

NASA: Incompetent or lying to us? - JabavuAdams
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/os-mike-thomas-abolish-nasa-091610-20100915,0,5397903,full.column

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bediger
First, every fault mentioned is probably true. NASA channeled money into the
Ares program, which got scrapped. The "Jupiter" thing is a Mr Potatohead.

Second, I don't think you can blame NASA-the-agency for these problems. I
think this is far more a case of the aerospace industry failing to retain any
quantity of talented engineers for long. The "defense" side of the aerospace
industry is the money-maker, so the companies funnel people into that side.
That side is compartmented and paid by-the-hour, so there's been no reason to
improve since about 1970. The US government has set things up so that nobody
can have a career in engineering, so it doesn't attract smart kids any more.

I see this as an indictment of US education policies, and the "War on the
Unexpected" that we've waged for several decades. I mean, what else do you
call the weird beard patent and copyright system we've got other than a "war
on the unexpected"?

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hga
Sorry, Ares was Michael Griffin's folly, using Shuttle technology but not the
actual, well understood and qualified components (e.g. the SRBs are wider and
the Ares I stack has 5 segments instead of the normal 4, all leading to
extreme $$$ and safety problems).

Direct really looks good, assuming NASA hasn't yet destroyed enough of the
existing Shuttle infrastructure. With one exception it uses _actual Shuttle
components_ (the one issue is what do you use for a man-rated restartable in
space rocket engine, which is a problem you need to solve anyway, I think) and
it's modular so that you don't need both Ares I and the heavy lift version of
it, a massive and needless duplication of work (which is entirely appropriate
when you notice that post-Apollo NASA is more a public works project than
anything else).

I think you can blame NASA-the-agency: they (Griffin) wanted to do this
themselves (the higher levels of design and management of the program) and
they simply weren't willing to listen to bad news or draw the obvious
conclusions from a program that was slipping a year every year is was in
development.

That said, Jerry Pournelle does agree with you, in that we, the US, have lost
enough rocket science ability that we can't at the moment build a 600,000 lb [
forget the term, but it's a 100% reusable, quick turnaround single stage to
orbit and back vehicle concept that he and others have been pushing for years
]. We'd have to rebuild the talent and teams, starting with smaller projects.

