But the key issue NASA is facing now is not trouble with ESAS, it is trouble with the (likely) incoming Hillary administration. Given how Hillary was quoted in the NYT regarding her space policy, she intends to retreat from VSE and abandon manned space exploration. This Hillary change in space policy is likely to happen regardless of any plan for implementing VSE that NASA might have tried, ESAS or otherwise. It’s telling that not one word from Hillary blamed Griffin or ESAS for her proposed change of policy. For Hillary the problem is manned space exploration period, and not the means of implementing manned space exploration.

What’s really sad about the Hillary policy is that — it is the worst of all possible worlds. She clearly intends to continue supporting manned spaceflight with all the attendant expense (and pork), it’s just that there will no longer be any hope for manned space exploration. It’s back to the past with Hillary, back to a pre-Columbia policy of endlessly circling in LEO.

It was still close though and didn’t account for the cleanup cost of decommissioning KSC. Also ‘decommissioning’ and generating the political support needed in the first place don’t go to well together. From an operation cost standpoint the Jupiter-232 (Ares-III) could drop below $10K/kg to orbit at about two launches per year and below $5K/kg to orbit at about eight. I have never seen an EELV price anywhere near $5K/kg.

But hope springs eternal; maybe SpaceX can beat this so we have a propellant depot in our plan to provide a real commercial opportunity for anyone who can deliver propellant to orbit at a lower cost than the NASA run Jupiter Launch System. Propellant, representing +60% of the mass needed for VSE, is no small business opportunity either. Real COTS as intended not what is currently being done primarily to silence the critics and provide some budget cushion for NASA internal projects. Even international partners could get trips on US spacecraft by providing mission propellant via their nation’s launchers, shoring up another key weakness with ESAS.

Again the biggest problem with the Ares-I/V is three fold. First the Ares-I is less capable and more expensive to operate what we already have. Second Ares-I and Ares-V are not true ‘direct’ derivative of the STS hence why the development budget is so high. Three the Ares-V has little utility outside of manned exploration.

The Jupiter-120 (Ares-II) at about 50mT to orbit and +8m diameter fairing would have great utility to number of unmanned and lunar precursor missions. During AIAA Space 2007 it was the payload volume of the Ares-V the unmanned teams wanted not the lift capacity. Also the Jupiter-120 (Ares-II) would replace the Ares-I so this new capability, not seen since the Saturn-V was decommissioned, would occur much sooner and be significantly less expensive than even the most optimistic Ares-V scenarios. The demographic timing of the Ares-V couldn’t be worse. If the Ares-V fails to be funded than defending the Ares-I ultra-high operational cost will be impossible at which point the STS infrastructure is gone and Orion is moved over to an EELV.

In our plan we only need to fund is a second stage development where as ESAS requires a Saturn V class launch system with a branded new production and launch infrastructure.

Upgrade the Jupiter-120 to a Jupiter-232 with an upper stage and we will have about 100mT in orbit sufficient in 2 launch architecture to blow ESAS or EELV off the map in terms of capability. All while cutting the number of launch systems we need to develop and operate in half while doubling the launch rate.

It’s beyond obvious at this point.

I’d predict something along the lines of the decadal survey report will be a baseline for the serious Presidential contenders, and the more environmentally-inclined will want to go quite a bit farther than that.

From the survey: “The national strategy outlined here has as its overarching objective a program of scientific discovery and development of applications that will enhance economic competitiveness, protect life and property, and assist in the stewardship of the planet for this and future generations.”

That’s what the VSE is supposed to do – science, security, and economics. I think it could do it (or could have done it), too … but not the ESAS implementation that took out the robotic precursors (except LRO), whacked various productive parts of NASA, left all of the private enterprise and international cooperation aspects of the plan to the pretty viewgraphs on the post-2020 lunar base, left out Centennial Challenges prizes for years, left only a trickle to fund COTS, and didn’t use EELVs or orbital fuel depots to share costs or give private launchers incentives.

So, the ESAS VSE implementation didn’t address the “science, security, and economics” foundations or the “private and international participation” aspects. That’s ok, because it probably isn’t going to get far, and the Earth Observation approach will likely be taken instead. It will be really easy to implement a major EO effort that addresses “science, security, and economics” as well as “private and international participation” head on, with results that come in quite quickly compared to ESAS. Here’s just 1 small example from the report:

“To restore more frequent launch opportunities and to facilitate the demonstration of innovative ideas and higher-risk technologies, NASA should create a new Venture class of low-cost research and application missions (~$100 million to $200 million). … The Venture class could include stand-alone missions that use simple, small instruments, spacecraft, and launch vehicles; more complex instruments of opportunity flown on partner spacecraft and launch vehicles; or complex sets of instruments flown on suitable suborbital platforms to address focused sets of scientific questions.”

This looks like a great opportunity for the private suborbital and small orbital launch vehicles, as well as the smallsat crowd.

I agree that the next President (whether it’s Clinton or not) isn’t likely to care about the Ares vs. EELV controversy as such, and more broadly they aren’t going to care about the general controversy over what the implementation of the VSE should be (or should have been). However, they will care about the implications of the ESAS implementation that they are presented with, whether it’s Ares, EELV, or whatever. They’ll care about things like how much the manned lunar program is going to cost, how long it’s going to take, how much of an organized scientific community is already working on interesting results from robotic lunar missions and getting the public interested, how much the lunar space transportation system is going to solve other problems (such as sharing costs of EELV launches from other organizations), how much political need there is to start the manned lunar program when the Shuttle workforce is already busy doing Ares I/Orion transportation to ISS, will there be results doing the next 4 or 8 years, and how does the lunar program compare to other alternate uses of the NASA funds.

I’d suggest that the scenario that the next President is apparently going to be presented with upon Shuttle retirement is not going to make the manned lunar program look at all attractive. If it was so good, why didn’t Bush/Griffin do anything with it, they’ll think.

Yes, the VSE, before Griffin started cancelling content left and right to get Ares I/Orion started and keep them marginally on track for a 2015 IOC, included:

– A series of lunar robotic orbiters, landers, rovers, and testbeds, to be launched at a rate of one per year. Of these, only the LRO and its LCROSS piggyback mission survive.

– A series of Mars orbiters, landers, rovers, and testbeds, to be launched at a rate of two per Mars launch opportunity (about every two years). This mission rate was cut in half.

– A nuclear reactor-powered Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO). Although JIMO was a technically and budgetarily questionable mission, even its much more conservative successor, Europa Orbiter, was indefinitely deferred. NASA now has no outer moons missions under development or planned.

– Two space telescopes for identifying and characterizing extrasolar planets. Both were indefinitely deferred.

The VSE roadmap on pages 4-5 of NASA’s VSE planning document clearly identify these robotic elements in yellow. If you don’t have the document, see the PDF links in lower right hand corner of this webpage:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/main/index.html

“The whole point of VSE is manned space exploration.”

The central element of the VSE is arguably a human lunar return. But a human lunar return is not the “whole point” of the VSE. The White House VSE policy document has as its very first goal:

“Implement a sustained and affordable human AND ROBOTIC [emphasis added] program to explore the solar system and beyond.”

Of the 26 bullet points in the White House VSE policy document, only five address the human lunar return element.

See the White House VSE policy document here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/space/renewed_spirit.html

Even in NASA’s VSE planning document, only the two pages labelled “Lunar Testbeds and Missions” address human lunar return.

Although Griffin has terminated billions upon billions of dollars of robotic content from the VSE to get Ares I/Orion started and keep them marginally on track for a 2015 IOC, that doesn’t mean that robotic content wasn’t a key, even dominant, part of the VSE. And it sure doesn’t mean that the VSE is only about building an Earth orbit human capsule and finding a booster for it to service ISS, which is what Griffin and ESAS has practically reduced the VSE to.

“The fact is without manned space exploration what is the point of NASA conducting manned spaceflight at all? Pork? Might as well stop NASA manned ops altogether then.”

I agree. With the possible exception of some achievements in the diplomatic arena, since Apollo, the past 30-35 years of NASA human space flight has arguably been relatively pointless. Unless NASA and its political masters in the White House and Congress can find a way to conduct actual human space exploration in an effective, efficient, sustainable, and timely manner, NASA’s human space flight programs should be terminated and those billions of taxpayer dollars put to better use elsewhere in the NASA or federal budget.

“And without manned ops, what is the point of NASA as it was created in 1958?”

NASA serves functions other than human space flight, usually much more productively. Even if NASA’s human space flight programs continue to cripple themselves with self-inflicted wounds, NASA’s space science and robotic exploration, Earth science, aeronautics, and space technology programs all produce worthwhile products that stand on their own merits, with or without (and often in spite of) the presence of a human space flight program.

One only needs to read the National Aeronautics and Space Act, the legislation that created and still governs NASA’s purpose, to see that NASA is about much more than human space flight. See the listing in Section 102 here:

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ogc/about/space_act1.html

“Might as well disassemble the whole agency then.”

No. Although there are legitimate points of debate to be considered in reorganizing NASA in the absence of any substantial human space flight activities, NASA’s other functions, especially its space functions, should arguably remain grouped together, as they are in the European and Japanese space agencies, both of which have small human space flight programs. In fact, Japan moved in recent years to consolidate its civil space functions, which were formerly divided between several different agencies.

FWIW…

A human lunar return effort is central to the VSE, but it is not the “whole point” of the VSE.

In the White House policy document alone, only five out of 26 bullets deal with the lunar return effort. See:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/space/renewed_spirit.html.

And in NASA’s accompanying planning document, only two pages cover “Lunar Testbeds and Missions”. See PDF link here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/main/index.html

Griffin has killed off many of the other elements of the VSE (all the lunar robotic missions after LRO, half the robotic Mars missions, any outer moons missions, both extrasolar planet-hunting space telescopes, space nuclear reactor power and propulsion development, most other exploration technology development, etc.) to get the ESAS implementation plan started and keep Ares I/Orion marginally on track for a 2015 start to operations. But that doesn’t mean that the VSE was originally only about building a CEV and finding a booster for it.

“The fact is without manned space exploration what is the point of NASA conducting manned spaceflight at all?”

I agree wholeheartedly, which is part of why I’m so critical of ESAS. Instead of returning NASA’s human space flight programs efficiently and rapidly to the development of actual human exploration hardware, ESAS wastes $10 or so billion recreating an intermediate Earth orbit lift capability that’s already exists in spades in the nation’s launch vehicle stable, among other arguably unnecessary activities and requirements.

I fully agree. And that’s one of the main reasons why I’m so critical of ESAS. Instead of getting NASA’s human space flight programs rapidly and efficiently back into the business of exploration, ESAS takes a huge detour with Ares I, duplicating an intermediate lift capability that the nation has in spades in its current and near-future launch vehicle stable. To a lesser degree, the same is true of Orion’s unnecessarily oversized requirements.

“The whole point of VSE is manned space exploration.”

The central element of the VSE is arguably the human lunar return effort. But it is not the “whole point” of the VSE.

In the White House VSE policy document, for example, only five out of 26 bullet points address the human lunar return effort. See here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/space/renewed_spirit.html

And in NASA’s VSE planning document, only two pages cover “Lunar Testbeds and Missions”. See PDF links here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/main/index.html

We should not confuse the greatly truncated VSE activities that Griffin is leaving the agency with versus the VSE program content as originally written and intended. Griffin may have cancelled all of the lunar robotic missions after LRO, half of the robotic Mars missions, any outer planets mission, both extrasolar planet-hunting space telescopes, any space nuclear reactor power and propulsion development, and most other exploration systems technology development just to keep Ares I/Orion marginally on track for a 2015 IOC. But that doesn’t mean that those non-Ares I/Orion elements are not part of the VSE. Or that the VSE is only about building a CEV and finding a booster for it.

“For one thing most of the current NASA budget crunch is directly tied to recent STS problems and the stalled national budget which froze NASA spending.”

No it’s not, not by a long shot. While it is true that White House and Congressional budget increases for NASA have been somewhat flatter than the VSE projected, NASA’s current budget crunch is mostly driven by the fact that Griffin’s ESAS implementation plan for the VSE busted the VSE budget from the very beginning. Just to get Ares I/Orion started, Griffin had to cancel billions of dollars worth of ISS research, nuclear reactor power and propulsion development, and other exploration technology development. And even then, Constellation was only budgeted at a 65% chance of success, meaning that there is a 1-in-3 chance that Ares I/Orion won’t meet its 2015 IOC and/or suffer overruns. The industry standard is 80%, or a 1-in-5 chance of delays/overruns.

Any budgeteer with a lick of sense could have foreseen that the budgetary good times would come to an end at some point in an effort that spanned multiple elections, Congresses, and White Houses. Any program manager worth his salt would have chosen a technical path that was not so budgetarily precarious from the very beginning, and incorporated the necessary margins, disposable elements, and off-ramps to prepare for such eventualities.

But instead of picking a conservative set of requirements and an efficient and resilient program approach, Griffin gambled on recreating Apollo in the absence of a Cold War budget, and worse, doubled down by putting the program’s requirements “on steroids” and demanding unnecessary elements.

The results of Griffin’s bad bet to date are a more than doubling of the post-Shuttle human space flight gap to five years, the worsening flight safety problems arising from the continued mismatch between Ares I performance and Orion’s mass, and the deferral of the choice to start Ares V/EDS/LSAM development into the latter half of a potential Clinton II presidency.

“Nothing ties an incoming administrations hands to the point that requires abandoning VSE or even defering it.”

Absolutely right. The point is not that Clinton is forced to chose a particular policy option. She’s not. She’s a Presidential candidate — she can choose whatever policy options she wants for her platform.

The problem is that Clinton is confronted with a choice at all. Griffin and ESAS did not have to pick a Shuttle successor and a human lunar return architecture that was so unaffordable and unsustainable that other NASA programs would get gutted and the decision to start building actual human lunar return hardware would be left up to the next President. But they did, so the next President is going to have to make a choice between starting a very expensive human lunar return effort that will likely require additional mega-bucks and continued gutting of other NASA programs versus spending that human lunar return money elsewhere at NASA or the federal government. And regardless of who sits in the Oval Office come 2009, the human lunar return effort is probably going to suffer from delays, deferrals, or outright termination as a result of confronting the next President with this choice — there are just too many other higher priorities. Clinton is just the first candidate to indicate such.

It didn’t have to be this way. These choices did not have to be delivered into the lap of the next President. The development of actual human lunar hardware could have been well underway during the Bush I Presidency without major cuts to other NASA programs, had Griffin not taken the ESAS requirements and Ares I detours. From a human space exploration advocate’s point-of-view, it was a terrible waste of a rare political opportunity to get actual human space exploration restarted.

“I think NASA could make ESAS work.”

Throw enough money, time, and effort at something and we can get anything to work. The key question is “At what cost?”

Is a duplicative intermediate-lift launch vehicle and oversized human capsule really worth billions in cancelled aeronautics, Earth science, space science, and exploration technology development? Is it worth major reductions in astronaut flight safety? Or large increases in system operating costs? Is it worth a five-year gap in U.S. civil human space flight? Is it worth years of delays in getting actual human space exploration hardware (heavy lift, EDS, lander) underway, which puts the actual exploration effort at great political risk?

Other folks may come down differently on these questions, but for me, it’s an emphatic “No!”.

“I do not support the ESAS architecture and I believe NASA could spend it’s limited resources in ways more productive for manned space exploration.”

Agreed, wholeheartedly. I couldn’t say it any better myself.

FWIW…

The VSE’s central element is arguably the human lunar return effort, but it is not the “whole point” of the VSE.

In the VSE White House policy document alone, only five out of 26 bullets address the human lunar return effort. See:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/space/renewed_spirit.html

And in the accompanying NASA VSE planning document, only two pages cover “Lunar Testbeds and Missions”. See the PDF links here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/main/index.html

To find the funding to keep Ares I/Orion marginally on track for a 2015 IOC, Griffin has killed off many other elements of the VSE, including half the planned Mars missions, any outer moons mission, extrasolar planet-hunting telescopes, space nuclear reactor power and propulsion, and even all the lunar robotic missions after LRO. But that doesn’t mean the VSE was originally only about building a CEV and finding a booster for it.

“The fact is without manned space exploration what is the point of NASA conducting manned spaceflight at all?”

I agree fully, which is part of why I’m so critical of Griffin’s ESAS implementation plan for the VSE. Instead of returning NASA human space flight rapidly and efficiently to actual exploration, ESAS wastes $10 billion or so recreating an intermediate-lift capability that already exists in spades in the nation’s current and near-future stable of launch vehicles, among other arguably unnecessary requirements and activities.

“For one thing most of the current NASA budget crunch is directly tied to recent STS problems and the stalled national budget which froze NASA spending.”

No it’s not. While White House and Congressional increases to NASA’s top-line budget have been somewhat lower than the VSE projected, the primary cause of NASA’s budget crunch is the fact that Griffin’s ESAS implementation plan busted the VSE budget from day one. Just to get Ares I/Orion started, Griffin had to cancel billions of dollars worth of ISS research, nuclear reactor power and propulsion technology development, and other exploration technology development. Even then, Griffin could only afford to budget Constellation at a 65 percent probability of success, meaning that even after busting the VSE budget, there is still a 1-in-3 chance that Ares I/Orion won’t meet its 2015 IOC and/or suffer an overrun. The industry standard is 80 percent (1-in-5 probability of delay/overrun).

Any halfway intelligent budgeteer could have foreseen that the budgetary good times would inevitably come to an end in an effort that spanned multiple elections, White Houses, and Congresses. Any program manager worth his salt would have would have chosen a technical path that was not so budgetarily precarious from the very beginning, and incorporated adequate margins, disposable elements, and off-ramps to prepare for such an eventuality. But instead of picking a conservative set of requirements and an efficient program approach, Griffin gambled on recreating Apollo in the absence of a Cold War budget, and worse, doubled down by putting the program’s requirements “on steroids” and demanding unnecessary elements.

The results of Griffin’s bad bet has been more than doubling of the post-Shuttle human space flight gap to five years, the worsening flight safety problems arising from the continued mismatch between Ares I performance and Orion’s mass, and the deferral of the choice to start Ares V/EDS/LSAM development into the latter half of a potential Clinton II presidency.

“Nothing ties an incoming administrations hands to the point that requires abandoning VSE or even defering it.”

Absolutely. But that’s not the point. To repeat myself from earlier in the thread, the point is that Clinton is confronted with this choice at all. Griffin and ESAS did not have to pick a Shuttle successor and a human lunar return architecture that was so unaffordable and unsustainable that other NASA programs would get gutted and the decision to start building actual human lunar return hardware (Ares V, EDS, LSAM) would be left up to the next President. But they did, so the next President is going to have to make a choice in FY11 (when the budget for Ares V, EDS, and LSAM start ramping up), if not earlier, between starting a very expensive human lunar return effort that will likely require additional mega-bucks and continued gutting of other NASA program versus spending that human lunar return money elsewhere at NASA or in the federal budget. And regardless of who sits in the Oval Office come 2009, the human lunar return effort is probably going to suffer from delays, deferrals, or outright termination as a result of confronting the next President with this choice — there are just too many other higher priorities. Clinton is just the first candidate to indicate such.

It didn’t have to be this way. These choices did not have to be delivered into the lap of the next President. The development of actual human lunar hardware could have been well underway during this Presidency without big cuts to other NASA programs, had Griffin not taken the ESAS requirements and Ares I detours. From a human space exploration advocate’s point-of-view, it’s been a terrible waste of a rare political opportunity to get human space exploration restarted.

“I think NASA could make ESAS work.”

At what cost?

That’s the key question that the next President is forced to grapple with as a result of Griffin’s choices and ESAS’s unnecessary costs.

“I do not support the ESAS architecture and I believe NASA could spend it’s limited resources in ways more productive for manned space exploration. ”

Exactly. NASA’s human space flight resources are limited, so they need to be spent productively. And ESAS is not doing that, not by a long shot.

Well put. I obviously can’t say it any better myself.

FWIW…

answer: one…

How many civilian human capable lifters are available in N.America?

answer: one…

How long has the practice of lifting humans into space existed?

answer: 47 years (almost 1/2 century)

Nope, no matter who’s in the white house it will be business-as-usual.
The rule will be appeasement toward ‘budget bean counters’ and a well lubricated propaganda machine to extol space-wonders-at-LEO to the masses who are really more interested at the next ‘frivolous idol de jour’

So where are the next?

Valentina Tereshkova
Sally Ride
Neal Armstrong
Buzz Aldrin
James Lovell
Yuri Gagarin
etc. etc.

Yea…right.