1) When enough partners agree the program is bad, they will cancel it. Why do you assume the programs are and have to be bad? Define bad.
2) I don't care about semantics: Venture capital, capital from the founder (you could name him venture capitalist too). Problem is: For business sizes needed for orbital HSF (or large passenger aircraft) you don't get enough private recources together because of the large risk. Individual people and even groups of people are too risk averse. This is reality. Enter the government. (I am not talking about the risk of spaceflight, but the risk for investors of getting their money plus interest. Different things, although there are interconnections.)
3) I did. Because absolute size matters, and the risk accociated with the needed absolute size matters. You can ignore reality. But this is how it works. And reality for 40 years does show it.
1) You are on very dangerous ground now. Cassini, ISS and Shuttle (after Columbia) would have been canceled it they were a purely national or private efforts.
1) Without ESA partnership, Cassini as we know it might not have flown, 2) but NASA would not have stopped flying flagship missions.
But I think the private sector will likely be the first to return to the moon because they are not as risk adverse.
Quote1) Without ESA partnership, Cassini as we know it might not have flown, 2) but NASA would not have stopped flying flagship missions.1) Not might. It would have been canceled. Just like CRAF. Period. Sorry, but this has been the reality back in 1992/1993. Same for ISS.2) It did stop. Or do you know of a flagship mission after Cassini I haven't heard about? MSL is still way below the flagship level, the Mars program gets truely international starting 2016, JWST is truely international, and the Europa orbiter - which too is international - gets pushed into the future as fast as time goes.Define white elephant and name international programs where it applies.
I still don't understand what is wrong with having white elephants, e.g. big research programs?
The problem (it is better called a feature) with many modern research programs is, you can't do them in a laboratory with an assistant anymore. You need large, expensive and very sophisticated apparatures and instruments, with very tight tolerances etc. You need massive computer power and lots of human brains (literally) to understand even small parts of the topic.This is true for nuclear medicine research, fusion research, elementary particle research, solar system probes, in particular the ones going into the outer solar system, space telescopes, HSF (although we can debate the science here) and many other things. Soon it will also be true for large ground based telescopes in the 30-42m class, which are approching 1 billion Euros a piece.Because of these price tags and the risk such projects are done one at a time and mostly in international cooperation. These are often multi decade long projects. You can't devide them and built three small LHC's, just to avoid having a white elephant by your definition. You can't devide Cassini into six Discovery class probes and sent them to Saturn. You need basic infrastructure which can't be devided. Same for HST: six 60cm HST's won't be as helpful as one with a 2.4m mirror. In summary: You do these projects in the only way they can be done - big - or you don't do them at all. They are not useful once scaled down more than a few percent. Cassini with only a 75% budget gets you a probe to Saturn, but no instruments and no people to do the science. And trust me, Cassini has been very close to cancellation, and only having an obligation with ESA did save it in the end.You are glad NASA got away from these large programs and built something more useful. I wonder what this is.a) It implies smaller ones are more useful, which is clearly wrong. These big projects give the most science bang for the buck. One day stunts like Deep Impact or the recent lunar impact cost 10 to 20 percent of one big project. But their return is hardly above the noise, and not 10 or 20 percent. When Cassini is done, it will have explored the Saturnian system for 13 years, visited countless moon countless times, being in space for 20 years, and the project itself lasts more than 30 years. Similar for Voyager, Shuttle, ISS, etc.b) And it also implies projects listed above simply can't be done anymore.You see these projects as not useful, or worthless, and international cooperation prevents cancellation. I see these project as worthy, and international cooperation is the only way to secure the funding, share the risks, keep the commitment, and all this over decades. Again: You eighter do it this way or you give up these big projects. And I repeat: You can't replace them with smaller ones, you can't scale them down in a meaningful way.I still don't understand what is wrong with having white elephants, e.g. big research programs? Analyst
"Will NASA actually return mankind to the moon?"No. Why would it? Why would it be directed to do so? What is the gain?
Beware of small thinkers. - Ed Kyle
Look around, and then look up. The Earth's population has doubled since man last walked on the Moon. It will double again at least before they return.
Unfortunately, it appears that President Obama isn't going to let the U.S., or NASA, participate in that endeavor. I suspect we'll officially hear the disastrous news within a couple of weeks.
Short sighted leadership with no clear goals....
I agree with the sentiment of that statement. I believe that the only way we could achieve that goal would be if everyone was on the same page. How would you go about getting that? Right now, more people are interested in what colour shoes celeb. X. is wearing than with the sentiment in your statement. I just cannot see how or when the sentiment if your post would come to pass. Derfinitely not in my life time and not in the life time of anyone that will be born in the next 100 years - hell maybe not even in the life time of someone born in 500 years from now.
I think that the problem isn't with leadership or goals. They've got that in spades. What is lacking is a dose of realism. NASA really seems to think that whatever bill they present for their wonder-rocket(s) will be paid in full and advance without question. NASA has never bothered to plan shuttle replacement under a budget. The EELV phase 1 and DIRECT plans both do so, which is their advantage.I had to grin when one of the Augustine panel members said that the agency has to be willing to sacrifice capability because of cost. That is one thing that the 'orthodox' CxP plan does not do. It assumes that the only priority is to maximise capability on paper and that budget and engineering issues can be handwaved away later.