There is at least one, and possibly two ignored elephants sitting in NASA’s living room, that they’re going to have to start to deal with soon, as a result of the president’s new space policy. They’re called Space Shuttle and International Space Station–the two fundamental components of what currently passes for the nation’s civil government-funded space program.

As Keith Cowing reports, they’re only starting to come to grips with the associated issues, but if the answers aren’t forthcoming yet, it’s partly because everyone knows them, but don’t really want to say them out loud. We have a policy that we’re going to shut down the Shuttle when station is completed, but what if we have problems along the way, and the station still has some way to go at the point we’ve a priori decided to shut down the Shuttle? And how do we transition personnel from the Shuttle to other programs, when it’s not clear that the current skill set is what is needed for future activities? Dwayne Day examines these questions, and as already noted, the answers may not be very pretty.

More fundamentally, since the Shuttle phaseout plans are now being driven entirely by ISS considerations, to what degree does continuing to do ISS make any sense? In my opinion, of course, to the degree that NASA’s space station plans ever made much sense (i.e., very little), that degree went to zero in 1993 when it became almost purely an instrument of foreign policy having almost nothing to do with the advancement of useful goals in space activities. Taylor Dinerman discusses some of the issues facing the international partnership (as does Jim Oberg), particularly in light of the politics with Russia and Iran.

I think that in announcing a 2010 end of the Shuttle program, the administration was just kicking the can down the road, but I don’t think they can do it much longer, because hard decisions have to be made as to how much more Shuttle hardware must be procured (a decision complicated by the fact that some, including the incoming administrator, want to build a Shuttle-derived heavy-lift vehicle for the lunar and Mars program). It’s probably not (yet) politically tenable to do so, but I think it’s almost inevitable that once we really confront the realities of the mess that the past thirty years of space policy have wreaked, a decision will have to be made to just hand off ISS to the Europeans, Japanese and Russians, to do with as they will, allowing us to shut down Shuttle as well. Simply giving them the facility outright could obviate some of the diplomatic damage of withdrawing from our agreements, while allowing us to end the farce that is the current US manned space program and get on with something worthwhile.

Some will complain, of course, about writing off the many billions invested in station to date, but there’s an old sayng in investment circles about throwing good money after bad. Unfortunately, Americans (and particularly the American government) aren’t always good investors.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s just one example of how absurd it is to continue operating the Shuttle, at least with the current risk-averse mindset:

NASA has from May 15 to June 3 to launch Discovery. Otherwise, it must wait until mid-July for the proper daylight conditions needed to photograph the entire ascent. The Columbia accident investigators insisted on multiple camera views at liftoff in order to check for debris or damage.

That constitutes a six-week period during which this vehicle cannot be flown, for the sole reason that they can’t take good pictures of it during launch.

This looks like an interesting new book:

Though the Lunar Prospector Mission was a small, inexpensive, unmanned, orbital mapping mission, the reader will, via the author’s experiences in conducting his mission, become intimately acquainted with the inefficient and self-serving activities of the entrenched NASA bureaucracy and the big aerospace companies. As such, the reader will come to understand how NASA’s increasing incompetence led to 1) the destruction of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia and their crews, 2) the loss of the 1992 Mars Observer, the 1999 Mars Climate Observer, the 1999 Mars Polar Lander, 3) the never-to-be-finished International Space Station that is already five times over its $8 billion budget and a decade over its original schedule, and 4) many similar NASA failures that have cost the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and have already taken 14 human lives.

[Sunday night update]

Keith Cowing isn’t impressed.

This looks like an interesting new book:

Though the Lunar Prospector Mission was a small, inexpensive, unmanned, orbital mapping mission, the reader will, via the author’s experiences in conducting his mission, become intimately acquainted with the inefficient and self-serving activities of the entrenched NASA bureaucracy and the big aerospace companies. As such, the reader will come to understand how NASA’s increasing incompetence led to 1) the destruction of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia and their crews, 2) the loss of the 1992 Mars Observer, the 1999 Mars Climate Observer, the 1999 Mars Polar Lander, 3) the never-to-be-finished International Space Station that is already five times over its $8 billion budget and a decade over its original schedule, and 4) many similar NASA failures that have cost the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and have already taken 14 human lives.

[Sunday night update]

Keith Cowing isn’t impressed.

This looks like an interesting new book:

Though the Lunar Prospector Mission was a small, inexpensive, unmanned, orbital mapping mission, the reader will, via the author’s experiences in conducting his mission, become intimately acquainted with the inefficient and self-serving activities of the entrenched NASA bureaucracy and the big aerospace companies. As such, the reader will come to understand how NASA’s increasing incompetence led to 1) the destruction of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia and their crews, 2) the loss of the 1992 Mars Observer, the 1999 Mars Climate Observer, the 1999 Mars Polar Lander, 3) the never-to-be-finished International Space Station that is already five times over its $8 billion budget and a decade over its original schedule, and 4) many similar NASA failures that have cost the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and have already taken 14 human lives.

[Sunday night update]

Keith Cowing isn’t impressed.

There’s a guy out there who thinks he has one. He claims that it wasn’t tile damage that destroyed the vehicle, but what he thinks is proof that it entered sideways.

Without even bothering to examine his fuzzy pictures that supposedly constitute his “proof,” I have to say, sorry, it doesn’t hold any water. Even ignoring his implausible theories about sensor failures and software glitches, the entry g-loads are such that a sideways entry would be immediately noticed by the crew, as would the direction of the earth motion, particularly for an experienced crew (there were several veterans on this flight). The seats aren’t designed to take loads in that direction at those levels. But the cockpit chatter indicates nothing abnormal until just shortly before breakup.

Professor Reynolds is optimistic about NASA, and particularly about the prospects for space elevators and solar power satellites. I certainly agree with him that prizes are much more promising than NASA’s past approaches, but it’s discouraging to see the huge ratio between funds expended for traditional ways of doing business and those used for prizes. Still, at least the ratio is no longer infinite, as it has been in the past. If the prizes are successful, it should (at least in theory, though bureaucracies and politics can be perverse) make it easier for their proponents, like Brant Sponberg, to expand them in the future, and carve out a bigger budget for them.

As for the prospects for space elevators and SPS, I’m a little less sanguine. Successful prizes will move us closer, but it’s still not clear that SPS will ever make sense compared to terrestrial alternatives (e.g., fusion, or nano-assembled solar-powered roads and clothes, or even nuclear if we can come up with more sensible reactor designs and attitudes toward waste). The inefficiency issues with power beaming are never going to go away, though advancing technology may mitigate them. I think that this will be a technology race, and it’s not at all obvious to me what will ultimately win.

But because we can’t know that, it also isn’t to say that it’s not an avenue that should be pursued, and perhaps even more vigorously than it has been. It’s certainly been underfunded relative to those more conventional solutions. And if it is going to be pursued, as Glenn says, it’s certainly better to do it via a technology prize route.

I’ve added a blogger who’s an employee at Johnson Space Center to the “Space” links to the left, who runs the “Mazoo” blog. I’m keeping this person anonymous, because I don’t know if (s)he wants the notoriety–if a self outing is desired, I have a comments section. As a content sample, there are some thoughts there on Hubble, the role of aeronautics in NASA (the first “A” and a subject to which I’ve been giving some recent thought) and the new administrator.

I’ve also moved Spaceship Summer, Rocketman, and The New Space Age blogs to the “AWOL” list, in the interest of weeking my garden, since I’ve seen no posting there for quite a while. They can inform me if they start posting regularly again.

By the way, if there are other space bloggers out there of whom I’m not aware, let me know, either in a trackback/comment here or via email.

[Update a couple hours later]

Here, via Instapundit, is another space blog previously unknown to me–Space Law Probe

Jeff Foust has a good rundown today on the state of the commercial launch market and industry. It’s a subject of limited interest, though, to those of us who want to go ourselves. On the other hand, Sam Dinkin has an interview with Dave Urie that offers much more promise in that direction.

My take on the incoming NASA administrator is up at TechCentralStation.

I wish I could get a sweet gig like this. I could have given NASA much better advice than this study, for a lot less than three hundred thousand:

The study by George Washington University researchers urged the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to cut down on shuttle flights by limiting construction on the space station and to reinvest extra funds in developing a new manned vehicle. NASA could use shuttles as remote-controlled cargo ships to finish the station, the report said.

No matter how many times people make that recommendation, it remains fundamentally wrong, and displays an ignorance of economics, and the purpose of the Shuttle. There’s no point in flying it at all if you’re going to fly it without crew, and no way to justify the expense of maintaining the infrastructure for it. The astronauts, who are paid and willing to risk their lives, are the least valuable element of the system, and NASA has an oversupply of them. NASA only has three orbiters left, and if it loses one more, it will almost be out of the Shuttle business anyway, regardless of whether or not more astronauts are lost.

But I can’t get my head around this bizarre notion that some seem to have that sending people into space is supposed to be risk free. What is it about that environment, unlike the sea, coal mines, construction, or any other activity in which people die all the time, that make some people check their brains at the door?

NASA at least had an appropriately diplomatic response:

Erica Hupp, a spokeswoman for NASA, said the organization “appreciates all the work that George Washington University put into its study. We are working toward the same goal to make human space flight more reliable and less hazardous.”

Translation: thanks for the clueless advice, but no thanks. What a waste of money.

[Update on Saturday morning]

Keith Cowing isn’t very impressed, either.