Are Detailed NASA Designs Open to the Public?

[Hanno the Navigator]

Hello everyone,

NASA being a governmental agency, is it possible to see details of their designs, beyond the pretty graphics? It doesn't necessarily have to be on the internet.

For example, is there any way for someone (a US citizen) to view the design of some electronic circuit installed on a MER all the way to the resistor and capacitor level?

Hanno.

[djellison]

Almost certainly not. ITAR regulations mean that any details technical info regarding launch vehicles, spacecraft etc. are out of the public domain.

If you look on Yahoo groups for something called 'space modelers' - those guys use the FOIA to get some nice overview drawings of spacecraft. Detailed PCB stuff...not going to happen.

Doug

[neilzero]

Perhaps, daily the government trashes a few tons of old paper work. Possibly you can get paid to haul it away. A small portion of this trash will be useful to someone sometime. Finding what you want among the megatons of old papers (still being stored) would require the assistance of the few over worked federal employees who are skilled at finding stuff.
The freedom of information act has already cost the tax payers billions of dollars. Neil

[Hanno the Navigator]

I mean legally and through official channels.

Do the ITAR regulations apply to purely scientific equipment? What's the risk in publishing details about, say, some infrared camera on Cassini?

[ngc3314]

I mean legally and through official channels.

Do the ITAR regulations apply to purely scientific equipment? What's the risk in publishing details about, say, some infrared camera on Cassini?

The ITAR regulations are a major pain not only to commercial space endeavors but to scientific ones. They can be claimed to apply to what graduate students from various countries might see in a lab. The rule seems to be "a security risk until proven otherwise". In that case, I can see someone saying "Infrared camera, relevant to infrared targeting gear, relevant to missile technology - NO". By and large, the people making these judgments have no incentive to be biased in favor of openness, as the scientific community generally is. And they have every reason to be suspicious, if only because the consequences of something going bad on their watch could be terrible.

Availability of competitive hardware from elsewhere might be a powerful argument - if, say, a French company sells imaging equipment or services of a particular resolution, preventing export of US equipment obviously does not contribute directly to a problem, and could be harming a segment of the US economy. This argument was raging when the SPOT system started delivering better imagery than US civil systems were allowed to produce (albeit before the current ITAR regulations).

[dgavin]

Actually from my understanding is that you can get details on designs that are 'In Use' or in the public eye already.

However you can't get designs on New Rockets, Engines, or Air Craft, etc... that NASA or it partners/contractors are designing.

[Swift]

Not quite what you are asking, but the publication NASA Tech Briefs, available for free in print or electronically, details lots of the research the various NASA centers do, particularly for technology with "spin-off" applications.

As far as the ITAR regs, this isn't anything new. Back in the cold war days, I went to several conferences on optical and electronic technology, that were not open to persons from certain countries (USSR and allies), because of similar concerns.

[Cugel]

However you can't get designs on New Rockets, Engines, or Air Craft, etc... that NASA or it partners/contractors are designing.

Well, this is as far as you can get: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/

It's a pay site, but not very expensive. They have tons of real NASA design documents from the big manned programs. I have the feeling that JPL or APL robotic designs are actually more ITAR sensitive than the manned programs. I have never seen these designs publicly available on the internet.

[Doodler]

NASA doesn't have squat to do with it. Boeing, Lockheed and Northrup get mightily irked when people want access to their intellectual property.

[publiusr]

NASA doesn't have squat to do with it. Boeing, Lockheed and Northrup get mightily irked when people want access to their intellectual property.

Thus the lawsuit when Boeing's Satchell and Alexio tried to spy on LockMarts Atlas V EELV.

But now under ULA, they'e all one big 'happy fleet'

Uh-huh--like the Lockmarters want to move to Decatur--smack in the middle of North Alabama's tornado alley.

Yikes. One big F-4/F-5 like 1989's big event, and we lose all non-shuttle rocket production.