[extropy-chat] FWD (SK) Letter to NASA

[Terry W. Colvin]

Letter to NASA about Your Human Space Flight Programs from an Old Former
Astronaut Taxpayer  (Don Peterson, former astronaut)

I'm an old guy, over seventy, and over the past four decades I have
watched the things you NASA folks have been able to do with admiration and
a touch of awe.  I think NASA is a good outfit with lots of really fine,
bright, hard-working people.

But I have to admit, I need some help trying to understand exactly what
NASA is trying to do.

More than four decades ago you undertook a series of human space flight
programs - Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo - and you met the challenge posed
by President John F. Kennedy to send a man to the moon and bring him back
safe and sound.  That was an exciting and ambitious goal.  You justified
the cost by telling everyone that having a human go to the moon and return
would provide great benefits to the nation, and I think there were:
national pride and prestige, some new technology and scientific
discoveries, a winning edge in the cold war in space, and, maybe most
important, the development of a skilled, dedicated government and
contractor team who could use the Saturn rocket and the other Apollo
hardware to do amazing things in space.

And then for some reason you must have felt it had no long-term value,
because you canceled two or three flights and shut the moon program down.

Then you said you were going to use some of the hardware and knowledge
gained in the Apollo program to build and fly a couple of laboratories in
space.  You said this program, called SKYLAB, would produce many unique
and valuable discoveries that would benefit all of us here on earth, and
it did produce some interesting findings about the sun and about pollution
here on earth, and other things.  You also said you learned a lot about
the effects of long-term space flight on human beings, and that would be
important for more extended human flights.

But you must have felt that extending SKYLAB operations lacked long-term
value, because you canceled the second laboratory and two or three crew
flights and shut the program down.

It seems even stranger that you cast aside all the vehicles and equipment,
which you had said were such amazing advances in technology.  Just
recently I heard someone from NASA say that even the blueprints for Apollo
hardware had been lost.

That led to nearly a decade without U. S. human space activities while you
developed the Space Shuttle.  You said it would be a "space airliner,"
that would make access to space cheap, safe, and routine for people and
cargo.  And a decade or so later you followed that up with the Space
Station program; a joint effort with 15 partner nations.  You claimed that
its unique capabilities as a long-term, sophisticated, research facility
in the zero gravity environment of space would yield new, valuable
findings in medical knowledge, materials science, and other scientific and
technological areas.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that's not working out.
The Shuttle, like most NASA vehicles, does some amazing things, but at
more than $400 million per flight with two losses in the first 113 flights
it is neither cheap nor reliable enough to support long-term, routine,
space operations.  And, contrary to publicly released findings, it's
becoming clear that the Challenger and Columbia accidents were not caused
by careless preflight processing or poor real time decisions in Mission
Control, but rather by intrinsic, serious design flaws built in from the
beginning, that made the Shuttle vulnerable and are proving extremely hard
to fix.

It's disappointing that people like Ron Dittemore, Linda Hamm, and the
NASA and contractor personnel who processed the vehicle preflight and
worked in Mission Control took all the blame for the Columbia loss; and
that the NASA people who were responsible for the design - Kraft, Abbey,
Faget, Cohen, Thompson, and astronauts like me - have not stood up and
been accountable.  (By the way, I did write a letter to the Congressional
committee that was investigating the Columbia accident and stated that I
am among the people who are responsible, because I was an active NASA
astronaut all during the design, development, and test phases of the
Shuttle Program.)

Meanwhile, the Station is drifting along in a state of hibernation with
its parts wearing out, insufficient resupply and repair capability, no way
to bring up large new experiments or take completed experiments back to
earth, and greatly reduced science operations, because it cannot be fully
supported without the Shuttle, which will have been grounded for more than
two years if it flies as now scheduled in the spring of 2005.  Of course
we could improve the station situation by buying some more Soyuz and
Progress vehicles, but apparently either you NASA folks or the
Administration or both would rather have the Station remain useless and
wear out than put the Russians back in the "critical path."

And now the President has announced a desire to send humans to Mars, and
you seem eager to respond.

That's a very exciting prospect but I have several misgivings:

To begin with, it seems that you are eager to abandon all the current
human programs that you once said were of great value to the nation and
focus your entire attention on the President's proposal.  Various NASA
"spokespersons" have said you will limit the Shuttle to fly only the 32 or
so flights needed to finish assembly of the Space Station with no other
missions, and will then shut the program down without a replacement
vehicle of equal capability.  And they have also indicated that you will
stop participating in Station research as soon as you have completed your
zero gravity life science studies.  In fact it is already clear that the
Station cannot continue full scale operations without the Shuttle or an
equivalent vehicle.

To me it seems absolutely illogical that, after investing more than fifty
billion dollars to create the Shuttle, develop its capabilities, and learn
to operate it; you would shut it down without an equivalent replacement
vehicle.  And it seems totally unreasonable, that after investing more
than forty billion dollars to build, test, launch, and assemble the
station, you would plan to stop participating in onboard research
activities at the point in time when it first becomes fully operational.

Without these capabilities the nation will no longer be able to do any of
the things that you have said made the human space program valuable during
the past two decades such as: carrying satellites to orbit and checking
them out on board prior to deploying them, or supporting Extra Vehicular
Activity to assemble things in space, or capturing free flying
malfunctioning satellites and taking them on board for repair or return to
earth, or supporting the kind of scientific missions that require the
Space Station or a laboratory like the Shuttle-borne SpaceHab.  Indeed the
first casualty of your cutbacks is the failure to fly the life extension
mission of the Hubble Telescope; one of the most scientifically productive
satellites NASA has ever deployed, and one of the few that produced visual
products that even non-scientists could appreciate.

I also wonder what the station partner nations will do if, despite
international agreements with those nations, you withdraw your support for
continuing long-term research on the Space Station.  Will they develop
their own vehicles to launch and return large, heavy cargo items and use
Russian, or possibly Chinese, crew carrier vehicles to capitalize on the
research potential of the Space Station?  Will they be willing to carry
American astronauts to and from the station and share the research
facilities with us after we stop providing the Shuttle to launch and
return crew and cargo?  If we do not participate in station research, and
other nations reap the rewards of our space station investments, will we
regret our decision to abandon our efforts?


You seem to be saying that the things the Shuttle and Space Station could
do, other than life science, are no longer of any value; and you will walk
away as soon as you have met your station assembly obligations and
completed your research to advance knowledge of space effects on people so
you can fly longer human missions.  That's self-serving and it's
disappointing, because you promised so much more.

Also it is painfully clear that you have not created an operational
infrastructure or the logistics capability to enable you to undertake a
Human-To-Mars program.  At present, we aren't even able to support a half
dozen humans on a space station in low earth orbit.  It appears that after
more than four decades of effort, you are left with three launch vehicles
that you say are unsatisfactory, a station that you seem all too eager to
abandon, and a proposed Orbital Space Plane that doesn't seem to have any
of the capabilities to meet most of your requirements.

I am getting the feeling that NASA is like a high strung, poorly
conditioned, racehorse; strong out of the gate but not a good finisher.
You seem to be very interested in starting out the gate to create new,
exciting programs and build impressive high performance vehicles, but
lacking in stamina and often stopping before you reach a satisfactory
finish line.  Your philosophy seems to be "...let's build something
exciting and figure out what to do with it later..."  There is no
continuity in your programs; they have all been "giant leaps" followed by
cancellations.  And don't try to sell me on "spin-offs"; that's like
keeping a high priced racehorse to get fertilizer.

By contrast, other nations seem to be following more reasonable plans for
continuing space activities.  The Russians use their vehicles and systems
over and over for years; making improvements when they can.  They now have
operational crew carrier vehicles, reliable boosters, and upper stages and
resupply vehicles that can rendezvous and dock automatically to deliver
cargo.  Furthermore, it seems their approach is cheaper and results in
vehicles that are very effective and more rugged and reliable than yours.
The Europeans are developing a "Space Tug," that will allow the movement
of modules from orbit to orbit as desired.  These tugs could be used to
deploy "free flyers" from the station and later recover them.  And the
Chinese are developing their own launch capabilities, using vehicles
derived from Russian equipment, but featuring many improvements.  That
appears to me to be the beginning of an international functional human
space flight infrastructure, and could well lead to more economic,
productive space operations.

So, I have some questions.

Please explain to me why you think we no longer need the capabilities of
the Shuttle, or an equivalent vehicle, to support human activities in low
earth orbit.

Tell me why you have changed your mind about the value of long term
research on the Space Station.


Explain to me why the Space Station wouldn't serve as an excellent
facility to test the systems and equipment that will be needed for the
long journey to Mars and also provide an ideal place to assemble the Mars
vehicles?

Why isn't it to our advantage scientifically and economically to
participate in the burgeoning international human space flight effort?
(Some U.S. companies are using Russian-made boosters because of their low
cost, good performance, and high reliability.)

Finally, if you feel all the things that humans have done in the past on
the moon and in low earth orbit are not worth continuing, why do you
believe that humans on Mars will accomplish things that are worth the
cost?

I think you need to demonstrate long-term responsibility and
accountability for how you spend our tax money.  Tell us taxpayers what
human space activities you have decided to stop supporting and why.  Then
spell out in detail what you want to accomplish in the next two or three
decades and why that will have lasting importance.  And tell us how you
plan to go about it.  Define the essential infrastructure and logistics
plans and then follow a step-by-step building block approach that will
enable you to reach your goals without the wasteful, disruptive starts and
stops which are the unintended hallmark of your earlier programs.  Most of
us aren't rocket scientists, but we can understand a clear plan explained
in plain language.

I'm not against sending humans to Mars, but I'd be a lot more comfortable
about giving you 50 or 60 billion dollars of taxpayer money if you would
answer my questions and explain exactly what you plan to do and how you
plan to do it before you bolt out of the gate.

Respectfully,

Don Peterson


-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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