Re:NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on...
by Robotbeat on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:21AM
(#14762034)
You can blame Congress. Congress insists on zip-code engineered space hardware whose primary mission is to ensure profit for contractors in their districts. The Administration, no matter who heads it, generally doesn't buy that approach, which is why you see the old programs scrapped (because they weren't going anywhere).
(Putting the Earth-science thing aside for the moment.) It really is a mostly non-partisan divide, here.
NASA has its own problems. A culture of risk averseness that is incompatible with new approaches like reusable rockets (although NASA will use them if they're proven by others). A culture of safety-uber-alles which is even more incompatible with expanding the capability of human space exploration in particular.
But for all that, NASA still accomplishes great things. NASA has been critical for the success of SpaceX (around 2008 in particular) and even has helped Blue Origin considerably. NASA has completed the International Space Station (the largest spacecraft ever built by far) and kept it inhabited since 2000. No one under the age of 20 remembers a time when there wasn't at least a couple people aboard the Space Station. This program has built up a level of experience with long-term human spaceflight that, in aggregate, exceeds all other such programs. We have experience manufacturing in space and leveraging ISS for launching commercial satellites (Planet.com in particular), helping pave the way for the current wave of smallsat launchers.
There are now half a dozen active satellites (half from NASA, but all with assistance from NASA) in orbit around Mars, two active on its surface, plus a probe around dwarf planet Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, and another probe, New Horizons, which has visited Pluto for the first time and is now on its way to other destinations deeper in the solar system. This is all just scratching the surface of NASA's accomplishments in this time.
(And next year are slated the launch of two commercial crew vehicles that NASA has been funding, SpaceX's Dragon 2 and Boeing's Starliner.)
(Putting the Earth-science thing aside for the moment.) It really is a mostly non-partisan divide, here.
NASA has its own problems. A culture of risk averseness that is incompatible with new approaches like reusable rockets (although NASA will use them if they're proven by others). A culture of safety-uber-alles which is even more incompatible with expanding the capability of human space exploration in particular.
But for all that, NASA still accomplishes great things. NASA has been critical for the success of SpaceX (around 2008 in particular) and even has helped Blue Origin considerably. NASA has completed the International Space Station (the largest spacecraft ever built by far) and kept it inhabited since 2000. No one under the age of 20 remembers a time when there wasn't at least a couple people aboard the Space Station. This program has built up a level of experience with long-term human spaceflight that, in aggregate, exceeds all other such programs. We have experience manufacturing in space and leveraging ISS for launching commercial satellites (Planet.com in particular), helping pave the way for the current wave of smallsat launchers.
There are now half a dozen active satellites (half from NASA, but all with assistance from NASA) in orbit around Mars, two active on its surface, plus a probe around dwarf planet Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, and another probe, New Horizons, which has visited Pluto for the first time and is now on its way to other destinations deeper in the solar system. This is all just scratching the surface of NASA's accomplishments in this time. (And next year are slated the launch of two commercial crew vehicles that NASA has been funding, SpaceX's Dragon 2 and Boeing's Starliner.)