Space X, Hubble, Coffee: The Cost Of Doing Business In Space

beyond the Earth's atmosphere, so it could see better than ground based telescopes. Webb is going to do it one better and go 1 million miles from Earth -- instead of Hubble's 375 miles. It will deploy a sun shield so it can see stars more than 1 billion light years away, and see them with a broader spectrum of frequencies.

It all sounds wonderful until you find this out:

It is 900% over budget, 10-years late, and no one is sure if it will ever get done. And let's say it is done. Does everyone remember when Hubble was considered a budget failure with a bad mirror? Hubble launched seven years late with multiple problems and ultimately cost $2 billion, when it was originally funded at $400 million. The only thing that saved it was expensive shuttle missions with multiple repairs.

How do you fix the Webb if it has similar problems when it is one million miles away?

Certainly, Elon Musk's Space X capsules can't get there, even if they can land on a little barge in the ocean. Do you see a pattern here?

For billions of dollars over budget you can have a space shuttle that never reduced the cost of cargo in space and never become the reliable multiple-use vehicle it was supposed to be.

For billions of dollars over budget you can have a Hubble Space Telescope with multiple problems that was supposed to solve the mysteries of the origins of the galaxy, but needed to be replaced by Webb.

For billions of dollars over budget you might have Webb, which may or may not work, and may or may not ever be finished.

Or you can lay off Elon Musk for not quite landing a stage of a rocket for the first time ever safely back on Earth to use again quickly. Since he's doing the most so far with the least, the Geekend calls this a success, bordering on a grand success. He's learning lessons in front of the world, and some people are making fun of him.

If you don't think Space X is a success yet, let me offer one more thing we can all relate to. One of the things that CRS-6 delivered to the International Space Station was the world's first space Espresso machine. Yup, talk about your Star-bucks. Developed by Lavazza and Argotech, the machine makes coffee that tastes just like the stuff on Earth.

You have to remember, most coffee-making systems use gravity in some way or another. Water is pushed or it falls over the coffee to pull the flavor out of the ground beans. Doing that in space isn't easy. They even had to redesign the coffee mug to make it work in space.

I don't know about you, but space seems a lot better with a morning cup of coffee. I bet our astronauts will be a lot more productive. But I'm not sure I'd want to do a spacewalk hopped up on a double espresso. Let's hope they don't get the jitters.

Of course, I'm being a little hard on NASA and a little easy on Space X.

There's room for both big and little projects in space. But one thing we're really learning from the commercial space experiment is that small, attainable goals at smaller prices that lead to more success are a good thing. And honestly, NASA should know this. We got to the moon with very methodical experiments in just that. But somewhere during the shuttle program, NASA's mandate changed. Instead of beating the Russians to the moon at all costs, the game changed to being all about controlling costs and they failed to adjust.

Space X is helping to inject a little sense into space, and it is long overdue. That's a success, and it will make it all the sweeter if CRS-7 successfully lands its first stage on a barge as planned when the group tries in June, again cutting the cost of putting cargo in space.

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