Can NASA Change In Order To Survive?

Los Angeles Times:

Early this month, Hawthorne-based rocket venture SpaceX launched an unmanned version of its Dragon capsule into orbit, took it for a few spins around Earth and then brought it home with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

The total cost -- including design, manufacture, testing and launch of the company's Falcon 9 rocket and the capsule -- was about $800 million.

Read the whole story: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Said One]

12:17 PM on 12/29/2010

They could do the celebrity trip thing that the Russians did to earn extra $$.

[noob1]

10:34 PM on 12/28/2010

what do they do again? eh?

[jsarets]

04:45 PM on 12/28/2010

Arianespace is set to launch their sixth Ariane 5 launch vehicle of 2010 from Kourou, French Guiana with a pair of communications satellites (from Spain and South Korea) headed to geosynchronous orbit.

The webcast is live:

http://www.videocorner.tv/videocorner2/live_flv/index.php?langue=en

The countdown is currently a T-7m and holding with a violation of weather constraints on high upper level winds. The launch window extends for another 40 minutes or so.

Ariane 5 is the second most powerful expendable launch vehicle in operation, closely following the American Delta IV Heavy, which is capable of replacing the cancelled Ares I launch vehicle and delivering the Orion crew exploration vehicle to orbit.

[jsarets]

05:03 PM on 12/28/2010

...and now the launch attempt has been scrubbed to try again tomorrow.

[pogo]

09:27 AM on 12/28/2010

Well, 100% of all southern governors named Rick don't want any of that socialist federal taxing and spending in their states, so NASA should just take their stuff and get out.

[Nosybear]

09:24 AM on 12/28/2010

NASA likely can't change. They're an American institution and, regardless of the recognized need to change, we show remarkable resistance to it.

[R U Sirius]

08:08 AM on 12/28/2010

Maybe the bigger question is: Can America change in order to survive?

[PalmReader]

08:07 AM on 12/28/2010

For me the key issues are WILL and EFFICIENCY. Apollo worked becaue JFK set the day by which he wanted a man on the moon. NASA had to really get cracking to do it, there was no time to doodle around. Everything had to be planned for that one goal, failure was not an option, everybody was focused and did the best he could. And the people, taxpayers and companies, stood behind that goal, 100%.

Nowadays the notion is more like "well, we build something and if it works we might modify it to do something else and if that works let's see if we can do something useful, maybe by the year 3000". That's not how you do it! That's a surefire way to accieve failure!

But (and it's a big but) if the President would step forward today and say he want's a man on Mars by (let's say) 2030 he would be laughed off the stage. There is no money, there is no will, there is no USSR to beat, there is no cold war, there is no NEED to go to Mars, no urgency, no benefit.

Everybody thought the Moon would get us Jetpacks, instead we got Teflon. People will not fall for that twice...

[jsarets]

09:10 AM on 12/28/2010

Apollo "worked" in the sense that we beat the commies. But it didn't leave us with any sustainable means of extending human presence to the moon and beyond. The time pressure inexorably led to a "flag and footprints" architecture that was limited by the performance of the Saturn V rocket.

As development proceeded on the CSM and the LM, Werner von Braun asked the development teams to estimate the gross liftoff mass of the two spacecraft so that he could develop Saturn V. The teams came back with 80 tons. Werner von Braun crossed out the 80 tons and wrote in 120 tons. He expected the mass to grow and he wanted Saturn V to have extra performance for later missions. When Apollo 11 launched, the mass of the two spacecraft was 118 tons. There ended up being no headroom at all in the architecture, and we were fortunate that von Braun was prescient enough to fudge the numbers.

The single-launch architecture is not sustainable. The rocket is far too big to launch commercial satellites yet too small to allow our exploration objectives to grow.

We have to embrace a multi-launch architecture where we can mount larger missions simply by adding more launches. The technology to do this needs a small amount of development and flight-testing, but it will pay off in the long-run, and it is almost essential for mounting a manned mission to Mars.

The all-up approach is faster, but we don't get a whole lot out of it. The incremental approach is slower, but it provides a development path that leads forward toward a more advanced space-faring civilization that can go farther and do more.

We won't succeed by setting a deadline. What we need a developmental roadmap.

[rss0246]

07:06 AM on 12/28/2010

PLEASE! The entire NASA annual budget is swallowed up every EIGHT DAYS at the Pentagon.

And Congress hasn't cut NASA's budget at all. But it has directed NASA to fully farm out manned spaceflight -- a slow, risky and ultimately pointless plan. Private space won't be able to do for decades what NASA already can do -- and then only with the infusion of huge sums of public money.

The best short-term fix is to allow NASA to complete its innovative Ares I / Orion project, the half-finished post-shuttle space access system that can restore indigenous U.S. access to the Space Station, preserve 12,000 skilled space jobs across the country and keep the lights on at KSC's matchless Complex 39. This will give the U.S. a reliable system to get humans to orbit for generations to come (an American Soyuz, if you will) while insuring a key role in whatever multinational deep space mission (Moon base, Mars or asteroid trip, etc.) develops at the end of the ISS's useful life in 2020.

Best of all, Ares I / Orion can be flying in just a few years without new funding of any kind -- using only a fraction of the monies NASA is saving by ending Shuttle and Constellation.

I for one consider it serendipity that NASA must hold off for awhile on destroying what has already been built for Ares I / Orion. Perhaps it will give us time to come to our senses...

[greezil428]

07:21 AM on 12/28/2010

...besides the space program is going backwards,now we take off and land and reuse a vehicle ,they want to go back to a capsule thats lands in the ocean,what a joke,Star Trek is getting farther away.Its all money, its not about advancing technology its about putting money in people hands for profiit America what a joke with your GOD and white picket fences.
Rebuild the shuttle with the new technology provide jobs get out of the east and move forward stop the BUCK!

[greezil428]

07:37 AM on 12/28/2010

it has to do with greed and GOD bless everything that ,they like to throw on everything like it makes everything OK.

[ProudToBeVeryLiberal]

07:57 AM on 12/28/2010

"Private space won't be able to do for decades what NASA already can do -- and then only with the infusion of huge sums of public money."

I've been saying that for years. Aerospace corporations are now running the show and that will ultimately spell the demise of NASA. While the privates are already counting the money they'll make with LEO (which, in the grand scheme of things, is an end in itself), NASA is kiIIing or severely defunding all the more ambitious space exploration projects, like research on alternative propulsion engines. Aerospace corporations are only interested in their lucrative cost plus contracts and they really don't care about space exploration, just whatever makes them the quickest bucks. And LEO is a great opportunity to make a ton of money with relatively low-risk and unambitious programs that will not advance human knowledge one bit.

[rss0246]

10:30 PM on 12/28/2010

Dear Proud: You should be. As my father used to say, "You have reason!"

Great insight into what is really going on. The NASA model (using private contractors to build and do 80-90 percent of everything while the agency does the overall planning and watches carefully over their shoulders) has produced spectacular results for half a century, is being copied by the rest of the world, isn't broken and doesn't need to be fixed.

Beware so-called "privatization" of that which is inherently collective, fundamentally unprofitable and uniquely governmental in nature -- like Social Security and space exploration!

[jeremylh1]

11:49 PM on 12/28/2010

Proud, I've seen your comments under the activity page when logging in. I'm curious to your background Your insight is interesting, especially in the area of science and technology. Not to be a misogynist, but is that you in your avatar or do you fulfill the margins in the field?

[briarus42]

06:46 AM on 12/28/2010

Short answer NO!

[Cacey]

05:53 AM on 12/28/2010

NASA could be the poster child of success if it is able to wean itself off of government funding and into the private sector sucessfully.  Born in the days of cold war rivalry, the government provided the seed money and the support to accomplish some great things.  Let NASA now be privatized in total or in many parts.  

[greezil428]

07:24 AM on 12/28/2010

They need better marketing,who does the NASA advertising ,GEEEEZUs,what a gaff lotsa people dont have any idea what spaceflight has achieved for mankind.You have to market that stuff like your making the rounds for a movie, not keep it so secret what a joke.

[bccmeteorites]

07:13 AM on 02/12/2011

If NASA is going to be part of the private sector you have to have goals and missions sustainable by vision and budget constraints. These are things this agency lacks.

[sote001]

05:40 AM on 12/28/2010

Perhaps they could start by changing their "foremost" mission. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency was to improve relations with the Muslim world.
How's that working for you? Not too good, is it... !?

[Downix]

04:45 PM on 01/02/2011

That was a claim made last year and was discredited.

[sftommy]

07:22 PM on 01/05/2011

NASA's mission under General Bolden's leadership has been to replace cost-exorbitant contracting with cost effective pricing.

Bolden's efforts toward inclusion of all peoples is working, as best it can given this environment that would apparently be gleeful if social inclusion were not part of the American way of life.

[bioluminescence]

04:37 AM on 12/28/2010

Earthbound weapons launched from platforms in space? Every nation on earth says, no. Except for the U. S. As long as the U. S. sees space as a military zone of operation, NASA will be necessary.

[StansDad]

12:57 PM on 12/28/2010

swing and a miss, NASA is going to just turn into a front to give free public money to aerospace companies to build cheap rockets and pocket the rest. The Airforce is lightyears ahead of NASA in space based weapon systems.

[cyberfringe]

04:03 AM on 12/28/2010

I spent over 20 years of my career working for NASA. I have visited all of the NASA centers many times, worked at two, and spent time at NASA HQ. I think I'm qualified to answer the headline question. The answer is "No". NASA cannot change for a couple of reasons. 1) Entrenched bureaucracy; 2) Southern state senators who treat NASA funds like jobs programs for their state (especially Sen. Shelby, (R) AL), and NASA employees -- I generalize -- who are for the most part unable to innovate their way out of a paper bag, mostly for lack of experience. There are strong exceptions although they too have problems. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a NASA center that is an FFRDC run by Caltech, continues to be the jewel in the crown. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland has an awesome Earth science and Astrophysics program. Note: no astronauts or manned spaceflight at those centers. In its current incarnation, NASA cannot be reformed. That said, the total cost of NASA is a drop in the Federal budget. Look elsewhere for savings, such as DoD.

[jsarets]

04:54 AM on 12/28/2010

That's pretty much how I see it from the outside, and in approximately the correct order.

I've read plenty of very impressive white papers from the major contractors in the industry -- Boeing, Lockheed, and their joint venture ULA -- but none of that matters if NASA is unwilling to give these guys design authority.

The decision-making power is concentrated in the upper levels of the Marshall bureaucracy and worse yet in Congress. By the time the project gets to the NASA engineers, let alone the contractor engineers, there is little room to innovate.

The box of engineering possibility closes in tight and nobody is empowered to question whether maybe we took a step in the wrong direction at the very beginning. That's why we get things like DIRECT where anonymous NASA employees go underground to campaign for alternative design concepts.

For a political organization, NASA expends perilously little effort considering and communicating the "why" of their programs (the objectives and rationale) for their rather myopic obsession with the "how" (the launch vehicles and mission architecture).

I don't think that anyone really knew what NASA intended to do on the moon if and when the astronauts landed there. The thought process seemed to begin and end with the transportation elements, and they never really bothered to sell the objectives of the surface mission.

It's difficult to develop engineering solutions without a coherent vision of purpose and direction. SpaceX has a vision -- a very ambitious and inspiring vision -- and they know what they're trying to achieve both now, five years from now, and in the long run.

To cap it all off, SpaceX is vertically-integrated to an extent that is unprecedented in the aerospace industry, so the engines, stages, and spacecraft can evolve together under common leadership. They've got their own streamlined space program going with a minimum of transaction costs and coordination overhead, and they have the agility to run circles around the old guard.

[StansDad]

01:02 PM on 12/28/2010

So what would you like to have done with NASA? I hear a lot of the anti-NASA rhetoric with little mention at all about anything positive they may have accomplished.

[whitemale08]

03:22 AM on 12/28/2010

Experiments in space costs alot of money....SO WHAT?

That's why only governments can funds them so the public owns the infrastructure of the future.

Corporations could never maintain a space program, just look at England.

England is the headquarters of the British Empire and yet never had a space program 'till this very day.

You can print 3.3 TRILLION to give to McDonalds and Harley Davidson for short-term profits and yet tell NASA, this country is wasting money with these vital experiments.

It's a testament to the FOOLISHNESS of the American public to be bamboozled by Wall Street/City of London to destroy its future and all of the scientific/technological discoveries possible for ridiculous bail outs in the TRILLIONS for bankrupt Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and others.

I never seen such ridiculousness in all my life.

[strongsmellofturpentine]

04:23 AM on 12/28/2010

A few points. A central government can do a variety of things far more successfully than the private sector ever could. And I don't think the dissolution of NASA's significance is reason to gloat.

2nd, its not "Obamacare". HCR was written by the senate finance committee and primarily by a health care lobbyist from Wellpoint. You want to call it a catchy name? How about "Romneycare", because that is essentially what it is, a resurrected decades old plan originally introduced by the Heritage Foundation.
.