Citing my Reason piece, the Washington Times comes out against the rocket to nowhere.
[Update a while later]
Dick Shelby is a uniter, not a divider:
It’s rare to get the Obama Administration and the conservative editorial page of the Washington Times in agreement on something. Yet, both have spoken out in opposition to report language in the Senate’s Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill—due to be considered by the full Senate this week—regarding cost and pricing data for commercial crew and cargo providers.
Well, it’s not like he has any political principles other than what will get him reelected.
I could probably count the number of times I’ve agreed with Obama on one hand and have fingers left over. This is another one of those times. It may be a broken clock moment but I’ll take it.
Well, I did agree with his plan to make things more convenient for us at the filling station by having them pump $20 worth of fuel twice as fast – so you don’t have to waste so much time standing there. I also admire the boldness of the Administration’s new goal of making it possible to store $20 worth of gasoline in a hip flask, which would represent an enormous advance in dollar density and transportability for an energy source.
It should also be recognized that Sen. Shelby’s poison pill is also payback to SpaceX for going after the ULA contracts. He is just reminding him how no attempt to save the government money will go unpunished since it always involved reducing the flow of pork to Congressional Districts (i.e. save the government money…).
Henry Kaiser learned this lesson in WWII. The shipbuilding industry and their Washington partners in pork tolerated his mass production techniques for cargo ships and escort carriers during the war, but quickly pulled the rug out from under him afterward. Imagine, building cargo ships in days instead of months at a fraction of the cost of traditional government shipbuilders. And before Henry Kaiser, Henry Ford also was taught a similar lesson about government contracting when he was “saving” the government money with his “Eagle” class sub-chasers being mass produced during WWI, a lesson reinforced with his Willow Run bomber plant in WWII.
The take away should be. 1) although Congress critters may talk about saving money they don’t mean it, its just code for getting more money flowing to their districts. 2) It doesn’t matter how much money you save the government with innovative ideas, if you are making excessive profits on it – which is anything over that Congress critter you are taking pork feels is excessive, you will be dealt with. 3) That government funded programs, no matter how clever they look, will never significantly lower the cost of space access, only focusing on true commercial markets which are actually driven by costs, will lower the costs of access to space,