<p><font color="#808000">Stunning. The vacuum is absorbing any good ideas floating in the hyperspace. How NASA Screwed Up (And Four Ways to Fix It) Gregg Easterbrook 05.22.07</font></p><p>Nothing like the usual eye catching headline from a guy who once said in print...the Energia rocket would be cheap to operate. Saying it in part because it was simply fashionable to believe the Russians were better than us at spaceflight. Not to mention that anything NASA does wont please this guy as long as it involves human spaceflight. </p><p><font color="#808000">See Also: Elon Musk Is Betting His Fortune on a Mission Beyond Earth's Orbit The Falcon 1's Rocket Science, From Its Avionics to Its Engines Burt Rutan and Richard Branson Want You to Hit Space in High Style From Wired Science A Conversation with Shana Dale,</font></p><p>Another group of NASA critics...including one who has already experienced failures comparable to NASA with simple expendable rockets. I do think that private industry can succeed at human spaceflight one day and it may well be these guys who are at the forefront of confirmed success as they are now. But right now, they still have a ways to go.</p><p><font color="#808000">Deputy Administrator of NASA Listen to the Audio Transcript (39:30 minute MP3) Here is a set of rational priorities for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in descending order of importance:</font></p><p><font color="#808000">(1) Conduct research, particularly environmental research, on Earth, the sun, and Venus, the most Earth-like planet. </font></p><p><font color="#808000">(2) Locate asteroids and comets that might strike Earth, and devise a practical means of deflecting them.</font></p><p><font color="#808000">(3) Increase humanity's store of knowledge by studying the distant universe.</font></p><p><font color="#808000">(4) Figure out a way to replace today's chemical rockets with a much cheaper way to reach Earth orbit.</font></p><p><font color="#808000">Here are NASA's apparent current priorities:</font></p><p><font color="#808000">(1) Maintain a pointless space station. </font></p><p><font color="#808000">(2) Build a pointless Motel 6 on the moon. </font></p><p><font color="#808000">(3) Increase humanity's store of knowledge by studying the distant universe. </font></p><p><font color="#808000">(4) Keep money flowing to favored aerospace contractors and congressional districts.</font></p><p><font color="#808000">Only one priority of four correct! Worse, NASA's to-do list neglects the two things that are actually of tangible value to the taxpayers who foot its bills research relevant to environmental policymaking and asteroid-strike protection. NASA has recently been canceling or postponing "Earth observation" missions intended to generate environmental information about our world. For instance, a year and a half ago the agency decided not to fund Hydros, a satellite that would have provided the first global data on soil moisture trends. NASA focuses its planetary research on frigid Mars rather than Venus, which suffers a runaway greenhouse effect. The agency is conducting only a few sun-study missions — even though all life depends on the sun, and knowing more about it might clarify the global-warming debate. But $6 billion a year for astronauts to take each other's blood pressure on the space station? No problem!</font></p><p>No problem, are you for real...no problem?</p><p>It took more than fifteen years to get just the first peice of station to orbit! All because of constant design and redesign imposed by Washington for the express purpose of saving money! No problem, one of the reasons ISS has become so expensive is because of nothing but problems in development...none of which were strictly technical in nature. </p><p><font color="#808000">Yet NASA has no program to research ways of deflecting space objects, and the agency recently told Congress it could not spare $1 billion to catalog the locations and movements of potentially dangerous asteroids. But hundreds of billions of dollars for a moon base? No problem!</font></p><p>No problem? Wheres the beef? Wheres the moon base that NASA has so easily funded no problem? We are almost a decade away from seeing the first piece of flight hardware for that program actually fly...IF it were to remain on schedule. No problem? I dont think you have to worry much about lunar bases. Once the new Admin is on duty, that will be the first thing to go.</p>It would be nice, but we dont actually need NASA for asteroid deflection duty unless we actually see one coming our way. And rest assured, if we see an asteroid coming our way...NASA wont be able to get its requests processed fast enough.<p><font color="#808000">Of course, "Keep money flowing to favored contractors and congressional districts" is not a formal NASA objective, but these words explain the agency's core problem. Since the end of the Apollo glory days, NASA seems to have been driven by the desire to continue lucrative payments to the contractors behind manned spaceflight (mainly Boeing and Lockheed Martin) while maintaining staff levels in the congressional districts (mainly in Alabama, Florida, Ohio, and Texas) that are home to huge centers focused on manned missions. If the contractors and the right congressional committee members are happy, NASA's funding will continue and NASA managers will keep their jobs. The space station project was built to give the shuttle a destination, keeping the manned-space spending hierarchy intact.</font></p><p>Well folks, ya get what ya pay for. When we decided to ax NASA budgets in the 70s...we got a lot of what is mentioned above. I challenge this guy...or anyone else to find a single document that states the station has but one purpose...to provide a destination for shuttle. Von Braun didn't mention that in 1969.</p><p>The shuttle did not need a destination. The shuttle did not actually need space station. Space station is the next logical step for human spaceflight for anyone left in America still interested. Even current docs do not suggest station was to keep shuttle employed. It actually turned out to be more like we need shuttle to get station in orbit since we were too cheap to fund heavy lift alternatives that would have been less expensive..in part because were too busy as a society, thinking anti human spaceflight critics have all the answers. </p><p><font color="#808000">With the space station now almost universally viewed as worthless, the manned-space funders need a new boondoggle. The moon-base idea, pushed by President Bush, fits the bill.</font></p><p>I thank human spaceflight critics for constantly dogging the station during its development in the 80s and 90s which insured we got what they say we got. Hmmm where is the document that states "We at NASA would like to propose a new boondoggle..". </p><p><font color="#808000">ACTUALLY I LIKE THE IDEA OF A MOON BASE. I know it can't be used to shoot to mars, the dynamics are wrong.</font></p><p>Might wanna bone up on how spaceflight is done before assuming the dynamics (Whatever that was supposed to mean) are all wrong for going to mars via moonbase. Its actually less demanding than launching from earth if we had a lunar base on the moon processing rocket fuel. But that can only happen if we actually ever go there. </p><p><font color="#808000">But the moon has a certain allure to it. Perhaps a vacation spot. Safe haven from nuclear war on earth. NEU: No, I don't want nasa closed or necessarily the funds cut, just a change of plans and implementation.</font></p><p>You dont want NASA underfunded or closed? News to me after reading all the above.</p><p><font color="#808000"> I never liked the shuttle.</font></p><p>This sounds like a child that didn't get the neato Christmas toy he wanted. </p><p><font color="#808000">The orig all liquid one might have been neat,</font></p><p>Ditto.</p><p><font color="#808000">if built, but the one we got is a dog.</font></p><p>What? Has someone else built a better one? I'd be the first to agree the shuttle has proven expensive. I have said in recent years that the shuttle was (And still is) a great technical success. Its just an economic failure but thats far from being a dog. What exactly specifically makes it a dog? What neato thing has it not done within its design capabilities and the tasks laid out for it? </p><p><font color="#808000">The ISS is not paying for itself on any level imaginable.</font> <font color="#808000"> Posted by jimglenn</font> </p><p>I would agree that ISS is not paying for itself, and at this point probably never will. But again, I wish to think the anti human spaceflight critics who successfully got Washington to drag out the stations development thru the 1980s and 1990s. They are just as responsible as any NASA official or contractor in that critics stay solely focused on cost which is what ended up making station so costly.</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>