[QUOTE=Alessan]
The way I see it, the primary purpose of NASA is not science, nor is it “space exploration.” The primary purpose of NASA is spacecraft design. Period. Build a spacecraft, test it to see if it works, then build a better one. Don’t waste your time with science - leave that to the kids at MIT. Your job is in engineering.
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First of all, NASA does not and never has designed or built spacecraft. All of the detail and most of the systems engineering/integration work is done by aerospace contractors working to NASA-developed requirements. Boeing-McDonall Dougles, Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, Orbital Space Corporation, Alliant Technologies/Thinokol, and the former Rockwell/Rocketdyne companies served as prime or system-level contractors who were responsible for concept, detail design, and in many cases, assmebly and pre-flight operations.
Second, blaming NASA in particular for the Space Transportation System (STS, of which the Shuttle Orbiter is a part) is, while not incorrect, a mistatement of the ultimate responsiblity. NASA has pegged its operations on the STS and the ISS because this is what Congress decided that NASA’s job would be. There’s a great book on the development of the STS called Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System which details the development and early operational history of the Shuttle. Jenkins doesn’t shy from presenting both the early idealism of a truely reusable SSTO (single stage to orbit) or flyback booster system to the ultimate technical and political compromises that resulted in the STS which failed to meet performance expectations by a rough order of magnitude. Development of alternative and more capable transportation systems has been hampered by inconsistent funding, a risk-adverse philospohy that avoids pushing the technical envelope, and political posturing about the utility of the Shuttle despite its manifest problems, hence the desire to complete the ISS regardless of cost and problems.
Third, what NASA really does best is science missions; JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA’s unmanned exploration center, managed out of CalTech) has a rate of sucesses and failure abatement that can rival any technical program in the world. They’ve done some astonishing planetology, climatology, astronomy, and heliotropic missions that have provided invaluable data for both practical applications and abstract science. NASA should be better throught of and operated as a clearinghouse and mission oversight agency rather than a design bureau or system integrator. This would be more cost-effective, but it would result in upheavals (i.e. layoffs, center closures, et cetera) that are politically unacceptible to many.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
New spacecraft are being developed right now. The CEV is the next-generation spacecraft, and it’s well under development. Unfortunately, Shuttle and ISS consume a huge chunk of NASA’s budget, leaving few resources to work on other things.
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The CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle) is still in proposal stage, although requirements have been pretty well set. Part of the problem is, again, the risk-adverse attitude that (to quote Gene Kranz) “Failure is not an option.” It’s fine to have that attitude as a morale driver in a crisis, but in reality, things are going to get ufcked up occasaionly; in fact, that’s when you usually learn the most from what you’re doing. Calling CEV a “next generation” is something of a misnomer; far from advancing the state-of-the-art, it seeks to use all existing technology and largely off-the-shelf components to ensure reliablity. This isn’t, in and of itself, a bad thing–right now we could use some risk abatement–but it does harken back to Apollo rather than forward to spaceplanes or SSTO boosters. CEV should properly be considered an interim program, a stop-gap while the failures that have hobbled the STS are addressed and the technology for reusable personnel spacecraft is improved. (Heavy boost capability should probably be relgated to non-reusable SRB-type rockets for the indefinite future as the cheapest way to get payload to orbit.)
[QUOTE=EJsGirl]
That ain’t necessarily a good thing. I got the chance to talk to Gene Kranz about the Apollo program (and the programs that preceded and followed it), and he talked about how they were seconds and inches away from total disaster on every single mission, many times more than once. Not just the ill-fated Apollo 1 and Apollo 13.
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Well, yeah. That’s what happens when you push the technical envelope and try to accomplish an impossible goal in a short timespan. There’s nothing wrong with that, so long as you’re honest. The Apollo astronauts were all test pilots and fighter jocks who had as good an understanding of anyone the risks they were taking.
The Big Lie about the STS and the Shuttle is that it was a “space truck” that would turn around in two weeks and deliver personnel and massive payloads to orbit with a reliability of a 747. The truth is that it was a development testbed that was grown into a fleet of operational vehicles despite the early and well-known problems and cost-overruns. The problem is that there was, quite deliberately, no replacement planned for it. The tooling for Apollo (which was just coming into an economies-of-scale reducting in launch costs) was deliberately destroyed and future development programs were underfunded, as if the Shuttle was going to last indefinitely.
After the Challenger debacle, when it was made clear that the real problem wasn’t the technical failures of the SRB design but also management problems within the organization itself, NASA could/should have started a program of developing the next generation of systems and re-evaluted their approach to risk management. Instead, they dug in their heels, assured everyone that the Shuttle wasn’t fundimentally flawed, and continued on with sinking money into more Orbiters, even though the cost of five or six launches could go a long way to developing a much better replacement. Fundamentally, NASA is guilty of wanting so hard to please its Congressional masters that it deluded itself and everyone else into believing that the STS was a good long-term solution. To admit anything else would be to acknowledge that the STS was a “waste” (it wasn’t; the technical lessons learned are invaluable if applied to a subsequent design) and that NASA was failing at their primary mission…which is to be perfect and pretty, rather than to accomplish far-reaching goals and manage long-term space exploration.
Stranger