Comments on: “Breaking the classic NASA mold”

By: Cecil

Cecil — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:07:20 +0000

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?

By: Bruce Behrhorst

Bruce Behrhorst — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 06:09:23 +0000

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…

By: Al Fansome

Al Fansome — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:54:54 +0000

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

By: Vladislaw

Vladislaw — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:51:04 +0000

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?

By: Carter S. Pawlus

Carter S. Pawlus — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:44:45 +0000

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.

By: Al Fansome

Al Fansome — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:23:42 +0000

Congrats to Zero-G!

It was a hard long road — much harder and longer than necessary — but they finally succeeded.

– Al

By: anonymous.space

anonymous.space — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:16:43 +0000

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…

By: Eric Conrad

Eric Conrad — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:51:35 +0000

Don’t dismantle NASA. Just use NASA to hand government money to others. Isn’t that how most gov’t agencies work?

By: reader

reader — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 21:03:48 +0000

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.

By: Go

Go — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:28:57 +0000

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.