In general, we don’t face a choice of whether or not NASA can be refocused more effectively, the question we must address is much more one of whether or not we can get any/ usable amount of money in motion.

Trying to restructure the whole gig before we even have the support to keep the current system going is cutting off one’s budgetary and political nose to spite one’s engineering face.

Anon,

I want to specifically thank you for bringing up an assumption — a false assumption albeit — that many have.

“Restructuring” is key to increased funding support. Those who want “more funding”, need to support “restructuring” the entire enterprise — so that it deserves increased support — as the first step.

The NASA space enterprise, as currently structured, is not supportable or sustainable. A bipartisan national commission effectively came to this conclusion. Then Griffin ignored the conclusion (maybe he thought he was smarter than the people on the Aldridge commission).

If more funding for NASA would convincingly provide national security, economic and science benefits, then it would receive more funding. The 3 years of failed attempts by some very smart NASA politicos (Shale, Shank, Bruner, Sterner (before he left), Stadd (before he left), Pace, etc.) looking for a compelling argument to generate more funding for Mike’s flawed ESAS, is illustrative of the problems with ESAS. Trying to come up with sales pitches (like invoking the Chinese) to sell an obviously flawed product is not working.

Doing what NASA has done for the last 40 years — structuring a political strategy based on limited support from a handful of Florida, Texas, Alabama, and Maryland members — is failing.

The Aldridge Commission was right. Griffin is wrong.

One of the reasons that the James Webb political strategy is failing is because the vast majority of the public has watched the last 35 years of “results”, or lack thereof, from NASA. The vast majority still “like space”, but they know something is wrong. They have lost trust in the “NASA-led system”. If you talk to the politicians in private, they share the general opinion of the public, but they have more important priorities to focus upon than “how to fix NASA”.

Now, I happen to believe we have been handed a clear plan for “restructuring” that was developed by a bipartisan national commission in 2004. The Aldridge Commission report. It may not be evident or obvious, but this report is NASA’s salvation.

The Aldridge commission report is a restructuring plan that will lead to much more funding “support” and political “sustainability”.

– Anon

Sure, just not a lot of NASA’s space “stuff”.

When Griffin was part of a lunar study at Nasa before he became administrator he called for a new heavy lift and manned launchers, NEITHER of them used the solid SRBs and he did this report like after 10 years of shuttle operations. Why would he call for a plan that is so radically different than what he proposed before unless it was not his plan or the end result was not to see a system built. It sure looks like that to me, that the end result is supposed to see COMMERICAL operations start BEFORE any NASA system can get built and it seems to me that from the way nasa approached this from day one was that the easiest, cheapest, fastest, etc etc approaches would NOT BE TAKEN, no matter what.

It is important to remember is that the only way to get money for COTS is to… give more money to NASA. NASA handles the contracts, creates the demand, establishes the regulatory environment and most importantly cutting the paychecks for COTS.

Keep in mind that the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is, essentially, nothing but a procurement agency. DARPA itself doesn’t do anything other than read contracts and fund proposals.

How much NASA or the big primes should or shouldn’t be the main providers of space exploration isn’t the main question – the main question is how much of the public dollar can we get pointed towards civil space exploration (be it government or private). If we want to get really fancy, we can start looking at more complex measures to make use of capital markets, but that’s way beyond the one or two page candidate space policies we’re likely to see in the next few weeks.

v/r

I – personally – have some rather grave reservations about the architecture as described, think that a absolutely once-in-a-lifetime opportunity got missed some years back with the political mandate opportunity that’s been let slide by, and a I have a whole list of grievances about NASA.

Yet, Washington being Washington, the important thing is to get the money first and then worry about how its going to be spent and allocated.

In the burning desire to get the money spent in whatever fashion we deem to be most efficient and effective, we’ve forgotten that the vast, vast, vast majority of discussion on space isn’t even as amenable as the infamous Professor Raze of this thread to space exploration.

In general, we don’t face a choice of whether or not NASA can be refocused more effectively, the question we must address is much more one of whether or not we can get any/ usable amount of money in motion.

v/r

Perhaps I’m extraordinarily foolish, …

Got it in one!

Throwing more money at NASA does not address the fundamental challenge, unless (of course) you are a major aerospace company who only wants to feed that giant sucking sound called Constellation.

I don’t how many more ways you (and others) need to be told, but there is not much passion for old “traditional” approaches to space development — the solution to which is “Ask for billions more for NASA”.

If the agenda was “changed” there would be lots of support.

But continually asking people to support the existing agenda, which has been tried and failed for several decades, and expecting a different results … is foolish.

– Nemo2

Candidate A announces “Hooray for space! Let’s give NASA a healthy dollop of funding! I keep bringing up this 1% number, like its a benchmark or something!”

And the responses are what? It’s a waste if it isn’t COTS? The architecture is stupid? It’s pandering?

Perhaps I’m extraordinarily foolish, but I had imagined that most of the people taking the time to read this blog and follow these issues might actually, you know, like, support space stuff…

But somehow, the ‘managerial’ tactic of responding to a positive, but not quite perfect, purely voluntary effort by completely condemning the effort doesn’t seem to be a good way to do anything other than discourage future candidates from even trying to support space exploration.

Taking the macro level perspective, you’ve got Candidate A who wants to add money to NASA and Candidate B who wants to take money away from any and all space-related activities, it would seem prudent (as a supporter of space stuff) to actually, y’know, encourage the guy who wants to spend more money on space.

Give whoever it is who takes the White House a nice warm fuzzy feeling about all the inspiration, leadership, and votes that their support of space has gotten them, and then ever-so-gently shape and nudge them into fine-tuning the budget to satisfy your particular itch on architecture.

Or, long version short, if you like space and a candidate is talking about giving space a couple of billion dollars, it wouldn’t kill you to email his campaign and tell them it got them your vote.

Griffin can make all the claims he wants on this topic, but it won’t be his decision. By the time Ares I/Orion becomes operational in 2015 (if then) and is in a position where it must take the ISS market from COTS to justify its existence, Griffin will almost certainly be long out of office.

“Now, I suppose he could be lying, or demented”

Or just an inept planner.

The duplication of ISS support with Ares I/Orion and COTS never made any sense. Even if the human lunar effort in the VSE had been pursued after the Ares V/EDS/LSAM starts got pushed into the next Administration, ESAS only assumed a couple human lunar missions per year. A $20-30 billion expenditure on Ares I/Orion never made a lick a sense if the system only flew a couple times each year. Ares I/Orion only begins to approach reasonable flight rate — one that will keep its workforce sharp and sort of begins to pay back its enormous development costs — if the system also supplies ISS in a big way. Despite his protestations to the contrary, the way that Griffin set up both programs, Ares I/Orion was always going to eat COTS lunch. It’s up to others to decide whether Griffin did so purposefully or by accident, but the huge disparity in budgets between the two programs and the sole-sourced Ares I awards are potential hints.

This is hardly an original thought. Others have pointed out how the division of labor between Ares I/Orion and COTS doesn’t pass a laugh test (add http://):

rocketsandsuch.blogspot.com/2008/01/cots-conundrum.html

FWIW,

BergStorm