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frank_sietzen
NASA: How Would You Help the Messenger Improve the Message?

Frank’s note: In these pages we have seen one disconnect after another on how poorly NASA sometimes produces its own message. An overwhelming majority of people have no idea what NASA does, other than Shuttle missions and the Hubble. Strangely enough though, according to a focus group done for NASA in 2008, when people are told some details about the space program, belief that it is important to the nation […]

  • NASA Watch
  • September 8, 2010
What Constitutes Space Leadership?

Frank’s note: Of all of the recent NASA Administrators (Goldin, O’Keefe, Griffin) former Marine General Charles F. Bolden, Jr. has given the fewest public appearances of them all. Excluding college commencements and STEM talks to school children, Bolden has been largely AWOL from the public square this summer. The face of NASA leadership, to the public, agency employees and the press has been that of Deputy Administrator Lori B. Garver. […]

  • NASA Watch
  • September 6, 2010
Rocket Motors to Nowhere?

Frank’s note: Heaven forbid that the 5-segment solid rocket motor test would have blown up – nobody in their right minds would want that. But I have to ask why on Earth is NASA proceeding to invest time and money in testing boosters that may have no role in the future of human spaceflight. The Senate seems hell bent on requiring NASA to develop the next Heavy Lift launch vehicle […]

  • NASA Watch
  • September 2, 2010
Should NIAC be Revived?

Frank’s note: One of the casualties of the tight budget squeeze at NASA was the closing in 2007 of the agencys Institute for Advanced Concepts, the closest thing for a think tank that the aging bureaucracy has had in its 50 year history. Chartered to think about truly revolutionary, way-out space exploration devices and technologies, Mike Griffin needed to poach the groups paltry $4 million annual budget to help absorb […]

  • NASA Watch
  • June 11, 2009
Would You Bring Back NGLT-or SLI?

Frank’s note: There was a time-back in the day when NASA funded research programs designed to develop advanced space launch technologies, which in part were to reduce the cost of space transportation. The Next Generation Launch Technology (NGLT) program and the Space Launch Initiative (SLI) funded a series of innovative designs in liquid rocket engines, propulsion systems, materials and structures. SLI gave rise to the X-33 and X-34 technology demonstrator […]

  • NASA Watch
  • June 6, 2009
How Best to Access the ISS-and LEO?

Frank’s note: Readers, Keith has asked me to keep posting for awhile, so heres my latest query: been reading some of the ideas for a commercially-derived lifting body crewed spacecraft that would make use of the existing expendable launch vehicle fleet, although the spacecraft itself would largely be reusable. My question: If a COTS-D solicitation is to be made, should it be opened to a lifting body as well as […]

  • NASA Watch
  • May 31, 2009
Remembering Apollo 11 and the Legacy of Apollo

Frank’s note: Readers, Ive been working of late with Buzz Aldrin and his team to help prepare a series of presentations related to this summers 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission. There are so many commemorations planned around the world that a friend is writing an article for a travel magazine about them. But do you think it will resonate with the American public? In other words, […]

  • NASA Watch
  • May 30, 2009
Why Some Say the Moon?

Frank’s note: Readers, in this my last exercise in gauging your ideas before Keith slips back in the saddle, I thought Id ask your views about the moon-specifically on whether or not to make it the initial focus of the VSE. Again, Buzz Aldrin has provoked my thoughts by suggesting that the U.S. defer any manned landings on the moon at all, instead developing a multi-national lunar development regime and […]

  • NASA Watch
  • May 26, 2009
This Memorial Day, Let Us Remember The Heroes of Space

Frank’s note: I remember the sound the wheels made as they clanked on the asphalt pathways of Arlington National Cemetery. In my minds eye I see the sunlights glint on the brass buckles holding saddle to horse, for it was the horses that accompanied the procession that carried his flag-draped coffin that hot summers day. It was July 1999, less than three weeks before the commemoration of the 30th anniversary […]

  • NASA Watch
  • May 23, 2009
Is the International Space Station Truly International?

Lost in Space, Op-Ed Buzz Aldrin, New York Post Frank’s note: In a recent op-ed published in the New York Post, Buzz Aldrin called the way the U.S. has managed the International Space Station as a form of Space Age colonialism. Aldrin said the U.S. treated its partners more like participants in the way NASA limited access to the station. He called for the admittance of such new space powers […]

  • NASA Watch
  • May 23, 2009