(1)I'm honestly not sure what to make of Wayne's Blog.
(2)Does he feel like a lot of effort was wasted on options that could never fit in the budget and that the commission should have spent more time ... making sure they had the numbers right ...
(1) Well, he's saying several slightly different things, which I'll elaborate on.
(2) I dunno about him, but I
know that a lot of effort was wasted. The key proof of this, in my mind, is the front and center presentation of BTDT as a valid reason for government policy. Once that completely erroneous axiom is accepted, it opens the gate for justification of future government policy only upon the criteria of newness. As I've mentioned, "Rox in space? New, new, new!"
The wasted effort went to hashing out, in elaborate detail, the costs of uber-expensive possible missions, largely to provide fodder for the master debaters of policy. Either that, or to give some substance to the forward looking statements of insider corporate interests, which I suspect is more to the point. Either that, or our policymakers are deliberately satisfying that British prediction that Americans will try all the wrong things before accepting the right thing.
Causuistry: The sophistry of causality; a form of deliberate cognitive dissonance where the same data point is used to argue in favor of one course of action, and agains a different, but essentially similar, course of action. Two examples: The alcoholic parent disapproving of his kid wanting to go out drinking. Finding out where Phobos came from is very important; the Moon's origin, not at all.
Per Wayne: "the committee was snookered by OMB". I'd add, the OMB was snookered by the political direction it was given, in that, in all probability, it's numbers were also suspect on certain fundamental levels. This is me looking at what comes out of the black box of OMB, and attempting to understand the working process within that black box. There I go again, but what else does Wayne mean when he sez: "the financial estimates made for the committee are highly suspect"?
He goes on to say: "at the very least the committee had ensured that NASA would get a significant budget increase". As I've said, and what must be true, government activity is deliberate conscious effort. It is goal seeking and it is fundamentally teleological.
Picking on HEFT again from this standpoint, and just because it is fresh in my mind. From the recommendations: Focus technology development on near term exploration goals (NEO by 2025); Do not develop a dedicated ISS ERV. If the
goal of NEO by 2025 is accepted, then the
recommendation of no dedicated ERV might very well result from the data generated in seeking to prove the feasibility of that goal. But that is no recommendation to make that visit; it is the goal and purpose of the report in the first place.
I would say that a purpose of the OMB report was, not surprisingly, to get an increase in NASA's budget. There's nothing wrong with overtly asking for an increase with the support of logical data, and everything wrong about hiding purpose behind false data. OMB was snookered.
Finally getting back to TrueBlue. It seems that the A-Comm was given a menu of choices to choose from. In part, what we need is the creation of the proper choice. That is, what we need is a proper path towards colonization. What we're getting instead is fireworks and BFR's. The clear outcome is that, for the forseeable future, we stay on planet.
He may be tired of not being able to leave LEO in 40 years but hearing that "Mars is the ultimate goal" for the duration of some of his co-workers lives yet never seeing any real progress.
Naaaah. Ya think?
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