Posted on 01/30/2010 6:07:08 AM PST by Notary Sojac
Short version, human spaceflight policy is one of the few things that Obama seems to be getting right, at least from a conservative standpoint.
Longer version:
The Bush Vision for Space Exploration, announced a year after the loss of the Columbia, in January 2004, was a good goal, and it got off to a decent start. Unfortunately, once he replaced Sean OKeefe, the NASA administrator, with Mike Griffin in 2005, the wheels started to come off. As the Augustine Panel pointed out this past fall, there was little prospect with the current plans of getting back to the moon on the stipulated schedule, and in anything resembling an affordable way. Unfortunately, once theyd hired the rocket scientist as the new administrator, the White House had simply put it on autopilot, because they had understandably higher priorities. For those interested, I wrote a long essay on the history of the human spaceflight program last summer at The New Atlantis, right up to present day minus five months or so, that explains why NASA in its current form isnt an institution that a conservative should support at all, but many do as a result of the historical contingencies of Apollo. I know that its become popular of late for conservatives to laud JFK (who admittedly wouldnt recognize, or probably even be allowed in todays Democrat Party), but its important to understand what Apollo was, and wasnt. It was a victory in the Cold War over the Soviets, but because we were at war, we waged it with a state socialist enterprise. What it was not was the first step of opening up the frontier to humanity, and was in fact a false start that has created a template for NASA and a groove in which weve been stuck for over four decades now, with many billions spent and little useful progress.
Part of the mindset that grew out of that era was that Space = NASA, and that Progress in Space = Funding NASA and that not funding NASA, or adequately funding NASA, or changing NASAs goals, is a step backwards. But as I noted at Popular Mechanics yesterday on the 24th anniversary of the Challenger loss, that event had a good outcome, in that it allowed private industry to start to become more involved, a trend that continues (and that the Bush/Griffin administration did support, albeit with paltry funding, in the form of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to pick up slack in delivering cargo to the space station after Shuttle is retired this year or next). We have been in fact developing, though far too slowly, the sort of private-enterprise (and more intrinsically American than Soviet in nature) space program that might have evolved more naturally had we not been side tracked by Apollo in the sixties.
What the administration is doing is to finally end the model that the government will have a state socialist design bureau to build a monopoly transportation system for its own use, at tremendous cost, but politically supportable because of all the pork it provides to Alabama, Florida and Texas. It proposes to expand the COTS program to provision of crew changeout in addition to cargo delivery, encouraging competition, and providing a robust capability that wont put us out of business when the government rocket fails (as has happened twice with the Shuttle in the past quarter century, for almost three years each time). Instead of a program projected to cost many tens of billions over the next decade for a NASA-owned-and-operated new rocket (Ares I) that will cost billions per flight of four astronauts, it is going to invest six billion dollars in developing private capability, with multiple competitors, and do it on a fixed-price, pay-for-performance basis, rather than the wasteful cost-plus model that inevitably results in overruns due to the perverse incentives.
At the same time, it is going to divert the funds being wasted by NASA on that redundant and unnecessary new rocket, and put at least some of them back into R&D for the kind of hardware necessary to actually get beyond low earth orbit (such as earth-departure stages, landers, propellant storage facilities, lunar resource utilization, etc.), R&D that had been starved by Mike Griffin in his desperation to find funds for his out-of-control Ares program. Yes, the administration has said that the moon is no longer an explicit, scheduled goal, but that doesnt mean that we wont go there, and in fact well be in much better shape to do so with the new plans than we ever would have with the current ones, should we decide to do so in the future. And in addition to the moon, well have the capability to visit, or divert asteroids, missions to the moons of Mars, and perhaps even Mars surface, because instead of wasting money on a new launch vehicle, we will have developed the affordable in-space infrastructure that allows us to do other things once private industry delivers us to orbit.
Yes, NASA spending creates jobs. The issue is (as Bastiat famously asked about the window repairers) does it create wealth? And how many jobs in the private sector arent created because NASA is discouraging private activities by competing with them with government dollars?
If the choice is between having no space program at all, and the current one, perhaps the latter is preferable. But if the choice is spending the taxpayers money to create wealth and new industries while actually accomplishing things in space and perhaps finally opening it up for the rest of us, versus a wasteful jobs program for Marshall Spaceflight Center, I know which Id prefer. The new administration plans will take us much more in that direction, and on the rare occasion that it gets something right, true conservatives should be applauding it, rather than recycling hoary tropes about staying close to home, and going nowhere. Sadly, it was the misbegotten policy of the previous administration that was doing that. At least in this area, its change I can believe in.
NASA should be privatized.
I sure hope this does mean more money for COTS.
But Obama isn’t trying to do the right thing. Obama is a communist who hates anything that represents American pride. He isn’t trying to find the best way to explore space,,, he is trying to divert money into welfare programs and change NASA into a global warming agency. But his biggest goal is to kill anything that makes people think “America”.
Obama isnt a conservative,,he’s a marxist. If i take a shot at my neighbor, and miss, but accidently kill a deer standing far in the background, it doesn’t make me a great deer hunter.
This NASA isn’t your father’s NASA. It’s bloated, inefficient and wasteful. Private business (which I thought this site supported) is in position to pick up the slack. This is a good decision, probably the only thing the Obama administration has gotten right. The only fear I have is that turning NASA into an Earth watch agency will kill long range robotic missions.
Obama wants to give all OUR scientific expertise to Muzlem countries so that they can bury it in the sand.
Obama is jealous of everything that makes America great because his Mama trained him to think that America’s Best was beyond his ability.
Obama has the worst case of “American-Envy” ever!
Obambi has no use for Utah, Alabama, Texas and all those places the current NASA contractors have work being done at. If this guy can't see we are going to fall so much behind the Chinese (!) in space travel, he has blinders on.
Commiebama doesent want to go to the Moon or Mars, he just wants to study globull warming. What a dupe author.
That is not how I would phrase it.
I may post my thoughts about this later on..
Gotta calm down first? lol
HAHAHAHA and you actually believe the Lier in Chief?
LOLLOLOLOLOL.
Privatize the Universe.
Get out of that stupid socialist treaty that no one can claim space and start staking private and national claim and see just how fast competition and progress at all levels catches fire! Bring back something from the moon and you get a 50-year exclusive prospecting lease to one square degree of it. Anything you bring back and sell is totally tax-free at least to the end of the century. Same thing for asteroids except the small ones, you claim the whole thing.
And wherever a private or public claim is thus staked, the country of origin gets sovereignty so long as it keeps the claim active within 50 years. That gives us 9 more years to get back to the lunar landing sites before someone else could claim them. This regime could be implmented unilaterally by the United States which could use its advantages in space to gain or impose international recognition of a privatizing system of governance.
You tell me, Kevin, if I’m right that that damned treaty is the greatest impediment to space exploration and exploitation (a GOOD word, by the way!)
Nah,
No more so then our military should be privatized.
NASA is just as important, it’s a tiny fraction of the federal budget.
I am all for private industry, I am happy to champion it too, but NASA trailblazes in ways that they cannot.
The nations that pull back from the frontiers, will wane and wither in influence determining human history.
There is a place for “Yankee Clippers”, but the nation must also accomplish great things through yes, our government sometimes, the military and NASA are TWO jobs I have no problem with the government backing robustly.
Obama is just trying to gain some political traction by handing out money rather then sticking to long term national strategic space goals that will not manifest during his term.
Our progress in space, taking giant steps for all mankind, is a tribute to American teamwork and excellence. Our finest minds in government, industry and academia have all pulled together. And we can be proud to say: We are first; we are the best; and we are so because were free. America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We can reach for greatness again. We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful, economic, and scientific gain. -Ronald Wilson Reagan
I’m one of those contractors ripping the government off in Huntsville at Marshall Space Flight Center. (Lot’s of sarcasm)
What did Columbus, Magellan, Lewis and Clark, Chuck Yeager, Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong all have in common?
Their exploration of the unknown was funded by government.
You won’t find private companies footing the bill for exploration of the UNKNOWN, because they are trying to make a profit.
Government does something that individual companies cannot - It pays for finding out what doesn’t work, what isn’t there and what doesn’t need to happen again.
“Privatize NASA” is a stupid statement.
What company can afford to send astronauts to the moon to find new resources? None.
Here’s another question: Why haven’t any private companies sent astronauts to the moon or Mars? No one is stopping them.
Research into space application is EXTREMELY challenging. It is also extremely expensive. Why?
Do you have a vacuum chamber in your lab? Uh, one big enough to place large automobile sized equipment?
How about Cryogenic holding tanks for the rocket engine test you need to run to validate your design? None of those either, huh?
NASA does the research that private companies cannot afford to do. And, NASA shares that research with the private sector so that they don’t go down the same dead end OR so that they can head in the RIGHT direction with the private investment moneys.
NASA isn’t perfect, and like any government agency, has its share of bloat and mismanagement. But, the technological spearhead that NASA provides is VITAL to the technological national security of this country.
Lastly, man is an explorer. People who quite exploring and quit wondering what is over the next horizon, well they are just dying in place.
As a country, if we quit taking the lead on exploring our universe, we become another European model - A country beginning to die.
“NASA should be privatized.”
To some extent. But at the very least, NASA should be broken up into smaller agencies.
Indeed and we need some incentive for private industry like solid property rights in space, otherwise there is no use if you go there and no one is supposed to own anything....
Certainly, as a “civilian” I am not aware of the managerial problems that NASA faces. However, whatever they are they can be corrected. What I fear is a government mandated retreat from achievement and space exploration so that the money can be used to buy votes for a rotten corrupt government. And this is what will happen as I am sure you know. It seems to me that this is kinda like trying to fix the pubbies from the inside out.
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