NASA exploration architecture

You know. I could talk all day and night about the new exploration initative. But I think I will leave it at this.

We are proposing a 12 year time line at the earliest to land on the moon.

In 1960 Kennedy proposed we would do it by the end of the decade and we made it in 69.

In otherwords... we made it faster when we didn't know it could be done than we are proposing to do it now that we not only know it can be done but still retain all the knowledge that got us their last time.

In otherwords... It is being proposed it will take 3 years longer in the day of the supercomputer than it did in the day of the slide rule.

That only gets more ridiculose when you consider they did it faster with slide rules when they were not sure they could do it than they are proposing to do it with computers and current manufacturing and hindsight of the last 30 years of space flight.

What makes it worse ? Its not like we are even proposing a completely different more capable mission. If you look at the newly released mission configuration for the lunar landing it looks more than suspiciously similar to the old Apollo configuration. It IS the Apollo configuration. And the only difference this time will be incremental not revolutionary... ie more capable computers, slightly more refined rocketry and perhaps better materials. Marginal improvements at best.

The only major difference ? The Shuttle stack vrs the Saturn stack. AND WE ALREADY HAVE THE ROCKETS. the 9 years of Apollo included the design of the rocketry stack from the ground up, design building and testing of the engines used which were providing capabilities that had NEVER existed before. They are currently propsing to use off the self rocketry in a new configuration only. And still saying it will take longer than it did when they built the whole thing from scratch. They are not proposing some new capacity. In fact the proposed system will still fall short in many respects of the Saturn V stack. So... existing tech with known capacity and performance vrs entirely new designs with unknown performance parameters untill said testing was completed.... and they did the ground up faster than what they are proposing when utilizing known systems.

Furthermore. What are we doing differently ? We have done our flags and footprints mission. At least tell me we have a solid goal of what we will accomplish this time above and beyond what was done in the 60's, 70's that will require this longer program development and deployment time ? I have yet to hear it. A dark side telescope? A permanent or at least long duration outpost ? Landing in a more challenging and geologically interesting location? Atempted gathering and refining of Lunar resources for a future self sufficient outpost? Please god don't tell me we are not just going to copycat ourselves from 40 years ago. That would REALLY be pathetic. Like a 50 year old in a mid life crisis trying to recapture their youth. I firmly believe Apollo was worth every dime. But to reproduce it for no other reason that to reproduce it is not worth one lousy half a penny in my humble opinion.

Now I can understand arguments of... but this program is not going to be funded the same way. Thats fine. But it SHOULDN'T be. My god if we had to spend 1% of the national budget for a decade to recreate something we did 40 years ago before the advent of the personal computer with technology we largely have already developed I would be really concerned. I know NASA has gotten bad at managing money but that bad ? Yes yes yes I know that Shuttle and ISS suck up most of the NASA budget at present and that the NASA budget is tiny to begin with. I know that until the shuttle dies around 2010 there just won't be any of an already limited budget to throw at space exploration... so in that sence, this is a proposed 8 year timeline with some preliminary spitballing and the initial crew capsule design done in the mean time.

So in 2010 we will have the crew capsule. We will have the Rockets. And it will still take 8 years to put them together to launch to the moon? Someone want to explain that one to me again ? We built the rockets and capsule etc from scratch in 9 before and the delivery of the technology was the largest problem in terms of how long it took. Your telling me that when space exploration becomes the 500 pound gorilla in the budget and we already have most of the technological ground work laid it will still take us 8 years to repeat a feat we did in ten years, 4 decades ago, building from scratch ?

Your joking right?

Some suggestions.

1) Get NASA to paying for delivered goods. Cost Plus Contracting is a blight on any endeavor and has yet to deliver on any promise other than to super inflate any cost of any program which is run on such an asinine concept.

2) Let whoever can deliver the goods get the money. Private industry is supposed to take risks. Hang out a few hundred million or a Billion or two and someone will make the effort to build the tech you need on speculation they will succeed in providing it. Stop providing life support for the military industrial complex by assuring they are the only ones that can compete for NASA money and bank rolling them before they even deliver one practical item. Rutan's Scaled composite built Space ship one and the White Knight mother ship in less than 5 years for less than 20 million dollars for a 1o million dollar prize. What could they have done in 5 years with a billion dollar prize and a clear goal similar to the ansari X prize? Perhaps its time to go with people that deliver results instead of cost overuns and scandles.... or at least with those who will profit ONLY if they actually DELIVER the goods.