— Donald

Doug,

I am not going to argue with you about the influence of BIG ESTABLISHED BUSINESSES that have huge lobbying budgets. Big aerospace is part of the problem in creating change in civil space policy and our national space agenda. Big Aerospace’s influence has nothing to do with which party is in charge either.

I also note that Lisa Porter — who demonstrably does not care much for industry — leads the part of NASA that demonstrated contempt for the public in the how it released the aviation study.

Bureaucracies show contempt for the public — all the time — without giving a darn about industry.

– Al

Doug,

The problems you mention are DOD related, not NASA related. NASA’s biggest bureaucratic problem is that it has become a self-licking ice cream cone. (Meaning that NASA develops technology, not to support & build entire new industries (or other outside “customers”), but to support its own internal interests and priorities.)

The predecessor to NASA, the N.A.C.A., produced its greatest accomplishments via partnerships with industry, by working hand-in-hand with private industry to (broadly) support its growth and development.

Is the N.A.C.A. approach a bad thing?

It sounds like Lisa Porter prefers an NSF approach over an NACA approach. The NSF approach is not bad, but neither is the NACA approach.

FWIW,

– Al

As an aside, I guess it’s one of the things that concerns me about the whole contractor business in Iraq. In an effort to save money, you end up creating private mercenary armies with enormous arsenals whose loyalties are to whomever pays them money (shades of late Western Roman Empire with its mercenary barbarian armies). The U.S. government becomes so reliant upon them that government officials seem more interested in protecting them than holding them accountable.

Ike warned us about this in his farewell address. It’s a warning I don’t think we’re heeding. A little known fact is that he was specifically referring to Edward Teller (father of the H bomb) and Wernher von Braun. This is in Michael Neufeld’s new book, BTW.

Lisa Porter’s bias is towards funding basic research at TRL 1-3 level. She prefers sending money to the universities, and she is generally against any partnership deals (even no exchange of funds deals) between the aeronautics centers and private industry. She has become pretty well known at the centers she has control of, or influence over, as an enemy of deals with industry.

Basically, her views are out of sync with NASA’s official policy, which is to develop innovative partnerships with industry.

Whether or not her decisions on basic aeronautics research are producing any results is an open question, which probably will not become known for some time. I do expect that university researchers will say they love her — as she is sending most of the ARMD money their way.

– Anon

It’s a bit off-topic for this forum, but I’d be interested in hearing a more specific assessment of Porter’s tenure. Aside from the aeronautics cuts that were passed on to her by Griffin to pay for Ares I/Orion, I have not followed Porter’s redirection/restructuring of aeronautics closely. Please share any specific observations that you have.

You help me make my point. I think you would agree that there was a LOT more going on than just those reports, in both cases.

The White House decided that it needed to retire the Shuttle. The CAIB report recommending as much was a convenience — something for the WH to point to.

In the case of HST servicing mission, I would suggest that O’Keefe’s retirement (and Mikulski’s tenaciousnous) and the passionate cries of lots of people had more to do than the existence of a report.

– Al

I did not mean to imply that you were. But clearly other people keep complaining about this. The fact that a 1988 law was not followed once is a pretty strong indication that Congress doesn’t care, and in fact has forgotten about it entirely.

“I think reports are not worth the paper they are written on — so passing a law to right a report, without any other context of the strategy was not well thought out.”

It depends upon the report. NASA is retiring the shuttle in 2010 because of a report. It is servicing the Hubble because of a report.

“In a similar manner, “commercial space” has been in NASA’s charter from the very beginning — but it is only in recent years that NASA has started taking concrete action to do something to support commercial space. This is not because NASA (the agency) cares about commercial space. Instead, commercial space advocates (and advocacy organizations) have chosen to aggressively lobby and market on commercial space issues for many years.”

I think that there is another issue, which is that the definition of commercial space has changed as the environment evolved. NASA could claim that they were supporting “commercial space” in the past because they had a different conception of it. So in their definition, SpaceHab was commercial space.