NASA

Exploration plan to be released soon

Space News reports that NASA has briefed the White House on its new exploration architecture and has received permission to share that plan with Congress and the public. According to the report, key Congressional committees will learn about the plan Friday, and NASA will make the plane at during a press conference Monday. The article also has some general details about the plan, which shouldn’t be too surprising to those who have followed the leaks about the plan over the last few months. Interestingly, the planned Monday release of the plan would coincide with the beginning of the International Lunar Conference in Toronto. There is a “NASA Keynote” scheduled for Monday morning, but it appears focused on robotic lunar exploration plans, and not the overall exploration architecture—although that could change now that the plan has been cleared for public release.

12 comments to Exploration plan to be released soon

  • Cecil Trotter

    We space advocates now have a choice: support the space exploration plan we have or assist opponents of space exploration in destroying it. It isn’t a perfect plan by any means, but it is the plan we have and the only way it will survive and succeed is if we support it. Supporting the plan means to voice our support to our representatives who will have the opportunity to vote for or against appropriating the funds to make it happen. It also means voicing that support in the media, through letters to the editor and writing positive articles on space exploration for dissemination through both traditional printed media and online media.

    Support does not mean blindly towing the line. But when we see a need for criticism we must frame such criticisms in the proper manner. Hypercritical attacks on NASA because it isn’t proceeding precisely as we might like are not helpful; they only provide ammunition for those whose objective is not to advance manned space exploration but to kill it outright.

    Constructive criticism needs to be based in the reality that NASA has chosen a certain overall architecture that is in all likelihood not going to be completely overhauled. It will either be tweaked or scrapped. We can effect which one of those two options comes to fruition. If we want it tweaked we can be a constructive voice for that sort of change, if we want it scrapped we can continue to argue amongst ourselves as has been the norm. The latter will be picked up on by manned space exploration critics in government and the media and used to bring the entire “Moon Mars and Beyond” initiative to an end. If we cannot come together and support this plan, flawed as it may or may not be, we certainly cannot expect those on the cusp of supporting the plan to be convinced to do so by our bickering over details of its implementation.

    One of the biggest jobs ahead for advocates of manned space exploration is to dispel the myth that the US government cannot afford the NASA budget. The NASA budget is only three quarters of one percent of the total US federal expenditures. Those of us in the manned space exploration advocacy know this figure well, but it isn’t well known among the general public. The general public impression is that NASA consumes a much larger portion of our tax dollars, an impression nurtured and fed by the anti-space segment of the media. Our goal as space advocates should be to convince our political representatives and the public that space exploration is both affordable and vital to the nation, not to argue amongst ourselves over EELV vs. SDLV, capsules vs. lifting bodies or any of the other diversions we seemingly love to argue infinitum.

    The $16 billion or so that NASA is appropriated is easily as important to the nation as the $57 billion appropriated to the Department of Labor, the $61 billion to the Office of Personnel Management or the $568 billion to Health and Human Services. The Department of Agriculture and The Department of Justice have larger discretionary budgets than does NASA. The US government spends more on International Assistance Programs than it does on space exploration. The media will spend much time and resources vilifying the “waste” in the paltry NASA budget yet give no time to these other federal departments that undoubtedly have enough actual waste to fund NASA in its entirety. Given that the media is certainly not going to give NASA a “fair shake” on its own it is up to us to make sure our voice is heard.

    Space exploration is vital to the future of all mankind. If the US is to remain the leader on the world stage we must decide to be the leader in space exploration. This is a decision we must make now; if we delay in doing so other nations will make the decision for us by overcoming the lead we have already seen narrowed drastically over the past decade. If we do not now step forward and lead in space exploration, other nations will.

    As a matter of national survival we cannot afford to let that happen.

  • Edward Wright

    > We space advocates now have a choice: support the space exploration plan
    > we have or assist opponents of space exploration in destroying it.

    This is a false dichotomy: either we must support a plan that will make space exploration even more expensive, with no promise of meaningful progress in the next 40 years, or we must curl up in a ball and die.

    There are many other alternatives, even if you do not wish to consider them.

    > It isn’t a perfect plan by any means, but it is the plan we have.

    No, Cecil, it is not the plan *we* have. You’re being reckless with your pronouns again. It is the plan you have, but some of us have other plans. Plans that will reduce costs, open space for all Americans, and create new industries that will benefit all of America.

    The US government is not all of America, and NASA is not the whole of the US government. Many US companies have their own plans for space exploration. Even in the US government, VSE is not the only plan. Pentagon visionaries have their own plan — Hot Eagle — which would use space to give the US an unprecedented rapid strike capability against terrorists and other enemies.

    > Constructive criticism needs to be based in the reality that NASA has chosen
    > a certain overall architecture that is in all likelihood not going to be
    > completely overhauled. It will either be tweaked or scrapped.

    You mean it’s your way or the highway? Either we choose to live in the 60’s forever, never attempting anything new, or we give up entirely? Sorry, Cecil. Like Ronald Reagan, I refuse to give up on progress and believe that America’s best days are behind her.

    > The $16 billion or so that NASA is appropriated is easily as important
    > to the nation as the $57 billion appropriated to the Department of Labor,

    Ah, that old chestnut — it’s unfair because your big government program doesn’t get as much money as some other big government program. Or pizza. Or beer. Or some other irrelevant comparison.

    Comparing NASA’s budget to the Department of Defense or Labor or whatever is bogus because NASA doesn’t do the same things.

    To justify the size of NASA budget, you have to look at what NASA does, not what other agencies do. Please tell us why we should spend over $17 billion a year to land four astronauts on the Moon (while most of the NASA astronaut corps is laid off, because NASA cannot afford to fly more than a fraction of them).

    Tell us why this is a better use of taxpayer money than incentivizing the creation of new industries and new space transportation capabilities so that thousands of Americans can go to the Moon. Or funding Hot Eagle so that Americans can sleep safer in their beds at night, rather than conceding the high ground of space and reusable launch vehicles to our enemies?

    Why is your plan worth giving up all the things we could be doing in space for $17 billion a year?

  • Cecil is correct and Edward is wrong.

    First of all, the VSE in no way seriously damages Edward’s plan. If the alt.space crowd can really do it so much cheaper, there are enough markets out there that are not under NASA’s direct influence (comsats, tourism, some space science and applications) for them to demonstrate their skills, as SpaceX is showing. I’d be a lot more convinced by NASA conspiracy theories if alt.space had demonstrated the goods.

    My fears with the current VSE plan mostly have to do with it growing unnecessarily complex and expensive. The basic plan has my full support and and it is the only politically-realistic plan for human spaceflight going forward. We finally have the government signing on to an expansionist space policy (much to my surprise, Congress, apparently, even more than the Administration), we would be complete fools to quibble over anything but the strategy to make the basic plan work.

    Let me state it again: in spite of my extreme distaste for the Bush Administration, this space plan has my full and unconditional support.

    The only place I would urge Cecil caution is his argument about NASA’s percentage of the budget. I agree with your argument, but I don’t think it will wash in the larger world. The larger government signing on to this plan was conditional on it not costing significantly more than we spend now. If it turns out that it does, we enter a whole new, and much more difficult, ball game. If NASA’s budget stays more-or-less where it is, the rest of the government is unlikely to complain too loudly. If it dramatically increases, everyone whose budget got cut will be screaming so loudly that Congress is unlikely to fail to hear.

    The political reality still remains, whatever our technical plan or problems, if we want this plan to survive over the long haul the solutions had better live within NASA’s current budget.

    — Donald

  • Cecil Trotter

    Donald: “The only place I would urge Cecil caution is his argument about NASA’s percentage of the budget. I agree with your argument, but I don’t think it will wash in the larger world.”

    If it won’t “wash in the larger world” it is only because we have ceded that battle to those who try to paint NASA as the ultimate in government waste. We need to win back that battle because money spent on NASA is not waste; it is an investment in the future. It is money we cannot afford NOT to spend and that is the point we need to press at every opportunity. So long as we accept the argument of “the larger world” rather than meet it head on and say, “No, you are wrong” we’re going to be stuck justifying ever dime of NASA money, every year. That is a loosing battle in the long run.

  • But, we’ve been doing that, Cecil. Respected people have been making this argument since the space program began. I agree that we should not cede the argument. However, we should also not make our future in space dependent on winning it.

    — Donald

  • Cecil Trotter

    Donald: “But, we’ve been doing that, Cecil.”

    No we’ve not, the majority of space advocates repeat the refrain “We can’t afford to” much more often that they declare “We can’t afford NOT to”.

    That has to change, because we realy, really “can’t afford not to”.

  • David Davenport

    If it won’t “wash in the larger world” it is only because we have ceded that battle to those who try to paint American Socialism as the ultimate in government waste. We need to win back that battle because money spent on Socialism is not waste; it is an investment in the future. It is money we cannot afford NOT to spend and that is the point we need to press at every opportunity. So long as we accept the argument of “the larger world” rather than meet it head on and say, “No, you are wrong” we’re going to be stuck justifying ever dime of American money spent to advance Socialism, every year. That is a loosing battle in the long run.

  • David Davenport

    One can susbstitute almost any noun in that sales rhetoric:

    If it won’t “wash in the larger world” it is only because we have ceded that battle to those who try to paint highway paving as the ultimate in government waste. We need to win back that battle because money spent on asphalt and concrete paving is not waste; it is an investment in the future. It is money we cannot afford NOT to spend and that is the point we need to press at every opportunity. So long as we accept the argument of “the larger world” rather than meet it head on and say, “No, you are wrong” we’re going to be stuck justifying ever dime of American money spent to advance road paving, every year. That is a loosing battle in the long run.
    05:50 PM

  • ken murphy

    While on the gripping hand…

    I don’t believe either of your choices, Cecil. While I do support the VSE and its goals of creating a permanent and sustainable spacefaring infrastructure, I do not support the Griffen/ESAS/ESMD/whatever plan, which I feel is very Mars centric, and unsustainable. I do support the use of a lot of things we have now to get started now on building a permanent space-faring capability.

    Let’s see, if we just do four launches a year of EELVs with 20mt payloads for the seven or so years it’ll take us to get this SDHLV/HLLV/ILV/whatever mega-booster up and running, we could have already put 560 mt of assets into orbit, with another 40 mt for each SDHLV 100 mt launch. So that means it would take about…um…4 1/2 years for the SDHLV to catch up with what EELVs could have put in orbit (at about 900 mt!).

    That’s also 46 EELV launches, which is a nice swath of production to sow your expenses across. And there will hopefully be satellite launches and Bigelow balloon launches and EELV-class CEV launches as well, requiring production of even more. These are the kinds of production rates that help to bring the cost-to-consumer of launch vehicles down to a reasonable price.

    Nine SDHLVs is not a big production run. I honestly don’t see each SDHLV launch costing less than $500.0Mn (I’m guessing that the “life-support” for a 100 mt payload prior to launch is going to eat NASA’s lunch). So that’s $4.5Bn. Twelve years of overhead & infrastructure at say $2.0Bn/yr, gives us about a $28.5Bn cost. That means that each of the 46 EELV launches would have to cost less than (drumroll please…) $619.6Mn. Good thing we’re not using the Titan!

    I have no interest in my tax dollars being used to fulfill a stale 70 year old Von Braunian dream, nor a private launch system just for NASA. We’re in a new century with new goals, and those include the entire Solar system. I am in favor of creating a permanent space travel infrastructure that is accessible to business and commerce so that the U.S. can continue to create new industries and products that we can sell to the rest of the world for a fair price. So where does my stance fit into your dichotomy?

  • TORO

    vision for space exploration ?

    I’d still like to bravely explore ways to get a human being to and from LEO, and giving them a determined (like modern automakers) probability of survival should the car crash or in this case rocket veer off course or explode.

    Hitler survived a bomb blast, and scientist years later re-enacted the scenario to determine why.

    Why are there no destructive tests of humna rockets like human cars?

    Is that too much to ask or do with some fraction of 17 billion shrinking dollars a year?

  • Edward Wright

    > First of all, the VSE in no way seriously damages Edward’s plan. If the
    > alt.space crowd can really do it so much cheaper, there are enough
    > markets out there that are not under NASA’s direct influence (comsats,
    > tourism, some space science and applications) for them to demonstrate
    > their skills

    Your argument is specious because private enterprise needs other things besides markets. Investment, for example.

    Numerous attempts to raise money have been undermined by anti-CATS statements from NASA officials. Those statements are echoed by many VSE supporters (including Mr. Trotter). It’s significant that your sole example is an internet billionaire who does not have to convince investors.

    While you and Mr. Trotter complain that NASA has “only” has $17 billion a year to spend on programs that will make space exploration more expensive, the private sector doesn’t even have a billion dollars a year to spend on CATS. Furthermore, it’s the private sector that bears fhe burden for VSE and other expensive government programs.

  • GuessWho

    A couple years back, a private investor proposed and began work on a LEO-GEO nuclear EP space tug and servicing system. He succeeded in getting congressional legislation for a $1.5B loan guarentee from the Govt. provided he raise 10% which he was already close to closing on. NASA stepped in and proposed NSI/JIMO/Prometheus and began to immediately undercut this private investor since he was a risk to their proposed program. While his projected $1.5B price tag may have been questionably low, it wouldn’t even come close to NASA’s $10B+ boondoggle to develop esentially the same system. This current thread is indicative of how NASA views commercial space.