Mr. Simberg has an interesting vision, but he is wrong at the bottom line. Basically, he believes that 'commercial space' is just about the answer to everything, and NASA needs to just go away into a corner and the conquest of space will happen.
The problem is the conquest of space will happen that way; but it will be done by authoritarian regimes like the Chinese and Russians. They have no compulsion about abusing their people, and will leverage their totalitarian power to conquer space only for their limited self-interest.
What has to happen is a robust commercial space program like Mr. Simberg proposes, and a complete liberation and revitalization of NASA from the bureaucracy that is choking it to death. Right now NASA is so risk adverse an organization that any program it embarks on has to be a guaranteed success from the get go. Nothing can thrive in the over-regulated, budget-starved space agency we have today, be it Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) exploration, or even robotic probes.
NASA is not close to perfect, and the NASA of the 1960's wasn't either. But the NASA of the 1960's got the job done because they were not starved of cash by both Congress and a culture that can't take any risk at all.
Apollo would not have occurred if NASA was the NASA of 1957-1960. It had to change to do the job, and it has to change again, not disappear as Mr. Simberg wants it to.
BTW, Mr. Simberg's vision is exactly what President Obama's vision of NASA is in Obama's original 2010-2011 budget proposal for NASA. That was rejected a prescription for failure by the Congress, and rightly so.
After reading that, I find myself back where I started: with tremendous respect for Mr. Simberg, and continuing to find him unpersuasive.
Firstly, he doesn't make much of an argument in that piece, let alone lay out anything that resembles a thought-out "conservative space policy." Instead, it's more of the same: many paragraphs spent recapping the well-known criticisms of NASA, followed by a paragraph or two boiled down to: "commercialize low-earth orbit (LEO)." In this way, Simberg writes like me, in this space: in shorthand boilerplate. I, however, am limited by a commenter field; what is Simberg's excuse?
Simberg, and other critics like him, are never able to explain how the Obama Administrations proposal to outsource LEO operations is any different fundemntally from what is done now.
Oh, so the government contracts will be going to upstart private companies such as SpaceX or Orbital instead of going to long-established private companies such as Boeing or Lockheed Martin? Whether we call it subsidy, profit or pork appears to me to be a meaningless distinction: the money is still coming from the taxpayer coffers, NOT from private consumers.
Yes, we'll be getting out of the incredibly expensive Shuttle business. But we already were doing so, and the Constellation program replacing the Shuttle was designed not just to replace the Shuttle in LEO but to act as the primary module for the Moon, and later, Mars programs-- it's LEO mission, while perfectly matched to the national goal of keeping a strong space industrial base healthy, was always secondary.
That all said, the *real* issue with NASA remains what to do BEYOND LEO. Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Paul Allen and the rest of our new generation of space entrepeneurs are interested, rightly, in making money: either from the government (read: taxpayers) or consumers (space tourists). They are welcome to their business.
But who will make a private profit on the next Voyager, Hubble, or New Horizons? Where is the wealthy private benefactor looking to purchase a mission-- unmanned, let alone manned-- to Mars from a private company?
Perhaps my failure to understand is one of imagination, and some creative capitalist arrangments exist to make unmanned and manned deep space science profitable for the private sector. If so, I look to experts like Mr. Simberg to point out what these arrangements are, and how they make any more practical sense than continuing a robust national space program (for whatever purpose we choose-- pride, international prestige, the rewards of discovery, etc.).
If we do not get out of low-Earth orbit, we are wasting our time.
I think that Dr. Robert Zubrin is the go-to guy on this. He has both the undying passion and an aerospace engineer's knowledge; and while his particular obsession (expertise?) is the manned exploration of Mars, Zubrin seems willing to compromise to get the job done, even if it means Moon-first.
He also seems to have a strong interest in maximizing the private side of the equation.
I personally like the idea of government-sponsored prizes for manned space milestones reached by private endeavors. Private interests seem willing to spend (say) $5 billion (collectively) in quest of a (say) $200 million prize. Such an approach got the Spirit of St. Louis to Paris, after all.
Jonah and others,
Mr. Simberg has an interesting vision, but he is wrong at the bottom line. Basically, he believes that 'commercial space' is just about the answer to everything, and NASA needs to just go away into a corner and the conquest of space will happen.
The problem is the conquest of space will happen that way; but it will be done by authoritarian regimes like the Chinese and Russians. They have no compulsion about abusing their people, and will leverage their totalitarian power to conquer space only for their limited self-interest.
What has to happen is a robust commercial space program like Mr. Simberg proposes, and a complete liberation and revitalization of NASA from the bureaucracy that is choking it to death. Right now NASA is so risk adverse an organization that any program it embarks on has to be a guaranteed success from the get go. Nothing can thrive in the over-regulated, budget-starved space agency we have today, be it Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) exploration, or even robotic probes.
NASA is not close to perfect, and the NASA of the 1960's wasn't either. But the NASA of the 1960's got the job done because they were not starved of cash by both Congress and a culture that can't take any risk at all.
Apollo would not have occurred if NASA was the NASA of 1957-1960. It had to change to do the job, and it has to change again, not disappear as Mr. Simberg wants it to.
BTW, Mr. Simberg's vision is exactly what President Obama's vision of NASA is in Obama's original 2010-2011 budget proposal for NASA. That was rejected a prescription for failure by the Congress, and rightly so.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAfter reading that, I find myself back where I started: with tremendous respect for Mr. Simberg, and continuing to find him unpersuasive.
Firstly, he doesn't make much of an argument in that piece, let alone lay out anything that resembles a thought-out "conservative space policy." Instead, it's more of the same: many paragraphs spent recapping the well-known criticisms of NASA, followed by a paragraph or two boiled down to: "commercialize low-earth orbit (LEO)." In this way, Simberg writes like me, in this space: in shorthand boilerplate. I, however, am limited by a commenter field; what is Simberg's excuse?
Simberg, and other critics like him, are never able to explain how the Obama Administrations proposal to outsource LEO operations is any different fundemntally from what is done now.
Oh, so the government contracts will be going to upstart private companies such as SpaceX or Orbital instead of going to long-established private companies such as Boeing or Lockheed Martin? Whether we call it subsidy, profit or pork appears to me to be a meaningless distinction: the money is still coming from the taxpayer coffers, NOT from private consumers.
Yes, we'll be getting out of the incredibly expensive Shuttle business. But we already were doing so, and the Constellation program replacing the Shuttle was designed not just to replace the Shuttle in LEO but to act as the primary module for the Moon, and later, Mars programs-- it's LEO mission, while perfectly matched to the national goal of keeping a strong space industrial base healthy, was always secondary.
That all said, the *real* issue with NASA remains what to do BEYOND LEO. Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Paul Allen and the rest of our new generation of space entrepeneurs are interested, rightly, in making money: either from the government (read: taxpayers) or consumers (space tourists). They are welcome to their business.
But who will make a private profit on the next Voyager, Hubble, or New Horizons? Where is the wealthy private benefactor looking to purchase a mission-- unmanned, let alone manned-- to Mars from a private company?
Perhaps my failure to understand is one of imagination, and some creative capitalist arrangments exist to make unmanned and manned deep space science profitable for the private sector. If so, I look to experts like Mr. Simberg to point out what these arrangements are, and how they make any more practical sense than continuing a robust national space program (for whatever purpose we choose-- pride, international prestige, the rewards of discovery, etc.).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf we do not get out of low-Earth orbit, we are wasting our time.
I think that Dr. Robert Zubrin is the go-to guy on this. He has both the undying passion and an aerospace engineer's knowledge; and while his particular obsession (expertise?) is the manned exploration of Mars, Zubrin seems willing to compromise to get the job done, even if it means Moon-first.
He also seems to have a strong interest in maximizing the private side of the equation.
I personally like the idea of government-sponsored prizes for manned space milestones reached by private endeavors. Private interests seem willing to spend (say) $5 billion (collectively) in quest of a (say) $200 million prize. Such an approach got the Spirit of St. Louis to Paris, after all.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse