Events, NASA, Other

Briefly noted: letters, speeches, and invites

A few items of interest as anticipation for this week’s presidential space conference at KSC builds:

More letter writing: a letter signed by a number of former astronauts, as well as former NASA administrator Mike Griffin and others, including Gene Kranz and Chris Kraft, criticizes the decision to cancel Constellation and asks the president to “demonstrate the vision and determination necessary to keep our nation at the forefront of human space exploration”. The letter doesn’t dwell on Constellation (indeed, it’s mentioned only once in the letter, in the very first sentence), but instead focuses on the concerns about abandoning human space exploration. “NASA must continue at the frontiers of human space exploration in order to develop the technology and set the standards of excellence that will enable commercial space ventures to eventually succeed. Canceling NASA’s human space operations, after 50 years of unparalleled achievement, makes that objective impossible.”

Also on Monday, Aerospace Industries Association president Marion Blakey called for specific milestones and deadlines in NASA’s new plan in a speech in Florida. “Kennedy didn’t say we’d go to the moon today; he said, ‘this decade’,” she said. “We need clear goals, milestones and dates, the building blocks and metrics of a concrete commitment to human spaceflight beyond low earth orbit.” She also called for a “national space strategy” that would “set out our goals for at least a generation so long-term investments can be made.”

Sunday’s “Save Space” rally in Cocoa, Florida, went off as planned, with as many as 4,000 people attending to hear speeches covering familiar talking points about saving space (or at least saving space jobs in the region). One comment from Florida Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, via the Save Space Twitter account: “we need to go back to the moon by 2015 and to Mars by 2020.” Good luck with that.

As for Thursday’s event, invitations have gone out (some as late as Sunday), so Central Florida News 13 asks, “who’s going?”. Some local officials have gotten invites, but surprisingly, neither Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) nor Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) has gotten one.

26 comments to Briefly noted: letters, speeches, and invites

  • Mark R. Whittington

    “Some local officials have gotten invites, but surprisingly, neither Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) nor Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) has gotten one.”

    That is not really surprising. Neither member of Congress are with the program nor do they realize the awesome wonder that is Obamaspace.

  • amightywind

    Since when is it a surprise that Obama packs his town meetings with his sycophants? Anyone who expects any satisfaction out of this charade will be sorely disappointed. The only way to stop Obama is with blunt force in congress. It shouldn’t be a problem. Opposition is bipartisan and has the support of the public.

  • Major Tom

    The Kranz, Kraft, Griffin et al. letter is just factually wrong. No one is “canceling NASA’s human space operations”. Shuttle is being retired according to the same basic plan that’s been in place for six years now. The ISS program isn’t going anywhere — in fact, it’s operations are being extended by five years. And the prior Constellation plan, which wouldn’t have restored a domestic human space transportation capability until 2017-2019 or started HLV development until 2016 at the earliest, has been replaced by a plan to put in place two domestic providers of human space transportation by 2016 and starts HLV development in 2011.

    Blakey apparently still hasn’t read NASA’s FY 2011 budget request. From flagship technology demonstration missions to robotic precursor missions (both by 2014), it contains multiple “goals, milestones and dates” associated with “building blocks” for “human spaceflight beyond low earth orbit.”

    These individuals and organizations are crippling their lobbying efforts with factually false statements. They have no hope of changing the White House’s course on NASA’s FY 2011 budget request if they don’t understand or acknowledge what’s actually in that budget. They’re just going to be dismissed out of hand.

    FWIW…

  • Major Tom

    “Since when is it a surprise that Obama packs his town meetings with his sycophants?”

    If you actually bothered to read the article that Mr. Foust linked to, you’d see that meeting invites include critics of NASA FY 2011 budget request, like “Brevard County District 1 Commissioner Robin Fisher, who spearheaded the well attended Save Space Rally in Cocoa Sunday.”

    Don’t make stuff up.

    “The only way to stop Obama is with blunt force in congress. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

    At a minimum, you’ll need to:

    — Convince both the House and Senate to redraft their FY 2011-2012 authorization bills, both of which authorize all the funding in every NASA account requested by the White House and incorporate all the major human space flight elements of the President’s FY 2011 budget request for NASA.

    — Convince the chair of the House Appopriations Committee to change his recent hearing statement supportive of the President’s FY 2011 budget request for NASA.

    — Convince the chair of the Senate authorization committee that oversees NASA that his negative statements regarding the human space flight program last year were wrong.

    — Convince budget hawks to cough up something in the neighborhood of five or so billion dollars per year in a time of historically high deficits to restore Constellation, despite a raft of negative reviews from the GAO, CBO, and Augustine Committee.

    — Convince the leadership of the House and Senate to send appropriations bills to the White House that would be veto bait for a President in their own party and threaten higher funding priorities in those bills.

    At a minimum.

    Shouldn’t be a problem.

    FWIW…

  • MrEarl

    Tom, you keep mentioning these DRAFT bills as if they’re carved in stone. We’re still very early in the budget process and anything can and most likely will happen. There has even been some talk that there may not even be a budget passed this year. That will mean a continuing resolution that will keep NASA funding on FY’10 projects, at FY’10 levels.
    As for a Presidential veto, there’s no proof that the president feels that strongly about NASA to expend the political capital on a veto. A “drive by shooting” at KSC on his way to a political fund raiser dose not look like a great deal of support to me or many others.
    This issue is far from resolved and the fight is far from over.

  • Major Tom

    “Tom, you keep mentioning these DRAFT bills as if they’re carved in stone. We’re still very early in the budget process and anything can and most likely will happen.”

    No doubt, but in terms of gauging intent, a bill is worth a thousand statements or quotes. It doesn’t matter what legislators say. What matters is what they write into law. So far, all the actual, legislative indications are that the President’s FY 2011 budget request for NASA will be funded in full, including all the major human space flight elements from that request.

    “That will mean a continuing resolution that will keep NASA funding on FY’10 projects, at FY’10 levels.”

    That’s what a continuing resolution usually means, but the funding in a continuing resolution can be directed however Congress and the White House agree to direct it, and historically every continuing resolution includes exceptions.

    Moreover, attempts to get the Shelby Constellation language from last year’s omnibus appropriations bill reinserted into this year’s bills have failed. That may be indicative of a poor legislative strategy on the part of Constellation’s supports, but it’s probably also indicative of where things are headed.

    “As for a Presidential veto, there’s no proof that the president feels that strongly about NASA to expend the political capital on a veto.”

    The White House doesn’t have to expend any political capital. They just have to threaten a veto in a SAP. At that point, Congressional leadership is going to ask why this NASA stuff is mucking up their spending bill involving multiple, higher priorities.

    “A ‘drive by shooting’ at KSC on his way to a political fund raiser dose not look like a great deal of support to me or many others.”

    It may not be as long as you’d like, but an hour-long discussion and a 45-minute speech is not a “driveby” anything.

    This is not a criticsm of the prior administrations, but for comparison’s sake, it’s considerably more time than President G.W. Bush personally spent on the VSE’s public rollout or his father spent on SEI’s public rollout.

    “This issue is far from resolved and the fight is far from over.”

    Again, no doubt. But historically, the White House leads and Congress follows when it comes to major changes in the direction of the civil human space flight program. There’s no legislative evidence that things are going to turn out different this time around. In fact, the congressional opposition has yet to agree to, nevertheless articulate, an alternative (Constellation, other Shuttle-derived, extend Shuttle, Moon, Mars, etc.) to the FY 2011 budget plan for NASA. The congressional opposition has to resolve that internal issue for the fight to even start.

    FWIW…

  • BrianM

    It is unfortunate that such an esteemed group, who could have made an appropriate plea for a logical change, instead got confused and delivered a very unclear message.

    Constellation had serious technical and managerial problems, and politically it was unsupportable over the long term. Since so many of these signatories lived through the shutting down of Apollo, which was also politically unsupportable for exactly the same reason, they should have known better.

    Constellation is not something that anyone should be trying to reinstate. Constellation as it was being designed and as it was being run would have most assuredly killed US human space flight.

    We have a human space flight program today; it is Shuttle and Station. Both offer tremendous capabilities today, and both offer tremendous opportunities for tomorrow.

    We’ve successfully headed off the Bush/Griffin plan to shut down ISS prematurely. NOW, IMMEDIATELY, we need to do the same for Shuttle and KEEP SHUTTLE FLYING AND ITS PERSONNEL ON THE PAYROLL FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE

    Shuttle and the heavy lift capability that could easily and inexpensively be derived from it, is what we stand to lose.

    Constellation was lost from the start and these people are trying to save it ?

    This letter does a great disservice by not having kit the nail; instead these people are confusing the message and they have wasted an important opportunity to make the case.

  • amightywind

    BrianM wrote:

    “NOW, IMMEDIATELY, we need to do the same for Shuttle and KEEP SHUTTLE FLYING AND ITS PERSONNEL ON THE PAYROLL FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE”

    That’s an attractive idea assuming we don’t incinerate 7 more astronauts in the interim. The Ares I and V are significantly and logically shuttle and Apollo derived. I would happy if we could go back to quibbling and backstabbing about Direct, or shuttle derived, or Constellation or any other architecture. But I think we agree it is nuts to disperse tens of thousands of space professionals while the hobbyists get their 15 minutes of fame for the pleasure of the nihilists in the Whitehouse.

  • Vladislaw

    ” while the hobbyists get their 15 minutes of fame ”

    Wouldn’t it be great if every hobbyist had 100’s of millions of dollars to invest in their hobbies?

    The dictionary defines hobby as:

    “an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation”

    As just about all aerospace companies do it full time and as their main occupation they are no longer considered a hobby.

  • BrianM, what Major Tom and amightywind both have in common is that they both continue to ignore the inconvenient fact of US law.

    “It is the policy of the United States that reliance upon and use of non-United States human space flight capability shall only be undertaken as a temporary contingency in circumstances where no United States-owned and operated human space flight capability is available, operational, and certified for flight by appropriate Federal agencies. The Congress reaffirms the policy stated in section 501(a) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2005 (42 U.S.C. 16761(a)), that the United States shall maintain an uninterrupted capability for human space flight and operations in low-Earth orbit, and beyond, as an essential instrument of national security and the ability to ensure continued United States participation and leadership in the exploration and utilization of space.” – S3068

    Not much has changed with regards to the ‘stated’ will of Congress in five years.

    Only Augustine Option 4B enables the President to adhere to this existing law because the Committee found that ‘all’ other options (4A, 5A, 5B and 5C) produce a significant gap, including the PoR even at a a significantly higher funding level. Not to be out done, the Feb 1st plan doesn’t adhere to this law either.

    What part of ‘uninterrupted capability for human space flight’ is not clear? Either change the law or select the one solution that adheres to it.

    Norm and Dr Crawley get it.

    Representative Kosmas: “of the options that you have forwarded to the administration, which one in your opinion offers the best protection for the human space flight workforce and the industrial base that we currently have?”
    Dr Crawley: “The options that have some variant or another that — that preserve — that extend the shuttle, or shuttle heritage systems do tend to preserve the workforce capabilities preferentially.”
    Norm Augustine: “We did look at that. That’s option 4B. And the recertification that we pointed to was the one that followed the recommendations [of the Challenger failure analysis] sic, the CAIB. And that option is present. It is, as my colleague says, is the one that’s probably the least disruptive to the ongoing workforce. And it’s also the only option that closes the gap.” – House Hearing, September 15, 2009

    Norm Augustine: “We looked at a lot of options to try to close the gap. And it’s our view that the gap is likely to be more like seven years instead of the five years that people have talked about. The only option we can find, viable option, to close that gap is to continue to operate the Space Shuttle. – Senate Hearing, September 16, 2009

    Thanks to the work of the Augustine Committee we now know that there is only one viable option that will adhere to the existing law. The only question is will the Congress finally realize this, unite and then stand its ground in support of the one solution that actually adheres to the laws they have passed repeatedly or will they divide their support among various non-solutions (including the PoR and Feb 1st Plan) that are outside the law as determined by the Augustine Committee?

    If just half the Congress would simple get behind the one Augustine option that can actually implement the laws they have already passed this debate would pretty much be over right now. If 2/3 of Congress gets behind this one option then there is nothing the President can do about it. The stated will of the Congress will become the official and funded policy of the United States Human Space Flight program.

    Or the President could simple adhere to his campaign promise to close the gap by using additional Space Shuttle flights and accelerate the Space Shuttle’s replacement.

    The moral high ground is there for either President and/or the Congress to take ownership of right now. It’s been sitting in the same spot now for over five years. In fact the spot hasn’t moved since 1978 when NASA engineers first proposed an inline HLV based on key elements of the Shuttle Industrial base.

  • Major Tom

    “BrianM, what Major Tom and amightywind both have in common is that they both continue to ignore the inconvenient fact of US law… What part of ‘uninterrupted capability for human space flight’ is not clear?… If just half the Congress would simple get behind the one Augustine option that can actually implement the laws they have already passed this debate would pretty much be over right now”

    First, that language contains a “contingency in circumstances where no United States-owned and operated human space flight capability is available, operational, and certified for flight by appropriate Federal agencies” that’s big enough to drive a truck through. It ties no ones hands.

    Moreover, even if that language was binding, Congress has repeatedly ignored it for five years running, failing to meet NASA annual budget commitments necessary to execute the VSE plan on time — which started with a four-year gap.

    It’s toothless language that Congress itself ignores. I wouldn’t hang my hat on it.

    “The moral high ground is there for either President and/or the Congress to take ownership of right now… In fact the spot hasn’t moved since 1978 when NASA engineers first proposed an inline HLV based on key elements of the Shuttle Industrial base.”

    What is “moral” about an “uninterrupted capability for human space flight” or an “inline HLV”? These are programmatic choices, not a debate about the nature of good and evil.

    FWIW…

  • eh

    I guess they didnt learn anything from the Moon by 2020 business. Make believe targets and schedules don’t always mean anything.

    And listening to Bolden when he says he needs time to generate the path is too much to ask for some I suppose. Griffin got 18 months for ESAS.

  • Major Tom: “First, that language contains a “contingency in circumstances where no United States-owned and operated human space flight capability is available, operational, and certified for flight by appropriate Federal agencies” that’s big enough to drive a truck through. It ties no ones hands.”

    Last time I checked the Space Shuttle is owned by the United States and still operational? John Shannon has stated on multiple occasions that he doesn’t know of anything they aren’t already doing every time they get ready to fly that would be included in a stand down/re-certification effort. The Space Shuttle is processing and flying as clean as it ever has right now. Better the devil you know. The sooner we get Orion on top of the Jupiter the better though.

    Major Tom: “Moreover, even if that language was binding, Congress has repeatedly ignored it for five years running, failing to meet NASA annual budget commitments necessary to execute the VSE plan on time — which started with a four-year gap. It’s toothless language that Congress itself ignores. I wouldn’t hang my hat on it.”

    I agree with you on that one which is why we have been so frustrated with both the Whitehouse in Congress during the Griffin Era which was clearly on a path to violate this provision because ironically Ares-1 and Ares-V weren’t adhering the SDHLV provision contained within the same authorization. Oh and it didn’t fit the budget based on NASA own external numbers, BTW the actual internal numbers were even worse.

    The question is, as the day of execution gets closer for the Shuttle Industrial base, American HSF, and the workforceeeee will the Congress finally give full force to the this provision of the law that they have passed repeatedly. Or will everyone in DC just ignore it but keep it in place?

    As a citizen it sure is getting hard to tell which laws are real and which ones are fake. Outside the beltway we actually believe that words mean things. I certainly will not disagree with you that Congress sure seems to be ignoring the laws they have pass. If so how are we little people to tell which ones they will force and which ones they don’t care about? Why should a law that funds or cancels something be executed and another one be ignored? If true than this unfortunately means that we are now ruled by men and not the laws passed in open debate by our representatives at this point.

    Heck the Constitution is just a piece of paper with a bunch of words “They’re more like guidelines anyway”

  • MrEarl

    The cries against this fiasco that the President and others to end US manned space flight keep getting louder.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36470363/ns/nightly_news/

    Like I said earlier:
    This issue is far from resolved and the fight is far from over.

  • Enon

    “As a citizen it sure is getting hard to tell which laws are real and which ones are fake.”

    And as you mention in your post, its hard to determine which programs and vehicles, schedules and budgets are real and which are fake. Excellent example: Ares 1X.

    Fact is Shuttle is operational now and can be continued. We’ve been flying it without “incinerating astronauts”, per amightywind above for several years since Columbia. Columbia was as much a management failure as a technical failure. Shuttle is real. Shuttle is operational. There is no reason to not continue it for the time being Turn the development of a follow on Shuttle-derived heavy lift over to a competent development team. Without that, there is little real capability to do these technology development missions. And any ARES, if we could have afforded it, was decades away.

  • Griffin got 18 months for ESAS.

    Griffin was appointed in the spring of 2005 and the ESAS results were announced in September.

  • Rhyolite

    Frank Morring at AW&ST is reporting that Orion is going to get a reprieve:

    http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/space/

  • MrEarl

    The president is going to have to do much better than that.
    How is Orion going to be launched and what are the capabilities?
    Decide on heavy lift in 2015?! WTF?! What is there to decide? Do you want to be a space faring nation or not. If you do you need heavy lift.
    We created a heavy lift vehicle that used kerosene for it’s fist stage 45 years ago, we have one now that uses liquid hydrogen. Take your pick and move on.
    More and more people are seeing this “plan” for what it is, a way to kill US human space flight and redirect the money in future years.

  • Do you want to be a space faring nation or not. If you do you need heavy lift.

    No, you don’t.

  • Major Tom

    “How is Orion going to be launched…”

    On EELVs, per Borenstein’s article:

    news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100413/ap_on_sc/us_sci_obama_nasa

    “Decide on heavy lift in 2015?! WTF?! What is there to decide? Do you want to be a space faring nation or not. If you do you need heavy lift.”

    It’s not a decision on whether or not to pursue an HLV. It’s a decision on what HLV design to pursue. See the White House talking points released to Florida Today:

    floridatoday.com/assets/pdf/A9155579413.PDF

    FWIW…

  • Enon

    Well the Orion lite is useless for crew since they’ll be riding up on others’ rockets and coming down the same way. Maybe it will be usable as a way to get ISS science returned ?

    Up until now I really did not think the Obama plan was a way to kill human space flight, but this new corruption of a plan makes it pretty obvious, that is his goal.

  • Major Tom

    “Well the Orion lite is useless for crew since they’ll be riding up on others’ rockets and coming down the same way.”

    It’s for crew rescue (at least initially), not crew transport.

    “Up until now I really did not think the Obama plan was a way to kill human space flight, but this new corruption of a plan makes it pretty obvious, that is his goal.”

    Yes, because you havn’t bothered to read the Florida Today article or the White House talking points and understand why NASA is pursuing Orion-lite (and commercial crew and ISS extension and HLV acceleration and human exploration technology), there’s obviously a huge conspiracy against human space flight afoot.

    Oy vey…

  • googaw

    It’s still the Obama budget but with more of the money, or at least more of the hype about the money, going to the swing states Florida and Colorado with their noisy taxpayer-funded unions and union-funded pols.

  • DCSCA

    “We are not a nation that scales back its aspirations.” – President Obama, March 23, 2010. Hmmm. That may be true for healthcare, but for manned spaceflight, it doesn’t seem so, Mr. President.

    Bear in mind that President Obama was all of 8 years old when Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar surface. The President has no real personal connection to the decade long march to the moon and by the time he was 12, the Apollo program was over. Anybody 45 or younger doesn’t in the general public and most are unfamiliar with the particulars of space policy. Their benchmarks are Challenger– and Columbia. Their perceptions are of astronauts in diapers chasing down spurned lovers or old moonwalkers making dancig fools of themselves on national television. (Ever see Lindbergh do a game show?) Not really the rightest of stuff. Furthermore, the people President Obama has to depend on for recommendations- his staffers- were in diapers or not even born to have witnessed the golden age of American manned spaceflight. It’s literally the stuff of museums to them, collecting dust down the street at the Smithsonian.

    The true culprits in this unbelievable decision lay squarely at NASA itself and the turf wars between bureaucrats in the aerospace industry like Michael Griffin and Lori Garver. What NASA really needs is another Vom Braun and a new generation of general purpose spacecraft. Something similar to Soyuz, a space vehicle that has been flying basicly unchanged atop a rocket that’s similar to the one that lofted Vostok and Sputnik. Cernan once said of it, borrowing from an old VW ad, “It’s ugly, but it gets you there.”

    So in the short term, fast track Orion, man-rate and launch it atop existing liquid LVs and get it flying in five years. In the midterm years, perfect a lander and plan a lunar base. Make a return to the moon the ‘Gemini’ program of a long term plan to head for Mars. Keeping two guys alive for a couple of days at a time over six different moon landings isn’t much experience to make the jump to Mars. No sir. Perfect a long term lunar facility then extrapolate that experience for a trip to Mars. That’s a whole lot of manned space program for the next 30 years.

    Then sell the U.S. stake in the ISS to China. There already was a ‘space station’ in orbit– the moon. That aerospace works project should not have been built to orbit the Earth but been assembled and firmly anchored to the Ocean of Storms.

  • […] Industries Association president Marion Blakey, who called for clear goals and a national space strategy in a speech earlier this week, was “encouraged” by the updated plan, in particular the […]

  • @DSCCA…. YOU ARE RIGHT ON THE MONEY, with this comment!!! The Moon is a vastly better destination than an asteroid would be!! Obama’s space plan stinks, because it excludes the Moon entirely. Yeah, right,…we’re going to plant manned bases on far distant asteroids, and repeatedly send return missions by the 2020’s, but the Moon is going to be completely empty & devoid of human activity?! This Obama scenario is an awful nightmare!! All because of the Anti-Moon zealots out there, who fabricated Flexible Path in the first place!! All because they hate the Moon so much. We must get Congress to veto President Obama on this critical matter!! The Moon should be revisited, ahead of any gigantic, oversized pebble!

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