America is more interested in flying their Harley’s and Hummer’s in record heatwaves than they are in investing in the future of their nation.

The fact that they are putting their entire manned space flight future in a low flight rate SRB powered launch vehicle should have been your first hint.

When are you guys going to figure out that the political hacks in this country don’t see the value in what space brings to the table? The so called alt.space community has done nothing to change this either. Flying more rich guys is hardly a call to arms for the future of the nation.

I was specifically speaking about the cost of these wars and the impact that would have on non-defense related discretionary spending. The budgeting rationale put out by Bush was questionable at best. Add in the inevitable cost increases that occur with large space projects, the deficits we were running, and the escalating war costs, and it made less sense.

My point on ISS is that even if it was desireable to cancel the program, it turned out to be not politically feasible. It would have been difficult to cancel it and then go to the Europeans and Japanese and say, “Hey, join on this moon/Mars project.”

Shuttle/ISS costs $8B a year. We have to rationally ask whether the minuscule 20 hours a week of micro-gravity research we are currently getting with that money is a worthwhile investment, or whether that capital could be better allocated elsewhere like leasing Bigelow modules or moving it to the science program.

Or the wars on terror and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

War ‘Of’ Terror. Bombing the shit out of a country isn’t going to solve the problem. The only defence against terrorism is competent law enforcement.

What is clear is that cancelling the program was not part of the plan Bush unveiled. Since cancelling ISS seemed to be an integral part of what TPS proposed, that should have raised some a lot more concern than it did and a lot earlier.

I didn’t know the part about TPS’s proposal, and the plan raised concerns with me. It never seemed reasonable that they could do all these things with only modest increases in NASA’s budget and moderate cuts elsewhere. Not given NASA’s history. Or the wars on terror and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush’s underestimating of those costs. Or his spendthrift, deficit-spending fiscal policies. Or his attitude about science in general or global warming in particular. I knew he’d use it as an excuse to cut into that part of the budget.

Again, I go back to a community wandering around in the LEO desert for decades finally seeing what looked like the Las Vegas Strip. I don’t think people questioned it enough. If they did, there were always prominent people who told them to sit down and shut up.

That’s all there is, eh? No wonder the United States is going backwards.

However, I do think they now need to come up with a plan that a). starts from where we are here and now; b) advances human spaceflight without enormous gaps in capability; c) continues automated science at whatever level they think necessary. As long as they are only complaining, it does not help.

For what it’s worth, to paraphrase a mutual friend, if I were god-king of the nation, I would have cancelled the Shuttle after the loss of Columbia; used the Space Station more-or-less as is and/or paid the Russians to launch newly built equipment using the Proton (dropping the Shuttle and abandoning the Space Station did not need to be synonomous); deployed a lunar-oriented Orion on EELVs; and relied on Soyuz/Progress and COTS vehicles to supply the Station. We coulda had it all!

— Donald

In Lou Friedman’s defense, the Planetary Society called for implementing the vision by immediate cancelling ISS construction, with only a Shuttle flight to repair Hubble. Lou’s plan was to afford growing science budgets AND CEV/CLV by jettisoning Shuttle and Station.

Given that the aerospace industry trots out “Return Shuttle to Flight” and “Complete ISS assembly” as the first two pillars of the Vision, this was not exactly a politically feasible plan. But it was an intellectually honest one.

– Jim

The Planetary Society advocated for this architecture, and are now opposed to the price of its implementation. The nation’s current financial situation was entirely predictable, as was using Shuttle components without much modification being an overly optimistic simplification. The fact remains, something similar to this architecture (Ares-1 versus EELV debates aside) is the option for continuing human spaceflight with the lowest up-front costs, the highest chance of near-term rsults, and the least impact on other parts of NASA. Given the financial realities, any other architecture — e.g., developing better rockets or entirely reusable vehicles — would have pushed up-front costs higher and / or pushed results (a landing somewhere) out, and probably far out.

I’d have more respect for the society (and renew my membership) if they proposed a workable alternative, rather than just complaining.

All that said, I do agree with those who argue that developing Ares-1 has pushed costs — and thus impacts to the rest of NASA — far higher than they had to be.

— Donald

Asteroids, Hemorrhoids, Moon, Mars and beyond (VSE) is the pay as you go part which I think funding is close to nil at this point.

So do we replace shuttle? COTS? Something else? Do we fund this as program at a level to complete by 2010 and should other programs give sacrifices to accomplish it?