NASA requests industry proposals for its canceled satellite refueling demo mission
NASA today issued a request-for-information, asking the commercial aerospace industry for “alternate use” ideas for using the “flight hardware, test facilities, and experienced personnel” of its canceled satellite refueling demo mission, dubbed OSAM.
The request suggests NASA is hoping a private company will pick up the mission at its own cost, thus getting it off NASA’s hands. The agency canceled it because it is almost a decade behind schedule, hundreds of millions of dollars over-budget, and has an absurd workforce of 450 people. The agency is also under pressure from the Senate not to cancel the project, because our idiotic elected officials like to make-believe that funding these make-work projects accomplishes something.
Even if a private company takes on the project, if it does so at its own expense that workforce is certain to be reduced, possibly as much as 90%. No commercial satellite company is going to get saddled with that cost. It will want NASA to pay the bill.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
NASA today issued a request-for-information, asking the commercial aerospace industry for “alternate use” ideas for using the “flight hardware, test facilities, and experienced personnel” of its canceled satellite refueling demo mission, dubbed OSAM.
The request suggests NASA is hoping a private company will pick up the mission at its own cost, thus getting it off NASA’s hands. The agency canceled it because it is almost a decade behind schedule, hundreds of millions of dollars over-budget, and has an absurd workforce of 450 people. The agency is also under pressure from the Senate not to cancel the project, because our idiotic elected officials like to make-believe that funding these make-work projects accomplishes something.
Even if a private company takes on the project, if it does so at its own expense that workforce is certain to be reduced, possibly as much as 90%. No commercial satellite company is going to get saddled with that cost. It will want NASA to pay the bill.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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