NASA Turns 50 — Now What?
These days, they say that fifty is the new forty, and people can certainly be at the peak of their creativity and achievement at that age. Sadly, though, government bureaucracies often grow sclerotic at the half-century mark — and even before. The agency achieved great things in its youth — a lot easier to do when you have a fresh new organization, a sense of national urgency, and almost unlimited budgets — landing men on the moon, sending out the first robots to explore that body and the planets, and building the first space station, albeit a short-lived one. And it still does some things well, continuing to open up the wonders of the solar system and universe. But the human spaceflight program has grown moribund, mired in politics and pork, to the point that we will be dependent on the Russians for years to access our own space station. The planned new Ares 1 and Orion programs continue to have technical, budget, and schedule difficulties, not really papered over by what some NASA insiders view as a “Potemkin” preliminary design review recently. These problems, particularly the budgetary ones, will only grow more dire with the ongoing national and global financial crisis. There may not be a lot of money for NASA.
And NASA now has competition, as events of the last few days indicate. This past Sunday, two notable events occurred. The Chinese landed a crew from their very first EVA mission on Saturday, demonstrating that, while they are four decades behind us, doing what NASA first did in the mid 1960s, they are making slow and steady progress. And that evening, way out in the south Pacific, Space Exploration Corporation (SpaceX) had their first successful launch of their Falcon 1 vehicle from Kwajalein Atoll, after three previous consecutive failures. The latter is significant in that it proves out much of the basic technology for the much larger Falcon 9, which is planned to launch next year and may, along with the planned Dragon capsule, be one of the keys to supporting the ISS without the Russians early in the next decade. Beyond that, on Monday, the European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) entered the atmosphere after proving out many capabilities that would result in its ability to support ISS as well.
Non-NASA progress continues on other fronts as well. In addition to Saturday’s Sputnik anniversary, it will be the fourth anniversary of the winning of the X-Prize by Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne — again, not a coincidence, as Burt likes to do things on anniversaries. While many had hoped that progress would be more rapid, the commercial space tourism version, SpaceShipTwo, has had some setbacks but is still expected to start test flights in the next two years. And in an interesting indicator of the potential market for private space travel — and in defiance of many who call it a “fad” — Space Adventures announced on Tuesday that Dr. Charles Simonyi, who flew to the ISS last year, was so delighted with the experience that he is going to pay millions to do it again next year.
So, on this half-century mark of U.S. civil space exploration, even if NASA’s future doesn’t seem to necessarily be as bright as its past — particularly its early years — the future of American space activities seems very promising, offering hope that we may finally see the kinds of progress that we’ve been promised for all these past decades.
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