Comments on: Florida’s next governor sees shuttle’s end as “opportunity”

By: vulture4

vulture4 — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 03:22:27 +0000

“Haridopolos, a Republican and potential 2012 US senate candidate, put the blame on current Senator Bill Nelson. ”

And Haridopolos is free to spread this absurd and self-serving lie. Brevard county, including most workers at KSC, is so thoroughly Republican that, having finally discovered they are about to lose their jobs, they blame it on Obama. The area is so politicized that there is no debate. Every legislator from Brevard is Republican (Kosmas and Nelson won with support from other areas, not Brevard). Try to tell anyone in Brevard that Bush made the decision to end the Shuttle program and you will be met with a blank stare, even though it was just a few years ago.

I would have written a letter to the paper but at the time anonymous online comments weren’t accepted and I was told a letter with my name on it criticizing the Bush policy would 1) adversely affect my job and 2) have absolutely no effect on Bush or Griffin’s decisions. I did get a chance to speak briefly to Mr. Griffin and it was quite clear he was not interested in other opinions than his own.

By: Rand Simberg

Rand Simberg — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:25:18 +0000

Commercial Space will NOT get us anywhere!!!!

Ignorant shouting and LOTS of EXCLAMATION MARKS will NOT get us anywhere.

By: Chris Castro

Chris Castro — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 03:20:20 +0000

Commercial Space will NOT get us anywhere!!!!

By: Chris Castro

Chris Castro — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 02:50:42 +0000

@Ferris Valyn & Michael Kent;….What you all believe is HYPE: Constellation, with proper funding, mind you, WOULD HAVE got the ball rolling. The Sortie missions were only the beginning. Even the shortest Sortie would’ve outdone the longest Apollo surface duration—that of Apollo 17, forty years ago. Plus, just like Apollo underwent dramatic improvements to accomodate better operations, so too, would’ve the Orion-Altair missions. An unmanned, one-way variant of the L-SAM would’ve been introduced, and from it, the automated landings of base modules would’ve been made viable. Commercial

By: Michael Kent

Michael Kent — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:45:44 +0000

Chris Castro wrote:

But then Barack Obama destroyed everything!…Iâ€™d much rather see NASA get on with expanded Lunar surface operations by 2020

Constellation wasn’t going to “get on” with manned lunar surface operations until 2035. That’s 2-0-3-5. Expanded lunar operations would never happen, because Constellation would have spent its entire budget flying two 4-man short-duration lunar sorties a year. There was no budget left over to develop a manned lunar rover or a lunar base of any kind.

To think at this point that NASA would be conducting manned lunar operations by 2020 under Constellation is pure fantasy.

Mike

By: Ferris Valyn

Ferris Valyn — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 09:33:00 +0000

Chris Castro – feel free to believe that if it helps you sleep at night.

The reality was that Cosntellation would NEVER have allowed us to even GET to Earth orbit for a long time, and you can forget about the moon anytime soon. Betting on it taking us to the moon is a bit like betting that I could’ve made it to China when I was trying to dig there (when I was all of 5 years old)

You put commercial space with tech development, you get cheap access and the technology to enable sustainable BEO spaceflight. Which is more than can be said about Constellation, or Apollo.

By: Chris Castro

Chris Castro — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 04:58:43 +0000

The End of the Shuttle, after the 30 year-run, could have been a real opportunity for finally leaving LEO. But then Barack Obama destroyed everything! You check out the chronology: April 1981-April 2011, and we are STILL as fully Earth-bound as we ever were!! All the Obama-spacers do is knock-down about how if Constellation would’ve flown then the acheivements of the past would be repeated;….but then, why don’t they get mad at the thought of NASA repeating the exact same acheivements of the Space Shuttle, all over again?!?! If they can’t stand the thought of doing Sortie missions to the Moon, why do they have so much enthusiasm for LEO Sorties, then?? All we are going to get out of this madness called “commercial space” is another twenty years wasted, going around in circles!! I’d much rather see NASA get on with expanded Lunar surface operations by 2020, than to watch as we throw further years down the drain, building bigger & more durable aluminum castles in LEO, in the same time frame. Obama-space stinks!!

By: Fred Cink

Fred Cink — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 02:42:28 +0000

“A beancounter whose capacity for bureaucratic speak, especially at Congressional hearings, could put glaze on a donut.” DCSCA, I don’t think I have ever agreed with you on anything you have ever posted on this forum….but THAT is a KEEPER.

By: DCSCA

DCSCA — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 00:52:01 +0000

@Rand Simberg wrote @ December 7th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
That’s because Griffin looked in the mirror every morning and saw Von Braun in his reflection. The rest of us saw just another self-absorbed bureaucrat. O’Keefe wasn’t any better. A beancounter whose capacity for bureaucratic speak, especially at Congressional hearings, could put glaze on a donut. Neither personna radiated much vision.

By: common sense

common sense — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 23:14:35 +0000

@ Rand Simberg wrote @ December 7th, 2010 at 6:00 pm

Yup. With O’Keefe’s approach we’d probably be flying a CEV ontop an EELV but we’ll never know, will we now? At least O’Keefe understood the need to pay as you go. He and Steidle. I believe I read somewhere that Griffin cancelled the “spiral approach” and said he did not want to hear about it again or something like this. Really helped.