Dec 13th, 2008 at 8:47 am
NASA vs. Obama
One of the less important things I liked about Barack Obama back during the primaries was that on a couple of occasions he indicated a desire to cut back on NASA’s wasteful human space exploration missions in favor of doing more actual science. It appears that this has not endeared him to NASA, and that the space agency is proving to be a major dark cloud in a transition process that’s otherwise gone very smoothly.
68 Responses to “NASA vs. Obama”
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December 13th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Griffin sounds as if he is the most obstinate of the Bush people leaving office although I don’t know if he has any big political support. But, there still is a section of the country that only believes in manned space flight. No people in space means there is no space program. He may scream this once he is out but other voices about the Bush years will get more media attention.
December 13th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Let’s not exclude the possibility that this is just one administrator being a giant prick, rather than the broader institution expressing its hostility.
December 13th, 2008 at 9:28 am
I think southpaw is basically right that it’s not a whole agency in need of redirection. It’d have been worth the initial post’s actually checking first to see what NASA has been doing with itself. The last space walk, I seem to recall, was from another country, and the talk of sending someone to Mars was out of the mouth of bush himself, where it could be safely ignored by one and all. One can discuss the extravagance of robotic explorers and space telescopes, but even they have pretty much been left to exceed their expected lifetimes by good fortune and not big bucks.
December 13th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Oh I get it. Waste on space programs is bad. Waste on new infrastructure is good.
December 13th, 2008 at 9:39 am
I suppose you could eat me, Milena. But my brother is coming over your bridge soon, and he’s much bigger and meatier than I am, so why don’t you let me go and eat him instead?
December 13th, 2008 at 9:41 am
1) I don’t know about Griffin but NASA has a HUGE string of major fuckups on its balance sheet.
a) THREE Missions to Mars failed. One –because a substandard valve had been used. Two — because guidance data was not converted to English units to metric when it was passed from Lockheed Martin’s software to NASA Mission Control. Three –because Lockheed Martin landing software shut off the descent engine several hundred feet above the ground when the landing arms were deployed. $Billions lost.
b) Another $Billion lost when NASA contracted with Lockheed Martin to build the follow on to the Space Shuttle –the X35. The X35 was abandoned when its lightweight fuel tank started leaking fuel.
c) IF I was the leader of space aliens and wanted to keep humans confined to planet Earth, I could Not think of a better way than to put space flight in charge of an incompetent NASA.
d) SPace flight will never work until we get much better propulsion systems — based on nuclear, not chemical energy.
If we want to go into space, we should be plowing a shitload more money into advanced physics research and NOT pissing it away on Mike Griffin’s slightly refined version of CHinese rockets from a 1000 years ago. That physics research would also pay huge dividends on development of alternative energy sources here on earth.
e) It is the UNMANNED Nasa programs that are valuable. The data collected from astronomical packages is the other major data input into advanced physics models that supplements data from programs like the Hadron Collider in Europe. If we want to go beyond Newtonian physics we need to look at non-Newtonian conditions — either by creating them here on earth or observing them in deep space. That is what we should be plowing money into.
f) I personally judge that NASA’s Manned programs are just another way for Air Force Space Command to get more money for its space warfare goals. A stalking horse.
December 13th, 2008 at 9:51 am
In theory, nuclear warheads are not allowed in space. In theory, we know everything that’s out there — we know that Russia, China,etc don’t have any aces orbiting overhead.
For various reasons, I myself wouldn’t bet on it — and I suspect Space Command wouldn’t either. But the only way to resolve an anomaly is to go look at it.
About time to dust off that old Star Trek propaganda franchise and brainwash AMerica into pissing away a $Trillion or so to “explore the final frontier”.
http://www.startrekmovie.com/
December 13th, 2008 at 9:54 am
These further science. No one is talking about shutting down NASA programs that further science. The issue is manned expeditions. Our remote sensing is so good that it is very hard to justify using people if science is the primary end goal (as opposed to flag waving).
December 13th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Re Don Williams
What’s this, the blogs resident Bolshevik and I have found something else to agree on! He agrees with myself, Prof. Bob Park and Prof. Steven Weinberg. Will wonders never cease.
I suggest that Mr. Williams, and anyone else interested in this topic, might want to mosey over to Dr. Phil Plaits’ blog where he will find me in heated combat with the Bad Astronomer, a strong advocate of manned space flight, and other such individuals. Links to a couple of threads on that blog follow.
The following is a post from Prof. Parks’ site with one of his famous jeremiads against manned space flight.
3. NASA REGRESSION: THE TRANSITION IS NOT GOING SMOOTHLY.
NASA is a thorny problem for Obama. NASA administrator Mike Griffin is focused on the Constellation program, the much delayed, way-over-budget and thoroughly useless moon rocket, which seems to be the U.S. entry in a space-race with emerging nations. The Orlando Sentinel reports a squabble between Griffin and Lori Garver, a former NASA associate administrator for policy, who heads the Obama NASA-transition-team. Griffin says she’s unqualified. She has no background in science or technology. It’s past time for a complete restructuring of NASA focusing on the future, not the past. Cede the Moon to China and the ISS to India. Space ships, along with sailing ships and covered wagons, are relics of bygone eras. There’s a universe out there to learn about, let’s get on with it.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/12/11/griffinobama-follow-up/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/12/11/nasas-griffin-butting-heads-with-obama/
December 13th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Thanks, SLC.
December 13th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Just to play devils advocate . . .
In addition to the purpose of furthering science, couldn’t it also be NASA’s mission to stimulate innovation? The original space race produced myriad engineering breakthroughs that I wouldn’t regard as pure science, but that nevertheless have tremendous utility. Learning how to sustain a living payload through long distance space travel strikes me as a worthy end (not that we should pay to do it right now, but that we shouldn’t abandon the idea forever), and the process of doing that would presumably throw off some terrestrially useful technologies.
December 13th, 2008 at 10:34 am
This quote certainly has Bush Jr. appointee flavor to it, although it’s only a report of what someone said in a meeting.
But if we had a SUPERTRAIN to the Moon, the question would be moot.
December 13th, 2008 at 10:35 am
On the theme of the space program developing technology, it surely does, but Carl Sagan once quipped about the myth that the space program invented Teflo (paraphrasing) “Surely there are less costly ways to develop stickless frying pans.”
December 13th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Teflon
December 13th, 2008 at 10:44 am
1) If NASA had two brain cells to rub together, it would be EARNING money by promoting MOOSE flights to rich sports enthusiasts.
2) MOOSE was conceived here in Philadelphia by the GE Reentry Systems, who developed ..er..other things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE
3) Here’s the record so far:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kittinger-jump.jpg
December 13th, 2008 at 10:49 am
SPace flight will never work until we get much better propulsion systems — based on nuclear, not chemical energy.
The best way of encouraging propulsion development is to demonstrate a consistent, sustained demand for it. It’s worthwhile looking at the original plans for the Apollo program. Von Braun and others wanted to use Apollo to create a space launch infrastructure that would enable human travel on a consistent basis. Not just a handful of moon landings, or a shuttle launch every 8 months or so, but repeated launches at least once a month if not more often.
The beauty of such a system is that the longer it is in place, the more efficiencies of scale you get. Not only due to the program itself — i.e., construction of space stations, moon bases allow not just more things to be done in space but more sophisticated things, and more cheaply — but the consistency of the program makes it more likely that private capital will be willing to invest in space.
Look where private capital has been attracted so far — into satellite launches. Why? Because dozens of satellites are launched each year. It’s a reliable source of business. Where, by contrast, is the incentive for private industry to come up with a cheaper version of the Space Shuttle? There is none. Launches are few and far between and there is little assurance that the program won’t be shut down. (The ISS is one of the few things keeping the Space Shuttle in business — this is an example, although on a pitifully small and overpaid scale, of what von Braun was talking about).
We need to make a multi-decade commitment to manned space travel. Enough to ensure companies that even with a decade-long lead time, they can count on enough business to justify a multi-billion dollar investment on their parts.
In an oblique way, the argument is the same as the argument for mass transit. Matt has argued at length that constructing more mass transit will encourage denser development of the kind people want to live in — but only if developers are convinced that the mass transit is permanent (so trains instead of buses) — and only if zoning around transit stops is changed so that high density occupation is allowed. The same applies to space travel. Investing in space should not be seen as a series of one-off missions, but as investment in an infrastructure that will itself encourage private development.
December 13th, 2008 at 10:53 am
MOOSE would actually be a shitload of fund.
You take a sighting on earth with a primitive sextant, compute your distance and determine how many seconds to fire the retro rocket. Get it wrong and you either burn to crisp in a ballistic reentry or skip out into space heading toward Mars.
Given that your reentry angle has to be kept to around 1 degree or so, you cover around 10,000 miles on the descent. So you kinda have to eyeball the earth and chose the right moment to end up in the South Pacific vice knocking monkeys off the branches in the Congo.
But what do we hear from Explorer Matthew? The restaurants of Finland.
That’s the problem with you young trustfund scumbags — you lack initiative.
December 13th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I know lots NASA “rocket scientists”. They see NASA as having been run by idiots at least since Dan Quail got to appoint Dan Golden. It is not at all surprising that the NASA administrator would forbid NASA people from talking to an outsider about NASA policy. Or that NASA people would give said outsiders an earful if they had a chance.
December 13th, 2008 at 11:06 am
the only argument i have heard for manned missions is,
“the public wants manned missions, and without public support, nasa is doomed.”
in other words,
“there are no good arguments for manned missions, but the public believes a lot of bad ones, so we have to pretend they’re right.”
better education from the scientists would help.
there’s also the possibility that a change in military culture will help, too. nasa grew up as fighter-jock heaven. but now that the military is getting used to the idea of unmanned drones, and even starting to see the advantages, they may be able to get past the need to stick a human into the payload.
December 13th, 2008 at 11:17 am
1) Re Scott de B’s comment “The best way of encouraging propulsion development is to demonstrate a consistent, sustained demand for it…The beauty of such a system is that the longer it is in place, the more efficiencies of scale you get.”
————
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Pissing away huge sums on Endless refinement of low-value bullshit does not lead to success. The prehistoric Indians who developed the Clovis point made a pretty good flint spearhead for killing mammoths — where did that get them?
Invention creates demand –not the reverse.
2) All this talk of “spin-offs” from NASA is utter bullshit. Many of the satellites launched today by the USA are launched by Lockheed Martin’s Atlas V rocket. It’s now used by the joint Lockheed-Boeing United Launch Alliance.
The Atlas V is a fucking Russian RD-180 rocket with a Lockheed decal slapped on it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V
So much for NASA’s contribution to space flight — after what ?? Hundreds of billions spent on NASA launchers.
3) Besides, aside from the NRO sending up spy satellites and NOAA sending up weather sats, who launches satellite nowdays? A shitload of optical fiber trunks have been laid across the oceans –that’s what carries the bulk of tranoceanic comms nowdays.
4) Civilization is not advanced by idiots pissing away hundreds of $Billions on questionable activities. Civilization is advanced by scientists discovering new knowledge and engineers exploiting that new knowledge. Our very survival depends upon developing alternative sources of energy — and that depends upon making new discoveries in physics.
But our advanced Physics labs have been starved for decades — two hundred scientists are likely to laid off just from the Democratic Congresses’ recent budget cuts for science.
Meanwhile , that same stupid fucking Democratic Congress diverted $1.5 TRILLION to rescue a bunch of worthless, lazy assholes on Wall Street whose sole contribution to humanity has been to keep the sellers of Cristal and the restauranteurs of Manhatten happy.
December 13th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Nuclear propulsion … what would that entail? Conventional nuclear reactors are obviously unfit for the job – they’re glorified steam engines. And doing some sort of controlled fission or fusion burn like we do with chemical rockets would be radioactively unpleasant. Don – I’m very curious!
December 13th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Don Williams: Does there exist a subject such that you have not richly developed your own set of monomanic obsessions?
December 13th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Here’s the article about the Democratic Congress buttfucking the physicists at Fermilab. And stiffing the Europeans on our share of the ILC.
http://fire.pppl.gov/doe_budget_2008_%20nature_122407.pdf
This stupid hostility toward science is a longstanding American tradition. If a shitload of European Scientists — many of them Jews — hadn’t fled Hitler and worked on Manhattan , we might all be speaking German today.
December 13th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Re El Cid’s comment “Does there exist a subject such that you have not richly developed your own set of monomanic obsessions? ”
——————
Hey, you pay off my share of the $11.3 Trillion in federal debt, promise my son won’t be drafted and sent to the Middle East, and promise to keep GDP rising at 2 percent per year and I’ll shut up.
Oh, yes — I’d like to get the money I paid into my Social Security/Medicare accounts put back.
December 13th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Going to Mars and coming back would probably require developing, at least, a new way to fuel the propulsion systems, right?
The current regime of sending our gadgetry and leaving it won’t like engage the question: How would you get back from Mars?
December 13th, 2008 at 11:53 am
won’t like = likely won’t
sorry
December 13th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
The best way of encouraging propulsion development is to demonstrate a consistent, sustained demand for it.
This is the problem: nuclear propulsion development is something that needs significant funding for more than a decade — longer than any single presidential administration. The odds that it will be sustained over several — or even 2-3 — administrations is very low.
Nuclear propulsion … what would that entail?
From what I remember, nuclear propulsion in space entails sending fuel over nuclear rods which ignite the fuel, driving the satellite/ship/etc.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Walker, just to clarify, while I was trying to word carefully to sound “fair and balanced,” I think the robotic explorers and the space telescope are great science. I was trying to offer a supportive comment about NASA. Ironically, the HST initially took a spacewalk to get functional, which at the time had me thinking that human intelligence are not made obsolete by robots just yet, although Bush could easily have me change my mind.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Re Professor Kum’n'go “Don – I’m very curious!”
————
How about Project Orion w/ Fusion?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
If not that, then use fission. We don’t need Anarctica anyway.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I disagree. To me, this sounds like an argument against having a manned base in Antarctica, and instead sending only robots.
I do agree, however, that achieving a safe, efficient, method of sending people into space will only be achieved through experience. It’s a matter of gaining knowledge through repetition. What the exact number is, I don’t know, but for the sake of argument lets say 10,000. After 10,000 missions, say, space travel will be safe enough for the average person to use. I would argue that it doesn’t matter one jot whether that’s 1 mission per year for the next 10,000 years or 100 missions a year for the next century. There’s no shortcut. You can’t gain the experience in a lab. You just have to do it.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I would recommend that we could achieve enormous cost savings by sending Republicans on manned missions, and thus eliminating a lot of need for safety technology, but apart from their ability to screw up the mission I’m also not sure that Republicans would still count as “human” involvement in space flight.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Invention creates demand –not the reverse.
Of course it does, but the problem is that it is not likely to create demand for a specific thing.
Another way of putting it: If all you want to do is discover a new species, but don’t care what it is, just go to the Amazon rain forest. If you want to discover a specific new species (say a flying monkey), you’re likely going to have to make it yourself. Waiting around for one to appear isn’t very efficient.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
I wouldn’t say it’s “NASA” that has a problem with Obama, so much as the Bush-appointed director, and maybe some people on the human-exploration side.
There’s a whole lotta NASA that thinks the human-cargo missions are a waste of money, and would rather see those resources go to probes and sattellite and telescopes and other projects that acctually, you know, succeed and accomplish things.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
“If you are looking under the hood, then you are calling me a liar,” Griffin replied. “Because it means you don’t trust what I say is under the hood.”
If I didn’t mistrust this guy before, I sure as hell would after that!
December 13th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
It would be a Great Thing if Obama “compromised” with NASA by coming out in favor of the unmanned programs over the manned ones.
Obama owes less than nothing to the Gulf States (except, slightly, Florida). Those guys are the ones who usually profit from boondoggles like Moon Mission 2: Electric Boogaloo. It’s not a big risk for him to tell them to go f*ck themselves with a rusty Saturn V.
I enjoy not having Tom DeLay around anymore.
December 13th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
“No people in space means there is no space program.”
This is an emotional, not scientific argument. And on an emotional level, it is true. If it doesn’t maximize the pleasure of a few astronomy grad students, I really don’t fucking care.
December 13th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Sending people into space has intrinsic value, not instrumental value. Just like studying literature or climbing Mount Everest.
But Americans don’t really care any more, so I guess it’s just as well that the Chinese are taking over from us.
December 13th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
The manned space program has always been a waste of resources. It exists only to win the pissing contest against other countries and is not at all necessary to learn about the universe.
December 13th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
The manned space program has always been a waste of resources. It exists only to win the pissing contest against other countries and is not at all necessary to learn about the universe.
Perhaps so. But as others have alluded to above, manned space flight is akin to a “loss leader” to drum up public support for funding of other, more valuable space-related projects.
December 13th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Re: Sending people into space has intrinsic value, not instrumental value. Just like studying literature or climbing Mount Everest.
Just what intrinsic value does sending people into space have? Frankly, I don’t see the point at all, and am not at all thrilled or inspired by the idea. Perhaps we should think about solving problems on Earth first.
December 13th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
So are roads. Haven’t you been seeing all those 4×4 commercials? Road are for wussies.
Want cost efficient?
http://www.spaceelevator.com/
December 13th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
How do you get back from Mars? is a good question. The likely answer is, you don’t. So manned space travel beyond the moon is emigration, not exploration. You need a balanced community that will survive and grow in a primitive, agricultural (of some kind), pre-industrial environment. How many? Pick your figure – say 5,000. Now seal your 5,000 volunteers up in a replication of the Mars environment, as close as you can get it, for five years. How many do you think will be alive at the end of that? My guess is none – they will have killed themselves in squabbles over religion and cultural issues. You only have to look around at our world today to realise that cultural issues are the biggest challenge to survival, not the scientific or engineering ones, as big as those are. Until humankind can solve issues like this in our real environment on this planet, it’s not worth sending manned expeditions any further than the moon.
December 14th, 2008 at 4:50 am
Bah.
What I want NASA to be doing is working feverishly to reduce the cost of getting a pound of mass into orbit– and, to a lesser extent, working on longer-term life support.
The space science, the “learning about the universe” is just gravy, not the meat and potatoes. Even if we can do “more science” with unmanned probes I’m not clear that it’s the science I would most want accomplished.
December 14th, 2008 at 11:34 am
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