If they were really a commercial company, they wouldn’t have any reason to care. However the plausibility of the idea that they do care suggests they are mutating into something different, a creature of politics. I’ve seen it happen before, and it’s just as sad to watch as the last time.

Well, who would know about that better than you? How does one “squirm” on it, though?

You’re illustrating my point about the opponents of the current budget demanding a deadline, astronauts, and a rocky (or at least beyond-LEO) destination, all at the same time. As you acknowledge, the 2011 budget has deadlines for robots to beyond-LEO rocky world destinations. That’s 2 of the 3 – deadline and destination. Why isn’t that enough, given that even with the 2011 budget increase we know we don’t have enough money for all 3 at the same time right now (witness Constellation’s expected but absurd astronaut boots on the lunar surface in year 2035 – totally making a joke of the 2020 deadline)? The only one missing of the 3 is the astronauts — and this new line of robotic missions has the specific purpose of breaking ground for astronauts (as opposed to NASA’s traditional robotic science missions). Why don’t the 2011 budget opponents value these absolutely essential missions?

As Major Tom illustrated above, it’s not true that the only deadlines in the budget are related to robotic exploration, even if you don’t count the HSF robotic precursors as part of human exploration. Major Tom listed a number of technology demonstrations with deadlines. According to the 2011 budget, many of these demonstrations will be done with astronauts (eg: at the ISS). Again we have 2 of the 3 – astronauts and dealines. All we are missing from the 3 concurrent things the 2011 budget opponents for some reason seem to pine for is the destination. The ISS work will be done in LEO. However, this work is done specifically to demonstrate technologies for enabling beyond-LEO exploration by astronauts. Why isn’t this valued by the 2011 budget opponents? Why do they so much prefer a budget-busting 30-year government rocket development program to get astronaut boots to repeat Apollo, which is all we would be able to afford with Constellation, if that?

And yes, we do have the other 2 out of 3 pair: specific destinations for astronauts. Yes, the destinations include just about all of the usual astronaut exploration prospects. That probably means it will be something like the Augustine Flexible Path, which, contrary to what many people say about it, is easily understood and specific even though flexible. We don’t have a deadline for these because it makes no sense to have a deadline for them. Constellation is a perfect case study for setting a deadline and completely missing that deadline – by a decade and a half, as currently estimated. A decade and a half! That deadline was useless, and worse, it caused NASA to do all sorts of destructive things to Constellation itself and to other NASA programs. Setting a deadline in the 2011 budget, where details will depend on what robotic precursors find and are able to do, what R&D and technology demonstrations work out, and how well commercial space establishes a foundation for exploration, makes no sense. Setting such a deadline would be a lie. Why do it?

I’ve said this in other posts, but I’ll say it here too: I think a case could be made for having all 3 at once for beyond-LEO destinations that are easier to reach like GEO, lunar orbit, and Earth-Moon Lagrange points. I don’t think we need a lot of robotic precursors or technology demonstrations for those, they could even help the robotic precursors and technology demonstrations for more ambitous destinations, and they could set up or enable capabilities and infrastructure (probably using commercial services) that could enable more difficult exploration. So, in those cases, I could see setting up specific deadlines and destinations for astronaut missions.

For the more difficult exploration destinations, I totally agree with the 2011 budget in not setting a bogus deadline for astronauts at rocky-world destinations. This is honesty, and it’s refreshing after ESAS/Constellation’s big lie that everyone knew was a lie in 2005. We don’t have the technology or knowledge yet to get astronauts to those difficult destinations yet on anything like an affordable budget when we have so many other things besides astronaut exploration missions to do with NASA that are of high priority.

Goose, gander, good for?

Just kidding…

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

you should have let it go Rand…now I will have to throw it in your face. I was hoping you would bite…the nasty part of me.

“The word petard comes from the Middle French peter, to break wind,”

you right wingers are so much fun to kick around!

Robert G. Oler

Robert, you need help..

lol…yeah my wife finds helping me a full time occupation! (along with her other task).

why cant we all get along!

Robert G. Oler

“The Obama plan was DOA.”

“Congress won’t sign off on his NASA budget as is, that is politically reality.”

Congress is already signing off on the President’s FY 2011 budget request for NASA. The draft Senate FY 2011 authorization bill provide every dollar in every NASA account that the White House asked for.

The draft Senate FY 2011 authorization bill also supports every human space flight element of the President’s FY 2011 budget request for NASA. The bill endorses commercial crew and cargo as the preferred means of ETO transport, extends ISS to 2020, and seeks HLV acceleration over Ares I/Orion.

Your DOA patient is alive and walking around in the Senate’s draft authorization bill for NASA.

“Orion will survive this. That is the heart of Constellation afterall… Constellation as it is known is gone, we know that… But Constellation will live on through Orion”

The draft Senate FY 2011 authorization bill directs no funding to Constellation or Orion and reduces the program to a study about whether Ares I/Orion costs and operations would conflict with the new plan going forward.

“Obama can’t change that.”

So far, it looks like he won’t need to. But even if he does, you do realize that under our system of government, the President can veto legislation, right?

“Just like Space Station Freedom became ISS… Just like Space Station Freedom on paper to ISS above our heads Constellation will do similar…”

The space station was saved because the Clinton Administration found a foreign policy justification for the program by involving Russian engineers in the program, ostensibly keeping Soviet missile technology out of the hands of dangerous states.

There is no foreign policy rationale for Constellation — Griffin expressly kept foreign partners out of the program — and no White House champion for Constellation like there was for the space station program during the Clinton Administration.

“Had he skipped the Augustine commission and had this summit 10 months ago? We would be talking a different story.”

Your argument is inconsistent. You cite the history of the space station program, but Freedom’s out-of-control costs were reeled in and the outline of the ISS design created by an independent, blue-ribbon panel appointed by the White House very similar to the Augustine Committee. Yet you argue that the Augustine Committee wasn’t needed to reel in Constellation’s out-of-control costs and outline the replacement program. Which is it — are these independent panels critical to saving broken human space flight programs or not?

(And it’s the Augustine Committee, not commission.)

“Gutting NASA HSF is one of them. A nation defining agency like NASA, that exemplifies the pioneer spirit this nation was born of!”

Hopefully they will in the future, but NASA’s human space flight programs havn’t pioneered a frontier since the end of the Apollo lunar missions. NASA’s science programs have been the pioneering part of the agency for 40-odd years now.

“America wants NASA to do what NASA is best known for.”

For better or worse, these days, that would be Hubble Space Telescope pictures and Mars rovers.

“I was right about it’s reception in congress…”

In terms of the actual legislation working its way through Congress, you’re not.

“I will be right again… It won’t happen. Get your minds around that.”

Because you say so? Really?

FWIW…

The darn thing in on the pad… Is it not?

squirming on the petard

Robert G. Oler, the brilliant military historian, demonstrates to all that he doesn’t even know what the hell a petard is. He must fantasize it as some kind of scaffold, or something.