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Comment by ihodes | Hacker News Reader

By outsourcing NASA to the private sector (e.g. Space X and whoever else enters this potentially lucrative market) and allowing capitalist competition expose the bureaucratic fluff that NASA is composed of these days. Eventually, the giant NASA-yak will be shorn, and scientists will do work again.

At least, that's what I think.

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I'm skeptical that merely privatizing NASA or really any other public sector agency would automatically remove bureaucratic fluff, and that bureaucratic fluff is such a gargantuan problem at NASA that removing it would cause a miraculous internal shift for the better. It strikes me as more of a libertarian utopian cure-all than a decision based on NASA's particular problems and objectives.

If not bureaucratic fluff, what is to blame for the great success of organisations such as SpaceX while Nasa has done less with more?

Still, I concede that we must be cautious about potential silver bullets. Good point on the "libertarian utopian cure-all"

I wouldn't characterize myself as a libertarian, nor do I think that privatizing is a cure-all. You misrepresent me.

What I said and what you portray my comment as saying are very different; contracting with third parties != privatizing NASA.

If SpaceX delivers, they'll be delivering a lot more for a lot less money. I'm sorry that my use of the word competition set off your "libertarian alarm", but I can't see how anything but good is coming out of contracting with SpaceX.

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