>==
>== 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.

>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.

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.

“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).

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.

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.