10 thoughts on “Reforming NASA”

  1. Personally, I think wasting another 2 to 4 billion on SLS before canceling it is an overly optimistic scenario, because I just don’t see any chance of it being canceled that fast.

    My own personal guess; they’ll cancel it around 2021 after the first test flight, and after squandering another 15 billion on it.

      1. I wasn’t disagreeing, just mentioning that I think that’s, sadly, a best-case scenario. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

  2. A surprisingly coherent statement from SpaceColonizer.

    My question is, where do you people who think NASA can actually be reformed get your hope from? They’ve always been this screwed up, what makes you think they can be anything else? It’s a government operation.

    1. I disagree that NASA has “always been this screwed up.” I don’t think they have. Screwed up, yes, but not as badly as now. IMHO, it’s been a steady progression over a couple of decades, going from bad to worse.

      I grew up as a kid who loved NASA. This was during the Shuttle era, and I was blissfully ignorant, until Challenger, of the rot. Since then, my opinion of NASA has been in ongoing decline.

      I still think it’s possible to reform NASA, though many would not consider my definition of “reform” to be to their liking. My idea of “reforming NASA” is literal: re-form it. First, identify which bits work and which don’t, then break it up. I may be wrong, but I think JPL is worth keeping. A few other small divisions (or parts of them) may be as well.

      As for the rest, fire absolutely everyone (over 90% of the total and 100% of upper management) and start over. Literally re-form NASA (a far smaller NASA), and make it what it was supposed to be; heavily R&D, not operations. NASA building launch vehicles actually made some sense decades ago, but today it makes as much sense at them building airliners to get their personnel from Kennedy to Houston and back; it’s simply unneeded, and the worst way of doing it.

      I also know that there’s about a 0% chance of anything like what I outline above actually being done.

      1. Shuttle was a turd before they turned the first bolt, and everyone at NASA knew it. Just like Constellation. Just like SLS.

        I also know that there’s about a 0% chance of anything like what I outline above actually being done.

        I agree, now ask yourself why. The answer is as plain obvious: that’s not what government programs are. Wishing won’t change it.

      2. “heavily R&D, not operations.”

        I disagree, R&D is far too important to leave to bureaucrats. I think NASA should focus on operations, just not on launch vehicles and capsules. Establish an orbital market for propellant and do enough operations, and market forces will take care of the rest.

        1. If you look at the history of NASA’s predecessor NACA, you’ll see they did a good job on R&D. NASA should go back to that model. NACA built large wind tunnels and outer expensive test facilities that industry could rent as needed. They also did a lot of fundamental research on aerodynamics (NACA airfoils and the NACA cowl, among many others) and structures that helped American aircraft companies become world leaders. A new, vastly smaller NASA could do the same thing. In addition to continuing their aeronautical research, they could research more efficient and cost effective technologies for space systems.

  3. “or a cost effective private sector heavy lift rocket capable of supporting deep space exploration activities”

    Aaargh, repeat after me: an HLV is NOT needed for exploration. Propellant transfer is the way to go.

  4. I think any space reform will have to have a substantial private component. Most of the currently involved parties have considerable incentive not to reform things and most of the electorate don’t have much of an interest in space policy. That’s a recipe for no change until a really big failure happens or perhaps the mythical president with an interest in space affairs comes around.

    Instead, I think we should start looking at private means to continue space development and exploration. For example, the Planetary Society tends to be aggressively pro-government when it comes to spending for space science. But they run some private research as well. SETI is another good example.

    A lot of small projects are run on CubeSats. The low cost of this platform puts in-space R&D in reach of universities and start ups, for example.

    So what sort of thing can be done? Well, technology development is a big one – especially “risk retirement”, knocking out risks that result from ignorance – such as space tethers for generating artificial gravity (there’s been only one attempt and that was in the 60s) and solar sails (which is one of the projects worked on by the Planetary Society). I’m sure that others can think of some stuff that’s been missed for decades because NASA never made it a priority to do research in these areas.

    There’s also a lot of exploration possibilities out there. For example, it’ll probably be a long time before anyone sends a probe out to the Jovian Trojan asteroids (asteroids which orbit around the Sun-Jupiter L4/L5 Lagrange points) – which are currently guessed to be roughly as numerous as the Asteroid Belt and contain about a fifth as much mass.

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