It’s underpowered, overrunning, and a programmatic mess, but it’s called “Ares”, not “Aries”.

“Getting rid of the shuttle now is a bad mistake, once again like apollo and skylab we develop tech and through it away.”

They’re nothing alike. Shuttle “tech” was developed 30-40 years ago, while the lifetime of the Apollo and Skylab programs is measured in single to low double digit years. Unlike Apollo and Skylab, Shuttle is being retired old, not young.

“The argument was that the US doesn’t need the shuttle because it won’t be doing anymore leo construction the program was meant for. I never believed that and now with maybe the slight chance of a LEO solar power satellite program, we do. Its dead without a vehicle that can do the construction.”

Today’s most competitive SPS concepts don’t require human in-space assembly. They rely on robotics or skip in-space assembly altogether. For example, see:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30198977/

FWIW…

Getting rid of the shuttle now is a bad mistake, once again like apollo and skylab we develop tech and through it away.

The argument was that the US doesn’t need the shuttle because it won’t be doing anymore leo construction the program was meant for. I never believed that and now with maybe the slight chance of a LEO solar power satellite program, we do. Its dead without a vehicle that can do the construction.

But once again we are going to just dump it all and let the rest of the world surpise us, same thing happened in small electronics and in physics.

I agree with your analysis. The facts of your analysis are hard to refute.

I expect that the White House, including but not limited to OMB, will use the same numbers and come to similar conclusions.

The writing is on the wall for all to see.

FWIW,

TANSTAAFL

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/04/study-eelv-capable-orion-role-griffin-claims-alternatives-fiction/

According to NASA’s FY 2009 budget request to Congress, the agency is planning to spend $6.5 billion on Ares I development in FY 2010-2013. So terminating Ares I and developing an EELV alternative for Orion will save NASA and the taxpayer $5 billion through FY 2013 alone. Heck, NASA could develop both EELV alternatives for Orion and still save $3.5 billion.

Of course, Ares I development doesn’t officially end until at least FY 2015, and with zero confidence of meeting that date, Ares I development likely won’t end until FY 2016-17 at the earliest. So the cost savings from terminating Ares I and developing one or two EELV alternatives for Orion will probably be another $3.5 -5 billion. Call it $7-10 billion total.

A total of $7-10 billion would cover most of the $1 billion annual difference between the $18+ billion annual budget projection for NASA in the Obama White House’s FY 2010 budget and the $19+ billion estimated annual budget need for NASA in the CBO report.

The savings are likely to be even higher than that. The Aerospace Corp. study found 5.0 tons (Delta IV) to 6.2 tons (Atlas V) of margin for Orion when launching to ISS (and similar margins for the lunar case). This would be a huge improvement over the small to negative margins Orion suffers on Ares I, greatly simplifying Orion’s development and avoiding the costs associated with closing the Orion design on Ares I. Aerospace also puts the EELV/Orion readiness date at 2014, avoiding one to several years of Soyuz payments given the Ares I/Orion IOC of 2015-17.

So an independently verified and much better path forward now exists for the civil human space flight space program. Whether the White House nominates an Administrator who will make the tough decisions to change NASA’s path and how much more pain the civil space program has to go through before Congress will stomach the necessary workforce dislocations is another question. But the prerequisite to making those tough decisions now exists.

FWIW…

Back then I too felt like Richard, and I would read these odd usenet posts from people who thought that NASA should be shut down. I wondered how anyone could arrive at such a conclusion and thought to myself that I would never let myself become that cynical.

Well, here I am, nearly 20 years later! Like Rand, I still love space, but for many reasons I’ve bored people with in other threads am looking beyond NASA.

Constellation in its current form is not only not critical, but actually monumentally counterproductive. Pouring more public funding into it would be bad for both the taxpayers and space enthusiasts. It would benefit only those actually working on the project.

I’m 20 years old. I always assumed I would see the beginning of moon colonization and possibly Mars too.

So did I, when I was twenty. In the intervening decades, it’s become obvious that NASA is not going to do those things, and that continued efforts to give them money to attempt to do so only delay the day that they will actually happen.

I wish the budget would be added to but with the economy.. sigh. IF ONLY we had a president worth his or her grain of salt in office. Instead of putting faulty money in a faulty bill.

We need a Reagan just for the amazing support of the space program he devoted.