The Associated Press has an article this morning about the Aldridge Commission’s final report, scheduled to be released Wednesday. The AP article largely focuses on the commission’s apparent recommendation that NASA hand over as many duties as possible to the private sector, including access to low Earth orbit (of course, the private sector already handles, in one manner or another, most access to LEO, a point not made in the article.) The article suggests, though, that launching manned missions would remain in the hands of NASA, for reasons not made clear in the article. The article also notes that “some experts have said President Bush’s goals could ultimately cost $1 trillion,” citing Douglas Osheroff, the Stanford physicist and CAIB member. Perhaps that shows that even Nobel laureates can be lousy cost estimators…
The AP was the source of the original “$1 trillion” cost estimate, although that was from a different AP reporter.
I will try to contact Osheroff and set him straight. But it is also possible that he was responding to a leading question by the reporter, such as “Do you think, as some people have estimated, that it will cost $1 trillion?” Osheroff is, after all, a low temperature physicist, not a budget analyst.
Actually, an appropriate and refreshing response to the question would have been exactly that:
“I am a low-temperature physicist, not a budget analyst.”
I won’t hold my breath waiting for one of these guys to do that, though.
“some experts have said President Bush’s goals could ultimately cost $1 trillion”
It would be nice if a journalist mentions that the “experts” are other journalists.
To bring up another element of your comment, Jeff, the report specifically identifies ISS resupply as something NASA should buy from the private sector. NASA does not do that now.
It is a huge, high-value market. And NASA even has a budget for it in FY2005: $140 million, ramping up to nearly $1B/yr in 2010.
A colleague of mine attended a talk given by Dr. Osheroff at Oak RIdge National Laboratory on Friday, June 18. After the talk, someone asked Osheroff about his comment that the plan would cost a trillion dollars.
Osheroff replied that he had originally said “hundreds of billions of dollars,” but that the AP reporter, Ted Bridis, kept pushing the $1 trillion number and Osheroff finally relented.
Osheroff also stated that after the article appeared, he got a rather testy e-mail from Sean O’Keefe, admonishing him about the statement.
A streaming video of a talk given by Dr. Osheroff on June 16 at Fermilab on the Columbia accident can be found here: http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_02/Lectures/Colloquium/Osheroff/index.htm
His oral comments included some factual errors (it wasn’t clear to me if they were accidental slips of the tongue or reflect actual misunderstanding.)