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NASA Is Worth Saving

145 points by EvgeniyZh 1y ago

xnx 1y ago
Is there a rational defense for NASA's crewed space programs? The robotic missions: satellites, landers, telescopes seem superb, but the crewed missions seem very low value. Are crewed missions necessary cover for various black budget programs?
- api 1y ago
  If you think there's a long term interest in advancing space flight in general, and human space flight in particular, then yes. They directly and indirectly fund a ton of science around that, heavy lift rockets, and also a lot of aviation stuff that is not directly related to space but impacts things like research on more efficient faster air travel. It also gets into aviation medicine, etc. NASA in general is a decent bargain. It's a lot of cutting edge science and engineering expertise for not a lot of money compared to the DoD/DARPA. Cutting it is part of the general national suicide agenda we seem to be in of trying to hollow out all the ways America actually still does lead the world in order to bring back lower value lower margin things America did well in the 1950s.
- inetknght 1y ago
  I think there's high value in understanding and experiencing zero gravity in a relatively low-risk mission. Forget Mars. I'd love to live in space. Having people in space would solve a lot of Earthly problems (and yes create a whole bunch of new ones). But it'd be cool. Is there a problem with things being cool even if perhaps low-valued by other measures of value?
  - aeve890 1y ago
    >Having people in space would solve a lot of Earthly problems Which ones?
    - majkinetor 1y ago
      resources, experimentation with deadly technologies, etc.
    - tough 1y ago
      Like literal unlimited space?
      - lkbm 1y ago
        Global population growth is still measured in the tens of millions. We're a ways off from launching anywhere near a meaningful number of people into space in terms of current terrestrial population.
    - creaturemachine 1y ago
      s/Having/Ejecting
    - BurningFrog 1y ago
      Escape proof prisons.
  - rocmcd 1y ago
    How is living in space meaningfully different from living in a submersible in the ocean (apart from the view)? You would think we would get really good at the latter before going after the former, and yet I see no interest from people wanting to live in a (shallowly submersed) submarine. It would also be an order of magnitude less expensive and dangerous.
    - margalabargala 1y ago
      Gravity or lack thereof is a big one.
      - rocmcd 1y ago
        Have you seen what happens to people who live in zero gravity for long periods of time? It doesn't sound fun. I do get the appeal of wanting to experience it for a short period of time, though. I would also say that scuba diving is probably the closest you can get to experiencing anything close to zero gravity on Earth.
        philwelch 1y ago
        Any space colony intended for long term habitation would create artificial gravity through centrifugal force. It's completely doable using materials sourced from the Moon and near-Earth asteroids; there are design studies dating back over fifty years.
        margalabargala 1y ago
        Sure, living in zero G for a long period of time is not good for you. You asked how space was different from a submersible. I gave you one difference, you expanded on that to a second.
    - ryandrake 1y ago
      Heck, we can barely build permanent settlements in many places on Earth like Antarctica and deep inside many deserts. And, here we have 1G gravity, 1bar breathable air pressure, a magnetic field and shielding from radiation. We don't have any of that outside of Earth. If we can't build, say, a 10K-person inhabited city on the south pole, how can we even imagine we can build it on the moon or Mars?
- Night_Thastus 1y ago
  For starters, I think it's a matter of excitement and interest. People still enjoy unmanned missions to a point, but I think for the less technical crowd actually seeing people out there in space doing new things is exciting. I think if you told people cutting NASA would mean no more probes sent to Mars they'd shrug. If you told them it was cancelling a manned mission to Mars and showed them the faces of the people training to do it...they'd care a lot more. It adds a human element people can relate to. Plus, adding people into the equation makes it a lot harder. Harder problems mean more creative solutions are required, which means an opportunity to learn.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    Additionally, as wonderful as NASA’s robotic missions are (we should do way more), they don’t move the needle nearly as much in terms of long-term impact on our species as mastering crewed spaceflight (and eventually, indefinite off-world inhabitation) does. The tree of possibilities in a timeline where humans live on the surfaces of other bodies and in permanently spacebourne crafts in significant numbers is infinitely larger than the timeline in which we do not. It’s an endeavor with an extremely long timeline of course, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Arguably, the things most worth doing are those with this level of potential impact, with much of what we obsess over in the short term comparatively being embarrassingly myopic bikeshedding. One must avoid leaning too far into this obviously — there are things that truly must be addressed in the short term and cannot be ignored, but the outcome of staring at your feet is just as likely to be catastrophic as staring only at the horizon is. Both can lead you to walk off the edge of a cliff.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      > but the outcome of staring at your feet is just as likely to be catastrophic as staring only at the horizon is Can you list which risks you believe are mitigated by space travel?
      - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
        The risk is never developing the ability because it never became politically beneficial to do so or never judged to be worth it in the short term and in the worst case scenario losing our chance to do it altogether (there’s nothing guaranteeing that we’ll always have our current ability to escape Earth’s gravity well or even get into orbit). We’ll never get good at things we don’t do and the related technology doesn’t just develop itself. Without intentional efforts to push the space forward, it’ll forever be stuck in limbo.
- elictronic 1y ago
  SLS is a jobs program. That’s the primary issue with replanting on the moon. Basically congress has set a requirement to build a 2025 operating system using Perl with 100% uptime and spread development across 20 companies run by idiots. NASA doesn’t have any extra budget to spend with that horrible mess.
  - echelon 1y ago
    > build a 2025 operating system using Perl with 100% uptime and spread development across 20 companies run by idiots. What!? Can you expand on this? That's horrific. I hope that's just an analogy and not the truth.
    - margalabargala 1y ago
      It's an analogy, yes.
    - PaulHoule 1y ago
      Well, the SLS is made of Space Shuttle parts and Space Shuttle parts aren't just gold plated... This book has many illustrations of alternate designs considered before the Space Shuttle was finalized https://www.amazon.com/Shuttle-History-Developing-National-Transportation/dp/0963397419 https://www.amazon.com/Shuttle-History-Developing-National-T... as well as the results of late 1980s-early 1990s studies that considered the possibility of putting together Space Shuttle parts in different ways. Say you could have a bigger external tank, four solid rocket boosters instead of two, and a big-ass orbiter which has five engines instead of three. (That one probably is too much of a boondoggle because they'd have to spend a few billion dollars making a bigger launchpad!) You might think that, with the research done to develop the parts, it would be cost effective to build something new from Space Shuttle parts but in those studies it was always outrageously expensive to build anything out of Space Shuttle parts because... Space Shuttle parts are stupendously expensive. In an alternate universe something like the SLS (a non-reusable big-ass booster with lots of stages) could be a lot cheaper than the SLS if it was cost-optimized, but cost-optimization itself isn't cheap! By contrast to that, the Starship model isn't proven either. Reusable Starship to LEO could be a good business, but orbital refueling is still unsolved and even if it is perfected, current plans are to launch 12-20 Starships to land and return maybe 3 tons from the moon. Think of what a huge thing you could build in LEO if you had 20 Starships!
- standardUser 1y ago
  I think you're combining two issues. Manned spaceflight beyond low earth orbit is about competition with rival nations, including national defense. Manned spaceflight to orbit to conduct experiments - which is the only kind of manned spaceflight happening on a regular basis - has a ton of value. More and more of that will be automated, but we've been doing manned research in space for 60-plus years and the manned spaceflight programs that support that have been and still are indispensable if we want to remain a great power.
  - LadyCailin 1y ago
    I don’t think America does. It wants to fuck over trans people, immigrants, and remove the rules for ultra rich people more than anything else, and that comes at a huge cost to America as a whole.
    - exoverito 1y ago
      Hard to argue that trans people are critical to America being a great power. High skill immigration is generally beneficial, but mass illegal migration is far more dubious, as seen in Europe. The OECD just reported that high immigration has actually been negative for Canada, which has had anemic economic growth for the past 10 years. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/high-immigration-is-worsening-canadas-economic-problems-says-report https://nationalpost.com/opinion/high-immigration-is-worseni... I don't think tax cuts for the rich are very wise given the budget deficit, but continuously increasing government spending, taxes and regulation is not wise either. U.S. government spending as a percentage of GDP is the highest it's ever been, even more than during WW2. Over regulation is a major problem, as seen with CAHSR, and even figures on the left are starting to realize it, e.g. Ezra Klein.
      - standardUser 1y ago
        The US has (had) saved itself from the crippling demographic curve that looms over the rest of the Western world thanks to being a nation of immigrants. It also became the research capitol of the world, among countless other benefits gained from welcoming the types of people willing to take risks and go to a foreign land to build a better life. And unlike in Europe, immigrants to the US are overwhelming from similar cultural and religious traditions. It's only the MAGA few who buy into this whole anti-immigrant rhetoric. Even the Republican party still loves immigrants - as any business-oriented party would! - even if they're forced to pretend otherwise due to temporary political concerns.
- ModernMech 1y ago
  People pay attention when people are sent to space. Also, it manufactures "heroes", which is something every society needs. Just look at the Apollo astronauts, they have been revered for ages and have done a great public service in inspiring future generations. Sending R2D2 to mars doesn't do that.
- apical_dendrite 1y ago
  The White House budget proposal makes enormous cuts to the things you say are superb. The proposal is a 47% cut to the NASA science budget, cancelling 19 active missions, and a third of the science portfolio.
wnevets 1y ago
[flagged]
- Georgelemental 1y ago
  You have it exactly backwards. Musk has been one of the major forces in the administration fighting to preserve and fix NASA. It’s his opponents within the Trump admin who want to cut it, and who convinced Trump to scuttle Isaacman’s nomination.
  - wnevets 1y ago
    If you believe Musk doesn't want to redirect as much funds as possible from NASA to SpaceX I have a brand new bridge to sell you.
    - wagwang 1y ago
      As the article said, nasa accounts for less than 7% of spacex revenue, additional nasa contracts is inconsequential to spacex which relies mostly on starlink for revenue
      - wnevets 1y ago
        this bridge is brand new and has only been dropped once.
      - righthand 1y ago
        There’s no way Starlink is profitable enough for all of SpaceX.
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
Related: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44259001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44259001
- guywithahat 1y ago
  Which is a better article imo, nobody is getting rid of NASA, this is about budget cuts.
PaulHoule 1y ago
The SpaceX model is ideal for low Earth orbit where technology and markets are mature, I think it has trouble at Mars if not the Moon. SpaceX can launch a large number of Starships to LEO and have them fail because the turnaround time is a few weeks. You only get to go to Mars once every two years or so, so if it takes 10 attempts, that is 20 years. SpaceX's control system is completely remote control from mission control: they'd need to build something entirely different to work around Mars. Right now Starship does not have an appealing lunar story. The baseline scenario that astronauts climb out of Orion, spacewalk to a Starship, then go to the moon on a Starship carries about the same payload as the original LEM with a much larger and taller vehicle that is likely to tip over or have its nozzles broken by rocks. It would be cool if you could land and return the full 100 tons but to do that you need to refuel. Some combination of: -- land 100 tons and turn the Starship into storage tanks/living space/a workshop -- using some of those 1-way journeys to stash fuel for return trips -- producing O2 from rocks but using CH4 from Earth -- producing O2 from electrolysis of polar ice seem possible with various levels of risk. A H2 + O2 rocket could be fueled entirely from polar ice but not Starship. It's not so clear if it makes sense to use polar ice to make propellants or if it makes sense to use it to accumulate a stock of volatiles that are recycled on a permanent settlement.
- notahacker 1y ago
  I think the "SpaceX model doesn't fill the gap" issue is bigger than just not using ISRU-derived peroxide rockets; that seems like the sort of thing they'd be really good at (even though the people I know working on that problem that are Europeans with university affiliations, not SpaceX employees) if they determined it was a mission requirement. It's more that propulsion is a pretty small part of the overall mission, which involves everything from portable handheld devices to astronaut physiology to in-space manufacturing if you want to build actual bases. Are there SpaceX skunkworks projects looking at that sort of thing? Probably, they've got money and space enthusiasts and a boss that doesn't mind that sort of thinking. Are they funding that sort of exploratory research to the level NASA or ESA or research institutes? Nope, and I'm not sure the "vertically integrate everything" model that's served them so well as a commercial business doing repeatable things in LEO is ideally set up to collaborate with the people that do either.
JKCalhoun 1y ago
The decades of the space program that lead up to (and included of course) Apollo 11 represented, I think, the highest level of optimism we could have mustered for the future — highest level of self-esteem we could have garnered for not just the U.S., but for the world (but perhaps especially for the U.S.). As a kid in elementary school at the time we seemed to be a country moving to embrace science. Heck, even the Metric system was being speed-run (ran?) into the curriculum. (Until it wasn't.) I would hate to shutter that. To be sure, public interest waned after a few landings, the follow up Space Shuttle was a bit lackluster — and fraught with some unfortunately spectacular failures. ISS did little better in terms of public enthusiasm. Is it the Cold War competition that is lacking today? Are we too mired in a gloomy outlook for our future, for our planet's future that we haven't the energy to be excited about anything any more? I rather doubt that last bit — perhaps in fact we're starving for something to lift the public mood. I think too we were deep in a dark fog after Kennedy's assassination — maybe the youthful Beatles and the space program were two of the prime movers that pulled us (somewhat?) out of that funk (never mind it all despite Vietnam and all the fallout from that). Perhaps we'll see the Chinese put their citizens on the Moon in the near future. Perhaps that will be our Sputnik moment for the 21st Century. I kind of think we might need a healthy (one hopes) competition to lift our spirits, perhaps unify us again....
- Thrymr 1y ago
  > The decades of the space program that lead up to (and included of course) Apollo 11 represented, I think, the highest level of optimism we could have mustered for the future It was less than 11 years from the creation of NASA to Apollo 11 landing on the moon. It has now been well over 50 years since the last astronauts landed on the moon.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    It cost over $250 billion dollars inflation adjusted to do that, in a much much much poorer country. Are you ready to pay that? SLS cost about $32 billion so far to regenerate similar capability and people are freaking out. Also Apollo was never really that popular, except for the few days Apollo 11 was literally on the moon.
fwip 1y ago
NASA is great, but the author's primary motivation seems to be "China is going to the moon and China is bad." I'm also not sure that NASA needs "saving." It needs continued funding, and it would be nice if they were jerked around less by the whims of politicians, but I don't think it is in crisis. NASA has continued to produce valuable science, even given those difficult headwinds.
- jvanderbot 1y ago
  A good administrator and cutting SLS would check all the boxes. It'd even bring about that budget cut they're proposing.
- BurningFrog 1y ago
  NASA does produce valuable science, like the Webb telescope. But it took them 30 years. I know these things are hard, but there has to be a better way to organize this.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    Maybe hard things just take time and effort? The Webb space telescope is a scientific instrument, not a product. Science instruments are always absurdly expensive and difficult to build. This magic idea that things just get cheaper or easier over time without fail is just an overly reductive idea of how things progress. "Careful" is expensive and space will always require "careful" because it is insanely difficult to engineer around. It's also wildly unforgiving. People also thought landing on the moon shouldn't be so difficult, yet lots of independent agencies and organizations are finding out that, no, small and minor mistakes or oversights will just destroy all your planning. That attention to detail will always be expensive.
- apical_dendrite 1y ago
  NASA is facing budget cuts that will put them at 1961 levels, inflation adjusted, meaning pre-Apollo. That's a 25% cut in one year, including layoffs of 33% of the workforce. That includes a 50% cut to the NASA science programs. 19 active missions will be terminated. They are planning to cut NASA's educational mission 100%. The loss of institutional knowledge and capability is staggering. Yes, it needs saving.
righthand 1y ago
My guess is that they’ll ship a few weather/gps satellites and then move to privatize both NASA and NWS. As was warned in Project 2025. The waffling funding is just buying time until then. Hand out to Elon. That’s why he came crawling back a few days later.
gammarator 1y ago
I prefer the NASA vision statement from nasa.gov/about: "NASA explores the unknown in air and space, innovates for the benefit of humanity, and inspires the world through discovery." to Casey's "defend US interests on the civilian side of space." SLS is an abject failure, indeed, but one whose faults are ultimately Congress's. I see no reason for human space flight to continue to "eat first" given that record of expensive failure. In contrast, astrophysics and planetary science remain--at least for now--world-leading.
- tlb 1y ago
  I agree that SLS sucks because of congressional meddling to award contracts in strategic districts. But you can't have something like NASA without that. Any large government agency is doomed to have to spread work around. Only a private company run by a fearsome CEO is able to say No, we're going to go with the best solution instead of the politically favored one.
  - sennalen 1y ago
    All the contractors and pork districts could still be engaged in doing something more useful.
- sandworm101 1y ago
  The key wording is the change from innovate to defend. Across the board, government policy is now about returning to a previous, largely imagined, state of affairs. If NASA proposed an Apollo 2.0, half the country and all of government would rally behind recreating the old program so long as it used the old blueprints. The longstanding fear of progress common amongst the old/rich is now manifest. NASA must therefore adapt. Words like "innovation" and "humanity" need to be replaced with "defend the status quo" and "repeat our past successes".
  - JohnFen 1y ago
    I'm not disagreeing, but just wanted to point out > Words like "innovation" I believe that the rhetoric, actions and results of "tech bro" style companies have managed to demonstrate to people that "innovation" is a thing to be feared, not a thing that improves lives. Widespread "fear of progress" is actually a relatively recent thing, and didn't come out of nowhere. It came from learned experience. It's a terrible result, but one that tech companies largely don't seem too bothered by.
guywithahat 1y ago
I opened this article thinking someone was getting rid of NASA; and to be clear, no one is. Nothing is happening to the organization or their work, this is just budget cuts. They will be focusing on human spaceflight and getting rid of green/climate research and general management.
- jeremyjh 1y ago
  The article is concerned with the fact that NASA is incapable of fulfilling its missions. It says NASA has spent $100B on a moon rocket that cannot go to the moon and will not go to the moon. NASA is worth saving not because someone is talking about cutting it, but because it has already been lost and needs to be recovered.
  - dakr 1y ago
    A rocket it was told to spend money on by lawmakers. It's not NASA's own creation.
    - jeremyjh 1y ago
      Yeah I don't get to choose what I work on either. I still try to actually do what I have promised to do.
      - dakr 1y ago
        At your work you're hopefully not held responsible for the business decisions made above you, just your assigned piece.
        jeremyjh 1y ago
        That's right. NASA's assigned piece was to build a rocket that could fly to the moon. They agreed to do it, and they spent the money. They have not built the rocket and never intended to.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
larrydag 1y ago
"If SpaceX can do it, NASA can do it." Space Shuttle never achieved is core objective and project shelved. Space Launch System is way past deadlines and cost. As far as launching systems NASA has not kept up since Apollo. I would argue NASA has achieved great progress in Space research. Hubble, Voyager, Mars rovers, Webb telescope have made great advances in discovery. I would have NASA change its core objectives to new research activities.
cryptonector 1y ago
> NASA Is Worth Saving > The US Is A Launch Superpower And NASA Seems Not To Have Noticed > SLS Is Original Sin There's your story. NASA might be worth saving, but first you'll have to sacrifice the Senators' pork.
knowitnone 1y ago
No. What else is there for NASA to accomplish scientifically speaking? land on the next planet but for what purpose? They've got the James Webb out there but what has that revealed for us except better quality images. Do you care if you find out certain planet has O2, C, H20? I certainly don't. You can argue that NASA has developed some tech that is used in our everyday live but I argue we could have developed that same tech without going to space.
- dakr 1y ago
  But who would have had the idea to make the technology? We don't know what's possible until after we do it. Science research pays dividends in knowledge and technology that we didn't know to look for otherwise.
woleium 1y ago
i am sorry to say this, but i would rather save the immunology system.
verzali 1y ago
It's going to be fun watching this guy melt down over the next four years or so.

145 points by EvgeniyZh 1y ago

xnx 1y ago

Is there a rational defense for NASA's crewed space programs? The robotic missions: satellites, landers, telescopes seem superb, but the crewed missions seem very low value. Are crewed missions necessary cover for various black budget programs?

api 1y ago
If you think there's a long term interest in advancing space flight in general, and human space flight in particular, then yes. They directly and indirectly fund a ton of science around that, heavy lift rockets, and also a lot of aviation stuff that is not directly related to space but impacts things like research on more efficient faster air travel. It also gets into aviation medicine, etc. NASA in general is a decent bargain. It's a lot of cutting edge science and engineering expertise for not a lot of money compared to the DoD/DARPA. Cutting it is part of the general national suicide agenda we seem to be in of trying to hollow out all the ways America actually still does lead the world in order to bring back lower value lower margin things America did well in the 1950s.
inetknght 1y ago
I think there's high value in understanding and experiencing zero gravity in a relatively low-risk mission. Forget Mars. I'd love to live in space. Having people in space would solve a lot of Earthly problems (and yes create a whole bunch of new ones). But it'd be cool. Is there a problem with things being cool even if perhaps low-valued by other measures of value?
- aeve890 1y ago
  >Having people in space would solve a lot of Earthly problems Which ones?
  - majkinetor 1y ago
    resources, experimentation with deadly technologies, etc.
  - tough 1y ago
    Like literal unlimited space?
    - lkbm 1y ago
      Global population growth is still measured in the tens of millions. We're a ways off from launching anywhere near a meaningful number of people into space in terms of current terrestrial population.
  - creaturemachine 1y ago
    s/Having/Ejecting
  - BurningFrog 1y ago
    Escape proof prisons.
- rocmcd 1y ago
  How is living in space meaningfully different from living in a submersible in the ocean (apart from the view)? You would think we would get really good at the latter before going after the former, and yet I see no interest from people wanting to live in a (shallowly submersed) submarine. It would also be an order of magnitude less expensive and dangerous.
  - margalabargala 1y ago
    Gravity or lack thereof is a big one.
    - rocmcd 1y ago
      Have you seen what happens to people who live in zero gravity for long periods of time? It doesn't sound fun. I do get the appeal of wanting to experience it for a short period of time, though. I would also say that scuba diving is probably the closest you can get to experiencing anything close to zero gravity on Earth.
      - philwelch 1y ago
        Any space colony intended for long term habitation would create artificial gravity through centrifugal force. It's completely doable using materials sourced from the Moon and near-Earth asteroids; there are design studies dating back over fifty years.
      - margalabargala 1y ago
        Sure, living in zero G for a long period of time is not good for you. You asked how space was different from a submersible. I gave you one difference, you expanded on that to a second.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    Heck, we can barely build permanent settlements in many places on Earth like Antarctica and deep inside many deserts. And, here we have 1G gravity, 1bar breathable air pressure, a magnetic field and shielding from radiation. We don't have any of that outside of Earth. If we can't build, say, a 10K-person inhabited city on the south pole, how can we even imagine we can build it on the moon or Mars?
Night_Thastus 1y ago
For starters, I think it's a matter of excitement and interest. People still enjoy unmanned missions to a point, but I think for the less technical crowd actually seeing people out there in space doing new things is exciting. I think if you told people cutting NASA would mean no more probes sent to Mars they'd shrug. If you told them it was cancelling a manned mission to Mars and showed them the faces of the people training to do it...they'd care a lot more. It adds a human element people can relate to. Plus, adding people into the equation makes it a lot harder. Harder problems mean more creative solutions are required, which means an opportunity to learn.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  Additionally, as wonderful as NASA’s robotic missions are (we should do way more), they don’t move the needle nearly as much in terms of long-term impact on our species as mastering crewed spaceflight (and eventually, indefinite off-world inhabitation) does. The tree of possibilities in a timeline where humans live on the surfaces of other bodies and in permanently spacebourne crafts in significant numbers is infinitely larger than the timeline in which we do not. It’s an endeavor with an extremely long timeline of course, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Arguably, the things most worth doing are those with this level of potential impact, with much of what we obsess over in the short term comparatively being embarrassingly myopic bikeshedding. One must avoid leaning too far into this obviously — there are things that truly must be addressed in the short term and cannot be ignored, but the outcome of staring at your feet is just as likely to be catastrophic as staring only at the horizon is. Both can lead you to walk off the edge of a cliff.
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    > but the outcome of staring at your feet is just as likely to be catastrophic as staring only at the horizon is Can you list which risks you believe are mitigated by space travel?
    - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
      The risk is never developing the ability because it never became politically beneficial to do so or never judged to be worth it in the short term and in the worst case scenario losing our chance to do it altogether (there’s nothing guaranteeing that we’ll always have our current ability to escape Earth’s gravity well or even get into orbit). We’ll never get good at things we don’t do and the related technology doesn’t just develop itself. Without intentional efforts to push the space forward, it’ll forever be stuck in limbo.
elictronic 1y ago
SLS is a jobs program. That’s the primary issue with replanting on the moon. Basically congress has set a requirement to build a 2025 operating system using Perl with 100% uptime and spread development across 20 companies run by idiots. NASA doesn’t have any extra budget to spend with that horrible mess.
- echelon 1y ago
  > build a 2025 operating system using Perl with 100% uptime and spread development across 20 companies run by idiots. What!? Can you expand on this? That's horrific. I hope that's just an analogy and not the truth.
  - margalabargala 1y ago
    It's an analogy, yes.
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    Well, the SLS is made of Space Shuttle parts and Space Shuttle parts aren't just gold plated... This book has many illustrations of alternate designs considered before the Space Shuttle was finalized https://www.amazon.com/Shuttle-History-Developing-National-Transportation/dp/0963397419 https://www.amazon.com/Shuttle-History-Developing-National-T... as well as the results of late 1980s-early 1990s studies that considered the possibility of putting together Space Shuttle parts in different ways. Say you could have a bigger external tank, four solid rocket boosters instead of two, and a big-ass orbiter which has five engines instead of three. (That one probably is too much of a boondoggle because they'd have to spend a few billion dollars making a bigger launchpad!) You might think that, with the research done to develop the parts, it would be cost effective to build something new from Space Shuttle parts but in those studies it was always outrageously expensive to build anything out of Space Shuttle parts because... Space Shuttle parts are stupendously expensive. In an alternate universe something like the SLS (a non-reusable big-ass booster with lots of stages) could be a lot cheaper than the SLS if it was cost-optimized, but cost-optimization itself isn't cheap! By contrast to that, the Starship model isn't proven either. Reusable Starship to LEO could be a good business, but orbital refueling is still unsolved and even if it is perfected, current plans are to launch 12-20 Starships to land and return maybe 3 tons from the moon. Think of what a huge thing you could build in LEO if you had 20 Starships!
standardUser 1y ago
I think you're combining two issues. Manned spaceflight beyond low earth orbit is about competition with rival nations, including national defense. Manned spaceflight to orbit to conduct experiments - which is the only kind of manned spaceflight happening on a regular basis - has a ton of value. More and more of that will be automated, but we've been doing manned research in space for 60-plus years and the manned spaceflight programs that support that have been and still are indispensable if we want to remain a great power.
- LadyCailin 1y ago
  I don’t think America does. It wants to fuck over trans people, immigrants, and remove the rules for ultra rich people more than anything else, and that comes at a huge cost to America as a whole.
  - exoverito 1y ago
    Hard to argue that trans people are critical to America being a great power. High skill immigration is generally beneficial, but mass illegal migration is far more dubious, as seen in Europe. The OECD just reported that high immigration has actually been negative for Canada, which has had anemic economic growth for the past 10 years. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/high-immigration-is-worsening-canadas-economic-problems-says-report https://nationalpost.com/opinion/high-immigration-is-worseni... I don't think tax cuts for the rich are very wise given the budget deficit, but continuously increasing government spending, taxes and regulation is not wise either. U.S. government spending as a percentage of GDP is the highest it's ever been, even more than during WW2. Over regulation is a major problem, as seen with CAHSR, and even figures on the left are starting to realize it, e.g. Ezra Klein.
    - standardUser 1y ago
      The US has (had) saved itself from the crippling demographic curve that looms over the rest of the Western world thanks to being a nation of immigrants. It also became the research capitol of the world, among countless other benefits gained from welcoming the types of people willing to take risks and go to a foreign land to build a better life. And unlike in Europe, immigrants to the US are overwhelming from similar cultural and religious traditions. It's only the MAGA few who buy into this whole anti-immigrant rhetoric. Even the Republican party still loves immigrants - as any business-oriented party would! - even if they're forced to pretend otherwise due to temporary political concerns.
ModernMech 1y ago
People pay attention when people are sent to space. Also, it manufactures "heroes", which is something every society needs. Just look at the Apollo astronauts, they have been revered for ages and have done a great public service in inspiring future generations. Sending R2D2 to mars doesn't do that.
apical_dendrite 1y ago
The White House budget proposal makes enormous cuts to the things you say are superb. The proposal is a 47% cut to the NASA science budget, cancelling 19 active missions, and a third of the science portfolio.

wnevets 1y ago

[flagged]

Georgelemental 1y ago
You have it exactly backwards. Musk has been one of the major forces in the administration fighting to preserve and fix NASA. It’s his opponents within the Trump admin who want to cut it, and who convinced Trump to scuttle Isaacman’s nomination.
- wnevets 1y ago
  If you believe Musk doesn't want to redirect as much funds as possible from NASA to SpaceX I have a brand new bridge to sell you.
  - wagwang 1y ago
    As the article said, nasa accounts for less than 7% of spacex revenue, additional nasa contracts is inconsequential to spacex which relies mostly on starlink for revenue
    - wnevets 1y ago
      this bridge is brand new and has only been dropped once.
    - righthand 1y ago
      There’s no way Starlink is profitable enough for all of SpaceX.

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

Related: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44259001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44259001

guywithahat 1y ago
Which is a better article imo, nobody is getting rid of NASA, this is about budget cuts.

PaulHoule 1y ago

The SpaceX model is ideal for low Earth orbit where technology and markets are mature, I think it has trouble at Mars if not the Moon. SpaceX can launch a large number of Starships to LEO and have them fail because the turnaround time is a few weeks. You only get to go to Mars once every two years or so, so if it takes 10 attempts, that is 20 years. SpaceX's control system is completely remote control from mission control: they'd need to build something entirely different to work around Mars. Right now Starship does not have an appealing lunar story. The baseline scenario that astronauts climb out of Orion, spacewalk to a Starship, then go to the moon on a Starship carries about the same payload as the original LEM with a much larger and taller vehicle that is likely to tip over or have its nozzles broken by rocks. It would be cool if you could land and return the full 100 tons but to do that you need to refuel. Some combination of: -- land 100 tons and turn the Starship into storage tanks/living space/a workshop -- using some of those 1-way journeys to stash fuel for return trips -- producing O2 from rocks but using CH4 from Earth -- producing O2 from electrolysis of polar ice seem possible with various levels of risk. A H2 + O2 rocket could be fueled entirely from polar ice but not Starship. It's not so clear if it makes sense to use polar ice to make propellants or if it makes sense to use it to accumulate a stock of volatiles that are recycled on a permanent settlement.

notahacker 1y ago
I think the "SpaceX model doesn't fill the gap" issue is bigger than just not using ISRU-derived peroxide rockets; that seems like the sort of thing they'd be really good at (even though the people I know working on that problem that are Europeans with university affiliations, not SpaceX employees) if they determined it was a mission requirement. It's more that propulsion is a pretty small part of the overall mission, which involves everything from portable handheld devices to astronaut physiology to in-space manufacturing if you want to build actual bases. Are there SpaceX skunkworks projects looking at that sort of thing? Probably, they've got money and space enthusiasts and a boss that doesn't mind that sort of thinking. Are they funding that sort of exploratory research to the level NASA or ESA or research institutes? Nope, and I'm not sure the "vertically integrate everything" model that's served them so well as a commercial business doing repeatable things in LEO is ideally set up to collaborate with the people that do either.

JKCalhoun 1y ago

The decades of the space program that lead up to (and included of course) Apollo 11 represented, I think, the highest level of optimism we could have mustered for the future — highest level of self-esteem we could have garnered for not just the U.S., but for the world (but perhaps especially for the U.S.). As a kid in elementary school at the time we seemed to be a country moving to embrace science. Heck, even the Metric system was being speed-run (ran?) into the curriculum. (Until it wasn't.) I would hate to shutter that. To be sure, public interest waned after a few landings, the follow up Space Shuttle was a bit lackluster — and fraught with some unfortunately spectacular failures. ISS did little better in terms of public enthusiasm. Is it the Cold War competition that is lacking today? Are we too mired in a gloomy outlook for our future, for our planet's future that we haven't the energy to be excited about anything any more? I rather doubt that last bit — perhaps in fact we're starving for something to lift the public mood. I think too we were deep in a dark fog after Kennedy's assassination — maybe the youthful Beatles and the space program were two of the prime movers that pulled us (somewhat?) out of that funk (never mind it all despite Vietnam and all the fallout from that). Perhaps we'll see the Chinese put their citizens on the Moon in the near future. Perhaps that will be our Sputnik moment for the 21st Century. I kind of think we might need a healthy (one hopes) competition to lift our spirits, perhaps unify us again....

Thrymr 1y ago
> The decades of the space program that lead up to (and included of course) Apollo 11 represented, I think, the highest level of optimism we could have mustered for the future It was less than 11 years from the creation of NASA to Apollo 11 landing on the moon. It has now been well over 50 years since the last astronauts landed on the moon.
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  It cost over $250 billion dollars inflation adjusted to do that, in a much much much poorer country. Are you ready to pay that? SLS cost about $32 billion so far to regenerate similar capability and people are freaking out. Also Apollo was never really that popular, except for the few days Apollo 11 was literally on the moon.

fwip 1y ago

NASA is great, but the author's primary motivation seems to be "China is going to the moon and China is bad." I'm also not sure that NASA needs "saving." It needs continued funding, and it would be nice if they were jerked around less by the whims of politicians, but I don't think it is in crisis. NASA has continued to produce valuable science, even given those difficult headwinds.

jvanderbot 1y ago
A good administrator and cutting SLS would check all the boxes. It'd even bring about that budget cut they're proposing.
BurningFrog 1y ago
NASA does produce valuable science, like the Webb telescope. But it took them 30 years. I know these things are hard, but there has to be a better way to organize this.
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  Maybe hard things just take time and effort? The Webb space telescope is a scientific instrument, not a product. Science instruments are always absurdly expensive and difficult to build. This magic idea that things just get cheaper or easier over time without fail is just an overly reductive idea of how things progress. "Careful" is expensive and space will always require "careful" because it is insanely difficult to engineer around. It's also wildly unforgiving. People also thought landing on the moon shouldn't be so difficult, yet lots of independent agencies and organizations are finding out that, no, small and minor mistakes or oversights will just destroy all your planning. That attention to detail will always be expensive.
apical_dendrite 1y ago
NASA is facing budget cuts that will put them at 1961 levels, inflation adjusted, meaning pre-Apollo. That's a 25% cut in one year, including layoffs of 33% of the workforce. That includes a 50% cut to the NASA science programs. 19 active missions will be terminated. They are planning to cut NASA's educational mission 100%. The loss of institutional knowledge and capability is staggering. Yes, it needs saving.

righthand 1y ago

My guess is that they’ll ship a few weather/gps satellites and then move to privatize both NASA and NWS. As was warned in Project 2025. The waffling funding is just buying time until then. Hand out to Elon. That’s why he came crawling back a few days later.

gammarator 1y ago

I prefer the NASA vision statement from nasa.gov/about: "NASA explores the unknown in air and space, innovates for the benefit of humanity, and inspires the world through discovery." to Casey's "defend US interests on the civilian side of space." SLS is an abject failure, indeed, but one whose faults are ultimately Congress's. I see no reason for human space flight to continue to "eat first" given that record of expensive failure. In contrast, astrophysics and planetary science remain--at least for now--world-leading.

tlb 1y ago
I agree that SLS sucks because of congressional meddling to award contracts in strategic districts. But you can't have something like NASA without that. Any large government agency is doomed to have to spread work around. Only a private company run by a fearsome CEO is able to say No, we're going to go with the best solution instead of the politically favored one.
- sennalen 1y ago
  All the contractors and pork districts could still be engaged in doing something more useful.
sandworm101 1y ago
The key wording is the change from innovate to defend. Across the board, government policy is now about returning to a previous, largely imagined, state of affairs. If NASA proposed an Apollo 2.0, half the country and all of government would rally behind recreating the old program so long as it used the old blueprints. The longstanding fear of progress common amongst the old/rich is now manifest. NASA must therefore adapt. Words like "innovation" and "humanity" need to be replaced with "defend the status quo" and "repeat our past successes".
- JohnFen 1y ago
  I'm not disagreeing, but just wanted to point out > Words like "innovation" I believe that the rhetoric, actions and results of "tech bro" style companies have managed to demonstrate to people that "innovation" is a thing to be feared, not a thing that improves lives. Widespread "fear of progress" is actually a relatively recent thing, and didn't come out of nowhere. It came from learned experience. It's a terrible result, but one that tech companies largely don't seem too bothered by.

guywithahat 1y ago

I opened this article thinking someone was getting rid of NASA; and to be clear, no one is. Nothing is happening to the organization or their work, this is just budget cuts. They will be focusing on human spaceflight and getting rid of green/climate research and general management.

jeremyjh 1y ago
The article is concerned with the fact that NASA is incapable of fulfilling its missions. It says NASA has spent $100B on a moon rocket that cannot go to the moon and will not go to the moon. NASA is worth saving not because someone is talking about cutting it, but because it has already been lost and needs to be recovered.
- dakr 1y ago
  A rocket it was told to spend money on by lawmakers. It's not NASA's own creation.
  - jeremyjh 1y ago
    Yeah I don't get to choose what I work on either. I still try to actually do what I have promised to do.
    - dakr 1y ago
      At your work you're hopefully not held responsible for the business decisions made above you, just your assigned piece.
      - jeremyjh 1y ago
        That's right. NASA's assigned piece was to build a rocket that could fly to the moon. They agreed to do it, and they spent the money. They have not built the rocket and never intended to.

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larrydag 1y ago

"If SpaceX can do it, NASA can do it." Space Shuttle never achieved is core objective and project shelved. Space Launch System is way past deadlines and cost. As far as launching systems NASA has not kept up since Apollo. I would argue NASA has achieved great progress in Space research. Hubble, Voyager, Mars rovers, Webb telescope have made great advances in discovery. I would have NASA change its core objectives to new research activities.

cryptonector 1y ago

> NASA Is Worth Saving > The US Is A Launch Superpower And NASA Seems Not To Have Noticed > SLS Is Original Sin There's your story. NASA might be worth saving, but first you'll have to sacrifice the Senators' pork.

knowitnone 1y ago

No. What else is there for NASA to accomplish scientifically speaking? land on the next planet but for what purpose? They've got the James Webb out there but what has that revealed for us except better quality images. Do you care if you find out certain planet has O2, C, H20? I certainly don't. You can argue that NASA has developed some tech that is used in our everyday live but I argue we could have developed that same tech without going to space.

dakr 1y ago
But who would have had the idea to make the technology? We don't know what's possible until after we do it. Science research pays dividends in knowledge and technology that we didn't know to look for otherwise.

woleium 1y ago

i am sorry to say this, but i would rather save the immunology system.

verzali 1y ago

It's going to be fun watching this guy melt down over the next four years or so.