(no subject)

[vernard]

I don't usually speak out "causes" on my journal. never really thought about it much. But this is one that I think deserves attention.

SpaceshipOne is going up again. Unlike most folks that believe that NASA is simply a waste of money and that it should be dismantled, I personally think it still serves a few very good purposes. however, I think that it has gotten stagnant. There is no reason we can't have both a civilian and a military/government presence. I think that the civilian one will actually force NASA to get with the program and provide us with the leadership that it used to.

I think that NASA is being strangled by government as opposed to nourished by it. But nevertheless, its a good thing.

But the real point of this is for you to go read about this initiaitve and the fact that its about to reach its goal. Its a testimony to the human spirit in many ways.

Ever reaching for the stars.....

Comments

[n3m3sis42.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on NASA. It boggles my mind how it's almost the default point of view that it's pointless.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I think NASA is most excellent at unmanned research missions. Particularly JPL. The Explorer mission to Mars has succeeded beyond anybody's dreams.

That arm of NASA is run by the scientists.

NASA Manned Space, on the other hand, is run by politicians... and needs to be taken out behind the Vehicle Assembly Building and used for target practice.

I could expound on this, but I won't just now. I'm going to go do target practice of my own. :)

But that's my professional opinion, having been a NASA contractor and the son of one and watching things from as close to inside as you can get without having United States Treasury on your paycheck.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I think several of the main problems with NASA are:
-- it has become heavily politicized;
-- too much of what it does has been subjugated to the needs of military and intelligence programs, leaving little resources left over for doing basic science;
-- a series of administrators with no real vision or imagination (or worse, the ill-fated "better, faster, cheaper") have largely left NASA reduced to doing what's "safe".

To be fair, much of the fault lies with Congress, which has repeatedly cut NASA's budget to the bone. But on the whole, I don't think NASA has made effective use of what budget it has since the end of the Apollo program. There have been big successes, Hubble among them, but there have been few real advances, and the Shuttle has been a hugely expensive, slow-to-turn-around boondoggle that has never lived up to the promises made for it.

I'm hoping the civilian space program will turn at least some of that around by showing what can be done when the doers aren't fettered with bureaucracy and government mandates.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

What he said. :)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and that's not restricted to NASA. The US government runs on pork.

I think your suggestion has a lot of merit, with the one reservation that it seems likely, as it now is in much medical research, that only research deemed likely to be immediately commercially profitable would get funded.