Congress, NASA

Another take on the upcoming Senate NASA authorization

While Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) played up the fact that “the biggest part of the president’s goals are being fulfilled” in the NASA authorization bill being considered this week, today’s Orlando Sentinel has another take. Based on a review of the draft of the bill it obtained, the Sentinel found that while Constellation would not survive in its present form, the bill included language that “kills President Barack Obama’s proposed shakeup of the agency’s human-spaceflight program” by cutting funding for technology development and commercial crew programs. A key excerpt:

[T]he bill would provide three-year appropriations totaling $250 million for robotic missions intended to pave the way for human deep-space exploration, $1.7 billion for technology research and development and $890 million to help commercial rocket companies develop space taxis for astronauts.

By comparison, the administration had proposed $1.3 billion for robotic missions, $5.5 billion for technology development and $3.3 billion on commercial rocket companies between 2011 and 2013. […]

The bill would forbid NASA from spending any money on service contracts with commercial-rocket companies in 2011 and allow it in 2012 only if NASA can satisfy six requirements. Those include coming up with standards that commercial rocket firms would use to make their rockets safe for humans, along with devising a congressionally approved system to buy private rocket services for astronauts.

Some of the language above is a little vague: what does it mean, for example, to “forbid NASA from spending any money on service contracts” with commercial launch providers in 2011. Does this apply to commercial crew only, or does it extend to existing contracts for commercial ISS cargo delivery or other services?

Another unanswered question is why Sen. Nelson, who chairs the subcommittee that is handing the legislation, would support something that others quoted in the article claim would hurt his home state. “I don’t know who Bill Nelson is listening to, but it’s not his constituents,” Space Florida Frank DiBello told the Sentinel. (Nelson did not respond to a request for comment from the paper.)

Meanwhile, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation released a “myths and facts” document about commercial crew, just in time for the upcoming authorization debate. The eight-page document is intended to address some of the arguments against commercial crew transport to the ISS, ranging from “unproven capabilities” to long development times, high costs, and safety concerns.

79 comments to Another take on the upcoming Senate NASA authorization

  • Major Tom

    Among other discrepencies, Nelson earlier remarked that the authorization bill was spreading commercial crew funding over six years (vice five in NASA’s FY11 budget request), while the Orlando Sentinel article claims the bill only covers three years and dramatically cuts commercial crew.

    Guess we’ll find out Thursday (or whenever the actual bill language is released).

    FWIW…

  • ksc.worker

    I’m sorry, Space Florida is incorrect. I work at KSC and no one here is excited about the new plan and we have voiced that very well to Nelson, as well as Kosmas and Posey for that matter. So, he is listening to his constituents, FINALLY.
    Commercial does not help KSC, SpaceX jobs are in California right now, the last time I checked their website there was only ONE job in Florida. Commercial is not ready to pick up thousands of workers. If we push for heavy lift NOW which he is doing we can keep some of the workforce here and leverage some of the Constellation work being done at KSC already.

  • Kelly Starks

    It certainly reverses Obama’s proposed changes. As for:

    >what does it mean, for example, to “forbid NASA from spending any money on service contracts” with commercial launch providers in 2011. Does this apply to commercial crew only, or does it extend to existing contracts for commercial ISS cargo delivery or other services?<

    That could easily mean canceling COTS, or more correctly not exercizing the options to use COTS (NASA never agreed to use it as far as I remember).

    Also Nelson repeatedly used the phrase extending shuttle by "at least" one more flight. Are Glenn and Hutchisens Shuttle extension proposals getting traction?

  • Commercial does not help KSC, SpaceX jobs are in California right now, the last time I checked their website there was only ONE job in Florida.

    SpaceX has about fifty people in Florida, with plans to hire more. And ULA has many jobs in Florida, and they’ll need more people if their flight rate increases, as it will with commercial crew.

  • GeeSpace

    An answer to the statement “Another unanswered question is why Sen. Nelson, who chairs the subcommittee that is handing the legislation, would support something that others quoted in the article claim would hurt his home state” maybe Senator Nelson is looking at the national impact of the National Space program and not the space plan just for Florida.
    Also, a lot of things can happen between now and the approval of the senate version of the NASA authorization bill.

  • maybe Senator Nelson is looking at the national impact of the National Space program and not the space plan just for Florida.

    If so, it’s stupid on that basis as well.

  • MrEarl

    If anyone read the 2nd sentence in the paragraph related to commercial services you would see that the restrictions seem to be aimed at crew services. As for the cut in funds for crew services it seams reasonable given the fact that this a request for services and not supposed to be a joint development project.

    The savings would then be spent on a Block I and II design of an HLV and an Orion capsule fully capable of operations BEO. This sets up a fall back position in case commercial is not ready to take over the crew transport responsibilities.

    It still dose not address the, in my view, most important failure of the Obama plan and that is lack of a coherent plan or road map to expand our presence beyond Earth orbit. Since this authorization would only cover the years, FY’11 to FY’13 it seems that the Senate is trying to retain present capabilities and leaves the mission of NASA in limbo until the next administration.

  • Major Tom

    “If anyone read the 2nd sentence in the paragraph related to commercial services you would see that the restrictions seem to be aimed at crew services.”

    There’s no funding for commercial crew services in the years supposedly covered by the authorization bill (2011-2013). Even the most optimistic projection (e.g., SpaceX and Dragon) wouldn’t put a crewed capability into service until late 2013/early 2014 (assuming commercial crew starts in 2011).

    “… this a request for services and not supposed to be a joint development project.”

    There’s no request for commercial crew services yet. The activities proposed in the FY11 budget are for the development of such capabilities.

    And it’s not “joint” development. We wouldn’t call Intelsat contracting with Loral for the development of a new commercial comsat “joint”. It’s just a commercial agreement or contract, from a user to a provider.

    “It still dose not address the, in my view, most important failure of the Obama plan and that is lack of a coherent plan or road map to expand our presence beyond Earth orbit.”

    How is BEO by 2020, NEOs by 2025, and Mars by 2030s not a “coherent… road map [sic]”?

    How is putting in place at least two commercial LEO transport providers by 2016, extending ISS for human exploration research to 2020, and undertaking tech demos for an HLV/exploration architecture decision by 2015 not a “coherent plan”?

    Just because a plan or roadmap is not pursuing the hardware or destinations you would choose does not mean it’s incoherent. It’s fine to criticize but make your argument using facts and logic, not broadly false statements.

    FWIW…

  • ksc.worker

    Rand,
    My point exactly. Plans to hire more… How many and when?
    ULA will need more. Same question?
    Nothing concrete, no jobs as of NOW = no support from anyone who has a job here or wants to keep a job here.
    Unless you work at one of the centers you can’t IMAGINE the hatred towards Bolden/Garver/Obama for this new vision. NO ONE WANTS IT.

  • Major Tom

    “Nothing concrete, no jobs as of NOW = no support from anyone who has a job here or wants to keep a job here”

    The nation’s civil human space flight program is about a lot more than jobs. My sympathies if your job is on the line, but routing taxpayer money to government contractors and their employees should be a secondary concern.

    “Unless you work at one of the centers you can’t IMAGINE the hatred towards Bolden/Garver/Obama for this new vision. NO ONE WANTS IT.”

    Anonymous hearsay on a blog isn’t worth much, but I was at KSC a month or so ago. I had many conversations, and I did not encounter a single worker there who didn’t support the FY11 budget.

    FWIW…

  • Unless you work at one of the centers you can’t IMAGINE the hatred towards Bolden/Garver/Obama for this new vision.

    Oh, I can well imagine it.

    NO ONE WANTS IT.

    I know many taxpayers and people interested in actual progress in space who want it. The purpose of the space program isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, to provide jobs at NASA centers.

  • MrEarl

    MT….
    According to NASAWatch;
    “In the proposed draft, commercial activities would now receive the following: $150M in FY 2011, $275M in FY 2012, and $464M in FY 2013 – for a total of $889M. ”
    and , you’re right, this would not be joint development, this would be NASA paying for the development of something that they may or may not purchase in the future with little to no input on how the money is spent. A true free market plan to buy commercial crew services on the open market would be the offer to purchase a set amount of crew transport services over a given number of years without having to pay for any portion of the development. That’s how is done in a true free market system.

    “undertaking tech demos for an HLV/exploration architecture decision by 2015 not a “coherent plan”?”
    The president only promised that he would make a decision on the type of HLV to pursue in 2015 and no mention was made about an exploration architecture at all.

    Tom you always cherry pick and take things out of context. When I talked about a plan or road map the rest of the sentence said, “to expand our presence beyond Earth orbit.” So, two commercial LEO transport providers and extension of the ISS doesn’t satisfy that criteria and if you were using logic you would realize that wishing to go to destinations you mention without an exploration architecture is just dreaming.

  • Major Tom

    “this would be NASA paying for the development of something that they may or may not purchase in the future”

    NASA is purchasing Commercial Resupply Services for the ISS from the two COTS developers.

    Why wouldn’t NASA purchase follow-on services from successful CCDev developers?

    “with little to no input on how the money is spent”

    Under COTS, SpaceX and OSC had to propose milestones with deliverables, NASA had to agree or modify those milestones and deliverables, and SpaceX and OSC only get paid if they achieve those milestones and deliverables.

    NASA terminated Rocketplane Kistler when they couldn’t achieve their cost-sharing milestones.

    NASA will have all kinds of say in who gets commercial crew money, how their commercial crew money will get spent, and whether they will keep getting commercial crew money from milestone to milestone. Even the Coumbia Accident Investigation Board is comfortable with how much input NASA is going to have on the commercial crew approach when it comes to the most important space flight issue — safety.

    spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=34471

    Don’t make stupid statements out of ignorance.

    “Tom you always cherry pick and take things out of context. When I talked about a plan or road map the rest of the sentence said, “to expand our presence beyond Earth orbit.” So, two commercial LEO transport providers and extension of the ISS doesn’t satisfy that criteria”

    Where did I say that commercial crew and ISS extension comprises a human space exploration plan?

    Don’t make stuff up.

    In addition to commercial crew and ISS extension, my earlier post referenced other elements of NASA’s FY11 budget plan for human space exploration. Apparently, you’ve decided to ignore those elements, the same way you’ve been willfully ignoring them in thread after thread so you can continue making the same lazy arguments and ignorant statements about plans and roadmaps not existing when they do or being incoherent when they are not.

    Let us know when you’ve actually bothered to read and comprehend the specifics of NASA’s FY11 budget plan and want to debate the plan on the basis of facts and merit, rather than whatever broadly false statement you want to make up for the current thread.

    Ugh…

  • Kelly Starks

    > Major Tom wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
    >>“It still dose not address the, in my view, most important failure
    >> of the Obama plan and that is lack of a coherent plan or road
    >> map to expand our presence beyond Earth orbit.”

    > How is BEO by 2020, NEOs by 2025, and Mars by 2030s not
    > a “coherent… road map [sic]“?

    ROTFL

    Those arn’t planed – those are sound bytes in a speech, “like getting us out of the middle east ni 16 months” “or a new open bipartisan administration”.

    >
    > How is putting in place at least two commercial LEO transport
    > providers by 2016, extending ISS for human exploration research
    > to 2020, and undertaking tech demos for an HLV/exploration
    > architecture decision by 2015 not a “coherent plan”?

    Well the two providers by 2016 is at least mentioned in the plan – though with so little detail it could mean anything from Orion on a EELV, To Dragon/Falcon. “BUT” he curiously made no attempt to get approval for the plan.

    Station was in the wind anyway, HLV was another sound byte of what might be thought about later – or not.

    The tech was pork aimed at nothing. Exactly the kind of undirected studies NASA did for decades resulting in nothing.

    A rambling set of platitudes and pork isn’t a plan. Not even if folks you like might get some of the pork.

    Mainly huge numbers of folks in NASA and around the country that build and fly space craft get pink slips. Yeah KSC might get a couple dozen SpaceX jobs, but they are certain to lose hundreds if not thousands.

    NASA’s budget will remain, but focused more and more no busywork and pork.

  • tivo

    Another kick in d S for all those Obama haters…
    http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=34471

  • “A true free market plan to buy commercial crew services on the open market would be the offer to purchase a set amount of crew transport services over a given number of years without having to pay for any portion of the development. That’s how is done in a true free market system.”

    It’s hardly uncommon in the commercial world to advance money to a supplier to develop or upgrade their systems. E.g. a big car manufacturer with a new model coming out may advance money to a parts suppler to upgrade its factory. Often a large construction project will not get underway until an anchor customer is found who will put money down before the ground is even broken.

    Commercial crew program will involve multiple competitors, at least two of which will be selected to provide for redundancy, and it will use fixed price contracts. Furthermore, the rockets will be the same as used for launching commercial satellites and the crew modules the same as used to deliver passengers to Bigelow habitats. All of this should be more than sufficient to qualify the commercial crew program as genuinely commercial.

  • ksc.worker

    Major Tom, Sorry about it being anonymous hearsay but I work here and know alot of people on shuttle and constellation and THEY don’t want it. Maybe you visited some people on the commercial side so if that’s true then maybe everyone you spoke to wanted his budget. There is no reason anyone on constellation would want the new budget….none.

    Let’s face it, constellation would be over so NO one on that contract wants that.

    Now CCAFS might have a different opinion. I’ll suspect you visited the Air Force side who support commercial.

    It’s not just about jobs !! Yes, we all want to keep our jobs obviously. But the thing is We have a goal NOW. Yes, we are working towards supporting a mission we can envision. Can you or anyone like Bolden tell me what my job will be under Obamaspace? Not that I know of. Which rocket will be launched from 39a or 39b next and when? Who will do the work, how many people will it take, etc… No one has said that and apparently no one knows.

  • pitufo

    ksc.worker wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
    Which rocket will be launched from 39a or 39b next and when? Who will do the work, how many people will it take, etc… No one has said that and apparently no one knows.

    I would also add, How will we obtain our usual porkchop, Salami and lionribs?
    :)

  • Kelly Starks

    > ksc.worker wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 3:07 pm

    > Unless you work at one of the centers you can’t IMAGINE the
    > hatred towards Bolden/Garver/Obama for this new vision.
    > NO ONE WANTS IT.

    Not surprising. And I’ve heard worse from folks at the centers. It’s beyond hating this, to hating being involved in space, if not aerospace, at all. Spend decades developing the engineering teams to develop something like Constellation – and then in a whim it thrown out. Not refocused on doing something new (one could hope better, but lets be realistic) just shut down. Operations shutdown. Work for anything solid gone.

    And worse all the space advocates applauding the end of the space program and the gutting out of NASA as if everything done, or that could be done, is garbage – while hailing laughable new visions, and plans like they are magic.

    Obama’s the pied piper who promises everything in such skillfully vague terms everyone can read into it what they want, but he flat out said he saw no value in NASA back before he realized he needed Florida’s votes to get elected. Garver wanted a career in politics and used the NSS to get there – she was never a space advocate who drifted into politics for the Cause. Bolden’s either a fool, or just follows orders. Unstopped they will end the US space program in any real sense of the word.

    If you spent you’re career at a center or in the program to open up space, this is humiliation followed by being thrown out no the side walk as the set fire to everything you built or dreamed.

  • Coastal Ron

    MrEarl wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 3:25 pm

    this would be NASA paying for the development of something that they may or may not purchase in the future with little to no input on how the money is spent… That’s how is done in a true free market system.

    The “free market system” is a lot more than one economic model.

    In this case, NASA is an agent of the government, and the government wants to help the commercial space transportation marketplace get established. To do that, they will provide a combination of technical assistance, direct payments for performing NASA specific tasks, and future service guarantees. This is the same model used by COTS, which is a pay-for-performance model that only rewards the participating companies for completing tasks, not for just working on them.

    The government has used this model for many industries, and for many years. It uses taxpayer money to spur the creation of a market that will generate jobs and more tax revenue than was originally seeded.

    The president only promised that he would make a decision on the type of HLV to pursue in 2015 and no mention was made about an exploration architecture at all.

    The President’s budget proposal only went out 5 years, and it is already asking for $6B more than their current level, of which he is investing into preparing the groundwork for the future plans (basic technologies, basic exploration, commercial transportation, lowering costs to space, etc.). Why waste time on something you don’t have a budget to build? Presidents provide direction, they are not futurists. Weird.

  • MrEarl

    Tommy….
    “Where did I say that commercial crew and ISS extension comprises a human space exploration plan?

    Don’t make stuff up.”
    Right in your previous post. Do you even read the garbage your write?
    The childish re-joiner of “don’t make stuff up.” is getting old.

    Let’s use a simple analogy that has been used by others on this blog. When the military buys services to transport troops to bases, via airlines for example, it pays a price per trip. That is the type of agreement that should be used for COTs but along with a per-flight cost NASA is also paying for a substantial portion of the development costs. Either the provider can deliver the services at an agreed price or not.

    “Don’t make stupid statements out of ignorance.”
    If you can’t discus the issue without resorting to “troll like” comments take your opinions else were.

  • Kelly Starks

    > Major Tom wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 3:55 pm

    > NASA is purchasing Commercial Resupply Services for the
    > ISS from the two COTS developers.

    Nit, but they have the OPTION to buy those services – they haven’t signed the checks and could with a whim cancel for political convene.

  • Coastal Ron

    ksc.worker wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 4:11 pm

    It’s not just about jobs !! Yes, we all want to keep our jobs obviously. But the thing is We have a goal NOW.

    Constellation had an announced goal, but Congress has never fully funded it, so you could say that Congress was not enthusiastic about the goal. Because of that, and technical challenges, the program was slipping away – something had to be done, and getting full funding from Congress did not look like it was going to happen. Sometimes you have to cut your loses.

    Can you or anyone like Bolden tell me what my job will be under Obamaspace? Not that I know of. Which rocket will be launched from 39a or 39b next and when? Who will do the work, how many people will it take, etc… No one has said that and apparently no one knows.

    One of the perpetuating myths is that somehow NASA is being decimated. The new NASA budget is being INCREASED by $6B over 5 years, and the last GAO report I heard was that NASA employment overall was not being affected (maybe even increased).

    Now maybe you work on the Shuttle program, and if so, then you can thank George W. Bush for canceling the Shuttle program. But I happened to agree with that decision, as did Congress and many others, so let’s get our anger directed to the right place.

    As far as what you are going to do, I don’t know, but that’s life. I can’t tell you how many products and projects I’ve worked on that have ended, and you need to realize that some things don’t go on forever. Pad 39A & B may eventually be torn down and replaced by launchers of a new generation, and that will provide jobs for a new generation of workers (maybe you too), and if we’re lucky, they will be commercial companies, and not government. NASA should not be running a transportation company, so things need to get realigned.

    Look, this is a bad time in the economy for job changes, but I’m looking at the overall picture here, and I see the transition to commercial transportation as better overall. My $0.02

  • Vladislaw

    ksc.worker wrote”

    “Major Tom, Sorry about it being anonymous hearsay but I work here and know alot of people on shuttle and constellation and THEY don’t want it.”

    Let me guess, the shuttle people think America should continue with the shuttle and the Constellation people think we should go forward with that. Bit if a stretch to say that is an unbiased opinion of KSC overall, or if they represent workers for the best way forward.

  • ksc.worker wrote:

    “Can you or anyone like Bolden tell me what my job will be under Obamaspace? Not that I know of.”

    This is the problem I have with a lot of “KSC workers.” They think the space program is about THEM. It’s not. It’s about what the federal government decides the space program is about.

    NASA is not a socialist government jobs program. You will have a job only so long as your services are required. That’s how it works in the real world outside your cocoon.

  • DCSCA

    Now maybe you work on the Shuttle program, and if so, then you can thank George W. Bush for canceling the Shuttle program.

    Uh, not really. It was inevitable that the shuttle era had to wind down and somebody had to end it. Poor management at NASA has a stake in that ‘blame.’ If the Columbia accident had not unfolded as it did, shuttle may have gotten a reprive for a few years, but the weak management practices, reminicent of Challenger, shown toward a tiring technology was the final straw. You can spend the time tallying the ‘down time’ of months- sometimes years- shuttle has had due to delays, technical problems, accidents and so on but it mostly likely adds up to well over half a decade over the 30 year span of the program so far– and each orbiter was ‘designed’ for 100 flights, at least on paper, and none of them have come close to that. There really isn’t much more you can do with shuttle after completing the ISS assembly, unless you fly it quarterly to haul cargo up or service satellites in some fashion but that doesn’t appear to be economical, which again falls squarely on the shoulders of NASA management and the aerospace industry. Of course, some ‘creative’ uses never really were flushed out– for instance, developing a ‘passenger’ module for the cargo bay to lease/sell to airlines, tourism, etc., to haul up ‘tourists’ or passengers, etc. Economic and bureaucratic obstacles abound. It’s pretty much flown its course, especially as it has become more and more costly to fly.

  • DCSCA

    @kscworker- This writer has posted this anecdote before- several years ago a fellow showed up to fix an electric organ at a relative’s home. One of the kids had a Saturn V on display and the fella caught sight of it and shared stories of how he’d worked on the rocket as an engineer years earlier. He then finished fixing the organ, at $10/hr., and left. Suggest you keep your tools handy, plan on moving– or find another line of work.

  • Kelly Starks

    > Coastal Ron wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 4:40 pm

    >>ksc.worker wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
    >>
    >> “It’s not just about jobs !! Yes, we all want to keep our jobs
    >> obviously. But the thing is We have a goal NOW.”

    > Constellation had an announced goal, but Congress has never
    > fully funded it, so you could say that Congress was not enthusiastic
    > about the goal. ==

    They liked the goal, they didn’t like the bloated costs and tech problems that NASA just wouldn’t deal with.

    Besides – whats worse, a goal your not getting to very well — or a stated no goal ever.

    >> “Can you or anyone like Bolden tell me what my job will be under
    >> Obamaspace? Not that I know of. Which rocket will be launched
    >> from 39a or 39b next and when? Who will do the work, how
    >> many people will it take, etc… No one has said that and
    >> apparently no one knows.”

    > One of the perpetuating myths is that somehow NASA is being
    > decimated. The new NASA budget is being INCREASED by $6B
    > over 5 years, and the last GAO report I heard was that NASA
    > employment overall was not being affected (maybe even increased).

    Your being pretty disingenuous here. NASA is being decimated, and thousands are listed to be laid off. Others might get jobs for some of the studies – but not him, or folks who worked the maned space flight programs in any real numbers.

    Its not like commercial crews ever going to employ many at KSC.

  • red

    If the authorization subcommittee wants to be taken seriously, it will need to try a lot harder to compromise than the Sentinel’s interpretation of its exploration proposal. Asking for a Shuttle extension, a full-blown Shuttle-derived HLV, and a full-scale Orion all at once is far too expensive. We see the result here: the exploration technology demonstration budget is a shadow of what it’s supposed to be, the robotic HSF precursor missions are virtually wiped out, there’s no work on affordable HLVs, and commercial crew is delayed and largely eliminated in favor of the Russian Soyuz. Essentially the entire new exploration plan is wiped out. It’s not a compromise.

    The subcommittee needs to figure out what it wants – Shuttle extension, Shuttle-derived heavy lift, or full-scale Orion. Every one of those is expensive, and it might not be able to get any of them, let alone all 3.

    Shuttle-derived heavy lift? Sidemount block I is supposed to be on the order of the $3B heavy lift work in the new budget. Associated infrastructure maintenance is supposed to be on the order of $3B assuming no actual Shuttle flights (subtracting $7.8B from $11B from the chart on page 7 here

    http://images.spaceref.com/news/2010/SDLV.charts.pdf

    and the total Sidemount cost (block I and II) figure here:

    http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2010/06/sd-hlv-assessment-highlights-post-shuttle-solution/

    Maybe the infrastructure costs could be absorbed by release of KSC Modernization (~2B) and Constellation transition savings. Then the compromise might skim a little bit off the exploration technology budget (eg: postponing the aerocapture demo at Mars, the last flagship technology demonstration mission described in any detail, since Mars landings are a bit in the future anyway) to get a start on Sidemount block II.

    That would be about as far as you could take a reasonable Shuttle-derived HLV compromise, and skimming off of the technology demonstrations is probably already taking it too far (since you’re already whacking HLV and propulsion technology work).

    Alternately, if you’re a Congressperson in Florida, you may also be interested in simply getting some HLV launches started on Florida soil ASAP. In that case, you might go for a compromise that starts some modest and quick EELV or similar upgrades rather than going through a lengthy HLV R&D phase. This could be done using some or all of the $3B in the FY2011 HLV budget through FY2015. You wouldn’t keep the Shuttle workforce in jobs, but you’d get EELV or similar HLV launches started for some jobs. That would be added to various other new Florida jobs for technology demonstration management, EELV and similar launches, and KSC modernization.

    Since you wouldn’t be devestating the rest of the FY2011 budget, you might stand a chance of getting such a compromise in place.

    For either Sidemount or EELV-class HLVs, you would of course also need to arrange some payloads (for example, from the robotic precursor, technology demonstration, ISS, or other lines in the FY2011 budget). Adding crew support for the launcher might be too expensive to fit into a reasonable compromise.

    You would also probably have to abandon the Orion altogether, including the CRV, in favor of commercial crew. In that case commercial crew might even need a budget increase.

    A similar thought process would be needed for a full-scale Orion. It would probably need to be launched on an EELV; maybe it would even have to be launched uncrewed and become a space-only vehicle to limit or avoid launcher costs so the compromise doesn’t go off the rails.

  • Coastal Ron

    Kelly Starks wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 7:54 pm

    They liked the goal, they didn’t like the bloated costs and tech problems that NASA just wouldn’t deal with.

    Maybe you could say that after the program had been running for a while, but Congress didn’t fully fund the program from the beginning, and then continued to underfund it, so that invalidates your theory.

    Its not like commercial crews ever going to employ many at KSC.

    So when you say “NASA is being decimated”, and yet their budget is staying the same or even increasing, what do you mean? You keep saying this, and yet the NASA budget proposal is quite clear what NASA is going to do with the money – real programs, lots of work to do for NASA and it’s contractors (some at KSC too).

    If you’re talking about Shuttle related stuff, then that was decided by Bush & Congress. If you’re talking about Constellation stuff, you even agreed that the program was bloated and behind schedule.

    You just seem to be complaining to complain. Is there anything specific you want to hitch your horse to, or are you just whining for the attention?

  • red

    “Its not like commercial crews ever going to employ many at KSC.”

    KSC and nearby communities have a lot going for them in the new plan, even though there will be a painful transition (as there would have been under Constellation, too). It’s not just commercial crew:

    – Shuttle extended beyond September 2010 (maybe Feb 2011, maybe even July 2011)
    – $1.9B in KSC region modernization
    – commercial crew (likely launched from the Cape or KSC)
    – joint management with JSC of NASA’s Flagship Technology Demonstration line
    – numerous launches to support ISS cargo, exploration technology demonstration missions, robotic precursor missions, small satellite technology demonstrations, new Earth observation missions, etc
    – likely HLV launch location in Florida much sooner than would be the case under Constellation
    – Constellation transition funds to help ease the job transition for those who can’t find a spot in the new efforts

  • Chance

    So, if passed as currently written, is this something the President would veto for not being close enough to the administration’s wishes? Or do you think it is “close enough for government work”? I know there will probably be a ton of changes and horse trading before final passage, I’m just curious what President Obama’s “red lines” are, if any, regarding space policy.

  • Set it straight

    Here’s the problem facing the W.H. and it’s pretty simple when you think about it… Either the plan that the authorization committee is accepted or it’s not. If it’s not, then another year of Constellation at the FY2010 funds and harder to shut it down. If it is, then Obama gets a portion of what he wants.

  • asd

    at least ksc worker has admitted that ksc workers only care about their jobs.

    they want to build another HLV to keep jobs. finally the myth of NASA not being a jobs program is broken.

    if you care about space you know who to ignore. the “skilled workforce” at ksc.

  • “Set It Straight” is right about why Obama will not veto the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 as currently written. Additionally, if Obama veto’s this Act, and if the GOP gains big in the mid-terms, that only encourages an override, which would, if successful, take space away from the President and put it in the hands of Congress, for the first time since Eisenhower created NASA. What an opening act that would be for a newly minted Conservative or a Dem. fighting to survive despite the President, to shove this down the White House’s throat. No, there will be no veto. But there will be collateral damage to be assessed after the mid-terms.

    As to Jeff’s speculation, what does it mean, for example, to “forbid NASA from spending any money on service contracts” with commercial launch providers in 2011. Does this apply to commercial crew only, or does it extend to existing contracts for commercial ISS cargo delivery or other services?, I assume that was a rhetorical question as he knows exactly what it means.

    Musk has a nasty habit of over-promising and under-delivering. Falcon 1, two years late, 3/5 of launches borked, and a missed Air Force payload. Falcon 9’s maiden flight was a success but SpaceX then informed NASA that it might get one more of the 3 flights it should launch before the end of the FY. SpaceX’s friends in NASA are few, far between, and about to be given early retirement. Once that cabal from the 9th floor is gone, rest assured that NASA’s new leadership will hold SpaceX’s feet to the fire down the road and if SpaceX doesn’t meet the terms of the COTS contract (again), its contract will be terminated. If you want to see what happens when you loose NASA contracts, just look at Kistler’s recent Ch. 7 filing in Oklahoma.

  • DCSCA

    Musk has a nasty habit of over-promising and under-delivering.<- His ex-wife apparently feels the same way.

  • space123

    asd,
    I guess I read things differently from kscworker or read the whole post at least. It sounds like jobs are important but that goes for all of us, but also the mission is what they believe in and they had that in shuttle/constellation. Yes they want to build a heavy lift now to “go somewhere” and “do something”. I don’t knock him/her for that. Under the Obama plan no one who works there could get excited about “maybe’s” sometime in the future.

  • Bennett

    “…no one who works there could get excited about “maybe’s” sometime in the future”

    I know it’s easier for those of us NOT working for NASA or a subcontractor to see that all of the cool infrastructure to make BEO happen over an extended period of time has consistently been put on the back burner, in favor of a huge Pork Project.

    It’s exciting, for me at least, to think that we just might move past “one off” missions, or “all LEO” HSF. Others may doubt the value of preparation and tech development, but I think it’s a good idea whose time has come.

  • spacermase

    You know personally, I can’t help but wonder if this is essentially a haggling act we are seeing. One side starts high, the other low, and they work towards the middle.

    (Which one is high and which one is low in this case is, of course, a matter of personal preference).

  • Kelly Starks

    > Coastal Ron wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
    >> Kelly Starks wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
    >> “They liked the goal, they didn’t like the bloated costs and tech
    >> problems that NASA just wouldn’t deal with.”

    > == Congress didn’t fully fund the program from the beginning,
    > and then continued to underfund it, so that invalidates your theory.

    Or it confirms it. They increased budget to support it adn shuttle – but didn’t offer teh bloated costs NASA was asking for.

    After all the point of the program was to force NASA to become a capable competent organization that could deliver at a reasonable cost. Constellation was laughable overpriced for its capabilities.

    >> “Its not like commercial crews ever going to employ many at KSC.”

    > So when you say “NASA is being decimated”, and yet their budget is
    > staying the same or even increasing, what do you mean? ==

    NASA capabilities and skill sets to do missions will be decimated. The folks in the staffs or the subcontracts that fly flights, plan and train for them, design and develop systems, etc will get decimated. Say 80+% cuts.

    Replacing 200 astronauts with 200 folks restudying old tech keeps the staffing and budget levels; but your trading folks with critical hard to replace skills, and who were doing things, for folks doing busywork and lacking the skills to do thing folks want a NASA for. Lay off thousands doing development work on the crappy Constellation, yeah you stopped wasting money no Constellation – but now you’ve got no one left to develop something you’d want.

    >== If you’re talking about Shuttle related stuff, then that
    > was decided by Bush & Congress. ==

    To be fair – Obama could propose reversing that decision a lot easier then getting support for Obama space.

    >== Is there anything specific you want to hitch your horse to==?

    Of what’s being offered, Nelsons compromise does the least damage, and keeps options open for a year.

    What I’d want would be restructuring the program, say a RFP for a commercial developed adn constructed major moon base with full RLV based transportation for 20 years. Or just a full RLV dev. program, highly commercially based, to replace Constellation. These would be cheaper even if much more expansive, and would force NASA and industry into a more constructive mixture. But no ones championing that, and all I hear is lose NASA and the space industry as long as maybe NEW space might get first divs no the crumbs. That’s not a plus for me. It leaves us with nothing to build fron to go forward.

  • Kelly Starks

    > Jim Hillhouse wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 7:35 am

    >== Musk has a nasty habit of over-promising and under-delivering.==

    Thats about all of new.space. Blue Origins about 2 years late on goals one of their senior folks told me 4 (ish) years ago. Hell most start out talknig big and go bankrupt. Even old hands like Scaled Composites is a couple years late.

    If they can get a market they can probably develop – but weer now talking about one of the dominent customers for services (NASA) doing major cutbacks.

  • Musk has a nasty habit of over-promising and under-delivering.

    Yeah, unlike that NASA, that never has schedule delays or cost overruns, or performance shortfalls, or kills astronauts. And it only costs tens of billions to do that, instead of hundreds of millions, like that chintzy SpaceX.

    The double standard and mendacity here is breathtaking.

    Falcon 1, two years late, 3/5 of launches borked, and a missed Air Force payload.Three test flight failures, each more successful than the previous, followed by three consecutive successes as the bugs were wrung out.

    FIFY

  • Kelly Starks

    > red wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
    > ==. Asking for a Shuttle extension, a full-blown Shuttle-derived
    > HLV, and a full-scale Orion all at once is far too expensiv..

    I wonder. A SD-HLV wouldn’t require a lot of extra infrastructure or staff – really it might require less then shuttles shedding. Cutting down the flights and the number of related folks (Astronauts, trainers, flight control, etc) is cutting shuttle ops costs a lot – a SD-HLV might not take many more then that. The budget already has Orion and Ares funds in it.

    Has anyone seen a solid beleavable budget for a nitegrated program?

  • Space Cadet

    @ ksc.worker

    “Unless you work at one of the centers you can’t IMAGINE the hatred towards Bolden/Garver/Obama for this new vision. NO ONE WANTS IT.”

    Not true at all. The NASA budget would receive an increase overall, resulting in a net increase in employment. Folks at the centers that do technology research love the new plan. When Griffin gutted tech development to cover endless Constellation overruns it was the folks doing technology who were getting laid off.

    The main reason Constellation should be cancelled is it would cost too much to operate at $ 1 Billion/launch. Most of the operational costs go to pay a huge workforce, including many at KSC. But as long as it takes an army for operations we’ll never be able to increase the launch rate. Change is difficult but that is no excuse for keeping the space program frozen in time.

  • Coastal Ron

    Jim Hillhouse wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 7:35 am

    SpaceX’s friends in NASA are few, far between, and about to be given early retirement. Once that cabal from the 9th floor is gone…

    I think you have it backwards. I think a good amount of the younger NASA folk are the SpaceX supporters – they are not as engrained with the “that’s not how we did it on Apollo & Shuttle” mentality. They also see their fellow comrades being hired by the SpaceX’s and Blue Origin’s of the world.

    …rest assured that NASA’s new leadership will hold SpaceX’s feet to the fire down the road and if SpaceX doesn’t meet the terms of the COTS contract (again), its contract will be terminated.

    Considering that they have met all of their milestones prior to their test flight, and that they feel good enough about their test flight program to drop one of the COTS Demo flights, I don’t think NASA is too concerned about them.

    Do you have a specific example of where they didn’t meet the terms of their COTS contract and NASA gave them a warning?

    If you want to see what happens when you loose NASA contracts, just look at Kistler’s recent Ch. 7 filing in Oklahoma.

    You have it backwards. Kistler was in financial trouble before they won the COTS contract, and it was because of their inability to raise additional capital (required by the contract) that caused them to be thrown off of COTS. They were going to fold, and the COTS contract just postponed the inevitable.

  • Justin Kugler

    The Transportation Office here at JSC has never been busier. We in Payloads are working very closely with them to get ready for cargo deliveries next year.

    The simple fact of the matter is that our only real option for sample return after Shuttle retirement is Dragon. This has been coming for a long time now and has nothing to do with 9th Floor politics. On the ISS Program, Orion wasn’t even on our radar under the status quo.

  • Coastal Ron

    jml wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 11:07 am

    The budget spreadsheet you pointed to is really detailed – what is the source, and how current is it?

    I ask because the link seems to come from the DIRECT folks, and I see references to the Jupiter-130 in the budget numbers (Transfers sheet). I was not aware that Nelson (or anyone else) was directly promoting DIRECT.

  • space123

    space cadet,
    the overall budget increase is not an increase for human space flight. it’s more money for planetary science and earth space science. so yes, those people might like the new budget but not the people who launch rockets like ksc.
    if there is going to be an increase in employment can they give us the numbers as someone else eluded too?
    lot’s of layoffs just happened with constellation in utah, alabama, and florida. maybe 1,000 or more, shuttle will lay off at least 6,000 or so at the end of the program.
    are you saying that nasa is going to hire upwards of 7,000 plus people if the new budget passes? which centers and how many people for each center?

  • Bennett

    Justin Kugler wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 11:47 am

    That’s very interesting information, Justin. Where the rubber meets the road, folks have to go with what works, or is expected to work, in the near term. It’s heartening to know that you folks at JSC are on the job, working with SpaceX, to get the job done. It is the only real option, and thanks to GWB and COTS, it IS an option.

  • Space Cadet

    @ space123.

    Actually no. The planetary science budget is essentially flat. Earth science would receive a small increase. By far the bulk of the shift in funding would be from Constellation to technology development and commercial crew. But note that “technology development” doesn’t just mean lab experiments. Billions of $ would go to actual technology demonstration and robotic precursor missions, many led by JSC, many launched from KSC.

    The budget is in terms of $ rather than heads and organized by program rather than by center. But one could match the programs roughly with the center assignments (NASA budget webpage) and use $ 300 K/ job (direct + indirect) as a rough conversion from $ to people.

    The bottom line is that a larger NASA budget means more jobs, since $ spent ultimately end up in someone’s paycheck. Not all of the NASA budget goes to NASA civil servants of course, some goes to contractors (support contractors, service providers, and hardware providers), universities, non-governmental laboratories.

  • jml

    @Coastal Ron

    Yes, this is from the Direct folks, and was created this spring as a response to the FY2011 proposals with, as I understand it, some input from the major industry players who would be involved in a government-owned but contractor-operated SDLV consortium. The broad strokes in this document could likely apply to any similar sort of SDLV, whether in-line or side-mount. Of course the actual proposed numbers from the Senate authorizing committee have just appeared for all to see….
    http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/NASA%20Rockefeller1.pdf

  • space123

    Space Cadet,
    Here is the thing though, if NASA is claiming that there will be a job increase from today then don’t lay off people today because supposedly you will need them as soon as the budget is passed. But they aren’t worried about showing people the door in huge masses. What I mean is that if Constellation was going to transition to “whatever” and you would still need those people “and then some” according to your larger budget theory then Bolden should just tell everyone to take it easy and they will all have jobs under the Obama plan but they will just be working on something different. That would be great for the workers to hear.
    But since Bolden is all teary eyed about losing so many great people and the mission they are dedicated too definately shows they will be losing jobs under the new program and not gaining.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ July 12th, 2010 at 7:16 pm

    @kscworker- This writer has posted this anecdote before-…

    and it is pretty meaningless. in fact stupid.

    None of us “know” the organ tuner person. What he did in the program (engineer? what) and what were the personal choices he and his family made in pursuit of his/her career.

    There are a few more personal issues…but they pale before the larger issue.

    ALL JOBS IN NASA HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT take taxpayer money to create and support. Space workers act as if that fact is not important. That it is an entitlement that should not be questioned…because heck we are in space flight and that is so important.

    I do not know what the ratio of “taxpayers to federal employees” is and certainly not “taxpayers to jobs supported by federal dollars” is either.

    Pete Olson right now is running around TX 22 alternately trying to save his federal (and federal supported jobs) and decrying deficit spending….and doing the later saying that for every federal job “Job created by taxpayer spending” (a direct quote) that it takes 1.5 taxpayers to fund that job. I think that Pete is running the number to low. I’ve read on “right wing” (sorry Rand) blogs that its 1.X number of taxpayers for every job funded by tax dollars at all levels…So Maybe Pete is kind of confused…

    BUT the point remains that jobs created and funded by federal taxes should provide more then just jobs, they should provide value for the jobs…and when the value of Apollo ran out. So did the jobs…and like shuttle anyone who was working in that project who couldnt see the end coming was making bad choices.

    HSF jobs are dead end jobs for taxpayers. They produce no product that improves our economy to the level of the cost necessary, they produce no infrastructure that has value to the cost…they just exist because they are left over from the one project that had national value and that is Apollo.

    The irony of this is that Bush’s TARP and Obama’s Stimulus all failed in my view because they were “NASA type spending”. What most of the TARP money went to are banks that had simply made bad decisions and were going under…but were to big to go under (or so we were told). The stimulus seems mostly to have been spent to protect (at least it was in Rick Perry’s Texas) to protect the jobs of Teachers and local law enforcement…but not to create any new product or infrastructure.

    However it is hard to argue that the jobs of teachers and cops are “less” important then the current examples of the person you use as an example tuning organs.

    Federal jobs have to have some value or they steal taxpayer wealth.

    If there is a choice between keeping the person who sits a console on Mission Control employed or controller at the ARTCC network. Which one do you think gives more value for the money spent?

    Your story is rhetoric. It has no real value.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    Jim Hillhouse wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 7:35 am

    bad politics horrible engineering management. I assume you work at NASA…thats about the speed there.

    The politics.

    If Obama does or does not veto a budget concerning NASA depends on a lot of things…we could debate those but the conclusions you draw on the election make that an almost futile gesture.

    IF there is a GOP Congress out of the mid terms (and who knows according to the same polls that show Obama sinking…the MOST distrusted group in politics right now is the GOP) it is unlikely that one of their efforts will be toward preserving federal jobs in human spaceflight or torquing space politics and policy towhere there is more money for it.

    I would like to see a GOP congress TRY and cut the deficit. The wars in Afland and Iraq have little or no popularity, the spending on the Military seems tough for the GOP to cut and…..in other words they have no real idea where they are going to cut. I’ve asked Pete Olson this (personally) at a town hall and the response was a fish out of water look. There is no chance that the GOP sacred cows (privatizing social security etc) are going to get past a Presidential veto (or override it) and the GOP has had bad luck in the past trying to do battle with Presidents of the opposite party (ask Newt about that).

    In any event no one except the space congress porkers are clamoring for more money for NASA…and even in TX 22 Pete is meeting resistance on that. As one worker asked him “why do you value NASA jobs over those being lost by the CAL merger…we pay taxes?”

    As for SpaceX

    if there was any group that over promised and under delivered it is NASA HSF. Shuttle, Station, Constellation (and a host in between) all are substantially “less” and cost far more then they were sold at. Musk has had about the same issues that Boeing has had with its Dreamliner…in terms of schedule and cost …so to not expect that in an engineering program of that magnitude is nuts.

    Indeed Musk has gone farther and done more on less…then say oh well Ares.

    How do you explain that?

    Robert G. Oler

  • Justin Kugler

    Robert,
    I got much the same look when I asked Olson how he squared his rhetoric with Gingrich and Walker’s claim that the FY2011 proposal was more in line with the recommendations of the Aldridge Commission and, thus, more “conservative” than the status quo. Culberson tried to rescue him by saying the Augustine Committee was okay with Constellation, but it was pretty obvious I wasn’t going to get an answer.

  • DCSCA

    “Robert G. Oler wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 2:17 pm” <- Nonsense. But then, that's about all that's left for those defending denial.

    "HSF jobs are dead end jobs for taxpayers. They produce no product that improves our economy to the level of the cost necessary, they produce no infrastructure that has value to the cost…they just exist because they are left over from the one project that had national value and that is Apollo."

    More nonsense. But then your stated opposition to human spaceflight in 2010 and 'valued' preference for the halcyon days of the first half century of aviation (1903-1953) is understood.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Justin Kugler wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 3:30 pm

    but it was pretty obvious I wasn’t going to get an answer…

    Justin.

    with some exceptions that is the entire problem with “the GOP revolution” or whatever they are going to try and call it this time (if they even have the horsepower to do that).

    They have no real answers.

    Olson goes slack jawed when he tries to square his support for NASA and HSF with his rhetoric on cutting taxes and the deficit. It is an argument that the NASA folks have trouble with. more then once I have heard “we pay taxes” but when you remind them that “other people pay taxes so that they can have their jobs” then you get this “we are special we do HSF and that is wow so American…etc”.

    On the other hand go to the place where the local folks want to build the alternate engine for the F-35 (and its not needed) they would make the same argument and dont give a darn about HSF.

    Where the real issue has drawn down to federal spending is that it has become so pervasive in our society that even the “creator fearing Republicans” like it when it is their federal spending…to do things that they like being done…even when those things have little support somewhere else.

    This is why I laugh at two groups. First those who think that a GOP takeover of Congress (the Whittington wing) is going to be great for human exploration of space (it wont be) and the GOP in general as they try and figure out where they would cut the “gravy train”.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 3:39 pm

    . But then your stated opposition to human spaceflight in 2010 and ‘valued’ preference for the halcyon days of the first half century of aviation (1903-1953) is understood….

    I am glad you can read and comprehend the English language.

    Maybe you can travel in Arizona and not get pulled over!

    Robert G. Oler

  • Dennis Berube

    Does everyone here miss the point that our government wants to pay the Soviets 334 mil. for them to taxi us to the ISS? That is crazy! They say it comes out to 50 mil a seat, and that is what the private sector is toying with as a cost to ferry people too! Where is the savings and lowering with regards to spaceflight? NASA with the Ares 1X design was looking at a lowering of launch prices. It was solid fueled, there fore did not need all that expensive plumbing associated with liquid fueled rockets. It along with Orion are reusable hardware, again saving costs. The private sector has yet to prove any of these abilities, much less put a person into space. I would MUCH RATHER see the money slated for the Soviet taxi service, put into keeping our jobs here at home and proceeding with at least the Orion and Ares 1X sections of the Constellation program. With Orion we could visit an asteroid and do other deep space research. If the spending is to high postpone the Lander Altairs until a later date. With private industry at the helm of spaceflight, we will be stuck in LEO for many more years. That was the whole problem with the shuttle program, it kept us in LEO for way to long. If we as a species are going to survive, not only our polluted Earth, but our overpopulation of it, we MUST move into space. Out there resources are limitless. NASA should aim at utilizing Orion to build a giant solar array at L5 so there could be a return on money spent. We could harvest power from our Sun if we really wanted to..

  • Ferris Valyn

    Dennis

    NASA with the Ares 1X design was looking at a lowering of launch prices. It was solid fueled, there fore did not need all that expensive plumbing associated with liquid fueled rockets. It along with Orion are reusable hardware, again saving costs.

    Dennis, that comment alone shows you shouldn’t be taken seriously. Again, no one really uses Solids for Launch Vehicles. And Ares I never had it in its stated goal as lowering launch costs.

    In fact, an Ares I launch is going to be around $1 Billion dollars – just to get to LEO. And, FYI – Ares I-X can’t even get us to LEO.

    And the private sector has proven its abilities a lot, including putting people in space.

    With Orion we could visit an asteroid and do other deep space research.

    Not on Ares I.

    Out there resources are limitless. NASA should aim at utilizing Orion to build a giant solar array at L5 so there could be a return on money spent. We could harvest power from our Sun if we really wanted to..

    Yea, um, with what? Orion, on Ares I, can’t reach L5. And Ares I certainly cannot deliver the hardware needed.

    Also, paragraphs – they are your friend

  • Robert G. Oler

    Dennis Berube wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
    ! Where is the savings and lowering with regards to spaceflight? NASA with the Ares 1X design was looking at a lowering of launch prices.;.;;

    this statement alone (much less the rest of the Cx fan club rhetoric) marks you as someone who doesnt have a darn clue what they are talking about.

    Robert G. Oler

  • DCSCA

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 4:26 pm

    When defensive astroturfers, drowning in denial, desperately lay down artificial arguments, it’s indicative a truth has struck a nerve— and you can’t handle it.

    “I’d take the first 50 years of aviation over the first 50 of spaceflight any day.” -RobertGOler. ‘Nuff said.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 5:35 pm

    “I’d take the first 50 years of aviation over the first 50 of spaceflight any day.” -RobertGOler.

    I sign everything I write. I’ve never posted under a “non name” as you do.

    I will take the first 50 years of aviation over the first 50 of human spaceflight.

    During the first 50 of aviation it went from a curiosity to one of the backbones of our economy. Without it we would not be a superpower either economically or militarily. (as one correspondent in Iraq noted “it was a fair fight between the USMC and the insurgents until American airpower showed up”) .

    Aviation pays not consumes tax dollars. Every dollar spent in the federal infrastructure to maintain and promote aviation demonstratably makes tax dollars in excess of those required.

    None of this is true about 50 years of human spaceflight. It is, to be kind technowelfare…that if it stopped tomorrow, would cause The Republic no harm.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 5:35 pm

    “I’d take the first 50 years of aviation over the first 50 of spaceflight any day.” -RobertGOler. ‘Nuff said.

    I have to agree with Oler here. If you want, you can easily go out and fly on a DC-3 or many other types of aircraft that flew in the first 50 years of aviation. You can also trace the heritage of many current flying aircraft to those early years.

    Except for the Soviet/Russian Soyuz, no one else is using an evolutionary version of an early spacecraft. The Shuttle is getting ready to be last of it’s kind, with no follow-on progeny. Orion you could argue is truly “Apollo on steroids”, but not reflective of 40 years of progress.

    The problem in the U.S. is that we never followed up with a successor to the Shuttle early enough. Maybe it would have been a crew-only vehicle like Dream Chaser, but because we stagnated, there is nothing to directly leverage after the Shuttle program ends.

    Capsules may be like going backwards, but considering the lack of investment NASA has done for a Shuttle follow-on, a capsule is the safest way forward if we want a Soyuz alternative quickly (years vs decades).

    The lesson from the Shuttle is that it absorbed too much of NASA’s budget, and because it did not encourage commercial competition, there are no alternatives. And now Nelson wants to repeat this “winning” formula. Ugh.

  • red

    Set it straight: “If it is, then Obama gets a portion of what he wants.”

    Jim Hillhouse: “Set It Straight” is right about why Obama will not veto the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 as currently written.”

    If a bill that’s anything like the draft at

    http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/NASA%20Rockefeller1.pdf

    shows up on his desk, Obama shouldn’t sign it.

    What do we lose with the bill?

    – commercial crew: This loses a massive amount of funding (down to $1.212B in FY11-FY13), gets roadblocks put in place, has a harder problem to solve (CRV is added) with the smaller funding, gets delayed, and gets a big government competitor. We know how the big government competitor worked out in the Shuttle era. Commercial cargo is also hit. The bill states “It is therefore essential that a United States capability be developed, as soon as possible.” for ISS crew support, but it seeks to prevent that from happening!

    – HSF robotic precursor missions – This $3B program from FY11-FY15 that would send a whole fleet of missions to the Moon, asteroids, and Mars (5 large missions, 3 small “scouts”, and multiple hosted instruments on other missions in the initial draft) to look for resources and assess hazards would be slashed to $244M in FY11-FY13. That’s worse than the Griffin era, which developed LRO/LCROSS. Essentially the robotic precursor line is dead with this plan.

    – The story is similar for the flagship technology demonstration missions, affordable heavy lift and propulsion development, and even the general space technology line, which isn’t even part of the HSF budget. The space technology line is still there, sort of, but it’s not all that much more than what remained after the Constellation devestation.

    Of course, even these little trickles would be subject to elimination if the big rocket and spaceship development programs run into budget trouble.

    Meanwhile, what do we get in exchange? Some kind of heavy launcher that maximizes use of Shuttle and Ares I hardware, and something derived from Orion.

    What can we do with the launcher? Well, we will have the opportunity to pay to maintain the launcher infrastructure. We will have no money to develop payloads for it other than the Orion-derived vehicle.

    We can’t afford to put robotic precursors, science missions, or technology demonstrators on it with this budget. We could launch the Orionish thing, but what could it do besides compete with U.S. commercial crew services for ISS support? The “multi-purpose crew vehicle” derived from Orion contracts is supposed to focus on cislunar space destinations, and to eventually include technology demonstrations and capability additions, to support EVAs, and so on. I’m in favor of these things, but they have to be done in a way that’s affordable. I suspect we won’t be able to do things like service satellites, build exploration infrastructure, do lunar orbit science, do some of those flagship technology demonstrations, or other similar work with it because we won’t be able to afford the stations or servicing capabilities or lunar robots or technologies that would be needed for such work. I suspect development and operation of the basic Orion-derived “multi-purpose crew vehicle” and the launcher that maximizes use of Shuttle and Ares I infrastructure and hardware will be too expensive to allow the actual content parts.

  • red

    Counter-compromise:

    Drop the Shuttle-derived requirements and ST135, and do early development of a modest and affordable HLV based on EELV, Falcon, or similar hardware. Use the savings to repair most of the FY11 commercial crew, exploration technology, general technology, and robotic precursor budgets. While we wait for the exploration spacecraft to be ready, use the HLV for some of the technology, precursor, ISS support, and/or robotic science missions.

  • red

    Alternate counter-compromise: Develop the multi-purpose crew vehicle as suggested, but launch it on an EELV (maybe uncrewed). Some FY11 HLV budget would be switched to help fund this; so any HLV work in FY11-FY15 would be modest indeed, and certainly would not be Shuttle-derived. Drop ST135. One of the purposes of the crew vehicle could be crew rescue, depending on commercial interest in that function. Use the savings to repair most of the FY11 commercial crew, exploration technology, general technology, and robotic precursor budgets. Use the multi-purpose crew vehicle to test and incorporate exploration technologies as appropriate. Try to get it to absorb the functions of the AR&D vehicle.

  • Bennett

    red wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 9:58 pm

    Wonderful assessment of the situation. My god, how the money flows when you’re a US Senator and contractors want things a specific way…

    This authorization bill is more socialist than pragmatic, and I hope the word spreads that it’s the worst of all options.

    Valid counter-compromises, but I would rather have a CR than this butchery.

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 6:11 pm- It’s not a valid comparison and he knows it. But that means nothing to the ‘astroturfer’ trumpeting a personal agewnda. It is amusing, though.

  • Space Cadet

    @ space 123
    “Here is the thing though, if NASA is claiming that there will be a job increase from today then don’t lay off people today because supposedly you will need them as soon as the budget is passed. But they aren’t worried about showing people the door in huge masses. What I mean is that if Constellation was going to transition to “whatever” and you would still need those people “and then some” according to your larger budget theory then Bolden should just tell everyone to take it easy and they will all have jobs under the Obama plan but they will just be working on something different. That would be great for the workers to hear.
    But since Bolden is all teary eyed about losing so many great people and the mission they are dedicated too definately shows they will be losing jobs under the new program and not gaining.”

    The net effect of a larger budget is more jobs, though I agree it’s no consolation to someone who lost their job that someone else is going to be getting a job.

    The civil servants at all the centers are safe – its virtually impossible to fire or lay off an civil servant. But Constellation contracts will be cancelled and that means contractors like ATK will lay off some of their workforce in Utah. And Shuttle retirement means support contractors laying off some of their workers in Florida. If the new plan happens, other companies will be hiring people, slightly more than the numbers that were laid off, but in many cases hiring will be by different organizations in different states than those laying off. If the only job you can do is make solid rocket motors or replace Shuttle tiles, or you’re not willing or able to move to another state, then you’re out of luck.

    It sounds like an uprising because the folks getting laid off are already up in arms about it, but those who will get jobs don’t know it yet.

    In the end we just have to decide: is NASA a jobs program or is it supposed to accomplish something. Change is difficult but that’s no excuse for keeping a space agency frozen in stasis.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 10:58 pm

    It’s not a valid comparison and he knows it. But that means nothing to the ‘astroturfer’ trumpeting a personal agewnda. It is amusing, though.

    Don’t be so hard on yourself DCSCA, I was not not claiming that you were a “‘astroturfer’ trumpeting a personal agewnda”, but if the shoe fits… ;-)

    And as far as the comparison goes, I was not explaining his comparison, I was agreeing with it and amplifying it.

    Other than the Shuttle, which is dying without a replacement, these last 40 years have been a wasteland of lost opportunities for creating a reliable and expanding crew transportation system. Do you see landing via parachute as progress?

    The culprit, in my mind, is that space transportation was never allowed to be developed as a commercial service. Instead, crew transportation has been declared a national imperative, and no companies were encouraged to establish a foothold, must less bring competition to the marketplace.

    What we need is capitalism to solve this problem (the Obama plan), not socialism (Shelby, Vitter, et al).

  • DCSCA

    “Aviation pays not consumes tax dollars. Every dollar spent in the federal infrastructure to maintain and promote aviation demonstratably makes tax dollars in excess of those required.” <- You best reschool yourself on the critical part Federal subsidies, in various forms and in the billions of dollars, aka 'technowelfare' have played in the development of aviation.

  • DCSCA

    Coastal Ron wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 11:44 pm LOL Ronnie, this writer literally has no dog in that hunt- others clearly do.

  • DCSCA

    @CoastalRon- And as far as the comparison goes, I was not explaining his comparison, I was agreeing with it and amplifying it. It’s inaccurate, but you go ahead and keep believing it is. It’s amusing.

  • DCSCA

    “What we need is capitalism to solve this problem (the Obama plan), not socialism.”

    Hmmmm. Bear in mind that over the 80-plus year history of rocketry, in various political guises around the world, it was chiefly big government rocket development programs that funded and moved the technology forward, not the private sector. Private enterprise was the follow along, cashing in where it could. It has never led in this field –(but you can see how private enterprise pretended it could in the 1950 film, Destination Moon, on DVD– and in Technicolor.)

    It is fair to say that some current private space enterprises show promise — but the kind of massive capital investments ‘free enterprised’ private space ventures demand has been hard to generate for more than three decades– (Earth to Conestoga 1) and won’t be any easier in this age of austerity. For the very ‘free market’ they’re trying to peddle their goods and services to is limited by the demand for those services coupled with a high risk venture and uncertain return to investors. And given the largess of capital needed for operating private space ventures and the demands of ‘capitalism’ – in that investors expect a profitable quarterly return on their investments– they can get better returns investing in offshore oil drilling than something more risky– like space ventures. But you go on believing otherwise.

  • Kelly Starks

    > jml wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 11:07 am
    >@ Kelly Starks

    >Yes.

    > http://www.launchcomplexmodels.com/Direct/documents/NASA-Compromise-Budget-Detailed.xls

    A comnpramise budget showing directs jupiters?

    ;/

    Direct got shot down with Augustine when their numbers were contradicted by the vendors.

  • Kelly Starks

    > Coastal Ron wrote @ July 13th, 2010 at 6:11 pm

    >==
    >== The Shuttle is getting ready to be last of it’s kind, with no
    > follow-on progeny. ==
    >
    > The problem in the U.S. is that we never followed up with a
    > successor to the Shuttle early enough. == because we stagnated,
    > there is nothing to directly leverage after the Shuttle program ends.==

    Big agree here. Shuttle was fielded as a rough draft that would be refined through upgrades and refits. Rockwell proposed metal skined tiles and significant servicability and safty upgrades by the time of the secound orbiter order — but NASA and Congress stayed with the Columbia class. A big “advantage” to the older shuttle design was the high labor hour requirements per flight, so I think the only major refit was the new cockpit and avionics in the ’90’s – but that was forced on them since no one made the old parts.

    A phased upgrade of shuttle would have offered dramatic cost reductions and capability improvements. Instead Grifen went to few flights for far more cost per flight, and a space spectacle design philosophy with the fuly expendable, stageringly expensive, Apollo on steroids.

    :(

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