Saturday, January 10, 2004

President Bush's expected announcement for plans to further explore the Moon and then Mars has been leaked out all over the place. The new focus plans on our abandoning the Space Station and the aging shuttle program, while committing a manned presence on the moon and using our presence as a stepping stone to manned exploration of Mars.

These are noble goals, but the biggest difficulties won't be technical nor scientific obstacles, but the budgetary, political, and interdivisional bickering will be huge barriers that may be insurmountable.

Partisan bickering is going to be an issue. Democrats are going to fight this tooth and nail. The electorate might have a hard time buying into an ever increasing space program while families and the aging population is fighting ever increasing medical costs. The billions of dollars that this program will cost would buy a lot of social programs.

If NASA gets the budget, they will have to make the budget work. Cost overruns are a way of life with NASA. Such a massive plan will need well defined goals, and the discipline to stay with them. The space station cost overruns caused the space station to be scaled down from its original design yet the cost was considerably more.

NASA is going to have streamline the way it does things. The divisions need work together instead of competing and backbiting with each other. Quality Control has to change from the "I got ya" mode to the "Can we help you make it better?" mode. The only way we will make it to the moon, and then to Mars is if everyone has the same goal at NASA. This might be the toughest obstacle to overcome. Its taken more than 30 years for NASA to develop into the "protect your turf" type of bureaucracy that it has become. Undoing it will be NASA's biggest challenge.

posted by Liberty @ 8:01 PM