There has been talk of a hypothetical 1% of the budget dedicated to Space. Assuming that such a budget were a reality, I was wondering how it should be divided to create a long-term sustainable man-in-space program.
The way to have a "long-term sustainable man-in-space program" is not to have the government fund it and not have a "1% of the budget dedicated to Space".
Meh.
However, that still avoids the basic budget balance question for sustainability (irrespective of the source of funding). What is the ratio of research/development : construction : operation (ignoring pure science for a commercial venture) for long term sustainability?
You convinced me.I wrote Congressman Bilirakis to defund NASA so that private ventures could take the lead.
c. The way to have a "sustainable" program, it to get the government out of the funding aspect of it and let market forces drive it. Only the market is going to create a true need.
NASA's current approach to crewed space flight has been a slow-motion trainwreck for decades. Maybe pare NASA down to automated probes and basic research and give human access to space to someone or something else. Again, what or who that is would be a matter of a great deal of debate.When the Space Force was announced, I wondered if maybe they could have the money and the drive to do what was required to push human space flight to the next level. Although much sniggering was directed their way, they do have a lot of money and a mandate to protect our interests in orbit. Maybe they will take the torch and develop a cheap, reusable way of getting cargo to orbit that isn't mired in 1970's technology and pork barrel politics. That's a really big 'maybe'. I'm not really suggesting that this will happen. I just can't see any other way that government is going to achieve this. NASA is just not capable any more. Private enterprise might do it. If there aren't any setbacks, roadblocks or other things that get in the way. The future is very much (pardon) up in the air.
An agency that controls it's own plan and agenda,
When the Space Force was announced, I wondered if maybe they could have the money and the drive to do what was required to push human space flight to the next level.
Quote from: Jim on 07/02/2022 06:39 pmc. The way to have a "sustainable" program, it to get the government out of the funding aspect of it and let market forces drive it. Only the market is going to create a true need."The market" serves only the need of direct profit, but there are more needs than just profit that are no less "true".All the currently operating manned spaceflight systems are driven by government demand. Some are direct government programmes (corporate relationship: "here's the thing we want built, go build it"), some are government service provision (corporate relationship: "here's the service we want, go supply it within these parameters") but all would not exist without that demand. No bucks, no Buck Rodgers, and the profit from purely private missions alone (Inspiration 4 and the future Polaris missions) is not yet sufficient to have sustained the entire Dragon 2 development programme. And I think few would dispute that of currently operating manned spaceflight systems Dragon 2 is almost certain to have had the lowest development cost. What private industry can do, and has done for centuries, is take advantage of infrastructure, services, and the surrounding economy and industry, that can be - driven from local small scale to integrated national-scale - or set up from whole-cloth - by government intervention, be it by top-down direction or by demanding and more importantly funding services that are not economically viable as profit-driven businesses. This has been demonstrated to great effect by the Interstate Highway System, or the New Deal public works programmes. Or the current manned spaceflight programmes.The government 'getting out' of manned spaceflight would result in the shuttering of Starliner, Axiom, large portions of SNC's spaceflight programmes (Dream Chaser and CLD work), and many other programmes. Dragon 2 might survive, but I can just as well see SpaceX dropping it to focus on Starship. If 'getting out' instead does not mean that, and instead means continuation of CRS, Commercial Crew, and CLD, then what's being called for is not the government 'getting out' of funding manned spaceflight but instead a change in government contracting.
I'm honestly coming around to the idea that Ares/SLS/Orion sucking up all the money (and not delivering) was actually awesome for NASA as it meant NASA had to do commercial crew and HLS, which NASA wouldn't have done if they were well-funded.More funding doesn’t always equal more accomplishments. I actually kind of think NASA has enough money.
The Greybeards really don't like Goldin, but his direction was ultimately the right one. He basically presaged NewSpace, commercial crew, SpaceX and its RLVs, and the commercial HLS.
And as far as what the money would’ve/should’ve been spent on if NASA hadn’t had SLS, well, it probably would have been a lander project handled by Marshall. So again, maybe wasting all that money ended up a good thing because the lander HAD to be commercial.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 09/02/2022 04:26 amI'm honestly coming around to the idea that Ares/SLS/Orion sucking up all the money (and not delivering) was actually awesome for NASA as it meant NASA had to do commercial crew and HLS, which NASA wouldn't have done if they were well-funded.More funding doesn’t always equal more accomplishments. I actually kind of think NASA has enough money.We got very lucky in the timing of SpaceX's rise coinciding with that period. If it hadn't been there and at just the right point in its development, the commercial programs would have fizzled. So we should never be comfortable with giant albatross programs that turn NASA's purpose on its head and depend on being saved from outside. The agency's future relevance rests on how effective it can be at finally banning cost-plus contracts, and how rigorously it's allowed to enforce the terms of better ones.Quote from: Robotbeat on 09/02/2022 03:03 pmThe Greybeards really don't like Goldin, but his direction was ultimately the right one. He basically presaged NewSpace, commercial crew, SpaceX and its RLVs, and the commercial HLS.All Dan Goldin did was tell NASA to "do more with less," which was completely inane MBA mumbo jumbo when not backed up by structural reform in contracting. He literally just gave the contractor base permission to front-load more of their costs into overhead and start projects they had no plan to finish, back-loading the consequences as far into the future as possible (up to and including Mars EDL, lol!).While the failure of "Faster, Better, Cheaper" was one of the early factors leading to growing skepticism about Oldspace, the system as a whole has not fundamentally changed. They've been forced by SpaceX's performance to basically build a "guest room" in the system for reality, letting authentic projects move forward in parallel with the politically-designed program, but the program of record continues to be largely built around systemic waste and malfeasance.Quote from: Robotbeat on 09/02/2022 03:03 pmAnd as far as what the money would’ve/should’ve been spent on if NASA hadn’t had SLS, well, it probably would have been a lander project handled by Marshall. So again, maybe wasting all that money ended up a good thing because the lander HAD to be commercial.If that much money were directed into technology development from the ground up, similar to NACA and the modern CC regimes, that would be the ideal situation. What happens from something like that would be a supernova of progress across a wide array of areas.
On Goldin for another minute: Goldin pushed for a public/private partnership for X-33/VentureStar. It wasn’t purely a NASA affair but an investment by Lockheed. And that it failed was actually a good thing: it was a bad design that would’ve been very cost inefficient even if it worked, just like Shuttle. F9 has already met or exceeded the VentureStar cost *goals*. If it had been a NASA-only program, it would’ve probably continued until flight. It was a real bummer for those who worked on it, but this approach formed the basis of commercial cargo and crew programs later on.