Slashdot Mirror

colonist writes "35 years ago, on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 began to achieve the goal set by the late President Kennedy: '...before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth'. On July 20, Michael Collins orbited the moon in the command module Columbia while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface in the lunar module Eagle. The descent engine was halfway through its final 12-minute burn when a yellow caution light lit up on the display of the lunar module computer. [ARMSTRONG: Program Alarm... It's a 1202. ALDRIN: 1202. (Pause) ARMSTRONG: (To Buzz) What is it? Let's incorporate (the landing radar data). (To Houston) Give us a reading on the 1202 Program Alarm.] Buzz Aldrin's recollection: 'Back in Houston, not to mention on board the Eagle, hearts shot up into throats while we waited to learn what would happen. We had received two of the caution lights when Steve Bales the flight controller responsible for LM computer activity, told us to proceed... We received three or four more warnings but kept on going. When Mike, Neil, and I were presented with Medals of Freedom by President Nixon, Steve also received one. He certainly deserved it, because without him we might not have landed.' Fred Martin describes the incidents, and Peter Adler looks at the design of the system."

colonist writes "35 years ago, on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 began to achieve the goal set by the late President Kennedy: '...before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth'. On July 20, Michael Collins orbited the moon in the command module Columbia while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface in the lunar module Eagle. The descent engine was halfway through its final 12-minute burn when a yellow caution light lit up on the display of the lunar module computer. [ARMSTRONG: Program Alarm... It's a 1202. ALDRIN: 1202. (Pause) ARMSTRONG: (To Buzz) What is it? Let's incorporate (the landing radar data). (To Houston) Give us a reading on the 1202 Program Alarm.] Buzz Aldrin's recollection: 'Back in Houston, not to mention on board the Eagle, hearts shot up into throats while we waited to learn what would happen. We had received two of the caution lights when Steve Bales the flight controller responsible for LM computer activity, told us to proceed... We received three or four more warnings but kept on going. When Mike, Neil, and I were presented with Medals of Freedom by President Nixon, Steve also received one. He certainly deserved it, because without him we might not have landed.' Fred Martin describes the incidents, and Peter Adler looks at the design of the system."

tyleremerson writes "With today's film release of "I, Robot," the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence has launched a new website, 3 Laws Unsafe. 3 Laws Unsafe explores the non-fictional problems presented by Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. The Three Laws are widely known and are often taken seriously as reasonable solutions for guiding future AI. But are they truly reasonable? 3 Laws Unsafe tries to address this question." Reader Rob Carr has submitted a review of the movie, below, that he promises is spoiler-free.

I, Robot: A Movie Review that's 3 Laws (and Spoiler) Safe!

A movie review by Rob Carr

Thanks to Eide's Entertainment I got to see I, Robot tonight. As someone who grew up with Isaac Asimov's robot stories, I've come to expect a mystery based on the implications of the 3 Laws of Robotics (or the lack of one or part of one of those laws), the "Frankenstein Complex," and Dr. Susan Calvin. I was afraid that the movie might miss out on this, especially since it's not a direct adaptation of the book, but "inspired" by the Good Doctor Asimov.

The movie met my expectations and more. Will Smith, whom we all know as an overconfident smart@$$ character from such movies as "Independence Day" and the two "Men in Black" movies, played a somewhat less confident and far less wisecracking character. It was a welcome change to see him less confident. Yeah, some of the stunts were a little absurd (am I the only one thinking of Gemini 8 at one point in the movie?) but that's to be expected from this type of movie. Bridget Moynahan was far too young to be the Susan Calvin I remember, but that's also to be expected in this type of movie. James Cromwell (whom you'll all remember from Star Trek: First Contact and Enterprise's "Broken Bow" episode as Dr. Zefram Cochrane) gave a flat performance - but that's actually a complement. I doubt anyone will recognize Wash from "Firefly" as an important robot in the story.

It's customary to comment on how well the CGI was done. I liked it, but then again, I'm not hypercritical on something like that. I did wonder a little bit about center of balance as some of the robots walked, but mostly I didn't think about it at all, which to me is the goal of CGI. I did wonder about children's fingers getting caught in some of the open gaps on the robot's bodies. Real world models would have a bit more covering, one would think. But that's being picky.

I have no memory of the soundtrack music. That in and of itself might say something. I'm a musician, but it just didn't register.

I figured out some clues, missed some others, and was surprised several times in the movie. There were a lot of clues - this isn't one of those mysteries where the answer is pulled out of the writer's a...out of thin air.

I'm not a complete continuity freak, so I can't tell if the movie violated any of Asimov's universe, but from what I can remember, it fits pretty well (if you ignore Dr. Calvin's age) and might even explain a few things.

Given that even some of the geeks in the audience were surprised to find out that there was a book of stories just like the movie, I think the movie will hopefully bring Asimov's stories to a new generation.

I liked "I, Robot. It's worth seeing, especially if you 've already seen Spider-Man 2 at least once. It's a pretty good (though not great) movie.

Having read Slashdot for a while, I know that there are folks out there who will despise this movie because it's not exactly like the book. Others will hate the movie or worship it, and loads of people are going to savage this review. You know what? That's fine with me. I had fun with this movie, had a nice date with my wife, and it didn't cost anything. I even had fun typing up this review. You're allowed to be different and to agree or disagree with me. Heck, that's a big chunk of what makes the world fun. Interestingly, it's even a small point in the movie. I'd say more, but that would be telling."

eckenheimer writes "Students at the Physics Department at Drury University have developed a robot that uses motions and contortions of its body to orient itself in zero gravity. According to the project site, 'If you've ever seen a cat land on its feet after falling while upside down then you've seen the idea behind our project.' The effort is a proposal for the NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program."

crmartin writes "NASA has released a web story about the sounds recorded aboard the Cassini spacecraft as it pased through the Rings. The story includes a Quicktime file of the hailstorm-like sounds of Ring particles impacting."

crmartin writes "NASA has released a web story about the sounds recorded aboard the Cassini spacecraft as it pased through the Rings. The story includes a Quicktime file of the hailstorm-like sounds of Ring particles impacting."

Roland Piquepaille writes "SPACE.com published two days ago an article named "Red Planet Wayfinder: A GPS System for Mars." You'll read that NASA researchers are studying a 'global positioning satellite (GPS) system around Mars that could also function as a communications network.' This would imply 'a constellation of microsatellites, or Microsats, and one or more relatively large Mars Aerostationary Relay Satellites, or MARSats,' according to the Mars Network website at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This sounds like a neat idea, but there are several issues here. First, the JPL site mentioned above has not been updated since 1999. Then, there is no mention of such a mission at NASA's Mars exploration program website. So, here is my question: is this a recycled 4-year old article? In this overview, you'll find some spectacular images and more indications leading to think that the article was written in 2000. And please note that a Slashdot reader asked last December 'Whatever Happened To The Mars Network?' without receiving an adequate answer."

Roland Piquepaille writes "SPACE.com published two days ago an article named "Red Planet Wayfinder: A GPS System for Mars." You'll read that NASA researchers are studying a 'global positioning satellite (GPS) system around Mars that could also function as a communications network.' This would imply 'a constellation of microsatellites, or Microsats, and one or more relatively large Mars Aerostationary Relay Satellites, or MARSats,' according to the Mars Network website at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This sounds like a neat idea, but there are several issues here. First, the JPL site mentioned above has not been updated since 1999. Then, there is no mention of such a mission at NASA's Mars exploration program website. So, here is my question: is this a recycled 4-year old article? In this overview, you'll find some spectacular images and more indications leading to think that the article was written in 2000. And please note that a Slashdot reader asked last December 'Whatever Happened To The Mars Network?' without receiving an adequate answer."

PipianJ writes "Various sources are reporting that NASA has been tracking the Halloween solar storms of last year as they head towards the end of the solar system and the beginning of interstellar space, the heliopause, in the near future. In related news, scientists now believe that it was solar storms that ripped water from Mars, causing it to be the dry barren wasteland it is today."

maggeth writes "The BBC is reporting that negotiations are under way to extending funding for the Mars rovers beyond this September. Originally designed to work for 90 Martian days, they now predict they may last well beyond the 250 Martian days they had announced previously." hoferbr writes "A new analysis by Phil Berardelli at the United Press International quotes Steve Squyres, chief scientist for the Mars rover mission, in which he says that the Mars rovers '... could go into 2005'. Spirit and Opportunity will complete six months on the Martian surface on July."

colonist writes "The Space Elevator: 3rd Annual International Conference was held recently. Blaise Gassend, a PhD student at MIT, took notes. The main obstacle is still the material: transferring the strength of the nanotube to the ribbon. Other topics include: the nanotube tether Centennial Challenge; Elevator 2010, a challenge for a 250 kg climber to climb a 16 km tether; objections and refinements to Bradley Edwards' design; non-equatorial space elevators; replacing the term 'space elevator' with 'space bridge'; testing the space elevator material on cable cars; science; defense and economics."

MattKeeler writes "NASA's running a story on the recent findings of Cassini, the satellite orbiting Titan, one of Saturn's giant moons. New images reveal details of the moon's surface and a variety of materials that cover it."

Dozix007 writes "The Herald reports: Cassini pierced the haze around Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, revealing details that have shattered theories about its composition. It has atmosphere and soil similar to primordial Earth and may contain the building blocks of life. Scientists believed bright patches on its surface seen earlier were pure water ice. But the first infrared images taken by Cassini revealed water ice as dark patches because it is mixed with material that may be organic, raining on to the surface."

Dozix007 writes "The Herald reports: Cassini pierced the haze around Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, revealing details that have shattered theories about its composition. It has atmosphere and soil similar to primordial Earth and may contain the building blocks of life. Scientists believed bright patches on its surface seen earlier were pure water ice. But the first infrared images taken by Cassini revealed water ice as dark patches because it is mixed with material that may be organic, raining on to the surface."

Dozix007 writes "The Herald reports: Cassini pierced the haze around Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, revealing details that have shattered theories about its composition. It has atmosphere and soil similar to primordial Earth and may contain the building blocks of life. Scientists believed bright patches on its surface seen earlier were pure water ice. But the first infrared images taken by Cassini revealed water ice as dark patches because it is mixed with material that may be organic, raining on to the surface."

Mr. Christmas Lights writes "While zinc whiskers, small metallic fibers which grow on surfaces that have been electroplated with zinc, aren't a problem for Christmas lights, they can cause serious problems for computers. The Denver Post reports how they caused computer outages for the last three weeks in the Colorado secretary of state's office. This basically halted business and elections document filings. Zinc whiskers are becoming more of a problem as computers electronics get smaller. NASA has a good reference site which includes a interesting PDF summary paper complete with pictures. /.'ers with computer rooms might want to check this out."

Mr. Christmas Lights writes "While zinc whiskers, small metallic fibers which grow on surfaces that have been electroplated with zinc, aren't a problem for Christmas lights, they can cause serious problems for computers. The Denver Post reports how they caused computer outages for the last three weeks in the Colorado secretary of state's office. This basically halted business and elections document filings. Zinc whiskers are becoming more of a problem as computers electronics get smaller. NASA has a good reference site which includes a interesting PDF summary paper complete with pictures. /.'ers with computer rooms might want to check this out."

Mick Ohrberg writes "The probe Cassini-Huygens is now officially in orbit around Saturn. Last nights' retro-burn was completed according to plan, down to the second, which in and of itself is an amazing feat, considering all data received is 1h24m old, as well as 900 million miles away. I must say, it was fairly exciting to watch the webcast, and see the signal fade behind the A-ring, and all but disappear behind the B-ring - all in (somewhat delayed) real-time. The SOI (Saturn Orbit Insertion) also saw Cassini-Huygens whisk by Saturn at around 68,000 mph at an altitude of about 12,000 miles from the cloud tops - the closest to the gas giant the probe will ever be during its planned 4-year mission, for instance the much awaited Huygens mission to Titan."

Mick Ohrberg writes "The probe Cassini-Huygens is now officially in orbit around Saturn. Last nights' retro-burn was completed according to plan, down to the second, which in and of itself is an amazing feat, considering all data received is 1h24m old, as well as 900 million miles away. I must say, it was fairly exciting to watch the webcast, and see the signal fade behind the A-ring, and all but disappear behind the B-ring - all in (somewhat delayed) real-time. The SOI (Saturn Orbit Insertion) also saw Cassini-Huygens whisk by Saturn at around 68,000 mph at an altitude of about 12,000 miles from the cloud tops - the closest to the gas giant the probe will ever be during its planned 4-year mission, for instance the much awaited Huygens mission to Titan."

Mick Ohrberg writes "The probe Cassini-Huygens is now officially in orbit around Saturn. Last nights' retro-burn was completed according to plan, down to the second, which in and of itself is an amazing feat, considering all data received is 1h24m old, as well as 900 million miles away. I must say, it was fairly exciting to watch the webcast, and see the signal fade behind the A-ring, and all but disappear behind the B-ring - all in (somewhat delayed) real-time. The SOI (Saturn Orbit Insertion) also saw Cassini-Huygens whisk by Saturn at around 68,000 mph at an altitude of about 12,000 miles from the cloud tops - the closest to the gas giant the probe will ever be during its planned 4-year mission, for instance the much awaited Huygens mission to Titan."

colonist writes "During the Apollo missions, astronauts explored on foot or in rovers. The next astronauts on the moon may move the entire base instead. Marc Cohen, from NASA's Ames Research Center, proposes a lunar base on wheels or legs, such as the habot (robotic habitat) or the mobitat (mobile habitat). Cohen considers mobile bases superior to rovers: 'To avoid life-threatening or other compromising situations that might occur with only one rover traveling to a remote place, a second rover might travel with the first. But what if the second rover runs into a problem, too - the same or a different problem? Well, that means a third rover. So, why not make the entire base mobile, so that all the resources, reliability and redundancy of the lunar mission move with the excursion crew?' Of course, mobile bases are nothing new. Terran buildings have been lifting off for years."

Anonymous Explorer writes "Fresh off of its fly-by with the Saturnian satellite Phoebe, the Cassini-Huygens craft is set for Saturn Orbit Insertion on June 30, 2004. Cassini-Huygens has a planned four year mission ahead for Saturn and its many moons. With 450 watts of power for the electronics, this mission has plenty enough horses to run the stretch with plenty-o-pep to spare. Thanks to all that power, and the plethora of electronics on Cassini and the Huygens probe, we can now hear sounds from Saturn. Pretty cool stuff! Festivities are scheduled to begin on June 29th with a broadcast of Cassini Saturn Orbit Insertion Press Conference on Nasa TV. SOI [PDF link] will occur after Cassini fires its main engine for 96 minutes, in order to slow down and be grabbed by the pull of Saturn. As always we extend an invitation to everyone to join #cassini on irc.freenode.net and help us celebrate this historic mission."

Anonymous Explorer writes "Fresh off of its fly-by with the Saturnian satellite Phoebe, the Cassini-Huygens craft is set for Saturn Orbit Insertion on June 30, 2004. Cassini-Huygens has a planned four year mission ahead for Saturn and its many moons. With 450 watts of power for the electronics, this mission has plenty enough horses to run the stretch with plenty-o-pep to spare. Thanks to all that power, and the plethora of electronics on Cassini and the Huygens probe, we can now hear sounds from Saturn. Pretty cool stuff! Festivities are scheduled to begin on June 29th with a broadcast of Cassini Saturn Orbit Insertion Press Conference on Nasa TV. SOI [PDF link] will occur after Cassini fires its main engine for 96 minutes, in order to slow down and be grabbed by the pull of Saturn. As always we extend an invitation to everyone to join #cassini on irc.freenode.net and help us celebrate this historic mission."

Anonymous Explorer writes "Fresh off of its fly-by with the Saturnian satellite Phoebe, the Cassini-Huygens craft is set for Saturn Orbit Insertion on June 30, 2004. Cassini-Huygens has a planned four year mission ahead for Saturn and its many moons. With 450 watts of power for the electronics, this mission has plenty enough horses to run the stretch with plenty-o-pep to spare. Thanks to all that power, and the plethora of electronics on Cassini and the Huygens probe, we can now hear sounds from Saturn. Pretty cool stuff! Festivities are scheduled to begin on June 29th with a broadcast of Cassini Saturn Orbit Insertion Press Conference on Nasa TV. SOI [PDF link] will occur after Cassini fires its main engine for 96 minutes, in order to slow down and be grabbed by the pull of Saturn. As always we extend an invitation to everyone to join #cassini on irc.freenode.net and help us celebrate this historic mission."

Anonymous Explorer writes "Fresh off of its fly-by with the Saturnian satellite Phoebe, the Cassini-Huygens craft is set for Saturn Orbit Insertion on June 30, 2004. Cassini-Huygens has a planned four year mission ahead for Saturn and its many moons. With 450 watts of power for the electronics, this mission has plenty enough horses to run the stretch with plenty-o-pep to spare. Thanks to all that power, and the plethora of electronics on Cassini and the Huygens probe, we can now hear sounds from Saturn. Pretty cool stuff! Festivities are scheduled to begin on June 29th with a broadcast of Cassini Saturn Orbit Insertion Press Conference on Nasa TV. SOI [PDF link] will occur after Cassini fires its main engine for 96 minutes, in order to slow down and be grabbed by the pull of Saturn. As always we extend an invitation to everyone to join #cassini on irc.freenode.net and help us celebrate this historic mission."

Anonymous Explorer writes "Fresh off of its fly-by with the Saturnian satellite Phoebe, the Cassini-Huygens craft is set for Saturn Orbit Insertion on June 30, 2004. Cassini-Huygens has a planned four year mission ahead for Saturn and its many moons. With 450 watts of power for the electronics, this mission has plenty enough horses to run the stretch with plenty-o-pep to spare. Thanks to all that power, and the plethora of electronics on Cassini and the Huygens probe, we can now hear sounds from Saturn. Pretty cool stuff! Festivities are scheduled to begin on June 29th with a broadcast of Cassini Saturn Orbit Insertion Press Conference on Nasa TV. SOI [PDF link] will occur after Cassini fires its main engine for 96 minutes, in order to slow down and be grabbed by the pull of Saturn. As always we extend an invitation to everyone to join #cassini on irc.freenode.net and help us celebrate this historic mission."

TexasDex writes "Wired reports: The NASA Space Solar Power project--a method of collecting solar energy efficiently from space and beaming it down to earth--was canceled in early 2001 after enjoying intermittent attention from scientists. NASA officials cited a policy shift toward the International Space Station and the space shuttle program. But there is still hope for it yet. A conference this month in spain hopes to advance the cause, dispite the fact that there is no public funding available in the US for this project. Some even claim that microwave power is essential for farther explanation. Accordong to the folks at Maxis, Microwave power should be available around 2020, depending on which version of SimCity you play."

No_Weak_Heart writes "New details and images of Cassini-Huygens' close encounter with Saturn's moon Phoebe have been released. Much of the data seems to confirm the earlier suspicion that Pheobe was formed in the outer reaches of the solar system and was later captured by Saturn's gravity. More coverage at Nature, NY Timesand the BBC. We covered the flyby here."

bofh31337 writes "Scientist Bradley C. Edwards, head of the space elevator project at the Institute for Scientific Research, thinks an elevator that climbs 62,000 miles into space could be operating in 15 years. He pegs the cost at $10 billion, a pittance compared with other space endeavors. 'It's not new physics--nothing new has to be discovered, nothing new has to be invented from scratch,' he says. 'If there are delays in budget or delays in whatever, it could stretch, but 15 years is a realistic estimate for when we could have one up.' NASA already has given more than $500,000 to study the idea, and Congress has earmarked $2.5 million more."

dev_alac writes "The BBC is reporting that C-3PO has been inducted into Carnegie Mellon's Robot Hall of Fame, along with Asimo, Shakeyboy -- "the first mobile robot to reason about its actions," Astroboy, and of course, Robby the Robot of Forbidden Planet fame. There, he joins such other legendary mechanical beings as Hal 9000, R2-D2, and Sojourner." Update: 06/20 08:27 GMT by T : Yep, it's a near-dupe of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story linked the other day.

loid_void writes "Reutersis is reporting that a giant Apollo moon rocket that never got off the ground is about to get a face-lift after years of rusting away in the Texas heat and humidity at the Johnson Space Center. Workers will construct a shelter for the Saturn V rocket and give it the equivalent of a "blow dry" in the first steps to preserve the relic of NASA's golden age, said Allan Needell, Apollo program curator for the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. The 363-foot-long behemoth has lain on its side in front of JSC since 1977, a favorite sight of tourists, but also a victim of the elements. Instead of launching astronauts to the moon as it was built to do, it has become a slowly fading hulk of peeling paint and corroded metal where birds live and plants sprout, Needell said on Wednesday during a visit to the rocket. "There's a lot of biology growing on there," he said, pointing out streaks of algae staining the rocket's white skin."

loid_void writes "Reutersis is reporting that a giant Apollo moon rocket that never got off the ground is about to get a face-lift after years of rusting away in the Texas heat and humidity at the Johnson Space Center. Workers will construct a shelter for the Saturn V rocket and give it the equivalent of a "blow dry" in the first steps to preserve the relic of NASA's golden age, said Allan Needell, Apollo program curator for the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. The 363-foot-long behemoth has lain on its side in front of JSC since 1977, a favorite sight of tourists, but also a victim of the elements. Instead of launching astronauts to the moon as it was built to do, it has become a slowly fading hulk of peeling paint and corroded metal where birds live and plants sprout, Needell said on Wednesday during a visit to the rocket. "There's a lot of biology growing on there," he said, pointing out streaks of algae staining the rocket's white skin."

loid_void writes "Reutersis is reporting that a giant Apollo moon rocket that never got off the ground is about to get a face-lift after years of rusting away in the Texas heat and humidity at the Johnson Space Center. Workers will construct a shelter for the Saturn V rocket and give it the equivalent of a "blow dry" in the first steps to preserve the relic of NASA's golden age, said Allan Needell, Apollo program curator for the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. The 363-foot-long behemoth has lain on its side in front of JSC since 1977, a favorite sight of tourists, but also a victim of the elements. Instead of launching astronauts to the moon as it was built to do, it has become a slowly fading hulk of peeling paint and corroded metal where birds live and plants sprout, Needell said on Wednesday during a visit to the rocket. "There's a lot of biology growing on there," he said, pointing out streaks of algae staining the rocket's white skin."

code_rage writes "A preview of the Aldridge Commission Report was discussed recently on Slashdot. Now that the full report has been released, a more in-depth presentation might be appropriate." code_rage has written a lengthy summary of the report below. Other readers sent in the Executive Summary and several news stories. A Journey to Inspire, Innovate, and Discover author President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy pages 64 publisher US Government Printing Office, http://bookstore.gpo.gov/ rating The glass is half {empty,full} depending on your outlook reviewer code_rage ISBN 0160730759 summary Presidential Commission proposes major changes to NASA

The single most prolific spinoff attributable to NASA is not Teflon, Tang, or Velcro. No, it's high-level reports on how to fix NASA. The latest report, written under the authority of a 9-member commission named by President Bush, proposes how to implement NASA's latest orders: complete the Space Station and retire the Shuttle by the end of the decade, return humans to the Moon by 2020, and eventually send humans to Mars.

The Background
The President's proposal, while lacking details, has been greeted with enthusiasm by many aerospace workers, for whom the application of the term "beleaguered" is more than appropriate. What other major industry has lost half its workforce in the last 15 years? (Oh yeah, the airline, IT and telecom industries, who managed about the same attrition rate in only 2 years: evidence of efficiency, or something.) Space scientists have awaited the implementation report with some trepidation: their Hubble servicing mission has already been traded for the uncertain prospect of a robotic mission, and some NASA science missions have already been pushed back by the budget impact of the Moon-Mars mission.

Meanwhile, public opinion has not quite caught fire. Opinion polls taken in January show at best indifference and at worst hostility to the new plan. Greg Klerkx wrote "Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the explosion of Columbia, other than the human tragedy, was that it changed very few opinions about NASA or NASA's human spaceflight activities. Both should continue, the polls unanimously concluded, but with no more or less vigor than at present." [p. 12, Klerkx 2004]

The Commission, led by longtime government official E.C. Aldridge, also includes four space scientists, a retired Air Force General, a former Congressman, a business and government executive, and the well-known CEO of a high tech firm. Notably, no astronauts or former NASA executives were on the panel.

Contents
Transmittal Letter
Executive Summary
Section I - Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision
Section II - Organizing the US Government for Success
Section III - Building a Robust Space Industry
Section IV - Exploration and Science Agenda
Section V - Inspiring Current and Future Generations
Section VI - Concluding Comments
Appendices

Historical Context
After any disaster or major program failure, commissions are empaneled and they tend to produce two sorts of reports. The first type of report is a failure analysis, including specific prescriptions for recovery. The second is a more broad examination of strategies and goals. This report falls into the second category. While the Aldridge Commission report includes some recommendations that duplicate some previous ones, the new report differs in some important ways from those.

In 1986, the Paine Commission examined how NASA should respond to the Challenger failure. The commission's report in places reads like a primer on space technologies, and proposes specific goals similar to those of the Bush plan: completion of the Space Station, return to the Moon, and a manned mission to Mars. The Paine Commission seems to have felt that the basic problem facing NASA was a lack of a long-term vision and political commitment.

In 1990, the Augustine Commission studied how NASA should respond to a variety of troubling problems on the Shuttle and other programs. This study endorsed space science strongly, while also supporting Space Station. The report focused strongly on workforce issues like morale, attrition and aging. It also noted weaknesses in NASA's executive leadership practices. The report made some specific reform proposals, some of which reappear in the Aldridge report.

The Report
The Aldridge Commission report differs from previous examinations in important ways. First, it has a very limited scope. The Commission did not perform an open-ended study of what NASA ought to do, or how much emphasis to place on astronomy vs planetary science vs human spaceflight. They only studied how to accomplish President Bush's new goals for the space program. Paradoxically, their limited brief resulted in a far more profound proposal to reorganize NASA than previous reports. The range and depth of reforms proposed by this report greatly exceeds those of previous reports.

The top-level recommendations include:
1. Establish a Space Exploration Steering Council, reporting to the President
2. NASA should establish much more private industry participation in space operations, beginning with unmanned launch services
a. Reorganization of NASA HQ
b. Spin off NASA Centers as Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (similar to JPL and the DOE National Labs)
c. NASA should establish 3 new organizations:
+ a technical advisory board, modeled on the Defense Science Board
+ an Independent Cost Estimating organization, modeled on DoD Cost Analysis Improvement Group
+ a research organization, modeled on DARPA and formed from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
d. NASA should adopt DoD-style project management methods
3. NASA should identify and begin development of critical technologies
4. Renew and sustain development of a robust space industry
a. NASA should actively solicit ideas from all sources
b. Congress should fund prizes targeting specific missions and technologies, and work on space property rights
5. NASA should pursue international partnerships
6. NASA should consult regularly with scientists and the National Academy of Sciences
7. The space exploration program should be tied into educational programs and public relations

Section I "Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision" presents three basic justifications for the exploration program: The human urge to explore, economic growth, and national security. Three "imperatives for success" are also presented: sustainability, affordability, and credibility. Sustainability is described as being able to sustain both technical momentum and long-term political support for what will be an expensive program. Affordability is described as "go as you can pay," where each milestone is reached through "spiral, evolutionary developments." The report compares the funding to cancer research, where the pace is determined by a political judgment of "annually, how much can we afford?" The report describes credibility as an amalgam of best practices. While the Commission recognized that space exploration is full of risk, NASA must not appear careless or foolish. NASA must embrace both management practices as well as technical ideas regardless of their source.

Analysis
The Commission's Report is itself a model of the practices they exhort NASA to follow. Whether by intention or not, many of the ideas in the report have been the stated position of advocacy groups like the National Space Society and the Mars Society. Some of the reforms have been specifically proposed by previous Commissions.

The biggest problem I wondered about was funding. So far, about $12B has been proposed for this vision. Yet, many of the recommendations seem likely to cost a great deal of money. For example, on p. 23, the report states that much of NASA's infrastructure needs substantial modernization. Elsewhere, technology R&D is addressed by proposing a DARPA model or even the In-Q-Tel Venture Capital firm funded by the CIA. The Pentagon's "System-of-systems" approach is proposed as a model for project architecture. Special attention is given to the need for reliable heavy lift launch capability. In discussing how to pursue international participants, the Joint Strike Fighter program is listed as a model. Each of these areas requires either significant direct investment (infrastructure, heavy lift, R&D) or large bureaucracies to administer complex contracts (system-of-systems, JSF model). There is an unavoidable tension between the need for R&D, "go as you can pay," available funds, and "credibility."

The money issue is partially addressed by proposing tax incentives, privatization and private competition. But competition cannot reduce the amount of honest-to-goodness investment needed to remediate the technology deficit. It can only promote the most efficient approach. We need more R&D, yet private competition is seen as a way to "reduce government investment" (p. 20). The elephant in the room is that aerospace is a highly regulated market with relatively low profit margins. This means that direct reinvestment is fairly low. A glance at a list of the top R&D companies shows that top-tier aerospace companies do not reinvest a lot of their own money.

The second issue that troubled me is the applicability of the models they proposed. JPL, the National Labs, various DoD organizations and methods, the X Prize, and other examples are listed as models for various reforms of NASA. This raises some questions. First, are these models applicable? No evidence is presented to indicate that the Commission considered whether different organizations with different goals, constraints, missions, and sizes can use a given model successfully. The proposal to spin off most NASA centers as FFRDCs seems quite radical. Would any commercial firm spin off everything except a design team? Is this what the Aldridge Commission proposes of NASA? How many NASA employees would be left, and in which disciplines? Can the JPL model be applied well to other NASA centers? Would the centers work together better or worse? Would there be limits to how many centers a given contractor would be permitted to operate? I suspect it's much easier to designate JPL as a model than it is to enact in the real world. Do the security and procurement scandals at some DOE labs give us anything to worry about? What about the need for the National Labs to chase proposals in light of funding cuts? Does that make organizations more market oriented and relevant, or does it simply waste the time of researchers?

Finally, the Commission's report failed to address the biggest political problem our human spaceflight program faces: a lack of relevancy to ordinary people. The transmittal letter to the President states that the Commission's web site received over 6,000 written inputs, and that public comments were 7:1 in favor of the new vision. This is of course not a scientific survey, rather it is a self-selected and rather small sample of people who are presumably interested in space exploration. Elsewhere in the report, supportive public testimony is cherry-picked without context or attribution. In one case, I recognized a quote that, taken out of context, sounds much more supportive of a government monopoly on human space travel than the speaker probably meant: "We all wanted to go" (p. 13) was characterized as an expression of the deep and broad effect that the Apollo program had on Americans. I believe this was Tony Tether, Director of DARPA. The full quote was: "What NASA seemed to forget was that then, we all wanted to go," Tether told commissioners. "We were forgotten about." But if NASA can find a way for American citizens to take the baby steps that would eventually allow them to reach the moon - or even just space - themselves, it would do wonders for the space agency's support, he added. "If you can do that, you will have a constituency that you don't have today," Tether said. The longer quote is here.

These anecdotes do not invalidate the report, but I do wonder if the Commission is overselling the enthusiasm that the public will have for this program. Section I, and the report's title, endorse the "inspiration, education, and innovation" arguments for space travel that have so far failed to garner support for a more expansive space vision. One brief mention was made of space tourism and of making NASA an engine of the economy (p. 20). There are hints at the relevance problem sprinkled throughout the report, but public support is more or less presumed, not demonstrated.

What's Good:
If your attitude about NASA reorg proposals is "wake me if it's a big deal," then this is your wakeup call. The Aldridge Commission Report proposes the most profound and far-reaching reorganization of NASA since its founding.

To a larger degree than I would have expected from this board, the proposals are strongly market- and business-oriented. I presume this is the implicit desire of President Bush (MBA, former CEO) and possibly NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe (an accountant).

The report is written in an engaging, enthusiastic style.

What's Bad:
Where's the Beef? "Go as you can pay" does not seem like an adequate response to an agency that has faced aging infrastructure and workers for more than 14 years (see Augustine report). Increased funding and profit margins might address many issues better than bureaucratic realignments or spinoffs. There is no discussion of how to value intangibles like scientific discovery and inspiration, yet tangible values are of prime concern to contractors. NASA's credibility is discussed only in terms of competency, not based on perceived relevancy to the public.

What's Missing:
There is no consideration of potential disadvantages of the various proposals. Supporters of space science may find the report dismissive of their priorities and concerns. There is no critical evaluation of the benefits of space program investments vs direct investments in education, science and technology.

This report is remarkably thin on supplementary materials: there are 13 pp of appendices. More is available on the Commission's web site.

Refs:
[Klerkx 2004]: "Lost In Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age," Greg Klerkx, 2004. ISBN 0375421505
[Paine 1986]: http://history.nasa.gov/painerep/cover.htm
[Augustine 1990]: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/augustin e/racfup1.htm
[Aldridge 2004]: http://www.moontomars.org

The reviewer is an aerospace engineer with experience in human spaceflight engineering and operations, commercial satellite development and operations, and scientific satellite development and operations. No current relationship to NASA, and no significant interests in companies with an interest in this proposal.

You can download A Journey to Inspire, Innovate and Discover from moontomars.org. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to contribute.

code_rage writes "A preview of the Aldridge Commission Report was discussed recently on Slashdot. Now that the full report has been released, a more in-depth presentation might be appropriate." code_rage has written a lengthy summary of the report below. Other readers sent in the Executive Summary and several news stories. A Journey to Inspire, Innovate, and Discover author President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy pages 64 publisher US Government Printing Office, http://bookstore.gpo.gov/ rating The glass is half {empty,full} depending on your outlook reviewer code_rage ISBN 0160730759 summary Presidential Commission proposes major changes to NASA

The single most prolific spinoff attributable to NASA is not Teflon, Tang, or Velcro. No, it's high-level reports on how to fix NASA. The latest report, written under the authority of a 9-member commission named by President Bush, proposes how to implement NASA's latest orders: complete the Space Station and retire the Shuttle by the end of the decade, return humans to the Moon by 2020, and eventually send humans to Mars.

The Background
The President's proposal, while lacking details, has been greeted with enthusiasm by many aerospace workers, for whom the application of the term "beleaguered" is more than appropriate. What other major industry has lost half its workforce in the last 15 years? (Oh yeah, the airline, IT and telecom industries, who managed about the same attrition rate in only 2 years: evidence of efficiency, or something.) Space scientists have awaited the implementation report with some trepidation: their Hubble servicing mission has already been traded for the uncertain prospect of a robotic mission, and some NASA science missions have already been pushed back by the budget impact of the Moon-Mars mission.

Meanwhile, public opinion has not quite caught fire. Opinion polls taken in January show at best indifference and at worst hostility to the new plan. Greg Klerkx wrote "Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the explosion of Columbia, other than the human tragedy, was that it changed very few opinions about NASA or NASA's human spaceflight activities. Both should continue, the polls unanimously concluded, but with no more or less vigor than at present." [p. 12, Klerkx 2004]

The Commission, led by longtime government official E.C. Aldridge, also includes four space scientists, a retired Air Force General, a former Congressman, a business and government executive, and the well-known CEO of a high tech firm. Notably, no astronauts or former NASA executives were on the panel.

Contents
Transmittal Letter
Executive Summary
Section I - Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision
Section II - Organizing the US Government for Success
Section III - Building a Robust Space Industry
Section IV - Exploration and Science Agenda
Section V - Inspiring Current and Future Generations
Section VI - Concluding Comments
Appendices

Historical Context
After any disaster or major program failure, commissions are empaneled and they tend to produce two sorts of reports. The first type of report is a failure analysis, including specific prescriptions for recovery. The second is a more broad examination of strategies and goals. This report falls into the second category. While the Aldridge Commission report includes some recommendations that duplicate some previous ones, the new report differs in some important ways from those.

In 1986, the Paine Commission examined how NASA should respond to the Challenger failure. The commission's report in places reads like a primer on space technologies, and proposes specific goals similar to those of the Bush plan: completion of the Space Station, return to the Moon, and a manned mission to Mars. The Paine Commission seems to have felt that the basic problem facing NASA was a lack of a long-term vision and political commitment.

In 1990, the Augustine Commission studied how NASA should respond to a variety of troubling problems on the Shuttle and other programs. This study endorsed space science strongly, while also supporting Space Station. The report focused strongly on workforce issues like morale, attrition and aging. It also noted weaknesses in NASA's executive leadership practices. The report made some specific reform proposals, some of which reappear in the Aldridge report.

The Report
The Aldridge Commission report differs from previous examinations in important ways. First, it has a very limited scope. The Commission did not perform an open-ended study of what NASA ought to do, or how much emphasis to place on astronomy vs planetary science vs human spaceflight. They only studied how to accomplish President Bush's new goals for the space program. Paradoxically, their limited brief resulted in a far more profound proposal to reorganize NASA than previous reports. The range and depth of reforms proposed by this report greatly exceeds those of previous reports.

The top-level recommendations include:
1. Establish a Space Exploration Steering Council, reporting to the President
2. NASA should establish much more private industry participation in space operations, beginning with unmanned launch services
a. Reorganization of NASA HQ
b. Spin off NASA Centers as Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (similar to JPL and the DOE National Labs)
c. NASA should establish 3 new organizations:
+ a technical advisory board, modeled on the Defense Science Board
+ an Independent Cost Estimating organization, modeled on DoD Cost Analysis Improvement Group
+ a research organization, modeled on DARPA and formed from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
d. NASA should adopt DoD-style project management methods
3. NASA should identify and begin development of critical technologies
4. Renew and sustain development of a robust space industry
a. NASA should actively solicit ideas from all sources
b. Congress should fund prizes targeting specific missions and technologies, and work on space property rights
5. NASA should pursue international partnerships
6. NASA should consult regularly with scientists and the National Academy of Sciences
7. The space exploration program should be tied into educational programs and public relations

Section I "Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision" presents three basic justifications for the exploration program: The human urge to explore, economic growth, and national security. Three "imperatives for success" are also presented: sustainability, affordability, and credibility. Sustainability is described as being able to sustain both technical momentum and long-term political support for what will be an expensive program. Affordability is described as "go as you can pay," where each milestone is reached through "spiral, evolutionary developments." The report compares the funding to cancer research, where the pace is determined by a political judgment of "annually, how much can we afford?" The report describes credibility as an amalgam of best practices. While the Commission recognized that space exploration is full of risk, NASA must not appear careless or foolish. NASA must embrace both management practices as well as technical ideas regardless of their source.

Analysis
The Commission's Report is itself a model of the practices they exhort NASA to follow. Whether by intention or not, many of the ideas in the report have been the stated position of advocacy groups like the National Space Society and the Mars Society. Some of the reforms have been specifically proposed by previous Commissions.

The biggest problem I wondered about was funding. So far, about $12B has been proposed for this vision. Yet, many of the recommendations seem likely to cost a great deal of money. For example, on p. 23, the report states that much of NASA's infrastructure needs substantial modernization. Elsewhere, technology R&D is addressed by proposing a DARPA model or even the In-Q-Tel Venture Capital firm funded by the CIA. The Pentagon's "System-of-systems" approach is proposed as a model for project architecture. Special attention is given to the need for reliable heavy lift launch capability. In discussing how to pursue international participants, the Joint Strike Fighter program is listed as a model. Each of these areas requires either significant direct investment (infrastructure, heavy lift, R&D) or large bureaucracies to administer complex contracts (system-of-systems, JSF model). There is an unavoidable tension between the need for R&D, "go as you can pay," available funds, and "credibility."

The money issue is partially addressed by proposing tax incentives, privatization and private competition. But competition cannot reduce the amount of honest-to-goodness investment needed to remediate the technology deficit. It can only promote the most efficient approach. We need more R&D, yet private competition is seen as a way to "reduce government investment" (p. 20). The elephant in the room is that aerospace is a highly regulated market with relatively low profit margins. This means that direct reinvestment is fairly low. A glance at a list of the top R&D companies shows that top-tier aerospace companies do not reinvest a lot of their own money.

The second issue that troubled me is the applicability of the models they proposed. JPL, the National Labs, various DoD organizations and methods, the X Prize, and other examples are listed as models for various reforms of NASA. This raises some questions. First, are these models applicable? No evidence is presented to indicate that the Commission considered whether different organizations with different goals, constraints, missions, and sizes can use a given model successfully. The proposal to spin off most NASA centers as FFRDCs seems quite radical. Would any commercial firm spin off everything except a design team? Is this what the Aldridge Commission proposes of NASA? How many NASA employees would be left, and in which disciplines? Can the JPL model be applied well to other NASA centers? Would the centers work together better or worse? Would there be limits to how many centers a given contractor would be permitted to operate? I suspect it's much easier to designate JPL as a model than it is to enact in the real world. Do the security and procurement scandals at some DOE labs give us anything to worry about? What about the need for the National Labs to chase proposals in light of funding cuts? Does that make organizations more market oriented and relevant, or does it simply waste the time of researchers?

Finally, the Commission's report failed to address the biggest political problem our human spaceflight program faces: a lack of relevancy to ordinary people. The transmittal letter to the President states that the Commission's web site received over 6,000 written inputs, and that public comments were 7:1 in favor of the new vision. This is of course not a scientific survey, rather it is a self-selected and rather small sample of people who are presumably interested in space exploration. Elsewhere in the report, supportive public testimony is cherry-picked without context or attribution. In one case, I recognized a quote that, taken out of context, sounds much more supportive of a government monopoly on human space travel than the speaker probably meant: "We all wanted to go" (p. 13) was characterized as an expression of the deep and broad effect that the Apollo program had on Americans. I believe this was Tony Tether, Director of DARPA. The full quote was: "What NASA seemed to forget was that then, we all wanted to go," Tether told commissioners. "We were forgotten about." But if NASA can find a way for American citizens to take the baby steps that would eventually allow them to reach the moon - or even just space - themselves, it would do wonders for the space agency's support, he added. "If you can do that, you will have a constituency that you don't have today," Tether said. The longer quote is here.

These anecdotes do not invalidate the report, but I do wonder if the Commission is overselling the enthusiasm that the public will have for this program. Section I, and the report's title, endorse the "inspiration, education, and innovation" arguments for space travel that have so far failed to garner support for a more expansive space vision. One brief mention was made of space tourism and of making NASA an engine of the economy (p. 20). There are hints at the relevance problem sprinkled throughout the report, but public support is more or less presumed, not demonstrated.

What's Good:
If your attitude about NASA reorg proposals is "wake me if it's a big deal," then this is your wakeup call. The Aldridge Commission Report proposes the most profound and far-reaching reorganization of NASA since its founding.

To a larger degree than I would have expected from this board, the proposals are strongly market- and business-oriented. I presume this is the implicit desire of President Bush (MBA, former CEO) and possibly NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe (an accountant).

The report is written in an engaging, enthusiastic style.

What's Bad:
Where's the Beef? "Go as you can pay" does not seem like an adequate response to an agency that has faced aging infrastructure and workers for more than 14 years (see Augustine report). Increased funding and profit margins might address many issues better than bureaucratic realignments or spinoffs. There is no discussion of how to value intangibles like scientific discovery and inspiration, yet tangible values are of prime concern to contractors. NASA's credibility is discussed only in terms of competency, not based on perceived relevancy to the public.

What's Missing:
There is no consideration of potential disadvantages of the various proposals. Supporters of space science may find the report dismissive of their priorities and concerns. There is no critical evaluation of the benefits of space program investments vs direct investments in education, science and technology.

This report is remarkably thin on supplementary materials: there are 13 pp of appendices. More is available on the Commission's web site.

Refs:
[Klerkx 2004]: "Lost In Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age," Greg Klerkx, 2004. ISBN 0375421505
[Paine 1986]: http://history.nasa.gov/painerep/cover.htm
[Augustine 1990]: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/augustin e/racfup1.htm
[Aldridge 2004]: http://www.moontomars.org

The reviewer is an aerospace engineer with experience in human spaceflight engineering and operations, commercial satellite development and operations, and scientific satellite development and operations. No current relationship to NASA, and no significant interests in companies with an interest in this proposal.

You can download A Journey to Inspire, Innovate and Discover from moontomars.org. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to contribute.

code_rage writes "A preview of the Aldridge Commission Report was discussed recently on Slashdot. Now that the full report has been released, a more in-depth presentation might be appropriate." code_rage has written a lengthy summary of the report below. Other readers sent in the Executive Summary and several news stories. A Journey to Inspire, Innovate, and Discover author President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy pages 64 publisher US Government Printing Office, http://bookstore.gpo.gov/ rating The glass is half {empty,full} depending on your outlook reviewer code_rage ISBN 0160730759 summary Presidential Commission proposes major changes to NASA

The single most prolific spinoff attributable to NASA is not Teflon, Tang, or Velcro. No, it's high-level reports on how to fix NASA. The latest report, written under the authority of a 9-member commission named by President Bush, proposes how to implement NASA's latest orders: complete the Space Station and retire the Shuttle by the end of the decade, return humans to the Moon by 2020, and eventually send humans to Mars.

The Background
The President's proposal, while lacking details, has been greeted with enthusiasm by many aerospace workers, for whom the application of the term "beleaguered" is more than appropriate. What other major industry has lost half its workforce in the last 15 years? (Oh yeah, the airline, IT and telecom industries, who managed about the same attrition rate in only 2 years: evidence of efficiency, or something.) Space scientists have awaited the implementation report with some trepidation: their Hubble servicing mission has already been traded for the uncertain prospect of a robotic mission, and some NASA science missions have already been pushed back by the budget impact of the Moon-Mars mission.

Meanwhile, public opinion has not quite caught fire. Opinion polls taken in January show at best indifference and at worst hostility to the new plan. Greg Klerkx wrote "Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the explosion of Columbia, other than the human tragedy, was that it changed very few opinions about NASA or NASA's human spaceflight activities. Both should continue, the polls unanimously concluded, but with no more or less vigor than at present." [p. 12, Klerkx 2004]

The Commission, led by longtime government official E.C. Aldridge, also includes four space scientists, a retired Air Force General, a former Congressman, a business and government executive, and the well-known CEO of a high tech firm. Notably, no astronauts or former NASA executives were on the panel.

Contents
Transmittal Letter
Executive Summary
Section I - Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision
Section II - Organizing the US Government for Success
Section III - Building a Robust Space Industry
Section IV - Exploration and Science Agenda
Section V - Inspiring Current and Future Generations
Section VI - Concluding Comments
Appendices

Historical Context
After any disaster or major program failure, commissions are empaneled and they tend to produce two sorts of reports. The first type of report is a failure analysis, including specific prescriptions for recovery. The second is a more broad examination of strategies and goals. This report falls into the second category. While the Aldridge Commission report includes some recommendations that duplicate some previous ones, the new report differs in some important ways from those.

In 1986, the Paine Commission examined how NASA should respond to the Challenger failure. The commission's report in places reads like a primer on space technologies, and proposes specific goals similar to those of the Bush plan: completion of the Space Station, return to the Moon, and a manned mission to Mars. The Paine Commission seems to have felt that the basic problem facing NASA was a lack of a long-term vision and political commitment.

In 1990, the Augustine Commission studied how NASA should respond to a variety of troubling problems on the Shuttle and other programs. This study endorsed space science strongly, while also supporting Space Station. The report focused strongly on workforce issues like morale, attrition and aging. It also noted weaknesses in NASA's executive leadership practices. The report made some specific reform proposals, some of which reappear in the Aldridge report.

The Report
The Aldridge Commission report differs from previous examinations in important ways. First, it has a very limited scope. The Commission did not perform an open-ended study of what NASA ought to do, or how much emphasis to place on astronomy vs planetary science vs human spaceflight. They only studied how to accomplish President Bush's new goals for the space program. Paradoxically, their limited brief resulted in a far more profound proposal to reorganize NASA than previous reports. The range and depth of reforms proposed by this report greatly exceeds those of previous reports.

The top-level recommendations include:
1. Establish a Space Exploration Steering Council, reporting to the President
2. NASA should establish much more private industry participation in space operations, beginning with unmanned launch services
a. Reorganization of NASA HQ
b. Spin off NASA Centers as Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (similar to JPL and the DOE National Labs)
c. NASA should establish 3 new organizations:
+ a technical advisory board, modeled on the Defense Science Board
+ an Independent Cost Estimating organization, modeled on DoD Cost Analysis Improvement Group
+ a research organization, modeled on DARPA and formed from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
d. NASA should adopt DoD-style project management methods
3. NASA should identify and begin development of critical technologies
4. Renew and sustain development of a robust space industry
a. NASA should actively solicit ideas from all sources
b. Congress should fund prizes targeting specific missions and technologies, and work on space property rights
5. NASA should pursue international partnerships
6. NASA should consult regularly with scientists and the National Academy of Sciences
7. The space exploration program should be tied into educational programs and public relations

Section I "Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision" presents three basic justifications for the exploration program: The human urge to explore, economic growth, and national security. Three "imperatives for success" are also presented: sustainability, affordability, and credibility. Sustainability is described as being able to sustain both technical momentum and long-term political support for what will be an expensive program. Affordability is described as "go as you can pay," where each milestone is reached through "spiral, evolutionary developments." The report compares the funding to cancer research, where the pace is determined by a political judgment of "annually, how much can we afford?" The report describes credibility as an amalgam of best practices. While the Commission recognized that space exploration is full of risk, NASA must not appear careless or foolish. NASA must embrace both management practices as well as technical ideas regardless of their source.

Analysis
The Commission's Report is itself a model of the practices they exhort NASA to follow. Whether by intention or not, many of the ideas in the report have been the stated position of advocacy groups like the National Space Society and the Mars Society. Some of the reforms have been specifically proposed by previous Commissions.

The biggest problem I wondered about was funding. So far, about $12B has been proposed for this vision. Yet, many of the recommendations seem likely to cost a great deal of money. For example, on p. 23, the report states that much of NASA's infrastructure needs substantial modernization. Elsewhere, technology R&D is addressed by proposing a DARPA model or even the In-Q-Tel Venture Capital firm funded by the CIA. The Pentagon's "System-of-systems" approach is proposed as a model for project architecture. Special attention is given to the need for reliable heavy lift launch capability. In discussing how to pursue international participants, the Joint Strike Fighter program is listed as a model. Each of these areas requires either significant direct investment (infrastructure, heavy lift, R&D) or large bureaucracies to administer complex contracts (system-of-systems, JSF model). There is an unavoidable tension between the need for R&D, "go as you can pay," available funds, and "credibility."

The money issue is partially addressed by proposing tax incentives, privatization and private competition. But competition cannot reduce the amount of honest-to-goodness investment needed to remediate the technology deficit. It can only promote the most efficient approach. We need more R&D, yet private competition is seen as a way to "reduce government investment" (p. 20). The elephant in the room is that aerospace is a highly regulated market with relatively low profit margins. This means that direct reinvestment is fairly low. A glance at a list of the top R&D companies shows that top-tier aerospace companies do not reinvest a lot of their own money.

The second issue that troubled me is the applicability of the models they proposed. JPL, the National Labs, various DoD organizations and methods, the X Prize, and other examples are listed as models for various reforms of NASA. This raises some questions. First, are these models applicable? No evidence is presented to indicate that the Commission considered whether different organizations with different goals, constraints, missions, and sizes can use a given model successfully. The proposal to spin off most NASA centers as FFRDCs seems quite radical. Would any commercial firm spin off everything except a design team? Is this what the Aldridge Commission proposes of NASA? How many NASA employees would be left, and in which disciplines? Can the JPL model be applied well to other NASA centers? Would the centers work together better or worse? Would there be limits to how many centers a given contractor would be permitted to operate? I suspect it's much easier to designate JPL as a model than it is to enact in the real world. Do the security and procurement scandals at some DOE labs give us anything to worry about? What about the need for the National Labs to chase proposals in light of funding cuts? Does that make organizations more market oriented and relevant, or does it simply waste the time of researchers?

Finally, the Commission's report failed to address the biggest political problem our human spaceflight program faces: a lack of relevancy to ordinary people. The transmittal letter to the President states that the Commission's web site received over 6,000 written inputs, and that public comments were 7:1 in favor of the new vision. This is of course not a scientific survey, rather it is a self-selected and rather small sample of people who are presumably interested in space exploration. Elsewhere in the report, supportive public testimony is cherry-picked without context or attribution. In one case, I recognized a quote that, taken out of context, sounds much more supportive of a government monopoly on human space travel than the speaker probably meant: "We all wanted to go" (p. 13) was characterized as an expression of the deep and broad effect that the Apollo program had on Americans. I believe this was Tony Tether, Director of DARPA. The full quote was: "What NASA seemed to forget was that then, we all wanted to go," Tether told commissioners. "We were forgotten about." But if NASA can find a way for American citizens to take the baby steps that would eventually allow them to reach the moon - or even just space - themselves, it would do wonders for the space agency's support, he added. "If you can do that, you will have a constituency that you don't have today," Tether said. The longer quote is here.

These anecdotes do not invalidate the report, but I do wonder if the Commission is overselling the enthusiasm that the public will have for this program. Section I, and the report's title, endorse the "inspiration, education, and innovation" arguments for space travel that have so far failed to garner support for a more expansive space vision. One brief mention was made of space tourism and of making NASA an engine of the economy (p. 20). There are hints at the relevance problem sprinkled throughout the report, but public support is more or less presumed, not demonstrated.

What's Good:
If your attitude about NASA reorg proposals is "wake me if it's a big deal," then this is your wakeup call. The Aldridge Commission Report proposes the most profound and far-reaching reorganization of NASA since its founding.

To a larger degree than I would have expected from this board, the proposals are strongly market- and business-oriented. I presume this is the implicit desire of President Bush (MBA, former CEO) and possibly NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe (an accountant).

The report is written in an engaging, enthusiastic style.

What's Bad:
Where's the Beef? "Go as you can pay" does not seem like an adequate response to an agency that has faced aging infrastructure and workers for more than 14 years (see Augustine report). Increased funding and profit margins might address many issues better than bureaucratic realignments or spinoffs. There is no discussion of how to value intangibles like scientific discovery and inspiration, yet tangible values are of prime concern to contractors. NASA's credibility is discussed only in terms of competency, not based on perceived relevancy to the public.

What's Missing:
There is no consideration of potential disadvantages of the various proposals. Supporters of space science may find the report dismissive of their priorities and concerns. There is no critical evaluation of the benefits of space program investments vs direct investments in education, science and technology.

This report is remarkably thin on supplementary materials: there are 13 pp of appendices. More is available on the Commission's web site.

Refs:
[Klerkx 2004]: "Lost In Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age," Greg Klerkx, 2004. ISBN 0375421505
[Paine 1986]: http://history.nasa.gov/painerep/cover.htm
[Augustine 1990]: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/augustin e/racfup1.htm
[Aldridge 2004]: http://www.moontomars.org

The reviewer is an aerospace engineer with experience in human spaceflight engineering and operations, commercial satellite development and operations, and scientific satellite development and operations. No current relationship to NASA, and no significant interests in companies with an interest in this proposal.

You can download A Journey to Inspire, Innovate and Discover from moontomars.org. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to contribute.

code_rage writes "A preview of the Aldridge Commission Report was discussed recently on Slashdot. Now that the full report has been released, a more in-depth presentation might be appropriate." code_rage has written a lengthy summary of the report below. Other readers sent in the Executive Summary and several news stories. A Journey to Inspire, Innovate, and Discover author President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy pages 64 publisher US Government Printing Office, http://bookstore.gpo.gov/ rating The glass is half {empty,full} depending on your outlook reviewer code_rage ISBN 0160730759 summary Presidential Commission proposes major changes to NASA

The single most prolific spinoff attributable to NASA is not Teflon, Tang, or Velcro. No, it's high-level reports on how to fix NASA. The latest report, written under the authority of a 9-member commission named by President Bush, proposes how to implement NASA's latest orders: complete the Space Station and retire the Shuttle by the end of the decade, return humans to the Moon by 2020, and eventually send humans to Mars.

The Background
The President's proposal, while lacking details, has been greeted with enthusiasm by many aerospace workers, for whom the application of the term "beleaguered" is more than appropriate. What other major industry has lost half its workforce in the last 15 years? (Oh yeah, the airline, IT and telecom industries, who managed about the same attrition rate in only 2 years: evidence of efficiency, or something.) Space scientists have awaited the implementation report with some trepidation: their Hubble servicing mission has already been traded for the uncertain prospect of a robotic mission, and some NASA science missions have already been pushed back by the budget impact of the Moon-Mars mission.

Meanwhile, public opinion has not quite caught fire. Opinion polls taken in January show at best indifference and at worst hostility to the new plan. Greg Klerkx wrote "Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the explosion of Columbia, other than the human tragedy, was that it changed very few opinions about NASA or NASA's human spaceflight activities. Both should continue, the polls unanimously concluded, but with no more or less vigor than at present." [p. 12, Klerkx 2004]

The Commission, led by longtime government official E.C. Aldridge, also includes four space scientists, a retired Air Force General, a former Congressman, a business and government executive, and the well-known CEO of a high tech firm. Notably, no astronauts or former NASA executives were on the panel.

Contents
Transmittal Letter
Executive Summary
Section I - Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision
Section II - Organizing the US Government for Success
Section III - Building a Robust Space Industry
Section IV - Exploration and Science Agenda
Section V - Inspiring Current and Future Generations
Section VI - Concluding Comments
Appendices

Historical Context
After any disaster or major program failure, commissions are empaneled and they tend to produce two sorts of reports. The first type of report is a failure analysis, including specific prescriptions for recovery. The second is a more broad examination of strategies and goals. This report falls into the second category. While the Aldridge Commission report includes some recommendations that duplicate some previous ones, the new report differs in some important ways from those.

In 1986, the Paine Commission examined how NASA should respond to the Challenger failure. The commission's report in places reads like a primer on space technologies, and proposes specific goals similar to those of the Bush plan: completion of the Space Station, return to the Moon, and a manned mission to Mars. The Paine Commission seems to have felt that the basic problem facing NASA was a lack of a long-term vision and political commitment.

In 1990, the Augustine Commission studied how NASA should respond to a variety of troubling problems on the Shuttle and other programs. This study endorsed space science strongly, while also supporting Space Station. The report focused strongly on workforce issues like morale, attrition and aging. It also noted weaknesses in NASA's executive leadership practices. The report made some specific reform proposals, some of which reappear in the Aldridge report.

The Report
The Aldridge Commission report differs from previous examinations in important ways. First, it has a very limited scope. The Commission did not perform an open-ended study of what NASA ought to do, or how much emphasis to place on astronomy vs planetary science vs human spaceflight. They only studied how to accomplish President Bush's new goals for the space program. Paradoxically, their limited brief resulted in a far more profound proposal to reorganize NASA than previous reports. The range and depth of reforms proposed by this report greatly exceeds those of previous reports.

The top-level recommendations include:
1. Establish a Space Exploration Steering Council, reporting to the President
2. NASA should establish much more private industry participation in space operations, beginning with unmanned launch services
a. Reorganization of NASA HQ
b. Spin off NASA Centers as Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (similar to JPL and the DOE National Labs)
c. NASA should establish 3 new organizations:
+ a technical advisory board, modeled on the Defense Science Board
+ an Independent Cost Estimating organization, modeled on DoD Cost Analysis Improvement Group
+ a research organization, modeled on DARPA and formed from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
d. NASA should adopt DoD-style project management methods
3. NASA should identify and begin development of critical technologies
4. Renew and sustain development of a robust space industry
a. NASA should actively solicit ideas from all sources
b. Congress should fund prizes targeting specific missions and technologies, and work on space property rights
5. NASA should pursue international partnerships
6. NASA should consult regularly with scientists and the National Academy of Sciences
7. The space exploration program should be tied into educational programs and public relations

Section I "Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision" presents three basic justifications for the exploration program: The human urge to explore, economic growth, and national security. Three "imperatives for success" are also presented: sustainability, affordability, and credibility. Sustainability is described as being able to sustain both technical momentum and long-term political support for what will be an expensive program. Affordability is described as "go as you can pay," where each milestone is reached through "spiral, evolutionary developments." The report compares the funding to cancer research, where the pace is determined by a political judgment of "annually, how much can we afford?" The report describes credibility as an amalgam of best practices. While the Commission recognized that space exploration is full of risk, NASA must not appear careless or foolish. NASA must embrace both management practices as well as technical ideas regardless of their source.

Analysis
The Commission's Report is itself a model of the practices they exhort NASA to follow. Whether by intention or not, many of the ideas in the report have been the stated position of advocacy groups like the National Space Society and the Mars Society. Some of the reforms have been specifically proposed by previous Commissions.

The biggest problem I wondered about was funding. So far, about $12B has been proposed for this vision. Yet, many of the recommendations seem likely to cost a great deal of money. For example, on p. 23, the report states that much of NASA's infrastructure needs substantial modernization. Elsewhere, technology R&D is addressed by proposing a DARPA model or even the In-Q-Tel Venture Capital firm funded by the CIA. The Pentagon's "System-of-systems" approach is proposed as a model for project architecture. Special attention is given to the need for reliable heavy lift launch capability. In discussing how to pursue international participants, the Joint Strike Fighter program is listed as a model. Each of these areas requires either significant direct investment (infrastructure, heavy lift, R&D) or large bureaucracies to administer complex contracts (system-of-systems, JSF model). There is an unavoidable tension between the need for R&D, "go as you can pay," available funds, and "credibility."

The money issue is partially addressed by proposing tax incentives, privatization and private competition. But competition cannot reduce the amount of honest-to-goodness investment needed to remediate the technology deficit. It can only promote the most efficient approach. We need more R&D, yet private competition is seen as a way to "reduce government investment" (p. 20). The elephant in the room is that aerospace is a highly regulated market with relatively low profit margins. This means that direct reinvestment is fairly low. A glance at a list of the top R&D companies shows that top-tier aerospace companies do not reinvest a lot of their own money.

The second issue that troubled me is the applicability of the models they proposed. JPL, the National Labs, various DoD organizations and methods, the X Prize, and other examples are listed as models for various reforms of NASA. This raises some questions. First, are these models applicable? No evidence is presented to indicate that the Commission considered whether different organizations with different goals, constraints, missions, and sizes can use a given model successfully. The proposal to spin off most NASA centers as FFRDCs seems quite radical. Would any commercial firm spin off everything except a design team? Is this what the Aldridge Commission proposes of NASA? How many NASA employees would be left, and in which disciplines? Can the JPL model be applied well to other NASA centers? Would the centers work together better or worse? Would there be limits to how many centers a given contractor would be permitted to operate? I suspect it's much easier to designate JPL as a model than it is to enact in the real world. Do the security and procurement scandals at some DOE labs give us anything to worry about? What about the need for the National Labs to chase proposals in light of funding cuts? Does that make organizations more market oriented and relevant, or does it simply waste the time of researchers?

Finally, the Commission's report failed to address the biggest political problem our human spaceflight program faces: a lack of relevancy to ordinary people. The transmittal letter to the President states that the Commission's web site received over 6,000 written inputs, and that public comments were 7:1 in favor of the new vision. This is of course not a scientific survey, rather it is a self-selected and rather small sample of people who are presumably interested in space exploration. Elsewhere in the report, supportive public testimony is cherry-picked without context or attribution. In one case, I recognized a quote that, taken out of context, sounds much more supportive of a government monopoly on human space travel than the speaker probably meant: "We all wanted to go" (p. 13) was characterized as an expression of the deep and broad effect that the Apollo program had on Americans. I believe this was Tony Tether, Director of DARPA. The full quote was: "What NASA seemed to forget was that then, we all wanted to go," Tether told commissioners. "We were forgotten about." But if NASA can find a way for American citizens to take the baby steps that would eventually allow them to reach the moon - or even just space - themselves, it would do wonders for the space agency's support, he added. "If you can do that, you will have a constituency that you don't have today," Tether said. The longer quote is here.

These anecdotes do not invalidate the report, but I do wonder if the Commission is overselling the enthusiasm that the public will have for this program. Section I, and the report's title, endorse the "inspiration, education, and innovation" arguments for space travel that have so far failed to garner support for a more expansive space vision. One brief mention was made of space tourism and of making NASA an engine of the economy (p. 20). There are hints at the relevance problem sprinkled throughout the report, but public support is more or less presumed, not demonstrated.

What's Good:
If your attitude about NASA reorg proposals is "wake me if it's a big deal," then this is your wakeup call. The Aldridge Commission Report proposes the most profound and far-reaching reorganization of NASA since its founding.

To a larger degree than I would have expected from this board, the proposals are strongly market- and business-oriented. I presume this is the implicit desire of President Bush (MBA, former CEO) and possibly NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe (an accountant).

The report is written in an engaging, enthusiastic style.

What's Bad:
Where's the Beef? "Go as you can pay" does not seem like an adequate response to an agency that has faced aging infrastructure and workers for more than 14 years (see Augustine report). Increased funding and profit margins might address many issues better than bureaucratic realignments or spinoffs. There is no discussion of how to value intangibles like scientific discovery and inspiration, yet tangible values are of prime concern to contractors. NASA's credibility is discussed only in terms of competency, not based on perceived relevancy to the public.

What's Missing:
There is no consideration of potential disadvantages of the various proposals. Supporters of space science may find the report dismissive of their priorities and concerns. There is no critical evaluation of the benefits of space program investments vs direct investments in education, science and technology.

This report is remarkably thin on supplementary materials: there are 13 pp of appendices. More is available on the Commission's web site.

Refs:
[Klerkx 2004]: "Lost In Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age," Greg Klerkx, 2004. ISBN 0375421505
[Paine 1986]: http://history.nasa.gov/painerep/cover.htm
[Augustine 1990]: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/augustin e/racfup1.htm
[Aldridge 2004]: http://www.moontomars.org

The reviewer is an aerospace engineer with experience in human spaceflight engineering and operations, commercial satellite development and operations, and scientific satellite development and operations. No current relationship to NASA, and no significant interests in companies with an interest in this proposal.

You can download A Journey to Inspire, Innovate and Discover from moontomars.org. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to contribute.

code_rage writes "A preview of the Aldridge Commission Report was discussed recently on Slashdot. Now that the full report has been released, a more in-depth presentation might be appropriate." code_rage has written a lengthy summary of the report below. Other readers sent in the Executive Summary and several news stories. A Journey to Inspire, Innovate, and Discover author President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy pages 64 publisher US Government Printing Office, http://bookstore.gpo.gov/ rating The glass is half {empty,full} depending on your outlook reviewer code_rage ISBN 0160730759 summary Presidential Commission proposes major changes to NASA

The single most prolific spinoff attributable to NASA is not Teflon, Tang, or Velcro. No, it's high-level reports on how to fix NASA. The latest report, written under the authority of a 9-member commission named by President Bush, proposes how to implement NASA's latest orders: complete the Space Station and retire the Shuttle by the end of the decade, return humans to the Moon by 2020, and eventually send humans to Mars.

The Background
The President's proposal, while lacking details, has been greeted with enthusiasm by many aerospace workers, for whom the application of the term "beleaguered" is more than appropriate. What other major industry has lost half its workforce in the last 15 years? (Oh yeah, the airline, IT and telecom industries, who managed about the same attrition rate in only 2 years: evidence of efficiency, or something.) Space scientists have awaited the implementation report with some trepidation: their Hubble servicing mission has already been traded for the uncertain prospect of a robotic mission, and some NASA science missions have already been pushed back by the budget impact of the Moon-Mars mission.

Meanwhile, public opinion has not quite caught fire. Opinion polls taken in January show at best indifference and at worst hostility to the new plan. Greg Klerkx wrote "Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the explosion of Columbia, other than the human tragedy, was that it changed very few opinions about NASA or NASA's human spaceflight activities. Both should continue, the polls unanimously concluded, but with no more or less vigor than at present." [p. 12, Klerkx 2004]

The Commission, led by longtime government official E.C. Aldridge, also includes four space scientists, a retired Air Force General, a former Congressman, a business and government executive, and the well-known CEO of a high tech firm. Notably, no astronauts or former NASA executives were on the panel.

Contents
Transmittal Letter
Executive Summary
Section I - Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision
Section II - Organizing the US Government for Success
Section III - Building a Robust Space Industry
Section IV - Exploration and Science Agenda
Section V - Inspiring Current and Future Generations
Section VI - Concluding Comments
Appendices

Historical Context
After any disaster or major program failure, commissions are empaneled and they tend to produce two sorts of reports. The first type of report is a failure analysis, including specific prescriptions for recovery. The second is a more broad examination of strategies and goals. This report falls into the second category. While the Aldridge Commission report includes some recommendations that duplicate some previous ones, the new report differs in some important ways from those.

In 1986, the Paine Commission examined how NASA should respond to the Challenger failure. The commission's report in places reads like a primer on space technologies, and proposes specific goals similar to those of the Bush plan: completion of the Space Station, return to the Moon, and a manned mission to Mars. The Paine Commission seems to have felt that the basic problem facing NASA was a lack of a long-term vision and political commitment.

In 1990, the Augustine Commission studied how NASA should respond to a variety of troubling problems on the Shuttle and other programs. This study endorsed space science strongly, while also supporting Space Station. The report focused strongly on workforce issues like morale, attrition and aging. It also noted weaknesses in NASA's executive leadership practices. The report made some specific reform proposals, some of which reappear in the Aldridge report.

The Report
The Aldridge Commission report differs from previous examinations in important ways. First, it has a very limited scope. The Commission did not perform an open-ended study of what NASA ought to do, or how much emphasis to place on astronomy vs planetary science vs human spaceflight. They only studied how to accomplish President Bush's new goals for the space program. Paradoxically, their limited brief resulted in a far more profound proposal to reorganize NASA than previous reports. The range and depth of reforms proposed by this report greatly exceeds those of previous reports.

The top-level recommendations include:
1. Establish a Space Exploration Steering Council, reporting to the President
2. NASA should establish much more private industry participation in space operations, beginning with unmanned launch services
a. Reorganization of NASA HQ
b. Spin off NASA Centers as Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (similar to JPL and the DOE National Labs)
c. NASA should establish 3 new organizations:
+ a technical advisory board, modeled on the Defense Science Board
+ an Independent Cost Estimating organization, modeled on DoD Cost Analysis Improvement Group
+ a research organization, modeled on DARPA and formed from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
d. NASA should adopt DoD-style project management methods
3. NASA should identify and begin development of critical technologies
4. Renew and sustain development of a robust space industry
a. NASA should actively solicit ideas from all sources
b. Congress should fund prizes targeting specific missions and technologies, and work on space property rights
5. NASA should pursue international partnerships
6. NASA should consult regularly with scientists and the National Academy of Sciences
7. The space exploration program should be tied into educational programs and public relations

Section I "Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision" presents three basic justifications for the exploration program: The human urge to explore, economic growth, and national security. Three "imperatives for success" are also presented: sustainability, affordability, and credibility. Sustainability is described as being able to sustain both technical momentum and long-term political support for what will be an expensive program. Affordability is described as "go as you can pay," where each milestone is reached through "spiral, evolutionary developments." The report compares the funding to cancer research, where the pace is determined by a political judgment of "annually, how much can we afford?" The report describes credibility as an amalgam of best practices. While the Commission recognized that space exploration is full of risk, NASA must not appear careless or foolish. NASA must embrace both management practices as well as technical ideas regardless of their source.

Analysis
The Commission's Report is itself a model of the practices they exhort NASA to follow. Whether by intention or not, many of the ideas in the report have been the stated position of advocacy groups like the National Space Society and the Mars Society. Some of the reforms have been specifically proposed by previous Commissions.

The biggest problem I wondered about was funding. So far, about $12B has been proposed for this vision. Yet, many of the recommendations seem likely to cost a great deal of money. For example, on p. 23, the report states that much of NASA's infrastructure needs substantial modernization. Elsewhere, technology R&D is addressed by proposing a DARPA model or even the In-Q-Tel Venture Capital firm funded by the CIA. The Pentagon's "System-of-systems" approach is proposed as a model for project architecture. Special attention is given to the need for reliable heavy lift launch capability. In discussing how to pursue international participants, the Joint Strike Fighter program is listed as a model. Each of these areas requires either significant direct investment (infrastructure, heavy lift, R&D) or large bureaucracies to administer complex contracts (system-of-systems, JSF model). There is an unavoidable tension between the need for R&D, "go as you can pay," available funds, and "credibility."

The money issue is partially addressed by proposing tax incentives, privatization and private competition. But competition cannot reduce the amount of honest-to-goodness investment needed to remediate the technology deficit. It can only promote the most efficient approach. We need more R&D, yet private competition is seen as a way to "reduce government investment" (p. 20). The elephant in the room is that aerospace is a highly regulated market with relatively low profit margins. This means that direct reinvestment is fairly low. A glance at a list of the top R&D companies shows that top-tier aerospace companies do not reinvest a lot of their own money.

The second issue that troubled me is the applicability of the models they proposed. JPL, the National Labs, various DoD organizations and methods, the X Prize, and other examples are listed as models for various reforms of NASA. This raises some questions. First, are these models applicable? No evidence is presented to indicate that the Commission considered whether different organizations with different goals, constraints, missions, and sizes can use a given model successfully. The proposal to spin off most NASA centers as FFRDCs seems quite radical. Would any commercial firm spin off everything except a design team? Is this what the Aldridge Commission proposes of NASA? How many NASA employees would be left, and in which disciplines? Can the JPL model be applied well to other NASA centers? Would the centers work together better or worse? Would there be limits to how many centers a given contractor would be permitted to operate? I suspect it's much easier to designate JPL as a model than it is to enact in the real world. Do the security and procurement scandals at some DOE labs give us anything to worry about? What about the need for the National Labs to chase proposals in light of funding cuts? Does that make organizations more market oriented and relevant, or does it simply waste the time of researchers?

Finally, the Commission's report failed to address the biggest political problem our human spaceflight program faces: a lack of relevancy to ordinary people. The transmittal letter to the President states that the Commission's web site received over 6,000 written inputs, and that public comments were 7:1 in favor of the new vision. This is of course not a scientific survey, rather it is a self-selected and rather small sample of people who are presumably interested in space exploration. Elsewhere in the report, supportive public testimony is cherry-picked without context or attribution. In one case, I recognized a quote that, taken out of context, sounds much more supportive of a government monopoly on human space travel than the speaker probably meant: "We all wanted to go" (p. 13) was characterized as an expression of the deep and broad effect that the Apollo program had on Americans. I believe this was Tony Tether, Director of DARPA. The full quote was: "What NASA seemed to forget was that then, we all wanted to go," Tether told commissioners. "We were forgotten about." But if NASA can find a way for American citizens to take the baby steps that would eventually allow them to reach the moon - or even just space - themselves, it would do wonders for the space agency's support, he added. "If you can do that, you will have a constituency that you don't have today," Tether said. The longer quote is here.

These anecdotes do not invalidate the report, but I do wonder if the Commission is overselling the enthusiasm that the public will have for this program. Section I, and the report's title, endorse the "inspiration, education, and innovation" arguments for space travel that have so far failed to garner support for a more expansive space vision. One brief mention was made of space tourism and of making NASA an engine of the economy (p. 20). There are hints at the relevance problem sprinkled throughout the report, but public support is more or less presumed, not demonstrated.

What's Good:
If your attitude about NASA reorg proposals is "wake me if it's a big deal," then this is your wakeup call. The Aldridge Commission Report proposes the most profound and far-reaching reorganization of NASA since its founding.

To a larger degree than I would have expected from this board, the proposals are strongly market- and business-oriented. I presume this is the implicit desire of President Bush (MBA, former CEO) and possibly NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe (an accountant).

The report is written in an engaging, enthusiastic style.

What's Bad:
Where's the Beef? "Go as you can pay" does not seem like an adequate response to an agency that has faced aging infrastructure and workers for more than 14 years (see Augustine report). Increased funding and profit margins might address many issues better than bureaucratic realignments or spinoffs. There is no discussion of how to value intangibles like scientific discovery and inspiration, yet tangible values are of prime concern to contractors. NASA's credibility is discussed only in terms of competency, not based on perceived relevancy to the public.

What's Missing:
There is no consideration of potential disadvantages of the various proposals. Supporters of space science may find the report dismissive of their priorities and concerns. There is no critical evaluation of the benefits of space program investments vs direct investments in education, science and technology.

This report is remarkably thin on supplementary materials: there are 13 pp of appendices. More is available on the Commission's web site.

Refs:
[Klerkx 2004]: "Lost In Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age," Greg Klerkx, 2004. ISBN 0375421505
[Paine 1986]: http://history.nasa.gov/painerep/cover.htm
[Augustine 1990]: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/augustin e/racfup1.htm
[Aldridge 2004]: http://www.moontomars.org

The reviewer is an aerospace engineer with experience in human spaceflight engineering and operations, commercial satellite development and operations, and scientific satellite development and operations. No current relationship to NASA, and no significant interests in companies with an interest in this proposal.

You can download A Journey to Inspire, Innovate and Discover from moontomars.org. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to contribute.

Quivering Coward writes "There has been a marked increase in seismic activity in southern California in the past several days," pointing to this map from Caltech Earthquake Net, including a 5.2 and 3.6 this morning (2004/06/15). "Could this be the big one? Is 'the big one' ever going to happen? NASA is doing their part to predict the future of Earthquakes."

EccentricAnomaly writes "NASA has begun to release some pictures from Cassini's Phoebe flyby last Friday. If you look at the thumbnail of this image or if you look at the right of these images, you can see a group of craters that look like a skull just south of the equator and something that looks like George Washington (wearing his wig) near the north pole. Come up with some good names for features, and you can submit your ideas to the IAU. There's a process for naming a newly discovered crater, fossa, or sulcus. By the way, the naming convention for Phoebe is people associated with Phoebe or the Greek islands."

EccentricAnomaly writes "NASA has begun to release some pictures from Cassini's Phoebe flyby last Friday. If you look at the thumbnail of this image or if you look at the right of these images, you can see a group of craters that look like a skull just south of the equator and something that looks like George Washington (wearing his wig) near the north pole. Come up with some good names for features, and you can submit your ideas to the IAU. There's a process for naming a newly discovered crater, fossa, or sulcus. By the way, the naming convention for Phoebe is people associated with Phoebe or the Greek islands."

Daniel Goldman writes "Twenty one years ago today, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to leave our solar system, by crossing the orbit of Neptune (which was then the farthest planet from the Sun). Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to enter the asteroid belt, the ring of giant rocks beyond Mars. It survived and zoomed on to Jupiter in late 1973, where it became the first spacecraft to take close-up photographs of the storms on the giant planet's surface. After Jupiter, it kept going, collecting data on the particles and radiation it encountered. More info about Pioneer 10 at Wikipedia."

Anonymous Explorer writes "The Cassini-Huygens probe is set to fly by the largest outer Saturn moon of Phoebe today. Cassini will be roughly 2000 km from the surface of Phoebe at 1:56 Pacific time Friday, June 11. Thats pretty darn close. The newest images of Phoebe are already thousands of times better than the previous ones taken by the Voyager 2 mission in 1981. Phoebe is interesting in that it maintains a retrograde orbit around Saturn. This has lead to the hypothesis that it is an ancient asteroid that has been captured by the gravitational pull from Saturn. Phoebe may provide some important insights into the composition of early building blocks of our planets. Phoebe was discovered in 1898 by American astronomer William Pickering. As always, discussion about this mission can be found at #cassini on irc.freenode.net."

Anonymous Explorer writes "The Cassini-Huygens probe is set to fly by the largest outer Saturn moon of Phoebe today. Cassini will be roughly 2000 km from the surface of Phoebe at 1:56 Pacific time Friday, June 11. Thats pretty darn close. The newest images of Phoebe are already thousands of times better than the previous ones taken by the Voyager 2 mission in 1981. Phoebe is interesting in that it maintains a retrograde orbit around Saturn. This has lead to the hypothesis that it is an ancient asteroid that has been captured by the gravitational pull from Saturn. Phoebe may provide some important insights into the composition of early building blocks of our planets. Phoebe was discovered in 1898 by American astronomer William Pickering. As always, discussion about this mission can be found at #cassini on irc.freenode.net."

Anonymous Explorer writes "The Cassini-Huygens probe is set to fly by the largest outer Saturn moon of Phoebe today. Cassini will be roughly 2000 km from the surface of Phoebe at 1:56 Pacific time Friday, June 11. Thats pretty darn close. The newest images of Phoebe are already thousands of times better than the previous ones taken by the Voyager 2 mission in 1981. Phoebe is interesting in that it maintains a retrograde orbit around Saturn. This has lead to the hypothesis that it is an ancient asteroid that has been captured by the gravitational pull from Saturn. Phoebe may provide some important insights into the composition of early building blocks of our planets. Phoebe was discovered in 1898 by American astronomer William Pickering. As always, discussion about this mission can be found at #cassini on irc.freenode.net."

Anonymous Explorer writes "The Cassini-Huygens probe is set to fly by the largest outer Saturn moon of Phoebe today. Cassini will be roughly 2000 km from the surface of Phoebe at 1:56 Pacific time Friday, June 11. Thats pretty darn close. The newest images of Phoebe are already thousands of times better than the previous ones taken by the Voyager 2 mission in 1981. Phoebe is interesting in that it maintains a retrograde orbit around Saturn. This has lead to the hypothesis that it is an ancient asteroid that has been captured by the gravitational pull from Saturn. Phoebe may provide some important insights into the composition of early building blocks of our planets. Phoebe was discovered in 1898 by American astronomer William Pickering. As always, discussion about this mission can be found at #cassini on irc.freenode.net."

colonist writes "Wired News reports on the Personal Satellite Assistant (PSA), a spherical robot about the size of a softball that uses air jets to move in the microgravity environment of space vehicles and habitats. Described as a cross between Star Trek's tricorder and Star Wars' lightsaber training droid, the PSA has 'sensors for measuring gases, temperature, and air pressure' and performs 'video conferencing and can communicate with electronic support devices such as computer servers, avionics systems, and wireless LAN bridges'." We mentioned these a few years ago - looks like they've come a long way since then.

Lunchy writes "A long standing monument to the growth of research and development in Silicon Valley, the NASA Ames Research Center has done advanced research in the area since 1939. Originally, the center focused on aircraft (and dirigible) research but it is now a high-tech computer science center. The open source community may be interested to know that NASA Ames is now OSI Certified and is releasing some of their software under open source licenses."

Lunchy writes "A long standing monument to the growth of research and development in Silicon Valley, the NASA Ames Research Center has done advanced research in the area since 1939. Originally, the center focused on aircraft (and dirigible) research but it is now a high-tech computer science center. The open source community may be interested to know that NASA Ames is now OSI Certified and is releasing some of their software under open source licenses."

KjetilK writes "Venus is just about to cross the solar disc. Direct from the control room in the Frogner Park in Oslo, I'm pleased to inform you that we have a great webcast, and as far as we know, it is the only webcast that still stands upright... Slashdotters, do your worst! ;-) A Venus transit is one of the most unique astronomical events in our time, in fact, no living person has witnessed it before today. And today, more people have seen it from the park where I'm sitting that in the rest of human history. Also, it had tremendous importance for the development of science, as it gave the first absolute measurements of distances in the solar system. Especially in 1769, a transit made science take huge leaps forward. And BTW, New Zealand and Australia were 'discovered' in the process" Some nice photos from the UK, photos from vt-2004.org, and if you missed it, it'll be eight short years till you can try again.