avoiding the death spiral

avoiding the death spiral

Rand Simberg thinks that NASA should decide right now whether to fly the shuttles as-is or shut down the program. Dwayne Day thinks that the language used to justify the space program has become feminized. Jeff Bell thinks that any shuttle-derived vehicle concept is absurd, and that NASA ought to just go with a new vehicle altogether. Leonard David argues that it may be time to ground the shuttle fleet. And Jay Manifold says that for most of America, space isn't even a blip on the radar(April 16/04).

All of this is being driven by the Aldridge Commission, which is seeking ideas on how to implement President Bush's new direction for NASA.

To get a few people to the moon will require a way to get 100 tons of material into orbit at one time. This can either be done with a heavy-lift bosster that puts it there all at once, or by multiple smaller rockets whose payloads rendezvous in orbit.

In the 60's and 70's, NASA used the Saturn rocket to lift the command module and service module of the Apollo missions. Today however, we know how to rendevous in space automatically, and many current launch systems can launch smaller payloads into orbit.

If NASA builds some heavy-lift vehicle or shuttle-derived vehicle for the moon missions, it will have continued along the path taken over the last thirty years, a death spiral.

Such a vehicle would have a limited number of applications. If you wanted to launch say ten tons to earth orbit, you would have to wait until there was ten tons (and sufficient volume) available on a flight, or else gather nine others with similar payloads to share the flight with you.

Using several smaller craft and docking them in orbit makes more sense. Most of the technology is already available. However, if NASA selects a design, and then pays a single contractor the contract to build them, then it will again be on the death spiral.

I don't think Dwayne Day has it quite right when he talks of the "feminizing" of the space agency. It is part of a larger phenomenon, the feminizing of politics. Women entered politics (and the taxable workforce) as never before during the sixites and seventies, and it is no surprise that politicians choose words that will appeal to women as well as men, such as "exploration" rather than "conquest" or "leadership".

Instead, what has happened to NASA is a bureaucratization.

In the 1960's NASA was for all intents and purposes an army. It's soldiers were engineers and scientists and - and, well, soldiers. It was fighting a war. It's enemy was the Russian space program. It had a well-defined objective, to put men on the moon and bring them back alive. It had a well-defined deadline: December 31, 1969. They met the objective and won the war more than five months ahead of schedule - and in doing so immediately changed. The accomplishment of that goal meant an "end of major hostilities" for the army.

When an army is done its job, the soldiers get to go home (for the most part; I do realize that the US maintains bases all over the world). And in order for NASA to survive, it had to become a bureaucracy. It had no real goal anymore, so it had to make one up. The expenditures of the Apollo years had convinced the American public that space was really expensive and that nobody but a government agency could possibly afford it. And that perception is correct, nobody could afford to do anything in space the way a government agency does it except for a government agency.

So we've got these shuttles, spacecraft designed by politicians in a commitee, and escalating budgets and exorbitant launch prices ($1.2 billion for a shuttle launch under the new transparent accounting methods).

NASA needs to take a bold new look at everything it does. For one thing, it needs to undergo a process that most companies in the US did more than a decade ago: downsizing. Ground the shuttle fleet now, or use them until the ISS is complete or two more have been destroyed and save the last for a museum.

Next, change the way it does business with business. Instead of picking one design and awarding a single contractor (or a small group of companies) a huge amount of money, open it up to the real power of the market. Announce the specs for the lifting vehicle (say 10 or 20 or 25 tons to orbit), announce the specs for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (say 25 tons and ten people or 10 tons and three people, whatever), define the interface between the two. Then buy from whoever can meet the specs.

Multiple companies who are not already doing so could compete in the spacecraft manufacturing industry if this was the case. Ford, Kvaerner, Honda, anyone who manufactures cars or boats or airplanes. The secret is the production line.

Perhaps NASA needs to take an even bolder step: to look at access to orbit in a new way entirely. Using chemical rockets to get to orbit is thinking rooted in mid-20th century ballistics. Early 21st century thinking must include the implications of nanotechnology, particularly carbon nanotubes. NASA already commissioned a report on a space elevator, and it is worth another look in light of recent advancements in carbon nanotube production.