NASA gets a budget, and then that budget is allocated across 10 centers. There are 50 states, 100 senators and 435 house members, all vying for a slice of that 17 billion dollar pie. People in Nasa will tie up to the coat tails of congress that will help them, congress will tie up with people in NASA that will help then bring home the bacon. I do not see how an engineer will somehow be above that.

Yes, but FWIW, NSF spends a large fraction of its $6B on facilities and research grants in all fifty states. Somehow it avoids at least the most blatant forms of earmarking and politicization that are hallmarks of NASA and, for that matter, DOE as well. I’m not sure whether NIH, for example, is in a simiilar situation. As I said, it’s worth some thought.

The question is not whether engineers can manage it, but how to depoliticize the management of it.

It would be about government policies to encourage CATS. Apparently you have no imagination whatsoever, give your monomania about cost-plus contracts, and NASA-funded RLVs.

And if not NASA who? The USAF? They tried it in the 1990’s and got their fingers chopped off for reaching into NASA’s cookie jar. Same as with the X-20 in the 1960’s.

Who are you arguing with? I didn’t see anyone making such a proposal.

If you want CATS give people a Profitable reason to go into space. Europe didn’t start building transatlantic capable ships until people saw there was lots of wealth to loot in the New World. Then they couldn’t build them fast enough. The art of ship building in Europe progressed faster in a few decades then it had in the previous millennium. Greed is a great motive for advancing technology.

So if these groups really want CATS they should push laws like Zero-G, Zero-Tax (including revenues from suborbital space tourism…). Or government purchase of unlimited amounts of LOX, Water, etc ($2500/lb to start?) to start an orbital fuel depot. Or offer a guaranteed (and substantial) premium for SBSP delivered to the grid. The latter two would also be tax free of course as per Zero-G, Zero-Tax. And of course make the sale of raw materials from NEOs and the Moon legal and tax free. Then let the greed of the market decide CATS.

But merely getting NASA to start another RLV program will be just a huge waste of time, effort, and if they get federal funding, money.

NASA gets a budget, and then that budget is allocated across 10 centers. There are 50 states, 100 senators and 435 house members, all vying for a slice of that 17 billion dollar pie. People in Nasa will tie up to the coat tails of congress that will help them, congress will tie up with people in NASA that will help then bring home the bacon. I do not see how an engineer will somehow be above that.

The NRC decadal studies are chartered (and funded) by multiple agencies — this coming year for astronomy by NASA, NSF, and a bit from DoE, to do a cross agency prioritization of projects/missions that have been proposed, on the basis of what is best for the field in the long term. This strategic prioritization is bounded by some likely budget envelope, and ideally responsible cost numbers. These surveys, which are supposed to reach out deeply into the research community and are the responsibility of selected panelists who bring deep insights into science, engineering, and policy and also respect from their colleagues, is to develop a clear and understandable consensus on what’s more important and what is less important to the field. This report is, as a result, taken seriously by Congress and the administration, which see it as hard decisions, responsibly supported by consensus, that they don’t have to make themselves.

Culberson’s suggestion to run NASA like NSF is indeed somewhat surprising. NSF doesn’t have a lot of experience at building big facilities, and that’s experience that NASA depends on. But his suggestion that NASA be managed (and not just “advised”) by engineers and scientists as a way of depoliticizing the agency is worth some thought. It should be understood that NSF, for example, is hardly ever earmarked in appropriations bills, very much unlike NASA. His suggestion is interesting not because a wholesale reorganization of NASA can really be envisioned, but because the agency as a whole is probably up for some reinvention, if just through the regular rewriting of its own strategic plan. Culberson is one of the few people on the Hill who seem genuinely motivated by science and engineering excellence, and it’s fair to say that NASA could stand some improvement in getting that.

Maybe I’ll get around to putting this latter paragraph in the right place.