[Lawgvr1955]

Too bad the US gave up moon exploration 30+ years ago, when it held a tremendous advantage over all other countries and had the structure in place to accomplish the task. Now the engineers and others have retired and the knowledge and skill needed has been lost or compromised.

[RightWhale]

the engineers and others have retired and the knowledge and skill needed has been lost or compromised.

Yes. OTOH the new program is a fresh start and will go on much longer than Apollo, Surveyer, Ranger. The technology will be all new, especially robotics. Much more will be done, and the work will build toward Mars.

[Names Ash Housewares]

"Now the engineers and others have retired and the knowledge and skill needed has been lost or compromised."

Respectfully. Nonsense! We know how to go to the moon. Its a matter of will and leadership. With the re-election of Bush and the very well thought out new space iniative, We are on the road back to stay. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We are better at many things now. Its always been a question of will. NASA has been victim to the whims of visionless politicians like Clinton and NASA budget butchering democrats. No more. Bush has provided the long term goals so desperately needed by NASA and another four years to cement the plans in place. Its not a race. its a journey. We are nation of explorers and risk takers. Always has been, always will be. Its why all of us are here today.

[Da Bilge Troll]

The original Apollo program, unfortunately, was a technological dead-end. Remember, it's mission was "to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth."

Not two men. Not two landings. Not a permanent presence. Mission accomplished.

This is the problem with government programs. The government should just get out of the way and let private enterprise take over. It has to happen sooner or later, why not now?

[r9etb]

Now the engineers and others have retired and the knowledge and skill needed has been lost or compromised.

Not true, actually. There are still a lot of very good, and very creative engineers in the space business.

The primary problem is, rather, Management and Process. At some point over the last 20-30 years, has sprung up the idea that Managers and Process can replace knowledge and creativity.

I work for a major defense contractor, and can point to several specific reasons for why things hit the skids. In order of importance:

1. The government contract managers are not technically knowledgeable about the contracts they're overseeing. So they a) set unreasonable contracts, and b) can't tell when they're being buffaloed.

2. Contractors' management teams tend likewise to not be technically savvy. They don't know enough to hold their development teams' feet to the fire. The best summary is: they don't know enough to ask those uncomfortable questions that engineers hate to answer.

3. The lack of technical knowledge has led to the rise of "processes" designed to overcome that ignorance. This leads to endless meetings and paperwork that have nothing to do with the actual design process. My experience has been that the "process people" typically outnumber "design people" by upwards of 2-to-1. This leads to enormous additional cost, and seriously extended schedules.

4. System Engineering -- which should be the technical head of the process -- has gotten the worst characteristics of all of the previous three problems, plus one more: they've become managers, and have thereby lost the crucial big-picture view of the technical problem.

5. And finally, there is cowardice. Project managers are afraid to tell the truth -- both about problems, and more importantly, they won't tell the government when an idea is stupid. Conversely, government-side folks won't fly the BS flag until it's far too late.

There is one other thing: an awful lot of basic manufacturing capability has gone overseas. It bespeaks a sort of "buy it elsewhere" mentality that is troublesome for a lot of reasons.