The Top Science News

Plus: This week's One Question—"Should NASA Have Its Own Spaceship to Compete with SpaceX and Blue Origin?" [View in browser]( | [Become a member]( August 23, 2022   Did a friend forward this? [Subscribe here](. Good Morning! Here’s the top science news—plus this week’s One Question and related Nautilus stories [READ NAUTILUS](   DID YOU READ THIS? The Top Science News This Week   [Presolar Stardust in Asteroid Ryugu]( Some grains of dust from the near-Earth asteroid’s surface are older than our solar system. [The Astrophysical Journal Letters→](   [Historical Prevalence of Slavery Predicts Contemporary American Gun Ownership]( Researchers found, among other things, that feeling unsafe and county-level firearms ownership are more strongly linked in counties with a history of enslavement. [PNAS Nexus→](   [A Watermark, and ‘Spidey Sense,’ Unmask a Forged Galileo Treasure]( Historian Nick Wilding’s done it again, deducing that a document about Jupiter’s moons was not, in fact, scrawled by Galileo but faked by someone in the 20th century. [The New York Times→]( Experience the endless possibilities and deep human connections that science offers [SUBSCRIBE TODAY](   [Expand Your Knowledge]( Love to learn but short on time? Expand your knowledge in 15 minutes with [Blinkist](. Save 25% on Blinkist Premium with a 7-day trial and share with a friend for free. [Start Learning](   ONE QUESTION Should NASA Have Its Own Spaceship to Compete with SpaceX and Blue Origin? INTERVIEW BY BRIAN GALLAGHER One Question for [Lori Garver](, former Deputy Administrator of NASA (from 2009 to 2013) and author of Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age.   No. NASA’s Space Launch System was proposed back in 2010. If people had been honest about how long it would take, and how expensive it would be, to get the SLS ready to launch next week, they would not have proposed it, either. I remember when Boeing first came to me and said they could do this for $6 billion. I laughed. And then I said, “You cannot. How can you be lying like this to NASA, the public, Congress?” They claimed they weren’t. But the incentives were never there for these types of programs to produce the vehicle on time or on budget. We flew the Space Shuttle for 30 years at a cost of 3 to $4 billion a year. Each year it launched seven or eight times, which was well short of its goal of launching 40 to 50 times. Yet here we are, 40 years later, using the same engines. But now we’ve spent an additional $23 billion on the rocket, and another $20 billion on the Orion capsule. And it can only launch every other year, at first. NASA hopes to be able to launch it once a year. That’s not what you would call progress. When you add to that SpaceX’s [Starship](, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, which have new reusable technologies—I don’t think we are going to see the SLS launch for 30 years, as we saw with the Space Shuttle. The government will have to, at some point, recognize, “Hey, the public’s money could be better spent on technologies that are going to capitalize on reduced heavy-lift launch costs.” That should have been the goal all along. It should not be surprising that this is where we are after 12 years. NASA has, in many ways, become a victim of its own success. The Apollo program was so successful and attracted a huge cadre of people, the best and brightest in the land. And many people, the children and grandchildren of the Apollo generation, were attracted to NASA to do that exact thing—build a big rocket—even though that’s no longer a national need. It’s not lowering the cost to be sustainable. The way the contracts for SLS are structured, if companies are late on production and other deadlines, they get even more money. More and more members of Congress vote for the contracts to benefit their district. SLS was promised to fly by 2016 for a quarter of the cost. Science missions have gone off of SLS to other vehicles, because not only is it so expensive, since it can’t launch very often, [it is required for the planned lunar missions](, which utilize Starship. It seemed at the time like awarding SpaceX that contract was an acknowledgement that the current plan was not going to be sustainable. But since then, there’s been no acknowledgement of that in any way. In fact, they’re talking about ordering maybe another dozen Space Launch Systems. If I were NASA, I wouldn’t have boxed myself into this awkward position where you’re asking taxpayers to pay billions for something that the private sector can develop and is doing on their own. NASA should get back to leading in technologies that will advance U.S. capabilities—doing things that have never been done to support the goals of the nation. One of our greatest global challenges today is climate change. Being able to contribute more to our understanding of what is happening would be a very important goal for the agency.   Related Nautilus Stories   [TECHNOLOGY]( [The Profound Potential of Elon Musk’s New Rocket]( BY ROBERT ZUBRIN In the late afternoon of May 5, SpaceX’s Elon Musk tweeted, “Starship landing nominal!” [Continue reading →](   [ASTRONOMY]( [NASA Is on the Cusp of a New Era]( BY BRIAN GALLAGHER Jennifer Heldmann laughed when I pointed out that she used the word “unprecedented” five times in a recent paper. [Continue reading →](   [PHILOSOPHY]( [Why Colonizing the Galaxy Is the Highest Good]( BY SETH BAUM Ten years ago, I dropped out of my graduate program in electrical engineering. [Continue reading →](   [ASTRONOMY]( [How NASA’s Mission to Pluto Was Nearly Lost]( BY ALAN STERN & DAVID GRINSPOON On the Saturday afternoon of July 4, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons Pluto mission leader Alan Stern was in his office near the project Mission Control Center, working, when his cell phone rang. [Continue reading →](   [ASTRONOMY]( [NASA Is Going to Dip This Cup Into the Sun’s Corona]( BY JUSTIN NOBEL When Justin Kasper, a professor of space physics at the University of Michigan, daydreams, he visualizes a spacecraft the size of a Toyota Prius speeding through the sun’s corona—a cloud of superheated plasma. [Continue reading →](   Today’s newsletter was written by Brian Gallagher   BECOME A SUBSCRIBER [School Is for Big Ideas and Unique Perspectives]( In anticipation of the new school year, Nautilus is offering [50% off gifts and personal subscriptions](. Nautilus is where you can find science's big ideas. We provide you with important news, unique perspectives, and expert insights from those who excel in their fields. [Share this access]( and more with a friend with a gift subscription to Nautilus. [Subscribe Now](   [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( Copyright © 2022 NautilusNext, All rights reserved. You were subscribed to the newsletter from nautil.us. Our mailing address is: NautilusNext 360 W 36th Street, 7S, New York, NY 10018 To view in your browser, [click here]( . Don't want to hear from us anymore? Click here to [unsubscribe]( .