The prior, Republican-controlled Congress endorsed ISS in authorization bills and funded ISS through multiple appropriations bills.

Think before you post.

“I can only assume the same people who killed it in 2015 before will do so again.”

It’s October 1, 2010. No one is killing anything in 2015 for another four years and two months.

Don’t waste this forum’s time with idiotic statements.

“Does anyone think that setting $5G/yr of scarce funds alight is a good thing?”

The FY 2010 ISS budget is $2.3 billion. It’s not projected to exceed $2.7 billion through the runout.

Don’t waste this forum’s time with ignorant statements.

And every subsequent one will too. Republicans aren’t going to cancel it.

“I can only assume the same people”

1. That was only Griffin
2. the “me” part of assume is not applicable where as the rest of letters are.

“Does anyone think that setting $5G/yr of scarce funds alight is a good thing?

Are you saying $5,000 per year? A “G” is slang for a thousand, or are you somehow converting that to billion (as in $5B/yr)?

In any case, if any money was wasted in a useless effort, it was Ares I. $10B to duplicate existing launcher capabilities (i.e. Delta IV Heavy), and no flight hardware was ever built.

At least the ISS is built and operational, and many people in the U.S. and our partner countries think that it produces worthwhile results. You won’t find similar feelings about Ares I…

Well, *this* congress let ISS continue. New leadership will be on board in a few months. I can only assume the same people who killed it in 2015 before will do so again. Does anyone think that setting $5G/yr of scarce funds alight is a good thing?

“And remember this is the same NASA that gave us Constellation.”

Actually Constellation was given to us by Griffin, so luckily we don’t have to worry about that part.

However, the NASA organization takes some credit for the mis-management of the Constellation program, since they figured that schedule slips and cost escalations were OK. This type of attitude needs to change, otherwise the fears you identify will continue to come true.

“No. I consider the moon or NEO mission to be a minimal benchmark of what is useful, meaningful exploration.”

I think you missed the point. One-off missions, no matter where you’re going, would require that you take everything with you. If you have infrastructure that you’re pushing out ahead of you, then you don’t need to launch everything on one or two launches.

“Let them develop the capability, but not at the exclusion of a rational follow on to the space shuttle.”

No one is building a follow-on to the Shuttle – there are no multi-purpose reusable winged-spacecraft that are being funded. Instead we are regressing back to relying on capsules and unmanned payload launchers.

Without the Shuttle, and without extending the Soyuz contract past 2015, how will the ISS rotate crew? The Senate bill stated that NASA was only a backup to commercial crew, and NASA won’t have their SLS ready to fly by 2016 anyways (underfunded to start).

“Senate Bill 3729 302.c.1.D:
The capability to serve as a backup system for supplying and supporting ISS cargo requirements or crew delivery requirements not otherwise met by available commercial or partner-supplied vehicles.”

Boeing, ULA and SpaceX (plus everyone else) won’t take on a NASA-specific task without NASA putting up at least part of the cost. Boeing and SpaceX don’t have a deadline for when they have to have their capsules “man-rated”, but NASA has a looming deadline for ISS crew rotation.

Since you don’t like the ISS anyways, I know what your answer would be, but Congress has mandated the ISS to continue, so NASA will have to pay commercial crew companies to perform their crew rotations for them – there is no way around it.

And that is not Ares I

“Aggelos – you can put a BEO Orion on a Delta IV.
You just can’t put the LAS on top of it, and get it into orbit. ”

Yes, it can