IMHO, NASA has done a pretty fine job overall, and has done more than anybody else by a large margin to further mankind’s knowledge and exploration of space.
Yet, it’s a big and thus political organization, which has to bend to the whims of congress (read: ISS) and deal with the inefficiences and problems that are part of any big organization, plus an ever-shrinking budget. They’ve had their failures as well as their successes. What would you change about the way we are approaching space exploration, if you could?
My answer:
(1) Fund it more. Currently we spend about 0.98% of the federal budget on space exploration. I think we could scrounge up 3 or 4% with no real hardship to anybody.
(2) Stop pouring money into ratholes like the ISS. I don’t see this as NASA’s fault per se - they’re doing it because it’s been mandated that they do it. Having a space station is not a bad goal, but there are better and cheaper ways. It’s just sucking up massive amounts of cash that NASA could better use for other things. Bad cost/benefit ratio on this one.
(3) Tilt the funding balance a bit more towards unmanned science. Even a tiny fraction of the ISS funds would do amazing things here. Instead of launching one Pathfinder (and thanking our lucky stars it worked), or one Polar Lander (and never hearing from it again), we could launch 10 of each. You’ll lose some and some will work, but you’ll get quite a lot more science data back. And if you buy a bunch of them at once, they get cheaper per copy. We should have blanketed the solar system in unmanned probes by now.
(4) Get NASA out of the space truck business. It does this adequately, but not effeciently or cheaply. (To some extent, this is happening with United Space Alliance, but they still have to deal with the same old systems).
(5) We need a new generation of launch vehicles. The shuttle fleet is old, expensive, finicky, and hard to maintain. It should be a national priority to replace it with something that emphasizes low cost-to-orbit, fast turn around, and simplicity. Proposals from Lockmart or Boeing or whomever should be handled in those terms. Instead of months between launches, we should be able to do it in days, without having to practically inspect every nut and bolt in the vehicle each time around.
What else?
peas on earth