What “disturbs” me a little here is this: It seems to me that we do not disagree that much, bail out included. However you do stick to your gun when ti comes to cost-plus and I am willing to say there are indeed programs where cost-plus might be necessary. All I say is that cost-plus at all costs is ludicrous! Not everything has to be cost plus. However the current (old?) mindest was to go cost plus even if the nature of the program did not necessitate cost plus, like Ares/Orion. Remember again Ares = SRB and Orion = Apollo in the old ESAS. And actually let me go further. If the design process had been rigorously followed I speculate that it might have worked. For example use a 3 crew Orion a la Apollo instead of 6!!! A lot less constraints would have been put on Ares and the LAS but hey we like our SUV of a capsule right? You can take it to ISS, to the Moon, to NEO, Mars and also grocery shopping! What’ss not to like?

Again cost-plus when you need it or COTS. Not always one and not the other just because.

Hey Orbital has a COTS contract, so good for them. Competition is on. What can I say? We’ll see who makes it first!

As to socialism… Funny a Republican WH got on its knees (literallly) to ask for a socialist move, right? Make an effort to understand that “socialism” as you seem to understand it is a relic of the past. As much is capitalism. We saw the limits of both. The “right” way if the way that works. Sometime it requires “socialized” services (e.g. healthcare and you better “believe” it or you’ll come crying when you retire sometime) and others “capitalist” services (e.g. launch services based on existing technology) and then there is a whole shade of grays in the middle. Social vs. Capital is all long gone. Only those who fight it put us in the mess we’re in. Sorry.

Actually, there is plenty of objective evidence that the NASA “cost-plus” paradigm is broken, and a fixed price approach that leverages private-industry innovation and risk-sharing has a better chance of succeeding.

One data point.

SpaceHab developed their Hab module on a firm-fixed-price approach for approximately $200 million.

NASA paid for a study, by Price Waterhouse, using NASA’s standard cost-plus models that estimated the cost of developing such a Hab module would be over $1 Billion.

If you add in the GAO’s empirical based study that shows that NASA’s estimates on developing new hardware are significantly UNDERestimated — that demonstrate about an average of 100+% cost growth for NASA human spaceflight programs –> the historical data suggests that a cost-plus NASA program for the SpaceHab module would have cost over $2 Billion.

Thus, the objective comparision is:

A) A $2 Billion cost-plus Hab module for the Shuttle.

B) A $200 million privately-developed module, based on a firm-fixed-price approach.

A few data points of hard reality:

* X-30
* X-33
* X-34
* X-38
* NASP
* Space Shuttle
* ISS
* SLI
* 2GRLV
* STAS
* CRV
* CTV
* OSP
* OSP
* OMV
* ISS Prop Module
* NLS

As they say, trying the same thing, over and over again, and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

Now we have Ares 1.

It’s failure was completely predictable. Completely.

Does that not fit the definition of insanity?

FWIW,

– Al

PS — The FAITH you talk about is on your part.

The point isn’t whether Obama bases his policy on political self-interest – its whether his political self-interest falls into the narrow interpertation of “Government good, private industry bad” mindset. However, you have indicated your unwillingness to discuss this, so thats all I’ll say, with regards to that.

With regards to the issue of the DC-3 – yes, you are right it had limitation, but it could, and did serve in multiple roles, The point isn’t to make it have to do absolutely everything, but is it versital enough that it can do some level of multiple things. And yes, we do see that – even today, civil airplanes will be used for both passengeres (as airliners) and as cargo transport (AFAIK, Fedex utilizes Boeing and Airbus systems, generally speaking)

Your comment about british airliners and bombers have nothing to do with the point about Soyuz – yes, as you mature a market, better specialization will occur. These are not mature markets yet, and everyone agrees with that. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t mature technology. How many WW1 fighter aircraft started as recon aircrafts, and yet I have never seen an armed U-2.

But lets put all of this to the side, for the moment, because implying that these operational capabilties are so incredibly different as to make it impractal for one craft to do multiple markets. So tell me, what is fundmentally different about the operations of delivering professional NASA astronauts to a beyond LEO craft, or of delivering tourists to a leased bigelow Station, or scientific researchers to ISS, or deliver nationalistic (peaceful) astronauts to a leased Bigelow habitat?

What is so different? What are the operational parameters, the enviromental parameters, and so on, that force such a level of differentiation into these markets?

When a company enters into a contract with the government they do have a legal responsibility to fulfill it. That is why public corporations need to be careful on which contracts they bid on. If they bid to deliver a spacecraft at 5 billion and its costs them 7 billion, then they eat the difference, which makes for unhappy stock holders. And unhappy stock holders tend to bid down the price of stock as well as sue management.

Again, That is why the government went to cost plus, so the major aerospace companies would have an incentive to bid on them and the government wouldn’t be stuck choosing from a bunch of lesser qualified companies desperate for money. As was the case for COTS.

“Limited resources and experience usually don’t let you go into orbit, now does it?”

Exactly why it took SpaceX 6 years to do what Orbital Sciences did in 3 years which was to get into orbit. Orbital Sciences actually did it with a successful launch on the first flight. Yes, I expect more experience and learning to be gained by SpaceX with their Falcon 9 launches. Elon himself admitted he made a mistake on using ablated engines which set him back.

As for the bailout – again, I think it was a mistake. Those banks should have been allowed to go under. As for the unemployment, that could have been handled with extend benefits and unemployment insurance at far lower cost then was dumped into the banks with TARP. And a news flash for you. The banks still laid off tens of thousands of workers even with the bailout and still stopped lending to small business even with TARP. Without TARP those banks would have failed and the more successful ones would have bought them out or taken over their customers and the economy would be far better off today then with the waling dead like AGI and Citicorp still around. Yes, it was a step away from free markets down the slope to socialism.

“To me this is the great weakness of the new space philosophy. The foundation of new space is based on the faith that small private firms with limited resources and experience are smarter then major corporations and government agencies with decades of experience and resources. ”

This is not true at all. It is because you do not know how they work. And that is okay but get informed first. Limited resources and experience usually don’t let you go into orbit, now does it? So what is it? Hey, have fun finding out!

@Annon and GuessWho:

Can’t catch up I’ll try though and try to answer you both.

No I don’t advocate any such thing. I am saying the realities fo the market are such. But please stop allcing that a “free” market. It is nothing like a free market.

I am saying that in any contract with the US government the requirements are to the US government NOT to the shareholders. When they serve the military as well as NASA they have duties to the government. Now of course since the trend is to privatize anything like the military (Blackwater AKA Xe AKA ?) I suppose this is what you mean when you say we are not socialist? But have you been to a socialist country? Would you say France, Germany or Sweden are socialists?

A quick scenario about the national security issue: Wall Street collapses, firing their workers (WSers). The WSers cannot go shopping, pay services, etc. Shops fire their workers etc. So what is the big deal you ask? Well none of these people can pay their local/state/federal taxes. So what come next: We fire the teachers, usually the easiest target (talk about short term vision – but no choice). The chain reaction continues all of those laid-off people can’t pay their taxes and the WSers are still in the ditch. Well we can’t pay for firefighters, police, national guards. See the trend? A major collapse as we have been through as consequences. National security consequences. If Wall Street collapsed, NYC would have collapsed. And then what? Rely on the rest of NY state to save the day? The major aerospace corporation are being traded on WS therefore have a role in this scenario. I hope it’s clear enough this time at least for national security issues.

As for F-117 and SR-71, there were competition at least for the SR-71. But these are programs where cost-plus makes sense and no company like SpaceX or Scaled or any that small will go for such a program. Well… Never say never. At least probably not fixed-price. NASA and Constellation are not better served with cost-plus. Sorry. This ongoing program yet another example.

The fact that NASA or anyone keep changing their requirements is because they don’t know (best) or don’t understand (worst) what they want. As to firing the managers, I believe it started back in January, did it not? But when you say incompetence or worse please don take the righteous road since all those corporations have lobbyist in DC who can’t care less of a program: Not their job.

“but the major incentive in any program is to deliver a product (spacecraft, launch vehicle) to the customer that ultimately meets his requirements.”

Also one of you suggested I never worked in industry whatever. Did one of you actually do? The major incentive of a program is to bring cash to the company so that it can satisfy its shareholders. Go ask your CEOs… Come on you can’t be that naive? Or pretty soon you’ll join me in my rant

“Whether you want to believe it or not, contractors don’t really enjoy repeated starts/stops or direction changes throughout the program as it often means they have been expelling a lot of effort only to see it go in the trash can.”

I don’t “believe” anything here. I know. There is a difference like between say options and recommendations. Your heart may be broken but again ask your CEO what he thinks. I mean what he really thinks when he goes in front of the shareholders meeting. Especially when asked the question that since the current program (figure of speach) is done then what is next on the company’s plate…

Why do we keep coming back to RpK? Let’s see what those current players can do and then we’ll talk about it. I already said why RpK’s re-entry would most likely have failed in their design released to the public anyway (elsewhere on this site).

About 707: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707
The prototype was conceived as a proof of concept aircraft for both military and civilian use: the United States Air Force was the first customer for the design, using it as the KC-135 Stratotanker midair refueling platform. It was far from certain that the passenger 707 would be profitable.

“As for LM and the composite tank, there were a lot of technologies used for Apollo that were not mature in 1961.”

Maybe so but please remind me NASA’s budget then? And now? In terms of %GDP. Come on! Please apples and oranges!

Free global market is a total illusion. I would hope that after the current crash people would understand that. It’s nt only the US that is bailing out their banks, you know?

Those are the realities of a free global market. There are probably Russian and Chinese stockholders of Boeing as well.

So do you advocate laws that would only allow U.S. citizens to own stock in defense contractors like Boeing?