“the folks who are pushing European Union the hardest are the French”

Well here is a reason to why: WW-II. Now the Germans are pushing and trying their part. The Germans got somehow diverted in their mission because of the reunification. Not an easy task to reconnect two countries 50 years later. Maybe the Koreans could take a look at that – a different story though. The British have somehow excluded themselves from the European Union effort because of their “special” relationship with the US. But things are changing on that front too. They had (still do?) a program for joint aircraft carrier forces with the French. If you think politics in the US are complicated because of the many states then you should try Europe. They don’t really know where they are going but they are trying. The eventual result of all this will be a world with Europe, with or without Russia, the US with or without the UK, Asia mostly dominated by China, and Africa. A lot of problems will most likely stem from Africa which seems to be a place where unity does not mean much – probably because of the actions of the West and now China. The key will be to see how Europe handles Turkey for example. Turks seem to live in both worlds: Western and Eastern and it is a laboratory so to speak we ought to pay attention to. They may be key to appeasement with Muslim nations in Europe. Malaysia may be key in Asia. Etc. Slightly off-topic sorry

Can HSF be somehow a part of it? Yes it can and it is what Bolden, I suspect, was trying to do in the Middle-East. However, it will take time to go around all the petty absurdity that resulted from his trip/comments. The political discourse in the US today is absolutely insane not to say plain idiotic. Suffice to look at HSF here to have a good feel for how narrow-minded a lot of people are.

Oh well…

at 14 dead astronauts and a shuttle stuck on the pad because somehow it got bad metal in the tank…you would think that these people would just shut up and go quietly into the good night.

For Paul Hill to imagine that shuttle operations has anything to teach in a substantive fashion the USAF which operates enormously complex airplanes, spacecraft and you know the National Nuclear Deterrent (or at least two legs of it) not to mention the “specials” which go with it…is goofy.

For Paul Hill to imagine that MOD has something to teach private launch folks who well manage to launch vehicles with 1/10th the folks the shuttle does…is equally goofy.

and then there is the language

“MOD is committed to “bullet proof” technical support to the operational programs”

or

““To always be aware that suddenly and unexpectedly we may find ourselves in a role where our performance has ultimate consequences.”

or the continued use of the word “ruthlessly”.

worked so well during Columbia’s last mission.

these folks have no clue of real engineering. The US Navy runs nuclear attack and boomer subs in an environment far more dangerous and far more unforgiving the spaceflight…and does it with 20 somethings.

and they dont use excuses like “we didnt mean to do it”.

Ruthless. get a life

Robert G. Oler

As I noted to “common sense” in my above post. Galileo has more to do with the politics of European Union then anything else.

I’ve come up with a working theory in my almost one month in Africa…

the battle between the past and the future is a battle between the forces that recognize the “power” in collective union and those that do not…it is almost the modern notion of “liberal” and “conservative”.

Robert G. Oler

to bring the conversation forward…

I read the comments you linked to as they were going up and then had a smile as I reread them.

The problem with most space advocates (particularly the ones for whom HSF is not a job…the ones whose job it is mostly have an entitlement mentality) is that they have no sense of reality after Apollo.

The Apollo political effort, not the program itself, but the politics behind it simultaneously define the effort (the Frontier mentality) and the magnitude (all out) and the reason for it (so the creatorless other people dont get there first…or we go to sleep under a “insert color here” Moon).

Whittington on his blog beating up on Simberg (they seem to need a man hug worse then Rand and I do) says that Obama’s policies (sorry for the mishmash of prose here hard to lead into it)

“Cancelling the return to the Moon was also hardly conservative either, as it smacks of retreat from space, ceding the high frontier to other countries”

the problem is that Whittington (and most space advocates outside of the jobs world) are living in a world that existed maybe from the end of WW2 to about 1965 and really only for a very short time (maybe 5 years or so) is something the public believed…that space was the “high frontier”. not to mention the notion that other countries are trying to take it.

But this is their world and as their world and reality have diverged more and more the explanations as to why their world should be the basis for politics and policy have gotten more and more extreme. And that is one reason why more and more space advocates (including the job holders) imagine that the rest of the American public should have no input into policy.

The battle over “crewed or uncrewed” systems has ended in almost My every other areana…when there is a choice between sending a UAV or a piloted airplane guess which goes more and more. My hope for the next generation of space launch providers is that somehow they can escape Apollo.

they can escape the goofy notions that Paul Hill has over in NASAspaceflight.com that the private launch providers need MOD…they dont. that we can escape the “bread and circus” mentality of one useless “spacefirst” after another…that we can escape the “frontier notion” of space…and instead start looking at space as something where what is done there for the most part has to pass the “how it affects life on Earth” test.

That in any other environment is both the “profit test” and how “does it make the nation stronger” test.

The irony of it is (to bring it to this thread) is that almost the sole reason the French want to do Galileo…is the European Union test. It doesnt take to long watching European TV to figure out (or be reminded of the fact) that the folks who are pushing European Union the hardest are the French.

Galileo might be redundant in the world of GPS…almost every other nav signal is redundant in the world of GPS…but it is one of the symbols of nationhood….and it affects the nation.

Robert G. Oler

“Of course, a second or third or fourth worldwide positioning signal is redundant and expends resources that could go elsewhere.”

That is not actually true, at least for civilian users. First note that it is possible to build multi-system receivers. GPS/GOLNASS receivers are already on the market at the high end and advances in software defined radios will likely make GPS/GOLNAS/Galileo/Compass receivers widely available in a few years. Being able to receive signals from additional satellites improves the accuracy of the position fix and makes reciever less susceptible to blockage. Thus, from a civilian user perspective, the signals are (or will be soon) complimentary rather than redundant.

Umm, GPS is a “big government program.” So is the internet. Galileo is ill-conceived in that it seeks to duplicate GPS rather than evolving beyond it. Modern Europe does many things well, but creativity in technology is not one of them.

Yeah, conceived by enlightened eurocrats to be forced onto businesses, paid for with their own taxes, who were already getting GPS services for free. Nice of ‘em.”

I agree with you windy, America just had the invisible space unicorns design, develop, build, launch and maintain our GPS. No American’s taxes went to pay for our GPS that is given away free.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/opening-space-with-a-transorbital-railroad

yet another goofy plan by Bob Zubrin..

gee so many errors so little time”

I have to agree with your inital assesment. I started having problems with it as soon as I read the first part of the first sentence. *boldface mine*

“First, we could set up a small transorbital railroad office in NASA, and fund it to buy six heavy-lift launches (100 tonnes to low-Earth orbit) and six medium-lift launches (20 tonnes to low-Earth orbit) per year from the private launch industry, with heavy- and medium-lift launches occurring on alternating months. (A tonne is a metric ton — 1,000 kilograms, or about 2,200 pounds.) The transorbital railroad office would pay the launch companies $500 million for each heavy launch and $100 million for each medium launch, thus requiring a total program expenditure of $3.6 billion per year — roughly 70 percent of the cost of the space shuttle program.”

Where is the track record for NASA doing something on this scale on budget and schedule successfully.

Zubrin then goes on to suggest NASA should pay 100 million for a 20 tonnes launch, or about 22 standard tons. SpaceX charges 95 million for Falcon 9 heavy that will put up 35 tons or you could pay 100 million for 2 standard falcon 9’s and put up the 22 tons. SpaceX has suggested they could launch 125 – 140 tons for 300 million per launch. I wonder where he was getting numbers from?

He then goes on to say:

“NASA would then sell standardized compartments on these launches to both government and private customers at subsidized rates based on the weight of the cargo being shipped. For example, on the heavy-lift vehicle, the entire 100-tonne-capacity launch could be offered for sale at $10 million, or divided into 10-tonne compartments for $1 million, 1-tonne subcompartments for $100,000, and 100-kilogram slots for $10,000 each”

Okay if you are launching a payload of 100 tonnes how can you sell 10 compartments of 10 tonnes? Isn’t a standard rule of thumb 1/3 of the payload is the container? This “dispenser” as he later on refers calls it?

Then he lists current launch providers:

“We don’t have to wait years to implement the transorbital railroad. We already have the capability to begin it right away, with twelve medium-lift launches per year using existing Atlas V, Delta IV, and Falcon 9 rockets.”

I wonder why he includes the Falcon 9 but doesn’t use the proper payload size it could launch.

I agree, it did have some goofy stuff in it. I can see what he is saying though, we use the buying power of Uncle Sam to do volume buying for the discount and pass that discount on the consumer.

You could do this a lot simpler to just offer low interest loans for payload launches and then those space companies volume buy in as a single company representing all it’s members.

What ideas did Jeff present in his article that “merit debate”? Don’t get me wrong, it was a good and read, but it was just a summary of the current political situation regarding the direction of America’s space policy/strategy. There weren’t any new ideas upon which debate could occur, just the facts of the situation. I don’t see why he would ever include it here as a blog post since all it would serve to do is “catch-up” people only recently getting interested in space politics.

Yeah, conceived by enlightened eurocrats to be forced onto businesses, paid for with their own taxes, who were already getting GPS services for free. Nice of ‘em.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/nasas-course-correction

The ‘David Gurgen summary’ of the inept and sordid events of the last two years. How about this for a title: “NASA, Adrift in Deep Space.”