Is NASA dying?? If so, whose fault is it?

"Terrell Miller" wrote in message ...
emphasis on *sub*orbital. That's orders of magnitude away from doing
anything in LEO, let alone anything productive.

So rather like NASA, then. Unless you really think that ISS is doing
anything productive?

because the gap between what private industry will be able to do on orbit
(roughly comparable to China's Shenzhou 5 up-and-back mission) adn what NASA
can do on orbit even in its current state, will not close for at least a
decade, probably more.

Let's see: private industry has no manned spaceflight capability at
the moment and neither does NASA. Yep, sounds like a big gap to me.

Mark

Certainly true of the previous White House, apparent at the time and
thoroughly confirmed by everything learned since - there was never
any real interest in NASA reform, so the question of available political
capital never came up.

The interesting thing about the current situation is that there is
apparently some level of White House support for reform now. How
deep and strong is still unknown - but the time we'll find out will
be after the coming election, assuming the incumbent wins and his party
keeps the House and gains more margin in the Senate. That would be the
moment when there's maximum leeway for drastic reform; the political
cost at that point would be as affordable as it'll ever get.

The odds would still favor betting against effective reform, mind,
but it's no longer a sure-thing bet. It should be an interesting
next couple of years, one way or another.

Henry Vanderbilt


Henry Spencer wrote:

Nor would I particularly *want* the job. I would be interested in it only
on a platform :-) of drastic reform, and the first question to ask someone
offering you such a job is "I'll have to slash and burn first -- the queue
of powerful people demanding my dismissal will overflow your outer office
and stretch down the hall -- so is this important enough to you that
you'll back me up all the way, even when I make mistakes?", and there is
just no way I'd get a (believable) "yes" to that. NASA, as a space agency
rather than a jobs program, just is not important enough to the White House
to invest that much political capital in reforming it.

(George William Herbert) wrote in message ...

1) O'Keefe likes NASA, and probably isn't going to abandon it unless
he thinks he's become ineffective.

On the contrary, one could argue that O'Keefe is doing his best to
destroy NASA. In fact, there are days when I believe that O'Keefe is
secretly working for Rand Simberg, or someone else who wants to see
NASA dismantled in favor of privately funded enterprises. Let see,
cancel Shuttle, plan to de-orbit Hubble, put an end date on ISS, mount
fantasy programs to the Moon and Mars that Congress is sure to kill,
leaving the big centers with no justification for their existence.
Sounds like a plan to me!

Henry Spencer wrote:

In article ,
Dick Morris wrote:
Plus, I'm not sure he has the management experience he'd need to ride
herd on the rest of the institution.

Some recent experience herding cats would be helpful.

Come now, we're talking about NASA Centers here. Herding weasels would be
more like it. :-) :-)
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

Henry Spencer wrote:

In article ,
Dick Morris wrote:
Plus, I'm not sure he has the management experience he'd need to ride
herd on the rest of the institution.

Some recent experience herding cats would be helpful.

Come now, we're talking about NASA Centers here. Herding weasels would be
more like it. :-) :-)

Now that wasn't nice. What do you have against weasels?
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

In article ,
Explorer8939 wrote:
On the contrary, one could argue that O'Keefe is doing his best to
destroy NASA. In fact, there are days when I believe that O'Keefe is
secretly working for Rand Simberg, or someone else who wants to see
NASA dismantled in favor of privately funded enterprises. Let see,
cancel Shuttle, plan to de-orbit Hubble, put an end date on ISS...

Uh, you need to learn a little more history...

The shuttle is long overdue for replacement, and not by a clone of itself
either. It's high time a specific plan and schedule for that appeared;
some of the orbiters are already older than some of the people who work
on them.

NASA has *always* planned to de-orbit Hubble. All O'Keefe has done is to
move the schedule up slightly, by refusing to fly the *last* planned
servicing mission because of the changes in the politics of shuttle risk.

And ISS has always had roughly the end date now given to it. SSF was
meant to be essentially permanent, but one of the compromises made when
SSF became ISS was a reduction in operating life to permit relaxing some
of the more demanding specs.

mount fantasy programs to the Moon and Mars that Congress is sure to kill...

The current ones are actually far more realistic than those proposed by
two or three past Administrators. In fact, the biggest problem current
plans face is the legacy of those past boondoggles -- for example, anyone
who talks about a pricetag of hundreds of billions is remembering Truly's
Moon/Mars mess and ignoring O'Keefe's actual proposals.

leaving the big centers with no justification for their existence.

A problem they've had, and have survived, before.

By the way, why is this wrong? NASA might well be better off without
some of those big centers. Henry Vanderbilt once described NASA as
"a cage holding a thousand pounds of apes, one of which weighs
five hundred pounds, and they make decisions by `consensus'".
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
jjrobinson2 wrote:
Oh, come on! O'Keefe may be underqualified for an aerospace leadership
position, but worse than Goldin, the "George McClellan" of Space?!

That last is not a bad comparison, since although McClellan didn't get the
results desired in the end, he *did* considerably improve the Union Army,
and his successors benefitted substantially from that. (Unlike some other
Union generals, he wasn't grossly incompetent, just too timid for top
command.)
---clip---

MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |



If we keep going with these Civil War analogies, we'll eventually have to
decide which of Goldin's achievements to compare to Antietam. Maybe we
should quit while we're slightly ahead.

JJ Robinson II
Houston, TX
****************
* JOKE *
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* SERIOUS *
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* SARCASTIC *
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* OTHER? *
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Henry Spencer wrote:
mount fantasy programs to the Moon and Mars that Congress is sure to kill...

The current ones are actually far more realistic than those proposed by
two or three past Administrators. In fact, the biggest problem current
plans face is the legacy of those past boondoggles -- for example, anyone
who talks about a pricetag of hundreds of billions is remembering Truly's
Moon/Mars mess and ignoring O'Keefe's actual proposals.


No. Simply noting the timeline, what inflation is likely to happen in that
time and a cost multiplier from a much higher risk aversion from the at least
one fatal accident with manned spaceflight that is likely to have accoured
in the meanwhile is quite enough to explain that.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Explorer8939 ) wrote:
: The obvious choice is Mr. O'Keefe, arguably the worst NASA
: Administrator ever. If you have any doubts, check out his performance
: in regards to the 3 of NASA's major programs: Shuttle, ISS and Hubble.

: Since O'Keefe will likely exit NASA after the election, the bigger
: question is the future of NASA. The most likely long term scenario
: for NASA is that Shuttle retires itself, ISS continues to depend on
: the Russians (in minimal mode), and the Moon Mars thing quietly fades
: away as the other crises overwhelm the NASA bureaucracy. All the
: while, private astronauts fly ever higher suborbital missions.

: One could argue that there is indeed a space race - if private
: astronauts get into orbit using totally private systems BEFORE NASA
: can send astronauts beyond orbit, then it would obvious that we don't
: NASA's version of human spaceflight - why spend billions of taxpayer
: dollars to fly NASA astronauts when any idiot can simply buy a ticket
: into space?

: For the first time, an end for NASA is in sight. If NASA does not have

Why do you equate NASA with manned spaceflight? What of all the unmanned
flight? Do you think that the private space industry will create
everything we do in space?

: its act together soon, even Congress would be forced to cut the human
: spaceflight program in the wake of private orbital spaceflight, and
: Marshall Spaceflight and the other centers would no longer have the
: ability to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on such turkeys as
: Propulsion Module, X-34, X-38 and the like.

: NASA *must* produce results in the near term to survive. Without the
: Shuttle, no amount of feel good propaganda will help.

: The end is near.

You're full of crap! NASA does lots of good things away from human
spaceflight. You should hope that the DOD gets trimmed before you doom
NASA.

Eric

EAC ) wrote:
: "jacob navia" wrote in message ...
: Your opinion is being published by the conservative media
: since a long time, it is nothing new.
:
: The idea is to destroy yet another collective undertaking
: (NASA) and substitute it with "private enterprise".

: The usual M.O..

: Took an establisted national organization, defame it, deconstruct
: piece by piece, make it to do bad things and make it look like it done
: bad things on it owns, someone suggest privatization to make things
: better, privatization occurs, a 'miracle' happened and things get
: better, privatization is heralded as the saviour of the whole thing.

: Of course, we should remember, what happened after things were
: privatized? Who own them now that they're 'private' ventures?

Right, just like the Internet was created by business for business and
that is that!

: Of course, if you are a billionaire and willing to spend
: some money in your private hobby, you will be able
: to get into space.

: Actually, it's questionable on whether the billionaires that
: previously went to LEO went there because of their cash or because of
: their political status.

: For example, Mark Shuttleworth's travel seems more in the term of
: political purposes, and also it's noted that he too took part in doing
: the experiments in LEO.

: Just remember, some billionaires become billionaires not just because
: they are quite saavy in the financial area, but also because they are
: involved in politics. One wrong move in politics, one could be no
: longer a billionaire.

Exactly. My theory regarding Martha Stewart is that she gave heavy to only
one party and it cost her. Let that be a lesson to the Olsen twins as
their stock continues to rise. I wonder about Oprah and the political
party donation thing.

: [snip]

: Obviously even the billionaires will never be able to
: *really* finance the stuff.
:
: Enter the russians.
:
: They will do it.
:
: They are *already* flying billionaires into orbit.
:
: Your proposition will please them, since it will mean
: more customers.
:
: The practical consequences of your way of thinking
: is to destroy the american space program.

: "To destroy" is a such harsh thing, a much better way of putting it
: is, "to weaken it so it can be take over".

No, a better way is to have NASA use it as a form of outsourcing. Surely
NASA wants no part of the space tourism industry. Fine. But what of other
potential industries that have yet to be created in space? Will space
tourism pave the way?

: The Russian space program is currently weak, the American space
: program is currently weak, what is next is for a 'saviour' to come,
: take over them, and revitalize them.

The Chinese?

Eric