Reply #14: The civilian space program has for some reason been more hidebound since the '60s [View All]

[benEzra]

than military R&D has. (Read The Hubble Wars by Eric Chaisson, formerly of the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins, to see what I mean.) I'm not sure why that is, but there seems to be a whole lot more of "marking time until retirement" in civilian space than milspace, and regardless of one's views on the topic, I think figuring out why DARPA is so much more innovative than NASA would go a long way toward helping NASA do more good. I mean, even adaptive optics (the technology behind the latest generation of ground-based telescopes that see way better than even the Hubble) was a military development, but has benefited astrophysics immensely.

Maybe it's because NASA has gotten into the mode of "projects for the sake of projects", with actual results being less important. The scrapping of the Gemini and Apollo hardware in favor of the space shuttle comes to mind; we're now spending billions hoping to replicate the launch capability that we had and scrapped in the early 1970's. And then there's the ISS, a project which makes me wonder how history would have developed if Christopher Columbus had anchored the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria 190 miles off the coast of Portugal and then spent all his funds over the next 25 years marking time and resupplying them from shore, in order to "learn about long ocean voyages". Military projects, on the other hand, eventually hit a wall of reality if they don't work and don't go anywhere.

There are a lot of things I'd like to see NASA work toward. But I think there is a lot they can learn from military Skunk Works style R&D that would help them immensely.

It's good to see that some in NASA are openly challenging the entrenched "ain't never done it that way" mentality, so there is hope:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100346538
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_424YskAfew