[QUOTE=rbroome]
I have heard a lot about how mis-guided and expensive NASA is. I wonder what the Straight Dope is. Certainly they spend a lot of money-and waste a lot of money. Just like many organizations I know. What I am curious about is can anyone do it better?
[/quote]
The essential problem with NASA, like any government bureaucracy, is that it exists at the whims of politicians who will support it or not primarily based on how much work or favor it brings to their constituency. With this in mind, NASA’s primary perrogative is to make as much publicity over how valuable their current big project is and how critical it is to the continued development of spaceflight, even when it’s clearly not. A prime example is the Space Transportation System (Shuttle and boosters) and Space Station Alpha/Freedom Station/International Space Station. While the pre-Challenger disaster Shuttle program initially had several major roles, including delivering commerical and military payloads, polar orbit military missions, recovery and repair of orbiting satellites, short term orbital laboratory, et cetera, in addition to its role as a cargo truck for a permanent orbiting space platform, it has come to be defined as necessary based upon supporting the ISS, and indeed, this is all that keeps the program operating, to the point of actually neglecting other important missions. Is the ISS necessary? Highly questionable, especially given how delayed construction has been and how crippled the concept has become, to the point that it’ll never support a complement of full time scientists in addition to the working crew. It is also–space enthusiast and journalist claims to the contrary–not a viable assembly point or fuel depot for staging interplanetary missions. And it provides little in additional value in studying long term effects of free fall environments on humans as the Soviets/Russians already have a substantial body of data indicating the deleterious effects if that.
On the other hand, NASA has had some remarkable successes, aside from putting men on the Moon. The Gemini program was a fantastic success as a bargin basement price; it’s likely that Gemini hardware could have put men on the Moon, and such plans were being made in case Apollo was cancelled or had significant hangups. The STS, despite its inherent warts and lack of direction, has had the most successful launches of any single design manned vehicle and is to date the only reusable space orbit vehicle that has actually been flown operationally. And JPL has pulled rabbit after rabbit out of their hat with a succession of interplanetary probes and landers which have provided a wealth of information on embarassingly small budgets.
Without NASA, spaceflight would be in the hands of the military, which may or may not have decided that it was worth the effort, depending on how far the Soviets progressed. By establishing a civilian agency, the United States demonstrated that spaceflight could have commerical and scientific applications (mostly) independent of mlitary interest. But NASA, as currently constructed, is a relic of Apollo, transmorgified around the STS (when it became clear that funding for Apollo was at an end), and now centered on the Constallation program, which means they have to spin and showboat first, rather than emphasize science and valuable (unmanned) exploration. NASA probably should have been converted back into the research clearinghouse like NACA (from whence it came), and space exploration efforts semi-privatized in government-owned non-profit companies analogous to The Aerospace Corporation. But that’s not going to happen; nor, I suspect, is commercial manned spaceflight going to be a viable profit-making business in the foreseeable future (at least, not without massive improvements and cost reductions in propulsion).
So yes, it’s too expensive, and yes, at this point, it’s the only one that can.
[QUOTE=rbroome]
NASA is developing an engine test stand-costing at least $200million, to test full-sized rocket engines in near-vacuum. Not for a second or two, but for the full 50 sec. burn-at sea level. Something about lots and lots of steam keeping the ambient pressure very low so that the engine operates in realistic conditions. Maybe this is useful, maybe not. (I am not a rocket scientist!). But I haven’t heard of anyone else conducting such a test. The rest of the world will just wait for NASA to do the research and make the necessary changes to their engines.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, this would be fantastic. Currently, we have to do static tests at as high an elevation as we can reasonably manage to minimize the effects of atmosphere on rocket performance, and then try to calculate out what the vacuum performance would be. This leads to all sorts of uncertainty. Is it worth $200M? Well it allows us to get much better data on what’s actually going on in the motor than trying to get telemetry and performance data in flight where there are all sorts of unconstrained variables. On the other hand, that’s a big chunk of change (though not, as previously indicated, very much compared to the bucketloads of money we’re dumping into the desert currently). Of course, much of this information will be publicized and other nations and private companies will benefit, too. Does it ultimately get us something worth the outlay? That’s up to propulsion engineers to figure out.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
If you think NASA was leading the Soviets, you don’t know the history. The Soviets dominated space exploration. The only milestone the US had was the first moon landing (which admittedly was a big one). But by pretty much any objective standard, NASA was virtually always second place.
[/QUOTE]
It’s true that the Soviets were far more on the ball than they’re typically given credit for, especially in the early days of manned spaceflight, and even today in the venue of permanent orbital platforms. The US, though, has had more significant successes in interplanetary exploration; save for Venus and the Venera and Vega programs, the Soviets didn’t have much luck in the way of interplanetary missions, and have never aspired to missions in the outsystem (Jupiter and beyond). And between competing reusable spaceflight programs it’s clear that the STS was more successful, albeit this probably had more to do with economic and political conditions in the waning years of the USSR; it can be argued that Buran was in many regards significantly better designed than the STS.
For my money, though, I’d look toward China, who appears to be in manned spaceflight for the long haul. While they’re spending a relative pittance, they seem to have an actual, reasonable development plan, and an impetus to demonstrate to the world their growing technology prowess. The ESA, by contrast, doesn’t seem to have a clue where they want to go, how they plan on getting there, and what resources they’re willing to put behind it. It seems like mostly a way for European nations to bicker with one another over who owes whom what.
Stranger