My belief is that shuttle derived lift is necessary to win the votes in Congress needed to sustain human space exploration done with federal tax dollars.

Q: Can we do human exploration without HLV, using depots for example?

A: Of course we can, but only if Congress gets on-board since technical feasibility does not equal political feasibility.

The FY2011 budget proposal released February 1st created an opportunity to refute my belief about the political necessity of shuttle derived lift, however in the ~60 days since February 1st it appears only Dana Rohrabacher stepped up to openly support that proposal.

I see FY2011 as having been a trial balloon, testing Congressional waters and looking for political support for an all “commercial” approach and it seems to me Congress isn’t buying.

Thus, proposals for compromise emerge.

Oh well…

You can’t run Shuttle C for $1-2b per year. The fixed costs of the Shuttle infrastructure alone are $2b per year. Actually making/launching stuff costs more. And none of this counts development cost and the time it takes to free up that money in the budget wedge.

Those who demand shuttle-derived heavy lift either:

a) care more about preserving Shuttle-related jobs than exploration

b) would rather wait longer for big heavy lift than start small and use
propellant xfer and storage

It would be a massive change for Obama and there is no reason for him to do that. He is winning.

we will see the 15th isnt all that far away

Robert G. Oler

A friend arranged for us to access the VIP area this morning to watch the STS-131 launch. We were at the Turn Basin site, which is in front of the press area and the famous countdown clock. (It’s where you see the review stands on TV from time to time.)

I filmed the launch but also some of the happenings nearby, which you usually don’t see on TV.

You can watch the video at:

http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/2010/04/sts-131-launch-video.html

And for the paranoid among you who think the government black helicopters are coming to get you, you’ll see NASA’s black helicopter at the end of the video.

“Unfortunately, I believe this new policy direction by the Obama administration to lessen our national commitment to NASA is a mistake.”

If commitment is measured by the amount of funding you receive and President Obama increased funding then his commitment must be increasing.

“By the end of 2010, there will be no space shuttle flights or a manned U.S. space program, and we will be effectively giving Russia and China a monopoly on space flight.”

In 2004 when President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration, “the gap” was automatically created thereby handing over the monopoly to Russia and China, where was his concern in 2004 in opposing the VSE because of the gap it created and the monopoly.

Farming out large portions of the manned space program to private firms is a mistake simply because we can’t guarantee that private firms will have enough capital to fund programs that by their very nature are risky, unpredictable, and subject to huge cost overruns.”

That is exactly what NASA has been doing with Constellation, farming out large cost plus contracts to private firms and creating huge cost overruns.

“There is simply no good reason for putting our manned space exploration efforts on hold for the foreseeable future while our strategic competitors continue their space exploration efforts.”

That is exactly what Dr. Griffin did by the choices made in the ESAS, the program of record is putting our exploration efforts on hold until the 2030’s. I believe that constitutes the “foreseeable future”. If commercial space launches to the ISS in the 2015-16 time frame what will Russia and China explore and how many launches in human space flight?

Russia is launching manned flights about 4 time per year? Of those 12 seats available per year how many are US and European crew and how many are Russian and what is the destination of ALL soyuz flights?

As all those launches goto the ISS Russia will be doing the exact same exploration as the U.S.A.. China will make how many manned flights in the next 5-6 years, 3-6? And where will they be going? Everything I have seen is they will be in LEO and working on a “mini” space station, practicing docking, assembly and EVA’s. The same thing that the US, Europe and Russia will be doing.

Only while the Chinese are doing what we have already done, we will be doing the technology research on the next generation of beyond earth orbit, space systems. Advanced propulsion, advanced power systems, radiation midagation, closed loop life support, precursor missions of support systems, inflatable habitat technology.

you are free to characterize my comments however you want, that is the nature of debate. I stand by them and the fact that Dr. Spudis has succumbed to the “goal driven” Mentality of the past. He does not have a timeline associated with it, but he and his plans meet every other test.

Robert G. Oler