The exact language from some of the articles is:

“hike NASA’s budget by an average of $1.3 billion annually over the next five years”

To me, that sounds like a compounded (“hike… annually”) increase. But I don’t pretend that either I (or the journalist) couldn’t have misinterpreted. We’ll find out next week.

More important than a $1.3B increase (compounded or not) is how much of the $5.5B+ annual Constellation budget is redirected and towards what. Again, we’ll find out next week.

FWIW…

I think you misread something. An “annual budget increase of 1.3 billion” means adding 1.3 B to the baseline NASA budget (about 18 B) one year, 2.6 B the next year, 3.8 B the following year and so on. Which was the Augustine recommendation — beef NASA up to 21 B and keep it there.

What’s actually being described seems like a an increase from 18 to 19.3B, held constant at that level (except for inflation) for the next 5 years, followed by reversion to 18 B.

These aren’t the same thing, in other words.

For getting astronauts into orbit, no, we wouldn’t. Just like Orion, Dragon is designed to take six crew to LEO and dock with another vehicle.

“Looking at the probable performance of the various vehicles you can see that Atlas 5 will probably deliver up to 29,000 kg to low earth orbit.”

Wrong. Depending on the variant, Atlas V delivers from 12,500kg (the 401) to 25,000kg (the 5H2) to LEO.

“The source of my numbers is years of experience doing real time space operations – but you could check them on Wikipedia, etc.”

I wouldn’t claim “years of experience” when I can’t quote launch vehicle lift capacity accurately to within thousands of kilograms.

I don’t know why you’re relying on wikipedia, but the numbers above are consistent with the wikipedia entry for Atlas V.

“Ares 1 was proposed to deliver 25,000 kg to LEO. The current version of Falcon 9 is proposed to deliver less than half of that – 10,000 kg.”

Your point? So what if Falcon 9/Dragon delivers six crew to orbit using less than half the throw weight of Ares I/Orion?

“So ‘commercial’ means Atlas/Delta to get something into orbit.”

No it doesn’t. Ariane, Atlas, Delta, Falcon, Pegasus, Proton, SeaLaunch, and Soyuz can all get “something” into orbit on a commercial basis.

“SpaceX is working on Dragon, but not to integrate it with those two boosters.”

Why would they need to? Dragon can deliver six crew to orbit and dock with another vehicle without launching on an Atlas or Delta.

LockMart has their own crew capsule design, the Crew Transport Vehicle or CTV, that can launch on a smaller Atlas V. They don’t need Orion or a big EELV to get astronauts to orbit, either.

“I did say that NASA has been underfunded and can only point to years of reports, commissions, committees, etc. that say that, for what it has been asked to do – NASA is woefully underfunded.”

And that’s different how from all the years of commission and committee reports on the various foreign space agencies? Or any other government department or agency?

Everything is always underfunded, especially in government. It’s a question of what you do with the funding you have.

“Major Tom points out that the NASA budget is far larger than other budgets”

No I didn’t. I pointed out that NASA’s budget is larger than the budgets of all the foreign space agencies combined.

“(since he woke up from his coma only recently)”

You have to be kidding. You can’t transcribe simple numbers from wikipedia accurately or tell the difference between a budget going up and a budget going down, yet you claim that I’m in a “coma”?

If I’m in a “coma”, then what’s your condition? Brain dead?

“For it’s tasking – for instance the Program of Record for Constellation – NASA has been underfunded since the days of the Sand Chart.”

False. NASA overall budget didn’t meet the VSE projections, but Constellation actually received more funding that what was promised in the VSE.

“I said that the budget would be cut and Major Tom again locked onto that statement since it is one of the few that he could understand.”

I didn’t “lock in” on anything. Your statement was false, I corrected it, you tried to backtrack, and I called you on it.

Why is it so hard to admit that your statement was wrong?

“The President has made a throw away mention that he was gonna ask for more money”

The President has done no such thing. Former astronaut and Augustine Committee member Sally Ride and a couple Administration and NASA officials told reporters on a telecon that next week’s White House budget request would include a $1.3 billion annual budget increase for NASA.

“(far too little to do any good)”

How do you know? Do you know what the programmatic content is? Do you work at the White House? Have you seen the budget?

Moreover, an annual increase of $1.3 billion is more than what the Augustine Committee claimed NASA needed ($1 billion in the first year rising to $3 billion at the fifth year) to implement the Committee’s various exploration program options.

“Sometimes the Congress does not automatically follow the President?”

Are you asking or stating?

On big changes in direction for NASA’s human space flight programs, Congress does follow the President historically — from Apollo to Shuttle to Freedom to the ISS to the VSE.

“…the Oracle (wikipedia) does refer to the Augustine Commission as what the Augustine Committee was a part of.”

Why are you relying on Wikipedia? Don’t you realize that there’s a webpage for the Augustine Committee?

“There is no point to putting up strawman arguments which are too easily dismissed.”

How is correcting the multiple errors in your posts “putting up strawman arguments”?

“Major Tom appears to be a spokeperson for the President”

Because I’ve criticized the White House’s decision to pursue a heavy lift vehicle in several threads here?

Goofy…

“CharlesTheSpaceGuy – Okay, first, the only Atlas V that can loft 29,000 kg is the Heavy version, which has not flown. And that has about the same lift capacity of the Falcon 9 Heavy (which I also admit, has not flown). Of the various Atlas versions considered for manned use, the Atlas V 402, talked about during A-com, lifts 12,500 kg (same as the Falcon 9). The Atlas V 431 has been mentioned as a possible lifter for the Dreamchaser, as well (Don’t know what the payload is to LEO, but obviosuly it is slightly more). ”

Excellent points. And as a matter of comparison, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_super_heavy_lift_launch_systems

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_heavy_lift_launch_systems

You’ll note that the Falcon 9 Heavy at completion is slotted to have the highest LEO lift capability of any rocket in production or planned. It would come after only N!, the Saturn family and the doomed Ares V. Granted it would fall WAY behind any of those four vehicles, but the point stands.

I suspect if Falcon 9 Mark 1 makes a few successful flights and gets crew up on the Dragon capsule we’ll see F9 Heavy shortly thereafter. That is, of course, provided there is a market, which has nothing to do with SpaceX’s capabilities.

No, he didn’t. Bolden stated that the radiation risks associated with a human Mars mission have to be dealt with honestly. He didn’t say anything about radiation risks for missions to other targets.

Don’t make stuff up.

“So this pretty much makes any flights to asteroids or to the moons of Mars, pure fantasy.”

No, it doesn’t. Radiation risk is largely a function of time spent in space. Missions to Lagrange observatories or NEOs are much shorter than Mars missions and don’t expose the crew to nearly as much radiation.

FWIW…

With regard to other companies for commercial crew
1. Its worth noting that, in the case of the COTS 1b bid (Which OSC won) Boeing made a serious bid for it
2. In the original COTS bid, Spacedev’s Dreamchaser is generally assumed to be the 3rd place finisher, and so must be considered a viable option (since SNC is still quite active). And we know one of the serious options under consideration was the Atlas V 432
3. The Orion-lite vehicle would probably end up being a joint project of Bigelow, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.

Anyway, this isn’t to beat you over the head about this, but when we consider commercial crew, we really need to be looking at the larger situation

Probably one of the best descriptions of the cost plus contracting mindset I’ve ever seen…

“Come on please, has Ares/Orion flown yet?”

No, they haven’t. I’m pretty sure I pointed out that fact in my previous post where I said “in the interest of fairness, you could same the same thing [that they haven’t flown yet] about Ares1/ Orion”

“What is it that makes you so comfortable with them? Because you work on them?”

Technically I never said I was comfortable with them. Also, I hate the fact that my current employment situation is dependant on a line item in a federal budget proposal. That’s the biggest problem with the aerospace industry in general to tell the truth. Every job I’ve had I’ve either been laid off or at some point threatened to be laid off because of program cancellations, federal budget cuts, etc.

But as I said in another thread, paraphrasing Luke Skywalker from Star Wars “It’s not that I love the [constellation program] I hate it, there’s just nothing I can do about it.”

@ Ferris

“How do you know they won’t (at least as it pertains to human flight, since we have multiple cargo options)? We have yet to see how commercial crew will be implimented. And why is it the assumption that only OSC and SpaceX will compete for commercial crew?”

Point taken, technically I don’t know that Dragon or OSC’s Cygnus won’t be compatible with EELVs. It’s entirely possible they will, but I hadn’t heard anything about that, so I assumed they won’t be.

I mainly just used OSC and Spacex because they’re the 2 who are involved in COTS. Depending on how commercial crew will be done it’s entirely possible other companies could compete as well. Fair enough?

Why does Dragon have be as big as Orion? Why does the entry vehicle have to comprise all the living and working space of an interplanetary spacecraft? Wouldn’t a Dragon with beefed-up TPS, docked to a Bigelow module and a separately delivered upper stage, work even better than cramming a bunch of people into a bathroom for a year? This arrangement would require multiple launches of existing boosters and perhaps a fuel depot–both lowering purchase prices for boosters, and establishing infrastructure that we need. Far better than eating up most of NASA’s budget for a couple of decades, to get a little more capability than we had in 1969.