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alonzofyfe
Guest
Events in the last few years have suggested that, perhaps, NASA could do more to promote the exploration and development of space if it quit managing its own pragrams.<br /><br />Now, I am a strong believer in testing, so I am not advocating a complete and sudden shift to the model I am describing below. However, I would like to see it tried at least with some smaller lunar missions.<br /><br />For every NASA mission that costs $X million dollars, these people would claim that if they were in charge of the mission that they could make $Y million selling all sorts of goods and services like those you mentioned -- and others -- on the open market.<br /><br />Typically, they would assert that $Y /> $X. That is, they could fly the mission at a profit.<br /><br />They also claim that a lot of this $X million is stupid and wasteful NASA overhead, and that they could launch the mission for N * $X million where 0 < N < 1.<br /><br />Now, in my opinion, their estimates are optimistic. Still, two things that are certain is that $Y /> 0 and that 0 < N < 1, even if N is not as much < 1 as these enthusiasts claim.<br /><br />These enthusiasts are not idiots. They are engineers. They are the people who build SpaceShipOne, built and ran the Lunar Prospector mission, and operate companies like SpaceDev. They work with space hardware, and have an idea of what is required. So, though I think their estimates are optimistic, they are not outlandish.<br /><br />Anyway, from this, it seems to make sense that NASA would be better off if it simply offered to pay some amount of money $Z million < $X million to whatever private entity that could accomplish the objectives NASA had set up for the mission.<br /><br />Then these companies can get an opportunity to try to do what they are claiming to be able to do -- launch the mission for N * $X million, collect the $Y million they claim to be able to collect from private sources, and, on top of that, collect NASA's $Z million to add to th