LEO Industry vs Socialist Space Program WAS: ( Socialists in Space)

Geoffrey A. Landis wrote:

In fact, by your definitions the space launch record to date has been
socialists 100, capitalists zero.


Yes, and that's the reason for the extremely slow pace, if not stagnant, of
human space travel. We're coming up on the 100 year anniversary of heavier
than air human flight, which most definitely occurred under a capitalist
system. We're also coming up on the fiftieth anniversary of human space
travel.

When you compare the two what do you get. In the first fifty years there
were hundreds of companies producing thousands (probably tens of thousands)
of designs of different aircraft. A broad base of a huge pyramid of
capitalist endeavor, all trying to build a better aircraft. At the end of
fifty years, commercial air travel was a reality and a thriving aerospace
industry had developed. This huge base of a capitalist pyramid is what got
us to where we are today. Many of the companies went broke, others merged,
and some were bought out. Like a huge Darwinian evolutionary process,
capturing the creativity and innovation of a thousands different people to
go higher, faster, longer, larger, cheaper, safer.

Now we compare this to our "Socialist" space programs. It's not a pyramid,
but a tower, like the tower of Babel. It can only go so high before the
base can't support the weight above. One design, built on the top of
another, with only seven floors. In the first fifty years of human space
travel what do we have? Four different US vehicles, two Russian, and one
Chinese. You don't even have to use all your fingers to count them. All
creativity and innovation stifled, in a Socialist bureaucratic maze where
if you can't prove your concept to a hundred different mediocre people
whose best skill is a social one (they've got great social skills to move
up the bureaucrat ladder), it never gets tried. At best, it only gets
studied for a little while. Why? Like the tower of Babel, all that can be
heard at the top of bureaucratic heap is the roar of thousand different
voices all trying to build the next floor in a different direction,
pulling, pushing, twisting, shoving. Trying to get the attention of the
person at the top of the heap, whose trying to decide how to build the next
floor. But he's constrained by what was built before, we can only go as
high as the very narrow base (of tax dollars) will support.

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit Washington DC. First time in
twenty years or so. If you walk around the Smithsonian Institute Air and
Space Museum, you wom't see two of same aircraft anywhere. There are so
many aircraft, they can't possibly display them all, let alone possess one
of each. Then you look at human space travel. There is such a vacuum that
the Smithsonian has to have two Gemini and two Apollo capsules. Two of the
exact same thing, in the same building because there isn't enough variety
to choose from.

I also had the opportunity to attend a Senate Hearing. That was interesting
too. The last speaker on the panel, when asked how we should respond to the
first manned flight of China essentially said, "Should we respond to the
Chinese socialist space program with our own socialist space program, or
should we respond with a capitalist space program?" We've already got a
socialist space program, and it's crawling along at a snails pace.

NASA should get out of the business of going to Low Earth Orbit and buy
tickets. Preferably from a thriving capitalist space industry where they
have tens, if not hundreds of choices of vehicles to choose from. When
astronauts returns from the Space Station, they should be filling out an
expense report that contains the price of a ticket to go to and from the
Space Station. Just like they do when they do when they go to Washington
to lobby for more funding.

Getting NASA out of the LEO business (not even an industry) would free them
up to do the things that the American people want to see. Manned
exploration, which could also be used to prime the pump to a future
thriving LEO space industry (much larger than a space program). One that
doesn't use tax dollars, but creates them.

Craig Fink

Craig Fink wrote:

When you compare the two what do you get. In the first fifty years there
were hundreds of companies producing thousands (probably tens of
thousands) of designs of different aircraft. A broad base of a huge
pyramid of capitalist endeavor, all trying to build a better aircraft. At
the end of fifty years, commercial air travel was a reality and a thriving
aerospace industry had developed. This huge base of a capitalist pyramid
is what got us to where we are today. Many of the companies went broke,
others merged, and some were bought out. Like a huge Darwinian
evolutionary process, capturing the creativity and innovation of a
thousands different people to go higher, faster, longer, larger, cheaper,
safer.

You're ignoring the impact of two world wars, both of which resulted in
huge advances in aerospace technology, primarily as a result of a deluge of
government funding. To ignore the impact of government intervention (from
establishing subsidies for air mail deliveries, land grants for airports
and military airfields, research subsidies, etc) is naive.



--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
Remove invalid nonsense for email.

Craig Fink wrote:





When you compare the two what do you get. In the first fifty years there
were hundreds of companies producing thousands (probably tens of thousands)
of designs of different aircraft. A broad base of a huge pyramid of
capitalist endeavor, all trying to build a better aircraft. At the end of
fifty years, commercial air travel was a reality and a thriving aerospace
industry had developed.


Don't forget how much of the drive to build better aircraft was driven
by the desire to sell them to the military, and how much R&D money came
from the government for that purpose, as well as the sales to the
government that kept the companies in business. With the exception of
Boeing, Ford and Douglas, the major aircraft companies were all
dependent on military aircraft sales to maintain their existence. Then
there is NACA- which was government funded, and did a tremendous amount
of basic research that aircraft companies used in their new designs.
(wing profiles, ring cowlings for radial engines, the area rule, etc.)

Pat

OK, I'm back again....

Surely, the reason for the boom in flight was that applications could be
seen for the technology, and the development costs were seen as OK for the
potential returns.

In the space arena, some commercial space involvement is profitable after
all, the comms sats are nearly all commercial. Commercial enterprises will
cherry pick, you won't find them doing science for its own sake, and sadly
men in space has yet to have a cost effective use as far as the bean
counters are concerned, so end of story.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff....
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
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Herb Schaltegger lid wrote in message ...
To ignore the impact of government intervention (from
establishing subsidies for air mail deliveries, land grants for airports
and military airfields, research subsidies, etc) is naive.

Which is precisely why, if NASA is going to continue to exist, they
should be buying launch services from private companies rather than
building their own spacecraft... provided that can be made to work
without it becoming a welfare program to current aerospace companies.

Mark

In article ,
Brian Gaff wrote:
Surely, the reason for the boom in flight was that applications could be
seen for the technology, and the development costs were seen as OK for the
potential returns.

Less so than you would think. The US airlines and aviation industry were
jump-started by government air-mail contracts, which were explicitly meant
to encourage the advancement of aviation -- there was not that much actual
customer demand, at the start, for really fast mail delivery. (Some, but
not much.)

Beware of thinking that because an application seems obvious now, it was
equally obvious and immediately marketable then. History is full of cases
of markets that were obvious only in hindsight. Nobody thought there was
a market for shipping Texas cattle to Eastern stockyards by rail, until
Joe McCoy tried it and discovered that the biggest problem was getting
railroad cars built fast enough to match growth in demand.

The application which could be seen for flight technology -- the reason
why the US government wanted to encourage its advancement -- was military.
Likewise for the Interstate Highway system: there was little commercial
market for long-range road transport -- long-haul freight and passengers
went by rail -- but the military wanted a national transportation system
that was less vulnerable to air attack than the railroads.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

In Mark wrote:
Which is precisely why, if NASA is going to continue to exist, they
should be buying launch services from private companies

They do.

rather than building their own spacecraft.

Spacecraft and launch vehicles are two different kinds of objects, of
course... but NASA buys both commercially.



--
Geoffrey A. Landis
http://www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis

Geoffrey A. Landis wrote:
rather than building their own spacecraft.

Spacecraft and launch vehicles are two different kinds of objects, of
course... but NASA buys both commercially.

NASA buys both via the Government Procurement Process,
from for-profit companies.

'commercially' is ... not right.


-george william herbert

In article ,
Geoffrey A. Landis wrote:
Which is precisely why, if NASA is going to continue to exist, they
should be buying launch services from private companies

They do.

Sometimes, and sometimes not. Shuttle launch is quite attractive to
projects within NASA, even when there is nothing in the project which
requires manned presence, because full costs are not charged back (and
are difficult even to determine). Witness plans for shuttle launches
for things like Triana and X-37.

The proposal is that NASA should buy *all* its launch services from
outside suppliers.

rather than building their own spacecraft.

Spacecraft and launch vehicles are two different kinds of objects, of
course... but NASA buys both commercially.

Sometimes, and sometimes not. Even when NASA does buy them, the process
is semi-commercial at best, with "qualified supplier" rules often limiting
bidding to the government's captive design bureaus.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

"Geoffrey A. Landis" wrote in message
...
In Mark wrote:
Which is precisely why, if NASA is going to continue to exist, they
should be buying launch services from private companies

They do.

rather than building their own spacecraft.

Spacecraft and launch vehicles are two different kinds of objects, of
course... but NASA buys both commercially.



--
Geoffrey A. Landis
http://www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis

NASA is supposed to develop technologies that aren't yet economically
profitable. Which they WOULD do, if they ever finished a program they
started.

Patrick