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Posts Tagged ‘space’
February 16th, 2018 at 12:21 pm
Image of the Day: SpaceX Also Means Lower Cost to U.S. Taxpayers
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Earlier this week, we continued our efforts to highlight how Elon Musk and SpaceX have propelled American space exploration from the private sector.  In that vein, UnbiasedAmerica illustrates vividly how this month’s SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch also means significant savings for U.S. taxpayers over equivalent predecessors:

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SpaceX Success

SpaceX Success

February 12th, 2018 at 3:34 pm
SpaceX: Private Sector Propels Space Exploration
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Quick:  Name some areas in which government outperforms its private sector counterpart.

Give up?  Don’t be too hard on yourself.  It’s difficult, even impossible to recall any.

That includes space technology.

Last week, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the most powerful rocket in the world, the Falcon Heavy, as reported by The Wall Street Journal:

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. successfully launched the Falcon Heavy rocket Tuesday on its initial test flight, marking another coup for founder Elon Musk…   With throngs of spectators on hand, the closely held Southern California company defied industry critics by flying the world’s most powerful rocket since U.S. astronauts landed on the moon almost five decades ago.  The 230-foot rocket, which featured 27 engines with the combined thrust of some 18 Boeing Co. 747 jumbo jets, climbed into clear skies at 3:45 p.m. local time.  It carried a Tesla roadster as a dummy payload and publicity stunt.”

Importantly, the article notes that cost-efficiency stands among the Falcon Heavy’s paramount accomplishments:

Large, reusable rockets such as the Falcon Heavy are ideal for deep-space transport from a cost perspective, according to Howard McCurdy, a space historian who teaches at American University.  ‘That’s where the heavy-lift design truly shines,’ he said before the launch.  Given President Donald Trump’s official policy of combining federal and private assets to explore the Moon, Mr. McCurdy called the SpaceX rocket ‘a very important step in that direction…  SpaceX has revolutionized the launch business by vertically integrating operations, slashing prices and reusing the main engines and lower stage of its existing workhorse rockets, the Falcon 9 fleet.”

Additionally, SpaceX’s success marks further progress in remedying a problem that we at CFIF have highlighted for some time:  the dangerous and embarrassing U.S. reliance upon Russian rocketry to continue our space program.

So congratulations to Mr. Musk and SpaceX.  Going forward, it offers cause for optimism and yet another example of private sector success and superior efficiency.

March 21st, 2017 at 7:21 pm
New Report: We Need More Capitalism in Space
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Quick:  Name all of the areas where government outperforms the private sector where both options exist.

Pretty difficult, isn’t it?  From schools to overnight delivery to cheese, the overwhelming and perhaps even categorical rule is that the private sector performs more effectively and efficiently wherever it competes with government.

Aerospace is no exception, as detailed by an impressive new report from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) entitled “Capitalism in Space:  Private Enterprise and Competition Reshape the Global Aerospace Launch Industry.”

The report first notes how increasingly critical a flourishing aerospace industry is for any nation hoping to prosper in today’s competitive global marketplace.  That includes national defense, natural resource exploration, economic growth, experimentation and national prestige.  Unfortunately, the report also highlights how U.S. government performance in this realm has declined:

All of these goals require a prosperous U.S. aerospace industry, which in turn requires above all a viable space-launch industry, capable of placing payloads, both unmanned and manned, into orbit cheaply and efficiently.  Unfortunately, since the beginning of the 21st century the U.S. government has struggled to create and maintain a viable launch industry.  Even as the government terminated the Space Shuttle program, with its ability to place and return humans and large cargoes to and from orbit, NASA’s many repeated efforts since the mid-1980s to generate a replacement have come up  empty.

In addition, in the 1990s the Department of Defense instituted a new program, the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), to guarantee itself launch services that – though successful in procuring those services – have done so at a very high cost, so high, in fact, that the expense  now significantly limits the military’s future options for maintaining its access to, and assets in, space.”

But there’s positive news, according to the report.  Private aerospace players like today’s SpaceX have succeeded at far less cost than the government spends:

Even as the federal government struggled with this problem, a fledgling crop of new American private launch companies have emerged in the past decade, funded initially by the vast profits produced by the newly born internet industry.  These new companies have not been motivated by national prestige, military strength, or any of the traditional national political goals of the federal government.  Instead, these private entities have been driven by profit, competition, and in some cases the ideas of the visionary individuals running the companies, resulting in some remarkable success, achieved with relatively little money and in an astonishingly short period of time.

Because of these differing approaches – the government on one hand and the private sector on the other – policymakers have an opportunity to compare both and use that knowledge to create the most successful American space effort possible.”

As just one example, the report notes the “significant cost discrepancy between the government-developed SLS/Orion system and commercially-developed systems, without any significant difference in capability.”  The SLS/Orion is projected to cost $43 billion for two rockets, three test spacecraft, and three flight spacecraft over 15 years.  By comparison, SpaceX development and operational contracts combined totaled less than $2 billion to achieve 13 launches to and from the International Space Station, as well as an orbital demonstration.

By leveraging the private sector and maintaining competition, the report concludes, America’s aerospace industry can continue to lead through the end of this century.  That won’t surprise anyone familiar with the performance disparity between the private sector and government generally, but it’s an important new confirmation in this vital sphere that will only play an increasingly important role in our lives.

May 31st, 2012 at 5:53 pm
First Commercial Flight to Space Successfully Completed Today

ABC News reports that the SpaceX Dragon, the first private spacecraft to service the International Space Station, successfully returned to Earth this morning at 8:42am Pacific Daylight Time, off the coast of San Diego.

The mission wasn’t glamorous.  The unmanned Dragon “carried extra supplies, experiments and garbage that the space station astronauts had loaded on board.”  However, the success of the flight indicates that May 31, 2012 might become a milestone in commercialized space travel.

Until now, all flights to the space station have been made by the U.S., Russian or European space agencies. NASA hopes SpaceX and other commercial firms will take over space jobs previously done only by governments.

[Space entrepreneurs] say space could be a bit like the old West: Governments sent explorers, such as Columbus or Lewis and Clark, to open the frontier, and then private settlers followed.

PayPal founder Elon Musk started SpaceX in 2002 and is moving his company closer to becoming the private sector alternative to ferry U.S. astronauts to the ISS.  (With the shuttle fleet mothballed, the Russians are doing the job now at price-gouging levels.)  Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com started Blue Origin to build, test, and deploy reusable spacecraft.  Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic wants to make orbits around Earth the high-flying equivalent of a five-star cruise.

With the economy in the tank and NASA failing to find an extraterrestrial mission Congress will fund, it’s time to let these and other capitalistic cowboys take their shot at taming the final frontier.

June 14th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
The Hubris to Think Small

As a die-hard space enthusiast, I find it hard to believe that the Obama Administration can’t seem to come up with $3 billion a year to sustain America’s manned space program.  From the folks who continue to bring us trillion dollar deficits and hundreds of billions in new spending for feel-good policies like universal health insurance, combating climate change, and subsidized job creation, can it really be that the end of the budget line stops just short of funding NASA’s Constellation program?

Apparently so.  A commission created by President Obama concluded that NASA’s current strategy is too expensive, lacks innovation, and takes too long to achieve its goal of getting Americans back to the Moon, and then off to Mars by 2020.  The criticism reminds me of the adage about getting something fast, accurate, and cheap: you can have any two, but not all three.  Thus, it looks like Americans will get nothing now that Obama’s NASA chief is directing contractors to abort their work as the government prepares to terminate the program.

So, good riddance thousands of science and engineering jobs; hello make-work Recovery Act projects!

Though I’m sure the Obama White House doesn’t agree; killing the Constellation program is the latest example of an inner circle that can’t see the forest for the trees.  Afghanistan is the war that won’t (can’t?) end; no one seems to know how to “plug the damn hole” in the Gulf; and there is growing unease about the direction of the country from the Left and the Right.  Wouldn’t a presidential challenge to put an American on Mars by the end of this decade be the kind of national rallying point we need?

It would inspire the best and brightest to pursue astrophysics instead of exotic financial careers, spur public and private investments in aerospace (and by extension, defense) technology, and give Americans a reason to wave Old Glory together apart from a sporting event or wartime.  It would also make good on the president’s implied promise to be the heir of John F. Kennedy, the first chief executive to call for a national moon shot.

For that, though, this president would need a quality that has so far eluded him: the courage to lay down an unmistakable threshold of success.