Mr. Whittington,

Your statements display an misunderstanding of the facts.

Yes, the AAS program failed, but this failure occurred in 2002, which was not during the Clinton Administration, and Lori Garver was long gone from NASA.

AAS really died in the Fall of 2002, which was under Sean O’Keefe (who arrived at NASA in December 2001). Code R had signed the AAS study contracts with the four AAS winners, only a few months earlier, and it would be many months before they would complete their work and submit their final reports. In fact, it is clear the decision to kill AAS had already been made inside NASA Code R by the time they signed the AAS contracts in July 2002.

The original AAS program plan was to downselect from the four companies who won in July 2002, to one company in the Summer of 2003, and to sign a commercial contract to deliver cargo to ISS. Instead, during NASA’s annual 2002 budget process for the 2003 budget submittal, Code R decided to kill AAS and use the $300M budget authority for something else. Code R gave their plan to the WH OMB, in the Fall of 2002. For some unknown reason OMB (e.g., in the Bush WH) let NASA get away this. This is odd and confusing, since they then went to the trouble to recreate AAS in January of 2004 in the form of the “ISS crew/cargo services” budget line.

CONCLUSION: AAS died under O’Keefe’s management.

If you want to debate space policy, then please get your facts straight.

– Friend of COTS (and before that, AAS)

Airbus seems to be doing remarkably well in their fire sale at the Paris Air Show. So far, they’ve trounced Boeing. Your thoughts?

— Donald

“Have the feminazis turned on Hillary?”

In short, don’t confuse him with the facts – he’s already made his mind up.

Mark Whittington hates Democrats (his private blog is dripping with it) so he is always looking for a wedge to employ against them – even if that wedge makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Again, you have to be kidding. See the reference to the $186 million Kistler flight demo awarded in 2001 under SLI towards the end of the prior post.

I don’t mean to be partisan, but the claim that COTS is some Bush II or Griffin revolution in thinking or commitment to commercial space is false. Programs spending hundreds of millions of dollars on newspace flight demonstrations with the aim of supplying ISS using commercial transportation services were formulated and funded under the Clinton Administration, well before Bush II and long before Griffin came to power. All Griffin did was cancel the old programs (including Steidle’s), take some of their funding for Constellation, and relabel them.

And heck, we could even go back farther to the microgravity return capsule that NASA paid to have flown on the Conestoga launch vehicle to see that these kinds of ideas and commitments to stimulating new players in the commercial launch industry using human space flight-related payloads are nothing new.

Again, COTS is a good and much needed program. But to beat our chests about its suppossed originality or the inadequate funding commitments that have been made to it is disingenious, to say the least.

Yes you are. You made up an assumption about Garver’s track record as AA for Policy and Plans and attacked Garver here:

“Despite her position of being an Associate Administrator, Ms. Garver was obviously unable to translate talk into action.”

You’re a consistent Bush and Republican supporter and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But don’t make up assumptions about events that you know little about and use those assumptions to impugn individuals that you know even less about, especially just because they worked for or are now helping a Clinton or a Democrat. That’s the worst kind of baseless, useless, personal, partisan sniping. I would retract such a statement and apologize for it.

“The fact of the matter is that the program did fail.”

You’ve changed your argument with every post. First you claimed that the Clinton campaign is not serious about commercial space. Then, after it was pointed out to you that the individuals involved in the Clinton campaign and on the Democratic side have consistently been supporters of commercial space, you claimed that one of them, Garver, hasn’t really been a supporter of commercial space. Then, after the various commercial space activities that Garver has been involved with were pointed out to you, you claimed that she took the spotlight from Logsdon on the Kerry campaign. Then, after it was pointed out to you that Garver couldn’t have taken the spotlight from Logsdon on the Kerry campaign, you implied that one of the commercial space activities that Garver helped get started as AA for Policy and Plans never existed. Then, after it was pointed out to you that this Alternative Access program did exist with links to back it up, you now claim that the Alternative Access program doesn’t count because it was cancelled and remade into COTS.

Getting back to your original argument, you’ve done nothing at all in all this wandering logic to prove your assumptions about the intentions of the Clinton campaign or the people involved in it. It’s far past time to stop trolling, stay on point, and add something more substantive to the discussion than made-up claims that don’t stand up to even the lightest scrutiny.

“I don’t care about… a single bureaucrat.”

Yes you do. You even stated so a few posts back here:

“As for space commercialization, what exactly did she [Garver] accomplish along those lines when she was a NASA Associate Administrator?”

Again, stop trolling, keep your logic straight, stay on point, and try to add something substantive to the discussion.

“COTS has a much better chance of succeeding because it is well funded,”

COTS is not well funded at all, not by a long shot. Kistler and Space-X are getting between $200 and 300 million each from NASA to build a launch vehicle and an upper stage that must dock with the ISS, return to Earth, and remain safely pressurized throughout. Contrast that with USAF cost-sharing on EELV development, approximately $500 million each to Boeing and Lockheed, just to develop a launch vehicle. COTS is funded at half the money to do a job that’s at least twice as hard. (I’d argue three or four times as hard.)

If that’s your definition of “well funded”, then I’d hate to see your definition of “poorly funded”.

“supported by the White House and the Congress”

So was Alternative Access. In fact, IIRC, one might argue that Alternative Access had better political backing because, unlike the White House FY 2008 budget proposal for COTS, Alternative Access was never cut by either the White House or Congress.

“well managed.”

I don’t want to cast aspersions on Alan Lindenmoyer or his folks because they’re doing their best to demonstrate a massive culture change with very limited resources and in the context of a very entrenched ISS program. But above their grade level, the program is woefully mismanaged by dint of its severe underfunding alone. Heck, Kistler alone has already missed its second-round private financing milestone. See the “Constellation and the Future” folder, “RpK apparently out of cash — stopped work” thread, on Level 2 at nasaspaceflight.com.

“And it is not the end of the vastly improved climate at NASA for commercial space that has existed in recent years. Just today, NASA announced the signing of an information sharing arrangement with three more commercial space companies.”

NASA signs dozens and dozens of unfunded Space Act Agreements with industry every year. Three more do not make a “vastly improved climate” for commercial space activities.

If NASA put some funding into those SAAs — or just funded the existing Kistler and Space-X SAAs at adequate levels — then such breathless claims would have some legitmacy.

“That sort of thing would have been unthinkable seven odd years ago. That’s the level of commitment that was clearly lacking.”

You must be kidding. Kistler was working on a ~$200 million flight demonstration started under SLI way back in 2001. See the bottom of the table in this article

http://www.spaceandtech.com/digest/sd2001-20/sd2001-20-001.shtml

Nothing new under the sun, there. Heck, even the competition — Space-X raising a stink with the GAO — was the same.

“What I care about is commitment and then (hopefully) results.”

Then you should argue as a loyal Republican and commercial space supporter that the Bush Administration and Administrator Griffin need to do more than just rehash the old Alternative Access program as COTS and underfund the resulting awards.

Sheesh…

Yea and NASA is not putting a penny into any of these agreements, why is that, Mark?