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Comment by wisty | Hacker News Reader

The problem wasn't NASA. The problem was, NASA was told to build something impossible - a cheap and reliable spaceplane. It was many times more complex than anything else ever made (including the Saturn V). It was never going to be cheap and reliable. (Well, it might be possible today, with decades more experience and technology). Only the "yes men" said it was possible, and they got promoted. The rest of the engineers were forced to work in a bubble where a realistic big picture didn't matter.

OK, you can privatize that. But the same problems will apply. Look at Australia's military acquisitions. Every vehicle we buy costs 10X the MOTS price, because there's always a requirement "modifications for Australian conditions". The private operators read this as "complete idiots in command", and charge accordingly. A privatized space sector would work the same way - stupid government orders will get stupid prices.

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They could have built a cheap and reusable space plane. The problem was they built it do far more than was necessary. You can build a "cheap" space-plane that get's 7 people to orbit at around 100-1000$/lb. (by cheap somewhere under 10 million a flight.) You can't build a cheap space plane that hauls up 7 people and 50,000LB of junk into space at back at the same time. If they just focused on people they could have avoided an external fuel tank and all those fragile tiles. Focus on a reasonable amount of structural redundancy and ended up with something that could get back from space without needing a new paint job let alone a full engine rebuild.

PS: Feathers don't burn up on rentry but bricks do. The shuttle was far to close to a brick to get back without a lot of trauma.

>>You can build a "cheap" space-plane that get's 7 people to orbit at around 100-1000$/lb.

That would push the costs down by a factor of ten, at least. For man-rated space flight!

What is the NASA track record for big projects that push costs down?

(Didn't Burt Rutan have some story of when he built some high altitude air plane on an order -- and the NASA space suit integration team was larger than the team to design and build the aircraft?)

> That would push the costs down by a factor of ten, at least. For man-rated space flight!

I don't think so. Those 7 people need all the "junk" up there too. it's their living quarters, their food, their science experiments, etc.

Maybe you launch it separately. But don't forget about the cost of that.

You missed my point -- 100-1000$/lb is at least a factor of ten less than anything else.

(NASA is not noted for going factors of ten less than normal costs.)

I expect they would still blow a lot on R&D. However, rocket fuel for a small craft is not that expencive so it's really a question of how much inspection / repare the vehicle needs. A light craft could reinter the atmosphere with minimal heating, and you can build reasonably efficent but vary simple rocket engines so there is plenty of room to simplyfy matence. So, in theory we chould build a fairly cheap and reusable shutte to LEO. The real question is could NASA build such a ship? IMO, that's really just a question of would congress fund such a ship?

PS: The space shuttle's never left the R&D stage. Practicly every flight change some significant internal system. If they had simply said "these are good enough" then the program would have been far cheaper.

>>could NASA build such a ship? IMO, that's really just a question of would congress fund such a ship?

Sigh. To repeat a trivial point for the third time...

You have the opinion that NASA after 1970 could do any large project and push costs down by a factor of ten.

If a serious argument could be made, then one of the NASA fan boys would have posted it...

It's a question of incentives. The costs of sending 100 people up instead of the normal crew of 7 and a lot of cargo on a shuttle mission would have been minimal. However, there was no real point to sending that many people into space at the same time and the risk from failure would have been insane.

So if there was some need for thousands of people to be sent into space per year then NASA could design and operate a fairly low cost per launch system. However, once they started operating highly capable but delicate system added to the fact there was little value in sending more than a token number of people into space in a given year then costs are going to spiral out of control even if the desgin was reasonable.

PS: I have even heard the argument that NASA benefited from the amount of spectacle involved in the shuttle program. If they had built something that looked and operated like a 747 nobody would have cared but build something that takes thousands of controlled explosions and then sit’s on a huge ball of fire into space and wow you must be doing something important.

>>if there was some need for thousands of people to be sent into space per year then NASA could design and operate a fairly low cost per launch system.

For the second time to you (4th time overall) -- uh... no. That account is less than two weeks old. I am probably being trolled.

That's a strong dismissal with little evidence to back it up. I am not saying that I expect NASA to become a lean organization tomorrow, just that there incentives are all messed up.

Anyway, you might think that government organizations are always full of bloat but compare the SSA with your 401k and you will find they are vary low overhead. The problem with government organizations is they tend to make really big a stupid decisions for political reasons, aka if SSA had invested in a mix of stocks and bonds vs. US treasury bonds people would be talking about how over funded it was right now. Instead the SSA “surplus” was used to subsidize government borrowing and treated as yet another agency.

PS: I have 64 Karma on a 2 week old act that may suggest something about my activities. If you actually have something meaningful to say feel free to support your argument, but right now I am feeling trolled.

11 days, to be specific. All the trolls get some karma, I think you are marked as new accounts below 50 now? If you aren't a troll, don't repeat claims without answering people's points from a new account.

A link re the Shuttle: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/07/lunch-wi...

Bye.

"Tethers in space, break" for a long number of reasons. NASA has actually tried to use tethers in space several times and found a lot of surprisingly tough issues. One of the least obvious induced current, but read up on it as there is some really interesting engendering involved. So, from the perspective of someone who you want to ride in a tin can at the end of one of these you are really going to need to say, if these break the occupants survive due the ability for each half to reinter the atmosphere, be rescued or whatever.

Now run the numbers for a version of that a reasonable person would actually be willing to live in for a full year and perhaps he would be willing to discuss it. However, a moon base is probably both cheaper and safer.

> If they had built something that looked and operated like a 747 nobody would have cared

I don't entirely agree. With a space program that "looked and operated like a 747" - assuming you mean a relatively routine and reliable spaceplane where the launches are less of a spectacle - you'd get a lot of people and hardware in space, and people would have cared about that.

I guess it's harder to get people excited about results than about spectacles, but it can be done, and it lasts longer.

Oops, my mistake.

NASA was told to build something that was pointless - a LEO satelite delivery system with 7 crew.

It's like being asked to design a 20 seater minivan. Then discovering your only customers are Mormon families on the school run and the Army - then trying to build something that fits both their requirements.

Then being told that it must use a engine built in Hawaii and be assembled in Alaska.

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