EPTNASA and the Private Sector - Page 18
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Shaok
297 Posts
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DannyJ
United States5110 Posts
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
He does sound like a preacher. And that's not a compliment. | ||
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Carson
Canada820 Posts
This is an interesting site related to poverty and technology Link | ||
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TheNihilist
United States178 Posts
On May 09 2012 05:07 hypercube wrote: The way he talks just annoys me. He's completely ignoring the tough questions - i.e that Nasa has been incapable of doing anything genuinely inspiring for at least 20 years. He does sound like a preacher. And that's not a compliment. Hard to inspire when your budget has been slashed every year since the mid 1960s (as a percent of the total budget). At 0.48% of the federal budget, NASA is now at its lowest point since 1959, when it was still a newly formed fedgling agency. I'm guessing you are referring to Apollo as the "inspirational" days of NASA. During those days, NASA recieved ~4.5% of the federal budget, more than x9 its current funding status. | ||
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
On May 09 2012 06:11 TheNihilist wrote: Hard to inspire when your budget has been slashed every year since the mid 1960s (as a percent of the total budget). At 0.48% of the federal budget, NASA is now at its lowest point since 1959, when it was still a newly formed fedgling agency. I'm guessing you are referring to Apollo as the "inspirational" days of NASA. During those days, NASA recieved ~4.5% of the federal budget, more than x9 its current funding status. I'd have more sympathy if they didn't spend most of their money on (essentially) failed projects like the ISS and the Space Shuttle. I'm honestly not sure if NASA had 5 times as much money they could do something meaningful. Their most successful missions have been their medium sized projects (Mars rovers, WMAP, Swift telescope, Kepler). Neil de Grass acts as if money was the main problem. It's not. One huge problem is that NASA lacks credibility. Their big projects are massively over budget. The James Webb Telescope was supposed to cost $500 million. It's going to cost well over 10 billion. Take his point about asteroids. NASA actually has a congressional mandate to find 90% of Near-Earth Asteroids larger than 140m diameter by 2020. Of course there's no chance of this happening at all, there's no funding for it. Some of this is the Administration's or the Congress's fault. But NASA is just as much to blame. In 2005 when Congress mandated this search NASA did a feasibility study. They found that the best way to reach this goal is to launch a 2m infrared telescope on orbit around Venus. This is nice, because infrared telescopes can find asteroids that have a dark colour and a Venus orbit ensures that the Sun is never in the way. The proposed price tag was $2.5 billion, if I'm not mistaken. A decent chunk of money, but certainly not too much for getting rid of the asteroid problem once and for all. Or knowing for sure when a disaster would happen and taking the necessary decisions. Except with NASA's track record that figure is completely unreliable. It could cost $5 billion. It could cost $20 billion and be 20 years late. Or it might not fly at all. That's the main problem with NASA at the moment, and until it's fixed it's very hard to effectively argue for more money. I'm sure Neil de Grass understands this better than I do. Yet, he choses to ignore it completely (at least in this video, not sure if he's ever taken a public stance on these issues). | ||
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Bowdz
United States202 Posts
On May 09 2012 10:05 hypercube wrote: I'd have more sympathy if they didn't spend most of their money on (essentially) failed projects like the ISS and the Space Shuttle. I'm honestly not sure if NASA had 5 times as much money they could do something meaningful. Their most successful missions have been their medium sized projects (Mars rovers, WMAP, Swift telescope, Kepler). Neil de Grass acts as if money was the main problem. It's not. One huge problem is that NASA lacks credibility. Their big projects are massively over budget. The James Webb Telescope was supposed to cost $500 million. It's going to cost well over 10 billion. Take his point about asteroids. NASA actually has a congressional mandate to find 90% of Near-Earth Asteroids larger than 140m diameter by 2020. Of course there's no chance of this happening at all, there's no funding for it. Some of this is the Administration's or the Congress's fault. But NASA is just as much to blame. In 2005 when Congress mandated this search NASA did a feasibility study. They found that the best way to reach this goal is to launch a 2m infrared telescope on orbit around Venus. This is nice, because infrared telescopes can find asteroids that have a dark colour and a Venus orbit ensures that the Sun is never in the way. The proposed price tag was $2.5 billion, if I'm not mistaken. A decent chunk of money, but certainly not too much for getting rid of the asteroid problem once and for all. Or knowing for sure when a disaster would happen and taking the necessary decisions. Except with NASA's track record that figure is completely unreliable. It could cost $5 billion. It could cost $20 billion and be 20 years late. Or it might not fly at all. That's the main problem with NASA at the moment, and until it's fixed it's very hard to effectively argue for more money. I'm sure Neil de Grass understands this better than I do. Yet, he choses to ignore it completely (at least in this video, not sure if he's ever taken a public stance on these issues). Great post. I generally agree with Dr. Tyson about the need to increase the funding for NASA (as a percentage of the national budget, something as inspiring and economically critical as space exploration should hold a larger portion IMO), BUT, NASA really needs to restructure and refocus before funding is increased. As they stand today, NASA are a shadow of their former Apollo glory and have become a true bureaucracy with so many competing interests and internal forces that their effectiveness has been greatly hampered. Robert Zubrin does a great job explaining how the internal power plays caused the 90 Day Plan for the Space Exploration Initiative to balloon in price (which in turn effectively killed what was a fairly ambitious political goal): A huge factor for the insane budgets comes from the entrenched contractors at the ULA who purposefully spread out projects across as many states as possible to garner as much political support as they can. Not only is this incredibly inefficient, but it will inherently cause the price to sky rocket compared to a more focused effort like SpaceX, who fabricate almost every piece of the Falcon and Dragon in house at Hawthorne. At least from my perspective, that is what the promise of the COTS/CCDev programs are: to dramatically lower the cost of rocketry by funding a new aerospace market (whose competition will continue to push prices down). Provided Congress doesn't gut the already scarce COTS/CCDev funding (which they are currently trying to) and the monopoly which is the ULA is forced to actually be competitive with other parties, than I would imagine that dramatically lower prices for launches would help create a political atmosphere that is more friendly toward space exploration and NASA. | ||
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aksfjh
United States4853 Posts
On May 09 2012 10:05 hypercube wrote: I'd have more sympathy if they didn't spend most of their money on (essentially) failed projects like the ISS and the Space Shuttle. I'm honestly not sure if NASA had 5 times as much money they could do something meaningful. Their most successful missions have been their medium sized projects (Mars rovers, WMAP, Swift telescope, Kepler). Neil de Grass acts as if money was the main problem. It's not. One huge problem is that NASA lacks credibility. Their big projects are massively over budget. The James Webb Telescope was supposed to cost $500 million. It's going to cost well over 10 billion. Take his point about asteroids. NASA actually has a congressional mandate to find 90% of Near-Earth Asteroids larger than 140m diameter by 2020. Of course there's no chance of this happening at all, there's no funding for it. Some of this is the Administration's or the Congress's fault. But NASA is just as much to blame. In 2005 when Congress mandated this search NASA did a feasibility study. They found that the best way to reach this goal is to launch a 2m infrared telescope on orbit around Venus. This is nice, because infrared telescopes can find asteroids that have a dark colour and a Venus orbit ensures that the Sun is never in the way. The proposed price tag was $2.5 billion, if I'm not mistaken. A decent chunk of money, but certainly not too much for getting rid of the asteroid problem once and for all. Or knowing for sure when a disaster would happen and taking the necessary decisions. Except with NASA's track record that figure is completely unreliable. It could cost $5 billion. It could cost $20 billion and be 20 years late. Or it might not fly at all. That's the main problem with NASA at the moment, and until it's fixed it's very hard to effectively argue for more money. I'm sure Neil de Grass understands this better than I do. Yet, he choses to ignore it completely (at least in this video, not sure if he's ever taken a public stance on these issues). You have to remember that every budget cut further increases the cost and time scale of projects. Not saying there isn't ANY mishandling of NASA, but to tout that they run overbudget completely due to that mishandling is stupid. If we look at the space shuttle, we can kinda see how it all went wrong. They had a great number of projects the space shuttle was designed to handle, and when it began costing more than expected, they had the option of putting everything on hold for at least a decade or run with what they had. There wasn't enough capital for NASA to drop its current plans and pursue better options. Today that remains the problem. | ||
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Miyoshino
314 Posts
When Dyson talks on this subject, the only thing he thinks about is what he can say to get the biggest slash of budget. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rethinking-the-dream http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/21/space-shuttle-programme I don't think Dyson would disagree with Krauss. It's just not in his political street. Or it might be he believes the only way to get 1 dollar for science is to spend 10 on human spaceflight. This kinda has been NASA policy. They needed to inspire kids so they would study math and science. Their astronauts always talk about that. They always talk about when they were kids and how they read SF and how they saw the moon landing and that they had this dream about being an astronaut but they relealized that it would never happen. Stuff like that. Still most astronauts are still fighter and test pilots so it doesn't really have any relevance anyway. It's some of the most silly stuff I have heard. I am all for spending more tax payer money on space science. But let's admit human space flight is not science and a waste of money first. They should admit the moon landing was for political reasons only and had little scientific returns, that the ISS and the space shuttle were failures. Then they can say that some of their other projects were very succesful. And evne then they have some huge bureaucratic problems. Some people say they are bound to happen with any governmental agency. I don't believe that. They need to lean down and refocus. When that is done it will actually start making sense again to increase the budget. Controlling the budget is often the only way politicians can control these agencies. If you just increase NASA budget there's a big likelyhood of NASA bloating even more in the wrong places. Huge problem is always presidents blabbering about the great things they will get NASA to do just to get votes. There is a long tradition of this and Gingrich also wanted to do it. They just send NASA up for failure and for wasting money. Most recent was Bush with Constellation. What a complete waste of money just so Bush could look good post-Colombia crash. | ||
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CHOMPMannER
Canada175 Posts
= GET WITH IT WORLD!!!!!!! | ||
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Rhine
187 Posts
On May 09 2012 15:27 Miyoshino wrote: hypercube, you are exactly right. Dyson knows what his audience is and what his political goal is when he says the things he does. Lawrence M. Krauss is another well known physicist. He is against human space flight. When Dyson talks on this subject, the only thing he thinks about is what he can say to get the biggest slash of budget. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rethinking-the-dream http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/21/space-shuttle-programme I don't think Dyson would disagree with Krauss. It's just not in his political street. Or it might be he believes the only way to get 1 dollar for science is to spend 10 on human spaceflight. This kinda has been NASA policy. They needed to inspire kids so they would study math and science. Their astronauts always talk about that. They always talk about when they were kids and how they read SF and how they saw the moon landing and that they had this dream about being an astronaut but they relealized that it would never happen. Stuff like that. Still most astronauts are still fighter and test pilots so it doesn't really have any relevance anyway. It's some of the most silly stuff I have heard. I am all for spending more tax payer money on space science. But let's admit human space flight is not science and a waste of money first. They should admit the moon landing was for political reasons only and had little scientific returns, that the ISS and the space shuttle were failures. Then they can say that some of their other projects were very succesful. And evne then they have some huge bureaucratic problems. Some people say they are bound to happen with any governmental agency. I don't believe that. They need to lean down and refocus. When that is done it will actually start making sense again to increase the budget. Controlling the budget is often the only way politicians can control these agencies. If you just increase NASA budget there's a big likelyhood of NASA bloating even more in the wrong places. Huge problem is always presidents blabbering about the great things they will get NASA to do just to get votes. There is a long tradition of this and Gingrich also wanted to do it. They just send NASA up for failure and for wasting money. Most recent was Bush with Constellation. What a complete waste of money just so Bush could look good post-Colombia crash. Getting kids interested in science and technology is imperative for our future. I'm not sure how you can argue that an overarching scientific goal where news is continually focused on discovery doesn't help inspire generations after that. We haven't really had that for a while. Science funding continues to be misunderstood by politicians and (some of the) public. Human space flight is science, though who knows if it is a waste of money. It is possible to do good things without humans in space, of course (and maybe we should do without), but it offers highly important problems whose solutions will definitely come back down here. Look at NASA budget over the last 20 years. It's pathetic. Yeah, there's been some mismanagement but a lot of it is due to a lack of direction. THere's no overarching plan and there can't be one because they don't know how much money they'll get anyway. Politicians only use NASA as a means to get vote. It's not real support, in large part. As for he moon landing and related space research having only little scientific returns here's a list of work directly resulting from the Apollo missions: modern microchips, home insulation, satellite tv, water filters, CAT scans, the joystick, and hundreds of new materials. That's just the Apollo missions. | ||
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Miyoshino
314 Posts
Also, I don't think human space flight makes children study math any harder. | ||
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Rhine
187 Posts
As for children studying math harder, it's hard to objectively say, but subjectively, take a look at the attitude of the 60s and 70s. Every damn day there was something in the paper or on TV about the latest scientific and engineering discovery. Every day there was "Today scientists have succesfully done a practice run running the rocket around in close orbit. In a month, they will try to fly the rocket around the moon and back just to see if it's possible." The entire psyche of a nation was all about the inventions of tomorrow, because thinking about "tomorrow" in a positive and motivated light was always in the media. Hell, the entire green movement was likely born (or at least fueled) as a result of the Apollo missions. Did they need "human" space flight? Not really probably. Just needed a coherent push in an exciting direction. Of course they had a huge impact on scientific discovery and did motivate children. The following decades were filled with new blood excited about new possibilities, and science funding was high (also out of fear of the soviets). Being a scientist was actually respected. Take a look at the positivity and motivation. Now we have science funding cut and many people flocking to the banking industry. Postdocs are increasingly hard to get, and the job market is awful for new grads. THankfully, there is still a forward outlook in fields like stustainability, but it's not the same excitedness and motivation as before (not to mention that sustainability was fueled by the space program in its early days). | ||
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Miyoshino
314 Posts
When I was young I read books about the Space Shuttle and about Sky Lab as well as Apollo. I can't say it had any effect on me but that's just an anecdote. But today, people play videogames with aliens in them. They don't care about some Soyuz launch. If anything they are slacking on their homework to play Halo or whatever games kids these days play. They sure aren't reading some picture book with the ISS inside and getting super excited. | ||
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Rhine
187 Posts
On May 10 2012 02:26 Miyoshino wrote: If you ask a child right now how many people there are in space, they won't know. When I was young I read books about the Space Shuttle and about Sky Lab as well as Apollo. I can't say it had any effect on me but that's just an anecdote. But today, people play videogames with aliens in them. They don't care about some Soyuz launch. If anything they are slacking on their homework to play Halo or whatever games kids these days play. They sure aren't reading some picture book with the ISS inside and getting super excited. That's exactly my point. The space program of the last 20 - 30 years has been uninspiring to say the least. There's no more drive and no more motivation that finds itself in the media and in the public psyche. | ||
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radscorpion9
Canada2252 Posts
That said there are many other areas in science that could prove valuable in enticing youth towards a career in a STEM field. Nanotechnology, biotechnology, advanced AI, stem cell research. Although I guess its not quite as visceral as the vision of going to outer space. | ||
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Rhine
187 Posts
On May 10 2012 02:47 radscorpion9 wrote: Its true, just looking at the company Planetary Resources and I'm inspired already and reading the comments so are many others. It might take a long time, but for once I'm excited about the future and the scientific breakthroughs we might make in our journey to colonize space (stations) and mine asteroids. If Nasa got involved in that as a partner with the private sector, it could be really exciting. Not to mention the human race might have a chance of surviving an impact from an asteroid if some people can live off world (a few decades away of course). That said there are many other areas in science that could prove valuable in enticing youth towards a career in a STEM field. Nanotechnology, biotechnology, advanced AI, stem cell research. Although I guess its not quite as visceral as the vision of going to outer space. Agreed. The allure of those fields is not as significant, though they are a driving force to some degree. I am part of those, so I fully support it :D. | ||
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[UoN]Sentinel
United States11320 Posts
On May 10 2012 02:11 Rhine wrote: As for children studying math harder, it's hard to objectively say, but subjectively, take a look at the attitude of the 60s and 70s. Every damn day there was something in the paper or on TV about the latest scientific and engineering discovery. Every day there was "Today scientists have succesfully done a practice run running the rocket around in close orbit. In a month, they will try to fly the rocket around the moon and back just to see if it's possible." The entire psyche of a nation was all about the inventions of tomorrow, because thinking about "tomorrow" in a positive and motivated light was always in the media. Hell, the entire green movement was likely born (or at least fueled) as a result of the Apollo missions. Did they need "human" space flight? Not really probably. Just needed a coherent push in an exciting direction. Actually a lot of this isn't true. Most people had the same views on space that people do today. Even when we finally got a man on the moon, 57% of the nation said "it isn't worth the cost". But back then it was alright for gov't/NASA to not give a shit what people thought, because everything could be explained as getting a one-up on the Soviets. Honestly though, I believe we need to start directing more labor towards space, start creating jobs for space janitors (cleaning up satellite debris from orbit using lasers or manually w/ spacecraft and conventional tools) or find a way to mine the Moon's helium (for fuel, technology, and balloons) and aluminum (for more craft to mine the Moon's helium). So we still have initiative. | ||
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Rhine
187 Posts
 . Even if during it they didn't think it was worth it, I think the social and scientific effects were still felt both during and after the fact. Whole industries were created and entire fields were revolutionized. It would be nice to get some kind of initiative, but it's not happening right now, at least not on this level. They keep floundering back and forth with "oh maybe we should go to Mars, maybe we should do this/that" but haven't settled on a meaningful, central long term plan with guaranteed funding. | ||
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
On May 09 2012 14:46 aksfjh wrote: You have to remember that every budget cut further increases the cost and time scale of projects. Not saying there isn't ANY mishandling of NASA, but to tout that they run overbudget completely due to that mishandling is stupid. If we look at the space shuttle, we can kinda see how it all went wrong. They had a great number of projects the space shuttle was designed to handle, and when it began costing more than expected, they had the option of putting everything on hold for at least a decade or run with what they had. There wasn't enough capital for NASA to drop its current plans and pursue better options. Today that remains the problem. I'm sure some of that is true. But some of it is deliberate strategy from NASA. You start with an unrealistically low estimate and try to force additional funding by appealing to sunken costs. The $500 million estimate was never realistic, not even if everything went according to plan. Which of course it never does, with projects like these. As for the space shuttle: the correct decision was to put everything on hold and it wasn't a close call at all. Maybe it was politically impossible, but NASA clearly supported the wrong side of the argument. The Challenger disaster was the natural point when the project should have been scrapped. Instead they tried to argue that the shuttle was safer than it actually was. Managers made claims about safety that were clearly untrue and engineers gave reliable numbers only off the record. I'm fairly sure, it wasn't because they were worried about putting projects on hold that depended on the Space Shuttle. They just didn't want to admit it was a failure because they were afraid they might be held responsible. Additionally they had support from people who were profiting financially from the program. That's not the mindset of a visionary, explorer or a scientist. That's the mindset of a politician or a bureaucrat. There's a huge difference between being forced into a bad decision and doing your best to make it happen. To some extent that's understandable. NASA is a big organization and I'm sure no engineer or astronaut wants to argue for many of their friends and former colleagues to lose their jobs. They are loyal to the organization and the people within it even if it hurts the overall goal or exploration and science a little. But why are people like Neil de Grass doing the same? Or advocacy groups like the Planetary Society? Ultimately these people should be called out for their empty platitudes, not applauded for supporting science. The best way to support the goal of space exploration is to take a critical attitude towards NASA. Not in the sense of giving them less money. But we should ask for more openness, and attack the decisions that lead down the wrong path. Supporting NASA unconditionally is not the same as supporting science and space exploration. It's supporting the people and organizations that profit off the inefficiency of NASA. | ||
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