It’s much easier to over-charge the government than commercial entities, and that appears to be Boeing’s space division’s primary interest.

None of us are interested in a useless barren rock at the bottom of a 2.4km/s gravity well, however quite a lot of us are interested in Earth’s extremely interesting sister world, a type-example of what is probably one of the most common types of planetary body in the universe, a mystery (why is Earth a double-planet?), a natural space station, a location to find samples of Earth’s earliest crust, an ideal site for radio telescopes, and the closest and cheapest place to get oxygen used in space.

— Donald

They did, but if you follow the market you’ll find that BSS now lags behind other commercial satellite manufacturers. Those problems with the solar concentrators on the 702 series didn’t help during a time earlier this decade when there was a during dip in demand.

Lockheed and Boeing also spent a metric shitload of their own capital on launchers for the commsat market.

Boeing took the Delta 4 off the commercial market in 2003 because it couldn’t compete on a price basis with other vehicles, and won’t bring it back even though the market, and launch prices, have rebounded. The Atlas 5 only attracts a smattering of commercial business.

However, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are less dependent on commercial satellite and launch business than other companies because of their strong government business.

Didn’t Boeing buy Hughes, the worlds largest commercial satellite manufacturer? Sounds to me that they’re VERY interested in commercial space. Lockheed and Boeing also spent a metric shitload of their own capital on launchers for the commsat market. Boeing even funded two.

What Boeing and Lockheed Martin aren’t interested is a useless barren rock at the bottom of a 2.4km/s gravity well.

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/170368main_IIST_%20Final%20Report.pdf

There are seven “Principal Recommendations” on page 12. The fourth recommends that:

“The Administration, Congress, and NASA should promote a proactive and phased post-Shuttle logistical transportation program, including adequate funding of approximately ONE BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR ABOVE CURRENT ALLOCATIONS [caps added] to ensure that adequate logistics and spares are available to maintain a viable Station.”

Although I doubt that the report will get more than a mention or two at NASA budget hearings, if taken seriously, the fallout from this recommendation could be very big. There’s at least three possibilities:

1) Increase COTS and Foreign Partner Vehicle Budgets — The most straightforward result would be an augmentation of the ISS transportation services budgets, including COTS Phase 1, COTS Phase 2, and purchases of foreign partner vehicle flights. Consistent with earlier posts in this thread, the report lists nine “Principal Observations” on p. 11, and the eighth reads:

“Design, development, and certification of the new Commercial Orbital Transportation System capability for ISS resupply are just beginning. If similar to other new program development activities, it most likely will take much longer than expected and will cost more than anticipated.”

I doubt a full billion per year is in the cards, but a budget more in line with what was in the original VSE sandchart for ISS transportation (also mentioned in earlier posts in this thread) is a possibility. But whether Congress would find or reallocate such funding against so many other competing priorities on the basis of just this one report is unclear and probably not likely.

2) If the Ares 1/Orion 2014 readiness date is still salvageable after the $500 million cut in 2007, Griffin and Horowitz will likely use the report to argue for more Ares 1/Orion funding to bring their favored ISS transport capability back to the left, circa 2012. They’ll have to get such a proposal through the White House first, though, and given unrealized VSE budget promises and tepid support in the last SAP, I doubt OMB will allocate more funding to NASA on the basis of this one report.

3) Senators Hutchison and Nelson may use the report as an argument to extend Shuttle operations, especially if the recent hail damage makes the ISS 2010 completion date even more uncertain. Although Griffin, the White House, and even other Congressmen will oppose such a move, this could provide the first camel’s nose under the tent for extending Shuttle operations in the 2008 budget. Hopefully the final ISS configuration would be reduced before such a costly and risky course is taken.

In the relatively zero sum game that will likely be NASA’s budget through the next election, pressure to put more dollars into ISS transport results in further delays to getting actual exploration hardware underway in most scenarios. Some very tough trades may need to be made in the coming year or two between Ares 1, COTS, ISS, and exploration.

http://chairforceengineer.blogspot.com/2007/02/getting-out-of-business.html

Well, we do have the EELVs, Soyuz, Proton, Ariane, et al, and the satellite markets they serve. Maybe if Dr. Griffin’s bosses do hoch the nation’s jewels to show the way (which, given Mr. Bush’s national “budgeting,” they are doing), some of these will be there. But, I doubt it. The space divisions at Boeing and, to a lesser degree, Lockheed Martin, have shown very little interesting in looking beyond the government teat.

— Donald

While I agree with most of your analysis (which is why I think the way forward is a synergy between government projects and the likes of SpaceX), I’m not sure I agree with this. The fear today, as expressed by a number of politicians, is the fear of our leaving the human spaceflight realm, either because of political inaction (or ineptitude) or because of technical and financial failures. This is why, now that the Space Shuttle is largely discredited, I think the VSE may change it’s spots but it is not likely to go away. The unfortunate thing (which you have observed) is that this particular fear will keep the Space Station alive, our access to LEO, and hopefully COTS, it is unlikely by itself to take us back to Earth’s moon. For that, we need a different fear or economic reason. I have argued that the need to supply heavy oxygen to the ISS and other orbital facilities may someday provide the latter reason, but, short of a government return to the moon, it’s a reason for the relatively distant future.

Mr. Robertson and others might, if they were feeling ill-tempered, accuse me of doing exactly that with some of my historical analogies

If so, I can’t think of what it was. I for one think you have played far more fairly than anyone else here, including (in my more honest moments) myself.

That said, I still think the early (Neolithic and on) ocean-going model is the best one because it most closely models the extremely alien environment and the relative difficulty. It took us some 10,000 years to learn to travel confidently over our world’s oceans, and I see no reason to believe it should be any easier to tackle the Solar System. The good news is, we achieved the former, so we may well be able to achieve the latter.

the nation would have to be in some very dire straits to summon the political will to stop funding any NASA human space flight program (or NASA itself).

This is very true. But, what many of us miss, is that it is also relatively new. As recently as the Clinton Administration, I think the entire human space program was at risk. This is a sea change, and not just in this country, and it is one that probably has dramatic import for the future.

I think COTS is likely to run into some politics when tough budget choices need to be made regarding the Ares 1 development schedule and eventually production for ISS transport. It will be interesting to see if those political choices emerge sooner rather than later due to the $500 million-plus shortfall in ESMD resulting from the 2007 budget resolution. . . . These political choices won’t emerge soon if Griffin keeps his word about keeping the $500 million for COTS fenced off. But Griffin also said “not one thin dime out of science” and we all know how that ended up.

It is interesting to note that Dr. Griffin appears to be attacking the automated lunar lander before COTS (which, as I argued a few months ago in Space News is exactly the correct choice).

— Donald

You may be right, Mr. Muncy, but I don’t recall that. AFAIK, it was always in Poniatowski’s shop prior to Griffin’s transfer to ESMD.

“In fact, it was under O’Keefe that Alt Access was cancelled, and he defended this cancellation, even after Columbia showed the value of having ALTERNATIVE means of ACCESSING the ISS.”

Again, you may be right, but I don’t recall that. Not that O’Keefe or any other NASA Administrator is free of contradictions, but it makes little sense to cancel the effort and then resurrect it in the VSE sand chart a little later on.

“When ESMD was given control of ISS crew cargo, both of these got smooshed together into COTS. and COTS was awarded to companies promising crew.”

One part I left out was the efforts of one of your clients, t/Space, to convince Griffin to reallocate some funding to commercial ISS transport funding after ESAS had scooped it all up. It’s too bad they didn’t get a piece of the action in the end.

“And so here we are, hoping that NASA chose well, because we all know that the detractors of commercial space will use the failure of one or both COTS awards as *evidence* that commercial companies just can’t do this really hard orbital space stuff.”

Per my earlier post, I think COTS is more likely to fail from government underfunding and in-house competition from Ares 1 than any selection choices.

But you’re probably right that such a failure will be displayed as proof of the private sector’s inability to develop and operate human space flight systems, rather than poor program formulation and funding from the outset.

Thanks for commenting.

You give O’Keefe a lot of credit for COTS and support for commercial ISS cargo/crew services. He deserves very little.

It is definitely true that the predecessor to COTS, Alternative Access, was an initiative by OMB way back in 1999. In fact, I was a congressional staff person at the time and worked with OMB to argue that NASA should take a commercial approach for *all* post-Shuttle transportation.

To be sure, NASA screwed up Alt Access, in part thanks to Dan Goldin giving the Aerospace Technology czar Sam Venneri the lead, rather than Human Spaceflight AA Joe Rothenberg. Then, when O’Keefe came in, he was in general opposed to “stimulating commercial space” as akin to “industrial policy”. In fact, it was under O’Keefe that Alt Access was cancelled, and he defended this cancellation, even after Columbia showed the value of having ALTERNATIVE means of ACCESSING the ISS.

Fast forward to the VSE announcement. Coincident and consistent with VSE, but not really “part of it”, the FY2005 NASA budget submission included funds for ISS Transport as part of the “sand chart”.

Completely independent, however, was the idea developed under Steidle late in calendar 2004… that if it were possible for NASA to enable a commercial Earth-to-Orbit human transport capability that would evolve enhanced safety/reliability through private as well as NASA demand, then NASA wouldn’t have to do what we now know as Ares 1 *or* a human-rated EELV.

When ESMD was given control of ISS crew cargo, both of these got smooshed together into COTS. and COTS was awarded to companies promising crew.

And so here we are, hoping that NASA chose well, because we all know that the detractors of commercial space will use the failure of one or both COTS awards as *evidence* that commercial companies just can’t do this really hard orbital space stuff.

– Jim