Book Review: Moon-Mars Commission Report 254
| A Journey to Inspire, Innovate, and Discover | |
| author | President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy |
| pages | 64 |
| publisher | US Government Printing Office, http://bookstore.gpo.gov/ |
| rating | The glass is half {empty,full} depending on your outlook |
| reviewer | code_rage |
| ISBN | 0160730759 |
| summary | Presidential Commission proposes major changes to NASA |
The single most prolific spinoff attributable to NASA is not Teflon, Tang, or Velcro. No, it's high-level reports on how to fix NASA. The latest report, written under the authority of a 9-member commission named by President Bush, proposes how to implement NASA's latest orders: complete the Space Station and retire the Shuttle by the end of the decade, return humans to the Moon by 2020, and eventually send humans to Mars.
The Background
The President's proposal, while lacking details, has been greeted with enthusiasm by many aerospace workers, for whom the application of the term "beleaguered" is more than appropriate. What other major industry has lost half its workforce in the last 15 years? (Oh yeah, the airline, IT and telecom industries, who managed about the same attrition rate in only 2 years: evidence of efficiency, or something.) Space scientists have awaited the implementation report with some trepidation: their Hubble servicing mission has already been traded for the uncertain prospect of a robotic mission, and some NASA science missions have already been pushed back by the budget impact of the Moon-Mars mission.
Meanwhile, public opinion has not quite caught fire. Opinion polls taken in January show at best indifference and at worst hostility to the new plan. Greg Klerkx wrote "Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the explosion of Columbia, other than the human tragedy, was that it changed very few opinions about NASA or NASA's human spaceflight activities. Both should continue, the polls unanimously concluded, but with no more or less vigor than at present." [p. 12, Klerkx 2004]
The Commission, led by longtime government official E.C. Aldridge, also includes four space scientists, a retired Air Force General, a former Congressman, a business and government executive, and the well-known CEO of a high tech firm. Notably, no astronauts or former NASA executives were on the panel.
Contents
Transmittal Letter
Executive Summary
Section I - Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision
Section II - Organizing the US Government for Success
Section III - Building a Robust Space Industry
Section IV - Exploration and Science Agenda
Section V - Inspiring Current and Future Generations
Section VI - Concluding Comments
Appendices
Historical Context
After any disaster or major program failure, commissions are empaneled and they tend to produce two sorts of reports. The first type of report is a failure analysis, including specific prescriptions for recovery. The second is a more broad examination of strategies and goals. This report falls into the second category. While the Aldridge Commission report includes some recommendations that duplicate some previous ones, the new report differs in some important ways from those.
In 1986, the Paine Commission examined how NASA should respond to the Challenger failure. The commission's report in places reads like a primer on space technologies, and proposes specific goals similar to those of the Bush plan: completion of the Space Station, return to the Moon, and a manned mission to Mars. The Paine Commission seems to have felt that the basic problem facing NASA was a lack of a long-term vision and political commitment.
In 1990, the Augustine Commission studied how NASA should respond to a variety of troubling problems on the Shuttle and other programs. This study endorsed space science strongly, while also supporting Space Station. The report focused strongly on workforce issues like morale, attrition and aging. It also noted weaknesses in NASA's executive leadership practices. The report made some specific reform proposals, some of which reappear in the Aldridge report.
The Report
The Aldridge Commission report differs from previous examinations in important ways. First, it has a very limited scope. The Commission did not perform an open-ended study of what NASA ought to do, or how much emphasis to place on astronomy vs planetary science vs human spaceflight. They only studied how to accomplish President Bush's new goals for the space program. Paradoxically, their limited brief resulted in a far more profound proposal to reorganize NASA than previous reports. The range and depth of reforms proposed by this report greatly exceeds those of previous reports.
The top-level recommendations include:
1. Establish a Space Exploration Steering Council, reporting to the President
2. NASA should establish much more private industry participation in space operations, beginning with unmanned launch services
a. Reorganization of NASA HQ
b. Spin off NASA Centers as Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (similar to JPL and the DOE National Labs)
c. NASA should establish 3 new organizations:
+ a technical advisory board, modeled on the Defense Science Board
+ an Independent Cost Estimating organization, modeled on DoD Cost Analysis Improvement Group
+ a research organization, modeled on DARPA and formed from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
d. NASA should adopt DoD-style project management methods
3. NASA should identify and begin development of critical technologies
4. Renew and sustain development of a robust space industry
a. NASA should actively solicit ideas from all sources
b. Congress should fund prizes targeting specific missions and technologies, and work on space property rights
5. NASA should pursue international partnerships
6. NASA should consult regularly with scientists and the National Academy of Sciences
7. The space exploration program should be tied into educational programs and public relations
Section I "Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision" presents three basic justifications for the exploration program: The human urge to explore, economic growth, and national security. Three "imperatives for success" are also presented: sustainability, affordability, and credibility. Sustainability is described as being able to sustain both technical momentum and long-term political support for what will be an expensive program. Affordability is described as "go as you can pay," where each milestone is reached through "spiral, evolutionary developments." The report compares the funding to cancer research, where the pace is determined by a political judgment of "annually, how much can we afford?" The report describes credibility as an amalgam of best practices. While the Commission recognized that space exploration is full of risk, NASA must not appear careless or foolish. NASA must embrace both management practices as well as technical ideas regardless of their source.
Analysis
The Commission's Report is itself a model of the practices they exhort NASA to follow. Whether by intention or not, many of the ideas in the report have been the stated position of advocacy groups like the National Space Society and the Mars Society. Some of the reforms have been specifically proposed by previous Commissions.
The biggest problem I wondered about was funding. So far, about $12B has been proposed for this vision. Yet, many of the recommendations seem likely to cost a great deal of money. For example, on p. 23, the report states that much of NASA's infrastructure needs substantial modernization. Elsewhere, technology R&D is addressed by proposing a DARPA model or even the In-Q-Tel Venture Capital firm funded by the CIA. The Pentagon's "System-of-systems" approach is proposed as a model for project architecture. Special attention is given to the need for reliable heavy lift launch capability. In discussing how to pursue international participants, the Joint Strike Fighter program is listed as a model. Each of these areas requires either significant direct investment (infrastructure, heavy lift, R&D) or large bureaucracies to administer complex contracts (system-of-systems, JSF model). There is an unavoidable tension between the need for R&D, "go as you can pay," available funds, and "credibility."
The money issue is partially addressed by proposing tax incentives, privatization and private competition. But competition cannot reduce the amount of honest-to-goodness investment needed to remediate the technology deficit. It can only promote the most efficient approach. We need more R&D, yet private competition is seen as a way to "reduce government investment" (p. 20). The elephant in the room is that aerospace is a highly regulated market with relatively low profit margins. This means that direct reinvestment is fairly low. A glance at a list of the top R&D companies shows that top-tier aerospace companies do not reinvest a lot of their own money.
The second issue that troubled me is the applicability of the models they proposed. JPL, the National Labs, various DoD organizations and methods, the X Prize, and other examples are listed as models for various reforms of NASA. This raises some questions. First, are these models applicable? No evidence is presented to indicate that the Commission considered whether different organizations with different goals, constraints, missions, and sizes can use a given model successfully. The proposal to spin off most NASA centers as FFRDCs seems quite radical. Would any commercial firm spin off everything except a design team? Is this what the Aldridge Commission proposes of NASA? How many NASA employees would be left, and in which disciplines? Can the JPL model be applied well to other NASA centers? Would the centers work together better or worse? Would there be limits to how many centers a given contractor would be permitted to operate? I suspect it's much easier to designate JPL as a model than it is to enact in the real world. Do the security and procurement scandals at some DOE labs give us anything to worry about? What about the need for the National Labs to chase proposals in light of funding cuts? Does that make organizations more market oriented and relevant, or does it simply waste the time of researchers?
Finally, the Commission's report failed to address the biggest political problem our human spaceflight program faces: a lack of relevancy to ordinary people. The transmittal letter to the President states that the Commission's web site received over 6,000 written inputs, and that public comments were 7:1 in favor of the new vision. This is of course not a scientific survey, rather it is a self-selected and rather small sample of people who are presumably interested in space exploration. Elsewhere in the report, supportive public testimony is cherry-picked without context or attribution. In one case, I recognized a quote that, taken out of context, sounds much more supportive of a government monopoly on human space travel than the speaker probably meant: "We all wanted to go" (p. 13) was characterized as an expression of the deep and broad effect that the Apollo program had on Americans. I believe this was Tony Tether, Director of DARPA. The full quote was: "What NASA seemed to forget was that then, we all wanted to go," Tether told commissioners. "We were forgotten about." But if NASA can find a way for American citizens to take the baby steps that would eventually allow them to reach the moon - or even just space - themselves, it would do wonders for the space agency's support, he added. "If you can do that, you will have a constituency that you don't have today," Tether said. The longer quote is here.
These anecdotes do not invalidate the report, but I do wonder if the Commission is overselling the enthusiasm that the public will have for this program. Section I, and the report's title, endorse the "inspiration, education, and innovation" arguments for space travel that have so far failed to garner support for a more expansive space vision. One brief mention was made of space tourism and of making NASA an engine of the economy (p. 20). There are hints at the relevance problem sprinkled throughout the report, but public support is more or less presumed, not demonstrated.
What's Good:
If your attitude about NASA reorg proposals is "wake me if it's a big deal," then this is your wakeup call. The Aldridge Commission Report proposes the most profound and far-reaching reorganization of NASA since its founding.
To a larger degree than I would have expected from this board, the proposals are strongly market- and business-oriented. I presume this is the implicit desire of President Bush (MBA, former CEO) and possibly NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe (an accountant).
The report is written in an engaging, enthusiastic style.
What's Bad:
Where's the Beef? "Go as you can pay" does not seem like an adequate response to an agency that has faced aging infrastructure and workers for more than 14 years (see Augustine report). Increased funding and profit margins might address many issues better than bureaucratic realignments or spinoffs. There is no discussion of how to value intangibles like scientific discovery and inspiration, yet tangible values are of prime concern to contractors. NASA's credibility is discussed only in terms of competency, not based on perceived relevancy to the public.
What's Missing:
There is no consideration of potential disadvantages of the various proposals. Supporters of space science may find the report dismissive of their priorities and concerns. There is no critical evaluation of the benefits of space program investments vs direct investments in education, science and technology.
This report is remarkably thin on supplementary materials: there are 13 pp of appendices. More is available on the Commission's web site.
Refs:
[Klerkx 2004]: "Lost In Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age," Greg Klerkx, 2004. ISBN 0375421505
[Paine 1986]: http://history.nasa.gov/painerep/cover.htm
[Augustine 1990]: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/augustin e/racfup1.htm
[Aldridge 2004]: http://www.moontomars.org
The reviewer is an aerospace engineer with experience in human spaceflight engineering and operations, commercial satellite development and operations, and scientific satellite development and operations. No current relationship to NASA, and no significant interests in companies with an interest in this proposal.
You can download A Journey to Inspire, Innovate and Discover from moontomars.org. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to contribute.
Excellent Review! (Score:5, Insightful)
complaint too - if we're serious about this, lets spend some real money on it!
My thoughts from a couple of days before the report came out are up on sciscoop [sciscoop.com] - I think the report does adopt a lot of the "O'Neill" vision of space. Maybe it's our job to make sure the money really comes through now.
Meta-Review: "You Bastard!" (Score:2)
You're thinking the author?
This code_rage person not only read the report and not only understood it well enough to summarize it, but well enough to clearly and concisely express damn near everything insightful, informative, and interesting possible about every section of it.
So the only thing left for any of us to do is scrounge at the bottom of the (+1, Funny) barrel. Code_rage, you utter bastard!
Re:Excellent Review! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Excellent Review! (Score:2)
A.The board completely avoided closing some of NASA's to many competing centers which desperately needs to be done. They spend to much time fighting each other and there is way to much duplication of effort and overhead. They did this because they knew if they tried to close any centers the congressional delegation in the state its in would fight the whole plan tooth and nail. That strongly suggest NASA's centers are more pork than an
Launch cost is the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to lower launch costs. Plain and simple. It is quite possible; it's just *incredibly* difficult work. A reusable space plane which doesn't have the shuttle's size (nor its tiles!!), reusable booster rockets or cheaper disposables, etc, are all technically possible. It's just going to take a lot of money and time. There are no shortcuts.
We also need to be spending more on ways to get unmanned payload to space cheaply. Anyone else for bringing back HARP, spending more on light gas guns, coil guns, rail guns, ram accelerators, and some of the other ballistic-launch methods to get a payload high enough that a small rocket can take it into orbit? Anyone for spending more money on research for advanced ion drives, magnetodynamic tethers, etc, to help craft get into higher orbits and even out of orbit? Anyone for spending more money on researching fusion drives, antimatter-catalyzed microfission/microfusion, and nuclear salt water rockets?
There is so much out there that can *help* the space industry, instead of being a distraction. Let's make the trip affordable first!
Re:Launch cost is the issue (Score:2)
Re:Launch cost is the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Ion propulsion is, as of right now, The Way to move things about in space. With a nuclear reactor pushing it instead of solar panels, congratulations: You now know how the next and probably second and third generation of probes to the outer planets should be propelled.
As for ground launch, we don't have anything better than chemical propulsion because we've spent the last century refining it to the point where the primary limiter on how good we can make chem rockets are the laws of thermodynamics! You can only have N amount of energy stored in chemical bonds. As a result, we're pretty much at the top of the game there- and deservedly so. It's the simplest, most cost-effective method of producing large amounts of thrust quickly there is except for detonating a nuke off your arse.
As for different methods, well, low-thrust is really the hotbed of research right now. It's easier to get a hysterically efficient low thrust engine than a passably workable high thrust one. That said, once NERVA-derivative nuclear thermal rockets can figure out a light way to keep the exhaust from being radioactive, there'll be a sudden new technology that's good for lifting things off the ground.
But this is more than Apollo (Score:3)
Re:But this is more than Apollo (Score:2)
More on rocketforge (Score:2)
How are we to properly discuss this… (Score:5, Funny)
X-Prize (Score:3, Interesting)
Just my $0.02.
Re:X-Prize (Score:4, Insightful)
A 3 year trip is a lot of food, and a hell of a lot of packaging material. In flight-replitishment with remote probes is going to be very tricky. (Think hitting a bullet with a bullet.)
It's also going to require a very unique set of individuals who can stay confined with others and not go completely nuts.
Re:X-Prize (Score:5, Informative)
Where you got your "3 year trip" line from, I'm not sure (perhaps if you wanted to get there with ion drives...) Even three years of MREs, however, would only weigh one ton per astronaut. We're looking at a spacecraft that on its own will weigh hundreds of tons. It's still not that big of a deal.
Re:X-Prize (Score:2)
MREs are evil. Eat ONE hamburger after a week of MREs and get ready to poop a weeks worth.
Re:X-Prize (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:X-Prize (Score:4, Informative)
Three years is the minimum-energy transfer orbit to and from Mars... any faster than that starts to require a lot more fuel.
Re:X-Prize (Score:2)
According to this NASA page [nasa.gov], the fast transit considered is only two months. Most proposals I've seen are for 3 to 6 months.
Re:X-Prize (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe you should read that page more carefully, since it says nothing of the kind: 'the transit time to Mars will be about 180 days', then there's nearly a two year stay waiting for a launch window back to Earth.
"It took Spirit and Opportunity a mere three months to get to Mars."
Spirit: launched June 10 2003, landed January 3rd 2004
Opportunity: launched July 8, 2003, landed January 24th 2004
That sure was a long 'mere three m
Re:X-Prize (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly, that's why it takes three years for the round trip.
Re:X-Prize (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, half of that will be used up on the inbound leg, but then you have to boost the other half OUT of mars orbit and back to earth. That's more fuel, which for the first part of the trip is just cargo needing even more fuel for the first leg to push it.
We are talking about a set of complex equations where painting on the interior can make the spacecraft 5 tons heavier.
Re:X-Prize (Score:2)
Water and O2 are the consumables that matter (Score:4, Informative)
Both of these consumables can be recycled slightly (water more than O2) but there will still be loss because we have not come close to building a closed loop environmental support system that is ready for space or small enough to make it up there. A closed-loop water system is close enough to reality that some of it could be applied here, but a closed-loop system for breathing is not going to be flying anytime soon (these involve things like growing plants to convert CO2 to O2, which increases the volume and weight of the spacecraft significantly.)
A body at rest consumes about 0.3L of O2 per minute. That is 432L per day of metabolic consumption and 116000L over nine months. Using 3000psi composite cylinders (larger, but lighter and we are weight-restricted here) you are looking at about 1.5 tons of weight for gas storage with no reserve and with no allowance for regulation or distribution of the O2. If the astronauts were actually going to do more than lie very still for nine months then your O2 budget goes up.
For water the problem is both easier and harder. It is easier because we have actually made good progress on small, lightweight water recycling systems, and it is harder because each litre of water lost carries a significant cost in terms of weight. An average person consumes 2L of water per day, so you would need 540L for your nine-month mission. We will start by saying that your water needs for cooling and other uses can be handled by non-recoverable losses in the recycling system. Now, if your water recycling system is 80% efficient you will still need to lug up 250 pounds of water and another hundred pounds of container and piping.
Now we are talking about 2 tons of consumables per astronaut, assuming the astronauts do nothing more than lie in their chairs and watch TV for nine months...
BTW, the grandparent came up with three years because for a Mars trip there are two options, short stay or long stay. For your short trip the astronauts would have a couple of weeks on the surface before they would have to leave so that their return transfer orbit would be able to catch up to the earth. The other option is to keep the astronauts on the surface for a year and meet up with earth after both planets have cicled around and are close enough for a transfer orbit. The grandparent poster was also assuming a more fuel-efficient transfer to Mars using a Hohmann transfer orbit, which takes 8.5 months.
No one gets a "three month" stay on Mars, at least not if they want to return to Earth. It is either weeks or a year. Any other option requires a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of fuel to catch up with the Earth.
Re:Water and O2 are the consumables that matter (Score:2)
And I have this really neat thing on my desk. It's called a "plant." It has the astonishing ability to take CO2 and converting it to oxygen. Other models can also make food and process water! With this kind of astonishing technology, I don't know why we can't go to Mars *righ
Re:Water and O2 are the consumables that matter (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd imagine it'd be a whole lot easier than trying to grow plants... although if they co
Re:X-Prize (Score:3, Informative)
Remote probes aren't efficient anyway, since you've got to pay the energy cost to boost that stuff halfway to Mars anyway. May as well just make a bigger main spacecraft. On the bright side, those supplies can be boosted into Earth orbit in advance of the manned mission taking off.
Back
Re:X-Prize (Score:3, Informative)
Not really, we have much of the technology, we just need to move it off the lab bench and into the field. The real problem is going to be to design equipment that can last for the whole length of the trip, and to arrange for proper spares etc..
Sparing is a very black art. The (US) Navy has been working on the problem of properly managing spares, minimizing MTBF and MTTR, and minimizing the ammount of preventative maintenance required etc. f
Re:X-Prize (Score:2)
2) It takes 6 months to get to Mars using current technology. We've had people on the space station longer. The only real issue is radiation, and that's only if we launch at solar maximum. The 3 year figure is getting there, staying for 1.5 years, and getting back. This is taken from NASA's reference mission.
3) It's not like they're going to be incommunicado the whole time. A 40 minute d
Re:X-Prize (Score:2)
Yes, the do convert CO2 (and water vapor) to O2 and sugar. But they need oxygen to fuel the process.
And assuming that you can just take off on Tuesday and be on Mars six months later, it's going to take you at least as long to get back. That's 12 months.
And orbital mechanics aren't that simple. The Earth and Mars are on 2 different orbits. Once per year, the Earth is closer to Mars. Months later, Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun from Mars. Thats the dis
Re:X-Prize (Score:2)
Second, it's not one 12 month trip, it's two six month trips, with replenishment on Mars. Don't bring along enough food and water and fuel for the whole trip, just enough for one way. (Plus emergency.) In situ production saves cost and weight.
70 minutes is fine. Email and photo attachments are great. With a better comm system (a
Re:X-Prize (Score:2)
Mars today is doable. We just have to do it right.
Re:X-Prize (Score:2)
Now, considering what a challenge it is to get material into Earth orbit, with an industrial base and a ready supply of factories and refined material, I am highly doubtful you would have much luck trying to scratch build that infrastructure on an alien planet, with materials you are carry
Re:X-Prize (Score:2)
Re:X-Prize (Score:2)
Re:X-Prize (Score:2)
The report claims that such prizes and bounties for specific pieces of the exploration pie will energize the industry and provide some good tech, to boot.
Re:X-Prize (Score:2, Informative)
However, once you've won the X-prize, you've still only achieved about 3% of the potential+kinetic energy that it requires to reach orbit.
Considering that you've got to carry your rocket fuel with you as you go, achieving orbit is even harder than the 3% number would suggest. There's still a long way to go.
It's going to be a long time before private astronauts competing f
Re:X-Prize (Score:2)
Another important effect of such prizes is the disproportionate amount of excitement that is generated. I don't think anything NASA could do for $10M would generate as much news coverage and public interest.
Also, these sorts of competitions b
Space Academy (Score:5, Interesting)
training the next generation technical work force.
This may be my favorite part. Itll will be difficult to replace the upcoming flood of retirements with so few students majoring in aerospace engineering (emphasis on space) these days. Giving NASA an academy from which to draw potential engineers, astronauts, and technicians would give it a pool of driven young minds.
Can the Starfleet Academy be far behind?
Re:Space Academy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Space Academy (Score:2)
Re:Space Academy (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is not supply of workers, but demand for them. Fooling more students into entering dead-end careers is both useless and deplorable.
Re:Space Academy (Score:4, Informative)
Space Property Rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Space Property Rights? (Score:2)
LOL... I'd love to see a government or corporation try to build a wall around a big chunk of space and claim it's theirs.
Space is big. (Score:2)
Before you can attack anyone you need to find them. Finding someone who doesn't want to be found in a cube of space a billion miles on a side is, shall we say, not very easy.
Re:Space is big. (Score:2)
Yes it is. Do the math sometime...
If you know where they are to within a few miles, then finding them from IR emissions is reasonably easy... but if you only know to within a billion miles, finding them is largely down to luck.
Even then, of course, if they know where _you_ are, they can cool down the part of the spacecraft that's facing you, and expel the heat from the far side. That will make finding them even harder.
Re:Space Property Rights? (Score:2)
Can you think of what the problems might be?
Re:Space Property Rights? (Score:2)
The oceans are now ruled in a really COMMUNIST way - take what you want, everybody owns it together (thus no one has incentive to guard it).
It's killing ocean habitats around the world, leading to massive overfishing in some otherwise very, very fertile waters, and depriving us (as consumers) the opportunity of eating responsibly "farmed" fish (be that farm an area of oce
Re:Space Property Rights? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that's basically what "Space Property Rights" means.
Currently, there are no property rights in space (or more accurately, on other worlds). By treaty, bodies in outer space are "governed" rather like Antarctica -- no government can claim the Moon for itself and issue deeds to explorers. Likewise, no private citizen can land on the Moon and claim it for himself or herself.
In the case of Antarctica, maybe that's a good thing - it's a nice lab, but it's pretty small and can't sustain a tourism industry.
In the case of the Moon, Mars, and (collectively) the asteroids - they're big enough that it'll take so damn long to "pave over 'em" or otherwise "despoil" their "natural" state, that scientific research wouldn't be jeopardized by private ownership of 'em.
Without space property rights, there can be no return on investment for the private sector. Without the private sector's involvement, the only entities doing space exploration, tourism, industrialization or colonization, will be governments. Problem is, governments have "better" things to do than establish offworld colonies. Space exploration doesn't help a government stay in power, and unsurprisingly, governments tend not to give a fuck about it except insofar as to use space programmes to spread the pork around.
A radical proposal:
With space property rights -- whether in the radical form above, or by following the more traditional "Homesteading" model in which government opened up the West by taking ownership of the land for the express purpose of giving it away to anyone who could survive there long enough -- we're much more likely to make it off this mudball.
Re:Space Property Rights? (Score:2)
That's a _great_ idea! This will guarantee that the whole planet will turn into a big death-match arena, giving all us Earth-dwellers plenty of entertainment!
Fund Raising (Score:5, Interesting)
1) A national lottery. Opportunity and Spirit cost (individually) $400 million. A nationwide lottery would be able to raise this much money, and would excite people. They would know that their money is going to put something on another planet.
2) A reality TV show about astronaut candidates. This long-running series, run by one of the major networks, would give a human face and personality to space flight. I'm not talking about people being voted off or anything stupid like that, but an unvarnished look at how astronauts are trained and selected. NASA could get the license from a network and make a few million bucks and improve its image.
Re:Fund Raising (Score:2)
A government partnership with a network to do a television show is interesting to say the least. It's something that I would watch and would probably increase public support, whi
One step ahead of you... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, there is a show in the works that sounds pretty close to what you're talking about [cnn.com], except that they want to send some average Joe into space. Of course, The Simposons did it first [snpp.com]. All hail
Re:Fund Raising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fund Raising (Score:2)
Re:Fund Raising (Score:2)
Ideally, we'd just be relying on NASA for advanced research and safety regulations akin to the FAA. I mean, it's not like we get all of our food and medicine from the FDA, right?
A view from a 60's relic (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, it didn't happen. It turns out that just hoisting enough life-support for a person for a few days into orbit costs more than most people earn in their lifetimes. The benefits of going to the moon, building the space station, and other manned ventures have turned out to be in two areas:
* Spinoff technologies
* Psychological side-effects
That is, none of the actual benefits of space travel have come from the space part, more from the preparation and the coolness factor. The real practical advantages have all come from unmanned craft, mostly communication satellites.
So, why don't we get more excited and/or spend more money on terrestrial exploration? There is better mapping of Venus than there is of the ocean floor these days.
I'm not trying to denigrate anybody's dreams or anything, and I recognize the value of science for its own sake, but maybe blowing another $100 billion on a one-time put-a-guy-on-Mars mission isn't really a good idea. Let's try to find some more practical way to spend our budget surplus (*cough*). How about curing diseases, for example? Bill Gates has personally increased the funding for research in diseases like malaria by a significant factor; why can't our government fund this kind of stuff more?
Pardon my grumblings....I'm just disillusioned in my old age. (where's my space ship, dammit! :)
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:4, Insightful)
The short answer is "Because the rich folks don't want to pay a lot of taxes."
The top tax bracket (for >$400,000) was 91% in the 50s and 60s, and right now it's only 39.6%. Also, the number of brackets has been decreased, so they can't raise taxes without affecting more and more people.
Link [heritage.org]
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
Frankly who on Earth are we defending ourselves against with Nuclear Weapons? Sure there is deterrent, but I think having enough weapons in our inventory to obliterate the civilized world 8 or 9 times is enough at this point. A missile delivery system that can drop 7 warheads on 7 different targets in 45 minutes seems like it'll due for the time b
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
I dunno... in Afghanistan and Iraq, our UAVs were downed like flies. Although I agree completely with your point.
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, more money should be spent on troops (primarily increasing pay so people might actually consider the military as an alternative to private enterprise), but throwing more money at Education has never worked. BOE's can waste more money faster than an
can you say gravy train? (Score:2)
I'm in favor of a strong military, but t
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:4, Interesting)
Is that some kind of joke? Or are you not living in the US?
The US Air Force spend _2 million dollars_ per pilot training them - and that figure is at least 10 years old, so G-d knows what we spend these days. If that's not a significant investment, I don't know what is.
The US Army also has a pretty damned good training program for fighting wars. Regardless of whether going to Iraq was right or wrong, the US Army annihilated the Iraqi army with startling speed. Good training costs money, ergo, I would be somewhat surprised to hear we cheap out on battlefield training.
IOW, you're right, but the US military is obviously doing a pretty good job of training soldiers in weapon system usage. Maybe we ought to put some money into Civil Affairs training, but that wasn't your thesis as far as I can tell.
It's always amazed me that people aren't more aware of the educational institutions that are directly affiliated with the Department of Defense, too.
-Erwos
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
* Spinoff technologies "
And the 'spinoffs' are highly over-rated too.
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
Are you really claiming, for example, that the CD was invented by NASA!?!?!
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
Just this year, I believe, they changed the rule back to "you can file for a patent if your invention has some of of aerospace applicability." So we should start seeing an uptick (at
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
Agreed, there are more viable scientific frontiers (Score:3, Interesting)
The public has turned into a funding arm for aerospace contractors at just the time when they should be figuring out how to make things work in the private sector.
Biotech, proteinomics, genomics, nanotech, clean energy, computing, photonics, networking, etc etc etc are all areas that can provide direct benefits to mankind now and pose more unanswered questions f
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
A "one-time put-a-guy-on-Mars" is a complete waste of time and money, a base on the moon isn't much better since its gravity is to low and no atmosphere.
Putting a permanent colony on Mars would be priceless. It would dramatically alter most of humankind's horizon, give us a second biosphere, and hopefully give us a fresh start free of many of the encumbrances and inertia of societies on Earth. It would also a
Re:A view from a 60's relic (Score:2)
Spiral development and costs (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, about costs... may I point out the following:
Mars lander that Jose'd itself into the surface: ~100 million dollars.
Mars lander that did NOT Jose itself, and that sent back kick ass pictures: ~1 billion dollars (Viking).
Do it right or don't do it at all!
Re:Spiral development and costs (Score:2)
It can be done more cheaply than it has in the past, it's just a matter of effort and innovative thinking.
so many wasted efforts (Score:4, Insightful)
If only they were all working on advancing technology; only working on how to make things better, finding better uses for things, doing important research...instead of making the things we've convinced ourselves are important.
No money to go where we have gone before (Score:4, Insightful)
First, there is no money to fund a moon program. When asked at a recent discussion on the subject if the military would fund such a venture, the DARPA fund manager simply said "no". He didn't qualify it even with an extra comment. It became quite obvious that there is no funding mandate for another moon landing despite rhetoric.
Secondly, the public must weigh the value of going someplace we have already been against funding new work on the frontiers of quantum physics, nanotech, biotech, computing, etc. I find it hard to believe that a moon landing would benefit the public or the scientific community more than a breakthrough in nanotech, for example. The public should be funding science on the frontiers of discovery, not on the explored trails.
In any case I don't know why this topic merits serious discussion any more - regardless of the projections for the costs, it is clear that the government has no plan for providing anywhere near the funds for even the most modest proposal.
Re:No money to go where we have gone before (Score:4, Insightful)
NASA funds a lot of good science and a good fraction of it is in serious jeopardy because the money is being pulled away to fund the exploration initiative. Want to venture a guess to what program may be hit the hardest? It's the Earth Sciences.... "But wait", you say, "aren't those the guys who study stuff like global warming". I wonder why that's happening... I wonder....
I wonder... (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally I think that is a pretty good way of handling human expansion into space. The public will get to know about everything out there, and then private indus
What's with the SPAM links on spaceref.com? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not the answer... (Score:2, Insightful)
Space is the remaining frontier and the issue of 'costs' in this context denotes the very problem at the core of the issue - Government is the last resort in everything and should only be done when a society cannot do something for itself.
The evidence on non-public funding being inadequate to perpetuate technologies that will make space travel/habitation viable isn
space shuttle, etc (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:space shuttle, etc (Score:2)
Potential astronauts are everywhere, but there are only three shuttles left. Lose one more and it doesn't matter what NASA want, the shuttle program is dead... it simply cannot function in any useful sense with only two shuttles (in particular because at any time there's usually one shuttle undergoing major maintenance work).
Even with three shuttles it's going to be very hard to finish ISS before they stop flying.
Re:space shuttle, etc (Score:2)
Right now, NASA has necessary redundancy, but, yes, I agree that the loss of an additional Orbiter would serious tax NASA's new safeguards and rescue modes. They plan on having a 2nd Shuttle ready to launch on the pad as a rescue vehicle while a mission is in progress. Considering how long to takes to prep an
Mars, Money and Motive (Score:5, Insightful)
"What's so great about that?" you might ask. If you want it in one word, that word is "Mining". Consider: in a nickel-iron asteroid, there is an amount of metal roughly equivalent to the metal mined in the course of human history. Not to mention rare heavy metals - Iridium, Osmium, Platinum - things that are scarce on earth but relatively more abundant in asteroids. A mining operation of that scale is more than lucrative - it also presents a way to attain necessary raw materials without tearing open the surface of our own planet.
But, yeah, mostly, it's the money. Money is the key - and I don't mean "having enough money to do these things". What I mean is opportunities for profit in space. Space travel currently costs a lot - I maintain that this is due to lack of expertise. If there is a sufficient profit motive in space, companies will find ways to do things cheaper and faster and, arguably, better (not being a terrible believer in an unregulated market, this last point is debatable). Prove that we can go get to the money, and people will go get it.
Which brings me to my last point - spending philosophy. A lot of people decry spending on the space program, arguing that the greatest benefits have come from near-Earth satellites and such; and besides, they say, aren't there better things to spend the money on? This is true, in a sense. But, I, for one, would rather spend another billion dollars on the space program, on research and development, than on a new B2 bomber that doesn't work the way it should and whose role as a long-range strategic bomber was obviated by the end of the Cold War. Finding a more worthy cause - education, health care, welfare - does not eliminate the need to spend on less worthy causes. The point is, we don't know yet what we might find worthy in space. It is a money sink until we find that. I think it is worth examining - with plans like reuseable launch vehicles and space elevators and Lagrange-point stations, we have a number of ways to lower the financial barriers to space.
I am not generally one to talk so, but I think we have a responsibility to future generations and to our own sense of intellectual completeness to reach into space. The cost will be mitigated over time. The benefits could be grand. The investment will surely be prohibitive. The continued and future examination and implementation of space travel depend on a long-term view of the investment, a willingness to look for opportunities, and a certain modicum of childlike wonder and hope. Space is great. It's just hard to get to right now.
Re:Mars, Money and Motive (Score:2)
Oink, Oink - this is pork, not space flight (Score:5, Insightful)
"Stimulate economic development" is a code word for "spend money in my Congressional district". And "Federally Funded Research and Development Centers" aren't organizations tightly focused on single goals.
That "executive summary" addresses all the wrong stuff. It doesn't mention cost, schedule, or basic approach. It's all about organizational structure. That's not how Apollo was done.
It also says very little about NASA's thirty years of failures to build a new launch vehicle. Those bozos can't even replace the existing Shuttle. Not for lack of money, either. In the past 30 years, NASA has spent more money than it did from 1960 to 1974, with far less to show for it. Keeping all those "centers" going costs billions.
DARPA, by comparison, is tiny. DARPA itself is a few hundred people. They buy and evaluate; they do nothing in house. There are no "DARPA centers" chewing up billions in overhead.
Exactly, more Boeing GRAFT (Score:3, Informative)
Projects like these are more subjective, but lets face it, Boeing and Lockheed lobby hard for this gravy - these open-ended projects are where they really make their bank.
Re:Oink, Oink - this is pork, not space flight (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, you have a NASA administration that is completely incompetent (by your own admission, throwing good money after bad), and then you complain that the commision wants to change out the organizational structure. As if leaving these people in the positions to make business decisions is viable?
And amazingly enough, changing NASA's finance model to a DARPA model, shouldn't cost as much money as NASA is now, so it sh
Yes we can go to Mars (Score:3, Interesting)
Why I feel that NASA should simply be disbanded (Score:3, Interesting)
Some aspects of this proposal are valid, such as spinning off the research agencies. I could see the creation of a "Department of Science" or some other federal bureaucracy that would oversee national research laboratories, including much of the NSF programs (Like the Antarctic research bases), leftover items from NASA such as JPL or Ames, and include other scientific projects that are generally "Big Science" that take so much capital to put together that it really makes sense to fund them with federal dollars due to legitimate return on their value. A restructuring of the NSF would also have value on its own as well. A restructuring like this would even allow other areas of research to be created that currently aren't being done.
When I think of NASA, I think of a bunch of cool looking guys (and a few cool women) dressed up in spacesuits going to places that nobody has ever gone before. For over 30 years NASA has done nothing even resembling this idea, so it is no wonder that a bunch of greying astronauts (no matter how fit they are) with stuck-up elitist attitudes have absolutely no connection with ordinary Americans like myself. I happen to know personnally (I've been in his home and done things with his kids... now raising kids of their own) one of the Apollo astronauts, and boy did he have a bunch of fun stories including his own recollections of Yuri Gregarian, not to mention Neil Armstrong and others I'm sure
I am a solid supporter of further space exploration. I feel we, as a species, need to get off this rock and move on throughout this universe. NASA, rather than helping out in moving this idea forward like they did in the 1960's, they are now a major obsticle keeping people from going into space. The longer NASA continues to exist as an agency, the longer and harder it will be for my kids and grandkids to get into space themselves. If this is a P.R. perception that NASA needs to change for both myself and within NASA as well, so be it. I wish it would simply go away because we no longer need the agency.
I do think that a civilian-based space exploration agency of some sort should exist, and perhaps something should be done to preserve the Astronaut corp, but there is so much more to NASA than astronauts that this minor part of the agency could be kept running for almost nothing compared to what it is currently taking to run the agency. When the main Astronaut corp office is in LEO rather than in Houston, Texas, I might give those guys a little more respect. Unfortunately I think the USAF will have a military base in space well before NASA gets its act together.
What I see is .... (Score:5, Interesting)
NASA works primarily because it is government. Yes, it always has the chance to be swayed from one political side to the other (slightly). NASA, though is also one of the few (only?) institutions of the government that has actually returned more money to the economy than it has taken. The thought of slice and dice on NASA is chilling. NASA provides (or provided) a strong platform for bringing initial research from the point of being non-viable in a business sense to a viable and even necessary understanding for businesses.
Take a look at most business today, especially corporations. How far down the road are the looking for a return on investment before they are willing to spend their capital on anything? Not even 4 years in most cases. There are a few exceptions, but normally limited to the pharmaceutical companies. Even most investment funds are geared to a year by year investment strategy, and they have one of the longest look ahead time frames for any product on the market.
I see the same private interests peeking up here as I see in almost all other privatization, schools, parks, roads, etc. The failure of this view is to recognize that by their very nature, all businesses must make a profit, and that means to the exclusion of all things perceived profitless (or not profitable enough). Our space program would have never happened if that had been the view (profit), and more than likely many things from tennis shoes to microwave ovens would either not exist yet or never exist. (Yeah, I know theoretically, all things in time will exist, but realistically, from a profit motive standpoint, most things will not exist, as the profit motive is not strong enough and even a societies available consumption is finite in nature. Basic supply and demand says no (or not enough) demand, no need for a supply.)
One of the problems with advanced cutting edge/bleeding edge research (like the moon missions) is that you have to throw tons of money away to get the advances. But as has been shown time and again (moon shots, Internet, Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, ), the benefits can be unmistakably life altering. This is something that most businesses are not good at, and in the hands of businesses would slow to a trickle.
IMO, NASA should be returned to its prior years of glory. I say glory because as a nation we glorified it. We stood as a people behind its mission. The bully pulpet of the president was strongly behind it. It was advertised and promoted. If anything should be outsourced, perhaps that would be the best start. We do so well promoting our drug using abusive sports heroes, but we fail to promote that which is essentially most valuable to us as a society, even as a race.
InnerWeb
NASA Needs Bill W.'s 12-Step Program (Score:3, Interesting)
After all, if in 1986 they tell you that you had a car accident due to your drinking, then in 1990 they tell you your driving is still terrible, then we can only conclude that when you have another inept DUI accident in 2002 that it's time to restrict your driving to "work only".
NASA has proven itself to be a poor repository of space vision. And we can see with increasing clarity that it is also a poor place to put your technological hopes for SSTO, solar power stations, lunar and asteroid mining, and overall Human habitation in space.
I can't blame NASA for all of this, however; we must also point at the money-fickle Congress. NASA has earned good marks with the thing they were allowed to pursue in good faith and budgeting, that being the interplanetary probes. We may as well relegate them to that so they can (to borrow that hated modern phrase) "concentrate on their core competency". I'd leap for actual joy if NASA was reduced to a "National Space Exploration Administration", which would design equipment, build probes, contract to have them launched, and then manage and track them with the DSN.
Re:Relevance (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, you may not have noticed, but it's now nearly fifty years since the space equivalent of the 'Wright Flyer', and space is still not relevant to ordinary people. Fifty years in aviation took us from the Wright Flyer to the first jet airliners... fifty years in space has taken us from expensive, cramped capsules to really, really expensive, slightly less cramped space shuttles.
Re:Relevance (Score:2)
Re:Relevance (Score:2)
Furthermore, you could argue that manned spaceflight is not relevant, but I'd imagine you couldn't walk into a typical room of Americans without finding someone with a life impacted by space travel in general(satellite TV
Re:Relevance (Score:2)
Some Choices Re:Propulsion Systems (Score:2)
These are definitely more efficient than conventional liquid fueled rockets, and even more than the fission rockets we tested in the 60s, but they are not an attractive choice for manned spaceships.
It would take a LONG time for an ion-drive equipped ship to reach escape velocity. You would need to bring along life support supplies for the weeks or months it would take a ship to just get away from the Earth. Also, they would be exposed to solar flares and such during this time.