I had thought that other items were more important, which is why those two items were so far from the top, but I see the point. Ideas or products that are not going to pay off need to stop wasting scarce resources, just a SLS is doing now. Another example of how scarce resources are squandered rather than being used on better projects is JWST. It may be a good idea and worth some resources, but it should have been restarted from scratch at least 8 billion dollars ago so that seven billion dollars would be available for other space telescopes and astronomy projects while still spending a billion on an infrared telescope.

I will have to reorder my list.

23. Free markets eliminate inefficiencies and the companies that are least efficient. Government may operate as inefficiently as it pleases.

These are the key items in your list. When companies fail, they are gone. Friends of mine or not, several of the companies that either didn’t deliver, lost interest, or failed to attract capital are gone. Rotary Rocket, Kistler, Beal, XCOR, and many more are no longer in the field. As bad as we feel about failure, it leaves a cleaner field for other ideas. If SLS had been held to the same standards, either the design would have been streamlined, or it would have been stillborn in the concept phase. Individual failure is the societal strength of free enterprise.

We spent 100 billion dollars on ISS building it, and we will spend another 50 billion dollars operating it. However, about half the manpower on board is needed for various types of housekeeping activities, leaving about three people available for research. Because it is considered a research lab, we are not getting as much benefit from it as we could were it also functioned as a manufacturing facility. Had NASA started earlier with a smaller space station, lessons could have been learned in order to reduce the manpower for housekeeping. Had the government not continually reduced the scope of the station, we could have had more people performing research and maybe even performing manufacturing that would benefit Earth. ISS was treated less like a resource to benefit us and more like a possession to have.

By the way, Space Systems/Loral’s telephone communication constellation was Globalstar. I couldn’t remember that, yesterday.

Max,
Please keep in mind that you said that it was a lost opportunity as well as calling it a publicity stunt. You had made it sound less like a dream and more like a lost opportunity for a publicity stunt.

Adding another mission to even a dead mass means a lot of effort and takes up valuable resources. It is nice to dream of every payload being able to do all things, but the reason a dead mass often goes up on a first launch is that the risk can be large, and losing a payload that has cost some serious money is not what launch services are about.

Some people, such as Jeff Wright, think that a successful, profitable business means that things are going too well for it and its owners. However, profit is the reward for finding better efficiencies than the competition, and when the competition is government then finding better efficiencies is easy. SpaceX was not challenged to make Falcon 9 more efficient as a launch system than ULA’s or Arianespace’s launch systems. SpaceX’s challenge was in making a booster stage inexpensively reusable with short turnaround time. These days SpaceX’s challenge is a fully reusable launch vehicle and also getting man to Mars, two challenges that government has not taken on. Government has pondered therm and thought, “too expensive.” SpaceX looks at them and thinks, “stretch goal.”

I have created a list of advantages of having a strong commercial space industry over government space industry:

1. Free market capitalism is our economic philosophy, preferred over central control by government. It shows the world that our economic system, freedom, and liberty work anywhere, even in space, even with the limitations of the draconian Outer Space Treaty that discourages our economic system.*

2. Free market capitalism pursues projects, exploration, and products that are expected to pay for themselves, becoming self sustaining.

3. Commercial space is less fickle than government space.** Using available resources, such as geostationary orbit, commercial space is motivated to stay.

4. Lightly regulated free markets result in competition, which result in reduced prices and satisfied customers.

5. Lower prices result in more customers, which encourages more companies, who innovate more efficiencies or improved products, which result in more customers.

6. Commercial space is motivated to pursue exploration that will produce revenue and profits, production that customers want and are willing to pay for.

7. Commercial space is motivated to explore space faster than government space agencies. Faster exploration means more products to offer customers.

8. Commercial companies doing their own things in space are forced to develop space-based products that benefit us on Earth.

9. Commercial space starts small just to get a revenue stream started, thus benefits begin quickly. Government space goes for the big final product; it took a decade to create the Space Shuttle, three decades to get an operational ISS, two decades for SLS, and over a decade for a JWST, all of which are very expensive.

10. Commercial space will find profits from going to the Moon and other places, building space stations, exploring the usefulness of space and free fall, and building space habitats or settlements. Profit is the reward for finding improved efficiencies in products that customers are willing to buy.

11. A competitive commercial space industry is motivated to continually improve products and services.

12. A competitive commercial space industry is motivated to optimize performance in relation to cost.

13. Commercial space has incentive to find better efficiencies to reduce costs or improve products.***

14. When governments run things, all we get is what the governments want. When the citizenry runs things, we get what we the citizens want.

15. Commercial space spends its own money for development, relieving the taxpayer from the burden of funding space projects.

16. Commercial space, because it spends its own money, has incentive to rapidly develop new technologies and methods, and to do this development at lower cost than government does.****

17. Commercial space can be more agile than government space. It can make changes to budgets and priorities faster than Congress can.

18. Commercial space can mine and manufacture in space, reducing the amount of pollution on Earth. In sixty years, government space operations have neither mined nor manufactured in space.

19. Free markets act to meet the demands and needs of the market. (In space, governments are still the major market customer.)

20. Free markets seek out new markets and new customers.

21. As commercial space becomes a larger economy than government space, governments will have less opportunity to choose winners and losers in the space industry.

22. Free markets weed out unsuccessful ideas and products. Resources stop being wasted on them.

23. Free markets eliminate inefficiencies and the companies that are least efficient. Government may operate as inefficiently as it pleases.

24. Price and demand are feedback for companies, helping to determine the supply needed, but governments may ignore demand and may charge all the traffic will bear.

25. ’There is far more capital available outside of NASA [for use by commercial space marketplace] than there is inside of NASA.’ — paraphrased from an interview with NASA Administrator Bridenstine on the Ben Shapiro radio show on Monday 3 August 2020.

26. Allowing commercial companies to do their own things in space allows government projects to explore the more basic scientific areas rather than the areas that show the most promise for profit.

27. New commercial companies tend to risk it all to develop new methods and products that advance the state of the art (wasn’t NASA going to do that?), and that is their strength. These new companies hope to get a jump on the competition and make a lot of money while everyone else is trying to catch up. SpaceX and Rocket Lab are doing this right now.

Freedom provides the opportunity to act on a variety of motivations.

* The French gifted the U.S., on her centennial, with the Statue of Liberty as a light shining onto the rest of the world to show the way to become as free and liberated as America. Due to a silly poem, many people misinterpret the statue’s purpose, thinking it is a beacon for the rest of the world to come to America.

** Project Apollo was abandoned after a decade, once going to the Moon bored the government. Commercial communications is going strong after more than half a century, and commercial observation after two decades. Commercial space will keep us from ending up like Apollo, abandoning a perfectly good opportunity just because government lost interest.

*** SpaceX rapidly reduced the cost of orbital launch, then further reduced the cost by recovering and reusing Falcon booster stages.

**** Constellation was cancelled after six years (with Ares 1 in validation testing phase), and its follow-on, SLS, is taking an additional dozen years until first launch. ISS was first proposed in 1982, first funded in 1984, first segments launched in 1999, and construction completed and declared operational in 2012, three decades and $100 billion later. Government seems more interested in space as a jobs program than as an exploration program. The Constellation and Artemis rockets and capsule are costing about $40 billion to develop over two decades. However, in addition to paying for more than 30 missions to ISS, commercial resupply and crew services cost around $12 billion to develop a rocket (Antares) and five spacecraft (Cygnus, Dragon, Starliner, Crew Dragon, and Dream Chaser), each developed in about half a decade.

That seems terribly unjust to the Red Planet.

That said, Ceres is certainly available…

When I was working on advanced batteries and electric vehicles in the early 80’s, our “secret lab” within the larger development company worked on non-core and non-Government contract work, coming up with new technologies. This is how you can keep some of the more talented or “bigger name” people on staff, happy and productive. Even my electronics group was allocated money for each technician to “play” and learn and keep our skills current, as well as come up with new ideas. That “playing around” ended up saving the company a lot of money and even more valuable time. And application proposals we were asked to look at, even if they didn’t go anywhere then, proved useful. One of my engineering studies became the basis of a plug-in hybrid the auto industry put into production, and one of the big military suppliers used it for a vehicle design as well.

The chance to work on something like a manned rover design, even if it’s just to study the problem and get ideas, has got to be attractive, and they certainly want to attract and keep this kind of talent. Elon could probably fund a start on it himself out of petty cash on a lark, but either or both companies ought to be doing it, maybe together, just on general business principles.

Read, for years but I lived on a bad network so I couldn’t comment.
reat work on your reporting.

However, once NACA became NASA, the focus changed from the commercial industry’s needs to the government’s needs. Because commercial needs were so ignored, it took half a century for commercial companies to begin finding any real funding in order to operate in space. Because government sees limited benefits for itself from space operations, expanding into space and exploring the resources of space have been limited for the three quarters of a century that man has had the capability to reach outer space. Government largely sees space as a resource for military needs, such as ballistic missiles, but space has also been used for national prestige, such as Russia putting the first person in space, America putting the first person on the Moon, and China trying to show that they can do it, too.

The exception to the government monopoly was the communication industry, which managed to get into the space business in the early 1960s. Communication, the transfer of information, is so important that it was easily profitable for satellite operators. Indeed, it took a third of a century for the first financial failure of communication satellites, with the bankruptcy of Iridium and Space Systems/Loral’s constellation.

Around 1980, rocket expert Robert Truax had wanted to found a commercial launch company, but he was unable to find funding, because the Space Shuttle was going to be so routine and low cost that no one dared fund a competitor to this government monopoly. Soon after Truax’s idea was rejected, the government declared that the Space Shuttle would be the sole supplier of American launch services. It was another quarter century before the government chose to begin encouraging good old American free market capitalism in space, when the U.S. president declared that commercial companies would take cargo to the ISS, and if that worked out then commercial companies would be allowed to carry astronauts to the ISS. It was 2008 that NASA first hired commercial operators to carry cargo to the ISS, and four years later this was demonstrated to work. In 2014, NASA hired commercial companies to carry astronauts to the ISS, but government was still reluctant to give up this power over its populace, so it took twice as long as expected for this service to begin.

In the 1960s, Americans expected NASA to do the things that commercial space is working toward today. In 1968, Americans thought it feasible that by the year 2001 Pan American Airlines might routinely ferry a couple dozen people to a large space station that had scores of workers producing benefits to earthlings, and a Starship-sized transport might routinely take dozens of people to a lunar base that had been built in an ancient lava tube. Instead, all we had was an expensive government shuttle that occasionally took a mere seven people to an expensive under-construction government space station that was still a decade away from having a capacity of six people who barely work on anything of benefit to earthlings. Two decades later, we still can only dream of lunar bases.

What little commercial space industry we have today still competes with each other for some small share of business that the government monopsony condescends to throw toward those commercial companies. We finally have some space companies that are designing their products for the commercial market and then convincing the government market that it works for them, too. Falcon 9 was designed to take commercial satellites to Geostationary Transfer Orbit, then SpaceX convinced NASA that it could take a cargo vessel to ISS orbit as well as supply that cargo vessel. SpaceX next convinced the Air Force that Falcon 9 could also carry their satellites to orbit, and then NASA again that it could carry a manned vessel to the ISS. Now SpaceX has convinced NASA that a vessel they are currently designing for other purposes can carry both men and materiel to and from the lunar surface.

Commercial space has had a four or five decade delay in getting started, and there are fewer companies working on it than we probably would have had four decades ago had it gotten its start in 1968. Some people still think that government should lead the way, but as we have seen, government hinders rather than helps, because Congress has little interest in having NASA develop the benefits that we can get from space resources. Which explains why the government-created Outer Space Treaty is itself such a hindrance.

Max asked: “But we are talking about musk! An Engineer with an army of electrical, mechanical, chemical, computer program engineers on his payroll. Does he get NASA to make another moon buggy?”

He gets SpaceX to make it. They may choose power and drives from Tesla, but much of what Tesla makes needs modification for off world use. Tesla’s engineers may not be as qualified as Max assumes. On the other hand, if NASA is contracting for the transporter, they likely will bid it among several companies.

“If you’re going to launch it to space, why a dead mass when something useful that wouldn’t normally be a high priority or worthy of the expenditure”

I explained that. It is nice to dream, but the reality can be very different. But to add to what I already said, what happens if the dream payload is not ready in time? What if someone comes up with yet another dream payload shortly before launch? How to handle all the complaints that one dream payload was chosen over another or for not flying a dream payload that no one thought of until after launch?

“As for a burden on the deep space network, musk already has hundreds of his own communication satellites with his own Purchased Radio frequencies.”

Starlink is both under powered for the job and pointed in the wrong direction. The configuration is not suitable, either.

Edward Said;
“I’m not sure that Tesla would be so eager to be distracted from its mission just to make a one-off unit that is outside its experience. Lunar and Martian rovers are designed very differently than Earthbound cars”

If it’s a distraction, there are others who have built them, and prototypes already made in a storage bin someplace. But we are talking about musk! An Engineer with an army of electrical, mechanical, chemical, computer program engineers on his payroll. Does he get NASA to make another moon buggy?
I think not because he will need functioning equipment specially tailored to moon and mars in the near future. I can think of no one else more qualified than the manufacturer of electric cars. He would do it just to test it in self driving mode just to show off how it can maneuver in and around obstacles.

“I keep reading suggestions that our space probes should do more than they do. Martian flight demonstrators, dead masses, and other missions should not become complicated nightmares”
“A dead mass should remain a dead mass rather than become a burden on the Deep Space Network for mere publicity”

I agree, but personally I can’t help but dream of something better, more purposeful. If you’re going to launch it to space, why a dead mass when something useful that wouldn’t normally be a high priority or worthy of the expenditure. College and universities have projects for a free flight with no expensive insurance required.

As for a burden on the deep space network, musk already has hundreds of his own communication satellites with his own Purchased Radio frequencies. With new laser communication, it’s more likely that his relay system will lighten the load rather than burden it.

If a human is going to Mars, there will be a lot of things that’s never been done before. Might as well use the opportunity to test out new Proto types. It will be fun! It may jeopardize the mission, but he will learn something. That’s why he keeps blowing up perfectly good ships…

Build it and then sell it. vs sell it and then build it.

Sort of like the auto industry.

The original video render did show the ALPACA launching on a Block 1B SLS. But since last year, Dynetics has been baselining on launching it on a Vulcan Centaur (one of the heaviest variants, no doubt). The refueling missions would also fly on Vulcans.

Link: https://spacenews.com/dynetics-to-use-in-space-refueling-for-nasa-lunar-lander/

At current rate of progress, Block 1B might be able to make an appearance in the 2030s. The fix is in, and SLS is the one that put it there by failure to perform, excess cost for a system that does not work, and not least by insulting the people that actually get things done. In short, the ones that are doing the most to kill SLS are the ones supposedly building it.

I’m not sure that Tesla would be so eager to be distracted from its mission just to make a one-off unit that is outside its experience. Lunar and Martian rovers are designed very differently than Earthbound cars.

“I have been upset because of the wasted opportunity that presented itself when they launched a Tesla car outside of earths orbit, without a scientific package! Like a remote sensing, ping radar, high gain telescope a board. A publicity stunt that would last years!”

I keep reading suggestions that our space probes should do more than they do. Martian flight demonstrators, dead masses, and other missions should not become complicated nightmares. Failure of a secondary mission becomes very likely, as it is of lesser importance and priority, and is seen in a very bad light as being publicity stunts that could damage reputations for years.

A dead mass should remain a dead mass rather than become a burden on the Deep Space Network for mere publicity.

Karl Ushanka wrote: “The NASA official who said, ‘NASA is now more open to innovation’ could have expanded that statement a bit. Perhaps: ‘NASA, a bloated govt-funded bureaucracy that quit with Apollo 17 in 1972, is now more open to innovation.’ Ya, that’s better.”

I see it a bit differently. After Apollo, which Congress reduced in scope even before Apollo 13, NASA intended to have an Apollo Applications Program (AAP) to do several great things in space until the Space Shuttle was ready. Instead, Congress, which holds the pursestrings and thus controls what NASA can do, squandered the knowledge, skills, and talents of NASA employees and contractors and prevented AAP past the Skylab space station. The Space Shuttle was also a political compromise that ruined its utility. The International Space Station (ISS) is barely what NASA had proposed to Congress, because Congress thought that $32 billion was too costly (instead, Congress funded the Russian participation for a total cost of three times what they originally rejected). Congress even thought themselves to be rocket scientists by directing NASA as to how to design SLS.

I am more in agreement with PR, who thinks this is NASA’s way of insisting that it be able to do stuff and once again accomplish great things. NASA going it alone, on Congress’s leash, has not gotten us very far, but many commercial space companies are eager to achieve accomplishments, and they believe that they can make profits (the reward for better efficiency) by doing more for less cost than the government-run space program has been doing. It is long past time for all the money that Congress has spent on NASA to finally bring us the commercial benefits from the research that we have paid for. Unleash the talent at NASA so that we all can benefit.

Jeff Wright asked: “Am I the only one who thinks things are going a little too well for Musk?”

Yes. Things are going well for SpaceX and Rocket Lab, because they both figured out how to get payloads to orbit more efficiently, for less cost and at a rapid cadence. This is what the Space Shuttle was supposed to do. SpaceX, Rocket Lab, NanoRacks, and other commercial companies are doing well, because they do not accept mediocre or poor performance but improve performance and efficiency whenever possible. Unlike government space, which is willing to put up with disappointing Space Shuttle performance for three decades and allows political considerations to drive up the cost and reduce the performance of ISS.

And that was hardly the end of their problems. Major cryogenic fluid management issues, mission sequencing problems, and lots of subsystems at low TRL’s. Quite surprising to see them with a low “marginal” technical rating, when in the first phase awards, NASA had given them the highest technical rating. I guess once Lueder’s people finally got to really look under the hood, the problems could not be hidden any longer.

Worse, their revised pricing made them the most expensive bidder.

Which is a shame, because I think the basic architecture was quite innovative and had some very attractive advantages.

When people see Starship in orbit around the moon and realize it can carry crew, SLS and Orion will be exposed as completely superfluous. All the new space companies going public may also create enough excitement in the right circles to make Congress pay attention. I think if Nelson senses which way the wind is blowing and realizes a lot of that money will come to Florida, he may acquiesce in NASA’s transformation. Fingers crossed.

Richard M: Yup, on all counts.

Exactly. In a sense this contract award mirrors the first cargo contract award to SpaceX and Kistler back in December 2008, at the very end of the Bush administration. The pro-capitalism faction in NASA realized that if they didn’t do it before the new Obama administration took power, they might never get the chance.

The irony is, it was Government Monster Rocket Enthusiast Mike Griffin who cooked up COTS. Of course, he had no intention of taking the idea any further, but hey – credit where credit is due.

The big surprise, though, was the emergence of a much more commercial space oriented faction with the new Obama Administration, led by Lori Garver. The Obama White House tried to get a tolerably pro-commercial Administrator, too, but unfortunately Bill Nelson kept swatting down candidates until he got the man he wanted — Charlie Bolden. Someone he could feel confident would stretch Shuttle out as long as possible, and keep the pork money flowing to Florida. In the end, Garver got her way, but only after letting Nelson and Shelby keep a Government Monster Rocket. Nelson and Shelby, of course, tried to renege on the deal by starving Commercial Crew as much as possible to divert the money to SLS, which in turn delayed Commercial Crew’s progress.

I disagree with Lori Garver on all sorts of things (and her old boss on even more) but I am grateful she ended up at NASA when she did. What happened yesterday was a major vindication for her, and everyone else in those days urging an entrepreneurial approach to space procurement – including, of course, guys like you and Rand. It took longer than it should have, but we finally got here.

I congratulate Elon Musk on winning the development contract. Her serves it. A big thing. Jeff, thank you very much for the appropriate comment above, especially for what you write at the end of your comment.

By the way, you also noticed that in the NASA announcement video (see link) only women and people of color appear as actors and moderators. The white man has been completely eliminated, although he created, and is essentially still creating, all of this technology. Isn’t that a new form of racism?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-sA3R4MWjA

I learned a long time ago not to get hopes up.

I would not have been surprised if NASA chose the guys at Dynetics–and them only. Which would have been a mistake. But Musk would have gone on with Lunar Starship anyway.

A smarter choice would have been to fully support Dynetics and Lunar Starship to hedge their bets.

My thinking WAS that the Lunar competition goes in one of two ways:

1.) My Alabama guys in Dynetics pull off a great achievement–kick it between the uprights (the solar panels do look like goalposts)–and Lunar Starship tumps over. Musk rethinks things–focuses on LEO and makes money making things in orbit–letting the big boys from ‘Bama do the heavy lifting for BEO. Rammer Jammer!

2.) Then too, the steely eyed missile men may very well have have lot their mojo–and wind up being rescued by Musk. Both fully funded–with Musk saying that while Apollo was good–it is time for the torch to be passed.

I’d be cool with either of the two outcomes. We settle things on the field of honor–the Moon now the greatest possible stage.

But now–there is a third option.

3.) Musk gets suborned into the Artemis narrative.

Lunar Starship lands–the NASA football facing the camera–the American flag and SpaceX logo very small.

The nice, woke female astronaut climbs down the ladder. Walks over to a camera where she looks taller than her ride–the globe of the Earth above her head.

She stands with arms akimbo–and talks about with her act, human spaceflight has met its conclusion. She then says that this (she points to the Earth) not this (she points to Starship) is now Humanities sole focus.

If she doesn’t return–a modified Safire letter kills human spaceflight even faster.

If she does lifts off, docks with Gateway and comes home with either Orion or Dragon (it won’t matter any more at that point which)–she writes a book about how she conquered that evil, outsized phallic symbol–and becomes the new media darling for the DNC–their new star.

Stennis is dynamited, SpaceX is shut down too–outside of launching weather sats–and Starlink is seized for global free internet–with approved content only. He’s from South Africa right? What better reparations than Starlink to unite the world under one message–one way of thought.

I can just **see** this outcome…..

PR wrote, “Their new SLS loving boss hasn’t on-boarded yet. They saw their chance and took it. More power to them.”

Exactly. In a sense this contract award mirrors the first cargo contract award to SpaceX and Kistler back in December 2008, at the very end of the Bush administration. The pro-capitalism faction in NASA realized that if they didn’t do it before the new Obama administration took power, they might never get the chance.

The big difference is that the pro-capitalism faction is now much larger at NASA, and in control. The choice of Biden-twin Nelson as administrator will do nothing to slow it down. And the choice of Melroy as deputy administrator might very well strengthen it.

On the other hand, Blue Origin, as well as most of Oldspace, is consistently failing to deliver. I mean, it’s been almost a year since the SpaceX crew flight, and Boeing Starliner still isn’t ready. Blue Origin can’t even do a properly compliant proposal, apparently. Reading between the lines on that one, that was just too blatant a “this isn’t a proposal to deliver, this is a proposal to milk change requests”, and that doesn’t fly anymore when SpaceX is actually succeeding at mission after mission.

Ah, to be relevant again.

The NASA official who said, “NASA is now more open to innovation” could have expanded that statement a bit. Perhaps: “NASA, a bloated govt-funded bureaucracy that quit with Apollo 17 in 1972, is now more open to innovation.” Ya, that’s better.

To me it looks like a finger in the eye to the SLS crew in Congress who intentionally short sold the commercial crew forcing it to be drug out for twice as long as needed if it had been fully funded. The same was going to happen to Artemis. The politically safe decision would have been to split the money between spacex and blue origin. That would also have meant virtually nothing would get done.

What NASA seems to have done here is to told Congress critters loud and clear “We want to actually do stuff. We want to build a lander and go to the moon. We are willing to also fund your preferred partners if you give us sufficient cash but if you don’t then the guys who build things get all the money and your boys get nothing. You don’t get to treat Artemis like you did commercial crew.”

Eddie Bernice Johnson and Ricard Shelby are retiring at the end of next year. Their new SLS loving boss hasn’t on-boarded yet. They saw their chance and took it. More power to them.

Richard M: More and more I really believe that people in Washington and NASA actually did read my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space [free pdf download]. With this decision they are accepting every single one of my recommendations. Every. Single. One.