Maciej Cegłowski's essay "A Rocket to Nowhere" is a much better description of how and why the Shuttle was doomed by political and military considerations.
How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle
11–20 of 68 posts
Re: How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle
#12This article is mis-titled. It makes an easy argument for "debacle," but omits the difficult "how to avoid" part.
It's not highlighted specifically, and it's weak on specifics, but the article points repeatedly at the failure to scope the Shuttle program realistically, and/or to re-scale the program once its true dimensions (costs, risks, launch frequency) were apparent.
The author definitely has an axe to grind. "Failure" is a qualitative assessment, though it's objectively true that the program underperformed on the bases listed above.
Re: How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle
#13This is also a good perspective, albeit old:
http://www.spacefuture.com/vehicles/how_the_west_wasnt_won_n...
"This country was bounded to the West by a desert. One day a telescope built on one of the country's mountains revealed what looked like sea far away beyond the desert which would have to be crossed in order to discover if there was habitable land on the coast. So the politicians got together and established a government agency to send some people through the desert. They called it the National Agricultural Frontier Administration, NAFA for short, and charged it with a dramatic task to demonstrate the vigour of the nation: it would carry out a 'mission' to send people right through the desert to the West coast of the continent and bring them back safely, within a decade."
Re: How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would think that the people are hacker news of all places would not get caught up in media-hype trends about how all government spending is waste bla bla. NASA tried to change the paradigm of space travel. It didn't work the way they'd hoped, but that's the risk of trying something different. Comparing it to TARP and Afghanistan is a ridiculous non sequitur that only works if you buy into the anti-government yammer…
So, am I to understand that your position is that NASA is efficient in its spending, and that this who think governments are inefficient (cost wise) at achieving goals are caught up in a "media-hype" that is "antigovernment"? If that is correct, how were SpaceX and Scaled Composites able to do so much with such limited resources?
Indeed, how were SpaceX and Scaled Composites able to do so much with such limited resources, 30 years later and having benefited immensely from NASA's pioneering work?
NASA could definitely be run better but let's compare apples to apples. I'm sure any given engineer at SpaceX has a computer on his desk superior to the entire world's computational capacity at the time the shuttle was designed.
Re: How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle
#15For the most part, the author is correct: by most objective measures, the shuttle was a disaster. One point I disagree with is his criticism of "the teachers who spoke about it in admiring tones to their students".
Is it really that wrong to try and get kids excited about engineering and science?
Re: How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle
#16This article makes a lot of good points, but I felt it failed to really break the surface and address the core problem that led to the failure of the Space Shuttle program. That core problem is misalignment of incentives. Or in short, politics. When you've got a public budget and your goals are political ones, you're going to pursue a specific set of capabilities and policies that help your political career. This is…
>The solution to this problem is very simple: No government agency with control over space. Outsource everything.
Blackwater.
Re: How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would think that the people are hacker news of all places would not get caught up in media-hype trends about how all government spending is waste bla bla. NASA tried to change the paradigm of space travel. It didn't work the way they'd hoped, but that's the risk of trying something different. Comparing it to TARP and Afghanistan is a ridiculous non sequitur that only works if you buy into the anti-government yammer…
So, am I to understand that your position is that NASA is efficient in its spending, and that this who think governments are inefficient (cost wise) at achieving goals are caught up in a "media-hype" that is "antigovernment"? If that is correct, how were SpaceX and Scaled Composites able to do so much with such limited resources?
while i admire Musk, lets look soberly at the things, credit due where credit due. SpaceX and Scaled Composites did nothing technologically new. They took old (50 years old) well developed approaches and reimplemented them efficiently. This is exactly what business is good at - to take a developed (at great expense, usually on huge government dime) solution to a complex problem and productize it, cost efficiently and thus making it widely available (coincidentally a thing that government isn't good at, and it is only logical that NASA was able to develop such complex, pioneering design like Shuttle - huge success in that regard and wasn't able to make it useful anywhere close to commercial scale - huge and not surprising failure in that regard)
Re: How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle
#18This article makes a lot of good points, but I felt it failed to really break the surface and address the core problem that led to the failure of the Space Shuttle program. That core problem is misalignment of incentives. Or in short, politics. When you've got a public budget and your goals are political ones, you're going to pursue a specific set of capabilities and policies that help your political career. This is…
Government funded programs in the US and Russia took care of a lot of the basic science companies like SpaceX rely upon. It is unlikely that a commercial venture would have been able to attract or afford the depth of engineering talent that got the Russians the MIR Space Station or the Americans the moon landing. They are treading the path blazed by government funded research. That said, there is no reason a hybrid model (government + private sector) could not work well.
Re: How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle
#19This article makes a lot of good points, but I felt it failed to really break the surface and address the core problem that led to the failure of the Space Shuttle program. That core problem is misalignment of incentives. Or in short, politics. When you've got a public budget and your goals are political ones, you're going to pursue a specific set of capabilities and policies that help your political career. This is…
Even if it is necessarily, the only governmental organizations I'd hate to see go more are probably NPS and the USFS. NASA is iconic, and I spent much of my childhood dreaming about them.
Re: How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle
#20For the most part, the author is correct: by most objective measures, the shuttle was a disaster. One point I disagree with is his criticism of "the teachers who spoke about it in admiring tones to their students". Is it really that wrong to try and get kids excited about engineering and science?
No, so long as it's science with solid economics and business sense behind it. [/tongue in cheek]