You know, if you have questions about vehicle development costs, or propulsion issues, I guess it would be useful to have a discussion with Dave King, but I see nothing in his experience that would render him in any way knowledgable about markets for commercial spaceflight. But a lot of clueless people will read this and think that he knows what he’s talking about, and make policy and investment decisions on the basis of it. This is even worse than having Congress call Tom Young as a witness, just because he was head of Lockheed and worked at JPL, when he has no experience with human spaceflight.
Via Clark Lindsey, who has more thoughts:
I would hope that in the future, NASA’s top administrators hire human spaceflight program managers who actually believe that human spaceflight is worth buying and are devoted to lowering its cost so that more and more people can afford to buy it.
Dream on. Not part of the job description. Which is why space remains unaffordable fifty-three years after its dawn.
To say that there is no commercial market is to say that there is nothing desirable enough in space or in the spaceflight experience for people to spend their own money to purchase…. then there is clearly no point in a human spaceflight program and is only done because NASA can spend someone else’s money on it. (Robots can do missions with intangible value, i.e. science, far more cost-effectively.)
Hear hear!
The incredibly sad thing is that the guy who was involved in the purchasing of manned space services for NASA thinks there’s no market for it.
It’s PURCHASERS that make the market, not suppliers. This is basic economics.
There is a problem with manned space flight however, and it’s not NASA’s monopoly. It’s NASA’s monopsony. They are the sole purchaser of manned space flight to LEO, and so therefore problems with their culture (such as the one on display by Mr. King) affect the entire market.
Luckily that won’t be the case much longer. Even before Virgin Galactic or Armadillo go for orbital tourism, Bigelow’s space station will bring out a real market of sovereign and private purchasers of LEO access. This will quickly show just how inefficient NASA is.
Congress and most of NASA will fight the commercial human spaceflight industry, because it exposes the gross inefficiencies in how NASA does human spaceflight.
It is interesting that commercial space won a “great victory” in the recent Congressional budget debate when commercial space only won $1.6 Billion out of the $58-Billion budgeted. President Obama added $6 Billion to NASA’s budget over 6 years so he could pay for his new commercial crew program, and in this “great victory” Congress even stole half of that new comercial crew money to invest in pointless government rocket programs. Obama would have actually saved money if he gave DARPA the $1.6 Billion over 3 years for commercial crew, and let NASA keep Constellation and its Bush-era budgets.
It will truly be a victory if NASA spends the $15 Billion dedicated to HLV and Orion over the next 3 years on comparable and dramaticaly cheaper options available from commercial companies.
It will truly be a victory if NASA really did its job and led U.S. Aeropspace by actually trying to develop leading and advanced aerospace technologies. The ATK solid motors and the over-weight 20-ton Orion CEV make the U.S. and NASA look incompetent.
Incredible
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/october_2010/52_say_space_shuttle_program_has_been_worth_the_cost
Pity that the audience was not qualified to before answering, with validating their rough estimates of the lifecycle costs of the program to within 500% and naming a few tangible returns that this program has shown.
…most entrepreneurs and private company employees feel the space program should be government-funded, while the plurality of government workers feel the private sector should handle the expense.
Nobody wants to pay for it, but a majority still think it’s a good idea. That support would go way down if they realized what percentage of the money is wasted.
I’m trying to envision a solar system government and none makes sense.
For NASA, it seems one day they might make a mistake and put somebody in charge that knows what they’re doing.