A new study, commissioned by NASA, endorses giving NASA more power and money, even as NASA becomes more irrelevant
It’s all about power and control.
Surprise, surprise! A just released report from the National Academies and paid for by NASA has concluded that the agency suffers from insufficient political and financial support, and that the agency’s recent shift to relying on private enterprise should be de-emphasized in order to grow NASA instead.
Two quotes from the report’s executive summary tells us everything we really need to know about its purpose and political goals:
NASA’s shift to milestone-based purchase-of-service contracts for first-of-a-kind, low-technology-readiness-level mission work can, if misused, erode the agency’s in-house capabilities, degrade the agency’s ability to provide creative and experienced insight and oversight of programs, and put the agency and the United States at increased risk of program failure.
In plain English, NASA’s transition to relying on the private sector for the development of rockets, spacecraft, and even planetary missions “erodes” the ability of the agency to grow. That those private companies are actually building and launching things and doing so for far less money, compared to NASA’s half century of relatively little achievement since the 1960s while spending billions, is something the report finds utterly irrelevant. If anything, that success by the private sector should recommend that NASA should shrink, not grow.
The second quote from this NASA-commissioned report underlines its effort to lobby for NASA:
Another evolving trend at NASA concerns the increased use of service contracts for early technology work. Such contracts can be altogether appropriate when circumstances demand. Still, they can remove NASA from control of critical mission elements and, if used excessively, can migrate NASA’s technical employees into de facto positions as contract monitors as opposed to performers of the hands-on work that is so critical to the maintenance of a quality future workforce. Very few of the nation’s most innovative scientists and engineers would likely seek or remain in such pure oversight positions.
In other words, the shift to the private sector has made many NASA jobs irrelevant. These people hadn’t accomplished much before that shift, but now that lack of achievement has become self-evident. All the real work is being done by private companies, which makes NASA look bad, and completely unnecessary. We can’t have that!
The report makes a lot of recommendations, but all can be consolidated into a demand for more funding and an increase in hiring, all aimed at giving NASA more in-house control over all space projects and taking ownership back from the private sector.
Liberty is people pursuing happiness,
not government planning their future.
What makes this report even more galling is that it has been released at the very moment private enterprise is proving unequivocally that NASA really is irrelevant for the future American efforts in space.
Even as I write this four private citizens are in orbit on the Polaris Dawn mission, launched by SpaceX and paid for by Jared Isaacman as part of his own personal planned space program of exploration. That program includes two more missions at least, one of which could repair Hubble with the other going around or even to the Moon or beyond. For this private space program, NASA really is irrelevant.
SpaceX meanwhile is building its Starship/Superheavy rocket for both Moon and Mars exploration, and intends to fly its own missions to Mars before this decade is out. While NASA provided some money for developing the manned lunar lander version of Starship, the rocket is almost entirely funded from private investment capital as well as profits from Starlink. NASA really is irrelevant.
In addition, there are four American consortiums building private space stations, with one company, Vast, doing so without any government money or support at all. While the other three stations are getting some NASA funding and NASA will certainly want to do American government projects on those stations, all four are depending not only on private investment capital for their creation, some are already garnering revenue from foreign nations who want to use those stations as a cheap way to create their own national space programs. Once again, NASA really is irrelevant.
The real conclusion, based on reality and the best option for America, its citizens, and its future in space, is to recognize that the need for NASA is fading, and that future government funding should recognize this. If freedom and capitalism is allowed for flourish — both of which are fundamental American ideals — in a few years America won’t need a government space program any longer. It can shift back to its roots whereby it is Americans who do the exploring and settlement, not government agents who control and program everything.
This new report is merely another effort by the administrative state to hold back the onset of freedom and private enterprise. It might couch those goals in reasonably-sounding words, but in the end, that is what this report wants to achieve, a bigger NASA with more employees controlling all space efforts while accomplishing as little as that agency did from the 1980s until the last decade. At the same time, that increased government power will allow it to further squelch any competition from the private sector.
You want to build a rocket or space station or go to the Moon or Mars? If the recommendations in this report are adopted you will have to get NASA’s permission to do so.
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NASA is less than F-35’s budget…I don’t think it can fly to the Moon.
I am reminded of PBS and its continuing taxpayer funding. For decades, television viewers have had a large number of channels available, with good programming being provided by many. There is simply no need for the public to pay for PBS with all the commercially produced options.
NASA is not quite as useless and unnecessary as the Public Broadcasting Service, but with the burgeoning private space exploration industry, it is getting there.
Robert wrote: “The real conclusion, based on reality and the best option for America, its citizens, and its future in space, is to recognize that the need for NASA is fading, and that future government funding should recognize this.”
It might be best for NASA to revert to the same function that the NACA had in assisting the overall commercial aviation industry. NASA could also continue to do government exploration of space, since the commercial companies would focus on explorations that were profitable, meaning useful in the near future.
On the other hand, science and innovation has slowed considerably with them increasingly being controlled by government. For the most part, areas that the government wanted explored and innovations that the government wanted to use were the areas that were best funded. These are the purposes of the decadal surveys in various fields of study.
What We the People need most is not what government wants to fund. During the Victorian Age of the 19th century many new technologies were created. Railroads and steamships increased transportation, brought beneficial products to every market, and virtually ended famines. Telegraph, telephone, and radio (including television) brought instantaneous communication around the world. Electricity is a virtual miracle, and everything can be powered by it except for airliners and ships (although electric airplanes are beginning to be developed, with lightweight batteries). Even the electric light proved that the Sun could possibly be powered by something other than fire — the only non-solar source of light for man until Edison invented the think tank. Skipping a large number of advances, lasers and integrated circuits were the last of the great innovations of what I think of as the Victorian Age of Technology. The world changed greatly between 1820 and 1970.
Since about 1960, when government controlled almost all science, the only major innovations have been cell phones, portable computers (which are practically the same thing), and additive manufacturing (3-D printing). Perhaps I should include the economically-reusable booster.
What amazing innovations are we about to create in the second Space Age? If only we can keep our regained liberty to be creative.
I am sorry, but is anyone else experiencing the kind of cognitive dissonance that I am over the pretzel logic that is being described here?
Let me get this straight. Given the present status of the Artemis / SLS program, there is essentially no guarantee that NASA will be able to put human beings back on the moon (per Robert’s estimate) much before the end of this decade — if ever — at a vast and totally unsustainable cost. Meanwhile, as also suggested in this post, private entities such as those behind the Polaris Dawn mission are working on their own programs to return human beings to the moon far more quickly and at a fraction of the cost. What does this portend, then, for Artemis, SLS, and the future of NASA as a whole?
On the face of it, what is being described here is absolutely INSANE, yet nobody in Congress — or at NASA — seems to have the slightest idea about any of this, as though, somehow, we are still living back in 1974 as opposed to 2024, and massively funded, Apollo-style government programs are still the only game in town.
Does *anyone* else — outside the readership of this website — see a “problem” with this? And how can Congress be made to see things from this perspective? I know, I know. The worthies in Congress still look at NASA as a “jobs” program / pork barrel for their home districts, and they don’t much care whether anything is actually accomplished; I *get* that. But (quoting the late Gamble Rogers), continuing in this direction is *the square root of insanity,* even if we could somehow afford the expense.
Any ideas?
Milt: I give you four words, with the first doing what is required by the next three.
Trump. Drain the swamp.
Some who comment here think I am being too naive in believing this is possible. They themselves misunderstand me in that I am like them entirely unsure whether the first word can do what the next three words require. Unlike them however I do not live my life in hopeless dread of failure. There is hope here, and we must grasp at it because there really is a chance that if Trump wins he might very well be our own Milei.
His enlistment of Musk to help house-clean the executive branch is for example strong evidence Trump will do this. Remember what Musk did at Twitter, firing about 70% of the workforce within weeks of taking over, proving that if you have the will and the courage, it can be done.
It took decades to get to this level of dysfunction: it will take decades to recover, although we won’t ever be in the same place. In overall societal terms, probably a good thing.
You’re blinded by the human space flight failings of NASA. The robotic missions are much more successful and do good work, though I’m sure even those programs have private sector involvement.
Because NASA NOW does the DoD work of climate “engineering”. AND sub-contract that work all over the world. You should obtain “Skyglass” and build the world’s database of aircraft flights in real time WITH indexing and cataloging.
You will be STUNNED at what you observe.
Edward, Ships can be powered by electricity . There was a generation of US battleships that were powered by steam turboelectric drive as well as the carriers Lexington and Saratoga. During World War 2. the Buckley and Rudderow classes of Destroyer Escorts were turbo-electric and Evarts and Cannon classes were Diesel-Electric. The Maritime Commission built 481 T2-SE-A1 tankers during the war – the backbone of the US tanker fleet. World wide 99.9 percent of all subs used batteries for underwater propulsion.
PEOPLE!!! Have you FORGOTTEN the TRUE MISSION OF NASA?? Didn’t the segment of excrement oblama declare that the TRUE MISSION of NASA was MUSLIM OUTREACH?? How is THAT MISSION progressing?? There’s one thing that we ALL know happens with a Gov’t Program – it GROWS in Power and Tax Payer Dollars Consumption while REGRESSING into unrelated areas!
If NASA needs more money then take a deep breath, analyze where you SPEND money and on WHOM and cut the deadwood! Determine WHAT it is that you are SUPPOSED to be doing and how EACH PERSON relates to that MISSION! I’m sure a ROCKET SCIENTIST can function without all the support from the Didn’t Earn It crowd and the Climatistas! Now I know they need SOME input from WEATHER EXPERTS when considering launches, but other than that? Nyet!! I would BET that a COMMON SENSE review of EVERY Gov’t expenditure by competent, uncaring how many DEMOcrats were dismissed, experts would result in a BALANCED BUDGET in a year or two! NASA has grown to it’s irrelevant position simply due to hubris and detrimental power!
NASA will consider putting a blind transexual in orbit a groundbreaking first while Elon Musk is busy building colonies on Mars. NASA just isn’t very relevant these days.
I have not read the report yet, but the blurbs that Mr Z quotes make it seem like they are sounding the alarm that a self-licking ice cream cone is melting.
I will read it, but, currently am curious also, if this is also not a political push to urge NASA to stop relaying on commercial launch, specifically, their number one provider, because they do not like the CEO/founder.
Speculation, till I read further.
Robert: Yes, there has to be a fundamental change in Washington, with someone actually willing to drain The Swamp — and who can stand the wailing and rending of clothes that will result.
My point, more narrowly, was just how long can people ignore reality and pretend not to see something that seems to be blindingly obvious? That Artemis – SLS is *not* the way to put human beings back on the moon is becoming more and more apparent to anyone with “eyes to see,” but how many people either at NASA or in Congress are ready to admit this? And, lacking a “the emperor has no clothes” moment, how can such individuals be “encouraged” to see?
True enough, people see what they are able to / want to see — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant — especially if they have no incentive to look elsewhere, but there is (I think) something like a “real world” out there whose operation is not dictated by what Taylor Swift and her followers might believe.
I’m sorry, it’s just that being a Cassandra isn’t much fun, especially if people’s willful blindness gets in the way of so many opportunities, both individual and collective, to do great things. The main points of Capitalism in Space have been spectacularly vindicated by recent history — including, again, the ongoing Polaris Dawn mission — yet now The Powers That Be suggest that we essentially turn our backs on all that and pretend that none of it is happening. Seeing all this makes me a very unhappy camper.
Milt: If Trump wins, it means the public has recognized reality. That the hardcore leftists in the media and within the Democrat Party refuse to do so will become less relevant.
This assumes once again that these leftists don’t fix the election, as it appears they did in 2020.
Great points in here, Bob, but maybe I might sense a niggle: “…NASA’s half century of relatively little achievement since the 1960s while spending billions.”
This is unquestionably true of NASA human spaceflight (sadly). It is hard to say that it has given us much more than a glorified jobs program since 1973. But I think we have to give the science mission directorate its props. For all their failings and inefficiencies, they have pulled off some stunning feats, and vastly expanded our understanding of the solar system and, indeed, the universe over the last 50 years. (To cite a personal interest: My aunt did a significant slice of the on-board software for the Viking landers when she worked at JPL in the 1970’s.)
There’s a lot more room in the SMD for use of commercial assets, and we are, finally, seeing the first slow stumbling steps in that direction now. Better late than never, I guess.
But I think we have to give the science mission directorate its props. For all their failings and inefficiencies, they have pulled off some stunning feats, and vastly expanded our understanding of the solar system and, indeed, the universe over the last 50 years.
———-
Richard M,
Here, here.
Voyager 1 & 2 are top contenders for the greatest achievements of humanity.
More recently Juno and Cassini.
JWST, despite being hugely over budget, has actually has been worth the cost.
Voyager 1 & 2 are top contenders for the greatest achievements of humanity.
I have long thought that the Voyagers were, dollar for dollar, the greatest value of money ever spent by the U.S. government since the Louisiana Purchase.
All those great robotic missions were designed and built over 20 years ago.
What has NASA done lately?
If it wants more to do then it better find a way to do more with what it has.
Maybe they can take over the FAA’s role in launches. They would at least know more than the FAA.
Pzatchok:
Well, Perseverance, at least, is more of a “last decade” achievement, even if heavily based on Curiosity! (And let us not forget its plucky helicopter.)
In our current round, we have Lucy, Psyche, and (launching in three weeks) Europa Clipper. Easy to forget about those since none of ’em have reached their targets yet!
Beyond that, we have Dragonfly, which is, frankly, a shockingly ambitious mission for NASA: a nuclear powered drone designed to fly through the hydrocarbon skies of Titan, landing and sampling places to its science team’s content. That launches in 2027.
Robert Zimmerman wrote: “His enlistment of Musk to help house-clean the executive branch is for example strong evidence Trump will do this. Remember what Musk did at Twitter, firing about 70% of the workforce within weeks of taking over, proving that if you have the will and the courage, it can be done.”
Reducing the Twitter workforce was a survival strategy, not an act of bravery or extraordinary will power. The revenue dropped by more than half when Musk took over and declared himself a free speech advocate. The advertisers only believed in free speech for themselves, not for their customers.
For Trump to do something similar to the Federal Government will require the cooperation of the other two branches of government. He cannot do it legally without them. If Congress allocates the money, Trump must spend it on the line item and nothing else; the Supreme Court ruled it this way. Trump will need Congress to willingly reduce the budget (or the Continuing Resolutions that they have been running the government on ever since Obama).
Trump will have a difficult time removing the communists and tyrants that are within the Executive Branch. Some of that swamp also needs Congressional cooperation to drain, because the bad guys are ensconced not only at the top, but even in the lowest levels, like Lois Lerner was. It is not impossible, but it will be hard work, because Congress made it difficult to fire federal employees. Vance and following presidents will have to also be as dedicated to draining the swamp and keeping it drained.
Congress will have to drain its own swamp.
______________
Milt asked: “My point, more narrowly, was just how long can people ignore reality and pretend not to see something that seems to be blindingly obvious? That Artemis – SLS is *not* the way to put human beings back on the moon is becoming more and more apparent to anyone with ‘eyes to see,’ but how many people either at NASA or in Congress are ready to admit this? And, lacking a ‘the emperor has no clothes’ moment, how can such individuals be ‘encouraged’ to see?”
Part of the problem is that you are asking people to see what is not yet there. Although it looks like Starship may be able to do what SpaceX promised, it has yet to even put a payload into orbit. You are asking Congress to abandon something that almost certainly will work, though at great cost, for something that might work. When Congress asked for a Human Landing System to get from Gateway to the surface of the Moon, they didn’t realize that the companies would ask for that much money to do it on fixed price contracts, so they allocated too little money for two systems but enough for the least-cost vendor, which turned out to be the Artemis competitor.
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Col Beausabre wrote: “Ships can be powered by electricity . There was a generation of US battleships that were powered by steam turboelectric drive as well as the carriers Lexington and Saratoga.”
Those were still oil fired, not electric. That is like saying that diesel-electric trains are electric.
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Ken wrote: “JWST, despite being hugely over budget, has actually has been worth the cost.”
I’m not so willing to give NASA a pass on JWST’s costs and delays. We could have had much, much more science from many more satellites and probes if JWST had cost half as much or 1/10th as much, yet we would still be getting the same science from JWST. If it had launched much closer to on time, we would have had more time with JWST and Hubble working together for broader spectrum comparisons of the same objects, giving us that much more science. JWST was worth doing, but it is not worth the cost. The cost being more than the money spent but also the science lost.
SLS is another project that could have been done for much less cost. A reusable system as a followup to the Shuttle would have been so much better, and if SLS had had a purpose when it was designed, we wouldn’t be wasting resources on the Gateway station.
As Richard M points out, NASA can be capable of a well managed project. We have to wonder why some of them are so atrociously managed.