RealCurrents

Congressman John Culberson, from Bill Archer’s (and George H.W. Bush’s) old District 7 in Houston, is getting a bit of a backlash for daring to say something critical of NASA. Here’s the comments page from yesterday’s Houston Chronicle article, Culberson weighing legislation for NASA overhaul.

Now Culberson has gotten a reputation as one of the most tech-savvy Congressmen, which seems well-deserved. In May, he did a live video, using his cell phone and the Qik service, of the Mars Phoenix landing from JPL. Culberson’s enthusiasm for space, science and discovery is obvious there. He’s also very active on the fast-growing Twitter social network (@johnculberson), to the point that last week he became embroiled in a flap with Democrat congressional leaders over proposed rule changes that would severely restrict congressional internet video and blog posts.

Asking a question like “What’s wrong with NASA?” is so complex that a long answer is probably of little practical usefulness. I will say that it was a little disturbing how quickly folks who obviously knew far less about NASA than Culberson, including some politicians, turned on him as if he’d blasphemed or something. It’s also frustrating how many immediately viewed this as some sort of attack on the personal integrity of NASA employees.

As someone who once worked, long ago, both for NASA and a contractor, these sorts of arguments seem pretty much pointless. Let me just repeat what I wrote at the Chronicle page:

This has nothing to do with whether NASA has good employees or not. Of course there are many very motivated and dedicated folks at NASA and among the contractors. The real question is whether they’re being used effectively.

Rep. Culberson is right in certain respects. NASA has made great strides in many areas, but two areas, manned spaceflight and propulsion technology, are greatly lagging. We need a concerted effort in advanced propulsion because this drives everything else, and we desperately need strong leadership for a sustained manned spaceflight program.

As far as NASA taking credit for a “growing commercial space industry”, that’s ridiculous. Maybe the agency is finally seeing the light about commercial space, but it’s visionary entrepreneurs and private investors who have long been the driving force.

As to how we should invest funds to best create a vigorous manned space program, I wrote about the basic technical strategy here on my blog AeroGo. Congressmen, responsible for determining NASA’s budget and priorities, at least need to understand the root problem behind our frustrating lack of progress in manned spaceflight, which I noted in this discussion of SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan’s criticisms of NASA:

Because its R&D isn’t properly divided between technology development and operations, NASA remains prone to starving technology development whenever funds are tight (i.e. nearly always), which is much of the root problem. I suspect this is a lot of what is upsetting to Rutan about the program, “that you are not going to learn anything new here that is useful for you to go on to the other moons.”

The reality of NASA budgeting over the last 30 years or more has been that of operational manned space projects - Shuttle and ISS - crowding out most everything else, which leads to a very risk-averse R&D environment where breakthroughs are unlikely to occur

NASA will never be a perfectly efficient organization, but it still could accomplish a lot more if its budgeting were realigned to reflect the strategy needed to make steady progress. Manned flight operations cannot be allowed to crowd out space technology research, especially propulsion, anymore than they can be allowed to displace space probes, space science, or aeronautics research.

Because manned spaceflight is so expensive, however, the reality is that it will end up crowding out the others unless Congress imposes budgetary guidelines to protect these other areas that provide so much technological return on investment. Rep. Culberson is right in calling for an overhaul of NASA, but the budgeting process is key. Even without multi-year appropriations, a lot can be accomplished just by making sure NASA isn’t eating its own seed corn, particularly in the area of space technology R&D.

I’ve been writing on my AeroGo site about the fundamental problems with NASA and U.S. space R&D policy (calling it a strategy would seem a stretch). Last week at the 2006 International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles, SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan ruffled some feathers with several criticisms of NASA and its Crew Exploration Vehicle, as well as FAA space tourism safety policy.

I’ve now posted a fairly lengthy discussion of Rutan’s comments regarding NASA and the CEV, and how they reflect many of the basic problems with U.S. space policy, as well as basic disagreements within the space community about how to make real progress.

There’s a constant tension in NASA space R&D between operational programs and development of advanced technologies, and until we clear up the confusion and systematically address (and invest) in both these areas, NASA will inevitably continue to just reinvent the past, as Rutan charges.

On the other hand, while the agency apparently continues to be guilty of overspending on big manned programs while giving space technology, science, and aeronautics scant resources, I disagree with Rutan’s view that the CEV capsule concept is inherently flawed. Nevertheless, schedule pressures do seem to once again be working their (not so good) magic at NASA.

I recently wrote on my site AeroGo (which is for students and others interested in going into the engineering and aerospace fields) about the real reasons behind NASA’s seeming inability to make much progress in manned space flight. Though there are some good things about new NASA Administrator Michael Griffin’s Moon/Mars plans, already we are seeing additional hits to science budgets and a backing away from developing new spacecraft technologies.

I noted how entities such as the European Space Agency and India are getting a better return on their space technology investment by more thoughtful and efficient pacing of research and development, and how other countries have shown more interest in using the International Space Station for microgravity research than NASA has.

In summary, NASA’s key strategy flaw is an inability to build on past successes. NASA needs an incremental space technology development strategy that combines new vehicles and technologies in ways that produce new, affordable options for exploration and science. It is NASA’s inclination to start with a clean sheet of paper every time - an approach the rest of the world simply can’t afford - which has caused us to end up in a situation today where we are again looking at having to spend a decade just to get back to the Moon.

As I discuss in my AeroGo post, a much more aggressive space technology development program needs to be maintained over the long run so that designers of operational programs have the confidence needed to use new space technologies. Only with more stability in spacecraft development and the maturing of new technologies can we really hope to get costs down.

Unfortunately, the difficulty of getting stable funding from Congress may be an insurmountable obstacle to NASA’s implementing such a strategy. On the other hand, Congress seems to grasp the role of NASA as an investment in the country’s technology future, so perhaps something could be worked out if NASA shifted away from a few very large development projects to a broader array of efforts that could make better use of some of its oft-neglected research centers, e.g. Glenn in Ohio, Goddard in Maryland, Langley in Virginia, Stennis in Mississippi, and Ames and Dryden in California.

Even if NASA isn’t able to change, the number of relatively well-funded commercial space companies continues to grow. We may already be past the point where the commercial arena is seeing the most significant research investment, if indeed these firms are able to get a more efficient return on the R&D dollars in their commercial efforts, and tie these to such an incremental, well-paced development strategy.

In addition to the post on NASA’s strategy, I also recently wrote about Aviation Week’s article on the supposed Blackstar space plane and XOV orbiters, and on the resulting controversy about it. I’ve included a number of links on these articles for those seeking additional information.

I wrote on my site AeroGo about Brazil’s decision to go ahead and pay Russia for a ride for its astronaut trainee, rather than keep waiting on NASA and a seat on the shuttle.

The U.S. has missed an opportunity to build goodwill with the largest country in South America. At a time when the Bush administration is trying to stem a rising tide of socialism in the region, apparently no one was even thinking about how space might play a diplomatic role. Instead, U.S. insensitivity has pushed Brazil toward the Russians, who haven’t exactly been a model of democracy lately.

While Russia still understands how its space program can play a political role, space has been off the radar screen for decades in Washington. As a result, once again we’ve lost an opportunity to reap some return on our investment in the space program. A lot of these returns are intangible or at least difficult to measure, such as spinoff technologies and industries, but considering the enormous expense of the space program, we need to see it pay off in as many ways as possible.

I recently read that the U.S. is spending more now on tort litigation than it is on research and development. Unfortunately, there’s not much of an export market in torts, so I hope we will find a way to get our priorities right before China and India (and near everyone else) eats our lunch.

On my site AeroGo today I used one example, the recent discovery that weightlessness affects the immune system in a way somewhat similar to HIV, as a springboard for discussing why it’s often hard to justify exploration and research beforehand, even though we have hundreds of years of human experience that clearly show a big long-term payoff.

The problem is that we usually get it wrong when we try to predict what we’ll find and the timetable for reaping benefits. We find something unexpected and seemingly disappointing, that in the long run ends up being way bigger than what we were looking for. Columbus was looking for spices and gold. There actually was gold, just not in the West Indies. Columbus apparently had failed, because the Spanish didn’t realize at first that they’d discovered two whole continents.

The U.S. needs to aim higher and stop quibbling so much about R&D. While funding needs to increase in the private sector (in case you haven’t noticed the federal government is already in hock up to its eyeballs), even more important than an increase is the need to get a lot better at the poorly-understood techniques of targeting and scaling of R&D investment.

We need to spend less per project early on, spread funds around more broadly, and most of all invest much more consistently and for the long term, something difficult to do in the U.S., at least in government agencies and publicly-traded companies.

Shenzhou 6 has launched successfully today, and I’ve written about the Chinese space program on my site AeroGo. With regard to space policy, I noted that the Chinese are reportedly working to develop a small station and so we need to start making efforts to ensure they use common interfaces and pressures, so in the long run all manned spacecraft can have compatible docking and environmental support systems.

I also noted how the Chinese and Indian space programs have been showing steady progress for many years, and ought not be underestimated for the future.

I’ve written some of my initial thoughts on NASA’s just-announced Moon-to-Mars plan involving a larger capsule and a shuttle-derived heavy booster on my site AeroGo.