Not quite true…

That said, I do agree that even if there are some within NASA that are actually very supportive of depots, there are also probably going to be many that oppose it for bureaucratic inertia reasons. With depots, you really don’t need much new launch vehicle development, and a lot of those improvements may be able to be left to commercial industry to do by various players trying to compete for a large new market.

~Jon

“There is a false choice in this statement — as it presumes that serious commercial advocates are promoting “exclusively commercial”. NO serious commercial advocate is doing so.”

I never said all “serious” commercial advocates are doing so. And any serious commercial advocate I am sure knows better. I was only referring to comments I have seen here and there about the dichotomy some are trying to make. I, as a commercial advocate, would love to see NASA go strong. And I believe that, conversely, NASA will get a lot more if commercial goes strong in today’s environment.

“But that ignores the primary challenge of getting there.”

I assume you refer to the “NASA iron triangle (NASA + contractors + Center politicians).” If so I do not ignore it one bit but it is our role to help them understand the benefits of having commercial space into the equation. As you pointed out we cannot somehow make them agree with that “just because”. The “just because” reason to do anything does not work today (ref. economic crisis, Ares, etc). I think they will have to come to grasp with reality sooner rather than later. I would even say further that if all goes well it’ll happen between mid and end of September if you see what I mean.

So, no, I do not ignore the challenge. I would love to be able to reassure those in the triangles, but primarily NASA and Congress/WH, that they’ll all benefit. As to the contractors, well, they are “commercial” are they not? That means fair game right? So, best of luck to them…

There is a false choice in this statement — as it presumes that serious commercial advocates are promoting “exclusively commercial”. NO serious commercial advocate is doing so.

The fight — which has been going on for over two decades — is between an almost exclusive government approach, and a balanced partnership between the two where we leverage the best of both commercial & government.

For the last 25 years, NASA has had to be brought KICKING & SCREAMING every step of the way — into a partnership with commercial industry. It has been resisted by the NASA iron triangle (NASA + contractors + Center politicians).

* The DOT was given the legal authority by Congress in the 1980s to regulate commercial space transportation over the objections of the traditional status quo space powers.

* Commercial payloads were taken off of the Shuttle after Challenger by the Reagan Administration over the active opposition of the then NASA Administrator (Fletcher).

* The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 — which was the first law mandating that NASA buy commercial space transportation services — was passed by Congress over the objections of NASA.

* Instead of partnering with the American Rocket Company in the late 1980s, NASA MSFC created a competing hybrid rocket R&D program in an attempt to put AMROC out of business. (They succeeded.)

* The Congress passed the Commercial Space Act of 1998 that mandated that NASA should purchase ISS cargo resupply services. NASA resisted that mandate for 6 years — until Columbia happened and the Bush Administration created the Commercial/Crew Cargo services budget as part of the VSE in 2004. In December 2008, over 10 years after CSA98 passed, NASA finally signed an ISS cargo services delivery contract.

* NASA is still resisting doing commercial crew — which was part of the original official VSE plan (it was the CREW/cargo services program in the VSE). It has taken a national commission of space experts — reporting to the White House — to unequivocably recommend (its in all the options) that NASA institute a commercial crew (instead of Ares 1).

* NASA could have instituted “propellant depots” as part of the national strategy years ago. Why were propellant depots so obvious to the Augustine Commission as a key enable for our national goals in space, but ignored by the traditional NASA bureaucracy?

It is not because the NASA bureaucracy is dumb. I assert the reason is that creating a depot based architecture is not in the “bureaucratic interest” of NASA, as it outsources a large portion of the supply chain for exploration to commercial providers.

Prediction — NASA will resist creating propellant depots to the extent it is given the means to do so.

So, I completely agree with you that we need to build on the strength of both commercial and government. But that ignores the primary challenge of getting there.

FWIW,

– Al

Look what happens for Charles Bolden and Sen. nelson for example… How can it be otherwise?

I think a justified reason for adding money to NASA would work, but Obama has to sell his choice to what is becoming a skeptical public when it comes to spending more. It would be wise if he pulled key members of Congress into the decision making process to get the right people to buy in to whatever choice is made, be it closing the gap or going another direction.

But Florida is gone for Obama in 2012 if he doesn’t raise the NASA budget. The Republicans will say that Obama wasted trillions in stimulus spending on other projects yet wouldn’t support our manned space program. And they could add insult to injury by saying that Obama turned his back on the legacy of John F. Kennedy. Obama would be a fool to be penny wise but pound foolish with the NASA budget.

as are seen our RPVs that increasingly displace fighter pilots in controlling the Middle East theater for us.

• Which are regularly, “accidentally” slaughtering large number of civilians, far more so than human pilots have in the recent past. Is this really the “leading” we want to do?

I’m sorry, but I don’t have statistics on how may civilians are killed by actual fighter pilots and RPVs. I suspect the statistics are not very pretty either way. But the fact is that RPVs are being judged as an extremely efficient and economical way of doing the job that the military wants done. It’s not at all the kind of leading I myself want to see done, but it is the kind of leading that our military finds acceptable.

•I think your perception of what the rest of the world perceives is dead wrong.

I will accept that statement. (I’m not sure what the point is about nuclear systems, though.) I completely agree that access to ISS is critical to our future, and I thought I made that point. Yes, chests are certainly being beaten about who can be first to return to the Moon, but I suspect that this is an issue mainly because there is little else considered worthwhile doing. Augustine’s team may fix that. I suspect a lot of the chest beating is about jobs (e.g. Aerospace Career Development Council) rather than national pride.

•The humans versus robots debate is only boring if you insist on believing (as far, far too many do) that robots can do what humans do or can successfully answer important scientific question about the Solar System.

I think that intelligent agents are necessary to answer such important scientific questions. Take your pick how much intelligence you need, and the cost per unit intelligence. I call this debate boring because it doesn’t actually go anywhere, and is usually oblivious to the fact that such robots are rarely acting autonomously, but are being controlled by humans. It’s about human brains in different places. Larger distances require more autonomy (for both robots and humans), but often involve being places that aren’t particularly nice for people.

Hubble astronauts and ISS assembly teams really don’t prove anything about the value of robots or lack thereof. HST was never designed to be serviced with robots and, actually, much of ISS assembly was done telerobotically, with Canadarm. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan, while tragic and regrettable, is an odd general argument to make against robotics, except that perhaps they are soulless beasts that are inherently evil. You’re not really saying that, are you?

“using a SDV in the Deep Space scenario when it should be applied as an alternative vehicle to the Program of Record.”

Well the program of record is not sustainable whether we like it or not, so they are considering different scenarios. Pretty much the questions to them was (1) “identify our capabilities” and (2) “considering our capabilities what can we do inside budget?”

The answer to (1) are the so-called options and to (2) is “no HSF beyond LEO”.

“it would seem to me keeping the shuttle stack intact, (the same solids and tank) and only developing a cargo shroud should at least give us an inexpensive heavy lift cargo capacity much cheaper than the Ares V.”

Unfortunately it is not that simple. See, the premises of ESAS was that using a regular SRB and an Apollo-like capsule we’d be soon somewhere. The problem is that SRB was not designed for this mission and Apollo expertise no longer exists (same essentially goes for Shuttle today – no, I am not speaking about the ops part of it). And this is where the mess we’re is originated. It only was allowed to grow to this level because there was no desire to look at other than SRBs options (see OSP link above). In the end the sidemount option may “look” like a Shuttle stack but would most likely have nothing to do with one (design, ops, architecture, etc). Looks ARE deceiving.

“As for putting an Orion capsule on top, the most challenging aspect would be abort vectors.”

All I can say is believe me if it were that simple we would have a current design even for Ares/Orion. There is no such thing. There is a LAS concept ann an MLAS concept both of which don’t worjk for different reasons. Adding an SRB (sidemount), aborting from the side (shock interactions affect pitch moment – there is a prelim analysis document tyou can find on NASAWatch and since it was very preliminary I disputed deriving any conclusion and never heard anything since then except it seems the concept no longer is one).

“It’s time we stop throwing away practically everything and starting over from scratch every time!”

Unfortunately it is what happens when decisions are not technical but rather political decisions to a design. And even if it were technical only it does not make any difference if the design does not work.

“Our capabilities need to evolve not move in fits and stops.”

Absolutely agreed. Again the day you remove politics out of design and capability decision you will be closer to that. And by politics I mean inside and outside NASA. Political decisions are made in DC but not only.

People able to really open their eyes and ears knew from the start that it’d probably go nowhere. Pretty bad heh?

— Donald