From: "Geo." 

"Monte Davis"  wrote in message
news:4t0qr29vrqhpsbh6m64hrfm2a79pl86sl0{at}4ax.com...

> That doesn't cut it -- "leadership" in the abstract is too vague and
> cloudy. What *reason* does the leader advance to sell the program? I
> may have misgivings about Kennedy's "We'll get men to the Moon first
> to show the world we can do big hard technology better than the USSR
> [and erase the embarrassments of Sputnik->Gagarin]," but it was clear
> and compelling at the time.

Leadership is about knowing where to go and why, it's not about making up
goals for the sake of having a goal.

> Another problem is that after Apollo, the "step size" grows
> dramatically.

You are making an assumption here, that the next step involves shooting men
off into space instead of robotic missions, space telescopes, and
scientific exploration by means other than making footprints. The next goal
could just as easily be finding earth2.

> Factual nitpick: Apollo peaked at ~5% of the Federal budget, NOT of
> GNP, and averaged closer to 2% over the period 1961-1972. (For
> comparison, NASA today is .7% of the budget.)

Ok I stand corrected.

> Tempting, but beware of the intellectual dishonesty of the "spinoff"
> sales tactic. Space hardware, because it has to be as light as
> possible  and survive launch stresses, is remarkably specialized.

Oh and a nuclear battery for use in a car wouldn't need to be light,
survive crash stresses, etc? I think it is adaptable.


> That said, I *could* get behind space solar power as a goal if it were
> sold *honestly* -- on a realistic time scale of 25+ years, and with
> the clear understanding that while it can't possibly compete with
> terrestrial alternatives at today's launch costs,
>
> (1) it's as clean as energy can be and almost indefinitely scalable
>
> (2) our criteria will be shifting in those directions anyway over 25+
> years
>
> (3) launch costs will come down *in the course of doing it* (because
> the single biggest factor in high launch costs is that we do so little
> launching)

Deep space exploration won't really work with solar since by it's very
nature you are going to be traveling outside the solar system (too far from
a star to use solar). But relay control stations might be solar powered to
get the signal a bit more range.

Look, I'm not trying to define a realistic goal here, I'm just trying to
point out that leadership and a clear attainable time limited goal is
what's required to get Nasa moving again. And if nasa says they need 25
years, give them 15. Nobody works at nasa's pace in the real world, those
guys take way to much time with everything if you don't push them and will
tie the whole thing up in red tape and procedures unless we make it so they
don't have time for the nonsense. They require a real sense of urgency or
even competition to get anything done in a reasonable time frame.

Geo.

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