NRC on NASA Labs: Not A Pretty Picture

What? You mean the labs are not able to produce the game-changing technologies we have been promised?

What?

It is the people at NASA that will create the game-changing technologies we have been promised.

The facilities we had have been mothballed by avoiding the Steroids injection to keep them healthy. The review has been conducted to evaluate if steroids had a effect in the people, it did not. The facilities need to be brought back to health as they have not taken steroids and become ill.

How about NASA does not NEED research and development it needs Apollo on Steroids to the tune of $15 billion from R&D and Science, taken while NASA had unrestrained transfer authority granted by Congress. This unrestrained authority was removed before the last election. Now you see the results, the CxP program was Zeroed as it was sick and unhealthy. The game has changed and CxP has no more steroids to inject.

Yep CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN, NO MORE STEROIDS to INJECT!

CxP is now on saline IV

have a happy CxP day

Well, not without funding to update the labs, yeah. You get what you pay for.

When money is tight, and it always is at NASA, the 'mission' always trumps 'the facilities'...unless there is a safety issue.

There is no surprise in this report for anyone that works at these Centers. From what I have seen, Center management is always doing the best it can with limited funds.

NASA CxP Program Manager: "Labs? There are STILL labs? Where have they been hiding them? I thought you told we that we stole all their money years ago? You need to get down there and find out what those useless weirdos are up to!"

From the report:
"A reduction in funding of 48 percent for the aeronautics programs over the period fiscal year
(FY) 2005-FY 2009 has significantly challenged NASA’s ability to achieve its mission to advance U.S.
technological leadership in aeronautics in partnership with industry, academia, and other government
agencies that conduct aeronautics-related research and to keep U.S. aeronautics in the lead internationally."

I've said it before and I'll say it again..........

Since it doesn't seem like we are going to be going anywhere anytime soon in space.

NASA should take a major part of it's budget for the next couple of years and FIX it's decrepit badly aging infrastructure at every lab.

Many and I mean MANY labs and test facilities need millions of dollars just to jump into the 1980's!

I have seen abundantly more modern facilities, control rooms, software and controls at any given sewage treatment plant---PERIOD!

Those of us in the test facilities have been the victims of better cheaper faster long enough!

Increase operating budgets!

Increase maintenance budgets!

And good God get rid of full cost accounting in an R&D setting--it has NO place here!

We're not making widgets boys!

Spiff.............Out

So, if we update the labs with a few million/billion $ then MAYBE we will discover a new game breaking technology that will short circuit the need to engineer complex launch and space systems.
OR we could take that same funding and press forward with a meaningful goal leading to a lunar base that is attainable with current technology readiness levels.
It's a no brainer as far as I'm concerned.

Yup, my first student a few weeks ago announced to me that he's no longer working on space stuff for his PhD research at a top tier university because he wants his PhD to involve modern equipment. Ouch :(

We don't really need test labs if we have no hardware to test. I work in a test lab but I would not advocate spending a bunch of money to update the facilities for tours. If we don't have any hardware what's the point of updating the labs?

I had the pleasure of touring a friends US based machine/press/fab shop last week. He is state of the art and successfully competing against Chinese products with a staff of 50. He was surprised when I said: "Your equipment and operations are equal to or superior to what I see at NASA."

The big difference however, was the authority and autonomy given to line personnel. Take heed NASA, it is your management practices (micro-management & crippling oversight) that is hindering your progress more than the equipment. You now focus exclusively on "process" in lieu of "product" or "technical advancement."

Though I strongly agree that NASA research center equipment and facilities are about 15 to 20 years out of date and need a wholesale update.

How about NRC, NSF, NOAA, DOE, et al, showing NASA the money instead of wanting to essentially continue free-loading their R&D on areas which increasingly have little to nothing to do with space exploration? Sure, many NASA labs are showing their age but, for example, so is the U.S. Highway Infrastructure which is already falling apart and there are no plans for significant expansion beyond the 1950's plan. In the meantime China, Europe, and others still continue to build several hundred miles of new highway/interstates, and high speed rail, each year.

Maybe if the DoD budget wasn't an whooping ~$650B+/yr, which is nearly equal to the rest of the planet combined (including allies), we'd have funding for other things? What about the nearly $800B 'stimulus' package which hasn't stimulated squat, or even a $20B/yr in direct farm subsidies so they'll grow less food to keep prices up?

CxP has nothing whatsoever to do with the sorry state of affairs we're in.

The danger with that is then we'll run the risk of repeating the mistake of the ISS/shuttle- we'll get a modest lunar base, but remain stuck there for the next 20 years or so, because we really haven't developed the technology to go elsewhere. That would not necessarily be a bad thing in of itself- as far I'm concerned, forward progress is forward progress- but I think it's symptomatic of a greater divide in the space community- namely, those who prefer NASA as primarily an operations agency vs. though who prefer NASA primarily as a research agency (of course, in an ideal world, it'd be both, but...).

Yup. Instead of building a Moonbase that would cost billions to supply using current technology & basically return nothing to the economy, we could reduce the cost of getting to LEO & open up the solar system to Mankind.

"Reach low orbit and you’re halfway to anywhere in the Solar System." - RAH

LOL
So, if we update the labs with a few million/billion $ then MAYBE we will discover a new game breaking technology that will short circuit the need to engineer complex launch and space systems.
OR we could take that same funding and press forward with a meaningful goal leading to a lunar base that is attainable with current technology readiness levels.
It's a no brainer as far as I'm concerned.

It is a good thing you have no input to the budget process, the meaningful goal was lost and we now have a goal to reach other planets with biology from earth this might include humans if we can think with our brain instead of living in 1961.

You have to build something to conduct an experiment with, correct it is NOT a test!

And now we see how big a pit NASA dug for itself. If CxP had been allowed to go on much longer, there would be nothing left of NASA worth saving. It would have been a hollow shell. NASA is fortunate to have an Administration that understands the need to invest in the future and needs to take advantage of the opportunity.

Note to all you expectation managers: You need to see how much time you'll need to rebuild the facilities before you are able to begin producing results and build that into your timelines. It will be tough holding off the short-sighted we-want-it-now people, but it's necessary if NASA is ever going to start producing results again.

Perhaps Holdren should form a non-profit to lobby bigillionaires for university research facility upgrades rather than NASA funding.

Try the top 20 bigilliaires and the top 20 corporate profiteers.

Gates, one of the world's richest men, has given $4.5 million to climate researcher

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Bill+Gates+gives+canadian+university+cloud+research/3017700/story.html

keep it up all ye better-cheaper-faster launcher BotsnSatsRus folks and your unmanned rocket launches will be getting outsourced to China too, at this rate.

Sorry, WORKING hardware just does not appear out of thin air or from a ProE station manned by a associate designer. The real design process is iterative. Design, test, then "back to the drawing board".

Not to mention supporting the inevitable design churn associated with no real requirements in terms of performance or schedule.

If you want REAL hardware and software that is game-changing, you have to move beyond CAD workstations and prove it. Otherwise, your just pissing away tax dollars while trying to fool everyone that your actually doing something useful.

What technology are you kids talking about that is so "game-changing"?? We know a LOT about propulsion, and NO ONE believes there's some magical technology there just around the corner that'll just show up in time for Obama's plan. Do some research, there is no huge tech advance anyone's working on that could be implemented in 5 years.

So we're gambling that maybe some magical tech will appear to save us $$ and in the process losing an entire industrial base of people who actually know what they're doing.

LOL

NASA/DARPA/USAF/Boeing have a new spacecraft on orbit at the moment that will allow for hypersonic research that no one has yet conducted. Do you think we are going to to use this with CxP? It is flying NOW!

No one is trying to save $$ it appears some one finally understands it is stupid to keep funding the program that no one knows what they are doing. It, CxP, unfunded the diverse input to build the mission of the future for 1961.

have a wonderful CxP day.

The NRC report is spot on. This is the direct result on 10+ years of one giant NASA management f#ck up at HQ and Center levels.

They also had help from OMB and Clinton and Bush WH to outsource and look for short term success while NASA managers worried about their careers and went along.

Hope they all are happy about where they left NASA and its ability to do real R&D.

I would be amazed if NASA does anything real and long term to turn this around.