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NASA Trying To Reinvent Their Approach
coondoggie writes to tell us that NASA has started down the road to reinvention with the addition of four new committees to the external advisory group that drives the agency's direction. "The four new committees include Commercial Space, Education and Public Outreach, Information Technology Infrastructure, and Technology Innovation. The council's members provide advice and make recommendations to the NASA administrator about agency programs, policies, plans, financial controls and other matters pertinent to NASA's responsibilities. In the realm of commercial space, NASA has been pushed by outside experts to leave low Earth orbit flights to other aerospace firms. The Review of United States Human Space Flight Plan Committee report recently took that a step further in recommending: A new competition with adequate incentives to perform this service should be open to all US aerospace companies. This would let NASA focus on more challenging roles, including human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit based on the continued development of the current or modified NASA Orion spacecraft."
Slashdot user A: This is great!
Slashdot user B: What a waste of money! We may not even need unmanned missions to space, let alone manned missions. Let's fix earth, instead.
Slashdot user A: You jackass. We need to be able to colonize other planets, either because (1) we such at conservation, or (2) eventually we'll get hit by a killer asteroid, or (3) eventually the sun will go out / go boom.
Slashdot user B: Those are all very speculative or a long time off. We have more pressing problems here and now.
I just wanted to get that preliminary stuff out of the way.
More committees. Way to think outside the box.
If they want to reinvent their approach, perhaps they should start by not creating multiple committees every time they want to accomplish something ... or am I forgetting the long track record of success by new committees at already-bloated government organizations?
What it's supposed to do is stuff that's valuable to humanity, but costs a lot of money and isn't expected to make a profit. This is essentially the role of any government organization: Do the things that will benefit everyone, but that businesses are unwilling to take on because there isn't enough money in it.
Low Earth Orbit is now at the point where we can see possibilities for how to make money there, so the time is right to hand it over to commercial interests. However, there is no particularly obvious or near-term profit motive for exploring other planets. Thus, if we want it done, NASA is going to have to do it, because nobody else will (except other governments).
Of course, in order for NASA to do that sort of stuff, it needs a lot more money than it has now. Personally, I'd like to see NASA get at least 2% of the total budget, which is more than 3 times what it gets now, but I seem to be in the minority on that one.
Let's form some committees to help our advisory group figure out how we can fix this gigantic bureaucracy!
I've got a clue for them. They need to follow some simple rules.
1. Rockets should look like cocks
2. People should only ride on liquid fuel rockets.
3. If you're the booster designer, double the requirements.
4. Success!
Explanation:
1. Rockets should look like cocks. Stacked vertically, not side by side. Both shuttle failures resulted from the orbiter, tank, and boosters being in a side-by-side configuration. If the thing had been stacked vertically, there's no need to worry about ice hitting what's next to you, or fire burning the attachment to what's next to you.
2. Liquid fuel rockets are way safer than solid fuel rockets. It's going to be damn hard for astronauts to escape alive if they abort anywhere near a full blast solid fuel candle. Maybe do a hybrid solid, but what we have now is a fucking hazard to the astronauts and ground crew. Just ask the Brazilians. Oops, they're fucking DEAD. booom!
3. The moon mission was saved by the genius Nazi von Braun increasing the Saturn V weight capability well above the requirements. The payload turned out to be a bloated mess compared to initial projections, but the Saturn could handle it. A huge problem was averted. Compare that to the current Constellation program, where the booster was designed to lift what the payload guys said they'd need. And now that the payload has gained weight, there's some serious doubt that Ares will ever be able to fulfill the design requirements. FAIL.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Jupiter does a pretty good job as our defense system. There have been a few asteroids on possible collision courses with Earth, and they all got sucked up by our bigger brother.
Asteroids are not our biggest concern. Just because one wiped out the dinosaurs doesn't mean that one will wipe us out too. We've evolved a long way to survive in harsh conditions.
In all honesty, I can't even imagine a practical asteroid evasion plan short of evacuating Earth. Armageddon and other Hollywood flicks have lead us to believe that we have the power to blow apart masses thousands of kilometers wide, which I really don't think we do.
We find an asteroid heading towards us thats the size of the moon - there won't be much we can do to stop it.
Committee: The only known form of life with 6 or more legs, and no brain.
(From the notebooks of Lazarus Long
Once we find out if asteroid detection, deflection or destruction is trivial and reliable, then we can go on to mentally masturbating about colonizing other bodies.
I presume the NASA memory foam will come into play here. We should be good to go.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
A press release in search of a mission.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_should_the_government
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Should be to develop and test asteroid detection and avoidance systems.
Okay, sure. In order to detect incoming asteroids, it's going to need to be able to scan the entire sky. It can't do that now, and doesn't have the funds to develop the capability to do that. Once it has the capability, it has to figure out a way to neutralize the threat of any incoming asteroid. Since we can probably rule out the possibility of altering the orbit of the planet to get out of the way, we need to either alter the orbit of the asteroid, or destroy it, and we're going to have to do it well before it reaches Earth. So, how do we alter the course of or destroy something that big that far away? Well, we're going to need a big fucking rocket, one that's big enough to travel that far and carry whatever big-ass thing we decide to use to render the asteroid harmless.
Of course, asteroid detection and avoidance is really boring. No one grows up wanting to fuck up an asteroid. However, lots of people grow up wanting to visit other planets. So, we could probably get some funding if we decided to go exploring other planets instead. But what will we need to explore other planets? Probably a big fucking rocket, one that's big enough to travel that far and carry whatever big-ass thing we decide to put on the other planet.
So, I say we fund planet exploration. That way, we get people excited about space again, and we also develop the big fucking rocket you need to take care of those pesky asteroids.
They would do well to put the moon and Mars on the back burner and focus on the asteroids. Then set aside a few hundred million a year in x-prize style incentives open to *everyone* not just US companies.
Focus on alternative propulsion and energy systems as chemical engines are not going to get us very far. Get NASA out of Earth to LEO and focused toward targets that are farther out and harder to reach. Let SpaceX and friends take care of launch costs to LEO. Focus on utilising robotic missions where possible and reserve human space flight for in depth study where the time lag/AI insufficiencies become problematic. Get hacking on the problem of orbital space debris- that will be a major problem if we're going to be going to do anything outside of our atmosphere.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I can't even imagine a practical asteroid evasion plan short of evacuating Earth
It is highly unlikely we will get hit by anything the size of Ceres. The biggest risk IMHO is from comets in the range 500 metres to about 70km in diameter. If we can see objects like this coming we should be able to evacuate the impact site ahead of time. Doing that will take remote sensing (something we already do well) and politics (which we are slowly getting better at).
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Oh there's profit in it... The asteroid belt alone has enough resources to sustain humanity at current rates of consumption for 150 million years or more. Space travel entails a very large barrier to any competitive entities surviving long enough to be profitable. The X-prize provided a near term reward which spurred tons of research into cheap sub-orbital space flight and now there's some rudimentary space industry that can be used to get the ball rolling. The next step is obtaining resources for LEO cheaply and that likely means making use of volatiles and such from NEOs. Then once that is all set up, we can start making real progress into expanding into places that aren't as easily profitable without all of the space infrastructure already in place. Really, I think what NASA needs most is competition through x-prize style incentives. Just a few hundred million a year might be enough to do the trick. It's comparatively tiny compared to their 17 billion$/year budget but it'll probably get things really going.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
No one grows up wanting to fuck up an asteroid.
Ha, not so! Inspired by many hours playing asteroid, to this day I love the idea of blasting the fuck out of asteroids! NASA's Deep Impact mission was just about the coolest thing ever! Comet, asteroid, planet, the freaking moon, whatever. I say bring it on!
In fact, if you made the (granted somewhat dubious) assumption that the portion of my allowance that I spent on pretending to blow shit up in space as a kid should be reflected by the federal budget, then not only would the entirety of NASA be devoted to building rockets for fucking up asteroids and other heavenly bodies, NASA would be about 80% of the budget. The DoJ would be operating on a shoestring budget. Sorry guys, I know you have stuff to blow up here, but Titan is acting cocky and needs its ass kicked!
The enemies of Democracy are
Then set aside a few hundred million a year in x-prize style incentives open to *everyone* not just US companies.
Cooperation is one thing, but we shouldn't rely on other nations to provide us with space access. It would be bad for the economy : US funds and technological advantage going to other countries.
Then set aside a few hundred million a year in x-prize style incentives open to *everyone* not just US companies.
Cooperation is one thing, but we shouldn't rely on other nations to provide us with space access. It would be bad for the economy : US funds and technological advantage going to other countries.
Deep space exploration should be an international activity, if only because it is so expensive.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Look at their budget, and the funding handed down from Congress. A lot of their funding comes with strings attached, saying they have to use it for X, where X is usually some educational program in a Congressperson's district. Not saying education programs are bad, but NASA isn't always in control of its budget.
The linked article didn't seem to mention it anywhere, but it's worth noting who the heads of the new committees are:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=29537
http://www.spacenews.com/civil/091030-bolden-revamps-nasa-advisory-council.html
* Commercial Space Committee: Bretton Alexander, current head of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation
* Education and Public Outreach: Miles O'Brien, pretty much the best and most clueful space journalist around
* Technology and Innovation Committee: Esther Dyson, well known for her tech entrepreneurship work
* (IT Infrastructure Committee chair seems to be pending)
All in all, they seem to be rather good picks. It also seems that Wesley Huntress has been chosen as the chair of the Science Committee. In 2004 he was head of a study, The Next Steps in Exploring Deep Space, a rather fascinating report proposing a space exploration infrastructure which would initially focus on Lagrange points and Near-Earth Objects, quite similar to the Flexible Path option proposed by the Augustine Commission.
If we can see objects like this coming we should be able to evacuate the impact site ahead of time.
Hm... up to 70km you say - that's quite unlikely, results would be quite devastating, even if you were 8000km away from the impact site (but depending on quite a few parameters of the object/impact).
Give this a try, maybe you'll reconsider: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
Education projects are a minuscule portion of NASA's budget. The real problem is that NASA of the past has not seriously attempted to put forth a credible manned space development/exploration plan. It has willingly served the interests of the NASA supply chain - the tail wagging the dog.
With a little backbone and support from the President, NASA could hold its own against both Congress and the contractors. Instead, NASA hasn't shown that it can handle its current funding responsibly much less three times as much budget.
Could be that the submitter uses British English. They generally treat collective nouns as plural.
The reason why NASA has problem (as does RSA and somewhat ESA), is that all have settled on one design and stick with it. What is needed is multiple designs and development. Only by doing numerous approaches will better be found.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.