Based on almost $4T of US corporate funds offshore that is likely return for reinvestment if amateur night ends next November. That’s one helluva “stimulus” that for sure would be better spent than the fiascoes we’ve seen since 2009.

It is when the loan is guaranteed by the government, because it allows the company to borrow the money on more favorable terms than it would in the market.

I’d argue that’s not because the money gets paid back (it’s expected to, anyway), plus there’s now a tax-paying business, but I can see how someone would look at that differently. In all honesty I’m not terribly interested in arguing about it here, especially because it’s not terribly relevant to commercial crew which operates in a different way.

It is when the loan is guaranteed by the government, because it allows the company to borrow the money on more favorable terms than it would in the market.

“So by your definition, Solyndra was not a government subsidy because the government was providing a guaranteed loan for a product–ie solar panels. For that matter, ethanol subsidies are not subsidies because it creates a product as well.”

A loan guarantee is not always a subsidy. If the borrowing firm does not default than there wasn’t any government funds going towards the firm so there wasn’t any subsidy. What determines if it is a subsidy and how much is something called the “credit subsidy cost”. If a bank is totally unwilling to take part in any form of borrowing because they determine is it to high risk to be involved there is costs associated with that. The risk is determined by the GAO and is rarely ever made public how they determine the risk. It involves the government having to allocate those resources to back the loan, because those funds can then not be used for other funding it ties up funds for a pretermined time and that time has a cost, even if the firm doesn’t default on the original loan. I do not know how much the credit cost was for the Solyndra loan.

Ethonal is a direct subsidy. When the government determines they want more of a product but the production cost is higher than the market will pay the fed will subsidize the producer so they can sell it at a price the market will bear, or they will subsidize the consumer directly so they can afford the higher price.

Farming is the easiest example for illustration of most direct subsidies. If prices are low and farmers do not want to plant that grain, the fed gives a subsidy to more is produced. Or if there is over production the fed will pay farmers not to grow a grain pushing the price up for the farmers still producing it.

If ethonal was only a concept on the drawing board and the government wanted to fuel some navy ships with it and wan’t a production facility built to produce it, that would not be a subsidy, it would be the government buying a product or service that does not exist.

That is the case with CCDEV. The government is demanding a service that does not exist. So they are buying the milestones from private industry. The milestones they believe will ultimately be needed by any firm that ends up contracting that service.

Once a firm is established, depending on how much NASA pays them and the contracting method used, THAT could be a subsidy. We do not know yet if commercial crew will be subsidized yet, we have to wait until the service is actually in existance and contracts issued.

OLer, by launch vehicle I lumped in launch vehicle and spacecraft development.

Which is complete nonsense. Only one company is doing any LV development under CCDev at all, and none under the current round of funding.

Others. So by your definition, Solyndra was not a government subsidy because the government was providing a guaranteed loan for a product–ie solar panels.

I’m not too familiar with the whole Solyndra affiar, but if the money the company received was indeed a loan then, no, that is not a subsidy.

For that matter, ethanol subsidies are not subsidies because it creates a product as well.

Money paid to artificially lower the price of a product or support an otherwise less competitive industry is a subsidy.

First-Lockheed Martin, who must be thinking that if the CCDev program takes cuts in funding as an excuse to stretch the schedule to first launch, then they have more time to slip in and say “I’ll just do it” (with Orion, on a Delta, on SLS, etc). LM knows this is a horse race and CCDev must be stopped – the sooner the better.

When someone can develop a LEO capsule/module for 1/10th to 1/20th of what LM is spending, then LM knows success there would eventually come to bite them. Note that Orion funding is about $1B a year, and has been since about 2006. Dragons development, through first orbital test flight, added up to $300M. LM has yet to achieve an orbital test flight, and won’t, till about 2013. That would have been a run-up till 2013 of about $7B.

(And yes, I’m aware that the delta-v’s of re-entry are different, before everyone chimes in. Yet to think that mods to a Dragon for BEO delta v’s on re-entry would need another 20X more funding is ludicrous. The comparison would be made, the possibility opened up, and LM would suffer.)

Second-the longer the ISS can be starved, for some, the better. There’s a subtle and insidious school of thought at NASA that would de-orbit the ISS tomorrow, and believes that NASA is about “real” exploration and “big rockets” (developed, owned and operated in-house). That NASA is not about creating or growing industry or markets and crap. (The former is not a school of thought I am part of). And that till we have “real” money “real” exploration can’t be done. So the sooner we free up funds by de-orbiting ISS the better. Starving CCDev is consistent with starving ISS and furthers this meme.

Looks at the goals people.

At where we draw the line and say no more.

There could have been executive decisions to stick to 2015 or earlier for a first commercial crew to ISS. Somehow, such as eliminating the weakest players. Stretching schedule under guise of SAA’s favored by all the players (and other outsiders rooting for these) may be a strategically failure. It could remove a chance for new players to displace old ones, more affordable, at higher flight rates, with that potential then to create non-NASA customers along the way.

Sing along, NASA, “This is the dawning of the Age of Aus-ter-ity, Age of Aus-ter-ity… Austerity! Austerity!” Zero it out all commerncial space funding. Private capital markets await.