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Comment by rdoherty | Hacker News Reader

To me, this sounds like the "old NASA" that I read and heard about from the 60's. Limited time frame, small team and a focused goal. Is there a way we can get NASA back to that type of organization?

If we did that (and had some audacious goals), I think it would get the public interested in space travel again.

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By outsourcing NASA to the private sector (e.g. Space X and whoever else enters this potentially lucrative market) and allowing capitalist competition expose the bureaucratic fluff that NASA is composed of these days. Eventually, the giant NASA-yak will be shorn, and scientists will do work again.

At least, that's what I think.

I'm skeptical that merely privatizing NASA or really any other public sector agency would automatically remove bureaucratic fluff, and that bureaucratic fluff is such a gargantuan problem at NASA that removing it would cause a miraculous internal shift for the better. It strikes me as more of a libertarian utopian cure-all than a decision based on NASA's particular problems and objectives.

I wouldn't characterize myself as a libertarian, nor do I think that privatizing is a cure-all. You misrepresent me.

What I said and what you portray my comment as saying are very different; contracting with third parties != privatizing NASA.

If SpaceX delivers, they'll be delivering a lot more for a lot less money. I'm sorry that my use of the word competition set off your "libertarian alarm", but I can't see how anything but good is coming out of contracting with SpaceX.

If not bureaucratic fluff, what is to blame for the great success of organisations such as SpaceX while Nasa has done less with more?

Still, I concede that we must be cautious about potential silver bullets. Good point on the "libertarian utopian cure-all"

Maybe this perception exists because there is less for NASA to do. There's not a lot for astronauts to do in space until we have some kind of breakthrough in propulsion. It's too slow and expensive to get around the solar system until then.

So for now we put up satellites and telescopes, send out probes, help with the ISS, and... study the sky. These jobs get done with what we have now. What great mission would even require the kind of NASA that existed in the 60s? Please don't say Mars.

I agree. NASA, and most people, thrive on having a mission - especially a challenge.

Why not say Mars?

There's no point, other than flag planting.

I had the same thought. Even though the scope of this operation was pretty limited, the can-do! of the NASA folks made me smile. Simple or not (relative to, you know, sending human beings to space and back), that's a lot of guys to throw at this and it can't have been cheap. I'm proud a few cents of my taxes went to this project.

More on the man who has come to embody the 60's NASA you're thinking of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz

> I'm proud a few cents of my taxes went to this project.

Likewise. I was thinking about this recently, and this article is a great example. Disasters happen relatively rarely, and by involving American scientists, first responders, and military in assistance, we get disaster preparation experience, higher readiness, help people out, and build some goodwill and good relations around the world. Very much a win/win/win/win situation for all involved.

Essentially it's what german engineers built in the 60s. ;-)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahlbuschbombe

http://www.bergbaumuseum.de/web/Dahlbuschbombe

Wow, that's pretty close. English Translations:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl...

More on that particular mine collapse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lengede

I think it's inaccurate to think that the type of organisation that NASA was in the 1960s was purely a product of intrinsic factors. I'd think that the reason NASA was as it was during the 60's was because of the external circumstances it found itself in:

- a competitive race with the Soviet Union against a background of the cold war

- a specific and hard presidential goal of "landing a man on the moon..before the decade is out".

Where those external pressures are in place, it would be almost expected that any organisation could (and likely, would) become entrepreneurial and innovative. And the converse is even more true: absent the goals driving the organisation, bureaucratic friction will drag it to a halt.

Seriously. Seems to me it's the 'old NASA' that would pick a name like "the Escape Vehicle". The names NASA picks always strike some kind of chord of passion in me.

Your comment reminded me of the saying, "work expands to fill the time allocated to it." Which means, I think, that, approximately speaking, if you assume it will take 100 people 1 year to solve a certain problem then that is probably about how long it will take. But if you instead say we only have 5 people and 1 month then, surprise surprise, you'll also have a solution too. Speaking in general terms, of course. You tend to need better people and less bureaucracy and friction in order for smaller teams and smaller time windows to be just as effective.

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