Curmudgeons Corner

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Robot Guy has an analysis of the current space effort entitled "Why Do Space At All." The analysis contains all of the usual complaints about NASA. It is bureaucratic. It wastes money. It is not using the right hardware to go back to the Moon.

The first two complaints are certainly true, but I think irrelevant. The third is debatable (and indeed is being debated ad infinitum, ad nauseum.)

Any government agency tasked with doing anything is going to be bureaucratic and waste money. It is in their nature. Complaining about that fact is sort of like complaining that a Bengal tiger tends to maul and eat other living creatures. The trick is not to wish that NASA did not behave like a government agency, but to find ways to reduce those bureaucratic and wasteful tendencies as much as possible.

Providing focus on a single mission, which the Vision for Space Exploration tries to do is one way. Encouraging innovative programs, such as COTS and the Centennial Challenges is another.

Balancing out NASA's bureaucratic and wasteful ways is that it has access to far more money than any private business could realistically have. A lot can be done with 16, 17, 18 billion a year, even considering NASA's infrastructure needs.

That leads us to the third complaint and there I am in the midst of a puzzlement as to why it persists. Despite the hyper ventilation from certain quarters, there seems to be no evidence that the Orion/Ares approach is so dysfunctional that it is bound to fail. Is it the absolute best way to get back to the Moon? Define "best."

In the best of all possible universes, with no budgetary and political constraints, it probably isn't. But we don't live in that universe; we live in ours. So we have to make do.

And, really, isn't complaining about Orion/Ares sort of like complaining to President Jefferson that Lewis and Clarke were not going to get to the Pacific is the best possible way. It would be inconceivable two hundred years ago to suggest that the best way to cross the Louisiana Purchase would be to walk and paddle about in collapsible boats (which had all sorts of problems that would sound familiar to rocket scientists today.) But the answer would not be to hold Lewis and Clark back while we argue over methods.

The first mass migration to the American West took place using Conestoga wagons. But the really interesting fact is that most people who went west in the 19th Century took the train. Neither technology was directly the result of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. But their exploration did show that the West was worth going to, worth settling.

I suspect that is what will happen with VSE. Most people in this century will not migrate to space because of any transportation technology developed by VSE. But because those future astronauts will have explored the Moon, Mars, and asteroids, discovering resources that will enrich our species, those that follow will develop the means to get at those resources cheaply and reliably. A lunar base will serve as a destination, given a lunar COTS program especially, for those inventive folks who want to go back to the Moon on their own dime.

It is therefore not NASA's job to build the rockets (or space elevator) that will get you beyond the Earth. That is your job. I suggest getting to it.