- In the early days of the Space Shuttle in 1976, NASA
offered a service called GAS, which is (yet another) acronym for "Get
Away Special." You could have a small canister taken into space which
must weigh less than 200lbs. This would cost $10,000.00, with smaller payloads
costing less. These canisters were completely self- contained and self-powered,
and could have one to three switches on the outside. Once in orbit and
astronaut would flip up to three switches to turn on or off experiments
inside. That's all astronauts will do with the canisters. Period.
-
- There were also strict guidelines as to what could be
inside for safety purposes. It was a common practice for several schools
to get together and come up with experiments to "fly" aboard
the world's most expensive reusable airplane. NASA switched payloads between
educational, foreign and commercial, and government "customers."
And the experiment inside must have a shelf life measured in months, tolerate
slightly elevated levels of radiation, temperature extremes, etc... Insects
were a common experiment for school children.
-
-
- Wikipedia - two canisters waiting to fly
-
-
- NASA must have teams of people cooking up clever names
like GAS, or perhaps they gave the job to Darin's advertising agency, McMann
and Tait. I can see a woman's nose wiggling somewhere...
-
- Having worked with NASA for many years in the past, I
can tell you that they are a legend in their own mind. That's one of the
reasons I got out of the space and defense business. I found that most
of the people who work for the government do so because industry won't
hire them. So they studied a bit, took the civil service test, passed it
and were hired. If you work for the government and are offended by this
statement, my apologies. (But if you're offended then perhaps you're too
smart to be working for them in the first place.)
-
- NASA's recent announcement that the space station will
be open for use by industry is laughable at best. The cost of manufacturing
on the ISS is so high it's measured in thousands of dollars per item. It
isn't the cost of the item itself, it's the transportation. Who can imagine
astronauts as production line workers? Then there is the cost of "manufacturing
in space." This one makes the Laugh-O- Meter smoke and go right off
the scale. Think gold is expensive per ounce? For space-manufactured products,
think in terms of thousands of dollars per ounce. I can see executives
chuckling in their offices all over the country when they hear about NASA
offering industrial services in space.
-
- Brain researchers years ago discovered an "M wave."
When you heard or read a sentence like "a big thick Hamburg is best
with a thick coating of soap" your brain generates an M wave because
your brain doesn't expect the word soap. NASA's offer to industry must
be generating a Tsunami of M waves all over the planet.
-
- Now, I'll be nice for just a minute. Imagine if you can,
a product that needs an item that can only be made in space. For example,
joining two metals together that won't fuse in the 1G gravitational field
here on the surface of Earth. OK, so let's assume (there's that bad word
again - ass-u-me) that a special material is made in space for an imaginary
product. The question is - who will buy the product? Does this sound like
a REAL consumer product of any kind? And if it was, just how much can you
sell it for? If anything, it sounds more like material for a niche product
- that is, a product with a very narrow, specialized customer base. A customer
like NASA for example, is the only company that Morton Thiokol can build
the custom massive shuttle boosters for. If their contract with NASA was
cancelled, Thiokol's existence might be cancelled as well. But not to worry,
because they have a non-compete contract. Translation: no one else bids
on it, because it's an exclusive. In contract terminology it's called a
"sole-source contract." And Thiokol can charge anything they
want for their boosters and it's legal. And they do.
-
- The cost of manufacture, which is the price of a finished
product coming off a production line but not yet shipped or sold is insanely
low in the real world. About 15 years ago I spoke to a telemarketing agency
about selling an item on television. It would run as a 30sec. or 60 sec.
commercial which would end with the classic blue order screen. At the time,
there was a twistable mop product which was selling for $19.95 (+ shipping
and handling.) I asked, "What is the actual cost of the product itself?"
He stated that "Actual product cost cannot exceed $4.00 no matter
what it is."
-
- Imagine it - a "state of the art" mop with
a total manufacturing cost of just $4.00? How could one even buy the materials
to make the mop for that sum? It seemed impossible, but at the time I instantly
understood just WHY everything is made overseas. All the raw materials
are "over there" as well as the cheap labor. So much for selling
a product with a $2,000.00 part inside made in space on national television!
And that cost doesn't include the cost of the product itself. Such a high
end product won't sell in sweat-shop product stores like ChinaMart where
everyone shops today.
-
- Now NASA comes along and offers the ISS to industry?
What planet did NASA really come from? Have their feet ever touch the ground?
Perhaps all the management personnel at the agency move around in wheelchairs
while at work so their feet can't touch the ground. It makes one wonder.
-
- No, the answer dates back 31 years to their GAS space
shuttle service I mentioned earlier. It's all about the currently insane
idea of "commercializing space." This has about the same level
of common sense as "military intelligence." The real idea NASA
has here, has nothing to do with reality - but everything to do with selling
the public on the idea that space has "potential." Perhaps if
they keep saying this long enough even they will believe their own rhetoric.
-
- Internally, the NASA paradigm literally considers every
department in the agency as well as other government agencies as "customers."
They are big on quality control which is to their credit. The space agency
has even created strict manufacturing standards for reliability, some of
which industry has adopted over the past 50 years. At least something useful
came out of the space program besides Velcro. But when it comes to profit,
the agency has long been accustomed to operating at a loss as a way of
life for them. The very idea sends a chill down the spine of any corporate
executive who wants to keep their job.
-
- And IF all these obstacles could be overcome, there is
yet one more big one. The ISS has long been planned as the launch point
for deep space missions to the moon, Mars and beyond. What happens to space
manufacturing then? Such a mission would undoubtedly consume ALL of the
time of ISS personnel and all ISS resources. Does all "manufacturing"
stop when one of these missions begins? Imagine if you owned a company
or were the CEO and depended on a key product made in space. How pissed
off would you be when told "Sorry, we're shutting down your production
line for the next two months" by the agency's feet-don't-touch-the-ground
managers? You'd be more than ready to strangle someone as you were cleaning
out your desk. But not to worry, because now you're fit to go work for
the government, perhaps even for NASA! Why, they might even give you a
job to help promote their "manufacturing-in-space" program!
-
- NASA is accustomed to endless delays, and they think
everyone else should think the way they do, too. But if you're NOT a mega-
contractor like Rockwell, Boeing or Lockheed who have non-compete bids
and tells THEM what to do, may God help you if your system delivery will
be late. I've been there first-hand - be just ONE day late and you can
have your contract cancelled. They could care less if you had delays getting
materials for the contract. It means nothing to them. I've stayed up for
three days and nights and then driven all night half way across the country
without sleep to deliver product to one of their installations for acceptance
testing. Not eating and taking a caffiene pill or two kept me awake. A
cardiologist heard this and frowned saying "you could have easily
had a heart attack." I told her "I also would have lost my company
over the contract cancellation, and that would have given me a heart attack
too." She didn't know what to say to that.
-
- Working for NASA is far from fun I can assure you. Just
qualifying for a contract with them is worse than jumping through hoops
over a pit of broken glass. And working with some of their personnel, many
of which couldn't launch a bottle rocket if their life depended on it,
can be even worse.
-
- So they are offering the ISS to industry? There goes
the Laugh-O- Meter up in smoke again.
-
- And then we have their SOHO satellites, which just BEFORE
our sun is about to start another period of activity NASA decides to do
a CCD bake-out which stops all image transmissions. I'll bet they will
do a bake-out about December 20, 2012. But then that's another story...film
at 11.
-
- Ted Twietmeyer
- www.data4science.net
|
