Re: CONGRATULATIONS BIGELOW AEROSPACE!


"Monte Davis" <monte.davis@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:o14gb2paklqqpvvs3u621bckokuqvu119g@xxxxxxxxxx
"Jeff Findley" <jeff.findley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The point I take away from this is that NASA should stick to what it does
best, research and technology transfer.

Can you make that more fine-grained? I'm always curious about how NASA
decides to allocate research effort to "mission-specific" vs.
"space-specific" vs. broader targets, because I start from the general
premise that it usually takes a certain critical mass of talent,
team-building time, and money to get productive R&D.

Certainly. You start with launch services. Commercial launch services do
exist in the US, so NASA should be using them. Also, there is zero gravity
aircraft flights (i.e. Vomit Comet).

When commercial providers exist that provide the products and services that
NASA needs, they should be used. The tricky part, which you've hit upon, is
deciding what should be bought commercially and what NASA should develop in
house. If you let NASA decide on their own, the bureacracy will choose to
do everything on their own, since they'll claim that they have special needs
that can't be met by buying commercially.

The question then becomes, who decides what NASA should do on their own? To
a large extent, this is the job of congress and the administration. They
pass and sign the budgets. If they choose not to fund the CAV and CaLV
because they think it will be too expensive, then NASA will be forced to
look for alternatives.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)


.

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