Question About Probes

"Chris Marriott" wrote in message
...

"David Nakamoto" wrote in message
...

If we have any national will to do space exploration right, we NEED both
a
truly reusable shuttle AND a set of medium to heavy lift expendibles.

"We" (ie we Europeans) do have a heavy lift capability - Ariane 5, which
has
something like a 70% world-wide market share of the commercial launch
business :-)

Don't you think that it's a bit silly to bring "nationalism" into space
exploration? Shouldn't "we" - the entire human race - be working together
to
achieve it, rather than talking about things like "national will"?

Regards,

Chris

Sorry, but I was under the influence of George Bush there, but I got him
exorcised for now, so I'm feeling a lot better now. ^_^

But there are good arguments for both sides of cooperation. While it should
reduce the cost for all parties involved and make things possible that a
single nation might find impossible or just difficult to do, it does carry
the danger because changing national priorities. The Europeans have gotten
burned on several NASA/European atempted collaborations in the past, thanks
mainly to congressional spending packages that trimmed NASA's budget yet
again (and again, and . . . ). And speaking of Arianne 5, an instrument I
worked on got grounded along with the rest of the spacecraft when the
Europeans finally admitted that there might be something wrong with the
booster. That could have stopped the spacecraft right then and there,
because it wasn't clear that NASA wanted to fund any sort of delay, and
pulling out would have meant the spacecraft stays on the ground forever.

I feel that once space exploration becomes more of a front-burner item than
it is right now, for all governments involved, cooperation will be a better
proposition, but for right now the situation is too politically shifty for
this to work more often than not, based on my own experience working at JPL.

I think your goals and heart are in the right place, but in the real
world reducing competition in order to design something very rarely
works to produce better products or lower costs. There is the argument
to make about short term competitive waste, but in the long term
competition is extremely healthy in developing technology and making it
affordable. IBM needed a substantial competitive kick in the backside
before it designed its PC. And if the government were in charge of
developing and producing automobiles, we'd all be driving Trabi's and
Lada's. Or horse buggies.

I'm more concerned with the current government monopoly on the control
of space exploration than I am about competition that may or may not be
driven by nationalism. NASA, like all large bureaucratic monopolies,
suffers from the rigor mortis of its "lifer" managerial class, forced to
lick the boots of political appointees. I'm not unaware of the risks of
unfettered capitalism in the race for space, but there should be some
way that business and government can work in a more productive, free and
cost effective manner than they do now.

Cheers,
Chris


Chris Marriott wrote:

Reading that last message, it doesn't say what I meant to say. Let's have
another go...

What I was trying to say is wouldn't it be more sensible for countries to
cooperate in space exploration, rather than trying to "compete" for an
out-moded concept of "nationalism"? The cold war is long, long over!

ie, given that ESA has an excellent heavy lift vehicle in the form of Ariane
5, what would be the point of the US spending enormous sums of money to
develop its own heavy lift capability? Would it not be more sensible to have
international collaboration and (for example) the US to develop payloads for
launch on ESA's launch vehicle?

Regards,

Chris