NASA: To Boldly Go or To Loudly Whine?
Lighting a rocket is easy; tough part is controlling it, making parts work together, AP
“Anybody can make something go boom. Controlling it is hard,” said former NASA associate administrator Scott Pace, director of space policy at George Washington University. … “In many ways, the worst enemy of NASA is `Star Trek’,” Pace said. “Captain Picard says `engage’ and the ship moves. And people think `How hard can this be?'”
Keith’s note: This is an odd thing for Scott Pace to say given that he’s a very smart guy. If anything, Star Trek is often NASA’s best friend. For several generations it has been Star Trek and other popular TV shows and movies that have so totally embedded the value and need to explore space within the minds of the citizens whose taxes keep NASA going. When cuts are proposed for NASA, what memes do supporters and energized taxpayers cite? Of course they use lines and themes about exploration and inspiration that you hear Star Trek characters saying.
When everything goes right, NASA loves to bask in the glowing PR and does not deter people from lofty comparisons to Star Trek. But when something goes wrong (or might go wrong) they like to lower expectations and say “Rocket science is hard”. And yet, NASA seems to do it right nearly all the time, leading one to logically ask ‘so how hard can this be’? This is the problem with NASA. They want to have it both ways.
The agency and its space insider surrogates (like Pace) complain when the public does not seem to understand or appreciate what NASA does. But when the public does take an interest in NASA and expects that their space agency is actually capable and worthy of doing more than it already does, NASA and the space insiders revert to the ‘rocket science is hard’ whine. In so doing they dismiss the confidence and hopes that have been thrust upon NASA – the same confidence and hopes it will need to draw upon the next time budgets get tight.
Where do these public expectations and confidence in NASA come from? In a great part, I feel that they come from the public’s perception of exploring space – one that has a firm root in fiction. The other source is NASA itself and the overwhelmingly stunning and successful things that NASA does manage to do. Indeed, fact and fiction often feed off of each other in a synergistic fashion with NASA’s abilities (real or perceived) elevated in the process. NASA’s own success have resulted in the establishment of its own high standards in the public’s mind. Instead of using excuses, NASA ought to be saying that it will do even better in the years ahead and that it is learning new tricks as it does.
Of course, a dose of reality is often needed to tamper those exaggerated expectations about what NASA can actually do – or should do. But that should be tempered with an equal and perhaps slightly larger dose of optimism so as to allow our collective aspirations to help push NASA forward – instead of holding it back.
NASA cannot have it both ways. Either it embodies the spirit of what can be done or it can whine about how hard it is. Trust me, whiners are not going to explore the universe.
Keith – Least anyone gets the mistaken idea that I’m against Star Trek, the point I was trying to make to the reporter was that there there is often a gap between what people hope and would like space flight to be and current realities. I agreed with your statement that “Of course, a dose of reality is often needed to tamper those exaggerated expectations about what NASA can actually do – or should do. But that should be tempered with an equal and perhaps slightly larger dose of optimism so as to allow our collective aspirations to help push NASA forward – instead of holding it back.” Thanks for the chance to reply.
And when I worked at NASA I used to have to answer angry letters of outrage asking why we needed to go into space to obtain access to microgravity when we had anti-gravity chambers here on Earth. Yes, some people confuse Star Trek with reality. But more often than not its when people collide fantasy with reality that reality starts to resemble fantasy. Star Trek may be “NASA’s worst enemy” from a certain point of view- but that is only because NASA has not done an adequate job of explaining itself to people. NASA should take every instance wherein Star Trek or other fictional memes are invoked as an opportunity to enlist people to support and engage – not a situation where PR management is required to dampen expectations.
The problem is a culture which prefers that you pay a illegal alien to mow your lawn rather than you doing it, that values more buying a fancy thing more so than your craftwork of you building it.
We get all our crap at the triple zero point from Walmart out of China and we don’t care how it got there, just that its cheap.
Many don’t even know how to assess quality and skill … so how can they appreciate doing something “hard”.
They buy “hard” in the form of a computer/mobile app, they use then discard it.
With this group, going into space isn’t seen any different than going to MacDonald’s.
To enlist and engage them is “hard” – when I do science outreach events to the general public, it only works with those who at least possess a sense of wonder – those without simply find the exercise poor entertainment – “how come these galaxies aren’t doing a space war between them for me?”.
And with those having wonder, you have to step them gradually into an appreciation of complexity of “hard”, otherwise they don’t like it.
Some good points, nooc. I work with some kids from China. If you give them something to do, they do it immediately. If it’s hard, so much the better, because they are focused on their future.
Unfortunately this cultural disease afflicts all, especially those who crave power.
I also do science outreach to various nationalities including Chinese. Youth, college age, and young adults. The encouraging part are, as you say, those who seek out the “hard” for better.
But even the Chinese have this. Painful example: “My father is Li Gang”.
China is attempting to control this.Just as America is struggling with its many demons.
And all of the kids across the globe, are the ones at risk most of the collective demons.
During outreach, with those cited above ones, dealing with the demons … are what they ask me the most about – they are rightly terrified of the demons.
Or should I say “dragons”.
Perhaps the core problem is being hinted at, unintentionally, in this statement. What is it that says we should be helping to push NASA forward?
Keith,
Good note. I think you have a good handle on this topic, obviously partly from personal experience.
What I have found in what I’ve read, heard and said over the years is that when discussing space we need to choose our words carefully. Changing a single word can completely alter the reaction to the message. For example, I won’t say space flight (or space anything) is “hard,” or even “difficult.” I say that it’s “challenging.” And I immediately add something like, “but, we’ve learned and accomplished a great deal over the years, and we are learning more every day.” Some might argue this as an exaggeration (I don’t), but no one can say it’s not true. The point is that people get a very different message just by changing a word or two.
In NASA’s shoes, I would take every opportunity to tell people that “we spend every dollar that we can get for the purpose on research and development, which is what enables us to do more and better work all the time. Those research dollars are the key; they are today’s essential investment in tomorrow.” This makes more people consider the NASA budget as something worthwhile, even important, and sounds very different from whining about budget cuts. I’ve also found that people respond much more favorably towards allocating a budget to NASA if you don’t use the words “taxes” and “taxpayers.” Most people know where the money comes from, but not drawing attention to it makes them react more favorably (and it doesn’t confuse those less astute among us who still think that the government has money and the government is paying for this and that; it scares me how many adults still think like that).
When spreading the word, if we don’t whine, and instead make it sound fine, we can make more people see bread and circuses instead of economic recession. (My God! Did I really type that?)
Steve
I think Americans, particularly rich ones, should stop wining about their taxes and pay up. Taxes were much higher during Apollo and we didn’t complain.
NASA, for its part, should give the taxpayers R&D of practical value. But every time we propose something that might improve life here on earth we are told that if it isn’t in space, it isn’t our mission.
I have to agree with Scott. Much as I love Star Trek, and have been a devotee of it for much of my life, the show, and others like it, have instilled a false sense of value in human space flight. In fact, it would seem that Star Trek has so well embedded the value and need of space exploration that, at least with regard to human space flight, we in the U.S. barely do it anymore. Star Trek embedded value and need of space exploration that has led us to find ourselves stuck in LEO, and in fact even without a national facility to get there. That was a pretty poor embedding job. It’s a fantasy to look at Star Trek in this way, as teaching us what we as a nation should be doing.
Star Trek was about adventure, and less about the kind of exploration we can achieve. It was about meeting new species, resolving conflicts with them and sharing ideas with them. That simply will not happen to us, at least within our solar system. In fact, some historians of exploration maintain that what exploration is really about is a confrontation of different cultures. Now adventure is really nice, but it’s hardly the case that adventure (for a few lucky humans) is a national priority that I should be asked to pay for. There are other reasons for human space flight, but none that I see represented that well in Star Trek.
Apollo began before Trek, and before “exploration” in the sense it is used today. It’s purpose was not to entertain or to explore, but to serve as a substitute for nuclear war. IMHO NASA’s problem isn’t that spacefllight is not entertaining. NASA’s problem is that it thinks spaceflight should be inspiring America, and that America should be paying for it for that purpose. NASA should be doing research and development of practical value. Human spaceflight should be routine.
“It’s a fantasy to look at Star Trek in this way, as teaching us what we as a nation should be doing.“
Hallie,
I too am a fan — of the original Star Trek — which was, at its time, a unique show with the power to convey values that its successors never quite captured, because the times had changed. For example, Roddenbury’s stand against bigotry and racial prejudice clearly came through, again and again, something that had a powerful effect on a generation and the times it lived in. So, Trek had both its pluses and its minuses with respect to how it matched reality. I always thought that the adventure aspect was simply the vehicle for getting an audience, rather than being predictive, educational, or an attempt to accurately portray either the present or the future. The adventure was the medium, not the message (apologies to Marshall McLuhan). Without an attentive audience you don’t stay on the air and you have no way to spread your ideas.
Even though we’ve all heard silly stories, I suspect that most people who watch(ed) Star Trek can/could clearly separate it from reality in their minds and the “anti-gravity chambers here on Earth” clowns are very much in the minority. There were other aspects which helped to remind watchers that it was fiction (although most of us probably didn’t really want that reminder and would rather have just immersed ourselves in a really cool show, leaving the analysis for the pundits).
The departure from reality that always stuck out to me with Star Trek was that, within the one hour time period, they (ignoring commercials) always spent 59½ minutes getting into big trouble and the last 30 seconds getting out of it, then everything’s wonderful again and we all live happily ever after. Life just isn’t like that, but it is the standard formula for a one-hour TV adventure, and it works; always has. But I don’t think there was any intent for it to be “teaching us what we as a nation should be doing,,” even though, at some level, it did often do exactly that.
I guess the bottom line is that I’d rather just enjoy my entertainment, not analyze it. One thing I will say: it is a prime example of how the entertainment of the 60’s was far superior to the fertilizer that most TV shows dish up today. No wonder reruns and retro seem to be dominating entertainment these days.
Steve
I think we’re in agreement. My problem was with the presumption that Star Trek “embedded the value and need to explore space”. That’s just silly. Star Trek was an adventure series that, as you say, projected cultural dilemmas onto a space storyboard in an entertaining way. As Scott Pace says, Star Trek made space flight look easy. Not just technologically, but in that there really weren’t any policy arguments about it. There was no question that the voyages of the Enterprise were worth it. Why? Star Trek embodied the spirit of the cold war, in that there were real threats (Klingons, Romulans), and there was simply no question that we would have to project our might to defend ourselves against evil intentions of those who would threaten us. Star Trek originally aired during the peak of the Gemini and Apollo programs, you’ll recall. What Star Trek may have done, through it’s regular reruns, is reminded us in a completely fallacious way why we do human space flight. Perhaps it’s because of those reruns that we have inane members of Congress spouting off about how human space flight is part of our national defensive posture, where the Chinese are lame standins for Klingons and Romulans.
Hallie,
Although some of the story lines were corny, even more so by today’s standards, many of them also asked “questions“, either outright, usually the case with the social issues, or subtly inserted into the viewers’ minds. I don’t know if this was a script requirement or something that Roddenbury (as producer) edited in. These questions, I believe, caused many viewers to think past the story line to the characteristics of human behaviour, both that of individuals and that of groups of various sizes and makeup.
What made this very powerful, I think, is that some shows ended with their question unanswered, just hanging there, inviting the viewer to think about it for himself. This sort of additional exchange is far more powerful than the spoon-fed drivel of “reality” TV (triviality TV?). For instance, the one question that, to this day, still makes me think, looking for an answer, was not specific to any episode, but rather originated from the series as a whole. That question is simply “how do we get there from here?”
There are a great many things about the Star Trek universe of the 22nd century that are very different from today. Not just technology, but social and political issues as well as other things, some bad, most very good (like they don’t use money, nobody starves or dies of common diseases, and almost nobody who is part of the Federation is an enemy to any other). Although many of the scripts were obviously analogies or allegories of situations from our present world and from our history, almost everybody in the Star Trek Federation is a good Samaritan, almost to the point of being altruistic, but they are still recognizable as behaving like typical human beings of our century (I’m generalizing too much, but I think you know what I mean; things like racing 200 light years away to deliver a vaccine).
After all these years. I still wonder, how did we get from our way of life to that of theirs? How do we get there from here?
And then there’s the most amazing question of all, how come every sentient being in the Federation (except the Horda) speaks English? (Perhaps they all watched Sesame Street as kids.) Ah, the power of television.
Steve
I think the public is happy as long as they see research, development and advancements. What I have heard over and over again over the last year is “why did we get stuck on Shuttle for 30 years and make no advancements”. Science fiction instilled some expectations, but mainly the public wants to see return on their tax dollars. They don’t want to spend a lot of money. They do not necessarily have to know much about the return, but they need to know that we are advancing. The smoke and fire of shuttle held their attention but after 30 years everyone wonders now how we wound up in a predicament where the country that was ostensibly the leader in space exploration a year ago can no longer put a human in space and it won’t get any better over the next decade while we are waiting for Orion. NASA’s lack of advancements is now having a very negative effect on people’s confidence in the space program and a very negative effect on expectations. That people have heard about the Constellation Program for eight years with nothing to show for it has only deepened those negative feelings. We’d best pray that Space-X, Orbital and Boeing are successful because I can foresee a negative kickback that could wind up eliminating the human space flight program for good. NASA’s leadership over the last 20 years lost its direction. They were too busy feathering their nests, building their organizations, and lost sight of advancing the future. Now we will be lucky if we can recover.
There are numerous useful design solutions; unfortunately we lack a design culture. We had it under NACA. Apollo created a mission culture. Shuttle and ISS created an ops culture. Constellation/SLS/Orion created a political culture without even a mission. X-33, X-34, X-37 and DC-X were at least attempts at new designs, but only X-37 has actually flown in space, and only for DOD. The most promising new design is the DOD’s reusable booster. It’s depressing that NASA shows no interest in reusability.
Dragon and Falcon are old tech but they have actually flown and they have a mission. Right now they are the best designs that NASA has, and it’s high time they were operational.
Star Trek? I barely know what Star Trek is and only because there was a movie that came out … don’t expect anyone born post 1980 to relate to any Star Trek reference.
JJ,
My first impulse was to say, that’s you’re loss; it was a show very much worth watching. But after thinking about it, I don’t know if it would have any impact on people who didn’t live (and think) through the 1960s.
Star Trek still runs in reruns in many countries (I live in Ontario, Canada and it runs twice a day on the Space Channel). It has also been overdubbed into several languages. I’d be really curious to know how people younger than myself, people who didn’t live through 1960s, react to it. Most of the issues are still issues today, some not so much so in North America as they were then, but all of them still happening in the world.
Warning, anybody seeing it for the first time should not expect CGI and fabulous graphics; they didn’t exist then. Scenery was made largely from Styrofoam and spray paint. Its weekly “effects” budget was probably less than some kids today get for a weekly allowance. But a lot more thought went into Star Trek in 1966 than the stuff on TV today. Finally. if you’ve seen the new movie, don’t expect the TV show the be the same, specially on a small screen.
Steve
I’m of the ilk that I think that for all the R&D and spinoffs there is one simple truth. The shuttle program was started while we were walking on the moon. April 1972 is when the bill for it ran through congress. so almost 40 years of the shuttle and no one had the audacity to come up with a design for a simple,reliable and cheap capsule to get us up to LEO for a decent price. 40 years is a very long time. sky lab for an example of back of an envelope on on a napkin design… I know that way oversimplifies it but skylab did get built. I think that in my mind and being overly simple here, it should be relativity simple. Lets see, a lightweight, solid pressure vessel, we have done that before. Computers, well this cheap laptop I’m using has a lot more power than the Apollo guidance computer. power, well how about a combo solar and fuel cells that might be interesting. Life support, how simple was the Lunar Module’s environmental system? heat shielding, tiles? phenolic resin? ect. I have books with schematics of the Apollo and Gemini and Mercury capsules its all been designed we have the plans! Why do I bring these old dead horse out for a beating? I simply look at how we get to LEO today… On an almost 50 year old designed Soyuz. Why is this so hard? Enlighten me. I hope someone reads this who wants to be the next John C. Houbolt? Someone please step up and be that” voice somewhere out in the wilderness and forward a few simple thoughts”
You are absolutely correct Patrick. There is absolutely nothing that would prevent us from designing, developing and building a human rated spacecraft in a matter of months. If we were in a warlike situation and had to do it, it could be done, probably even faster. If we took a skunk-works type approach with a small number of knowledgeable people who are given clear direction it could easily be done. It is how it ought to be done.
That is why organizations like Space-X are making relatively quick progress.
On the other hand when you have too large an organization, with too many people, particularly those in charge who have little or no demonstrated ability and they aren’t sure what their overall job is or what their particular role or function is, then you are stuck in a bureaucratic morass in which people are literally afraid to do anything for fear of treading on someone else’s function, and at the same time, people are jockeying for political power since authority and responsibility is given by friendships rather than by knowledge, experience, capability or talent.
In the earlier programs people learned by doing. As they learned the spacecraft became more complex but the people became more knowledgeable in their given area of expertise. We lost all of that beginning in the early 90s. Lots of people were put into leadership positions with no demonstrated past experience. The biggest hit came over the last several years with the shutdown of Shuttle as we lost a lot of the experience.
That is NASA today. NASA and human space flight are as large as ever but person-for-person doing less than ever before.
Patrick,
Mercury, Gemini and Apollo had the capability to get their crews from one place to another, period. Staying alive and taking photographs were pretty much the total extent of what you could do in any of those three capsules. The “experiments” performed during those missions involved primarily the human body and cameras. The other experiment equipment was very small; there was simply no room for anything bigger. If you read the flight plans, all too often it was “move this to get at that.”
If we, today, had all of the drawings, and all of the manufacturing and test equipment needed, and were to rebuild any of these three capsules, we’d be able to do exactly what they did then, and nothing additional. What would be the point of that? Three days in a shoe box of a taxi would give us nothing of value, at best another flags and footprints-type mission.
We have newer and better technology and materials, and we need to be learning how to apply them to creating more capable spacecraft and LVs. Reusing what was used decades ago would be a complete waste of money and a huge step backwards — a hole, not a goal.
One of the biggest reasons for being in the situation we’re in today is exactly because the same technology is used over and over again. NASA and various government entities are happy to just use the same technology and design concepts on every program, at best making the LVs a little bigger every few years, and refusing to invest significantly in R&D; therefore the capability that we have today differs very little from what we had in the 1960s. The only relevant large-scale progress has been in computing power and computer size/weight reduction, and it isn’t being made in rad-hardened versions, so isn’t being used.
What you suggest doing is, for the most part, reusing the same vintage of technology as Soyuz, so why build, and create/maintain facilities, for the same thing? It makes a lot more sense, from a cost and risk position, to me at least, to just keep buying Soyuz rides from the Russians. The only issue is American pride. Well, pride has to be earned, and you don’t earn it by standing still, spinning your wheels, which is what NASA has done and apparently plans to continue doing.
It’s long past time that NASA and its contractor buddies did more than just trying to stretch the existing designs a little bigger, and designed something better. The prerequisite for this is, and always has been research — directed, relevant research, not spin-offs and ipad apps. We’re not talking about making candles or pencils, which can be done the same way for ever. Advances in space science are required, not repeated reuse of the same old tech.
Steve
I think NASA has something new and exciting.The deep space vehicle.It is to be launched in pieces.No SLS.MPLM based.
Nobody had the audacity to come up with a simple, reliable, and cheap capsule for LEO because there was no market. You think someone would do it just for fun? Entrepreneurs saw the end of the space shuttle as an opportunity, it was a gamble but they have succeed with major political backing from the president. So to answer your question, LEO access is indeed not so technically hard, but nobody saw an economic model for it … in fact, some like me still don’t see an economic model for it. A lack of volume and profitability is the biggest risk moving forward, not technical feasibility, for all commercial launch providers. The easy part is development as far as cost projections, the hard part is operations, including idle periods. Not to mention that the ISS is only a finite destination of only a few years, what then?
“Let’s see what’s out there”. Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard in the very first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
NASA should thank its lucky stars for Star Trek. Really. Star Trek is an image of what could be. Of possibilities. That encourages people to imagine. When they start to imagine, then they start to create. If they start to create, over time, well, maybe one day someone will come up with a feasible warp drive. And its likely at some point that person or people involved, at least once in their lives will have looked to the stars and asked “Let’s see what’s out there”.
Make it so.
Reader comments extolling ‘Star Trek’ reveal a generational disconnect, and that must be recognized. The imaginings of the old vs the imaginings, or lack thereof, of the young. In today’s world, there is no ‘bogeyman’ like the USSR kicking us up a notch, there is only ‘will my pizza be delivered on time for American Idol?’ or some such irrelevancies. Our leadership is promising them care of their lives under their parents at least until age 26. How is that helpful? Do we need war (or disease) to progress and excel? The DVR and the next govt check will not further exploration. Are we to be a people based on govt reliance, or a people based on free will? We no longer have differences of opinion on how we want to achieve our goals as a nation, but rather what those goals are.
I think that once we figure out how to get to LEO on the cheap, we will be wasting time and money, this country seems to like doing that. I don’t disagree with you, however I am not speaking of only bringing back the old technology but perfecting it with our know-how. Working on other exotic programs can begin in earnest and be launched to be assembled by crews launched on their Chevy caviler, simple stripped down easy to maintain ect spacecraft. I would think since we are sending up 2-4 astronauts on a Soyuz every year at 50 million apiece… My point is that we may not always get along with the Soviets- oops! I mean the Russians… We need to diversify out LEO access. I remember another time we put all our eggs in one basket, it got really messy on Jan 26th 1986…just saying.
“I am not speaking of only bringing back the old technology but perfecting it with our know-how.“
Patrick,
If I understand what you mean by that, and I’m not sure I do, I still have to wonder what benefit you see in it. What do we gain by spending far more money creating creating a Soyuz clone and the facilities for it than we can buy Soyuz rides from Russia for? Shouldn’t we instead be working on the next stage of the game?
I look at this the same way as I do managing a business (although they’re certainly not the same problem). During the 1970s and 80s, there was a wave of efficiency studies in many industries. Ultimately these studies failed to solve some of the major problems because they looked at efficiency only and ignored effectiveness. Even today, many people confuse the two. Efficiency basically addresses how cheaply and/or quickly a specific task can be performed. Effectiveness, on the other hand, looks at which tasks should be included in a given process — what we should be doing as opposed to how well we do what we are doing. Why worry about doing task ABC more efficiently when we don’t actually need to be doing it at all? The best thing to do with ABC is eliminate it or replace it with the new task DEF.
That’s what I think of reading your “perfecting it with our know-how.” I can’t see any value in making capsules more quickly, or at less cost, or “perfected with our know-how” when making capsules is not what we need to be doing at all. The Shuttle was a move in the right direction, but its implementation was only a first attempt at “space planes” and it desperately needed to evolve, but instead we let it ramble on, unrefined, for more than three decades. Stagnation set in. Attempts by the USSR and EU to fly the equivalent of the Shuttle (Buran and Hermes) were canceled before achieving success, so Shuttle was Earth’s only space plane program that actually flew missions, our only shot at moving to the next stage. Only recently has there been any demonstration of progress, when DOD picked up the X-37 which NASA canceled. However, the X-37, even if they scale the next one up to its original plan, will suffer the same major shortcoming as capsules — it’s just too small to do anything with that includes people doing anything but flying from point A to point B, so we’re back to square one again.
Perhaps Dream Chaser will evolve into what the Shuttle’s next step could have been, but it too affords little functionality beyond a taxi with passengers strapped in, hip to hip. Our space technology needs to evolve, and for that to happen, first our thinking must evolve. At least, for what it’s worth, that’s how I see it.
Steve
Steve,
First, I’m just a average Joe with only an LPN diploma. I am a huge space buff since the first shuttle flight Lifted off. That being said, I am also a pragmatic person and what has occurred in the 45 years in respect to NASA is a huge perversion of the simple, straight forward get it done kind of attitude that was prevalent in the beginning. That atmosphere got us from a 15 minute hop to the moon in only 8 years! I’m not against having another space plane of sorts. I just think that while I can understand your thoughts on duplicating Soyuz, I just think that we need to be able to get into orbit on the cheap and as simple as possible. I believe that it does not matter where we go, whether it’s ISS or to L1 or L2 or the moon, or to an asteroid. The hardest part is getting above the atmosphere. I think that having our own “Soyuz” type capsule that would utilize current rockets and slightly modified facilities will lower our costs and therefore leave more money across the board. I think we don’t need a U haul truck to haul our astronauts to LEO! We can and we are obligated by law, build a huge U Haul type of launch vehicle. we don’t even have to man rate it. Not man rating the SLS a substantial savings can be had.
I agree, Keith. Instead of whining about how Star Trek makes NASA’s job too hard, perhaps there should be more of embracing Star Trek and educating the public on the differences and what NASA is currently doing to achieve some of those fantasitcal dreams of the Star Trek future. Marc Millis had a wonderful series of reality-based articles on the physics of Star Trek and what NASA was doing in terms of breakthrough propulsion http://www.nasa.gov/centers…
I would encourage more of the same from NASA. I know there is an entire generation of physicists and engineers that drew their inspiration to study science and math from their watching Star Trek growing up. Live long and prosper, y’all!
Seams NASA and congress avoid what is hard. If Space flight is double hard. Shouldn’t we try double hard to solve the problems. Look at Spacex and recoverable boosters that maybe triple hard! But isn’t something impossible if you don’t try at all?
Isn’t SLS like let’s avoid the the issue of making man a multi planet species which should be NASAs goal?
Pass the pork chops Please!
Here are some images of NASA plans for deep space vehicles.They call them habitats but they have engines,so they are vehicles.Would this be Enterprise-0001 if it flies? The first 2 are 60 day and the second 2 are 500day.Cruise out to an asteroid.Kind of like Star Trek in the Solar System.Star Trek had a lot of shows about asteroids.Maybe this is why NASA is going there.Hardly any about Mars or Luna.MPLM,ISS modules and Orion.Looks good to me.You asked for Enterprise and NASA is giving it to you maybe,just an early model.When I edited they switched posistion of the images.The most complicated is the 500 day,where ever they put it.