NASA's Human Exploration Program: Reports & Hype – But No Clear Plan
The Debate About The Future Of Human Spaceflight – 30 Years On, Marcia Smith, Aviation Week
“Will NASA’s newest plans languish as well, or are we finally ready to move out on the next phase of human exploration? Can we avoid diversions like the Asteroid Redirect Mission? Will Congress sustain the level of funding it provided for NASA in FY2015 — $549 million more than the President requested? Is that enough to make real progress? The “Journey to Mars” hype associated with the Orion test last month seems to have been effective in educating the public that NASA has not, in fact, gone out of business, but won’t the public wonder what happened when this year and next year and the year after that pass with no more Orion flights?”
– Yet Another Space Policy Advisory Committee, earlier post
– Yet Another Slow Motion Advisory Committee on Human Space Flight, earlier post
– Yet Another NASA Pick-the-Next-Destination Effort, earlier post
– Bolden: NASA Does Not Have To Actually Go To An Asteroid, earlier post
They seem to be missing a strategy and the communications mechanism for communicating the strategy. Amazing how NASA seems to have lost their ability to think and speak. They are entirely focused on near term, brief hype statements like the first step to Mars without anything to back it up.
Quote from Ms. Smith: “It wasn’t that long ago that Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill and in the White House agreed on the path forward – the Constellation program.”
Ms. Smith disparages the ISS for its long development time and cost growth. She says nothing about the future of the ISS and Commercial Crew, which were to be scrapped under Constellation. She states flatly that there is “widespread consensus” that manned flight to Mars should be our next step. She does not address the potential for cost growth or the practical value of such an endeavor.
I think this puts the cart before the horse. First let’s get ISS working and productive. It and the transportation between Earth and ISS is the foundation of the infrastructure Ms. Smith describes.
Yeah, this seems to echo some of Mike Griffin’s comments about the value of ISS, the same comments he had to basically retract when he learned (SHOCKER) his workforce had spent decades of their lives creating.
While NASA can make things like ISS go painfully slow and cost too much, you have to admit that it is actually the first example of a commercial space station that businesses will use to base their assumptions/design decisions on. Every single (truly) commercial station in the future can go through all the all the Do’s and Don’t’s of the ISS and be able to assign numbers or value to the different activities: tourism, visiting scientists, merit of designing for maintenance EVAs, need to automate routine maintenance tasks, need to have multiple launch providers, value of having NanoRacks-style commercial experiments, price other nations are willing to pay to have an “astronaut” up there, and the list goes on.
While no one is going to copy the ISS, everyone is going to learn from both the good and bad that NASA, Roskosmos, ESA, JAXA, etc. and the next generation of space stations will be MUCH better as a result. I wish NASA would go faster, but they don’t, but I’m still glad they made the effort, it’ll pay dividends well into the future.
It could pay dividends now if we get on the ball…
I think NanoRacks, SpaceX, Planet Labs, Bigelow and more would argue it already pays… 🙂
We can always want more, but this is a LOT better than during Skylab or Shuttle. I think we are moving in the right direction.
I think you have hit on some things-some that reiterate what DR. Smith wrote, and some that are also important despite not having captured her attention. In the 1980s the plan was to build infrastructure. The NASA leadership seemingly got led astray.
We had a critical piece of the infrastructure, Shuttle. Instead of trying to improve upon it, lowering costs, speeding efficiency, improving performance and safety, we actively chose to do none of those things. Over time it became less efficient, more expensive, and know safety issues were not reconsidered. If you speak with the managers who developed Shuttle, they thought the existing NASA HSF management was nuts throwing Shuttle away, particularly before there was a replacement.
You do have to wonder what is wrong with the NASA ISS Management. I am not talking about some managers who retired in the distant past. I am talking about the Gerstenmaiers and Suffredinis who are there today and who have been there for fifteen years. NASA knew how to do efficiency, speed and commercialization on Spacehab and on Mir. Yet they allowed none of those people or organizations to move into ISS. ISS today is inefficient, ineffective, And as you say “lets get ISS working and productive”-they should have been doing this for the last 15 years, not having to start now. And why did ISS take the $100 billion and 25 years? Is it the same mentality and poor management that made it inefficient and ineffective in its operation? Spacehab was a fully commercial project. Yet they now tout Commercial Crew and Cargo as something new and different. Not so. Why didnt they start that 15 years ago?
The problem is the leadership. The US HSF leadership is inefficient and ineffective.
They lack a Werner von Braun, a man with a vision. Without a vision they will go nowhere.
von Braun built his first rockets using slave labor. Not the best “vision” to be yearning for.
OK, you may have a point there!
True, Keith, and deplorable, but hardly germane to the question– we DO need leadership at NASA and in so many other parts of our country.
It should be pointed out that even when leaders do arrive they are killed by a thousand cuts.
“Leaders maximize gains, managers merely minimize losses” – me
NASA has “Management” (as does Boeing, Lock-Mart, etc). SpaceX, currently, has “leadership”, though the question is “for how long?”
Leadership makes the “pie” bigger. Managers employ accountants to carefully slice what had been previously created by leaders without adding anything to it.
NASA has something better. They have Mr. Musk
So a “vision” automatically means funding?
With a visionary leader they could do a lot with the funding they already have. But I know this is not a privat company, so maybe this is just a dream I have.
So THEE most charismatic leader comes along and gives “the speech” and this changes congress and their self interests how?
The leader must lead by example. He should have the power to start with out having to ask congress. U know like maybe have his own company.
Exactly go around Congress and NASA is the only way forward.
Marcia Smith is making the same mistake made in so many of those glossy reports featured in this articles graphic. Inspiration has to be informed by reality. Inspiration and vision can guide us, motivate us, and provide for a common understanding of why we go forward, what we wish to achieve, and the challenges we expect. Inspiration can not be devoid of a proper understanding of the resources we can expect, how we might achieve our vision within these limitations, and what has to change in our approach to temper visions and inspiration as we go about overcoming challenges.
Perhaps because NASA is such an engineering and technical organization, or perhaps because so many resources are entrained in contractors and states that are loath to let these go, budgets resources have always been treated as a constraint, an annoyance. Until reasonably likely budget resources are treated as an input, on a par with the delta-v’s that are a given to get a spacecraft to orbit, the Moon or Mars, such calls for vision, or criticism about a lack thereof, border on hard-headed denial that simply furthers the existing fantasy – that all we need is the right leadership, and vision (and afterthought, then all the resources will follow).
Vision and inspiration are sorely needed, a broad unity of purpose, but just as well is an acceptance of the changes that must take place in NASA and it’s industry partners ways of doing business. Otherwise NASA space exploration is going nowhere, and pioneering even less. It’s that second part these editorials about vision always forget.
Okay, Keith… going clockwise from the leftmost: Aldridge, Paine, Ride, ISECG, Stafford, Augustine #2. Missing: Augustine #1, various NRC documents. What do I win?
You win confirmation that you have been doing space stuff for far too long! 😉
the thing about all of these reports is the complete lack of
detailed budget definition which is in deep contrast to many exploration plans leading up to Post-Apollo plans.