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Space Science

Redirecting NASA 202

Posted by michael from the going-ballistic dept.
anzha writes "Many people have been sitting and waiting to see what Sean O'Keefe, the new head honcho @NASA, would do with the agency. Would he clean out the temple? Would he simply go through the motions? Spaceref has an interesting article up about what O'Keefe intends for the agency's future. It highlights the changes that are going to happen this year."
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Redirecting NASA More

Redirecting NASA

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  • What A Mess... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cybrpnk2 ( 579066 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:12AM (#4658759) Homepage
    Basically we are going "back to the future" under the new NASA plan. Money that was supposed to go to a next-generation Space Shuttle is being divided up into three piles - one to support current shuttle ops, one to support current Space Station ops, and one to build a glorified Apollo capsule with wings that can be launched on expendable Delta and Atlas rockets. So in 2015 we are going to fly three guys on an expendable rocket - just like we did in last did in 1975, 40 years before. Folks, this is NOT how to get back to the moon and on to Mars....
    • At the risk of sounding like a troll, do you have a better idea? Seriously, I don't know much about the space program, and the Saturn V seemed to get the job done for a lot less than the current shuttle costs (let alone the cost of a new one). SSTO is a nice dream, but it seems to me that tried-and-true is what we need right now.

      • Re:What A Mess... (Score:5, Informative)

        by cybrpnk2 ( 579066 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @11:20AM (#4659357) Homepage

        Whatever we do has GOT to be based on our Number One resource, the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME). This is an absolutely FANTASTIC piece of machinery that is as much an American Classic as a 1964 Mustang convertible. A Saturn 5 launched with five F-1 engines that burned liquid oxygen and kerosene - got the job done, but by far not the most efficient chemical reaction to get the job done. Thus it needed to be MUCH bigger and carry LOTS more fuel. The SSME burns liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen which is MUCH more chemically efficient - you get LOTS more energy out of much LESS fuel. In fact, the liquid oxygen / liquid hydrogen combination, and the way the SSME burns it at an almost theoretically perfect specific impulse of 480 seconds, is the BEST chemical propulsion engine that is EVER going to be built. They will still be using SSMEs in Star Trek time - Scotty would sing their praises. You can't build a "better" rocket engine than the SSME unless you go nuclear - and in our current political environment, development of a nuclear rocket seems doubtful. (Proposed changes to the turbopumps and heat exchangers address RELIABILITY concerns, not ENGINEERING IMPROVEMENTS...). So any plan to get out of Earth orbit has first GOT to include SSMEs as the core component...

        The next step in an improved NASA is to use SSMEs WISELY. Here's the facts. Conquering the solar system is a numbers game. You've got to put up infrastructure to do the job you want done and that infrastructure is first and foremost WEIGHT. A good space program by definition gets the maximum infrastructure weight into space - the more you've got up there, the more you can do.

        Now look at what NASA has done with the shuttle. Every Shuttle launch has three dry weights of interest - a payload weight of 20,000 pounds, an Orbiter dry weight of 180,000 pounds and an External tank empty weight of 80,000 pounds. The payload gets left in orbit. The Orbiter achieves orbital velocity and then gives that hard-won velocity up to land on a runway. The External Tank acheives 97% of orbital velocity and then is allowed to burn up and crash into the Indian Ocean because NASA has no ability established to use an ET in orbit if they went ahead and put it there - which NASA could, they just don't. So far there's been around 110 shuttle flights.

        So what has NASA done with the SSMEs it's flown so far? They (could have) left 20,000 * 110 = 2.2 million pounds in orbit, they've put 80,000 * 110 = 8.8 million pounds into the Indian Ocean and they've brought 180,000 * 110 = 19.8 million pounds BACK from orbit and landed it on a runway. Of the 30.8 million pounds launched by NASA using SSMEs that could have been placed in orbit and left there, only 2.2 million pounds actuall WAS - only around 7%. So 93% of what SSMEs actually sent to orbit NEVER GOT TO STAY THERE under current NASA utilization policies....

        Because of its greater efficiency, the Space Shuttle is capable of putting as much mass into low earth orbit as an old Saturn 5. The problem is that 93% of the weight put up by a space shuttle COMES BACK AND LANDS ON A RUNWAY OR FALLS IN THE INDIAN OCEAN. This is STUPID. The dream of the 1970s or routine cheap Shuttle flights with astronauts being a combination of an interstate trucker crossed with a souped-up fighter/test/commercial pilots HAS NOT COME TRUE and NASA MUST ABANDON THIS DREAM TO PROGRESS. Shuttle launches are SO expensive and the on-orbit stay time is SO limited (a week or maybe two if you REALLY stretch it) and the destination so boring (low Earth orbit) that there is NOTHING an astronaut can do in a week that's worth the cost of putting her there to do it.

        Bottom line - NASA needs to abandon the manned-flight tunnel vision mentality it currently has and build an expendable heavy lift unmanned cargo vehicle based on SSMEs that it can fly IN CONJUNCTION WITH existing manned Shuttle flights. The sooner NASA acknowledges this, the sooner we can conquer the solar system...

        • Re:What A Mess... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by gorilla ( 36491 )
          The ultimate answer is that the Shuttle was a huge mistake. It put a break in the space program from 1973 to 1984, which caused the loss of Skylab, and it's still much more expensive & limited than conventional expandable rockets.
        • The SSME? are you nuts? The SSME is far too complicated for what it needs to be with current technology. I agree that it is nice to take an evolutionary approach to rocket engine design, so that your reliability stays high, but IF we stay with H2 as the fuel it would certainly be worthwhile to go to something like an SSME 2:the sequel. Redesign it with current materials and manufacturing technology. Greatly reduce the part count to reduce failure modes. And, of course, take into account lessons learned on the Classic SSME. That assumes we stay with H2. Kerosene is still not dead, and might be the better choice. ISP is lower, but so is tankage. I'm not saying anything new, of course; just making the point that we don't want to stick with the current SSME.
          • I've got no problem with SSME2:The Sequel. Certainly there are a lot of new alloys and computer gear and stuff that could be integrated into it...but that stuff is in the same category as the turbopump upgrades and heat exchanger upgrades...it is for reliability and cost, not performance. The SSME is currently optimized for perfomance. Plus, there has to be a warehouse of (admittedly overly-complex) SSME Classics that have accumulated over the past twenty years that are no longer man-rated after 10 or 15 flights but have still got one last flight left in them as components in a one-way expendable heavy lift vehicle...for a Mars ship...if we only had the nerve and will and vision...

        • Re:What A Mess... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by cybercuzco ( 100904 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @02:04PM (#4661233) Homepage Journal
          Ive heard the "keep the ET in orbit" bit alot. What are you going to do with it? Its a big empty tank. You could fill it up with oxygen and hydrogen again, except that its very hard to pump flids on orbit. You could use it as a habitat. Ok first you would have to empty out all the residual propellants, hard to do because of the pumping issues. Next you would have to make it habitable, which means cutting a hole in it for at least a door, hauling up an airlock, and welding it into place. Then you need to haul up all the internals, life support, etc. Third you could melt it down and use the metal. All you need is an on orbit smelting facility, and factory to manufacture stuff out of the metal.


          On the other hand, youre absolutely right about the cargo bit. The ET/SSME/booster combo can launch over 100 tons into LEO, but the cargo capacity of the shuttle is only about 25 tons. So straight away you can reduce your launch costs by a factor of four by making a cargo pod instead of a shuttle.

          • And the majority of the cargo capacity of 25 tons is never used - half of it winds up being cradle weight supporting the other half that is TRULY payload that and get left in orbit.

            And then there is the absolutely CRIMINAL hit on payload weight the Shuttle takes to get to the Space Station orbit. The Space Station was originally planned to be flown in what's called a 28 degree inclined orbit - that's the orbit you get to if you launch due east out of Florida, which is at 28 degrees North latitude, and is the max payload launch profile for the Shuttle. Fly it in any other direction out of Florida than due east and the total payload weight that can be carried is reduced. So when the Cold War ended and we "invited" the Russians to join us in the Space Station project, THE BASELINE SPACE STATION ORBIT WAS CHANGED FROM 28 DEGREE INCLINED TO 53 DEGREE INCLINED SO THE RUSSIANS COULD GET TO IT FROM RUSSIAN LAUNCH SITES. This was a TECHNICAL DEATHKNELL FOR SPACE STATION - IT WAS A POLITICAL SHOWCASE AND ONLY A POLITICAL SHOWCASE FROM THAT DECISION FORWARD. PERIOD. I DEFY ANYBODY IN NASA TO CONTRADICT THAT STATEMENT. OOOOOOhhhhh, it gets my blood pressure up just thinking about it.

            Now instead of flying due east out of Florida and carrying 25 tons of payload to the Space Station, the Shuttle launches UP THE EAST COAST OF THE US AND FLYS OVER CAPE HATTERAS NORTH CAROLINA to get only 10 TONS to the space station. Want to know why there's only three crew and no science? Because by inviting the Russians to join we killed 60% of our ability to get Space Station infrastructure in place - crew, equipment, supplies. So there's just a skeleton crew aboard a ghost ship. And the public has NO IDEA how stupid this all is, NASA just keeps feeding them pretty videos of their Space Heros...

            • Yeah well, the fact that NASA didn't have an air reprocessing plant and would have had to spend more than a billion (plus overruns) designing one doesn't exactly inspire confidence that America could have gone it alone. The Russians had one from off the shelf they could use. Don't forget the Russians have been in space continuously for 30 years. NASA haven't. There's plenty of things that the Russians have realised that NASA haven't (like it's a bad idea to toss liquids overboard in space cos it condenses and jams the docking ports). And the Russians probably could have launched their entire section on one Energia if they had been allowed to. America has nothing that big.
        • The SSME burns liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen which is MUCH more chemically efficient - you get LOTS more energy out of much LESS fuel. In fact, the liquid oxygen / liquid hydrogen combination, and the way the SSME burns it at an almost theoretically perfect specific impulse of 480 seconds, is the BEST chemical propulsion engine that is EVER going to be built.

          The latest studies have show that for a first stage- LOX/Kerosene outperforms LOX/LH. There are lots of reasons for this:

          a) the density of LH is really very poor indeed

          b) (consequently) the thrust to weight ratio of LH engines is worse, kerosene gives much more thrust for the same weight

          c) the weight of the vehicle goes down more slowly with LH, this increases 'gravity losses'

          d) the density of Kerosene is very high

          Anyway, bottom line is: LOX/Kero needs less delta-v than LOX/LH to get to orbit by about 6%. However, it doesn't give as much thrust per unit weight. But the density is 5x higher, which means that it is much easier to pack more fuel into the tanks to compensate. Once you realise that LH is more than 5x more expensive, and many, many times harder to handle then you start to seriously wonder why the Space Shuttle uses LH.

          LH is good for upper stages though- the reduction in stage weight makes the lower stages smaller.

          They will still be using SSMEs in Star Trek time - Scotty would sing their praises.

          They may be good for deep space work. They're not as good as LOX/Kero for launching however.

          • I agree that kerosene has density and especially cost advantages over liquid hydrogen, and that, for launches from Earth-based facilities to low earth orbit, LOX-kerosene could indeed be a viable alternative. For solar system exploration, tho, LOX-liquid hydrogen is king for two reasons. One, it IS the lowest mass alternative when it's done right, and on planetary missions "lowest possible weight" is a BIG deal. Two, if you take along a small nuclear reactor to generate electricity for hydrolosis (sp?), you can refuel a LOX-liquid hydrogen engine anywhere in the solar system you can find water ice - the poles of the Moon or Mars, Europa, comets, lots of places. There ain't no kerosene out there.
            • For solar system exploration, tho, LOX-liquid hydrogen is king for two reasons. One, it IS the lowest mass alternative when it's done right, and on planetary missions "lowest possible weight" is a BIG deal.

              If you're worried about weight; then ion drives do much better (particularly Hall effect thrusters, ISP about 1500s). I think long term VASIMR is the way to go though (ISP 20000s); but its a waste of time right now IMHO.

              Two, if you take along a small nuclear reactor to generate electricity for hydrolosis (sp?), you can refuel a LOX-liquid hydrogen engine anywhere in the solar system you can find water ice - the poles of the Moon or Mars, Europa, comets, lots of places. There ain't no kerosene out there.

              That's not a small reactor that's a large one; and generating electricity is hard because getting rid of the waste heat is awkward in a vacuum. If you get off the Earth, the ISP needed goes down considerably. You should check out www.neofuel.com he talks about a nuclear/solar powered stean rocket, ISP is only about 190s but the system mass is orders of magnitude lower; you don't need such high ISP if you can refuel.

              • I agree that as soon as you open the door to ion or nuclear rockets as SSME replacements then the whole ballgame changes for the better. The problem is, I was kinda hoping to see a moonbase and manned Mars mission and first steps to expanding on into the solar system in my lifetime. SSMEs could do that NOW. If we wait for ion or nuclear to be developed in the cash-starved NASA environment dominated by ISS we have today, it's gonna be another twenty years before we even START to develop nuclear/ion/VASIMR as a viable manned system as opposed to lab toys and small prototypes on Deep Space One. By that time the RUSH OF EXCITEMENT that was the REAL fuel behind Apollo will be long gone...and whatever the driving force is behind planetary expansion is at that time (if it happens at all), I won't be here to see it...
                • I was kinda hoping to see a moonbase and manned Mars mission and first steps to expanding on into the solar system in my lifetime.

                  I'm not going to start argueing the technical details because others clearly know a shitload more than me about that. BUT, there is one thing that I think a lot of people are forgetting (or are not aware of?) when they talk about a manned mission to mars, or a moon base for that matter. We may have the technology (and it will only improve with time), but one of the biggest obstacles to these sorts of missions is the human element. After all, the thing we all want to see is a human standing on Mars.

                  And that is one of the things that the ISS is allowing us to do - spend extended periods of time working in very low gravity and working out things like bone density loss. Even now, the longest stay in low gravity (by russian cosmonauts) is still less than half what would be required for a 'short stay' mission to mars (about 600 days round trip), and much less than the long stay trajectory (about 900+ days). And you also have to consider the psychological stresses and implications of spending that length of time cooped up with the same people, and away from earth.

                  and whatever the driving force is behind planetary expansion is at that time (if it happens at all), I won't be here to see it...

                  Don't lose heart - as long as people dream about it there is always a chance!

      • Re:What A Mess... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @11:50AM (#4659732) Journal
        The shuttle fleet is made up of damn prototypes. That's all they are - they were never meant to operate as a long term fleet, but were meant instead to serve as a testbed for the next generation of orbital lift vehicles, which would build upon the lessons of the shuttle, and maximize operating efficiency. As as a consequence, we end up rebuilding the damn things after every launch, none of the shuttles are completely standardized with any of the other shuttles, and we have no cargo-only module (meaning we waste payload space on crew and required life support/recovery equipment.) Oh, and by the way, did I mention how goddamn expensive it is to recover and rebuild all the damn components?

        Right now, they're re-welding the hydrogen feed lines, and a recent launch was scrubbed because they were leaking oxygen, despite having inspected the feed lines. I'd rather we move to using Russian spacecraft if we want to go back to big dumb boosters. Unfortunately, it looks like the "new" NASA budget will be pork-barreled to death to preserve congressional influence in funding current programs (shuttle, space station, token amount to new lift capability so they can claim research into new technologies.) The sad consequence of this is that the Chinese will probably have better heavy lift capability than we do before the end of the decade is out, despite having a 30 year disadvantage, and restrictions on US technology transfers...
      • The Saturn V is a much older technology than the shuttle, but the X-4000 Launch Aparatus [uncoveror.com] is medieval. THey will develop it instead of SSTO, which will never happen because it would cost too much.

    • Re:What A Mess... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by simong_oz ( 321118 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:29AM (#4658908) Journal
      Absolutely correct - a complete step sideways, with no forward motion at all. Where is the daring? The exploration? The pushing of boundaries? The capturing of public imagination? These are the sorts of feelings that (space) exploration should evoke.

      I have been saying for ages that the this will never change while we live in the current age of cost-effectiveness and results(=profit)-now-not-tomorrow.

      Go and read about the voyages of people like Shackleton (go see the IMAX film!), Mallory, Scott, Cook, Columbus - these expeditions captured the public imagination and were quite daring for their time.

      No matter what some might think, we don't have the technology right now to put a man on Mars (and bring him - or her - home). It's not just 'a bit further than the moon', there is a lot more involved. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try and develop that technology.

      I find it a sad statement on today's world that NASA is not allowed to have a vision.

      • Re:What A Mess... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by archen ( 447353 )
        I think that the daring and exploration needs to take a step back into the realm of trying to become a little more practical. Right now the main way to get into space is a vertical take-off with gigantic booster rockets - which cannot launch if there is even the slightest bad weather, and from only 2 (if memory serves me correctly) launch sites. Until we can find a better way to get into space on average without making each launch a monumental undertaking, I think we need to hold back on the exploration part.

        That said, can someone tell me why we don't have a moon base? Everyone talks about sending someone to Mars, but what about the moon? It's fairly close by, and could easily maintain contact with the earth. Has a small amount of it's own gravity which I'm sure would simplify things compared to a space station. We have a relatively alien world on our doorstep yet we refuse to actually set people down on it and explore it. Am I missing something?
      • I take issue with your contention that the technology to get to Mars and return safely does not exist. What parts of the puzzle are missing?

        If you're interested in the topic, check out Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars", significant fractions of which are available at http://www.marssociety.org for free (beer).
        • What I was referring to was specifically the technology to put a human on Mars and the safely bring them home without any long term adverse effects on the person.

          I would agree that the technology to send a person to Mars and return them exists, but there are very big questions about exposing a human to very low gravity for such lengths of time and the effects this would have on the human body. For example, the degradation of bone density over long periods of time is a big problem. Consider that a Mars mission would last about 600 days minimum (short stay trajectory), and the longest single stay is space so far is a little over 400 days, and there are only a handful of people who have been in space for long periods of time. This is the 'technology' to which I was referring, possibly not very well in hindsight!

          I have read The Case for Mars and would also recommend it to anyone interested (as I definitely am).
          • Right.

            So do as Zubrin suggests, and tether the crew module to the spent upper stage and spin the whole thing.

            This zero-gee dragon is not a showstopper. Zubrin spent the better part of a chapter explaining how this is not nearly as big a deal as anti-space exploration grognards want it to be.

            And, while we're at it, define "safely". Exploration isn't a "safe" activity. There are STILL people who will examine the risks and choose to accept them. Why get in their way?

    • Re:What A Mess... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Cujo ( 19106 )

      Yes, a mess. A very good, insightful article, but so painful to read. The tail is wagging the dog all over the place at NASA right now. The main problems as I see them are the palpable presence of the grevious absence of vision and courage, great lumbering dinosaurs consuming nearly all the budget, and the numerous little piggies who scramble to feed at the trough very time a new budget line item opens up.

      Albatross!

    • Re:What A Mess... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @11:13AM (#4659277) Homepage
      Yeah, well the reusable idea has been a resounding success. The vehicles are cheaper, less maintenance, quicker turnaround and totally reliable and are able to reach amazingly high orbits.

      He, he he. Who am I kidding? Actually none of the above. Saturn V was actually 4x cheaper than the Shuttle per kg; and that was expendable. The Russian vehicles launch for about 1/20 of the cost of the Shuttle, and they're expendable.

      Studies have shown that cheap expendables can cost as little as $500/kg, cf $20000/kg with the Shuttle.

      And its not high tech, its the money stoopid, that is holding back Moon and Mars. We have the technology.

      • mmmm. More like $5000 per kg ballpark for cheap launch vehicles. (which is still much less than shuttle)

        Also it depends on what orbit you're launching into- big cost difference for Geosynchronous (comm sats) vs Low Earth Orbit (everything else). However, shuttle has lots of goodies that justify the extra cost -- robot arm, big cargo capacity, can take lots of people, is piloted, etc.

        The ISS, on the other hand, eats up lots of $$$. I've heard scientists say you would get vastly more for your money by paying for individual launches for each project that would go on the ISS (i.e., ROI of the ISS doesnt nearly justify its cost)

        • Re:What A Mess... (Score:4, Informative)

          by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @02:13PM (#4661323) Homepage
          mmmm. More like $5000 per kg ballpark for cheap launch vehicles. (which is still much less than shuttle)

          No. Russian Proton is about $2500/kg right now to LEO. Sea Launch is about the same. Ariane is nearer to Space Shuttle costs per kg, but that's a geosynchronous launcher whereas Shuttle can only make LEO.

          My rule of thumb is that Geosynchronous is about 3x more expensive than LEO; since you need more than 3 the payload at LEO to be fuel for a kick motor to push you up the last bit into GEO (an additional 3.8 km/s).

      • Re:What A Mess... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Winged Cat ( 101773 )
        You're comparing optimized, theoretical expendables vs. unoptimized but actually deployed reusable. Unoptimized varies by degree of unoptimization, but in theory, optimized (cheap) reusables could get down to $100/kg or less.
        • No, my analysis has nothing to do with optimisation- all rockets are pretty highly optimised.

          The issue is more to do with flight rate. Reusables are several times more expensive to design, and tend to have less payload, (everything else being equal, because they have to be stronger to survive being reused).

          Therefore to make them cost effective you have to reuse them many times to recoup the extra investment.

          The offset for this is that the cost of the hardware itself is amortised over each reuse. So if the hardware costs $10 million, then if you reuse it 100 times, it only costs $100,000 per launch. Likewise the development costs.

          But typically most launchers only launch 5-10 times per year, so the flightrate isn't there right now- it would take 10 years to recoup the extra development cost, and then there is interest on top...

          In contrast, a cheap expendable can be knocked out very cheaply, and at these launch rates it's a win to do that, alas.

          • But typically most launchers only launch 5-10 times per year, so the flightrate isn't there right now- it would take 10 years to recoup the extra development cost, and then there is interest on top...

            In contrast, a cheap expendable can be knocked out very cheaply, and at these launch rates it's a win to do that, alas.

            On the other side of the coin, expendables also become very cheap if you launch frequently. (~1x per day or more) The way it is now, you only have a very few launches. For example, Arianes launch about every 3 weeks. You are not mass producing the rockets. It's like having your car built from scratch by a team of mechanics and machinists.

            If you have a large amount of rockets being launched, you can have great cost savings through mass production,
            • Oh, also, you can reduce costs a lot by having cheap infrastructure. The shuttle has thousands of people working on it just to prepare for the occasional launch. If you reduced things by cutting it down to a team of mechanics checking the safety of the rocket, a few launch controllers, and some various other people, you could reduce launch costs even further.

              If you only had 150 people working to launch a good sized rocked instead of 10,000, you would save a lot of money, obviously.

  • Either scrap the manned program and put the money into unmanned exploration. Or keep the manned program, but do something other than dinking around in low earth orbit.

  • ISS? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jamesjw ( 213986 )

    I'd like to see more done with the International Space Station, certainly some potential there for related space exploration.

    Where the funding ends up is anyoens guess though..

  • Rock + hard place? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gravelpup ( 305775 ) <rockdog@gma i l . com> on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:18AM (#4658804) Journal
    Three points of note:

    1) Increase shuttle flight rate (to ISS) to 5 flights a year.

    2) Extend shuttle lifetime, possibly by as much as 10 years.

    3) Upgrade current shuttle fleet.

    Are these goals mutually exclusive, or what? The current round of shuttle upgrades pulls one shuttle out of service for a year, leaving only two that can fly to the ISS. Turnaround time for a shuttle is somewhere around 3 months, BEFORE you factor in all the delays. Finally, if the flight rate is increased, won't that lower the life expectancy of the vehicles?

  • Why New Tech? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Omkar ( 618823 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:18AM (#4658813) Homepage Journal
    Granted, new technology is cool and good in the long run, but what we need to do now is to make space transport (and travel, such as it is) cheaper. We could learn a couple things from the Russians' effective 'big dumb booster' approach.

    • We could learn a couple things from the Russians' effective 'big dumb booster' approach.

      Of course we had a really good "big dumb booster" and abandoned it. Anyone remember the Saturn V and Saturn 1B?

      • The Saturn V was anything but cheap! Just to build one of those suckers costs $630,000,000 [axion.net]. It was probably the most expensive single-use rocket ever built!
        • That's not much more than the Space Shuttle; in fact the Space Shuttle is arguably more expensive. But the Saturn V payload to LEO was 100 tonnes compared to 25 tonnes that the space shuttle manages.

          So it's 4x cheaper in fact.

          • Question is, even if we wanted to put the Saturn V back into operation, do we have the institutional know-how to do it? I expect most of the engineers from the original program have long been retired, or (in case of some of the older ones) probably deceased. Sure we may have the plans, but without people who know what the hell they're doing, you can be there WILL be catestrophic failures... which will be VERY ugly with a 100 ton payload. Jeez, do we even have any contractors who are qualified to build the beast? What about subcontractors???

            Too bad we're not spending more on space exploration (exploitation) - it'd be a great way to employ a lot of very skilled workers, instead of letting them disperse to designing webpages, or teaching basic high school math as probationary teachers...
            • The Russians have a whole stack of the much more modern Energia boosters [russianspaceweb.com] sitting at Baikonur. That's 100 tonnes straight into orbit - and they'd love the hard cash.

              If NASA needs a big rocket, why not go to the people who have most experience? They're already willing to use Soviet engines [channel4.com] on the Atlas V, so it can't be pride.

              Best wishes,
              Mike.

              Best wishes,
              Mike.

              • I wholeheartedly agree. The Russians have plenty of space hardware available for cheap - but you have to understand, that NASA is really all about politics right now. If the congresscritters don't get their pork-barrel allocation out of the NASA budget, they get cranky, and start stamping their feet. If I were in charge of NASA, the first thing I'd do is negotiate a bulk purchase of rockets, and needed consultants. The private sector has the right idea - they use Russian tech to launch comsats into space, and we use Russian tech to launch the resupply missions to the ISS (ie the escape pod.) Thanks for the link on the big boosters. It's a shame to let that kind of heavy lift capability lie fallow [Energia boosters]:

                Payload from Baikonur

                95-100 tons to 51-degree LEO
                18 tons to geostationary orbit
                32 tons to the lunar transfer
                28 tons to Venus and Mars
            • No. You've missed the point really. The point isn't that Saturn V is cheaper, it was about mid-priced, it's that expendables, at todays launch rates, are cheaper.

              The cheapest expendables designed use, strangely enough, ship-building skills. So the skills are out there, for constructing these vehicles.

  • NASA and materials research (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Spyffe ( 32976 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:19AM (#4658819) Homepage
    The International Space Station initiative is a great idea, but I'd like to see it used more intensively for space materials research.

    If we could have scientists actually up there developing new crystalline materials, and then NASA could sell them on the open market, maybe some of its funding problems would disappear!

    If NASA is going to depend on the charity of the White House and Congress, their budget is going to be cut out of existence. Better to help themselves by being a little bit market-savvy.

  • What a waste (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:22AM (#4658846)
    All this funding and planning and still there's no talk whatsoever of extensive research into sex in zero-g.

    What's the point of having a space program if it doesn't do things that will make for better cartoons in Hustler???

  • Other head of NASA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AntiFreeze ( 31247 ) <antifreeze42@gEI ... minus physicist> on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:25AM (#4658870) Homepage Journal
    Apparently not many people know this, but as I understand it, the Vice President of the United States is in charge of NASA.

    NASA is not an independent agency like the FDA or FCC, which have their own agency hierarchy and don't really take orders directly from the White House. I'm not exactly sure how NASA was formed (I would assume through an act of Congress) but however it was formed, it was made responsible to the office of the Vice President.

    The Vice President does not need to get involved with NASA at all, and could let it function independently if he so wished, but he has the power to control it. After the 2000 election, I was wondering what Cheney might do with NASA, because his party has been pretty vocal about wanting to spend money elsewhere, but he had a somewhat calmer voice. It seems like the cooler head (ack, am I really calling Cheney a cooler head?) prevailled, for I haven't seen changes in NASA like I expected to when Bush took over the White House. Maybe the real test is to see what happens come inaugurations in January, or later this month when the dead-heat in the Senate is broken.

  • NASA is actually doing the right thing (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jack Wagner ( 444727 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:26AM (#4658875) Homepage Journal
    I did some minor consulting work for them earlier in the year, in fact my contract ran out just a few months ago. I can't speak for the political climate as I was hunkered down in a cube with a few of their best coders, but I can tell you that they are certainly willing to move in the right direction technology wise.

    I was part of a team that was migrating the majority of their C2 server farm away from old Unix's like SCO and HPUX and moving them to Gnu/FreeBSD. They were also bringing down lots of Linux boxes and moving them to Gnu/FreeBSd but that was another team.

    It seems that one of the new tech leads has some power and is eventually planning on bringing a team on board to fork the Gnu/FreeBSD sources and develop a version specific to NASA. They are able to do this due to the fact that Gnu/FreeBSD uses a non-restrictive license, well, plus they simply love the stability and security offered by Gnu/FreeBSD. I'm trying to get hired on the transition team as I used to be part of the FreeBSD dev team a few years ago and this would be quite the feather in my cap, so to speak

    Warmest regards,
    --Jack

  • Porn in space - cure the funding shortage (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sabalon ( 1684 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:28AM (#4658893)
    C'mon - just get a couple starlets up there with a crew and let them go at it. We all know how porn sells - zero G porn would probably sell pretty well and bring in tons of money for NASA.

    Just imagine the position the stars could get into!!!
    • It's called, "The Uranus Experiment," and it was filmed on a Vomit Comet.

      Haven't seen it, though I'm curious. I read about it in Penn's (of Penn & Teller) journal of his Vomit Comet flight, which took place around the same time.

      Not quite the same as on-orbit, but most films are shot in 30-second (or less) segments and edit together, anyway.
      • I remember reading that one of the reasons the porn studs can go for so long is all the breaks in filming for moving the camera, changing positions, etc... kinda interrups things.

        But "Hey...we're returning to gravity" every 30 seconds...that's hilarious
  • ...the image of the space station crashing into the dome of the Capitol building on the same page as the headline "...NASA hits the ground running..."?

  • Stop printing out stupid certificates... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jin Wicked ( 317953 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:34AM (#4658930) Homepage Journal

    I'd like to know just how much money a year NASA spends on all the stupid certificates, medals, and Bryan Adams CDs mailed out on the space shuttle. (Apparently each crew member gets a little box they can fill with bad CDs and crucifixes and other unexplainable crap.) It seems like they give even their janitor a certificate and medal/commemerative coin for "contributing to work on the ISS/making it possible." I work in a custom frame shop fairly close to NASA and people have no idea how much pointless NASA crud is brought in for us to frame. We had two women in once talking about how they had helped work on the space station, very proud of themselves... turned out they were like assistants to the secretary of one of the engineers or something two or three times removed like that.

    I want to frame this... it was in spaAAAace. I have handled so much stuff that "was in space" "on the space shuttle!!!" that they probably should give me a medal for being an astronaught by proxy.

    I recently had a woman have me do a frame of a piece that was formerly part of the space station, with a photo and a brass plaque -- the total bill was about $900. For someone's office. Paid with corporate credit card. If they're wasting this much money on wall decorations and passing out meaningless medals, I don't even want to know what they spend some of the rest of their money on. I like NASA and I think they should continue to exist... but sheesh.

    • Why the griping about stupid certificates? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tsar ( 536185 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @11:28AM (#4659463) Homepage Journal
      they probably should give me a medal for being an astronaught by proxy.

      After seeing your portrait of Richard Stallman [jinwicked.com], I'd agree that you qualify as having been to spaAAAace.

      As for the rest of your tirade, I'm sorry, but I don't buy a bit of it. I visited the Smithsonian as a small child, and my only tactile memory of the event is that of touching a small rock that had once been on the Moon. That memory inspired me for years, and was one of the reasons I pursued a career in the hard sciences. How many others have been inspired by some piece of junk that a jaded Houston frame-shop worker wouldn't deign to touch, were she not being paid to do so?

      So some secretary who's worked for twenty years at NASA gets a .01-ounce certificate that flew into orbit. So some Senator or Congressman who's supported our space program to the tune of a few billion in appropriations gets a $900 frame for a piece of space junk that will inspire some influential visitor to say, as you so aptly put it, "wow, it was in spaAAAce." So some astronaut who's devoted his career to the hope that someday he'd get picked for a mission, gets to take a few things he can share with his kids and grandkids. Why can't you just let it ride?

      Do you really think that if Columbus hadn't brought anything back from the Americas, and there hadn't been any alien trinkets to pass around at the Court of King Ferdinand, that there'd have been as much interest to go back? And what if Spain had been a democracy? You can bet that Chris would have brought back a hold full of crap to pass around to anyone who could read, with certificates saying it was from the New WoOOOorld.
      • No, I'm sorry, I don't equate moon rocks with Bryan Adams and Michael Bolton CDs that somehow become magical items of Immense Value and Rarity once they escape the earth's atmosphere. Big boxes of junk being put on the space shuttle just adding weight and taking up space isn't the same as something brought back from space with some legitimate value and scientific study possibility. The certificates are not usually flown in the shuttle, they just give those out to anyone and everyone. And they also give out very nice silver and/or gold plated coins, miniature flags, pins, and all other sorts of junk which I would prefer a publicly funded organization to not just willy-nilly buy and pass out. These are not going to kids (indeed, my opinion would be much different if they were), these are going to fully grown adults that are already employees of NASA.

        As for the $900 frame, it was for an office of someone who works at NASA, for himself; I doubt his private office is a high-traffic area where it would attract much attention beyond Wow, how much did that cost to do? I don't approve of that any more than I would approve of a Senator or any other employee buying $900 worth of framing to hang in their office with public money.

        If you had any idea of the amount and sheer absurdity of some of this stuff that gets brought in, you would probably be a bit jaded too. I suppose you just have to see some of it to believe it. As for the painting of RMS, he liked it, and as far as I'm concerned, that's the only opinion of it that matters to me.

        • No, I'm sorry, I don't equate moon rocks with Bryan Adams and Michael Bolton CDs that somehow become magical items of Immense Value and Rarity once they escape the earth's atmosphere.

          You didn't mention the Michael Bolton CD's in your original post! I am in total agreement now, and retract my earlier reply with my deepest apologies. Since his tripe has infected over 50 million discs [michaelbol...anclub.com], destroying all affected media in this manner would be horribly inefficient.

          Now, if they carried Bolton himself into orbit (in the cargo bay, of course), that would be an investment of taxpayers' money that all Slashdotters could get behind.

          And as for the NASA employee's $900 wall hanging, my opinion is this: if it would be inappropriate to write that employee a $900 check, it would be just as inappropriate to spend public money on a $900 gift.

          You're right that junk carried into space and back don't carry the cachet of stuff really FROM space, like the moonrock I mentioned. Sadly, though, our current space program doesn't include a lot of sample-return mass; most missions only bring in what they took out (the Bolton deployment mission would be a happy exception).
      • So some astronaut who's devoted his career to the hope that someday he'd get picked for a mission, gets to take a few things he can share with his kids and grandkids. Why can't you just let it ride?

        I'd have zero problem with this if they paid for all the "frivolous" stuff out of their own pockets, but unfortunately the taxpayer foots the bill. Astronauts are enormously privileged individuals; they receive training, equipment and opportunities that are orders of magnitude more expensive than the value they create for society. Using the shuttle to manufacture souvenirs for their friends is borderline theft.
    • I don't even want to know what they spend some of the rest of their money on. I like NASA and I think they should continue to exist... but sheesh.

      Why are you bitching? You're the one that's getting obscene sums of money for framing their Janitor Achievement Awards.

  • I'm a bit disappointed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ChuckDivine ( 221595 ) <charles.j.divine@gmail.com> on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:38AM (#4658954) Homepage

    The best thing in this plan is stepping back to easier to develop technologies -- e.g., the space plane atop an EELV. It's a vehicle with one purpose, rather than many. The current shuttle violates the Keep It Simple, Stupid rule so strongly it's not funny.

    ISS exists. It might be a black hole for money, but it exists. Incremental improvements to make it earn its keep are well worth doing.

    Putting existing contractors on notice that future followons will not be automatic is a good thing. Although, like many good things, it could lead to unfortunate results. If all that happens is contractors hunkering down even more, abusing their staff and greater lieing to outsiders in an attempt to hold onto existing revenue streams, this effort will fail. If, on the other hand, new people step up with better ideas (or even old ones finally try reforming themselves), this change will be for the better. The more of us -- currently inside and outside the industry -- who focus on what's happening, the better. A bright light can show what's wrong, what's right and better ways of doing tasks.

    Keeping the shuttle going is better than throwing money at ill conceived projects like the X-33. Although putting the money into a variety of efforts to improve space transportation (especially on the cost side) should be the primary focus. We should be thinking "Let's learn as much as we can." That requires many, small, nonbureaucratic efforts, not just one or two bloated empires.

    I suspect at this point the real action is going to be with entrepreneurs willing to try new ideas to serve markets that don't exist because the cost of reaching orbit is entirely too high.

  • Perhaps some competition would help? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HealYourChurchWebSit ( 615198 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:45AM (#4659020) Homepage

    My father worked for NASA from the Mercury project up through the Galileo launch. The new technologies, the fantastic missions, all of it was spurred on by a mad race against our arch rivals the USSR. Climaxing with a walk on the moon ... and plummeting in popularity with the Challenger explosion.

    Perhaps what is now needed is some other finish line. A race? To what, I dunno. Could it be competition with commercial endeavours, other countries, national defense ... I just know that the race made it exciting. Well, that and watching them huge roman candles get to point A and B in spite of all the complaining I heard from my Dad when he'd get home from work!-)

  • Aeronautics? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WEFUNK ( 471506 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @10:49AM (#4659053) Homepage
    IEEE Spectrum magazine has a similar article [ieee.org] actually written by O'Keefe. One thing that concerns me with both of these articles is the lack of any mention of NASA's often forgotten role as the AERONAUTICS and Space Administration.

    NASA's rather underfunded work with the SATS [nasa.gov] program has the potential to completely revolutionize air travel and even population distributions (better access to flights and less reliance on the few major hubs could mean more industry for smaller communities and some officials even predict a trend away from cities and suburbia to one of the 10,000 smaller and even rural centres with decent airports).

    NASA's aeronautic programs have also recently supported the development of innovations like the Eclipse 500 [eclipseaviation.com] low-cost microjet, which, if successfully introduced, could be one of the biggest technology stories [eclipseaviation.com] of the last few years, with the potential to have a massive impact on society. (As an interesting aside, the Eclipse is heavily funded and managed by big players in the computer and software industries, the CEO is the former head of Symantec and the Paul Allen Group, and Bill Gates apparently owns a significant percentage - insert windows crash joke here).

    Space is cool, but basic and applied research in aviation is at least as important and no one else really covers this mandate in the way NASA can and sometimes does. It would be a real pity if NASA simply becomes the National Space Agency (I guess they couldn't use the acronym though).

  • Advanced Concepts and ISS (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tomzyk ( 158497 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @11:08AM (#4659232) Journal
    So what will happen with the funding of NASA's Advanced Concepts [usra.edu] branch? As I read the article (2 long pages) and saw that they were basically COMPLETELY scrapping everything from the X-33, I was hoping to see that they might start pumping more money into the space elevator. But I was left disappointed; they decide to go with strapping a plane onto a rocket... which is what they've been doing for a long time already. :( Also, from what I read, it sounded like NASA is planning on letting other countries finish the station on their own.
    This resulted in identifying a stage in the development of the ISS - U.S. Core Complete wherein all developmental focus should lie. U.S. Core Complete is the point at which assembly has proceeded so as to facilitate the addition of all modules and hardware being provided by the ISS program's international partners. This would result, however, in a space station with only three crew (since the crew return vehicle had been eliminated from development) and a limited ability to do science.
    Uh... what's the point of building the huge, expensive station, if we're not going to be able to put more than 3 people up there and only do a small amount of experiments?? Or am I reading this wrong? very confused...

  • Space Elevator (Score:5, Informative)

    by Niles_Stonne ( 105949 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @11:16AM (#4659314) Homepage
    What about the space elevator? I think that it is a really good idea, and there have been some very interesting(and detailed) studies of the feasibility.

    Previous Articles:
    Space Elevators: Low Cost Ticket to GEO? [slashdot.org]
    More on Space Elevators [slashdot.org]
    Going Up? [slashdot.org]
    Calling the Space Elevator [slashdot.org]
    Space Elevator May Become Reality [slashdot.org] - The Linked Study(PDF) [usra.edu] Was fascinating.
    Space Elevator Could Cost Less Than You Thought [slashdot.org]
    Stepping Closer To The Space Elevator [slashdot.org]

    I want to walk into an elevator some day and see too buttons - "G" and "O".

    • Arg, "two" buttons ;) I should stop reading slashdot, my spelling would improve!

    • The fact is, nobody has yet demonstrated a nanotube composite strong enough to build a space elevator out of. There are, however, lots of applications for carbon nanotube composites which should be *quite* sufficient to pay for the R&D. If that R&D effort succeeds, then and only then do we need to consider the space elevator.
      • They've already produced a nanotube composite (about a month ago I believe) that is almost strong enough for a space elevator. Materials science progresses so fast, I'm sure we'd have a nanotube composite in another couple years that is plenty strong. (After all, 5 years ago they could only produce extremely small quantities of nanotubes. Look at where we are now.)

  • Not a job for the government (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @11:38AM (#4659589)
    Speaking as a rocket scientist and former NASA contractor, I think we should get the government out of the transport business. NASA is good at science and research, but it stinks at being a bus company.

    I had to leave the business because I couldn't, in good conscience, keep taking the people's tax money for doing bullshit. We did all sorts of silly crap (eg, porting giant simulation software from mainframes to little HPUX boxes that - surprise! - could only only run it at a snail's pace) that didn't really further space exploration at all. When we DID work on stuff that was actually mission critical, there were usually twice as many engineers as really needed and we spent most of our time writing reports that justified our jobs.

    Face it, folks, the government is exactly the wrong entity to run the shuttle program. Instead, the government needs to write laws that make it easy for private enterprise to exploit space travel (for example, one thing holding back private launch facilities is the insane cost of insurance - if the government just insured reasonable facilities for a reasonable fee, it would help a lot). NASA, of course, protects its turf and actually works to make it HARDER for private enterprise to get into space travel.

    NASA should be in the exploration business, not the transportation business.

  • Why NASA is important (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Paradox !-) ( 51314 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @11:47AM (#4659685) Homepage
    We're going to have to leave this planet eventually, if we want to survive as a species.

    For this reasons, I support J. Richard Gott's proposal (in Time Travel in Einstein's Universe [amazon.com]) "The goal of the human spaceflight program should be to increase our survival prospects by colonizing space."

    He goes through more detail in the book (It's in the last chapter "Report from the future"), but the basic idea is that we could probably colonize Mars today, with about the same effort as we did the Moon missions. And to do so would exponentially increase our survivability as a species and probably do no ends of other good.

    This isn't just an idea for America. It's an idea the entire world could get behind. It's an inspirational idea, one that is worthy of our species and civilization.

    And it wouldn't just have to be funded by governments. Make donations to it tax deductible and let corporations help. This is a bet on our existance, folks. Because we only have a short while that we have the economy and political will to actually explore space (at least, since the Cold War ended). We go now, or we go never.

    IMHO.

  • OneNASA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @12:24PM (#4660139)
    No, No, No! O'Keefe is doing important things at NASA. For example, he's decided that we need to unify our e-mail system, so they've jammed the concept of "OneNASA" down our throats.

    OneNASA involves removing field centers from our e-mail addresses -- no more @msfc.nasa.gov or @gsfc.nasa.gov , it's all @nasa.gov. Damn the fact that it breaks mail routing and puts pointless loads on WAN links! And of course it all runs on Exchange (now there's a big surprise.) Wait, you mean everybody DOESN'T use MS Outlook and Exchange? We can fix that, we'll mandate that EVERYBODY use Windows. (Don't laugh, it's coming and we've already seen the political push to do so.) You know their excuse for doing this? Robustness, Security, Cost, and breaking down barriers between field centers. Bullshit. Of course, O'Keefe has never heard of OpenBSD running Postfix, I'll wager.

    It's the same old political bullshit. Fix the stuff that isn't broken so you look like a "visionary" and leave the tattered ruins of what was at one point one of the premier scientific institution in America.

    Damn straight I'm an Anonymous Coward, I want to keep my job. But it's true, and I'm sure some of the other NASA folk around will back me up on it.

    • You must actually do research.

      I remember whe Goldin came in. The joke was that he saw the enemy on the horizon and immediately ordered all the women and children executed so that they couldn't be captured.

      As romantic as the shuttle is, it takes a lot of money away from the hard science which gets done at the research centers.

      Good luck...keep you chin up.

      (disclaimer: I'm a Goddard alum, special payloads division. I'd say hi to Stew and Craig, but I'm not sure they're still there, and I doubt they surf /.)

  • Interesting site - Space Islands. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bleckywelcky ( 518520 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @12:25PM (#4660154)

    Many people have mentioned that NASA just seems to be lingering, not really accomplishing much now in comparison to times of the past, or that what they are accomplishing now is heading in the wrong direction. An AC posted a reply with a rather fascinating link to this site [cyberg8t.com] that talks about an idea that uses the external tank (ET) of the space shuttle as a structural component in space for creating "Space Islands". I thought this topic should be given more light here instead of being buried several levels down in the comments. The structures could house many people and huge amounts of experimental and self-sustaining equipment and processes, using several ETs linked together that NASA throws away after each SS launch (they partially burn up in the atmosphere after being let go and then crash into the ocean near Hawaii). The site is somewhat old (they make references to the upcoming 1996 presidential election, heh) but the information seems that it could still apply. One of the key ideas behind this process is that we have already spent almost all of the energy required to place these ETs into orbit (and in the site's words, the ETs are actually "nudged back down" to begin burning up in the atmosphere and crashing into the Earth). The ETs are not released until the SS is approaching its 200 mile orbital altitude, the boosters have been released, and the SS is operating on its own engines. Other ideas include creating artifical gravity by spinning the structures (the ETs are proposed to be formed into a circle, where the actual living and operating spaces would be placed in the radial direction on the arms of the circle), and the ability to move the structures through the solar system (to, say, Mars) and then use transport vehicles to drop down to our destination once in orbit around the desitnation. Sounds like a great idea to research to me unless major flaws have since been discovered that would impede such a design.

  • The NASA employee is dead (Score:3, Informative)

    by heroine ( 1220 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @12:46PM (#4660388) Homepage
    NASA will no longer have full time employees. Instead researchers in academic institutions and contractors will devote part of their time to NASA projects with their paychecks coming mostly from their institution. NASA only pays for equipment and contractors. This is how the Mars rovers are being done already. The scientists are all on university payrolls, while NASA pays for equipment.

    • Oh, so all those folks in Hampton, VA, Sunnyvale, CA, etc. are just students and professors? puhleeze

      Have you ever actually been to NASA Langley or any of the other design centers? There's a LOT of people working there, full time, on real projects. Sure *some* of them are contractors, or grad students on loan, but most are NASA employees.

  • From reading the article it seems that the new meanong of NASA will be:

    National Aerospace Sliced Apart

    Good bye Moon, farewell Mars, arriverdeci Space, do svidanya Cosmos, sayanora Universe, bonne nuit Science. It seems that the only thing that will fly in 2015 will be a crappy ISS falling apart and hundreds of threatening robots seeking its targets in Earth's surface. Oh, and a few commercial satellites to make people happy with streaming media and give them a chance to chat a bit on Internet mobiles from LA to Tokyo, through Space and Paris. A small taste of technology for the masses...
    • Don't forget, it was W's dad who wanted to turn the peace dividend into the Space Exploration Initiative (http://www.abo.fi/~mlindroo/Station/Slides/sld049 a.htm & http://history.nasa.gov/staffordrep/main_toc.PDF ). Whether you believe this was for the good of the nation or to keep money in the pocket of defense companies, they still wanted to do big things in space (amazingly if you read his stuff, Dan Quayle of all people really had some good ideas about our future in space). The whole thing was snubbed by their political opponents (and I don't think they have forgoten that, look for O'Keefe to clean some house) and NASA was kept as a space bus operator. I wouldn't be surpised if we get some new version of the SEI proposed in a possible 2nd Bush term (especially if the war on terror is winding down and another "peace dividend" is approaching).

  • Oribtal's Solution (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Chris Y Taylor ( 455585 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @01:34PM (#4660944) Homepage
    At this year's Joint Propulsion Conference, there was a session where NASA and several contractors discussed the Space Launch Initiative and thier plans. All but one of the talks centered around building completely reusable vehicles as per the SLI plan. Oribtal's talk (I think partially drawn from space economics work from William R. Claybaugh, II) was different. They showed that at currently projected rates, you could get something like 800% of the operational cost savings of the SLI program with only a tiny fraction of the research and capital costs just by developing a reusable crew vehicle (like a new and improved X-38) and putting that on top of the EELVs Lockheed-Martin and Boeing have already developed (which are not yet man-rated, but given their design reliability that should be a relatively small step compared with developing a totally new launch system). In addition to having lower R&D and capital costs, it should have less risk too. 80% savings for much less risk and capital looks very very good until you get up to launch rates of around 1/week.

    This may not be a sexy as SLI, but the economics seem better. Despite people's attraction to SLI, we won't get to Mars and back to the moon any time soon if we waste our finite resources on big systems that we don't yet need (no matter how cool they look). Better to spend that money on R&D or systems engineering so that we can move the market closer to that 1 launch/week and so that when we do need to build the next big thing, it is done with even better technology.

    Chris Y. Taylor

  • Shitcan NASA: It Only Makes Common Sense (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Peahippo ( 539266 ) <peahippo @ m a i l . c om> on Wednesday November 13, 2002 @11:04PM (#4665605) Homepage
    I do have a vision for NASA. It's called bankruptcy. Fire everyone and sell off the whole infrastructure -- right down to the coffeemakers -- to someone who is willing to put up the capital to make a buck off of a real space program.

    Yes, fire everyone. Fire those goddamned desk sitters who can't resist playing political games in a government work environment. Fire all those assholes who dared to spend 8 billion dollars without a single kilogram of space station making it to orbit. Purge that mass of dipshits that watched Mir tumble and burn while their rockets sat in their warehouses.

    It's not just opinion ... it's physical fact that the name of the game is putting mass into orbit and on hyperbolic paths. There's no justification for continued studies on the space environment from data eked out from spindly craft built by guys with obviously inferior penises. NASA, you see, runs as two interlinked welfare programs:

    1. A jobs program for PhDs and workers in the area subordinate to their Congressional reps.
    2. Some corporate welfare for aerospace companies.
    It was doomed to fail from Day One -- Sputnik. Sputnik was a political and -- I can only emphasize -- non-economic motivation to invest in technology, to set an almost meaningless goal, and to get there ... all dressed up and with little to do. There was a period of some relative promise, since orbiting functional satellites is a useful thing. But, things dropped off this plateau when Apollo hit. An enormous lifting system was built to just make a bigger-penis boast across the theatre of international relations. Once the other guy's dick went sufficiently flaccid, the whole thing crumbled in search of more chest-beating, like the Vietnam War. Apollo crashed and burned.

    So the Shuttle was eked out in the post-Vietnam period and something like a plateau was again reached. (Interplanetary exploration proceeded apace with some spindly craft that I mentioned above. Really, those vehicles and the signal network are the only viable thing NASA did in that period, if exploration is your idea of ROI.) But it nosedived again with other sabre-rattling projects being proposed: send men to Mars, and the ISS.

    The first project is another blast from Earth to somewhere else, to end up in pretty suits on another world. Gosh. That will result in even more expensive dirt in some vault in Texas. Long supply lines are deadly things in warfare, so why don't we see that the same thing applies in interplanetary travel?

    The second project has been done before and will end up the same way. Skylab and Mir rained ashes on our heads in some Biblical-seeming prophecy of our own inadequacy. In sheer and utter defiance of the Law of It's-The-Mass-Stupid, they were allowed to be destroyed. And once the ISS wears on the public consciousness, it will have served its true purpose as an icon, and it too will return to Earth the hard way, lighting the sky with a long smear that is the universe's way of flipping us the bird.

    Fire everyone at NASA and return the space program to adult supervision. Put certain men in charge of this mess -- those with vision, practicality and an utter lack of fear. Human colonization of space can't be done under the mantle of welfare; we've been able to have a moonbase since the early 1970s, so these last thirty years are ample evidence of that.

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