Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Hindsight

NASA is rapidly loosing it's way. They relied on the Space Shuttle for so long that they have lost their ability to design and innovate their way out of a problem. The replacement for the Shuttle and the future of NASA itself is hanging on the Ares project...which looks like a real piece of shit at this point.

This begs the question, why not just dust off the blueprints for the Saturn V? Thirty years ago NASA engineers using slide rules and black coffee built a rocket that was reliable AND capable of taking us to the moon. Apparently all of the advancements in material science, computer aided design, computer aided manufacturing, avionics and simulation technology has made it HARDER for NASA to meet it's design goals.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

From a government contractor viewpoint, its not the tools that have made it harder for NASA, rather an extra 40 years of processes and beauracracy. Guaranteed.

Hank Scoprio said...

It used to be that if you put the engineers in charge shit would get done. Of course now the beauracrats have engineering degrees right?

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