My suspicion at this point, as Dan Goldin announces his resignation, is that NASA is in fact already dead, but just doesn't know it yet. Certainly, the government's answer to a space program has completely lost its way. It goes nowhere, slowly and at great and expanding expense.

For all intents and purposes, mankind has successfully flown exactly one model of "spaceship." All the others have been nothing more than ferries and tugs, moving things around the marina that is low earth orbit.

The Apollo service and command modules together comprised the only vehicle to leave the marina and plow the high seas of space, albeit with the aid of another tugboat, the Saturn SIV-B, to get it past the jetty of earth's gravity well.

Ultimately this design failed, because of several shortcomings. Obviously, it was too small and underpowered. Each one could fly only a single mission. And maybe most crippling, it tried to do too much. Attached to the Saturn V stack, it acted as the ferry to earth orbit. Then it had to ferry the crew back to the surface of earth when the mission was done. What if we had instead built ONE moonship? A single Saturn V could have orbited it, very much like Skylab. It could have been larger, supporting longer missions. It could at the same time have been simpler, not requiring launch and reentry hardware and software.

Time to go to the moon?

Ok, launch an expendable with the LEM and some fuel to the moonship. Then launch a stripped down ferry with the astronauts (a three seat Gemini could have done the trick).

Dock, go to the moon, return, ferry reenters, moonship remains in orbit for the next mission. Hard to say what this would have cost compared to the Apollo program we mounted instead. But in the end we still would have had that moonship in orbit, ready to go somewhere. I suppose there are arguments to be made against this approach, but if we are to return to human exploration we really will need something more along these lines. We aren't going to Mars with a do-it-all spaceship.

We need to think Enterprise. Yes, that one. Interplanetary though instead of interstellar. Very modular, like the object-oriented paradigm used in computer programming. Each section specialized and replaceable. The habitation module should be rotatable, for artificial gravity. The power system should probably be nuclear, like a submarine.

The Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) has proven its reliability, and would provide plenty of vacuum thrust to get a mission out of the earth's gravity well.

The addition of Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) engines could greatly shorten mission times while efficiently using propellant during interplanetary cruise, and would also help shield astronauts from radiation hazards.

Add an aeroshell so that we can use a planet's atmosphere for braking into orbit and we save more fuel and can get there even faster. Dock a fuel tank or two and you've got a real spaceship. We might consider training an at least semi-permanent crew (know anyone named Kirk?), while leaving space for plenty of passengers (a.k.a. scientists). A shakedown flight to the moon would get things going. Then it's off to Mars.

Don't bother with the manned landing yet, just get into orbit, send down a whole fleet of unmanned probes, and collect the data in real time. Sending a couple of robots every two years is too slow, too complicated, and in the end probably costs almost as much. Drop a fuel tank on Phobos to use as a future base. Come back to earth for a little shore-leave, re-supply, then off to Venus. Sample the atmosphere. Investigate terraforming potential. Whatever. EXPLORE!

When not on a mission, we leave our spaceship in a high orbit, safely above the bulk of the orbiting trash that might damage it (Another mission we should consider is cleaning up LEO space. But we can talk about that another time).

Now this is starting to smell like a SPACE AGE!

Now, who builds this thing? Is this a NASA project? How much is it costing them to put an underpowered, undermanned, non-propelled string of tin cans into orbit? I simply refuse to believe a properly managed organization (private corporation?) couldn't build our spaceship for a LOT less.

Hey, there are a few individuals who, judiciously liquidated of some assets and aided by other fundraising efforts, probably could pull this off themselves! We probably do need a centralized organization to do this. Not government though. Right now there are private space ventures underway (The Planetary Society is building a solar sail for instance).

If all these disparate efforts could be combined under a single masthead, guided by the hand of an experienced corporate leader, maybe we'd finally get somewhere.

you can email Joe via [email protected]

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