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Senators Blast NASA For Lacking Vision
An anonymous reader writes "A Senate science subcommittee clashed with NASA's chief on Wednesday, saying the agency and the White House lacked a clear vision and goal for the program. Skeptical senators told the space agency that it should not just talk about plans, but set out to do something specific. Lawmakers expressed a bipartisan opposition to the agency's plans and the initiatives of the Obama White House." Updated 23:13 GMT by timothy: Reader Trent Waddington contributes this video link to the hearing, if you want to come to your own conclusions.
Nuff said
NASA has spread around the work to the maximum number of congressional districts to maximize their political support. But ask those same congressmen what they are willing to give up...ask them how important it is to balance the budget and even ...gasp..to begin paying off some debts..and they go quiet about what they want to give up...except to demand that the budget be balanced (but let someone else's district pay for it).
Obama puts a freeze on some agencies spending and already the constituencies are whining.
Where are politicians with guts who care more about the future of the country than getting elected with phony promises and posturing?
If you want to live in a barren desert, there's thousands of square miles here on earth that no one particularly wants.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Actually, it looks more like vintage-1960s Soviet space launch technology.
Put the senators in the airlock until we decide what to do with them.
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
Then, of course, there is the pork. Representative Olsen, not of the senate, has voting against the economic stimulus package, which consensus seems to indicate that it has stopped the hemorrhaging of jobs, and now he is complaining that a few thousand government employees are going to lose their jobs. What is it Pete? Do we want to balance the budget or keep support a federal jobs program where the average salary is over 70K a year? Sure the NASA jobs are great, but the budget is the budget. These jobs and ancillary costs could save over a billion a year. I know that Clear Lake is the probably the most federally subsidized place in America, but we really need real jobs based on capitalism, not socialism.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Citizens blast the Senate for lacking vision.
This is a completely backwards way of thinking. New propulsion systems are vastly more valuable than any specific space mission. Advanced propulsion systems could take the most difficult mission we might attempt today and turn it into a routine trip.
We need a willingness to develop new technologies that might take more than a few years to pay off, and even try things that might not work at all. We should tie this work to a specific goal in order to provide focus and to justify the price, but the real prize is the technology itself. Reducing fuel mass or cost to orbit by a factor of ten would open up the solar system to us.
Why do so many people think that if there isn't a NASA plan to put a couple NASA astronauts on a NASA rocket and launch them to a specific NASA-picked destination by a specific time that we've somehow abandoned human spaceflight? How short-sighted can people be? We already did that 40 years ago, and where did it get us? The huge expense caused the cancellation of any real followup missions and damaged human spaceflight aspirations to this day. We're still seeing the effects, since apparently no one in congress (or much of the public, apparently) can imagine anyone except NASA putting people into space.
It just pisses me off to no end. We need a space program that opens access to space for EVERYONE. Not just the few lucky NASA picked government employees. Do you want to go into space at some point? I certainly do, and constellation had zero chance of ever letting me do that. Maybe you think constellation would have opened access to space and expanded the possibilities for the rest of us, but I think you are wrong. So, so wrong. The current plan for NASA has the best chance of anything NASA has done since its creation of truly opening access to space. New technologies, reducing cost, encouraging multiple options for access to orbit. That's what NASA's goal should be and needs to be. Not a repeat of Apollo. Not another huge expense for flags, footprints, and some neat video that ends up getting 5 minutes on the evening news. So there's my rant. Take it or leave it.
Sure, it's leading to a place you happen to disagree with going to -- but going up against all the congresscritters getting jobs (and thus votes) off the Constellation program is unquestionably a gutsy move.
Moreover, I think it's the right one. Getting private investment into the business of shuttling things in and out of orbit and freeing up NASA's resources for "leaner, meaner" scientific work is exactly the right place to be going. Look at what kind of ROI we've gotten on the rovers; if NASA is going to be doing science, let them do science rather than being forever in the overpriced transport business.
Politics: The fine art of pretending you are important, while you do little more than criticize others for not doing anything.
America started to cede its position as the world power in space exploration as soon as it had buy-in to the system. Every time something goes wrong in a NASA mission and people die, or expensive equipment explodes, it can no longer be a learning process for the organization. Instead, it becomes a negative PR statement and, since American's know their tax dollars pay for it, they bitch like they were just robbed. As a result, budgets are cut. Politicians pretend to be engineers and enforce design decisions through budgets and political grandstanding. NASA becomes scared because, well, little by little it gets killed off. And, as a result, the space program stagnates.
As long as the American public perceives itself to have buy-in or ownership or stock in NASA's going-ons, the organization will remain to risk adverse to do anything truly stupendous anymore. The reason we were able to put a man on the moon in 1969 was because, at the time, the space program was new and mysterious. The American public didn't feel it had much buy-in over the system. All in all, it was a pissing match with the Russians so any ownership the tax payer did feel it had over the program was justifiable as it meant we have bigger space penes than the USSR. Nowadays, though, the organization neither has the freedom or elbow room to do real engineering and take real risks. Without risk, there is no progress.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Which *works* and is orders of magnitude cheaper to run that the shuttle program.
NASA does lots of cool stuff - research and science on both earth and the rest of the universe. I happen to think manned space flight is very cool, but I'm getting more and more frustrated that NASA is seen as only manned space flight*, or that space research has to include manned space flight to be worthwhile.
If a congressman doesn't think NASA has any goals or program direction, it means he or she hasn't looked beyond putting people on a ship to [insert non-earth destination].
* this problem has plagued NASA for decades - manned spaceflight sucks up the bulk of funds, despite having a relatively low science per dollar quotient. It's good for marketing, though.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Ok so you feel that you need to throw away a working system and start from scratch then? DIRECT leverages existing infrastructure and existing designs.
your idea is the same as Ford deciding to release a new F150 pickup truck but abandoning using Steel and internal combustion engines as well as wheels.
It's really dumb to redesign it all with fancy new pie in the sky technology. Use what works and get it in place fast. Why set your self up for a 2 year delay because of a problem that needs to be corrected? The SRB's and current tech works and works well no problems to have to design out. ALL DONE.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Disclaimer: I work for the space program, but I'm not high enough to make these decisions.
Some people will never be happy. All the dreams of the last 50 years are about to come true, and all people can do is bitch!
Look, chemical powered rockets have not changed much since the development of the SSME. So why are we only now getting private space launch? Because there was nowhere reasonable to go! ISS cargo is an easy enough mission for non-cutting edge rocketry, and since it is manned there is a long term need for supply flights that won't go away.
The future looks like this:
1. NASA guarantees it be buy x flights at y price from now until 2020.
2. Multiple vendors (currently SpaceX, Orbital, Lockheed, Boeing, and others) use this promise to secure capital to develop launchers.
3. Several years of regular supply flights gives ample qualification of the new boosters.
4. Once confidence is gained, NASA transitions from buying human flights from Russians to buying flights from Americans. Lots of politicians get reelected.
5. All the tech for better than chemical rocket launch now has a concrete mission to design for. Someone perfects laser ablative launch of cargo to ISS and does it much cheaper. Someone else gets an even cheaper launch option going.
6. NASA works on designs for solar system manned exploration craft. Design is steady and largely free from political pressure.
7. Private cargo launch matures, and one day both it and the NASA designs are ready.
8. ISS, which is now a largely private operation, is sold off or deorbited at its end of life.
9. NASA (and hell, maybe even private spacecraft) launch on commercial boosters and usher in a new era.
Look, promises smomishes. Unfunded mandates scmuded fandates. This is the ONLY way to get beyond LEO in a sustained manner by the 2050s ( when I will retire). You all should be overjoyed.
It is difficult to make long term plans given that your budget changes (usually in a downward spiral) each year.
NASA has a number of mandates that they have to use their funding for. And then they have the proposals that they are told to work on ("Go to mars", "privatize everything", "minimize risk because it is bad publicity"..) These cost lots of $$. Given no budget they mainly turn into paper exercises.
This should be a dilbert cartoon.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
don't blame obama. the incredible, astounding debt that this country has racked up under the leadership of the people *we* elected is to blame. obama might end up being a terrible president, but you can't blame him for things that happened before he was in office.
at least he's realistic, unlike bush jr. that made wild claims about sending a man to mars in a completely unrealistic time frame unless of course you were willing to throw money at it like the future of the human race depended upon its success. manned spaceflight is really a silly idea. it serves no scientific purpose at this point in our development and costs hundreds of times more than robotic spaceflight.
FYI, the craft was called SpaceShipOne. The program is called Tier One. Too bad neither compares with what the NASA programs are/were working on. To sum up:
1. Altitude. That 20-30 MM got to suborbital altitude only. How about going high enough to actually *get something done*?
2. Duration. SpaceShipOne can only stay at altitude for a few minutes due to the ballistic nature of the final trajectory. How about staying long enough to *get something done*?
3. Payload. SpaceShipOne has a max payload of some 2400 kg (in theory -- has not been tested), compared to 22,700 kg for the shuttle program, and projected 188,000 kg for LEO / 71,000 to the moon for the Constellation program. Even the Ares V Lite would carry 140,000 kg to LEO.
4. Crew capacity. SpaceShipOne can carry three crew members only, compared to seven for the shuttle, and six for the Orion capsule.
If you want to compare cost of the programs, you need to compare utility as well. And Tier One is woeful in terms of anything other than a stepping stone for more ambitious programs.
If you want to compare the cost of Constellation and Orion to what Scaled Composites is doing, then you need to wait until we know the full cost of TierTwo, which is supposed to encompass LEO, and some of TierThree, which is rumored to encompass both lunar travel and interplanetary travel. Until then, kindly fasten your seatbelt before takeoff and enjoy the view, because commenting on cost of programs with disparate utility and goals is meaningless.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
What you describe sounds like space communism, complete with a politburo and five year plans. How about we try a different strategy - let NASA open-source all of the technology that it has developed so far and see what the private industry can make of it. SpaceX and Virgin Galactic have already created launch systems independently. They could do much more if they had access to NASA's vast collections of information about what does and doesn't work for spaceflight.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
"from scratch" my ass. The "private" industry is riding on the coattails of about 70 years of government-financed rocket research. Let's see one of these "more efficient than the government" private entities finance a revolutionary technology on their own.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Of course, this won't happen at all. And these agencies are supposed to be filled with the smart people? Yeah, well i can walk on water and summon plagues out of my ass.
NASA is filled with smart people. The problem is that it works with a budget and mandates from Congress, which is full of mediocre-intelligence people who really don't care that much about accomplishing anything great, only about their own personal power and wealth. And these Congresspeople are elected by people who are mostly complete morons.
Yes, if we could get a person to Mars fast enough (need undeveloped technology), cheap enough (need technology about 1000x cheaper than now), and keep him alive on the trip and on mars and on the trip back (need undeveloped technology), a human with a rover could outperform the robot we did send.
Also, you perhaps overestimate what a human can accomplish under those conditions. The human will need to tote around life support equipment. He will be in a pressure suit, which really drops mobility and productivity. Also, repairing equipment under those conditions mostly means clearing jams and swapping in spare parts.
And last, the human can't hang around for months and months while scientists back home digest data and decide the best place to send him next. Accumulated radiation dose will do him in first.
Question is, with all that technological development needed to send a human, couldn't we just send a better robot instead with the same resources? And wouldn't that better robot technology help us in 1000's of other ways?
--PM