Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL)

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

Those of you who live in Alabama, do you have nay idea what Sen. Shelby does these days other than see how much pork he can come up with. I never hear him speak out on any issues or do much of anything.

[autigeremt 7,460]

Nope. Not a fan at all of Sen. Shelby. The engineering department got a very nice building with his name on it but so did spuat. He's in cruise control these days.

[DKW 86 8,097]

Well, his office did helpget me into see the VA. He is not all bad.

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

I didn't vote for him last time and won't ever again.

[icanthearyou 4,468]

Here you go. He is doing something. He is supporting the bureaucracy.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-23/spacex-versus-senator-shelby-s-rocket-to-nowehere?cmpid=yhoo

SpaceX Versus Senator Shelby's Rocket to Nowhere

Should Elon Musk and the engineers at Space Exploration Technologies Corp., do more paperwork? Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, thinks so. He has inserted language into a Senate appropriations bill to force private space entrepreneurs such as Musk to navigate the kind of red tape that has transformed NASA into a directionless, sclerotic bureaucracy. Even worse, the provision guarantees to perpetuate U.S. dependence on Russian rockets to deliver Americans into space at a cost of $70 million per astronaut.

As far back as the mid-2000s, NASA began planning for its own "space taxi" to replace the shuttle after its final launch in 2011. Funding issues, congressional meddling, policy differences between the George W. Bush and the Barack Obama administrations, and bureaucratic roadblocks, caused that goal to be missed by years. Nonetheless, there remained reason for hope. In 2010, Congress created the Commercial Crew Development program to promote the development of technology and companies capable of delivering crews to low Earth orbit by 2015 (due to funding concerns, this deadline was extended to 2017).

To do so, NASA selects private companies, provides funding, and sets them to work on specific technologies and benchmarks. Along the way, the companies and their technologies are evaluated and culled. To further speed development, NASA dispenses with its traditional “cost-plus” method of paying contractors, which requires every cost in a mission’s development to be accounted for along the way, and reimbursed (with a profit added on top). Rand Simberg, a former aerospace engineer and project manager, writing for Reason on June 13, describes “cost-plus” in the following terms:

It essentially turns productive workers into part-time accountants. Lots of hours that used to go to producing beans get spent on counting them instead. This significantly increases costs and cripples companies for normal commercial competition.

In place of cost-plus, Commercial Crew offers contractors fixed fees (called Space Act Agreements) for projects. The idea is simple. Contractors who complete work on such projects under-budget keep the difference; those who don't, swallow the losses. The risks are bigger, but so are the rewards -- and everything happens at a quicker pace.

Commercial Crew’s unmanned predecessor, Commercial Cargo, also used a fixed-fee system -- with wild success. The Falcon 9 series of rockets from Musk's SpaceX, for example, which have since docked with the International Space Station, were developed for $390 million. In a 2011 report, NASA conceded that development of Falcon 9 would have cost “between $1.7 billion and $4.0 billion,” if done in-house (the agency said it didn’t understand what accounted for the savings precisely).

In a perfect world, SpaceX would be allowed to develop a similarly cheap and effective means for sending Americans to space (it is one of three companies currently competing to do so under Commercial Crew). But thanks to Shelby, that may not happen. In June, the senator inserted language into NASA’s appropriation bill requiring that Commercial Crew contractors begin the burdensome process of reporting their costs and purchases as if they were being paid via a cost-plus contract. Why? On Wednesday, Shelby said this would ensure “the government is not saddled with mounting bills and no recourse.” This is absurd. Companies signed to a fixed-fee contract have no incentive to pad their government billings, unlike companies that are reimbursed for every expense, such as those contracted under cost-plus.

Shelby’s maneuver probably has more to do with the 6,000 home-state jobs at NASA’s Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the threat that SpaceX and other private space contractors pose to them. Indeed, while SpaceX develops fast, cheap and efficient launch vehicles for specific missions (in part with NASA money that Shelby would like to see in Huntsville), Marshall is working on a $9 billion project to build the Space Launch System, the largest U.S. rocket in decades -- even though NASA has no planned mission for it.

Shelby, who’d like to see that “rocket to nowhere” built, can’t kill SpaceX -- but he can slow it, raise its costs and further delay a U.S. return to space with its own rockets. Passage of his red tape amendment would all but assure this outcome. If it values a strong U.S. presence in space, the Senate should remove this innovation-killing provision at the earliest opportunity.

[cptau 169]

Here you go. He is doing something. He is supporting the bureaucracy.

http://www.bloomberg...here?cmpid=yhoo

SpaceX Versus Senator Shelby's Rocket to Nowhere

Should Elon Musk and the engineers at Space Exploration Technologies Corp., do more paperwork? Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, thinks so. He has inserted language into a Senate appropriations bill to force private space entrepreneurs such as Musk to navigate the kind of red tape that has transformed NASA into a directionless, sclerotic bureaucracy. Even worse, the provision guarantees to perpetuate U.S. dependence on Russian rockets to deliver Americans into space at a cost of $70 million per astronaut.

As far back as the mid-2000s, NASA began planning for its own "space taxi" to replace the shuttle after its final launch in 2011. Funding issues, congressional meddling, policy differences between the George W. Bush and the Barack Obama administrations, and bureaucratic roadblocks, caused that goal to be missed by years. Nonetheless, there remained reason for hope. In 2010, Congress created the Commercial Crew Development program to promote the development of technology and companies capable of delivering crews to low Earth orbit by 2015 (due to funding concerns, this deadline was extended to 2017).

To do so, NASA selects private companies, provides funding, and sets them to work on specific technologies and benchmarks. Along the way, the companies and their technologies are evaluated and culled. To further speed development, NASA dispenses with its traditional “cost-plus” method of paying contractors, which requires every cost in a mission’s development to be accounted for along the way, and reimbursed (with a profit added on top). Rand Simberg, a former aerospace engineer and project manager, writing for Reason on June 13, describes “cost-plus” in the following terms:

It essentially turns productive workers into part-time accountants. Lots of hours that used to go to producing beans get spent on counting them instead. This significantly increases costs and cripples companies for normal commercial competition.

In place of cost-plus, Commercial Crew offers contractors fixed fees (called Space Act Agreements) for projects. The idea is simple. Contractors who complete work on such projects under-budget keep the difference; those who don't, swallow the losses. The risks are bigger, but so are the rewards -- and everything happens at a quicker pace.

Commercial Crew’s unmanned predecessor, Commercial Cargo, also used a fixed-fee system -- with wild success. The Falcon 9 series of rockets from Musk's SpaceX, for example, which have since docked with the International Space Station, were developed for $390 million. In a 2011 report, NASA conceded that development of Falcon 9 would have cost “between $1.7 billion and $4.0 billion,” if done in-house (the agency said it didn’t understand what accounted for the savings precisely).

In a perfect world, SpaceX would be allowed to develop a similarly cheap and effective means for sending Americans to space (it is one of three companies currently competing to do so under Commercial Crew). But thanks to Shelby, that may not happen. In June, the senator inserted language into NASA’s appropriation bill requiring that Commercial Crew contractors begin the burdensome process of reporting their costs and purchases as if they were being paid via a cost-plus contract. Why? On Wednesday, Shelby said this would ensure “the government is not saddled with mounting bills and no recourse.” This is absurd. Companies signed to a fixed-fee contract have no incentive to pad their government billings, unlike companies that are reimbursed for every expense, such as those contracted under cost-plus.

Shelby’s maneuver probably has more to do with the 6,000 home-state jobs at NASA’s Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the threat that SpaceX and other private space contractors pose to them. Indeed, while SpaceX develops fast, cheap and efficient launch vehicles for specific missions (in part with NASA money that Shelby would like to see in Huntsville), Marshall is working on a $9 billion project to build the Space Launch System, the largest U.S. rocket in decades -- even though NASA has no planned mission for it.

Shelby, who’d like to see that “rocket to nowhere” built, can’t kill SpaceX -- but he can slow it, raise its costs and further delay a U.S. return to space with its own rockets. Passage of his red tape amendment would all but assure this outcome. If it values a strong U.S. presence in space, the Senate should remove this innovation-killing provision at the earliest opportunity.

He is protecting government contractors Boeing and Lockheed and jobs in Alabama. SpaceX builds its Falcon 9 booster in California. The Lockheed Atlas V and Boeing Delta IV boosters are partially built in Alabama.

SpaceX has gotten some money from NASA to help get where they are. They depend on NASA and the Air Force for launch facilities and times at Cape Canaveral. SpaceX will have their private launch facility in South Texas soon. They started from scratch in 2002 and have an operational Falcon 9 and a manned Dragon spacecraft that could soon put astronauts into at least low orbit to reach the ISS.

If the government gave SpaceX the funding they could be flying manned missions to the ISS right now. Instead we pay millions of dollars for seats on a Russian spacecraft designed over 40 years ago and provided by Putin...... We even pay the Russians for their rocket engine that Lockheed uses in the Atlas V. To make it worse many US companies buy space on Russian rockets to have private communications satellites orbited because most US rockets are too expensive to use.

Meanwhile NASA after political interference and several design changes will fly its Orion manned spacecraft with humans on board in 2021. NASA was told to build the Orion in 2004..... Houston we have a problem

[cooltigger21 0]

He needs to retire.

[homersapien 12,683]

I think we should stop trying to send people into space. We get a LOT more "bang" for the buck with unmanned scientific satellites.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/earth-from-space.html

[TheBlueVue 177]

He needs to retire.

I agree but doubt he will. I have sent Shelby quite a bit of e-mail some of which he responded to. I really like Jeff sessions though. His responses are always swift, concise and not the least bit condescending. Sessions, in my view, is an excellent senator.

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

cptau.....you are right to some extent but not 100%. It's too complicated to get into. But for sure Shelby doles out a lot of pork. NASA and even Auburn have been big beneficiaries. But much of the money he gives NASA is a waste. Sure it helps protects jobs but is that the thing to do even if they aren't needed? It's the old bit that everyone likes his senator for sending home the pork but all the others who do it are big spenders. Shelby and all the others should be focused on cutting cost and balancing the budget. JMHO.

[Strychnine 1,811]

It's the old bit that everyone likes his senator for sending home the pork but all the others who do it are big spenders. Shelby and all the others should be focused on cutting cost and balancing the budget. JMHO.

One would expect politicians to be able to grasp the rather simple fact that cutting costs wherever possible, subsequently balancing the budget, and eventually lowering taxes is in everyone's best interests. It should not even be necessary to address this concept with them, or them to need to debate it.

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

Strry....you would sure think so but unfortunately they don't get it.