Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Senators Want Big Rocket Instead of New Tech, Commercial Transportation

Posted by Soulskill on from the space-programs-don't-win-fights-against-bureaucracy dept.

FleaPlus writes "Members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation are drafting a bill (due this week) which slashes NASA technology development/demonstrations, commercial space transportation, and new robotic missions to a small fraction of what the White House proposed earlier this year. The bill would instead redirect NASA funds to 'immediate' development of a government-designed heavy lift rocket, although it's still unclear if NASA can afford a heavy lifter in the long term or if (with the new technology the Senators seek to cut, like in-space refueling) it actually needs such a rocket. The Senators' rocket design dictates a payload of 75mT to orbit, uses the existing Ares contracts and Shuttle infrastructure as much as possible, and forces use of the solid rocket motors produced by Utah arms manufacturer ATK."

11 of 342 comments (clear)

  1. In Other Words... by dmgxmichael · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pork.

    1. Re:In Other Words... by epiphani · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Naw, this is just a case of NASA being a political punching bag. It will never get anything done ever again.

      Not because it isn't capable - but because every four years someone new comes along that thinks they know how to run things. They gut everything that has been happening, and refocus the organization. Thus, there are a good dozen projects that got half done. Some of the early X33 work had a lot of potential, and I remember reading about how the rocket nozzle work could be qualified as a major breakthrough. But it got scrapped. NASA isn't suffering from a lack of vision. It's suffering from too many visions that change too often.

      --
      .
    2. Re:In Other Words... by magsol · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can't comment personally, but I've heard through friends who have done internships at NASA that the working atmosphere there is terrible. It's depressing, it's uninspired, and I suspect it has to do with exactly what you just mentioned: entire mission changes with every single administration.

      NASA is good at what it does, it just needs to be allowed to follow through.

      --
      "I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
    3. Re:In Other Words... by FleaPlus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      NASA isn't suffering from a lack of vision. It's suffering from too many visions that change too often.

      That's why it's important that the "first leg" of access to LEO is decoupled from the political process as much as possible. This has already been done for unmanned launch for a couple decades now, and the new plan is to do the same for manned launches as well, so that even when political whims change NASA will still have an existing launch infrastructure it can use.

      That's also why NASA should be spending its money on technological development and demonstrations rather than building new mega-rockets. If funding on your mega-rocket costing tens of billions of dollars is cancelled due to political whims when development is only 25% complete, you have nothing. If technology development is cancelled after only a few years, you've still made a bunch of short-term technological advances that increase the capabilities and sustainability of later exploration.

    4. Re:In Other Words... by vlm · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Eh, thats more of a ticket puncher (military reference) or seagull manager (fly in, crap all over everything, fly out).

      Look at this quote and try to explain how its not ticket punching or seagull management:

      because every four years someone new comes along that thinks they know how to run things. They gut everything that has been happening, and refocus the organization

      Obviously NASA was supposed to be a technical organization, but now its just a MBA stepping stone.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    5. Re:In Other Words... by dmgxmichael · · Score: 5, Insightful

      whenever the manager states you must use XYZ product as a critical subcomponent in a large engineering project before it's started, you know there are going to be problems.

      Fixed it for you.

    6. Re:In Other Words... by vlm · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've heard through friends who have done internships at NASA that the working atmosphere there is terrible.

      I've heard through (probably completely different) friends that the working atmosphere FOR THE SCIENTIST / ENGINEER / "PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR" personnel is as terrible as you report, but the MBA types love it, because they coincidentally just happen to be the ones in charge and have created a paradise for themselves.

      Not a culture of equations and test tubes, but power point and office politics.

      Different strokes for different folks, etc. The scientists are on their way out, and they are well aware of it, and unhappy about it, so I'm told. The unwritten goal is to eventually have nothing but management and PR personnel on staff. Not unlike most American companies.

      NASA is good at what it does

      Like I said, powerpoints and office politics. I am told they're pretty good at those subjects. If you have the mistaken idea that it's like Bell Labs half a century ago, well, illusions don't always work in the real world.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  2. When lawyers design spacecraft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since when do a bunch of lawyers know dink about the best cost solution to any technical problem?

    Want NASA to provide a heavy-lift capability? Give NASA a broad goal (say for example to get to the moon in ten years), get the hell out of the way and have NASA produce a design study showing cost-benefit trades for all options studied (including whatever the engineers think might be feasable / possible / affordable - who knows, maybe those engineers actually know a thing or two about what they do). If the projected costs come within the realm of feasibility, authorize a multi-year funding profile (with offramps for failed performace), and get the hell out of the way. Otherwise, any effort is doomed to failure as a political football.

    - A Practicing Aerospace Engineer
    PS: N(a)SA, the National Space Administration; lack of adequate funding has already killed any useful Aeronautics they might have once accomplished

  3. Re:The Senators' rocket design dictates a payload by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, but "75mT"? It's nice to see US Senators trying to get to grips with this new fangled metric system when they specify their pork, but 75 milli-Tonnes would be 75KG. Perhaps NASA should fax their designated rocket motor supplier in Utah some of its own blueprints for a surface to air missile and just get on with whatever it is that NASA actually wants to do, which might actually be something useful.

    Alternatively, they could just claim to be catering to their stated directive about "reaching out to Muslims" and tell the not-so-honorable Senator from Utah "We don't do pork anymore as it might offend Muslims."

    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  4. Re:The Senators' rocket design dictates a payload by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apparently I mis-calibrated my sarcasm.

    I was attempting to satirize the fact that any sort of government spending on social programs tends to fall victim to the backlash against the terrifying(but largely unverified) "Welfare Queen"(which, again regardless of statistics, is an explicitly racially identified character); while even the most transparently pointless dicking around with porky corporate contracts does not arouse the same ire.

    Somehow, as long as the government spending results in some sort of corporate product(even if it is wholly ill-suited, grossly over budget, or simply canceled partway through) it avoids the dread stigma of being "welfare"(for some reason, farm subsidies also seem to escape this). On the other hand, if there is some chance that a poor person of the colored persuasion might get their hands on a thin slice, it instantly becomes "welfare", which is self-evidently an unsustainable "entitlement program" that is destroying America's moral fiber even as it wrecks its finances.

  5. Re:From an Ares engineer: Let Ares die. by mrfrostee · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am also a NASA engineer that thinks it's best to let Ares go.

    NASA did a lot of research and science before the Constellation program sucked all the funds from everything else NASA does, and Constellation is still at least 3 billion dollars per year short of what it needs to actually get built. I don't see any of these senators proposing the borrowing or tax increases needed to realistically implement a manned return to the moon, so the chances of it happening are approximately zero. Meanwhile, it's killing all of NASA's other missions.

    Given that, it make sense to restore the balance back toward research and technology development and try to get cheaper commercial access to LEO going until we have the technology (fuel depots, electric propulsion) required to affordably go farther.