Nicely said, Hiram. Indeed, we’ll see tomorrow if they moved in that direction.

1. Consider the goals for the human spaceflight program as set forth in (a) the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, (b) the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Acts of 2005, 2008, and 2010, and (c) the National Space Policy of the United States (2010), and any existing statement of space policy issued by the president of the United States.

7. Provide findings, rationale, prioritized recommendations, and decision rules that could enable and guide future planning for U.S. human space exploration. The recommendations will describe a high-level strategic approach to ensuring the sustainable pursuit of national goals enabled by human space exploration, answering enduring questions, and delivering value to the nation over the fiscal year (FY) period of FY2014 through FY2023, while considering the program’s likely evolution in 2015-2030.

These are questions that, quite frankly, have never been asked before in a formal way. So if they do their job, the report won’t be ignored. I do have to suspect that the temptation is going to be preservation of the status quo, which is the old and tired arguments (exploration!, inspiration!) for human space flight. If they do that, it’ll hit the circular file pretty fast. It will be interesting if this committee manages to think outside the box, or just cuddles up inside of it.

Part of the pathos of the HSF community is its chronic inability to separate transportation architecture from rationale and value proposition. We’ll see if this committee can pull that off.

I think too much emphasis on ops and not enough on systems research, development and planning is what got NASA into trouble over the last couple of decades. NASA phased into this during the Shuttle of the late 80s and it carries over to the ISS today.

The NASA operators are great at establishing their mission rules and following their checklists, but they do not establish a plan, a process, or the rationale. That is what is missing.

NASA needs to get back to strategizing, planning, researching and developing; those are the proper roles of the government. The contractors can take the subservient role of operating the service. In human space flight NASA forgot what DDT&E was all about. Mr. Musk is showing everyone how the job could be done.

I hope the forthcoming report will address NASA’s and the government’s role and value. I hope it addresses how NASA can best contribute to maintaining US space leadership and the importance of maintaining a strong civilian space agency. Because NASA has not figured these things out on their own.

“Throughout the first five decades of the U.S. space program, the space transportation systems NASA depended on to pursue its goals of exploration were owned and operated by the government. Space policy analyst Jeff Foust observed that, “For a long time … we’ve seen a lot of promises and PowerPoint presentations about proposed (private) spacecraft,” continuing, “Now we’re seeing those PowerPoints turn into actual hardware.””

Let’s hope the NRC report recognizes the value for NASA to “buy a ticket, not the vehicle” like they are with cargo and crew transportation, and pretty much what the rest of the USG does for moving any type of mass to space. Plus, in the final accounting, NASA only ended up paying for 47% of the total cost for the SpaceX system, and 43% of the Orbital system, and only 5% of the total COTS budget went to overhead costs (typically 10-15% for other NASA programs). Outstanding taxpayer value!

If we’re going to be able to afford to do more in space, we have to lower the cost to access and do things in space. COTS is a proven model now, and the Commercial Crew program is following in it’s footsteps, so again let’s hope the NRC report recognizes that innovation can still happen in aerospace, and it doesn’t have to come from the entrenched players.

“Political scientists? Sociologists? Historians? Where are the engineers? Where are the blood and guts NASA ops people?”

We don’t lack technical ability per se, we lack a reason. And not just any reason, but one that can be supported by some significant amount of U.S. Taxpayers, and one that can be understood and supported for decades to come by the politicians that have to find and support the funding.

Until there is a reason, and the funding to support it, engineers are ops people are not yet needed.