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Dick WB Tracy's avatar

Agreed on the corporate welfare aspects here. We should award contracts to the lowest responsible bidder and move on, feelings be damned.

But I disagree heartily with your rejection of NASA's privatization of much of its work to develop rockets. Contractors did all the work for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, as well as Space Lab and the Shuttle. Look at the old videos of crews being loaded onto the rockets - technicians are wearing garb adorned with their companies' logos. Our private contractors allowed us to go to the Moon, while the Soviet Union never made it.

What's different is that NASA is setting goals and asking industry to come up with proposals to bid, just as defense contractors do. Competition results in better products for NASA. Prime example: SpaceX is running circles around Boeing with its Dragon crew capsule, which just delivered the first all-commercial crew to ISS, while Boeing's Starliner is still mired in technical difficulties and definitely not anywhere near ready for launch. What's the difference? I think it's because SpaceX has a fixed rate contract, while Boeing is paid cost-plus - no incentive for Boeing to control costs and just get it done!

Competition and private industry are essential to progress in space. Don't poo-poo them; harness them and get rid of crony capitalism.

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Anon38901932047's avatar

We should perhaps also recall the old John Glenn quote here:

“I guess the question I'm asked the most often is: "When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?" Well, the answer to that one is easy. I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts -- all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”

But, I think Jeff Bezos has found a way around this problem: keep bribing politicians until they create a budget custom designed for your company's project. There's no need for a low bid. There isn't any bidding at all.

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Matt330's avatar

The sheer amount of monopolization is going to destroy what little competition is left and make it so that upstart companies with good ideas go nowhere and get bought out.

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Ph8drus's avatar

I don't have a problem at all with public/private either, and agree with you in objecting to the losing bid muscling in through politicians to get a contract when they blew the bid.

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Koshmarov's avatar

"Our private contractors allowed us to go to the Moon, while the Soviet Union never made it."

...aaand? I'm sure the Soviet Union is very sad about this. Oh wait, it doesn't exist as a geopolitical entity any more. I'm learning a lesson here -- going to the fucking moon is a prerequisite for durability as a geopolitical entity, apparently.

Mobutu, a king: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/27244/brief-history-congolese-space-program

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Dick WB Tracy's avatar

It's not about "durability as a geopolitical entity" but our human need to explore, and. yes, the possibility of commercial gain, too.

Queen Isabella supposedly pawned her jewels to pay for Columbus' trip. There is still a monarchy in Spain, but that didn't depend on underwriting Columbus. It depended on the open-mindedness to want to expand horizons (and perhaps also to make a profit). And that probably also meant Spain would get colonies if Columbus were successful, which he was. But I would never doubt the need to explore was part of the equation.

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Koshmarov's avatar

I wonder whether the "need to explore" -- and the lack of new physical topographies in which to do it (the moon is a rock in space) -- is one of the major crazifying praxes in modern society. It's why people get weird on the internet.

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Feral Finster's avatar

The goal was to get a cheaper source of spices, not colonies per se.

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Koshmarov's avatar

The spice must flow.

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Stxbuck's avatar

That’s what Cobra Commander taught me in 5th grade, in the GI Joe episode where he carved his face in the moon with a laser!

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Koshmarov's avatar

You gotta read Jack Vance's THE FACE (1979). https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40871.The_Face

I think we could all learn lessons from Cobra Commander. He periodically reinvented himself, as a good capitalist should.

At some point in the mid-1980s, Flint Dille ate a lot of psychedelic drugs and the world was never the same afterwards.

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Tedder130's avatar

The only reason you think as you do is your belief in the neoliberal world order. Other ideological systems work quite well or better. The USSR beat the Americans to space in spite of enormous economical, political, and military challenges.

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Stxbuck's avatar

I’d trust Space X’s quality control as much as NASA’s for it’s contractors-the Challenger o ring was screwed up by Morton Thiokol…….

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Koshmarov's avatar

After the Challenger disaster, I participated in the "Name The New Space Shuttle" contest at my elementary school. My nomination was "Inferno."

I got kicked out of class.

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Stxbuck's avatar

My 7th grade math teacher was a crazy old bat, but she had a certificate on the wall for being one of 50 finalists in the state or something for the Challenger Teacher in Space, and one day I got pissed off and said “Too bad you didn’t get picked!!!”

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