NASA's Space Telecoms Network May Soon Be Outsourced (space.com) 23
vm shares a report from Space.com: SpaceX is among companies that might replace services of NASA's aging space telecoms constellation that has kept the International Space Station connected to Earth for decades. For years, NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) constellation has served as the main link between the International Space Station and Earth, providing astronauts with constant connection to ground control as well as the ability to engage with the public and stay in touch with their loved ones. The American space agency, however, plans to retire the six aging satellites in the next decade and hand over their task to commercial companies. This month, the agency announced partnerships with six commercial satellite operators including SpaceX, U.K. company Inmarsat, American Viasat and Switzerland-based SES, to demonstrate how they could take care of NASA's space communication needs in the future. "We don't plan to launch any new TDRS satellites in the future," Eli Naffah, the manager of NASA's Commercial Services Project, who oversees the partnership with the commercial companies, told Space.com. "The plan is to allow the constellation to basically [reach the end of its life]. At some point later in this decade, we are going to have some diminished capability and the plan is for the [commercial companies] to come up with a different way of providing communication services to our missions."
"Back in the 1980s, when we developed TDRS, there really wasn't an ability on the commercial side to be able to provide this service," Naffah said. "But since then, the industry has far outpaced NASA's investment in this area. There's a lot of infrastructure, both on the ground and in orbit that is capable of providing these types of services to a spacecraft. [...] Hopefully, we can achieve some cost efficiencies in buying commercial services, get out of the business of operating networks, and really put more focus on science and exploration." According to Naffah, NASA will invest $278 million into the project over the next five years, with the agency's industry partners contributing a total of about $1.5 billion.
"Back in the 1980s, when we developed TDRS, there really wasn't an ability on the commercial side to be able to provide this service," Naffah said. "But since then, the industry has far outpaced NASA's investment in this area. There's a lot of infrastructure, both on the ground and in orbit that is capable of providing these types of services to a spacecraft. [...] Hopefully, we can achieve some cost efficiencies in buying commercial services, get out of the business of operating networks, and really put more focus on science and exploration." According to Naffah, NASA will invest $278 million into the project over the next five years, with the agency's industry partners contributing a total of about $1.5 billion.
Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
When you are (virtually) the only customer for a product, outsourcing that product to an external entity will not give you any improvement in efficiency. Instead you now have to cope with the added friction and cost of having to sustain another company.
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No, economics do not work like that. Quite the opposite. The outsourced company sustains and pays for engineering and overhead using revenue from other projects providing efficiencies over bringing staff in house for a single project.
Re:Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Complete nonsense. What actually happens is that the service provider notices that a) it has no respective experts and hires them b) the customer has no alternative, so it passes the cost onward with a fat mark-up and c) the service provider tries to do everything as cheaply as possible and sometimes cheaper so reliability and security suffers. Oh, and d) if the customer has a problem, the service provider tries to make the customer go away or at least delays any efforts at resolution as long as possible.
Seriously, do you not understand the basics of capitalism or what?
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Except that the service provider in this case does have the expertise.
So going with a basically leads to exactly what I said.
Seriously, do you not understand the basics of the companies under discussion or what?
#confidentiallywrong
Re: Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
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There's no vendor consolidation going on here. I'm not sure what you're talking about but it's not what the rest of us are.
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Exactly. Also, you make yourself dependent on the mercy of that external entity. Not smart.
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Comparative advantage [wikipedia.org]
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So you produce all your own food? You posted that comment using a computer you built yourself, with chips you designed and fabbed yourself using silicon that you mined yourself?
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What Could Go Wrong? (Score:5, Funny)
Users of the service might get a recording: "Please deposit 10 USD to transmit the next 1GB of your data."
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government kickback (Score:2)
government kickback /GB on an no bid contract.
We bill NASA $200
Starlink (Score:4, Interesting)
Nasa should start testing starlink v2 .
The iss orbits at 400 km while starlink is 550km
You need v2 for the space lasers.
Heck with iss location they can probably get near gigabit service.
Plenty for 6 to video call family while doing science, and watching movies via hbo max.
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I hear Elon's going to buy it (Score:1)
....so according to the NYT, CNN, MSNBC it will suddenly become full of white supremacists attacking women, trans, and BIPOC.
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$1.5 billion!! (Score:2)
Jesus H. Christ. That'll buy a lot of Starlink terminals. And the ISS needs...three? (good to have a couple of hot backups).
Your tax dollars at work. Gotta keep those contractors eating.
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The TDRS constellation is used by more than just the ISS; the Hubble Space Telescope uses it for data and commanding, as do a number of other NASA science missions.
Makes sense if it's a commodity operation (Score:2)
NASA should not be in the business of building or managing commodities.
In related news (Score:1)
Unemployment numbers for Las Cruces, NM expected to rise with the shuttering of the the WSGT (AKA NGT) and STGT ground stations.