11 thoughts on “NASA’s Next Fifty Years”

1. Something like a National Advisory Committee for Aerospace?

2. Well, I see us as having two main goals, space settlement (expanding into the future), and scientific exploration. The entrepreneurs might have enough capital to get over the hump and start turning a profit on space settlement, but the scientific exploration of space is never going to be a direct revenue generator, and will need government funding.

   Although I agree with Bob Zubrin that the robotic efforts are mission oriented, when contrasted to the human spaceflight program, I think both suffer from some of the same basic problems of a top-down big-government approach laden with pork and political goals that are unrelated to those missions. Of late, part of the goal seems to be making sure plenty of EU members get to build critical elements of the probe, as opposed to buying parts from “Probes-R-Us”, a hypothetical company that might even offer entire probes and cheap deep-space delivery services.

   So I think there’s room to drill past this part of his essay, which necessarily focuses on human spaceflight and isn’t getting distracted with the robotic missions.

   A space agency funded by 4 percent of the world’s population, it is responsible for launching 100 percent of the rovers that have ever wheeled on Mars; all the probes that have visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto; nearly all the major space telescopes; and all the people who have ever walked on the Moon. But while its robotic planetary exploration and space astronomy programs continue to produce epic results, for nearly half a century its human spaceflight effort has been stuck in low Earth orbit.

   Are the results in fact “epic”, and how do they really rate in dollars per data compared to what a different approach might produce? By what metric is the James Webb space telescope program more functional than SLS/Orion? JPL does amazing work, but aren’t their prices quite reflective of the inflated costs throughout NASA and the legacy space industry?

   They’re great in that their amazing probes do in fact get to far-flung planets and produce a treasure trove of information, whereas most people can’t remember when they last looked at a video of something going on on the ISS, but at present there’s also nothing else to compare their results to except other governments’ space-agency exploration programs.

   It’s perhaps just good luck that the commercial space sector has enabled new entrepreneurs and innovators to dramatically lower launch costs, and the robotic missions will at some point greatly benefit from the better launch pricing.

   But we’re still running the programs based on building political support through employment and contracting, and seeing how big of a budget item Congress is willing to fund (similar to other big science projects). They have to convince Congress that Ganymede is really important, but often what it comes down to is that Ganymede is really important because the ridiculously profitable spectrometer for the Ganymede mission will be built in Montana.

   Perhaps it would make more sense for the government to say “We’d like a probe than can travel to Y and do Z, or something close to Z, and we’re looking for the lowest bid,” and an industry that replies “We have something even better than Z, and X is actually a more interesting target.”

   Better yet, Probes-R-US competes with Bob’s Probe Warehouse, Amazon Probe, and Tesla Rovers, who try to cut mission costs in all sorts of ways. One makes a light probe and cuts costs by doing everything in house, one buys cheap commercial instruments, packs them in heavy radiation shielding, and relies on cheap launch with high throw weights to lower the bottom line. One offers an old reworked back-up probe at a deep discount. JPL selects a bidder and then sits back to await the arrival of the data.

   This would be a big change. JPL started out testing components to make better, more reliable rockets. Their role kept evolving, but at this point I view them as ideally a customer, a team of planetary scientists who would like their computer screens to show all kinds of scientific data so they can analyze it. Essentially, instead of running a robotic deep space exploration program, the government could be contracting for really remote data services.

   If what the government wants is up-to-the-minute weather data, does it really require a fundamentally different management approach and organizational structure if the weather satellites happen to orbit a different planet?

   The details are in what the contract says about who runs the probes and who eats the cost if the probes breaks down before the mission is over – whether it’s leasing, you break it you bought it, cost plus, milestones, etc.

   However, rethinking our approach to robotic missions isn’t a real priority when JPL can say “Have you been to Houston lately?”

   1. So, I like what you are saying and, if I understand correctly, think that scaling back some decadal aspirations to ones that can be achieved for less money, over shorter time frames, in larger quantities, and for less or equal money than we spend now is certainly achievable but would there be enough people or money to pay them to make all of that data useful?

      1. Well, what you suggest is kind of how the SLS and JWST started out. But then the aspirations of fairly low-cost, rapid development programs (we’ll re-use Shuttle hardware!) grew into the SLS and JWST we know today. The telescope was supposed to be a $500 million program and fly 11 years after the program started. Now its up to $10 billion and the flight date is at least 25 years after the project’s start, at least so far.

         They can change the development concepts, the slogans (Faster, Better, Cheaper), and the mission statement, but they’re stuck being what they are, a massive government operation that is subject to all the pathologies that entails. For example, the programs that are running smoothly often have their funding raided to prop up the programs that are running poorly. A mission that’s done quickly and cheaply provides a few jobs for a couple of years, but a program like JWST provides long term careers for thousands. When a bureaucrat figures out a way to do the assigned job with a third of the staff, then he only gets to keep a third the staff. He’s downsized for being efficient.

         So I’m suggesting that maybe the government should bid for private sector services or equipment, even space probes, instead of trying to run massive programs that, due to their size, become virtually unkillable budget items, sacrosanct NASA centers, or vital regional revitalization and jobs programs.

         1. Well, what you suggest is kind of how the SLS and JWST started out… They can change the development concepts, the slogans (Faster, Better, Cheaper)…

            Maybe to some degree but not how I mean, or I though what you meant.

            A mission that’s done quickly and cheaply provides a few jobs for a couple of years, but a program like JWST provides long term careers for thousands.

            True, except that what you suggest isn’t something that would last a couple of years. Placing a constellation of satellites around Mars would be decades of work and the same is true for replicating this around other heavenly bodies.

            Companies can certainly build idiosyncratic vehicles but they do better building multiples of things. So, no matter what the purpose is, I think the way you describe procuring services means that there will be an abundance of data over long periods of time for the same amount of money that NASA and congress have already shown willing to spend. But that creates the most wonderful of problems of turning it all into something usable.

            For example, our Mars rovers have lives longer than expected. They go until they die. NASA will soon be doing yearly lunar missions. Some of those will have parts with short lifespans but other parts could have significantly longer lifespans. Maybe it wont be a big deal to manage all that in a meaningful way, but maybe it will be a big deal.

            With Super Heavy, how expensive would it really be to throw a constellation of satellites to Mars or take the slow road to Pluto? Is there more to be gained from prolonged observation than a infinitesimally quick flyby? Could there be a similar series of trade offs for a trip to Europa or Enceladus?

            I think there is a lot of opportunity for job expansion and job security if NASA was a bit more humble and patient.

3. I like the quote and am not going to click on the link to find the parts that get a little sensational.

   This method might be a little slower to get going and be less predictable but the potential upside beyond just making it cheaper for government to get stuff done is enormous. It is also what we are currently doing.

   The dual track approach was started under Bush and continued by both Obama and Trump. Trump has shown signs he might take it even further but we wont know until it happens. People always talk about NASA always having things cancelled from one administration to the next, and while partially true it isn’t always true and not just when it comes to SLS.

   I hope this continues and even if it is slower and has to be implemented incrementally as time goes on, we will all be better off.

4. I was reading the Space News commemorative issue:

   https://spacenews.com/download-your-apollo-11-at-50-special-digital-edition/

   and I saw an article about going to the moon and staying there. I started scrolling by, and saw a pull quote that caught my attention:

   “For decades, with each failed programmatic attempt at a lunar return, the ostensible goal has been to “return to the moon, this time to stay.” Yet somehow, rather than being bold, the plans always start with a repeat of what we did in the 1960s.”

   And I thought: that sounds familiar….and so I scrolled up to the byline…

   Nicely done!

   1. I’m waiting for the Space News issue commemorating 50 years since the Apollo 12 mission. Conrad, Bean, Gordon or bust!

      I’m just worried that NASA will have trouble retaining the public’s interest by the time we’re celebrating the anniversary of Young, Duke, and Mattingly or Cernan, Schmitt, and Evans, and I fear the celebrations may face funding cuts before then.

5. In the course of 50 years, NASA has gone from being able to land men on the moon several times a year, to the Shuttle era of LEO, and now to being unable to launch astronauts at all. I think their highest operating current manned craft is a research U2.

   If one extends that trendline for the next 50 years, NASA will need horses and stagecoaches to get personal from Houston to Marshal.

   1. Eh. If they drive like a maniac, an astronaut can make the trip in record time wearing a wig, a trench coat, and a diaper. It’s something we learned from one of the low points in the astronaut program.

6. The Verge on the current state of NASA, with an appearance by Lori Garver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-it-OH7pxK4

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