Rick Tumlinson Gives A NASA Update (heh!)

04/30/05 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

(Rand can type faster than I can)

Rick is giving an update on changes at NASA given his view from the roadmapping committee and other interactions. “We have good friends on the inside”. Now there's a new Administrator and some of the people he's bringing in are of the O'Neillean point of view. (Personally I find the O'Niel, Sagan, von Braun distinction insufficient due to O'Niel never getting into economics.)

Lots of people at NASA are satisfied just being part of space. Some of the new people are interested in opening it up.

Rick says, “I know things look like they're going backward. Being centralized and going all '60s' on everything. But that's just for the mandated items. Just the CEV. ” But he thinks that Griffin is going to create a “non-traditional programs office” for everything that's not part of the short term mandates.

Rick sent Griffin (among other conversations) the SFF's Frontier Enabling Test. Griffin's response (and quoting) “I don't disagree at all with your FET goal. ”(Ed: sorry, I couldn't type that fast). The gist of it was “I have to deliver a government program using government money. To do otherwise is malfeasance. The key is what kind of commercial sector is left behind once he's delivered on what he must deliver. Rick thinks one of those things might be orbital fuel depots.

But Rick still says, "Dont' trust and verify”.

His other comment: Pay your taxes! (refernece to the Walt Anderson issue)

Re: the margarita pump. It had a very good ISP….

Other points he tries to make: evangelize, but don't oversell and use facts. And stop the trash talking about others ideas/capabilities. Let's work on building each other up and work together where we can.

And we have to kill ITAR… (thunderous applause)

Rick is personally working on talking to politicos about “port authority” ways of thinking about ISS and lunar resources at the very beginning… Also the idea of prize based contracts where the prize is a lunar lease that can be sub-leased. “Catalytic contingency contracts”…

And lastly: build and fly! And make sure everyone knows about it.