Send the space-bureaucrats to Mars
March 24, 2011
As the space shuttle Discovery is decommissioned and retired from service, it is time that the government of the United States rethink the role that government has to play in the future of space exploration. The reason for this is that it is necessary to contemplate whether the resources that have been and will be allocated to the space program has been worth the output it has produced. Despite all of the praise that has been heaped on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the past decades, it is clear that its output is the subject of hype and that it has also been an organization that has been imprudent in its utilization of resources. If there is to be future progress in space exploration, then what needs to happen is not sending highly specialized, billion-dollar missions into space for the curiosity of scientists and welfare for the aerospace industry.
Instead, what must happen is a dramatic decrease in the costs in order for mankind to have any future in space and this is a task of economizing resources that is best left to the free market.
For the past three decades after the end of the Apollo missions in 1972, NASA has existed in a state without a clear objective to accomplish and has instead existed in a nostalgic limbo. Indeed, much of NASA has served as welfare to the post-Apollo aerospace industry as insignificant missions that are sent in and out of Earth’s atmosphere with much fanfare. This has had the result of merely keeping the aerospace industry alive, but little innovation has occurred. While the scientific gadgets that are hurdled into space may have become smaller and more advanced, the most important feature of the space program: the costs of getting payload beyond the grasp of Earth’s gravity, has yet to reach economical levels. Instead, despite the fact that NASA lives off of the reputation of blazing the trail for future activity in space, ever since the breakthrough of the Saturn rockets, it has yet to make real a more cost-effective means of launching into space.
On the face of it, this may seem like an obtuse and excessively critical view of NASA. Of course, critics of this judgment would bring to the table projects like the International Space Station or the Hubble Space Telescope. While the Hubble Telescope may be of great use to astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology, it has not only been beset by technical issues since its launch, but it is not clear-cut whether its advantages over Earth-bound observatories warrant its costs. The ISS is almost a complete waste of money on a project that is more a post-Cold War make-up hug between the space programs of Russia and the United States than a project that has any utility, or even relevance, to humanity’s supposed future in space. In addition, NASA is also heavily politicized, first serving the interests of politicians in Congress and then space exploration. Evidence for this is that even though solid rocket boosters for the space shuttle were the least preferred means of propulsion from an engineering perspective, among other things a solid fuel booster can never be shut down once started unlike other types of fuel, it was chosen because it was produced by a company in Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-Utah) state.
Without a doubt, the space program has been the beneficiary of both a wave of hype ever since the American government thought it was critical to land a gadget made in America on the moon before a gadget made in the USSR was as well as low expectations from the general public. The public seems content to watch missions be launched into space, or even lost (need I mention the recent loss of a $424-million mission earlier this month), with little accountability for either how they use resources or whether their goals are even worth pursuing. The space program, despite the fact it may be the pet program of many, is not sacrosanct.
Eventually, all talk about NASA and the future role of government in space exploration must come down to a judgment regarding whether a bureaucracy put in place by the government is the best means of attaining the ends desired. Here, there can be only an unequivocal answer: no.
The future of mankind in space requires an institution that is an environment that encourages unforeseen innovation and that depends not on the designs of men, but rather by where spontaneous order brings them. In short, what is needed is a market in which not only are competitors not crowded out by the government, but also in which space-entrepreneurs can try out a vast array of plans based not on the approval of a single board of central planning, but rather on the confidence of investors. A market will be far more sensitive to the demands of the public regarding how the space-industry ought to evolve and rather than simply expecting money for their projects, as do space-bureaucrats, the space-entrepreneur would have to support his enterprise on providing actual services to consumers. Indeed, in the past years private enterprise has already shown its capability to organize missions into space when SpaceX, a company founded by one of the co-founders of PayPal, created the line of Falcon Rockets.
In the end, NASA’s mission of preparing the way for further involvement of the human race in space is not best accomplished by a public bureaucracy. Instead, it is time that the government end its involvement in the aerospace industry and let private enterprise be the force that propels humanity into whatever future there may be.
Harrison Searles is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].
AJ • Mar 29, 2011 at 3:17 am
Market-based access to space? I think the other article in this point-counterpoint – https://dailycollegian.com/2011/03/24/why-we-need-nasa/ – does a good job explaining why there is no future for market-based space travel. Why exactly would any for-profit company want to put people in space?
The only way that market-based space travel has been even remotely successful (i.e. profitable) has been with enormous government support. It’s time to admit that NASA’s domination of space isn’t going anywhere, and it’s time to stop asking NASA to prop up hopeless private initiatives that do nothing but suck taxpayer money.
If everything in the 60s was subordinated to getting a few people to the Moon, I say we take the exact same approach again and subordinate everything to getting a permanent base on the Moon. This isn’t about being in competition with anyone, this is about taking Mankind forward into space. The obvious next step in that field is to build a permanent Moon base. Then once we’ve done that, we can subordinate everything to the next project (perhaps Mars), and so on. Soon enough we’ll have a sizable presence in space.
Tom Billings • Mar 27, 2011 at 2:47 pm
AJ said:
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“If you think present-day NASA is doing badly, you should be arguing for it to return to the internal structure it had in the 1960s – not arguing for it to be de-funded.”
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The structure of NASA in the 1960s was determined by the political situation of the 1960s, where we were fighting “the socialist camp” for, among other things, the imagination of the world. Apollo was a badly needed propaganda victory in WW III. That does *not* mean we can or should try to duplicate either it or the structure that executed it, because it also did many bad things. *Everything* was subordinated to getting 2 men on the Moon, and returning them safely. Apollo ate the seed corn of technology development funding inside NASA from the summer of 1964 onwards, just as the Shuttle and ISS, and Constellation have done since then.
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We are not in a war with a reactionary group that tries to convince the world they are better at science and technology than we are. We are now in a worldwide war with a wave of reactionaries who want to convince the majority of the Ummah of Islam that science and technology don’t matter, *to*them*. That means we should use NASA to develop the technology that will allow people all over the world to make spaceflight and its associated sciences part of their own personal future.
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That will not happen using the NASA internal structure used to run a single dominant project sending a few civil servants into Space, at the expense of everything else NASA can do. Different needs should call forth a different response. We need to encourage market-based access to Space, because that is the only sane hope for getting large numbers of people participating.
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As a government agency, NASA can help by developing the Low Earth Orbit(LEO) cryogenic propellant depots that will allow human exploration Beyond Earth Orbit(BEO). It can help by developing true spaceships that fly from LEO to other places in the Solar System, using separate landers to enter atmospheres or to dock with asteroids. It can develop technology and programs to use In Situ Resouces on other celestial bodies, from the Moon, to Mars, to the Asteroids, so we don’t have to bring everything for every trip every time. It can do many things that will help, as long as the control freak domination of NASA is not allowed again, as it was between 1979 and 2004.
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To be a positive contributor NASA needs to admit that one of its goals must be that will become soon a *small* part of what is happening in Space, not because it has shrunk, but because the rest of industrial society around the world has grown into Space as well.
AJ • Mar 27, 2011 at 12:33 am
Look, it’s perfectly true that NASA has been doing a less than stellar job since the 1970s. But before that, in the 1960s, it achieved some of the greatest feats of engineering and exploration in human history. If you think present-day NASA is doing badly, you should be arguing for it to return to the internal structure it had in the 1960s – not arguing for it to be de-funded.
Tom Billings • Mar 26, 2011 at 4:39 pm
Pete said:
“Also, the reason that SRBs were chosen for the Space Shuttle is because they can be submerged in seawater and re-used. Liquid-fuelled engines would be damaged by seawater.”
Unfortunately, Pete, this is false. Before the end of the 1960s liquid propellant Titans were being launched, and having their first stages found floating in the ocean. The AF had those refurbished with far less effort than goes into the virtual rebuilding that an SRB requires, then successfully reloaded and launched them again. This was why liquids were in the original booster competition for the Shuttle. They were dropped for 2 political reasons.
The first reason was a political requirement through the WH Office of Management and Budget that the peak year funding for the Space Shuttle should be promised as under $1 Billion. With the liquid boosters, the estimate was $1.2 Billion peak funding, while the solid’s numbers were tortured till they looked like $975 Million at their peak.
The second reason was the fact that President Nixon owed a *very* large political debt to Jake Garn, Senator from Utah. Even after Aerojet showed they could cast and successfully store single grain SRB solids for the needed timeframes, in Florida itself, Nixon needed Garn’s constituents in Utah, where ATK’s ammonium perchlorate plant and their SRB plant is, to get the money. That sealed the fate of the cheaper operating costs and easier upgrades for a liquid booster Space Shuttle.
We had some hopes after the Challenger disaster in the 1980s that this would change, but, … even now, ATK is the primary lobbying force behind the useless HLV rocket to nowhere that Senators like Shelby, Nelson, and Bennet have designed specifically to use the ammonium perchlorate solids that provide ATK all those nice bundles of cash.
Pete • Mar 25, 2011 at 11:29 am
You evidently have absolutely zero understanding of any of the hundreds of experiments that are currently being conducted/are planned to be conducted on ISS – many of which could yield extraordinary benefits to the Earth and to future of space exploration.
Also, the reason that SRBs were chosen for the Space Shuttle is because they can be submerged in seawater and re-used. Liquid-fuelled engines would be damaged by seawater.
Try doing some research before you write your next article.
Dave • Mar 25, 2011 at 10:54 am
I believe the real value of NASA has been Internationally a diplomatic endeavor and a domestic jobs program since Apollo Hardly fitting their actual mandate. Handing off to the private sector is not entirely possible though, without developing a process to encourage innovation and provide some baseline funding. DARPA has been wildly successful, and you don’t have to look for spin-offs to see value. The Internet was started at the same time as the moon landing and has had a profound impact on our everyday lives, from our economy, our personal and political lives.
NASA could have a similar impact, but it must create objectives with a reward system for private industry. There was no immediate value add for industry to participate in building out the Internet. It may be easy to see the value now, and hard to imagine not seeing the opportunities it would provide, but I worked on deploying early Internet services and business only saw overhead.
Creating a commercial partnership, where NASA seeks to become a partner and sponsor, rather than a mandated monopolist is critical to the US maintaining the lead in space technology and exploration. There will be two countries with manned exploration capabilities at the end of 2011 and the US is not one of them. There may be 3-4 by the end of 2012 and again the US will not be among them. Sadly Congress’ response to this gap (that they have known about for 8 years) is funding a jobs program to reuse 1970’s Shuttle technology to create a new 1-2 billion per launch heavy lift system to send astronauts to nowhere. No funded objective, exploration and scientific endeavor. Heavy lift for the next 20 years should only be a payload system, and not a human lift system. There is no reason to need 747 like capacity for gettings humans into space. Current SpaceX and ULA systems (American) could launch Americans into space in 18 months, if prioritized and properly funded. This would in turn leave funding to be used to develop reduced cost methods, first stage capture technologies to reduce the cost of rockets, improved performance and science and exploration.
NASA has done great work, but Congress has killed every good project they have proposed, and forced them to stay with bad, marginal and outdated systems, soaking up the funds for the good and great since 1972. So, don’t be too hard on NASA, cast your eyes on that most august body of blowhards in Washington. They are now forcing NASA to build a 130 ton rocket to nowhere launch system and reducing funds for anything practical or even game changing.
Michael • Mar 25, 2011 at 5:47 am
You really don’t know what you’re talking about. Go to http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/communications/spinoff.html to review all of the benefits we’ve gained from NASA’s research.
Dennis • Mar 25, 2011 at 5:35 am
If we wait on commercial, all we will gain is another way to LEO. The high cost of deep space exploration will never get cheaper. Remember inflation keeps its ugly head raised. With an economic down turn people out of work, etc. Fuel prices on the verge of going out of sight, do you really think spaceflight will become a cheap commodity? Im for commercial, for use to LEO, but deep space, and remember here, that it is still commercial that builds our vehicles, under NASAs guidance. Boeing, etc. and other services are utilized for deep space, but the price is high, and I believe will remain so. To Mars on a credit card, will be our future slogan.
don w • Mar 25, 2011 at 4:32 am
hey calling the iss a complete waste of money dis regards one fact that is vital :the iss has taught volumes to our engineers and scientists on how to do heavy construction and actually operate in space essential in turn to any missions to anywhere else