Lacking a Strategy

The last attempt at a strategy was George Mueller's shuttle, the concept for which originated with Noordung in WWII, but which Mueller started talking about in 1968; virtually all of the great 60s leaders in manned space flight, by 1968 or 69, were in agreement that a flyback vehicle which could be reused in order to save on manufacturing costs was a necessity. It was a necesity because they needed something to replace Saturn and Apollo, which were unaffordable, and it was a necessity because they needed something to loft the modular components of space platforms since without a Saturn they had no other way. The Shuttle that was built wound up being pretty close to what was envisioned in terms of functionality, but the big problem was that it was too expensive and took too much time to turnaround between missions. In large measure because of the expense and preparation time, Shuttle never turned into the DC-3 it was intended to be. It was more like a Boeing 247; not really practical. The Vision of 2004 was an attempt at a strategy, and it is the best thing we have, but noone ever laid out the requisite steps within the Vision. The first step NASA should have turned to was an R&D effort, to use and improve upon what was learned on the Shuttle; the big strategic mistake was in not trying to improve on Shuttle's performance and reduce its expense by moving towards an improved Shuttle 2. I think that Admiral Steidle may have been on that path, but when Griffin came in he tossed it all aside in an effort to try and re-create Apollo. Apollo was never sustainable or affordable and it wasn't with Constellation either.

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