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It appears Newt Gingrich may be running for president, he hasn't said no or yes, but as I seem to recall, he once had a proposal to award prizes for achieving various objectives including a Mars Prize. I read about in in the Case for Mars book. So what do you think his chances of running for President and getting elected are? Is this the man we should be supporting? Would he be the one that could make a manned Mars program happen?
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i didn't bother voting; Newt has weird ideas, or at least, he's caught up in his parties ideas; both he and Al gore claimed to have read Alvin Tofflers 'The Third Wave', and 'PowerShift', and both had different interpretations; in other words, they are both conditioned socialites.
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the only moderate republican I'd vote for would be John McCain;
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The way I see it, conventional wisdom got us as far as the Moon but got us no farther. NASA got more interested in spending money than actually getting results out of it. I think awarding prize money is a results oriented approach. Congress can appropriate $30 billion for a Manned Mars mission for any given year, it is candy for any private company that wants to collect that money. I also think we should make the Ares I and V along with CEV available for sale to all private US companies that meet the security requirements. Have NASA develop the Ares I and V and then allow the contractors to make additional sales and fill additional orders for those rockets. And private US companies will then have the option of either buying Ares V and I launches or of building their own launch vehicles, they would then develop their own spacecraft to bring their astronauts to Mars. The great thing about prizes is that they cost the government nothing until someone wins them.
Since money is budgeted on an annual basis, perhaps it can be done this way. Lets say President Gingrich first year in office is 2009, for that year he asks Congress to appropriate $30 billion for the Mars prize, at about this time the Ares I rocket is tested for the first time. Most likely no one collects on this prize, the money goes back into next years budget (2010) as revenue. Next year NASA has a budget of say $27 billion + $30 billion if the prize is collected for 2010. Out of NASA's budget, NASA may decide to add a portion of its budget to sweeten the prize a little bit so that $5 billion gets added to the pot so now the prize is $35 billion, in 2010 no one succeeds in collecting on this prize and so the $35 billion gets collected again as revenue for the 2011 budget. NASA gets $27 billion for that year and adds another $5 billion to the pot, the prize goes up to $40 billion, NASA decides to split this and make a first prize for $30 billion and a second prize for $10 billion in 2011 no one collects on the prize so $40 billion goes back as general revenue. In the 2012 budget, NASA gets $27 billion dollars and of that $27 billion NASA adds $4 billionm to the first prize and $1 billion to the second so the prizes now are $34 billion and $11 billion. While all this is happening, various aerospace firms are eyeing these prizes and raising money from private capital markets to try to win one of these prizes. The progression of increasing the prizes continues until the first prize equals $42 billion and the second prize equals $13 billion, at this point NASA's $5 billion is split this way, $1 billion for the first prize and $4 billion for the second making the prizes $43 billion and $17 billion respectively for 2015, for 2016 the prizes become $44 billion and $21 billion, for 2017 its $45 billion and $25 billion, for 2018 its $46 billion and $29 Billion, and hopefully by now the price of each mission can be brought down and NASA will contribute $5 billion for the third prize in 2019. The idea is to keep on adding sugar increasing the incentive and increasing the private competion to win one of these prizes.
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Newt would make an excellent president for many reasons. Unfortunatly I think he's too smart to get elected.
I think the best way to reinvigorate the space program is drop all pretenses and admit its all about colonization. Reorganize NASA into 3 branches, manned and unmanned interplanetary space flight, and interstellar/galactic recon. Aeronautics reseach is shifted to the Department of Defense with the goal of producing cheap and effective Earth to LEO to Earth transprotation. Geological and meterlogical research is handed off to the USGS and NOAA. Funding for each branch would be roughly equal to NASA's current budget.
The biggest change I think needs to be implimented is the way things are developed. Hardware needs to be developed completely by the contractors to requirments given by NASA. Today, contractors are paid to draw up pretty pictures and white papers. They should have to design, build, and even test fly hardware all on their own dime prior to receiving a production contract. Of course this would be offset by a much higher flight rate.
"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane
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Newt would make an excellent president for many reasons. Unfortunatly I think he's too smart to get elected.
I think the best way to reinvigorate the space program is drop all pretenses and admit its all about colonization. Reorganize NASA into 3 branches, manned and unmanned interplanetary space flight, and interstellar/galactic recon. Aeronautics reseach is shifted to the Department of Defense with the goal of producing cheap and effective Earth to LEO to Earth transprotation. Geological and meterlogical research is handed off to the USGS and NOAA. Funding for each branch would be roughly equal to NASA's current budget.
The disadvantage of splitting it up like that is that there is less flexibility to move funds around as needed. The advantage is that all programs implemented by each branch should be relevant to the intent of each branch. I think NASA does other thing like earth research and education. I suppose you purpose dropping those areas.
Dig into the [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/2006/12/political-grab-bag.html]political grab bag[/url] at [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/]Child Civilization[/url]
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There are other departments that cover Earth Research and Education. The prizes should just get bigger and bigger until some one wins one of them. The second and third prizes are for the second and third flights to Mars, these reduce the risk to the compeditor of losing, and when the first prize is won, the second prize becomes the first prize and that build up until someone wins that. NASA devotes a portion of its budget to building up the prizes, generally the first prize is largest followed by the second prize and the third prize. When the first prize is one, the second and third prizes become the first and second prizes and a third prize is added, and the same heirachy is maintained, the prizes increase in value over time with the first prize always being the largest, and this is the way I propose to fund a Manned Mars program. You'd end up with a bunch of private corporations competing with each other and launching their own missions, to maximise profits they try to reduce costs, this keeps the management of the programs lean and efficient.
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I've read his "space prize" idea and I am skeptical to say the least. The only succesfull (so far) bid for the X-prize cost far more to accomplish than the prize was worth. And it goals were VERY modest.
Even if the prize money was increased to reasonable levels, I don't think it would work. The risk is to great and the potential for return is to small. If you had several hundread million dollars to vest you would not put it into a contest in which success is very difficult and if you're competators beat you you get nothing.
It also assumes that comerical intrest can get things done at vastly cheaper prices then NASA. But much of NASA's work is done by commerical intrests like Boeing and others. While their is probably a great deal of pork and ineficency in this commerical work, every dollar they can drive their price down means more profit for them, so you can be sure they are taking every pratical effort to reduce costs. But space is still just plan difficult.
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As for Newt himself, I rather like him actually. Which is odd because I am fairly libral and almost always vote a straight (D) in elections. However, I agree with him on many aspects of foriegn policy and I appricate his fiscal concervatisim. Since I live in Texas, and my democratic presidental vote is meanigless (since the state is bound to go Red) I'd vote for him if he ran on a third party ticket. Unless he split the vote and made it likely for a dem to win the state, but that is unlikely. I would certianly perfer him to our current neo-con leadership.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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Funny thing, if you said Texas is a red state in the 1980s, they would have laughed and reminded you that Cuba is red, Russia is Red, and China is Red, but not Texas!
I don't know what you find wrong with the prize system, I did mention three prizes, so if a company doesn't win the first prize, it still has a chance of winning the second or third if they are the second or third to land humans on Mars. As soon as the first prise is won, then a fourth prize is added. the prizes start out small but they grow bigger over time with each annual budget, because with each fiscal year, NASA would add some of its money to the prizes, and they would increase in value and become ever more tempting. Legally the prizes get reappropiated every year because that's how the US Constitution works, but if you count the prize money that is not spend as revenue for next year, you can balance your bodget by reappropriating the same amount and adding a little extra to it the next year, by no means a budget buster, The US taxpayer only pays the difference between last years prize and this years prize, not the whole thing every year if it is not won. Do you get my drift? Just because the prize is worth $40 billion a particular year, doesn't mean that the tax payer pays the whole $40 billion if the prize is won, he only pays the additional amount over last years amount for that particular year, the bulk of the prize is carried over from last year,and the government keeps on adding to the prize until someone wins it. There will always be three prizes to win at any given time for as long as the program lasts. The government only pays for success and the private companies worry about the risks.
I do think private companies manage costs better than the government does, they are more focused on the bottom line, the government is less so, as they can always make up for it by raising more revenue through taxes. I think with private companies, if the prize is big enough, they will take the risk, if the prize is not big enough, they will wait for it to get bigger before making the attempt, but if they wait too long, some other company may make the attempt and take the prize away from them. Many companies will fail, and thus write off the cost of the attempt, stock prices will go down, but the prize is still out their, companies know that getting to Mars is possible if the manage the program right, so many will try and some will succeed.. The ultimate goal is the bring down the costs of each suceeding mission, I don't know how this will be done, but it is up to the markets and the clever corporations to figure this out. Ultimately I want travel to Mars to be cheap enough so that we can begin to establish colonies on Mars. People running government programs could care less about cost, so long as the taxpayer is paying for it, and far as the government employees are concerned, its all about jobs. If they get paid to service the Shuttle and its expensive, they don't care, part of that expense is their salary and they are happy to recieve it. Government employees and managers have no motivation to bring down costs, instead their goal is to maintian their employment and jobs. The union asks for a raise, give it to them, they want increased health benefits and a retirement package, why not, the government is paying, and the managers like happy employees if they have no other goals, and their are no pressures on them to reduce costs.
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Funny thing, if you said Texas is a red state in the 1980s, they would have laughed and reminded you that Cuba is red, Russia is Red, and China is Red, but not Texas!
Yeah, less funny if you live there. Especialy if you live in a district (like I do) that was gerrymandered to get more republicans elected. Thanks, Tom DeLay.
The government only pays for success and the private companies worry about the risks.
The bold part of you're statment higlights the problem with this plan. Risk. Space travel is VERY risky. Both from a simple human point of view, and even more so from a finacial point of view. Rockets malfunction, blow up, people even die. These sorts of failures are costly both in terms of human life and (more importantly to a coporation) capital. Space-X is struggling with this very issue right now.
Now for the goverment, this risk is managable. The gov. has basicaly limitless pockets and does not demand immediat tangible results (ie money) as a return on its investment. This is not true for a corporation, which has both limited finacal resources, and must show a return on it's investment. And when dealing with the billions of dollars you are talking about as 'seed' money for a space enterprise, coporations (or any other finacer with that kind of money) are very averse to risk. The private sector simply cannot afford to throw away that kind of money on a failed mission attempt.
Simply put, the risk is to great for a private coporation to attempt without some sort of guaranty on a return on its investment. We have a system for providing such guarantys already, they are called goverment contracts, which is how most space work has already been done.
I think with private companies, if the prize is big enough, they will take the risk, if the prize is not big enough, they will wait for it to get bigger before making the attempt, but if they wait too long, some other company may make the attempt and take the prize away from them.
You might have a point if we were talking only mere millions of dollars here like with the x-prize (which hasn't been achive in a finacialy succesfull way BTW), but when you scale that up to billions, the finacial sectors tolerance for risk of this magnitude dwindles, and their expected return goes up. And so no one will bite.
You see their is a market for money, just like there is for everything else. It is represented by the stockmarket, bonds, bank loans, ect... but it is a market none the less. Diffrent buisness and entrepreneurs compete for this money, and so to get the seed money you need you're offer has to be competaive. The supply of billion dollar level financing is VERY tight, and so to get that kind of money your prospect has to be VERY attractive. But this investment isn't. It's VERY high risk and the returns are only marginal compared to the alternative options. If there is a point where the returns are high enough to justify the risk, the Goverment could then do it for less money.
Again dealing with risk is one of the few places the goverment has a critical advantage over private coporations. Because of the reasons I pointed out before, deepest pockets and no need for immediat financial return. Private coporations can't match this, and frankly don't want to. If you look back in history, virtualy every large scale, high-risk program (like Apollo, Dams, Canals, transcontiental railroads, ect) were either goverment run or basicaly goverment financed.
Many companies will fail, and thus write off the cost of the attempt, stock prices will go down,
Another problem. When you are talking about failures meaning billion dollar investments go belly up, it's not a minor problem for our economy. When a billion dollar venture goes south, people lose their jobs, alot of them. Obviously alot of investors lose their money as well. The goverment absourbe the kinds of losses no problem, but when it happens to a private coporation the effects and major. People are realy hurt. It is probably not ethical (and defiently not finacialy wise) to encourage this kind of behavior in the market.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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So you are saying the US Army should assemble all the rockets, build the space vehicles and launch the mission because it is more efficient than the private sector? The US Army does have a large supply of manpower. Instead of fighting and shooting, they could be put on an assembly line and trained to do a number of tasks that are required to get to Mars, and if they don't follow orders, they get court marshalled.
The bold part of you're statment higlights the problem with this plan. Risk. Space travel is VERY risky. Both from a simple human point of view, and even more so from a finacial point of view. Rockets malfunction, blow up, people even die. These sorts of failures are costly both in terms of human life and (more importantly to a coporation) capital. Space-X is struggling with this very issue right now.
Now for the goverment, this risk is managable. The gov. has basicaly limitless pockets and does not demand immediat tangible results (ie money) as a return on its investment. This is not true for a corporation, which has both limited finacal resources, and must show a return on it's investment. And when dealing with the billions of dollars you are talking about as 'seed' money for a space enterprise, coporations (or any other finacer with that kind of money) are very averse to risk. The private sector simply cannot afford to throw away that kind of money on a failed mission attempt.
What is $30 billion to the US economy? It is about 1% of Federal spending, but as a part of the economy as a whole it is a much smaller fraction. Last I looked at the figures Gross Domestic Product for the USA was $12 trillion, as a fraction, it would be a mere 0.25% of the US economy, and I didn't say foreign firms couldn't compete. NASA will give US firms access to US technology such as the Ares rocket, but the Russians can come up with their own technology and spend their own equivalent of $30 billion. I also mentioned that there would be three prizes. The first prize for the company that gets their first, the second prize for the company that gets their second, and the thrid prize for the company that gets there third, and as prizes are won, we would add even more prizes to that list and do so as long as we want the missions to continue. The only castasrpophic risk is if something bad were to happen in space because the corporation launched the mission too early. Haste makes waste as they say. With greater risk, greater reward is demanded. The prizes would just keep growing over time until their sufficient to induce activity on the part of the private sector. A billion dollars is not as much as it used to be, both in terms of inflation and as a proportion of the US economy. Multi-billion dollar companies fail all the time, witness Enron, and the US economy has survived them. There is no such thing as too big to fail, if there is, then it becomes a government run corporation and it ends up just as inefficient as any other government agency.
If a private space mission fails, then the only one to blame is the corporate management for not taking sufficient safety precautions. Even if the rewards are greater than what a government agency would spend to do the same thing, and just look at how efficiently the ISS was managed, a competion does allow for mission design to evolve and become more efficient. The rule under capitalism is survival of the fittest, under government it is survival of the fattest. Efficiency is not always rewarded under government management, their is a conflict between doing things efficiently and creating jobs for one's congressional district, getting contributions from the local Unions who are working on these projects and money gets thrown around to make things happen politically rather than being spent on the most efficient mission designs.
Again dealing with risk is one of the few places the goverment has a critical advantage over private coporations. Because of the reasons I pointed out before, deepest pockets and no need for immediat financial return. Private coporations can't match this, and frankly don't want to. If you look back in history, virtualy every large scale, high-risk program (like Apollo, Dams, Canals, transcontiental railroads, ect) were either goverment run or basicaly goverment financed.
Government has deep pockets alright, it builds bridges to nowhere, it builds spaceships that do not fly and then abandons them, it compromises the designs of spaceships based on politics as the Shuttle was, it tries to do one thing, changes its mind, decides to do another, it orders one thing, then adds requirements to it while it is being built and their are cost overruns, forcing engineers to chisel it down to reduce costs and balance the budget. With private corporations, its always the bottom line, it it can realize a profit by going to Mars it will. I don't think any of those companies are too big to fail. If people are put out of work, they go find a job with another company. with the prize constantly growing, someones eventually going to win it, and the government doesn't really spend a dime until its actually won. $5 billion a year over the next 6 years is $30 billion. if the accumulation is predicatable corporations are going to be able to tell what the prize is going to be for any given year. So while government is adding $5 billion the pot, private corporations may be raising $2 billion dollars per year in private capital markets, all to achieve a 250% return on their investment. For each individual stockholder, its not $2 billion; it is whatever he invested, it might be $250, or it might be $2,500. Makes little difference to him what he's investing in just as long as he receives a return on that investment, it could be oil rigs, or it could be a venture to win the Mars Prize money. A return is a return.
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I don't think you are listening Tom, no company will ever risk that much money on something so risky. The expected payoff could be a truely staggering number, but that in no way changes how much it costs to make a play for the prize, and in no way changes the chance of sucess. The concept that no risk no matter how high can be overcome by offering a big enough prize is silly: that relies on a corporation both being large enough to accomplish a Mars mission and the company being posessed by irrational greed; no company could reach that size by being irrational plus still does not change the amount of cost and risk.
As with almost everything in life, it is a matter of scale, and the scale of the problem, the cost and risk being so high will simply scare the pencil pushers too much, no matter how big the prize. A mission to Mars is a huge undertaking, the coldly rational accountants and stock investors will ultimately make the decision to try such a thing or not.
You also ignore critical concepts about investing, which is the price of risk: that the more risky a venture is, the less likely people are to invest in it. Sure some people will, but given the extremely high level of cost and risk, you'll never get enough for a Mars mission. Secondly, there is the centrality of return, that for two different investments with comperable risk, the money will go to whichever one offers the most return. Unless the prize becomes truely unimaginable, it seems unlikely that Mars could compete with Earthly investments. Particularly what a few tens of billions could buy you here on Earth would probably last a long time, instead of just a one-time superprize.
And then infrastructure, that NASA and its major subcontractors have it - the Shuttle infrastructure, the regulatory permits, and most importanty the man power. A private space venture, unless mounted by one of the big name contractors, will have none of this. This hurts a private mission twice, because their cost is in addition to the development, and secondly that once the prize has been won all that infrastructure will not be able to generate a return on their operating costs.
Lastly, do we really want a small-time private mission, with just enough capability to plant flags & footprints, so they can win a one-time prize? Don't we want a sustained presence? Isn't that the ultimate goal? Once the prize is won, why will the winners bother to go back? The prize ship will definately be built to get there as fast as possible and as cheaply as possible, with little or no thought given to exploring or living on Mars, which is the last thing we should want. If we are not prepared to go with our eyes fixed on staying, then a mad dash flags & footprints mission could delay settlement, since we will have "conqured" Mars.
So, ultimately, all this points to a government run operation that takes a reasonable amount of time to go to Mars in a reasonably "large" fasion able to actually accomplish something, and not a dinky dash for a one-time prize.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Are you listening? I didn't say a one time prise, I said a series of prizes. If you say that no company would go for them, there is really no harm in the government offering them, as it doesn't really cost the government any money unless they're collected. They are appropriated and if not collected they go back as revenue to be appropriated the next year. tax payers only pay for the added amount. Over 6 years at a rate of $5 billion a year, the amount will reach $30 billion, and by paying a premium to an insurance company, the government can offer $30 billion on the first year. An insurance company can offer a policy that pays the difference between the amount in the pot ans $30 billion. If you think it an unlikely event that the prize will be collected before 6 years then the Insurance company risks nothing.
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Nonsense, unless you are offering an unlimited number of prizes then it isn't open-ended, sustained presence. And if you do offer an unlimited number of "prizes," then its no longer a prize system, and the government might as well pay a contractor directly.
You say that there is no harm in the government offering such a prize, but then you go right around and propose the government pay money to a hypothetical mega insurance company. Money down the drain, even in the unlikely event the government would make such an arrangement with any corporation, and assuming any insurance company would make such a vast policy.
And frankly, even $30Bn is barely enough to get there and and half-heartedly do any exploring, and thats with NASA's pre-existing infrastructure. So you would not even have any return. The size of the prizes must be really staggering, like $100Bn, and at this point it just gets silly. Nobody, especially us, could nor should take such an idea seriously.
I fail to see how this nonsense about a prize system is even remotely plausable versus what Austin Stanley and myself have stated.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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This is like watching a child get beat with a wiffile bat.
Offer a more creative and lucrative prize to offset the risk and engender an intrest in long term sustained development.
Offer monopoly control of space transportation for 100 years.
Offer zero percent tax status/or reduced tax status for a certain amount of technology R&D by companies in targeted fields related to space exploration and sustained space development.
Offer subsidies to small corporations and educational instutions to launch stuff, which fosters greater demand and induces further development of cost cutting measures for cost to launch.
Offer 50% of any mineral wealth generated in space as tax free, or if the technology (read prize) is used by the government, 10% of the value of all proceeds (for x years) goes to the company.
Increase the lifetime of patents for targeted fields related to space.
Increase the number and scope of grants for Material science PhD's, or nuclear physics, aerospace, etc.
I thought the whole idea about going to Mars was to try and do something different. If you think about getting to mars in the same old way, then you miss the point of the whole venture.
Now, back to wiffile.
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Nonsense, unless you are offering an unlimited number of prizes then it isn't open-ended, sustained presence. And if you do offer an unlimited number of "prizes," then its no longer a prize system, and the government might as well pay a contractor directly.
You say that there is no harm in the government offering such a prize, but then you go right around and propose the government pay money to a hypothetical mega insurance company. Money down the drain, even in the unlikely event the government would make such an arrangement with any corporation, and assuming any insurance company would make such a vast policy.
Actually it was just a suggestion. Government could actually act as its own insurance company, it simply works out an agreement that it would legally be requires to sell bonds to pay for the prize if somebody won it. If no one wins it, the government doesn't run a deficit, no big deal.
And frankly, even $30Bn is barely enough to get there and and half-heartedly do any exploring, and thats with NASA's pre-existing infrastructure. So you would not even have any return. The size of the prizes must be really staggering, like $100Bn, and at this point it just gets silly. Nobody, especially us, could nor should take such an idea seriously.
Ok, so what if the government does offer a $100bn prise from day one? Suppose tommorow or the next day its in session Congress appropriates $100 billion for a Mars prize, the President signs it and it takes effect on January 1, 2007 and it lasts until midhight on Janaury 1, 2008 at which time that $100 billion goes back into general funds as revenue for fiscal 2008, if no one wins it, it costs the government nothing. It can be a bill that contigent upon someone winning the prize the Government sells $100 billion in bonds and awards the amount to the winner, otherwise the money is not spend, there is no deficit and it costs the taxpayer nothing. I think it is safe to say that the chances of someone winning this prize for fiscal 2007 are nil. If the prize is reenacted for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 etc, the chances improve however as companies respond. The government ups the ante each time. First prise $100 billion, second prize $70 billion, third prize $40 billion, increment the prizes by $5 billion each year so that next year its $105bn, 75bn, and 45bn respectively. if someone wins the fist prize add a fourth prize for $20 bn and increment it $5bn per year. we do after all want the companies to develop cheaper ways of getting to Mars. If $100 bn covers their startup costs then additional missions with established infrastructure will cost less. if someone fails to get their first and comes in second instead, the $70bn prise will limit their downside loss, so you can have three giant companies competing with each other and all three will get a prize of they all send successful missions, but remember the money does't actually get spend until someone wins.
I fail to see how this nonsense about a prize system is even remotely plausable versus what Austin Stanley and myself have stated.
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You keep listening but not hearing, both of you Tom and Clark,
That no prize, reguardless how big even a trillion dollars, will ever be worth the risk to anyone. There are just so much better things to spend that kind of money on, like maybe an X-Ray microchip lithography plant, energy sources, that sort of thing. Remember, that the money goes where the best investment is, and the risk of Mars is so high presently that no return is worthwhile versus the risk.
Its just a matter of cold, hard, reality of the scale involved, its just so fantastically expensive, time consuming, and risky that hardly anyone will be willing to make that kind of a leap of faith. Massive corporations don't become massive by being frivilous with money. Stock holders and investors would just not have it.
This is just such a different level from anything like the dinky X-Prizes that I don't think its really computing, you'd need thousands of times the money. Its just too big; when you are talking about these kinds of numbers its easy to lose an understanding of them, like how many atoms are in a rock, how much energy is released by atomic bombs, how far away other galaxies are, etc etc.
So what would we have to lose? It would cheapen and trivialize Mars for Congress to hold such a contest, and what if entrants used Russian hardware? Pumping tens of billions of dollars into the Russian economy from US taxpayers is a political problem.
Holding "tapering off" subsequent 4th, 5th, etc prizes is again not sustained, and you will quickly reach the point where the minimum practical cost for Mars travel no matter how its done will be too large compared to ever smaller prizes. Its not what we want! What we want, what we need, is a concious and deliberate decision to go to Mars to stay. Offering one-time payout prizes is directly harmful to this both as a practical matter but moreso as a psychological matter, it turns Mars into a game show, and not the first real step out of the cradle.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Tapering Mars prizes:
Year -First Prize ---- Second Prize ---- Third Prize ---- Fourth Prize
2014 $100 billion ---- $70 billion ------- $40 billion
2015 $105 billion ---- $75 billion ------- $45 billion
2016 $110 billion ---- $80 billion ------- $50 billion
2017 Mars Mission -- $85 billion ------- $55 billion ---- $25 billion
2018 ----------------- $90 billion ------- $60 billion ---- $30 billion
2019 ----------------- $95 billion ------- $65 billion ---- $35 billion
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So you are saying the US Army should assemble all the rockets, build the space vehicles and launch the mission because it is more efficient than the private sector? The US Army does have a large supply of manpower. Instead of fighting and shooting, they could be put on an assembly line and trained to do a number of tasks that are required to get to Mars, and if they don't follow orders, they get court marshalled.
I'm not sure where you are getting this from at all. I've said nothing of the sort. Please don't set up strawmen of my arguments.
What is $30 billion to the US economy? It is about 1% of Federal spending, but as a part of the economy as a whole it is a much smaller fraction. Last I looked at the figures Gross Domestic Product for the USA was $12 trillion, as a fraction, it would be a mere 0.25% of the US economy, and I didn't say foreign firms couldn't compete. NASA will give US firms access to US technology such as the Ares rocket, but the Russians can come up with their own technology and spend their own equivalent of $30 billion.
$30 billion is a lot of money, even to the US economy. That kind of capital isn't just lying around for just anyone to snatch up and grab. There is actually very, VERY little money just sitting around not being used. Money is infact worthless unless it is being used/invested in something. So what this ultimatly means is that you're money will have to be moved from some other (presumably less profitable) investments. It actually is slightly more complicated than this as the fed/banks do have the power to issue more money, but this doesn't change the competativeness of the money market one bit.
Lets look at that market for a little bit, shall we? Assuming the prize is $60 billion (the figure you start of with) and the actual cost to the company is something like $30 billion. Mars Mission don't happen overnight, so lets assume a 10 year time frame from the start date, which means that you are only getting a ~7% return, which frankly, given the risk compared is pathetic. Putting that money in the stock market would give you an average return of somewhere around ~10% over any 10 year time span, and the risk would be IMMENSLY lower. You would need a return a prize of $70 billion dollars just to be competative with the stock market. But again, you're risk is MUCH higher then that of a stock market investment.
I again stand by my point. If there was in fact a point that the risk of the investment was offset by the potential gain, the goverment could then probably do it for less money itself. This is even more likely since the goverment already owns all the launch infastructure it would need.
The only castasrpophic risk is if something bad were to happen in space because the corporation launched the mission too early. Haste makes waste as they say. With greater risk, greater reward is demanded. The prizes would just keep growing over time until their sufficient to induce activity on the part of the private sector. A billion dollars is not as much as it used to be, both in terms of inflation and as a proportion of the US economy. Multi-billion dollar companies fail all the time, witness Enron, and the US economy has survived them. There is no such thing as too big to fail, if there is, then it becomes a government run corporation and it ends up just as inefficient as any other government agency.
You are right that greater risk requires greater reward. My point is that the risk is SO great that the reward that would be needed to provoke private investment would be larger than the cost for the goverment to do it itself. And in a way, the goverment endures no risk, as it can keep going at it untill it is succesfull, which a private company cannot do.
And while the faliure of a multi-billion dollar company would not bring down the US economy (I never said it would, another strawman), that doesn't mean their wouldn't be serious human suffering as a result. When Enron colapsed, thousands lost their jobs, investments, and retirement plans. Furthermore there IS a noticable impact on the economy at large from such effects. The US's GDP is not generate overnight, but over the course of the entire year, if 30/60 billion dollars was to disapear on any given day, it does create waves that cycle through the system causing effects elsewere. It in the goverments intrest to promote a smooth operation of the US economy, not jerky starts and stops.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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Just for clarification to all, please do not lump me in with Tom. I agree with the general sentiment that a standard prize system will not achieve the desired results of this group.
What seems to be ignored is that my offerings, while meager, are centered around long term sustainability by offering incentives geared towards creating an infrastructure in space and/or for space.
It's using the government to give a greater incentive to develop space and space exploration to private groups so that the economics of long term investment in space become attractive.
You are playing number games and granted, the numbers don't add up with the current ideas. So break the f-ing mold and look for an alternative.
You all have your head up your ass if you think government is going to colonize space. There is no point short or medium term intrest or payoff for any nation to do so. The only reason is some bizarrae philosphical justification bordering on the religious with pro-space groups. Mainstream joe-six pack wants lower taxes and a good school. None of which will be created by a colony on Mars or in space.
What you will get with government funding is a Lewis and Clark style expedition that surveys and brings back some rocks occasionaly for the next 200 years. After which time, there *might* be enough infrastructure in near space to enable more of a private venture for Colony Zubrin to make a play.
You all know what you want, well guess what, most sane people don't want it. So the only way to get what you want is to focus on creating environment that enables smaller groups of like minded individuals (such as pro-space) to have the ability to execute their 'vision' on their own, or with limited support from outside of their group.
Expecting government to be santa claus and give to you is stupid. The real focus should be on getting the government to act as the catalyst to generate a greater investment by private and acedimic instutions into space development to help reduce costs and increase the number of vested intrests in space development and space exploration.
The fact that this point is often missed, or ignored by pro space is a fundamental failure of the pro space community.
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Lets look at that market for a little bit, shall we? Assuming the prize is $60 billion (the figure you start of with) and the actual cost to the company is something like $30 billion. Mars Mission don't happen overnight, so lets assume a 10 year time frame from the start date, which means that you are only getting a ~7% return, which frankly, given the risk compared is pathetic. Putting that money in the stock market would give you an average return of somewhere around ~10% over any 10 year time span, and the risk would be IMMENSLY lower. You would need a return a prize of $70 billion dollars just to be competative with the stock market. But again, you're risk is MUCH higher then that of a stock market investment.
Ok lets set this up:
Start date is 2010 and the initial prize is $60 billion, this is what happens under my assumptions:
Year Prize --------- Cost to taxpayers
2010 $60 billion --- $60 billion
2011 $65 billion --- $5 billion
2012 $70 billion --- $5 billion
2013 $75 billion --- $5 billion
2014 $80 billion --- $5 billion
2015 $85 billion --- $5 billion
2016 $90 billion --- $5 billion
2017 $95 billion --- $5 billion
2018 $100 billion -- $5 billion
2019 $105 billion -- $5 billion
2020 $110 billion -- $5 billion
The prize starts out at 60 billion and this causes a private company to spend $30 on its Mars mission, it takes 10 years to realize the successful completion of the mission, so what is the return on investment? 366.6% over 10 years, this is an annual rate of return of 36%, which is not bad compared to many other investments. And what about the $110 billion cost? Isn't that about the cost of the International Space Station? If you include the costs of the Space Station freedom. Originally we thought we were getting a bargain, the Space Station Freedom for $8 billion, and then the costs ballooned and ballooned. It certainly wasn't our intention to spend as much as we did on this Space Station, but you had cost overruns, inefficiencies, changes in design, changes in priorities. Originally the space station was to be an assembly platform for Moon ships and Mars ship in Low Earth orbit, so some work was done on that, and then we decided that would be too expensive, the Clinton Administration canceled the Moon and Mars programs, but the money was aready spend on useless design studies., then we decided to make it an Internation project and change the name of the space station, because as we know, the name Freedom so offends the Russians.
I think in the end, when we project forward what the Government would spend on a government run project, what we're really getting is the contractor's low ball bid.
The contractor might give a number such as $30 billion for the Mars mission, but we perfectly know that is not what the government is going to end up spending. From past experience we can expect the government to pay a much higher amount due to cost overruns etc. and the bidding process awards those companies that produce low bids for work done, their goal is to get the contract first with a low bid and then add on additional costs later, then the government does other things like, change the budger priorities, things like stretching out the program life, spending less this year to balance the annual budget and pushing back additional expenditures and stretching them out over longer periods of time, but doing so adds additional costs, and then if International partners hop onboard, this is going to force further design changes and thus additional costs. Government does too much micromanaging, and to the government its just as much a jobs program as it is a space program, the various production centers are going to be spread across the country to buy key congressional and senatorial votes for the project, all these transportation costs will simply add to the cost of the project. A corporation doesn't have these problems, it will try to do things as efficiently as possible, the cost offered in the prize is the exact amount that will be spent by the government. The only uncertain costs are the costs to the company that competes for these prizes, but comparing the prize money to the initial low-ball estimates of cost-plus government contractors is a bit unfair, because we know these aren't going to be the true costs of the program. The government likes certainly in expenditures and the prize system will bring certainly and make it easier for the government to balance its budget. There would be none of this cost overrun stuff, and scrambling to find additional costs elsewhere to pay for the program or else discontinue it.
You are right that greater risk requires greater reward. My point is that the risk is SO great that the reward that would be needed to provoke private investment would be larger than the cost for the goverment to do it itself. And in a way, the goverment endures no risk, as it can keep going at it untill it is succesfull, which a private company cannot do.
My point is you are comparing a known against an unknow costs. We never know exactly what the actual amount of a cost plus government program will cost, because the engineering details aren't completely resolved yet, and the bidding system rewards estimates that fall short of the mark. You think if one contractor says his proposal will cost $30 billion while another contractor says $60 billion. The contractor who says $60 billion might be making a more accurate estimate, but we know that he won't be awarded the contract, because the $30 billion estimate will look so much cheaper - even it its wrong.
And while the faliure of a multi-billion dollar company would not bring down the US economy (I never said it would, another strawman), that doesn't mean their wouldn't be serious human suffering as a result. When Enron colapsed, thousands lost their jobs, investments, and retirement plans. Furthermore there IS a noticable impact on the economy at large from such effects. The US's GDP is not generate overnight, but over the course of the entire year, if 30/60 billion dollars was to disapear on any given day, it does create waves that cycle through the system causing effects elsewere. It in the goverments intrest to promote a smooth operation of the US economy, not jerky starts and stops.
People still lose their jobs if government cost plus programs are cancelled, the only difference between government programs and private corporations, is that government programs allow the waste to go on for so much longer and various competing political interests will decide whether or not to cancel the program. Corporations simply run out of money. I think corporations are managed more rationally than government programs, but government employees or the employees of contractors aren't immune to layoffs, and the effect on the economy is the same, or else you have inflation because the government is not balancing its budget.[/tex]
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Clark, I'm going to respond to you're first post as I think it captures you're feelings more succiently.
Offer a more creative and lucrative prize to offset the risk and engender an intrest in long term sustained development.
Offer monopoly control of space transportation for 100 years.
Offer zero percent tax status/or reduced tax status for a certain amount of technology R&D by companies in targeted fields related to space exploration and sustained space development.
Offer subsidies to small corporations and educational instutions to launch stuff, which fosters greater demand and induces further development of cost cutting measures for cost to launch.
Offer 50% of any mineral wealth generated in space as tax free, or if the technology (read prize) is used by the government, 10% of the value of all proceeds (for x years) goes to the company.
Increase the lifetime of patents for targeted fields related to space.
Increase the number and scope of grants for Material science PhD's, or nuclear physics, aerospace, etc.
This is more on the right track as to what the goverment could both affordably offer and would be more likely to attract investment. However, you have to balance these options with what the goverment can actually praticaly offer. A great number of these options are either praticaly impossible. For example no one goverment could grant a monoply on space travel or lifetime patents (that would be unconstitutional in the US anyways).
But you are right that these sorts of non-monetary incentives are more likely to get a coporation to invest in space. A similar system was used in getting the US transcontiental railroad built. The goverment could pledge to support bond companies issued to finace space exploration. Tax breaks and the like could also be offered.
The problem with all this though is that it assumes that space travel will become profitable in the short term, which is unlikely. It makes little sense for the goverment to offer such guarntees towards a prizes that it itself puts up. It might as well finace the thing directly.
I think the key to bringing the cost of space travel down is to make the bidding proccess more competative, and hold the companies more closely to those contracts.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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Let me give you a colorful illustration of compedative biding:
"OK, I bid one cent for the whole package of sending 4 astronauts to Mars for 2 years. I win! Yippee! My bid is the lowest and nobody can top my bid because nobody can do it for less than one cent!"
Sometime later
"Now that I've won the bid, and conducted some engineering studies, it turns out that we've had some cost overruns, it turns out, or so my Engineers tell me, that the Mission will cost $100 billion, well who could have figured? These things happen after all. Well I'll give the Government these revised estimates and of course they can forward me the money. I mean after all, wouldn't want to waste that one cent the government already spend on the project by abandoning it, would we?"
Compedative bidding means the government assumes the risk of making the wrong choice because it was presented with false information during the contractor bids. Each contractor wants to win the contract, so each one strives to underbid each other, after all they haven't spend any of their own money, so why shouldn't they? They just have to make the cost overruns look plausible - Something I have failed to do above for illustrative purposes. The government procurers really can't expect to be presented with accurate cost information by either one of the contractors, so he might as well go "eenie meany miney moe, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go, my mother told me to pick this very one!" Politics is more likely to decide the winning contractor rather than cost.
Would you for instance want to select the gold, silver, and bronze metal winners before the competions in the Olympics. The atheletes get the metals before they compete, all the others don't bother since they weren't selected to win metals so the go home, then the gold, silver, and bronze silver metalists run the 500 meter dash and the Bronze metalist comes in first followed by the gold and then the silver, but since the metals have already been awarded, too bad. I think you will agree with me that this is a dumb way to run the Olympics, so why should government contracts be awarded this way?
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You have a business- you remodel homes for a living. Would you try to make a livign, and a business by:
A: Estimating the cost of what a customer wants, and then adding in a profit so you make a buck.
or
B: Remodel the house while three or four or five other people with a similar buisness all remodel at the same time, and however finishes first wins an amount that the customer has predetermined he will pay, which may or may not cover the actual cost of the work you put in?
When contractors submit to the government their estimates, there are auditors who review and determine if the estimate is legetimate. Contracts can also be modified such that cost-over runs come out of the contractors profit margin.
You are either playing fast and loose with the reality of the situation, or have no clue as to what you are talking about.
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Yeah, I'm leaning tward the whole "lack of grip on reality" thing too.
The whole prize system relies on business acting irrationally, that is, to build rockets and such with no promise of profitability (unless the prize is absurdly large, in which case no money is saved). Busnesses large enough to carry out such a massive feat as a Moon or Mars mission simply do not become big by acting irrationally.
Also not considerd, is that competition for a prize increases risk, that if you are the only company competing then your chances of getting the prize are much better than if multiple companies compete against you. Therefore, if lots of competitors all try for the same goal, the chance that you get paid goes way down. This would be plenty of reason to scare companies off in the first place.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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