MarsBlog - Part 163

–

TechCentralStation also has a new article on NASA’s renewed interest in nukes in space.

–

Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit has a column at TechCentralStation titled Cracking the Shell.

He lists a number of reasons why we should colonize Mars, post-haste. The following sums up what should be done about the troubles in space exploration in much better fashion than Reed’s simple “pull the plug” approach:

The most important goal of such a policy has to be to lower costs. Doing things in space is expensive – horribly so. (In fact, in many ways it’s more expensive than it was in the 1960s). This is no surprise: it’s the tendency of government programs to drive up costs over time, and human spaceflight has so far been an exclusively government run program.

That’s why promoting the commercialization of outer space is so important. Market forces lower costs; government bureaucracies drive them up. Among the cost-lowering programs that are likely to make the biggest difference is space tourism, which is beginning to look like a viable industry in the short term. (Just ask Dennis Tito.) We should be promoting it any way we can, but especially through regulatory relief and liability protections.

Government programs should be aimed at research and development that will produce breakthroughs in lowering costs: cheaper, more reliable engines, new technologies like laser launch, etc. Once this technology is produced, it should be released to the private sector as quickly as possible.

It’s a good rebuttal (if unintentionally so) to Reed’s ridiculous Washington Times op-ed.

–

Some info on Yuri’s Night 2002.

We at LAMS have been discussing doing something for Yuri’s Night this year. If you would like to participate, or have some suggestions for events, please email us.

–

In the mail today was the April 2002 issue of Analog magazine. Robert Zubrin writes the science fact article this month, entitled “Galactic Society”.

I have not had a chance to read it yet, but I will report back when I do.

–

Now this is a joke: Value of space program questioned — The Washington Times

Yes, we’ve heard all these arguments before, Fred, you’re not telling us anything new. Worse than rehashing the same old criticisms (some valid, some not), you’re falling prey to the “all or nothing” fallacy implicit in the government monopoly on space travel:

Why do we want to go to Mars? The underlying answer seems to be that it would be a really neat thing to do, an adventure. Agreed. If a Martian expedition were sold honestly as sheer fun and an appeal to the exploratory spirit, and people still thought it worth doing, I’d say fine. Yet the cost would be fantastic.We don’t have better uses for the money?

This is exactly the kind of thinking that keeps us from going anywhere in space — space exploration is always thought to be a “guns or butter” sort of tradeoff, where money spent sending the Shuttle into space is not being spent on more “noble” causes like poverty elimination, education, infrastructure, or any number of other government programs which are so poorly managed as it is that NASA’s entire budget could be transferred to their accounts without producing a visible improvement in results.

He entirely misses the point of private space enterprise — that the real solution to the “going in circles” problems at NASA lies not in defunding its signature programs and focusing on very limited and “non-boring” robotic probes, but rather in a transition from the NASA monopoly to private competition. While I may pile on NASA myself, I suspect that terminating the agency outright would do more harm to private efforts than letting it continue in its current policies. Better the agency should lead by retreating — gradually shifting its operations and programs over to private hands, eventually focusing primarily on the deep space scientific programs which Mr. Reed grudgingly accepts as legitimate, and the kind of basic research which characterized NACA, its predecessor.

–

Someone has been putting a lot of thought into naming the Martian months.

–

A map of Mars and it’s surface feature names, produced from MOLA data.

–

The Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature has links to just about everything you ever wanted to know about what, how, and why the planets, moons, and features thereon are named the way they are.

Check out Mars here.

–

To continue in the harping-on-NASA vein, The National Review today features an overview of the essential problems.

–

Speaking of “mules”, the Huntsville Times has a story on disused NASA facilities.

The author could have — but didn’t — mentioned the remaining Saturn V stages, all but one shipset of which are displayed outdoors. The final flight-article first stage (S-IC-15) sits corroding in front of the Michoud Assembly Facility here in New Orleans (and is still, despite never having been painted in 25 years of outdoor display, in better shape than the S-I-C on display at JSC in Houston). Nor did he mention the two complete, flight-article LEMs which were dumped in a Florida junkyard after Apollo wound down.

He points out that it is “good stewardship” to spend scarce maintenance money on other, in-use facilities first, but misses the point that these one-of-a-kind facilities should themselves be in-use. Some disused NASA legacy facilities could — should — be made available to private sector companies. It’s a shame to let such monuments rust away, but it’s even more of a shame to let valuable facilities become monuments in the first place.

But this is a perfect example of what happens when you have “mule” programs — facilities are built, hardware is assembled, an infrastructure is developed, and when it is all over, rather than building on what has been accomplished, it is thrown away and the next mule project is begun from scratch. The resources are squandered, the lessons are lost, the people disperse, and new money is thrown after the old to build new facilities and designs and infrastructure which will themselves, in turn, be abandoned.

MarsBlog.net

Categories

Archives

A sample text widget

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

Recent Posts

Blogroll

Meta