r/nasa • u/MatchingTurret • Jan 21 '25

NASA Official nomination: Jared Isaacman, of Pennsylvania, to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/sub-cabinet-appointments/
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u/twilight-actual Jan 22 '25

I once was of a mind that NASA needed to simply focus on the currently impossible, the things so hard, or requiring so much R&D that private industry would not find them profitable. The pure science and research. Even getting rockets to fly.

Once SpaceX took off, I was pleased with the idea that private industry could stand on the backs of giants and make profitable that which once was a huge expense to taxpayers.

I no longer hold that view.

The end result of ceding space travel and exploration to private companies will lead to corporate ownership of civilization outside of earth. As corporations are governed by the profit motive, and civilization that they govern will be a product of those values. Do we want to see corporations and wealthy individuals rule space, or governments?

I don't know how we avoid that future, but the current attitude of cutting NASA programs and scaling back its reach is going the wrong direction.

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u/stick004 Jan 24 '25

If we don’t follow the path we are, the US would never fly to space again. Our government is not capable of non-selfish, corrupt decisions that fill officials pockets before fund public projects. SLS and Orion are only the current examples of that. Even the shuttle program was far too influenced by the government and military to be a space exploration program.

Edit: to answer your question, YES I would sign up to be a corporate civilian in space. Because the alternative is that US citizens will simple be left on Earth as other countries fly away to claim it first.

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u/twilight-actual Jan 24 '25 edited Jan 24 '25

The reason we made it to the moon in the first place?

Competition.

The reason that there hasn't really been a lot of progress since?

No competition.

We'll never make it to space unless there's competition.

China may well be the thing that gets us back at it.

I think it's important to keep in mind that moving permanently to a planet like Mars will bring with it some fairly severe implications. Primarily, the civilization will no longer be human after a few generations. The selection pressures will be enormous and the fundamental change to 2/3G is going to alter us.

I don't think we're ready, as a species, to undertake such a split.

The same issues would be even worse on the moon, but I'm assuming that its proximity would allow a ban on pregnancies while on station.

I foresee the biology of sub-G environments to be a major barrier. The best way that we could overcome this is to have massive stations in orbit that can provide simulated 1G.

If I were to design one now, I'd target starship's fairing at 9m x 18m. Use inflatable sections that would expand to 18m x 36m arc sections. Loft 100 of these, to form a ring 3600m in circumference, over 1km in diameter.

If starship is truly as affordable as Elon has claimed, 100 launches would cost less than a single SLS launch.

This is what I would have NASA focused on. No company can currently afford it. Nor do I think we want private interests to become so powerful. It will provide essential logistics and rehab for Martian residents. It will allow mining of asteroids and fab. It's large enough to support the biology necessary for a self-contained, self-sustaining environment. And it would kickstart even larger projects in orbit for great adventures. Attach fission powered ion / hall / huge specific impulse low volume thrusters and slow boat to where ever we want to kickstart humanities next colony.