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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #350

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 10 : Issue 350

Today's Topics:
         NASA Reform White Paper, Part 2 of 2 (long)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 14 Dec 89 10:21:28 PST
From: mordor!lll-tis!ames!scubed!pnet01.cts.com![e-mail] (Jim Bowery)
To: crash![e-mail]
Subject: NASA Reform White Paper, Part 2 of 2 (long)

The following is part 2 of a 2 part white paper proposing a reform
of our civilian space program.  It is submitted to the network minus
an appendix which discusses a fall-back policy position which must be
adopted if this reform cannot be implemented.  I will circulate the
appendix depending on the reaction to this paper.

About the coauthor:

Andrew Cutler is a well known researcher in the economics of space
resource utilization and edits an international sceintific and technical
journal, "Space Power" devoted to that topic.  He was a primary force
behind the introduction and imminent passage of HR2674, the Space
Transportation Services Act.

This paper is currently in revision and is being circulated for comment.


*****************************************************************************


                A Space Program Derived from American Values

                             Part 2 of 2

        Andrew Hall Cutler     James Alan Bowery
        [phone]        [phone]



How to get from Here to There

      NASA is currently a bureaucratic jungle badly in need of reform.  We
must help those within NASA who wish to perform do so, and we must rid
ourselves of those who wish to be 'king of the hill' instead of being
productive contributors to a vital future in space.  In order to do this we
must ensure that individual programs do not have to fight with eachother
for continuing appropriations year after year.  We must give individual
programs and NASA centers the freedom to produce and the independence to
create - and then judge them on the basis of their accomplishments.  We
must critically evaluate all proposed programs on the basis of their
potential and periodically review them to ensure that they live up to that
potential,  instead of failing to produce results for year after year.  We
must ensure that each program has independent means to acheive its ends -
e. g. that spacecraft can be launched on whatever vehicle is most suitable
for the mission proposed.  We must broaden the involvement of other federal
agencies in space activities.  We must make a national commitment to
reform our space program, to make it vital again,  and to invest the time,
money and effort it will take to do so.

    The best reform strategy would be to break NASA up into 9
independent agencies - Headquarters as the agency for aeronautics and
space technology, each of the field centers (Marshall, Johnson, Kennedy,
Lewis, Goddard, Ames and JPL) becoming its own agency, and a separate
agency formed out of various parts of NASA which would be the shuttle
flight agency, responsible for giving us opportunities to do things in space
in the next ten years by flying the shuttle, but barred from increasing its
budget or engaging in any further launch vehicle development.  Each of the
new agencies would be responsible for defining its area of interest, and the
existing federal R&D agencies would be encouraged to add space related
topics to their purview.  Each agency would have an independent budget and
an independent administrator.  This would allow us to reward successful
programs while allowing those which fail to produce to fade into the sunset.

    These new agencies should be prohibited from managing their own
development programs.  Indeed they should be barred from funding
development directly at all.  Their function should be to fund scientific
research through peer review and similar mechanisms.  Their budgets should
primarily be sent out into the scientific community.  This would free the
NASA personnel of the onerous burden of mananging contracts and allow
them to devote themselves to their own research so that their special
knowledge can once again be an asset to the nation.  The money going out
into the scientific community would provide a 6 to 8 billion dollar per year
market for launch and on orbit services as well as for spacecraft.  This
market would ensure the emergence of a robust space based economy as
well as allowing space science to flourish.

    Science is the very embodiment of the competition of ideas and thus
requires diversity, variety, independence, redundancy and a certain amount
of controlled chaos from which mutant ideas arise to feed the evolutionary
process.  Only after we have evolved the technical maturity necessary to
create and manage plans should we attempt to do so.

    When trying to attain a goal in the absence of technical maturity,
evolutionary progress is the only option.  We must try out a lot of ideas
cheaply, see which ones bring us closer to our goal, come up with  a bunch of
new ideas based on the successful ones in the previous  generation, try them
out cheaply, and so on.  As we go through generation after generation of
ideas, our technical maturity increases until we can create and execute
valid plans.  Rapid evolutionary progress requires many, short duration,
evolutionary cycles.  An evolutionary cycle requires that many different
concepts are tried out in parallel - competing with each other for success.


    As technical maturity grows with the passing evolutionary cycles, our
plans can be of longer and longer duration.  Apollo is a perfect example of
success in this regard:  Von Braun and friends went through hundreds of
liquid fueled rocket tests on several generations of rockets (many at
Peenemunde) prior to John F. Kennedy's challenge to land a man on the moon
and return him safely to Earth.  By the time President Kennedy issued the
challenge, evolutionary advance had given them the technical maturity to
make and execute a 10 year plan.  But even then, there were 3 generations of
space flight systems that led up to the landing - each generation taking only
a few years to complete.

    Programs like Shuttle and Space Station are perfect examples of
failure in this regard:  We are trying to plan, build and operate systems 10
years in the future in the absence of the technical maturity provided  by
rapid and diverse evolutionary growth.  The X-series craft (leading up to the
X-15) was a good example of the kind of low cost, rapid evolutionary growth
needed. The Soviets also followed the correct route  with their Space
Stations - something we could have and should have done with Skylab.  If our
major research avenues require 10 years and $20 billion dollars per
evolutionary generation, as they seem to take now with NASA, we will be
well into the 21st century before we have the technical maturity to
competently engage in planning programs such as Shuttle (now called
"National Aerospace Plane") and Space Station.  This  assumes that funds
won't dry up, that the aging and death of key  engineers and scientists
doesn't discard important knowlege and that young people will continue to
be drawn into the field in spite of the lack of real activity.

    While we are discussing the impropriety of long range planning in
fields where we lack experience we might as well talk about the Space
Station.  Scientists need space laboratories, but the Space Station  as
currently envisioned is not a useful one and should be terminated so as to
open up the market for private efforts to provide such laboratories.  Without
the political clout of NASA behind it,  Space Station would be terminated
and the market for space facilities would be wide open (and note the recent
problems with NSS not being willing to support CDSF since it might compete
with Space Station for funding).  In filling this market people would be
learning how to live and work in space - something we do profess to want
the American public to be able to do.

    Any centrally planned activity,  be it an economy or a space program,
is subject to the monolithic failure mode.  Only in well understood areas
that are subject to mature techniques,  such as civil engineering,  should we
attempt to set specific goals and plan out development programs more than
5 years in advance.  Planetary probes are not really an exception to this rule.
They require, by their very nature,  long lead times to traverse the vast
distances between worlds,  but they should be planned, built and launched
promptly.

    We must recognize that contracting is not privatization.  Contracting
is simply a way for a bureaucrat to have authority over more people than he
could if he were only bossing around the civil servants who work for him.
True privatization is appropriate.  An activity is truly privatised when the
company pursuing it risks a significant amount of its own money to make
more money and makes all of its own management decisions without outside
interference or advice.

    "Privatization" does not consist solely of government guaranteed
markets for government contract developed and produced hardware - the current
mode of operation.

    Our space activities should be performed by private entities operating
privately developed systems which were not designed,  managed, overseen
or paid for by the government.  The private entities should be allowed to set
a price which gives them a reasonable return on their investment and be
forced to take the risk that they will receive NO return if their system is
not as economical as that of a competitor.

    ALS and NASP are discouraging privatization - since they are federally
funded development programs which could compete with private vehicles.
Private entities cannot afford to take the risk that an economically viable
vehicle will have to compete with a subsidized system for government
captive payloads as was the case with the space shuttle.  These programs
should be restricted to research ONLY by strong legislation.  If the research
yields promising results,  the private sector should be allowed to take
advantage of them in the absence of government competition or subsidy to
potential competitors.

    The central role of private enterprise in our space activities
ultimately derives from one fact - WE WANT TO HELP!  Americans want to
contribute to opening the space frontier.  They want to participate in the
adventure.  They want to GO!  They do not want their creative energies
stifled by the current NASA "not invented here" syndrome (under which the
half formed idea a NASA bureaucrat has over a cup of coffee one morning is
turned into a flight system while years of creative thought and energy
contractor engineers spent to conceive the best spacecraft for the mission
are discarded).  They do not want to watch people with Ph. D.'s and olympic
caliber athletic talents sew up all of the astronaut positions - and then fly
every few years.  They do not want to watch a space program build
monuments to bureaucrats and develop astounding capabilities which are
seldom exercised.  The American public wants to participate personally in
some way in opening the space frontier.  It is the government's job to allow
that to happen.  This will probably require the expenditure of something like
the current NASA budget for the foreseeable future,  but this money will
have to be spent in different ways than NASA wants to spend it.

    The appropriate role for federal spending is to support reseach
directly.  This will support private development indirectly and thus create
the infrastructure of a spacefaring civilization as well as provide us with
the basic knowledge we need to build that civilization.  Federal money
should not be given directly to development,  nor should it be given up front.
The need to find capital sources is a necessary discipline to enforce on
development programs - and it is a discipline only the market can provide.
While federal dollars will make up the market at first,  NASA and the
federal government are NOT the market and they must not interfere in it.

    Before we talk about how to design a space station or space
transportation system, we must have a very accurate understanding of our
need for such systems.  Market research is the traditional methodology for
understanding needs in our economy.  We must associate money with those
needs and let our economy do the rest.  NASA claims it designed Shuttle and
Space Station to serve a variety of needs such as space transportation,
microgravity research, national prestige, earth observation, etc.  The users
of these systems should be given the funding directly to purchase them from
any source they choose.  If NASA truly has been responsive to the needs of
the user community all of the money will come back to shuttle and space
station.  They only reason NASA could have for NOT sending the money out
and letting the scientists purchase the services they need is that it has NOT
been responsive to their needs and they would take their business elsewhere
given the opportunity.  There are several billion dollars involved in our
civilian space program alone.  This should  immediately generate enough of a
market to motivate the private sector to accurately assess and fulfill its
needs.

    American prestige will come, as it should, from the substantive
accomplishments of our people.  It is not the government's job to astound
the world with space spectaculars,  it is the American people's job to
create a spacefaring civilization of such impressive extent that American
prestige automatically flows from its very existence.

    We should take NASA out of the launch business by prohibiting them
from launching private payloads other than those specifically designed for
the shuttle, preventing them from developing  another launch vehicle, and
requiring them to launch their spacecraft on commerical rockets.

    Since Shuttle, Space Station and proposed planetary exploration are all
supposedly in service of a wide variety of space research, it makes sense
to place the funding for these systems under the control of a wide variety of
researchers instead of a few civil servants.    The $6 billion cashflow is
more than enough to immediately create a private launch services industry
with a wide variety of start up companies trying a wide variety of
rocket/vehicle designs and business/marketing plans.  Unlike the Launch
Incentives Act that has been proposed by the Citizen's Advisory Council, the
market for launch services would be directed by scientific needs.  There
would be no need to institute an artificial price per pound as an incentive,
and the market created would be more politically stable.  A further
advantage of this approach is that it provides a market incentive for a wide
variety of space services - not just launch.

    A committment to a return to the moon or a manned Mars mission
would be profoundly destructive and should not be made under any
circumstances.

    We need several separate facilities for materials processing,
refuelling and vehicle servicing,  life science research,  facilities to
perform earth and astronomical observations,  and facilities to develop and
test materials and technologies for space use.

    Some program should support pertinent research in hypersonic flight
and propulsion across a broad spectrum,  but should not be counted on to
provide the next generation of launch systems.  Since NASP has become an
exemplar of the kind of intellectually bankrupt development program that
has kept the American people out of space,  we should terminate it,  demote
all of its senior management and start an entirely separate activity with
new people to perform research in hypersonic flight and propulsion.

    The Advanced Launch System appears to be repeating the mistakes of
the Space Shuttle program.  We should terminate it immediately.  If it has
led to REAL discoveries of ways to lower launch costs the contractors
involved should be free to pursue these and compete as providers of low
cost launch services in a free marketplace.

    Commercial launch services should be supported by the simple
expedient of prohibiting NASA from developing or operating launch vehicles.
All space flight programs should have an explicit account for launch
services which they can spend as they wish.  A launch services industry will
grow out of the existing aerospace companies with their Atlas, Titan and
Delta into a thriving business of moving American enterprise and spirit out
into space.  The "National Space Transportation System" is properly
composed of private vehicles belonging to a variety of owners who compete
to provide the most efficient and economical service, like the airline
industry of today.  And like today's airline industry, the roots of the space
transportation industry may lie in carrying those first few government
payloads.

    There are several areas where it would be extremely productive to
collaborate with the Soviets on space activities.  A manned Mars mission is
NOT one of them.  Promising areas for US/Soviet collaboration in space are
as follows:

*    Allow U. S. satellites to be launched on Soviet boosters in order to
assure U. S. manufacturers continued dominance in the international
satellite market.

*    Arrainge to launch the Mars Geoscience and Climatology Orbiter mission
on a Soviet Proton booster so the mission is not inordinately delayed.

*    Collaborate on automated planetary exploration so U. S. scientists can
fly instruments on Soviet missions and vice versa.

*    Offer the Soviets access to Spacelab flights in return for Americans
having access to the Mir space station.

*    Offer to rendezvous the space shuttle with the Mir space station for
cooperative experiments.

*    Invite the Soviets (with their 16 years of experience in space station
operations) to be one of the international participants in our space station
program.

*    Offer the Soviet Union the opportunity to launch spacecraft from our
low latitude Kennedy Space Center site in return for access to their space
station.

    Our space program should be a vital part of a hopeful future, not just
a high tech form of bread and circuses.  Since we hope to have peaceful and
cordial relations with the Soviet Union, we hope to collaborate with them on
productive peaceful space activities.

    The space program can help us with problems here on Earth in many
ways - by helping us understand the Earth,  by giving us worthy goals to
aspire to and thus direct our energies to creative ends,  by encouraging the
advance of useful technology,  by challenging our imaginations,  and
ultimately by giving us a new frontier to absorb our energies and return
wealth to us.

    We derive our sustenance and all of our wealth from planet Earth.
Understanding the Earth allows us to sustain ourselves better, create more
wealth,  and minimize the damage done to us by natural forces and the
damage done to the Earth by our activities.  Seeing the Earth from space is
uniquely useful in understanding it as a whole entity.  Comparing the Earth
to other planets allows us to discover properties and trends which could not
be discovered from a knowledge of the Earth alone.

    The human spirit is most noble - and the world most peaceful - when
our energies are channelled into reaching a difficult and meaningful goal.
Creating a spacefaring civilization is certainly a worthwhile goal and a
worthy challenge.  We must strive for it aggressively,  and in so doing
perhaps we will learn to direct our aggressions at our problems rather than
at our fellow man.

    One key part of American values is responsibility for your actions.
Many NASA bureaucrats have engaged in corrupt activities and must be
prosecuted for this.  The agency's inspector general simply is not equipped
to deal with out and out corruption.  We need a special office in the justice
department devoted to investigating and prosecuting NASA corruption to
balance the freedom NASA enjoys with appropriate responsibility when this
needs to be enforced externally.


A Crisis in Space Activism

    The space movement's current difficulties are similar to the
organizational problems with our  space program.    Not surprisingly, the
way out of our difficulty is similar in nature to what we must force NASA
to do if we are to have an effective space program.  Thus one of NSS's
crucial contributions to creating a spacefaring civilization is to reform
itself and consider this experience a microcosm of NASA reform.

    This reform begins at home, with each one of us accepting
responsibility for NSS's failure to promote  our goals.  We are responsible
for allowing ineffective and even destructive leaders to be elected year
after year.  We are responsible for failing to exercise and/or acquire
critical thinking skills which would allow us to distinguish  between
propoganda (Soviet, U.S., NASA and NSS) and reality.   We are responsible for
allowing our enthusiasm to be used in  ways that are destructive to our long
term goals of creating a spacefaring civilization through private endeavor
and making space a place where private citizens can afford to live work and
play.

    We speak glibly of space activism without specifying the most
important characteristic of it - is it PRO-space activim or ANTI-space
activism?   Never has the saying "The road to hell is paved with good
intentions." been more appropriate.  We must exercise the emotional and
intellectual discipline to ensure that our activism is PRO-space.  We must
not accept good intentions alone - we must measure results.    We are often
weak willed even when we act with the best of  intentions.  It is time to
ignore intentions and focus on results,  forcing ourselves to learn from our
own mistakes so that we achieve the results we need.  This is a time for
strong character and a willingness to pay some personal price without
complaint in order to foster the creation of a spacefaring civilization.

    Our exercise of will shall bring us into conflict with ourselves and
others who have good intentions but lack discipline and character.  They may
cast us as inhuman villains who lack understanding of their human foibles.
Nothing could be further from the truth.  We must recognize human weakness
and compensate for it  with discipline and growth just as a good parent
disciplines and  nurtures a slovenly child.

The Space Movement - Towards or Away from Space?

    Those who delay or prevent the establishment of self supporting
settlements beyond Earth are ANTI-space regardless of their intent.
ANTI-space activists in positions of trust or authority within the National
Space Society must be held accountable for their actions.  Malfesance must
not be  tolerated and must be treated as a direct attack on our goals
regardless of the motivation behind it.

    There is no sense arguing  with those who lead the space movement
AWAY FROM space  or seek to placate us with "political pragmatism"
instead of showing us how what they are doing is going to result in the
creation of a spacefaring civilization.  We must do everything in our power
to eliminate anti-space influence -- ignore anti-space activists, ridicule
them,  proclaim their evils to all who will listen.  We must never
compromise, argue  or work with them.  We should leave political
expediency to politicians.   Like customers, constituents are always right
and we should  behave accordingly.

    We must recognize that we don't know what we, as a "movement" are
doing.  If we did, we would be much more effective than we are  at
progressing toward our goals.  This acceptance of a little humility will be
most difficult for those of us who are in leadership  positions and like to
pretend we are wiser and more knowlegeable  than the rest.  We aren't, and
the membership is certainly in need of much deeper knowlege and
understanding of our situation than anyone can currently provide.

    We all share responsibility for the sorry state of affairs in the
space movement as well as our space program.  Reform of our space
movement requires  that we mature by promoting rapid evolution rather than
through any "master plan" or "unifying goal."  Rapid evolution requires that
control be decentralized as much as possible to motivate and prosecute
many potential paths rather than relying on some mythical central
organization to do everything for us.  Leaders must cease acting on behalf of
the movement as though they know best what is to be done.  Our leaders
should  DEMAND that the grass roots take the initiative -- and should
provide  that initiative with their full material and moral support.

Background and Overview

    There are several problems with the current system of federal support
for space related research and development.  Most of these are widely
acknowledged within the technical community, but can only be solved with
the help and interest of congress and the administration.  Some major
problems are that research funding and directions are inordinately
influenced by people in privileged positions;  that funds are readily obtained
for established people and organizations to work on well understood
problems while new investigators find it extremely difficult to obtain
funding at all and established investigators have a difficult time pursuing
new ideas;  that it is extremely difficult for young scientists and engineers
to find positions where they may pursue an appropriate technical career;
that university research activities have become a detriment to education
rather than a boon;  that major projects and research directions are chosen
more on the basis of political support within the technical community than
on the basis of true merit due to the lack of an appropriate cooperative
relationship between the technical community, congress, and the
administration;  and that research too often leads to government sponsored
development.  These problems run through the whole federal R&D endeavor,
but they are most severe in NASA.  They represent a weakness in the
foundation of our technological society, which must eventually be repaired
by appropriate policy measures.

    One of the things the Reagan administration has been busily doing is
ensuring that monopolistic businesses become ever larger and government
agencies become ever more monolithic and centralized.  Cooperative space
ventures between the United States and the Soviet Union should be initiated
by scientists and businesses and civil servants should serve the needs of
these joint ventures rather than manage them.  We should also ensure that
Americans who wish to procure Soviet launch services are free to do so.

    NASA was started in order to take back leadership in space activities
from the Soviet Union.  It succeeded for a time through the spectacular
acheivements of Apollo, but NASA and the republican administrations of
Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan simply did not understand leadership well
enough to maintain it.  NASA refused to fund the basic research needed to
give it the technical capabilities to maintain leadership, and failed to
provide a policy framework to define what leadership was.  We are thus in
the current situation where we spend a lot of money  doing  things without
any real return.

    NASA has not done its homework.  The research that we need in order to
have technological choices we can use to attain and maintain leadership in
aeronautical and space activities has been ignored for the last 20 years.  We
should spend somewhat more (about $500,000,000 per year) on this kind of
homework so that we can spend a lot less in the future when we need to
perform certain tasks.  Historically, the money for this kind of work has
been stolen by large development programs, so most NASA managers view
this kind of money as an ante to try to start their own development prgram
rather than as money to actually do work (the most recent example of this
being "Pathfinder").  Some effort will be needed to change this culture, and
some of the basic space related research we need will have to be done
through agencies other than NASA.

    There is currently a (correct) feeling that NASA's manned spaceflight
activities have not been terribly worthwhile, but that they have taken
money away from far more successful automated spaceflight programs.
Since this has been quite apparent for at least 10 years, and nothing useful
has been done about it the proponents of unmanned spaceflight are rather
bitter.  They see their only hope of pursuing a vigorous program of
automated space exploration as being the termination of the manned
spaceflight program.  The usual response of manned spaceflight advocates is
to refuse to debate the merits of the issues, and to play back room politics
to steal yet more money from the unmanned program.  Needless to say, this
has not left the advocates of automated exploration in any mood for rational
discussion or cooperative problem solving.

    In the absence of any overall national policy, people have fallen into
four different camps in their opinion of what our purpose in pursuing space
activities should be.  The first camp, epitomized by Sen. William Proxmire,
believes we are wasting money letting people play around to no useful end,
and that this should be stopped immediately.  Then there is the general
public, which finds space fascinating and believes it is somehow important
to our future, but which does not really understand how our current
activities are leading to a future they will get to share in.  There is a small
but voiciferous community composed of NASA personnel, aerospace
contractors and laymen who believe that manned spaceflight is destined to
lead us to great accomplishments and who make a remarkable leap of faith
in assuming that all of what is going on now is as it should be except for a
lamentable lack of congressionally supplied money.  Finally, there is a large
contingent of the scientific community, a substantial number of lay people
and a small fraction of NASA employees and contractors who believe the
federal role in space is to gather scientific knowledge and that this is best
accomplished through the use of automated spacecraft.

    Large development projects have been the hallmark of American civil
space, and one of the most destructive factors in it.  Most NASA managers
believe the agency can only exist if it is justified by some multibillion
dollar, decade long project, and spend all of their time and resources either
covering up the deficiencies of the current project or trying to make their
pet idea become the next one.  (Ironically, NSF has had almost no political
trouble maintaining its budget until recently when it adopted the "large
development project" strategy.)  For a variety of reasons, this ensures that
little basic research is done, so that there are no creative new choices of
what to do ten years down the line.  When we discover an unexpected result,
such as that reuseable space shuttles are not necessarily cheap to operate,
this mentality ensures that NASA will devote its fullest energies to
covering that discovery up.

    Corrupt contracting practices have become the sine qua non of NASA
operations.  Proposals are NOT subject to outside evaluation, and NASA's
internal evaluating procedure is highly political, rewarding those who back
NASA politically and punishing those who try to do real work, since fresh
results have an unfortunate tendency to raise questions about the pat sales
pitches NASA managers are using to try to get a large program started that
they can be in charge of.  Current contracting practices ensure that
whatever the stated policy of the agency is, it will not be implemented and
that it will not lead to a vigorous program of research or space exploration,
but it will lead to the usual contractors receiving substantial amounts of
money to pursue the ideas of others - unsuccessfully.


Results of Reagan Policies

    Ronald Reagan has chosen to fix NASA's problems by reappointing James
Fletcher administrator.  Under Nixon, Fletcher destroyed the legacy of
apollo, fired the most talented engineers NASA had, and embarked NASA
upon the space shuttle program by promising that it would fly 60 times per
year, would be incredibly cheap ($40 per pound to launch payloads - as
opposed to the $6,800 it has turned out to be) and perfectly safe.

    During the first seven years of his administration,  it was not really
correct to say that Ronald Reagan had a civilian space policy.  NASA drifted
from cost overrun to delay to disaster due to the lack of a policy framework
to act within.  When presented with the opportunity to develop a policy
throught the national commission on space, the administration first
procrastinated about appointing it, then ensured it was too fractious to
produce a coherent policy document, then refused to accept or acknowledge
the document it HAD produced for quite some time.  Various well thought out
and useful policy documents do exist - such as the reccomendations of the
solar systm exploration committee.  The Reagan administration's typical
response has been to praise them faintly and then to not support them in the
budgetary process.

    When Reagan finally did write a space policy,  it was immediately
classified,  denying the American public access to it.  Excerpts and press
releases make one thing very clear - the Reagan space policy is one fo the
most clever uses of the Big Lie theory since 1933.  While it pays lip service
to the goals of the space interest movement,  it makes proclaims frequently
that these goals will be met by pursuing business as usual,  spending all of
our money on the current large programs that are taking us nowhere at
breakneck speed,  and laying the groundwork for subsequent large
development programs through Pathfinder at the expense of needed research.

    Ronald Reagan has consistently rewarded NASA centers on the basis of
politics rather than technical acheivement, and has allowed pork barrel
politics and old fashioned corruption to dominate NASA spending and
decisionmaking.  Corruption now runs so deep it is unlikely NASA can be
reformed without dramatic and painful steps.

    Note that there is one very important opportunity presented by the
Reagan space policy.  Launch vouchers are suggested for payloads stuck on
the ground.  No money is requested for them, of course,  but this does not
mean that congress could not be asked to provide some and thus give us an
early start on creating a commercial launch services industry.


Recent Developments

    The space shuttle Challenger   exploded, killing six astronauts
representing a cross section of American society as well as a schoolteacher
who was along to demonstrate how safe and reliable the shuttle was.  This
also stranded several flight ready spacecraft on the ground, caused us to
miss important space based astronomical observations of two events that
happen every few centuries - the mutual eclipses of Pluto and Charon, and
the nearby supernova (1987A) in the Magellianic cloud.  In the aftermath of
this, NASA demonstrated it had had no concern for technical issues in its
recent launch and programmatic decisions, and has spent the last two years
demonstrating that it has no intention of taking a sensible technical or
policy approach to correcting the problems illustrated by the Challenger
disaster.

    The Solar System Exploration Committee has laid out a plan of
automated space missions designed to be economical and to build on past
successes.  Despite the general acceptance of this plan by NASA and the
scientific community, it has not been implemented in the last four budgets.


Acknowledgements

    We wish to thank a variety of people for their help in crystallizing
our understanding of the need for reform of the government space program and
space movement.  Many members of San Diego L5 have shared their views
and enthusiasm for a spacefaring civilization with us.  Special thanks are
due to David Anderman,  Will Ackel,  Mike Byron,  Randy Gigante,  Peter
Glaser,  Mari Hughes,  Steve Lord,  Gregg Maryniak,  Jomil and John Mulvey,
Jim Muncy,  Mike Simon and Walt Venable for thoughtful discussions which
helped us develop the views presented herein.  Thanks are also due to Jim
Davidson,  Rich Gertsch,  Binh Kieu,  Anderson Hailey,  Bob and Elsa
Hoogbruin,  Joe Hopkins,  Jeff Miller,  Mark Ogilvie,  Dale Skran,  Barbara
Sprungman, Nancy Stevens,  Anh Tran,  Rick Tumlinson,  Kevin Whelan,  Chris
and Cathy Zerby and many others for sharing their enthusiasm for space
with us and being willing to discuss a wide variety of topics.  Mark Hopkins,
Stu Nozette, Jerry Pournelle and Barney Roberts were very helpful in
developing a clear and concise definition of evil.  Jim Arnold,  Joe Carroll,
Jim Clinton,  Mike Duke,  Wendell Mendell and George Webb were helpful in
bringing one of us (AC) to understand that conflict of interest is very real,
pervasive, insidious and extremely difficult to judge for yourself.  Finally,
thanks to all the pro-space activists who share their genuine if often
uninformed desire to create a spacefaring civilization with us wherever we
go.  This is the ultimate motivation for us to work towards a spacefaring
civilization through writing papers like this - the burning desire of the rank
and file space activists to open up the space frontier to all of us in the
quickest possible manner.  Their motivation is contagious - it keeps us
going even in the face of the NASA space pogrom and space movement.

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End of SPACE Digest V10 #350
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