NASA: A Bumbling bureaucracy?

[Guest Biggles]

With almost three years to fix foam from falling off booster rockets and striking the Shuttle (dooming the passengers inside) NASA failed (again) to use its millions and millions of dollars to fix a problem.

 

Today's New York Times reported that NASA actually did not test the foam covered tank during this time to see if the foam would be stable in launch conditions, saying "So the only tests of how the ramp material might hold up under the rigor of launching were the launchings themselves, with astronauts aboard." Despite Columbia breaking apart (really superheating from the inside out) NASA argued that "that the PAL ramp did not urgently require alteration."

 

(PAL ramp = protuberance air load ramp a portion of the fuel tank / rocket that is used to get the Shuttle into outer space)

 

NASA had improved how the foam was applied to the Shuttle - but these changes took effect after the Discovery tank was made. "But the tank that flew with the Discovery last week was made before the new procedures went into effect, and NASA stopped short of requiring that the ramps be redone, said a spokesman, Martin J. Jensen."

 

All of this despite a report after the last two tragedies that essentially said NASA had become a massive group think styled organization that has lost sight of any answers or questions that are not internal.

 

I have many questions:

 

1) Is this a good argument for privatization of a public industry?

2) Is it only lethargy and resignation that does not cause the American public to not implode when billions of taxpayers money go up in flames - repeatedly - and the SAME accident causing phenomena happens two times in a row (and countless other times that were night launches)

3) Is NASA dead on it's feet and waiting for the glue factory? Or will the resignation mentioned in #2 simply allow it exist forever - despite how many astronauts loose thier lives?

[ZGangsta 0]

Oh please, NASA does not "kill astronauts." You wanna see how good NASA is? Compare how many people they've lost compared to the Soviet programs. They had rocket after rocket just blowing up on the launch pad. And a lot of their accident were repressed from the public at the time too.

Tragedies have happened and will happen in the future. It sucks, but people have to come to terms with that. NO sientific progress will ever be made without risks. Would people have ever found the New World if they'd sat in Europe thinking "hmmm those sea's seem rough, I think we'd better hang out here"? Launching spacecraft is so incrediably complex that there are bound to be accidents.

 

NASA is not some screw up entity sucking money like some people like to claim. Look at the Deep Impact and 2 Mars Rover missions. They were resounding sucesses, far exceeding expectations and mission objectives. NASA is definately not "dead on it's feet and waiting for the glue factory." That's such stupid ignorant statement.

 

I'm fucking sick of people with no technical or scientific knowledge writing editorials in newspapers and such claiming that they know all the answers on how to run this multi-billion dollar, super technical institution. Are you people aerospace engineers? This IS fucking rocket science. People can't come out and say "oh NASA's useless, they should have done this or that." Hindsight's 20/20.

[Art Sandusky 0]

Privatizing NASA is one of the worst possible ideas ever.

[Guest Biggles]

ZGangsta -

 

Easy man. There are plenty of decafinated beverages that taste just as good as thier cafinated counterparts.

 

I think you are right - my wording is a little harsh like NASA is some force that deliberately killed Astronauts. I will edit the original post.

 

However, this post wasn't about how hard it is to get a rocket into space - it also wasn't about proving the rocket scientists inept at thier facts or figures - it was about an inability of NASA to address internal problems.

 

Here are two simple facts that allow this journalist to write this article. The foam that struck the leading edge of the wing of the Space Shuttle and brought it down 3 years ago was NOT addressed in the next three years. The scientists argued that there was no other way of doing this (foam on the ramp). Foam broke away AGAIN during the latest launch and could have caused the same problem that Discovery had.

 

This seems to lead to a community of people that cannot think outside of the box and when confronted with a failure cannot address it in ways that they do not already think.

 

Do you agree or disagree?

[Stephen Joseph 0]

The space industry will be privatized to some extent (See SpaceShipOne) but removing NASA as a public entity would be foolhardy at best.

 

There are some endeavors that goverments can take that are well worth the investment, and serve the public interest better than anything the private sector would do.

 

Leading space research and exploration is one of them. I'm quite probably one of a very small number of libertarians who thinks this way.

 

Sure, NASA has problems, and serious reform is needed to fix them. But scrap it? Hell no.

 

And I'm agreeing with you on the point about the foam. Still, they managed to be rather successful on Mars, no?

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

Am I the only one who finds it funny that NASA has been accused of thinking "inside the box"?

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Someone has an agenda to grind.

 

The fact of the matter is that NASA only just recently found out about this problem. Just becuase they only found out it's there a few years ago doesn't mean it didn't exist before then. The only difference is someone has decided to put cameras on-board pointing at things that can go wrong.

 

The shuttles, although they need some kind of successor before they tear themselves apart, have been flying missions for 25 years with no evidence that this kind of thing hasn't happened regularly over and over during that time.

 

Due to the right combination of heat and weakened shielding, Columbia did what it did. As unfortunate as it may be, it must be filed into the category of "shit happens" because the greatest scientific minds in the world may have been wrong, or maybe they weren't, but at the end of the day the job of the astronaut is to accept that the highly intelligent people on the ground have plotted out the best course of action and go about pulling it off.

 

There's no evidence that a similar incident involving foam hitting a place is going to = dead crew. This very well could have been happening for years, on dozens of successful flights.

[Ripper 0]

It always amazes me when people jump all over nasa when something goes wrong. they are in the business of shooting large objects into fucking space. The fact that things don't go wrong more often shows that they are indeed doing a good job.

[ZGangsta 0]

There's no evidence that a similar incident involving foam hitting a place is going to = dead crew. This very well could have been happening for years, on dozens of successful flights.

Exactly, the "dings" in the hull and the falling foam are only being discovered now because of all the insanely thorough new precausions NASA is taking. Which is the right thing to do following a disaster.

[Art Sandusky 0]

I don't know what made it go away, but I wish space exploration excited us as much today as it did during the 60s. Man, if we'd kept up the pace we had back then, we'd probably already have a small Moon colony and possibly put a man on Mars as well.