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Policy

More NASA Strategies That Are Not Very Strategic

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 2, 2014
Filed under

Pioneering Space: The Next Steps on the Path to Mars
“Over the past four years, NASA has been implementing the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, which was enacted on a broad bipartisan basis and reflects agreement between Congress and the Administration on the nation’s next steps in space.  A new paper from our Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) explains NASA’s roadmap to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s.”
NASA’s Strategic Plan Isn’t Strategic – or a Plan

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

13 responses to “More NASA Strategies That Are Not Very Strategic”

  1. Lowell James says:
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    Your title is appropro Keith.

    This May 29 Pioneering Space white paper from Bolden tries to ameliorate and placate most every faction (except not the moon-first people) while describing at the outset a flags and footprints Apollo-like mission to land humans on Mars in the name of exploration. It appears the NASA higher-archy is still the shortsighted viewpoint that we have to go somewhere and get there in a hurry rather than we need to build for supportablity, sustainability, and the ability to move outward.

    They talk all about cis-lunar first and extending humanity into the solar system (blablabla) but do not actually describe how they will accomplish that.given that the strategy are far too expensive throw away Orion and SLS and the current work I see ongoing are not the development of the technologies that will be required for a sustainable or evolvable program. .

    So there is no plan and no strategy.

    Very disappointing.

    Mars in 2035-not likely.

    Using this paper as a “plan”, decades more of circular thinking in which nothing will likely be gained.

    Maybe we’ll see a more straightforward plan with the next Administration.

    • Panice says:
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      We need a new Congress more than a new Administration.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        A challenge when gerrymandering has eliminated almost all competitive seats.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Worse, more voters favor a different party than the one locked in power; it’s a serious problem. Only a decade or so ago there were cries from the right to term limit, remember>

    • dogstar29 says:
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      I don’t think Bolden even believes this. But he has no choice. Congress has demanded it, a statement that the SLS/Orion will be built, and thus must have a mission. It’s a waste of money, the biggest pork barrel in the history of the space program. It will never happen. But he has to pretend that it will, because it’s the law.

      • Wendy Yang says:
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        Time to bring in the loophole abuses and word for word lawyers, then.

        • dogstar29 says:
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          An interesting idea. Are you suggesting that there may be some way to evade the law? One possibility that occurs to me is that the law cannot compel a person to do the impossible. (Legally is NASA a “person”?)

          • Wendy Yang says:
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            No, because NASA is legally bounded to the US government. And even so, which definition of “impossible” are you basing your claim on?
            (Disclaimer: am not a lawyer)

  2. Anonymous says:
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    Wouldn’t it have been less vague to just say we assume the ISS has an end of life in the mid 2020’s. We assume NASA gets to keep that money. We assume the NASA budget keeps growing more or less in keeping with current purchasing power -forever (…umm, ok let me slide on that one). Also, we think the items to get to Mars will be this, that and the other. That bigger departure stage. And the new boosters. Or maybe just many more flights of the 70t SLS. Then MDV’s and Habs and that alphabet city of things. That we think the ISS funds will allow us to finish these things by 2040…woops…make that 2050 something…ok…lets just stay vague…before it becomes obvious that NASA has to really change how things get done to get this all to add up sooner, rather than in the year 2089.

  3. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    Any project that wants to use the ISS after 2020 will need replanning. it will have to be either cut short or move to a new spacestation.

    • Anonymous says:
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      There’s the rub. We got into a spot where you don’t start something new without discarding what you had, as was the case with the Shuttle. The logistics line out into space, instead of being secured, grown, and strengthened, is stretched and weakened by not wanting to tackle growing the industry that must take over the rear lines. Unsustainable, ultimately.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        I do not see any reason to set any end of life date for the ISS, unless it has already been replaced by a more advanced station.

  4. Lowell James says:
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    No doubt we need Congressional support also, but I fault the NASA management first and the President and his Administration next. I was just re-reading the Station decision and how NASA organized the interagency group which included the DOD, Commerce, State, and Science, to decide how to move forward in 1983, and NASA put together ‘the package’ to sell the President and his staff. NASA pushed and lobbied and strategized and got the support amongst the various departments, often bucking severely negative support.

    I don’t see any of that today. I don’t see a good rationale put forward. I don’t see a logical program laid out. I don’t see anyone in NASA organizing for the future. I see some lip service about how great a future we will one day have, as put forward by Bolden in this statement, but they are starting out on the wrong foot with Orion and it does not get any better from there.

    The current set of NASA managers think they (and it was none of them, it was a prior generation of Station management) that the Station decision was made in 1993. It wasn’t. In 93 the Russians helped to keep the program sold (by a single vote), but the hard work of establishing the rationale for a Station was done a decade before. I have not seen the current NASA management put together the rationale or the plan to implement such a rationale. ARM certainly is not it.