Unaffordable and Unsustainable, NASA’s failing Earth-to-orbit Transportation Strategy Options

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

The Space Frontier Foundation has gotten a lot of attention from the mainstream press with their latest Whitepaper.

They advocate a more extensive support fo free enterprise and entrepreneurship in the American space program. They suggest that NASA should no longer be allowed to develop and own new launch vehicles, and that CEV and CLV development should be cancelled. They also advise that NASA rely on Altas 5 and Delta 4 rockets, and transfer more funding to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.

I cannot find the actual white paper on the SFF website. I don't know if SFF is particularly professional (certainly their gaudy website doesn't look it), but I have to agree with some of their points.

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

I certainly don't want to see NASA stop funding science missions to the planets. One of the frustrations with NASA's current agenda has been the amount of funding sucked away from science to keep the Shuttle and ISS going. One reason you are hearing some of us complain. For other nations, ISS is pure gravy, they get to have "astronauts" and pay a very marginal amount of the cost. Talk about space tourism.

In general, I think government should encourage private enterprise to step in, they should encourage multiple vendors, and they should never compete with private enterprise. The commercial statellite business is a good example of this policy in action in the US.

[Stephen]

In general, I think government should encourage private enterprise to step in, they should encourage multiple vendors, and they should never compete with private enterprise.

I was under the impression NASA long encouraged multiple vendors. Didn't multiple vendors compete to produce the LM way back in the Apollo era? And doesn't it currently have two competing to produce the CEV?

The commercial statellite business is a good example of this policy in action in the US.

Actually your analogy with the commercial satellite business doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. For a start there is a large market for commercial satellites. Or at least the communications & weather sorts; and probably a growing one for certain other kinds, like the Landsat sort. That's why you have private enterprise building those and sending them into orbit.

By comparison where is the market for doing the kind of scientific investigations that NASA was (originally at any rate) going to do with the ISS or sending probes to other planets?

More specifically, Bigelow may want to put an orbital hotel in space, but where are all the private entrepreneurs competing to put a private enterprise version of the ISS in orbit? Or rather (given all the complaints about the ISS) one closer to the original vision for the ISS?

The ISS as it stands certainly has its problems, but I do not see anybody in private enterprise prepared to step forward and use their own money (or their investors') to do a better job. They seem to be quite willing to build something if somebody else (like NASA) pays for it, but that is as far as their interest seems to go;and as far as I can see that is as far as it is likely to go for some time yet.

That being the case just how exactly is NASA "competing" with private enterprise at all? In which fields do you see NASA competing against private enterprise?

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Stephen

[The Messenger]

I was under the impression NASA long encouraged multiple vendors. Didn't multiple vendors compete to produce the LM way back in the Apollo era? And doesn't it currently have two competing to produce the CEV?

There are two primes, but some of the subsystems can only be supplied by single vendors, most notably, the solid first stage.

In practice, this can get pretty interesting during the proposal stage: Two proposal workers may work for the same company, even share an office, and be completely embargoed from discussing their work, even though they are doing exactly the same thing.