Re: The decline/whither of NASA?

Straydog wrote:

<snip>

With Bush, Sr., there was Panama 


A drop in the bucket.

and Kuwait,


We were outta there in months or less. A handful of Americans killed, few Iraqi soldiers, comparatively little damage, low budget compared to Iraq today. 

My examples of Panama and Kuwait were just used as examples to show that
there was conflict during both Bush administrations.  After all, who was
it that committed American forces to Somalia?

As for the damage, that's debatable. Saddam released oil into the Gulf and, then, set the wells on fire. The overall environmental damage may not be fully determined.


 as well as the collapse of the

Soviet Union


Yeah, it hurt the careers of all the sovietologists in the USA; they got laid off. 

Not just them.  How about the military contractors who had to cut staff
because there was no longer any work for them?


 and its European allies, leaving the American economy in the

lurch.


There was hardly a drop in the US defense budget. Some money was re-budgeted but we're spending more on military than ever before. 

But far less is being spend on an offensive capability than before
November 9, 1989.

<snip>

You can't criticise this.


Yes I can. The X-33 was scuttled because there were problems with the fuel tanks, it came to an end before they were ever resolved, leaving a lot of unanswered questions. If a project is going to be shut down, at least bring it to a point where the money that was spent could be justified and there's something to show for it.


Nah, nah, nah....you either keep throwing money at a dead horse or you cut your losses. 

Neither the X-33 nor the Crew Return Vehicle were dead horses.

I could name lots of projects, both commercial and
military and govt where some problem came into the picture. 

The same thing happens in industry.

<snip>

They're not gaining market share. What do they do? Get into the music player business. Bet all the iPod follow ons (nano pod, etc) were in the pipeline almost in parallel with the first one.


Bad analogy. Spacecraft aren't music players.


BFD, the process was the same. Apple never did music players in the past. It was an initiative that could have flopped. Lots of companies started technical projects in the past decades, poured lots of money in, and they flopped. Its a fairly big topic in business schools: evaluating a project for success/failure. Identifying strengths/weaknesses, market analysis.

Again, spacecraft aren't music players. You can't apply that sort of economic analysis in this situation.

<snip>

I was referring to the Soyuz. Had the work on the X-33 continued, the space shuttle might have been retired by now.


You really can't make this judgement untill, as I said above, you see all the notes, books, reports...blah, blah ...to determine what the reasons were--even if you think they are stupid, someone else didn't--to go with a particular decision.

On their technical merits, the X-33 and Crew Return Vehicle were good and were scheduled to be operational by now. I can't comment on how those projects were managed and how the money was spent.

<snip>

I read part of the "Columbia" Accident Investigation Board's report shortly after it was released last year and many of the criticisms directed against NASA were justified.


Anyone can, especially in hindsight, make pronouncements of infinite wisdom. I read about some of this stuff in the journal Science back when they were running pure oxygen atmospheres in the space capsule. Yep, they had reasons for doing that and they knew if anything caught fire, the three guys were going to be scrambled eggs in about 5 seconds. Then, it happened. So, they changed the atmosphere back to like-earth (with nitrogen). 

The circumstances surrounding the Apollo 1 fire isn't as simple as that.
There were many factors which contributed to it.  (I could provide
details, if you wish.)  None of them individually might have been
fatal, but their combination on that day resulted in the loss of the crew.

Whose fault was it?  Everyone's, actually, because nobody ever thought
that what happened could occur.

Same deal with the O rings; there were memos on this before
an O ring caused a loss of a shuttle. There were trade-offs all along. More safety, less payload, more money to pay.

Again, a number of factors contributed to the failure of Challenger. The o-ring failure was the one that started the process.


Remember, I've been the one to bring up the Titanic (the unsinkable ship) many times on this NG in the last ten + years. Two stupid things: i) bragging about unsinkable, and ii) stupid captain risking everything for a maiden voyage record trip at top speed through known iceberg fields.

The unsinkability claim was foolish, particularly since it was never tested before the ship was commissioned. As for the captain being dumb, there's more to that story. First of all, iceberg surveying and forecasting was incomplete in those days and radio communications systems not very sophisticated. Secondly, the ship was carrying mail and whichever company delivered it the fastest across the ocean got the contract from the postal service. He was trying to ensure that the White Star Line got it.


Rutan's point was that since all that money was spent on developing the hardware, there was nothing to show for it. Nothing was ever flown, which could have at least provided some data which would be useful for future projects.


Look, someone has to call the shots. This is done everywhere. Guys become heros if the project works, guys become (often, not always) duds if they don't. Somebody misplaced a decimal point and a space shot went into the drink instead of orbit.

You're probably referring to the Mars Climate Orbiter where it is believed that conversion between units of measurement were incorrect. See:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/orbiter/

I don't remember reading what happened
to the guy who made this mistake but it was a lot of money that went poof.

Rutan's point was that all the money was spent developing the hardware and nobody ever found out how it performed. Even if it crashed after takeoff or blew up on the runway, the lesson that what was built was not the way to do it. Neither project got to that point.


Sure, its fun and EASY to throw stones at decisions we see with limited
knowledge and without BEING THERE and having the pressures, politics, etc.
breathing down our necks (if I may stick up for management responsibility
once in my usual diatribe against BMOs).

A better analogy for my point would be when one is drilling for oil or natural gas. The seismic data might indicate a promising formation. The only way to know for sure is to start drilling, set and cement casing in place, and check the core samples. Even then that's no guarantee, which is when one calls in logging crews who'll perforate the casing and run a logging tool downhole.

A lot of promising formations end up yielding dry holes, which is a wasted investment. But at least one knows for sure that the parcel of land isn't worth developing any further.

Few people want to spend a lot of money without having anything to show for it, even if it's a negative result.

<snip>

Well, we've lost two shuttles and that means three left. No replacements on the drawing board or on budget, and I don't recall seeing it decided what to do next.


None have been proposed. Work on viable alternatives was shut down several years ago.


Yeah, well, that's another "stock market" bubble headed for a crash (train wreck). 

Huh?

<snip>

The dissent wasn't just come from people whose own research would have been curtailed because all of the funding went to the supercollider. There was a lot of concern expressed about such an expensive facility, particularly when there was the possibility that it might not accomplish its proposed objectives.


Well, that is a negative attitude. You could say the same thing about all the little projects that PIs were writing proposals for, too. They might not accomplish their proposed objectives, either. Not all of my experiments in the lab were successful, either. But I knew I had to keep the publications coming out. My BMOs certaily didn't care about any bad luck or misunderstandings in hypothesis creation.

But, by spending the supercollider money on many smaller projects, the chances of obtaining good data for the respective investigations are higher.

You may remember that the Mars Observer mission which vanished just before it went into orbit. Its loss prompted the "smaller, faster, cheaper" doctrine at NASA (though the long-term merits of that approach are still being debated). It was one of the last all-in-one missions that saw a large number of experiments and instruments flown on a single bus. SMC would have divided that hardware among many more smaller spacecraft. If one failed, at least the others still had a chance of meeting their objectives. Fly them all on a single mission, and it goes haywire, none of those objectives are ever met.


<snip>

It was originally proposed as a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses project as the Soviets had their Salyuts. When the Cold War ended, there was no real reason for the station to exist, but it had become horribly expensive and behind schedule. The only way to salvage it was to collaborate with other countries.



Well, there's nothing basically wrong with that. Good for international good will and international cooperation. That might be worth more than the science.


There are better and cheaper ways of doing that in the context of research.


Again, you are exploiting both hindsight and, when you say "context of research," a prejudicial point of view. If the decisions were for doing things in the context of political payoff or public relations, I'd have to grant that such decisions might cast "context of research" to a priority I'd be unhappy with. 

Remember the International Geophysical Year?


The international collaboration on the ISS was simply a way of getting other countries to pay for that cosmic boondoggle.


Well, the question would be: to what degree there would be a share in planning and benefits. As I recall, some citizens of other countries rode on some of the missions. So, they all got something back.

Had the U. S. continued with Space Station Freedom (its original name) on its own, it would had to scrap it as it was becoming prohibitively expensive. So, to save both the project and face, it was decided to make it into an international project.

<snip>

Several years ago, a "kaon factory" was proposed for a location in western Canada. Unfortunately, its cost requirements would have resulted in government funding being taken away from other areas of research. Those who were affected by such financing complained, and the project was ultimately killed.


Yeah, and there were engineering consultants who said that the levees around New Orleans were weak and not up to snuff for a major storm and those reports were stuck on a shelf to accumulate dust many years ago.

You're missing the point. Why spend $100 on a single project which might not deliver as promised when it could be distributed among many smaller ones, which might?



that was supposed to be done up there could just as easily have been done on the ground.



Well, I'm not going to say that all that flys in space or on the ISS is worth what is being spent on it, but if you want to complain about waste then how about complaining about the US military budget which is about 100-200% bigger than it needs to be. I can think of a few more items--both public and private--that are wastes, too.


That still doesn't justify the cost of an orbiting laboratory that has yet to justify its existence.


Why can't I get you to recognize the existence of all the other wasteful projects? 

That wasn't what the original topic was.


 If, say, a cure for cancer was discovered because of

what was done out there, then it would be worth the expense.


There you are, another boondoggle. Tons of money have been spent on cancer and we're hardly any better off. Tons of money on heart disease and they say we are better off. Want to figure that one out for me?

Remember, I said *if*. To the best of my knowledge, little direct work in cancer research has ever been done in orbit.

As for the large expenditures on cancer and cardiac research so far, the average citizen has a direct stake in why that work is being done and in any possible results. That money, therefore, is regarded as a worthwhile expense.

Flying crews in space has been, and will be for the foreseeable future, the privilege of a lucky few.


Materials processing was considered to be one thing that could be done better in orbit than on the ground. Another was the production of ball bearings that were closer to perfect spheres. So far, no private company has shown interest in establishing a manufacturing facility out there as the cost of what might be produced would be prohibitive.


I've heard all the stories, too. I'll still say that there are three pots of gold: i) scientific knowledge for its own sake (but no gold, at least forseeably) and maybe an accidental discovery worth something, 

That'll never change.

and
ii) a playground for rich people (They are already taking trips with the Russians) 

Only three so far, but not everyone with the $$ will qualify.

, and iii) commercial satelite payloads.

That'll never change, either. You could also add satellites for communications, weather observation, and environmental monitoring.



<snip>

The crews right now are spending more time in maintenance and repair than in operating the experiments which are now the justification for the space station.



That's just a little different way of saying they are overbudget and behind schedule.


Due to the Soyuz being the only vehicle available to ferry crews to the station, and limiting the number to two, rather than the three that can be up there now, they clearly have more than enough work just running the ISS.


There is overhead in any operation in any organization. You can't have a scientific staff without a support staff, and here is one where the support staff and the support effort is like 90+% of the overall staff and effort. So what?

The ISS is right now designed for a crew of three, but only two are there permanently. The schedule was intended for three, but only two available to do the work. The crew's priority is to make sure the place stays up there and runs properly. Operating someone's experiment is of secondary concern.

<snip>

The only one that's managed to put a man in space is Scaled Composites, Rutan's company and it did it with SpaceShipOne piloted by Mike Melvill. Brian Binney was the only other one when he made the second X-Prize flight just over a year ago.

Rutan and Richard Branson are collaborating on getting a regular service going.


Its still an unproven project. 

Of course it's unproven.  They haven't built or flown anything yet.

All they need is one failure and they
will take a hit.

But Rutan and Branson are risking their money, but I dare say those risks are calculated.

<snip>

Second, there ain't gonna be "cheap" anything in space and thus Joe Public is going to go into space only by dreaming.


Not right away. Then again, neither was air travel initially. The only way Joe Public will afford to go into space is if the cost was comparable with, say, an airline ticket.


OK, lets look at cost vs technology. The Concorde SST was ALWAYS expensive. It was never high initially. It was high at the start and just as high at the end. Look where that ended up. Terminated. Not economical. And, they had a spectacular crash, too, killing lots of people.

Part of the reason why Concorde was a financial sinkhole was because it was never allowed to fly all the routes it was intended for due to concerns about the sonic booms it produced while flying over land. Therefore, its routes were restricted to those which flew over the sea where that wouldn't be much of an issue.

Another reason it was put up on blocks is that it's an old aircraft. It uses engines designed forty years ago, which were hayburners and produced some rather dirty exhaust. It became too expensive to fly and to maintain.

Don't forget what happened to the Tu-144. It slowly disappeared from public view after its crash at the Paris Air Show. It also had a number of technical problems as well, as the later versions had some canards added to the nose as, I believe, the plane was unstable in flight.

<snip>

China, so far, has tended to go it alone, with the Long March boosters and the Shenzhou missions being a good example. I somehow don't think it can afford to risk that sort of money on such a long shot.



Just remember the words I wrote. Both China and India have space programs and I recall China has sent a guy into space now. I don't follow the details, but they are growing by leaps and bounds and we are not.


Actually, they're not. They're at the same stage at where the Americans and Soviets were forty years ago.


Yeah, and fourty years ago, we were just getting off the ground. It wasn't many years ago that India and China didn't even get off the ground.

But those countries have someone else's experiences to refer to. The U. S. S. R. and the U. S. were learning things as they went along as they were doing something completely new.


 That's not to say that they won't make

progress and do so quickly (there is, after all, the previous experience of two other countries to draw on), but I'm not getting too worried about it right now.


I think its a matter of time and whether an economic crisis or bubble or revolution causes all work to stop over there. 

That's a likely possibility.


So far, all they've had were three taikonauts in space in two years, using a spacecraft based on the Soyuz design. That's hardly "leaps and bounds".


Fine, if you don't think its leaps and bounds, then ask why our stores are full of Made in China stuff. I'm not making too many bets for the next 10-20 years.

What has "Made in China" got to do with the fact that the Chinese have only flown three men in space in two years? The Soviets and the Americans had many more in orbit during the same time in the early 1960s.

<snip>

That's true, but we're talking about sending humans there. If machines have a high failure rate when going there, would it make sense to send crews?


There is evidence that thousands of years ago, people went on risky sailing trips and lots of them didn't come back. Do you think people didn't know the risks before they went? 

But not at taxpayer expense.



  The

Soviets were never successful in landing a spacecraft on Mars which operated for a signficant length of time.



We Americans never landed a probe on Venus for any significant length of time, either.


None has ever been attempted. There were two Mariners, a Pioneer, and Magellan. The first two were fly-by missions and the other two went into orbit, with the Pioneer sending a probe into Venus's atmosphere.

The ESA recently launched the Venus Express probe as well.


OK, what does this have to do with the purpose of your sentence about the soviets never successful with a Mars mission?

You were the one who changed the subject about the U. S. not landing anything on Venus. I was merely saying that they didn't because they never tried. The Soviets launched several probes to Mars and none were successful in either getting there, or, if they did, working properly. By comparison, the Americans were far more successful and we can add the Europeans with their Mars Express (not including the Beagle 2 lander).

<snip>
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