https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L8MY056Vz8
I've had several exchanges recently with frens who are under the impression that NASA has been starving the objective of space exploration, and otherwise preventing any national trend in that direction. I have been trying to provide information to support a more objective, factual view.
This is a recent address by Mike Griffin in which he has very insightful observations from his experience in the field and with NASA in particular. Some of the interesting points are:
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If you do an inflation-compensated comparison of time frames between the Apollo program and now, you find that NASA is spending more money than ever before.
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And that it seems to be of poor effect, because it took far longer to design and develop the Space Launch System than the Saturn V.
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A big part of the problem is the idea that such space development can all be hired out to "commercial" entities---yet be managed by NASA personnel who no longer have any experience in doing this work themselves.
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On the one hand, NASA is a "national security agency," insofar as it is a way of demonstrating capability supremacy to the world. On the other hand, it is a servant of political direction, beyond the power of the Administrator to alter.
His remarks are 25 minutes long, with some question answering for another 8 minutes. He tends to stand back from his microphone, so his voice will sound soft for most of the time.
Hmm. I don't fully buy that. My neighbor works for NASS as an aerospace engineer (working on robots) and I've worked on lunar projects for nasa this very year. There active plans for lunar lander stuff on the southern moon. There are many other things that are just simply not in the public domain right now.
You don't fully buy Griffin's criticism of the Artemis mission architecture? Or his other criticisms? I identified the Gateway as a fatal weak link at the beginning. The whole point of Artemis is to land on the south pole of the Moon. SpaceX got the contract to design/develop the manned lander. You don't agree that NASA has lost the experience base for effective project supervision?
Product supervision? They definitely have poor communication abilities and certainly need more knowledge.