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NASA insider: Some truth to Gingrich's barb
After Newt Gingrich's harsh comments about NASA during Monday's night's debate between GOP presidential hopefuls, you'd guess the outrage from the nation's legendary space agency would be deafening.
So far today, all we've heard from Houston and Washington are crickets.
For those who missed it, Gingrich accused NASA's bureaucracy of wasting hundreds of billions of dollars that it's spent since the 1969 moon landing. Without such waste, he said, "we would probably today have a permanent station on the moon, three or four permanent stations in space, a new generation of lift vehicles."
NASA is "standing in the way" of a "new cycle of opportunities" when it "ought to be getting out of the way and encouraging the private sector," said the former House speaker.
The government agency that fulfilled President Kennedy's Cold War challenge to send a man to the moon within a decade chose not to comment. "It is inappropriate for us to comment on election rhetoric," said today's one-line statement from the communications office.
Why so quiet? Some NASA officials suspect Gingrich may be letting us know that the emperor has no clothes.
Some insiders are wondering if NASA is operating with an outdated management paradigm better suited to the 1960s Apollo era rather than the 21st century.
Instead of a bounty of exploration riches, Gingrich said, NASA has produced "failure after failure."
The space shuttle, which will lift off a final time next month, was originally designed to fly 50 missions per year at $10 million per flight. That never happened. The International Space Station was first priced at $8 billion to design build and develop. That price tag eventually totaled more than $100 billion. NASA's list of expensive and less-than-successful programs includes the X-33, the Constellation, the X-38, the Ares I, and the Ares V, which were all canceled before they came to fruition.
The former House speaker didn't mention the shuttle's well-known successes, including countless research missions, fixing the Hubble Telescope and building the International Space Station.
"Most people know that there's a lot of truth to what Newt's been saying," said a NASA executive who asked not to be identified so he might speak more frankly. "But they're doing their best to compose the nation's space agenda in the face of all the constraints of operating within a government bureaucracy."
What Gingrich didn't say last night is that he agreed with NASA's 2011 budget - which was approved by President Obama.
The "Obama administration's budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration deserves strong approval from Republicans," Gingrich wrote in an editorial with former Rep. Robert Walker.
NASA has been fostering programs during the past few years aimed at using privately developed rockets and orbiting vehicles for U.S. space missions.
Space Exploration Technologies, aka Space X, has been contracted to use its Dragon orbiter - after it's fully developed - to resupply the space station. The stakes for NASA to reconfigure are high, said the NASA executive.
"NASA will either undergo a paradigm shift now to figure out how to work with the private sector - or it will probably collapse."
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Interesting, NASA was not an issue when Newt was speaker! Must Be President Obama's fault!
Newt indeed had problems with the way that NASA was funding and financing spacecraft development even as Speaker. A comment of this nature is strictly uninformed.
Jerry Pournelle (then a presidential science advisor and a well-known science fiction author) was able to convince Newt, as speaker, to push forward a rather innovative "X-prize" type commercial spaceflight fund and was about to introduce the bill into congress.... when the scandal that eventually pushed him out of office broke and ended up trashing the whole concept. It would have been amazing had the legislation gone through, and might have kicked started commercial spaceflight efforts a decade earlier had it worked out. Details can be found on Jerry Pournelle's blog (Google it if you have to... I'm being lazy here) and I've heard Mr. Gingrich confirm this story.
History sometimes happens or doesn't happen because of some strange events, and it should be noted that spaceflight was not the only gig or area of responsibility for the Speaker of the House.
What people do not realize is that while Congress has funded NASA, over the last 15 years, it's also added stipulations that those same funds be used on a myriad of other things which detract from NASA's main goals. If Congress removed these stipulations and let NASA be NASA, Newt would not have anything to comment on. Also, we've seen how prices for defense contracting programs also steadily climb, which gives some credence to the notion that the private sector is not always the best at providing the highest quality for the best price. The private sector space ventures thus far have not be going as well as expected either.
GREAT observations!!
I'm hoping that Sarah Palin weighs in on this one pretty soon. Teabaggers all over the country are wandering around their trailer parks like little lost zombies waiting for her sage advice and wise council.
You know what's funny? Watching all the Bush-bashers (with no one to blame everything on since 2008) attack Palin every chance they get. I'd love for her to run for president just to drive them insane.
What about me? I'm " hot for Jesus ".
I'm pretty sure she would agree that we should drill for oil on the moon, if anyone suggested it to her.
When ah stand on mah deck on the water in Alaska and look towards Russia, I see the Moon RIGHT THEIR in the water. So its no wonder that NASA cyaint find the Moon by shooting rockets from Florida, which is like, near Antarctica. They should support drilling in the Arctic to go to the Moon like Joe Da Plumber's been saying all along. Cancel NASA. Ain't no beauty contest ever been won using Calcilus.
NASA's priority should be UNmanned exploration. Manned spaceflights are so 20th Century.
Manned flight should not even have been 20th century, except for near Earth missions. The moon landing was a massive waste, more of a cowboy approach to the Russians than good science. Had Kennedy not grandstanded, we would have permanent space stations doing good science instead of having some rocks. That good science together with space tourism and private development could have financed so much unmanned exploration that we might have more than a few rocks, like tanks full of Helium3.
Even while we were doing manned flight, there were plenty of unmanned projects going on. Manned flight also helped to fix some problems with some of the unmanned platforms (Hubble comes to mind). The returns on the unmanned projects were often narrow adn specific, but manned flight resulted in many, many advances including knowledge we will need for when we eventually go to space to stay. Every new epoch in history needs its pioneers who dream – often inaccurately.
Yeah! Same for Airline flights too.
For years NASA has been a Republican play toy. The reason it cost so much to send Americans into space is because of Contractor mark-ups on costs. NASA needs to be a Government funded CO-OP and it needs to build all the space hardware with Federal Employees NOT Contractors. Federal Employees need to take "Ownership" of the projects. You cannot as yet create a FREE MARKETPLACE for Space Travel. It's too soon. Heck we can't even create a free market place for energy. Just because you can't have a free market place yet doesn't mean you cannot control the hogs at the trough. Boeing has been paid to built another shuttle already and it has been test flown twice. Once again having several private companies bid on Federal Projects is NOT a free market place, don't kid yourself. It's Federal Tax dollars going to investors pocketbooks.
You either have a terrible memory or terrible history/science teachers. It was Kennedy then Johnson – both Democrats – that started the space program. We got the original rocket scientists from Peenemunde during Truman's administration – another Democrat. Sorry, but you are full of hot suds.
Gingrich's criticism of NASA can be applied to Congress as well, and for a lot longer than just 42 years. Congress holds the purse strings. Demand better accounting and accountability. Which of these GOP candidates was in a position to do something about NASA's waste? House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Classic.
Touche', Keeth in Cali.
I agree with most of what Newt Gingrich said. I would not use the term failure but I would say the return from all the money spent has not been sufficient. . How long has it been since Man last left the moon. Why no return. Why did the space shuttle not evolve to something else or at least NASA could license it's technology. To me NASA Is symptomatic to what is ailing America. Heavily indebted to the point of losing it's independence. It is a nation that is on a plateau Decline is more likely that climbing higher
Backwards. The only way to make 'space' affordable is if there is an industrial or private reason to go there. Obama should not fall for the lure or privatizing the technology to use to fullfill a NASA mission. The problem is the mission, as well as the technology. Obama should change the mission, reprioritize NASA so that it is a very small organization, similar in responsibility to FAA except for space oversight, and then maybe (in 50 years say) 'space' will have been made affordable enough for NASA to reexpand to a scientific mission.
The champion of small government, enemy of government programs, wants NASA to stop wasting money and build more lift vehicles, stations in orbit and on the moon. He wants a government program to succeed. But Newt, government programs have never worked, remember? Not one single government program has ever worked. You and your neo-cons have said so yourselves. So why try to improve NASA? Why not end it outright? It can't work, remember? You're wasting your time and our money telling it how to run itself, when you should be consistent with your ideology and your past statements and simply demand that NASA be scuttled. Oh, I forgot... You agreed with Obama's NASA budget this year. So you just changed your mind again. Never mind. You're a hopeless chaos of contradictions. Small wonder that the "Contract with America" failed so miserably, and small wonder that you yourself were scuttled afterwards. Give it up, Newt. You aren't part of the solution. You're part of the problem. We are being defeated by the old "Divide and Conquer" strategy, and you are a willing participant in that agenda. The fact that you constantly "Divide and Conquer" in your own mind is proof that you cannot do anything to save us from the real enemy – the one that has neatly divided this country into a false dichotomy of "liberal" vs. "conservative", "left" vs. "right", "big government" vs. "small government". Those are not and never were the issues. The issue is division. You are helping divide us. You are part of the agenda being used to conquer us. In your memo describing methods of engaging in smear campaigns against opponents, you coined several terms suggesting that political opponents could be characterized as "traitors". The "traitors" aren't the people on the other side of your phony divide. The "traitors" are the ones who created that divide and are maintaining it. You would be one of those.
Sure, blame the division on the liberals. The division created those "liberals", not vice versa. And you are perpetuating it. You are not good for this country.
Who now controls our economy? Who can destroy that economy and our way of life by simple manipulation of world markets? While you were busy indulging in your fake ideological war, you completely ignored – or should I say "abetted" – the real threat. Thanks for helping to destroy this country, Newt.
This idiot was quick in lambasting NASA for wasting $ 400 billion plus not caring about the !.2 trillion of national treasure that was burned in Iraq & Afghan and counting. Or the 2 million a day we are spending in Libya.
Why does John King grunt during the responses ??
If he wants to hurry them up, Which he did, why GRUNT ?? Icky sounds !!
Ugh, Ugh, Ugh, Ugh hurry it up please.
Can't believe I'm agreeing with Gingrich, but he's right!! NASA was was established on the model of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which supported the development of the U.S. commercial aviation industry (which by the way is the ONLY U.S. industry that still has a positive global trade balance). The NACA was successful because it focused it's resources on R&D to improve the safety and performance of commercial aircraft. On the other hand, NASA has not developed or improved the safety or performance of any human-rated space vehicles in the last nearly 40 years (and had no plans to do so for the next 15-20 years) ! Too much of NASA's budget was being spent on operations (Shuttle, Station, Constellation, launch facilities and crew training); which left no money for the R&D required to develop new technology. Imagine how far behind this nation would be if all the other major transportation industrues were run this way!
"Give a nation a rocket, and you can impress them for a while. Teach a nation to build rockets, and you empower them forever!!"
Can't believe I'm agreeing with Gingrich, but he's right!! NASA was was established on the model of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which supported the development of the U.S. commercial aviation industry (which by the way is the ONLY U.S. industry that still has a positive global trade balance). The NACA was successful because it focused it's resources on R&D to improve the safety and performance of commercial aircraft. On the other hand, NASA has not developed or improved the safety or performance of any human-rated space vehicles in the last nearly 40 years (and had no plans to do so for the next 15-20 years)! Too much of NASA's budget was being spent on operations (Shuttle, Station, Constellation, launch facilities and crew training, etc.); which left no money for the R&D required to develop new technology. Imagine how far behind this nation would be if all the other major transportation industrues were run this way!
"Give a nation a rocket, and you can impress them for a while. Teach a nation to build rockets, and you empower them forever!!"
Oh, we're supposed to take Newt seriously now? Okay, here goes. Yes, we could have run the space agency with everyone working at minimum wage and no benefits, and let's break out the cat o' nine tails whenever they slow down. Or Newt could have run the place with his ten-great-ideas-a-minute approach. Thank you, Newt.