What changes has Obama made to NASA?

[twofish-quant]

Don't forget you're talking about a Communist country. Their dynamics are a bit different than ours and other free countries.

It's more similar than you would expect.

I don't think they care about getting their citizens interested in STEM. They can keep the cost down because they can virtually pay whatever they want for their parts, materials, services, etc. Right?

No they can't. The problem with this is economic calculation. If you have three ways of doing something, the thing that causes you to do something that is most efficient is cost, and if you force non-market prices, then things get very much out of balance. For example, if the cost of gold is $1 and the cost of steel is $500, then you'll design rockets and cans out of gold, and when you actually try to get 100 tons of gold, you'll run into big, big problems.

Both China and Russia are market economies with prices on most goods and services set by the market.

 

[Shackleford]

Clearly insufficient? NASA is clearly inefficient. The technology available today is far more advanced than that available in 1969. There's no good reason why NASA could not have successfully completed a modern-day trip to the Moon. NASA is poorly managed at best.

 

[Shackleford]

..."fiscally conservative" presidents that funnel the majority of the national revenue towards Defense and Homeland Security rather than something actually useful...

Right. Because Defense and National Security aren't actually useful.

 

[Caramon]

I would argue that the overinflated portions of the budget that Defense and National Security get are not useful. The United States does not need to have military bases around the world or still be fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. No one is attacking the United States. 9/11 was a one-time thing.

In the long-term, NASA is the government agency to be funded as once the door is opened to an actual base on another planet, then it will stay open.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Clearly insufficient? NASA is clearly inefficient. The technology available today is far more advanced than that available in 1969. There's no good reason why NASA could not have successfully completed a modern-day trip to the Moon. NASA is poorly managed at best.

The technology is advanced, but perhaps not as much as you may think- certainly, there has been no major advance in the fuel/source of energy needed to lift things into orbit. Propulsion today is essentially the same as the 1960's. While computer technology has somewhat advanced, the need for radiation-hardened components means the computers used are a lot less functional than the Dell computer you can buy for $1000- and never mind the *software* requirements... NASA doesn't do Windoze.

Then there's the whole problem with astronauts- they need to eat and poop fairly regularly. That hasn't changed since 1969, and the technology to deal with that hasn't changed much, either.

It's easy to blame NASA management, but for all their problems they must, in the end, respond to the demands of Congress, who provide sustenance. Getting Congress to support a $100+ B project that does not do anything to keep us safe from the commies/JMFs/cancer/etc.. is a tough sell. Unfortunately, space exploration is not a priority for the voting public, and there isn't a charismatic leader around right now who can change that.

 

[Oriako]

1) Lack of a Goal

There has been essentially no serious interest from those who have the opportunity to implement new programs and develop new launch vehicles and space habitats to seriously consider a Mars program. We have simply been wallowing in Earth Orbit for the past 20 achieving little more than scientific and engineering curiosities that may be potentially useful some time in the future when we actually decide to do something useful. Until then, they seem to be happy with not looking beyond launching satellites and having interviews from the space stations learning about zero gravity health effects. Clearly I am giving a cynical caricature here, but there is an underlying problem that is of a serious nature. If NASA is to actually pull ahead of the rest of the world in space flight and secure the United States as a "great nation" as it once used to be considered, it must pour funding into the space program and lower safety restrictions and either build a moon base, send missions to mars, or likewise. Not in 20 years when the budget and administration will change, but within a 10 year time span that holds everyone accountable to achieving a goal...

...It has been long into the future, and will be far longer into the foreseeable future where no moon base will be built and no interplanetary missions will take place. As I see it, this is a step in the wrong direction towards the extinction of the human race.

-Caramon

What has the ISS actually done that is actually useful towards scientific progress and space exploration!?

 

[Shackleford]

I would argue that the overinflated portions of the budget that Defense and National Security get are not useful. The United States does not need to have military bases around the world or still be fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. No one is attacking the United States. 9/11 was a one-time thing.

In the long-term, NASA is the government agency to be funded as once the door is opened to an actual base on another planet, then it will stay open.

That's not what you said. I'm a conservative and I agree with Ron Paul - close the military bases all across the world and bring the troops home. National security does not equal the Military Industrial Complex.

Going to another planet, let alone establishing a base will require revolutionary advances in propulsion technology.

 

[Shackleford]

The technology is advanced, but perhaps not as much as you may think- certainly, there has been no major advance in the fuel/source of energy needed to lift things into orbit. Propulsion today is essentially the same as the 1960's. While computer technology has somewhat advanced, the need for radiation-hardened components means the computers used are a lot less functional than the Dell computer you can buy for $1000- and never mind the *software* requirements... NASA doesn't do Windoze.

Then there's the whole problem with astronauts- they need to eat and poop fairly regularly. That hasn't changed since 1969, and the technology to deal with that hasn't changed much, either.

It's easy to blame NASA management, but for all their problems they must, in the end, respond to the demands of Congress, who provide sustenance. Getting Congress to support a $100+ B project that does not do anything to keep us safe from the commies/JMFs/cancer/etc.. is a tough sell. Unfortunately, space exploration is not a priority for the voting public, and there isn't a charismatic leader around right now who can change that.

What? Are you sure about that? My main point was not that technology per se has advanced greatly, but that the cost has been reduced, maybe more mundane materials and technology.

The entire U.S. manned lunar program cost roughly $100 billion. There is no good reason why we cannot complete one lunar mission in a relatively short amount of time at a "reasonable" cost. We would not be starting from scratch.

 

[Caramon]

The entire U.S. manned lunar program cost roughly $100 billion. There is no good reason why we cannot complete one lunar mission in a relatively short amount of time at a "reasonable" cost. We would not be starting from scratch.

Apparently, AIG is more important than creating a space-faring civilization as they received a bailout that rivaled the entire cost of the Apollo program and your projected $100 Billion.

IMO, establishing a permanent base on both the moon and Mars >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

Which is probably what it would cost.

 

[Shackleford]

Apparently, AIG is more important than creating a space-faring civilization as they received a bailout that rivaled the entire cost of the Apollo program and your projected $100 Billion.

IMO, establishing a permanent base on both the moon and Mars >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

Which is probably what it would cost.

Why would we establish a permanent base on both the moon and mars?

 

[Fuz]

Why would we establish a permanent base on both the moon and mars?

Why not?

 

[Caramon]

The eventual goal is to colonize the entire solar system and when all of the solar systems energy has been harnessed, or our sun comes closer to expanding into a red supergiant, we move to another star/planetary system.

The entire point of living is to colonize the galaxy and immortalize the human race.

 

[Shackleford]

Why not?

Sorry. You want to undertake at least a trillion-dollar enterprise.

You explain why.

We need R&D to develop those appropriate technologies that would allow something like that to be much more practical.

Also, it's our tax dollars. Building a base on the moon and Mars is entirely immaterial. We have more important things.

 

[Shackleford]

The eventual goal is to colonize the entire solar system and when all of the solar systems energy has been harnessed, or our sun comes closer to expanding into a red supergiant, we move to another star/planetary system.

The entire point of living is to colonize the galaxy and immortalize the human race.

Wow. You're thinking really far ahead. Might want to bring it back to reality.

 

[Fuz]

Sorry. You want to undertake at least a trillion-dollar enterprise.

You explain why.

We need R&D to develop those appropriate technologies that would allow something like that to be much more practical.

Also, it's our tax dollars. Building a base on the moon and Mars is entirely immaterial.

Hey, I was just asking why not. And NASA isn't the only way, you still have programs like SpaceX, which don't rely on our tax dollars.

 

[twofish-quant]

Clearly insufficient? NASA is clearly inefficient. The technology available today is far more advanced than that available in 1969. There's no good reason why NASA could not have successfully completed a modern-day trip to the Moon.

There's no good scientific or technological reason. There are lots of messy political, economic, and social reasons why not. Constellation is not being funded at anywhere near the levels needed to return to the moon.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10051/MainText.4.1.shtml

You can get Constellation to work if you strip out everything else that NASA is doing, but at that point you've got lots of screaming astronomers at you. You can also significantly increase NASA funding, but there's no constituency for that.

 

[twofish-quant]

Hey, I was just asking why not. And NASA isn't the only way, you still have programs like SpaceX, which don't rely on our tax dollars.

SpaceX is going to rely on tax dollars. Hopefully it's going to rely on tax dollars in a way that works. Ultimately SpaceX is looking to be profitable by relying on contracts from NASA to supply the space station.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transportation_Services

It is true that private enterprise is putting up the development costs, which is a good thing because if SpaceX just doesn't work, then no politician is going to have people yelling at them. But without the prospect of massive government contracts at the end of the effort, it's not going to work.

 

[Fuz]

SpaceX is going to rely on tax dollars. Hopefully it's going to rely on tax dollars in a way that works. Ultimately SpaceX is looking to be profitable by relying on contracts from NASA to supply the space station.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transportation_Services

It is true that private enterprise is putting up a lot of the development costs, which is a good thing because if SpaceX just doesn't work, then no politician is going to have people yelling at them. But without the prospect of massive government contracts at the end of the effort, it's not going to work.

I think my hopes are shifting to the fact that Obama won't be president forever. I'm sure somebody will bring everything back within the next decade. I mean, there's no reason NASA couldn't be resurrected to its original state if congress and some future president wanted to, correct?

 

[twofish-quant]

I think my hopes are shifting to the fact that Obama won't be president forever.

Except that some people (me included) think that Obama is doing the right thing, given the current budget constraints. Given that we don't have enough money for a gold plated mission to the moon, Obama's strategy is to kill Constellation and then fund SpaceX and other commercial vendors to get to low Earth orbit. Once we have an infrastructure to get to LEO cheaply, then we'll have the foundations to get to the moon and Mars.

If you could triple NASA's budget, then everything changes. If...

Put some Red Flags on the moon, then things might change.

There are people that strongly degree with this. But then you run into the trouble that it makes sense if you drive on the right side of the road. It makes sense if you drive on the left side of the road, but if you compromise and drive on both sides of the road, you get a big mess.

What's a bit worrisome is that Obama is probably the most pro-space politician that I can think of. The Republicans will likely insist on even further cuts than Obama. It also doesn't help that most scientists are dead set against manned space flight. At every astronomer meeting that I've ever been to, the topic has always been killing the shuttle and the manned space flight program and putting that money into unmanned space probes.

The Hubble fiasco really turned most astronomers against manned space flight. The problem with Hubble was that it was designed to be serviced with regular shuttle flights, and once people were terrified of sending people into space, this left Hubble in a lurch. Had people done things over, they would have made Hubble a throw-away telescope, since for the price of one serviceable Hubble you can build five telescopes that you toss if something goes wrong.

The problem is that manned space flight provides essentially no science of value. Robots are a lot better at doing science in space than people are, for the main reason space is very dangerous, and you don't have a dead body when a robot blows up. The military is not that interested in manned space flight for the same reasons.

I mean, there's no reason NASA couldn't be resurrected to its original state if congress and some future president wanted to, correct?

Unfortunately this is not true. One problem is that once you shut things down, people go off, work at other jobs, and it's really hard to put a team back together and relearn the lessons that you've already learned.

Also I worry that the US will get into a science death spiral. Science and technology produces economic growth, so I worry that we are getting into a spiral of "less tax money for science" -> "less growth" -> "less tax money for science"

 

[D H]

The entire U.S. manned lunar program cost roughly $100 billion. There is no good reason why we cannot complete one lunar mission in a relatively short amount of time at a "reasonable" cost. We would not be starting from scratch.

155 billion in 2010 dollars, and we would be pretty much starting from scratch. Most of that money was spent on procurement and operations. R&D was a small part of the total budget.

Obama's proposed budget for NASA is $18.7 billion for 2012, less than that ($18.0 billion) in 2013 and 2014. About 1/3 of NASA's expenditures go to human space flight, not all of which will go to your back to the future / redo Apollo program. Even if we splash the ISS, kill the JWST, its hard to see more than 6 billion a year going into developing, procuring, and operating a new (old) rocket. We maybe we could redo Apollo in 20 years or so.

 

[Andy Resnick]

What? Are you sure about that? My main point was not that technology per se has advanced greatly, but that the cost has been reduced, maybe more mundane materials and technology.

The entire U.S. manned lunar program cost roughly $100 billion. There is no good reason why we cannot complete one lunar mission in a relatively short amount of time at a "reasonable" cost. We would not be starting from scratch.

I am sure. Computer components follow a mil-spec type of standard, and mission-critical components are held to an even higher standard.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20040014965_2004000657.pdf
http://www.cti-us.com/pdf/HistoryEEESpacePartsinUSA.pdf
http://aero-defense.ihs.com/collections/nasa/nasa-standards-14.htm
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/36804/1/01-1236.pdf
http://misspiggy.gsfc.nasa.gov/tva/meldoc/docs4/docs4.pdf

http://sunland.gsfc.nasa.gov/smex/wire/mission/cdhsw/wirrqtop.htm
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19880004514_1988004514.pdf
http://www.aspera-3.org/idfs/APAF_SRS_V1.0.pdf

The full NASA motto is "Fast, Better, Cheaper: pick two."

 

[Norman]

I am sure. Computer components follow a mil-spec type of standard, and mission-critical components are held to an even higher standard.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20040014965_2004000657.pdf
http://www.cti-us.com/pdf/HistoryEEESpacePartsinUSA.pdf
http://aero-defense.ihs.com/collections/nasa/nasa-standards-14.htm
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/36804/1/01-1236.pdf
http://misspiggy.gsfc.nasa.gov/tva/meldoc/docs4/docs4.pdf

http://sunland.gsfc.nasa.gov/smex/wire/mission/cdhsw/wirrqtop.htm
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19880004514_1988004514.pdf
http://www.aspera-3.org/idfs/APAF_SRS_V1.0.pdf

The full NASA motto is "Fast, Better, Cheaper: pick two."

I can second Andy's statement here. There is a lot of testing that goes into any piece of hardware that flies for NASA. I am not directly involved in testing, but I have done initial radiation exposure estimates for some upcoming missions to help define likely dose rates for electronics.

You cannot simply take your refurbished Dell laptop up on the ISS. It dies very quickly. Never mind something that is going to get flown to Jupiter or Saturn and is mission critical. The assumptions about how advanced our every day electronics are has absolutely no direct correlation on the availability and quality of space quality electronics.

 

[D H]

The full NASA motto is "Fast, Better, Cheaper: pick two."

"Faster, better, cheaper" was one of NASA's dumber ideas. The 2003 Columbia disaster, along with the 1999 losses of the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander, put the nix on that idea (for example, see http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=864).

Perhaps we will now do the right thing with regard to human spaceflight. As Churchill noted, we Americans always do do the right thing -- but only after we have tried everything else. The Obama budget for FY2012 has $850 million going to commercial space. Congress however has other thoughts; congressional budget meddling is an ongoing issue with any technology project. Key congresscritters still want NASA to build a new human-capable rocket by 2016 on a paltry budget and using existing technology (read: high-cost contractors, lots of marching armies). NASA this time around finally had the cajones to tell Congress that what those congresscritters want cannot be done within the proscribed budget. NASA is not fighting the concept of commercial space. Congress is.

 

[Shackleford]

155 billion in 2010 dollars, and we would be pretty much starting from scratch. Most of that money was spent on procurement and operations. R&D was a small part of the total budget.

Obama's proposed budget for NASA is $18.7 billion for 2012, less than that ($18.0 billion) in 2013 and 2014. About 1/3 of NASA's expenditures go to human space flight, not all of which will go to your back to the future / redo Apollo program. Even if we splash the ISS, kill the JWST, its hard to see more than 6 billion a year going into developing, procuring, and operating a new (old) rocket. We maybe we could redo Apollo in 20 years or so.

Are you saying we would need $6 billion/year for 20 years? $1 billion is a lot of money. You can get a lot done with $1 billion. I don't understand why it takes so much money, especially now that we've "been there and done that." We already know the appropriate performance requirements of the systems and materials and so forth. I'm asserting here that NASA is grossly inefficient and that you could probably get away with spending a lot less with the right management of the program(s). Given our modest technological advancements, scientific understanding, and experience, with the right management and leadership, we should be able to make one trip to the Moon at a cost less than the relative 1960s cost.

 

[D H]

Are you saying we would need $6 billion/year for 20 years?

Yes, I am. That comes out to $120 billion, or $35 billion less than the cost of the Apollo program. You apparently are thinking that because we have "been there, done that" that the cost will be a lot less. What makes you think that? Most of the cost of the Apollo program was for procurement and operations, not R&D. To make matters worse, twenty years is a very suboptimal time frame for such an endeavor. Finally, spending $6 billion per year on this would entail spending all of the human spaceflight budget on this (i.e., we would need to scrap the ISS, and that ain't going to happen).

The only way to make such an endeavor cost less than $100 billion would require
1. Doing it in significantly less than 20 years and
2. Drastically reducing the cost of getting into orbit.

Item 1 would require Congress to up the ante on NASA's budget. This will not happen any time soon given the immense downward pressure on non-defence discretionary spending. Item 2 is possible if Congress stops meddling with NASA's budget.

 

[Shackleford]

Yes, I am. That comes out to $120 billion, or $35 billion less than the cost of the Apollo program. You apparently are thinking that because we have "been there, done that" that the cost will be a lot less. What makes you think that? Most of the cost of the Apollo program was for procurement and operations, not R&D. To make matters worse, twenty years is a very suboptimal time frame for such an endeavor. Finally, spending $6 billion per year on this would entail spending all of the human spaceflight budget on this (i.e., we would need to scrap the ISS, and that ain't going to happen).

The only way to make such an endeavor cost less than $100 billion would require
1. Doing it in significantly less than 20 years and
2. Drastically reducing the cost of getting into orbit.

Item 1 would require Congress to up the ante on NASA's budget. This will not happen any time soon given the immense downward pressure on non-defence discretionary spending. Item 2 is possible if Congress stops meddling with NASA's budget.

I agree with 2. We should focus on that instead of cobbling together slightly more-advanced rockets. What about trans-atmospheric flight?

When I think the cost should be less, I think that the appropriate materials might now be more prevalent and thus lower in cost; that the computing power allows us to more efficiently and quickly design the appropriate systems and requirements; that we know what to expect in the flight, and so forth. Is this any of this correct?

Aren't the Air Force rockets better and cheaper?

 

[Norman]

I agree with 2. We should focus on that instead of cobbling together slightly more-advanced rockets. What about trans-atmospheric flight?

What exactly do you mean by trans-atmospheric flight? If I take the phrase at face value, it seems like all space-bound rockets are "trans-atmospheric"

When I think the cost should be less, I think that the appropriate materials might now be more prevalent and thus lower in cost; that the computing power allows us to more efficiently and quickly design the appropriate systems and requirements; that we know what to expect in the flight, and so forth. Is this any of this correct?

DH mentioned this above (twice I think). The huge price tag on going to the moon is due to procurement- or the acquisition of the actual vehicles, rockets, hardware, etc. The things you mention above have to do with R&D (mainly). The materials we use for spaceflight are largely unchanged. The only thing I could see making a noticeable difference is a system engineering perspective on the overall design.

 

[Shackleford]

What exactly do you mean by trans-atmospheric flight? If I take the phrase at face value, it seems like all space-bound rockets are "trans-atmospheric"



DH mentioned this above (twice I think). The huge price tag on going to the moon is due to procurement- or the acquisition of the actual vehicles, rockets, hardware, etc. The things you mention above have to do with R&D (mainly). The materials we use for spaceflight are largely unchanged. The only thing I could see making a noticeable difference is a system engineering perspective on the overall design.

Oh. I didn't know that. I thought we've made a bit of advancement in materials science and engineering in the last 42 years.

Of course, I knew the bulk of the cost would be procurement and "buying" everything we need. I just thought, from an economic standpoint, the cost might have been reduced over the years for whatever reason.

 

[twofish-quant]

Oh. I didn't know that. I thought we've made a bit of advancement in materials science and engineering in the last 42 years.

At some point you run into basic physical limitations. It turns out that for launching people into space "big and dumb" is the way to go which is why the Russians are good at it.

 

[twofish-quant]

Are you saying we would need $6 billion/year for 20 years?

Yes.

$1 billion is a lot of money.

In 2011 dollars, a billion is not that much money. A $1 billion is the cost of one Manhattan skyscraper or the budget of a large university for one year, and the programs that I work on routinely process several tens of billion dollars in transactions each evening.

I'm asserting here that NASA is grossly inefficient and that you could probably get away with spending a lot less with the right management of the program(s).

I don't think that you can. Once you start pushing efficiency past a certain point, it makes things more inefficient.

Also, the question becomes efficient for what? Astronomers for example have figured out that manned space flight is useless for astronomy, so $1 spend on manned space flight turns out to be "inefficient."

Given our modest technological advancements, scientific understanding, and experience, with the right management and leadership, we should be able to make one trip to the Moon at a cost less than the relative 1960s cost.

I don't think so. Some things have gotten a lot cheaper since 1960 (computer technology). Some things haven't (plumbers). You also have to realize that we have costs that didn't exist in the 1960's. One is that we don't have the technology infrastructure that we did in the 1960's and we have to rebuild that from scratch.