Crony Capitalism -- your tax dollars at work

The money spent up through the Apollo missions turned out to be a pretty good bang for the buck, (how much of that was luck is open to debate), but I'm not sure you can make that statement for the program since then.

-DuraCraft Marine of Delphi, La., Lockheed Martin and NASA’s Marshall Center took the thermal protection materials and manufacturing processes used for the Shuttle’s External Tank and created a “thermal livewell” for recreational boats that doesn’t take up much-needed space. Non-insulated livewells -- which are used to keep a fisherman’s catch alive -- limit the effectiveness of tournament fishing “catch and release” programs

- The Marshall Center and USBI of Huntsville have also developed a spray process -- tied to the Space Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters -- that can apply a skid-resistant surface to highway beds. The process is faster to apply and, possibly, cheaper than conventional methods.

- A miniaturized ventricular-assist pump has been successfully implanted into several people. Initially called the NASA/DeBakey heart pump, it is based in part on technology used in space shuttle fuel pumps.

- Properties of metal alloys studied for the space station program have sparked a new line of golf clubs. Shape memory metal gives the most seasoned golfer new control and feel.

- Building the Boeing 777 brought about the use of NASA innovations, from lightweight composite materials to the modern glass cockpit and aircraft control systems.

- The Marshall Center hit the roof – literally – when it partnered with USBI Co. of Huntsville, Ala., to develop an environmentally friendly, spray-on coating for metal roof buildings. The coating was originally developed as a heat-resistant coating to the Space Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters.

- Marshall and USBI developed an advanced stripping system based on hydroblasting – high pressure waterjet cleaning – to slice through the thermal protection material and blow away the particles. Next came a whole new industry. The process
– marketed as ARMS (Automated Robotic Maintenance Systems) – uses waterblast streams at 55,000 pounds (24.95 kg) psi controlled by target-sensitive robots. The system – which is economical, fast and safe for the environment and workers -- is used to strip paint and other coatings from aircraft, ships and turbine engine parts.

Perhaps because you haven't been looking?

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/benefits/
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marsh...facts2.pdf



One could even make the argument that the Shuttle Program probably produced more in terms of external benefit to society at large than Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo combined did.

"It kept us limited to low-Earth orbit," said space policy expert John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington Universtity and author of "John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Indeed, some NASA officials have voiced dissatisfaction with the agency's post-Apollo focus on the shuttle and the International Space Station, which shuttle missions have helped build since 1998.

"It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path," then-NASA chief Michael Griffin told USA Today in 2005. "We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can."

As for history's verdict? It will likely fall somewhere in between, experts say.

"It's not all one way or all the other, in terms of success or failure," Launius said. "The nuances associated with this are going to be significant in trying to assess the legacy of the shuttle."

Logsdon voiced similar sentiments.

People "will view it with mixed feelings," he said. "It did some remarkable things. But we flew it for too long, and it cost too much."

One could even make the argument that the Shuttle Program probably produced more in terms of external benefit to society at large than Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo combined did.

Quote : Properties of metal alloys studied for the space station program have sparked a new line of golf clubs. Shape memory metal gives the most seasoned golfer new control and feel.

I'm not one of those "end justifies the means" folks.

The shuttle program cost well over 200 billion. Have you done a cost benefit analysis on the current NASA administration claims? Not that they would have any bias.

I admit I have a bias towards not spending more for a particular benefit than was necessary. I'm not one of those "end justifies the means" folks. Might have something to do with my relative contributions towards the "means".

But none of that means that the Shuttle program didn't do a whole lot of good for us.

Usually, companies that undergo a significant change in ownership risk having major restrictions put on their tax benefits. The U.S. bailout of GM, in which the Treasury took a 61% stake in the company, ordinarily would have resulted in GM having such limits put on its tax benefits, according to tax experts.

But the federal government, in a little-noticed ruling last year, decided that companies that received U.S. bailout money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program won't fall under that rule.

Consider the real-life horror story of 20,000 white-collar workers at Delphi, a leading auto parts company spun off from GM a decade ago. As Washington rushed to nationalize the U.S. auto industry with $80 billion in taxpayer “rescue” funds and avoid contested court termination proceedings, the White House auto team schemed with Big Labor bosses to preserve UAW members’ costly pension funds by shafting their nonunion counterparts. In addition, the nonunion pensioners lost all of their health and life insurance benefits.

The gutting of white-collar worker pensions at Delphi, GM’s biggest parts supplier, is a teachable moment about UAW power and Obama administration callousness.

As the administration rushed to complete GM’s bankruptcy last May, the question of Delphi was a pressing issue. Spun off by GM in 1999, Delphi was still intimately bound to its former parent through supply chains and union contracts. But when it came time to resolve Delphi pensioners, Delphi’s salaried workers were thrown overboard even as the UAW’s pensions were made whole.

Decisions on which car dealerships to close as part of the auto industry bailout -- closures the Obama administration forced on General Motors and Chrysler -- were based in part on race and gender, according to a report by Troubled Asset Relief Program Special Inspector General Neal M. Barofsky.

Included among those undisputed facts:

-"[D]ealerships were retained because they were ... minority- or woman-owned dealerships";

-Thousands of jobs were lost, unnecessarily, due specifically to Obama's "mandate for shared sacrifice";

-A disproportionate number of Obama-forced closings were of rural dealerships, in areas unfriendly to Obama, even though such closures could "jeopardize the return to profitability" for GM and Chrysler.

In the bizarre pecking order offered by the administration, the unions, which are at the bottom of Chrysler's capital structure, would get nearly full recovery value for their $10.6 billion retiree health-care claims, while the secured creditors at the top of the hierarchy would receive about 30 cents on the dollar.

"We're not holding out for some sweetheart deal. We're asking for the normal treatment of creditors in bankruptcy, and the absolute priority of claims," says George Schultze of Schultze Asset Management, a Purchase, N.Y., investment firm. "Why should the administration force politics into this deal and give a special gift to a favored group of creditors?"

http://online.barrons.com/article...ws_barrons

Quote : "Why should the administration force politics into this deal and give a special gift to a favored group of creditors?"