Congress, NASA

Gordon: Administration sent Congress an “unexecutable” NASA budget

Last week a group of 30 people, including 14 Nobel laureates, sent Congressman Bart Gordon (D-TN) a letter asking him to reconsider elements of the NASA budget proposal that were cut in the authorization bill approved by the House Science and Technology Committee, chaired by Gordon, in July. Late Friday Gordon replied with a letter of his own to Stanford professor and former NASA Ames director Scott Hubbard, suggesting that, if anything, Gordon remains as strongly committed as ever to his committee’s plans for NASA.

Gordon, in the letter’s introduction, says that while his committee “fully supports” a number of initiatives in the administration’s budget proposal, it had questions about some aspects of it which it found hard to get answers about from NASA. “Reluctantly, the Committee came to the conclusion that the president’s new human space flight program, much like the current Constellation program, was unexecutable under the current budget projections and the other NASA priorities we all agree must be addressed,” Gordon wrote. The problem was exacerbated by the administration’s decision in April to keep the Orion program alive as a crew return vehicle for the ISS without increasing the agency’s budget or specifying what offsets would pay for the program. “The hard reality is that the Administration has sent an unexecutable budget request to Congress,” he wrote, “and we now have to make tough choices so that the nation can have a sustainable and balanced NASA program.”

Gordon then touched on several specific areas addressed by Hubbard and others in their original letter, including commercial spaceflight. He defended the committee’s support for commercial spaceflight, arguing that “Contrary to the suggestion in your letter, the Committee’s bill ‘invests’ no more in the Russian launch industry than the president’s budget request.” (In fact, the Hubbard et al. letter noted that the House bill authorizes over $900 million in purchasing seats on Soyuz flights versus $450 million for commercial crew development.) Gordon wrote that concerns that it may be “premature” for NASA to rely on commercial crew providers, plus “tight budgets”, forced them to limit the amount of support they could provide and thus “explore creative mechanisms” for providing it. That is a reference to a loan guarantee plan in the version passed by the committee, but Gordon confirms earlier reports that the plan will be reworked since the Congressional Budget Office found that the financial risk of such a program “is so high that it makes the program unviable”.

On other issues, Gordon defended the committee’s support for technology development, criticized in the Hubbard et al. letter. Gordon noted that funding for the Exploration Technology Program was moved to the Space Technology account to keep it “from being ‘raided’ to pay for other Exploration-related activities, as has happened in the past.” He also defended the lack of funding for exploration-related robotic precursor missions, saying it was better to wait until the overall human exploration program was better defined. “One only has to look at the Administration’s robotic precursor budget request to see that it is ill-defined,” he wrote, referring to a proposed lunar lander mission when there are no plans by the White House to return humans to the Moon as one example.

All this suggests that Gordon doesn’t seem particularly inclined towards a compromise with either the administration’s proposal or the Senate’s authorization bill, which provides more money for exploration technology development and commercial crew development than the House bill, when Congress returns from its summer recess next week.

275 comments to Gordon: Administration sent Congress an “unexecutable” NASA budget

  • Major Tom

    On top of lying or being misinformed about his bill’s spending on Russian Soyuz services versus domestic commercial space flight development (by a factor of two!), Gordon is either lying or was lied to by his staff regarding the movement of ESMD technology to the Space Technology line. The House authorization bill funds the Space Technology line in the amounts and for the activities requested by the Administration. It does not add funding to or transfer activities from ESMD into the Space Technology line.

    And it’s hypocritical in the extreme to claim that the Administration’s budget was “unexecutable” when Gordon and his staff couldn’t produce a bill that passed the simplest CBO tests and created an “unviable” loan program.

    Oy vey…

  • amightywind

    All this suggests that Gordon doesn’t seem particularly inclined towards a compromise with either the administration’s proposal or the Senate’s authorization bill

    It is not important that there be a compromise. The legislative year is ending and congress is about to change hands. NASA will be funded by a damaging continuing resolution, as will the rest of the government. How ironic that the democrats have done so poorly with HSF given that they pull all of the levers or power. Or maybe it’s because of that.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Gordon’s comments are useless.

    There is either going to be a centering on the Senate bill or a CR, if the latter occurs then NASA will find itself dying at the hands of the deficit commission as the race to cut the budget heats up.

    In any event it is the end of Cx and the shuttle, I bet that they dont even get the LON off.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Byeman

    Oler, just get off your high horse. You are worse than than the trolls. You may know a lot, but you know less than you think, and hence it nullifies your credibility.

  • In other words … “I don’t care how smart and accomplished you people are, I want my pork and I’m going to get it. Oink.”

  • Robert G. Oler

    Byeman wrote @ September 6th, 2010 at 8:00 pm

    lol having hoped for it for along time…I am enjoying the end…I still give the LON a oh 60 percent chance of becoming a real mission but hopes are fading fast. It is sort of a death panel.

    Robert G. Oler

  • For anyone who is sick of the unmoderated trolling on this site, I recommend moving the discussion over to Clark’s site. He regularly links here and morons like DCSCA and almightywind will not be tolerated.

    Here’s the link for this thread.

    http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=23327

    Please post there instead, and keep it civil.

  • Gordon’s vision is just as unsustainable and just as expensive as any other proposal out there. His letter shows he lacks the vision to be the architect of NASA’s future and a final NASA funding bill may have to be crafted without his specific contribution.

    He does seem insistant on setting up NASA for a long term mediocre failure at a reasonable price!.

  • Jeff Foust

    For anyone who is sick of the unmoderated trolling on this site

    Or, you can stick around, have a civil conversation, and ignore the trolls. (I am looking into tools to better manage the conversation and hopefully improve the signal-to-noise ratio; if you have suggestions feel free to contact me offline). Now back to the discussion of the topic of the post…

  • Beancounter from Downunder

    I sometimes wonder at the ability of politicians to make the hard decisions. It seemed likely that it was going to happen in Europe and considerable pressure was brought to bear on a couple of uncooperative countries however they seem to have failed.
    What makes anyone think that the current Administration and Congress can do any better? It seems that when jobs and staying in power are on the line (now that the banks and other investment edifices have been bailed), the deficit doesn’t seem to matter? Just a thought or two.

  • Bennett

    I’m sorry, but the snarky threat to cut funding for science really shows the ultimate tenor of this response.

    “If you believe that addition funding for the programs you mentioned in your letter should take precedence over these science and aeronautics funding increases*, please inform me of that fact so we can take your views into account as we prepare the final form of the NASA authorization Bill.”

    *increases from 2010 levels, NOT from the FY2011 Budget levels

    What an asshole.

  • DCSCA

    Jeff Foust wrote @ September 6th, 2010 at 9:58 pm <- Agreed. Voices from all sides should really be an eouraging sign that there is interest in the fate of our space program, which over the years has lost luster, direction and most importantly, the capacity to attract competent management.

  • A fully funded NASA’s contribution to the budget deficit is a valid point.

    As a taxpayer holding down two jobs I would rather NASA were funded for success than see my tax dollars wasted by underfunding great projects.

    America need ought have as great a concern for it’s trade deficit as for it’s budget deficit, although inflation discounts the impact of deficits to a degree in the long run and borrowing to fund NASA now might never be cheaper?

  • Major Tom

    Mr. Waddington’s remarks over at Hobbyspace regarding the other false/erroneous statements in Gordon’s letter regarding Lagrange point and lunar missions are worth reviewing, on top of the other false/erroneous/hypocritical statements in Gordon’s letter on Russian Soyuz versus commercial funding, executable budgets versus unviable loan guarantees, and transfer of exploration technology/budget to the Space Technology budget line.

    The letter is so rife with hypocrisy, false statements, and errors, it really makes me wonder whether Gordon wrote this letter without having staff review it. Then again, when House Science staff like Ken Monroe are known for pulling these kinds of unprofessional stunts:

    nasawatch.com/archives/2010/08/congressional-s.html

    Staff involvement probably wouldn’t have improved the letter, anyway.

    FWIW…

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ September 6th, 2010 at 11:52 pm

    Voices from all sides should really be an eouraging sign that there is interest in the fate of our space program

    Interest is one thing, but SOME PEOPLE are anything but an “encouraging sign” of interest.

    SOME PEOPLE are being publicly called out because they have taken on the characteristics of a troll, which I think this definition fits:

    Someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

    That, my capitalized friend, has been you recently. For some reason, the quality of your posts have sunk to a point below a minimum acceptable threshold. Now, I like this blog, and Jeff posts some very nice content to get the conversations rolling, so I plan to continue to read and post.

    But it’s hard to have an intellectual battle with an unarmed poster, and so I mostly refrain from your recent inanity. Even Gary Church removed himself from my “shun” list (for a while at least), so I have high hopes for you, although I don’t know if anyone else does…

    My $0.02

  • Mark R. Whittington

    This is what happens when a President tosses a grenade into the civil space program and then walks away while others try to pick up the pieces. It is chaos and finger pointing.

  • Coastal Ron

    sftommy wrote @ September 6th, 2010 at 9:43 pm

    He does seem insistant on setting up NASA for a long term mediocre failure at a reasonable price!

    It’s hard to tell the motivations of some of these politicians – do they really believe that they are saving NASA, or do they have an agenda that they are pursuing that is not purely science oriented?

    I’ve asked this before, and I’m sure the answer is different for each politician, but I also wonder if the SCOTUS change in corporate political donations is having any influence on this?

  • DCSCA

    Coastal Ron wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 12:26 am <- Put down the mirror and stop being so hard on yourself– and wasting space ( pun intended.) Get Bowersox up and down or up, around and down safely and you'll find support surfacing from surprising sources.

  • Major Tom

    “This is what happens when a President tosses a grenade into the civil space program”

    The Administration tried to put the civil human space flight program back together after Griffin’s ticking Constellation bomb went off. It wasn’t the White House’s fault that LREP and Altair funding had been terminated and that Ares V and exploration technology had been reduced to studies ad infinitum — all so nearly $10 billion could be spent with one lousy, non-relevant suborbital first-stage flight test to show for it.

    Don’t make stuff up.

    “while others try to pick up the pieces.”

    The “others” in this case — Gordon et al. — aren’t trying to pick up the pieces of the civil human space flight program. They’re idiotically trying to reassemble Griffin’s bomb.

    Think before you post.

  • Major Tom

    CR: “Someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.”

    DCSA: “Get Bowersox up and down”

    You’re proving Coastal Ron right by taunting him with the same non-relevant statement ad nauseum, even after multiple posters have shown your statement to be technically inaccurate and factually groundless.

    Stop trolling or go away.

    Cripes…

  • DCSCA

    “Gordon wrote that concerns that it may be “premature” for NASA to rely on commercial crew providers, plus “tight budgets”, forced them to limit the amount of support they could provide and thus “explore creative mechanisms” for providing it. That is a reference to a loan guarantee plan in the version passed by the committee, but Gordon confirms earlier reports that the plan will be reworked since the Congressional Budget Office found that the financial risk of such a program “is so high that it makes the program unviable”. <- He's correct, but a successful suborbital manned flight by SpaceX (which seems more feasible than a successful manned orbital flight at this time) would go along way, figuratively and literally, in defanging that argument by skeptics in Congress to block loan guarantees and subsidies from the Treasury.

    "All this suggests that Gordon doesn’t seem particularly inclined towards a compromise …" <- Agreed. Not in this climate and certainly nothing will be cast in quick drying cement until after the mid-terms, which may or may not leave a sea change in their wake on the Hill.

  • DCSCA

    Major Tom wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 12:48 am <– Both you fellas have been discredited repeatedly. Rage and noise doesnt change that.

  • DCSCA

    Beancounter from Downunder wrote @ September 6th, 2010 at 10:15 pm “I sometimes wonder at the ability of politicians to make the hard decisions…” <– They've been kicking the can down the road here in the U.S. in a variety of areas for forty years– not just the space program– Short term thinking makes 'em long-term office holders. No doubt Aussie pols have the same bad habit. But NASA neglect from its glory days is starting to come home to roost and the pages from those days seem awfully yellowed w/age in 2010. Oler does have a point when he criticizes NASA for basically going in circles since '81. This battle is their last. If Congress dithers much longer and the WH maintains the lack of interest it has shown since the Nixon days, there really isn't much point in funding the civilian space agency in a decade or as the Age of Austerity takes root. It's ultimate fate may be like its forebearer, NACA… and what assets worth using will be folded into existing agencies such as DoD, NOAA, FAA, etc.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark R. Whittington wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 12:30 am

    “This is what happens when a President tosses a grenade into the civil space program and then walks away while others try to pick up the pieces. It is chaos and finger pointing.”

    that is absurd.

    First tossing a grenade means nothing if you dont pull the fracken pin …

    but to the real point. What Obama inherited on so many levels but our topic is space, is a program legacy from Bush and his thunderheads that was not sustainable. With modest exception it had not been fully funded but had gotten a LOT of money 10 billion dollars and produced nothing remotely resembling flight hardware.

    There was no hint that even more money would fix it…It is clear to all but the Obama haters like you that the project baselines were bad and that the management at NASA particularly at JSC had been third or fourth rate.

    So your answer is to throw more money at a project that at best 200 billion dollars and two decades later would land a few NASA astronauts on the Moon…goofy

    I dont think as a rule that Obama has done at all well in picking up either the rubble of the last administration or the IED’s that Bush and his thunderheads left lying around …but Obama has done well in space policy.

    At one point, July 1999 you signed on to an article that I wrote and Kolker edited, you asked to have your name put on it, that has a policy outline in all major respects no different then what exist under Obama. I know that has been pointed out before but it is worth repeating because it shows how far you have “drifted” from beliefs you once held very strongly. And all I can associate it with is Obama hate.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 1:05 am

    “. Oler does have a point when he criticizes NASA for basically going in circles since ’81. This battle is their last. If Congress dithers much longer and the WH maintains the lack of interest it has shown since the Nixon days, there really isn’t much point in funding the civilian space agency in a decade or as the Age of Austerity takes root. It’s ultimate fate may be like its forebearer, NACA… and what assets worth using will be folded into existing agencies such as DoD, NOAA, FAA, etc.”

    we are headed for more or less the end of NASA as an agency of human exploration of space. I dont know if the agency can get back to the NACA days and make that applicable to spaceflight…but NASA inability to operate human spaceflight missions at an acceptable cost is going to take it out of the human spaceflight game…unless it changes.

    We are likely headed for fairly dark economic times. It grows clearer to me that the GOP and Dems have misdignosed the economic situation; like generals they are fighting the last depression…and as a result things are going to get worse before they get better.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 1:05 am

    Oler does have a point…

    Wow, maybe there is hope for you.

    Now go to the 9/5 “Commercial crew, EELV, and avoiding repeating history” topic and answer some basic questions I asked – your answers will determine your new trollness level.

  • Major Tom

    “a successful suborbital manned flight by SpaceX… would go along way”

    You’re trolling again, with the same non-relevant, technically inaccurate, and factually wrong point — twice in the same thread.

    SpaceX and your imagined suborbital test are not mentioned in Mr. Foust’s original post about Gordon’s letter to Hubbard.

    Multiple posters have shown you over multiple threads that a suborbital flight provides no useful test of Dragon’s life support, orbital maneuvering, thermal protection, communications, tracking, and other systems. It’s technically a waste of resources.

    For Falcon 9, it would be a useless step backward to conduct a suborbital test when that vehicle has successfully launched to orbit.

    And Ares I performance with the White House and Congress shows that useless suborbital tests like Ares I-X do not help secure support for a program or vehicle. If anything they hasten it’s termination.

    “Both you fellas have been discredited repeatedly.”

    When? Where? Specifically.

    Stop trolling or go away.

    “Rage and noise doesnt change that.”

    When? Where? Specifically.

    Stop trolling or go away.

  • This is the most coherent letter I’ve ever seen from a politician. It’s amazing that we’re 6 months into this debacle and this is the first time we’ve heard them lay out their concerns and their confusion. My favorite part:

    “One only has to look at the Administration’s robotic precursor budget request to see that it is ill-defined, e.g., a lunar lander/in-situ resource extraction demonstration mission being proposed at the same time the president is stating that he has no intention of pursuing a human lunar mission; and a proposed mission to visit a Langrangian point, despite the fact that NASA has had Langrangian point spacecraft operating in that environment for the past several decades.”

    This reeks of confirmation bias. Here’s how it works: the expert tells you what you want to hear, you accept it at face value and never ask anyone you think would disagree.. it therefore becomes fact.

    Let’s address the second one first.. there’s no spacecraft operating at the Earth-Moon Lagrangian points – they’ve never been visited – perhaps the Chairman is thinking of the Earth-Sun Lagrangian points? That’s the kind of misunderstanding that could be clarified by asking someone who doesn’t want anything from you.. like your nephew who has a college degree in astronomy.

    So what about that robotic precursor to the lunar surface to characterize the polar ice? How can that be a “precursor” if the Prez says we’re not going back?

    Well, for a start, he didn’t say that. He said we’re not going back *first*.. deciding when to go back and how to do it sustainably would be guided by information returned from that precursor, and it needs to be done now so we have a decade to figure out what the results mean.

    More importantly, robotic precursors are *not* just for gathering information. A demonstration of ISRU would be followed by a full-up robotic water extraction facility. That water can be delivered back to Earth-Moon Lagrangian points where it can be used to replenish consumables and propellants – laying a highway in space so future human missions are affordable and sustainable.

    If only there was some easier way to get politicians to speak this coherently. We could clear up a lot of misconceptions.

  • brobof

    Jeff Foust wrote @ September 6th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
    Personally speaking the open nature of the forum is one of its charms. A sort of Speaker’s Corner of Space.
    For a foreigner it is interesting to see how your right wing handles Space Issues especially in these “Interesting Times.”
    If the Trolls annoy… well there always a slider bar, if not a scroll wheel. Informing them of their status followed by implacable shunning seem to work IMHO.

    As to Congressman Gordon: stunning hypocrisy or what. My jaw dropped at the second paragraph. The ‘historical revisionism’ started in the third paragraph and the letter seemed to depart further from reality with every subsequent sentence. If I were a Nobel laureate I would find an equally creative accountant and be penning an immediate reply.

    Whilst it might be said that your Congress *might* not be responsible for the Unholy Mess of Cx. (Although this space cadet is of the opinion that Ignorance of the Science is no excuse!) By the time the current meddling is over they *will* own its successor. As I have said before NASA is being set up to fail again by a Congress that is already seemingly trying to shift the blame for their own meddling back on the President.
    Shameless.

  • Martijn Meijering

    Any ideas as to why Gordon is doing this? He is not up for reelection and he can forget about being nominated NASA administrator. Is he in the pocket of the Shuttle industrial complex? Does he want a board seat, lucrative consulting or lobbying work?

  • Martijn, why can’t he just be speaking his mind? It looks like that way to me. I don’t agree with him and I think he’s been misled but I don’t see any need to look for ulterior motives.

  • Peter Lykke

    About trolling:
    Trolls are not a problem. Everyone knows an internet troll, and knows that they will not be persuaded by anything, no matter how logical the arguments are. Never. But some even find satisfaction in trashing trolls and reveal the stupidity of the troll (eh Costal Ron?), and sometimes that can be intertaining.

    The problem is when legislators behave like trolls, making bogus arguments and directly falsify truth. As an non – US, I cannot help but think that there is something else lying behind all those strange statements from the hearings. I know that Nelson said that “We live in a world of perception”, but still.. It seems that space is just the odd battleground on a much larger struggle, and I don’t like this a bit.

    Space should be about true and false. This can be done and this cannot. About absolutes. Not polluted by politics or bogus facts.

    And yet it isn’t at the moment. Our issue with the trolls is a mirror of what is going on in DC.

  • Jeff Foust wrote:

    Or, you can stick around, have a civil conversation, and ignore the trolls. (I am looking into tools to better manage the conversation and hopefully improve the signal-to-noise ratio; if you have suggestions feel free to contact me offline). Now back to the discussion of the topic of the post…

    I’m not going anywhere, Jeff. I’ve posted many times that the solution is simply to ignore the trolls, but some people can’t control themselves. They’re as much a part of the problem as the trolls.

    Some boards have a “permanent ignore” feature where a user can block posts by a specific screen name, but that would require users to sign up for accounts. That’s fine by me, if it will reduce the signal noise.

  • Anne Spudis

    Chairman Gordon noted in his letter: “This conclusion was not reached in haste and was based upon several months of hearing from expert witnesses. Moreover, the Committee received a letter (attached) earlier this year by the Aerospace Corporation in response to questions submitted by Subcommittee Chairwoman Gabrielle Giffords that raised concerns about the assumptions made to justify the president’s budget request.”

    Below is an excerpt of the above linked letter from Aerospace to Subcommittee Chairwoman Giffords:

    “This is the guidance the Committee gave to Aerospace: $3 billion would be carried in our affordability analyses as NASA’s portion of the development. Aerospace did not independently develop the basis for the $3B initial estimate. The Committee did not ask Aerospace to independently verify the $3 billion figure. In fact, no verification could be performed given the Committee’s statement that this dollar amount was simply NASA’s portion of the total cost. Our role, as explicitly outlined in our task statement, was in some cases to develop our own estimates for certain elements where we were asked and qualified to perform the estimate, and in other cases to accept numbers from the Committee itself and/or the NASA analysis team. No traditional independent cost or independent schedule estimates were performed. Aerospace was not privy to all of the background material on the cost of commercially provided services
    which was provided in closed fact finding sessions to the Committee. In each case, we would seek to understand what was included in the estimate to assure there were no gross omissions or “double booking” and to uniformly apply historical cost growth factors to the NASA portions.”

    [break]

    “Direction to use the $3 billion figure came to us from Dr. Crawley, who was the lead for the working group; however, the figure was consistently reiterated by all members of the working group when Aerospace interacted with them during the
    course of our analyses. ….. [End Excerpt]

  • amightywind

    Trent Waddington wrote:

    A demonstration of ISRU would be followed by a full-up robotic water extraction facility. That water can be delivered back to Earth-Moon Lagrangian points where it can be used to replenish consumables and propellants – laying a highway in space so future human missions are affordable and sustainable.

    Patently absurd! Any frost in the regolith is extremely diffuse. So the amount of regolith that would have to be processed (think strip mined) for significant water extraction would be vast. Residual water ice can also be expected to be extremely briny presenting further problems. Do you really expect a scientific curiosity like the frost regolith to be torn up for the satisfaction of the ‘fuel depot’ obsessionists? You aren’t thinking clearly.

  • All this suggests that Gordon doesn’t seem particularly inclined towards a compromise with either the administration’s proposal or the Senate’s authorization bill, which provides more money for exploration technology development and commercial crew development than the House bill, when Congress returns from its summer recess next week.

    That would be a shame, given that a CR would give a potential GOPer Congress means to enact Gordon’s Plan since it seems the most conservative, resurrects Ares1 and defunds all else.

  • Contra Jeff Foust, I don’t see anything in Bart Gordon’s letter that rules out a House / Senate compromise. I do see an explicit repudiation of the Bill Nye, Nobel scientist led effort to return closer to FY2011 as proposed back in February.

    I believe Henry Vanderbilt (Space Access Society) is close on target — the final bill will be somewhere between the House and Senate versions and therefore advocating for the Senate version is the most effective thing people can do.

    http://www.space-access.org/

  • Peter Lykke

    @Anne Spudis: What’s your point? That Gordon pondered for months before reaching an erroneous descision?

  • Anne Spudis

    @Peter Lykee:

    You asked the point of my post.

    I posted the link and the quotes with the hope that it would be a welcome contribution to the points raised in the original blog entry by Jeff Foust.

    Read Aerospace Corporation’s answers to questions asked of them on how their work for the Augustine Committee was done. You will become a more informed poster after you do.

  • Peter Lykke wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 9:25 am

    To say it more bluntly, IMHO, the March 19th letter suggests that the Augustine Commission used “plugged in” figures rather than independently verified and vetted figures.

    Bart Gordon also writes this sentence, apparently related to the above:

    After months of requesting further clarification it became clear that no such explanations would be available.

  • Chilson Wagglefoot

    You asked the point of my post.

    We already know the point of your posting, Anne – Al Gore is fat. We get it.

  • MrEarl

    Trent said:
    “For anyone who is sick of the unmoderated trolling on this site, I recommend moving the discussion over to Clark’s site. He regularly links here and morons like DCSCA and almightywind will not be tolerated.”

    In other words; “Lets move to a site that echos our own ideas back at us so we don’t have to consider the thoughts of others.

  • To say it more bluntly, IMHO, the March 19th letter suggests that the Augustine Commission used “plugged in” figures rather than independently verified and vetted figures.

    Bart Gordon also writes this sentence, apparently related to the above:

    After months of requesting further clarification it became clear that no such explanations would be available.

    From what I saw from these Congressional Committees, these Congress-critters used their own ‘plug-n-play’ figures to tear ol’ Charlie a new arsehole, or feigned ignorance of said numbers when it came to the cost of Ares1 launches and overhead.

    What you say is probably true Bill, but Gordon at best is being disingenuous.

  • Robert G. Oler

    The reality of Gordon’s letter (other then as someone else correctly noted it does not preclude a compromise with the Senate) is that he is stating the obvious…

    no one has a real clue (at least what they will state publically) what the mission of NASA is in human spaceflight…

    or put another way they are searching for a mission in HSF that has relevance to today’s times.

    A few realities:

    1. There is no public support for the hundreds of billions of dollars that it would take over a few decades to send Cx to the Moon. None. As soon as the “Plymouth Mission” to asteroids gets a price tag, support for it will vanish as well.

    2. There is less and less support for flying space missions that are as costly as the space shuttle. If the LON dies (and it might) as a stand alone mission it will be because Congress is growing increasingly wary of the 200-300 a month it will take to keep the program in operation for “one last flight”.

    3. ISS is going to keep flying. As the western worlds economies depress that is going to be the last dog that dies…

    4. Because ISS is going to keep flying there is going to be an effort to fly commercial resupply and sooner rather then later human flights.

    Absent some major singularity (like the economy suddenly gets better…it wont Bush killed it and Obama cant bring it back to life… or we find life on Mars that is like the monolith from 2001) these are the facts that all actions are going to be based on.

    Without some significant support for “a grand project” NASA as it is known today in HSF cannot continue. And while Whittington, Cernan even Spudis and the like have banged all sorts of gongs (my favorite goofy notion is “American exceptionalism”…what a hoot) none of the gongs have gotten a note with the American people. Gordon is correct in his larger point…someone needs to define what NASA is going to become, because it cannot stay what it is.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 7:18 am

    I’m not sure what the significance was of that particular excerpt you posted, but I do think that intervening events & facts make that number not only doable, but maybe even high.

    The root question you seemed to be highlighting was the validity of the $3B number, which was then used to grow into the $5 or $6B budget number for commercial crew.

    Let’s see what we already know about costs for commercial crew:

    ULA – Their CEO testified before the Augustine commission and stated that Delta IV Heavy could be man-rated for $1.3B, and that Atlas V could be man-rated for $400M. That’s $1.7B total for two man-rated launchers.

    SpaceX – Their CEO has stated publicly that $300M would be needed to man-rate Dragon/Falcon 9.

    So far that’s $2B to man-rate three launchers and one capsule.

    Throw in Boeing’s CST-100 for $1B, and that would be $3B for a fully redundant commercial crew capability, including one launcher that can send crew and cargo if needed (Delta IV Heavy), or launch Orion if it’s funded too. For any additional funds NASA gets, I would hope they would apply that to next generation vehicles like Dream Chaser.

    If Giffords would have questioned the companies that were part of the commercial crew equation, instead of the Constellation group she actually brought in, then she would have known this. Unfortunately, our Representatives, like kids, only hear what they want to hear…

  • Anne Spudis

    “In one of his early speeches defending the Apollo program, President John F. Kennedy laid out the reasons that America had to go the Moon. Among the many ideas that he articulated, one stood out. He said, “whatever men shall undertake, free men must fully share.” This was a classic expression of American exceptionalism, that idea that we must explore new frontiers not to establish an empire, but to ensure that our political and economic system prevails, a system
    that has created the most freedom and the largest amount of new wealth in the hands of the greatest number of people in the history of the world. This is a statement of both soft and hard power projection; by leading the world into space, we guarantee that space does not become the private domain of powers who view humanity as cogs in their ideological machine, rather than as
    individuals to be valued and protected.

    “The Vision was created to extend human reach beyond its current limit of low Earth orbit. It made the Moon the first destination because it has the material and energy resources needed to create a true space faring system. Recent data from the Moon show that it is even richer in resource potential than we had thought; both abundant water and near-permanent sunlight is available at selected areas near the poles. We go to the Moon to learn how to extract and use
    those resources to create a space transportation system that can routinely access all of cislunar space with both machines and people. Such a system is the logical next step in both space security and commerce. This goal for NASA makes the agency relevant to important national interests. A return to the Moon for resource utilization contributes to national security and economic interests as well as scientific ones.” New Space Race

  • Anne Spudis

    @ Coastal Ron:

    The purpose of posting that link was to show how Aerospace was extremely limited in arriving at factual bottom lines given the time crunch imposed on them and by their inability to confirm or deny numbers they were told to use by the Augustine Committee.

  • @ Anne Spudis

    A new space race (for lunar resources) could be a compelling narrative except there really isn’t anyone for us to race. No other nation by itself is capable of doing a moon base any time soon. Not Russia (Rockets, yes. Money, no) or China or India or Japan.

    That said, a consortium of nations could do that, especially if assisted by US New Space, and supported by an EML-1 logistics hub.

    Russian rockets and Western money? Yes, I believe that could work if ITAR issues can be solved and that would give NASA a competitor, someone to race against.

    Remember, the Roadrunner needs Wily E. Coyote and the Globetrotters need the Washington Generals.

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 11:49 am

    The purpose of posting that link was to show how Aerospace was extremely limited in arriving at factual bottom lines given the time crunch imposed on them and by their inability to confirm or deny numbers they were told to use by the Augustine Committee.

    And the purpose of my post was to show the information was independently available, especially if Giffords would have called anyone from the industry to validate it.

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 11:45 am

    Good link: New Space Race

    Maybe or maybe not, but you could have qualified that you have more than a casual relationship with the author, and the article is six months old.

    Other than being a form of “link farming”, how is it relevant to the discussion at hand?

  • Coastal Ron wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 12:19 pm

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 11:49 am

    “The purpose of posting that link was to show how Aerospace was extremely limited in arriving at factual bottom lines given the time crunch imposed on them and by their inability to confirm or deny numbers they were told to use by the Augustine Committee.”

    And the purpose of my post was to show the information was independently available, especially if Giffords would have called anyone from the industry to validate it.

    = = =

    In his letter, Bart Gordon writes that he asked NASA for additional information and they failed to provide it.

    Anyway, even if Giffords and Gordon are biased, no one else in the House seems eager to oppose them, on this. Remember that Ralph Hall (R-TX) is the ranking Republican on this same committee and is probably more pro-Constellation than either Giffords or Gordon.

    Here we are seven months after FY2011 was introduced and except for Dana Rohrabacher, can you name another member of Congress willing to fight for the original proposal?

  • Ben Joshua

    Re: trolling – there is a vast difference between challenging a poster’s thinking with facts and cogent analysis, and hurling insults while raising the flag of a particular bias. I like the former. It makes a sight like this hum. The latter is worth a bemused and sad smile, and on to the next thread.

    Re: Rep. Barton – If he does not show some flexibility, he may force a CR. Worst case, deficit dracos take the helm next year and NASA HSF becomes a fight for scraps among space districts.

    Best case, NASA eats some humble pie, confronts its flawed approach to risk management, and goes to Congress with real budget numbers and schedules. Congress would at least have a sober moment to try to get real with the technical issues currently beyond its grasp.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 11:42 am
    wrote:
    “In one of his early speeches defending the Apollo program, President John F. Kennedy laid out the reasons that America had to go the Moon. Among the many ideas that he articulated, one stood out. He said, “whatever men shall undertake, free men must fully share.” This was a classic expression of American exceptionalism, that idea that we must explore new frontiers not to establish an empire, but to ensure that our political and economic system prevails, a system…………..

    no it is not. Indeed it is a mischaracterization of what Kennedy meant (and that is typical of some of the political groups mostly on the right these days).

    First off there is NO effort by “man” to go to the Moon. The effort that you and Mark Whittington and a lot of others have conjured up by the Chinese to do anything but learn about the Moon is impressive but totally built on exaggerations, misstatements, and constructs of what “you” think that they are going to do.

    “Free men” are in no danger of (to semi quote Whittington) “having to show their passports to the Chinese on the Moon” because that entire notion is absurd. Even if the Chinese were to land 200 people on the Moon they couldnt control it in that fashion and it is clearly unlikely that they are in a position or will be to land two.

    Kennedy’s notion was more in terms of a free people competing in the world of ideas and the market place of the betterment of mankind.

    American exceptionalism has been bastardized by folks who would use it to justify things which are on their own face not justifiable. It is absurd to believe that we are an exceptional nation just because we can put a lot of money and talent and go to a place that no one else is going to…while in most red states obesity is out of control, child mortality is approaching third world levels, and entire groups of people are growing up with third rate educations.

    American exceptionalism if it is defined at all is defined in our Declaration of Independence…it is where all people are allowed to pursue the blessings given to them by their creator…no matter how they define that creator.

    When we have gotten to that point, when we have banished the fear from people who are afraid of a life different from their own, then we will be truly exceptional. Until then we are simply working on the “more perfect union”.

    Robert G. oler

  • common sense

    Re: Sub. vs orbital flight.

    I am just curious to give an opportunity and fwiw I did not read all the posts about this.

    In what way, save for the stunt, would a suborbital flight garner support for LEO crew market? There are risks with this kind of flight. The vehicle is obviously designed for orbital flight, not sub orbital. So in essence you are asking for an off-design stunt to prove a TBD point. It would in effect amount to an abort flight. An abort puts all kinds of stress on a vehicle and its crew. So again, svae for the Alan B. Shephard look-alike stunt, what is the point? Why would you or anyone invest in such a masquerade?

    For the others, I think that it is important that everyone has a voice. It is an unnecessary evil so to speak. Yet I will wait and welcome an enlightening answer to my question. See if there is any credit to the idea. See who would suddenly support SpaceX, since it is SpaceX we are talking about.

    Just curious.

  • common sense

    @ Peter Lykke wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 6:33 am

    “And yet it isn’t at the moment. Our issue with the trolls is a mirror of what is going on in DC.”

    So sad and so true. The political conversation in the US is going down the drain.

  • @ Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 11:45 am

    Nice try Anne, but the American Exceptionalism brand doesn’t sell when the money tree is bare.

  • Coastal Ron

    Bill White wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 12:31 pm

    Anyway, even if Giffords and Gordon are biased, no one else in the House seems eager to oppose them, on this.

    That does seem true, but I think that may be because the NASA budget is such a small part of the political fabric, and that other national issues have more attention.

    Remember, the national budget is $3.6 trillion, and NASA’s is only $19B – that’s 1/2 of 1% of the total budget. Couple that with the current economic condition of the country, and that every Representative is being voted on this November, and it’s a wonder half the committee members made it to any of Giffords hearings.

  • Anne Spudis

    @ Coastal Ron:

    You state: “Maybe or maybe not, but you could have qualified that you have more than a casual relationship with the author, and the article is six months old.”

    How does my being married to Paul Spudis or the date of an opinion piece written by him regarding the U.S. space program change what he proposes? That’s just plain silly.

    I have no way of knowing your personal associations because I don’t know who “Coastal Ron” is. But I am familiar with what you, “Coastal Ron,” has been writing for the same six months. Should I question your opinions because you’ve been posting them beyond your grabbed-out-of-nowhere expiration date?

  • Robert G. Oler wrote:

    no one has a real clue (at least what they will state publically) what the mission of NASA is in human spaceflight…

    Not true. NASA’s mission is spelled out quite clearly in the National Aeronautics and Space Act.

    The Act doesn’t require NASA to fly humans, to explore other worlds or even to own its rockets. The whole human spaceflight thingie was dreamed up by President Kennedy as a way to show the world our technology was better than that of the Soviet Union. A recording of his private conversation with James Webb in November 1962 revealed he was “not that interested in space,” he was afraid the HSF program was going to blow the federal budget, and made it very clear to the NASA administrator his sole intent was to use HSF as a global P.R. stunt.

    HSF needs to be liberated from the whims of Congressional porkers. If there is no overwhelming consensus in this nation for us to explore beyond Low Earth Orbit, then there’s no reason to waste tax dollars funnelling pork to Congressional districts under the guise of LEO exploration. Better to let the commercial sector grow access to space if the demand is there (which it is). NASA’s role per the Act is to help research new technologies, not to be a space taxi.

  • common sense

    @ Stephen C. Smith wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 1:28 pm

    “Robert G. Oler wrote:

    no one has a real clue (at least what they will state publically) what the mission of NASA is in human spaceflight…

    Not true. NASA’s mission is spelled out quite clearly in the National Aeronautics and Space Act.”

    You’re actually both right. HSF is not called for in the Space Act. And no one can support it on a sound basis for something, anything outside maybe “prestige”. Commercial space will make or break HSF. If there is no cash to be made then even commercial space will disappear. Good or bad? It does not matter.

  • MrEarl

    CS: “In what way, save for the stunt, would a suborbital flight garner support for LEO crew market? ”
    I for one would like to see an orbital demonstration of a space craft’s ability before public (government) investment or purchase. Think of this as a an X-Prize with the prize being a government contract for X number of flights to the ISS with the X being a number large enough to attract serious competition. If orbital flight is as easy as many on this blog state that it is, a demonstration would not be an unreasonable requirement.

    As for the “trolls” on this site……..
    The quickest way to be labeled a troll here is to hold a view that is not whole hearted, blind support for commercial space endeavors over NASA. Many of us who hold beliefs that commercial needs to prove it’s abilities with HFS, or that it is wasteful and foolish to abandon our present technology are called liars and belittled for that, yet when we use the same tactics we’re labeled as trolls.
    If you want a homogeneous echo chamber then by all means move to a site with a moderator to keep out the opposing voices. What everyone seems to forget is that two people of goodwill can look at the same “facts” and come to different conclusions and neither is “wrong”.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 1:28 pm

    Robert G. Oler wrote:

    no one has a real clue (at least what they will state publically) what the mission of NASA is in human spaceflight…

    you replied
    Not true. NASA’s mission is spelled out quite clearly in the National Aeronautics and Space Act…

    yes and I should have been more clear or clearer…you are correct in the entirety of your post. My inelegantly expressed point was that NASA is trying to operate (and some Congress people and others thinkk it is) an exploration agency for human spaceflight in a nation that right now has no use for that….and simply cannot afford it.

    A technology development agency is what NASA is but that is not what the pork folks think it is and that adjustment is going to be a hard time coming.

    In essence who finally killed NASA was the folks who on 10 billion dollars couldnt get something in Cx flying. that is amazing.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Anne Spudis

    @ Robert G. Oler [you say — “It is absurd to believe that we are an exceptional nation just because we can put a lot of money and talent and go to a place that no one else is going to…while in most red states obesity is out of control, child mortality is approaching third world levels, and entire groups of people are growing up with third rate educations.”]

    Perhaps if the United States started looking outward, toward the multitude of possibilities that striving to move humans into the universe will unleash, we wouldn’t be wallowing in such decline. I see promise in mankind and their untapped potential. Talent and money won’t get you anywhere if you don’t have a goal. If you don’t have a goal your talent and money dries up.

  • Major Tom

    “The purpose of posting that link was to show how Aerospace was extremely limited in arriving at factual bottom lines given the time crunch imposed on them and by their inability to confirm or deny numbers they were told to use by the Augustine Committee.”

    All the letter from Aerospace Corp. says is that they weren’t the source of the commercial crew budget estimate used by the Augustine Committee.

    So what?

    The final report of the Augustine Committee (p. 69-72) goes into extensive detail about how they derived their conservative commercial crew development estimate of $5 billion. This is actually $1 billion lower than what the Administration provided in NASA’s FY11 budget request. It’s also consistent with the total budgets on similar, multiple, government/commercial LV developments (e.g., $5 billion combined USAF/private investment in EELV development).

    It’s sad that Gordon and his staff have not bothered to actually read and understand what blue-ribbon experts had to say in the final report of the Augustine Committee, instead of touting useless letters to/from Aerospace Corp. confirming what was already in print in the report.

    It’s even sadder that interested posters to this forum still, after more than half a year, havn’t bothered to read and understand the final report of the Augustine Committee.

    Sigh…

  • Robert G. Oler

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 1:38 pm

    “Perhaps if the United States started looking outward, toward the multitude of possibilities that striving to move humans into the universe will unleash, we wouldn’t be wallowing in such decline.”

    no

    this argument is like a couple that is having marital difficulties thinking that a baby is going to make them come closer.

    The notion of looking outward of looking for (to quote a line from Trek) the “unlimited possibilities of the future” only comes with self confidence in who one is and what one can do…not the other way around.

    The US is in some difficulty because of a multitude of factors but one of them is people who have started seeing enemies and challenges where none exist, which have supplanted courage with fear and hope with anger and then trying to define national honor as dealing from fear and imagination and (to be kind) American exceptionalism as some chest thumping “we are number 1″ stupidity.

    There is no real Chinese threat to take over the Moon or monopolize what resources (and I am sure that they are substantial) it has or to use the Moon as the “high ground” from a military standpoint. Those statements are absurd on their face.

    When people like Whittington come on and say “they would force us to show our passports” it is clear that they are not either dealing in reality or know that this is a canard and are still quite happy to say it, because they think it drives the policy with the stupid and ignorant among us…who are equally fearful. I know Mark and he must know that the words he is saying are just hyperbole. But like most he uses them because they impress people who have less knowledge then he does…and attempt to get his way on policy.

    It is in the words of the current Chief of Staff “not letting a crisis go to waste”…and we have had about 10 years of that.

    The problems in red states (people being fat etc) are cultural problems with people who are having their own little problems with the way the world is evolving; but those problems are symptomatic of a nation that no longer deals with its problems with reality but instead is stuck in some endless loop of arguments between groups who are trying to impress solutions of the past onto present problems.

    Until we start dealing with those issues from facts not fear, then having a baby metaphorically by some idiotic program to chest thump on the Moon wont fix things, it will make them worse.

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    @MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 1:36 pm

    “I for one would like to see an orbital demonstration of a space craft’s ability before public (government) investment or purchase. ”

    Yes. An orbital flight. Note that this is exactly what the plan seems to be. First get the cargo version going and collect data relevant to a crewed vehicle. The develop whatever necessary for the crewed vehicle. So yes you are right. And it seems to be the exact plan. Some people are fighting SpaceX in particular for a contract they do not even have! That is a crewed vehicle contract. The fight therefore is pointless. Especially based on irrelevant arguments.

    ” If orbital flight is as easy as many on this blog state that it is, a demonstration would not be an unreasonable requirement.”

    Orbital crewed flight is not easy, never was, never will be. It is easi-er than a planetary return flight. That it definitely is. Most reasonable people do not actually argue that point. Most people would tell you, rightfully so, that the technology exists, has existed for decades. Said technology can easily be transferred to the commercial sector if it does not already exists there. That is what commercial proponents advocate, in addition with a competitive fixed price bidding. Nothing more than that. So again, there are ongoing test flights. The likes of SpaceX do not have a crewed LEO contract, yet. Of course if they cannot make their cargo version work why would any one buy their crewed vehicle? So all you want is happening. Relax and enjoy the show.

    “As for the “trolls” on this site……..
    The quickest way to be labeled a troll here is to hold a view that is not whole hearted, blind support for commercial space endeavors over NASA.”

    Not true. We want a substantiated conversation. We want fact based discussion. Not faith based discussion. Of course to some people it is a highly emotional subject. But emotion is not a good driving force. See Constellation for example. Could it have been better? Of course! But it was not and emotion drove the whole thing into chaos. That and/or incompetence and/or “fraud” (sole source contracts) and/or all of the above.

    ” Many of us who hold beliefs that commercial needs to prove it’s abilities with HFS, or that it is wasteful and foolish to abandon our present technology are called liars and belittled for that, yet when we use the same tactics we’re labeled as trolls.”

    Not ture. We all want commercials to prove their worth. What is being ridiculed is the comparison with the former POR. A POR that has gone nowhere. There is no “present” technology to speak of. If it were the case the POR would have been successful. It is the foolish mega-rocket idea that put it throught the drain. Go look for yourself. Don’t take my word for it.

    “If you want a homogeneous echo chamber then by all means move to a site with a moderator to keep out the opposing voices. What everyone seems to forget is that two people of goodwill can look at the same “facts” and come to different conclusions and neither is “wrong”.”

    True. But lloking at facts, not looking at what “might be or might have been”.

    Oh well…

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 1:51 pm

    “Until we start dealing with those issues from facts not fear”

    Unfortunately no one can derive power from reason. Unless “you” some kind of a priest. Fear is much easier to deal with. Our nation is lost in fear of something or someone lurking to take our… things.

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 1:27 pm

    How does my being married to Paul Spudis or the date of an opinion piece written by him regarding the U.S. space program change what he proposes?

    What else am I supposed to think when you say “Good link” and link to an old article that your husband wrote?

    Maybe if you would have explained how it was relevant to the current discussion about Congressman Gordon and the NASA budget, it would not have seemed so out of context, and thus odd.

    Should I question your opinions because you’ve been posting them beyond your grabbed-out-of-nowhere expiration date?

    Question all you want – I come here to discuss, debate and learn, and I have certainly learned a number of good & bad things during my time on this blog.

    For instance, I was a big DIRECT supporter last year, but as I became aware of all the issues and alternatives while reading this and many other blogs, I decided that any NASA SDLV would ultimately be a financial drag on NASA, and that we don’t even need one right now. And don’t even get me started on what I’ve learned about Constellation. ;-(

    But bottom line, I try to provide the latest relevant information, and if you don’t think I do, then show me where I’m wrong. Sorry if I try to use the same standard with you and others…

  • common sense

    @ Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 1:38 pm

    “Perhaps if the United States started looking outward, toward the multitude of possibilities that striving to move humans into the universe will unleash, we wouldn’t be wallowing in such decline.”

    And this is based on what facts? Because we’d be going places in the universe suddenly all private interests would disappear? Everyone would form a happy traveling-along unified family?

    ” I see promise in mankind and their untapped potential. ”

    I don’t see any such promise. Call me a cynic or whatever but once upon a time a great country had tons of cash on tap. Said country chose to waste the cash in tax cuts and wars. Potential? What potential?

    “Talent and money won’t get you anywhere if you don’t have a goal. If you don’t have a goal your talent and money dries up.”

    If you don’t have money, all the talent in the world and the most ambitious goal will drive you nowhere. No bucks… Come on! Reality means something to you?

  • Anne Spudis

    Coastal Ron said: What else am I supposed to think when you say “Good link” and link to an old article that your husband wrote?

    Ron, the link I had posted didn’t work so I re-posted with a “good” link.

  • Anne Spudis

    Coastal Ron said: [“Maybe if you would have explained how it was relevant to the current discussion about Congressman Gordon and the NASA budget, it would not have seemed so out of context, and thus odd.”]

    Ron, I was responding to Robert G. Oler’s premise that: [“no one has a real clue (at least what they will state publically) what the mission of NASA is in human spaceflight…

    or put another way they are searching for a mission in HSF that has relevance to today’s times.”]

  • MrEarl

    CS:
    “Yes. An orbital flight. Note that this is exactly what the plan seems to be. ”
    I don’t think that’s what the plan as envisioned by the initial FY’11 budget seems to be. That proposed $6billion over 5 years for development. If it’s commercial than development should be up to the company with the reward being a guaranteed contract. I can’t speak to the sub-orbital thing.
    It’s my opinion that a lot of posters on this blog blindly accept whatever SpaceX tells them. It seems to be the darling of the moment.

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 2:59 pm

    “I don’t think that’s what the plan as envisioned by the initial FY’11 budget seems to be. That proposed $6billion over 5 years for development. ”

    Well, if they want to include as many players as possible then they have to use the word development. Only my own speculation here. Otherwise the sole entrant would indeed be SpaceX since they appear to be way ahead of anyone.

    “If it’s commercial than development should be up to the company with the reward being a guaranteed contract.”

    I do not believe they already know how they want to write the procurement of such a vehicle. The usual suspects will of course like a cost plus. But cost plus would kill the entire idea of “commercial”. Fixed price seems the most reasonable if COTS/CRS is successful. Something in-between? I don’t know.

    ” I can’t speak to the sub-orbital thing.”

    Well yeah there would be nothing, not one thing of valu for a suborbital flight save for a stunt. Especially when the orbital cargo version is about to fly.

    “It’s my opinion that a lot of posters on this blog blindly accept whatever SpaceX tells them. It seems to be the darling of the moment.”

    Possibly true. But a lot of posters take outrage when shown the facts of the poor performance of the POR. So? Look I would have loved to see Constellation going. Probably more than you and most pro-Constellation posters here sinec I actually put a lot of work in Constellation at some time. Does it matter in the end? Nope. Facts are facts. Constellation turned for the worse with ESAS and the Ares when Constellation did not go for the ESAS architecture. Actually even before when the EELVs were dropped. Believe me, had we had an Orion (even lite) fly on EELVs today, ther’d be no Augustine committee and associated consequences. But we have 5 segment booster tests… These are facts, not sci-fi.

  • wow

    Bart Gordon is so wrong about so many things he is making heads spin.

    If this letter doesn’t get space fans riled up to send letters and knock on doors, nothing will.

    NASA is garbage as long as leadership can get away with things like this.

  • MrEarl

    I happen to agree with Anne and Paul Spudis on the next steps for human space flight and the necessity to return to the moon.
    Talk of a “Flexible Path” and going to asteroids and the moons of Mars are in my opinion not much more than stunts.
    A moon base(s) could give us full access to cis-lunar space and once the bases are in place would be hard to abandon. Just look at the ISS. Ridiculed since it’s inception, planned to be splashed in 2015, it’s extension to 2020 and beyond is the only thing that all sides in this debate have agreed on. Even just a single base on the moon creates a tremendous opportunity for commercial resupply and crew transportation.
    That’s why we need commercial entities to step up to take the responsibility to supply and crew the ISS and build experience needed to do the same for the moon base.
    That’s why I believe we need an HLV to deliver base components in a reasonable amount of time and that have been fairly well integrated, outfitted and tested on Earth. While not absolutely necessity, it makes the endeavor easier.
    Until we have LEO transfer point between the moon and Earth, we’ll need a spacecraft like Orion that can do an Earth re-entry from the moon.
    A moon base makes testing things like radiation shielding, insitu resource utilization, advances in space propulsion and a host of other technologies a far easier task and builds experience for living on another world.

  • Major Tom

    “I don’t think that’s what the plan as envisioned by the initial FY’11 budget seems to be. That proposed $6billion over 5 years for development. If it’s commercial than development should be up to the company with the reward being a guaranteed contract.”

    Development includes test flights. If the government is paying on delivery for the successful achievement of agreed-to milestones (like test flights), then the government should have a say in the definition of those milestones. You don’t want taxpayer money going towards a useless milestone. This is how the COTS program is structured.

    “It’s my opinion that a lot of posters on this blog blindly accept whatever SpaceX tells them. It seems to be the darling of the moment.”

    On the contrary, hardened opponents of commercial crew (or the more blind Shuttle/Constellation supporters) use SpaceX as a strawman to make multiple false claims about the company, and commercial crew by extension, that require multiple corrections from other posters. There wouldn’t be nearly as much discussion about SpaceX if it wasn’t repeatedly brought up as a strawman in misdirected efforts to discredit commercial crew.

    And when the same false claims about SpaceX are made ad nauseum, even after they’ve been repeatedly corrected, we enter troll territory. The unobjective and unhealthy negative obsessions that some posters have with Musk, Garver, and other public figures is frankly creepy and a big waste of time in this forum.

    Commercial crew discussions — criticism or support — shouldn’t revolve around SpaceX. They should be made independent of the provider and based on the merits of the program as it is defined, and if a discussion of providers is necessary, include EELVs and the other COTS and CCDev providers as well.

    FWIW…

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 2:13 pm

    “Unfortunately no one can derive power from reason.”

    what was the Heywood Floyd line in 2010 “our leaders might be acting like (blank) holes but that doesnt mean we have to”.

    There are some sad reasons that since 9/11 2001 our national life has been “fear”…but trying to do honor to Jeff…that doesnt mean our space politics have to be…and the notion that we are going to lose some race tot he Chinese and they are going to take over the Moon is a fear based initiative.

    Robert G. Oler

  • MrEarl

    CS:
    You know I’m no supporter of Griffin or the Aries architecture. The original VSE was hijacked by “Apollo on steroids”. I am for an evolution of the shuttle hardware along the lines of Direct and the Boeing proposal from the May AIAA conference. The Aries architecture was really a brand new HV not a SD LV. What a lot of people don’t understand is that the Delta IV “Super Heavy” is really a new LV too. New tanks, engine configurations, flight software make it a new LV.
    I’ve always believed that NASA needs a political insider for administrator like Webb or O’Keefe. The original VSE was hijacked by Apollo on steroids.

  • Anne Spudis

    amightywind wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 8:30 am: “Patently absurd! Any frost in the regolith is extremely diffuse. So the amount of regolith that would have to be processed (think strip mined) for significant water extraction would be vast. Residual water ice can also be expected to be extremely briny presenting further problems. .”

    Check following from LRO radar data:

    [excerpt] Over forty small (2-15 km diameter) craters near the north pole of the Moon are found to contain this elevated CPR material. The total mount of ice present at the pole depends on how thick it is; to see this elevated CPR effect, the ice must have a thickness on the order of tens of wavelengths of the radar used. Our radar wavelength is 12.6 cm, therefore we think that the ice must be at least two meters thick and relatively pure. At such a thickness, more than 600 million metric tones of water ice are present in this area. Such an amount is comparable to the quantity estimated from the 1998 Lunar Prospector (LP) mission’s neutron spectrometer data (several hundred million metric tones). The LP neutron spectrometer only sees to depths of about one-half meter, while we penetrate at least a couple of meters, so the neutron data would underestimate the total quantity of water ice present. [end excerpt]

    http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2010/03/01/ice-at-the-north-pole-of-the-moon/

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    “You know I’m no supporter of Griffin or the Aries architecture. The original VSE was hijacked by “Apollo on steroids”. I am for an evolution of the shuttle hardware along the lines of Direct and the Boeing proposal from the May AIAA conference.”

    Ares not Aries ;) The problem with SD vehicle is and always will be cost. I know, a hard number to figure. Yet SD is based on cost plus type contracts and therefore expensive by nature. So a lot of people oppose it. If you were able to make a case that SD is the only way to go then you might be onto something but so far no one has been able to. The most simple, real case would be to say that SD is Congress/WH supported. Not that it is the best technological choice. Or most cost effective. The simple argument that SD is pork supported and that it is that or the high way then would give some credibility to it. But all the support there is does not say anything as bluntly as this, save perhaps the Augustine Committee report.

    “The Aries architecture was really a brand new HV not a SD LV. What a lot of people don’t understand is that the Delta IV “Super Heavy” is really a new LV too. New tanks, engine configurations, flight software make it a new LV.”

    Possible. But Deltas are flying vehicles. And I am not sure we actually need a “Super Heavy”. I think we need imagination.

    “I’ve always believed that NASA needs a political insider for administrator like Webb or O’Keefe. The original VSE was hijacked by Apollo on steroids.”

    Yes. In retrospect O’Keefe was a very good choice. We’ll see how Bolden fares; too early to tell in my opinion. But a Marine General by default is a political creature.

  • Coastal Ron

    common sense wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 3:23 pm

    Believe me, had we had an Orion (even lite) fly on EELVs today, ther’d be no Augustine committee and associated consequences.

    This is really the bottom line. If Ares I had worked as originally envisioned, and was on schedule, no one would have been able to cancel it, because it would have been doing what was planned and funded by Congress.

    Or, as you point out, if Delta IV Heavy would have been used instead, Orion would have been able to be ready for it’s first test flight next year, instead of fighting for it’s viability.

    Rarely does a program get cancelled when it’s doing what it was funded to do.

    Well, if they want to include as many players as possible then they have to use the word development. Only my own speculation here. Otherwise the sole entrant would indeed be SpaceX since they appear to be way ahead of anyone.

    If there were off-the-shelf ISS crew systems laying around, you wouldn’t need “development”. But since delivering crew to the ISS is something non-standard in the aerospace industry (just NASA & Russia do it), then “development” is needed.

    Detractors of commercial crew seem to focus on SpaceX, but I know I for one have always been clear that one company does not constitute a robust industry. Two is a minimum, and three or more is really needed to ensure competitive pricing and continued innovation.

    The reason any of us talk about SpaceX is because they are actually accomplishing something – real hardware, not mockups. This threatens the status quo, so turf battles ensue, but the fact remains that SpaceX is being partially funded by NASA to build and test a capsule that by next year will only lack four features to enable it to transition from cargo to crew – and only the three simplest ones are needed as an ISS lifeboat (down only). When SpaceX is certified by NASA to start CRS missions, the cry “but they need to prove themselves” will fade away.

  • common sense

    @ Coastal Ron wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 4:03 pm

    “This is really the bottom line. If Ares I had worked as originally envisioned, and was on schedule, no one would have been able to cancel it, because it would have been doing what was planned and funded by Congress.”

    And the worst is that early on people knew that the ESAS Ares I so to speak would not work. Period. 5 segments showed up to alleviate the issues with 4 segments and brought in their own set of issues. A spiral indeed but an uncontrolled spiral. Early on was the time to reverse course back to EELVs or to a less “capable” CEV. But heck why?! I want everything right away; reminds you of some other crisis?…

    Oh well…

  • Robert G. Oler

    MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
    ” Even just a single base on the moon creates a tremendous opportunity for commercial resupply and crew transportation.”

    not really no.

    A base on the Moon has far less likely hood of commercial involvement then ISS does.

    a base on the Moon requires commercial companies to 1) develop unique hardware which can land on the Moon and 2) rockets which can launch the mass necessary to carry any meaningful payload to the Moon and land it.

    As it stands now the vehicles that launch satellites into GEO will carry even more mass to ISS…and the reverse is true for a lunar surface delivery.

    Plus there is no reason to believe that NASA having developed the unique vehicles to go and land on the Moon would not ala shuttle find some pressing need to use them to supply a lunar base.

    your statement has no merit in fact

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 4:13 pm

    Your comment above helps explain why I advocate for an EML-1 Gateway to be operated by a small neutral (perhaps a Singapore sovereign wealth fund or Isle of Man located multi-national corporation). But perhaps largely owned by US shareholders.

    That way we Americans (via our New Space industry) can HELP other nations explore the Moon and seek out water ice and PGMs thereby building our soft power. While making money. Sell China a moon base and retrieve some of those dollars Wal-Mart shoppers have sent over there.

    Apollo was about proving we could kick butt better than anyone. Today, we need to prove we can play well with others.

    Of course, we keep all the access codes and operating manuals and software back door traps for that EML facility. Just in case.

  • Coastal Ron

    MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 3:33 pm

    I happen to agree with Anne and Paul Spudis on the next steps for human space flight and the necessity to return to the moon.
    Talk of a “Flexible Path” and going to asteroids and the moons of Mars are in my opinion not much more than stunts.

    Conversations like these are a little like the family talking about what they’re going to do on their vacation to New York City. However the hard part is getting to the city, and that in my mind is what many “Moon First” advocates skip over.

    I know some call the proposed NASA budget the “un-plan”, because it does not specifically state a time and date for us to be somewhere, but I think those people skip over the logistics question too quickly.

    I think if we develop commercial crew & cargo to LEO, decisions about where to go next will not only be easier, but could be done in parallel (more than one at a time). The other part left out of all of this is robotic precursor missions, because there is a lot we can do with robotics to mitigate cost & risk for manned missions. The proposed House budget kills robotic missions.

    For myself, I’m very much focused on the cost & affordability part of the NASA equation, so lowering the cost to access space plus robotic missions are very high on my priority list – no matter where we ultimately go.

  • MrEarl

    MT:
    No doubt COTs has been a good way to start, I just think that with HSF we can move to a procurement system that will reward the first (and hopefully second) company to launch and recover a manned vehicle meeting a certain set of reasonable criteria with a guaranteed number of flights at a fixed cost thus eliminating any need for funding up front. I also realize that those development costs will be borne in the cost per-flight but we wouldn’t be funding failure as we did with Kisler.

    CS:
    I think it’s a fallacy to believe that a SD-LV family would have to be built in a cost-plus environment and need the same “standing army” as the present shuttle program. Since May, I’ve been supporting a NASA/Boeing/ULA joint program where the ULA/Boeing would be given a contract to supply NASA with a SD-LV on a per unit basis. From Boeing’s presentation of May 2010 they seemed to be interested in doing such a thing. A SDV is as much an operational vehicle as the Delta IV Super Heavy, maybe even more so since a SDV would only require a configuration change.

    I’m sure with imagination we can find ways to go to the moon and build bases with 25 to 30 mT class vehicles but I found that the safest, most robust solutions to anything is usually the simplest.

  • MrEarl

    Ron:
    “Conversations like these are a little like the family talking about what they’re going to do on their vacation to New York City. However the hard part is getting to the city, and that in my mind is what many “Moon First” advocates skip over.”

    I haven’t skipped over the getting there part. That’s why I advocate turning LEO over to commercial and moving now for the development of a SD-HLV for cargo (maybe manned), a fully functional Orion and an EELV to launch it.

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 4:25 pm

    I am not saying we would not be able to have fixed cost SD vehicles. BUT most support goes to the ongoing workforce for SD vehicle choice. If you want to “protect” the existing workforce you have to use a similar procurement. If you want to limit cost then the existing workforce will change and shrink.

    So here it is for you. The Congress tries and not interfere with LV development. Congress says: Here is xxx$M or $B, go and develop a vehcile, any vehicle that NASA actually defines for some given mission(s). Every one can bid including SD proponents and opponents of course.

    If you agree with the above then I am all with you. But I am not holding my breath when Congress actually told NASA what vehicle they would design based on no, zero, requirement.

    Are you up to it Congress?

  • Martijn Meijering

    I’m sure with imagination we can find ways to go to the moon and build bases with 25 to 30 mT class vehicles but I found that the safest, most robust solutions to anything is usually the simplest.

    You haven’t shown that an SDLV would be safer, more robust or simpler. I don’t think any of these are necessarily true.

  • Major Tom

    “we can move to a procurement system that will reward the first (and hopefully second) company to launch and recover a manned vehicle meeting a certain set of reasonable criteria with a guaranteed number of flights at a fixed cost thus eliminating any need for funding up front.”

    That would be a prize competition. I, and I’m certain others on this forum, would support such a NASA prize. But Congress has capped NASA’s prize authority at an amount ($50 million, IIRC) that is way too low to support such a “Human Orbital Prize” (HOP or whatever you want to call it). Furthermore, Congress has refused to fund NASA’s prize program in amounts greater than $4 to 10 million, spread over multiple years. So while great in theory, it’s a non-starter from a real-world point-of-view, unfortunately. (With the government’s failure in this area, it would be great if Google or someone could cough up ~$100 million for an X-Prize HOP but the realism of that happening is another discussion.)

    “I also realize that those development costs will be borne in the cost per-flight but we wouldn’t be funding failure as we did with Kisler.”

    NASA didn’t fund failure with Kistler. Kistler failed to meet a private fundraising milestone (i.e., no bank or other investor would lend them money) so NASA didn’t pay Kistler for that milestone or any milestone thereafter. The only payments Kistler received were for milestones they successfully achieved. That’s the beauty of the COTS pay-upon-successful-milestone agreements, and that approach left enough in the COTS kitty to bring OSC on board to replace Kistler.

    No doubt, the same would happen with commercial crew. The Augustine Committee recommended starting with three providers (IIRC), and NASA recently talked about starting with four. No doubt, one or two would fail to meet their milestones, their NASA funding would dry up, and the remaining NASA resources would be concentrated on the surviving two providers. It’s not as clean as a prize competition, but it’s about as good as you can do given the procurement tools and budgets NASA has available.

    FWIW…

  • Robert G. Oler

    MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 4:25 pm

    ” From Boeing’s presentation of May 2010 they seemed to be interested in doing such a thing”

    there is no chance that Boeing would develop a SDHLV using their own money and then try and sell its services to the government or anyone.

    None Robert G. Oler

  • Major Tom

    Following up to my prior email, here’s a recent article that gives a feeling for the size of prize competitions that NASA can currently undertake given legislative restrictions on prize authority and funding:

    spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=31571

    Unfortunately, nothing bigger than $2 million.

    FWIW…

  • Coastal Ron

    MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 4:38 pm

    I haven’t skipped over the getting there part. That’s why I advocate turning LEO over to commercial and moving now for the development of a SD-HLV for cargo (maybe manned), a fully functional Orion and an EELV to launch it.

    I guess I wasn’t clear, and I didn’t mean you for the skipping part.

    I’m glad we are of like mind for the LEO transportation, but I certainly don’t see the need for HLV of any sort – at least not on the horizon.

    Our current space program is built around 15ft diameter payloads, and Delta IV Heavy can loft anything the Shuttle put up. There are also incremental assembly techniques that could be used to mount missions, and the ISS has certainly shown us that in-space assembly is doable.

    Based on all of that, other than large bulk deliveries of liquids, I don’t see the advantage an HLV provides, especially when you take overall costs into account (development + operations). No one can demonstrate a functional need that cannot be done with current launchers.

  • Martijn Meijering

    No one can demonstrate a functional need that cannot be done with current launchers.

    And they’ve sure tried. One recent argument was that an SDLV would be handy for launching an asteroid diversion spacecraft, never mind that you don’t need an SDLV for that or that we don’t have any money for such a spacecraft. The money would surely materialise if an asteroid were detected was the argument. Grasping at straws. Many in the blogosphere desperately want an SDLV but no one I know of is willing to admit they want it for its own sake (or for the jobs it provides etc).

  • Anne Spudis

    Coastal Ron, I’m curious, what role do you advocate for humans in space?

  • Robert G. Oler

    Bill White wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 4:20 pm

    we are in my view sometime (and it seems to be receeding not advancing now) from any real need for any infrastructure that services humanity at any point outside of GEO.

    The worst part of the last 10 years is that they have likely been the death knell for any real ability for the western world to come to any cohesion either as sub parts or as a “level 1 or 2″ group in almost any affair, much less space activities.

    IF we are ever to get past human spaceflight depending on the excess currency that government have to “blow” and make space a part of “soft power”…we have to find a compelling reason to have people in space past “soft power” itself …and the western world in particular has spent a lot of money combined (and a lot in the US since the space station project started) merely in building it…and now that it is there it is barely holding on in terms of its existence.

    There is a reason that the Chinese are going very slow in their human space activities…and one that in my view comes to mind is that they have all the “soft power” from it that they want or think is useful and they cannot find no matter how hard they scheme any hard power reasons to have it.

    There has been a lot of talk “we could go back tot he Moon and develop all its stuff and then propellants etc would be cheaper and wow watch space exploration take off”.

    problem is that we have been down this road before with the shuttle and now the station and nothing has occurred…no country is really going to spend the money to develop all that infrastructure without some hard power reason to do so.

    And as it stands now no country can figure one out.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Space Cadet

    Obama wants NASA working on terrestial projects, and become goodwill ambassador to the muslim world. NASA has lost its way and like other agencies should be shutdown if it cannot get back to its roots of space exploration and technolgy development. Getting back to the programs that were scuttled would be a good start rather than aimless initiatives that serve no purpose.

    Unfortunately the government is so far in debt that NASA is now a target of budget cuts because of the massive bailouts and jobs bills extensions. This misguided administration has no vision other than just empty rhetoric and unfunded mandates.

    Until there are technology oriented people who have a business sense the Space program will continue to flounder and become even less relevant.

  • common sense

    @ Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 5:21 pm

    “Coastal Ron, I’m curious, what role do you advocate for humans in space?”

    Expansion, colonization. None of which is anywhere in the Space Act.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Martijn Meijering wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
    ” Many in the blogosphere desperately want an SDLV but no one I know of is willing to admit they want it for its own sake (or for the jobs it provides etc).”

    yeah. The argument is on one thread at NASAspaceflight.com that is basically this…”we found work to fly shuttle for the last few decades, if we build a SDV what is to say we wont find things for it to do”.

    And that is the problem. It is not just that we have no money to build an SDV it is that everything that someone proposes it should do, takes money a lot of money and no one at the national level is interested in spending that money or committing to that goal

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 5:23 pm

    “There is a reason that the Chinese are going very slow in their human space activities…and one that in my view comes to mind is that they have all the “soft power” from it that they want or think is useful and they cannot find no matter how hard they scheme any hard power reasons to have it.”

    The Chinese cerainly are no fools. Time is on their side. They have soft and hard power. Hard power is not only derived from military power. Economic power nowadays makes a lot more sense. China will not attack its largest market. Only fools would try something like this. They don’t need to do it. What for?

    As for military power. A base on the Moon? How would it help China say invade Taiwan? If China wanted to do so they would. A little like Russia with Georgia. We would definitely protest! War on the other hand? With what resources? Loans from China maybe?

    In any case. HSF can be played for diplomacy for sure. But I don’t think you need a lunar base. Unusual partners should be sought after and what Bolden did in the mid-east was, still is, very smart. Too bad the press and other lunatics took over. He was doing the right thing!

  • Ultimately, IMHO, humans settling space is existential and In utilitarian terms, it will never be “worth it”

    I see the goal of settling space being more about what we might become rather than what we might find out there.

    As with all existential questions there is no “right” or “wrong” answer. Each of us must decide for ourselves.

    As for the Space Act, it was written by Congress and the proposed Senate Authorization Bill does define the goals of space flight as including preparation for eventual permanent settlement. There is nothing in the Space Act the current Congress cannot amend.

  • Anne Spudis

    Robert G. Oler, Do you see a scenario where our country should be concerned about our economic and national security assets residing in cislunar space, with the understanding that the health of our country depends on keeping them serviced and protected? Wouldn’t this be why our country would build a cislunar transportation infrastructure using the Moon and it’s resources?

  • common sense

    @ Bill White wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 5:39 pm

    “Ultimately, IMHO, humans settling space is existential and In utilitarian terms, it will never be “worth it””

    Maybe so but if you want support you have to make it “worth it”.

    “As for the Space Act, it was written by Congress and the proposed Senate Authorization Bill does define the goals of space flight as including preparation for eventual permanent settlement. There is nothing in the Space Act the current Congress cannot amend.”

    Until ammended it remains law and therefore… I’d be happy to see Congress ammend the Space Act in response to today’s realities as well as put it into law that we shall colonize space. It’d be fun to watch.

  • It’s fun to look back. Guess who wrote the following (I’ve edited for length) a few years back. No, not me:

    “First, I will present to the Congress the National Aerospace Act which will reorganize our nation’s civil space effort…”

    … one way to address this problem would be to break up NASA into functioning groups. There would be separate, smaller organizations addressing the following areas: engineering research and development, science and robotic exploration, the great observatories (like the Hubble telescope), regulation of private industry, special projects, and on-going operations. A cabinet level Office of Space Flight would coordinate government space policy.

    “Second, the government will sell off or ground all civil space launch assets, including the space shuttle, and will acquire launch services from the private sector.”

    … If, …, the government were to acquire it’s civilian launch services from the private sector, a recent study by five aerospace firms under contract to NASA indicated that cost savings of one to two billion dollars a year were possible. And privatizing launch services-just as privatizing air mail transport more than sixty years ago-would help to form a robust private space launch industry.

    “Third we shall embark on a two billion dollar a year program to develop technology to lower the cost of traveling to and operating in space.”

    … Small, entrepreneurial companies… are building launch vehicles which promise to bring down the cost of launching people and material into space.

    “Fourth we shall offer legislation declaring space an enterprise zone, offering tax and regulatory relief to private companies which propose to provide goods and/or services in space.”

    Likely a President making these four policy initiatives would be greeted by polite applauds and a few lines inside the A section of the newspaper. Things like tax relief, bureaucracy reform, and small scale technology R&D are not quite as sexy as Apollo-like lunges at Mars, but they would have a profound impact toward fulfilling the dreams of space advocates. These initiatives would lower the cost of space travel and open up the high frontier of space to a wide variety of players, mostly from the private sector. This could mean the difference between just a few highly paid government employees getting to travel and work in space, and a huge number of ordinary people getting to travel and work in space-including you who are reading this article.

    And ironically these four proposals, if followed through, would make a government funded lunar base or Mars expedition far more possible…

  • common sense

    @rich kolker wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 6:07 pm

    “It’s fun to look back. Guess who wrote the following (I’ve edited for length) a few years back.”

    Yeah, people do change over time. You just increased our friend Robert’s credibility a few notches ;)

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 5:21 pm

    Coastal Ron, I’m curious, what role do you advocate for humans in space?

    Not to crib from Common Sense above, but I advocate an expanding role for humans in space. I hope the ISS is recognized as the first point that humans permanently occupied space, and that it is a building block for our gradual expansion.

    However space is both hard and expensive, so I don’t know how quickly we can expand. Robotic precursor missions have a role to play too, and can both lower the overall costs and speed up our expansion.

    Certainly there will also be a number of inflection points that will allow increased amounts of people or activity to be sustained, and I could speculate on what some of those are.

    But the bottom line is that for the U.S., we are limited by the budgets of NASA, and the number of industries that are able to profit from space activities. Increase either or both of those, and we expand into space quicker.

  • Nope, not Robert, although he was heavily involved in drafting the National Aerospace Act proposal, as was I.

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 5:49 pm

    Robert G. Oler, Do you see a scenario where our country should be concerned about our economic and national security assets residing in cislunar space…

    What makes you think they aren’t already concerned with that, and have been dealing with it since the sixties? You are talking about LEO, polar and GEO satellite assets, or is there something we don’t know about at L1?

  • common sense

    @rich kolker wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 6:20 pm

    “Nope, not Robert, although he was heavily involved in drafting the National Aerospace Act proposal, as was I.”

    I know. I meant Robert keeps saying this and that about Mark. You just confirmed it. Hence the increased credibility…

  • First – take space seriously. This new frontier, as it was once called, deserves it. Not because it’s something different, but because its potential is the same as any frontier: new resources to gain, places to live, businesses to grow, things to learn.

    Next, whatever direction is set should have an underlying purpose. In other words, don’t just answer who goes to space, what they send, where it goes, and when we send it, but WHY we feel it is in our national interest to do this. If this new direction is going to have the support of the American people, as it must, this purpose must go beyond “because it is there” or “to do good science”.

    That purpose must be a space purpose. Competing with, or cooperating with, the Russians, Chinese or Europeans as a purpose for a space effort for example relegates space to being a side show, and forces an administration to make decisions not based on what will expand our ability to operate in and take advantages of the potential of the space environment, but instead maximizing the foreign policy and foreign aid aspects. That becomes the mission, not the space purpose.

    The direction should set what we want to do, not how to do it. The role of the government is strategic (and financial), not tactical.

    Finally, it is important that whomever is setting this direction understands that space is not all of one piece. Flying exploratory spacecraft to other planets is worthwhile, as is lowering the cost to orbit, as is operating the Great Observatories like Hubble. So long as all of these goals (and others) must compete for the attention of a “space” agency some will get shortchanged. Just as what the FAA does is not the same as what the NTSB does is not the same as NASA does (in aviation), it makes sense to separate goals (and perhaps agencies) for space technology development from crewed space flight operations from scientific missions to the outer planets.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 5:49 pm

    “Robert G. Oler, Do you see a scenario where our country should be concerned about our economic and national security assets residing in cislunar space, with the understanding that the health of our country depends on keeping them serviced and protected? ”

    Not in the next 20-30 years on the pathways that our and the Chinese (and other) countries economies and military and space activities are going. That doesnt mean it wont ever happen, but it does mean that planning for them now is pretty lame.

    For the Moon to become a economic and security asset it would have to have been developed to the point where it served as a reasonable part of the nations infrastructure in space (or there was some asset there which changed the economy on Earth) and a multiplier to it. That would imply that there is a space commercial interest in general that needs that development.

    It is a chicken/egg thing. To develop local lunar resources to supply propellent say for space craft would take hundreds of billions and right now that buys a lot of propellent…

    history is at time illustrative The US seized the Philippines in 1900 did some modest fortification work on it 10 years later and then built the tunnel system on Correigedor in the 1920’s…war did not come until 40 years later…and this is in an environment where sailing the Pacific had been routine for almost a century (by the time of WW2).

    With some modest exceptions the Philippines never really figured in the US economic equation, they were what they were solely because they were a) conquered and b) a sort of stop sign in the Japanese conquest of Hawaii (which was important).

    To supply the outpost on the Philippines took a lot of money but not all that much more then a US Army base…on the other hand to maintain any sort of Moon base right now would take many times more then any other base the US maintains.

    I dont see the issue of protecting the Moon (sadly because I wish it was some form of economic equation in the US…have an excellent story about that) as an issue in American foreign policy for decades maybe another half century.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Byeman

    MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 2:59 pm

    “It’s my opinion that a lot of posters on this blog blindly accept whatever SpaceX tells them. ”

    You are no better. You blindly accept what NASA tells you and NASA was wrong about CxP.

    Also, it just isn’t Spacex. How many times do we have to say it, it is ULA, OSC, Boeing etc.

    BTW, there are many in NASA that believe Spacex because NASA is working with SpaceX on COTS, CRS, and unmanned launches.

  • Byeman

    Why does the US need a moon base? There is no need or reason. It does no “open” cis lunar space. GSO is just a useful for that

    “A moon base makes testing things like radiation shielding, insitu resource utilization, advances in space propulsion and a host of other technologies a far easier task and builds experience for living on another world

    Huh? there is no advantage for propulsion research on a lunar base. Orbital bases can do most of the other things that you list. ISRU on the moon is not a given.

    There is not enough reasons to justify the expense of lunar bases

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 5:37 pm


    The Chinese cerainly are no fools. Time is on their side. They have soft and hard power.”

    yeah and the Chinese have looked at how great powers in the modern world come and go.

    Without economic power the Soviets demonstrated that one can only stay afloat as a military power for a bit of time.

    The US is in a position that Great Britain was in at the end of WW1…it had spent a lot of money in a fairly useless war (that cooler heads could have talked themselves out of) a war that settled almost nothing and yet it had spent a lot of money on it, all borrowed from the US. In large part it never recovered.

    Had the US not entered WW2, well things would be very very different in terms of the ability of the UK to have recovered from defeats brought on by bad economics driving the resources that their military had access to in the interwar years.

    Now that the Reds gleefully hold most of our paper, and we seem unable to recognize the illness which is affecting our economy well as you say they are no fools.

    Whenever I hear that the Reds are “doing this or that” with their space program things that have the “stop the commies” folks here all spun up…I think that they must smile and look at what Reagan did with SDI and the arms buildup in the 80’s and laugh. They are doing the same thing just economically and our own business leaders are helping. (as are our politicians)

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    history is at time illustrative The US seized the Philippines in 1900 did some modest fortification work on it 10 years later and then built the tunnel system on Correigedor in the 1920′s…war did not come until 40 years later…and this is in an environment where sailing the Pacific had been routine for almost a century (by the time of WW2)….

    this graph is unclear…war did not come until 40 years after we took the Philippines.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Byeman

    Space doe not justify a cabinet office, it is a location.

  • Rep Gordon is not running for reelection this year. His only real power is as a temporary obstructionist. 60 days from now no one will care what he says.

    Continuing Resolution will probably be better than HR5781 or anything else Gordon is likely to let come out of committee.

    I thought it a little premature for him to point the fingers of failure at Obama and everybody else for a bill he greatly changed and that hasn’t even yet come out of his committee. It sounds like he doesn’t believe in his own ability to craft a NASA funding bill.

    His retort to the “smart guys” would seem to reiterate that assessment.

  • MrEarl

    Speaking of trolls here is Byeman:
    “Huh? there is no advantage for propulsion research on a lunar base.” Sure there is, use your imagination. Ion and VASIMIER propulsion need a complete vacuum to be properly tested and and its difficult maintaing a large vacuum on Earth for long periods of time. A test stand on the moon would be very helpful. Nuclear propulsion which may give off harmful radiation here on Earth can be safely tested on the moon.
    “Orbital bases can do most of the other things that you list. ISRU on the moon is not a given.”
    Have you done any checking to see if an orbital base outside the Van Allen belts is cheaper or holds any advantage to a moon base?

    And here’s that knee-jerk reaction to anything that may question SpaceX;
    “MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 2:59 pm

    “It’s my opinion that a lot of posters on this blog blindly accept whatever SpaceX tells them. ”

    You are no better. You blindly accept what NASA tells you and NASA was wrong about CxP.”

    See…. Byman, if you have read and comprehended any of my posts you would realize that I don’t accept anything at face value. You would even know that I don’t support Constellation or Griffin but you have no response to what I really said in my previous posts so you just label me a “CxP lover” and try to discredit me that way.

    Then there’s this…
    “Also, it just isn’t Spacex. How many times do we have to say it, it is ULA, OSC, Boeing etc. ”
    Many people on this blog, BYMAN, and the CEO of SpaceX himself hold up SpaceX as an example of commercial space flight. When you do that you also make the company a target, but when people start taking legitimate shots at the target the next thing is to hide behind the other more established companys of Boeing, ULA, ect…

    I just answered Byman in kind and I eagerly await being called a troll by Bennett.

  • Coastal Ron

    MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 8:50 pm

    While you’re waiting for others to comment about the other, I’ll talk about Moon stuff.

    Ion and VASIMIER propulsion need a complete vacuum to be properly tested and and its difficult maintaing a large vacuum on Earth for long periods of time. A test stand on the moon would be very helpful.

    You’re actually making more of an argument to test those engines in the hard vacuum of space than you are of testing them on the Moon, but for an engine manufacturer on Earth, LEO is much closer than the Moon. And remember, VASIMR is scheduled to be tested on the ISS. If you want to persuade people the Moon is more desirable for that specific task, then you’re going to have to detail out the monetary and technical reasons why. So why?

    Nuclear propulsion which may give off harmful radiation here on Earth can be safely tested on the moon.

    But if it’s safe enough to lift up out of the Earth’s atmosphere, then it’s probably safe to test in orbit. Again, all things considered, what monetary and technical reasons would convince a manufacturer to test on the Moon versus anywhere else?

    This is a chance to get past the debate, and educate.

  • Bennett

    MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 8:50 pm

    You’re too eager for your shirt.

  • brobof

    MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
    Talk of a “Flexible Path” and going to asteroids and the moons of Mars are in my opinion not much more than stunts.”
    And the Apollo Mission was…? To the contrary, evaluating the nature and composition of NEOs and more particularly PHAs is probably the second most important thing we can do to ensure species survival. Whilst our robotic scouts from NEAR to DAWN can effectively ‘look but not touch'; the few probes intended to do just that have not fared well: Fobos-2 and Hayabusa… with Philae to come. Indeed operating a remote probe lagged by light minutes will prove problematic until we have characterised the surface hazards with infinitely more flexible human scouts. IMHO.
    Furthermore there is *probably* more water locked up in the various NEOs than there is at the Lunar Poles and *certainly* more useable materials if one extends out to the rest of the System. All of these materials are available without the launch infrastructure required for getting mass out of the Lunar gravity well. Indeed with a little nudging some of these ‘vermin of the skies’ would make for ideal habitats.
    “A moon base(s) could give us full access to cis-lunar space
    As would a radiation proof ISS MkII at L-1. With a built in bonus of 2.52 km/sec to anywhere!
    ” and once the bases are in place would be hard to abandon. Just look at the ISS. Ridiculed since it’s inception, planned to be splashed in 2015,
    Self defeating argument. Indeed there seems to be a vociferous minority that STILL want to see it splashed. However you will note that ESA and RKA have backstop plans in place to rescue their investment if the US is still determined to junk some 20-30 years of intellectual investment to prove their ‘Exceptionalism.’
    it’s extension to 2020 and beyond is the only thing that all sides in this debate have agreed on.
    Only post Augustine. And there are still some luddites…
    Even just a single base on the moon creates a tremendous opportunity for commercial resupply and crew transportation.
    At a tremendous cost. Once again the Russians and Lunokhod showed the way for real Lunar development and with Robonautic repair staff the only human presence will be for Boot’s n’ Flags for those countries needing that sort of thing. After all Buzz has been there :)
    “That’s why we need commercial entities to step up to take the responsibility to supply and crew the ISS” [Yep] and build experience needed to do the same for the moon base. [Nope.]
    “That’s why I believe we need an HLV to deliver base components in a reasonable amount of time and that have been fairly well integrated, outfitted and tested on Earth. While not absolutely necessity, it makes the endeavor easier.
    And I believe that the bulk of any ‘lunar base’ will be built in situ using in situ materials. Cos even Bots need radiation protection! Why should we lift even one ton of Aluminium/ Iron/ Titanium / Oxygen /… to the lunar surface when the Moon is just made of the stuff?
    “Until we have LEO transfer point between the moon and Earth, we’ll need a spacecraft like Orion that can do an Earth re-entry from the moon.”
    Sigh. Because the ISS is inclined the way it is, it has a regular LEO to TLI ‘window.’ Twice a month IIRC. Transfer to L-1 is of course much easier. Return is via aeroshell or ballute and aerobreaking/ aerocapture. Splashdowns are just SO 20th Century. But we knew all this way, Way. WAY back… in the 20th Century!
    http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/HLR.html
    “A moon base makes testing things like radiation shielding, insitu resource utilization, advances in space propulsion and a host of other technologies a far easier task and builds experience for living on another world.”
    You were asking about trollishness? Well these concepts have been raised and dismissed repeatedly by me and other worthies on previous threads. However benefit of doubt:
    A/ Radiation shielding on the Moon is achieved by lots of regolith. No need to test. Just pile it high! However Lunar regolith is not Asteroidal regolith. Nor is it Martian soil and it has no bearing on the multiple layers of plastic/ metal/ hydrogen and water that will provide a SPE shelter inboard of a DSV or habitat.
    B/ Lunar ISRU is useful for Lunar R. Martian R and more especially Asteroidal R will be different. As will the conditions under which the U is carried out!
    C/ Space propulsion has to work IN SPACE.
    D/ to summarize: living on the Moon prepares us for… LIVING ON THE MOON. Everywhere else there will be differences. Differences that can kill us.
    And we don’t need to live on the Moon. Even ‘Saint Gerard’ only envisaged a minimal team operating the lunar catapult and that was before we had discovered the thousands of “Islands in Space” already there for the taking. Some of them accessible with even less delta Vee than say our nearest neighbour.
    All this on a day (ish) when three brand new NEOs passed (missed) us by less than one Lunar Distance.
    http://discoveryenterprise.blogspot.com/2007/08/islands-in-space-challenge-of.html

  • Former Reader

    Why don’t you just hand this website over to Oler and his troll pals?

  • Matt Wiser

    Chances are, the Senate Bill is what will become law. It gives some funding to Commercial Services-though not as much as Bill Nye and the Nobel “ivory tower” crowd” wanted as per the FY 11 Budget request. It accelerates Orion and Heavy-Lift, and gives the pro-Constellation people (and I was certainly in that group-having been born in 1970, and was a toddler for Apollos 14-17) something. I’d be a lot more supportive of ObamaSpace if he’d included in his remarks at KSC something like this, or words to this effect: “Just because we are not on a ‘Moon First’ plan for exploration does not mean that we will not return to the Moon. Our robotic precursors will pave the way for the astronauts that will follow them in the mid to late 2020s, as per the Augustine Commission’s reccommendations. It is just that I want to challenge NASA to do something new, something that has never been done before, before we return to the Moon to prepare for Mars.” If he’d said that, a lot of opposition to even the amended FY 11 request would’ve gone away-especially from the likes of Armstrong, Cernan, Kraft, Kranz, and the other former astronauts-including shuttle vets-who’ve come out against it. Do I want commercial crew to succeed? Certainly. But they need to prove that the commercial sector-including the big boys like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing, not just the poster child that Lord Musk is-can handle the job they’re being asked to do. And have a government vehicle-if necessary, Orion on a Atlas V or Delta IV Heavy, to back up commercial, and take their place if they run into dificulties that prevent scheduled flights from taking place. As long as Space X is the poster child for commercial space, the whole idea will have political opposition in congress-which has rejected the original FY 11 plan and the amended version. Bottom line: those supporting the original FY 11 plan-including some people on this board, do not have the votes in Congress to do what they want. One reason: it’s an election year.

    Anyone care to bet that Bolden, Garver, and the OSTP people are regretting not taking members of Congress from the key committees and from districts where Constellation work was being done, and informing them ahead of time before that disaster of a rollout what was in store? They should’ve done something like this: “We are cancelling the Constellation program, and here’s why. A new program is in work that will get us not only to the moon, but beyond, and do it sooner, in a more affordable and sustainable way. We realize that this will mean job losses not just because of shuttle phaseout, but Constellation’s termination, but we will work to mitigate those losses. And contractors working on Constellation will be given every opportunity to bid on the new exploration program once it is fully fleshed out, and reaches the RFP stage. And none of Constellation’s work will have been in vain, as we want to incorporate some of it into the new programs being developed over the next few years.” They did nothing of the sort, and I personally believe that they thought that their new program would be universally praised, it would be “change” and that Congress would happily go along. Wrong.

  • Major Tom

    “Ion and VASIMIER propulsion need a complete vacuum to be properly tested and and its difficult maintaing a large vacuum on Earth for long periods of time. A test stand on the moon would be very helpful.”

    This makes no fiscal or technical sense.

    Establishing a base on the Moon is going to be orders of magnitude more expensive than creating a large vacuum chamber on Earth. We’re talking $100 billion or more for a lunar base (see ISS) versus $1 billion or less for a terrestrial vacuum chamber (see large test facilities on Earth).

    Moreover, some of the key issues you’d want to test with large ion engines, like spacecraft charging, can’t be tested on the Moon because contact with the lunar surface will ground the engine. If you want to test an ion engine in space, then you test it in space.

    Like the old saying goes: Test as you fly, fly as you test.

    “Nuclear propulsion which may give off harmful radiation here on Earth can be safely tested on the moon.”

    Thermal nuclear rocket engines have already been tested on Earth. See NERVA.

    “Have you done any checking to see if an orbital base outside the Van Allen belts is cheaper or holds any advantage to a moon base?”

    A GEO base should be significantly cheaper than a lunar base because it’s days closer and doesn’t sit in a second gravity well. The landers involved in a lunar base alone will cost hundreds of millions (Augustine commercial route) to tens of billions of dollars (Constellation mode) — landers that a GEO base doesn’t need.

    That doesn’t mean that the potential benefits of a lunar base couldn’t potentially outweigh the costs, but the existing history of space stations doesn’t support such and unique lunar base benefits like propellant production from lunar water are years from ground truth, nevertheless proof of concept or cost-effective demonstration.

    Much research and technology development has to take place before intelligent decisions can be made on the next permanent civil human space outpost. Elements of NASA’s FY11 budget request supported some of the necessary robotic precursors and technology demonstrations.

    FWIW…

  • brobof

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 10:55 pm
    “I’d be a lot more supportive of ObamaSpace if he’d included in his remarks…”
    He sorta did: “Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit. (Applause.) And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. […Asteroid bit…] we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned.” Which is an implicit statement that the US would return to the Moon BUT NOT AS A FIRST PRIORITY. (And any mention of telerobotic sample collection and return would be far too technical for a generic space speech.)

    However your Anti Obama crowd was in full “End of HSF” mode at the time and their noise drowned out the signal. I think posterity will look kindly on that speech… whichever way the future goes.
    http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/trans/obama_ksc_trans.html

    Obama and his Space Policy advisors made one big mistake. IMHO. They assumed that Congress and “the likes of Armstrong, Cernan, Kraft, Kranz, and the other former astronauts” had read and grasped the import of the HSF Report. Make that two mistakes. They also under estimated the influence of ‘vested interests’ so entrenched that they would rather see the “End of HSF” *and* NASA. Rather than support a plan that could save these entities from the coming storm. One suspects that these ‘vested interests’ also had closer contact with “the likes of Armstrong, Cernan, Kraft, Kranz, and the other former astronauts.” Whereas the next generation of the NASA ‘family’ had read both the Report and perhaps “Next Steps” as well and were thus ahead of the parabola.

    Ironic that your Anti-Obama crowd will ultimately bring about the very thing they were decrying.

    Of course as IANARS I might be wrong. MSFC might produce a SDHLV on budget and on schedule. And said SDHLV might be the most cost effective launcher ever built.

  • Coastal Ron

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 10:55 pm

    But they need to prove that the commercial sector-including the big boys like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing, not just the poster child that Lord Musk is-can handle the job they’re being asked to do.

    1. What is that proof that Boeing, LM and SpaceX (Lord Musk) need to provide?

    2. Wouldn’t a COTS-like program provide both the proof and the financial protection for NASA so it isn’t saddled with another Ares I?

    I know you don’t speak for anyone else, but I’d someone to actually be specific on this topic.

  • Matt Wiser

    The Augustine Commission’s report shouldn’t be taken as Holy Writ. It should be a guide and nothing else. When they reccommended that commercial space develop a lunar lander, I said WHAT? Why not have an international partner, such as the ESA or JAXA, develop lunar assets? Commercial will have a role in lunar exploitation when that time comes, but that suggestion goes further than even those commercial zealots who want commercial in LEO and NASA handling BEO. As budgets improve, as they surely will with time, government will handle the lunar lander and associated surface systems-rovers, habitats, etc. If commercial wants in, fine. But initial exploration is best left to NASA and its counterparts.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 10:55 pm

    “Anyone care to bet that Bolden, Garver, and the OSTP people are regretting not taking members of Congress from the key committees and from districts where Constellation work was being done, and informing them ahead of time before that disaster of a rollout what was in store? ”

    sure I would take that bet.

    the only way one kills a federal program that is supported solely by pork is to outmanuever the porkers and do a little (gasp) shock and awe.

    If Bolden and Garver had gone around as you suggest the argument you suggest would have been scoffed at. The notion that somehow folks like Olson are going to do a Wimpy, ie give up jobs today for more jobs tomorrow is absurd.

    If Bolden/Garver had done the consults then by the time they went public the folks who want to “save our jobs” would have organized and already had a plan.

    As it was Bolden/Garver caught them kind of on the fly and they have held the upper hand ever since.

    The trick to change the direction of national human spaceflight is to kill the things that stop you from ever changing direction. Thats shuttle and the Cx program and those are gone. The trick on killing those was to make the proponents of them have to go against the “resident experts” (the Augustine commission) or to accept their findings which was that the program of record could continue but MORE MONEY was needed.

    That was the kiss of death.

    Bolden and Garver have done a good bit of work. They have prevailed against the local pork kings and more or less gotten their way in terms of setting the trend. Heavy lift will die in the next budget cycle (or become a Delta IV heavy) and then Orion will slip over the side.

    Having been an opponent of Garver’s most of my space advocacy life…well she deserves some kudo’s on this.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 12:04 am

    ” Why not have an international partner, such as the ESA or JAXA, develop lunar assets? ”

    because they have no money and we would have to pay for it and American dollars should go toward American jobs. Besides they would use their countries version of private enterprise anyway.

    When Boeing couldnt build the ninja turtles or most of the nodes…who do you think the US went to…?

    Robert G. Oler

  • Ferris Valyn

    When they reccommended that commercial space develop a lunar lander, I said WHAT? Why not have an international partner, such as the ESA or JAXA, develop lunar assets?

    Because the data supports them. Lets presuppose a lunar landing will happen sometime between 2020 and 2030. Thats not exactly a short time frame. Now, lets consider some of the suborbital guys, and what they are doing. We have 3 companies, actively working on VTVL rocket systems. Very similar to what will be needed for a lunar landing. Why not take advantage of that?

  • Matt Wiser

    Sure, take advantage of it: when it’s time for the RFP stage in developing the lunar lander, they can bid along with other interested parties. If they pair up with a more established firm, fine. If they can do it on their own, more power to ‘em. But it will be a NASA vehicle in all likelihood. This is exploration, not a taxi service. Even the most ardent commercial advocates at this time are not advocating getting involved in exploration. Exploitation, when that stage becomes possible, is a whole different matter altogether. I just think that it’s way premature to even consider commercial for the lunar lander when the time comes in the mid to late 2020s-hopefully, after the election of 2012, sooner. But that’s just me.

    Oler, I won’t dignify your comments with a response other than this: the FY 11 request as presented on 1 Feb and amended after the speech at KSC by POTUS on 15 Apr never made it out of any Congressional committee: It was DOA. Dead, buried, gone. A more sensible NASA billl made it out of the Senate. That will pass, either as a stand-alone bill or as part of a CR. There is no, repeat, NO congressional support for the original bill that Bill Nye, those Nobel winners, and the Planetary Society cling to “like Grim Death to a dead cat.” Either get with the program that the Senate bill will allow, or get out of the way.

  • Snarly Snodgrass

    DOA. Dead, buried, gone

    Hey, not a problem, in fact on the contrary, I look forward to hearing your explanations in another five years, after yet another five year failure to launch. You can’t even get a heavy lift launch vehicle flying, let alone flying well enough to have it collapse on its own weight of its total unaffordability.

    I encourage you to fail … again. It’s entertaining, if anything.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 1:23 am

    well dignified or not your statements are nonsensical.

    The Senate bill is a great bill. it does exactly what needs to be done to turn NASA around (or change it) and that includes the primary elements of The Presidents plan.

    You might try and say “well he didnt get it all exactly” but in the end he got the baseline effort which is to kill the programs which are eating away at the core of national space efforts and consuming the dollars that can do good things.

    The essence of “smart” is to try and understand “victory” …if one is so inept as to think that victory is getting everything you want, in a political process that occurs in a system so nutty as ours right now, then that is ones problem.

    The trick is to understand what constitutes your side gaining the control over the direction of the program and not having it.

    If you want to delude yourself into thinking that Obama didnt get his way…go ahead. Keep saying that as the shuttle is ended, Alliance people go out the door, the lights in the FCR’s go out, there is no SDV HL and Cx becomes just more viewgraphs.

    OK there isnt as much money for commercial as I would like, but there is enough.

    My side won. How I know? Cx groupies like Whittington are still clinging to the notion that a GOP congress will fix things…HAH

    Robert G. Oler

  • DCSCA

    @ Coastal Ron wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 1:33 am <-Indeed and it's refreshing to see his emerging capacity to accept wiser, alternative viewpoints. Follow his lead.

    @MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 1:36 pm "I for one would like to see an orbital demonstration of a space craft’s ability before public (government) investment or purchase." <– A manned orbital flight by commercial would be a welcomed effort but given the risks involved and what's at stake for commercial space in the near future, most likely a bridge too far right now. A successful sub-orbital manned flight, which seems more realistic given the risks and rewards involved, would be a huge step in quashing immediate congressional skepticism and validate requests for loan guarantees and government subsidies to press on for manned orbital flight operations. It would also allow SpaceX, assuming they're the ones to do it, to 'man-rate' their vehicles on their own terms. Contrary to 'commonsense's comment' –indicating lack there of– Shepard's suborbital flight was hardly a 'stunt' given the context of the times and decisions at stake for the immediate future of NASA in that era. A success was essential before the commitment to the moon was made. What is bothersome are commercial space advocates claiming any manned test flight, orbital or otherwise, it's not necessary if a cargoed flight suceeds, spinning that orbiting and safely returning an unmanned cargo craft is all but ends the debate– is good as orbiting and safely returning a crewed vehicle. A ground rule double is not a home run.

  • Jason

    Why repeat what the commercial venture Scaled Composites accomplished several years ago? Unless your motive is to discredit, your requirement has already been fulfilled.

    Nothing would be gained by SpaceX performing the same feat. Just as people changed their arguments from “SpaceX hasn’t launched a single payload to orbit” to “SpaceX hasn’t launched a person”… detractors would just change again.

  • Matt Wiser

    As Charlie Bolden said in that Senate Hearing back in May: “Reasonable people can disagree.” Well, I disagree with the approach that the Senate was forced to modify in the bill that cleared the Senate, and which will likely become law, one way or another. That original FY 11 budget went nowhere in Congress, and I’m surprised that there’s still people “clinging to it like Grim Death to a Dead Cat” (to use a WW II phrase regarding the USN and its lamentable Mark-14 submarine torpedo). The Senate bill gives some funding to Commercial Crew, which satisfies some of the “new space” advocates, and funds Orion and accelerated Heavy-lift, which is what will mollify the Constellation crowd. And it specifically includes the moon as a destination in the bill. Something that a successor administration in 2013 or 2017 at the latest will reaffirm. Bottom line is that the original FY 11 NASA budget request, and the amended version that POTUS outlined at KSC on 15 Apr, never made it out of committee in either form. Personally, I think that had Bolden listened to his PR people, something he admitted to not doing following the rollout, a lot of the acrimony and anger would’ve been mitigated, because that budget rollout was a disaster. They just assumed that Congress would go along, and the Constellation contractors would shut down, and come back when the new exploration systems were ready for the RFP stage. Wrong on both counts. Remember that Congress controls the power of the purse, and displeasing the Congresscritters is a sure-fire way to get them not to vote for what you want to do. And angering two Senators (Hutchinson and Shelby), who stand to become committee chairs if the GOP wins the Senate, only makes things worse.

    Btw, since when is opposing the President’s specific plan being an “Obama-hater?” I have no disgreements with him personally, though I didn’t vote for him. It’s just that I think he’s wrong on this issue, as well as a couple of others (Counter-terrorism and trying to make nice with Iran, but those are different issues for another place).

  • Ferris Valyn

    Matt Wiser

    Sure, take advantage of it: when it’s time for the RFP stage in developing the lunar lander, they can bid along with other interested parties. If they pair up with a more established firm, fine. If they can do it on their own, more power to ‘em.

    Well now, that depends – does it have to be cost-plus contract, totally designed by NASA?

    But it will be a NASA vehicle in all likelihood.

    Exactly how will it be a NASA vehicle, since NASA doesn’t have the capacity to actually BUILD its own vehicle.

    This is exploration, not a taxi service.

    Potentially, it is. You don’t know how successful any of those comapnies will be, (and I’ll freely grant I don’t know how much of a failure some of them may end up being). The point is, we can position our country to move quickly from exploration to explotiation.

    Part of this comes from the question of can we replicate the success that we saw in the dotcom world in commercializing space. Suppose we get 1 Commercial Capsule going to ISS a month? Suppose we get a VTVL suborbital craft going into space at least 2-3 times a week (or hell, you can expand that to any suborbital craft). These are much larger numbers, and many more people in space than we’ve ever had. These are gamechanging, and to presuppose that NASA wouldn’t need to adopt quickly is a mistake.

    Another part of the issue is that you are viewing what happened with Apollo as being exactly where we are today, for exploration purposes. In point of fact, there are vast areas where I think NASA, as an exploration program, makes much more sense than going back to the moon. I am not saying the moon isn’t important – just that, if you consider difficulty and unknowns, there are destinations of comprable distances, that are closer to true exploration. For example, exactly how will we do NEO exploration? Is it going to be a dock mechanism? Is it going to be a lander mechanism? This is a brand new area, that I freely acknowledge I don’t know. But we’ve seen VTVLs and Lunar landers, so we do have some idea how that works.

    With regard to no congressional support – thats not true. Look at the proposed Warner amendment for example. I have no doubt that represented how Mark Warner felt, and the fact that he didn’t get all the way is unfortunate.

    I disagree that everything is pre-ordained that the only choice is the Senate bill. What if the House decides not to bring up a bill for a vote? Or brings their bill up for a vote, and it fails?

    As for considering you an Obama-hater – your personal agreements or not with him aren’t the point. The point is you claim that “They just assumed Congress would go along”, and elsewhere, I get the impression that you subscribe to the notion that Obama isn’t doing this because he believes its a good policy, but is trying to do it to kill NASA HSF. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim “reasonable people can disagree” and then assume he isn’t dealing honestly.

  • DCSCA

    @Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 5:49 pm <- Anne, bear in mind, his stated positon pretty much nullifies his musings on the future of human spaceflight activities: "Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 2nd, 2010 at 4:17 pm “First I really dont care that we (the US or humanity or whatever) goes to the Moon or Mars or an asteroid in the next 10-20 years. I dont think that there is any need to send people we have good robotics which can do the job at far lower cost."

  • Beancounter from Downunder

    Hi SCSCA
    This has all be answered before to the satisfaction of those who maintain an objective view.
    Cheers.

  • Beancounter from Downunder

    Whoops my bad – that should have been addressed to DCSCA!!

  • DCSCA

    Beancounter from Downunder wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 4:30 am <- Except, of course, that POV is not objective.

  • DCSCA

    Peter Lykke wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 6:33 am

    “Space should be about true and false. This can be done and this cannot. About absolutes. Not polluted by politics or bogus facts.” – That’s a fine, ivory-towered POV. Unfortunately, the history of rocketry, the space program- the ‘space age’ etc., have all been born out of political wedlock and fueled by political expedience. To borrow a line from the late Walter Cronkite, “That’s the way it is.”

  • DCSCA

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 1:29 am

    “…we are headed for more or less the end of NASA as an agency of human exploration of space. I dont know if the agency can get back to the NACA days and make that applicable to spaceflight…”

    That remains to be seen but what was once considered improbable now appears remotely possible. Time will tell. NACA is dead. Bury it. No going back to that dinosaur.

    ‘We are likely headed for fairly dark economic times.”– certainly some storm clouds ahead…. and space exploration in good times and bad– is by anyone’s assessment of ‘value’ a luxury.

  • DCSCA

    “…. legislation declaring space an enterprise zone” <- ROFLMAO

    "The enterprise zone concept evolved from a combination of theories, policies and social forces. The philosophy is most closely associated with the theory of supply side economics [aka Reaganomics]…" 'Nuff said. Reaganomics is not going to lead the human species out into the cosmos. Only into debt.

  • Anne Spudis

    DCSCA wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 4:11 am

    I feel that Robert G. Oler and Coastal Ron hold similar views about humans eating the space budget and wishing they would leave the meager buffet table–it’s obvious that though many say humans will follow robots, later (much later}, their comments appear to be a way to deflect the argument as they pursue their preferred unmanned direction. They truly don’t want HSF costs, now or ever. I believe what humans bring to the table is far more valuable than what they consume in costs. People must explore and by that I mean physically setting foot on new worlds and learning from what that teaches them and how they build on it.

    Robots are useful tools and play an important part in scouting the path ahead for humans and assisting them in space. Space advocates need to take a principled position about their feelings on the importance of HSF (Are you for it or against it? Because that really is at the crux of the matter).

    In the long run, time not money is at the heart of how to budget a manned program. Just set your goal and move toward it as budgets allow but set your path and stay focused. Nothing of lasting value can be accomplished with all these stops and starts and lack of direction and leadership.

    For NASA to be healthy and relevant to our national and economic health they must approach space development of cislunar space and understand how development and resource utilization on the Moon will create that infrastructure. Unless of course, NASA’s new program has no room for human expansion into space, content instead to shrink it’s role to focus on Earth science and robotic probes to places we’ll never go but whose study will keep fiefdoms funded.

    Commercial was included in the VSE and received funding. No one has a problem with developing a commercial market. Just don’t confuse the issue now about how commercial has come to incorporate government largess into their business plan. At this rate, neither patient (commercial or NASA) will thrive.

    Manned or unmanned? Just be upfront about it. Then we can have an honest discussion.

  • DCSCA

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 5:30 am <– Well, Anne, recall what Michael Collins said: "People have always gone where they have been able to go. It's that simple." He's right. So is Chris Kraft.

    Kraft pretty much spelled out in his recent editorial how the next phase of manned space exploration is going to happen at this point in human history. Per Kraft : "[R]egular and extended moon missions, utilizing the spacecraft designed for Mars missions, will be necessary to confirm the readiness of spacecraft, astronauts and flight procedures for future Mars missions. In fact, several dress-rehearsal-type missions, simulating a multiyear Mars mission, within the relative safe-return distance between the Earth and the moon, would be vital before attempting to risk the unforgiving demands of sending a manned spacecraft more than 100 million miles to Mars."

    Private enterprise has never led the way in this field, which is the fallacy commercial hsf advocates are trying to establish. It’s simply bogus. Over the 80 year history of rocketry, it has been governments, in various political guises, that have funded and fueled the the progress up and out into space, not the private sector. Private enterprise has always been a follow-along, cashing in where it could. It has never led in this field and wont for the forseeable future, particularly in the subset of manned space exploration. The ‘operational model’ is essentially what Kraft stated in his editorial. It’s the right one and the way it will be done. Whether it’s led by Americans is less certain. But governments will do it, not private enterprise. The scale and largess of costs and risks involved, both economical and natural, in an extemely hostile environment, are simply too massive for a quarterly driven private enterprised organization to do it. Space exploitation is not space exploration. The next humans to set foot on the moon- or Mars– will arrive in a craft bearing the emblems of his or her nation(s), not corporate logo(s).

  • Are people still playing the China card?!

    That’s just pathetic.

    If the Moon had any military strategic value, we never would have left in the 1970s, and the Soviets never would have given up.

    The Moon may one day have a value beyond selling its rocks as novelty items, but for now there’s no reason that justifies the incredible taxpayer expense to send someone.

    So you’ll have to find something else to scare people with. How’s about Al Qaeda is going to the Moon to burn Bibles?! Too bad there’s no oxygen to start a fire. But that might frighten the same people who think the Chinese are going to seize the Moon as some sort of military outpost.

  • DCSCA

    @Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 5:30 am ” Just set your goal and move toward it as budgets allow but set your path and stay focused.” <- That's pretty much what NASA Admimistrator Thomas O. Paine oftem said years ago. Paraphrasing, he essentially stated you first establish the goal then assemble a budget to reach it; not draft a budget then see what program/goal you can afford with it.

  • Anne Spudis

    DCSCA wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 7:16 am [The next humans to set foot on the moon- or Mars– will arrive in a craft bearing the emblems of his or her nation(s), not corporate logo(s).]

    I agree.

    Once government can demonstrate that there are possibilities, investment will materialize and capitalists will take over development. Government will always be needed to keep things civil.

  • DCSCA

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 7:25 am “Are people still playing the China card?! That’s just pathetic.” <- Pathetic? Indeed…

    http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/world/china/piloted-lunar-landing.htm

  • And in the reality-based world …

    http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1685/1

    Both the 2009 and 2010 versions [of DoD’s annual report on Chinese military power] mention that China’s human space program has the goal of developing a permanently-manned space station by 2020 (and no mention about China landing a man on the Moon in the next decade, an occasionally-repeated claim made by some media sites and bloggers, for which there is no evidence).

  • DCSCA

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 7:28 am <– "Government will always be needed to keep things civil." LOL Yeah, picture a 'range war' out on the space frontier between 'cargo barons' and 'regolithbusters.' Certainly gov't is needed to lead the way in exploration in this period of human history. The largess of scale, costs and risks cannot be absorbed by quarterly driven private corporations. But it works well in the movies- again, revisit Destination Moon. Capitalists pushed government out of the way, rolled up their sleeves and conquered the moon… for craters full of uranium. Quaint entertainment for 1950…. but actually a good business plan. ;-)

  • Anne Spudis

    DCSCA wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 7:56 am

    I do mean government with a small g, not the mega Government preferred by too many. Government should have a limited role.

    Besides DCSCA you just know government will be there to collect taxes from those “cargo barons” and “regolighbusters.”

  • Dennis Berube

    SpaceX has set Oct. as a launch date for the first operational Dragon. I am rooting for them, but we shall see. Just maybe if their test works out, we can get away from relying on the Soviets sooner rather than later. All you SpaceX fans, keep your fingers crossed…………………….. I think a failure will devastate commercial space. All eyes are watching.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 3:05 am
    “. And it specifically includes the moon as a destination in the bill. Something that a successor administration in 2013 or 2017 at the latest will reaffirm.”

    this is why you are hard to take seriously. How do you know this?

    First off the Senate confirming the Moon as a destination in the bill is irrelevant. Nothing in that bill is directing NASA or HSF policy toward the moon…it is like saying “we want to win in Iraq” …wow

    then there is the most nutty thing…YOu assume an unnamed successor administration of either party in 13 or 17 would make going back to the moon its priority….thats not policy it is wishful thinking.

    No one has a clue of the political dynamics in 12 or 16 or the people involved or the people who will shape that persons space policy.

    The rest of your analysis dissolves along similar lines. A HLV development does not keep the “Constellation” crowd happy…because they are slowly going out the door and nothing stops that.

    Learn to deal with reality and at some point you might make more progress…

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 7:28 am

    Once government can demonstrate that there are possibilities, investment will materialize and capitalists will take over development….

    there is nothing in the history of human spaceflight that demonstrates that will happen particularly absent policy that promotes it.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 5:30 am

    it is not a crewed or uncrewed issue, it is a outcome based issue.

    Your husband has been banging the drum (correctly in my view) about utilizing the resources on the Moon…yet while we know some about those resources almost all the data is remote…there is little on site analysis of the potential that exist.

    The question is how best to get that data.

    Now the Cx people want to spend 200 billion and wait 2 decades to get some boots on the ground in a very limited fashion and try and figure it out there.

    But for the dollars spent on just keeping the Cxx program going (and not flying anything) we would have the answer if we had a robust uncrewed exploration of the lunar poles going. We would have eyes on the ground and instruments in the soil …and that alone might help change the dynamics.

    I dont care how vibrant the presenter is…if all they are doing is saying “these numbers say this” the American people just roll there eyes. There wont be but if a lunar probe had a picture of frozen water or some ground truth that validated the increasingly loud claims coming out of the ISRU people…well maybe your side might get some traction.

    As it is you folks want to, in the name of human exploration spend 200 billion 2 decades and send a few people back to the moon, not even sure if they go to the poles anymore…and then check it out.

    The military, the oil industry, everyone along time ago answered the question of robots v people…it is they all work together for some result.

    You would have us think that a person with their boots on the ground analyzing the regolith at the south pole is somehow far superior then a robot…and I would agree until I point out that your effort takes 200 billion and waits 2 decades…and mine can be done for under 1 and sometime next year.

    Dont make a false choice.

    Robert G. Oler

  • MrEarl

    MT, Ron, Byman ….
    To get back to a moon base, I think I let this debate get too caught up in single issues. I think it’s a given that a base on the moon would have to multi-purpose to justify the cost.
    I think Anne and Paul Spudis point out the advantages of a moon base and control of cis-lunar space much better than I can.
    That being said, a mulit-purpose base would require large, heavy multi-capable modules and the means to get them there requiring a HLV.

    Byman:
    “Talk of a “Flexible Path” and going to asteroids and the moons of Mars are in my opinion not much more than stunts.”
    And the Apollo Mission was…? ” a stunt. A stunt that was abandoned after just 6 missions. And that’s what missions to NEO’s are. Sure we could do important science there but it’ soooo easy to just pull the plug like we did with Apollo. Here’s the deal, the Apollo missions were greatly anticipated and highly celebrated but the public and politicians lost interest once Apollo 11 landed. The Space station was ridiculed from the start, nearly lost it’s funding in the early ’90’s yet it’s extension is the only thing that the House, Senate and WH can agree on in the FY’11 budget. A moon base would be the same way. It’s hard to abandon investments in infrastructure like that.

  • MrEarl

    DCSCA and Anne:
    Your points are well taken and should be seriously considered by many on this blog.
    Commercial has never led in exploration and especially should not be expected to lead in terms of space exploration. But I do believe that government should provide opportunities for commercial interests to participate and utilize the discoveries and technological advances achieved by these government programs.
    DCSCA is spot on with my major disagreement with the WH proposed FY’11 budget, pick a goal and stick with it. The VSE picked the goal of Moon, Mars and Beyond. It’s a worthy goal and as originally planned, “go as you pay” was sustainable. The VSE was hijacked by “Apollo on Steroids” which was unrealistic given the funding. Flexible Path and the FY’11 budget proposed by the WH abandoned the VSE and replaced it with empty promises.

  • Stephen C. Smith wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 7:25 am

    Your argument cuts too deeply, Stephen, unless you wish to argue that ALL human spaceflight (including SpaceX and ISS) is too expensive and without intrinsic merit to justify the expenditure of tax dollars.

  • Anne Spudis

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 9:13 am

    Technology has been used to study the Moon for some time now, and will for some time to come. That was designed into the VSE. As we all know (and knew almost from the onset and tried to correct) the architecture chosen by NASA was not about implementing the intent of the Vision: Return to the Moon and learn to use it’s resources to build a sustainable infrastructure to Mars and beyond.

    My goal in using “manned” (crewed) in my comments is because it is obvious that it is being shoved out the door of NASA in favor of robotic probes. I do not see a purely robotics program as sustainable but I never say they will not be precursors to manned settlement. I guess part of the problem is you keep misinterpreting my use of manned as excluding robotics. That has never been the case and clouds my point when you continue to state it as such.

  • Dennis Berube

    First, I dont see us going totally the way of robotic probes and stopping manned spaceflight. Remember one incentive is military. With other countries sending men into space, I dont see the USA stopping… We may use the term space exploration as a front, but really we will be keeping our eyes elsewhere from a military standpoint.

  • John Malkin

    I don’t think any supporters of Commercial is expecting COTS BEO. This is how politicians are spinning the Obama budget.

    “Apollo on Steroids” refers to Orion which has a chance to survive like it or not. Ares I was definitely not on steroids. It was more anorexia from lack of food (money). Now Congress wants to abandon Ares I for an HLV which is more akin to a Saturn V with basically the same money as Ares I. So we will have an anorexic Ares V/SD-HLV. How will that look?

    I would expect that within 5 years LEO commercial crew will be available without NASA. If Congress goes down the road to attempt to rebuild Apollo than in 5 years we will have another commission that will recommend commercial again, because Apollo 2 won’t be ready for even LEO. All of this is just transportation, not a dime more for any hardware to use on the Moon or an Asteroid. So how does the fictional goal help?

    This exercise will keep a lot of people busy but our space program will look like the 50 lbs weakling.

  • Anne Spudis

    MrEarl wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 9:54 am

    Also, lunar resources were not as well understood at the end of Apollo as they are now. We have a much broader picture and understanding as to the possibilities and usefulness of the Moon. Resource utilization may not be “exciting” to a lot of space enthusiasts but it can not be dismissed in favor of pure science. It is exciting to think of humans actually living and working on another world, at least I believe it is and I think a lot of people seeing it happen, would also find it inspiring and would want to somehow find a way to be a part of that.

  • Robonauts look enough like people (well, Cylons at least) that getting ground truth of lunar resources using a small team of Robonauts — complete with high definition video — could accomplish what Robert Oler suggests, which is capturing the imagination of the American people.

    I guess I am agreeing with Robert, here. Robotic obtained ground truth of lunar resources can help grow political support for humans on the Moon.

    Then, the question becomes whether the United States seeks a monopoly position with respect to those lunar resources, or seeks to share with other nations of the world. Or do we just ignore everyone else and pretend they don’t exist.

  • John Malkin

    Bill White wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 11:19 am

    Then, the question becomes whether the United States seeks a monopoly position with respect to those lunar resources, or seeks to share with other nations of the world. Or do we just ignore everyone else and pretend they don’t exist.

    I like the statement that it is an assumed choice for the United States to decide. To think the US has any right to monopolize the lunar resources would start a couple of conflicts if not a war or two. That is a very American view, it’s ours unless we don’t want it. We won’t have access to those resources without help from other countries which is another problem with Constellation, it’s a monopoly.

  • Anne Spudis

    Bill White wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 11:19 am [Then, the question becomes whether the United States seeks a monopoly position with respect to those lunar resources, or seeks to share with other nations of the world. Or do we just ignore everyone else and pretend they don’t exist.]

    I don’t see this anti-American attitude as being accurate or productive.

  • John, the question is not whether we will establish a monopoly in and to lunar resources. The question is whether we will choose to make the attempt to establish a monopoly, an attempt I believe would be foolish and would fail.

    Nonetheless, many Americans would like to see the Moon annexed as some sort of 51st state (Quit the OST of 1967 and claim the Moon!) and therefore the question needs to be asked.

  • Anne Spudis

    John Malkin wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 11:30 am [To think the US has any right to monopolize the lunar resources would start a couple of conflicts if not a war or two. That is a very American view, it’s ours unless we don’t want it.]

    Well, this discussion has certainly has taken an interesting, and hateful turn. What was the problem, it was actually making sense? It was uplifting? You don’t agree, so you want to poison the well?

  • Anne Spudis

    Bill White wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 11:38 am [Nonetheless, many Americans would like to see the Moon annexed as some sort of 51st state (Quit the OST of 1967 and claim the Moon!) and therefore the question needs to be asked.]

    When did you take this poll? I must have missed it.

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 5:30 am

    their comments appear to be a way to deflect the argument as they pursue their preferred unmanned direction.

    I don’t think I talk enough about robotic missions to get labeled this way, and in fact I get misinterpreted as advocating SpaceX only, and commercial exploration instead of NASA.

    I advocate for lowering the cost to access space, and to stop trying to build perfect exploration systems.

    Robotic missions fit in there under both of those categories, because they are less costly to get some sort of “boots on the ground”, and you can do them quicker. Especially with the newest generation of robotic vision & driving systems, we can land very capable robotic explorers on the Moon to explore and test out many of the things we’ll need when we finally return humans to the Moon. I’ve never stated timetables or preconditions, so I don’t see how that equates to “preferred unmanned direction” – it’s all about cost and how fast we can learn & develop.

    In the long run, time not money is at the heart of how to budget a manned program. Just set your goal and move toward it as budgets allow but set your path and stay focused.

    In some ways this is what I advocate, and what the Obama NASA budget advocated for. Putting in place commercial crew makes it easier & quicker to get crew to LEO, which means NASA can send less decades planning a BEO trip. Robotic precursor missions remove the many of the unknowns from future human trips, and thus make mission planning quicker and less expensive. But the bottom line is that I don’t need to set a specific destination “goal” yet, and you would probably set the Moon as the only one.

    Manned or unmanned? Just be upfront about it. Then we can have an honest discussion.

    As I’ve always said, both, but in the order the makes the most sense – unmanned to pave the way, and manned to follow and stay. Do you advocate for something different? Or is the real difference how quickly manned follows unmanned?

  • MrEarl

    Bill, I can’t believe you said this….
    “Robonauts look enough like people (well, Cylons at least) that getting ground truth of lunar resources using a small team of Robonauts — complete with high definition video — could accomplish what Robert Oler suggests, which is capturing the imagination of the American people.”

    So you think because we can make robots vaguely resemble humans that will “capture the imagination of the American people”?! That’s ridiculous!
    Going back to the moon is not just about science and pictures and “cool stuff”. It’s about learning how to live and adapt on an alien world. Overcoming difficulties and becoming a truly spacefaring and utilizing species in the relative safety that cis-lunar space provides. That’s why we can’t just offload that to Robonaughts and probes. Those will be a big part of the tools that we use but can’t replace human participation.

  • Anne Spudis

    Coastal Ron wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 11:49 am [But the bottom line is that I don’t need to set a specific destination “goal” yet, and you would probably set the Moon as the only one.]

    Now, why would I say the Moon is the only goal? Why would we stop there?

    I believe the Moon is the necessary next step and so it is a goal. The ultimate goal is human expansion into space.

  • The Robonauts should be presented as advance scouts rather than replacements for humans. In part because we don’t know where to site a moon base.

    Where is the best, most accessible lunar water ice? Which crater?

    We don’t know.

    The reason and purpose for sending robots is to choose a location for human presence. Not for science and not merely because its cool but as a first step in a larger process.

    Be a shame to build a moon base at one crater only to learn there is water ice of greater purity and more easily accessed at another crater maybe a hundred kilometers away.

  • John Malkin

    My point is we need other countries for both robotic and human BEO exploration. Many robotic missions have at least one international instrument. So how can we exclude those countries from the lunar resources or any other resource when they help to discover and explore it?

  • common sense

    I find it funny how the direction changes from space politics/policy to sci-fi. I guess we need a little of sci-fi to look forward to. But, robonauts? On the Moon? Doing what? Walking around? Moon the 51st state of the US?

    Now back to reality a little bit. To do all of the above and keep China at bay we need an SD-HLV? Now?

    I don’t know people but if I were a cold hearted accountant I would probably give y’all a nice CD of Avatar say.

    I would love to see one of you try and sell all of this to the public right now.

    51st of the US? What happened to Puerto Rico?

    Oh well…

  • Matt Wiser

    I’m with Anne, Mr. Earl, and DCSCA on this: Pick a goal, and stick with it. We had that until Griffin. Now, all we have is a vague promise and no deadlines or firm destinations; something that either Congress or the next administration (hopefully in 2013) will set straight. I’m not denying that commercial space will have a role to play, but unlike some on this board, it will not be the lead. Government explores, and leads the way. Commercial exploits and makes money. Oler and co. forget that their approach was rejected by both houses of Congress, and they can count on exactly two members of Congress who can be expected to vote against any NASA bill for their own reasons: Barney Frank (yes, that one-who’s on the House Finance Committee), who’s liberal with a capital L, and Ron Paul, the one GOP house member every other GOP Congressman loves to hate for many reasons, because space isn’t in the Constitution. Maybe Rohrbacher, because Commercial gets cut down to its proper size, and a company in his district might be affected by that, but you never know. Said it before, Oler would fit right in with the Luddites on the LA Times Editorial Board: they’ve been anti-HSF ever since the Columbia accident.

    Coastal Ron; politically, the FY 11 budget as originally proposed is dead. It never got out of committee. Now, if this wasn’t an election year, it would’ve had more of a chance, but it also assumes that Bolden, Garver, and Holdren wouldn’t have made their mistake-which Lori Garver admitted in that Huntsville Times piece-in not consulting with key members of Congress, and botching the budget rollout, which Bolden took the responsiblity for, and in not explaining Constellation’s problems. It’s still a big political stretch for many in Congress-in both parties, I might add-to swallow NASA astronauts flying on a privately owned spacecraft-safety reassurances notwithstanding. And that’s the political problem with Commercial Crew, nothing technical, but political. Since Congress controls the power of the purse, that has to be taken into consideration. They are not a rubber stamp. The Senate bill is the best politically possible compromise between the FY 11 proposal and the pro-Constellation side; I’m willing to eat humble pie in that Constellation (other than Orion) is gone, but will get accelerated heavy-lift sooner, instead of a promise “by 2015) to start. But the commercial crowd needs to realize that they have to eat some as well. Because they didn’t get what they entirely wanted, either.

  • amightywind

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 3:56 pm

    [excerpt] Over forty small (2-15 km diameter) craters near the north pole of the Moon are found to contain this elevated CPR material. The total mount of ice present at the pole depends on how thick it is; to see this elevated CPR effect, the ice must have a thickness on the order of tens of wavelengths of the radar used. Our radar wavelength is 12.6 cm, therefore we think that the ice must be at least two meters thick and relatively pure… [end excerpt]

    Thank you for the link. Lunar water research has been all over the park this summer. For the sake of argument assume these numbers are correct (even though the estimates they are stated without any proof by people with a vested interest in a very rosy estimate). You still have the problem of processing an significant (1m+) overburden for a thin (<2m) ice/regolith ore that is spatially widespread on rugged terrain. The more you think about what it would take, loaders, crushers, conveyors – strip mining the moon, the more ludicrous the idea becomes. For those that want to pursue mineral processing in space, wouldn't it make more sense to hijack a NEO of suitable composition.

    In any case. A lunar base or a NEO mission would require heavy lift (Ares V) and a reliable manned exploration vehicle (Ares I/Orion). It is hard to fathom why this simple prerequisite to manned space exploration remains a controversy. Then again, it is hard to fathom how manned space nihilists came to control NASA.

  • Bill White wrote:

    Your argument cuts too deeply, Stephen, unless you wish to argue that ALL human spaceflight (including SpaceX and ISS) is too expensive and without intrinsic merit to justify the expenditure of tax dollars.

    What are the reasons to go to space?

    Let’s not overlook the only reason we had a robust government space program in the 1960s — it was because Kennedy wanted to show the world our technology was superior to the Soviet Union. In his own words, “I’m not that interested in space.” No Cold War, no Sputnik, no Gagarin, then there’s no Moon program.

    We probably would have developed some sort of modest military program to put military astronauts, satellites and platforms in space, but it would have been for a military purpose, not for science or exploration.

    So the only remaining reasons are:

    * To collect knowledge about our place in the universe.
    * Perpetuate the human species, i.e. a “space Ark.”
    * To make a buck.

    Not many people are interested in spending taxpayer dollars to collect knowledge. For years, polls have shown a majority of Americans want less government spending on space.

    Perpetuating the human species in case of some sort of cataclysm on Earth sounds more like science fiction. It would be extremely expensive, and again I don’t think you’ll find many people supporting it.

    So that leaves the commercial motivation.

    If someone handed me autocratic power, we’d slice $100 billion out of the military budget and transfer it towards a robust global program to take humanity out into the solar system and beyond. We’d actively court all the other spacefaring nations and go to the stars as a species.

    But my preference means nothing to most Americans.

    So the only way to open space to the average person is to grow commercial. That may not come for decades, but it will come if government plays no more than a nurturing role.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Bill White wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 12:06 pm

    yes.

    my line about robotic exploration is not so much how they look, but it is to try and put the water issue (and all the other resource talk) in perspective.

    The water on the Moon issue for me has become the space equivelent of “saddam has WMD”. OK who cared if he did but if we are going to invade another country, spend a lot of money and base national policy on it, then we darn sure should have been accurate in terms of him having them.

    There are a lot of “water” statements but they all come from external remote sensing with little or no ground truth measurement.

    For about half of the 10 billion we have spent on Cx so far we could have more or less peppered the Moon with a pretty good fleet of uncrewed vehicles that would have answered teh question pretty decisively.

    Then there would be more factual information to base the decision on.

    We are not going to the moon because of some need to explore or “its hard” or some other goofy reason…thats just not going to float in todays environment (and really never should). We have come no where near to the amount of knowledge that can be gained by using uncrewed vehicles and until we are brokering that limit there is really no need to discuss humans

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    MrEarl wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 11:53 am

    “Going back to the moon is not just about science and pictures and “cool stuff”. It’s about learning how to live and adapt on an alien world. Overcoming difficulties and becoming a truly spacefaring and utilizing species in the relative safety that cis-lunar space provides.”

    absurd

    First “cis lunar space” is not “relative safe”…relative to what? It is no more a harsh environment then being in orbit around the Moon…ok being inside Jupiters radiation belt is more deadly but the Moon is neither more or less safe then GEO.

    The definition of space junkie is thinking that the American people are going to fund hundreds of billions to simply learn “how to live and adapt on an alien world. ”

    go to the south pole..try that on its much cheaper

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 10:40 am
    That was designed into the VSE……………..

    lots of laugh.

    I find it amusing how you, Paul and a lot of other folks keep banging the gong of VSE.

    Truth is that VSE was just another Speech by Bush that he had no idea of what it said, meant or how to implement it. He didnt care about much in his administration and the VSE speech was almost on the bottom of it.

    How do I know this. He and the rest of his inner circle sat idly by as Mike Griffin, their hand pick choice demolished the basic concepts of it.

    It was par for his administration. Bush was going to remake the Mideast and yet he had no problem standing by while the thunderheads of his administration screwed one thing after another up…now all we have there is basically the status quo. (Maybe)

    VSE was an attempt by Bush to distract from the failures of his space agency in losing the orbiter. It was the salesmans trick of telling the crowd something neat about their product so that no one would notice the product doesnt work.

    There is no way that the US could do what Bush claimed on the Moon with the dollars it is willing to spend at NASA…10-12 billion after the speech we dont even have a booster/capsule that is a bad remake of Apollo…who is goofy enough to think that NASA could come even close to resource detection and use.

    This is almost as silly as the American exceptional argument

    Robert G. Oler

  • Coastal Ron

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 1:43 pm

    politically, the FY 11 budget as originally proposed is dead.

    Yep. I only referenced it for the direction, not the dollars.

    The Senate bill is the best politically possible compromise between the FY 11 proposal and the pro-Constellation side

    And this is what many of us have been saying also. Constellation is dead, but some of the pieces, zombie-like, continue to live. I don’t see the need for HLV at this point, and I don’t have much hope for the contradictory-laden SLS monster that Congress is designing. To me it’s a jobs bill, and I wish they would just label it so.

    For commercial crew, the deadline for action on this industry is not close yet, as it really doesn’t have a need until 2016, so any funding at this point is looked at as a victory.

    By the time the next two budgets come along, the barriers in peoples minds about commercial crew should be down far enough that the fears of spending more money with Russia take over. At that point, commercial crew is likely to be the only crew system that will be ready in time, so it will end up being the default. After that, Orion will be looking for a mission – and waiting for a launcher to get off the ground.

  • amightywind

    VSE was an attempt by Bush to distract from the failures of his space agency in losing the orbiter.

    The NASA institutional rot that took down Columbia clearly metastasized during the Clinton years. Bush did much to provide a needed post shuttle vision with the VSE (I’m with ya Anne!). Sadly, that vision has been temporarily derailed by the chaos that the left brought to government 2 years ago. There is hope that the VSE will soon be reconstituted.

  • byeman

    “reliable manned exploration vehicle (Ares I/Orion)”
    Mutually exclusive terms

    Ares I never was or never will be, plus it was obscenely expensive

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 2:41 pm

    VSE was an attempt by Bush to distract from the failures of his space agency in losing the orbiter.

    The NASA institutional rot that took down Columbia clearly metastasized during the Clinton years. …

    lol…even if that were accurate, and it is just another attempt by the “personal responsibility crowd” to excuse failure of the politicians that they like…

    the fact is that Bush and “his NASA” had a lot of years to find and correct the suppossed problems that clinton left behind and fix it.

    They didnt

    The truth is that Bush and his turd were caught sleeping almost from day one…and whenever a failure would occur not only would they bring out the “blame Clinton” meme but would then try and distract the country by some other villian. It is an old GOP hat trick.

    By your logic nothing Obama has failed at would be his fault, it was all Bush’s. goofy

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    If the Senate bill passes, it is important to understand the main throw in it.

    NASA is out of the Human exploration of space business.

    It is an amazing accomplishment. Flagship programs have died, the agency is left with no real planning for any event other then operating the space station (and maybe building a Delta IV super heavy)..

    the notion of NASA doing human exploration has simply died.

    An amazing accomplishment.

    NASA has been dogged by the Apollo ghost almost since the Eagle left tranquility base. “the next logical step” has driven one idiotic spending effort after another…and it seems Bolden and Garver have been able to finally drill a stop crack and kill it. Of course the failing economy helped…but it makes it unlikely that in 13 or 17 someone is going to come along and say “wow lets spend hundreds of billions to do this or that”.

    It is going to take a few cycles to get NASA firmly on another track, downsize it a bit and then move forward, but that seems now possible.

    OF course I love the irony because I (and Rich Kolker and even Whittington…gasp) have been suggesting that for sometime…but I love even more the irony that Garver is on the deck as this is happening.

    When Kolker, Whittington and I proposed the National Aerospace Act, we tried to get NSS (where Garver was at the time) to at least give it a national sounding. We got some speeches and an article (fair enough) but it was amazing to me how Garver opposed it. In one public (but not on stage discussion) she remarked to me and some others (I even recall Logsdon being there) “do you ever think that the Congressman from TX 22 is going to let JSC be without a flagship exploration effort” (or words close to that).

    and now it is.

    I like the policy but like or dislike it is an amazing political accomplishment that Charlie Bolden and Lori Garver can feel proud of.

    I think that things will be better in human spaceflight for it. We can get on with the notion of human spaceflight trying to find a niche that pays its way. Like people living on the ocean floor, it might not…but I am an optimist.

    Anyway the politics stand on their own. Feel the love

    Robert G. Oler

  • @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 2:55 pm

    Oler, you’re a hoot! lol!

    I have a suspicion however that certain folks won’t appreciate ‘feeling the love!’

  • ben Joshua

    amightywind wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 2:41 pm

    “The NASA institutional rot that took down Columbia clearly metastasized during the Clinton years.”

    Putting aside the humorous grammatical time machine in the above sentence and the incorrect use of the word “metastasized,” let’s be clear about the risk management and decision-making culture at NASA HSF.

    The careful can do spirit of Mercury and Gemini took a bad turn toward hubris and arrogance from Apollo onward, and remained essentially unchanged by all the investigations and review panels in the wake of the Apollo fire, the Challenger explosion and the Columbia disintegration.

    Rep. Barton’s notion of what can be accomplished on a limited budget only feeds the fire, as he proposes to give NASA marching orders that are patently not “executable.” Let’s stop asking the truly impossible of NASA, and maybe NASA will stop turning its safety standards and go / no go rules into pretzels.

    As for the let’s blame Clinton time machine club, why not also blame him for (have fun filling in the blank with anything that went wrong in the last ten years).

  • amightywind

    Robert G. Oler wrote:

    I like the policy but like or dislike it is an amazing political accomplishment that Charlie Bolden and Lori Garver can feel proud of.

    If you admire the last kamikaze runs of those who operate under Obama’s political cover, so be it. But like them Bolden and Garver haven’t accomplished anything other than to stir the affected to action. I don’t think NASA will be naming spacecraft after either one in 2050.

  • common sense

    @ amightywind wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 3:28 pm

    “I don’t think NASA will be naming spacecraft after either one in 2050.”

    That explains a lot…

  • Coastal Ron

    amightywind wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 2:41 pm

    The NASA institutional rot that took down Columbia clearly metastasized during the Clinton years.

    Bush was in office for exactly two years when Columbia died – at what point does someone take responsibility for what they are in complete charge of?

    Bush did much to provide a needed post shuttle vision with the VSE

    And then failed to support it with funding. All hat, no cattle, as Bush himself would say.

    There is hope that the VSE will soon be reconstituted.

    The four goals and objectives of the VSE are:

    – Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond

    – Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations

    – Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human exploration

    – Promote international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests.

    That first one, “Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program” was not going anywhere with Constellation. Not affordable, not sustainable, and it consumed the robotic program money so not robotic either.

    All four of these are still part of NASA’s goals under Obama, but they just don’t have a time and date. Dates with NASA are never set in stone anyways, so Obama dispensed with the ones that fell outside his 1st term in office, and concentrated on the technology that would be needed for all of them. Even with the Senate bill, it is more like the direction he wanted NASA to take than what Constellation had turned out to be.

    But the bottom line to all of this is cost, and despite what Congress may be hoping to do with a big expensive SDLV, I think a big budget reset is coming, and big ticket programs will be on the chopping block – especially if they don’t have a defined mission and payload.

  • brobof

    MrEarl wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 9:54 am

    Oh dear. Oh Dear. Oh Dear!

    “Byman:
    “Talk of a “Flexible Path” and going to asteroids and the moons of Mars are in my opinion not much more than stunts.”
    First of all I think you will find that its “byeman” and he didn’t write it.
    FACT checking again! Or not as the case may be…
    I think you didn’t even read my deconstruction beyond MY point that the Apollo program was a stunt.
    Sigh…

    One last college try. (University of Warwick :)

    “And that’s what missions to NEO’s are.”
    No they are not. Human missions to the NEOs will ground truth the various methods by which most -if not all- future robotic missions will proceed: locomotion; manipulatIon; sampling; processing; deploying;…
    Furthermore if you had any idea of what you were talking about you would know that HSF NEO missions are infrequent to say the least. Roughly one or two PER DECADE. (This number may increase as better propulsive techologies mature.) Taking as an example the recent and, IMHO, highly unfeasible: Plymouth Rock venture in its updated form; you will note that there are only eight candidate targets between 2016 and 2030! And most of these bodies will be smaller than the craft visiting them ~10 m! With the right architecture 1999 AO 10 is probably the best bet as per Wes Huntress. A mission to a NEO of sensible proportions will also provide us with a testbed for a jaunt to Phobos.

    “It’s hard to abandon investments in infrastructure like that.”
    Whose investments? Europe, Russia, India and China are all focussing on LEO, with the exception of a few *Robotic* Probes. There is neither the political will, the public interest or the MONEY for a MoonBase.
    Saving the planet from a ELE OTOH.

  • brobof

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 1:43 pm

    “I’m with Anne, Mr. Earl, and DCSCA on this: Pick a goal, and stick with it. We had that until Griffin. Now, all we have is a vague promise and no deadlines or firm destinations;”
    The goal is full utilisation of the ISS until 2020. Perhaps 2028.
    All the rest is still SF.

  • MrEarl

    Sorry Brobof:
    It was too late and WAY too long winded to merit reading anything but the first few paragraphs.
    After reading the mess above I wish I had stopped at the first “Oh Dear”.

  • Anne Spudis

    amightywind wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 1:45 pm [Thank you for the link. Lunar water research has been all over the park this summer. For the sake of argument assume these numbers are correct (even though the estimates they are stated without any proof by people with a vested interest in a very rosy estimate). You still have the problem of processing an significant (1m+) overburden for a thin (<2m) ice/regolith ore that is spatially widespread on rugged terrain. The more you think about what it would take, loaders, crushers, conveyors – strip mining the moon, the more ludicrous the idea becomes. For those that want to pursue mineral processing in space, wouldn't it make more sense to hijack a NEO of suitable composition.]

    Here is the link to the radar instrument. As to your comment about "rosy estimate by someone with a vested interest." There are many people on the team besides Paul and you are correct that they have put a lot of their life into space exploration.

    http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mini-RF/main/

    As to your oh-so-awfully un-rosy picture of what is needed to access the water, well, it's there and we're going to harvest it. I know the discover of water really annoys some but there you are. The methods of collecting the water will depend on which variety you go after. The "low hanging fruit" of almost pure ice (located near areas of almost permanent light/energy) will be first.

  • Anne Spudis

    John Malkin wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 12:39 pm [So how can we exclude those countries from the lunar resources or any other resource when they help to discover and explore it?]

    Are you serious? Who is proposing to exclude anyone?

  • Anne Spudis

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 1:55 pm […Not many people are interested in spending taxpayer dollars to collect knowledge. For years, polls have shown a majority of Americans want less government spending on space..]

    I disagree. People have benefited enormously from the adaptation of the technology created for the space program. It can not be discounted.

    Also, 50% of Americans want Americans in space. And this has been almost a constant number for decades. They are basically indifferent as long as there are discoveries and I suspect, they certainly expect to see humans move beyond LEO in the not too distant future. They’ve been expecting it for some time. If anything will turn off Americans, it will be telling them humans will remain behind.

  • amightywind

    Anne Spudis wrote:

    There are many people on the team besides Paul and you are correct that they have put a lot of their life into space exploration.

    Take it easy! I have met Paul (in a former life; a frightening notion for you I’m sure!) and think very highly of him as a scientist. He is probably the foremost ‘moon guy’ there is.

    I am also thrilled by the liklihood of water on the moon. It just requires a bit of a leap to think you can do much with it. Paul would admit, the state of the knowledge on the amount of water there is, umm, fluid.

  • Anne Spudis

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 2:03 pm [go to the south pole..try that on its much cheaper]

    And the South Pole is on the way to where?

  • Anne Spudis

    amightywind wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 4:56 pm [Paul would admit, the state of the knowledge on the amount of water there is, umm, fluid.]

    More here if you’re really interested. Archived by month on right side or just page back though the information at the link at the bottom of the page.

    http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/

  • John Malkin

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
    Are you serious? Who is proposing to exclude anyone?

    Bill White wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 11:38 am
    John, the question is not whether we will establish a monopoly in and to lunar resources. The question is whether we will choose to make the attempt to establish a monopoly, an attempt I believe would be foolish and would fail.

    mo·nop·o·ly  [muh-nop-uh-lee]
    –noun, plural -lies.
    1. exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.

    I think it will be more of a own production or the fruits of labor but not the resource. This can get very complicated very fast. For the US to go in thinking that it will control a resource would be a mistake. We should be sharing from the start as we have been doing on ISS. ISS is a starting point for how we should proceed. BUT we are sooo far away from any of it.

  • Anne Spudis

    Coastal Ron wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 3:37 pm [The four goals and objectives of the VSE are: 1…. 2. Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations….3…..4……All four of these are still part of NASA’s goals under Obama, but they just don’t have a time and date……so Obama dispensed with the ones that fell outside his 1st term in office, and concentrated on the technology that would be needed for all of them. ]

    Ron, they’re in or they’re not in. Trust me, I heard him say it. #2 was specifically called out by the president to be axed.

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 4:55 pm

    I disagree. People have benefited enormously from the adaptation of the technology created for the space program. It can not be discounted.

    I agree, but I think that was predominately in the 60’s & 70’s. Since then, I think you would be hard pressed to point to 5 recent space program spin-offs that are having a major effect on people today. Come to think of it, how about just one?

    For instance, since most of our NASA R&D money went into the ISS this past decade, what could people identify that was a spin-off from that?

    NASA’s major relevance these days is knowledge, not technology.

    50% of Americans want Americans in space.

    Maybe, and I’m sure they also want a smaller budget deficit. If you give them a list of budget choices, how would space fare? That is the more important question.

  • Anne Spudis

    John Malkin wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 5:07 pm [….mo·nop·o·ly  [muh-nop-uh-lee]
    –noun, plural -lies.
    1. exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.]

    ———–
    soph·o·mor·ic/ˌsäf(ə)ˈmôrik/Adjective
    1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a sophomore.
    2. Pretentious or juvenile.

  • brobof

    MrEarl wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
    In other words: you’ve got nothing. How apropos!
    “Any man is liable to err,…” Cicero

  • Anne Spudis

    Coastal Ron wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 5:16 pm [I agree, but I think that was predominately in the 60′s & 70′s. Since then, I think you would be hard pressed to point to 5 recent space program spin-offs that are having a major effect on people today. Come to think of it, how about just one?]

    If we were actually pushing out into unknown territory and challenging ourselves we would be tripping over innovation and breakthroughs. We’re not smart enough to see what waits around the next bend or know what we’ll need, we need necessity — the mother of invention. We need to actively be doing something. Not to mention, it will have people sitting on the edge of their seat and kids clamoring to know more and feeling the pride that comes from accomplishment and caring about something big and wondrous.

  • John Malkin

    I agree that for the most part there aren’t any big spinoffs but there are a lot of little spinoffs, technology improvements and safety related technologies from NASA. The airline and automotive industries have gotten many safety improvements because of NASA.

    Spinoffs
    http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 5:04 pm

    More here if you’re really interested. Archived by month on right side or just page back though the information at the link at the bottom of the page.

    blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/

    Ah, now I see where you got the wrong impression of my stance on robotics vs human exploration (earlier in this blog topic) – Paul’s summary of my blog posts on his latest article on the Air & Space website.

    I disagreed with his characterization of my postings, but since he was the author, I let him have the last word. However now I see that you have translated that over to this blog discussion, so I thought I should point that out.

    Just to summarize (again), I advocate for lowering the cost to access space, and to stop trying to build perfect exploration systems.

    Your group of geologists have been quite clear about going after water as a resource on the Moon, and my point has always been that your plans, as advocated, ignore cost and market concerns, specifically because you advocate ignoring cost reduction efforts now, and heading straight for the Moon for ISRU first (i.e. instead of any other place, including LEO). ISRU is on my list of things to do in space too, but it is too early to support with humans in my opinion, and that’s really as much as we can argue – opinions.

    My last comment on that blog summarized my feelings about our two opinions:

    “You find resources. I build things. Everyone has their part to play.”

  • Robert G. Oler

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 4:57 pm

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 2:03 pm [go to the south pole..try that on its much cheaper]

    And the South Pole is on the way to where?..

    the same places that the Moon or underwater life or life in the clouds is for all that matter…a new chapter in human history IF there is a reason to write it.

    There is nothing special about the Moon…it is a place and there are places where a lot of people want to live, places where few people want to live and places where no one wants to live. So far guess which category the Moon is in.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    John Malkin wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 5:34 pm

    and none of those spinoff justify the cost. Spinoffs are what one uses when one has nothing else to use. Somethings are self justifying.

    Want to build a new ATC system..? It is self justifying

    Robert G. Oler

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 5:16 pm

    Ron, they’re in or they’re not in. Trust me, I heard him say it. #2 was specifically called out by the president to be axed.

    It appears that people heard what they wanted to hear, because many of us heard “anywhere, but NEO was the next target”. That’s what the flexible plan was all about. It didn’t exclude the ability to go anywhere.

    Nevertheless, Bush couldn’t even make his own target, as the projected date for a Constellation Moon landing was closer to 2030 than 2020.

    Didn’t it concern you at all that Constellation was going further and further over budget and way past schedule? Have you no concern about how well a program is being run?

    This is why I get the impression that it’s “The Moon At Any Cost” with your group.

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 3:28 pm

    Robert G. Oler wrote:

    I like the policy but like or dislike it is an amazing political accomplishment that Charlie Bolden and Lori Garver can feel proud of.

    you replied
    If you admire the last kamikaze runs of those who operate under Obama’s political cover, so be it….;

    The entire political appointed part of The Executive operates under the political cover of the POTUS…that has always been true.

    The Kamakazis were destroyed at the end of the run, and despite the gloom and doom predictions of those like you who are losing this debate Bolden and Garver seem stronger then ever.

    And the future of NASA has been changed. Far more then Bush/Griffin and the rest of those jug heads did…

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 4:55 pm

    Also, 50% of Americans want Americans in space. And this has been almost a constant number for decades. They are basically indifferent as long as there are discoveries and I suspect, they certainly expect to see humans move beyond LEO in the not too distant future…..

    you can suspect what you want to but that is all it is, your wishes translated…the polls dont say what you suspect.

    you are treating space like the WMD…you wish it was support was there…goofy

    Robert G. Oler

  • Anne Spudis

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 5:43 pm [There is nothing special about the Moon…it is a place and there are places where a lot of people want to live, places where few people want to live and places where no one wants to live. So far guess which category the Moon is in.]

    What a downer you are Robert G. Oler. Our Moon is special. It will be the gateway into the universe. And we will go.

    As far as your pronouncement that “no one wants to live on the Moon.” I say you are wrong. There aren’t plans to build condos up there but there are always people who live for adventure and will go where the work is. These people will line up to go to and live on the Moon.

  • Robert G. Oler

    dad2059 wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 3:23 pm

    Oler, you’re a hoot! lol!

    I have a suspicion however that certain folks won’t appreciate ‘feeling the love!’…

    the technowelfare crowd is special just ask them.

    A lot of them are right wing nut jobs in the GOP and are on the case of just about everyone getting this or that assistance from the government; but come after their government job, a job that for the most part is a “dead ender” in terms of what it does for the economy….

    and all of a sudden they are the most special jobs in the world…after all as one told me last weekend “we send people into space”.

    wow

    Robert G. Oler

  • Vladislaw

    MrEarl wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 3:33 pm

    “Even just a single base on the moon creates a tremendous opportunity for commercial resupply and crew transportation.”

    Using that logic a single base in LEO should provide the same thing, but look at the fighting over commercial crew just to leo, and you think commercial crew to the moon would fly after spending 100-200 billion for a lunar transportation system? I highly doubt that commercial would be allowed to compete with the altair cargo version much less the orion.

  • Wodun

    rich kolker wrote @ September 7th, 2010 at 6:30 pm

    ^^ excellent post.

    “The direction should set what we want to do, not how to do it. The role of the government is strategic (and financial), not tactical. ”

    We have a brief window when we can focus on “tactics” like fuel depots or robot precursor missions before we have to decide the best strategy to use them.

    Would the end destination effect where you would want to put a fuel depot?

    IMO, put a bunch of game theory grad students on the problem of creating a strategy that will span administrations.

    Oh, and I’ll say this again, don’t underestimate the Chinese. A year ago would anyone have thought they could maneuver two satellites close enough to bump and not damage either one?

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 5:30 pm

    If we were actually pushing out into unknown territory and challenging ourselves we would be tripping over innovation and breakthroughs.

    So that would be a no, that you can’t point to any recent spin-offs?

    Look, I like pure research, as well as space exploration for knowledge and the innovations that are the byproducts thereof, but NASA has been spending too much of it’s budget on operations type stuff recently (i.e. like $200M/month for Shuttle program costs).

    I think the innovations that will be coming out of space exploration will be mainly focused on space exploration, which is not a bad thing. The pace of technology innovation on non-space today is massively bigger than what NASA can do, and that too is not a bad thing.

    So I don’t base my decisions on NASA spending on supposed discoveries that might occur – I base them on the returns I can quantify, and any more than that are bonus. To do otherwise is foolish, and it leads to disappointment & disillusionment if the hoped for “innovation and breakthroughs” don’t appear, or are less than expected.

    Like the old marketing axiom:

    “Always give the customer more than they expect”

    It works for space exploration too.

  • John Malkin

    @Anne

    It’s not juvenile, it’s a big problem. I don’t know how much you have lived or worked outside the US but the perception is a lot of Americans are not inclusive. Constellation had almost no international component which would have saved a lot of money.

  • Anne Spudis wrote:

    50% of Americans want Americans in space. And this has been almost a constant number for decades.

    Cite your sources.

    All the articles I’ve seen in recent years say the opposite.

    http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/5/31/871021/-Research-2000-Poll-on-Space-Exploration-Policy

    http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/april_2010/45_say_space_shuttle_worth_what_it_cost_taxpayers

    http://www.spacepoll.com/sumreport041610.pdf

    http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/january_2010/50_favor_cutting_back_on_space_exploration

    There’s also this passage from a blog entry I wrote on April 26 at:

    http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/2010/04/when-bush-cancelled-space-shuttle.html

    The day before [President Bush’s VSE] speech, Florida Today published as its headline story on Page 1 an article titled “Poll: U.S. Tepid on Bush Space Plans.” When asked “on the whole, do you think our investment in space research is worthwhile or do you think it would be better spent on domestic programs such as health care and education,” 55% preferred domestic programs, 42% chose space research, and 3% were not sure.

    The AP-Ipsos poll also asked about using less expensive robotic missions than human flights. 57% preferred exploring the Moon and Mars with robots, while only 38% preferred humans.

    These polls reflected the general sentiment in three polls I’ve published this year from various sources showing more people want space spending reduced than not — meaning that, outside of space center districts with a vested interest in the status quo, the public nationwide won’t support a return to the budget-busting NASA program of the 1960s.

    Poll after poll in recent years has clearly indicated more Americans than not want less government spending on space. If the private sector pays for it, fine. But not the government.

  • Poll after poll in recent years has clearly indicated more Americans than not want less government spending on space. If the private sector pays for it, fine. But not the government.

    That is the most realistic consensus and anyone can gather oodles of links to have a link farm to agree with this comment and other folks can offer links disavowing said comment, so I’m not going to waste my time with it.

    I believe it was someone here who said “Americans love having the space program, but hate paying for it with their taxes” so that explains why most people love what SpaceX is doing, despite how folks feel about “Lord Musk.”

    That is irrelevant in the overall scheme of things. Commercial crew is going to happen, come hell or high water. A compromise bill or a CR with some elements of the compromise will ensure a jobs program for NASA for the foreseeable future, without results in five years IMHO. But we’ll wait and see.

    We all want Star Trek, but will settle for Destination Moon. I have a feeling that when the natural evolution of the smaller commercial companies like Masten, Armadillo and Blue Origin begin, I think you’ll see something amazing happen.

    Then this pain and angst will be a faint memory.

  • brobof

    Spinoffs
    “We are developing technologies for more efficient use of energy. In 2000, NASA and the University of Arizona developed the Mars Oxygen Generator, a two-pound experiment designed to generate oxygen for life support and fuel production on Mars. The device used solid oxide electrolysis cells to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and fuel. When operated in reverse as a fuel cell, this device has been shown to produce clean, reliable electricity here on Earth. Development and commercialization of this technology as a NASA spin-off by Bloom Energy, which is now largely supported by the private sector, is moving beyond the early demonstration phase, with the goal of generating electricity at prices lower than traditional methods while producing half the amount of greenhouse gases.”

    Prepared Remarks at AIAA Space 2010 By NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver
    http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=34857

    Or if you want something really cutting edge:
    http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/MDRV.html

    Or if that is not to your fancy perhaps something on this list may bear fruit:
    http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/List.html

  • Dennis Berube

    Hey, Id want to live on the Moon and or Mars. NO PROBLEM!!!!!! A small colony of people would be ccoooooooollllll ……

  • MrEarl

    Steve: People have been miss-reading polls for years. I got the biggest laugh out of this gem; “The day before [President Bush’s VSE] speech, Florida Today published as its headline story on Page 1 an article titled “Poll: U.S. Tepid on Bush Space Plans.”. Americans are always great for an opinion even though they have no real knowledge of the subject. The question of space or health care and education is always a good one. As if that is really the choice. I can’t think of any issue that will come out ahead of healthcare and education, except maybe puppys.
    I realize this is anecdotal but I would like to see a “scientific” poll done with the question, “How much will the government spend on the space program this year?” Since I started asking that question to people who say that we’re spending too much on space or shouldn’t be spending anything at all, the answers have almost always been in the range of $100 to $200 billion dollars. People really have no idea how little we really spend on NASA each year.
    I know politicians do it all the time but basing policy mainly off popularity polls is bad government.

  • Robert G. Oler

    dad2059 wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    there is a great line (I should see if there is Utube on it) from Ike after the Russians sent Luna 3 behind the moon and got the farside pictures when he was asked if he wanted the US to do the same thing and his answer to paraphrase was “I am interested in the pictures but neither I nor the American people are interested in breaking the budget to do it”.

    The “explore explore explore” people live in a world where Apollo is the norm not the exception. And as the US economy gets worse the dollars are going to get harder to get.

    In the end if there is a reality it is that NASA since 1980 has simply priced itself out of the market of the American people. Despite the spinoffs babble they dont do things that the American people care about and the cost to do it are going up not down.

    Had 10 billion been spent on a launch vehicle/delivery system and there was something flying well the trend might be different…but that was their last chance to make it happen as it turns out and the thunderheads at JSC blew it.

    Now there is nothing left to do but turn out the lights.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    MrEarl wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 7:09 pm

    “but I would like to see a “scientific” poll done with the question, “How much will the government spend on the space program this year?” ”

    that question is useless.

    just useless.

    The American people have never rated what they like or dont like government to do based on its cost. Nor do they have a really good estimate of the cost to the government of anything really.

    If they are for it the cost is OK no matter what it is…and if they dont like it the cost dont matter they dont like it.

    This is why the GOP trots out the annual list of things the NEA funds. 25000 dollars for some “art” where a person does this or that with urine is nothing in terms of federal expenditures but the people dont like it and it enrages them…

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    Dennis Berube wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 7:06 pm

    Hey, Id want to live on the Moon and or Mars. NO PROBLEM!!!!!! A small colony of people would be ccoooooooollllll ……..

    have you ever lived on a ship at sea, or an oil rig or been in the military?

    If not then you dont have a clue what life in the near future is going to be on Mars or the Moon or on a space station.

    very regimented, everything you do has to be at least told to others and probably approved by someone. Other then taking tape and taping you to a window, and you would grow bored of that eventually life “up there” is very very much like a rifle company in combat. Everyone is depending on everyone else to follow the rules and act responsibly or they all can die.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Anne Spudis

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 7:10 pm [….Now there is nothing left to do but turn out the lights.]

    Well, goodnight Robert G. Oler.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 7:22 pm

    not for me, for me it is morning in America’s space program

    the exploration crowd is going into the good night

    Robert G. Oler

  • MrEarl

    Vladislaw wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
    (didn’t want to cut and paste the whole thing)
    What we are going through now is a paradine shift in thinking about HFS so there is going to be fighting. NASA has established the US as the dominate member of the space faring nations on Earth. Under ideal circumstances the shuttle would be phased out while commercial crew and cargo services are phased in. Unfortunately that boat has sailed and we’re stuck with the gap.
    It makes sense to to turn over LEO to commercial enterprise so NASA can turn it’s attention to the next step, cis-lunar space and bases on the moon. Once those moon bases are established and commercial has shown expertise in LEO the next NASA transition to the exploration of NEO’s and the Mars environs begins, leaving the moon base(s) and cis-lunar space to commercial.

    What I and other on this and other blogs have been fighting for has not been for NASA to have a monopoly in HFS, but for NASA to be allowed and tasked with the next step in man’s path to the solar system and that is the moon.

  • Coastal Ron

    MrEarl wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 7:33 pm

    You had me nodding in general agreement until your last word.

    But what that highlights is the divide between the definition of NASA’s HSF mission. For some, that would be doing things that have never been tried (i.e. NEO type stuff), for others it’s expanding previous exploration (i.e. Moon).

    Both have merit, but with NASA’s budget, both cannot be done at once.

    I can’t solve this here, but I thought I’d try and distill it down to the basic differences. How’d I do?

  • MrEarl

    Ron:
    Ya done good. :-)

  • Matt Wiser

    I’m with Mr. Earl; Ron, you did good. Reasonable people can disagree on future BEO destinations.

  • DCSCA

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 2:55 pm “NASA is out of the Human exploration of space business. “”…the notion of NASA doing human exploration has simply died.” ROFLMAO. But then, you don’t really care, do you. Haven’t seen this much spinning since the Falcon9 launch. ‘For the benefit of the uneducated –(borrowing an appropriate line from the old aeroplane film, ‘The Battle of Britain,’)– Herr Oler’s musings on manned space flight operations are essentially nulled by his own words: “Robert G. Oler wrote @ September 2nd, 2010 at 4:17 pm “First I really dont care that we (the US or humanity or whatever) goes to the Moon or Mars or an asteroid in the next 10-20 years. I dont think that there is any need to send people we have good robotics which can do the job at far lower cost.” ‘Nuff said.

  • DCSCA

    @Oler “…not for me, for me it is morning in America’s space program” ROFLMAO along with ‘enterprise zones, eh. Trickle down Reaganomics will not lead America out into the cosmos– only into debt.

  • Matt Wiser

    Ron: have you seen what Professor Ed Crawley said at the Space Summit down at the Cape, after POTUS’ speech there on 15 Apr? He summed up the Flexible Path, and I finally got to watch it via NASA’s Youtube channel. He did make some interesting points, and I think he was trying to explain to the Moon First people that while you’re doing the NEO, Lunar Orbit, and Lagrange Points, you’re developing the lunar systems that will be needed in the mid to late 2020s, when we do go back to the Moon. Not if, he said, when. Because he recognizes that learning surface operations, ISRU, human rovers, and so on will be required to get ready for Mars. Interesting thing was that he reccommended the first BEO mission be a lunar orbit; because, according to him, we’d be doing two things at once: first, checking out the Orion in a BEO environment for several weeks, and two, sending the rest of the world a message that the U.S. can return to the Moon “whenever we feel like it.” For a Moon First guy like me, I can live with that. Just do several, before we go for boots on the ground.

  • Coastal Ron

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 1:09 am

    have you seen what Professor Ed Crawley said at the Space Summit down at the Cape, after POTUS’ speech there on 15 Apr?

    No, I hadn’t, so thanks for pointing it out.

    I guess for me, I’m not anti-Moon first, but I’m not exactly advocating for it either.

    As I summarized earlier, I know that NASA cannot afford to do too much, and for me I’d rather they concentrate on the truly hard stuff, which NEO qualifies for. I also know that if we get good feedback from robotic precursor missions, that maybe we could leverage some industry involvement when we go back to the Moon – robotic or manned.

    I also hope that going back to the Moon can be an outgrowth of our ability to go anywhere locally once we have commercial crew and cargo well established. Because once getting to LEO is easy, then going beyond won’t take a big planning effort – and NASA’s problem right now is just getting to LEO post-Shuttle (i.e. Ares I & Orion problems).

  • Anne Spudis

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 6:17 pm [Cite your sources.]

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/121736/majority-americans-say-space-program-costs-justified.aspx

  • Anne Spudis

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 1:09 am [I think he (Crawley) was trying to explain to the Moon First people that while you’re doing the NEO, Lunar Orbit, and Lagrange Points, you’re developing the lunar systems that will be needed in the mid to late 2020s, when we do go back to the Moon. Not if, he said, when.]
    ————

    [April 15, 2010] “…Now, I (Barack Obama) understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before. Buzz has been there. There’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do. So I believe it’s more important to ramp up our capabilities to reach — and operate at — a series of increasingly demanding targets, while advancing our technological capabilities with each step forward. And that’s what this strategy does. And that’s how we will ensure that our leadership in space is even stronger in this new century than it was in the last.” (Applause.)

    http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/trans/obama_ksc_trans.html

  • Anne Spudis cited:

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/121736/majority-americans-say-space-program-costs-justified.aspx

    That does not prove your original claim, which was:

    50% of Americans want Americans in space. And this has been almost a constant number for decades.

    To quote from the lead paragraph in the article:

    On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the U.S. moon landing, a majority of Americans say the space program has brought enough benefits to justify its costs. The percentage holding this view is now at 58% and has increased over time.

    Two different things. Your poll says 58% believe the space program has “justified its costs.” It does NOT say “50% of Americans want Americans in space.”

  • Anne Spudis

    Majority of Americans Say Space Program Costs Justified
    Percentage has grown since 1979
    by Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup – July 17, 2009

    [Full text – graphs at link] PRINCETON, NJ — On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the U.S. moon landing, a majority of Americans say the space program has brought enough benefits to justify its costs. The percentage holding this view is now at 58% and has increased over time.
    Notably, those old enough to remember the historic moon landing are actually somewhat less likely than those who are younger to think the space program’s costs are justified. Among Americans aged 50 and older (who were at least 10 years old when the moon landing occurred), 54% think the space program’s benefits justify its costs, compared with 63% of those aged 18-49.

    The July 10-12 Gallup Poll also finds that most Americans continue to express support for the current level of funding for NASA (46%) or an expansion of it (14%). But the 60% holding these views is on the low end of what Gallup has measured since 1984, when the question was first asked.
    The two lowest readings of 46% and 53% were found in a pair of 1993 polls. In 1993, as now, Americans had highly negative evaluations of the economy, and the results suggest that when Americans have a negative outlook on the economy, they are apparently less willing to spend money for space exploration. In addition to a struggling economy, the lower 1993 NASA ratings are due to a number of problems that plagued the agency, including losing contact with the Mars Observer and several last-minute cancellations of planned space shuttle missions.

    The high point in support for current or larger funding levels for NASA was 76% in January 1986, immediately after the space shuttle Challenger disaster.
    NASA Gets Favorable Performance Review

    Fifty-eight percent of Americans say NASA is doing an excellent (13%) or good (45%) job. The agency’s ratings have been stable over the last several years. The high point was 76% in late 1998 after 1960s astronaut John Glenn made a return trip to space, and the low point was in September 1993.
    Ratings of NASA vary by education. Sixty-three percent of college graduates say NASA is doing an excellent or good job, compared with 55% of Americans without a college degree.

    The educational differences are even greater in opinions on space program spending, with more than 7 in 10 college graduates saying the space program’s benefits justify its costs and that NASA spending should be kept the same or increased. Only a slim majority of college non-graduates share these views.

    Bottom Line

    Americans remain broadly supportive of space exploration and government funding of it. In fact, Americans are somewhat more likely to believe the benefits of the space program justify its costs at the 40th anniversary of the moon landing than they were at the 10th, 25th, and 30th anniversaries.

    Although support for keeping NASA funding at its present level or increasing it is lower now than it has been in the past, the fact that 6 in 10 Americans hold this view in the midst of a recession suggests the public is firmly committed to the space program.

    Survey Methods

    Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,018 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted July 10-12, 2009. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.

    Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).

    In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls. [End]

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/121736/majority-americans-say-space-program-costs-justified.aspx

  • Anne Spudis

    I thought this thread was frozen but now realize it wouldn’t let me post with links but I only understood that after I posted my reply to Coastal Ron on a newer thread at Space Politics: “A Tense Issue” But I’ll also add it here.

    ——–

    Coastal Ron wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 5:47 pm [Didn’t it concern you at all that Constellation was going further and further over budget and way past schedule? Have you no concern about how well a program is being run?
    This is why I get the impression that it’s “The Moon At Any Cost” with your group.
    ]

    >>>>Anne Spudis wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 10:40 am

    [Technology has been used to study the Moon for some time now, and will for some time to come. That was designed into the VSE. As we all know (and knew almost from the onset and tried to correct) the architecture chosen by NASA was not about implementing the intent of the Vision: Return to the Moon and learn to use it’s resources to build a sustainable infrastructure to Mars and beyond…..]

    “Gordon: Administration sent Congress and “unexecutable” NASA budget: Space Pollitics September 6, 2010

    ———

    Coastal Ron,

    Alarm bells went off almost immediately after Mike Griffin took the helm at NASA.
    Behind the scene communication with Mike was useless (similarly, others have reported their inability to get a fair hearing with him about his direction). Couple being played, ignored and/or stonewalled by a director set on building his rocket and an agency being steered by entrenched Mars-centric scientists and it becomes clear why the Vision was smothered.

    I know you’ve read some of Paul’s work at Air and Space (Once and Future Moon Blog) but since you asked that question Google and read these essays (I can’t seem to get a link to post).

    The Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) and Project Constellation (Dec 12, 2008)

    NASA Lost its Way (April 2, 2010)

    Confusing the Means and the Ends (February 13, 2010)

    Vision Impaired (February 3, 2010)

    Objectives Before Architectures – Strategies Before Tactics (SpaceRef-Sept 15, 2009)

    Two Views of the Vision (August 11, 2009)

    Would More Money Improve NASA? (July 8, 2009)

    Value for Cost: The Determinate Path (March 24, 2010)

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 8:47 am

    I know you’ve read some of Paul’s work at Air and Space (Once and Future Moon Blog) but since you asked that question Google and read these essays (I can’t seem to get a link to post).

    Uh, OK, you want me to read a bunch of articles I assume your husband wrote, but what I was looking for was an answer from you (who I assume I’ve been talking to under the name Anne Spudis). Could you summarize?

    And just as a friendly suggestion, if you post 3rd party content but don’t summarize or comment on it, then people can draw their own conclusions, including ones that support their own arguments.

  • Anne, you can quote the entire article if you want but it still doesn’t say what you claim it said.

    You claimed it said that:

    50% of Americans want Americans in space. And this has been almost a constant number for decades.

    What it really said is that 58% of those surveyed believe “the space program has brought enough benefits to justify its costs.”

    That’s not the same thing.

    The poll you cited simply says 58% think NASA generates enough benefits to justify the money spent on it. It does *not* say “Americans want Americans in space.” The poll doesn’t ask those surveyed if it should continue, or if it does should it be paid for more by the private sector, or do they actually “want” a government-financed program. It’s just 58% saying they think NASA has justified its costs, whether or not the respondents “want Americans in space.”

  • Anne Spudis

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 10:29 am

    It really annoys you that Americans like to see PEOPLE in space, doesn’t it?

    Another thing from my linked poll:

    “The high point was 76% in late 1998 after 1960s astronaut John Glenn made a return trip to space” (Americans like seeing a HUMAN in space)

    “The high point in support for current or larger funding levels for NASA was 76% in January 1986, immediately after the space shuttle Challenger disaster.” (Americans want safe conditions for HUMANS in space.)

    I’ll also mention Americans in huge numbers watched HUMANS repairing Hubble.

    No matter how you want to slice it, Americans view NASA support as supporting Americans going into space.

    You go ahead and wish it weren’t so. I can’t stop you.

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 12:33 pm

    It really annoys you that Americans like to see PEOPLE in space, doesn’t it?

    He’s arguing your interpretation of the polls.

    You take a poll question, and then imply a result that is different from the question. You’re also picking and choosing emotional high points and using them as justification for your proposition, when you should be looking at what Americans think when nothing out of the usual is happening with the space program (i.e. 99% of the time).

    Space has become yet another interesting place that we inhabit. I have a neighbor who is a rebreather diver for a bio-tech company, and he is the dive master for trips to regions of the ocean that very few see (deeper than normal diving, too shallow for subs).

    Does his work make the headlines? No, because it has become routine enough that it doesn’t merit it – just like most of the work on the ISS, and what would happen anywhere in space after they have done something “X” amount of times (i.e. routine).

    That is why what we do in space has to be more than sensationalism – it has to make sense. Americans are willing to spend money on research, and that includes space. They are also willing to spend money on exploration, but that’s where cost starts really being a factor, especially in this economy.

    Why don’t you take a poll and see how many people want to spend $200B to send people to the Moon? That would be relevant.

  • Anne Spudis

    Coastal Ron,

    The entire text of the 2009 Gallup Poll is printed in full a few posts up from here.

    I have never discounted robotics. Quite the contrary. But it always amuses me how posters like Stephen C. Smith, get so nasty about manned space programs.

    BTW, I’m quite interested in all science — ocean studies included.

    It was thoughtful of you to rally to his defense.

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 1:30 pm

    It was thoughtful of you to rally to his defense.

    I barely know the guy. I was more focused on your interpretation of polls.

    I have never discounted robotics.

    I’ll go back and look at what I wrote, but I’m not aware I’ve ever said this of you. Though I think that robotics should be funded more than it is, I haven’t really been focusing my posts on them, so I’m not sure why it keeps coming up.

    Also, and this is just a friendly suggestion, could you just post the relevant passages from websites, and provide a link to the rest? I’m a “trust but verify” type person, but I would prefer to read the entire original text on the original website – people can still edit long posts (not saying you, but I apply the rule to all). Also, you should assume that some percent of the readers will take you at your word, and for the others you will have then provided the source – it makes for shorter posts.

    I know I’m long-winded enough as it is, and if I started pasting in whole sections from other websites, a lot more people would ignore me (some already do I’m sure).

  • Matt Wiser

    Anne, I do wish POTUS had been more specific in his speech. Both Bolden and Garver (ugh, retch, puke-why doesn’t she fall on her sword and quit after the original FY 11 budget never made it out of committee?) have been on record as stating that they fully expect lunar missions in NASA’s future. It’s highly likely that they know the succeeding administration (hopefully in 2013) will have human lunar return back on the agenda. It’s just a question of when, not if.

  • common sense

    @ Matt Wiser wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 2:36 pm

    “Both Bolden and Garver (…) have been on record as stating that they fully expect lunar missions in NASA’s future. It’s highly likely that they know the succeeding administration (hopefully in 2013) will have human lunar return back on the agenda. It’s just a question of when, not if.”

    ???? Is that supposed to make any sense? Lunar return is on the agenda. Okay. Next WH may have it on the agenda as well. Okay. Does that mean you’ll see a NASA crew on the Moon with the next WH? And when is that supposed to happen?

    Hope springs eternal I suppose…

  • Anne Spudis wrote:

    It really annoys you that Americans like to see PEOPLE in space, doesn’t it?

    So now you’ve chosen to lie not just about the poll but about me too.

    I’ll just add you to the troll list and ignore your posts from now on, since you seem to have a problem with the truth.

  • Coastal Ron

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 2:36 pm

    It’s highly likely that they know the succeeding administration (hopefully in 2013) will have human lunar return back on the agenda.

    Yeah, just like Reagan did, and Ford, Carter, Bush 41 and Clinton too. NOT!

    I’m kind of with Common Sense on this one, in that it’s one thing to put it on a slide (i.e. it’s our goal to return to the Moon…) – it’s another to actually fund and pursue it.

    Tight economic times are ahead, and huge financial “nice to have” projects will be getting lots of scrutiny. Unless someone else makes a real effort to land someone on the Moon (like the Chinese), I don’t see a lot of consensus that it’s a priority. Look what happened to Constellation, and that’s when we weren’t in a recession…

  • common sense

    @ Coastal Ron wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 3:43 pm

    “Unless someone else makes a real effort to land someone on the Moon (like the Chinese), I don’t see a lot of consensus that it’s a priority.”

    I predict two things:

    1. China will not go for a Moon race

    and

    2. If they do decide to go to the Moon it’ll be within an international framework including the US. I will all start with China joining the ISS and/or putting their own station first. Joining the ISS would be an easier first though.

  • Anne Spudis

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 2:55 pm [I’ll just add you to the troll list and ignore your posts from now on, since you seem to have a problem with the truth.]

    Now you’ve morphed into Nurse Ratched.

  • Anne Spudis

    Coastal Ron wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 2:12 pm [Also, and this is just a friendly suggestion, could you just post the relevant passages from websites, and provide a link to the rest? I’m a “trust but verify” type person, but I would prefer to read the entire original text on the original website – people can still edit long posts (not saying you, but I apply the rule to all). Also, you should assume that some percent of the readers will take you at your word, and for the others you will have then provided the source – it makes for shorter posts.]

    The site wouldn’t accept links when I was posting this morning. And if I had started excerpting from those sources, it appears you would be complaining that I was posting too much information. I assumed you were interested, since you asked. My mistake.

    Sorry about focusing on Robots R Coastal Ron. I guess I was reading more into your posts than was there.

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 5:36 pm

    If we weren’t passionate about space, we wouldn’t be talking, so no worries. Besides, I know I certainly have enough cracks on the inside of my glass house… ;-)

    I know that Major Tom adds his links without the “http//:www.” part, as I think he’s had problems too in the past. I usually only put one or two links, so maybe there is a limit?

  • Matt Wiser

    Well, if intelligence comes back that the ChiComs (my preferred name for the PRC) are planning a lunar mission, all bets are off. Because there will be a political firestorm if that happens. If you think the opposition to the original FY 11 plan was bad enough, that would really light a fire on the Hill.

    Ron, I know you would rather have a NEO or Lagrangian point for the first BEO mission. There are those of us who’d rather go back to the Moon, get planetary surface ops, ISRU, rovers-both human and robotic, teleoperating a rover from orbit, and so on, under our belts, then go to an NEO, and further out. Just decide on a path that leads to a identifiable destination, stick to it and the budget, and press ahead. None of this hitting the reset button every time a new administration comes into D.C. Have you seen Crawley’s presentation on the NASA Youtube channel? Comments?

  • Coastal Ron

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 9th, 2010 at 11:05 pm

    Watching Crawley now (10 min. in so far).

    I guess I haven’t explained my thinking well enough that this doesn’t keep coming up, but thank you for digging as opposed to dismissing.

    Absent an external force, like your ChiComs threatening to go to “our Moon” (as we like to think of it), NASA’s budget is going to remain flat, or maybe even decline for a while with a budget reset.

    That budget is really fairly limited, especially if Congress mandates NASA to keep a large amount of their budget in operations related stuff like running an HLV (another reason I don’t like a government SDHLV).

    Crawley’s presentation is almost over, and he has been addressing how out of the four major things you need to do space exploration, landing somewhere takes all four of them, whereas exploring an NEO takes less than four. Of course that in itself is not a reason, but just pointing it out for how quickly they (NASA) thinks we could get some exploring done.

    Referencing your comment “None of this hitting the reset button every time a new administration comes into D.C.”, we need a plan that makes incremental progress, in space, and thus would be hard to kill. The ISS is in space, and it’s turning out to be hard to kill – Constellation was not in space, and is turning out to be easier to kill than most thought.

    I think an NEO is easier to get to, and it’s also a “first” that Crawley/NASA thinks would be more inspiring to our younger generation of taxpayers. For me, again, with a limited amount of funds, I want NASA to focus on things that have not been done, because it’s only a matter of time until a Google Lunar X PRIZE participant wins, and that (or something like that) will be the impetus for public/private groups to be the ones that actually go back to the Moon – using the knowledge we acquired with Apollo, and without NASA having to pay for the whole thing.

    If you’re pitching a business idea to a potential investor, they are going to ask you what pain you are addressing with your customer. Right now we don’t have a pain that supplies from the Moon will address, so from a purely market standpoint, I think it’s too early to be worried about getting there quick. When we get to the point that people are squirming at the idea/cost of shipping so many supplies up from Earth, then that is the point that market forces will help set up the supply systems on the Moon. Until then, it’s too early.

    Caveat – this is all human exploration related, and robotic missions would have different goals, which I would prioritize as Moon 1st and NEO 2nd.

    My $0.02

  • Matt Wiser

    Ron: glad you saw the video. Again, coming from a Moon First guy, he had some very interesting points. And did you notice how he was reaching out to the Moon First people? By saying that while you’re doing the NEO, L points, etc., the stuff you need for lunar exploration (lander, habitats, rovers, etc) is being developed-he pointed out the main problem the commission had with Constellation was that all four had to be developed at once-Ares I and V, Orion, and Altair/surface systems. At least he does recognize that to get ready for Mars, we’ll have to relearn surface ops, rovers, etc., and the Moon offers the best locale for that.

    However, I do disagree with you on one point: I strongly doubt the first person back on the Moon since Gene Cernan in Dec ’72 will step out of a lander with a commercial logo. Return to the Moon will be exploration. The lander may be made by the ESA, or be a joint NASA/ESA (or JAXA) program. Now, resupply of an outpost, should that road be undertaken, is something the commercial sector may want to get involved in, but we’re still a ways from deciding that.

  • Anne Spudis

    Coastal Ron wrote @ September 10th, 2010 at 12:28 am [Crawley’s presentation is almost over, and he has been addressing how out of the four major things you need to do space exploration, landing somewhere takes all four of them, whereas exploring an NEO takes less than four. Of course that in itself is not a reason, but just pointing it out for how quickly they (NASA) thinks we could get some exploring done.]

    Talk is cheap. Space programs aren’t. So talk wins.

    Coastal Ron: [Referencing your comment “None of this hitting the reset button every time a new administration comes into D.C.”, we need a plan that makes incremental progress, in space, and thus would be hard to kill. The ISS is in space, and it’s turning out to be hard to kill – Constellation was not in space, and is turning out to be easier to kill than most thought.]

    Interesting comment about killing a program. You point out exactly why so many want the Moon out of the picture. Once we’re there and working toward an infrastructure, it will “slow down” the itinerary of others. But if it is to be incremental progress toward true space access, we must begin on the Moon. Everything else is just putting the cart before the horse.

    Coastal Ron: [I think an NEO is easier to get to, and it’s also a “first” that Crawley/NASA thinks would be more inspiring to our younger generation of taxpayers. For me, again, with a limited amount of funds, I want NASA to focus on things that have not been done, because it’s only a matter of time until a Google Lunar X PRIZE participant wins, and that (or something like that) will be the impetus for public/private groups to be the ones that actually go back to the Moon – using the knowledge we acquired with Apollo, and without NASA having to pay for the whole thing.]

    Thank you for being honest about your reasoning — that you feel this is your opening and you’re going to take it before program logic kicks in. But commercial is not taking us back to the Moon to do ISRU, the government has to show that this is possible before money will be invested. Landing a rover on another body is one thing (Spirit and Opportunity), doing breakthrough resource development is another.

    Coastal Ron: [I think it’s too early to be worried about getting there quick. When we get to the point that people are squirming at the idea/cost of shipping so many supplies up from Earth, then that is the point that market forces will help set up the supply systems on the Moon. Until then, it’s too early.]

    “Getting there quick”??? That was never going to happen. Let’s just begin by getting serious and sending some precursors. Let’s get a couple of communication satellites orbiting the Moon. Let’s work out some way to get a radio telescope on the far side. How about a solar array field? Begin processing the lunar regolith to create and build on the Moon. Start using the water. Begin to understand what it will take to live off Earth and use what you find in space. The Moon offers something for many disciplines of research and development beyond human presence but exploration, resource exploitation and human migration is ultimately why we’re going.

  • Coastal Ron

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 10th, 2010 at 4:17 am

    I strongly doubt the first person back on the Moon since Gene Cernan in Dec ’72 will step out of a lander with a commercial logo.

    I didn’t say that. I did state public/private partnerships, but I can’t forecast what will essentially be a marketing decision (who, and who first), or who is paying the salary of the astronaut or owns the lander.

    Now, resupply of an outpost, should that road be undertaken, is something the commercial sector may want to get involved in, but we’re still a ways from deciding that.Now, resupply of an outpost, should that road be undertaken, is something the commercial sector may want to get involved in, but we’re still a ways from deciding that.

    That’s the operations side that I think is missing from many Moon occupation plans. Getting there is pretty straight forward, but the logistics of staying there permanently get expensive, which means you’re committed to doing that, and only that, for a long time.

    I could actually imagine a scenario where NASA takes the lead to set up a lunar colony, and then (for whatever reason) they no longer have the funding to support it. The colony then has to close, since industry cannot make a business case for operations without NASA business. That to me would be a waste of effort.

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 10th, 2010 at 5:12 am

    You point out exactly why so many want the Moon out of the picture.

    * sigh *

    NASA HSF related comments:

    1. If I have a choice, then I want NASA to focus on doing things that have not been done before, like visiting an NEO. The Moon, from purely the standpoint of figuring out if we can land, operate and return safely, has been done – an NEO has not. For the Moon, to me, the next step is exploitation (human exploration is part of that too), which requires industry involvement.

    2. The business case for doing exploitation on the Moon is not there for me – not yet. As I have explained, I see the need for supplies from the Moon as a supply & demand equation, not one of “build it and they will come”. Until the economics of supplies from the Moon start making sense, why spend the money? Any of NASA’s meager budget spent on non-value added activities is money diverted from stuff only NASA can do.

    3. Your statement reflects paranoid delusions… ;-)

    NASA Robotic Precursor related comments:

    Let’s just begin by getting serious and sending some precursors.

    Preaching to the choir. But just so you know too, I think robotic systems could do the ISRU that is needed for water, and that makes a business case much easier than one with humans involved. I don’t know if that is good or bad for your narrative…

  • Anne Spudis

    Apparently you like writing my narrative Coastal Ron.

    Robotics are important. They have NEVER been unimportant or dismissed in a lunar return.

    I don’t know how talking about humans on the Moon translates to robotics people as people will be going to the Moon now. The mere fact that the very mention of people exploring and working in space gets some in a verbal lather, speaks to their biases.

    I do not see a demand until government has made the case for private money to come on board. So we can just sit here and type back and forth or we can enable private enterprise by sending PROBES to the Moon with the PLANNED, eventual and necessary follow-on of humans. A large block of the science community will be content to send probes and study returned data, happy to avoid “losing” any funding to human exploration and migration.

  • Coastal Ron

    Anne Spudis wrote @ September 10th, 2010 at 1:02 pm

    The mere fact that the very mention of people exploring and working in space gets some in a verbal lather, speaks to their biases.

    Or their budgets. People in space are expensive, and if you keep them there, that is a huge ongoing expense. As always, I don’t see NASA able to support people on the Moon on a sustained basis, and so far there has not been a business reason for any companies to pony up money to go either.

    Maybe it’s a matter of the time scale we’re talking about here. If I had to guess, with my most optimistic commercial crew hat on, I think that it will be at least 5 years after commercial crew is established before the full realization of that service is starting to be utilized.

    Give another 10 years to get commerce going in LEO and starting to spread out a little, and so we’re at least 20 years out before we start needing water or other supplies from the Moon vs Earth. Now that’s just from a supply standpoint, not an exploration one.

    I also hope during this time that we start robotic precursor missions to the Moon, but this is also where the commercial world can step in and start doing contract exploration for NASA. That could be a huge cost saver for NASA, and it would open the door for commercial exploitation efforts.

    As you well know, some exploration companies on Earth can spend a long time mapping out their future production opportunities, and robotic exploration would allow speculative exploration by many deep-pocketed corporations – ones that hold a long view on business operations.

    With the whole economic situation in the U.S., I just don’t see NASA able to afford much. And because of that, the Moon can only be visited, not colonized, for a very long time.

    My $0.02

  • Anne Spudis

    Well Ron, let’s leave it here. If some of what we believe happens, it will be a good thing.

  • Vladislaw

    MrEarl wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
    Coastal Ron wrote @ September 8th, 2010 at 8:20 pm

    I, like Ron, was nodding my head in agreement, to a point. If NASA is allowed to, once again, create a huge launch infrastructure for a luna program it will be just the same ole’ ole’ as vested political and commercial interests associated with that program will block any moves that would interfer.

    I used to beat this dead horse about where and how to approach our next moves in space but laid off as other options were presented by various writers, bloggers and space groups.

    In both jounalism and criminal investigations the old addage is “follow the money”. The same should be done for space exploration. We can talk about routine missions to Luna, asteroids and Mars but where is almost 90% of all space assets and where are the most routine launches taking place? If you follow the money, GEO is the next logical place for ROUTINE human travel.

    The point I repeatedly tried to make was if we can’t build and operate a simple “gas & go” space craft, based in LEO, and fueled at an orbital fuel station to the closest next destination, GEO at 25,000 miles, why the hell are talking about mars?

    Following the money to geo and the hundreds of billlions of assest there would mean orbital satellite STATIONS. Starting with man tended space platforms that are routinely visited with the ablity to plug in a Bigelow hab as research, maintaince and tourist station. Once we can make 25,000 miles routine with LEO2GEO space craft, gas stations, and human tended geo operations we will gained the knowledge we need for so many of the problems we face moving out from earth.

    We can do anything past geo because ownership as not been decided like it has been done for leo and geo. You can “own” a slot in GEO but you can’t commercially own anything past geo. So follow the money to geo with LEO2GEO gas and go capability and it would do more to open the further reaches of space then any 200 ton heavy lift.

  • Matt Wiser

    Ron, if you had your choice, which would you have for the first BEO mission (circa 2018-2020)? Crawley suggests lunar orbit (which I prefer, and Bolden has said that would be his preference as well) or GEO (which has never been done with humans-that opens things up to satellite service in GEO, among other things), before tackling a NEO mission? If it was up to me, I’d have several lunar orbit missions, of increasingly greater length, doing such things as learning how to operate a rover from orbit, practicing deep-space EVAs, using Orion’s SM bays a la Apollo for cameras and other instrumentation that are astronaut-operated, and so on. Now, if Lockheed-Martin is right, and they can convince TPTB to do a NEO Orion mission in 2019, that moves things more appreciably. You could have a Lunar orbit series, and the NEO mission. Or two. Then do the L points. But there will soon be pressure for boots on the ground. Especially if intel finds out the ChiComs are going for a lunar landing.

    I agree that lunar exploration will likely be sorties, rather than a base, until the budgetary picture improves, but that time will come eventually. There are sites that were on Apollo’s wish list, but had to be dropped (Tycho, for example) or were the targets of the two cancelled Apollos that had crews assigned-18 and 19, (I’ve heard that Marius Hills and Schroter’s Valley were the likely targets). And at least one Apollo site (Hadley, on Apollo 15) was felt in ’71 to be the first site to be revisited on the moon when the time came.
    Then there’s the lunar poles. To quote Dave Scott (CDR, Apollo 15) “There’s still a lot to be seen and done up there.”

  • Coastal Ron

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 11th, 2010 at 1:03 am

    If it was up to me, I’d have several lunar orbit missions, of increasingly greater length, doing such things as learning how to operate a rover from orbit, practicing deep-space EVAs, using Orion’s SM bays a la Apollo for cameras and other instrumentation that are astronaut-operated, and so on.

    Sounds good to me. I like the combination of operating away from home on an extended basis, and practicing local tele-robotics.

    You could have a Lunar orbit series, and the NEO mission. Or two. Then do the L points. But there will soon be pressure for boots on the ground.

    Probably true, but I’m not sure if the price equation for doing stuff ON the Moon will have changed at that point, but as you point out, a political consideration could provide the incentive.

    I agree that lunar exploration will likely be sorties, rather than a base…

    There are so many combinations of possibilities, but I think there could be a bunch of “low cost” robotic landers that could capture the interests of both the public and companies. I think this is the more likely scenario, and who knows, maybe some of them would be tele-operated from lunar orbit?

    You can send a lot more robots down to the lunar surface without people than you can with cost-wise, and 10 years from now the sophistication of those robots will be a lot better. As with consumer electronics, trends for many fields are hard to predict, so I guess we’ll have to wait…

  • Matt Wiser

    Ron, sooner or later, the political pressure will be there for boots on the ground. Because to get ready for Mars, as Crawley points out in his presentation, you’ll need to learn surface operations, rover ops-both robotic and human, ISRU, habitats, and so on. I can see some Congresscritters telling NASA “You’re doing all this lunar orbit stuff and NOT landing?” If the ESA wants to get involved in some way, that can spread out the cost, and both Bolden and Garver (Ugh…) have been on record as expecting lunar landings in the future.

  • Coastal Ron

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 11th, 2010 at 1:38 pm

    sooner or later, the political pressure will be there for boots on the ground. Because to get ready for Mars, as Crawley points out in his presentation, you’ll need to learn surface operations, rover ops-both robotic and human, ISRU, habitats, and so on.

    I hope so. And maybe I’m being pessimistic about this, but the costs are going to have to come down quite a bit for NASA to afford the Moon, much less Mars. Industry involvement helps to lower costs, as does other nations participating. I hope the combination is eventually found – within my lifetime…

  • Matt Wiser

    Ron, Politics, if nothing else, will dictate human lunar return. Especially if the ChiComs are found out to be planning such an endeavor. If the ESA and/or JAXA want in, they’d be welcome, as it would spread out the costs to NASA. Crawley’s presentation points out that going to Mars will require learning surface operations, rovers-both robotic and human, extended EVA on the surface, everything. As he said in his remarks: “How’d you like to be NASA Administrator in 2035 and tell the President ‘We’re ready for Mars’ and not having operated on a planetary surface at all?” POTUS would likely say no. Want to go to Mars and operate on its surface for a while? You need to learn that stuff in a space environment. Best place is only 240K miles away.

  • Coastal Ron

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 12th, 2010 at 10:42 pm

    Want to go to Mars and operate on its surface for a while? You need to learn that stuff in a space environment. Best place is only 240K miles away.

    An airless moon with 1/6 Earth gravity is not the best place to learn how to operate on the 1/3 Earth gravity atmospheric surface of Mars. Mars is the best place to do that.

    The Moon can let us test a number of off-Earth technologies and techniques that we’re going to need for Mars and space in general. But I would think that hardly any equipment designed for the Moon will be used as-is for Mars – there are too many differences in the operating environments.

    And as a note, although I think Crawley has a number of things right, I don’t know of too many people that can accurately predict the future of technology, or the market forces in markets not yet created. So I think if we look after today (creating a commercial space industry), tomorrow will look after itself (public/private exploration).

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