[Moonbase-discuss] Gov. versus Private Space debate

[Peter Cheeseman]

Hi All,

    Sorry I have not contributed to the discussion so far--I have been
on travel, and only
just caught up with the government/private space discussion.  The
following is a quick
summary of the points I would like to make....

1) NASA is a large organization organization which does many
things..flies the shuttle,
runs the space station (ISS), explores the solar system (Voyager,
Pathfinder, Galileo, etc.),
observes the earth (Landsat, Eos-AM, etc.), operates space observatories
(Hubble,
Chandra, IRAS, etc.), to name a few.  My criticism was directed at
NASA's post Apollo efforts in space
launch capability, not all its activities (although I have strong
reservations about the
cost effectiveness of is Shuttle and ISS investments).  Essentially,
post Apollo, NASA has
not built or designed rockets, with the exception of the shuttle main
engine--a technical "success",
but an economic disaster.  All the expendable rockets, and the shuttle
servicing is done by
contractors, with oversight by NASA.  This oversight generally drives up
costs, without
contributing significantly to performance.  It is my view that NASA
should get out of the space
launch business itself, and should become instead a customer of
privately owned and operated space
launch providers.  This still leaves all of space science missions
(manned and unmanned) as
NASA's primary mission.  My primary reason for getting NASA out of the
rocket business,
is that getting into orbit is no longer a **technical** problem, but a
problem of **economics**.
The government list of failures in developing new rockets (e.g. X-33,
X-34, Delta-3, etc.) is
impressive--any commercial operation with this record would have gone
bankrupt long ago.
Government organizations have a poor historical record of doing things
cheaply, mainly because they
are not motivated by minimizing cost (or maximizing profit).  It is
possible to design, build and
launch very cheap expendable rockets, but not by using the extemely
complex (and costly) legacy
rockets from the 1950's (Delta, Atlas, Titan).  Throwing more money at
the same contractors who
operate these expensive dinosaurs, as NASA (SLI) and the Air Force
(EELV) are doing, is a very
poor investment, and is almost guaranteed to produce the same costly
failures as earlier such efforts.

2) I agree that **in principle** there should be no conflict between
private and government efforts
to develop space access.  In practice, however, the governments prior
investments not only have been
failures, but that act to scare potential investors away, as they do not
see the point in completing with
such deep pockets.  Most private rocket ventures to date have failed
primarily because of failed funding
(although some poor design choises helped).  By offering guaranteed
prices for current launch needs,
and getting out of the launch business, the government could make the
launch business a more attractive
proposition.

3) My preference for private over government launch capability is not
due to any political bias (if anything
I am mostly on the left side of the spectrum), but caused by direct
observation of NASA in operation.  It
has become so risk adverse, political and safety concious that almost
nothing innovative goes forward.

4) On a personal note, I want to add that my interest in cheap space
access is mainly motivated by the
realization that the long term survival of the human race depends on
getting off earth--sooner or later
weapons will become so powerful that their destructive range will reach
the scale of the planet.

---hope this contributes to the discussion....

Peter Cheeseman
=============