NASA's "We Explore Space" Concept Maps
NASA Internal Memo: Public release of ‘We Explore Space’ Concept Maps
“We are pleased to notify you that the human space exploration project you graciously offered your time and expertise to support has been completed and is being released to the public at this very moment! You may launch into the “We Explore Space” concept maps from the NASA website.”
Keith’s note: At first blush there is a blatant omission in this presentation: commercial space – crew and cargo. Given the large amount of money NASA is spending, and the hopes that the agency pins on the private sector for acccess to space, you’d think this would be a prominent theme. Guess not. And the “Previous” and “Next” links do not work on my Mac running OS 10.6.8 in Safari, Firefox, or Chrome browsers.
Keith’s update: Well I fiddled with it some more and I found a page that deals with commercial space. But finding it was rather counterintuitive requiring multiple steps where the word “commercial” is not used. Again, given the battles that NASA and the Administration have had with Congress over this issue you’d think they’d want to explain how commerce fits into it. Or maybe they are trying to de-emphasize it so Congress won’t complain. Oh yes, you can’t print these charts out (easily) on a single sheet of paper. PDF versions would be nice.
That said, I am a fan of mind maps, so this is an interesting approach. The question that really begs an answer is who is the intended audience for this website? The media? Policy wonks? The public? How much this activity cost? How much was the grant? Why is there no press release?
Looks interesting. But I have not found the plan.
I heard some good words from Mr. G on one screen about how eventually we might try to develop a lander that doesn’t have to be thrown away every time we fly (once each year). In fact a lot of what he describes is sort of what we had with Shuttle, though Shuttle was limited to LEO. Now he says we want the same kind of thing, but in more distant places. As I recall, Shuttle was originally the Space Transportation System, with other elements we were going to develop being a Shuttle-C, an OMV, various other stages and orbital vehicle. Somehow about 20 years ago we reduced our sights. We’ve subsequently pissed it all away and now we are trying to reinvent Apollo.
Suddenly as Shuttle was in its final throes, USA came forward and said, we could continue to operate for a lot less money. Great! Now why werent they saying that when USA took over back in the mid-80s?
Programs like Space Hab showed that a lot of integration could be done with a lot fewer people and a lot more quickly and less expensively,, yet Shuttle never adopted that and ISS threw all of it away and is now much more tedious. Good job guys!
How are we going to do that if NASA keeps insisting on maintaining their fiefdoms and inordinately expensive ops mode?
So far I’ve not heard a good story about why we need an Orion. An Orion tells me we throw it all away every mission. I’ve not heard a good story about how we get from our present ISS capabilities to the next step.
At some point you have to actually start doing things differently. Mr. G talks a good game but he’s in charge and has been for about a dozen years, and Shuttle didnt improve and neither did ISS, and G has been in charge. Mainly its his cronies that he put in charge of things like Orion.
I saw that Mr. Hale this week seriously criticized where we are with the program and where we do not seem to be going. How are we going to change that? Kind of interesting that Hale, recently right under Mr. G and had the master’s ear, yet nothing positive happened and instead he got out. Interesting to see so many other senior type jumping ship. No changes anticipated? Its all Congress’ fault?
I don’t think so. NASA should have a plan, not just dreams of a revised Apollo.
Newt was right; whats the plan for colonization?
Mind maps are great. I’d like to see changes and progress.
NASA is so lost after 30 years of Shuttle ops, crippled by empire-building and promoting incompetent sycophants, that it could never perform this type of work. This paper mentions “massive layoff of a skilled technical workforce.” That’s BS. The skilled workforce was attrited over 30 years of Shuttle operations. We have no design and development expertise anymore. That “skilled” workforce in operations is an oxymoron. Who is more skilled, the bus driver and mechanic, or the engineer who envisioned, designed and built the bus? That’s what NASA is today. A bunch of dime-a-dozen drivers and mechanics trying to do design It’s a disaster, an utter and complete failure with no chance to succeed. Until this is corrected, we will fail. NASA has a new mantra: Success is not an option.
Generally, Gold stars for NASA and IHMC efforts on the concept maps. Give the maps a “B” grade for very-good format. Absence of “path” is a Fail and loses the “A” grade. A different grade is in order for content. The CMAPS presented contain an extensive array of space elements. Interrelationships between elements are shown, but lack direction. About 98% of the content relies upon free federal space play dough money, anticipates international buckets of collaborative dream money add in a few percent of commercial fund resources. A considerable fraction of the outcomes fall in to the Star-Trek inspirational, go where no man has ever gone, category. If Congress will ante up the billions and trillions, great! There is a fool born every minute. Then the CMap space fun begins.
Keith’s comment on “commercial space” omission is of note, although there are multiple element inclusions of “commercial” on the CMap pages. Generally NASA prefers to avoid mention of “commercial”. Commercial is foreign to NASA. Commercial frightens NASA. Commercial is what the White House wants to see and Congress increasingly wants to see. Commercial erodes NASA and gives NASA very bad nightmares. Note: Keith, I don’t care who did the CMaps, although it looks like IHMC was involved. It’s a very good start.
What might concern the average citizen is the volume of elements presented on the Cmaps and the vast scope of missions. The CMaps, if executed, even in part, would move beyond billions of dollars. These concepts would require multiple TRILLIONS of dollars to successfully perform.
Note the Budget CMap, an attempt to show the puny dollars NASA receives, dramatically contrasted to the 37 times larger U.S. Defense budget. If the entire U.S. Defense budget were redirected to NASA, then perhaps a significant fraction of the Cmap visions could be realized. Some.
Visions, “If-I-Were-A-Rich-Man” – hum that tune, wild and unfettered dreams of roaming the solar system and intergalactic realms of the universe are wonderful to have. In that respect the Cmap effort is rich and enjoyable to view. From a realistic, grounded and fiscally sober perspective much of the Cmap content is trillion dollar loony.
“Loony” said, it would be prudent for the CMap developers to continue and not to give up or stop. They need to continue to mature CMaps. They should work on CMaps only when they are fully sober and realize that money is not likely to be infinitely available to enable their unbounded visions. I suggest two rooms for CMap work. In Room A, they can dream, they can fantasize without limitation. In Room B, they should be sober and embrace the reality of “limitation” and economic reality.
They should consider adding a temporal, layered dimensionality to CMaps, where the elements and missions are decade-time phased and where fiscal realities and economic reality are included in the structures.
It is doubtful that the CMap people or NASA or the U.S. Economy has a spare 1 or 2 or 3 Trillion to throw at the visions and concept presented. If you think otherwise, confer with OMB. If you happen to have the trillions, few do, please raise your hand or just send the check to NASA.
Check out,http://www.cislunarnext.org… a definite plan. It looks half decent but only if NASA will seriously adopt it.
This plan falsely assumes we will explore space just for the sake of exploration or extending the reach of the human race. Our capitalist system has no interest in such things. If there’s no profit, there’s not motive. And I don’t mean long-term ROI, but short-term gain. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with capitalism. But as with anything, it must be taken in moderation. Capitalism based purely on maximizing profit on a quarterly basis without regard to anything else is driving this country into the ground. When there’s profit to be had in space, we will go there.
Orion going to Mars with a lander attached – what a joke! If we want to go to Mars we will need a much larger craft. Orion maybe the landing craft. But you you can’t keep folks in a Apollo/Soyuz/Orion/Dragon craft for 6 months alone. You need something the size of Mir or ISS to keep the astronauts/cosmonauts from going crazy. Why is there no plan from anyone on a Mars interplanetary craft? Preferably with a spinning module to let them spend a good chunk of their time in partial artificial gravity.
Hi Mr Keith.
My name is Ernani and I’m a Braziliam Computer Science Master Degree student. I’m looking for the original instances of the concepts maps presented in this list http://cmex.ihmc.us/cmex/ta…. For original instances I mean the original concept map filethe original concept map file, not the jpg image file. I’m looking for the ones I can get loaded and ediedt by cmaptools. I need perform experiments about data mining over concept maps.
I beg your pardon for my bad english.
I hope make myself clear.
Thanks and congratulations for the great job.
Ernani. ([email protected])