It’s ‘Make or Break’ Time for NASA
NASA must meet enormous challenges in the coming post-shuttle era.
The results of misbegotten space policy choices over the past decades are finally coming to a head in the new administration. The cans have been kicked down the road as far as possible with regard to when to retire the space shuttle, and the future of NASA’s human space flight program in general and the International Space Station (ISS) in particular. Indeed, we’re reaching a point of no return.
Fortunately, at least some uncertainty has been reduced with recent reports that the U.S. is moving toward a decision to continue supporting ISS through 2020, despite the fact that it will add a couple of billion dollars per year to the NASA budget — something not anticipated in previous plans. But this makes the issue of how we will service the ISS all the more important.
NASA recently provided policy makers with two shuttle extension plans: one to 2012 and the other to 2015. But despite attempts by Florida legislators to extend the program, external tank production has been shut down. This means that there will be a limited number of flights that the system can perform, regardless of how long we continue to fly, because each flight requires a tank.
And even at a low flight rate, the program is very expensive on an annual basis, putting further pressure on the budget. Once we run out of tanks, the program will end, with nothing in place to allow us to get astronauts to and from the ISS. This will make us dependent on the Russians into the indefinite future for human space transportation, unless SpaceX can come through soon with the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule.
Since the decision seems to be irreversible — or at least no reversal is in the cards since the president’s proposed budget doesn’t contemplate it — this makes the decision of what will replace that capability ever more urgent.
Unfortunately, Ares I and Orion — the launch vehicle and capsule that are supposed to allow us to get astronauts to and from earth orbit (and eventually, in conjunction with other hardware elements, all the way to the lunar surface and back by the end of the next decade) — are far over budget and behind schedule. The original plan laid out in President Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration” (VSE) five years ago was initial capability to orbit earth in 2014, implying only a three-year “gap” with a planned shuttle shutdown in 2010. Since then, the schedule has slipped to at least 2015, with little confidence of actually making that date.
With regard to the budget growth, NASA’s own projected costs to first lunar landing have risen from an initial estimate of $52 billion to $97 billion currently, and the Congressional Budget Office not unreasonably projects additional growth to more than $100 billion, based on program history. While this may seem like couch cushion change in the current environment of trillion-dollar deficits, the pressure to cut it will be intense.
Even ignoring the budget and schedule issues, there are serious concerns about what we will get for the money. The technical issues of vibration in the first stage, potential drift into the tower during liftoff, underperformance of the vehicle, and excess weight of the capsule and service module have resulted in NASA reducing the initial crew size to orbit from six to four. Moreover, the Aerospace Corporation has reportedly recently performed a study indicating that using existing launch vehicles for the Orion could save a significant amount of money without reducing crew safety.
With all of these issues on the table, and the fact that NASA still lacks a permanent administrator (Deputy Administrator Chris Scolese has been the acting administrator since Mike Griffin left in January), it isn’t surprising that the administration has decided to pull together an independent blue-ribbon commission to look over the situation and make some recommendations.
The commission will reportedly be headed by Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin and former head of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He will no doubt be viewed as a good candidate for such a job (he headed a previous commission on space policy almost two decades ago, though many of his recommendations, including a budget increase for NASA of 10 percent per year, were ignored). The only issue with him may be a potential conflict of interest in that he may still own Lockheed Martin stock, and they manufacture the Atlas V, one of the vehicles that could compete with the Ares I.
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Rand Simberg is a recovering aerospace engineer and a consultant in space commercialization, space tourism and Internet security. He offers occasionally biting commentary about infinity and beyond at his weblog, Transterrestrial Musings.
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28 Comments
1. Dave Levitt:I’m also a regular reader of Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor site, and his proposal for junking the current government space program, and replacing it with a private enterprise driven system.
See the original post at http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail242.html#prizes
[quote]
I can solve the space access problem with a few sentences.
Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States:
The Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay to the first American owned company (if corporate at least 60% of the shares must be held by American citizens) the following sums for the following accomplishments. No monies shall be paid until the goals specified are accomplished and certified by suitable experts from the National Science Foundation or the National Academy of Science:
1. The sum of $2 billion to be paid for construction of 3 operational spacecraft which have achieved low earth orbit, returned to earth, and flown to orbit again three times in a period of three weeks.
2. The sum of $5 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a space station which has been continuously in orbit with at least 5 Americans aboard for a period of not less than three years and one day. The crew need not be the same persons for the entire time, but at no time shall the station be unoccupied.
3. The sum of $12 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a Lunar base in which no fewer than 31 Americans have continuously resided for a period of not less than four years and one day.
4. The sum of $10 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a solar power satellite system which delivers at least 800 megaWatts of electric power to a receiving station or stations in the United States for a period of at least two years and one day.
5. The payments made shall be exempt from all US taxes.
That would do it. Not one cent to be paid until the goals are accomplished. Not a bit of risk, and if it can’t be done for those sums, well, no harm done to the treasury.
I had Newt Gingrich persuaded to do this before he found he couldn’t keep the office of Speaker. I haven’t had any audiences with his successors.
Henry Vanderbilt points out that having a prize, say $1 billion, for the second firm to achieve point (1) above will get more into the competition, and produce better results. I agree.
[/quote]
May 13, 2009 - 7:51 am 2. John:Ah one of my favorite topics. It is also the most frustrating.
1. NASA has a man rated rocket capable of being built and used to transport a simple launch/recover module of a slightly larger diameter Apollo capsule. It is the Saturn 1B. It is flight tested, rock solid and simple in design. All that need be done is a basic update of the engines, and to take advantage of improved materials and electronics. It’s second stage (which was the Saturn V’s 3rd Stage) need only be adapted to connect the wider command/service module for the simplified Orion.
(Dear NASA. Please see Soyuz for reference. That little tank can re-enter on a ballistic trajectory, with a hatch as a heat shield, and bring its crews home safely. When it comes to rugged simplicity, the Russians are kings. Learn from them on this. KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID.) Build a simple launch and recovery vehicle. Make sure that it does that mission, and that mission alone. Brass plating the Orion is just going to make it more expensive, complex, and difficult to field.
2. We have a simple effective, reliable heavy lift rocket. The Saturn V, like its little brother the Saturn 1B is Cheap… it runs on refined kerosene and liquid oxygen… it can lift a building into orbit. Start using it again. The thing has been flight tested, it is reliable, and capable of adaptation. It’s diameter also puts it in the ultra heavy lift category that will allow you to pre-deploy all sorts of trans-lunar equipment that can take advantage of a SIMPLE launch and recovery system.
(Dear NASA: Once again KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID. You do not need a gold plated do it all including haul the kitchen and pantry vehicle for going up and coming back down… use the cheap S-V to do the work of putting the Kitchen, living room, water, fuel, and other goodies into place where the grand caravan can then head off to the moon, unencumbered extra stuff that you don’t need for the mission, like Earth Launch and Re-Entry vehicles.)
3. Vision is more difficult, because your organization is polluted with narrowly focused scientists who love to play with their theories and toys, but have not a clue as to the fact that if WE DON’T GO THERE… the knowledge that they are collecting is USELESS, EXPENSIVE TRIVIA. If we don’t go to Mars, who cares what is on Mars? If we don’t want to leave this solar system, who actually really needs to know anything about it?
The unmanned program is permanently tied to the manned program. There is no need to poke around if WE aren’t going to GO. That money is better spend on Earth Orbit functions for communications and weather satellites. All of those types of “space” stuff can be done by commercial ventures with absolutely no involvement of government resources. The remaining non-exploratory missions are military in nature, and can be handled as such.
Perspective is everything. If we want to save money, we can cut ALL NASA space programs.. no robots, no deep space probes, no mars rovers, nothing… IF WE DO NOT INTEND TO GO THEY ARE ALL A WASTE OF MONEY.
I personally think that if mankind does not explore, if he does not push his frontiers outward, he will eventually self-immolate. However, the academic exercise of playing games with who gets what budget because he feels himself as being more important, is childish nonsense.
NASA needs to grow up, and get back to work. We need a base on the MOON tomorrow. From there, we can take the next step. AGAIN, NASA.. KISS the problem.
r/John
May 13, 2009 - 8:00 am 3. Falconsword:As a sci-fi novelist and faithful follower of NASA since the 60’s, I was encouraged that they were finally moving past the disastrous Space Shuttle period of our history, the only launch vehicle to kill fourteen astronauts. Then it was announced they were boldly “going backwards”. Gone were the visions of an SSTO powered by the linear aerospike motors, or anything even remotely better. Screw innovation, that takes time. We’d rather waste time trying to reengineer what we did fifty years ago! Apollo on Steroids? Give me a break.
So I’ve continued to watch, listen, and write letters with many other trying to nudge NASA in the direction of the future, and utterly failed. On a recent trip to the Houston Space Center, I got a few minutes to chat with the development team for the future LEM replacement. If any of them had recognized my name, they would have seen it coming. It ties with a quote from the article above “Getting marginal costs low implies reusability of the hardware, which in turn implies fueling it in orbit and on the moon, with depots throughout cis-lunar space.”
I asked the young, smart, PHD in charge; “So, tell me this, if we’re going back to stay, why are we going to launch a fully capable lunar lander, full of avionics and other expensive equipment, then throw it away after each mission?” My biggest pet peeve of them all. For an estimated 20% increase in cost, we could build lunar ‘tug boats’ that would ply between lunar orbit and the surface, refueling in orbit at first from reserves brought from earth, and eventually from the lunar surface as mining and refining begins to kick in. After a couple missions we have several of these tugs hangning around orbit, both ready to serve the ever growing traffic from earth, and ready to help should the need ever arise to evacuate the colonists. After all, the LEM on Apollo 13 did a good job as a lifeboat. Load them up, boost back to earth, unload on the ISS. Good plan for the first few years when there are only a dozen or so living 24/7 on the moon.
Anyway, the complete lack of ‘look to the future’ is probably the biggest idiotic problem at NASA. They don’t, and never do look to the future unless it is when they are figuring what will cost the most, and keep the most NASA employees busy. We’re past time to make private this venture, and SpaceX is the first step. Burt Rutan needs to come on board as well. I especially like the idea of the government setting up open ended reward contracts as mentioned by an earlier poster. A few billion here and there for established goals, no win, no pay. We’re dumping BILLIONS into auto companies only to see them fail, but the idea of a billion or two for space exploration/development is ‘unsound policy’?! I’m even more disgusted. Are we ultimately doomed in this venture, or will someday a Bill Gates type figure catch the space bug and dump all his wealth towards the goal of ‘the man who sold the moon’? We can only hope.
May 13, 2009 - 9:25 am 4. EvilDave:John:
May 13, 2009 - 11:54 am 5. Harry:I remember a story a while back that we lost the design plans for the Saturn V.
Thankfully, Elon Musk is putting his money where his mouth is. Steve Cooke is a great guy, but NASA/MSFC is rudderless. Shuttle was an enormous waste of money ($300M marginal launch cost!) and Ares 1 is screwed. Ares V is history before it starts…
I concur with the above poster: we are wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on car bailouts when we could spend a fraction of that amount, define a Griffen-less path forward and really have a space program!
HPN
May 13, 2009 - 11:56 am 6. Contrarian:“Getting marginal costs low implies reusability of the hardware, which in turn implies fueling it in orbit and on the moon, with depots throughout cis-lunar space.”
This is an assumption that needs to be tested. Wouldn’t a Big Dumb Booster be cheaper than refurbishing and testing an expensive re-used exotic material system?
May 13, 2009 - 12:06 pm 7. Rand Simberg:I remember a story a while back that we lost the design plans for the Saturn V.
It’s not true, not that redoing Saturn would be a good idea.
Wouldn’t a Big Dumb Booster be cheaper than refurbishing and testing an expensive re-used exotic material system?
There’s no good reason to think so. You have some hidden and flawed assumptions in your question.
May 13, 2009 - 12:52 pm 8. Kent:Extending ISS to 2020 means it has a one in six chance of being severely damaged from space junk. Russian Roulette, anyone?
May 13, 2009 - 12:55 pm 9. Rick:Sean O’Keefe’s design contained a lot of flowery, one-function vehicles strewn across space to the moon, which is only three days away. Most considered it little more than NASA contractors trying to design vehicles that would cost as much and do as little as possible, while looking pretty to O’Keefe, who was not a rocket scientist by any stretch. He had no intuitive grap of how badly out of whack these designs were.
Ares I may be a mess, but I think Ares V is critical to any major advance in space. I would replace Orion with Dragon if it succeeds in passing Orion in development, which it could easily do this year with two flight tests planned. A heavier Dragon could still be carried on a Falcon 9 Heavy and be moon-worthy (able to return at much higher entry speeds). That said, Ares V would drive dramatic advances in spaceflight.
EvilDave:
Be that as it may, we also have a handful of Saturn Vs doing “garden gnome” duty for a couple museums in the US. I know we’ve already pulled apart one museum-piece Apollo CSM assembly in order to look at the connections between them (and the guillotine that separates them right before reentry), because we’d also lost *that* knowledge as well, and Orion needed it. I see no reason why we couldn’t pull apart a full Saturn V, number the parts, take extensive photos, video the process, etc, and reverse-engineer the machines our parents and grandparents built back in the day.
The problem is, as Rand puts it, that Apollo and Saturn Vs will do nothing to build the “Spaceborne Interstate” that is probably necessary to build a spacefaring civilization. Try telling NASA or its representatives that, though. Several years ago I had the opportunity to listen to a JPL scientist bemoan the regular loss of probes on Mars missions, and how it was near-impossible to hit the proper landing site as selected before a launch. The audience asked why we didn’t simply put in a Mars-orbiting GPS constellation, a few weather satellites, etc, and define Martian geography based on the way we do it here on Earth. Not only did this guy act like the idea had never occured to him (a few moments of stunned silence while he mulled it over), he immediately launched into a tirade about how Congress would never fund such an idea and that pursuing it would be a waste of time and effort. When the audience brought up the detail that doing things right the first time was cheaper in the long run than pouring cash into failed mission after failed mission (this being roughly at the turn of the century when we lost something like 3 probes in a row, plus a few from the ESA and a Japanese moon-probe), the discussion was brought to a premature conclusion so the JPL rep could be given another facilities tour.
Anecdotal, but I think that moment captures the NASA mentality in a nutshell.
May 13, 2009 - 12:56 pm 10. NameWithheld:One correction to the article: Lockheed Martin no longer manufactures Atlas V. You’ll recall that both Atlas V and Delta (II and IV) were transeferred in their entirety to United Launch Alliance several years ago. LM only owns half of ULA, and only half of ULA is Atlas, so the potential conflict of interest RM speculates about is far less of a concern that might otherwise be the case.
May 13, 2009 - 1:06 pm 11. 49r:It’s too expensive and dangerous to explore space with humans. We should be putting our money into relatively cheap, small robots on one-way missions. If you give the robots cute names, the public will support increased funding for NASA. And maybe we’ll get to do a bit of science in between photo ops.
May 13, 2009 - 1:35 pm 12. John:Christmas (Holiday Dinner) under Enterprise… No one who has seen the “dummy” shuttle Enterprise, and has a rudimentary knowledge of flight mechanics (mine is from long love of models, books, building flying models, and hours in the Air and Space – everything…) isn’t impressed by the sheer size of the orbiter, and dumbfounded by power and complexity of the system that is necessary to orbit the shuttle system. However, it is not a capable realistic transport bus to get 7 to 10 astronauts into orbit, and down from orbit – and nothing more.
I am not a classic engineer, just an enthusiast who has followed the space program since I built my first model of the Jupiter C/Explorer as a child. My guide was Jules Bergmann and I built every available model of every American and Russian Spacecraft that I could get my hands on.
1. Soyuz. The Booster is merely a product improvement and upgrade of the same rocket that put Sputnik in orbit. It works. It’s escape system works. The capsule/service module/orbital module design is from the 1960’s and aside from the improvements installed because of improved technology, it works.
2. We need a heavy lifter to get stuff into orbit. Why re-invent the wheel at great cost? With modern materials Saturn V (VI, VII) would be a champ, Especially the first stage. It is nice to contemplate all sorts of great “orbital and exploratory taxis” but we have to get that equipment into orbit, and out of orbit (which means boost, fuel, and replacement fuel.) Again, why re-invent a wheel.
Ok, I will grant you that the second stage of the Saturn V rocket is a slightly more complex and expensive vehicle to be so disposable, but how much easier would it be to re-design a cheaper replacement than try to build the entire system?
Sometimes “New” and Shiny (said with a ton of smarmy tonal slide) isn’t so good. The Russians have proven that.
3. The need for outside of the box thinking is plain to see, but not so easy to implement. As is shown here, everyone has some other “idea” of just what the box is in the first place.
4. Manned exploration, left up to private corporations, will go NOWHERE… no company is going to invest such huge sums in an adventure that amounts to exploration equivalent to what the Corps of Exploration (Lewis and Clark) and the Pike expeditions were conducting. It was 1869 before we had a transcontinental railroad, and if anybody here doesn’t know the story, the Credit Mobile scandal, and the massive government bond and rights transfer necessary to build it then they should do some light reading. Businesses don’t explore, they make profit, and there is little or no profit in flushing money down black hole R&D projects that might go exactly no where.
Besides? What corporate benefit is there in having a base on the Moon? Where is the profit in that?
No, the job of risky exploration is to be left to sovereign entities, not corporate fictions. People explore, businesses exploit at a later date.
We need a mix of things that work, simplicity, and innovation. NASA needs to drop the “do everything with one car” sort of mentality, and it needs to realize something that the Army did years ago about the helicopter…
The UH-1 still works, well. The design, still flies all over the world. Because it works, and aside from incremental improvements, it hasn’t needed to change since its initial design in the late 1950’s.
Ares is a failure, Orion could be a success but it needs to be simplified greatly, and it needs a booster system that works. It can’t be of much use sitting on the ground looking innovative.
Best Regards and thanks for a great discussion,
John
May 13, 2009 - 1:44 pm 13. Ed Unneland:Regarding the Saturn V that is on display at Johnson Space Center, is it at all possible that it could actually be refurbished and launched? Or is it better to simply use it to reverse-engineer it.
Also, could a reusable version of Saturn V (with the capture of the spent stages) actually work, or it is too difficult what with the tempertures that are encountered in atmospheric reentry?
May 13, 2009 - 2:30 pm 14. Rand Simberg:It’s too expensive and dangerous to explore space with humans.
It doesn’t have to be. That’s just the NASA Way.
May 13, 2009 - 2:39 pm 15. Rand Simberg:We need a heavy lifter to get stuff into orbit.
No, we need a low-cost lifter to get stuff into orbit. Nothing on NASA’s drawing board does that. The private companies are another matter.
May 13, 2009 - 2:41 pm 16. Roderick Reilly:Saturn V was a great vehicle, but a lot more of a maintenance hog prior to launch than people realize. Do we want to spends weeks/months prepping a Saturn V for each launch? Also, the Saturn was HUGE. While we may want/need to put up 200-250k lbs. a few times for a Lunar outpost, the Saturn would not be a frequent flyer.
Why go all the way back to the Saturn V for a heavy lifter when the Shuttle-C concept is actually much more within reach? At 150K lbs. payload, it has adequate capabilities for supporting a return to the Moon.
The idea behind private corporations like SpaceX partnering with NASA is that they would provide the baseline transportation system to at least LEO, NOT undertake an entire private Moon program of their own. While such companies may have tentative plans of such kinds for the future, for the near term they would be partnering with the government, and at a fraction of the cost that NASA would otherwise be spending.
May 13, 2009 - 2:47 pm 17. Jack Okie:I’ve been thinking for a while that we are lagging in the materials science needed for the hypersonic region. Maybe because I’m a pilot, but the idea of coming down from orbit in a tin can under a parachute is just lame. Is it likely that the technology for a space plane actually exists in a black program or two?
May 13, 2009 - 4:39 pm 18. Rick:16: Roderick – “The idea behind private corporations like SpaceX partnering with NASA is that they would provide the baseline transportation system to at least LEO, NOT undertake an entire private Moon program of their own.”
I don’t know, the business case for an aerospace manufacturer to be the first to put something on its business cards along the following lines pretty much writes itself: It gives a certain amount of confidence that they know what they’re doing – their very lives depend on it.
“ABC Aerospace”
May 13, 2009 - 6:37 pm 19. Mike Puckett:Corporate Headquarters
1 Armstrong Plaza
Von Braun City, Tranquility 15324-LUNA
“It’s too expensive and dangerous to explore space with humans.”
It is impossible to colonize and settle space with robots. Robots do not advance human civilization into the cosmos. They can help but they cannot do it alone.
May 13, 2009 - 7:42 pm 20. G Alston:I too am a fan of Jerry Pournelle’s prize approach.
Indeed, I reckon that this coupled with a vital real-world LEO mission might be all that’s needed for the next step.
What vital real world LEO mission? Does such exist?
I think so: solar power sats. We already have proved the ability to be able to construct big things in space (ISS) so the logical next step is to build big things that actually do something. We also have an energy problem. Politics are against building fission plants, Bussard’s (Polywell) system is still in development and buried, and there’s a growing blowback regarding drilling (peak oil, environazis, or global warming hysteria, pick one or more of the many poisons.)
The ROI in energy production would offset the costs. At some point the effort would pay for itself. How long is up to the trolls in accounting, which currently seems like the most creative department in NASA.
Politically, we could offer to build SPS for use anywhere, e.g. African countries that are energy poor.
May 13, 2009 - 10:19 pm 21. Pete:A better prize might be $250, $200, $150 million each to the first three companies to do a hundred separate orbital flights, at least 10% of which carry a person.
High flight number is a far better metric for the creation of a sustainable low cost access to space industry – which must include the creation of a market (not just a stunt). A market also helps the economic case close and the far greater flight number should little affect up front development costs while providing far greater opportunity for incremental development and the creation of a full on endurance race atmosphere.
That prize level might seem low but including some market revenue that might work out at around $3 million a launch – which is almost small expendable launch vehicle territory. So perhaps the flight number should be still higher and the prize value yet lower. The total prize pool really need not be high – less than a single Apollo or even Shuttle launch…
May 14, 2009 - 12:26 pm 22. lefroy:I have never understood why the US just turned its back on space exploration after Apollo. Expensive, yes – but at the moment of greatest triumph, when the country’s proper pride in its astounding achievement should have been unbounded, the impetus just sort of died – with no real regret, and even a kind of shame in some quarters. It was an eerie, defeatist sort of attitude. Not the US at all.
May 14, 2009 - 12:28 pm 23. Roderick Reilly:#13 Ed Unneland:
The Ssaturn V first dtage separated at an altitute too low for reentry heating, and could have been redesigned for recovery. The most ambitious redesign proposal had the 1st stage turned into a flyback booster.
May 14, 2009 - 2:33 pm 24. Robert Arthur:But despite attempts by Florida legislators to extend the program, external tank production has been shut down. This means that there will be a limited number of flights that the system can perform, regardless of how long we continue to fly, because each flight requires a tank.
…Once we run out of tanks, the program will end, with nothing in place to allow us to get astronauts to and from the ISS.
This is a false premise. Production of external tank assemblies at Michoud is not a limiting factor for Shuttle program extension, either to 2012 or 2015. Quoting from Nasaspaceflight.com:
MAF are already prepared for an extension, should it be called, with part builds of tanks up to ET-141 already complete and now in storage. Further tanks can be produced by refining the programming of new friction weld machinery at MAF, in the event additional ETs are required.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/04/downstream-processing-and-planning-preparing-fleet-to-sts-135/
There are no showstopping limitations of engineering or supply in extending the Shuttle program. When and if funded, it is possible for the program to continue to help close the gap in capability. It would be better, of course, for the decision to be made sooner than later. The “point of no return” rhetoric, however, is just that: an attempt to make the Shuttle program seem as if it is already dead, to make retirement seem inevitable. That’s policy maneuvering by people who support other options, not engineering.
May 14, 2009 - 5:02 pm 25. billslayer:Not to be the eternal devil’s advocate here but the Ares V is just too cool to scrap. And it can actually do the heavy lifting to get us to the moon to go get the damn Helium 3! Once we came back with enough Helium 3 to fire up a fusion reactor that might be the biggest game changer…ever. Of course Obama might just cancel the Ares to have more money to build ghettos.
May 15, 2009 - 11:07 am 26. Rand Simberg:Not to be the eternal devil’s advocate here but the Ares V is just too cool to scrap.
Yes, because, you know, “billslayer’s” idea of “cool” (which is completely subjective — I think it’s antiquated) is enough reason to waste tens of billions of dollars on a hyperexpensive launcher.
And it can actually do the heavy lifting to get us to the moon to go get the damn Helium 3!
Yes, because we can’t get to the moon without “heavy lifting,” no matter how much it costs, and we have all those Helium 3 reactors sitting here on earth just waiting for fuel…
May 15, 2009 - 6:50 pm 27. typos_R_us:49r: #19, you are completely wrong. How many 8 years olds will grow up dreaming about becoming robots and exploring space? You may be a first rate tech weenie and King of the Nerds, but your people skills leave a lot to be desired.
May 17, 2009 - 8:42 pm 28. Andy K:Any sort of space exploration that doesn’t have a human riding along/involved will fail. Only scientists are interested in science. Everyone else wants to use science to further their own agenda.
No humans = no interest = no money. No money = no space program. This debate is old hat and has been beaten to death many times. I recommend “Moon Shot” by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton. Between sea stories they go over the human vs robot argument in some detail. To much for me to repeat here.
NASA is locked in their box. They will never willingly leave that box. So the only way to make use of the talent in that box is to destroy the box.
Defund NASA and let the private sector take over or let DARPA and the various military branches develop an alternative to the rocket. There are some ideas out there that need to be explored.
A space elevator would be best, although that will require enormous amounts of money being spent on materials research. I’m sure the spin-offs would pay for that, down the road.
So apparently the future of Nasa is becoming less and less clear, but on a side note…
Does anyone have any info on Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency’s budget proposals for the future and whether or not they are actually moving towards the right direction? I sure hope so, for the sake of science.
I’m beginning to lose hope on Nasa (sad because I was optimistic that Obama would fund them more… I guess failed banks and automobile companies were more important).
May 22, 2009 - 12:39 pm