It Doesn't Take a Rocket Scientist

To be sure, the OSP’s requirements have descended directly from aspects of the three major initiatives mentioned above. But the OSP inherited just three components—for crew return, crew transfer, crew rescue—from complex systems that included launch platforms, light- and heavy-lift capabilities, vehicles for science payloads, cargo and exploration support, as well as the more ordinary, everyday support features for the ISS and its crew.


The inherited crew-transfer component had originally been conceived as one element of a broad, upgradable, long-term system, capable of carrying up to 10 passengers for full-up missions, and of active docking and orbital operations. As the OSP emerged last spring, it had fewer and fewer of those characteristics, until it became the pint-size version of a passive-crew-rescue vehicle envisioned today. A competition that was already under way—and from which several potential bidders had been eliminated—had been radically rescoped to meet immediate political goals within soaring budgetary shortfalls.


Why? Probably because there wasn’t enough vision or commitment behind the shuttle-replacement plans to begin with.


What should have happened? NASA should have continued to develop the architecture for a true shuttle-replacement
system and requested that the crew-transfer part of the program be fast-tracked; or, if that approach didn’t seem responsive enough to the needs of the day, the table should have been swept clean and the process started afresh with a new set of problems on the boards.


One result of the retrofitting rush that gave us the OSP initiative is that the smaller, more risk-taking and often more dynamic companies were knocked out of the bidding before it even got going. Now that the OSP only need accommodate four people and ride atop an expendable, commercial launcher, it’s beginning to look to me an awful lot like the various vehicles being developed by the contenders for the X Prize. Yet by the nature of the bidding, none of those 25 teams has any chance of bringing its space-plane concepts to OSP. What would be the result if NASA were to enable this sharing of
ideas by inviting competition and reopening the field of design solutions? Most likely cost savings and superior design.


Here is the recent history of shuttle-replacement systems in a nutshell: Propose and study a succession of systems, then fight to keep a single subcomponent going when the budget is slashed—without considering its long-term compatibility with the rest of the human spaceflight program. All these separate pieces somehow need to be made to fit the next wave of big-picture plans. And the Big Plan bogey keeps shifting—it’s anyone’s guess how the OSP will fit into the Bush Administration’s new space initiative. When the components’ utility in a new scenario is hard to prove, they get shot down—no matter how much effort has already gone into their development. They become ideas that go back on the shelf, only to get reinvented by future generations.



THE “GREAT PROJECTS” PROBLEM
As many wise space pundits have said in recent times, NASA needs a challenge. Without a broad, external challenge backed up by consistent support and political will, it seems unlikely that the kind of heroic effort and vision that characterized the first decade and a half of NASA’s existence will re-emerge.


What these pundits are really bemoaning is the lack of consistent vision, which ultimately stems from an issue that is much larger and older than NASA, and whose nature is of profound interest to architects and master planners, because it has a powerful effect on the kind and scale of projects we may build. Simply put, undertaking what we call Great Projects—projects of a large, public scope whose completion will require 10 years or more—is very difficult in a democracy.


In an autocratic society, it is common for rulers to make their mark by commissioning massive works such as roads, fortifications, elaborate religious or magisterial structures. And once the order has been given, it becomes a goal of the government to see that the works are completed, and in such a way that they stand to the glory of the rulers who brought them into being.


Under our democratic system, it is inherently impossible to ensure that any long-term program will receive funding, or remain consistently funded, from year to year. From this perspective, the four terms of FDR’s nearly unchallenged administration may well have been critical not only to the establishment of the Works Progress Administration but, more important, to the completion of many individual WPA projects.


Certainly in today’s politically polarized environment, a shift from a Democratic to a Republican administration (or vice versa) often portends the cancellation of many unfinished public projects—for example, the several major human spaceflight programs axed before the end of February 2001, less than a month after George W. Bush’s inauguration.


When budgets are cut, the public needs to be aware that this will result in the loss of valuable programs and personnel. But for those losses to matter to the American people, a truly inspiring vision for NASA must be articulated. And when politicians announce new NASA initiatives, whether to the Moon or Mars or beyond, the public must listen hard within the announcement for a coherent plan and a powerful commitment—including, of course, the funding—to deliver the mission itself and not just the idea of mission.


On this point, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s report is very clear: "It is the view of the Board that the previous attempts to develop a replacement vehicle for the aging Shuttle represent a failure of national leadership."


NASA proved a long time ago that it can answer a profound and improbable challenge, as it did with the great Moon mission announced by President Kennedy in 1961. But it is not up to NASA to supply the vision itself. That falls to our leaders. If they do supply the vision, it’s a safe bet that a truly renewed NASA will do an extraordinary job of bringing it to fruition.