That’s what Michael Mealing says.

while I agree with Rick and Jon that NASA and Congress could do a lot better, the odds of being able to convince the existing organizations to change is so slim that its hard to justify spending your time attempting to change it. The political reality is that the various Shuttle derived systems exist because no other plan pays the political bribe that gives NASA the budgets it needs to do other things. Any suggestion that causes the standing army to stand down is dead on arrival. It sucks but its just the nature of our system of politics. Its the nature of any large organization.

Does that mean you give up and start cheerleading for the Architecture as the only show in town? No. Did Jobs and Wozniak become cheerleaders for mainframe computing? No. They simply ignored the current way of doing things. While their products did eventually disrupt the computing industry rather radically, they didn’t set out with that goal. They did it by finding new markets and routing around adoption barriers.

I’ve thought this for a long time, which is one reason that I don’t devote much (unpaid) time or energy in trying to change the agency or its plans, or even in critiquing them. And Michael’s suggestion is exactly the path by which space will be opened up.

Clark Lindsey has some links to stories and pics about their record-setting rocket flight. Here’s hoping that it’s broken soon, and repeatedly.

That’s what Jon Goff says that ATK should do with its “Safe, Simple, Soon” vehicle.

I agree. But we can bet it won’t happen, now that they have their own man running the exploration activities.

NASA has two new Centennial Challenges:

The space agency is challenging innovators to build an autonomous aerial vehicle to navigate a tricky flight path or robots capable of building complex structures with only limited guidance from their human handlers, NASA officials said.

I hope that a few of these start to pay off soon, to provide incentive to start spending a lot more money on them. Right now, by my count, they’re spending about a hundredth of a percent of the agency’s budget on them.

Leonard David also has a report on a recent space tourism roundtable in California. The giggle factor continues to dissipate.

More foam cracks on the PAL ramp.

At the current flight rate, if they get it off next fall, the cost per flight will be many billions. Either fly it, or retire it, but stop wasting all this time and money on trying (in futility) to make it safe.

The Space Frontier Society has put together a new feature at their site, called NewSpace News. It has a nice roundup of links to stories of interest to fans of the new (private) space program(s).

Also, Rick Tumlinson has an editorial with some advice for Mike Griffin. Like many of us, he’s underwhelmed by “Apollo on steroids”:

It’s dead Mike. That horse won’t run. That dog won’t hunt. The fat lady has sung. Or, to bring it closer to space, I’ll quote Bill Paxton in the film Aliens: “Game over man!”

The bloated, business as usual, cost-plus, pork-based, design-bureau use-it-and-throw-it-away approach to space is a failure. The excitement and momentum that might have existed when the president aimed us toward the Moon, Mars and beyond has been squandered. It has been worn down by the dumping of vision in favor of pork, and the jettisoning of the President and Aldridge Commission’s declarations that frontier infrastructure building based on commercial enterprise is a prime goal. Dumped in favor of getting a few folks on the Moon relatively quickly (for these timid times) and pretending that this will lead us on to Mars

…is to call for an end to controversial debate. I got more calls and letters on this article than I got in a year of previous writing. The responses were polarized. The most controversial item was my list of companies that could succeed if we stop space industry infighting. The list was a mistake–no list can be completely inclusive so better to describe broad categories. I did not intend to exclude companies. Many many companies can prosper in a boom. Not all will be around 25 years from now. IBM is not even in the PC business any more.

Setting aside the list, the correspondence was bi-modal. Half said it’s about time that someone said this. Some of these people had Washington return addresses. The other half said it is brutally repressive to cage the intellectual debate, and counterproductive.

I think there must be some kind of inverse square law that says if you have a political party that represents 50% of the people, it has one opinion, but a splinter interest group that represents 1% of the people has 2500 opinions.

There certainly can be a democratic process to arrive periodically at consensus. I favor a knockout auction where the proponents of a position pay those that disagree with it if they win.

Those who agreed with my article probably would think that just about any civility and unity in the space industry would be better than division and infighting regardless of the message disseminated.

Those who disagreed with my article challenged that there was any way to arrive at a consensus without free and open debate that wouldn’t fatally taint the ultimate message.

I guess I will have to go on being controversial and dividing people.

I haven’t written anything about the former Canadian defense minister’s recent descent into (literally) loonytunes madness, but Thomas James has a good roundup.

Via Mark Whittington, an article in which he (as usual) takes false hope, with a misleading title: “China Aims to Put Man on Moon by 2020.”

But if you read the article, it’s clear that “China” has no such “aims.” The only person with such “aims” is the “deputy commander of the Chinese manned spaceflight program.” He himself makes clear in the paragraph following that this is not (yet) a national goal:

But the goal is subject to getting enough funds from the government, Hu said, explaining that the space program must fit in the larger scheme of the country’s overall development.

If Mike Griffin’s deputy said, “I think that in about fifteen years, we could have the capability to send humans to Jupiter,” would Mark then agree with the headline “US Aims To Put Man On Jupiter By 2020”? Would he say that there are “indications” that this is a US goal?

Well, given his apparent gullibility, perhaps he would.

[Monday morning update]

Mark amusingly (as usual) misses the point:

Of course landing a man on Jupiter and landing one on the Moon are exactly analogous. At least it seems Rand thinks so.

First of all, I didn’t say “land a man on Jupiter.” But then, reading comprehension has never been Mark’s strong suit, either, at least when it comes to reading me. But ignoring that (non-trivial) distinction, for the purpose of this discussion, they are in fact analogous. The point is that a statement of technological capability (and we could in fact send a man to Jupiter if we so chose in that time period, not that it would be a sensible thing to do) is not a statement of intent, or a declaration of a national goal. Even Mark might realize this, if he actually read the article he cites with such misplaced hope, and thinks about it a little.

Via Mark Whittington, an article in which he (as usual) takes false hope, with a misleading title: “China Aims to Put Man on Moon by 2020.”

But if you read the article, it’s clear that “China” has no such “aims.” The only person with such “aims” is the “deputy commander of the Chinese manned spaceflight program.” He himself makes clear in the paragraph following that this is not (yet) a national goal:

But the goal is subject to getting enough funds from the government, Hu said, explaining that the space program must fit in the larger scheme of the country’s overall development.

If Mike Griffin’s deputy said, “I think that in about fifteen years, we could have the capability to send humans to Jupiter,” would Mark then agree with the headline “US Aims To Put Man On Jupiter By 2020”? Would he say that there are “indications” that this is a US goal?

Well, given his apparent gullibility, perhaps he would.

[Monday morning update]

Mark amusingly (as usual) misses the point:

Of course landing a man on Jupiter and landing one on the Moon are exactly analogous. At least it seems Rand thinks so.

First of all, I didn’t say “land a man on Jupiter.” But then, reading comprehension has never been Mark’s strong suit, either, at least when it comes to reading me. But ignoring that (non-trivial) distinction, for the purpose of this discussion, they are in fact analogous. The point is that a statement of technological capability (and we could in fact send a man to Jupiter if we so chose in that time period, not that it would be a sensible thing to do) is not a statement of intent, or a declaration of a national goal. Even Mark might realize this, if he actually read the article he cites with such misplaced hope, and thinks about it a little.