Mark Whittington has an essay on it, but he misses the biggest part of it — the creation of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation (now FAA-AST), which enabled the development of the commercial spaceflight industry, as I described when Reagan died in 2004.
And, Mark, please stop demonstrating your profound ignorance of the meaning of the word “subsidy.” COTS and Commercial Crew are not subsidies.
I didn’t know that about Reagan and commercial space. I linked your 2004 article at Dr. Sanity’s Reagan post.
I should have added:
And everyone should check out her Reagan post.
How Can You Not Love a Guy Like That?
A complete ignorance of the history of the commercialization of the launch industry is pretty common in space advocacy circles. For example, whenever anyone talks about “what we could do with an HLV” they inevitably suggest that something like JWST would be easier to launch with bigger fairing rockets and wouldn’t that be great for a program that is horribly over budget, etc.
There’s so many things wrong with a statement like that, but simply from a commercial launch services purchases perspective – it’s a disaster. The launch industry is already struggling to get enough launches to remain afloat.
Rand, what would you call a promise by the NASA administrator to “do what it takes” to make sure that commercial space succeeds even if it means giving it the biggest bailout since GM? If that is not a subsidy, I’m not sure what is.
Ah, the same “subsidy” fantasy, justified, yet again, by the same Bolden quote.
Well, Bolden may wish he could do that. He may wish a lot of things. But I’d refer to the wisdom of “The Maltese Falcon”
Sam Spade: Ten thousand? We were talking about a lot more money than this.
Kasper Gutman: Yes, sir, we were, but this is genuine coin of the realm. With a dollar of this, you can buy ten dollars of talk.
Whatever Bolden or you may or may not wish, the only commercial ISS crew or cargo work approved and funded is all “pay for results”. So unless you’re twisting the word beyond recognition, as if the purchase of a bespoke dress were “subsidy” of the tailor, or the advance paid to purchase an author’s book is “subsidy” of the author, then “subsidy” is not what is going on.
What’s going on is called an exchange of money for goods and services received. I think that’s about as close to a definition of “commerce” as one is likely to come. You may not like the fact that NASA is purchasing things rather than developing them by themselves. But calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
Profound ignorance tends to be hard to hide…
pennypincher:
Great response doomed to fall on deaf ears.
However, sidelines folks like me just stood up and cheered.
It could be called a cross-subsidy to commercial spaceflight, but that means indirectly subsidising end clients, not the spaceflight providers themselves. And that is perfectly in accordance with NASA’s mandate to “seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space”.
Mark Whittington wrote:
…what would you call a promise by the NASA administrator to “do what it takes” to make sure that commercial space succeeds even if it means giving it the biggest bailout since GM? If that is not a subsidy, I’m not sure what is.
I’d call it nonesense.
First of all, Charles Bolden denies having ever said such a thing. Second, there’s no direct evidence he ever said it. And third, the claim doesn’t make any sense.
The auto bailout has cost the taxpayers about $39 billion. SpaceX has spent about $275 million thus far to develop the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon capsule. Both of these vehicles have flown successful test flights. So are we to believe that it would cost $39 billion to man-rate existing vehicles that only cost $275 million to develop in the first place? That doesn’t make any sense.
Then there’s Boeing. They’re not as far along on their CST-100 as SpaceX is on their capsule, but they’re bypassing the unmanned cargo phase and going straight to the crew version. They’ve never publicly stated what their development cost will be, but rumors on some of the space blogs say that it will be about $2.3 billion. Are we to believe that Boeing, the company that developed the Mercury capsule, the Gemini capsule, the Apollo capsule, the Space Shuttle orbiter, and the Skylab and International space stations would get so far underwater on their firm, fixed-price CST-100 contract that they would need a $39 billion bailout from NASA just to survive? Really?
For comparison, the actual development cost of the ISS was only $25 billion.
This commercial crew bailout claim is so rediculous that it makes anyone peddling it look like a fool. I’d expect better from anyone posting here.
Mike
Poor Mark. He was told there would be no math. He probably doesn’t understand the difference between a million and a billion. All those “illions” sound alike and are so confusing.
Thanks for that link RickL. RR was a great man and it really irritates me when some twits bash him.
I think we should cut Mark some slack. Maybe he can’t do math, but what would you expect from a Bush Leaguer? (He probably thought the prescription drug benefit would cost what Bush said it would cost.) And of course he’s padding his resume as usual — writing letters to the Houston Chronicle, Washington Post, and LA Times becomes writing “for” those publications.
But at least he’s finally found something good to say about private enterprise. Or “priivate” enterprise.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110130/us_ac/7733940_space_adventures_closer_to_priivate_round_the_moon_voyage
This is real progress for a man who’s spent years telling us that it’s impossible for anyone but NASA to go beyond Low Earth Orbit.
I might be a lone reed on this one, but in my opinion RR was one of the greatest presidents so far, possibly the greatest. I am taking into consideration his attitude and understanding on space (future), economics (:-), military(strength) and foreign policy issues. I believe that his acting experience not only gave him the upper hand in dealing directly with leaders from other nations, but knowing that cameras, lighting and position could make the difference.
I like to think that were he alive and well today, that there would be a third party with some clout and true leadership.