Maybe you could say that but in my mind the topic was HSF hence…

“I guess what you’re really saying is that commercialization of HSF has to be a key ingredient in any attempt by NASA to fulfill the commercialization mandate of the Space Act. ”

All I am saying is that for one reason or another there has never been a real attempt at commercial space. Worse, a lot of people at NASA in position to make decision do not want to see an emergence of commercial space. And all of that despite the fact that it is in NASA’s charter to promote commercialization of space. So in essence some people within NASA are not following their mandate.

“Commercialization of HSF was never an explicit goal for NASA.”

Stricto sensu true but again commercialization of space is a goal per the Space Act:
(4) seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space; and
(5) encourage and provide for Federal Government use of commercially provided space services and hardware, consistent with the requirements of the Federal Government.

Your statement was that “if NASA is to promote commericalization then HSF MUST be part of it”. The logical sequence is that if HSF is part of NASA, and NASA is promoting commercialization, then HSF must be part of what is commercialized. That same logic applies to anything NASA does.

But I agree that this statement is ambiguous.

I guess what you’re really saying is that commercialization of HSF has to be a key ingredient in any attempt by NASA to fulfill the commercialization mandate of the Space Act. But I really don’t understand where that comes from. I think we both agree that commercialization would be strongly beneficial to HSF, but the reference to the Space Act seemed irrelevant in that respect. Commercialization of HSF was never an explicit goal for NASA.

We were at the OBGYN today (good news as an aside) and I was asked a very good question by the doctor…which I do not know the answer to.

During the Apollo effort quite a few LM’s and Saturn third stages were deliberatly crashed into the Moon…I notice LRO has in fact seen the Apollo 14 SIVB site…

did any optical equipment from earth attempt to image the impacts of that era? The LM Maybe to small…but I was wondering about the third stage…

I know BTW the ALSEP’s recorded it …

Robert G. Oler

there are fascinating parallel tracks in history which one would like to see how they turned out even though it is impossible.

For instance had Griffin come up with some plan using the EELV’s and some fast build capsule or even something different even in terms of structure, like some vehicle that started and ended its journey up at ISS and was reusable (sort of a Moon cycler) and made some reasonable progress to it in the last 4 years…or maybe even had something flying.

Well that might be different. As it is NASA has once again come up with a vehicle that is so expensive it has no other customer…and a decades long effort that the nation can not afford..

so it is toast.

Another failed Bush program

Robert G. Oler

“It is also a fair statement that the current state of affairs (9 billion for Ares 1 and nothing) plus the need for ever more cash and stretchouts as far as the eye can see…is a repudiation of the execution of Bush’s vision.”

My mistake I did not read carefully and I am the one that mixed up stuff. You are right and we do agree.

Oh well…

you replied…

I think that’s simplistic. We’ve created unsurpassed engineering expertise in building big things in space for humans to use. ..

that maybe (and indeed I think that it is the one legacy of the space station of immediate value…one wonders why NASA didnt take advantage of that expertise in the “vision”?)

but it wasnt what I meant.

Everyone should in my view go do a little research on the Syncom/Advent projects that heralded the opening of geo synchronous communications. It is an interesting study in how the Army (Advent) totally miscalculated the “cost/capability/benefit” range as it designed Advent…and yet the folks at Hughes who designed Syncom…worked it just perfectly to get the concept up and running.

the design features in Advent are now quite commonplace but at the time Advent was the Ares of its day.

As long as “where NASA goes” with HSF is the key talking point…not how it goes there…most of the Money is going to be badly spent

Robert G. Oler

……

it doesnt surprise me. Most ardent Republicans give lip service and thats about it to private industry.

I was a solid “red” Republican until the Clinton impeachment fiasco …and the party’s opposition to Bosnia when I figured out that most of the “conservatives” were frauds.

Robert G. Oler

What I think we have to get rid of are the two ball and chains that have shackled human spaceflight.

The first is that exploration is what human spaceflight does…

Oberg is correct here (in my view). The technology aspect is killing NASA. It isnt that NASA doesnt know how to do human spaceflight technology development (although that might be argued)…it is that there is almost no commercial (or more correctly external) spin in from other aspects of spaceflight that are 1) tolerated or 2) encouraged. There has been spin in before

NASA used ATlas and Titans that were more or less “stock” ICBM’s…OK there was some attention to human rating and care was taken in the production of the ones carrying humans …but to get Mercury (and Gemini) flying NASA used off the shelf hardware. They have never done that since.

2. They have stopped doing “spin outs”. This is the essence of the communications side of NASA…the Syncom/ATS/ACTS programs. The shuttle was a “spin out” platform…at one point it was going to open to all comers. But the agency made it more and more difficult to fly non agency payloads on the vehicle…and before long all but trivial (or NASA paid for ) processes stopped. If you want an example of how badly things ahve gone awry…look at what it cost to get an amateur radio on the shuttle…

The USAF was instrumental in developing the turbojet engine…and doing a lot through its various bomber programs to solve the problems of high altitude flight Imagine some AirForce equivelent to Hanley arguing “turbojets are to difficult for commercial flight”?

The reason NASA is so screwed up is that it pretends to be a test flight organization when it is not…and yet go read Hanley’s memo and all you get through his 9th grade prose is “We are to sexy for ourselves and no one else can do what we do”.

when really they dont do anything at all very well

Robert G. Oler

Where did I say that all of NASA had to be commercialized. The topic here is HSF and per your own words “human space flight is ultimately survivable only if it can be commercialized.” I don’t understand your disagreement.

Hmm not sure I understand your “disagreement” here.

“But the Space Act isn’t just about human spaceflight., and in many respects what NASA does builds strongly on the commercial sector”

Agreed. BUT the current approach has just shown its limitations, hasn’t it? So again we seem to agree…

“if you’re saying that Lockmart, Boeing and NG aren’t making money off of NASA, that would be pretty arguable. ”

I think that a lot of us see “commercialization” differently from what the usual contractors are doing. I never said they don’t make money. But it is arguable as to their recent track records in HSF. “Commercialization”, to me anyway, is more like COTS.