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Space: Kill NASA and Really Explore Space

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NASA Logo upside down
I am a big fan of anything to do with flying or space. I am an instrument and commercial pilot, and I spend a lot of my free time reading about astronomy, cosmology, and all things space-related. I'm a huge fan of manned spaceflight, and I'm ready to go into outer space on a moment's notice.

But we gotta kill NASA if we really want to explore space.

That might sound crazy to you, but please hear me out.

They have no goals. The goals they do have they are not accomplishing, they actively prevent others from making progress, and they serve no useful purpose anymore.

First, they have no goals. Here's the list of NASA's goals from their website:


We will be at the forefront of exploration and science. We will develop and transfer to industry cutting-edge technologies in aeronautics and space to fulfill our national needs. We will establish a permanent human presence in space, expanding and sustaining human exploration, use, and development of space in our solar system and providing benefits in science, technology, and commerce that will contribute to a better life on the Earth for this and future generations. As we pursue our mission, we will enrich our Nation's society and economy. We will communicate widely the content, relevancy, and excitement of NASA's missions and discoveries to inspire and to increase understanding and the broad application of science and technology.

In the longer term, it is our goal to undertake bold and noble challenges and to share the excitement of NASA's future programs with our fellow citizens. Our long-term goals include conducting international human missions to planetary bodies in our solar system such as the Moon and Mars; enabling advances to air and space systems to support "highways in the sky," "smart aircraft," and revolutionary space endeavors; supporting the maturation of established aeronautics and space industries and the development of new high-tech industries; enabling humans to forecast and assess the health of the Earth system; and establishing a virtual presence throughout our solar system.


The only thing NASA is not doing, it seems, is finding a cure for the common cold. Goals are supposed to be measurable to mean something, and "contribute to a better life on the Earth for this and future generations" could be anybody's goals and isn't exactly meaningful.

So let's be kind and say that NASA has a lot on its plate. This is because NASA is a political animal: congress votes on funding for it, and congress, last I checked, was full of politicians. So projects get started and funded in powerful congress member's districts, and changing parties and chairpeople means changing where the bucks go.

Every government agency I've ever seen is directed in various random ways by congressmen every year, who pick and choose what to fund, usually as a result of constituency pressure. NASA is no exception. This leads most agencies to end up doing everything from their original mission to things other agencies are already doing. Practicality and return on investment doesn't mean much in this environment.

So lets give them some real goals. We need NASA to: develop spaceflight technology, conduct space science, and help develop aviation technologies. How are they doing?

Developing spaceflight technology: We're talking about using 40-year-old Apollo era technology for the next few decades of missions. We've made zero headway on fuel-less technologies and we don't have plans to change that. Ideas like a Space Elevator, Blimps-to-orbit, and X-Prize competitions to reduce cost-to-orbit have been bandied around, but don't hold your breath. It's not happening anytime soon. The prevailing attitude at NASA seems to be that they own spaceflight. That's changing a little bit, but only a little bit. NASA can be a pretty elitist place. Look at the reception they gave when the Russians started talking about taking tourists up to the Space Station. Or when the Russians did the golf-ball stunt recently.

Conduct space science: Space science should absolutely be supported. But does it make sense for NASA to be doing that? Do we have a National Telescope Agency to handle research by telescopes? Do we have a National Ocean Agency for all science that happens on the ocean? Then why have a Space Agency that owns all space science? It doesn't make sense. We should fund space science the same way we fund other sciences. Else, where do we draw the line? Is studying Earth from orbit part of Earth science, or space science? This is a scope creep minefield, When NASA did one thing -- go to the moon -- they do great. But those days are gone and aren't coming back.

Help develop aviation technologies: Do you really think everybody is going to have a flying car anytime soon? NASA does, and they've been busy developing HITS (Highway In The Sky) for that day. As a pilot, I'm thinking that would be way cool, but it's not happening anytime soon. At best NASA is developing technology for something fifty years from now. At worst they are simply wasting our money.

So they have no clear, measurable goals, and the goals we all think they should have they are not accomplishing. Worse, they look like they are actively preventing solutions to their problems. Take cost-to-orbit. Whenever we any space discussion we always come back to how expensive it is to put things into space. But over 50 years, NASA has done very little to fix that. One could argue that if they had spent money on decrease cost-to-orbit in the 1970s and 1980s instead of the Space Shuttle, we'd have a dozen space stations by now. Reduce cost-to-orbit. That's it. But NASA keeps turning the same old crank on the same old organ grinder. Nobody is thinking strategically. The lights are on, money is pouring in, and NASA done anything about the 400-pound problem in the middle of the room. That's chronic, fatal, systemic incompetence, and it's not changing anytime soon.

Our national strategic goals should be cheap space access for everyone. If it could cost a dollar to put a pound into orbit, we'd have so much science going on in space we could barely keep up. IBM would be launching probes to each of the Jovian moons as part of a corporate image campaign. Boy scouts would be helping little old ladies get space station trips instead of helping them across the street. Universities would have their own space science stations.

But it is not happening. There is no incentive for NASA to reduce costs -- only to fund programs. No politician is going to support spending a couple of hundred billion on Space Elevators. It has no direct impact, and politicians love things with direct impact so they can get votes. Worse, having NASA around creates the illusion that we are making progress on space exploration. Every new president comes out with some vision of what NASA is going to do -- and it's all just the illusion of progress. Sometime to placate the space fans but just barely. We need the clear goal of reduced cost-to-orbit. It will solve all of these other problems. But it's not happening anytime soon.

Time to get rid of NASA and at least be honest about what our priorities are.

3 Comments

NASA is junk and full of censorship.

Your problems with NASA are better described as problems with Congress. Anything NASA does must be approved line-item by line-item by Congress. As such, anything that NASA does MUST be politically motivated.

If NASA doesn't provide jobs in some congressman's district, they don't get support in return. The primary mission of the Space Shuttle was to keep the standing army of Apollo contractors employed. So it is with the new Ares launchers: All the reasons NASA gave for not going with existing Atlas launchers have been disproven - they could have saved billions. But without Ares I and V, there would be large layoffs. Congress would never approve it.

Political pork is the reason you have everything from road building in Alaska to a fisheries research center on the east coast charged to the Space Station budget. Not to mention 9 trips to Mir and half a billion dollars each, which should have come out of the State Department budget - they're the ones who wanted to keep Russian scientists employed instead of working for Iran. (Nice try, anyway.) Not to mention bringing in the Russians to ISS, meaning an orbit that couldn't take as much advantage of earth's spin, meaning 1/3 less payload per launch, meaning another redesign from scratch of the whole thing, and more expensive launches.

It's the reason for a program like HITS. It's not that anyone wants a "highway in the sky"; it's a means to bring air traffic to small regional airports away from the big hubs. Which in turn brings more jobs and more development to some congressman's district. If NASA doesn't spend money on a program like HITS, that doesn't mean the money would go to space exploration - it could just as easily go to another agency.

> First, they have no goals.

For the first time, they do. For many years congress would cancel any plan that even smelled of preparation for a manned trip to the Moon or Mars. NASA learned not to submit such plans. This has finally changed.

What they don't have is support. Bush hasn't shown any interest or support since the "Vision for Space Exploration" was announced. When the time came he didn't even support the small budget increase he promised to make it work.

Lack of support is what ended Apollo; Saturn V production was ended by Congress even before the first moon landing. Once the Gemini program showed that the Russians were no longer ahead of us, support (and with it funding) ended.

> We're talking about using 40-year-old Apollo era technology

A modernized, higher-capacity version of Apollo is what you want for a return to the moon. A winged shuttle for example is good for returning large payloads from low earth orbit. It has no advantage - and significant disadvantages - for launching payloads and lunar and Mars missions. The high costs of developing a reusable single-stage-to-orbit system only make economic sense when you have a high flight rate, and even the planned lunar missions will only have a handful of launches per year.

> a Space Elevator,

I've been a fan of these for a long time. But once you get the materials to do this, you have the materials to revolutionize traditional launchers too.

> Blimps-to-orbit,

Don't hold your breath on this one. Good people have done the math and don't think it'll work.

> X-Prize competitions to reduce cost-to-orbit have
> been bandied around, but don't hold your breath.

Go ahead and hold your breath - this is exactly what they're doing with the Commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS) program. Funding has been awarded to SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler - two companies very much outside of the usual pork collectors (Lockheed Martin and Boeing.) Armadillo's rocket just successfully flew NASA's Lunar Lander challenge - but they have to do it again at the X-Prize cup for it to count.

> The prevailing attitude at NASA seems to be that they own spaceflight.

Agreed. But, what difference does it make? NASA has little if any power to stop you or I from getting into the launch or space exploration business. Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and privately developed launchers like Orbital Sciences and SpaceX, launch independently of NASA. NASA might not move forward as fast as you want, but they're not holding anyone else back. If someone can't find a way for their Mars mission to be financially profitable to attract potential investors, that's not NASA's fault.

NASA isn't even America's largest space agency. The largest current space program that the Air Force has underway has a cost estimate of around $12 billion. Other large projects have cost estimates of around $10 billion. For a 20-year lifetime, they want a space-based radar that could cost between $25 and $90 billion depending upon the size of the system. The reference architecture of nine satellites with 40-square meter radar arrays would range from $35-50 billion. Compare that to ISS's costs, even after the pork was added.

> decrease cost-to-orbit in the 1970s and 1980s instead of the Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle *was* a decrease-cost-to-orbit program. And there was a valid plan - a space shuttle to build a space station, a space station to do in-orbit assembly on lunar and Mars missions, and then lunar and Mars missions.

But then the Air Force demanded that it be made much larger, which made it far more technically difficult. Then for political reasons the Shuttle Main Engine contract was given not to the company who had proven in competition that they could do it, but to the one who had proven that they couldn't. And any plan that didn't use big dangerous solid rocket boosters would be vetoed by a congressman who's district had a solid rocket booster company. (And the larger design mandated them anyway.) Then they never got the flight rate to even begin to pay it off. (That standing army of engineers and technicians - and other fixed costs - needs to be paid regardless of flight rate.) etc. etc.

Lockheed and Boeing's launchers should have lowered launch costs. But they're experienced government contractors who are adept at driving costs *up*, knowing that they'd be paid regardless. But that's not NASA's fault. (We're now seeing some true private launch companies enter the ring with NASA helping, not hindering them.)

No matter what your national priorities are, if want significant government funding, your new agency will run into the same problems. If you want private industry to do it, well, no-one is stopping them.

Roger that was a great comment and I stand corrected on a few things. That's always the problems with posts like these -- to make them short you have to over-generalize. You've called me out on several of these overgeneralizations. Thanks.

I can't say I rabidly opposed to NASA, but overall, in the general scheme of things, appearing to make progress and helping win political points is harming progress more than helping it.

I'll take a couple of your points and respond. Yes, my problem is with Congress, not NASA. But it is impossible to separate the two. Once you politicize something and run it by committee it stops becoming goal-oriented. Yes, NASA has goals for the first time in a while, but there are a lot of folks in the agency who don't like the goals they have been given, there's little administration support, and Congress could care less about goals from the administration. So while technically there are goals, in actuality it is the _appearance_ of goals and not real ones. Like I said, it does more harm than good.

I understand that the COTS program is headng in the direction we'd all like to go, but really it's just a Johnny-come-lately answer (political answer) to the Ansari X-Prize. Instead of single, clear goals with ROI, NASA is creating a reward system put together by a bureaucracy. I'm very suprised that they got a winner on the Space Glove contest. I will be more surprised if COTS manages to make honest competition for the big contractors. I imagine the agency will do what it can to throw wrenches into the gears to muck things up.

And finally, yes, NASA is getting in the way of private spacefilght. The FAA is very picky about who they let launch rockets -- even in places where nobody lives (as opposed to the Cape). It seems to me that a lot of agencies get in the way of manned spaceflight -- and they are looking to NASA as leaders in what should be regulated or not. This means that NASA is playing an active role in keeping people from flying, albeit under the guise of making it safe for the general public. Got news for you -- the general public didn't need the FAA to start flying airplanes, and they shouldn't need NASA to "help" them start flying rockets.

But you made some great points. It is a nuanced situation, and my opinion (which I've just developed) is based on an overall observation of the current system. So it's difficult to make a "flaming" argument. I just think we're doing more harm than good.

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This page contains a single entry by Daniel published on June 6, 2007 1:07 AM.

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