Sunday
(0)Rand Simberg is at the Return To The Moon Conference this weekend and is providing live blogging of the talks by key speakers. Frank Seitzen's talk is of particular interest to those with a commercial space bent:
Taking questions now. Jeff Krukin: "Is there any sense that all of this could be made irrelevant by things happening in the private sector"?Answer: "Yes, O'Keefe has met with Musk, and O'Keefe is very skeptical about the ability of the conventional space industry to do things affordably. Was particularly disturbed by cost estimates for OSP. Has been reaching out to the smaller players."
"Estimate cost of getting to the Moon by 2020 is 64 billion dollars. They found nine billion for a down payment by 2009, but they won't be able to afford it all without much lower costs from the private sector (and that doesn't mean traditional contractors)."
I have known the disarticulated skeleton of this story for some time but this is the first I have seen it put together and with flesh on the bones.
The space program has always custom designed and manufactured every item on the spacecraft even down to the smallest screw.
NSA has to change their designs to use off-the-shelf parts whenever possible. Just as the military did in their design and manufacture of unmanned aircraft.
Posted by Jake at July 19, 2004 03:14 AM
Its not just the problem of getting NASA and the military to use off the shelf equipment. They also have to learn to write the requirements to fit the commercial sector rather than only for the big contractors.
Posted by spacer at July 19, 2004 02:32 PM
Spacer is right. If they want to get what they've never had, they should learn to do what they've never done...
Posted by Ambulance Girl at November 26, 2004 03:26 PM
