Let’s look at what the Obama budget proposes. It ends our manned moon and space exploration, but it proposes a total NASA spending increase by $1 billion. So NASA won’t be totally out of business. His FY2011 budget proposed $19 billion, with emphasis on science, not on manned space flight. He wants to end NASA’s manned space flight program and rent space on Russian spacecraft. He wants to turn space transportation over to private, commercial companies, such as Space X, United Launch Alliance, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Bigelow Aerospace and others. There is only one problem with privatization with space flight – it does not work. Space X is where NASA was in 1960 with Project Mercury. The ability to put humans into orbit exists only on paper.
Really? The Falcon 9, which has had two successful flights with no failures, and the Dragon capsule, which flew into orbit and returned safely last year, “exists only on paper”? And a capsule that can carry seven crew is “where NASA was in 1960 with Project Mercury,” which could only carry a single person? Really?
Whence comes this compulsion from many supposed anti-government and free-market types to deliberately slander private industry? Do they really hate Barack Obama that much?
Rand,
“Whence comes this compulsion from many supposed anti-government and free-market types to deliberately slander private industry? Do they really hate Barack Obama that much?”
Yes, from what I’ve seen they do. Trashing liberals and Obama is the #1 principle for many conservatives I’ve known. Liberals in their eyes are so the ultimate evil that it’s completely impossible for them to comprehend that occasionally liberals might actually make the a good decision or two. Kind of like the right-wing equivalence of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
~Jon
Who can be slandered tends to be faddish. Slandering men in general and white men in particular has been popular. Slandering business and finance has taken off with Obama so others join the bandwagon.
Slandering conservative woman seems to be an outgrowth of slandering white men. It’s a tool used to get children that vote on board. It has to be answered with equally effective tools or we are all lost.
The truth seems always with a minority.
Will the SpaceX = Mercury comparisons never end? At some point maybe they’ll compare it to Apollo, but then they’ll claim SpaceX has to develop their own flight computer using nothing but wire-wrapped NOR gates, too.
Given how consistently wrong the regime is it’s easy to fall into a reflex reaction. Given the regime’s backwards view of the private sector and apparent objective of weakening this country, I can see space operations being left to the private sector with the expectation and intent of weakening this country.
The criticism of SpaceX would be more biting if NASA wasn’t going to use a capsule on a stick with AresI.
Misconceptions with NASA probably have less to do with ODS than they do with a lack of knowledge about NASA and New Space. A person has to actively seek out knowledge on the issue, it isn’t delivered on a silver platter on cable TV.
The way Obama rolled out his plan(s) was also poor and right now would be a great time for his administration to be pushing a narrative of what NASA’s future will be but there hasn’t been much of a presence of official spokespeople. A hard thing to do considering the lack of coverage in general.
For less than 1/5th of what NASA has paid Lockheed-Martin to develop the Orion capsule, SpaceX has build and flown the Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule. I’ve seen the future of spaceflight and it isn’t cost-plus.
Whence comes this compulsion from many supposed anti-government and free-market types to deliberately slander private industry? Do they really hate Barack Obama that much?
This is too easy, simply chalking it up to ODS. There are lots of people who are informed about NASA and who much of the public would consider authority figures – among them Neil Armstrong and Mike Griffin – who opposed the Obama plan, and it had nothing to do with personal animus for Obama.
It has been observed many times that the Left doesn’t believe in the free market below the atmosphere and the Right doesn’t believe in the free market above the atmosphere. Right now, it’s about Pork versus Progress. I think that many on the Right confuse the cost-plus procurement method of NASA’s past with a free market. Instead, that procurement method was closer to mercantilism than the free market. However, that which cannot go on forever won’t, and NASA’s budget is going down. Doing everything in-house eats their seed corn, and NASA has to change the way it does – well, pretty much everything.
This is quite an indictment of humankind. If money is involved, truth becomes the victim.
Well.. I personally think private industry can’t do the job, because NASA will stop them. See the other article about screwing the CCDev contracts.
NASA will try, but if the public catches on NASA will end up in a faster death spiral.
“Whence comes this compulsion from many supposed anti-government and free-market types to deliberately slander private industry? Do they really hate Barack Obama that much?”
Of course private sector is what makes NASA be able to go into space- NASA has always been the customer, it’s just has had a strange customer relation. It like me telling Ford how to build a truck; I am not building the truck, in same way NASA isn’t building the spacecraft.
As for the Hate, maybe these politician don’t want to appear like jackasses for supporting socialism. The evidence they been paying too much for spaceflight must be denied.
Actually, the Dragon/Mercury comparison doesn’t bother me too much. But then again, I’m looking at it from a different angle.
I’m old enough to remember following Gemini flights, but I’m just a little bit too young to remember Mercury. Nevertheless, I spent hours poring over my parents’ Life magazines covering the Mercury flights, and I still have them. I’ve always been fascinated with the history of Project Mercury.
When the first Dragon was launched last December on its two-orbit flight, I obsessively followed its progress on the internet, hungry for every scrap of information I could find. I was very conscious of the parallel to the early Mercury flights, and it gave me the teensiest taste of what it must have been like on Feb. 20, 1962, when the whole country stopped in its tracks to follow the flight of MA-6.
As far as Obama’s space policy goes, I agree with what Rand has said before: The only reason he got the policy right is because he doesn’t care about space. Since he is a socialist, a statist, and a collectivist by nature, if he did care about space, he would undoubtedly support a centralized, government-controlled policy. It’s a case of a broken clock being right twice a day.
And yeah, I have butted heads numerous times with conservatives over this.
It is more like Big Gemini or Saturn IB Apollo than Mercury. The Mercury capsule and Atlas rocket had much less performance.
I personally think private industry can’t do the job, because NASA will stop them. See the other article about screwing the CCDev contracts.
They’ve chosen NASA as a customer and now this customer wants to structure its contracts differently. It’s quite silly to equate a customer making its purchases in the way it wants with that customer stopping a supplier from doing business. NASA AFAIK has never stopped SpaceX or any other Newspace company from launching whatever they liked however they liked as long as it wasn’t on the NASA dime. (There are some regulations of course, just as there are in the airline business, but they come from the FAA and from the USAF when they use its launch ranges, and from national security considerations (ITAR), not from NASA).
If Newspace companies were really commercial they could focus on customers besides NASA instead of getting all in a snit about how the single customer in the 99%+ taxpayer-funded monopsony they have foolishly locked themselves into wants to do business. If SpaceX doesn’t like the way NASA wants to purchase Dragon in future contracts it should find other customers for it, or (much more likely) forget about this hopelessly NASA-style program and focus on its actually commercial satellite launching business.
Nobody is putting a gun to any Newspace CEO’s head forcing them to do business with NASA. They are choosing their poison. You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
A lack of self-confidence is endemic in 21st century American man. Even soi disant conservatives suffer from it. You hear them more often dreaming of a conservative Caesar who’ll make the damn trains run on time than turning out the lights in the capital so private business can do what it feels like doing without scrutiny or regulation or “help.”
It makes their fondness for reductions in taxes a little quaint. You wonder why anybody wants their taxes cut, since they seem to have little confidence they will, themselves, make better use of the money. It often seems really a debate about to which Caesar we should all turn over our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Our forefathers must be a little ashamed of us, girly men that we’ve become. (Not all of us, I hasten to add.)
I definitely share your sentiment, Carl. Which makes Sarah’s, “Fight like a girl!” so poignant. Real men respect and defend woman. Breitbart called the elite republicans eunuchs in “The Undefeated” documentary. Some of those eunuchs that believed the medias saw the movie and now say how ashamed they are and will never allow it to happen again. The shame needs to be spread around.
Allen West says the gloves are off because DWS is no lady. Generally I think someone should hold their tongues, but when you are lied about so often and consistently I had to cheer his decision. The right needs more men of honor willing to speak out and take the arrows.
Palin/West 2012 – They both take responsibility with no apologies.
While not perfect they both love America and will put their lives on the line for their country even while everyone smears them. Imagine VP West defending Sarah’s honor from smears? I expect we’d see some heavy artillery.
The relationship between NASA and the CCDev partners is *not* a customer-provider relationship.. Perhaps, some day, it will be.. but it isn’t yet. Even commercial cargo hasn’t entered into that phase yet. NASA has a choice: they can wait until commercial crew is available, and then work with the providers to retrofit it to what they want, or they can contribute their expertise and funding during the development program to cut down on the amount of work they need to do later.. either way requires them to give up control over the design of the vehicle.
So the CCDev partners get basically all of their HSF revenues from NASA. But by the magic of sophisticated daydreaming, their HSF operations are really independent and “commercial”. And a bunch of competing contractors dictate terms to their only customer for this quite unique HSF machines. Right. And ducks are really mammals, and I can teach pigs to fly. Any other such lessons astronaut fans would like us to learn?
Dragon has been in design for a long time. Whatever NASA has added has been minimal. To imagine it is so specific to ISS that it couldn’t be used for Bigelow or others is silly.
They may get all passenger revenue from NASA today, but tomorrow (as little as two or three years) there will be other customers.
It seem that standard docking ports (of different sizes perhaps, but at least one of a specific size) regardless of nationality would make a lot of sense. Like the fact that all commercial pilots everywhere in the world are required to use [broken?] english on the radio.
As Rands recent article points out, Dragon could serve as a lifeboat for ISS today as is (with seating they already have designed.)
Ah, yes, they’ve got a splendid alternative to NASA: Bob Bigelow, who invests his money in UFO hunting and “hotels in space.” Put your money in now, you don’t want to miss out on this one! 🙂
Alas, even this crank has stopped flying his little inflatables and now is simply in line with the others for NASA contracts.
Googaw, this “crank” as you call him is expanding his production facility by 180 thousand square feet right now. Bigelow has also decided to go straight for the BA330 design for the next launch. He has also put his money where his mouth is to the tune of over $100M of his own money into the project, with a willingness to go to $500M personal investment before seeing profit. That money was earned by owning a successful hotel chain right here on earth. And as far as I know, you can’t put your money into it – Bigelow Aerospace is completely privately owned. You may want to re-evaluate your assessment of the man.
Bigelow just might be crazy, crazy enough to do what he says.
wodun, I don’t care what nut jobs do with their own money. I care a great deal what they do with mine.
Whatever he’s doing with your money Googaw is being done indirectly. It’s the people that voted idiots to represent them that needs consideration.