The Private Sector According to Steve Cook

It goes without saying there are 2 private sectors with opposite interests.

One of them wants the new contracts, and the other wants things to stay as they are to preserve contracts they have or anticipated under CxP.

> "Critics of the Obama space plan point out that setting up private companies, like Falcon rocket-maker SpaceX, duplicates what NASA can already do and sets space exploration plans back."

Ahem:

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ogc/commercial/CommercialSpaceActof1998.html

TITLE II--FEDERAL ACQUISITION OF SPACE TRANSPORTATION SERVICES

(a) In General.--Except as otherwise provided in this section, the Federal Government shall acquire space transportation services from United States commercial providers whenever such services are required in the course of its activities. To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers.

> It goes without saying there are 2 private sectors with opposite interests. One of them wants the new contracts, and the other wants things to stay as they are to preserve contracts they have or anticipated under CxP.

Actually, it's more like one side wants fixed-price contracts with multiple competitors with payments contingent on meeting performance-based milestones, while the other side wants cost-plus contracts without any competition with payments more reliant on what congressional districts they operate in.

Interesting perspective about this issue from way back at the beginning of the Constellation Program; apparently this controversy is not new:
http://www.universetoday.com/2004/01/16/space-advocates-feel-the-bush-plan-needs-work/

I'm so sick of hearing from Steve Cook and Mike Griffin putting down the "new"space companies like SpaceX. Elon Musk put up a lot of his own money and raised other private capital to start that company and do the preliminary design of the Falcon 1 and 9 and the Merlin main engines. What rocket company have they founded? What rockets and engines have their own companies designed and launched?

What did we get from the $9 billion spent on Constellation? Another parachute failure just yesterday for the Orion capsule. Even the X-38 which had a much more complex parachute didn't have this many failures.

I wish all of the Constellation (and ex) folks would just shut up.

Well, if the Griffin administration at NASA hadn't been constantly stripping stuff from Orion in order to cover for Ares 1's shortcomings perhaps Orion would be further advanced toward s its original design.. a capable enough cislunar transport that would also serve as part of the crew hab during true deep space missions.

While the chute failure may or may not have been caused by an actual problem with Orion you must admit that having to constantly redesign the capsule in order to meet the ever-diminishing Ares-I performance margins can't have helped things.

CxP was screwed up royally but Orion itself was a sound, if stolid, design.

neuronexmachina, indeed, the other day I said they should incentivize commercial with cost-plus. I now know that was a mistake, a very stupid mistake. I wasn't aware that that was part of the contractual problem we were experiencing.