Open space to the people so they participate in reality not vicariosly through others. Being personally involved is a great motivator. How to do it, lower cost access to space. How do you achieve lower cost access? Building a private commercial transportation industry. You do that with Government acting as a good customer with incentives for investment and some revenue subsidies.
Ransom Sent from my iPhone On May 26, 2012, at 12:12 PM, Douglas Hill <[email protected]> wrote: > Now that the shuttle is gone, how do we keep kids interested in STEM? What > inspiration does a teenager get from cargo drone launches? What would get > you pumped up and want to spend your future doing science? > > > > > > From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2012 12:57 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Vo]:Critique of Space Shuttle written in 1980 > > > > Chemical Engineer <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Condemning the shuttle program is like condemning jet fighter aircraft & > bombers now that we have drones to do the dirty work. > > > > No, it is like condemning the F22 Raptor because that airplane was too > ambitious, it tried to do too many different missions, and it costs way too > much. The history of military aviation is filled with cost overruns and badly > designed aircraft. > > > > > > Without the shuttle & crew Hubble would be a piece of space junk. > > > > As noted, it would have been cheaper to abandon it as space junk, and launch > another. Sending the Shuttle to fix it was a publicity stunt. That mission > alone cost more than a replacement, never mind the whole Shuttle project. > > > > It is not surprising that a new Hubble would have been cheap. The Hubble is > similar to the spy satellites the U.S. has been launching for decades. This > is a mature technology with lots of experienced people. Unfortunately, when > they were designing the Hubble, they ignored many of the lessons of the spy > satellite business. The spooks contacted them and offered to help, but the > designers blew them away. That is one of the reasons the Hubble had a bad > lens and other problems. It was a fiasco in many ways. > > > > It was also overrun by academic politics, which degraded performance. Much of > the design and operation was focused on preventing junior-level astronomers, > staff or -- God forbid -- members of the public from making important > discoveries, by locking up, restricting or degrading the data. Before the > Hubble, a junior astronomer made a major finding by looking through the raw > data. She got to it before the big-gun, well established experts got a > chance. So they vowed to prevent this by structuring the whole project in the > Mushroom Management Mode: keep your employees in the dark and feed them > manure. > > > > Again, see the book "Hubble Wars." > > > > - Jed > >
