Are We Done With Discovery?
I was born a few months before this nation decided to enjoin the Soviet Union in a technological contest of wills with a civilian agency that would put all of it’s endeavors on public display. My father, fresh out of engineering school, with a profound interest in space and astronomy would go to work for one of NASA’s contractors, and ultimately many years later for NASA directly. The dinner table was always abuzz with the milestones of the man and unmanned space program.
At eleven years of age, with my siblings, we were allowed to stay up after midnight to witness live the grainy, black & white, rotated images of Neil letting the world know what technological and logistical moxie the United States could unleash. Lord, how exciting space was in the 60’s and 70’s both in the real world, and in the public’s imagination on the big and little screens. Think 2001 a Space Odyssey, Countdown, Silent Running. Given the numerous veiled Star Trek references here on Ricochet, I believe many are fluent space-geek cognoscenti. We were pumped with the possibilities and discoveries that were within our national grasp. Dad’s four boys all became engineers; all eventually worked within the aerospace community. Space would become the family business.
Today we saw the last flight of the shuttle Discovery, and we will be parking the other two shortly. All destined for museums with the hope of doing what? Inspiring? In an increasingly complacent yet high tech reliant society, how do we get the young to belly up to the grueling curriculum that is needed for producing the next generation of engineers? After years of hearing liberals professing that “if we could put a man on the moon, why can we ….(fill in your favorite lefty trope)”. Their man has been elected. President Obama believes that government can do everything, yet chose to stop the government development of an updated launch system, and decided to let the private sector fill our national launch requirements.
Availability of commercial launch services seems to be many years off, tenuously funded, and if the space station ages out before those services are available will investors support the private development and continue without a baseline government customer? Do we still dream to go where no one has gone before, or do Conservatives feel it is time to pull the plug on the 0.5% of the federal budget that we spend on NASA?
- Comment (30)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (5)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments :
May '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
I think it is time to lead with our strength. Real advancement comes from the private sector. The government did not build Ford. They did not perfect electric power. They did not create the light bulb. Heck, they did not take all the spin off Space Age tech to market. Going back into space will be the work of non-government as it should be.
Jul '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
Another pork-stuffed luxury we can't afford.
Jul '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
Well, that "0.5%" now goes to Muslim outreach.
Pull the plug.
May '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
Exploration is a role of government. Exploration requires acknowledgment of the greatness of the objective and of those who achieve it. Barak Obama does not believe in American greatness, and would rather have U.S. engineers dabble in 19th century modes of transportation.
When I was a little boy I had a sticker on a pane of my bedroom window. I can remember at the time not know exactly what it was emblematic of, other than interesting because it was a ship with full sail flying in space. It seemed magical. I know today that it was the mission patch for Apollo 12.
One day in elementary school a NASA employee demonstrated the heat absorbing qualities of a white brick, an example of the tiles to be used in the mosaic of the thermal protection system on the STS orbiter. While red hot from the flame of a propane torch, he could hold it in his hand without being burned.
I'm wanting President Obama to step up and say "No, the shuttle fleet will not be retired. Instead of trains, we'll build three more shuttles." It would be magical.
May '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
Pull the plug. The military must maintain a space program. There's no need for a separate civilian program funded by taxpayers.
Space exploration can survive without government money. There are plenty of people willing to privately donate to such causes. Museums and libraries began as private charities. Space exploration can similarly survive on a combination of private charity and sales (museum-style visitations, Hubble photography, etc).
Earth exploration is often conducted using for-profit models. Space exploration can be, too.
Mar '11
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
Cal
The shuttle was the best the US could do for 1970's technology, and some components have been really nicely refined since then (one main engine can pass ~65,000 gallons of hydrogen & oxygen each min, and are reusable!) They are sunk development costs that would be in our interest to recover either commercially or as Kenneth implies Government pork (ie paying a contractor to build a system to your requirements). At a billion per launch no one within the space fraternity would argue we need to reduce the manned access cost to space. My question was how do you get young folks inspired to get into engineering? Math and science is not easy, and the excitement of the possibilities in that era were infectious. In raw numbers, India & China have been graduating more engineers, however there is some discussion on how effective they are to their economies. Money is not the hook for this profession.
Additionally where does our nation get developmental research done? Bell and RCA labs are closed; Many corporations no long maintain basic research to commercialization development facilities. How long do we ride on our national laurels?
May '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
GLDIII: Cal
The shuttle was the best the US could do for 1970's technology, and some components.... [etc]
Oh, I'm VERY well aware of the technology and what it really is. STS is still classified as experimental, never exactly ready for school teachers and civilians. In terms of a safety record, 1 flight in 50 results in a lost crew. The system originally represents an agency with a program in search of a mission...the NASA pitch to Congress was to deliver spy satellites for CIA, and maybe one day there could be a kind of "station", in space, perhaps LEO, to dock with.
Triple-redundant hydraulic systems to operate aero flight control surfaces, plus redundant cooling systems, means some engineers should be awarded wizard hats for the plumbing solutions alone. See? I do know the level of impossible craziness STS represents. That work relied on everything Saturn V engineers had learned during Apollo. Should there be something new? Absolutely!
I'll become overt with my subtext: we are leaderless, therefore discovery can't occur.
Edited on Mar 10, 2011 at 11:37amOct '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
In a time where the options appear to be austerity or economic collapse, the Shuttle can be summed up in a single sentence:
It costs too much for what it does.
Unarguably, it has unique capabilities (the RMS [robot arm], crew capacity, and downmass from orbit), but then, depending on how you work the numbers and allocate the costs, it costs between half a billion and a billion dollars per launch, most of which goes into the salaries of the massive standing army which refurbishes it and prepares it for the next flight.
Had the Shuttle NASA wanted to build, rather than the one that Nixon's budget constrained them to settle for, been built, and served as the first generation of an evolutionary sequence of vehicles like the early days of aviation, things might have been different, but that didn't happen and here we are now.
The single factor which most determines what you can accomplish in space is cost to low Earth orbit—“halfway to anywhere”, and the Shuttle, or anything derived from it, simply costs too much to open the High Frontier.
Here is a rant about the standing army mentality from 2009.
Feb '11
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
There's a science fiction story dating probably from about 1950, in which the protagonist somehow is transported forward in time...perhaps to the then-distant year 2000. He finds that society has developed technologies which would allow it to easily and cheaply explored space...ordinary aircraft now having that capability...but no one has bothered trying because no one is interested in such things. The whole society has become so narcissistic that all they are interested in studying is their own psychologies...
Oct '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
My dad works in aerospace, and he's never been impressed with the Space Shuttle. It's 30-year-old, bloated, make-work technology. It costs something like two billion dollars to launch the damn things, and employs tens of thousands of people. In essence, it's corporate welfare for aerospace.
The Russians copied the shuttles, once. They weren't too happy with the result; it's a terrible design. We should have stopped flying them two decades ago.
Feb '11
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
Corporate welfare for aerospace is an apt description.
I suspect the billions of dollars a year the government urinates away on this particular agency could have been vastly better spent on research and development for technologies that could have provided much better and cheaper access to space.
But of course if we had killed the shuttle back when we should have the various contractors would have shrieked and congress just hates that.
So instead we've got another in the endless recent examples of the failure of American governance and leadership.
And as long as we're talking about space- what the heck is the international space station good for anyway?
Oct '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
Why, it's a place for the Shuttle to go! And the Shuttle is the way to go there!
(If you read the original justifications for the earlier incarnations of the space station, all the way back to when they dared call it “Freedom”, they're about as circular.)
Bottom line: it's a jobs program, fiercely defended by legislators from Florida, Texas, Utah, Alabama, Mississippi, and other states with NASA centres and/or contractors.
Oct '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
Pick anything that this government has it's fingerprints on, and argue effectively that whenever or for whatever it started, it isn't now corrupted beyond any meaningful public good. It isn't relevant why NASA started, any more than it any longer matters why public schools were instituted. They are now ponderous monsters that fulfill a mere fraction of their intended purpose at many, many times the planned cost.
Our constitutional mandate has been twisted entirely beyond recognition. We are moving closer and closer to that point that the Marxists have lived for. The point of total collapse from which will arise the socialist Utopia. Perhaps the image of the parachutist whose equipment has failed, hurtling towards the ground at 120 miles per hour is the closest parallel. Will our reserve chute, the spirit of American Exceptionalism, open in time? Will the battle just beginning be won? I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that urinating away further billions on NASA or public (government) education, and their unions, will only add weight to our body when, if, it hits the ground.
Feb '11
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
John Walker
Why, it's a place for the Shuttle to go! And the Shuttle is the way to go there!
Sadly, I know you've hit the nail right on the head.
I was hoping someone would come back with something like "even though everyone thinks the space station is nothing but a giant flying boondoggle actually work done there has been vital in solving etc etc..."
Alas, I suspect I will continue to be disappointed in that wish.
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
I'm sympathetic to your love of space, GLD, but Silent Running? No. Tiresome eco-tripe with Bruce Dern wandering around as a pop-eyed holy hippie, tending the last trees in the universe while Joan Baez warbled on the soundtrack - urg. The model work was nice, but even as a kid I felt robbed after seeing it. Like so much sci-fi of the 70s, it was depressing. Even when we looked up, it was a downer.
Cute robots, though.
Oct '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
Absolutely! Jerry Pournelle calls this The Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
James Lileks: I'm sympathetic to your love of space, GLD, but Silent Running? No. Tiresome eco-tripe with Bruce Dern wandering around as a pop-eyed holy hippie, tending the last trees in the universe while Joan Baez warbled on the soundtrack - urg. The model work was nice, but even as a kid I felt robbed after seeing it. Like so much sci-fi of the 70s, it was depressing. Even when we looked up, it was a downer.
Cute robots, though. · Mar 10 at 3:54pm
I couldn't agree more. The models were cool, but when I re-watched it a few years ago, I was appalled at what an awful preachy film it was.
On the policy front, I love space but I would turn NASA into an agency that mabye administers some challenge competitions of the X prize variety to encourage private companies to engage in space exploration/colonization efforts. Robert Zubrin in The Case for Mars argues for something similar if I remember correctly.
May '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
Adam Freedman
...challenge competitions of the X prize variety to encourage private companies to engage in space exploration/colonization efforts...
Why not do it the old fashioned way? First company to land a man in Moon Crator 36 gets the mineral rights! You want to capitalize on them? Build your own base!
Mar '11
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
Well my peeps are certainly a tough crowd. A little surprised to get on the front page especially with all negative vibes, perhaps more than I expected for an inaugural post.
Given the fairly uniform reaction it confirms what a wag once told me; support for the man (person?) space program is like the Everglades, miles wide, but inches deep. Clearly there is a drought.
Despite the Peter R. posts today on Optimism and the National future, this post's feedback from those not swimming the space scene bathwaters would suggest that recommending a career in the space arena is a "no go".
Oh and James & Adam, your guys are right about the Silent Running digs, but when you are ~13 it was visually cool (remember the cinema of the era), but when I saw it again 15 years later I recognized that it was just envirotrope in a new locale. But still the impressions this stuff has on kids...
Dec '10
Re: Are We Done With Discovery?
It's not that we don't think manned space exploration is worth doing, it's that we don't think the government should be the ones doing it.
If the .gov were to not put any onerous regulations on the exploration of space, and not encumber them with outrageous oversight (like demanding veto power over any or every decision, mission phase, etc), the private sector would do what NASA has been doing, for a fraction of the cost.
But they have to be allowed to take the risks.
That, IMO is why NASA has become so bloated. Somewhere along the line, someone sold the .gov/public a line of BS about how aerospace research and space flight were not ultra-dangerous endeavors (IE safe). So everything had to be planned and engineered in such a manner that it could never fail under any circumstances whatever.
Of course, engineers know this is totally impossible (in the "can't divide by zero" school of impossible, not the "it's just really really hard/rare" school most people think of).
When you try to do the truly impossible, you just end up spending a gigantic sum of money to fail (which is pretty much what NASA has been doing for the last several years).
Edited on Mar 10, 2011 at 8:09pm