Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin sat down for an interview with the web site Ars Technica and reiterated his belief that the change in direction for NASA’s human spaceflight program is a bad decision. “I can’t imagine anyone is wondering what I think, because I’ve been quoted often on that,” he said. “The administration’s new budget offers a plan to dismantle an ongoing program, but offers no coherent replacement.”
During the interview Griffin made the case for having a government-run human spaceflight program rather than outsourcing it entirely to the private sector, which the current proposal will do in the case of Earth-to-LEO transportation. “[I]s there a value for a government-led human space flight program? See, what’s being missed here is that NASA is being taken out of the business of conducting human space flight, and I think that’s wrong,” he said, noting that question has been lost in the debate over various options for launch vehicles and spacecraft. “We need to focus on the larger issues: should NASA… should the US government be leading the human space flight program or not, and what are the goals? I am unsatisfied with the President’s answers to those questions.”
Griffin said he believes that, eventually, commercial providers will be able to perform human spaceflight, but that doesn’t mean the government shouldn’t also have that capability, noting that government-owned ships and planes operate alongside commercial ones. “So, I find it bad policy to put the US government in a position where it is hostage to the services of commercial contractors, with no government alternative,” he said. He’s also skeptical of handing over government money to “so-called commercial firms” who want to develop vehicles with it, but without the same level of oversight as a government-led program. “As a taxpayer, I would ask: in what sense is it appropriate for taxpayer funds to be provided to commercial industry without government oversight? That’s the crux of the issue here.”
He also stated that the Moon should remain the next destination for human space exploration, and only after that should there be missions to near Earth asteroids or other destinations, including Mars. “We need a robust program of exploration; the president’s plan does not offer that.”
Man, why do Constellation supporters never address the program’s single biggest problem: the price tag? Griffin whines about not wanting to see his tax dollars go to commercial industry without government oversight. I’m whining about NASA wanting to spend $40 or $50 billion of our tax dollars to develop a capsule and a medium lift launch vehicle! Which is more wasteful? Sheesh!!
Where to start on this one?? You can already hear our usual suspects typing their usual responses – Oler will say that NASA is all hosed up (as he always does), gewgaw will agree and argue to shut the Agency down, Gaetano will pipe up that he solved all of these problems years ago…
But seriously, Mike has his standard reply that he rolled out again. Of course the gov’t provides funds all the time without oversight!! Ever hear of the FAA?? They are the poster child for “no oversight”. Mike says that the gov’t should have the capability to launch people – like the Air Force has cargo planes as well as ships stuff on commercial aircraft.
Certainly the gov’t has a lot of the facilities and corporate knowledge – how to certify for approach and docking, how to train crews, how to do many things. Right now it looks like most of those people will be sent off to chase some nebulous science projects – which might go away still! Does the Administration (or the Agency) have an idea of what facilities will be needed for these science projects? Or will they be available for use by commercial outfits? Example – Orion was gonna be assembled in the O&C Building – will that be available for Dragon? Or will SpaceX maintain their own building? Where will training be done – will there be a Motion Base trainer for Dragon (etc)??
There is a place for the people and facilites that have been developed (at great cost) and will they be used? Or will commercial outfits re-invent them?
There is so much to say but we’d better stop here. Let the Griffin flame wars begin.
Why not a new space shuttle? Or, wait, we should buy it from India.
http://www.asianage.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7470:india-to-fly-own-space-shuttle-in-a-year-isro&catid=34:top-story&Itemid=59
Nice to see most of the commentators at Ars Technica treating Griffin with the respect that he deserves. Eg, very little.
One part of the interview really made my jaw drop, where Griffin says that “because commercial airplanes exist does not mean the government does not have its own airplanes, because commercial shipping exists does not mean the government doesn’t have its own ships.”
Based on this and other statements he makes, I’m honestly starting to suspect that he does not even know what commercial industry actually is. He doesn’t understand that when private industry makes widebody aircraft and tanker ships, the government does not. The only time the government makes its own airplanes and ships are when the requirements for them are so specialized that they’d be non-useful (or illegal) for private industry’s own purposes – fighter jets, attack submarines, tanks, etc. Otherwise, when governmental and commercial requirements coincide, the government buys from commercial providers. That’s how it actually works in the real world — a place that Griffin seems to have no acquaintance with whatsoever.
Anyhow, end of rant. Griffin’s continuing descent into irrelevance is very satisfying to watch, and probably doesn’t need much more comment than this. I’m tremendously happy with the administration’s new direction, and wish them all the best with it.
I’m not quite as bothered as Griffin at the idea of going all in with commercial for Earth to LEO space flight, though his point about a public option is reasonable and doesn’t deserve the disdain it gets on the Internet.
But he also makes the point, which the defenders of Obamaspace always pass over, that we are abandoning space exploration under the plan. No one, not the least the NASA leadership, has ever provided a proper explanation for that decision other than Obama just doesn’t want to do it.
Mark,
Can you show the evidence for your claim that we are abandoning space exploration? The budget documents seem to tell a different story.
But he also makes the point, which the defenders of Obamaspace always pass over, that we are abandoning space exploration under the plan.
We “always pass that ‘point’ over” because such a notion is palpably insane. And your mindless repetition of it does nothing to ameliorate that.
Vincent, the budget documents actually support me. There is no plan with a destination, time table, or deadline to go anywhere beyond LEO. All Obamaspace does is to do some directionless technology projects with no hint of where or how they will be applied.
Rand – You know quite a bit more about insanity than I could ever learn about (g).
All Obamaspace does is to do some directionless technology projects with no hint of where or how they will be applied.
You either haven’t read the budget, or you are unable to comprehend clear English. There is abundant historical evidence for the latter.
D’oh! Forgot to close tags. The second graf in the previous post is mine.
Mark wrote:
“I’m not quite as bothered as Griffin at the idea of going all in with commercial for Earth to LEO space flight, though his point about a public option is reasonable and doesn’t deserve the disdain it gets on the Internet.”
Wow Mark, I actually almost agree with you on this point. I have always argued that NASA should not have it’s own launch capabilty until they can buy it commercially off the shelf. So NASA should be helping make sure Virgin Galatic and the Space Ship Company are successful. Once those systems have been tested and are operating commercially, THEN Nasa can buy a turn key system and possibly operate it. NASA will have to wait on the orbital side though until there is a commercial system they can buy.
NASA should be doing the grunt work on design and development, then push it into the commercial sector. Constellation has shown us one thing, NASA managment isn’t up to the task, if they were we would have already test launched at this time, or be very close to launching a CEV on an atlas. Can you imagine where we would be at right now if Griffin would have chosen a 3 person lunar capsule and the Atlas?
@Vladislaw wrote @ April 2nd, 2010 at 2:17 pm:
“Can you imagine where we would be at right now if Griffin would have chosen a 3 person lunar capsule and the Atlas?”
Actually since he liked the SRB so much a 3 crew capsule might just have worked fine! A capsule! Not a spacebus…
Oh well…
“but that doesn’t mean the government shouldn’t also have that capability, noting that government-owned ships and planes operate alongside commercial ones.”
And not ONE of which was developed by the government. They were PAID for by the government, but designed & built by private enterprise.
None of this noids ever get that.
“As a taxpayer, I would ask: in what sense is it appropriate for taxpayer funds to be provided to commercial industry without government oversight? That’s the crux of the issue here.â€
Now I am not sure where he saw that there is, or will be for that matter, no government oversight. Where is the contract he’s referrring to? Because as far as I know COTS and CRS have NASA oversight if they serve as examples. And he implemented at least COTS and was probably still in office when CRS started (I doubt they came up with CRS in less than a year after Griffin left NASA).
Let’s parallel that to what say the AF is doing. Do they have oversight of their airplane designs? Do they design the airplanes? Does that approach relinquish all responsibility to the private sector? Do the AF sometime buy commercial off the shelf
?
Political babble…
Man, why do Constellation supporters never address the program’s single biggest problem: the price tag?
Because for the winning contractors high cost is a feature, not a bug. The Constellation contracts have already been won.
(Another poster)
NASA should be doing the grunt work on design and development, then push it into the commercial sector. Constellation has shown us one thing, NASA managment isn’t up to the task
Where NASA has failed (and not just with Constellation) was in the design and development, so it’s hardly helpful for NASA to do that “grunt work”. Research, yes, design and development of operational systems no. As with DARPA and the old NACA. As for the private companies, they are not interested in operating grossly uneconomical white elephants. They are very interested in fat NASA contracts, but that’s a very different story. We can’t privatize an economic fantasy, we can only shut it down when taxpayers grow tired of subsidizing it.
I continue to admire Griffin. What he says makes perfect sense.
…And I also understand that there will also always be other priorities and points of view.
Nelson
Mark R. Whittington wrote @ April 2nd, 2010 at 11:42 am
…
But he also makes the point, which the defenders of Obamaspace always pass over, that we are abandoning space exploration under the plan….
space exploration is not ending under the Obama plan.
What IS ENDING is project and sort of timeline driven special purpose exploration which has no purpose other then to keep a government agency in business and keep civil servants and contractors employed in an effort that means nothing to the rest of America.
YOU use to support such things. As I wrote in The Weekly Standard and you asked to co author the need for a “timeline” and project driven effort has no bearing on todays society because there is no reason for it. You have tried to create one. Creating the myth of the chinese going to the Moon, with your in theory rhetoric garbed “they are going to make us check our passports” or some similar foolishness…is to try and create an Apollo like reason for an Apollo like program.
If the US like the Chinese had the excess cash (in large part because a President who you defended ended the notion of budget surpluses which he inherited) and needed something to burn that cash then your notions might have some logic.
But they dont. Like Sadaams WMD you people have tried and tried to create a reason to do stupid things, and in most part do them stupidly and the American people are just no longer listening.
Robert G. Oler
Oler… I like to read your posts when I need a laugh or two. Did you get a Poloroid of yourself entering the booth when you went to vote for Obama? Bet it’s framed and sits next to your computer- quick give it a big smooch.
“Griffin said he believes that, eventually, commercial providers will be able to perform human spaceflight, but that doesn’t mean the government shouldn’t also have that capability, noting that government-owned ships and planes operate alongside commercial ones. ”
this is the weakest part of Griffin’s argument.
There is no room in an economy built of free enterprise for “government” operating things that private enterprise 1) can do and 2) can make a profit at doing.
The US military has C-17’s C-5 etc that seem at least in theory to do what Delta airlines does…ie transport people. But the capabilities of the C-5 etc are UNIQUE they have almost no equivalent in the public arena…indeed the unique capabilities shaped their design.
If the nation was on a purpose oriented mission to say “go back to the moon” and do it on a certain timeline…then Griffin might have a reason to build design and operate government vehicles. But the effort which would drive such an effort; purpose exploration being done FOR SOME REASON THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SPACE BUT IS FOCUSED ON SOMETHING EARTH BOUND does not exist.
Worse, the effort to operate government vehicles which lift people off the planet and return them safely has proved to be INEPT from the design decision to its execution.
Hence there is no reason for the particular hardware that Griffin’s notions spawned to continue.
BTW NASA will still operate a human space vehicle. ISS.
Griffin is a person with ideas left over from the last century. We need to move on.
Robert G. Oler
Oler – As someone who has represented himself as a military officer you should be familiar with the principle of the objective. There is no objective in Obamaspace. Just a series of disconnected technology projects, likely to be picked off one by one by Congress because they don’t lead to anything.
By the way, to clear the record, it was you who asked me to put my name on the Weekly Standard article, which I was happy at the time to do. I do not appreciate your attempts to besmirch me.
Max Peck wrote @ April 2nd, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Oddly enough I did not vote for Obama Max.
It does not take to many internet keyboard strokes to find that during the campaign I supported heavily John S. McCain (both during 08 and when he ran against Bush the idiot in 00). In fact in 00 I spent a lot of time “on the road” campaigning for him.
A few more keystrokes will reveal that after the FL primary I was one of the first to present arguments that a little known Gov from Alaska should be his running mate.
That last position in retrospect turned out to be one of the two things that undid his campaign however. The 2008 campaign was all about which direction the US was going after a very failed 8 years of leadership. McCain had a problem defining his own vision of the future…and worse Sarah Palin played to the notion of some, that our solutions like in assumptions from the past not in innovation in the future. That and a few other things caused me to really grit my teeth the last month or so…and when Obama won I am not all that “sad” about it.
I disagree with a lot of what Obama has done or proposed (I do however agree completely with his space program I advocated something like it in 1999 in The Weekly Standard) but it is clear that we needed a completely new direction and while “it isnt mine” I am not to terribly unhappy with where it has gone. There are a group of people (you and Mark Whittington are in that group) who believe heavily in the Fox news version of American history and seek solutions to new and evolving problems in a static past.
This has lead us to fiasco’s like Iraq and “Apollo on Steroids”. At the very least with Obama we have broken free of solutions that look to the past and instead summon a future.
I dont know what Obama’s space efforts will lead to…but they can hardly go farther off path then the billions spent on Ares/Constellation with almost nothing to show for it.
Robert G. Oler
“As someone who has represented himself as a military officer you should be familiar with the principle of the objective. There is no objective in Obamaspace.”
I just don’t get this argument. The budget specifically metnions the moon and mars as well as an HLV program to get us there.
There’s no dates, but the VSE said bases on the moon by 2015.
Then it was by 2020.
Then it was back to LEO by 2018 and around the moon by somewhere around 2028 and on the surface maybe by the early 2030’s.
Then let’s look at the other priorities:
Base on the moon? gone, we’re back to semi-annual two-week sorties somewhere around my preschooler’s college graduation. It’s not even Apollo on steroids. It’s more like Apollo on Viagara.
Research to support long-term manned presence on the moon? Gone. Almost nothing is left. Even the simpler projects like new spacesuits and moon buggies that were begun in earnest and even had engineering models are now mothballed.
Commercial Space? The large component of the VSE that expressly stated NASA should use commercial as it’s primary option was stripped down to a subsidized technology development program that didn’t even have cargo contracts attached (and may have lost one vehicle, the K1, as a result)
Mars? I haven’t heard Mars referenced outside the space geek community in years. About the only American drafting plans to Mars is Zubrin, and he ain’t gettin there (sorry Zubrinites).
Along the way we were prepping to sink ISS, thereby defeating the purpose of flying Ares-1 to LEO at all. We were cannibalizing science budgets left and right and still asking for more money and more time, and prepping to sign a bum deal negotiation with the Russians for more time on Soyuz. And on top of that, the Ares 1 was continually stripping the one good peice of the program, Orion, of any useful capability or affordability.
And as for the criticisms on the HLV R&D program in the current program of record, even if Constellation moved to launch Ares-1 by 2015, the R&D phase of Ares-V, which still doesn’t have a stable blueprint wouldn’t have started until the current program of record had completed it’s program. We could pick the vehicle in 2015 and still have an HLV in flight before Ares V even left the drafting board. And for what? Updated versions of engines we already have? Overpriced flights to a place we’ve already been?
I’m sorry, I’d much rather have a plan of attack based on functional capability than a nice date on the calendar that keeps slipping further and further away on a program that has so thoroughly failed to meet it’s objectives that it is actually causing NASA to abandon even some of it’s existing projects.
Mike Griffin is exactly right on this one. The question of architecture is a distraction. The fundamental question is what do we use a $20 billion a year government space program for. If NASA spends $200 billion over the next ten years not to develop anything or the go anywhere, how is that a good use of the tax payer’s dollars?
Abandoning the Moon will have huge negative economic consequences for this country if other nations establish permanent bases on the Moon before we do. Huge!
“If NASA spends $200 billion over the next ten years not to develop anything or the go anywhere, how is that a good use of the tax payer’s dollars? ”
And if you get an answer from him on why Constellation was headed that direction, let me know.
“Abandoning the Moon will have huge negative economic consequences for this country if other nations establish permanent bases on the Moon before we do. Huge!”
Nobody’s getting there before 2025 by the last check I made, and that’s under the horrifically faulty assumption that their own programs won’t be delayed (you know, like pushing back a space station or mid-heavy launcher a year, or not having a pad ready to launch said rocket when it’s done). Even then their programs aren’t currently slated for anything more than the same humdrum sorties featured in both our original lunar program and the most recent failed attempt.
Spare me the chicken little routine.
“If NASA spends $200 billion over the next ten years not to develop anything or the go anywhere, how is that a good use of the tax payer’s dollars?”
Um, isn’t that the path Mike Griffin had us on with what turned out to be an “unexecutable plan”? The idea that we were actually going somewhere was an illusion that still deludes some Constellation huggers. As it was, we’d be lucky to be going to ISS with Ares/Orion in the next ten years, much less the Moon.
The FY11 budget investment in commercial space is most certainly one that will have our country going somewhere (and soon!) The robotic precursor program will certainly pave the way to have humans go to significant places. The investment in new propulsion technologies is all about going somewhere, but not depending on the space equivalent of horses and carriages to do it.
Although the new direction is rather poorly defined right now, the idea that it compromises human space flight is just nuts.
Mark wrote:
“Just a series of disconnected technology projects,”
You keep repeating this like you are stuck in a loop or your buddist and it is your daily mantra you chant.
What does a reusable space based vehicle need that could travel beyond Low Earth Orbit? What is President Obama funding in the 2011 budget?
Ship requirements:
A means of refueling, the budget is funding fuel station technology.
Higher specific impulse engines for in space operation, the budget is funding advanced propulsion for in space operation.
Power systems that go past solar power because of high demands the new systems will require, the budget is funding advanced power systems.
A habitat section for the astronauts, the budget is funding low weight, higher protection, inflatable habitats.
Closed loop life support, the budget is funding this.
The list goes on but you get the point.
If you read the budget I find it impossible for a RATIONAL person who professes KNOWLEDGE of space systems not to see how the tech funding is not connected.
So you must be not taking your meds because you keep repeating a fallecy that virtually everyone I talk to can instantly see and understand. You not being able to understand this must be a conscience choice on your part to purposely NOT understand it just so you can keep repeating that insane line of thought.
Mark R. Whittington wrote @ April 2nd, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Oler – As someone who has represented himself as a military officer you should be familiar with the principle of the objective. There is no objective in Obamaspace. Just a series of disconnected technology projects,..
..
what actually makes Obama’s space policy different from Bush the last or anyone since Ronaldus the Great is that he actually has a space policy that has a principle of objective that is related to 1) space and 2) the American economy.
You and spudis and all the other “THERE IS NO PLAN” heralds all assume that a “date” with a “timeline” is something that has value in itself…and you base this all on the Apollo experience. Experience which had nothing to do with space and everything to do with geo politics (or bipolar politics take ones pick)..and when the objective that was at the forefront was met (we got to the Moon first) it was easy to shut the thing down because it had left no human spaceflight industry that was self sustaining behind.
A date with a timeline is useless unless there is some overriding need to keep to that date and timeline. Instead of “focusing our efforts” (the JFK Rice speech) without an overriding need the effort has become difuse and timid.
What your unrealistic views of politics in general and Obama in particular cannot let you see, is that ANY specific timetable or date made by any administration absent some external reason to do it, will flounder. You have tried to invent one (the Chinese) but it is one that only you and a few other “dangers gather near our shores” xenophobes seem to put any stock in.
Obama’s theory is to create a human spaceflight industry that makes human spaceflight sustaining on its own…and from that the cost drop for the effort; commercial efficiencies are fed into the equation and The Republic actually gets some tax revenue that is really multiplicative.
The “we need a goal” folks (since you seem to try and play amateur military historian) remind me a great deal of Robert E. Lee. Lee never quite understood what the goal was–crush Federal will. Instead he became battle fixated ie winning this or that battle…and it finally got the best of him at Gettysburg. When he should have left on day 1 he got to invested in that goal alone and broke his army in one tactical misjudgment after another; always assuming that his plans “would work”.
What you cannot see (or dont want to, I think it is the later) is that there is no reason to return to the Moon which under any circumstance sustains the effort in this political/economic/and social environment. Worse there is no reason to return to the Moon which under any circumstances along with it creates a human spaceflight infrastructure that sustains past that goal.
And in that you are again like Lee. Even had he “won” at Gettysburg, he was not going to burn Washington or do anything that would have altered the federal course of the war. His army would have still been broken, unable to continue to any other objective; all while the Federals did nothing but get stronger. Win or lose, he lost and in losing he simply ended it. Meade was in a better position to execute the Lee strategery then Lee was.
At somepoint you should learn some military history before trying to use it.
As for TWS article you asked to be on it, but the argument is a he/she said. In any fashion you consented to being on the masthead; a courtesy that was offered and the masthead was a policy statement that in all respects outlines the policy; you are now against.
Robert G. Oler
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ April 2nd, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Abandoning the Moon will have huge negative economic consequences for this country if other nations establish permanent bases on the Moon before we do. Huge!.
there is no data that any other nation is even remotely thinking about doing what you suggest…it is all speculation
Robert G. Oler
If you read the budget I find it impossible for a RATIONAL person who professes KNOWLEDGE of space systems not to see how the tech funding is not connected.
Ah. You’ve obviously mistaken Mark for such a person.
Mr. Oler,
I’m pretty sure that Dr. Spudis has never advocated a specific fixed timeline for his lunar-first approach; I remember him not to long ago specifically pointing out the original VSE’s pay-as-you-go intention, especially for the unmanned lunar precursor missions that got dumped by the wayside to make room for Constellation. I believe that lumping him in with your so-called “all those other heralds” does him a disservice on that particular point.
Please forgive this long point by point rebuttal to Griffin’s nonsense, but I felt it had to be done:
A decision to go to Mars directly, at whatever time, without taking advantage of the learning experiences available on the Moon and with the space station, is flawed.
What “learning experience”? Cx called for building a base on the moon (which I fondly call ISS 2.0), and then had the audacity to say that said base would be abandoned for a trip to Mars. Cx had no significant in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), which any sane Mars mission would incorporate. The moon is a vacuum with no weathered dust which requires a different and over engineered level of technology.
And to top it off, the Space Station, which Griffin mentions here in some sort of two-faced nonsense, would have been scuttled in 5 years, and science funding was cut on the ISS from the inception of Cx. The ISS was not being utilized with Cx.
So, If Mars is the goal, then the most expeditious way to get to that goal is to have a multi-front…a robust, multi-front space program, where we are using space station and developing the Moon, and with those experiences effectively get to Mars.
That’s exactly what the new direction proposes. Cx was not that in any way whatsoever. You cannot call putting modules on the moon “lunar development.” Lunar development is using ISRU on the moon in a way that is useful toward future space explorers, and the new direction does just that, with robotic exploration and ISRU proof of concepts. There are people within NASA who want to move forward with this with great optimism (and you can quote me on that).
The Russians built a remote controlled robot and ran it on the moon for over a year. It is pathetic that NASA has not done anything in this vein ever in its history, though it was proposed (Advanced Automation for Space Missions).
It may be possible to go to Mars without returning to the Moon, but it isn’t advisable.
The new direction does not say “don’t go back to the moon.” I suppose Griffin is like Zimmerman and stopped reading the budget overview after the first page. No, what the new direction implies (with Option 5B/Flex Path) is that the moon, NEO, and Mars are all options at a given stage in the process.
And the United States bypasses the Moon at its peril, because other nations—as they develop space capability—will not bypass it.
With robotic ISRU on the moon the United States is ensuring that the United States has a long term presence on the moon, while developing technologies to actually “develop space capability.” Cx was not, under any circumstances, developing that capability.
the experience of learning how to live on another planet only three days from home, I think, is enormously valuable
Such technologies and such experience can be gleaned far better here on Earth and on missions to NEOs or Martian moons. The path envisioned by Cx was *not* in any way essential for a Martian expedition.
In my view, the proper goal is an aggressive program to return to the Moon, and learn how to use it
If Cx actually used the moon other than a platform to assemble ISS 2.0 style modules, then certainly I would agree that that is a noble goal. But Cx doesn’t do that, period.
We need a robust program of exploration; the president’s plan does not offer that.
The new direction is the first time in nearly a decade that NASA has even considered actually exploring again.
I find it bad policy to put the US government in a position where it is hostage to the services of commercial contractors, with no government alternative.
Like the US government is already held hostage to cost-plus contractors who put it into space an order of magnitude more expensive than fully commercial operations? Like the US government who was held hostage when Katrina hit and the tank construction infrastructure was heavily damaged requiring copious amounts of tax-payer money to return it to operation? Under a commercial space program you are not held hostage, because you have competing groups making a vehicle, and you have options with who you’d chose. As of now NASA is already held hostage, given the amount of lobbying being done by those who are behind Cx and STS, and the senators and congress-people who are decrying the new direction at the sake of America’s future space program.
And so, we were in a position, and still are, where it’s necessary to retire the shuttle in order to have the money to develop anything new.
It’s necessary to retire the Shuttle because it killed two astronaut crews, and we have a commitment to complete a space station that the scientific community and manned space flight as a whole can benefit from. Once the ISS is complete there is no need to continue flying outdated hardware that is unsafe. (And if anyone questions this; remember that every flight of Shuttle requires a backup.)
If the government is the only customer in a so-called commercial service, then how is it commercial?
The leading commercial providers have more private contracts than government, by a huge margin.
As a taxpayer, I would ask: in what sense is it appropriate for tax payer funds to be provided to commercial industry without government oversight?
That’d be remotely true if COTS-D companies were trying to undermine the man-rate requirements of their vehicles. But we see that this is frankly not the case, and that NASA has ultimate oversight over the vehicles on which their people will eventually launch.
The only significant difference is that one way of doing things is cost-plus, the other is milestone based. It saves taxpayer money by more than an order of magnitude, because the companies themselves take the brunt of the risk rather than making it so that taxpayers take the risk, as Ares I would have done to the tune of $40 billion dollars.
Obama’s theory is to create a human spaceflight industry that makes human spaceflight sustaining on its own…
To Obama’s credit, he has never expressed any such economic fantasy.
I think what it comes down to is the exact wording of the goal for NASA as offered in the review of human spaceflight: to chart a course for human expansion into the solar system. Until that goal becomes: to expand humanity into the solar system, not just chart a course for it, the “let’s hurry up and go” people will never be happy. Griffin was a hurry-up-and-go kind of person.
Trent wrote:
“Griffin was a hurry-up-and-go kind of person.”
Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration outlined a hurry up and go agenda. Griffin, with every single choice, was the exact opposite. Anything and everything that could slow down the project were the choices Griffin made. In the VSE it called for a lunar landing as early as 2015 Griffin only missed that mark by almost two DECADES. If that is hurry up and go thinking I would hate to see what constellation was going to look like if he had chosen to go slow.
Vlad, don’t confuse incompetence of management for intent.. I’ve done that rant before.
[…] Space Politics » Griffin on government versus commercial human … […]
“And not ONE of which was developed by the government. They were PAID for by the government, but designed & built by private enterprise.
None of this noids ever get that.”
Government owned aircraft such as the JSF are designed and built just like any spacecraft. The USAF has as much oversight into those types of aircraft as NASA does into Orion.
Vlad, don’t confuse incompetence of management for intent..
Good intentions and two bucks will buy you coffee at Peet’s. Or a road to hell.
just 12 days left to the Florida Space Summit http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=356261201268
space summit, sure they’re not going to delay until May 11?
From the FY2011 budget summary:
“Most important, we are not ending our ambitions to explore space. In order to explore new frontiers, we are launching a vigorous new technology development and test program that will pursue game-changing technology development that can take us further and faster and more affordably into space.”
I look upon this as yet another excuse to spend lots of money with little to show for it. Here we have the language of beginnings. That made sense when we had little hardware, no experience, no track record…I.C.G.O&O. but since then the above has been continually done by NASA, year after year after year since July 1958. Further: are they really so naive as to consider that “new” will be more “affordable”? Sorry, but…”it ain’t necessarily so”; and only if you have more money to spend in any case.
Most of the results of previous research are now just “archives of interest to the Space Cadets”. One of them resulting in the “backrooms revolt” of DIRECT: studiously ignored or countered with another NASA research-based proposal by NASA top brass to save face.
We’re now proposing to do it AGAIN?!? How is THAT going to make things faster?! I think there is sufficient knowledge base: e.g ION-based and MHD sustainer engines such as VASIMR are getting on for SIXTY years old; chronically underdeveloped power supplies such as fuel cells and RTOGs also 40+ years old. The technology employed by Space X and OSC equally so. New propellants? Like there hasn’t been any research on those already? In-orbit propellant depots: did that in the sixties, seventies, eighties etc both within NASA and the Aerospace Industry.
So what’s to research? Start using some of that HUGE technological database available to NASA engineers and translate it into hardware I say.
To give an example of how NASA operates: back in 1970 Rocketdyne built and successfully tested Aerospike KERO & HYDROLOX engines. AIB! Along comes Venture Star/X-33 25 years later. Resurrect the old designs & proof test them into production? Nope! NEW engines of a similar design; cost overuns. Import LiAl Tank-tek from Russia and screw-up X-33 tank construction, overrun costings even more than usual; cancellation. Three years later, VSE. Five+ years after that announcement, more massive cost overruns, a joke of a flight test, schedule slippage up the kazoo…cancel and (yawn) start again with a “NEW” concept.
Analyzing the track record. what are the chances of success before the next President cancels “Obamaspace” and implements a new equally unattainable idea? Virtually a certainty I’d say – with management of the O’Keefe/Griffin/Bolden ilk running things.
Even more so when one divests oneself of experienced hard-working people while incompetent management wriggles out of responsibility and reinforces its personal position in the heirarchy….
Simburg said “But he also makes the point, which the defenders of Obamaspace always pass over, that we are abandoning space exploration under the plan.
We “always pass that ‘point’ over†because such a notion is palpably insane. And your mindless repetition of it does nothing to ameliorate that.”
You’re correct Rand, which is rare in my view on anything having to do with Nasa. If he had said abandoning human space exploration, he would have been correct. Obama is killing HSF in America. It’s nuts to think SpaceX or ULA will go ape sh%t building LEO launchers on their nickel. Those firms will demand guarantees and full funding from the Congress. Why should Congress fund it when there are few district jobs involved? When Shuttle and Constellation jobs are gone so will Congressional support. Obama’s plan will give us the first Congress since 1960 when there are few Nasa jobs in members districts.
My guess is Obama’s April 15 HSF speech will be a defiant defense of his plans and not change many minds in Congress. With the 2010 elections looking terrible for the Dems, Congress will fund Shuttle and Constellation for 2010 and reject Obama’s plan. 2011 will give us another chance to shape HSF for America. Hopefully it will be more intelligent than Obama’s proposal.