Communications, navigation and imaging (weather and recon) are all profitable now. If you mean human spaceflight, no profitable mission exists without a factor of ten reduction in launch costs.

Most of Mr. Romney’s supporters in the space program believe he will “provide strong leadership” and “a clear goal”, which they believe are the main reasons for the failure of Constellation/SLS/Orion, and they believe he will fully fund Constellation and start us back to Mars immediately.

Mr. Romney plans to reduce the NASA budget (by at least 6% according to the Ryan proposal) and (based on his statements) will direct NASA to get part of its funding from industry. This is not realistic. There are some areas where industry will pay government for services but human spaceflight is not one of them as there is no external customer to whom the product can be immediately resold.

Clearly, Mr. Romney’s level of analysis is as shallow as is his advisors’ laziness in educating him about what the Augustine Commission has recently concluded.

1. Augustine found six integrated options (three Moon First, three Flexible Path) to be viable.
2. All but one includes a 70+ ton heavy lifter, and three (two Moon First, one Flexible path) includes an SD HLV.
3. SLS is a 70+ ton SD HLV.
4. Both of Romney’s advisors–as late as last year–are on record supporting SLS.

So what’s the problem?

His bland, boilerplate response of what we already do is clear evidence of how little this issue means to him, other than necessary duckspeak for winning an election.

Really? The US has a unified strategy for civil and military space?

http://www.spacepolitics.com/2012/01/23/romney-and-gingrich-offer-contrasting-space-policy-views-in-florida-debate/

Mr. Romney:

Clearly, Mr. Romney’s level of analysis is as shallow as is his advisors’ laziness in educating him about what the Augustine Commission has recently concluded. His bland, boilerplate response of what we already do is clear evidence of how little this issue means to him, other than necessary duckspeak for winning an election. There’s no need for additional studies, there’s need for an executive position on an important issue about the nation’s future.

Just as Mr. Obama prematurely terminated the shuttle, the only Bush policy he upheld, so Mr. Romney will ignore NASA, upholding the current Obama policy.

Mr. Gingrich:

More political grandstanding in this statement much ameliorated by his subsequent statements.

If indeed he had some ideas about “fundamentally leapfrogging into a world where you’re incentivizing people”, he had, and lost, an opportunity to elaborate on this. The idea of prizes is a good one, but you can’t make any money off of them because they’re too small. Take GLXP. If you could pull it off for $29M, you could pocket a cool $1M. Can’t be done. Increase the prize by two orders of magnitude, maybe you could make a profit. If his suggestion were $10B for the Moon, not Mars, that might be a profitable undertaking.

That the prizes aren’t big enough, isn’t Mr. Gingrich’s problem necessarily. His first problem is that his simple analysis concludes that the current prizes are sufficient for profitability, and they aren’t. Secondly, Mr. Gingrich may not like bureacracy, but if the government is handling those prizes, there will certainly be a lot of people sitting in rooms and talking about it. And thirdly, where’s the prioritization? Mars is unrealistic without the experience of the Moon in hand.

While it’s generally true that “there are a whole series of things we could do that could be dynamic” with regards to HSF, it’s also generally true that peace is better than war. If the issue were important to him, he’d list that series of things. He’s just saying what he thinks some voters want to hear. If he continues to bring HSF to the forefront of his campaign, and places it appropriately on his website, then his committment would be genuine.

His subsequent statements on this issue have been very good in general, I’d say. It really depends on whether he speaks any more about HSF after he crosses state lines.

***************

Both candidates err in thinking that as a subset of Florida thinks about HSF, so thinks the nation. They both pander to the parochial. Mr. Romney hasn’t thought about HSF in any depth. If the nation is to have the HSF program that I would have, then every state needs to be brought into the discussion, and this plank would be well known on their official websites to demonstrate their interest and committment. It isn’t, and they aren’t.

Investing always follows the same herd mentality. I doubt investors are quaking in their shoes afraid. They are mearly waiting. In more modern terms it is refered to as the ‘netscape moment’.

We need that first killer “app” for space that generates extra normal profits. Capital automatically flows towards extra normal profits and you would see this “fear” disolve overnight with the first IPO.

You then enter into the speculation phase as hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars pours into that start up industry. Every would be company with space in their name would start seeing capital flowing in.

Production/services would now suddenly be over producing for the market and prices would plummet as cut throat competion sets in. Un productive, mismanaged companies fall to the wayside and declare bankruptcy. A company’s production capabilties are bought up for pennies on the dollar and the shake up leads to the industry leaders and a new equilibrim pricing for the masses is established.

We are close to the tipping the point as we now have more than one angel venture capital firm specializing in space ventures. We have seen this play out countless times in the US.

“I am in direct negotiations right now on a space project that is extremely conservative and almost a slam dunk and people are still afraid to put money out there, even though we have a complete A list of people working on it.”

As I’m sure you know, you’re not just competing on the merits of your proposal, but you’re also competing against other companies that want that same pot of investor money. Maybe you offer an 8X ROI after 5 years, but someone else might have a deal that could be 10X after 3 years.

“Take a look at the total size of deal flow and the size of the deals.”

There is some skewing of the data going on here that is not readily apparent in the gross numbers. The recent fad for big VC’s has been to do additional investments in companies they are already in – doubling down so to speak. That means that the overall investment numbers don’t equate to what the investment market used to mean.

Also, it’s kind of meaningless to look at overall numbers, since investors tend to stick with markets that they know. There aren’t too many investors that specialize in space related stuff, so that’s something else working against you. I know our local angel group has only recently started investing in internet companies, mainly because the member backgrounds were in other areas (new blood has started coming in). I doubt they would even look at a deal for space related stuff, as they have no expertise in which to evaluate or manage it – what value could they bring to the Board?

“…as the investors that I am talking to across the board would rethink the risk profile for high risk missions should ZGZT come into being.”

I hope that would make a difference, although you’re still competing against all the other potential deals out there. Good luck with your proposal.

“[responding to my question] You’re not going to meet Bigelow’s requirement from scratch for $50 million.”

I’d agree with that. Thanks.

Said public will soon wonder why NASA’s budget of around $20B/yr needs about half for HSF when the Shuttle is gone.

You may want to start articulating an answer to that question.

“Lets see, I am in direct negotiations right now on a space project that is extremely conservative and almost a slam dunk and people are still afraid to put money out there, even though we have a complete A list of people working on it.”

All right. I don’t know in what way your comment goes against what I say. What I said is that you don’t know how many people here are actually taking steps towards the private industry. You do it, great! Just don’t assume you are the only one. What does it tell you that investors are afraid? Here it is, the business case, to them, probably is not solid enough.

“you are claiming that ZGZT would not help? Anything that lowers risk and increases return will help an industry that has long been fraught with risk and loss. To state otherwise is counterfactual to the reality of the market today.”

I don’t remember claiming any such things. It is upon you to show it will work and I am asking references which you are not providing. I too am astounded about (apparently) unsupported claims. You want to do the outreach then do it while not telling every one and any one that they don’t know what they are talking about.

“I repeat, I am astounded at the comments, as the investors that I am talking to across the board would rethink the risk profile for high risk missions should ZGZT come into being. I have the money pledged for a congressional round table on this subject but I personally don’t have the time to run it. We need rational people who are working to execute on this business today to have a say rather than the uninformed speculation that is rampant on these forums.”

You see again you have a very inflammatory language and you assume you only know what needs to be done. How far have you gone? How far do you think you will go like this? When did you first propose ZGZT? 2008? Earlier? So please make an effort. Reaching out is not what you are doing.

“Read the Bush VSE speech, I directly lifted those lines from that speech in paraphrase.”

So? Did I personally mention Mars anywhere?

“The current debacle was allowed to happen by the Obama administration that did not put one iota of political capital into their effort after the tossed it over the wall. Obama made the insane statement about the Moon that we had “already been there and done that” when he was at KSC. The heavy lifter was never off the table (The Ares 1 was the only thing cancelled and even then it lurched on spending money for several months), and not once did the White house stand up and oppose it.”

Oh come on! Political capital for HSF??? “You’ve go to be kidding”!!! This President had a couple of more pressing things to do that may not have been your priorities but were those of the public, said public you seem to easily disparage here. Not very astute. And if you think that Gingrich or any one will do more then you’re up for a nice wake up. At least Obama asked for an increase of NASA money. And to fully support commercial space, which Gingrich supported. Your VSE President did not as far as I can remember request an increase of NASA budget. And even though the VSE was a good start it went to the ditch thanks to Ares/Constellation and those who supported Ares/Constellation. And yes that mess happened under the President who formulated the VSE. Enough of this nonsense!

“As far as presidents right now, I am with Richard Pryor in Brewster’s millions, vote for none of the above dem or rep.”

Well your choice here.

Yep.