Re: OSP Secrecy

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Henry Spencer) wrote:

>Going through the bids and rejecting the grossly non-credible ones ought
>to take a few guys a few days, at most.  Even at NASA-bureaucrat rates,
>that is a negligible expenditure in a program this size.
>
>The *hard* part would be going through the marginally-credible bids and
>sorting out which of them don't know quite enough to do the job, and which
>ones are proposing something odd but could well make it work. 

The big expenditure, and the hard part, will be dealing with the
appeals filed by the marginal bidders.  Don't fool yourself into
thinking that winnowed bidders will simply go quietly into the night.

>You know, there is a solution to that.  It's called "competition".  The
>key is that you don't try to pick *one winner* based on the quality of
>their viewgraphs.

And how else do you pick them?

>There is nothing that keeps a development program on
>track better than the knowledge that they *don't* have a guaranteed tap
>into Uncle Sam's wallet, that somebody else will get the production
>contract if they screw up the development. 

There is nothing better to keep someone from bidding on a development
project than the knowledge that it won't give them a leg up on the
competition for the production or operations contract.

The big guys play your theoretical game because that's what they do,
they don't know any better.  There are thousands of smaller companies
who *won't* bid on goverment work because the entire thing could
evaporate tommorrow.

D.
-- 
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to [EMAIL PROTECTED], as well as posted to 
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for 
discussion.