Earlier this week reporter Leon Bibb of Cleveland’s WEWS-TV briefly interviewed President Obama at the White House. About halfway through the wide-ranging ten-minute interview, Bibb asked Obama about the future of NASA, with a particular emphasis on the future of the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “With the space shuttle program cutting back now, or ending, after this next flight, what do you tell people at Glenn Research Center?” asked Bibb. “Will there be a need for the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland? And can they count on the White House standing behind NASA staying in Cleveland?”
Obama’s response, while not making any news with respect to the administration’s space policy, shows that the president continues to put an emphasis on technology development for NASA, while indirectly reassuring the local audience he has not plans to close Glenn:
Well, I believe in the space program. Look, I’m turning 50 in about a month and a half. But, that means that I grew up being inspired by Apollo and the Moon landing. So the key, even though the space shuttle is phasing out, is, what’s that next big leap? And that’s going to require research. That’s exactly part of our plan is to make sure that we’re researching new fuel, new mechanisms to allow for long-term space flight. There’s some additional technological leaps that we have to make because, basically, we’re using the same technologies that we were using back in the 60s, in a lot of cases. That’s why a research facility of NASA’s is going to continue to be critical because we want to find what are those next technological leaps that will take us not just to the Moon, but take us to Mars and beyond.
In space as in most other areas of policy, Obama has shown an inverse Midas touch. At some point you have to tune out Obama’s platitudes. His actions shows him to be hostile to NASA. The pablum about technology is amusing. Obama’s NASA is poised to make the same technological leaps that his car companies, meaning none. If he balks at 60’s technology, one wonders if he has looked under the hood of a Falcon 9?
At least this President proposed a budget that was in line with what he asked the Agency to do.
At least this President proposed a budget that was in line with what he asked the Agency to do.
Yes. What is disturbing is how little the President asked NASA to do.
“His actions shows him to be hostile to NASA.”
Providing the agency with $1 billion in Recovery Act funds is not an action “hostile to NASA”.
Stabilizing the agency’s budget at $18.7 billion when other departments and agencies are being cut is not an action “hostile to NASA”.
Taking political heat so that technically crippled programs that are overruning their budgets by tens of billions of dollars and more than a decade behind schedule can be terminated is not an action “hostile to NASA”.
Continuing to invest many billions of taxpayer dollar annually in civil human space flight despite these failures is not an action “hostile to NASA”.
“Obama’s NASA is poised to make the same technological leaps that his car companies, meaning none.”
If Congress forces NASA to spend tens of billions of dollars on an SLS that merely rearranges Shuttle elements into a bigger, more expensive HLLV, instead hundreds of millions to single billions that the Administration wants to spend on actual technological breakthroughs in propellant management, in-space propulsion, and other areas, then yes, NASA is not “poised to make… technological leaps”.
“If he balks at 60′s technology, one wonders if he has looked under the hood of a Falcon 9?”
Falcon 9 employs all friction stir welded aluminum lithium propellant tanks. That technology did not exist in the 1960s.
The Falcon 9 interstage uses carbon fiber composite structure. That technology did not exist in the 1960s.
The Merlin engine uses kerosene from its turbopump as the working fluid for its hydraulic actuators. No rocket engine that I’m aware of did that in the 1960s.
Falcon 9 incorporates GPS signals into its avionics processing. That obviously did not exist in the 1960s.
Don’t make a stupid statements out of ignorance.
Sigh…
Forget it Tom, it’s Chinat-er amightwind.
Mighty’s convinced that NASA’s current predicament is the result of the last three years Obama’s been in office as opposed to the previous three decades of Congressional apathy and mismanagement of our space program and nothing anyone could say will ever dissuade him from that delusion.
“At least this President proposed a budget that was in line with what he asked the Agency to do.”
The last President did, too. But unfortunately the Bush II Administration picked Griffin to replace O’Keefe when he left for LSU and gave Griffin free reign to run the VSE in the ground with a budgetarily unexecutable Constellation program elements (Ares I, Orion, and Ares V).
FWIW…
Fair enough, Tom.
“the Bush II Administration picked Griffin to replace O’Keefe when he left for LSU and gave Griffin free reign to run the VSE in the ground with a budgetarily unexecutable Constellation program elements”
Griffin had lots of support and help from NASA managers who either were genuinely stupid or who dared not tell the emperor he had no clothes. I’m not sure which. Either way, most of the same NASA people are still running the show despite the fact that Griffin is gone.
One day we’ll get a President who is truly hostile to NASA. Then you’ll see the O haters cry bitter tears over their partisan hackery. Or they’ll just move on to the next talking point. Whichever furthers their incoherent lunacy the most.
@Major Tom
1. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to build a heavy lift vehicle. In fact, HLVs have probably been the most thoroughly researched vehicle by NASA during the last 40 years with thousands of studies done over and over and over again. And believe it or not, we actual built a heavy lift vehicle back in the 1960s using primitive mid-20th century technology. So its time to build one already! But if you think a company like Boeing can’t build rockets anymore (I guess you only think Space X can:-) then I’d have to disagree with you.
2. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to return to the Moon.
3. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to produce lunar water by heating lunar regolith that contains large quantities of ice
4. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen for air and fuel through electrolysis
5. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to shield a lunar habitat from galactic radiation with 5 meters of lunar regolith.
Dennis Wingo has a pretty good piece at SpaceRef which in my view sort of sums things up…
I frankly dont understand most Obama critiques on Space policy.
Mark Whittington, who excuses every single Bush failure (or blames it on Dems) and who at one point was a supporter of just about everything Obama is proposing (he supported the concepts in print in a Weekly Standard Article July 1999…I wrote it Kolker edited it and Mark asked to have his name put on it, Whittington contributed nothing else (and took part of the payment for the article)…Whittington wrote this on his blog:
“Sadly, Obama ended (or tried to end) Constellation in a fit of caprice and did not subtitute anything subsantial aside from a crony capitalist, space industrial policy style commercial space program and a vaguely defined mission to an asteroid. Wingo and other defenders of Obamaspace need to face up to the fact that we are not only on the wrong path, we are not on any path at all.”
The statement of facts Whittington makes are almost all wrong; but so are his conclusions (and those of Winds and others ON THIS BLOG).
1. Cx was not fixable. To fix Cx there were one of three paths. Throw enormously MORE money at the program and let things just continue on as they were. The second was to try and revamp the existing program to burn less money for a similar result; but there has never been a single NASA program in HSF (or really uncrewed flight that has succeeded at this)…or substantially change the program to make it affordable.
Only the last method is viable; but how easy would that have been? Cx was a house of cards held together by the political support that various “stakeholders” cranked up. THESE STAKEHOLDERs included actual “crony capitalist” for there is no other way to describe ATK or Lockmart or USA (which doubtless was going to “operate” Cx for NASA much as it does the shuttle).
Whittington hurls “crony capitalist” (and Wind uses similar phrases) at groups like SpaceX…while all the time supporting the cronies at ATK…If Cx for instance was revamped to use existing launch vehicles then the support of ATK and hence the UTAH congressional delegation would vanish.
Go look at the discussions on the Senate Launch System. The “Stakeholders” are for the most part the crony capitalist companies that generate the political support.
The “logic” that somehow commercial crew and supply are “crony capitalism” somehow seems to falter when Whittington, Wind etc cannot define how the folks in the Cx program WERE NOT “CC’s”
If one cannot reform the entire program or remake it to eliminate the high dollar expenditures; there are no other options left other then just continue as before…and it is clear thanks to the economic condition of The Republic; more money is not an option.
Second the “no destinations” makes no sense. In just a revenue sense; there are far more vehicles returning revenue to the folks who made them and bought them in orbit around the Earth, then around or ON the surface of any other “body” in the solar system. Unless one is willing to simply buy into the notion of “human exploration of space because it is a cool thing to do (or it fits the ego, or makes the US look tough)” then it is absurd to think that human spaceflight can justify its cost (which will be far higher on the Moon) per value on the Moon or other body then it can in Earth orbit.
“going around in circles” is a goofy phrase. The only things that make money in space OR justify their existence in value for cost are vehicles that “go around in circles” around the Earth.
What Obama’s policy does (and Whittington use to support) is try and make hsf a for profit activity. If it cannot be done in Earth orbit…it cannot be done…and if it cannot be done; then humans will never leave on a semi or permanent basis…Earth orbit.
NASA has grown incompetent in engineering and management in the last 30 years, and in the last 40 years no one has invented a reason to return to the glory years of the 60’s and have a program whose only value for cost; was the PR it had.
It is those who support what has failed in the past who should justify trying it again.
Robert G. Oler
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ June 9th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
“1. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to build a heavy lift vehicle. ”
No we don’t. We can build them just as expensively as we used to, or planned to do with Ares V. Might need a high tech printing press to turn out money fast enough, though.
“2. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to return to the Moon.”
See above.
“3. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to produce lunar water by heating lunar regolith that contains large quantities of ice”
Except that the lunar regolith you’re working on is in cold traps that are probably at 30-50K. Got a bulldozer that works in those temperatures? Got a space suit that does? Brrr. Yeah, just build a fire.
“4. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen for air and fuel through electrolysis”
And off the oxygen and hydrogen drift, into the sky, because you don’t know how to store them. A big balloon? Maybe. Liquifaction? Well, we’ve never done that in a space environment, much less a lunar one. Once you do, what long-lived low-loss cryo storage system are you going to use to hold them? Oh, the ones that we’re so desperate to make technology investments for in space?
“5. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to shield a lunar habitat from galactic radiation with 5 meters of lunar regolith.”
Nope. As long as you get someone with that lunar bulldozer, drill, and brick factory to help you, or who understands the properties of the deep regolith well enough to trust lunar lava tubes, and knows how to reinforce them. Natch.
@Marcel:
you also don’t need an HLV for any of your points 2-5 either…
“1. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to build a heavy lift vehicle. In fact, HLVs have probably been the most thoroughly researched vehicle by NASA during the last 40 years with thousands of studies done over and over and over again. And believe it or not, we actual built a heavy lift vehicle back in the 1960s using primitive mid-20th century technology.”
Advances are required if the HLLV is going to be built within a reasonable time and operated effectively within the budget runout available for SLS in NASA’s budget.
“But if you think a company like Boeing can’t build rockets anymore (I guess you only think Space X can:-) then I’d have to disagree with you.
I don’t think that. I don’t that an SLS can be built affordably by Boeing or anyone else if they’re constrained to Shuttle elements and workforce and Ares contracts. But I’m sure Boeing could build an affordable HLLV absent those constraints.
Look, Ares I was a Shuttle-derived, intermediate-lift (~25ton) launch vehicle. It’s total development costs were exceeding $20 billion before Constellation was shut down. SLS is a heavy-lift (70-130 ton) launch vehicle, much harder than Ares I. But SLS only has about $13 billion, 35% less than Ares I’s cost before shutdown, available for development. If SLS has to use Shuttle elements, the Shuttle workforce, and Constellation contracts like Ares I did, there is no hope that this 3-5x larger, more complex vehicle can be completed for a 35% less dollars.
Based on its budget and requirements, SLS requires a new technical base.
“3. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to produce lunar water by heating lunar regolith that contains large quantities of ice.
4. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen for air and fuel through electrolysis”
5. You don’t need any technological breakthroughs to shield a lunar habitat from galactic radiation with 5 meters of lunar regolith.”
Sure you do. Where are you going to look for this lunar ice, specifically? At what longitude/latitude? At what depth? What advances are needed to find out? Are these locations lit or permanently dark?
How are you going to collect this lunar ice? Microwave heating? Drilling? Dozing/scrapping? Do any of these systems exist?
And how will those collectors operate in the lunar environment? How will they be powered? Nuclear reactor? Solar? Does a space-rated reactor exist? Do space-rated solar arrays of the necessary size exist? How will the power be transmitted to the collectors? Wires or wirelessly? If wirelessly, by laser or microwave? Does such a wireless system exist? How will the collectors be controlled? Autonomously, locally directed telerobotics, Earth-directed telerobotics, other? How will the collectors deal with lunar surface temperatures over months or years of operation? How will the collectors be lubricated in this temperature environment? How will the collectors keep lunar dust out of their systems? Have we ever operated a system in such an environment for such a long time?
There are multiple, huge differences between a lunar rover that carries tens to hundreds of pounds and operates for a few days and equiment that must move and process tons and tons of regolith over months and years. We don’t have the technology for the latter.
FWIW…
“There’s some additional technological leaps that we have to make because, basically, we’re using the same technologies that we were using back in the 60s, in a lot of cases.”
Yeah? Golly Mr. President, your limo use some pretty old technologies, too– like the internal combustion engine. Maybe you outta start travelling by horseback til a cleaner, cheaper engine is invented. Then there’s that wheel thingy. Put the limo up on blocks so we can make some “technological leaps”… and reinvent it. Good grief.
The Merlin engine uses kerosene from its turbopump as the working fluid for its hydraulic actuators. No rocket engine that I’m aware of did that in the 1960s.
Actually, the F1 first implemented the idea for thrust vector control. Your knowledge of space technology is thin.
This administration is pouring $1.5-$2 billion a WEEK down a black hole called Afghanistan and the United States is getting nothing of value in return for it. Two weeks worth of that lost ‘capital investment’ — $3 to $4 billion– redirected toward NASA’s ANNUAL budget would have been a smarter, wiser investment for the United States.
President Obama was “inspired” by Apollo? Really?? President Obama wasn’t even born when Shepard flew and JFK made his lunar commitment speech; six months old when Glenn orbited in Mercury; a toddler in/out of the country when NASA was orbiting Gemini spacecraft every six weeks; was 6 for the Apollo fire; 7 for the first Apollo/Saturn launch in November, 67; was under 8 when Apollo 8 orbited the moon and Apollo 11 landed and all of 11 years old when Apollo 17 splashed down– but then he did go with his grandfather to wave at some returning Apollo crew in Hawaii– which one he has never really said. Inspired?? Doubtful.
Major Tom wrote:
The last President did, too. But unfortunately the Bush II Administration picked Griffin to replace O’Keefe when he left for LSU and gave Griffin free reign to run the VSE in the ground with a budgetarily unexecutable Constellation program elements (Ares I, Orion, and Ares V).
Well, I have to disagree with this, because if you watch the Senate Science Committee meeting (it’s on the C-SPAN web site) held two weeks after the VSE speech Senators on both sides of the partisan aisle said the estimated costs were way too low, it would be years behind and be way over budget.
There were several editorials and opinion articles around that time frame which said the same thing.
I’ve posted it several times on SpaceKSC.com under the BUSH Label link in the right column, if you wish to pursue it further.
Let’s also recall that the original VSE planned to end ISS and many other NASA missions by mid-2015 to pay for what came to be known as Constellation. That was in the Vision Sand Chart presented to the Committee that day.
The only problem is that, despite their acknowledging the cost estimates were totally bogus, the Senators seem to have approved it anyway. As usual, they didn’t care so long as the pork kept flowing to their states.
Griffin had lots of support and help from NASA managers who either were genuinely stupid or who dared not tell the emperor he had no clothes. I’m not sure which. Either way, most of the same NASA people are still running the show despite the fact that Griffin is gone.\
They were genuinely stupid, and still are.
DCSCA wrote @ June 9th, 2011 at 5:12 pm
“President Obama was “inspired†by Apollo? Really?? President Obama wasn’t even born when Shepard flew and JFK made his lunar commitment speech; six months old when Glenn orbited in Mercury; a toddler in/out of the country when NASA was orbiting Gemini spacecraft every six weeks; was 6 for the Apollo fire; 7 for the first Apollo/Saturn launch in November, 67; was under 8 when Apollo 8 orbited the moon and Apollo 11 landed and all of 11 years old when Apollo 17 splashed down– but then he did go with his grandfather to wave at some returning Apollo crew in Hawaii– which one he has never really said. Inspired?? Doubtful.”
Yeah, he didn’t even have his “inspiration license”. They wouldn’t let him buy a beer to celebrate. He couldn’t scratch his beard with pleasure. How could he have been inspired??
I know lots of elementary school kids who are completely in awe of astronauts. Yes, it’s not completely clear what makes contemporary astronauts awesome. Maybe the uniforms? The helmets? But the idea of traveling into space is pretty cool, whether you’re five years old, or fifty.
“Awe” is different from “inspiration”. That is, I doubt if their awe will automatically translate into superb performance on their STEM education tests, as many presume. Most people use the word “inspiration” without even thinking about what it means (including, I guess, Obama). It doesn’t mean much. But I see no reason at all why an elementary school kid can’t pick up on, and be hugely influenced by the surrounding excitement about a program like he described. No reason at all. Your doubt is doubtful.
Oh, and Alan Shepherd, John Glenn, and the JFK pledge weren’t Apollo. I’ll bet Obama knew that …
So can’t SLS be at least milestone driven and the prime contractor not get paid until a milestone is complete? Can vendors agree on a price for each milestone? Can they invest 5% into the development?
Did ATK make a profit on the failed Ares-I development?
@Robert G. Oler wrote @ June 9th, 2011 at 3:54 pm
“NASA has grown incompetent in engineering and management in the last 30 years…”
Management, yes. Engineering, no.
Haven’t seen any ‘private enterprised’ firms probing the distant planets with landings or flybys nor successfully orbiting crewed spacecraft let alone sending them to make lunar landings and returning them safely to the earth. NASA’s engineering is pretty good. Management- at least in the HSF/shuttle era- not so much. And the ‘for profit’ poison injected into the space agency in the Reagan days was a factior. They wanted NASA to operate like the postal service. Silly stuff. The lack of any ‘destination’ as a motivation wasn’t helpful either- at least w/t HSF crowd. ‘Going in circles’ is not very inspiring after moonshots– beginning with the group directed to operate Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz then into early shuttle. They’d done orbital flight since the Mercury days. You don’t see that ‘lack of inspiration’ in the planetary science crowd. They remain giddy with every probe and project. Such is the nature, excitement and motivation of new discoveries.
@Doug Lassiter
1. At about $500 million per HLV launch (6 launch per year scenario), I do consider that too expensive for an $18 billion a year budget.
3. There’s no weather on the Moon. So cold will really depend on how long you remain in the permanently shadowed areas. Fortunately, regolith digging machines would probably be less than an hour away from sunlight areas as they transported their loads of ice enriched dirt.
4. Its easy to store water as water or ice. And its easy to store LH2 under aluminum sun shades for several months without any significant leakage (guess you don’t believe in space depots). If you store H2 as a solid, you could store it for a couple of years without any significant leakage. But you could always manufacture the LOX/LH2 fuel just a few days before your flight back to L1.
5. In order to shield a lunar habitat all you need to do is dump dirt inside of a surrounding regolith fence or regolith boxes. Pretty simple. And with an HLV, its pretty easy to deploy the heavy moving equipment that you’ll need on the lunar surface.
Of course these things are really really really hard to do, if you really don’t want to do them like Holdren and Obama:-)
@Martijn Meijering wrote @ June 9th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
“you also don’t need an HLV for any of your points 2-5 either…”
Actually, you don’t need any vehicle if your philosophy is that there is no reason to return to the Moon as stated by President Obama and his chief science adviser, Holdren!
President Obama’s original proposals are still far better than anything that’s rolled out of Congress since.
2016 would have seen NASA much more capable with new technologies well along their way to maturity, including better and safer engines to build the super heavy lift with. Instead we will have a rocket eating NASA’s budget in development costs and after that in maintenance costs. A five year breather to develop lunar mining technologies, in orbit shuttles, fuel depots, etc. would have given the super heavy lift a purpose. Now it’s best chance to be more than a one launch wonder is if Bigelow designs a wheeled station module with the B-2100.
Congress set NASA’s horizons to low and those amazing leaps that could have been developed in a decade now recede like the finish date of the Webb Telescope.
@ Major Tom
“Advances are required if the HLLV is going to be built within a reasonable time and operated effectively within the budget runout available for SLS in NASA’s budget.”
That’s why the Congress wisely required that an HLV has to initially be able to lift only 70 tons. That’s not going to cost more than $11 billion in development cost over 5 or 6 years. And launch cost for 6 flights per year are estimated at less than $500 million per launch.
“I don’t think that. I don’t that an SLS can be built affordably by Boeing or anyone else if they’re constrained to Shuttle elements and workforce and Ares contracts. But I’m sure Boeing could build an affordable HLLV absent those constraints.”
Can’t get much simpler than a single stage LOX/LH2 booster with SSME below it and the current 4-segment SRBs strapped to the side.
“Look, Ares I was a Shuttle-derived, intermediate-lift (~25ton) launch vehicle.”
The Ares I attempted to do something that had never been done before, launch humans right on top of a solid rocket booster. Then Griffin added to the complexity by having a brand new upper stage developed in order to get the Orion into orbit. There was no logical reason to do it that way.
“It’s total development costs were exceeding $20 billion before Constellation was shut down. SLS is a heavy-lift (70-130 ton) launch vehicle, much harder than Ares I. But SLS only has about $13 billion, 35% less than Ares I’s cost before shutdown, available for development. If SLS has to use Shuttle elements, the Shuttle workforce, and Constellation contracts like Ares I did, there is no hope that this 3-5x larger, more complex vehicle can be completed for a 35% less dollars.
“NASA studies have repeatedly shown that Griffin devised the most expensive shuttle derive possible. NASA estimates that the Griffin architecture is about 40% more costly than the DIRECT type of architecture.”
“Sure you do. Where are you going to look for this lunar ice, specifically? At what longitude/latitude? At what depth? What advances are needed to find out? Are these locations lit or permanently dark?
How are you going to collect this lunar ice? Microwave heating? Drilling? Dozing/scrapping? Do any of these systems exist?
And how will those collectors operate in the lunar environment? How will they be powered? Nuclear reactor? Solar? Does a space-rated reactor exist? Do space-rated solar arrays of the necessary size exist? How will the power be transmitted to the collectors? Wires or wirelessly? If wirelessly, by laser or microwave? Does such a wireless system exist? How will the collectors be controlled? Autonomously, locally directed telerobotics, Earth-directed telerobotics, other? How will the collectors deal with lunar surface temperatures over months or years of operation? How will the collectors be lubricated in this temperature environment? How will the collectors keep lunar dust out of their systems? Have we ever operated a system in such an environment for such a long time?
There are multiple, huge differences between a lunar rover that carries tens to hundreds of pounds and operates for a few days and equiment that must move and process tons and tons of regolith over months and years. We don’t have the technology for the latter.”
That’s why you nee a heavy lift vehicle so that you don’t have to toys on the lunar surface– but real heavy earth moving equipment. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the little toys worked to:-) But you have all kinds of affordable power options from solar to nuclear. But I predict that teleoperation will probably be the primary mode for digging and transporting the powdery regolith (No logical reason, IMO, to assume that we’d be dealing with a solid surface at the poles. Its probably as powdery as the rest of the lunar surface.
But no matter how difficult it is to mine the ice at the lunar poles, I think its pretty obvious that manufacturing lunar water will be astronomically cheaper than importing it from Earth if we’re producing at least several hundred tonnes of water on the lunar surface annually. So lunar machines will have the simple task of trying to manufacture water on the Moon at less than 50 to 100 thousand dollars per kilogram.
How are you going to collect this lunar ice? Microwave heating? Drilling? Dozing/scrapping? Do any of these systems exist?
I have raised this issue several times on this forum with Anne Spudis. You would have to strip mine large areas of the moon to a depth of several meters to extract a small amount of water. Lunar ice is an interesting scientific phenomenon. It is foolish to suggest that it is a viable resource.
The Ares I attempted to do something that had never been done before, launch humans right on top of a solid rocket booster. Then Griffin added to the complexity by having a brand new upper stage developed in order to get the Orion into orbit. There was no logical reason to do it that way.
A crazy assertion. The SRB 270 times, with only 1 unfortunate SRB failure, and only when it was flown out of specifications. It is a safe, robust piece of hardware. It was imminently logical to launch crew on it. You forget that Ares I-X flew successfully. But there was nothing Ares could do to save itself. The program was left naked to the predations of the loony left after the election of 2008. And here we are.
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ June 9th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
“At about $500 million per HLV launch (6 launch per year scenario), I do consider that too expensive for an $18 billion a year budget.”
Heh. Six per year? Where do you get that number? It’ll be more like one at that cost. Don’t forget, that’s just the launcher. You’ve got to add payload costs onto that. $18B? Nope, the science and aeronautics people aren’t going to be jumping on the HLV bandwagon. The science folks can’t afford what they want to launch on an EELV (JWST? MSL?) The cost of Ares V was never really admitted by the designers, but the going number was $1B a pop. Numbers lower than that were based on silly economies of scale. The technology development that can be done is to lower that number to make BEO more than a one-shot deal.
“There’s no weather on the Moon. So cold will really depend on how long you remain in the permanently shadowed areas. Fortunately, regolith digging machines would probably be less than an hour away from sunlight areas as they transported their loads of ice enriched dirt.
You don’t have a clue, do you. You’re saying you run in, and then run out when your toes start to freeze? Wrong. Couplings, bearings, and electronics on a “digging machine” will start to chill fast. Remember, you’re picking up 30K regolith. LOTS of 30K regolith, which is going to be in intimate thermal contact with the machine. Oh, but we don’t need “technology development” to figure all that out. Hey, but put a nuke on, and keep it warm, right? Nope, because if you aren’t careful, you’ll be surrounded by clouds of evaporating water. Tech development, please.
“Its easy to store water as water or ice. And its easy to store LH2 under aluminum sun shades for several months without any significant leakage (guess you don’t believe in space depots). If you store H2 as a solid, you could store it for a couple of years without any significant leakage. But you could always manufacture the LOX/LH2 fuel just a few days before your flight back to L1.”
Simply wrong. Bad physics. Space depots far from the Earth or Moon are surrounded by cold space. You shield them from the Sun well enough, and they’ll stay cold. That’s how a space cryo depot is supposed to work. BTW, as you would know, if you knew anything about in-space cryo depot architecture, such long-lived cryo depot designs are not at TRL6. We’ve got some good ideas, but no hardware. Technology development, please. No comparison with a lunar surface system. You raise a reflective umbrella above the lunar surface and … oops, you got warm regolith underneath you, not cold space. Unless your tank is in the permanently shadowed area, which of course you can’t set up there without freezing your toes. That’s radiative equilibrium 101. Take a class.
“In order to shield a lunar habitat all you need to do is dump dirt inside of a surrounding regolith fence or regolith boxes. Pretty simple. And with an HLV, its pretty easy to deploy the heavy moving equipment that you’ll need on the lunar surface.”
Dump dirt? How do you get 5m of regolith over you by “dumping dirt”? Geez. You think the GCRs are coming at you only from the horizon? OK, you “dump dirt over a structure you’ve set up to hold it. Hmmm. A lunar surface structure that can hold a 5m layer of regolith over you? Tech development, please!
Yep, these things are really really hard to do. Not impossible, but just hard. But if you’d provide all your detailed design wisdom to NASA, we’d all be grateful. You just can’t call it technology development when you do.
“I believe” the President needs to slow down his rate of speech, so that his voice will be lower, and he will sound more”Presidential”.
“I believe” he needs to watch how Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones do it.
“I believe” that that may help to deal with some of the nonsense that gets written about what he actually says and does.
Sometimes you have to make it really simple as well. For example:
“”I believe” a strong space program is good for our country”,
strikes me as stronger and clearer than ” “I believe” in space”.
But then with my stroke I’m lucky if I can type a simple note nowdays.
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ June 9th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
“Pretty simple.”
Sounds like you’re taking a page out of the Safe, Simple, Soon Ares I book, and we all know how far over-budget, and vastly-overschedule that was (safety was questionable too regarding vibration).
All of the lunar technologies you describe have NOT been created and tested in situ. As NASA engineers have found with the Urine Processor Assembly (UPA) on the ISS, is that despite 30 years of development, the vapor compression distillation technology they used didn’t work right when they turned it on in zero-G. And that is just one small technology that would be needed for a full-up colony doing resource extraction on the Moon.
One-atmosphere equipment that depends on one-gravity processes in relatively benign temperature environments, do not automatically work in environments where the temperature swings between -153 and 107C, there is a hard vacuum, and a surface gravity of 0.165 g. I don’t know of any manufacturing or process engineer that would call that “simple”.
But if you think it is “simple”, then the path for you is clear. Do what Elon Musk has done, and create a company to address the market demand you foresee, and the market solutions that are so “simple”. Musk turned $200M in investment into a $2B order backlog for med-heavy rockets – what could you do?
I want to point out that for all the failings of NASA management, I have been impressed many times by the actual people who keep the shuttle flying safely, the USA techs and engineers. There is not one flight that would have made it had not literally hundreds of people accurately performed complicated tasks requiring craftsmanship, judgement and particularly vigilance. They have solve numerous problems and after almost every mission they have come up with improvements. At this point we have the only workforce in the world with person-centuries of experience in maintaining a reusable spacecraft. They have the insights that would allow a next-generation shuttle to be practical in cost and reliable and safe in operation. Of course, these are the people who are all going to be fired 30 days after wheel stop.
About freaking time, POTUS mentioned returning to the Moon. Too bad it was in a presser and not in some event at NASA HQ or a Center like KSC or MSFC.
“‘The Merlin engine uses kerosene from its turbopump as the working fluid for its hydraulic actuators. No rocket engine that I’m aware of did that in the 1960s.’
Actually, the F1 first implemented the idea for thrust vector control.”
Not from its turbopump.
Read, comprehend, and think before you post.
“Your knowledge of space technology is thin.”
This from a poster who is unaware of Al-Li alloys, friction stir welding, carbon fiber composites, and GPS?
Please… I have an elementary school nephew who knows more about rocket engine components.
Sigh…
“That’s why the Congress wisely required that an HLV has to initially be able to lift only 70 tons. That’s not going to cost more than $11 billion in development cost…”
Based on what? At 70 tons, SLS is going to be nearly three times larger than what Ares I was suppossed to be. Ares I was going to cost $20 billion-plus. As long as SLS has to use the same Shuttle elements and workforce and Constellation contracts as Ares I, there’s no way its going to cost $11 billion. We can’t buy something three times as large for nearly half the amount of money. That’s six-fold savings. There’s no way to get that level of savings without a fundamentally different technical base, a much smaller workforce, and different contractor incentives.
The SLS budget is $13 billion through 2016. Even if you disregard the numbers in the prior paragraph, NASA has already sent a letter to Congress stating that their Shuttle/Constellation-derived SLS doesn’t fit within this budget.
spacenews.com/civil/110111-nasa-heavy-lift-proposal.html
Again, there’s no way SLS will cost anything near $11 billion, $13 billion, or even $20 billion if it’s constrained to Shuttle elements and workforce and Constellation contracts.
NASA has run the experiment three times now (Shuttle, Constellation, and the latest study for Congress). The Augustine Committee ran it independently a fourth time. It doesn’t work.
“And launch cost for 6 flights per year are estimated at less than $500 million per launch.”
Based on what? The average cost to launch a Shuttle stack is $1.2-1.5 billion (not including development).
rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/04/space-shuttle-costs-1971-2011.html
With the exception of the TPS and payload containers on the orbiter, a Shuttle-derived SLS is going to retain most of the expensive, labor-intensive elements of the Shuttle stack — a cockpit and life support systems (on Orion), the ET structure and foam, the SRB construction and recovery, and the SSMEs and their testing. Worse, the SSMEs are now going to be thrown away on every launch. There’s no way NASA can cut the average launch cost by a factor of three (from $1.5 billion to $500 million) when it’s still using most of the same components.
Even if we don’t want to look at the major elements of the program, we can figure this out by looking at the budget. Maintaining the Shuttle standing army in a non-shutdown mode is $4-5 billion per year. SLS will fly a couple times a year at most. That’s a per launch cost of $2-2.5 billion, not $500 million. SLS will have to consistently launch 8-10 times per year for decades to hit a $500 million per launch cost. Shuttle only averaged 4.6 launches per year.
Moreover, the Aerospace Corporation independently costed the per flight costs for the Orion capsule at $1 billion. (See the final report of the Augustine Committee.) Even if SLS magically cost $500 million per launch, Orion is going to add another billion dollars on top of that.
“Can’t get much simpler than a single stage LOX/LH2 booster with SSME below it and the current 4-segment SRBs strapped to the side.”
You’re still using most of the expensive, labor-intensive elements of the Shuttle stack. And you’re throwing those expensive SSMEs away on every launch to boot.
And you can get much simpler by using one type of first-stage engine (as Saturn V and Falcon Heavy do) instead of two types of first-stage engines (as Shuttle, Ares V, and a Shuttle-derived SLS do). Forgoing cryogenics also simplifies engines, tankage insulation, and ground operations.
“NASA estimates that the Griffin architecture is about 40% more costly than the DIRECT type of architecture.”
Quote? Reference? Link?
“But no matter how difficult it is to mine the ice at the lunar poles, I think its pretty obvious that manufacturing lunar water will be astronomically cheaper than importing it from Earth if we’re producing at least several hundred tonnes of water on the lunar surface annually.”
It’s not obvious at all. I can put 300 tons of Earth water into space starting today with 12 Delta IV Heavy launches (25 tons per launch). At $300 million per launch, that’s $3.6 billon per year, or $36 billion over a decade to put up 3,000 tons of Earth water. Let’s round up and call it $40 billion.
Apollo, in today’s dollars, cost $170 billion. That’s more than four times as expensive as the Earth water launch scenario in the paragraph above. And Apollo didn’t develop, emplace, or operate any long-term, multi-ton mining equipment.
ISRU may make sense someday, but a lot of R&D is needed to make it competitive with Earth-launched resources.
FWIW…
“Well, I have to disagree with this, because if you watch the Senate Science Committee meeting (it’s on the C-SPAN web site) held two weeks after the VSE speech Senators on both sides of the partisan aisle said the estimated costs were way too low, it would be years behind and be way over budget.
There were several editorials and opinion articles around that time frame which said the same thing.”
I disagree. The relevant areas under the curves on the VSE sand chart (budget chart) added up to the same dollar figure as Apollo through Apollo 11 (adjusted for inflation). They were just spread out over twice the years: ~16 years (2004-2020) for the VSE versus ~8 years (1961-1969) for Apollo (no big hump in the agency’s budget).
[This may not be worth much as hearsay, but I also know from discussions with the individuals involved that their strategy was to build an Apollo-equivalent budget for the lunar effort into the VSE. They hoped the agency would innovate and achieve more than Apollo, but they wanted to make sure that NASA could at least repeat Apollo 11.]
FWIW…
The president might be weel advised to dial back on the platitudes and exercise some leadertship for a change. If he is so inspired by Apollo, perhaos he will exert himself to fixing the mess he made and put the nation’s space effort on some sort of path that goes somewhere besides into chaos.
*Yes, Oler, I am asking the POTUS to take some accountability. Sorry that distturbs you, But I am fascinating to see that I still live rent free in your head (g).)
@Doug Lassiter wrote @ June 9th, 2011 at 6:14 pm
“I know lots of elementary school kids who are completely in awe of astronauts.â€
Bet you do. However, elementary school kids in 2011, with the plethora of methods to access information, are hardly a comparison to elementary kids of Obama’s era – an era of great racial tensions in the U.S. during which black kids saw white astronauts on TV, if they owned a TV at all and bothered to watch. An era in which this writer was not that much older than Obama, but old enough to know the meat of the space race was beyond him to draw inspiration from. He’s lucky if he remembers a Star Trek episode, and that’s being generous. And bear in mind, at Cronkite’s memorial services, he made it clear that although ‘Uncle Walter’ was a part of a passing culture, he wasnt really a part of shaping his perceptions or world view– and Cronkite was America’s most popular window on the space program, including Apollo– and that window closed fast for CBS after July, ’69.
In elementary schools of that period, when the space race was ‘front page news’ and Gemini spacecraft were launched every six weeks, Obama was out of the country, too. And in the U.S. most elementary/grade schools had no practical media services to speak of for kids to use. No internet; no cellphones; no texting; no CDs, no DVDs, no VCRs, no VHS tapes, no IPods or IPhones, no laptops, no computer lab – maybe a b/w TV w/rabbit ears-rarely used, a 16 mm projector for the science teacher to show some staid movies like A is for Atom, but that’s about it. 1960′s USA elementary school systems, fella- and that’s what you saw in the good ones in the suburbs.
Most transistor radios were forbidden for use in class even with an earphone (this writer personally recalls sitting outside with a bag lunch on a June day listening to radio news reports on Gemini IV’s spacewalk between rock on WABC AM, NY). Library services were pretty sparse on the real space program as well. Lots of fiction, but not much on the real deal. There was LIFE and the Weekly Reader; some film strips, a few elementary school level books (most of which this writer has in his personal collection now) some NASA PR materials and publications which the school had to write to NASA to obtain (in the my collection as well) but not much more. There were three TV networks and print newspaper coverage. No PBS to speak of. That’s about it– unless your folks could afford a trip to the Woolworth to stock up on the Aurora/Revell version of America’s space program in various scales at what was then fairly pricey for kids. (that 1/48th Revell Gemini was $10 back in ’66.) This writer’s assignment during every elementary school years was the space program and weekly reporting to the class via news clippings was how anybody interested in ‘current events’ outside of news on Vietnam, Cassius Clay, Carl Yazstremski and Mantle’s knees was how we kept up, fella.
Bear in mind the thread of Apollo begins with JFK’s speech. You don’t read through things very well nor grasp context- and it’s spelled Shepard, not Shepherd. Every ‘inspired’ elementary school kid knew that back then along with the names of the other astronauts, dates of their flights and so on–and many have living memories of JFK– particularly 11/22/63. The infant Obama doesn’t. Bet you don’t either. And, of course, Shepard commanded 14. Bet Obama doesnt know that either– and could care less. Do the math. Obama was five and a half years old when the Apollo fire occurred. Was he even in the country then? And all of seven years old for Apollos 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11- which Cronkite covered quite well BTW. By the time he was eleven years old, 17 was splashing down. If he was ‘inspired’ he could tell us which crew he and his grandpa waved at in Hawaii. You’d remember. He doesn’t. Obama ‘inspired’ by Apollo? Quite doubtful.
Not from its turbopump.
Umm, yes, it is. Read page 3-10 where the routing of hydrolic fluid is discussed. Indeed, read the whole document so you can avoid making foolish assertions in the future.
Please stop trying to sell the Merlin as something new. Merlin is a modest replica of the F-1, at 1/15 scale.
amightywind wrote @ June 9th, 2011 at 8:59 pm
“with only 1 unfortunate SRB failure, and only when it was flown out of specifications.”
no. it was well within the specified tolerances of the SRB in terms of weather. goofy RGO
Mark R, Whittington wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 6:27 am
*Yes, Oler, I am asking the POTUS to take some accountability. ”
no that is not what you are doing. What you are doing is disagreeing with his policy, which is a policy you once supported.
A policy you once supported in print. Since Cx was a failure and there was only three ways to fix it, none of them practical I have to wonder why you oppose a policy you once supported. It can only be Obamaopposition.
RGO
DCSCA wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 7:45 am
“Bet you do. However, elementary school kids in 2011, with the plethora of methods to access information, are hardly a comparison to elementary kids of Obama’s era – an era of great racial tensions in the U.S. during which black kids saw white astronauts on TV,”
not so much.
I dont know if what The President is saying about Apollo is an accurate recollection of his childhood or not. Only he does; but his accounts are fairly plausible.
The President and I are about the same age.. Now what is different are our racial experiences (I am white grew up in Texas) and I was a space “junkie” and that combined with an early love for flying and amateur radio (my “elmer” let me help him set up a S band station to hear the S band down link of the Apollo landigns (and amazingly we could also by moonbounce here the uplink although not at the same time doppler) from the Moon. Was in fact at the ham meeting last night showing some early “Robert Oler” pictures as I “helped” (grin) Skip tune up the parametric amp (Pumped at 12 GHZ).
The racial aspect of it is interesting. I can speak to how that was in the south (the “keen minds of the south” who are now right wing GOP supporters were then right wing Dem supporters and still quite racist..check out how many of the Tea Party are non whites)…but friends who are both white and multi racial who grew up in Hawaii in that era seem to relate a different life style. There was (and is ) racism in Hawaii, but it was and is far less “hung up” on ethnic issues then the rest of the US.
All pols pad their childhood in federal government parlance it is called “puffing” (1801 USC violations not withstanding). Palin rolled out some issues about her “love” of the space program that seem well “enhanced”.
Who cares. Few of our actual presidents really did grow up in log cabins.
RGO
“A crazy assertion. The SRB 270 times, with only 1 unfortunate SRB failure, and only when it was flown out of specifications. It is a safe, robust piece of hardware. It was imminently logical to launch crew on it.”
This statement is contradictory.
Flying a single-stick SRB is flying “out of specifications” with respect to the long flight history of the Shuttle SRBs.
Flying a five-segment SRB is flying “out of specifications” with respect to the long flight history of the Shuttle SRBs.
Flying a new propellant geometry is flying “out of specifications” with respect to the long flight history of the Shuttle SRBs.
With all those changes, it was not “imminently logical to launch crew” on Ares I.
“You forget that Ares I-X flew successfully.”
No, it didn’t. The SRB casing was badly damaged on water landing due to parachute failures.
universetoday.com/43778/ares-i-x-manager-addresses-booster-damage-stage-tumbling-and-thrust-oscillation/
If we can’t recover intact SRB casings for reuse, then the cost model for Ares I falls apart. More importantly, so do the reliability and safety benefits of tracking the performance of each SRB casing from launch to launch.
And even if Ares I-X had a perfect flight, it had little relevance to Ares I. They had different numbers of segments and different propellant geometries and grains.
“But there was nothing Ares could do to save itself.”
As long as Griffin imposed crippling launch concepts that flew hardware way outside of family, the high costs of the Shuttle infrastructure and workforce, and a needlessly duplicative intermediate-class LV development, thhen yes, there was little Ares could do to save itself.
“The program was left naked to the predations of the loony left after the election of 2008.”
Predation by left or right has nothing to do with it. When a program is bleeding as badly as Constellation was, it doesn’t matter whether a wolf or lion (or a Democrat or a Republican) comes to power. The program is going to be terminated.
FWIW…
DCSCA wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 7:45 am
one more thing on this topic. I usually give both ordinary people and Presidents a pass as they relate their childhood. I know that things which I think were big deals in my childhood contemporary adults will sometimes tell me at the time were minor pertubations. There is a string line as to “how things turn out”.
What I find amazing is that people like you pick at everything Obama throws out…and give the folks you love/like a pass.
Bush the last bought a ranch so he could look like Reagan and have the Reagan image. He would spend considerable time in his Presidency at the ranch trying to be Reagan. When he left the Presidency, he sold the ranch and now lives with a restricted zone over head where he had lived most of his “adult life”…a few blocks from Mom and Dad.
Had Obama been on vacation at his “ranch” in the month before 9/11 every loser out there would be screaming for his head “wow if he had not taken all of August off on vacation and was on the job”…
You folks are goofy RGO
“Read page 3-10 where the routing of hydrolic fluid is discussed.”
First, it’s “hydraulic”, not “hydrolic”.
Second, pages 3-7 have nothing to do with the “routing of hydrolic [sic] fluid”. Pages 8-9 discuss the engine start and cutoff valves and manifolds, which do involve hydraulics but doesn’t tell us anything about the source of pressure in the hydraulic system.
Third, on page 10, it makes clear that when the F-1 engine is started, the “checkout valve moves to transfer the hydraulic fuel return from the ground line to the turbopump low pressure fuel inlet.” In flight, the F-1 derived its hydraulic pressure from the fuel pump, not the turbopump.
For the umpteenth time, read, comprehend, and think before you post.
“Indeed, read the whole document so you can avoid making foolish assertions in the future.”
Pot, kettle, black. If you’re not going to read other posters’ sources, at least read your own.
“Please stop trying to sell the Merlin as something new.”
Where have I done that? You claimed that Falcon 9 (not Merlin) incorporated no new technologies since the 1960s, and I pointed out several examples proving that’s not true, only one of which involved Merlin.
Don’t put words in other posters’ mouths.
“Merlin is a modest replica of the F-1, at 1/15 scale.”
Merlin is a pintle engine. F-1 is not. Merlin derives the bulk of its heritage from the RS-18 and Fastrac, not the F-1.
Cripes…
“The president might be weel advised to dial back on the platitudes and exercise some leadertship for a change. If he is so inspired by Apollo, perhaos he will exert himself to fixing the mess he made…”
The Obama Administration did not formulate the Constellation program. You have Griffin to blame for the tens of billions of dollars of cost growth and years of delay on Ares I/Orion and the zeroing of Ares V and Altair.
The Obama Administration is not insisting that NASA build a Shuttle-derived HLLV using Constellation contracts with less funding and schedule than was provided for the intermediate-lift, Shuttle-derived Ares I. You have Congress to blame for the SLS language in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act.
FWIW…
no. it was well within the specified tolerances of the SRB in terms of weather. goofy RGO
I refer you to Richard Feynman’s well known comments in the Roger’s Commission Report about the issue. To suggest that it was within specifications to fly the SRB’s at cold temperatures is completely crazy.
And even if Ares I-X had a perfect flight, it had little relevance to Ares I. They had different numbers of segments and different propellant geometries and grains.
Opponents of Ares I seize on these trivial details, yet ignore that SpaceX basically redesigns their systems between flights. There is no question that Ares I-X retired a great deal of risk. Intellectual dishonesty is central to the Newspace argument.
DCSCA wrote stuff @ June 10th, 2011 at 7:45 am
Sorry, but the extent to which Obama was inspired (shall we say “moved”?) by Apollo has absolutely nothing to do with his ability to memorize the names of Mercury astronauts or Star Trek episodes. Our nation accomplished a great thing with our Moon landing, and Obama just seemed to be saying that he felt that pride as an 11-year old. Maybe having spent a lot of time out of the country, he felt that pride as a human being, rather than just as an American. (Oh yes, which he is.) It’s that simple, and it seems petty to deny someone the right to say it because he may not have been a total space nerd.
Your lengthy discourse about elementary schools and information technology has nothing to do with anything. You’re saying that kids these days are “moved” by human space flight because they can dial it up on their iPads? No argument that new electronic communication easily puts this information in front of them. But it puts oodles of information in front of them, and yet they choose to be excited about this.
But I can’t understand the point that you’re trying to make. You seem to be saying that kids who were not wholly immersed in the Apollo and human space flight legends can’t have been inspired by them. That when someone like Obama uses the word “inspiration” in the context of human space flight, he can’t mean it, because only those who were thoroughly immersed in the storyline (which an 11-year old in 1969 obviously, in your view, could not have been) deserved to be. What a wonderful lesson that is to those who, these days, use “inspiration” as a rationale for human space flight. I guess that “inspiration” is for some but not others. Your argument reeks of prejudice about who gets to be inspired and who doesn’t, and who is allowed to use that word and who isn’t.
Actually, what it all comes down to is how lame an argument “inspiration” actually is, as a rationale for human space flight. Perhaps the best way to look at it is that as “inspired” as Obama was by Apollo, he decided to become a lawyer and community organizer. Oh yeah, if he was REALLY inspired, he would have become something important like an engineer or even an astronaut. Take that, Mr. President!
“I refer you to Richard Feynman’s well known comments in the Roger’s Commission Report about the issue. To suggest that it was within specifications to fly the SRB’s at cold temperatures is completely crazy.”
Yes, Feynman’s famous demonstration did indeed show that the SRB should not have been flown at that temperature. But that demonstration was AFTER Challenger blew and had NOTHING to do with the published pre-existing specifications of the SRB. And the issue here was specification. It flew inside specified temperature tolerances, but that specification was wrong. More GIGO from ablastofhotair.
Oler, you should stop misrepresenting my position. I never supported a crony capitalist, space industrial policy on the scale that the president is undertaking. That is not encouraging commercial space. That is high speed rail in space.
I certainly did not ever support the abadonment of the Moon, though I have to say that his hint of a lunar return is somewhat encouraging. But noting his track record, anything that comes out of his mouth, especially curing a presidential campaign, should be taken with a grain of salt.
“Opponents of Ares I seize on these trivial details,”
Lengthening a launch vehicle, increasing its propellant, and boosting its mass by 20-25% each are not “trivial details”. Nor is changing the grain or geometry of its solid propellant.
Goofy…
“… yet ignore that SpaceX basically redesigns their systems between flights.”
Evidence? Quotes? References? Links?
How, specifically, did SpaceX “redesign” the Falcon 9 between its first two launches? What engines and avionics were switched out? What structures and materials were altered? What dimensions were changed?
Don’t make stuff up.
“There is no question that Ares I-X retired a great deal of risk.”
Evidence? Quotes? References? Links?
What specific “great” risks did Ares I-X retire for Ares I?
Don’t make stuff up.
“Intellectual dishonesty is central to the Newspace argument.”
Doctor, heal thyself.
Sigh…
amightywind wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 11:10 am
“Opponents of Ares I seize on these trivial details…”
That the $445M Ares I-X flew no operational hardware for Ares I? You call that trivial? Boy is your sense of proportion out of whack.
“yet ignore that SpaceX basically redesigns their systems between flights”
Of course you don’t offer any proof – are you using some form of Mad Libs to make this stuff up?
“There is no question that Ares I-X retired a great deal of risk…”
The Ares 1-X flight retired no Ares I hardware risk, because there was no Ares I hardware on the Ares I-X flight. It also didn’t retire any Ares I software risk, because there was no Ares I software controlling the Ares I-X.
Oh sure it validated some software models for flight dynamics, but retired “a great deal of risk”? Only in your mind.
amightywind wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 11:10 am
.
I” refer you to Richard Feynman’s well known comments in the Roger’s Commission Report about the issue. To suggest that it was within specifications to fly the SRB’s at cold temperatures is completely crazy.”
dont be goofy the SRB was being flown well within the specs it supposedly was designed to. It did not meet those specs and NASA KNEW that it did not…but the specs were still there.
pay attention to what people write:
RGO
amightywind wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 11:10 am
“Opponents of Ares I seize on these trivial details, yet ignore that SpaceX basically redesigns their systems between flights. There is no question that Ares I-X retired a great deal of risk.”
yes there is. Cost aside, and the cost was outrageous, I am not sure that the test flight (to kind a phrase) really retired any risk
as for SpaceX…test flights with flight hardware are designed to generate changes…thats why they are called test flights and use flight hardware.
sigh
RGO
Intellectual dishonesty and partisanship is central to windy’s arguments.
I never supported a crony capitalist, space industrial policy on the scale that the president is undertaking.
Mark, we know you’re not capable of doing it in any coherent way, but could you at least attempt to explain why an open competition for a fixed-price contract with multiple bidders and providers is “crony capitalism,” but a sole-source no-bid cost-plus handout to ATK is not?
Mark R, Whittington wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 11:29 am
“Oler, you should stop misrepresenting my position. I never supported a crony capitalist, space industrial policy on the scale that the president is undertaking”
The only one misrepresenting themselves is you.
How can you get off calling the commercial space effort by this administration “crony capitalism” when you do not label the Cx program, the current attempt (and that is a kind phrase) to build a “parts” heavy lift system either pork or crony capitalism?
The commercial crew/supply effort at least had a fair and open competition for the funds. There are performance metrics for the funds, there is actual investment by the individual companies OF THEIR FUNDS…and you label this crony capitalism?
There was no (or paltry and they got it all back in cost plus) investment by the companies involved with Cx of their funds, there was no “free and fair” competition, there are no performance metrics for the companies to get the funds…and this is true for the effort to build a heavy lift…and yet you dont label this anything pejorative; indeed you support it…all while tolerating bad performance.
Obama does not abandon the moon, what he does is end a government run government mismanged program that was costing more and more every year…and which had no real way to be fixed.
What Obama is proposing is indistinguishable from the plan set forth in the Weekly STandard piece that you had your name attached to. I KNOW I WROTE IT.
There are things to be critical of this administration about, and it doesnt take to many keystrokes to figure out that I do that. BUT when I do it at least I am consistent in the argument.
For you to remain silent on the “crony capitalism” that is how NASA does its projects since Apollo and to attack the commercial programs as such is like calling Saddam Hussain Hitler, but then again you made that comparison.
Why have you not called Cx “crony capitalism”?
Robert G. Oler
yes there is. Cost aside, and the cost was outrageous, I am not sure that the test flight (to kind a phrase) really retired any risk
Considering that opponents of Ares I claimed that the rocket would collide with the launch tower, not be controllable due to length, be shaken to destruction by longitudinal vibrations, etc, the flight did indeed retire a great deal of risk. Your political zeal has clouded your engineering judgement. Your credibility suffers harm when you reject scientific truth.
If we can’t recover intact SRB casings for reuse, then the cost model for Ares I falls apart.
That fact that the shuttle has successfully recovered SRB’s over 200 times means nothing? The parachute system for the Ares stage needs refinement. It is not a show stopper by any means. We are still waiting for even the attempt to recover and reuse an F9 first stage. MUsk’s cost estimates depend on it.
In flight, the F-1 derived its hydraulic pressure from the fuel pump, not the turbopump.
From the diagram on page C-9 you see that both the oxygen pump and fuel pump are driven by the same turbine, right? The hydrolic head used to gimble the engine is generated by the pump turbine, the turbopump. Keep trying. I am sure you can find some novelty on the Merlin. But be careful, because I am here ready to call bulls**t when you try to mislead us again.
We are still waiting for even the attempt to recover and reuse an F9 first stage. MUsk’s cost estimates depend on it.
No, they don’t. Are you lying, or ignorant?
Are you lying, or ignorant?
I read it here.
“In addition, SpaceX is assuming it will save money by achieving high reuse rates for its boosters when it has yet to recover, much less reuse, boosters from Falcon 9 launches.”
amightywind wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
I wrote:
yes there is. Cost aside, and the cost was outrageous, I am not sure that the test flight (to kind a phrase) really retired any risk
You in part replied (will this is the reply to something I wrote)
“Considering that opponents of Ares I claimed that the rocket would collide with the launch tower, not be controllable due to length, be shaken to destruction by longitudinal vibrations, etc, the flight did indeed retire a great deal of risk. Your political zeal has clouded your engineering judgement. Your credibility suffers harm when you reject scientific truth.”
The vibration issue is still quite open. As for science truth…LOL are you the same wind who had the FAlcon 9 second stage not making it into orbit? LOL
RGO
amightywind wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 2:17 pm ..
SpaceX’s cost estimates, the ones on their web site by the link you posted clearly do not depend on recovering the first stage RGO
“In addition, SpaceX is assuming it will save money by achieving high reuse rates for its boosters when it has yet to recover, much less reuse, boosters from Falcon 9 launches.â€
Of course it will save money if they can recover the stage — that’s why they want to do it. But you said his prices are dependent on it. They are not. You just made that up, as you do most of your nonsense. If they do it, it simply increases their profit margin (or allows them to further reduce prices).
But that demonstration was AFTER Challenger blew and had NOTHING to do with the published pre-existing specifications of the SRB.
Roger Boisjoly raised objections the day before the flight. The management chain actively chose to ignore. The history is well recorded.
But you said his prices are dependent on it. They are not. You just made that up
I have cited a reference in an effort to defend my assertion. You have made an unfounded accusation. Have you ever wondered how SpaceX can offer a price of a little more that 1/3 that of an Atlas? I do. Musk’s answers don’t add up.
“Considering that opponents of Ares I claimed that the rocket would collide with the launch tower, not be controllable due to length, be shaken to destruction by longitudinal vibrations, etc, the flight did indeed retire a great deal of risk… Your credibility suffers harm when you reject scientific truth.”
If you think these are real Ares I risks, Ares I-X didn’t retire any of them. Ares I-X used Atlas V avionics, not Ares I avionics, to control the test flight. And with only four SRB segments burning, the vibrations induced by the Ares I-X first-stage engine were completely different from the vibrations induced by the five SRB segments that were going to burn on the Ares I first-stage.
Moreover, your statement is contradictory. If you don’t think these are real risks, then Ares I-X was a waste of money, testing for issues that aren’t real.
You can’t have it both ways.
“That fact that the shuttle has successfully recovered SRB’s over 200 times means nothing?”
No. The Ares I-X first-stage was heavier than the Shuttle SRBs. The five-segment Ares I first-stage was going to be even heavier.
“The parachute system for the Ares stage needs refinement.”
No. The Ares I parachute system was not a minor advance requiring mere “refinement”. It was the largest parachute _ever_ manufactured and pushed the limits of parachute technology.
nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/cluster_chute.html
“It is not a show stopper by any means.”
As Ares I-X showed us, there is no guarantee that a parachute system of that scale was going to work routinely. It is well outside the Shuttle SRB experience.
“We are still waiting for even the attempt to recover and reuse an F9 first stage.
They’ve both been expected failures, but SpaceX has attempted to recover the Falcon 9 first-stage on its first two launches. Space X doesn’t expect to fully recover the first-stage until the sixth launch of Falcon 9.
nasaspaceflight.com/2009/01/musk-ambition-spacex-aim-for-fully-reusable-falcon-9/
Don’t make stuff up.
“MUsk’s cost estimates depend on it.”
Musk has stated that he personally thinks SpaceX will have failed if the company doesn’t achieve reusability. But the prices advertised for Falcon 9 (or the lower costs for Falcon Heavy) are not dependent on reusability.
“From the diagram on page C-9″
There is no page C-9.
“But be careful, because I am here ready to call bulls**t when you try to mislead us again.”
How? By making up page numbers in your references?
Ohhh… I’m so scared.
Oy vey…
@Robert G. Oler wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 9:50 am
Yes, much, particularly in comparison with elementary school children of the 1960s to the 2011s. Night and day differences in every department whether you choose to accept it or not, particularly in terms of information access.
“Plausible?” No, it’s highly doubtful. Do the math- he was 5 to 8 years old for the meat of it– a toddler– and it was over by the time he was 11… barely out of diapers for Gemini. And he was in and out of the country as well and his only plausible account recollected is waving at a returning Apollo crew with his granddad in Hawaii– a crew he has not named because he doesn’t recall which flight. Bet you’d remember which crew. Doesn’t wash. Obama “inspired” by Apollo? Very doubtful. But then he’s a politician and prone to exaggerate- or lie to his audience and in this case, it was Cleveland TV with worried workers at GRC hanging on every word.
@Doug Lassiter wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 11:20 am
“Your lengthy discourse about elementary schools and information technology has nothing to do with anything. ”
In fact, it does, particularly w/respect to President Obama. O’s endless reiterations on the value of education and the role it played in his life- his mother was reading to him before dawn and so on– should tip you off to that. If you want to believe the political BS that as a 5 to 8 year old he was ‘inspired’ by Apollo then you’re an easy mark. And Obama wasn’t aged 11 for Apollo 11 in ’69… he was a month away from turning 8 years old. My own younger brother was 11 years old in 1969 and had zero interest in Apollo; but he did care about his Huffy bike and the Mets- chiefly their baseball cards.
Obama’s bogus ‘inspiration’ BS to a Cleveland TV audience just doesn’t fit with flavor of those times for a black kid in his economic and social situation. And most black kids knew their parent(s) were infuriated by Apollo as a massive waste. Witness Abernathy at the 11 launch.
Do the math. Obama’s misleading you. He all but stated it at Cronkite’s memorial service. But if it makes you happy, believe him, but he’s fooling you– and you’re fooling yourself, otherwise he’d have found a way to make Constellation work, not show up at KSC and read a staff recommendation on 4/15/10 . He has no interest in space. He flipped his position on it while campaigning and when he makes any reference to it today, even as a metaphor (the ‘sputnik moment’ thingy) it falls flat.
I have cited a reference in an effort to defend my assertion.
It did not support your assertion. Only an illogical loon would imagine that it did.
Robert G. Oler wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 10:04 am
What I find amazing is that people like you pick at everything Obama “throws out…and give the folks you love/like a pass.”
Nonsense. But then, Obama is the President and placed himself in the arena of criticism. If he, or you, can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
“I have cited a reference in an effort to defend my assertion.”
The “reference” doesn’t “defend” your “assertion”. Your assertions were that: “We are still waiting for even the attempt to recover and reuse an F9 first stage. MUsk’s [sic] cost estimates depend on it.” The reference you cited states that: “In addition, SpaceX is assuming it will save money by achieving high reuse rates for its boosters when it has yet to recover, much less reuse, boosters from Falcon 9 launches.â€
Achieving savings from reusability (your citation) is not the same thing as making cost estimates dependent on reusability or attempting recovery and reusability (your assertions).
“You have made an unfounded accusation.”
Mr. Simberg’s “accusation” was not “unfounded”. We don’t know if you’re knowingly lying or simply don’t understand the words you read, but either way, you just made up the statement that “MUsk’s [sic] cost estimates depend on it [reusability].” The reference you cited only claims that SpaceX has not achieved savings from reusability. It does not claim that SpaceX prices are dependent on reusability. Those are two different things.
Don’t make stuff up.
“Have you ever wondered how SpaceX can offer a price of a little more that 1/3 that of an Atlas? I do. Musk’s answers don’t add up.”
This is easy to understand, and it’s been repeatedly pointed out to you in prior threads. The SpaceX workforce is about 1,200 while the ULA workforce is about 3,700 (down from a high of 4,400).
dailybreeze.com/business/ci_17540847?source=pkg
space.com/9682-rocket-launch-provider-scale-workforce.html
The former is one-third of the latter. When you only have to pay one-third of the mouths to do the same job, your costs are going to be one-third that of your competitor.
Duh…
They have the insights that would allow a next-generation shuttle to be practical in cost and reliable and safe in operation.
Some of them.
Of course, these are the people who are all going to be fired 30 days after wheel stop.
Which means they could be hired for CCDev. Are you sure you aren’t mainly concerned with preserving jobs instead of promoting the cause of an RLV?
Mr Oler/ amightywind: regarding your discussion on the o rings and specs and temp. your both right: the system Had been flown within the specs up till then but …. but there wasnt a “spec” for the seals @ temp.
the issue was that the “SRM System” was “Qualified” for 40F -95F.
the actual O-rings had been tested 2or 3 times (subscale press tests at 30F and seated in time . They had several prior flights that showed the primary not sealing and significant blow by at temps in the 50’s which prompted a number of actions to investigate the cause, which were not done at the time of 51L . Nor was there a spec that tied “ambient temp” to seal performance minimums, (this is what Larry and others used to reverse the traditonal logic and asked the Thiokol folks to prove why it “wouldn’t work”) They assumed the cold soak of amb temps overnight wouldnt get the seals down to 30F . But the requirement was to be able to have a system that could fly at or above 40. So they prepared rationale (chart) to address this. But there was not a spec on Seals vs Amb temp. just seal and seating time ( a function of shore hardness, which is not a 1-1 with temp) as we all know. ( I was ET config rep at time for MMC at KSC and our office was next to Thioklos and that night I was in the room when they discussed this….since they wanted our ET concerns as well , …. i lost a good friend the next day …some things Id like to forget but cant… hopefully those managing new programs are required to read the Rogers commison and CAIB reports (which has a simialr theme only this time it was Foam not in spec but ok to fly.) and LEARN those lessons in management arrogance , Techncial honesty , and True communication: because ive met some of the new folks both in and out of Govt and they would do well to take a day or 2 and reflect on these very hard lessons . Godspeed. OF
DCSCA wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
” Do the math- he was 5 to 8 years old for the meat of it– a toddler– and it was over by the time he was 11… barely out of diapers for Gemini.”
you are happy to believe whatever you want to believe. There is no real point of disagreement here; no proof one way or the other. I told you my experience and I was similar “aged”.
One of my “I love me” pictures on the old wall is one of a very young Robert Oler, my Dad’s Skylane and Neil Armstrong and Pete Conrad at the old Spaceland airport. My Dad did not recognize them, I did. (and both were kind enough to ask me to send them the developed picture and they signed it…
I dont have any idea how the effort affected the future President, neither do you. We have to take him at his word
“But then, Obama is the President and placed himself in the arena of criticism”
lol I have no problem being critical of Presidents especially ones I did not vote for…but at least when I do it, I try and be somewhat logical about what I am doing.
Whittington and Wind and to some extent you are not. Whittington’s defining the commercial crew and resupply as “crony capitalism” is simply labeling run amock. (or if you like Star Trek Amock Time…I think thats it)…one has to be consistent. One minute Palin is arguing to go into Libya then she wants to know what the mission is…
One cannot be for Bush V Gore (or at least the majority opinion in the case) and then turn around and say “Roe was bad law”…Congressman Wiener should resign, but David Vittor (spell) can stay….
what you folks have is result oriented logic…ie if you like the result, you like the logic
RGO
amightywind wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
“. Have you ever wondered how SpaceX can offer a price of a little more that 1/3 that of an Atlas? I do”
I dont. But then again I understand why SWA can offer the fares it does and American cannot even though they are both flying the Pig.
Goofy RGO
“Roger Boisjoly raised objections the day before the flight. The management chain actively chose to ignore. The history is well recorded.”
A fact that has NOTHING to do with your assertion that the SRB flew outside of specifications. In fact Boisjoly was stating, even though the SRB was going to launch within published specs, the temperature specifications were wrong. That was Feynman’s whole point by doing the demonstration, that NASA’s published specifications were wrong.
It is amazing that you are either too stupid to know the difference between what you said earlier and what you are saying now or that you are silly enough to think the rest of us won’t realize it.
Personally, considering your ridiculous reaction and statements just after the first F9 flight, I think it is the latter. Just like earlier statements by you like: all commercial space supporters are left wing, claiming your support of Constellation is consistent with Tea Party values, etc.
You are truly our resident nutball. But what the hell, every blogs got to have one. No wonder you post under that campy pseudonym; otherwise, the humiliation would be unbearable for you.
DCSCA wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
“O’s endless reiterations on the value of education and the role it played in his life- his mother was reading to him before dawn and so on– should tip you off to that.”
Hey, that’s why W had zero enthusiasm for space, as in “walking the talk” for his VSE. It was because we never heard any “endless reiterations on the value of education” from him. Ahah! I consider myself tipped off. Eh, can’t think too much of a President who does endless reiterations on the value of education. Kids might get the wrong idea!
“If you want to believe the political BS that as a 5 to 8 year old he was ‘inspired’ by Apollo then you’re an easy mark. And Obama wasn’t aged 11 for Apollo 11 in ’69… he was a month away from turning 8 years old.”
I’m presuming you did the math when you said that he was 11 years old when Apollo 17 splashed down. Oh, but yes, he should have memorized all the Apollo astronauts in order to be qualified to be inspired, you seem to be saying.
“My own younger brother was 11 years old in 1969 and had zero interest in Apollo; but he did care about his Huffy bike and the Mets- chiefly their baseball cards.”
I never asked about your younger brother. I work routinely with ten year olds (outreach to lower-income 5th grade classes), and your younger brother wasn’t typical of the interest in space at that age these days, nor those I’m quite sure. Space is cool, but astronauts now are mainly fancy uniforms and big hair. Kids these days really aren’t interested in Huffy bikes or Mets baseball cards either.
“Obama’s bogus ‘inspiration’ BS to a Cleveland TV audience just doesn’t fit with flavor of those times for a black kid in his economic and social situation. ”
Flavor of the times? Black kid in his economic and social situation? You think Obama’s life typified the economic and social situation of black kid in the 1960s? Sounds like a racist rant to me. Oh my. Well, the private, affluent, Punahau School was deep in the black ghetto in Honolulu, wasn’t it? Now, I don’t have any insight into the views of human spaceflight by the black community in the 1960s. While you may be right about their skepticism of it, it is utterly irrelevant to this discussion.
“He flipped his position on it while campaigning”
Um no. He said during his campaigning that he was impressed by the astronauts returning from the Moon, and that’s what we’re talking about. Methinks you’re changing the subject. Can you point me to a reference where he changed his mind on being “inspired” by human space flight?
Your reluctance to accept what Obama has been saying all along about being impressed by human space flight is very peculiar. It remains to be seen whether Obama is going to “walk the talk”, but his talk is consistent and undeniable.
Deeper and deeper …
I’m writing from South Africa, with a keen interest on the endeavours of compatriot Elon Musk. That’s my bias. I consider myself a Child of Apollo and remember clearly all the commerative goodies my grandfather gave me during the Apollo program, including a book I still treasure .. “You Will Go To the Moon” by Mae and Ira Freeman.
As an outsider-looking-in it’s easy to see the angst and pain most space-fan Americans feel with the shutting down of the shuttle programme and seeming lack of direction for manned space flight going forward .. but as that outsider-looking-in observer things haven’t looked so promising in decades! Elon Musk is claiming, quite believably, that SpaceX could develop the HLV for $2.5-billion and whether or not his enterprise gets the chance to do so is not really the point … NASA itself is recognising that SpaceX’s efforts so far would have cost order of magnitude more.
Looking for a parallel, SpaceX are doing a MicroSoft on the mini and mainframe computer industry and doing it well … and in the nick of of time. Perhaps one or two of the dinospace entities will find it within themselves to respond, which can only be good for American aerospace. In that sense Obama can be said to be a genius for forcing the issue, no matter how hard the medicine is to stomach.
For a couple of years there’s likely to be some floundering but the simple truth is that SpaceX have won their COTS contract and are masters of PR and will probably soak up the PR vacuum left by the space shuttle as they progress towards a manned launch of the Dragon spacecraft. I’d take a ride on the next Dragon, probably less dangerous than the first shuttle flight … after a 14 flights the Falcon+Dragon is likely to be as robust as the Soyuz, a major achievement in US aerospace.
Obama is pictured in a photo with Musk on the SpaceX launchpad, something unique relative to the dinospace companies .. as the outsider-looking-in observer it’s clear that Obama knows what he he is doing by rufflingly the feathers of 50-years business as usual, to the extent that SpaceX is just as much a pawn/tool going forward .. it’s up to them to continue to deliver. Hopefully the Big B****ers can respond, for they sure will try and that has to be really exciting for fans of US aerospace.
The next 2-4 years are going to be as interesting in the history of US space exploration as the 60s. Space 2.0 has begun. IMO.
Dave
Doug Lassiter wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 6:35 pm
“… but his talk is consistent and undeniable.” Um YES. Look it up. It’s on this blog.
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/08/17/obamas-detailed-space-policy/
“•He formally signs off on one of the key milestones of the current Vision for Space Exploration: “He endorses the goal of sending human missions to the Moon by 2020, as a precursor in an orderly progression to missions to more distant destinations, including Mars.â€
Oops. No more. We call that a flip-flop. fella.
from the campaign. One of many he has racked up.
His position today is 180 degrees from what he campaigned on in the primaries. Racism?? Good Lord, you must have missed the riots and upheavals of the 1960s– and this writer voted for him BTW. THat said your assertion is out of line. The fact you have problems absorbing historical context is clear now. You’re drifting deeper and deeper alright- into Fictionland. Face it, you screwed up- you trusted him. And he lied.
Dave Hall wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 7:49 pm
“I’m writing from South Africa, with a keen interest on the endeavours of compatriot Elon Musk. ”
Do you watch Jacobs Cross? When I was in Africa, including South Africa for almost two months at the start of the year I sort of got hooked on that.
I found you’re comments compelling and quite good.
To me the ultimate failure of the shuttle era, is that it killed the “imagination” or “innovation” at NASA and in human spaceflight period. The shuttle era started with dreams, low cost access to space, doing different and unique things in space…and the first flights say up to Challengers loss were filled with those. And then the shuttle and the shuttle program including the space station settled down to “Just another government program”. There was no innovation.
Musk (and to some extent Obama…and I didnt vote for him) is about “the undiscovered country”. What can be done? The future is different then the present or the past; The best video of the first space age was taken of JFK just before he was gunned down when he visited the Cape. I’ve had a chance recently to see all the footage of that. The tanned President looking very “lean forward” (apologies to MSNBC) energetic…
Musk in my view captures some of that. The notion that we are developing new vehicles and the folks doing it are willing to stretch to try new things with them…TO INNOVATE is to me amazing.
I didnt vote for Obama and dont think he has done a good job getting hold of the reigns of the office. He shows flashes of doing it but most of the time in my view he falls flat. But he does sometimes capture “the new frontier” of America…and the GOP and old NASA space advocates seem to be stuck in the old..Its predictable…fly shuttle derived parts for another bunch of decades, do this do that…the viewgraphs only change in terms of what vehicle is in the picture.
The sad thing for American politics is that the GOP right wing has made the country “old”. They all want to go back to the past, or at least how they imagine the past. Wind, who is a goof ball even talks about “traditional NASA” or something like that roles. That is all the old people of the GOP can imagine…what the past looked like. Thats why people like Whittington support “one more time” (my phrase) to the Moon as a big government program.
Change is hard. It is unsettling and yet there is a vibrancy in it that summons something (the undiscovered country) that is worth all the pain. I cheer for Musk simply because I like the notion of someone going out, putting his/her money at risk and making a go of it; building a better mousetrap and changing the world.
I can imagine a future with a shuttle derived heavy lift vehicle and what turns out wont be much different, if anything it will simply be “less”. It is hard to imagine what the future will be with 1000 dollars a pound lift.
One of the things I attended down in South Africa (this will probably date it for you) was the joint Indian/South African celebration of independence…got a peek at some of the joint ships both navies had assembled and participated in some of the celebrations. There is vibrancy.
Musk and SpaceX have some of that. TAke care Robert G. oler
Dave Hall wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 7:49 pm
Said as well as it can be said.
I agree, Dave, as do many on this site and several other sites that I read.
It may chap windy’s hide, but I think we’re going to see, at long last, a bit of progress.
Doug Lassiter wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 6:35 pm
“I’m presuming you did the math when you said that he was 11 years old when Apollo 17 splashed down. Oh, but yes, he should have memorized all the Apollo astronauts in order to be qualified to be inspired, you seem to be saying.”
DCSCA is a legend in his own mind, and feels that he is some sort of “keeper of the flame” for “his” generation, of which he’s probably the only member.
If you haven’t talked with von Braun like DCSCA has, or don’t have moldy NASA manuals next to your bedstand for nightly reading, then you obviously don’t understand and appreciate NASA and space travel. And since Obama has done neither, he obviously can’t appreciate our space accomplishments. Duh!
@DCSCA:
I was 7 years old on 1969.
In that years I followed the Apollo space program (from Italy) and I become a space fan simply by reading newspaper, books and other written materials, and watching every Saturn launch on national Italian TV.
I has not became President of USA, I cannot do that anyway because I am not born in USA
, albeit Obama too has some problem regarding that, but I think I am a good example of a child living abroad that managed to get awed and inspired from space program in the ’60.
Without Internet, paper and TV only.
DCSCA wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 9:13 pm
“Um YES. Look it up. It’s on this blog.”
Thanks. I did read that blog, but I guess you didn’t. That blog says nothing about changes in the degree to which Obama was “inspired” by human space flight. Nothing at all. No “flip flop” on “inspiration” there. That’s what we were discussing, as per the title of this thread. As I said, you’re changing the subject to fit your own prejudices, just creating opportunities to whack at Obama. I recognize and respect your fear of him, and your passion about wanting to whack at him, but you’re leaving out a whole lot of stuff. I mean, we weren’t discussing TARP or health care either. Shall we?
It is a matter of discussion to what extent Obama is supporting human space flight. Actually, the cancellation of an unexecutable program might be considered the first proactive step in that support. But that’s a different topic, and has nothing to do with Obama’s impression of human space flight when he was eleven years old. You believe it impossible for him to have been so inspired. It may be that Obama is, in fact, now dead set against human space flight, as you’d like to believe he has now revealed himself to be, but you can’t seem to separate that from what would be a confession by him that, at one time, he was “inspired” by it. Maybe he still is, but feels that we can’t afford it.
“President Obama was “inspired†by Apollo? Really?? ”
Yep. Really.
@Doug Lassiter wrote @ June 11th, 2011 at 9:23 am ‘s stuff.
“President Obama was “inspired†by Apollo? Really?? â€
Doubtful.”
There. Fixed that for ‘ya. Your poor capacity to absorb historical context is disturbing and any t’prejudices’ you reflect your own vision. Sad, You must be under 40. Seem you can’t accept Obama’s blatant flip-flop. Which earns criticism. And it is one of several. Quaint. But you go on believing a 5 (in 1966) to 8 year old (in 1969) African-American toddler/child of the mid-1960s moved in and out of the country (Indonesia/Kenya) who cannot even recall which crew his grandfather too him to see was “inspired” by Project Apollo. Bet you’d remember which crew. It’s amusing. And laughable. But makes for great political BS to TV audiences in Cleveland who are worried about their jobs at Glenn.
Start checking up on the position of other candidares for 2013- then you can start imagining that “President Romney” or “President Perry” or “President Pawlenty” was inspired by Apollo, too. Or “President Gingrich” — inspired enough to float a trial balloon in the mid-90s when he was SoH to shutter the agency because its mission was accomplished decades earlier. Good grief.
@amightywind wrote
“I have raised this issue several times on this forum with Anne Spudis. You would have to strip mine large areas of the moon to a depth of several meters to extract a small amount of water. Lunar ice is an interesting scientific phenomenon. It is foolish to suggest that it is a viable resource.”
The amount of ice contained within the shaded regolith of the lunar poles is estimated to be approximately 6%. That’s 6 tonnes of water per 100 tonnes of regolith. In 2009, a tiny 76 kilogram lunar excavation test robot called Moonraker 2.0 collected nearly 440 kilograms of simulated lunar regolith in less than half an hour. So in theory, just one of these little robots could excavate about 20 tonnes of lunar regolith in just one day.
An HLV could place at least 100 such tiny robots on the lunar surface with a single launch. 100 excavation robots could in theory excavate about 2000 tonnes of regolith per day that could be heated to produce about 120 tonnes of water per day (nearly 44,000 tonnes of water per year). Even if you assume that these little robots were not operating half the time, that would still mean over 20,000 tonnes of water produced on the lunar surface per year. Of course, the Moonraker 2.0 could lift six times more mass on the lunar surface than it can on Earth. So, in theory, it could excavate material even more efficiently under the Moons 1/6 gravity.
@Coastal Ron wrote @ June 11th, 2011 at 1:02 am
Even you’d remember which Apollo crew you ‘greeted’ if you had the opportunity- espeically if you were an 11 year old “inspired” by same. Good grief. Obama flip-flopped on space policy. Accept it. As well as a number of other issues that dew indies to him. If you heard him at Cronkite’s memorial, he all but acknowledged the reportage from WC’s heyday/era had little impact on him and his perceptions of the world but acknowlwdged his place in the passing parade- and Cronkite’s coverage of Apollo was the most popular window on the space program. Personal attacks only indicate you have no argument to make.
Robert G. Oler wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 5:49 pm
DCSCA wrote @ June 10th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
†Do the math- he was 5 to 8 years old for the meat of it– a toddler– and it was over by the time he was 11… barely out of diapers for Gemini.â€
you are happy to believe whatever you want to believe. There is no real point of disagreement here; no proof one way or the other. I told you my experience and I was similar “agedâ€.
Yeah, there’s proof. Obama’s inability to state which Apollo crew he ‘greeted’. Sombody ‘inspired’ by Apollo that young would remember. You remember. Obama doesnt. End of story. Nice story on NA/PC. My Na experience was in the US Embassy in London, October, 1969- met the A-11 crew at their presser/reception discussing the first landing just a few weeks earlier. My signed picture is framed in the den. (Next to the one w/Von Braun, Ron.) Wonder where Inspired Obama hangs his…
@Doug Lassiter
“Heh. Six per year? Where do you get that number?”
NASA.
“It’ll be more like one at that cost. Don’t forget, that’s just the launcher. You’ve got to add payload costs onto that.”
Of course and so does every other launch vehicle.
” $18B? Nope, the science and aeronautics people aren’t going to be jumping on the HLV bandwagon. The science folks can’t afford what they want to launch on an EELV (JWST? MSL?) The cost of Ares V was never really admitted by the designers, but the going number was $1B a pop.”
Since the Ares V was supposed to place about 188 tonnes into LEO, 1 billion per launch is still a lot cheaper than a Delta IV heavy which can only place about 25 tonnes into orbit for about $200 to $400 million per launch.
“You don’t have a clue, do you. You’re saying you run in, and then run out when your toes start to freeze? Wrong. Couplings, bearings, and electronics on a “digging machine†will start to chill fast. Remember, you’re picking up 30K regolith. LOTS of 30K regolith, which is going to be in intimate thermal contact with the machine. Oh, but we don’t need “technology development†to figure all that out. Hey, but put a nuke on, and keep it warm, right? Nope, because if you aren’t careful, you’ll be surrounded by clouds of evaporating water. Tech development, please.”
Obviously, we’re going to design machines to deal with the differences in dealing with cooling under the shadowed areas and heat under the sunlit areas. But we’ve sent machines as far out into the solar system as Neptune and beyond. And don’t forget, machines give off heat themselves depending on what kind of power they’re using.
“Simply wrong. Bad physics. Space depots far from the Earth or Moon are surrounded by cold space. You shield them from the Sun well enough, and they’ll stay cold. That’s how a space cryo depot is supposed to work. BTW, as you would know, if you knew anything about in-space cryo depot architecture, such long-lived cryo depot designs are not at TRL6. We’ve got some good ideas, but no hardware. Technology development, please. No comparison with a lunar surface system. You raise a reflective umbrella above the lunar surface and … oops, you got warm regolith underneath you, not cold space. Unless your tank is in the permanently shadowed area, which of course you can’t set up there without freezing your toes. That’s radiative equilibrium 101. Take a class.”
Again, you don’t need to produce hydrogen on the Moon until you need to use it. But water can remain frozen practically forever.
“Dump dirt? How do you get 5m of regolith over you by “dumping dirtâ€? Geez. You think the GCRs are coming at you only from the horizon? OK, you “dump dirt over a structure you’ve set up to hold it. Hmmm. A lunar surface structure that can hold a 5m layer of regolith over you? Tech development, please!”
I’d be worried if there was no internal pressure to counter act the external pressure of lunar soil on top at 1/6 Earth’s gravity.
“Yep, these things are really really hard to do. Not impossible, but just hard. But if you’d provide all your detailed design wisdom to NASA, we’d all be grateful. You just can’t call it technology development when you do.”
And I’m not really sure why you keep asking for tech development for lunar facilities when your boys Holdren and Obama are strongly opposed to any lunar return. So there won’t be any serious tech development for the Moon under the Obama administration.
An HLV could place at least 100 such tiny robots on the lunar surface with a single launch.
Who cares how many launches you need? Since by your own admission they would be tiny (or at least no bigger than 25mT, which would be huge), what matters is cost, not throw weight. Of course, you know this already. Why do you think you’ll mislead any of the regulars here with arguments you know to be invalid?
DCSCA wrote @ June 11th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
“Even you’d remember which Apollo crew you ‘greeted’ if you had the opportunity”
Obama didn’t “greet” an Apollo crew, he was waving a flag when they arrived at an airport. Wikipedia states it this way:
“In Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams From My Father, he mentions, “One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my grandfather’s shoulders as the astronauts from one of the Apollo missions arrived at Hickam Air Force Base after a successful splashdown.””
His memory was of being with his grandfather, and waving a flag for some “Apollo astronauts”. It was personal trivia that he was remembering, not space trivia.
One of the problems that have made you a difficult person to converse with is your inability to understand that not everyone is obsessed with Apollo like you are. The level of knowledge you think you have about Apollo would put you in the 99.995 percentile, which would make you a bore to talk to at social gatherings (and on this blog).
I remember looking through my neighbors telescope as one of the Apollo capsules was arriving back to Earth. We could see the capsule illuminated in the sunlight, and it must of been just before entering the atmosphere. Now that’s what I remember, but I couldn’t tell you which mission it was, or any other details. I even wonder today if that was really possible (seeing it), but it’s a memory that’s been with me my whole life. However it was not a “guiding light” in my life, and I’ve never talked about it – it’s just personal trivia.
Another example. The current issue of Air & Space magazine has an article about an autobiography by the Apollo 15 command module pilot. I’d never heard of the guy, and I didn’t know about the disgrace that befell the whole crew after they came back home. Does that make me a non-space enthusiast along the lines of President Obama? Because I don’t know who one of the Apollo crews are?
So if you want to win big on Trivial Pursuit 1960’s Edition, great. But most of us that lived in that generation have moved on, and I’d rather remember what’s important today than obsess about trivia of yesterday.
DCSCA wrote @ June 11th, 2011 at 3:31 pm
“You must be under 40. Seem you can’t accept Obama’s blatant flip-flop. Which earns criticism. And it is one of several. Quaint. But you go on believing a 5 (in 1966) to 8 year old (in 1969) African-American toddler/child of the mid-1960s moved in and out of the country (Indonesia/Kenya) who cannot even recall which crew his grandfather too him to see was “inspired†by Project Apollo. Bet you’d remember which crew. It’s amusing. And laughable. But makes for great political BS to TV audiences in Cleveland who are worried about their jobs at Glenn.”
Wrong on many counts. But your argument is with a black 11 year old, not with me. Did Obama say he couldn’t recall which crew he got to see on his grandfathers shoulders? Makes perfect sense. I wouldn’t have remembered it either. But of course in your eyes, it’s that list of names that defines inspiration. No list, no awe. If he didn’t remember the names, he couldn’t have been inspired, you believe. Bet you collected baseball cards too, right? Helps memorizing names. That’s what Little Barack should have had. Astronaut cards!
Let me add that while current 11-year olds are pretty excited about human space flight, they in no way remember ANY of the names of astronauts on ISS. Ouch. So much for inspiration.
Jobs at Glenn? How quaint. Your final point. Of course, that’s what it’s all about. Jobs. Now we see where you’re coming from.
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ June 11th, 2011 at 4:38 pm
“Obviously, we’re going to design machines to deal with the differences in dealing with cooling under the shadowed areas and heat under the sunlit areas.”
No, no. You said that all the tech was available today, and that we’re ready to go. Now you’re implying that we WILL have to develop the tech. Which is it Marcel?
“But we’ve sent machines as far out into the solar system as Neptune and beyond.”
As Doug Lassiter pointed out (but you evaded), all of those probes were in vacuum, so thermal issues were much easier to manage.
As soon as you have contact with the lunar regolith, then you get heat transfer. Sure you can manage that by having an internal heat source, but how do you power that? We already know what the limitations are for electric vehicles here on Earth in cold locations, so solar charging is not a complete answer.
Nuclear would be a natural, but per your tonnage estimates we would need pretty big nuclear reactors – whose going to make those? Russia? And will we launch them from stateside or depend on the Russians? Plus, there goes your “U.S. Only” plan.
Your lunar plan is a concept, just like everyones plans for anything in space. Until you start testing equipment and techniques, you won’t know what works and what doesn’t. And until then, no one, including Congress, is going to fund your full-up lunar fantasies. Especially when we don’t need anything from the Moon at this point.
DCSCA wrote @ June 11th, 2011 at 3:56 pm
“Yeah, there’s proof.” you are free to believe what you want and see proof where you want. There is nothing to argue here. I dont understand why you think its important…RGO
@Doug Lassiter
“Heh. Six per year? Where do you get that number?â€
and then Marcel F. Williams wrote @ June 11th, 2011 at 4:38 pm
“NASA.”
Ah, well. Wink. Let’s make that one launch every two years then. ’nuff said.
“Since the Ares V was supposed to place about 188 tonnes into LEO, 1 billion per launch is still a lot cheaper than a Delta IV heavy which can only place about 25 tonnes into orbit for about $200 to $400 million per launch.”
The math on this has been done in many places. Those prices for Delta IV-H were not sustainable, and SpaceX knows it (as does ULA). The kind of technology investment Bolden was pushing would serve that need. Also the convenience of more launch opportunities is worth a lot.
With regard to science users, let’s see. JWST has a mass of 6 mT. It’s going to cost around $6B. Ares V could send 50 mT to ES L2. So an Ares V could send about 8 JWST’s to ES L2. That would cost SMD about $50B. Chump change, eh? SMD only dreams about that kind of money. So science could fill a small piece of an Ares V in any given year.
“Obviously, we’re going to design machines to deal with the differences in dealing with cooling under the shadowed areas and heat under the sunlit areas. But we’ve sent machines as far out into the solar system as Neptune and beyond. And don’t forget, machines give off heat themselves depending on what kind of power they’re using.”
Yes, obviously we’re going to design those machines. But we’re talking about technology development in doing so. The TRL level of equipment for mining 30K regolith is pretty low. Designing those machines is going to require that technology investment. QED.
“Again, you don’t need to produce hydrogen on the Moon until you need to use it. But water can remain frozen practically forever.”
So when you produce that ice, where do you put it?? How do you store it? In fact, where are you going to store all that ice once you’ve laboriously mined it out of a 30K crater. Repeat after me … technology development.
“I’d be worried if there was no internal pressure to counter act the external pressure of lunar soil on top at 1/6 Earth’s gravity.”
Oh, your crew compartment is going to hold up 5 meters of regolith? Bob Bigelow will be impressed at what you figured out to do with one of his habs. So, when the humans are gone (remember, Congress insisted that a lunar base not be continuously inhabited) you have to keep pressure in it to keep the roof from crushing the hab? That’s a (gulp) creative concept. I guess when humans are there, a small hab leak is a bigger problem than I would have thought. If I had 5m of regolith piled on top of me, I’d be worried too!
“And I’m not really sure why you keep asking for tech development for lunar facilities when your boys Holdren and Obama are strongly opposed to any lunar return. So there won’t be any serious tech development for the Moon under the Obama administration.”
They aren’t “boys”, and they certainly aren’t mine. Another racist poster? Wow. Chill out. Holdren and Obama aren’t “strongly opposed to any lunar return”. That’s just made up out of whole cloth, and it’s been pointed out repeatedly in this forum. The Moon is one of the destinations listed explicitly in the NASA budget proposal, which comes from Holdren and Obama. I can give you the page numbers if you need them. What they are opposed to is a Moon-or-bust-by-2020. Why? Because we can’t afford to do it. The Augustine panel agreed, and Congress feels the same way, as per the latest NASA authorization bill.
“An HLV could place at least 100 such tiny robots on the lunar surface with a single launch.”
http://www.wpi.edu/news/20090/paulrobot.html
In terms of mass each robot masses less than 80Kg. 100(80kg)=8MT. Delta IV heavy could easly lob that much mass at the moon as it can take 12mT to GEO. In one shoot.
In terms of volume which is what is actually limited each robot fits in a 1.3 M cylinder. The Delta IV heavy has standard payload fairings of up to 22 meters long and 5.3 Meter in diameter. You could fit 4 in a row, about 16 high for a total of 64 robots per Delta IV heavy launch and note you can make the payload fairing a non standard size.
Still need an HLV?
Actually erred too low. You could fit four in a row at the diameter, You should be able to fit more to the side.
Anyway the big problem I have with lunar ISRU esp that based on water is that there are a lot of assumptions.
Assumption 1. LOX/LOH is the preferred propellant for everything. There is a big problem storing Hydrogen and it could be better to use LOX/Methane esp. if you are going out to mars. In addition electric propulsion does not usually use lox/loh and solar electric propulsion is just fine for manned NEO missions, Mars Cargo, Lunar Cargo.
Assumption 2. You can make it on the moon for less than sending it from earth. Water is very cheap on earth. Water on earth is 90+% water. Lunar regolith is 6%. I can see two uses for lunar water. One is for life support(in which case you don’t need to be able to mine hundreds of MT a year). The second might be for propellant from the lunar sufarce ( and depending on the mission lox/loh could be very limiting) and even here the amount might be tens of MT per launch.
Export from lunar surface to LLO, L1 and esp. to LEO questionable. To send 25MT to LEO from the surface of the moon you would need to process 416MT of lunar regolith plus the regolith needed to move the 25MT of water to LEO. To send 25MT from earth’s surface to LEO all you need to do is turn on the water.
If you want hydrogen, electricity is much cheaper on earth and hydrocarbons are a much better source of hydrogen than water (i.e. you get more Hydrogen for less energy in).
If you need LOX, all you need to do is cool the air we breathe. You will not only get LOX but other gasses which have industrial uses (in fact liquid nitrogen is colder than LOX. One of the dangers of handling it is that it can cause oxygen to liquidity right out the air).
In fact shockingly enough there are plants on this planet that already produce LOX and LOH such that if you wanted to export it from earth you would need to spend $0 on equipment to produce it vs. billions on lunar equipment.
Amen. Much of that comes to my mind when I hear most ‘refueling from the Moon plans.’ (though an argument might be made for Lunar oxygen from the open regolth [not from ice in cold traps], sent to LEO or the Lagrange points via some sort of ground accelerator…in spite of the constant updates to the anticipated water content of the Lunar surface, I’m still inclined to believe that it will be more valuable right there for life-support and other local processes, and not being expended into vacuum as propulsion)
The notion that ‘it’s cheaper because it’s in a shallower gravity well’ doesn’t impress me much, either. Yes, we’re in a deeper gravity well with a drag-inducing atmosphere on Earth, but the fuel resources down here are plentiful and varied (not just LH2/LOX, as you note, though most of Earth is covered in an effectively infinite, easily accessible source of that as well, if we want to do that) and cheap. Propellant and oxidizer costs are not what make access from Earth’s surface to LEO currently expensive. (space-elevator and orbital scramjet enthusiasts should also repeat that last sentence to themselves)
And if we ever get operational nuclear-thermal rockets, then only hydrogen matters as reaction mass. (though even straight water will have acceptable performance at the temperatures of gas-core NTR systems, and is readily available [as ice] at some destinations…)
@Coastal Ron wrote @ June 11th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Yeah its a great line but really says nothing. Trivia? He can’t name the crew or the flight. You could if it happened to you. You know you could if you shared a similar experience. Hardly ‘trivia’– a crew returning from a historic moon landing– especially to an ‘impressionable’ kid supposedly ‘inspired’ by same. It’s clear by his own words (if not recent actions) he really wasn’t ‘inspired’ by Apollo at all, particularly per his comments at Cronkite’s memorial. But it makes for quaint fodder to space enthusiasts grasping for any interest from the CIC. His own writings note his ‘formative’ years were in Hawaii, after Apollo ended. He’s shovelling BS to the Cleveland area– and they should know it.
As to the 15’s FDC mess- maybe its time you boned up on some Apollo history. Pretty much everyone who knows anything about Apollo with any interest in it knows of the mess about the FDC’s, the rationale behind it and the German stamp dealer selling some, breaching the deal. Scott wrote about it in his book w/Leonov as well a few years back as has Worden and the late Jim Irwin touched on it some but Scott, as CDR, took the responssible heat over the deal. Slayton went to bat for them then but was left hanging when it turned out he was misled– andd he was ticked off. Disgraced is a harsh word- but in the context of the times they were ‘reprimanded’ in the heirarchy over the deal. If memory serves, Scott ended up EAFB as I recall for a stint because of it. After the Mitchell’s ESP bit and Shepard’s golfing on 14, it wasn’t helpful PR in the context of the times.
DCSCA wrote @ June 12th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
“He can’t name the crew or the flight. You could if it happened to you.”
Nope. I’m not that good with names for people I meet, much less people I see from afar.
But you keep proving my point – not only are you oblivious to your Apollo obsession, you’re even oblivious to the possibility that it’s not that important to other people.
Would it matter that Obama was there with his grandfather for Apollo 10 or Apollo 12? I have no clue who those guys were, and I would imagine 99.9995% of the rest of the world remembers them either. They were “Apollo astronauts” – does it matter who they were?
You lack the ability to understand that Apollo is 40 years distant, and doesn’t occupy a daily presence in people’s lives. It does with you, which as I said before, probably makes you a huge bore at social gatherings.
Maybe if you were a docent at a space facility like Stephen C. Smith, then that be would important info to have memorized. But otherwise imposing your standard of arcane knowledge on other people is pretty ignorant of reality. But luckily your reality doesn’t infect others, so the world is safe from mass Apollo Obsession-itis…
DCSCA wrote @ June 12th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
“Yeah its a great line but really says nothing. Trivia? He can’t name the crew or the flight. You could if it happened to you. You know you could if you shared a similar experience.”
“You could if it happened to you”? Daresay I could, if I had been on that flight. If I had “shared a similar experience”. But I wasn’t on that flight, and I never shared a similar experience. Unfortunately! Very few people have shared a similar experience.
It’s a novel idea, that remembering the names of people who made history is a test for the extent to which one was touched/influenced/moved/inspired by that history. The event becomes the person who did it, more than what was accomplished. With all due respect to the astronaut corps, this has a familiar ring to it. I look at our accomplishment in human space flight, and see the effort, brilliance, creativity, and leadership of the supporting engineers and scientists somewhat eclipsed by the folks who happened to fly. I guess if what “inspires” me is danger, risk, and perhaps fear, then the astronauts are inspirational, and their names count for a lot. If what inspires me is the effort, brilliance, creativity, and leadership, then it’s the whole program, rather than the astronauts, that bring that inspiration. I suggest that Obama was, as a kid, inspired most by the latter.
No wonder that “inspiration” is a lousy rationale for human spaceflight. People can’t even agree on what it is, or how it manifests itself. All we know is that, whatever it is, it is surely a GOOD THING. So adopting it as a rationale for human space flight is both easy and meaningless, requiring minimal thought or investment.
@ Doug Lassiter wrote @ June 13th, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Very well said. Seriously. A well written way to disintegrate the “inspiration” rationale if there ever was one.
I agree that “inspiration†isn’t a good reason to do something but it’s a good side effect of accomplishment. Inspiration creates hope and without hope, you can’t proceed and therefore reach a new accomplishment. Failure creates hopelessness and doubt which leads to frustration and more failure. Those individuals that stand against the odds and say “we can do better†and act on it, are my heroes.
To me the Apollo astronauts of today are people like the Ansari Family, All the team leaders that competed for the X Prize, Paul Allen, Burt Rutan, Dr. Peter Diamandis, Sir Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Robert Bigelow and many more.
“I think the [Ansari] X Prize should be viewed as the beginning of one giant leap…†— Dr. Buzz Aldrin
I hope Obama is honest with what he has said. If he says he will continue to support researches at NASA then let it be fulfilled. However, the budget to support NASA should be considered in the midst of an economic downturn. There are important problems to solve such as the rising national debt, increasing unemployment rate, and a whole lot more. May he be not hasty in making promises.
Quite probably another politicians lie! He gave Leonard Nimoy the vulcan hand sign? Now that really makes him a space advocate!
So what is our destination, Mr. President? An asteroid or the Moon? Don’t you even remember the speech you read from the TelePrompter on April 15, 2010? In your haste to erase the space program of your predecessor and substitute your own you have not demonstrated leadership and only caused great damage.
Steven White wrote @ June 15th, 2011 at 3:38 am
“Don’t you even remember the speech you read from the TelePrompter on April 15, 2010?”
Would it have meant more to you if he had memorized the speech?
You do realize that ALL Presidents use Teleprompters nowadays, so you just lumped Obama in with Bush I&II, Reagan, Clinton, et al.
And all of this ties in with the discussion going on in the other Space Politics topic, where other than Newt Gingrich, no other Republican presidential candidate had anything space-related to say when offered the chance.
Space is an initiative, and without a National Imperative it makes no sense to plant a huge stake in the middle of the budget and declare the destinations of a politicized agency (NASA) beyond the political boundaries of the current owner.
Kennedy was able to go to the Moon because it served a political need and it was novel, but Bush 43 wasn’t able to return to the Moon because his goals didn’t fit the political & budgetary realities of his successor (Constellation was WAY over schedule & budget). The same will happen to Obama if he institutes a program that exceeds it’s budgetary boundaries without a perceived National Imperative. And right now we don’t even have one for the Senate Launch System (SLS), so why put much effort into far away destinations.
Obama has his NASA focused on providing the foundations for future exploration, and there is no way NASA is going anywhere big during his tenure, even with re-election. And I’m fine with that.
Obama does NOT care one iota about the space program, and he NEVER did.