Posted on 11/15/2004 8:56:22 AM PST by cogitator
Liberally excerpted due to length; I recommend clicking the article link and reading the whole dismal thing.
"VSE" stands for "Vision for Space Exploration".
Telling excerpts:
International Space Station: "There is no plan to handle NASA's share of the huge up-cargo and down-cargo demands of the finished ISS, except for a thin wedge labled "ISS transportation" in the famous VSE budget chart. There is no plan for a US cargo vehicle.
There is no initiative to do away with the Iran Non-Proliferation Act which forbids NASA to purchase Progress launches from Russia. There is no plan to purchase ATV cargo flights from Europe, or to purchase HTV flights from Japan.
Even worse, there is no plan for crew exchange without Shuttle. The "finished" ISS will require that a total of 12 crewpersons be launched and landed each year. NASA is responsible for the non-Russian share of this.
The INPA forbids the purchase of Soyuz flights; Europe and Japan have no manned vehicles to purchase; and the Chinese Shenzhou program is withering away with an apparent flight rate of less than 0.5/yr.
The announced US policy for the future of ISS amounts to this: NASA will finish assembling the ISS at vast further expense in American money (and possibly dead American astronauts), then dump the whole white elephant on the international partners, who will be totally unable to meet its crew exchange and "junk exchange" needs.
This plan is so stupid that even Congressmen are objecting to it. For some months there has been a series of increasingly less polite requests from Congress that NASA present some kind of plan for adequate logistical support of the finished ISS. But no plan has been produced - much less a budget.
.........
Hubble Robot Repair Mission: "For $2200M, one could build several more Hubbles and launch them on expendable boosters. It just doesn't make any sense to develop a whole new space robot technology for this one repair job. There is no chance that Congress will pony up this amount of money to save Hubble. Anybody working on this mission is wasting their time."
Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter:: "Of course, JIMO is the mission which was used to justify the hugely expensive Prometheus program for improved nuclear power in space.
But that was back in the pre-VSE environment when it was officially forbidden for NASA to work on or even plan for any post-ISS manned programs. Clearly, the Prometheus 100kw space reactor plant is far more necessary as an auxiliary power source for manned ships and bases than it is as propulsion power for unmanned probes."
Mars Sample Return: "For a while it seemed that Earth was only getting young volcanic Mars rocks, probably from the Tharsis region. But then ALH 84001 was belatedly recognised as a chunk of Mars' ancient highland crust.
The bogus controversy over "fossils" in this meteorite has tended to overshadow the large amount of real science that was extracted from it.
The most important programmatic implication of ALH 84001 was that if we collected enough Mars meteorites, we might get samples of most of the significant geological units on Mars.
Instead of spending billions on MSR, it might be more cost-effective to expand the existing collection program in Antartica, or offer big cash prizes to rockhounds for genuine Mars rocks in their collections.
Concluding paragraphs: "This is a pretty scary list of disasters. The combined impact of these failures and cancellations in the next year or so could be disastrous, on top of the Columbia, OSP, and Genesis fiascos. Possibly NASA needs an "Associate Administrator for Early Warning".
His job would be akin to that of the old court jester - to speak the unspeakable truths that loyal courtiers dare not mention, early enough that these doomed projects could be quietly put out of their misery before they generate too much bad publicity.
The sad thing is: some missions are really working well. The Mars Rovers, both of the working NASA Mars orbiters, Cassini, Stardust (if they can get the parachute to deploy when it gets back!) as space missions, and TRMM, Terra, Aqua, Aura in the earth-observing sector -- are all successful. Why waste money on boondoggles?
As the old saying goes, money talks, bull**** walks.
Let's face it: It's easy to be an armchair rocket scientist. If doing it better than NASA was easy, people would be doing it already.
And considering that the private sector is only now doing what NASA was doing nearly 50 years ago, I won't hold my breath for hot dog stands on the moon.
Dan Goldin is the #1 responsible @-hole for NASA's problems. He wouldn't fight for NASA, but he would explode at his staff for using out-dated letterhead on memos.
He was recently lined up to be president of BU's School of Medicine. "Faster, better, cheaper" applied to healthcare.... The man should be in jail for the manslaughter of our astronaughts.
You know the answer to that question. It is inherent to the way government programs are allocated and operated.
I wonder what it would cost to interest Burt Rutan in servicing the ISS?
And chief among them was allowing aerospace contractors to keep the ISS work-program-in-space in orbit. Imagine how much money could have been devoted to useful science and research if that thing had been shelved.
We're done in space. We've got trial lawyers to subsidize.
NASA made a reusable space plane that had a turn around time of 4 days and cost less than 40 million forty years ago?
The ISS has been written off due to lack of international [that's what the I in ISS stands for] cooperation. Russia has continued to work for a few $$, everybody else is too busy elsewhere or nowhere. The rest of the disasters are non-events.
Ask Mr. Rutan how difficult it would be to satisfy the certification requirements of NASA and the FAA and you'll understand why that hasn't happened.
NASA has been a great system for the space contractors in the paperwork business though.
... and the Chinese Shenzhou program is withering away with an apparent flight rate of less than 0.5/yr.
Huh? "Withering away"? Shenzhou hasn't even gotten started yet. It would be like saying "The American Mercury program is withering away because they haven't landed one on the Moon yet".
Oh, I certainly do know it. The article highlights problems at NASA that IMO need rectifying. That certainly doesn't mean that I think all of NASA needs to go -- they need a better planning process. The Space Shuttle lesson was that if something is too expensive and keeps going, it sucks money away from other, perhaps more useful, programs. That doesn't mean that the Space Shuttle isn't technologically amazing.
BUMP
When do we launch ? Who's going to start a live thread ?
NASA needs better and more diverse launch launch vehicles. Why they are doing anything except focusing on that is a total mystery to me. Launch vehicles are the alpha and the omega of the whole deal, and NASA's are terrible and don't even measure up to the Russians'.
Perhaps not, but 40 years ago the available technology that Rutan could utilize now wasn't nearly as advanced, and NASA's goals were not limited to sub-orbital flights. It's a big step from sub-orbital to life-sustaining orbital flight.
Does it do anything but suborbital altitude? Hello. Was done in the Mercury and Gemini programs.
Las Vegas might get his hotel in space eventually, but not a word from him or any other space entrepreneurs about private property rights to space resources. They all have that fatal blind spot.
I just realized something: EVERY time some big NASA mission or test set comes up in the media, a rant gets bat around on FR about that ol' horrible and wasteful NASA... smells fishy to me.
Except for the fact that these non-events are being funded (primarily planning and design) at a significant level. The Hubble Rescue Mission is the best example. One wonders if there were feasible plans for Hubble replacement missions (like 4 Hubble-equivalents launched every five years for the next two decades) if there'd be such a large outcry over "losing" the existing Hubble. (And note that it's still going to cost around $400 million for a mission just to de-orbit Hubble "safely".
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