Congress, NASA, Other

Briefly: Feinstein, ESA, and the search for compromise

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who doesn’t speak out much about space issues, issued a press release Wednesday congratulating SpaceX for last Friday’s successful launch of the first Falcon 9. Calling the launch “an enormous success” and “a glimpse of the future of space transportation”, she said it was a sign that “California will continue to lead the way for technological innovation and space flight”.

While NASA and other US agencies prepare to examine what programs they may have to cut in future budgets, the European Space Agency is facing a budget squeeze as well, Spaceflight Now reports. With ESA’s budget frozen for 2010 and 2011 at €3.35 billion ($4.05 billion), the agency is modifying contracts to stretch out payments and hasn’t ruled out delaying programs.

The mood on Capitol Hill regarding NASA “has shifted from seizing partisan advantage to pursuing at least some political pragmatism”, the Houston Chronicle reported yesterday. In a letter that will go to the White House later this week, a group of congressmen is asking for changes in the White House proposal to create a program “that continues our elite astronaut corps, preserves an irreplaceable workforce, protects our defense industrial base and ensures that the U.S. will leave low-earth orbit within the decade.”

85 comments to Briefly: Feinstein, ESA, and the search for compromise

  • I believe you mean ‘Falcon 9′ launch Jeff, not Falcon 1. ;)

    In a letter that will go to the White House later this week, a group of congressmen is asking for changes in the White House proposal to create a program “that continues our elite astronaut corps, preserves an irreplaceable workforce, protects our defense industrial base and ensures that the U.S. will leave low-earth orbit within the decade.”

    Translation: Keep earmarking a jobs program, not a space program.

  • The Houston Chronicle article is obviously slanted towards pandering to their readers. It implies that Obama cancelled Shuttle when in fact it was Bush in January 2004. Using the Russians to reach the International Space Station (ISS) was also decided by the Bush administration in 2004.

    The “elite astronaut corps” is going nowhere. That’s the first lie in the letter. Astronauts will be going to ISS until at least 2018, and the Obama administration is negotiating with our partners to extend it to 2028.

  • Justin Kugler

    Stephen,
    Not all of us in Houston are happy with Stewart Powell’s reporting, I can assure you. My wife won’t even read his stuff any more because it is so slanted it upsets her. We’ve both gotten calls from family members worried about me after reading his articles… and I work on the Station program, one of the programs that gets a funding increase under the new budget.

    He has consistently avoided painting anything close to the whole picture, including the fact that JSC is home to the Flagship Technology Demonstrators Program in the FY2011 budget. With Mark Carreau having been laid off, Eric Berger is the only really objective reporter on science and space issues at the Chronicle now.

  • Paul D.

    “has shifted from seizing partisan advantage to pursuing at least some political pragmatism”

    In other words, having moved past the denial and anger phases, we’re into the bargaining phase. Depression and acceptance are waiting in the wings.

  • Using the Russians to reach the International Space Station was the plan for the ISS from the beginning. As I’ve ranted before: http://quantumg.blogspot.com/2010/05/hitching-rides.html

  • amightywind

    Fineswine is simply rooting for the home team. Shock. Obama is weakening by the day due to his poor handling of the gulf oil spill and the GOP is poised to take over congress. There can be no compromise. Press to MECO on Ares!

  • Justin Kugler wrote:

    Not all of us in Houston are happy with Stewart Powell’s reporting, I can assure you. My wife won’t even read his stuff any more because it is so slanted it upsets her.

    Justin, thanks for the background info.

    I’m very excited about the potential for ISS now that it will be extended. Ever since the 1960s, the primary justification for human space exploration has been scientific research. But we’ve never really done it full time. Under Obama’s proposal, we unleash the full potential of the ISS.

    Constellation huggers like to point to all the supposed scientific spinoffs from the Apollo program. Let’s see where we are in ten years after a decade of research on the ISS. It may be a very different — and better — world.

  • amightywind

    “Let’s see where we are in ten years after a decade…”

    ISS value as a scientific laboratory can never match its $100 billion cost, unless you fancy pointless life sciences research. Think of the rockets that could have been developed. The waste! At best it is a place were the US is marooned with the Russian enemy. It should have been deorbited in 2015 as per the Bush plan.

  • @ablastofhotair
    ISS value as a scientific laboratory can never match its $100 billion cost, unless you fancy pointless life sciences research.
    Yes, but that $100 billion has already been spent so we might as well get the most of something we already have.
    We should have learned something from the experience with ISS. Why duplicate the same error with Constellation given that even NASA says that just the future additional development costs to finish Ares I alone would be $35 billion dollars with the GAO saying it would be another $50 billion?

  • amightywind

    “Ares I alone would be $35 billion dollars with the GAO saying it would be another $50 billion?”

    Ugh. The routinely left touts the fraudulent findings of the hopelessly politically compromised GAO and CBO. They are not worth the paper they are printed on.

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    @ almightywind,

    At best it is a place were the US is marooned with the Russian enemy.

    I wonder… do you really understand how ridiculous that statement makes you sound? The Cold War is over. Whilst it would be a stretch to call the Russian Federation an ally of the United States, it is certainly no worse than a rival in certain areas of geopolitial contact.

    The ISS has a variety of uses, including the ‘life sciences’ research that you so casually wave away, which will be vital in developing the technologies required to get anywhere further away than the Moon for more than a few weeks. It also, it seems, is going to serve as the life-boat for HSF, because the BEO program selected was so expensive that it was unexecutable with any realistic budget. Because of CxP, the most that can be confidently expected is 10 or more years of shipping mission specialist astronauts to the ISS because NASA blew the chance to develop a system to go any further.

    Onto the subject of Jeff’s original post. The search for a compromise suggests that someone has finally told the politicians that Ares-I would smother BEO because it is so expensive it would rule out Altair and Ares-V. A cheaper launch system that can be operated for less and allow for the development of actual spacecraft to do the BEO exploration that I think most posters on this board support.

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    Correction:

    Onto the subject of Jeff’s original post. The search for a compromise suggests that someone has finally told the politicians that Ares-I would smother BEO because it is so expensive it would rule out Altair and Ares-V. A cheaper launch system is required that can be operated for less and allow for the development of actual spacecraft to do the BEO exploration that I think most posters on this board support.

  • amightywind

    “The Cold War is over.”

    Tell that to the Georgians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Estonians, Poles… You get the idea. Under Putin the old Soviet Union has been replaced by a new Russian empire, every bit as vile and dangerous. Europe is at risk, US interests are at risk. It is time to start acting like it.

  • @ablastofhotair
    Ugh. The routinely left touts the fraudulent findings of the hopelessly politically compromised GAO and CBO. They are not worth the paper they are printed on.

    How convenient for you to ignore the also stupendously high NASA figure and go into a rant about the left.

    It’s even more convenient for you to automatically assign anyone who is anti-Constellation into a nice little left-wing pigeon hole. It gets rid of all of that bothersome effort to think!

    God, save us from fanatics on BOTH the far-left AND the far-right!

  • SpaceMan

    @ablastofhotair

    I think that should be @ablastoffetidair to match reality.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Ben Russell-Gough wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 10:21 am

    @ almightywind,

    “At best it is a place were the US is marooned with the Russian enemy.”

    I wonder… do you really understand how ridiculous that statement makes you sound? ………….

    no he/she doesnt

    Robert G. Oler

  • J201

    A quick question about ISS:

    I’ve heard that The ISS program was extended through 2018 by an appropriations bill back in 2008. Can anybody shed some light on the subject?

  • John Malkin

    Constellation = Ares I and nothing else. It’s a myth that Constellation contains an HLV or a Moon Base or anything else. There is almost no funding for their development. Do you really think that after Ares I goes operational the money for an HLV will be made available? Also how many jobs will be “saved” if we keep Constellation? The new plan makes money available for development of an HLV now. I wish it was more but we can’t even get Humans to LEO. I think an HLV would be useful and not just for HSF.

  • Robert G. Oler

    J201 wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 12:07 pm

    A quick question about ISS:

    I’ve heard that The ISS program was extended through 2018 by an appropriations bill back in 2008. Can anybody shed some light on the subject?..

    that is not accurate.

    The plan (and that is all it is) is to continue ISS NOW until 2020, but thats just a planning date. The reality is that it will be very very hard to end the ISS program.

    As the world economy continues to “stumble” as the story on the Europeans shows every government space program is going to come under pressure…and it is likely that the last dog left barking in government human spaceflight will be ISS.

    the government programs are slowly unwinding

    Robert G. Oler

  • Heathen

    God, save us from fanatics on BOTH the far-left AND the far-right!

    God? And you call yourself a scientist? You couldn’t save yourself or your planet if your life depended on it with that attitude, and guess what – it does.

  • DCSCA

    @RobertGOler “As the world economy continues to “stumble” as the story on the Europeans shows every government space program is going to come under pressure…and it is likely that the last dog left barking in government human spaceflight will be ISS. the government programs are slowly unwinding”

    Hmmmm. “Senior Chinese space officials have told their state media that China could be on the moon by 2022 at the outside. Other authoritative Chinese space engineers see a moon landing as a next step in the Tiangong program that will launch three Chinese space stations into Earth orbit between 2011 and 2015. In 2008, NASA scientists told the Bush White House that, with the technology currently available to the Chinese space program, Chinese cosmonauts could be on the moon by 2017.” source -Washington Times 1/8/10

  • Brian Paine

    The future of NASA appears to have been hijacked without debate. Regardless of all the bickering sewn through the comments that I have read, the points of argument regarding systems and costs, the primeval political point scoring, the most Important “truth” has been missed.
    It is the spirit of the human adventure that has been compromised, and I would suggest with
    that the spirit of the USA. I do not make this
    claim lightly, or to support any particular
    argument, but all my years of life on this planet
    have taught me that this particular “spirit” is of
    such value that the consequence of it’s
    compromise will be great indeed.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 2:24 pm

    anything CAN happen…I could be Pope that next time they try for one…but the odds are long.

    First off the Chinese are so far from acquiring the space skills to get to the Moon, much less the technology, and at the rate they are learning/acquiring them my two month old daughter will be my age before the Reds have any of those things.

    Second, the Chinese can afford to do all this. The theory of the Reagan administration with SDI was that we could outspend Ivan on Defense and by the spending alone would get them to spend stupidly. They sort of were kind enough to do that.

    The Chinese could go back to the Moon and the only reason one could see them doing that would be to get the US to so something stupid like spending200 billion dollars (that we mostly borrow from them) to compete…at the end of it we are well 200 billion more in debt.

    If the Chinese are trying to put a person on the Moon my theory is to say “knock yourselves out”. Once they get there they will find what we did…you pick up some rocks and then wave some flags and shut the program down as quickly as you can, because it is essentially unaffordable.

    “NASA scientists told the Bush White House that, with the technology currently available to the Chinese space program, Chinese cosmonauts could be on the moon by 2017.”

    and those people should have been fired for stupidity, if they really believed that.

    Robert G. Oler

  • amightywind

    “…hijacked without debate.”

    NASA, Healthcare, stimulus, auto bailouts, financial regulations, off shore drilling… ‘Hijacked Without Debate’ will be written on the tombstone of this disastrous regime.

  • @Heathen
    Thomas Lee, how nice of you to drop in! BTW, I was using “God” in the rhetorical sense. Even so, Einstein believed in a supreme being and it didn’t keep him from being a scientist.

  • @Robert G. Oler : It is refreshing to hear someone echo my sentiments on this matter. If the Chinese want to bankrupt themselves by landing on the moon, then I’m sure American businesspeople will happily lead tours to see the equipment they left behind twenty years after they start – and stop – going.

    China has, what, 2 manned orbital flights under its belt? And it continues to fly at the rate of one every three years or so. Clearly, there is no political will to actually do anything. Quotes from “Senior Chinese space officials” about how fast they “could” do something are somewhat akin to quotes from Bob Zubrin about how fast we “could” land on Mars.

    As the late Sam Kinison once said: “You want to impress us? Bring back our flag a**holes!”

  • It is the spirit of the human adventure that has been compromised, and I would suggest with that the spirit of the USA
    A manned asteroid mission by 2020 is human adventure as far as I’m concerned.

  • Heathen

    Even so, Einstein believed in a supreme being and it didn’t keep him from being a scientist.

    I believe in alien life with godlike powers, and that doesn’t keep me from being a scientist either.

  • Heathen

    A manned asteroid mission by 2020 is human adventure as far as I’m concerned.

    I also believe that sending humans to asteroids by 2020 for mere adventure is a waste of taxpayer money and human resources, when unmanned upper stages will do the same thing for far less money with many more capabilities.

  • Sorry I meant to say 2025 instead of 2020 in my above post.

  • I believe in alien life with godlike powers, and that doesn’t keep me from being a scientist either.
    I never said it didn’t, Thomas Lee.

  • Heathen

    I believe in alien life with godlike powers, and that doesn’t keep me from being a scientist either.

    I never said it didn’t, Thomas Lee.

    Got logic?

  • The one who is not using logic here is you. My point in my last couple of posts was belief about God one way or the other has NOTHING to do with how good a scientist one is. For all you know I am a devout atheist (I’m not saying whether I am or not since it’s none of your business). Even under the atheistic communist Soviet Union, party officials used to say “God save us” as an expression of exasperation. But again, your emotions are leading you to go way off topic and I will not address this with you again. Rave on.

  • DCSCA

    “If the Chinese want to bankrupt themselves by landing on the moon, then I’m sure American businesspeople will happily lead tours to see the equipment they left behind twenty years after they start – and stop – going.”

    As President Obama quipped, ‘Been there, done that”–at least in Hollywood. Shades of the 1979 TV pilot ‘Salvage 1.’ Pen a fresh script. Remakes are hot these days and cost-effective. The world has been witness to the character and incompetence of business people- particularly American and British or late- and their penchant for needing governments to bail them out of their troubles. If American ‘business people’ ever reached the moon — and got stuck there on a tour– they’d phone home to their government– or China, for help.

  • Its pretty obvious that NASA is a government agency that President Obama does not like!

    Nixon terminated NASA’s ability to travel to the Moon and now Obama wants to terminated NASA’s ability to travel to orbit. Obama is essentially outsourcing NASA’s manned spaceflight capabilities to the Russians and eventually to private industry.

    So the fundamental question is will Congress and the American tax payer support spending $18 billion a year for an agency that’s not allowed to do anything. And I don’t think they will.

    So President Obama is essentially setting NASA up for deep budget cuts in the near future.

  • DCSCA

    “China’s space program also seems to have all the funding and resources it needs, partially due to the fact that seven of China’s nine most senior leaders – the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo – are themselves engineers. [As opposed to lawyers.] To be sure, China’s imaginative and capable aerospace engineers have devised quite workable spacefaring designs, and their access to Russia’s space science has helped accelerate their progress. And what the Chinese can’t buy from the Russians, or learn at America’s top universities, they can still pilfer from U.S. industry.”

    “This combination of financial wealth, educational excellence, advanced technology and a penchant for plundering intellectual property has enabled China’s space program to develop swiftly. In 2003, China’s gained entry into the exclusive manned-space club previously restricted to the United States and Russia. By 2008, Chinese astronauts were taking space walks and buzzing tiny “BX-1″ nano-satellites around their space capsules, a technology that puts them on the cutting edge of “space situational awareness” that America’s military space assets still lack.”

    “Beijing’s political and military leaders alike foresee “competition” in space with the United States. They certainly plan to seize the high ground of low-Earth orbit and then will likely move to the even higher ground of moon landings perhaps before this decade is out. Judging from the past behavior of China’s state-owned aerospace firms especially in their unseemly eagerness to proliferate ballistic missile technology to rogue states, it is unlikely that Mr. Obama can count on much “cooperation” with China in space – except on China’s terms.” – source, Washington Times 1/8/10

  • Nixon terminated NASA’s ability to travel to the Moon

    No, Lyndon Johnson did that.

  • “Obama is essentially outsourcing NASA’s manned spaceflight capabilities to the Russians and eventually to private industry.”
    How wonderful selective memory is! The “outsourcing NASA’s manned spaceflight capabilities to the Russians” was a plan laid out during the previous administration to cover “the gap” that would have occurred even if Constellation went perfectly on its preplanned timeline!

    Also the Aldridge Commission appointed by Bush (BEFORE Griffin was made NASA administrator) recommended that commercial vehicles be used for both cargo and human flight. But Griffin hijacked that and implemented just the commercial cargo part of that commission’s recommendations so that he could have the excuse of saying “Hey, I followed the Aldridge committee’s recommendations. I used commercial!” while he went after Constellation with his big Ares push.

  • DCSCA

    @amightywind- Not so sure ‘the Cold War’ really works as a ‘selling’ point for NASA activities these days. Technical life insurance, national prestige and the ‘Cernan intangible’ are more likely to have a chance at punching through the noise. Still, as Britain was in decline it waxed wistfully over the grand days of their once proud Empire as well. American consumers have been buying Chinese-made products now for well over 15 years and the fact their government is still communist hasn’t deterred Wal-Mart execs from filling their shelves with stuff from ‘the Reds.’

  • Robert G. Oler

    Roga wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 2:51 pm

    Quotes from “Senior Chinese space officials” about how fast they “could” do something are somewhat akin to quotes from Bob Zubrin about how fast we “could” land on Mars. …..

    precisely it is hard to improve on that.

    People who say “the Chinese are going to the Moon” have some burden of proof that they are if they wish those words to be the basis of American human spaceflight policy (and even if accurate I dont have a clue why such an event would compel us to meet that effort).

    The Chinese have demonstrated none of the technologies necessary to go to the Moon much less return with humans. Nor have they demonstrated that they are even attempting this.

    What you have is a lot of Americans who want to have some sort of race to the Moon, trying to pony up the Reds as a reason to do it.

    If the Reds want to spend a hundred billion or so giving it a try…go do it. In the meantime if we are lucky SpaceX or someone else will take the commercial launch industry back from the Europeans and russians and you know create real jobs.

    Robert G. Oler

  • American consumers have been buying Chinese-made products now for well over 15 years and the fact their government is still communist hasn’t deterred Wal-Mart execs from filling their shelves with stuff from ‘the Reds.’
    All the more reason to shorten “the gap” as much as possible and have American commercial companies like ULA, SpaceX, and Orbital sending American astronauts to the ISS. Meanwhile, NASA can use the money from the savings it gets from commercial LEO transport to push for the BEO destinations that will increase the prestige you speak of (not to mention the cutting edge technology).

  • As I’ve documented many times, the Chinese have no Moon program. They’re working on their own space station launch sometime in the 2020s, but have already been approached about joining the ISS consortium.

    They have a study to determine what would be necessary to do a Moon mission, but that will probably be robotic to bring back rock and soil samples — which we did 40 years ago.

    http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/search/label/China

    The Constellation huggers just can’t find one single truthful reason to justify their boondoggle — so they make up fantasies about a new Red Menace.

  • DCSCA

    @Rand Simberg wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
    “Nixon terminated NASA’s ability to travel to the Moon No, Lyndon Johnson did that.”

    Uh, no. “President-Elect Nixon named a space task group chaired by Spiro Agnew. It reported in September, 1969 on three possible long-range programs…. The third option [and the cheapest] involved only the space station and the shuttle, with annual spending between $4 and $5.7 billion. NIXON chose option 3 in March, 1970. The last two Apollo [lunar landing] flights were scrubbed and the Apollo Applications Program shank to a single Skylab. Nixon even cancelled the MOL, again frustrating the Air Force.” — source, Walter McDougall,’…the Heavens and the Earth.”

  • DCSCA

    @Rick Boozer wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 4:25 pm

    Out year paper projects won’t happen. Projected budget deficits reported today for the United States in five years- $20 trillion, reiterating NBC News report of yesterday. It’ll get cut PDQ. U.S. interests in the ISS in out years could just be leased or sold off to China or some other interested party. The country could use the income. Or it’ll just follow MIR into the drink.

  • DCSCA

    @StephenCSmith: “As I’ve documented many times, the Chinese have no Moon program.”

    “[In 1964] Sir Bernard Lovell, director of Britain’s Jodrell Bank Observatory, returned from a visit to the USSR with the impression there was no Soviet manned lunar program. [He was told] the USSR was concentrating on space tations and unmanned exploration.” – source, Walter McDougall, “… the Heavens and the Earth.”

    You’re in good company; Sir Bernard was wrong, too.

  • Out year paper projects won’t happen. Projected budget deficits reported today for the United States in five years- $20 trillion,
    If they can’t happen with lower cost commercial strategies, you would have even less of a chance going back to the moon with the MUCH MORE expensive Constellation. It’s an oxymoron. What you’re really saying is we couldn’t afford to do ANYTHING NO MATTER WHAT: Constellation or PoR.

  • Sorry, I meant,
    What you’re really saying is we couldn’t afford to do ANYTHING NO MATTER WHAT: Commercial or PoR.

  • Uh, no.

    Uh, yes. Johnson cancelled production of Saturns in 1967. All Nixon did was cancel the last three missions (converting one of them to Skylab). The statement was that Nixon “terminated NASA’s capability to go to the moon.” Johnson did that.

  • Tease

    My point in my last couple of posts was belief about God one way or the other has NOTHING to do with how good a scientist one is.

    After citing a single vague and naive example? That’s an awesome scientific result, Rick, you need to publish that in the Journal of God Studies right away. Prepare for greatness, Dr. Boozer, an exciting and distinguished career in science lay waiting before you! The world is indeed … your personal oyster.

  • Ben Russell-Gough, if you think amightywind is an idiot, why do you keep talking to him? STOP FEEDING THE TROLLS.

  • DCSCA

    Uh no. It is accurate to state “NASA was forced to kill all plans for future Saturn production in August of 1968, including early procurement for SA-516, SA-517, and Saturn 1Bs SA-215 and SA-216,” 90 days before the November elections, however Presdient Nixon could easily have maintained production and chose Option 3 which effectively killed lunar flight. Indeed, it was mre LBJ than JFK who propelled Americans to the moon and he does not recieve enough credit for it. But Nixon killed effectively cut Apollo’s life shorter than it could have been, not LBJ.

  • Rick,
    belief about God one way or the other has NOTHING to do with how good a scientist is.

    Uhh, I strongly disagree with that statement. You may be able to find a rare case of a living scientist who is religious and can set it aside to be objective about their work, but if that work is even slightly controversial you can be sure that a religious scientist has taken the path of maximum stupidity.

    Similarly, being an atheist doesn’t guarantee you have even a vague grasp of scientific principles.

  • But Nixon killed effectively cut Apollo’s life shorter than it could have been, not LBJ.

    No one claimed otherwise, you moron. Learn to read.

  • DCSCA

    “Translation: Keep earmarking a jobs program, not a space program.”

    Accurate. It never should have been allowed to get to this- or for any program in the MIC. NASA management over the past 30 years deserves much of the blame. Still, without firm support from the WH, U.S. manned space exploration has been in free drift for decades and little more than a works program for the aerospace community. If Congress lets the base elements of Constellation die, even if they decide to rework it, dump Ares for another LV and fully fund Orion, U.S. manned space exploration is essentially dead. This writer has already seen his nephew, who excels in the sciences and currently at a major university, dump career plans for any aerospace engineering and move into the biotech sciences. He sees no future for space exploration as a rewarding career path while the biotech industries appear to have a flourishing future.

  • DCSCA

    @RandSimberg- But Nixon killed effectively cut Apollo’s life shorter than it could have been, not LBJ. No one claimed otherwise, you moron. Learn to read.

    Ahhh, that engineering arrogance. Always amusing. Rand Simberg wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 3:48 pm “Nixon terminated NASA’s ability to travel to the Moon. No, Lyndon Johnson did that.” There’s a future for you in repairing electric organs at $10/hr., as well.

  • Rand Simberg wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 3:48 pm “Nixon terminated NASA’s ability to travel to the Moon. No, Lyndon Johnson did that.”

    And that statement remains true. Johnson shut down Saturn production, which effectively ended NASA’s ability to travel to the moon.

  • Bennett

    Producing Saturn 5 rockets = having the ability to travel to the moon.

    Cutting 3 moon missions does not equal terminating NASA’s ability to travel to the Moon.

    Point for Rand.

  • DCSCA

    Rand Simberg wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 3:48 pm “Nixon terminated NASA’s ability to travel to the Moon. No, Lyndon Johnson did that.” And that statement remains true. <- No, this is inaccurate.

    Johnson shut down Saturn production, which effectively ended NASA’s ability to travel to the moon. <- Inaccurate. Congress did not appropriate funding. And modified from your earlier inaccuracy. Nixon effectively killed the lunar program, not LBJ, by pulling WH support and going w/option 3. Nixon could easily have thrown WH support in 3/69 to restart the Saturn production line paused in August, 1968. But you go ahead and keep blaming LBJ. It's amusing.

  • DCSCA

    @Bennett- nonsense.

  • Inaccurate. Congress did not appropriate funding.

    LBJ could have vetoed the appropriations bill. He didn’t. It was a Democrat congress. Saturn production ended in his administration. Nixon didn’t do it.

    Nixon could easily have thrown WH support in 3/69 to restart the Saturn production line paused in August, 1968.

    He could have done it, but he couldn’t “easily” have done it, or at least not effectively. It wasn’t going to happen with a Democrat Congress, no matter how much White House support there was. There was no enthusiasm for Apollo once the race had been won. And the fact that he didn’t do it doesn’t mean that he is responsible for the end of production. At most, he is only complicit in not restarting it.

    I am no fan of Richard Nixon, but unlike you (and Marcel and many others), I like to get the history right.

  • DCSCA

    @Bennett/Simberg: “In August 1968, [Jim] Webb turned down Office of Manned Space Flight director George Mueller’s request that NASA buy two more Saturn V rockets, the sixteenth and seventeenth in the series. Soon after, Webb stepped down as NASA Administrator and the Saturn V production line went on standby. In January 1970, faced with a Fiscal Year 1971 NASA budget of only $3.5 billion, NASA Administrator Tom Paine permanently halted Saturn V production.” The Nixon Administration killed it. =sigh=

  • Coastal Ron

    Brian Paine wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 2:34 pm

    The future of NASA appears to have been hijacked without debate.

    Was there a debate about Constellation? If so, I missed it. All I know is that Mike Griffin dictated the design, and consigned us to 5 years of over-budget, behind-schedule hell.

    As others have already pointed out, the VSE specifically stated that NASA was to use commercial methods of transportation to space, and Griffin completely ignored it. I don’t recall the debate he held about that.

    If anything, the new plan gets us back to what the VSE calls out for, which when combined with the work of the Augustine Commission, has had far more public debate than anything Bush/Griffin did.

  • DCSCA

    @randSimberg- “I am no fan of Richard Nixon, [well, that’s a point in your favor] but unlike you (and Marcel and many others), I like to get the history right.

    Apparently not. Again, as stated above:

    In August 1968, [Jim] Webb turned down Office of Manned Space Flight director George Mueller’s request that NASA buy two more Saturn V rockets, the sixteenth and seventeenth in the series. Soon after, Webb stepped down as NASA Administrator and the Saturn V production line went on standby. In January 1970, faced with a Fiscal Year 1971 NASA budget of only $3.5 billion, NASA Administrator Tom Paine permanently halted Saturn V production.” The Nixon Administration killed it. Twit.

  • DCSCA

    @RandSimberg- “Nixon didn’t do it.”

    He did. See above.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 7:09 pm

    what I use to tell the girls…arguing for the sake of argument is nuts

    when you wrote this “[Jim] Webb turned down Office of Manned Space Flight director George Mueller’s request that NASA buy two more Saturn V rockets, the sixteenth and seventeenth in the series. Soon after, Webb stepped down as NASA Administrator and the Saturn V production line went on standby”

    you acknowledged Rand was correct. As Webb left office (in October of 68) he knew what you seemingly dont. Apollo was not going to be a permanent part of NASA’s future.

    Robert G. Oler

  • DCSCA

    @RobertGOler- “you acknowledged Rand was correct.” Inaccurate. Something private space proponents are displaying with amusing regularity of late. The Nixon administration killed it- cited twice now:

    http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4214/ch11-6.html'Standby‘ is not ending it.

    And ,of course, everyone was aware Apollo was a limited lifetime program– you may have missed that. Again with the amusing spin. Really no need. The chips are falling fast in favor of commercial space. If Congress lets Constellation die, however it may be modified, U.S. manned space exploration will be dead.

  • DCSCA

    “Ten days later, [January 14, 1970] after preliminary discussions on the fiscal 1971 budget, administrator Thomas O. Paine revealed more changes in space exploration. Saturn V launch vehicle production was to be suspended indefinitely after the fifteenth booster was completed, leaving NASA with no means of putting really large payloads into earth orbit or continuing lunar exploration. The last Saturn V was reassigned from Apollo 20 to Skylab. Unmanned explorations of Mercury and Mars were reduced or deferred. Some 50,000 of the estimated 190,000 employees of NASA and its contractors would have to be laid off, and many university scientists would find their projects without funds. Though the new plans imposed real austerity, Paine noted that they did provide for a start on the next project, development of a reusable spacecraft to shuttle crews and payloads between earth and a space station in earth orbit.” – source, NASA

  • The pseudonymous moron continues to make an asshat of himself.

  • someguy

    Why are we arguing about this? It was 40 years ago.

    In the end, who gives a frak? I don’t.

    Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if it was this president or that president, or this congress or that congress. The real answer is the American people cancelled it. The American people no longer cared 5 minutes after Apollo 11 landed. We won. Mission accomplished. Time to go home.

    Cancellation was inevitable.

  • DCSCA

    @RandSimberg: “The pseudonymous moron continues to make an asshat of himself.” <- Quack, quack, quack. Put down the mirror and put your head back; your nose has been bloodied; your inaccuracies corrected.

  • Nixon crippled NASA’s ability to fly beyond LEO and now Obama wants to cripple NASA’s ability to fly to LEO, the final blow to this highly beneficial government program.

    There’s been a brain drain from other nations around the world to the US for decades now. But with many countries trying to develop their own space programs, this may be an opportunity for them to recruit aerospace scientist and engineers from the US. They might be able to do for them what the Germans did for the US and Russian space programs after World War II.

  • Ben Joshua

    Nixon’s truncation of AAP and selection of the DOD shuttle over the NASA mini shuttle concept, tells me both Johnson and Nixon (and their respective congresses) had roles in curtailing any follow-on evolution of Apollo.

    Objective historians are supposed to start with the full scope of data before drawing conclusions. It would be ideologues who cherry pick data to fit a good guys / bad guys view of political parties and space politics.

    One telling example of this is the view that NASA’s inconvenient democrat, JFK (“We choose to go to the moon, and do the other things…”) was somehow not a liberal. (Take a look at his Sept. 14, 1960 speech on the meaning of liberalism, as well as his 1963 civil rights telecast and his American University commencement address on peace.)

    Trying to reconcile a government owned and operated space program with conservative ideals is problematic enough, without insisting the good and bad turns in space policy fall out into republican and democratic columns.

    The space station decision alone was kicked down the road by both parties and more than one president.

  • Agreed, someguy. Apollo was an historical anomaly. There will never again be such a program that spans several presidencies and twice that many Congressional elections before success. At least with Flexible Path there can be amultiple number of smaller successes, each allowing further capabilities to build, along with markets and industry.

  • Bennett

    “But with many countries trying to develop their own space programs, this may be an opportunity for them to recruit aerospace scientist and engineers from the US.”

    If they have the money, they couldn’t do better than hiring from the USA. Seeing how well the South Korean Rocket fared, Russian engineers may have a harder time selling design services.

    It also underlines the scope of SpaceX’s success with Falcon 9. Rocket science is, after all, rocket science.

  • Vladislaw

    “BX-1″ nano-satellites around their space capsules, a technology that puts them on the cutting edge of “space situational awareness” that America’s military space assets still lack.”

    “Beijing’s political and military leaders alike foresee “competition” in space with the United States. They certainly plan to seize the high ground of low-Earth orbit”

    China is going to seize the high ground of space by replicating what Russia and the United states have been doing since Skylab and Mir? Oh and the current ISS.

    I would think that the latest X launch by the airforce, that is still orbiting, wouldn’t give them situational awareness, or whatever it launched.

  • Nixon crippled NASA’s ability to fly beyond LEO</eM.

    Why do you continue to indulge in historical fantasies? Just because you hate Nixon?

  • Sorry, but the nightmare of Nixon’s policies was no fantasy. And, unfortunately, Obama is trying his best to be Nixon Jr. when it comes to NASA.

  • Sorry, but the nightmare of Nixon’s policies was no fantasy.

    You are a loon. But the looniness of your posts is certainly no fantasy.

  • @Simberg

    I’ll take that as a compliment from a Nixon lover like yourself:-)

  • Space Cadet

    @DCSCA

    “[In 1964] Sir Bernard Lovell, director of Britain’s Jodrell Bank Observatory, returned from a visit to the USSR with the impression there was no Soviet manned lunar program. [He was told] the USSR was concentrating on space tations and unmanned exploration.” – source, Walter McDougall, “… the Heavens and the Earth.”

    You’re in good company; Sir Bernard was wrong, too”

    To be fair to Sir Bernard, the USSR in fact built several space stations, sent unmanned missions to the Moon and Venus, but never launched a manned mission to the Moon.

  • DCSCA

    @SpaceCadet- The point was, they did have a manned lunar program, and Sir Bernard was incorrect in his assessment and lied to by his Soviet hosts. They had cosmonaut training, spacecraft in work and, of course, the ill-fated N-1. The fact that they never could pull it all together isn’t in question.

  • I’ll take that as a compliment from a Nixon lover like yourself.

    I’m not a Nixon lover. Nixon was an awful president. But unlike you, I am a reality lover.

  • […] Die Nachfrage nach Starts sei hier zu klein. (Space X Press Release 7.6.2010; Popular Mechanics, Space Policy 10., Orlando Sentinel, Flight Global, Orion 9., Space Politics 8., The Space Review, Tracker, […]

  • puzzled

    An interesting item: Paine’s anemic 3.5 billion in 70/71 cut down from the Glory Days and on which it was hard to do much except that much-maligned Option 3 is roughly the same, adjusting for inflation, as the 18 billion we’re stuck with today…

    Item 2: competing with NASA funding was a Vietnam War that was eating everything in sight, and although deficit spending was in vogue there was still a lot of inertia opposing the kinds of deficits we are running today. (man this ought to bring folks out of the woodwork…)

  • […] to an asteroid and beyond, as you said in Florida.” This is apparently the letter that a Houston Chronicle article referred to earlier this month as part of a shift to “political […]

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