NASA has no Engine, and no Purpose

NASA has existed in a kind of directionless, motionless gray zone since the end of the moon missions.

During the Apollo days, NASA’s purpose was clear: send a man to the moon before the goddamn commies get there and turn the place into another freaking North Korea.

NASA kind of doddered along during the Space Shuttle days. Constructing the International Space Station (which is worthless) gave them some busy work to do. In the meantime, they sent robotic probes and took pictures of the stars, which was actually kind of interesting.

But the Space Shuttle days are coming to an end, and Bush 43 proposed sending men back to the Moon, and then flying to Mars. This would be expensive, but the expense would be spread out over decades, and it would give the bored engineers at NASA something to do. (The fact that it would create a lot of lucrative jobs and contracts in Florida and Texas was apparently incidental.) Also it would be really cool and would make China look like shit by comparison. Or something.

It doesn’t really seem clear if NASA will get the funding for a return to the Moon or a Mars-shot. And the fact is, it really shouldn’t. Going to a distant planet is pointless when it takes tens of thousands of barrels of increasingly precious fossil fuels to get there.

If NASA wants a future, they need to make the case for large research budgets for advanced propulsion systems like VASIMR. Combining these advanced, highly efficient, and just really cool electrical engines with a nuclear power source could make human spaceflight meaningful and exciting again. But don’t expect this system to come from the bloated and incompetent national space welfare system. This innovation can only come from the private sector space industry. Unfortunately, they are crippled by government regulations and red tape.