NASA Turns 50 — Now What?
The first week of October is always one fraught with space history, but this one is particularly significant, both by the nature of the anniversaries and the fact that so much space future is playing out as well.
Wednesday, October 1, will mark the end of the first half-century of NASA. That it falls on the first of the month is no coincidence — the legislation authorizing the new agency in 1958 was signed on July 29, but the funding to actually create it wasn’t available until the beginning of the next government fiscal year, which always starts at the beginning of October.
NASA was formed as a response to an event that had occurred a little less than a year before when, on October 4, 1957, the nation and world were shocked by the Soviet announcement of the first satellite launched into space, Sputnik 1. While the Eisenhower administration wasn’t surprised at the event, they were surprised at the public reaction to it and had to hastily and visibly accelerate the nation’s own space efforts, which had been occurring for a few years with little fanfare. The fifty-first anniversary of that event occurs this Saturday.
There had been a civilian program called Vanguard and an Army program in Huntsville directed by former German and Nazi rocket engineer Dr. Wernher von Braun, who had escaped the advancing Soviet troops in Germany with much of his team, to surrender to the Americans in 1945 — causing some to accuse the American space program of having been “born in sin.” The administration had wanted the first launch to be civilian to demonstrate that our space intentions were peaceful. The Vanguard program was intended to launch satellites as part of the upcoming International Geophysical Year (IGY) declared for 1957-1958. The desire to avoid having the Army launch the first satellite was so strong as to require that sand ballast be put in the payload of an Army test launch to insure that it didn’t reach orbit. But after Sputnik in October, when Vanguard TV-3 failed spectacularly and humiliatingly on the pad in December, in front of the entire world, von Braun’s team was given the go-ahead to launch the first satellite. It was successfully placed in orbit on a Jupiter C rocket, a descendant of von Braun’s World War II V-2 missile, in January 1958. Called Explorer 1, it helped discover the Van Allen radiation belts that protect our planet — including objects in low-earth orbit, such as the International Space Station — from harmful solar radiation and demonstrated that we, too, could cast objects into the cosmos. It also gave us some unexpected lessons in the dynamics of satellites.
But this was just a stopgap and the administration was still resolved to have a civil space agency lead the way into the new frontier. So the following summer, legislation was passed to authorize a new agency to be made up of the old National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), with existing centers in Cleveland, Ohio; Mountain View, California; and Hampton, Virginia; and new ones to create an aeronautics and space agency to meet the new technological challenges of the latter half of the twentieth century.
The state of our space program highlights how little anyone is seriously concerned with the ultimate survival of humanity, as we’re all content to remain here in this one basket together. Concerns about CO2 emissions, massive nuclear exchanges, and so on breed mass cries for retreats back into a primitive societies, but anxiety about the unknown, the ‘black swan’ cataclysm appears absent in the public, or at least, the logical conclusion that mankind must span out to survive seems to go unshared.
No, that’s not it. People in the abstract get it, but increasingly no developed society seems capable of following long-term goals with any discipline. We live to satisfy immediate wants, for tomorrow we may die. Our attitudes aren’t helping. Perhaps radical life-extension will help, but there’s very little giving modern man a sense of permanence about anything mankind is creating. Appreciating the depth of civilization across time is essential for caring about establishing a permanent foothold elsewhere in the universe. Its so obvious as to be axiomatic that you can’t motivate people if they don’t care.
I wouldn’t consider SpaceX a NASA competitor since NASA gives them huge gratuities and is pretty much telling them to get their rockets going so we don’t have to rely on the Russkins. The American space program is moving towards privatization and I think that’s a good thing. SpaceX’s president has said his company will be able to launch payloads for a fraction of the cost of current delivery systems. The lowered cost of space delivery will make all manner of projects feasible that otherwise would be cost-prohibitive.
SpaceX is working on unmanned and manned versions of their Dragon capsule. The first two unmanned test flights are planned for next year. It’s intended to carry supplies to the ISS just like the Russian Progress and ESA ATV. It’s quite possible they may have the manned version flying years before NASA’s Ares I/Orion combo and for a fraction of the cost. If that happens, perhaps Congress should ask NASA some pointed questions about how they managed the Ares I/Orion programs, such as why did it take so long and cost so much.
‘Now what?’, you ask?
More bureaucracy and politics, of course. NASA’s heyday has long past.
NASA’s greatest failure isn’t technical. The relatively modest Chinese achievement a week ago lit up the Chinese. All the Chinese. Young and old, rural and urban. NASA’s successes are far more impressive but no one in America cares. Why?
Space exploration is the greatest endeavor in human history. But Americans aren’t excited. Suburban kids taking a break from computer games build potato guns but rockets don’t interest them. Astronauts aren’t heroes. Most American kids can’t name an American astronaut. Or name the planets for that matter. Interest in space is non-existant. Why?
Channel surfing recently, I caught Sally Ride giving a lecture on the short history of space exploration. One camera, poor lighting, dull set, tired audiovisuals. NASA can’t afford better production values? NASA’s PR failures here on earth are inversely proportionate to its successes in space. This dull, bloated bureaucracy has crushed all interest by ordinary Americans in its endeavors.
(Needless to say, Sally Ride is nobody’s idea of a feminist icon. Merely the first American woman in space. Physicist (yawn). Doesn’t hold a candle to true feminists like Gloria Steinem or Sandra Bernhardt.)
“Sclerotic bureaucracy” hardly defines the stultifying atmosphere described to me by someone prominent in the Mars Program recently. NASA is a grave where American imagination and creativity are buried. The faster American space exploration is privatized the better.
Not my area of expertise, but still it seems to me that NASA started losing momentum when it took on the space shuttle program. Designing, building, and deploying the shuttles was a brilliant technical achievement – something spectacular that the public could follow, identify with, and cheer on as it progressed. Once the program got to the “routine” phase, however, it became the private domain of scientists and engineers. The public, for the most part, neither knows nor cares about the experiments the shuttle crews perform nor the bits and pieces they haul up to the ISS.
NASA tries to educate us about all its good works with press releases and a pretty comprehensive website. Nevertheless, compared to NASA’s Mercury through Skylab days, it really feels like someone else’s space program being run for someone else’s benefit by someone else’s agency. The test pilots and astronauts are gone and the guys with the sounding rockets and weather balloons are running the show. Useful, but not very interesting.
Contrast this with the Mars missions. Little robots actually exploring the surface of an alien world. The details of the search may be arcane, but the basics idea is compelling: we’re searching for life on another planet. That’s something most people can understand and get behind.
I’d say that if NASA doesn’t succeed in sending a manned mission to Mars within the next twenty years, it will be broken up and the bits transferred to various Federal agencies, with actual space flight contracted out to private companies.
ALL space agencies can’t survive to the New.Space age since the commercial space companies will be able to build and launch rockets and vehicles at a fraction of the “galactic£ R&D, hardware, assembly and launch costs of ALL governments’ space agencies (so, NASA, ESA, etc. should have 10-15 years of life max)
Do what they should have done in 1970 – shut it down. A solution in search of a problem is a pernicious thing.
Why was NASA exciting back in the 1960′s, because people thought that it was leading to the opening up of space for everyone. The implied message was that if you were young enough or good enough that you could become an astronaut in the future and there would be LOT more astronauts.
Now NASA is a bureaucracy whose purpose is to spread money (pork projects) to the districts of powerful senators and congressmen. Almost all of the money goes to facilities, ground jobs and research which while interesting will not lead to the opening of space.
That is why Virgin Galactic is exciting now. It opens up the possibility of space travel to ten thousands times more people.
The robot missions are nice. Everyone gets new pictures and some new science.
An exciting future is a lot more and soon all of us can go visit [for longer and longer trips] space and then everyone can choose to live and work there and go farther.
TK, i think you’re getting carried away. I could make the same argument that no-one is sufficiently concerned with the ultimate end of our universe because we arent pouring resources into interdimensional travel.
We’d be better served digging more bomb shelters. The idea that we are anywhere close to a surviveable alternative to Earth is laughable, and it has nothing to do with our current NASA budget. Now start building a space elevator, followed by an orbital factory facility, and then we can talk about interplantary travel etc. But rushing some half baked mars mission to set up some sort of hippy commune that simply cant be self-sufficient is pointless. We should move one step at a time.
Why isn’t space, and NASA, as exiting now as it was in the 1960s?
Well, consider the development of aviation. It was about 32 years from Wright Bros. to commercial use of the DC-3, and another 26 from DC-3 to 707.
In 1969, one could say it was just 12 years from Sputnik to moonwalk. But since then, progress has stalled.
In 1968, one could still imagine “2001: A Space Odyssey” as a possible reality. But, it didn’t happen.
Manned space flight remains fantastically expsnsive, and seriously expensive. The Space Shuttle was touted as “the DC-3 of Space,” but DC-3 flights don’t cost $800million apiece, and DC-3′s don’t have a one percent chance of killing everyone on board on each flight.
And so, the enthusiasm’s gone. Commercial and explorative space has moved to robots because electronics (unlike space propulsion systems) has improved enormously since the 1960s.
Suppose that 1953 aviation had consisted of improved versions of the Wright Flyer– better fabric, more reliable engines, but essentially the same thing. How much enthusiasm would there have been about that?
I’d say that if NASA doesn’t succeed in sending a manned mission to Mars within the next twenty years, it will be broken up…
Unlikely. The hard science of unmanned space exploration and various EMF spectra telescopes is too important to end. It is “manned exploration” in search of a mission they can do better and for less cost than remote-operated or robotic craft that is the problem.
Just launching an ESA “supply barge” to the ISS cost 7.5 billion. That was a billion a ton. A manned mission to Mars would cost a trillion, and result in little more than a few days of footage of a few people prancing around, collecting a few samples and returning home.
The idea of colonizing space is not feasible now. Lack of cheap heavy lift capacity, lack of a good energy source, lack of elements and compounds essential for life in all areas explored (inc. Mars – no nitrogen to grow naything).
Plus substantial, at times lethal, radiation levels outside Earth’s magnetosphere.
Vast swathes of uninhabitable desert, arctic tundra, acquatic environs, even Antarctica would be easier to establish a self-sustaning colony on than any other celestial body or L-5 satellite.
If man does embark into space and survive outside the Earth’s shield and independent of its resources – it may only be when man reaches Kurzweill’s Singularity – and embarks not as a biological organism – but as resilient, very long-lived machines carrying human intelligence.
In the meantime, the real discoveries will be by robots, space and land telescopes, and the efforts of mathematicians and particle physicists.
I don’t know Mr. Simbergs perspective but since his credentials allude to some connection to the space industry I hoped he would provide some cost analysis .
The taxpaying public has provided some heavy and deep piles of money for the first 50 and without any apprehension I would say the next 50 would be that number squared.
It is probably time to entertain thoughts of defunding . Some great jobs,salaries and retirements are riding on the continuation of the money flow and from a purely practical stand point , we never hear of cost to benefit or containment. Space exploration is not a good place to cut corners, but can our economy perpetually expand funding without ever seeing an actual benefit ?
I know many technologies owe their existence to this dynamic but that does not justify funding it forever.
We have found joint or partnered efforts are fruitless and the costs are growing faster than the anticipated results .
We should have a full time station on the moon by now rather that squandering billions in the Antarctic. Choosing is difficult , but we cannot afford everything.
I’d say that if NASA doesn’t succeed in sending a manned mission to Mars within the next twenty years, it will be broken up…
You could only believe that if you believe the purpose of NASA is to build space stuff. It’s not. The purpose of NASA is to provide jobs, as Brian Wang noted above. The imminent failure of the Ares/Orion to come in at a reasonable price/performance point is due more to political constraints than any engineering challenge: It has to keep employed the people who are currently working on the shuttle. Since those people are the major cost component of the shuttle it’s difficult to see how the new system will be any cheaper, though I grant it may have a bit better performance.
Allowing the shuttle program to amass a permanent political constituency was the death of the American manned space program. It’s been dead for decades, but the body will be animated as long as the money flows.
If we were actually serious about getting cheap access to space, and we weren’t willing to let political considerations drive the process, Pournelle’s The SSX Concept would be mandatory reading for everyone involved in the process.
I guess NASA has become a comfortable old Government agency run by comfortable old bureaucrats. People like that are cautious. They tell you what can’t be done, what shouldn’t be done, why none of it’s worth the trouble. None of them are willing to say “Let’s try anyway.”
I guess the only pioneers left are a handful of entrepreneurs like Paul Allen and Burt Rutan. Let’s hope their projects lead to something more interesting than NASA’s vision for space exploration.
The primary purpose of a Mars mission would be to keep the public excited about space science (and thus willing to fund it) for the 15 to 20 years it would take to get there. During that time huge advances would be made in the private sector, and hopefully significant strides towards a space elevator. Because without a space elevator (assuming no unexpected breakthroughs in propulsion like a Higgs Field inertialess drive) spaceflight will remain too expensive for any real progress off the Earth. Chemical rockets simply don’t have the energy density to cut it.
I might add a Mars mission would not be as useless as cedarford sneeringly comments. (One suspects cedarford makes his living off unmanned probes. Such people tend to be strongly against manned spaceflight as it “picks their pockets.”)
Mankind isn’t ready to walk yet. We took a couple baby steps (to the moon), then sat down again. We’re trying to learn to stand (orbital facilities), but we’re a long way from walking or running. We’re a very immature race.
Until we develop a new energy system, and a new propulsion system and such, even the dummies know that we’ve really hit a wall. The potential now is very limited. The perception is that there’s no there, there. No vision; no hope; no dream.
The real problem for advancement, in my mind, is we need a new organizational mode. Right now, second-rate guys become the bosses of first-rate guys. These are overseen by political cronies, the problem with all government agencies. All these guys are simply less smart and less qualified than the first-rate guys. It stifles achievement and vision. Real smart guys HATE working for stupid bureaucrats and brown-nosers. Maybe that’s just me, though.
Rand,
Sorry I’m responding to this blog so late. Work, family, the usual. My ideas in this area are already well-known to you. But for the record, my solid belief is that we need a return to NACA, or at least a fundamental restructuring of NASA to work more in the NACA role. It would be OK with me for the restructured NASA to disseminate funding to the private sector to stimulate governmental priorities (ala COTS), but the work needs to be done in the private sector. Ultimately, I’d like to see the US government get out of the way, since it seems no longer capable of leading.
Dave