Valerio Ricciardi
09-10-2022, 18:25
Una interessante risposta in un altro forum dedicato, in lingua inglese
Why does NASA want to return to the moon after so many years?
Steve Baker
Senior Software Engineer
“NASA” doesn’t want to “do” anything. They are a part of the US government - and they do what the politicians demand of them.
In this case, the history is approximately this…
George Bush cancelled the Space Shuttle (good idea!) and told NASA to go back to the Moon - under “Project Constellation” and they funded Boeing to build the SLS rocket and Orion capsule to do it…using leftover Shuttle parts so it would be (a) cheap (it certainly was not!) and (b) fast (which was a joke surely?!!?)
Barack Obama cancelled the Constellation program as a part of generalized belt-tightening when the financial crisis hit - but Boeing’s mandate to build SLS was left in place - there was some vague idea of using it to land people onto an asteroid…but that never seemed to go anywhere. NASA talked about going to Mars - but there was no funding.
Donald Trump instructed NASA to go to Mars by the end of his second term in office - and when NASA said that this was impossible, he instructed them to go to the Moon by the end of his first term in office - and when they told him that MAYBE they could do it by the end of his second term - he had the Senate appropriate the money and gave NASA the go-ahead, changing “Project Constellation” to “Project Artemis” and tweaking some details.
Joe Biden has so far done basically nothing - so NASA are continuing with Artemis until someone tells them to do some other stupid thing.
NASA only does what the government tells them to do…they have no choice in the matter.
SO WHY ARE WE GOING TO THE MOON?
Because Trump wanted a big flashy “capstone” for his presidency - and forced NASA to take the shortest course to doing SOMETHING. When his second term didn’t happen - it landed in the lap of Joe Biden…who seems to just let things roll wherever he can.
At no point has anyone since the Bush presidency stopped to ask “Why?” and since Bush was not the sharpest tool in the shed…who knows?
WHAT IS GOING WRONG HERE?
NASA never gets to take the simplest, sanest route to do anything because they don’t get to make the big decisions. Scrapping SLS is the biggest “no-brainer” in the history of space flight - but because corrupt politicians are trying to hand money to their favorite campaign donors - the money that’s being pointlessly flushed down the Boeing-toilet is money well spent in their minds.
With every president changing NASA’s direction - and with it taking more than an eight-year double-term to get anything SERIOUS done - NASA are forced to flail around, saying “Sir! Yes Sir Mr President!” and never getting anything done. This has been the case since the end of the Apollo missions.
NASA didn’t want the Space Shuttle or the ISS - they wanted to retain Saturn V as their “heavy launch vehicle” and to build a cheap/simple “space taxi” to get into orbit, a massive spacecraft assembly factory in orbit and a “space tug” that would remain in orbit indefinitely, moving parts and people around from low earth orbit to moon bases and so forth.
By the time government and the military had their say in it - the orbital factory turned into the pointless international cooperation thing, the simple space taxi became one of the stupidest and most dangerous spacecraft in history - and the handy space-tug was abandoned on the drawing board…and here we are 50 years later having achieved pretty much NOTHING in space.
But it’s **NOT** NASA’s fault…they are the political football in this fiasco.
If we want to see progress in space then we need to do one of two things:
Change the structure of NASA’s governance such that central government chooses whether to fund or not to fund some long term (at least 10 year) project - and once having funded it - have no further control over it’s direction and have the money pre-allocated and locked away so it can’t be revoked.
Remove NASA’s function as designer-of-launch-systems and require them to purchase launch services from commercial contractors. They become a space-science organization who do things like purchasing seats on SpaceX’s first manned Mars rocket for geologists and exo-biologists. Designing space telescopes - but using commercial launch facilities. Sending rovers and landers to interesting places - but again, using commercial launch services ONLY.
Why does NASA want to return to the moon after so many years?
Steve Baker
Senior Software Engineer
“NASA” doesn’t want to “do” anything. They are a part of the US government - and they do what the politicians demand of them.
In this case, the history is approximately this…
George Bush cancelled the Space Shuttle (good idea!) and told NASA to go back to the Moon - under “Project Constellation” and they funded Boeing to build the SLS rocket and Orion capsule to do it…using leftover Shuttle parts so it would be (a) cheap (it certainly was not!) and (b) fast (which was a joke surely?!!?)
Barack Obama cancelled the Constellation program as a part of generalized belt-tightening when the financial crisis hit - but Boeing’s mandate to build SLS was left in place - there was some vague idea of using it to land people onto an asteroid…but that never seemed to go anywhere. NASA talked about going to Mars - but there was no funding.
Donald Trump instructed NASA to go to Mars by the end of his second term in office - and when NASA said that this was impossible, he instructed them to go to the Moon by the end of his first term in office - and when they told him that MAYBE they could do it by the end of his second term - he had the Senate appropriate the money and gave NASA the go-ahead, changing “Project Constellation” to “Project Artemis” and tweaking some details.
Joe Biden has so far done basically nothing - so NASA are continuing with Artemis until someone tells them to do some other stupid thing.
NASA only does what the government tells them to do…they have no choice in the matter.
SO WHY ARE WE GOING TO THE MOON?
Because Trump wanted a big flashy “capstone” for his presidency - and forced NASA to take the shortest course to doing SOMETHING. When his second term didn’t happen - it landed in the lap of Joe Biden…who seems to just let things roll wherever he can.
At no point has anyone since the Bush presidency stopped to ask “Why?” and since Bush was not the sharpest tool in the shed…who knows?
WHAT IS GOING WRONG HERE?
NASA never gets to take the simplest, sanest route to do anything because they don’t get to make the big decisions. Scrapping SLS is the biggest “no-brainer” in the history of space flight - but because corrupt politicians are trying to hand money to their favorite campaign donors - the money that’s being pointlessly flushed down the Boeing-toilet is money well spent in their minds.
With every president changing NASA’s direction - and with it taking more than an eight-year double-term to get anything SERIOUS done - NASA are forced to flail around, saying “Sir! Yes Sir Mr President!” and never getting anything done. This has been the case since the end of the Apollo missions.
NASA didn’t want the Space Shuttle or the ISS - they wanted to retain Saturn V as their “heavy launch vehicle” and to build a cheap/simple “space taxi” to get into orbit, a massive spacecraft assembly factory in orbit and a “space tug” that would remain in orbit indefinitely, moving parts and people around from low earth orbit to moon bases and so forth.
By the time government and the military had their say in it - the orbital factory turned into the pointless international cooperation thing, the simple space taxi became one of the stupidest and most dangerous spacecraft in history - and the handy space-tug was abandoned on the drawing board…and here we are 50 years later having achieved pretty much NOTHING in space.
But it’s **NOT** NASA’s fault…they are the political football in this fiasco.
If we want to see progress in space then we need to do one of two things:
Change the structure of NASA’s governance such that central government chooses whether to fund or not to fund some long term (at least 10 year) project - and once having funded it - have no further control over it’s direction and have the money pre-allocated and locked away so it can’t be revoked.
Remove NASA’s function as designer-of-launch-systems and require them to purchase launch services from commercial contractors. They become a space-science organization who do things like purchasing seats on SpaceX’s first manned Mars rocket for geologists and exo-biologists. Designing space telescopes - but using commercial launch facilities. Sending rovers and landers to interesting places - but again, using commercial launch services ONLY.