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NASA hasn’t been actively trying to drive down the cost of space. If the had it would of unlocked space for all of us decades ago. It took SpaceX investing the
by trixie_ 7y ago
NASA hasn’t been actively trying to drive down the cost of space. If the had it would of unlocked space for all of us decades ago.
It took SpaceX investing their own profits into building a reusable booster. And now they’re doing the same for the entire vehicle with Starship. NASA does pay SpaceX for flights to the IIS, but most of that money goes into building Dragons and the rockets to support them.
What if NASA actually invested in truly low maintenance fully reusable vehicles decades ago? You might actually have Mars colonies today. But what do we have? Continued investment in SLS when the writing has been on the wall for years now.
- p_l 7y agoNASA projects are endangered by politicians. The difference is that SpaceX funded reusability on their own, instead of depending on fickle funding from Congress that killed the original STS (leaving us with the one that flew and costed as much as Apollo per launch). And sometimes it wasn't Congress zit was president - like Nixon deciding to kill nuclear space propulsion for no known reason. The cutthroat politics of inter-OKB competition in Soviet Union Post Korolev's death sometimes appear milder than the indecision left after Kennedy in actually funding NASA.
- merpnderp 7y agoNixon killing nuclear space propulsion for no known reason? You mean the Orion project and thousands of nuclear bombs in space? I’d say keeping space nuclear weapons free in the face off with the Soviet Union counts as a known reason.
- p_l 7y agoThe nuclear propulsion project was unrelated to Orion. And yes, the reason is unknown, because in giving his Executive Order there was no reason attached. It was nuclear thermal engines, similar were being developed in Soviet Union in fact. IT was even tested for safety in case of crashing on Earth (and could run on earth, though the target was using it in space).
- pfdietz 7y agoNixon killed nuclear propulsion because there was no mission on the horizon to justify it. It was the right decision, although developing the shuttle was not.
- p_l 7y agoUnder pure "will this bring immediate profit", both were wrong decisions. Building the STS as it actually flew was a wrong decision, but that wrong came out of political pressures that resulted in NASA begging USAF for money, and USAF requiring features that were never used but which killed the reusability benefit and arguably stopped US launcher R&D for better part of 30-40 years. As for no mission - the missions on the horizon are locked by available launchers and bus systems available, with NERVA engines opening significant options. Despite Congress actually voting the money into budget Nixon killed it with Executive Order, and so far I haven't seen any real explanation why, except possibly internal politics and some people's ego.
- headmelted 7y agoHow on Earth (see what I did?) would NASA drive down the cost of space? “I don’t care if it’s not real science - Go there and do that, you burden on the taxpayer” - Every administration official in charge of NASA’s budget ever, probably. I love me some NASA but I don’t envy the people asking for funding one iota. Also, For All Mankind is terrific.
- trixie_ 7y agoSimple, by putting out contacts for reusable, low maintenance vehicles. NASA is in the position to define the requirements for bidders.
- buboard 7y agowhy would NASA want to drive down the cost of space? I mean, they would want to drive it down in order to go farther in space, but their mission is to explore space, not be the uber for space the criticism of their research budget is valid though, they need to be more ambitious and driven
- trixie_ 7y agoI think you answered your own question. You can’t go further in space to explore if the costs are high. NASA has the funding and power to shape requirements that make those Uber rides for their probes much much cheaper.
- DennisP 7y agoThen NASA should completely give up being the uber for space, instead of spending gobs of money on SLS. But if you are going to get into the launch business, then do it right.
- jacobwilliamroy 7y agoWell then there would be less money for things like PACE, ICE-SAT, ICE Bridge. They've been building earth satellites to improve fisheries management and inform earth conservation efforts. PACE will be particularly helpful for me as an oceanographer because of they've got those neato optical plankton sensors onboard. Also, NASA allocates funding based on decadal surveys of the scientific community, so they have really considered doing as you propose.
- trixie_ 7y agoBy funding science they’ve actually held science back because the costs of access to space have not decreased. You can do a lot more science when the costs are low.
- jacobwilliamroy 7y agoWhy do you personally want to go to space?
- DennisP 7y agoOr, there would be less money for SLS. NASA has been spending $2 billion annually for SLS development for a while now, and all they'll get is a disposable rocket the size of Starship that costs at least a billion dollars per launch, or $10,000/kg payload. Meanwhile SpaceX is spending less than one billion dollars total for Starship/Super Heavy, and at scale it'll launch payload for $20/kg. How much more money would NASA have for observation satellites with $20/kg launch? Probably even more than you'd think because when launch is cheap, you can also afford to make your satellite cheaper. If it fails, it's not so expensive to launch another one.
- jacobwilliamroy 7y agoThat's strange. Why is NASA doing sls instead of just contracting SpaceX? From your comment it sounds like SpaceX is much more efficient at launching things into space than NASA, and I'd like to know how that came to be the case.
- chr1 7y agoNASA could not do that decades ago because then we didn't have good enough computers to model the process of burning in the engine, or to control the engine to land vertically. So i don't think that effort spent on facebook and other computer related things was a waste.
- catalogia 7y ago> NASA could not do that decades ago because then we didn't have good enough computers to [...] control the engine to land vertically. Autonomous propulsive landing isn't something SpaceX invented. Besides the DC-X in the mid-90s which is often cited in these discussions, there are the Soviet Luna probes. In 1966 the Luna 9 lander used retrorocket thrusters to arrest its descent to the lunar surface to 6 m/s at 5 meters above the lunar surface (airbags handled the rest.) This is not quite as impressive as what SpaceX does today for a few reasons, but it seems to me that a concerted effort to iterate on this tech could have been a lot more successful decades ago than you think. (I believe in 1970 Luna 17 landed on the moon with no airbags, but I don't know much about Luna 17)
- chr1 7y agoLanding rocket on low gravity lunar surface, or test rockets that did not go to space is a much easier task, which is evidenced by multiple failures of early spacex rockets, despite grasshoper landing every time.
- trixie_ 7y agoIf you were right then NASA and every other country would be doing it now. But you’re not right. There’s nothing about the computers or engines that couldn’t of been done decades ago.
- chr1 7y agoThere is a big difference between "the only thing preventing development of better rockets" and "one of things". NASA and every other country would be doing it now if better computers were the only thing needed for reusable rockets. There is no sharp line dividing computers that made spaceX possible and slow ones, and with a little bit worse computers spaceX could develop the rocket after more failed attempts, spending much more money and time. But with the technology of 80's they'd end up with something very expensive and not very reliable similar to shuttle/buran.