Silence killing NASA ---nobody wants to fix problem--including Romney/Ryan

Credit: nasaproblems.com

Silence Killing NASA
Don A. Nelson
Retired NASA Aerospace Engineer ~ Aerospace Consultant   Contact: nasaproblems@yahoo.com  
August 2012
There is a deadly silence from the aerospace community and media as NASA senior management continues to fund their ruinous Space Launch System program (SLS). It does not require rocket science to know that the SLS is not, as NASA management claims, safe, affordable, or sustainable. Even if NASA had unlimited funds for the SLS, it has a fatal flaw. The SLS does not have any commercial return to earth payload capability. Commerce is the mandatory catalyst to sustain any space transportation system. Without commercial support any deep space transportation system will fail. Government funding serves only the development phase of any space transportation systems. To have sustainability there must be return on investment. The SLS does not have any commercial or even military application. It is nothing more than another wasteful government job’s program!

To imply that the SLS is a Mars human transportation is a gross misrepresentation of its limited capabilities.  By NASA’s own estimations it will take 15 to 20 launches of the largest (130 mt) launcher to orbit enough payloads for one manned Mars mission. So why is this budget breaking monster still being funded. Why isn’t there a roar of protests calling for the cancellation of this money pit? NASA employees who challenge the SLS management are labeled as not being team players. Contractor employees do what they are told. NASA oversight organizations do not conduct independent investigations, but reply on what they are told by NASA management. NASA only feasible and affordable option for a deep space transportation system was to privatize the space shuttle and develop a space based cruiser for deep space operations. However, managers rejected the privatized shuttle to save their civil service launch operations and in the process forced thousands of shuttle contractors to the unemployment lines. Members of Congress and the President are for the most part only concerned with the NASA community votes they can muster for their next election. So there is only silence as NASA slips into what is rapidly becoming an unrecoverable death spiral. In too many ways NASA mirrors what is happening to our nation.

Now is the time to: “Speak out…or forever suffer the consequences of remaining silent!”