Quality Control

Like so may people around the world, I still think that the "go it alone" mentality with Space Exploration is wasteful of people, time and scarce resources.

So Russia has managed to build rockets which easily lift heavier payloads, then use them.

Likewise Computer Engineering and other items are better in non-Russian Countries, then use the equipment.

That's what I think.

Kind Regards....

Well said, Sir!

10% of the US budget? That would be sweet - maybe we could fix the leak in the roof of my lab. (NASA current gets < 1% of the budget.)

But, who will you take the other 9% from?

Given the opportunity, I would take it out of congress' collective butt.

Right now, the U.S. government is huge, and growing beyond all reason. And most of it is a result of pork-barrel spending, vote buying, and petty bureaucrats with delusions of grandeur.

Start by getting the federal government out of business, completely. Take a hard look at the federal register and dismantle every law on the books which favors one thing over another or is no longer applicable. That would take care of about 90% of it. Then start chopping away all of the bureaucracies that have been created to administer all of these laws. Especially, cut away all of these petty bureaucrats which serve no further purpose than to butt into people's private business.

This nation was founded upon the premise that people could best take care of themselves, if they were just left alone to do it. It's worth pointing out that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended primarily as a way for the citizenry to keep the government in check.

How's that for a start?

Start by getting the federal government out of business, completely.

You realize, of course, that most of the NASA budget goes directly to private industry.

I think that there's a little bit of difference between funding research and buying hardware and services, than regulating business.

Congressional earmarks, maybe.

I read your piece with interest, but I can't help feeling that maybe your head is already in the clouds.

NASA stands for 'North American Space Agency, but it has always been an international body. It was actually a German and [mainly] German Nazi technology that put America on the moon [Wernher Von Braun and his German team]. Many of the scientists at NASA since the early days of space flight have come from all over the world, partly because it was the only place they could practise what they were good at, and partly because of the money.

The US was in the right place at the right time after the Second World War so it had the money to buy talent and pay for expensive projects; now China has the money [when America pays back the $9.5 trillion it owes them], so there's no need to worry, it's only the brand that has changed, Space exploration will go on.

It could have all been so different if Bush et al hadn't drained the country [making fortunes for his friends] of money with the Iraq fiasco and if the US central bank had done its job and stopped the Wall Street cowboys from making fortunes and ruining the banks and the economy in the process. Don't you just love unregulated capitalism ;)

JD

On the contrary! As a matter of historical fact, the German liquid fueled rocket program borrowed heavily from the work of Dr. Robert Goddard, an American. Unfortunately, it was only after the German rocketry program of WWII bore such deadly fruit that his work was taken seriously. And while it was true that many German scientists were brought to the United States after the war to work on the American rocket and space programs, what developed was of a uniquely American character.

As touching upon the political issues which you mentioned, I find your presumption to judge my nation and it's president to be faintly offensive. I have in fact been to the UK and count certain of it's subjects as friends, and I have no wish to alienate them or you. However, I do not presume to have an opinion of British politics. And by the same token, American politics is the business of it's citizens, and not that of the rest of the world.

In 1898, a Russian schoolteacher, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), proposed the idea of space exploration by rocket. In a report he published in 1903, Tsiolkovsky suggested the use of liquid propellants for rockets in order to achieve greater range. Tsiolkovsky stated that the speed and range of a rocket were limited only by the exhaust velocity of escaping gases. For his ideas, careful research, and great vision, Tsiolkovsky has been called the father of modern astronautics.

[Robert H. Goddard was 6 years old then]

American politics are world politics; Bush invaded a sovereign state on the other side of the world with a ridiculous excuse, trying to connect it to 911. That affected the whole world, not just America. Many intelligent people all over the world have 'judged' [as you call it] Bush and his government and found him to be an idiot doing exactly what the people who put in there wanted him to do.

America does not live in a bubble, it is part of the world and in particular, part of the West. There are plenty of Americans who know what goes on in Europe and the rest of the world and make judgments based on that knowledge.

I agree that if you do not know about the subject you should study it before you give your opinion. Caucasian Americans [about 2/3 of US citizens] came from Europe, their history is our history.

I would say that an educated British person probably knows more about the history and goings on in America than the average American.

Feel free to contradict me [But be careful you don't end up in an orange jumpsuit in Guantánamo Bay] JD

We all of us stand upon the shoulders of giants....

And,

Consider the following statement. "The Captain is always right."

And lastly,

In the upcoming U.S. general election, you sir will not be voting. I will.

I take it that you are referring to the captain of the Titanic

If you hadn't noticed, America is shrinking [and broke] and China is becoming the giant.

Which of the multimillionaire political family club members will you be voting for in the 'fair and free' [unless you're black or Hispanic] election? JD

Well, Sir, please dont forget that the "sovereign state of Iraq" has invaded the sovereign state of Kuweit and has killed by chemicals thousands of iraquian kurds in their own villages. And dont forget also that Saddam was a bloody dictator, so I do not believe that he could be made responsable for his actions by the Iraqi people himself, without any help from outside. We, the Romanians, we have waited for meny years the Americans to come to save us from the communist dictatorship, but it was not to be so.

And dont forget also that the "idiot" Bush has been elected twice by the Americas, and the seccond time with a bigger score as the first time.

Best regards,

Vlad Marius

Yes you are right, Saddam was a bloody dictator and ran Iraq as a dictatorship; but that is exactly what the Americans put him there to do. The leader of Iraq before Saddam was a really good well-respected leader, but he got too close to the Russians so the CIA got their man Saddam [and another guy] to assassinate him. The rest as they say is history.

The above is not a unique case, look at Iran and the Shah and numerous fascist dictators in South America all engineered or directly installed to power by the Americans.

If Romania had oil the Americans would have 'saved' it, just like they have 'saved' Iraq.

Bush only won one of the elections; in the second election he got fewer votes. That time the gerrymandering paid off. If it had happened in another country it would be called a coup d'état.

It's all about power, control and money [nothing to do with affection for the Iraqi people], the Russians are no different. It's very nice to believe that there is a good and bad side, but I would rather look at the reality. JD

Wiki Addendum

Only late in his lifetime was Tsiolkovsky honoured for his pioneering work. On 23 August 1924 he was elected as a first professor of the Military Aerial Academy named after N. E. Zhukovsky (Russian: Военно-воздушная академия им. Н. Е. Жуковского).^{[citation needed]}

His most important work, published in 1903, was The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices (Russian: Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами),^[2] arguably the first academic treatise on rocketry.^{[citation needed]} Tsiolkovsky calculated that the horizontal speed required for a minimal orbit around the Earth is 8,000 m/s (5 miles per second) and that this could be achieved by means of a multistage rocket fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.

During his lifetime he published over 500 works on space travel and related subjects, including science fiction novels. Among his works are designs for rockets with steering thrusters, multi-stage boosters, space stations, airlocks for exiting a spaceship into the vacuum of space, and closed cycle biological systems to provide food and oxygen for space colonies.

Tsiolkovsky had been developing the idea of the air cushion since 1921, publishing fundamental paper on it in 1927, entitled "Air Resistance and the Express Train" (Russian: Сопротивление воздуха и скорый поезд).^[3][4] In 1929 Tsiolkovsky proposed the construction of multistage rockets in his book Space Rocket Trains (Russian: Космические ракетные поезда).

Tsiolkovsky's work influenced later rocketeers throughout Europe, like Wernher von Braun, and was also studied by the Americans in the 1950s and 1960s as they sought to understand the Soviet Union's successes in space flight.^{[citation needed]}

I'm sorry, sir, but you don't have a clue about what you're writing, especially your quip about "North American Space Agency". I hope you really aren't really that ignorant.

I spent 12 years at NASA Langley Research Center, the mother ship of all NASA centers, from 1966 to 1978 (minus 2 years vacation in sunny Southeast Asia). I can honestly say that while Von Braun and his limited company collaborated on US rocketry experimentation, there were very, very few foreign nationals that contributed to our space efforts in the early days. The brain trust that created Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and related projects did quit well with American brainpower, thank you.

As far as your political views of the US, who cares. You don't vote here (unless ACORN recruits you).

And, yes, I'd like to see 10% of the Federal budget go to NASA. It would be easy to do if we only suspended foreign aid.

Hooker <-- capitalist favoring libertarian

Well said sir! Good answer. Pity that loudmouth already pretty much killed the discussion by being so obnoxious.

You and your fellows are the men who made this nation into the technological powerhouse that it is. I salute you.

I'm not sure if you reply was a sarcastic reply or not, but I believe NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

As far as where the money should come from, imagine the us government spending have of the Trillion Dollar Financial bailout on NASA and related technology - it would be a better return on investment and do more to jump start a nervous economy than throwing more money at the irresponsible financial institutions.

Woops! I knew I should have checked NASA before I posted ;) It was actually called the US military before they civilianised part of it ;)

If humour doesn't have truth/reality in it, it is not funny.

The joke at the moment is, America has gone socialist [welfare for Wall Street] and invaded Afghanistan, and Russia has gone capitalist ;)

JD

It was first called the German military....

Please, please, please!! This is getting really insulting!!

Study some history before making comments like this.

NACA NASA

Hooker

Since you favor wiki:

Von Braun worked on the American intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program before joining NASA, where he served as director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon.^[3] He is generally regarded as the father of the United States space program, both for his technical and organizational skills, and for his public relations efforts on behalf of space flight.^[4] He received the 1975 National Medal of Science.

The U.S. Navy had been tasked with building a rocket to lift satellites into orbit, but the resulting Vanguard rocket launch system was unreliable. In 1957, with the launch of Sputnik 1, there was a growing perception within the United States that America lagged behind the Soviet Union in the emerging Space Race. American authorities then chose to utilize von Braun and his German team's experience with missiles to create an orbital launch vehicle.

NASA was established by law on July 29, 1958. One day later, the 50th Redstone rocket was successfully launched from Johnston Atoll in the south Pacific as part of Operation Hardtack. Two years later, NASA opened the new Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, and the ABMA development team led by von Braun was transferred to NASA. In a face-to-face meeting with Herb York at the Pentagon, von Braun made it clear he would go to NASA only if development of the Saturn was allowed to continue.^[31] Presiding from July 1960 to February 1970, von Braun became the center's first Director.

The Marshall Center's first major program was the development of Saturn rockets to carry heavy payloads into and beyond Earth orbit. From this, the Apollo program for manned moon flights was developed. Wernher von Braun initially pushed for a flight engineering concept that called for an Earth orbit rendezvous technique (the approach he had argued for building his space station), but in 1962 he converted to the more risky lunar orbit rendezvous concept that was subsequently realized.^[32] His dream to help mankind set foot on the Moon became a reality on July 16, 1969 when a Marshall-developed Saturn V rocket launched the crew of Apollo 11 on its historic eight-day mission. Over the course of the program, Saturn V rockets enabled six teams of astronauts to reach the surface of the Moon.

During the late 1960s, von Braun played an instrumental role in the development of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville. The desk from which he guided America's entry in the Space Race remains on display there.

You omit the fact that Dr. von Braun became an American citizen on 15 April 1955. We are a nation of immigrants, but we are all Americans, and so was Dr von Braun, and for that matter, most if not all of his collegues which came to the United States from Germany after the war.

duh - but hardly germane to the main point - it was German science and German technology developed in Germany by Germans that launched the era of space flight.

While still in Nazi Germany, Von Braun stole liberally from Robert Goddard's journals on rocket design and control. Most of Goddard's designs predated the German rocket effort by 10 years or more.

And Goddard was a native born American.

So we have now come full circle.

Hooker <--- a second generation American

Sure - all technology builds on previous work. But NASA didn't go to the moon on Goddard's notebooks. We went to the moon on Von Braun's brain.

bhankiii - a 5th generation Texan, 12th generation American.

You seem to presume that if Von Braun hadn't come to America that we couldn't/wouldn't have fulfilled John Kennedy's mandate to put Americans on the moon "by the end of the decade" (of the 60's). Hogwash.

Using your logic, I could just as well claim that the Apollo missions would have failed without the untiring efforts of Chris Kraft in Mission Control. No one man determined the fate of the mission. It was a true team effort, though there were a number of individual heroic efforts that stand out.

I contend that the moon landing would have happened anyway but since I can't prove positively or negatively that another timeline (without Von Braun in America) would've had different results, I retire from the fray.

Hooker

Gentlemen,

It seems to me that you are both right. However, I personally would very much like to hear your opinions on the original question of this thread. I believe that anyone who works for NASA, or who worked for NASA during the glory days of the sixties, would be in a unique position to comment. For example, what do either of you know about the Orion project which I have spoken of elsewhere in this blog? Please, share your thoughts.

DrMoose,

Personally I feel throwing back to an un-reusable delivery system is a mistake. IMO, we don't usually make "progress" when we "regress" to prior systems. There's almost no pure research required and that's where NASA especially shines, again IMO. And when steamships sank, we didn't go back to sail, did we?

Secondly, big money in space projects takes excitement and committed politicians to make it work. This country is way to enveloped in political mire to pay much attention to anything else. We have been way too politically distracted since the beginning of the Clinton era to much more than lip service to anything else.

Everything is federal politics, just the way the politicians like it. They're too busy trying to control every aspect of our lives (for their benefit) to have any vision of the future. Without vision, at least in this democracy, there is little or no chance of recapturing our past glory.

All, of course, IMO.

Hooker <-- who hates to sound so cynical over something that could be really nationally inspiring (but, then, nationalism and patriotism are no-no's nowadays, aren't they?)

Everything is federal politics, just the way the politicians like it. They're too busy trying to control every aspect of our lives (for their benefit) to have any vision of the future.

And yet the Nazis, then the Soviets, and now the Chinese, made great strides.

I am currently working on Orion. I think it is grand. Complaints about "regressing" from the shuttle are simply misinformed. The reason that Orion looks like Apollo is due not to a lack of vision, but to the fact that the physics of travel to the moon today are exactly the same as they were 40 years ago. There is a good reason why a capsule is shaped like a capsule, and not an airplane.

There are a great many problems with the current Orion design - some of them technical, some managerial, and some political. I am confident that the technical problems will be solved.

Experience tells us that the public will not reliably support our nation's vision of space exploration. So we do what we can, with what we have, while we have it.

Gentlemen.

I am thrilled that this thread has revived, because I thought it an excellent discussion. Sadly, it degenerated into something of a sneering match, something which I fell into myself. But, rather than continuing with claim and counter-claim as to who's right and who's wrong, let us return to the original question. What indeed should be the proper place of NASA in these trying times?

In comment #2 of this thread I set forth my own opinion, that NASA should receive 10% of the federal budget, be taken out of political hands and given back to the scientists and engineers, and given a mandate to make getting to high orbit as inexpensive as surface shipping, as well as to establish permanently manned bases on high orbit, on the moon, etc, and to work with business to turn space into a paying proposition. I believe that NASA's highest priority should be to develop a fully reusable launcher, and I set forth five examples of fully attainable technologies which could be pursued.

Now, as I said elsewhere, we have here in CR4 some of the most intelligent, most capable, most wildly imaginative and unrestrained scientists, engineers and technicians on the planet. So, what do the the rest of you think? Where should we go from here and how? Any takers?

I've always wanted to see an atomic bomb go off in space....far enough away so's not to do any EM or ocular damage but close enough to see the fireworks. Perhaps Nasa could be financed (and persuaded) through the publics contribution to stage such an event....any extra $ would help keep the space cowboys off've thin ice...and assist in developing the space plane.

Just a thought (besides, it would help clear the bomb inventory)

An amusing thought, and it would be a heck of a fireworks show. I wonder if you remember the Orion project? This was a proposal to build a spacecraft powered by nuclear explosions. The basic idea was to detonate small fission or fusion bombs behind a massive pusher plate and shock absorber system to generate thrust. The performance was nothing short of incredible. A fusion Orion could lift a multi-megaton payload directly from earth surface and accelerate it to as much as 10%c, and very clean explosives would even have minimized fallout. The project was killed by the nuclear test-ban treaty of 1963, more's the pity. How'd that be for a fireworks display?

I remember reading about 'experimental' outer atmospheric nuclear detonations. I think it resulted in the first anti nuclear treaty signed between the US and the Soviets banning the use of same. Apparently one such detonation caused a massive EM discharge which knocked out the power in Hawaii. There was a rumour that one such detonation knocked a passenger airliner down over Siberia. These early detonations were in the ionosphere......why not go further out?

But getting back to the point.... I think Nasa needs to regroup and rethink its approach to space exploration. Using atomic detonations as propulsion would indeed be an interesting avenue of approach. Personal opinion suggests that they first dislodge the beancounters from the managerial orifice they occupy before they totally ruin a great institution.

The Orion is the ultimate heavy-lift booster, making SaturnVs and Russian Protons look like bottle rockets.

There are, apparently, some quiet wispers of taking Orion back off the shelf of dead ideas, though it would face some pretty serious opposition. The mearest mention of nuclear "bomb" propulsion would have environmental wackos of every stipe wetting themselves, and the UN screaming bloody murder. It would require a level of political backbone not seen in this country since even before Ronald Reagan to tell the rest of the world and our own lunatic fringe to shut up while we get on with it.

However, the advantages of the Orion, it's super-heavy lift capabilities and fact that launch costs, per kg to orbit, would be about a hundredth of the space shuttle are pretty strong incentives. With improvements in nuclear explosives it would be possible to both minimize fallout and reduce EMP to acceptable levels.

Seems to me the bean counters should be the ones pushing Orion.

On the other hand Burt Rutan showed it's possible to piggyback a spacecraft to the edge.

Seems to me the bean counters should be the ones pushing Orion.

I'd suggest they be made the passengers! Maybe the Challenger and Columbia would still be flying!