Congress, NASA, White House

Mars exploration versus commercial crew?

On Wednesday Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) director John Holdren appeared at a hearing of the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. The hearing was held in a location without webcasting capabilities, so there was limited coverage of the event. Those reports, though, suggest that a battle may be brewing in Congress between preserving the administration’s requested funding for NASA’s commercial crew program and restoring funding for the agency’s Mars exploration program.

ScienceInsider reported that Holdren himself brought up that connection in his testimony regarding the decision to terminate NASA’s participation in the joint ExoMars program with the European Space Agency:

Holdren said the decision was one of many “tough choices” in the president’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2013, which begins on 1 October. He said that NASA realized it needed $450 million more than Congress gave it this year to maintain progress on building a commercial crew vehicle that would replace the space shuttle in ferrying U.S. astronauts to the international space station. That money, Holdren said, had to come from somewhere else within NASA’s $17.8 billion budget, which would remain flat under the president’s request.

Holdren, as expected, faced stiff questioning about the Mars program and overall planetary science cuts from two subcommittee members, Reps. John Culberson (R-TX) and Adam Schiff (D-CA), who have previously been very outspoken in their criticism of the cuts in the 2013 budget proposal. “I think that what this budget does to planetary science is deplorable,” Culberson said, as quoted by ScienceInsider.

The article also notes at the end that the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), “asked repeatedly if NASA could find ways to reduce the cost of its commercial crew program.” A separate Space News account goes into more detail on this, with Wolf asking Holdren if the administration had considered consolidating the current effort, featuring four funded and three unfunded Space Act Agreements, “into a star team in order to eliminate the cost that would be incurred as they dropped out and to expedite this some”. The subcommittee’s ranking member, Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA), agreed with Wolf, saying “there may be more to be gained by collaboration amongst some of the commercial crew companies than by pure competition.”

The ScienceInsider account suggests that Holdren is blaming the commercial crew program for the decision to cut funding for Mars exploration. Yet, the request from the administration for the program in FY2013, approximately $830 million, is nearly the same as the $850 million the administration requested in FY2012 (with similar, if notional, values in the outyears of the budget projection.) And in the Space News account, he blamed Congress for funding the program at less than half the requested level in FY12. “Congress gave us too little money to keep commercial crew on a fast track,” he said.

With no apparently support for increasing NASA’s overall budget in order to fund planetary science, any effort to restore funding will have to come at the expense of some other agency program, Holdren warned. “If you’re going to fix planetary science, you’re going to have to figure out where it will come from,” Holdren told Schiff, as quoted by ScienceInsider. “And somebody’s ox is going to get gored.” Will it be the commercial crew program’s ox, or someone else’s?

50 comments to Mars exploration versus commercial crew?

  • SpaceColonizer

    This is just getting stupider by the day. The Russians are charging us through the nose to fly our astronauts on the Soyuz… money that could be spent HERE in America if we supported our commercial partners, part of an already active program. But rather than accelerate those efforts, members of congress want us to commit to an ambitious exploration campaign that hasn’t even started and will require many years of consistent effort to meet a schedule of one payload every 2 and some change years, not only from us, but from the international partners as well. One of those partners, Europe, is having fiscal problems just as bad as ours, if not worse. For us to sacrifice our own program’s well being and sustainable to continue those efforts is foolhardy.

    And don’t even get me started on the fact that the REAL budget vacuum her is the SLS… a program with NO mission and NO purpose besides jobs, that won’t be able to accomplish anything (if it even gets BUILT) with a substantial budget increase. So it’s total hypocrisy to continue with one big giant program that’s completely wasteful with a budget increase… but deny both NASA a budget increase for both commercial and Mars exploration to keep them both going.

    SLS and the ExoMars campaign both require future budget increases and commitments. Commercial Crew on the other hand will wind down once we have active providers and will become a replacement for the more expensive Russian Soyuz. It’s absolutely ludicrous that congress wants to commit to MORE future spending that has no guarantee of materializing rather than REDUCE future spending by developing an alternative to the Soyuz.

  • lol

    HMMM I WONDER WHO THE SOMEONE ELSE COULD BE!

  • Dark Blue Nine

    Congress won’t do this, but the easy answer is to make a small cut to SLS and MPCV. They’ve both already slipped a year, they don’t deliver any actual human space flight capability until the 2020s no matter how much funding is thrown at them this decade, and they don’t have any actual exploration payloads anyway. Restoring the FY13 Mars Exploration budget to FY12 levels would take $226 million. That’s only 8% (or one month’s worth) of the $2.3 billion (with a “B”) SLS/MPCV budget. I’d much rather deley for a month or two an underperforming program that doesn’t deliver anything useful until next decade (if ever), than whack commercial cargo/crew programs by 25% that have already successfully demonstrated new launch vehicles and capsules, are within a couple months of demonstrating in-space docking, and will perform actual human space flight this decade.

    I’d also take a look elsewhere in the Science budget. Solar Probe, for example, is another MSL or JWST in the making. It’s cancellation won’t happen because it’s in Mikulski’s state, but in an ideal world…

  • SpaceColonizer

    @Dark Blue Nine

    Oh… if only easy answer were as easy as they sound.

  • Alex M

    I’m no defender, but SLS and Orion have only slipped a year relative to the October 10 Auth Act and those budget projections.

    Upon actually selecting the SDHLV architecture for SLS in October 2011, NASa declared a 12/17 first launch. This date continues to hold under the curret budget.

  • Fred Willett

    In the end Commercial crew may be cut but NASA will find enough money from somewhere to keep it going because they really have no choice.
    They will continue with SAAs rather than FAR type contracts because again it’s the cheapest.
    They will fund at least 2 vehicles because SAA’s, while being cheaper, are riskier. Remember one out of 3 COTS contracts failed (Kistler) and NASA absolutely must come out of this with at least one commercial crew vehicle.
    For the congress what this is all about it protecting as much pork as possible.

  • Coastal Ron

    The FY2013 budget request for “Exploration Systems Development” (i.e. SLS & MPCV) is $2.8B, and $2.9B per year thereafter.

    Since there are obviously no funds for using the SLS whenever it finally finishes it’s development (we’re short funding for missions that use existing rockets today), then the best place to get funding for Planetary Science is the SLS budget. Planetary Science will never need the SLS anyways, so why not?

    Just curious, besides the few members of Congress supporting the SLS, are there an other potential customers that have money to actually use the SLS?

    Planetary Science has their decadal survey to guide their needs, and Commercial Crew is needed to support the ISS and to allow the U.S. to stop relying on Russia for access to LEO. Planetary Science and Commercial Crew have real requirements and real constituencies outside of Congress. The SLS doesn’t, mainly because no one can afford to use it.

    The solution is pretty clear – transfer whatever amounts are needed for Planetary Science out of Exploration Systems Development. I wonder who will be the first to propose it?

  • Culberson represents Houston (JSC) and Schiff represents Pasadena (JPL).

    I think the rule to remember here is that the vast majority of Congress couldn’t care less about their parochial porkery.

    It’s also likely that NASA and the rest of the federal government will run on continuing resolutions (CRs) until early next year, when a new Congress will be in office. Although it’s not a sure thing, it’s quite possible that the Democrats will retake the majority in the House, meaning perhaps Chaka Fattah will be the new chair. I’m not sure that will help much, as both sides seem equally clueless based on the quotes cited by Jeff.

    In any case, we’re a very long way from having to worry about this. Senator Bill Nelson has gone on the record as saying he will do his best to protect commercial crew’s funding. He’s in an election year, so if he loses then we lose an influential NASA voice, for better or for worse. But right now it doesn’t look as if any Florida Republican can take him.

    Anyway, I think we’ll get to a conference committee sometime early next year which is when the real number will be decided. By then, hopefully we’ll have had at least two SpaceX cargo deliveries to the ISS and at least one Orbital flight. NASA will have selected one or two CCiCap vendors in August 2012 and will be well on its way to building the first spacecraft that will fly a commercial crew demo flight in late 2014 or in 2015.

    So although these porkers may be oinking for the benefit of their re-election campaigns, once we’re past November 6 their motivations will disappear. Either they’ll be re-elected and they won’t feel pressured to get pork, or they’ll be defeated in which case it won’t matter.

    The only thing that can stop commercial space at this point would be a failure by SpaceX and/or Orbital with their cargo demo flights.

    Of course, there’s also the pending expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and sequestration that will impose mandatory spending cuts across the board, so squabbling over ExoMars and commercial crew will probably be forgotten.

  • Martijn Meijering

    The solution is pretty clear

    Yes, and the recent safety smear is likely an attempt to head this off at the pass. Not because SLS / Orion need the money, but because they need commercial crew to die. In other words, they want to divert money away from commercial crew and it doesn’t really matter where it goes. Planetary science provides cover.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “I’m no defender, but SLS and Orion have only slipped a year relative to the October 10 Auth Act and those budget projections”

    You’re right that SLS has slipped a year relative to the 2016 requirement set in the legislation.

    However, in addition to that, MPCV’s first flight (on a Delta IV) has also slipped a year, independent of SLS:

    http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/01/eft-1-spring-2014-launch-date-contract-negotiations/

    This is the same year-for-year schedule slippage trend that we saw with Constellation (Ares I and Orion).

    “This date continues to hold under the curret budget.”

    I doubt it with the Europeans refusing to pay for the propulsion module on MPCV:

    http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/asd/2012/02/16/02.xml

    Even without the Constellation-like, year-for-year slippage trend, the schedule must slip again if MPCV has to pay for its own propulsion module out of its own hide (as the program should).

  • Michael from Iowa

    This year will be extremely important for the future of commercial spaceflight. There are a lot of major milestones which could go a long long way towards making the case for commercial flight over SLS (especially the SpaceX ISS flight), but if any of these companies run into a hurdle I wouldn’t be surprised if Congress tries to shut down the program altogether.

  • DCSCA

    @SpaceColonizer wrote @ March 3rd, 2012 at 3:20 pm

    “This is just getting stupider by the day. The Russians are charging us through the nose to fly our astronauts on the Soyuz… money that could be spent HERE in America if we supported our commercial partners…”

    ROFLMAO

    Earn some credbility with the private capital markets. Fly someone. Put somebody up– or shut up.

  • Aberwys

    Is anyone else’ entertained by the letter that was sent to the WH regarding the waste of fed funds associated with Commercial Crew funding? I know I was because it came from Republicans who have stakeholder constituencies in TX, AL, FL, TX…pray tell, what kind of work are those NASA centers doing there? Hint: Not COTS.

  • Michael from Iowa

    @DCSA
    Earn some credbility with the private capital markets. Fly someone. Put somebody up– or shut up.

    As if that would satisfy you – you’ve pushed the goal posts back with every new achievement accomplished by private spaceflight.

  • Alex M

    I’m only going by what NASA themselves said at the FY13 rollout. They all said this year’s funding keeps the 12/17 date for the first test launch/mission.

  • Coastal Ron

    Stephen, great summary of the real political situation.

    My previous post assumed that politicians could think and reason without being under the influence of political considerations – though that could happen, let’s look at what would happen if Wolf got his way.

    First a quick recap of who is involved, and what their motivations (financial and otherwise) are import:

    o Boeing – They have stated they want to be a player in space transportation, but they have also stated that they will not self-fund CST-100 completely. They have money to spend, but only for the right product/deal.

    o SpaceX – Everyone knows Musks motivations, and they can leverage their CRS experience to be the first company ready for crew transport. If they had to self-fund, I think that’s what they will use their IPO proceeds for. Only a big company could afford to buy them pre-IPO, and I don’t see Boeing, LM or ATK doing that.

    o Sierra Nevada Corp. – A privately held company that is bigger than SpaceX. Boeing could buy Dream Chaser from them, but otherwise I don’t see any synergy between them.

    o Blue Origin – Wholly owned by Jeff Bezos, who started the company before CCDev. I don’t see him selling out, and I don’t see him partnering.

    o ULA, ATK and Excalibur Almaz – ULA is forbidden by it’s parents to build or sell payloads, so they will stick around to launch, hopefully, someone. ATK could buy Dream Chaser, but I don’t see the that happening. E.A. doesn’t have enough money for their own spacecraft, much less anyone else’s.

    So for whatever reason, if NASA doesn’t get enough funding for CCICap, is there a reason for a “star team” to get together? Let’s look at the vehicles they are proposing:

    o Boeing CST-100 – A basic capsule, which doesn’t have solar panels (narrow range to dock with ISS).

    o SpaceX Dragon – A more fully featured capsule, with solar panels, and a potential game-changing landing system.

    o SNC Dream Chaser – A lifting body spacecraft, and the only horizontal lander being considered.

    o Blue Origin New Shepard – A biconic capsule, which is supposed to provide better cross-range than standard capsules.

    If a “star team” is going to come together, what would their synergies be? Their motivations? Their financial motivations? Maybe it could happen, but I’m not seeing any obvious reasons for one to form. Any thoughts?

  • Logically, Congress should simply increase the relatively tiny NASA budget in order to properly fund all of its projects.

    But since the extreme political right tends to view any government program that’s not related to the military as a waste (except those who view NASA as a part of the military) and the extreme left tends to view any government spending related to manned space travel as a waste, the NASA budget is almost always in constant trouble.

    Most folks in the rational middle, however, see the value of our Federal space program and understand how it has benefited technological progress, private industry, and the general economy.

    President Obama could have easily gotten bi-partisan support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress for a modest $3 billion increase in the NASA budget, as recommended by the Augustine Commission, in order to continue the effort, started during the Bush administration, to return to the Moon and to support the development of private commercial manned space programs.

    Instead, President Obama nixed any efforts for NASA to return to the Moon while going along with the cancellation of the Shuttle program– pretty much leaving NASA without a manned space program. And, suddenly, Obama’s support for commercial crew development moved from being a compliment to NASA into a political– repudiation– of NASA’s manned space program! And the wars began!

    Maybe Obama thought that he would gain favor from the anti-government right while also appeasing the anti-manned space program left on this issue. Instead he met hostility from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress with Congress eventually forcing him to adopt a new Congressional manned space program for NASA.

    Undermining NASA’s manned space program while politicizing commercial crew development as– private industry vs. the government– was a huge mistake on Obama’s part since the right tends to view Obama as a Socialist– no matter what he does! And Obama is easily the most conservative Democrat to sit in the oval office in the last 100 years.

    Marcel F. Williams

  • Martijn Meijering

    Earn some credbility with the private capital markets. Fly someone. Put somebody up– or shut up.

    Why not apply the same reasoning to SLS / Orion?

  • GeeSpace

    To reduce the US debt, the United States could sell its part of ISS to another country; there are probably many countries who would be interested. Then the United States cpuld use the proposed commerical space to pay down the debt

    Definition of “pork” — the funding of someone else’s program which is less important than the definer’s special program
    .

  • Space columnist John Kelly in Sunday’s Florida Today:

    SpaceX took another step this week toward flying the first-ever private spacecraft to the International Space Station.

    The countdown rehearsal at the company’s launch complex at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was a big deal. It didn’t get a ton of news media attention. There was some buzz in the aerospace industry about it.

    Every step toward the flights of the half-dozen or so new space transportation systems under development by private companies and NASA is a big deal. These are turning points in human space exploration.

    Am I rooting for SpaceX to succeed in launching its Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station? You bet and, honestly, the rest of the space industry ought to be, too. Yes, the companies that are working to develop these new systems in some ways ought to be competitive. That will drive innovation and the kinds of time and cost savings that will advance space travel.

    But they also ought to be rooting for one another. Because the U.S. space program needs high-profile, visible success stories to point to, as it struggles to continue to get the White House and Congress to fund and commit to space exploration in the short and long terms.

  • JohnHunt

    It would seem as though a confederacy could come together against SLS. Commercial space, planetary scientists, Mars advocates, technology proponents, and plenty of others have common interest in seeing SLS be terminated or at least delayed 5 years as Obama initially proposed and have that money redirected to their many programs. So, where’s the joint press conference?

  • JohnHunt

    …I could also add Gingrich, Rorabacher, TPIS, who else?

  • amightywind

    The best way to lower the exorbitant cost of commercial crew is to down select the program to no more than 2 entrants. This decadal long beauty contest between multiple entrants has certainly spread the wealth aorund – well, at least among Obama’s cronies, but it a luxury this nation cannot afford.

    Commercial space, planetary scientists, Mars advocates, technology proponents, and plenty of others have common interest in seeing SLS be terminated or at least delayed 5 years

    The problem is these constituents have no representation in congress, and SLS does. This is the reason the Mars program is being assailed. SLS (nee Ares)/Orion is NASA’s top priority.

  • E.P. Grondine

    We could have had DIRECT and 2 manned launch systems for what was wasted on Ares 1.

    You have to ask why Griffin went that route, and continued on it when major problems appeared.

    On the science side its the JWST. You have to ask why Weiler went that route, and continued on it when major problems appeared.

    In both cases there was no Plan B.
    You have to ask why there was no Plan B.

    I’ve stated what I think should be the research focus of our next Mars rover – going up Valles Marineris to recover the geological history of Mars.

    Also, in my opinion, we as a nation are not making optimal use of our existing Mars data, which has already been paid for.

  • Scott Bass

    Sometimes it seems like people forget the nature of politics….if some people got their way and Al’s was canceled… This does not mean their favors programs would be saved, congress would be more likely to redirect money to other agencies altogether and the battle for planetary versus commercial would continue to fight over remaining funds. The DOD especially would be eyeing any funds freed up from NASA under a save America umbrella, A Rimney presidency would probably embrace that

  • JohnHunt

    The problem is these constituents have no representation in congress, and SLS does.

    I know that. That is the fundamental problem. However those constituencies are primarily in the districts of congressmen on the science committees. A confederacy of opponents to the SLS would primarily be targeting those congressmen who were NOT on the committee. If SLS starts going significantly over budget, thenit will become vulnerable just like other previous big NASA projects (with their constituencies) got canceled. But to sort of second Grondine, it would be best if that confederacy could agree upon a Plan B which would fulfill the HSF goals which the SLS would have ostensibly addressed (i.e. An asteroid, maybe a martian moon, and eventually Mars).

  • Martijn Meijering

    But to sort of second Grondine, it would be best if that confederacy could agree upon a Plan B which would fulfill the HSF goals which the SLS would have ostensibly addressed (i.e. An asteroid, maybe a martian moon, and eventually Mars).

    There’s a whole bunch of reports (Decadal Planning Team, OASIS, Huntress, ULA exploration architecture) that explain how to do this. Most of those had been published when Griffin stepped in and diverted NASA from the foresighted course O’Keefe and Steidle had set it on..

  • Coastal Ron

    Martijn Meijering wrote @ March 4th, 2012 at 11:25 am

    There’s a whole bunch of reports (Decadal Planning Team, OASIS, Huntress, ULA exploration architecture) that explain how to do this.

    Yes, but you have to know about the reports, and you have to read & process them, and politicians don’t do that on non-core issues.

    What JohnHunt & others are proposing is essentially a lobbying effort to present a clear message to those willing to listen. The message, as I see it, would be:

    The SLS does not address the nations space needs at this time, and it’s continued funding is stopping us from pursuing more worthy goals in space.

    I would then back that up with a chart that shows, without changing NASA’s budget, what could be done if the SLS were canceled. In order to keep the priorities simple and clear, I would continue the MPCV program and show that it would be launched by existing rockets.

  • Martijn Meijering

    In order to keep the priorities simple and clear, I would continue the MPCV program and show that it would be launched by existing rockets.

    I’d go one step further and split Orion into an Orion Light commercial crew taxi and a reusable universal SM to create a large and fiercely competitive propellant launch market as soon as possible. But you’ve seen me say that a thousand times already. ;-)

  • Coastal Ron

    Martijn Meijering wrote @ March 4th, 2012 at 12:49 pm

    I’d go one step further and split Orion into an Orion Light commercial crew taxi and a reusable universal SM to create a large and fiercely competitive propellant launch market as soon as possible.

    I don’t disagree, especially since the current MPCV vehicle is likely to end up as a $8B lifeboat on a future Nautilus-X. However when lobbying Congress, it helps if it’s a clear choice between A or B, with no distractions.

    However after the SLS is history, then we can start working on making the MPCV (or it’s successor) more useful. Or less wasteful.

    But you’ve seen me say that a thousand times already.

    Two things I don’t get tired of reading – good ideas and the truth.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “The best way to lower the exorbitant cost of commercial crew…”

    $4-800 million per year for commercial crew is exorbitant compared to what? Space Shuttle at $5 billion per year? SLS/MPCV at $3 billion per year? American jobs and taxpayer dollars lost to Soyuz purchases?

    “This decadal long beauty contest”

    The first commercial crew awards were in February 2010. It’s only been two years, not ten.

  • Martijn Meijering

    The best way to lower the exorbitant cost of commercial crew […] This decadal long beauty contest

    For a good example of real-life Newspeak, check out the CJS subcommittee. For a bad impression of Newspeak, check out amightywind’s writings.

  • vulture4

    “This does not mean their favors programs would be saved”

    If SLS/Orion is not worth its likely cost in taxpayer dollars, it should be cancelled, regardless of whether NASA gets to keep the money.

  • Michael from Iowa

    “The best way to lower the exorbitant cost of commercial crew…”

    “lower the exorbitant cost of commercial crew”

    “the exorbitant cost of commercial crew”

    Oh god, my sides!

  • E.P. Grondine

    The NEOO budget for next year is pretty much guaranteed:

    http://sfbay.ca/2012/03/04/got-an-asteroid-heading-our-way/

    so don’t look to it for funding Mars or the JWST.

    Same problem as always: Where is the spectral data from Hubble for this one?
    When can we expect it?
    Where is the Hubble imagery of 73P’s debris stream?
    When can we expect it?

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi Mike –

    It’s important to stay on message, and to keep it simple.

    Like “ATK is a crummy company which could not deliver a crummy rocket anywhere near on time or on budget.”

    We could have had DIRECT and 2 manned launch systems for the money that was wasted on Ares 1.

  • Martijn Meijering

    We could have had DIRECT and 2 manned launch systems for the money that was wasted on Ares 1.

    Translation: we could have wasted the money we used to try to build Ares 1 on another useless rocket instead.

    No, we should have used the money to build a lander and do moon missions or to build a less extravagant Nautilus and do NEO missions, and start the journey towards cheap lift in the process.

  • E.P. Grondine

    Martin, you’re forgetting how the sausage factory works.

    In fact, the per kg cost of DIRECT would have been very acceptable.
    That’s a fact: it would have been very acceptable.

    And yes, payload would have been funded as well. That’s another fact.

    So please stay on message, which is that we could have had DIRECT and 2 manned launch systems for what was wasted on Ares 1.

  • “To reduce the US debt, the United States could sell its part of ISS to another country; there are probably many countries who would be interested.”

    I have a hard time imagining even one..

    And unless their names begin with an ‘R’ or a ‘C,’ (and maybe not even the latter), how would *they* reach it?

    “Then the United States could use the proposed commercial space to pay down the debt”

    Yes, that $400-odd million we would then not spend (plus no more ISS rides), will take us a long way to debt reduction, while we wait for (and continue to dump money into) the rocket to nowhere, sure…

  • Coastal Ron

    E.P. Grondine wrote @ March 4th, 2012 at 9:01 pm

    In fact, the per kg cost of DIRECT would have been very acceptable.
    That’s a fact: it would have been very acceptable.

    It depends on what you consider “acceptable”.

    When I came to this blog I was a big fan of DIRECT, but after many people pointed out the inherent cost factors of any SDLV, I came to understand that any SDLV is the wrong direction to go.

    For instance, while the Shuttle program was running along at 3-4 launches per year, the External Tank cost $173M each and your favorite ATK SRB’s (only the SRB, not the additional components to make them SRM’s) cost $69M per set. Total for just those two components for each flight was $242M.

    So for just for those two components, it cost $3,457/kg to LEO. Remember you still have to add in the additional SRM components, the disposable external cargo carrier, VAB, crawler & launch tower costs, contractor support costs – lots more. As a comparison, Falcon Heavy (53mt to LEO), with ALL costs factored in (plus profit) would cost $2,358/kg.

    For DIRECT you also have to look at what it would be needed for. As a government-owned rocket it would not be allowed to compete against commercial launchers, and it would be a poor choice for the small payloads already being taken care of by commercial rockets under the NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract.

    Just like there is no need for the 70-130mt SLS, there is no need for a government-owned DIRECT rocket.

  • E.P. Grondine

    CR –

    I didn’t even consider SpaceX, as Musk is going to do what he is going to do and has enough money to do it. All he needs is a level playing field and no obstacles.

    At the time, so many years ago, I was thinking in terms of Delta and Atlas, with two interchangeable manned spacecraft, one a capsule and the other winged for low cost landing. Any 1 of the four components goes down, and you’d have had a backup on hand.

    DIRECT was for the lift of heavy components. While you can do projects on a modular basis, as China will likely show us soon, its nice to have the ability to launch larger components.

    We could have had DIRECT, and part of its payloads, and 2 manned launch systems for the money that was wasted on Ares 1.

    What the hell was Griffin thinking?

  • Martijn Meijering

    Martin, you’re forgetting how the sausage factory works.

    How could I forget? I’m not going to endorse something I strongly oppose “because that’s how the sausage factory works”. And I note that SDLV proponents tend to hide behind politicians instead of admitting they want one for selfish economic reasons or for equally selfish emotional reasons.

    In fact, the per kg cost of DIRECT would have been very acceptable.
    That’s a fact: it would have been very acceptable.

    That’s not a fact, it’s phoney accounting. The could only get reasonable looking costs by not including development costs and by assuming a totally unrealistic launch rate of 8 flights a year. That’s launching 4 expendable landers and four expendable capsules! Even if you only care about the total incremental cost of a moon mission, that’s incredibly wasteful. So no, it wouldn’t be acceptable.

    But more importantly, cost to NASA isn’t the relevant yardstick, it’s commercial launch prices in the 5 – 10 mT to LEO range. Jupiter would not have been available to commercial clients, and even if it would have been no one could have afforded to launch so much payload in one go.

    So please stay on message, which is that we could have had DIRECT and 2 manned launch systems for what was wasted on Ares 1.

    I think I’ll stay on my own message, which is that DIRECT would have been just as much of an indefensible fraud as Constellation and that we could have had moon missions, or NEO missions and most importantly cheap lift in our lifetime.

    What’s the point of a government-run space program in LEO if it doesn’t materially contribute towards 1) going beyond LEO within a reasonable timeframe and 2) opening up space for commerce within a reasonable timeframe? And the crucial thing we need for that is cheap lift. To first approximation it is the only thing that matters. I think I’ll stay on that message and leave the SDLV shilling to people like you.

  • E.P. Grondine

    “What’s the point of a government-run space program in LEO if it doesn’t materially contribute towards 1) going beyond LEO within a reasonable timeframe and 2) opening up space for commerce within a reasonable timeframe?”

    Googaw should be the one handling this, not me.

    Most space utopian models are based on unrealistically low transportation costs, and over estimates of economic returns.

    Apparently you think that if we can build deep space manned vessels, without first developing the technologies and cost sharing mechanisms first.

    You folks here keep calling pork on the whole shuttle system, when in fact it represented a paid for technology base which could have been used way more effectively than Ares 1.

    We could have had DIRECT and 2 manned launch systems for what was wasted on Ares 1.

    What the hell was Griffin thinking?

  • Martijn Meijering

    Apparently you think that if we can build deep space manned vessels, without first developing the technologies and cost sharing mechanisms first.

    Yes. And it is unclear to me how DIRECT would have contibuted towards that.

    We could have had DIRECT and 2 manned launch systems for what was wasted on Ares 1.

    So what? What good would that have done?

  • E.P. Grondine

    EP – Apparently you think that if we can build deep space manned vessels, without first developing the technologies and cost sharing mechanisms first.

    Martin – Yes.

    Martin, Tecumseh said not to trouble any man about his religious beliefs, and Tecuseh was a wise man.

  • Martijn Meijering

    Martin, Tecumseh said not to trouble any man about his religious beliefs, and Tecuseh was a wise man.

    Calling something a religious belief does not make it so. What makes you think we could not have built a scaled down version of Nautilus instead of SLS / Orion? What technology would need to be developed first? Do you think the budget would be insufficient?

  • Jim Muncy

    If I can briefly interrupt the debate over launch vehicle preferences, I’d just like to point out that the original article from Science Insider does not really imply that any of the Congresspeople there saw a linkage between commercial crew and Mars cuts.

    There was simply a discussion of several hard choices the Administration had to make.

    So in this very rare instance, I think Jeff kind of jumped the gun inferring that someone was linking the two. This isn’t to say that nobody is linking them, but the article — and by all accounts the hearing — did not include this.

  • vulture4

    Yeah, the real choice is between Commercial and SLS/Orion, but don’t expect the senators who are running the show to accept that.

  • E.P. Grondine

    I really think that Bolden is doing a great job cleaning up of Griffin’s mess while navigating through the icebergs of the politics of all of this.

  • Jeff Foust

    Jim: in my reading, a link between the two was inferred in the paragraph of the article quoted above, where Holdren says commercial crew needed additional money and that funding had to come from somewhere (which came after a discussion of the ExoMars termination). The inference was that the money had to come, at least in part, from planetary sciences. However, I was not at the hearing and don’t have access to a transcript or recording of the meeting, so it’s entirely possible that I’m reading something into the accounts of the hearing that are inaccurate. If that is the case, I apologize for the inappropriate speculation.

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