Commercial Space: Spirit of Apollo Or Spirit of Solyndra?

The Space Shuttle could have been considerably more efficient, had the budget for it not been slashed many times over. Nuclear propulsion was entirely possible 50 years ago, but this thing called an Arms Race made it politically a no-go. Had there been a more enlightened attitude on both sides of the curtain, we'd have colonies on Saturn's moons by now, never mind Mars. Ion drives make extended-mission space probes a real possibility, but the lack of isotopes to make nuclear energy cells (due to a total lack of decent nuclear facilities in the US) means that the probes will still have propellant long after the batteries are dead.

Ok, launch systems. ARLA is a real possibility for low-mass satellites. TAR is a real possibility for larger systems. NASA is experimenting with ski-jump assisted launchers but I doubt that will go anywhere - Congress keeps slashing the budget. Blended-Wing Body aircraft could have been released by NASA by 2010, but Congress - guess what! - slashed the budget and the program was killed off.

NASA could do a hell of a lot better, but it can't do it for free. The current rocket program is a mistake - NASA is an R&D facility, a discovery facility, not a mass production facility. Multiply NASA's budget by 10 or 20, build it a dedicated reactor for producing the necessary isotopes for batteries, devolve it as a quango so it has less political interference, and you'll see what it is capable of. All without breaking a single law of physics.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/zvH1DOxV-UU/commercial-space-spirit-of-apollo-or-spirit-of-solyndra

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