One aspect of Monday’s ESAS announcement that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention is NASA’s continued push to seek commercial cargo and crew services options for the ISS. That’s not new, of course—Mike Griffin made comments along those lines this summer, as did Chris Shank at the Return to the Moon Conference in Las Vegas in July—but Monday’s announcement reiterated that intent even as NASA designs the CEV to be able to support the station as an alternative. As Griffin said at Monday’s press conference, according to the official transcript:
NASA has not had at its upper levels a manager or an administrator more supportive of commercial enterprise than I. We are base lining in the out years past the retirement of the shuttle, we are base lining commercial service to the station. That is the only known and knowable, at this point, market for those entrepreneurs that I have to give. We are base lining the use of that market for them and are providing, will be providing this fall a new procurement to try to stimulate that market.
That said, at the end of the day, what commercial means is, that it is not government directed. So, I can provide the incentive and I can provide the market that I have and commercial providers will either emerge or not. It is not acceptable for a publicly funded program not to have a way of meeting its mission requirements in the event that commercial operators do or don’t materialize. So, the architecture that we have advanced allows NASA to meet its mission requirements, but also allows NASA to concentrate its resources on other more advanced activities if commercial providers can emerge in the next five to seven years. That is exactly our intent.
Our fondest desire would be to keep NASA on the very frontier of space activity, letting commercial provider fill in for those activities which are not frontier activities. We will be putting some money where our mouth is.
The Space Frontier Foundation did notice that, and, not surprisingly, heartily endorses it and calls in supporters to defend the plan: “Money must be allocated and the agency’s tendency to make creeping changes which ultimately kill innovation must be blocked.”
Wow, these guys really get it. I like this part: “[t]he Foundation believes that NewSpace companies, and any other players who want to be paid for results rather than effort, should be permitted to prove themselves by carrying astronauts and supplies to the space station.” What worries me, though, is that once these companies start doing business with NASA, they will go down the same road as the “dinosaurs” they, and I, are so critical of now.
I suppose new space is in a strange situation. It’s not necessarily in their best interest to call for major NASA procurement reforms, because the reforms would make the old space companies competitive again. Well, I say it would make them competitive, but the reality is, it would take years for them to transform back into competitive companies, and some would never make it. On the other hand, if NASA doesn’t make some changes, which they seem to be making slowly, the new companies will never get a foot in the door. Long term, if NASA doesn’t stop paying for failure, or more charitably paying for effort as the Space Frontier Foundation puts it, the alt space companies will turn into the dinosaurs they are vying to replace.
Wow, he really sounds like he’s serious about continuing to throw his support behind the space “start-ups”. This bodes well for companies like t/Space.
“Our fondest desire would be to keep NASA on the very frontier of space activity, letting commercial provider fill in for those activities which are not frontier activities.”
If Griffin’s statement is truthful, he should cancel the shuttle derived nonsense now. Compared to the rest of VSE, going from the ground to LEO is not a frontier activity. Lockheed and Boeing have successfully done this for years. This is not the beginning of the space age, and NASA should allocate its funds to exploration, not developing new earth-to-LEO transportation systems.
This is not the beginning of the space age, and NASA should allocate its funds to exploration, not developing new earth-to-LEO transportation systems.
Are you suggesting that the Shuttle stay in use forever? What is NASA supposed to do any manned space exploration with, in the absence of a new Earth to LEO spacecraft? And how is the new spacecraft to be obtained?
I suggest that a new earth to low orbit spacecraft is exactly what is needed. The way to obtain this spacecraft is to offer a sort of giant X-Prize, open to Boeing and LockMart as well as to new firms.
The functional requirements for the new spacecraft should fit on one single-spaced page of text. The document should allow designers to chose capsules, lifting bodies, or gliders to satisfy the functional requiremnts. In other words, wings or parachute landings should not be a requirement in the functional requirements.
I think NASA would argue destination of new vehicle is a Lunar orbit, not low Earth. In reality it is an MCOTS f’ing joke. The hardware they “reuse” will constrain the design much more than it will help the cost. In fact, it will most likely drive the cost significantly higher than that of a clean sheet design. They will have to live with all the legacy mistakes, and make it work with a booster that’s 5 segments, not 4, and make those overly complex SSMEs work on the bottom of a main tank that’s not really a main tank any more. Its load paths are entirely different, and it has to react 1/3 more thrust from the boosters.
What a bunch of boobs! Vehicle design really is a lost art. When I worked on space station we often argued that NASA management (as well as our own) should be replaced with a coin flipping machine. For one thing, the coin flipping machine could make a decision – how incredibly refreshing that would be, a manager managing – and at least half the time it would make the right one. That would be an improvement over the current bunch by at least 1000%.
David,
If you reference any of my previous posts, you will note I am no fan of shuttle. I believe we should have shut it down after Columbia.
What I meant is that NASA should be a consumer and buy passage on the expendable launch vehicles. NASA needs to put its money into the payloads, not the launch vehicles.
What I meant is that NASA should be a consumer and buy passage on the expendable launch vehicles.
I agree, provided that you mean American launch systems.