Thoughts from Eric Berger. NASA is going to remain a mess until actual accomplishments in space become more important than targeted job preservation. And I don’t expect that to happen any time soon, at least with the current political leadership (and I think that Santorum is likely to be a very bad president when it comes to space policy, as will Mitt).
15 thoughts on “NASA’s Mars Mess”
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While I don’t think a whole ot of Willard, I think his gathering of a Space group was merely show. I doubt he cares a whit about space and I think he will be happy enough to let the private sector (his fave phrase) do it’s thing.
I actually laughed at seeing the words, “Santorum,” “likely,” and “President” in the same sentence.
Joking aside, my main worry/fear/prognostication is that the Mars money will be largely restored by further cutting from Commercial Crew and/or Tech Dev. We’ve effectively ended up right back where we were in 2008/2009. No crew transport, an Orion capsule that won’t be on-line until 2020ish, a large NASA rocket to nowhere, and no real unmanned program. Mike Griffin must be laughing hysterically in his underground evil laboratory.
Do you really expect it to turn out any other way?
Organization culture is very strong and organizations always return to their core behaviors when they are able to do so. Especially when outside forces (i.e. Congress members in districts that benefit from the core behavior) enable it to do so. That is why its probably easier to close down NASA and start over with a new agency then to keep trying to reform it.
Clicking through, you can read about the JWTS problems and find this gem from spacenews:
In that regard, the Space Launch System, which per the House and Senate spending bills is slated to receive nearly $2 billion next year, is an appropriate bill payer for JWST. Given that NASA has no established exploration destination requiring the heavy-lift rocket on the schedule mandated by Congress, stretching out its development to help fund an observatory of undeniable scientific merit — its substantial problems notwithstanding — is a fair trade.
Keep Mars probes, end SLS!
It’s not over until Congress sings…and they will be the first hogs to the trough. So a lot of this will get restored.
The entire NASA budget is so tiny with respect to the national problem, that any cut is a waste of breath. The train chugs on towards your face.
I always thought the NASA budget could go one of two ways:
1) Either it’s left alone because $15-$20 billion out of $1.3 trillion doesn’t even rise to the level of a rounding error. So it slides in under the radar
or
2) It’s cut because it’s politically less troublesome and the lying, dissembling, bastard, pols will say, “look here! I’ve saves you 3 billion. I’ve made REAL cuts!”
Evidently they’ve plumped for #2
“I always thought the NASA budget could go one of two ways:
1) Either it’s left alone because $15-$20 billion out of $1.3 trillion doesn’t even rise to the level of a rounding error. So it slides in under the radar
or
2) It’s cut because it’s politically less troublesome and the lying, dissembling, bastard, pols will say, “look here! I’ve saves you 3 billion. I’ve made REAL cuts!”
Evidently they’ve plumped for #2”
Nope, it’s #1.
The Budget hasn’t changed much, nor should change much. It should have dropped since they no longer flying the shuttle- so in a sense it’s been increased.
But the budget isn’t very important, what is important is what does NASA do. And basically NASA has changed a little, but backsliding- and probably ended at what it’s always done. Which can summed up as, nothing really important.
What is important is the political spin message that can be foisted off on the public. No Mars missions? that’s a “cut”.
You have a public where ~50% do not look into anything other than the surface. Obama knows this.
The entire NASA budget is so tiny..
This is such a BS argument, it irks me every time when i see it. Take a look at discretionary non-defense spending pie chart by organization, and its far from tiny.
NSF does not think its tiny.
“NSF does not think its tiny”.
I am sure the NSF would be more than happy to get their hands on any other pot of money they can. So what?
I dont think you understand the term “discretionary”
It’s about $16 billion, yes? I don’t care how tired you are of hearing it, in a budget of trillions, $16 billion
is
tiny.
Yeah. Because an average living room has thousands of cubic feet of air in it, a few cubic inches of flatulence is tiny compared to it…
And I don’t expect that to happen any time soon, at least with the current political leadership (and I think that Santorum is likely to be a very bad president when it comes to space policy, as will Mitt).
And I assume that Newt would make something happen?
It seems SLS is one main problem- and in few years SLS will be cancelled- regardless of who is elected.
The topic is what will change Mars exploration, and I don’t think more robots are going to make much difference.
I think a big different will occur once there is a fuel depot. And it doesn’t beyond Obama, Newt, Mitt, or Santorum ability to manage that.
Getting a new NASA administrator, could make a difference- and either of four could manage that.
Now who leaves first, SLS or the NASA administrator, I am guessing the administrator. And if current administrator leaves quietly, then probably Deputy administrator is next. Whether she will do any thing different as Administrator, is questionable.
If Newt, Santorum, or Mitt are president would they pick someone else?
Odd question, if Newt wanted to [very unlikely] would and/or could- if he doesn’t get elected president- be the NASA administrator. Would such a task be “beneath his status” and if he didn’t think so, could be at all effective?
Related:
“But we can also change how we structure our human spaceflight efforts. In the face of trillion-dollar deficits, there’s no other option. Mr. Gingrich’s solution is to allocate 10% of NASA’s annual budget of about $18 billion to prizes that would challenge and entice our best innovators and spaceflight entrepreneurs.
I would add that we should target the most important problem first–the cost of space launches. Use the first year’s prize money of $1.8 billion to create a Reusable Spaceplane Prize. Set the first prize at $1 billion, and the second prize at $800 million–and then get out of the way.”
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1606
Linked from: http://www.nasawatch.com/
Since Musk is already trying to do this, at this point it would probably be 1 billion dollars in his pocket.
But the rules of such as prize would be interesting.
Question what be allowable for said vehicle to re-fuel in space?
Because if you could refuel in space, it could be quite easy to win the prize.
So can whatever brings the rocket fuel to orbit need to be re-usable?
Yes, it could poor use of rocket fuel in LEO.
But don’t why the emphasis is on Reusable Spaceplane, what about making spacecraft reusable?
It seems to me, what you want is reusable first stage. And focus on recycling/reusing the second stage [and 3rd and/or 4th] in space. Keep the second stage [etc] in space- don’t bring it back to earth.
Have markets for rocket fuel, and used spacecraft [or space scrap]- because space scrap should more value in space than on earth.
What you want is cheap rocket fuel in space. It would also nice to have cheap scrap in space.
Reasoning is, you bring rocket fuel worth somewhere around $1 per lb- in space it’s worth say $2000 per lb. Or it’s worth $2000 per lb if it was buy-able.
The metal used in spacecraft might be $2 per lb on earth, how much is it worth in space- $10 or $100 or $1000 per lb. If scrap is engine rather than a tank is there any difference in value.
Now, I would favor NASA buying rocket fuel in space. But wouldn’t want NASA hoarding scrap- but someone could- don’t who or particularly why they want it, but someone would probably buy it if they were allowed to buy it, and buy it at a low price.
Just suppose this low price was $10 or $100 per lb, and they somehow spent $500 to $1000 per lb of scrap before resold it to some other party for some value that perhaps allowed the scrap dealer to make a profit. Whether grind the scrap up, keep some parts grind up other parts, etc, it not the issue.
Point is someone somewhere wants the junk for damn reason. Point is you faced with getting some pocket change to allow someone to take your junk, or you spend money returning to earth or disposing of it somehow.
If you spend 10 or 100 per lb in addition to material costs to fabricate on earth, why bring it down to earth? If whatever you sending costs 1000 to 10,000 per lb to make on earth- reusing by bringing it back to earth makes some sense.
Reusing a first stage makes sense, because it’s easier to return in order to reuse. In addition the weight requirement of first stage is not as important- you put lots of safety margin into your structure. It’s also important to have high reliable in the beginning launch phase. What would results be if your blast off- was safer then air craft take off from a runway?
Is there any reason it could be made more so it is safer- it one higher risk of flying on an airplane.