It brings it to an end. Which is good. Government funded manned spaceflight should be ended as well.

You watch, the Chinese and Russians would immediately follow suit.

Norm,

I am not surprised that you are confused. I will take a cut at explaining.

First, for Members — with NASA centers in their district — even if they feel powerless to do anything … that is not politically acceptable back home to say “I was powerless”. So, you put on a show, designed to convince voters that their elected Representative is doing something about their pocket-book issues.

Second, Mike Griffin is not ready to give up, and change strategy. Mike does not understand politics — so Mike is going to make a last desperate attempt to save his precious strategy. Unfortunately, he can’t point to how his big new LVs produce measurable benefits to national security or economy in the near-term. Sinece he does not have much to work with — beyond being a good speaker — he therefore makes speeches with JFK in them, along with allusions to national security, to gaps, and “China is coming”.

3) The Dems are blaming the WH (now) for not asking for enough (part of the show) … but in the end, they are going to give NASA less than the WH asked for. They are wringing their hands about “all the priorities”, which is code language for “these other priorities are more important than your priority Dr. Griffin”.

The NASA budget will be the fighting ground for ONE 2008 Presidential issue. Congress is likely to increase the Earth Resources Observation budget — maybe by as much as $500M per year (based on the recent NAS report) — and (then silently pray) for the WH and/or other Republicans to publicly oppose this. The Dems will see this as a wedge issues they can use to say “the Republicans can’t even support research on global warming.” The Republicans will probably be smart enough to not say anything. Even if the Republicans don’t say anything, the Dems will have a talking point for how they helped out immediately on the global warming issue by increasing research.

Who gets hurt? ESMD’s programs. Meanwhile, Barbara Mikulski will bring home the bacon to GSFC, and laugh all the way to the bank (in private). But publicly Barbara will (again) put on another show about trying to increase NASA’s overall budget. Two years ago it was the supplemental — now the Mikulski show is “Let’s have a Summit.”

4) The real story — which political experts know is the real driver for Congress — is the 2008 election. NASA will be mostly ignored (excepting global warming) as a budget priority. Since the Dems have other priorities for the federal budget, that will help in the coming elections, they almost certainly will probably reduce the NASA funding to help pay for those other priorities.

The EASY way for the Dems to do this is to say “NASA we will give you that 3% budget increase you asked for” but in the details it will be clarified that it is 3% over the amount provided in the FY2007 continuning resolution. This will result in a $500M cut from “what was requested”.

But NASA will not be able to say it is a cut.

If Griffin screams … Congress will say “It is not a cut … it is just a slow-down in the increase” … and they can then pull out Griffin’s words about his “slow down in the increase” in the Science budget. It is not a cut, right Dr. Griffin?

When you combine the extra $500M going to Mission to Planet Earth, and another $500M coming off the top line of the NASA budget, I am predicting a $1 Billion cut to NASA’s ESMD budget for FY2008.

The pain gets worse — if NASA’s budget gets baselined at $500M lower, that will probably stick as a new baseline that lowers NASA’s budget by $500M/year for the next 5 years — or $2.5B out of ESMD. In addition, if you rebaseline the MTPE budget at $500M/year higher … over the next 5 years that is another $2.5B out of ESMD.

What does a $5 Billion cut do to Griffin’s ESAS architecture?

I have no idea.

– Al

Because, the pro-NASA committee representatives all have jobs in their district so their support comes regardless of what NASA actually does. It’s their peers in the Senate and the House, without NASA jobs in their districts, which they need to convince. Manned space exploration, as currently defined, is a Nationalistic endeavor. In order for the broader congress to approve a significant increase in VSE (Required by ESAS) we need a congress that believes America is unique, greatest among nations and has its best days still ahead.

A congress that can’t even identify a enemy that killed 3,000 American’s on clear day in September and has now publicly stated its intent of achieving a Nuclear Holocaust on Israel and America, will never “get” VSE either.

Without even a self preservation level of Nationalism from the broader congress they only path forward is to find a more efficient way to utilize the resources we have to work with that naturally will drop out as a result of local district politics.

I am further boggled by the responses on this site. What in the world are you folks talking about? It does not appear to be on topic.

It would be erroneous to draw these conclusions from the JIMO debacle. JIMO is proof that no matter how much political support you can get, it’s no substitute for good engineering and tech development. JIMO’s reactor failed not because they *couldn’t* develop sufficient technology, but rather because they *wouldn’t* advance reactor technology to the point where it would support an attractive mission, instead relying on “off-the-shelf” technologies that simply weren’t “off-the-shelf”.

If you had a hydrogen/oxygen engine that only got 150 seconds of specific impulse, it’s because you have a bad engine design, not because there isn’t more capability in the concept.

The most promising near-term non-chemical propulsion technology for crewed transportation is Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP).

Far from it. A representative nuclear thermal rocket is essentially untestable on the ground, in any sort of flight-like configuration. And it must be tested, because the NERVA technology would not lead to attractive flight engines. I go through a great deal of NEP/NTP arguments on an extensive thread on NSF.com.

The most promising near-term non-chemical propulsion technology for crewed transportation is Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP).

Anybody got a 6 MW, 4000 sec Isp thruster unit that can run for months on end?

I will believe VSE is more than Apollo 1.85 when NASA starts working on — or even toward — technologies like those shown in the presentation vanilla referenced.

Which is exactly why we should be using the EELVs and not developing new vehicles at this point. Solar-electric probably would require somewhat more mass, but would be more politically palitable, and may prove more reliable.

— Donald

Anyone wanna sell this idea to Microsoft or Google ?