Or anywhere else. A leaked NASA report has apparently tossed a whole lot of cold water on the Bush administration's proposed post-Shuttle space program as being little more than an effort "designed to mollify Congress by keeping almost every worker in the dying Space Shuttle program in his present job, performing the same task in the same factory in the same politician's district."
The spacecraft is too big, the shuttle technology cannot be applied, the choice of fuels is all wrong, and "[t]here isn't any magic technology or management trick that will make it possible to fly double-Apollo missions on a half-Apollo budget."
I've been fascinated in the space program since I was a tiny child, and still think that if government must pay the salaries of aerospace engineers (there's nothing the government must do), I'd rather have them figuring out ways of sending people to the moon and getting them back rather than building new and more lethal weapons of mass destruction.
But it is impossible to justify men in space as government work.
IF it must be done, the answer is simple -- ground the shuttles now, forever (they're going to make really nice museum pieces), and contract out with Energia to use better-designed Soyuz modules and the expected Kliper replacement. Energia, given its limited resources, is acting more like a commercial firm anyway. And the Soviets, given their limited finances, had to build simpler spacecraft.
A version of Soyuz, first designed 40 years ago, is still flying. Originally built to take Soviet men to the moon (an effort that failed because it was also overly complicated), it proved a better and more lasting design. Largely by accident.
Americans, like Romans, are essentially engineers. We build things and solve problems. When the government takes the lead, we think we have access to virutally unlimited economic resources, and tend to create overly complex and over-engineered systems that revel in their decadent affluence. Government engineering, for any number of reasons, rarely appreciates simplicity. Complex engineered systems, especially those expected to do all things, can fail in the most unexpected ways. Only limitations -- whether financial, engineering, or physical -- truly allow designers, builders and entrepreneurs to focus their minds and do the best with what they have on hand. That's why the future of people in space is not with government efforts -- American, Russian or Chinese -- but with the likes of Spaceship One and what comes after.
The reviewer says its best:
As long as we use throw-away vehicles powered by rocket engines, space travel will be extremely expensive. If we aren't willing to pay for a real space program, we should get out of the game and stop wasting our money.
