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I think a major hurdle with NASA is that the American ~public~ political leadership does not accept failures (they barely accept success). Thus, NASA seems to

I think a major hurdle with NASA is that the American ~public~ political leadership does not accept failures (they barely accept success). Thus, NASA seems to only swing at pitches they know will be home runs. If NASA spends $10 billion on a mission that fails, it will be complained about for decades to come about how "wasteful" NASA was. (of course, you'll never hear those same politicians complaining about how wasteful failed military engagements costing 10000x are). It's unfortunate, because NASA is probably the only organization on earth capable of achieving such goals.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
To be fair, this is a pretty rational approach to many low impact questions with no timeline. You can simply wait for cost to go down and chance of success to go up. Most people would agree we dont need to know about Europa today. If you look at other issues where the government spends money like a drunk sailor, there are at least debated claims of urgency and need.
DowagerDave 2y ago
I think the biggest hurdle is the human condition. We're prepared to spend 10x to get a human into some version of outer space as basically cargo, but don't get the same emotional resonance with unmanned exploration even though that's were the valuable science happens.
hfe 2y ago
> If NASA spends $10 billion on a mission that fails, it will be complained about for decades to come about how "wasteful" NASA was. And rightly so. The solution isn't to not try. The solution is to continue investing. See the Apollo missions. Lots of failure there, but it wasn't a waste because it did eventually succeed, both in its mission and also in bringing a bunch of technological advancement. Investing a ton of money into some venture, only to give up on it after the first failure is something we should all be angry about. If its worth doing, its worth trying again when it fails.
- mlyle 2y ago
  I agree, but this also means "investing in smaller chunks." We're stacking missions up to be so complicated that they're really expensive and the first try really has to succeed. We need to figure out how to get smaller chunks so that individual ones can fail.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    Yes. A lot of the innovation in space recently has been about making space missions cheaper. NASA and JPL still do these huge multi-billion-dollar headliner missions, but the democratization of space is an underrepresented story in the public view of space. It's still hard to get far from orbit cheaply, though.
    - mlyle 2y ago
      Yup. Actually, I'm advisor for a high school team that was selected by NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative to put a satellite in LEO, mostly to do space technology development and demonstration. The growth of rideshare and dedicated small satellite launch missions has been impressive to watch in the past couple of decades. Getting out of LEO has a lot of challenges; the delta V is expensive, but also survivability away from Earth's thermal radiation and magnetic field gets harder. This has a compounding effect where costs and scope run away; if you need to buy expensive launch, rad-hard hardware and do exotic things for power and heating, you want to amortize the fixed portions of these over more science...
polishdude20 2y ago
Maybe there should be more emphasis on what IS accomplished during the building and engineering of those missions regardless of the final mission outcome. I think the PR spin needs to be in a direction that highlights the achievements along the way more.
Ancalagon 2y ago
Laughably, horribly dystopian how much we spend on the military vs. programs like NASA. I want my Star Trek timeline back :(
bee_rider 2y ago
The American public was willing to pay for the Apollo project because the Soviet Union was embarrassing us, right? I hear China is kicking our asses at space stuff. Don’t look it up, there’s no time to check me on that, we need to hurray and load up the dump truck with money for NASA before China takes over Europa.

s1artibartfast 2y ago

To be fair, this is a pretty rational approach to many low impact questions with no timeline. You can simply wait for cost to go down and chance of success to go up. Most people would agree we dont need to know about Europa today. If you look at other issues where the government spends money like a drunk sailor, there are at least debated claims of urgency and need.

DowagerDave 2y ago

I think the biggest hurdle is the human condition. We're prepared to spend 10x to get a human into some version of outer space as basically cargo, but don't get the same emotional resonance with unmanned exploration even though that's were the valuable science happens.

hfe 2y ago

> If NASA spends $10 billion on a mission that fails, it will be complained about for decades to come about how "wasteful" NASA was. And rightly so. The solution isn't to not try. The solution is to continue investing. See the Apollo missions. Lots of failure there, but it wasn't a waste because it did eventually succeed, both in its mission and also in bringing a bunch of technological advancement. Investing a ton of money into some venture, only to give up on it after the first failure is something we should all be angry about. If its worth doing, its worth trying again when it fails.

mlyle 2y ago
I agree, but this also means "investing in smaller chunks." We're stacking missions up to be so complicated that they're really expensive and the first try really has to succeed. We need to figure out how to get smaller chunks so that individual ones can fail.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  Yes. A lot of the innovation in space recently has been about making space missions cheaper. NASA and JPL still do these huge multi-billion-dollar headliner missions, but the democratization of space is an underrepresented story in the public view of space. It's still hard to get far from orbit cheaply, though.
  - mlyle 2y ago
    Yup. Actually, I'm advisor for a high school team that was selected by NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative to put a satellite in LEO, mostly to do space technology development and demonstration. The growth of rideshare and dedicated small satellite launch missions has been impressive to watch in the past couple of decades. Getting out of LEO has a lot of challenges; the delta V is expensive, but also survivability away from Earth's thermal radiation and magnetic field gets harder. This has a compounding effect where costs and scope run away; if you need to buy expensive launch, rad-hard hardware and do exotic things for power and heating, you want to amortize the fixed portions of these over more science...

polishdude20 2y ago

Maybe there should be more emphasis on what IS accomplished during the building and engineering of those missions regardless of the final mission outcome. I think the PR spin needs to be in a direction that highlights the achievements along the way more.

Ancalagon 2y ago

Laughably, horribly dystopian how much we spend on the military vs. programs like NASA. I want my Star Trek timeline back :(

bee_rider 2y ago

The American public was willing to pay for the Apollo project because the Soviet Union was embarrassing us, right? I hear China is kicking our asses at space stuff. Don’t look it up, there’s no time to check me on that, we need to hurray and load up the dump truck with money for NASA before China takes over Europa.