NotHardUp1
What? Me? Really?
Because Boeing is the veritable black hole of disaster this decade, NASA has been allowed to take a free pass from running the gauntlet due it for the stunning mismanagement of the supplier as well as the program itself. Leaving astronauts in space for months on end, unplanned, uncorrected, NASA has not been held accountable for its blunders.
Go ahead. Google it.
You won't find any hard-hitting expose of NASA's failure to have a plan for such a contingency, a likely event rather than an unforeseen one. All you'll find is articles on Boeing and on particulars of the protracted stay by the two stranded crew who will spend EIGHT MONTHS high-centered (pun intended) in space instead of the planned eight days.
Has NASA been dragged before Congress to testify on how its clusterfuck has caused two citizens to be held hostage for so long? Nope. NASA is the darling of the military industrial complex, and therefore has many wolves protecting it from such a shaming and accountability by "our" representatives in the national legislature. No partisan points to be made by simply holding hearings on a natitonal failure, costing the nation further international prestige by the bumbling, Keystone Cops-like lack of Plan B.
For just over 30 years until 2011, the nation flew a fleet of Space Shuttles for a total of 135 missions into space, all but TWO of them returning to Earth intact. The shortest interval between launches was just over two weeks apart (not the same craft). The typical interval was more like 3-6 months between missions.
After cosmic failures in due diligence and process control, the program was abandoned due to national embarrassment and the failure of the massive agency to convince the nation that it was worth the zillions.
Now, over a decade later and after comically hyped Martian and Lunar plans, NASA is proving itself unsuccessful yet again in damage control where it counts. Yes, they own enough senators and media moguls to avoid the scrutiny skewering that social media moguls receive, but the bones of the failure are there on the ground, to be seen by the world if not examined appropriately by the American 5th Estate, or the wine bibbers who pass for "leaders" in Congress.
And, regardless of the economic cost, this should have been a high-priority mission to bring back the crew after its highly-paid supplier failed so spectacularly. Not doing so leaves the agency and the nation justifiably mocked for its pride and arrogance and ineptitude. I've worked for Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, and L3 Harris Technologies, to name just some of my employers in aerospace, so I know ineptitude and arrogance up close.
So what?
I'll tell you so what. The agency is touting the viability of manned space flight to the moon, to Mars, and beyond. The trip to the moon is only about three days, one-way. To Mars, it will take more like nine months to get there. Both are staggering distances from us in miles/kilometers. Yet, here we are six decades into space flight and still unable to rebound to this simple problem in a near-Earth orbit.
You don't have to be Chicken Little to see the implications of this failure by those who are in charge of planning missions, most specifically mission safety. This flaw, like the one that enabled the o-ring to take down a shuttle, is inevitable in space exploration. Missions are insanely complicated, as is the design of craft and the logistics involved. And, because the environment is literally the most unforgiving possible (outside the sun itself), the simplest failure can be catastrophic.
NASA, like commercial aircraft designers, prides itself in redundant systems. Yet, here we are with no system in place for such a simple thing as bringing back astronauts quickly who are only a one-day's flight from the surface of our planet.
The big So What remains that we are not as close to leaving our planet, even in voyages with a tiny handful of humans in a massively expensive and intensely engineered protective craft. Barring a seismic shift in physics or technology, we won't see an inhabited space station on Luna or significant presence on Mars in this century. And by space station, I mean more than a simple space ship sitting on the moon's surface with some kind of Gerry-rigged bridge to another trailer park craft next door to it.
For that matter, look at the ISS itself. Does this look like a futuristic sci-fi world to you?
It looks like some erector-set combination of leftover pieces of some kids hobby projects. It most certainly does not look like a planned creation, but more like the Trapper Keeper episode of Southpark.
Our primary space work today should be focused on interrupting and correcting climate change, detecting and intercepting meteors and comets, and devising protection from a devastation by solar flares. We are not ready to plan interplanetary travel. Leave that to the 22nd or 23rd century, if there are any.
Go ahead. Google it.
You won't find any hard-hitting expose of NASA's failure to have a plan for such a contingency, a likely event rather than an unforeseen one. All you'll find is articles on Boeing and on particulars of the protracted stay by the two stranded crew who will spend EIGHT MONTHS high-centered (pun intended) in space instead of the planned eight days.
Has NASA been dragged before Congress to testify on how its clusterfuck has caused two citizens to be held hostage for so long? Nope. NASA is the darling of the military industrial complex, and therefore has many wolves protecting it from such a shaming and accountability by "our" representatives in the national legislature. No partisan points to be made by simply holding hearings on a natitonal failure, costing the nation further international prestige by the bumbling, Keystone Cops-like lack of Plan B.
For just over 30 years until 2011, the nation flew a fleet of Space Shuttles for a total of 135 missions into space, all but TWO of them returning to Earth intact. The shortest interval between launches was just over two weeks apart (not the same craft). The typical interval was more like 3-6 months between missions.
After cosmic failures in due diligence and process control, the program was abandoned due to national embarrassment and the failure of the massive agency to convince the nation that it was worth the zillions.
Now, over a decade later and after comically hyped Martian and Lunar plans, NASA is proving itself unsuccessful yet again in damage control where it counts. Yes, they own enough senators and media moguls to avoid the scrutiny skewering that social media moguls receive, but the bones of the failure are there on the ground, to be seen by the world if not examined appropriately by the American 5th Estate, or the wine bibbers who pass for "leaders" in Congress.
And, regardless of the economic cost, this should have been a high-priority mission to bring back the crew after its highly-paid supplier failed so spectacularly. Not doing so leaves the agency and the nation justifiably mocked for its pride and arrogance and ineptitude. I've worked for Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, and L3 Harris Technologies, to name just some of my employers in aerospace, so I know ineptitude and arrogance up close.
So what?
I'll tell you so what. The agency is touting the viability of manned space flight to the moon, to Mars, and beyond. The trip to the moon is only about three days, one-way. To Mars, it will take more like nine months to get there. Both are staggering distances from us in miles/kilometers. Yet, here we are six decades into space flight and still unable to rebound to this simple problem in a near-Earth orbit.
You don't have to be Chicken Little to see the implications of this failure by those who are in charge of planning missions, most specifically mission safety. This flaw, like the one that enabled the o-ring to take down a shuttle, is inevitable in space exploration. Missions are insanely complicated, as is the design of craft and the logistics involved. And, because the environment is literally the most unforgiving possible (outside the sun itself), the simplest failure can be catastrophic.
NASA, like commercial aircraft designers, prides itself in redundant systems. Yet, here we are with no system in place for such a simple thing as bringing back astronauts quickly who are only a one-day's flight from the surface of our planet.
The big So What remains that we are not as close to leaving our planet, even in voyages with a tiny handful of humans in a massively expensive and intensely engineered protective craft. Barring a seismic shift in physics or technology, we won't see an inhabited space station on Luna or significant presence on Mars in this century. And by space station, I mean more than a simple space ship sitting on the moon's surface with some kind of Gerry-rigged bridge to another trailer park craft next door to it.
For that matter, look at the ISS itself. Does this look like a futuristic sci-fi world to you?
It looks like some erector-set combination of leftover pieces of some kids hobby projects. It most certainly does not look like a planned creation, but more like the Trapper Keeper episode of Southpark.
Our primary space work today should be focused on interrupting and correcting climate change, detecting and intercepting meteors and comets, and devising protection from a devastation by solar flares. We are not ready to plan interplanetary travel. Leave that to the 22nd or 23rd century, if there are any.