Unaffordable and Unsustainable, NASA’s failing Earth-to-orbit Transportation Strategy Options

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

The Space Frontier Foundation has gotten a lot of attention from the mainstream press with their latest Whitepaper.

They advocate a more extensive support fo free enterprise and entrepreneurship in the American space program. They suggest that NASA should no longer be allowed to develop and own new launch vehicles, and that CEV and CLV development should be cancelled. They also advise that NASA rely on Altas 5 and Delta 4 rockets, and transfer more funding to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.

I cannot find the actual white paper on the SFF website. I don't know if SFF is particularly professional (certainly their gaudy website doesn't look it), but I have to agree with some of their points.

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Well, I did not so much intend to compare socialism to capitalism. I think the issue is government control vs. private enterprise. From my own experiences in industry, I don't believe private enterprise is simply people thinking about profit, nor do I believe that burocrats and intellectuals are totally selfless in their motivations.

Messenger brought up the issue of future engineers to maintain a "world class rocket program". That's another thing that concerns many people. James Oberg has asserted that Russia is in trouble because its rocket expertise consists mostly of old men, with no young people taking their place. Oberg is something of a Russian-basher, so I don't know if his assertion is true. Similar concerns are expressed about American engineering, although a recent Duke University Study suggests that when you count real engineers, the US is not falling behind.

Right now, I believe the USA still leads in rocket technology. Initially, a lot of the R&D behind that was from Von Braun's group, but today the research for new rockets is being done privately by Boeing and Lockheed and a few other companies, not by NASA as such. And I think the Atlas V and Delta IV are excellent results. Russia still has major expertise, especially in rocket engine design (the Atlas V engines are Russian!), but I'd like to see Russia proceed with new vehicle designs like the Angora. A lot of new rocket programs like China's Long March series are not very innovative (non-cryogenic fuel, gas-generator-cycle engines).

As I said, I think people go where the action is, and this is the "computer age", not the "space age". I personally left the space program to do computer research, when I was a graduate student. Perhaps a private space station that was open to the public could fire the imagination of some talented young people and encourage more to consider aerospace engineering as a career. But for that to be a good career path for young people, space exploration has to be a growing concern!

[David]

There's no question but that corporations have had and will continue to have a major role in American space-related industries. Whether they are ready, willing, or able to pursue initiatives in space exploration, manned and unmanned, where there are scientific objectives but no profit, is another question -- and one which I don't see being answered in the affirmative. Moreover, I don't see how cutting NASA out of an area where private firms have shown little willingness to take an initiative does anything but kill the United States' role in space exploration altogether.