[Mars-discuss] The end of NASA?

[Thomas Coffee]

Proposals recently surfacing in Washington mirror a set of 
recommendations assembled by some MIT Mars Society folks two years 
ago: in short, dissolve NASA by consolidating current federal 
research enterprises and creating an independent center for deep 
space human exploration.

- Thomas


>Mission unthinkable: Disbanding NASA
>
>* 03 November 2005
>* NewScientist.com news service
>* Greg Klerkx
>
>
>LESS than two years after it was announced with great fanfare, President
>Bush's plan to return people to the moon is in trouble. The signs are
>everywhere.
>
>Take Operation Offset, a proposal devised by a group of Republican
>legislators to cut government programmes and free up funds to pay for damage
>done by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Conspicuous on the chopping block is
>NASA's moon and Mars initiative. Another austerity proposal, suggested by
>economist Maya MacGuineas, recommended much the same thing:
>cancel NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle, the spacecraft that would carry
>humans back to the moon.
>
>It must be worrying to NASA administrator Michael Griffin that the political
>right and left can be so unanimous in casually proposing such a fatal blow
>to the agency's human space-flight programme. But the calls for cuts
>highlight something more fundamental: a growing perception that NASA is no
>longer up to the task of leading big, visionary enterprises.
>
>NASA has done itself no favours here. Charges of fiscal bungling continue to
>make headlines: for instance, the recent revelations that it wasted $20
>million by flying its personnel on private jets rather than on regular
>flights. Last year, an independent auditor hired by NASA quit in
>exasperation, claiming the agency's books were in such disarray that it
>might never have a clean audit. During the post-Apollo era, dozens of
>reports have emerged of bad management and overpayment for underperformance.
>Billions are spent on the shuttle, yet it is still grounded; billions have
>been spent on the Space Station and it is still incomplete.
>
>With the agency in such disarray, cutting the budget is simply not enough.
>America's space-faring ambitions are suffering a serious loss of
>credibility, and to get it back there may only be one solution: disband NASA
>altogether.
>
>Even voicing this idea will smack of heresy to many. After all, NASA landed
>men on the moon, and it has led the exploration of the solar system and
>beyond. But that is in the past, and for some time now much of its work has
>been done by outside entities: corporate contractors, universities and
>non-profit organisations. More than two-thirds of its budget has been spent
>on outside contractors over the past few decades.
>NASA has more or less become one huge administrator, and not a very good
>one.
>
>So why not push this trend to its logical conclusion and hand over all its
>responsibilities to the organisations that already do the work? For example,
>Earth observation could go to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
>Administration, and unmanned exploration to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
>which already handles most of it. Aeronautics - what NASA insiders
>derisively call the little "A" in the agency's name - could move to the
>Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Aeronautics research at NASA has
>suffered badly in recent decades, and its Dryden, Glenn and Langley research
>centres might fare better under an aviation-focused organisation.
>"There is a growing perception that NASA is no longer up to the task of
>leading big enterprises"
>
>Responsibility for human space flight could be divided up. The task of
>putting people into Earth orbit could logically go to the FAA, which already
>regulates all the US's commercial unmanned space launches through its Office
>of Commercial Space Transportation. Launching to orbit is becoming a
>free-market enterprise, with several companies offering launchers and
>spacecraft. There is no reason it shouldn't carry on evolving that way.
>Likewise, there is no reason why astronaut training shouldn't be a
>commercial, publicly regulated activity, much like the training of aircraft
>pilots.
>
>As for human space flight beyond Earth orbit, this could be handled by the
>Johnson Space Center, which already does most of the big thinking in this
>area and could be spun off as a Federally Funded Research and Development
>Center (FFRDC). It could then be run by a university, just as Los Alamos
>National Laboratory and many other existing FFRDCs are now, or as a
>non-profit entity or private organisation. Turning NASA centres into FFRDCs
>was a main recommendation of the Aldridge Commission, charged by President
>Bush with exploring how his lunar plan could best be achieved. Its report,
>released last year, said that NASA centres would be more efficient and
>entrepreneurial as FFRDCs.
>
>Dismantling NASA would not be easy. But in the long run, it may be the only
>way to progress. Over the past decade or so, the agency has striven to
>improve from the inside: the administrator before last, Dan Goldin, tried
>with his "faster better cheaper" blueprint, his successor Sean O'Keefe
>introduced back-to-basics fiscal management, and Griffin is going for
>hard-nosed personnel juggling and programme slashing. Yet through it all,
>the American public have slowly lost confidence, not to say interest, in
>much of what NASA is purporting to sell.
>
>The Bush lunar programme has often been lambasted as an expensive attempt to
>recreate past glory. This may be unduly cynical. But if we want to move
>forward in space exploration, it may be time to put away the past. And that
>may mean putting away NASA.
>  From issue 2524 of New Scientist magazine, 03 November 2005, page 18