...EELV was/is:

...the government's total investment in the two rockets has grown from an estimated $17 billion to more than $32 billion since its inception.

It makes one cry, when considering what we could have had instead, if a small fraction of that money been applied to actual cost reductions and reliability improvements (e.g., by putting it up as a market for delivery of water to orbit, or a prize for ten consecutive successful launches). I doubt if any of the cost-per-launch quotes for either Delta or Atlas include amortization of that outrageous welfare program. And now, having wasted all that money, they want to shut down one of them, losing the resiliency that was one of the supposed features of the program.

At least NASA is starting to come to its senses, as the once "Shuttle-derived" heavy lifter slowly morphs into an EELV-derived one, with the RS-68s, so perhaps the investment won't be for (almost) naught.

"First company to successfully deliver an expensive vital national security payload to orbit wins the prize!"

Why don't we offer prizes to build nuclear submarines?

Yeah, and think how much cheaper the Manhattan project could have been if we had offered a prize instead.

BTW, ULA will be keeping both the Atlas and Delta flying. Not that this changes any of the cost numbers.

> Why don't we offer prizes to build nuclear submarines?

Because the technology is classified and it's pointless to offer prizes for something that's illegal?

It's illegal to build nuclear subs? What are you smoking?

Do we want a commercial market for atomic bombs or nuclear powered military submarines? These analogies are useless.

That 15 billion dollars that was thrown down the EELV hole could have funded some astounding prizes, subsidized a lot of cargo to space, or merely returned to the taxpayers (at $50 per head, it would be a decent economic boost).

Why don't we offer a prize to the first group which stabilizes Iraq? It would be cheaper than the $300 billion we have spent so far. Or a prize to keep the Bird Flu Pandemic from happening. Or a prize to end global poverty. Or a prize to solve the Israeli Palestinian problem. Or a prize to keep Dan Rather and Bill Moyers off the air forever. Or a prize to the blogger who can go the longest without suggesting a prize. Or a prize to come up with a better idea than a prize for whatever ails you.

Perhaps because a prize for a technological achievement is unlike any of the things that you propose?

This is as dumb as the old saying "If we can land a man on the moon, why can't we cure cancer|have world peace|give everyone a pony|(fill in the blank)?"

In fact, they do give prizes for those things (or at least for attempts to do those things). They're handed out by the Nobel Committee, though since Jimmy Carter's and Yasser Arafat's, they've become sort of a joke.

Pardon my feeble attempt at humor.

"This is as dumb as the old saying 'If we can land a man on the moon, why can't we cure cancer|have world peace|give everyone a pony|(fill in the blank)?'"

The above wouldn't be something akin to a straw man argument, would it?

The above wouldn't be something akin to a straw man argument, would it?

Well, I don't think so. Pardon me if I missed the humor. I took it as a serious (albeit sarcastic) post, in the sense that you seemed to be putting technology prizes in the same basket as the other things you came up with.

Jardinero1, what's wrong with Bill Moyers? Whether or not I happen to agree with him on any given topic, he tends to be worth listening to.

EGB

> It's illegal to build nuclear subs? What are you smoking?

Oxygen-nitrogen. I guess you don't know what "classified technology" means.

I find Bill Moyers tendentious and full of predictable and wrong left-wing platitudes myself. Your mileage may vary.

"First company to successfully deliver an expensive vital national security payload to orbit wins the prize!"

Second Rule:
"Any company that fails to successfully deliver a vital national security payload to orbit does not win the prize."

Q. Why is a prize better?

A. Because the primary purpose of NASA, like just about any other taxpayer-funded organisation in any country for at least the last forty years, is as a welfare programme for its employees, many of whom would be unemployable in private business.

Personally, I think the rot started when Orion was cancelled. I believe there was a pilot study involving Neptune by 1985! And in something the size and weight of a destroyer, at that.

Instead, in 2006, only one country, not the USA, can reliably and safely reach LEO with a human crew.

>>"Or a prize to solve the Israeli Palestinian problem"

The Israeli's are solving it pretty well at the moment. Blocade the border, and wait till the bastards starve to death.

I think the rot started when Orion was cancelled.

Good grief. That would have been the mother of all expensive boondoggles. Even ignoring the pollution issue, Orion required multiple new technologies, of considerable complexity, many of which could not be tested in isolation. Compare the difficulty of building an Orion test stand to the test stand for a conventional rocket engine. The latter doesn't have to tolerate repeated nuclear explosions! Even a simulator with planar conventional chemical explosive charges would be a Rube Goldberg monstrosity (and would not test pusher plate/plasma interaction physics.)

First Rule:
"First company to successfully deliver an expensive vital national security payload to orbit wins the prize!"

Second Rule:
"Any company that fails to successfully deliver a vital national security payload to orbit does not win the prize."

Third Rule:
"Who cares about national security? National security isn't important. That's why we should give prizes and roll the dice when it comes to putting vital national security payloads in orbit."

Fourth rule: The prize shall be for launching a rocket with a dummy payload under similar conditions.

The winner will then receive a fixed-price contract to do it for real.

If you want to play the game (or change the game as is the case), simply state no one gets paid until the payload is safely in orbit.

[sigh]

Okay, I guess I need to stop assuming that people can figure this out for themselves, so I'll put it really really simply:

-nuclear submarines are considered by the USG to be vital to national security
-aircraft carriers are considered by the USG to be vital to national security
-fighter aircraft and bombers are considered by the USG to be vital to national security
-spy satellites, GPS satellites, communications satellites and weather satellites are considered by the USG to be vital to national security

-hence, the rockets needed to deliver these satellites to orbit are considered by the USG to be vital to national security.

Therefore, the USG is NEVER going to roll the dice and put something as vital as delivering these satellites to orbit in something as dubious and unproven as a prize for delivery. That's why EELV was not done as a prize for delivery.

They don't do this for other aspects of national security, they won't do it for military space.