Back to Exploding Totem Poles
by Raymond M. Coulombe

NASA released their plans for the space program and it's back to the future. Their new plan looks an awful lot like Apollo. What's the great big innovation? Well . . . it's bigger. Oh yeah . . . we can use some parts from the shuttle. Those worked out pretty good most of the time.

NASA's director also admitted that the whole shuttle program and the International Space Station were mistakes.

Ok then, so basically, the last 30 years of NASA's efforts have been a waste of time. Then there is the little thing about the money they spent. Now, we are supposed to assume that this time NASA has got it right?

Let's examine exactly what NASA has been doing. The idea of the shuttle was a good one. The original plan, and I'm dating myself here, was to have a space truck. This vehicle was supposed to be reusable, cheap to run, not require a huge ground crew and be not much harder to service than an airplane.

That's not the vehicle they built. For goodness sake, it's made out of ceramic! It's a piece of delicate china. It's a crock. It requires specialized craftsmen to meticulously piece together each individual tile, all pretty much different from each other. The smallest imperfection and it turns into confetti scattered across Texas! Doesn't sound much like a truck to me.

Promising designs, some quite cheap, were discarded along the way. It's a long long sad tale, too long for this editorial. Even now, things are being tested to death with nothing moving forward. One can't but come to the conclusion that NASA wants to fail. Do they want to keep the average Joe out of space?

Rutan proved that it didn't take magic to get out of the gravity well. He did it on the cheap, with a vehicle that probably took less service than your average jetliner. Is NASA going to learn from Rutan? Of course not. The money is going to go where it always has gone, to the big contractors with comfortable relationships with the government.

The government seems to reward failure. We spent billions of dollars on the shuttle and the International Space Station, and it was a mistake. Now the plan is to give billions of dollars to the same bunch of companies that assisted with the big mistakes directed by the agency that directed the big mistakes. No big deal for our government. After all this is the same government that gave more money to the agencies that failed during the destruction of the Twin Towers. Not only were they given more money and power, the people involved were promoted. In government, failure is no hindrance to getting a promotion and a raise.

Now we are going back to the same ideas behind Apollo. The best that can be said for Apollo is that it did work, after a fashion. We did get to the moon. Of course, the way we got to the moon didn't establish any infrastructure in space. Apollo was a dead end. It was expensive, and a waste of resources that could have been better used for building stepping stones. We probably should have built a space station that would have served as a jumping off point for the exploration of the whole solar system. The current space station really isn't designed for that sort of thing.

Keep an eye on the Chinese. Study the design of their manned space craft. Look at the jump from their first manned effort to the current project. It's a big leap. They are getting a handle on the technology. The problems aren't technical. The problem NASA has had is a lack of vision. I'm curious to see what China's vision will be.

I believe that man's destiny is in space. It's the only way to grow beyond the limits of our single planet. The hope for mankind is that we get into space in a big way and do it reliably and cheaply. NASA has really dropped the ball on this one. The new hope is that private companies may develop technologies that do the job. Also, keep an eye on China.

I think I'll learn Mandarin. It might be the language of space-faring people, and I don't' want to be left out.

| Home | Alternative | Fantasy | Science Fiction | Artwork | Editorial | Submissions | News |
| Discussion Board | Recommended | Merchandise | About Us | Links | Webrings | Archives |