“the DoD has deep pockets to secure funding lines.”

The DoD gets it’s money from the Treasury – it doesn’t borrow it.

“And the ‘sacrifice’ of savings by presenting a ‘consolidation’ of space operations”

So all of NASA will be folded into the DoD’s X-37 program?

What a maroon.

Yes but it will be easier for advocates with the DoD ‘nat’l security’ mantre to present an postion that has a chance to save a stable funding lne- and of course the DoD has deep pockets to secure funding lines. NASSA simply doesn’t. And the ‘sacrifice’ of savings by presenting a ‘consolidation’ of space operations alone could placate budget cutters to start looking at other areas of DoD or other agencies completely.

Look back at the path NASA has travelled since the Apollo days and you’ll see it has been bleeding and dying a slow death by a thousand paper/budget cuts through much better fiscal times. Tucking it under the wing of DoD as a civilian division through the Age of Austerity, charged with R&D for ‘national security’ purposes offers a viable chance of core projects needing stable funding over mid and long term time frames of surviving.

It’s a noble thought, but I’m not sure one thing necessarily flows to the other. Military projects get cut all the time. Just look at the F-22 Raptor program. Maybe R&D is treated differently, but I’m not aware of any guarantee you’ll receive simply by “tucking” a space project into the military. Regardless of where a program sits, it still has to justify itself.

“Look back at the path NASA has travelled since the Apollo days and you’ll see it has been bleeding and dying a slow death by a thousand paper/budget cuts through much better fiscal times.”

Your solution for a government agency that lacks funding support is to switch it to another government agency for funding?

How about we just do what the government has did the vast majority of the times in the past. Move it out of government and push it into the private sector. Free up some of NASA’s high costs to gain multiplier effects from private capital.

It costs NASA 7 billion a year just to pay wages and keep the lights on. That leaves 11 billion for everything else including all hardware.

How about we chop 200 million a month from NASA’s workforce involved in launching and instead NASA just buys a service. You know, the American way.

“‘commerical’ astronauts have been flying aboard shuttle for the bulk of the 30 year program”

The benefits of using a documented language is that word definitions don’t change just because it doesn’t support someones argument.

The word “Commercial” means:

1 concerned with or engaged in commerce : a commercial agreement.
2 making or intended to make a profit : commercial products.

Non-government employees that flew on the Shuttle did so as guests of the U.S. Government. No one, in the history of the Shuttle program, was able to purchase a ticket to ride on the Shuttle in order to conduct commercial operations that were separate from NASA’s needs.

“Apollo managed to get a scientist astronaut to the moon on the last lunar landing and most of the Skylab crews were medical/scientist astronauts.”

Government employees all. You do realize that not all NASA employees are military test pilots, right?

A postscript- FYI, ‘commerical’ astronauts have been flying aboard shuttle for the bulk of the 30 year program; Apollo managed to get a scientist astronaut to the moon on the last lunar landing and most of the Skylab crews were medical/scientist astronauts. So you really don’t get it.

[continued from above]…. Rather, consolidating space efforts would save money and keep projects of scale, by necessity needing steady, long term funding, a chance of surviving.

You really don’t get it. Ask space science to justify the costs in the face of the Age of Austerity or worse, generate a profit? Pshaw! That’s heresy. Why would Apple or Google or Master Musk fund a space science project if they can’t make a buck at it– why, then, should the government. That’s like funding HSF and not making a buck at it either, because the goal of private enterprise in space is to make a profit- to exploit, not to explore, and space exploitaton is not space exploration… unless you can show your ‘exploration’ can be profitable.

By avoiding that fundamental truth, you’re making a defacto admission that space science is not a profitable enterprise, and for a debt and deficit riddled government, a drain on the Treasury. That’s the same argument made against HSF. What you seem to overlook is that if a DoD space project of scale- science, R&D or HSF in nature, is directed by civilian authority to be implemented, they’ll salute smartly– and have NASA get at it, with ‘nat’l security’ as a safety net to keep budgets stable throough fiscally tight times- and make no mistake, this era is going to be a long time. And FYI. von Braun did advocated a space station all his life- as a way station for human exploration out to the moon and on to Mars.

William Mellberg wrote @ September 12th, 2011 at 2:39 pm

There may be some merit to his proposal. It certainly would clear away the cobwebs, ghosts and debris of past administrations. But starting a ‘new’ government agerncy in the Age of Austerity, with barbarians at the gate chanting for less government activities, not more, seems unlikely. Rather, consolidating space efforts

No, I’m not. Reread my posts. I’m arguing that Orion/MPCV is way too expensive a vehicle to serve this function. NASA can’t afford to throw $2B+ away each year on a couple, lousy ISS crew rotations.

“Orion is spacecraft that can act independentl, [sic]”

Whoop-dee-doo. So can every other capsule.

“is complete and with all the systems a crew would need.”

Your statement is meaningless. “Complete” and “need” are defined in terms of the functions needed to carry out a mission or set of missions.

“2. Orion would use its propulsion module to get home. Just like Apollo. Study the architecture.”

Learn basic celestial mechanics. An architecture built on minimum energy transfers isn’t determined by the model of capsule used.

“3. Orion never dropped the deployable radiation shields for lunar mission.”

Yes, they did. The ZBV was a lunar sortie vehicle.

“5. Ares I works.”

Based on what? How does the atmospheric launch of a four-segment SRB first-stage with different propellant grain and geometry, a dummy upper-stage, and a dummy mass Orion running on Atlas V avionics with two SRB-damaging parachute failures demonstrate that a five-segment SRB and a J2-X upper stage “works” to take an actual Orion capsule to orbit?

That’s like saying my wife’s SUV works reliably because a two-wheel moped with no engine and a box strapped to the back can roll downhill and crash into a tree.

“We wanted to use a 4 segment booster if possible for cost, but needed more push!”

“We”? I doubt you were in the decision chain on Ares I.

Regardless, the only reason Griffin, Horowitz, and others needed more “push” is because they were stupid enough to employ a first-stage LOX/hydrogen engine (the SSME) in an upper-stage application (the original Ares I second-stage) in the first place.

“6. The LOX damper works, was proven,”

Nothing “was proven”. It was only modeled:

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/fix-for-ares-vibration-issue.html

Don’t make stuff up.

“added in the baseline and was to be part of production.”

Evidence? Reference? Link?

Ares I was years away from CDR. (It arguably never finished PDR.) Nothing was “in the baseline” for “production” because there was no production design.

Don’t make stuff up.

“7. Orion will fly on an EELV in 2013.”

NASA has baselined no plans to do so.

Don’t make stuff up.

“Rethink your position.”

You’ve provided not even a single reason to do so.

“Major Tom, your understanding goes only 1 to 2 charts deep. You have little knowledge of the topics at hand.”

I’ll take my “1 to 2 charts deep” understanding over someone who thinks that:

— a LOX damper (or any other piece of equipment that’s never been tested or demonstrated at scale) works just because a computer model says it might,

— the four-segment/dummy Ares I-X parachute failures proved much of anything for an operational five-segment/J-2X vehicle,

— the Ares I production design had been finalized because the project had barely passed PDR and was years from CDR,

— the Orion ZBV was an ISS vehicle,

— a remibursable Delta IV reservation made by industry represents a decision by the government (NASA) to fly MPCV before 2017.

Please…

You have to remember that attacks are part of the ATK game – and they want to identify you, as you’re talking about the Ares 1 abort probalems, which carry over to SLS if the 5 segs are used.

There are also insecure people around with nothing better to do; a lot of them have “hidden” obsessions. Asking “Why?” is a godd way to identify those.

I’ve had a stroke and am pretty much out of it, so care to share on the what happened to the Gration nomination?

Any word on when the MASA mess with impactor detection is goind to be cleaned up?

How are things going with Reid? Any log rolling with Hatch?