A NASA center director has started a blog. It's too bad there aren't more Pete Wordens to replace existing NASA center directors. And speaking of Ames, it looks like they just lost a promising program, as a result of politics as usual.

Punish success, reward failure. Does this look like an agency that needs an emergency appropriation? If so, it's only due to Congressional meddling and pork barreling.

This is why NASA will not get us back to the moon, or open up space.

[Both links via NASA Watch]

As best I can tell that would have been the only program to field something tangible to the general public by January 2009. How much do you think this reduces the odds of VSE surviving?

If all that sufficed to hold us back from the Moon was questionable politics, no one would ever venture beyond LEO again.

No, many will, Mark. It just won't be NASA. Politics don't have that much effect on people spending their own money.

That, Rand, has got to be the silliest statement you have ever made. And that's saying something. Not only does national politics affect business of all sorts (just ask Bill Gates, who has had to fend off the government wanting to break up his company for being too successful), but internal (i.e. office) politics affects it.

A commercial company will some day land people on the Moon on their own nickle. But seeing as even Burt Rutan has admitted that he hasn't a clue how that might happen, I think we're safe in assuming that the next person on the Moon will draw his or her paycheck from evil big gummit. That might not square with libertarian theology, but it does seem to square with objective reality.

Mark,
A commercial company will some day land people on the Moon on their own nickle. But seeing as even Burt Rutan has admitted that he hasn't a clue how that might happen, I think we're safe in assuming that the next person on the Moon will draw his or her paycheck from evil big gummit. That might not square with libertarian theology, but it does seem to square with objective reality.

Burt Rutan isn't the only person running a commercial space company. Burt may be talented, but he isn't God. There are other talented people in the alt.space world, and assuming that just because Burt doesn't know how to do it that nobody else does is just plain silly.

As for who'll be next on the Moon, I still think the odds are better than 50/50 for that person being delivered by a commmercial space company. The more NASA bungles things up with incompetence and dumb politics, the longer it will take them to get back to the moon, and the more likely that they won't get back to the moon at all on their own vehicles. Every such delay greatly increases the odds that private ventures will beat them.

As for other governments, none of them are seriously working towards meeting even NASA's glacial schedule. While I'm not 100% sure that private enterprise will beat NASA back to the moon (only about 50-70% sure), I'm almost positive they'll beat the Chinese there for instance.

~Jon

...even Burt Rutan has admitted that he hasn't a clue how that might happen

I repeat, Mark. Burt Rutan is not God. He may not know how to do it, but there are plenty who do.

And he announced that there shall be a blog, and there was much rejoicing...

Yeah, because civil servants are allowed to be so open and candid with their blogging.

But count me optimistic. I hope that Worden's blog includes a comments section, because I cannot wait to see Rand and Mark take shots at each other there as well. It will be refreshing.

The problem with a commercial company landing someone on the Moon is that, at current costs, it's about $100,000 per pound to land something on the Moon, and you have to take all your food, water, air, etc. with you. And before you say "technology will make this cheaper" you'd better have a technology in mind...that number hasn't changed in real $ for a long time. There are no disruptive technologies in the pipeline. ISRU isn't going to work. "Feathering" isn't going to do a lot, not when you're travelling at 14km/sec.

It's simply not a good economic story. Nobody is going to spend a billion dollars to be a space tourist...there are only a few people who can do that, and even if *every one* of them did it, you wouldn't cover the cost of building the system!