In a speech on Florida’s Space Coast yesterday, Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) warned that NASA’s human spaceflight program needed a “clear mission” in order to retain its funding in the coming years. “Absent a clear mission, human spaceflight, I’m afraid, will be very vulnerable,” he said, according to Florida Today’s account of his speech. (The article doesn’t mention if Posey specified what he thinks a “clear mission” means, but earlier this year he unveiled legislation that would mandate a return to the Moon that was previously planned under the Vision for Space Exploration.) Posey also fired a round in the direction of NASA leadership, calling it “arrogant, petulant and defiant” for not releasing information requested by Congress regarding plans for developing the Space Launch System rocket.
One item not covered in the Florida Today article was Posey’s apparent support for NASA’s commercial crew program. According to a tweet from Edward Ellegood, who attended the address, Posey said that “commercial space providers are our best hope for getting U.S. astronauts back into orbit.” Ellegood passed on some other news, though, overhearing from an unidentified individual that Sen. Barabara Mikulski (D-MD) may cut commercial crew funding and transfer it to the James Webb Space Telescope, a project whose funding was cut in an appropriations bill awaiting consideration by the full House. The Senate has not started work on its appropriations bill; Mikulski chairs the appropriations subcommittee that would draft that legislation.
Posey has correctly identified the main problem with this administration’s “Flexable Path” approach. The VSE was the right plan with a flawed implementation. Flexable Path leaves everything, commercial and public programs alike, wide open to the budget axe.
I would also agree with his assesment of NASA and would include in the the OST.
If you have been paying attention at all the last few years the fact that Barbara Mikulski would fight to protect the JWST is not surprising. It’s just a matter of where the money is comming from. If the JWST does get funded there has to be a clearing of the decks as far as management goes with the emphisis placed on launching by 2017 at the latest and sticking to the buget of 2009. While the ESA will provide the Ariane for free this may also be a candidate for launch on the SLS.
Posey is quite right about a number of things. Unfortunately the current NASA is incapable of providing that clear vision, not the least because it is “arrogant, petulant and defiant.” Sort of like some supporters of the current plan.
@Earl
There have been two perfectly good plans for manned spaceflight over the last decade – one focused on an ambitious destination-based mission, and one focused on a more pragmatic goal of developing new technology and private partnerships to build a more stable foundation for future endeavors.
Congress opted to support both plans as half-assedly as possible, dancing around a wishy-washy middle ground somewhere between Bush’s and Obama’s plans for space exploration, but accomplishing little of either.
Hopefully the new cost estimates on the SLS will force Congress to pick a program – either increasing NASA’s funding enough for the SLS to be developed without having to gut the science and tech divisions, or abandoning the SLS in favor of a private-public space program.
@ Michael from Iowa
“Hopefully the new cost estimates on the SLS will force Congress to pick a program – either increasing NASA’s funding enough for the SLS to be developed without having to gut the science and tech divisions, or abandoning the SLS in favor of a private-public space program.”
As far as the former of the two options is concerned, forget it. As I pointed out in a prior thread, there is no way funding for SLS is going to be increased because of the budget committee provision mandated by the new debt ceiling law that was passed. If the commitee fails to reach an agreement by a specified date, ALL agencies (including NASA) and all programs across the board with NO exceptions will be automatically cut. This has been mandated by law. But even if they do reach an agreement, it’s a certainty that everything will get a hit except possibly Social Security.
“Unfortunately the current NASA is incapable of providing that clear vision, not the least because it is ‘arrogant, petulant and defiant.'”
No, NASA and its leaders are unable to provide a “clear vision” because the “vision” of several key congressmen starts and ends at NASA releasing a plan to build the Senate Launch System.
If Posey wanted a “vision”, then he should have worked to get it written into the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, instead of putting his lunar goal in a separate bill that will never exit subcommittee and rubber stamping a $38 billion earmark for heavy-lift vehicle with no exploration payload or destination.
“Sort of like some supporters of the current plan.”
If there’s a “current plan” with “supporters”, then by definition, there’s a clear, identifiable vision forward.
Make up your mind. Is there a vision/plan or not? Just because you don’t agree with the current vision/plan, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
Lawdy…
Mark Whittington wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 10:26 am
” Unfortunately the current NASA is incapable of providing that clear vision, ”
There is a clear vision for what NASA should become, oddly it is a vision that you once supported…it is to turn NASA back to its roots as NACA and have it do for space what NACA did for aviation.
The “vision” (and that is being kind) that people such as you promote is really just a continuation of the “nightmare” of the last 30 years. More government bureacracy, more spending on projects that do nothing but keep a “socialist” group of corporations in power providing products which have no real “buyer” other then NASA. For you to call the commercial providers “crony capitalism” while defending projects whose results are not only bloated in terms of dollars…but which have no real market outside of federal funds…is a duck of reality that is basically stunning.
All this is occurring against two other backdrops
The first is that NASA HSF has demonstrated with Cx and SLS that it cannot manage its way out of a good toilet paper wrapping. Cx is just incompetence on the part of Griffin and the twits at JSC and MSFC…but one has to ask a real question about SLS.
Assuming that while there is some “Sir Humphrey” In Boldens cost numbers…one has to ask however…is there also some reality? Could it be that if SLS is not done the “classic NASA way” of turpor and sloth…but a paycheck (there is that socialism again) for every “stake holder”…then there is no political support for it?
The second is that we are starting to enter “The Tea Party slide”…the sad ending of 8 years of Bush incompetence and Obama stupidty which have taken the Clinton economic years and thrown the country into a near depression. As the market barrels down to a “new reality” it is pretty clear that enthusiasm for hundreds of billions of dollar NASA projects just to show how great we are, while the rest of America is sitting in unemployment lines…is draining.
embrace the future Mark..it is the policies you have loved that are bringing it RGO
MT wrote:
“NASA and its leaders are unable to provide a “clear vision†because the “vision†of several key congressmen starts and ends at NASA releasing a plan to build the Senate Launch System.”
While I’ll grant you that many in Congress may have voted for the SLS to preserve pork in their districts, I think that the “few dozen” House members that he refers to in the Florida Today article along with a handful of members of the Senate are committed to the cause of US human space flight. They see that there is no reasoning with an, “arrogant, petulant and defiant†NASA and OST leadership put in place by this administration and wish to preserve proven abilities of the STS and a core of experience honed over the past thirty years in hopes that the next president would be more accommodating to their views.
NASA’s leadership reinforces their reputation for “arrogant, petulant and defiant†behavior but delaying release of the information congress wants about the SLS until the layoffs are a done deal and then releasing cost figures and time-lines that that vastly overstate both.
MT also wrote:
“Make up your mind. Is there a vision/plan or not?â€
There is a plan, but there is no vision.
Earl/Mark,
you have it wrong. The reason why NASA does not want a ‘clear path’ is because NASA wants Commercial space to handle all of the launches to LEO. Ppl like Shelby, Wolfe, Nelson, Hutchinson, Hatch, Coffman, AND Mr. Posey want the SLS. They want NASA as a JOBS BILL. NONE of those politicians care about NASA or the program or even getting to the moon. They simply want money to flow into their areas and will gut it from where they can.
As to the moon, we ARE going back there. No doubt about it. But, private space wants this. Let them go for it while NASA focuses on deep space missions.
“There is a clear vision for what NASA should become, oddly it is a vision that you once supported…it is to turn NASA back to its roots as NACA and have it do for space what NACA did for aviation.”
=yawn= NACA ceased to exist 50 years ago for a reason: its structure and purpose were obsolete for a changing world. NASA’s ‘roots’ are, in fact rooted in the DoD– which, in the Age of Austery and an accelorating scarcity of discretionary funding, is precicely where it should be transplanted. A consolidation of space operations most certainly will be considered as an economy measure by the powers that be– and may just give a “NASA” of some kind a chance of survival.
Congressman Posey is dead on. NASA leadership is just as he’s described. It took Senate Action to get SLS materials that the Senate demanded, and it was like pulling teeth, given NASA’s response. Get rid of Bolden and Garver, and have real leadership who can get along with Congress AND communicate well not only with Congress, but the public.
If Congressional Super-committee fails and automatic cuts across the board come down, NASA will be set back a long long ways. Bolden’s SLS time-line will be seen as having been optimistic. If Congress needs motivation then it might be time for Space-race with China?
@Matt Wiser wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 2:18 pm
“Congressman Posey is dead on.”
So we have to assume that you actually agree with his other remark below, right?
“Posey said that “commercial space providers are our best hope for getting U.S. astronauts back into orbit.—
Which actually means that Posey wants a SLS and Commercial Crew and that otherwise they will cut NASA’s budget right? Hmm NASA gave them an estimate for all of the above. Now Posey wants a clear mission right? But I thought Congress dictated the design of SLS. And Congress does not offer a budget to operate SLS and wants to cut CCDev. I guess it all sounds just right to you?
Unbelievable that people fall for this kind of nonsense. Do you call that leadership? If you do then you have no idea what leadership actually is. Oh yes leaders will definitely appear to be “arrogant, petulant and defiant” to those who stay on sideline and support the status quo. Real leaders have those exact characteristics to those who don’t know what leading means, those who like to work within the system, to make as little and few waves as possible. Those who take no risks.
Whatever…
Again: No SLS, No MPCV whatsoever. Soon the budget will reduced by about $5B and CCDev will look so good then…
Whatever…
The role of leadership clearly resides in the whitehouse….. It is a failure there that has lead congress to try to step in and fill the void. I see no scenario that saves NASA in it’s current form. In hindsight the real beginning of the end did come from Obama….. Not that alot of the ideas were not good ones….. It is more of his lack of understanding that you can not speak in generalities about researching new technologies and have vague references about what we would like to do in the future and expect funding. NASA has always been program driven and without specific goals they are lost. It was not the Presidents decision to kill constellation that killed NASA, it was his decision to do it without a replacement the Public could embrace.
Mr. Earl wrote:
“They see that there is no reasoning with an, “arrogant, petulant and defiant†NASA”
I agree with you on your discription of Dr. Griffin, he was all of those. The Constellation train wreck, which he arrogantly chose with the ESAS, and his petulant and defiant attitude with Congress because they wouldn’t keep funding his train wreck on steroids is the reason we are where we are.
MrEarl wrote:
There is a plan, but there is no vision.
There is a vision. You just don’t like it so you pretend it doesn’t exist.
The vision is at:
http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/
There are plenty documents on that page that document the “vision” you don’t like.
The “clear mission” for HSF is really quite simple – “Lunar COTS” with bite-sized components built by commercial companies on a pay-per-milestone basis. The goal would be to extend America’s economic sphere to include lunar ice harvesting for any number of uses. Astronauts would land on the lunar surface using the same landers which previous equipment and telerobots used. Their purpose would be to repair telerobotic equipment and increasingly gain self-sufficiency (life-support, metallurgy, machining, glass, etc). Propellant from lunar ice would enable NASA to do “the other things” too.
@ sftommy wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 3:13 pm
“If Congress needs motivation then it might be time for Space-race with China?”
There will be no such thing. Better look for something else. Not sure how many times we need to repeat it. There is no and will not be any space race with China. Especially no CIVILIAN space race. Anything else is taken care of by our friends at DoD, NSA, CIA, DoH etc.
DCSCA wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
I wrote:
“There is a clear vision for what NASA should become, oddly it is a vision that you once supported…it is to turn NASA back to its roots as NACA and have it do for space what NACA did for aviation.â€
you replied.
=yawn= NACA ceased to exist 50 years ago for a reason: its structure and purpose were obsolete for a changing world
…
that is completely goofy. NACA is still alive as the first A of NASA…and it does great things for both small, middle and large jet transports.
Robert G. Oler
@Matt Wiser wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 2:18 pm
The agency needs a thorough house cleaning. A purge of the shuttle management culture. Bolden turns 65 on August 19. Expect him to ‘retire’ from government work by the end of the year- fiscal or calendar and take advantage of those government ‘pensions’ while they’re still around. Can’t see him administering over the dismantling of the space agency in austere times as discretionary funding evaporates before his- and NASA’s eyes. It didn’t appeal to Tom Paine in his day. Garver is useless. She’s a lobbyist, not a space visionary. A procuror of contracts for the aerospace industry, as her history with the ISS shows from her NSS days. Her feud with Griffin remains a souring issue as well and both are part of the past and part of the problem, not sources for solutions. The faster Garver is jettisoned from NASA and ‘recovered’ by a lobby or contractor, the better.
Matt Wiser wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 2:18 pm
” Get rid of Bolden and Garver, and have real leadership who can get along with Congress AND communicate well not only with Congress, but the public.”
OK Lets make you “NASA Administrator for this thread” …How would you explain SLS to the American people who are watching the economy collapse?
RGO
@Robert G. Oler wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 4:26 pm
What’s ‘goofy’ is your believe that NACA exists- it was dissolved half a century ago. Clinging to propeller and piston thinking won’t get you off the planet and out into space, fella.
@Scott Bass wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 3:49 pm
“The role of leadership clearly resides in the whitehouse….. It is a failure there that has lead congress to try to step in and fill the void.”
Scotty, the LAST thing this president is worried about these days is the future of NASA. The global economy is teasing with another slide into a depression. NASA best batten down the hatches and prepare to weather an economic storm the likes of which nobody currently associated with the agency has ever experienced.
The moon-nauts must have their way or they will gut funding. I see.
DCSCA wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 4:35 pm
What’s ‘goofy’ is your believe that NACA exists-…
the spirit of it does in the first A and it does good work. The ability of the US commercial aviation industry to stay where it is with the Europeans (and soon Chinese) advancing is in no small measure related to the technologies that are worked on at mostly Langley and Lewis.
We desperately need something like that for human spaceflight.
RGO
DCSCA wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
“The global economy is teasing with another slide into a depression. NASA best batten down the hatches and prepare to weather an economic storm the likes of which nobody currently associated with the agency has ever experienced.”
on this we agree completely RGO
JohnHunt wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
do you think that this plan/vision/whatever is actually salable to the American people RGO
Scott Bass wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 3:49 pm
” It was not the Presidents decision to kill constellation that killed NASA, it was his decision to do it without a replacement the Public could embrace.
”
as we teeter on a depression…what do you think that “replacement” that the public could “embrace” was?
Robert G. Oler
@Robert G. Oler wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 5:25 pm
The ‘spirit’ of Lindbergh is in every pilot, too. but he’s gone and part of the past- just like the NACA. Good grief.
DCSCA wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 5:32 pm
you wrote:
“The ‘spirit’ of Lindbergh is in every pilot, too. but he’s gone and part of the past- just like the NACA. Good grief.”
no the spirit of Lindbergh is not alive in every pilot…and I know far more about pilots then you do. If you have ever ridden on an airline, there is a good chance that I either did flight test on the plane or checked the pilots RGO
Hi RGO –
Rio Curaca, Rupunini.
73P.
2022.
What do you propose?
Posey is demanding Obama, Holdren, Garver, and Bolden provide a clear, competent vision for NASA. I’d like to **** Tiffany cuff links.
no the spirit of Lindbergh is not alive in every pilot…and I know far more about pilots then you do.
Anyone else laughing at this?
The vision NASA needs is a near term mission/destination that is part of a broader roadmap that leads to a small crewed Mars base — not just a crewed landing on Mars. That would lead to a continuous set of missions to support the hardware/life support needs of the base in the decades following establishment of the base. In order to achieve this Mars goal starting in the early 2030s, NASA needs to return to the goal of building a crewed base on the Moon, at the lunar south pole. Despite the cancellation of Constellation, SLS and Orion still live, and the first near term destination should be a crewed lunar landing in 2025 to set-up a small base over 5 years to learn how to live on the surface of another celestial body.
Funding? Well, my first assumption is that there is an affordable architecture that will return us to the Moon in preparation for Mars. Constellation was an expensive architecture, one which the current Administration did not support. No doubt there are other less expensive architectures that can succeed in placing humans back on the Moon — and I believe NASA needs to explore them — if it doesn’t already have lower-cost reference missions on the books somewhere.
Without a defineable focus, NASA’s direction will flounder and be subject to budget cuts. We have to avoid this by restoring NASA’s vision with a minimum affordable architecture that actually takes us somewhere on a long-term journey — not simply on another stunt mission, such as a crewed asteroid landing. We don’t need firsts that are one-stop only stunt missions. What we need are a series of long-term missions that build upon one another in support of the ultimate goal of living on another celestial body. Even sending a crew just to orbit Mars is not needed. If you send them all the way to Mars, after a 6-9mo grueling transit through space, with finicky funding levels due to Presidential/Congressional terms, only to orbit, with the chance that the program could simply be canceled by a non-visionary President? At least get in a crewed landing. This is why I believe the current flexible path list of destinations is bogus — Lagrange points, lunar flyaround, mission to a NEO, Mars orbit…they are each just stunts, unless you want to place at each individual destination a long-term habitat. And that obviously is not affordable, as we need to pick at the minimum just one near term destination that will prepare us for Mars.
Some people here think commercial crew is the answer, but if they succeed, they will only take Americans back to LEO. Their spacecraft are designed for LEO, for delivery to the ISS, not for beyond LEO exploration. And some also believe the ISS will be the launcing point of beyond LEO activity. However ISS is not in a proper orbit inclination to support reasonable (in terms of propellant) beyond LEO exploration. The best ISS can provide in terms of long-duration HSF is more data on the effects of the space environment on humans. And even so it doesn’t provide data on the effects of high levels of galactic radiation because it is inside the Van Allen belts.
Hence why, in my opinon, we need a beyond LEO spacecraft (e.g. Orion) to conduct beyond LEO exploration (we need one, despite what some Orion-haters may think, even to do an asteroid mission). And we will need a heavy lift vehicle of some kind at some point, even the Obama administration acknowledged this (with a proposed 5-year delay in developing it, however). Forget multiple launches to assemble an earth departure stage, lunar lander, etc. I would bet it is just more reliable to launch such payloads on a single heavy-lift launch vehicle rather than on multiple launch vehicles.
You can argue whether NASA should design these vehicle concepts and just have private companies build them, or whether NASA should just define the broad mission concept and let private companies design and build their best concepts for mission vehicles. That is just an exercise in architecting a cost-effective mission. However, it really isn’t a question of government-run vs. commercial — it’s how best to use both. And in my opinion it’s better to go with a moon-first then Mars, rather than an asteroid-first then Mars approach. Obviously, in the best of worlds, we could use both an asteroid mission (ONLY for the purpose of testing beyond-Van-Allen belt life support systems for a several month time of flight, as an analog to the time required to transit from Earth to Mars) and landing and supporting a crewed Moon base (as an analog to living on the surface of Mars). But if anything living on Mars in the longer stay and thus, in my view, the more critical phase to gain experience on.
Robert……. As you know,I was not totally against SLS until I became convinced over time…. The glimpse at the latest schedule estimates was the final nail in the coffin for me….. So in my eyes sls is finally dead, I can not imagine congress going through with it now. Now if your asking me what Obama should have done from the moment he decided to scrap constellation…..I think he should have taken as many billions as it would take out of the original 800 billion stimulus package to put the delta4 and the atlas on a fast track to be man rated to carry Orion, he obviously was ready shelve exploration for the near term and so this would have given congress and the public and NASA a transitional system…. Ie short term iss flights while they worked out the rest………. Just one of several roads they could have taken
“In hindsight the real beginning of the end did come from Obama”
What a laugh. In hindsight and foresign the end came from Griffin.
I met Griffin. He was not the type to listen to anybody. He had this gigantic rocket he designed with powerpoint. No one could convince him that people who had actually put their hands on the hardware for 15 years might know more than he did. He had the ESAS done and told the authors to conclude that his ideas were best. I challenge anyone to read the ESAS and not conclude it is junk. But the worst part was his arrogance. He didn’t care a whit about the average of 15 years of experience the people working Shuttle had. He underestimated the cost of Constellation about as badly as the much more complicated Shuttle. But by the time he left he had driven a stake through the heart of the Shuttle.
What I don’t understand is how someone like Posey, who has two years of college, can claim NASA is being arrogant because there are some people in NASA, like Lori Garver, who know very well that Constellation will never fly because Congress will never appropriate the hundreds of billions of dollars it will need before it goes anywhere.
“While I’ll grant you that many in Congress may have voted for the SLS to preserve pork in their districts, I think that the ‘few dozen’ House members that he refers to in the Florida Today article along with a handful of members of the Senate are committed to the cause of US human space flight.”
“Committed to the cause” and “vision” are two different things. I’m committed to causes like my local pet shelter and provide support for them. That doesn’t mean that I have any “vision” with respect to directions my pet shelter should be taking in the future in order to reach and care for more animals.
Nearly every congressman would claim that he is committed to the general cause of U.S. human space flight. But that doesn’t mean that any of them has a clue as to what directions the NASA human space flight program needs to move in to be more relevant to national needs, fly more astronauts, and reach more distant destinations and the painful but necessary steps along that path.
“They see that there is no reasoning with an, ‘arrogant, petulant and defiant†NASA”
When, specifically, has Bolden or Garver ever been “arrogant, petulant [or] defiant” with Congress? Quote? Reference? Link?
Just because a politician is waxing rhetorical doesn’t mean that his statements are true.
“and OST leadership”
OST?
“preserve proven abilities of the STS”
With all due respect to the hard efforts of the STS workforce over the past almost 30 years, STS has very few “abilities” that should be carried forward into a future system. It was the most expensive launch vehicle, on both an annual and per launch basis, in the world, by far. It had no launch escape system for its crew, and even without the orbiter, its enormous solid rocket boosters make the development of an effective launch escape system highly questionable. The STS manifest routinely, almost annually, suffered from multi-month delays induced by SSME gaseous hydrogen leaks and ET structural flaws, delays that would kill a multi-launch exploration campaign. Among other issues…
We have much more affordable launchers that can more easily support effective launch escape systems and that don’t suffer multi-month launch delays. If we have to build an HLLV, it should be based on those systems, not STS.
“in hopes that the next president would be more accommodating to their views.”
This appears to be a vain hope. All the Republican candidates that have weighed in on civil space policy so far favor commercial competition.
“NASA’s leadership reinforces their reputation for “arrogant, petulant and defiant†behavior but delaying release of the information congress wants about the SLS until the layoffs are a done deal”
NASA leadership can’t release or transmit anything to Congress until the White House Office of Management allows them to. This is true of every Executive Branch department and agency. OMB is requiring SLS to submit to an independent cost assessment — a very reasonable request given the magnitude of dollars involved — so the earliest that NASA will be allowed to send its final SLS report to Congress is when that cost assessment is complete, in late August. And given how bad the numbers already appear to be, it’s probably going to be a lot longer than that as the White House wrestles with the bad news.
We don’t live in an oligarchy where a few Senators can have their way with multi-ten billion dollar program decisions. Our system of government has checks and balances, and until the White House is satisfied that SLS has an affordable, timely, effective, and realistic path forward, they’re not going to give it their approval.
“and then releasing cost figures and time-lines that that vastly overstate both.”
No one has officially “released” anything. Someone, likely without senior management approval, leaked documents to the Orlando Sentinel. Administration deliberations, especially budget deliberations involving OMB, are embargoed. Appointees that release embargoed information often have to resign.
And the SLS cost and schedule is very consistent with Constellation. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you demand that NASA use Constellation and Shuttle contracts and workforce, that you wind up with Constellation and Shuttle costs and timelines.
FWIW…
The Obama administration’s space policy is not really even the Flexible Path. Its just a continuation of the LEO on steroids program except using Russians and then eventually private American companies to transport astronauts to LEO.
Congress is trying to get NASA to develop a Flexible Path vehicle but the Obama administration clearly doesn’t want it. They just want NASA to study the future and dream about the future but not to participate in it.
But simply daydreaming about the future really never accomplished anything. In fact, daydreaming about the future is pretty much what NASA has been doing for the past 40 years since the end of the Apollo era.
@Robert G. Oler wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
“no the spirit of Lindbergh is not alive in every pilot…and I know far more about pilots then you do.”
ROFLMAOPIP… Your very comment reveals otherwise. Perhaps it’s your ‘wall’ talking.
“If you have ever ridden on an airline, there is a good chance that I either did flight test on the plane or checked the pilots RGO”
Then we have you to blame for lousy seat room, cramped heads and the L-1011. Or perhaps we should all just call you– “Mister Hunny,” eh Jimmy.
Marcel, You’re quite correct. It took Congress to drag the Administration to build a HLV NOW instead of waiting up to 5 yrs. If it takes continued Congressional pressure to get NASA leadership (really-the White House-especially Dr. Holdren, the Presidential Science Advisor) to put meat on the bones as far as destinations, tentative timelines, etc., so be it. Remember what Candidate Obama wanted back in ’07? He wanted to delay CxP by 5 years to pay for “unspecified education programs.” (Washington Post, 23 Nov 07) It took the realization that to win Florida, he needed the I-4 corridor, which includes KSC, and he’d best be supportive of NASA.
Scott: I agree: generalites and vague promises will get us nowhere. If it takes continued pressure from Congress to get outlines of planned missions, destinations, and tentative dates for flying said missions, so be it. Right now, it’s been like pulling teeth in getting the HLV information demanded by Congress….
Scott Bass wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 9:47 pm
Scott…perhaps I was not clear.
What you are advocating is that Obama should have used the stimulus money to human rate one of the EELV boosters and finish Orion…correct? (I got that from your reply)…
and then do what?
Let NASA run the space station transfer system this time with Orion on an expendable instead of the shuttle…or take the EELV and Orion and try and do some sort of human exploration of space?
Neither of those sound valid to me.
We can argue all day long if NASA should be doing with government money what it is doing, essentially running (or trying to) the equivelent of a transportation node…I dont think so and I dont think that has any real stimulus to the US economy…
But if you are arguing then that NASA should jump out on some human exploration program…I am curious how you think that the dollars involved in that have value for the cost particularly as the US faces a lack of jobs in manufacturing that actually produce things of value for The Republic?
we are in my view on the brink of economic catastrophe in The Republic not because the federal government spends to much or to little, but in large measure because the things that the federal government spends a LOT of money on have no value for the cost.
What is the value in human exploration for the dollars that we are/would have to spend on it? How would you justify the 10-20 billion (or more) needed to build the infrastructure to send people to an asteroid, float around for a few weeks and then come back…
how would you justify that when a billion would do just about the same thing with uncrewed programs?
Do you think human exploration of space can be justified just for the doing? I dont RGO
Congress is trying to get NASA to develop a Flexible Path vehicle
A (singular) Flexible Path vehicle is a contradiction in terms. Flexible Path requires two or more possible launch vehicles in order to be flexible enough that if there is a problem with one launch system, they can switch to another.
This should be obvious.
@ Marcel Williams
“But simply daydreaming about the future really never accomplished anything. In fact, daydreaming about the future is pretty much what NASA has been doing for the past 40 years since the end of the Apollo era.”
“Physician, heal thyself”
“The Obama administration’s space policy is not really even the Flexible Path. Its just a continuation of the LEO on steroids program except using Russians and then eventually private American companies to transport astronauts to LEO. “
It was a very robust Flexible Path to expand human presence into the inner solar system, until certain politicians threw SLS into the mix. To stay alive SLS must eat its sibling programs or die when NASA’s budget declines due to the now existing debt ceiling law. When the SLS albatross is finally lifted from NASA’s neck, the true Flexible Path can yet be implemented.
the spirit of it does in the first A and it does good work. The ability of the US commercial aviation industry to stay where it is with the Europeans (and soon Chinese) advancing is in no small measure related to the technologies that are worked on at mostly Langley and Lewis.
Egghead, its Glenn Research Center, not Lewis, as named after the first American to orbit the Earth. Don’t attempt to describe what NASA does if you do not even know the names of the Centers. Geesh!
Breaking news …
I’m watching the NASA Future Forum on the NASA channel. In his opening remarks, Charlie Bolden said the first SpaceX cargo delivery to the ISS will be in February.
“Posey is demanding Obama, Holdren, Garver, and Bolden provide a clear, competent vision for NASA ”
No, he’s not. He’s demanding that they commit to building a $38 billion HLLV and the associated jobs and votes in his district before the Administration’s independent cost estimate comes back with an even worse number. If Posey or anyone else in Congress actually wanted to provide NASA with an exploration vision, they would have set exploration goals, destinations, deadlines, etc. in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. They didn’t. Instead, they designed an HLLV with no exploration payload or goals.
“I’d like to **** Tiffany cuff links.”
What, specifically, have any of them done that’s illegal? Under what law would they be charged?
MW: “The Obama administration’s space policy is not really even the Flexible Path. Its just a continuation of the LEO on steroids program except using Russians and then eventually private American companies to transport astronauts to LEO.”
Since when are NEOs and Mars in LEO?
Don’t make stuff up.
Other MW: “It took Congress to drag the Administration to build a HLV NOW instead of waiting up to 5 yrs.”
Why does NASA need to start an HLLV now? Per the SLS schedule, we’re only going to get a couple launches by the early 2020s, maybe one of which will be a lunar flyby. Instead of stretching development out over more than a decade, the program should be started later so it can be efficiently phased with the start of operations.
“If it takes continued Congressional pressure to get NASA leadership (really-the White House-especially Dr. Holdren, the Presidential Science Advisor) to put meat on the bones as far as destinations, tentative timelines, etc., so be it… vague promises will get us nowhere. If it takes continued pressure from Congress to get outlines of planned missions, destinations, and tentative dates for flying said missions, so be it.”
No pressure, congressional or otherwise, is needed. The Administration has already set “destinations” and “tentative timelines”. It’s a NEO by 2025 and Mars by the 2030s. This has been known since April of last year.
http://www.universetoday.com/62766/obama-wants-mission-to-asteroid-by-2025-mars-by-mid-2030s/
Don’t make stuff up.
“It took the realization that to win Florida, he needed the I-4 corridor, which includes KSC, and he’d best be supportive of NASA.”
No one needs KSC votes to win Florida. Their numbers are too small in comparison to other voter demographics. Cuban-Americans interested in Cuban-American policy and relations far outnumber KSC workers in Florida. Both are utterly swamped by retirees interested in Medicare policy.
“Right now, it’s been like pulling teeth in getting the HLV information demanded by Congress…”
Until the independent cost estimate is in, the Administration is not in a position to decide whether it stands behind and supports NASA’s SLS plans. Why should the Administration send something to Congress that it may retract a month or two later?
Matt Wiser wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 12:13 am
“He wanted to delay CxP by 5 years to pay for “unspecified education programs.†(Washington Post, 23 Nov 07) It took the realization that to win Florida, he needed the I-4 corridor, which includes KSC, and he’d best be supportive of NASA. ”
that is pretty goofy political analysis.
with only a small subset exception, the only people who vote on space politics and policy are those who received a pay check to do so…meaning those who concerned about their techno welfare. there was no chance that anything Obama said as a candidate was going to get their vote…they are very very heavily right wing GOP…
Robert G. Oler
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61099.html
Wow finally some serious GOP runners… NASA is saved, the USA are saved! Such a landslide of approval. Must be a liberal media poll.
I am sure that eventually we’ll have a Super-Duper heavy HLV. Flames will be thrown to the ground while the gallant astronaut will… present yet another powerpoint demo with Jupiter or Ares. But where the heck did they put the sidemount???
Great.
Do you think human exploration of space can be justified just for the doing? I dont RGO
I do….. And although I can respect the opinions of those who don’t….. I do believe there is great value in exploration just for explorations sake. One of the main flaws in this administrations thinking is the concept of researching new technologies so we can do things in the future…. Things don’t work that way, inventions and processes are refined by technical hurdles you encounter as you work toward a goal….. And those hurdles do not present themselves in a lab…. It is the doing that brings out all the things you have not thought of. As far as my comments of what Obama could have done differently….mostly pointing out that we are in the third year of this administration and everyone is still unclear….still drifting….. Having a couple of our rockets man rated could have been accomplished and would have been good for NASA and commercial space
Funding for SLS is only a few months old. They should have time to come back with a realistic proposal unless you really don’t care about realism. Besides what is a couple of months extra, when they have nine years to build it from existing infrastructure, systems and contracts.
This made me think of a thought I had probably 20 or 30 years ago, I was watching Carl Sagan and he made a comment that perplexed me, He said it would be a complete waste for us to set out on a voyage to the nearest star system because technology would advance and future astronauts would end up passing those original voyagers. Although I found him a very intelligent man I disagreed with the reason…..Yes technology would advance but who is to say those early voyagers did not make the discovery that spurred the technology to make it possible for the future astronauts to pass them. Its an unknown……..many many discoverys and inventions were made by accident in pursuit of something entirely different…you have to do what you can….Technology is a progression…..breakthroughs happen but in the mean time you can do alot by improving what you have and improving what you have often opens the door to the breakthrough.
@Scott Bass wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Ah yes exploration for sake of exploration. Unforeseen discoveries. Now how do you know that building on existing technologies a couple of launchers at astronomical cost will lead to some technical breakthrough that will allow unbelievable travel means through space?
Not that you do not have an expert approach but please explain to me how working on old rocket technology and building a gigantic rocket will allow us to travel to distant stars.
Is it difficult to understand that in order to do that you need a breakthrough in science first and then in technology. Do you think you could build a self sustaining ship to voyage through the cosmos for hundreds if not millions of years? I mean come on. Technology may be a progression BUT it is a progression in all fields of science, not solid rocket boosters, nor SDV HLV that we need.
From a Constellation like program you will NOT get what you want. Not one bit because you are taking most of your resources to build a 1970 vehicle with 2010 software that will become operational if ever when its software has also become obsolete – search obsolescence in the military aviation for example and in particular software.
Only funding basic science for years to come will give you what you want. You need such a breakthrough that nobody has any idea if such a breakthrough will ever, ever come. If it is at all even possible. And again it is a breakthrough in basic science that you need first and they usually do not really come in progression.
So yet again a plan to fund advances in technology IS what we need today for our Solar system. Not unaffordable unfunded big rockets doing what others can do with small existing rockets.
I wish it’d be easy to understand but I am afraid it is not.
Hi RGO –
I have about 45 minutes at the yoke. With my stroke, that’ll be it.
My friends in Virginia used to own planes, but it became too expensive.
I will be damned if I’ll see the US sat and launch industries go the way of GA without a whimper. Not as long as I can peck out a post.
Clearly, no one, and I do mean no one, understands the NEO mission as a test of manned Mars systems. No one understands where it came from, or where it is supposed to go.
ATK’s propaganda dominated public discussion, and still does.
Obama’s PR team lost big time.
Aside from that, Mikulsky is a Democrat.
It will be interesting to see how the GOP high speed rail veto plays out in 2012.
But let us not lose focus on the problem at hand:
Rio Curaca, Rupununi.
73P.
2022.
What do you propose?
@Matt Wiser
“Marcel, You’re quite correct. It took Congress to drag the Administration to build a HLV NOW instead of waiting up to 5 yrs. If it takes continued Congressional pressure to get NASA leadership (really-the White House-especially Dr. Holdren, the Presidential Science Advisor) to put meat on the bones as far as destinations, tentative timelines, etc., so be it. Remember what Candidate Obama wanted back in ’07? He wanted to delay CxP by 5 years to pay for “unspecified education programs.†(Washington Post, 23 Nov 07) It took the realization that to win Florida, he needed the I-4 corridor, which includes KSC, and he’d best be supportive of NASA.”
*********
This is going to be a close Presidential election and Florida is probably going to be even more important as a swing State. So politically, it makes no sense for Obama to drag his feet on this issue– especially for an agency with such a relatively tiny budget.
But NASA personal are the only Federal employees that I’m aware of that have ever expressed real hostility towards Obama! And I think that really surprised and angered the President! Also, President Obama was probably not too pleased by the way Holdren and Bolden have been grilled by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress– including by Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords.
But if Obama is allowing his personal anger to cloud his political common sense on this issue then maybe he’s not all that different from George Bush!
@Rick Boozer
“It was a very robust Flexible Path to expand human presence into the inner solar system, until certain politicians threw SLS into the mix. To stay alive SLS must eat its sibling programs or die when NASA’s budget declines due to the now existing debt ceiling law. When the SLS albatross is finally lifted from NASA’s neck, the true Flexible Path can yet be implemented.”
Yeah! It was about as robust as Carl Sagan’s ‘Spaceship of the Imagination’ in the series Cosmos:-) A $20 billion NASA budget dedicated purely to R&D with no realistic near term destinations would have been easy pickin’s for big budget cutters in Washington! And I think Obama probably knew that!
“He said it would be a complete waste for us to set out on a voyage to the nearest star system because technology would advance and future astronauts would end up passing those original voyagers”
Under that ideal we would actually never leave for another star. No matter how far technology advanced, like getting to the closest star in 1 day.. nope, no point in going because by the time we got there someone would figure how to do it in an hour.
The problem is, under CxP and even the SLS, we haven’t been going through a technological progression, most of the architecture relies on recycling old shuttle technology rather than finding new and innovative ways to tackle problems.
Instead of dumping a huge chunk of NASA’s dwindling budget into another Ares, we should be looking at all the other resources we have available now:
Commercial spaceflight, the flagship technologies program, even NIAC’s up and running again. Put them all to work for five, six years on raw R&D and we can create a much stronger foundation to build a human spaceflight program on.
Scott Bass wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
It’s nice to imagine flying to other stars and I would be the first to sign up and my wife knows it but we need to innovate in our backyard first. I expect SpaceX and others will pass the SLS on the way to the moon or even Mars. Maybe they could tug it along.
I define Human spaceflight in two categories, Space Exploration and Settlement. Space Exploration only provides an elite few to fly to interesting destinations while Settlement provides sustainable presence of many humans on destinations which include space stations and habitats. ISS was expensive but it created a permanent (2020+) destination in space. Other countries, Universities and companies can take advantage of this lab and purchase cargo or crew trips to the station which could support a HSF “commercial†industry outside of NASA. NASA should be focusing on developing technologies to enable space settlement which will provide the technology for space exploration for those elite few willing to go where no one has gone before (PC version).
@Major Tom
“Since when are NEOs and Mars in LEO?
Don’t make stuff up.”
You stop making things up! There is no commercial crew program for NEO’s and Mars.
And– pure– R&D programs are also not near term manned NEO or Mars programs. Plus these nebulous goals are so sporadic (4 to 10 years between missions) and so distant into the future (2025 to a NEO and 2035 for Mars flyby) that they’re not even politically or economically sustainable.
@Stephen C. Smith wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 9:03 am
“Breaking news … ”
Yeah: SpaceX Slips Scheduled Launch Date AGAIN To February, 2012 At Earliest. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
“I’m watching the NASA Future Forum on the NASA channel. In his opening remarks, Charlie Bolden said the first SpaceX cargo delivery to the ISS will be in February.”
Another ‘press release, another schedule slippage.’ Investors beware. Indicative of mismanagement to announce schedules and keep missing them at a quarterly driven ‘for profit’ firm.
Looks like the ‘can’t wait ’til November’ crowd wil be waiting a lot longer. As usual.
@ DCSCA wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 3:06 pm
“Another ‘press release, another schedule slippage.’”
Oh boy, DCSCA showing off as one of the king of disinformation again. Read below and (try to) understand.
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2011/08/watch-live-bold.html
“He was referring to the SpaceX demo flight scheduled for November 30 this year. He also brought up Orbital saying both companies would be bringing cargo to the ISS in 2012 and that after the SpaceX final demo in November SpaceX could be bringing their first cargo to station in February of 2012.”
In his opening remarks, Charlie Bolden said the first SpaceX cargo delivery to the ISS will be in February.
My interpretation of that is that this will be the first scheduled cargo delivery flight, assuming a successful test flight. I have heard nothing to indicate that the planned test flight date in November has changed.
@Planet Marcel
“It was a very robust Flexible Path to expand human presence into the inner solar system, until certain politicians threw SLS into the mix. To stay alive SLS must eat its sibling programs or die when NASA’s budget declines due to the now existing debt ceiling law. When the SLS albatross is finally lifted from NASA’s neck, the true Flexible Path can yet be implemented.”
See my last reply to you under the heading before this one, “Conservative criticism of NASA spending”:
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2011/08/07/conservative-criticism-of-nasa-spending/#comments
@Marcel
Oops, copied the wrong quote. Here is how it should be:
“Yeah! It was about as robust as Carl Sagan’s ‘Spaceship of the Imagination’ in the series Cosmos:-) A $20 billion NASA budget dedicated purely to R&D with no realistic near term destinations would have been easy pickin’s for big budget cutters in Washington! And I think Obama probably knew that!”
See my last reply to you under the heading before this one, “Conservative criticism of NASA spending†at 8:22 am. It directly addresses the logical fallacy in the above statement. I’ll make it easier for you:
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2011/08/07/conservative-criticism-of-nasa-spending/#comments
@DCSCA
SpaceX is docking with the ISS in December and making its first delivery under the CRS contract in February. That’s cause to celebrate not something to scoff at.
Common sense….. My comments were not directed at sls…. As I had stated earlier, if the spaceflightnow schedule turns out to be accurate then sls has lost my support….. Too much money for too few flights and 2030s til it is mature is beyond any amount of reasonableness ….. Just can’t imagine it going forward…… Guess I’ll reserve final judgement when the official report finally gets released…… In the mean time I am studying up on the alternatives, obviously fuel depots are being seriously studied now regardless of whether sls happens
That’s cause to celebrate not something to scoff at.
No SpaceX success is cause for DCSCA to celebrate. It makes him look like the fool that he is every time.
Btw commonsense, I had just read your reply to my post in the other thread concerning the demise of sls…… No arguments here that others may be faster at arriving at conclusions than I….especially if they work in the industry and have better insight behind the scenes…..I can’t make up my opinions though based on the opinions of others… I just try to look at the current state of affairs….. What decisions have already been made…. What laws have been signed……..if they do move forward with sls under the spaceflightnow schedule it would be pretty appalling……..but I am not going to bitch about it for the next 20 years lol….. You still have to wish for program success because afterall we do own it and pay for it
@ Scott Bass wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
“No arguments here that others may be faster at arriving at conclusions than I”
Fair enough and I am addressing you since like Bernie has done in the past you have shown enough open mindedness to revise your judgement.
What I am pointing is that most often than not arguments have been brought forth by others anonymously or not that some here have dismissed. When the arguments were supported with facts still others would dismiss the arguments as mere politics. What I have (possibly poorly) tried is to put forth such problems with Constellation in particular or the NASA/Congress broken relationship. A lot of the information can be found if researched. Look at DCSCA disinformation. How can he get any credibility when he actually lies about SpaceX launch. I would love to read an informed discussion of why SpaceX may, or not, make it. Not the idiotic bashing we keep reading. And there are reasons why they may not make it. They have nothing to do with their flights spinning out of control if you see what I mean. Just an example.
Some went even further to dismiss the Augustine Committee report and I cannot remember if you are one of them.
My reproach to you is that you did not really look at the current state of affairs. It seems (?) that you are/were getting the information that you wanted to hear from politicians and other people on other website. Even in this industry there are people with uninformed opinions (MPCV will fly on EELV soon) so don’t feel bad about it.
The emotional content of all of this has to go so that we can pursue a more realistic plan or it will not I repeat it will not happen. Don’t trust Congress (Dems or GOP for that matter) until they sign on the dotted line: It is ALL that matters, everything else is vaporware.
There is no program success to wish for. There simply is NO program. It is not funded.
Ah and also, fuel depots? Might or not happen. But they need a budget. Without budget no fuel depots.
MY crystal ball is NASA budget minus $5B if the economy keeps going down the current path. See what you can achieve then.
Major Tom: That’s the same vague promise that Charlie Bolden has been repeating ever since that “space summit” last year-on WH orders, more likely. A promise of an NEO by 2025 and Mars orbit by 2035 are NOT a detailed outline of missions, destinations, and tentative dates for flying them. At least with Apollo and Shuttle, there were launch manifests, mission types, and so on. NOTHING from NASA so far. And if Charlie Bolden or even the President want continued Congressional support, instead of Congress telling them what to do, they’d best provide a tentative flight schedule with actual destintations.
“A promise of an NEO by 2025 and Mars orbit by 2035 are NOT a detailed outline of missions, destinations, and tentative dates for flying them.”
Yes, it is. It’s two missions to two destinations by two (actually non-tentative) dates. You may not agree with the missions, destinations, and dates, but it is the “outline” you’re looking for.
It’s fine to criticize plan if we think it’s the wrong plan. But we should do that by critiquing the actual content of the plan. Not by repeating false statements from politicians that there is no plan when in fact there is.
“At least with Apollo and Shuttle, there were launch manifests, mission types, and so on. NOTHING from NASA so far.”
NASA shouldn’t be producing any launch manifests or mission types at this point in time. It’s only been a year and three months since the Administration set the NEO by 2025 and the Mars by 2035 goals. A year or so after Kennedy set the goal of landing on the Moon within a decade, NASA still had not decided to go with a LOR architecture over an EOR architecture or even how many engines Saturn’s first stage should have.
Your statement makes a totally unrealistic claim about today’s programs based on an utter lack of knowledge and understanding about the timelines of prior programs.
“And if Charlie Bolden or even the President want continued Congressional support, instead of Congress telling them what to do, they’d best provide a tentative flight schedule with actual destintations.”
The Administration has provided a schedule with “actual destintations [sic]”. Certain members of Congress simply aren’t listening because retaining Shuttle jobs and votes via a $38 billion HLLV earmark is more important than getting the civil human space flight program positioned to go to new destinations with an affordable exploration lift capability that leaves enough in the kitty for actual exploration payloads and missions to actual exploration destination. If you read his quotes above, Posey and his ilk aren’t calling for destinations or mission schedules. They don’t even use those words. But they do know the words “SLS decision.”
And threatening to dramatically cut NASA’s budget is a boneheaded strategy and empty threat for these members of Congress, anyway. What are congressmen like Posey going to do if the White House disagrees with NASA’s SLS plan? Dramatically cut NASA’s budget and ensure that the very Shuttle workers who jobs they’re trying to save via SLS are guaranteed to be fired for lack of funding? Highly unlikely. Even politicians like Posey know better than to hold a knife to their own throats.
FWIW…
@commonsense
Given the House was proposing a $2 billion cut to NASA’s budget BEFORE the debt deal, I think $5 billion is optimistic.
That’s the biggest reason we need to abandon SLS. If NASA really does lose about a third of its budget, the only viable way for the SLS to continue will be for NASA to gut, nay disembowel most other programs.
“You stop making things up! There is no commercial crew program for NEO’s and Mars.”
I never claimed that there was a commercial crew program to exploration destinations like “NEO’s [sic] and Mars”.
You continue to make things up, now by putting words in my mouth.
“Plus these nebulous goals are so sporadic (4 to 10 years between missions)”
Do you really expect the President to lay out a multi-year launch manifest? Kennedy said land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. He didn’t say excute three to six unmanned launch tests followed by one Earth orbit test flight and three lunar orbit test flights before the first landing. That’s NASA’s job, and it take a few years to get that level of planning.
Your statement makes a totally unrealistic claim about today’s programs based on an utter lack of knowledge and understanding about the timelines of prior programs.
“and so distant into the future (2025 to a NEO”
2025 is less than 14 years from now. That’s less than five years more than Apollo from Kennedy’s speech to the first landing. And it’s to a more difficult target in a much more constrained budget environment. That’s not a “distant” goal at all.
Rand Simberg wrote:
My interpretation of that is that this will be the first scheduled cargo delivery flight, assuming a successful test flight. I have heard nothing to indicate that the planned test flight date in November has changed.
That’s why I was very specific in saying the first “cargo delivery.” No cargo is being delivered in December (unless there’s cheese on board), it’s a test flight.
NASA released this afternoon Charlie’s prepared remarks, but he departed from those remarks at several points. The February 2012 flight was not in the prepared remarks, he said it extemporaneously.
Matt Wiser wrote:
And if Charlie Bolden or even the President want continued Congressional support, instead of Congress telling them what to do, they’d best provide a tentative flight schedule with actual destintations.
You need to read a history of the Apollo program. They made it up pretty much as they went along. They had a general idea, but schedules constantly slipped, some missions were dropped or combined, and of course everything came to a halt after the Apollo 1 fire.
You also need to read the U.S. Constitution. NASA can only do what Congress authorizes. Congress has not authorized a “destination.” They’ve had plenty of time to do so if they were interested. President Obama proposed destinations in April 2010. Congress has chosen not to act on them.
Stephen C. Smith wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 9:13 pm
Seems a waste to berth/dock with the ISS and not deliver at least some cargo. I’d be very surprised if they don’t actually have a fair bit on board. Just stuff that doesn’t cost much if lost but will be useful to have anyway. You know, toilet paper, food, etc.
@ Michael from Iowa wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 8:16 pm
“Given the House was proposing a $2 billion cut to NASA’s budget BEFORE the debt deal, I think $5 billion is optimistic.”
Yes I guess it is possible. I think again it is why NASA has contractors or they will all be civil servants: The ability to let them go based on needs. A lot of things will need to happen for any one to make a credible prognostic though. I suspect that in 2012 this WH will be re-elected, the GOP candidates are too weak and do not address the needs of this nation. If and only if President Obama is re-elected then he will possibly use the tough medicine part of which will be tax increases (of some sort). But the problem is transnational, one fix here may not be enough elsewhere. So it will take a lot of courage and imagination for the world political class to come together on a strategy to get us all out of this mess. And China will be in the talks. Better believe it. The trick will be to cut NASA (and the others) to a point where they can bounce back to life when (not if hopefully) the situation eventually improves. If you cut too much then you may as well get rid of it. The medicine will not be cherry flavored this time I am afraid. COTS/CCDev/CRS have all the right ingredients for a reform of our procurement and they should be applied to the DoD whenever possible but it is not enough. How do you reform the health system? I think a single payer will eventually come to be. If not you can kiss bye bye your health insurance system.
Then again, MY crystal ball.
FWIW.
Matt Wiser wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 7:21 pm
most bizarre post here and that is saying a lot…you clearly do not understand our system of government SIGH RGO
Scheduled milestones for the next six months
December
– SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft scheduled to dock with ISS
– OSC’s Taurus II scheduled for maiden flight
February
– SpaceX makes first delivery under CRS contract
– OSC’s Cygnus capsule scheduled for maiden flight
When Congress starts asking for detailed plans, even tentative ones, agencies (not just NASA) had better listen. Congress writes the checks, after all.
POTUS proposed destinations are either too vague (NEO without a specific target, even for planning purposes, though L-M has ID’d several in their PLYMOUTH ROCK mission proposal) or too far down the road (Mars orbit by 2035). What Posey and other critics want is “Where else are we going? When? How will we get there and what will our Astronauts be doing?” So far, nada out of Bolden, Garver, et al.
Big article on Aviation Week about SpaceX and their aggressive plans to lead the global launch industry.
SpaceX Plans to be Top World Rocket Maker
“We have built about 60 engines so far this year, and will build another 40 by year-end,†says [SpaceX President Gwynne] Shotwell. Speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Joint Propulsion Conference here, Shotwell explains that the eventual “plan is to build up to 400 engines per year, that’s our target.†The expansion is built on booked revenues of $3 billion through 2017, part of which was earned by orders for 14 new Falcon 9 launches placed “within the last year,†she says. SpaceX is also “negotiating three more right now,†she adds. The launch manifest lists 40 sold flights, including 33 Falcon 9s, plus five options.
@Michael from Iowa wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 4:07 pm
Another press release. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
@common sense wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 3:17 pm Demo models and press releases– yep, you must drive a Tucker, too. They fly nobody, slip schedules and fail to deliver the groceries. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
@vulture4 wrote @ August 10th, 2011 at 9:47 pm
“I met Griffin. He was not the type to listen to anybody. He had this gigantic rocket he designed with powerpoint.” He fancies himself another Von Braun. Except he’s clearly not. A legend in his own mind.
@Rand Simberg wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 3:33 pm
“My interpretation of that is that this will be the first scheduled cargo delivery flight, assuming a successful test flight. I have heard nothing to indicate that the planned test flight date in November has changed.” You may be the selected shill shooed out of the loop. Subject to ‘interprretation.’ Good grief.
@Rand Simberg wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 5:52 pm
Indicative of fear. The shills are worried. Subject to ‘interpretation.’ Again.
@Stephen C. Smith wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 9:16 pm
“You need to read a history of the Apollo program. They made it up pretty much as they went along.” And you need glasses. In fact, ‘they’ didn’t. Sober up.
@Michael from Iowa wrote @ August 11th, 2011 at 4:07 pm
The objective is to make a profit with the rocket. Slip schedule and you’re signalling line problems or management problems. Master Musk has said he plans to retire on Mars yet he can’t deliver the groceries on time. Yes, plenty to scoff at. But as Gene Cernan said, ‘they son’t know what they don’t know yet.’ Tick-tock, tick-tock.
“When Congress starts asking for detailed plans, even tentative ones, agencies (not just NASA) had better listen.”
Congress hasn’t asked for a detailed exploration plan (with dates ). You’re projecting what you want onto what members of Congress are actually saying. Per Posey’s quotes above, he doesn’t use words like “detailed plan, destinations, timeline, or mission.” All he want is a “vision” and that vision starts and ends with SLS.
“POTUS proposed destinations are either too vague (NEO without a specific target, even for planning purposes”
It’s ridiculous to expect the President to select the NEO NASA should target (or for NASA to have selected the NEO by now). Kennedy didn’t pick a specific lunar landing site for the first Apollo mission and direct NASA to “land in the southwest corner of the Sea of Tranquility by the end of 1969.” He said land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Your statement makes a totally unrealistic claim about today’s programs based on an utter lack of knowledge and understanding about the timelines of prior programs.
“What Posey and other critics want is “Where else are we going? When?”
No, Posey is not asking those questions. Read his quotes above. Again, you’re projecting what you want onto what members of Congress are actually saying.
“We have built about 60 engines so far this year, and will build another 40 by year-end,†says [SpaceX President Gwynne] Shotwell. Speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Joint Propulsion Conference here, Shotwell explains that the eventual “plan is to build up to 400 engines per year, that’s our target.â€
Sounds impressive until you realize that is only enough to fly 6 rockets. The Merlin engine is the least impressive rocket engine in use today in terms of total thrust and Isp. 100Klbs of thrust is laughable.
SpaceX’s flight rate is down to 1 per year, a real puzzle when you recall the chest thumping of last December.
@ Stephen C. Smith wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 6:42 am
Of course they want to become the largest rocket maker. HSF is a distraction so to speak, something they can afford as they build the company and that Elon wants to do anyway. BUT their focus is the launch market. It’s where the big bucks are. HSF also is a great marketing tool. Look people all over keep speaking about SpaceX and Dragon. Very few pay attention to their grand plan. Smart.
Very few pay attention to their grand plan.
And what would that be? Talking about rockets?
The Merlin engine is the least impressive rocket engine in use today in terms of total thrust and Isp.
The Merlin is the _only_ RP-1/LOX engine in production in the US today. The Atlas engine is Russian.
@DCSCA
They’re not behind schedule. They’re combining the second and third COTS demo flights in December, and starting their CRS contract in February.
The planned start date for CRS has been late 2010/early 2011 for a while now.
@amightywind
Six rockets and two F9/Dragon flights this year is six rockets and two flights more than we’ve accomplished with Ares/SLS
“Sounds impressive until you realize that is only enough to fly 6 rockets. The Merlin engine is the least impressive rocket engine in use today in terms of total thrust and Isp. 100Klbs of thrust is laughable.”
maybe is more economical in the end,to make Merlin 2 ,and not like F-1 ,but smaller like RD-180 in thrust?
they will have fewer rockets to produce..
and Usa badly needs a all american BIG kerolox engine..
“Sounds impressive until you realize that is only enough to fly 6 rockets.”
No, the Falcon 9 employs 10 Merlins. So 100 Merlins per year support ten Falcon 9 launches.
If they ramp up to 400 Merlins per year, that will support 40 Falcon 9 launches or 13 Falcon Heavy launches and change.
Learn grade school math.
“100Klbs of thrust is laughable.”
The Merlin 1C does 125,000lbf and the Merlin 1D does 140,000lbf (and more according to the latest Av Week article).
Again, learn grade school math.
amightywind wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 8:59 am
SpaceX’s flight rate is down to 1 per year, a real puzzle when you recall the chest thumping of last December.
There is no reason to launch a spacecraft that isn’t needed that would be a waste of a spacecraft. As an example ATK has run two ground test of the five segment motor and plans for a third. This doesn’t seem prudent and it’s a waste of tax payer money.
Hi Jeff,
I seldom post, but I read your site almost daily. Thanks again for your solid, fact-based reporting. You provide a great service.
As a result of the tone you set, your site serves as one of the more useful and interesting forums on the subject. It is obvious that a number of posters spend considerable effort to provide well-referenced points of view. I appreciate them even if I do not always agree with their opinions. Many are excellent.
Unfortunately, some individuals who post on this site are abusing it and devaluing it with immature attacks on people they don’t agree with. Some are so bizarre that I find it hard to believe that they are sincere.
They are detracting from your good work, and the efforts of those who comment in the same spirit as you.
You haven’t asked, but I would strongly support banning anyone who adds nothing of value and resorts to the kind of name calling displayed this morning.
Thanks, Jeff, and keep up the good work.
Ken
“ATK has run two ground test of the five segment motor and plans for a third.”
Although the ATK rocket is completely useless, adequate ground and flight testing is essential before the first manned flight in any system. Generally about a dozen unmanned flights are needed to reach a minimum anticipated failure rate.
In the case of the Shuttle some major problems discovered within the first dozen flights could never really be corrected because the design was already both frozen and “man-rated” and thus very hard to change, just part of the fallacy of the concept of “man-rating”.
amightywind wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 8:59 am
“Sounds impressive until you realize that is only enough to fly 6 rockets”
next to inventing the “widget” learning how to build it economically particularly when you need a lot of them…is the next important thing.
RGO
@ amightywind wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 9:27 am
“And what would that be? Talking about rockets?”
Let’s draw a parallel that I am sure will get you all excited my friend.
In the 80s Reagan started an arms race. The intent was to get the USSR to follow and thereby to ruin their economy since they could not actually follow. Bring this to SpaceX. They claim hard and loud to those who want to hear it that they are committing resources to develop HSF, so far so to get contracts with NASA and say how great they are.
In order to keep up the old guard has to follow or they will look like passe with no vision which in any business is not good. Unfortunately their cost structure is so engrained with cost-plus contract that unless they make dramatic changes they will NOT be able to follow, just like the old USSR.
So two results are possible then since they haven’t been able to eliminate the SpaceX et al. threat – so far anyway.
1. The old guard adapt and the cost goes down and every one is happy. Unlikely to happen at ATK it seems. Boeing is much, much better and they still have the genes of commercial aviation for them.
2. The old guard go the MDD way, when MDD laughed their bottom off of Airbus until well MDD disappeared for good themselves.
What do you think may happen sometime in the future? Uh? Show us a little smarts of yours instead of a rhetoric that used to be a lot better and is only running on fumes these days…
Ken , although some flaming goes on here it is far tamer than I have seen other places…. Certainly not enough to start banning. I enjoy reading everyones opinion and even the negative responses when it is relevant….having said that though I do think people should be respectful of others opinions…quite a few believe their opinion is the right one and anyone who disagrees is stupid lol…..and don’t hesitate to say that
Matt Wiser wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 12:39 am
“POTUS proposed destinations are either too vague (NEO without a specific target, even for planning purposes, though L-M has ID’d several in their PLYMOUTH ROCK mission proposal)”
I’ll let Lockheed Martin debunk you:
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/data/assets/ssc/Orion/Toolkit/OrionAsteroidMissionBrief.pdf
Specifically:
“In the next twenty years, three known asteroids will come close enough to reach using this dual-Orion approach, in 2016, 2019, and 2028. Additional accessible asteroids will probably be discovered in the meantime.
Visiting more difficult asteroids, such as the President’s proposed mission to asteroid 1999 AO10 in 2025…”
Obviously the 2016 and 2019 dates for the proposed Plymouth Rock missions are unlikely without immediate funding from Congress (which is lacking for all asteroid missions) but LM is not focused on one particular date or destination, but is “flexible” depending on budget and timing. Hmm, sounds like the Flexible Path to me…
@Doug Lassiter and Bob Mahoney
I don’t know if you read this but someone offers a “why” we go to space that makes quite a bit of sense especially in the US at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1903/1
Look at DaveH post about America’s “sense of manifest destiny”. I am not sure I like the association with the Puritans/religious especially in the modern context but I am open to it. There still is something special about all who come to the US that somehow relates to this (for lack of better reference at hand http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Manifest_Destiny): A better world of their own. Or something like that.
I think there is an association to be made with a case for adventure and his “sense of manifest destiny”. Add science and survival of the species and voila! You may come up with a not so bad reason as to why we go to space.
Now of course if we can support that with some good ROI of some sort to the US people and then we’d have a pretty good message.
And, the “sense of manifest destiny” would nicely reconcile those who like the “intangibles”.
Something to explore – if I may.
@vulture4
I can understand a couple ground test but when do we draw the line. Do they have the final design to build too? Maybe someone can send it to congress so they will stop bothering NASA about it. Doesn’t it make sense to test flight hardware unmanned with real designs? Isn’t one of the main reasons we are using the SRB is it has “already†flown on STS and it has a proven track record? Did they encounter issues on DM-1 or DM-2? Also you can’t ground test the actual SRB flight hardware because it has to be completely refurbished after each use. Sometimes it seems they test as a keep busy task instead of real development requirement. I’m just frustrated because we are in a rush to wait mode.
Man rate an SRB for SLS?…
I say since the moons of Mars are asteroids, go for the gold. Instead of a specific asteroid mission, go directly to Mars with a Martian Moon mission. That way both a direct encounter with an asteroid will take place, plus a good close up and personal investigation of the Red Planet can also happen. That seems like two for he price of one!
Just to get back to Posey, his primary strategy has been to simply attack Obama every chance he gets. This plays well with his highly partisan supporters. He never objected to termination of the Shuttle under Bush but now acts as though it was entirely Obama’s idea. He blames Obama for everything bad since the great flood and takes credit himself for everything good. However he is afraid the Obama’s “commercial” proposal may do fairly well and so he wants to get ahead of it as a “supporter” even though he still attacks Obama for trying to cancel the huge, monolithic waste of tax dollars known as VSE/Constellation/SLS-MPCV.
@Dennis
The moons of Mars are a target under the Flexible Path plan, and Obama has specifically mentioned that future goals for HSF include “the moons and surface of Mars”.
However there are a lot of difficulties to overcome before we can send a manned mission that far, so a mission to a NEA could be used as a trial run for a future mission to Phobos or Deimos (not to mention learn information that could one day prove useful in preventing impacts).
@KDP:
Ken, I am a regular reader – seldom poster like yourself and I have to oppose your censorship proposal:
Jeff, please let the loonies talk. They are their own worst enemies, plus they make excellent opportunities for counter- posts. And, when they occasionally gets over the top, we can just ignore them.
Dennis wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 2:42 pm
“Instead of a specific asteroid mission, go directly to Mars with a Martian Moon mission.”
I think you’re missing the point Dennis.
We have never ventured beyond Earth’s orbit (BEO), so the proposed asteroid mission is part of expanding our capabilities to venture further and further out into space. If we can’t do an asteroid mission, then we’re not ready for Mars, regardless if it’s just to obit one of it’s moons.
What do you think may happen sometime in the future? Uh? Show us a little smarts of yours instead of a rhetoric that used to be a lot better and is only running on fumes these days…
My quick answer. Not much. My apologies. Lack of inspiration. It is a reflection of the low level of activity at NASA. The epic battle between good and evil has been fought to a standoff and is now waiting for an election. There are only so many ways to present your argument. You must admit it has been a slow year.
@ John Malkin wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 2:40 pm
“Isn’t one of the main reasons we are using the SRB is it has “already†flown on STS and it has a proven track record?”
It was a reason for ESAS and other SRB supported plans. The new design no longer is the SRB as found on the STS. Therefore it is a new system that requires all the process for being fielded, human-rated or not. And until it actually flies and starts gathering flights under its belt no one, no one, can tell if it is safe or not.
Almighty wrote:
“You must admit it has been a slow year.”
Yes it has,
CCDEV2,
Dawn,
Congressional Continuing resolutions,
SpaceX 2nd succesful Falcon 9 launch,
SpaceX 1st time in the history of the planet a private company launched and successfully recovered a capsule,
Virgin Galctic signs almost 500 costumers,
Virgin Galatic does drop tests,
Virgin Galatic does feathered drop test,
NASA signs for 7 private firms for suborbital tests.
Bigelow signs 7 MOU’s
Just to name a few, can anyone add some more?
@ amightywind wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Na. This post will not cut it either.
We need grandiloquence from you. We need not “good” vs. “evil”. It’s been used and used ad nauseam. You know, Axis of Evil is a little better but even that has been over used. Rather bring us the Beelzebub or the Prince of the power of the air or the Angel of the bottomless pit and its relentless fight against the Kingdom of the Supreme Light or something.
You know?
Make yourself original and don’t let other people bring you down. Read more books, get references.
In other words, don’t do like Falcon 9 2nd stage, don’t spin…
common sense wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 4:23 pm
Ok, I will stop complaining about ATK doing ground tests of the development motors.
RGO > do you think that this plan/vision/whatever is actually salable to the American people RGO?
Should the STS become a boondoggle (likely IMO) and we reach another soul-searching struggle, a plan which costs less and yet goes beyond LEO will be supported by the people.
But, please explain why you don’t think so, so that I can respond more precisely. Thanks.
@amightywind wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 8:59 am
“We have built about 60 engines so far this year, and will build another 40 by year-end,†says [SpaceX President Gwynne] Shotwell. Speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Joint Propulsion Conference here, Shotwell explains that the eventual “plan is to build up to 400 engines per year, that’s our target.â€
“Sounds impressive until you realize that is only enough to fly 6 rockets.”
ROFLMAO yeah, ain’t that the truth. Plumber’s nightmare and N1’s in the making. Most press releases sound ‘impressive.’ Wonder how that condo on Mars is coming along… retirement creeps up fast.
@Michael from Iowa wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 9:37 am
In fact, they are. Of course, if you keep revising your schedule you can keep fooling yourself you’re still on your timeline. You can do that with a hobby. Rich profiteers make for poor rocketeers.
@Vladislaw
ULA announces plans to man-rate Atlas V
Juno launches
*MSL launches (Fall)
*SpaceX’s Dragon becomes the first commercially operated spacecraft to dock with the ISS
*later this year
Re the comments about the trolls … Personally, I just scroll right past them. Spend a day or two on this site and you’ll know who they are. The best way to deal with them simply is to not respond.
Some boards have a feature where you can mark a particular user for permanent ignore. That would solve a lot of problems here.
Absent that feature, the next best thing is to exercise self-restraint and not respond to the trolls. They have no power if you don’t respond, even better if you don’t read their posts.
@ John Malkin wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 4:54 pm
“Ok, I will stop complaining about ATK doing ground tests of the development motors.”
Nah. Do complain as they are wasting our taxpayers’ money for a vehicle that will not fly. Unless they do it on their dime which I don’t know.
JohnHunt wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 4:57 pm
I have said this here and other places many a time and I will say it again. There is a value between cost and value; the more the former takes the more the latter should give.
We spent as a nation 200 billion plus on the shuttle system and about 15 billion on all forms of Cx. I dont think that there is value for the cost in either of those. Now the people who got a paycheck from either would disagree but to the rest of the nation, the part that writes and pays (or borrows) that money would probably agree…and that is why both programs are dead.
If it cost say 10 or 100 times what is spent for the South Pole station to keep the same number of people doing about the same things at a South Pole station on the Moon, I have no doubt that this country would do that. We are a great people and we do great things, sometimes when the cost are low…just to do them.
But it doesnt cost 100 times what is spent at the South Pole station to even keep 2 people at a South Pole station on the Moon. Maybe one day it will…I think it will if we develop commercial industries that can do things for far less then the NASA bureaucracy can do it…and then we ought to do it. But if the idea was to learn about the Moon, the 15 billion spent on Cx could have been spent in far better ways and instead of learning nothing about the moon, which Cx did, we would have learned something.
But we would not have passed out as much technowelfare. Which right now is the goal of human spaceflight. RGO
Good points re the “trolls.”
Thanks,
Ken
MT: in case you haven’t seen the hearings on the House side, Charlie Bolden is asked about other destinations, and he keeps repeating the same line the White House tells him. NEO by 2025 and Mars orbit by 2035. Nothing in between. Congress has a right to request additional information, including other potential destinations, as well as tentative dates-even if those are just for planning purposes. And when Congress wants information, they get it.
Ron: Then I stand corrected. But I do feel that the sooner PLYMOUTH ROCK or a mission similar in scope is flown, the better. Then NEO can be scratched off the list, and serious efforts made to get lunar return back on track. Again, if POTUS had said last year, instead of the “been there, done that” re: lunar exploration, but had said something like “when we go back to the moon, it will be to get ready for the surface of Mars,” maybe, just maybe, some of the anger, the vitriol, and the opposition to what the Administration orignally had in mind (the disaster known as the original FY 11 budget) might have been lessened. And those who were “Moon first” would be able to say “We’ll get what we want-NASA returning to the lunar surface-not when we wanted it, but that’s OK.”
@ Coastal Ron
“We have never ventured beyond Earth’s orbit (BEO), so the proposed asteroid mission is part of expanding our capabilities to venture further and further out into space. If we can’t do an asteroid mission, then we’re not ready for Mars, regardless if it’s just to obit one of it’s moons.
*******
I think you meant that we’ve never ventured beyond the Earth for several months at a time. The best way to test a manned interplanetary habitat for such a journey would be at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points. But the best way to test how effective mass shielding is in protecting the human brain from heavy nuclei would be at a Moon base where there is plenty of water and hydrogen to test the effectiveness of mass shielding.
But there’s really no logical reason to prioritize an asteroid mission over a Martian Moon mission. A Martian Moon mission would be much safer since you could send habitats and fuel depots to the surfaces of a Martian Moons before the astronauts arrive provide housing, fuel, water, and radiation protection.
Plus I’ve seen extremely little public or political support for an asteroid mission!
Marcel F. Williams
Robert G. Oler wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 7:21 pm
I wrote:
I have said this here and other places many a time and I will say it again. There is a value between cost and value;
This should be “I have said this here and other places many a time and I will say it again, there is a balance between cost and value…
The editor regrets the error RGO
common sense wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
@Doug Lassiter and Bob Mahoney
“I don’t know if you read this but someone offers a “why†we go to space that makes quite a bit of sense especially in the US at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1903/1”
Thoughtful essay. It’s thoughtful essays like this that help constitute the discussion this nation should really be having, but is largely afraid to have.
“Look at DaveH post about America’s “sense of manifest destinyâ€.
Yeah, I did, and I had a hard time getting past the “We American’s more than any other nation have, or had, a sense of manifest destiny, to create a nation stretching from sea to sea.”. That’s just B.S. Many nations that have seen themselves as empires have most certainly done this. We have a lot less land between our seas than they did. “Manifest destiny” actually doesn’t mean much to me. It is certainly something pretty intangible, and makes almost no sense for space exploration, in which we’d be expanding out into territories that are highly unfriendly to human existence. That hardly makes intangibiity any stronger as an argument for expansion into space. But his picture sounds a lot like “flexible path”, which makes some sense in this era.
@Stephen C. Smith wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 5:54 pm
“Spend a day or two on this site… ‘and you’ll recognize those desperately shilling for commercial space, advocating ‘for profit’ HSF ventures with government subsidies because privatre capital markets continue to balk.
How about the eventual need for a closed-loop life-support system?? The Mars zealots completely ignore this issue! The ISS could NOT last one year without resupply from Earth. Be it Progress automated cargo visits or manned Soyuz visits. Renewed manned Lunar missions would most certainly address this problem. A manned surface expedition which would recycle almost everything that they had brought onboard, and NOT need to depend on Earth intervention for each & everything provision-wise. The Moon is the natural locale in which to practice for a mission to Mars. No matter what the freaking Zubrinites have to say on the topic! Furthermore: there is dust management to deal with. There are the intricacies of manned vehicles which are designed to land astronauts on another world. All this childish avoidance of constructing a new manned lander vehicle, that is the name-of-the-game with Flexible Path—-TOTALLY LUDICROUS! A manned Mars lander would need to be fifty times more complex than a manned Lunar lander would have to be, to develop, build, and keep in a viable ready-to-use state. Even if the intended Mars lander would only be used to get the crew down to the surface one-way, (with a different Mars ascent vehicle designated for utilizement). Do not these people forsee the need to tinker with Lunar landers first, before venturing into the deathly abyss of creating manned Martian landers?!?!
I think it is important that any group that wishes to have a meaningful debate on space policy encourage the participation of those with differing opinions. Although I might disagree I try to do so logically and diplomatically.
One of the really serious institutional problems NASA faces is the lack of any open and honest debate on goals and strategies between people who disagree. For years I thought Constellation was irrational and Shuttle cancellation without a new operational RLV was irrational, but there was simply no one to talk to.
Even today when asked privately why things are confused and what should be done, many NASA officials simply say they are waiting for word from above, or for a new election to replace Obama, who they blame for their own failure, with a Republican who will magically make everything right.
Matt Wiser wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 9:47 pm
†maybe, just maybe, some of the anger, the vitriol, and the opposition to what the Administration orignally had in mind (the disaster known as the original FY 11 budget) might have been lessened.”
not really. All the opposition, vitriol, anger etc or at least most of it, is based on “I am losing my fortune cookie” Ie “My technowelfare”. and none of the people who otherwise argue for “shrinking” government would be happy unless their government job was maintained.
Thats not all of them, next are the Obama haters…people who if he said “I love The Speaker” would say “no you dont”…
Besides the way NASA does projects there is no value for cost in going back to the Moon. RGO
@ Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 11:33 pm
No, no. You did not (?) see what I meant. There are many things to be done to fund a good space program. One of which is to get support from the taxpayers. In order to do that you need a salesman speech. There is in our society a definite “sense of manifest destiny” that bridges cultures and ethnicity. Only in the USA you’ll find this sentiment. I am not saying it right, or justified or anything about its logic and correctness. I am saying the salesman speech to our public may (should?) include such things. Not only that but that also. I am a scientist and an engineer so those intangibles are not my first concern. However in business you need to bring as many potential customers to you as you need. And that could be part of the “why” that we are all longing for. Because in the end, you might ask yourselves “why” do you want human space exploration and find that you too have no good answer. Yet you still want it. So there is some “intangible” to it. It is not easy to formulate, then if it’d be easy any one could do it…
See?
> How about the eventual need for a closed-loop life-support system?? The Mars zealots completely ignore this issue! [snip] Renewed manned Lunar missions would most certainly address this problem.
This is something that one should think about when returning to the moon, should that ever happen. Namely, the moon is easy enough to get to that architectures dependent on supply and resupply from Earth will likely be perfectly doable and maybe even superior to closed-loop ones in terms of cost, safety, etc. So if the idea is to develop Mars-applicable technologies, that needs to be factored in when planning Apollo 2.0 and the planners need to be ready to make choices that might not be optimum in purely lunar terms.
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 10:36 pm
“I think you meant that we’ve never ventured beyond the Earth for several months at a time.”
Going to the Moon is not going beyond Earth’s orbit (BEO), since the Moon orbits the Earth. Because of that, we’ve never been BEO before.
“The best way to test a manned interplanetary habitat for such a journey would be at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points.”
EML points would certainly be one of the places to go on our way out, but why stop there? That’s like taking a new ship out to sea but staying within sight of the coast – sure you need to validate your systems, and shakedowns cruises are good for crew training, but sooner or later you want to head out to sea and see if you can really survive all the elements.
“But the best way to test how effective mass shielding is in protecting the human brain from heavy nuclei would be at a Moon base where there is plenty of water and hydrogen to test the effectiveness of mass shielding.”
So you would have to land your spaceship on the Moon in order to test out whether it works correctly in space? You don’t make sense.
If there are materials we need from the Moon for our space-only spaceships, then that will be part of the logistics infrastructure we’ll need to set up.
However water from Earth for one spaceship’s worth of shielding is far less expensive then the $88B required for the Spudis/Lavoie water production plan. In small quantities there is no need for water or other supplies specifically from the Moon.
“No, no. You did not (?) see what I meant. There are many things to be done to fund a good space program. One of which is to get support from the taxpayers. In order to do that you need a salesman speech. There is in our society a definite “sense of manifest destiny†that bridges cultures and ethnicity. Only in the USA you’ll find this sentiment. I am not saying it right, or justified or anything about its logic and correctness. I am saying the salesman speech to our public may (should?) include such things.”
The first thing you need before a good salesman is to change the aquistion strategy of NASA. It doesn’t matter how well you sell a program to the taxpayers if the bottom line after funding is another train wreck like the Constellation program. It would be a lot easier to sell a program to the taxpayer if the price for the program was not inflated by a factor of 10.
Until we deal with the fundamentals of how NASA does business it won’t matter how good of a Salesman in Chief the Nation has in office or the sales tactics used to sell that program.
After 50 years of spaceflight the American public is jaded. Unless we are going to ALL goto space together i.e. the government, the commercial sector and the taxpaying public no sales tactics will work in the long run. The public has been sold on the idea that government was going to “open the frontier” instead we have had a government monopoly that has actually been antagonistic towards bringing the private sector and the public with.
Look how NASA treated Dennis Tito, that sure made me feel like NASA wanted to bring me along. It was more like “give us our funding and shut the hell up”
Chris Castro wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 3:43 am
“How about the eventual need for a closed-loop life-support system?”
That is one of the many things that the ISS is working on, and why Congress has designated the ISS as a National Laboratory. And what better place to do the testing than the closest place to Earth that is actually in space, which is LEO. We can iterate experiments much faster being 200 miles from Earth, as opposed to being 200,000 miles away on the Moon.
“A manned surface expedition which would recycle almost everything that they had brought onboard, and NOT need to depend on Earth intervention for each & everything provision-wise.”
It’s funny how transparent our logistics infrastructure has become in our modern lives. There is always a store around the corner that holds the things we need, and if they don’t have them, then Amazon or some other online store can FedEx it to us overnight.
Unfortunately those systems don’t exist in space, or even for vast parts of the Earth. And the recycling systems you claim would exist on the Moon don’t exist here on Earth in a compact enough form to transport to the Moon.
Maybe you have some special knowledge of recycling, but I can tell you that just composting leftover food is pretty tough here on Earth, and it will take a lot of equipment and habitable space to do it anywhere off Earth.
No I think Egad had it right when he told you that we’ll conquer the Moon the same way we do any other harsh environment, which is by sending more supplies and equipment than will be needed, and then keep sending more.
Matt Wiser wrote @ August 12th, 2011 at 9:47 pm
“But I do feel that the sooner PLYMOUTH ROCK or a mission similar in scope is flown, the better.”
Yes, and I think the sooner we build true spaceships the better. We all have wishes Matt, but what matters is the money available and the interest that exists for doing those things. At this point there are too many wishes and too little money.
However the President is targeting an asteroid for 2025, and NASA is working internally to meet that date. You may not like the date, and Congress may not like the date, but it is a date.
But of course Congress hasn’t funded ANY exploration beyond LEO, so really it’s up to Congress to put their money where their mouth is. Given the lack of support in Congress for anything space related (per Rep. Posey), I don’t see any grand plans being funded.
“Then NEO can be scratched off the list, and serious efforts made to get lunar return back on track.”
Being someone that is focused on lowering the cost to access space has it’s advantages sometimes, one of them being able to easily spot a “[fill in the blank] First” groupie.
You of course are a “Moon First” groupie, which means that you really don’t care what NASA’s plans are, but they better include getting back to the Moon as quickly as possible – costs be DAMNED!
“maybe, just maybe, some of the anger, the vitriol…”
You mean the anger and vitriol that you have. The vast amount of Americans don’t care about which destination we should be doing next in space, if any, with their tax money. And of the minuscule few that do care, a significant amount like the President’s plan.
So in the grand scheme of things, that puts your perspective of what the President said into a very small minority, and one that is fighting with some of the other small minorities like the “Mars First” groupies that think the President should have made Mars a higher priority.
And while you and the other “Firsters” are duking it out in the corner, the capabilities approach to doing things in space will continue to gradually put in place the commercial transportation and logistics infrastructure that will allow us to go anywhere less expensively.
@ Vladislaw wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
“The first thing you need before a good salesman is to change the aquistion strategy of NASA. It doesn’t matter how well you sell a program to the taxpayers if the bottom line after funding is another train wreck like the Constellation program. It would be a lot easier to sell a program to the taxpayer if the price for the program was not inflated by a factor of 10.”
I do not believe I said anything about selling a program like Constellation. I am talking of the big picture. Not Constellation, not COTS, I am saying NASA. How do you sell NASA. And within NASA how do you sell HSF. At this stage there is no “first thing” to do. We MUST do those things concurrently. I loved the FY11 budget and associated program but I am an easy audience for this. The public at large is not an easy audience for technology development. Unless it relates to them.
“Until we deal with the fundamentals of how NASA does business it won’t matter how good of a Salesman in Chief the Nation has in office or the sales tactics used to sell that program.”
Again I disagree. This sounds like the kicking the can down the road thing. We MUST do all of those things at the same time and we MUST do them now.
“After 50 years of spaceflight the American public is jaded. Unless we are going to ALL goto space together i.e. the government, the commercial sector and the taxpaying public no sales tactics will work in the long run. The public has been sold on the idea that government was going to “open the frontier†instead we have had a government monopoly that has actually been antagonistic towards bringing the private sector and the public with.”
If you take your comment and remove all the “unless” or “first” then we agree. You cannot just wait for something “unless”. You have to do what you have to do with what you have. What you have today is NASA with a stupidly expensive SLS/MPCV program. So fine. This thing will collapse of its own weight anyway: Bolden/Garver have the right strategy since our beloved Congress think it is okay to waste our tax money and obviously there is little we can do about it. Next elections? Maybe but I doubt it.
“Look how NASA treated Dennis Tito, that sure made me feel like NASA wanted to bring me along. It was more like “give us our funding and shut the hell up—
Well. Anytime you shake up a system you will find similar answers. Tito was a pioneer of his own. Since then? Well a lot has happened. So it does not matter in the big picture how he was treated. He showed the way and now a lot has changed. More power to him, less to the status quo cheerleaders.
We still need a good speech. NASA will be cut, most likely. We MUST keep NASA alive and redirect its useful talent. With no money there is nothing to redirect…
And while you and the other “Firsters†are duking it out in the corner, the capabilities approach to doing things in space will continue to gradually put in place the commercial transportation and logistics infrastructure that will allow us to go anywhere less expensively.
False dichotomy. There’s no reason why a destination driven approach wouldn’t lead to that too and probably do so faster, as long as it is incremental and seeks synergy with commercial development of space.
common sense wrote:
“I do not believe I said anything about selling a program like Constellation. I am talking of the big picture. Not Constellation, not COTS, I am saying NASA. How do you sell NASA. And within NASA how do you sell HSF.”
My apologies for the assumption.
NASA is currently a brand. What is the current condition on that brand? I believe it is mixed. It seems pretty well on the robotic side except for cost growth. On the human spaceflight side The GOA has it listed in the high risk catagory for program aquistions for that last couple decades. So if you want the President to sell NASA it has to be a NASA worth selling. So I don’t believe it is kicking the can down the road, but instead laying the proper foundation for our long term goals.
For me that means, like Robert Oler said “as we “drain the swamp†at NASA…and its time to do that.”. Until NASA’s house is in order all you will get is a short term bump and then as NASA does the same ole’ same ole’ we get nothing for the political investment made to sell NASA. If you mean sell a “new and improved” NASA and actual changes are made I will agree with you on that point.
“If you take your comment and remove all the “unless†or “first†then we agree. You cannot just wait for something “unlessâ€. You have to do what you have to do with what you have. What you have today is NASA with a stupidly expensive SLS/MPCV program. So fine. This thing will collapse of its own weight anyway:”
This goes to my point of investing of political capital to sell NASA at the same time NASA is doing the same thing with the SLS.
For me this means the shuttle and all the high cost shuttle heritage has to finally die first and the aquistion strategies relating to it and any follow on program.
Again, only my opinion and what I believe it will take to gain more support for NASA, but it can no longer be looked at as the Nation’s sole source space program. Space should be sold as a place, a destination and not a government program. That place, that destination should be sold as all inclusive and everyone can be preceived as going along for the ride because NASA will not be preceived as this NASA only for the entire Nation anymore.
My use of “unless” is a conditional for what I believe what it will take to make that successful sale. I truely believe the general public does not see space as being a part of their future in any way shape or form. The way to change that is for the Nation’s Space Agency to actually sell that idea. That is no longer NASA alone but NASA and the Nation as a whole.
It is also an easier economic argument to make if NASA is buying services at reasonable prices on fixed priced, milestone based projects rather than then giving the public the same cost plus NASA. No one is buying that brand of NASA and to try and sell that same NASA will be bound for failure in the long term anyway.
By fundamental changes at NASA first you can sell a lot more actual programs with hardware that ends up flying because of new realistic cost structures and you get a multiplier effect because now you have commercial capital flowing into the space sector at a higher level than if it is just NASA alone.
Martijn Meijering wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 2:24 pm
“There’s no reason why a destination driven approach wouldn’t lead to that too and probably do so faster, as long as it is incremental and seeks synergy with commercial development of space.”
That’s true, but it’s not happening now, nor does sit look like NASA can do that within our current procurement and political environment.
And I’m not saying one will do what the other does, I’m saying that while Mars First and Moon First proponents are squabbling over a declining NASA budget, the things they both need, but that they both want to ignore, will be gradually put in place.
Ironically the thing that they ignore the most (logistics) is what will likely be put in place before decisions are made as to whether their pet destinations will ever be funded for a NASA program.
But I don’t see NASA able to support a destination driven approach right now, since the institutional inefficiencies that brought down the Constellation program have not been addressed, and Congress is not in the Mood to fund really big programs right now. Because of that, incremental capabilities that are being funded are more likely to make it to fruition than major destination programs.
Vladislaw wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 2:47 pm
“I truely believe the general public does not see space as being a part of their future in any way shape or form. The way to change that is for the Nation’s Space Agency to actually sell that idea. That is no longer NASA alone but NASA and the Nation as a whole.”
I think this gets back to what the goals of NASA are. Some part of it should be leading-edge exploration. But another goal that is ignored or overlooked is in transitioning what NASA has learned, and making sure it makes it back into the nations economic engine – the companies and individuals that can turn that knowledge and skills into businesses that couldn’t have existed without that knowledge and skill.
It’s the old “teach a man to fish” vs “give a man a fish”, and NASA as a whole has been lousy at the teaching part for space related stuff for the last three decades.
The COTS program (Griffin/Bush) is a good example of the “teach a man to fish” concept for automated cargo delivery. The CCDev program (Bolden/Obama) continues that concept for commercial crew transportation. Neither would have happened without NASA’s knowledge and guidance, and NASA will reap huge benefits by teaching the commercial transportation industry to do what only NASA could do previously in America.
But I don’t know if the public in general will ever get really excited about the normal activities we do in space. It’s like people getting excited about football – only the rabid fans follow the preseason, and you don’t get the big national attention until you get to the playoffs and the Superbowl. The ISS is the preseason, and an NEO will be a playoff. Mars I think will be reserved for Superbowl like attention, at least for the first month or so of walking around. Then the public will get bored and start following American Idol again…
That’s true, but it’s not happening now, nor does sit look like NASA can do that within our current procurement and political environment.
Agreed, and what Holdren & company are proposing is much better than what Matt & friends are proposing. But that’s not a reason for not pointing out any alternatives, even if they are politically unacceptable. If they are at all.
But I don’t see NASA able to support a destination driven approach right now, since the institutional inefficiencies that brought down the Constellation program have not been addressed, and Congress is not in the Mood to fund really big programs right now.
My current favourite is an unmanned program that would use storable and refuelable transfer stages derived from the Orion SM. That wouldn’t require major new investments in new hardware, it wouldn’t require lengthy delays for R&D and it could preserve much of the $3.5B/yr Congress has been willing to channel to the launch industry for the past thirty years. The major difference would be that this time round that money would be spent competitively.
The mission-specific spacecraft Could come from NASA’s SMD, which would be incentivised to choose propellant-intensive solutions, which wouldn’t be a bad thing. Simply throwing subsidised propellant at L1/L2 at a problem means you can easily and cheaply (from SMD’s perspective) do bigger and faster missions. If you include asteroid missions you could also simply do missions to more destinations with identical spacecraft and a common ground segment, two forms of economies of scale, because there are so many asteroids and types of asteroids and since they are of genuine scientific (and ultimately perhaps economic) interest.
Because of that, incremental capabilities that are being funded are more likely to make it to fruition than major destination programs.
I certainly hope so, but I am very skeptical of it. Did anything useful come out of SLI? Has Glenn ever produced anything of value, except interesting papers? I mean that in the nicest way possible, since papers I find interesting tend to come from Glenn.
Congress is not in the Mood to fund really big programs right now.
Size of the program is only one indicator of its effect on funding for cheap lift, timeliness is another one. NPV of competitive propellant launch expenditures is a major indicator of the viability of RLV R&D. If you delay these expenditures by ten years, then you will dramatically reduce the NPV of potential income from such R&D.
If the required rate of return is 10%, then a 10 year delay means a reduction to no more than 39% the value it would have had with no delay. A 15 year delay would reduce it to 24%. The corresponding numbers for r=20% would be 16% and 6%. You can easily check this with different values, but as you can see the effect of delays is dramatic. Present plans would have hardly any accelerating effect on RLVs or other forms of cheap lift for the next couple of years.
@ Vladislaw wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 2:47 pm
“For me this means the shuttle and all the high cost shuttle heritage has to finally die first and the aquistion strategies relating to it and any follow on program.”
No why does it have to die “first”? It is dying, it will be over soon. BUT you don’t want to wait until it’s dead to start doing something else. And today NASA is trying COTS/CRS/CCDev with HSF – btw robotic exploration even though less expensive is not that well either (for another topic).
See SLS is not about NASA not one bit. It is about Congress. The current NASA -except for a few Constellation groupies – never asked for it. Bolden said often it was not affordable under proposed schedule and budget. Congress does not listen. And Congress is issuing threats about cuts if NASA does not use SLS. Remember? NASA wants CCDev, they want it badly because they know it’s their only life jacket wrt HSF. SLS/MPCV is not a program and they know that but it is being forced down their throat. It is difficult to reorganize something as big as NASA but it is happening. Look for the new org that takes both exploration and space ops. Who is heading it? For how long do you think? Once Shuttle is completely gone… Think about it. SLS will not be ready for years, same for MPCV, so who will take the job of heading the new directorate? Just askin’.
Now you mention all inclusive but somehow you (seem to) exclude NASA. Well no. NASA MUST be part of it if we play it right. NASA still has the facilities and most of the expertise. I am sure you know there are collaboration in place between NASA and “New Space”. You know that for example PICA was developed at NASA and transfered to SpaceX. Things of that nature that a private company can ill afford.
“I truely believe the general public does not see space as being a part of their future in any way shape or form. The way to change that is for the Nation’s Space Agency to actually sell that idea. That is no longer NASA alone but NASA and the Nation as a whole.”
So again back to my earlier post and the added notion of “manifest destiny”. The nation does not understand thermal protection systems, nor navigation BEO. They do on the other hand understand actual return on investment, they understand participation. And I think the current NASA does understand that very well but it takes some time before you see the effects of this policy. The nation also understand the “american exceptionalism” or at least they have their own idea about it. Much more so than on orbital navigation. So again it is about bringing the public to the “why” we do HSF at NASA, at SpaceX and elsewhere. There are good arguments to be made why “manifest destiny” may not be the most politically correct approach but the underlying idea is there.
“By fundamental changes at NASA first ”
No again not “first”. You do all of these at the SAME time. You cannot afford to wait for the results of even a sound economical approach. Why do you think SpaceX is under such pressure to succeed? Just because of the bashers on this site? Think about it. Why SpaceX? Why not Blue Origin? Not Boeing? Think what Elon says he wants to deliver and compare it with the others language. Seriously. You’ll see that I am not that off in my reasoning.
@ Vladislaw wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Another way to use what I am saying: Use your “enemy” language and turn it to your advantage! This is not difficult.
Coastal Ron wrote:
“But I don’t know if the public in general will ever get really excited about the normal activities we do in space. It’s like people getting excited about football – only the rabid fans follow the preseason, and you don’t get the big national attention until you get to the playoffs and the Superbowl. The ISS is the preseason, and an NEO will be a playoff. Mars I think will be reserved for Superbowl like attention, at least for the first month or so of walking around. Then the public will get bored and start following American Idol again…”
Thanks for articulating a lot my thoughts, we are pretty much in accord on most points on how we would like to see it unfold.
For the civil part of our space goals what you lay out I can agree with. The part I don’t is this is only the civil side and does not take into account the public side. I agree with a lot of what Bill White has written in the past about commercial aspects in space.
For a space junkie like myself watching people operate on Mars would be very entertaining, for most Americans probably not so much so I would much rather see people tune into an American Idol type reality show at a Bigelow Space Facilty. That is more in tune with what I mean about people being involved more and give them the idea that they to can get a shot.
We do not know what kind of commercial money making opportunities will present themselves once capital has access at a reasonable rate.
common sense wrote:
“No why does it have to die “firstâ€? It is dying, it will be over soon. BUT you don’t want to wait until it’s dead to start doing something else. And today NASA is trying COTS/CRS/CCDev with HSF – btw robotic exploration even though less expensive is not that well either (for another topic).
See SLS is not about NASA not one bit. It is about Congress.”
I agree it is Congress and I should have been more specific, what I mean is, the mentality that is pushing the SLS in Congress to do it the same old way expecting a different result. The reason I believe this is important is because if a President pushes a new program and tries to sell NASA and all that old guard stuff is still in place, we know what will happen with that new program, the usual suspects will make the costs unrealistic and nothing actually happens. I would rather wait a year or three and have that wrung out of the system (SLS) and then start from scratch with the new paradigm for NASA. That way what you want will actually have a good shot at success.
“Now you mention all inclusive but somehow you (seem to) exclude NASA. Well no. NASA MUST be part of it if we play it right. NASA still has the facilities and most of the expertise. I am sure you know there are collaboration in place between NASA and “New Spaceâ€. You know that for example PICA was developed at NASA and transfered to SpaceX. Things of that nature that a private company can ill afford.”
I believe most of my positions have been posted in the past and I have never called for NASA to be shut down or excluded. I have strongly expressed my opinion that I want NASA out of the launch business and instead use part of that funding for exploration instead.
I do believe that NASA should have, as one of it’s core goals, a strong tech research base that acts as a pump primer for entrepreneurial America. I truely believe the Nation is better for it when NASA is shoveling tech into the private sector and then buy those products and services off the shelf.
I want NASA on the leading edge but dragging American commercial firms right along with them every step of the way rather than NASA trying to maintain a monopoly on whatever activity they want to protect as being “NASA only”. This idea of NASA only has been expressed by more than a few on this blog and for me that is what has kept us where we are.
“So again back to my earlier post and the added notion of “manifest destinyâ€. The nation does not understand thermal protection systems, nor navigation BEO.”
The reason I did not address this is because I feel it sends the wrong message and gives ammunition to other countries.
I can just hear China and others:
“America thinks they own space and have a destiny to control all space”
If the people are more engaged on a personal level, more so than just being a NASA watcher, I feel you would not have to play the destiny card.
“No again not “firstâ€. You do all of these at the SAME time. You cannot afford to wait for the results of even a sound economical approach”
If it can be pulled off simultaniously then yes I am all for it, but as I have expressed, I fear that if that old guard way of doing things is not gone it will be hard to go forward with selling a new NASA to the public.
Martijn Meijering wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 3:47 pm
common sense wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 4:01 pm
Vladislaw wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Two conversations that have some of the same parallels. There are major points from all of you that I agree with, so I think it’s more a matter of how do we get things from where we are to where we want to be.
I do agree with Vladislaw on the point about the STS legacy infrastructure needing to “die” in order for us to really move forward. Congress (and others) are focused on continuing the STS derived hardware with SLS and whatever else they can dream up. Until that goes away politically, it will be a drag on our ability to move forward with what’s next. Which is what “common sense” I think talks about regarding Congress.
If people stop wanting to rely on STS hardware, then maybe we can start focusing on what the future transportation systems should be. Here is where I think NASA leadership has an opportunity to do what Congress has ignored for political reasons – ask what the best way is to expand out into space and explore.
Congress doesn’t ask because Congress is only interested in funded solutions that benefit the required constituencies. I think what NASA could do is organize a summit of the industry, science and educational communities and see if they can develop a framework with NASA for how we’ll move forward.
I’ve written about this before (Google “Coastal Ron wrote @ April 23rd, 2011 at 6:02 pm” for the Space Politics thread), so I won’t go into detail, but one thing that would be nice to have defined is the initial transportation regions that should be established in the Earth local area. I see four that would provide logical routes and destinations that would help the space industry build products that overlap and support each other.
Today the commercial industry is focused on what I call the Earth-LEO-Earth (ELE) route, which is cargo and crew. That supports operations just about anywhere in LEO, which includes the ISS, and will also support Bigelow stations and all the other space stations being proposed. To go beyond this requires some generic hardware systems, like fuel depots, and specific ones like transport systems to the next destination (L1?).
One thing that industry likes is predictability, since it lowers their risk of building the wrong product for the wrong market. Getting agreement on what everyone thinks the defined routes and destination are could lower that risk, and allow lower cost and more purpose-built transportation to be developed, keeping costs low but flexibility high.
My $0.02
Vladislaw wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 5:19 pm
“We do not know what kind of commercial money making opportunities will present themselves once capital has access at a reasonable rate.”
Agreed. And that opportunity will never happen with government-run transportation like the SLS, as the Shuttle proved.
Bill White has some good ideas, but I differ with him over how the money will flow. I think he tends to see lots of space activity because of various forms of space tourism, but I think tourism will only constitute a small percentage of the actual dollars spent in segments such as transportation.
Sure you could have a game show broadcast from a Bigelow station, but how many bodies and how much traffic is that generating? It’s not like people have to go to space to watch the sport, so I think the entertainment industry in space will be limited to infrequent traffic, not lots of scheduled traffic.
NASA research facilities like the ISS require lots of scheduled transportation, so they are the revenue foundation that will allow the entertainment industry to piggyback on already scheduled transport. Grow that traffic, and you grow the need to lower costs, which ultimate leads to more and more traffic and cost reductions. You know this, so I’m just saying it for other readers.
Great conversation.
@ Coastal Ron wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Just a few words. We all keep talking on “how” to do things. Fuel depots and the likes. Well they are not there today they may never be there ever. This is not the point. You seem to focus on the detail so to speak. We need a more general approach. One that will force Congress to do something, not circumvent Congress, we cannot, right or wrong. One aspect of this strategy is actually being implemented by NASA it seems. Congress wants nonsense? Sure we’ll give them nonsense. And we’ll drag our feet. So yes SLS will die, most likely MPCV as well. We all know that to have a real exploration program we do not need HLV, not really, especially not SD HLV and you don’t want to live in a capsule all the way to Mars. Unfortunately it takes time for this to happen. It cannot be by using a magic wand. In any case. The approach is multiple. Yes we enforce competition, fixed cost for things that do not need a lot of development. We may keep cost plus for such things as a Nautilus-X concept but well TBD.
As for China and others and the Manifest Destiny. We can try and be a little smart. As a leader the USA brought you the space station, now the USA is bringing commercial market, the USA welcomes international, nontraditional participants such as China. Well go ask some good marketing people and they’ll build the language for you. No need to be exclusive of anyone. Quite the opposite actually. In other words what do you think Bolden was doing in his outreach to the middle east? Where is the cash you think? Where is the technology? Where do we need reconciliation?
And well “yes we can do” all at once. We just need to work on the message. We need to gather the public. Not gather common sense, Coastal Ron and Vladislaw. We and others only are the choir. We need to sing the song right now and be inclusive of all here and abroad.
Heck I am going to turn into some preacher soon if I don’t pay attention
Coastal Ron wrote:
“Sure you could have a game show broadcast from a Bigelow station, but how many bodies and how much traffic is that generating? It’s not like people have to go to space to watch the sport, so I think the entertainment industry in space will be limited to infrequent traffic, not lots of scheduled traffic.”
This concept is not about the actual bodies in space. It is about building support for NASA. It is often said that support for NASA is a mile wide and an inch deep. I believe the shallow support is because people do not see space, in there face, on a day to day type basis. It is not something they will participate in, not even in their wildest dreams. If people see space in their lives not just from the rare NASA probe but regular cable shows, Virgin Galatic space rides, et cetera, I believe NASA would not have such a hard time getting more taxpayer support for space in general and human space exploration in particular.
If a reality show in space that participants got their through luck or lottery doesn’t matter. It does say to people that yes, even you have a shot at it, even if that chance is remote. Look how many play a game of chance for a shot at their dream. That is something that NASA can never offer but to a very select few with “the right stuff” therefore barring a lot of Americans from that dream.
common sense wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 6:09 pm
“Heck I am going to turn into some preacher soon if I don’t pay attention”
We all have busy lives, but informing the public about space issues isn’t a bad idea. However my experience has been that their eyes glaze over pretty fast – such is the interest in space that the nation at large has.
Vladislaw wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 6:34 pm
“This concept is not about the actual bodies in space. It is about building support for NASA.”
I have previously thought this, but if NASA’s budget is going to be fairly static going forward, then the only way we’ll expand out into space is by non-NASA activities.
NASA is important for certain core activities, but I would argue that they are more important for the technology development side of things than manned exploration. For instance, if NASA was allowed to spend their SLS budget on technology development instead of the SLS, then I think America could expand into space much faster and sustainably.
But in order for those in Congress to see what the better choices are, the SLS and Shuttle pork constituencies must die off. We’ll see what happens when NASA delivers the official SLS cost estimates – maybe that will allow for a semi-rational debate about where the money can produce more activities in space. I’m not holding my breath that it will happen in today’s political climate, but you never know…
@ Coastal Ron wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 7:49 pm
“We all have busy lives, but informing the public about space issues isn’t a bad idea. However my experience has been that their eyes glaze over pretty fast – such is the interest in space that the nation at large has.”
Yeah well space is pretty close to me
Their eyes glaze over because they do not relate, hence my babbling about the higher calling or something like that, associated with pride and chest thumping. We can do that in such a way to actually accommodate our desires and ambitions for real open dare I say space program.
“MT: in case you haven’t seen the hearings on the House side, Charlie Bolden is asked about other destinations, and he keeps repeating the same line the White House tells him. NEO by 2025 and Mars orbit by 2035. Nothing in between.”
It’s only been a year and three months since the Administration announced those targets and deadlines. Webb did not have AS-201 thru -204 or Apollo 4-20 planned 15 months after Kennedy’s set the goal of a lunar landing within a decade. NASA didn’t even have the LOR architecture or the arrangement of Saturn V’s engines decided by then.
Your statement makes a totally unrealistic claim about today’s programs based on an utter lack of knowledge and understanding about the timelines of prior programs.
“Congress has a right to request additional information, including other potential destinations, as well as tentative dates-even if those are just for planning purposes.”
For the umpteenth time, Congress isn’t asking for “destinations” or “dates”, “tentative”, “for planning purposes”, or otherwise. Read the actual article. Posey doesn’t use any of those words. Again, you’re projecting what you want onto what members of Congress are actually saying.
“And when Congress wants information, they get it.”
Congress might get that information if that’s what they were asking for. But they’re not. They just want a go-ahead decision on their $38 billion SLS earmark. (And they’re not getting that until after the end of August, if ever.)
@Coastal Ron wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 7:49 pm
We all have busy lives, but informing the public about space issues isn’t a bad idea.
You’re about 50 years behind the times. NASA has had a pretty good outreach program in place sine the Mercury days, when they actively curried favor with major media outlets back in the heyday when space was ‘new and exciting.’ Today, it is less overt however, the outreach is much more hands on these days, what with computer/web interaction and personal interaction with students and such by folks who’ve been there. Anecdotal case in point- my own niece, a young student, spent some time interacting w/Sally Ride on matters space and locally, the late Wally Schirra use to make a point of visiting grade schools and high schools to discuss matters space before he passed. Cernan also makes a point of it as well. And some years back, the public was able to question shuttle crews on orbit via PA events so the outreach exists. But it is meaningless national leadership tells a generation of kids growing up that we’ve abandoned the moon because ‘we’ve been there.’ Point is- new generations have not.
DCSCA wrote @ August 14th, 2011 at 4:22 pm
“You’re about 50 years behind the times.”
And you’re clueless about what the conversation was. It wasn’t about NASA outreach, it was about personal outreach.
“Today, it is less overt however”
NASA’s outreach efforts with the general public depend on how “exciting” things are, which since we’re “only” doing science-type stuff on the ISS and around the solar system with robotic systems, it does not rise to the level of “excitement” for the general population. Students, sure, especially in engineering and science areas, but not the general population.
And that’s no surprise. Space has to compete with all the other “exciting” things going on here on planet Earth. Once the first step is made on some new piece of space ground, the public has shown that their attention span goes somewhere else.
As an example, for the life of me I couldn’t tell you who was in Apollo 12, and until Cernan rose from recent obscurity, I wouldn’t have remembered that he was the last person to leave the Moon. And I follow the space program far more than John & Jane Q Public, so don’t expect much from them. In the end, it’s meaningless trivia – all that matters is whether the public got value for their tax dollars, not who the chosen ones were that got the glory.
“But it is meaningless national leadership tells a generation of kids growing up that we’ve abandoned the moon because ‘we’ve been there.’ Point is- new generations have not.”
As usual you prove that you can’t read and comprehend.
Obama didn’t ban anyone from the Moon, he only said that NASA, with it’s limited resources, would be traveling to an asteroid as it’s next exploration mission beyond LEO.
Maybe you haven’t heard, but we’ve been to the Moon, many times, and we met Kennedy’s goal of “before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”
Going back to the Moon would be neat and interesting, but NASA doesn’t have unlimited funds for neat and interesting things, and if the goal is to reach Mars then learning how to survive a trip to an asteroid gets us to Mars quicker than setting up a golf course on the Moon.
Posey doesn’t care a fig where NASA goes. He knows Constellation was a Bush plan so he is for it, and by extension SLS. He doesn’t even realize that his district lost jobs because a Republican president cancelled Shuttle. Posey just wants to motivate his base by blaming everything bad on Obama and taking credit for everything good for himself.