NASA

Griffin on balancing the public and private sectors

In yesterday’s issue of The Space Review I published an article on recent comments by NASA administrator Mike Griffin on the roles of the public and private sectors in spaceflight. These comments include not just the ones he made during his “Space Economy” speech at a luncheon on September 17 but more informal remarks during a meeting that evening of the MIT Enterprise Forum. In both cases he made the point that the government needs to help foster the development of new space industries through mechanisms like the COTS program, likening it to government incentives for aviation in the 20th century.

However, at the MITEF event, he went farther, discussing how he felt that the government, including NASA, could be major customers for the emerging suborbital spaceflight industry: “If I was still at the helm of NASA when such a service became available, I would guarantee you that we would use it to begin entry-level training of astronauts,” he said. He said, though, that he didn’t want to go too far away from traditional government models, rejecting concepts like extremely large prizes for Mars exploration: “The people who suggest that we should put up a $100-billion prize for the first company to take us to Mars are idiots.” (Speaking of Mars prizes, the New York Times’ John Tierney touches on them in an essay in the ScienceTimes section today, but in the context of billionaires funding them to attain a measure of immortality.)

Griffin’s conclusion: “We need an appropriate balance between government sector activity and private sector activity. My point is that, for fifty years in the space business, we have not had that appropriate balance. We need to move more towards the middle.”

23 comments to Griffin on balancing the public and private sectors

  • Chance

    “The people who suggest that we should put up a $100-billion prize for the first company to take us to Mars are idiots.”

    Now THAT’S a well-reasoned argument. I can see why they made him the boss.

  • anonymous.space

    I strongly agree with and applaud Dr. Griffin’s remarks regarding public/private balance in space flight. I just wish his actions matched his rhetoric.

    The only commercial initiative that Griffin has undertaken (or arguably inherited from his predecessors) is the COTS program and that’s underfunded by a factor of two to four compared to similar public/private launch development programs, like EELV on the military side. (Not to mention the negative impact of creating a much better funded in-house competitor in Ares I/Orion.)

    But even setting the big stuff aside, there’s plenty of little things Griffin could be pushing to bring in the private sector. But he’s not.

    Griffin mentions prizes, but there’s been no new funding for NASA’s prize program for years. Google is now funding the big space prize instead.

    Griffin mentions commercial suborbital launch services — and used to promise an RFP or other procurement in this area. But NASA has yet to offer such, even for NASA science payloads that currently launch on sounding rockets. (Forget astronaut training and surmounting OSMA’s standards and procedures.)

    Griffin used to talk about in-space fuelling, but no longer does, except in relationship to what China might do with its existing Long March rockets. Moreover, NASA has done little in this area, even ground-based development of the key technologies necessary for industry to pull it off. Boeing is instead making AIAA proposals for a cheap propellant depot. See http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4224660.html.

    At one time, Griffin and NASA made a big deal about how “open” their lunar polar base architecture was going to be for commercial participation — that NASA planned to buy services for things like habitation, power, and rovers rather than design, build, and operate those systems. But now NASA is presenting preliminary trades and design plans for NASA lunar habitats (large ones) and NASA rovers (partially enclosed ones) at the AIAA. See presentation at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=25506.

    Again, Griffin should be commended for his speeches in this area. They point in some of the right directions. But it sure would be nice to see Griffin and NASA actually push in these directions. Words backed only by underfunded, non-existant, and contradictory actions are just that, words.

    My 2 cents… FWIW.

  • anonymous.space

    “‘The people who suggest that we should put up a $100-billion prize for the first company to take us to Mars are idiots.’”

    Now THAT’S a well-reasoned argument. I can see why they made him the boss.”

    While I agree with Griffin that a prize of that scale is unrealistic from a budgetary and political perspective, Chance is right that the NASA Administrator should not be making comments like this. Since Newt Gingrich made the $100 billion human Mars prize suggestion, Griffin basically just called the former Speaker of the House an “idiot”.

    It’s fine, even necessary, for the NASA Administrator to critique proposals. But he must do so on the basis of the proposal, not by name-calling, especially a former member of Congress.

    Not good…

  • al Fansome

    Anon,

    Totally agree with you on Griffin. There is a huge disconnect between his speeches and what he actually does when he makes decisions at NASA HQ. He is truly in a position to make speeches into real policy.

    – Al

  • al Fansome

    ANON: “While I agree with Griffin that a prize of that scale is unrealistic from a budgetary and political perspective, Chance is right that the NASA Administrator should not be making comments like this.”

    Anon,

    I agree with this.

    Moreover, since the Centennial Prizes budget request has not been increased once since Griffin become Administrator, and since there are MANY MANY possibilities for effective smaller prizes in the 1-100 Million range that NASA could easily fund — his rhetoric is pretty empty.

    ANON: “Since Newt Gingrich made the $100 billion human Mars prize suggestion, Griffin basically just called the former Speaker of the House an “idiot”.

    Does anybody have a source on this?

    My information is that Gingrich does not think that $100 billion is necessary for a Mars prize. He most recently proposed a $20B prize for Mars, which was reported by Mr. Foust here:

    http://www.spacepolitics.com/2007/06/09/gingrichs-eyes-still-on-prizes/
    In a glimpse of what his candidacy might look like, he said he would … offer a $20 billion reward for the first private company that successfully completes a Mars mission.

    This is consistent with previous Gingrich statements. John Tierney wrote an article in 1999 in Reason magazine that had Gingrich using the same $20B number.

    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_9_30/ai_53747404/pg_3
    The Mars Prize. Zubrin tried selling this idea during a dinner with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who got so enthusiastic that the meal lasted for four hours. But Gingrich never followed through on the proposal, which calls for Congress to promise $20 billion to the first explorers who reach Mars and return. In case that prize isn’t enough to interest entrepreneurs in such a risky all-or-nothing venture, Zubrin also envisions offering smaller bonuses for achieving technical milestones along the way, like sending the equipment for making fuel to Mars.

    Perhaps the reason Griffin is a little hot under the collar is because Mr. Gingrich suggested that the private sector could go to Mars so much cheaper than NASA could.

    Or perhaps it was because of Gingrich comments like:

    http://www.spacepolitics.com/2007/06/09/gingrichs-eyes-still-on-prizes/
    “Somebody would be there and back about 40 percent of the way into the NASA process,” he said.

    Since these Gingrich comments are a few months old, something must have happened recently that we don’t know about. Either that, or Mr. Spock has been stewing on this a long time and looking for a chance to fire back.

    – Al

  • anonymous.space

    “My information is that Gingrich does not think that $100 billion is necessary for a Mars prize.”

    You’re right. I don’t know of any source that attributes a $100 billion figure to Gingrich’s Mars prize proposal.

    I’d still argue that Gingrich’s proposal is budgetarily and politically infeasible as anti-deficiency laws would require Congress to appropriate the entire $20 billion in one fiscal year.

    That said, the NASA Administrator should still not call or imply that a former member of Congress, especially one from his own political party, is an “idiot”, under any circumstances.

  • Ray

    I made a rather long post on the Space Prizes blog last night on the Space Review article Jeff wrote. It turns out to have a lot in common with a hybrid of Jeff’s post above and some of the comments that follow. In fact I probably wouldn’t have written it if I’d read this thread first. However, it’s already done, so in case you’re interested:

    http://spaceprizes.blogspot.com/2007/09/nasa-adminstrator-griffin-on-prizes-and.html

  • To put the offending comment in context, Griffin was responding to a question about the roles of NASA and the private sector in space. The point that he was trying to make was that there needed to be, in his words, an “appropriate balance” between the two and not a “binary” (again, in his words) situation where it’s all government run or all privately-run. The $100-billion figure was said in passing and he didn’t dwell at all on prizes (large or small) in his response.

  • anonymous.space

    “I made a rather long post on the Space Prizes blog last night on the Space Review article Jeff wrote.”

    Ray’s blog points out another important opportunity for Griffin to put a few taxpayer dollars where NASA’s commercial mouth is — atmospheric microgravity flight services. This is also something Griffin used to talk up, but NASA has yet to put out an RFP or other procurement in this area. Instead, Griffin’s NASA (JSC) continues to purchase, own, and operate its own vomit comet aircraft, duplicating capabilities that Zero-G has offered in the private sector for years now. It’s one thing not to commit to suborbital flight services to take place on vehicles that are still being built. (Although if NASA could do that for orbital COTS services, why not suborbital?) But it’s totally another thing not to be training astronauts and conducting microgravity research on proven, existing, operational, and commercially available, Zero-G aircraft and flights.

    If Griffin can’t get the NASA bureaucracy and infrastructure to commit to doing something as commercially simple as purchase tickets on existing Zero-G flights, then Griffin and NASA arguably have no business thumping their chests about suppossed changes in attitude towards the commercial space sector. This is the easiest litmus test by which Griffin and NASA can prove that they can walk the commercial walk. And years after first talking the talk, they’re still failing the walk.

    Not that my opinion matters in the grand scheme of things, but the disconnect between Griffin’s rhetoric and NASA actions — even on this most straightforward of commercial activities — makes me shake my head in disbelief…

  • D. Messier

    To be fair, I don’t think Gingrich never proposed a $100 billion prize, so the idiot label doesn’t apply here. I don’t anybody has suggested anything that large.

    But is it any wonder that Griffin got figures wrong? Everything I’m hearing about the human lunar program indicates that it’s way off budget. The overruns in Mars robotic spacecraft are trifling by comparison. Why the former isn’t written about more and the latter has been the subject of so much focus, I don’t understand.

    But, I digress. I think it unlikely that Gingrich will be in a position to push such a prize. Democrats hate him. A lot of Republicans were quite happy to see him go and probably don’t want him back. They saw him as a great idea man who was not good at running things as speaker. He talked to much. He was constantly outmanuevered. And during that whole time, he was screwing a Congressional staffer during his speakership while (a) professing to be happily married (b) impeaching Clinton over a sex scandal and (c) condeming the opposition party for – of all things – its poor family values.

  • MarkWhittington

    Griffin may have expressed himself rather bluntly, but he is right that a humans to Mars prize, whether it is twenty or a hundred billion dollars, will not work. No private company is going to be able to raise the amount of money necessary to send people to Mars (and get them back) if the sole pay off is a government financed prize that may or may not be there in the end depending on the whim of future Congresses and administrations. I think Rp/K’s problems raising even a fraction of that amount of cash bears that out.

  • Christine

    The private sector is balanced. On one side of the scales you have ATK, and on the other, BoeLockMart.

    Perfectly balanced.

  • Chance

    “No private company is going to be able to raise the amount of money necessary to send people to Mars (and get them back) if the sole pay off is a government financed prize that may or may not be there in the end.”

    While I won’t try and debate how much it would cost to send people to Mars and back (I’ve heard all kinds of figures), the prize would not necessarily be the sole pay off. Advertising revenue could be raised, heck, make the craft look like a NASCAR racer with stickers all over it for all I care. (Pepsi, the OFFICIAL drink of the 2027 Google-Amazon Mars mission) Additionally, such a mission would serve as a tech demonstration and possibly would make this company or companies extremely sought after in the industry. If they were already at the top, like “BoeLockMart”, then this would further cement their position. Companies do big wasteful projects all the time just to warn potential competitors and woo new partners (Bob, if they can drop $60 billion to do this, they MUST be the guys to go to for our new widget project). Heck, they could even set up remote instruments and rovers and charge universities and science centers to use them or for the data they collect. People already pay big money to be “buried” in space on a 3 minute suborbital funeral. You’re telling me there isn’t one or two millionaires out there willing to pay to be the first people buring on another planet (well, excluding Shoemaker)?

    I don’t know if a prize would work or not. America’s Space Prize seems to have fizzled after all. My point is just that if I can brainstorm for 5 minutes and think of potential revenue from such a venture, surely those smart businesspeople these companies hire could do they same. Even if it wouldn’t work, I don’t think the idea is idiotic or the proponants idiots.

  • anonymous.space wrote:
    “If Griffin can’t get the NASA bureaucracy and infrastructure to commit to doing something as commercially simple as purchase tickets on existing Zero-G flights, then Griffin and NASA arguably have no business thumping their chests about suppossed changes in attitude towards the commercial space sector.”

    I think the question is whether NASA is so far beyond control that the Administrator doesn’t actually have any real amount of power any more. That’s a pretty ugly scenario and spells doom for NASA.

    I’ve been struggeling to figure out Dr. Griffin for quite a while since I don’t believe he’s insane nor an idiot. If he’s being effectively “locked down” by his own agency or spending just about all his resources fighting it then it’s an answer that could explain all the oddities and contradictions between words and actions.

    That’s pure speculation but for sure something must be wrong somewhere.

    And if it happens to be right on the mark I’ve got to extend my sympathies to Griffin because being lured into being a “figurehead only” when you actually have real ambitions (which I do believe he has) must be pure hell.

    Btw Christine is perfectly balanced three ways; one measure snark, one measure truth, and one measure humour – perfect ^_^

  • anonymous.space

    “No private company”

    I’d just note that prize competitions, certainly not NASA’s or the X PRIZE Foundation’s, are restricted to for-profit companies. In fact, most competitors (but not all) are usually non-profits.

    “a government financed prize that may or may not be there in the end depending on the whim of future Congresses and administrations”

    That’s not how NASA’s prize program and Congressional appropriations work. Congress must appropriate the funding for the prize and that money has to be sitting in NASA’s accounts at the Treasury Department before NASA can start the competition.

    Although $20 billion is still arguably too big an amount — bigger than NASA’s annual budget — to reasonably expect any White House to propose or any Congress to appropriate for any prize competition (Mars or otherwise), anti-deficiency laws force the Congress to fund the prize in full before NASA can start the competition. It’s not up to “the whim of future Congresses and administrations”. The money must already be in the bank before the prize can go forward.

    “the prize would not necessarily be the sole pay off”

    While true, I would not expect a private entity to make billions or tens of billions in advertising or sponsorships, space burial, and data collection. Millions, yes, which arguably makes the Google Lunar X-Prize relatively viable. But not billions. Nor would I expect a large corporation to undertake a loss-leader measured in the tens or single billions.

    That doesn’t mean that non-profit organizations might not pursue such a large, risky, and challenging prize. But I’m not sure any for-profit organization could bear the weight at that scale.

    “America’s Space Prize seems to have fizzled after all.”

    ASP is arguably way underfunded for the requirements set out in its rules. ASP requires five crewmembers to 250 kilometers, a docking capability, an ability to stay in orbit for six months, 80 percent reusability, and two successful flights in 60 days. For $50 million, the best that could be hoped for would be a single Mercury- or Gemini-like flight that just orbits once or twice with one or two crew.

    This is second- or third-hand, but I understand that NASA was in discussions with Bigelow to add another $50 million to ASP before Griffin came on board, but that the change in regime quickly brought an end to the discussions. For what that’s worth…

    Finally, John Tierney had very interesting editorial in the NY Times Magazine this past weekend on funding sources for private space activities, especially space prizes and the teams that pursue them.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/science/space/25tier.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

    Tierney makes a jocular yet serious appeal to the bazillionaires of the world, arguing that if they want to buy their way into history, then space exploration in the model of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal and Queen Isabella of Spain is a good way to do it. And, moreover, big prizes and their teams offer a mechanism that won’t take up too much of a bazillionaire’s time if they don’t want to go the “hands-on” route of the likes of Musk and Bezos. It’s a provocative piece, implying that if anyone is going to fund a multi-billion human Moon or Mars prize, it will be a Paul Allen, a Saudi prince, or other bazillionaire, not a government.

    Here’s hoping the Paul Allens and Saudi princes of the world read the NY Times Magazine…

  • anonymous.space

    “But is it any wonder that Griffin got figures wrong? Everything I’m hearing about the human lunar program indicates that it’s way off budget. The overruns in Mars robotic spacecraft are trifling by comparison.”

    To be fair to the human side, they aren’t yet at the point in a program where costs get officially baselined and under- or overruns get measured. Ares I and Orion may cost a heckuva lot when compared to similar programs or alternatives, and may even cost more than originally estimated in ESAS. But unlike MSL, their costs do not yet represent true “overruns”.

    “If he’s [Griffin’s] being effectively “locked down” by his own agency or spending just about all his resources fighting it then it’s an answer that could explain all the oddities and contradictions between words and actions.”

    Could be. There are always rumors about parts of the agency going off the reservation and undertaking studies on alternatives without the Administrator’s knowledge or blessing, and there’s no end of such rumors currently. But by their very nature, such “resistance” or “underground” activities are hard to verify with documentation.

    But regardless of whether it’s Griffin’s lack of follow-through or institutional and bureaucratic resistance, the lack of action on a simple procurement to purchase existing microgravity flight services argues that Griffin and NASA speak a much better commercial game than they play.

    “The private sector is balanced. On one side of the scales you have ATK, and on the other, BoeLockMart.

    Perfectly balanced.”

    Very wry. Very funny.

  • D. Messier

    To be fair to the human side, they aren’t yet at the point in a program where costs get officially baselined and under- or overruns get measured. Ares I and Orion may cost a heckuva lot when compared to similar programs or alternatives, and may even cost more than originally estimated in ESAS. But unlike MSL, their costs do not yet represent true “overruns”.

    I’ve heard otherwise. I’ve been hearing the same thing for two years now. There’s not enough money to do what they want to do in terms of the moon. My guess is won’t be really revealed until Spring 2009.

  • MarkWhittington

    The last time I looked, Zubrin thought that a private Mars expedition would cost between five and seven billion. I think that’s on the low side, but let’s accept that figure. Five to seven billion is not a triffling figure and is many times the amount that Rp/K is having trouble raising.

    I’m not sure, by the way, that all of the corporate sponserships (“Cialis – The Official ED Pill of the Mars Expedition!) in the universe is going to come anywhere near that amount of money. Nor selling Mars rocks at Southbys.

    I really think that the prize needs to be broken up into smaller, more managable bits. How about this for a start?: 100 million for the team that builds a working engine that would take a ship to Mars quicker than oridnary chemical rockets. I could see Chang-Diaz, for example, leaping at the chance.

  • Ray

    anonymous.space wrote:
    “If Griffin can’t get the NASA bureaucracy and infrastructure to commit to doing something as commercially simple as purchase tickets on existing Zero-G flights, then Griffin and NASA arguably have no business thumping their chests about suppossed changes in attitude towards the commercial space sector.”

    Habitat Hermit wrote:
    “I think the question is whether NASA is so far beyond control that the Administrator doesn’t actually have any real amount of power any more. That’s a pretty ugly scenario and spells doom for NASA.”

    Check out this.

    http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07434r.pdf

    It doesn’t seem to be a problem restricted to NASA. The document isn’t exactly what we’re talking about (it seems to be about the balance between government employees doing jobs vs. allocating them to contractors, whereas we’re talking about government employees and contractors doing jobs vs. government buying services – or maybe in-house and cost-plus vs. buying a ticket or fixed-price). However, I think it gives some insights into the agency perspective (or at least parts of it).

    “You requested that we determine how the Department of Commerce (National Institute for Standards and Technology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have implemented the May 2003 revised Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-76 process, which seeks to put commercial activities now performed by government out for public-private competition. … We also found that, while the five agencies generally implemented the A-76 process, few of the hundreds of commercial activities they determined suitable for public-private competition were competed. … Finally, we found that the private sector won few of the science agency activities put out for competition. Specifically, from fiscal year 2003 through fiscal year 2005, the agencies held 22 public-private competitions. In-house organizations won 19 of these competitions and the private sector won 3.”

    From a side bar in the report:

    “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.”

    It seems like some officials at NASA think the balancing job has already been done.

  • […] The workshop, from 4-5 pm Saturday, will take place at the University of West Georgia, but will be streamed on the Internet. There will apparently be an option for interaction with the audience; perhaps someone can ask Walker what he thinks of NASA administrator Mike Griffin’s thoughts about prizes. […]

  • Chance

    My point isn’t that a company would get billions in advertising and space burials, only that the prize money need not be the only income source. I still think the big payoff is the show of fiscal and technological strength such an act would show. 20 billion prize, a few hundred million in advertising, billions in new contracts, multi-billions in contracts kept, engineering talent flocking to be recruited by this notional company. The return on the investment could be substantial. Could an RpK do it? No, it would need to be a huge company to begin with, but I think it could be done.

  • Anonymous: Griffin basically just called the former Speaker of the House an “idiot”.

    While I agree that name calling in politics is never a good idea, in this case Dr. Griffin is correct. Mr. Gingrich is totally discredited in my mind. After promising to make spaceflight a priority before he gained power, he chose instead to undertake divisive ideological battles in Congress — and now he has the gall to say that space has become too politicized?

    I won’t be fooled twice, at least not by this man.

    My (entirely personal) take on Dr. Griffin is that he went in with a plan and intended to “get things done” in contrast to most of his immediate predecessors. Although forced to deal with them, he doesn’t care a whole lot about anything but his lunar project. Then, he got bogged down with a poisonous mix of physical reality, political reality, and internal NASA politics. He’s frustrated, and cannot control his mouth sufficiently well to work the politics necessary to achieve his goal. He is still trying, but, primarily because of his fateful decision to “waste” the EELVs by not using them, he is ultimately likely to fail.

    Mark: Five to seven billion is not a trifling figure and is many times the amount that Rp/K is having trouble raising.

    There are a small number of private individuals who have this kind of money. How about a MarsX? In fact, I’ve read the Elon’s ultimate goal is Mars.

    Chance: Could an RpK do it? No, it would need to be a huge company to begin with,

    I think a “huge company” is far less likely to try to do this than a small company or, more likely, a private individual. Most huge company’s are beholden to stockholders, and no even vaguely responsible institution is going to spend grandma’s retirement money on going to Mars.

    — Donald

  • MarkWhittington

    Donald – Even Elon Musk does not have five to seven billion in the bank. He has his hands full, in any case, getting the Falcon rockets to fly without worrying about Mars.

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