Either way it went last night, a third of the American electorate was
going to be "eating their hearts out." (And the remaining third was
acutely aware that neither remaining option was perfect and they had a
really tough choice to make.)
The key here is that two-thirds of Americans are at least mildly
favorably disposed toward space.
But keep in mind that anything this incoming Administration decides to
do in space will have to be executed within some fairly hard limits:
- Strong Congressional regional coalitions supporting the current
geographic distribution of funding.
- Limited Executive bandwidth for space. As in all US administrations
for decades now, whatever their intentions, they'll have far larger and
more pressing problems than space on their plate competing for their
limited time and political clout.
- NASA's status as a sprawling multi-centered "mature federal
bureaucracy" with all the massive inertia and resistance to change that
implies.
That said, I do see a practical path for positive change through these
obstacles. In fact, I need to be writing about that (with considerably
more care than I put into arocket posts) for the day job.
Meanwhile, a hint: The current geographic distribution of funding does
not necessarily imply the current geographic distribution of tasks.
That's probably too subtle... Clue-By-Four: NASA really doesn't need
to be working on heavy-lift launch in-house. It's not 1962 - we have a
commercial sector with multiple players able to take that on, at least
two of them already working on that.
On the other hand, granted the strong near-term prospect of a thriving
near-Earth space economy based on chemical rockets, one obvious next
national technological requirement is for high-energy deep-space power
and propulsion.
Which is exactly the sort of task a sprawling multi-state federal R&D
establishment might usefully be pointed at. It's too expensive and too
long-term for the commercial players. NASA meanwhile has for a long
time been too focused on its own short-term agendas to do more than
nibble around the edges of this national medium-to-long-term need.
So, my modest proposal: JSC et al continue running Station (stations?)
in support of near-Earth commerce, in parallel with an increased
emphasis on long-term life-sustainment research (rad shielding, of
course, but also human variable-G work dammit) while MSFC et al begin
shifting focus from heavy lift launch to high-energy deep-space power
and propulsion.
Henry
On 11/9/2016 6:38 AM, John Dom wrote:
Now that so many are eating their hearts out this election day: first
impressions regarding coming space policy:
John
