Next NASA prize announced

Then too, one could always say that the alt.spacers should go it alone if they really think they can do a better job. Griffin has enoughh problems with the VSE bashers to fool with a bunch of wanna-bes

Better not to do it at all rather than do it half heartedly. Dont raise people's expectations then sit on a fence.

This article says that most of the funding for prizes has been ripped off for other areas of NASA which would explain the lack of new prizes being announced.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=21363

It is from Rick Tumlinson at the Space Frontier Foundation so there is a certain vested interest ( I believe they administer some of the current prizes) but he makes a few good points.

I'm afraid I do angree with anything the man says. If he thinks private initiative is so much better than NASA--then swear off thei help. Otherwise --if you take the king's money--you march to his drumbeat

---and you'll like it.

Thats not so easy when NASA is vitually the only game in town. If the privates could get money from governments the same way that NASA does then they could compete but when you are forced to go through NASA for nearly all government funding (particularly in areas concerned with human spaceflight) then I can see they might have an axe to grind. Its pretty hard to compete with a government monopoly that does not have to adhere to the same set of rules (FAA approval for one).

And lets face it nearly everyone has a gripe with their employer at some point or another when they think they could do a better job.

Hello, Andy Hill,

yes - it's the the abuse and ellbow-behjaviour of might and power by those who have significantly more of them than others which is to be suspected and supposed.

There are very lots of experiences that the governments, their agencies and the politicians abuse their power to prevent the success of persons and private companies that can do something better and at less costs and financial requirments than the governmment and its agencies can.

There are experiences here in Germany, throughout the EU and in Asia at least. And especially companies are subject to the abuses that already have shown and proven that they can do it better, at less costs and less requirements.

The reasons very often are governmental fear and the politicians fear that they loose influence, power etc., the chance that they are proven to be wrong - which occurs again and again and their egoism(s).

Ther is no market in the free world where the abuse of pwoer of a monopolist on a market is legal and not against the laws. Everywhere power of monopolists is suspected to be abused - by law. In Germany the abuse of demand-side monopolist power quickly can result in the monopolist being forced to sell parts of the company, to have to pay a lot of money, to be supervised by the competition agencies and courts and even more.

Except for the government - the government(s) claim allways to right to that a degree that some laws mustn't be applied to them. To keep that within the constitution those laws explicitly limit the natural persons and persons by law so that those laws can't and mustn't be applied to the government(s).

Of course each one can take the government(s) to the court(s) to force down the abuse(s) - and they tend to win against the governbment(s). But this way costs asignificant amount.

Because of all this it is quite justified to suspect abuse of power by NASA and the government - and behind it the abuse of power by Lockheed Marttin, Boeing and the like is to be suspected.

It is possible to prove the abuse and/or to get rid of it. But again those abusing the power can and really do abuse their power to try to threat the privates from going to the court(s) - the threat consists simply in the refusal by the abusers to do business with those taking them to the courts.

Another way out might be the federation of the Alt.Spacers. This federation should be made an international one that assists and helps the mebers against abuse of power by governments and companies like Lockheed Martin.

And the federation might build and provide equipment llike NASA has that fits more and better into the requirments of the privates and thus increases and improves their independency from NASA.

...



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

We have a severely distorted economic model for the space launch “industryâ€

It just isn't smart to put money into COTS for more wonky little craft when that money is better spent on professionals.

Griffin knows what he is doing--which is why people hate him so. He isn't a pencil pushing hack--or a Gingritch/Libertarian-party neo-con who worships privatization at any price. So he won't be bullyed by people and dares to push back.

Good for him.

I've waited a long time to get a NASA Chief like him--the anti-Goldin.

After all, you know you're on target when you get the most flak.

If Griffin knows what he's doing, that's geart, but if the rest of NASA simply want to go on as in the past xx years, then that's no help at all imo. Privatization in itself is not 100% and government isn't either. They can't be. Government has an obligation to their workforce to keep their jobs and a private company has an 'obligation' to their shareholders to make money.

Imo a private enterprise is the lesser evil here. You can't get any solid advancements in a government agency with so many boundaries of so many people. A private business on the other hand wants and needs to make money. And to do that, they have to be better then their competition. How can that be a bad thing? Apart from money taking the upper-hand off course.

NASA is simply to big and way to bureaucratic do get anything done within a reasonable amount of time. Now i'm not saying i know anything about NASA, but that's the feel i get about them.

But hey, it aren't my taxes they flush down the toilet.

It may come as a surprise to you that NASA has a range of responsibilities and that many of them involve small payloads. Any agency investing in the option of $6.7 Million dollar Falcon 1 launches to replace $15 Million Pegasus launches is showing promising intelligent (DARPA and Air Force). Small payloads include tests of subsystems intended for larger projects since engineering projections for truly innovative technology are always imperfect.

The possibility that SpaceX can cluster their components and at least match Russian costs for cargo to ISS is also very attractive, for US dependence on Russia to sustain the “Internationalâ€

DART ISS assembly also costs. HLLVs are cheaper per pound and are their own value in terms of capability. They are an end in and of themselves, and can get large structures done and paying for themselves.

ISS would have been finished years ago had STS been modular like Buran/Energiya.

I don't see too many motorboats replacing one big oil tanker.

Your repeated reference to motorboats reveals classic “reduction to the absurdâ€

Yes, big rockets can launch big payloads at a lower PER POUND cost, but the cost PER LAUNCH is still higher than for the small rocket.

If you have a big payload, it is inefficient to launch it on a bunch of small rockets, but if you only have a small payload, it is REALLY stupid to use a big rocket to launch it.

The only thing going on here seems to be that publiusr doesn't give a $#!+ about small payloads. I believe that is wrong. Small payloads are extremely important. But I understand publiusr's frustration at our inability to launch big payloads. He really wants to do that but he can't do it alone because the project would be too big, and nobody (or not enough people) wants to help him because they just don't care. The advantage of the go small route is that you can just say, "The hell with everybody else, I'll just do it myself", and you and a few friends can really do that. The problem with Sea Dragon is that you need big engineering and lots of cooperation with lots of people, and if everyone does not agree with your plan, it never goes forward.

I feel your pain publiusr, but you really need to mellow out!

As I see it, the choice shouldn't be between small & expensive and big & very expensive, at 20% lower cost per pound. It should be between small, complicated & expensive and big, simple & expensive, at 80, 90 or 95% lower cost per pound.

Get there and you won't have to spend huge amounts of money making the PAYLOADS smaller and lighter.

But someone should definitely try SEA Dragon on a small scale, maybe a 100th scale version.

Now you're talking! We need existence proof that simpler really is cheaper. Then we scale up. The absolute worst disaster I could imagine for space would be for NASA or whoever to build a full scale big dumb booster that turned out, for reasons nobody foresaw, to be just as expensive as the big complex rocket.

And a small cheap rocket would have value. A delta size rocket that could only launch a few pounds, but do it dirt cheap, would have thousands of customers, like every student in aerospace launching his own microsat as a senior project.