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Preview of Moon-To-Mars Report
schnarff writes "Space.com has obtained a sneak preview of the Moon-To-Mars commission report, which will be officially released June 16. The report calls for spinning off NASA centers as FFRDCs, establishing an independent cost estimation bureau, and otherwise streamlining NASA's bureaucracy."
I heard a rumor that R. Daneel Olivaw will be helping out here and there, especially with a new technology that can capture approaching comets and mine them for minerals. Can anyone confirm this?
I also reply below your current threshold.
"Y'all need to stop worrying about the middle east and the economy. I got that under control! And we aint stoppin' at the moon. Write this down. M-A-R-S, Mars bitches. We're going to Mars. Red Rocks!"
/very ad-libbed
"Yeai yeaaaaii!"
NASA announced today that with the privatization effort in full gear, Halliburton had been awarded a no bid contract to adminster the entire US Space Program...
"The Commission believes that commercialization of space should become the primary focus of the vision, and that the creation of a space-based industry will be one of the principal benefits of this journey...."
This one point seems so obvious. It has been said many, many times. Yet it's so hard for "The Powers That Be" to implement.
When the history of the airplane is considered, one has to be thankful that the Wrights did not work for the National Aeronautic Administration in 1904.
I am grateful for all that NASA has given us. But if we are to truly make the next step, the financial incentives for space must be given a chance to exercise their power.
It's hard to allow a child to move out on it's own, but for the good of both the child and the parent, it must be done. Yes, there will be mistakes and risk and danger. But the alternative is a stunted, deformed life that is nothing but tragedy.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
The report calls for spinning off NASA centers as FFRDCs, establishing an independent cost estimation bureau, and otherwise streamlining NASA's bureaucracy.
Only in the federal government would "streamlining bureaucracy" involve "FFRDCs" and a "cost estimation bureau."
As an added bonus, people who complain about their tax dollars being "wasted on space" will have much less to bitch about.
While I agree that the Moon To Mars mission is just a PR stunt, and that they haven't even approached a reasonable budget for it, I have some real problems with the report. Namely, the "NASA As A Punching Bag" style.
I'm probably going to get jumped on for this, but *every* national space agency has had huge problems of every type. NASA being the biggest, it's no shock that we seem to have more than our share. But seriously - look at the ESA. Ariane has been a disaster. How many more bailouts are they going to need? How many more times is Ariane 5 going to explode? The Soviets, in their hayday, were even more unsuccessful than us; look at their appalling mars record, for example. We've got some newcomers on the scene - China, Japan, and India - for whom it is too soon to judge. However, don't hold your breath for a miracle.
Private industry? What a laugh. First off, much of NASA's work *IS* done by private industry. The company I used to work for, Rockwell-Collins, had a major shuttle contract when it was being developed. They abused the hell out of it. Whenever any project ran out of hours, they charged it to the shuttle, even if it was unrelated. Private industry is supposed to *save* us money?
Small startups? Not even the slightest bit of success. Hundreds of millions of dollars were poured into private space startups during the dotcom boom, and all they have to show for it is a bunch of loping along companies and half-completed projects of bankrupt companies.
Is everyone just doing a bad job? Of course not. The problem is that the engineering challenges are *massive*, and there are so many variables that it is almost impossible to see what realistically could go wrong. On the really big projects, it gets even worse: not only do you have so many more things that could get wrong, but you have so many more people who have their ideas of what could pose a problem, most of which are not real threats. And now, if you don't investigate each of them, you're accused of suppressing whistleblowers.
This probably isn't going to be a popular post. I'm OK with that. But I don't like the typical Bash-NASA threads that these usually turn into, so I thought I'd add my two cents. Mod me as you will.
Carbon, made, only wants to be unmade.
While your political analysis is generally correct, I think that we should remember that the famous speech given by president Kennedy to the joint session of Congress in May 1961 - "I believe that this nation should commit itself, before this decade is out, to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth", can also be translated in your way to:
"Well, a month ago the Soviets launched Gagarin to the first manned orbital flight and all the PR spin doctoring in the world cannot make Alan Shepard's flight a match for that. Also just a few days ago the guys from CIA made complete morons of themselves in Bay Of Pigs, Cuba. It looks like we'll count another humiliating defeat in Indochina. To make things worse to me, I won the election by a very narrow margin and the Republicans can hit me that I'm soft on communism. Oh, and I need that whole civil rights movement on the South like a pain in the a** - if I'll support them, the Southern Democrats no longer support me, if I'll oppose them, all the other Democrats no longer support me. Damn, I have no movement. To the left, to the right, to the north, to the south, obstacles everywhere. So maybe I'll just move up, up and away?".
Yeah, for Kennedy the Apollo Project was nothing but a clever PR-stunt, a brilliant escape from his political problems. But decades ago all that counts is that it was one of the greatest achievements of mankind in the twentieth century. In politics, major achievements are often made thanks to petty reasons. Even if the Moon-to-Mars project is also a PR-BS for Bush, it doesn't prove nothing will come of it.