Congress, NASA

Fox News examines (briefly) the future of NASA funding

A brief segment on Fox News this morning features a congressman and a space advocate talking (although not debating) what the Republican takeover of the House means for NASA:

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) (an odd choice, given that he doesn’t play a major role in space issues, although he does sit on the full House Science and Technology Committee) claims that NASA is a “national security issue” and that the Obama Administration “cut back on spending” for NASA. “I think space is a necessity,” he said, suggesting he would seek to protect the agency’s budget from potential cuts. Berin Szoka of the Space Frontier Foundation played up the commercial aspects of the administration’s plan. “In the short term, quite frankly, it doesn’t matter whether we’re sending astronauts up into orbit,” he said. “What matters is, is NASA going to build a commercial sector that can make our presence in space sustainable?” Unfortunately, there was no opportunity in the brief segment for the two to debate their viewpoints.

56 comments to Fox News examines (briefly) the future of NASA funding

  • Robert G. Oler

    This is the same Fox News where some of its high priced talent is explaining that obama’s trip to India is going to cost more per day then the Afland war…goofy

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    something got cut out

    I wrote:

    Afland war…goofy.

    so it is easy to go on Fox and babble that NASA has some national security mode, when clearly it does not.

    goofy

    Robert G. Oler

  • This is the same Fox News where some of its high priced talent is explaining that obama’s trip to India is going to cost more per day then the Afland war…goofy

    Gee, the Fox News I heard tonight had several commentators pointing out that these cost numbers were nonsensical.

    But I guess that goofy commenters like Robert hear what they want to hear.

  • MichaelC

    “-and babble that NASA has some national security mode, when clearly it does not.”

    Any help from those maniacs I can get I will take. Though it is not expressly written down anywhere, NASA HAS conducted numerous asteroid/comet defense studies.
    Arguably this makes it a de facto National Defense function.

    I seem to recall the shuttle has flown….How many classified missions?

  • NASA Fan

    If there was a ROI for the commercial sector in HSF, we’d have seen something materialize in the last 40 years. So why is Govn’t responsible for developing the commercial sector in a market when the commercial sector does not see an ROI?

    NASA should not be spending $100B on , say an ISS, just so two commercial companies have a place to make make money.

    There is no reason for HSF. There once was, thank you Apollo, but not now nor in the foreseeable future.

    Send Robots if we want to scratch the itch of our curiosity and exploration DNA.

    The republic is broke. Might as well end HSF now. Let commercial have it if it wants.

  • reader

    the Obama Administration “cut back on spending” for NASA

    Facts ?? Who cares about facts when you can have ill-informed opinions!

  • googaw

    “In the short term, quite frankly, it doesn’t matter whether we’re sending astronauts up into orbit,”

    Well said. Many space fans think of astronauts like voodoo shamans think of their dolls. By poking a doll with a pin somehow you’re jabbing a real person with a knife. As long as we keep shooting up astronauts in their little capsules, somehow that constitutes progress towards space colonization. It’s sympathetic magical thinking.

    “What matters is, is NASA going to build a commercial sector that can make our presence in space sustainable?”

    Alas, what NASA has done in recent decades is so far divorced from economic reality that there is no hope of it meaningfully assisting real space development except by providing basic NACA-style research and by buying the occasional real commercial (i.e. satellite launching) rocket to launch science robots. In any case soon that is all NASA will have budget for.

  • Derrick

    Just more political talking points from a congressman trying to please his constituents–him mentioning “Russia” more than once in this interview should be translated to: “We need to cut government spending!! …unless it’s money spent on my district.”

    Obama cut back on NASA spending? When did this happen? Pretty sure NASA is getting a budget increase. Again typical political posturing–take your GOP talking points to the dumb blondes on Fox ’cause you know they won’t question anything.

  • Gregori

    Bizarre….

    NASA is a purely civilian agency. If there is a national security issue in space, this is dealt with by the Department of Defense. It has its own budget for this as well an array of reconnaissance satellites, GPS, rockets, ICBMS and so and so forth.

    Having a manned space program is not an asset for national defense and more likely a huge liability. A space station like the ISS would be a very easy target for an anti satellite weapon. There is little it could do to avoid being annihilated. Its very visible, has known orbit and can’t change its orbit very quickly. Machines can be replaced, human lives can’t. The trend in advanced armies has been to try put soldiers out of the line of fire as much as possible, using UAV’s and other robots. That’s going to continue into the future.

    If humans were useful for military purposes in space, the DOD would be sending them up there to do……do….I actually don’t know what they would be doing up there!!! There are wiser ways to spend 100 Billions to defend a country. Automated systems are lot more effective at surveillance and bombing. They’re also much cheaper than sustaining humans in space.

    ISS is not about national security as such. Its a combination of techno-welfare and diplomatic cooperation between industrialized nations. And those both have their merits but it shouldn’t be distorted into some phony security issue. USA has some very real security issues that it should focus attention on. Being distracted by defending irrelevant and illusory “problems” could mean turning a blind eye to something very real and terrible.

    I notice politicians are the only ones who bring up this “national defense” argument for manned spaceflight…. not the Generals or leaders at the Pentagon. That’s interesting.

    The Russian Bogey man is hilarious too. No matter what plan was enacted by Obama, NASA was going to be relying on the Russians for Crew Transport. Commercial, Constellation or a single HLV would have all required relying on Russia for 5+years. That’s simply because the Shuttle program was closed down (its not safe) before he was in office. Continuing the Shuttle would have probably killed people and insure there is no money to develop the next system, government or private. Constellation would have thrown the ISS into the Ocean before any rockets would fly, leaving NO PLACE to fly to!! (It was not going to the Moon, to slow and not enough funds).

    Big Deal, though. In the Globalized world, everybody is dependent on every in anyway. So you trade. We do it with practically everything else, I don’t see why space is different. For the cost of the Shuttle program per year, you could afford at least 15 Soyuz launches or more, which is enough to rotate the crew of ISS every 6 months for SEVEN years!!! USA depends on Russia for a short while to provide crew transport, but Russia is just as dependent on USA, ESA and JAXA to keep the ISS running. Russia simply doesn’t have the resources to keep it going by itself and would be forced to abandon it without USA’s cooperation. If they hike crew prices too high, do the capitalist thing and buy from another supplier who will undercut them. China would be more than willing to do that and they have a vehicle working NOW!!!!!

  • DCSCA

    Saw this, live, and the level of down market and to the right discourse, errors and general emptiness in the brief segment should alarm any space advocate- commercial or government funded. Oler’s correct on this one- the same vapid morning show ‘talent’ kept perpetuating the false story about $200 million/day being spent on Obama’s overseas trip. To borrow a favorite term from the poster above- it’s just ‘goofy.’ But then, a little leg and a lot of lipgloss fills the information gaps nicely.

  • Perhaps Diaz-Balart is one of those on the Hill who “imagine that it’s literally true, in the sense that there are secret military missions performed by NASA astronauts”, as Rand Simberg recently wrote.

    I’ve asked before, and I’ll ask again, *HOW* is NASA a National Security asset?

  • MichaelC, where? I’ve read ones the Air Force has produced. I’ve read the one LLNL produced. I’ve read the stuff that Rusty Schweickart and the B612 Foundation have produced. So far as I know NASA has never done any asteroid/comet defense studies..

  • Vladislaw

    NASA Fan wrote:

    “If there was a ROI for the commercial sector in HSF, we’d have seen something materialize in the last 40 years. So why is Govn’t responsible for developing the commercial sector in a market when the commercial sector does not see an ROI? “

    You should ask yourself then why has the federal government been involved and responsible for developing ALL other forms of transportation?

    From cars, planes, trains, you name it. Our government has actively been involved in all of them. Either through subsidies to the oil and car companies or the kelly space act, the erie canal, the transcontinental railroads or funding basic research we have always believed helping transportation of all kinds is better for the nation.

    Why does commercial space always get singled out as the one form of transportation the federal government should somehow not be involved with developing when it has helped develop every other form of transportation the nation uses.

  • Martijn Meijering

    I’m not so sure it actually helped rail transportation all that much. They nationalised it and then turned it into a shadow of its former self by subsidising a highway network.

  • Vladislaw

    The railroads got how much in land grants? One square mile of land per mile of track. The federal government extensively used the rails to transport cargo to outposts providing the initial market for many lines without it many lines would not have been created because there wasn’t an established market yet. It was only after the creation of the outpost and rail line and the homestead act that farmers moved into some of those areas.

    The point being the Nation thought it was in our best interest to get rails established across America. Same with roads for automobiles. America funding our transporation is what helped us become an economic power why we should think space is different is beyond me.

  • MichaelC

    impact.arc.nasa.gov

    You did not look very hard Trent.

    Current search programs are of a scale that can find Earth-crossing asteroids greater than one km in diameter—e.g., those whose impacts could destroy civilization. The U.S. Government’s Spaceguard Survey plans to detect and catalog 90% of NEOs one km and larger in size by the end of 2008. A search program to locate sub-kilometer Earth-crossing asteroids has been recommended by the National Research Council (which would focus on asteroids down to 300 m in size) and by an internal NASA NEO Science Definition Team (which would focus on those down to 140 m).

  • MichaelC

    http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/

    NASA has several programs involved in planetary defense.

  • MichaelC

    http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/report/1994/cape/cape2-9.htm

    space shuttle military missions.

    Those last posts took me about 4 minutes to google after you guys intimated I was “making it up.”

    Jeez, talk about people with blinders on.

  • MichaelC

    I corresponded with Rusty Schweickart’s organization and was disappointed to learn they are adamantly against any nuclear weapons in space.

    They seem to have an agenda based on a space tug of some kind.
    Pretty sad when you consider the survival of the human race may depend on an intercept.

    In that case anything goes. And we better have some HLV’s.

  • amightywind

    Thank you Mario Diaz-Balart for stating openly what we already know. NASA is a national security agency like the DoD. Relying on Russia for space transport is grossly irresponsible. We need to start treating the Ruskies as the malevolent entity they are. Last Tuesday America seems to have waken up to that fact.

    P.S. Ainsley Earhardt is hot!

  • Dennis Berube

    Wow, you people who would end Human space flight altogether have no sense for the future. If we are to even survive as a species with a growing out of control number of individuals on this planet, space is the only alternative to a big war! Would you rather have that? Out there in space are a limitless supply of materials with which we can expand the human condition.. Hopefully even the Republicans will have the wisdom to realize that human space flight is necessary for the future of mankind!

  • space shuttle military missions.

    There hasn’t been one in many years. No one at the Pentagon will miss the Shuttle.

  • Martijn Meijering

    Wow, you people who would end Human space flight altogether

    There aren’t too many of those here. You may be engaging imaginary interlocutors in conversation.

  • Coastal Ron

    amightywind wrote @ November 6th, 2010 at 10:45 am

    Thank you Mario Diaz-Balart for stating openly what we already know. NASA is a national security agency like the DoD.

    That other people confuse NASA’s mission as much as you do is not proof that NASA actually has that mandate, legally or otherwise.

    In my mind, the Department of Defense is not just the Department of Defense Within The Atmosphere, but the Department of Defending Us From All Threats, Terrestrial or Non-Terrestrial.

    NASA is not so inclined, staffed or budgeted to handle that responsibility.

  • Derrick

    MichaelC:
    ” seem to recall the shuttle has flown….How many classified missions?”

    Back in the 80s, pre-challenger dude. USAF takes care of the cool stuff now.

  • Coastal Ron

    NASA Fan wrote @ November 6th, 2010 at 12:12 am

    If there was a ROI for the commercial sector in HSF, we’d have seen something materialize in the last 40 years.

    In order for there to be a market, you have to have demand and supply forces in play. During the time of the Shuttle, there has been demand for HSF, but the commercial providers were not asked to provide services, since NASA operated their own transportation system (your tax dollars at work).

    With the ISS, there is a funded need for crew transportation to and from the ISS. For the last 10 years, we have really relied on the Russians for this transportation, since the Shuttle can only swap people out during it’s brief stays in orbit – it cannot permanently add to the ISS crew compliment.

    For these last 10 years, the U.S. Government did not have a problem with relying on the Russians, because if we did, we would have done something about it. Now that commercial companies want to replace the Russians, there is hand wringing and concern about U.S. companies taking away business from the Russians. Many may not see it that way, but that is sure what it sounds like.

    The U.S. has a need to get crew to and from the ISS starting in 2016, which is after the current Soyuz contract is done. NASA could A. do nothing, and Soyuz would be the only option for U.S. astronauts for the indefinite future. Or, B. they could expend U.S. tax dollars partially funding U.S. companies to develop the technology, infrastructure and capabilities that will allow them to provide commercial crew services to LEO.

    Oh, and choice B is a lot cheaper overall than NASA doing it themselves, and it would allow other commercial services in LEO to start up, thus increasing employment and potential tax revenue.

    Your choice – A or B.

  • NASA Fan

    @ Vladislaw wrote: “You should ask yourself then why has the federal government been involved and responsible for developing ALL other forms of transportation?”

    Apple and Oranges here.

    Business men who were at the fore front of inventing ‘cars, planes, trains, etc.’ saw a ROI for their efforts. The Government saw this as well, and for the good of the republic, ‘got involved’ to further their efforts.

    Post Apollo, business has not seen a ROI in HSF, notwithstanding the suborbital tourist industry, so there hasn’t been any commercially generated, purely capitalist endeavors in this arena. Government doesn’t see it either.

    It is not governments role to create a false market, with one buyer – the government – so investors can then see a ROI in HSF.

    Apples and Oranges

  • Vladislaw

    Rand, just finished your article, good read but I didn’t understand this line about budget cuts:

    “In terms of human spaceflight, absent ending the program entirely, there are three areas to cut: the new Space Launch System, the commercial crew program to get astronauts to/from low earth orbit for both ISS crew changeout and later exploration missions, and the development of technologies needed to dramatically reduce the costs of deep-space exploration, such as in-space propellant depots.”

    I understand cutting the SLS but commercial crew and depots? Are you advocating that is where you think the cuts will come from?

  • Robert G. Oler

    MichaelC wrote @ November 6th, 2010 at 9:55 am

    NASA has several programs involved in planetary defense.

    comical

    Robert G. Oler

  • Byeman

    “NASA is a national security agency like the DoD”

    Mario Diaz-Balart is just a clueless as windy is. Just because he said it doesn’t mean it true.

    1. NASA is an independent agency
    2. it is not part of the national security council
    3. It does not consult with the DOD on military issues.
    4. It does not perform national security functions.
    5. The National Space Act says it is not
    6. It says nothing about this in my employment paper work.

    Also windy, it is ludicrous to think that the last election had anything to do with “treating the Ruskies as the malevolent entity”.
    What are you taking or smoking to come up with these mindless posts? Do you even leave the basement once in a while?

  • I understand cutting the SLS but commercial crew and depots? Are you advocating that is where you think the cuts will come from?

    I am saying that there are three broad areas of NASA human spaceflight, and that not all three are affordable under a budget cut. The smart thing would be to kill SLS and fund commercial crew and technology instead. I expect Republicans to live up to their name as the Stupid Party, and do the opposite, but I’m trying to convince them that this would be both dumb and not in keeping with their professed principles.

  • eh

    Gee, the Fox News I heard tonight had several commentators pointing out that these cost numbers were nonsensical.””” Rand Simberg.

    Huckabee pushed in on Fox. Rush and Beck pushed it seperately. If it came up other times on Fox, I have no idea.

    On topic, I think that an effort kill tech development and CC is a natural result of any budget cut. These will be still be seen as Obama plans for some reason.

  • I am saying that there are three broad areas of NASA human spaceflight, and that not all three are affordable under a budget cut.

    I should add that they’re not affordable even with the requested budget. HLV always breaks the bank, which is why we haven’t left LEO in almost four decades, and we won’t do so until people advocating it stop using its lack as an excuse to not move forward.

    Huckabee pushed in on Fox. Rush and Beck pushed it seperately.

    None of those people are Fox News reporters. If you’re going to slam Fox News for its opinion commentators, what do you have to say about the lunatics at MSNBC?

  • MichaelC, oh I see: you’re a weasel.

    NASA has *never* studied deflecting asteroids. I know this because every year there’s asteroid people at NASA standing up saying “we need to study this!!!”

    The lack of traction at NASA to study asteroid deflection is the reason why all those other organizations have picked up the torch.

    As for Spaceguard, once again, it’s an independent effort led by an international organization called the Spaceguard Foundation. Telescope time in the US has been given to them and JPL maintains one of the systems where you can get trajectory information (there’s others). I really don’t understand how you could possibly come to the conclusion that NASA is the defacto planetary defense organization when for years they have punted on doing anything about asteroid deflection.

    So, I ask again, and *HOW* is NASA a National Defense asset? If you can’t answer seriously, don’t answer. If you can’t answer at all, STOP SAYING IT IS.

  • ben Joshua

    It is easy to speak with congresspeople about money coming into their districts, or benefits to their biggest donors.

    Hard, to speak with them about astronomy, physics and chemistry.

    Harder still, economics.

    That’s the alternate mindset in Congress that makes a rational HSF program, among other things, difficult, especially in tough times.

    As for the lunatics at MSNBC (and Fox), their reportage (not their comment shows) does not bear up well under scrutiny for commitment to fact, empiricism and context.

    As for NASA and the national security establishment, once Congress starts ignoring NASA’s founding charter (which it has been doing for a long time) any fantastic notion or mythology can be foisted, procalimed or asserted, especially with the “news media” that is almost context-free and more storytellers than reporters.

  • Vladislaw

    “Business men who were at the fore front of inventing ‘cars, planes, trains, etc.’ saw a ROI for their efforts”

    Yes so they could sell to the military (the government as a single customer), the first auto, made in france, was for the military. The wright brothers tried to sell to the military very early on and trains were used for military cargo transport from the start. The government has historically always been the first best customer for transportation.

  • NASA Fan

    @ Vladislaw

    Yes, and in those scenarios, both Government (1st customer) and business saw customers beyond the government.

    However, i do not believe that is the case for HSF.

    Apples and Oranges

  • Vladislaw

    Then the customers that flew on soyuz to the space station were actually not customers wanting to experience space flight and were willing to spend the money to do it but were secretly government agents being sent there as government employees and were not commercial customers … glad you cleared it up.

    There isn’t any government demand or need for commercial spaceflight and there isn’t any private sector customers for it either .. it all makes sense now. Let’s continue on the road we have been on. A monopoly by NASA.

  • However, i do not believe that is the case for HSF.

    Fortunately, what you believe has no bearing on reality, or the prospects for commercial human spaceflight.

  • Coastal Ron

    NASA Fan wrote @ November 7th, 2010 at 10:22 am

    Yes, and in those scenarios, both Government (1st customer) and business saw customers beyond the government.

    However, i do not believe that is the case for HSF.

    Robert Bigelow would beg to differ with you. He has potential customers, but what he lacks is the transportation to get them to LEO. IF NASA gets commercial crew going for it’s ISS crew needs, then those same providers can offer their services to Bigelow.

    At this point, getting crew to/from LEO is the last missing piece to finding out if commercialization of LEO is ready to begin. I think there is a good chance that the first businesses may not succeed, but I know they won’t even get started without multiple commercial ways of getting crew to LEO. It will be small numbers to start, but that is the way every new market starts out.

    In any case, NASA needs someone to provide crew transportation services for the ISS after 2015, so there is a market for commercial crew. Either Congress/NASA will support it, or we’ll be buying more Soyuz from the Russians. I know which choice I would make…

  • Robert G. Oler

    NASA Fan wrote @ November 7th, 2010 at 10:22 am

    @ Vladislaw

    Yes, and in those scenarios, both Government (1st customer) and business saw customers beyond the government.

    However, i do not believe that is the case for HSF….

    some people do…they are putting their money into the effort…

    how do you explain that? Robert G. Oler

  • E.P. Grondine

    A little background on NASA and planetary defense:

    In December, 2005 the Congress of the United States, House and Senate, Republican and Democrat passed the George Brown Jr. Amendment. NASA scientists wrote the report of specifications required, which then Administrator Griffin sat on in 2007, an act in criminal direct contempt of the Congress. The specifications report interfered with then Administrator Griffin’s desire to have NASA focused solely on manned flight to Mars.

    The Congress in turn passed a resolution requiring the President, who they did not know would be Democrat or Republican, to set up a Planetary Protection Coordination Office by October 15, 2010. The President has dispatched the required response to the Congress, for their consideration.

    NASA has conducted NEAR, Stardust, Deep Impact, and now EPOXI and DAWN, (CONTOUR was lost due to a defective Star 30 motor from ATK);
    ESA has Rosetta; Japan Hayabusa; and China’s space leadership has stated their intention to launch a NEO probe following the Chang’e 3 lunar sample return mission.

    While the B612 foundation promotes non-nuclear options, these require early detection, and are practical for smaller bodies if such early detection is available; DOE has studied nuclear options

    To my knowledge, the prediction that Comet Schwassmann Wachmann 3 will turn into magic comet dust is based on a sample of 1, Comet Biela.
    Other comets have not done this. No one knows with certainty what comet 73P will do. Further, to my knowledge, no one has estimated the effect on climate of a dust load from 73P.

    2022 is the deadline to be ready for 73P.

    Regardless of what 73P does, there is plenty of other things out there, and we know with a certainty of 1 that some of them are headed our way. We simply do not know where they are, or when they will hit.

    It is highly unlikely that the leadership of the US will depend on Russia or China for planetary protection.

    I believe the current bi-partisan consensus supporting DIRECT and the EELVs and Falcon for ISS service will hold.

  • Vladislaw

    Coastal Ron wrote:

    ” I think there is a good chance that the first businesses may not succeed,”

    You are probably correct there, as a general rule the inventors and innovators usually don’t last because they are the dreamers and do not usually have the business chops it takes to succeed.

    Two recent examples that illustrate this is the personal computer market and the dot.com business. Very few of the originals are around. They go broke or are bought up by more efficient companies.

    Strangely it is the suppliers to the primaries that generally make out the best. When you look at mining in california in the 1800’s it was the businesses that supplied the miners who made out more often than actual miners. You can see this with the internet also, Cisco selling routers for the internet made out more than the vast number of ISP start-ups that bought the routers and offered internet access and ended up going broke or bought up.

  • googaw

    The idea that government was central to most transportation innovations is monstrously distorted. The people repeating these lies are counting on the reader having not themselves read this history for themselves. I highly recommend folks read the actual history. It is fascinating and illuminating.

    The earliest customers of railroads were coal mines. Indeed horse-drawn rails were used in private coal mines for over a century before the invention of the steam rail, which in turn was at first built for and used by the coal mines. The first railways beyond the coal mines were built entirely by private investors and used entirely by private customers, passengers as well as said coal mines and other shippers of bulk goods. The automobile was invented as a hip replacement for carriages for young rich private customers. The Wright Brothers invented the airplane with no government funding (it went to their lame competitor Langley). None of these things were invented to government specification. Government departments of various sorts, usually military, sooner or later learned about the private innovations and purchased their own rides and often altered technology for their own purposes (e.g. military airplanes).

    Even more misleading is using various examples of secondary government involvement (e.g. the Kelly Act which took the very obvious step of putting the U.S. mail on already-developed airplanes) to justify having government specify and fund the development of pet projects with imaginary or preposterously speculative markets, or markets that are very small compared to the government funding. For example 99.5% of HSF funding is governments launching astronauts for the sake of launching astronauts, with the remaining being a handful of billionaires — less than one billionaire per year — buying spare seats on already-developed Soyuz. Less than one billionaire per year paying the marginal costs of marginal costs, that is the grand market for which we are being asked to shell out billions of dollars per year for further government-funded and specified HSF.

    Governments did indeed, driven by the s*c**l*st fad, get heavily involved in attempting to innovate transportation in the 20th century. The result is that we now know that when governments have done the specifying and funding of transportation based on imaginative or speculative functions or markets, we have gotten glorious but useless missions such as Apollo and Constellation and preposterous white elephants such as the Skylab, Salyut, Shuttle, Mir, and ISS. How many hundreds of billions more must be taken out of our children’s W-2 forms before we learn the actual lessons of history?

  • Martijn Meijering

    The Wright Brothers invented the airplane with no government funding (it went to their lame competitor Langley).

    Much as I like reading papers that come out of the old NACA centers, I have to wonder if any of that wonderful research (and some of it really is very interesting) ever makes it into flight hardware. Is there truly a net benefit to NASA funded research? Because it also drives up aerospace wages and absorbs SBIR-funded entrepreneurs, making private aerospace R&D more expensive. Why would aerospace companies do internal R&D if they can make a profit on NASA-funded R&D? To paraphrase Freeman Dyson (as quoted by Henry Spencer): government research centers may do harm merely by existing. Delaying exploration until we have an unneeded HLV is a bad idea, but having it wait for unneeded technology does not seem very wise to me either. The upside could be funding for New Space, but that’s hardly worth delaying exploration over and it risks zombifying New Space.

  • Wodun

    People often conflate cutting a program with cutting funding just like they conflate tax cuts with tax rate cuts.

    It is like people who continuously say the Bush tax cuts for the rich when people at the bottom end of the scale got the most tax relief in proportion to their incomes.

    Regardless of the accuracy of Fox news’ reporting, it is nice to see space related issues getting some air time. The future of NASA is a serious issue and hopefully the msm starts paying attention. As Mr Foust stated, it is too bad the segment was so short.

  • Vladislaw

    googaw wrote:

    “None of these things were invented to government specification. Government departments of various sorts, usually military, sooner or later learned about the private innovations and purchased their own rides and often altered technology for their own purposes (e.g. military airplanes).”

    No where did I write anything about government being the inventor or innovator, quite the opposite, the entrepreneurs are the dreamers. When I refered to the governments helping hand it was in the guise of being a customer first and foremost. When I did refer to government helping it was in the form of land grants ( something I have expressed several times on here about how Luna could be developed through land grants because it would instantly create wealth and markets)

    NASA does not seem to fund dreamers, they might fail.

    The United States is going to have a transportation problem when the contract with Russia runs out for the soyuz. They can buy more launches from the russians, fund the development of a domestic human space launch sector or they can build their own.

    My point is, historically the taxpayer has tended to come out on top when the federal government’s transportation needs are handled by commercial firms, even if the taxpayer has to kick in something to get it started.

  • googaw

    Martijn, government does small-scale research much better than it does grand speculative infrastructure. As for HSF “exploration”, it’s a frivolous luxury we can’t afford. Many more discoveries and much more knowledge can be obtained at far less expense by small robots.

    What NASA needs most is a radical physical downscaling. Not just in terms of the size of its bureaucracies, but also in terms of the size of its spacecraft. Most of what NASA has in Powerpoint slides and CAD files right now is at least an order of magnitude too large to fit in its future budget. For example many of the proposed R&D projects such as propellant depots, inflatables, and variable-gravity biology research could learn most of what they need to learn with far smaller spacecraft than have been proposed. The big spacecraft designs come out of tradition and a perceived need to have big bureaucracies working on big projects. We can no longer afford that. Miniaturize or die.

    Vladislaw, it’s the “taxpayer kick[ing] in something to get it started” that has been, until the 20th century, very uncommon and, when targeted towards speculative markets, spectacularly unsuccessful. And there is a strong relationship between the “taxpayer kick[ing] in something to get it started” and government as the main initial customer (or in the case of CCDev, the only initial customer) specifying the product. It is the high-level constraints such as NASA will lay down for CCDev, not the design details, that cause the biggest distortions away from what a market would do. To have NASA outline the basic constraints of what it wants to buy while protesting that the private company will be responsible for the detailed design and actually building and operating the thing does not solve the problem. It’s like having the government specify and pay for building a mile-high mountain in Nebraska and claiming that it will be successful in the private market as a ski resort because a private company will be responsible for the design details and for building the mountain and running the ski resort. The problem is the idea, not the implementation. The government funding a particular idea removes the most important role of the market, namely rejecting bad ideas. People in both government and the private sector propose and try to sell vastly more bad ideas than good ones. Without the “creative destruction” of the market rejecting these bad ideas, most of the benefit of the market has been destroyed.

  • Beancounter from Downunder

    Vladislaw wrote @ November 7th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
    Coastal Ron wrote:

    ” I think there is a good chance that the first businesses may not succeed,”

    You are probably correct there …’

    Ok there are valid examples however in looking at the current stock in so-called Newspace companies we can see several exceptions to the rule. Both SpaceX and Bigelow defy this rule since they are being backed and run by hardheaded engineering and business types, not just dreamers and speculators. Virgin Galactic is still in with a chance although I don’t think their business model is as compelling as the other two. Other companies are surviving and seem to be thriving although much smaller and likely to be swallowed up if too successful.

    Cheers.

  • Coastal Ron

    Vladislaw wrote @ November 7th, 2010 at 7:25 pm

    The United States is going to have a transportation problem when the contract with Russia runs out for the soyuz.

    You’re right. And for that, we need solutions, not rhetoric. It’s obvious that NASA does not have the mandate nor the ability to create a crew transportation system by 2015, so unless we want to continue to send money to Russia, we need fund a competitive and redundant commercial crew system.

    The funded need exists (ISS thru at least 2020), and NASA’s overall costs will be lower, even if it has to cough up a few billion dollars in matching funds to help get the marketplace going. Remember, NASA spent $9B on Ares I, and all we got was one dummy test flight with hardware that was never going to fly again.

    Let’s remember what the commercial sector has stated they need:

    $1.3B to “man-rate” Delta IV Heavy (launcher & infrastructure)
    $400M to “man-rate” Atlas V (launcher & infrastructure)
    $300M to “man-rate” Falcon 9 and Dragon

    So far that adds up to $2B, and the U.S. gets three man-rated launchers, and one man-rated capsule. Add in $1B for Boeings CST-100 (my SWAG), and we’re talking around $3B to get a redundant LEO crew transportation system that everyone can use, and which should cost far less/person than Soyuz (and carry twice as many people). The resulting spending on future markets will more than pay for the initial investment, and we’ll expand into space much faster than NASA could have done on it’s own.

    My $0.02

  • Vladislaw

    Beancounter from Downunder wrote:

    “Both SpaceX and Bigelow defy this rule since they are being backed and run by hardheaded engineering and business types, not just dreamers and speculators.”

    I would argue you are already past the dreamers with Bigelow Aerospace and Virgin Galatic. Bigelow wasn’t the dreamer, it was more like Constance Adams. With Virgin it was Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites. Neither of the dreamers brought anything to market. It was the businesspeople, Richard Branson and Robert Bigelow, that are actually bringing them to market.

    googaw wrote:

    “To have NASA outline the basic constraints of what it wants to buy while protesting that the private company will be responsible for the detailed design and actually building and operating the thing does not solve the problem.”

    Nowhere have I stated I want NASA defining anything for commercial space, it has actually been the opposite. I said from the start that this is a transportation issue for the Nation and not an exclusive NASA issue and my prefered path was to cut NASA out of it and any grants should have been overseen and administered by the Dept of Transportation and the FAA. As both Rand Simberg and Robert Oler, I believe it was them, said any technical expertise could be hired by DoT and NASA would not be allowed to over burden the process.

  • NASA Fan

    @ Robert

    There are what, 6B people on the planet? Bigelow and Branson are putting up their own money for tourism in space. There are a few others out there too with space tourism plans. And indeed, there are customers who have plunked down serious money to be on Bransons Galatic flights, once operational. I will grant you that.

    However, Does the government spend billions of tax payer dollars so a few business folks who see a market can get rich? Where is the benefit to the Republic in that?

    States will often spend dollars making their states more attractive to tourists.

    I do not believe that is the parallel here.

  • googaw

    Fans of the “hard-headed” Bob Bigelow fail to mention his even more promising investment, MUFON. Who needs NASA when we can have alien technology?

    Lumping Branson, who has actually signed up thousands of real customers for Virgin Galactic, together with the crackpot Bigelow, who has signed up exactly zero for his orbital fantasies, is quite the exercise in spacy rhetoric.

  • Coastal Ron

    NASA Fan wrote @ November 8th, 2010 at 5:48 pm

    However, Does the government spend billions of tax payer dollars so a few business folks who see a market can get rich? Where is the benefit to the Republic in that?

    That’s not the problem before us. NASA needs crew transportation to the ISS starting in 2016. NASA cannot have the SLS+MPCV ready by then, so either NASA buys more Soyuz flights, or they step up and fund part of the costs for two or more commercial crew carriers.

    Let’s put this in perspective by using some simple math:

    – NASA is paying about $56M/person for Soyuz, or a total of $335M for 6 crew during 2013-14. Let’s say Russia doesn’t raise that price for 6 years (unlikely), so we assume $56M/person to the ISS thru 2020.

    – If NASA paid SpaceX $300M to “man-rate” Falcon 9/Dragon (what SpaceX says they need), then they said they would charge $20M/person to the ISS. Dragon carries up to 7 crew, and we only need to carry 3/flight, so let’s assume the worst price, which is 7 x $20M = $140M, and divide that by actual flights of 3/flight, or $46.7M/person.

    – Over the period of 2016 thru 2020, if you add up all those costs, it turns out that even with paying SpaceX the $300M, it would cost the same amount for Soyuz as it would for SpaceX, or about $1.7B. Add on the trickle-down benefit of that $1.7B being spent in the U.S. for material and jobs, and overall it would be much cheaper to pay SpaceX for the crew transportation than paying Russia.

    Now I don’t advocate NASA funding only one domestic crew provider, but if all we want to do is a one-for-one replacement for Soyuz, then SpaceX would be the less expensive choice, and better deal for the Republic.

    With commercial crew in operation, non-NASA customers (your “few business folks”) can buy a ride to LEO for the same price NASA pays, which if they fill up a Dragon, would be $20M/person.

    I’d say that would be a good investment by the Republic.

  • Martijn Meijering

    Lumping Bigelow Aerospace with Virgin Galactic maybe. But Bigelow is a very successful and serious, if eccentric, entrepreneur. And he has functioning hardware in orbit.

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