October 13, 2007

NASA and Enterprise Architecture

First all of all let me say that NASA and its people are totally awesome.

On July 20, 1969, the human race accomplished its single greatest technological achievement of all time when a human first set foot on another celestial body.” (NASA)

The trip to from the earth to the moon is approximately 240,000 miles!! (adapted from Wikipedia)

“Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin spent a total of 21 hours on the Moon, two-and-a-half of them outside the landing module. A further 10 astronauts traveled to the Moon in another six missions with the final manned lunar landing, Apollo 17, completed in December 1972.” (adapted from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/)

On 20 September, 2005, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced a New Spaceship Designed for Travel to Moon and Mars. Griffin defended the $104 billion dollar lunar program, saying it is intended to make President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration a reality. The price of the new lunar program will be spread out over 13 years and adjusted for inflation represents about 55 percent of what the Apollo space program cost in the 1970s. (adapted from globalsecurity.org)

Question:
Why haven’t we been able to send man back to the moon (or to other planets in the last 35 years)? And why do we need to invest another $104 billion to do something that we should already know how to do? Finally, if we were able to go to the moon before the unbelievable technological advances of the last 35 years, why can’t we do it today?

Honest answer:
I don’t really know.

Hypothetical answers:
  • The alien technology that we acquired to make the trips to the moon has either been depleted or destroyed by the Russians. (Ha ha ha)
  • User-centric EA wasn’t around 35 years ago, and therefore, the business and technical processes, information, and means of governance weren’t well documented and have been lost to mankind, and now we need to recreate the whole darn thing (hopefully not).


Barring another Roswell alien landing, we will have to thank the Clinger-Cohen Act for helping us ensure that this critical (and expensive) information is better documented going forward.


Share/Save/Bookmark

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The U.S. hasn't gone back because Congress hasn't been willing to spend money on going back. Congress hasn't done this because there's been no demand from the American people to do so.

There WAS a demand during the time of Sputnik and Gagarin, when the Russians were "ahead of the U.S." in space.

Once the Gemini flights demonstrated long duration flight, space walks, rendezvous and docking, etc., Americans knew they were ahead. NASA's funding was axed. Production of the Saturn 5 was ended, with only those in the pipeline being completed. The space program coasted on fumes through the moon landings.

There just hasn't been a demand for lunar exploration since, that would make congress fund a new trip. Watch Apollo 13; you'll see how even by then the TV networks had lost interest, putting the space program back on the air only when astronauts were in trouble.

As for losing the expertise to go back, there's good news. Things were well documented. To save money, the new command module and is using a design updated from the old one. The new launchers are a mix of shuttle solid rocket lower stages and updated Apollo-era engines in the upper stages.

Until a few years ago, many people in the space industry thought that the Saturn V plans had all been purposely destroyed, and all the jigs for bending metal, scrapped. As it turns out, the plans still exist. The jigs were in storage at NASA's Michaud fabrication facility. At the end of production they even sat some technicians in front of cameras to pass on their knowledge and experience to the future.

Roger Strong
Winnipeg, Canada