NASA: No Flights Until Foam Issue Fixed

When someone does want to exploit space or Antarctica, when the money is right, they're not gonna let the UN or laws get in the way.

It's Catch-22.

First, assume there is a way to exploit some of the resources of outer space. I have seen both technical and economic analysis that shows it can be done in a businesslike way. The one thing that stands in the way is investment. There is no investment of the kind that would be required, so we should ask why this is so. The answer is that no one will invest without getting an interest in the project. That interest would have to be in the form of collateral. A grant, deed, or contract of charter would be such collateral. There can be no other collateral than property rights. But, property rights are impossible under the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty.

It is possibly amusing to those who think about it that by signing the Treaty agreeing that we would not as a country assert national claim to celestial bodies, we asserted at the same time that we in fact have claimed everything in outer space to the limit of the visible universe if not beyond.

There is opposition, of course. I might mention the Eastern interests that have kept the resources of Alaska virtually frozen excepting oil. It is the same interests that forbad settlement of the Colonies beyond the fall line of the Alleghanies. The same interests do not want development of space resources where it might undercut their established business.

I am an X-prize member by the way. I fully support private industry's efforts.

Glad to hear that you put at least some of your money where your mouth is. I just hope that you didn't join the Ansari X-Prize Foundation as recently as you joined Free Republic. ;)

BTW, I was one of the original X-Prize Foundation members, kicking in $500 back in 1994, when I attended the Foundation's inaugural dinner in St. Louis. Of course I met Burt Rutan (who I had met a decade before) and Dr. Peter Diamandes (who I had met several times before) as well as numerous astronauts (some I had met before) and X-Prize contenders (who I had known for years as well.)

I'm glad that you have come to the commercial space party, albeit a bit late - just stop telling us how wonderful NASA is, when it is apparent that you barely know more about it than the lamestream reporters do.

but they are decades behind what NASA can do.

Last I checked, over the last couple of years both NASA and the commercial guys (Rutan) have sent up two flights each. The commercial vehicle came back safely. The jury is still out on NASA's ability to do the same. Let's hope they improve their record.

Government cont(r)acts to private companies are not necessarily inherently wasteful. If they can somehow avoid all the bureaucracy, they can get the job done efficiently.

Of course, but they type of contract and terms make all the difference in the world. Cost plus contracts generally are bad for larger contracts. One approach that has been advocated for some time has been for the government to offer a prize to whichever entity that can accomplish a stated goal. In this way the government only pays for successes, not failures. It also encourages innovation. It tends to weed out the typical government contractors that are used to generating only paper instead of flying hardware.

There's got to be some lightweight material to make this a weight-neutral solution.

Apparently you haven't followed the ET's tortured history. Originally the ET was built pretty stout - for a structure akin to two giant aluminum balloons stacked upon each other.

They originally painted the ET white to provide some additional thermal protection and match the orbiter, but they later skipped the paint job to save hundreds of pounds of weight.

Then when they decided to bring the Russians into the space station project, they raised the orbital plane of the station to allow the Russians to reach the station from their higher latitude launch range at Balkinour. This meant that the shuttle would have to expend more fuel plane changing to reach that higher inclination orbital plane. Not much could be offloaded from the orbiter (actually they needed to add extra cargo capacity to the orbiter for station), so the ET had to go on an even stricter diet. It was decided to make the ET out of Lithium-Aluminum alloy to lighten it up thousands of pounds. The only problem is that Lithium-Aluminum alloy is tricky to weld and fabricate. It tends to cause stress fractures, which weaken the metal. Eventually NASA/LockMart figured it out (the Russians had been building aircraft out of Lithium-Aluminum alloy for a decade) and they started flying the ET-lite.

Of course all of these post-Columbia safety fixes has added thousands of pounds of extra weight on both the ET and the orbiter. This extra baggage means that much less is left to carry people and cargo up to the space station. NASA desperately wanted to do this "extra-safe" shuttle flight perfect to prove to Washington that every thing is OK now - and then go back to thinning out much of the "extra-safe" dead weight to start restocking and continue building the space station.

Then falling foam happened - again!

NASA is in a tight spot now in so many ways. Merely fixing the ET foam is only a minor (but visible) part of what is going to happen to NASA in the near future.

Washington is not happy. The media is already writing NASA's obituary.

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