The governments job, part 2

Going back to this discussion for a bit.   I touched before on how  I think it is the government's responsibility to ensure that certain tasks are done.  However, it is not necessarily their job to do the work those tasks require.

For example, NASA is no longer sending shuttles to the international space station.  An estimate of 1.6 billion dollars was tossed out to account for how much 1 trip with the  shuttle costs to do so.

Now a privately owned craft is going to be tested to do the same job. The private carrier can hold maybe half of what the shuttle can carry, but also can make 12 trips for the same price as the one shuttle flight. 

Using the most generic math, that still gives us roughly 6 equal movements from the private shuttle carrying the same amount of freight for what it costs to send one shuttle.

Even if we are even more conservative with our math and say it takes 3 private trips to equal one shuttle trip, it still gives us 3 private transfers to equal the cost of 1 shuttle transfer.  The private ship is still a 300% improvement.

This serves to further exemplify that the government should be contracting the work of the country to private business instead of trying to do it themselves.

Not only can private business do it more cost effectively, more private sector jobs are created, government costs go down, and, if done right, honest competition keeps technology moving forward.

(unless of course you have one of the modern "compete in the courtroom, not in the R&D lab" corporates contracted, then nothing gets better.)