NASA is a political jobs program from a funding perspective. There isn't any way around that.
This creates uncertainties, distractions and perverse incentives all around:
0. Everything is dramatically complicated by the artificial divisions of work across states needed to get enough political support. Grossly inefficient from the start, and inflexible into perpetuity.
1. Initial schedules are incentivized to be unrealistic, and not reflective of hard analysis/planning, in order to get funding. Easier to deal with the real details and expand schedules later, even though nobody wants that to be the process.
2. Essentially a cost plus (or cost even) program. There is no hard limit on cost, since the further along a project is, the easier it is to raise its budget, especially along with schedule delays.
3. Creativity flows to the most basic constraint. The most basic constraint is political will to fund, so top level attention goes to managing/manipulating up.
When NASA's hard constraint was time (getting to the moon first), creativity went there. They were never cheap, but they did operate with incredible speed.
Whereas any private company's basic constraints are relative profitability in terms of net return in a given time frame, so creativity goes to both speed and cost.
4. Boeing and other traditional large NASA contractors operated for decades under NASA's politically driven, cost plus umbrella, so continue to suffer from, and reinforce, NASA's problems.
This culture is hard to break, even after switching to a flat cost (still time flexible) regime. See recent Boeing troubles. Not just throw away rockets, but a much delayed, over budget, wonky one-way manned spaceship!! Ouch!
That’s part of the plan though. With high risk nascent industries, the govt is often the only customer who can bear that risk. It was the same dynamic that ushered in aerospace; it was mainly just a hobby industry until the Army offered a lucrative contract.
This is the truth, and while you could frame it as a negative, I see it as a huge positive.
Because NASA has been subsidizing space for decades the US has a tremendous among of trained workers for aero-space. It was exactly that workforce that venture-capital based space industry was able to source talent from. I doubt spaceX would have been possible without NASA dumping billions into boondoggles. Now it is self-reinforcing. NASA trained talent for/funds industry, industry now trains talent for/supplies NASA. Space economy the easy way, just costs a few hundred billion bootstrap it.
This is the truth, and while you could frame it as a negative, I see it as a huge positive.
I see a clear split.
When NASA does something brand new, where private industry doesn't have incentives, it is a jobs program doing pioneering science, producing unique scientific and technological progress.
Since those projects would not get done otherwise, the inefficiencies are not really inefficiencies. Just cost of project.
But when NASA does something industry has found incentives for, the result is massive money-wasting redundant lower-quality, economically deadend work. The SLS is a monstrous parasite, tragically sucking up NASA/tax-payer resources. The only "purpose" for each build, launch & discard, vs. buying an economy class Starship ticket, is to "justify" the cost of doing so!
So I applaud NASA's manned missions in the past.
And I applaud NASA's current unmanned missions exploring our solar system and universe. And asteroid deflection missions. And human habitability research.
But manned transit, and near Earth resource missions, are best left to the growing list of companies that are funded, incentivized, better managed, and single mindedly optimizing those activities so well that they not only pay for themselves, but grow unbounded.
3. Creativity flows to the most basic constraint. The most basic constraint is political will to fund, so top level attention goes to managing/manipulating up.
Can you or somebody elaborate on this? Is there an idea or a terminology or something I can read more about this? I'm very interested in the idea that you can pay attention to where the "smart kids" are going, to help identify where the most basic constraint is. I'm also interested in what the word "basic" means here. I'm familiar with the theory of constraints and the idea of bottlenecks. But that doesn't seem like what this is getting after. Thanks!
They were never cheap, but they did operate with incredible speed at that time.
Actually, they were good, fast, and pretty cheap. The Saturn V cost per kg was much something around $5000/kg (compared to Delta IV Heavy at around $12000 kg), and could send a ton more into orbit than anything until Starship. If we'd continued down that development line instead of the insanity of the Shuttle, we'd really be somewhere today.
They also inherited a lot of free R&D from the Nazi V2 rocket program via Wernher Von Braun and several of his collaborators thanks to Operation Paperclip…
The US government is a jobs program. When you have been the dominant superpower for over 30 years, there is no reason you should be effective or efficient at anything. If nobody is capable of challenging you, private interests tend to override public interests.
And when a real challenger arises, you just have to hope that you can discard the old establishment and replace it with something capable of delivering before it's too late.
Comments
NASA is a political jobs program from a funding perspective. There isn't any way around that.
This creates uncertainties, distractions and perverse incentives all around:
0. Everything is dramatically complicated by the artificial divisions of work across states needed to get enough political support. Grossly inefficient from the start, and inflexible into perpetuity.
1. Initial schedules are incentivized to be unrealistic, and not reflective of hard analysis/planning, in order to get funding. Easier to deal with the real details and expand schedules later, even though nobody wants that to be the process.
2. Essentially a cost plus (or cost even) program. There is no hard limit on cost, since the further along a project is, the easier it is to raise its budget, especially along with schedule delays.
3. Creativity flows to the most basic constraint. The most basic constraint is political will to fund, so top level attention goes to managing/manipulating up.
When NASA's hard constraint was time (getting to the moon first), creativity went there. They were never cheap, but they did operate with incredible speed.
Whereas any private company's basic constraints are relative profitability in terms of net return in a given time frame, so creativity goes to both speed and cost.
4. Boeing and other traditional large NASA contractors operated for decades under NASA's politically driven, cost plus umbrella, so continue to suffer from, and reinforce, NASA's problems.
This culture is hard to break, even after switching to a flat cost (still time flexible) regime. See recent Boeing troubles. Not just throw away rockets, but a much delayed, over budget, wonky one-way manned spaceship!! Ouch!
This is really the only problem.
Because the government was the only buyer - no one in their right mind would supply unless a ridiculously cushy contract is in place.
You're going to massively overpay if you're the only buyer in a new industry that requires insane CapEx and is high risk.
That’s part of the plan though. With high risk nascent industries, the govt is often the only customer who can bear that risk. It was the same dynamic that ushered in aerospace; it was mainly just a hobby industry until the Army offered a lucrative contract.
This is the truth, and while you could frame it as a negative, I see it as a huge positive.
Because NASA has been subsidizing space for decades the US has a tremendous among of trained workers for aero-space. It was exactly that workforce that venture-capital based space industry was able to source talent from. I doubt spaceX would have been possible without NASA dumping billions into boondoggles. Now it is self-reinforcing. NASA trained talent for/funds industry, industry now trains talent for/supplies NASA. Space economy the easy way, just costs a few hundred billion bootstrap it.
I see a clear split.
When NASA does something brand new, where private industry doesn't have incentives, it is a jobs program doing pioneering science, producing unique scientific and technological progress.
Since those projects would not get done otherwise, the inefficiencies are not really inefficiencies. Just cost of project.
But when NASA does something industry has found incentives for, the result is massive money-wasting redundant lower-quality, economically deadend work. The SLS is a monstrous parasite, tragically sucking up NASA/tax-payer resources. The only "purpose" for each build, launch & discard, vs. buying an economy class Starship ticket, is to "justify" the cost of doing so!
So I applaud NASA's manned missions in the past.
And I applaud NASA's current unmanned missions exploring our solar system and universe. And asteroid deflection missions. And human habitability research.
But manned transit, and near Earth resource missions, are best left to the growing list of companies that are funded, incentivized, better managed, and single mindedly optimizing those activities so well that they not only pay for themselves, but grow unbounded.
Can you or somebody elaborate on this? Is there an idea or a terminology or something I can read more about this? I'm very interested in the idea that you can pay attention to where the "smart kids" are going, to help identify where the most basic constraint is. I'm also interested in what the word "basic" means here. I'm familiar with the theory of constraints and the idea of bottlenecks. But that doesn't seem like what this is getting after. Thanks!
Actually, they were good, fast, and pretty cheap. The Saturn V cost per kg was much something around $5000/kg (compared to Delta IV Heavy at around $12000 kg), and could send a ton more into orbit than anything until Starship. If we'd continued down that development line instead of the insanity of the Shuttle, we'd really be somewhere today.
They also inherited a lot of free R&D from the Nazi V2 rocket program via Wernher Von Braun and several of his collaborators thanks to Operation Paperclip…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
Yes, so?
It’s not like that knowledge was forgotten and rediscovered post 1972.
The US government is a jobs program. When you have been the dominant superpower for over 30 years, there is no reason you should be effective or efficient at anything. If nobody is capable of challenging you, private interests tend to override public interests.
And when a real challenger arises, you just have to hope that you can discard the old establishment and replace it with something capable of delivering before it's too late.