WSJ: The Case Against Private Space

Status
Not open for further replies.
A

asj2010

Guest
I have the same thoughts as this WSJ article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059263418508030.html

"The private sector simply is not up for the job. For one, NASA will have to establish a system to certify commercial orbital vehicles as safe for human transport, and with government bureaucracy, that will take years. Never mind the challenges of obtaining insurance. Entrepreneurial companies have consistently overpromised and under-delivered."
 
A

aaron38

Guest
Krauthammer, who is very pro-space and thinks NASA deserves a chunk of the stimulus money, also stated his belief that private industry wasn't up to it. And almost surprisingly, that only the federal government can handle space travel.

Interesting. Why is it that the same crew that wants to privatize war and medicine feel that only big government can fly a spaceship? Beyond the nationalistic factor, both argue that the private space industry will fail to deliver.

And maybe they will. But you can't try if you can't fail. And if private space is going to fail, I'd rather know sooner than later. We'll know what we need to work on. And I for one want to get space out of the hands of a corrupt Congressional funding mechanism. The way to make space a permanent reality is to make it part of the permanent economy. People are life, they give reason for things to exist. Put manned installations in remote locations and establish routine travel. NASA plans and runs the outposts and explorations, industry provides the transport, however they both see fit.

As for safety, what's wrong with a military model for acceptable losses? It's a dangerous job, people are going to get killed. If you can't handle that, then don't participate. Getting space into private hands is also about getting people to stop carring about losses, since it's not their money.
 
D

DarkenedOne

Guest
Practically the arguments come down to this.

Those in favor highlight the potential benefits of having a commercial manned space market

Those against highlight the risk involved and fear that the private industry will not succeed.

To me the potential benefits outweigh the costs. For about 50 years now HSF has been stagnant. 50 years since the first man was launched into space, and look were we are today. The HSF industry has even less money than it did 30 years ago during Apollo. Even today only three governments even have human space programs.

HSF is going no where fast. I believe that commercialization is the answer. Commercial companies will look for applications for HSF such as space tourism and space science.
 
K

kelvinzero

Guest
Im generally pro the new direction, but I dont think either side put their case very convincingly.

Firstly the question of government verses private space is only meaningful in the short term. In the longer term of course it should be commercial. The only question is what is the best way to get there

Against the case against:
Saying the private sector is not up to the job.. As I understand it NASA generally does not build rockets, the actual work is done companies. I might just be missing the point here. There are big differences in the way these companies were paid, but what difference is the writer referring to?

Mentioning Rotary Rocket and Kistler. Maybe These companies failures were a good thing. If they had been government projects, maybe they would have been forced to work by application of vast amounts of money and eventually abandoning the far fetched elements that justified the funding in the first place.. and then forced into missions that could have been done by cheaper, safer, more conventional designs. ..or just been dropped after sufficient billions were poured into them. NASA has overpromised and underdelivered on occasion too!

Against the case for:

This article really said very little about why funding commercial businesses now is better than funding nasa projects now.

"metals, minerals, energy and real estate—are in near-infinite quantities in space."
Not relevant at this point. Of course we want to get to the point where companies are mining asteroids. No one is debating that that would be cool. But a prime justification for funding NASA is to push technology to the point where this is viable. This is what the article must work to discount.

"An average half-kilometer S-type asteroid is worth more than $20 trillion"
This is a specious argument. By the time we are actually in a position to exploit these materials, they will be as cheap as dirt and probably more useful on location. Todays prices are highly misleading. Also it is not relevant now, as above. Its just fluff.

"As the generation that has never known a world without "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" matures, it will not be content to watch only government astronauts walk and work on the moon."
Well this is just personal, but I reckon Starwars and Star Trek have breed a nation of nerds who have absolutely no interest in space until we can get to other earth-like worlds in a television-hour and can guarantee a universe full of greenskinned slave girls :)
 
S

StarRider1701

Guest
kelvinzero":xqi3wpd8 said:
Im generally pro the new direction, but I dont think either side put their case very convincingly.

Firstly the question of government verses private space is only meaningful in the short term. In the longer term of course it should be commercial. The only question is what is the best way to get there

This article really said very little about why funding commercial businesses now is better than funding nasa projects now.

Well this is just personal, but I reckon Starwars and Star Trek have breed a nation of nerds who have absolutely no interest in space until we can get to other earth-like worlds in a television-hour and can guarantee a universe full of greenskinned slave girls :)

Right now the Government is willingly letting go and stepping back to allow private industry to move forward.
FACT: Government rarely 'gives up' anything. We must take the opportunity while it is there, they might change thier minds!

"...funding NASA projects now." NASA is run by old idiots who are totally wasting our money. They are currently building a new space vehicle, the Orion capsule! This appears to me to be nothing more than a revamped Gemini or Apollo capsule. NASA is wasting our money moving backwards and ultimately doing little. YES, let them step aside now!
Private industry cannot afford waste. Ok, you question whether or not they are capable of doing the job. Yet you yourself noted that private industry has already built most of the stuff that NASA uses...

"... nerds who have no interest in space..." Is that what you are? If you can't get to the Orion Slave Girls in an hour you ain't interested in any space endevour? I think that you think too little of us and the current generation of young people.
BTW, young people are not the only ones who want to see us succeed in space.
 
V

vulture4

Guest
Everyone other than the crew who puts hands on the Shuttle or, to be frank, exercises the real judgment needed to fly it safely, is a contractor. The high cost of Shuttle is at least partly because under the somewhat absurd policy of full cost accounting every man hour has to be charged to a monolithic program run from Washington. SpaceX may very well blow up one or two more rockets, but they are so goal-oriented and efficient that they will learn from the mistakes and still be safer and more efficient than the Constellaiton approach. Unfortunately there are now a couple thousand NASA civil service employees looking for something to do, and if they all look over the shoulders of Elon Musk's engineers, forcing them to produce a stack of useless paperwork to justify every engineering decision, that will really be a disaster.
 
G

Gravity_Ray

Guest
Honestly I am left perplexed by comments such as made in this article that “The private sector simply is not up for the job”. The simple question must be asked? Mr. Dinerman how do you know that?

From the 20 or so organizations that submitted COTS proposals in 2006 two have passed every single round of cuts and have jumped over every hurdle presented to them. Those two are Orbital Sciences and SpaceX, and both are now past the COTS program and have moved into the CRS program. 2 more Andrews space and SpaceHab have also shown that they are a hairs breath away from being able to get into the space business and just lack funding.

In this article Mr Taylor Dinerman states that “Enterpreneurial companies have consistently over promised and under-delivered”. Well no crap duh!! That is the way private industry works. COTS is supposed to work that way. You get a lot of interest and then you slowly prune away the ones that can’t cut the mustard. As opposed to NASA just giving money away with Cost Plus programs. GAO has reported that NASA has approved nearly the maximum amount of bonus payments on cost-plus contracts, even for those programs that fell far behind schedule and or suffered cost overruns. According to Bloomerg in one example cited Boeing won 92 percent of its potential bonus (about 425 million dollars) on its ISS work despite major schedule and budget problems. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are also cited in the report for large bonus payments for troubled programs.

I must suggest to Mr. Taylor Dinerman that NASA along with its Cost-Plus program have consistently over promised and under-delivered.

The problem is Politics. The reason why we are stuck in LEO since the Apollo program is due to just such politics between NASA and its contractors. These relation ships have become job programs that provide much revenue to the Congressmen and Senators from the states that have these Cost-Plus contracts. Why is it that there is such a back lash right now to the new direction that NASA is to take? Politics and nothing more.

Let me show you a quote from Dr. Griffin from November of 2005.

“With the advent of the ISS, there will exist for the first time a strong, identifiable market for “routine” transportation service to and from LEO, and that this will be only the first step in what will be a huge opportunity for truly commercial space enterprise. We believe that when we engage the engine of competition, these services will be provided in more cost effective fashion than when the government has to do it.”

I know President Obama is not liked on this board and that’s OK. But we have to separate politics from the space program if we as a nation ever want to do more than just have a small jobs program to spin astronauts around in LEO.

There is so much history behind the US government helping private sectors with building the infrastructure on a worthy technology that how now and suddenly this is a bad idea? If it’s a bad idea for the government to help the private industry to build a space program that is both public AND private then why was it OK for the US government to have done this in the past:

Walter Folger Brown: The postmaster General who built the US airline industry
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay ... /Tran3.htm

Or this:

Pacific Railway Act
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdo ... cRail.html

In both cases the government spent a lot of money to create something that would not have created itself. But because politics at that time were not as vicious and nasty as they are now the good of the country was placed above the good of a single political party.

It is time to allow the private industry the same opportunity to grow up with government support to allow our civilization to move out into space and continue the growth that we have had for the past couple of centuries. If we do not keep growing we will for sure fall.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts