Interview with Dr. Bradley C. Edwards

Transcript of Interview ^ | 10/17/2005 | Keith Curtis

[KeithCu]

KC: Did you see Michael Griffin's interview in USA Today last week?

BE: No, but I know the general gist. It’s not a surprise. In my mind the Space Shuttle and Space Station are not valuable efforts. It’s not what NASA should be doing. NASA is using technology from commercial enterprises, or very old technology from the 70's to try and do space exploration. If they are going to be a real premier space agency, they need to be pushing it.

It seems like there was a long-standing debate between rockets and the Space Shuttle. From where you sit, that's like choosing between Nicki and Paris Hilton.

Even high up in NASA management, they won’t officially say it - but they have said it directly to me - that nothing substantial in space can be done with rockets. A federal program with lots of money can take some people up there, but it won't be able to commercialize space. We've been going at it for thirty-five years now, and we’ve put up telecommunications systems and GPS. If there's a buck to be made and a product to be built, it’ll get done. With current technology, I think we've developed space commercially as far as we can. We need something dramatically different—a brand new market, a brand new technology.

[KeithCu]

My 2nd freep post, I've been lurking for years. I interviewed Dr. Bradley C. Edwards, space elevator expert, recently. We talk about a lot of different things.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

One thing that we tend to overlook in this country is in-house experience. Prior to Nixon, NASA was a world leader in many areas of technology including electronic reliability. We consulted with them concerning the reliability problems that we were having with our gear.

When privatization occurred, NASA in-house technical experts, became contract managers. Private companies were supposed to have the skills, and all that a government agency had to do was to pay them and they could "buy" whatever was needed. In about 5 years, the keen technical edge started to disappear. Consequently, in about 20 years it became difficult to find anyone in NASA that had any technical expertise ( there were some exceptions naturally). The result was that the skills now resided in the private sector.

Fast forward to today. Now we are asking a dinosaur to design a current space program when most of the skills are not there. Think about the shuttle. Nixon's privatization has borne fruit.IMHO

[GOPJ]

I know this is off the subject, but did we have the technology to land a craft on the moon and then take off from it? In the '60's? Wasn't that a time period when we had to land craft in the ocean and have ships pick them up?

Not only did we "land" but we did a take us with no help - no structures to hold up the rocket? Looking back on it, it's starting to look like a fake. Flame away..