NASA, White House

President’s statement on the launch of Atlantis

For the second time this week, President Obama has spoken publicly about space issues. In a “Twitter Town Hall” on Wednesday he described how he was pushing NASA to “revamp its vision”. This afternoon, a few hours after the successful launch of the shuttle Atlantis on the final mission of the program, he released a statement about the launch. He expressed his “sincere gratitude” to NASA’s astronauts, shuttle workers, and the rest of the agency’s workforce. “You helped our country lead the space age, and you continue to inspire us each day.”

He also looked ahead in the statement. “Today’s launch may mark the final flight of the Space Shuttle, but it propels us into the next era of our never-ending adventure to push the very frontiers of exploration and discovery in space,” he said. And, summarizing some key goals from his April 2010 speech at KSC, he said, “I have tasked the men and women of NASA with an ambitious new mission: to break new boundaries in space exploration, ultimately sending Americans to Mars. I know they are up to the challenge – and I plan to be around to see it.”

85 comments to President’s statement on the launch of Atlantis

  • Robert G. Oler

    sigh…I wish people would drop the “inspire” part of the same stale message RGO

  • GeeSpace

    Nobody, that I am aware of, said that President Obama can not make a good speech or say nice sounding statements.

    A nice sounding statement is the one were he (Obama) said, “I have tasked the men and women of NASA with an ambitious new mission: to break new boundaries in space exploration, ultimately sending Americans to Mars. Well, his goal of ultimately sending Americans to Mars in the mid 2030’s will be 3 to 5 Administrations after his. How will President Obama ‘keep’ his Mars goal. By his great personility, by his great “space advocacy” involement, or by witchcraft.

  • DCSCA

    No doubt his ‘message’ was issued on a pink slip of paper.

    The President made his ‘statement’ on Atlantis– as well as manned spaceflight as a whole- last April 15, 2010, at the Kennedy Space Center. And the thousands of dedicated employees layed off since heard him loud and clear. And FYI, Mr. President, ‘sincere gratitude’ doesn’t pay the electric bill– or keep America in a leadership position to lead other nations in exploration or exploitation in HSF. The 9.2% unemployment figure tells us all that the nation needs jobs now- and your decimation of America’s HSF program only adds to it. The nation needs another FDR and some ‘action this day’ leadership. It need a ‘Captain Kirk’ on the bridge. Instead, it has a ‘Mr. Spock.’

  • DCSCA

    Scott Pace was on CSPAN this morning and explained why the moon makes a better target for cooperative space ventures than Mars or some asteroid yet to be named.

  • DCSCA

    “There can be no thought of finishing, for ‘aiming at the stars’, both literally and figuratively, is a problem to occupy generations, so that no matter how much progress one makes, there is always the thrill of just beginning.” – Dr. Robert H. Goddard, 1932

  • Matt Wiser

    Agree with DCSCA: It’s worse than Spock. We’ve got a Chekov or a Data instead. And yes, cherry slogans and pretty speeches do not answer the problems of KSC workers gettign pink-slipped and having to wait how long until either the commercial side gets stood up, or a NASA vehicle is ready to fly BEO.

  • @DCSCA

    The fastest and cheapest way to set up a permanent human presence on Mars and on the moons of Mars is by first establishing a permanent human presence on the surface of the Moon. Why Mars First advocates don’t understand this astonishes me!

    The same basic habitat modules and regolith shielding used for a lunar base could be used for a Mars base– and would already be tested over several years time on the lunar surface. Reliability will be essential for any Mars venture that takes several years time to complete and where quick rescue will be possible if things go wrong.

    The cheapest way to test the hundreds of tonnes of water or hydrogen mass shielding required for an interplanetary journey to Mars (powered by light sails, nuclear rockets, or Aldrin Cyclers) would be on the Moon utilizing the Moon’s abundant water resources at its poles. Since the Moon’s regolith would provide half the shielding, only half the total amount of water or hydrogen would be needed to test a crew module mockup under such shielding against the dangers of potentially brain damaging heavy nuclei.

    Water mining and processing facilities on the lunar surface might also be applicable to mine such resources on the moons of Mars for fuel production for Mars landing craft. The moons of Mars might also be a commercially viable source of water and fuel for L1 and even LEO space stations and space tugs.

    The Moon is also the best way to see if humans can adjust to hypogravity environments over several months and even several years without deleterious effects. Its also the best way to see how humans behave psychologically after being continuously away from Earth for a few years.

    Why would anyone want to go to Mars just to fly by the planet or to simply visit a martian moon when we could use our Moon to enable humans to stay permanently in Mars orbit and on the Martian surface and even export water and fuel from the moons of Mars for commercial gain!

  • amightywind

    Somebody needs to call Obama on this change for change sake stuff. What exactly is he talking about? This nation needs to wake up and realize it has a great deal to risk at the whim of these witless political adventurers. The fact that everything Obama has touched in 2.5 years has turned to crap doesn’t seem to dissuade him. Watching all of the shuttle program documentaries on TV just makes me mad. We have the people, the technology, the facilities, and the funding to build a great shuttle replacement. Leadership is utterly lacking. I haven’t seen much of that skulker Bolden today. If I were him I’d lay low today too.

    The nation needs another FDR and some ‘action this day’ leadership. It need a ‘Captain Kirk’ on the bridge. Instead, it has a ‘Mr. Spock.’

    Hardly. FDR’s reputation was saved by WWII, and the unity of purpose created by Pearl Harbor. Read Amity Shlaes.. The nation’s potential has been restrained by his social programs for 70 years. We will all be better off when they are gone. And we don’t have Mr. Spock on the bridge, we have Deanna Troi.

  • Matt Wiser

    We’ll need a Mars orbital mission and Martian Moons as a dress rehearsal for Mars itself. I do agree with using the Moon as a proving ground for Mars, however.

  • Mark R, Whittington

    Obama is nothing but consistant. Having seen the collapse of his space policy, he has decided to ignore the facts and pretend that all is well.

  • Coastal Ron

    Matt Wiser wrote @ July 8th, 2011 at 9:41 pm

    And yes, cherry slogans and pretty speeches do not answer the problems of KSC workers gettign pink-slipped and having to wait how long until either the commercial side gets stood up, or a NASA vehicle is ready to fly BEO.

    Let’s keep some perspective here – Congress overwhelmingly agreed to cancel Constellation, and if they get their way, there will be even more pink-slips for the JWST team. They are also planning to cut 10% of NASA’s budget, so who is responsible for job losses here?

    Of course I’m sure you’re not implying that government contractors have some sort of communist right to a guaranteed job? If the workers have been keeping their skills up to date, they should not be out on the job market too long. If they didn’t, well, maybe they’ll have time to upgrade their skills.

    Job markets are tough nowadays, so you can’t assume any job is a lifetime career anymore…

  • Norm Hartnett

    No, the fastest and easiest (and cheapest) way to establish the technologies needed for interplanetary exploration is to develop them in LEO. At the laboratory we have spent so much money developing, the ISS. If NASA and it’s partners do not utilize this facility it will be far more difficult to convince politicians that new facilities on the Moon or Mars are a good investment. I wish the President had re-articulated his vision of basic research and technology development for NASA. I wish he had emphasized his goal of using commercial launch capabilities for LEO access. “Go to Mars” is one of those feel good comments without substance or funding requirements.

  • ok then

    Base elements alone don’t get you to Mars. You’ll also need long distance ships, deep space experience, zero g mitigation, etc. Whichever course is chosen, there is something applicable to Mars yet to learn.

    No single course will give you everything you need. And certainly not on today’s budgets.

  • pathfinder_01

    Matt

    Those workers were in danger the moment CXP started slipping. What are you going to do pay people to hang around till 2017 doing nothing? If CXP were ready in 2010 or could be ready in 2012 there would be few layoffs and they would be short ones.

    If you extended the shuttle then you have problems.

    Problem 1: The extension has to take place by early 2008 or else there will be a gap. If Obama changed his mind tomorrow the soonest the shuttle could fly would be almost 2014.

    Problem 2 CXP was counting on the money that would be freed when the shuttle retires so extending the shuttle likely delays CXP more unless you increase NASA’s budget and good luck with that.

    Problem 3 Extension gets more and more expensive the longer and longer the tools/people/equipment needed to make shuttle parts grows cold. Is this a good use of money?

    Problem 4 Extension does not solve the it needs replacement problem. What are we going to do keep flying the shuttle until one by one they are lost to accidents? This system needs to be replaced with something safer. I love Dragon and Dream chaser but I hope the heck we don’t fly them 30 years because we can not get a replacement done.

    NASA has been trying to replace the shuttle since the late 80ies. I suspect that like Cronus (Saturn…) the shuttle devoured it’s children. OSP and anything that was not going to fly on the shuttle got little support in Congress.

    Anyway what he did was the best he could switch to more affordable private providers cause NASA’s budget is not going to go up anytime soon esp. as the boomers retire. End CXP, it was slipping and threatening to cost more than the shuttle for less and at the rate it was going I would be in my 50ies before it landed on the moon. I am 35!

    NASA needs to get realistic with its budget if it wants to survive. They can no longer rely on the STS space states to be a sugar daddy. The states can sort of protect STS money, but they cannot provide enough cash to make something shuttle derived fly.

    With some luck my grand kids or great grandkids might be able to buy a trip into orbit instead of seeing four guys golfing on the moon with little to no other forms of US spaceflight.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “and FYI, Mr. President, ‘sincere gratitude’ doesn’t pay the electric bill”

    Nor do America’s taxpayers. Get that straight. I have ZERO obligation to pay the electric bill for our space workers if what they are doing is not in the greater interest of the nation.

    “The 9.2% unemployment figure tells us all that the nation needs jobs now- and your decimation of America’s HSF program only adds to it.”

    Simply and utterly false. To the extent that NASA’s budget stays level, and that most of its money goes to pay people, the “decimation” of America’s human space flight program has nothing to do with the number of jobs NASA supports. Um, ya think NASA is burying that money in a hole somewhere? Those workers may or may not build rockets, but they will advance the enterprise. To the extent that NASA’s budget isn’t going to stay level, and NASA jobs are really cut, it appears you’d have Congress to thank for that.

  • DCSCA

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ July 8th, 2011 at 9:59 pm

    “The fastest and cheapest way to set up a permanent human presence on Mars and on the moons of Mars is by first establishing a permanent human presence on the surface of the Moon. Why Mars First advocates don’t understand this astonishes me!”

    Yep. Agreed. Pace was correct today, too. Given the state of the art and the capabilities and resources of the nations who’d partner in any kind of international effort it’s the way it will happen. Kraft layed out a similar approach. Whether it is American led is increasingly uncertain. Between Mercury and Apollo, there was Gemini and w/o it, Apollo would never have suceeded. The moon is a gift; a proving ground from God and if it wasn’t there, engineers would have to create one. One thing IS certain- the animosity between Griffin and Garver continues to fester. Caught them on a network newscast tonight and the flashes of bad blood between them still surface. All her appearences today were quite defensive. The quickers Garver is jettisoned from NASA, the better.

  • Fred Willett

    The president doesn’t assemble the parts of your favorite rocket.
    He doesn’t design the parts or order the parts or design the rocket or order the rocket.
    He doesn’t design the mission or even need to know what the mission is.
    The presidents job is stand out in front, look Presidential and utter just those platitudes a lot of folks here are critizising him for.
    That’s his job.
    It’s the job of the machine under him to take the general direction indicated by the president and turn it into a plan, a mission, a program, a what ever you want to call it.
    All you will ever get out of the president is a few general words of support.
    Or not.
    When word filters up the chain of command that a program (like Constellation) is in trouble the average politician (like the big O) wouldn’t have a clue what to do about it. So what does he do?
    Appoint a panel. (Like Augustine)
    The panel gets some general directions from the White house. (like don’t spend any extra money, for example and give me a list of options) and the panel goes away and prepares a report.
    The president looks at the report and chooses an option. In the case of Augustine it was Flexible Path.
    It is unlikely that the President has given NASA a moments thought since. His speeches are probably cobbled together by staff based on their views of the decisions on NASA he’s made in the past.
    Why should he spend time on NASA? He has more important things to worry about. 2 wars. An economy in trouble. Other economies in trouble, like Europe, which could spill over into the US. Arab unrest. Pakistan unrest. I could go on for quite a while before NASA floats to the top as an issue of interest to the White house.
    The wash up?
    Looking to the president to take any interest in what happens at NASA is just plain ridiculous. No president has ever shown any interest in NASA.
    Ever.
    except, of course, as a photo op.

  • Fred Willett

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ July 8th, 2011 at 9:59 pm

    I would recommend you go back and look at the Augustine Committee’s final report.
    They concluded that landing on anything bigger than a gnats behind was simple unaffordable with any sort of heavy lift architecture given the current budgets. There is simple no money for landers.
    Since NASA is committed to building a SLS that means that Moon or Mars landings are out of the question for the forseeable future.
    And that is before any budget cuts.
    So why waste time praying for the impossible?
    On the other hand if SLS were to go away and we were to explore with EELVs and fuel depots, the budget might stretch to Mars and Lunar landers.
    Something for you to think about.

  • Robert G. Oler wrote:

    sigh…I wish people would drop the “inspire” part of the same stale message.

    The other abused adjective is “bold.”

  • Alan

    “And yes, cherry slogans and pretty speeches do not answer the problems of KSC workers gettign pink-slipped and having to wait how long until either the commercial side gets stood up, or a NASA vehicle is ready to fly BEO.”

    They have know for 7 years that this day was going to come. Maybe they should have lined up a new employment opportunity with the warning they were given.

    The rest of us are lucky to get a 30 day notice, so I don’t feel sorry for people who received a 2500 day notice.

  • GeeSpace

    Marcel F. Williams wrote
    Why would anyone want to go to Mars just to fly by the planet or to simply visit a martian moon when we could use our Moon to enable humans to stay permanently in Mars orbit and on the Martian surface and even export water and fuel from the moons of Mars for commercial gain!

    Marcel, going to Mars just to fly by the planet or to simply visit a martian moon Is President Obama’s implementation plan for space exploration for the mid 2030’s..

    A real reason, maybe the primary reason, for going to Mars is the estabish human cities and towns on Mars for the development of Martian resources and for people to live “a good life”.

  • NASA Fan

    Obama, though indeed he inherited Bush II decision to end the Shuttle Program, will be remembered throughout history as the President who ended Human Space Flight @ NASA. Years from now, when the CAIB II/Augustine Jr/Rogers commission is investigated the next disaster in NASA human space flight, they will see the root cause was put in motion by Obama’s ‘non policy’ on HSF circa 2010.

  • Monte Davis

    …‘aiming at the stars’, both literally and figuratively, is a problem to occupy generations…” [DCSCA quoting Goddard]

    We need more of that Tsiolkovsky/Goddard long view, and less of the von Braunian “on to the next step now.” I have the greatest respect for von Braun, but remember that his perspective was shaped by four huge ramp-ups in funding inside 30 years: (1) when the Reichswehr plucked him from the VfW hobbyists to work at Kummersdorf, then Peenemunde; (2) when the A4 (V2) went from testing into mass production and deployment; (3) when the US plunged into the ICBM race circa 1954; and (4) when Kennedy said ‘go’ for Apollo.

    That couldn’t continue — and unless you really want a renewed arms race/cold war or a killer asteroid, it won’t resume. Von Braun himself saw it in 1970: “…too many people at NASA…waiting for a miracle, just waiting for another man on a white horse to come and offer us another planet, like President Kennedy… The legacy of Apollo has spoiled a few people at NASA. They believe we are entitled to this kind of a thing forever, which I gravely doubt.”

    41 years later, see how many are still spoiled, still looking for that Next Big Breakthrough — or else, frustrated with NASA, persuading themselves that NewSpace will deliver it quickly and cheaply. (Von Braun may have been a dreamer, but he was also too good and hard-headed an engineering manager to swallow that.)

    Get over it, people. We will become spacefaring, but it’s going to take a lot longer than we hoped, progress in smaller increments than we’d like, and cost a lot (public or private) before it comes close to paying its way. Think in generations, not administrations.

  • Martijn Meijering

    And yes, cherry slogans and pretty speeches do not answer the problems of KSC workers gettign pink-slipped and having to wait how long until either the commercial side gets stood up, or a NASA vehicle is ready to fly BEO.

    So you care more about jobs and whether NASA has its own vehicle than about exploration. Not very surprising I have to say.

  • Policy Analyst

    the root cause was put in motion by Obama’s ‘non policy’ on HSF circa 2010.

    Right now the president’s policy, through Ms. Garver and Mr. Holdren, is to get some launch vehicles together as quickly as possible to get back to LEO and the space station. This policy is being executed and is now progressing extremely well even with the meddling and funding reductions of the senate and congress, through the excellent work of contractors and the emerging commercial space companies. Without the weight and infrastructure restrictions imposed by the senate and congress, the SLS properly executed (read smaller and reusable) would be a welcome addition to the fleet well under way, but NASA continues to insists on screwing it up through civil servant delusions of exploration.

  • Robert G. Oler

    NASA Fan wrote @ July 9th, 2011 at 8:50 am

    “Obama, though indeed he inherited Bush II decision to end the Shuttle Program, will be remembered throughout history as the President who ended Human Space Flight @ NASA”

    LOL really that is an amazingly silly statement.

    First off you have no clue how history will remember a President who is still “President”. What the statement you make shows is more your personal bias then anything else.

    History is written when 1) an actor or event is finished in terms of its affect on events (for instance Mr. Bush is done) and 2) the events that occurred have reached enough of a conclusion to have effected “the next course of decisions”.

    For instance. If you wrote history as Saddam’s statue came down Mr. Bush would go down as the “great liberator”. He is now hated in Iraq almost on par with Saddam. When the statute came down most Americans thought “wow”, now most (including the GOP candidates for POTUS) are renouncing the “intervention” style approach and most Americans would like to have the 2.5 trillion back. Who nows how Americans 30 years later will feel? I wont predict.

    If one had written history at the conclusion of the battle of Brooklyn Heights in the First US Civil War (the Revolution) Washington goes down as an incompetent leader who was lucky to get away from the Brits. Fortunately there was more history to be written.

    It is far to early to tell what Obama’s space policy will be remembered for. A fact is that he has ended NASA human spaceflight as it has been practiced since Mercury; a fact as well is that he ended something that had simply stopped performing in any reasonable manner and had resisted all attempts to improve it.

    If commercial flight works (and there is a market passed government employees…all things I think will happen) then ended the NASA lead big government approach to human spaceflight will be seen as the smartest thing that could happen in HSF…and historians will wonder why it took so long.

    But like so many other things in our country …NASA HSF as it was practiced by Cx was ending…one way or the other.

    The statement you make on history is laughable RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ July 8th, 2011 at 6:32 pm

    ” Mr. President, ‘sincere gratitude’ doesn’t pay the electric bill– or keep America in a leadership position to lead other nations in exploration or exploitation in HSF”

    Why are space workers special, even among government employees? I am under no obligation to pay their electric bill or make sure they have a job…government workers or those who live off the government check should do things that has a demonstrated value to the taxpayers who pay their salary.

    I can make that case for the FAA…but space workers…Joke. It cost a billion dollars plus and took at least 5000 people to send 8000 or so pounds of supplies to the space station…thats no value for cost.

    Goofy RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Matt Wiser wrote @ July 8th, 2011 at 10:34 pm

    “We’ll need a Mars orbital mission and Martian Moons as a dress rehearsal for Mars itself.”

    do you think that this would sale politically…? To a country where we are on the verge of not being able to open the schools for 5 days a week?

    RGO

  • @Norm Hartnett

    “No, the fastest and easiest (and cheapest) way to establish the technologies needed for interplanetary exploration is to develop them in LEO. At the laboratory we have spent so much money developing, the ISS.”

    You might have an argument if you said L1 instead of LEO. LEO doesn’t expose the ISS to the continuous heavy nuclei that astronauts will experience in interplanetary space. And we need to know what the appropriate amount of mass shielding will be for heavy nuclei exposure.

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    Actually, I think that America currently has a Wesley Crusher. ;-) Seemingly young, bright and articulate with an incredible reputation for leaps of intellectual brilliance but never seeming to deliver on it

    I guess that makes him a modern media-selected and -hyped politician… Gee, who would have guessed?

    Still, all those who point to Bush II and even previous to that are right. Really, there hasn’t been real, unqualified support for HSF since at least Reagan, maybe even before that. It has been one of those things that no-one in leadership really likes but no-one has had the intestinal fortitude to cancel. More recent politicians, far more cunning and deceptive than their predecessors, have got around a lack of resolution by simply killing it with neglect and fine words unsupported by cash.

  • Coastal Ron

    NASA Fan wrote @ July 9th, 2011 at 8:50 am

    Obama, though indeed he inherited Bush II decision to end the Shuttle Program, will be remembered throughout history as the President who ended Human Space Flight @ NASA.

    The Shuttle, which could only stay in space for 2 weeks (and cost $1.2B doing it) should really be remembered as the epitome of temporary spaceflight.

    NASA’s current Human Space Flight program (the ISS) has provided us with 3,901 days of continuous American presence in space, and Congress has extended it’s life through at least 2020. Now that’s HSF!

    Many people confuse spaceflight with launch events. That’s like confusing vacation time with the time you spend getting to your vacation destination. If your idea of a vacation is sitting in an airline seat, then I can see where you would consider the journey to/from the ISS on the Shuttle as “spaceflight”.

    I really don’t care what mode of transportation we use to get to space, my desire is that we increase the amount of activity in space. Because of that I look forward to the commercial crew transports that will vastly increase our ability to get more people into space. Let me give you an example.

    The Shuttle program has averaged a cost of $1.2B/flight, and it could normally carry 7 astronauts. With a flight rate of 4/year, that works out to $4.8B to get 28 people to space for a maximum of a two week stay, regardless if they wanted to stay longer at the ISS, since the Shuttle is time limited in space. That’s $171.4M/person for two week trips.

    Elon Musk recently said in an interview that he foresees the cost of their Falcon 9/Dragon crew system as being $140M/flight if NASA buys 4 flights/year. Assuming they did, that would mean that NASA would be spending $560M to get 28 people to space, and stay docked at the ISS for up to 2 years (it’s potential, not likely used in practice). That’s $20M/person. Boeing, SNC and Blue Origin will likely cost closer to Soyuz, but provide far more capacity than Soyuz (7 vs 3 crew).

    So if our goal is to get more people into space, then commercial space will do that far more effectively than the Shuttle, and far safer too. Has everyone forgotten that the Shuttle doesn’t have a crew escape system? All the commercial crew systems will.

    The Shuttle was a great experiment that went on too long and produced mixed results. Now is a good time to hand off the routine task of transportation to LEO to the commercial sector, and let NASA focus on how to expand our small foothold in space.

  • ok then

    A primary conclusion of Augustine was to match funding to goals. Obama’s goals matched the funding. It’s the House that is changing the dynamics.

    Just months after they mandated a huge rocket, they are failing to supply the funding levels they themselves dictated. If you didn’t understand the message of Augustine, I wouldn’t be so quick to involve him in your partisan jabs.

  • Alan

    Let’s revisit Windy for a moment:

    “The nation’s potential has been restrained by his social programs for 70 years. We will all be better off when they are gone.”

    FDR isn’t the true subject, it’s JFK (one could make the case that it’s LBJ), we could easily substitute just a few words . . .

    The nation’s potential has been restrained by his socialized space programs for 40 years. We will all be better off when they are gone.

    Oh the truth hurts, Windy . . . As usual, Windy runs around in Libertarian clothing, but is really just a socialist who wants Uncle Sam to pay for his pet project.

    Windy the Watermelon – capitalist green on the outside, but just another red socialist on the inside.

  • NASA Fan

    @Coastal Ron

    Yes, indeed , having an ISS represents having a HSF program. And, later when there isn’t interest/funds/capability to keep it going, it will splash into the ocean.

    Like I said in my post, Obama 2010 is the beginning of the end not ‘the end’. The end is not here, right now, as the existence of ISS points out.

    No politician will ever ‘vote to end HSF'; politiicans are not so courageous when it comes to voting. However, they, like Obama, will obfuscate,dither, punt, etc…so in the end, it will all come crashing down anyway, and they can say they hand ‘clean hands’.

    This will take some time to play out.

    Revist this post in about 12 years.

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    @ ok then,

    There is a key issue that many people seem to miss: The people in Congress behind SLS don’t believe that it will be as expensive as NASA fears. They believe that if NASA were to stop whining and get on with it, there is more than enough money to do the job. They believe that there are malign political motives behind NASA’s current stalling that has nothing to do with cost, safety or engineering. They believe and, frankly, facts are irrelevant.

    On this basis is the USA currently being governed.

  • Vladislaw

    NASA Fan wrote:

    “Yes, indeed , having an ISS represents having a HSF program. And, later when there isn’t interest/funds/capability to keep it going, it will splash into the ocean.”

    If the ISS is still functioning well in 2020, it will get extended to 2028. If it doesn’t, NASA can just lease a BA 330 for 100mil a year, four SpaceX launches per year and for 600 million a year NASA will be in space.

    I hope the ISS is extended to 2028 only to see the long term effects of atomic oxygen on the systems, radiation, etc. Wring it out like russia did with Mir. Whenever the ISS splashes, I am confident that there will be commercial options for NASA for lease options. All commercial is going to do is give America’s taxpayer funded agency, NASA, a lot more less expensive options.

  • vulture4

    Developing practical system for human spaceflight is really hard, but we have made 30 years of progress. The Shuttle was our very first attempt, and many decisions were made that turned out to be wrong, some at great cost. But we learned a great deal. The Shuttle today is reliable and safe, and would provide the foundation for a new generation of RLVs that would also be practical in cost.

    The disaster came when Mike Griffin threw out 30 years of hard-won progress because he was bored with the current programs and had childish dreams. He squandered $20B on “Apollo on Steroids”, obsolete technology for an obsolete goal. Dan Goldin would intimidate subordinates who disagreed with him; he doubled the size of the Webb telescope on a whim, leaving it over budget and years too late, with more billions wasted. Sean O’Keefe claimed the X-33 took off horizontally and violated the laws of physics; he canceled almost all NASA work on RLVs, including the shuttle, without even bothering to find out why they were being built. Charlie Bolden pantomimed flipping a coin and playing Russian roulette as estimates of the level of risk of flying the Shuttle.

    Lori Garver does not agree with many of my views or even answer my email. In person she is said to be somewhat annoying. But she understands both politics and technical issues in depth and doesn’t make snap judgments based on personal bias, naive fantasy or hubris. As nearly as I can tell she has never said anything that wasn’t clearly thought out and solidly supported by facts and logic, something which cannot be said about any of the recent Administrators. At the present time I am not aware of anyone at the highest levels who is better qualified to lead the agency.

  • Coastal Ron

    NASA Fan wrote @ July 9th, 2011 at 1:11 pm

    No politician will ever ‘vote to end HSF’; politiicans are not so courageous when it comes to voting. However, they, like Obama, will obfuscate,dither, punt, etc…so in the end, it will all come crashing down anyway, and they can say they hand ‘clean hands’.

    I think those that oversee NASA in government have a genuine desire to see NASA succeed. I haven’t seen any evidence of true maliciousness. But what I do see as impeding NASA’s ability to succeed is greed. Greed can be defined as wanting more than you should have, and not sharing with others.

    That’s how I see the situation today with the SLS, in that the Senators that proposed it wanted it to preserve jobs in their states, not because of the effect that the job loses would have in other states.

    As long as politicians are responsible for a major part of our activities in space, then our ability to expand into space will be retarded. All the more reason to push for commercial crew to get going, since once NASA certifies them for ISS use, Bigelow and others can start using them for commercial purposes that are not as beholden to greedy politicians.

    That’s why when starry-eyed dreamers think that the SLS signals the beginning of massive spending for Moon and Mars programs, I have to chuckle at their naivete. All the SLS indicates is that greed is still in control of NASA, and that NASA HSF could, as you say, continue to decline until it is gone because of it.

    I think commercial capabilities will get established before that happens, but no doubt about it, it could be a close run thing.

  • VirgilSamms

    “Has everyone forgotten that the Shuttle doesn’t have a crew escape system? All the commercial crew systems will.”

    The shuttle is gone. Why are you still talking like it is the measure of all things? To confuse the issue is my guess.

    Falcon has a hypergolic pusher system that has nowhere near the thrust necessary to qualify as an effective escape system. Cheap and nasty.

  • @Coastal Ron

    A Space Shuttle flight cost $450 million, not $1.5 billion. Its only $1.5 billion if you include development cost. Did you include development cost for the Falcon 9? But I guess you can’t since they’ve never flown a human into space and are still in the development stage.

    Plus the shuttle delivers crew plus over 20 tonnes of cargo. A Falcon 9 certainly won’t be able to do that. And if NASA purchases 4 flights per year from Space X, that doesn’t leave many, or any, flights for other private companies to the ISS.

    Since the ISS was originally supposed to be decommissioned by 2016 in order for NASA to fund beyond LEO missions, NASA isn’t getting any savings from commercial crew since the ISS is now going to be extended until 2020 at a cost of $3 billion per year.

    These commercial crew companies really need to be focusing on commercial space tourism and not the ISS and tax payer dollars.

  • DCSCA

    Monte Davis wrote @ July 9th, 2011 at 9:51 am
    Yes, but consider how much further von Braun progressed than Goddard in the same time frame, given von Braun was subsidized by government funding and Goddard was all but starved of financing save Lindbergh’s interest and some monies from Guggenheim. A few months before Goddard died, he had an opportunity to examine some captured V-2 components and marveled at the similarities in engineering thinking as well as the progress made (thanks to those ReichMarks.) Von Braun’s brilliance was in the capacity to corral resources, manage them well and market a vision to the benefactors at hand- be they German or American. [‘… a man whose alliegience is ruled by expedience,’ per Tom Lehrer.] He was also helped by good timing, flush funding and by a government which carefully concealed the details of his Faustian bargaining.

  • Rhyolite

    “A Space Shuttle flight cost $450 million, not $1.5 billion. Its only $1.5 billion if you include development cost.”

    The space shuttle program has averaged about $5 Billion per year for less than 5 missions per year. Even excluding developmental costs, the per flight cost is over $1 Billion.

    “Did you include development cost for the Falcon 9?”

    SpaceX quotes prices, which inherently include the amortized development cost.

    “Plus the shuttle delivers crew plus over 20 tonnes of cargo.”

    The last flight delivered less than 4 tonnes. How often has shuttle actually flown full?

    “These commercial crew companies really need to be focusing on commercial space tourism and not the ISS and tax payer dollars.”

    SpaceX has 40 some flight on its manifest of which no more than 13 go to ISS. It already gets 2/3s of it’s business elsewhere.

  • A Space Shuttle flight cost $450 million, not $1.5 billion. Its only $1.5 billion if you include development cost.

    You can take out development costs, and it’s still over a billion a flight.

    Did you include development cost for the Falcon 9?

    Falcon 9 prices include development costs. It was privately developed.

    But I guess you can’t since they’ve never flown a human into space and are still in the development stage.

    Falcon 9 is now essentially operational, sorry. It will probably deliver a Dragon to ISS on its next flight, and it is already designed to existing stated NASA human-rating requirements.

    if NASA purchases 4 flights per year from Space X, that doesn’t leave many, or any, flights for other private companies to the ISS.

    It does if by saving so much money by no longer flying Shuttle, they can afford to buy more than four flights a year.

    You might want to take a course in economics and accounting some time.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ July 9th, 2011 at 4:55 pm

    “Plus the shuttle delivers crew plus over 20 tonnes of cargo. ” only 8000 pounds this flight…RGO

  • pathfinder_01

    “Plus the shuttle delivers crew plus over 20 tonnes of cargo. A Falcon 9 certainly won’t be able to do that. And if NASA purchases 4 flights per year from Space X, that doesn’t leave many, or any, flights for other private companies to the ISS. “

    Marcel, Space X isn’t the only supplier for commercial crew or cargo. The MPLM only delivers around 6mt at most per shuttle flight and that was for a station that was under construction. The Russian progress hold about 2MT worth of cargo and has able to support 3 person spacestations. Dragon can carry 6MT and Cgynus about 2MT.

    Budget willing NASA wants 2-3 companies for crew. All of the commercial craft can hold 7 and are storable at the ISS for up to 6 months(they can function as lifeboats). If one of them does a cargo run/lifeboat duty say then that allows the others to be space taxies. A pilot plus 4 NASA astronuants that leave at least 2 seats that could be sold per flight. The ISS can only support 7 people permantly but can support more in surge mode. So yes they could carry more to the ISS without more flights and because commercial crew isn’t limited to Space X they or the other carrier could add a flight if someone is willing to pay.

    “Since the ISS was originally supposed to be decommissioned by 2016 in order for NASA to fund beyond LEO missions, NASA isn’t getting any savings from commercial crew since the ISS is now going to be extended until 2020 at a cost of $3 billion per year. “

    It is cheaper than the shuttle and deorbiting the ISS wasn’t going to free enough money to make BEO spaceflight happen any time soon. Cxp estimated date of first lunar landing was sometime in the 2030ies!

    Anyway before you dismiss Commercal crew and Commercail cargo as useless, you can use Dragon and Cygnus to supply or resupply anything in LEO and they could be adapted to supply a BEO mission a lot easier than the Shuttle. Commercal crew could allow you to cheaply go further out like to l1.

  • DCSCA

    “essentially operational ….”

    ROFLMAO yeah, that’s a swell, shill turn-of-phrase to bolster confidence in investors and market a commerical product/enterprise. In other words, it’s not. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Yeah, imagine the peace of mind brought to commerical passengers and stockholders boarding 747s around world if the phrase ‘essentially operational’ was emblazoned on the bulkhead by the emergency exits. Lordy.

  • E.P. Grondine

    DM wrote:

    “That couldn’t continue — and unless you really want a renewed arms race/cold war or a killer asteroid, it won’t resume.”

    Damn it, Monte, get it straight:
    It isn’t a killer asteroid, its a killer comet.
    And it isn’t what you “want”, it’s what’s there.

    Deal with it.

    Other than that, a pretty good analysis and review of von Braun that seems to have intruded on the usual discussions here about where to go and how to get there held by those who don’t know where they are.

  • DCSCA

    @Marcel F. Williams wrote @ July 9th, 2011 at 4:55 pm

    There’s lots of numbers and creative bookeeping involved. $400 million is lowballing and $1.5 billion is way high and commerical shill hype. The $500 0$750 million range seems safe. Regardless, it is simply too costly to operate and maintain in this economic climate. Given the ‘mission rules’ NASA management penned, thry seem oblivious to the ‘incidental’ costs that add up– just look at the costs in simply delays when they have to de-tank, etc. Even the 747 transport from CA to KSC can cost $1.5 million if they had to dicert to Edwards AFB. The costs for the embarassing delay of STS-134, when the CIC showed up have to be high as well. It’s time to end this program and muster out the management operating it. 30 years is a good run.

  • pathfinder_01

    “You might have an argument if you said L1 instead of LEO. LEO doesn’t expose the ISS to the continuous heavy nuclei that astronauts will experience in interplanetary space. And we need to know what the appropriate amount of mass shielding will be for heavy nuclei exposure.”

    Marcel how about this:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matroshka_experiments

    or this

    http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/DOSIS-DOBIES.html

    Among others. The ISS does not receive as much heavy nuclei as deep space, but it receives more than you would get on the ground.

    Here is some info from a Mars probe:

    http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/1297.pdf

    Basically a three year trip to mars and back would put one near lifetime limits on radiation (which is going to be a big problem if you try to colonize it).

    The big problem with heavy nuclei is that too little shielding is more dangerous than no shielding at all. When heavy nuclei crash into an atom they create secondary particles and if you don’t have enough mass to absorb the secondary you will get a higher total does of radiation than if you had no mass at all!

    This is why current theory is to carry enough to shield from solar particles (which will kill in a very short period of time but are block able) but not so the GCR (they are a long term problem which won’t kill instantly and you can’t carry enough shielding practically for them).

    Both the earth’s atmosphere and the magnetic belt are what protect the surface from this threat and the ISS’s high inclination orbit takes it near the poles (where the magnetic field tends to bend the trajectory of the GCR towards….).

  • mr. mark

    While everyone here is arguing back and forth, The second stage has arrived at the cape for the COTS 2 mission for Spacex. That mission most likely will be the first one to berth at the ISS as a combined COTS2/3. It’s a shame that we constantly argue while good work is being done to close the gap especially in the cargo phase of operations. In about 6 months time all cargo vehicles will be fully automated and not require astronauts to fly them thereby reducing the risk to flight crews who otherwise would have to man those missions. Russian, European, Japanese, Spacex and Orbital all will be making those automated cargo deliveries. I believe that is a major advance and one that the world spaceflight community can be proud of. You can keep blaming whoever but, it won’t change anything. It’s time to move forward with what we have and stop looking back at a program that in a week will no longer exist.

  • Martijn Meijering

    There is a key issue that many people seem to miss:

    Are you a mind reader? If not, how can you *know* what they believe? All we know is what they *say*. And since I believe they are a bunch of liars and thieves I’m not too impressed by statements of what they claim to believe.

  • VirgilSamms

    “Basically a three year trip to mars and back would put one near lifetime limits on radiation ”

    That is not what I am reading from your link.

    “The effective dose expected for an exploratory space mission is very large compared to the effective dose limits recommended by the International Com-mission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) [8] for the general public (1 mSv.year-1) and for occupational exposures (20 mSv.year-1) and is expected to be higher than the exposure limits recommended by the National Council of Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) [9] for astronauts during exploration missions at low Earth orbit (LEO) (0.5 mSv maximum annual dose to the blood-forming organs). This NCRP report specifies that these limits do not apply to interplanetary missions because of the large uncertainties in predict-ing the risks of late effects from heavy ions.”

    Those “large uncertainties” are easy to predict in regards to what heavy nuclei does to brain cells. It is the showstopper no one wants to talk about except for a few specialist studying it.
    And no one is listening to them.

    It is a problem that can be solved with moon water for shielding and either nuclear propulsion or lunar based beam propulsion. This is a project requiring HLV’s and fissionable material for spacecraft power and both require governmental resources.

    Private space cannot accomplish any of this. The space shuttle heavy lift hardware (minus the orbiter) can.

    It is easy to regurgitate advertising about various schemes but the fact is a heavy lift vehicle with hydrogen upper stages and a hydrogen earth departure stage is the only practical solution.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ July 10th, 2011 at 2:26 am

    There’s lots of numbers and creative bookeeping involved.

    NASA’s accounting system is notoriously opaque, which is why outside studies have more validity. The one that is most widely accepted is the one by Pielke, who has been digging into the program costs since 1992. Here is his estimate back in 2005 post Columbia:

    http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/space_policy/000346space_shuttle_costs.html

    And this WSJ article after Atlantis took off:

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303544604576433830373220742.html

    $400 million is lowballing and $1.5 billion is way high and commerical shill hype.

    As usual you have a hard time telling fact from fiction. $1.5B is the estimated cost when R&D is included, which is a valid way of looking at overall cost.

    The $500 0$750 million range seems safe.

    Now that’s shill hype! Your kind of accounting precision is why NASA keeps failing on major programs. Maybe you’re really Jeff Hanley (former CxP PM) – that would explain a lot… ;-)

    The lesson here is that we shouldn’t listen to guesses, or feelings, but facts.

    And the facts are that using OSC and SpaceX to resupply the ISS will cost far less than using the Shuttle with it’s MPLM, which only carried 50% more than Dragon but cost 10X more per flight.

    Costs for commercial crew will likely be in the same cost savings range, be far safer (Shuttle had no LAS), and able to launch more often and without the multitude of minor launch issues that have stopped so many Shuttle launch attempts over the decades.

    Yes the Shuttle will be missed – I miss all the money that was wasted on over-priced transportation.

  • DCSCA

    Lori Garver does not agree with many of my views or even answer my email. In person she is said to be somewhat annoying. …At the present time I am not aware of anyone at the highest levels who is better qualified to lead the agency.”

    You’re out of your mind. Garver’s history is that of a corporate lobbyist, shilling for boondoggle aerospace corporate welfare projects like the ISS- a project she supported decades ago over BEO projects. She has been a creature of contractor Washington since her ‘National Space Society’ days. Sh is part of the problem, not part of the solution and the quicker Garver is jettisoned from NASA, the better.

  • David Dex

    They have know for 7 years that this day was going to come. Maybe they should have lined up a new employment opportunity with the warning they were given.

    Way to blame the workers, Alan. What did you want them to do? Quit the program 7 years ago? It was always about the money, or lack thereof.

  • pathfinder_01

    “It is a problem that can be solved with moon water for shielding and either nuclear propulsion or lunar based beam propulsion. This is a project requiring HLV’s and fissionable material for spacecraft power and both require governmental resources.”

    You know you can get water MUCH cheaper on earth. For lunar water to make sense you would need billions of dollars worth of investment plus billions more worth of R/D into ISRU and reusable Landers(oh and you will need to melt the ice and purify the water before use). If for some crazy reason you needed 500MT worth of water you could lift it in 9 flights of an FH or 16 flights of Delta IV heavy price (4.8 billion for the Delta or 1.1 billion for FH). I don’t think you can build a moon base capable of exporting 500 tons for 1.1 billion and I seriously doubt 4.8 billion is enough to do both the R/D needed and build/support it.
    In addition mass is not your friend when it comes to the rocket equation, the more mass you want to move the more propellant it is going to take for the whole mission and beamed power to what? Electric propulsion has high ISP but very low thrust more mass equal more trip time(or more power) and mind you the power will drop off greatly with distance(remember beamed power follows an inverse square law). Solar Sails and thermal rockets likewise.

    “Private space cannot accomplish any of this. The space shuttle heavy lift hardware (minus the orbiter) can.”

    So can delta derived and Atlas Derived and Falcon Derived.

    “It is easy to regurgitate advertising about various schemes but the fact is a heavy lift vehicle with hydrogen upper stages and a hydrogen earth departure stage is the only practical solution.”

    Well given that we cannot store hydrogen long term on orbit(it boils off and current hydrogen upper stages have lifetimes measured in hours) and given that at some point the amount of propellant needed for a mission will exceed your HLV lift capacity, how do you propose going to Mars?

  • DCSCA

    Coastal Ron wrote @ July 10th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
    Go with OMB.

  • Well given that we cannot store hydrogen long term on orbit(it boils off and current hydrogen upper stages have lifetimes measured in hours)

    That is not a given. We can store hydrogen on orbit indefinitely with proper designs. Current states have lifetimes measured in hours because they need not be measured in more for their mission requirements. It isn’t any fundamental technology issue.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ July 11th, 2011 at 1:09 am

    Go with OMB.

    Your ignorance of government is only second to your ignorance about financial issues.

    The OMB’s predominant mission is to assist the President in overseeing the preparation of the federal budget and to supervise its administration in Executive Branch agencies. They work on the current budgets, not those from 30 years ago.

    The only government agency that could do a non-partisan historical audit of the Shuttle program would be the GAO. But since no one asked them to do one we’ll never know what the official numbers are. Absent a GAO audit, Pielke’s numbers are the most believable.

  • That should have been “current stages…”

  • Monte Davis

    DCSCA: consider how much further von Braun progressed than Goddard in the same time frame

    I’m not sure if you’re questioning my point or buttressing it :-) Just as it’s ill-advised to take the 1960s as one’s baseline for how aggressive our goals in space should be, it’s ill-advised to take a von Braunian timeline as one’s standard for how fast we ought to be progressing. Are you quite sure that the US could/should have provided Big Government Bucks for Goddard without any of the other characteristics of the Big Government that funded the A4… and the Mittelwerk? I’m not that sanguine.

    As I’ve noted here before, in 1953-1961 we spent 2.5 Apollo budgets (constant dollars) on ICBM development and the associated technologies. That turbocharged progress when we slapped the “civilian” label on those same technologies, many of the same rockets and many of the same teams. One of the biggest factors in the “slow pace” and “anemic funding” since Apollo is that since the ICBMs were deployed, there’s been no comparable de facto subsidy from DoD for new space technology. Reagan’s version of BMD wasn’t in the same league, nor is today’s.

    EPG: I have no doubt that there are more dinosaur-killers out there. But there’s also a severe mismatch between their typical interval /probability per annum and those typically used by any human culture so far, let alone any US Congress. “Want” was my shorthand for all the more or less desperate motivational stratagems that space fans come up with to make other people care as much as we do… from “OMG, what if the New Imperial Han take down our Apollo 11 flag?” to “OMG, if we don’t get wagon trains on Chryse Planitia soon we will lose our American Pioneer Spirit and turn into placid Old Yurrupean socialists.”

  • VirgilSamms

    “It isn’t any fundamental technology issue.”

    That is one of the major propaganda ploys of private space.

    It is an extremely difficult trick to pull off and probably is not practical.

    The reason it is being pushed so hard is the numbers for storable propellants are much larger and turn the smaller cheaper path into a joke.

    Launching a rocket a day may be great for those ignorant enough to think it will happen but the reality is there is no substitute for a heavy lift vehicle with hydrogen upper stages. Piecing together spaceships in orbit on a scale that will equal what HLV’s lift in large pieces is a bad plan.

    I might seem like I am on the other side of the fence with the private space crowd, but we are all after the same thing; space.

    If the private space crowd would just admit to their place in the scheme of things instead of trying to start from scratch that would be a start.

    An organization working to get the U.S. into space might accomplish something but divided we are going nowhere.

  • Martijn Meijering

    This is a project requiring HLV’s and fissionable material for spacecraft power and both require governmental resources.

    Neither lunar water nor fission reactors require an HLV. And water doesn’t have to come from the moon. In fact, if it does come from the moon you will have even less to do for an HLV! So you your argument is largely independent of the conclusion you want to prove and to the degree it isn’t, it points in the opposite direction. Another moronic argument from an incorrigable troll.

  • Martijn Meijering

    Piecing together spaceships in orbit on a scale that will equal what HLV’s lift in large pieces is a bad plan.

    That strawman plan only exists in your mind.

  • adastramike

    Ultimately sending Americans to Mars has always been NASA’s holy grail–this is nothing new. What’s new and distracting is the idea that we need to send them to orbit Mars first, or send them to the moons of Mars first, before landing. The trip to Mars is so long, 6-9 months transit (2 years round-trip) if memory serves me, that why would you risk sending people there only to orbit or only to visit the moons? And the cost would be so large that all it would take would be one “bad” Congress or non-visionary President to decide that such a first crewed trip to Mars orbit ultimately was too expensive. As a result, it would become a stunt and canceled, before we ever got the chance to actually land humans on Mars. In my mind, sending Americans to Mars orbit is just a distraction. Once we go to Mars, send them there to land. Any other choice is just foolish, unless you have guaranteed funding for both a trip to the Martian moons AND a follow-up mission to land. I know that once we go to Mars we’ll want continuous missions to eventually form a small colony, but which gov’t will invest the continuous stream of funds needed for such an endeavor? Knowing the likelihood of the first crewed Mars mission becoming a stunt, why not simply fund the first one to be a landing?

    It’s nice to hear a President start speaking on space more frequently…but then again he’s speaking after a major, historic space event — so any President would likely issue a statement. I think Obama simply has poor space/science advisors and if they recommended we send people to an iceberg (so to speak) he would agree to that, after of course funding a Presidential commission to suggest that very idea. My point being, I feel that Obama is relying on people, in my opinion, who just want to make a name for themselves in space politcy in order to guide his space policy.

    And him suggesting that we’re using ancient rocket technology (40 years old) too me is very funny. We’re still using the internal combustion engine for cars. Should we halt our summer vacations just because we haven’t yet built highly efficient and powerful electric cars? I don’t think we’re going away from using chemical rockets to launch satellites into space anytime in the remotely near future. Also for crewed Mars missions, to me only nuclear propulsion or something like VASIMR is has even a remote possibility of “replacing” chemical rockets for such a long duration mission. As for other ideas of launch/space propulsion, I feel we’re talking decades before anything operational comes into play. Can we really afford to wait that long? I don’t think so if America wants to remain THE leader in space exploration, not simply A leader or the leader ONLY for the next 50 years, and then possibly relinquishing it to some other country and being OK with that. I think history has shown what happens to countries that shy away from exploration, or those that misuse their exploration capabilities. I think this has already begun to happen to America.

  • Coastal Ron

    VirgilSamms wrote @ July 11th, 2011 at 1:07 pm

    Piecing together spaceships in orbit on a scale that will equal what HLV’s lift in large pieces is a bad plan.

    Gary/Virgil, every time you say this you look really ignorant. Why? Because the ISS, which weighs 919,960 lb, proves you wrong.

    There are no HLV’s being seriously considered that could lift 1M lb of mass to LEO, so to duplicate the ISS is going to take multiple launches anyways. And if you’re going to do multiple launches, then you have to consider cost as one of the trade-offs to complexity.

    If we needed to duplicate the ISS, or build something using the same construction techniques, then we can do that today using Delta IV Heavy, Ariane 5 and the Proton launchers. No wait, no need to spend budget on HLV development instead of payloads, the launch costs are known, and the launchers have been proven over many launches. A new HLV could not claim any of that.

    What is a new HLV supposed to carry? You still haven’t told us what year or decade Congress will cough up the money to fund a Moon or Mars program. When will that happen?

    What is a government-only HLV supposed to do while it waits for a mission? Every day an HLV sits on the ground, NASA employees and contractors will be paid for doing essentially nothing. And you advocate for that?

    If the private space crowd would just admit to their place in the scheme of things instead of trying to start from scratch that would be a start.

    You’re the one that is pushing the HLV scheme when there are no funded payloads for one. Commercial space advocates want NASA to be allowed to do what most every other part of government does – come up with the requirements, and see if there is a commercial solution that will work. If there isn’t, and an alternative can’t be found, that should be the only point that NASA decides to design their own solution, which the commercial marketplace will build anyways.

    There is no getting around the fact that the commercial marketplace has always built everything that NASA needs, and this won’t change. It’s more an issue of who owns and operates it, and even there NASA doesn’t operate what they fly anymore. NASA is essentially a contracting agency when it comes to hardware, so you getting worked up about “hobby rockets” is hilarious, because it’s those “hobby rocket” makers that build everything NASA needs. Get over it.

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ July 11th, 2011 at 9:54 am

    “Your ignorance of government is only second to your ignorance about financial issues.” =yawn= Your expertise in ignorance qualifies you as a Newspace advocate. Put down the mirror. Panic-stricken Newspace advocates, desperate for shrinking government subsidies, always challenge the messenger when they don’t like the message. If you’re foolish enough to believe space shuttle missions were averaging $1.2- $1.5 billion/flight then you musta been the subcontractor who supplied the AF w/$500 toilet seats, too. SpaceX is behind schedule and still not servicing the ISS. Tick-tock, tick-tock, fella.

  • VirgilSamms

    “you look really ignorant. Why? Because the ISS, which weighs 919,960 lb, proves you wrong.”

    The ISS is an incredibly expensive pile of junk going around in endless circles. There is nothing in LEO. Nothing. We have learned all we need and now it is time to go BEO.

    “to duplicate the ISS is going to take multiple launches anyways.”

    Who wants to duplicate it? And multiple launches in this context is….not even near the vast difference being discussed. Shame on you. Really.

    “What is a new HLV supposed to carry?”

    Well Ron, that is pretty obvious to everyone except you. It is supposed to carry Heavy things. Last year Bolden said he would probably be launching DOD payloads as soon as it was available. It also launches hydrogen fueled Earth Departure Stages BEO. Inferior lift vehicles cannot send any humans BEO on anything except a HLV.

    “NASA employees and contractors will be paid for doing essentially nothing. And you advocate for that?”

    That is so ridiculous I cannot believe you posted it. Without the orbiter the ability to launch 10 times a year with shuttle components is a sure thing.
    Block 1 is 70 tons and 130 tons is easily attainable with 5 segments and more powerful Hydrogen burning engines. 130+ launches and no reason that number cannot be reached in a little over a decade.

    “NASA is essentially a contracting agency when it comes to hardware, so you getting worked up about “hobby rockets” is hilarious,”

    Ha ha ha. That hobby rocket is pieced together mickey mouse junk compared to a shuttle derived HLV. You might be swallowing the infomercial (I doubt it) but congress and space advocates who are seeking to expand into the solar system know what is happening.

    I never needed to get over anything. I know the truth, congress knows, the scientists who are serious about BEO know, and I think you know it to- or you really are either a pawn, a con artist, or a fool. Maybe a little of all three.

    Goodbye Ron. Post whatever you want to try and light my fuse. I am not going to look at this worthless infomercial anymore. Ugh.

  • Coastal Ron

    adastramike wrote @ July 11th, 2011 at 4:33 pm

    What’s new and distracting is the idea that we need to send them to orbit Mars first, or send them to the moons of Mars first, before landing. The trip to Mars is so long, 6-9 months transit (2 years round-trip) if memory serves me, that why would you risk sending people there only to orbit or only to visit the moons?

    You may have a point, although I guess I thought the point of that type of visitation mission would be as a shakedown cruise for a Nautilus-X type reusable spaceship.

    And him suggesting that we’re using ancient rocket technology (40 years old) too me is very funny. We’re still using the internal combustion engine for cars.

    True, but now we use fuel injectors instead of carburetors, anti-lock disc brakes instead of drum brakes, shoulder belts and smart airbags, and almost double the fuel mileage.

    If you gave rocket engineers a chance to redesign the Shuttle orbiter, I doubt very many of the legacy systems would be kept. And that’s what I think Obama’s point was, which is that we should start off with a clean-sheet design for our next government transportation systems.

    I know Congress’s assumption that the Shuttle SRB & ET are the best technologies to use for a Super-Heavy Launch Vehicle is kind of laughable, especially considering that Congress has no clue what the cost effective alternatives are. To me that’s a pretty strong indicator that they didn’t care about cost for the SLS, nor using the best technologies, and that they are only pushing it so hard for jobs.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ July 11th, 2011 at 8:29 pm

    If you’re foolish enough to believe space shuttle missions were averaging $1.2- $1.5 billion/flight…

    Oh, that’s right, this isn’t something from the Apollo era, so you don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge about Shuttle stuff. No wonder you can’t use anything but uninformed opinion to respond.

    If you’re going to be ignorant about things, at least don’t dig yourself in deeper by trying to defend it without proof. I’ve provided my sources, if you want to defend your cost estimates, then provide yours.

    As usual, I doubt you have any public facts that support your assertions… ;-)

  • Vladislaw

    “Well Ron, that is pretty obvious to everyone except you. It is supposed to carry Heavy things. Last year Bolden said he would probably be launching DOD payloads as soon as it was available. It also launches hydrogen fueled Earth Departure Stages BEO.”

    Where is the funding for the EDS? I still have not seen a budget line for it. If it is supposed to launch in 5 years, shouldn’t they have to start on it and the lander?

    “That is so ridiculous I cannot believe you posted it. Without the orbiter the ability to launch 10 times a year with shuttle components is a sure thing.
    Block 1 is 70 tons and 130 tons is easily attainable with 5 segments and more powerful Hydrogen burning engines. “

    10 times a year of 130 tons? So where is the funding for 1300 tons of hardware?

    At 1 billion per launch, that is the total human spaceflight budget, again, where is the funding for the actual hardware if the entire budget is just paying for empty launches.

  • Coastal Ron

    VirgilSamms wrote @ July 11th, 2011 at 8:36 pm

    The ISS is an incredibly expensive pile of junk going around in endless circles.

    You keep ignoring the fact that Congress has designated the ISS as a National Laboratory, and has said the ISS will be funded through at least 2020. Apparently they don’t share your opinion.

    We have learned all we need and now it is time to go BEO.

    Real scientists and engineers don’t share your view. And there’s that issue you have with a lack of facts to support your rhetoric…

    Last year Bolden said he would probably be launching DOD payloads as soon as it was available.

    Bolden, in testimony in front of Congress today, said the DoD doesn’t have a specific use for the SLS. They look at the SLS as supporting their manufacturing base for DoD programs, nothing else.

    The SLS has no other customer than NASA itself. By law it can’t compete with commercial launchers, and the DoD doesn’t have a use for it. That leaves NASA’s shrinking budget to fund whatever it is you think will launch on top of the SLS.

    There’s no money for SLS flights, and definitely no money for all the payloads you dream about.

    As Vladislaw has already asked you, “where is the funding for 1300 tons of hardware?

  • Martijn Meijering

    It is supposed to carry Heavy things. Last year Bolden said he would probably be launching DOD payloads as soon as it was available. It also launches hydrogen fueled Earth Departure Stages BEO.

    Other than fueled EDSs there are no affordable heavy payloads. And with refueling you don’t need the heavy lift becase propellant is easily divisible. I’m afraid you have an unhealthy fixation with large rockets. I think you may need get some help with that. That of course would be a matter between you and your mental health provider.

  • Martijn Meijering

    The reason it is being pushed so hard is the numbers for storable propellants are much larger and turn the smaller cheaper path into a joke.

    No they’re not, especially not if you use LOX/LH2 for LEO -> L1/L2, which is most of the way out of the Earth’s gravity well, and only use storable propellant from there onwards. The numbers get better if you throw in SEP, which is also proven tecnology for small tugs carrying storable propellant.

    And most importantly: IMLEO * specific launch costs is affected as strongly by IMLEO as it is by specific launch costs. The former will no more than double, while the latter can be reduced by an order of magnitude. It’s quite simple really.

  • Vladislaw

    VirgilSamms wrote:

    “The ISS is an incredibly expensive pile of junk going around in endless circles. There is nothing in LEO. Nothing. We have learned all we need and now it is time to go BEO.”

    So NASA contracts to have junk built? The shuttle? More junk? If that is the case then constellation was junk also, and the SLS will be junk.

    It is amazing that NASA has had to trim literally thousands of proposed experiments that have wanted to be conducted, on the ISS, in the last ten years. It is also amazing that astronauts compete so hard to stay in an orbital junk pile. You should start taking these issues of yours to the astronaut corp and tell them they are basically wasting their time flying to LEO, oh and while you are talking to them, tell them that NONE of them are actually astronauts because flying in LEO is not actually space travel.

    You should suggest to them they should quit and refuse to travel in LEO because it is not really space travel, there is nothing there, ISS is a pile of junk, and they are basically wasting their time.

    “Ha ha ha. That hobby rocket is pieced together mickey mouse junk compared to a shuttle derived HLV”

    So if NASA pieces together the junk they have built for the space shuttle that will be better junk than SpaceX’s pieced together junk? So when the space junk derived HLV vehicle flys humans after 2020 America will be the envy of the planet? Will everyone rush to copy America’s junk launcher?

  • Das Boese

    VirgilSamms wrote @ July 11th, 2011 at 8:36 pm

    The ISS is an incredibly expensive pile of junk going around in endless circles. There is nothing in LEO. Nothing. We have learned all we need and now it is time to go BEO.

    Learned all we need? Wow. To paraphrase Pauli: You’re not just not right, you’re not even wrong.

    Not only are we not even close to learning all we need, we barely understand what it actually is we need to learn. Welcome to the wonderful world of science.

  • VirgilSamms

    “Not only are we not even close to learning all we need”

    30 years flying in endless circles is enough. Time to leave. You have an agenda that does not support progress. Do not imagine the people reading this do not understand what you are doing.

  • Coastal Ron

    VirgilSamms wrote @ July 13th, 2011 at 5:22 pm

    You have an agenda that does not support progress.

    No, I think it is you that has an agenda that is unsupportable.

    Where are the funds for your grand plans? Where is the funds for the technology that needs to be developed? Which decade are you planning to do this in?

    The ISS is being used to figure out the solutions for the problems we already know about, and to find out what else we need to live and work in space. The scientific community backs it, as the does the astronaut corp, and of course Congress is continuing to fund it.

    You seem to be in the minority. And of course, your plans lack the massive amount of funding that they will require, so you’re not going anywhere soon, especially when NASA’s budget is getting cut by 10%.

  • VirgilSamms

    “Where are the funds for your grand plans? ”

    DOD

    “Where is the funds for the technology that needs to be developed?”

    Tech is already available.

    “The ISS is being used to figure out the solutions for the problems we already know about,”

    The ISS is the Private Space cash cow. It the only destination the hobby rocket MAY be able to reach. You are so transparent.

  • “Where are the funds for your grand plans?”

    DOD

    The people at the Pentagon will be very surprised to hear that they have a budget for your nutty fantasies.

  • GaryChurch

    “It’s quite simple really.”

    Quite simple to make up. None of it exists and there is not even a proof of concept project in the works. Decades away and probably not feasible.
    Liquid Hydrogen is not storable in space. Not now and not for a very long time- if at all.

  • Liquid Hydrogen is not storable in space.

    What a stupid statement.

  • Martijn Meijering

    Quite simple to make up. None of it exists and there is not even a proof of concept project in the works. Decades away and probably not feasible.

    What do you mean none of it exists? All of it exists in some form. Hypergolic propellant transfer, cryogenic upper stages, small spacecraft with SEP, capsules. It is absolutely feasible and it could be a couple of years away if the right decisions were made. This could have been done at any point in the past thirty years. It really is that simple.

    The RLVs would be safely off the critical path, yet they would get earlier and more effective funding than under any other plan I’ve seen.

    Liquid Hydrogen is not storable in space. Not now and not for a very long time- if at all.

    Unqualified, this is a stupid statement as Rand rightfully points out. But as I sketched above and as I’ve explained to you several times neither exploration nor commercial development of space depends on it. The strategic decisions necessary for both commercial development of space and exploration in the near future can be made using only proven technologies. The rest is gravy and can be safely left to the market.

  • Coastal Ron

    GaryChurch wrote @ July 14th, 2011 at 6:26 pm

    Not now and not for a very long time- if at all.

    Just out of curiosity, why should anyone believe you?

    Are you an aerospace engineer like Rand? Do you take aerospace engineering classes like Martijn?

    Are you an expert in the field of hydrogen storage?

    Other than “because”, can you explain any of the things you assert?

  • Martijn Meijering

    Do you take aerospace engineering classes like Martijn?

    Not classes, just buying books, self-study and coding.

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