NASA

Not much of a “plan B”?

Space News, which has also been covering the news that NASA is working on an alternative “Plan B” in the wake of Congressional criticism, gets administrator Charles Bolden to go on the record that he has not requested any such alternative:

“The President’s Budget for NASA is my budget. I strongly support the priorities and the direction for NASA that he has put forward,” Bolden said in a written statement. “I’m open to hearing ideas from any member of the NASA team, but I did not ask anybody for an alternative to the President’s plan and budget. We have to be forward thinking and aggressive in our pursuit of new technologies to take us beyond low-Earth orbit, and the President’s plan does this. After years of underinvestment in new technology and unrealistic budgeting, we finally have an ambitious plan for NASA that sets the agency on a reinvigorated path of space exploration.”

The article also has the full text of JSC director Mike Coats’s email where he states that Bolden “agreed to let us set up a ‘Plan B’ team… to look at what a potential compromise might look like.”

64 comments to Not much of a “plan B”?

  • I did not ask anybody for an alternative to the President’s plan and budget.

    JSC director Mike Coats’s email where he states that Bolden “agreed to let us set up a ‘Plan B’ team… to look at what a potential compromise might look like.”

    There is no contradiction in the two statements. Bolden didn’t ask for an alternative plan but he agreed to allow Coats to set up a team to look into it.

  • common sense

    It is not about contradiction, not really. But there is a significant difference whether Bolden ask for it or not. If he did not explicitly ask for it it means that he did not care for one. He only agreed to Coats’ request. It does not mean Bolden is actually looking for a Plan B. Clear enough?

  • NASA Fan

    Bolden has much more of a friendship and relationship with the folks at JSC than Garver.

    Coats in turn has much more of a relationship with the entire JSC community that Bolden. It’s possible Coats is asking to be heard out by Bolden as a way of showing his troops, whose morale has to be lower than whale waste, that he is looking out for them, via Plan B.

    Bolden I’m sure is sympathetic to what is happening in his old stomping grounds and is willing to listen. What’s he gonna say instead? ”

    I do hereby declare I will not listen to anybody who has contradictory ideas from the Presidents Budget’

    This is much ado about nothing.

  • No it means that Bolden knows that “The Plan” is DOA. So he is “allowing” Coats to work on what a compromise might be while still formally staying with “The Plan” so that Garver can’t report that he is being disloyal to the Prez.

  • common sense

    @NASA Fan:

    True if and only if Coats did indeed ask for Bolden’s approval and that Bolden is not doing any damage control as it looks to be since he had to “go on the record that he has not requested any such alternative”. The whole handling of this seems to be pretty lousy anyway.

  • common sense

    @John:

    Sorry to be harsh but are you in denial? He does not allow anything because “The Plan” is dead. He said himself he is open to hearing ideas but did not ask for it since he “strongly support the priorities and the direction for NASA that he has put forward”.

    Are you saying here again that Bolden is running mutiny with this?

  • Are you saying here again that Bolden is running mutiny with this?

    I think that Bolden knows that Congress isn’t buying it. It’s the New Space people you are not being real. He can’t “mutiny” but he has to come up with a fall back plan. My view is that the Prez isn’t that much into the whole New Space thing. Healthcare is his focus, then Global Warming. Garver has sold the idea but I don’t think he will fight for it like he will other things.

  • I think that Bolden knows that Congress isn’t buying it.

    Congress has already bought it, per the Senate Appropriations bill.

    You are living in the denial of an alternate universe.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Yet another reversal of something Whittington stated as “fact”.

    LOL

    Robert G. Oler

  • NASA’s tiny budget only amounts to about 0.5% of the total Federal budget. But, unfortunately, Obama has already payed a big political price in Florida for his poor NASA decision.

    It think the presidents going to let Congress have whatever they want as long as they don’t exceed the $19 billion his budget allocates for NASA next year. The President has hardly said two words about NASA.

  • Vladislaw

    Shelby has frank discussion with NASA Administrator
    http://www.waff.com/Global/story.asp?S=12086296

    “HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) – A frank discussion took place on Capitol Hill Thursday between Senator Richard Shelby and NASA administrator Charlie Bolden.

    It took place behind closed doors in Senator Shelby’s office. Bolden and Shelby are very far apart on NASA’s vision and therefore NASA’s budget.

    In fact, many in Congress don’t even see a vision for the space agency if there is no government owned and operated human space flight program , namely Constellation, once the shuttle retires.

    There is so much descension coming from the idea of canceling the ARES rocket program to develop commercial vehicles. So when WAFF 48 News Anchor Liz Hurley asked Shelby if Bolden has a plan B in the works, Shelby said absolutely not.

    “I don’t think he has anything definitive. This will be the beginning of the death march of NASA.”

    On March 25, Charlie Bolden will once again be in the hot seat in the senate as hearings begin on the 2011 budget, but there is no timeline on when the country and north Alabama will learn the specific details on the future of human space flight once the shuttle retires in September.”

    Well it is about time Senator Shelby FINALLY admits it “! don’t think”

    Now since that admission we can move forward,

  • GuessWho

    Oler – Your complete ignorance on this subject is amazing. ROTF-LOL.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    And yet Mike Coats and his team is working on the Plan B with a wink and a nod from Bolden. It is already clear that Congress will not buy the Obama plan. Since Obama doesn’t know this yet, Bolden must move carefully.

  • “Steve Robert and I talked to Charlie and he agreed to let us set up a “Plan B” team,” which Coats actually said, is different from “Steve Robert and I talked to Charlie and he asked us to set up a “Plan B” team,” which is what the initial reports implied. Fortunately I didn’t hear the news about “Plan B” until the correct report was floating around.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark R. Whittington wrote @ March 5th, 2010 at 12:08 am

    And yet Mike Coats and his team is working on the Plan B with a wink and a nod from Bolden…

    still misstating events.

    First you over state the role of Bolden then you go into it is a “wink and a nod”…then you come to the conclusion that “Bolden must move carefully”.

    sorry this is another Whittington end run on the facts. you are grasping at straws…

    gee it is more like Karl Rove lies all the time

    Robert G. Oler

  • Jeff Greason

    I find it amusing but sad the extent to which some commenters seem to consider the new direction for nasa to be by, for, and about “new space”. With $6B for commercial crew projected, perhaps it is worth considering what the other ~$100B is for, and comparing it to what we were going to get with the $100B formerly programmed?

    Under the old POR with the previous NASA budget, by 2020, we were going to get an Orion Capsule on an Ares I booster on a mission to LEO — but not to ISS, because the flight would be after ISS splashed in 2016. And … that’s it. Ares V would be completed in the sweet bye and bye (late 2020’s at best), the lunar lander was not ever going to be completed (indeed, had already been canceled), and then NASA could spend its budget … doing what? Not developing anything new, as keeping those production lines open would consume the whole NASA budget. Not going anywhere … because the budget wouldn’t cover enough pieces to go anywhere. Not servicing station … because it had to cancel station to get the other pieces.

    People are comparing the new direction, not with what the old program was going to achieve on the old budget, but with what the old program *hoped* to achieve given a budget they didn’t have, never had, and weren’t going to get.

    I don’t play the game of second-guessing what Congress will or won’t do; I am sure we’ll find out in the fullness of time. And there are things to argue for and against in the new policy, as in the old. But compare apples to apples. You can make *any* policy look good by saying “well, look what they could achieve if they were only given all the time and money they want”. The point is what can be achieved within achievable budgets.

    I am pleasantly surprised that the Obama administration recommended a budget *increase* for NASA over the old baseline. That increase came with a change in direction that makes NASA more valuable to certain national stakeholders (for example, by increasing technology funding, which is something that has benefits outside of NASA). It is unwise to assume that if the program *were* changed by Congress in a way that didn’t appeal to those other stakeholders, that somehow the budget would stay the same. Given economic trends in the U.S. the default state for *ALL* non-defense discretionay spending is *DOWN*, and for a long time to come. For NASA to get a constant, let alone increasing budget, it *MUST* begin to serve national stakeholders in addition to “jobs at NASA centers”.

  • Bill White

    I agree with Jeff Greason that cancellation of the ESAS interpretation of the VSE would be a very good thing.

    What troubles me now is the apparent unwillingness of NASA to negotiate a compromise plan that could win a strong consensus across Congress.

    When the entire Florida delegation – stretching from far Right to far Left – unites to sign a letter expressing opposition to a plan, it is time to re-evaluate were you are heading.

    I am also concerned about an apparent obsession with commercial crew combined with a lack of focus on ITAR reform and the need to get a non-NASA owned destination up to LEO as soon as possible. A privately owned Bigelow hotel or R&D lab would require dozens of SpaceX Dragon flights (or equivalent) per year while commercial crew to ISS might only require 2 or 3 flights per year. A private non-NASA LEO destination would better facilitate a robust commercial space sector than a tiny handful of ISS logistics flights.

    Public statements from top NASA officials to the effect that they have watched “Orphans of Apollo” and they believe Dan Goldin got it wrong would definitely increase my willingness to support the new plan.

    I also believe the Administration should consider horse trading shuttle derived HLV for significant ITAR reform and support for a rapid deployment of a non-NASA destination in LEO. Recall that Team DIRECT has been very vocal about using commercial assets for ISS support and about using fuel depots to leverage beyond LEO exploration.

    In any event, making powerful enemies in Congress is not a useful path to achieve a sustainable, robust space program.

  • danwithaplan

    I agree with several posters here taking a critical approach to the “new plan” It just seems like swapping old horses for new ones. The previous collusions between private and public rested on established real private markets like mail and transportation across the Earth’s landmasses. Which were intrinsically motivated and financed by private demand PRIOR to the governmnet utilizing it. And only then engaged by the US government.

    The current “plan” simply assumes that “if you build it [with taxpayers’ dollars], they will come”, and thus distorts the market (COTS). And no, the ISS is well serviced between HTV, ATV, Soyuz and Progress. So there is no real demand even for the ISS.

    It would be much better for the true commercial development if NASA simply waited for real markets for HSF to develop and only then would contract them for services.

    The COTS is actually killing the development of a real long-term commercial spaceflight.

  • “Under the old POR with the previous NASA budget, by 2020, we were going to get an Orion Capsule on an Ares I booster on a mission to LEO — but not to ISS, because the flight would be after ISS splashed in 2016.”

    It gets better. Russia was planning on keeping all of their modules up there as the foundation for their own space station in the even ISS got deorbited. the ESA was in shared talks with keeping their components up as a part of it. So not only would we no longer have the ISS, Russia and China would both still have space stations and the Europeans may very well have been customers exclusively of them while we contemplated our navels for a decade before we could go anywhere. What’s more, NASA made it perfectly clear no one was going to get a piece of Constellation until a base was built on the moon. No international cooperation at all. So we’d scrap almost all meaningful R&D and science, all international cooperation, and all LEO destinations, handing all of those things over to the Russians partly on our dime. All for what? A fairy tale space program that looks good enough on paper to beat our chest and wave our flags, but wouldn’t go anywhere at all for four or five more presidential terms, if it ever went anywhere at all.

    “What troubles me now is the apparent unwillingness of NASA to negotiate a compromise plan that could win a strong consensus across Congress.”

    They’re playing the usual game. First off, consider that NASA has no choice. They operate based on what the most recent official marching orders are. For the moment that’s POTUS’ new plan. Bolden will be on board when congress signs the budget because he won’t have a choice then either. The NASA administrator is not the puppet-master, he’s the puppet. Griffin got away with a lot because everyone likes a good round of hubris, but even he wasn’t in charge. As for negotiations? That’s not Bolden’s job. His job is to follow orders, period. And right now his orders are to get his hands dirty and define the best path forward. And that’s what he’s trying to do.

    “A frank discussion took place on Capitol Hill Thursday between Senator Richard Shelby and NASA administrator Charlie Bolden.”

    Shelby has proven himself to be a loose cannon of late with his nominee holdup (which he openly admitted he didn’t even know or care who they were, he was just making a point about an aircraft contract he already had) and his reactionary statements regarding this plan. Again, rational debate is fine and good. Even a little righteous anger is appropriate, but Shelby sounded more like a street corner doomsday prophet off his meds than an honest critic. He’s not the only one out there to be sure, and many of the critics have been reasonable. But if Shelby is your hero of the day, you’ve bet on a long-shot horse. And Bolden knows it, which is why he’ll give the guy his ear for a bit, but not change his course an inch over what Shelby has to say.

    “I am also concerned about an apparent obsession with commercial crew combined with a lack of focus on ITAR reform and the need to get a non-NASA owned destination up to LEO as soon as possible.”

    That’s not NASA’s role. I love what Bigelow has to offer and I agree that ITAR reform and a robust commercial market should be big priorities, but NASA shouldn’t be the primary driver. For the record, the FY 11 budget calls for work on inflatable habitats and a recent article I read (I can get a ref if you REALLY want it, but it’s quarter to 1:00 so you’ll have to ask nicely) stated that Bigelow was the choice as a proof-of-concept ISS module. That’s as far as I believe NASA should take it. It directly benefits the ISS and continues NASA’s work on the 40-year-old effort that eventually became Transhab before it was dropped. But as for stand-alone inflatable labs? NASA shouldn’t be doing that job.

  • “It would be much better for the true commercial development if NASA simply waited for real markets for HSF to develop and only then would contract them for services.”

    Dragon, DreamChaser, and Orion Lite were all to be developed with or , without NASA and Dragon and Orion Lite had a market, Dragon doubly so. Heck, SpaceX has a satellite market already, they didn’t even need to build Dragon and were told repeatedly not to bother trying until they had the first mock-ups on the assembly floor. COTS and CCDev are gravy plans and can provide a more solid foundation, but they have never been a make or break deal for those three. The EELV dev program, manned Cygnus, and the mysterious Blue Origin craft likely wouldn’t have happened without government. Blue Origin, maybe, but it would have happened a lot later.

    What NASA is doing is not offering up a contract and waiting for the blueprints to roll in. They are looking at mostly existing options and seeing if they can speed things along and assure that NASA gets its share of the pie. Additionally they’re trying to capitalize on pieces such as EELV’s and Bigelow whose programs are essentially retooled and privatized NASA programs from prior budget cuts.

    “The COTS is actually killing the development of a real long-term commercial spaceflight.”

    Okay, now that’s just silly. Even if this entire round of spacecraft fail or NASA actually does end up their sole market, there’s nothing in this budget or any budget prior that would make it impossible for a commercial market. SpaceX has the budget and the plans for way more than the 1-2 capsules and 2 flights per year demanded of them for ISS resupply. Throw in the other vendors and we’re looking at a lot more supply than NASA can eat up. If they can’t make a go of it based on that, then the market was never meant to be this time around, with or without NASA.

  • danwithaplan

    It seems that some folks contrast the “new plan” with Constellation/ESAS.

    Well, I think BOTH are/were ill-conceived and badly executed. The Constellation was over budet, badly executed job program and frankly – embarassing.

    The current plan is shaping up to be an over budget, badly executed job program, but simply with federal dollars going to different folks.

  • danwithaplan

    “Okay, now that’s just silly. Even if this entire round of spacecraft fail or NASA actually does end up their sole market, there’s nothing in this budget or any budget prior that would make it impossible for a commercial market. ”

    It makes “commercial” HSF providers subservient to NASA’s whims as NASA is their prime and only customer with money to pay.

    In my view SpaceX should have never approached NASA until it had a firm commercial foundation. NASA should have been “on the side” But no, they now RELY on NASA This is bad for commercial efforts.

  • Jeff Greason hit the nail on the head. $6 billion to commercial, while it sounds large, over 5 years is a drop in the bucket of the $100 or so billion NASA will receive. This is significantly less than the total amount of money given to a rocket that hasn’t even flown and which would not have flown for another 7 years.

    Read the Space Technology budget overview (PDF) to see what NASA is really proposing. Read the outlines for Early Stage Innovation and Game Changing Technology. This is what NASA should have been doing for the past decade at least. And the beautiful part is that some 70% of Game Changing Technology will competitively awarded. They are open to in space robotic assembly and manufacturing. They are open to non-conventional access to space (JP Aerospace could get a boost from that), they are open to “non-chemical in space propulsion” which is a keyword for nuclear, but can also be solar sails and the like. But more a key word for nuclear.

    This is the NASA we need, I don’t know how to really convince people of this, but I truly believe it. The hopes for huge budget increases are just that, hopes, they will never be reality.

  • danwithaplan

    “Game Changing Technology” – Great, another series of buzzwords. What the heck does it even mean? What Game?

  • danwithaplan

    My BS detector always goes overscale when capitalized meaningless things like “Early Stage Innovation” and “Game Changing Technology” get introduced.

  • danwithaplan, read it. ESAS had its buzzwords, look were it brought us. NASA is reestablishing NIAC (NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts), which Cx had canceled. They’re taking all of that money that was going to be wasted on rockets that weren’t going anywhere and putting it where it can be useful, not just for NASA, but for the country as a whole.

    The very idea that NASA engineers will be allowed to do something other than build a rocket that wouldn’t fly for 7 years is refreshing.

  • […] Space Politics » Not much of a “plan B”? […]

  • Josh, we talked about JPAerospace offline, so this isn’t directed at you. John Powell is doing interesting work, and has a dedicated team of volunteers, but I don’t think they’re a short term proposition and most likely wouldn’t accept NASA funding on the terms they would be offering it on. He recently appeared on The Space Show (http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=1297) and it was really educating. I think the giggle factor of John’s airship to orbit concept is going away among the kinds of technical audiences that present papers on advanced aerospace research, but its still too wacky for the serious space community, and definitely too wacky for NASA.

    And, just so people know what I mean by wacky, I’ll try to summarize the basic plan here. I don’t mean this to be derogatory.. I think all good ideas start out wacky initially.

    1. incrementally, develop balloons that go higher and carry more, and as with all these steps, find commercial applications to pay for the research.
    2. improve the guidance and propulsion systems (including high altitude propellers that everyone told John wouldn’t work, but have already been demonstrated).
    3. experiment with active drag reduction systems to carry more with less. Some experiments have already flown.
    4. build large platforms that actively hold stationary points at high altitudes over the earth’s surface. So-called aerosats.

    Oh, I promised wacky didn’t I? Ok.

    5. Put up a large permanently manned platform. They call it the Dark Sky Station.. living in the sky, so quaint. The platform would be built up by many flights of the ascender vehicle.
    6. The crew of the station will keep busy building multi-km-long balloons that, using as yet undeveloped propulsion systems, will go higher and faster than any ground launched balloon can.
    7. Using as yet undeveloped lift enhancing and drag reducing systems, the balloons will eventually make the long journey to orbit. Apparently it’ll take about 3 days.
    8. I haven’t heard much about it but there’s steps beyond that too.

    And there ya go.

  • SpaceVet

    Ms. Garver’s contention that Shuttle extension was a non-start when she arrived at NASA needs to be qualified. At the time, Constellation was still on track with start-up funding requirements that made Shuttle extension impractical. Shuttle extension is most definitely still possible. It is simply a matter of reestablishing workforce and vendor supply lines, which will require additional funding…funding which, at the time, was needed by Constellation. It’s not too late to extend Shuttle by any means.

  • Col. Todd

    Well, if they keep shuttle, they are gonna keep Constellation too. So the funds can’t come from Constellation…

  • Major Tom

    “Shuttle extension is most definitely still possible. It is simply a matter of reestablishing workforce and vendor supply lines,”

    At least 2,000 Shuttle workers are aleady gone from USA, ATK, and Boeing. It is not a “simple matter” to bring back that many workers and their families or to find replacements for those workers that won’t come back. There will be even more gone before the Senate authorization bill passes (if it passes) later this year.

    That’s just the first-tier contractors and says nothing of the second-tier contractors that Garver talked about in her speech. Whole production capabilities and companies have likely been lost in the second-tier.

    “which will require additional funding…”

    If Shuttle was extended for five years, paying those 2,000 workers’ salaries and benefits would cost NASA $1-2 billion that’s not in the budget. What should be cut from NASA’s budget to pay for it? Or should the U.S. government just go deeper into debt during a time of historic deficits?

    And that says nothing of the incentives required to bring those workers back in the first year or search for replacements for those that won’t come back. And again, this is just the first-tier contractors. The second-tier is likely larger and requires an even greater amount of funding to reestablish whole production capabilities and companies.

    It would be one thing if we were still at the stage where the delta cost of extending Shuttle was measured in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. But we’re talking about opportunity costs in the many billions of dollars, here. If we’re going to spend that kind of money, then it should go to new, more efficient, and/or more capable systems that can send spacecraft to more locations than the ISS, that we’re going to use for more than ten additional flights to the ISS, and that we’re going to keep using for more than the next five years.

    With all due respect to the Shuttle workers that have been laid off and will be laid off in the future, the horse left this barn long ago. It’s time to move one.

    My 2 cents… FWIW…

  • Major Tom

    “And yet Mike Coats and his team is working on the Plan B with a wink and a nod from Bolden.”

    No, they’re not. Per Bolden in Space News:

    “… I did not ask anybody for an alternative to the President’s plan and budget. We have to be forward thinking and aggressive in our pursuit of new technologies to take us beyond low-Earth orbit, and the President’s plan does this. After years of underinvestment in new technology and unrealistic budgeting, we finally have an ambitious plan for NASA that sets the agency on a reinvigorated path of space exploration.”

    Don’t spread lies.

    “It is already clear that Congress will not buy the Obama plan.”

    If Congress won’t buy the President’s FY 2011 budget request for NASA, then why does the draft Senate FY 2011 authorization bill provide every dollar in every NASA account that the White House asked for?

    If Congress won’t buy the President’s FY 2011 budget request for NASA, then why does the draft Senate FY 2011 authorization bill endorse commercial crew and cargo as the preferred means of ETO transport?

    If Congress won’t buy the President’s FY 2011 budget request for NASA, then why does the draft Senate FY 2011 authorization bill extend ISS to 2020?

    If Congress won’t buy the President’s FY 2011 budget request for NASA, then why does the draft Senate FY 2011 authorization bill seek HLV acceleration over Ares I/Orion?

    If Congress won’t buy the President’s FY 2011 budget request for NASA, then why does the draft Senate FY 2011 authorization bill direct no funding to Constellation and reduces the program to a study about Ares I/Orion cost and operational effectiveness?

    Don’t spread lies.

    Jeez…

  • “It makes “commercial” HSF providers subservient to NASA’s whims as NASA is their prime and only customer with money to pay. ”

    Again, the current contenders for cargo and crew resupply have the capacity and intent to easily provide services well beyond what NASA asks for. The proposed manifest for ISS resupply is very small and could be handled by one or two spacecraft flying at most a half dozen flights per year for cargo and crew. If NASA is still the only customer then it is the failing of the private market, not NASA, that will make the proposition fail. Their pittance of a demand for launch services, while lucrative, is far from a supply hog. It could keep one provider busy, perhaps, but not two, and certainly not 5 or 6 if all pan out.

    “In my view SpaceX should have never approached NASA until it had a firm commercial foundation. NASA should have been “on the side” But no, they now RELY on NASA This is bad for commercial efforts.”

    SpaceX didn’t approach NASA. NASA approached SpaceX. SpaceX had ISS resupply in mind and I’m sure they were salivating over the idea, but they were working far harder at commercial providers than on NASA pretty much right up until COTS was offered and they continued to push for commercial service after they got COTS. And with two providers on tap for resupply, the demand should be slim enough, even judging by SpaceX’s manifest, to allow for plenty of private launches shoudl the demand arise. As for ‘they should have waited’ apparently you’ve never run a business. You don’t spend a fortune building a market that may not get off the ground when someone else has their checkbook out. It would have been spectacularly dumb for them to turn down COTS.

  • MrEarl

    That was a pretty definitive statement by Bolden to head off speculation.
    So to my statements yesterday………

    Never mind.

  • Major Tom

    “That was a pretty definitive statement by Bolden to head off speculation.
    So to my statements yesterday………

    Never mind.”

    Very poor fact-checking on Andy Pasztor’s part. He should have confirmed the content of Coats’ email with Bolden’s office. Sad that an industry rag like Space News reported more accurately than WSJ.

    FWIW…

  • ehok

    This isnt about truth, they just want to run with the “NASA in disarray” storyline. They had their fun for 24 hours and now they will try and find something else to distort. Some, not all but some, of the CxP dead enders are just using any stick they can find. It doesnt have to make sense.

  • googaw

    Dragon, DreamChaser, and Orion Lite were all to be developed with or , without NASA

    Apparently delusion knows no bounds.

  • common sense

    @ Jeff Greason:

    Unfortunately you are dealing with a lot of irrational thoughts due to the denial process included in any changes. One of this magnitude in particular. It was to be expected. What I find really odd is how people try to manipulate reality to satisfy their most foolish desires. Note that there is a fringe of the population that don’t believe we landed on the Moon and I think that once made Buzz Aldrin hmm a little upset.

    Such is life in the US today. Denial, denial and more denial.

    This President must be crying tears of frustration quite often since he gets decried even when he, a “leftist socialist democrat”, actually embraces a GOP policy, not Constellation (an implemtation) mind you but the actual VSE.

    Weird, weird universe. I don’t think we should fear China, we should only fear ourselves!

    Oh well…

  • Trent, fair enough, I just couldn’t think of alternate methods to space, heh.

  • “Dragon, DreamChaser, and Orion Lite were all to be developed with or , without NASA

    Apparently delusion knows no bounds.”

    So SpaceX saying over and over and over again that F9/Dragon were designed from the start as manned vehicles is delusion? The fact that Orion Lite was never planned to go to the ISS at all suggests they were going to rely on NASA contracts? That DreamChaser has been quietly humming along in the background, complete with negotiations on man-rating EELV’s is just fantasy? You can argue they wouldn’t have succeeded, an argument that would be all your word against mine, but you can’t argue that they weren’t planning to do so with or without NASA.

    I accept that I’m operating on faith that these projects will succeed. But it’s faith based on real hardware, real programs, and a development process that has kept going year after year, milestone after milestone while cynics have called it delusional.

  • googaw

    Aremisasling, your mind is truly operating in a galaxy far, far away. On this planet, DreamChaser comes from hundreds of millions of dollars of NASA funding when it was called the HL-20. Orion Lite comes from hundreds of millions of dollars of NASA funding Orion. As for Dragon,

    So SpaceX saying over and over and over again…

    I’ve never seen anybody put such great faith in corporate press releases. It’s touching. Alas, talk is cheap and no more so than in HSF. I’ve seen hundreds of such proposals before and they all ended in one of two places: nowhere, or NASA contracts. Substantial amounts of money were not put into Dragon until the prospect of COTS contracts came along. Indeed, the political effort to get COTS was already well underway before anybody ever heard of Dragon. With government agencies accounting for over 99% of HSF funding, no sane businessman would put substantial money into these projects without prospects of fat government agency contracts. Though eccentrics with their minds firmly planted in the Twisted Galaxy might:

    http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1060799053000926706bDxycQ

    Which of these categories Musk and Bigelow fall into I can’t say. To hazard a guess I’d say Musk has always been eying NASA contracts and Bigelow has always been hoping to make his space hotels affordable by using that top-secret alien technology from nearby Area 51. But that’s just a guess.

    I accept that I’m operating on faith that these projects will succeed.

    There’s no need for faith, or even success, when billions of NASA dollars are to be had.

  • common sense

    I am sure googaw has his own timeline of events to justify our delusion but just in case:

    http://spacex.com/dragon.php
    Initiated internally by SpaceX in 2005, the Dragon spacecraft is made up of a pressurized capsule and unpressurized trunk used for Earth to LEO transport of pressurized cargo, unpressurized cargo, and/or crew members. ”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transportation_Services
    “Commercial Orbital Transportation Services is a NASA program to coordinate the delivery of crew and cargo to the International Space Station by private companies. The program was announced on January 18, 2006.</b?[1] "

  • googaw

    You see, in the Twisted Galaxy it’s just not possible that within the one to twelve months between Dragon being “initiated internally”, and the official announcement of COTS for ISS, that SpaceX could have heard about what NASA was planning. (BTW, the source below says that COTS was “established in 2005″). It’s also just not within the realm of what we can think about that “internally initiated” could mean that an engineer was given a few days to pursue his daydream and create a few diagrams, as often happens in engineering organizations to keep employees motivated, and that it never got serious consideration as a program until COTS came along. Nope, such things just don’t happen in the Twisted Galaxy. In the Twisted Galaxy we just take corporate press releases as gospel and throw common sense out the window.

    By the way, COTS was “established in 2005″ and “COTS is not implemented as a traditional government contract but as a ‘Space Act Agreement’ (SAA) in accordance with the Commercial Space Act of 2003″:

    http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1461/1

    In other words, back on our own planet, the COTS law had already been on the books for about two years and NASA was already quite deep into specking out COTS for cargo to ISS and studying a similar program for crew to ISS when Dragon was “initiated internally”.

  • “On this planet, DreamChaser comes from hundreds of millions of dollars of NASA funding when it was called the HL-20. Orion Lite comes from hundreds of millions of dollars of NASA funding Orion.”

    Thanks cs, for the assist on the timeline. I was just about to do that. Besides the timeline Musk has said human spaceflight was his personal ultimate goal for SpaceX long before even the Dragon press release. SpaceX was also considered a major contender for Bigelow’s America’s Space Prize, which was announced in ’04. I will grant those critics out there that ASP just lapsed with no winner even close to completion, but that’s not the point here.

    Here’s another one for ya:
    September, 2004 Business Wire article on Dream Chaser
    Yes, it mentions ISS as a destination, but it distinctly doesn’t flag it as the only target. It also predates the COTS announcement by a year and a half and comes a mere few months after the announcement of the VSE, which contained provisions for commercial spacecraft (and also mention 2015 as the return date for the Moon, funny that). As for HL-20, yes, it was a NASA project. It was a NASA project that got cancelled. So also was HL-34, which was the previous project spaceDev had looked at. Neither of these craft were to ever fly again, so the money was already spent long before DreamChaser. And in both cases SpaceDev was using the design as a basic framework on which they are making significant modifications, including a complete from scratch redesign of it’s propulsion. Even the basic hull has been reworked a good deal, though the shape is still more or less the same.

    Orion Lite, while based on the hull of the original Orion, is a significant redesign including a rework of the heat shields as well as much of the internal workings. The point is to take Orion and retool it for LEO use. Yes, NASA developed the hull, did the drop tests, etc, but the negotiations were, and still are, between LM and Bigelow, not Bigelow and NASA. And it may very well be the path forward for Orion post-Cx.

  • common sense

    “Musk has said human spaceflight was his personal ultimate goal for SpaceX long before even the Dragon press release.”

    Why would you believe the words of the CEO of a company that wants to make profit? Just because he invested $100M of his own cash into it? Come on… ;)

    ““internally initiated” could mean that an engineer was given a few days to pursue his daydream and create a few diagrams,”

    It could sure. And you know that it actually happened because???… You were laid off by SpaceX at that time? That’s what happened in the Twisted Galaxy anyhow. What is your problem with SpaceX? Afraid they might make it? See personnally I want them to succeed because I believe we need to make access to space more affordable. How about you?

    It looks like COTS indeed started in 2005 so I can only say that googaw has the truth, obviously. And the contract is CRS not COTS.

    Maybe he should run NASA with his/her Super COTS. What do you think?

  • It’s also just not within the realm of what we can think about that “internally initiated” could mean that an engineer was given a few days to pursue his daydream and create a few diagrams, as often happens in engineering organizations to keep employees motivated, and that it never got serious consideration as a program until COTS came along.

    Actually, it existed as a full-scale prototype on the SpaceX shop floor in 2005. I saw it on a tour of the El Segundo facility. Elon had always planned such a thing, because he had always planned to go himself. Dragon would have been in development in the complete absence of COTS.

  • googaw

    “common sense”:
    What is your problem with SpaceX?

    I don’t have any problem with SpaceX. It’s as good as any other NASA contractor I can think of, and better than most. What I have big problems with are your ludicrous opinions about the business it is in.

  • common sense

    “What I have big problems with are your ludicrous opinions about the business it is in.”

    Please tell me what my ludicrous opinions are.

  • common sense

    Hopefully this will put all this nonsense to rest http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=33643

  • “In the Twisted Galaxy we just take corporate press releases as gospel and throw common sense out the window.”

    No, in the Twisted Galaxy you take corporate press releases and pretend you know what they REALLY meant and what they REALLY were thinking when in reality you weren’t in the board room any more than we were.

    It’s not at all feasible that they’d wait to get Falcon 1 on the pad (which happened in May of ’05, though the launch famously failed in November) before initiating a manned capsule, I suppose. I mean, why get the rocket engine and the proof of concept going first when you can just shoot the moon, right? Why on Earth would they want to build a customer base for satellite launches before they took on the next project? Clearly the only motivation was a government program they had super-secret inside information on.

    I don’t take press releases as gospel, but I also don’t pretend I can read minds. Is your version of events possible? Sure. Is it any more logical than what the press releases suggested? Not in the least.

    More cynical is not the same as more truthful.

  • “I don’t have any problem with SpaceX. It’s as good as any other NASA contractor I can think of, and better than most. What I have big problems with are your ludicrous opinions about the business it is in.”

    Ohhhhhh, you’re making the ‘same old contractor’ argument.

    You see, the primary difference is that the usual contractor model is a product. NASA says “build this for me”, they build it, NASA buys it, and nobody but NASA gets to use it ever without NASA’s say so, regardless of the existance of a private market. In the “commercial spaceflight” model, once a market comes to be, those companies are 100% free to supply that market and don’t need to consult NASA unless some NASA flights are going to get bumped.

    It doesn’t matter if takes 6 months or 30 years for that market to come to be. Whenever it is ready, the lift to orbit is there.

    Now whether or not said market materializes is a different matter, and frankly irrelevant. If the market doesn’t come to be, then, again, it’s a failure of the market, not of the model.

    We do satellite launches all the time on that model. And yes, that makes ULA a NASA contractor, but it doesn’t make them ONLY a NASA contractor, like they would be if NASA still owned and operated their program. If 5 years go by with only NASA ULA contracts, ULA is still a private commercial company that is free to pick up more commercial flights in year 6. It may be possible if NASA owned the rockets in the Shuttle/Cx/Saturn model of contracting, but it would take a major change in direction and congressional approval to allow the private market to use those spacecraft. With service contracting it takes a meeting with the sales department and a signature on the dotted line.

  • John Hanses

    How wonderful to see Jeff Greason here, at a time when we are hoping to see great advancement coming to new space. And how difficult that he had to walk into this current storm.

    The options recommended by the Committee last fall seem prudent, also — better on our strained budget. and having some adventure.

    But am sometimes still having trouble accepting aome of the assesment. Jeff stated, “Under the old POR with the previous NASA budget, by 2020, we were going to get an Orion Capsule on an Ares I…” I saw a mention of China in the comments above as well. People chould be unhappy aboput China having 3 major missions to to the moon this decade, as part of China’s not too distant eclipsing of America. China, with its strange propaganda agency, with its unknown rocket accident death tolls, its administrationally united space & military departments, and its record of harsh oppression.

    So there can’t be only a pure aerospace assesment of plans, but an assesment of plans with an eye to the global situation. And in that light, the flexible plan option becomes a vague and distant thing. The moon and then mars were the solidly approved course. With the global environment, the moon calls out strongly, as the object that is so obvious and ripe for the taking by the nations of our world. An object that is in soon destiny for tourism as well as science.

    And within a global environment, keeping this objective, and apportioning the NASA budget for it cries out to us as well.

    New space is thrilling, and Spacex may open up great doors to help great goals for NASA. But Burt Rutan shares the belief, that this one great, nearby, solid goal should not have been exchanged for what is more distant and ambiguous. Lets restore the VSE.

    I also want to applaud the work at Space Politics, it’s excellent!

  • googaw

    John Hanses:
    an assesment of plans with an eye to the global situation. And in that light, the flexible plan option becomes a vague and distant thing.

    Um, no. The global situation has changed and will be changing rapidly. Other institutions understand this and have flexible plans. Our military, for example, does not create a schedule of future wars. It is rather prepared to fight anywhere on the globe (or for that matter anywhere in space near earth). It is on the Flexible Path. Commerce, and especially high-tech startups, do not rigidly stick to plans. They adapt to changing market conditions. They are ready to adapt their products when market conditions change. It’s time for us to realize that NASA, too, are not prophets. They need to be on a flexible path.

  • ehok

    “”Lets restore the VSE””

    The VSE wasnt just about CxP. VSE was also about commercial space, telescopes, robotic probes and R&D as well. Whoops. Somehow CxP defenders have it in their head that it was only about their moon mission.

    I’m sure the terrestrial planet finder folks and robotic lander folks would like us to follow the VSE as well, only their projects were cut in 2006 to keep the moon funding going.

  • googaw

    ehok:
    The VSE wasnt just about CxP. VSE was also about commercial space, telescopes, robotic probes and R&D as well.

    Or to put it in Administrator Bolden’s terms, the VSE was a hallucination. “A vision without resources is a hallucination.”

  • Brad

    Common sense

    Thank you very much for the link to the late breaking Bolden statement. I thought this part of his statement really puts the new plan into perspective,”We in the NASA family know all too well the difficulty of the things we do, and we now want to go to Mars and other deep-space destinations. We all know that we can’t get there with the technology and knowledge base that we have today, and that is why we must aggressively embark on a robust program of research and development.”

    This reinforces for me some other things I’ve heard Bolden say, and clarifies the current Bolden/Obama plan for NASA. It’s an explanation why Bolden has decided to retrench NASA for the next 10-20 years away from deep space ops and into pure R&D. I think it’s a needlessly conservative policy, but at least it explains a lot.

  • Guest

    “It’s an explanation why Bolden has decided to retrench NASA for the next 10-20 years away from deep space ops and into pure R&D.”

    Sure Brad, as if the current program by Griffin would be getting us into deep space ops any time soon….

  • Brad

    Gee “Guest”, where did I say anything to support Constellation? What does Constellation have to do with what’s wrong with the Obama plan? Or did you really intend to imply that I support Constellation?

    It’s really sad to see how often defender’s of the Obama plan resort to a knee jerk attack on a strawman, as the default defense of the Obama plan. At one point I thought that I had to append to every post I made the fact that I don’t support Constellation, in order to head off the strawman reaction. But that didn’t make any difference, so why bother.

  • Major Tom

    “It’s an explanation why Bolden has decided to retrench NASA for the next 10-20 years away from deep space ops and into pure R&D.”

    NASA hasn’t conducted deep space human operations for 40-odd years. An organization can’t retrench from something it isn’t doing.

    And going forward, nothing has changed. The agency never had a credible budget and program plan for deep space human operations any earlier than the 2030s — more than 20 years away — anyway.

    FWIW…

  • ehok

    @Brad

    I want a rocket/capsule too but wIthout a lander or R&D you can have neither the moon nor flexible path.

    I would argue that it’s much easier to line up pols to fund big shiny rockets than it is to get them to fund basic R&D to make use of the rocket. These opportunities are rare. It’s not the status quo move that your average WH would come up with and it might well pan out.

  • danwithaplan

    It’s all going to end in tears once again.

    La di da…

  • googaw

    danwithaplan:
    It’s all going to end in tears once again.

    And how. The ability of astronaut fans to set themselves up for disappointment has never ceased to amaze me.

  • Guest

    Brad writes: “At one point I thought that I had to append to every post I made the fact that I don’t support Constellation”

    I guess you should, Brad. With sentences like “It’s an explanation why Bolden has decided to retrench NASA for the next 10-20 years away from deep space ops and into pure R&D.” it looks like you’re only blaming Bolden.

  • GuessWho

    aremisasling – “Now whether or not said market materializes is a different matter, and frankly irrelevant. If the market doesn’t come to be, then, again, it’s a failure of the market, not of the model.”

    This statement is gibberish. Go research what it takes to develop and implement a business plan.

    “And yes, that makes ULA a NASA contractor, ….”

    ULA is not, and never has been a NASA contractor. ULA is a DoD contractor. If NASA needs a EELV, they work through DoD.

    “… ULA is still a private commercial company that is free to pick up more commercial flights …”

    ULA does not sell commercial flights. ULA is a DoD contractor. If a commercial company (Intelsat, SES, etc.) wants/needs an EELV, they work through either the Boeing Commercial Launch Service provider or the Lockheed Commercial Launch Service provider. Boeing CLS and LM CLS are competitors in the commercial launch business.

    Commercial EELV launches are very rare. DoD fully manifests the EELV’s and wedging in a commercial EELV is difficult. EELV’s are also expensive relative to other launch vehicles because of the reliability demands required by DoD. DoD cannot afford to have its launch capability cutoff because of dumb mistakes that lead to launch failures (SpaceX). That is why they carry two independent LV production lines (even if both are managed by a single company) so that if a systemic error arises in one vehicle design (bad parts, bad proceedures, etc.), the other is available to continue to meet DoD needs while the problem is worked.

    Given your ignorance about these topics, it’s hard to take anything else you write seriously.

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