Discovery, We Hardly Knew Ye
Four hundred million dollars would be only half the request, as it was last year, and once again, this will only delay the day that we are no longer reliant on the Russians. Speaking of which, veteran astronaut Anna Fisher seems to be out of the loop as well:
Former NASA astronaut and “the first mother to fly in space” Dr. Anna Fisher took a veiled shot at President Obama and his space policies Tuesday during an interview with a local anchor at Dulles International Airport where Discovery was making its last flight before being retired at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Fisher pulled a little boy named Ethan out of the crowd who was dressed up as a NASA pilot and asked him if he wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up, which he answered in the affirmative.
“Any advice for Ethan, an aspiring astronaut?” she asked her mom.
“Study Russian,” Fisher quipped, to laughter.
Very funny. It’s not actually a dig at Obama (though it may have been intended to be). It also reveals ignorance about what’s going on. Obama planned to get commercial replacements up as soon as possible, and sooner than Constellation would have been operational, but Congress insisted instead on starving the Commercial Crew Program and funding rockets that NASA doesn’t need because they provide constituent jobs and campaign donations.
Unfortunately, many share Dr. Krauthammer’s belief that the agency just needs more money. Over 25,000 people have signed a White House petition to have NASA get one percent of the federal budget (which it used to perennially receive in the 1980s and ’90s). The problem is that doubling the budget won’t help if Congress continues to force the agency to waste it, as with the SLS. It also implies that NASA has taken a massive cut, when in fact the only reason that its budget has gone from about a percent to half a percent is that the size of the federal budget doubled in recent years. NASA’s budget, while somewhat reduced, is still about what it has been traditionally in absolute terms. What the agency needs is not more money, but the ability to spend the money it has on actual space exploration and technology development instead of prestige rockets.
Anyway, not everyone was sad yesterday. Reason TV took a mocking victory lap for private space (though I’m pretty sure that it’s an exaggeration to say that Richard Branson has signed up “more stars than there are in heaven” for his suborbital excursions). Perhaps, in less than two weeks, when SpaceX plans their first launch to the International Space Station with their Dragon capsule, and people contrast the vision of the newly earth-bound Shuttle with the space-bound private rocket, the Shuttle/Apollo nostalgia will subside, and more Americans will start to recognize our true future in human spaceflight.
I lost respect for NASA when they caved to the enviroweenies regarding “something” they used in their shuttle design. The result was that the ship blew up.
The foam thing?
Actually both shuttle accidents had environmental components.
Challenger was launched about 30 degrees F colder than any large solid ever was launched – so it was a poor operational decision. The environmental problem was that an asbestos ring between SRB segments was replaced with a rubberized compound. Rubber responds poorly to cold temperatures. Asbestos doesn’t.
The ban on CFCs made the SOFI on the ET flake off easier than in earlier flights. After the ban, they started seeing a factor of ten increase in the number of divots on belly tiles post flight. But the NASA culture grew up with ice falling off boosters during launch (look at old Apollo and Atlas films), and didn’t take it real seriously. The operational problem with Columbia was deciding to not take a look from the ground at the leading edges of the wings. There was an AF offer to do so that was rejected. There are those that believed they could have flown a rescue / repair flight and saved the crew. Sadly, they decided not to take a look and see. Cheers -
“Cheers-?”
I do not in any way direct this against you, but the murder of these 14 people makes me feel ill and violently angry, precisely because they were such foreseeable, preventable deaths. I could forgive the people involved if something previously unknown was the cause.
Don’t know if the asbestos impregnated seals would have done significantly better, since they would almost have had to have an elastomer to seal. Fiber only would have high temperature infiltration. The key thing was how O-ring blow-by damage became linearly worse when graphed against lower temperatures, and this was known and explicitly stated by the engineers who said, “Don’t launch!”, and who were ignored.
The people doing the ignoring should have been tried for some flavor of manslaughter.
The phrase “Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat” should go down in history alongside “God Himself could not sink this ship.”
Tom – Don’t disagree.
What we see is an example of the difference between a government vs a commercial enterprise. Had Shuttle been privately operated, the managers who pushed Thiokol to agree to launch / refuse not to inspect the leading edges of wings after a possible impact would have been sliced to shreds in court. Doesn’t happen to a government bureaucracy, which is yet another reminder of the importance of the need for a very small, constitutionally based government.
General Kutyna and Freeman Dyson demonstrated that cold damaged the new o-rings by making them less supple. They got testimony (as I hopefully remember correctly) that cold would not similarly impact the original asbestos-based.
The problem with the don’t launch folks is that they were around from the beginning of the program. The first manned launch was the first time a booster was flown on its initial flight with people onboard. There was a substantial minority opinion among the engineering world that believed it would not make it far off the pad due to lack of testing and the overall configuration.
It is a dangerous business and you have to weigh the dangers (risk) against the rewards. Take no risk and you never get rewarded with progress. Take too much and you create a lot of very expensive paperweights and bereaved family members. The private / commercial world does this significantly better than the feds do as individuals have different interests than a bureaucracy. Cheers -
Make that Richard Feynman rather than Dyson. Cheers -
NASA gave away their real intentions in the early 1980s when they used the bureaucratic slow roll to block a private purchase of a fifth orbiter by a group headed up by Klaus Heiss. In return, the group wanted to schedule unused payload bay capacity and lift to and from orbit. Had this been done, there would have been more than 5 orbiters – perhaps some even with operability mods that made it easier to turn to the next sortie. The Heiss group reportedly had over $1 b in the bank at the time. But money is fungible and goes elsewhere if it is not making money. I have a copy of their briefing to congress somewhere.
For the NASA bureaucracy, control of the monopoly over manned space flight and the supporting budget line was the very most important thing on their minds. The ET applications guys found out the same thing a decade later.
The most important part of today’s festivities is that the NASA monopoly on manned spaceflight over the last 40 years or so had been broken – first by Bert Rutan’s team and second by Mircorp for flying tourists on Soyuz. All the government needs to do in order to get large numbers of people into space is to simply get out of the way and stay out of the way. Cheers -
Is it an accident that the head of SpaceX, Elon Musk, is an Obama bundler. Now THERE’s a story for PJ Media. Stay tuned. Obama Supporter and Bundler Elon Musk suddenly benefits from Obama decisions. Sounds like Space Solyndra.
http://mayrantandrave.com/2011/09/13/solyndragate-just-the-tip-of-obamas-campaign-bundler-payback-scam/
SpaceX has been doing what SpaceX has been doing since long before Obama. Unlike NASA, SpaceX has been on target for cost and timetable.
There’s no meat to your insinuation.
Except now they are doing it with LOTS of federal tax dollars. Happy to stand corrected. But tell us the outflow of federal dollars to support Spacex’s “private” space efforts – starting in 2006 through today. Go ahead.
I know they are beating the pants off NASA for being on time and on schedule, and way cheaper per pound to LEO.
Did you do anything to research to the economics of spaceflight before you typed your needless smear??
I really am 100% certain you are an excellent attorney, I’d like to see the math on the your engineering.
SpaceX developed its two boosters with its own money. That it is getting federal money for even more R&D, as well as for launch contracts, is no scandal. The private sector has been launching American government spacecraft since the beginning. None of the major aerospace contractors have been ‘nationalized’ like GM, have they? Do you believe in a two tiered procurement system, where the big contractors get their R&D paid for by the feds, and the new, little guys have to pay their own way? The only scandal is how much we have been paying for launch services from the big contractors for half a century.
The difference with SpaceX is that it will cost a whole lot less per launch than the traditional aerospace big boys will cost. As a taxpayer, I am fine with that cold hard fact. You should be too.
It depends on how you define “lots.” SpaceX has spent a total of about $1 billion to develop the Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Dragon capsule and all of the infrastructure needed to build, test, launch and control them. Of that, approximately $300 million was NASA funding.
By way of comparison, NASA has paid Lockheed-Martin (AKA “Overruns-R-Us”) over $5 billion to develop the Orion capsule alone. It’s years away from flight, with an unmanned test maybe in 2014. It’ll be years later and likely billions more dollars before a manned Orion flight is possible.
Except now they are doing it with LOTS of federal tax dollars. Ready to stand corrected. Post for us then the amount of federal money SpaceX received for their “private” space flight efforts going back to the Bush years.
“Except now they are doing it with LOTS of federal tax dollars.”
Thing is, to have a point, you’d have to back up the insinuation they are delivering less for it than the usual suspects.
You can bet that absolutely no conservatively ran organizations are going to be allowed to succeed in this space. BTW, 20 years working in the space industry, I’ve seen the games that the liberals play with republican donating companies versus how they coddle democratic donors. Commercial space flight will be a joke because the lefties are in charge of choosing winners and losers and it has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with capability. SpaceX is going to be the next Microsoft, a monopoly providing an shoddy product using regulations and leftist finagling to squash any competition.
“SpaceX is going to be the next Microsoft, a monopoly providing an shoddy product using regulations and leftist finagling to squash any competition.”
Dude! How did you find THAT scoop out?!? Thank you for taking the time to type that out and let us all know!
Instead of throwing FUD, you could point any evidence of shoddyness now.
I can though, the SLS, which the established cost plus companies can not deliver in twice the time or at twice the stated budget, and then might do 1 third the claimed number of flights.
And if it’s like the shuttle, will kill people.
That’s NASA and it’s house contractors.
You’re mixing apples and oranges here. Conflating the very positive and significant and very important milestone of cheaper space access thanks to SpaceX with other aspects of Elon Musk’s relationship with the Obama administration makes little sense, and is unfair.
Tesla Motors is an excellent target for your misgivings, SpaceX is not. I can’t speak as to why Mr. Musk has chosen two very different and philosophically contradictory business models for his two ventures, but I welcome a fair and well-researched article on Tesla Motors from you. I’m certain you could write one without smearing Spacex in the process. I have enjoyed your material on the alarmingly corrupt DOJ. That is a subject you know well.
Still waiting for those annual budget numbers to SpaceX going back a few years.
SpaceX has received about $300M from NASA in the history of its existence, all for services provided. In a couple weeks it will demonstrate a crucially needed capability — the only American means of resupplying the space station.
Why are you so upset about a program that actually delivers value for the money, and are seemingly completely unconcerned about the billions that are going to ATK for a giant rocket that will almost certainly never fly, and that the agency does not need? You don’t think that’s a worthy scandal?
Your question is excellent. It deserves an answer.
Rand Simberg wrote:
“Why are you so upset about a program that actually delivers value for the money…”
Please specify what “value for the money” that is in terms of cargo delivered to the ISS or any other paying payload delivered to orbit by the Falcon 9 (please do not try the dodge of talking about the COTS “milestone payments” – the whole subsidy thing has already been over discussed).
Utterly agreed that the best way forward is for government to hire the capacity it needs as it needs it.
That partially takes off the table as pork.
Speaking as a taxpaying onlooker, I have to say that the onset of the Shuttle Era was when I started losing interest in NASA’s manned spaceflight program. Once the novelty wore off, the routine missions, slow turnaround times, and lackluster publicity made the Shuttle seem kind of boring. The ISS didn’t help. People directly involved with that thing seemed to get excited about installing the latest module, delivering the latest cargo of space-groceries, fixing the latest space-toilet malfunction, or observing the latest zero-g nematode experiment. I don’t know anyone else who did. I can’t think of anything interesting done by the ISS crews. The only interesting thing I can think of for the space shuttle was the mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.
And speaking of HST – unlike NASA’s manned space program, its various unmanned projects have been responsible for some of the most amazing discoveries and feats of space exploration ever. Sorry, but it’s the robots that are doing all the cool stuff today. I don’t mind looking at endless hi-res photographs of Mars or the moons of Jupiter, even if they weren’t taken by astronauts. The fact is, we’re seeing other worlds. We’re doing it cheaply (relative to manned missions) and efficiently, with no risk to life and limb. Manned flight is all romantic and everything. But do we really need a base on Mars? Or even the Moon? What will we do there? Mostly stay alive, i.e., install modules, deliver space-groceries, and fix space-toilets.
You hit it right on the head!
There was very little info about WHAT they were doing on the Shuttle and then on the ISS. It was always about breakdowns, delays and trouble. Or, groceries and additions to the habitat
The worst job of getting the message out I’ve ever seen.
Instead of funding SLS, Congress should shift that money to advanced propulsion development. This shift in focus can keep the aerospace giants very happy and well-employed, while the newer private launch services take over the ‘space taxi’ duties to LEO.
Advanced propulsion — including those concepts for Eart-to-LEO — have languished for decades, which is a disgrace. And the major reason for that disgrace is that all the money that could have gone to such R&D was gobbled up by outrageously overpriced launch costs, as well as other other over-priced space projects.
Congressional and pundit demands for a ‘big’ orthodox space program will mean wasting vast sums on 50-year-old technology.
This is a curious unreal discussion about the benefits of private sector space exploration–a proverbial Horatio Algers going to Mars at the behest of a President that regularly spears the unfairness of the private sector–and space development while still sucking on the Federal teat–a teat Romney would purportedly withdraw because going to Mars or the Moon is an investment folly given the fiscal crisis of the state. Of course the government will always “…hire the capacity it needs…”, but that’s not private enterprise. Without the government providing the pork and the funding and the market, there will be no “private enterprise” going to the Moon or Mars.
If private enterprise gets a gov contract, it’s still private enterprise.
Musk is on track to lower LEO costs to a low integer multiple. Of fuel costs, airline prices.
Lots of private demand there.
Well, hell, private enterprise has been around for fifty years after the technology and methods were demonstrated for going to the Moon by NASA, and IBM and GM and Boeing and Airbus still aint’ got to Mars yet. Far as I know, there’s been no logging chains tied their butts, or any of the other upcoming garage based innovators that brought us Apple Inc, preventing them from privately raising the capital and going for it. Seems like those Titans of industry, those efficient Masters of the Universe, those paragons of capitalist risk taking should have been to the Moon and Mars by now. I would have enjoyed the trip.
The biggest obstacle to private exploitation of space is the uncertainty of property rights. Right now if a private entity invested a couple of billion dollars to bring back titanium from the Moon they could have every government from China to Liechtenstein claiming a piece. There’s no way to make a profit under those conditions, so why make the investment?
“Far as I know, there’s been no logging chains tied their butts”
Then you don’t know what you need to. The NASA contractor model is for the contractors to perform as little innovation as possible, to lower risk, while employing as many people and spending as much money as possible in key congresscritter’s districts, and doing it on cost-plus contracts.
SpaceX’s model is this, accept lower performance in terms of percentage of lift-off mass which is payload, and spend the mass making the system as easily reusable as possible. Their goal is to recover, refuel, and re-launch.
So far it’s worked out.
“Far as I know, there’s been no logging chains tied their butts”
Little knowledge is a dangerous thing. There are several political, cultural, perceptional and financial ways how just the existence of NASA in it’s current form presents a real logging chain on private enterprises butts.
One simple and extreme example, look up the fate of Beal Aerospace.
Killed by NASA vaporware.
Where is the SLI?
Government contracts helped get the airlines started. The Postal Service paid good money to private companies carrying airmail. These companies pioneered transcontinental air routes and helped establish airports across the country. Maybe the same will happen with spaceflight.
At the end of the day, manned space exploration will only expand significantly when there is a commercial reason for man to be there. It appears the first real nongovernmental demand will be tourism, but that’s a relatively small market. The question is what will be the commercial demand that really pulls man into space?
This nails for core difficulties and limitations with privatizing spaceflight. There’s a market for commerical satellites, which private companies can and do serve.
There’s a smaller market for rockets and spacecraft carrying with people and supplies up to the International Space Station. We should never stop questioning the whole point of the ISS — but as long as it’s there, it needs regular service flights. Again, commercial spaceflight can meet the need — though how well, how safely, and how cheaply all remain to be proven.
But that’s it, people. Low Earth orbit.
There’s no commercial market for robotic (let alone manned) flights to the Moon and farther. None. The sole customer for that kind of spaceflight is government pursuing the goal of scientific research. Which in this country means NASA.
I’m very glad to see private development of spacefaring technology — but we shouldn’t kid ourselves that commerce is going to take us farther than low Earth orbit.
But what about Moon mining? Asteroid mining? All those bodies can provide is raw materials in unprocessed bulk form, which doesn’t offer much advantage even if you get it for “free.”
Raw ore is the least valuable part of a manufacturing process. And delivering that raw material to Earth’s surface — without making a big crater — requires some means of slowing down incoming material that weighs tons. Or you move your processing plants and factories into space — which again costs you bazillions.
Anybody can dismiss all these arguments as simply a new version of “I told Wilbur and I told Orville, they’ll never get off the ground….” But it isn’t me you have to convince. It’s convincing people with real money to invest that space resources make economic sense, and that’s where sci-fi dreams and fantasies crash into the wall of reality.
So if like me you want to go to other worlds — within the solar system and someday beyond — you’re stuck with government doing the job.
S/O – I think the asteroids are key to this. Perhaps half the know population of earth-orbit crossing bodies are thought to be inactive comets – high in ices. Trip distances in terms of delta-V are not all that different than that of the moon for a few of them. Trip times are a bit long OTOH. If we can figure out how to mine and purify water ice from these bodies, we have the ability to bootstrap anywhere from earth to the main belt. Water ice = radiation shielding = water to drink / sanitation / hydroponics = propellant = oxygen to breathe. And if we can commercially figure out how to do this in between the planets, a one way trip to Mars is not that more difficult to do. Cheers -
Delta-Vee isn’t the snag; it’s turning raw stuff into usable forms. Water and ice exposed to a vacuum go away quickly thanks to sublimation. And turning rocky materials laden with water of hydration into drinkable or even usable water requires substantial inputs of energy.
(Solar power? Maybe, but first you have to launch that solar power gizmo up into space where it’s useful and then you need to bring it and the water-laden rock or comet nucleus together…)
The problem in all this isn’t that ideas are lacking. It’s that technology can’t do it for a price that makes economic sense. And all the wishing in the world isn’t going to change that anytime soon.
If you want a perfect parallel right down here on Earth, simply look at wind power generation. Sure, the wind blows for free, just as asteroids & comets are free for the taking (probably, though space law will have the final word on this). But in the world of real life engineering, wind power is dead without massive subsidies. Space mining is simply a vastly bigger boondoggle of the same ilk.
People who are personally unfamiliar with industrial processes usually assume away all these messy, gritty, little technical details because they interfere with The Grand Dream. You want another parallel? This is how socialism founders on the rock of actual people, as opposed to the idealized version.
Dealing with nature forces you to respect details.
S/O – I’d bag solar and go directly to baby nukes for energy. The Russians have been building them for decades. So has the USN for that matter. I think it can be done commercially and expect we are within a few years of finding out after the suborbital tourista business gets off the ground.
Have no intention of doing this on the taxpayer dime. Cheers -
Shuttle: 135 flights
SpaceX: 9 flights
The Space Shuttle was demonstrated performance.
Commercial space is still very little more than promises.
No it did not demonstrate good performance. It was delivered way late and way over budget, never was able to fly as often (not by half) as promised, was never as cheap to fly per mission (not by half), never demonstrated good economics by reuse (cheaper to forget the solids than refurbish for most missions), and was operated stupidly enough it killed 14 people and saw the loss of 40% of the fleet. It was a politically driven mish mash of technological compromises which could never hit it’s target, the compromises which added risk to the system arose from the decisions made by Congress ad the Executive.
By contrast, SpaceX has been only been late by about 10% of it’s schedule–and has been early sometimes, which is just about unprecedented–and its delivering a system which can satisfy a re-fuel/re-fly, airline approach to LEO. It’s only a 1.2 billion company in valuation, and it’s doing this. The discrepancy between it’s expenditures and what it’s received in fees-for service/contract milestones has been in the upfront investment of Musk’s own money and other private VC. Not cost-plus.
Yes, in a way the LockMart NASA contractors cannot claim, it is a private company.
And unlike what any “LockMart”, cost-plus contractors can claim, it is delivering on time, on budget, and meeting spec’ed performance targets.
Nothing the shuttle (or Apollo for that matter) ever did.
Total spending on the Shuttle: about $300 billion over more than 30 years, all tax dollars.
Total spending by SpaceX: about $1 billion, with about $300 million of that being tax dollars for services rendered.
Shuttle’s done and gone. If you’re going to use that analogy, you should have picked a legacy aerospace launch vehicle, like Atlas or Delta. But if you did, you would be picking a vehicle that costs at least twice as much to launch as Falcon for the equivalent payload and mission.
Oddly enough my entire career in the Space Industry (since December 2000) has been to follow the END of shuttle programs. When I arrived in Goldstone they had stopped tracking shuttle. When I arrived here in White Sands the Shuttle Program had ended.
Funny enough though thanks to my work with TDRS I will now be tracking the first private spacecraft to the ISS and I’m looking forward to it. I’d also like Virgin Galactic to hire me too but I’m not holding my breath even if the spaceport is just up the road.
NASA “vaporware”, that’s rich. Speaking of self attached “logging chains,” the Europeans did the Concorde while the Americans sat on their butts chained to sub-sonic flight because of perceived pollution issues and sonic booms over the waving amber waves of grain–grain currently destined for ethanol to fuel state subsidized hybrids. If thirty percent of that 71 percent of consumer demand had gone to exploring the stars as apposed to low flow flush toilets and free contraceptives to meet the new liberal industrial policy, maybe the Americans would be on Mars by now instead of playing midnight basketball in the hood.
NASA needs to get out of the launch/management end of space flight and return to a mission more like that of NACA. NACA, NASA’s predecessor agency, focused on development and research that was either to costly or to long lead for aviation companies to do directly. It also did pure reach that was of general value, air foil development for example, and made this research available to anyone. The NACA ducts, low drag air scoops that you see on race cars, were one outgrowth of such research. NACA built the first wind tunnel for their research and made it available, I believe for a fee, to private companies so they could test their designs and mitigate the expense of building their own.
Private space flight is a necessary to efficiently use existing and near term technology to access the area of space close to the earth. The cost barrier to longer lead technologies is prohibitive, at least for now, to private companies. A great deal of that research will inevitably provide other benefit.
I also think that if the government/military needs spacecraft they should develop mission needs and put it out for competitive bid, much as we do for aircraft. They should not pick individual companies and pay R&D costs.
Seconded. NASA still does function a bit as NACA, but its useful functions are getting crushed under the behemoths of HSF, things like JWST, MSL and so on.
When can I buy a good used Firefly class boat? I’ve lost the war against the socialist Alliance, and I need something to get away from the inner core of overlording and over-charged laws and lawyering. I just need to find some outer planets, not too Reaverish, not too lawless, but Goldilocks warm to liberty. Shiney.
If choosing between Charles Krauthammer, Anna Fisher and this author; I will pick Krauthammer and Fisher every time.
So you don’t bother to think, you just name-check?
Let me give you a personal example of how ridiculous NASA space flight has become: several years ago, I and three other experienced aerospace engineers were sitting around discussing the CEV program, in competition at the time. We all experienced the moon program as kids, and became aerospace engineers in large part because of the allure of space. NONE OF US had any desire to work on CEV; some of us had already actively avoided working on it. All because of the nightmare of working as a NASA spaceflight contractor. Micromanagement, ridiculous scheduling, always wanting ten times as much as they have money for, the godforsaken goodfornothing bureaucracy, etc., etc.
I applaud SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and the rest; our space program is in better hands than the pork barrel politicians and center administrators that have brought us the monstrosity of the Senate Launch System. Rand is exactly right here.
No, I bother to think.
I have worked with Ms. Fisher (a long time ago) and have read and listened to Mr. Krauthammer for decades. I have read many of Mr. Simberg’s writings for the last several years. I stand by my assessment (I am, by the way, also an “experienced aerospace engineer”).
As for the rest of the post. Two points”
- Nobody is forcing you to work for NASA.
- Maybe you should consider anger management counseling.
Charles Krauthammer is a psychologist/political pundit. Rand is an aerospace engineer. If you’d rather take the work of a political pundit over an aerospace engineer on a space issue, then that doesn’t say very much about your judgment. Krauthammer is blathering on a subject he knows very little about, which makes me question his opinion on anything else. For the record, I’ve worked on military satellites and space systems since 1986.
As for Anna Fisher, I have no idea who she is. Is she an engineer or another pundit?
Larry J wrote:
“If you’d rather take the work of a political pundit over an aerospace engineer on a space issue …”
I would specifically take Krauthammer over Simberg on this specific issue as it is a matter of policy not design, and Krauthammer has long taken an interest in space policy.
“For the record, I’ve worked on military satellites and space systems since 1986.”
I have worked on various space programs since 1982. I beat you by four years, do I win a prize?
“As for Anna Fisher, I have no idea who she is. Is she an engineer or another pundit?”
She is an astronaut, who has flown several times. Curious that an “experienced aerospace engineer” wouldn’t know that.
A lot of people have an interest in space and don’t know the first thing about it. Krauthammer is one of those and I’ve lost all respect for him as a result. If he’s so uninformed and ignorant about space (IMO), then how can I trust his opinion about anything else? It’s like when you read an article about a subject you know well and find errors in it, how can you assume the next article will be any more accurate?
Continuing to dump billions of dollars into the legacy space companies is a luxury we simply can’t afford any more. NASA has already spent more than $5 billion on the Orion capsule alone, which is about 5 times the amount that SpaceX (to name just one example) has spent in the entire history of their company. In what reality would that be considered a good idea or a wise use of the taxpayers’ money?
Larry J wrote:
“A lot of people have an interest in space and don’t know the first thing about it. Krauthammer is one of those and I’ve lost all respect for him as a result. If he’s so uninformed and ignorant about space (IMO), then how can I trust his opinion about anything else? It’s like when you read an article about a subject you know well and find errors in it, how can you assume the next article will be any more accurate?”
This from the “experienced aerospace engineer” since 1986 who does not even know who Anna Fisher is. Your angry, over the top, insulting posts (note comments about Krauthammer above) would be comical if they were not so pathetic.
This will be my last response to you on this subject, as you obviously have nothing to say worth a response.
Tom Perkins wrote:
“…. SpaceX has been only been late by about 10% of it’s schedule–and has been early sometimes…”
Space X original schedule was to have it flying operational cargo missions to the ISS in November 2009. They are currently scheduled to fly a test mission to ISS at the end of April 2012. So far they are two years and five months behind schedule and counting. And remember in the COTS program they received every government penny in subsidies they were promised.
Yes . . . and?
Legacy aerospace companies follow this pattern routinely, but for much larger sums of money and longer timelines.
If I have to choose between a schedule and cost overrun of a few years and a couple billion vs. one of many years and tens of billions, I’m going to take the first option.
Joe – a fee for service is not a subsidy. It is payment for services rendered. Do you also call purchase of an airline ticket a subsidy? Likely not. Cheers -
Bozo the Clone wrote
“Legacy aerospace companies follow this pattern routinely, but for much larger sums of money and longer timelines.”
The statement to which I replied was that Space X was only 10% behind schedule. It is in fact about 60% behind schedule and counting. Maybe the difference between 10% and 60% means nothing to you, but then you are not the budget hawk you pretend to be.
agimarc wrote
“Joe – a fee for service is not a subsidy. It is payment for services rendered. Do you also call purchase of an airline ticket a subsidy? Likely not. Cheers –“
When I purchase an airline ticket, I receive a service – I am transported someplace I want to go. The service that Space X is supposed to deliver to the ISS is cargo. It has yet to do that and it is 60% behind schedule and counting. It has received money for achieving certain milestones in attempting to develop the capability to deliver cargo (however far behind schedule it may be). Those are subsidies, no matter how you may want to abuse the English language.
No, this is not a subsidy, it is payment for hitting a contract milestone. And how long did Spacex wait around for NASA to decide if Spacexcould do stage 2/3 at the same time? That delay is no fault of spacex’s.
It also can’t be a budget problem when it’s fixed cost.
“No, this is not a subsidy, it is payment for hitting a contract milestone.”
A contract milestone that provides not one useful service to anyone. Only the hope of someday doing something useful. I replied to a statement that said ““Joe – a fee for service is not a subsidy.” No service has been provided, therefore it is a subsidy.
I know you work by the internet rule of “he who posts last wins”, but this semantics game (and your obsession with the word subsidy) is pointless.
Have a nice day.
I’m a commercial supporter, but COTS payments before service is being offered IS a subsidy, plain and simple. It’s absolutely not “payment for services rendered”
I’m not sure that there is absolutely always something wrong with government subsidizing a critical capability.
Well, Joe, as usual, any NASA money to anyone outside the NASA/Congressional Complex and its NASA Club contractors is what you call a subsidy. Is the use of Air Force funds to develop the Massive Ordnance Penetrator by a private company a subsidy, then? The development costs of a project the government needs have often been paid by the Federal government since the 19th century, no matter that they will then have civilian uses. As long as it results in the lowest total cost for the value the republic receives, that’s a good deal.
As always, you seek to sustain the belief that only those who have done spaceflight can do spaceflight, properly. No matter that those original contractors have received many Billions of dollars for less efficient development than SpaceX has provided; No Matter that at least one of those new “subsidized” companies under the Space Act Agreements is also a member of the NASA Club contractor’s guild. Both NASA engineers and engineers in the NASA Contractor’s guild are often brilliant, but as long as the NASA/Congressional Complex makes the decisions about spaceflight, those engineers will be submerged in the same mess, where designs are driven more by politics than by engineering, that they have lived with for 40 years.
I note the bitterness that Musk has raised money for Obama in the past. I too have no net use for Obama in the WH. His totally disastrous performance in almost all other actions as President cannot be overbalanced by his allowance of a rational Space Policy. The focus in the debate on Commercial Crew on Musk obscures that Boeing, Sierra Nevada and Orbital are also involved, and are needed to prevent a monopoly arising alongside the present monopsony.
That has *nothing* to do with the competence with which SpaceX is building a capability to get to ISS and beyond. Obama’s uninterest in politically unimportant spaceflight is what allowed him to keep from interfering and allow space activists, who had joined his campaign after his first disastrous statements about NASA, to shape a program that can get us away from Congressional influence over all American spaceflight.
The critics of Commercial Crew are in fact fighting to continue the statist monopoly of the NASA/Congressional Complex over manned spaceflight. So, just why is it you joined them?
Tom Billings wrote:
“Is the use of Air Force funds to develop the Massive Ordnance Penetrator by a private company a subsidy, then? “
Yes by any sane definition it is. I never said a subsidy is always a bad thing; you are with the group that seems to obsess about the term
“As always, you seek to sustain the belief that only those who have done spaceflight can do spaceflight, properly.”
Really, when did I say anything like that? I simply noted the indisputable fact that Space X is 29 months and counting behind schedule
“No matter that those original contractors have received many Billions of dollars for less efficient development than SpaceX has provided;”
Again the question, what service has Space X provided?
“No Matter that at least one of those new “subsidized” companies under the Space Act Agreements is also a member of the NASA Club contractor’s guild.”
I suppose you are talking about Boeing. I used to work for them and have friends on the CST-100 Team. See previous comments about subsidies. What is it with you people and that word?
“I note the bitterness that Musk has raised money for Obama in the past.”
You do not note it from anything I said, since I never mentioned the subject
“The critics of Commercial Crew are in fact fighting to continue the statist monopoly of the NASA/Congressional Complex over manned spaceflight.”
Aren’t you supposed to say “congress critters” and other ad homonym insults about here?
“So, just why is it you joined them?”
I have not joined anybody. I simply noted that (the much hyped) Space X is far behind in its COTS schedule and yet to deliver a useful service. You make a lot of assumptions about me based on no evidence and imply that I have somehow sold out. I am going to refrain from responding in kind.
This has gotten tediously long. If you want to continue the quest for the last word, that is of course your privilege.
Again, bottom line: SpaceX costs way less than the competition, so if there are delays and overruns it is less costly to me the taxpayer than it was with Boeing and Lockheed Martin. I’m not saying these issues are not a problem. but they are less costly with the new paradigm than with the old one.
I have noticed an insidious pattern with the critics of “New Space:” They want to apply a more stringent set of rules for the smaller new guys than the bigger legacy guys. Apparently wasting billions with the big boys is OK, but wasting millions with the new kids on the block is a bad thing. I’m sorry, but I’m having a problem with that strange math.
Bozo the Clone wrote:
“Again, bottom line: SpaceX costs way less than the competition, so if there are delays and overruns it is less costly to me the taxpayer than it was with Boeing and Lockheed Martin. I’m not saying these issues are not a problem. but they are less costly with the new paradigm than with the old one.”
Really, Bozo? You have done a detailed analysis of the costs to the government having to make new expensive contracts with foreign entities because of Space X delays? Please feel free to present them.
“I have noticed an insidious pattern with the critics of “New Space:” They want to apply a more stringent set of rules for the smaller new guys than the bigger legacy guys. Apparently wasting billions with the big boys is OK, but wasting millions with the new kids on the block is a bad thing. I’m sorry, but I’m haing a problem with that strange math.”
The problem, Bozo, is with shutting down an existing program and replacing it with the hope that the “new kids” will succeed, before making sure that they will. If the Space Program is entirely unimportant to you (as it appears to be to both Obama and Romney), then that is probably fine. If on the other hand you think it is important, you would have reason to be concerned. If you find that position “insidious” so be it.
The problem, Bozo, is with shutting down an existing program and replacing it with the hope that the “new kids” will succeed, before making sure that they will. If the Space Program is entirely unimportant to you (as it appears to be to both Obama and Romney), then that is probably fine. If on the other hand you think it is important, you would have reason to be concerned. If you find that position “insidious” so be it.
The Shuttle program was ended by Bush as a result of the Columbia accident. With only 3 orbiters left, it was simply too expensive to operate. Bush announced the end of Shuttle flights in 2010 to complete the ISS. Delays pushed the last flight into 2011.
The intended replacement for the Shuttle was to be the Orion capsule launched on the Ares I rocket. For longer range missions, they indended to develop the Ares V. That program was already slipping more than 1 year for every year that passed. The estimated cost of completing the Orion and Ares I was $40 billion. That was a classic boondoggle and killing it was about the only thing Obama has ever done that I agree with.
NASA has already spent about $5 billion on Orion. They might manage an unmanned test flight in 2014 but it’ll be years after that before it will be ready to carry people to Earth orbit. By way of comparison, SpaceX has spent a little over $1 billion (about $300 million from NASA) to develop the Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Dragon capsule, launch facilities at two locations, etc.
I believe the government itself caused much of that delay either by occupying the originally intended launch pad or by not having its ducks in a row. It also is a fixed price contract, not cost plus.
Spacex also seems poised to complete it early.
You believe wrong, much of the most recent delays (for instance – a minimum of five months) were caused by Space X completely botching the dry run for the Flight Readiness Review last fall.
Interesting article, but what caught my attention was the title of the piece. Sorry to change the subject, but language is important, and “we hardly knew ye” is not correct, as “ye” is the plural for addressing a group of people in the “familiar” form of address that used to be common in the English language. The Discovery, if to be addressed at all, would be properly addressed as “thee” in this title, because it is the personification of a singular item; it would never be “ye.” I think what the author meant was the slurred pronunciation of “you,” which could have been achieved by changing the spelling to “ya,” as in “What’s it to ya?”
By the way, the other “ye” that is frequently misused is the “ye” in Ye Olde Shoppe, which is properly pronounced “the,” as it is a spelling relic from centuries past, when the letter y was used to represent the second sound of /th/ (as in thus), as opposed to the first sound, the /th/ in “think.”
“Ye” is correct in this context. The title refers to an old Irish song called “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye.” It’s written in faux-Irish dialect. The first verse goes like this:
While goin’ the road to sweet Athy, hurroo, hurroo
While goin’ the road to sweet Athy, hurroo, hurroo
While goin’ the road to sweet Athy
A stick in me hand and a tear in me eye
A doleful damsel I heard cry,
Johnny I hardly knew ye.
I’m not sure, but I think it became part of American pop culture after the assassination of President Kennedy.
Thank you for the comment; I took some time to research this a little more. I noticed that the title of the song is also “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya,” which makes more sense to me because that simply sounds like a slurred “you” at the end of the sentence.
It is my understanding that the main use of the word “ye” is the plural form of “thou,” as in “O ye of little faith.”
If one can substitute “you all” (as they frequently do in the South) for the word “ye,” then that is the most common usage. While there may be other uses for the word, I think that they may be largely due to the confusion over the formal and familiar forms of address, as modern English has just about lost this distinction.
For example: when folks address God as “thou,” they’re not being more polite or respectful, instead they’re implying that they’re on intimate terms with the Creator of the universe. That’s what the familiar forms of address are for. In other modern European languages, strangers, older relatives and social superiors are not addressed in the familiar, as that would be disrespectful, and the person who committed such a blunder would be reprimanded on the spot. Words are important, folks.
Great nations do great things; however, as long as government is the sole participant in an endeavor, political decisions will guide the policies and goals of that endeavor. The shuttle wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, it was just that it was the only idea allowed. As soon as the moon landings were complete, a multi-faceted approach would have been more ideal. Be that as it may, the opportunity is now there for more than one way into space whether low-earth orbit or beyond.
reader wrote:
“I’m a commercial supporter, but COTS payments before service is being offered IS a subsidy, plain and simple. It’s absolutely not “payment for services rendered”
I’m not sure that there is absolutely always something wrong with government subsidizing a critical capability.”
Agreed on both counts. The real question for “commercial” space is if either Space X or Orbital Sciences will ever deliver on their COTS commitments.
The real question for “commercial” space is if either Space X or Orbital Sciences will ever deliver on their COTS commitments.
They already have, or they wouldn’t have been paid. You seem to be quite obtuse on this issue. It’s been explained to you, many times, here and other places.
And you keep wanting to confuse the difference between supplying an actual service (in this case cargo delivery to the ISS – which neither Space X nor Orbital Sciences has done); with being paid subsidies for meeting arbitrary milestones in an attempt to develop the capability to provide that service.
That has “been explained to you, many times, here and other places.” But you seem to lack the capacity to understand the distinction.
Have you ever worked on any government procurement, Joe? It sure sounds like you don’t have a clue. When the government signs a contract with a company to develop something, the contract usually stipulates various payments at different milestones. Since R&D can take years, they don’t wait until final delivery before making the first payment. That’s just the way it’s done across government. When the government wants something developed, they pay for it. If it’s off-the-shelf, that’s different.
The big difference is that the legacy companies like Boeing, Lockheed-Martin (AKA Overruns-R-Us), ATK and the others generally work on a cost-plus contract. That means that whatever expense they run up during R&D gets paid by the government plus a profit. Overrun by a billion dollars? No sweat, it just gets passed on the the taxpayers.
SpaceX and the other new generation commercial space companies aren’t on cost-plus contracts. They’re being paid a fixed price at different contract milestones and then fee for service. If they have an overrun, they have to eat it. Last year, NASA analyzed SpaceX’s accounting to determine the cost to develop the Falcon 9 booster. By their own admission, it would’ve cost NASA at least 10 times as much following the traditional cost-plus method, and given NASA’s dismal track record at program management, their estimate is most likely low. It would’ve cost them even more.
There’s also another aspect of the Dragon that no one else will be able to do and that’s return stuff from orbit. All of the existing space cargo vehicles (Progress, ESA’s ATM and the Japanese one) burn up on reentry. Dragon is designed to deliver 6 metric tons of cargo to the ISS and return up to 3 tons to the surface. Since the end of the Shuttle, the only things that can be returned are whatever you can squeeze into a Soyuz reentry module along with the crew, which isn’t much at all.
Larry J wrote:
“Have you ever worked on any government procurement, Joe? It sure sounds like you don’t have a clue.”
We have already discussed our respective backgrounds above. I have 30 years’ experience in government related aerospace procurement.
The issue that you do not want to address is that (years behind schedule) no cargo has been delivered to the ISS by a ‘New Space’ company.
By the way, about all the “experienced aerospace engineer” and “you don’t have a clue” stuff. It should have occurred to you by now that the internet bully thing isn’t working for you. You need to find a new hobby.
And you come across as a blowhard who is either in the pocket of legacy aerospace or NASA. Both have a dismal track record.
So, no commercial space company has delivered supplies to the ISS yet (something that may well change in the next couple weeks) and that discounts them in your eyes? Well, NASA has spent billions on the Orion capsule and it’s years from flying. They’ve spent billions on the James Webb Space Telescope and it’s years from flying. They overspent by billions on the Shuttle and it was years late flying. It’s hard to name a single major NASA project (say an original budget over $500 million) over the last 30 years that wasn’t late, overbudget, or outright canceled.
Einstein and others have said that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome. You continued lauding of the status quo suggests that you’re either insane or you rather like the status quo of costly overruns. Which is it?
Unfortunately, all too many of the brave, libertarian claims for the virtues of private-enterprise space programs amount to little more than plans for selling payload capacity to government –in effect, tax farming.
SpaceX has a large commercial satellite backlog, which is likely to grow as they establish a flight record. Bigelow will also be purchasing flight services from them once they have the abort system to allow them to carry passengers.
I’m curious, exactly which paying passengers do you have in mind? The former paying passengers that used to ride Concorde, a supersonic plane that at least had destination resorts at the end of a very expensive flight for that upper quintile income class? And wasn’t the Concorde that state subsidized joint European Anglo French project that hit the skids, a European project that’s also currently heading for the toilet? The Soviet version only lasted a year. But the Europeans did build the Large Hadron Collider: the Americans, under Clinton and the democrats, canceled the even bigger Texas located collider after two billion had been spent on it’s construction. After dicking around with Clinton’s health care reform, apparently the peace dividend from the cold war just wasn’t enough to fund basic particle physics, and the private sector certainly wasn’t interested in floating stock options in the Desertron.
Bigelow has memoranda of understanding with several “sovereign clients” (e.g., the Netherlands, Japan, and others) who want to have their own manned space programs on the cheap.
To assure that there is no (unintentional) misunderstanding; I am a great admirer of the Bigelow approach to space structures and hope his plans will someday be incorporated into a real Space Program.
However, MOU’s and about $10 will buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Larry J wrote:
“And you come across as a blowhard who is either in the pocket of legacy aerospace or NASA. Both have a dismal track record.”
“Einstein and others have said that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome. You continued lauding of the status quo suggests that you’re either insane or you rather like the status quo of costly overruns. Which is it?”
You earlier said of Charles Krauthammer: “A lot of people have an interest in space and don’t know the first thing about it. Krauthammer is one of those and I’ve lost all respect for him as a result. If he’s so uninformed and ignorant about space (IMO), then how can I trust his opinion about anything else? It’s like when you read an article about a subject you know well and find errors in it, how can you assume the next article will be any more accurate?”
This from the “experienced aerospace engineer” since 1986 who does not even know who Anna Fisher is. Your angry, over the top, insulting posts (note comments about Krauthammer above) would be comical if they were not so pathetic.
Considering the people you seem to like to insult, I take any insults from you as a compliment.
This will be my last response to you on this subject, as you obviously have nothing to say worth a response.
Beware of products sold as religions.