In article <BtIH0M.CJt@news.cso.uiuc.edu> tjn32113@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Tom Nugent ) writes:
>Last week's Space News mentioned this a bit. In a round table discussion
>regarind commercial space, it was agreed that OSC (Orbital Science
>Corporation, the makers of the Pegasus laucnh vehicle) is about as close as
>you can come to the 'little guy goes big' in space,
This is ridiculous, since OSC gets over 90% of its revenue from the U.S.
government. They have commercial expectations, but first they have
to make Pegasus and Orbcomm actualy work instead of just looking good
on paper. Pegasus was a great concept, and still is a great concept
IMHO, but its implementation by OSC has been a dismal failure.
There are many significant players, both old and new, in commercial
space. Hughes and Loral both get nearly half of their space-related
revenue from commercial satellite building, and Comsat gets over three-quarters
of its revenue from commercial satellite ops. Comsat stock is near its
all-time high, and Hughes is signing deals across the planet to bypass
primitive local telephone switching systems with satellites. There are
many start-ups both for building (Norris Satellite, Iridium) and operating
(Alpha Lyracom, American Mobile Satellite Corp., Skypix, etc.)
commercial spacecraft. General Dynamics and McDonnel Douglas, while still
dominated by government contracts in the space field, have significant
commercial launch operations. E'Prime is a small rocket company with a
commercial contract but no government support. Arianespace gets most
of its revenue from commercial launches. None of these may fit the
stereotype of the ideal space startup, but they are all in there duking
it out in one of the fastest growing sectors of our economy.
--
szabo@techbook.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400, N81)
------------------------------
Date: 3 Sep 92 15:01:49 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <szabo@techbook.com>
Subject: Private space ventures
Newsgroups: sci.space
In article <BtK3nK.HGp@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>>[GPS, satellite recievers, etc.]
>It won't help. The belittlers will just redefine the "space program"
>they are criticizing to exclude these obviously-useful things.
Sadly, what is in fact happening is that many space activists define
the "space program" to exclude these things.
--
szabo@techbook.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400, N81)
------------------------------
Date: 3 Sep 92 15:52:28 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <szabo@techbook.com>
Subject: Private space ventures
Newsgroups: sci.space
In article <1992Aug25.214547.3097@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> xrcjd@resolve.gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles J. Divine) writes:
>[Andrew-type hurricanes unpredicted could have killed thousands]
>That's the way things used to be -- before weather satellites.
Why, then, have you been lobbying almost exclusively for very expensive,
relatively useless projects like SSF? Why have you not been lobbying
for inexpensive but useful projects, such as improving weather satellites,
or better launchers for satellites? We have here a blatant double
standard, a Trojan Horse -- using examples of the usefulness of space
that have nothing to do with what you are actually promoting.
--
szabo@techbook.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400, N81)
------------------------------
Date: 3 Sep 92 15:42:01 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <szabo@techbook.com>
Subject: Saturn class (Was: SPS feasibility and other space
Newsgroups: sci.space
In article <1992Aug25.210314.14787@iti.org> aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>SS Freedom construction and supply IS a viable commercial market for
>HLVs this decade.
This is a sad example of the Orwellian perversion of the word
"commercial" being undertaken by NASA & freinds. The common, and only
useful in this case, definition of commercial is those projects for
which funding originates in the private sector. What we would have here
is traditional contracting, perhaps modified in process to be called
"commercial", but subject to the same political winds and probably the
same efficiencies. We have NASA still dictating architecture to
industry and serving its own obscure needs, instead of following the
lead of commerce and serving the needs of commerce.
In this case, Clinton/Gore with their emphasis on EOS, and Bush/Quayle
with their 10% across-the-board spending cut, combined with next year's
budget-conscious Congress could easily axe SSF. Whatever the political
support it may have garnered from zealots in the past, the political
landscape during the next few years is going to be greatly changed.
In the early 80's, with the Cold War overshadowing any concern for
deficits, I could collude with people like Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA)
to get SSF funded and get Boeing the contract (that sad tale has been
told elsewhere). That won't work with somebody like Rod Chandler,
this year's Republican for Senate from Washington State that whose
main campaign theme is cutting the Federal Budget -- quite a rare
campaign theme, if you think back to previous years when budget-cutting
was portrayed as a vice, not a virtue.
Furthermore, there is still intense political pressure to use the Shuttle.
The chances of SSF ever being inhabited are less than 50%, and the chances
of it being serviced by other than the Shuttle, if it did get that
far, are probably less than 25%. A 13% chance of a couple $billion in
revenue in five to fifteen years is a net present value on the order
of $100 million, an insignificant fraction of the cost to develop this
monster.
This is nowhere close to being sufficient to attract private
investment, nor would the resulting monster save any money for
SSF, not to mention the other 90% of the space program. It may yet
"justify" the pork barrel to start rolling for NLS, subsidized by the IRS
every step of the way, and improving launch services not a whit. Why are
you expending effort creating arguments for the NLS crowd?
--
szabo@techbook.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400, N81)
------------------------------
Date: 3 Sep 92 14:28:20 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <szabo@techbook.com>
Subject: With telepresence, who needs people in Earth orbit?
Newsgroups: sci.space
In article <1992Aug24.175759.1@fnalf.fnal.gov> higgins@fnalf.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:
>I'd guess that [Nick] too would like to develop the
>capabilities of "real" robots, telepresence, and even Real Astronauts.
Actually, both anthros and anthropormorphic machines are overrated
for solving the most important long-term space industry problems (eg
extraction of ice and metal, automated processing in microgravity,
etc.) Sure I'd like to see astronauts and "real" robots, but they are
not worth the resources spent, especially the $10's of billions wasted
on astronauts. Telepresence, automated extraction and processing tech,
and the like are quite important for future space development, as well
as being the most ripe for spin-offs in Earthside industries.
While space activists and NASA neglect these critical fields,
the most important such work is still going on down here on Earth,
in areas from medicine to oil to cable-laying.
>He simply is not willing to
>pay the price of Space Station Fred to get this. He's not even
>willing to pay for Shuttle operations.
I don't totally oppose this kind of stuff, I just think it has gotten
way out of hand, and people thinking they are promoting space
development are obsessed with this part of the space
program which is really not producing very much. I support
Shuttle/Spacelab if they could operate on a much lower
budget, and I'd support Mir as a joint U.S./Russian venture
if NASA put no more than $500 million per year into that. I'm not
totally opposed to astronauts, but the current obsession with astronauts
has totally gotten out of hand, to where it eats up 2/3 of the NASA
budget, has perverted what could have been a cost and reliability
breakthrough in Ariane 5, and has starved planetary exploration along
with hundreds of lines of research.
>Frequent
>and simple access to orbit is the key. What NASA has now is "We're
>only gonna get one chance this decade to fly our gadget, and if it
>doesn't work our careers are shot, so it must be super-reliable and
>gold-plated."
The problem is, projects like TSS and SSF are designed around a launcher
that doesn't give frequent and simple access to orbit. TSS, for example,
could easily have been a quarter the size, a tenth the cost, teleoperated,
launched commercially, and provided 90% of the needed data. Instead,
NASA plays politics with every experiment -- use our big astronaut pork
projects or die. Thus the bloating and most of the problems of the
Great Observatories, Galileo, and other Shuttle-tied exploration.
What Henry, when he criticizes this bloating, has to realize is that
this is the direct consequence of the politics of astronauts and i
centralized projects.
The lean/mean planetary projects, like NEAR, MESUR, lunar orbiter, and
Artemis lander _still_ have difficulty getting funded, because they don't
use Shuttle or SSF, even after all of the realization of the cost-effectiveness
of small, quick exploration. Planetary science has plucked out the mite in its own eye, but it is still being destroyed by the mote in the astronaut-world's
eye. We need the strategy of frequency and simplicity in all of NASA if
we are to have effective NASA programs.
--
szabo@techbook.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400, N81)
