If NASA had a reputation bar, where would it be at?

[Kryten]

Mars One may have been a scam, but it shows that there is a public will to colonize.

Does it f***. They had less than 5,000 compete applications.

[Zucal]

They had less than 5,000 compete applications.

They quietly claimed it. Who knows, there may be even less than that, the number of applications they physically displayed was a little over 2,000.

[billbobjebkirk]

Note that NASA only succeeded at Apollo due to the singleminded dedication to one goal for all of it's manned spaceflight systems to the point where they sacrificed any form of sustainability.

[UmbralRaptor]

I'm not sure how giving us our first closeup views of Mercury, Vesta, Ceres, Venus (surface), Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, several small asteroids, scores of moons, finding ~1000 exoplanets, landing rovers (and doing in situ analysis of samples) on Mars, mapping the entire sky in microwave, mid-IR, near-IR, UV, Xray, and gamma ray, extensive earth/sun observations, and researching forward swept wings, thrust vectoring for aircraft, post-stall aerodynamics, hypersonic flight, and aerospike nozzles counts as nothing after Apollo.

And this leaves out lots of things like Hubble...

[ChrisSpace]

Why? In less than a decade we've had Huygens (Cassini too owes a lot to Italy), Mars Express (Beagle 2 was a British thing, not really ESA), Rosetta-Philae, Venus Express and maybe something else I'm forgetting of (such as IXV). Next up we'll have the incredible LISA Pathfinder, Bepi-Colombo, Euclid, Solar Orbiter and especially the massive ExoMars program and the JUICE mission to Jupiter's moons which is a lot ahead of NASA's Europa Clipper or whatever it will be called! It's true that ESA has never been involved in designing manned spacecraft or anything similar, but that's mainly because ESA is just a group of very different members, we aren't a single state or anything like that.

All the achievements you mentioned happened a long time ago. Even rosetta, while completing its mission very recently, was funded, built and launched back in the ESA's golden age. Now Europe simply has too many other problems and distractions to worry about space.

Moreover, NASA worse than Russia? True, Roscosmos is the only way we can get up to the ISS currently, but it has unbelievable corruption scandals which will be very difficult to cancel out.

The two are only 100-199 points apart. And Russia puts a larger fraction of its economy into the space program, and uses it as a good source of national pride, since it is one of the few things they do better than America/Europe

Also, India is going great in my opinion. Why 0? It has done beautiful things at Mars on its first try, and it tested its new heavy launcher last year.

India's space program has two main problems. Firstly, it is not very well known compared with Rocosmos or NASA. Second, the nation has a lot of poor and starving people who strongly think the Indian government should be helping them more rather than exploring space.

Also, you forgot about Japan. I'd be interested in knowing what you think about it.

Probably near India, maybe a bit above. Japan has a very prosperous space program for it's size and budget, yet at the same time Japan has many more important issues to focus on, such as an ageing population, a declining population, demographic problems, and two nuclear-armed enemies to the west.

[Frida Space]

All the achievements you mentioned happened a long time ago. Even rosetta, while completing its mission very recently, was funded, built and launched back in the ESA's golden age. Now Europe simply has too many other problems and distractions to worry about space.

Well, half of the missions I've mentioned (BepiColombo, LISA Pathfinder, MEX, VEX, IXV, but especially ExoMars and JUICE!) still have to happen, so they're receiving funds, they are being built and they are being prepared for launch right now. I personally believe (but that's just my opinion) that ESA's golden age has just started and will only get better in the next years.

The two are only 100-199 points apart. And Russia puts a larger fraction of its economy into the space program, and uses it as a good source of national pride, since it is one of the few things they do better than America/Europe.

I agree, Russia spends a hell lot of money on its space program, but I would say it's more for military reasons than national pride: you can relate almost any Russian rocket/spacecraft to something military. True, things are similar in the US and everywhere else (maybe except ESA), but in Russia it's a whole different story. Don't take my words as an insult towards Russia: half of my family lives in Moscow, so I love Russia.

India's space program has two main problems. Firstly, it is not very well known compared with Rocosmos or NASA. Second, the nation has a lot of poor and starving people who strongly think the Indian government should be helping them more rather than exploring space.

True, it's kinda unpopular amongst most Indians themselves, however for every dollar you spend in space you get many more back, usually. The same thing was said a few weeks back when Mexico lost a several hundred-thousand-dollars satellite, MexSat/Centenario 1, but luckily it was insured. I personally support India's space vision.

Probably near India, maybe a bit above. Japan has a very prosperous space program for it's size and budget, yet at the same time Japan has many more important issues to focus on, such as an ageing population, a declining population, demographic problems, and two nuclear-armed enemies to the west.

Interesting. I very much like Japan's space program because of superb and unprecedented missions such as Hayabusa; on the other side, they don't seem very lucky with planetary exploration (see Nozomi and Akatsuki), which I think should lower they're reputation bar a bit.

[ChrisSpace]

Well, half of the missions I've mentioned (BepiColombo, LISA Pathfinder, MEX, VEX, IXV, but especially ExoMars and JUICE!) still have to happen, so they're receiving funds, they are being built and they are being prepared for launch right now. I personally believe (but that's just my opinion) that ESA's golden age has just started and will only get better in the next years.

I am doubtful for Europe's success in space, largely since the entire continent is losing power. From the start of the renaissance to the end of WWII, Europe has been the political and economic center of the world. Now that power is rapidly going away due to population declines, resource scarcity and increasing political fragmentation. Additionally, Europe will soon have to deal with extreme climate change, millions of climate refugees from Africa, Cold War II and increasing destabilization. Other than the Nordics, Europe is weakening by the year.

I personally support India's space vision.

So do I. in my first forum blog post I predicted the three big space powers of the 21st century to be America (largely because of SpaceX), China and India. India in particular has a high potential as it has good relations with America, among many other reasons. For more info about this topic, see my blog post.

Interesting. I very much like Japan's space program because of superb and unprecedented missions such as Hayabusa; on the other side, they don't seem very lucky with planetary exploration (see Nozomi and Akatsuki), which I think should lower they're reputation bar a bit.

They are doing quite well for such a troubled nation.

[Kuu Lightwing]

Just pointing out that I think in Russia there's not that many people who really care about space. The national pride thing is kinda dumbed down to "we were first to space" and "America uses Russian rocket engines". Which rocket engines are they and what rockets do use them(and why) - they usually don't know. I'm not sure, if Roscosmos gets and spends that much money, but I'm a bit too lazy to find out how much money they spend on what, so, I might be mistaken on that. But still, I don't think space is a good source of the national pride in Russia, even if you don't take into account recent Proton and Soyuz failures.

[78stonewobble]

Can't really blame NASA for the tight budgets and decisions in policy shift. That blame rests squarely on politicians.

Can blame NASA for certain executions of plans, policy and too optimistic planning. Ie. apollo 1, challenger, hubble main mirror problem, columbia, James Webb telescope price and so on...

PS: Offcourse accidents will happen and mistakes will be made, but to varying degrees some things are preventable and possibly should have been prevented.

[Frybert]

"My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch? Next April?"

“It doesn’t make sense to us that a piece of debris could be the root cause of the loss of Columbia and its crew.â€Â

[Jonboy]

"My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch? Next April?"

“It doesn’t make sense to us that a piece of debris could be the root cause of the loss of Columbia and its crew.â€Â

People seem to forget just how devastatingly NASA was condemned by the investigations after Challenger and Columbia. And the whole culture of ignoring catastrophic engineering/safety "because it hasn't caused a failure yet" was not improved at all between those two disasters.

So if we're talking about NASA's unmanned achievements, I'd say that their reputation bar is very high. We've successfully explored every planet in the solar system with relatively cheap probes.

As far as the manned program since Apollo, I'd say their reputation should be pretty low. Real life is not KSP, you can't launch humans into space on death traps just to "see what happens". I'll find it hard to trust NASA with manned spaceflight until they exhibit a serious change in culture (which I see no evidence of to date).

[78stonewobble]

People seem to forget just how devastatingly NASA was condemned by the investigations after Challenger and Columbia. And the whole culture of ignoring catastrophic engineering/safety "because it hasn't caused a failure yet" was not improved at all between those two disasters.

So if we're talking about NASA's unmanned achievements, I'd say that their reputation bar is very high. We've successfully explored every planet in the solar system with relatively cheap probes.

As far as the manned program since Apollo, I'd say their reputation should be pretty low. Real life is not KSP, you can't launch humans into space on death traps just to "see what happens". I'll find it hard to trust NASA with manned spaceflight until they exhibit a serious change in culture (which I see no evidence of to date).

Death trap, is a pretty harsh word... I think most astronauts / kosmonauts accept quite a bit of risk, as part of the job. The problem here being that it was easily forseeable problems or known problems, that got ignored. Which offcourse happens other places in life too...

[Windspren]

I think NASA has two problems which both hurt its reputation a lot:

1.) Right now they look like they lack a sense of purpose. Apollo era NASA had a mandate to do whatever it had to in order to put a man on the moon. Now we kinda sorta maybe have a vague plan to put people on Mars at some point in the not so immediate future (we think?)...

2.) NASA is in dire need of some showmanship. Back in the Apollo era, NASA did useful science but didn't use that as their hook for engaging the public -- little boys weren't inspired by lunar geology, they were inspired by men on the moon driving buggies and being awesome. Now look at modern day NASA... They spend most of their time harping on things like climate studies and propulsion systems. Because nothing inspires school kids like higher resolution infrared cloud imaging and improved efficiency for ion thrusters! Yay ions!

It's chicken and the egg -- fixing either of these problems will bring in more funds, but it also takes funds to make either happen.

It's a shame, but most of NASA's glory can only be found by looking through the lens of nostalgia.

This.

[FishInferno]

Congress wants to make money through NASA, but they are reluctant to make the initial payment.