Early this month the Orlando Sentinel reported that a planned extension of NASA’s exemption of the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA) was in jeopardy in Congress. The current exemption, which allows NASA to buy Progress and Soyuz flight services from Russia, expires in 2011; NASA sought an extension for Soyuz flights only, planning on utilizing commercial services and/or international partners for cargo. However, at the time the paper reported that “election-year politics and growing concerns about Iran” made it difficult to get members of Congress to back such an extension.
Now the situation is more serious, after hostilities broke out last week between Georgia and Russia (and appear to be still taking place now, according to latest reports, despite the announcement of a ceasefire earlier this week.) While the earlier Congressional concerns were about Iran, now the concerns are about Russia’s actions, according to Sen. Bill Nelson. “It was a tough sell before, but it was doable simply because we didn’t have a choice,” Nelson told Florida Today. “It’s going to be a tougher sell now unless there are critical developments during the next 48 to 72 hours.”
That view is shared by others on the Hill. The Sentinel reports today that a “senior House Republican staffer” told the paper that the extension “dead on arrival. Nobody thinks it’s going to happen, and the reality is there is no backup plan for the space station.” The future of US crew access to the ISS is looking much worse today than just a few weeks—or even a few days—ago.
There were some of us, who, some time ago, warned that reliance on the Russians was not a good idea. While things always looked much rosier on the space exploration side of things, there were many signs that Russia was not going to be the “Ally” that some saw from the political side of things.
It’s about time for the “We told you so” statements.
And now our space program is screwed.
Mike Griffin lead the parade against relying on Russia for oh, the last 3 years.
To paraphrase, he said we’d live to regret it. Mike has been a superb public servant, calling it like it is while at Nasa.
I did think that Russia wouldn’t jeopardize its extensive financial dealings with the US over a matter like Georgia. How wrong I am. I guess $120/bbl oil can skew a major oil producers perspective. Tit for tat is just starting between the US and Russia, how far it goes is anyone’s guess.
We need to remember that Russia now depends on the West as much as the West depends on Russia!! Having a number of cosmonauts there who will quietly point out that it is very handy to have the US as a friend has got to help us.
For instance some people in Russia must be thinking that if they can’t find the cause of their ballistic reentry – we still have the Shuttle flying (for a couple more years). In their program, normalization of deviance is the rule rather than the exception but if they do lose a Soyuz we can support the Station with ATV and Shuttle.
The timing may be perfect here, late enough that people can over rule the George Bush decision to retire the Shuttle (so soon) and yet early enough that the infrastructure is still there.
Too bad we can’t do any OMDPs in California anymore since they took down the test stand there – any maintenance has to be done in Florida now. Funny how that worked out.
Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail there in Russia and they will not go after the Ukraine next. And we can agree to disagree and bargain a lot harder for the next Soyuz contract.
Absent of a vast increase in NASA’s budget, extending the Shuttle is still the worst outcome, since we cannot afford to do both that and prepare for the future. Far better would be to put any additional funds into helping the COTS or EELV providers crash-develop a quick-and-dirty capsule of our own. I can’t cost $4-5 billion a year to duplicate the Soyuz, which is what the Shuttle costs us.
— Donald
Mike Griffin lead the parade against relying on Russia for oh, the last 3 years.
What do you think Michael Griffin has been doing these last 3 years?
I guess you just missed that five year spaceflight gap of his own design then, just as he missed that longitudinal thrust oscillation problem in the Ares I.
Heck, with friends like you, we don’t need any enemies.
Mike has been a superb public servant, calling it like it is while at Nasa.
You are dumb as well as deaf and blind then.
Delusional denial at it’s finest here.
The ISS has always been more of a political project than a space project. (Which is why I have always thought the ISS budget should have been funded from the State Department rather than from NASA) Today the original political rationale for the ISS has completely collapsed, the rationale of keeping Russian aerospace engineers employed with peaceful projects during the immediate post-Soviet-Union-era of Russian economic collapse.
But if Congress wants to keep the ISS project going under the new political reality of Russian hostility, then it will have to give NASA the extra money required for doing so. If Congress only mandates that the Shuttle keep flying past 2010, that decision would just add to the other nearsighted burdens Congress keeps piling unto NASA. Sooner rather than later NASA will break under the strain.
The most cost-effective solution to the gap is a solicitation open to any American company for providing NASA manned access to the ISS by 2011 with a spacecraft with a minimum crew of three. The two lowest bidders should get funded to increase the chance that at least one of them will work by the required date of operational service. This project would cost NASA quite a bit of extra money no doubt about it, but probably still quite a lot cheaper than keeping the Shuttle flying past it’s retirement date of 2010.
The most cost-effective solution to the gap is a solicitation open to any American company for providing NASA manned access to the ISS by 2011
But, but, but … the .. Ares I!
It’s called COTS D. Too bad they didn’t ask for that the second time around.
If an administrator can’t make it work with what we have, a truly astonishing set of assets, then they shouldn’t be administrator, nor designing architectures. Every cent spent on the VSE, ESAS and the Ares/Orion fiasco here on out is wasted energy, time and money, resources that should have been spent on the real problem, LEO access, since February 2, 2004.
Add that in it’s almost five years wasted. I don’t want to think about the money. The upcoming destruction of the tooling now is even more piquent.
Things gotta happen, right now, not in February of 2009, and they have to happen in an exact sequence of events, otherwise all is lost here folks.
A slight variant of that idea – why not do a Request For Proposals (RFP) for COTS-D capability?
We have already paid for Soyuz flights in 2010-2011 so that money is already committed. The question is about what happens after that as the bridge to get us to Ares-I/Orion FOC in 2016 which will be our first chance to rotate a crew. There’s 5 years under question here and Griffin has already indicated the Soyuz flights to cover that period will cost in excess of $2 billion.
What would happen if we contracted those same billions to one or two COTS competitors to get their COTS-D systems fully-operational by 2012?
A billion dollar shot-in-the-arm for Space-X would go a very long way towards getting Falcon-9 and Dragon fully operational in time.
A billion dollars to Bigelow/ULA would go a long way towards helping get the Atlas-V 401 Human Rated and their crew spacecraft designed.
I do not understand why we are we even talking about extending the Russian contracts when the same money can be used instead, to create more US jobs and build a domestic solution to help close the gap.
Isn’t this option at least worth issuing an RFP if only to see what the options actually are from the competitors?
Cartoon Boy
“I guess you just missed that five year spaceflight gap of his own design then, just as he missed that longitudinal thrust oscillation problem in the Ares I.”
The TO problem can be solved, your mental oscillation between dumb and dumber is incurable. Dampers could be tried though, google “strait jacket”….you might find one that helps.
Cartoon Boy
Says the guy who thinks Michael Griffin is doin a heckava job, heckava job.
The longer you continue to consume and market koolaide, the longer it will take you to solve the problems created by Michael Griffin and the Ares I.
It you want to solve this problem by 2012 (2010 is out of the question now) you need to quit drinking the koolaide right now, not on January 20, 2009.
Just a little heads up. FYI. From engineering.
[…] Space Politics » Russia, Georgia, and the ISS […]
spectator: “Mike Griffin lead the parade against relying on Russia for oh, the last 3 years. To paraphrase, he said we’d live to regret it.”
I remember that statement being criticized right here as akin to complaining about a self-inflicted wound. Posters here have been pointing out literally for years the problems with ESAS that will extend this problem, and calling for a well-funded COTS and COTS D as priorities that trump ESAS, as well as independent reviews of ESAS itself, all this time.
Griffin gets some credit for COTS, but it doesn’t solve the crew access problem and it’s not well-funded considering the difficulty and importance of the problem (especially since the chosen COTS winners don’t have either major part of COTS in hand already).
tarz: “A slight variant of that idea – why not do a Request For Proposals (RFP) for COTS-D capability?”
I can’t see how such a thing would hurt, as long as there was some reasonable prospect of the thing being funded. Otherwise it would be just wasting the time and money of the space launch companies. I think they should have done COTS crew access years ago, and be well on their way by now. Certainly the closer we get to Shuttle retirement, the more it seems we need this commercial capability. Even if Ares 1 gets built (!) we’d need it to allow Ares to do the lunar mission, or if that’s cancelled, for fault tolerance for LEO access and encouragement to get Ares to do something other than ISS access.
Jeff: “The future of US crew access to the ISS is looking much worse today than just a few weeks—or even a few days—ago.”
Or … optimistically … it’s getting better because now we have a better chance for good decisions to be made to give the incentives for U.S. commercial space to provide crew access to the ISS. Maybe we can solve 2 problems at the same time with COTS D or something similar: solve one of our space access problems and find another way to give Russia some kind of economic penalty for its invasion (as well as enforcing the INA). This would still leave flexibility for rewarding good behavior in the future, too.
Of course it could also lead to another self-inflicted wound if it results in the Shuttle being continued for years more at the expense of higher priorities, sort of like how the Loral/China controversy resulted in ITAR treating the entire U.S. commercial space industry as a munitions industry.
AP: “U.S. officials have had difficulty determining exactly what’s happening on the ground in Georgia, despite considerable intelligence resources. U.S. spy satellites have been repositioned to refocus on the conflict area.”
It’s too bad we don’t have those operationally responsive space capabilities to pop up a reusable suborbital imagery vehicle at will somewhere nearby, or to quickly launch a smallsat in an orbit that would improve the time coverage of our imagery in the area. Refueling capability for the traditional spy satellites would also come in handy. NASA could have been going about its post-Columbia missions in such a way as to encourage such useful capabilities a lot more if it hadn’t been focused on Ares.
red,
No, I don’t think your optimistic option can happen. Had this happened a few months later, with a new president (and potentially a new Nasa Administrator), then I think we could see a revisit to the current mess.
Without Griffin removed, it won’t happen.
spectator: “Mike Griffin lead the parade against relying on Russia for oh, the last 3 years. To paraphrase, he said we’d live to regret it.â€
This is complete hogwash.
Mike Griffin created the problem. Griffin knew perfectly well that the easiest solution to eliminating the gap was to put the Orion on an EELV.
Maj. General Bob Dickman (USAF, retired) told Congress about this solution on May 7th of this year. His written testimony opened the issue here …
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=27923
“Use of the CEV to provide crew rotation for the International Space Station (ISS) is not projected after 2017, jeopardizing the opportunity to reach the full benefit of this unique research facility. There are alternatives to the Ares-Orion for access to the ISS, including commercial and government approaches. However, none will be available without additional funding.”
Then during the Q&A session, Dickman went into more detail, as reported by Jeff here:
http://www.spacepolitics.com/category/nasa/page/4/
Later, Robert Dickman, executive director of AIAA, offered another alternative to closing the gap involving EELV. “For less than the cost a single space shuttle mission, they could be human-qualified and… a relatively simple capsule to go to low Earth orbit could be built†for access to ISS, he suggested.
Nelson pushed back on this idea, seeing it as something of a threat to Constellation. “The question is, where are we going to get the money?†Nelson asked at one point.
“Chairman, I would simply say, the same question of where you going to get the money is the question if you try to accelerate Constellation,†Dickman responded. “It’s the same dollars, it’s just the question of whether you use it to accelerate Constellation or you keep Constellation on its current path and build something that has a unique capability to haul humans to station and back.â€
As payment for telling the truth to power, all hell was let loose on the AIAA. I heard that Griffin flipped out, and threatened the AIAA with severe repercussions, and forced the AIAA to do a mea culpa (I recall there was something in AvWeek). Some of the upset was reflected in a story titled “Heretics at AIAA” by Keith here:
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2008/05/
But that does not change reality — Dickman was right and still is right — you can put a version of Orion on an EELV, and have human spaceflight capability — perhaps by 2012.
More ominously, Boeing bid a version of a simplified capsule on an EELV for their latest bid for COTS (round 2), which could have transported humans to/from ISS. Boeing came in second, behind Orbital, which bid a non-existing launch vehicle, and which did not include an option for crew capability.
If Griffin really cared about the gap, he would have picked Boeing (or SpaceDev or tSpace) in the latest round of COTS.
So, don’t tell me what a wonderful leader Mike Griffin has been. Mike Griffin could have eliminated the gap if he had wanted to.
– Al
The Gap could have been quickly minimized back in 2006 by Congress and Bush Admin thru increasing Nasa’s .6% of the national budget to around .8 or .9% with the increase going to clv and Orion. Some of you guys moaning about the CLV architecture would be moaning about something else had Nasa adopted some other launch architecture.
As it is, we now have a problem that Congress is uniquely qualified to solve. In an election year, throw some money around. Throw an extra .2% of GNP to Nasa to keep shuttle and Orion funded. It keeps that Florida standing army, standing and it keeps the Orion program on target for 2015+. This I predict will be what Congress does in 2008. Its expensive, its covers up very poor bipartisan public policy and it lets Congress bash the Russians. In short its the perfect solution.
The Gap could have been quickly minimized back in 2006 by Congress
That is a bald faced lie. You just don’t get it. The Ares I is a failed design. It was a failed design out of the box on September 22, 2005, it will NEVER fly, and all of the time, money and resources wasted on this idiotic project are irretrievably lost. Until you recognize that, you cannot begin to repair the damage that Michael Griffin has done to the reputation of the US and NASA.
In short its the perfect solution.
Invading Iraq was your ‘perfect’ solution as well.
You are seriously deficient in scientific and mathematical skills.
SPECTATOR: The Gap could have been quickly minimized back in 2006 by Congress and Bush Admin thru increasing Nasa’s .6% of the national budget to around .8 or .9% with the increase going to clv and Orion.
The Gap would also have been quickly minimized if, in 2006, Bill Gates had committed 5-10 billion dollars of his wealth to building a humans-to-orbit transportation system.
Both of these scenarios are fantasy.
SPECTATOR: As it is, we now have a problem that Congress is uniquely qualified to solve. In an election year, throw some money around. Throw an extra .2% of GNP to Nasa to keep shuttle and Orion funded. It keeps that Florida standing army, standing
This is a good thing?
and it keeps the Orion program on target for 2015+.
???? Keeping the Orion program on target does not eliminate the gap.
This I predict will be what Congress does in 2008. Its expensive, its covers up very poor bipartisan public policy and it lets Congress bash the Russians. In short its the perfect solution.
Again, this if complete fantasy and wishful thinking. There is no evidence that NASA will receive a $3 Billion increase in 2008. (0.2% of a GDP of $14 Trillion is $2.8B).
Moreover, the Democratic-controlled Congress appears to be moving steadily ahead on a continuing resolution for all domestic discretionary agencies.
Therefore, it easy to predict that your prediction will be not come to pass.
– Al
I think Tazz is onto something that could be a good solution so I’m going to do a partial cross-post from a comment I made at RLVnews:
Combine something like that with the funding source Tazz singled out and its even better. How does one wake up Congress?
Boy there is a serious gap on this site….sense of humor…sense of sarcasm.
Cap Child, I don’t know from where your thoughts are hatched, and I don’t want to know, but you are doing a wonderfully original impersonation of the state bird of Minnesota.
The (apparently deliberate) decision to not allow the last COTS award to fund a current booster (EELV) for human transport to close the gap was not in the interest of the United States, or of NASA, or of the ISS. And now with the old Evil Empire truly trying to re-assert itself, it almost appears unpatriotic. Seriously.
Until the past two weeks, I would not have thought it a practical possibility for Congress to be willing to add more money to COTS in the short term to correct this redress; i.e., to fund one of the previous proposers who put forward EELV-launched crew capability to eliminate our dependence on Vladimir Putin’s whims. However, things have changed. It is a very real possibility that, with leadership – and with no resistance from NASA this time – we finally have a geopolitical confluence of events that could allow this to happen.
And we should find ways to push it – including with the two campaigns. After all, Obama’s support for a national space council didn’t come out of thin air; some folks around here pushed for it behind the scenes these last several weeks (or more). Pushing for a second $500m (total, over several years) solely focused on COTS-D in order to get out from under Vladimir’s thumb would have more resonance now than just a month ago; and, it is an election year, as well.
Why did they only allow two COTS competitors ? Whats wrong with 4 ? Its not like the initial payments would bankrupt NASA, however it would avoid picking winners early on and allow strong solutions to surface in the end.
“Why did they only allow two COTS competitors ? Whats wrong with 4 ? ”
COTS doesn’t fully fund a development effort. Most of the other competitors would have had RPK’s problem (funding). Also there isn’t enough work to support 4 different vehicles (which leads to investors not wanting to support a competitor that isn’t going to receive a long term contract).
“Also there isn’t enough work to support 4 different vehicles ”
Russia has a backlog of private space tourists, bigelow worries about having manned access to his stations and you feel there is not enough work for four vehicles? It is the fact that having an overflow of suppliers causes prices to fall as competition for customers increases. The question comes down to how serious is the USA in wanting private orbital space flight. Until the government throws a few billion at the companies that are already launching (delta, atlas) to put a capsule on a rocket and start launching then they are not TRUELY serious about having the capability.
With a 3 TRILLION dollar YEARLY budget the USA can have the capacity ANYTIME the political will surfaces. Money is nothing but a red herring. Engineering is a red herring. It is political will that would drag taxpayers kicking and screaming to the table and convince them that space is the future.
This lapse in time between next generation readiness of the STV alongside the unstable partnership with the only other nation capable of manned flight may be a pivotal moment of historical proportion for America’s manned flight program. The political fallout might be the straw that breaks this camel’s back. I
Wouldn’t the projected delay period be in sync with a mature Virgin Galactic space plane? OMG That would be hilarious on so many levels. Rattan and Nasa, government dependence on a BRITISH playboy, etc.
Wouldn’t the projected delay period be in sync with a mature Virgin Galactic space plane?
Virgin has no stated plans to build an orbital vehicle in that timeframe. They don’t even seem to be able to build a suborbital one (largely because they were too reverent of Burt Rutan). I’d bet good money that XCOR will beat them into space (if you don’t arbitrarily declare it to be a hundred kilometers altitude).
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