Slashdot Mirror
NASA Administrator Calls for Space Privatization
According to this story on Wired News, NASA honcho Dan Goldin is now actively encouraging private companies to become more active in space research and exploration. In a speech he gave yesterday at the 8th annual Space Frontier Foundation conference, he is quoted as saying, "A partnership between NASA and the Space Frontier Foundation -- which consists mostly of aerospace companies -- will be the only way to make the new millennium the space millennium." For decades, NASA has seemingly done more to hinder than to help private industry get into space. Maybe this represents a long-overdue about-face. I sure hope so.
Daniel Golden has done an incredible job for NASA in the past several years. He's taken a ho hum, shuttle after shuttle launching NASA without much focus, dealt with massive bugestary cuts, and trimmed NASA down (relatively) to a mean, lean space exploration machine. I know it's not quite what we expected when we were growing up, but who has done better? Not Private Business. The Russians stopped sending out interplanetary probes since their failed launch of a Mars probe in (I think) '96.
;)
Can you remember this may active spacecraft ten years ago? (There are ten right now, alright, so I'm counting Voyager 1&2, the greatest missions ever, which are still alive and kicking 7 billion mies away). Half of these active missions are the new "better, faster, cheaper" created under Goldin's regime. Two missions to Mars every two years? The man has this incredible ability to convince the American public that science and space exploration are a good use of American tax dollars...
Goldin's ultimate goal it seems is to build a mega-telescope, most likely a huge interferometer, that could image the surfaces of planets in other solar systems, generating an Apollo 17 like image of an extra-solar Earth like planet to inspire the next generation. Deep Space 3 should be a good first test of space formation flying and interferometry.
Of course, NASA sounds like they're getting more cuts. One of those few instances where I guess you Americans would want Newt Gingrich, who was a big NASA fan himself, back where he was... OK, perhaps the only instance.
At any rate, I hope Goldin gets to keep hold of the helm for a while, or that private industry manages to gain some of the public's interest in space. I don't want to see a return to the late 80's...
This is the kind of attitude that has lost funding for NASA in the past, and continues to cost NASA money. The premise is that since NASA hasn't done anything as spectacular as the Apollo missions, that the program is a waste of funding.
The only thing that the Apollo missions accomplished on a practical scale was to demonstrate that the equipment could be built to go to another astronomical body. However, the research that NASA has done since Apollo has benefitted mankind in the form of new medical research, new materials for production and the like. All we got out of the Apollo missions were a bunch of moonrocks, and some equipment that is no longer in use.
I'm in no way deriding the Apollo missions. Yes it was quite an achievement. Humankind set a new distance from home at around 380,000 km. Sure, it helped to prove something. But first and foremost it was a political rivalry that had more to do with beating Russia to the moon than real science (and their reasons for going there were just as shallow as ours). When we accomplished that task, no more Apollo program. Seems like a real dead-end deal to me.
The loss of the Mars Climate Observer is not evidence that NASA is inept at implementing a program, since we don't have a clue if it was lost due to: operator error, poor engineering, or a simple hyper-velocity meteor striking the beast sending it hurling into the surface of the planet.
Despite setbacks, I'm all in favor of the smaller, better, cheaper approach that NASA has been implementing. We've had a real good showing with the Pathfinder mission to Mars. Real Science, and much cheaper than prior missions. Another key thing that NASA has been working on, ISS, is pivotal if we are to have a future in space. The only holdup there is that the Russian space program can't pay the bills and is holding up the project. If they can't get their act together, they really don't deserve to be part of the project as a main partner.
I'm in Huntsville, AL (the TRUE first piece of ISS, the Unity module, was manufactured here), but for political reasons, Zarya (the first Russian module) was called the "first," even though it was launched several months after Unity, and relied heavily on US money. If anything will kill ISS, it will be politics.
I'm all for privatizing NASA if it's feasible. The problem is, that it's not "commercially viable" except for reasons of research, which in and of itself does not generate revenue (and that is what companies are in the business to make). Business is always short-sighted and out to make a quick buck. Business doesn't want to dump millions or perhaps billions of dollars into something that they won't see immediate returns on. That's why privatization of NASA won't work right now. Maybe in the future, but I doubt it will happen very soon. If it did, it would set the space program further back than the recent rash of spending cuts have.
The best solution for NASA at this point is to get a leader in office, like Reagan, who understood the value of space. Also, a restructuring of the program to "trim the fat" probably wouldn't hurt from all the stories I've heard from friends that work at NASA.
Cars were once impractical, so were planes, electricity, running water, computers and basicly everything else you use all the time.
Just because developing a technology may be extremely expensive initally, doesn't mean that it is a worthless technology. Space travel is a very advanced technology that will require a LOT of research and a LOT of money to develop. When computers were first produced, they cost a LOT of money, were impractical (no, a computer that is several tonne is not practical) and weren't very effective.
Also, space travel will provide spill over technologies in other industries as it is developed due to the new way scientists will solve problems. (I admit teflon sucks rocks though!).
It is extremely naive to simply dismiss an entire field of technology because of its expense. The results of this field could be incredible, given the money and resources required.
Oh, and NASA spends much less that the USA defence forces, so i can complain that USA spends 600 billion dollars (last time i checked) a year developing and using technology designed to kill people in a variety of ways, while keeping the technology secret so it cannot be used in other industries.
What is the point of being a great nation unless you can do things like this? Is all America is about just accumulation of $$$ and driving SUV's up and down the highway? Why shouldn't we be trying for something better than just establishing the biggest consumer society in the history of the planet? What happened to the idea of trying to better yourself? What do you want history to remember our nation as? The nation that invented the fast food hamburger joint, the gas guzzler and television shows like Myt Mother The Car? Or do you want to remembered as the first nation to land on the moon, establish a L5 colony, and solve the problem of escaping the earth's gravity economically.
The fact is that a nation should stand for something, and NASA is one of the few things that the government spends money on that is not just a transfer of wealth from high income to low income people.
Thank god.