Cluelessly, as with many:
Some would argue that in times of budget problems a robust space program is an unnecessary expense and that if we can’t cut there, where can we cut?
We aren’t cutting. The budget is increasing, and in particular it is increasing for things that we actually need to get beyond low earth orbit, which Mike Griffin’s NASA had eliminated funding for to pay for his expensive and unneeded new rocket.
“We’ve got to do it in a smart way,” Obama said, apparently preferring to pay the Russians $56 million a pop to send Americans to fix toilets on the International Space Station.
No, that’s not what he was referring to. That was the George Bush plan, in case you’ve been asleep for the past six years. It’s too late to fix that in the near term, but at least we now have hope of fixing it a lot sooner, for a lot less money, than Ares would have provided.
Why do all of these supposed free marketeers bash private enterprise when it comes to space?
[Update a couple minutes later]
Speaking of which, Falcon 9 is almost ready to launch.
_”Why do all of these supposed free marketeers bash private enterprise when it comes to space? “_
I have only some combination of these explanations so far, depending upon the individual:
a. “Anything Obama proposes is automatically bad, because he is so evil that the facts be damned and anyway I haven’t paid any attention to space since Apollo 11 or earlier, or since the last Hubble photo I saw.”
b. NASA is just a subset of national defense, so attacking the existing plan (“whatever it is, [see item ‘a’]”).
c Subset of ‘a’;” it’s Barry Obama that cancelled the Shuttle!”
For example Limbaugh epitomizes both ‘a’ and ‘b’, having praised NASA’s contributions to “our superior ICBMs, and being the [epitome] of entrepreneurship” [!!!!! Not even just a stimulus to it, mind you but somehow being at the where it happens.]
You’d think that they’d have a big enough cudgel to throw around with the policies in other areas that Obama is so wrong about. But it only shows the commenters’ nonexistent regard for space that they won’t even find out if they happen to be wrong about _this_ case.
If I didn’t know better, this situation is enough to make me think that I might be wrong about some of Obama’s other policies, 🙂
That was the George Bush plan, in case you’ve been asleep for the past six years.
1. I’m sure you’ve fully documented that this originates with Bush, but, since the space plan is becoming a hot topic in the conservative blogosphere, perhaps it would be useful to put occasional Bush links into ongoing posts.
2. For that matter, I have been asleep for the past six years and more: it seemed to me that NASA’s progress toward humanity in space was that of a glacier that was in danger of melting. (Maybe NASA did things as well as they could have been done at the time, but the Challenger Report certainly didn’t leave me with that impression.)
Therefore, as a taxpayer who supports America-led movement into space but is not an aficionado of the issue, I am willing to roll the dice and abet the private sector’s efforts.
Why do all of these supposed free marketeers bash private enterprise when it comes to space?
Why do supposed free marketers equate bashing government spending and the associated government contractors with bashing free enterprise?
I’m hardly on the side of those defending the old POR, but I’ll give them this: I haven’t seen a single opponent of the new plan bashing any real commerce, such as satellite communications. Maybe they are bashing an improved form of government contracting, and maybe they are wrong about that. But they are light-years away from bashing free enterprise.
Once again, Googaw, communications is not the only “real” commerce, no matter how times you say so. That is as naive as Tom’s belief that mining is the only real commerce.
You continue to pretend that sat comm is pure free enterprise and ignore all the government subsidies that it receives. If you were intellectually consistent, you would have to say that sat comm, too, is “improved government contracting” and hence, pure evil.
Of course, the world is not as black and white as you believe. Going from a government monopoly on human spaceflight to purchasing transportation services from private companies (even companies that receive some subsidies) may not be free enterprise but it is a giant step in that direction. Just as breaking the Intelsat monopoly was. Anyone but zealots should be able to see that.
Since government bureaucrats and contractors are trying to coopt the terms like “commerce” and “market” to describe fixed-price government contracts, or even competitions over government contracts generally, I use the terms “real commerce” and “real markets” to describe activities that actually strongly resemble those of free markets — activities in markets with several private suppliers who sell goods or services to many private customers.
Commercial satellite operators such as DirectTV, Dish Network, HughesNet, Wildbue, OnStar, XM and Sirius Satellite Radio, etc. etc. are private entities with thousands and sometimes millions of private customers, and their revenue is dominated by the private customers. HSF is dominated by government contracting — government accounts for closer to 100% than 99% of HSF revenues. Commercial satellite operators are real commerce and HSF is orders of magnitude away from being real commerce. This definition of real commerce has nothing per se to do with HSF or astronauts, it only happens to rule out astronauts because that profession and the infrastructure that supports it is one of the ludicrous aberrations of modern government-funded civilian activities.
It is true many comsat builders also build satellites for the military — just as many airline companies built airplanes for the military. But most commercial satellite operators, as with most airlines, get the vast majority of their revenue from private customers, and any government customers buy the same exact way the private customers — quite the antipodes from the more than 99% of revenue that HSF derives from governments using things like fixed-cost milestone development contracts to pay for economic fantasies that real commerce won’t remotely come close to paying for. If HSF is “commerce” then so are ICBMs, Blackwater, Medicare, and anything else that involves a government contractor.
Since government bureaucrats and contractors are trying to coopt the terms like “commerce” and “market” to describe fixed-price government contracts, or even competitions over government contracts generally, I use the terms “real commerce” and “real markets” to describe activities that actually strongly resemble those of free markets
No, you use the terms according to your personal bias.
Satellite operators sell services to the government through fixed-price contracts. Yet you call satellite communications “real commerce” — and correctly so. But if private companies sell human spaceflight services to the government in a similar fashion, through fixed-price contracts, you say that’s not “real” commerce and claim that selling services to the government is a fixed price is a “government subsidy.”
You also ignore the fact that communication satellites receive real subsidies (not rhetorical “subsidies”) through the use of government launch ranges and electromagnetic spectrum at below-market prices. And in another post, you complained that Boeing and NASA were studying propellant depots for “the wrong market” (human spaceflight instead of satellite communications). Why should NASA develop propellant depots to support commercial satellite operators instead of its own missions? That would be yet another government subsidy for satellite communications. How is that “free market”?
The world is not as black and white as you want it to be. Most industries are imperfect. Pure free markets are rare. You ignore imperfections in one industry, which you happen to like, while condemning another industry for similar imperfections.
Commercial satellite operators… are private entities with thousands and sometimes millions of private customers, and their revenue is dominated by the private customers
*Some* commercial satellite operators have thousands and sometimes millions of private customers. Others, like Iridium, have revenues dominated that are by government customers. You ignore facts that don’t fit your arguments.
If private companies are successful in developing the human spaceflight industry, the importance of government customers will decline and revenues will eventually be dominated by private customers. Just as the airline industry is now dominated by private customers rather than government air mail. For some odd reason, you regard that as intolerable.
If you really believe in free markets, you should be in favor of changes that move in the direction of free markets, rather than defending a government monopoly that is the antithesis of the free market.
If you really believe in free markets, you should be in favor of changes that move in the direction of free markets, rather than defending a government monopoly that is the antithesis of the free market.
Where have I done this? And this from Ed who religiously defends a so-called “market” of so-called “commerce” that is over 99% funded by government space agencies, and equates it to commercial companies which often have close to 100% of their revenue coming from private customers.
Anybody who can’t see the vast, indeed antipodal, nature of the difference between an airliner selling the occasional ticket to a government agency to fly a government employee on an airliner that has already long since been developed to meet the needs of a large group of paying private customers, or a comsat operator renting the occasional bandwidth to a government agency on a comsat that has already long since been developed to meet the needs of a large group of paying private customers, and NASA paying a fixed-price milestone contract to develop a brand new space capsule for which there are no private commercial orders whatsoever, ought to seriously have their heads examined.
Isn’t all this “..why are you bashing moving to the free market?..” rants a little off the mark here? Its not like anyone in DC is talking about contracting out more of the space program — they are talking about MAJOR declines. Ok, Boeing and L/M get to compete with Soyuz for crew taxi flights to the ISS in a few years (If you think SpaceX is in the running – read the big firestorm about trusting crew to inexperienced commercial firms, and note the money going to Boeing and L/M to help them big for crew taxi business)
All that scale of several billion a year going to commercial firms training the astronauts, building and servicing the shuttles, planning the complex missions, is all going away. I.E. major reduction in scale and complexity of what’s being done in space, and the scale of money going to commercials to do it – is going away.
No big new free market – not even a market as big as before.
> googaw Says:
>
> April 19th, 2010 at 12:27 am
> Anybody who can’t see the vast, indeed antipodal, nature
> of the difference between an airliner selling the occasional
> ticket to a government agency to fly a government
> employee on an airliner that has already long since been
> developed to meet the needs of a large group of paying
> private customers, or a comsat operator renting the
> occasional bandwidth to a government agency on a comsat
> that has already long since been developed to meet the
> needs of a large group of paying private customers, and
> NASA paying a fixed-price milestone contract to develop a
> brand new space capsule for which there are no private
> commercial orders whatsoever, ought to seriously have
> their heads examined.
BINGO!
::Applause!!::
To here the delusional space advocates talk, you’d think NASA was contracting Boeing to start mail service, or build a interstate to, the moon. Or that they were going FAA and helping Virgin Galactic field a orbital tourist craft. All they are doing is setting up a competitor to split the crew Taxi business with Soyuz so the Russians don’t get greedy, and NASA has a fallback if the Russians become politically unacceptable.
All this religious argument about supporting free markets can wait until they actually consider doing it.
NASA paying a fixed-price milestone contract to develop a brand new space capsule for which there are no private commercial orders whatsoever, ought to seriously have their heads examined.
First, there are commercial orders for space capsules already. They were placed by people like Dennis Tito, Anousheh Ansari, and Richard Garriott, Unfortunately, the facts don’t seem to bother you.
Even if that weren’t the case, the fact that there are no commercial orders for something at one time does not mean there will never be commercial orders for that thing.
How many commercial orders were there for your beloved comm sats, before the first comm sats were developed? Zero. If you were intellectually honest and applied your argument consistently, you would have to believe that comm sats will never have commercial customers.
All they are doing is setting up a competitor to split the crew Taxi business with Soyuz so the Russians don’t get greedy, and NASA has a fallback if the Russians become politically unacceptable.
No, that is not “all,” Kelly. That is only the first step. As numerous people have told you, time and time again.
Since you obviously know that and pretend otherwise, I must assume you are simply opposed to those next steps — opening space to many thousands of people.