NASA does great things when they're allowed to get on with them. The trouble is they're constantly subject to the worst sort of government interference that capitalists rightly object to. No sort of Haldane Principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane_principle) appears to be enforced. If it was, perhaps the space age would have worked out differently.
Then again, space exploration is neither about pure science nor pure politics nor pure adventuring. It's a strange hybrid of all of these, which political systems are ill-equipped to handle. This is also true in Europe, where despite a run of 72 successful Ariane 5 launches, ESA still does nothing more than make occasional, pathetic squeaks about developing a human capsule, or worse, insists that it doesn't have a reliable launcher.
On the other hand the private institutions are currently relatively free to do whatever they wish, and their founders grew up fully expecting manned space exploration to be routine. They've been allowed much greater freedom to innovate than the government agencies and no-one is changing their mandate every five years. True, at the end of the day they're seeking profit just like any other private company... but they're also rather more philanthropic and forward-thinking than many other companies. This model has been rather successful in the past (https://www.jrf.org.uk/).
Though it's worth remembering that SpaceX would not be where they are today without NASA as their principle contractor. They've effectively been given government money for a government project without nearly as many of the government rules as NASA has to follow. This model appears to be delivering rich rewards thus far, and since rockets are damnably expensive to start with, even a profit-motivated company cannot help but get things cheaper (unlike, for example, the pharmaceutical industry).
Eventually though, we're going to get large numbers of people in space. At that point some form of government oversight is likely to be required. Corporations are currently great for space innovation, but it's hard to see them being so successful at regulating people's lives.
Originally shared by Kevin C
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/some-real-talk-about-the-future-of-rockets/
That's entirely contingent on NASA's leadership, which hasn't always been so great. Cases in point, Hubble Space Telescope. NSA offered to collimate that scope for them - they had all the equipment - oh no, nothing doing, go away you spooks. Hung on that wire for all those years, finally launched it, you know the rest of the story.
ReplyDeleteI never heard of the NSA offering assistance with the HST. Citation ?
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor Not only has NSA/NRO offered help to NASA over the years, they've just given NASA two birds. Maybe NASA can do something with them but I am not encouraged to believe anything will happen on that front. I'm a government contractor, I can't give you citations out of some classified database. The November 1990 HST Failure Report lays it out pretty clearly and I was around for all that. What we do know is that Challenger blew up, (fine launch parameter management by our heroes at NASA) - HST was the next mission to go up, it was delayed for years, HST wasn't retested, ( more NASA management excellence ) - the search for guilty parties which followed, the COSTAR fix - they were fun times, Rhys. Fun times for all involved. And given the cost overruns for the JWT and the mess with Orion, I am not encouraged to believe NASA has sufficiently reformed or learned much in the interval.
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