I was watching a video that I got for Christmas on the history of the NASA manned spaceflight missions. I really especially love the early years ... the 60's. These guys were real risk takers. All of them from the astronauts, who, in these early years, were all test pilots, to the engineers. The average age for the front line personnel was 26 and the managers were in their early 30's. It is little wonder that they were willing to try so many things that would never be done now. At one point, they were launching crews every 6 weeks!
I remember a couple years ago, NASA was going to bail on the Hubble Space Telescope because it would require a risky space walk to fix the device. In the 60's we had guys tethered to the outside of the Apollo spacecraft coming back from each moon flight to retrieve the camera film. We had folks walking on the moon! We had to depend on one engine to start perfectly to keep from stranding folks on the moon.
The culture has grown up. Old guys run the program and everyone wants everything to be risk averse. We all need to go back and listen to the early test pilots. They had the right stuff. Now, it takes 20 years to figure out how to get back to the moon. It has to be risk free.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
They do seem to have given up on big missions. I'm not even really sure what they do these days. The earth science group seems to have really taken the lead over the space group.
I just don't think they can risk manage at the level they want to. Back when you could build systems with 8-bit processors or custom TTL logic, you could test for every possible situation. That just isn't possible with what is available. Unless the NASA starts developing their own systems...which goes against what they've done all along in the first place.
Meanwhile, it looks like the Chinese are busy with their space program.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7917957.stm
Post a Comment