You're probably familiar with how no briefing on a new DoD program is
complete without the slide showing that it has subcontractors in 47 to 50
of the states.
It's outrageous/fascinating how rationality and self-interest get morphed
when you distribute it across different sizes and groups of people. It
makes perfect sense for India and South Korea and Japan to say, "I'll buy
your plane if you let me assemble it here," or "build the wings here" to
grow their own industry rather than shipping their money to build US
factories, but when I drive through St. Louis and see F-18 wing sets being
trucked around, and every time I see the special airplanes that Boeing and
Airbus build to fly wings and fuselages around between factories it just
makes me sigh. Amazing how long we got by without realizing that it's
impossible to build wings and fuselages in the same building, but it's all
"The Art of the Deal" now. And as someone said, then it wound up in a
movie, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers."
Like I said, I have hopes for Elon Musk.
> In a message dated 3/6/2015 12:00:27 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> writes:
>
> It's amazing how many false economies we consistently fall for, whether
> it's JSF or the idea of a "reusable" box to carry things to orbit that
> weighs three or four times as much as its contents. When you realize how
> comparable Shuttle was to Saturn V, both about 1/2 billion $ per launch,
> 6.8 million pounds thrust vs. 7.5 million, and realize that S-V could put
> about 2.5 times as much mass into LEO (and for Shuttle only 1/4 of that
> was payload, 3/4 was "reusable" box) and twice as much to the Moon as
> Shuttle could to LEO, the false economies are appalling. If you figure
> 135
> shuttle launches times the waste mass of the orbiter itself, which was
> almost identical to the mass of Skylab, that's 135 Skylabs we could have
> put up, or almost 24 ISSs.
> That's because post-Apollo NASA was a Jobs-Program, not a Space Program.
> A lot of money (for the time) was thrown at beating the Soviets in the
> space race and key Congress-critters made sure they brought some of that
> money
> home. There was no national political need to push beyond the Moon since
> nobody was going to solve the technical difficulties of getting to Mars
> anytime soon. However, they weren't about to let that gravy train end...
> somehow I don't think the 'reusable39; efficiency argument was the primary
> reason
> NASA budgeting for the project was approved. Granted iirc it led to the
> Challenger disaster (the boosters had to be shipped by rail since they
> were
> made in a key C-critters district so O-rings were required since the
> boosters were too long).
>
> While China may push that space race button or some other black swan event
> occurs (making space projects a factor in voting), I'd put my bet that
> more
> and more of the heavy lifting will be seen on the private sector projects
> in the future. To make space development stick (beyond what we have) I
> think it has to have a direct profit motive beyond snapping up a
> government
> contract\subsidy. That just isn't going to happen in a government
> directed
> project... the political nature of the beast creates way too many economic
> mal-incentives. For historical example, the only transcontinental
> railroad
> not to go bankrupt was the only one not built using public subsidies (the
> Great Northern Railway...now merged into the BNSF Railway). All the
> other
> transcontinental railways (all major receivers of public funds) went
> belly-up.
>
> It may take a little longer, but I'd rather see profit motive and economic
> self-interest drive space development rather than the government good idea
> fairy getting involved. It's more likely to stick that way.
complete without the slide showing that it has subcontractors in 47 to 50
of the states.
It's outrageous/fascinating how rationality and self-interest get morphed
when you distribute it across different sizes and groups of people. It
makes perfect sense for India and South Korea and Japan to say, "I'll buy
your plane if you let me assemble it here," or "build the wings here" to
grow their own industry rather than shipping their money to build US
factories, but when I drive through St. Louis and see F-18 wing sets being
trucked around, and every time I see the special airplanes that Boeing and
Airbus build to fly wings and fuselages around between factories it just
makes me sigh. Amazing how long we got by without realizing that it's
impossible to build wings and fuselages in the same building, but it's all
"The Art of the Deal" now. And as someone said, then it wound up in a
movie, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers."
Like I said, I have hopes for Elon Musk.
> In a message dated 3/6/2015 12:00:27 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> writes:
>
> It's amazing how many false economies we consistently fall for, whether
> it's JSF or the idea of a "reusable" box to carry things to orbit that
> weighs three or four times as much as its contents. When you realize how
> comparable Shuttle was to Saturn V, both about 1/2 billion $ per launch,
> 6.8 million pounds thrust vs. 7.5 million, and realize that S-V could put
> about 2.5 times as much mass into LEO (and for Shuttle only 1/4 of that
> was payload, 3/4 was "reusable" box) and twice as much to the Moon as
> Shuttle could to LEO, the false economies are appalling. If you figure
> 135
> shuttle launches times the waste mass of the orbiter itself, which was
> almost identical to the mass of Skylab, that's 135 Skylabs we could have
> put up, or almost 24 ISSs.
> That's because post-Apollo NASA was a Jobs-Program, not a Space Program.
> A lot of money (for the time) was thrown at beating the Soviets in the
> space race and key Congress-critters made sure they brought some of that
> money
> home. There was no national political need to push beyond the Moon since
> nobody was going to solve the technical difficulties of getting to Mars
> anytime soon. However, they weren't about to let that gravy train end...
> somehow I don't think the 'reusable39; efficiency argument was the primary
> reason
> NASA budgeting for the project was approved. Granted iirc it led to the
> Challenger disaster (the boosters had to be shipped by rail since they
> were
> made in a key C-critters district so O-rings were required since the
> boosters were too long).
>
> While China may push that space race button or some other black swan event
> occurs (making space projects a factor in voting), I'd put my bet that
> more
> and more of the heavy lifting will be seen on the private sector projects
> in the future. To make space development stick (beyond what we have) I
> think it has to have a direct profit motive beyond snapping up a
> government
> contract\subsidy. That just isn't going to happen in a government
> directed
> project... the political nature of the beast creates way too many economic
> mal-incentives. For historical example, the only transcontinental
> railroad
> not to go bankrupt was the only one not built using public subsidies (the
> Great Northern Railway...now merged into the BNSF Railway). All the
> other
> transcontinental railways (all major receivers of public funds) went
> belly-up.
>
> It may take a little longer, but I'd rather see profit motive and economic
> self-interest drive space development rather than the government good idea
> fairy getting involved. It's more likely to stick that way.