What changes has Obama made to NASA?

[Oriako]

1) Lack of a Goal

There has been essentially no serious interest from those who have the opportunity to implement new programs and develop new launch vehicles and space habitats to seriously consider a Mars program. We have simply been wallowing in Earth Orbit for the past 20 achieving little more than scientific and engineering curiosities that may be potentially useful some time in the future when we actually decide to do something useful. Until then, they seem to be happy with not looking beyond launching satellites and having interviews from the space stations learning about zero gravity health effects. Clearly I am giving a cynical caricature here, but there is an underlying problem that is of a serious nature. If NASA is to actually pull ahead of the rest of the world in space flight and secure the United States as a "great nation" as it once used to be considered, it must pour funding into the space program and lower safety restrictions and either build a moon base, send missions to mars, or likewise. Not in 20 years when the budget and administration will change, but within a 10 year time span that holds everyone accountable to achieving a goal...

...It has been long into the future, and will be far longer into the foreseeable future where no moon base will be built and no interplanetary missions will take place. As I see it, this is a step in the wrong direction towards the extinction of the human race.

-Caramon

What has the ISS actually done that is actually useful towards scientific progress and space exploration!?

 

[Shackleford]

I would argue that the overinflated portions of the budget that Defense and National Security get are not useful. The United States does not need to have military bases around the world or still be fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. No one is attacking the United States. 9/11 was a one-time thing.

In the long-term, NASA is the government agency to be funded as once the door is opened to an actual base on another planet, then it will stay open.

That's not what you said. I'm a conservative and I agree with Ron Paul - close the military bases all across the world and bring the troops home. National security does not equal the Military Industrial Complex.

Going to another planet, let alone establishing a base will require revolutionary advances in propulsion technology.

 

[Shackleford]

The technology is advanced, but perhaps not as much as you may think- certainly, there has been no major advance in the fuel/source of energy needed to lift things into orbit. Propulsion today is essentially the same as the 1960's. While computer technology has somewhat advanced, the need for radiation-hardened components means the computers used are a lot less functional than the Dell computer you can buy for $1000- and never mind the *software* requirements... NASA doesn't do Windoze.

Then there's the whole problem with astronauts- they need to eat and poop fairly regularly. That hasn't changed since 1969, and the technology to deal with that hasn't changed much, either.

It's easy to blame NASA management, but for all their problems they must, in the end, respond to the demands of Congress, who provide sustenance. Getting Congress to support a $100+ B project that does not do anything to keep us safe from the commies/JMFs/cancer/etc.. is a tough sell. Unfortunately, space exploration is not a priority for the voting public, and there isn't a charismatic leader around right now who can change that.

What? Are you sure about that? My main point was not that technology per se has advanced greatly, but that the cost has been reduced, maybe more mundane materials and technology.

The entire U.S. manned lunar program cost roughly $100 billion. There is no good reason why we cannot complete one lunar mission in a relatively short amount of time at a "reasonable" cost. We would not be starting from scratch.

 

[Caramon]

The entire U.S. manned lunar program cost roughly $100 billion. There is no good reason why we cannot complete one lunar mission in a relatively short amount of time at a "reasonable" cost. We would not be starting from scratch.

Apparently, AIG is more important than creating a space-faring civilization as they received a bailout that rivaled the entire cost of the Apollo program and your projected $100 Billion.

IMO, establishing a permanent base on both the moon and Mars >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

Which is probably what it would cost.

 

[Shackleford]

Apparently, AIG is more important than creating a space-faring civilization as they received a bailout that rivaled the entire cost of the Apollo program and your projected $100 Billion.

IMO, establishing a permanent base on both the moon and Mars >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

Which is probably what it would cost.

Why would we establish a permanent base on both the moon and mars?

 

[Fuz]

Why would we establish a permanent base on both the moon and mars?

Why not?

 

[Caramon]

The eventual goal is to colonize the entire solar system and when all of the solar systems energy has been harnessed, or our sun comes closer to expanding into a red supergiant, we move to another star/planetary system.

The entire point of living is to colonize the galaxy and immortalize the human race.

 

[Shackleford]

Why not?

Sorry. You want to undertake at least a trillion-dollar enterprise.

You explain why.

We need R&D to develop those appropriate technologies that would allow something like that to be much more practical.

Also, it's our tax dollars. Building a base on the moon and Mars is entirely immaterial. We have more important things.

 

[Shackleford]

The eventual goal is to colonize the entire solar system and when all of the solar systems energy has been harnessed, or our sun comes closer to expanding into a red supergiant, we move to another star/planetary system.

The entire point of living is to colonize the galaxy and immortalize the human race.

Wow. You're thinking really far ahead. Might want to bring it back to reality.

 

[Fuz]

Sorry. You want to undertake at least a trillion-dollar enterprise.

You explain why.

We need R&D to develop those appropriate technologies that would allow something like that to be much more practical.

Also, it's our tax dollars. Building a base on the moon and Mars is entirely immaterial.

Hey, I was just asking why not. And NASA isn't the only way, you still have programs like SpaceX, which don't rely on our tax dollars.

 

[twofish-quant]

Clearly insufficient? NASA is clearly inefficient. The technology available today is far more advanced than that available in 1969. There's no good reason why NASA could not have successfully completed a modern-day trip to the Moon.

There's no good scientific or technological reason. There are lots of messy political, economic, and social reasons why not. Constellation is not being funded at anywhere near the levels needed to return to the moon.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10051/MainText.4.1.shtml

You can get Constellation to work if you strip out everything else that NASA is doing, but at that point you've got lots of screaming astronomers at you. You can also significantly increase NASA funding, but there's no constituency for that.

 

[twofish-quant]

Hey, I was just asking why not. And NASA isn't the only way, you still have programs like SpaceX, which don't rely on our tax dollars.

SpaceX is going to rely on tax dollars. Hopefully it's going to rely on tax dollars in a way that works. Ultimately SpaceX is looking to be profitable by relying on contracts from NASA to supply the space station.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transportation_Services

It is true that private enterprise is putting up the development costs, which is a good thing because if SpaceX just doesn't work, then no politician is going to have people yelling at them. But without the prospect of massive government contracts at the end of the effort, it's not going to work.

 

[Fuz]

SpaceX is going to rely on tax dollars. Hopefully it's going to rely on tax dollars in a way that works. Ultimately SpaceX is looking to be profitable by relying on contracts from NASA to supply the space station.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transportation_Services

It is true that private enterprise is putting up a lot of the development costs, which is a good thing because if SpaceX just doesn't work, then no politician is going to have people yelling at them. But without the prospect of massive government contracts at the end of the effort, it's not going to work.

I think my hopes are shifting to the fact that Obama won't be president forever. I'm sure somebody will bring everything back within the next decade. I mean, there's no reason NASA couldn't be resurrected to its original state if congress and some future president wanted to, correct?

 

[twofish-quant]

I think my hopes are shifting to the fact that Obama won't be president forever.

Except that some people (me included) think that Obama is doing the right thing, given the current budget constraints. Given that we don't have enough money for a gold plated mission to the moon, Obama's strategy is to kill Constellation and then fund SpaceX and other commercial vendors to get to low Earth orbit. Once we have an infrastructure to get to LEO cheaply, then we'll have the foundations to get to the moon and Mars.

If you could triple NASA's budget, then everything changes. If...

Put some Red Flags on the moon, then things might change.

There are people that strongly degree with this. But then you run into the trouble that it makes sense if you drive on the right side of the road. It makes sense if you drive on the left side of the road, but if you compromise and drive on both sides of the road, you get a big mess.

What's a bit worrisome is that Obama is probably the most pro-space politician that I can think of. The Republicans will likely insist on even further cuts than Obama. It also doesn't help that most scientists are dead set against manned space flight. At every astronomer meeting that I've ever been to, the topic has always been killing the shuttle and the manned space flight program and putting that money into unmanned space probes.

The Hubble fiasco really turned most astronomers against manned space flight. The problem with Hubble was that it was designed to be serviced with regular shuttle flights, and once people were terrified of sending people into space, this left Hubble in a lurch. Had people done things over, they would have made Hubble a throw-away telescope, since for the price of one serviceable Hubble you can build five telescopes that you toss if something goes wrong.

The problem is that manned space flight provides essentially no science of value. Robots are a lot better at doing science in space than people are, for the main reason space is very dangerous, and you don't have a dead body when a robot blows up. The military is not that interested in manned space flight for the same reasons.

I mean, there's no reason NASA couldn't be resurrected to its original state if congress and some future president wanted to, correct?

Unfortunately this is not true. One problem is that once you shut things down, people go off, work at other jobs, and it's really hard to put a team back together and relearn the lessons that you've already learned.

Also I worry that the US will get into a science death spiral. Science and technology produces economic growth, so I worry that we are getting into a spiral of "less tax money for science" -> "less growth" -> "less tax money for science"

 

[D H]

The entire U.S. manned lunar program cost roughly $100 billion. There is no good reason why we cannot complete one lunar mission in a relatively short amount of time at a "reasonable" cost. We would not be starting from scratch.

155 billion in 2010 dollars, and we would be pretty much starting from scratch. Most of that money was spent on procurement and operations. R&D was a small part of the total budget.

Obama's proposed budget for NASA is $18.7 billion for 2012, less than that ($18.0 billion) in 2013 and 2014. About 1/3 of NASA's expenditures go to human space flight, not all of which will go to your back to the future / redo Apollo program. Even if we splash the ISS, kill the JWST, its hard to see more than 6 billion a year going into developing, procuring, and operating a new (old) rocket. We maybe we could redo Apollo in 20 years or so.

 

[Andy Resnick]

What? Are you sure about that? My main point was not that technology per se has advanced greatly, but that the cost has been reduced, maybe more mundane materials and technology.

The entire U.S. manned lunar program cost roughly $100 billion. There is no good reason why we cannot complete one lunar mission in a relatively short amount of time at a "reasonable" cost. We would not be starting from scratch.

I am sure. Computer components follow a mil-spec type of standard, and mission-critical components are held to an even higher standard.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20040014965_2004000657.pdf
http://www.cti-us.com/pdf/HistoryEEESpacePartsinUSA.pdf
http://aero-defense.ihs.com/collections/nasa/nasa-standards-14.htm
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/36804/1/01-1236.pdf
http://misspiggy.gsfc.nasa.gov/tva/meldoc/docs4/docs4.pdf

http://sunland.gsfc.nasa.gov/smex/wire/mission/cdhsw/wirrqtop.htm
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19880004514_1988004514.pdf
http://www.aspera-3.org/idfs/APAF_SRS_V1.0.pdf

The full NASA motto is "Fast, Better, Cheaper: pick two."

 

[Norman]

I am sure. Computer components follow a mil-spec type of standard, and mission-critical components are held to an even higher standard.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20040014965_2004000657.pdf
http://www.cti-us.com/pdf/HistoryEEESpacePartsinUSA.pdf
http://aero-defense.ihs.com/collections/nasa/nasa-standards-14.htm
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/36804/1/01-1236.pdf
http://misspiggy.gsfc.nasa.gov/tva/meldoc/docs4/docs4.pdf

http://sunland.gsfc.nasa.gov/smex/wire/mission/cdhsw/wirrqtop.htm
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19880004514_1988004514.pdf
http://www.aspera-3.org/idfs/APAF_SRS_V1.0.pdf

The full NASA motto is "Fast, Better, Cheaper: pick two."

I can second Andy's statement here. There is a lot of testing that goes into any piece of hardware that flies for NASA. I am not directly involved in testing, but I have done initial radiation exposure estimates for some upcoming missions to help define likely dose rates for electronics.

You cannot simply take your refurbished Dell laptop up on the ISS. It dies very quickly. Never mind something that is going to get flown to Jupiter or Saturn and is mission critical. The assumptions about how advanced our every day electronics are has absolutely no direct correlation on the availability and quality of space quality electronics.

 

[D H]

The full NASA motto is "Fast, Better, Cheaper: pick two."

"Faster, better, cheaper" was one of NASA's dumber ideas. The 2003 Columbia disaster, along with the 1999 losses of the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander, put the nix on that idea (for example, see http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=864).

Perhaps we will now do the right thing with regard to human spaceflight. As Churchill noted, we Americans always do do the right thing -- but only after we have tried everything else. The Obama budget for FY2012 has $850 million going to commercial space. Congress however has other thoughts; congressional budget meddling is an ongoing issue with any technology project. Key congresscritters still want NASA to build a new human-capable rocket by 2016 on a paltry budget and using existing technology (read: high-cost contractors, lots of marching armies). NASA this time around finally had the cajones to tell Congress that what those congresscritters want cannot be done within the proscribed budget. NASA is not fighting the concept of commercial space. Congress is.

 

[Shackleford]

155 billion in 2010 dollars, and we would be pretty much starting from scratch. Most of that money was spent on procurement and operations. R&D was a small part of the total budget.

Obama's proposed budget for NASA is $18.7 billion for 2012, less than that ($18.0 billion) in 2013 and 2014. About 1/3 of NASA's expenditures go to human space flight, not all of which will go to your back to the future / redo Apollo program. Even if we splash the ISS, kill the JWST, its hard to see more than 6 billion a year going into developing, procuring, and operating a new (old) rocket. We maybe we could redo Apollo in 20 years or so.

Are you saying we would need $6 billion/year for 20 years? $1 billion is a lot of money. You can get a lot done with $1 billion. I don't understand why it takes so much money, especially now that we've "been there and done that." We already know the appropriate performance requirements of the systems and materials and so forth. I'm asserting here that NASA is grossly inefficient and that you could probably get away with spending a lot less with the right management of the program(s). Given our modest technological advancements, scientific understanding, and experience, with the right management and leadership, we should be able to make one trip to the Moon at a cost less than the relative 1960s cost.

 

[D H]

Are you saying we would need $6 billion/year for 20 years?

Yes, I am. That comes out to $120 billion, or $35 billion less than the cost of the Apollo program. You apparently are thinking that because we have "been there, done that" that the cost will be a lot less. What makes you think that? Most of the cost of the Apollo program was for procurement and operations, not R&D. To make matters worse, twenty years is a very suboptimal time frame for such an endeavor. Finally, spending $6 billion per year on this would entail spending all of the human spaceflight budget on this (i.e., we would need to scrap the ISS, and that ain't going to happen).

The only way to make such an endeavor cost less than $100 billion would require
1. Doing it in significantly less than 20 years and
2. Drastically reducing the cost of getting into orbit.

Item 1 would require Congress to up the ante on NASA's budget. This will not happen any time soon given the immense downward pressure on non-defence discretionary spending. Item 2 is possible if Congress stops meddling with NASA's budget.

 

[Shackleford]

Yes, I am. That comes out to $120 billion, or $35 billion less than the cost of the Apollo program. You apparently are thinking that because we have "been there, done that" that the cost will be a lot less. What makes you think that? Most of the cost of the Apollo program was for procurement and operations, not R&D. To make matters worse, twenty years is a very suboptimal time frame for such an endeavor. Finally, spending $6 billion per year on this would entail spending all of the human spaceflight budget on this (i.e., we would need to scrap the ISS, and that ain't going to happen).

The only way to make such an endeavor cost less than $100 billion would require
1. Doing it in significantly less than 20 years and
2. Drastically reducing the cost of getting into orbit.

Item 1 would require Congress to up the ante on NASA's budget. This will not happen any time soon given the immense downward pressure on non-defence discretionary spending. Item 2 is possible if Congress stops meddling with NASA's budget.

I agree with 2. We should focus on that instead of cobbling together slightly more-advanced rockets. What about trans-atmospheric flight?

When I think the cost should be less, I think that the appropriate materials might now be more prevalent and thus lower in cost; that the computing power allows us to more efficiently and quickly design the appropriate systems and requirements; that we know what to expect in the flight, and so forth. Is this any of this correct?

Aren't the Air Force rockets better and cheaper?

 

[Norman]

I agree with 2. We should focus on that instead of cobbling together slightly more-advanced rockets. What about trans-atmospheric flight?

What exactly do you mean by trans-atmospheric flight? If I take the phrase at face value, it seems like all space-bound rockets are "trans-atmospheric"

When I think the cost should be less, I think that the appropriate materials might now be more prevalent and thus lower in cost; that the computing power allows us to more efficiently and quickly design the appropriate systems and requirements; that we know what to expect in the flight, and so forth. Is this any of this correct?

DH mentioned this above (twice I think). The huge price tag on going to the moon is due to procurement- or the acquisition of the actual vehicles, rockets, hardware, etc. The things you mention above have to do with R&D (mainly). The materials we use for spaceflight are largely unchanged. The only thing I could see making a noticeable difference is a system engineering perspective on the overall design.

 

[Shackleford]

What exactly do you mean by trans-atmospheric flight? If I take the phrase at face value, it seems like all space-bound rockets are "trans-atmospheric"



DH mentioned this above (twice I think). The huge price tag on going to the moon is due to procurement- or the acquisition of the actual vehicles, rockets, hardware, etc. The things you mention above have to do with R&D (mainly). The materials we use for spaceflight are largely unchanged. The only thing I could see making a noticeable difference is a system engineering perspective on the overall design.

Oh. I didn't know that. I thought we've made a bit of advancement in materials science and engineering in the last 42 years.

Of course, I knew the bulk of the cost would be procurement and "buying" everything we need. I just thought, from an economic standpoint, the cost might have been reduced over the years for whatever reason.

 

[twofish-quant]

Oh. I didn't know that. I thought we've made a bit of advancement in materials science and engineering in the last 42 years.

At some point you run into basic physical limitations. It turns out that for launching people into space "big and dumb" is the way to go which is why the Russians are good at it.

 

[twofish-quant]

Are you saying we would need $6 billion/year for 20 years?

Yes.

$1 billion is a lot of money.

In 2011 dollars, a billion is not that much money. A $1 billion is the cost of one Manhattan skyscraper or the budget of a large university for one year, and the programs that I work on routinely process several tens of billion dollars in transactions each evening.

I'm asserting here that NASA is grossly inefficient and that you could probably get away with spending a lot less with the right management of the program(s).

I don't think that you can. Once you start pushing efficiency past a certain point, it makes things more inefficient.

Also, the question becomes efficient for what? Astronomers for example have figured out that manned space flight is useless for astronomy, so $1 spend on manned space flight turns out to be "inefficient."

Given our modest technological advancements, scientific understanding, and experience, with the right management and leadership, we should be able to make one trip to the Moon at a cost less than the relative 1960s cost.

I don't think so. Some things have gotten a lot cheaper since 1960 (computer technology). Some things haven't (plumbers). You also have to realize that we have costs that didn't exist in the 1960's. One is that we don't have the technology infrastructure that we did in the 1960's and we have to rebuild that from scratch.

 

[twofish-quant]

Then there's the whole problem with astronauts- they need to eat and poop fairly regularly. That hasn't changed since 1969, and the technology to deal with that hasn't changed much, either.

Whereas robots have gotten a lot cheaper. This is why astrophysicists tend to be extremely strongly against astronauts in space. People haven't changed much since 1969, but computers have.

Also a lot of the technology that has made things cheaper since 1969 really doesn't help you. The big problem with manned space flight is that you don't want a rocket to blow up with a human being on top, and a lot of things that are cheap are cheap at the expense of reliability. I can get a really cheap cell phone. If it stops working, I get a new one. If a cheap part on a rocket fails, someone dies. You do have computers that have been rated for manned aerospace, but those are *enormously* expensive.

NASA did try to do "faster and cheaper" with unmanned spacecraft . The trouble was that spacecraft started failing left and right. If you have political backing so that spacecraft *can* fail left and right, and you get more money to "try again" that's great. Except that you just can't do that with people.

 

[twofish-quant]

I agree with 2. We should focus on that instead of cobbling together slightly more-advanced rockets. What about trans-atmospheric flight?

You mean like the space shuttle...

The trouble is that when you have massive budget cuts, that's a bad time to fund breakthrough technologies. There are a *lot* of technologies on the drawing board that could potentially reduce the cost of LEO. The trouble with those technologies is that you need to fund them to see if they work, and when you work on experimental technology and find out that most of them *don't* work (and most of them won't), the budget hawks scream at you for wasting tax payer money, and those programs get canned.

When I think the cost should be less, I think that the appropriate materials might now be more prevalent and thus lower in cost; that the computing power allows us to more efficiently and quickly design the appropriate systems and requirements; that we know what to expect in the flight, and so forth. Is this any of this correct?

No. Part of the reason it isn't is that we haven't really done much research in manned space flight since the 1960's because there isn't money there.

Aren't the Air Force rockets better and cheaper?

Air Force contracts rockets to the same aerospace companies that NASA does.

 

[D H]

What about trans-atmospheric flight?

Trans-atmospheric vehicles / aero-space planes are just one of many technologies that are at a perpetually low technology readiness level (TRL). What about space elevators? Launch loops? Fusion rockets? Laser launch systems? Any other technology out of the world of sci-fi?

"Trans-atmospheric vehicle" is an old 1980s-era term for a single stage to orbit (SSTO) vehicle, typically one that uses an air-breathing engine for a good part of the flight through the atmosphere. SSTO, regardless of propulsion technique, is for now a pipe dream, and has been one for 40-50 years. The term "trans-atmospheric vehicle" is one of several reincarnations of the SSTO concept. National aero-space plane is another later reincarnation. There have been many others.

That it is a pipe dream does not mean that the concept is necessarily wrong or wrongheaded. NASA and the Air Force should continue to do research into alternative propulsion / flight technologies such as scramjets.

What is wrongheaded is pinning ones hopes on a specific technology that has remained at a low TRL for decades. Let's suppose we arbitrarily pick one of the myriad of perpetually TRL 1-3 technologies as the one and only hope of the future, sinking billions of dollars into bringing this technology X from the realm of sci-fi to engineering reality. The most likely outcome is abject failure, with billions of dollars down the drain and no aero-space plane / fusion rocket / scramjet vehicle / launch loop / space elevator / whatever to show for the expenditure.

Aren't the Air Force rockets better and cheaper?

Better? What's your metric?

Cheaper? Both NASA and the Air Force have a lot of hopes pinned on SpaceX and other commercial space ventures because United Launch Alliance tends to offer vehicles that are expensive to assemble, expensive to launch, and expensive to operate.

The ULA vehicles used by the Air Force are not human-rated. Making them human-rated is one of several CCDev 2 proposals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development#CCDev_2) that NASA is considering right now.

 

[D H]

Also, the question becomes efficient for what? Astronomers for example have figured out that manned space flight is useless for astronomy, so $1 spend on manned space flight turns out to be "inefficient.".

Whereas robots have gotten a lot cheaper. This is why astrophysicists tend to be extremely strongly against astronauts in space. People haven't changed much since 1969, but computers have.

Astrophysicists and astronomers can be rather dumb at times. Those who think this way (and there are several) are not thinking.

Let's suppose that Congress completely eliminated NASA's human spaceflight programs. What would be the outcome? Space-based scientists would like to think that all of those monies currently directed toward human spaceflight would go to space science. That is not what would happen. What would happen is that those monies would go elsewhere, or nowhere given our current budget crisis.

Another thing that would happen is that a lot of the monies currently allocated to space-based science would also go elsewhere, or nowhere. Space-based science would have to stand on its own against other sciences. Just as space scientists look jealously at the billions spent on human spaceflight, there are lots of other scientists who look jealously at the billions spent on space science. While robotic space missions are cheap compared to human space missions, those robotic space missions are extremely expensive when compared to science done on the Earth.

Space scientists have seen their wish for drastically reductions in spending on human spaceflight come true at least three times in the past. The outcome has been the same each time. The end of the Apollo era saw drastic reductions in spending on human spaceflight and on space science. The same thing happened in Russia. Russia spent a lot on space exploration in the 1960s, and spent a lot on space science as well. The Russian space program, manned and unmanned, saw drastic reductions post-Apollo.

Neither the US nor Russia completely canceled their human spaceflight programs. Great Britain did. Great Britain's space scientists successfully petitioned Parliament to ban all spending on human spaceflight. Those space scientists won the battle but lost the war. After decades of ever dwindling expenditures on space science, Britain's remaining few space scientists petitioned Parliament to lift the ban on human space exploration a year or so ago.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Whereas robots have gotten a lot cheaper. This is why astrophysicists tend to be extremely strongly against astronauts in space. People haven't changed much since 1969, but computers have.

Also a lot of the technology that has made things cheaper since 1969 really doesn't help you. The big problem with manned space flight is that you don't want a rocket to blow up with a human being on top, and a lot of things that are cheap are cheap at the expense of reliability. I can get a really cheap cell phone. If it stops working, I get a new one. If a cheap part on a rocket fails, someone dies. You do have computers that have been rated for manned aerospace, but those are *enormously* expensive.

NASA did try to do "faster and cheaper" with unmanned spacecraft . The trouble was that spacecraft started failing left and right. If you have political backing so that spacecraft *can* fail left and right, and you get more money to "try again" that's great. Except that you just can't do that with people.

What your (well-considered) comments come back to is essentially asking "what is the proper mission for NASA?" Answers can range from "launch stuff into space", to "manned exploration", and everything in between.

And that's the problem- NASA has not had a well-defined mission since the end of Apollo in the early 1970s. There was a huge explosion in activity- space shuttle, 2 space stations, space-based telescopes across the entire EM spectrum, "mission to planet Earth"...

And then the whole *other half* of NASA- the Aeronautics side: Wing design, engine design, de-icing, civil aviation safety and systems ...

What this led to was a defocused, diffuse agency that has the symptoms of ADHD: extreme short-term focus on a succession of unlinked concepts. There was never a coherent research program to develop next-generation rockets/engines/systems for anything beyond low Earth orbit.

Additionally, NASA has to deal with a never-ending supply of wingnuts who contact their congressperson (or the science deputy for said congressperson) claiming they have all kinds of ideas to 'help' NASA: Alcubierre warp drives, space elevators, zero point energy, Podletnikov gravitational shielding... The congressperson, not knowing anything about science, calls NASA HQ and says "I have a constituent, he's a scientist, and he wants to know if you have thought about [insert dumb idea here]." NASA, being a political organization, commits time and money to 'study' the idea:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/possible.html

All that wasted effort only serves to *further* dilute any semblance of a coherent mission. But wait, there's more...

Saint Al Gore, he-who-invented-the-interwebnet, issued OMB Circular A-76 back in 1992 as part of "reinventing Government", which defined "inherently governmental activities". Most people have never heard of this document, which says something, considering it's impact.

In brief, "scientific research", "research and development" and the like are *not* inherently governmental activities. Thus, government employees cannot perform those functions.

Specifically, "A commercial activity is a recurring service that could be performed by the private sector and is resourced, performed, and controlled by the agency through performance by government personnel, a contract, or a fee-for-service agreement. A commercial activity is not so intimately related to the public interest as to mandate performance by government personnel. Commercial activities may be found within, or throughout, organizations that perform inherently governmental activities or classified work."

NASA proper- the civil servants- are explicitly prohibited from doing the very research needed to develop better spaceflight systems- it has to be contracted out. And we are back to dealing with the wingnuts, who feel their pet ideas need to be developed and (successfully) lobby for earmarks to get money.

It's not clear how to get out from this vicious cycle. Partly there needs to be a clear, unambiguous goal set for NASA to accomplish, and that goal (and funding) has to be kept constant for 10-20 years. That requires leadership. Personally, I think a reasonable goal is to establish a permanent base on the moon- it's possible to make concrete from materials on the lunar surface, and so a base could be established that can provide radiation shielding for the crew. Having a base on the moon would provide a testbed for technologies required to get humans to Mars, should we then decide to set that as the next goal.

 

[Shackleford]

Personally, I think a reasonable goal is to establish a permanent base on the moon- it's possible to make concrete from materials on the lunar surface, and so a base could be established that can provide radiation shielding for the crew. Having a base on the moon would provide a testbed for technologies required to get humans to Mars, should we then decide to set that as the next goal.

Are you aware of how much it would cost to simply establish the mining operation? Instead of mining on Earth, let's go to the Moon instead! It would cost too much just to get the necessary equipment up there. I've heard it costs $20K/pound to get into orbit.

You work on making getting into orbit as cheaply as possible. Then, the Moon, Mars, aren't that far away.

I agree NASA does need a clear, reasonable goal.Throwing money at something doesn't make it better. My vote is for propulsion and transatmospheric vehicles.

However, it seems the Air Force is already well-ahead of NASA.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR890.html

 

[D H]

Throwing money at something doesn't make it better. My vote is for propulsion and transatmospheric vehicles.

Those two sentences are in direct contradiction with one another.

However, it seems the Air Force is already well-ahead of NASA.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR890.html

That document is from 1995. Some questions:

1. What makes you think that NASA was not a part of those efforts?
2. Has a viable trans-atmospheric vehicle been developed in the 15 years that have passed since the publication of that document?
3. What makes you think that trans-atmospheric vehicles are the one and only answer to the problem of access to space?
   4. What if the apparently insurmountable problems that make the answer to question #2 "no" are just that, insurmountable problems?

 

[Shackleford]

Trans-atmospheric vehicles / aero-space planes are just one of many technologies that are at a perpetually low technology readiness level (TRL). What about space elevators? Launch loops? Fusion rockets? Laser launch systems? Any other technology out of the world of sci-fi?

"Trans-atmospheric vehicle" is an old 1980s-era term for a single stage to orbit (SSTO) vehicle, typically one that uses an air-breathing engine for a good part of the flight through the atmosphere. SSTO, regardless of propulsion technique, is for now a pipe dream, and has been one for 40-50 years. The term "trans-atmospheric vehicle" is one of several reincarnations of the SSTO concept. National aero-space plane is another later reincarnation. There have been many others.

That it is a pipe dream does not mean that the concept is necessarily wrong or wrongheaded. NASA and the Air Force should continue to do research into alternative propulsion / flight technologies such as scramjets.

What is wrongheaded is pinning ones hopes on a specific technology that has remained at a low TRL for decades. Let's suppose we arbitrarily pick one of the myriad of perpetually TRL 1-3 technologies as the one and only hope of the future, sinking billions of dollars into bringing this technology X from the realm of sci-fi to engineering reality. The most likely outcome is abject failure, with billions of dollars down the drain and no aero-space plane / fusion rocket / scramjet vehicle / launch loop / space elevator / whatever to show for the expenditure.

Better? What's your metric?

Cheaper? Both NASA and the Air Force have a lot of hopes pinned on SpaceX and other commercial space ventures because United Launch Alliance tends to offer vehicles that are expensive to assemble, expensive to launch, and expensive to operate.

The ULA vehicles used by the Air Force are not human-rated. Making them human-rated is one of several CCDev 2 proposals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development#CCDev_2) that NASA is considering right now.

I hope you don't think I was equating RLVs with space elevators. I was under the impression that Transatmospheric flight was not a pipe dream, e.g. cold fusion, and that the Air Force is actively involved in R&D.

 

[Shackleford]

Those two sentences are in direct contradiction with one another.



That document is from 1995. Some questions:

1. What makes you think that NASA was not a part of those efforts?
2. Has a viable trans-atmospheric vehicle been developed in the 15 years that have passed since the publication of that document?
3. What makes you think that trans-atmospheric vehicles are the one and only answer to the problem of access to space?
   4. What if the apparently insurmountable problems that make the answer to question #2 "no" are just that, insurmountable problems?

I'll admit I'm new to the term. The document from 16 years ago and an even earlier one I found gave favorable conclusions to the technology. If that was 16+ years ago, is it reasonable to assume advancements have been made?

 

[D H]

I hope you don't think I was equating RLVs with space elevators. I was under the impression that Transatmospheric flight was not a pipe dream, e.g. cold fusion, and that the Air Force is actively involved in R&D.

Both the Air Force and NASA spend some R&D money on truly nutty ideas, some of which even violate the laws of physics. The rationale behind investing R&D money in nutty ideas is that even though the odds of success are extremely small, the payback will be truly immense if the ideas do somehow pan out.

NASA and the Air Force have been putting sometimes small, sometimes large amounts of money into an SSTO vehicle for a long, long, long time, at least since the 1960s. The concept of an SSTO vehicle has long had a small coterie of aficionados. They even managed to convince Ronald Reagan to announce in his 1986 State of the Union address a desire to create "a new Orient Express that could, by the end of the next decade, take off from Dulles Airport, accelerate up to 25 times the speed of sound, attaining low Earth orbit or flying to Tokyo within two hours." This led to an eight year boondoggle, the National Aero-Space Plane. The idea keeps coming back because even though the odds of success are extremely small the potential for payback is immense.

Do note the similarity in phrasing between the last sentences of the first and second paragraphs.

I'll admit I'm new to the term. The document from 16 years ago and an even earlier one I found gave favorable conclusions to the technology. If that was 16+ years ago, is it reasonable to assume advancements have been made?

Tiny steps? Yes. Meaningful steps? No. An SSTO vehicle is still a pipe dream. While investing small amounts of R&D money in a pipe dream is not necessarily a stupid idea, pinning ones hopes on a pipe dream is a very stupid idea.Edit
I see that you have not yet answered any of the questions I raised in post #67.