| | Several years ago, we discussed here on AeroGo what I consider to be NASA's basic problem. Rather than build steadily on past successes, in the manned space program since Von Braun's retirement, NASA has repeatedly thrown away the capabilities we developed and started over from scratch. In the unmanned program there's room for improvement, too, as we shall see.
Indeed, yesterday the pattern continued. Stennis Space Center conducted the final planned test of the Space Shuttle Main Engine (video), one of the world's most advanced rocket engines, reusable, with an outstanding record of reliability. I hate to see us losing this valuable space hardware.
Instead, in its main "operational" development programs, NASA needs to develop each new capability - rocket engine/stage, spacecraft, space station component, etc - in such a way that it can be a building block that, once developed, could be used repeatedly by combining in various ways. This is how Von Braun did things, re-using engines and stages, using the S-IVB stage for Skylab, putting the Apollo Telescope Mount in place of the Lunar Module, etc. There was actually an Apollo Applications Program that looked for ways to creatively re-use Apollo hardware.
Here is the basic strategy I outlined three years ago:
- NASA must learn to plan in a more incremental way, creating building blocks with each operational program that can be pieced together in any number of ways.
- NASA needs to plan for the future in a way that consistently balances shorter-term operational programs and longer-term advanced technology efforts.
- "Operational" (manned and robotic) programs should be based on proven "building blocks".
- A second, less expensive (largely unmanned) set of programs should be tasked with aggressively developing new spacecraft technologies.
- Operational programs would get most of the funding but would not be allowed to starve out "advanced technology" funding.
- Exploration and scientific missions would be flown using both categories of hardware, with exploration and science goals being primary for operational hardware and secondary for advanced technology hardware.
I noted, "Space technology is just too expensive to reinvent the wheel over and over, and NASA needs to stop eating its seed corn by plowing too much money into overly-ambitious manned programs that starve out high-risk technology development. In the long run, a balanced R&D strategy will ensure real growth in our manned and robotic capabilities without science losing out." I would add:
- NASA needs a process for gradually seeding out to industry building blocks as the technology matures, rather than holding on to all of them, bloating its staff/budget and in effect competing against the growing commercial space industry.
 
An example of a mission where science could have benefitted was the missed opportunity to visit Halley's Comet in 1986. The U.S. was contemplating such a mission, but projected costs were mounting and time was running out. What we should have done is pursue an advanced technology mission using more capable but less-proven technology (e.g. electric propulsion). We could have achieved a primary goal of gaining experience with new space technologies in a faster-paced and lower-cost program. Science return from Halley's Comet would have been a secondary goal, but even if it didn't work out, the advances in our understanding of electric propulsion would have made another comet mission much more feasible.
And lest you think this is a far-fetched scenario, this is more or less just what happened a decade later when NASA sent the Deep Space 1 mission, using electric propulsion to the comet Borrelly. Electric propulsion (DS1 ion engine, above left; engine test, above right) was a technology that had been sitting on the shelf since the 1960s, so DS1 would have been a big success even if it hadn't produced any science return, but in fact it did- the best comet images and data ever (Comet Borrelly, below left; false-color composite of Borrelly's coma, below right).
Deep Space 1 was an example of the sort of win-win mission strategy I am suggesting here. You set up a mission so that even if some objectives aren't achieved, you still advance technology, and if everything does work out, you reap a science windfall. This is the right approach to take for the lower-budget high-risk technology development part of NASA's program. It doesn't mean you don't do big operational projects like Cassini, but there'll be a lot better options for these big-budget missions because of the technologies validated through the advanced technology portion of the program.
 
There have in fact been several attempts at taking such a technology-investment approach. One was NASA's Applications Technology Satellite series of the 1960s-70s, revived briefly with the ACTS mission. Deep Space 1 was itself an early success for NASA's New Millennium Program, which was doing for unmanned space technology much of what I've outlined here. Unfortunately, it too seems to have withered away, the victim of budget pressures.
I'm certainly not the only one calling for a renewed emphasis on space technology development. John Mankins from The Space Review has written a good article, "To Boldy Go: The Urgent Need for a Revitalized Investment in Space Technology" about the importance of NASA getting back to sustained space technology investment. From the introduction (emphasis added):
"At the beginning of the space age, the United States realized that preeminence in space exploration and development could only be achieved through a commitment to robust investments in advanced space research and technology. ... in the mid-1960s, NASA’s investment in advanced space research and technology was approximately $1 billion per year (in current year dollars), and was directed toward truly ambitious technical objectives such as nuclear propulsion, high-energy cryogenic engines, thermal protection for reusable launch vehicles, electric propulsion, solar energy, automation and robotics, and more. For its day, NASA’s advanced space research and technology program was truly transformational—pressing the frontiers in technology and enabling the space missions of the 1970s and 1980s to achieve goals that were unimaginable for any other nation in the world.
... This “orchard of innovation” yielded missions such as the Viking landers and orbiters at Mars (1976) and the Voyager missions to the outer planets; systems such as the Space Shuttle (1981–present); and, international initiatives such as the International Space Station (1982–present). ...
Unfortunately, the US investment in advanced research and technology for space exploration and development has been reduced to historically low levels, and concurrently has been focused more narrowly than ever before on immediate system designs and development projects. In many respects, the current budget is little more than an “advanced development” program with minimal opportunity for innovation and essentially no possibility that an invention arising from civil space research and technology programs could influence system design decisions, inform budget estimates or inspire new, more ambitious space program goals."
This is very true. If you go back and read the early Kennedy-era NASA budgets, there was a prominent line item for nuclear propulsion. In his Rice University speech you've probably seen replayed several times recently during the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, nobody seems to notice, but what Kennedy actually said was, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..." I'm not sure, but I suspect those "other things" were the advanced space technology projects like nuclear propulsion.
Why was nuclear propulsion important? For one thing, we expected to need it to go to Mars. So does this mean Kennedy was already thinking about going to Mars? Probably. In any event, there's no doubt that Kennedy's aim was for America to be the pre-eminent leader in space technology, and he understood we'd never get there without a vigorous advanced technology program, centered on propulsion. |
| | Posted 7/30/2009 1:37 PM - 151 Views - 0 eProps - 1 Comment
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