More on Elon Musk, and What is Wrong with NASA

Back in April I blogged a bit about Elon Musk, after learning a bit about this amazing entrepreneur in Wired magazine. So I was pleased to see the latest issue of Wired have a cover story titled Rocket Boom, which goes into more detail about Elon Musk's efforts to build privately-funded space rockets. It is a well-written piece, as it gives a glimpse of what his work is like in this field.

And another, shorter item in that issue is also worth reading: How NASA Screwed Up (And four ways to fix it). Author Gregg Easterbrook really makes clear the failings of NASA -- not just failed projects, but more importantly its misguided priorities for projects going forward. Consider the moon-base plan, being pushed by George Bush:

For a sense of how out of whack NASA priorities have become, briefly ponder that plan. Because the Apollo missions suggested there was little of pressing importance to be learned on the moon, NASA has not landed so much as one automated probe there in three decades. In fact, the rockets used by the Apollo program were retired 30 years ago; even space enthusiasts saw no point in returning to the lunar surface. But now, with the space station a punch line and the shuttles too old to operate much longer, NASA suddenly decides it needs to restore its moon-landing capability in order to build a "permanent" crewed base. The cost is likely to be substantial -- $6 billion is the annual budget of the space station, which is closer to Earth and quite spartan compared with what even a stripped-down moon facility would require. But set that aside: What will a moon base crew do? Monitor equipment -- a task that could easily be handled from an office building in Houston.

In 2004, former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, now an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin, calculated that NASA can place objects on the moon for $26,000 a pound. At that price, each bottle of water a crew member uncaps will cost the taxpayer $13,000. Even if the new moon rocket being designed by NASA cuts launch costs in half, as agency insiders hope, that's still $6,500 for one Aquafina (astronauts and moon base are extra). Prices like this quickly push the total construction bill for any serious facility into the hundreds of billions of dollars. A private company facing such numbers would conclude that a moon base is an absurd project -- at least until a fundamentally different way of reaching space is found -- and would put its capital into the development of new propulsion technologies. But NASA takes a cost-is-no-object approach that appeals only to those who personally benefit from the spending.

Although the article begins by laying out several projects that would be more rational for NASA to focus on than what it currently has as its priorities, I was glad to see the article end with the following emphasis on the need for a turn away from NASA and towards the private sector:

Given NASA's politicization, we should hope that the space industry evolves as aviation did — transitioning from ponderous government-run projects to mostly private-sector activities attuned to customer needs. That raises the question: Could entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos eventually put NASA out of business? Perhaps, but not for the next couple of decades — space has colossal economic barriers to entry. Given that NASA is sure to be around for a while, taxpayers should insist the space agency be recon figured to produce tangible benefits for all of us. With any luck, private space enterprise will eventually find success and begin to exert competitive market pressures on the government space program. NASA's success in putting men on the moon in the 1960s is one of history's enduring achievements. But it's the 21st century now — long past time for a new set of space priorities.