[FPSPACE] Re: NASA Administrator

[Jonathan McDowell]

Jens said:
> duplicate the Russian...
 I would say back up rather than duplicate. I'm no
Jim Oberg (hi, Jim...) but I do think there are aspects
of the NASA/RAKA interaction which need a little more
assertiveness on the NASA side (and other aspects
in which NASA needs to back off, too... I get the impression
that they invite the Russians in because they know how
to do things cheaply and then expect them to generate
the same mountain of paperwork as the US...)

> Apollo

Exactly, no Apollo type throwaway effort. I think
NASA would benefit across the board from steadily
funded groups in each discipline (perhaps two per discipline,
for competition) being pretty much let loose with the
goal of - ok, here's X amount of money, you can do what
you like with that much per year adjusted for inflation.
Right now with big projects followed by gaps we tend
to lose the critical expertise. Again, you have to balance
a little bit of stability versus the dangers of stagnation
if there's no pressure on the teams, but I think we need
to veer more to stability a little.

However, this is getting a little OT... in response to
Phil's posting, btw, I also have been wondering about
Tsiklon and Dnepr. My guess is that RVSN wants to dump
Yuzhnoe entirely and was hoping that something like the
light Angara would be ready... it will be interesting
to see what happens. 

 jonathan