After killing ESAS (if it hasn’t suicided) and depending on who wins the election (especially if it’s McCain) Dr. Griffin needs to be told to leave too so as to remove any chances of him staying on (he did at some point say he wouldn’t continue but who knows what goes on in his head –I sure don’t*). If this is done during the last week of the present administration the interim administrator wouldn’t necessarily have to keep going all that much longer than usual.

Sounds like a plan, does it make sense? Would it work?

* I still believe Dr. G has the very best of intentions (but it’s getting awfully hot down that road).

Each and every White House document explicitly uses the phrase “Vision for Space Exploration”. At the same time, Shana Dale’s remarks do not. The NASA presentation charts presented yesterday use the 4-letter “VSE” word only once — as a label for the White House’s 2004 VSE policy document.

Since NASA is obviously trying to kill the White House’s “Vision for Space Exploration”, maybe it is time for the White House to return the favor to NASA, and kill ESAS.

– Al

This budget is headed for a CR, big time.

OMB shows that $1.4B in ’09 is for finishing up with NPP, GPM, LDCM, OCO, Glory, and evidently for starting some new missions–but I bet there won’t be much left for any new missions. (After all this time, Triana is probably never going to be launched… that’s if it is still intact.)

Bottom Line: NASA Science overall goes from 5.5B in 2008 to 4.4B in 2009. That’s a 20% decrease. If Congress lets that happen, then the taxpayers will totally be getting the shaft from Bush and Co.

FAST (2M): The Facilitated Access to Space Environment for Technology Development and Training (FAST) program objective is to mature technologies for future space flight use, especially those technologies that need to be proven in the microgravity environment. FAST will provide access to commercial microgravity flight services to advance NASA technologies, reducing risk levels and enabling more verification and validation of these technologies for space flight missions. FAST also facilitates the procurement of commercial space services by NASA to support the development of future space flight-certified technologies.

Lunar Robotic Lander (2008 funds): In FY2008, the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate will fund a lander project as a pathfinder for an anticipated network of small lunar science landers based on requirements of the Agency’s expanded Lunar Science Program, to be outlined in the FY 2009 budget request. NASA envisions that the first two small landers will launch in the 2013/2014 timeframe. During FY 2008-2009, ESMD will use appropriations identified in FY 2008 to conduct Phase A definition, initiate related technical demonstrations for ESMD risk reduction, begin Phase B, and if necessary, begin procurement of long-lead items. The Exploration Systems and Science Mission Directorates will continue to work together combining resources to assure the goals of the science lander are achieved.

Sounding Rockets (30.2M 2008 to 45.1M 2009) (hopefully there’s a way to integrate commercial suborbital rockets into this): The Sounding Rockets effort funds all suborbital mission activities (payload integration, launch, and mission operation) that support science investigations funded in other parts of the research program, such as the Heliophysics and Astrophysics Research and Analysis programs, as well as other NASA
research benefiting from low-cost or periodic access to space such as exploration technology test and demonstration programs.

Sounding Rockets present unique low-cost platforms that provide direct access to Earth’s mesosphere and lower thermosphere (40-120 kilometers) and precipitation regions of Earth’s magnetosphere. Because of their short duration and access to Earth’s upper atmosphere and the space environment, sounding rocket suborbital missions also enable calibration under-flights of orbital missions, repeated proof-of-concept technology demonstration missions, and valuable end-to-end space mission experience for scientists and engineers learning to develop and execute discovery-oriented orbital missions.

True enough, but the launch industry has been static for many years. The “traditional” markets have failed to generate much expansion and show little sign of doing so.

human launches were also on the table way before

Really? My recollection is that commercial human missions to orbit started out to Mir (another high-resource requirement destination), and transferred to the Space Station, and otherwise do not yet exist. Suborbital commercial flights may yet happen with or without the Space Station, but they haven’t yet and are a very long way from routine orbital commerce. There is today no large markiet for expansion of the commercial launch industry other than the Space Station.

It is you who are touting myths.

— Donald