Congress, NASA

Delaying Orion

The big news that came out yesterday’s hearing, as noted by the Houston Chronicle, Florida Today, New York Times, and others was that the cut in NASA’s exploration program enacted by the Congress when it passed the final FY07 budget a few weeks ago will result in a delay of four to six months in the development of Orion and Ares 1, pushing the first manned flight of Orion into 2015. (Griffin later clarified that he meant fiscal year 2015, saying that it was still possible under the revised schedule, in the best case, for a flight in December 2014).

Not surprisingly, this news did not go over well with the chairman of the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, nor ranking Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who have previously expressed concern about the gap between the end of the shuttle program in 2010 and the start of Orion operations. Much of the hearing was devoted to discussion about whether NASA had the authority to transfer money into the exploration program from other accounts (Griffin said he didn’t; Nelson and Hutchison said they would look into the matter) or other ways to add several hundred million dollars to the agency’s budget. Griffin said he would get back to the committee regarding exactly how much money NASA would need to prevent the schedule slip.

One thing to remember with all this discussion of a gap, including claims that it is “a national security issue”, is that it refers only to the US Government’s ability to send humans into space on vehicles it operates. Should one or both of the COTS awardees, or another company interested in commercial orbital spaceflight, be successful, the gap would be greatly reduced—or even in the best case eliminated—simply by having the government procure transportation services.

Some other highlights from the hearing:

  • Griffin said that he would have an FY07 operating plan ready by March 15, detailing how the agency would spend the money it got in the final appropriations bill.
  • One senator, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, raised the question of what NASA was doing in terms of revamped screening of astronauts in the wake of the unfortunate Lisa Nowak saga. Griffin said that two studies, including one with experts from “high-performance, high-stress” military organizations, were underway to examine what changes NASA should make to its procedures.
  • Sen. Hutchison asked Griffin whether it will be possible to get a planned ISS experiment, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), to the station. (Regular readers will recall that this experiment, and some claims about its utility, have been the subject of discussion and debate here.) Griffin said there’s no room on any of the remaining shuttle missions for AMS, but if another agency or organization was willing to handle the launch of the experiment and pay for it, NASA would not object.
  • The hearing featured an appearance by full committee vice-chairman and ranking Republican Sen. Ted Stevens (who achieved fame, or infamy, last year by likening the Internet to “a series of tubes”), who asked this question: had NASA ever considered selling “space bonds”? After all, he said, most everyone in the country would be willing to buy some space bonds to help support the space agency’s mission. Griffin said that no, he hadn’t thought about that, but he was pretty sure he didn’t have the appropriate Congressional authorization to do so.

73 comments to Delaying Orion

  • canttellya

    Delay is good. Now they can take a step back, take a breath, and realize the right thing to do is cancel this foolishness. Get NASA out of manned spaceflight. They can’t do it cost-effectively, have no incentive to innovate, and drink up all the funds and interest. Leave human spaceflight to the innovators who have economic incentives to do it better.

  • Anon.

    Here here, canttellya, I second that.

  • […] SpacePolitics has some commentary on the issue, and notes that Griffin later clarified he was referring to […]

  • LetsGetReal

    Get NASA out of manned spaceflight.

    Total extrication from manned spaceflight is not the solution. For instance, future exploration of Mars could strongly benefit from the presence of crew in Mars orbit. However, the current Apollo-style implementation of VSE is way off, and NASA development of crewed launch vehicles doesn’t make any sense.

    Ownership of VSE clearly lies with a small cabal of Texas, Florida, Maryland and Alabama congressmen.

  • anonymous

    I have to say, the Senators are being pretty unrealistic if they think they can find more exploration funding through transfer authority (other Senators like Mikulski affected by such a transfer and with more powerful positions on appropriations would oppose) or “space bonds” (I’m sure ways and means and the treasury oversight committees will approve that).

    From an exploration perspective, again, I think the most telling statement was Griffin saying “I’m not worried about the Moon right now. I’m worried about replacing the Space Shuttle.”

    Goodbye for now, human space exploration. It was nice visiting with you.

  • canttellya

    For instance, future exploration of Mars could strongly benefit from the presence of crew in Mars orbit.

    Do you seriously think that the NASA that can’t build an Apollo capsule for less than $4B and 8 years of development is going to be putting a human crew in Mars orbit? They can’t even explain how they’re going to get their capsule built.

    Griffin should be sent packing and bring someone in who can get the capsule on an EELV before 2010 for less than $2B. Griffin himself said in pre-administrator testimony before Congress that the capsule should cost no more than $100K per pound to develop. If NASA can’t do this silly little capsule then there’s absolutely no point in pursuing further government manned spaceflight.

  • richardb

    Nasa bashing is fun, lots of websites cater to it. You could design a capsule to fit on a EELV and go to ISS. Then you’re still stuck in leo cuz those EELV’S can’t lift all the hardware needed for Mars or the moon.
    You could contract the launches to private companies(for all those savings), but none exist today that have sent people into orbit. None have ever existed. There are plenty of alternatives to Nasa’s approach to escaping from LEO, but they all involve heavy lift of at least 80mt(low end) which EELV can’t do today or likely in many years to come.

  • anonymous

    “You could design a capsule to fit on a EELV and go to ISS. Then you’re still stuck in leo cuz those EELV’S can’t lift all the hardware needed for Mars or the moon.”

    But the point is that with the right requirements, that EELV-based LEO transport wouldn’t cost as much or take nearly as long as Ares 1, so NASA could put more money towards heavy lift and actual space exploration hardware much sooner.

    With the current plan and budget, we may be looking at 2012 — a half decade from now — before the first serious Ares V spending is ramping up, assuming the next White House doesn’t defund the lunar return effort in 2009-10. For an exploration advocate, I would argue that kind of delay, just to replicate existing U.S. launch vehicle capabilities to LEO, is unforgiveable.

    “There are plenty of alternatives to Nasa’s approach to escaping from LEO, but they all involve heavy lift of at least 80mt(low end) which EELV can’t do today or likely in many years to come.”

    That’s not true. There are architectures that forgo heavy lift in favor of in-space fuel depots. Again, with the right requirements and some technology demonstration, lunar is very doable that way. Mars is considerably less so, but Mars is so far off that I’d argue NASA shouldn’t allow it to drive near-term costs and schedule to the point that they’re politically and budgetarily unsustainable — which is one of the failings of the ESAS plan.

    I’m not saying ESAS should have forgone heavy lift, but if NASA was not sinking so much time and resources into Ares 1 and if ESAS had not been so dismissive of certain approaches, NASA could have pursued a parallel in-space fueling effort and then downselected between that approach and heavy lift at an appropriate juncture.

  • anonymous

    “Ownership of VSE clearly lies with a small cabal of Texas, Florida, Maryland and Alabama congressmen.”

    Based on Mikulski’s statement after the passage of the 2007 budget resolution, I’d argue there’s much VSE ownership in Maryland.

    But the traditional human space flight states, certainly.

  • canttellya

    I’m not saying ESAS should have forgone heavy lift, but if NASA was not sinking so much time and resources into Ares 1 and if ESAS had not been so dismissive of certain approaches, NASA could have pursued a parallel in-space fueling effort and then downselected between that approach and heavy lift at an appropriate juncture.

    I totally agree. Heavy-lift is one way to do the Moon and Mars, not the only way. In fact, just saying “there’s no heavy-lift” at the outset would have been a HUGE stimulus to the investigation of alternate approaches. Building a huge rocket whose main purpose is to launch a huge amount of fuel and little tiny spacecraft to LEO is an approach that only appeals to congressmen from space states and their cost-plus contractors.

  • Agreed! NASA should be out of the manned spaceflight business! Leave it to private enterprise.

  • John Malkin

    In General, I like Dr. Griffin’s responses to panel. Congress needs to learn there is a penalty for not funding a program at its original requested amount. I know some slack is built into budget requests but Congress needs to get real with its variable allocations. To me the word ‘priorities’ has become an excuse to cut important programs instead of raising taxes to cover them, eliminating earmarks or something. It’s the old VET vs. NASA argument in disguise but they apply it to everything. In Chicago, ‘priorities’ were used to completely eliminate the county dentists for poor children.

    Here we go again with the entrepreneurial startups/private sector vs. government/entrepreneurial startups/private sector debate. The likelihood that NASA will get out of manned spaceflight business is 1000/1 and the main reason is the jobs it creates in certain congressional districts. It’s time to move on and determine a plan that might allow them to all work together. At least VSE provides structure to our national space goals. I really haven’t heard an alternative that would be any better. Oh, transfer authority allows congress to avoid doing their job.

    Would wings on Orion make you happy? I just hope they keep spacecraft on top. At least nobody wants to put the engines above the spacecraft. It would look really cool but very impractical, something like a spider. Did I hear single stage to orbit, not bloody likely in the next two decades, maybe two stages to orbit with scaled composites design by 2015 but big maybe, bet anyone…? We should have started seriously building and a shuttle replacement ten to fifteen years ago, now we are paying the price in timeline and design.

  • Earl Blake

    garry wrote @ March 1st, 2007 at 2:37 pm
    “Agreed! NASA should be out of the manned spaceflight business! Leave it to private enterprise.”

    This is really getting old. You can “if” and “should” all you want but it comes down to the fact that there is no “private enterprise” that can place a person in orbit. COTS and other ventures are promising but the fact remains only the US, Russia and China government run agencies can launch people into space.

    Once a “private enterprise” dose demonstrate that it can provide safe transport to LEO and back I’ll be the first to jump on the band wagon, until then NASA needs to develop the it’s own space craft to carry out the missions assigned.

  • Earl Blake

    canttellya wrote @ March 1st, 2007 at 2:08 pm
    “Building a huge rocket whose main purpose is to launch a huge amount of fuel and little tiny spacecraft to LEO is an approach that only appeals to congressmen from space states and their cost-plus contractors.”

    Ok, fine… you need fuel to get to the moon, how would you propose to get it to LEO and how much would it cost compared to heavy lift. Or do you have another way altogether to get from the Earth to the moon?

  • richardb

    I believe that the CLV selection served two purposes for Nasa that an EELV can’t do. CLV first will work and second develop most of the hardware needed for a HLV. Then when the funding wedge for CLV is over, Nasa can say it needs “comparatively” very little to continue on with HLV. On the other side is the EELV. If it becomes “man” rated, then there will be a very expensive HLV effort that must be done for any serious lunar or beyond travel. Just flinging small EELV’s loaded with a lawn mower gas tank to some Exxon in the sky isn’t realistic. ( Its never been clear to me how squirrling tons of cyrogenic fuel in LEO is a wise idea. Seems explosive to me.)
    Instead Nasa will have to tell Congress, “ok now I need some big bucks for our HLV”. Congress could easily tell them to go pound sand.
    Congress might tell them that anyway, so debating EELV’s or CLV will be moot, Congress could care less. I don’t think that will happen, Nasa and Congress will have their rangle and get on with it, just a matter of when with what.

  • canttellya

    This is really getting old. You can “if” and “should” all you want but it comes down to the fact that there is no “private enterprise” that can place a person in orbit. COTS and other ventures are promising but the fact remains only the US, Russia and China government run agencies can launch people into space.

    Give me a non-pork reason for putting humans in space and I’ll explain how private enterprise will find a better way to do it. All this talk like:

    The likelihood that NASA will get out of manned spaceflight business is 1000/1 and the main reason is the jobs it creates in certain congressional districts.

    shows where the real problem in government-funded human spaceflight lies…

  • Edward Wright

    > One thing to remember with all this discussion of a gap, including claims that it is “a national security issue”,
    > is that it refers only to the US Government’s ability to send humans into space on vehicles it operates.

    Not even that, Jeff. NASA is not the whole US government.

    NASA is not responsible for national security. DoD is. This “gap” refers only to the US Government’s ability to send humans into space on vehicles it operates for bread and circuses — not national security.

    The US military has had its own “gap” in manned access to space since DynaSoar was cancelled. It’s shameful that politicians ignore that while trying to pass ISS and Orion off as “national security.”

  • John Malkin

    The distribution of NASA centers was brilliant. I think it’s the main reason NASA still exist at all. Heck, Hubble would be dead if it wasn’t for a bunch of science jobs. Sure they are government jobs but they are good government jobs not just more pencil pushers. So, they provide no direct economic gain but I don’t think we can measure there non-economic gain. Until we give humans the same opportunities we have given robots, I don’t think there is a basis for comparison.

  • Edward Wright

    > Nasa bashing is fun, lots of websites cater to it. You could design a capsule to fit on a EELV and go to ISS.
    > Then you’re still stuck in leo

    If that happened, Richard, it would be a huge improvement, because right now most of us can’t even get *into* LEO. Including most of NASA’s astronauts.

    If you believe the only purpose of the US space program should be to send a tiny handful of government employees on expensive junkets, while the rest of us are left behind — okay, fine, but in that case, don’t ask *us* to fund it for you.

    > cuz those EELV’S can’t lift all the hardware needed for Mars or the moon.

    You need to do a little research.

    Von Braun showed how it was possible to build to build lunar and Mars expeditions with rockets that had a 10-ton payload. That was in the 1950’s.

    The Gemini project planned lunar missions using Atlas and Titan rockets that are smaller than today’s EELVs. That was in the 1960’s.

    ESA and the Russians are designing lunar missions using Ariane V, Proton, and Soyuz. Today.

    If we close our eyes to what is really possible, we may find the rest of the world has passed us by.

    > You could contract the launches to private companies(for all those savings), but none exist today that have
    > sent people into orbit. None have ever existed.

    So, if something has never existed, it can never exist? Americans must never try to do anything that hasn’t been done in the past? Is that what passes for “vision” in VSE?

    No airplane ever existed before Uncle Orville and Uncle Wilbur showed up at Kitty Hawk. Does that mean airplanes can never exist? Or we need a national socialist airplane program?

  • Edward Wright

    > This is really getting old. You can “if” and “should” all you want but it comes down to the fact that there is no
    > “private enterprise” that can place a person in orbit.

    And why is that a good thing, Earl? Why should we spend hundreds of billions on policies that will make spaceflight more expensive? Please explain.

    > Once a “private enterprise” dose demonstrate that it can provide safe transport to LEO and back I’ll be the
    > first to jump on the band wagon, until then NASA needs to develop the it’s own space craft to carry out
    > the missions assigned.

    Private enterprise has not demonstrated “safe” transport to LEO — a 1% catastrophic failure rate is not “safe” by any reasonable definition — but neither have NASA, the Russians, or the Red Chinese. Private enterprise *has* demonstrated ELVs that are just as safe as Ares will be. But you aren’t jumping on the bandwagon. You’re standing in the road shouting “halt!”

    You want private enterprise to demonstrate everything in advance, but you want us to hand over billions of dollars to NASA in advance. You don’t demand that they demonstrate hardware before asking for money. Why not? Do you think state socialism is more reliable than private enterprise? Do you think NASA has never failed? NASA has been trying to replace the Shuttle for a quarter century. Every attempt has failed. What reason do you have to believe this attempt will be more successful than the last?

  • anonymous

    “Agreed! NASA should be out of the manned spaceflight business! Leave it to private enterprise.”

    “Here we go again with the entrepreneurial startups/private sector vs. government/entrepreneurial startups/private sector debate.”

    I think the debate between commercial and government human space flight absolutists is a futile one. It’s not an either/or proposition. Both are going to exist in one form or another in the decades to come.

    The more relevant and important policy question is, “What should be the role of government relative to a new and growing commercial human space flight industry in the coming decades?”

    Any Government 101 class tells us that government should not do those things that the private sector does or can do. When the government competes with or substitutes for the private sector, it stifles commerce, innovation, and efficiency and results in greater costs and lost opportunities for the taxpaying public.

    We are currently in a transition point with regards to human space flight, where the private sector has done orbital launch for satellites for decades, is doing suborbital human space flight, and shows the potential to do orbital human space flight in the not-too-distant future. I would argue as a matter of policy that NASA, as a government agency, should design its human space flight hardware to leverage existing U.S. orbital launch capabilities (e.g., smaller Orion on Atlas) and encourage the development of purely private sector human space flight capabilities (e.g., augment COTS). Even assuming ESAS proves to be right (doubtful given some of the poor data inputs that have come to light), the difference in safety between an all-government system (e.g., Ares 1) and partial or totally private sector alternatives (e.g., Orion/Atlas or COTS) over the likely NASA lunar base and ISS life-cycles is marginal and not worth the cost in additional taxpayer dollars, schedule, and lost opportunities for commerce.

    That doesn’t mean, however, that there’s not an important role for the government and NASA. Unlike orbital human space flight, the private sector is several steps away from mounting human space flight efforts beyond Earth orbit. Regardless of whether it’s heavy lift, fuel depot technology, or something else, NASA should be focused on developing capabilities to extend human space flight beyond Earth orbit. Unfortunately, ESAS and Griffin’s insistence on owning and operating the whole architecture and system is getting NASA stuck once again in LEO, wasting precious taxpayer dollars and a limited political window before the next White House on replicating existing orbital launch capabilities with a NASA-unique vehicle (Ares 1).

    “The likelihood that NASA will get out of manned spaceflight business is 1000/1 and the main reason is the jobs it creates in certain congressional districts.”

    Absolutely. But what should those NASA and NASA contractor employees be doing? Duplicating USAF and LockMart/Boeing investment in Atlas and Delta and competing with COTS? Or building truly new capabilities that are actually on the critical path to human space flight beyond LEO?

    “At least VSE provides structure to our national space goals.”

    VSE does provide a good structure and strategy. I would argue that the ESAS plan provided a poor means of implementing that strategy.

    “I really haven’t heard an alternative that would be any better.”

    What I described above was the basic O’Keefe/Steidle implementation plan for the VSE, before Griffin and ESAS. There’s lots of variations on and alternatives to that plan as well, from TeamVision’s work to Direct to Bigelow/LockMart work on a commercial Atlas. Although I think we can logically think through the right policies at a top-level on this forum, it’s worth familiarizing oneself with the technical details of all these plans as well.

    “Would wings on Orion make you happy?… Did I hear single stage to orbit, not bloody likely in the next two decades, maybe two stages to orbit with scaled composites design by 2015 but big maybe, bet anyone…?”

    I don’t think anyone here is making an argument for a return to OSP or X-33.

    “Once a “private enterprise” dose demonstrate that it can provide safe transport to LEO and back I’ll be the first to jump on the band wagon, until then NASA needs to develop the it’s own space craft to carry out the missions assigned.”

    That’s a valid argument. But ESAS and Griffin have carried it to a damaging extreme with Ares 1. A smaller Orion on an Atlas, for exmaple, would have been a good enough U.S. backup to COTS and foreign vehicles for ISS transport and a lunar LEO architecture.

    “We should have started seriously building and a shuttle replacement ten to fifteen years ago, now we are paying the price in timeline and design.”

    I would argue NASA should have started transitioning human space flight needs, as it did with science missions, to commercial launch services after Challenger, and not waited for Columbia. But even accepting that historical lost opportunity, the price we’re paying in dollars and time for Ares 1 is needlessly large.

  • richardb

    Edward Wright, I expect private companies will be operators of manned missions in the next 50 years that will dwarf what Nasa has done to-date.
    Nasa however is the only game in town for the US over the next 10 to 20 years if escaping LEO is the game. So why not show them some love? After all it costs you less than a penny for the pleasure.

    If COTS works, you know that private enterprise initiative using hundreds of millions of Nasa dollars, then a new day is at hand. It might not work. Maybe Bigelow and LMT(the huge government contract devouring private company), can scheme a manned launcher to a new space station. You know, using the rocket US taxpayers continue to subsidize to the tune of a few hundred million per year.
    If putting people in space is important, and I think it is, why not play it safe until these earlier efforts show what they’ve got? Like I said, the cost is about 1 penny, percentage wise of the fed budget. Nasa has a plan, its workable, its affordable, it in no way stands in the way of private enterprise. So why not let them get on with it?

  • anonymous

    “In General, I like Dr. Griffin’s responses to panel. Congress needs to learn there is a penalty for not funding a program at its original requested amount.”

    I found Griffin’s arguments to be pretty weak. I agree that he has to lay out the impact of cuts to his programs. But he also has to provide a good justification for those programs to begin with.

    Griffin’s justification before Congress for Constellation in general, and Orion/Ares 1 in particular, has collapsed to just keeping NASA’s human space flight workforce and institutions intact after Shuttle’s retirement. And while that may be important, just maintaining a capability is not a goal worthy of taxpayer investment. It’s a means, not an end.

    That capability, and all those billions of dollars, must serve a greater purpose. Griffin has to be able to concretely articulate, in terms of scientific research, commercial benefits, foreign policy goals, etc., what opportunities would be forgone if Congress continues to delay Ares 1/Orion and a human lunar return.

    Unfortunately, with ISS research sidelined, a human lunar return receding over the horizon due to the costs of Ares 1, and no real foreign partnerships or competition in the making, those justifications have been largely lost. NASA appears to be rapidly closing on another era like the 1980s, with vehicles and capabilities that are limited to LEO and unable to usefully serve any concrete goals.

    And on the risks and impact of the coming “gap” on NASA’s human space flight workforce, I have yet to see Griffin present any data showing that NASA actually had greater turnover in its program/project managers, technical leads, and other critical positions during the 1975-1981 time period than in the periods before and after. In the absence of such data, Griffin’s argument about the “gap” is vulnerable to critical analysis from appropriators and their staffs, especially those who do not have human space flight centers in their states like Hutchison and Nelson.

    “To me the word ‘priorities’ has become an excuse to cut important programs instead of raising taxes to cover them, eliminating earmarks or something. It’s the old VET vs. NASA argument in disguise but they apply it to everything. In Chicago, ‘priorities’ were used to completely eliminate the county dentists for poor children.”

    I would argue that NASA’s human space flight programs do not compete well as a priority because do not do a good job addressing actual federal priorities. (Apollo and the Soviets and ISS and the Ruskies being the two exceptions that prove the rule.) When NASA structures its human space flight programs to efficiently serve greater and more concrete goals, the justification for federal spending will become self-evident.

  • anonymous

    “you need fuel to get to the moon, how would you propose to get it to LEO and how much would it cost compared to heavy lift.”

    Assuming it performs as advertised, Ares V will put about 120,000 kg into LEO. An Atlas V today can put about 20,000 kg into LEO. Assuming $500 million for each Ares V launch and $75 million for each Atlas V launch, it’s about a wash. I’m sure someone with nitpick these numbers, but for a ROM, and especially for Ares V figures that won’t be known for another decade (if it’s built at all), it’s about right.

    The promise of forgoing heavy lift is that you get a much higher flight rate. And with a higher flight rate, you can drive launch reliability and affordability in ways that we have not been able to do before. The overall architecture may experience a greater rate of launch failures, especially early on. But if those failed launches were just carrying rocket fuel, there should be little impact to overall mission success.

    It also allows NASA to forgo the huge costs associated with developing and maintaining a heavy lift infrastructure. It’s unknown how those costs would trade with developing and maintaining a fuel depot on-orbit, but I’d guess they’re also a wash, at worst.

  • canttellya

    I’m still waiting for a non-pork argument why we need humans in space. Everything I’ve heard is jobs-in-districts and a dubious appeal to “capabilities”–not sure where those capabilities are since NASA centers haven’t built a spacecraft in a generation.

    Space tourism is the only attempt I hear to connect a human spaceflight need with economic return. And regardless of the reality or unreality of that market, I’m sure we can all agree that it’s not NASA’s job to get space tourism going.

    So NASA, tell us why America needs you to put astronauts in space, or stop doing it.

  • anonymous

    “I believe that the CLV selection served two purposes for Nasa that an EELV can’t do. CLV first will work”

    How do you know that? Even setting aside the much higher costs and longer schedule associated with Ares 1, the wise thing is to do is take a launcher with eight or so successful flights behind it (Atlas V) over a paper design with mass issues and no flight history (Ares 1).

    “and second develop most of the hardware needed for a HLV. Then when the funding wedge for CLV is over, Nasa can say it needs “comparatively” very little to continue on with HLV.”

    Even setting aside the very significant technical differences between Ares 1 and Ares V SRB loads, J2-derived motors, tankage, avionics, etc., Ares V development costs are still going to be a multiplier (not a fraction) of Ares 1.

    The actual NASA cost comparison will be more like, “We spent X on Ares 1. Now we need 2, 3, 4, or 5 times X for Ares V.” And if NASA actually uses such an foolish argument to justify Ares V, I don’t need to spell out how the next White House or a future Congress will react.

    “On the other side is the EELV. If it becomes “man” rated, then there will be a very expensive HLV effort that must be done for any serious lunar or beyond travel.”

    Based on what analysis? What is standing in the way of developing a clean-sheet HLV design that is less costly than Ares V?

    “Just flinging small EELV’s loaded with a lawn mower gas tank to some Exxon in the sky isn’t realistic. ( Its never been clear to me how squirrling tons of cyrogenic fuel in LEO is a wise idea. Seems explosive to me.)”

    Again, based on what analysis? What specifically do you mean by “realistic”? Why would a fuel depot be any more explosive than the spent stages, Progress tankers, and ISS tankage already up there?

  • anonymous

    “If COTS works, you know that private enterprise initiative using hundreds of millions of Nasa dollars, then a new day is at hand. It might not work.”

    COTS probably won’t work because the effort is underfunded compared to other private/public launch vehicle development partnerships (EELV) and because NASA is allocating many billions more to an in-house, government competitor (Ares 1).

    This is the conundrum — NASA can’t accelerate the development of a commercial LEO human space flight market and leverage that market as long as NASA insists on competing with that market with its own vehicle, especially within a constrained NASA budget.

    “Maybe Bigelow and LMT(the huge government contract devouring private company), can scheme a manned launcher to a new space station.”

    If industry proves to a reasonable degree that such an approach is workable for private space flight, then the government should move out of that business, or at least shift its investments to heavily favor that solution over the in-house government backup.

    “If putting people in space is important, and I think it is, why not play it safe until these earlier efforts show what they’ve got?”

    Unfortunately, NASA/ESAS/Griffin are playing it too safe — so safe that there’s nothing left to get an actual human space exploration effort underway.

    “Nasa has a plan, its workable, its affordable”

    From an exploration viewpoint, ESAS is proving to be budgetarily unaffordable and politically unsustainable. If Congress today won’t pony up to keep supposedly critical path vehicles on schedule to service ISS, I’d argue there’s little hope that the next White House or a future Congress will fund a human lunar return effort that NASA will not have started in any substantial way by the timeframe.

    “it in no way stands in the way of private enterprise”

    As described above, Ares 1 and COTS are contradictory. NASA won’t be able to accelerate or leverage private human space flight capabilities by spending many billions of taxpayer on an in-house, government competitor to those private capabilities. It’s a very unrealistic view of financial markets — they simply aren’t that stupid.

  • Edward Wright

    > Edward Wright, I expect private companies will be operators of manned missions in the next 50 years that will
    > dwarf what Nasa has done to-date.

    Sorry, Richard, but I am not willing to wait another 50 years to see any real activitiy in space. Nor have you presented any good reasons why we should.

    > Nasa however is the only game in town for the US over the next 10 to 20 years if escaping LEO is the
    > game. So why not show them some love? After all it costs you less than a penny for the pleasure.

    I hardly know where to begin. First of all, NASA is not the only game in town. There are a number of companies developing suborbital vehicles in the US, right now. I know, VSEers sneer at such vehicles because they aren’t as big and expensive as the Saturn V and they don’t go all the way to Alpha Centauri, But they are being built right now, and they will reduce the cost of access to space while Orion will only increase it.

    Second, VSE does not cost “less than a penny.” You’re off by more than a hundred billion dollars.

    Third, what “pleasure” do you think I will get from Project Orion? NASA is not going to allow taxpayers to use it for pleasure trips. The only people who will have that pleasure are a few NASA astronauts who manage to survive the post-Shuttle layoffs.

    > If COTS works, you know that private enterprise initiative using hundreds of millions of Nasa dollars, then a new day is at hand.

    “Hundreds of million of NASA dollars.” Actually, taxpayer dollars — the money doesn’t come from NASA. At the same time, you’re asking taxpayers to spend hundreds of billions on Orion and its siblings. Why? What value do we get out of that? Why should we settle for a “new day” that limits private enterprise to less than 1% of the government program?

    > It might not work. Maybe Bigelow and LMT(the huge government contract devouring private company), can
    > scheme a manned launcher to a new space station. You know, using the rocket US taxpayers continue to subsidize
    > to the tune of a few hundred million per year.

    That has nothing to do with giving NASA hundreds of billions for Project Orion. (Neither does COTS.)

    > If putting people in space is important, and I think it is, why not play it safe until these earlier efforts show what they’ve got?

    Because you haven’t shown that state socialism is a “safe” investment — or safer than private enterprise, for that matter. NASA has tried at least two dozen schemes to replace the Shuttle. How many of those have succeeded? If you’re right, it should be close to 100%.

    If you think putting people in space is important, why do you want to replace the Shuttle (which could put up to 56 people a year into space) with Orion, which will never manage more than 12?

    > Like I said, the cost is about 1 penny, percentage wise of the fed budget. Nasa has a plan, its workable,
    > its affordable, it in no way stands in the way of private enterprise. So why not let them get on with it?

    Because it is not affordable. If the goal is to put humans on the Moon, ESAS is just about the least affordable plan for doing that. Calling something “affordable” does not make it so.

    The role of the Federal government is to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare. ESAS does neither. It does not ensure our military superiority in space, nor does it help the United States remain economically competitive. We deserve much more for an annual expenditure of more than $16 billion.

  • Dave Huntsman

    If putting people in space is important, and I think it is, why not play it safe until these earlier efforts show what they’ve got? Like I said, the cost is about 1 penny, percentage wise of the fed budget. Nasa has a plan, its workable, its affordable, it in no way stands in the way of private enterprise. So why not let them get on with it?

    I think the first sentiment is exactly where Mike was originally coming from when he decided to put most money into CEV et al, with some in parallel for COTS. (Keep in mind the relative sizes, though; for example, the cost through the first Ares-I unmanned test flight, over $300m, is more than the total either COTS company is getting to develop an entirely new, cheaper launch vehicle. And the Ares-I is supposed to be based on mature technology).

    However, at the time, I think Mike had in his mind that he was going to be able to have a human CEV capability for LEO by 2012. Now that has been blown out of the water, and the gap is increasing. Currently, after 2010, the only human transport systems we know for sure will exist will be controlled by Vladimir Putin, and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Not a preferred set of choices.

    The current plan is workable, and affordable? I’m not sure that’s true now; when the (budgeted) plan (as opposed to good intentions) leaves us totally dependent for access to our multi-tens of billions space national laboratory on two entities that do not mean us well. If the European ATV concept ends up doing well, I can see us approaching them in a year or two with a quid pro quo proposal for them to man-rate it (an over-used term, I think), to at least give us some options other than total dependence on Vladimir or the PLA.

    And special emphasis should also be given to Mike’s point at the hearing that the increasing gap is going to see a brain drain out of both NASA, and the contractors and subs; many into retirement, others to other industries, as happened before. (More than a few will go into teaching, if my memory from the same type of thing in the ’70s is any guide).

    It is not inconceivable that we could see a wholesale transfer of the centroid of human spaceflight, from the US, and to a new Europe-Moscow-China axis, during that time. (Remember, Europe and Moscow are already building a joint launch facility at Korou).

    The wild card is the US entrepreneurial space market; which at the moment hardly exists, but which has some serious potential. And it’s not just the two COTS ‘winners’, SpaceEx and Rocketplane Kistler. I have been pleasantly surprised the last several months that others- including some COTS ‘losers’ – continue to work, to try to find a way. The Spaceship Company/Virginia Galactic is as serious as ever, if not more: since they have now at least publicly admitted that transcontinental suborbital transportation is now on the radar as well as suborbital joyrides. PlanetSpace is also aiming at that potential market – like the previous two, using suborbital tourism as the stepping stone/excuse to get started. Hopefully Bezos’ will keep on pressin’ on; and Bigelow is in his own category. Even t/space is still trying.

    My own quirk: I like- or maybe the better word is, I hope – for success by Benson Space/SpaceDev. While Jim is a businessman and thus might change direction later as things change, at the moment he’s also using the whole suborbital tourism step mainly as a gateway into what he thinks is the real business: more affordable human space transportation. And by forming Benson Space he’s basically relieved SpaceDev management of the time-consuming and distracting chores of fund-raising, creating markets, etc. etc. I think its Jim’s intention to be able to be there, and be available, to sell human orbital transportation to either ISS, or a Bigelow facility, for the post-2010 period; and he’s putting his heart, soul and experience into it. With Hoot as the stellar (!) head of space ops, and SpaceDev keeping its nose to the grindstone on being able to make hardware….if anyone might be able to pull an upset here, I’m betting for the moment on Jim.

    (btw: Jim is being interviewed on The Space Show on Sunday ; at
    thespaceshow.com).

    Dave Huntsman

  • Edward Wright

    > I’m still waiting for a non-pork argument why we need humans in space.

    Why do we need humans on land? On the sea? In the air? Those questions are fundamentally the same.

    A more significant question is why humans spaceflight should be restricted to fewer than a hundred individuals working for the NASA astronaut office.

    > Space tourism is the only attempt I hear to connect a human spaceflight need with economic return. And regardless of
    > the reality or unreality of that market, I’m sure we can all agree that it’s not NASA’s job to get space tourism going.

    I don’t agree, and neither did Congress when they passed the NASA charter. One of their stated duties is to “seek and encourage, to the fullest extent possible, the commercial use of outer space.”

    That doesn’t mean it’s NASA’s job to do commercial spaceflight, any more than it was the NACA’s job to run the airlines, but they do have a statuatory obligation to encourage its development. Unfortunately, NASA has no desire to play the same role in space the NACA did in aviation. They want to run the airlines.

  • richardb

    If this country can’t spend a paltry .7% to 1% of the Fed Budget on Nasa, then we deserve a space program that is dependent upon promises from the snake oil salesman promising sub-orbital is just another case of orbital.
    Incidentally, that 16 billion is for more than VSE. Hubble, Cassini, the Mars probes, education & r&d, ISS. VSE is 3rd on Nasa’s list behind ISS and Shuttle. If people want to argue about some other approach Nasa should take, well god’s speed. Nasa has an approach, it will work, its affordable, its been well researched. Would they have picked a different approach if politicians weren’t involved? Possibly. But that isn’t the world Nasa lives in. Politicians do help Nasa navigate on earth. Congress approved the plan last year too. Now its up to them to fund it.

  • anonymous

    “If this country can’t spend a paltry .7% to 1% of the Fed Budget on Nasa, then we deserve a space program that is dependent upon promises from the snake oil salesman promising sub-orbital is just another case of orbital.”

    If NASA cannot adjust its plans to budget and political realities, it will continue to fail to extend its human space flight capabilities beyond Earth orbit. Eventually, those commercial efforts, unhindered by such realities, will outpace NASA and inherit the mantle of U.S. human space flight leadership.

    It won’t happen soon, but it will eventually happen if NASA does not break its addiction to the Apollo approach to human space exploration.

    “Nasa has an approach, it will work,”

    Based on what evidence? The fact that the LEO truck is so underpowered that there is no mass margin for design and development?

    “its affordable,”

    Based on what evidence? The fact that Congress refused provide enough funding in the 2007 budget to keep the plan on schedule? The fact that less than 40 Congressmen were willing to sign a letter supporting NASA and against the 2007 reduction?

    “its been well researched.”

    No it has not. There was no consideration of budget margin or sustainability in ESAS. There was no consideration of national needs or the utility of competition in ESAS. There was no requirements sensitivity analysis in ESAS. ESAS used incorrect thrust data for some engines. ESAS got blackout periods for EELVs wrong. ESAS applied questionable assumptions to quantitative safety analyses. Etc, etc.

    No study is ever perfect, but ESAS is flawed in very important and serious ways.

    “Congress approved the plan last year too.”

    No, that was a different, Republican-controlled Congress that passed the last NASA authorization bill (a couple years ago). Moreover, the bill authorized the VSE, not the ESAS implementation plan (which did not exist at the time).

    “Now its up to them to fund it.”

    No, now it’s up to a Democrat-controlled Congress to decide what spending priority they give to a Republican President’s human space flight plan versus other NASA programs and other demands on the federal budget.

    That’s the real “world” that NASA lives in, and the sooner the agency owns up to it and reassesses its plans, the better.

    Although I don’t expect Griffin & Co. to do so anytime soon…

  • canttellya

    Why do we need humans on land?

    They live there.

    On the sea?

    They receive positive economic return from fishing, mining, drilling, shipping, or military activities.

    In the air?

    99.9% of them are employing their time in the air as a medium for high-speed, low-drag transit. The remainder pursue personal interest or military activity.

    Those questions are fundamentally the same.

    No they’re not. Now answer the question why humans need to be in space. Is space a medium for low-drag rapid point-to-point transit?

    I have no problem with individuals who wish to pursue space travel to fulfill personal desires. I admire and encourage them. There is currently a nation on this planet that will assign a market price to such desires and fulfill them for qualified customers, and there is another nation that pretends that the experience of human spaceflight is of such importance that it transcends any financial, scientific, or economic qualifications on its value.

  • Edward Wright

    > No they’re not. Now answer the question why humans need to be in space.

    Because unless they have achieved eternal life, humans cannot exist outside of space and time.

    Beyond that, humans don’t “need” to go anywhere or do anything. Even live. Most choose to live and do other things because they want to, not because they need to.

    Is there some point to these philosophical questions?

    > Is space a medium for low-drag rapid point-to-point transit?

    Yes, extemely low drag.

  • anonymous

    Two nitpicky but important points:

    “If this country can’t spend a paltry .7% to 1% of the Fed Budget on Nasa,”

    NASA has earned less than half a percent of the federal budget for decades. Even the funding that came with the VSE did not change this. We space cadets need to accept that reality and adjust our plans accordingly. NASA can either choose to try new approaches to human space exploration that can be afforded within the ~$8 billion annual U.S. federal human space flight budget or not. I have a hard time believing that a reasonably safe and useful human space exploration program could not be put together for less than $80 billion a decade.

    “then we deserve a space program that is dependent upon promises from the snake oil salesman promising sub-orbital is just another case of orbital.”

    Space-X, Kistler, Bigelow, t/Space and others have nothing to do with suborbital human space flight. They may or may not be selling snake oil, but to smear their efforts with a suborbital label is inaccurate and misleading. They’ve been designing (t/Space), building (Space-X, Kistler) or achieving (Bigelow) orbital vehicles all along.

  • achieving (Bigelow) orbital vehicles

    I wasn’t aware Mr. Big was building rockets.

  • anonymous

    “I wasn’t aware Mr. Big was building rockets.”

    And you’d be right.

  • So why spin it? We don’t need any more new rockets. We can’t come up with enough payloads for the rockets we have. The only reason to build more rockets is to build BETTER rockets than the ones we already have.

    If you just want to launch payloads to do space missions, clearly the rockets we already have will suffice. Clearly that’s what NASA wants to do, and clearly the rockets they are proposing to build aren’t better than the ones we already have.

    That’s what separates the men from the boys here. The men want to build better rockets, the boys want to build rockets they don’t need. NASA epitomizes the disposable vanity society that America has become.

  • anonymous

    The more I reread this thread and Griffin’s testimony, the more I think cantellya has it right in this post:

    “Do you seriously think that the NASA that can’t build an Apollo capsule for less than $4B and 8 years of development is going to be putting a human crew in Mars orbit?… Griffin should be sent packing and bring someone in who can get the capsule on an EELV before 2010 for less than $2B. Griffin himself said in pre-administrator testimony before Congress that the capsule should cost no more than $100K per pound to develop. If NASA can’t do this silly little capsule…”

    Griffin is whining that his workforce will atrophy during the “gap”. But of course, it’s Griffin’s duplicative, expensive, and time-consuming Ares 1 LEO truck (and, to a lesser extent, an oversized Orion) that’s driving the gap. It’s kind of like listening to a spoiled teenager come up with excuses for why he needs a new sports car, when all you can afford to buy him is a used sedan.

    But Griffin is an adult. If he really cares so much about the “gap”, then he should stop whining, rethink, and pursue a more affordable and less time-consuming solution that would could be achieved within the resources he’s being given and before his much feared “gap” decimates NASA’s human space flight workforce.

    But that’s not what he’s doing — he’s holding onto Ares 1, damn the gap, the budget, the political sustainability of the follow-on human lunar return effort, or anything else. It’s the height of engineering hypocrisy — you should select design options that solve the problems you’ve been handed, not hold onto options the create additional problems.

    I’m not saying that my ego wouldn’t drive me to do the same — and Griffin is human, too — but in an ideal world, oversized teenage engineering egos amongst NASA’s leadership shouldn’t be allowed to drive the agency out of human space exploration yet again.

    My 2 cents… FWIW…

  • anonymous

    “So why spin it?”

    I wasn’t. I was simply pointing out the Bigelow has a vehicle in orbit and has never pursued suborbital capabilities, contrary to the earlier poster’s generalization about emerging human space flight companies.

    “We don’t need any more new rockets. We can’t come up with enough payloads for the rockets we have.”

    We’re in violent agreement. There’s no need for Ares 1. A smaller CEV on an Atlas V would suffice for NASA and benefit USAF and commercial competitiveness to boot.

  • LetsGetReal

    Now answer the question why humans need to be in space. Is space a medium for low-drag rapid point-to-point transit?

    There is no justification for the government to send humans into space, at least in the short-term. Robotic spacecraft and surface systems can clearly take care of requirements within the foreseeable future.

    However, there is a strong rationale for developing the technologies that would eventually enable transportation and extended habitation of humans beyond earth orbit. Use of present technologies, as in the case of ESAS, will result in flight systems that are unaffordable to operate over the long haul. The good news is that work on more advanced technologies could be done at a fraction of the cost Ares and Orion development, and could dramatically improve the capabilities for human spaceflight over the next 20+ years.

    But back to your question about why we should have humans in space. There is no justification in the short-term, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore its potential importance in the future. We may not know what form this will take, but I’m certainly not going to ignore the transformational effect that human migrations and exploration have had throughout history.

  • canttellya

    But back to your question about why we should have humans in space. There is no justification in the short-term, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore its potential importance in the future. We may not know what form this will take, but I’m certainly not going to ignore the transformational effect that human migrations and exploration have had throughout history.

    Thanks for being real, LetsGetReal. An honest admission. I’d love for humans to go into space–shoot, I’d love to be one of them. But it’s not the government’s responsibility to get me there. If there’s a space tourism market someday, and I have the wherewithal, I’ll get to go, as a paying customer.

    In the meantime, the US government should get out of the manned spaceflight business due to lack of need and return. Russia and China will follow swiftly since they don’t have any better arguments, and Soyuzes can’t fly three paying customers per flight.

  • Stephen Metschan

    There is a better way.

    http://www.thespacereview.com/article/814/1

    Looks like Mke thinks the Ares I is more important than VSE or anything else for that matter. I’ve just about had it. We can’t afford another two years of this.

    Mike is a smart guy any ideas why he doesn’t persue the approach we talk about?

  • anonymous

    “Mike is a smart guy any ideas why he doesn’t persue the approach we talk about?”

    Griffin is human, like the rest of us. He develops analytical biases, gets his ego invested in certain solutions, and closes his ears to critics when the going gets rough like anyone else.

    It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. I agree that the lunar return effort cannot withstand two more years of wasteful efforts on Ares 1, but barring a minor miracle, that’s what’s going to happen. Unfortunate, but probable.

  • LetsGetReal

    Mike is a smart guy any ideas why he doesn’t persue the approach we talk about?

    He certainly is, and there is a logic to his approach. However, the logic was based on overly optimistic performance projections for the original CLV/Ares I configuration, which consisted of a 4-segment SRB and an SSME-powered upper stage. This design was much more “off-the-shelf” than the current Ares I, and thus yielded a much lower cost.

    Moving to a 5-segment configuration with an essentially clean-sheet upper stage engine (it is J-2 only in name) and more complex structural design (e.g., imbedded tanks) blows everything out of the water. Ares I is no longer a simple slam-dunk, and its costs will approximate that of developing a completely new launch vehicle.

    It’s time to take a step back and reassess ESAS with this new and more realistic information. I think the EELV approach will fare much better this time. However, this needs to be done by an independent group. NASA has invested too much blood, sweat and tears in Ares I to provide a truly unbiased assessment.

  • John Malkin

    There is one good reason to go to space, protect humans, plants and animals from extinction due to a global disaster. The odds something bad could happen are pretty high relatively.

    Robots aren’t better than humans. They are just cheaper.

    NASA will still be in the human spaceflight business in 2020, I would wager a seat on Virgin Galactic. I would expect at minimum NASA would be working on similar issues with spaceflight that it currently researches for aeronautics.

    I don’t think anyone else will stop human spaceflight because of some shortsighted Americans.

  • canttellya

    There is one good reason to go to space, protect humans, plants and animals from extinction due to a global disaster. The odds something bad could happen are pretty high relatively.

    Ok, the global extinction/biosphere backup option. In which case, closed-life support systems technologies, ultra-ultra-ultra cheap launch systems, and ISRU and mining technologies should be of prime importance, in addition to asteroid detection and deflection systems. Better be a way to evacuate the planet quickly or maybe the politicians can make a list of the favored few who get to survive in the event of planetary catastrophe.

    Sounds like the “underground cave gap” argument in Dr. Strangelove.

    Any indications that the politicians are funding NASA because of such remarkable millennial vision?

    Will the Stick or the LSAM be the machines to get human colonies on the Moon, Mars, or in orbit?

  • LetsGetReal

    There is one good reason to go to space, protect humans, plants and animals from extinction due to a global disaster. The odds something bad could happen are pretty high relatively.

    This is probably the best reason for maintaining a view toward eventual colonization of other planets. But this is a long-term objective, and there is no immediate need to push toward this goal. It would be better to develop advanced technologies that could enable such exploration and settlement more effectively and affordably than charging off on a “mad rush” return to the Moon.

    I do agree that expansion into space is necessary. It improves the odds of that life can sustain itself and continue to evolve in the future.

  • anonymous

    “Just flinging small EELV’s loaded with a lawn mower gas tank to some Exxon in the sky isn’t realistic. ( Its never been clear to me how squirrling tons of cyrogenic fuel in LEO is a wise idea. Seems explosive to me.)”

    Here’s one Boeing expert who thinks otherwise…

    http://selenianboondocks.blogspot.com/

    In-orbit fuel provisioning isn’t necessarily a slam dunk, but its state of technological readiness, likely advantages and sustainability versus heavy lift, and market potential make it worthy of further pursuit, for a human lunar return or other applications.

  • richardb

    I know that when it comes to Nasa and space, there are dozens of contrary opinions on how things should be done. Its been that way since before Apollo. We could send out dozens of stop work orders to the primes right now and go back for another year’s worth of reviews before spending a few months or more writing RPF’s then issuing them to the same primes plus a few startups. While months go by for those to be evaluated and judged, the calendar has flipped a couple years with a new President, Congress and Nasa Admin. They scratch their collective heads and say, “Gosh, this new Nasa Plan isn’t too smart, lets rethink it.”. Sooner or later, if a plan is in place that is workable, affordable and reasonably funded, then its time to get on with it. We are exactly at that point.
    Plenty of people have said the stick is underpowered, well senior Nasa big wigs have gone public saying they have no show stoppers and can meet their requirements. If others say they lie, then they have an obligation to prove it.
    Its affordable as its designed to pretty much work within historic Nasa budgets of the last few years. Again, its a tiny part of the Federal budget.
    Funding, well if they can’t get Congress to pony up for this, no way other ideas will get funded either. Its amazing how low ball estimates for getting to mach 25 get exposed as….low ball estimates.

    .

  • Stephen Metschan

    Rich not even Mike Griffin shares your optimism and he should know.

    “The FY07 appropriations, if enacted as the House has resolved, will jeopardize our ability to transition safely and efficiently from the Shuttle to the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and the Ares 1 Crew Launch Vehicle. It will have serious effects on people, projects, and programs this year and for the longer term.”
    – NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, February 5, 2007

    Well Mike the budget cuts are official, now what? I know lets just keep driving NASA into that brick wall you just described. Good idea.

    The first component of successful leadership begins with believing you can succeed. Having a plan that can actually succeed within the budget is good way to kick that off don’t you think?

  • LetsGetReal

    Plenty of people have said the stick is underpowered, well senior Nasa big wigs have gone public saying they have no show stoppers and can meet their requirements. If others say they lie, then they have an obligation to prove it.
    Its affordable as its designed to pretty much work within historic NASA budgets of the last few years. Again, its a tiny part of the Federal budget.

    Yes, that has been the “official” position. But behind closed doors, these very same big wigs have expressed grave concerns with the current approach. Again, the current direction would probably make sense if the truly “off-the-shelf” stick could be made to work. It can’t, and now we’re charging in the same direction with an essentially clean-sheet vehicle.

    The reticence to change or reconsider this course if driven by several factors: (1) continued appeal of maintaining Shuttle workforce and infrastructure, (2) fear that changing course will make program more susceptible to cancellation, and (3) an institutionally fostered obsession with the concept and its viability.

    It would make sense not to quibble if the results of ESAS were valid. But this is not the case. Continuing down this course pushes the development of meaningful VSE hardware out beyond the secure political window and severely limits the funding for other important NASA programs and activities.

  • Edward Wright

    > Plenty of people have said the stick is underpowered, well senior Nasa big wigs have gone public saying they have
    > no show stoppers and can meet their requirements. If others say they lie, then they have an obligation to prove it

    No one said they lied, Richard. We have said they are wrong. That is not the same as “lying.”

    You’re the only person here who’s accusing others of lying and being “snake oil salesmen.” Where’s your proof?

    > Sooner or later, if a plan is in place that is workable, affordable and reasonably funded, then its time to get
    > on with it. We are exactly at that point.

    What evidence do you have, beyond the fact that “Nasa big wigs” say so?

    NASA big wigs said the same thing about NASP, Shuttle II, X-33, X-34, X=37, X-38. and Orbital Space Plane. What makes you believe they are infallible this time?

    > Again, its a tiny part of the Federal budget.

    No, one-half percent of the Federal budget is a huge amount of money.

    If the government spent that much money on military spaceplane development, we could have a weapon system that would ensure the military supremacy of the United States for the next 50 years.

    If the government spent a small fraction of that money on commercial incentives, we could reduce the cost of space transportation by two orders of magnitude, provide a tremendous boost to the the American economy, and enable many thousands of Americans to go into space, to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond.

    If you want Americans to give up all of that, to retreat to the 1960’s and never try anything new, the obligation is on you to tell us why. Why is it better cede the high ground of military space to our enemies? Why is it better to send almost no one to the Moon, rather than lots of people? Why is it better to make space transportation more expensive, rather than cheaper?

    “Because NASA big wigs say so” is not a good enough answer.

  • anonymous

    “We could send out dozens of stop work orders to the primes right now and go back for another year’s worth of reviews before spending a few months or more writing RPF’s then issuing them to the same primes plus a few startups. While months go by for those to be evaluated and judged, the calendar has flipped a couple years with a new President, Congress and Nasa Admin.”

    It’s not necessary to disrupt ongoing Constellation work until the leadership has decided it’s going to switch gears. There’s no reason a new (perferably independent, say Aerospace Corp.) study could not be commissioned and conducted in parallel with ongoing Ares 1/Orion work. The worst that would happen is that it would confirm that the dismal path NASA is currently on is the best we can hope for. But, if given the latitude to correct ESAS data errors, consider other important criteria, and do some requirements sensitivity analysis, it could uncover/confirm some very desirable alternatives. Even if Griffin & Co. don’t bite on such an alternative, those alternatives will probably be critical to retaining VSE and Shuttle dollars after the next election.

    As far as contracts go, per the GAO’s recommendations, Orion is structured such that it can be terminated or redirected with little loss to NASA. Ares 1 does not have all its contracts in place and the 2007 budget debacle is only shifting those to the right — so if NASA leadership was in a mood to act quickly enough, they could avoid the worst on Ares 1. The only real loser that may try to stick it to NASA is ATK, and that may just unavoidable if we’re going to dump Ares 1, especially if there’s no place for SRBs on heavy lift. But we can’t hold the nation’s entire human space flight effort hostage to one munitions company.

    “Sooner or later, if a plan is in place that is workable, affordable and reasonably funded, then its time to get on with it. We are exactly at that point.”

    No we’re not, and it’s slipping farther and farther from NASA’s grasp. By definition, the plan that is workable and affordable is the one with budget, schedule, and performance parameters that fit within the goals and resources provided by the White House and Congress.

    With an almost $600 million shortfall and a year’s delay, the 2007 budget proved that the current ESAS plan is not workable and affordable.

    Worse, the situation is going to deteriorate in the 2008 budget, when NASA needs about a six percent increase to its topline budget over 2007 to keep Ares 1/Orion on schedule. That may not sound like much, but in today’s federal budget environment, where nearly all other non-defense discretionary agencies are lucky to get one or two percent increases, it’s a nearly impossible increase to achieve (and that’s before the earmarks get counted). Barring a minor appropriations miracle, exploration is looking at another multi-hundred million dollar shortfall and another year’s delay to Ares 1/Orion.

    By the time the smoke settles at the end of this year, Ares 1/Orion will be looking at an operational date sometime in 2016. Despite the VSE having been in existence for several years, that Ares 1/Orion operational date will be nine years (almost a decade) from now. That is dismal, dismal progress just to get into Earth orbit, and it puts the remaining ESAS plan — the part that gets some actual exploration hardware built — way over the horizon.

    And that’s just the budget inputs. It says nothing about whether NASA can bring Ares 1/Orion in at the costs they’ve quoted. Something that NASA’s leadership doesn’t say out loud is that by ESAS’s own analysis, there’s only about a 50/50 shot of that happening (versus the 80% chance of success that such programs are usually budgeted at). So if the coin toss goes against NASA and there is an Ares 1/Orion overrun on top of the 2007/8 budget shortfalls, we may be looking at 2017 or later for the first operational Ares 1/Orion flights. Given the specific technical hurdles that have emerged with Ares 1 (see below), the current yellow cautionary ratings on Ares 1/Orion program status, and the fact that the exploration leadership at NASA can’t even build a simple robotic lunar orbiter within budget (LRO has nearly a $50 million overrun so far), I think the probability that Ares 1/Orion won’t overrun is actually much less than 50/50.

    From an Earth orbit/Shuttle replacement/ISS provisioning/human space flight infrastructure and workforce maintenance point-of-view, a plan that is going to require roughly a decade from today to re-establish a basic human space flight capability to Earth orbit is not a “workable” plan.

    From an exploration viewpoint, a plan that leaves no money for actual exploration hardware development until after the political window of opportunity opened by the Bush Administration has closed — and likely pushes the start of such hardware into 2012 or later — is not “affordable”.

    “Plenty of people have said the stick is underpowered, well senior Nasa big wigs have gone public saying they have no show stoppers and can meet their requirements. If others say they lie, then they have an obligation to prove it.”

    Ares 1 is underpowered. Per Horowitz’s slides from his press conference about a month ago and the Level 2 information available over on nasaspaceflight.com, Ares 1 does have mass margin for “performance” (i.e., enough margin to cover various operational contingencies). But Ares 1 has no margin to cover future increases in mass due to design and development iteration. The lack of design and development margin stemming from the underpowered Ares 1 is also why we see NASA investigating thrust augmentation from the LAS (not a smart thing to do from a safety standpoint, especially since that LAS will already have a hard time getting away from the high-thrust SRB), why Orion’s capabilities were scaled back earlier last year, and why Orion’s motor has taken on more and more responsibility for achieving orbit.

    NASA is basically claiming that they can hold Ares 1 and Orion mass constant for the rest of these systems’ design and development cycles, despite the fact that there’s no precedent for such a feat (at least that I’m aware of) in the history of aerospace development, despite the fact that the Ares 1 first-stage still has yet to clear PDR or CDR, despite the fact that the Ares 1 upper-stage has yet to clear SRR, PDR, or CDR, and despite the fact that Orion has yet to clear PDR or CDR. Admittedly, the design has considerable heritage and NASA should have a deep understanding of it, so maybe, just maybe, they can pull it off. But to make such a bet is to bet against the entire history of aerospace (really all engineering) project development — not a smart thing to do with billions and billions of taxpayer dollars.

    Going back to the point about workability, a plan that requires a minor engineering management miracle to achieve orbit is not a “workable” plan.

    “Its affordable as its designed to pretty much work within historic Nasa budgets of the last few years.”

    If ESAS had been designed with adequate margin to work within the approximate NASA budgets of the past few years, then Griffin would not have had to cut the number of missions in the Mars program in half; would not have had to cut astrobiology research and other science disciplines in half; would not have had to indefinitely delay the Mars sample return mission, two of the next three major optical telescopes, all major high-energy astrophyics missions, and any robotic missions to the outer moons; would not have had to cut the aeronautics budget by a third; and would not be catching heck for the projected drop-off in Earth science data sets.

    Going back to the point about affordability, by definition, a human space exploration program that requires dramatic cuts in NASA’s other program areas just to get started and survive its first couple of years (all these cuts occured before the 2007 budget debacle) is not “affordable”.

    “Again, its a tiny part of the Federal budget.”

    But it is billions and billions of dollars, and exploration must compete for those tens of billions of dollars against a war on terrorism, the coming retirement of the baby boom generation and its impact on Social Security, skyrocketing medical costs and their impact on Medicare, other research priorities such as energy/global warming research, and other NASA human space flight, science, and aeronautics programs.

    We space cadets (especially Griffin) have to accept that NASA human space flight will have to live within a budget of about $80 billion per decade and roughly a third of that will be needed just to keep the ISS operational and serviced after Shuttle’s retirement. We have to be able develop a human space exploration plan that fits within the remainder.

    “Funding, well if they can’t get Congress to pony up for this, no way other ideas will get funded either.”

    How do you figure? Per Cantellya’s argument, if Congress is willing to pony up $4-5 billion for Ares 1 development (minus a half-billion here and there), what would prevent them from ponying up, say, $2 billion for, say, a smaller, four-person capsule and LAS that fit atop an existing Atlas stack and some of the additional avionics and redundant systems that would be necessary to give that Atlas a modicum of human-rating? The logic of why Congress would not fund a lower cost and faster approach to the same basic capability — especially if they’re really worried about the “gap” — escapes me.

    “Its amazing how low ball estimates for getting to mach 25 get exposed as….low ball estimates.”

    Don’t smear alternatives with general arguments. Get down to brass tacks. What prior, low-ball figures for Mach 25 orbital vehicles are you talking about? And how do you know that they were low-balled?

    Sorry, I don’t mean to pick on you Mr. B, but again, we space cadets, NASA, and Griffin & Co. especially have to come to grips with some pretty hard realities before we can ever hope to take control of the future of public human space exploration and get some actual exploration accomplished in our lifetimes. This cycle of over-ambitious engineering hubris and institutional bias leading to the real or de facto cancellation of any actual exploration hardware and the stranding of NASA in Earth orbit has got to stop.

  • Earl Blake: Once a “private enterprise” dose demonstrate that it can provide safe transport to LEO and back I’ll be the first to jump on the band wagon, until then NASA needs to develop the it’s own space craft to carry out the missions assigned.

    I couldn’t have put it better myself. However, I do agree with those who think NASA should caught up more to support the COTS effort.

    I one-hundred percent agree with Anonymous’ analysis of medium-class boosters versus heavy lift. But, I would add that increasing the EELVs flight rates also benefits both commercial and scientific customers. Using the EELVs could have dramatically expanded the political base for the launch vehicles supporting a lunar return. (An alternative that might work if NASA insists on the Ares-1 is to get rid of the EELVs and transfer everyone to the Ares-1, but I’m not sure we want that kind of high launch rate for a large solid rocket.)

    John: Robots aren’t better than humans. They are just cheaper.

    Only if you don’t count the value of the science. No robot is likely to find a fossil on Mars except by purest chance, and no set of robots at any cost will be able to do the field work required to understand the history and distribution of any past life. If you want that, you’d better be prepared to send humans.

    LetsGetReal: But this is a long-term objective, and there is no immediate need to push toward this goal. It would be better to develop advanced technologies that could enable such exploration and settlement more effectively and affordably than charging off on a “mad rush” return to the Moon.

    I emphatically disagree with this. You learn by doing, not (only) by studying. If there is one lesson of the last thirty years, you don’t develop more affordable technologies unless there is a reason for them to exist. We did not get serious about lower cost alternatives to LEO until the Space Station was partially deployed, the Space Shuttle was discredited, and we needed an alternative. COTS is underfunded, but, because their is a perceived political and financial need, it has a far better chance of actually reducing the cost of spaceflight than all the efforts before the Space Station. Note also that the orbital space tourism did not develop until Mir was in place and Russia was despirate for money (not all that different from the situation that resulted in COTS!).

    Create political and financial “markets” in space, and they will come. Don’t, and they won’t, and we’ll continue playing in the “develop the technology to do it right first” sand box for the next thirty years.

    I agree with most of Anonymous’ analysis of the political realities in his last post, but disagree with his conclusion. We all seem to agree that there is little chance of Dr. Griffin changing course in the next two years (or a little longer if I am right that these decisions will not be made quickly in a new administration). Therefore, here an now we need to accept that reality and plan a way forward. I still believe the best way is to continue the Orion development with as little disruption as possible. When it becomes politically possible to change course, replace the Ares-1 under the heavy Orion with something that can lift it — a four segment Delta-IV, maybe? It’s my understanding that Boeing has studied Delta-IV derivitives that can launch circa 100 tons, Delta-IV Growth Options. (Which brings up the point that Atlas-V is probably not on the table for this role because of its Russian engine, especially with relations with Russia rapidly deteriorating.)

    — Donald

    — Donald

  • anonymous

    “I agree with most of Anonymous’ analysis of the political realities in his last post, but disagree with his conclusion. We all seem to agree that there is little chance of Dr. Griffin changing course in the next two years (or a little longer if I am right that these decisions will not be made quickly in a new administration). Therefore, here an now we need to accept that reality and plan a way forward. I still believe the best way is to continue the Orion development with as little disruption as possible.”

    To be brutally honest, I’m torn.

    On the one hand, I want to argue for what _should_ happen, assuming the world and the NASA Administrator were more perfect. And that would be for NASA to change course away from Ares 1 now, take a more cost-effective and timely path to LEO, and get some actual exploration hardware underway before the political window of opportunity totally closes at the next election and a new White House takes power.

    On the other hand, this is not a perfect world and the NASA Administrator is a mere mortal with all the flaws that entails. In the real world, nothing I or anyone else says on these forums is going to stop Ares 1 from getting built. And nothing Mr. Robertson or anyone else says is going to help get Ares 1 built.

    So I guess disagree with Mr. Robertson in two ways. I would still argue that, at least in a perfect world, the right thing for NASA to do is to change course. But, in the real world, I would argue that the whole debate is moot. Griffin is going to do as he pleases with Ares 1, and all we can do in the peanut gallery is sit on our hands and handicap what might happen after the next election.

    A strange conundrum, but I think that’s where we’re at.

    “When it becomes politically possible to change course, replace the Ares-1 under the heavy Orion with something that can lift it — a four segment Delta-IV, maybe?”

    In the perfect world, NASA changes requirements to allow for a lighterweight Orion that does not require an unusual EELV configuration.

    In the real world, the point is moot. Ares 1 will be too far along and too many dollars will be sunk for the next White House and NASA Administrator to spend yet more dollars human-rating another launch vehicle and moving Orion onto it.

    “We all seem to agree that there is little chance of Dr. Griffin changing course in the next two years (or a little longer if I am right that these decisions will not be made quickly in a new administration).”

    Based on past history, that’s right. The NASA Administrator is pretty far down the list of political appointees that a new White House needs to get through the Senate. The Brookings Institute actually does a good job at tracking how long it takes each new White House to get appointees confirmed for key positions. For the policy inclined, if you remember two years from now, it’s worth visiting their website after the next election to track the process.

  • al Fansome

    ANONYMOUS: In the real world, the point is moot. Ares 1 will be too far along and too many dollars will be sunk for the next White House and NASA Administrator to spend yet more dollars human-rating another launch vehicle and moving Orion onto it.

    Anonymous,

    You are probably right, but I am not so sure. Remember the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor, which Jamie Whitten (the former Chairman of House Appropriations) created? We spent about $4B on ASRM, and it was cancelled soon after Chairman Whitten was removed as Chairman of Appropriations after the 1992 election.

    Some argued that the rational thing to do was to complete the ASRM, considering how much we had invested. But we did not.

    Now, the Ares 1 has not generated the level of opposition that the ASRM generated — yet — but some of the conditions are different. The natural opposition to Ares 1 has been driven underground — as the chief protector of the Ares 1 is the NASA Administrator. Griffin can punish his opponents in many more ways than the House Chairman of Appropriatons can.

    The word I have heard is that Griffin has made it crystal clear to senior executives at Boeing and Lockheed that they will not mess with his Ares 1 project.

    If it is true that Griffin has had to resort to this tactic, it is possible that major opposition may well surface in January 2009.

    – Al

    PS — What we do here in the peanut gallery is completely irrelevant compared to the opposition that could surface in January 2009.

  • anonymous

    “You are probably right, but I am not so sure. Remember the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor, which Jamie Whitten (the former Chairman of House Appropriations) created? We spent about $4B on ASRM, and it was cancelled soon after Chairman Whitten was removed as Chairman of Appropriations after the 1992 election.

    Some argued that the rational thing to do was to complete the ASRM, considering how much we had invested. But we did not.”

    That is an interesting analogy.

    The difference, though, is that ASRM was a totally discretionary project. No other NASA program depended on it.

    The problem with Ares 1 is that NASA access to ISS, Shuttle retirement, and NASA human space flight in general are all dependent on it (barring one of the COTS contractors getting all the way to and through Phase 2 and crewed flight very rapidly).

    Given that, I think the calculus for the next White House will go something like, “Yeah, this Ares 1/Orion system is taking way too long, but it’s pretty far along and still better that throwing more money at a more expensive and much more dangerous Shuttle. Besides, we need Ares 1/Orion to get to the Space Station and we can’t not fly the flag and eagle in space. But do we need to plant the flag on the Moon again? No, and NASA hasn’t gotten that effort going anyway. So let’s keep a minimal human space flight program going with Ares 1/Orion, cancel the lunar return, and put those Moon dollars to use elsewhere.”

    At least, that’s how I’d handicap it.

  • anonymous

    “The word I have heard is that Griffin has made it crystal clear to senior executives at Boeing and Lockheed that they will not mess with his Ares 1 project.

    If it is true that Griffin has had to resort to this tactic, it is possible that major opposition may well surface in January 2009.

    What we do here in the peanut gallery is completely irrelevant compared to the opposition that could surface in January 2009.”

    Yeah, I dunno. I think it depends on the specific alterations and demands NASA makes to the Atlas or Delta line for a “human-rated” launch vehicle.

    To the extent that there are minor changes with minimal oversight or that the change benefit the USAF/commercial market in some way (e.g., more reliable engines) or that the NASA vehicles are produced on a seperate line with a lot of common components overhead cost-sharing, I think USAF/ULA would be very happy to produce more boosters for NASA. They clearly have vast undercapacity with the current USAF/commercial market.

    But if NASA stays true to form and its human space flight culture, NASA could get very deep into ULA’s knickers or make alterations and demands that make the Atlas or Delta line less, rather than more, affordable and competitive. That’s essentially what the (very lazy and poor) human rating assumptions and analysis behind ESAS said — if you apply current NASA human rating processes and standards to EELVs, you drive their costs to exorbitant levels. And if that looked likely, USAF/ULA would probably prefer to keep NASA out of their business and continue to accept the undercapacity they have today.

    There is probably is a kernel of truth to the rumors that Griffin has asked the EELV companies to not compete with Ares 1 for Orion business. But today, all that affects are ULA/LockMart/Boeing studies (i.e., leadership tells their engineers they can publicly study Bigelow business, but not NASA Orion business). I don’t think there was ever any serious lobbying by these companies against Ares 1 or for EELV solutions.

    And implicit in a switch from Ares 1 to an EELV would be a serious rethinking of how NASA goes about human rating launch vehicles (and probably a resizing of Orion). If that wasn’t in the cards, I think the senior leadership at USAF/ULA/LockMart/Boeing would say thanks, but no thanks, we’re not interested.

    It’s too bad that Griffin took the easy way out and wasn’t willing to challenge NASA’s human rating culture, assumptions, standards, and processes. He’s probably one of the few guys in the business who could have done so effectively. Unfortunately, NASA human space flight be paying for his lack of moxie for many years to come.

  • micspasatron lingsom

    And implicit in a switch from Ares 1 to an EELV would be a serious rethinking of how NASA goes about human rating launch vehicles (and probably a resizing of Orion). If that wasn’t in the cards, I think the senior leadership at USAF/ULA/LockMart/Boeing would say thanks, but no thanks, we’re not interested.

    __________________________________________________________

    Yea right. The primes turn down multibillion dollar contracts. Not in this reality. Lockheed is already in the thick of the Ares 1 project with them taking the lead for the upper stage, an upper stage that could probably work with an uprated Atlas V heavy. Hmmm….. wonder what they are thinking.

    As for problems with Ares 1, they are plethora.

    Some of the gems coming out of the woodworks at MSFC.

    Thrust Vector Control

    The Ares 1, being a very slender vehicle has some really demanding requirements for thrust vector control. As of this time, the contractors don’t have a handle on this, especially since the whole system has not even passed its systems requirements review. Some folks that have done the calculations say that the existing SRB TVC system is completely inadequate to the task.

    Booster Recovery

    Despite what Scotty Horowitz has been saying this is still a huge issue and it is still only 50/50 whether or not it is feasible.

    Underpowered Upper Stage

    The single J2xxx upper stage is inadequate to the task of pushing the system to its really dumb -30 x 160 km suborbital trajectory. The ESMD folks keep talking about uprating the motor but already there is very little sembalance between what is proposed and what the J2 motor series actually was.

    These are known problems with the system. They can be solved but the cost is going to approach $10 billion dollars to do so. How many EELV heavies could be purchased for that price?

    The Ares 1 is an ego driven program and none of the contractors are going to whine as solving the problems just means more cash in their pockets.

  • anonymous

    “Yea right. The primes turn down multibillion dollar contracts. Not in this reality.”

    You may be right. But ultimately the USAF will have something to say about whether NASA requirements drive up the costs of their EELVs or screw with the military’s assured access.

    “The Ares 1 is an ego driven program and none of the contractors are going to whine as solving the problems just means more cash in their pockets.”

    Agreed. Even if Griffin is not silencing them, I don’t think LockMart or Boeing has much of an incentive to lobby for or sell EELVs for Orion. It’s the smart thing to do from a national perspective, but it’s probably a wash for each company’s bottom line.

    “Thrust Vector Control”

    Except for some remaining KSC twang analysis, I thought this was a dead issue. Care to share?

    “Underpowered Upper Stage”

    It boggles my mind that the SRR for J2-X is still pending. I wonder what’s holding up the train. I also find it remarkable that Horowitz is so confident about mass margins and that the overall Ares 1 SRR was approved with the J2-X SRR still pending. To quote Bill and Ted, “Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.”

  • Every one who has personally met Griffin says he’s smart.
    His book on Space Vehicle Design is reasonable intelligent

    So if someone smart is doing things everyone thinks is .stupid, then
    one of the two judgments must be wrong.

    Suppose Griffin is deliberately putting together a low cost program that will be a huge success (COTS. prizes) and a Government boondoggle of biblical proportions. (Aries, the Stick, CEV etc…) Maybe his end goal is the utter destruction of the “We must build it in house” side of NASA.
    Give them enough rope to hang themselves so to speak.
    It’s clear that he has not been given the political power necessary to
    trim the bloated workforce, so let it implode.

  • canttellya

    Griffin’s co-author on the book was James French, who’s no knuckle-dragger. Maybe he did most of the work and got the least of the credit.

  • canttellya

    This guy has a theory about why the decisions were made the way they were made, and I tend to believe it, especially when you look at a NASA leadership that stocked with ATK executives like a stream is stocked with fish, and corporations that offer jobs to ex-astronauts who are good enough to bring their address books along with them.

  • anonymous

    “So if someone smart is doing things everyone thinks is .stupid, then
    one of the two judgments must be wrong.”

    “Griffin’s co-author on the book was James French, who’s no knuckle-dragger. Maybe he did most of the work and got the least of the credit.”

    “This guy has a theory about why the decisions were made the way they were made,”

    My 2 cent theory is that Griffin is technically smart and powerful but politically naive and weak. Unlike O’Keefe, who was so politically powerful and adept that he could thumb his nose at Congress regarding NASA workforce issues and make the right programmatic decisions from a national perspective regardless of what parochial interests were at stake, Griffin has no political connections and probably had to make certain promises to certain Senators for his confirmation that compromised his programmatic decisionmaking. Worse, Griffin’s political naivete has compounded the problem by taking those parochial congressional concerns to such an extreme in ESAS that they have seriously undermined the budget and political sustainability of the VSE at a national level over multiple elections.

    Hopefully someone will do a history or biography someday that will lend some real insight into what happened.

  • al Fansome

    ANONYMOUS: With an almost $600 million shortfall and a year’s delay, the 2007 budget proved that the current ESAS plan is not workable and affordable.

    Worse, the situation is going to deteriorate in the 2008 budget, when NASA needs about a six percent increase to its topline budget over 2007 to keep Ares 1/Orion on schedule. … Barring a minor appropriations miracle, exploration is looking at another multi-hundred million dollar shortfall and another year’s delay to Ares 1/Orion.

    Anonymous,

    I think you are being optimistic by suggesting only a “multi-hundred million dollar shortfall”. Unless “multi” is a big single digit, or even a double-digit, number.

    If you take the following assumptions:

    1) NASA only gets a 3% increase instead of a 6% increase, the impact is ~$500M on NASA’s budget. If the 2007 CR precedent is followed, 90% of this will come out of ESMD budget.

    2) The Dems & Chairwoman Mikulski increase NASA’s Earth Remote Sensing budget by $500M per year — consistent with the recent NAS report. Since global warming is a powwerful political wedge issue, and they have a scientific report to back them up, and Sen. Mikulski priority is to send $$ to GSFC, all the political stars are lined up for this. If the 2007 CR precedent is followed, then most of this increase to the remote sensing budget would come out of ESMD budget.

    Combined these two political impacts could have a $1 Billion impact on ESMD’s budget in FY2008.

    In this case “multi” = 10.

    – Al

    PS — If the space science, or aeronautics, or the ISS research budgets are increased, the damage to ESMD’s Constellation program could be even larger.

  • canttellya

    Excellent points, Al.

    The real problem of using the pork-argument as the only justification for a gov’t human spaceflight program is that pork can take a lot of different forms, and unless you happen to live in Houston, Huntsville, or Titusville, your pork won’t necessarily look like a shuttle.

    Now that many of the powerful republicans from those locations are out of power we will see new flavors of space pork coming from places like Maryland that won’t get Griffin or Horowitz the Moon program they claim to want.

    Courageous leaders would restructure a program for maximum efficiency and maximum national benefit. They would make hard choices about what REALLY needs to be done to make a human spaceflight program a valuable contribution to the national economy (in a productive, not parasitic way) and national technological competitiveness.

    Courageous leaders would sit down and come up with one or two viable reasons for a lunar or Martian exploration plan, and then drive all development around those reasons, with technological development as a dependent function of the reasons.

    For instance, if NASA assesses an economic opportunity in asteroid mining, for instance, they would design vehicles and infrastructure around making that economically viable. If that meant humans were a part of the mining campaign, fine, if not, fine. Every decision would be based around how to make the most money for the least amount of expenditure. Maybe you don’t mine the asteroid in space; maybe the whole trick would be to direct chunks of the asteroid on reentry trajectories for mining on earth.

    Of course, this isn’t how our space program works. But it should. In the end, all government programs are about what they return, whether it’s security, wealth, competitiveness, or prestige.

  • Anonymous: get some actual exploration hardware underway before the political window of opportunity totally closes at the next election and a new White House takes power.

    I think it is already too late for this. That is why I still think that, however unfortunate, we should go with what we can get — Orion and Ares-1 — and try to fix it later. The alternatives when that window closes is continuing to use the Shuttle or nothing. Why not just go with COTS for LEO? 1). Because that’s not in the political cards because it doesn’t keep most of the Shuttle workforce employed, which is of some importance even to politicians outside of the affected states, and 2). because at least we have a lunar capable spacecraft at the end, and that’s a lot better off than we’ve been at any time since the mid-1970s.

    My 2 cent theory is that Griffin is technically smart and powerful but politically naive and weak.

    I fully agree. I first developed this opinion when he made enemies of the space science community long before he had to, and almost everything that has happened since has only confirmed me in this opinion.

    I only fear that we are playing the same politically naive card by opposing Orion for something better at this late date.

    — Donald

  • anonymous

    “I think it is already too late for this.”

    Again, in the real world, the point is moot. Griffin is going to get his way for the next two years and by then it will be too late to stop Ares 1/big Orion.

    But in the perfect world with a more perfect Administrator, I don’t think so. Orion has a very flexible contract, many Ares contracts are not signed yet, and two years is plenty of time by government reckoning to expend a few billion dollars on heavy lift and lander hardware.

    “That is why I still think that, however unfortunate, we should go with what we can get — Orion and Ares-1 — and try to fix it later.”

    Even if we were in that perfect world, I’m not sure the oversized Orion can easily switch to an EELV without creating a major EELV variant that no one else wants to buy. I think we’d be better off modifying the contract today for a smaller Orion that is more compatible with commercially proven EELV variants.

    “The alternatives when that window closes is continuing to use the Shuttle or nothing.”

    “Nothing” includes Soyuzes/Progresses/ATVs/HTVs and any minor miracles on COTS, all of which is what we’re stuck with now through 2015 anyway. If we’re smart with the requirements, a human-rated EELV and smaller Orion could be ready well before then — shrinking the gap — with change to spare for some actual lunar hardware.

    “Why not just go with COTS for LEO? 1). Because that’s not in the political cards because it doesn’t keep most of the Shuttle workforce employed, which is of some importance even to politicians outside of the affected states,”

    No, you put your NASA workforce on the stuff with no near-term commercial application, i.e., heavy lift and lander. That’s plenty to keep them occupied while BoeLockMartULA build your small CEV/human-rated EELV backup to COTS.

    “2). because at least we have a lunar capable spacecraft at the end, and that’s a lot better off than we’ve been at any time since the mid-1970s.”

    Wrong, Orion is not lunar capable without either heavy lift or in-space fuel provisioning. Under the current plan, none of that gets developed before the election, and (if you agree with my political assessment) it gets lost for another 10 or 20 years after the election. If NASA made a change of course now, they could get the heavy lift or fuel depot camel’s nose under the tent before the election, and have a much better shot at retaining the lunar return effort intact afterwards.

    And again, I’m arguing the hypothetical, perfect-world case where the NASA Administrator is no mere mortal, recognizes the political and budgetary threats, and is capable of changing tracks. I readily admit that none of the above is going to happen as long as Griffin is at the helm.

  • canttellya

    And again, I’m arguing the hypothetical, perfect-world case where the NASA Administrator is no mere mortal, recognizes the political and budgetary threats, and is capable of changing tracks. I readily admit that none of the above is going to happen as long as Griffin is at the helm.

    It doesn’t require superhuman intelligence or capability to realize the budgetary and political realities and adjust to them. Griffin or any other reasonably competent individual should be able to do just that. If he can’t, he should get the boot and quickly so someone else can come in and do the job he can’t seem to do.

    Personally, I think twenty years from now Griffin will go down as the guy whose inept bungling got government-funded American human spaceflight terminated and led to the shutdown of Kennedy, Johnson, Stennis and Marshall Space Flight Centers.

  • watcher

    Amazes me that laser det launch is not even on the cards for 100 kg payloads. A big boondoggle of a launch complex and minimum fuel. But the way NASA reinvents the same wheel , and nuts , and bolts …
    I’m hoping that some of the Russian space thinking heritage – ie PROVE your technology then you can move on with other unknowns – is behind the thinking on the stick. If it works then the USA finally will have what the Russians have had with Soyez and Proton, a stable working longterm system, and it will have the advantage of recent design and hopefully a 30 year no major redesign capability built in – not developmental like the Shuttle.
    Although I regularly despair of the Mammon worshipping side of the US ( I call it the no long spoon ( no spoon necessary for pigs at the trough) supping ), free speech and rationality also appears as some of your cultural heritage. The MIC and SIC Mammonites serve a purpose, and it is up to your Congress to restrain them. Up to space cadets to continue the long process of educating people and their representatives that space is an alternative to war as any nonviolent human activity is better, after all … Any comments on the similarity of the USA going to war in Vietnam and to the Moon , and now – similar distractions anyone?

  • canttellya

    In space, no one can hear you spend

    This wasteful attachment to human space flight is tenderly cultivated by NASA’s public relations operation. This is no ordinary collection of flacks. They are more like the Borg: a soulless, unstoppable hive mind.

    Their plan is fiendishly simple: Get more taxpayer cash from Congress. Use it to send astronauts into space. Aggressively promote the astronaut program to build public support for NASA. Use public support as a tool to get more taxpayer cash from Congress.

  • […] and the beginning of Orion flights. Earlier this year NASA administrator Mike Griffin said that the year-long continuing resolution that funded NASA in FY07 at FY06 levels created a six-month dela…, pushing its introduction to service to as late as early 2015. Want to shorten the gap? Then […]

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