House Outlaws Obama's NASA Intervention 209
TopSpin writes "NASA's Constellation Program and Ares rockets appear to have strong support in Congress. An appropriations bill passed by the House includes language that bars 'any efforts by NASA to cancel or change the current Constellation program without first seeking approval of Congress.' The Administration's appointed NASA leadership is being publicly hostile towards its traditional aerospace affiliations. As Charles Bolden put it to industry execs, 'We are going to be fighting and fussing over the coming year,' and 'Some of you are not going to like me because we are not going to do the same kind of things we've always done.'"
Oink! Oink! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Our minds are made up, don't confuse us with the facts".
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, I'm sure you've been on many decade long aerospace engineering projects to know how it should work.
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, let's just sit on our asses and wait for that Technological leap to appear out of nowhere so we can utilize the infinite resources in space. I mean that is how technology progresses right? Just sit on ones ass, somewhere someone will come up with the right idea.
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:5, Insightful)
Until someone makes a technological leap past chemical rockets, the resources of space are anything but infinite.
And I don't think repeated practice with 40 year old chemical rocket technology is going to lead to that leap.
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, let's just sit on our asses and wait for that Technological leap to appear out of nowhere so we can utilize the infinite resources in space.
That's exactly what we should do. In the mean time, robotic probes can accomplish much more useful work in space than fragile human meat sacks at a small fraction of the cost.
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:5, Insightful)
I grew up around NASA - at the KSC and JSC. I watched as the US built up the space program from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo. I watched as Congress gutted NASA after Apollo and managed to create the kludge that is the Shuttle. I watched as NASA and it's contractors managed to get the Shuttle off the ground despite the roadblocks put up in front of if.
I know enough to realize that rocket science is hard and that Congress, as a body, is no more able to micromanage booster technology than it is able to manage, well just about anything. Congress has a near perfect track record of solving the wrong problem, solving the right problem in the wrong way which results in not solving the problem, and / or doing anything but attempting to solve the problem along with a myriad of other generic inabilities.
Congress should make general policy and let the people that know what they are doing implement it. Congress should NOT micromanage.
And while you're at it, I'd like a Pony.
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:3, Insightful)
But the ultimate goal is to send humans into space not robots.
Re:Well, I'm glad thats settled. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it can be a little more subtle than that. Eisenhower described the process thusly:
Politicians are concerned about the welfare of their constituents. During wartime/other massive government spending in industry, more and more of those constituents become financially dependent on military/government contractor industry for jobs. To act in the best interest of their constituents, politicians are compelled to continue war, or to make other kinds of major fiscal decisions benefiting those industries.
By promoting massive, wasteful spending on NASA, many politicians could be actively seeking the immediate best interest of their constituents.
Representative democracy should fear the military industrial complex.
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're confusing the ends with the means. The ultimate goal is to gain scientific knowledge and/or access to resources. This can currently be done more effectively without the additional cost of sending humans.
The only current useful purpose for sending humans into space is to provide an exhibition of national bravado.
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:3, Insightful)
But the ultimate goal is to send humans into space not robots.
And do what? Live? Currently we do not have the means or technology to build a self supporting orbital colony, or one on the Moon or on Mars. Spending more money on putting humans in space won't magically develop technologies needed to support life outside of Earth.
I agree that it is imperative that for the survival of our species that we have more than one home in the solar system. We can better work towards that by focusing on science, which outside of our orbit is most efficiently done with probes.
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, only a few years, but its pretty clear that this is not in the best interest of furthering space exploration, but rather in keeping jobs in a few congressional districts -- namely Huntsville, Alabama. Marshall Space Flight Center stands the most to lose if Ares falls through, but MSFC is in many ways a dinosaur of the Apollo era and hasn't transitioned to being a leaner, more efficient group.
Consider this: for the cost of building Ares 1-X, the test-flight that consisted of a shuttle SRB with some dummy mass on top and made up to look like an Ares 1, what was essentially the worlds largest model rocket, cost $450M -- SpaceX, has developed one working rocket and has almost completed a larger one for around the same cost. While obviously the Ares program will cost more than what a company like SpaceX will spend, since they're building bigger rockets to do riskier things, there is something wrong when a mere model costs that much.
The problem with micromanaging NASA through congress is that the only districts where its an issue that can make a difference in an election are the ones where they want to maintain the status quo, which is not working well. Everyone else who sees it and disagrees with its handling probably aren't going to swing their vote based on it, since there are a myriad of other, more immediate things to consider as well.
No Good Guys Here, but Separation of Powers = Good (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA has always been used as a pork barrel, and the engineers who just want to fly birds have both used that shamelessly to get funded, and been victimized by it, in equal turns. It's hard to guess whether they would have created cheaper, simpler designs if feeding billions into the industrial complex (in all 50 states as often as possible) were not the more important goal than flying.
Bottom line, I find it hard to cheer for either side when these spats come up. You always want to take the side of the homies (fund NASA, fly something cool somewhere), but NASA is spending so many millions per kilogram flown that the whole thing will ALWAYS be for a lucky tiny few as long as their big-iron design philosophy is enabled by those who LIVE to spend tax dollars (in their state).
Silver lining though: Americans may have forgotten that their Congress has the power to tell the Executive branch "NO!". That the founders considered the legislature, NOT the executive, the first among three equals, because it directly represents the people on the most frequent election cycle.
Who knows, this "make the executive branch moves illegal" power, now revived for the first time in years, may one day be used to make torture, fake intelligence, and war itself less likely instead of perfectly acceptable.
Re:International "cooperation" (Score:1, Insightful)
Clings to the idea? How about trying to reconcile the disaster that was the last eight years of foreign policy? Remember those days where we told just about every other country to do it our way or fuck off?
Yeah, we have a lot of enemies out there. But why not work with those who used to be our friends and try to reconcile our differences for a better world? Contrary to popular belief the United States does not have infinite resources. Money, scientists, natural resources... yeah, you know those things we need to actually make shit?
I'm so sick and tired of people bashing the one president this decade who is actually trying to get my country back in the good light it once had. So if you have no recommendations on how to improve this country - move out or shut the fuck up.
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:3, Insightful)
Three out of five flights, and the order matters significantly. The two that have been successful are significantly different than the three that failed. They added baffles to the tanks, improved the control algorithms, changed materials. They *FIXED* all of the issues that caused the early failures. Also, if its cheaper to blow up a few unmanned rockets than it is to design it perfectly the first time, then that sounds like the right way to do it. I'd consider the reliability of the Falcon 1 the same as any vehicle with a 2-0 record. Still not too reliable yet, but showing promise.
And those safety numbers are in so many ways bogus, since they only consider known failure modes. Everything thats ever killed an American astronaut was an unknown failure mode. Since Falcon 9 is intended for human use as well, with the same safety goals, and is in a further state of development than Ares 1, I can't help but be shocked by the sheer price of *just* Ares 1-X. If it were the entire Ares 1 program that had cost so much so far I'd say it was pretty reasonable and even cheap -- but no, just the aerodynamic and structural test cost that much.
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:3, Insightful)
To you the ultimate goal is scientific knowledge and resources.
To me the ultimate goal is human settlement beyond Earth.
To congresspeople the ultimate goal is getting reelected.
What you see as nationalistic chest thumping I see as (admittedly often poorly done) continued development of technology to support frontier development. They of course see it as jobs for their district. Conversations about how we should do things first require an agreement on the goals.
Re:International "cooperation" (Score:3, Insightful)
Yea, because Clinton's policy of ignoring problems worked out so well for the US
When Clinton had missiles fired at Ossama Bin Laden, it was all "Wag the dog! He's trying to distract from the important issue of his blowjobs!"
There was a little war in Kosovo...
Yeah, he was ignoring problems just like Bush was eloquent.
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:4, Insightful)
My view is that if rockets were flying at the same rate as passenger jets, fuel costs would be about a third of overall cost (as they are for passenger jets). That means roughly $300 per kg for vehicles using liquid oxygen and hydrogen or $100 per kg for vehicles using liquid oxygen and kerosene. That's well over an order of magnitude cheaper than today's price (and the cost goes down, if energy gets cheaper).
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:3, Insightful)
Then I would argue that the failure mode is poor management and schedule rush -- definitely things not included in whatever safety numbers were quoted when the shuttle was being designed. The point is that whenever those 1 in 1000 numbers are pulled out they are almost meaningless -- the failures that did occur weren't included in those.
Its like judging the safety of a car on whether or not a freak string of events is likely to blow up the car on any given trip (or the brake lines fail, or your toyota accelerates without your command), when everyone knows that the most likely reason you're going to die in the car is because you or someone else screws up. While you want to do your best to keep the freak accidents from happening, more time needs to be spent making mistakes less damaging, and training people to avoid them.
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:5, Insightful)
Might have been cheaper, faster and more effective. But the Hubble servicing missions DID give us practice in doing repairs in space. That is the sort of practice and technique we're going to need if we plan on doing anything in space that approaches 'routine'. Like go to the asteroids / Mars / Moon.
Saving one's bacon is a very strong motivator to getting something done. We need to do more of it. Or do you think that we won't have any equipment problems as we scale up our space activities?
Re:Oink! Oink! (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it's there? Because there are enough resources in space to allow all of humanity to live in riches?