There’s quite a bit of discussion in this post about NASA’s role in general, and particularly in technology development.

Reader “Tristan” says that:

The two key problems of space travel have yet to be solved: inexpensive access to LEO, and a way to get around in deep space quickly. Both require high-risk, long term research to produce breakthroughs in propulsion.

While these are two key problems, the former doesn’t “require high-risk, long term research to produce breakthroughs in propulsion.” As Andrew Case points out, correctly, in a later comment:

I have to disagree with Tristan on the propulsion issue. No new breakthroughs are needed in the basic technology of propulsion. We just need to take technologies already known to work and figure out ways to make them cheaper, more efficient, and more robust. Up to a point NASA can do that, by research programs aimed at ferreting out the various ways in which rocket engines can degrade and fail. Even better is if the power of the market can be brought to bear. History shows that markets are very effective at reducing the costs associated with a given technology.

Technologists often refer to “enhancing technologies” and “enabling technologies.”

The former improve systems, in terms of cost and performance. The latter allow them to be built at all. Of course, the definitions are dependent on the context of the mission being carried out, and no technology falls purely into one box or the other, but it’s a useful distinction.

For going to Mars, enabling technologies are required to make it practical (some of which I mentioned in the linked post (e.g., nuclear propulsion, or capability to manufacture propellants from the Martian atmosphere). But for earth to orbit, it is possible to achieve dramatic cost reductions without new technology, unless you define vehicle design integration and development as a technology per se. That’s because the cause of high launch costs isn’t lack of technology, but lack of activity, and vehicles designed to be flown at a high flight rate (and such vehicles can indeed be designed with today’s materials and propulsion, but no one has made the investment to do so).

I make the distinction because it helps us prioritize NASA’s potential role. It is useful for the agency to be working on enhancing technologies, but it’s essential for them to be working on the enabling ones. That’s how the resources should be allocated, if they’re limited (as they are, of course).

NASA has been spending (and sadly, squandering) entirely too much money on launch technologies, and altogether too little on deep-space and planet-settling technologies, though the former aren’t needed as badly and can be funded by the private sector, whereas the latter are vital, with no apparent near-term payoff.