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Comment by themagician | Hacker News Reader

Why?

This is one thing that "governments" are really, really good at. NASA routinely launches things into space designed to last a few weeks that end up lasting for a decade or more because they are so amazingly overengineered. They don't do it for profit. They do it for science.

Private business is almost always about short term gain (because it kind of has to be). I don't think I want a bunch of crowdfunded garbage just adding more crap to the skies hoping to turn a quick buck. We have enough crowdfunded garbage here on earth. The only crowdfunded thing I'd support at this point is filling a rocket with a bunch of e-scooters and shooting it into the sun.

I know it's super trendy now more than ever to hate on the "government" but space exploration is one that that all governments—the US in particular—seem to do really, really well.

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> NASA routinely launches things into space designed to last a few weeks that end up lasting for a decade or more because they are so amazingly overengineered.

i worked on some of those. they're not overengineered, they're underpromised.

and no, i can't provide a source for that because the whole point is to look good to the public. there's not a line in the proposals about how long things are _actually_ supposed to last if you want to ever get another contract.

if the delivery estimates were good, we'd see a nice uniform distribution about expected lifetime. instead we see everything lasting so much longer than "expected". if we're attributing it to the engineers, then that's bad engineering. but the discrepancy isn't the fault of the engineers.

Imagine a world where e.g. a moderately well-funded university science department can launch instruments into space. It sounds absolutely fucking amazing. Near-Earth space is going to fill up regardless, and I'd like to live in a world where big corporations and governments aren't the only entities that can afford to put stuff up there.

Meanwhile, our space exploration program basically exists as an excuse to rob the American taxpayer to fund massive, obsolete rockets and get politicians re-elected. That's not to say that the instruments themselves aren't examples of the finest technology ever created by the human species, but their way of doing business needs an overhaul. They need some competition, and SpaceX and other new space companies are bringing it.

Not sure what world you live in. I went to a state school where a number of people worked on instruments for Cassini.

Not sure what politicians get elected over NASA projects in the last 40 years. Maybe for cutting their budget.

> Not sure what world you live in. I went to a state school where a number of people worked on instruments for Cassini.

Good for you. I went to a small private school where such things were a pipedream, and I expect in poorer countries than the USA the outlook is even bleaker for universities sending hardware to space.

> Not sure what politicians get elected over NASA projects in the last 40 years. Maybe for cutting their budget.

Are you seriously claiming that space pork doesn't exist?

I mean, e.g. Richard Shelby hasn't come out and said "I use my political clout to shackle science and exploration missions to the SLS because it is an economic boon to my constituency at the general expense of the American taxpayer", but if you have eyes to read between the lines it's not a difficult leap to make.

Slightly OT (payload rather than instrumentation), but I was able to work on a CubeSat [0] project as an undergraduate at a small state school, which was an absolutely amazing experience.

I later went to ASU where I worked for the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) which is a world-class department for students interested in aerospace.

Awesome aerospace R&D is certainly not solely the realm of Ivy League private schools.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat

> Slightly OT (payload rather than instrumentation), but I was able to work on a CubeSat [0] project as an undergraduate at a small state school, which was an absolutely amazing experience.

This is a great example of how downward-trending costs of putting things in space have already opened doors. There are certainly more dimensions to that trend than SpaceX selling cheap launches.

When I went to university, CubeSats were barely a thing, unfortunately.

Also, the idea of filling up space with little chunks of non-government science and engineering seems to go against the stated position of the guy I've been replying to.

> Good for you. I went to a small private school where such things were a pipedream, and I expect in poorer countries than the USA the outlook is even bleaker for universities sending hardware to space.

Sounds like we should probably invest more in improving the public school system.

A bunch of Canadian students and their lecturers built a world class telescope while in university using off the shelf technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_Telephoto_Array

https://www.dragonflytelescope.org/

It's all published and anyone can make their own too. Using off the shelf products.

Having a colossal budget to blow isn't always the answer to everything in fact it's sometimes more of a hindrance which is clear to anyone ever involved with government procurement and how it works.

Your point isn't clear, but that's certainly a true statement.

Sometimes, it's best just to walk away.

Private business has much longer term perspective than government.

Typically, governments are run to make things look good by the next election. That's a planning horizon of 2 years on average, assuming 4 year terms.

Meanwhile, forestry companies routinely plant trees that won't be harvested for 50 years.

Government routinely plans projects on horizons spread over decades. See for example, the MTA, the Big Dig, LA's Metro system, pretty much everything handled by NASA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the NPS, the Dept of Transportation, DARPA, etc.

Private business has trouble seeing beyond this quarter's financials... especially when said business is publicly traded.

Meanwhile, forestry companies routinely plant trees that won't be harvested for 50 years

Depends very heavily on the type of tree. Red Oak is on a 50-year timeline, but Douglas fir is usually on a 5-10 year timeline (depending on whether it's grown for Christmas trees or for lumber), most big box store lumber is on the 10-20 year timeline, and bamboo is frequently harvested the same year it's planted (but is also technically not a tree...). This is a matter of necessity, not far-term vision. If they could get away with not thinking long-term they would, but the modern lumber industry has learned from the excesses of the colonial and pre-Industrial lumber industry.

> Private business has trouble seeing beyond this quarter's financials... especially when said business is publicly traded.

I know that's the snarky cliche, but where is the empirical evidence?

I see major public corporations staying competitive for decade after decade.

It's hard to understand how organizations that bet everything on the 2020 Q1 results while ignoring 2020 Q2 accomplish that.

> This is a matter of necessity, not far-term vision.

I'd say the far-term vision is a necessity to flourish far-term. therefore surviving companies have it.

> I see major public corporations staying competitive for decade after decade.

Not sure what "competitive" means in this context, but there is no shortage of examples of large companies which have been run into the ground for the sake of short term payouts for executives and insider stakeholders: Lehman Brothers, AIG, PG&E, Boeing, likely IBM, any number of the drained husks left in the wake of private equity like Toys R Us and Payless, etc.

Corporations can be run well or badly, and governments can be run well or badly. It's just a question of the competence and moral character (or lack thereof) of decision-makers.

By competitive I just mean that they keep performing well decade after decade. Many Fortune 500 companies have been on that list for decades.

> Lehman Brothers, AIG, PG&E, Boeing, likely IBM, any number of the drained husks left in the wake of private equity like Toys R Us and Payless, etc.

I doubt all of those were victims of shortsightedness. Sometimes, it's time for institutions to die and leave room for new things.

But of course you're right that this happens. I wasn't claiming that all private companies are run perfectly with epic time horizons and no executive ego involved etc. I was just arguing against the idea that they never think beyond the next quarterly result report.

> Corporations can be run well or badly, and governments can be run well or badly.

Sure!

> It's just a question of the competence and moral character (or lack thereof) of decision-makers.

I'd focus a lot more on what incentives the decision-makers are under. And I claim the politician who will be fired in 2 years unless he makes himself look awesome on Election Day has more short term focused incentives that a company CEO.

> And I claim the politician who will be fired in 2 years unless he makes himself look awesome on Election Day has more short term focused incentives that a company CEO.

Here's where the disagreement starts. We have insufficiently different facts on the table, but those unspoken are on the different sides. So you decide that governments are under more short-term pressure to demonstrate results, while I think modern corporations have shorter periods when shareholders can allow CEOs not to bring them tangible results. And for corporations existing for decades I have examples of governments existing at least as long.

I guess we have to keep disagreeing.

Agreed. I don't mind disagreement at all.

The cost and schedule overruns on JWST are a good argument against the statements you have made. The program is ~$4B over budget, and 3 years behind schedule.

NASA does some things well, and is absolutely terrible at others.

We need to stop pretending that these missed estimates are a catastrophe. They're inventing new things, and there's uncertainty.

We'd be a lot better served, as a nation and a society, if we accepted these realities in the same way that our best businesses do. Instead, we're stuck with a Day 2 mentality, where the risks associated with grand endeavors are unacceptable because a bunch of whiners will complain.

The same assholes who whinge about the JWST being $4b over budget will happily cheer for hundreds of billions to be spent on wars or whatever. They're not arguing honestly, and we need to learn to ignore them.

> We need to stop pretending that these missed estimates are a catastrophe. They're inventing new things, and there's uncertainty.

Uncertainty is certain! We also need to accept the fact that sometimes we go down paths, make discoveries, and need to reverse course, or hold people accountable so the wrong people don't pay for the mistakes of others. None of that is happening with JWST, while Northrop gets to pull in billions. That's in addition to ~$30B/year Northrop is pulling in building weapons.

> The same assholes who whinge about the JWST being $4b over budget will happily cheer for hundreds of billions to be spent on wars or whatever.

That's just not true, and the criticism of the F35 program is a fine example.

Beyond that, Webb going over budget is stifling progress on dozens of other pursuits that could probably use the funds more constructively.

> We also need to accept the fact that sometimes we go down paths, make discoveries, and need to reverse course,

All of which are made harder by people who share your preference for exceedingly inefficient but low-error processes.

> or hold people accountable so the wrong people don't pay for the mistakes of others.

This part of your sentence isn't compatible with the first part of your sentence. This is at the core of the problem. The prevalence of this attitude leads to a culture of ass-covering rather than ambition and risk-taking. That ass-covering creates gross inefficiencies, leading to every step costing 10x too much, and taking 5x too long.

Whle that is true, to some extend this can be pushed into the absurd and people still make excuses for it.

The JWST yes is new and great and better and technically difficult. But a serious discussion must be had about how NASA spends its money. Many of the things they do are not that innovative and the big companies basically have no accountability and essentially know that delays to JWST will keep them in business. That money could simply have been spent a better way.

Now with the JWST at least you are pushing the possible and I agree you have to be willing to keep pushing those things beyond the initial budget.

However other things, like SLS, Orion and a number of other programs are just charity for big companies. They do not push the possible in terms of technology, but rather are mostly old technologies that they can incrementally work on.

So overall I do agree you have to go over budget and accept that as a reality. However you need to be careful and not just give a free pass not unlimited spending, when that money could be used to improve a dynamic space infrastructure and industry rather then having 50% of your budget in the 3 huge programs that have little accountability.

The cost overruns are an example for my argument, not against it. They make economically non-viable decisions. Instead of, you know scrapping the project or cutting corners and launching garbage like 99% of all crowdfunding disasters.

If governments are so good at aerospace then why can a man with no training and some funding come along and cut the launch price per kg by 80% within a decade or so.

Governments are notoriously bad at procurement, especially in this sector.

Governments are very much about short term gain too, just with money that's not their own.

A man didn’t.

A man with a ridiculous amount of money and a cult following hired a bunch of very smart people, many who used to work for the government, to work for him to build rockets for other people so he could make more money.

NASAs goal was never to build rockets for cheap. It was to do great science.

What a shame that the thousands of people who have been elected in that time by the public and with a budget a few magnitudes larger couldn't manage somehow it. Either they are wildly incompetent or the one person with far less money is highly competent. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle?

Guess it was too hard, political considerations and such, certainly some aerospace CEO's got rich regardless in the meantime, so good for them yes?

Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly and it's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm not sure what is flamewar about that comment Dan but will endeavour to be more generalist I guess? Respect the tough job you have and will keep it more impersonal.

US aerospace funding by the government is clearly broken, this is known the world over. SpaceX came along and cut costs by half within a decade, that's surely common knowledge by this point?

https://theconversation.com/how-spacex-lowered-costs-and-red...

> US aerospace funding by the government is clearly broken, this is known the world over.

I generally agree with you here - but we'll need to separate "privatizable" aerospace projects from others.

Rocket design is quite old, being a prerequisite to all else. No wonder a lot of experience was gained and - by now - private enterprises can optimize this, so governments should step aside.

At the same time there are projects which could produce commercial benefits after much longer time spans. Automatic interplanetary stations are in that range. So are space telescopes.

That explains how, simultaneously, SpaceX can outwit NASA in rocket design - yet doesn't yet venture into space telescopes business, nothing serious there.

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