us media: nasa, 66 years old, is in a state of decline
2024-09-12
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reference news reported on september 12according to the stars and stripes website on september 10, nasa, which lasted 66 years, has shown its age. prominent engineers have retired. others have turned to higher-paying jobs in the private aerospace industry. the buildings are old, and their maintenance has not been carried out as planned. the apollo era - along with the huge taxpayer investment during this period - has become a distant memory.
the agency is currently undertaking a variety of complex tasks with an inadequate budget.
this may be an unsustainable path for nasa, jeopardizing its long-term success. that's the conclusion of a comprehensive report titled "nasa at a crossroads," written by a committee of aerospace experts and released on the 10th by the national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine.
the report argues that nasa has prioritized near-term missions and lacked strategic thinking. in other words, the space agency is not paying enough attention to the future.
norman augustine, the lead author of the report and retired ceo of lockheed martin, said on the 10th that nasa's focus on current missions is understandable given the rigors of space operations, but "people often overlook factors that may not be so glamorous but will determine future success."
one solution to nasa's problems would be to get more money from congress, he said. but that might be hard to come by. in that case, he said, the agency would need to consider canceling or delaying expensive missions to invest in more mundane, but strategically important, agency needs, such as technology development and workforce training.
augustine said he worries that if nasa relies too much on the private sector to develop emerging technologies, it could lose its own expertise.
“it’s going to be hard to hire innovative, creative engineers,” he said. “innovative, creative engineers don’t want to be in the business of supervising other people’s work.”
nasa administrator bill nelson thanked the augustine commission for its report. "the purpose of this report is consistent with our current efforts to ensure we have the infrastructure, workforce and technology nasa needs for decades to come," he said in a statement released by nasa. "we will continue to work hard to address the commission's recommendations and advance our cutting-edge work on earth, in the sky and in space."
after passing the chips and science act in 2022, congress directed nasa to sponsor a national academy study to review the agency's long-term goals and mission planning. the 204-page report released on the 10th was compiled over 14 months and 25 committee meetings.
the report is not a scathing tirade. it strikes a paternal tone. it praises the agency — with a budget of about $25 billion — for its accomplishments while urging it to make more prudent decisions and develop a long-term strategy.
nasa is on a number of ambitious missions. it has sent numerous robotic probes into the solar system and interstellar space. astronauts have been in orbit for more than 20 years at a stretch. the most ambitious program, the artemis program, aims to return astronauts to the moon in just a few years. and in the longer term, nasa hopes to send astronauts to mars.
but there is one indisputable fact in the aerospace industry: space exploration is a difficult business. the new report argues that nasa's ambitions are not matched by its budget and it needs to focus on basic issues, such as repairing aging infrastructure and retaining internal talent.
"nasa's overall physical infrastructure has far exceeded its design lifespan," the report said.
on july 24, the rocket core of nasa's artemis 2 project was transported to the assembly building at the kennedy space center. (afp)
