You can’t fire all the technical managers and “just build & fly the sucker”. Kistler/RpK had very good technical management. They needed those managers to build and fly it. However, they did not have a business plan that closed, even with a $200 million NASA space act agreement. Furthermore, it was not a foregone conclusion that the most recent management could not find more “dumb money” to invest in RpK. The previous Chairman (Robert Wang) was able to find over $500 million of dumb money from Saudi Arabia and Asia. The new management could have repeated that feat, and almost did.

Next, if they did find somebody with “deep pockets” (a Musk, Bezos or Beal, Allen figure) — who was not investing for pure financial returnes — RpK would not need the services of managers whose job it was to raise the private funding. In that case, they could (and would) lay them off.

But you can’t waive a wand and find somebody with deep of pockets for invests for “philanthro-capitalist” reasons. By observation, we can see that people with that much money generally prefer to design the company from ground up. If you look at recent history — from Beal, to Musk, to Bezos, to Bigelow — if they get excited about space, they tend to start their own company, and begin from a clean sheet of paper, rather than investing hundreds of millions in somebody else’s company.

ANON: If we had a $2-3 Billion COTS program, instead of the current miserly $500M COTS program, who here would not have given about $400M to Kistler (with $100M private matching required) in order to see this TSTO RLV fly?

With a $400M space act agreement, RpK probably could have raised the remaining $100M. More specifically, apparently RpK had a $200+ million commitment from a Canadian fund (which I think was “dumb money”.) Kistler/RpK was very successful at raising private funds from overseas sources, which generally have a much different approach to investments and due diligence. In other words, they are in it for the financial returns, but they don’t do they same level of serious due diligence as American professionals. (Which is why I call it “dumb money”.)

Back to your original proposal — I would support a larger COTS program, and (in that case) I would have given RpK a larger amount of funding, as long as there was some significant matching requirement.

Perhaps more importantly, I would require NASA to begin purchasing more of its space transportation services on a commercial firm-fixed-price basis. An existing proven market demand is critical to raising private investments.

– Al

We could do some amazing things in space in this nation with slightly different budget priorities.

We could funding half a dozen of these very innovative companies right now, and see a renaissance of truly exciting space development.

– Anon

— Donald