Tuesday morning I attended a breakfast meeting of the Space Transportation Association with Craig Steidle, the NASA associate administrator for exploration systems, as the featured speaker. Steidle’s presentation was very similar to past ones he has given (he has used essentially the same set of slides a number of times, like these released in associated with the Code T industry day last month), but he did offer a few interesting notes:
- The review of the approx. 140 technology programs that fall under his office has been completed, and he said “almost 10%” had to be either transferred to another enterprise within NASA or cancelled. (The X-43C and the RS-84 are the two most infamous examples of technology programs cancelled.) An additional 25% had to be rescoped in some manner.
- Steidle confirmed some earlier reports that NASA is planning to have a “flyoff” of two different Crew Exploration Vehicle concepts in 2008. The RFP to select those two teams will be issued in about a year.
- NASA will hold a workshop on the Centennial Challenges prizes program in mid June in Washington (Steidle specifically said June 16-17 at the Washington Hilton; a press release about the workshop is due out shortly.) The workshop will discuss the program and NASA’s specific areas of interest.
In addition, in his opening remarks Rich Coleman, president of the STA, mentioned that the Coalition for Space Exploration now has its own web site, www.space-exploration.us. You will notice that it looks very similar to the STA’s own web site…
I am totally disappointed in all the very long delays, as I see it, in getting a CEV unit up and manned rated. Being greatly concerned if the shuttle never flies again with respects to this long lead time with no flight capability is terrible. Relying on the soyuz and not paying for seats is worse.
Can anybody give NASA a clue for what Americans want from space exploration???
Simply put explore… enough red tape and budget beauracracy already.