Over at Open Market, I’ve roundly fisked the latest display of ignorance from a supposed conservative on the new space policy. It’s sad that one of Breitbart’s sites would publish such nonsense. The real “Solyndra in Space” is SLS.
[Update a few minutes later]
I see that Thomas James has shredded it as well.
Went to go see 2016 over the weekend and it had some distortions about NASA in it as well.
The Breitbart article is off base in a number of areas but I agree that NASA is unfocused because it doesn’t have a good over arching strategy. Technology developments are important tactics but they are not themselves a strategy. They are also incredibly important and advocates and space cadets should talk more about them so that people know what needs to be achieved before we can have a sustainable presence in space.
Sometimes I think these issues are ignored by the advocacy community because it has such a strong dampening effect on enthusiasm.
The main difference between Solyndra and CCDEV is that the CCDEV contractors have to reach certain technological milestones in order to get funding. Accountability is part of the system whereas with Solyndra and similar loan programs, there was no accountability. Funding wasn’t awarded based on achievements or competency.
Here are Musk’s political contribution records, http://www.opensecrets.org/usearch/index.php?q=elon+musk&searchButt_clean.x=25&searchButt_clean.y=28&cx=010677907462955562473%3Anlldkv0jvam&cof=FORID%3A11#itemized
I think NASA has no apparent over-arching strategy other than to survive as an agency. There is no defined mission such as “Land a man on the moon and return him home within this decade” so they’ve somewhat floundered for a long time.
I’m an advocate of NASA going back to its NACA roots as a technology development agency. NACA did own some R&D aircraft but they were for flight test, not operations. NACA owned and operated a good collections of wind tunnels, performed essential research into topics like airfoil design, drag reduction and the like. The lessons learned from these R&D projects enabled the US aerospace industry to make incredible advances such as what happened from 1945 through the early 1960s (early jet aircraft to the Blackbird).
NASA still does good R&D. An example is the PICA heat shield technology. SpaceX adapted PICA and made their own enhancements to create the PICA-X heat shield for their Dragon capsule. There are a host of other things that need to be developed before manned missions to asteroids and other worlds, such a radiation shielding, better life support systems that can operate for months to years without replenishment and mediation for the long term effects of weightlessness.
NASA should continue the leadership in planetary exploration, aerospace technology development and scientific satellites.
They could lead in manned exploration too, provided they got out of the Earth to orbit (any orbit) and crew return business. They’ll be forced out of it eventually anyway, and if they try to change tactics then it will be too late.
Government has historically had a place in exploration, such as Columbus’s expeditions or Lewis and Clark. Space exploration means going somewhere to discover things. NASA could lead in that.
I’m more interested in long term space exploitation than exploration. We landed 6 missions on the moon in the name of exploration and then we quit. Exploration tends to be that way – who cares about the second expedition to climb Mount Everest? Exploitation is taking advantage of the things that make space useful. Governments don’t have a good track record in this regard other than for military purposes.
Government’s role has been substandard or non-existent support followed by revisionist history claiming responsibility for successes and disowning failures.
NASA is successfully continuing this tradition.
Strategy… other than extrasolar planet search and mapping the resources of the inner solar system I think there isn’t a lot that we can currently consider doing that has not been done before. So making the things we are doing now for cheaper liberates more funds to consider other avenues. Any manned Mars expedition or Lunar base will need R&D, demos, of a lot of foundational technology before it should be attempted. Reusable rockets which can use in-situ propellants. ISRU technologies for habitat construction, power generation, consumables like air, food and water. The list goes on and on.
The only thing which is doable in the next generation is lunar robotic exploration in a grand scale. We could just buy several already existing rockets and send mass produced robots to the lunar surface with various payloads as demonstrators of ISRU and for building a lunar base which would be used by people in future missions. I doubt it would cost more than what is being spent on SLS right now.
However assume someone develops a self replicating solar powered robot which can produce its building blocks out of lunar soil. In that case the cost of the mission would be reduced by orders of magnitude since a lot less launches and robots would be initially required.
If these “conservative” pundits are so clueless on space issues, it makes you wonder how much else they really are clueless about – yet people assume it is fact.
This of course applies to all pundits, no matter political affiliation. You have to find out more. Trust but you MUST verify. It is frightening to realize how little many professional “opinionators” really know.
Lars,
Yes, expertise in one narrow area doesn’t make you an expert in all areas, the fundamental flaw of the blogsphere.
It’s scary how much incompetence and amateurism there is in large and reputable companies. I wonder if that is unique to my own field of software development, but I’m afraid it’s not. It’s amazing society hasn’t collapsed yet.
It is a function of current productivity per (working) capita that so many fools can still eat. If productivity, including agricultural, dropped to that of a century or two ago, many would be left to starve. Many more than that would be forced into menial jobs that they currently think are “below” them at this time.
It is productivity alone that has prevented the collapse, and the constant interference with it from incompetent managers and government threatens our standard of living at the least, and very existence as a nation in the long run.
I’m gratified to see that the “Open Market” piece is getting pretty soundly trashed in the comments. Also, Thomas M., I’ve seen this “expertism creep” in many venues over the years. It certainly isn’t a problem restricted to the blogosphere. Dan Gardner’s “Future Babel” gives many wonderful and depressing examples of this, as well as the unreliability of “experts” in general.
I’m gratified to see that the “Open Market” piece is getting pretty soundly trashed in the comments.
Do you mean the Big Government piece?
The real Solyndra In Space is Rocket Plane Kistler… I wonder if Solyndra was destroyed by bumbling bureaucrats who have no understanding of corporate financing too.
Sad how Republican commenters can bray just like… donkeys. If I read one more “Muslim Outreach” post, I’m gonna puke.
SLS is the real problem. It’s like, an elephant is standing on your balls? Ignore it and swat the butterfly on your forehead–with a club.
D’oh!
Rand — late in replying but yes, the Big Government piece was the one I meant.
It seems that the neutered “opposition” has slimed its way into the Breitbart sites. Something that would make Breitbart himself turn over in his grave. Interesting since Breitbart was a stunning example of the Real Opposition to the corrupt permanent USG.
If you want to know what I mean by “neutered opposition”, Mencius Moldbug came up with the term. If you think his essays are too long, then this will ring a bell: