Wall Street Journal columnist Holman W. Jenkins Jr. wants to change the way NASA does business. In an essay in today’s issue [subscription may be required], Jenkins thinks NASA would do well to follow the lead of Robert Bigelow, who has offered $760 million for eight flights to his planned orbital habitats, a guarantee of business designed to help vehicle developers raise money from “mega-angels” or elsewhere. (Jenkins goes so far as to call the concept “possibly the best idea of 2007.”) NASA should follow suit, he argues, by offering similar guarantees of future business to private firms, calling current plans to develop its own launch vehicle and spacecraft “the in-house, do-it-all approach that has produced little real progress since Apollo.”
To Jenkins, what is at stake here is not just the future of NASA and private spaceflight, but even the eventual survival of the human race:
The next president should turn NASA into a buyer of services rather than a producer of them, much as the government once used mail contracts to boost the early commercial aviation industry. Only by breaking the classic NASA mold can we speed up a permanent human presence in space, thus ensuring humanity’s long-term survival.
Wow.
I agree with him. (I can’t say agree with him 100% until I read the full editorial, but I 100% agree with what Jeff posted.)
– Al
Now if it would only be possible to make the next president, or any of his relevant campaign staff to read the column.
They may. The WSJ has significant influence — though I expect that to leak away over time as the new owndership guts the paper as they have most of the paper’s they’ve owned.
I also agree with Jeff’s quote. However, one correction, Jeff, humanity is a species, not a race.
— Donald
I’ve actually thought this for a while. It should be an agency that receives applications for grants, and distributes them. It would create more diversity, and probably stimulate the industry. NASA as is was good for the Apollo years, but let’s move on to today’s economy…
NASA field centers continue to fight with industry and academia, sectors that are far larger than the centers themselves. The situation has only grown worse by the centers’ needs to “compete” for funding.
Of course, the centers run most of the competitions. As one would expect, the people running the competitions at the centers freely share inside information with those in the centers who are “competing.” Centers also regularly threaten their own internal employees from cooperating with outside proposers. They also threaten their local subcontractors from doing the same. Because of these behaviors, the centers regularly waste hundreds of millions of dollars per year by insourcing bad ideas. Then we wonder why programs are overbudget…
Get rid of NASA internal infrastructure, and get rid of this waste.
the question then becomes, how do you dismantle an US government agency, for the benefit of the future of spaceflight ? Mr. Bono told us how to dismantle an atomic bomb, but this would be a far more delicate procedure.
Don’t dismantle NASA. Just use NASA to hand government money to others. Isn’t that how most gov’t agencies work?
To NASA’s credit, today the agency (finally) announced one small step towards the commercial services future that is the focus of the WSJ editorial:
“NASA Awards Contract for Microgravity Aircraft Services
PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Source: NASA HQ
CLEVELAND – NASA has awarded a contract to Zero Gravity Corporation of Las Vegas to manage and operate an aircraft to perform reduced gravity parabolic flights while carrying NASA-operated experiments and personnel.
The parabolic flights will provide the means to replicate the reduced gravity environment of space for various areas of research needed to further NASA’s understanding of space travel. These include aeronautical research, fluid physics, combustion, material sciences and life sciences.
Additionally, work done during these flights will assist engineers in developing NASA’s Crew Exploration Vehicle, as well as contribute to improved flights for astronauts on the space shuttle and the International Space Station. The aircraft will fly primarily out of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
The contract’s one-year base period, valued at $4.7 million, began on Jan. 1. Four one-year options could add just over $5 million per year to the fixed price, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract total. These options could extend the period of performance to a total of five years, for an estimated $25.4 million.
For more information on NASA and its programs, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov”
That it took this long to make an award, when Zero-G was pursuing NASA’s business during O’Keefe’s reign and Griffin was talking about such a contract in his very first speeches, is rather sad. But better late than never.
FWIW…
Congrats to Zero-G!
It was a hard long road — much harder and longer than necessary — but they finally succeeded.
– Al
I was so proud of the early days when competancy reigned supreme. Since then bureaucratic growth has stifled competancy to the extent of many lost lives. Personal agendas have gotten in the way of economic production of better ways to do things. R&D is the life blood of the future and too many private and bureaucratic agendas interfere with necessary advancements in NASA. Change your ways and get back to your original concepts and follow through as you should. Focus, focus focus.
Zero-G charges like $3675.00 per seat, a 4.7 million dollar contract will fly 1278 astronauts a year, over 40 a week. How many was nasa conducting with their own vomit comet?
Vadislaw,
NASA has some unique requirements, which significantly drives up the cost. This is pretty typical of NASA procurements. If I had the interest in this issue, I could pull some of these unique requirements out of the NASA RFP, which is available on line.
Maybe Rand Simberg will comment on this, since Interglobal Spacelines used to compete in this market niche.
– Al
Maybe NASA needs to be a registered NPO (non-profit society) a platform to centralize, assemble and coordinate only space missions and operations for companies doing business in space with all legal charters accorded as in any government agency.
I think there’s been successful models of this before…
The Commercial Orbital Transport System (COTS) is a commercial grant followed with a contract for services. So NASA is doing just exactly what the WSJ reporter suggested. Hmmm I wonder if he knows about COTS?