Chris Kraft Talks About The Decline of NASA 262
schwit1 writes in with a link to a recent interview with Chris Kraft, founder of Mission Control, discussing the impracticality of the SLS, and why the best and brightest are slowing leaving NASA. From the article: "The problem with the SLS is that it's so big that makes it very expensive. It's very expensive to design, it's very expensive to develop. When they actually begin to develop it, the budget is going to go haywire. They're going to have all kinds of technical and development issues crop up, which will drive the development costs up. Then there are the operating costs of that beast, which will eat NASA alive if they get there. ... You go talk to the guys who were doing Constellation (NASA's now-scuttled plan to return to the moon), and the reason they came to NASA was to go back to the moon. They're all leaving now. The leaders are leaving for a lot of other reasons also, but they're leaving because there's no future that they want to be involved in. And that's unfortunate."
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The SLS? (Score:5, Informative)
The SLS is basically a big boondoggle forced on NASA by a bunch of congressmen who have factories in their districts that used to make Space Shuttle parts. These congressmen have basically forced NASA to produce some sort of space launch vehicle in a way that requires these Space Shuttle parts and therefore keeps the factories in their districts in business.
Re:Doesn't surprise me at all (Score:4, Informative)
The space shuttle wasn't just for popularity, but a military boondoggle. A whole bunch of its requirements were basically imposed on NASA by the Pentagon, because they wanted it to be dual-use.
Re:Can't fund NASA (Score:3, Informative)
The thing is, it's really hard to stop poverty and famine. It's not at all hard to not go somewhere and shoot people.
Re:But but but...... (Score:5, Informative)
The government provides the mission and funding, the private sector does what it does best.
Bribe senators & congressmen for contracts, inflate the costs to double or triple original estimates, deliver 20 years after spec while milking every dollar they can from the government? So, you want to turn NASA into the Defense Industry II?
At least the defense industry gets a workable budget.
2013 Estimated NASA budget : $17,000,000,000 - http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/632697main_NASA_FY13_Budget_Summary-508.pdf [nasa.gov]
Estimated cost of one year of the afghan war: $109,500,000,000 - http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gNQ3JbWwd6t-PzkuECkRJvsAlNkA [google.com]
FY 2013 Intelligence Budget: $52,000,000,000 - http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/inside-the-2013-us-intelligence-black-budget/420/ [washingtonpost.com]
DHS 2013 Budget: $54,807,277,000 - http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/mgmt/dhs-budget-in-brief-fy2013.pdf [dhs.gov]
We spend about 3 times as much on intel and spying on our own citizens than space research and capability
When you add in DHS it is 6 times.
A year of one war is almost 9 times the NASA budget.
This does not include all the other crazy defense spending. Even if NASA were completely axed today, it would not take even a tiny dent out of our national deficit. Cutting 'unnecessary' NASA spending is just a way to please ill-informed constituents, and make it look like our elected legislators are working to reign in spending. They are NOT.
Re:But but but...... (Score:4, Informative)
The main proposed use for He3 has been as a fusion fuel but while the fusion reaction involving He3 does have the advantage of being aneutronic it is unlikly to be used in practical fusion for two reasons. The reactions involving He3 requires much higher energy levels than the fusion reactions being investigated currently. This implies two things.
1: He3+D fusion is going to be much harder to pull off than D+T or even D+D fusion (where D is duterium and T is tritium).
2: The He3+D fusion reaction will always be accompanied by a side D+D fusion so the overall reaction wouldn't be aneutronic.
There is also apparently a He3+He3 reaction that would be aneutronic but is even harder to pull off.
Re:Doesn't surprise me at all (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, you picked exactly two that were not their inventions... was that on purpose? But let me help you: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=list+of+technologies+invented+by+nasa [lmgtfy.com]
The first link should be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies [wikipedia.org]
Re:But but but...... (Score:4, Informative)
Go on then. Tell us who else is going to put up the money for more than a few comsats and why they will do it. We're listening. Surely you've got some kind of obvious answer since you are calling another a liar - let's see it.
I called the OP a liar because he lied about Neil deGrasse Tyson. He never claimed "only the government can do Space", in fact, if you and the OP actually Read The F*ne Article about him, you will see that he is an favour of commercial space activity, and in fact thought it scandalous that NASA had delayed such a development for years, hinting that the Space Shuttle program was part of the reason.
For scientists, like Tyson, it makes no sense that NASA should spend their budget on making rockets for commercial satellite delivery, let the private sector do that, and let NASA concentrate on new research and space exploration.
What Tyson also said was, that he didn't think the private sector would do trailblazing space feats, it is way too expensive to do space exploration compared to the economic gains that there simply isn't a business case.
Re:But but but...... (Score:5, Informative)
That is kind of how it works now for every government project but the bribes are jobs. If you look at any big project like the Shuttle, Apollo, or just about anything they will all have a map showing all the places that will get jobs from the project. Why do you think the big aerospace companies build things in California? About the only Aerospace company that is not located in a big state was Boeing but they are moving their headquarters to Chicago.
Take the top five states by population and look at the companies that are located there or the NASA presence there.
California
Texas
New York
Florida
Illinois
Votes are are power and you need to spread around the jobs. Even SpaceX is in both California and Texas.
Re:nasa as an institution: it hasnt evolved. (Score:5, Informative)
"the problem with nasa is its inception was intended to combat the USSR on a number of fronts. It advanced technologies like ICBM " ,spy sats, weather sats, and nav sats but not ICBMS. In fact NASA benefited more from early ICBMs than it contributed.
Ahhhh No you are wrong and don't know history.
The US ICBM programs were well on their way before there was a NASA. The Army, Navy, and Air Force all had projects that were moving along. NASA started to use those rockets for space work. Atlas, Titan, and Thor where all USAF ICBMs and MRBS that were converted to space launchers. By 1960 the needs of the military weapons and the needs NASA had completely diverged. Smaller warheads and the needs to launch in seconds meant that the next generation of missiles where small solid fueled missiles that were not very useful as space launchers. Minuteman and Polaris where lacked the payload of the older Atlas, Titans and Thor/Deltas. Even the Saturn I first stage was built out of left overs from the Army's SRBM and MRBM programs. It was made of leftover Redstone and Jupiter parts.
You could argue that NASA was to help develop other technology like comm sats
Too bad that the USGOV wasted all those Titan Is. When they were retiring the Atlas and Titan Is after only a few years in service as ICBMs the government stored that Atlases but gave away the Titans to parks and schools and other static displays. The logic was that the NASA had already converted Atlas to launcher so it was cheaper and the Titan I's payload increase over the Atlas wasn't worth the cost. Too bad since they had to re-open the Atlas production line when we ran out of them.
Re:But but but...... (Score:4, Informative)