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Commercialization

Is Commercial Spaceflight Federation Losing Faith In Commercial Spaceflight?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 5, 2017
Filed under , , , ,
Is Commercial Spaceflight Federation Losing Faith In Commercial Spaceflight?

Don’t expect a space race. SpaceX and NASA need each other, LA Times
“The whole idea is that NASA is at the point of a spear,” said Howard McCurdy, professor in the school of public affairs at American University. “It’s like exploration of any terrestrial realm. This is the way the model is supposed to work.” Indeed, the rapid ascent of Musk and other space industry pioneers is validation of the public-private partnership envisioned when Congress passed the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984. By the mid-2000s, NASA was signing contracts with the private sector to fill in for its own funding constraints and the impending retirement of the space shuttle program.”
Does SpaceX’s moon plan threaten NASA?, Florida Today
“I don’t think NASA has anything to be worried about if somebody else can do it 50 years later,” said Alan Stern, a former head of NASA science missions. “NASA has much bigger plans and ambitions to explore other worlds with humans than just a figure 8 mission around the moon.”
Keith’s note: For a commercial entity to mount their own mission around the Moon using their own hardware and finances is quite an unheard of accomplishment. But now that the Commercial Spaceflight Federation under CSF Chairman Alan Stern’s leadership has caved in and supported the SLS (which will compete with the commercial heavy lift launch sector) it is obvious that more commentary dismissing commercial space achievements is to be forthcoming from CSF. Contrary to Stern’s comments NASA should be worried about this SpaceX mission.
NASA currently does not have – nor has it had – the ability to send humans around the Moon for nearly half a century. Even if SpaceX’s Moon mission slips a few years it is still likely that they will beat NASA back to the Moon – for a fraction of what it will cost NASA to do so – even if you add every single cent NASA has ever given SpaceX for everything it has ever done. Moreover SpaceX has an assembly line that can churn out and launch these Moon rockets at a rate and cost that NASA will never be able to match. Oh yes. ULA and Blue Origin are not exactly sitting on their hands either.
Oddly, CSF sends its chairman out to diminish this capability rather than to openly praise it.
What’s With All The Commercial Space News?, earlier post
Alternative Facts And Snake Oil From The SLS Mafia, earlier post
Commercial Spaceflight Federation Sells Out and Endorses SLS (Update), earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

20 responses to “Is Commercial Spaceflight Federation Losing Faith In Commercial Spaceflight?”

  1. TheBrett says:
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    It’s good politics. The dominant party in Congress right now includes several folks were were skeptics of commercial crew and supporters of SLS, so it makes a lot of sense to tread carefully on the issue when so much of your funding depends on NASA support.

  2. Paul451 says:
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    “Does SpaceX’s moon plan threaten NASA?”

    In a sane world, lowering the cost and increasing the availability of any launch capability would be seen as a huge win for NASA, never even remotely a “threat”.

    Only in an insane world is the mere existence of the Big Program seen as the entire raison d’etre for the agency, rather than the missions it could fly; and hence any alternative to the Big Program, even if a potential enabler of more missions, is seen as a threat to the agency.

    • Eric Ralph says:
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      And thus the true existence of NASA’s vehicle development branches come to light 🙁 If anything other than political profit and status quo maintenance was the goal of NASA’s push to develop a heavy lift vehicle, they would be publicly and loudly supportive of SpaceX so much as *attempting* to further humanity’s ability to explore deep space.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Welcome to the insane world of pork barrel politics. Why have two or more suppliers competing with each other when a single government program can spend about 10x the money and spread it all out over more congressional districts.

  3. jski says:
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    “It is obvious that more commentary dismissing commercial space achievements is to be forthcoming from CSF”, you bet it is.

    Give ’em hell Keith! Those SOBs with do everything they can to protect the established order.

  4. JadedObs says:
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    Why is it that this web site – and many of its posting contributors – seek to simplistically portray commercial efforts as competitors to NASA? NASA doesn’t talk this way and neither does Musk or Bezos and ifor Bezos, he doesn’t need NASA money or take very much so its not just that he’s fawning for dollars.
    In fact, NASA enabled the commercial successes of many of the commercial companies by providing technology development and often contracting opportunities such as the commercial cargo delivery opportunity to ISS – which sounds like what Bezos wants to do for the moon. NASA doesn’t see these efforts as competitive, CSF doesn’t and even some big primes, like Boeing, that is building a commercial crew vehicle and has partnered with Nanoracks, doesn’t see small new commercial companies just as competitors. CSF isn’t “selling out” when it praises NASA or denies a black or white competition; Alan Stern gets it, the LA Times gets it – why can’t NASA Watch and its contributors?

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      If NASA doesn’t see SpaceX as a competitor the problems are worse than it appears. Maybe not a competitor in the sense of running a race for the same goal like auto companies trying to win buyers.

      But there’s competition, all right, and it’s competition that ought to terrify that huge scientific and HSF apparatus.

      Imagine the world, say, 15 short years from now (and ignoring the whole Musk/Mars thing). SpaceX has hundreds of F9 launches. FH has dozens, at least, of flights.

      Moreover, FH has a hot final stage and is lofting science to the outer system. And FH has many – perhaps ten – tourist flights around the moon.

      SLS? In fifteen years? Based on what we know, and it’s not much, but SLS in 15 years might have a dozen flights. And it will have burned $15B, too, not counting the development costs.

      So what, you say? Shuttle flights were similarly expensive, and you’d be right. But shuttle didn’t live next to Pad 39A, either, where FH is lofting the same mass for about a tenth of a billion – and where three cores regularly land 10 minutes after flight. Over 15 years there will be a recession, too, making the media even more interested. Scientists will have noticed long ago, hungry scientists wanting to explore the out planets, that FH is the true ‘flexible path’. And this doesn’t even account for the capsule sitting on top of FH.

      That’s the competition. Even in our dullard world, at some point someone will notice.

      Tea leaves indeed.

      • JadedObs says:
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        First point, our national space policy now in place already precludes NASA competing against private sector capabilities so if SpaceX or Blue Origin build something commercially to serve a market then fine, NASA should use it if it meets their mission requirements but that’s not likely since there isn’t much of a commercial market for what SLS and Orion are being designed to do – in fact, despite the hype over the lunar fly by, I haven’t seen any announcements about SpaceX selling any commercial LEO rides – outside of ISS, where is the commercial crew market?
        Second, just because you say you’ll do something commercially and even if you have some commercial market doesn’t mean you will succeed quickly or at all – look at Virgin with 700+ reservations; it’s been 14 years since Spaceship One; being “commercial” is no assurance of rapid success.
        Lastly, let’s not forget the earlier claims for rapid progress and much lower cost of space access – the Shuttle program in the early 1980’s, the National Aerospace Plane in the late 80’s and the D.C.-X / X-33 in the 1990s – all promised a bold new future of cheap, reusable and reliable space access – how’d that work out? This time may be different but that’s what they said then too!

  5. Michael Spencer says:
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    Mr. Musk appears to go out of his way to not burn NASA. This could be explained by his actual admiration for NASA and the Legacy; it could be simple business, as he needs NASA assets for his moon mission; it could be out of respect for the current NASA folks engaged with him day to day; it could be he’s just a guy that doesn’t burn bridges.

  6. mfwright says:
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    Paul Spudis replied to someone’s comment on his latest blog: I do not “fear” the loss of life of someone dumb enough to ride on this monstrosity. My concern is that carnival freak shows like this make a sustained and permanent lunar return less likely because brainless media and SpaceX fanboy enthusiasm for this pronouncement can fool the unsuspecting public into thinking that “we ARE going to the Moon.”
    http://www.spudislunarresou

    Which has me thinking what kind of space program that can be scalable to routine use if such is possible.

    • Paul451 says:
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      You need to remember the context with Spudis, he leads a clique that’s deeply hostile to SpaceX. Anything they do now, even if it moves towards Spudis’ own goal, will be seen as dumb, amateurish, dangerous, overhyped…

  7. ThomasLMatula says:
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    Government handouts corrupt so it is not surprising these New Space firms are being corrupted into being NASA contractors. Hopefully the SpaceX flight will wake them up to how they are being assimilated by NASA. As Capt. Piccard stated “Resistance is never futile!”

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      It’s hard to follow that argument. SpaceX’ receipts from NASA amount to developmental costs, period, after which it is a vendor (and user/buyer of NASA assets).

      How do you imagine SX subsumed by NASA?

      As far as Mr. Bezos he’s at arm’s length.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        It corrupts because it is “easy money” once you get in the government contractor pipeline, just do what NASA wants and you get paid even if you don’t produce anything, like RpK got $20 million from COTS for just paperwork. This makes firms lazy in seeking out commercial markets to serve. SpaceX has basically forgotten its DragonLab targeted at the biotech industry because of its pursuit of COTS.

        Also the changes in management procedures, especially the micro-management and endless reviews that treat time as being unimportant NASA does, results in firms developing procedures that make it more expensive to do business in the commercial world. So now only do they stop searching for commercial markets, the lose the ability to work with them when they do find ones to serve.

        And then it creates a cycle where NASA competition prevents private markets emerging. Commercial launch is a classic example. Because NASA was launching satellites for its Marginal Cost, which it often under stated due to its government designed accounting system, it prevented the emergence of a commercial launch industry until the Challenger accident forced it out of the commercial launch business.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          OK now I’m following you. But still not seeing the same reality – what would be different between SX supplying LV to NASA, say, and a painting contractor giving the county building a new coat of paint? Is there something nefarious about the pipeline, as you call it, at NASA?

          Your last point about how the government assigns costs is one I hadn’t considered.

    • DP Huntsman says:
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      Tom, you’ve lost me.

  8. ThomasLMatula says:
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    Yes, they appear to have become just another bunch of government contractors. They should change their name to reflect that and call themselves the Government Spaceflight Federation.