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NASA Task Force Recommends Radical Changes
darrellsilver writes: "As reported at the nytimes (free reg, etc) here and msnbc here, an independant task force initiated in July by the now resigning Dan Goldin concluded this week that "radical changes" need to be put into place if the space station is to continue functioning. The full report in PDF format is available from NASA here." We've reported on this before but we didn't have a link to the report itself. Budgetary woes have already taken their toll on the station and this report is recommending even more cuts.
I'm tired of the $2 billion/year ego project that the ISS is. I'd go back to really good 100 million buck science projects, and fund 20 of em a year, or 5 bigger and 12 smaller ones. I suspect a few scientists would agree. And that's basically what the report comes down to. No good science looks like it'll be getting done any time soon.
People forget that it takes foundational science to do sexy science, and there are TONS of really worthy and interesting projects that get sidelined by sex appeal.
Even the dreamers should realize that ISS does much less to get folks on mars for example than real good focused R&D here on earth. NASA has a horrendous record in cost control, timeline estimates, and it is about time they paid the price. Redirect all that money to folks who'll use it well untill NASA get's its house back in order.
Man on mars (one way trip to start) is definatly cool, but let's take a pause to do some real science for a while, say 5 years, then see where we are.
Sure, this'll get modded down by all the NASA lovers but all these blind science geeks need to realize something. Unless you allow stuff to fail you never will evolve. Basic evolution in action.
That's something the miliary for example, which refuses to admit huge procurment mistakes time and again, has never has got. They can't admit a mistake and end up chasing down dumb roads to the tunes of billions.
Bush never cut the space station's budget... His administration simply agreed on the already-planned funding, but told NASA they wouldn't get a single buck more than that. Aren't they already several tens of billions over budget? (If I'm not mistaken, the planned cost was about $40billion and the current estimates are more like 80...)
And now they say they can't make it, due to an absolute failure to track costs. Giving them more money is encouraging them to soak more of it into their virtual monopoly on spaceflight. That said, not completing the space station is a violation of the US' international commitments.
How about calling for bids and letting a private company complete program? Preferably a small one - not Boeing and the likes, they're already the ones running the show...
Honestly, I just don't see the relavency of the space program in this day and age.
Construction.
We need to concentrate on keeping our citizens safe, and most importantly bringing our boys home from Afghanistan and bringing Bin Laden to justice.
Destruction.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
I am highly interested in progress in space. I want to see many more things happen before I die. I am all for any way to increase the amount of funding that advances space sciences.
Although nasa may not be the best place to put all that money in its current state, that does not mean we should just cut the funding for space projects.
To say that we are at war or that there are more important ways to spend money is short sighted and a narrow view of the benefits of this science.
first of all, the people that died on sept 11 were unfortunate americans, and im a patriot and all but that does not qualify them as brave(with exception of the firefighters,etc).
second, if we abandon everything so that we can go after one guy(this was implied in the previous comment) then we are a very sad country.
the space program does a whole lot more for us than "waste money"
Many usefull things have come out of NASA, most importantly knowledge.
the 120 some million americans can do a whole lot more than just focus on terror. We have to keep moving and developing, as in keep programs like NASA running. The space station also gives us a certain respect from other nations and people, they know that only america can do stuff like this.
not to mention that you are an anonymous coward!
AND, not that im defending him, but Bin Laden has not been proven of the sept11 attack, he is just a major terrorist and the first target of many, dont use this one man to focus everything bad you knoww on, focus on the terrorism itself. anything else would be mob justice which is not justice at all.
It's all well and good to insist that NASA manage to a budget and a schedule; however, to hold these as the two highest priorities as they attempt to coordinate something no one has ever tried before is ludicrous.
Instead of rewriting history, would it not be better to learn from it? The Russians launched and ran a space station for many years ( remember ), until the costs crippled the program. The same thing seems to be happening to NASA.
NASA has to understand that a large percentage of tax payers see little point in a Space Station, and unless it embrasses budget cuts it will either alianate tax payers even more, or face another Challenger.
Personaly, I hope for neither.
There is something in this analysis that strikes me as odd.
1) Apparently, the NASA did not have enough money these last years, and solved this by pushing costs to the future.
2) The solution suggested for this problem is giving them even less money. Strange.
If you look at item 1, you would think that giving them *more* money, or more time on the current budget, would be a logical solution. At least, give them the same amount as before and allow for some time to reorganize their management.
Of course, budgetting is a real world issue, so just doing the logical thing is not always feasible. Spending for ISS has been going down for some time, even before the current maybe-recession and the attacks on Afghanistan. But even though wars costs lots of money, a wise government would not stop spending money on all research. Imagine when they would have said in WWII "we're at war, we don't have time for this research on atoms". The outcome could have been way different from what it was.
And on a side note, wouldn't you be giving the terrorists more credit than they're due? They are already disrupting normal life, which is surely one of their targets.
Inez{R}.
If humanity wants to survive, we must get off the Earth.
:-(
And that certainly starts with small steps, like the ISS.
But, hell, we can't even take that small step
Some of the assumptions behind the selected 1993 Space Station "Alpha" design and cost estimate of $17.4B now appear to be ridiculously optimistic.
The space flight software would total 500,000 source lines of code (SLOC).
It is now projected three times as high, tripleing the costs. And this is only to speak of the software onboard, the whole project software has 4M source lines it says later. Why do I think that in the majority of cases the software costs is the part which is underestimated mostly? Shouldn't they have learned from the Ariane V disaster?
By the time everyone figured out there was basically nothing of scientific value that needed the whole space station, NASA was already committed. What they should have done is said "oops, actually could we just please have all the space station money and use it for something else?" -- but that's understandably hard to do, because it would make them look incompetent. What they went with insted is the "let's cook up some thin stories to justify this monstrosity; they only need to be good enough to fool some senators."
It kills me that we have already spent enough NASA money on this to fund the Pathfinder mission 200+ times over. That's when NASA was at their best (in science, bargain-hunting and self-promotion).
The space station is now operational, but we don't hear anything about it because nothing is happening there. And there won't be, even when all the parts are attached! Sure, they'll act like all kinds of neato science things need the space station, but for any experiment they do, ask yourself whether the same thing could have been done in an independently-launched, self-contained experimental satelite, which would have been much cheaper. Most things, like growing crystals and perfect vaccuum research, will require independent satellites anyway, because of the vibration caused by motors and centrifuges on the ISS, and because the ISS will inevitably leak a little bit, so it will be surrounded by a cloud of gas. Any studies on physiological effects of weightlessness would just duplicate what was done on the MIR... and let's see... what else was there supposed to be?
My first reaction to the ISS is that though it's useless, it's still cool, just because it's a SPACE STATION, and I always hoped we'd have a nice one. But it's not innocent like that: Not only does the ISS draw money from much more interesting and budget-constrained experiments; it also makes NASA look like bumbling fools when in 2005 a panel concludes (correctly) that we basically didn't learn anything on the ISS that experiments costing 1/10 as much could have told us. In the next budget, NASA's funding request will get lauged at. NASA's epitaph will curse the ISS, and that's why it sucks.
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4291653,00. html
Paraphrasing here, "the agency's main hopes lie with persuading Congress to bail it out. It is estimated it needs 8 billion dollars to fulfill its commitments and to cover a 5 billion dollar debt, a vastly improbable sum given that America is on a war footing and has priorities far removed from space travel. Instead, a desperate slashing back of costs and missions seems the agency's likely future."
Not a pretty picture at all.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Either you have a very skewed definition of space science, or you are merely an idiot. Apollo did very little in space science, which is why I am leaning towards idiot. But, with full knowledge that this is a troll, here we go.
e 02.html#Table_2_4). ISS is about 35% of that. But, if you look at the table, you will notice a surprising list of things we spend more money on: Veterans' Affairs, and Transportation, for instance. We spend TWICE on HUD what we do on NASA. Same with Education, and HHS gets 3 times as much. I am not arguing that NASA should be equated with any of these agencies, but just pointing out how insignificant the NASA budget really is.
.8 cents of the tax dollar.
"we spend as much on NASA as we do."
NASA spends 14 billion a year, in total. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2002/guid
Or, for a more influential stat, divide 14 billion into 1.6 trillion, and figure out the percentage of the annual budget that goes to NASA.
"Around the world, people starve and die of diseases that would be cured by a quick trip to an American doctor."
OK, more math: Assume half of the populations of China and India (probably a significant understatement) have problems that could be easily remedied in the United States. So, that's 1 billion people. If you can find a way to get them to the States, or provide continuing American quality medical care, for FOURTEEN DOLLARS A PERSON then more power to you, but you are missing your calling posting on slashdot. And this totally ignores the mess that is sub-Saharan Africa.
People starved and died before NASA, and they will continue to after NASA is a memory. That is LIFE. The United States ALREADY feeds the world. U.S. Pharmaceutical companies, love them or hate them, medicate the world. These facts are only true because of the research dollars the U.S. gov't has spent. Now, I'm no biologist, but I have heard from quite a few that there is potential in creating medicines in zero-g environments that will revolutionize medical care. I think that possibility might be worth
"We haven't done anything of significance in space since the moon landings, and we won't in the near future, either."
This doesn't make much sense, frankly. Apollo brought us back some moon rocks, and we learned about lunar geology and some about the space environment and how to survive in it. Within the past 2 years we have discovered evidence of water oceans on Europa and, possibly, Ganymede and Callisto. Since 1990 we have discovered evidence of the movement of water on the Martian surface, we have discovered planets around other stars, imaged black holes, etc. Hubble, Chandra, and a whole host of smaller projects have made significant advances in our understanding of the universe. I haven't even gotten into NASA's Earth Science and Solar Science Programs. In the near future, Cassini/Huygens will get to Saturn and we will learn what is going on on Titan, including gathering evidence for or against the possibility of life in the atmospheric soup.
What of any of this is insignificant? Or is space science itself insignificant, which you don't say.
"Commercial interests will eventually take over..."
This part of this sentence I actually agree with, though the idea of a private concern building Hubble is so ludicrous that is doesn't even deserve comment. If we kill NASA in the near future, commercial interests will never take over. Period. The cost of space activity is too high for anything besides communications sats. This cost will not come down without a significant amount of research money being spent. Sure as hell the industry is not willing to spend those dollars, even if they were equipped for it. Without NASA, no one would do it, plain and simple.
Well, I hope this actually makes you think, though I doubt it. Idiot might have been a bit strong in the first paragraph, but I don't think you've actually put any time or effort into this opinion, so you merely sounded like an idiot instead of actually being one. I apologize.
"Fifty million Americans can't be wrong," said Rep. Billy Tauzin. Gore - 50,999,897 Bush - 50,456,002
Gore was more interested in going up into space and looking BACK at Earth instead of looking out, away from Earth and to human kind's future. Human kind is doomed in the very long run (100% chance in a few billion years), and perhaps in the short run, if we don't get our freakin' DNA off this planet.
As much as I hate seeing IIS suck the dough from other NASA projects, the work IIS supports in gaining experience in long term space travel is worth it. Read the book Dragonfly about the Shuttle-Mir program for a good look at life in space.
Once a good sized chunk of rock smacks into Earth, all that starving and disease doesn't matter much anyway.
Anyone who thinks the money would be better spent on charity is very shortsighted.
HOWEVER, I have done a little contract work for NASA here and there, and they are nothing but one huge bureaucracy with a history of mismanagement. (Much like the DOD, et. al.) Throwing them more money just makes them think that mistakes, bad fiscal management, and scores of incompetent middle managers is A-OK with everyone and business should go on as usual.
I don't want any funding cut...but I do want them to act a little more like a business instead of a public works project. Either that, or let's start handing out R & D grants to people who can actually put the money to work effectively and efficiently. You can't say a project will cost $8 billion/year and then spend $10 billion/year and defer the extra $2 billion till five years down the road. What happens when five years go by and you now have to face the fact that you have spent $2 billion of your budget before you have even done one thing?
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
Think of how many billions of dollars go to taking away people's rights to liberty and the puruit of happiness via the Drug Enforcement Agency. Think of how many people that could put in orbit if they made drugs legal...
Don't get me wrong, my truck gets about 285 Leagues to the Oxhaft and that's the way I like it, and I love NASA and what they do, but honestly, this is a scientific organization. What the hell are they doing using "standard" measurements?!?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.