Author Topic: Discussing NASA's Future  (Read 32694 times)

Offline texas_space

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #80 on: 06/11/2008 01:46 pm »
Why do none of *these* people advocate the R&D approach that can make things like CxP not only attainable, but sustainable and evolutionary, as well? They are smart enough to know better!....aren't they?

Just playing devil's advocate here, but could NASA even accomplish the R&D mission (for spaceflight) if so directed?  Some on these forums have made the argument that the current generation of NASA at Marshall etc. don't have the actual expertise to design a new rocket (ie Ares) on their own.  If that is true, how would NASA do any better in working on a cheap, sustainable access to space (an advanced RLV)?  Their past efforts over the last twenty years haven't borne much fruit.  Contractors like LM and Boeing haven't done much better either.  Thoughts?
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Offline Phillip Huggan

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #81 on: 06/11/2008 01:56 pm »
This thread briefly swerved from the title to justifying NASA at all.  A big argument in favour of NASA is the ancillary benefit of medical technologies (easier to quantify than much of NASA's long-term physical sciences research).  Af least 10% and probably more, of the medical equipment in US hospitals comes in part or full from NASA R+D programmes.  I'm guessing even ignoring aerospace and materials science applications, the societal medical benefits of NASA investments return more than average US taxpayer expenditures over the last 50 years.
I agree there isn't much point marketing NASA beyond public school education content, as the money would be better spent on applied programmes.  But if NASA were to team up with health authorities to account how much the US and even the Western world has benfited from NASA medical technologies, it would probably shut up whoever wants to cut NASA's legs out.
« Last Edit: 06/11/2008 01:59 pm by Phillip Huggan »

Offline modavis

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #82 on: 06/11/2008 02:36 pm »
... could NASA even accomplish the R&D mission (for spaceflight) if so directed?  Some on these forums have made the argument that the current generation of NASA at Marshall etc. don't have the actual expertise to design a new rocket (ie Ares) on their own.  If that is true, how would NASA do any better in working on a cheap, sustainable access to space (an advanced RLV)?

The R&D I'm talking about is well short of "an advanced RLV" -- it's mostly materials, subsystems and systems, and tightly focused X-craft that validate no more than one innovation at a time. When and if the results of those add up to a decent prospect for an advanced RLV, I'm agnostic as to whether that's done by NASA, Big Aerospace, or Sprightly Economical Entrepreneurial NewSpace.

Offline khallow

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #83 on: 06/11/2008 02:38 pm »
Phillip, we've gone over the Tang effect in other threads. My take is that NASA hasn't developed much non-aerospace technology that wouldn't have been developed anyway. There's some value in NASA being an early adopter of various cutting edge technologies, but the benefits of NASA's spin-offs is often grossly exaggerated. Certainly in the case of medical technology, NASA hasn't done enough to warrant your degree of optimism.

Having said that, I think NASA will long have to justify its existence. My view is that important economic goals, that will make or break US efforts in space, are being ignored. That is, a key goal in the US space program should be the building of a space-based economy that isn't heavily dependent on US government funding. When we speak of the number of science projects (as opposed to what those science projects are doing) done on the ISS or the percentage of technologies "tainted" ;) by NASA research, we need to keep in mind that those activities don't necessarily contribute to NASA's long term goals or to the US's interests in space.
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Offline meiza

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #84 on: 06/11/2008 04:05 pm »
Excellent material, Modavis.
I have a lot of thoughts on this, I'll post them later.

Offline texas_space

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #85 on: 06/11/2008 06:02 pm »
... could NASA even accomplish the R&D mission (for spaceflight) if so directed?  Some on these forums have made the argument that the current generation of NASA at Marshall etc. don't have the actual expertise to design a new rocket (ie Ares) on their own.  If that is true, how would NASA do any better in working on a cheap, sustainable access to space (an advanced RLV)?

The R&D I'm talking about is well short of "an advanced RLV" -- it's mostly materials, subsystems and systems, and tightly focused X-craft that validate no more than one innovation at a time. When and if the results of those add up to a decent prospect for an advanced RLV, I'm agnostic as to whether that's done by NASA, Big Aerospace, or Sprightly Economical Entrepreneurial NewSpace.

Agree it doesn't to have to be NASA.  But I was curious if the expertise even resides at NASA to accomplish this alternate vision for NASA's spaceflight section?  I'm particularly interested to hear from someone who has worked at/works at NASA.
"We went to the moon nine times. Why fake it nine times, if we faked it?" - Charlie Duke

Offline Jim

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #86 on: 06/11/2008 06:04 pm »
contractors are going to do the work no matter who runs it

Offline Antares

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #87 on: 06/11/2008 06:41 pm »
I guess to summarize, working at NASA high positions or even in the space field in general  probably requires some suspension of disbelief, a living in fantasy, and it has been like that for decades.

It's not a healthy thing.
This is the most wildly mischaracterizing post I've seen on here in a long time.  I'm sure many, many members of this forum take exception to it.  You're strongly implying that space professionals are by nature of their positions unprofessional.
If I like something on NSF, it's probably because I know it to be accurate.  Every once in a while, it's just something I agree with.  Facts generally receive the former.

Offline PhalanxTX

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #88 on: 06/11/2008 08:02 pm »
I guess to summarize, working at NASA high positions or even in the space field in general  probably requires some suspension of disbelief, a living in fantasy, and it has been like that for decades.

It's not a healthy thing.

It's not a healthy thing to dream about how to accomplish that which is believed to be impossible? 

George Bernard Shaw said that the irrational man persists in adapting his environment to suit himself.  Therefore, he concluded that the irrational man is the root of all progress.  :)
"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program, and if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!"

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Offline hop

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #89 on: 06/11/2008 08:13 pm »
See, I've never questioned it. I've always been for all die hard science funding. From the Hadron accelerator to NASA, I like science for science sake.
Our society clearly values science for it's own sake, but how much we are willing to spend on it is obviously limited. The limit is defined by very complex political interactions, but no matter how much you like science, it does have to be limited. So at some level you have to justify why a say space station is more worthwhile than a big particle accelerator. NASA inevitably falls under scrutiny because it gets a pretty big part of the "science for it's own sake" pie.

Comparing the relative values are hard (this is far worse than apples and oranges!), but there are certainly a lot of people who feel that the manned program doesn't return science remotely in proportion to it's cost. This suggests that if you want wider support for it, you need to have other reasons for the program.

clongton:
I agree that more "advertising" isn't an answer. Improved outreach is a good thing (and outreach/education part of NASAs mission), but it isn't going to bring any dramatic change. If NASA wants a special position compared to other "science for it's own sake" projects, it needs to actually do stuff that is demonstrably more important than those projects.

Your suggestion seems like it amounts gerrymandering NASA jobs, which I doubt will change the overall picture much.

Offline khallow

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #90 on: 06/11/2008 08:46 pm »
I guess to summarize, working at NASA high positions or even in the space field in general  probably requires some suspension of disbelief, a living in fantasy, and it has been like that for decades.

It's not a healthy thing.
This is the most wildly mischaracterizing post I've seen on here in a long time.  I'm sure many, many members of this forum take exception to it.  You're strongly implying that space professionals are by nature of their positions unprofessional.

While it'll probably be prudent for meiza to tell us what he meant, it's worth noting that this followed on the heels of a couple of posts with the general theme that it'd be "crazy" to do X (where X is a space shuttle, space station, etc). My take is that there is a certain level of institutional delusion present in the space industry. But I'm not in a position to compare it to other industries though I can always make wild guesses. For example, I suspect that the high tech industry is at least as delusional.
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Offline clongton

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #91 on: 06/11/2008 09:06 pm »

clongton:
I agree that more "advertising" isn't an answer. Improved outreach is a good thing (and outreach/education part of NASAs mission), but it isn't going to bring any dramatic change. If NASA wants a special position compared to other "science for it's own sake" projects, it needs to actually do stuff that is demonstrably more important than those projects.

Your suggestion seems like it amounts gerrymandering NASA jobs, which I doubt will change the overall picture much.

Without this "gerrymandering" of existing NASA-related jobs, Shuttle would likely have been shut down years ago. It's probably the only real thing that kept enough funding going into NASA to keep it alive because too many legislators knew that they had constituants that depended on these jobs, and that these jobs affected the voting pattern; therefore their own political fortunes. It's not "gerrymandering". It's stacking the deck in your own favor to improve your own odds. Governments have been doing it for hundreds of years. It works.
« Last Edit: 06/11/2008 09:07 pm by clongton »
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Offline hop

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #92 on: 06/11/2008 10:35 pm »
It's not "gerrymandering". It's stacking the deck in your own favor to improve your own odds.
i.e. winning based on manipulating the process rather than on merits. I'm not seeing the big distinction, and I don't see how you distinguish between legitimate projects and pork with this method, since the criteria is jobs and federal money, not the merits of the end result. Substitute "NASA" for anything that brings in the same amount of votes, and you get the same result.

Our legislature is supposed to operate in the interests of the country, not by funneling money to their districts to buy votes.

In reality, it operates on a complex mix of both, but you seem to be suggesting the latter is perfectly legitimate. I find this quite astonishing. Do you believe that spaceflight is a special case where the end justifies the means, or is this acceptable for anything ?

Offline clongton

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #93 on: 06/12/2008 11:44 am »

Our legislature is supposed to operate in the interests of the country, not by funneling money to their districts to buy votes.

In reality, it operates on a complex mix of both, but you seem to be suggesting the latter is perfectly legitimate. I find this quite astonishing.

I don't vote, and neither do you, for a Senator or Representative that will look for opportunities to better the economic condition of people who live in other states than our own, *at the expense* of our own states. Both of us vote for Senators and Representatives who look for opportunities to better the economic conditions in our own states, because that has a positive effect on our own well-being. That is what the legislators are supposed to do. Representatives are elected to represent you and me, and our best interests. Senators are elected to represent the best interests of our own state. Beyond that, we look for people who are able to balance that with the needs of the nation as a whole, without loosing sight of the *primary* responsibility to represent us and our own states individually, first.

What is so astonishing about that? That’s why we elect them. It is the way it has always worked, and is the way it always will. It is the very core and foundation of the Republic. A government of the people, by the people and FOR the people.

What I was suggesting was that NASA needs to keep this in mind as new work (real work) becomes necessary as the size and scope of the VSE expands and to try to locate the center of that work where it doesn't currently have any presence. That will go a long way to bringing the legislators from those places into the NASA fold because now there will be people in their districts who make their living doing NASA-related work; people with the power, thru the vote, to re-elect or replace them.

There is nothing wrong with that. It's called making smart business and political choices, and NASA isn't the only agency that does it. Every federal agency in the nation that needs legislative support does this to help expand its influence.

This is one of those political realities that companies and agencies, and well meaning but otherwise unexposed people tend to overlook, at their peril. Nobody can operate without a good budget. One of the best ways to ensure a good budget is to have some influence in Congress, where the size and stipulations of the budget are determined. This *is* how that influence is created and maintained. It is perfectly legitimate, because, after all, the only reason those persons are there in the first place is to represent our individual interests. That's why we elected them, and if they don't do that, we replace them with someone who will. That's the source of the ability to influence Congress and the power of the ballot box. There is only one thing that every politician in the nation is scared to death of; and that is the power of each individual voter to vote either for or against them. Therefore, the ones that keep the voter happy get to keep their jobs. The ones that don't get replaced by someone else who will.
« Last Edit: 06/12/2008 11:51 am by clongton »
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Offline vt_hokie

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #94 on: 06/12/2008 07:47 pm »
Welfare for a few hundred thousand engineers is a really rotten reason for a space program.

I agree.  Railroads didn't keep steam locomotives around just to keep people employed, and likewise we shouldn't be keeping shuttle hardware around just to preserve jobs.  When do we put progress ahead of pork for a change?

Offline Jim

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #95 on: 06/12/2008 07:59 pm »
Welfare for a few hundred thousand engineers is a really rotten reason for a space program.

I agree.  Railroads didn't keep steam locomotives around just to keep people employed, and likewise we shouldn't be keeping shuttle hardware around just to preserve jobs.  When do we put progress ahead of pork for a change?

But the railroads still employed the useless fireman on the diesel to keep the job

Offline kraisee

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #96 on: 06/12/2008 08:21 pm »
There is no problem with keeping staff on the books as long as they are still producing positive results and benefit for the program.

Keeping them so they just sit around twiddling their thumbs for 2-5 years while simply 'waiting' for Ares-V/LSAM is just not a viable proposition though.

But keeping them and giving them real work to get on with is worthwhile. They have all had their background checks, they've has site training & are already fully familiar with the program and the full barrage of safety procedures already - not to mention whatever specific skills they are there for in the first place. Losing all of that experience isn't a smart move just to have to replace it all again 2-5 years later.

That's a critical difference to keep in mind along with the thought of what systems you will have and when so that you can put those people on different work during these 'transition years'. If there is going to be a 6 year gap after Shuttle and if your first vehicle just can't do anything more than launch the Orion you will be severely limiting the opportunities to put those workers on anything useful, even if you do keep them.

'Scuse the blatant plug, but that's why we think Jupiter-120 is better suited in this situation than Ares-I. We can use these 'surplus' staff during the 2.5 year down-time we have to produce and prepare other items which can fly on the first handful of missions along with the Orion spacecraft specifically because Jupiter-120 has sufficient payload performance to do so. We can use many of those staff *productively* on both temporary & permanent contracts to make the large Payload Fairings, to make the Space Shuttle Payload Delivery Modules and to prepare the half-dozen payloads for delivery to ISS in the 2012-2013 time frame. That's how you can make use of those experienced staff, keep them on the books and then have them ready, available and up-to-speed when CxP ramps up with the Lunar hardware a few years later when we then need those people. DIRECT actually needs the staff even before then.

Ross.
« Last Edit: 06/12/2008 08:26 pm by kraisee »
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Offline clongton

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #97 on: 06/12/2008 08:52 pm »
Welfare for a few hundred thousand engineers is a really rotten reason for a space program.

I agree.  Railroads didn't keep steam locomotives around just to keep people employed, and likewise we shouldn't be keeping shuttle hardware around just to preserve jobs.  When do we put progress ahead of pork for a change?

vt;
You miss the point. We have all been handed a bucket of lemons and told to "deal with it". We do not have to option to switch to cola. It is what it is. We can either drink the koolaid or try to make lemonaid out of the lemons. What I have been suggesting is a lemonaid recipe. That's not my preference, but it is the cards we have been dealt.
Chuck - DIRECT co-founder
I started my career on the Saturn-V F-1A engine

Offline Phillip Huggan

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Re: Discussing NASA's Future
« Reply #98 on: 06/18/2008 03:56 pm »
I suggested ice as relevant to this thread because the future of NASA will basically be for B.Obama to decide whether to pay more to make Orion go to a manned Lunar Base, or just to keep it for ISS.  Without the exploratory science to determine if there is ice that could one day be harvested on the Moon, Orion to the Moon is like colonizing Greenland rather than continental (arable) North America.
Here's NASA's 2008 budget in USD billions:
SCIENCE: Earth Science, 1.5; Heliophysics, 1.1; Planetary Science, 1.4; Astrophysics, 1.6
EXPLORATION SYSTEMS: Constellation Systems, 3.1; Advanced Capabilities, 0.9
AERONAUTICS RESEARCH: 0.6
CROSS-AGENCY SUPPORT: Education, 0.2; Advanced Business Systems 0.1; Innovative Partnerships Program, 0.2
SPACE OPERATIONS: Space Shuttle, 4.0; ISS, 2.2; Space and Flight Support, 0.6

Ideally you'd include some projections into the future, at least just beyond the Shuttle, but it would be helpful anyway to rank NASA's proirities as: #1 Shuttle, #2 Constellation, #3 ISS, #4 Astrophysics, #5 Earth Science, #6 Planetary Science, #7 Heliophysics, #8 Advanced Capabilities (Exploration), #9 Aeronautics Research, #9 Space and Flight Support.
Now I'm going to post my NASA priorities.  It might be more meaningful for others to do the same; when people claim to trim the fat, fat has different meanings for different people.  Feel free to include other priorities.
#1 Shuttle.  I'd include this even higher to cram in an extra CAM mission to ISS.
#2 ISS.  Should've been at a crew compliment of 6 a long time ago; if one Shuttle failure jeopardizes the whole science station why build it in the first place?
#3 Earth Science.  Higher to counter other government agencies (such as the President) working against Global Warming.
#4 Planetary Science.  Especially ice and active ecosystems.
#5 Advanced capabilities.  I assume this is the kind of stuff that would facilitate drilling into Encephalus and Europa.
#6 Astrophysics.
#7 Heliophysics.
#8 Space and Flight Support.  I'm thinking if there was more of this, the administrator that ignored two Columbia rescue contingencies might have had more time to focus upon the issue at hand, at the time.  ISS would've had an extra few years of science.  Call it Administrator Support.
#9 Constellation.  If developed for ISS, ISS will already be 2/3s into its projected lifetime.  If developed for Moon, need ice and to stop cancelling Lunar missions.
#10 NIAC.  Wild ideas that at think spawned the ion engine for nothing.  I'm liking tether technologies, solar sails, etc.  Materials science advances and eletronics shrinkage dictate NASA should reinstate and bolster this cancelled programme.

Basically I'm suggesting defocusing from the Moon and Mars to include more Solar System mapping until the issue of ice is resolved (sending ice from somewhere else to the Moon probably works albeit may take a while).  And without a clear vision of the future, why not add more basic science?

In response to the poster would suggested NASA's medical devices would be developed anyway, that might be true.  But I haven't read anything that analyzes interdisciplinary Crown Agency inventions.  I haven't read any posts here that support such a hypothesis.  There is little point talking about shifting say, Earth Sciences to NOAA.  Sure do it or not.  But if it is moved the budget goes with it.
To take one example, medical robotics technologies will be huge in the future for society.  Crappy robots to assist seniors do day-to-day tasks, and cutting edge surgical robots to assist shaky handed surgeons.  NASA develops this technology to aid an ill astronaut with the expertise of a ground civilian doctor.  Yet the spinoffs accrue to all corners (3rd world, remote 1st world)...it isn't fair to claim some other agency would fund this research.  Why wouldn't you want to account this when justifying NASA?  The whole purpose of the ISS is research.  Like it or not, NASA isn't about beating the Soviets to the Moon anymore; its initial Cold War objectives are obsolete.

 

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