What a stupid question. He doesn’t plan to retire for decades. Why would he need to be working on it now, other than doing what he’s doing — reducing the cost of access to space? And I continue to find it hilarious that the only people who idiotically call him a “lord” are the people who fantasize that others see him that way.

“ESA doesn’t have the money for this and they don’t need Liberty because they already have a much better rocket.”

That’s the thing I think most people miss – Ariane 5 has the same capacity to LEO that Liberty is supposed to have, so why would anyone choose the Liberty over the Ariane 5?

I think Astrium must be going along with this because they think someone (ATK or NASA) will pay them to do engine work that will be useful for something they would like to do in the future, but otherwise don’t have the budget. They certainly would not be partnering up with ATK if it meant they would lose Ariane 5 launch business, so that’s the only thing that I can think of.

So an American goes out and builds a company, flies successfully, and begins to challenge Russian and Chinese on price…obviously he needs to be grilled by congress. What was he thinking! Do you ever stop to wonder why congress has a 15% approval rating?

He completely ignores my earlier point.
“Because Hall has made this proclamation multiple times since assuming the committee chairmanship, it has appeared to me for sometime that by just claiming he thinks Musk needs to be called up accomplishes his goals more effectively than actually doing so. That way he gets to give the impression that Musk is up to something untoward without the risk of Hall’s own position being exposed during an actually testimony by Musk. Thus we can continue to expect him to say he will call Musk, but never actually do it.”
I hope NASA can survive the True Believers in what I call the SCOSNSQ (Sacred Church of the Old Style NASA Status Quo) who take everything High Priest Hall, Saint Armstrong, Saint Cernan, etc. say at face value, unquestioningly.

ESA could be another funding source since half the rocket is indirectly ESA.

ESA doesn’t have the money for this and they don’t need Liberty because they already have a much better rocket.

“This one is about NASA HSF in general, and probably more specifically, BEO missions.”

What are they going to say that they didn’t say last time?

See that’s the thing Matt, Hall doesn’t have anyone else that he can have testify that will support his political narrative. Armstrong and Cernan are just figureheads being trotted out to say what they are told, and they probably won’t even vary the script from the last time.

And again, Armstrong and Cernan are four decades removed from the technology, techniques and knowledge of today. They have no clue about flying Shuttle, building, working and living on a space station, and building 21st century spacecraft.

And Griffin? Congress rebuked his legacy program (Constellation) because of lousy decisions and lousy management, and they are getting ready to cancel another of the programs that he mismanaged (JWST). Pray tell, what could he say that would be believed? Safe, Simple and Soon part 2?

The Republican Chairman invited him because Griffin trashes Obama, plain and simple. Not because Griffin has any ideas worth listening to. As always, it’s political, and not meant to advance our ability to do space exploration.

No, it’s not.

“And Armstrong and Cernan are two of the extremely few human beings ever to travel beyond Earth orbit. In fact, Cernan did it twice. So I trust their opinion a lot more than I would Obama’s science adviser, Holdren.”

That’s like asking the pilot of the Enola Gay how the Manhattan project should be run. Paul Tibbets might have been at the pointy end of the project but if you want to learn how project should be run you need to talk to Vannevar Bush, Leslie Groves, and Robert Oppenheimer.

“Now that we are working closely with NASA, we will also look for other funding sources to further speed the development of Liberty,” said Rominger.

I read it and I watched the press conference.

An at least 4 to 6 times the word unfunded was brought up. I feel this is total misdirection since at some point it will be funded. This unfunded part is only for Preliminary Design Review as stated in the press release. ESA could be another funding source since half the rocket is indirectly ESA. They have the same chance as everyone else to get the human LEO customers (corporations, universities/research centers, corporate, private citizens [tourist]) but they will need to compete on cost and features with safety being the most important feature. So I say let them compete. Just don’t take my money and give me nothing. Also don’t pretend you are doing me any favors. I would hope a 4.8 billion dollar company can afford to fund a Preliminary Design Review.

Liberty has cost us billions when it was called Ares I. Now changing the second to stage to a foreign company will fix everything. At least KSC will have 300 new “jobs”.

And one more thing on safety, let’s just hope Astrium loads the right software.

Hall’s tactic is similar to one Sen. Shelby tried to use to keep Ares I going. He threatened multiple times that he was going to have the Inspector General look into the members of the Augustine Commission because he claimed that he had “evidence” that several of the members were “paid lobbyists” for companies that wanted to sell NASA rides to the ISS. He appears to have been hoping (just as Hall is) that just the claim of miscreance would spread FUD among his fellow politicians and the public to his advantage when it came time for a vote on the issue . Of course, if there were actually any real evidence of his claims, he would have followed his threat with action because it would have discredited the Augustine Report, which was the administration’s main justification for cancelling Ares I and Constellation as a whole.

Typical tactics of anti-commercial crew politicians.