Congress, NASA, White House

Budget freezes, watchdogs, and more

As expected, the FY2011 budget proposal for NASA will be released next Monday, with a press conference planned for Monday morning, according to Space News. That may be followed by a separate press conference the next day at the National Press Club; what the difference in topics between the two press conferences isn’t clear. The Office of Science and Technology Policy is planning its own press conference Monday at AAAS headquarters about the administration’s R&D priorities, including NASA.

White it appears that NASA may not get the billion-dollar increase previously anticipated, any increase may put it in better condition than many other government agencies. POLITICO reports that the White House is planning a three-year freeze on discretionary “non-security” spending. However, the report adds that there is some flexibility in at least the FY11 request: “One-time costs, like the 2010 Census, will also be coming down, and this could help pay for more money for NASA, for example.”

Meanwhile, the House Science and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee is planning a hearing next Wednesday titled “Key Issues and Challenges Facing NASA: Views of the Agency’s Watchdogs”. The hearing’s witnesses include NASA inspector general Paul Martin, Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel chairman Joseph W. Dyer, and Cristina T. Chaplain of the Government Accountability Office.

73 comments to Budget freezes, watchdogs, and more

  • MrEarl

    Here we go! The political “knee jerk” reaction to the Brown victory in Massachusetts is to freeze discretionary spending. Never mind that it only totals a little over $400 billion and will have a very negligible effect on the overall $3.4Trillion budget.
    I just wish the president had taken a complete look at the whole budget as he did with his decision with Afghanistan. You may not agree with his path but I think you would be hard pressed to say that he fully consider the situation before he acted.
    I didn’t have a good feeling for HSF NASA or commercial before last night’s announcement and I am even more pessimistic now.

  • MoonExploration

    Don’t worry – if the US is cutting costs in the space program we can always rely on the communist sate of China that continue its efforts in space, and towards the Moon (our next big utility) http://twitter.com/MoonExploration/statuses/8206853295

  • mike shupp

    Well, on the negative side of things, it would appear that
    (a) NASA’s budget will not grow
    (b) Many NASA personnel will be laid off or retired in the next
    few years; ditto USA and other contractor personnel
    (c) Mike Griffin’s attempt to build up NASA’s own internal
    rocket design capability is to be scraped
    (d) Ares I and V are about to be eliminated
    (e) The Orion crew capsule as well
    (f) COTS-C _and_ COTS-D will be funded
    (g) Lunar landings are off-limits for another decade or more
    (h) Nothing else in manned space flight is going to happen
    until money-conscious capitalists and entrpreneurs
    decide to make it happen

    On the positive side, these are all developments yearned for by the majority of commenters at this site, at Nasa Watch, at The Space Review, at Rand Simberg’s and John Goff’s site and others.

    So Obama will be making us all furiously happy. Truly he is The One. God bless the man!

  • Robert G. Oler

    MrEarl wrote @ January 26th, 2010 at 10:57 am

    I just wish the president had taken a complete look at the whole budget as he did with his decision with Afghanistan. You may not agree with his path but I think you would be hard pressed to say that he fully consider the situation before he acted…

    I wouldnt go that far (the last sentence). Of course I dont know, I was not in the discussions but …

    (as an aside I voted for McCain. In my view, a year into the administration of his opponent, and this is an imprecise metric, it is my view that McCain would probably be floundering as well…for reasons I’ll talk about in this post…but I did vote for him).

    The trick in the last election was that Americans wanted something different. Bush the last was a complete failure, everything got measureable worse in his administration, not a single significant metric got better…the American people really wanted to find “another country”.

    And they were not talking minor change, they were almost across the board ready for something completely new. Not an evolution, not a process change but a major “reformation” if you will in terms of where the nation was going.

    That doesnt mean changing how the process was done, but changing the underlying assumptions which define the process. I dont think that Obama did that in Afland, nor has he done that in the stimulus, nor has he done that in his economic policies nor almost anything that he has touched.

    Obama has in my view taken everything significant Bush the last did and maybe pushed the timeline here or there a a few degrees to port or starboard…but it is hard to tell any significant difference in how he is performing from the effort in Afland, to well Bernanke.

    None of the underlying assumptions of any of Bush’s major efforts have in my view been challenged. Domestically Obama has abandoned whatever ideology he had in terms of Wall Street just as Bush did embracing the financial class’s rhetoric “to big to fail”. These statements “X bank cant fail we go into a depression” are presented as “facts” on their face to justify things that in theory neither President really agreed with. Or maybe they both do agree with it is hard to tell.

    There are (other then their particular “slant” On policies) some differences between Bush and Obama (and one big difference) all of which are outside the scope of this forum.

    But just because someone takes a bit of time to make a decision does not indicate that they have used that time well. Or that they have thought through all the issues, or challenged even the basic concepts of the decision. In Afland there appears (to me at least) very little evidence that Obama used that time well…and I supported him on various blogs taking that time to make a decision)…

    I dont see a freeze being a very thoughtful approach to the deficit issue (it seems knee jerk I agree)…and so far the “sausage” of making human spaceflight changes, although I might end up agreeing with the result has not impressed me much.

    What is needed at NASA is not more money nor a real goal, it is an underlying change (gads finally used the word) in how they do business. Not a tweak not a little course correction but a serious rethink of the entire basis of a human spaceflight effort in The Republic.

    So far…as Spock said to Kirk as the Big E battled Kahn. “he is very bright, but his tactics indicate two dimensional thinking” Sadly I think that describes BHO

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    MoonExploration

    sorry not impressed.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Martijn Meijering

    c), d), e): perhaps, but not just yet. I expect that at least a token effort may be allowed to peter out. I worry it may be barely successful enough to block further progress.

    But yes, irony of ironies, Obama may turn out to be the president who got NASA on the right track. JFK is often credited for being enough of a visionary to get NASA started on the right track, but as Rand Simberg has persuasively argued he in fact ended up creating the monstrous bureaucracy that has blocked progress ever since. Space activists and enthusiasts may condemn Obama’s ‘lack of vision’, but he may accidentally end up doing the right thing. Lack of money may finally get NASA out of the launch business, although the death rattle of the beast may last another couple of years.

    Deliberately doing something that appears to be the right thing but isn’t, vs accidentally doing something that appears not to be the right thing but is.

  • Robert G. Oler

    mike shupp

    A-G seem to me to be very positive developments.

    H…the trick is learning how to make money grubbing capitalist do what is in the best interest of The Republic.

    See Syncom

    Robert G. Oler

  • Ferris Valyn

    mike shupp – I am still waiting for the way to build the required support for becoming a spacefaring society. How do we build support to restart some sort of grand JFK style situation? Why should the average person care about that?

  • common sense

    @Ferris Valyn:

    ” How do we build support to restart some sort of grand JFK style situation? Why should the average person care about that?”

    In the current state of our nation we just don’t create a JFK situation. We are not there and hopefully probably will never be there again. The grandiose NASA exploration is over as far as HSF goes. VSE/Constellation was the last chance and it did not work. See my post here http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/01/nasa-must-chang.html

    The only reason why the average person might care is if HSF or NASA or whatever actually does something to sooth their problems: A private initiative may create jobs, high end well paying jobs. And those jobs may be at reach of the “average” person. And if the private sector is successful it might create a wealthy environment where people could thrive working for HSF. If the private sector fails no one will ever care for HSF for years if not decades to come. Moon, Mars all will be moot.

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ January 26th, 2010 at 1:30 pm

    . If the private sector fails no one will ever care for HSF for years if not decades to come. Moon, Mars all will be moot…

    exactly right on point

    Robert G. Oler

  • MrEarl

    The only thing that would be a positive development from Mike’s list would be (f), more money for COTs C and D. (which I am doubtful will happen)
    A and B, the loss of jobs in the NASA centers and especially in Florida would do great harm to already fragile state economies.
    C, D and E The lose of capabilities for HSF (technology and human experience in space and in design, implementation and execution) is never a good thing and I don’t think that commercial enterprises would be able to pick up more than a small fraction of those capabilities any time in the foreseeable future.
    I really am a big supporter of commercial human space flight but all of the companies mentioned ( SpaceX and Orbital come to mind) have limited experience in any space ventures much less providing safe, reliable human transportation. I have no doubt that they will eventually get there, and we should be supporting their efforts, but there is no telling when that may be. LocMart, Boeing and NASA at least have the experience right now to make HFS happen.
    On the political side, Obama has never cared much about space, he said so early in the campaign and his actions since election have borne that out. I don’t see but a few members of congress willing to spend political capital to maintain HSF whether government or commercial.
    So this is it. The Shuttle flys out it’s remaining manifest and the world’s most advanced space faring nation bows out of human space flight for the next couple of decades at least.

  • common sense

    “LocMart, Boeing and NASA at least have the experience right now to make HFS happen.”

    This is just plain not true. They do have experience in HSF ops that is a fact BUT they do not have experience in HSF design this experience was lost years, decades ago for the most part. The current Constellation was an attempt at re-creating this experience based on past documents and a few “survivors”.

    “Obama has never cared much about space, he said so early in the campaign and his actions since election have borne that out. ”

    Not true either becasue had he not care he would have left Constellation alone and it would have died a horrible death due to budget starvation with people being let go with not so much as a chance to survive. At least this WH did a thorough if not complete review of the available, politically viable options. Don’t you get it? Whether you’d give NASA $20B they still would not be able to achieve their goals. Exagerate? It’s already been 5 years and nothing has flown, save for Ares-1X a Shuttle SRB…

  • Robert G. Oler

    “The Shuttle flys out it’s remaining manifest and the world’s most advanced space faring nation bows out of human space flight for the next couple of decades at least.”

    I dont agree with a lot of what you wrote ( MrEarl wrote @ January 26th, 2010 at 1:44 pm ) because I dont think that the current path is/was sustainable.

    There is almost zero chance that given unlimited funding NASA and its corporate hacks could get to where there was anything “over” what the shuttle had offered…and indeed from the various flight rates etc that were projected it appears as though it was far less.

    The fundamental disagreement I think”you” and I have is this. I dont think that 1) the current structure is sustainable and 2) I dont think that even if it was it was/is worth sustaining.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ January 26th, 2010 at 1:30 pm

    not only that. Lockmart and Boeing both have the absolute WRONG experience in terms of spaceflight. It is all government driven with little or no regard for commercial product.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Ferris Valyn

    common sense – By and large I agree with you. I don’t think grandiose NASA exploration is necessarily over, but it will be done in a vastly different way, (which you allude to in the second paragraph).

    However, this is part of a longer conversation that goes back quite a few months, where I asked Mike shupp how to make us a spacefaring society, and he responded with a long technical list of things. No doubt some are worthwhile investments, but I then asked the question I repeated in my post here. He didn’t really have a response.

    Anyway, main point – I largely agreee with your reading of the tea leaves, but I would like to see if mr. Shupp can address the underlying point.

    MrEarl – lets for the moment say that you are right, that only LockMart, Boeing, and NASA have experince to make HSF happen. Ok, when we do commercial crew, WHY NOT ENSURE THAT LOCKMART/BOEING/ULA are among those picked? Do you honestly think they’ll reject being involved?

  • common sense

    @Robert G. Oler:

    “It is all government driven with little or no regard for commercial product.”

    Yep I know. Hence COTS like programs are our best option today. It may change again when a real ambitious program will require risk sharing with the government and cost-plus will be the way. Not now.

    It is funny how Constellation has become a competitor to say SpaceX, the elephant is scared by the mouse. Today they are both trying for the same thing, using similar techniques (new LV + capsule). But look at the darn cost difference! Constellation was supposed to bring us the Moon and now they barely try to geet to ISS and not even on time. Ah yeah, Ares is safer… Very sad, very sad indeed.

  • R.U. Kidding

    “Obama has never cared much about space, he said so early in the campaign and his actions since election have borne that out. ”

    Not true either becasue had he not care he would have left Constellation alone and it would have died a horrible death due to budget starvation with people being let go with not so much as a chance to survive. At least this WH did a thorough if not complete review of the available, politically viable options.”

    MrEarl is right. This President doesn’t care about space. OSTP chartered the HSF review. OMB was put in charge of choosing an option and implementing (this evident because the grand vision for NASA is arriving via a budget submission!?!). If at any point the President actually cared about space he’d actually talk about it or show some personal interest in making a decision. It’s very telling what a President considers to be important- the President will make a personal appearance to discuss the issue. This President is letting Orszag run the show.

    Before everyone thinks I’m bashing Obama- space has not been a priority for any President since Eisenhower. Yes, even Kennedy. Launius’s book on Presidential leadership shows this quite well.

    Space is critical to national pride, technological development, the economy, national security, etc. It’s people like us who continue to fight for space and keep it in the public eye. And while we all may not agree on all issues, and sometimes argue passionately, we all agree that space is important. The unfortunate part of what’s happened with HSF is that there’s only so many beatings we can take in the space community before we stop fighting- many people thought that this was the time we might take a step forward. Instead it appears we’re just sitting in the same seat in the corner.

  • common sense

    “If at any point the President actually cared about space he’d actually talk about it or show some personal interest in making a decision”

    Who beyond you and I and the posters herein do care about space? Who has the luxury to care about space? Yes LUXURY, that is all HSF is today because of poor past choices. The president responds to the majority of the citizens not to space afficionados only.

    “Space is critical to national pride, technological development, the economy, national security, etc. ”

    Maybe so, but not necessarily NASA HSF space program. You may want to look up the DOD budget for Space. I don’t have a good link at hand so I’ll let other posters provide if they so care.

  • R.U. Kidding

    Common sense- it appears you and I will have to disagree on the purpose of HSF. It’s a luxury to you and to me it’s a critical to U.S. innovation and foreign policy.

  • Robert G. Oler

    R.U. Kidding wrote @ January 26th, 2010 at 2:31 pm

    Space is critical to national pride, technological development, the economy, national security, etc. It’s people like us who continue to fight for space and keep it in the public eye…

    you are having the same problem most space advocates have…differentiating between “space” efforts and “human spaceflight”.

    I preface these remarks with a full admission that I dont have a clue what Charlie Bolden told or talked about “human spaceflight” with Obama…no clue and I dont think that to many people do. There were I am told only a few sets of ears in the room.

    BUT if Obama is not interested in human spaceflight then that is solely the fault of space activist and the professional space people.

    I AM interested in human spaceflight, but I care more for the future of The Republic then I do for the future of big government NASA programs…and as it stands right now I dont see the future of big government space programs merging with The Future of The Republic.

    A lot of space advocates (and some politicans) have given it the old college try. The Congressman in AL who switched parties blathers on about “the Chinese are coming”…but one could not convince most Americans of that if one tried.

    If the choice is between 3 or 4 billion a year to keep a lot of space “community” employees going, and continuing Ares/Constellation and getting America (to quote the head of KSC) “exploring again” OR

    Building roads/bridges/helping people stay in their home extending unemployment whatever…well there is no choice.

    OR the choice is to do things like build power grid transfer lines across the US…there is no choice.

    Space advocates sell human spaceflight on things which are mostly myth (the Chinese are coming or “we are all going to live in space”) and the space professionals sale it on “keep our corporations alive”.

    When things are going as badly as they are now in The Republic…if those are what the selling points are…there is no choice.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ January 26th, 2010 at 2:27 pm

    It is funny how Constellation has become a competitor to say SpaceX, the elephant is scared by the mouse…

    yes because if the mouse succeeds the elephant is toast

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    “it’s a critical to U.S. innovation”

    Unfortunately this is a resounding NO, not as it is. Not Human Space Flight at NASA.

    “and foreign policy.”

    Possibly but it is not used as it should. Even though apparently Charles Bolden talked about expanding HSF to non traditional, even poor nations. We shall see. Today it only is an leftover artifact of the Cold War. Look at the participants. I would even argue that the Russians make better choices as to whom fly with them, nationwise, than we do.

  • common sense

    “The Congressman in AL who switched parties blathers on about “the Chinese are coming”…but one could not convince most Americans of that if one tried.”

    Even better, they are not coming they have arrived. Afterall they actually fly a vehicle into space and back while as a nation we just flew a poor suborbital demonstration of an SRB. Again compare their cost and ours. But it really does not matter much.

  • common sense

    “The unfortunate part of what’s happened with HSF is that there’s only so many beatings we can take in the space community before we stop fighting”

    By the way how many beatings did you actually get? How do they compare to the beatings the professional community is actually getting? See the problem is not “fighting” for the sake of it. You should rather ask yourself whether you are fighting a just cause.

  • geronimo

    Ares 1 finally gets the axe. Excellent news!! NASA lost its way a long, long time ago. They simply can’t successfully develop a new launcher anymore. SpaceX has the best engineers money can buy, who does NASA have? Inept egomaniacs like Steve Cook.

    Again, this is excellent news.

  • MoonExploration

    @Robert G. Oler
    Space advocates sell human spaceflight on things which are mostly myth (the Chinese are coming or “we are all going to live in space”) and the space professionals sale it on “keep our corporations alive”.

    A myth? The truth is that the Chinese do have a vehicle operating right now. And, unlike The US, the Chinese have plans for extended HSF with their own space station and taking humans to the moon. In October this year they will send Chang’e 2 to the moon, and within the few next year’s we will all witness how the Chinese nation will leave The US behind in space exploration. Let’s just hope that India will hold the free world’s position in the space frontier.

  • Ferris Valyn

    MoonExploration – how does the world situation change if the Chinese land a human on the moon?

  • MrEarl

    Let’s be clear. I WANT SPACEX AND ORBITAL TO SUCCEED! But to state, as geronimo dose and others allude to, “SpaceX has the best engineers money can buy, who does NASA have? Inept egomaniacs like Steve Cook.” is just plain wrong. NASA, Boeing and LockMart have had many many more success than failures in maned and unmaned launchers and systems and years more experience than SpaceX or Orbital. A prudent choice would have been to support SpaceX and Orbital to design crew delivery to the ISS and LEO while allowing NASA and Lockmart to design Orion for exploration and maybe using SpaceX and Orbital as subs.
    Per Common Sense, “they do not have experience in HSF design this experience was lost years, decades ago for the most part.” about Boeing, Lockmart and NASA. You completely discount or forget ISS. It’s a very complicated system that dose it’s job well.
    I’m not laying the death of HSF (American government owned systems) all at Obama’s feet. There’s plenty of blame to go around, from GWB who never appropriated the funds he pledged, to Griffin who was too egotistical and refused to make adjustments to the plan once it became clear that the money wasn’t coming. Don’t forget Al Gore who took us down the X33/VentureStar road for most of the ’90s wasting time and money. There’s also papa Bush who started his own exploration plan then abandoned it soon after the announcement.

    There are a whole set of reasons as human space flight and most on this blog would agree or they wouldn’t follow it and debate it as lively as they do.
    I feel it’s a shame and a sign of our decline as a nation that we can not sustain our leadership in human space exploration. The worst shame of all is not that we were passed by other nations, we quit.

  • MoonExploration

    Lyndon B. Johnson said during the space race in the 60’s that; “I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon”.

    I do hope that we have the same feeling today as we had back in the 60´s.

  • MoonExploration

    And talking about the need for HSF and not just robotic science missions:

    Stephen Hawkins said:
    “The long term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet. Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid or a nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe”

  • Loki

    Whether the chinese lunar aspirations are myth or not doesn’t really matter. The fact is we’re not in a cold war with China, so people don’t really care. It would be like saying France or Spain are going to the moon. So what? Now if Al Quaeda/ the Taliban or Iran was going to the moon then that might pique people’s interest. Like I said we’re not in a cold war with China, and it probably would be a bad idea to start one, seeing that they’re practically the only country willing to buy our soon to be worthless treasury bonds.

  • Stephen Hawkins is a very smart man! But I don’t think it takes a genius to realize that you never put all of your eggs in one basket:-)

  • common sense

    @Mr Earl:

    ” You completely discount or forget ISS. It’s a very complicated system that dose it’s job well.”

    I do absolutely! See this was a serioous mistake: ISS personel in charge of a FLIGHT vehicle, atmospheric flight! As I said the experience was lost. Make an effort and try to understand that a flight vehicle has nothing, NOTHING to do with an orbital vehicle.

    Oh well…

  • common sense

    “Now if Al Quaeda/ the Taliban or Iran was going to the moon then that might pique people’s interest. ”

    That is an idea! We could make it Alcatraz II, it is a rock after all. I would not include Iran though. Iran is a nation the others are not. And there is a lot more to Iran than there is to the others as well. Now if you’d said Iran’s leaders that’d be different.

  • mike shupp

    Ferris Valyn is “still waiting” for my eight point plan “to build the required support for becoming a spacefaring society.”

    Well, tough titty, Ferris, I don’t have a plan, and I’m not sure that I’d have a plan even if I had dictatorial power over the whole country, and I rather think it’d be an evil thing to impose such a plan if I did manage to come up with one. Democracy, y’know?

    Hell, I can’t even come up with a plan that looks convincing to the couple dozen frequent commenters on haf a dozen space-related blogs! And what’s worse, I’m f***ing useless in other ways.

    I got no idea how to make sure high school kids learn Darwin’ss ideas about evolution instead of “Intelligent Design.” I can’t figure out how to make people accept my quite reasonable views about the likelihood of climate change. I’d like you all to agree with me about sensible grounds for performing abortions, and I’ve no clue as to where I should start. I’ve got no 8- or 80-point plan for establishing a health care plan that would make most folks happy. I probably couldn’t get you all to agree with me that waterboarding suspecting terrorists is unproductive, let alone wrong.

    I do have a few ideas about winding down the Global War on Terror and balancing the federal budget over time, but they aren’t mine alone, and they aren’t relevent to this discussion. Such is life.

    You want a big change in people’s hearts and ideas, you might look at giving rights to non-whites in this country. Look at the path from the Emancipation proclaimation to electing a black President — friom 1863 to 2008. Look how long it took, look how twisted and up and down that path was, and consider we haven’t come to the end of it yet, think of how many gave their effort and even their very lives to making it possible. That’s the scale of what you’re asking for. Sometimes we don’t have Plans, only Dreams.

  • Actually, until a couple of years ago, Japan owned more of our debt than China did. Foreigners only own about 28% of our national debt. China plus Hong Kong owns less than 8% of our national debt. Japan owns nearly 6% of our national debt even though they’re deeply in debt themselves! About 72% of our national debt is owned by Americans and American institutions.

  • Doug Lassiter

    And talking about the need for HSF and not just robotic science missions:

    Stephen Hawkins said:
    “The long term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet. Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid or a nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe”

    Yep, and even world renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking said exactly the same thing!

    Look, no one argues with this. But our government doesn’t appear to sign on to it either. The problem is that NASA has never been given the task of expanding humanity, or even developing the tools to do so. I’m serious. Where in the NASA charter do you see words like that?

    It doesn’t take a genius to realize that an agency that was never given a major task has no fear of being criticized for not doing it.

    “Sometimes we don’t have Plans, only Dreams.”

    And sometime we have dreams without any reasons for them. This nation has not come to grips with why we need human space flight, except for Mr Hawkins … er, Hawking, who tells us in a blindingly obvious way what that irrefutable reason has to be, and what we should have told the American public and it’s space agency what it has to be.

    I’ll take a one-point plan for building a human space faring society, where that one point is a single good reason for doing it that could not be done better in another way. The exasperation expressed by most human space flight advocates is matched only by their inability to come up with one.

  • common sense

    I do have a lot of respect for Stephen Hawking as an astophysicist but I am not sure how he qualifies as a space policy expert. His statement however right it may be does not make policy. Unlike in astrophysics where he just may make statements that turn into policy. So what help does that provide? He could be a great public figure to try and make a case but that would be about it. And then he would have to associate himself with some advocacy group??? I am sure he has better and more pressing things to do.

  • Loki

    “That is an idea! We could make it Alcatraz II, it is a rock after all.”

    LOL. Not quite what I meant, but you might be onto something! Let’s just turn the moon into a giant prison colony (only for the most hard-core convicted felons and terrorists of course). The best part is we wouldn’t have to worry about pesky safety or “man rating” clap trap for our rockets. We could just use the crappiest most rickety rockets we can and if they blow up, oh well. jk

    Thought I’d lighten the mood a little:)

  • common sense

    “We could just use the crappiest most rickety rockets we can and if they blow up, oh well.”

    Heck stop it! You are going to give ideas to the Ares fans! And someone in Alabama might try and solve the problem we face with prisons in this nation!!!

  • MrEarl

    Common Sense, you show none

  • Doug Lassiter

    “I do have a lot of respect for Stephen Hawking as an astophysicist but I am not sure how he qualifies as a space policy expert.”

    Sure, which makes it all the more boggling that he can come up with a real reason for human space flight that human space flight advocates cannot. I don’t even care if it was Stephen Hawkins who said it. It’s right.

    (And I certainly never implied that Steven Hawking should spend his time being a HSF advocate!)

    You’re avoiding the issue.

    The issue is that HSF cheerleaders are living in the past. Their dreams about human space flight are based on rationale that was impressed upon them in their youth by Apollo. They need to grow up. They’ve missed the boat. Technology has grown up around them, and they refuse to admit it. Look, Bob Park was wrong. He said long ago that human space flight was worthless because it didn’t accomplish science well. We all know that now. But what he could have said, but didn’t, and what is becoming more and more obvious, is that human space flight can’t even do non-science exploration that well. It probably can’t mine solar system resources well. You want helium 3? Give me $100B and I’ll make you a helluva rover that will scoop it up by the bucketload. For the price of putting a seventh flag on the Moon. A decade hence, Moore’s law says we’ll have one that will scoop up thirty bucketloads. In deference to Harrison Schmitt, it’ll also find a lot of orange rocks!

    The only thing HSF can do well, and exceedingly well, is expand the species.
    So what human space flight cheerleaders have to do is figure out how to sell THAT reason to the public. But they have to grow up first, and try real hard to leave the past behind.

    I suspect Obama knows that. Did Obama never care about space? Perhaps. But it was the lack of real growth in human space flight policy over the last few decades, and the ruts we all got stuck in, that would have convinced him not to care.

  • common sense

    @Mr. Earl:

    Well okay then. We’ll see who is right or wrong around Feb 11th from what I gathered. If I don’t make sense then be it. I’ll keep doing what I do and you’ll keep doing what you do.

  • common sense

    @Doug Lassiter:

    In what way am I avoinding the issue? I already told you you might onto something with species preservation yet that it still is a tough sell. As for Hawking all I am saying is that why would any one take is word for the truth? Just because he’s a genious physicist? Man I know quite a few really really bright people that I would not necessarily follow on space policy issues. That is all I meant.

    As to HSF advocates living in the past if you’ve read my posts I am sure you know we agree. And btw, I happen to have been impressed by Apollo and I am learning to grow up every day, or actually grow out of Apollo.

    “Did Obama never care about space? Perhaps.”

    I believe he does care: Once again Augustine panel when there were so many things to do he set it up right away. Should he care about space only? Absolutely not!!!! Heck if he had said so how many would have voted for him! Okay Florida, Texas and Alabama, maybe. So what? Do you think he would hesitate a minute between HSF and healthcare though??? Yes people need to grow up and it usually goes through adolescence a state of unexplained perpetual rebellion…

  • Ferris Valyn

    Mr. Earl – then I go back to my question – if you want to ensure we have human spaceflight, when we do commercial crew, why is your assumption that only OSC and SpaceX the only competitors? There is a (relatively) easy way to get commercial crew to happen, but also ensure that OldSpace is also helping.

    Ultimately, the battle really isn’t OldSpace vs NewSpace – the battle is whether its all NASA controlled, or multiple people/organizations controlling it.

  • Ferris Valyn

    MoonExploration – Don’t give me slogans. I am sorry, but the LBJ quote, and the Stephen Hawkins are both slogans. That doesn’t translate to the average person. If the Chinese get to the moon, does that mean I’ll have to pay higher taxes? Does that mean I’ll lose my ability to practice (or not practice) my religion? Does that mean that global warming will be greatly accelerated to the point of disaster?

    And let us also be clear – The Chinese putting humans on the moon, at this point, only consists of, at max, 3 people or so per year. There is no evidence of them planning some sort of mass migration. At least, I have no evidence of them doing that, and every reason to think they aren’t.

    So again, why does it matter? How would the world situation really change?

  • Ferris Valyn

    Mike shupp – the problem is that, for a dream to happen, (particularly when you have a dream of this scale) you have to have some way to carry that dream to fruition, by bringing the dream to other people, and making it into a plan, and then caring through that plan until you have reality. At this point, you still only have a dream, and no mechanism for it to be carried to reality.

    You cite the struggle for equality & civil rights, and suggest there wasn’t a plan. I disagree, or at least I suggest that, while there might not have been an 80 point plan that Freddrick Douglas & Abraham Lincoln had that led us from then to the election of Barack Obama, there was a mechanism by which people could realistically buy into the Dream, such that a plan was developed, and we’ve hence got greater equality, including the election of Barack Obama (and I’ll also agree that we haven’t yet truly achieved full equality).

    In the case of Civil rights, the dream of full equality, there was a mechanism by which a plan could be developed (or, if you prefer an alternative definition, a way by which large numbers of people would agree that it was important, and so work towards the goal). When confronting non-white Americans who were not active, the mechanism was “Shouldn’t you be able to be proud? To choose your own life? To make of it what you want? Aren’t you as smart as the white man?” and so on. In the case of talking to a white person, it was “don’t you find this morally unfair? If you were in their position, wouldn’t you feel the same way?” and other such points.

    In other words, there was a mechanism that made greater equality relevant to the average person, thus allowing for a plan.

    I will admit that I probably should’ve limited my question to the mechanism that would make it relevant to the average person, as opposed to the full on “plan” but I don’t believe you’ve even tried to provide that.

    In the case of someone like Parker Griffith, or Marcel Williams, they’ve both provided a mechanism, at least in theory. In the case of Parker Griffith, its because of the “evil Chinese.” In the case of Marcel Williams, its because of the need to preserve the species.

    The problem with those arguments is that its very impersonal, since in the case of the first there isn’t the overwhelming fear of Chinese’s supposed lunar ambitions, and in the case of the second, worrying about the way humanity is in thousands of years, or even hundreds of years, doesn’t really make a major impact.

    However, I do believe that in the case of Commercial spaceflight, we can find a legit thing that will appeal to a lot of people – getting rich, having a job, and being able to provide for your family.

    And that is the mechanism, and how we get a plan to have a spacefaring society

  • danwithaplan

    As long as the only (paying) demand is that of the taxing uncle sugar , calling anything SpaceX or Orbital do “commercial” is a misnomer. USA, ULA, we’ve had that for decades. Contractors.

    Perhaps there is NO intrinsic non-governmental demand side. What is the point of this “commercial” push then? If the only customer is NASA anyway? Are there any “commercial” entities on the demand side?

    What then? HSF is only for national &^ick measuring contests and of no other utility (otherwise there’d be hundreds of companies clamouring to buy a ride on PRIVATE DIME)

    Then this whole ‘commercial’ branch will blow in the wind and wither.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “In what way am I avoinding the issue?”

    Your post was all about how Steven Hawking’s decision was not one that he was qualified to make, nor did he have the time to make. That was the whole post. Your agreement with me was appreciated, but that was in another thread.

    “I believe he does care”

    And so do I. You’re also exactly right about the many burdens he faces. I believe he cares about a kind of human space flight that has real goals, and thus can inspire the public in a special way. The human space flight we’re looking at does not, and that it doesn’t is not his fault.

    “Yes people need to grow up and it usually goes through adolescence a state of unexplained perpetual rebellion…”

    I see what you mean. That’s right about where the human spaceflight cheerleaders are right now. But, you know what we say about teenagers. We like to believe that as misguided as they are, there is light at the end of the tunnel!

  • common sense

    “However, I do believe that in the case of Commercial spaceflight, we can find a legit thing that will appeal to a lot of people – getting rich, having a job, and being able to provide for your family.

    And that is the mechanism, and how we get a plan to have a spacefaring society”

    Yes.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “I am sorry, but the LBJ quote, and the Stephen Hawkins are both slogans. That doesn’t translate to the average person.”

    Ah, touché. But my point was that expansion of the species is the ONLY rational reason for human space flight. Especially with robotic (both autonomous and telerobotic) technologies that are advancing explosively. That’s the boat human spaceflight cheerleaders have missed. The one where they translate human expansion into needs for the average person. OK, it’s unlikely to be for material needs, but do such needs define the problem?

  • common sense

    @Doug Lassiter:

    I usually don’t change my views when I change threads, unless presented with new evidence.

    As to Hawking again: He may be right BUT it is not the point. The point was it is not because he is a genius in physics that one can claim his words to be the truth on space policy issues. On physics? Maybe and even so his positions may or not be accepted by his peers. There is a peer reviewed process by which he became what he is. On space issues???

  • Robert G. Oler

    MoonExploration wrote @ January 26th, 2010 at 4:08 pm

    A myth? The truth is that the Chinese do have a vehicle operating right now. And, unlike The US, the Chinese have plans for extended HSF with their own space station and taking humans to the moon…

    this afternoon as I worked on the deck around the house…I tried to figure out what your point is here.

    To be fair.

    I disagree with almost every assumption you have made.

    1. I dont know that the Chinese are going to the Moon with their human spaceflight program. why?

    2. I cant see any reason why they would do it. I learned a long time ago that being “second” at something has little or no value in claiming “first”. They could do a technical first “first landing on the Moon by humans this century”…but I dont see a thing it buys them (and that includes national prestige or all the other usual statements) and

    3. Even if they went I cannot see what they would do with the capability to go and come to the Moon, that makes either us concerned or really gives them any value.

    Their program, whatever its aim is, shows no particular urgency nor no particular direction of development. Their lunar probe seems to be doing far less in terms of actual accomplishments then the Indian probe did and it did far less then our current effort.

    Even if they answered “yes” we are going and stated some reason…why would them going to the moon bother us or demonstrate a lack of US leadership in space?

    American astronauts generate in what three days (or less) more time in space then the Chinese have total. The Chinese EVA’s were barely on the scale of Ed Whites G IV…what would their technology do on the Moon that would make all the cost worthwhile.

    What do you think the answers are here?

    If I was the Chinese (and Europeans and Russians) I would be petrified that the US is about to unleash its market and commercial savy that has driven leadership in almost every other venue…on access to space.

    Figure this out.

    If Musk succeeds he will drive every EVERY single launcher in the US out of business in his payload class…If Musk succeeds he will be the first US launch vehicle that will give the Europeans a run for their money in terms of commercial lift.

    If Musk succeeds we may be on the verge of the start of launcher (and GEO inward) capability/cost expansion/reduction that will revolutionize what is done in GEO inward space.

    Whats a Moon landing up to that?

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ January 26th, 2010 at 7:40 pm

    Ah, touché. But my point was that expansion of the species is the ONLY rational reason for human space flight. ..

    I dont think that. thats not how the oceans work

    Robert G. Oler

  • The preservation of our species is just one reason to expand our civilization beyond our planet of evolutionary origin. There’s also lots of money to be made in space.

    Tens of billions of dollars annually could potentially be made from space tourism.

    The first nation to successfully colonize the Moon will probably end up dominating the satellite manufacturing and launch industry which is currently at the core of a $100 billion a year telecommunications industry.

    The first nation to successfully exploit the natural resources of the asteroids will probably end up dominating the $10 billion a year platinum industry plus get a chunk of the lunar tourism industry (supply hydrogen and oxygen for lunar shuttles and orbital transfer vehicles).

    Ultimately, space industrialization will lead us to manufacturing our own Earth-like worlds as suggested by Gerard O’Neill when he testified before Congress back in the 1970s. A hundred years from now, manufacturing titanic rotating worlds with Earth-like environments could probably be a multi-trillion dollar a year industry. There’s only enough asteroid material in the solar system to house hundreds of trillions of people in vast spacious Earth-like environments. And we could revert most of the Earth back to its natural environment.

  • mike shupp

    Ferris Valyn believes “that in the case of Commercial spaceflight, we can find a legit thing that will appeal to a lot of people – getting rich, having a job, and being able to provide for your family.

    And that is the mechanism, and how we get a plan to have a spacefaring society.”

    Wouldn’t it be simpler, cheaper, and quicker to just increase immigration quotas in the USA and other affluent nations?

  • mike shupp

    Doug Lassister feels “The issue is that HSF cheerleaders are living in the past. Their dreams about human space flight are based on rationale that was impressed upon them in their youth by Apollo. They need to grow up. They’ve missed the boat. Technology has grown up around them, and they refuse to admit it…. The only thing HSF can do well, and exceedingly well, is expand the species.”

    This seems to miss an important point — most of us older advocates of manned spaceflight and space colonization formed our opinions well before Apollo came along. I’d argue being closer in time to the westward expansion of the US was the actual factor here. For instance, Robert Heinlein, born in 1907 in Missouri, would have known as a child people who had actually been in that wave of pioneers. In my case, I was born in 1946 in Ohio and had relatives who remembered other relatives who had been pioneers. And the recollections passed down certainly didn’t suggest that colonization was likely to be cheap, easy, quick, free of tedium, or lacking tragedy. Not all the “HSF cheerleaders” you’re so eager to decry have been the bubbleheads you imagine.

    I won’t comment on what level of intelligence I see in the modern breed of space enthusiast.

  • mike shupp

    Returning to Ferris Valyn. I don’t think you can make much of enchanting image out of three square meals and a roof, though of course this is something too many people still aspire to.

    Let’s consider: I like France. I like the idea of France, and am disposed to like individual French people. I like the idea of a country which takes pride in its wines and cheeses and cooking. I like French cinema and French historians and occasionally French philosophers; there are French generals and novelists and scientists I find worthy of respect. Etc.

    I like Scotland, I like Finland, I like Germany now and then, I like Israel and Canada and Japan and …. Not everything everywhere, you’ll notice, but a lot. And I can’t really explain why, and I don’t think it makes any sense at all to ask why.

    So. I’d like to see a lunar colony and even a lunar nation. I’d like to see a Martian colony and colonies on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn; I’d like to know colonies are being established or are on the way to nearby planets. I think they’d be different from run-of-the-mill Earth nations; I think they’d eventually produce interesting people and interesting history and interesting culture, enriching the whole of the human race. As expressed before, I don’t think this will occur easily or cheaply or quickly, and I don’t thing progress toward sweetness and light is inevitable. Still, I think it is worth the effort. But I can’t make a dollars and cents argument for that.

  • Ferris Valyn

    Mike shupp – in terms of eliminating world poverty, I Suspect that easier immigration would do some good along those lines. How much is open to debate, but I suspect we could do a decent amount.

    However, it only goes so far. You need some sort of economic wealth generating mechanism. We’ve had that in the form of manufacturing, in the of farming, mineral extraction, and the like. In other words, even if we open the boarders, we still need some sort of jobs waiting for people when they get here. And its worth our efforts to encourage as much job creation & wealth creation as we, so long as we aren’t endangering human life, or causing substantial damage to the planet.

    There is nothing wrong with wanting to do something like this, as it relates to space. Consider the internet, and how its exploded and gotten so big in a short time (The “Did you know? 4.0″ comes to mind). Or consider the situation with Intelsat, and PanAmSat – until the advent of PanAmSat, there was no way to make ventures like CNN possible. Now, you go across oceans, its very cheap to make long distance calls.

    Market and industry creation can lead to society developing and integrating technology and new locations into their social structure quite quickly. If you want other examples, there is the Kelly Air Mail Act of 1925. Without that, the US Aviation industry would’ve had a much harder time growing.

    To put it bluntly – the rise of internet commerce helped get us out of the 1990s recession – if we encourage the growth of new space industries, it can help us get out of the current economic mess (although I would like to see greater regulations for other industries, particularly banking, but, really, separate topic).

    Doing that, and you’ll have a mechanism that will encourage people to go out to space, to get rich and provide for their families. Mind you, this probably won’t be practical for some 3rd world person currently working in a sweat shop, but it would entirely be possible for a former auto worker, instead building rockets for rich people to fly to space.

    Seriously, I suggest if you have a chance, read the book Selling Peace, by Jeff Manber

    The colonies in America weren’t done so out of altruism, or a desire to create new culture.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “As to Hawking again: He may be right BUT it is not the point.”

    You just don’t get it. I never said it was the point that Hawking said it. Someone else tried to say that (but didn’t quite succeed). My point is that, as I said, I don’t even care if it was Stephen Hawkins who said it, whoever he might be. That human expansion is the only rational reason for human spaceflight is right. That’s uncomfortable, because it’s hard to sell as a national need, but it’s right.

    “I’d argue being closer in time to the westward expansion of the US was the actual factor here.”

    Wow. Folks who were closer in time to the westward expansion of the US than to Apollo must be REALLY old. What happens to the passion for human space flight when they die off? The bubbleheads take over entirely?

    “Not all the “HSF cheerleaders” you’re so eager to decry have been the bubbleheads you imagine.”

    So who then has been making the case for why we’re actually doing human spaceflight? I guess that older generation you refer to has been strangely silent, while the “exploration”, “inspiration”, “technology driving”, “jobs producing” people, who seem to believe that human spaceflight has unique value in these regards, have been driving the bus. If expansion of the human race is the one justifiable reason for human spaceflight, then where are these non-bubbleheads who can translate that into national need? What rock have they been hiding under? Nope, even Heinlein didn’t try to do that.

    “So. I’d like to see a lunar colony and even a lunar nation. I’d like to see a Martian colony and colonies on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn …”

    Fine. You’re entitled to those opinions. So get out your wallet. Unfortunately, if you yourself can’t afford it, you’re going to have to ask others to help. If you can’t explain to those other people why you like these things, and why they should like them too, how can you expect them to help you pay for them? That makes no sense at all. Hey, I can tell all the things that I like. Should the nation be obligated to do or get those things for me?

    OK, pioneers. People who would expand the human race. Fine. What’s that going to do for me? That’s what the American public would say, and human space flight advocates have to have an answer to that question. Answering that question is the challenge that they’ve largely ignored.

    “I dont think that. thats not how the oceans work”

    Huh?

  • mike shupp

    Ferris –

    Maybe there are platinum group metals in minable quantities on the moon as Dennis Wingo thinks, maybe there are enough He3 atoms to use in earthly fusion plants, maybe there’s even a market for ugly little dolls stamped MADE IN MARE CRISIUM for sale to tourists.

    Maybe. But till shipping costs come way down, the most likely “exports” from offworld colonies will be invisibles — films and music scores and book texts and picture images and other digitized items, lots of scientific data, and a smattering of locally procured chemicals, geological samples, and perhaps microscopic lifeforms. As for the bulk of the water and iron and silicon and just plain dirt we find, it’d best be processed and used locally. If you’re a Martian entrpreneur, with products to sell to other Martians, high shipping costs from Earth are your friends! Think of them as astronomical tariffs.

    Truthfully, I’m not terribly sanguine about “new space industries” in the near term. Communication was always supposed to be a major driver for space utilization (since the 1930’s anyhow); we’ve got comsats up the wazzoo today and they haven’t brought the planets any closer or helped lower the cost of reaching space. Landsat-style planetary mappers were supposed to be another moneymaker; it’s been 30 years and they still don’t make money. Weather satellites have been a tremendous success, but they aren’t getting the human race off to the planets either. Planetary probes and astronomical satellites have done awe-inspiring things, but again they haven’t contributed much to manned space flight. Solar power satellites were going to pay for the whole space program three times over in the 1970’s — you’ll notice they haven’t. Spy satellites are supposed to have clipped billions off of unnecessary military programs — but that hasn’t done much for the rest of the space program. Etc.

    Which is a tad disappointing, to be honest. Clever people keep coming up with neat things to do in space, and we do a lot of them, and even watch smugly as our economy becomes dependent on them. But that doesn’t really flow back to outbound space programs, which are forever getting squeezed because they aren’t making money and demonstrating their benefits to ordinary taxpayers. Y’know, we could probably triple the financial payoff from current and next-generation unmanned satellite programs in the next ten years and we would be in in exactly the same state we are now, with people demanding that Space Programs Must Show A Profit!

    Oh well. Downstream a few decades, I can actually foresee quite a lot of space-based mining and refining and manufacturing and agriculture, but the logical consumers are off-earth people. Industrializing the solar system has got to be cheaper than shipping everything people will need from earth.

  • mike shupp

    Doug Lassiter —

    I think you’re arguing with me for the sheer joy of arguing, and it’s getting silly. You want to reduce EVERYTHING to telling people What’s It Going To Do For You?

    Fine. All of us in the USA should become Muslims. Immediately. Devout Muslims. Think how quickly our military budget would fall! Think of the many friends we’d make all around the world. By God (Allah), there’s benefits for any idiot to see!

    Do you like that idea? Then start selling it. And if you don’t like the idea, explain why. Justify your answer in economic terms.

  • Ferris Valyn

    Mike shupp

    The irony to your last post is that not only do you have all of the pieces, BUT, you actually do see and identify all of the pieces.

    First, lets talk about the comsat industry. The comsat industry did not really take off until PanAmSat broke the IntelSat monopoly. When that happened, the real capabilities of comm sats were realized, in the form of things like CNN, satellite TV, and large scale long distance service. Until that happened, there was a dearth in the capabilities of Comsats.

    Secondly, you really need to look at the first attempt of space commercialization in the 1980s. You’ll realize how much NASA actually tried to kill it, because parts of it challenged a great deal of NASA orthodoxy. (If you want to read more about this, I suggest you read this link – mind you, this isn’t some nobody saying this, but someone who operated a space station, and someone who was an associate administrator at NASA). In point of fact it hasn’t been the “Space must show a profit” group that has been dis-allowing some of the potential to flow into outbound space development products – its NASA.

    There was also the issue that we really tried to go from World War 1 Bi-planes to the 707, when we went from Apollo to the space shuttle. The reality is that the technology was not ready to go to cheap operations. But are we really to believe that there haven’t been technological advances that will lower the cost of space access in 30 years? I mean, thats a hell of an assumption, in my book. Because that is the suggested implication of going with Constellation.

    Which brings us to the major point – why is it so costly to launch people and material into space? There really are one of 2 reasons, and thats it (unless you want to engage in conspiracy theories). Either, we lack the technology to make it cheap. Alternatively, we lack the operational infrastructure to make it cheap. Now, if its the first, then what we should be doing is pouring most of the money from NASA into R&D for work on cheap access. Not going off on some attempt to redo what we’ve done 40 years ago. While that would not be my first choice, I would consider the pursuit a good one, since we will be likely develop a lot of technology that has real value. But lets consider the second option.

    What that says is that, what we need is a reason to put a whole lot of stuff into space, or at a minimum, some mechanism that will allow for us to build a self-sustaining high scale launch rate.

    Now, many of the traditional Commercial space industries (comm sats being the big one) don’t require a high launch rates. And the various potential industries you discussed are at a minimum 10 years away (probably a bit more than that). So is there something in between? Because, let us be very clear – what we need is a definable reason/market taht will put us in orbit (or at a absolute minimum space), on a VERY regular basis (a regularity ideally measured in hours, at most weeks). Is there markets that could do that?

    In a word, yes.
    1. Space Tourism – we’ve all seen the futron study, for both suborbital and orbital. Most of us also know that already Virgin Galactic has already taken substantial deposits. If the government also purchased tickets, that would add further, and all more investment into it.
    2. Satellite refueling – right now, the biggest driver on satellite lifetime is the amount of on-board fuel. If you could allow for longer usage of the satellites.
    3. Cheap remote sensing – I know of at least one company that believes it can offer substantially lower cost remote sensing, utilizing suborbital hops, as opposed to orbital satellites.
    4. Space Sports – look at the draw things like the Red Bull Air races have, and other sporting events, and tell me something like the Rocket Racing league won’t have mass appeal
    5. Regular access for zero-g science – right now, we don’t have that. Don’t kid yourself.
    6. K-12 education – how much money do we spend on things like chemistry sets, homemade rockets, and so on. If kids had the potential to actually do an experiment in space, you can bet they would jump at it. if you could sell them a small kit, say between $50-$200 dollars, I have no doubt that you would find parents willing to pony up.
    7. Space Burial – Funerals typically cost in the thosands of dollars. What about a funeral that involves spreading Uncle Fred’s ashes into space? Its worth noting that, in Japan, the average funeral cost is around 4 million yen (thats in the tens of thosands of dollars). Don’t you think they might be interested?

    In otherwords, there are markets out there that can create the self-sustaining demand for cheap, regular launch services, and if we give them a kick start, we can see the critical mass develop for this to happen. We don’t need to wait for asteroid mining, or Space Based Solar Power.

  • Ferris Valyn

    Oh, I forgot to include this link – read this

  • mike shupp

    Ferris –

    (1) You missed my point. Yes comsats now make money. Weather satellites are an economically sensible government purchase. Airlines and hikers enjoy the benefits of GPS systems. We can now track stolen cars and perhaps even kidnapped children from the heavens. Space funerals and rocket races may become profitable enterprises. That’s fine. But there is no conglomerate SPACE, INC. which takes the profits from these businesses and plows them back into R&D for lunar bases or future space telescopes. Everything we ask of government space programs is — almost by definition — non-profitable, and this will always be the case.

    (2) We can tell each other horror stories until the cows come in about NASA failures to recognize business opportunities and how this branch of NASA tripped up that branch of NASA. And so what? Big commercial firms make mistakes too — ask Chrysler or Saab, or Data General or DEC or Control Data. So NASA managers screw up? They do so just like managers in the Real World. Consider the example you linked to — NASA fucked over a generation of would-be microgravity researchers, to provide funds to space station construction. Well yeah, that sucks, and it was short-sighted in retrospect. Was it a decision that would never have been made by financially-strapped commercial firm, no matter how desperate? Or was it just the sort of thing General Electric was famous for a few years ago? (Helpful hint — the answer is YES)

    (3) So going from Apollo to Shuttle was too large a technological leap? Likely, but again so what? What was the alternative, really, back in the early 1970’s? Do you seriously really god-damned absolutely in your genuinely right mind think NASA had any options except proposing some sort of miracle vehicle after Apollo was shit canned? There was NO middle-capability manned vehicle which the Nixon administration and Congress was willing to accept. There was NO possibility of building something say 10% cheaper than Apollo, and then something 20% cheaper than Apollo and something 30% cheaper than Apollo and … No frigging way. If NASA had asked to do that, American manned space programs would have ended after Skylab.

    Yeah, you don’t want to believe that. All the bad ideas NASA had were entirely NASA’s fault, right? Well, I was there at Rockwell and I remember how it looked to us, and how it looked to folks at NASA and how it looked to Aviation Week and The LA Times and I gotta tell you sound sensible development programs were not on the cards back then, anymore then they have been the last five or six years.

    (4) Why is it costly to lauch stuff into space? (a) it’s an insanely challenging task, compared to most engineering projects. The vehicles have to be light, yet undergo great stress. Chemical propellants are piss-poor energetically. We don’t have a good understanding of exactly how fuel and oxidizers combine in rocket engines. We simply haven’t built the thousands of flight vehicles necessary to move down the production cost curve. We’re DUMB. (b) Since we don’t know what we’re doing, we try to analyze things to death, rather than rely on simple ruggedness. (This is peculiarly an American weakness, and NASA shares it with just about every other American institution in sight). Analysis and re-analysis and re-re-analysis and constant checking is innately expensive. (c) Some very bad mistakes were made on shuttle — hard to access wiring harnesses, for example, and a basically sucky themal protection system based on fragile, hard to secure ceramic tiles — which have led to extensive pre-and post-flight servicing demands — Jerry Pournelle’s famed “Maintenance Army” of shuttle workers, which costs a bundle, Some of these were sort of anticipated — NASA was told to cut development costs and to just accept higher operational costs by OMB, and they obeyed like a government agency should, and yeah the higher operational costs were grossly underestimated. But basically: (d) NO ONE ON EARTH EVER IMAGINED IN THE 1970’s THAT SHUTTLE WOULD FLY INTO THE 2010S. The system was supposed to last for ten years and be replaced by something better, when — God, we all hoped — the American taxpayer would be willing to pay for better spacecraft. And that magic moment never came.

    So shuttle became an expensive sucky system because that’s exactly what the US government was willing to fund in the 1970’s and because the US government has never been willing to bite the bullet and fund a successor system. Yea, verily, even in the Year Of Our Lord 2010, the US government has not been willing! Because Space Flight is small and unimportant in the Big Scheme of Things, and there just aren’t enough launches each year to justify the development costs of a cheaper launcher.

    Note that none of this is going to change much in the next 20 years.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “You want to reduce EVERYTHING to telling people What’s It Going To Do For You?”

    Yes, I do. And so does our country. This has been the mantra for space advocates for a generation, quite properly. In fact, this is the basis of all national budget policy. It’s called strategic planning, which is a standard agency budget exercise. What they propose to do has to point back to something that benefits the nation, and that value can be judged against other value-generating expenditures. What they spend taxpayer money on has to benefit the nation.

    Does expansion of the human race, and creation of the technologies and tools to do it benefit the nation? Well, it’s not going to put dollars directly in my pocket or yours, but that’s a narrow definition of value to the nation. Most federal expenditures don’t result in a check in the mail. Where human space flight advocates have missed the boat is not coming up with a picture for the American public about why that expansion has value. I don’t have that picture. I’m just challenging the community to come up with one.

    It isn’t about me.

    Oh, this explanation has nothing to do with commercial space. If you’re spending your own money, you can do whatever you want. You don’t have to prove value to me. I assume you’re doing it because it benefits you in some way.

  • MoonExploration

    Now I know the answer to the Fermi Paradox – all alien civilizations are run by democrats that lack the capability to have visions beyond Low Planet Orbit. Sadly.

  • common sense

    ” Doug Lassiter wrote @ January 26th, 2010 at 11:53 pm
    “As to Hawking again: He may be right BUT it is not the point.”

    You just don’t get it. I never said it was the point that Hawking said it. Someone else tried to say that (but didn’t quite succeed). My point is that, as I said, I don’t even care if it was Stephen Hawkins who said it, whoever he might be. That human expansion is the only rational reason for human spaceflight is right. That’s uncomfortable, because it’s hard to sell as a national need, but it’s right. ”

    Okay, I NEVER daid you said it… Someone else indeed said it first. Sometimes it fells we’re talking opast each other but I guess it’s okay, it’s one of the traits of Internet blogging. Frustrating though.

    Now it is YOUR point of view that “human expansion is the only rational reason for human spaceflight” and that of a few others, not all. Let me then ask you why you hold the ability to define what is rational and what is not for all of us? I discern some arrogance here and that won’t help your case, then again I may be wrong…

    Oh well…

  • Doug Lassiter

    “Let me then ask you why you hold the ability to define what is rational and what is not for all of us?”

    I certainly never said I was defining it for everyone else. Yeah, that sure went right past me. I was saying that in my view, just about all the other reasons for human space flight — space science, space resource development, technology leadership, soft power, inspiration and education (which all sit under the umbrella of “exploration”, I guess)– can be envisioned as being achieved more effectively, and at lower cost, in other ways. So it’s just a matter of taking those standard rationales for human space flight (what did I miss?), and considering how unique they are to human spaceflight. Sure, these considerations might be arguable, but I haven’t heard any good arguments against them here.

    But you can’t do human expansion robotically. That you can’t isn’t arguable. QED, that makes it the only rational justification I can think of. The question then becomes, why is human expansion important? Answering that question in a way that acknowledges national need, and can be compelling to the public, is both a challenge for the community, and an invitation for discourse.

    The space advocacy community has largely missed all that.

    Too bad you “detect some arrogance here”. None is intended. This is the best space policy discussion site around. It’s where people present views and others comment on them. In fact, with regard to certain suggestions about becoming Muslims and convincing idiots, punctuated by exclamation marks and full caps, I was wondering about that myself. Was that supposed to help your own case?

  • common sense

    @Doug Lassiter:

    “I certainly never said I was defining it for everyone else. ”

    You “sounded” like you did. Remember how you reacted once when I tried to “simulate” the people’s demand? You thought I was saying I was the voice of the people…

    “This is the best space policy discussion site around. It’s where people present views and others comment on them.”

    Yes but when you claim the only rational is preservation, why do you think it is the only rational? It is the only rational you can come up with. Hence the “arrogance” but enough of that if you don’t mind.

    ” In fact, with regard to certain suggestions about becoming Muslims and convincing idiots, punctuated by exclamation marks and full caps, I was wondering about that myself. Was that supposed to help your own case?”

    Not sure what you mean. Reference to the Alcatraz joke above? Is that it? Do you equate the Taliban and Al Qaeda with the Muslims as a whole? Just questions because I do not know where I did so. If it is what you think please show me where I said so and I am will provide an apology. What about convincing idiots? Where did I mention “idiots” anywhere? And btw I am not trying for a case, what case?

  • Doug Lassiter

    “Not sure what you mean. Reference to the Alcatraz joke above? Is that it? Do you equate the Taliban and Al Qaeda with the Muslims as a whole? Just questions because I do not know where I did so. If it is what you think please show me where I said so and I am will provide an apology. What about convincing idiots? Where did I mention “idiots” anywhere?”

    Oops, that was Shupp. My apologies. You didn’t say that. Good question as to whether he was equating Taliban and Al Queda with Muslims as a whole. I hope not.

    “Remember how you reacted once when I tried to “simulate” the people’s demand? You thought I was saying I was the voice of the people…”

    Gee, that was a long time ago. But you did say “Because we, the public, the customers, want it. Period” My problem was that I didn’t know who “we” was, and I called you on that. The words “We the public” means you’re speaking for the public. It means you’re the voice of the people (that’s the public, you see). You weren’t.

    Just the words, ma’am …

    I believe I did say somewhere up north in this topic that *we* all know that human space flight is not about science, but that’s a call that hardly anyone would argue with. Otherwise, I don’t think I was ever trying to speak for others.

    “Yes but when you claim the only rational is preservation, why do you think it is the only rational? It is the only rational you can come up with.”

    I was talking about “rationale”, not “rational”. Um, yep, that’s why I claimed that human expansion was the only rationale for human space flight, because I laid out what I thought were arguments for claiming it. That’s how “discussion” is supposed to work. You make a statement, and then back it up with supporting thoughts. No arrogance intended. If you disagree (and I welcome any constructive disagreement), then do so, but back it up your disagreement with supporting thoughts. That’s what we usually do here. Don’t think about how I “sound”. Think about what I say.

  • common sense

    “Don’t think about how I “sound”. Think about what I say.”

    Thanks for the lesson ;)

    All right. I already countered your “preservation” rationale (correct spelling this time) with the Katrina debacle and the (near?) zero funding for NEOs observation at NASA. Therefore I am showing you that not all people at NASA or FEMA would think that HSF may be justified with a “preservation” rationale. I am not saying it is wrong. I am saying that it will not work just as is. I also said that if you or anyone can come up with a justification that ties with national priorities (security, economy, education, health) than you will most likely get some funding. And for that matter any rationale linked to said priorities will work. Not only preservation.

    Getting any clearer?

  • Major Tom

    “But you can’t do human expansion robotically.”

    That’s certainly true currently. But given how much more rapidly information technology is advancing versus human space flight, I’d guess it’s a good bet that our descendents will be able to download their consciousnesses into artificial brains and bodies that are more suited for solar system settlement before we start living offworld using our existing biology.

    FWIW…

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