Slashdot Log In
NASA Trying To Reinvent Their Approach
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Nov 02, 2009 04:14 PM
from the handle-my-lightweights dept.
from the handle-my-lightweights dept.
coondoggie writes to tell us that NASA has started down the road to reinvention with the addition of four new committees to the external advisory group that drives the agency's direction. "The four new committees include Commercial Space, Education and Public Outreach, Information Technology Infrastructure, and Technology Innovation. The council's members provide advice and make recommendations to the NASA administrator about agency programs, policies, plans, financial controls and other matters pertinent to NASA's responsibilities. In the realm of commercial space, NASA has been pushed by outside experts to leave low Earth orbit flights to other aerospace firms. The Review of United States Human Space Flight Plan Committee report recently took that a step further in recommending: A new competition with adequate incentives to perform this service should be open to all US aerospace companies. This would let NASA focus on more challenging roles, including human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit based on the continued development of the current or modified NASA Orion spacecraft."
Related Stories
[+]
Politics: NASA Willing To Team With China; Rumors of a Budget Cut 200 comments
eldavojohn writes "2009 has been an interesting year for NASA — from a new strategy to even closer ties with an old enemy. So it's perhaps no surprise that NASA has publicly stated that they are ready to team up with China. NASA Chief Charles Bolden said, 'I am perfectly willing, if that's the direction that comes to me, to engage the Chinese in trying to make them a partner in any space endeavor. I think they're a very capable nation. They have demonstrated their capability to do something that only two other nations that have done — that is, to put humans in space. And I think that is an achievement you cannot ignore. They are a nation that is trying to really lead. If we could cooperate we would probably be better off than if we would not.' While the budget of the China National Space Administration is a fraction of NASA's, partnering with them has been considered since 2008. In possibly related news, rumors are circulating of the Obama administration cutting NASA's budget by ten percent for fiscal year 2011 despite the success of Monday's Atlantis launch. Considering the Augustine panel's recommendations, such a cut could halt US human space flight for a decade."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Quick summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot user A: This is great!
Slashdot user B: What a waste of money! We may not even need unmanned missions to space, let alone manned missions. Let's fix earth, instead.
Slashdot user A: You jackass. We need to be able to colonize other planets, either because (1) we such at conservation, or (2) eventually we'll get hit by a killer asteroid, or (3) eventually the sun will go out / go boom.
Slashdot user B: Those are all very speculative or a long time off. We have more pressing problems here and now.
I just wanted to get that preliminary stuff out of the way.
Re:Quick summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot user C: Did it ever occur to either of you that (a)the same technology we use to colonize other planets can help fix climate problems on earth, and (b) trashing earth is not a prerequesite for space colonization? Indeed, running conservation and colonization programs in parallel can help preserve earth rather than destroy it! That's why you go out and colonize, specifically so you don't have to use up all the earthbound resources.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot user D: Who cares?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
"Climate change" is a naturally ocurring process and us puny people are no match for the friggin' planet.
Oh, come on. Who here is dumb enough to get in a boxing match with the GROUND? We get the Earth to do what we want it to do. And our power and knowledge grows by the day while the Earth remains a large rock.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdot user C: You both suck, we should be dumping money into a big hole and burning it, screw the earth and space, kill everyone.....
For those who haven't seen it... (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_should_the_government [theonion.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot user D: And who is going to pay for this big hole? The taxpayers?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What could go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
More committees. Way to think outside the box.
If they want to reinvent their approach, perhaps they should start by not creating multiple committees every time they want to accomplish something ... or am I forgetting the long track record of success by new committees at already-bloated government organizations?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
More committees. Way to think outside the box.
If they want to reinvent their approach, perhaps they should start by not creating multiple committees every time they want to accomplish something ... or am I forgetting the long track record of success by new committees at already-bloated government organizations?
It's not like it's rocket science. ... oh wait.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Managing large organisations is hard. You can't just say make it so and expect anything will get done. Getting even one thing done in a four year period in a large organisation like NASA will take an enormous amount of organisation and planning.
Re:What could go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but important decisions at large organizations are made by CEOs or other key executives (CMO, CTO, etc.) with clear lines of responsibility and accountability, not by establishing several dozen committees. Only in government (and poorly-run, similarly-bloated conglomerates) is this kind of bureaucratic, process-obsessed operation characterized as "reinventing their approach".
Don't forget to separate execution of the plan from development of the plan. It will clearly take thousands of people collaborating to execute on the vision of "go to the moon by 2017" -- but deciding what the top priorities are while keeping in mind resources, timelines, and feasibility, simply does not require four more committees at NASA.
Parent
Re:What could go wrong? (Score:5, Interesting)
NASA is a hopeless entrenched bureaucracy. Forming more committees, and writing reports, is what they do when threatened, its their counterpart to the old west circling of the wagons when attacked by Indians.
As an aside here is a fascinating article [counterpunch.org] by an ex CIA agent on why the CIA has exactly the same disease NASA has and why they are dysfunctional too. Apparently most CIA agents spend most of their time angling to making a jump to the private sector where they can get rich by using their insider knowledge to get lucrative contracts.... from the CIA.
NASA is pretty similar. There are very few scientists and engineers left at NASA. They are mostly contract monitors who shuffle paper from pile to pile to get money from Congress to award contracts to the private sector and the contractors do all the actual work. Of course contractors tend to be flakes, and are just in it to milk as much money as they can. During Apollo there were a lot of contractors but there were actual engineers and scientists at NASA who did stuff, not so much any more.
Parent
Reinvent the approach (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's form some committees to help our advisory group figure out how we can fix this gigantic bureaucracy!
I've got a clue for them. They need to follow some simple rules.
1. Rockets should look like cocks
2. People should only ride on liquid fuel rockets.
3. If you're the booster designer, double the requirements.
4. Success!
Explanation:
1. Rockets should look like cocks. Stacked vertically, not side by side. Both shuttle failures resulted from the orbiter, tank, and boosters being in a side-by-side configuratio
Definition (Score:5, Funny)
Committee: The only known form of life with 6 or more legs, and no brain.
(From the notebooks of Lazarus Long
Re: (Score:2)
IQsum = 1 / ((1 / IQ1) + (1 / IQ2) + [... ] + (1 / IQn))
NASA (Score:5, Funny)
If they really want to get humanity into space... (Score:4, Interesting)
They would do well to put the moon and Mars on the back burner and focus on the asteroids. Then set aside a few hundred million a year in x-prize style incentives open to *everyone* not just US companies.
Focus on alternative propulsion and energy systems as chemical engines are not going to get us very far. Get NASA out of Earth to LEO and focused toward targets that are farther out and harder to reach. Let SpaceX and friends take care of launch costs to LEO. Focus on utilising robotic missions where possible and reserve human space flight for in depth study where the time lag/AI insufficiencies become problematic. Get hacking on the problem of orbital space debris- that will be a major problem if we're going to be going to do anything outside of our atmosphere.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Then set aside a few hundred million a year in x-prize style incentives open to *everyone* not just US companies.
Cooperation is one thing, but we shouldn't rely on other nations to provide us with space access. It would be bad for the economy : US funds and technological advantage going to other countries.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Then set aside a few hundred million a year in x-prize style incentives open to *everyone* not just US companies.
Cooperation is one thing, but we shouldn't rely on other nations to provide us with space access. It would be bad for the economy : US funds and technological advantage going to other countries.
Deep space exploration should be an international activity, if only because it is so expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What protectionism is in place? The only thing that we have is that any space tech can not be shared with China.
ITAR restrictions (where pretty much anything, however mundane, related to satellites is classified as a munition) are actually rather more problematic than you describe for space industry, although there fortunately seems to be some progress on that:
http://thespacereview.com/article/1503/1 [thespacereview.com]
A decade-long concern for the US space industry has been export control regulations. Since satellites and related components were put under the jurisdiction of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), space businesses, including manufacturers or commercial satellites and their subsystems, have raised the alarm that the stricter ITAR rules were hurting their ability to sell to customers outside the US, even to close allies. Companies, industry organizations, and their supporters have sought for much of this time to at least partially roll back those changes to enhance their competitiveness.
While the drumbeat for reform isn't necessarily as loud as it was a few years ago, thanks in part to procedural changes that have reduced the backlog of, and waiting time for, export license applications, there is now real evidence of progress towards the reforms the industry has sought. A section of HR 2410, a State Department authorization bill that the House approved in June, deals with export control and includes a number of key reforms that the industry has been seeking.
"It accomplishes many, if not almost all, of the things that people in the export control reform movement have been dreaming of for quite a while," said Mike Gold, director of the Washington office of Bigelow Aerospace and a leading advocate for export control reform, during a presentation at the COMSTAC meeting last week.
One key component is what Gold called a "review and revision" of the US Munitions List (USML), the compilation of components that are subject to ITAR. The bill would require a review of at least 20 percent of the USML every year for five years to determine if items should be removed from the list. After the five-year period the review would start over to allow updates based on advances in technology.
Another aspect of the bill would give the President the ability to remove satellites and related components from the USML, although it would still not allow the export of such items to China. The bill language would also require the public release of what are known as commodity jurisdiction determinations, when the State Department evaluates whether a specific technology belongs on the USML or not.
The good news for export control reform advocates is that the bill has passed the House. The bad news, as Gold explained, is that the Senate has taken no action on the bill yet, and there's no indication when--or even if--they will take up the legislation before the end of the next year. "To be honest, we haven't even heard any good rumors as to if this is something that rises to the level of priority" that the Senate will take action on, Gold said.
Key to the future of the bill is Senator John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "If Senator Kerry chooses to prioritize export control reform, it most likely will get done," Gold said.
Gold also noted there is a review of export control policy going on within the new administration, although that may be of limited effectiveness for the space industry since the inclusion of satellites and related components on the USML was done in legislation and therefore must be undone that way. However, he said that the actual law does provide some "wiggle room" for the administration to change how it implements that law, if it so chooses. "If there isn't a legislative fix, there is still the possibility--certainly not a strong possibility, but the potential anyway--of the executive branch doing something helpful unilaterally," he said.
To some, it might appear the administration is already doing that, with its presidential determination in September that shifted authority for approving missile and space technology exports to China from the President to the Secretary of Commerce (see "How competitive is commercial launch?", The Space Review, October 19, 2009). However, Gold said that this was not a significant shift in policy. "There has been no substantive change whatsoever in our export control policy relative to China, or space and missile technology as a whole at all," he said. "The only thing that was done was virtually a superficial change" and was not an indication of any potential changes in export control policy.
While export control reform efforts continue, Gold noted he is about to have published a law review article that argues that ITAR itself is unconstitutional as a prior restraint on free speech. "If you were to challenge ITAR under the First Amendment, it would collapse like a house of cards," he claimed. "That's another reason for reform: we need a regime that could pass constitutional muster."
Re: (Score:2)
Yes what you're proposing is protectionism. Any measure designed to artificially tilt the balance toward local industry against foreign competition is protectionism. You're just justifying it with national security and anti-dumping policies on which you are wrong on both counts. There's a difference between covert military tech and the civilian tech prizes I'm talking about here. You're not considering the advantages to rapid development of space flight tech by whomever is able to do so. You're just th
Re: (Score:2)
Dumb question, but why are you not encouraging other nations to hold x-prizes? If these other nations are so advanced, then they will do it as well. Heck, nearly all of the western nations, Russia, as well as China, are in MUCH better economic shape than is America. What is wrong with THEM doing this
Great IDEA (Score:2)
Re:If they really want to get humanity into space. (Score:2)
They would do well to put the moon and Mars on the back burner and focus on the asteroids.
This is basically the finding of a report by Wesley Huntress (see "The Next Steps in Exploring Deep Space" [iaaweb.org]), who was just named as head of the NASA Science Advisory Committee.
Then set aside a few hundred million a year in x-prize style incentives open to *everyone* not just US companies.
Focus on alternative propulsion and energy systems as chemical engines are not going to get us very far. Get NASA out of Earth to LEO and focused toward targets that are farther out and harder to reach. Let SpaceX and friends take care of launch costs to LEO.
Bretton Alexander, the newly appointed head of the Commercial Spaceflight Advisory Committee, is also President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a group which includes private spaceflight companies [commercial...flight.org] like SpaceX, Armadillo Aerospace, Scaled Composites, and the X Prize Foundation. I suspect he'll be advocating pretty much exactly
New committee heads (Score:5, Informative)
The linked article didn't seem to mention it anywhere, but it's worth noting who the heads of the new committees are:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=29537 [spaceref.com]
http://www.spacenews.com/civil/091030-bolden-revamps-nasa-advisory-council.html [spacenews.com]
* Commercial Space Committee: Bretton Alexander [commercial...flight.org], current head of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation
* Education and Public Outreach: Miles O'Brien [wikipedia.org], pretty much the best and most clueful space journalist around
* Technology and Innovation Committee: Esther Dyson [wikipedia.org], well known for her tech entrepreneurship work
* (IT Infrastructure Committee chair seems to be pending)
All in all, they seem to be rather good picks. It also seems that Wesley Huntress [wikipedia.org] has been chosen as the chair of the Science Committee. In 2004 he was head of a study, The Next Steps in Exploring Deep Space [iaaweb.org], a rather fascinating report proposing a space exploration infrastructure which would initially focus on Lagrange points and Near-Earth Objects, quite similar to the Flexible Path option proposed by the Augustine Commission.
Not a very promising start... (Score:2)
Generally, when I see a 'reinvention' start off with new committees, I get sleepy.
Then I look around to see where the ad hoc committee in charge of making sure nothing gets done is.
When I find that, I gauge if there is any chance of disbanding that committee...
If not, time to move on.
Re:Sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
Low Earth Orbit is now at the point where we can see possibilities for how to make money there, so the time is right to hand it over to commercial interests. However, there is no particularly obvious or near-term profit motive for exploring other planets. Thus, if we want it done, NASA is going to have to do it, because nobody else will (except other governments).
Of course, in order for NASA to do that sort of stuff, it needs a lot more money than it has now. Personally, I'd like to see NASA get at least 2% of the total budget, which is more than 3 times what it gets now, but I seem to be in the minority on that one.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh there's profit in it... The asteroid belt alone has enough resources to sustain humanity at current rates of consumption for 150 million years or more. Space travel entails a very large barrier to any competitive entities surviving long enough to be profitable. The X-prize provided a near term reward which spurred tons of research into cheap sub-orbital space flight and now there's some rudimentary space industry that can be used to get the ball rolling. The next step is obtaining resources for LEO c
Re: (Score:2)
...Space travel entails a very large barrier to any competitive entities surviving long enough to be profitable. The X-prize provided a near term reward which spurred tons of research into cheap sub-orbital space flight and now there's some rudimentary space industry that can be used to get the ball rolling.
Well, fond as I am of the X-prize and the various entities who are trying to make a go at suborbital tourism, it's worth pointing out that they are going after the sub-orbital tourism market. The vehicles making hops to 100 kilometer altitude for sightseeing are pretty cool, but there's a vast delta-V from there to orbit-- these vehicles are not "going to get the ball rolling" if you're talking about orbit: they don't get to orbit, don't get close to orbit, don't get anywhere near to getting close to orbit
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, in order for NASA to do that sort of stuff, it needs a lot more money than it has now. Personally, I'd like to see NASA get at least 2% of the total budget, which is more than 3 times what it gets now, but I seem to be in the minority on that one.
Yeah, way too small. There's no reason that we are not spending at least 10% of the GLOBAL budget on space exploration.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, in order for NASA to do that sort of stuff, it needs a lot more money than it has now.
Whatever gives you that idea? NASA doesn't seem to be using its current funding effectively, what would it do with three times the funding?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
With a little backbone and support from the President, NASA could hold its own against both Congress and the contractors. Instead, NASA hasn't shown that it can handle its current funding responsibly much less three times
Re: (Score:2)
my point is NASA is all over the board.
Dude, don't worry about it. I'm sure NASA has a room full of guys whose job is just to think shit up!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Jupiter does a pretty good job as our defense system. There have been a few asteroids on possible collision courses with Earth, and they all got sucked up by our bigger brother.
Asteroids are not our biggest concern. Just because one wiped out the dinosaurs doesn't mean that one will wipe us out too. We've evolved a long way to survive in harsh conditions.
In all honesty, I can't even imagine a practical asteroid evasion plan short of evacuating Earth. Armageddon and other Hollywood flicks have lead us to bel
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't even imagine a practical asteroid evasion plan short of evacuating Earth
It is highly unlikely we will get hit by anything the size of Ceres. The biggest risk IMHO is from comets in the range 500 metres to about 70km in diameter. If we can see objects like this coming we should be able to evacuate the impact site ahead of time. Doing that will take remote sensing (something we already do well) and politics (which we are slowly getting better at).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If we can see objects like this coming we should be able to evacuate the impact site ahead of time.
Hm... up to 70km you say - that's quite unlikely, results would be quite devastating [arizona.edu], even if you were 8000km away from the impact site (but depending on quite a few parameters of the object/impact).
Give this a try, maybe you'll reconsider: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/ [arizona.edu]
Re: (Score:2)
If we can see objects like this coming we should be able to evacuate the impact site ahead of time.
Hm... up to 70km you say - that's quite unlikely, results would be quite devastating [arizona.edu], even if you were 8000km away from the impact site (but depending on quite a few parameters of the object/impact).
Give this a try, maybe you'll reconsider: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/ [arizona.edu]
Sure but half way around the earth is 20000km, so evacuating a circle 10000km around the impact site doesn't seem impossible. Easier than moving everybody to the moon or mars, anyway. I am assuming we can give ourselves 20 or 30 years warning with good quality remote sensing.
Re:NASAs first priority (Score:4, Funny)
Once we find out if asteroid detection, deflection or destruction is trivial and reliable, then we can go on to mentally masturbating about colonizing other bodies.
I presume the NASA memory foam will come into play here. We should be good to go.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Should be to develop and test asteroid detection and avoidance systems.
Okay, sure. In order to detect incoming asteroids, it's going to need to be able to scan the entire sky. It can't do that now, and doesn't have the funds to develop the capability to do that. Once it has the capability, it has to figure out a way to neutralize the threat of any incoming asteroid. Since we can probably rule out the possibility of altering the orbit of the planet to get out of the way, we need to either alter the orbit of the asteroid, or destroy it, and we're going to have to do it well
Re:NASAs first priority (Score:5, Funny)
No one grows up wanting to fuck up an asteroid.
Ha, not so! Inspired by many hours playing asteroid, to this day I love the idea of blasting the fuck out of asteroids! NASA's Deep Impact mission was just about the coolest thing ever! Comet, asteroid, planet, the freaking moon, whatever. I say bring it on!
In fact, if you made the (granted somewhat dubious) assumption that the portion of my allowance that I spent on pretending to blow shit up in space as a kid should be reflected by the federal budget, then not only would the entirety of NASA be devoted to building rockets for fucking up asteroids and other heavenly bodies, NASA would be about 80% of the budget. The DoJ would be operating on a shoestring budget. Sorry guys, I know you have stuff to blow up here, but Titan is acting cocky and needs its ass kicked!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's always some louts wanting to kill off NASA for starving kids, to weaken the US military, or whatever. Some of them even are US citizens. And some of those might even vote on occasion. That leaves a small number of whiners in my view with any credible influence.
The real threat as I see it is the low utility per dollar of manned NASA projects. As long as NASA is about lining pockets and protecting jobs, it'l
Re: (Score:2)
Adam Kirsch reviews Anne C. Heller's new Ayn Rand biography in this weekend's Book Review. His piece offers this nugget about John Galt's long radio address in the novel Atlas Shrugged: A Random House editor told Rand that "if she gave up 7 cents per copy in royalties, she could have the extra paper needed to print Galt's oration."
Kirsch calls the agreement a "sign of the great contradiction that haunts her writing," observing that "giving up her royalties to preserve her vision is something that no genuine capitalist . . . would have done."
But Rand's decision to exchange money -- a portion of her royalties -- for extra paper is capitalism at work. Rand bought something that had financial value to her: the ability to disseminate her idea in the form she desired.
Without such an elegant capitalist mechanism through which to make this trade, the alternative solution would have been messy and unsatisfying. Rand would have had to give up part of Galt's speech or try to find a new publisher.
Here we have a controversial figure, Ayn Rand, who lived a life full of contradiction and hypocrisy and the best that the author of the book review in the post above could come up with was an incredibly strained story about her forgoing a bit of royalty payments for something of monetary value. Controversial? Come on. It should embarrass the NYT to have hired such an idiot.
Also, given that the above "gra
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Could be that the submitter uses British English. They generally treat collective nouns as plural.
Actually, it would not (Score:3, Interesting)