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Lori Garver Claims That NASA Is 'Wary' of Elon Musk's Mars Plans (arstechnica.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Ars Technica reports that former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver claimed, during a panel discussion at the Council for Foreign Relations, that many at NASA are "wary" of the Mars ambitions of SpaceX's Elon Musk. While the space agency has yielded low Earth operations to the commercial sector as part of the commercial crew program, it reserves for itself deep space exploration. Garver herself disagrees with that sentiment: "I thought, fundamentally, you just don’t understand. We’re not in a race in a swimming pool where everyone is racing against one another. We're in a cycling race where the government is riding point and the others are drafting behind us, and if someone comes alongside us and can pass us because they’ve found a better way, we don’t get out our tire pump and stick it between their spokes."
Newsflash
He seems really good at using government subsidies to make money for himself.
Outside of that???
It's just better PR to say we're going to Mars. That's what brings in the funding. We can barely get to the moon...assuming we even can anymore.
Musk does burn government $$$ but NASA does so as well. I'm indifferent but some people aren't happy unless they're complaining.
At this stage, NASA should just funnel money to SpaceX as fast as they can, before the space programs of other countries make them an irrelevance.
Yes I know that's harsh, but how else can NASA sidestep the politicians that meddle with NASA's long-term plans every election cycle?
Fat? Are you really that clueless?
Or of course Musk could rush it, it blows up in his face and no politician will touch funding for Mars for 50 years.
Congrats, you are suffering from Global Warming Denialism, where you'd rather question the expertise of scientists and handwave warnings of experts.
Here's a tip: If you are siding Lamar Smith? You are probably wrong.
Elon is good,
Elon is great,
We surrender our will
As of this date.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Worst. Analogy. Ever.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Honestly I think Musk is smarter than that. He knows that if he fucks up big in that arena he is going to set back privatize space flight/exploration.
Burn him at the stake!!!
How would that be a bad thing? I see no sign that things will be different anyway or that spending US money on a Mars mission would be done in a sensible way.
Can I get a car analogy, please?
... but we can't come up with a decent analogy. -- NASA
We don't carry pumps with us, we carry CO2 cartridges and a small adapter (if that), and even if the officials wouldn't tell you to lose the thing, you'd probably get laughed at by the other riders. Just sayin'..
Exactly.
From Lori Garver's statement I see she is disillusioned with the Italians?
Faccio battuta su Breaking Away
In a carbon neutral way.
That's a great metaphor. Keep in mind that (1) riding point doesn't mean you're the winner, (2) bicycling relies heavily on doping, and (3) once they see themselves losing their funding, any remaining good intentions of "playing fair" will fall by the wayside.
Ya. It's beyond big fat check!
He promises stuff he fails to deliver.
Compared to who? You just described the majority of established aerospace actors including government agencies.
Launching to Earth orbit has a clear business plan. Companies with real revenue streams will pay for this service for sound business reasons. Thus, it makes sense for a private company to do this. They can make money this way and that is what all business are out to do.
Going to Mars, though, does not have a clear plan. Where is the profit? Even if you can do it for a reasonable cost, how do you make money? Thus, I'm sure many in NASA and outside, are doubtful that Musk will actually do this.
However, if Elon Musk does send humans to Mars then funding NASA to do the same thing is an expensive redundancy. If enough of Congress believes that story then there will be no funding for NASA.
If Elon Musk does not go to Mars and NASA does not go to Mars (because congress thought Elon Musk would do it) then I guess nobody goes to Mars.
That is the sort wariness I would expect from smart people working at NASA.
Musk isn't going to Mars. Just a financial breakdown of the Apollo missions will demonstrate easily why Musk isn't going to Mars. He can't afford a spacecraft that big. He can't fund it, and can't build it. There's no business case for going to Mars. It's a frontier that business won't fund the exploration of. To be honest, I don't think America is smart enough to get to Mars anymore. The general population is too pacified/enthralled to pay for a Mars mission or even care about why they should go to mars.
Re 'politician will touch funding for Mars for 50 years" :)
Remember how many times Western governments messed up huge projects when the German experts had issues with some aspect of an early launch, test after WW2?
The UK spent huge amounts on its own failed early Skynet satellite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... only to buy into a US system.
Government or private sector, the cash needed is huge, the testing is spectacular in public until a nation or project finally understands or decades later reinvents the tools and systems needed.
The thing about US funding is just to ensure jobs are spread out over a lot of workshops and campaign contributions flow or federal cash allows for some great state "upgrades' to show to the local press. Work with any local political leaders to allow them to show they had the ability to bring home well paying local jobs.
That Florida 1960's federal building and funding feeling all over again
Funding, building and good design have to flow with the well connected local political leaders.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The gov and mil backed secrecy of NASA covering for Operation Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and hiding top German experts from later versions of the Dora Trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or the international press, or authors is not really needed anymore.
Any private company can do space now until it gets a bit interesting with the Missile Technology Control Regime or established gov contractors try and keep their decades of no bid contracts.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
SpaceX lost one launch, for which NASA will NOT pay as per the contract. What is wrong with your perception of reality? He is very far from not delivering what he promised.
No, we have to retort him at the stake, so that he and the stake will be converted into biochar for the Organic Food Co-op. The volatile gases given off will be sequestered in an approved seabed carbon sink.
Well constructed and coherent argument, sir.
Mars is too expensive for "just because" but I don't for a second think that Elon or Bezos or some other egomaniac wouldn't just do it to look cool.
To some of these guys profit doesn't matter.. this stuff is a hobby. If you can do it for "a reasonable cost".. one of them definitely will just to get their names in the history books.
Government is critical of NASA because they know once the algorithm they embedded in Bitcoin generation solves the Stargate address problem we can just gate to anyplace we want. So why bother with NASA.
I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but other countries have space agencies too.
Yeah, but that was better than some of the out right lies and attacks by some here
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why should I care about global warming? Since science still has not boosted our longevity to very much beyond 100 years (and often short of that), I will be dead before the consequences really kick in.
But the money I can make now will increase my level of luxury for the years I have left.
So....piss off.
They spearheaded it and that was great - but most of their scientists are in the private sector now. The private sector can do it cheaper, likely much safer and more efficiently while turning a profit and bringing back resources to justify that profit on a scale NASA could never hope to achieve. This isn't to say NASA should be closed, on the contrary they should have more funding to pursue projects like those in Eagleworks, some of the LENR and similarly fringe-physics projects. We need to be able to get to other solar systems, come up with technologies to grow food in space, protect against radiation, determine the best ways to scan and mine, etc. NASA is amazing at literal "moonshots" - things so outlandish people don't think they are possible until they happen and the private sector is equally bad at those same things. Everyone just needs to play to their strengths, leave colonization and exploration to the private sector but by all means throw public funding at R&D of new tech.
where you'd rather question the expertise of scientists
Nope, it's not their expertise that's being questioned, it's their integrity.
Trillions of dollars later, still behind in the space race to Mars. And they are scared ....
stay out of it. As a partisan political hack who while inside NASA helped stir-up the partisan politics even more, she has nothing to contribute but more damage.
ALL parties to this argument are wrong and putting their own, often tangential, interests first:
The SpaceX fanboys: They are guilty of joining a religious cult; they breathlessly announce that Elon can do ANYTHING and often even claim there's no need for NASA anymore. This is insane both because SpaceX misses nearly every promised date and promised performance level on their rockets, and also because without NASA there would BE no NASA "commercial cargo" or "commercial crew" contracts and thus no money funding these SpaceX activities. Musk is doing GREAT work and giving ULA an excellent free market competition style worry (which would be better if the market was more free) but Elon is not a Demigod and his hardcore fans need to face reality.
The ULA fanboys: They're guilty of a great deal of dishonesty. They assign to current Atlas and Delta rockets the historic success rates and patriotic legacies of earlier generations of rockets whose only connection is in the NAMES. They pretend that ULA was the real core of NASA's space competence and that nobody new like Musk or Bezos will be able to match them within the next few decades. This is a mindless worship of inertia, PR, and status-quo.
The Defense contractors behind ULA and at Orbital: They're some of the most deceptive players here. They claim to be patriotic American companies, but they chose to employ Russian engineers and technicians over Americans when they put Russian engines on the modern faux-Atlas, and Ukrainian engineers and techs over Americans when they hired the Ukrainians to build the Antares 1st stage to which they affix Russian engines. They do this all with the pretense that the cold war is over and now "the Russians are our friends and reliable partners". These VERY SAME VENDORS then sell military hardware to the US government every year that's designed to right Russia and based on the threat of the Russians as current or potential adversaries. These companies could have built re-usable rockets decades ago, but they were not about to take an action to lower the cost of rocket launches as long as they had cost-plus contracts and were launching all US govt payloads. These guys are also very dishonest about their capabilities and experience bases. Boeing, for example, loves to claim the legacy of Mercury,Gemini,X-15,Apollo, and Shuttle but Douglas did Mercury and Gemini, North American did X-15 and PART of Apollo (Chrysler and Grumman did big parts of Apollo) and North American Rockwell did Shuttle. Boeing actually just did part of the Saturn V launch vehicle and then gobbled-up Douglas and North American (discarding most of the workers involved and much of the infrastructure. Boeing's "Legacy" connection to these projects is now mostly in obsolete IP and dusty papers in file cabinets.
The Democrats supporting "Commercial" over NASA: The party that always favors forms of socialism and centralized control with the arguments that (a) free markets mean for-profit competitors making money and those profits therefore being unnecessary price inflation and (b) centralized control leads to better planning and organization and reduced waste from needless unplanned redundant efforts, is suddenly the champion of free market competition and opponent of government involvement. They do not want to admit that they are just supporting the same guy who they are subsidizing to make electric cars and solar panels and who is "sticking it" to the "military-industrial complex" they've always hated.
The Republicans supporting NASA over "Commercial": The party always worshiping the free markets, is supporting centralized government-run over entrepreneurs. They do not want to admit that many of them (particularly on Capitol hill) are actually just crony capitalists shoveling government dollars top their campaign contributors. In fact, many who pretend to be
"...how else can NASA sidestep the politicians that meddle with NASA's long-term plans.."
Huh?
If you are an American, you must have missed civic classes through your entire education. If your outside the US, you might simply misunderstand.
1. The citizens vote for a congress to represent them in the legislature (the government body that writes that laws, including the laws that empower government to collect taxes and spend those taxes on things).
2. The citizens vote for a president to run the executive branch, which is the part of government that implements the laws. The IRS part of the executive collects the taxes the congressional laws order them to collect. All executive (as in "to execute" or "to carry-out") branch departments and agencies like the Defense Department, the Interior Department, etc (including things like the IRS and the National Parks and NASA) spend the tax dollars congress gives them doing the things congressional laws tell them to do. The President's role (though they love to try to over-step it by aggressive policies) in these domestic activities is to control HOW the executive branch of government does all these things. Presidents have far more leeway over international activities, though even there they must get funds from Congress, get declarations of war, ambassadors and treaties approved by congress.
3. Employees of executive branch departments and agencies are charged with obeying the laws congress passed, using the procedures ordered by those above them in their chain-of-command (topped by the President) as long as those orders are within the laws congress passed.
When I last checked, members of congress and presidents are all by-definition "politicians", so what you suggested in your post was absolutely contrary to laws, good governance, and the very spirit of generally democratic forms of government.
Reminder: John F Kennedy did NOT wave a magic wand and sprinkle pixie dust and suddenly put men on the moon. He spoke to a joint session of congress and gave them his famous "I believe this nation should commit itself..." speech and convinced them to pass a law authorizing the moon missions and fully funding the project. Kennedy then went all around the nation giving very inspiring speeches, including the very famous "We choose to go to the moon, and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard..." speech at Rice University in order to get the public behind him and thus behind ALL the people (both Republicans and Democrats) in congress who would be needed over the years to fund and support the activity.
If you want NASA to succeed like it did with Apollo you do not need some fairy-tale alternate history version of how and why Apollo worked and nothing since the shuttles started flying has.
You need to understand how government works, why Apollo worked, and then stop voting for hacks (like Obama or Gore who PRETEND to support NASA but actually only see it as a partisan political tool they can use as a weapon in other political fights), and the disinterested (like both Bushes and the Clintons, Nixon and Carter, who will voice support because some advisor told them to but will then do nothing to create and sustain a significant program). Presidents who will push the way Kennedy did are as rare as JFK himself. Johnson, as a Senator, worked with Republican President Eisenhower to convince congress to create NASA and fund it to do the Mercury program that put men in space. Then as Kennedy's VP, Johnson was very involved with NASA in the early Apollo program, but he became very consumed with Vietnam and might not have stuck to the moon program in the face of the rising costs of his new social programs and the war but for the fact that as Kennedy's post-assassination successor it was his PR link to the legacy. Nixon had only limited interest in NASA; he'd been Eisenhower's VP when the agency was created, but having inherited the moon program at a point when production of Saturn V rockets had already
Just sayin' what? That you're entirely too literal and missed the point because while you're trying ridiculously to show us how smart you are ... you weren't even smart enough to realize that an analogy isn't meant to be 100% factually accurate and is instead intended to convey a point? Is that what ya'r say'n?
That sound you hear? Thats the other slashdotters laughing at you as if you ... kind of like the other riders you refer to.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
That is that NASA regulates and approves human space worthy craft rather than build much of it itself. Shrinking budgets and trend toward privatisation may force NASA's had. I prefer NASA pay a big role in space travel. But that may not be realistic in the long term.
Lori Garver said: "We’re not in a race in a swimming pool where everyone is racing against one another."
If you're not in a swimming pool, why are there bubbles coming out of the astronauts' helmets and spiraling upwards? If you're not in a swimming pool, why did an astronaut's suit suddenly fill with water, and "makeshift snorkels" were required?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
they can do it for 1/10 the cost of what Americans' companies charge.
Musk's goal is to have self sustaining city at Mars (1 million people, his estimate). Also for each ship with people there should be about 100 ships with equipment (also his estimate).
At first flights to Mars will be very expensive and available only for super rich, but Space X goal is to get it down to $500,000 per person to get to Mars.
I dunno if you caught up to what I am saying, but just in case I will make it very clear: Musk doesn't want to build Mars colony, he wants to create transport company from which people will buy tickets to go to Mars and create the colony. Therefore he is not going to lose money on building Mars colony, he is going to be making money on people building Mars colony.
Hope this helps.
The AC is probably a climate change denier..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
You cannot possibly have actually read what I typed and come to the conclusion that I "believe that the US political system is working well."
I marvel at the inability of so many people these days to understand the English language. I pointed out that wanting to have government agency employees ignore the politicians the people have elected to represent them is absolutely contrary to both the design of the US government and to democratic forms of government. You just responded with the standard "it's all broken, and most people questioned agree, so let's get all lawless!"... which is exactly how clowns like Mussolini get into power. I pointed out that the people themselves must vote for better candidates, which is the ONLY way to fix things in a representative system of government.
There ARE better candidates in most elections but people either let themselves get propagandized with lots of ads run marketing and manipulating specialists funded by corrupt money, and they get fixated on certain "wedge issues" which the candidates, their funders, and experts have specially selected to inflame passions. Many people would simply rather get their "news" from 30 second partisan TV ads and comedy TV show hosts than from actually spending time studying the issues and candidates with info from ALL sides. Oh, and if you want to get rid of all the big evil corporate money and "Citizens United" etc, but you do not also want to eliminate all the big union money (most unions are also big artificial corporate "persons") then you're not honestly seeking real reform, you are just another left wing hack trying to restore a political imbalance that favored unions over businesses for decades. (I oppose them BOTH)
Where is the profit? Even if you can do it for a reasonable cost, how do you make money?
people pay to go, same as suborbital flights, Musk has said he has done the figures and he wants to get the costs down to $500k per person, which implies that it will be in the millions for the first few trips, and implies he is going to make money out of it.
His companies are making money, so I don't think you can doubt he has planned it out to make money.