Congress, NASA

Griffin to House: just say no

Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin, who has previously said he liked the original House version of the NASA authorization bill more than the Senate’s version, is now openly calling for House members to vote against the Senate bill when it comes up for a vote tomorrow. “After considerable reflection, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that NASA and the nation’s space program would be best served if the House were to vote against the Senate Authorization Bill in its present form,” Griffin said in an email message obtained by SpacePolicyOnline.com. The Senate bill, Griffin writes, has “grievous flaws” and, while better than the administration’s proposal in his opinion, “it is not enough better to warrant its support in law.”

Griffin’s email is not the only sign of opposition to the Senate bill, although not necessarily for the same reasons. According to a Space News tweet, Ohio congressmen Dennis Kucinich (D) and Steven LaTourette (R) are asking fellow members of the Ohio congressional delegation to vote against the bill, because of jobs at NASA Glenn as well as commercial crew and space technology funding.

Because the bill will be considered under suspension of the rules, it will require a two-thirds majority to pass. Will it get it? The Orlando Sentinel reports that “Initial signs are that the vote could be very close” with the chair of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), expected to vote against it. The Hill, though, claims that the House is “likely” to pass the bill.

If the House doesn’t pass the bill, it makes it unlikely any authorization bill will make it out of Congress this year, leaving it up to appropriators to make policy when they get to funding bills after the November election. Griffin, in his email, seems willing to settle for that. ” If we cannot do better than that,” he writes, referring to the Senate bill, “then I believe we have reached the point where it is better to allow the damage which has been brought about by the administration’s actions to play out to its conclusion than to accept half-measures in an attempt at remediation.”

44 comments to Griffin to House: just say no

  • mr. mark

    Protecting his interests as usual. He’s a royal pain in my backside. First he invents a program that was way over budget and had no chance for being completed under the current timeline and now he wants to put the hex on the Senate plan. To me this guy is Satan.

  • Bennett

    To me this guy is Satan.

    If for nothing else, for taking the VSE and grinding it into the mud with his stupid and egotistical ESAS/ARES programs.

    I still have the printout of the original VSE pdf file (using HOW much black ink for all the space backgrounds?), and I’d look at it now and then over the years and think “well? so? what’s happening NASA? when’s this stuff going to start happening?

    Griffin should be charged with treason against NASA.

  • I vote NO on Mike Griffin and have urged my Rep to vote NO on him.

    Every space enthusiast had to compromise this year to make progress, Mr. Griffin’s uncompromising attitude and whiney burn-down-everything-if-I-can’t-have-it-my-way atitude just vindicates President Obama’s decision to fire him. From an HR perspective I can’t see many jobs he’d be employable in?

    I’m asking my Rep (N. Pelosi) to vote YES on S. 3729
    America makes progress with it!

  • Matt Wiser

    Griffin: why can’t he stay in Academia where he came from and where he went back to? Still stuck in the “My way or the highway” mindset. Almost everyone who supported Constellation has decided to move on and get with the new program, myself included. Ironic: he’s in the same position as the original FY 11 budget: not very likely to get what he wanted. I imagine that Constellation is like a religion to him now, and he just can’t let go.

  • The men who moved to kill Project Constellation in the first place, are the real villains!!! So what, if it would’ve taken until 2025 for the first Orion-Altair mission to finally leave low earth orbit?! In the end, America would’ve ended the end-less LEO ferris wheel, and gotten back to an actual otherworldly flight-plan. The Space Shuttle was not a project done on schedule, and neither was the ISS. Both projects took far more time & years to finally get launched, than originally intended. But NASA carried on and persevered, and eventually got some degree of return for its big investment. This ridiculous chorus of: “Let’s not even get started on it, ’cause it’ll just take way too long!” —is exactly what’ll keep us chained to merry-go-rounding the Earth for yet another twenty years!! The Orion-Altair missions to the Moon should just simply be carried out! Like Apollo, there will be unexpectedly advantageous upgrades in the capabilities, once we’re actually flying the expeditions.

  • Major Tom

    “So what, if it would’ve taken until 2025 for the first Orion-Altair mission to finally leave low earth orbit?! ”

    Try 2035. And then only if the White House and Congress agree to add several billion dollars to NASA’s budget every year between now and then.

    “The Orion-Altair missions to the Moon should just simply be carried out! Like Apollo, there will be unexpectedly advantageous upgrades in the capabilities, once we’re actually flying the expeditions.”

    Like Apollo, Constellation requires an Apollo-scale budget. And like Apollo, Constellation ceased to be when such a enormous budget never materialized over the long-term.

  • henry vanderbilt

    “The Space Shuttle was not a project done on schedule, and neither was the ISS. Both projects took far more time & years to finally get launched, than originally intended. But NASA carried on and persevered, and eventually got some degree of return for its big investment.”

    The thing is, back in the days of Apollo, given the mission and the schedule and the state of the technolgy they started with, there probably wasn’t any choice but to do the job with an immensely expensive mass-parallel-assault approach. 35,000 direct NASA employees, several hundred thousand contractors, peak funding about $35 billion a year in 2010 dollars, cost per Saturn 5 launch pretty near $2 billion (2010 dollars) each.

    Then came Shuttle, which was supposed to be so much cheaper – yet still ended up near $2 billion a flight. Some of us began to look at how NASA was doing business – still the mass-parallel-assault, with fewer people but ever-growing layers of procedural bumf – and started to point out there are better ways, but we didn’t get much traction – no proof that it could be done far cheaper (and thus we could explore far more for the money.)

    Station cost $100 billion and took decades precisely because each Shuttle flight was near two billion, and because NASA did Station with the same mass-assault organizational model, plus a generation of bureaucratic accretion. And we still had no proof it could be done far cheaper…

    NASA meanwhile had been bollixing up every attempt to replace Shuttle for thirty years at a cost of a few billion a year. Proving it’s really hard, they’d claim, proving they’re a sclerotic bureaucracy we’d say but had no counter-examples for proof.

    Then came Constellation and Ares. NASA originally budgeted something well under twenty billion for Ares I. Last seen, the budget was near thirty billion to first flight and headed north fast, and the schedule was stretching at one year per year. The functionally equivalent USAF/Boeing Delta 4 Heavy meanwhile was already flying for a tenth of that, and the totally commercial half-an-Ares-I Falcon 9 made first flight for A SEVENTY-FIFTH of that.

    This made clear to enough other people that NASA’s major system development model is MASSIVELY broken that Constellation actually got a serious critical review, and the result was that people who PAID ATTENTION became aware that parts of NASA were now capable of burning arbitrarily large amounts of funding without delivering useful vehicles, and thus, the first step to getting NASA back to being halfway useful is to STOP LETTING THEM DEVELOP THEIR OWN FRIGGING VEHICLES.

    A lot of people seem to still be missing this point…

  • henry vanderbilt

    Forgive the fit of all-caps shouting, but this is a point I’ve been trying to make for twenty years now, and occasionally when I’m tired and fighting the flu I get a bit impatient.

    Just for a total change of pace, I’m going to defend (backhandedly) Mike Griffin’s decision to ditch O’Keefe and Steidle’s spiral development and EELV use, in favor of Ares/Orion: Given the strength of the reaction the NASA in-house booster Old Guard was able to generate this summer, consider the leverage they had back then. It’s entirely possible Griffin was more a symptom of the Old Guard’s desire to go on rolling their own boosters than he was the primary cause of Constellation – possible that he understood all too well how much easier the short-term NASA politics would be for him if he gave the in-house booster Center/Contractor axis what they wanted. Ares 1 and 5 may have been as signs of political realism on his part as well as personal obsessions.

    I tried to tell him the problem with this strategy was that the NASA in-house booster Center/Contractor axis could no longer deliver working rockets even for the (still quite generous) funding Congress gives NASA, but he didn’t seem interested in my opinions. Oh well.

  • Szebehely

    I’ll second Henry’s point–Steidle’s spiral development was a bust day one.

    Spiral development and fly-off’s work fine for a large, well-funded program like JSF and the F-22 but not for the pittance of a program in funding terms that is Orion.

  • henry vanderbilt

    That wasn’t my point, actually – Steidle’s approach looked like a good fiscally practical fit for the large (but not infinite) funding available, as long as system development was not conducted under NASA business-as-usual.

    My point was that, in favoring EELV over in-house NASA booster development, and in challenging NASA business-as-usual in general, Steidle may well have been politically impractical in terms of the NASA-Congressional axis of the time.

  • Googaw

    what’s happening NASA? when’s this stuff going to start happening?

    Considering the history of NASA, when Venus freezes over is the most probable guess.

  • /scI/owan

    If you support the Senate bill, please:
    1. Call your Congressman tomorrow morning.
    2. Tell them to vote YES on the Senate NASA bill.
    3. Ask at least one other person to do the same.

  • Googaw

    To me this guy is Satan.

    (reply)In the end, America would’ve ended the end-less LEO ferris wheel, and gotten back to an actual otherworldly flight-plan.

    For those who are truly faithful in their hearts, an earth-hugging orbit just doesn’t cut it for a heavenly shrine. Temples for our astronaut saints must be built on the Moon or Mars or some similarly elevated vista, not hugging on to the corrupt Earth.

    To those heretics who hate the true religion, the one true plan for space, and object when I raid their children’s W-2s to fund our celestial cathedrals: may you boil on Venus forever!

  • Martijn Meijering

    Spiral development and fly-off’s work fine for a large, well-funded program like JSF and the F-22 but not for the pittance of a program in funding terms that is Orion.

    Huh? I’d say spiral development works even better for programs with much less funding. Look at New Space for an extreme case of that.

  • Frediiiie

    If you think the bad old NASA has gone and reformed it ways then just read the HEFT report. It calls for spending $7B to develop an inflatable module, yet the report writers seem unaware you can buy a Sundancer off the shelf from Bigelow for around $100M. I’m sure Bigelow could do any mods NASA wanted for well short of $7B.
    But perhaps I misread the HEFT. NASA may have some really good reason why an inflatable module should be made of solid gold.

  • It’s entirely possible Griffin was more a symptom of the Old Guard’s desire to go on rolling their own boosters than he was the primary cause of Constellation – possible that he understood all too well how much easier the short-term NASA politics would be for him if he gave the in-house booster Center/Contractor axis what they wanted. Ares 1 and 5 may have been as signs of political realism on his part as well as personal obsessions.

    That is the most logical and coherent explanation I’ve read concerning this whole disaster, thank you Henry.

    Dr. Griffin is entitled to his opinion, but he should realize he’s also entitled to be ignored. He’s had his time in the sun.

  • Dennis Berube

    It yet remains to be seen just how much help NASA will provide to these commercial enterprizes. Bigelow wanted to link an inflatable up to the ISS for an experiment, I wonder if NASA will allow it? Now what is going to happen as Russia has its eyes on a commercial station by 2016? You commercial advocates will be jumping wont you, if all this comes about?

  • Dennis, uhh.. Bigelow Aerospace is on the record as saying that an inflatable module for the ISS is a bad idea. If NASA wants to blow money on trying to do what is fundamentally stupid Bigelow will happily take it of course.

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    @ Frediiie,

    There is not enough bandwidth on the internet to carry my lengthy and ongoing rant about NASA’s persistant delusion that, if they come up with a sexy enough program, then they will once again enjoy Apollo-levels of funding and public approval.

    Simply put, NASA doesn’t want the cheap option. A cheap option (especially off-the-shelf) means no huge development contracts, no project offices (giving mid-rank administrators their own little space ‘empires’) and no huge boost in funding from the govenrment. That they wouldn’t get the huge boost in funding either way seems to be something about which NASA has a collective hysterical blindness.

    The most that NASA can hope for is a project that the politicians are willing to tolerate that is hard enough for little vested interests and personal beloved brain-children to inflate into something undoable and unaffordable. So far, SEI and VSE have both gone down this route to oblivion.

  • Dennis Berube

    Well I hate to say it people, but I liked Mike Griffin. He should be reinstated as head of NASA. He wanted to put us back on a path toward deep space exploration, not fool around with only Earth orbit. As to the the cost of project constellation, spaceflight is still not going to be cheap, and anyone thinking as much, is fooling themselves. I wonder how much the Russians are going to charge for a stay at their commercial orbiting facility, if they get it up in 2016? It wont be cheap either.

  • amightywind

    “then I believe we have reached the point where it is better to allow the damage which has been brought about by the administration’s actions to play out to its conclusion than to accept half-measures in an attempt at remediation.”

    Wise words from a brilliant man. But I think this kind of capitulation is unnecessary. Obama is much weaker than he was when he first floated his ridiculous plan. Opponents of Obamaspace have only to wait out the clock. On November 5 much more progress will be possible.

  • Martijn Meijering

    He wanted to put us back on a path toward deep space exploration, not fool around with only Earth orbit.

    No, he got us off the path toward deep space exploration that had been so competently prepared for him by O’Keefe and Steidle. He put us on a path of development of unnecessary launch vehicles (SDLV) by unproven designers (MSFC) when excellent launch vehicles (EELVs) designed by proven designers (Boeing/LM) were available and other unproven launch vehicle designers (SpaceX) were making more progress with more sensible launch vehicle (Falcon) than MSFC. Of course if he ends up having inadvertently killed NASA in-house launchers then he still deserves a statue. ;-)

  • Martijn Meijering

    Bigelow wanted to link an inflatable up to the ISS for an experiment, I wonder if NASA will allow it?

    Er, no, it was NASA that wanted an inflatable connected to the ISS, not Bigelow. They asked Bigelow to give them cost estimates and they were pleasantly surprised. Bigelow would happily sell them an inflatable to connect to the ISS, but he doesn’t want anything to do with NASA for his own station.

  • amightywind

    when excellent launch vehicles (EELVs)

    The EELVs are decent satellite launchers, but are woefully undersized for manned exploration. Using them would a technological dead end.

  • That NASA Engineer@KSC

    On reading this I’m reminded of that saying “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” I always wondered what that meant, but nowadays I think I see it.

    It’s curious that in getting argumentative over this House or that OMB or that Senate version of a plan for NASA that very little is said about the numbers compared to other information. Budget amounts don’t do anything; they merely set the stage for the next act. For example, in any advocacy of Constellation continuing as-is, it’s never said that even if all the funds available in Human Space Flight were diverted, that even these amounts get us to the Moon in the late 2020’s and back to a Crew-to-orbit capability sometime in 2017, possibly. And then that’s it, because again even by Constellations own numbers there would not be any money left for anything else until the ISS is de-orbited. And that’s the optimistic numbers. Confidence level analysis is still in the single-digits by Constellations own admission.

    Even in the recent HEFT report (posted here on NASAWatch), even when the Orion Ares I was thrown out of the plan, even those heavy lift centric-approaches were all in yearly deficits averaging a couple of billion dollars a year for the next decade. It’s safe to assume that the only reason the estimates closed to within less than a Billion short of available funds in the 2020’s was because when looking that far out all sort of even more optimistic assumptions were used about costs and available budgets.

    So here we are arguing over about 0.5 to $1Billion a year being diverted over to some Space Technology R&D or Commercial Crew efforts while the multi-billion dollar a year deficit between reality and the Constellation sequel looms large.

    Does anyone honestly expect that in some alternate universe where Constellation is reinstated, or where Constellation the sequel goes the way of a heavy-lift focus (dropping Ares I), zeroing out the R&D and the commercial crew shifts, that the very next day these same advocates wouldn’t just start to say “it’s a bad plan, because it’s underfunded, and we need the top-line budget increased by $3B to $4B a year”? Well, maybe not the next day. More like within minutes of signing the new appropriations we’d hear the gripes from these same advocates for going back to something like Constellation to the effect “oh by the way…that plan won’t work”.

    So let’s take this discussion back to reality. If the Constellation sequel (whatever form it takes) can’t focus on a dramatic reinvention of how to use about $4B to $5B a year, then any discussion about it being 4 vs. 5 is a mute point. The reality is that $5 Billion is not going to turn into $8 or $9 Billion a year anytime soon.

    So the arguing over the basic amount being 4ish or 5ish is a distraction from the real challenge ahead. That challenge is about change in how we do business, and it goes for industry, NASA and in the end, us as individuals.

    Oh, and back to that saying “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” I suspect its meaning is in facing uncertainty; you just don’t know what happens. But acceptance of this uncertainty is a first step in being prepared and coming out better on the other side of events.

  • Martijn Meijering

    The EELVs are decent satellite launchers, but are woefully undersized for manned exploration. Using them would a technological dead end.

    Mighty, we have discussed this time and time again. With refueling in LEO and at L1/L2 they are just fine for exploration. It’s quite easy to see actually. A slightly bigger upper stage would be nice, but not crucial. It would be especially nice for interplanetary exploration, but even for that it wouldn’t be critical. EELV Phase 1 would be more than enough and Atlas Phase 2 would be a straightforward upgrade, though unlikely to offer much benefit. EELV keeps the path towards RLVs open, SDLV puts obstacles on it. It’s SDLV that is a technological dead end.

  • amightywind

    Mighty, we have discussed this time and time again.

    Yes, we have, and you are still spewing your insanity. It cannot go unchallenged lest a casual reader be deceived.

  • Martijn Meijering

    You offered no challenge, just an unsupported denial. There are published architectures (I pointed you to a few) that would work just fine with EELVs. The sums are quite easy to do actually, you need no more than a spreadsheet, a delta-v table, the rocket equation and some EELV specifications that you can easily find on the internet. EELVs are good enough once you use propellant transfer, and almost trivially so.

  • henry vanderbilt

    “If you think the bad old NASA has gone and reformed it ways then just read the HEFT report. It calls for spending $7B to develop an inflatable module, yet the report writers seem unaware you can buy a Sundancer off the shelf from Bigelow for around $100M. I’m sure Bigelow could do any mods NASA wanted for well short of $7B.
    But perhaps I misread the HEFT. NASA may have some really good reason why an inflatable module should be made of solid gold.”

    Yes, in the descriptions of the HEFT report I’ve glanced at, I’ve noticed the classic Old Guard NASA tendency toward developing incredibly over-specced and overpriced single-point mission systems. Winning the current fight won’t mean the war is over, alas.

    Speaking of the current fight, I see on C-Span 1 that Nancy Pelosi has just called the House into session, and 1-minute speeches are starting. Votes expected to start in an hour or so. It should be an interesting day…

  • Reality Bites

    If for nothing else, for taking the VSE and grinding it into the mud with his stupid and egotistical ESAS/ARES programs.

    Can you please point out to me how a congressionally mandated SRB powered straight stack expendable Direct 3.0 architecture is radically different than the Ares V disaster? Because honestly, I just can’t see it.

  • NASA can engage the classic Old Guard approach no matter what launchers are chosen.

    NASA can pork out SDLV and they can pork out EELV and NASA can do EELV lean and they can do SLV lean.

    Because NASA needs competitors, it could be good news that Russia has announced an intention to deploy a tourist-focused space station.

    I thought this quote was funny:

    Sergey Kostenko, Orbital Tehcnologies’ chief executive, told The Associated Press in an interview that the planned station would be “a comfortable hotel in orbit, designed specifically for tourists.”

    “But it will be more comfortable than the International Space Station because there won’t be any unnecessary scientific equipment,” he said.

    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j_VvXu5YSgMA1ABk0cR3fKt9ccdgD9IHK1V04?docId=D9IHK1V04

  • Martijn Meijering

    There is no way to do SDLV lean. And if SDLV is rejected, then there won’t be the money to do EELV in a porked out way. It’s really simple:

    SDLV = porked out
    EELV = lean

    Also, NASA doesn’t need competitors, it needs competing suppliers. To suggest otherwise is to borrow the terminology of one’s opponents to say something that is superficially similar to what they are saying, but means the opposite.

  • common sense

    @ That NASA Engineer@KSC wrote @ September 29th, 2010 at 9:23 am

    “So let’s take this discussion back to reality.”

    Reality really is not the point. Politics is the point. Reality? What reality? Everyone knows that without an indecent budget increase NASA will NOT perform any of what they are being asked. Yet everyone wants to see THE plan.

    As I said before HEFT and HLV if adopted as is will be the end of NASA HSF. Watch it unfold.

    Oh well…

  • libs0n

    Bill White,

    You forget one thing. NASA already uses EELVs. NASA science.

    NASA science explores other worlds and the inner and outer regions of the solar system, and the universe. And they do so using commercial launch systems, and do so in a manner consistent with pursuing their own self interest to accomplish things.

    NASA HSF is not free to pursue a similar self interest, because a different interest reigns. In the SDLV world, the hens run the henhouse. These hens say the point of NASA HSF is the field of rocketry. In the DoD world, the NASA science world, the rooster runs the henhouse. DoD has no interest in paying more for launch than it has too. This is the driving motive behind its actions from the formation of the EELVs to the drive for cheaper lift. DoD is free to act in its own interest, which is its mandates. Similarly, when NASA is free to act in its own interests, as the science missions show, it finds methods to engage with its launch providers in a manner consistent with the end of accomplishing things it wants to accomplish. See the NLS procurement method already established.

    We can see this happening already with the Orion program, where it has been given room to pursue its own self interest, and that interest is leading it toward more rational choices.

    So, there are real world working models that contradict your latest cheap argument.

  • NASA also already uses a close analog to the Jupiter 130

  • PS — A NASA than can propose to spend $7B on R&D for inflatable habitats when Bigelow is offering to sell such habitats at $100 million each, retail, is a NASA that can pork out whatever program it is given.

  • DCSCA

    Griffin has little to contribute to the future of America’s space program. He’s done enough damage with Ares. ‘His’ lousy rocket, along with underfunding for the Constellation project by the Bush Administration are key to what sent it spinning off-course to begin with. Funding is a variant but a multi-decade commitment to a poorly designed rocket is not. Nature abhors a vaccum and Griffin is a poster boy for the Pepter Principle at work. Ares remains a poor decision championed by a very pedestrian administrator-turned-missileman, who filled the void left by a disinterested WH over half a decade. He’s more concerned about salaving his reputation than pressing on with business of space exploration. Go away. Mike. Just go away.

  • libs0n

    Bill White,

    The Space Shuttle isn’t a J-130. A multibillion dollar and multi-year development effort by an ill experienced entity must be undertaken to create it, during which considerable infrastructure must be sustained during that standdown, upon which the flight rate is dependant upon a class of payload larger than any such in existence that NASA must also produce itself in a funding environment unknown.

    All this conspires to wreck the ability of a J-130(which only exists in an ideal form in the minds of its proponents apart from reality) to compete against simply purchasing available lift from the commercial launch market as the cost effective option, to say nothing of the monumental opportunity choice at hand I have outlined on previous occasion.

    The theme of my remarks has always been that NASA can accomplish more when it utilizes the commercial launch industry than when it instead undertakes its own endeavors to build launch vehicles. Segmenting launch away from NASA’s own execution to a competitive model where a booster must earn and keep its place in the architecture, while also being open to competing for other payloads to share costs, will at least better allow NASA to accomplish things in whatever manner it does. It maximizes the productive output that NASA is capable of.

    The alternative, SDHLV, inhibits that output.

  • libs0n

    PS. NASA must maintain at considerable expense a specialty in launch. Moving to a commercial model would transfer that specialized role to the already experience commercial launch companies, a competitive system that can more purely pursue it. NASA would then be free to better pursue a specialty in its mission oriented payloads.

  • Googaw

    Reality really is not the point. Politics is the point. Reality? What reality?

    As succinct and accurate a summary of the world view of the astronaut fan as I’ve ever read.

  • David Davenport

    It’s entirely possible Griffin was more a symptom of the Old Guard’s desire to go on rolling their own boosters than he was the primary cause of Constellation – possible that he understood all too well how much easier the short-term NASA politics would be for him if he gave the in-house booster Center/Contractor axis what they wanted. Ares 1 and 5 may have been as signs of political realism on his part as well as personal obsessions.

    Then why hasn’t Mikey G. expressed any regrets or second thoughts about Constellation now that he’s experienced career stage separation from NASA? And why is giving in to short term politics a virtue?

    Answer: that stuff was his personal obsession, and still is.

  • common sense

    @Googaw wrote @ September 29th, 2010 at 4:35 pm

    “As succinct and accurate a summary of the world view of the astronaut fan as I’ve ever read.”

    Well as I alreday told you in the past, some of us fans have tried to tell other fans that reality is important. But why would NASA say yes to an underfunded useless HLV? Very simple. NASA knows very well it is underfunded, but they also know that if they say “no” then this amount of the cash will go elsewhere, not necessarily even to NASA. So now what do we do?

    I think we the fans who try to live inside reality know that commercial is the only chance left today for a decent HSF program. That HLV+HEFT is mostly headed for disaster, yet again. The problem lies with the other fans, some of those you can read saying that the only little tiny probelm with Constellation was funding and that if NASA had the cash then Constellatipn would roar back to life… Those fans are even worse than the robotfans because they kill the efforts of those who actually try to live within their means.

    Then again don’t we all pay the mortgage of all the nice people who bought a house way beyond their means?

    C’est la vie…

  • DCSCA

    common sense wrote @ September 30th, 2010 at 3:43 pm “I think we the fans who try to live inside reality know that commercial is the only chance left today for a decent HSF program.”

    In so far as the ‘immediate future’ goes (that is, with respect to American manned spaceflight operations over the next quarter century) you may be right. Unless a ‘sputnik moment’ occurs from China, the chances of a strong U.S. manned space project as outlined by Kraft a few weeks ago taking off seem dim. And given the lethargic mindset of today coupled with the Age of Austerity, watching China go to the moon will elicit a ‘so what’ response anyway. Being ‘number one’ in space doesn’t appear to have the payoff today it once had. The goal for young rocketeers now seems clear: make commerical manned spaceflight a reality– and routine. Unfortunately, the profit elements of the free market calculus still adds up to the cost of failure outweighing the value of success.

  • common sense

    @ DCSCA wrote @ October 1st, 2010 at 12:59 am

    “In so far as the ‘immediate future’ goes (that is, with respect to American manned spaceflight operations over the next quarter century) you may be right.”

    Oh better believe it. I am right. Even my crystal ball says so.

    “Unless a ‘sputnik moment’ occurs from China, the chances of a strong U.S. manned space project as outlined by Kraft a few weeks ago taking off seem dim.”

    Irrelevant.

    “And given the lethargic mindset of today coupled with the Age of Austerity, watching China go to the moon will elicit a ‘so what’ response anyway.”

    Lethargic? You seem to consume way to much popular newscast.

    “Being ‘number one’ in space doesn’t appear to have the payoff today it once had.”

    Never had any payoff. The Soviet Union was defeated but certainly not because of Apollo or the Shuttle.

    “The goal for young rocketeers now seems clear: make commerical manned spaceflight a reality– and routine. Unfortunately, the profit elements of the free market calculus still adds up to the cost of failure outweighing the value of success.”

    The goal of any young engineer is simple: Make cash. Commercial space is a promise to that. A risky yet very real promise. The cost of failure of commercial space is a tiny amount of the cost of failure of the POR or any government mandated and run program, whether you or I or anyone like it or not. There is no, let me repeat, no good reason for this or any government to invest large sums in space. China is our partner and the partnership will only grow stronger with time. It is called “economy”. Wars are expensive waste when you can defeat your “enemy” with the strike of a “stop sell” key. Only fools rush to idiotic wasteful wars. The others just take their time because they have the cash and the time.

    A “Sputnik” moment already occurred with the financial melt down. So?

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