End NASA, start from scratch

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SciGuy

A science blog with Eric Berger


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Apollo astronaut: End NASA, start from scratch

Not everyone is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s decision to go to the moon with best wishes for another century of NASA.
Harrison Schmitt, the 12th astronaut to walk on the moon and a former U.S. senator, has called for dismantling NASA and replacing it with a new agency devoted solely to deep-space exploration.
Its charter, he believes, should simply be:

Provide the People of the United States of America, as national security and economic interests demand, with the necessary infrastructure, entrepreneurial partnerships, and human and robotic operational capability to settle the Moon, utilize lunar resources, scientifically explore and settle Mars and other deep space destinations, and, if necessary, divert significant Earth-impacting objects.

In his essay, Schmitt says NASA’s space science research should be transferred to the National Science Foundation, and its climate research to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/files/2...tt-211x300.jpgSchmitt (NASA)

And what of the International Space Station? He writes:

De-orbiting of the ISS will be necessary within the next 10 to 15 years due to escalating maintenance overhead, diminished research value, sustaining cost escalation, and potential Russian blackmail through escalating costs for U.S. access to space after retirement of the Space Shuttles.
NASA itself should sunset two years after de-orbiting, leaving time to properly transfer responsibility for its archival scientific databases to the NSF, its engineering archives to the new exploration agency, and its remaining space artifacts to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

In Schmitt’s view these changes are necessary to compete with China and its own ambitions in deep space. So what should replace NASA?

With the recognition that a second Cold War exists, this time with China and its surrogates, the President and Congress elected in 2012 should create a new National Space Exploration Administration (NSEA).

The new agency must truly be a new agency, beginning with the workforce. Schmitt asserts:

An almost totally new workforce must be hired and NSEA must have the authority to maintain an average employee age of less than 30. (NASA’s current workforce has an average age over 47.) Only with the imagination, motivation, stamina, and courage of young engineers, scientists, and managers can NSEA be successful in meeting its Cold War II national security goals.

Even as it manages the ISS, Johnson Space Center would eventually be subsumed into NSEA, maintaining its responsibility for spacecraft, training, communications and flight operations.
Setting aside the matter of whether we’re in a cold war with China or not, it’s an intriguing idea. Whether it’s realistic is another matter. But I have to admit I’m curious what a streamlined, unshackled NASA with a deep-space exploration mandate could do.

I can't say this is a bad idea. NASA has become a bloated/bureaucratic nightmare, certainly not the cutting edge, bold, and innovative agency it once was.

Perhaps let the Air Force handle near Earth space matters or, relegate NASA (or a reorganized/renamed NASA) to near Earth and form a separate agency to deal with deep space exploration/colonization. And as was pointed out NASA shouldn't be dealing with climate research. Let NOAA deal with that.

One big problem with this though is the distinct lack of scientists our schools are turning out today. Thanks public school system and teachers' union!

NASA lacks coherent direction, says government report

Posted on December 7, 2012 - 06:39 by Emma Woollacott


A report sponsored by NASA has concluded that the agency is failing to inspire the world, the nation or even its own staff, and is unlikely to achieve long-term objectives such as a manned Mars landing.


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In a report commissioned by Congress last year, the National Research Council also says that NASA's budget doesn't match up to its goals, and that legislative restrictions mean that NASA's inefficient at managing its staff and infrastructure. The White House, it says, needs to re-examine NASA's budget and free it up to operate more efficiently.


"A current stated interim goal of NASA's human spaceflight program is to visit an asteroid by 2025," says Albert Carnesale, chancellor emeritus and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who chaired the committee that wrote the report.


"However, we've seen limited evidence that this has been widely accepted as a compelling destination by NASA's own work force, by the nation as a whole, or by the international community. The lack of national consensus on NASA's most publicly visible human spaceflight goal along with budget uncertainty has undermined the agency's ability to guide program planning and allocate funding,"


Future strategic goals and objectives should be ambitious but technically achievable and should focus on the long term, says the report.


The panel gives the White House four options. It could embark on an aggressive restructuring program to cut infrastructure and personnel costs and improve efficiency; enter more cost-sharing partnerships with other US government agencies, private sector companies and international partners; increase NASA's budget or make drastic cuts to its current program plans.


This latter option, says the report, would mean "reducing or eliminating one or more of NASA's current portfolio elements (human exploration, Earth and space science, aeronautics and space technology) in favor of the remaining elements".


Most important, though, is to establish a new consensus on NASA's goals and objectives.


"Only with a national consensus on the agency's future strategic direction — along the lines described in the full NRC report — can NASA continue to deliver the wonder, the knowledge, the national security and economic benefits, and the technology that have been typified by its earlier history," say the authors.



Read more at http://www.tgdaily.com/space-feature...TOFQvj7Yxg4.99

FNC had Gene Cernan on a little bit ago to remember that we are coming up on (12/11-12/14) the 40th anniversary of the last man walking on the moon. :worry:

saw it. Feel the same.

Sad.

I remember sitting in our home in Detroit when they landed in 1969 the first time. I lived on a street called "Lilbridge" a block or so from the river. My sister and I sat absolutely glued to the television. The others were too young to care.

I remember looking at the moon a little differently from that point in my life on. I was twelve.

I knew, without a doubt we'd be on Mars by the early 2000s. I was soooo wrong.