Posted on 02/01/2007 9:45:45 AM PST by Fitzcarraldo
I agree.
OK, no problemo.
Your argument about the Apollo follow-on seems to prove my point. Nasa invented ways to keep spending money on projects that should have been moth-balled over a couple years, not decades.
There has been ongoing debate about the effectiveness and usefulness of many of the post-Apollo efforts. For the record, I have not been terribly pleased with many of them. The ISS for example, seems to be evolving into a pretty bad money pit. I just don't see a coherent plan for fitting it into any long-term objectives. Apollo would have better been followed up by manned presence of the lunar surface, for both military and economic exploitation. The shuttle? Others have noted the military-driven aspects of that. Less-expensive access to orbit probably is a good thing in the long run, but, in hindsight (of course), the Shuttle didn't meet that expectation.
I know how government contracts work. That is why I want Nasa eliminated because imo, they are the worse of the worse when it comes contract management. Whatever military projects Nasa has that are reviewed to be feasible should be rolled into the Defense Department. The remaining projects should be scrapped, or passed to other Departments to bid out and control.
In creating NASA, the government followed a more or less standard business organization model. Just like a corporation forms smaller units, like divisions or groups within the overall corporate structure, to address specific business areas and needs, so does the government organize along the task-oriented lines that businesses often follow. It allows for tighter control, accountability, and the focusing of resources and expertise. It was the judgment of Congress that a separate, independent agency should head government efforts to develop space technology, so that it would not become the exclusive domain of the military, for example. The idea was to enhance dissemination of knowledge and foster cooperative relationships between different government agencies, and in industry-government partnerships.
How about we return to the real issue at hand. Can you tell me what the heck we got over the past dozen years/$150 billion we've poured into Nasa? None of the defenders have thus far.
Others have touched on some of these. Communications satellites, weather observations, Earth resources mapping, intelligence gathering, basic sciences, materials development, instrumentation, electronics, computers, geopositioning applications, military functions, all of this have had some impact from the development of space technology. But my guess from the tone of this and your previous posts is that these things won't satisfy you. So all I can say is that the Congress, as the elected representatives of the people, made a decision that it would be in our national interest to pursue development of this technology. True, it was born of a geopolitical imperative, the notion that we had to "beat the Russians". That is still a dynamic in play today, substituting "Chinese" in place of "Russians". Heck, I don't know if it was the right decision in a geopolitical sense or not. But the fact is, our government made the commitment, and created NASA to implement the national policy that they decided upon.
The R&D project bidding for all departments stink because I always felt like they should do the initial R&D bids as 2 or 3 seperate victor award, not just the best bid. Yea it would be more cost up front, but I believe that any products which come out of the R&D projects would have a cheaper cost to produce/maintain because you have 2 or 3 legitimate entities who have the technical expertise to continue working on it. Plus with each R&D winner knowing there are 1 or 2 others competing for all follow-ons, I surmise that this would lead to better/faster technological break-throughs and lower production bids/cost. Because they can rebid the real production contracts to a sole provider knowing that multiple entities may each have the technical capability to perform. If that contractor fails, rebid it or move it.
I see what you're getting at but, I don't know, it might pose some problems in management and control. Having several contractors working independently on the same systems or products may have you ending up with a bunch of redundant, incompatible things. If you remember Apollo 13, they had to work pretty hard to get the square CO2 scrubber cannister apertures in the LM to accept the cylindrical CO2 cannisters from the CM. Same basic system, did the same thing, but two separate contractors (Grumman and North American) produced incompatible systems. They got them to work, but kind of on a jury-rigged basis.
With regard to nano-technology projects which Nasa may or may not be doing, why have those in the space agency at all? I'd prefer more direct congressional insight and control so these projects are clearly defined and scoped over a limited time period. This is so we do not continue to create giant new bureaucracies which soon become outrageously expense and provide little or negative value.
I don't think you're going to have Congress micromanaging (so to speak) individual projects. Congress passes the laws and the bureaucracy responds by creating whatever mechanisms are needed to implement those laws. That means either a federal department, agency, or group, funded by appropriation, and directed to carry out the mission specified by Congress. You're always going to need a conduit between the lawmakers and the funding, to get the job done, either with government employees, contractors, or a combination of those. Those agencies or departments or groups then go about implementing the will of Congress. Often they will put an RFP out on the street for bid, and they will establish selection criteria for awarding the contract. They may choose to do some of the work in-house. That is certainly true of NASA. The Saturn V used in Apollo was a Von Braun design, NASA employees are Marshall did the design and development work. But a huge army of contractors did the nuts-and-bolts hardware fabrication. Rocketdyne built the F-1 engines, for example. IBM and Applied Dynamics had major responsibilities for the instrument unit and analog computers. Sperry Rand had a hand in the guidance gyros. This is an accepted business model, and is the paradigm followed in almost any large, complex project, be it in government or private industry.
Those rockets won't be available if the space program is scrapped as the poster suggested.
Even if the NASA's space program is totally scrapped, these rockets are in full production for launching commercial and military satellites.
And they'll launch from where exactly?
All you're proposing is moving NASA's funding to the military.
That's not exactly scrapping the space program as the poster suggested.
You make excellent points here. My idea on allowing multiple awards would downstream likely turn into another boondoogle because the agencies would end up electing to used the multiple award option for too many projects. I'd like to see it use only in places where the R&D is completely conceptual or investigatory of a new science or type of discovery. Or when they want to replace an existing technology with a completely different product that overcomes some inherent flaw that cannot be overcome using the existing materials.
For example, batteries. They could award ten contracts for a few million a piece to the 10 best conceptual ideas that are proposed. If one of these hits, then everyone in America benefits because the creator doesn't get to keep the patent for 10 to 15 years and charge whatever they want. Currently a project like this would get awarded to a single entity whom the awarding agency believed had the best concept. But this decision is likely to be clouded by who has the very best salesmen and/or lobbiest. But if they were picking 5 or 10 awards, it might very well be that the company with the 4th best presentation actually has the concept that will ultimately achieve the desired specifications of a new battery.
On the other hand, if my company develops the next generation battery, I'll be darn glad I haven't disposed of any of our stock yet!
You're convinced me that Nasa may not be so bad, especially compared against other fed department. Final question: Is JPL funded by Nasa's budget? I know guy who was writting code for the Mars vehicle or a very similar project who had told me years ago that it came to them because it had to be under X dollars and Nasa couldn't do it for that price. And after I had toured the site he works at (Southern California) I wonder how the heck they could even do it for that price.
Have a great weekend and enjoy the game or the opportunity to go somewhere on Sunday without fighting a crowd.
The military has launch pads at Cape Canavaral air station and Vandenberg AFB, California.
The item of contention at NASA is the Manned Space Program, its plans to build a new manned vehicle to replace the space shuttle and establish a small base on the moon. There are no solid plans at NASA to send people to Mars.
NASA also launches and operates unmanned interplanetary probes, space telescopes and Earth observation satellites, and there is no great call to scrap these projects; typically NASA will delay or cancel a smaller project to pay for a bigger one that's in trouble.
I think the idea that a manned base on the moon would be effective for military purposes was debunked in the 1950's, yet it has made a popular resurgence.
YES, JPL (Pasadena, Calif.) is almost completely funded by NASA (but managed by Caltech) to the tune of $1 billion/year. They build and operate unmanned space vehicles. I think the latest budget cuts will result in a hiring freeze there for the second year in a row.
Well, thanks for being open-minded. Sorry for being a bit testy earlier. Yes, as federal agencies go, NASA isn't too bad. I've dealt with worse, to be sure. They have their problems, as all government agencies do. But, over the years, they've been reasonably successful in implementing national policy. Fair-minded people can certainly debate the merits of those policies, but, like in the military, for the NASA folks, their's is not to question why...
Means JPL came in with the low bid, or it couldn't be done as well at any other NASA center or outside contractor. JPL has the most experience with unmanned interplanetary spacecraft and rovers than anyone else in the world.
I understood that napscoordinator considered money spent by NASA to be a waste.
Diplomat's opinion was more succinct. I believe he wrote, "gut this pig!"
I "assumed" you were agreeing with them but I admit that I haven't read the whole thread.
I apologize for misrepresenting your position.
The '50's were the pre-missile era. I'm not sure that much of what they envisioned is still relevant. But they did design and build nuclear flying saucers for dropping warheads from orbit. They just never got around to installing the nuclear rockets.
The most difficult part of space travel is getting off the earth. Getting off the moon is much easier with 1/6th the gravity. Except for water and possibly heavier metals, all the raw materials that exist on the earth are available on the moon.
Creating the infrastructure on the moon to manufacture with local raw materials is probably going to cost at least as much as welfare, with no near-term payback.
But launching warheads will be a snap. And they can arrive at the target faster than missile defense systems can handle them. Also anti-satellite warfare will be much easier from the moon.
The picture will change significantly when nuclear rockets become widely available, if that's possible in the existing anti-nuke environment.
I probably wrote "gut that pig." Sounds like something I would say. Fight hard, play hard, live hard, and never give up is my motto. Used to be "hard and fast" but that was too easy a setup line for my wife.
Thanks again for all the info.
Visionless cowards.
You can always count on democrats to kill progress.
They will fail.
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