Posted on 04/06/2010 5:47:06 PM PDT by NonZeroSum
During World War II in the Pacific, many native tribes were astounded by their first contact with an advanced technological civilization, when the Americans would come in, clear a strip in the jungle, set up a control tower and loud giant silver birds would appear from the sky bearing canned food, trinkets, fuel and other supplies. After the war, the Americans went away for the most part, but the memories remained. Many of the natives, changed forever by the experience, decided to replicate it. They cleared their own strips, built control towers of thatch and palm, and waited for the silver birds to come back, providing again the manna from the heavens. Unfortunately, many in the space community engage in similar thinking, with a nostalgia for Apollo, when we had a "real space program."
After President Bush's announcement of the Vision for Space Exploration a little over six years ago, the program got off to a good start under NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe and exploration chief Admiral Craig Steidle. But O'Keefe resigned, and was replaced by Mike Griffin, who canned Steidle, and then formed his own cargo cult, one that aimed to be an "Apollo on steroids," complete with a bigger rocket and crew and service module. He hoped, as the Pacific natives did, that by replicating the plans of the fathers of the space age, he could replicate their success as well.
But Apollo was a success only in terms of the fact that we beat the Soviets to the moon at the peak of the Cold War, which was the main reason it could justify the funding it received. (At one point, it was four percent of the federal budget.) In terms of providing an affordable and politically sustainable manned space program, it was an utter failure, as evidenced by the fact that we stopped doing it (and the decision to do so was, in fact, made in 1967, even before the first landing). In modeling his plans on this achievement, he has caused the new vision to fail as well. Because of both its slow pace, and its sixties approach, it was less Apollo on steroids than Apollo on Geritol.
[Read the rest at Popular Mechanics]
The policy like everything Obama is doing is a defeatist policy...
The success of the moon program was not a bunch of rocks or even beating the Russians to the moon. The success which more than adequately paid for the INVESTMENT was that of scientific and technological advancement in addition to developing an actual career path promoting science and engineering education...
Ever hear the phrase "necessity is the mother of invention"?
Sitting on our ass and contract out is not leadership.
I will agree with you though that not investing in this will save money that Obama will better use providing free education to public servants e.g. social workers and psychologists and MORONS that would agree with you.
I guess I just imagined the conversation I had today with a NASA guy, talking about the breakthrough technology being developed as a part of the ARES system.
I love it when people tell me that the hardware I see and the tests I see (and even participate in) don’t exist.
BTW, here’s a little secret for you. Unless you can develop a NEW type of commercial satellite, one that big corporations will pay through the nose to use, the only customer for space is Uncle Sam.
Either NASA will pay for NASA to develop the rockets or NASA will pay a contractor for the ride. No private company is gonna build a usefull rocket unless the government is paying the fare.
OK, don't keep us in suspense. What "breakthrough technology" was going to be provided by Ares? And how would it have "broken through"?
I have to agree with this assessment. At present, there is no market for anything beyond low earth orbit. It’s not as if we found an asteroid made of gold, or had a million people living on the moon demanding more supplies and a better living standard, or some other compelling reason for companies to develop infrastructure for beyond LEO. It takes huge sums to develop the technology—who will pay them to do so?
Government simply HAS to get the ball rolling, because there is NO commercial market there at present. Find me some asteroids containing huge amounts of precious metals, expensive rare earths, diamonds, or certain radioactives, and a market MIGHT open up for it—assuming that the costs for developing all the technologies required work out. That includes a lot, by the way—launch, life support (which includes everything from consumables to renewables to radiation protection), recovery, and return (how do you soft-land precious metals in a way that’s cost-effective?)
If anyone is thinking, “oh, we just need companies to start a mining operation like in ‘Outland’”. Okay...mining for WHAT? Because it sure won’t be for iron or anything else that we can get right here. If we find vast amounts of gold you MIGHT be able to make the case, assuming that the commercial world (read: shareholders and boards of directors) don’t balk at the enormous amount of risk involved in starting such an undertaking from scratch.
Sorry, but I don’t buy it. We’re NEVER going to get out of LEO until governments get people living permanently somewhere other than in LEO—the moon, an asteroid, Mars, it doesn’t much matter. It has to be far enough that there is a market for infrastructure that by definition isn’t required for LEO operations.
The policy is to retreat from manned space flight for the foreseeable future. In short declare defeat and surrender manned space flight to Russia, China and India. Another insane decision by an incompetent president.
No, that was the Bush policy, even if inadvertent, due to choosing a bad administrator. The new policy offers much more hope for the future than the previous one. Did you even read the linked article? Have you actually looked at the proposed budget? My bet is no on both counts.
So how does the USA do manned flight after the shuttle retires this year? And yes I read the article.
If there was an asteroid made of pure gold, platinum, whatever in low earth orbit you couldn't bring it down with the shuttle and make a profit.
While there are lots of ideas for developing low cost low earth orbit vehicles, if you think a cost plus NASA contract will ever get you there you are delusional.
That was the Bush plan, decided over six years ago.
Second step: cancel what would have been the earliest possible shuttle replacement.
There was never going to be a "Shuttle replacement," but Ares/Orion, the new means of getting NASA astronauts to orbit, was unlikely to occur before 2017, and likely would have taken longer, according the Augustine Panel, and NASA's own internal schedule risk estimates. There are at least two commercial options that could be available within five years.
Third step: But wait! Increase overall funding for NASA! What a bold new idea! (fine print: increases in funding will be applied toward increasing the numbers of government funded global warming researchers.)
No, that's not the fine print. Most of the additional funding will go into commercial crew, and technologies needed to actually break out of low earth orbit, which had been starved under Griffin's plan.
Newt Gingrich agrees with this new direction. So does Dana Rohrabacher and Bob Walker. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. This is a much better policy than the Bush policy was, if you care about humans in space.
There are lots and lots of anti-NASA trolls out when ever the subject of manned space program come up. They bait us with the “we can’t afford it”, the “nothing usefull”, the “not constitutional”, the been there done that”, and a host of other negative sterotypical arguements.
There is no point in trying to convince them of any thing: they are fanatics - “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”—Winston Churchill
But please do not let them stop you from enlightening the rest of us who are very interested in learning more -— ad astra per aspera.
I hope every one here understands that Russia, for one, has a State Policy of manned space exploration...
Operation manual: place man in chair, inflate balloons with helium, when at desired altitude don oxygen mask, ignite rocket motor(s).
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