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The Non-Innovator's Dilemma



 
 
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  #71  
Old September 26th 03, 08:10 AM
Rand Simberg
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Posts: n/a
Default The Non-Innovator's Dilemma: talk is cheap, innovation is hard.

On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 00:52:05 CST, in a place far, far away,
(Tom Merkle) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..


Why should NASA bethe organisation that will act as a government subsidy
dispenser for some loser who cannot get his act and business plan together?


Why should we assume that the problem is "some loser who cannot get
his act and business plan together"?

because there's no law against offering launch services to NASA--you
can do it tomorrow if you have the ability to carry it out.


There's also no law requiring them to purchase your services. I'm not
sure what your point is.

And you are wrong anyways - you can buy manned space access now and the price
very probably reflects present demand.


That's utter nonsense.


Two private citizens have paid the cheapest price on the market for
manned access to space. How is this nonsense?


Because the supply isn't satisfying the demand.

It's called supply and
demand.


No, it's called supply not satisfying demand.

Just how ignorant are you of economics?

If soyuz flights were more frequent, they would have paid
less.


Not much.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax)
http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

  #72  
Old September 26th 03, 02:35 PM
Len
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Default The Non-Innovator's Dilemma: talk is cheap, innovation is hard.

(Tom Merkle) wrote in message m...
(Len) wrote in message . com...
(Tom Merkle) wrote in message om...
h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..
http://www.techcentralstation.com/091903E.html
cheaper (although it may be *more* expensive, as your article


...snip...

Rand, what planet are you from? What is the agency doing that
frustrates the "pent-up demand for public space travel?" (Cue dodging
that direct question with a vague response that inverts the issue, to
something along the lines of 'not encouraging the private sector...
enough...')Let me preemptively ask you a follow-up: WHAT COULD NASA
ACTUALLY DO BETTER OR DIFFERENT THAT WOULD HELP PUBLIC SPACE TRAVEL?

Easy, get out of the space transportation business
that NACA would never have gotten into.

Best regards,
Len (Cormier)



Do your part, Len. Provide a working alternative, and NASA will beat a
path to your door.

Respectfully,

Tom Merkle


Actually, Tom, I think that you are basically right.
I think that most of the problems with NASA are
inadvertent--not maliciously planned. However, an
NACA environment would make private investment far
more attractive.

In the mid-1970's, I had some promising contacts
with potential investors with respect to a solar
energy project. However, the government then
announced that they were planning to spend billions
of dollars developing solar energy. That killed
any investor interest for my project and many other
projects. The net result was a lot of bureaucratic
shuffling for positions at ERDA for two years. Then
the formation af DoE and another two years of
bureaucratic shuffling. Finally, they came out with
an SBIR-type announcement and funded about 4 percent
of the resulting proposals. All this essentially
killed off a lot of promising private projects. It
even killed off some quite worthwhile government
projects at the National Science Foundation and HUD.

Best regards,
Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc. and Third Millennium Aerospace, Inc.
( http://www.tour2space.com )

  #73  
Old September 26th 03, 07:05 PM
Sander Vesik
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default The Non-Innovator's Dilemma: talk is cheap, innovation is hard.

In sci.space.policy Rand Simberg wrote:
On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 00:52:05 CST, in a place far, far away,
(Tom Merkle) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..


Why should NASA bethe organisation that will act as a government subsidy
dispenser for some loser who cannot get his act and business plan together?

Why should we assume that the problem is "some loser who cannot get
his act and business plan together"?

because there's no law against offering launch services to NASA--you
can do it tomorrow if you have the ability to carry it out.


There's also no law requiring them to purchase your services. I'm not
sure what your point is.


There is no law either requiring that your local supermarket buy produce from
more than one supplier or for that matter, that it didn't buy all foodstuff
only from its own subsidiaries.


And you are wrong anyways - you can buy manned space access now and the price
very probably reflects present demand.

That's utter nonsense.


Two private citizens have paid the cheapest price on the market for
manned access to space. How is this nonsense?


Because the supply isn't satisfying the demand.


Its not? There is basicly zero demand for space access as things stand.
Increasing supply will not help because guess what - people will still
not have anywhere interesting to go in space and thus don't care.

Artificialy increasing supply by governemt subsidises will not change this.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

  #74  
Old September 26th 03, 07:46 PM
Sander Vesik
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default The Non-Innovator's Dilemma: talk is cheap, innovation is hard.

In sci.space.policy Rand Simberg wrote:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 18:49:43 CST, in a place far, far away, Sander
Vesik made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

And as long as there's no customer for it, there never will be. NASA
could be a chicken to the egg, or the egg to the chicken, but right
now it's not even in the henhouse.


Why should NASA bethe organisation that will act as a government subsidy
dispenser for some loser who cannot get his act and business plan together?


Why should we assume that the problem is "some loser who cannot get
his act and business plan together"?


If he wasn't he wouldn't need to rely on a handful of launches per year
that NASA will provide him. Haven't you noticed just how small number of
trips to space NASA has per year? There is no evidence they would want
radicaly more, no matter how low the cost. There just aren't interesting
places to go to on earth orbit.


This will not give you any additional capability or reliability over present
and will incur additional costs, esp as the entity will essentialy be able
to raise its price arbitrarily and would not need to bother about any kind
of oversight.


Who said there would be a monopoly?


The fact that it will be managed by NASA on behalf of US government? US has one
of the worst track records for making sure they aren't dealing with a single
supplier.


And you are wrong anyways - you can buy manned space access now and the price
very probably reflects present demand.


That's utter nonsense.


Care to substaniate your claim that in a high-demand environment cost of a
space-ride in Soyuz would not go down?

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

  #75  
Old September 26th 03, 08:27 PM
Rand Simberg
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default The Non-Innovator's Dilemma: talk is cheap, innovation is hard.

On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 12:46:32 CST, in a place far, far away, Sander
Vesik made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In sci.space.policy Rand Simberg wrote:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 18:49:43 CST, in a place far, far away, Sander
Vesik made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

And as long as there's no customer for it, there never will be. NASA
could be a chicken to the egg, or the egg to the chicken, but right
now it's not even in the henhouse.


Why should NASA bethe organisation that will act as a government subsidy
dispenser for some loser who cannot get his act and business plan together?


Why should we assume that the problem is "some loser who cannot get
his act and business plan together"?


If he wasn't he wouldn't need to rely on a handful of launches per year
that NASA will provide him. Haven't you noticed just how small number of
trips to space NASA has per year? There is no evidence they would want
radicaly more, no matter how low the cost.


Of course there's not. That doesn't mean that a change in policy
couldn't change that.

There just aren't interesting
places to go to on earth orbit.


That's your opinion. There are many people who don't share it.

This will not give you any additional capability or reliability over present
and will incur additional costs, esp as the entity will essentialy be able
to raise its price arbitrarily and would not need to bother about any kind
of oversight.


Who said there would be a monopoly?


The fact that it will be managed by NASA on behalf of US government? US has one
of the worst track records for making sure they aren't dealing with a single
supplier.


Which is what has to change.


And you are wrong anyways - you can buy manned space access now and the price
very probably reflects present demand.


That's utter nonsense.


Care to substaniate your claim that in a high-demand environment cost of a
space-ride in Soyuz would not go down?


I've never made such a claim.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

  #76  
Old September 26th 03, 08:27 PM
Rand Simberg
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default The Non-Innovator's Dilemma: talk is cheap, innovation is hard.

On 26 Sep 2003 18:05:00 GMT, in a place far, far away, Sander Vesik
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

because there's no law against offering launch services to NASA--you
can do it tomorrow if you have the ability to carry it out.


There's also no law requiring them to purchase your services. I'm not
sure what your point is.


There is no law either requiring that your local supermarket buy produce from
more than one supplier or for that matter, that it didn't buy all foodstuff
only from its own subsidiaries.


My local supermarket is not a government agency, funded by my tax
dollars, with powerful political constituencies.

And you are wrong anyways - you can buy manned space access now and the price
very probably reflects present demand.

That's utter nonsense.


Two private citizens have paid the cheapest price on the market for
manned access to space. How is this nonsense?


Because the supply isn't satisfying the demand.


Its not? There is basicly zero demand for space access as things stand.
Increasing supply will not help because guess what - people will still
not have anywhere interesting to go in space and thus don't care.


And you know this nonsense (which is in opposition to every public
opinion poll and market research study ever done on the subject) how?

Artificialy increasing supply by governemt subsidises will not change this.


Fortunately, it doesn't have to. Apparently you're as ignorant about
demand for space travel as you are about current conditions in Iraq.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

  #77  
Old September 27th 03, 03:09 AM
johnmontgomery11
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default The Non-Innovator's Dilemma: talk is cheap, innovation is hard.

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 11:28:13 CST, in a place far, far away,
(Tom Merkle) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..
On 24 Sep 2003 08:15:01 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Tom Merkle) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

WHAT COULD NASA
ACTUALLY DO BETTER OR DIFFERENT THAT WOULD HELP PUBLIC SPACE TRAVEL?

It could be a better customer, with more ambition for manned
spaceflight than sending a few government employees a year. It could
stop wasting billions on dead-end projects.


Personally I think sending more than a few government employees into
space a year should be funded by the private sector. The private
sector is likeliest to come up with the total system that works the
best and cheapest for a continuing space effort.


I agree.

Allowing a committee
at NASA to pick commercial 'winners' and 'losers' who get limited
contracts results in risk-averse, expensive approaches that are
unsustainable when separated from government funding.


Who proposed that?

My point is that the whole idea of "amortizing development costs" is
meaningless when development costs are so intertwined with operating
costs. The idea of a separate "development phase" followed by an
"operational phase" is one that is lifted from commercial industry and
fits only poorly with the actual situation of an experimental vehicle
that is still being tested every time it flies.


Regardless, the development costs are still largely behind Shuttle.
Cost of improvements are a different category.

Those Development costs for the shuttle cannot be
considered to be 'sunk,' since we have spent more than their
development cost maintaining them since their construction.

Those aren't development costs.


So? no matter what 'type' of cost you label it, it's in the budget and
it has to be spent to make the vehicle fly.


Yes, and that was included in the analysis.

OSP is not starting from scratch, either.

Then that makes the projected development costs even more outrageous.


which projections are you using? the favorable ones that say 3-4
billion, the unfavorable ones that say 6 billion, or your own that
says 9 billion?


The unfavorable ones that that say twelve or thirteen billion, which I
generously reduced, even though most NASA programs tend to cost more,
not less than originally estimated.


In fact, the whole idea of using commercial production model economics
on what is still an experimental government platform is pretty silly,
as is the notion of waiting for the eventual successor to X-prize
contestants to return man to orbital space. (Actually, that's not
silly, it's sad. That's burning your 1480 Portugese caravel while you
wait for the commercial development of an 1860 Yankee Clipper. It
might happen eventually--but you'll miss out on 400 years of
exploration in the meantime.)

An interesting analogy, but it's not at all clear that it's a useful
or appropriate one.


Actually it's a metaphor.


It looks like an analogy to me, but either way, I'm not sure that it's
useful or appropriate.

But in terms of better overall system design, expandibility, and
safety, OSP makes lots of progress and is a huge departure from the
one-vehicle-fits-all program NASA has been stuck using since the end
of Apollo. I for one expect much more progress towards exploration
beyond LEO once NASA is no longer wedded to the LEO-limited shuttle.


I suspect that you'll be disappointed.


what it all comes down to in the end is that the crew are all dead and
apparently they were doomed from just after lift-off. surely some-one
must shoulder responsibility for this!

 




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