What Is NASA for?
slate.com
slate.com
The European aristocracy fueled explorations far and wide, killed many more people, and now a large percentage of humans travel around the world daily. If we sent more people to space far and wide would it not follow the same pattern if something eventually came of it? I'm not sure that anyone knew the early explorers would come back with boats filled with gold and precious resources but perhaps we will come back with ships filled with rare elements, minerals and gasses.
I found this article to be rather pessimistic. I realize that military spending is a necessity so long as our geo-political situation continues to remain unstable. However it seems to my uneducated view of the subject that the US could cut a good fraction of its military spending, continue to dominate in conventional warfare and reduce the cost of space exploration greatly in the long term.
Maybe someone who knows more about it can enlighten me. I, like many, get wide-eyed when I think of space and dream, hopelessly, of one day experiencing it for myself.
It's a pittance, but, it's what we get to spend on space programs; and we're spending it on NASA. I'm glad to see a criticism that isn't criticism of what we think NASA'a mission is, but instead a criticism of how NASA executes that mission.
If you wanted to fling people all over the solar system, even if you didn't care that you killed a bunch of them, you would need to spend much more than anyone is willing to do, for some unspecified and unlikely gain.
On the other hand, I generally agree with you. The article's statement, "Factor in the danger, and human spaceflight becomes almost impossible to justify," is part of the problem. If you believe that you must never kill anyone, for national pride or simply "justifiably", you will never fly anything.
Caveat: I work with a team of NASA & contractor Earth scientists. I think they'd all tell you they don't need to go search for a justification; justifications are self-evident. Here's one: Maintain the climate record.
Some of this was a result of remote sensing tech coming into it's golden age, some as a result of climate change needs, and a lot was a result of NASA needing to find a source of funding.
But I can't find anything extensive about that on the web at this moment.
From NASA's 2014 budget request (in millions of dollars):
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/750614main_NASA_FY_2014_Budget_Estim...
Science 5,017.8
Aeronautics 565.7
Space Technology 742.6
Exploration 3,915.5
Space Operations 3,882.9
Education 94.2
Cross Agency Support 2,850.3
===============================
Total Request 17,715.4
Earth Science 1,846.1
Planetary Science 1,217.5
Astrophysics 642.3
James Webb Space Telescope 658.2
Heliophysics 653.7
I thought it was because the project was invented in the Senate version of the NASA budget, where Senate staffers made up arbitrary requirements for its design and functionality.
Not sure where I got the impression NASA had adopted such a dramatic shift in focus.
""" I have been obsessed with the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs since childhood and I've read the first hand accounts of astronauts, flight directors, engineers, administrators, and journalists covering the programs. What has consistently struck me is that although the programs were marketed - if you may - along the lines of their exciting thrust into the unknown, the programs were executed based upon a cold rational calculus that extended sabre rattling and the grounds of engagement beyond the surface of our planet.
Yes, for me it might be one of the greatest achievements of humanity, but for the people paying for the show all of that work was for one thing and one thing only; to claim the high ground swiftly and decisively before the enemy. For anyone with the ability to put a capsule into orbit and to retrieve it, also possessed the ability to spy on the other party, safely launch and drop a nuclear warhead into the other party's major cities, and one-up the enemy in a show of technical prowess and strength - something that would persuade those on the fence to pick the right side if it were. That's what these programs were sadly all about and that's why they were ended once the high ground was decisively seized.
The reason why there isn't an Apollo-esque or Manhattan-esque thrust towards landing on Mars is because there is no substantial tactical, economic, or political advantage to be gained from the act. Sure in the long term there will be amazing pay-offs if we open up the solar system and expand outwards, but right now in the minds of the people who are actually cutting the cheques that pay-off is too distant, too abstract, too foolhardy, and too unsettling to justify any kind of support.
Now some people choose to rue the cause behind our current Earth-bound civilization, but I think this is actually a good thing. It ensures that when we do manage to find a way to reach out to the stars we will do it for the right reasons and our exploration will continue from one frontier to another because of that fact. """
Maybe y'all should have paid more attention in humanities courses.
Talk about pretentious.
Yes, let's talk about pretentiousness. Like the pretentiousness involved in ignoring existing grammar structures that are accepted by everyone in favor of whatever you think works and then expect everyone else to conform your unique usage.
Take a good long look at yourself.
Though the intent of the quoting style may have been unclear before it was explained, I now understand the utility. Would double-quotes have worked just fine? Probably. But so did todayiamme's method. Does it offer anything over double-quotes? Maybe not. But why shit on the guy because he did something differently than most other people would have?
The guy didn't ask you or anybody else to approve of or make use of his own style. If it's so offensive to you, don't read it. In this case, it just doesn't matter. It really doesn't.
If the idea of triple-quotes holds utility, what does it matter if it's "improper syntax" or not? I find your need to squabble over quotation styles pretentious.
I don't personally care, unless it's in a context where the expectation is that the language will be, well, "normal." I just thought I'd tease out what I think is being the criticism.
In any event, this is a matter of punctuation, not syntax. As for nesting quotations, you want to alternate between single and double quotation marks. It's pretty rare that we go beyond two levels of nested direct quotations in English, so it's rarely ambiguous.
The poster explained their preference for the triple-quotes in a clear and completely non-inflammatory way, and then got shit on for being pretentious. I don't find that to be acceptable.
For those not aware, the Saturn launch vehicle series was the first to not explicitly be based on missile technology. The Redstone, Atlas, and Titan series were primarily developed for launching ballistic missiles and then adapted for scientific purposes.
The Shuttle too, was intended for DoD launches, and was used for a few of them.
But the idea of putting it on the side of the fuel tank, where insulation could fall down and damage it -- that configuration predated the DoD-driven doubling in size.
See: http://www.nss.org/resources/library/shuttledecision/p219.gi...
It was already a bad design, it just got worse when the DoD got involved. It needed to be a lot smaller -- small enough to fit on top of the stack. And there was no need to risk astronauts' lives to launch payload -- use an unmanned launcher for that.
That's true, but reusability was the wrong goal. It forced a bad design to be adopted. It also led directly to the wishful thinking (50 flights per year!) that caused the schedule pressure on the Challenger.
The actual goal should've been low cost.
Instead of designing the most awesome closed-cycle engine that we could, we should've mass-produced a low-tech and low-cost engine. That's what the Russians did, and that's what SpaceX is doing today.
Exactly. Unfortunately, it's often not possible to find out something is impossible before you fail repeatedly trying. We now know mass-produced engines is the way to go, but building the SSMEs was what taught us that.
For example, reed the section “Liquid Fuel Engine (SSME)” in the Feynman’s apendix report about the Challenger disaster.
With missiles, you want a storable propellant so that you can launch-on-demand -- not launch-after-fueling. Thus, hypergolics and solid propellants.
As warheads became miniaturized, the payload capacity actually went down. When the Russians started selling their decommissioned missiles for satellite launches (e.g., Rokot), the only things they could launch with it were small LEO satellites.
It's actually military satellite launchers that drove the commercial market. Spy satellites kept getting heavier, so the launchers got beefier, which meant that communications satellites could also get bigger.
Solid rockets give a rough ride, so they aren't suited for most payloads. And they're not so fun for manned launches, because aborts get difficult.
Why is curiosity not enough? Why must we all be more concerned about who has more nukes than about the 99.999%+ of space out there that we've never touched?
Yeah, yeah, I know. Something about human nature...
So long as space travel depends on politicians, this'll be the case, with some rare exceptions. Even Columbus had to justify the expense of sending his ships on an exploration cruise heading West across the Atlantic (trade with India).
By the way, which initiatives are you referring to?
To be clear /s :p
Future archaeologists trying to understand what the Shuttle
was for are going to have a mess on their hands. Why was
such a powerful rocket used only to reach very low orbits,
where air resistance and debris would limit the useful
lifetime of a satellite to a few years? Why was there both
a big cargo bay and a big crew compartment? What kind of
missions would require people to assist in deploying a
large payload? Why was the Shuttle intentionally crippled
so that it could not land on autopilot? ① Why go through
all the trouble to give the Shuttle large wings if it has
no jet engines and the glide characteristics of a brick?
Why build such complex, adjustable main engines and then
rely on the equivalent of two giant firecrackers to provide
most of the takeoff thrust? Why use a glass thermal
protection system, rather than a low-tech ablative shield?
And having chosen such a fragile method of heat protection,
why on earth mount the orbiter on the side of the rocket,
where things will fall on it during launch?With that said, I'm OK with us still having a space station with people in it, because it keeps the engines of the national space machine greased. It won't be long before the United States is faced with a new contender for Global Superpower, and space will definitely become the place to be. If you want to control the land, you must control the sea, and if you want to control the sea, you must control space. As our military becomes more and more drone-heavy, I wouldn't be surprised if Space Command drastically increases its scope and reach as an organization. Its much faster to control a drone across the world in real time from space than it is from Virginia.
Couple military need with the new blood of private contractors (spaceX and its like), I believe space will be a big deal once again in a few decades.
And when you start comparing the relative costs, it seems like a no brainer. For the budget required to sustain manned spaceflight in its relatively trivial form, you could launch a space telescope, two Mars missions, an outer-planet mission, a comet mission, an asteroid mission, and a Sun mission, all robotic, every year. There'd be a constant stream of new data of interest to scientists and the public. The inevitable failed missions would just be blips on the radar, and technical progress on the exploratory robots would go faster than ever.
Over the decades launch and return technology will improve, especially as private industry gets more involved in space travel, and once we have cheaper and more reliable ways to get into space, gradually it may make more and more sense for humans to return and live there (or it won't, which is okay, too).
While I agree mostly, I disagree with the "entirely" point. I think at some point with enough advances it becomes feasible and maybe even necessary to start colonies elsewhere (the moon, asteroids, mars, whatever). Robots will only get you so far if there's an existential reason to need to get off earth.
There would be no stories. No machine can tell you how it feels to be there. If, ultimately, the goal is to send people, then we should send people. Of course, we should send machines until we are sure it's safe to send people, but we can't forget why we are doing it.
We (rightfully) complain NASA does too little with the money they have while military spending is orders of magnitude larger. And, as long as that money is used to fund fighters such as the F-35 (good luck for those who'll fly it) and the F-22 (is that O2 problem fixed?), there will be very little benefit from there except fat military contractors.
BTW, those are the same companies that feed on NASA.
I'm not sure manned versus unmanned is the right distinction to make for media attention, though. More important is whether a mission is TV-ready (like a manned moon landing), or not (like an unmanned Mars landing where after landing we spend six months calibrating each instrument one at a time, before rolling forward six inches).
Right now, science is barely on the radar of the manned mission planners. While for unmanned missions, science is the highest priority. If this were only tweaked slightly, and media appeal made another priority for unmanned missions, then I think you could get cost-effective unmanned missions that are both media- and science-friendly.
This conflict mimics the technological dichotomy in the rest of society...how can we continue to value human contributions when computers can do things so much more efficiently and accurately? My opinion is that there are plenty of things that require a "human-in-the-middle" for the forseeable future, earthside. But in space, it's much harder to justify, based on the plain physics of sending a human into space.
What NASA does accomplish is economic growth of America as a whole. What most people don't realize is very dollar given to NASA roughly translates to 2-4 dollars of GDP growth of American research, development, and manufacturing.
Really one of the most direct ways of the US Government putting additional money in the hands of the American is NASA's budget strangely.
On a person by person level yes there is likely some wasted talent at NASA, and their skills could be put to better use else where. But doing a micro-economic analysis of every 1 person's case over 300,000 employes and 18,000 contractors would be very time consuming then making boarder macro economic statements. Also remember micro-economics are wrong about certain things, macro-economics are wrong about things in general.
Assuming you're talking about the '60's, it's the other way around. If you're talking about today, it's still the other way around but the number of contractors is much smaller.
(Aaahhhhhh! Cognos! Aaahhhhhhh!)
I don't have a good source for the number of contractors, other than wikipedia. (...which cites http://employeeorientation.nasa.gov/contractors/default.htm. Huh.)
Aha! Now we know where NASA's IT budget went -- to IBM.
IBM specializes in making sure that you spend your full IT budget each year, so that upper management isn't tempted to cut it next year.
We all accept the importance of this message; few of us are able or willing to make the necessary changes. How many of us use a computer for 8+ hours a day?
NASA, and any space program or company trying to develop the necessary technologies to reach orbit and live in space, are doing us a great favor. There is going to be a point when we need resources outside of Earth. This includes water, places to grow food, metals, etc. It also includes going into orbit and conducting Earth Science research to help us use our current resources more efficiently. An exploding human population and desire to give everyone a fighting chance at a happy life require that we reach outside of our atmosphere.
To say that NASA is no longer justified seems ignorant. That being said, as a government agency, there is a lot of wasted money at NASA. Obviously this is changing as they keep giving away private contracts (which is generally good).
This may all seem trivial ten or twenty years from now, when private enterprise has taken over 90% of what NASA does -- a process that's already begun.
There are ~60 launches scheduled for this year (http://spaceflightnow.com/tracking/). Most are launching communication satellites, some are ISS resupply missions, and others are for research. China is developing a space station and private space companies are doing well. Year over year the amount of launches has been increasing and there is no reason to believe this trend won't continue, with or without NASA. NASA has served a great purpose, and it may or may not continue to do so. Calling it a tragedy seems loaded and misguided.
Spaceflight has contributed very, very little technology to earth. The reality is that anything we fly into space is already generations behind the equivalent earth technology.
Put it another way: What were the obvious benefits of the Apollo program?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies
What were the direct benefits of Amundsen's expedition to the south pole? Is exploration a waist even if its results are less than stellar? I would say that by its nature, exploration is a hard thing to waste money on. Necessity is the mother of invention and nothing provides necessity like pushing the envelope. For example, look at the picture that accompanies this article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm
You can't simply say that all exploration gives value for money. With finite resources, we have to direct spending to where it will result in the most benefit. Funding of human spaceflight means that there's less funding available elsewhere. I'm not familiar with who funded Amundsen's expedition, but I'd imagine that it cost a lot less than the trip to the moon did.
There has been innovative developments in the space industry. Some of those spin-off technologies are definitely valid (although the question of whether the return they provide given the absolutely huge R&D budget is worth it) but others are less so. Freeze drying was apparently initially developed in 1938, long before the space program. I find it hard to believe that, in the absence of a space program, nobody would have invented the portable vacuum cleaner.
There are benefits from a space program. Government R&D, when spent well, has a huge impact on technological progress (just look at the absolutely incredible technological step change that wars bring). What I think needs to end is the absolute idolisation of the space program. It's an investment, and one which has often shown a poor return.
There are many reasons for that. For one thing, the environment that it has to operate in is...poor. The "best of breed", most modern technology typically doesn't like that sort of thing. The technology in your automobile's engine compartment is also typically generations behind, as is the stuff in your toaster (for slightly different reasons).
Second, the technology of the manned program (and the same argument applies to a lesser extent to the unmanned program) is "man-rated"---it's specifically tested to ensure that it won't fail in some spectacular fashion and kill everyone. That is expensive, and takes a lot of time. One way to make that cheaper is to maintain a pedigree; what you fly today flew yesterday, or is based on something that you flew yesterday.
And then, of course, at current effort levels, building a new launch platform is mostly a non-starter. So, you might as well go with what's already working.
"Spaceflight has contributed very, very little technology to earth."
You need to keep a distinction in mind: manned vs unmanned. Unmanned flights are plenty competitive in terms of basic research.
Further, many people, before the Internet Boom, got into science and technology because of the manned spaceflight program. To an extent, some of those that went into spaceflight-specific programs were lied to. But still, they have made some contributions, somewhere.
While the knowledge will hopefully be useful in the future, and we can spread humanity to more than one relatively small, condensed point, at present it's not really helping us, and was pretty much a waste of money. At present.
It is about making a future for uncountable trillions of (post-)human beings, instead of the few measly billion our single planet can support.
It is about blossoming new cultures in far off places, instead of stagnation and unity.
It is about expanding the human economy to include effectively limitless new land and resources instead of fighting the same zero sum game.
It is about providing a cosmic lifeboat such that one single catastrophe doesn't wipe out the human race or all life on Earth.
Sorry, I think the burden of proof is on those who say the above is meaningless.
For confirmation just look to NASA's vision, mission, and strategic goal statements, and the report of every blue ribbon commission to have looked at NASA over the past three decades.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGgtsn9SCkg (in French)
It's really depressing to talk to experienced engineers (even if they're not NASA proper, but lend/leased from Lockheed or someone else) who are like "Yeah, we could build that, no question, but who will pay for it?"
It's even more depressing to talk to normal engineers at any meetup or hackathon, because there's the same sort of awe and mystique about NASA and what it could be doing, but also the tacit acknowledgement that the agency is fucked in the head--you usually end up with a bunch of Boomers old enough to remember when NASA actually did things that were cool.
The most frustrating thing is that the technology works and has been in production for half a century now, but the agency is unable or unwilling to fund manned missions to completion--and these questions of "Should we even put people in space? Why not robots lol?" could be rendered moot if somebody just cut a goddamn check. The people know this. The engineers know this. The astronauts know this. And yet, no check.
Worse still, you can't keep sending robots into space because nobody cares. Sure, a few people here or there who love ~=science=~ can appreciate the pursuit of knowledge for its own means, but for everyone else there needs to be a payoff. The only payoffs come, though, in either moving people off-planet to start colones or moving material back on-planet (which is fairly silly in its own way). If you don't do either of those things, then no shit everyone would rather your funding go to aging Boomers or poor urban youths or starving hillbillies or students loans or fighting the war on drugs or any number of more immediate short-term pains our democracy faces.
At least we've got a few folks funding this privately--as for NASA, though, the best thing to do would be bow out of space all together and open-source and make public domain all of their research and patents.
in other words, they need a strong marketing division that can take the droll numbers of science and present it to schools and online that anyone can understand.
The get attached to some cereal boxes, cookies, and lunch boxes.
Years ago I wondered why they were constantly trying to remind and justify the whys of their existence; now it's pretty clear.
When I was ~ 11 years old, my 5th grade classroom in rural Texas received some tomato seeds which had been exposed to space, and -- for science! -- I and other classmates grew some in our backyards and we reported back about how these plants grew vs normal ones. Many other classes did the same thing at the time.
Oh, by the way ... that was 24 years ago.
NASA does quite a bit of Earth Science and Aeronautics