In All Fairness

Ok, I was pretty harsh on Shubber et al in my last post. There were a few good points made in his blog, and I figure they deserve discussion. The first of two was made by Tom in his post Cynic or Critic. After a fairly good article, where Tom mentions the sometimes common lack of good business skills that has hindered the commercial space movement a lot in the past, Tom finishes up with a good point:

Many decry the insider status of NASA/DoD contractors exemplified by the term "BoLockNor", but it seems that several are jockeying simply to be the next generation of contractors, as opposed to being true space-commercial entrepreneurs. If they succeed, good for them, but everyone else, 20 years from now, will be railing against "TransConX". What does that do for our children and grandchildren, to work hard simply so that a fortunate few can be the last guys in the Country Club?

Now, if the New Space or alt.space movement is succesful, earth-to-orbit space access will likely become another stodgy, mature industry, just like the commercial airliner industry, or the car industry. Just this time I hope it doesn't happen until we have real, affordable and frequent space transportation--maybe even so commonplace and ho-hum that orbital space access isn't really even thought of as anything much different from air travel or any other form of transportation. I really wouldn't mind moaning and groaning about "TransConX" being bloated government contractors, just so long as they make space travel at least as well-developed, reliable, and affordable as air travel has become over the past 100 years. I'm sure that had early aviation enthusiasts seen only the mergers and bureaucracy and stagnation that dominates a lot of the industry today without also seeing all the massive progress in cost, availability, safety, and performance, they'd be discouraged too.

That said, Tom has a real point that it would definitely suck if we end up with a the mergers, and stagnation, without the maturity, progress, safety, and affordability. We definitely need to be careful. While COTS and other similar programs going on have a lot of potential for good, they could also have some really negative impacts on the industry if executed poorly (on both the part of NASA and the part of the COTS competitors).

On a related topic, Shubber elsewhere (in his post All Hat, No Cattle)asks:

So here's the question for those following along: how many of the White Hats are either currently the recipient of government funding or loan guarantees of some sort? How many White Hats (and WHSs - white hat supporters) are lobbying for more government money to flow in the direction of the alt.spacers?

Now, while I think that having Uncle Sugar as one customer among many isn't really that bad. And I also don't think that taking a firm, fixed-price contract from them to develop something that they really needed, and that you likely would have developed over a longer period of time, and with private money anyway is all that bad either. Making a business plan that revolves around trying to win the COTS "prize" without having actually bent any metal to earn it, or just trying to get DoD to replace their current EELV contractors with your booster...I agree that that isn't really what I think commercial space is about either.

Now, the government is currently one of the single biggest spenders in the space market. Ignoring them when they have things they want to buy is silly. There's nothing uncommercial about selling something to the government. What the problem is, and what I think distinguishes White Hats from Black Hats is when a company starts getting most of its money from the government, especially in the form of cost-plus contracts, and stops really trying to even meet the needs of the commercial market. If SpaceX reached a point where it was making almost all of its money from cost-plus government contracts, it'd probably deserve the reputation Orbital has earned itself, even if it was financial sucessful in the process.

As for the other part of Shubber's question, the part of his statement referring to lobbying the government to spend more money on alt.space, I think he's missing the point. The government right now is spending a lot of money on space related stuff. A lot of that is being squandered pretty badly. Even with all of his distaste for the alt.space Kool-aid drinkers, I'm sure that Shubber wouldn't try to defend such lovely boondoggles as the Space Shuttle, ISS, X-33, OSP, etc as having been wise investments of public money.

While there may be some alt.space supporters who are really just trying to get NASA to spend more on their favorite teams, I think a lot more of us are motivated by the realization that the approach NASA has taken in the past just doesn't work. We're trying to get NASA to try out different, more commercial approaches, to see if some of that money that gets spent on aerospace can actually accomplish something useful. If the end result of COTS and the other programs NASA is doing is just that "more government money to flow[s] in the direction of the alt.spacers", then it would be a failure. What many of us are trying to do is to see if NASA can instead spend some of its money in a way that will help promote the development of a real, thriving, and dynamic space marketplace.

But both Tom and Shubber do have a point. While the government is such a major customer and spender, getting too used to dealing with them, and not becoming used to fending for oneself in the cold, hard world of the marketplace is a fast way to becoming a furry dinosaur. And that would be a sad end indeed to our endeavors.