4 ms·

This situations represents a failure to understand economics. From the moon race to the period of the XPrize, and even after, NASA and the FCC has stymied priv

by nirvana 15y ago

This situations represents a failure to understand economics. From the moon race to the period of the XPrize, and even after, NASA and the FCC has stymied private access to space. It is hard to test a launch vehicle if you can't get a launch or even testing (e.g.: static firing) permits. It is hard to start a space tourism business if the person developing your vehicles is barred from showing the CEO of the company the designs (as happened to Virgin Galactic for a couple years because Richard Branson is not a US citizen!) This should resonate really well with anyone building a startup. A startup is a money engine. You find something that is profitable, and you invest in it and grow it. You can go out and spend a lot of money doing things the manual way, but if everything pretty much stops when you stop spending money, you're not really investing in a sustainable business. This is the case with NASA and a lot of government programs. We were spending a lot of money, but we were not building a space industry... in fact, because government bureaucrats saw space as a competitive advantage (NASA, for instance, long enjoyed easy funding from Congress) they worked to stymie private interests that might show them up. It is great that things are changing now. We have SpaceX building launch vehicles. Virgin Galactic will start their business any day now (hopefully, though remember how congress wanted to shut it down because it might not be "safe"?) Jeff Bezos is doing something off in the desert of west texas, and even John Carmack has a small space business. But we cannot ignore the legacy of hundreds of billion sunk into NASA on unsustainable programs, and quirky launch vehicles designed to meet bureaucratic needs, such as to at least have one component of it built in each of the 50 states. So, the news that NASA is in an "embarrassing" state to me, is good news. I say this, because I would very much like to see Humans have ready access to space.

TechNewb 15y ago
"First of all, let’s clarify what the NASA budget is. Do you realize that the $850 billion dollar bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50-year running budget of NASA? -Neil deGrasse Tyson" http://wp.me/p1bnM2-qW http://wp.me/p1bnM2-qW
- dimitar 15y ago
  Eventually the US government will sell back the banks and make some income, so its hardly comparable. Sweden in the early nineties did this and they recovered more than half their money. The bailouts were a necessary step to prevent severe economic crisis - they amounted to just 6% percent of GDP. Clearly worth it, when considering what is at stake here.
  - redrobot5050 15y ago
    >Eventually the US government will sell back the banks and make some income, so its hardly comparable. Sweden in the early nineties did this and they recovered more than half their money. Compared to what America got out of the space race, the bailout was a complete waste. America got something like 100X their ROI in going into space. Major investments in materials science, aerospace engineering, battery technology, computer technology, their probably isn't a product today on the market that isn't using some kind of "space age technology" that ultimately came about because of NASA's space race. So the space race was clearly worth it. The bank bailout is still clearly debatable. I would argue that because the banks turned around and paid out bonuses, that we should have placed the banks into receivership and re-structured them. In our post-bailout system, the banks have grown even more concentrated and reform is pretty much a failure. We're set up to be "way too big to fail" next time around. When that happens, we won't be talking about "getting half our money back" and saying it was a "good deal".
    - tsotha 15y ago
      >Compared to what America got out of the space race, the bailout was a complete waste. America got something like 100X their ROI in going into space. Oh please. This isn't even close to being true. If you actually go down the list of things NASA fans claim to be commercial space development, what you find is a whole lot of half truths and exaggerations. The space race was expensive, and we never even came close to recouping what we spent. You can try to justify it on scientific grounds, but the space race was clearly not worth it from an economic perspective.
- jen_h 15y ago
  Seriously. Two weeks ago, the GRAIL project sent two satellites on a Delta 2 to the moon. To the MOON. The entire mission, soup to nuts, cost 496 million dollars. To put this in perspective, with this cash, we could have also purchased one of the following: - Two F-35s - .07% of the TARP bank bailout - Half of Groupon's Series D I'd rather go to the moon.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    Sounds like a lot just for the Moon. The whole Juno mission to Jupiter is currently budgeted at a mere $371.1 million. (Or for $500 million, we could give a loan guarantee to Solyndra and watch it go bankrupt!)
- equark 15y ago
  This statement is false. TARP cost $19 billion compared to NASA at $18.5 billion per year. http://www.housingwire.com/2011/03/30/cbo-drops-estimate-of-tarp-cost-to-19-billion http://www.housingwire.com/2011/03/30/cbo-drops-estimate-of-...
  - melling 15y ago
    Also, aren't companies suppose to be paying the TARP money back? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program
  - dhugiaskmak 15y ago
    His number is way too small, if anything. There was an awful lot more to the bailout of the US economy than the TARP program. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristoc...
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
anigbrowl 15y ago
government bureaucrats saw space as a competitive advantage Military strategists saw space as a competitive advantage. Although I agree with you about the problems with NASA and the need for more private participation, overlooking the military heritage of the space program undermines your whole analysis.
krschultz 15y ago
"It is hard to start a space tourism business if the person developing your vehicles is barred from showing the CEO of the company the designs (as happened to Virgin Galactic for a couple years because Richard Branson is not a US citizen" For the military, that is a feature not a bug.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Launch#Concerns_and_investigations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Launch#Concerns_and_investi... Realize anyone with the ability to get to orbit has the ability to drop things on the USA. Contrary to popular belief, the people in government who make laws and control regulation are not bumbling idiots. Sure, it's easy to make jokes about the DMV or the post office, but the reality is that the person at the counter you interact with doesn't make laws. The guys making laws are generally really sharp and well educated, and in fact a lot of them actually have economics degrees because it is a great background for that position. So they probably understand better than you or I roughly how many jobs are going to be killed by these tight regulations. That is weighed against the military's desire to keep space less open for security reasons. For a long time the military was winning the argument. It has slowly started changing, but the delay certainly has nothing to do with a mis-understanding of economics.
- mkn 15y ago
  "Contrary to popular belief, the people in government who make laws and control regulation are not bumbling idiots." Actually, in the case of the export restriction laws in question, they were bumbling idiots. These laws were passed in haste after there was an accidental disclosure of technology from the U.S. to the Chinese during an investigation of a launch failure. The law is terribly vague, with industry leaders unable to tell even what is covered by it or isn't. Additionally, enforcement responsibility moved from the Commerce Department to the Defense Department, with a concomitant increase in red tape that really only a large prime defense contractor could have the resources to cope with. It would not be too much of a stretch to say that this law would be like outlawing airline travel completely on the basis of security concerns arising out of 9/11. Finally, the arguments that will bring about a much needed change to these regulations will not be economic in nature, they will be arguments about national security. Already there is an international market for technologies untainted by U.S. control. Unfortunately for the U.S., the need for that market is going away as U.S. companies have been isolated for so long, and other nations have been so free to cooperate for so long, that non-U.S. space technology is, for the most part, superior to U.S. technology on cost, reliability, and performance bases. We, the U.S., are losing the larger security war by winning every local security battle with senseless and callous efficiency.

by nirvana 15y ago

TechNewb 15y ago

"First of all, let’s clarify what the NASA budget is. Do you realize that the $850 billion dollar bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50-year running budget of NASA? -Neil deGrasse Tyson" http://wp.me/p1bnM2-qW http://wp.me/p1bnM2-qW

dimitar 15y ago
Eventually the US government will sell back the banks and make some income, so its hardly comparable. Sweden in the early nineties did this and they recovered more than half their money. The bailouts were a necessary step to prevent severe economic crisis - they amounted to just 6% percent of GDP. Clearly worth it, when considering what is at stake here.
- redrobot5050 15y ago
  >Eventually the US government will sell back the banks and make some income, so its hardly comparable. Sweden in the early nineties did this and they recovered more than half their money. Compared to what America got out of the space race, the bailout was a complete waste. America got something like 100X their ROI in going into space. Major investments in materials science, aerospace engineering, battery technology, computer technology, their probably isn't a product today on the market that isn't using some kind of "space age technology" that ultimately came about because of NASA's space race. So the space race was clearly worth it. The bank bailout is still clearly debatable. I would argue that because the banks turned around and paid out bonuses, that we should have placed the banks into receivership and re-structured them. In our post-bailout system, the banks have grown even more concentrated and reform is pretty much a failure. We're set up to be "way too big to fail" next time around. When that happens, we won't be talking about "getting half our money back" and saying it was a "good deal".
  - tsotha 15y ago
    >Compared to what America got out of the space race, the bailout was a complete waste. America got something like 100X their ROI in going into space. Oh please. This isn't even close to being true. If you actually go down the list of things NASA fans claim to be commercial space development, what you find is a whole lot of half truths and exaggerations. The space race was expensive, and we never even came close to recouping what we spent. You can try to justify it on scientific grounds, but the space race was clearly not worth it from an economic perspective.
jen_h 15y ago
Seriously. Two weeks ago, the GRAIL project sent two satellites on a Delta 2 to the moon. To the MOON. The entire mission, soup to nuts, cost 496 million dollars. To put this in perspective, with this cash, we could have also purchased one of the following: - Two F-35s - .07% of the TARP bank bailout - Half of Groupon's Series D I'd rather go to the moon.
- hugh3 15y ago
  Sounds like a lot just for the Moon. The whole Juno mission to Jupiter is currently budgeted at a mere $371.1 million. (Or for $500 million, we could give a loan guarantee to Solyndra and watch it go bankrupt!)
equark 15y ago
This statement is false. TARP cost $19 billion compared to NASA at $18.5 billion per year. http://www.housingwire.com/2011/03/30/cbo-drops-estimate-of-tarp-cost-to-19-billion http://www.housingwire.com/2011/03/30/cbo-drops-estimate-of-...
- melling 15y ago
  Also, aren't companies suppose to be paying the TARP money back? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program
- dhugiaskmak 15y ago
  His number is way too small, if anything. There was an awful lot more to the bailout of the US economy than the TARP program. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristoc...
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]

anigbrowl 15y ago

government bureaucrats saw space as a competitive advantage Military strategists saw space as a competitive advantage. Although I agree with you about the problems with NASA and the need for more private participation, overlooking the military heritage of the space program undermines your whole analysis.

krschultz 15y ago

"It is hard to start a space tourism business if the person developing your vehicles is barred from showing the CEO of the company the designs (as happened to Virgin Galactic for a couple years because Richard Branson is not a US citizen" For the military, that is a feature not a bug.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Launch#Concerns_and_investigations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Launch#Concerns_and_investi... Realize anyone with the ability to get to orbit has the ability to drop things on the USA. Contrary to popular belief, the people in government who make laws and control regulation are not bumbling idiots. Sure, it's easy to make jokes about the DMV or the post office, but the reality is that the person at the counter you interact with doesn't make laws. The guys making laws are generally really sharp and well educated, and in fact a lot of them actually have economics degrees because it is a great background for that position. So they probably understand better than you or I roughly how many jobs are going to be killed by these tight regulations. That is weighed against the military's desire to keep space less open for security reasons. For a long time the military was winning the argument. It has slowly started changing, but the delay certainly has nothing to do with a mis-understanding of economics.

mkn 15y ago
"Contrary to popular belief, the people in government who make laws and control regulation are not bumbling idiots." Actually, in the case of the export restriction laws in question, they were bumbling idiots. These laws were passed in haste after there was an accidental disclosure of technology from the U.S. to the Chinese during an investigation of a launch failure. The law is terribly vague, with industry leaders unable to tell even what is covered by it or isn't. Additionally, enforcement responsibility moved from the Commerce Department to the Defense Department, with a concomitant increase in red tape that really only a large prime defense contractor could have the resources to cope with. It would not be too much of a stretch to say that this law would be like outlawing airline travel completely on the basis of security concerns arising out of 9/11. Finally, the arguments that will bring about a much needed change to these regulations will not be economic in nature, they will be arguments about national security. Already there is an international market for technologies untainted by U.S. control. Unfortunately for the U.S., the need for that market is going away as U.S. companies have been isolated for so long, and other nations have been so free to cooperate for so long, that non-U.S. space technology is, for the most part, superior to U.S. technology on cost, reliability, and performance bases. We, the U.S., are losing the larger security war by winning every local security battle with senseless and callous efficiency.