“Since NASA has already acknowledged (in public) that the AMS-02 can be delivered by an ELV…”

Indeed. But the time for serious consideration of *all* ELV options was last fall/winter. The train has since left the station, and AMS-02 advocates are now left with the only path of trying to get the mission squeezed onto the STS manifest somehow.

In an attempt to add a little “light” to the “heat”.

The technical savvy people at NASAspaceflight.com consider putting AMS-02 on to the Shuttle, in place of one of the Express Logistics carriers to be a legitimate option to consider. IMO, they identify the correct question as being “what is more important, the AMS-02, or the ORUs?”

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=11027&start=1

Then, somebody who has access to inside NASA information appears to think that the AMS-02 has already been placed back on the STS manifest, if only unofficially. See STS 129 on the 3 December 20007 update of the “Unofficial Space Shuttle Manifest” here:

http://www.sworld.com.au/steven/space/shuttle/manifest.txt

My experience is that the “Unofficial Space Shuttle Manifest” is often quite accurate at predicting changes to the manifest, that are announced at a later date.

– Al

WINGO: Totally uninformed BS. COTS at the earliest will not fly until 2010. COTS is not a procurement for cargo but for a demonstration of cargo capability. Any COTS cargo contract will happen after a successful demonstration of capability. Anything else would be complete and under abdication of responsibility for the station.

Dear Mr. Wingo,

In this case, you are the uninformed one, as you don’t know what you are talking about.

Before you call other people’s positions “totally uninformed BS” maybe you should make sure you understand the facts first.

First, the COTS Announcement makes it explicitly clear that delivering unpressurized cargo to ISS is an objective of the COTS program.

Second, there is no hard requirement to deliver all of these “contingency flight” unpressurized ORUs by 2010. They could be deliver some of these in 2011, some in 2012, some in 2013, some in 2014 and some even later — if there was means to do so. What NASA is doing is “pre-positioning” ORUs for the life of the ISS.

Mr. Foust understands this when he says “As I recall, Griffin and/or Gerstenmaier said that was not an option because all of the cargo on those flights was needed for the ISS, to build up a store of spare parts there before the shuttle retirement.”

Therefore, off-loading some of this cargo might mean that NASA needs to accept some risk of putting these ORUs up a COTS vehicle, but it is by no means “BS” to consider this as an option. Nor is considering off-loading an ORU that is needed in 2014/2015 necessarily a “would be complete and under abdication of responsibility for the station”. Since these are only “contingency” flights, it is clear that these flights are not hard requirements, and that discussing other options for these remaining flights is not “irresponsible” and should be on the table for discussion.

You personally may want to trash COTS — and maybe what you are really saying is that COTS providers are “total BS” — but it is clearly an option to consider to off-load some of that unpressurized cargo to COTS vehicles and/or HTV.

ROBERTSON: Dennis, one addition. I believe that the “contingency” flights are intended to deliver outsized spare parts too large or heavy for the likely COTS vehicles.

Donald, with all do respect, we should not make an important decision like this based on “belief”.

None of the existing ISS ORUs that NASA plans to deliver is as big as the AMS-02 (3 meters x 3 meters x 3 meters). Since NASA has already acknowledged (in public) that the AMS-02 can be delivered by an ELV, it is clear that those same systems could deliver even the largest ORUs (such as the ISS Pump Module).

Now, it is true, that some of the COTS bidders may not be able to deliver every single external ORU. Delivering something like the Pump Module is more difficult. It depends on what they bid (and obviously who NASA chooses.)

– COTS Advocate

— Donald

Does the HST servicing mission advance human space exploration?

You could make a case for either way, since learning to service complex equipment is directly applicable to the skills we will need to conduct human operations in deep space. That said, and contrary to the prior expectations of many or most scientists, Hubble has proven to be one of the most, if not the most, important astronomical instruments of our time. In spite of repeated assertions that ground-based instruments are ready to put it out of business, years after launch it continues to hold its own on the observational frontier. A good part of the reason for this continuing relevance is the human servicing missions that keep it functioning and provide new generations of instruments. From both human spaceflight and astronomical perspectives, NASA was correct to add the docking ring to the JWST to give it at least a theoretical ability to see limited servicing by Orion.

— Donald

Totally uninformed BS. COTS at the earliest will not fly until 2010. COTS is not a procurement for cargo but for a demonstration of cargo capability. Any COTS cargo contract will happen after a successful demonstration of capability. Anything else would be complete and under abdication of responsibility for the station.

NASA has said multiple times in multiple venues that there will be plenty of cargo’s for COTS and to say that those STS missions are taking payloads away from COTs (with limited unpressurized volume) is complete and utter bilge.

That is SOMD’s and the ISSP’s clear position. They clearly don’t want to depend on COTS.

FOUST: (This got into a discussion of why the last two missions are called “contingency” missions when NASA considers them essential, but that’s a different story.)

Jeff, I am trying to make the point that this is the same story as AMS-02. The politics around those “contingency” missions is critical to what happens to AMS-02.

I wish somebody would post what was said on this subject to Congress. This is important.

It is clear that SOMD and the ISSP want to convert these “contingent” missions to “baseline” missions. I have heard that OMB is strongly resisting this.

It is obvious that SOMD and the ISSP have a conflict — they care more about the ISS infrastructure than they do about having the infrastructure produce real science results (like AMS-02, or any of the other ISS science work that has been cancelled recently.)

Somebody at a higher level than the SOMD/ISS, or even higher than NASA, needs to make this decision about national priorities. Why? NASA has a institutional bias as it appropriately cares more about its programs, than it cares about the importance of fundamental physics breakthroughs, which is generally the job of DOE.)

The senators did not ask if that cargo could be offloaded onto an HTV or COTS vehicle, but NASA left the impression that the shuttle was the only way to get it to the station.

It is a shame that nobody asked thethisquestion. It is obvious that STS is not the only way to get this unpressurized cargo to station.

By observation, one of the COTS program express goals is to deliver unpressurized cargo to ISS, which is what is on those last two “contingency” flights.

– COTS Advocate

You are asking a second order question. We first must decide whether delivering AMS-02 to ISS is the right thing to do. Then we decide who pays for it.

That said, in response to your rhetorical question, I ask my own:

Did AMS-01 advance human space exploration?

Does the HST servicing mission advance human space exploration?

– Al

— Donald