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Published online 4 April 2008 |
Nature
| doi:10.1038/news.2008.737
Corrected online: 4 April 2008
News: Briefing
Get me to the Moon on time
Vibration problems may slow down NASA timetable.
NASA's space shuttle is set to take off on its last mission in 2010, so the agency is busy designing a replacement rocket and capsule in time to send astronauts to the Moon by 2020. But recent developments suggest that there may be delays.
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Why? Why the engineering problems? Why is it we're having this kind of trouble, and it's going to take well over a decade to get back to the moon? Chances are, the effort will be ditched anyway. They must have used up all that "right stuff" they had back in the day, there isn't any left to be found at NASA. Or maybe it's simply because the Nazi rocket engineers are all gone. I cannot believe a problem as basic as resonance is even cropping up to such a degree as to warrant a mention in Nature or anyplace else. Seems we were spending money on plenty besides NASA back then too, so don't start making excuses based on our Iraq adventure... what I believe is we're not going to the moon anyway. The Chinese will be, for sure.
Professional management is about process not product - Mil-Spec, Six Sigma, ISO900x. 1970 onward NASA streamlined its managerial productivity by producing little beyond management. The Space Scuttle's foam shedding problem disappears by adding a teeny bit of fiberglass or carbon fiber to the final blow. Who wants that? (Can NASA plan to study Xydar and Spectra before the Space Scuttle is scuttled?) NASA invented a $million pressurized pen with shear-thinning ink that wrote at any angle and in micro-gee. Cosmonauts used pencils.
Schwartz, the story about the space pen is a false urban legend. Initially, Astronauts used pens too. This was a minor problem because the led would break and float around, get sucked into your lungs, etc. Also the lead and wood are very flammable in high oxygen atmospheres. An individual, not NASA, payed for all research in the space pen. After he developed it, he approached NASA and sold them pens. Aside from gaining a valuable customer, this lead to a nice advertising campaign. NASA did not waste money on the space pen! Notice that the advertisement the space pens have is not "developed by NASA" but "used by astronauts".