Time Is Running Out

for NASA reform. Contact your representative while they’re in the district. Next week, when they come back, there will be another attempt to pass the ruinous NASA authorization bill in the House.

And speaking of reform, should NASA be abolished?

I don’t think that just renaming the agency will work. And can we please stop repeating the myth about Fisher pens and pencils? There are good reasons not to use a pencil in a space vehicle.

17 thoughts on “Time Is Running Out”

  1. I don’t think that just renaming the agency will work.

    I wonder if that is precisely why the author wants it, renaming things to avoid real reform.

  2. If NASA was abolished who would provide the “commercial” markets for New Space firms? Or would they be expected to find real commercial markets?

  3. Or would they be expected to find real commercial markets?

    Yes, obviously, unless you think subsidising joy rides by multimillionaires is worth spending taxpayers’ money on.

  4. Split NASA along these lines:
    1) NASA beyond Earth robotic exploration
    2) Earth monitoring
    3) ISS
    4) Standards organization: (airlocks, approach procedures, etc.)
    5) Rocket design – cancelled.

    Number one and two would buy lift on cargo craft. Number three is going to buy cargo and crew lift. Number 4 doesn’t get lift.

  5. If NASA was abolished who would provide the “commercial” markets for New Space firms?

    An interesting question to ask is if NASA was abolished to what extent would other interests step up to take its place? Public and private funding is at least a little fungible.

    The turnover might take a few years but I suspect on the order of 10% of the existing NASA HSF budget would not be an unreasonable estimate. Private interests do spend rather large sums of money on noble causes for the greater public good. Other government agencies may well takeover other NASA roles.

    10% of the NASA HSF budget spent sensibly would achieve far more than the current NASA budget. Commercial has the potential for launch costs at 0.1-1% that of NASA. With such private funding I would expect CATS within a decade and the development of many other necessarily low cost and economically sustainable space activities.

    Even with the ongoing government support of NASA the private sector is slowly stepping up to take its place (Branson, Bezos, Bigelow, etc.). The private will is there and I would expect it to increase dramatically should NASA be abolished. It is probably not unreasonable to say that abolishing NASA would likely be a net win for space, even if not, it would be little worse.

  6. Pete,

    [[[An interesting question to ask is if NASA was abolished to what extent would other interests step up to take its place? Public and private funding is at least a little fungible.]]]

    Yes, just look at all the organizations rushing to funding robotic missions to Mars or other space exploration missions.

    As for astronauts to ISS, its difficult to see who would pay for them. Perhaps a tourist or two as is the case now, but not researchers for a full stay unless the USAF picks up the U.S. obligations under the ISS Agreements.

    So other then NOAA picking up some of the Earth observations missions its difficult to see who would step in and fill the gap.

    No, the money spent on NASA would just disappear into the rest of the federal budget, along with most of the funding hopes of the New Space industry.

  7. No, the money spent on NASA would just disappear into the rest of the federal budget, along with most of the funding hopes of the New Space industry.

    Why would that be a bad thing?

  8. It would be nice to see organizations such as the National Geographic Society sponsor space exploration. A return to their roots.

  9. As for astronauts to ISS, its difficult to see who would pay for them.

    Why would private interests wish to fund astronauts to go to the ISS? A hundred billion dollar space station with operational costs to match that does next to nothing productive?

    You may be missing the point of private investment. It has very different interests (like opening up space) and an inclination to find the most cost effective ways of serving those interests.

  10. A modest proposal:

    With our huge trade imbalance and foreign debt, the markets the private aerospace firms go after should be overseas. I suggest, in addition to abolishing NASA, we get rid of ITAR and pull out of various alliances. Without US-subsidized defense, the artificial peace that the world has been enjoying will break down, and we’ll have HUGE arms export markets.

  11. There is an entry barrier to developing CATS vehicles (and cheap space infrastructure), with each passing year it gets lower, it is perhaps now only $100m-$200m. It is getting within the means of private investors. I suspect it will happen in the next decade or so, even with NASA continuing to poison the well.

    Once it starts to happen the governmental approach to space will I expect go through a period of “readjustment”, and whatever replaces NASA will I suspect be somewhat effective.

  12. Forgive my ignorance, but can anyone tell me why using a regular pencil in a spacecraft is a bad idea, other than for the pencil shavings that might be generated if using a non-enclosing sharpener?

  13. I’m guessing it’s the fact that pencil “lead” is actually mostly graphite and tends to shed minute particles both from the exposed pencil point and from whatever surface is written on. Graphite is also electrically conductive. Lots of electrically conductive dust floating around in zero-g and getting into electronics bays is a major bad thing.

  14. Don,

    [[[Forgive my ignorance, but can anyone tell me why using a regular pencil in a spacecraft is a bad idea, other than for the pencil shavings that might be generated if using a non-enclosing sharpener?]]]

    Pencils use Graphite and Graphite conducts electric current. Pencils leave Graphite power when they write, which in Zero-G may drift into places where its ability to conduct electrical current would not be a good thing…

  15. TM,

    No apology required. I believe you and I are united in the view that everyone is entitled to his own opinion but no one is entitled to his own laws of physics 🙂

    As one old enough to have done both a fair amount of manual drafting and construction of midget arc furnaces using graphite center electrodes from those giant cylindrical volt-and-a-half carbon-zinc dry cells with the screw terminals that no one seems to make anymore, I was thoroughly familiar with both the dusty and conductive nature of graphite.

  16. Thanks to both of you for the answer. I started as a manual drafter more years ago than I care to remember, and still use mechanical pencils to draw some initial sketches before generating them in UG Sketcher.
    Believe it or not, some very large companies still have a large number of manual drawings that need occasional updates. It isn’t worth it to them to convert these drawings to CAD, not even to scan them, so I’ve been asked to do manual updates several times, and still have a basic manual drafting kit with me on the road.

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