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NASA Admin Says Shuttle and ISS are Mistakes
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Sep 28, 2005 07:51 AM
from the he-should-know dept.
from the he-should-know dept.
Teancum writes "NASA Administrator Michael Griffin was recently interviewed by the USA Today Editorial Board regarding the current direction of the U.S. Space Program, and in the interview he suggested that the past three decades have been a huge mistake and a waste of resources. As a total cost for both programs that has exceeded $250 Billion, you have to wonder what other useful things could have been developed using the same resources. Griffin quoted in the interview regarding if the shuttle had been a mistake "My opinion is that it was... It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible." Regarding the ISS: "Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in.""
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ISS Orbit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ISS Orbit (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:ISS Orbit (Score:5, Informative)
-everphilski-
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Re:Not quite. (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, international politics aside.
One of the real problems we saw was the US Congress, and yes, NASA management.Space Station Freedom was often a dumping ground for "retired in place" senior engineering management waiting for that magic day when they could sit at home and impede their wives instead of coming to the office and impeding engineers. That's not to say we didn't have decent, enthusiastic, qualified management but they were outnumbered... or simply out-numbed... by the incompetents.
A lot was preordained, despite engineering advances. "Don't try to convince me, my mind is made up." I could go on at length about the decision to scrap the 100 khz power distribution system on Freedom in favor of the DC system. I was around when the "test" destroyed some computer hardware at MSFC that was used as justification, despite the fact that the test was protested by competent engineers with a knowledge of VAX power supply design. Were there problems with the high frequency AC distribution? Some, but not insurmountable.
SSF was also a training ground for kids right out of college. Get them in, turn 'em loose with little guidance, slap 'em around a bit until they started doing good design, then move them to Shuttle.
We had a lot of design by Aerospace Conglomerate, too. Let's get that design that Lockheed wants, because it'll make them easier to deal with at contract time. Let's use THIS design that MD wants, even if it's not what NASA wants/requires, because we think their design is going to make them do something else for us on another project.
Still, and all, most of the conglomerate designs I saw, worked with, and helped shape (and, yes, I worked for a contractor company, too, but I was doing specs and requirements, as well as working with the prototyping) would have been acceptable, even if somewhat limiting in their own ways.
The BIG problem, however, was Congress. Every three years or so, we'd get a "stop what you're doing, reassess the design, and then start over" command from the Hill. I've gotta say, we wasted a LOT of money on those exercises, and we wasted a LOT of time.
There are improvements borne of waiting time and engineering advances in ISS that would not have been, and may never have reached SSF or Alpha, but we could well have bent metal and flown hardware by 1990 if Congress had stuck to original budgets and timelines and stayed the hell out of the way. I flew prototype hardware in 1992 that was the first piece of Space Station hardware to fly, be proven and certified for on-orbit Space Station operation. I could have flown it 3 years earlier save the Challenger accident.
Final thought. We developed or promoted a lot of stuff that's now common place in the world. Speaking from the perspective of medical hardware development (I also did a bit for the medical facility in terms of GNCC and COMMS) there's a lot of stuff I see in hospitals, doctors' offices, dentists' offices and ambulances that makes me smile and think, "I worked with the prototype of that...", or, in a couple of cases, "I wrote the SBIR paperwork that made that happen".
So, yes, NASA's efforts HAVE improved life ont he planet. Really.
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100 KHz? (Score:5, Informative)
A bit of googling says yeah, people really do 100 khz power supplies, and higher. But I don't understand the advantage.
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Re:100 KHz? (Score:5, Interesting)
-Jesse
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Re:100 KHz? (Score:5, Interesting)
The tradeoff is that the transmission lines become more difficult. At 60hz you can run the power on nearly any old wire and it'll be fine. At 100khz the skin effect is stronger so fat wires to carry lots of amps don't work. You need special litz wires that have individually insulated strands.
Interference isn't much of an issue, at 100khz the wavelength is 9,835 feet long. You won't get anything even near 1/4 wavelength long that could radiate a significant amount of power. For the same reason transmission line impedance isn't much of a thing to worry about.
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Waste of Resources? (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously, the ISS is not a waste of money. When you think of all the research done there, the international goodwill spread there, it is well worth the cost. I do wish the degree of internationality was a bit larger. Simply having Americans and Russians isn't very diverse -- it would be nice to see China/India/other aspiring space powers to join in the fun (and help with the bills).
Re:Waste of Resources? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Waste of Resources? (Score:5, Insightful)
Read up on the history of the shuttle program, and what alternatives were dumped in favor of it. Make note that they knew perfectly well the numbers they were telling congress for flight costs were wrong.
Then read up on the history of the ISS. A lot of people here were probably not born when they first started making those plans, and don't remember the fiasco around it -- the ISS has been a political project that was known was going to never be productive since day one. Its a technical corporate welfare program meant to keep defense contractors in business, really nothing more. They've known for a decade it would never get constructed to the size required to do productive science, but science was the bedtime story told to the American public to keep support for it.
Some people tend to look at the manned space program through rose-tinted glasses and think everything is so romantic, man in space. Its been a collossal failure since the end of Apollo, and from a science standpoint even Apollo was really a failure. NASA and the Government killed the program once the political goal of beating the Soviets was done -- science was never a primary goal, or even in the top ten. Even Skylab was intended to develop technologies with military use.
NASA, in general, has always been better at non-manned science. You get 100x your bang for your buck doing that, so thats a good decision on their part. The problem is more the public's misguided belief that the manned space program existed for anything more than military applications and keeping companies critical to the defense industry afloat. Science is just the shiny thing to keep the public's ADD distracted from the real motivations.
If China wasn't rattling its space saber right now, Bush wouldn't be getting a boner over getting man back on the moon. Its not a coincidence its planned to use so much of the Shuttle components -- the research is done on them, and production of those components are pure profit for the contractors that build them.
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Re:Waste of Resources? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Waste of Resources? (Score:5, Informative)
For some quick ideas see: http://www.spaceislandgroup.com/manufacturing.htm
or for a more detailed list of publicized experiments try: http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/list
Some of interest I've found:
http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/CGBA
http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/BBND
http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/APCF
http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/Foam
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Re:Waste of Resources? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's what the current crew is working on:
http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]
if you ever need to get an ultrasound, I doubt that the doctor is going to take the time to tell you that the equipment was developed or improved on the space station. The benefits of the research they do up there make it into our lives, but it happens decades later and we never really notice. Oh well.
I'm an astronomer, and I haven't heard of a single thing useful having been produced by the ISS.
Be careful buddy. If the standard of good science is that it has to be "useful" then I think you'll find that a lot of the funding for those fancy telescopes you love so much will quickly dry up. I haven't heard of a single useful thing that any astronomer has done in my lifetime.
We should fund science - not because of a selfish "what do I get out of it" mentality. We should fund it because it is the search for truth, and that's *always* important.
Think of all the poor, hungry homo habilis' that could have been fed if Ogor hadn't wasted so much time rubbing sticks together in his useless "fire" research. He should have been out gathering rotten banannas with the rest of the tribe. Right? Right? Can I get an a-men here?
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Re:Waste of Resources? (Score:4, Insightful)
But the ISS is a different matter. It was the right thing to do to de-millitarize space and have a platform where all the world (well the developed countrys) could work together to start to reap the benifits from that new platform in the sky with micro gravity and a veiw of the stars that we don't have here on earth.
There was a lot of research that went into the ISS but most of it is expressed as the engineering to solve the issues of creating a good stable maintainable manned facility in space. The first work is building the platform that the research can happen on. The goal is to provide the world's scientists and industry a new research facility to develop new and better science and technology for all our futures. It was not a waste, it is not a waste, it will not be a waste.
You build the plane before you load in the passengers to take the trips. You have to do things in the proper order and not be too impatient. This is a long term project. The problem is short term thinking that micro manages scientific research.
What we are really lacking in the current legislative and executive branches is the "Vision Thing". Bush with his Cowboy "Yahoo" lets go to Mars space race mentality is wanting to re-kindle the cold war environment of international competition that just wastes your dollars and my dollars.
Scientists know about the benefits of cooperation. Thats how science progresses. It's the polititians that are greedy and possesive and try to hold back the advances of mankind because they haven't gotten their cut of the process, or their friends in industry that support them haven't gotten their cut.
What we need to do is realize things like there is Global Warming and that we are responsible for it and there are things we can do about it and to listen to the scientist and take real action, not "Well it will adversly effect my business friends so I'll find some detractors and hold them up as reasons for doubt so I can back out of Global Warming treaties, cause I don't want to pay the price for our past mistakes, let our grandchildren do it when were not here anymore". As one clear example where the current politics ignores the facts, and/or the clear advice of the scientific community. Another example of this old "I wish I lived in the Dark Ages again, as a King of course" is the administrations comments on Intellegent Design. Can the inquisition be far behind (seems like they have inquisitors in training right now).
Did you personally sign the Geneva Convention, No well sorry.
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Wrong headline ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Headline doesn't reflect the Michael Griffin quote in the summary :(.
$250 billion. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$250 billion. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not saying I'm pro-war or anything, but killing each other has lead to many advances as well.
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Re:$250 billion. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:$250 billion. (Score:5, Insightful)
Since I've been carrying this stone I've never been attacked by a tiger. I'd say it's doing it's job very well.
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Re:$250 billion. (Score:4, Informative)
Technically, by attempting to assisinate former President Bush (Senior), Iraq did attack the US government. (But at least they had the balls to attack legitimate targets, not civilians)
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His point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Having no space program would be a mistake. Having an inefficient one just reminds us that there is always room for improvement.
Useful? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Useful"? I hate it when people use words like that in reference to the sciences. It's like they think every last penny of the national budget that's not being spent on Medicare or disaster recovery should be spent feeding the homeless.
How do you define "useful"? This is NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Their entire charter is building giant cans that explode out of one end in order to throw chunks of metal into orbit. They're science, which means $99 out of every $100 they spend goes toward what amounts to research and development of ideas nobody else can implement, and then working with them for a couple of decades to see what comes of them.
How can you gauge the "usefulness" of the Cold War space race in the 1950s and '60s? Yet that race eventually led to the technology and processes which, today, have placed hundreds of communications, weather, and astronomy satellites in orbit. Was any of that "useful" at the time? Heck no. We haven't gained one "useful" bit of knowledge from our trip to the Moon in 1969, but we didn't know that would be the case until we actually went there.
NASA's budget is on a shoestring as it is. Give them credit for doing what they do with as few dollars as it is. You never know when an investment will pay out until it does.
I tend to agree (Score:5, Insightful)
In terms of the space station, it seemed to quickly turn into an exercise to divide up the money according to country and state. I'm not even sure what science goes on up there any more. These days the reduced crew seems to spend their time repairing the place. Crazy.
Things they could be working on (Score:5, Interesting)
2) First generation platform at one of the Lagrange points [wikipedia.org].
3) Lunar observatory on the dark side.
4) Another Hubble-like telescope at L3.
5) Space elevators, aynone?
Re:Things they could be working on (Score:4, Interesting)
Only if you go all the way to ground level. A LOT of different designs have been thrown around over the years; I recall a recent Analog SF story using a high altitude dirgible platform. While it was done in the story to avoid a legal jurisdictional SNAFU, it could be done at a high enough altitude (above 50000' ?) to put the cable entirely above the weather.
There's another detail... the economics of space transport dictate that whoever is first to build a working space elevator will effectively own space. Natural monopolies occur when there is a high entry cost, and reduced costs thereafter. In almost every design, the main cost element (aside from R&D) is not the exotic materials, but lifting them to orbit-- $100 to $1000 per kilo multiplied by beanstalk cable weight per meter multiplied by a whole lot of meters. A space elevator (capital amortization aside) cuts the costs of space access on a per-pound lifted basis by at least two and perhaps three orders of magnitude. This means once you have one beanstalk, your capital cost for putting up another is vastly reduced.
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Shuttle Engines Not Engineered Properly (Score:5, Informative)
A link to his comments is at http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.h
He has a wonderful explanation, in terms that non-engineers as well as engineers can understand, about how to build complex devices. Good engineering, he says, comes from dividing the task in to component parts, creating specifications for those parts, building samples, testing them to their limits, retesting them to various other limits, until you have a complete understanding of all the failure modes of that component, as well as the reliability of your manufacturing process for that component. Then, you assemble multiple components together and test that assembly together in all the modes you can conjure up, to create what I have always heard termed, "A Well-characterized System".
As he points out, the space shuttle main engines (SSME's), though complex and "groundbreaking" in the sense that they were very big and incorporating some (at the time) quite advanced technologies, they were NOT WELL CHARACTERIZED on a component basis. To my knowledge (although I'm not a NASA watcher with as much fervor as some) I don't believe the SSMEs have EVER BEEN analyzed and re-engineered to create characterizations of their failure points, reliability, etc.
The fact that NASA's next plan is to use them in the follow-on vehicles for heavy lift only testifies to NASA's complete lack of focus here. They should put out several contracts for heavy lift engines with well-characterized failure modes, with focuses on reusability, reliability, maintenance cost, and overall operating cost.
We're soon going to be stuck with the next-gen heavy lift using components of unknown reliability, which forces us to replace component parts ("tune-up" or "overhaul") the system too often and with too large an expense.
Feynman was right. Solve the root cause. Engineer these things with good methodologies. And don't tie us down to next-gen-of-schlock-engineering if we don't have to be. I congratulate the able engineers who worked on the SSME's, but I respect Feynman's analysis that correct procedures benefit lowering long-term costs and ensure safety of the admirable crews who pilot our national spacecraft.
Not the same thing (Score:5, Interesting)
is not the same thing as
he suggested that the past three decades have been a huge mistake and a waste of resources
which is not the same as
"It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible....we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in"
Manned versus unmanned (Score:5, Interesting)
At this stage of the game, what is it that we can do on Mars with a manned mission that we cannot accomplish better, cheaper, and safer, with a robotic mission?
I really don't see a point in a manned mission to Mars until we've been on the Moon long enough to have a permanent station of some kind there.
As much as I loved Apollo, I'm not sure I see that it really accomplished anything with manned missions that a robotic mission couldn't have done. Especially since if I'm not mistaken only one or two real 'scientists' went on any of those missions.
Re:Manned versus unmanned (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the scientific aspect, one point that manned Mars exploration advocates have made is that military test-piloting skills will, at most, only be needed for a few minutes, while scientific skills will be needed every day. Therefore, it makes a lot more sense to select scientists and engineers and pick ones who show a reasonable level of piloting skills, rather than pick the hottest flyboy they can find and try to teach him to become top research scientist. But, as I understand it, NASA's already figured that out. The whole insistance on having a crew made up entirely of test pilots ended with Apollo.
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Duh... (Score:5, Funny)
ISS Purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
sPh
the nature of space travel (Score:4, Insightful)
"My opinion is that it was... It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the point of space exploration as a whole? That it's really hard, fraught with danger, and constantly pushes the envelope of what's possible with our technology and ingenuity?
We stunned the world by putting men on the moon, but for chrissakes, that was decades ago. With advancements in technology since then, we should have half the solar system under our belt by now.
Re:the nature of space travel (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the goal of exploration. It shouldn't be the guiding philosophy when you're designing your tools, necessarily.
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Why I Support Big Science (Score:5, Interesting)
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: j...@pnet01.cts.com (Jim Bowery)
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1993 07:16:54 GMT
Local: Tues, Jun 29 1993 12:16 am
Subject: Who I am and why I support Big Science
There have been some questions about who I am and what my positions are. Here are the relevant details for sci.space readers:
As chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce [geocities.com], I have, over the last 5 or so years, been the principle activist promoting the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 and the launch voucher provision of the 1992 NASA authorization.
To preempt some noise:
Allen Sherzer has yet to apologize to me for his repeated slanders in this forum 2 years ago, declaring that my contributions to the passage of the LSPA were insignificant compared to those of Glenn Reynolds [slashdot.org], then chairman of the legislative committee of the National Space Society. However, during congressional hearings on space commercialization, the LSPA's sponsor, Congressman Packard, gave me a personal introduction (the only panelist out of over 10 to receive such an introduction) and my organization credit for passage of the LSPA. Congressman Packard did so with Glenn Reynolds sitting next to me on the same panel -- and he did not mention Glenn Reynolds or the NSS. This is in the Congressional Record and on video tape. Allen Sherzer's words are in the sci.space archives of late spring to early summer 1991. I encourage those with access to the sci.space archives to retrieve them and see exactly what Allen Sherzer said and the manner in which he said it.
I've been involved in several other, as yet unsuccessful, legislative efforts to reform NASA, DoE (primarily fusion [geocities.com]), NSF and DARPA. In so doing I've come across gross inefficiencies in technology development -- inefficiencies that some small high technology startups were ready to fill with technical advances of great economic and social import. The government agencies I just mentioned see these high technology startups, not as vital partners, but as deadly political threats to the credibility of those, within the agencies, that picked incorrect technical directions. These government-funded individuals drive funding away from those who would bring us critically needed technical advances -- rather than working with and help them.
The dollars we spend on NASA, DoE, DARPA and NSF to promote technology are actually used to suppress this country's technology in a frighteningly effective manner. But when one looks at the political incentives of these institutions, one wonders how anyone could believe it to be otherwise.
My first and most tragic experience in this area was George Koopman's statement to me, made in person just before his untimely death, that NASA had been relentlessly driving his suppliers and investors away from doing business with his company, AMROC. NASA appeared to reverse its behavior in a tokenistic manner just prior to Koopman's death. The first test of an AMROC booster, shortly thereafter, failed and AMROC was forced into capitulation with established aerospace firms. This pattern of hostile behavior from NASA, combined with the means, motive and opportunity, leave room for reasonable suspicions of murder against individuals within or funded by NASA.
This is only one story and I wasn't even inv
Re:Imagine if... (Score:5, Insightful)
They were first to do it privately, not first ever.
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Re:Imagine if... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's almost poignant.
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Re:Imagine if... (Score:5, Insightful)
They would probably become just as inefficient as NASA. Generally, the bigger the budget you have, the less efficient and more wasteful you become. You've only got to look at some of the excesses of the
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Re:Imagine if... (Score:5, Interesting)
If Scaled Composite was handed a check for 250 Billion they'd wet themselves, hire a ton of new engineers, and start on their way to becoming NASA. But forcing them to work with a small budget makes each and every bolt a considered cost, and a lot more streamlined.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that Scaled Composites can do better than NASA, but it will take some self control when it comes to spending, designing and testing. But I would be greatly disappointed if they were handed a huge check for a quarter trillion dollars.
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Re:Imagine if... (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA could put a tiny ship with barely any payload into low orbit decades ago. Not really all that comparible.
Your post was rated insightful? More like overly-rehashed nonsense.
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Re:Imagine if... (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, if we go back to why the Space Shuttle concept was even dreamed up, it was to cut costs, so that the program wouldn't have to keep nickel and diming their way into space. Of course, it didn't save them as much as they had hoped, and more recently has scaled up quite a bit in expense maintaining old flight hardware, but nevertheless the reasoning is all there.
I mean we can all look at what we've spent to date in any industry, find flaws of where the money was put, credit them to bad engineering, cutting corners, whatever you like, but the point remains the money is spent and you should be working towards moving your industry in a forward direction and not spinning your wheels trying to figure out what to do next.
This is why I'm supporting the SDLV so much. We have flight hardware that works, and has worked many times. The flaws have been hammered out by catastrophies that happened with the Shuttle hardware that can now be retired to a museum. Even if this will set us back a few years, and it will make us look like the Soviets had it right all along, we will still be moving forward into further reaches in space, and we'll be able to go back to the moon (something the shuttle would have never allowed us to have done).
Sometimes it's good to have disasters like these; it makes you look at yourself and realize that man is mortal and that the hardware you're flying on is only as good as its weakest link. It makes you grow out of complacency and mundane attitudes about flying into space. And it opens up people's checkbooks to help mend the ailing space agency. The only really sad part is the loss of human lives to make people realize that this needed to have been done years and years ago.
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Re:Imagine if... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe a NASA Administrator (read: advocate) would be so candid. But the point here is not that space exploration is bad, or science is bad or we are bad at science or we shouldn't invest in science. The point is Government is bad at science. Government is bad at running a multi-hundred billion science program. Government is inefficient. Government is bad at ensuring safety and reliabilty.
What we need is less government involvement, whether it is domestic government or foreign governments. Yes, japan, china and india can help stem the costs - private japanese, indian and chinese firms. Not more mismanaging governments. Other space exploration will just be run by the same types that run the UN. Gross incompetence, malfeasance and inefficiency.
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Re:Imagine if... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad idea. I don't want to be picking up would be space explorers off my lawn each and every morning. Better to put money into ventures you know have some kind of chance than to just flood the market with money. This is why so many
The point is Government is bad at science.
Sore point really. Government can be an aid or a hindrance to science as society guides it to be. It just so happens we wouldn't have rocket science or even jet science if it wasn't for a government's overinflated military spendings and need for the next latest and greatest weapons. Things you take for granted are almost all rooted back to some government spending. Remember ARPANET?
What we need is less government involvement
No, what we need is less governmental hindrance, and from what I've seen, the goverment is apt to do just that right now. Step out of the way of anyone who wants to go into space, and even provide a little room in the budget for them. The FAA has been more than pleased to grant several air-worthy and space-worthy some flight time recently. This is the American government at work for science.
Lastly, I want to add my own point. Space flight in this country is generally overlooked by people. Most people equate the saftey of spaceflight to the saftey of air travel, which is a gross misunderstanding. While we were singing the praises of the Apollo-era astronauts, the Space Shuttle Astronauts are generally not even given a single block of airtime on television, or a mention in the evening news. Most people don't even realize that there are people in space this very minute, and think it's a generally safe place to be. This needs to stop. Space flight is exceedingly dangerous, it's industrious, hard work, and the people who have the courage and training to hop on top of a million gallons of high explosives need to be seen as national heros for what they are doing. The work they are doing right now in space is almost entirely peace-oriented, even if the science could easily be turned to make weapons. These are the kinds of things we need to look at as a society if we ever want to colonize space. Sadly I don't think any of the things mentioned above will happen in my lifetime.
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Re:Imagine if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Government involvement == government hindrance. The (US Federal) government is incapable of 'providing a little budget' for something without attaching all sorts of strings to the money. The fact that the FAA is 'granting' flight time to vehicles is not the government supporting anything. It's the government interfering less than normal.
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Re:Imagine if... (Score:5, Insightful)
I take it you believe heavily against the government, and that's fine by me, but you've done nothing to strip my point from validity.
The government is more than capable of handing money over to anyone it wants, and in fact, you probably wouldn't have made it through elementry, middle, high school or college if they hadn't have (of course you'll say the government never gave you a grant, but what you fail to realize is that they gave your institution a grant, and thus, helped pay your astronomical schooling fees). Of course, there are always exceptions to this rule, but if you are one of them, you are exceptionally wealthy or exceptionally poor and never went to school at all.
The fact that the FAA monitors flight is something they've also done for you. If it weren't for them, all kinds of machines that should never see air travel would be up there fluttering around, and coming down on people like you on a whim. In order to prevent "the sky is falling" catastrophies from making the nightly news every day, the government instituted a way of tracking, monitoring, and guiding the aircraft over your head so that you don't even think about it when a Boeing 747 comes barreling over your head in a large city. If you think that the government "interfering" by trying to keep your life well and protected is a shame, then perhaps you are in the wrong country. That same government keeps a house over your head with building codes, keeps the food you eat safe with regulations and guidelines, and tries to prevent you from being ill with hospitals, and the CDC. But of course, you don't think of any of this during your ordinary day, and don't realize just how much you need that government supporting you to maintain the quality of life you have now. If you don't mind it, though, you can find a nice little island somewhere and live off coconuts for the rest of your days.
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Re:Imagine if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now all that hard work is done, and we have so powerful computers that the computer I'm typing this message on, is propably faster than all the computers combined NASA had when they designed the Shuttle. Now we have Scaled Composites who marches in, takes advantage of all the stuff NASA pioneered at great expense, and they barely manage to get one spacecraft (with just the pilot, and nothing else) in to space for short amount of time. And they shout off "look how cheaply we can do this!". Well, no shit Sherlock, since NASA and others did all the hard work for you! NASA had none of that whiz-bang technology at their disposal that you take for granted! The foundation on which SC can build their space-operation on already exists. It did not exists back when NASA designed the shuttle, NASA had to build it from the ground up. And that takes money. SC didn't do it, they just take advantage of it.
Yes, what SC did was great. But I'm getting sick and tired of listening to the "NASA sucks, Scaled rules!" choir of fanboys. NASA has done A LOT of work for space travel, and now we have others taking advantage of their pioneering work. Usually it is very expensive to be the first one at doing something. Those that follow have easier job in front of them.
And of course it's very easy NOW to point out the flaws in the Shuttle. And of course it's easy NOW to deisgn something better than the shuttle. And the reason for that is that we can learn from the shuttle! NASA didn't have that luxury when they designed the shuttle, it was the first of it's kind.
NASA does lots of stuff. SC managed to barely do a sub-orbital spaceflight. Maybe NASA spends more money, but they also do A LOT more than SC does!
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Re:Imagine if... (Score:5, Interesting)
The first prerequisite of any successful engineering project is to have a worthy goal that is clearly identifiable and governs everything else. In this sense, Scaled Comoposite's acheivement has a lot in common with Apollo, and the Shuttle and ISS have a lot in common with each other. The Spaceship One effort and the Apollo program were both narrowly focused on one thing -- sending one or more humans to a specific place and returning them safely. All the engineering done on them was focused on achieving that goal. The Shuttle and ISS programs, while they support many worthy scientific an technical goals, are primarily driven by pleasing enough constituencies to continue their operation. These are political goals, which means many types of missions under many types of conditions.
If you had to put the Shuttle's purpose on a bumper sticker, it would be "Cheap Access to Space". Except "Access to Space" is vague. Obviously, we mean "Manned Access to Space", but even stipulating that, different missions under different scenarios require different performance characteristics. The shuttle has all kinds of capabilities that it uses on very or none of its missions; yet all the things needed for those capabilities are shot up to space and landed on every single mission. I'm thinking primarily the wings here, but its large payload capacity and its capacity to launch satellites into polar orbit count here too. It follows that the Shuttle design is likely never to be the cheapest way of doing any mission. But, without the ability to perform a wide array of missions, NASA would never have got the backing of the Air Force, which wasn't really all that interested in the Shuttle.
You can't design any system to do everything; and the more the system does the more complex costly and unreliable it's bound to be.
Specific goals such as "get two men higher than 100km and return them to the surface safely" are inherently more efficent to pursue than broad, vague goals such as "build an orbital launch capability" or "cheap access to space". And, this has other consequences. Scaled's accomplishment, while signficant in its own right, gets them practically zero percent of the way to orbit. They just built an air launched rocket plane like the X-15. About the only thing they're almost immediately ready to do is create a suborbital space tourist business. If the mission was "get two men higher than 100km and return them to the surface safely primarily with components that will be part of a future orbital capacity," they'd have spent a lot more money, taken longer, and may not have been as safe.
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Re:Miserable Failures (Score:5, Informative)
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Mod parent Troll. (Score:4, Insightful)
Engineers were criticizing the shuttle as it was being built and pointing out the flaws in it's design before it was built. The problems that the shuttle has have all been predicted. One doesn't need a operational test to know that if I fling my self off a 100 story building I will end up as a crumpled dead smear on the ground.
What would be the point of outlining an entire plan of "What would I have done if I was king of NASA?" I prefer that he outline what he will do NOW. Which if you note the beginnings of this was announced last week.
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Atypical bureaucrat (Score:4, Informative)
I mean, he states the shuttle was "deeply flawed". What would he have built? Kept shooting Apollo capsules up forever more? Built an Apollo 2? And if the ISS isn't in a good orbit, what orbit would he prefer? And additionally, how were we supposed to know the Shuttle wasn't a solid idea, until we had actually built a few and tested them operationally?
After nearly 35 years imagine how the original Apollo design might have evolved? We might be on the 10th iteration! The ISS orbits sucks because it is highly inclined and low altitude. Highly inclined orbits are less accessable from low latitude launch sites (thanks Russia). Throw in the new lighting requirements for the Space Shuttle and you have absurdly few launch opportunities from the Cape. The low altitude of the station results in the need for frequent reboost due to atmospheric drag. It is also of marginal use in earth remote sensing because there is no global coverage.
I do agree that a shuttle-like vehicle has great R&D value. Perhaps a smaller reusable vehicle could have been built that integrated smoothly with Apollo launch capabilities.
It seems to me he's just trying to ride the wave of popular opinion that says the shuttle must go and the ISS isn't interesting.
Better that than ride the wave of mindless groupthink that left the US without a space architecture. Now that there is a negative (and richly deserved) feeding frenzy against shuttle/ISS lets make sure we kill the beast!
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