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.

Comments

Alternative Financing

[Hanzie]

It's really a pity that they couldn't find anybody willing to PAY for a trip to the ISS. It would solve so many financial problems.

Idiots.

Re:Alternative Financing

[hughk]

A shuttle launch costs in the region of $100mil, this is far too expensive. However, the Russians can launch for $10mil which means that the entire three man flight costs less than the shuttle does per person.

Cost & Schedule vs. Safe & Right

[purp]

It seems like what's being lost in this analysis is that any project you're going to launch into space has to be done safely and properly ... or your cost-managed investment amounts to naught.

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.

--j, insomniac at large.

budget cuts

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn. The ISS took yet another hit, and more NASA engineers who love their jobs will be told to leave. The article makes these panel members sound inscrutable, but who knows what kind of backseat politicking is going on here? Finance and law seem to be tearing engineering apart.

Since when does science take a backseat to finance? Welcome to the federal hegemony of America, where culpable deniability and reactionary motivation rule the day. This is the same kind of stuff that makes American engineers cry: when Goldin parachutes matter more than scientific progress. It makes me want to resign my own piece of scholarly hide to some country that is friendlier to engineers and hard scientists.

Unfortunately, the "American way" is being imposed almost everywhere, and many countries are pervaded with an overarching sense of responsibilty to itemize their science into the ground. Just where does NASA think this will take them? More importantly, why in the hell is Johnny Lunchpail equating NASA cuts with more money in his pocket?

The ISS isn't about science...

[isaac]

I agree the ISS is a collossal waste of money, but those who think the main purpose of the ISS was ever scientific are pretty naive. The point of the ISS is to keep the Russian rocket/space industry afloat, thus keeping their scientists and engineers employed in peaceful pursuits instead of working for the missile programs of Iran, Iraq, North Korea, China, Pakistan, India, etc. etc.

-Isaac

Re:I think the ISS is a waste of money

[BDew]

The essential point you and many of the other posters this morning have missed is that the NASA budget is not a zero sum game, for two reasons:

1) The Space Station budget is ENTIRELY divorced from that of the Office of Space Science and the Office of Earth Science. Congress decreed that NASA had to fix ISS within the confines of the ISS program budget, and NASA has been doing that.

2) (this is the big one) Money not spent on Station WOULD NOT BE SPENT BY NASA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Congressional budgeting doesn't work like this. NASA fights with the Veterans Administration, EPA, and HUD for its dollars, so money not being sunk in the ISS hole would just as likely be sunk in the VA Hospital hole as go to NASA Science.

The trap in robotic missions is that they are then all you will ever get. NASA Does quite a few robotic missions, and most of them work. Try this link: http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/index.htm for the comprehensive list. Many scientists would be happy to just use robots forever, but NASA's mandate is broader than that.

NASA made an immense mistake in trying to sell ISS as a Science platform. It's true that, as originally designed, it would have been good for that. In truth, though, ISS is a massive engineering and design project. It is MUCH more complicated than a glorified Mir station. Nearly all of the work done on ISS has been groundbreaking in space engineering, and the knowledge generated is necessary to move the manned program forward.

I Used to Work on the Pure Scientific NASA Side

[ChuckDivine]

And I've written a fairly angry analysis of what I saw there. A Few Thoughts on NASA's Problems describes some of the management (or is it manglement) problems I saw there. While I've toned it down a bit, NASA people might want to put on their asbestos underwear. Then again, independent thinkers who still manage to work in aerospace might see reflections of their own disorganizations.

ISS science is worthless!

[fortinbras47]

On the non-manned mission side, NASA has pushed a whole new approach of smaller and cheaper space vehicles and satellites. Using this strategy, NASA has gotten more satellites into space and had the first mission to Mars in decades.

At the exact same time, NASA has also been pursuing the International Space Station, which is neither cheap, small, nor effective. It is currently only being manned by a skeleton crew, so they can't hardly do any experiments. Furthermore, it has been recently pointed out that the ISS wobbles a bit, which could render many microgravity experiments useless. Basically, the ISS is an endeavour to pay hundereds of millions if not billions of dollars for experiments of very questionable scientific value.

Consider all the interesting science that could be done if this were instead channelled into real science.

Re:About Time!

[Moofie]

Nonsense.

First of all, the Russians have lots of on-orbit time. Their cosmonauts exhibited some loss of bone strength, but it came back rapidly when they were back on Earth.

Secondly, there's no reason to do a Mars mission in microgravity. Put a tether between the spent upper stage of the rocket, and the crew module, and spin the thing like a bolo. Believe it or not, you CAN do astrogation on a rotating platform like this.

Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" debunks this and all other so-called reasons not to go to Mars. Many of his papers are available at http://www.marssociety.org

30 years? Hell, if we don't have a viable colony on Mars by that time, we're a bunch of jackasses.

Why should Station be immune? Show me the science!

[code_rage]

Anyone remember the Superconducting Supercollider? That project was terribly mismanaged, but at least it was going to bring us cutting edge science. I would be willing to keep funding the bankrupt Station IF I believed something valuable would come out of it. Let's examine the historical evidence:

• Scientific discovery -- the manned space program is fairly spotty on this. Peer review of scientific proposals has been criticized at JSC (the 'manned spaceflight center') as being inadequate or absent. Papers published in peer-reviewed journals are relatively few, considering the billions of dollars spent. Is it unfair to expect some results in exchange for the money spent? I think so. Contrast this with other space research such as Hubble or the Very Large Array / Very Long Baseline Interferometer. Those facilities have yielded large numbers of papers. Sure, we can quibble over whether the quantity or the quality of the science is important, but ultimately there has to be some quantity.
  
• Inspiration -- Some argue that you can't put a price tag on inspiration, and that Astronauts and Cosmonauts inspire children "of all ages". Frankly, I just don't see the interest. Maybe if we put J.Lo and Kid Rock up on the Station this would change. We've seen a huge upsurge in interest in careers at FBI & CIA recently -- contrast this with the exodus at NASA.
  

So, what is the mission of the manned space program? What are we paying for? I'm all in favor of a manned space program -- but not boring holes in the sky.

So what do I propose for the manned space program? Drastically increase research into advanced transportation technologies:

• Propulsion -- e.g. Franklin Chang-Diaz's VASIMR engine, which will permit faster trips to Mars.
  
• Space tethers -- to provide artificial gravitational acceleration, to offset bone demineralization and muscular atrophy.
  
• Access to space -- the Space Launch Initiative might be OK, but we need to make sure it does not hinder commercial development, as previous initiatives and policies have.
  

In short, I think that the time has come for NASA to focus on the basic building blocks of space utilization, rather than pursuing missions as the primary focus. The missions will come when the building blocks are ready. I would like NASA to return to its R+D roots a la NACA.