350 workers @ $50,000 year = 17 million and change per year regardless of how many launches.

14000 workers @ $50,000 year = 700,000,000, seven HUNDRED MILLION per year regardless of how many launches.

The point is NASA will NEVER be fast, simple, etc etc etc because HUGE slow moving dinosaurs are just NOT FAST.

NASA did not build the HL20, HL42 because of these VERY facts, they represented a threat to a 14000 person workforce. NASA will never build systems like that.

Someone earlier said it was “bogus” that NASA or “BIG AEROSPACE” worked against simplier solutions, All you have to do is look what boeing did with the inflatable technology that nasa developed, they SHUT IT DOWN through lobbying pressure, it is all history if you just read it.

Just for the record and in case anyone wants to use the data for future reference, the actual cost of Shuttle (i.e. what was actually spent from the start of development in 1972 through to the first operational flight in 1982) was $5464.7 million, expressed in FY’71 conditions and calculated using the historical escalation values. This data comes from an analysis performed by Humboldt Mandell Jr. and was published as part of his PhD thesis, which he submitted to the University of Colorado in 1983.

This analysis shows that the Shuttle’s development programme came in at only 5.1% above the original 1971 budget estimate, though the vehicle’s operational capability fell far short of the original target. It’s relevance to this particular discussion is that it demonstrates NASA was once able to do reasonably accurate cost estimates and, more importantly, were able to manage an extremely complex and technically challenging launch vehicle project without screwing up big time.

General Chilton’s position, and those who have learned the same lesson about RLVs from the Shuttle, is a major obstacle right now.”

This sounds like a perfect case for the U.S Air Force to use something like NASA’s COTS approach. The RLV advocates think they can do something the Air Force needs. The Air Force doesn’t, but it (or Gen. Chilton) believes they have enough enough credibility to spend time in a meeting with them.

Solution: go ahead with non-RLV plans to address Air Force requirements for routine, low-cost assured access to space. In the meantime, define some RLV-related set of technical, operational, and business (non-Air Force investment, etc) goals that the RLV companies can try to demonstrate. The goals should be such that the Air Force is suitably impressed, if they are achieved, that maybe the RLV folks are onto something after all. No money is given to the RLV folks until the milestone is reached. If they do reach a milestone, though … don’t skim on the reward. String a bunch of such milestones into a COTS-like program with an end result that is operationally useful to the Air Force. Intermediate goals could be launch of very small payloads to orbit, reusable first stage/expendable 2nd stage, payload of useful size to Air Force but only reaching suborbital capability … or whatever the Air Force and RLV companies can agree on.

If it doesn’t believe the RLV companies can come through, the Air Force protects its money this way. Maybe they’ll get lucky and an RLV company will come through in spite of it all. If nothing else, the other, non-RLV project(s) are liable to work “harder and smarter” knowing that they have a potential competitor.

The biggest reason NASA hasn’t done more towards RLVs (or better ELVs or much of anything else) is that it’s been spending so much since 1981 on operating STS (or more accurately, pretending STS was an operational system)… and since 1984 on designing->building->launching the space station. I wish it hadn’t done those things, but neither happened in a vacuum.Both had Presidential marching orders and influential constituencies (including, truth be told, not just the usual political and corporate suspects but large portions of the “space community” that have since updated their views with hindsight.

(BTW, final STS development costs were close to $11B in late-70s dollars — your $5.2B figure was the first course. I say this for historical accuracy, not in any way to make Ares/Orion seem better)

Al: yes, if today’s views about the relative promise of NASA and non-NASA initiatives had prevailed over the last 30 years, or if the 1970-72 NASA had approached RLVs via X-vehicles rather than in ‘great leap forward’ mode, we’d probably have seen very different results.

Let’s at least acknowledge there’s a certain amount of ambiguity and wishful thinking in COTS and in Donald’s “government creates destinations to make a market,” as with all tax-funded pump priming. That last metaphor suggests that you pour in a cup or so, and after a brief pause gallons come gushing out.

If it should turn out that New Space development takes longer and costs more than the “unleash the private sector” enthusiasts predict… and/or that private demand for their services is smaller or grows more slowly than predicted… then the difference between pouring money down a NASA rathole and pouring it down multiple entrepreneurial ratholes becomes a difference in name only.

I don’t say that will happen, and it’s certainly worth trying. There have been both very successful and very unsuccessful pump-priming initiatives in other domains. I do suggest that a “NASA drools, New Space rules” faith may set us up for disappointment just as much as 1969-vintage faith in “can-do NASA” did.

Monte, I’ve never claimed that it’s not hard. I’ve simply claimed that it’s not as hard as many (particularly NASA (and NASA-pork) partisans) claim that it is, or at least (at a minimum) that it’s not impossible.

And while I do think that it’s hard, I think that you underestimate the “mind-clouding power of NASA” (at least in the past), particularly with regard to its undue influence over investment (this is speaking from personal experience). In fact, ironically, had this “mind-clouding power” not existed, the X-Prize wouldn’t have been funded, because the foolish insurance company that took the hole-in-one bet was assured by gray beards that it couldn’t be won in the requisite time frame.

I laughed at the time, and do still.

I think that the next few years will see that mind cloud dissipate, to the limited degree that it still exists, and we’ll see how hard it really is. In fact, we’re already starting to see that happen in the investment community. But to deny the factor in the past is, to me, well…denial…

Al:

If you can agree with this, then what is the issue between you and Rand? What is the issue?

I think the issue is straw men by Monte. But that’s my take. We’ll see what his is…

DAVE SALT: According to current estimates, Ares 1/Orion will cost more than $20 billion to field.

Monte,

Since you and Rand (as you say) are ” In substance, we’re not far apart”, let me try to find an area of substantive agreement between to two of you.

To do so, let’s talk about objective facts — rather subjective statements.

Would you agree that although NASA is funding the Ares 1/Orion at $20 billion, the best it has been able to do in the last two decades for subsidizing commercial development (e.g., COTS) is $500M, and the best it has been able to do for RLV x-vehicles (e.g., X-33) is $1 Billion?

If you agree with those facts, then isn’t it reasonable for Rand to say “NASA has not tried as hard to develop commercial or RLV breakthroughs as it tries with its own internal government programs (like Shuttle, Station, and CEV/Orion).

Would you agree that if NASA had made the same level of financial commitment to COTS-like partnerships, and to flying lots of x-vehicles (e.g., actually “blacken the sky with x-vehicles”), that the results almost certainly would be different?

If you can agree with this, then what is the issue between you and Rand? What is the issue?

– Al

According to current estimates, Ares 1/Orion will cost more than $20 billion to field. However, Shuttle development costs were $5.2 billion ($FY’71), which escalates to something equivalent to the Ares 1/Orion cost in $FY’07. This suggests that NASA has not only lost the financial plot but that it’s also lost the technical competence to the point where it cannot even reinvent the wheel!

The plain fact is that Ares 1/Orion is the first serious attempt that NASA has made to build a launch system since Shuttle. It has never made a serious attempt to investigate the feasibility of RLVs by building and flying actual test vehicles — the X-33/34 debacles not withstanding — even though its own research (e.g. the 1993 Access to Space study) has indicated their potential and likely feasibility.

So, given NASA’s abject failure to make any measurable progress in this particular field, is it any wonder that some people ask you to “put your faith in our great leap forward instead!”?