NASA

Report: NASA getting only a small cut in FY13 budget proposal

The FY13 budget isn’t officially released until Monday morning, but Aviation Week has news about what it will contain for NASA: an overall request of $17.711 billion, or $89 million (0.5%) less than the agency’s final FY12 budget. As expected, the proposal cuts $300 million from planetary sciences, and kills the US role in the joint ExoMars program with ESA. The budget requests for SLS ($1.8 billion) and MPCV ($1.0 billion) are similar to 2012 levels; MPCV’s request is “tweaked downward” so keeps pace with SLS. Commercial crew gets a request of $830 million, similar to the request in FY12 ($850 million) but far more than the $406 million it got. Space technology would also get nearly $700 million in the proposal, a bit above its 2012 levels.

88 comments to Report: NASA getting only a small cut in FY13 budget proposal

  • MrEarl

    Is the money requested for SLA and MPCV in 2013 the same that was requested or what was finally approved in 2012?
    If it’s only what was requested then I see another congressional cut in Commercial crew in the offing.

  • GeeSpace

    It is not good for almost any cut in NASA’s budget. Let’s hope for the best.

    If the robotic missions are cut, perhaps Elon Musk will use Space X.s 2013 IPO for such missions.

  • Googaw

    “If the robotic [science] missions are cut, perhaps Elon Musk will use Space X.s 2013 IPO for such missions.”

    Oh sure, that’s a great way to sell the IPO. Dear investors: never mind revenue, much less profit. We’re going to use the proceeds from our IPO to do science for free!

    Do you NewSpacers ever stop to listen to yourselves?

  • amightywind

    I’d say Musk has his hands full. The fact is SpaceX doesn’t know when it will be able to launch. There isn’t even the appearance of a schedule any more.

  • Googaw

    SpaceX is being distracted to death by NASA. They should be focusing on the Falcon 9 itself and on their real commerce customers, not on the latest NASA phantoms.

  • Vladislaw

    I do not understand the construction method for the MPCV, why would you build it out of platinum, then cover it with gold and use gem stones for the control buttons?

    Maybe if they took a different approach it wouldn’t be costing taxpayers a billion a year for a freakin’ capsule.

  • GeeSpace

    Googaw wrote @ February 10th, 2012 at 3:40 pm
    “If the robotic [science] missions are cut, perhaps Elon Musk will use Space X.s 2013 IPO for such missions.” Oh sure, that’s a great way to sell the IPO. Dear investors: never mind revenue, much less profit. We’re going to use the proceeds from our IPO to do science for free!

    Yes, Googaw, I sure some scientists would be very happy with Mr. Musk’s assistance. And, perhaps, Mr. Musk can deduction his missions expenses that might be greater than his missions income as a federal income tax deduction.

  • JohnHunt

    Private Space and planetary science should team up against the SLS. Kill that monster and there’s plenty for everyone.

  • JohnHunt

    So my prediction is that Congress will:
    – take the proposed ExoMars cut,
    – repeat their underfunding of commercial space,
    – trim down technology a bit,
    – trim the Orion a bit,
    – keep the SLS funding where it’s at,
    – and call it a day.

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ February 10th, 2012 at 3:55 pm

    I’d say Musk has his hands full. The fact is SpaceX doesn’t know when it will be able to launch. There isn’t even the appearance of a schedule any more…

    Kind of like Cx and they spent 15 billion dollars…or Webb…or SLS or…should I go on…RGO

  • SpaceColonizer

    Why would Elon Musk use any of his money for robotic exploration? His goals, the stated goals of his company, are to make LIFE multiplanetary. I can’t imagine this being part of his game plan in the short or even medium term by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe after he’s conquered his quest for a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, and after a stable private sector market for LEO transport has been established, maybe then he’ll consider doing some prospecting if, and only if, he really thinks it would be helpful create a demand for off world activities. But I really don’t think it would even be necessary at that point. If he is successful and bringing down launch costs as much as he’s intending than I suspect that universities and the like will find science programs more affordable for themselves.

  • Coastal Ron

    SpaceColonizer wrote @ February 10th, 2012 at 11:01 pm

    Why would Elon Musk use any of his money for robotic exploration?

    Agreed. Musk has stated that SpaceX is a transportation company. Even the Dragon capsule is just a container for delivering cargo or people.

  • Doug Lassiter

    It this is true, it would seem to mean that JWST overruns are squarely to blame for the cuts to the Mars program. I mean, if the total agency cut is small, and if half of the $1B JWST bill falls squarely on SMD, then the Mars cuts really can’t be blamed on much else. If there were a large cut to the total agency, then it wouldn’t necessarily be clear who you’d blame for the Mars cuts.

    If that’s the case, and given the profound importance of Mars exploration in the recent planetary science Decadal Survey, the planetary science community should be justifiably enraged about JWST overruns. That’s actually unfortunate, in that science inter-discipline collegiality would have been better preserved if the rationale for the Mars cuts had been more obscure.

  • NASA Fan

    Exo Mars rovers are being cancelled because the bean counters at OMB can see the phasing plans for these missions haven’t yet ramped up yet, so cutting them saves a boat load of money in the next few years w/o necessary cutting too many jobs this election cycle. This is the same rationale that was used last year, when FY 12 Feb budget rolled out, as two Earth Science missions, totaling nearly $3B over 6 years were cancelled. Again, those missions were just about to get started, just like Exo Mars.

  • SpaceColonizer

    @Doug

    I’m going to continue blaming SLS for everything… even when it’s obvuosly JWST. If I were King of America, I would be raiding SLS to support JWST, not international programs (of course, if I were King of America we wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with). The fact that SLS is politically untouchaable, for the most part (I say this because apparently SLS is receiving a slight cut), is why these cuts got redirected at planetary sciences. And now, when the relevent porkers and anti-Obamaers combine forces, they will re-redirect these cuts at Commercial Crew, also know as the only developing program that can actually create a valuable capability for the organization so we can stop outsourcing LEO transport to the Russians. Is it irony, coincidence, or something else entirely that NASA’s most valuable program has the fewest congressional defenders?

  • Michael from Iowa

    I don’t see SpaceX opting to help with any actual development work on NASA science missions… but if they’re able to underbid ULA on launch costs they could certainly help NASA stretch the budget a bit more.

    At ~$50 million a flight the Falcon 9 could launch about twice the payload of something like a Delta II for almost half the cost.

  • Doug Lassiter

    SpaceColonizer wrote @ February 11th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
    “I’m going to continue blaming SLS for everything… even when it’s obvuosly JWST.”

    No, they’re disconnected. SLS is eating former Shuttle funding, and probably a lot of ISS funding. It’s eating HSF funding. Well, because it’s presumably supposed to be about HSF. It’s not eating science funding. If you scrapped SLS, loads of money wouldn’t flow into science. The firewalls that are set up there are too high. But if you lopped off the agency budget as a whole, you could argue that Mars cuts came out of that cut, since those agency cuts are usually distributed fairly uniformly. But if the agency isn’t facing big cuts, and Planetary Science is, the target it painted squarely on JWST. No, those firewalls between planetary and other SMD disciplines were smashed when the JWST budget cratered.

  • Googaw

    It seems that all poor Newt has left is the Trekkie vote. From the Maine caucus:

    Romney 39%
    Paul 36%
    Santorum 18%
    Gingrich 6%

    (source: CNN.com)

  • Googaw

    First I’d like to state unequivocally that I strongly believe JWST should be canceled so as to “motivate the others”, as they say, to keep on budget. Those institutional factors are more important than other factors.

    That said, however, I must comment on this:

    “it would seem to mean that JWST overruns are squarely to blame for the cuts to the Mars program.,,.given the profound importance of Mars exploration in the recent planetary science Decadal Survey…”

    This however is comparing planetary science to astronomy. And in this era, astronomy is generally speaking far more important. Indeed, a large infrared telescope with good spectroscopy (like JWST, but properly managed) should be right behind climate science as the leading science and exploration priority for NASA. There are a number of reasons for this, among them:

    * Detecting dark objects like comets when they are still in the outer solar system. As E.P. Grondine loves to regale us, these may pose an important threat to us here on earth. At this point we have great uncertainties about this threat, both generally (what are the statistics) and specifically (which comets yet to be discovered should we be worried about). Detecting comets in the outer solar system will help solve both these problems.

    * Exoplanet studies: these are the most exciting and important discoveries we are making about space during this era.

    * SETI. This is switching from looking for radio communications (probably a poor way for ETI to communicate compared to lasers and many other methods) to studying the data we are accumulating about the cosmos, especially in the infrared, for signs of very large scale artificial construction. This technique allows us to look at tens of orders of magnitude more of the universe for signs of ETI. Although politicians probably won’t let NASA do SETI, they can certainly provide the data for others to do it.

    * Spectroscopic and other studies of comets, asteroids, and other planets to better characterize their molecular makeup and provide clues to earth’s origin, and to prospect for resources for future space industry.

    Planetary science for its part is going to have to learn to scale down. Back to he small Mars rovers, for example, rather than the monstrous Curiosity.

  • Doug Lassiter

    I said

    “it would seem to mean that JWST overruns are squarely to blame for the cuts to the Mars program.,,.given the profound importance of Mars exploration in the recent planetary science Decadal Survey…”

    and then Googaw wrote @ February 11th, 2012 at 9:47 pm
    “This however is comparing planetary science to astronomy.”

    No, it most certainly isn’t. You didn’t finish my quote. I said that given the importance of Mars exploration to the planetary decadal, planetary scientists should be justifiably enraged at JWST. But the reverse is true as well. If MSL had sucked up $8B, and pulled money out of JWST, astronomers would justifiably enraged at MSL, because JWST has been a top priority in astronomy decadals.

    As to profound opportunities of JWST, I agree, but you have the story a bit out of kilter. (1) A “properly managed” (huh?) JWST would be totally incapable of doing the kind of survey of solar system small bodies that would be relevant to planetary protection. (2) As to exoplanet studies, JWST will contribute to our understanding of how planetary systems form, but will not do much in the way of exoplanet detection. (3) As to SETI, that has absolutely nothing to do with JWST. Yes, extrasolar civilizations will emit infrared light, but so do LOTS of other things. JWST will NOT distinguish such civilizations. (4) We certainly don’t need JWST to characterize the molecular makeup of the solar system. The planetary science budget that is being cut would be vastly more helpful in those tasks. In fact, those favorite science goals of yours simply don’t appear in the list of highest scientific priorities for JWST. There are truly great priorities for JWST, but those aren’t them. Solar system science is a significant but quite small part of the JWST science portfolio.

    As to the “monstrous Curiosity”, small rovers simply don’t have the analytical capability that Curiosity does. The MERs were great, but the questions that we now need to answer for Mars won’t be answered by the likes of them. The “scaling down” can be done in a number of ways while preserving capability. The most credible way is in reduction of mission rate. Actually, most of the cost of Curiosity was in development delays. If the thing works, it’s an architectural template for a raft of enormously productive vehicles that should cost less than the original.

  • Googaw

    Doug, you make some very sweeping statements about JWST but they’re a bit short on specifics. I’d love for you to tell us why you think JWST does not better help accomplish the stated goals. Of particular interest in that regard are the Near Infrared Spectrograph and the Mid-Infrared Instrument:

    http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/nirspec.html
    http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/miri.htm

    These spectrographs strike me as ideal for the kind of chemical composition studies needed for both prospecting in our own solar system and the new kind of SETI in other solar systems and galaxies, among other goals. (And of course, my list of goals is hardly exhaustive, they’re just the ones I believe are more important). Also one of the explicit goals of MIRI, described as “wide-field”, is to detect “faintly visible comets as well as objects in the Kuiper Belt” — the very kind of capability we need to reduce our uncertainties about the comet threat. If you don’t think these are great ways to accomplish these goals, please tell us specifically how you would do them better.

    Furthermore, exoplanet detection and spectroscopy is explicitly the main goal of the Near InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph:

    http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/fgs.html

    What do next generation infrared telescopes need to better accomplish these goals? Larger field(s) of view with more megapixels for the comet and exoplanet surveys? Even better spectroscopy? Different wavelengths? A constellation of smaller telescopes? Suggestions are very welcome.

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi googaw –

    * Detecting dark objects like comets when they are still in the outer solar system. As E.P. Grondine loves to regale us, these may pose an important threat to us here on earth. At this point we have great uncertainties about this threat, both generally (what are the statistics) and specifically (which comets yet to be discovered should we be worried about). Detecting comets in the outer solar system will help solve both these problems.”

    Great – you sort of understand, but there is no “may” involved.

    Ed Weiler once asked me” What do expect me to do, map the Oort Cloud?”, and I told him “No, just find the ones headed our way.”

    At that range we need Lidar or Radar – hence CAPS instruments on the Moon. And you can’t do that all with robots, though they can help cut costs.

    And nearer in, wide field IR. These things are as dark as charcoal until they are heated up.

    Now if we can move them a proverbial “gnat’s” hair out there, that results in several Earth diameters down here. There are several technologies for doing that, but for the non nuclear sure fire ones the key is “Early detection, early detection, early detection”.

    I don’t want EMP blowing out my television.

  • Florida Today has a lengthy interview with former Shuttle launch director Mike Linebach.

    He’s very bullish on commercial crew now that he’s in that program. He thinks Atlas V will be ready for crew vehicles in about three years; after that, it depends on when the crew vehicles are ready.

    Columnist John Kelly said Leinbach sounds even more optimistic about commercial crew than Elon Musk, which says a lot.

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi DL, all

    “given the profound importance of Mars exploration in the recent planetary science Decadal Survey, the planetary science community should be justifiably enraged about JWST overruns.”

    When NASA set their priorities, the impact community was never asked, and it never is. But then NASA doesn’t ask the general public about their priorities either. Thus only the President and Congress can intervene, and set NASA priorities.

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi DL –

    “JWST has been a top priority in astronomy decadals.”

    When NASA set those priorities, they never asked the impactor detection community, and they never have.The planetary science panel had no one working on the impact history of Mars – hence the instrumentation and research focuses of our Mars probes. .

    I’m sick and tired of watching these people ride in the back of the bus, and until this changes, as long as I can type I am going to. I suppose I should be thankful for the motivation…

  • Doug Lassiter

    Googaw wrote @ February 12th, 2012 at 4:26 am
    “Doug, you make some very sweeping statements about JWST but they’re a bit short on specifics. I’d love for you to tell us why you think JWST does not better help accomplish the stated goals.”

    This isn’t the forum to have a deep discussion of astronomical specifics, and such discussion would evidently collide violently with other small-bodies of thought around here who see themselves as riding in the back of busses. But I can at least point you to some references.

    Re chemical composition of inner planets, we’ve been doing this work for a long time, using this kind of equipment from ground-based telescopes, HST and Herschel. JWST is built mainly to address questions of faint sources. Planets are not faint sources. But the most effective studies, for many reasons, will be done by in situ instrumentation, which we know how to do. For outer (much colder) planets, the critical observations are in the far IR, and Herschel has been doing a wonderful job on that. JWST doesn’t do that work. Very simply, go to the Planetary Decadal Survey report, and look for pointers to JWST. You won’t find many. For good reason.

    For exoplanet detection, sure, JWST will detect some planets that are VERY FAR OUT from their parent star. Those are not going to be even close to being Earthlike, or in habitable zones. There is no question that an interferometer (SIM, TPF) is what you need to find those latter objects. Those telescopes will offer vastly higher spatial resolution than JWST. But we can’t afford them now. Especially now. This is all clear from many assessment studies. See for example the report of the AAAC “ExoPlanet Task Force” a few years ago. In fact, the next generation (30m+ class) ground-based mega-telescopes will be far more useful for looking for such planets than JWST.

    If your “goal” is reducing impact threat, the way you do it isn’t surveying the outer solar system, but surveying the inner solar system, and JWST isn’t the telescope to do that with. Actually, JWST isn’t a survey telescope at all. Just not built to do that. The NRC has nice recent studies on impact threat assessment and mitigation. See the NRC “Ad Hoc Task Force on Planetary Defense” or the NRC “Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies”. JWST isn’t mentioned in those reports, I believe, except in the latter, which very briefly and specifically refers to JWST as not being discussed because it is a facility that “could only negligibly contribute to the survey goal”.

    Having said all this, I’ll consider the Space Politics discussion on this point closed, though I welcome pointers to professional studies done by experts that might conflict with my reasoning here. JWST will do wonderful, fantastic, exquisite science. But not so much in these areas. Let’s hope that the excellent science JWST does produce will be worth what we’re paying for it, both fiscally and programmatically.

  • Das Boese

    E.P. Grondine wrote @ February 12th, 2012 at 9:31 am

    hence CAPS instruments on the Moon.

    You’ve been beating that drum for years, how about you actually put forth a convincing argument why they need to be on the moon.

    I’m also puzzled as to why you’d want to use radar and laser tracking at extreme distances and IR imaging for close examination, instead of the other way around which would actually make sense. In any case putting these instruments on the moon is either unnecessary in the case of radar or patently idiotic in the case of IR sensing.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ February 12th, 2012 at 9:32 am

    it is a great story of “love the one you are with”. in the end we have reached critical mass on commercial crew…this is the way it is going…I still predict the end of SLS and the big change in Webb this year. This is a great time for our country…things are changing RGO

  • Googaw

    Doug, thank you for the informative post. I think it’s great to get into the technical details here, as it helps separate the men from the boys. We do sometimes get into technical details on these fora about rockets, but the technical details of the payloads are even more important. The payloads are what provide the benefits that people on earth are paying for.

    “Re chemical composition of inner planets…”

    I had in mind primarily the chemical composition of asteroids and comets, to which JWST’s spectrographs are well suited.

    “But the most effective studies, for many reasons, will be done by in situ instrumentation…”

    More effective, but mostly not more cost effective.

    “For outer (much colder) planets, the critical observations are in the far IR, and Herschel has been doing a wonderful job on that.”

    This is a very interesting comment. The far IR would also presumably be a nice complement to near IR in composition studies of comets and asteroids. This suggests a question of whether we are up to the technical challenge of combining the JWST and Hershel spectrum range and kinds of instruments into a single next-generation IR telescope, or whether it makes more sense to keep them separate.

    “JWST will detect some [exo-] planets that are VERY FAR OUT from their parent star.”

    This is very good, because it’s complementary to current techniques which are quite biased towards detecting planets that are very near their star. Our current statistics are plagued by selection effects and JWST’s instruments will help reduce that.

    “If your “goal” is reducing impact threat, the way you do it isn’t surveying the outer solar system, but surveying the inner solar system”

    I disagree. The impact threat from asteroids is now largely well understood. The great uncertainty involves comets. If Napier et. al. are wrong the way to shut them up is through data. The vast majority of comets spend almost all of their orbital time in the outer solar system. So that’s where we need to be looking the most.

    “The NRC has nice recent studies on impact threat assessment and mitigation. See the NRC “Ad Hoc Task Force on Planetary Defense” or the NRC “Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies”.

    The latter study focuses on asteroids, not comets, and the former dismisses the threat from comets based on very flimsy statistical theories of the kind that usually prove to be wildly wrong. There is simply not enough data to conclude that comets are not a threat. Nor of course to prove that they are. We desperately need far less dogma and far more data on this issue.

    As for interferometers, I suspect the main reason they are so expensive is that folks are proposing to apply them too ambitiously without us having done the necessary R&D to prove less expensive applications of the concept. This should be a very important line item in NASA’s tech R&D budget.

    As for ground-based telescopes, I’m all for them, and I’m even in favor of NASA paying for them since they are in fact space exploration, just as much as a space-based telescope or a planetary probe. We should only use space-based telescopes instead of ground-based ones where necessary, especially for the frequencies like infrared where there are substantial absorption or emissions from earth’s atmosphere.

  • Robert G. Oler wrote:

    it is a great story of “love the one you are with”. in the end we have reached critical mass on commercial crew…

    I think we’re close but not quite there.

    Last night I watched again last October’s House space committee hearing on commercial space. Click here for those who want to watch and click on “Archived Webcast” once you’re there. Watching these congressional buffoons reminded me of how fragile the commercial program is. Two of them actually argued we’re better off sending U.S. taxpayer dollars to Russia. Many of them totally ignored what the witnesses were telling them, and they didn’t invite Bigelow Aerospace which is a big piece of the puzzle.

    It only takes one Congressional budget to wipe out commercial crew/ As we saw last year, they chopped the budget by more than half of what the White House requested. Based on what’s been leaked, it appears that the White House tomorrow will ask for $835 million when the budget is only $500 million so we might see a repeat of last year — which would slow down commercial space.

    We’ll get there eventually, but I’m not quite ready to say we’ve passed the tipping point.

    In any case, it’s nice that Mike Leinbach saw the light. Hopefully more are following him.

  • Doug Lassiter

    Googaw wrote @ February 12th, 2012 at 3:39 pm
    “The impact threat from asteroids is now largely well understood. The great uncertainty involves comets.”

    This is formally correct. But let’s look at what the experts say.

    The population of long-period comets, with orbits originating in the outer solar system, represents a small part of the total comet threat, and thus an even smaller part of the total impact hazard.

    from “Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies: Final Report” NRC 2010, which you curiously choose to label as being based on “very flimsy statistical theories”.

    and

    Stokes et al. (2003) provide considerable description of the threat represented by long-period comets, and there is no need to repeat all of their arguments here. In brief, they find that the comet hazard constitutes only a tiny fraction (on the order of less than 1 percent) of the total risk to life on Earth by impacting NEOs (prior to the Spaceguard Survey) and that producing a complete catalog of hazardous long-period comets is far beyond the abilities of any proposed survey. For these reasons, they suggested that limited resources would be better utilized in finding and cataloging Earth-threatening near-Earth asteroids and short-period comets.

    from “Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies: Final Report” NRC 2010.

    So yes, long period comets may end up the largest threat after other more serious threats are identified. But they are not clearly a serious enough threat that they need to be dealt with now.

    So you’re free to argue that long period comets demand our immediate attention and investment. But you’re not arguing with me. You’re arguing with panels of dozens of experts selected by the NRC. Those folks aren’t easily misled by “flimsy statistical theories”. It goes without saying that JWST shouldn’t be commandeered to survey those comets. For that matter, it’s understandable that investment in space science is a defensible expenditure, instead of surveys for long period comets.

  • Googaw

    “It only takes one Congressional budget to wipe out commercial crew”

    Perhaps you ought to try some actual commerce, the kind that people from the private sector actually want to buy, rather than chasing old NASA economic fantasies, as a result being utterly dependent on the U.S. taxpayer, and calling it “commerce.”

  • E.P. Grondine

    DL, DB –

    What both of you don’t know about how those impact hazard estimates came into being would fill a book – I hope that someday someone writes it.
    (googaw – that would be a great book in the history of science.)

    Instead I’ll just state here that NASA’s ELE estimates are demonstrably low by a factor of 4, and NASA’s estimates for Human ELE (HELE) are demonstrably off by a factor of 100. For the smaller impactors the situation is not yet entirely clear, but NASA’s impact hazard estimates generally appear to be low by factors of around 10, though for Tunguska class impacts NASA’s estimates appear to be “only” low by a factor of 3 to 4.

    DL – Your assumption is that a Long Period Comet will make several passes before becoming Short Period Comet. That is not true – Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 demonstrated that. Right now our warning times are around 18 months; the CAPS instruments would provide another 6 months warning.

    DB – The essential here is early warning. I’ll have to leave the detailed technicals to the engineers at Langley, but the engineering restraints are mass, power, serviceability, size, and pointing. Discussion of the trade space to get the necessary data takes more than a post. Your point about LIDAR is well taken.

    With cost/benefit analysis, CAPS easily wins. OMB wants facts, there they are.

    Right now our warning time for smaller objects MAY attain 3 days, but those 3 days are not guaranteed by any means, and 3 days is simply not enough time.

    The immediate need right now is for all of Hubble’s IR imaging time for comet 73P’s debris stream.

    I’ll also state that detailed well dated impact data data from Mars is my highest immediate priority for probes there, and not the search for life, which can be done later.

  • E.P. Grondine

    googaw –

    You’re absolutely right – they are flimsy statistical theories. What’s worse is they ignore hard data. Further, the efforts to gather hard data are have no funding, and are often suppressed.

    As far as that NRC study goes, I believe that Byeman was involved; and there were no cometary impact specialists (Napier et al.) on the committee, as those who are not cometary impact specialists decided that they weren’t impact specialists. Even the large holes in the Earth were conveniently ignored

    The Ares 1 mess pales in comparison to this one.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ February 12th, 2012 at 4:57 pm

    >>

    It only takes one Congressional budget to wipe out commercial crew>>

    but it wont happen.

    The BIG cash cow for the contractors in the NASA budget is ISS…these are great contracts…there is little to build and its a lot of people sitting around doing well what NASA does best…doing not much.

    Commercial resupply and crew are the key to keeping that “on the line” and the Pols are porkers but they are not dumb enough to think that Orion is actually going to ever fly (much less SLS).

    We are at an inflection point in The Republic’s future…things are about to change and most likely the change will be things getting better. I am hoping for either a Rick ticket or a Willard/Rick ticket…it wont get over 100 electoral votes. RGO

  • DCSCA

    @JohnHunt wrote @ February 10th, 2012 at 8:07 pm

    “repeat their underfunding of commercial space”<– whch makes it most decidely NOT commerical space; they don't need a cent of government subsidies- the place to source commerical space funding is in the private sector, not the U.S. Treasury.

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ February 11th, 2012 at 10:41 am
    'Musk has stated that SpaceX is a transportation company. Even the Dragon capsule is just a container for delivering cargo or people.'

    Another press release. Musk has stated he'll retire on Mars, too. Shades of Newt Gingrich- Moon President. As for delivering cargos and crews, of February 12, 2012 SpaceX has done neither. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  • Scott Bass

    Interested in any SLS insights in relationship to continued funding in 2013 and beyond.

    It seems to me there will be a threshold reached to where it goes forward no matter what….. Question is how many more years of survival gets us to that point? I know some have predictted it’s demise this year but I see no signs of that happening yet

  • @Stephen C. Smith

    “Columnist John Kelly said Leinbach sounds even more optimistic about commercial crew than Elon Musk, which says a lot.
    Great news. I’m for any one who can get us to orbit and beyond without a pork laden rip-off.

    @Oler
    As much as I want to, I don’t agree that SLS will be cancelled this year. But it will eventually be cancelled when the majority of politicians outside of the traditional space states (who aren’t on the space committees) notice a heavy lift vehicle built totally with private funds for far less than any amount NASA could have built the same size vehicle for. Some questions will start to be asked by the Congressional majority instead of them just going along with the committee’s recommendations as they usually do. That will spell the end of SLS, but it won’t be as soon as you predict. Never-the-less, that doesn’t keep me from hoping I am wrong and you are right! ;)

  • P.S. My apologies to anyone trying to get to my blog via the link on my name at the top of my previous post. I forgot to enter the new URL; the old URL will take you nowhere. Starting with this comment, my name now has the proper link.

  • amightywind

    Sounds like Obama’s budget is dead on arrival anyway, meaning we will get some sort of continuing resolution. Newspace adventurers will be granted yet another opportunity to stall for time raid the treasury.

  • miya

    As for delivering cargos and crews, of February 12, 2012 SpaceX has done neither. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

    “SpaceX will never finish the Falcon 9. Tick-tock, tick-tock.”
    “SpaceX will never finish the Dragon. Tick-tock, tick-tock.”
    “SpaceX will never fly a cargo transport mission. Tick-tock, tick-tock.”
    I’m noticing a trend here.

  • Doug Lassiter

    E.P. Grondine wrote @ February 12th, 2012 at 11:31 pm
    “DL – Your assumption is that a Long Period Comet will make several passes before becoming Short Period Comet. ”

    I make no such assumption. That kind of misreading on your part is telling. My assumption is simple. That several dozen recognized experts in small body statistics, properties, and dynamics carefully chosen by the National Academies come up with a clear consensus on investment strategy for our protection, and that investment strategy isn’t directed at long period comets.

    Your passion for this is notable (as is your curious dislike for Ed Weiler which, fortunately, we won’t be hearing about anymore), but this is the wrong forum for expressing it. If you really care about this stuff, you’re better off working other more scientifically constructive avenues than informal space politics forums. Arguing about it here is, frankly, a waste of your time. The real decision makers have more credible routes to their insight into stuff like this.

  • Coastal Ron

    Googaw wrote @ February 12th, 2012 at 8:39 pm

    Perhaps you ought to try some actual commerce, the kind that people from the private sector actually want to buy, rather than chasing old NASA economic fantasies, as a result being utterly dependent on the U.S. taxpayer, and calling it “commerce.”

    I don’t think you understand the business situation here.

    Sure, if we were talking about flying NASA personnel to Witchita Kansas, all NASA would have to do is contract with existing transportation companies that have relevant experience. That doesn’t exist for transporting people to low-Earth orbit.

    So far no company – not Boeing, not Lockheed Martin or anyone else – has said that the financial risks of building a proprietary transportation system is worth it. And it’s quite understandable when you look at the economics of the business proposition. NASA pays $63M/seat to Russia right now, and with such a low flight rate it would take a long time to recoup a significant upfront investment.

    But there are plenty of analogies in the private business world that end up doing the same thing that NASA is doing – reducing the risk for contractors to perform a customer-specific task. Apple is famous for funding the building of large manufacturing plants that can produce the volumes of product they need. I guess you would criticize the suppliers for not raising the capital themselves?

    So get your head out of the NASA hole and look around at the real world. The Commercial Crew program is not doing anything new or different than is done in business the world over. If Congress wants NASA to have a U.S. transportation provider for crew to LEO, transporting them the NASA way, then NASA needs to share the financial risk. Business 101.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Rick Boozer wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 10:01 am ..

    Well ones milage may vary and the pork machine is very strong…but in the end I suspect we are coming in this country to a moment where the “wave the bloody shirt” group in the GOP finally runs out of steam….and when it goes so will go a LOT of spending including in my view SLS.

    The GOP since Reagan has increasing run out of ideas and as that has happened amped up the rhetoric of what some call the “culture” wars…but what I call the “lets take America back to a past that is only real in our minds” battle…

    In space politics SLS is that “bloody shirt”. It summons up to the GOP faithful (not the politicians who know better but to the crowds that they are appealing to) a time when America was “on top”, “Number 1″, “dominated the heavens” etc…and that is the political basis which gives the pork traction.

    Problem is that this current group of GOP candidates has in my view simply run out of both ideas and in Newts case it seems the ability to express them. For me the best outcome of the GOP Primary would be a Ricky Santorum victory. He would barely get 90 electoral votes and we would be done once and for all with both the tea party wing and the religious right nuts…

    and with it will die support for things like SLS …

    Shaping this battle is that “sometime” this year commercial cargo is going to fly. Doubtless there will be rough spots but when it does then the notion of what “Orion/SLS” does as even a fall back to Commercial crew will collapse. Already you can see the Willard people at least here in Houston starting to pressure various GOP operatives to come up with a human spaceflight program that can be done with Orion and Atlas/Delta’s….Not even the Willard people here in Houston think that SLS can survive.

    RGO

  • Scott Bass

    Just of note…. They are saying the L2 study will be complete in march and seems to be punching the idea that it will be dependent on SLS …..notable in that as missions emerge the worthiness of SLS at least become debatable as to which systems fit the mission best….. As opposed to rhetoric of the past year debating the unnamed asteroid mission

  • Robert G. Oler

    Scott Bass wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 12:24 pm

    I had some coffee this morning with someone who I think really is sort of “ghosting” for Willards campaign, ie trying to glue together some sort of space policy for him.

    The interesting note out of this is that the Willard campaign (from my friend but also just in general) is starting to look (foolishly in my view) to the Texas primary as some sort of “firewall” if Santorum gets traction in Michigan and Ohio (and he might) …and they are starting to work on some space program ideas.

    What is being glued together at least by this person and the group he is with (these are mostly Boeing people) is some sort of “we ought to deploy telescopes at the libration points and we need a crewed program to service them” sort of the coupling together of two ideas which on their own have no merit. And then it goes “once we are there then we can study the Moon”…yeah all tens of billions of dollars…which we are the saying goes going to spend any way.

    No where in these plans do you see SLS…they need to find the money to do it…and of course WEbb is the reason for doing it (LOL) so the money comes from somewhere.

    I must confess to finding these plans both “entertaining” and “useless”…but it is sort of a middle ground between a “flexible path” which is really a path to no where in particular…a plan to spend money on a rocket that will never fly and well something concrete.

    The politics of it are interesting as well. It would be fascinating to me if Newt “dies” along the way here and Santorum picks up steam, to the horror of the GOP establishment and Willard tries to use space politics to grapple “rocket city” votes.

    The problem with the “thing” is the politics of it. I dont know if what is left of the “corporate wing” of the GOP can stop Rick S…particularly if Newt succumbs along the way. The Gov of the State will (having endorsed Newt) fly over to Santorum and the god squad is really all that is left of the GOP in Texas. RGO

  • Coastal Ron

    Scott Bass wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 12:24 pm

    They are saying the L2 study will be complete in march and seems to be punching the idea that it will be dependent on SLS

    I don’t know why that is so surprising – the SLS is a funded program, so Congress would be pretty ticked if NASA wasn’t planning to utilize it.

    That being said, if you were to ask the various mission planners if they could do their missions without the SLS, I’m sure they would all say “YES”.

    Likewise, if you were to ask NASA if they have projected budget space for missions that require the SLS, the answer would likely be “NO”.

    The Hopi indians called this “Koyaanisqatsi”, or life out of balance. Here on this blog we call it Space Politics. Regardless, because of this situation we’re not leaving LEO anytime soon…

  • Scott Bass

    well RGO….I am starting to believe Obama wins 4 more years regardless, November is a long way off but I am not finding anyone in the GOP that excites me much, the independents may just stick with Obama….. Obama seems to be pretty content with the Nasa plan,nonplan as is……sooo still guessing on sls fate

  • Scott Bass

    btw that statement is dependent on other independents coming to the same conclusion that Obama has done pretty well with what he had to work with when he took office….I have no regrets electing him although I know many do

  • amightywind

    RGO

    Sarah Palin gave Mitt some tepid support at CPAC, but makes it clear he needs to dance for her first. She can sure whip ‘em up though. I noticed she withheld support of Santorum, which is a little surprising. He gets faulted for loosing a Senate race, but Romney did too. He might be young enough to be a threat to her. No question the party is fractured: libertarians, tea party small government types, the establishment, evangelicals.

  • MrEarl

    @RGO:
    I still see you’re still living in The Republic of Olerland. You still predict the demise of a SDHLV where every indication is that that is what congress will support. SLS is not the “bloody shirt” for the GOP. At least two of SLS’s bigest supporters are Democrat.
    You and our cohort have been saying that SDHLV is dead since 2009 yet not only is it alive and well but last budgetary cycle it ate the lunch of your much beloved Commercial Crew.
    The administration cut funding for SLS and MPCV by $250 million from last years appropriation. If congress decides to replace it, with I think they will replace half of it, it’s soing to eat Commercial Crew’s lunch again this year.
    Time to face reality, congress has been dictating space policy since Obama has been in office and SLS and MPCV is not going anywhere as long as that is the case.

  • Googaw

    RGO: ‘…is some sort of “we ought to deploy telescopes at the libration points and we need a crewed program to service them” sort of the coupling together of two ideas which on their own have no merit.’

    Mitt, learn from Newt. Don’t take advice from space cadets. If you really need to cater to the astronaut cult, if we really have to make our heavenly pilgrims look useful by creating a repairable telescope, put it in LEO near the ISS. Take advantage of what we already have instead of turning each new project into a throwaway sci-fi extravaganza.

  • vulture4

    A recent conversation with a Senate staffer suggested Congress is still solidly behind SLS and is convinced that we, the advocates of spaceflight, feel the same way. I suggest we let them know this isn’t the case, particularly the strongest SLS advocates, Hutchinson and Nelson.

  • Googaw

    Coastal Ron, I understand the business situation far better than you. It’s government contracting done under pathetic euphemisms to gull the gullible into believing it comes with all the magic cost savings of private enterprise. It’s reminiscent of the IRS calling the people who pay them the taxes “customers.” At the end of the day, “Commercial Cargo” and “Commercial Crew” might be a slightly better form of government contracting, but it’s still government contracting.

    Real commerce (e.g. Falcon 9 launching commercial satellites) is a very different matter.

    “So far no company – not Boeing, not Lockheed Martin or anyone else – has said that the financial risks of building a proprietary [human space] transportation system is worth it.”

    One would think you’d find a quite valuable clue in this fact.

  • Robert G. Oler

    http://www.examiner.com/space-news-in-houston/moon-base-supporters-struggle-to-justify-the-project

    having predicted sometime ago, as many including the guy who wrote the above piece were hoping that The President would use stimulus funds to save the Cx program…there is no real reason to justify a human lunar (or really anything else program)

    Spudis is to spend 100 plus billion on water that we could fly up there for less then a tenth of that. Taylor Dinerman’s comments are simply laughable…and now we come to Mike Griffin

    http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/168084main_griffin_quasar_award.pdf

    this speech even makes one stop laughing a Dnerman’s goofy proposals.

    “I’ve reached the point where I am completely convinced that if NASA were to disappear
    tomorrow, if the American space program were to disappear tomorrow, if we never put up
    another Hubble, never put another human being in space, people would be profoundly distraught.
    Americans would feel less than themselves. They would feel that our best days are behind us.
    They would feel that we have lost something, something that matters. And yet they would not
    know why……………………………….substantial text skipped.

    ………………….

    We like to do what I’ll call monument building. We want to leave something behind for
    the next generation, or the generations after that, to show them that we were here, to show them
    what we did with our time here.”

    so this is the speech Willard’s new found friend Mike could get him to make during the Texas primary

    “I propose here on the hallowed ground of the Johnson Space Center that we have a non zany program to return to the Moon. Some of you might be out of work, some of you might have run out of the unemployment which some of my fellow Republicans think makes you lazy anyway, some of you might not know how to deal with your mortgage…and some of you might wish you were as rich as me. But you are not. What makes you feel bad is that we are not doing things which build monuments to having done something.

    So we will do that on the Moon. Sure they will cost tens of billions, you wont ever see them except on High Def TV, and yes you will have to pay for them because I wont tax people like me any more…but you will feel better because we will be building a monument that will be there tens of thousands of years later. And so dont vote for that Bible Banging nut, vote for me Willard who will make us all proud”

    The return to the Moon people are just completely out of touch. RGO

  • Das Boese

    E.P. Grondine wrote @ February 12th, 2012 at 11:31 pm

    Instead I’ll just state here that NASA’s ELE estimates are demonstrably low by a factor of 4, and NASA’s estimates for Human ELE (HELE) are demonstrably off by a factor of 100. For the smaller impactors the situation is not yet entirely clear, but NASA’s impact hazard estimates generally appear to be low by factors of around 10, though for Tunguska class impacts NASA’s estimates appear to be “only” low by a factor of 3 to 4.

    Bold statements, you got any sources for that? Preferably peer-reviewed papers?

    DB – The essential here is early warning. I’ll have to leave the detailed technicals to the engineers at Langley, but the engineering restraints are mass, power, serviceability, size, and pointing.

    This general statement is true for any space mission, duh. You also forgot to add the most important restraint, money.
    All of them are significantly worse for structures on the moon.

    Discussion of the trade space to get the necessary data takes more than a post. Your point about LIDAR is well taken

    Curious, because I did not make any points about LIDAR. Pay attention, please!
    The point I made was that active systems (Radar, Lidar) are generally best suited for closer examination of known objects, not for detecting unknown objects way out in the solar system. Radar works just as well from the surface of the Earth, with Lidar I’m not that familiar, I think it’s somewhat more limited than Radar in terms of beam power.
    For finding dark objects in the outer solar system, an IR imaging platform at a Lagrange point in combination with ground-based observaition would be my first choice, but wether this is at all feasible in a realistic way isn’t clear to me.

    Let’s leave it at that: I agree that impact hazard detection ought to be a dedicated effort separate from planetary science, with adequate funding for dedicated missions. It should also involve significant global cooperation because impactors don’t care about borders, duh.

  • Doug Lassiter

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 1:16 pm
    “What is being glued together at least by this person and the group he is with (these are mostly Boeing people) is some sort of “we ought to deploy telescopes at the libration points and we need a crewed program to service them” sort of the coupling together of two ideas which on their own have no merit.”

    No, that’s incorrect. Telescopes at Earth-Sun libration points are a great idea (we do it now), and servicing them at Earth-Moon libration points are also a great idea, but no one … I mean NO ONE … is looking at those as justification for travel to, and habitation at one of these libration points. Telescopes that would be worth such servicing might come along every decade or two, so it’s just not a driving task. The Boeing people, at least, are not that deluded to think that it is.

    Now, this is an idea that meshes nicely with OTHER uses of Earth-Moon libration points, as in depoting for lunar surface operations, telerobotic control of lunar surface operations, or just testing of human habitation outside of LEO. It’s a good “as long as they’re going to be there …” argument. But it’s not an idea that stands on its own. The Boeing folks (who are pushing the idea of using ISS hardware and technology for an EM L1/2 outpost) understand this very clearly.

    Googaw wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 5:29 pm
    “If you really need to cater to the astronaut cult, if we really have to make our heavenly pilgrims look useful by creating a repairable telescope, put it in LEO near the ISS.”

    As to putting a repairable telescope near ISS for servicing, that’s just dumb. For telescopes that work at Earth-Sun libration points, as most of them will do, insertion into LEO is propulsively expensive. Putting large optical surfaces in a LEO environment that is rampant with debris, near an ISS that is oozing contaminants (hydrocarbons, mainly), and in a LEO environment that is, because it is highly non-equilibrated thermally, hugely difficult to do testing in, is simply crazy. Our heavenly pilgrims would look a lot more useful if they weren’t wearing dunce caps trying to do this stuff in LEO.

  • Coastal Ron

    Googaw wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 5:42 pm

    One would think you’d find a quite valuable clue in this fact.

    Lots. The first being that 30 years of government-run space transportation was a failure, in that it didn’t lower costs over time, and it didn’t create or promote any successors. Hence the situation we’re in today with supporting the ISS.

    The second being that contracting with NASA/government is so iffy that no company would risk significant amounts of money upfront on building a proprietary service that doesn’t have an ironclad ROI.

    If you think there is a better way that the current CCDev process, then by all means, detail it out for us. But also forecast what your proposal does for the future of space transportation, such as promoting competitors (if any). That’s where your proposal will fall far short, and that’s why the approach that NASA is currently taking will provide greater redundancy and lower overall costs to NASA in the long run.

  • DCSCA

    ‘NASA getting only a small cut in FY13 budget proposal’

    More free drift, and expected in an election year. Only an external event will force the space agency to focus. Paging PRC… Luna awaits.

  • DCSCA

    Googaw wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 5:42 pm

    I understand the business situation far better than you.

    There’s no evidence of that.

  • @MrEarl
    “Time to face reality, congress has been dictating space policy since Obama has been in office and SLS and MPCV is not going anywhere as long as that is the case.”
    Could not help but see both the truth and the humor in your statement. SLS “is not going anywhere” whether funds are added to its budget or not, since it is the least practical option available. ;)

  • E.P. Grondine

    DL –

    What I’m trying to tell you is that NASA brings in “experts” who don’t upset their existing scientific client base.

    Googaw has it exactly right, they are flimsy statistical models, incredibly weak statistical models, well known to be faulty. When Dr. Morrison developed them he used lunar data entirely, conveniently forgetting the fact the the Moon is part of a two body system.

    Furthermore, and what is worse, is that those flimsy statistical models you and others keep on trotting out fly in the face of the hard data in the form of large holes in the ground here on Earth. Yet they are still trotted out.

    Now you may wish to silence me here by repeating nonsense as being “authoratativce”; others have silenced me before elsewhere.

    You can trot out any rationalizations to support any manned space flight fantasy you may entertain, and you can bring up every denial mechanism you want to.

    But when it comes down to hard facts concerning impact, and the flimsiness of NASA’s low ball hazard estimates, I know that field far better than you ever will. That part of my brain still remains to a great extent, though other parts of it were hit hard, along with parts of my body.

    For example, the global impactite layer for the Holocene Start Impacts has now been demonstrated. Cometary impact.

    DL, when NASA tries to B*** S*** “the real decision makers” with those flimsy imaginary low ball estimates, did it ever occur to you that more than a few of them might get really, really fed up? In a bi-partisan manner? Particularly when their own districts have been hit in the “recent” past by effects of impacts?

    Do you really think that they are all, everyone of them, all that stupid?

    They aren’t, and that’s why they passed the George Brown Jr amendment to NASA’s charter.

    Weiler and Griffin deliberately ignored those instructions.

    Goodbye and good riddance.

  • Z-Bob

    It’s time for robotic missions to Mars to be cancelled. It’s obvious there is no life there, now or ever. Mars will wait until the day arrives that someone wants to terrform and colonize it. Don’t hold your breath.
    Europa offers a much better chance at life, but there’s no way in hell this administration will ever pay for that mission.
    The JWST also needs to be cancelled. If it ever is deployed, and something goes wrong with it, there is no way to repair it and that’ll be a big steaming pile of money wasted.
    The focus will eventually shift back to the moon and asteroids and that’s how it should be. SLS and Space X are currently the only two realistic options for a return, one day, to manned deep space exploration. But if you go too far beyond the moon you will need atomic power for propulsion and there’s no sign of that on the horizon either. Mars is several generations away.
    Everything else is just fantasy

  • BeanCounterfromDownunder

    Googaw wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 5:42 pm

    SpaceX doesn’t distinguish between their government and non-government contracts. So far as they’re concerned, anything that they sign is a commercial contract. Pretty certain you’ll find all other companies treat their contracts the same way. Some may require more paperwork than others but that’s actually irrelevant.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 6:10 pm

    But it’s not an idea that stands on its own.>>

    there is NO not a single idea for human spaceflight past keeping people on ISS that “right now” stands on its own. There is nothing repeat NOTHING that justifies any further expenditures on Orion or SLS or anything related to human spaceflight past LEO.

    Justifications that stand on their own however are not the things that people who are trying to get someone in some political camp to listen to them…are not what makes the political train go.

    What makes the political train go is some theory of how one can justify doing things that in their words “are going to be done anyway” (ie spend money on human spaceflight) and do something that keeps the various (or at least some of them) stakeholders in key political states doing something.

    There is no justification to build WEBB anyway. Its going to cost more then an Aircraft carrier and if it works (big IF) it wont do anything remarkably close to what an aircraft carrier will do it would not for instance (its about the same money over the same period of time) come close to installing satellite based ADBS air traffic control…but there is an infrastructure in various political states associated with human spaceflight and if Texas becomes important in the political contest and its down to a Willard/Rick contest with Rick getting the Texas god squad, Willard is going to have to have somethign that might get a chunk of GOP votes in Houston…and some clear goal for the JSC to do might be it.

    At least this is what these people are thinking and trying to glue together.

    Its not that strange. We spent billions using the space shuttle to service Hubble when it would have been cheaper to have simply launched another one…but those billions to launch another one…were not “free” as they use to say at NASA.

    A good indicator of what the “boys and girls” at NASA are thinking politically is where the viewgraphs are showing. The latest group dont have SLS in them…they have an Orion servicing Webb using a Centaur to get there. I also read what friends send me…RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    MrEarl wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 4:51 pm

    @RGO:
    I still see you’re still living in The Republic of Olerland. >>

    should we call the new place that? We are accepting suggestions but that sounds a little grandiose even for me. (you are invited to the 4th street house warming)

    SLS is a creature of Congressional pork which is allowed because there is a certain drift going on right now in Congress…that is about to come to an end one way or another with the 12 election. watch RGO

  • vulture4

    SpaceX is aggressively competing for commercial (non-government) launches, while ULA is not. This requires SpaceX to be much more cost-conscious. OTOH, ULA has a reputation for meeting complex government requirements, whether NASA or DOD, while SpaceX tends to push back. It’s not so much that one is right and one is wrong, but they have quite different philosophies.

    “So far no company – not Boeing, not Lockheed Martin or anyone else – has said that the financial risks of building a proprietary [human space] transportation system is worth it.”

    How would you categorize Virgin Galactic?

  • Coastal Ron

    vulture4 wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 8:46 pm

    How would you categorize Virgin Galactic?

    VG offers sub-orbital rides, not transportation to an LEO destination.

  • Coastal Ron

    Z-Bob wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 7:43 pm

    SLS and Space X are currently the only two realistic options for a return, one day, to manned deep space exploration.

    Why don’t you consider ULA part of that group? For technical competency, ULA stands the best chance of getting us out of LEO and doing deep space exploration. Their only fault, and it’s a big one, is that they are expensive.

    However, whereas NASA is still trying to figure out what they can do with the SLS (assuming it becomes operational), ULA has already done a detailed study outlining how they would set up an outpost on the Moon with 4-5 month duty shifts. The study utilizes existing rockets (which can include Ariane, Falcon, Proton, etc.).

    Of course there still isn’t a good reason to set up a base on the Moon, at least not yet. For myself, I see the best way to get to the Moon, or Mars for that matter, is by expanding our capabilities in space. For instance, we don’t have crew transportation to LEO right now, and we don’t have reusable transportation between LEO and L1/L2/lunar orbit. Get those two basic modes of transportation in place, and suddenly the Moon (and Mars) get a lot easier to reach.

  • Doug Lassiter

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 8:41 pm
    “there is NO not a single idea for human spaceflight past keeping people on ISS that “right now” stands on its own. There is nothing repeat NOTHING that justifies any further expenditures on Orion or SLS or anything related to human spaceflight past LEO.”

    I’m with ya, sort of. But if species preservation and expansion is considered a cultural mandate, then that isn’t going to happen in LEO, and it isn’t going to happen robotically. Now, while species expansion might be considered a cultural mandate, there is no sign of it being a congressional mandate.

    But it is a truism that the main justification for moving out in space is, right now, to make it easier to move out in space, which is circular reasoning. Yes, that’s why going to the Moon is so important. To make it easier to go farther.

    On another topic, that’s pretty odd, saying that there is no justification for Webb. The science that it would do with it would be epochal, and if you don’t like epochal science, you might as well pull the plug on other large national projects as well. BTW, I’m not aware that aircraft carriers are designed to do epochal science, nor is Webb designed to do what an aircraft carrier would do (but hey, a JWST in the Persian Gulf might well intimidate some enemies …), so the comparison is kind of bogus. What is a very good question, however, is whether that epochal science that Webb would do is worth $8.7B.

    The point about Hubble and servicing is a good one. We did Shuttle not in order to do servicing of Hubble, but we did that servicing because we were going to have Shuttle anyway. It was there, for other reasons, and we used it to do good stuff on Hubble. No question that a copy of Hubble would likely have been cheaper than servicing, if large space telescope functionality was the only goal. But it was more than that. We learned some very important lessons about hands-on EVA space servicing with our repeated servicing efforts on Hubble. A Hubble copy wouldn’t have given us that.

    As to the latest group using Orion to service Hubble with a Centaur to get there, it’ll be interesting to see how those ideas go. Hubble is way past its prime, both scientifically and technologically, and using SMD money to service it would be hard to justify. Now Grunsfeld is certainly a Hubble hugger, but if the exercise costs SMD money that would come out of high priority opportunities like WFIRST, the idea is likely to to be dead in the water. The only scenario I can see for that Hubble servicing happening is if the JWST budget craters again, and the project is killed off by a thoroughly exasperated Congress. Then servicing Hubble will become important to many, though probably still not a very sensible idea.

    In fact, Gerst’s challenge isn’t getting to Hubble at all, but getting outside of LEO, and doing new stuff. Putting patches on an old telescope isn’t a highly marketable strategy. That planning effort of getting out of LEO, which is pulling back from voyages to NEOs, and most recently focusing on Earth-Moon Lagrange points, is highly oriented toward SLS, perhaps unfortunately. That is, in current planning, SLS is the de facto way to get there.

  • Doug Lassiter

    E.P. Grondine wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 7:22 pm
    “But when it comes down to hard facts concerning impact, and the flimsiness of NASA’s low ball hazard estimates, I know that field far better than you ever will. That part of my brain still remains to a great extent, though other parts of it were hit hard, along with parts of my body.”

    I have no problem with the fact that you know the field far better than I do. But you don’t know the field better than the multitude of experts selected by the National Academies … “Where the Nation Turns for Independent, Expert Advice”. That’s one thing that I evidently know a lot better than you do. Maybe it comes down to trust, and I have to say that I trust their judgement more than I trust yours. Now, this issue of who we should trust is very much one of space politics. So it’s nice to get back on topic!

  • Googaw

    “If you think there is a better way that the current CCDev process, then by all means, detail it out for us.”

    Well sir I’ve never claimed that there’s some magic bullet to keep the heavenly pilgrimages going at greatly reduce rates. Indeed I’ve long argued against that economic hallucination NewSpace inherited from the low-balling NASA culture. So don’t ask me to conjure up another fantasy just because yours isn’t coming true.

    What’s the cause of the current SpaceX delays? Dragon navigation and docking software apparently fails to measure up to the dogma of that holiest of holy NASA scriptures, namely Safe Practices Around Our Most Precious Cosmic Sojourners. You see, they didn’t actually specify all those lines of code in a contract. They couldn’t actually fully define what Safe Software is. Contracts are, as economists like to say, incomplete. At the end of the day it comes back to an informal relationship, and in government contracting at the end of the day that is about politics. NASA has all the power in the world to keep Dragon from flying anywhere near the ISS (>95% of its market), for however long they wish or forever, if that’s the way the political winds blow. There is absolute nothing in the contract that prevents NASA from deeming Dragon to be “unsafe” as long as they care to do so. The only proven way to fix that kind of problem in the world of government contracting is to spend more money lobbying than your competitors. That’s every bit as much true for these “commercial” contracts as for cost-plus contracts. NASA, like the Honey Badger, doesn’t give a **** about SpaceX or getting cargo to ISS or anything else as long as they get their honey from Congress.

    However if you actually want to talk about space transportation, meaning the transportation of payloads into space that are actually valuable for solving practical problems here on earth, and thus transportation that the private sector is actually willing to buy — in short, the carriage of unmanned satellites — then I think there is a great deal of room for progress if SpaceX disengages itself from Dragon and its NASA swamp and focuses on Falcon 9 and its real commerce customers. That and that alone would allow SpaceX’s cost-reducing innovations to shine.

  • gregori

    I have a theory that DCSCA is actually just Ke$ha in disguise.

  • E.P. Grondine

    DB, DL –

    I wish there was one refereed paper somewhere I could point you to. There isn’t, so here goes:

    As far as the estimates that NASA handed to the Congress, you already have some idea, though you did not see the handouts they provided.

    “Instead I’ll just state here that NASA’s ELE estimates are demonstrably low by a factor of 4,”

    Geological ages were identified and defined by the change of life forms. A 27 million year stochastic periodicity in ELE observed since isotopic dating was developed, with the only possible explanation being cometary impact, with cometary markers at the now known crater sites.

    Therefore any “expert” assertions tying ELE’s to asteroid impact are entirely unfounded.

    And therefore any “expert” claiming that ELE’s occur roughly once per 100 million years are clearly not “expert”.

    “and NASA’s estimates for Human ELE (HELE) are demonstrably off by a factor of 100.”

    A simple catalogue of well dated major impact craters during human evolution along with loss of hominid lines demonstrates this, along with the “shrinking” of human DNA pool. The impactors at different craters are currently unknown.

    “For the smaller impactors the situation is not yet entirely clear, but NASA’s impact hazard estimates generally appear to be low by factors of around 10″

    See the papers published by the members of the Holocene Impact Working Group.

    “though for Tunguska class impacts NASA’s estimates appear to be “only” low by a factor of 3 to 4.”

    If one looks at the archaeological record, there are “cultural discontinuities”, often accompanied by memories of impact from the surrounding peoples.

    It wasn’t “Ancient Aliens” fighting wars with nuclear weapons that left those astroblemes. But if you want to believe that, there’s nothing I can do to stop you.

  • E.P. Grondine

    DL, googaw –

    Since it has been quickly demonstrated by reference to the hard data that these “experts” are not “expert”, then one has to ask how they were identified as “expert”, and who exactly was in charge of that process.

    As I said before, this mess makes the Ares 1 mess pale in comparison.

    I dread that the cost of this mistake will be large numbers of lives, and not simply dollars.

  • Coastal Ron

    Googaw wrote @ February 13th, 2012 at 10:54 pm

    Dragon navigation and docking software apparently fails to measure up to the dogma of that holiest of holy NASA scriptures, namely Safe Practices Around Our Most Precious Cosmic Sojourners.

    You see conspiracy, and I see SpaceX deciding they want to make sure things go as planned.

    Contracts are, as economists like to say, incomplete.

    Maybe so, but the COTS milestones are very short, and very clear. Maybe you are unclear about what their goals are, but SpaceX (and Orbital for that matter too) know what they have to do in order to get milestone payments and successfully conclude the COTS program.

    NASA has all the power in the world to keep Dragon from flying anywhere near the ISS (>95% of its market), for however long they wish or forever, if that’s the way the political winds blow.

    I can’t convince you to not be paranoid, so I won’t. Suffice it to say I don’t see the roadblocks in the COTS program that you do. And if anything, from Obama on down, this administration wants COTS to succeed, and I haven’t seen any unusual attempts at slowing down the progress of either SpaceX or Orbital Sciences.

    NASA, like the Honey Badger, doesn’t give a **** about SpaceX or getting cargo to ISS or anything else as long as they get their honey from Congress.

    I’m a Theory Y type of guy – you appear to be a Theory X. The vast amount of government employees don’t make a dime off of politically motivated decisions that are made. They are the normal people that get up every day, go to work, do their work, and go home. Some have higher motivations that others, but most want to do a good job.

    That applies to most of NASA management too, even though not everyone has the same vision of how things should be done. Along those lines, Bolden, Gerstenmaier and Suffredini all want COTS to succeed. They don’t make anymore money if COTS succeeds or fails, but from everything I have seen, they are all space enthusiasts first, and NASA employees second.

    But if you need paranoid delusions to get you through your day, then by all means, indulge. For myself, I’m a big fan of COTS, and I don’t see this SpaceX delay as anything more than SpaceX wanting to make sure they have the highest possible chance for success when they do launch. All this angst will be forgotten when they finally conclude the COTS program and start CRS deliveries, whenever that is.

  • Doug Lassiter

    E.P. Grondine wrote @ February 14th, 2012 at 10:07 am
    “I wish there was one refereed paper somewhere I could point you to. There isn’t, so here goes:”

    Yep. It just went. No refereed papers, eh? So much for trust in judgement. That’s not how responsible science is done, and arguments made on that basis usually devolve into some kind of paranoia.

  • Googaw

    “The vast amount of government employees don’t make a dime off of politically motivated decisions that are made. ”

    Government employees aren’t paid salaries? Wow, you learn something new every day!

  • Googaw

    me: “NASA, like the Honey Badger, doesn’t give a **** about SpaceX or getting cargo to ISS or anything else as long as they get their honey from Congress.”

    name removed to protect the guilty: “I’m a Theory Y type of guy – you appear to be a Theory X. ”

    You realize I’m talking about NASA, an organization of tens of thousands of people funded by political processes. Not the motivation of individual employees.

    Yet another case where an astronaut fan casually commits an error of four orders of magnitude, and like the Honey Badger, doesn’t give a **** as long as they keep launching their heavenly pilgrims.

    And then you go off on a spree of psycho-babble name-calling against me for giving a non-euphemistic account of the politics of government contracting, and describing why those politics apply just about as much with these “commercial” contracts as with other kinds of government contracts.

    When you’re in the astronaut cult, the real world does I suppose seem like crazy-talk. Of course the reverse is true as well, as Newt Gingrich recently experienced.

  • Scott Bass

    I don’t fault SpaceX or NASA for the delay either…. It’s a pretty big deal having an unmanned spacecraft flying around in close proximity… Everyone remembers the Mir incident well…. Can’t go til the software is perfect… Or instal a seat and a joystick ;)

  • Coastal Ron

    Googaw wrote @ February 14th, 2012 at 3:54 pm

    You realize I’m talking about NASA, an organization of tens of thousands of people funded by political processes. Not the motivation of individual employees.

    Stop the hyperbole. Are you’re talking about the few in NASA that are affected by the political process (true political appointees & NASA employees in certain positions), or you’re talking about every employee being politically sinister in their jobs (i.e. “organization of tens of thousands of people”)? Make up your mind.

    And in case you hadn’t noticed, the ENTIRE government is funded by what you call “political processes”, not just NASA. Sheesh.

    When you’re in the astronaut cult…

    Uh huh. Calm down and get a grip on reality. I suppose “astronaut cult” is your euphemism for anyone that says something nice about NASA? I’ve been pretty vocal on this blog about what I see as NASA’s shortcomings, so I won’t repeat them here – suffice it to say that I’m not part of any “astronaut cult”.

    And I don’t see high-drama political shenanigans around every cubicle of NASA like you do. Bad decisions, lack of consensus, and even moral failures, sure, but those exist everywhere, not just NASA. I see the real political NASA failings at the Executive and Legislative level – you know, the real, put there by the public for the public good politicians.

    Even so, I don’t think Senators Hutchinson or Shelby are somehow personally delaying the launch of the Dragon D2/D3 COTS flight? In this case, Occam’s razor suggests that the most likely reason for the SpaceX launch delay is because of what they stated – they want to do more testing – not because of some nefarious plot by greedy politicians for politically motivated reasons.

  • Googaw

    “Can’t go til the software is perfect.”

    If that were true you could never go. No non-trivial piece of software, such as navigation or docking software, is ever perfect.

  • Googaw

    Coastal Ron, I have not accused anybody of “conspiracy” or “nefarious plot”, and the hyperbole is you reading that into my text. I’m just describing business as usual in the world of government contracting. But in your good vs. evil world of the holy pilgrims and their cosmic mission, such an endeavor must either be a heavenly quest untainted by sin (or by incomplete contracts), or else it must involve a “nefarious plot”, and there is nothing merely human in between.

  • Coastal Ron

    Googaw wrote @ February 14th, 2012 at 7:49 pm

    I’m just describing business as usual in the world of government contracting.

    Maybe in the small world you perceive, but otherwise your hyperbole is just that – hyperbole.

    But in your good vs. evil world of the holy pilgrims and their cosmic mission…

    And you don’t see that as hyperbole? Weird.

    I suggest relearning how to speak normally so people don’t get distracted by your obtuse choice of words.

  • Das Boese

    E.P. Grondine wrote @ February 14th, 2012 at 10:07 am

    I wish there was one refereed paper somewhere I could point you to. There isn’t, so here goes:

    Unfortunately, in the world of science “but I really swear it’s true!” isn’t good enough. Without independent review of your evidence and conclusions, your opinions have no more worth than those of any other fringe kook. Deal with it.

  • E.P. Grondine

    DL, DB –

    I’ve set the data of the entire field of geology and nuclear isotopic dating in front of you, and you prefer to stick with NASA’s “experts'” impact estimates because there is no one “refereed paper” somewhere.

    Did you ever ask yourselves why there is no one “refereed paper” somewhere?

    Did you ever ask yourselves how NASA’s experts became “expert”?

    Have you watched the process?

    In the world of science, there’s theories, and then there’s data.
    (For example the “Nemesis” theory, which the data showed did not exist.
    And there are plenty of refereed papers on “Nemesis”. Strange how that worked.)

    Well the fact is that right now there is a cometary debris stream headed out way, arriving in 2022. That’s the data.
    Didn’t any of your experts bother to tell you?
    Perhaps its “theoretically” impossible, or it was not “refereed”.

    In any case, NASA’s experts’ current “hope” is that it will all turn into magic comet dust. Unfortunately, no one at NASA has examined the climatic effects of magic comet dust. Killed off the mammoth.

    I will state here without a link to one refereed paper that the general consensus among experts is that the next one, either asteroid or comet, will have to hit before impact is taken seriously. I did not think people were that stupid, but perhaps I am wrong.

    Denial is a powerful mental defense mechanism, particularly when its tied to utopian beliefs, and/or an established client base.
    In this case, stupidity is well entrenched bureaucratically.
    In other words, stupidity is an industry.

    Its a free country, and you can believe in “Ancient Aliens” and that Obama is keeping a flying saucer hidden in the White House pool if you like.

  • Das Boese

    E.P. Grondine wrote @ February 15th, 2012 at 1:12 pm

    I’ve set the data of the entire field of geology and nuclear isotopic dating in front of you, and you prefer to stick with NASA’s “experts’” impact estimates because there is no one “refereed paper” somewhere.

    No, I prefer to stick with the international geo/astrophysics community. I don’t care about your obsession with NASA, I’m not even American remember?

    Did you ever ask yourselves why there is no one “refereed paper” somewhere?

    Possibility A: No one but E.P. Grondine has ever thought about this.
    Possibility B: People have thought about it, but dismissed it
    Possibility C: Someone wrote about it but did not pass peer review
    Possibility D: It’s a conspiracy!

    Unlikely: A. Probably true: B,C. Batshit insane: D

    Did you ever ask yourselves how NASA’s experts became “expert”?

    Probably by studying a relevant field, doing research and publishing.

    In the world of science, there’s theories, and then there’s data.

    No, there’s hypotheses, data and theories. A hypothesis is a way to try and explain the data you see. A theory is a hypothesis that has been so thoroughly and exhaustively tested that the possibility of it being wrong is virtually zero. Good examples of this are relativity and evolution.

    (For example the “Nemesis” theory, which the data showed did not exist.
    And there are plenty of refereed papers on “Nemesis”. Strange how that worked.)

    That’s not a theory, it’s a hypothesis, and we know it’s likely false because… wait for it… peer reviewed papers that show that either the object is so small and far away as to be negligible or it doesn’t exist.

    Well the fact is that right now there is a cometary debris stream headed out way, arriving in 2022.
    That’s the data.

    You know “data” needs to be verified, too, don’t you?
    Has this debris stream been observed? Its density and composition measured?

    Didn’t any of your experts bother to tell you?
    Perhaps its “theoretically” impossible, or it was not “refereed”.

    Please, E.P., the term is “peer reviewed”. It’s not that hard, is it?
    Of course it’s possible. But not everything that’s possible is true, that’s why we want evidence.

    Unfortunately, no one at NASA has examined the climatic effects of magic comet dust.

    http://scholar.lmgtfy.com

    I will state here without a link to one refereed paper that the general consensus among experts is that the next one, either asteroid or comet, will have to hit before impact is taken seriously. I did not think people were that stupid, but perhaps I am wrong.

    Yes, that’s political reality, it doesn’t have anything to do with your delusions.Your wacky doomsday scenarios aren’t contributing to more awareness, or better understanding of the threat.

    Its a free country, and you can believe in “Ancient Aliens” and that Obama is keeping a flying saucer hidden in the White House pool if you like.

    Yes, or in the invisible killer monster comet.
    You make no sense.

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