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Future of NASA's Manned Spaceflight Looks Bleak
coondoggie writes "Things don't look good for NASA when the report outlining its future begins: 'The US human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. [NASA] is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources. Space operations are among the most complex and unforgiving pursuits ever undertaken by humans. It really is rocket science. Space operations become all the more difficult when means do not match aspirations.' Today the Augustine Commission handed to the White House the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee summary report, after months of expert review and testimony. Many observers expected a bleak report, but ultimately the future of US manned space flight will hinge on how the report's conclusions are interpreted. Keep in mind too that NASA has spent almost $8 billion of a planned $40 billion to develop systems for a return to the Moon."
Yeah. And, when NASA spent all the money on the X-33 they ended up with nothing to show for it.
Post-Apollo, NASA has a poor track record of developing new launch systems. I'm certain there are many bright and dedicated engineers at NASA, but as a collective organization, NASA just sucks at developing new launch systems.
I propose we take the remaining $32 billion that NASA hasn't spent yet, and deposit it in a bank somewhere. The first American company that lands human beings on the moon, keeps them there for one day, and returns them to Earth can collect $20 billion. The second company that does this can collect $10 billion. The third can have the last $2 billion.
No money will be paid for designs or plans, no matter how sincere. Only results will be paid.
It would be even better still if there were bounties for a useful space station (with fuel tanks and other infrastructure) to encourage solving the problem in a long-term way, rather than an Apollo-style pure race to the moon. These bounties should all be tax-free, of course.
I am 100% confident that bounties like this would result in America developing manned spaceflight capability. If we keep giving money to NASA bureaucrats to spread around to the military-industrial complex, I am less than 100% confident.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The whole "flexible path" thing is gaining traction, but its basically just a nice way of saying don't go anywhere, or stay there
I don't really agree with that. Putting an ISS at a Lagrange Point would be far more stable and a 100x better long-term investment than putting an ISS in LEO.
Since an ISS at LEO will require *constant* re-boosting to keep its altitude (its orbit naturally decays about 20km lower every month and fuel needs to constantly be ferried up to keep it from falling down), but an ISS at a Lagrange Point would require trivial stationkeeping.
Therefore, an LP base makes more sense than a LEO base. Now, one could say that a Moon base makes more sense because it has raw materials available, but that is ignoring all the Near-Earth Asteroids, which could be reached from an LP at trivial fuel amounts. You can mine the NEOs just as well as you can mine the Moon, thus building a nifty base at an LP that would serve as a great staging ground for humans in space. No gravity well to descend into or try to get out of.
The #1 thing humanity should build is a mining/smelting/shipyard at a Lagrange Point. Before a moonbase, before anything else, really.
And Flexible Path accommodates those kinds of goals.
What I don't get is why we don't just buy some Soyuz spacecraft off the Russians and be done with it.
Because buying Soyuz wouldn't create many jobs in Florida and Texas. The manned spaceflight side of NASA is a jobs program which just happens to occasionally put some people into space.
Of course there's the rational Christian view that there's no evidence the rapture is going to occur within the next millennium and a large chunk of rock may hit Earth before then. The thing about the Christian faith is that you're not supposed to take it for granted that GOD will save you from some horrible fate. You're supposed to go about your business as though no one is looking out for you. With that in mind, I sure as hell want a competent space program that can have sustainable colonies on other celestial bodies as well as one that can protect us from celestial threats regardless of the fact that I believe GOD exists and sent his only son to die for our sins.
That is not entirely true.
I am part of a research project that is reconstructing the Apollo project, and I can say authoritatively that large parts of the Saturn V knowledge are indeed missing. Only some of the booster physical structure blueprints are on file at MSFC. That does not include the wiring diagrams, the internal diagrams of the Instrument Unit, or the software that actually flew the booster. That was designed by IBM Federal Systems, and when IBM was broken up as a monopoly the documentation and software were lost. We have been chasing after this stuff for YEARS. If it existed we would have found it. We have taken to searching out and contacting former programmers and engineers to see if they took anything home with them that we might be able to scan. We have even gone so far as to take apart one of the remaining Saturn LVDCs to try to read the core memory out and see if the software is present. (This is a potentially destructive effort and is still ongoing. It will be at least a year before we know anything.)
Also missing are the procedures by which the software was used, the prelaunch checkout procedures, we have almost NO documentation of the software, tools, and procedures that the ground controllers used, and so on. There's a lot of missing pieces.