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Comment by dextrous | Hacker News Reader

Politics aside, according to a pretty comprehensive study (118 missions) it does seem that SpaceX is much more efficient than NASA [1]. Data like this would suggest privatization of space missions is a good idea. Maybe this conclusion is biased somehow, or perhaps the purpose of a dedicated govt org is different in some way that justifies its budget and scope despite the difference in efficiency?

https://qz.com/emails/space-business/2172377/an-oxford-case-...

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SpaceX is pretty efficient at space launches, and has gotten there using a lot of NASA guidance and funding.

NASA does a lot more than space launches, and they do use private sector (including SpaceX) for most of their launches.

NASA does far more science research than spacex.

Efficiency is important for public institutions but not the highest priority. The highest priority is public service. These institutions should have public good as their north star, not shareholder value

How are those any different considering the public are essentially the shareholders.

No the public is the customer. The difference is between the postal service being profitable and not losing your packages. If not losing packages costs too much for them to be profitable, then the public would want them to operate at a cost but make sure all packages arrive safely

They compare cost, speed-to-market, schedule, and scalability, but it looks like they ignore failed launches and consider all missions successful?

I couldn't find a comparison of the number of launch failures between the two, my recollection is that this happened a lot more often in SpaceX rockets. But maybe that's included in the cost overrun figures and still puts SpaceX ahead by an order of magnitude.

I agree with the thesis of the paper, that platforms and incremental advances are more efficient and more economical. I don't quite agree that an incremental approach would have worked well for the NASA efforts in the 60s and 70s. Perhaps it should be considered as an option for these large organizations, but I'm not convinced it's always better.

Also, to do this study fairly, you would have to set up SpaceX to not benefit from any of the advances made by NASA for the decades beforehand. Some step-function style advances did happen under NASA supervision that benefitted the entire scientific community.

Also looks like the paper explicitly said it wasn't doing a public/private sector comparison so much as observing that SpaceX doing repeatable stuff in LEO on short timelines delivered without the cost overruns of NASA doing more complex one-offs over longer timelines and concluding that, surprise surprise, the repeatable stuff and incremental improvement stuff had much better cost control than the deep space science missions and space station enhancements. Yes, if you look at the raw number of missions SpaceX has operated, most of them have been successful Falcon 9 launches and most of them have been to deploy minisats to a standard design, and its track record of these is excellent (including adding reusability). NASA's track record would look a lot better if it mostly launched satellite constellations to LEO too and better still if it held off on planning anything in deep space, but that's not really what NASA is for. If you look at SpaceX in terms of private programmes rather than missions, the Falcon 9 is outstanding and the Starlink minisats work, the Falcon Heavy seems fine, Starship has been going on a very long time (including work before the Starship name was coined like the the Raptor engine) and hasn't achieved anything useful yet, and the stated goal of going to Mars hasn't got off the drawing board. But they're very, very good at building and delivering significant improvements on the repeatable stuff that isn't NASAs focus

Also, if you're doing a fair comparison between public and private sector you've got to consider all the launch startups that aren't SpaceX, including the ones that haven't successfully launched...

The question to ask is if NASA's numerous responsibilities and accomplishments should be owned by the People or by individuals. Efficiency is fixable.

> Data like this would suggest privatization of space missions is a good idea

How is that working out with the US Health Care System?

Better healthcare for fewer people. Might work well for space exploration.

So just like for-profit health care customers must avoid rural regional hospitals hollowed out by VCs to be able to gain the better outcomes in a system hurdling toward catastrophe, space explorers must carefully avoid paths of a growing amount of space debris in a LEO system also hurdling toward catastrophe.

In both cases, I don't think the system works well without assuming spherical cows or something like that.

Edit: ah, I see it's "hurtling." Although I guess in both cases you have to dodge larger and larger geographic regions to claim success, so a bit like hurdling. :)

More like none healthcare for the bottom 20%, bankruptcy for the next 20%, and acceptable coverage for the rest.

Great system...

Better how? Less dollars in means worse, more expensive care for those who can afford

Screwing over regular people didnt work out too well for that one guy though ...

But still expensive burden for tax payers.

It's working great! For certain companies.

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