Nearly six years ago, several months after President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration, a group of space organizations announced the formation of the Space Exploration Alliance (SEA), a loose federation designed to drum up support for NASA’s new space exploration mandate. The SEA is best known for running a series of legislative “blitzes” on Capitol Hill, where members of SEA’s organizations have briefed congressional offices on NASA’s exploration plans, but little else beyond that.
Now, a few months after the release of the FY11 budget proposal that redirected NASA’s exploration plans, a group of organizations have also come together to support the agency. A “Joint Statement by Space Organizations on the FY 2011 NASA Budget” is a one-page document endorsed by a dozen organizations. In the statement the organizations endorse the topline FY11 budget for NASA and “increases in science, aeronautics and technology initiatives”. They continue: “We believe this is an opportunity for NASA to craft the exploration strategy in partnership with science and applied science that includes the International Space Station, safe and cost-effective access to low earth orbit, robotic precursors, and other missions.”
The statement doesn’t delve into specifics about the plan, though. While it states that “destination, milestones, engagement and story matter” for human exploration, it doesn’t specifically endorse the president’s statements last month about mounting a human asteroid mission by 2025 or Mars orbit mission a decade later. The statement also endorses “safe and cost-effective access to low earth orbit” but doesn’t explicitly support commercial ventures to provide that access, a key part of the agency’s new plan.
The document might be deliberately vague to attract a broad cross-section of organizations, which range from advocacy organizations like the National Space Society, The Planetary Society, and the Space Frontier Foundation; to academic and research organizations like the AAAS, American Astronomical Society, and the American Society for Gravitational and Space Biology. Some of those organizations are not part of the SEA, while some SEA organizations are not signatories to the joint statement (including the Mars Society, whose leadership has been critical of the new plan.)
The statement grew out of a closed meeting NASA held with leaders of a number of organizations in Washington a few weeks ago. It’s not clear if these organizations will do anything more jointly to support the plan beyond yesterday’s statement. But then, SEA did not do that much to harness support for the Vision, and has been relatively quiet about the new plan: the latest update on their web site is a statement congratulating Buzz Aldrin for appearing on “Dancing with the Stars”.
This “joint statement” is certainly vague, but is also a pretty sad piece of writing. Most of what they say they agree on is pretty much the party line for anyone. I suppose they could have also agreed that there is no air in space, or that rockets should be pointed upwards, rather than downwards. The only serious point they make is (as quoted above) the importance of partnership in exploration strategy. Yes, this statement will go well next to the congratulations to Buzz on his dancing.
The idea of someone like Lou Friedman getting up in front of an audience and reading this out loud is laughable. Unless maybe his topic is how space advocacy organizations can waste their time.
US international space cooperation should be withheld from all except firm allies. An argument can be made for Japan/EU cooperation. No argument can be made for cooperation with emerging enemies Russia or China.
The joint statement on President Obama’s space plans is a very weak and probably meaningless statement. But it’s understandable in that most of these supporting groups signing this statement or their members will benefit from this plan.
However, the general public will probably not benefit in this “slow walk in the park” program.
The people who support a rapid, aggressive space program with manned missions beyond Earth orbit should thank the Mars Society leadership and others for their stand.
Jeff (and Doug, re. your comment) may miss the point of getting these groups together. AIAA is the space engineering community. AAAS is much broader — is the American science community! You have the largest science organization, the larges space interest professional society and the largest popular interest space organization plus others on this. By coming together we have undercut the notion that you might otherwise have after listening to individuals and Congressional representatives from a few contractor areas — viz. that the space interested community is opposed to the new plan. It is not. The President and Congress need to know that. There will be plenty of time (unfortunately) to work all our favorite specifics into the plan.
Quasar — you are right that I might not enjoy reading it out loud. But I am working hard to get others (not space folks, but outside) the choir to read it themselves.
Space Advocacy has been toothless for as long as I can remember. This statement which is long on vagueness is certainly proof of that. It’s a mom and apple pie manifesto without having to be specific.
If there was really a Space Advocacy sector, groups would be picking apart Obamaspace and would be pointing out it’s flaws and demanding that they be fixed.
Lou, I support what you were trying to say in this joint statement. But the statement as written is virtually meaningless. How much effort was actually expended on this? Is this really the result of some serious deliberation, trying to come to terms with different perspectives? Or is it just something someone quickly knocked off, with the intention of being as vague as possible in order to assure that the others would quickly sign it? Sure smells like the latter.
I’ll repeat. Most of what is in here, no one would disagree with. So if it’s trying to prove something, it’s that these organizations don’t not like the new initiative, rather than that they do. So you like the top budget line? Nice. That doesn’t say you like any of the plan under the top budget line. So you think that human space exploration and research are important? No one serious disagrees with that, though some would argue that the first is unimportant in doing the second.
I agree it has some small marginal value to say that these organizations support the President’s proposal. The names on the list (and not on the list) are the real statement.
If there is any news here, it is the fact that the AIAA has put its name on this statement of support. They are clearly walking away from the position of the contractors and the special interests.
Perhaps the other surprise, to me at least, is that the Maryland Space Business Roundtable has taken a public position. I expect they will communicate their position to Babs.
The support by AAAS, AAS, USRA, AURA, ASGSB, AU, is obviously not a surprise … but is nice because they are less vocal in taking positions than other organizations.
Planetary, NSS, SFF, and CSF have already been (and continue to be) quite vocal. Each of them individually makes much better better arguments than statements by committee. Clearly any of them could have individually written a much better statement, and could even have done so if it was just the four of them.
Also notable is who has NOT signed the statement.
* Mars Society. Becoming increasingly irrelevant.
* Space Foundation. This is quite notable. They have a two decade history of being “cheer leaders” for whatever the existing program is, and now appear to be changing their stripes, or at least showing their true stripes. They are proving they are captured by the special interests of a few of the big companies.
Considering how dependent the Space Foundation is on federal largesse, this is extremely risky on their part. For example, their annual conference depends upon their ability to bring senior government leaders to the event. If the senior government leaders stop showing up, the reason anyone would pay ~$1,000 registration fees (on top of the other expenses), and the justification for huge corporate sponsorship fees, will begin dissolving.
Perhaps other organizations, and their events, could benefit by this mistake on the Space Foundation’s part.
Who is going to the AIAA Space 2010?
FWIW,
– Al
AIAA is hosting the Exploration Enterprise workshop with ESMD next week in Galveston. A huge meeting that really kicks off the new plan. That’s a better sign of AIAAs investment in and support for the new plan than signing this weak joint statement.
As to Mars Society, yes, increasingly irrelevant. Of course, Bob Zubrin wouldn’t be caught dead reading a statement this vague! As to Space Foundation, I can only suspect that the joint statement organizers wanted to steer clear of what is essentially an industrial consortium. That’s understandable.
They are proving they are captured by the special interests of a few of the big companies.
Hardly a shock, considering the source of their funding.
In a rare moment I agree with Whittington that space advocacy is toothless.
The reason of course is that space advocacy has never quite figured out a way to advocate for their entitlement (particularly in human spaceflight) that is coherent with the American public.
When the last shuttle goes “wheels up” we will be at the end of half a century of big government exploration for the purpose of having a big government exploration program.
The attempts to resuscitate Human space exploration and the Constellation program have been amusing and somewhat pathetic. From the Chinese are coming to “we have to have NASA subsidize the DOD budget (now that is wierd).
I also understand the vagueness of the statement. The folks who actually do exploration now, the uncrewed programs would be wise to not get to close to the sinking ship of human space exploration.
This is an entertaining effort (the joint statement) but it changes nothing.
Robert G. Oler
“coherent with the American public”
I agree the dream is not alive. I always thought if Gemini had flown that jetpack and we had something besides White flailing around early on that would have captured some imaginations. NASA PR never was any good. That MMU was a priceless chance to get some Buck Rogers aerobatics into the public eye but it was wasted. How about that new window in the ISS? I would have a clip of that playing in movie theaters with the coming attractions. What about zero G public service announcements? Space Advocacy might be more effective if we could get some exposure.
NASA PR never was any good.
They always believed the missions would be high profile enough, so there was no need for effective PR.
The public is more jaded now-a-days.
Gary Church wrote @ May 21st, 2010 at 12:02 pm ..
with all due respect it is the sort of “flying backpack” stuff that in my mind turns off the American people.
NASA has spent 50 years (OK 40) doing “stunts” and the “stunts” dont work all that much with the American people.
HSF needs a reason to exist that is not “Oh wow”.
Robert G. Oler
My Turn Next
That is why space exploration died. For me, space exploration was always predicated on ‘my turn next’. The idea that NASA broke ground and the rest of us were coming right behind them. Hell even Pan America and Hilton hotels thought NASA was mearly opening the door for the rest of America. But as each year went by and NASA insisted that space was solely their providence with no participation by the rest of America and with the death of one school teacher, the final nail was hammered into the dream of space of space for all.
It was that defining moment, after the final tears had fell, that the vast majority of America no longer considered space exploration as relevant to their lives.
“Perhaps the other surprise, to me at least, is that the Maryland Space Business Roundtable has taken a public position. I expect they will communicate their position to Babs.”
That’s telling, actually. MSBR sticks out in this group as being quite different. Where are all the other business groups? Florida? Houston? Either MSBR organized this joint statement, or they were asked specifically to be a part of it by someone who wanted it done. Someone who needs Maryland to be conspicuously represented in it, and who cares not about words but about signers. Not hard to figure out who she is who might have asked.
“HSF needs a reason to exist that is not “Oh wowâ€.”
Then maybe it will not exist? What other reason is there besides “Oh wow”?
The first time I read about Bernal Spheres- the hollow moon you stand on the inner surface of- I was “Oh wow.” I think “Oh wow” might be the only thing that gets people from here to there. The only reason I can imagine for HSF is a new world, a new life. I do not believe it will be at the bottom of any gravity well. And anyplace that does not have 1G and sea level radiation is not going to be a good place to live. My point is the possibilities of space are shown to the public through “stunts.” If they are done poorly then the possibilities remain invisible, and public support is not there.
Gary,
The problem is you are confusing stunts & demonstrations with actual growth. You talk about a new world and new life, but thats not a stunt. Thats actual change and growth ie the difference between becoming a doctor, and jumping a motorcycle over the grand canyon.
Doug Lassiter: “Most of what they say they agree on is pretty much the party line for anyone. … Most of what is in here, no one would disagree with.”
In the context of comparing the new NASA direction to Constellation and similar approaches, the statements actually say a lot. They don’t say “Constellation wasn’t doing this, and the new budget does” for the various statements, but that’s the implication. Going through the statements 1 by 1:
“We strongly support the top line FY2011 NASA budget.”
In other words, under Constellation we didn’t have and could not get the budget we needed. We have it with the FY2011 NASA budget (assuming Congress goes along and out year budgets follow the plan). It could be that NASA wasn’t getting the budget under Constellation because it wasn’t providing the returns that would justify the budget.
“We believe an important goal of the NASA budget is to accelerate the development of the intellectual capital of the United States by investing in a high-cadence exciting program.”
This shows the big contrast between Constellation’s giant but slow approach that only reaches milestones every 10 or 15 years and the new approach with lots and lots of smaller missions, milestones, and accomplishments happening one after the other (multiple commercial crew competitors, Orion CRV, multiple small technology demonstrations, larger technology demonstrations (starting with propellant depots, autonomous rendezvous and docking, inflatable habitats, closed-loop life support, aerocapture, efficient power, and efficient propulsion), an increasingly capable spacecraft to house technology demonstrations and deliver them (eg: an inflatable hab) to ISS or GEO, numerous small “scout” robotic precursors, several larger robotic precursors, various ISS experiments and additions, various general space technology developments and demonstrations, HLV/propulsion projects, various human research projects and demos, etc.)
“We are excited by the increases in science, aeronautics and
technology initiatives.”
The point is similar here. Under Constellation, science, aeronautics, and technology were under siege. With the new budget the siege is lifted.
“We believe both human exploration and research are important:
destination, milestones, engagement and story matter.”
In other words, Constellation shifted the balance away from research too much. The new budget shifts it back. Also, Constellation wasn’t meeting (and could not meet) its milestones; the new plan is more realistic and at least has a chance. Constellation didn’t engage with the public; hopefully the new plan will. Constellation never told its story about its plans at its destination (at first the Moon) with any competence (a 250-item bullet list is not a story). I think that’s really the fault of the Constellation approach and not the Moon, because there is a good story to tell there. The problem was that Constellation was too expensive for the story (i.e. ISRU, etc) to be believable under that approach, since only the transportation system could get any decent funding.
“We believe this is an opportunity for NASA to craft the exploration
strategy in partnership with science and applied science”
Here they’re pointing out more problems with Constellation that are solved with the new approach. In spite of science being one of the 3 goals of the VSE, under Constellation science was attacked. The new approach fixes that. There are lots of synergies between science and HSF in the new plan.
“that includes the International Space Station,”
The same is true for the ISS. Under Constellation, it was to be destroyed. Now, it will be finished because of the Shuttle contingency funding in the new budget, it will be kept to 2020+, and it will be actually used and added to because the funding is there to do that.
“safe and cost-effective access to low earth orbit,”
This is another devestating contrast between Constellation and the new approach. Ares I with only 1 test and no chance to gain a flight history without astronauts on board would not be safe. Commercial crew can demonstrate itself by flying lots of missions that don’t have astronauts on board (i.e. satellite launches, ISS cargo missions, etc).
On top of that, they are clearly pointing out that Constellation did not give cost-effective access to LEO, and the new plan allows that.
“robotic precursors, and other missions.”
Under Constellation, there was no more money for robotic precursors, and many other missions were being cancelled. With the new budget, lots of robotic precursor scouts and main robotic precursor missions are added, and lots of other missions are also added (Earh observation missions, technology missions, the missions I mentioned above, etc).
“Heavy lift launch and in-space servicing enable new realms of exploration and science.”
This again shows a big contrast. Under Constellation, heavy lift was hardly being funded, and would not until Ares I/Orion were done after many years. In-space servicing was not part of the plan. With the new budget, heavy lift launch is accelerated, and we may very well stumble upon an affordable sort of heavy lift (eg: based on EELVs or other rockets we’d be using anyway) rather than something unaffordable to operate like Ares V. In-space servicing is a big part of the Flexible Path plan we’re now on (eg: at Lagrange points, at depots), and is addressed in the technology demonstration budget.
“We believe it is critically important that the American people can and must participate and be engaged in the journey of discovery and exploration.”
Here’s another solid hit at Constellation. Constellation was very much a closed-door internal-to-NASA sort of effort. Constellation’s message to students: “Just send us money; well get back to you when you’re old.” The new budget includes participatory exploration. It also includes lots of small projects (prizes, SBIRS/STTRS, NASA internships, small research efforts, smallsat missions, commercial suborbital RLV missions, ISS research, etc) that interested members of the public (especially students and small companies) can participate in.
Excellent rundown Red. To expand on what you are writing about technology Bobby Braun laid it out the other day:
“NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun Talks About Technology’s Role in NASA’s Future”
Technology
I agree that it’s a clear signal of support. I also agree that it probably doesnt mean much to Congress, who are only concerned with the jobs fallout in their districts.
.
Gary Church wrote @ May 21st, 2010 at 2:13 pm
“HSF needs a reason to exist that is not “Oh wowâ€.â€
Then maybe it will not exist? What other reason is there besides “Oh wowâ€?….
that is the point of the Obama policy…to try and find solid things that actually make human spaceflight worth doing
Robert G. Oler
“In the context of comparing the new NASA direction to Constellation and similar approaches, the statements actually say a lot. ”
Sorry, but I don’t accept that.
The top line NASA budget is just that. It’s literally one line. You agree with it? Umm, OK. Lotsa billions.
Re “accelerate the development of the intellectual capital of the United States by investing in a high-cadence exciting program”. Well, what Constellation started out to do was put us on the Moon by 2020. It was supposed to be a high cadence, exciting program. Even the Constellation huggers still believe that’s what it is. Ares I-X was supposed to prove that. No one would say that Constellation would not have developed intellectual capital.
Re exploration and research being important, come on. There were some cuts in the NASA science budget, but NO ONE at NASA was saying that exploration and science weren’t important. No one. The science program survived, though not with healthy increases. So, this statement is saying that science is important. Wow. Take that, all you who thought it wasn’t!
Re ““We believe this is an opportunity for NASA to craft the exploration
strategy in partnership with science and applied scienceâ€, they got that exactly right. No complaints.
Re ““safe and cost-effective access to low earth orbit”. Geez. You’re saying that Constellation advocates were hoping for risky and pricey access to LEO? You can argue about what Constellation would have achieved in these regards, but you can’t argue about what the Constellation advocates were saying it would do.
Re your characterization, “under Constellation, there was no more money for robotic precursors”, that’s just balderdash. The whole Mars science program is a human exploration precursor program. Several lunar exploration precursor missions were funded.
Re “heavy lift launch and in-space servicing enable new realms of exploration and science”. Heavy lift WAS an integral part of Constellation. It is not an integral part of the current plan. In fact, we’re admitting we might not really need it. Now, in-space servicing is a good call. Constellation would not have touched that.
Re involving the American people in exploration, NASA has always worked very hard to do that. It’s nonsense to think otherwise, unless involving Americans in exploration means precisely commercial access to LEO. It doesn’t. SBIRS? Internships? Small sats? Huh? You think the new plan created those things?
Now, one can try to apologize for the vague, tepid language in this statement, and look at its implicit messages, but it’s really bending over backwards to do so. The “heavy hits” you point out were with a foam mallet. The problem is what they could have said and didn’t. I do believe in what they were trying to say, and I’m just really disappointed that they didn’t say it. Each of these bullets should have been lead-ins to something more substantial, but they just dropped the ball. Let’s hope future joint statements by reputable organizations have a content smell-test done on them before they are released, and the words are chosen to say what is really meant.
“The problem is you are confusing stunts & demonstrations with actual growth. You talk about a new world and new life, but thats not a stunt. Thats actual change and growth ie the difference between becoming a doctor, and jumping a motorcycle over the grand canyon.”
Ferris, the problem is you are trying to confuse everyone with your lame analogy. They know what I am talking about and so do you but for some reason you want to argue. I am with Mr. Oler on something “solid” instead of “Oh wow” but I if the “Oh wow” is necessary than make it work instead of waste. Women look great with their hair all messed up in zero G. We never see anyone getting interviewed on CNN like that and it is a wasted opportunity. You can see all kinds of things from the ISS like……oil spills. Why not get Americans used to thinking about space as part of our heritage? Vlad is right; my turn next is what lights people up. If we had been sending up something 50 times a year with seven or eight people on it like the shuttle was supposed to, after 30+ years that would be over ten thousand astronauts.
Doug Lassiter wrote:
“Re involving the American people in exploration, NASA has always worked very hard to do that. It’s nonsense to think otherwise, unless involving Americans in exploration means precisely commercial access to LEO.”
I look at like this, Columbus or Lewis & Clark returns and says, “we have a lot more to explore, give us more money and resources than you did for the last time so can explore some more, in the meantime set up roadblocks so no one else can follow us where we have already explored.”
And they keep argueing that no one else should be doing it but them. Year after year, decade after decade. Can you imagine L&C trying to sell that to the government? After fifty years?
There has to come a time when you can declare some area has been explored and private and commercial interests should be brought in. LEO, GEO, Luna, have been explored by the government, now the government should be priming the pump to commercialize the explored territory and bring a return to the Republic for the exploration investment that has been made.
Oh sure. Like commercial spaceflight is going to “involve Americans in exploration”. Perhaps it will, for those very few who have enough money. What most of us interpret involving Americans in exploration is bringing them along for the ride at least virtually, and keeping them in the loop about accomplishments. NASA tries to do this and, in some respects, does it pretty well.
I have no problem with commercial investment in space exploration by our nation, and I think it is a powerful strategy for lowering the cost of access to LEO, but calling it “involving Americans” is misguided.
“Women look great with their hair all messed up in zero G.”
Hey, Gary? This is Space Politics, not Space Fetishes, okay? Thanks.
“Oh sure. Like commercial spaceflight is going to “involve Americans in explorationâ€. ”
Oh sure like commercial oil extraction is going to involve Americans in exploration.
Oh sure like commerical mining is going to involve Americans in explorations.
Oh sure .. oh sure .. oh sure…
Oh .. and I never said americans in exploration, I said commercialize the territory that has already been explored.
What is all the fuss about? The statement is so much “motherhood’ that you can almost agree with it and not actually be at all keen on supporting the new “mission to nowhere”.
I wish the best and most ambitious interpretation of the statement was in fact the new policy, but alas, that’s not true.
There needs to be a much more serious debate on this new NASA vision, but it probably won’t matter much. All space advocacy seem toothless and irrelevant these days. You can get them to “talk the talk’, but self proclaimed “emotionalist” Bolden and his team seem unable to “walk the walk”.
“I never said americans in exploration, I said commercialize the territory that has already been explored.”
Indeed you did. I confused that with the paragraph you quoted, which was about involving Americans in exploration. Moving away from that, yes, of course, NASA has internalized all aspects of space exploration, in areas that commercial developers have potential to succeed if they were given the chance.
“Hey, Gary? This is Space Politics, not Space Fetishes, okay? Thanks.”
Oops. Sorry.
Gary,
Actually, no, we don’t know what your talking about, because your posts tend to ramble, and your words aren’t clear.
Forgive me, but huh? I really don’t know what to make out of that kind of comment.
I would submit they already do. And proof of that can be seen in the fact of all of the space museums, and the like, and the response of people after Columbia.
The problem is that its part of our heritage, like the Liberty Bell, or the Mona Lisa is a part of their heritage – they see it as part of their history, and it feels good to have it, but it doesn’t impact their daily lives, when you compare it to something like the internet, or cars. In otherwords, its not seeing it as part of our heritage, but as part of our livelyhood.
And yes, I do agree with Vlad, about the idea of getting space open. Thats why I like the ideas of Commercial crew, and space tourism. And part of getting space open means figuring out a way to bring the price down so people like you and me can actually take advantage and pay our own way into space
Ferris Valyn wrote @ May 22nd, 2010 at 12:34 am ..
here is the problem. NASA spends a LOT of money on human space flight…and in total since Apollo (which is mostly special) NASA has been living on a 200-300 billion dollar high where WHAT is done never was really important just that something was done.
Space groupies and enthusiast have played their role in this. Assuming the”world” starts in 1980 with the shuttle…thats 30 fracken years of space efforts and a lot of billions but there is no hint that we can somehow start moving from 1 or 2 or 3 or whatever people in space to “something more”.
Yet there are people who are satisfied with the mere presence of a vehicle with the stars and stripes on it…and a few people doing not all that much and…watch the cheerleading for Ares/Orion.
Now it is all ending. The American people ahve run out of interest. There are only so many times one can blow soap bubbles or see women floating with “wild hair” (whats up with that anyway?) or hear some lame explanation about how hard it is to change batteries…(as one kid asked me today “If they were changing all of them out why didnt they just pull the pack?”…yeah).
The price has to come down and what is done has to be made more relevant or the trains are about to come to a halt
Robert G. Oler
Oler, I was saying the other day that if they ever bother doing a call up to the ISS when the shuttle isn’t there I’d like to hear someone ask a simple question “what did you do today?” Last time I tried to answer this question myself I saw things in the timeline like “filled the waste water disposal system tank: 15 mins”. Yeah, makes you wonder how much “real” work they get done up there. Are they just working as hard is civil servants or is NASA’s PR just so horrid that it appears that way? Probably a little of both.
“But then, SEA did not do that much to harness support for the Vision, and has been relatively quiet about the new plan: the latest update on their web site is a statement congratulating Buzz Aldrin for appearing on “Dancing with the Starsâ€.”
Even this is out of date. The aging Aldrin made a fool of himself more recently with a pathetic appearence on Monday, May 17 ‘hosting’ a WWF wrestling event in Toronto. One wonders what aerospace constituency he was trying to reach in Canada with those bulked up cartoonish wrestlers by his side. The ‘highlight’ of this new low was seeing ol’Buzz literally do a dead Michael Jackson moonwalk across a wrestling ring between two oiled up wrestlers. Sad. Next he’ll be cutting ribbons, opening shopping centers.
“Assuming theâ€world†starts in 1980 with the shuttle…thats 30 fracken years of space efforts and a lot of billions but there is no hint that we can somehow start moving from 1 or 2 or 3 or whatever people in space to “something moreâ€. The American people ahve run out of interest. There are only so many times one can blow soap bubbles or see women floating with “wild hair†(whats up with that anyway?) or hear some lame explanation about how hard it is to change batteries…(as one kid asked me today “If they were changing all of them out why didnt they just pull the pack?â€â€¦yeah).”
No interest? The popularity of all things space within the American popular culture, be it flights of fantasy (Star Trek, etc., ) of fact, (Apollo 13) the interest and pride are there. The fact that 30 year old news directors on popular cable channels decide what to expose or not expose the American public to may reinforce your perception, but not the reality of it. Compare the CBS News telecast of a Mercury or Gemini launch, of even Apollo 8 to the early shuttle flight news coverage and you’ll see a marked drop not only in the amount of air time devoted to the broadcast but the drop of technical discussion within the broadcasts. Apollo coverage, in particular, was surprisingly peppered with some above average tech talk for viewers, dutifully explained by Cronkite, than the early shuttle flights, in which th technical content was dumbed down.
Perhaps you should show that child a few days of, say, the Apollo 15 lunar television from Hadley Rille. It is available commercially now in many stores. It still can be riveting to watch, 38 years later, and to young eyes, a fresh experience. It makes the moon a place to want to go, explore and exploit. You can learn something new with every viewing.
“Thats why I like the ideas of Commercial crew, and space tourism. And part of getting space open means figuring out a way to bring the price down so people like you and me can actually take advantage and pay our own way into space”
Figuring out a way to bring the price down? Pay our own way? Ferris, you might have problems understanding why I like women’s hair in zero G but you have much more serious issues if you think you are going to be buying any space clown seats in the near future. My ramblings make more sense than your prophecy.
Space tourism? Pony rides for people who want to play Wild West, not explore and exploit a New Frontier. Suggest pie-in-the-sky backers of private enterprised human space ventures visit the LRC mission image gallery on the NASA website and peruse the overhead snapshots of the lunar landing sites of various spacecraft, especially those for Apollo. In spite of the massive technological efforts they represent, the leavings as they appear today look pretty puny in the context of comparing them to the vast unexplored portions of the moon. Yet these six landings are supposed to satisfy return-to-the-moon critics as representing the place as explored, per President Obama, as we’ve ‘been there, done that.’ Utter foolishness.
Nothing is stopping a private space venture creating a heavy lift launch vehicle, stamping them out and selling them to the government — except finding the private venture capital that will take the risk without socializing the potential loss and inevitable developmental failures along the way.
@GaryChurch- The dream is very much alive. The NASM is still the most visited place in Washington, D.C. Space fantasy games and films are still popular (Star Wars, etc.,) and a decade ago Tom Hanks’ HBO series ‘From The Earth To The Moon’ won Emmys galore and was embraced by fresh generation. It’s alive. It just needs some focus, some strong support, a popular voice and platform for projecting it. Example- there’s no reason why every Friday night the credits at the end of each major network news can’t roll over an image that week from Hubble, the Mars Rovers, or footage from a spacewalk. NASA Select was once a free channel on many cable systems but bumped for HSN-styled programming so they’d make money instead.
@TrentWaddigton – “I was saying the other day that if they ever bother doing a call up to the ISS when the shuttle isn’t there I’d like to hear someone ask a simple question “what did you do today?†”
Quite by chance, many years ago before ISS was up and running, this writer actually DID call and get through to a shuttle crew on orbit — twice, in fact, on two separate missions — during PA events televised through CSPAN. Startled at getting through, both times the same question was posed: ‘What are you doing aboard the shuttle you feel you could do better aboard a space station?’ This writer will leave it to your imagination to discern how they replied.
DCSCA wrote @ May 22nd, 2010 at 2:08 am ..
with all due respect, and I do mean that, in a word “no”.
If I understand your post it basically boils down to “The People liked space in the Apollo era and will today if only it were shown in the same light as it was up to Apollo 11, it is not today, so they dont care about it”. Is that accurate?
The American people as a block, have in a phrase “common sense” or another phrase is “horse sense”.
They might not get, at times the nuances of things, but they are very “common sensible” meaning that they know what they like when they see it, and they also know when they dont like “that” any more.
I was opposed to the Iraq war…almost from the word go. For a lot of reasons but it boiled down to I didnt view Iraq (correctly) as a threat to the US (even if they had WMD and I did not think that they did) and absent a threat, beyond a good doubt, there was no business on our part attacking another country. There were other reasons but that was at its core.
When the Iraq war happened a lot of people who I knew in politics (and were opposed to it on either similar or other reasons) were aghast that the American people “fell in line” (mostly) and were supporting it. There theories were that this support would fade when 1) if only the pictures of those killed were shown, or 2) the numbers of those killed got higher then on 9/11 or 3) the media wasnt in the tank for bush (which it was) or some other notion which never took into account the way the American people react to a crisis and then support that reaction.
About two weeks before BOG the USNI (which opposed the war) put on a seminar and Douglas Brinkely (who was opposed to it as well) talked about how skilled leaders move the American people toward a decision and then noted that the American people will stand by that decision until 1) the basis of that decision is proved to no longer have any reality in their lives AND 2) that the effort that resulted from the decision proves not to have made their lives better or actually makes their lives “worse”.
Oddly enough what he used as an example of this was “the lunar effort”.
The lunar (and HSF) had the support of the American people not because they were “cool on space” (my term) or that there was a real threat in the realm of human spaceflight; but because Kennedy carefully wove it into the political fabric as a focus around which the American people could see competition between themselves and The Soviets. BEcause that was far better then conflict. What is impressive about the effort is not that the American people went along, but that the Soviets did. JFK baited them into a lunar race which they must have known would put them at a disadvantage.
That is a unique set of circumstances and as the falloff after Apollo 11 demonstrates it fell apart very very quickly. The collapse of support had nothing to do with media coverage (indeed the people drove the declining media coverage. The American people just couldnt, after 11 see any value in the effort. In large part because the circumstances which had spawned the effort collapsed.
That is not the view of “space fans”. (sorry I dont have a nicer phrase). They still see the value of a lunar type effort EXTENDED into our current time because they see it as a space focus, not as something that space is on the periphery of. They still see the justifications for it that Kennedy used as (what Brinkely called “eyewash”) as having value. Eyewash it is clear JFK really didnt care about.
When in reality those justifications had nothing at all to do with the effort (it was just “cram it down Ivan”).
This is like the people (and there are some on this forum) who still say “We were justified in invading Iraq because Saddam shot at pilots in the NFZ” (maybe but no one would have talked the people into that being a justification absent “smoking gun smoking mushroom, you are going to die”) or “we freed people” (same thing)…sorry none of those reasons work after 1 trillion dollars 4000 US lives and about 100-200K Iraqis…
There is no Apollo type effort solely on the American people’s love of space.
There is no Apollo type effort without racing Ivan (Whittington tries to drone up the REd Chinese as their equivalent). I dont care how much the American people like Star Trek…not that much.
Why the American people of one period in history can be motivated to do something is always a mystery to the next generation…because they dont live in those times.
Sadly NASA is all caught up as well with being “space fans”. Go ask the civil servants at any NASA center and they are “special”. They do things that make them better then any other federal employee. The folks at Houston Center only make sure the airplanes keep moving. The folks at JSC “take America into space”….As one person at JSC told me on another forum “the astronauts are our heroes”.
maybe on NASA Parkway…but not so much the rest of The Country.
Sorry this is long, but the Apollo era is over. Unless HSF starts paying its freight and figuring out something useful to do. Its winding down.
Robert G. Oler
MW: “Space Advocacy has been toothless for as long as I can remember.”
RO: “In a rare moment I agree with Whittington that space advocacy is toothless.”
BT: “All space advocacy seem toothless and irrelevant these days.”
Thanks guys.
http://www.outofthecradle.net/archives/2010/05/2010-metroplex-moon-day-machinations/
Consider yourselves uninvited.
MW: “If there was really a Space Advocacy sector, groups would be picking apart Obamaspace and would be pointing out it’s flaws and demanding that they be fixed.”
You mean something like this?
http://www.outofthecradle.net/archives/2010/04/so-finally-were-turning-our-gaze-back-towards-the-future/
For those interested and excited about manned exploration of space, then the recent RFI for Flagship Technology Demos outlines a great future.
For example, in the Aero-Assist Demo, NASA proposes a mission to Mars using equipment that approaches the scale that would be needed for manned Mars landings. If the Mars Society would look at this objectively, then I think that they might see something to support.
What NASA is proposing for this RFI is an early test of technology that is absolutely needed if women and men are ever to land on the Red Planet. When was Constellation ever going to test this technolgy? 40 years from now? For those who truly want to see men and women explore our neighboring worlds, then, contrary to what Armstron or Cernan say, the President’s plan is the way to go. Obama is not cancelling manned spaceflight. His team is restructuring it. NASA’s newest BAA and RFI releases show that, if Congress cooperates, we could be entering one of the most inspiring eras of space exploration.
I totally agree with this Administrations new plans for NASA. We all know that the agency’s budget will not suddenly double. We must make do with what the American public is willing to spend. The new plan is just the way to go. I am heartened by the Joint Statement in support of the President’s new direction.
Philip Horzempa
“I am heartened by the Joint Statement in support of the President’s new direction.”
Excuse me, but where in the joint statement did they say that?
“Unless HSF starts paying its freight and figuring out something useful to do. Its winding down.”
Mr. Oler, I can only say that space colonization is useful insurance for the human race. If money is all that matters then we may very well go extinct. As I have said before we are now engineering organisms that could end it all. You paraphrase the same message again and again; stop wasting money. Let me paraphrase my message again; it is not a waste. It is no more a waste than B-1, B-2, V-22, Seawolf, littoral combat ships, jet tankers, anti-sub 737’s, converted seal team boomers, airborne lasers, C-17, C-130J, the latest version of predator, etc. You mention the trillion dollar war. We could just as well as not invaded Iraq and spent a trillion on HSF. All those people would not have died and Haliburton would not have made all those billions. We could just as well have cut back all the useless military projects and spent the money on HSF. We could have built a better space transportation system 30 years ago and sent ten thousand people into orbit by now. We could have…..and we still can.
Robert G. Oler wrote:
“I was opposed to the Iraq war…almost from the word go. For a lot of reasons but it boiled down to I didnt view Iraq (correctly) as a threat to the US (even if they had WMD and I did not think that they did) and absent a threat, beyond a good doubt, there was no business on our part attacking another country.”
What you need to think about is what a rogue Saddam Hussein would have cost the US economy over the decades in oil prices and other mischief in the middle east. Then you will conclude that his hanging was an excellent value. My only regret is the US let Saddam off the hook in Gulf War I.
“When the Iraq war happened a lot of people who I knew in politics (and were opposed to it on either similar or other reasons) were aghast that the American people “fell in line†(mostly) and were supporting it.”
It was beautiful. For a time the leftists were cowed from their normal appeasing, treasonous behavior. GDub could do whatever he wanted. It will happen again too if the country is successfully attacked again.
Space politics- not right wing politics. Stop.
@Gary – “We could just as well as not invaded Iraq and spent a trillion on HSF. All those people would not have died and Haliburton would not have made all those billions. ”
Now, this is a rational comment. Even still, we wouldn’t have done it, mainly because there is no way Congress would have agreed to putting a trillion dollars onto the debt for HSF. But I feel the same as you do about the waste, and of what could have been.
Gary – the thing is, I fully agree with you about things like colonization for an evolutionary backup, tech spinoffs, and the like. The problem is that, for close to 40 years now, that argument hasn’t swayed the public. And you can dislike that fact all you want, but since there really HASN’T been any serious increase in the federal government budget for NASA for a good long time, that should tell you that, its not convincing the people.
And further, I do believe that, while we can get the costs to go down, we’ll need to invest a LOT more into space, if we want to do full on development and colonization. The problem is, if we aren’t going to get more money from the federal government (and you can bemoan that fact all you want, but as I said, that set of arguments hasn’t really swayed the public to spend the money, in 40 years), we have to figure out where we are going to get that money. IMHO, the best bet is the private markets. In otherwords, can’t we pool the private & public money together, in some fashion, and get them working together to build a spacefaring society?
Finally, we can have a lot of discussions about what programs should’ve been done with the money we spent, and I have a lot of imagined alternative histories that could come. But, thats not going to change where we are, so lets not spend too much time bemoaning the loss of Saturn V, or whether the space shuttle was a good decision. If people want to draw lessons, thats one thing, but its entirely another to spend time asking “Why did we do _________?”
Robert Oler wrote:
“I didnt view Iraq (correctly) as a threat to the US”
You weren’t afraid of his scuds and plywood navy?
“what a rogue Saddam Hussein would have cost the US economy over the decades in oil prices and other mischief in the middle east. ”
We were not getting any oil from Saddam. We went into Iraq to protect the petro dollar, not for any other reason. As soon as Saddam switched to Euro he became a threat. You will also notice that within days of Iran announcing they were setting up a seperate market for oil in france and switching to the euro, the saber rattling began against Iran.
Space politics, not left wing politics. Stop
We were not getting any oil from Saddam. We went into Iraq to protect the petro dollar, not for any other reason.
This is both off topic, and nonsense.
You will also notice that within days of Iran announcing they were setting up a seperate market for oil in france and switching to the euro, the saber rattling began against Iran.
This is off topic as well, but on what planet has there been any “saber rattling” against Iran? The Obama administration has essentially taken any military action off the table.
“But I feel the same as you do about the waste, and of what could have been.”
“If people want to draw lessons, thats one thing, but its entirely another to spend time asking “Why did we do _________?â€
I think you are both missing my point; I am not bemoaning what we could have done- I am saying we can still do it. Eisenhower warned us about the defense industry and that is what has taken all the money that should have went to HSF. There is defense spending and there is wasteful defense spending. Defense spending on things like failed recon jets (suntan) and steel balloon rockets (atlas) are what got us into space in the first place, but so much of the defense budget is just people in politics, industry, and the military itself scamming the system. NASA is just a drop in the bucket compared to the Niagra falls of the defense budget. We can have a space program, we just have to bust up the defense industry racket and vote for it. That has a much better chance of making it happen than space clowns and the profit motive. We are negative about it because the big corporations have brainwashed us into believing it is all too expensive. It’s a lie. Fleets of nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines and foreign wars are great for business but they are what is too expensive for the American people, not spaceships.
Gary Church wrote @ May 22nd, 2010 at 11:51 am
Mr. Oler, I can only say that space colonization is useful insurance for the human race..
I can agree with that. the problem is that nothing in the 1/2 trillion spent at NASA (or little of it) has done a darn thing to advance that cause…and the American people probably dont have a very favorable opinion of that viewpoint to support spending more
Robert G. Oler
Gary – again, the main point I was making, which you didn’t address – people have been making the exact argument you made in your last post, for the last 30-40 years or so. And, by and large, the American public hasn’t agreed with that point of view, certainly not enough to fund NASA to the levels we need
So, if you continue to make an argument, that not enough people have agreed with for 30-40 years, why do you think you’ll get a different response now?
Vladislaw wrote @ May 22nd, 2010 at 1:23 pm
You weren’t afraid of his scuds and plywood navy?…
yeah. Actually there are few (if any) nations that can “go rogue” and US power cannot deal with them. The underlying worry in my opposition was what would happen when the US went roque. If any other country in the world were to use the same level of “proof” we had for invading Iraq to invade any other country then we are going to be very busy as the worlds cop.
As for a reason…
I think that the bush people were somewhat intoxicated with power, and really having never used it had no real clue about its limitations (and “A person always needs to know their limitation”) and they were kind of using the Gary Church theory.
In the end (at least for now) the US is so powerful that “it can do whatever it wants to do” in the world. The problem is that we ran into a leader (Bush) and his thunderheads whose notions were so “wild” that to be successful they had to “make it work” before the people saw through their scheme.
Or put it another way. Had bush listened to competent military authorities and the Iraq of 2006 looks like the Iraq of today…Bush would stand as a giant across history.
Instead he listened to the thunderheads whose ideology trumped competence and got those results. NASA is just such an institution, it is just that the ideology is large human spaceflight programs.
Robert G. Oler
If I were Jeff, I’d set up filters on the software to block any comments containing the phrases and words “right wing,” “rightwing,” “right-wing,” “reich wing,” “Fox News,” “Iraq,” and “thunderhead.” I think that it would sanitize the place marvelously.
@RobertGOler-If I understand your post it basically boils down to “The People liked space in the Apollo era and will today if only it were shown in the same light as it was up to Apollo 11, it is not today, so they dont care about itâ€. Is that accurate?”
In a word, no. Your premise ‘will today’ is simply invalid. They do today. Spaceflight remains popular today with the general public as demonstrated in numerous venues of popular culture, produced at great financial risk in the private sector btw w/o government funding, and with an expected financial return -a profit. If there was no interest or market for these projects, they simply would not be made. Maybe you should care how much Americans like their Star Treks, Star Wars and space adventures, fact or fiction. If there was no interest, the items on display in the NASM would be scrapped or homes to pigeons on display in small town city parks across flyover country. Measuring media coverage by American standards is not wise either. Interest in Apollo was incredibly high overseas as this writer witnessed first hand. And the perception of collapsed support had a great deal to do with media coverage, just as the storm of Vietnam did, which was the pressing diversion of that era. Today it is the looming clouds of economic collapse. As stated before, only Americans could be smart enough to reach the moon and dumb enough to walk away from it.
The current ‘wars’ are a waste of resources on so many levels it boggles the mind. At best their motivations and management reflect the poor qualities of same at the highest levels of government. Brinkley’s knowledge base on Louisana and the New Orleans may hold some water but his ‘lunar analogy’ is a stone skipped in random direction upon a flat pond, particularly pitching it wrapped with JFK. Kennedy may have articulated a rough game plan but was killed just as Mercury died. He had little to do with shaping how Apollo was actually carried out and presented to the nation other than the few speeches often quoted. It was LBJ who carried the ball. Brinkley’s assumptions of Soviet space efforts ‘going along’ with the premise of a ‘space race’ shaped by Americans seems off target as well. He has it backwards. In that era they were running their own course along their own planned path– a path they started. It was the U.S. who first framed it as a ‘race’ and were playing catch-up, really until 1967. The competitive factor is a flaw for the team with corporations driven by quarterly reports. It can easily drift from five year plans when profitablilty is negative or flat. Augustine’s report noted the difficulty of sustaining programs through 18 Congresses and five administations and so on. But Whittington’s premise of Red Chinese on the horizon as competitors is accurate. Those who choose to ignore it will welcome another Sputnik-like event in their lives in the not too distant future. Although this time, the response of a weary U.S. as the ‘American Century’ ends may very well be, “who cares?”
But it is folly to believe that Americans do not support their manned space program. And if they were told in clear, concise language that it will be ending within the year, they might very well voice that support loud and clear. Nobody wants their kid to grow up to be a robot.
DCSCA wrote @ May 22nd, 2010 at 4:31 pm
then we do disagree (grin).
Americans have the same viewpoint (generally) of Apollo relics as they do the USS Constitution, the Alamo, or any other historical event or place. They like seeing it, know little actual about them, and dont really see how they interface in their current lives. That is the joy of being a citizen in a country where “old” is about 5 years ago.
This is why July 20 of any year goes off the calender and no one really cares. Its massive symbolism is to another generation, just as 7 Dec or VE/VJ or whatever day is. And that is great…that is how history works in a country that keeps reinventing itself year after year.
I dont know what Kennedy would have done in hsf anymore then I know what he would have done in Vietnam had another date and event not cut him down…but I dont see him or anyone else being able to transition an infrastructure that is much like the shuttle one today…to expensive to really use.
But I am quite sure that JFK was able to suck the Soviets into a race, that they could not win. The Soviets were in no real way moving toward the Moon until Kennedy dropped kicked a ball so far ahead that all other milestones diminished in significance…what they were moving toward were what they eventually got…routine space ops on a crewed station….they were moving toward that because they were attempting to find some military value in it that they could not acquire with their limited technology in uncrewed systems.
The same with the Chinese. They are not going to the Moon to plant flags much less to stay. They are not that stupid. They see the launches from the northern coast of South America and recognize an economic problem when they see it. There is no military purpose in the Moon right now. If they want to spend tens of billions (nee hundreds of billions) on a flags and footprints…go ahead.
Had HSF been less about going to the Moon and more about an affordable operational system there was a way that somewhere in the mid 60’s (and we had the chance again in the mid 80’s) where HSF took on a tone more like say GEO com satellites then some mythic dash to do battle in the Cosmos. We are now at that point again.
We have to do things that are directly relevant to the American people or we should not do them at all.
Robert G. Oler
Trent Waddington wrote @ May 22nd, 2010 at 1:23 am
Oler, I was saying the other day that if they ever bother doing a call up to the ISS when the shuttle isn’t there I’d like to hear someone ask a simple question “what did you do today?….
if the truth were told the answers would be annoying. The vast majority of the time on ISS is spent just staying alive…the science is so pathetic (because of long lead times and other issues like cost) that the vast majority of things are simply make work.
did you see the list of experiments that the crew of Columbia did on their last flight?
Robert G. Oler
“We have to do things that are directly relevant to the American people or we should not do them at all.”
Same message, over and over; stop wasting money. Again, the truth; it is not a waste. Half of the defense budget is waste, HSF is not. What is directly relevant to the American people? Bombing more weddings in Afghanistan? Moving more factories overseas? Letting the banksters rob more pension funds? 45 year old beat cops retiring with six figure pensions because their union gamed the system while amputee veterans are lucky to see a thousand a month? Big business paying no taxes and posting record profits while bridges collapse and we sell toll roads to china? Launching more Ronald Reagan nuclear carriers? What do you think is relevant Mr. Oler?
Gary Church wrote @ May 22nd, 2010 at 5:39 pm
what I think is more relevant is things that make the people of The United States have better lives, liberty and the ability to pursue happiness.
I dont think that is done by space shuttle missions that have no future aim point or the last 30 years of space shuttle operations or the next 30 of Constellation efforts.
As for the rest. In most of it you have me mistaken for Mark Whittingon. He is all for big government capitalism.
Robert G. Oler
@RoberGOler- “But I am quite sure that JFK was able to suck the Soviets into a race, that they could not win.”
JFK sucked- or suckered- nobody into anything. He was dead before much of the ground was broken, literally and figuratively, for Apollo infrastructure and his motivations revealed in tapes from his era only recently revealed. The 1964 Congress could easily have killed Apollo as well. It was LBJ who muscled it through and made Apollo happen, not JFK. Bear in mind as well that much of the Apollo era funding was spent literally building the infrastructure and support facilities for manned spaceflight on that scale, not on actual space hardware for flights.
“Americans have the same viewpoint (generally) of Apollo relics as they do the USS Constitution, the Alamo, or any other historical event or place.”
That’s quaint but hardly accurate, particularly with respect to Apollo hardware. Americans are notoriously quicksodic when it comes to such treasures. That has often been a strength– and some times a weakness. Bear in mind much of the remaining Apollo hardware was discarded to rot or just scrapped. This writer is aware of several first hand accounts from production staff digging for items left to decay (the LLTV, the White room… even space suits, files full of photos/documents, etc.,) ferreted out for accuracy in the HBO production of ‘From The Earth To The Moon.” This writer also personally saw discarded Saturn V segments left to the elements at KSC in marshes in 1978. And the decay of Apollo hardware on display at JSC itself was well documented. Indeed, even Glenn’s Mercury launch pad was scrapped. Stories abound.
Americans 40 and under, perhaps, may gaze at the lunar program with glazed eyes as shuttle has been the center of their space program, benchmarked by Challenger and Columbia, not Apollo landings. It is easy to understand. This writer was re-reading an AAS volume (bathroom reading, to be blunt) published 1974 on various Skylab studies from the science missions. Dry stuff and hardly as exciting as exploring Taurus-Littrow but informational all the same. Many of the participants of Apollo are still with us. July 20 is an important date and in time may come to be honored as Columbus Day. But that’s hardly a benchmark of popularity anymore than issuing postage stamps commerating the events. This writer believes you underestimate the power of pride– or panic to generate support for manned spaceflight. Emotion fuels our space programs as much as propellants and budgets. Shuttle, unfortunately, was a compromise from the day it was created. Recall it was intended to be a means to an end, not the center of a space effort. Its epitaph may very well be a means to an end after all— itself.
@RobertGOler– Of course there’s a military purpose to the moon. Always is with the ‘high ground.’ A political one as well. The ‘free world’ – or what’s left of it, Americans included, might feel even less ‘free’ or secure with Chinese someday plundering the lunar highlands, or picking through the remains of American lunar landfall from a past century.
While HSF as a concept maybe is not a waste, the way NASA has been going about it is. It is a waste to find the most expensive way to launch something into orbit when there are other vehicles that already exist that can fulfill those requirements. More importantly, it is a waste for NASA to operate its very own launch infrastructure, when there are no relevant national security needs that the shuttle can fulfill that is not done better and cheaper by other means. NASA could just as easily contract out for launch needs on an as-needed basis with Atlas, Delta or Falcon.
I basically stop listening when people talk about national security and the shuttle. The shuttle is too expensive to use to launch spy satellites. The shuttle can’t be used to launch a nuclear warhead. Therefore, the military has no use for it. The military has two perfectly good rockets of their very own.
We could abandon the ISS today and let the Russians have it completely and it wouldn’t diminish our national security one bit. We would still have all of our spy satellites and all of our nuclear missiles ready to go.
So, the only ones left for shuttle is then NASA. And it is not allowing NASA to move on, because it eats up all of the available budget whenever NASA does try to move on.
That is what is meant as “too expensive”. It is not that it couldn’t be funded if it was a national priority. It is precisely because it is NOT a national priority, that it is too expensive.
While “too expensive” can be a relative term, realistically NASA is only going to get approximately $20 billion to work with per year. Full stop. Game over. With both Republican and Democratic presidents and congresses. 40 years of history disagrees with the notion of NASA getting significantly more money.
So, the answer isn’t to complain that the military or health care or whatever is wasting so much money. Even if true, a reduction in the military or health care wouldn’t just be transferred to NASA. It would be given back to the tax payers with tax cuts or else used to reduce the deficit. NASA will not get it.
The answer is to ask then, what is the best way that $20 billion that NASA does get can be spent to make life multi-planetary, as Elon Musk puts it?
In my opinion, the answer is exactly to go with a more “Gemini on steroids”, just as SpaceX is doing. The problem with shuttle is that it is not programmatically flexible. You can’t just send people up to the station if that is all you want to do. You have to have some giant payload along with the people to make it worth the expense. There is actually more flexibility programmatically in the SpaceX approach than the NASA approach. If you want to send people up, send people up. If you want to send cargo up, send cargo up. If you want both, then you can do both. But, you don’t have to incur the costs of both every launch.
And I do happen to think it can be cheaper, precisely because so far we have managed to find the most expensive ways to do it. The only way is down, unless of course we try to make it more expensive (Constellation).
For those of us not in space districts, and who are under 40, the moon landings were a long time ago and not really relevant anymore. That does not diminish the accomplishment, but it means the accomplishment applied to a different time and different era. While I respect the accomplishment, we need to stop doing the Apollo model, because it no longer applies. It didn’t even apply five minutes after Apollo 11 landed. If Saturn V couldn’t survive with the Soviet Union as our enemies, Constellation and any other wholly NASA-owned form of HSF is destined to fail, or at best programmatic mediocrity.
I see some saying, well Dragon is mediocre because it’s basically Gemini. Yet, it’s advantages are both economic and programmatic. Dragon can be used for cargo or humans (yes, I know, eventually humans). And Dragon can also be used for space experiments in it’s DragonLab form. And it doesn’t cost $200 million a month to do.
I see some saying, well Dragon is mediocre because it’s basically Gemini.
A Gemini that can carry seven to orbit…
someguy wrote @ May 22nd, 2010 at 7:28 pm
You may be under 40, but your words are as true as they get, no matter the age. Well written, thanks for taking the time.
Bennett
@someguy “While HSF as a concept maybe is not a waste, the way NASA has been going about it is. It is a waste to find the most expensive way to launch something into orbit when there are other vehicles that already exist that can fulfill those requirements.”
Then do it.
Raise capital in the private sector, build a launch complex, support facilities, a mission control, a global tracking network, recovery teams, train crews, build and man rate a spacecraft and launch vehicle and go fly. Except you have to do all that within the limitations of the private sector, where the risk must be accepted by investors, shareholders andtand the like, without socializing the risk on the back of the taxpayers. We’ve seen it done– in the movies. Your business plan has already been scripted in ‘Destination: Moon’ and in a Bond flick in the guise of Drax Industries.
The tinker toys being peddled today as replacements for America’s manned space program are all on paper. If this goes through, the rationale for any viable human spaceflight program in the out years when times get tougher will be nil, and any rationale for keeping NASA in existence will have evaporated.
@someguy- Bear in mind Elon Musk’s PayPal was a security nightmare, relentlessly hacked and attacked, prone to scamming. Not so sure that kind of history lends itself to confidence building for the future of manned spaceflight as a replacement for government funded, operated and managed HSF activities.
DCSCA – simple question – lets assume for the sake of argument I have 20 million dollars, that I want to spend on making society spacefaring. OUTSIDE of paying my taxes, and donating to things like NSS, what can I realistically do with my money, to help insure we become spacefaring? Or alternatively, isn’t there someway we can merge the private and public pools of money, so that we can get even more spent on becoming spacefaring?
“Become spacefaring?” We have been since 1961. Nothing is stopping the private sector from jumping in to this arena and this writer supports that effort 100%, however, not as a replacement to a government funded, managed and directed manned space program. Take your $20 million, find some fellow investors and share the risk of success and failure in the private sector. From the POV of a taxpayer, we have a viable manned space program already and there’s no reason to supplement a private venture using government assets, especially if that supplement is earmarked to replace a robust program with a downgraded system. Falcon and Dragon are just that– privatized Geminis. None have flown as of today. If an aerospace manufacturer had been contracted to stamp out 500 Gemini spacecraft for use over time (a la Soyuz) to simply ferry crews/cargo up on Titans for the United States government the costs to reach orbit most likely would have been driven down. This writer simply does not believe a private corporation, whose motivation is profit, is a safe or sound replacement for a government funded and managed space program at this point in our history.
We aren’t spacefaring, and have never been. Being spacefaring doesn’t mean you can send a few people in space, on semi-regular basis. Being spacefaring is much greater than that. Being spacefaring includes (but not necessarily limited to):
• Ease of Travel: A spacefaring society has the capability to transport large numbers of people, goods, and materials to and from the earth’s surface, and between various in-space destinations, in a much safer, more frequent, and substantially more affordable manner than is current available.
• Personal Accessibility: In a spacefaring society, average people, not just the wealthy or highly trained astronauts can travel, work, and live in space. Such a society entails large numbers of people—eventually thousands—not just visiting space briefly, but actually living there, working, and raising families.
• Resource Utilization: A spacefaring society uses off-world resources and the characteristics of the space environment to provide materials, products, and services for the economic and social benefit of both earth-side and in-space communities.
• Off-world “Local” Economies: As our nation becomes a spacefaring society, “local” in-space markets will be developed and strengthened, providing a more robust and diverse space economy, which will provide more benefits earth-side as well.
By that definition, we aren’t spacefaring.
Nor did I argue that we shouldn’t have a government funded and managed space program – what I asked was if I have $20 million dollars, isn’t there some way in which I can contribute to our becoming spacefaring, and do so in a way that is not only compatible with what NASA is doing, but actually compliments it? In other words, is there not a way to create a larger pot of money, if people within the private sector wish to contribute?
The space tourism commercial space thing is not going to work. The space shuttle is on it’s way out. We do not have anything to put people up with and never had a plan for “spacefaring” to start with.
“Ease of Travel: A spacefaring society has the capability to transport large numbers of people, goods, and materials to and from the earth’s surface, and between various in-space destinations, in a much safer, more frequent, and substantially more affordable manner than is current available.”
This is pure fiction. There is no cheap. If you think yankee ingenuity is going to bring costs down, try reading a couple chapters of “Taming Liquid Hydrogen” from the Nasa History series. You can build a reusable system with a wet workshop second stage that does not expend big pieces but it is still going to cost big bucks. Way big bucks.
Nobody is interested in HSF because there is not enough profit margin. The big defense industry contracts are extremely profitable- those B-52’s Boeing cranked out half a century ago are still making them money. Nuclear warships are money machines that go on and on and on. But a heavy lift launch vehicle? Risky. It has to work. Unlike machines like the V-22 which have failed to deliver any of the performance promised, a rocket has to at least make it to orbit. Musk and those other companies are doomed. And unfortunately, if that is all we have for HSF then we are screwed.
@FerrisValyn “We aren’t spacefaring, and have never been. Being spacefaring doesn’t mean you can send a few people in space, on semi-regular basis.”
Who decided those parameters for definition- you? By your definitions, Britain, Spain, et al., weren’t seafaring nations until well into the 19th century. Humans have been a spacefaring species since 1961. The frequency varying regarding humans themselves but the unmanned probes have been fairly regular over the decades albeit under different flags. There’s a heck of a lot of space junk not to mention some pretty crowded orbits full of commercial and military space vehicles these days.
Yes, there’s a way to take your $20 million and go fly. Get some partners, raise additional capital, buy/build/invest in the facilities necessary and launch your rockets — just without the crutch of access to government funded space assets. Go for it. But when you land off course, call company HQ for rescue, not the U.S. Navy for help.
@GaryChurch- that’s just the point, but Musk wants to minimize his chances of ‘doom’ by socializing as much of the risk for any venture capitalists as possible, including avoiding building his own launch facilities and related infrastructure. As an effort in tandem with a government funded and managed space program, fine. But after 50 years of effort, to see the future of HSF put in the hands of private investors who are by nature abhorent to risk, spells ‘doom’ for HSF as you so rightly noted. There’s no profit it it yet. The fellow(s) who invent a propulsion system out of unobtanium that delivers payloads for pennies on the pound to orbit will open up the space frontier for profiteers.
DCSCA wrote @ May 22nd, 2010 at 9:02 pm
“Become spacefaring?†We have been since 1961….
probably a more profitable point of discussion then redoing the politics of Apollo (grin).
We are not spacefaring in any means unless one encompasses that definition to mean our machines…and to be fair I think that is a reasonable encompass.
(Blank) faring means that a nation or group use the environment on a routine basis to make their lives better.
There is an argument, I dont agree with, that the best one can do in spaceflight is the machines…that space is a place like the bottom of the ocean…our machines work well there; we as a people dont. It is after all very expensive to keep us there and there seems to be nothing that we can do there; that our machines cannnot.
Gemini was in any event one (but not the last) stand of humans in space trying to be spacefaring. At every turn in Gemini we expanded the portfolio of what humans could do, and how easy (or not) it was to do those things. Gemini was almost “operational”, we were routinly launching one every 2 months and the craft were likely “reuseable” with not much more work.
If we had gone down the Gemini route to a space station; we would probably not still be flying Gemini/Titan 2’s now. The reason Ivan flies Soyuz is that his industrial base has improved little since that era. Thanks in part to the rubble/dollar/euro exchange it is still profitable for him to assemble spacecraft much like they did 30 years ago.
We on the other hand can do much better. It is like saying we would still be flying 707’s (OK we are flying 737’s which is another story) …
Very likely we would have progressed to Big G and a booster evolution much as the EELV’s evolved from Titan. A suggestion is that probably in the 80’s we would have moved from Titan to an EELV type booster and probably from a Gemini to something a lot like well Dragon.
We would be light years ahead.
(or at least 30 years)
Robert G. Oler
DCSCA wrote @ May 22nd, 2010 at 11:21 pm
@GaryChurch- that’s just the point, but Musk wants to minimize his chances of ‘doom’ by socializing as much of the risk for any venture capitalists as possible, …
I dont think he is doing this
Robert g. Oler
Gary – With the technology we are likely to have in the 2020s, what is the minimum price point to deliver 1 human to LEO? How about the 2050s? How about 2100? (If you prefer the moon, you can use that location as well)
I also am curious as to how many people you think you’ll need to have a viable colony, off planet?
The reason I ask is that you talk about the importance of having a backup, if something should happen to the earth. The question that must be asked is exactly how much will this cost, and is there even enough money to do this? So please, answer my set of questions – Minimum price point, and how many people?
DCSCA – you missed the point yet again. The question wasn’t can I do something on my own – the question is, can I do something that will COMPLIMENT NASA, in helping us to become spacefaring? Yes, I am free to go all on my own – I am not asking that – I am asking if we can make public and private work together? At least public & private investment
@Ferris- If you can do it on your own or with partners you are welcome to construct a rocket w/all the necessary elements of support and development you can afford through financing in the private sector in tandem with a viable, government managed taxpayer funded program- not as a substitute or replacement for that USG program.
@RobertGOler- Is Musk/SpaceX paying the costs for the refurbishment of LC40 on Canaveral AFB for Falcon or are taxpayers…. and who ends up pays for it if Falcon explodes on the pad, destroying the launch facilities…. it appears the launch facilities were paid for with stimulus dollars, not by SpaceX.
“In October 2009 NASA provided a pre-solicitation notice regarding an effort to be funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The commercial crew enabling work would include a “base task” of refurbishing and reactivating SLC-40 power transfer switches, performing maintenance on the lower Aerospace Ground Equipment (AGE) substation and motor control centers, installing bollards around piping, replacing the door frame and threshold for the Falcon Support Building mechanical room and repairing fencing around the complex perimeter. Several optional tasks would include work installing conductive flooring in the Hangar Hypergol area, performing corrosion control inspection and maintenance of the lightning protection tower’s structural steel, upgrading and refurbishing other facility equipment and performing corrosion control on rail cars and pad lighting poles, painting several buildings, repairing and improving roads, and hydro-seeding the complex.”
DCSCA wrote @ May 23rd, 2010 at 1:20 am
the question is what is best for The Republic
Robert G. Oler
DCSCA wrote @ May 22nd, 2010 at 11:21 pm
So, I keep seeing this and yet I have not seen any evidence for it. Sure, if the government is offering money to speed development of an industrial capability that the government wants, then it’s absolutely understandable SpaceX would go after that contract.
But, what I have not seen is Musk saying that the government should take on the risk or else he won’t. What I have heard him say is that killing your customers is bad for business, so he absolutely agrees with meeting safety standards. He has also said that he will be man-rating his rockets with or without the government’s help. The only difference is how long it takes.
So, if NASA wants SpaceX to have the capability now, then they will have to pay for it. In fact, this is no different than the private sector. If one customer wants a feature in a product they use before the supplier is willing to pay for it, then that customer will have to pay the supplier for that feature. And it’s also usually the case that the supplier retains intellectual property over that feature. The customer is not paying for ownership, but the development and availability of the feature.
DCSCA wrote @ May 23rd, 2010 at 2:01 am
the federal government builds airports
Robert G. Oler
DCSCA – so, should I just assume you are not going to answer the actual question? Because you keep repeating the same line over and over, which has absolutely nothing to do with the actual question. Saying you can develop an independent capability is not the same thing as suggesting a complimentary role.
“Gary – With the technology we are likely to have in the 2020s, what is the minimum price point to deliver 1 human to LEO? How about the 2050s? How about 2100? (If you prefer the moon, you can use that location as well)
I also am curious as to how many people you think you’ll need to have a viable colony, off planet?”
It is not just delivering a human to LEO Ferris; it is not like castaway. Price point? Money is not what this is about. A viable colony? Well, if you have one woman and a hundred men that is not viable- but the other way around works. Actually, I believe the figure is about 2500 for a genetically viable population but cryopreserved sperm and eggs brings that figure down.
But the technology is what is the really important question I think you are asking and I will get back to you on that; I have to cook my wife breakfast.
Gary – No, its not technology – its money that I am really curious about. There are a number of example of technologies that could be developed, if we invested the pre-requisite money, to bring them through the various TRL stages (this is true for both space tech, and any other technologies you wish to consider) – of course there will be cost overruns, and the like, I don’t deny that.
So, as I said, its not a question of technology – its a question of price point. That is what I am interested in.
O.K. Ferris, here are some numbers;
The contract to build the nuclear aircraft carrier Reagan was awarded to Northrop Grumman Newport News and Dry Dock Company in Newport News, Virginia on 8 December 1994, and her keel was laid down on 12 February 1998. The budget for the ship had to be increased several times and ultimately $4.5 billion was spent on her construction.[5] Reagan was christened by Reagan’s wife Nancy on 4 March 2001 at Newport News Shipbuilding, the crew moved aboard on 30 Oct 2002,[6] and the ship was commissioned on 12 July 2003. That 4.5 is just the tip of the iceberg when you add on the price of her air wings and their operating costs, the maintenance on her reactors, spare parts, etc.
So I would say it is not a question of money if you answer the question, “would the world stop turning without this aircraft carrier?” Alot of people posting here seem to think NASA is the evil empire- it is a drop in the bucket and people like Mr. Oler who preach against it are misrepresenting the facts.
Gary – I am not asking about funding priorities right now. The question isn’t whether the Reagan aircraft carrier is important to have or not, nor is it how much it cost to have that aircraft carrier. Thats a separate discussion, we aren’t having right now.
The question is what are the price points for human to LEO transport in the 2020s, in the 2050s, and in 2100?
Or if you want a simpler question – How much money do we have to spend to make our first viable off-planet colony?
If the ISS represents 100 billion dollars spent, would a bernal sphere (or whatever iteration you like) cost? 10 times that? 50 times that? 100 times that?
There’s a big difference between 5-10 billion for an aircraft carrier and 500 billion (or a trillion) for a small space colony. Not that I wouldn’t love to see it happen, but the reality is Money Must Be Spent To Make It Happen.
Whose money?
Gary Church wrote @ May 23rd, 2010 at 1:31 pm
So I would say it is not a question of money if you answer the question, “would the world stop turning without this aircraft carrier?†Alot of people posting here seem to think NASA is the evil empire- it is a drop in the bucket and people like Mr. Oler who preach against it are misrepresenting the facts…..
No I am not.
First off it is you who have drummed up the comparison of the Navy’s flattops with NASA HSF spending…but thats OK lets go there.
You might argue that there are cheaper ways to do the mission the flattops do, and there are cheaper ways to have the flattops and a lot of things…but one cannot in any sense of the word (Unless you are just a very far libertarian) argue that the mission of the flattops is essential. ESSENTIAL.
You might not like America being a superpower but the fact is that we are and unless you can come up with a better cheaper way to put the kind of flexible power PROJECTION that a carrier and her battle group put on a situation then the binomial solution set is that that we should either have that projection system or we should not.
Take away force projection (and force use if it comes to that) then there are demonstratable ways in which “The Republic” changes. Take away that force projection and then you are left (unless you find a way to replace it) with those changes.
You and Marcel and a lot of others may think that we can settle the solar system but the fact remains that even if the dollars that NASA HSF consumes were spent perfectly (and clearly that is not happening) there is no societal drive to do that. There might be some urge to do that one day, but right now there is no deep seated urge among any significant portion of the population to go off world.
But we are back to the notion that NASA gets a LOT OF MONEY about 10 billion for human spaceflight and at BEST at best that money is keeping X (single digits) numbers of Americans in Low Earth orbit and every cent of it is being used.
So at that rate there is not (to paraphrase Admiral Tom Connley) “even cash in the christian world” to keep a sizeable amount of people off planet…and until that is fixed then it is hard to see any serious off world migration (or desire to do so).
As an aside (and I know these numbers pretty well) 10 billion dollars is about what it takes to run 3 carrier battle groups a year. That is about what it takes to keep 1.5 CVN’s somewhere in the world with her battle group ready to fight almost any opponent on the planet to at worst even and probablydestroy them.
If NASA were that fracken efficient we would have a hugh base on the Moon right now…and be headed out to Mars.
It is not a “drop in the bucket” for either action. It takes MONEY. The question is what bang do you get for that buck.
X number of people on ISS doing nothing of significance…you think that is efficient.
Robert G. Oler
ESSENTIAL? MONEY? You are on a pretty high horse Mr. Oler. Why don’t you get off it for a moment and consider other things besides projecting your ego around the planet. It is a good thing we had those carrier planes standing by to bomb those weddings in Afghanistan. And we could not have won the Vietnam war without them either. As for the shuttle and then the ISS, one good mistake deserves another I guess. You might think you know all these numbers pretty well but I know them better; I have seen the junk our military buys and put my life on the line in the various contraptions our tax dollars buy. There are very few military projects that do not suffer from some kind of political interference. Carter (a former nuclear submarine officer) and Zumwalt tried to reform this racket and never made much progress; but notice the name on the aircraft carrier I just cited. The shuttle was a political boondoggle from the start and never made much sense to the people trying to build space stations and spaceships. There is a magazine cover from 1980 with the shuttle on it that read “Beam me off this death trap Scotty”. I do not like the ISS at all; horribly overpriced. A spaceship is always the best spacestation and the way to build one is with wet workshops; empty second stages. Now just for argument sake, let’s say the shuttle had been a reusable capsule instead of a spaceplane. The cargo bay was just the front part of the second stage tank and the SSME’s had their own reentry module and were mounted on the bottom. So the SRBs parachute, then the escape tower parachutes, then the engines come back, and eventually the capsule comes down and everything gets fished out of the ocean and reused. Except that wet workshop- it stays up there. One external tank has several times more room inside it than the entire ISS. So if we had been doing this- and there is absolutely no reason we could not have for less money than what that spaceplane cost, we would have a spaceship made of over 100 external tank size compartments. It would be about the size of the Ronald Reagan. Think about that as bang for your buck Mr. Oler. Why it did not happen is politicians constantly nickel and diming the whole program- and the initial mistake of designing it as a spaceplane. Even as a spaceplane it would have had more payload and been able to accomplish more if not for the SRB’s and the Utah lobby and the air force cross range spyplane requirement.
Quit using past mistakes for justifying no future for HSF.
Gary Church wrote @ May 23rd, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Bitching and moaning won’t change the past, or anything else. What suggestions do you have for going forward that are even remotely grounded in reality?
@Ferris- It seems quite clear- developing an independent capability in the private sector complimentary to a USG manned space effort is fine, as long as that complimentary capability is not paid for, dependent upon nor replacing the government program.
@RGOler- municipalites float bond issues to build public airports; some are private and regulated; governments build air bases. Musk could easily have purchased or leased land or an island and constructed privately funded launch facilities. He has not. RE 707s- Crossing the Atlantic isn’t much different in that than from crossing in a 747. Done both, unless comfort is more important to you than getting there. The objective of Soyuz is to get you up, not how comfortable the trip is. Soyuz does that. But the American aerospace industry isn’t keen on that idea. New toys, better contracts– profitability — are their goals.
@someguy- Bear in mind ‘killing your customers’ didn’t stop automobile manufacturerers from producing less-than-safe vehicles for years until government stepped in. That’s why you have seatbelts and they fought that tooth and nail. Cut into profits. A private company’s goal is to turn a profit on theeir investment and satisfy share/stockholders. Musk is no different. Stimulus money aka public tax dollars built his launch facilities. A penny saved is a penny earned.
Its just silly to wax philosophical on colonizing the solar system, planets and so on. A smack in the face of reality is needed. Visit the NASA website and the LRO image gallery and look at the photos of the Apollo landing sites and some of the Soviet/U.S. probes recently captured. With all due consideration to the technological triumph of those endeavors of four decades past– it’s pretty puny stuff scaled against the vast unexplored regions of the moon and beyond. And for President Obama to deliver a speech with the dismissive, pro-privatization plug of ‘been there, done that’ was utter foolishness. He just read what the bureaucrats handed him.
“Its just silly to wax philosophical on colonizing the solar system, planets and so on.”
Well, they use to wax on just flying something heavier than air. It was not that long ago.
DCSCA wrote @ May 23rd, 2010 at 6:44 pm
@RGOler- municipalites float bond issues to build public airports; some are private and regulated; governments build air bases. Musk could easily have purchased or leased land or an island and constructed privately funded launch facilities. He has not. RE 707s- Crossing the Atlantic isn’t much different in that than from crossing in a 747. Done both, unless comfort is more important to you than getting there. The objective of Soyuz is to get you up, not how comfortable the trip is. Soyuz does that. But the American aerospace industry isn’t keen on that idea. New toys, better contracts– profitability — are their goals.
no.
Airports that are major hubs go nowhere without federal funds or federal facilities. Musk HAS thought about the “go it alone” theory…I KNOW his people have been to Australia and looked at the old Black Brand site…but it just doesnt make much sense.
The satellite processing facilities, long runways to fly things in..etc more or less drive a space port…or you have to start from scratch. The proper role of a federal government is to build infrastructure that private industry can take advantage of in the national interest. That is true if it is I-45 or DFW or well a spaceport.
Next..
A 707 and 747 there is all the difference in the world. An airline today could not make a profit on todays ticket prices if they were still flying 707’s across the pond…and not even to Hawaii. The CLOSEST thing flown to a 707 today is the newer 737’s (which are almost a two engine Dash 80 and retain “some” system legacy) and they are just about at the end of the line on that one.
Internally the difference between a 707 and say a 777 are not even close…in terms of the cost to operate and maintain them. It is not comfort it is cost…actually the 707 is more comfortable then the pitch seats Delta has on the 757 (fortunately a great deal of the time while flying Boeings, I get one of the seats up front!).
We would have however made more progress in the last 40 or 30 years had we gotten on the road that we are about to get on now…ie working on routine operations before we got on the no where read of a system like shuttle.
Unless one has the infrastructure in place (and that means a commercial industry) cost never go down.
Robert G. Oler
“Bitching and moaning”
Sounds like you are the one being a bitch.
Gary Church wrote @ May 23rd, 2010 at 6:28 pm
I liked the concept of an ET station (although what is his name, the guy who had the “ringed ET station” was a bit over the top…cant recall his name, have his book somewhere, nice guy are you him?) but NASA never did. I even have some ‘scratch built” models of some of them including one with the “wingless orbiter” concept.
Alas another effort NASA didnt like.
As for being on a high horse…well yes sort of.
Robert G. Oler
DCSCA wrote @ May 23rd, 2010 at 6:44 pm
The difference is Musk has always stated that he will “put in seatbelts”. I have not heard him say he is fighting meeting safety requirements. In fact, he has stated he is designing in the NASA safety requirements from the start.
If you have a link to an interview or something where Musk says something different than that, I am ready to be corrected. But, what I don’t really want is speculation or just blindly saying he is lying with no evidence.
I guess I view the mission of the next decade as not specifically going somewhere, but building technologies and an industry available to NASA, but separate from NASA, for space access and exploration. Maybe that’s the best way to put it.
I guess the core of my philosophy is basically that NASA gives up being in the launcher business.
Instead they build spacecraft that can fit on available non-NASA launchers (Atlas/Delta/Falcon) and use those. So, there is still a “government manned space program” as you say it, but we remove the launcher from NASA because it doesn’t serve any relevant purpose for them to have their own.
In fact, it detracts from the exploration mission because they have to always give up a good portion of their available budget to feed the launcher.
If we really really need a bigger launcher, then we should deal with that when it comes to it. And then, we should try and scale up the launchers available (EELV Phase 1/2) instead of building a completely custom one that only NASA uses and forever has to feed.
The advantage of the EELV Phase 1 approach is that NASA can pay for the larger launcher as needed instead of having to feed its own complete program, no matter how many times it is launched. NASA can just buy one Phase 1 Atlas when needed, and the military can go on just buying the normal Atlases as they need.
No I am not him, never graduated high school. I would like to write a book but the meds I take keep me kind of foggy.
No I am not him, never graduated high school. I would like to write a book but the meds I take keep me kind of foggy.
This explains a lot.
I knew one of you high school insult game guys would jump all over that; congrats.
someguy wrote:
“I guess I view the mission of the next decade as not specifically going somewhere, but building technologies and an industry available to NASA, but separate from NASA, for space access and exploration. ”
I enjoyed your post… er, I mean I really enjoyed playing bullsh*t bingo. You forgot to mention ‘game changers’. How the leftist nihilists in the administration even get a serious hearing in the debate, I’ll never know. The current NASA leadership is bent on securing increased funding for the bureaucracy while shedding concrete goals and time lines. Good work if you can get it. Astroturfers on this site notwithstanding, Obamaspace is in its death throws.
“Musk HAS thought about the “go it alone†theory…I KNOW his people have been to Australia and looked at the old Black Brand site…but it just doesnt make much sense.” Yeah, he thought. Then thought again when the U.S. gov’t fronts costs using tax dollars from the stimulus package and those were before Constellation was thrown under the bus.
“The proper role of a federal government is to build infrastructure that private industry can take advantage of in the national interest.”
Who defines ‘national interest?’ Private industry? you’d get an argument from people living near JFK or LAX that the expansion of those facilities are in ‘the national interest.’ (Having lived within 1/2 a mile of LAX for years, we saw little national interest in noise and crack plaster.
)Socializing the risk/costs sound great to stockholders. Just as suckering citizens every 30 years to pay for new stadiums for ‘private industry monopolies’ as well. Private airfields– or in this case private launch sites are easier on the taxpayer in these times. Don’t get me wrong, though, this writer will cheer on every effort by the private sector to get costs down and payloads up. My chief concern as a citizen is seeing the national manned space program essentially replaced with a simplistic, privatized effort that cannot fill the role of NASA.
RE 707. You miss the point- the objective is getting there, not the comfort of sophistication of how you get there. Soyuz, for all its antiquated faults (at least in the eyes of the West) gets you there. A VW Beetle gets you across the country. So does a Cadillac. This writer always regreted the termination of production of a Gemini styled spacecraft. With some modifications, it would do what Soyuz does- get you there. Perhaps Musk’s Dragon will fill that void but for all intents and purposes, his stuff really hasn’t proven itself yet.
amightywind wrote @ May 23rd, 2010 at 8:34 pm
You know, it’s fine if you disagree with me, just state your disagreement and reasoning without being a jackass.
I’m no fan of the constant use of the term “game changers”, but I do think we need to take a different approach to space exploration.
@someguy- Don’t misunderstand. Any success on his part will be cheered by this writer. Believe plans are, after several delays, to launch Falcon on 5/27. Wonderful. The more people throwing payloads up there the better. Just as long as a viable HSF program continues to be funded flown by the USG through NASA and not replaced by these privatized ventures.
Gary Church wrote @ May 23rd, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Would this explain why you never really answer anybody’s questions? Ferris has been trying to get you to explain how your space reality fits into the world as we all know it. Things like money and the will of the people as expressed by congressional posturing and the politics involved in huge budgets for HSF.
You never actually respond in a meaningful fashion.
Why is that?
DCSCA wrote @ May 23rd, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Do you have more info than is on the Spaceflight Now page? Specifically, do you have news that the AF has signed off on the FTS?
DCSCA wrote @ May 23rd, 2010 at 8:58 pm
We might be losing a frame for discussion if we are going to get into “does the federal government play a role in building airports”. I think that they do and in any rate that ship sailed a long time ago.
But
You miss the point- the objective is getting there, not the comfort of sophistication of how you get there.
no that is not my point.
My point is that all things have a technological window and how wide that window is depends on how rapidly technology advances.
One reason the Soyuz is still a good “ride” is that technology in the former USSR is moving at almost no speed…and the US so far has been frozen in an “uber” technology device (the shuttle) that is not aging gracefully.
A 707 is almost useless today if the object of the effort is to make money. The USAF flies them and a knock off as tankers (there are some KC 135’s that are not 707’s and some that are and there is a difference between the two) not because there are better alternatives available…but because the cost inefficiencies associated with flying a half century design are (at least for now) affordable compared with the other expenditures.
No airline in the US could even hope to make a profit if that airline flew the oh7. (even the rengined one). The airplane is almost exhausting being able to make a profit in places like Africa.
Why? because technology and the market have moved on…
so if all you want is transportation and are willing to pay the inefficiencies in the system then the oh7 makes sense…but few are like that.
Space transportation that has any yank past a government only crowd would have left both the Soyuz and Gemini a long time ago because it has to be affordable and functional. It is far to expensive (in real dollars) to build and it is far to inefficient. I wont call it the 707 of the day…but the parallels with why its day is over are clear.
I have no doubt that done correctly SpaceX and some others can come up with a capsule that is 1) reusable, 2) cheap to build and 3) cheaper to operate and 4) very versatile. NASA cannot do it, but thats because they are inept.
BTW both the 707 and the 727 (the tri motor) are joys to fly. One of the most enjoyable articles I ever wrote for a “flying” magazine was about rating in the 707. The “spread” of the article was a sort of “Airport” redux.
Robert G. Oler
Robert G. Oler
DCSCA – thats not complimentary. Duplicating what somebody else is doing is not what is called complimentary. Thats called duplication. And I didn’t ask about duplication. And please stop acting like that was my question. My question is, can I act in a complimentary way (not a duplication way, but a complimentary way)? Or if you prefer, is there a way in which me spending MY money can benefit NASA?
DCSCA – BTW, in case you need an example of what complimentary is (rather than duplication), look at the FAA/AST and NASA – they play complimentary roles with spaceflight, right now.
“explain how your space reality fits into the world as we all know it”
Your world as all you good old boys know it. If you read my posts I answered all your questions but you ignore it because you cannot shoot holes and ridicule what makes sense.
Gary – you certainly haven’t really answered my question – how much will it cost, in total dollars, to create the first viable off-planet space colony? And the further you can flesh out the details of the how and why of that number (such as we need X dollars to do project Y, kind of thing) the better the your estimation will be.
@Ferris- SpaceX is hardly duplicating what NASA does. But if you want a toy space program, that’s what SpaceX is offering.
DCSCA – I didn’t mention SpaceX, or anything like that. Please actually try to answer the question I raised. Or do you think its somehow an unfair question?
Everyone in this discussion might want to learn how to spell “complementary….”
@Bennett- actually that date is cross-referenced and already posted on wikipedia as well so that time frame seems to be the one to look at for the fireworks.
@Ferris- Clearly ‘complimenting’ NASA activities is not an objectionable enterprise. That would not be a poor investment of yout $20 million, provided you understood the risks were totally in the private sector and tax dollars were not going to socialize your risk of failure. My objection is to believe a private enterprised, profit-centered manned space venture in this era is a substitute for the 50 years of experienced, government funded and managed manned space program of today.
@RobertGOler “NASA cannot do it, but thats because they are inept.”
The space agency can be labelled many things but ‘inept’ doesn’t come to mind at all. Especially after 6 moon landings and assorted planetary probes. Let’s see how well private enterprise does flying in a decade and turning a profit on a quarterly basis as well. Seem to remember long ago Deke Slayton pitching Conestoga 1 back in 81 or 82… what, nearly 30 years ago. As Cernan said, these companies ‘don’t know what they don’t know.’ Nothing would please me more– or Cernan most likely as well- than to be proved wrong.
DCSCA wrote @ May 24th, 2010 at 1:38 am
@Ferris- SpaceX is hardly duplicating what NASA does. But if you want a toy space program, that’s what SpaceX is offering….
actually all SpaceX is offering is commercial access to orbit for cargo.
As for a “space program” …mine is not a few government employees in space at great cost doing nothing of comparable value.
Robert G. Oler
@RGOler”Private airfields– or in this case private launch sites are easier on the taxpayer in these times.” You spend ‘my’ money well.
Can think of thousands of more pressing priorities down to Earth for tax dollars to subsidize than private enterprised space ventures. Space programs are luxuries.
@RGOler- SpaceX is offering nothing but a promise of things to come. When they get a system in place that flies and returns intact on a repeated basis, they can talk turkey.
“The space agency can be labelled many things but ‘inept’ doesn’t come to mind at all. Especially after 6 moon landings…”
40 years ago.
DCSCA wrote @ May 24th, 2010 at 1:49 am
“that date is cross-referenced and already posted on wikipedia as well”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but industry info has the launch date still up in the air until the USAF gives the go-ahead. I watched an interview with Musk last night (This Week In Space) and he didn’t have a date certain.
It was interesting to hear him spell out the (roughly) three scenarios:
Great Day: Reach Orbit
Good Day: Make it to MECO and Stage Separation but have a malfunction of the second stage
Bad Day: Destruction of this first rocket in a way that they gets very little data and the launch pad is damaged
He added that he always misses sleep before a launch.
Bennett–he forgot to mention that he could call upon Iron Man to come to the rescue if anything went wrong.
Derrick- Ha!
DCSCA wrote @ May 24th, 2010 at 2:15 am
@RGOler- SpaceX is offering nothing but a promise of things to come. ..
which is more then the current program offers which is more of the same not much different …
given a choice, I’ll take the promise of things to come over the currency of the current turkey. As the scriptures say, Faith
Robert G. Oler
DCSCA wrote @ May 24th, 2010 at 2:09 am
@RobertGOler “NASA cannot do it, but thats because they are inept.â€
The space agency can be labelled many things but ‘inept’ doesn’t come to mind at all. Especially after 6 moon landings and assorted planetary probes…
the Moon landings were a long time ago. Competency has a limited shelf life, particularly when you kill 14 people through incompetency.
Robert G. Oler
DCSCA wrote @ May 24th, 2010 at 1:38 am
@Ferris- SpaceX is hardly duplicating what NASA does. But if you want a toy space program, that’s what SpaceX is offering.
Another ignorant post. Funny how people don’t even try to get informed yet make very strong statements on something they hardly know a thing. But reading all your comments I can only infer you work on Constellation. Or have some interest to see the POR go.
“My objection is to believe a private enterprised, profit-centered manned space venture in this era is a substitute for the 50 years of experienced, government funded and managed manned space program of today.”
In what way is the current Constellation a reflection of 50 years of experienced space program? Management? Are you just kidding or what? Go read the Augustine committee report. In their time the Apollo management would never have f…ed up that much. Got get to know some of them and you’ll understand why. And wht Constellation cannot be successful no matter how much cash.
“you certainly haven’t really answered my question – how much will it cost, in total dollars, to create the first viable off-planet space colony?”
O.K., read this carefully;
It will cost what all those defense programs I named and other unnamed cost. Make the airline industry, which is already subsidized, the majority of our air force. Make the majority of the Navy into our merchant marine fleet. Make our police and fire departments the the majority of the Army. Get rid of all the cash cows like the V-22, star wars, littoral combat ships, etc. Disconnect the officer corps from industry. By the way, I have seen these hordes of officers in their cubes working industriously on their emails. You see enlisted guys and gals go to sea or the field over and over again while the zeros do a tour and then go to graduate school or command desk for a couple years. In WW2 there was about one officer for every eight enlisted and this was thought to be top heavy but acceptable for the duration. Now we have one officer for every four enlisted. Disconnect the politicians from industry; there are dozens of examples of politics screwing over our troops. Right down to the very basic pieces of equipment like rifle and body armor. Rumsfeld was big on hi-tech because of who he was really working for. It sure wasn’t the grunts getting blown up. Poor design has become a hallmark of U.S. military equipments. Take for example, tanks and helicopters. The M-1 and H-60 seem like great machines but if you look a little deeper you will find serious flaws. These design errors are the result of a combination of politics, industry, and the officer corps all conspiring to achieve goals divorced from what the design is for. So we can stick some stealth cruise missiles on airliners and call them B-52X, B-1Y, and B-2Z or whatever letter number combo you desire. We can use container ships and supertankers with flight decks on them and containers filled with missiles. We can take this vast fortune from the pentagon industrial complex and make a space program with it. How much will it cost? The cost of a stamp on that letter to your congressman and the gas to drive to the polls. This is space politics after all.
Gary – In that entire paragraph, I don’t see any numbers. I am looking for specific numbers. How much money will it take to make the first viable off-planet colony? $5 million? $50 Million? $5 Billion? $5 Trillion? Higher?
Why is this such a difficult concept for you to address?
“Gary – you certainly haven’t really answered my question – how much will it cost, in total dollars, to create the first viable off-planet space colony?”
That is to open ended. What is a colony? Population? Capabilities? 100% self sufficent? You would have to define a lot more variables before you could consider a price tag.
It’s pointless to talk about a “price tag” unless you specify what you mean. If there’s a discounted risk-adjusted economic payback from it (not saying there is, but if) then the price is negative.
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“We can take this vast fortune from the pentagon industrial complex and make a space program with it.”
I would much rather gut the vast welfare/entitlement state and make a space program from it.
[…] SEA, the next generation? – Space Politics […]
I would much rather gut the vast welfare/entitlement state and make a space program from it.
Both are pipe dreams, regardless of their merits. Space isn’t that important, and when you demand that someone else’s budget be cut to fund it, all you do is create powerful enemies.
“Both are pipe dreams, regardless of their merits. Space isn’t that important”
If you dont think it is important, why are you wasting your time here?
As for gutting the vast welfare entitlement state- better take a look at one of those GAO pie charts; most of the entitlements are for retirement checks. A small slice of the pie is social programs, most of it goes to defense.
“someone else’s budget”
I thought it was our budget. Enemies? Am I supposed to be afraid?
@RobertGOler- no argument there regarding poor management at NASA– which has been my point all along. They’ve been asked to do something outside the area of their expertise- turn the shuttle into a profit center. It wasnt designed for that.
@Derreck- So? When left to do what the agency is/was good at doing, there’s none better. This writer wont even try to defend the levels of bureaucracy at NASA that simply arent needed.
If you dont think it is important, why are you wasting your time here?
Because it’s important to me. But not to most people.
I thought it was our budget. Enemies? Am I supposed to be afraid?
Yes, you’re supposed to be afraid that not only will you not get the Pentagon’s budget, but that they’ll come after the NASA budget in retaliation for you trying to get it. It’s hard enough to demand that NASA get more money to waste without also angering people by trying to take money away from them.
@RobertGOler- no argument there regarding poor management at NASA– which has been my point all along. They’ve been asked to do something outside the area of their expertise- turn the shuttle into a profit center. It wasnt designed for that.
No argument from me either- except I do not think they knew what they were designing the shuttle for. With no money available to make it capable of any “solid” mission it equated to an inept NASA. Trying to turn a profit is what eventually killed two crews. You end up paying one way or another- there is no cheap.
@Bennett- take up the LD posting w/wikipedia– they had it up as 5/27. Doesn’t matter to this writer if/when it flies but luck to him if it does.
@commonsense- <- show some class and try not to be rude. This writer has stated before that several elements of Constellation are wrong headed- chiefly Ares LVs. Political design, not engineering design IMO and that should be rectified. But replacing shuttle with a general purpose spacecraft (Orion) and flying it atop existing LVs modified for manned flight seems a wise move, then in years out develop a lander and lunar habitat for long term stays. That's a sound space program for the next 30 years and puts the engineering community to work on something worthwhile. The premise of returning to the moon, expanding the experience and knowledge base of operating to lunar distance and marrying that experience to a Mars expedition in out years seems a logical progression outwards. Killing the government run/managed manned space program and downgrading it with profit-centered private space ventures is foolish. In tandem, fine. But as a replacement, no way.
DCSCA wrote @ May 24th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
@RobertGOler- no argument there regarding poor management at NASA– which has been my point all along. They’ve been asked to do something outside the area of their expertise- turn the shuttle into a profit center…
I dont think so.
There was a time when they were trying to fly commercial sats in sort of an odd competition between ArianeSpace and the US government to do the commercial launch thing.
That ended with Challenger (and it was not a factor in Challenger).
Where NASA lost its competency is trying to do “operations” when they had no real chance or knowledge of how to do it. There are some thing that illustrate this, other then the two hull losses.
Take the recovery from Challenger. One of the things NASA made a big deal of was “the pole”…other then a good line in Space Cowboys the “pole” is something that some manager at a truly commercial operation would have said “not worth it” and moved on not spending a dime on it. I dont know the millions that went down that hole but at any operational agency they never would have gone that direction.
Before Columbia, with the knowledge that foam was shedding off the ET…an operational group would have either fixed the foam (which they seem to have kind of done) or institute the heavy inspection doctrine that they have now.
The trick is to figure out how this works in terms of spending money.
Robert G. Oler
“Yes, you’re supposed to be afraid that not only will you not get the Pentagon’s budget, but that they’ll come after the NASA budget in retaliation”
I meant tax dollars as one budget. Our money for the people by the people. You know, that democracy stuff.
Bennett wrote @ May 24th, 2010 at 10:02 am
Musk sounds like a rocket engineer…. circa 1958.
“That ended with Challenger (and it was not a factor in Challenger).”
I am sorry Mr. Oler but that is not what the record says. The shuttle program was built from the ground up predicated on being THE launch vehicle for everything and turning a profit by doing it dirt cheap. It was built cheap and ended up with no escape systems because if had a pathetic payload to try and make money with.
@RoberGOler- We can spend decades debating the strengths and flaws of the shuttle on many levels- managment, design, purpose, etc. The flaws with the STS were planted when the design was okayed 35 years ago. It is what it is. And the managers were pressed far too long to turn an experimental vehicle into an operational machine to haul freight up to the great beyond. After Challenger, the fell by the wayside and its new mission was to construct a space station. That turkey we probably can agree has been a waste of money and nothing more than make work for aerospace contractors. Never was a fan of ISS. but, it is what it is an asset on hand. They never should have lost MIR or Skylab as well. Takes too long to get these things flying. Frankly, this writer never really understood the rationale of hanging the payload on the side of the LV rather than a top it, other than it contributing to the lift necessary for launch by the design of the orbiter. Who’s idea was that– Max Faget? Don’t recall. That’ll never happen again. How it was managed is what let to the successes and failures. It was not initially proposed to be the center of a space program but one element of the larger effort but the budgeteers beat the rocketeers in that game.
“How it was managed is what let to the successes and failures. It was not initially proposed to be the center of a space program but one element of the larger effort but the budgeteers beat the rocketeers in that game.”
Sorry I keep disagreeing with you guys but saying it was management is like putting the chicken (or turkey) before the egg. It just evolved into a poor design, a mistake, because of repeated budget cuts and over runs. It was proposed to be the center of the space program- they killed the expendables and even shredded all the Atlas vehicles in storage.
@GaryChurch- yes and those ‘evolutions’ were decided upon by managers and budgeteers, not rocketeers. In the case of shuttle, the end game came to be the engineers went and made what they were told to make, not what they prefered to have. You have to recall the context of the times. After Apollo, NASA was lucky to have funding to pay the electric bill. Hiring freezes were on. Layoffs, etc. They were happy to get shuttle at all. It is what it is with all the strengths and weaknesses. How it was managed is how it is judged. And a lot of NASA managment for shuttle may very well be mid-level bureaucratic deadwood. NASA HQ no doubt has the same.
Sorry, I am just not buying your blame game. Responsibility goes across the board.
I guess it comes down to this; do you want your kid building spaceships or machine gunning illiterate peasants on the other side of the planet? What do you want your representative to make happen for your vote?
DCSCA wrote @ May 24th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
I have no problem with either wikipedia OR your comment, I was just hoping you had news that I hadn’t heard or read yet.
DCSCA wrote @ May 24th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
@RoberGOler- We can spend decades debating the strengths and flaws of the shuttle on many levels- managment, design, purpose, etc. The flaws with the STS were planted when the design was okayed 35 years ago. It is what it is
we can debate the STS decision forever…but two things are not disbutable.
The first is that the two major accidents had nothing to do with the design… they were all management flaws which simply “broke open” over some piece of hardware. If it had not been the O rings or the RCC/foam it would have been something else…a hydrogen leak on one of the engine bells almost got them
The second is that the design flaws whatever one thinks that they are of the STS had to do with NASA promising almost everything to make the shuttle everything to get it.
the rest…well they are dependent on whatever version of history one wants to believe.
In the long term I actually think that ISS can have some value for the cost…hope anyway
Robert G. Oler
“In the long term I actually think that ISS can have some value for the cost…hope anyway”
Someone mentioned bolting a vasmir engine on the keel and heading out for somewhere. But I personally do not think vasmir will ever work anywhere near as advertised. I cannot help but be completely depressed about that ISS. Skylab was just one empty 3rd stage tank. Von Braun wanted to pack it full of stuff and leave it connected to the second stage and move the stuff in for a station three times as big. One launch. I hear it has a nice window now but I have not seen it yet.
Everyone seems to think the Saturn V was some kind dinosaur monster but in fact the shuttle was in the same class- only slightly less powerful. Instead of the 7.5 first stage were the two SRB’s and instead of the SII there were the engines on the shuttle and the external tank. The shuttle just spent most of it’s payload….on the shuttle. Considering how much the shuttle cost it would have been cheaper “stamping out” Saturn V’s and launching them for the last 30 years. I am absolutely not saying build Saturn V’s. But we could do HSF right if we learn from the past.
@ DCSCA wrote @ May 24th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
“@commonsense- <- show some class and try not to be rude."
Sometimes reality is rude and not classy. Such is life. In any case, saying your post I was referring to is ignorant is not rude. It is what it is. In any case.
"This writer has stated before that several elements of Constellation are wrong headed- chiefly Ares LVs. Political design, not engineering design IMO and that should be rectified."
You cannot rectify "political design". NASA is a political tool and as such is at the mercy of the politicians. Sometimes it works well and sometimes it does not. How can you go to the Moon if your vehicles are designed with politics in mind? How does politics change physics?
"But replacing shuttle with a general purpose spacecraft (Orion) and flying it atop existing LVs modified for manned flight seems a wise move, then in years out develop a lander and lunar habitat for long term stays. That's a sound space program for the next 30 years and puts the engineering community to work on something worthwhile. "
This was the original O'Keefe's approach that was dumped by his successor. Politics. It is not salvageable. The Flex-Path is the most sensible way to "return to the Moon". Orion as such would not "replace" Shuttle. It is a totally different concept for a very different use.
"The premise of returning to the moon, expanding the experience and knowledge base of operating to lunar distance and marrying that experience to a Mars expedition in out years seems a logical progression outwards."
In what way is Flex-Path not doing what you want? No timeline?
" Killing the government run/managed manned space program and downgrading it with profit-centered private space ventures is foolish. In tandem, fine. But as a replacement, no way."
See the problem is this: VSE had a real private enterprise component: Servicing of the ISS. It was the previous WH direction. NASA under Griffin essentially did nothing to support it, even though COTS was essentially born under Griffin. When NASA got in trouble instead of trying to use COTS to salvage Constellation they made the "privates" their enemy. What is foolish is the way Constellation was managed. A lot of people (you included?) misunderstand the NASA of Shuttle operations and that of vehicle design. NASA as it stands cannot effectively design a vehicle that will accomplish all you'd like. At this stage only the privates can. It is all about cost. Given the current budget IF the privates can design and field a vehicle to service the ISS they will be able to eventually go to the Moon. Beyond the Moon is a totally different story. Also if the "privates" successfully make cash then no one will ever question the HSF program. No one is calling to "cancel" HSF at NASA but rather to take on a new more challenging direction. Please read carefully the current proposed plan and the Augustine report. And if you have more precise questions I would be happy to answer if I can and if not I am sure others here would.
BUT you cannot call up people for class if you do not even make the effort to read all that is available to you and rather just make empty claims. If you want to know what SpaceX for example is about, read their website, if not enough call them up. BUT again don't say things that are wrong to support your statements. That is class: Make an argument based on reality and not wishful thinking. Show us how in reality NASA can make it with HSF without relying on the privates. They tried, really hard and they failed so?
@GaryChurch- re Saturn V– Dinosaur?? No way. Superb LV. It’s only too bad they didn’t contract to build 300 of them. They’d still be stamping them out today.
@commonsense- Ignorant? Speak for yourself. Advocating replacing the government managed and operated manned space program with the kind of tinker toy operation SpaceX proposes (as nothing is truly operational yet) is not only ignorance but negligence. It’s a giant leap backwards to 1960. From a guy who could not guarantee simple basic computer security of his other brainchild, PayPal. And it isn’t even truly a private enterprised set-up, as the launch complex was retro-fitted using stimulus tax dollars before Constellation was torpedoed. It is just not a viable replacement for the HSF program. A welcomed alternative, yes. Replacement, no.
“You cannot rectify “political design”.
Of course you can if you modify the politics. And if you don’t believe that, you have the entrenched perspective a bureaucrat.
“No one is calling to “cancel” HSF at NASA but rather to take on a new more challenging direction.”
If it’s such a ‘challenging direction’ let SpaceX follow that vapor trail to oblivion. Wake up and smell the java. This proposal essentially eliminates the 50 year old manned spaceflight program managed and operated by NASA. There is nothing in the out years. No new spacecraft in the pipeline. No plans and no clear goal. Just a mission to no place on paper that politicians with withering budgets in out years can tear up. And in four or five years, when the budgets are tighter and the economy remains flat and other agencies are competing for these shrinking revenues, the remaining assets of NASA will be folded into existing agencies like the FAA, NOAA, USAF etc., and the civilian agency disbanded. In the eyes of the public, who pay the freight, NASA puts people into space. Remove that mission and it’s something an economically distressed nation can easily eliminate and there isn’t a politician alive who wouldn’t love to take credit for eliminating a Federal agency.
“At this stage only the privates can.”
Nonsense. They’ve done nothing for three decades and NASA has been putting people and payloads up for half a century. Privates have had thirty yers to get off the ground with nothing practical to show for it. Recall Conestoga 1 from the early 80s? Thirty years later and nothing much more beyond that scale of rocketry. Private efforts are to be welcomed and should be solely capitalized in the private sector and the risk not socialized on the back of taxpayers. But it is not a replacement for manned spaceflight projects on a government scale designed to expand the human presence in space — not turn a profit. It’s just not a realistic or viable proposal at this point in history and the past 40 years has shown that. And it is wrong headed to expect private U.S. corporations– whose primary goal is to turn quarterly profits and satisfy share/stockholders– to manage the American space program. Their allegiance. as with BP management, is to stockholders, not the nation(s) they service.
@RobertGOler- “The first is that the two major accidents had nothing to do with the design… they were all management flaws which simply “broke open†over some piece of hardware.”
The SRB design was flawed and was supposed to be redesigned eventually. Eventually was too late. Bad managment killed that crew.
The debris problem was again flawed design which management overlooked. Bad managment killed them as well. No excuse for it and heads should have rolled over it– not retirements and transfers. This writer used to have a photo of both hanging in his office with the sentence-‘Bad management can kill’ underneath. The boss always remembered it.
@ DCSCA wrote @ May 25th, 2010 at 8:44 am
It is clear to me how biased your view is on this subject. With no chance to convince you otherwise so I will not waste my time.
As to shareholders we do agree but remember that the NASA primary defense contractors do have that very same obligation.
Now you do seem to have a problem with SpaceX since for some reason YOU do equate private companies with SpaceX. SpaceX at least until now is not traded anywhere. It certainly have investors. But this argument is artificial in the US.
The days of free spending on HSF are coming to an end. You believe it, you don’t I don’t really care. I would hope you’d understand why it is so but you cannot. It seems anyway.
From an engineering point of view, it doesn’t make sense to say that the future of SpaceX depends on one launch. Initial launches have a high loss rate even for launch vehicles that are ultimately quite succesfull.
That said, the design of the Falcon is superior to that of the Ares, and you only have to look at the processing flow to tell why. The Falcon is a clean-sheet design, with a very simple and efficient horizontal integration flow; a single modern hangar, a few hundred feet of rail, no service tower and no crane hoists, no processing of solid motors which are hazardous at all times and much heavier. The number of unique components is minimal.
Ares requires maintaining all the vast Apollo-era facilities, including the Vehicle Assembly Building, the crawlers, and MLPs. As an example, the crawlers were chosen as a spur-of-the-moment decision to save time in the moon race, because the LC-39 pads with their steep approach ramps had already been designed. But no sane engineer would use a tracked vehicle to move a load of thousands of tons repeatedly over the same route, when rails would have a fraction of the operating coast. Because it requires all these facilities, the total launch cost for Ares, including facility maintenance, manufacturing, integration, servicing and the still-required R&D, is actually higher than the launch cost for Shuttle in spite of its much smaller crew and payload. Recovery cost for Orion is also higher due to the large naval vessel required.
If there are two high-cost elements of Shuttle that should not be used in a future program, they are the LC-39 facilities and the solid fuel booster. If there are two elements of Shuttle that have saved money and should be preserved, they are reusability and runway recovery. Constellation does the exact reverse.
“If there are two elements of Shuttle that have saved money and should be preserved, they are reusability and runway recovery.”
It was not reusable in the sense that the largest and most useful component of the system, the external tank, was thrown away. As for runway recovery, the airframe, wing, and landing gear are what this Saturn V class vehicle spent most of it’s payload sending in to orbit just so it could come right back again.
“should not be used in a future program, they are the LC-39 facilities and the solid fuel booster.”
There is no system that is reusable and provides the massive thrust of SRB’s. And the LC-39 facilities are the only ones that can handle heavy lift launchers. Hi cost is inherent in space flight. There is no cheap.
@commonsense- As if there every were days of ‘free spending’ on HSF. Every program has had to fight for funding. Many in Congress attacked Apollo funding when it was proposed. There’s an era coming to an end alright… but SpaceX and its ilk are not going to replace a government funded space program. And don’t forget SpaceX is not truly a private effort as its launch facilities, located in a taxpayer build and funded USAF base, were refurbished with tax dollars from the stimulus pacakge. No you will not convince this writer SpaceX is a viable replacement for NASA. Cernan is right. They don’t know what they don’t know yet. But good luck to them just as we wished good luck to Conestoga 1 back in the early 80s.
@vulture “From an engineering point of view, it doesn’t make sense to say that the future of SpaceX depends on one launch. Initial launches have a high loss rate even for launch vehicles that are ultimately quite succesful.”
Why not? Musk isnt promoting SpaceX’s Falcon/Dragon system as an experimental program but a viable replacement for NASA activities wih 50 years experience. Perhaps you dont recall the early days when Americans rockets exploding on the launch pad was more the rule than the exception. A private enterprise company could not have absorbed those kind of losses perfecting a new technology. The brutal truth of the free market, private enterprise system these days is Musk’s rocket cannot afford failures not only for financial reasons but PR reasons as well. Debut a lousy product and the market will rule on its fate. Today SpaceX cannot afford the luxury of operating like Project Vanguard.
Today SpaceX cannot afford the luxury of operating like Project Vanguard.
Fallacy of the excluded middle.