So excited about Dawn, and I also like Mercury Messenger. These are good NASA investments.
But that doesn’t mean we need a lot more spacecraft going to these destinations.
Also think Google Lunar Xprize is good, but it’s sort of “ahead of it’s time”- some people think being ahead of it’s time is really good thing, but I would say that is problem of space exploration.

Or I would say we need to recognize where we are. And where we are is in the early phase of
space exploration. And people seem to assume we instead in some kind of operational phase
or something or we finished exploring. And this tied to general idea of NASA should equal excitement and doing new things. That NASA should doing stunts. Being first land humans on Mars, sort of thing. I would say NASA long past the stage of doing stunts. The private sector
might do some stunts. Stunts are a PR thing, and the private sector can “use” stunts.

What NASA needs to do is make space important. So space is important in regards to the satellite
industry- the satellite market and governmental/military related activities. There no doubt about
how important the satellite market is. And as asserted before, we wouldn’t have the NASA we have
without this satellite market.
And also we would not have the robotic exploration that we have, without the human spaceflight which has been supported. So without NASA human flight, the US might doing around as much space exploration as the UK. It’s reasonable that that UK or some other country like Sweden could doing more space exploration than US. And without the satellite market, no country would be doing much related to space. Whereas because of satellite market every country interested and engaged to space.
So NASA task is to make space beyond GEO, important. And the path to this is by proper exploration, exploration focused on doing. Or exploration focused on opening the space frontier.
Or once there is markets beyond GEO, NASA would finished in the stage of space exploration.
At the point, NASA could perhaps explore Neptune. Send couple spacecraft. NASA could do other things like exploring the galaxy and universe with large telescopes. And developing craft
with get some fraction of speed of light. Though NASA can continue to be involve all space related
markets, just NASA is involved in airliner market.

So since the Moon probably has minable water, doing this should be a NASA priority- and of course it has not been nor is it a priority. Because NASA is lost, and imagines the moon has already been explored- “we have been there”. Or we already did a stunt related to the Moon.

So NASA doesn’t need to do any stunts related to the Moon. Maybe the private sector should
do some stunts related to the Moon, but NASA should not do stunts.

Now, I said endlessly that NASA should focus on developing a rocket fuel market. Maybe this
is wrong. Instead perhaps a better way to start a rocket fuel market in space, is to privatize
launch sites. If KSC were smart, they would want a rocket depot at their inclination.
A spaceport would want a depot at their inclination because customers could see that as a benefit of using that spaceport. Or it would attracts customers. So if KSC were private, and had some need of attracting customers they could imagine this would be something considered important. Whereas monopolies and governmental controlled interests are focused on themselves, rather than driven by increasing their market share.
This main reason why monopolies are evil. Monopolies kill innovation and economic growth.

Marcel

I also find myself grabbing many of Dennis’ quotes for my rants on the forums:

“Space advocates many times are their own worst enemies in that they see the vision of what is possible in space without considering the objections of other competiting interests.” [the one-legged stool for example]

Book concludes with,
“Deals of this size are done all the time, and think what having access to and rights over a billion kilos of platinum would do for our corporate portfolio.”

One of the main instruments on Skylab was a telescope to study and try and predict solar events. If these events could be predicted in advance they could be avoided much as hurricanes are avoided by ships at sea. This would have allowed for continuing the human missions with unshielded spacecraft. It did not work out and there is no way to predict solar events or mitigate the effects of the heavy nuclei component of cosmic radiation. This is the showstopper; the reason why we have not traveled beyond the Moon.

Radiation is deleterious to a far greater degree than microgravity though both combine to make Human Space Flight-Beyond Earth or Lunar Obit (HSF-BELO) impractical.

This makes the Moon the only place to go. Once there is an infrastructure on the Moon to allow humans to work and exploit lunar resources then the situation changes; but not until then.

Nuclear propulsion to push massive shields and artificial gravity systems around the solar system are only going to happen after a human presence and infrastructure are established on the Moon.

The rationale and benefits resulting from human space flight are to be found in cislunar space. The Moon is the only sanctuary available. Any discussions about space stations or interplanetary missions are at this point in time not only counterproductive but should be shouted down as fantasy or obfuscation.

The problem with NASA’s manned space program, however, is that its not focused on pioneering the solar system at all! Humans have been traveling into space for more than 50 years now. Yet we still don’t know if people can live permanently off the Earth.

We’ve known since Skylab in the 1970s that a microgravity environment is inherently deleterious to human health. But we really don’t know if that’s true at all on the surface of the Moon or Mars. Even the most rudimentary of outpost on the Lunar and Martian surface would finally reveal if living in a low gravity environment is harmful or harmless to human health and reproduction. Yet no such outpost are currently planned by NASA.

And no rotating space stations have ever been deployed to see if humans can adjust to artificial gravity. Again, no permanent rotating space stations are currently being planned by NASA.

Instead of pioneering the solar system, NASA has tried to justify human space travel as essential to microgravity experimentation aboard the ISS at LEO. The ISS is estimated to have cost the US and its partners over $150 billion and it still cost the US $3 billion a year– and rising. An extension of the ISS until 2028 would add another $42 billion in cost to the US.

That titanic amount of money (almost $200 billion) would have been much better spent establishing a simple artificial gravity space station at EML4 or EML5 and rudimentary water and fuel producing outpost on the Moon and Mars. And we probably would have gotten a large and much cheaper microgravity space station– anyway– from some of the basic hardware developed for the other programs– just as we did with Skylab after Apollo!

Marcel

The rationale is simple enough; survival of the species.
From the external threat of a comet or asteroid impact we face the real possibility of extinction.
From the internal threat of an engineered pathogen we face the real possibility of extinction.

The benefit was explained in 1976 by Gerard K. O’Neill in the High Frontier; cheap energy and Lebensraum.

The technology to effect impact deflection, survival colonies, and space solar energy is available now and refinements are on the way from rapidly accelerating fields of research in meta-materials and energy transmission.

The place to assemble, test, and launch nuclear space systems and to build survival colonies and the industrial infrastructure to support space solar energy was found with the discovery of millions of tons of ice on the Moon.

If the National Academy Committee is “struggling” then the problem is their own inability to think outside the box of this rapidly deteriorating world economy we are all trapped in.

Getting back to HSF and science, I think these are suffering because these are not this country’s priorities. Back in the days they were so even though people like James Webb still had to battle budgets with politicos, but at least there was incentive to spend money on HSF and science.