So how _would_ you change space exploration?

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

NASA is already working on number (5). SSTO, anyone?

What we need is an Orbital Transfer Vehicle. We have nothing that can get a manned vehicle out of low Earth orbit now. I want my bleedin’ Moonbase!

Think of the energy savings if we could launch some of the out-systen probes from the Moon, rather than schlepping the whole thing from the bottom of Earth’s gravity well in one shot. Assembly on the Moon, with Lunar industry manufacturing the cases and other bulky stuff for the probes…

Let NASA do what it does best: basic R&D and exploration. NASA shouldn’t be involved in commercial exploitation of space (the 'Space Truck Business). If NASA hadn’t interfered, we would have had a lot more commercial space launch companies 20 years ago, and a thriving industry now. And we’d probably be on about 5th generation of launch vehicles, operating at 1/10 the cost per pound.

Here’s an idea - shut it down. Give me my 1% tax reduction back in my wallet where it belongs - I’m sick and tired of funding space exploration because folks are curious about what’s out there - if you want to know, then pay for it yourself - don’t ask me to pay for your curiosity.


I open my mouth and the whole world turns smart.

The biggest problem with the space program is that we still haven’t recovered from the fundamental error in the 60’s that went for the bang for a buck skyrockets instead of developing real space planes. If we had stuck with developing real space craft instead of glorified fireworks, we’d be putting 747 sized vehicles in orbit everyday by now instead of the once in a blue moon puddle jumpers.

Space exploration, be it by machines or humans, will never amount to much if we continue to do it on a shoestring budget with cheapo spacecraft. Instead of pissing away money on tinkertoys we should be concentrating on heavy lift capability to get more freight into orbit and better power sources than friggin’ rockets for outside earth orbit travel.

We should have a BIG space station, one capable of assembling large lunar and interplanetary vehicles. And another one in orbit around the moon. Launching landers from Earth is clumsy and wasteful. Travel between celestial bodies should be by pure space craft with dedicated landers on both ends.

BTW…all the plans I see for a manned Martian mission involve one craft from Earth to Mars. Wouldn’t make more sense to do it piecemeal? Assemble all the the hardware and supplies for the landing and return in one big package in Earth orbit, send it ahead of time by cheap, slow unmanned craft and then send the people by a small, fast craft that could rendezvous with the unmanned supply craft in Martian orbit.


JB
Lex Non Favet Delicatorum Votis

EddietheDane complains:

Sure, under one condition: if you ever ask for a dime of tax money from my privately-funded space exploration activities, I won’t have to bother killing you, because you’ll eat the gun yourself.
Agreed?


“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”

Yeah, if NASA is shut down, they’ll send all the taxpayers back their portion of the money. Fat chance.


“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather

Akatsukami,

Aside from your ludicrous threat of violence, I accept your challenge. You see, I’ve never taken a dime from anyone, without having earned it first. You needn’t worry about me darkening your door with my hands outstretched - I don’t require charity from you or anyone else.

pldennison -

I’m not suggesting for a second that a reduction in expenditures necessarily means that the government will “see the light” and send me or anyone else a rebate. I just see NASA as yet another uncontrolled, low yield expense that the government embarks upon which I resent in the strongest sense.


I open my mouth and the whole world turns smart.

Eddie:

Good enough. As this is primarily a philosophical discussion, I think it important to distinguish the three positions of:
[list=1][li]Libertarianism, which prohibits the taking of tax revenues by force for any endeavor;[/li][li]Democracy, which insists that the will of the majority is ethically enforceable upon all, and;[/li][li]Whining, which wants millions for the whiner’s program, but not one cent for anyone else’s.[/li][/list=1]Since you had hitherto (no doubt by sheerest inadvertance) failed to indicate whether you adhered to the first or the last of these philospohies, I thought it not out of place to offer a test of which it would be.

Having settled that point, I would suggest that you show a total lack of interest in space exploration per se. Since you will not be financing this activity, you may have your dime back, and leave it to the rest of us to discuss how we will spend our money. See you around, gaijin.


“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”

There’s already another (probably troll-inspired) thread going on about whether we should fund space. Do we really have to do that again in this one?

Anyway, JBenz writes:

I think it depends on what “assembling in orbit” means. Doing anything in orbit is very much more expensive, riskier, and slower than doing it on the ground, and that’s likely to remain the case even if we reduce costs-to-orbit by a factor of 10 or 100 and have a permanent space station up there. On the other hand, if you just haul up a few big pieces (say, your fuel in one flight, your crew spaces in another…), then you can plug them together up there and be on your way. I’ve seen a few Mars proposals along those lines (although some of them also depended on the unavailable shuttle-C).


peas on earth

I have no logic to back this statement up whatsoever, but I always thought building a base on the moon would be a better idea than an orbiting space station. Maybe if I thought about it, a space station would prove to be the better idea, but just off the top of my head, I’d like to see a cool Space 1999 moonbase. I think Dr. F has the right idea about piecing together and launching spacecraft that would be to heavy and unwieldly on the earth from the low gravity of the moon. By the way, would it be possible to terraform the moon, or is the gravity too weak to hold an atmosphere?

That’s what I had in mind. Most of the problems with a Mars mision are with freight and time. If you built the lander and packed it in a module you could pop it into orbit and attach it to other modules preloaded with fuel, food and all the other stuff you’d need after arrival. All that could be sent off in a long, slow, cheap transit.

You wouldn’t send the people until it got there safely. Since you would only be sending bodies and enuf hardware to get them there, the craft could be small, fast and cheap. They would live off the supply dump and refuel and resupply for the trip home there instead of lugging all that junk along in the life support equipped spacecraft.

Building complex stuf in orbit would need a huge space station but plugging modules together and launching them shouldn’t be all that difficult.


JB
Lex Non Favet Delicatorum Votis

A simple plan that would cost the federal government nearly nothing, and get space exploration back on track:
Announce that after a certain interim period (5 years?), the federal government will no longer conduct space launches, but will contract with the cheapest commercially available launch service to put payloads into low earth orbit (LEO). This would get the power of the free market behind spaceflight and would probably drop the cost per pound to between one tenth and one twentieth of the current price.

At that price unmanned exploration could be afforded by universities and foundations instead of a government bureaucracy. Private industry could support research into microgravity materials processing. If the total number of payloads going into higher orbit became great enough, it would become cost-effective to maintain a refuelable orbital transfer vehicle. At that point the Moon, Mars and even self-sustaining space colonies start looking feasible.

Cheap, fast and dependable access to LEO is indispensable to any other ambitions in space. And after forty years of NASA, it’s time to admit that government can’t seem to do it. Let private enterprise give it a shot.

JBENZ said:

I recommend that you read Robert Zubrin’s book “The Case For Mars” to see alternative proposals. In fact, IIRC it has recently been adopted by NASA as the way to approach manned Mars missions. It uses technology available today without relying on a space assembly station, and for 1/10th the cost of Bush’s “90-day Report” resulting from his Space Exploration Initiative.

High points include a “live off the land” approach and multiple launches per mission. Unmanned modules are sent first that start manufacturing the necessary return fuel (among other things) upon landing. The basic conclusion is that we could and should do it NOW.