FAA figures in there as well somehow. There were noticeably lots of call outs to FAA after the launch from the SpaceX TV team.
Sidenote: There is currently nobody in charge of the FAA currently. El dumbass has yet to put anyone in place.
And that will continue to happen, too. The problem isn’t NASA or Space X or Lockheed Martin, really, it’s a political problem - but then again, congresscritters want to bring home jobs and wealth to their constituents.
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The free market will sort out air traffic. Don’t worry.
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Absolutely no surprise. In the context of this conversation, Warner will not be sympathetic to SpaceX.
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Absolutely. And why should he be, frankly.
But my original point remains and will remain that privatized space infrastructure will have consequences. What I think would be far more productive and help ease costs, would be to internationalized space exploration along the lines of the ISS. And I’m really not sure why holding this position gets me insulted and treated like shit.
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Well, my beef is the wasteful ways Government blows thru my-your-our money on ridiculous contract vehicles. (see Puerto Rico) If you could see the things that I have seen. I applaud high five your position on cost sharing. Someday when politics allows perhaps that will be a good option. Here’s hoping!
Thanks for contributing to intelligent discourse!
Even then though, most of that public money went to private contractors who to this day still charge NASA for launch services. While NASA does have a lot of great infrastructure of their own (SpaceX leases those launch pads for example), even back in the massive budget days, NASA was basically subsidizing the private sector then, too.
NASA’s own accounting says they cannot develop or launch rockets as cheaply as SpaceX can. I for one hope that politics doesn’t get in the way of that fact and they purchase even more of those inexpensive launches and instead use the savings to build awesome science payloads to put on those rockets instead!
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And there is the key to how SpaceX differs from previous launch contractors.
The 20th century space industry was an offshoot of the military industrial complex. Corruption, featherbedding and massive fraud are their standard operating procedures.
They were in it purely for the money, so they focused their efforts on extracting as much loot from the public purse as possible. The rockets and missiles were just a means to an end for them.
Elon Musk, OTOH, wants the rockets for his own purposes. So he’s willing to sell them to the state at cost. He’s still being subsidised by the people, but in this case he’s investing the subsidy into his own personal STARK program rather than cashing it out as raw profit.
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To be fair, Cost-Plus has its uses. If NASA wants a moon rocket, and no one’s ever built a moon rocket before, it’s silly to expect contractors to pin down prices in advance. Too many “known unknowns” and LOTS of “unknown unknowns.” Trying to pin down an accurate price for such a thing in advance, within the margins of profitability, would be a fool’s errand.
For cutting-edge never-been-done-before projects, Cost Plus is the only way you’d ever get any sensible defense contractor to sign on. It also preserves the government’s flexibility to alter, modify or cancel things. Pay what it costs to do those things plus the fixed markup, and everybody’s happy.
There’s even an interesting case in the current ULA block-buy contract. The block buy of launch cores was negotiated as a Firm Fixed Price contract, since the costs of building Atlas V and Delta IV cores is well-understood and predictable, ,especially with a large block buy that allows the contractor to budget for ongoing production.
But the Launch Capabilities Contract, (LCC) which pays for taking those cores from the Decatur plant, shipping them 1700 miles through the inland waterways to the Gulf of Mexico and then around the tip of Florida to Cape Canaveral or through the Panama Canal to Vandenberg, then standing them up, stacking the stages, integrating the payload(s), and actually performing the launch (including all repeated attempts due to scrubs), as well as maintaining the pads year-round, is a Cost-Plus contract.
The Air Force wanted to preserve their own flexibility to schedule launches as needed - maybe ten or twelve this year, but only six or eight next year, and so on. So the LCC
was structured as a Cost-Plus contract, where the government pays whatever the launches cost, plus a fixed markup.
Both Firm Fixed Price and Cost-Plus have their places in aerospace contracting.
Services as routine and well-understood as satellite launches and cargo or crew deliveries to the ISS should be provided by private contractors at Fixed Firm prices - and that’s exactly what the Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew programs are doing.
But it’s not the answer to every situation. Cutting-edge envelope-pushing projects done “Not for Profit but for Science” (NASA’s basic remit) will still need Cost-Plus contracting, because there isn’t really any profitable business case for such research.
But private companies can and will make a profit launching satellites and carrying cargo and crew to orbit. Those are well understood and potentially quite lucrative tasks. So best we let them do so, and get out of their way.
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OK, now you’re just making him sound even more like a supervillain.
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But this is NOT a “profit-driven space program.” It’s a profit-driven Launch Services Provider that sells cheap rockets to all comers. But it’s not the whole Space Program.
The American Space program would buy cheap launches from SpaceX. Doing so would leave a LOT more money for the scientific payloads. Lots more exploration bang-for-the-buck.
But SpaceX will also sell commercial launches to commercial commsat operators, Internet constellation operators, orbital mappers, asteroid mappers, and the science and research agencies of other companies around the world.
It’s that commercial base that will allow them to offer such cheap rockets.
Turning the entire American Space Program into a for-profit enterprise would be a stupid and completely counter-productive maneuver, no argument there.
But no one is proposing that. They’re just privatizing the supply of launch systems, since that’s something private business can and should be able to do at a profit.
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It was from Totally New on HBO. I think from 82 or 83? I was just a kid but my dad liked Gallagher so he always recorded his stuff.
You really think the end goal of Space X isn’t commercial? Corporations aren’t made for the betterment of mankind, they are made to increase profit.
And not having a great control over launches is bad for the US, yeah? Isn’t that the exact damn argument that people have against us going up in Russian rockets? Space X doesn’t have America’s best interests at heart.
as all the men who are smarter than me have pointed out, private corporation are already building the technologies for space programs, FOR NASA.
Profit and the betterment of mankind are not often compatible, I’m afraid. I think people have put too much faith here in Musk’s good will and ability to divorce his economic interests from the interests of humanity. There is very little in history that verifies that those out to profit off something are able to divorce their interests from the maximum benefit for humanity. If he really was interested in that, why is Space X a privately held, for profit corporation?
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If the SpaceX partnership doesn’t work out there’s always Weyland-Yutani.
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Seriously, it’s literally like no one here has ever seen or read anything in their years of reading/watching sci-fi on the possible problems of a privatized space program.
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Star Trek is a hellava good drug.
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At some point, space travel, if it’s to be successful, needs to be handled like air travel. Few nations have state-monopoly airlines any more, and back in the day Aeroflot was the butt of many jokes.
The Government buys a lot of seats on commercial flights. The postal service contracts with a lot of commercial airlines, railroads and truck lines. Why can’t a government space launch go to the low bidder? (Not that Starman was a government project - he wasn’t. He was “because we can.”
Human nature being what it is, you can make good SF stories about both screwed-up private space travel and screwed-up government space travel. It’s hard to make a good story without something being screwed up somewhere; you have to give the protagonist a problem to solve.
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Star Trek isn’t a privatized space program. It’s a global one.
Have you been on a plane lately? It’s not a pleasant experience.
I didn’t say that there shouldn’t be ANY private industry involved in space travel. I said ENTIRELY PRIVATIZED space exploration isn’t the pure good that everyone seems to be imaging it is.
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You’re hearing it, I’m not saying it. We’re seeing some private investment, rather than the government monopoly we had not too many years ago (yes, the government subcontracted, but pretty much all plans needed government blessing). It seems to be yielding major cost reductions, and it’s doing really interesting engineering (booster recovery using vertical landing under propulsion, large clusters of inexpensive engines, restartable first-stage boosters, …). That’s a good thing.
If a rich playboy wants to launch a sports car because he can, it’s his money. (No, I don’t quite buy the argument that it’s the taxpayers’ money because his company also has government contracts: that’s like saying that GM is wasting the taxpayers’ money building Corvettes because they also sell mail trucks to the postal service.)
And yeah, a Tesla with a mannequin is still way cooler than a few 55-gallon drums of concrete, which would otherwise be the logical payload. Even if Musk is a robber baron, I’d rather have a robber baron with a sense of humour.
You’re right, it surely isn’t! But I can get on a plane for the cost of a ticket. I don’t need to work a grant proposal, file an environmental impact statement, hire a review board, submit quarterly health and safety reviews, undergo contract audits, and so on just to go visit my relatives.
NASA still has an aeronautical arm, and the military funds a lot of aeronautical research (I’m working on Uncle’s money right now, on an aeronautical project), and the government (civilian and military) flies a lot of aircraft. That’s a good thing, too. Nevertheless, I’m very glad that I don’t have to deal with that system on the rare occasions that I fly somewhere.
Whatever you say.
