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NASA Science Directorate, which operates Mars rovers and sends planetary probes, is mission driven. NASA human spaceflight is a jobs program (it invents make wo

NASA Science Directorate, which operates Mars rovers and sends planetary probes, is mission driven. NASA human spaceflight is a jobs program (it invents make work in order to excuse spending money) that is fatally afraid of taking on a project they might fail at, because that might endanger the spigot of endless government money for all the pet technologies (for the people inside NASA) and jobs in districts (for the funders in congress). See this talk by Dan Rasky (inventor of PICA heatshield) for a perspective from the inside: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3gzwMJWa5w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3gzwMJWa5w See almost any talk by Robert Zubrin for a perspective from outside, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaNKtIY6JpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaNKtIY6JpQ

jonhendry18 8y ago
"is fatally afraid of taking on a project they might fail at, because that might endanger the spigot of endless government money for all the pet technologies " And people could die
- wolf550e 8y ago
  Wasting billions of dollars trying to prevent a few astronauts from dying, while that money spent on saving lives more efficiently could have saved thousands of lives, is called "statistical murder". https://reason.com/archives/2012/01/26/how-much-is-an-astronauts-life-worth https://reason.com/archives/2012/01/26/how-much-is-an-astron...
  - jonhendry18 8y ago
    Sure, but that's cold comfort if you work on something that blows up some astronauts and a teacher.
- rbanffy 8y ago
  A lot of projects fail without taking human lives with it. Ares was dropped after one single test flight of a simpler Ares I. Arguably it shouldn't even have been attempted - the sheer stupidity of the whole idea of having a single large solid rocket propelling you up without the possibility of being throttled down and with the chance of having burning solid fuel raining on your parachute in case you needed to bail out was probably swept under the rug too many times for comfort. And that clusterfuck was stopped before it'd be able to kill anyone. In the meantime, it produced some knowledge on large solid fuel 1st stages that may someday compete with SpaceX's tech.
  - wolf550e 8y ago
    This is only re: your last sentence. It won't, solid rockets are inherently limited in their safety (for the reasons you pointed out), fuel efficiency and ability to be rapidly reused. The fuel efficiency will never be that of kerolox, methalox or hydrolox engines [1]. Landing a solid the way Falcon 9 lands is impossible (there is no engine on the way back, and if you can shut it down safely and then relight it then you can't throttle it), and when you recover the parts of the rocket that are not fuel, "refueling" solid rocket is basically re-manufacturing (the STS boosters were re-manufactured, without any economy). In general, the use of solid boosters for crewed NASA missions is a folly that was mandated by congress to funnel money into ATK (manufacturer of many military solid rockets and explosives from hand held to ICBM/SLBM, now Northrop Grumman). Ares I, Liberty and OmegA, and the SLS boosters, are just more of the same. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-propellant_rocket#Performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-propellant_rocket#Perfor...
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      Indeed. The SRBs are a stupid idea. Someone must build a decent rocket factory in the same congressional district so that NASA can make safe rockets. It makes sense if refueling is just filling them with fuel in an automated way (think a giant extrusion device printing layers of fuel inside a rotating empty rocket). That way, the cost of flying a rocket becomes downtime+fuel.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    OrbitalATK (now part of Northrop Grumman) is bidding Omega, which has a big solid first stage, for EELV2.
woodandsteel 8y ago
Thank you, that is a very insightful comment and it answers exactly what I was asking about. Maybe if SpaceX starts sending people to Mars at 1/100 the cost NASA plans to, congress will finally end the NASA manned space program.

jonhendry18 8y ago

"is fatally afraid of taking on a project they might fail at, because that might endanger the spigot of endless government money for all the pet technologies " And people could die

wolf550e 8y ago
Wasting billions of dollars trying to prevent a few astronauts from dying, while that money spent on saving lives more efficiently could have saved thousands of lives, is called "statistical murder". https://reason.com/archives/2012/01/26/how-much-is-an-astronauts-life-worth https://reason.com/archives/2012/01/26/how-much-is-an-astron...
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  Sure, but that's cold comfort if you work on something that blows up some astronauts and a teacher.
rbanffy 8y ago
A lot of projects fail without taking human lives with it. Ares was dropped after one single test flight of a simpler Ares I. Arguably it shouldn't even have been attempted - the sheer stupidity of the whole idea of having a single large solid rocket propelling you up without the possibility of being throttled down and with the chance of having burning solid fuel raining on your parachute in case you needed to bail out was probably swept under the rug too many times for comfort. And that clusterfuck was stopped before it'd be able to kill anyone. In the meantime, it produced some knowledge on large solid fuel 1st stages that may someday compete with SpaceX's tech.
- wolf550e 8y ago
  This is only re: your last sentence. It won't, solid rockets are inherently limited in their safety (for the reasons you pointed out), fuel efficiency and ability to be rapidly reused. The fuel efficiency will never be that of kerolox, methalox or hydrolox engines [1]. Landing a solid the way Falcon 9 lands is impossible (there is no engine on the way back, and if you can shut it down safely and then relight it then you can't throttle it), and when you recover the parts of the rocket that are not fuel, "refueling" solid rocket is basically re-manufacturing (the STS boosters were re-manufactured, without any economy). In general, the use of solid boosters for crewed NASA missions is a folly that was mandated by congress to funnel money into ATK (manufacturer of many military solid rockets and explosives from hand held to ICBM/SLBM, now Northrop Grumman). Ares I, Liberty and OmegA, and the SLS boosters, are just more of the same. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-propellant_rocket#Performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-propellant_rocket#Perfor...
  - rbanffy 8y ago
    Indeed. The SRBs are a stupid idea. Someone must build a decent rocket factory in the same congressional district so that NASA can make safe rockets. It makes sense if refueling is just filling them with fuel in an automated way (think a giant extrusion device printing layers of fuel inside a rotating empty rocket). That way, the cost of flying a rocket becomes downtime+fuel.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- greglindahl 8y ago
  OrbitalATK (now part of Northrop Grumman) is bidding Omega, which has a big solid first stage, for EELV2.

woodandsteel 8y ago

Thank you, that is a very insightful comment and it answers exactly what I was asking about. Maybe if SpaceX starts sending people to Mars at 1/100 the cost NASA plans to, congress will finally end the NASA manned space program.