Congress, NASA

A JWST doubleheader on the Hill next week

(Updated Friday 5:30 pm with time change for hearing)

The full House Science, Space, and Technology Committee is holding a hearing this coming Tuesday, December 6th, from 10am-noon 2-4 pm, on “The Next Great Observatory: Assessing the James Webb Space Telescope”. NASA’s JWST program manager, Rick Howard, will testify, along with astronomers Roger Blandford and Garth Illingworth, as well as Jeffrey D. Grant, a vice president with Northrop Grumman, the prime contractor for the telescope. The committee will likely scrutinize plans by NASA and Northrop Grumman to get the space telescope, which has encountered significant cost overruns and schedules, back on track. JWST got $530 million—more than $150 million above the administration’s original request—in the final FY2012 appropriations bill, but the that bill includes some other provisions about the telescope, including a formal development cost cap of $8 billion (NASA’s current cost estimate) and a requirement for regular JWST program reports by the GAO.

Before that hearing begins in room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, you can walk down the hall to room 2325 for a Women in Aerospace event on “U.S. Leadership in Astronomy: Space Telescopes Today, Tomorrow and Beyond”. That event will feature a different set of speakers, including former astronaut John Grunsfeld, the deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute. Nature reported last week that Grunsfeld was expected to be named the new NASA associate administrator for science, succeeding Ed Weiler, who retired at the end of September. (Note that the WIA panel event does advance registration and a fee.)

32 comments to A JWST doubleheader on the Hill next week

  • DCSCA

    This turkey is the Supercollider redux. A nation teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, that’s already festooned with telescopic astrotoys for academia to play with along with those in other lands simply cannot afford this kind of luxury in an Age of Austerity where 25% of America’s kids are living at or below the poverty level; where infrastructure across the land is collapsing and schools crumble. Hard times call for hard choices. Make the best of what you’ve got.

    Cancel it.

  • amightywind

    Age of Austerity where 25% of America’s kids are living at or below the poverty level;

    Space science spending doesn’t cause youth poverty. Welfare and entitlement spending manufactured it by reinforcing single parent households.

    where infrastructure across the land is collapsing and schools crumble.

    Our infrastructure and education system are held hostage by ever more costly and rapacious union labor. You may quibble at the waste of $8 billion for a telescope. I am far more concerned about the trillions we need to be save through deep government and entitlement restructuring. And, by the way, there is no austerity. There is plenty of fear of it among the government class, but spending continues to rise unchecked. I only wish we’d see such an ‘age’. Then we’d know real recovery was near. Hope this makes it through the censor.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ December 1st, 2011 at 7:39 am

    A nation teetering on the edge of bankruptcy…

    Again, why do you post here if you’re not going to advocate for anything space related?

    This is the “Space Politics” blog, not “The Sky Is Falling Hysteria” blog – stop confusing the two.

  • Doug Lassiter

    DCSCA wrote @ December 1st, 2011 at 7:39 am
    “telescopic astrotoys for academia to play with …”

    As opposed to flame-and-fire astrotoys for space cowboys to play with. Ares I/V, SLS … You can take your fiscal disasters in one flavor or the other. Those were cases were we sure didn’t make the best of what we had.

    That being said, I think it’s sad that for JWST scientific accomplishment is being touted to forgive massive fiscal incompetence. Unlike for Ares, which seems to have bequeathed us SLS, JWST is likely to bequeath us with a strong aversion to any future science flagship missions.

  • John Malkin

    amightywind wrote @ December 1st, 2011 at 8:43 am

    where infrastructure across the land is collapsing and schools crumble.

    Our infrastructure and education system are held hostage by ever more costly and rapacious union labor.

    Doesn’t that describe SLS?

  • vulture4

    The cost overrun in JWST stems largely from Bush 1 appointee Dan Golden. He ordered the agency to double the size of the telescope without increasing its cost, then took credit for having done so by being “bold”. This kind of self-indulgent mission creep isn’t likely under Bolden, or under Garver if she gets the job.

    That said, at least JWST will yield some interesting data. $L$/0ri0n won’t even do that. And right now Congress is forcing NASA to continue pouring money into it while slashing both Commercial Crew and Technology Development (that’s the things NASA does that are actually useful) by more than 50%.

  • GClark

    “…a strong aversion to any future science flagship missions.”

    You say that like it’s a bad thing.

  • Doug Lassiter

    vulture4 wrote @ December 1st, 2011 at 7:06 pm”
    “The cost overrun in JWST stems largely from Bush 1 appointee Dan Golden. He ordered the agency to double the size of the telescope without increasing its cost, then took credit for having done so by being ‘bold’.”

    Not true. Goldin never “ordered” anything of the kind. He challenged the agency and the science community to consider the possibility. The agency and the science community took that challenge as a sign that the Administrator would be supportive of such an expanded observatory if it looked like it was credible.

    Goldin was right to do what he did. He said that the agency shouldn’t feel bound by a telescope that would fit in a launch shroud, and should not hesitate to think more ambitiously. It should do that assessment responsibly. You think the agency shouldn’t think ambitiously? What the agency did was not only think ambitiously, but it costed irresponsibly.

    In fact, he issued this challenge at an American Astronomical Society meeting in 1995, when he explicitly urged the astronomical community to think big, challenging them to come up with an 8m telescope design at a lower cost than previous telescopes. As it turned out, they couldn’t, so they eventually backed off to 6m, which they thought they could design at a lower cost then previous telescopes. So they thought.

    It wasn’t “mission creep” either, because at the time he made this challenge in 1995, and even when they descoped to 6m, JWST (or NGST as it was then called) wasn’t a mission. It was a concept. The mission didn’t proceed to phase B (“new start”) until 2002.

    No, a “challenge” doesn’t mean an “order” at NASA, though it might be interpreted that way in industry or in the military.

    Now, whether Boldin and Garver are likely to challenge the agency to be ambitious remains to be seen.

  • DCSCA

    @amightywind wrote @ December 1st, 2011 at 8:43 am

    You attempt to negate a false conclusion. It does, however, siphon off dwindling resources in an Age of austerity where hard choices need to be made. Rebuild schools, roads and bridges which benefit the many- yes. Give new, expensive toys to the astroacademia to play with whe they are already awash in expensive playthings around the world- no. Make the best of what you have.

    Coastal Ron wrote @ December 1st, 2011 at 10:28 am

    =yawn= Space projects of scale, particularly HSF which is used as a whipping boy to draw funding from for unmanned projects to justify costs, in fact cost taxpayers a lot of money and the greatest strength unnmaned projects have had going for them is their cost-effectiveness in terms of ROI– which this project clearly is not going to do- as wasn’t the Supercollider. This writer’s advocacy for a strong, vibrant, wisely managed and fully funded government operated manned apaceflight program is self-evident. Hard, smart and wise decisions about same are necessary in the Age of Austerity for HSF to survive tight times. Something you clearly wish to avoid– particularly as the private HSF rocketeers continue to fail to fly. BTW– tick- tock, tick-tock.

    @Doug Lassiter wrote @ December 1st, 2011 at 3:38 pm

    In fact, NASA in general and HSF in particular is paying dearly for the Ares fiasco, not only in lost time and funding, but in public confidence as well. JWST is simply another Supercollider mess. One got built- but in Europe, not Texas. The scienxce didn’t suffer. JEST is a fiscal bridge too far- one expensive elitist project too many. There are plenty of telescopes. Make use of what you’ve got through the Age of Austerity– everyone else is. Recall the near-disaster astroacademia faced when Perkin-Elmer befouled Hubble’s mirror- which was saved by a manned spaceflight repair mission. JWST will have no such safety net.

    @vulture4 wrote @ December 1st, 2011 at 7:06 pm

    Go back and review the Supercollider mess. Same symptoms. This is simply a nig since project gone off financial course. Best to kill it and make use of the astrotoys in place through tight times.

  • amightywind

    JWST is likely to bequeath us with a strong aversion to any future science flagship missions.

    How short your memory is. For a while Hubble was the greatest scientific fiasco of all time. Recently so was MSL. JWST can be ironed out. It takes persistence, which is in increasingly short supply in our instant gratification culture.. There is nothing easy about space technology development.

    For the record. I strongly supported the Supercollider. When America abandoned it, it abandoned its leadership in high energy physics.

    HSF in particular is paying dearly for the Ares fiasco, not only in lost time and funding

    The only fiasco was abandoning a well designed program in mid execution. With Ares the mission profiles to the moon and asteroids were crystal clear. I still have not seen the equivalent with the SLS launcher. We really need to get that 10m tank back!

  • Doug Lassiter

    DCSCA wrote @ December 1st, 2011 at 11:19 pm
    “There are plenty of telescopes. Make use of what you’ve got through the Age of Austerity– everyone else is.”

    But that’s not the point. The “plenty of telescopes” that astronomers have won’t come close to answering what are the most important questions. So by “making use” you oddly seem to mean addressing important questions that have already been answered or maybe answering much less important questions. That’s a make-work sentiment that isn’t consistent with the nature of science. It’s about turning the crank rather than producing quality product. The argument that JWST should be mercifully put down isn’t that your “plenty of telescopes” could do good stuff, but that the project simply squandered the public trust.

    The same argument, about what we should do in the Age of Austerity, could be used more effectively against SLS. With regard to that project, which is mammothly un-austere, I guess its proponents are reluctant to make use of what we’ve got.

    “Recall the near-disaster astroacademia faced when Perkin-Elmer befouled Hubble’s mirror- which was saved by a manned spaceflight repair mission.”

    I recall it very well. Though the cost to the nation of doing that fix was larger than the cost would have been for a replacement mission. In fact, what was saved in that episode was less Hubble science, and more the Shuttle program, which was suddenly viewed by the public in the heroic light that it had always aspired to. If just for that reason, that was probably money well spent.

  • Dennis

    I guess the question is: Will the JWTele, be worth the scientific gain in the end? We cant begin to address what will be learned from it, should it proceed to completion.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ December 1st, 2011 at 11:19 pm

    This writer’s advocacy for a strong, vibrant, wisely managed and fully funded government operated manned apaceflight program is self-evident.

    There has been little evidence of that. “Age of austerity”, “near bankruptcy”, blah, blah, blah.

    And the adjectives “strong, vibrant, wisely managed and fully funded” are said by everybody, so you’re just parroting them.

    – How do you define fully funded, and what are you funding?
    – How would you make our space program “vibrant”?
    – How would you institute “wisely managed”?

    See? You lack specificity, which is why the moniker “all hat, no cattle” sticks to you so well. Tick, tock, tick, tock, pal.

  • Fred Cink

    FROM: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella TO: Christopher Columbus SUBJECT: Your Request for Exploratory Funding Dear Sir, In light of the still lingering economic difficulties of the dark ages, we must decline your request and suggest you make due with what you have. If Spain is ever to become a prosperous world power we must first solve our pressing social problems here at home before we can commit precious resources to the exploration of unknown frontiers. We propose a more “flexible path” of the development of steel hulled vessels powered by nuclear reactors before we actually start exploring. The sound logic of this flexible path proposal is un- arguable. Good luck in your future endeavours.

  • Coastal Ron

    Fred Cink wrote @ December 2nd, 2011 at 4:00 pm

    Funny, but the punch line is wrong. It should have read:
    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
    FROM: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella
    TO: Christopher Columbus
    SUBJECT: Your Request for Exploratory Funding

    Dear Sir, we appreciate your interest in doing exploration for Spain, but we think your approach is all wrong.

    Instead of setting off in three available ships of moderate size, we propose that you wait for us to build the largest sailing vessel ever constructed in order to do your exploring.

    We don’t know when the ship will be finished, and we don’t know when we’ll have the money to operate it, but our advisors, who are not sailors themselves, feel that no voyage off into the unknown can be done without such a vessel.

    We are open to further discussions on this matter, but really, who would ever believe that ships the size of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria can successfully make long voyages of discovery?
    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

    Of course the irony is that Columbus made do with existing ships, and was successful. And because he used more than one ship, they were able to continue their journey when one of their ships became disabled.

    The SLS rocket will be a single point of failure mode of transportation, since payloads built for it will not be able to fly on any other rocket. And being government owned and operated, it will be very expensive and limited to government-only use. How is that supposed to be better than using existing rockets?

  • Doug Lassiter

    Fred Cink wrote @ December 2nd, 2011 at 4:00 pm
    “FROM: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella TO: Christopher Columbus SUBJECT: Your Request for Exploratory Funding Dear Sir, In light of the still lingering economic difficulties of the dark ages, we must decline your request and suggest you make due with what you have. If Spain is ever to become a prosperous world power we must first solve our pressing social problems here at home before we can commit precious resources to the exploration of unknown frontiers.”

    Heh. And look where Spain ended up. A significant nation, but hardly a “world power”. In fact, the most significant world powers actually don’t even speak Spanish. Our nation may revere Christopher Columbus, but interestingly doesn’t revere Queen Isabella or Spain.

    Actually, we know a whole lot more about the Moon, Mars, and NEOs than Queen Isabella knew about the New World. They are largely known frontiers. That’s one reason that it isn’t as important to send people to those places as it was to the New World.

    Historical pretensions about exploration are largely irrelevant to contemporary perspectives on space, though it feels good to pretend that they are.

  • DCSCA

    @Doug Lassiter wrote @ December 2nd, 2011 at 9:39 am

    “The “plenty of telescopes” that astronomers have won’t come close to answering what are the most important questions.”

    In fact, that is precisely the point. The most important question any astroacademic can ask today is can we afford this? Somehow, that never comes up. The answer in the Age of Austerity is clearly no, given the history of cost overruns already incurred by the JWST boondoggle. Witness the Supercollider. One was built, but in Europe, not Texas. The science didn’t suffer. And your SLS argument is hollow given the costs incurred by JWST already. Not to mention the $2.5 billion on sending that very spiffy- and iffy- atomic rover, Curiosity, to Mars. 26 of the 40 probes sent out Mars’ way have failed and the only leverage for continuing these kind of probes was their relatively low cost againt the return given the risk level of failure, except $2.5 billion isn’t quite that cheap anymore– in fact, at $800 million a launch, the same funding would have covered three more space shuttle launches with a waiver for retirement of another 18 months and reduced the HSF ‘gap’ — missions that carried human crews and supplies into space to the ISS.

    Hard times call for hard choices and astroacademia has plenty of telescopes to play with- the planet is festooned with them on and above it. Make the best of what you’ve got.

    As to the Hubble fiasco, you learned the wrong lesson. The point was to fly it right the first time, not endure techno=humiliation and lose two years of science inquiry and cost additional billions creating celestial bifocals and training a specialized crew to repair it on an expensive mission that should never have had to have been flown in the first place. Of course, the irony of it was how it reaffirmed the value of hands on manned spaceflight in a practical sense, something beyond the reach of the proposed JWST deploy which means they’d have to get it right the first time and given their documented failure to work within budget, that seems quite doubtful. If the JWST team can’t manage the program, why should the taxpayer believe they can manage the engineering that goes with it to get it up there and get it right. Past time for Uncle Sam to kill this turkey off for the holidays and instruct the astroacademics to make the best of what you’ve got– or seek out private capital investors to pay the freight. Sell a justification and a valid ROI for the JWST project to Exxon, Burger King, Apple… or the PRC. Attempting to answer a few of the infinite number of cosmic questions as a vaild ROI to quarterly driven, for profit firms should make for some great rejection theatre.

  • Doug Lassiter

    DCSCA wrote some stuff @ December 3rd, 2011 at 1:24 am

    Wow. You had a bad experience in a science class, didn’t you. Those “astroacademics” must have given you some pain.

    Scientists, and everyone else, regularly ask what we can afford. Scientists can happily come up with designs for science equipment that they know we can’t afford. Those designs simply don’t get built. Our Congress, representing our nation, has decided that it’s worth $5B/year to do great new things in space science, and the voters seems to approve. So the science community decides what’s most important and, with that number as a constraint, try to reach for those great new things.

    That my SLS argument is hollow given JWST is just silly. I can’t imagine what you’re referring to, comparing the cost of SLS to JST. $2.5B? Per year you mean, for SLS. Or maybe per launch? For JWST the yearly cost is now one fifth of that. That doesn’t make JWST cheap or even defensible, but just means that in the Age of Austerity, and not making use of what we’ve got, SLS is in a league of its own. In fact, as I said, what we’ve got for telescopes now can’t do the great new things that the taxpayers want science to do, and JWST will, unlike for SLS. That is, lots of ELVs do what SLS would do, but lots of smaller telescopes won’t do what JWST will do.

    Oh yes, let’s make sure that we get private or at least non U.S. federal investors to fork over the money for an SLS. Exxon, Burger King, Apple… or the PRC. They’d all want an SLS, right? Imagine how many Big Macs one could put in LEO! It is curious though, isn’t it, that no commercial buyer seems to want an SLS?

    Please don’t fall back on the supercollider as an argument. Yes, it did get built, in Europe, and U.S. scientists are able to use it. So when we cancel JWST, we’ll wait, I guess, for Europe to build another one, so we can use it as well. Is that how it works? Of course, the Europeans are not in an Age of Austerity, so they can easily do this. Um, right? By the way, ESA is a partner in JWST.

    No, you still have it wrong about Hubble. Hubble servicing was a magnificent thing, but the main beneficiary (aside from that very modest population of astronomers who have, after all, many telescopes to play with anyway, according to you) was the human space flight program. That’s not the party line, but that’s the reality. Had Hubble failed, it would have been a huge embarrassment, and a decade later, we’d have another, probably better one up there. So there’s no irony about how Hubble servicing reaffirmed the value of hands in space, that was the WHOLE POINT!

    I too believe that it was not smart to develop a large space telescope, with a large number of actuators that all had to work perfectly, with a very finite lifetime, that was not serviceable, whether by humans or telerobots. The development cost impact of making it serviceable isn’t quite clear. On the one hand, I&T costs would go down. On the other hand, human rating of the equipment and ops plan would make costs go up. But as yet another reaffirmation of the value of hands in space, any extra cost would be worth the money. JWST really should have been a project partnership between SMD and what is now HEOMD. One might hope that this is one of the conclusions that comes out of the Congressional hearings on JWST.

    You know, SLS isn’t even going to be “spiffy”. Just big. At least MLS is spiffy.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ December 3rd, 2011 at 1:24 am

    The answer in the Age of Austerity is clearly no

    If that were true Congress would defund all science efforts, and that clearly hasn’t happened. So much for your “Age of Austerity” theory. As Cernan would say, “you don’t know what you don’t know”.

    Congress continues to fund space-related science because it IS of interest to the citizens of the U.S. And budgets may rise and fall, but not by much.

    Your Chicken Little “the sky is falling” hysteria over the current budget is just that, hysteria. No wonder you hide in your basement watching “Destination Moon” over and over – reality is too tough for you.

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ December 3rd, 2011 at 2:22 pm

    “If that were true Congress would defund all science efforts”

    Nonsense. Promising fields of research which actually produce timely results in an economical fashion merit- indeed have earned- priority over funding less productive proposals or projects already proven to be over budget and poorly managed like the JWST in austere times. Hard times call for hard decisions. Fixing roads, repairing bridges, reinvigorating schools… even stem cell and cancer research have earned priority over glaze-eyed stargazers begging for mor, who have proven they can’t manage basic budgeting of the JWST project. These folks already have a plethora of telescopes festooned around and bover the planet to play with. They just want a new toy now that the shine is of Hubble. They seek escoteric answers to cosmic questions which satisfy the curiosity of an elite few, not the many and at the expense of the many as well, which is a luxury the United States can no longer afford. Of course, the private sector remains a place to seek funding. Convince Apple, Exxon or McDonald’s of the cost/benefit of funding the JWST. Or try the PRC. Go for it.. Cernan’s assertions regarding establishing a practical, operational, prfitable, private enterprised HSF system remains valid. BTW… December 3, 2011 and still no crewed or cargoed operational Dragons flying, yet Soyuz still soars. Tick-tock, tick-tock, fella.

    @Doug Lassiter wrote @ December 3rd, 2011 at 11:23 am
    =yawn= The Supercollider remains a valid example. JWST just happens to be one of those poorly managed projects that got out of control. Astroacademia has plenty of toys around the world- and above it- to play with. In austere times, you make the most of what you’ve got. Thet should be a challenge, not an obstacle, to the stargazing community.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ December 3rd, 2011 at 4:23 pm

    Nonsense. Promising fields of research which actually produce timely results in an economical fashion merit…

    You might as well stop right there, since it’s obvious you don’t know how the world of government funding actually works. And if you think Congress can pick “fields of research which actually produce timely results”, then you are are truly delusional.

    Congress spends plenty of money on things that don’t “produce timely results in an economical fashion”, so spending on pure science, which doesn’t have a defined payoff date, is typically better because of the educational level of employment that it supports.

    And of course you are forgetting about the “NASA effect” of creating technology spin-offs from building cutting-edge hardware. Even though NASA doesn’t do as much of this anymore, it still drives a lot of research that that is used by industry.

    But the bottom line again is that despite your Chicken Little hysteria, Congress continues to fund NASA. I guess they disagree with you, but then, who doesn’t? ;-)

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ December 3rd, 2011 at 6:33 pm
    “… world of government funding actually works.”
    =yawn= With a credit card. Has John Q. Public’s name on it from the Bank of Uncle Sam. Point is, it doesn’t work. Witness the debt. How sad you’ve been left behind. We’re in the Age of austerity now. BTW…LOOK! Up in the sky- it’s a bird, it’s a plane– no it’s Soyuz, not Dragon. Tick-tock, tick-tock, fella.

  • Martijn Meijering

    You know, SLS isn’t even going to be “spiffy”. Just big. At least MLS is spiffy.

    Well said.

  • Martijn Meijering

    Commercial Crew and Technology Development (that’s the things NASA does that are actually useful)

    Is the way NASA currently does technology development actually all that useful? That too looks like a giant money pit to me.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ December 3rd, 2011 at 8:47 pm

    Witness the debt.

    What you know about the debt would only fit on one side of a Post-it note. We’ve had a significant debt since World War I, and our current debt is far lower than it was during World War II.

    As always, if our politicians want to spend money on tax breaks for oil companies or rockets to nowhere, they can. If they wanted to spend more on real NASA space exploration, they would too. There is no constitutional limit on how much NASA gets, or doesn’t get, so it’s all arbitrary.

    Being less than 0.5% of the federal budget, cutting program within NASA won’t do much solve our debt problems, so take your Chicken Little hysteria to a forum that represents a larger slice of the pie.

    no it’s Soyuz, not Dragon.

    Ooh, Mr. Obvious. But Mr. Obvious forgets to mention that no NASA vehicles are flying to the ISS either. And NASA hasn’t contracted with anyone, including SpaceX, to fly crew to the ISS, so like usual you’re crowing about something irrelevant.

    Guess you’re not much of a patriot either, since you seem rather happy to support the Russians over American solutions. How telling Comrade.

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ December 4th, 2011 at 6:11 pm

    =yawn= December 4, 2011 draws to a close. Back in mid-August, a private-enterprised, cargo Dragon was hyped, announced, scheduled and supposed to be lofted to dock with the ISS on December 9. How’s that slipping schedule thingy workin’ out for ‘ya? Tick-tock, tick-tock, fella.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ December 4th, 2011 at 7:54 pm

    Back in mid-August, a private-enterprised, cargo Dragon was hyped, announced, scheduled and supposed to be lofted to dock with the ISS on December 9.

    You really need to keep up with current events – spending too much time in your basement watching reruns of “Destination Moon” again?

    You didn’t notice when your vaunted Russians lost their Progress M-12M on August 24th? You know, the spacecraft that shares the same 3rd stage (the one that failed) with the Soyuz?

    You didn’t notice when the crew trained for the SpaceX COTS flight were delayed because of the Progress failure, and won’t launch to the ISS until December 21st?

    Wow, no wonder you say such silly things – you’re ignorant of the facts. You should know better, but you’re jealousy of SpaceX seems to blind you to rational thought.

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ December 4th, 2011 at 9:31 pm
    Uh, no, you really need to understand what it means when quarterly driven, for profit private enterprised corporations pronounced to the free market, customer base and capital investment community a schedule and then and slip target dates. Indicates sloppy management, poor planning and, of course, added expense. And in business, time is money. And time’s a wastin’, Musketeer. Tick-tock, tick-tock, fella.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ December 5th, 2011 at 5:56 am

    So no, you forgot (or were unaware) that the Russians are the reason NASA won’t have it’s personnel transported to the ISS for the COTS C2/C3 mission until the end of this month.

    And regarding “quarterly driven, for profit private enterprised corporations”, you also have forgotten (or were unaware) that SpaceX is a private company, majority owned by Musk himself.

    Maybe you’ve fallen off your meds, but if not I recommend consulting your doctor to find out why you have such a disconnect with reality.

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ December 5th, 2011 at 11:13 am

    =yawn= Again, slipping announced target dates indicates sloppy management, poor planning and, of course, added expense. And in business, time is money. Issuing press releases and not meeting schedule is just about as bad as not flying at all for commercial HSF. Tick-tock, tick-tock, fella.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ December 5th, 2011 at 3:12 pm

    Again, slipping announced target dates indicates sloppy management, poor planning and, of course, added expense.

    It’s hard to tell who you’re talking about here. Russia for their Progress failure and schedule slips in getting NASA personnel to the ISS? NASA for not getting their COTS trained personnel to the ISS in time for the SpaceX COTS launch?

    SpaceX announced on August 15th (prior to the Progress failure) that NASA had given them a target date of November 30, 2011 for their COTS mission, so who knows what you’re looking at.

    Regardless of all of our inaccurate and faulty information, you are the only one that seems to feel that changing the COTS test from December to February is a big deal. SpaceX makes the same money since they are paid for milestones completed not dates performed, and the ISS is fully stocked for now so NASA isn’t in a hurry.

    More of your Chicken Little syndrome.

  • BeanCounterfromDownunder

    What’s a slip of 3 months anyway compared with the ongoing fiasco that was Cx, is still JWST, and yes, wait for it, the Senate Launch System. And quite likely, by the time CCDev3 is contracted, SpaceX will be into their CRS contract. It’ll be interesting as to how CCDev3 plays out now with the reduced funding.

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