Glad to see work is progressing with regard to on orbit repair. That's a capability which will benefit all kinds of future activity in space.
I don't know, though, about a shuttle replacement becoming less likely though. NASA might not come up with a replacement (think National Aerospace Plane, X-33) but teams now competing for the X Prize could very well produce an orbital vehicle down the line.
If a small group can win the X Prize, it will show a better way to pursue space engineering than NASA's dysfunctional bureaucracy. Such a win will lead people to start investing real money in new space technology. It's already known that if we can reduce the cost to orbit from $10K/pound ($20K/kilo) to around $1K/pound ($2K/kilo) lots of opportunities will arise for space based activity. Get that price down to $10/pound (if possible) and you see people like me taking off for orbit to do things like create art. At that lower price we might even see zero gravity dance like that envisioned by Spider and Jeanne Robinson. The possibilities are truly endless.
You're absolutely right -- I haven't read Zubrin's book. I really should. I know I've read too much drivel about building cities on the surface, terraforming Mars into being almost like Earth, etc. I spent too much time wading through Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. That trilogy was interesting, but really flawed in some important ways.
I do remember from my O'Neill colony advocacy days that people who knew more about the subject than I did recommended putting heavy, static shields around the colonies. One meter or so of solid waste products (think left over materials from mineral refining) in a layer around the colony could effectively shield the inhabitants from cosmic radiation.
This, unfortunately, makes for a pretty massive structure -- difficult to move around the solar system with contemporary propulsion. Travel is possible, especially with better propulsion, but more difficult than Star Trek et al. would have you believe.
This problem also could impact those proposals for Martian bases and settlements. I think Mars doesn't provide the same protection from radiation as Earth does. So, we could build bases on Mars -- just bury them underground. That's hardly what I think Zubrin and company want.
It might be interesting to see what can be done, if anything, with some sort of magnetic shielding. Although that could be a lot trickier again than SF TV shows imply.
I think problems like this are resolvable, but it's going to take a wide variety of efforts in multiple fields and directions to come up with solutions. Is there enough interest in space currently to make that kind of effort? Or can research in various fields be done with other goals in mind to solve this specific problem?
My musical tastes tend toward classical, jazz, some older rock, some avant garde, some weird stuff.
How do I learn about new music? From friends, live concerts and now free sampler CDs at places like Borders. Yes, I'm also now trying the Internet occasionally -- to satisfy my curiosity and broaden my horizons.
I make sufficient money to purchase CDs from people I really like. For instance, paying $15 or more for a CD at Maryland's Renfest is reasonable to me. Of course, I've heard the artists and know I'll like their work. It also helps to know the money is going to the artists, not some huge RIAA member.
There's another reason I'm listening to less radio that wasn't mentioned in the article. Radio quality is declining. Here's the current playlist for WGMS (a Washington, DC classical station):
5:03 pm Mozart:
Symphony #41 "Jupiter": I
5:12 pm Schubert:
Impromptu in A-flat Major (Op. 90 #4)
Mozart's Jupiter symphony is more than 9 minutes long. WGMS now seems to be going in much more for short selections than full works -- especially at drive time. I'd rather stick with my CD player. No, I don't get exposed to new music (precious little of that on any radio station around here). But I also don't get pestered with commercials.
One blog I frequent -- Samizdata (a libertarian site) -- was recently hit with this kind of stuff. They've initiated a technology that forces people to enter a code supplied on the comments page before being allowed to post a comment.
Slashdot's moderation feature may also help with this problem. If the spammer's goal is to be seen, rather than just Googled, moderating down spam as offtopic or some other negative category may help reduce that visibility.
This movement touches on one of my central concerns. People are urged -- even required -- to spend more and more time at work.
Not only does this take a toll on life outside of work, it exacts a price at work. Exhaustion increases the likelihood of making mistakes. Perhaps more importantly, it also limits our ability to learn newer and better ways of doing things. It also affects our ability to discover new things.
As far as I can tell, this trend began during the 1970s and accelerated to the present day. What's interesting to me is the fact that the rate of productivity growth -- high in the quarter century after WWII -- dropped precipitously in the 1970s. This rate stayed low until the dot com bubble in the 1990s when productivity apparently soared. Now we're busy restating that productivity burst -- downwards.
Summing up, exhaustion carries a real price not only for society as a whole, but also possibly for business in particular.
I first read about this sort of thing back in the 1970s. Proposals back then focused on constructing huge satellites (think 5 miles by 5 miles or 10 KM by 10 KM) in geosynchronous orbit. Energy would be beamed to earth via microwaves or lasers.
Planes could be powered via laser pointed at various reception devices (photovoltaic, steam generators, etc.).
Clouds would not be a major problem. Just pick a frequency that penetrated the clouds fairly easily. Or, in the case of airplanes, fly above the clouds.
Motivating the US to spend more money on NASA? Not sure what kind of an idea that is (good or bad). Of course I am as curious as the next person to see what's out there. But technologically, we're so far away from going anywhere meaningful, particularly when you weigh the expense and effort required againsts the current state of the US economy and health care systems. Couldn't money be better spent at this point in time?
There are at least two answers to this question.
Considering the mess at NASA (see the Columbia report), putting money into NASA looks a bit problematic. But what if we manage to reform NASA and the existing aerospace industry? Spending money on them then seems like it could lead to real benefits. We should also consider that, while NASA has truly major problems, it still does manage to get some real work of real value done.
We could also pour the money into alternatives to the existing NASA/contractor work. That might also lead to major benefits.
We must also consider the level of spending that NASA receives. It's $15B. The United States spends approximately 100 times that annually on health care. We also spend about 25 times NASA's budget on K-12 education. Neither health care nor education is above criticism. If we did cancel NASA and put the money into either education or health care, we might not get any really worthwhile return on the money.
Summing up, while NASA has huge problems and needs reform, the amount we're spending on them is downright trivial.
I agree with Diamandis on this one. We are about to see the first vehicle not initially developed for government reach space. And, as the X-15 was a precusor to the space shuttle, I expect the X Prize contestants to be the precusors to a variety of orbital vehicles.
Instead of a one size fits all vehicle, though, I expect to see various vehicles developed for various uses. We've learned the shortcomings of that approach.
NASA predicts it will take a number of years to develop the OSP. If they do get bogged down in bureaucracy too much, they'll wind up losing that race to private entrepreneurs. That will radically change the way humanity does work in space.
Even if all doesn't go well, I expect to see a broad range of humans boarding space ships before I die (probably 30 to 45 years from now).
More players means more ways of doing things. Cooperation can be good -- but so can competition. Competition allows various new technologies and ideas to be tried. A cooperative monopoly can strangle a field.
Possibly the biggest problem with NASA is that it has stifled innovation in the field. When one organization dominates a field the way NASA does, it's difficult to get alternative ways of doing things developed. The dominant group dismisses out of hand any thing they haven't developed. They tend to drive off independently minded people. Problems go unnoticed for longer periods of time.
Many of us welcome competition for NASA -- be it private or governmental. I salute ESA for it's independence -- and for trying out ion propulsion.
We're finally seeing an admission from the aerospace establishment that the shuttle has failed as an experiment. Wings on space craft are essentially a burden. Mercury-Gemini-Apollo demonstrated that you could come back to earth -- even in a controlled fashion -- without wings. Shuttle had wings to meet an Air Force requirement on cross range capability. Now the Air Force doesn't even use the shuttle.
So, the immediate future of vehicles intended to reach orbit looks like something that's been proven to work for both the United States and Russia. It's good to see people actually looking for something that works well.
In other ways, though, this development is a further criticism of the NASA culture. Much has been reported about the suppression of dissent in the safety culture. This is one aspect of a larger suppression of independent thinking in aerospace culture. The lack of new ideas shows another aspect. The unwillingness to examine things outside the industry (the "not invented here" syndrome) demonstrates still another.
New ideas and technologies thrive in free atmospheres. People are more willing to try new things. Good ideas get promoted. Faulty ones, even if held by people with power, are more likely to be challenged. For the aerospace industry to succeed, such a model must be embraced, not shunned.
(CNN) -- The lead investigator into the space shuttle Columbia accident told congressional leaders Thursday that his task force "determined NASA is not a learning organization. They do not learn from their mistakes."
is damning for an organization that NASA is supposed to be.
NASA should be a research and development organization. The job of such organizations is to learn new things and teach the rest of us. The fact that they're not learning from their mistakes shows an organization that's become mired in incompetence.
This is one consequence of the rigid, hierarchical nature of today's NASA. Rigid hierarchies resist change and learning. They're great if you want to keep doing the same thing the same way. For instance, if you want to keep on making buggy whips in the same way to the same standards as your great grandfathers, adopt this kind of organization. Oh, you want to switch from buggy whip making to rocket research? Time to scrap the rigid hierarchy.
Sadly, you could be right about NASA not changing.
There are, however, some hopeful differences. Let me list a few:
There have been a lot more obvious blunders committed in the public eye. Consider Hubble's focusing problems, the crash on Mars of probes because one group was using metric and the other English units, space station woes, the X-33 failure.
Compared to 1986 there are more people with real knowledge about the agency who are willing to speak up about the agency's problems. In 1986 extremely interested people were far more willing to cut NASA a break. That's not true anymore.
Significant politicians (e.g., Mikulski) are more aware of the problems and are willing to take action.
The CAIB's citing of a "culture" problem marks an important step. People are no longer looking just at technology, but at the organization that creates and uses the technology.
This event is being viewed as NASA's Vietnam. That's a real wake up call.
Yes, things could still go wrong. There are plenty of well entrenched people who have turf to protect. But that's going to be much harder now.
And, I suspect, a lot of the good people who still manage to work in aerospace are also going to work to change things.
I'm one of the older generation of techies who did get involved in politics as far back as the 1960s. In the 1970s I joined the now gone L5 Society because I thought space had a real role to play in human affairs. It still could.
But it would be helpful if today's political activists learned a bit from our mistakes. Practically all L5ers were political neophytes. We took up our cause with enthusiasm. For awhile we gathered some attention. So why aren't we all living in space colonies now? Here are some reasons I can think of:
We didn't really connect with the larger society as much more than entertainment. People were intrigued -- but not motivated to part with real money.
We relied too much on exposition of our ideas. Listening to what others wanted and seeing if we could tailor our activities to others' wants and needs seems important to me now.
We underestimated the difficulties we faced.
Initially we trusted too much in NASA and the aerospace establishment. Now, ironically enough, we might be trusting too little. That unfortunately is the consequence of dealing too much with an increasingly rigid hierarchy that has been becoming more and more dysfunctional.
Techies are damned good with technology. We tend to have significant problems in dealing with people, though. Some of us are working to overcome that shortcoming.
Broadening our horizons, listening more, seem like good ideas. Easier said than done, though. First step: ask people why they do things. Ask them why they are so concerned about technology and worry so much about things that we know are relatively minor problems.
These are just a few thoughts early in the morning. Others will probably be able to think of others.
Summing up, try to learn from our mistakes -- and from our successes. Politics isn't as neat and orderly like technology.
Re:NASA Amazes Me
on
SOHO Is Back
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You haven't been paying attention the past several years, have you?
Consider:
Two space shuttles lost. A poor design, dishonestly sold, a marked failure. Routine, cheap access to space it isn't. Successor vehicles aren't doing too well, either.
Hubble trouble -- not because "space is hard" but because people didn't bother to correctly test the observatory on the ground.
Probes crashing into Mars because one part of the team working in metric, another in English units.
These are just some high profile failures.
Yes, some (probably most) people at NASA do good work. But quite a few knowledgeable people don't trust the organization. There is a lack of "honesty and openness" (to quote Donna Shirley, who led the team that gave us the successful Mars rover) that adversely affects NASA.
Re:Great!
on
SOHO Is Back
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
moehoward writes:
I love a happy ending.
But the story could have used a bit more drama. And maybe even its own Aerosmith song.
I love a happy ending, too. And drama is terrific, too. But you don't want drama everywhere. SOHO is an observatory that performs a quite useful function for the human race. It's better for it to perform that function as well as it can. That probably means with as little drama as possible.
Engineering and science can be part of something quite dramatic. Check out a mid 50s British film "The Dam Busters" for an illuminating look at real engineers involved in real drama. Or the Ron Howard film "Apollo 13" for a more modern look at engineers involved in high drama.
But everyday engineering and science should avoid drama. Drama comes from unexpected events (e.g., Apollo 13's failures, natural catastrophe) and conflict (war, political campaigns, etc.). Society (as well as scientists and engineers) want technology to work, not provide drama -- unless that is a deliberate goal. Routine technology should not be dramatic. Dramatic events should not be routine.
And hearty congratulations are in order for the people who got SOHO working again.
First, competition attracts more interest. Part of the reason for the decline in interest in space since Apollo is the lack of any real competition. NASA launches shuttles -- who really cares that much? While not "routine access to space" shuttle launches are fairly common. There's no drama -- unless something goes wrong. Competitions such as this will bring some drama back to the field.
These kinds of competitions can also bring the participants together, much as happens in automobile racing. I discovered when photographing SCCA races that they were as much social events as automobile competitions. Bringing people together in these competitions can facilitate information exchange. One team can see what another is doing and learn from it. That kind of thing goes on in the Sports Car Club of America. Why not X Prize competitions as well?
These efforts will be much less bureaucratic. It would be easier for young scientists and engineers to get involved in meaningful ways. Doesn't that happen now in various competitions to build and race solar powered automobiles?
Yes, I'd like to watch -- hell, even get involved somehow.
Space travel is beyond current day NASA. Given current management problems, that is looking increasingly likely. The Washington Post now has a special section on the Columbia disaster.
What should we (the United States in particular and humanity in general) be doing?
One thing is support the X Prize. This will provide alternative experience and data to the NASA monopoly. The more attempts we make, the better. The greater the variety, the better.
Since NASA is a U.S. government creation, U.S. citizens should write their Congressional representatives, citing articles such as this one by Jeff Bell and the Washington Post section linked to above. It's time for some light and heat to be shed on this agency.
Look for investment opportunities if you have the money.
Nearly 70 percent of those questioned said they were in elementary school when they first played video games. By junior high and high school, about half said they had tried computer games -- software-driven games from cards to shoot-'em-up adventures such as Doom -- and 43 percent said they had tried online games over the Internet.
Apparently added by PhysicsGenius:
However, 92 percent of those that played games said that it replaced their regular social life, including dating. Most of the survey participants still had never gone on a date.
Or were the last two sentences deleted from the CNN story before I read it?
In my years at NASA Goddard I saw a dysfunctional management operate in ignorance of reality.
There was much praise of the employee who "went the extra mile", "put in long hours" and "served the customer" (that applied to contractor employees). There was also very little thought paid to the consequences of those practices.
What's the first thing to go when you're tired? It's not your body -- it's your mind. That's right -- if you're staying at work until you're feeling tired, you're making mistakes that need to be corrected later. The tireder you are, the more mistakes. The tireder you are, the less you can actually do.
I witnessed people who wore their exhaustion as a badge of honor. And, when they got into management, insist that others emulate their bad example. The result that I saw was people who should have been kept out of management becoming increasingly dominant. This was accentuated by the "faster, better, cheaper" ideology promulgated by former NASA administrator Goldin. This ideology was used to get rid of more experienced (and thus costly) people who were aware of the consequences of trying to squeeze more work out of fewer people.
It could take a long time for NASA to recover from this culture. The failure of projects in the past few years, the crash of Columbia could be turning points -- or they could be used by incompetents to justify even more dysfunctional behavior.
There's quite a bit going on with regard to private space. Just check out The X Prize for information on Carmack, Rutan and others. The most recent story about Rutan's work is attracting quite a bit of attention.
Personally, I think the next crewed orbital vehicle will be coming out of one of these startups, not out of NASA. Of course, NASA could get back into the picture if they decided to help independents rather than try to run the whole damned show.
No, I don't usually bring that up. But, given the topic, I think it is relevant.
Yes, I do well on various kinds of IQ tests. I also have some real world accomplishments to my credit. To get a flavor of some of my abilities, check out my personal web site. Some of it is serious, some not. The software side isn't fancy -- the point of the site is the content (words, pictures) not software. I have also done reasonably well in life. I make enough money to live indoors, sometimes do interesting work and have lots of friends. OK, I go in for understatement and I can be weird.
These sorts of tests can screen out the obviously unqualified. They also can offend those of us who are good enough for the job. I've deliberately blown such tests a few times in my life. Once I walked out without even taking the test -- the company made that bad an impression on me. The recruiter who set up the experience was surprised.
Hiring people is still a black art. Once you've eliminated the obviously unqualified, you might as well use some random criteria. Is there any alternative? Yes -- hire people who are already somewhat known to you. That way you get a fuller idea of what the person is actually like. It's easy (well, it is for me) to maintain an act for a few interviews.
These puzzle tests do test intelligence to some extent. They also help make sure that the person being hired is at least somewhat like the people doing the hiring. And are willing to put up with something the corporation thinks important.
Do such measures make me think well of a company? Not really. There are many things that can limit what you can do. Yes, a lower intelligence can be a handicap. So, unfortunately, can a dysfunctional corporate culture.
I don't think I would like working at Microsoft. Gates seems too much of an autocrat. Yes, it's nice to work with intelligent people. But it's also nice to work in an enviroment where you're reasonably free. I don't know how Microsoft stacks up in that regard. Their lack of innovation doesn't speak too highly for them.
"The USA has been flying a fleet of twenty-year-old X-planes, and we're running out. Half the people I know have been trying for all their lives to build a better rocket ship. I can't find the energy to be enraged."
-Larry Niven
This begins to address the real problem. The space shuttle was sold as "routine access to space." It isn't. It's a routinely operated experimental vehicle. That's not good. Back in the 1940s we didn't build Bell X-1s for the Air Force. We used what we learned from the X-1 to build production jet aircraft.
Official attempts to build better rockets (NASP, X-33) have failed to produce even flyable vehicles. Currently a considerable number of people have given up hope that the aerospace establishment will eventually come up with a vehicle that actually gives us routine access to space. I believe Larry's friend and coauthor Jerry Pournelle is one of them.
People have noted that real innovation in software comes from academia and small companies. Microsoft talks about innovation, but doesn't really deliver.
In the aerospace field, however, a healthy culture of small companies and independent academic research hasn't begun to exist until recently. And NASA's experiments turn into expensive failures. What's worse is the establishment tends to inadvertently suppress research by people other than itself.
I'm generally in favor of space exploration and development. But I've made several comments critical of our current approach here on Slashdot. People have modded a number of them up to +4, +5.
This is a site that draws those interested in technology and science. Some of us do know a fair amount about both. Some moderators are apt to point out that hostile comments are in fact hostile comments.
I currently don't have moderator points. If I did, I might have modded you up as +1 Interesting. I certainly would not have put you down as -1 Flamebait. Even though there are real flaws in your arguments. For example, that guy sleeping on the grate is more of an indictment of current social welfare institutions than it is of the aerospace establishment.
NASA claims to have the best people in the country. While I dispute this to some extent, they still have a good number of top quality people. In spite of this they haven't even been able to create a successor to the shuttle. Perhaps it's because they are putting all their eggs in one basket.
Putting all the best people (even if it can be done) in one group can have negative consequences. You can get a group think phenomenon where everyone starts to think the same way. Dissent can be suppressed. This leads to unhealthy problem solving behaviors.
One project may take a long time to fail. And it might take even longer to see that failure. Multiple projects can lead to greater learning -- that's the real key to success.
In the computer field we've seen greater progress from letting multiple efforts flourish. Similar things can be said for all sorts of human endeavors. Why is space different? Because that's what those currently dominant think and say?
Slashdot Mirror
Glad to see work is progressing with regard to on orbit repair. That's a capability which will benefit all kinds of future activity in space.
I don't know, though, about a shuttle replacement becoming less likely though. NASA might not come up with a replacement (think National Aerospace Plane, X-33) but teams now competing for the X Prize could very well produce an orbital vehicle down the line.
If a small group can win the X Prize, it will show a better way to pursue space engineering than NASA's dysfunctional bureaucracy. Such a win will lead people to start investing real money in new space technology. It's already known that if we can reduce the cost to orbit from $10K/pound ($20K/kilo) to around $1K/pound ($2K/kilo) lots of opportunities will arise for space based activity. Get that price down to $10/pound (if possible) and you see people like me taking off for orbit to do things like create art. At that lower price we might even see zero gravity dance like that envisioned by Spider and Jeanne Robinson. The possibilities are truly endless.
You're absolutely right -- I haven't read Zubrin's book. I really should. I know I've read too much drivel about building cities on the surface, terraforming Mars into being almost like Earth, etc. I spent too much time wading through Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. That trilogy was interesting, but really flawed in some important ways.
I do remember from my O'Neill colony advocacy days that people who knew more about the subject than I did recommended putting heavy, static shields around the colonies. One meter or so of solid waste products (think left over materials from mineral refining) in a layer around the colony could effectively shield the inhabitants from cosmic radiation.
This, unfortunately, makes for a pretty massive structure -- difficult to move around the solar system with contemporary propulsion. Travel is possible, especially with better propulsion, but more difficult than Star Trek et al. would have you believe.
This problem also could impact those proposals for Martian bases and settlements. I think Mars doesn't provide the same protection from radiation as Earth does. So, we could build bases on Mars -- just bury them underground. That's hardly what I think Zubrin and company want.
It might be interesting to see what can be done, if anything, with some sort of magnetic shielding. Although that could be a lot trickier again than SF TV shows imply.
I think problems like this are resolvable, but it's going to take a wide variety of efforts in multiple fields and directions to come up with solutions. Is there enough interest in space currently to make that kind of effort? Or can research in various fields be done with other goals in mind to solve this specific problem?
My musical tastes tend toward classical, jazz, some older rock, some avant garde, some weird stuff.
How do I learn about new music? From friends, live concerts and now free sampler CDs at places like Borders. Yes, I'm also now trying the Internet occasionally -- to satisfy my curiosity and broaden my horizons.
I make sufficient money to purchase CDs from people I really like. For instance, paying $15 or more for a CD at Maryland's Renfest is reasonable to me. Of course, I've heard the artists and know I'll like their work. It also helps to know the money is going to the artists, not some huge RIAA member.
There's another reason I'm listening to less radio that wasn't mentioned in the article. Radio quality is declining. Here's the current playlist for WGMS (a Washington, DC classical station):
Mozart's Jupiter symphony is more than 9 minutes long. WGMS now seems to be going in much more for short selections than full works -- especially at drive time. I'd rather stick with my CD player. No, I don't get exposed to new music (precious little of that on any radio station around here). But I also don't get pestered with commercials.
One blog I frequent -- Samizdata (a libertarian site) -- was recently hit with this kind of stuff. They've initiated a technology that forces people to enter a code supplied on the comments page before being allowed to post a comment.
Slashdot's moderation feature may also help with this problem. If the spammer's goal is to be seen, rather than just Googled, moderating down spam as offtopic or some other negative category may help reduce that visibility.
This movement touches on one of my central concerns. People are urged -- even required -- to spend more and more time at work.
Not only does this take a toll on life outside of work, it exacts a price at work. Exhaustion increases the likelihood of making mistakes. Perhaps more importantly, it also limits our ability to learn newer and better ways of doing things. It also affects our ability to discover new things.
As far as I can tell, this trend began during the 1970s and accelerated to the present day. What's interesting to me is the fact that the rate of productivity growth -- high in the quarter century after WWII -- dropped precipitously in the 1970s. This rate stayed low until the dot com bubble in the 1990s when productivity apparently soared. Now we're busy restating that productivity burst -- downwards.
Summing up, exhaustion carries a real price not only for society as a whole, but also possibly for business in particular.
I first read about this sort of thing back in the 1970s. Proposals back then focused on constructing huge satellites (think 5 miles by 5 miles or 10 KM by 10 KM) in geosynchronous orbit. Energy would be beamed to earth via microwaves or lasers.
Planes could be powered via laser pointed at various reception devices (photovoltaic, steam generators, etc.).
Clouds would not be a major problem. Just pick a frequency that penetrated the clouds fairly easily. Or, in the case of airplanes, fly above the clouds.
For lots more information, just Google "Space Solar Power".
There are at least two answers to this question.
Considering the mess at NASA (see the Columbia report), putting money into NASA looks a bit problematic. But what if we manage to reform NASA and the existing aerospace industry? Spending money on them then seems like it could lead to real benefits. We should also consider that, while NASA has truly major problems, it still does manage to get some real work of real value done.
We could also pour the money into alternatives to the existing NASA/contractor work. That might also lead to major benefits.
We must also consider the level of spending that NASA receives. It's $15B. The United States spends approximately 100 times that annually on health care. We also spend about 25 times NASA's budget on K-12 education. Neither health care nor education is above criticism. If we did cancel NASA and put the money into either education or health care, we might not get any really worthwhile return on the money.
Summing up, while NASA has huge problems and needs reform, the amount we're spending on them is downright trivial.
I agree with Diamandis on this one. We are about to see the first vehicle not initially developed for government reach space. And, as the X-15 was a precusor to the space shuttle, I expect the X Prize contestants to be the precusors to a variety of orbital vehicles.
Instead of a one size fits all vehicle, though, I expect to see various vehicles developed for various uses. We've learned the shortcomings of that approach.
NASA predicts it will take a number of years to develop the OSP. If they do get bogged down in bureaucracy too much, they'll wind up losing that race to private entrepreneurs. That will radically change the way humanity does work in space.
Even if all doesn't go well, I expect to see a broad range of humans boarding space ships before I die (probably 30 to 45 years from now).
More players means more ways of doing things. Cooperation can be good -- but so can competition. Competition allows various new technologies and ideas to be tried. A cooperative monopoly can strangle a field.
Possibly the biggest problem with NASA is that it has stifled innovation in the field. When one organization dominates a field the way NASA does, it's difficult to get alternative ways of doing things developed. The dominant group dismisses out of hand any thing they haven't developed. They tend to drive off independently minded people. Problems go unnoticed for longer periods of time.
Many of us welcome competition for NASA -- be it private or governmental. I salute ESA for it's independence -- and for trying out ion propulsion.
Not quite.
We're finally seeing an admission from the aerospace establishment that the shuttle has failed as an experiment. Wings on space craft are essentially a burden. Mercury-Gemini-Apollo demonstrated that you could come back to earth -- even in a controlled fashion -- without wings. Shuttle had wings to meet an Air Force requirement on cross range capability. Now the Air Force doesn't even use the shuttle.
So, the immediate future of vehicles intended to reach orbit looks like something that's been proven to work for both the United States and Russia. It's good to see people actually looking for something that works well.
In other ways, though, this development is a further criticism of the NASA culture. Much has been reported about the suppression of dissent in the safety culture. This is one aspect of a larger suppression of independent thinking in aerospace culture. The lack of new ideas shows another aspect. The unwillingness to examine things outside the industry (the "not invented here" syndrome) demonstrates still another.
New ideas and technologies thrive in free atmospheres. People are more willing to try new things. Good ideas get promoted. Faulty ones, even if held by people with power, are more likely to be challenged. For the aerospace industry to succeed, such a model must be embraced, not shunned.
The quote at the beginning of the article
is damning for an organization that NASA is supposed to be.
NASA should be a research and development organization. The job of such organizations is to learn new things and teach the rest of us. The fact that they're not learning from their mistakes shows an organization that's become mired in incompetence.
This is one consequence of the rigid, hierarchical nature of today's NASA. Rigid hierarchies resist change and learning. They're great if you want to keep doing the same thing the same way. For instance, if you want to keep on making buggy whips in the same way to the same standards as your great grandfathers, adopt this kind of organization. Oh, you want to switch from buggy whip making to rocket research? Time to scrap the rigid hierarchy.
Sadly, you could be right about NASA not changing.
There are, however, some hopeful differences. Let me list a few:
This event is being viewed as NASA's Vietnam. That's a real wake up call.
Yes, things could still go wrong. There are plenty of well entrenched people who have turf to protect. But that's going to be much harder now.
And, I suspect, a lot of the good people who still manage to work in aerospace are also going to work to change things.
Then again, it might not.
I'm one of the older generation of techies who did get involved in politics as far back as the 1960s. In the 1970s I joined the now gone L5 Society because I thought space had a real role to play in human affairs. It still could.
But it would be helpful if today's political activists learned a bit from our mistakes. Practically all L5ers were political neophytes. We took up our cause with enthusiasm. For awhile we gathered some attention. So why aren't we all living in space colonies now? Here are some reasons I can think of:
These are just a few thoughts early in the morning. Others will probably be able to think of others.
Summing up, try to learn from our mistakes -- and from our successes. Politics isn't as neat and orderly like technology.
You haven't been paying attention the past several years, have you?
Consider:
These are just some high profile failures.
Yes, some (probably most) people at NASA do good work. But quite a few knowledgeable people don't trust the organization. There is a lack of "honesty and openness" (to quote Donna Shirley, who led the team that gave us the successful Mars rover) that adversely affects NASA.
I love a happy ending, too. And drama is terrific, too. But you don't want drama everywhere. SOHO is an observatory that performs a quite useful function for the human race. It's better for it to perform that function as well as it can. That probably means with as little drama as possible.
Engineering and science can be part of something quite dramatic. Check out a mid 50s British film "The Dam Busters" for an illuminating look at real engineers involved in real drama. Or the Ron Howard film "Apollo 13" for a more modern look at engineers involved in high drama.
But everyday engineering and science should avoid drama. Drama comes from unexpected events (e.g., Apollo 13's failures, natural catastrophe) and conflict (war, political campaigns, etc.). Society (as well as scientists and engineers) want technology to work, not provide drama -- unless that is a deliberate goal. Routine technology should not be dramatic. Dramatic events should not be routine.
And hearty congratulations are in order for the people who got SOHO working again.
This proposal has a number of interesting ideas.
First, competition attracts more interest. Part of the reason for the decline in interest in space since Apollo is the lack of any real competition. NASA launches shuttles -- who really cares that much? While not "routine access to space" shuttle launches are fairly common. There's no drama -- unless something goes wrong. Competitions such as this will bring some drama back to the field.
These kinds of competitions can also bring the participants together, much as happens in automobile racing. I discovered when photographing SCCA races that they were as much social events as automobile competitions. Bringing people together in these competitions can facilitate information exchange. One team can see what another is doing and learn from it. That kind of thing goes on in the Sports Car Club of America. Why not X Prize competitions as well?
These efforts will be much less bureaucratic. It would be easier for young scientists and engineers to get involved in meaningful ways. Doesn't that happen now in various competitions to build and race solar powered automobiles?
Yes, I'd like to watch -- hell, even get involved somehow.
OK, NASA still looks screwed up.
Possibilities we must consider:
What should we (the United States in particular and humanity in general) be doing?
Really from the article:
Apparently added by PhysicsGenius:
Or were the last two sentences deleted from the CNN story before I read it?
In my years at NASA Goddard I saw a dysfunctional management operate in ignorance of reality.
There was much praise of the employee who "went the extra mile", "put in long hours" and "served the customer" (that applied to contractor employees). There was also very little thought paid to the consequences of those practices.
What's the first thing to go when you're tired? It's not your body -- it's your mind. That's right -- if you're staying at work until you're feeling tired, you're making mistakes that need to be corrected later. The tireder you are, the more mistakes. The tireder you are, the less you can actually do.
I witnessed people who wore their exhaustion as a badge of honor. And, when they got into management, insist that others emulate their bad example. The result that I saw was people who should have been kept out of management becoming increasingly dominant. This was accentuated by the "faster, better, cheaper" ideology promulgated by former NASA administrator Goldin. This ideology was used to get rid of more experienced (and thus costly) people who were aware of the consequences of trying to squeeze more work out of fewer people.
It could take a long time for NASA to recover from this culture. The failure of projects in the past few years, the crash of Columbia could be turning points -- or they could be used by incompetents to justify even more dysfunctional behavior.
There's quite a bit going on with regard to private space. Just check out The X Prize for information on Carmack, Rutan and others. The most recent story about Rutan's work is attracting quite a bit of attention.
Personally, I think the next crewed orbital vehicle will be coming out of one of these startups, not out of NASA. Of course, NASA could get back into the picture if they decided to help independents rather than try to run the whole damned show.
No, I don't usually bring that up. But, given the topic, I think it is relevant.
Yes, I do well on various kinds of IQ tests. I also have some real world accomplishments to my credit. To get a flavor of some of my abilities, check out my personal web site. Some of it is serious, some not. The software side isn't fancy -- the point of the site is the content (words, pictures) not software. I have also done reasonably well in life. I make enough money to live indoors, sometimes do interesting work and have lots of friends. OK, I go in for understatement and I can be weird.
These sorts of tests can screen out the obviously unqualified. They also can offend those of us who are good enough for the job. I've deliberately blown such tests a few times in my life. Once I walked out without even taking the test -- the company made that bad an impression on me. The recruiter who set up the experience was surprised.
Hiring people is still a black art. Once you've eliminated the obviously unqualified, you might as well use some random criteria. Is there any alternative? Yes -- hire people who are already somewhat known to you. That way you get a fuller idea of what the person is actually like. It's easy (well, it is for me) to maintain an act for a few interviews.
These puzzle tests do test intelligence to some extent. They also help make sure that the person being hired is at least somewhat like the people doing the hiring. And are willing to put up with something the corporation thinks important.
Do such measures make me think well of a company? Not really. There are many things that can limit what you can do. Yes, a lower intelligence can be a handicap. So, unfortunately, can a dysfunctional corporate culture.
I don't think I would like working at Microsoft. Gates seems too much of an autocrat. Yes, it's nice to work with intelligent people. But it's also nice to work in an enviroment where you're reasonably free. I don't know how Microsoft stacks up in that regard. Their lack of innovation doesn't speak too highly for them.
This begins to address the real problem. The space shuttle was sold as "routine access to space." It isn't. It's a routinely operated experimental vehicle. That's not good. Back in the 1940s we didn't build Bell X-1s for the Air Force. We used what we learned from the X-1 to build production jet aircraft.
Official attempts to build better rockets (NASP, X-33) have failed to produce even flyable vehicles. Currently a considerable number of people have given up hope that the aerospace establishment will eventually come up with a vehicle that actually gives us routine access to space. I believe Larry's friend and coauthor Jerry Pournelle is one of them.
People have noted that real innovation in software comes from academia and small companies. Microsoft talks about innovation, but doesn't really deliver.
In the aerospace field, however, a healthy culture of small companies and independent academic research hasn't begun to exist until recently. And NASA's experiments turn into expensive failures. What's worse is the establishment tends to inadvertently suppress research by people other than itself.
Your comment was modded up to +5.
I'm generally in favor of space exploration and development. But I've made several comments critical of our current approach here on Slashdot. People have modded a number of them up to +4, +5.
This is a site that draws those interested in technology and science. Some of us do know a fair amount about both. Some moderators are apt to point out that hostile comments are in fact hostile comments.
I currently don't have moderator points. If I did, I might have modded you up as +1 Interesting. I certainly would not have put you down as -1 Flamebait. Even though there are real flaws in your arguments. For example, that guy sleeping on the grate is more of an indictment of current social welfare institutions than it is of the aerospace establishment.
What makes you think that will work?
NASA claims to have the best people in the country. While I dispute this to some extent, they still have a good number of top quality people. In spite of this they haven't even been able to create a successor to the shuttle. Perhaps it's because they are putting all their eggs in one basket.
Putting all the best people (even if it can be done) in one group can have negative consequences. You can get a group think phenomenon where everyone starts to think the same way. Dissent can be suppressed. This leads to unhealthy problem solving behaviors.
One project may take a long time to fail. And it might take even longer to see that failure. Multiple projects can lead to greater learning -- that's the real key to success.
In the computer field we've seen greater progress from letting multiple efforts flourish. Similar things can be said for all sorts of human endeavors. Why is space different? Because that's what those currently dominant think and say?
I say let's try multiple approaches.