“Agency View of Activities That Can Be Successfully Contracted Out: According to agency competitive sourcing officials, they expect the in-house organization to win most competitions. For example, Energy officials told us that they expect the in-house win rate to be higher than the private-sector win rate because most commercial type activities such as cleaning and general maintenance have already been contracted out. The remaining activities are more complex and require greater knowledge about agency operations, which officials said gives agency employees an advantage. Similarly, NASA officials told us that NASA started off about 30 years ago contracting out many of its commercial services and now has fewer such services to compete.”

I guess we’re all barking up the wrong tree with all of this talk about prizes, COTS, and fixed-price contracts, since they’ve already long since shifted all the work private industry can handle, like bathroom maintenance, to the private sector. Just let the government do inherently governmental activities like “Space Trucking” and “Space Taxi”.

Thank you for saying it so crisply, Jim. There are some nascent hypocrisies in that area, which find it harder to spread under a clear bright light.

But I have to respond to Ed Wright. You are correct: a single positive example does not prove a logical requirement.

That said, the prizes for NASCAR races aren’t the real payoff: that comes from the extra sponsorship money a winning team gets. And if the prizes are sufficient to motivate a simple, low-financial-cost behavior, then of course that by itself is the market.

COTS is *not* a prize using any common understanding of the term. It is a development contract that uses other-transaction-authority powers.

A prize that isn’t big enough won’t spur huge levels of investment if there isn’t some other payoff. Even prizes that are really big may only spur investment if the level of risk of success — not winning, just of getting the result at all – is too high.

In short, there are *limits* to the effectiveness of prizes. They are not a panacea. And the NewSpace community must not allow itself to be corraled into a “prize” ghetto. As Ray and Anonymous said, the key is for NASA to *buy* services on a fixed price commercial basis. If NewSpace can’t win procurements on those terms, we don’t deserve to open our mouth about NASA (other than as taxpayers).

I’m still leery, though. NASA has a habit of screwing up good space-related ideas lately. Letting them take sponsor money may screw that opportunity for others too. Change is a scary thing when it involves the dinosaur stomping around things it can see or care about.

I should also say I’d like to read the Space Review essay Jim Muncy had an idea on writing about the politics of Centennial Challenges, including the difficulties and ideas on surmounting the difficulties.

Exactly. Well put.

“Anyway, hopefully this idea at least gets Congress aware of CC (have most Representatives even heard of it?) and how easy it would be to properly fund it.”

That might be a side effect if the proposal got far enough in the legislative process. Honestly, I doubt the legislation will leave the subcommittee, almost certainly not the committee. And if it did, it might create the wrong perceptions among other congress critters about NASA’s prize program, rather than the right ones.

Thank you Lisa…

(BTW this is a ridiculous concept, it is just another last gasp of a failing organization and the toadies that support it….)

Robert

I’ve read a lot of criticisms about NASA not acting commercially, while the Russian program does. I haven’t agreed with them (although I think some of it like getting tourists to ISS is good as it breaks ground for future commercial interest) since I don’t want NASA to act commercial and compete with businesses, I want them to buy commercial services instead of making everything internally.

Are there any variants of this that would work for businesses working for NASA (similar to what Jim said at the beginning of his post)?

Anyway, hopefully this idea at least gets Congress aware of CC (have most Representatives even heard of it?) and how easy it would be to properly fund it.

I’m sorry to be so negative, but I fail to see how, say, a logo that says “Energizer, Official Battery of NASA” on the side of the ISS — even if that logo is repeated on television in every Energizer commercial — is going to raise public understanding of and support for our public space agency. I don’t think it will do anything particularly negative in terms of public understanding and support for NASA. I just don’t think it’s going to do anything particularly positive, either. I mean, c’mon, there are memory foam mattress commercials that mention NASA on television every night –and those unofficial endorsements don’t result in more public appreciation or federal funding for NASA.

I think all this legislation could do is take away from Bigelow & Co.’s, or the X PRIZE Foundation’s, or Armadillo Aerospace’s ability to get the same Energizer (or whatever company’s) sponsorship revenue for their own future private space stations, space prize competitions, and space prize vehicle entries.

But I don’t think it will even do that… I doubt NASA’s human space flight programs are culturally attuned enough and sufficiently incentivized to undertake such sponsorships in a commercially viable way. Even if this legislation got to the House floor and passed (and it’s just the latest in a long string of such proposals, like zero-G taxes, that have gone nowhere), I think NASA would never actually use the authority. It’s just too much at odds with how NASA’s human space flight programs do business (or don’t do business, as the case were).

Again, instead of floating half-baked ideas, the best thing Calvert can do to help NASA prizes is pressure appropriators to fund them.

My 2 cents… FWIW.