I attended Thursday afternoon’s hearing of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee regarding DOD-NASA cooperation on space transportation issues. There wasn’t too much from the hearing that was newsworthy, but here are a few random tidbits that may be of interest:
- The one news item from the meeting was that Craig Steidle, the NASA Associate Administrator for the Office of Exploration Systems, revealed that the agency had cancelled the X-43C hypersonic vehicle program as well as the RS-84 reusable engine project because neither fit the needs of NASA’s exploration efforts. I wrote up a small blurb about this for Spacetoday.net; see also Aerospace Daily.
- Elon Musk (who testified from California via a video link) likened the US launch industry to the US automotive industry of the 1970s, but added that at “no point during that period did General Motors decide, as Boeing has recently done, that they would only service government customers.” (The comparison is a little unfair, since Boeing still commercially markets the Delta 2 and is the lead partner in Sea Launch, which is entirely commercial.)
- One point Musk did make was that biggest thing that NASA and the DOD could do in the form of cooperation was cross-certification: if a new launch vehicle was good enough for the DOD, it should be good enough for NASA, and vice versa. Right now vehicles are independently certified, so a vehicle that has proven itself with one agency is not automatically considered satisfactory by the other. Later, during the question period, Karen Poniatowski, the NASA official responsible for procuring launch services, said the agency is willing to take risks by using untried launch vehicles for certain spacecraft, but has no payloads to assign to such vehicles: a potential Catch-22 for new vehicles.
- When the hearing started at 1 pm, there were six Congressman in attendance: chairman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), ranking member Nick Lampson (D-TX), and four others. After about 20 minutes the hearing recessed for over an hour because of a series of votes on the House floor. When the hearing resumed only three members were present: Rohrabacher, Lampson, and Tom Feeney (R-FL), who wasn’t there when the hearing started.
Thank God for Elon Musk – voice of reason. Or at least, a new voice in a 25-year dialogue defined by champions of mediocrity (Congress) and Super NASA.
As someone involved in propulsion research, as opposed to propulsion development, I can only hope that these development cuts do not spell the end of US propulsion research too. There’s barely anything as it is.
We’ve been waiting 40 years for hypersonic airbreathing launchers that in my opinion will always be more complex (expensive, unreliable) than the alternatives, existing or not. It was a mystery to me why NASA always thought that hypersonics was the next step, and perhaps Adm. Steidle felt that way too.
In today’s budgets and those we’re likely to have for the foreseeable future, the exploration initiative won’t get past the Moon without something cheaper than chemical launchers. Even just a moonbase will probably take us 20 years. Just look at how little of the space station we can afford to logistically support even now.
I’m not saying that Adm. Steidle should plan around anything other than existing launchers in the near term, but I am waiting to hear what they think they’re going to do in the long term, and I think this is something congress should want to hear too.
The canning of on going projects that do not fit into the supposed plan acording to NASA chiefs.
First how much was each project budgeted for, how much has been spent and do the math how much remains to be funneled into the SEI program. Also see what can be recycled out of these projects since it has tied up a lot of cash.