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Can Rep. John Culberson Save NASA's Space Exploration Program?
MarkWhittington writes The Houston Chronicle's Eric Berger has published the seventh in his series of articles about the American space program and what ails it. The piece focuses on Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, who has two fascinating aspects. The first is that he is taking over the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA funding. The second is that he has a keen appreciation for the benefits of space exploration for its own sake and not just for his Houston area district.
Culberson wants to save NASA and the space program from his fellow politicians and return it to its true glory. He favors sending American astronauts back to the moon and a robotic space probe to Jupiter's moon Europa. He would like to enact budget reforms that take funding decisions away from the Office of Management and Budget and gives them solely to Congress. He favors a steady increase in NASA funding to pay for a proper program of space exploration. To say the least, he has his work cut out for him.
Culberson wants to save NASA and the space program from his fellow politicians and return it to its true glory. He favors sending American astronauts back to the moon and a robotic space probe to Jupiter's moon Europa. He would like to enact budget reforms that take funding decisions away from the Office of Management and Budget and gives them solely to Congress. He favors a steady increase in NASA funding to pay for a proper program of space exploration. To say the least, he has his work cut out for him.
As a government institution, they are doomed to be plague by inefficiencies that do not exist in the private sector. Elon Musk will take us to Mars and colonize the solar system.
I wish my tax money went to SpaceX!
NASA did all the really hard work (the basic design of space rockets). You know, the Basic Science that costs billions and doesn't pay off for decades. You see, private companies are too focused on short term profit generation to basic science. That's why it's done on the public dime.
As for gov't inefficiency: it's a myth brought on by a few high profile pork projects (the US Military comes to mind) and underfunded DMVs. Go to a modern well funded post office some time. They're incredibly efficient. Also, go work in management for a large (private) corporation sometime and tell me again how amazingly efficient they are compared to government.
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Being bound only to a singe planet is limiting and risky, disease war or asteroid strike, each threaten all of us at once so long as we are only on one planet. Unless this risk is acceptable to you on a long term basis, and you also do not need or consider valuable things like asteroid mining, we want out and so we need the technology, regardless of the short term reason for developing it.
How can we really know where we are making progress towards real earth independent habitats and launch related technology without testing the parts in steps? How can we fix all the bugs in an efficient manner without testing as e go along? Even if the tests are "dummy data" equivalent played for publicity they are still needed. Or would you try to create even something as simple as a large computer game code base without testing any of the parts in their integrated form as you go along? Just putting something together and testing it in a "baby" version of the intended aim gives you valuable data and helps to speed up development towards long term goals, unless you thing that steady progress should be banned in favour of attempting impossible leaps.
And there is the real prize - hidden in plain sight. He wants to usurp the power of the Executive Branch and arrogate it to Congress. But it's for the children!, er, NASA! and so it slides right by most commenters here.