Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
NASA Businesses Earth Government Space The Almighty Buck

NASA Spends 72 Cents of Every SLS Dollar On Overhead Costs, Says Report (arstechnica.com) 166

Posted by BeauHD from the bearer-of-bad-news dept.
A new report published by the nonpartisan think tank Center for a New American Security shows us where a lot of NASA's money is being spent. The space agency has reportedly spent $19 billion on rockets -- first on Ares I and V, and now on the Space Launch System rocket -- and $13.9 billion on the Orion spacecraft. If all goes according to plan and NASA is able to fly its first crewed mission with the new vehicles in 2021, "the report estimates the agency will have spent $43 billion before that first flight, essentially a reprise of the Apollo 8 mission around the Moon," reports Ars Technica. "Just the development effort for SLS and Orion, which includes none of the expenses related to in-space activities or landing anywhere, are already nearly half that of the Apollo program." From the report: The new report argues that, given these high costs, NASA should turn over the construction of rockets and spacecraft to the private sector. It buttresses this argument with a remarkable claim about the "overhead" costs associated with the NASA-led programs. These costs entail the administration, management, and development costs paid directly to the space agency -- rather than funds spend on contractors actually building the space hardware. For Orion, according to the report, approximately 56 percent of the program's cost, has gone to NASA instead of the main contractor, Lockheed Martin, and others. For the SLS rocket and its predecessors, the estimated fraction of NASA-related costs is higher -- 72 percent. This means that only about $7 billion of the rocket's $19 billion has gone to the private sector companies, Boeing, Orbital ATK, Aeroject Rocketdyne, and others cutting metal. By comparison the report also estimates NASA's overhead costs for the commercial cargo and crew programs, in which SpaceX, Boeing, and Orbital ATK are developing and providing cargo and astronaut delivery systems for the International Space Station. With these programs, NASA has ceded some control to the private companies, allowing them to retain ownership of the vehicles and design them with other customers in mind as well. With such fixed-price contracts, the NASA overhead costs for these programs is just 14 percent, the report finds.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

NASA Spends 72 Cents of Every SLS Dollar On Overhead Costs, Says Report More

NASA Spends 72 Cents of Every SLS Dollar On Overhead Costs, Says Report

Comments Filter:

  • Can't blame NASA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @02:07AM (#54125083) Journal

    NASA is the easiest go to for pork barrel politics.

    • Re:Can't blame NASA (Score:5, Interesting)

      by slacka ( 713188 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @02:09AM (#54125095)

      And if you remove the pork barrel from the equation, with such fixed-price contracts, the NASA overhead costs drops to just 14 percent. This should be the main take-away.

      • That's not how it works. Of course NASA's overhead drops when they contract that work out instead of doing it themselves it just means someone else is doing the work and cost where shifted to them. You should be asking does it cost less to contract that out?

    • Re:Can't blame NASA (Score:5, Informative)

      by taiwanjohn ( 103839 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @02:44AM (#54125157)

      That's why so many space enthusiasts refer to SLS as the Senate Launch System. My friends and I are betting on how many times it will actually fly before it gets canceled (my money's on 2). By the time this thing flies (if ever) SpaceX and Blue Origin will already have heavy lifters available for a fraction of the price. The Falcon Heavy and New Glenn are not quite as powerful, yes, but both companies already have bigger rockets in development which will probably be available in the early-to-mid 20s.

      Besides, in the current launch market there just isn't much need for a booster the size of SLS. And by the time such needs develop, the commercial ones from Musk and Bezos will be ready.

      • Re:Can't blame NASA (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @04:00AM (#54125361) Homepage

        I'm anyone but someone to defend SLS, but this report seems rather flimsy. It seems that they're calling anything that NASA does in-house "overhead". That's not really a fair measure. A rocket is not just its physical construction; there's a huge amount of cost in research, design, testing, and support infrastructure - in the case of SLS, particularly the Exploration Ground Systems [nasa.gov] (EGS). Part of the problem however is that every time NASA builds something new, they're rarely allowed to shut it down. Including major projects with contractors. Congress keeps mandating this inefficiency, when what NASA really needs is the freedom to put large amounts of infrastructure to the axe when it can't contribute toward competitive costs, and reallocate the funds as is needed. So long as they face mandates to keep everything open (both internal, and with specific production lines run by particular suppliers), they shouldn't be criticized for their high costs - congress should.

        I really think NASA would fare better if it went back more to the NACA model - a research and support organization for other players, maintaining the common infrastructure and R&D used by others - with the addition of a scientific exploration program. NASA shouldn't be making anything that a private business case can be built for (for example, rockets reaching LEO / GEO), but they should be running the DSN, range support, creating a market for private industry to continually expand/improve its capabilities, nurturing startups to increase competition, and extensively working to bring more advanced technologies (that the market couldn't afford to sink money into due to the risk) from theory into real world - not trying to make "workhorses", but proof-of-concept systems that others will run with if merit and maturity can be demonstrated.

        In short:
        If there's a business model for it: private industry
        If it's too risky or long-term for business: NASA proof-of-concept
        If its a common need for multiple businesses in the field: NASA permanent infrastructure

        • I couldn't agree more, in particular with the idea of NASA getting back to its NACA roots. And I suspect the SLS will provide some impetus in that direction, as it becomes more and more obvious to the public that it's a colossal waste of money, especially when privately developed rockets almost as powerful as SLS are flying at a much lower cost. If Thiokol (or whatever they're called these days) wants to continue building SRBs, let them compete in the open marketplace instead of bribing Congress-critters to

        • A rocket is not just its physical construction; there's a huge amount of cost in research, design, testing, and support infrastructure - in the case of SLS

          The problem is that in case of SLS, which recycles half of the STS equipment, if you need to do so much extra research, maybe it was a wrong idea from the very start. One of the things I found utterly laughable was the recent engine testing campaign for the limited amount of engines that already flew (and will be thrown away), just because they've decided to run them slightly hotter. These things sum up in a nasty way. You could have designed and developed not one but several new launchers for the total sum

        • Total agreement. Sounded bogus right when I read- "These costs entail the administration, management, and development costs paid directly to the space agency" as if development should be near nothing. That's insane.
      • Funny thing is, that SLS was mostly done by house GOP, not Dems or the Senate.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Gravis Zero ( 934156 )

      NASA is the easiest go to for pork barrel politics.

      I would like to remind you that about a trillion dollars a year go toward "defense". The budget for the F-35 is almost as large as the entire budget for NASA! If you want to talk about pork, you aren't talking about spending money on science, you're talking about defense spending.

      • Re:Can't blame NASA (Score:5, Funny)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @04:05AM (#54125379)

        So your best defense of NASA's budget is that we also waste money on other things that are even stupider?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by gmack ( 197796 )
          I don't think anyone is defending NASA's budget, only correcting the statement that NASA is the easiest to go to for pork barrel politics. NASA is bad, but the defense spending is far worse mainly because if you question defense spending your loyalty to your country is questioned so it's a great place to force the military to buy overpriced things, or worse yet, things they don't even need.

        • So your best defense of NASA's budget is that we also waste money on other things that are even stupider?

          Sure, NASA budget needs fixed. Before projects throwing, what, two orders of magnitude more money away?

        • Funding NASA has continually paid off with new scientific knowledge, much of which has even been used to make weapons. War only destroys lives.

        • You're right. You should take the budge of NASA AND the military and devote it towards more Spiderman and Batman films.

        • So your best defense of NASA's budget is that we also waste money on other things that are even stupider?

          Depends if you think it needs defending. Think of what you get for your money from NASA compared to the F-35. You want to talk about wasting money? How about a billion dollars for 62 miles of wall/fence. http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03... [cnn.com]

          • Think of what you get for your money from NASA compared to the F-35.

            How about we just think about what we get for our money from NASA?
            Comparing it to the F-35 is pointless since in no way whatsoever are they alternatives.

            How about a billion dollars for 62 miles of wall/fence.

            Using that as justification for spending on something completely unrelated is idiotic.

      • I would like to remind you that about a trillion dollars a year go toward "defense".

        The actual number last year was around $600 billion but your point still stands. Coincidentally our federal deficit in 2016 was also right around $600 billion so we basically borrowed every penny we spent on the military last year. So thank your grandchildren for the debt they'll be paying off because we think it necessary to support a military that is grossly oversized but are unwilling to tax enough to pay for it.

        If you want to talk about pork, you aren't talking about spending money on science, you're talking about defense spending.

        Truer words have never been spoken. NASA is a rounding error compared to the wasteful spen

      • I would like to remind you that about a trillion dollars a year go toward "defense".

        No it is actually closer to half that [insidegov.com] and if you include veterans benefits it is only about 60%. That isn't to say there isn't waste and stupid shit going on since we all should be familiar with generals and the like saying they don't want something and don't need it but congress approves money for it because it brings home the bacon to their district. Personally I think our military budget is over sized and everyone likes to complain the the US spends more than the next X countries combines on their milita

        • ... we end up being world police...

          Nobody asked us to be, so why are we doing it? You can claim whatever justification you want but we both know it comes down to money.

          • I don't want us to be wold police and have argued long against it. Unfortunately because we have played that role for so long a lot of countries are dependent on the US being there to defend them if something happens (western Europe, Japan, South Korea, other parts of S.E. Asia, the Middle East, the UN, etc) so I realize that packing up immediately would be bad so a deliberate unwinding would be needed.

            • I realize that packing up immediately would be bad so a deliberate unwinding would be needed.

              It'll only happen after we stop buying oil from other nations.

    • Privatization always works out great for regular people, like the water supply in Flint Michigan. I wonder if Americans will ever figure out that privatization is a con job by oligarchs to get your money for themselves under the guise of efficiency. Our privatized health care system sucks, and it costs twice as much as non-profit systems that have no co-pays and cover everyone. You're being conned folks.

      • I wonder if Americans will ever figure out that privatization is a con job by oligarchs to get your money for themselves under the guise of efficiency.

        I dunno. Americans still haven't figured out government programs are a con job by politicians to get our money for themselves under the guise of efficacy. "Hey Taxpayer! You're too stupid to know what to do with your own money so we will take it from you and spend it in ways we think are best for you! Don't object! It's for your own good!"

        This is why I'm a Libertarian.

        • You are drinking the coolaid for sure. Government is only as good or as bad as the people who voted into office. Business is always about screwing customers to get their money. Now that college is a for profit business, regular people can't afford it. We'll see how you like the Trump administration who says they are going to make the government into a business, and citizens into customers. I'm sure you are going to love it. Not so much for most of the rest of us.

    • This doesn't look pork barreley to me at all.

      I'm actually amazed that 28% of the cost is going on building the rocket, because you know... Someone has to fucking design the thing.

      Why is it surprising that the design of a brand new rocket system costs a significant proportion of the cost of building the first rocket of that type?

  • If space is so dazzling, and NASA that incompetent, why doesn't the private sector develop its own space program?

    Do these figures instead indicate NASA is providing hidden subsidies to the private sector lined up at its feeding trough?

    • Well, I have never heard of Center for a New American Security before, so it would be reasonable to be skeptical about how non-partisan they are. Judging from the article alone, however, it appears that 'overhead' is anything that isn't passed on to external contractors, so potentially this could include any research that is done by NASA scientists. If this is the case, I don't think it is non-partisan at all - the position that only work done by external contractors is 'real work' is a highly biased one to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      A few ideas.
      1. When the Germans arrived after WW2 they created German supply systems in the USA. The USA copied the best ideas from 1930-40's Germany and is now stuck with that method.
      The US was in such a rush to get into space it copied all the faults of 1930's Germany.
      No US company or gov worker is going to give up the wage structure and good standards generations later.
      The USA finally got quality control but the cost was funding the US private sector to make all the parts to German standards in th

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      Because there is no profit in space except where you can take from the government.

      The problem here is that we're ALREADY using the private sector (Lockheed Martin and Boeing and a host of other smaller companies) but without any true management or expectations from NASA, these things tend to go over budget or completely replaced every time a politician wants some cred for his next campaign

      The NASA budget is indeed small but it's being spent on hundreds of reviews over the same items. Nothing new is happenin

    • Unless your goal is to drop bombs on places halfway around the world, there really isn't much economic reason to go into space. Satellites are the main exception, but you launch one and you're set for the next 7-15 years. That's why pretty much all the U.S. launch vehicles are actually modified ballistic missiles. They were designed (by the private sector under contract) with the goal of dropping bombs on places halfway around the world. And NASA got to re-use that tech at a price heavily subsidized by

      • That's why pretty much all the U.S. launch vehicles are actually modified ballistic missiles. They were designed (by the private sector under contract) with the goal of dropping bombs on places halfway around the world. And NASA got to re-use that tech at a price heavily subsidized by military R&D.

        Historically this was true. The situation has now, bizarrely, reversed. NASA is being used to artificially keep Thiokol alive because they manufacture the solid fuel rockets that are ICBMs, but the Air Force hasn't been allowed to buy more ICBMs since the Clinton era. This is why the Senate Launch System is "architected" the way it is.

        Trump has been making noises about the poor condition of our nuclear deterrent. If he gets his way, the Air Force will be able to replace a bunch of missiles directly, and

  • It is in the nature of the business! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by farrellj ( 563 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @02:58AM (#54125197) Homepage Journal

    Going into space is an incredibly front loaded type enterprise. They aren't opening a a dollar store, they are sending people in to one of the most hostile environments known to man. They say "Measure twice, cut once", but when you have the lives of people in your hands, you measure tens of thousands of times to make sure the final cutting won't accidentally kill them! And before you go and say Blue Origin and SpaceX are doing it so much cheaper, yes, but that is because they are standing on a mountain of research & technology courtesy NASA. R&D done by NASA has given us billions and billions of dollars in spin-off technologies over the years, and I am sure if you charted it out, your return on investment is pretty good.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by SiggyRadiation ( 628651 )

      No, they aren't opening a dollar store, but the numbers from TFA are enormous. SpaceX and Blue Origin may be standing on a mountain of previous research & tech from NASA, but NASA itself is also standing on that same mountain. Since it is their own mountain, it should be logical that they would be more effective in applying previously discovered knowledge to their new projects.

      And, purely the fact that space is a hostile environment isn't a fact that can be used to explain away any level of bureaucracy

      • Re:It is in the nature of the business! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by farrellj ( 563 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @04:07AM (#54125385) Homepage Journal

        Yes, they stand on that mountain, but they are still building it! As for your comparison with nuclear, health, etc...sorry, the tolerances there are much greater than for space. Certification for use in the medical or nuclear fields is much easier than getting something space rated!

        And most times when a "think tank" comes out with "proof" that some agency has too much bureaucracy, it is a prelude to justify budget cuts. It's just another piece of the propaganda war. :-(

        • Yes, they stand on that mountain, but they are still building it!

          All the more reason to question their overhead since this "mountain" was already climbed in 1969. You do realize there's almost nothing NASA is trying to do today that wasn't already done better, faster, and cheaper by the Apollo program, right?

      • I think a point being missed is the contract accountability requirements, and the fact that managing subcontractors is all overhead.

        In a perfect world, it might be 30-35%, but more often than not it exceeds 50% in the private sector. 76% sounds bad, but I am sure there is a little gaming of the numbers there.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      And before you go and say Blue Origin and SpaceX are doing it so much cheaper, yes, but that is because they are standing on a mountain of research & technology courtesy NASA.

      Something both of them readily admit. SpaceX in particular has continually expressed their gratitude for all of the support they've gotten from NASA over the years. And they have an interesting cooperative model in place now for Red Dragon - no money exchanged, but they get access to NASA facilities and time working with NASA resea

    • They aren't opening a a dollar store, they are sending people in to one of the most hostile environments known to man.

      "I'm not going up there!... send a droid."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      Regarding commercial space companies, they may be cheaper (a little) but pretty slow on delivery (though fast when compared to SLS, or Orion). In 2004 with SpaceShip One everyone thought suborbital flights, Virgin Galactic, will be commonplace quite soon (but still years away). Then we have SpaceX that has made some impressive capabilities but launching humans always seems to be 2 or 3 years away. Hard to know when BO will deliver, I see lots of impressive schedules but always some delay. SN Dreamchaser? Ma
    • that's not how it works. You make a guess about how likely you are to get in trouble for those people's deaths and use that to decide how many times to measure. If somebody's irreplaceable (either because they're a genius or just really,really rich) you don't risk them. I'm not being flippant. That really is how it works. And we've got centuries of business rules and relations to fall back on as proof. Hell, looks at Flint MI's water supply. Or the process of approving drugs and the high profile failures th

  • Is this a lot? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MFriis ( 4445501 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @02:58AM (#54125199)

    Obviously it sounds like a lot, but i haven't been able to find any source on what they define as overhead. I also have no idea how much the normal overhead is.

    It sounds like any cost not going towards a private company is accounted as overhead. Surely NASA has expenses internally that wouldn't make sense to call overhead.

    • That is pretty much my take. The other fun question is how much of the contractor's time goes to things that do not directly contribute to work-in-place. On government contracts, it is fairly normal for us to be at 10% compliance overhead, in addition to your other traditional overhead tasks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by godrik ( 1287354 )

      It is a weird definition of overhead. Overhead is usually defined as the part of administrative expenses as opposed to research expenses. But even like that 72% would not be that big necessarily.

      When applying to NSF grant, public state universities have indirect cost, often labeled "overhead", which rate is roughly 50% for public universities (it is negociated per university, but that's roughly what it is.)
      What that 50% overhead means is that if $1 goes to the research (paying faculty in summer time when th

    • Well, a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money!

  • It's 42 for the normal overhead and 30 for the secret military overhead. Just thought I'd clear this up.

  • A book of this title written years ago describes the mess NASA was and still is.

    NASA= Not About Space Anymore

  • When President Kennedy famously said, "We choose to go to the moon...", a significant part of the decision stemmed from what was known as trickle-down economics. The idea was that buy investing a huge amount of money into NASA, but then require the agency to outsource much of their work to sub-contractors scattered around the country, the act of pouring billions in at the "top" (NASA) would see that money help lift a huge part of the national economy.

    Unfortunately, all the big suppliers found they liked

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      I once worked at Rockwell-Collins, which had been a supplier for the Space Shuttle programme. When I arrived, they were very stringent about how we handled our time reporting and billing. Why? Because apparently before I got there they had just gotten heavy slapped down for exploiting cost-plus Shuttle contracts. Whenever any project went over budget, they just had employees credit their time to the Shuttle programme.

  • Nineteen Days Left to File Your Taxes (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Whether the numbers a correct - or not, why does any one care?
    Seriously. If we could reduce the obscene cost of medical care by even one percent,
    the NASA budget could be doubled and we could have a "single payer" health system.
    And if you really want to explore "social welfare tax money" don't get me started on the military budget.
    We are one nation under a bunch of god-awful, politically motivated morons.
    It feel good to rant early in the morning. Try it.

  • What a load of crap! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Because Nasa does just "overhead"..? They think NASA, maybe because is not private, never does something useful by itself? Without NASA you wouldn't have all these rockets anyways..
    And Boeing, Lockeed...are cutting metal...Let me catch my breath! For one dollar given to Lockheed for the F35 how many cents did go to "cutting metal" ?!? These publicly-supported companies are overhead machines by themselves! I worked for some of them in a similar sector (high tech, main client is governments), you wouldn't bel

  • Private sector will increase costs. (Score:3)

    by Zemran ( 3101 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @04:03AM (#54125369) Homepage Journal
    If it costs money to do something and you hand it over to the private sector it will cost money plus profit to make it therefore more. If the argument is that somehow the private sector magically has better management then improve the management and reduce the costs but that simply is not true. Better management always equals higher cost as they always charge more than they earn.

    • If it costs money to do something and you hand it over to the private sector it will cost money plus profit to make it therefore more.

      Wrong. If that were true, the USSR would have economically destroyed the US. That's just one of millions of examples. It's not the case that *everything* is best done by private enterprise, but if the primary goal is to serve the customer at minimum cost, competitive private industry is the absolute best way we know to achieve it. Yes, companies need to generate a profit, but that profit is almost always dwarfed by the opportunities for reducing costs by being more efficient.

      In a competitive market, findi

    • You are correct up to a point, but you seriously underestimate the inefficiency of the federal government. Here are a few of their greatest hits. All the employment records for the federal government are stored in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvanian, there have been many failed attempts to digitize them, the last failure was led by an English major with no technical background, It can take up to a year before people receive their retirement. The system is so notoriously bad they have a policy where benef

    • If it costs money to do something and you hand it over to the private sector it will cost money plus profit to make it therefore more. If the argument is that somehow the private sector magically has better management then improve the management and reduce the costs but that simply is not true. Better management always equals higher cost as they always charge more than they earn.

      Costs are lower in the private sector due to competition in the marketplace. If there is a monopoly on any item or service, you better believe the costs will be astronomical.

      What we have seen in the past 5-10 years is the end of a monopoly by ULA as a result of Space X and others. While ULA had a monopoly in the private sector, the SLS made sense. Now that there is competition, that is no longer the case.

  • They ignored inflation. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by silentcoder ( 1241496 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @04:23AM (#54125425)

    In it's day Apollo 8 cost 20 billion dollars. In today's money that's about 110 billion dollars.
    The SLS costing the about the same in today's money as Apollo 8 cost in 1968 dollars - is actually a MASSIVELY cheaper and more efficient project then. .

    The argument is pretty flawed if you make such a silly mistake. Now let's consider the claim about amounts and where they go. Are these people seriously saying that ALL of what NASA does with their share is wasted effort ? Does NASA not have a stake in doing their own testing and validation - making sure that they get what they paid for and that their astronauts will be safe ? Outsourcing that seems seriously irresponsible but even if you DID the private sector companies would have to do the same tests. Maybe they COULD do it cheaper -but cheaper isn't the most important thing here, quality matters a lot more than price for this stuff.

    Why exactly is it a bad thing if a large chunk of NASA's budget is spent on the parts NASA does ? Why are these people arguing that NASA should outsource more than they do ? NASA is the customer here - and this seems like a thinly veiled attempt to use politics to force the customer to buy more.

    NASA is the dumbest thing to complain about in terms of cost anyway - as a fraction of the federal budget they are a blip. Seriously NASA has had it's funding cut so consistently for decades that, today, they are basically a rounding error on the budget.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by lavaboy ( 21282 )
      except that back during Apollo, NASA consumed between 1.2 and 4.4 percent of the entire annual federal budget. Now it accounts for around 0.5%. So, the pie got a lot bigger, and the space program's slice got a lot thinner. So NASA is actually doing a lot with less. Also - the entire Apollo Program cost around 26b$ in 1969, which works out to about 136b$ in 2007 (and closer to 160b$ in 2017 dollars) ... so it's more like 36% ( 31% in 2017 dollars) of Apollo, and less when you consider that the SLS program di

  • Those overhead figures are no surprise at all. NASA has been around more than long enough for Pournelle's Iron Law to take over. The bureaucracy grows to meet the needs of the growing bureaucracy. Any space science that gets done is purely incidental.

    This is a fundamental problem with government agencies. When private companies become inefficient, they (in an ideal world) either clean house or they are overtaken by their competitors. When government agencies become inefficient, there is no pressure on them

  • You realize we're sitting on 45,000 pounds of fuel, one nuclear warhead and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder? Makes you feel good doesn't it?

  • This is the sort of idiotic criticism made by people with no understanding of accounting. Part of "overhead" is engineering and the engineering costs for designing a system like SLS are substantial. Since NASA is doing the engineering for SLS in house of course the overhead costs are going to be a higher percentage of their total. If they outsourced it, the overhead for engineering won't disappear - it will just go on the P&L for a different company. You could argue that a private sector company

  • NASA is a pork barrel project and isn't about space anymore. It was appropriate for the era of getting to the moon and should now get out of the space game and be replaced with separate organizations for supervision and mission funding of private contractors as has already begun. Going to the moon was actually about shifting the high cost of rocket development as well as putting a pretty face on large rocket tests. It was a PR thing. The defense department got their rocket tech which they were going to get

  • Imagine what NASA could do if it didn't spend 65 cents of every dollar filling out Freedom of Information requests from industry lobbying groups with patriotic sounding names!

    From the summary:
    "This means that only about $7 billion of the rocket's $19 billion has gone to the private sector companies, Boeing, Orbital ATK, Aeroject Rocketdyne, and others cutting metal."

  • Labor Isn't Overhead (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You might want a one-off widget which costs $100 to make for every launch, but if the engineering into that widget takes decades to get people to be able to engineer, years to put in place the business infrastructure to supports, months to train up the skilled labor to build, etc then it isn't really $100. Now, if you only need that widget every decade or two it gets even worse because you also have to pay for maintaining that organization which likely has to maintain a very high tech level of production s

  • Aren't they talking about manned flight? (Score:3)

    by backwardsposter ( 2034404 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @08:47AM (#54126541)

    This is the epitome of news reporting these days.
    Step one: gather information to report on something you don't understand (e.g. how to do a manned flight mission)
    Step two: make assumptions about a detail you learned on a subject you don't understand (e.g. how to do a manned flight mission)
    Step three: complain about money spent (Bonus points for calling out NASA and how successful private industry is)
    Step four: compare the risk of two things that are just not relatable (the difference of risk between unmanned and manned flight is laughable)
          Just to point out, there is a dedicated team at NASA focused on the safety of everyone involved. This is "overhead".
          There are people for quality assurance. This is "overhead".
          There are system engineers.
          There are people who manage the process.
          There are managers at the project level.
          There are managers at the mission level.
          Personnel managers.
          Facility managers.
          Security.
          Independent reviews.
    Do you really want to be known as the one who cut one of these pieces when a rocket carrying people blows up? I'm not saying that the private industry can't handle this. I'm sure they will some day. But to assume they won't be exponentially more expensive???

    Look people. Space X saved millions of dollars by borrowing decades old lessons and in some cases even algorithms and hardware from what NASA accomplished. Maybe private is the future, but how can we be so arrogant as to assume that our current success is unrelated to the hard work of people for the better part of a century?

    Step five: inflammatory news piece to get your name out there.

  • "The new report argues that, given these high costs, NASA should turn over the construction of rockets and spacecraft to the private sector." I thought contractors already build NASA's rockets?

  • 1. From a late friend who was a rocket scientist, she was an engineer at the Cape, and used
    to complain mightily that the last years she was there, upper management were time servers,
    and didn't want to sign anything.
    2. How much of that "overhead" is administering contracts? Here's a working example: I work,
    right now, for a federal contractor (civilian sector). I have my fed direct

  • It better all be over head, because after all they're the freakin' National Aeronautics and Space Administration!

    • Think Tanks are almost entirely purposed with creating biased academic like support for propaganda purposes. They do not seek truth, only as much truth that supports their paid positions and maybe invent clever fake science to undermine confuse actual science -- smoking is actually good for you! Some people they hire are honest but believe in the same things and if that changes they are fired. Others are just intellectual whores who sell their minds out for money, arguably worse than a whore.

      Think Tanks o

Slashdot Top Deals

Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.

Close