Yesterday the House passed another continuing resolution (CR), providing another two weeks of funding to keep the government operating. With the Senate willing to support this CR, the threat of a government shutdown at the end of this week has been eliminated (or, more accurately, pushed back for two weeks.)
The CR has a mix of good and bad news for NASA. The good news is that agency is not included in the $4 billion in spending cuts the House put into the CR. However, the CR does not appear to contain any additional provisions beyond those cuts, which means that a provision dating back to the FY10 appropriations bill preventing NASA from terminating any Constellation programs, even those not continued under the new authorization act, remains in force. (Language removing that provision was included in the full-year CR, HR 1, passed by the House last month, but this CR extends previous ones and does not refer to HR 1, which the Senate has not taken up yet.)
When the FY10 appropriation was passed, oh so many years ago, many NASA projects based their plans and schedules on the budgets for FY 11 and FY 12, etc.
Now, w/o the money needed in FY 11 to execute what was planned for in FY10, these projects have on choice but to SLIP THEIR SCHEDULE. Which everyone knows winds up costing the taxpayers more money.
So, while the Congresscritters think they are standing up for their principles, holding out for the ‘right deal for America’, they are actually costing Americans more money due to the delay of every project at NASA, Dod, etc because of their posturing for the folks back home.
Sad bunch.
There’s no good reason not to stop funding CxP work. Mainly because the hot-and-heavy, do-or-die congressional insistence on it’s mega-HLV, along with continued work on Orion, IS Constellation. Call it anything you like. Altair was never more than a “yet to be”, so all that has changed is Ares I. Since ATK wants to build regardless, it likewise remains. Now if we could only get someone to do a flat-rate Ares V wannabe…
I’m not sure this is right. The new CR legislation, if I read it correctly, builds on the first one. That is, it adds provisions, and changes the expiration date. So by my reading, the new CR does everything with regard to NASA that the first one did.
Mainly because the hot-and-heavy, do-or-die congressional insistence on it’s mega-HLV
Isn’t that the way its supposed to be. Congress sets direction, NASA executes. Sadly, in the past two years it has been ‘congress sets direction, NASA obfusticates’. All with a wink and a nod from the administration. I hope the clamor for new NASA leadership increases after Bolden’s testimony this week. Newspace was rejected because it is an empty idea with a pointless mission. This all reminds me of the Air Force Tanker competition. We can all take heart that after years of buffoonery the right decision was made in the end.
@ NASA Fan wrote @ March 2nd, 2011 at 7:48 am
“Sad bunch.”
Yeah and that regardless of your political beliefs…
The new CR legislation, if I read it correctly, builds on the first one.
No, it seems to build on the existing CR, not HR 1. There are no anomalies in it.
amightywind,
Isn’t that the way its supposed to be. Congress sets direction, NASA executes. Sadly, in the past two years it has been ‘congress sets direction, NASA obfusticates’.
Really? The major problem currently with space policy – no matter what direction you prefer – is that Congress hasn’t set a clear direction.
The authorization bill says one thing (do SLS), and appropriations bill keeps funding another (CxP). Which leaves NASA in a pickle.
Then you have the whole SLS issue where NASA says it can’t do what Congress partially (see above) wants on time and schedule. Sure they could – but that would mean dumping the contractors that fill the pockets of the congressional space policy “deciders”. Basically Congress is telling NASA to build SLS within A) a specific timeline using B) specified budget with C) our favorite contractors. NASA has to be given more latitude. Relax the budget constraint. Or the time constraint. Or the contractor/design constraint. Something has to give. Otherwise there won’t be an SLS.
(And perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but that’s another topic…)
“We can all take heart that after years of buffoonery the right decision was made in the end”
Best words ever to describe the cancellation of Ares I and the other parts of CxP.
The new CR legislation, if I read it correctly, builds on the first one.
Correct, but HR 1 is not the first CR: there have been a series of continuing resolutions dating back to the end of September. This one amends the previous one, passed in December. None of the previous CRs included language addressing the language from the FY10 bill that prevents termination of Constellation programs.
Thanks for the clarification. My mistake. The latest CR does just replace the expiration date of the older one (and adds a few amendments), but the older one didn’t strike the Shelby language. Furthermore, H.R. 1, which does strike that language, was never actually passed! Somehow I was thinking that it had. It’s in the Senate.
“Best words ever to describe the cancellation of Ares I and the other parts of CxP.”
But wait a second Jim,
You once said that orion exists without ares, and that dragon is not a viable replacement for orion. that there is a place for both.
Why the change?
You once said that orion exists without ares, and that dragon is not a viable replacement for orion. that there is a place for both.
There may be a place for both, but there’s not enough money for both. Orion is still going to cost more than than Dragon, CST, and Dreamchaser combined. And Orion is not realistically much good for anything beyond the moon. And Dragon can do a lunar mission with kits.
@ Rand Simberg wrote @ March 2nd, 2011 at 2:53 pm
“There may be a place for both”
No there is not. Once Dragon flies with a crew that will be it for Orion. Period. I believe Orion is already gone though.
“but there’s not enough money for both.”
There is not enough money for Orion alone.
And Orion is not realistically much good for anything beyond the moon. And Dragon can do a lunar mission with kits
Orion is the only craft part of any credible BEO mission that I am aware of.
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/data/assets/ssc/Orion/Toolkit/OrionAsteroidMissionWhitePaperAug2010.pdf
And Dragon can do a lunar mission with kits.
Haven’t even seen PowerPoints of such kits, or are you paid SpaceX insiders privy to unpublished information.
“Now if we could only get someone to do a flat-rate Ares V wannabe…”
That would be sidemount at well under 10 billion for the cargo version.
“Best words ever to describe the cancellation of Ares I and the other parts of CxP.” That is not what he was talking about. Absolutely no point in making that comment except spite.
“And Orion is not realistically much good for anything beyond the moon.”
That is not quite true. All Orion, or Dragon, or any return capsule needs to go BEO is an empty stage- a wet workshop for living room to float around in. Skylab was just an empty SIVB. Any metal hull unshielded crewed vehicle is not “much good” on deep space missions. As with all BEO flights, as the months go by the probability of crew death or of permanent debilitation goes up in a steep curve. Catching an NEO on a multi-month mission would be extremely dangerous -for what? Not worth it. As for going anywhere else, it will take hundreds of tons of shielding and nuclear propulsion to push it around- and a tether to generate artificial gravity- and closed loop life support which would require water probably from the moon and so that water might as well be used for radiation shielding- and on and on. The resulting spaceship is predictable and would cost a fantastic amount of money. Which is why in my opinion the only way to do it is to make it useful enough for the DOD to drop a hundred billion or so on it like star wars. And the only mission valid from a defense perspective would be CAPS. That is my logic Rand. As for sending unmanned interceptors for CAPS, it is too important a mission to not have a human crew. What could be more important than the survival of the human race?
>And Dragon can do a lunar mission with kits.
Interesting. What would be needed?
“Interesting. What would be needed?”
http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=30771
http://quantumg.blogspot.com/2010/12/apollo-8-solo.html
http://quantumg.blogspot.com/2011/01/easy-way-to-moon.html
@ Egad wrote @ March 2nd, 2011 at 6:29 pm
“>And Dragon can do a lunar mission with kits.
Interesting. What would be needed?”
Cash.
Isn’t that the way its supposed to be. Congress sets direction, NASA executes.
No. NASA is an independent agency under the Executive Branch of government. It does not work for congress. However, the money that congress authorizes and appropriates is the main thing that NASA needs to do its job. That’s the only reason it bellies up to this worthless hodgebodge of obsequious pork-ladling lick-spittles.
VirgilSamms wrote @ March 2nd, 2011 at 6:28 pm
“Now if we could only get someone to do a flat-rate Ares V wannabe…â€
That would be sidemount at well under 10 billion for the cargo version.
Yeh another $10 billion wasted. Not to worry, the money’s not there for either NASA traditional SLS or MPCV (Orion’s had a name change in case you hadn’t noticed).
VirgilSamms wrote @ March 2nd, 2011 at 6:28 pm
” Skylab was just an empty SIVB”
no it was not.
There was a “wet workshop” proposal which would have used “an empty SIVB” but Skylab was far from that.
Skylab was actually quite amazing and was illustrative of what NASA could do on a budget and do a very good job
Robert G. Oler
Rand Simberg wrote @ March 2nd, 2011 at 2:53 pm
“Dragon can do a lunar mission with kits.” Uh-huh, and next year Tucker will introduce convertibles. Rubbish. Dragon hasn’t flown anybody. And never will.
VirgilSamms wrote @ March 2nd, 2011 at 6:28 pm
“Skylab was just an empty SIVB.”
Uh, not quite. The configuration used the S-IVB ‘shell’ as it were but it was heavilly instrumented and modified for long duration human habitation. It was quite sophisticated for its time. Visit the back-up Skylab (on display at the NASM) and you’ll see it was more than an ‘empty’ S-IVB.
Egad wrote @ March 2nd, 2011 at 6:29 pm
>And Dragon can do a lunar mission with kits.
Interesting. What would be needed?…
…………………………………………………..
the question is “what kind of mission would you want to do”…
If you want to see “what is possible” for Dragon then go look at some of the extended Gemini missions that might have occurred (or might have naturally developed) had there not been Apollo or the lunar goal.
The sad thing for our space development in my viewpoint is that we had the lunar goal…which more or less drove everything in the 60’s and really resulted in an effort that was simply not sustainable once the political reason for it vanished.
Gemini on the other hand was both affordable (the entire program including the flights cost less then half of what has been spent on Cx todate and that included what 8 crewed flights with Agena vehicles in some cases) and was knocking on reusability (one capsule flew twice although not with people in it).
go look at any of the “Gemini lunar” applications programs and you start to see what is possible (and probably affordable) with Dragon and Falcon 9 or Falcon 9H.
If Musk makes his cost (and we still need to see that) it is not hard to imagine some very (comparably) cheap lunar missions including landers…if Bigelow works…well things get even better.
I think we are on the verge of a Golden age in human spaceflight.
Robert G. Oler
Today’s Florida Today on the Congressional porkers oinking about NASA’s budget:
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20110303/NEWS02/103030324/Budget-raises-fears-NASA-future
Stephen C. Smith wrote @ March 3rd, 2011 at 6:49 am
Stephen. I am in Germany and reading the paper copy but you could probably find it on line…there is an article in the International version of The Wall Street journal about a pretty good poll (meaning large sample set) of people by Hart (a Democratic pollster) and McInturff (a Republican pollster) about some of the issues on the budget…and it is clear that the GOP is in for a fairly difficult time.
According to the poll an overwhelming majority of Americans “like” their federal spending…and are pretty angry over any cuts in most of hte things that the right (tea party) wing of the GOP wants to cut…social security, medicare etc…but they are ok with large cuts in defense and by extrapolation large cuts in things like NASA…
It will be interesting to watch how this all plays out in the NASA budget…but every day I become more convinced that the LON will never happen and the era of NASA developing “rockets” is more or less over.
Hall etal can squel all they want, but in the end the American people, are just not going to pay for things that do not change “their” lives…
An interesting note…is that most of the polled people were fine with raising taxes on the above 250K crowd…a large majority
Robert G. Oler
@ sc220 “That’s the only reason it bellies up to this worthless hodgebodge of obsequious pork-ladling lick-spittles”
With turns of phrase like that you should post more!!! Great!
..and my sentiments exactly.
Also, leadership regarding our future in space can come from anywhere, not just the WH. In my view NASA has never done a good job leading this conversation, rather deferring to the President. Well, what if the president is a jerk?
In the absence of leadership, the grist mill that is congress, the ‘ worthless hodgebodge of obsequious pork-ladling lick-spittles’ will gladly screw it all up.
..and so they have.
NASA Fan wrote @ March 3rd, 2011 at 7:14 am
“..and so they have.”
Well no they haven’t. You might think they have but the bigger picture is that they are causing a delay that is being used to worthwhile effect by commercial entities such as SpaceX, Orbital, Boeing and Bigelow for leo while sub-orbital is also taking off with contracts being signed for rides up to perform micro-gravity science experiments.
So I don’t mind if it goes on a bit longer since it’s actually contributing to a much needed change in the whole arena of spaceflight.
BTW NASA seems to have worn out the patience wrt the JWT. No additional funding so the timelines getting stretched with more problems (pixel degradation) cropping up. Pity, I think the telescope and the science community deserves better.
VirgilSamms – you would be correct if Sidemount, which isn’t the worse HLV option out there (especially in a cargo-only configuration), can “come to market” in the same fashion as ATK claims they can offer Liberty.
Using Concorde as a parallel, why does anyone believe there will be a sub-orbital market, when The airways utilizing Concorde could not pull in customers for 10,000 a whack? Concorde cruised at 60,000 ft at the aspeed of a bullet, yet onlythe rich flew on it. Even when it first began service, at 2,000 a ticket, few flew in it due to cost. I dont think the average man or woman will be counted in on all of this commercial hanky panky!
Visit the back-up Skylab (on display at the NASM) and you’ll see it was more than an ‘empty’ S-IVB.
When you compare what was achieved with a single Saturn V and Skylab, with the absurd, pointless, 20 year odyssey we are on with ISS, you can only wonder, “What happened to the future?”
“Using Concorde as a parallel…”
Dennis, could you point me to anything that shows how the Concorde provided a zero-g experience for its passengers?
I didn’t think so.
Im sure if it was desired, Concorde could have done just that. Doesnt NASA have the vomit comet???? Which was a 707 that would climb and take a nose dive to imitate zero G?
My point with the Concorde was the price was alot lower than these commcial companys are offering, and you could fly to the edge of space. Not enough flew on Concorde to make Air France and British Airways keep it going, so it fell to economics. The hull on her would expand a foot while in flight at supersonic speeds. She was an incredible machine. So Im wondering how many will fly the new sub-orbital craft, if not many flew Concorde? Certainly not we poor folk!~
amightywind wrote @ March 3rd, 2011 at 2:58 pm
Agreed. Was thumbing through some volumes of Skylab research just last month. Amazing effort on several fronts. It was an impressive program for its era given it was in orbit all of 15 years after Mercury (using SX-70 cameras for some imaging was quaint.)The research was quite good, including the unexpected addition of respurceful, on orbit ”fix-its.’ There are 12 people at the ISS now and the taxpayers of the United States have no idea what they’re doing other than unloading supplies… and have had not been adequately informed as to anything accomplished aboard it. But it has been a superb 20 year ‘works program’ for the aerospace industry. But the gravy train is ending.
“Robert G. Oler wrote @ March 3rd, 2011 at 5:54 am
Egad wrote @ March 2nd, 2011 at 6:29 pm
>And Dragon can do a lunar mission with kits.
Interesting. What would be needed?…”
A ECS. And a Soyuz.
Skylab was an empty SIVB.
It was filled with a lot of stuff and I never said it was a wet workshop- it was a “dry” workshop. A converted empty stage. Pay attention. I said “just an empty SIVB” to illustrate what an empty stage can do compared to multi-million dollar custom built ISS….metal cans that are not much different than an empty rocket stage.
Von Braun wanted a little more money to modify the S-II so it would stay attached to skylab. It would have been really really big; like floating around in a movie theater. This is the kind of stuff you can do with an HLV for pennies compared to the pieced together junkpile called the ISS.
You can’t do it with hobby rockets for billionaire tourists. Or maybe Bigelow will pull it off with his blow-up tents. I am skeptical of inflatables. Not only do they offer zero micrometeorite shielding, but they will deteriorate much faster than hard structures and have a short life.
However, just to prove to all you regulars I have no “hidden agenda” and I am not “narrow minded”; I am impressed with the possibility of filling up an inflatable with water for radiation shielding. 14 feet of moonwater massing about 500 tons would be a true radiation sanctuary from an possible solar storm and from long term cosmic ray brain damage. And then there is the Medusa concept, which is a woven alloy parachute used to derive thrust from nuclear plasma pulse units (bombs). So these little rockets that private space enthusiasts are so obsessed with could possibly put “Jetson” type spaceships together. But it would be far more trouble and expense in the long run than using HLV’s and more conservative hardware.
“Im sure if it was desired, Concorde could have done just that.
I do not believe that the Concorde was built for parabolic arc flights, and doubt that the engineer would have signed off on it.
Do you think the Zero-G Corporation is hurting for customers? It doesn’t take the massive expense of a Concorde to provide weightlessness in 20 second chunks. If that’s what you want, you can buy it for $5,000
However, there’s a big difference between 20 seconds of weightlessness in a parabolic flight and the several minutes of weightlessness achieved in a suborbital flight a la XCOR or Virgin Galactic.
What you “think” about the potential market is of little value. These companies have sold tickets and have closed their relative business cases to the satisfaction of their investors.
For heaven’s sake Dennis, get a grip. Comparing Concord with the current sub-orbital efforts is simply insane. They are designed for totally different things. Besides which, the sub-orbital designs aren’t even in production and operation, yet there are contracts being signed and markets emerging.
New technology often creates markets simply by providing something that didn’t exist previously. Look at Apple and their products if you want examples.
“Using Concorde as a parallel, why does anyone believe there will be a sub-orbital market,”
There is at least a small market for sub-orbital tourism, since Virgin has already has 390 customers lined up. There is also presumably a fair sized market for people who want to experience weightlessness, as the Zero-G Corporation is still in business and a statement on their website claims they have flown “thousands” Jeff also discusses growing interest in commercial sub-orbital in a recent Space review article. I’m not saying the markets will be huge, but they could very well be profitable.
Concorde’s problems were not really high ticket price. In fact high ticket prices are the reason it survived the 80ies. The Original concord was to be a fast every man’s plane but they soon realized that it couldn’t compete in that market but there was a market of people who could afford $10,000 tickets and would be willing to pay it.
With subsidies the companies that ran it made a profit. The problem of Concorde was that it was limited in what routes it could do both by its sonic boom and its fuel thirstiness and it carried too few passengers. This doomed it in comparison to other aircraft.
Concorde was fast but limited to over ocean routes. It could not do many pacific routes like LA to Tokyo without refueling and it subsonic completion the 747 could carry almost three times as many passengers while using less fuel.
With commercial space travel there isn’t much completion at the moment.
VirgilSamms wrote @ March 3rd, 2011 at 7:10 pm
“I said “just an empty SIVB†to illustrate what an empty stage can do compared to multi-million dollar custom built ISS….metal cans that are not much different than an empty rocket stage.”
Skylab was not “an empty stage” – it was a retrofitted empty stage that was filled up with equipment, systems and supplies. Even so, Skylab had a lot of wasted volume.
What I don’t understand is why you think it is so much better than the ISS? Skylab had 1/3 the interior volume (only 1/5 the mass), was not expandable, and was limited by 60’s era technology. It was a great first effort at a space station, but the knowledge we learned from it has been applied to the ISS.
Space technology has evolved – it’s time for you to do the same…
I will ask, you gentlemen, how many of you would pay the 200,000 for a sub-orbital lob? My response to the 0-G comment was that probably any jet can nose into a weightless effort so why pay 200,000 for that? I hope all of you are right and that we dont see these enterprises fail. Plus dont get me wrong I am for commercial efforts at space travel. I am, as stated before also for Deep Space Exploration, which our government can pull off. As yet no one and I repeat no one, has been flown to orbit on a commercial craft. I do believe they can do it, why not, even if they are using early Mercury type systems, afterall they are drawing off old tech here. Things that have already been done. I am glad that Musk praised NASA for all its help. I think without NASA, Musk would have been hurting.
I will ask, you gentlemen, how many of you would pay the 200,000 for a sub-orbital lob?
What difference does it make? We’re not the initial market. By the time we fly, it will cost much less.
My response to the 0-G comment was that probably any jet can nose into a weightless effort so why pay 200,000 for that?
That foolish response is because you don’t know anything at all about it. The longest period of weightlessness you can get in a subsonic aircraft is less than half a minute, and it’s not very good quality. Suborbitals can do three or four minutes or more, at very high quality. Comparing them to aircraft is ludicrously ignorant.
Dennis Berube wrote @ March 4th, 2011 at 7:32 am
“My response to the 0-G comment was that probably any jet can nose into a weightless effort so why pay 200,000 for that?”
You keep forgetting that the highest point of a Virgin Galactic ride takes you to the edge of space, which “any jet” won’t.
That is the experience that Virgin Galactic is selling, and they think they will find enough people who can afford the trip, plus be a profitable business. Time will tell if they succeed, and while they’re doing it, they are stimulating the economy. Win Win
Dennis Berube wrote @ March 4th, 2011 at 7:32 am
“I am glad that Musk praised NASA for all its help. I think without NASA, Musk would have been hurting.”
This seems like a backward comment to me.
In reality, Musk never would have attempted the business if there wasn’t the existing huge amount of research, technology and experience available to private individuals and companies. NASA was responsible for some of it, and the DoD certainly funded their share, but it’s the totality of civilizations progress that Musk drew upon.
To assume that they only relied on NASA is short-sighted, just as it’s short-sighed to assume that NASA doesn’t rely on the innovations of their contractors for the majority of their technology. What NASA does best is cutting edge research, but there is a huge amount of work that goes into turning research into real-world applications, and NASA does not do much of that.
@ Dennis Berube wrote @ March 4th, 2011 at 7:32 am
“As yet no one and I repeat no one, has been flown to orbit on a commercial craft.”
This is getting ridiculous. Do you know who built Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Shuttle? Come on think harder than that.
So these little rockets that private space enthusiasts are so obsessed with could possibly put “Jetson†type spaceships together. But it would be far more trouble and expense in the long run than using HLV’s and more conservative hardware.
Straw man, no one here is proposing that. The very small launch vehicles are intended to reduce launch prices for people by enough to make commercial manned spaceflight a reality and to reduce launch prices for propellant (or water, polyethylene slabs, etc) by enough to make large scale exploration affordable to government space agencies. Launching spaceships would be a job for EELV class vehicles, which counts as conservative hardware.
Also, conservative vs synergy with commercial spaceflight is a false dichtotomy. We can do extensive exploration and have enormous synergy with commercial manned spaceflight with use of very conservative hardware. It’s a myth that the choice is between HLV and lot of R&D – not that lots of R&D would be a bad idea or anything.
“I am glad that Musk praised NASA for all its help. I think without NASA, Musk would have been hurting.”
Why do you persist with idea that somehow NASA is an independant enity devoid of it’s ownership?
NASA and EVERYTHING it does is the property of the people of the USA. That includes American business. It is mandated to push it’s technology into the American economy through American businesses.
There shouldn’t be a thank you to NASA for doing what they are mandated to do. The idea that NASA tries to roadblock commercial development of what they preceive as THEIR business is the crime.
NASA should have been buying commercial seats 30 years ago, if they had we wouldn’t have the mess we have to deal with now.
“What I don’t understand is why you think it is so much better than the ISS?- Space technology has evolved – it’s time for you to do the same…”
Skylab was launched in one afternoon. That fact alone makes it better than the monstrous farce called ISS. You need to think about that before giving others inferior advice about inferior launch vehicles.
I can’t wait until we build trucks big enough to haul 100 story sky scrapers to the building site and then have one super crane set it up. Gosh just think, we could do away with all those 20 ton 18 wheelers, that is so freakin inefficient. Just build one MONSTEROUS semi truck 1000 foot long and drive that skyscraper into downtown manhatten and set em up.
VirgilSamms wrote @ March 5th, 2011 at 8:03 pm
“Skylab was launched in one afternoon.”
Gee, is that your measure of success for a space station?
I think most people would say it’s the amount of work that can be done, not that it took one launch to put it in space.
By that measure you’ll never be able to build something bigger than your largest available launcher, so I guess you don’t want rotating space stations or lunar cities to get built?
Using that logic, we would never live in houses bigger than tractor trailers.
I’m glad I don’t live in your world, and I’m also glad the world ignores your advice.
Coastal Ron wrote @ March 6th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
You’d do well to bone up on Skylab. It makes the ISS look like a two decade porkfest.
“Just build one MONSTEROUS semi truck 1000 foot long and drive that skyscraper into downtown manhatten and set em up.”
Another stupid analogy. They are endless. It is not downtown manhattan and they are not semi-trucks. Nowhere close. Try again.