Replace NASA With Us

[Bill_Wright]

I propose that we ask the government to close NASA. I am suggesting that this is the only way to get to Deep Space. Forget public funding and having to get Congress to pass under-funded or non-funded programs that change every year. Hire a dynamic 40-50 year old CEO who has a proven record of being able to attract private funding as well as an understanding of space technology. Hire the NASA employees as employees that have gotten reviews that are above average. Hire employees as contractors that don't have good reviews and let them go if their performance ratings appear to be accurate.

Sell shares - if you folks really believe in what you write then buy them. The Apollo program took about $175B in today's funding so we have a goal; we should double it to $350B to reflect today's increased goals. Get every magazine and author that makes money off of writing about space to donate 10% of their profits to the program. If 1/3 of the people support the space program then that means that an average of $1000 would be needed. As many of the investors would buy more than the minimum number of shares then that doesn't make everyone's investment would have to be $1000. And remember that we don't have to achieve all of our goals in year one so we also don't have to sell every share the first year. If our technical force is savvy and we meet our deliverables the market will increase the share price and early investors will have capital gains.

Partner up with the rest of the globe. They can add money and expertise that will just make the job easier. Pragmatism is cheaper than blind patriotism. I have fought for our country and am proud of my service. But even John McCain has visited Viet Nam so you shouldn't let your pride interfere with your goals. Hire international auditors to insure that no country uses slave labor, takes short-cuts on quality, or cheats on pricing.

Use our current successful vendors instead of every start up with promises but no experience. Write contracts that have bonus money for under-budget, no shortcut, ahead of schedule deliveries. Write contracts that penalize poor performance. Forget cost-plus!!! Hire independent auditors to insure that we get what we pay for. Continue with the little $1M to $10M projects to help develop the next round of engineering talent.

Write project plans using commercial project planning tools. Publish them to the web so we can all follow the projects. Insure that GANTT and PERT charts are published so we can see where the bottlenecks might be as well as when we are on or ahead of schedule. Fire anyone coming to a meeting with a PowerPoint presentation!

Ensure that every procedure, component and chemical is environmentally safe. Our job will be to save our species, not destroy it.

Not a perfect plan, but I think a good start. Thoughts?

 

[cat666]

Typical NASA bashing. The basic rule is: developing a project rarely goes as planned. Especially if you really push the boundaries. It does not matter who is doing this, a state organization or a private enterprise. Delivering ahead of schedule? There is a diffrence between delivering a prototype and getting mass produced things out.

For selling shares, what you describe here is an enterprise that does not make money. Only income would come from increased share price. Thats a good thing.

 

[samkent]

Totally clueless.

Who in their right mind would buy one share in something that has never shown to generate a single dime in profit? As much as I love space projects (certain ones), I would never willingly give any money to any space venture.
I don’t need GPS, I have a road atlas.
I don’t need sat tv, I have a roof antenna.
Space doesn’t pump up my retirement account.

Most Americans would feel the same way.


Suppose you do find enough suckers to buy the shares for a Moon mission. Once the mission is over and the astronauts are back on the ground, what is a share worth? Zero!
You have no hardware left, the rocks and data are at universities. You have nothing!
Share price is ZERO! All of those people who invested $1000 per share have lost everything. With that track record are there any people dumber than the first group? I doubt it.

Clueless Clueless Clueless

 

[Shpaget]

samkent, space exploration provided and led to so many inventions you take for granted that if NASA was commercial enterprise it would never need another cent form the government.

Bill, your idea might sound nice on the paper, but not many people would be willing to practically give away their money and invest in something so risky.
Who would control the leaders? People on the top would really need to be saints not to take a billion or two for themselves (each).

 

[Bill_Wright]

I am a scientist / engineer, no MBA here. An honest law firm (?) would have to set the corporation up to prevent the CEO and board from pillaging. Also, as shareholders, if we sense a problem we have the right to vote people out. We would need to set up rules to prevent a small block of folks from taking control.

I (strictly my opinion) would suggest that as a for profit corporation the Moon and maybe Mars might not be good targets. Asteroids obviously have precious metals on board. Comets have water. If I was in control (which due to my lack of qualification I would not be) I would only target bodies that might contain material(s) that could be sold at a profit. I would also set the initial share price at $20 and split any time it got above $40 to allow anyone who has "space fever" the opportunity to participate. I might even allow group ownership of shares so people in poorer countries could participate.

You all have valid questions, we need to get more people involved to get good answers. I think it is obvious that under our political system we will never get anywhere with our space program. Space projects need from 1 to 30 years of steady funding and we can't count on a volatile government to do that. Also, not everyone cares about space, many consider it a waste of funding. Take them out of the equation (although the first return of valuable materials might change their minds). If they ever want to participate, then let them buy shares. It would just make our initial investment more profitable as it would boost the share price.

If we ever hit the mother lode, we might branch off into space tourism, like cruise lines. Then the Moon becomes viable as there should be folks that would pay to see the historical sites and we should have developed the technology to make that possible. All thoughts appreciated.

 

[Swampcat]

An honest law firm (?)...

:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[doom_shepherd]

First off... sell the asteroid metal to who?

I mean, I am in favor of the concept of mining the 'roids, but are you proposing to haul the ore back down to Earth's surface? I don't think mining the asteroids for metals or rare elements will be viable until you have enough of an off-planet population that you don't have to worry about the expense of carting "ore trucks" back and forth through gravity wells.

Then, asteroids will be valuable both as mines and as real estate afterwards (hollowed out or catacombed asteroids = lots of apartment space when you can build in 3 dimensions)

Second... Sure, McCain has visited Vietnam. That doesn't mean he's going to share ballistic missile technology with them.

Thirdly... honest law firm? The drug legalization topic is on another page... :lol:

 

[Bill_Wright]

First, statistics would indicate that there must be at least one honest law firm. If you buy into the fact that there must be life other than on Earth because statistics says so, then you have to buy into my argument as well.

There have been experiments with inflatable heat shields. There has been talk about aerobraking. Between the two techniques it should be possible to get cargoes safely to the surface. Neither technique would require hauling massive cargo trucks up into space. Iron meteorites could be aimed at desolate spots in Canada, Siberia, or Greenland. We'd probably lose half the mass getting through the atmosphere but half of something is better than all of nothing.

Partnering up with countries doesn't mean sharing sensitive technology. We are building a fighter plane (F-35) with NATO and are not sharing all of the source code with our #1 ally, England. Other countries can contribute workers to build non-sensitive components (tanks, fins, etc.) without us giving away the guidance system for MIRVs.

Hollowing out asteroids is a good idea. Think of the condos at one G on the outside of the shell, think of the zero-G park where you can fly yourself, not just a kite, at the center of the asteroid. Think of the views of space? I believe that would be an easy sell.

I have led projects where complex factories were automated that came in on time and on budget. The reason? The contracts had both rewards and teeth. It is not impossible to meet a schedule you just have to have good management to do so.

There is an alternative to this plan. It is called the status quo. Are you all happy that we are still trying to get back to the Moon, a no-value exercise, 40 plus years after doing it first? Are you happy that Congress has passed a law mandating that NASA identify all NEOs by 2009 but has not funded them a dime? Are you happy that NASA has to borrow funds from science to keep their infrastructure in place? Are you happy with the fact that kids would rather be rappers or basketball players than astronauts? If you want change then come up with a better proposal, or improve upon mine and let's get it working. Statistically I have another 20-25 years to live. I'd rather not die knowing that we still can't duplicate what we did in 1969.

 

[Bill_Wright]

Thoughts on an honest law firm: maybe there are none. However, there are honest legal interns available who simply haven't gotten the chance to be corrupted. We could employ them to write a contract with a law firm that would keep them as close to honest as our own scrutiny can insure. The important thing about this exercise is to think out of the box. Come up with solutions not jokes. We have been on the starting line for deep space for 40 years and are still waiting for the starter's gun to really go off. When it does do we want the race to be defined by Congress? It would start off as the 100 yard dash, then switch to the high hurdles. Before it got half way down the track it would be a steeplechase. And in the meantime Congress would be gorging themselves on earmarks. Maybe not the best metaphor or allegory (chemists get these words confused) but you know what I mean. We need to leverage space away from its current environment and put it in the hands of those who care. Democracy is not a bad idea, nor is profit, so all of us shareholders (anyone with $20) would have a voice in directing us to profitable targets. For the sake of history and our consciences we must act to avoid wasting another 40 years. Would there be risks? You bettcha'. Could there be rewards? Quite likely. Are both the reason we are not still creatures sitting on our haunches in the deserts in Africa? Yep. So let's act like humans and put our fate in our own hands, not our "representatives". Please someone, come up with a better idea, or improve on this one, then let's get on with the business of conquering space.

 

[Bill_Wright]

BTW: this is not NASA bashing, it is government bashing. That and the confidence that we can do a better job.

 

[Shpaget]

Look, don't get me wrong, I'm all pro your idea (I had similar thoughts as well), but this kind of communist enterprise can't work in capitalist world.

1 G asteroids? That would be almost as big as... Earth, well actually much bigger since they're hollowed out. Or dou you plan on spinning them up?

Besides, if I remember correctly there are several private companies that already invest millions in research. Why not support one of them?

 

[SpaceXFanMobius57]

NASAs main problem is that its government.

I still luv it tho ^^ :mrgreen:

 

[jim48]

As the 19th century became the 20th, a man by the name of Henry Morrison Flagler, a partner of John D. Rockefeller in the oil business, decided to build a railroad from the southern tip of Florida to Key West. And he did. And it cost him a lot of money, because much of that railroad was over the ocean.[/i, connecting a series of islands.] It was hugely complex project from an engineering standpoint and most labor intensive. But Flagler did it. Today where I live in Palm Beach county streets and buildings are named for Flagler. Head farther south to Miami and more things are named for him. He built railroads that pretty much allowed the creation of Palm Beach and Miami Beach. Today of course roads and bridges are paid for by us, not by Henry Flagler. Parts of his bridge remain as wreckage, wiped out by successive hurricanes. During the Great Depression over 400 men died when a hurricane struck the Keys. They were part of a WPA program to turn the former rail line into a highway, which they ultimately did. Flagler literally laid the foundations for an overseas route at his own expense. The gubberment came in a few decades later and turned it into a highway. Thank God they built a new bridge down to Key West some years back, a wider one, because that was a harrowing car drive down and back but I digress. I would have no problem with getting rid of NASA. The only reason it got billions to go to the moon was because John Kennedy was a charismatic guy and the Russians were ahead of us in space. That ain't happening now. Want to send people to Mars? Start a business!!! Get NASA out of the way. I remember a movie called When Worlds Collide, in which a privately funded rocket ship was mankind's last, best hope. NASA's hands are tied budget-wise. Private industries' are not. The gubberment got the Trans-Continental Railroad going then stepped aside. Ditto for early commercial aviation . The gubberment funded the army to deliver the mail by air, then stepped aside to allow civilian aviation to deliver the mail, which ultimately resulted in the creation of airlines! So why not allow that for space? Hmm? NASA could of course continue, IMO, but leave the heavy lifting to the big boys. Apologies for the weird italics here. SDC is always hard to edit and correct, unlike most other sites.

 

[Eman_3]

Well Bill, I certainly sympathise with you, and I believe I share your emotions. After the heady days of the 60's when the US space program marched steadily marched forward in advancing mankind into space, we reached the moon and suffered post-coital withdrawl. I'm very sure that no one back then realized that forty years later, we have advanced technology, but not moved and inch beyond low earth orbit. Shamefull and embarassing to the extreme.

And it's certainly frustrating to see NASA get yanked around every change in administration, with the net effect only minor advances in technology and goals. Personally, I do not blame NASA at all, this lack of forward development in manned exploration is a political problem. Of course the people at the top of the food chain in NASA are political and just as responsible for this failure as anyone, but as far as the fine scientists, technicians, mechanics, and even support staff (big shout out to all the fine people pushing the paperwork behind the scenes), they are doing a great job.

Just imagine how personally frustrating it must be for an engineer on the Aries project. You grow up post-Apollo, and want to design spacecraft that explore the planets. Instead you are assigned a project where you use a modified copy of an old Apollo capsule, stick it on top of a solid rocket that has been used for the shuttle project (with major modifications), and it's only to lift people into low earth orbit. I really do feel for those frustrated engineers who dreamed that one day they would be designing exotic spacecraft for planetary exploration, to only construct a taxi, and just about everything has been proven, it's no major life-changing challenge. Everyone, including engineers all wish they were involved in a major undertaking. I know many who brag, "I was involved in the Apollo project".

But this proposal appears to basically take the job away from NASA and privatize it. Everntualy, one day it will happen. But right now, the only room for privatization in space is low earth orbit, or up in geosynchronous orbit. Personally, I believe that these technologies and procedures are still immature, and it will be a few more decades before private industry is capable of stepping in and filling NASA's shoes.

Advancing past low earth orbit and the geosynchronous orbits is a huge undertaking, and will take many decades. It just does not make good business sense to ask anyone to invest in a venture that might take at least 50 years to return on investment, most likely a hundred to two hundred years. I can guarantee an investor a much quicker return on their investment, and within just a few years. It's fundamentally impossible to compete against that.

I do believe that right now, NASA is the right place to do this job, it's just the darn politics. NASA has all the infrastructure, staff, and experience to do the job. They just require a thorough cleaning of the top, and focus.
And the lack of focus is coming from the top, and that is driven by public interest, or apathy. For instance, Michael Jackson's death drew a heck of a lot more attention and media coverage than the Aries launch. Public interest has to be re-invigorated and young kids drawn into the dream of space exploration. Right now, kids are more interested in Guitar Hero and rap than what's going on over their heads. Maybe NASA ought to dedicate two shuttle seats to some young star, such as Miley Cyrus, and film her throughout the mission, and she can make a movie and music videos. Maybe that is how you spark interest in kids. But something has to be done.

Personally, I sincerely believe that until the public wakes up and motivates the politicians, things won't change and any advancement in the US manned exploration beyond low earth orbit will crawl slowly ahead, if at all. My strategy is to speak what I believe will happen, and alert and frighten others out of inaction. Because if things keep happening the way they are, it will be the Chinese, Russians, or Indians who return to the moon, and are the first to step foot on Mars.

Iron meteorites could be aimed at desolate spots in Canada, Siberia, or Greenland.

Not going to happen. You're not going to bomb my nation with anything. If you want to harvest meteorites, land them inside the continental USA. It's your idea for a private industry concept, it's your problem to figure out the logistics without messing up other nations or unbroken and unspoiled wilderness.

 

[Bill_Wright]

I don't think my proposal would take 100 years to turn a profit. I don't think my proposal would be that hard to fund.

There are hundreds of NEOs and asteroids. Spectroscopes could wean out the ones that might be rich in metals that are in short supply on Earth. Robotic missions could confirm that. That could be done in 5-7 years, about the time frame that Orion and the new launcher (let's call it Saturn VI) would be ready. That should also be the time that we have figured out how to get a pretty big object into Earth orbit in another 6-8 years. So we harvest our first profit in 15 years. Warren Buffet (sp?) just made a $30B+ investment that he believes will lose money short term but make money in the really long run (20-100 years). There are few investors with that kind of cash, but Paul Allen comes to mind as someone with a lot of money who can make a large investment. Meantime there are several million people who can do the $1k+, and many, many people who can do the $20+. Once people see that there is a return on investment the number of investors would increase greatly.

An iron meteorite "aerobraked" into an area of the world with a low population density should not be considered "bombing". If slowed to 15kmph there should be little damage, certainly less than golf course sized. I once lived in NE Montana. I'd volunteer two miserable counties for a landing zone. Windows would have to be boarded and people and animals should stay inside, but we are not talking A-bomb energy. Find an iron meteor, cut it into 100 foot hunks, and drop them into the landing zone. After that demo I am sure that other countries would volunteer some of their "badlands" for some kind of "prep bonus".

15 years is a long time to return a profit, but remember that our investors are people in love with the idea of space travel and realize that patience and a steady hand at the wheel are prerequisites. Maybe step one is to build a good explanation of the whole process and then fund a poll. Anyone consider volunteering to head that committee?

 

[Shpaget]

15 km/h? For a 30 meter chunk of iron? That's almost 100 000 tons.

How in the world would you slow that thing down?
Anyway, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near it.

 

[MeteorWayne]

I hope you realize that your physics is completely out to lunch. First of all, an object as small as the shuttle heats up to several thouand degrees when deorbiting from a mere 7 km/sec. If you are "aerobraking" a several hundred thousand ton object in the atmosphere, it will become hot enough to ignite every flammable object on the earth's surface. As far as 15 km/h final speed??? That's just unrealistic. The terminal velocity of an object with zero speed relative to the earth would be several thousnd km/h. And you wouldn't be able to stop it.

Have you calculated the amount of energy required to slow an object that size to the ~ 7 km/sec orbital speed above the atmosphere? And that's just your starting point!

An object with zero velocity relative to the earth at the edge of the earth's gravity well would hit at 11.2 km/s of course, and would blast through the atmosphere in 10 seconds.

 

[Eman_3]

With a lot of respect, I cannot see how this venture could be worked up to a profitable level in my lifetime. You were proposing private enterprise, and that would involve designing and implimenting heavy lift launchers, some form of in-orbit processing facility, and some kind of devices to travel out to the source of the minerals and return them.

That sounds so easy, but right now we haven't even been out to this source of minerals. And a round trip would take a guaranteed minimum of five years, most likely ten. And I just can't see designing devices for this venture that would not require a lot of time and money to work out the bugs. Heck, If you launched one mission and three years out it went dead, that's three years lost.

And I definitely do not trust predictions on landing sites. Back in 1996 Russian suffered a failure of a launcher (Mars96), and contacted U.S. Space Command who tracked it, and predicted a landing in Australia. This incorrect prediction was passed on to the National Security Council (NSC), who alerted the President, then in Hawaii. President Clinton, on the strength of the NSC alert, called the Australian Prime Minister to warn him that the Mars 96 spacecraft might come down in his country. For the record, it landed somewhere in Chile.

And you casually dismiss a huge chunk of metal coming down from space, that it wouldn't be much of a problem?

About 15 millions years ago an almost one kilometer large meteorite with a speed of 70.000 km/h went down, penetrated one kilometer deep into the earth and tore an internal crater of more than twelve kilometers diameter with the energy of 250.000 Hiroshima-bombs out of the alb highplane. All life in the vicinity of more than hundred kilometers got immediately destroyed by a shock wave, and powerful clouds of evaporated rock went down over large parts of Central Europe. The rock condensed to a glassy mass, which for example rained down over the nowadays Czechoslowakia, where one can find these days the socalled Moldavites, a green, transparent rock glass that is found usually in form of weathered drops and occasionally is made into jewelry.

 

[Booban]

Why would you choose such a thing as meteorite mining?! Others are already pointing out how obviously unfeasible it must be. It can't make sense that it would be competitive to mine in outer space what we already have here on earth. All the costs would be the same, except you are doing it in space (or bringing it home and then mining it). The only thing I can think of that would possibly be different is if the precious metal density was radically pure, like an asteroid being a gigantic pure gold nugget.

I wish there could be one thing that most people can agree to has the most profitable possibility and just do it. But apparently our current knowledge of space tells us that beyond LEO, there is no profit to be had.

The only two things that come close to being possible in my mind is space tourism or a space based solar power.

Already discussed the space based solar power idea on other threads. I can't logically see why it cannot be profitable as long as it lasts long enough with little maintenance. Of course it should be just enough to motivate there be a manned presence and to develop space ships to zip about between these solar power plants.

Space tourism is simple, there will be people willing to pay top dollar to go into space to wherever they can get to, moon base, mars base, deep space space ship. Just build it and they will pay to get there. Imagine someone like Warren Buffet. What is he going to do with his billions when he dies? He may just want to buy something he doesn't already have and die in a space ship on it's way to Mars (automatic pilot for return ofcourse :lol: )

But anyways, if you can get Warren Buffet to invest in whatever your idea is, I'll do it too. Heck, if you can tell me anything the he is investing in, let me know!

 

[samkent]

According to my poor math skills.

100 sphere of iron is worth $37.7 million.

You can’t even send a crew into orbit for that. And before you think of other metals consider your losses. If you accept a 50% loss due to aero braking, what would be the consequences? Would you dump hundreds of thousands of pound of lithium into the atmosphere? Son go wash the plutonium off the car.

You have the cart before the horse. You need to define what/where the profit is going to come from. Do we need to minerals from space? What happens to the price of diamonds if you bring down 100 pounds from the Moon?

Just because it’s up there doesn’t mean we need it down here. Case in point is helium 3. We have almost none of it down here and the Moon does have some. But then there is no market for it here so no profit to be made.

Is there enough people willing to spend x amount of cash to orbit the Moon? There maybe a hand full, but once they have gone on the trip, what then?

Share price doesn’t go up if there is no profit. Especially if you are dumping the hardware into the ocean.

Tell us where the profit is going to come from?

You show me the profit and I’ll show you the money.

 

[Bill_Wright]

First a word on measurement. My intent in using "15kmh" was to express 15,000 mph - I have been working on a report in Imperial units and got "stuck". Nor did I calculate how many dips and at what speed and altitude it would take to ground the object. I assumed (due to the shuttle) that there would be no impact on people on the ground, provided they weren't hit. I also was totally unaware that our accuracy at picking the spot that something will hit was so poor (due to the shuttle).

Having said that, we will all be dead before we see a deep space presence at the rate we are going, and by we I mean our whole generation. Health care is an example of how efficient our government is at tackling relatively easy problems. Germany does not have socialized medicine yet takes better care of their citizens than we do at a lower cost. Yet with that as an example our Congress has frittered away a whole year basically doing nothing.

I know what I do best and that is manage programmers working on specialized medical algorithms. What I had hoped to get out of this thread were positive suggestions on leveraging the space program out of the hands of our government and into ours. I think we could manage the technology better, I think we could be more transparent, and I know that those of us who read these threads want to see it happen. So why the rush to criticize rather than suggest solutions? Is that so much easier? If you all like the status quo, then fine. Just don't complain on your death beds when we are still stuck in LEO.
Bill

 

[Shpaget]

Like I said, there are several private companies doing various space related experiments and research. Why not support one of them?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Sorry Bill, but it would have been better had you proposed something realistic. The abilty to capture an asteroid into earth orbit is a century or more away. The amount of energy required is enormous. Where will it come from? Then the ability to cut it into 30 meter chunks and aim them at specific impact point on earth? The energy required is astronomical.
C'mon, you have to be somewhere near realistic. And you also need to do this with a mostly iron asteroid, or the concentration of valuable materials would be too low. They are pretty rare...and they are 95% Iron, and 5% nickel. Anything else it trace elements. I don't think we need enough of either to make your plan anywhere near economical.

 

[tampaDreamer]

I'd gladly sell my shares in iraq and afghanistan for $10,000 each, and invest $5,000 in the space program.

 

[Bill_Wright]

OK Folks,
It was an incredibly stupid idea that would never work. I apologize for getting you to waste your time. I'm sure that NASA and Congress will get everything sorted out and America will go on to rule the stars.