Well, yes, but any human endeavor starts with “find people with the right skills and bring them into the organization”. Even when a company starts a new project and doesn’t hire anyone new for it, they’re still using people that they previously found for their skills.
No, it is a crucial step to developing the technology to both exploit space resources and protecting the Earth against large meteorite impacts. Such an effort would start with robotic missions to one or more Near Earth Asteroids, followed by a possible crewed mission, and thence to a propulsive redirect mission. Any asteroid we would move into an Earth orbit would certainly be too small to pose any kind of terrestrial threat (probably in the 10 m diameter range or less) and would doubtless be placed into one of the Earth-Lunar stable libration points rather than a lower orbit where debris could pose a hazard to artificial satellites. If we do want to develop the capability to sustain a permanent human presence in space, in-situ utilization of space resources is critical, as the cost of hauling resources up from the surface of the Earth (or even the Moon) is cost-prohibitive.
Stranger
Oh. Carry on, then.
As mentioned by Stranger, the current system is far from perfect. And there’s lots of blame on both sides of the isle.
The contractors are motivated by money, obviously. This is not a bad thing in-and-of-itself; quite the contrary, great things have been done by people and companies who are motivated by money. The problem is with business ethics. Some contractors will deliver systems knowing there are problems with it. When the problems eventually arise, they will fix it – for a price, of course. And they’ll already have the ECO for it. (It was written when the problem first arose, in anticipation of future repair work.) Suffice to say, the real bread-and-butter for the contractors is in supporting the equipment after it has been delivered (TOs, repair, calibration, software & hardware upgrades, training, etc.). So there’s little incentive to deliver a reliable product that’s easy to use from the get-go.
But here’s the kicker… the government is supposed to monitor this stuff. The government is supposed to keep the abuse from happening. But it’s not effective in doing so. Why? Many reasons:
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Most government engineers don’t have any real, hardcore experience in designing or building such systems. That’s because the government likes to hire them right out of college, which is a very stupid and huge mistake. The contractors will walk all over them.
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When a government engineer gets close to retirement, what does he/she want to do? Actually retire? LOL!!! No, he/she wants to get a job working for a contractor. And the contractor will hire them in an instant. This is because of their connections inside the government. So… if you’re a government engineer, you do not want to hold a contractor’s feet to the fire, else it might jeopardize your chances of getting hired by them. To maximize your chances of getting hired by a contractor after retirement, you want to treat them with kid’s gloves.
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The government has a… culture. It’s very politically-correct, and you are judged by how well you get along with everyone – including contractors.
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And if you think these problems can be fixed by having the government itself design and build the systems, you are highly mistaken.
Right, but surely we can agree that there’s generally more on the windward side - yes?
Hi,
Could you provide a cite that supports this? Specifically, a cite that shows that NASA primarily relied on private contractors for the the development and design, assembly, manufacture, and planning of spacecrafts from 1958 to 1980*. Also, if you could, please provide a cite (if any) that shows that astronauts were trained, vetted, or taught by private contractors, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
- Honesty
P.S. I am in the process of moving and therefore haven’t had a chance to participate in this thread as I would like. When I have time, I’ll reply to some other posts, but this one stuck out. Thanks again.
- I stopped at 1980 because this is when white people decided - en masse - that funding NASA (and other useful sciences) were no longer useful expenditure of federal dollars. Bless your hearts.
IIRC, SOAT is a longtime NASA analyst so you can probably take his word for it.
I have no reason to not believe him; it just would be helpful if there was a cite saying what he says is true. He is a NASA analyst employed by NASA? Or is he a Edward Snowden - an analyst hired by a government agency that’s not apart of NASA.
Thanks.
You don’t need me to do your legwork for you. You can look at Mark Wade’s Astronautix.com among other sites and see which contractors were responsible for propulsion systems, stages, spacecraft, and entire launch vehicles. The spare exceptions on the spacecraft and rover side are those developed by JPL (Surveyor, Ranger, Mariner, Voyager) which has acted largely independently of NASA, although contractors have provided many of the individual systems. TMost of the their recent missions have used space probes developed by external contractors and all launch vehicles for interplanetary systems have been developed by internal contractors. The Redstone launch vehicle (used for the early Mercury program suborbital launches) was the last major rocket system developed largely by government agonies, although the Redstone-Mercury vehicles used the later A-7 motor developed by Rocketdyne, and the vehicle itself was constructed by Chrysler Aerospace.
Did I say this anywhere? I don’t think so. We were speaking of procurement, not the astronaut corps, which is clearly composed of NASA employees along with a handful of astronauts from other nations and a few civilians all trained under the auspices of NASA.
What the ever-loving fuck does this mean? The budget allocated to NASA, adjusted for inflation, has been as much or more in almost every year since 1980 and largely hovered between 0.8% and 0.9% of federal expenditures until 2001 when military spending suddenly dominated the budget, resulting in massive deficit spending. And whatever the “white people” comment is about I don’t think I even want to know.
I don’t work for NASA, and there is no reason to take my word for it. There are copious and readily available public records and information regarding which contractors built what engines, stages, and vehicles. While NASA has acted as a “prime integrator” for certain vehicles like the Saturn V and early flights of the STS, all of the vehicle fabrication and nearly all of the “wrench turning” is done by contractors.
Stranger
I’ll (hesitantly) take your word for it. That aforementioned cite is way too dense for me to parse either way. Thanks for the reply.
- Honesty
P.S. As for the white people thing, you wouldn’t understand. I’ll explain in another thread sometime. Take care and thanks again.
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It’s what she does.
Every. Single. Time.
Cheaper.
I don’t think the Panama Canal could’ve been built for cheaper if it were built by private contractors. If memory serves, the Canal was built in less than two years by the Army Corp of Engineers. In contrast, private contractors are unable to do anything comparable to that.
- Honesty
There is no chance that it would be cheaper for the government to build weapons itself. For one thing, the defense industry leverages it’s infrastructure for commercial products: Boeing’s factory for expensive defense satellites is the same factory for more modest commercial satellites.
Creating a government-owned infrastructure to build only weapons is obviously not as efficient, to say nothing of the points already raised.
Whatever. When 99.99% of the people who are making ridiculous decisions that influence the laws that govern my daily life are white people, I find it humorous that it is somehow verboten to point out that they’re the ones making the decisions. The point was that in the 1980’s, white people decided to vote for a man slashed science funding. Not once. But twice. Then they decided again to vote for his VP who carried it on. Then they pressed ahead and voted for a man who put trillions of dollars of tax cuts and a medicare prescription program on credit. If Obama - a black guy - were to go this route in regards to infrastructure, he’d be tied to a wooden post, burned at the pyre, and the rabble would erupt in celebratory song and dance.
Every Speaker of the House, every House Majority Leader, every Vice President and nearly every President and Supreme Court Justice has been white. White, white, white, white. Now, I know this is like *The Village *where it’s the thing “we do not speak” but it’s true. So naturally, when the government shuts down annually, when white people run around screaming about the government oppressing them and how they want their “country back”, when they refuse to fix the roads because it’s pork, when scientists are quitting their tenure-track jobs because there’s no NIH funding to be had due to cuts, when millions of unemployed Americans are let go from their jobs for no fault of their own are refused continuance of benefits, I can’t help but to point out that these are the wishes of white people. Why? Because white people vote for the same anti-government ideologues over and over again ad nauseum. In fact, if you doubt me, look at Mr. Silver predictions for the 2014 election. The proof is in the puddin’.
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This was the cite I was given. I see nothing there pointing out private corporations supplying, building, consulting spacecrafts. On that link, I clicked on Apollo 13 and <drum roll> I saw nothing about private corporations building the spacecraft. I don’t see what Stranger on the Train is talking about but, at the same time, I am not going to belabor the point. As Stranger on the Train said previously, “You don’t need me to do your legwork for you.” Well, unfortunately, I kind of do. But maybe you can help me. Go to the aforementioned cite and see if you can parse it out.
Thanks.
- Honesty
I 100% agree with this.
- Honesty
Exactly. The government has over $17 trillion in GDP and pulls in $2 trillion in revenue yearly. The government has enough resources and money to recruit talented citizens to perform projects. In fact, I’d argue, the government has more resources than any other private corporation to do just that.
- Honesty
What does that have to do with the topic?
Especially since the number is more like 90%, 72%, or 64%, depending on how you count it, not 99.99%.