NASA, White House

Prospects for commercial crew growing

A couple of recent reports suggest that it’s increasingly likely that the new space exploration policy to be released in the near future by the White House will include a provision for funding a commercial crew development program. Space News reported Friday that the FY2011 budget proposal “would fund a multibillion-dollar effort to foster development of commercial systems” for transporting crews to and from the ISS. On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal said its own sources indicated a commercial crew transportation program would be in the budget proposal. The Journal, though, describes the administration’s support for the initiative as “murky” based on its sources, who claim that “the budget isn’t expected to outline a clear, long-term funding plan.”

29 comments to Prospects for commercial crew growing

  • Robert G. Oler

    WOW (and that is not Weight on Wheels)…..ISNT THIS A SURPRISE (from the Space News Piece)…NOT

    “Budget data available on NASA’s Web site indicate Ares 1, part of a broader, 5-year-old effort to replace the space shuttle with new rockets and spacecraft optimized for the Moon, is over budget by almost half a billion dollars.

    …(cut paragraph about schedule slipping)…

    In hindsight, NASA officials say the agency set Ares 1 and Orion on a unsustainable spending trajectory, signing contracts to develop the rocket and crew capsule on a schedule that the agency’s projected budget did not support and forcing unpopular cuts to other NASA programs in an effort to keep Ares and Orion on track. ”

    As Andy would say on Mayberry “SHAZAM”

    What a bunch of freeking jerks. Most of the NASA managers would be lucky to be working at Wally World

    Robert G. Oler

  • CharlesHouston

    Those NASA managers accepted a program that they knew was unsustainable. They just hoped that it would work, some how. Now will we trust them to pass judgement on the commercial alternative? They will never have the best interests of the tax payer at heart.

  • Robert G. Oler

    CharlesHouston wrote @ January 24th, 2010 at 9:01 pm

    Those NASA managers accepted a program that they knew was unsustainable. They just hoped that it would work, some how…

    they have been doing this repeatedly since the Apollo days..

    The trick is going to move commercial spaceflight outside of NASA…its coming

    Robert G. Oler

  • NASA Fan

    It takes a former astronaut running NASA to dismantle HSF as it has come to be known.

    What is troubling is the phrase: “The Journal, though, describes the administration’s support for the initiative as “murky” based on its sources, who claim that “the budget isn’t expected to outline a clear, long-term funding plan.”

    So, without a clear long term funding plan for the ‘new paradigm of commercially operated HSF’, both to LEO and eventually NEO, and BEO, what the heck will NASA /HSF be asked to do between now and when things aren’t so ‘murky?’ Continue marking down the dead-end path of Cx/Ares-1/Orion spending Billions while the murkiness is worked out?

    I can not image being a worker at JSC or MSFC or KSC or Stenis with this murkiness existing in the present moment, knowing the in the end the POTUS is outsourcing HSF.

    What a mess.

  • HotShotX

    Out of curiosity, if NASA leaves LEO and ISS resupply to Commercial, and maintains its current budget, would that technically be a substantial budget increase since they no longer need to maintain a Crew Vehicle? (Assuming, of course, that the government doesn’t gut the NASA budget to pay for the Commercial contract).

    ~HotShotX

  • Mark R. Whittington

    This seems like a typical Obama initiative. Announce a grand new initiative that sounds good, then fall flat paying for it, planning for it, and selling it to the Congress.

  • mike shupp

    HotShotX –

    No. Running shuttle cost 3.5 – 6 billion per year, depending on how you want to cut up costs at the various centers. Just ending shuttle operations and laying off the USA troops saves you 4 billion a year or so. Running shuttle in 2011 puts that “savings” off till 2012 and after. After that, NASA’s share for R&D costs for COTS C (cargo) are estimated at 3.5 billion total. NASA’s share for COTS D — a crew vehicle — will run at least as much, and likely more. In the meantime, moving people from earth to station by Soyuz will cost 0.5 billion per year (50 million bucks per astronaut for each flight, assuming the US sends up 10 astronauts per year). And finally, operating the space station costs the US 2.0 to 2.5 billion per year, so operating the ISS in the 2015-2020 period will take a total of 10 – 12.5 billion out of the NASA budget.

    Are you seeing a lot of savings there? I’m not.

    Maybe we can shut down ALL the manned space flight activities at NASA — Kennedy, Johnson, Marshall, Stennis, Dryden, and Glenn — for an extra 2 billion in savings per year, on the grounds that henceforth all manned space flight will be performed/provided by commercial suppliers, so the Federal government doesn’t need such facilities. I don’t see anything else that might be pointed to as “technically a substantial budget increase.”

  • R.U. Kidding

    ” NASA Fan wrote @ January 24th, 2010 at 10:34 pm
    It takes a former astronaut running NASA to dismantle HSF as it has come to be known.

    What is troubling is the phrase: “The Journal, though, describes the administration’s support for the initiative as “murky” based on its sources, who claim that “the budget isn’t expected to outline a clear, long-term funding plan.”

    So, without a clear long term funding plan for the ‘new paradigm of commercially operated HSF’, both to LEO and eventually NEO, and BEO, what the heck will NASA /HSF be asked to do between now and when things aren’t so ‘murky?’ Continue marking down the dead-end path of Cx/Ares-1/Orion spending Billions while the murkiness is worked out?

    There will be no murkiness worked out as long as OMB is calling the shots on HSF and the rest of NASA. OMB works year-to-year and isn’t in the business of vision, leadership, or inspiration.

    This administration punted. When you release your grand plan for space as part of the budget submission you’ve sent a pretty strong message to us in the space community.

  • David Stever

    Mark Whittington says:
    “This seems like a typical Obama initiative. Announce a grand new initiative that sounds good, then fall flat paying for it, planning for it, and selling it to the Congress.”

    I’m sorry Mark, but you’re confused here. Obama was first elected to the White in 2008. The President you’re describing is George Bush. He was selected in 2000, and reselected in 2004. He is the one who announced No Child Left Behind and the Space Initiative, and didn’t fund either one of them.

  • Barney Fife

    As Andy would say on Mayberry “SHAZAM”

    Andy didn’t say ‘shazam’, Goober – Gomer did.

  • CharlesTheSpaceGuy

    The NASA budget is unlikely to decline – let’s not all make some huge extrapolations here. This is similar to the announcement, by President Reagan, in 1986 that we would stop planning to fly all payloads (commercial, military, exploration, etc) on the Shuttle and would fly commercial and military payloads on expendable rockets. That did contribute to the very painful contraction of the launcher industry (Titan was phased out, Atlas/Delta production combined) to make it more competitive.
    NASA will retain oversight of commercial rockets – since they will lift the NASA-designed orion capsule. So most of the funding will appear in the NASA budget but will be shuffled off to ULA, etc rather than spent on a government development project. I just hope that the expectations of the oversight will not be set so high that no one can meet them!!
    And yes, President Obama and Administrator Bolden just happen to be in the positions they are – the key decisions (or lack there of) were made years ago by George Bush, Sean O’Keefe, etc etc. It is just Charlie Bolden’s poor fortune that, instead of presiding over exciting new programs, his fate is to dismantle the capabilities that he spent years developing. We can no longer service Hubble or any other similar spacecraft. We can no longer (soon, now) access low inclination orbits – the Russians almost certainly would not allow us to. Soon – to get people to the Station we have spent billions on – we will have to get a Russian commission to approve sending astronauts to ISS.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Barney Fife wrote @ January 25th, 2010 at 9:21 am

    As Andy would say on Mayberry “SHAZAM”

    Andy didn’t say ’shazam’, Goober – Gomer did….

    “Barn” you are correct… Thanks for fixing it for me…take that bullet from the pocket and put it in your revolver. watch that foot!

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark R. Whittington wrote @ January 25th, 2010 at 12:09 am

    This seems like a typical Obama initiative. Announce a grand new initiative that sounds good, then fall flat paying for it, planning for it, and selling it to the Congress…

    so yet another trait of Bush the last Obama is taking on?

    As you doubtless recall Bush the last was famous for this. Even in human spaceflight Bush announced his vision then by all accounts underfunded it.

    this is the same thing he did in Iraq….listened to people who were really clucks and said that we could take Iraq with what was clearly insufficient troops.

    Amazing how you right wingers beat up on people for doing what Bush did and yet love Bush seesh

    Robert G. Oler

  • Mark R. Whittington

    David, Oler, even the Obamanauts are reconsidering the “Bush did it!” strategy, seeing as how it worked so well in Massachusetts.Bush is no longer President and has as much relevance as President Truman. We’ve had the stimulys package and health care reform, both fair ideas in principle, that fell apart due to lack of planning and leadership. Space commercialization may well be the next Obama adventure in policy chaos.

  • Ferris Valyn

    Mark,

    I wouldn’t say that Health Care Reform is done. IN fact, we might actually get a decent bill.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark R. Whittington wrote @ January 25th, 2010 at 10:49 am

    LOL

    Mark you and the other Bush the last apologist remind me of the person whose house caught on fire because of their own negligence and then spent the majority of their time commenting on the incompetence of the fire department in putting the fire out.

    OK the fire department might or might not be incompetent, but people who have demonstrated incompetence by faulty logic, supporting stupid efforts and just BEING FLAT WRONG are really not the best judge of others actions.

    What strikes me as odd, is that you continue to defend an effort that EXCLUDED commercial free enterprise projects, didnt even discuss their use…and yet you still claim to be a Ronald Reagan Republican. On your blog, you even now are arguing for “pork politics” to keep a return to the Moon going. Seesh.

    Win loose or draw, by incompetence, or blind luck or thoughtful planning AT THE VERY LEAST the discussions today are at a place in space politics and policy which I have wished for, for over two decades and at one point you even embraced…the concept of commercial lift to space for humans.

    I do not know how it will work out, and there are a lot of eddys and currents still in the “protect our phoney baloney jobs” mode…but AT LEAST WE ARE TALKING ABOUT IT…metal is being bent and there is progress.

    The later is more then can be said of the government program which you consistently carry water for. In “the vision”, in the Ares/Constellation effort there is ZERO true commercial participation not by accident but by design. People who worked for the administration you LIKED purposly built up a system that was designed to exclude commercial products.

    Obama in my book is an amazingly flawed administration which, although one hopes he gets it together, is walking quite convincingly the road his predecessor walked toward failure.

    BUT in space policy and politics he (Obama) and his “homies” are doing one thing Bush the last and his jerks could never do…There is serious effort toward starting a “airmail” like effort in human launch and recovery capability as well as cargo.

    and it is opposed by good free market people like you.

    That is a choice you made.

    Robert G. Oler

  • So what happens to these companies if a future administration decides that they no longer want to spend $2 billion a year of tax payer money for the ISS? Will they lobby Congress to keep this corporate welfare program going?

    If Obama really wants to help the emerging manned space launch industry, then NASA should help private industry to develop a simple and safe rocket booster and space craft that can be used by NASA, the US military, and by private commercial launch companies.

    But the ISS is a huge waste of tax payer dollars, IMO. So why would I want to use my tax payer money to pay an unnecessary middle man to transport NASA astronauts to that boondoggle? That’s like asking tax payers to turn over all military transport operations to Blackwater (Didn’t we see that in Avatar?)!

    If private manned space launch companies want some guaranteed revenue, then maybe the US government should set up a ‘Space Lotto’ system where hundreds of millions of average Joes and Janes can purchase a $1 ticket for a chance to fly into space aboard a US private commercial space craft. Since a majority of Americans say they would jump at the chance to travel into space, such a system could possible generate hundreds of millions or possibly billions of dollars annually. Since the cost of space tourism is about $25 million per person and we assume 4 passengers per flight, then a billion dollar a year Space Lotto system could support 10 manned launches per year– that’s twice as many flights as the Space Shuttle had last year.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ January 25th, 2010 at 1:05 pm

    So what happens to these companies if a future administration decides that they no longer want to spend $2 billion a year of tax payer money for the ISS? .

    there is no guarantee that will not happen…any more then there is no guarantee that you will not receive this message because a piece of metal will break off an airliner flying above you, the metal will smash through where you are and that will be the end. Anything is possible but in what is “likely” dropping support for ISS is the most unlikely thing that will happen in human spaceflight.

    “If Obama really wants to help the emerging manned space launch industry, then NASA should help private industry to develop a simple and safe rocket booster and space craft that can be used by NASA, the US military, and by private commercial launch companies.”

    you are about 30 years to late. Already been tried. The President was Nixon and Carter…the vehicle was the space shuttle.

    What is at issue here is the future of the US launcher industry. As it stands now US made launchers are launching almost no commercial satellites which are the cash cow of industry…the only things going up on US launchers are US government payloads.

    Unless that is reversed then space activities are going to not go much farther in The Republic.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Doug Lassiter

    “What a mess.”

    Yes, but it took us a number of years to get into this mess, and it might take a couple to get out. The Obama administration received some thoughtful comments from the Augustine committee just a few months ago (which pretty much formalized the mess), and while it might be disappointing to some if he didn’t have a grand plan for the next few decades all worked out by now, I can’t really fault him for that. So much for expectations about a “a clear, long-term funding plan” in the FY11 budget. Get real.

    What I hope to see in the FY11 budget are some pointers that a grand plan is achievable. Starting a commercial crew development program is one such pointer. Get the heads screwed on right at the agency to make this happen, with a modest investment, and then build on it. Same way with international collaboration. Make progress on ITAR reform, and start building international linkages for human space flight beyond LEO, perhaps on the ISS model. It’s a culture change that’s being asked for, and you don’t just legislate culture change, and press a button to make it happen.

    Finally, I’m going to look for words about what this administration sees as a compelling reason for human space flight. I don’t believe those words have happened yet, and they desperately need to happen.

    What I hope to NOT see in the NASA budget is a slapped together vision, with no budget to support it. That would be the ultimate disappointment.

    A punt? Yes, maybe. But perhaps an onside punt that just picks up some yards in the right direction.

    “Bush is no longer President and has as much relevance as President Truman.”

    Unfortunately, with regard to space, that lack of relevance was true for most of his second term.

  • vulture4

    If we cannot produce practical benefits with ISS, we will certainly not be able to do so with a moon base, which cannot do earth observation, cannot do microgravity, cannot do lunar geology any better than robotics, and costs much more than ISS to support.

    So we have to make ISS productive if we are going to have human spaceflight at all. And ISS support is the first mission of human launch.

    On a per-seat basis Orion will actually be more expensive than the Space Shuttle, with almost no resupply cargo capacity (few hundre kg vs 12-15 MT), fewer flights (2/yr vs 5-6/yr), and a smaller crew (4 vs 7). I suspect that hen overhead is included the annual program cost of Orion will be about the same as Shuttle and the per-flight cost higher.

    Constellation is MUCH more expensive than SpaceX for ISS resupply due to the much heavier vehicle and vastly more facilities and personnel required for ground processing, and even the larger ships required for recovery. Yet Dragon actually carries a larger crew.

    Orion was simply not designed for ISS resupply, Shuttle and Dragon were.

    It makes sense to drop Constellation, which provides the fewest capabilities and has the highest cost. It makes sense to extend Shuttle until SpaceX or other carriers can clearly meet all ISS logistics requiremnts.

  • Loki

    “The Journal, though, describes the administration’s support for the initiative as ‘murky’ based on its sources, who claim that “the budget isn’t expected to outline a clear, long-term funding plan.”

    Isn’t that, in a way, what got us into this mess in the first place? An administration (Bush’s) giving NASA an ambitious vision and then failing to support that vision with an appropriate long term funding plan? The more things CHANGE…

  • Doug Lassiter

    “Isn’t that, in a way, what got us into this mess in the first place? An administration (Bush’s) giving NASA an ambitious vision and then failing to support that vision with an appropriate long term funding plan?”

    The administration support may be “murky” because the administration may wisely not be giving us a real “vision” just yet. The “mess” one has by not having a vision is vastly less than the mess you get by promoting a vision, and then walking away from it and underfunding it.

    As I said, we need pointers and a commitment to culture change more than we need, or deserve, a vision right now. The time simply isn’t right for a new vision, but very ripe for some managerially and politically astute feelers and sanity checks that have to accompany such culture change. As per Wayne Hale’s latest blog entry, culture change doesn’t happen overnight. “That will take a tremendous amount of energy, and time must pass,” he says. Wayne is one of the wise old guard, and doesn’t want that culture to change, but he’s also smart enough to know that it probably has to.

  • The most beneficial part of a base on the Moon will be what we learn about the human body. We already know that living aboard microgravity space station is inherently deleterious to human health.

    A Moon base will finally tell us if a 1/6 gravity hypogravity environment is also deleterious to human health. If it is not, then colonizing the Moon and Mars will be relatively easy. And this will greatly enhance the survival of our species. Finding out if humans can survive– permanently– beyond the Earth will be one of the greatest discoveries since tool using humans first emerged in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2.6 million years ago and eventually went on to colonize the entire planet!

  • Robert G. Oler

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31989.html

    I am sure that the administration will propose an exception to this for NASA (Smirk alert).

    Robert G. Oler

  • Mark Bray

    You folks seem to forget it was CONGRESS that wrote and passed the NASA Act of 2005 which directed the vision for space exploration. You also seem to forget that the CONSTITUTION gives CONGRESS the power of the budget, not the executive branch. Bush used the bully pulpit to advance the idea and suggest an Administrator who knew what was needed. But congress – Republican and Democrat – agreed with it, voted on it and never funded it. As far as your analogies with the wars we are fighting, congress passed the declaration with resounding majorities and they could bring the troops home in an instant by defunding the war. That is what they did in the late 80’s and early 90’s in afghanistan. They defunded it. I love how we blame president’s and forget the other 535 people who are responsible for this mess.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ January 25th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
    . “That will take a tremendous amount of energy, and time must pass,” he says. Wayne is one of the wise old guard, and doesn’t want that culture to change, but he’s also smart enough to know that it probably has to…

    I enjoyed his note.

    Look there are two reasons bureaucracies change.

    The first is that a leader motivates change…the second is that a force greater then the inertia of the bureaucracy acts upon it…and pushes it into a new vector.

    What NASA and human spaceflight are about to undergo is that latter. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the Obama/Bolden meeting…or at the Bolden/Garver meeting when Bolden dropped the word. whatever it is.

    NASA HSF has finally just run out of horsepower. In the past they have created launch vehicle replacements for the shuttle that spent a lot of money (and got no where near flying) before they were canceled because the money just dried up as the project floundered…but that was OK, the point really never was to develop a new vehicle…it was to continue flying the shuttle which the agency has institutional comfort with.

    Problem is that the powers above them are REALLY Serious this time about ending the shuttle and no one seems to give a darn as to any reasons why it should be extended.

    in the process the shuttle replacement got the usual suspects managing it and the dollars got higher and the schedule slipped and the effort like all the efforts in the past has floundered. So now they are faced with the worst of both bureaucratic worlds.

    The shuttle is going away and the replacement is to expensive to build.

    As In the past they might have kept on going but for pesky Elon Musk. OSC is floundering, there is almost no chance in my view that they are going to produce a Launch vehicle, much less a capsule of some sort anytime soon. Boeing and Lockmart want a piece of the pie but are kind of like Braniff trying to compete with SWA…they just dont have a clue what is happening. There isnt a commercial bone in any of the managers there bodies…and hence they are kind of watching the asteroid coming saying “gee that is a pretty sight”.

    Musk however seems determined to succeed, he has cash… and might have pulled a Donald Douglas…gathered the correct people with the right technology and inspired them to do something pretty cool. And like all people who launch new products and win…he might have timed himself to be at the start of a new market.

    Imagine where the Augustine commission would have been (or had gone) had there been no “SpaceX” only OSC and the usual suspects at Lockmart and Boeing.

    As such change is coming, because the bureaucracy simply could not perform (never had to in the past) and indeed I think never thought this day would actually come.

    I would love to be surprised, but it is to bad, in my view Obama is not embracing the power of the change that I think is going to happen. I believe that he could make it metaphoric for a “restart America” program that is sorely needed. Sadly I dont think his folks (Or he) Understand the peril of The Republic again I would like to be wrong…but they are starting to strike me as “Khan” doing battle with Big E. As Spock told Kirk “His tactics demonstrate two dimensional thinking”

    Long Live The Republic

    Robert G. Oler

  • NASA has not been the same since President Nixon started NASA’s ‘Mission to LEO’ program in the early 1970s. President Regan ‘s space station idea eventually evolved into President Clinton’s ISS program– Mission to LEO on Steroids!

    President Bush finally decided to send us back to the Moon– to stay– but decided to fund the new crazy architecture with an installment plan that would take nearly two decades to complete. And then Congress decided that they really didn’t want us to stay.

    Now we have the Flexible Path plan that supposed to be a lot cheaper than returning to the Moon! A plan that imitates the old Soviet Union style of space spectaculars, instead of a logical plan to establish the first permanently manned facility on the surface of the Moon, our closest neighbor in space.

    If Obama chooses the Flexible Path which takes more than 20 years to reach its ultimate goal, a visit to the moons of Mars, I guarantee you that this silly long term plan will be terminated by the next administration and we’ll be looking at another incarnation of an ‘Augustine Commission’!

  • Robert G. Oler

    Marcel F. Williams

    not really.

    I cannot speak to the actual motivation of the Administration. My thoughts are that the current program simply expanded cost and schedule wise into something that no one is willing to fund anymore.

    moving on…the reality of how things work is that as long as human spaceflight stays where it is, that there is no immediate or reasonable short term cycle of economic payback (say 5 years) the days of anything short of politics driven space based spectaculars are the only thing that one can hope for…and they wont happen.

    Unless the short term implications of human spaceflight can become obvious and realized the only way hsf is funded is either when there is an external imperative (such as the Moon race) or when society has a lot of capital (see the Chinese) and all those are very short term.

    If the economic feedback ever starts then well watch out.

    The genius of flexible path, to me, is that it essentially shuts down human exploration of space…and concentrates on technologies which have some reasonable chance of near term economic success.

    If by 2015 human spaceflight is not making money. Then it is on a very short path to being ended.

    Robert G. Oler

  • @ Robert G. Oler

    I’ll agree with you that at minimum, we’ll probably get some new space vehicle hardware: probably a new heavy lift vehicle, an EDS stage, and probably the Orion-CEV. But no one really knows what future Republican or Democratic administrations will do with this hardware over the course of the next 20 years.

    And without clear quickly achievable goals that give the public a sense of progress and direction, a lot of this new hardware could end up just being tested a few times and then stored away until future presidents and legislators decide if they have the appropriate funds to use it in some manner.

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