The Orlando Sentinel reports this morning that the Obama campaign has issued a brief statement on how it would close the gap in ISS access between the shuttle’s retirement and the introduction of Constellation. The statement, in response to a question by the newspaper about his stance on an extension of NASA’s INKSNA waiver, doesn’t commit the campaign to any specific option:
Senator Obama will be taking steps to help ensure that the next president has as much flexibility as possible in closing the gap. This includes potentially increasing funding for an additional shuttle flight, freezing NASA efforts to retire the shuttle, accelerating the development of the next generation vehicle, tapping the ingenuity of the commercial space industry, and passing a waiver to enable us to use Soyuz vehicles if necessary.
This is all part of Barack Obama’s multi-pronged approach to closing the gap and maintaining an American presence in space. This presence is critical to both maintain our global leadership on this issue and to protect aerospace jobs here in Florida and around the country.
We are not in an ideal situation, but there are not many options left to us after President Bush and John McCain led us to this point.
In other words, they’re open to just about anything and everything, and don’t feel the need at this time to commit to any particular direction. It does seem difficult, though, to be able to keep a US presence on the station after 2011 unless part of that plan includes a waiver extension to permit additional Soyuz purchases (something that, in the language above, almost looks to be a last resort) unless the campaign feels that “the ingenuity of the commercial space industry” can come through with an alternative quickly.
And perhaps they do. The Sentinel report includes this note: “Campaign sources have said that Obama space policy advisers were looking at the possibility of tapping commercial aerospace companies to see if they might be able to use existing rockets to develop a fast, safe and inexpensive rocket that could more quickly replace the shuttle to get astronauts to the space station while NASA continues to work on a larger moon rocket.” The “fast, safe and inexpensive” passage above, ironically if unintentionally, sounds a lot like “Safe, Simple and Soon”, the phrase ATK used to sell the shuttle-derived approach that became Ares 1 and Ares 5.
Actually, it sounds a lot like COTS, with an emphasis on Category D.
Obama has already committed to COTS, so this would be consistent with his current policy statement.
Boeing is probably dusting off it previous COTS proposal, which was a simple capsule on an EELV, which came in second place in the last COTS round.
– Al
a nit. If memory serves, the “safe, simple, soon” mantra came from Lockheed in the OSP days when they abandoned a winged vehicle in favor of a capsule.
Obama never commits to anything. That is his problem.
If he intends to have the Shuttle flying past 2010 he will need to make some fast decisions for his first budget. The same goes for COTS-D.
To me it sounds more like, instead of extending COTS to COTS D, this could devolve into the govn’t just going out and tasking a major aerospace company to build a capsule pronto – the usual excess cost. We can’t trust capsules that the private sector might consider adequate for its own use for commercial purposes, such as transport to and from Bigelow’s stations, etc., now can we?
Maybe if “minor” sapce firms actually had some capusles flying NASA would have a basis to trust them. As it is only Dragon is close, and the repeated failures of the Falcon 1 does not bode well for having confidence in it.
When minor space firms start producing results instead of excuses NASA will trust it. but until then New Space will need to earn its stripes by showing what it is able to do. Hopefully the Falon 1 launch this week will be the turning point for New Space firms in terms of creditability.
Sounds like Lori Garver wrote this to me.
“Fast. safe. and inexpensive” sounds like “Better, Cheaper, Faster” to me, and as many wiser people pointed out – you can have any two that you want, but can’t have all three.
Of the three, hopefully Safe will make the cut. So of Fast and Inexpensive – which do we want????
Spacer: “As it is only Dragon is close” No indication of this either. No known status on an actual working orbital prototype. Until it ascends, approaches ISS, gets berthed, stays at ISS, reenters and lands [while not killing anyone inside in the crewed version] at least once, it’s not an alternative either.
[…] the Obama campaign issued a statement Monday generally supporting a wide variety of options for dealing with the Shuttl…, Senator Obama is being a little more specific. In a letter from Obama’s Senate office to […]
“‘As it is only Dragon is close’ No indication of this either. No known status on an actual working orbital prototype.”
Very wrong. Dragon has passed CDR (Critical Design Review). Orion, by comparison, is still a year away from PDR (Preliminary Design Review).
Dragon’s PICA heat shield, structural test articles, aerodynamic mockups, landing model, and ergonomic mockups all finished their builds and/or testing last year. Orion, with the exception of its ergonomic mockup, still has crucial decisions to make in each of these areas, nevertheless built the test articles and models and completed the testing.
This information is widely available on Wikipedia, the Space-X website, etc. Please, let’s do at least a little homework before making totally false statements.
FWIW…
CHARLES: Of the three, hopefully Safe will make the cut. So of Fast and Inexpensive – which do we want????
Charles,
Is this a trick question?
Right now we are getting both “slow” and “expensive”.
Right now I would be quite happy with acquiring either “fast” or “inexpensive”, in addition to safe.
– Al
I said when Mike G. first announced Ares I was he trying to kill NASA manned flight.
I now believe that was the plan from the start. Bush wanted commercial flight. The Next president, with the current budget, will not fund it and with the shuttle canceled they will have to do a safe, simple, soon, capsule on a rocket. Ares I busted the budget the day it was announced and every new add on only added time and money to the gap. While Russia is sending tourists to space on their rockets america has to ask for a ride. That changes the arguement and it will be private enterprise launching capsules not nasa. I now truely believe that was the plan from the start.
I wish someone would just say how much a flight for the space shuttle actually costs! One can get information on the Soyuz but not the space shuttle.