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Date: Mon, 17 Dec 1990 02:28:44 -0500 (EST)
Subject: SPACE Digest V12 #674

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 12 : Issue 674

Today's Topics:
		      Re: Future Headlines Today
			Re: Where is GALILEO?

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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 Dec 90 03:20:39 GMT
From: zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!sequent!crg5!szabo@beaver.cs.washington.edu  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: Future Headlines Today

In article <1990Dec10.203703.3385@dirtydog.ima.isc.com> suitti@ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti) writes:


>[ 1) Hubble and 2) Astro were not failures ]
>...
>3) Challenger was not a failure.  It was a tragedy to be sure. 

This is great rhetoric!  You should apply for a job at NASA.  
They pay people to post stuff like this to the net.  "Look how many 
parts malfunctioned, but if you count it like *this*, we still got 90% 
of our science!  NASA -- we prove that, no matter how many things go 
wrong, customers are so ingenious they can get *anything* to work!
NASA -- where even a tragedy is success!"  :-) :-) :-)


>...
>NASA may have enough of a paper trail to
>satisfy the Baldrige Award, however, and it might be surprising
>how it would rate.  Customer definition may be difficult.

:-) :-) :-)  "NASA wins Baldridge award after Challenger, Hubble,
and Astro bring immense satisfaction their customers.  Schoolteachers
and astronomers lavishly praise the agency, declaring that that NASA's
quality is well worth money, knowledge and life itself.  'American
taxpayers can be proud to have spent billions just for us',
said an overawed astronomer after a 20-hour session programming image 
cleanup for Hubble.  'NASA quality just blows me away', opined a 
schoolteacher.  'NASA *is* the space program', declared NASA's proud 
chairman, Richard Truly, upon recieving the award.  'We want to show 
taxpayers and the world the future of American quality.'"


>In engineering (as opposed to production), there is really only
>one alternative to failure - do not try.  For NASA, this is an
>unacceptable alternative.

Actually, NASA is doing quite well putting this alternative into
practice.  You don't need to *build* a space station to get 
funding for it, after all -- just come out with a few nifty 
CAD animations.  "NASA wins Baldridge Award for Space Station 
redesign.  Microgravity scientists and astronauts praise the
agency for 'showing pretty pictures instead of actually making us
use that thing.  NASA pays attention to the customer.'"  :-0


>Success can not be achieved without
>failure, except in trivial cases, and even then not without tons
>of work.

NASA, in their never-ending quest for new knowledge, has discovered
something more: that *failure* can be achieved with failure.  And tons of
work.  Amazing!  What will those bright boys come up with next?  :=) 


>NASA needs stable funding more than anything else. 

Show me an organization with stable funding and I'll show you an 
organization on the dole.  There is no such thing as "stable funding" in 
the real word (*especially* in the private sector), only in the whining 
of NASA administrators.


>I'd vote for
>giving NASA a fixed, say, $5x10^9, annual budget, and specific
>science and capability goals with no deadlines.

Tell you what, if you give me $5e9 per year (until the Heat Death, 
since there are no deadlines :-) , I promise I will discover 
*everything there is to know about the Universe* and spread 
*mankind across the stars*!  Of course, you must account
for inflation, and fund me come recession or war, 'cause if you miss
the budget by a penny I'll whine "you're cutting my budget!  you're 
cutting my budget!" and blow my rockets up.  If I don't come up with 
anything for a billion years or so, don't worry, we're in it for the 
"long term".  I've also got some real estate in Florida, they used to 
launch Saturn V's there.  Really cheap!  :-)

BTW, you'd have to cut NASA's budget by 2/3 to get $5e9.  I'm in favor 
of your proposal.


>Congress would
>not be allowed to alter funding or delete goals.  Congress could
>require some sort of accountability.

How about a source of funding other than Congress?  What, nobody willing
to *give* or *invest* billions of dollars in NASA for one of those 
successful, quality missions?  What a shame.  Somebody should pass a 
law about this.


-- 
Nick Szabo			szabo@sequent.com
"We live and we learn, or we don't live long" -- Robert A. Heinlein
The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any
organization I may be affiliated with.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Dec 90 18:43:55 GMT
From: bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu  (RAMontante)
Subject: Re: Where is GALILEO?

smb@ulysses.att.com (Steven Bellovin) <14107@ulysses.att.com> :
| I saw an AP story noting that it [Galileo] managed to photograph a piece of
| the far side of the moon that had been missed by all previous lunar missions.


At last!  All these years, wondering if *just maybe* those car keys really
are up there after all....

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End of SPACE Digest V12 #674
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