The Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee has scheduled a hearing on the NASA budget proposal for 2013 for this coming Wednesday, March 21, at 9 am Eastern time. The hearing will be webcast for those not able to attend in person. It’s like the proposed cuts in NASA’s planetary science programs, including termination of NASA’s participation in ExoMars, will come us, as well as the agency’s proposed $830 million for commercial crew development, based on the NASA-related topics that came up in a hearing with presidential science advisor John Holdren two weeks ago.
At the same time, space activists are rallying to support commercial crew as well as space technology, two parts of the NASA budget proposal perceived to be particularly vulnerable to cuts. The Space Frontier Foundation issued a legislative alert Thursday, asking people to contact their members of Congress to support a request for “full funding” for those two programs. (The Space Access Society issued a similar call for legislative action on Wednesday.) Because the deadline for members to submit specific funding requests is Tuesday the 20th, the organizations are asking people to contact their members by Monday.
No chance that ‘Crony Crew’ will be funded higher than the proposed $320 million. $830 million? They’re dreaming. Expect the calls to down-select the contracts to increase. Also expect ExoMars to stay dead. It is a odd, incongruous mission, fraught with risk.
“funded higher than the proposed $320 million”
No one has proposed $320 million for commercial crew. The program got more than that last year.
Hey amightywind, remind me – how many tech and flight tests are “Crony Crew & Cargo Ltd” performing this year versus the SLS?
“‘Crony Crew’”
So Boeing, who receives most of the money is one of Obama’s cronies?
It just shows how much of an idiot that you are.
SLS is more cronyism than commercial crew is. And that is a fact.
Commercial crew funded Boeing, ULA, Spacex, Blue Origin, SNC, Paragon etc.
SLS is Boeing, ATK and PWR.
SLS contractors donated to politicians more than commercial crew contractors
@amightywind wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 2:25 pm
There’s no point in considering any further Mars planning until after August and the fate of Curiosity is known.
“…proposed $830 million for commercial crew development?”
That’s DOA. Every government dollar wasted on LEO commercial crew development is funding syphoned away from BEO mid-to-long term space exploration projects of scale. LEO operations is short term thinking and for the immediate needs of accessing the doomed ISS w/American crews, buying seats on Soyuz to meet minimal contractal obligations is fine. Subsidizing LEO commercial crew is just throwing good money after bad. The ISS is a Reagan era dinosaur, fated to a Pacific grave and been a multi-decade ‘WPA” project for the aerospace industry, as Deke Slayton labeled it shortly before he passed. It’s a relic of past planning with no purpose as there’s no integrated space program for it to be a part of, as originally proposed by Von Braun in August, 1969. The thing is an obtuse one-off which does not fit w/t economic realities of the Age of Austerity. And w/o it as a faux destination, commercial HSF firms are toast. The place to source funding for commercial HSF firms which believe they can develop a market for LEO HSF operations– orbiting Aunt Bea and Barney as tourists- is the private sector, not the U.S. Treasury. Terminating all government subsidies for LEO of commercial crew development and channeling those resources into BEO development is a smarter move for the future of America’s space program.
===========
“funded higher than the proposed $320 millionâ€
“The program got more than that last year.” <= this is a fundamental flaw in 'free market' commercial HSF advocates, desperate to tap dwindling government resources denied by private capital markets, which remain wary of LEO ventures w/a minimal market and little to no ROI. Oil exploration presents a better return.
These private enterprised companies are not a 'program' deserving government funding and a budget line. They're private enterprised, quarterly driven firms created to make a profit for their investors. Space exploitation is not space exploration. LEO is a ticket to no place and every dollar NASA is directed to waste subsidizing going in circles on LEO operations condemns American space efforts to more decades of going no place fast.
amightywind wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 2:25 pm
‘Crony Crew’”
I knew yesterday was Pi Day, but apparently I missed the announcement where today is “amightywind opposite day”.
It must be, since Commercial Crew is a competitively bid program, whereas your current favorite program (the Senate Launch System) is the real “Crony Capitalism” program (i.e. no-bid contracts, it only exists to benefit certain political districts, etc., etc., etc.).
Remind us again how you even qualify to call yourself a conservative or a Republican? You certainly aren’t a free-market capitalist.
DCSCA wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 4:03 pm
“They’re private enterprised, quarterly driven firms”
OK Mr. Financial genius – can you point us to the quarterly corporate statements for SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corp. and Blue Origin?
I’ll wait… tick, tock, tick, tock…
What’s that you say? They are private-held companies, and not “quarterly driven firms”, and that you’ve been wrong about them this whole time?
Glad you cleared that up you Maroon.
DCSCA wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 4:03 pm
“There’s no point in considering any further Mars planning until after August and the fate of Curiosity is known.”
That’s not right. The question that CJS Appropriations has to deal with is the level of funding for an effective Mars program, and when the next Mars missions with U.S. involvement might be. We’re talking about missions that would probably not be launched until late in the decade. The fate of Curiosity may well inform the architecture of those missions, but that’s not what this committee will be considering. If Curiosity fails, it might well be a strong incentive for Mars mission funding (perhaps for a mission that doesn’t look like Curiosity). If it doesn’t, it might be a strong incentive for funding as well. This committee isn’t doing mission “planning”. That’s not its responsibility. It’s doing funding for FY13.
If Curiosity #2 were half built, the fate of Curiosity #1 might well bear on its continuation. But that’s not where we are.
If funding depended on whether missions were going to be successful, we’d never get anywhere. You have to assume that they probably will be successful, but they might not. Nothing foreign about that to CJS.
Jeff Foust wrote:
At the same time, space activists are rallying to support commercial crew as well as space technology, two parts of the NASA budget proposal perceived to be particularly vulnerable to cuts.
You can’t e-mail any House Republican unless you have your nine-digit zip code number and you live in his/her district. The mail servers for House Republicans block anything that isn’t in their district.
So you can’t e-mail Frank Wolf or Ralph Hall or any other Republican in charge of a space-related committee. You have to go snail mail.
The House Republicans did this after the health care fight when they were carpet-bombed in e-mail.
@Doug Lassiter wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 5:20 pm
“That not right… If Curiosity fails, it might well be a strong incentive for Mars mission funding (perhaps for a mission that doesn’t look like Curiosity).”
Hilarious. Of course it’s ‘right’ to the folks who are paying the bills. It may not seem ‘right’ to a researcher hungry for government funding to develop additional robotic probes but it’s perfectly right for taxpayers being asked to fund these probes. And bear in mind, the point is to reduce the cost of these space probes and Curiosity- a one iof a kind vehicle at this point- jumped to — what… $1.2 billion. And it’s nuclear powered. If it survives, it should hopefully operate for years. If not, it’ll be apile of nuclear contaminated junk on Mars. Should Curiosity arrive intact and operate well, then by all means press on and that’s a reasonable expectation for taxpayers. If it’s a crash and burn, a reassement is in order. With the orbital intervals for Mars close-approach it is a gift to the budgeters and mission planning. Funding for Mas projects should be on hold until we see what happens in August.
@Coastal Ron wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 4:34 pm
Again, the place to source funding for commercial HSF firms which believe they can develop a market for LEO HSF operations is the private sector, not the U.S. Treasury. If they can mostly self-finance, fine, if they need to rasie capital, pitch a prospectus. If they want to build their own facilities, fine. But it’s nuts for taxpayers to subsidize them then have them try to lease government facilities with the subsidy then poor mouth they need more financing- its like giving them free access at the expense of the taxpayer- once again socializing the risk on the many to profit a select elite few.
“You have to assume that they probably will be successful, but they might not. Nothing foreign about that to CJS.”
This kind of thinking has no place in the Age of Auserity. The failure rate for Mars probes indicates ‘assuming they’ll be successful’ is, to be kind, wishful thinking at best. Especially when these probes broach the $1 billion mark.
@Stephen C. Smith wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 6:09 pm
“You can’t e-mail any House Republican unless you have your nine-digit zip code number and you live in his/her district. The mail servers for House Republicans block anything that isn’t in their district.”
LOL No surprise.
Stephen C. Smith wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 6:09 pm
“So you can’t e-mail Frank Wolf or Ralph Hall or any other Republican in charge of a space-related committee. You have to go snail mail.”
It’s worse than that. Ever since the anthrax episode, snail mail undergoes very serious delays. At least in the House, people say NOT to mail things if you want it to get to them this century. DO NOT mail letters. If you have a lobbyist/friend in DC, have them hand carry it to the office.
You have two better options. (1) fax, which results in a pile that people may actually get to glance at (in fact, the height of the pile, sorted by issues and positions, is one decision metric for legislative staff). Or better yet (2) call, and speak clearly (and concisely!) to a staffer. Don’t bother to try if you’re not in their state/district, but if you are, they will at least listen politely, and they’ll remember. They will log the call in their notebook, which is a way of sticking your foot in their door. They can’t throw that contact in the circular file as they can everything else.
In fact, #2 is what the Space Foundation actually suggests that you do. They know the drill.
Doug Lassiter wrote:
Don’t bother to try if you’re not in their state/district, but if you are, they will at least listen politely, and they’ll remember. They will log the call in their notebook, which is a way of sticking your foot in their door. They can’t throw that contact in the circular file as they can everything else.
Well, herein lies the problem in our modern era.
We have technology like C-SPAN and now the committee web sites stream the meetings live. We can watch meeting archives online and through YouTube.
If we see an idiot like Hall or Wolf or Eddie Bernice Johnson, or a blatant porker like Kay Bailey Hutchison, what can we do to correct them? Unless we’re in their district or state, nothing apparently.
I really don’t like that China-paranoid Wolf can cut commercial crew funding by half just because he thinks it’ll be spent on saying hello to the Chinese. But I can’t complain to him about it. My representative, Sandy Adams, is totally worthless but isn’t on the Appropriations Committee anyway.
About the only other options I can think of:
* Contribute to an advocacy group like the National Space Society.
* Find out who’s running against these bozos and send them a campaign contribution.
Any other ideas?
“You have to assume that they probably will be successful, but they might not. Nothing foreign about that to CJS.â€
DCSCA wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 6:17 pm
“This kind of thinking has no place in the Age of Auserity. The failure rate for Mars probes indicates ‘assuming they’ll be successful’ is, to be kind, wishful thinking at best.”
No. Exactly the opposite. In a space program where failure is an option, there are economies that present themselves. It’s in programs where failure is not an option that things go off the rail fiscally. That’s a hallmark of the NASA human spaceflight program. Failure is not an option, and we pay very dearly for it.
Actually, for more than two decades, our Mars missions have been astonishingly successful. Odyssey, Spirit, Opportunity, MRO, Phoenix. Maybe you’re kindly wishfully thinking about the Russian program? I wouldn’t pay them to sneeze at Mars.
DCSCA wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 6:12 pm
“Again, the place to source funding for commercial HSF firms which believe they can develop a market for LEO HSF operations is the private sector”
You’ve already admitted that business is not your strong suit, so I’ll try (yet again) to show you who is the “market”.
NASA needs crew transportation to the ISS – that is what’s called “the market”.
NASA (“the market”), per an act of Congress, and directed/funded by Congress, wants commercial firms to provide crew transportation services. There are laws you can look up to verify this, if you knew how.
NASA (“the market”) won’t buy generic transportation services, and wants (as does Congress) specific control over the services provided by commercial firms. And Congress is willing to pay for that. The only question is HOW MUCH Congress will pay – not whether they will at all.
So you see he/she/it, you are late to the party on this conversation. The only market is the government, and though that may change after crew service starts, the government is quite happy to pay money, has been paying money, and plans to continue to pay money to commercial firms in order to satisfy their need for crew transport to the ISS. Again, the only question is HOW MUCH.
Let me know if I typed too fast for you to understand…
Strongly urge commercial space advocates to revisit the Epilogue penned by the late Arthur C. Clarke in the 1970 book, “FIRST ON THE MOON A Voyage With Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins & Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr.” Believe it in in reprint at B&N. The Epilogue, titled “Beyond Apollo’ is relatively prescient and divided into sections. Part 4. titled “The Business Of Space” (this section is only 8 pages long) is quite good for a piece penned 40 years ago and builds a valid outlook for space exploitation in conjunction with space exploration. In fact, the entire epilogue is a good read. Section 4 begins with: “Whenever new territory has become available to mankind, it has sooner or later been developed, colonized, or otherwise exploited; there are no exceptions to this rule, if a sufficenently long time scale is adopted. From discovery to full exploitation however, may take anything from a century to several hundred thousand years.” A good call– particularly on calibrating time frames.
Of course ‘space tourism,’ a mainstay pitch today, is a frivolous after-thought, though not dismissed outright- at the end of the piece with the caveat, “As soon as the cost of earth-to-orbit transportation descends below ten or so dollars a pound, space tourism will become feasible.” And Clarke was a bit off predicting “And in the early 2000’s, flight between the earth and the moon will be an ordinary commercial operation.” Still, its a pretty good piece on how to approach space operations in the century to come. What we have now in the discourse– from all points of the compass– has decidely devolved. .
DCSCA wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 8:06 pm
“The Epilogue, titled “Beyond Apollo’ is relatively prescient and divided into sections. Part 4. titled “The Business Of Space†… is quite good for a piece penned 40 years ago”
You mean 40 years removed from current reality. You can wonder all you want about how close their guesses were, but I’m sure you’re overlooking how far off they were on other things. You may want to base a business case on a 40 year-old book, but no other sane person would.
“Of course ‘space tourism,’ a mainstay pitch today”
Maybe rattling around in your head, but not out in the real world.
There are what, two companies that are planning to offer sub-orbital rides, which would be called tourism (more specifically “adventure tourism”). The are just more enhanced versions of the “vomit comet”, and I wouldn’t call that “mainstay” by any means.
For orbital transportation none of the Commercial Crew companies are planning to rely upon tourism. That would be zero. Nada.
DCSCA
The way to get to that cost $10 per pound to LEO is to evolve there. With commercial spaceflight there is some pressure and a method to lower prices. As the saying goes Rome was not built in a day. NASA can reward the cheaper provider. With NASA doing it’s own rockets it can reward no one. Air travel once cost $10,000 a ticket, but given time it was lowered by market forces.
The function of NASA in the 60ies/70ies is different than in the 80ies/90ies and onward. In the same era of Apollo NASA also launched all US satelights. There was no commercial launch industry then. In the 80ies-90ies the commercial launch business was born and NASA relegated to human spaceflight launches only.
Honestly there are not enough HSF launches to justify NASA having its own rockets. I mean 4 ISS flights a year? Maybe one deep space mission a year or two?
ULA could easily crank out 2-4 more Atlases a year to meet this demand and do so a lot cheaper than NASA paying to keep shuttle infrastruce going. The more NASA shares systems with others(DOD, Commerical users) the less it pays just to get into space. ULA, Orbital, and Space X could easily handle that much load.
So long as NASA keep trying to build and own the rocket, it won’t make much progress.
@Doug Lassiter wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 8:05 pm
“This kind of thinking has no place in the Age of Auserity. The failure rate for Mars probes indicates ‘assuming they’ll be successful’ is, to be kind, wishful thinking at best.â€
No. Exactly the opposite. In a space program where failure is an option, there are economies that present themselves. It’s in programs where failure is not an option that things go off the rail fiscally.
Uh, no. Again, you’re quite comfortable spending taxpayer money in risky ventures to benefit an elite few in ivory towers– and in the case of Martian probes, the failure rate hitory is high and with probes broaching the $1 billion mark, as in the case of Curiosity, it bears repeating that any failure dictates a reassessment on all fronts. Your attitude is to press to get as much funding committed up front so as a failure doesn’t force a suspension or out right cancellation being more costly than completing it. THat’s wrong headed in the Age of Austerity and funding for further Mars exploration dictates a delay until the fate of Curiosity is known. It’s only ficve months. That seems to be to long for you. The more you pressure to suspend that believe, the more doubt you project that it will have a positive outcome. If Curiosity lands safely and is operating well, if anything you might very well get funding to exceed your requests.
“That’s a hallmark of the NASA human spaceflight program Failure is not an option, and we pay very dearly for it.” LOL That’s a line from a movie- in fact failure is always a matter of managing calculated risks be it in HSF– or crossing the stree. How the operationsd are accepted and managed is the key but obviously an error mandated a reassessment- as with failures in Soyuz, Apollo and shuttle.
@Coastal Ron wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 8:05 pm
‘You’ve already admitted that business is not your strong suit, so I’ll try (yet again) to show you who is the “marketâ€.’ ROFLMAO Uh, no, you’re quoting yourself those are your own musings, but as a governmenet contractor its easy to see why quarterly driven private enterprised firms perplex you. It’s your area of defincency so stop projecting. But you should re-read Clarke’s epilogue for a wiser perspective. Otherwise, you’re just crankin’ to crank again.
Doug Lassiter wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 8:05 pm
Stephen C. Smith wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 7:45 pm
“If we see an idiot like Hall or Wolf or Eddie Bernice Johnson, or a blatant porker like Kay Bailey Hutchison, what can we do to correct them? Unless we’re in their district or state, nothing apparently.”
I suppose you could fax then, and once you identify yourself as not being one of their constituents, very quickly (before they trash the fax) make the point about why this is meaningful to their constituents and their boss. They’re in the business of acting on the basis of what their constituents or boss want or need. So if they happen to hear from a nonconstituent about that, it might just at least provoke some questions in their mind, especially if the point is coming from someone with some established perspective or evident insight.
Now, what is good for the nation is something that they want to serve, but it all has to come back to the benefit of their constituency. Because it isn’t good for the nation if it isn’t good for them. Congressional staffers aren’t dumb, and their jobs depend on them being inquisitive about what’s good for their boss and his or her constituents. Different offices are different, and sometimes it just comes down to feeling your way around.
Oh, another possibility is to write a letter to the editor of his or her local newspaper, and even get an op-ed in it. That’ll raise some eyebrows.
But yes, Congress erects tall fences to protect idiots.
NASA (“the marketâ€)
I see the NASA contractor euphemism machine is still hard at work. First “commercial” NASA-funded spaceflight. Now NASA itself is “the market”. Thus governments and the organizations they fund impute to themselves characteristics people praise the free market for: simply co-opt the language by which we’ve described those characteristics.
In other news, some Russian pundits are calling for the return of the Soviet Central Planning Committee (“private enterprise”). And of course every American taxpayer remains deliriously happy that they’ve chosen to be a “customer” of the IRS.
Doug Lassiter wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 5:20 pm
If Curiosity #2 were half built, the fate of Curiosity #1 might well bear on its continuation. But that’s not where we are…..
Is there even parts for a number 2…? I did not know that there were…RGO
DCSCA wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 10:17 pm
“but as a governmenet contractor”
Dementia is raging your brain. I haven’t worked for a government contractor since the 90’s. What will you dream up next?
Also I’ve stated many times that I’m not in an industry related to aerospace, which is why I’m fine if NASA’s budget takes a hit along with the rest of the U.S. Government.
You on the other hand seem to be in the “out of print space books” business by the way you keep pushing irrelevant old books. How’s that market doing for ya these days?
“quarterly driven private enterprised firms”
Which is only Boeing, but Commercial Crew is so small that it doesn’t even show up in their annual report. And since you have failed to provide a link to the quarterly corporate reports for SpaceX, Sierra Nevada and Blue Origin (hint, they are all privately owned), your whole proposition about “quarterly driven private enterprised firms” lacks any basis in reality. What a surprise.
Every time you use that phrase you just reconfirm that you are an idiot.
@pathfinder_01 wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 9:31 pm
Well, that was $10 or less per pound ETO in 1970 dollars for the ‘frivolous’ [his term] element- tourism. And those projections by Clarke were w/o the poison of privatization injected in the 80’s into a government space agency by Reagan and later GHWB. Because from ACC’s perspective, the technology had come a long way in a decade yet remained quite primative. The more costly ETO numbers in his writing- “shooting billions into space will return trillions back to Earth” as he notes – were offset w/manufacturing scenarios in his piece. Seems a harder sell now. But launch rate and improved technology were key in reducing rates for market development– and he believed the manufcturing market was there. Seems less of a selling point now than the tourism pitch. But Clarke’s musings suggest private enterprise ‘launch’ out on its own, w/o the government, to develop LEO operations w/no “NASA”-style involvement and leave BEO to the space agency. For instance, the piece notes that the “Hilton Space Station’ in 2001 was meant to be just that- a ‘Hilton Hotel’– Barron Hilton used it in presentrations at the time. And the ‘Orion’ shuttle a PanAm o/o vehicle– all private enterprised ‘exploitation’ effort. It was no accident several household named corporations were prominent in the flick. He saw it that way, The ‘exploration’ elements were government space operations, so how the contracts are let is not really the issue. What commercial wants to do is use government as crutch and what some in government appear to be doing is trying to use commercial as a rationale for maintaining a space agency. It’s all screwed up.. But the NASA of the 60s/70s is not the NASA of today. More’s the pity. But suggest you read the whole piece if you get a hold of it. It presents a fairly good perspective on it, much of which still holds up today.
@Coastal Ron wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 8:54 pm
Always enjoy somebody displaying ignorance when knocking the musings of Clarke– particularly a piece like the aforementioned epilogue. Rather than cranking, you might just read it- it actually helps your case.
@Robert G. Oler wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 12:10 am
JPL most likely has some duplicate base elements- and a basic ‘sandbox’ vehicle for testing. Actually, a successful landing would warrant a “2” upgrade. If its a crash, a reassessment is in order. Either way, August is just five months away so waiting to see how it goes shouldn’t wreck Mars mission planning.
Doug Lassiter wrote:
Oh, another possibility is to write a letter to the editor of his or her local newspaper, and even get an op-ed in it. That’ll raise some eyebrows.
An interesting notion, although most newspapers suffer from the same parochial attitude. If it’s not from a local who might buy their paper, they won’t publish it.
For example … Just before she took office, Sandy Adams published a clueless column in a Daytona Beach newspaper, claiming U.S. astronauts were being forced to ride on Chinese rockets. (!) I wrote a letter to the editor. It wasn’t published. It wasn’t even acknowledged that they received it.
A few weeks ago, a West Palm Beach newspaper claimed NASA has been “defunded.” I wrote a letter to the editor. Again, no response, and not published.
I think that, with some of these papers, they really don’t care about the truth. They have their own agenda to create a misperception in the minds of their readers.
By the way, of tangential interest … 60 Minutes will feature SpaceX on Sunday:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57398292/space-travel-moves-to-private-sector/
Finally, some mainstream media attention … Which makes me think the Dragon launch on April 30 will help awaken the public to what’s really going on.
Stephen C. Smith wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 6:36 am
I would never attempt to disuade any attempt to “redress grievances” by citizens of a Free Republic…but we are at a moment in history where the players are almost all on the board and events almost will end up making the decisions.
this is one reason the SLS/Orion groups are starting to put out neat graphics and timelines etc for missions in the future which mostly will never happen…they have to have something because come April/May SpaceX is going to fly and succeed or fail the world is going to change…
Inside this are the changes which are going to sweep the federal budget system (thanks to the GOP which agreed to this rescission thing and then floundered in the budget talks …still trying to sort that gaff out).
the politicians are sort of like the people on the Titanic after the lifeboats ran out…there was no place to run but the stern and when you got to the stern there was nothing left to do but sink…all the run to the stern did (unless you are Leo, Kate, and the Cook who really survived) is give you a few more terrified minutes.
the federal budget process is going to be like that…and in the end the survivors are going to be few! RGO
DCSCA wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 8:06 pm
For orbital transportation none of the Commercial Crew companies are planning to rely upon tourism. That would be zero. Nada.
What do you mean by “rely upon”? And when?
The Boeing/Bigelow business case for CST-100 and Bigelow inflatables is perceived as a “package” for some phases of the business plan, and certainly does include tourism as a market sector. Eric Anderson’s Space Adventures is the booking agent for CST-100 passengers.
fyi: I have completed an excel database to mail all 60 Tea Party Caucus Republicans and three TP Caucus Senate members.
I look at it this way. I support commercial. I believe in a full all out blitz. If you can’t email, you can snail mail at cost. I can afford it, so I’ll do it.
I do not believe in duplication of effort. I am more than willing to email the .xls or convert it to .csv if so needed.
Democrats and TP R alliance is a majority in both chambers. It is just a matter of getting beyond committee members who may or may not be ‘frightened’ of those who pull the strings.
Please email me at gary.anderson@earthlink.net
Gary Anderson
DCSCA wrote @ March 15th, 2012 at 10:17 pm
“Again, you’re quite comfortable spending taxpayer money in risky ventures to benefit an elite few in ivory towers– and in the case of Martian probes, the failure rate hitory is high and with probes broaching the $1 billion mark, as in the case of Curiosity, it bears repeating that any failure dictates a reassessment on all fronts.”
Long sentence but, first of all, I don’t see how Mars science is an ivory tower elite anymore than the astronaut corps is. (And those latter folks sit on real towers where flames come out!) Failure absolutely dictates reassessment on all fronts, but don’t count your failures before they hatch, as you seem to be doing. Federal planning is never done that way unless one really believes that the chances of success are small. We don’t.
“Your attitude is to press to get as much funding committed up front so as a failure doesn’t force a suspension or out right cancellation being more costly than completing it. ”
No, we’re talking about one year of funding. Congressional appropriators write a check for ONE YEAR. Should we decide that outright cancellation of a mission is necessary, a one year appropriations bill isn’t going to prevent that. We managed to cancel Constellation, even though Shelby and his ilk tried to keep it alive for the remainder of one appropriations year. There is no question that pulling the plug on Mars mission development until Curiosity succeeds is just going to make continuation of future Mars missions much more expensive.
Maybe you’re saying that we should only start new missions once the last one has succeeded. But the development time for a mission can be a decade or more, so that management posture doesn’t make a lot of sense for a success-oriented program. Yep, I guess preparations for Apollo 12 should have stood down until we had pictures of Neil’s footprints, in a roll of film he brought back. Pete, Alan, and Dick should have headed out for a long vacation.
Your fear of major science missions and your “Age of Austerity” has been repeatedly expressed, as has your skepticism about the “elite” who do those missions. That fear is neither constructive nor justified. Ages of austerity are chronically declared, and I can’t recall an age where people weren’t using those words. The NASA budget going down, and our mission opportunities are disappearing. Who needs to be lectured about Ages of Austerity? I don’t.
Anyone from Florida can at least call both senators, Nelson and Rubio. make sure to call the Washington office and ask for the staff member handling space policy. I think this could have an effect; if we believe Commercial Crew should be supported, we need to tell the people who make the decisions. Be brief but mention that Florida needs human spaceflight early and often to create jobs, and only an aggressive commercial program can achieve this.
Which makes me think the Dragon launch on April 30 will help awaken the public to what’s really going on.
Oh, the public knows what’s going on all right. It’s the old soft shoe, while behind the scenes teenagers frantically debug code under pain of death.
Industry has begun to notice the slips at SpaceX.
fyi: I have completed an excel database to mail all 60 Tea Party Caucus Republicans and three TP Caucus Senate members.
I shall support my congresswoman, and leader of the Tea party caucus, Michelle Bachmann, to whom I have contributed financially, to do the right thing, the American thing, and get behind the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft…or else. I shall exhort her not to be deceived by TPIS astroturfers.
Mary Lynne Dittmar wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 1:58 pm
“What do you mean by “rely uponâ€? And when?”
I think you need to go further back in the original conversation thread, and you’re quoting the wrong person.
DCSCA said – “Of course ‘space tourism,’ a mainstay pitch todayâ€
He/she/it implied that space tourism was a major driver, and I disagreed.
“The Boeing/Bigelow business case for CST-100 and Bigelow inflatables…”
My point was that none of the orbital transportation providers are relying on “space tourism”. Yes Space Adventures would love to fill empty seats just like it has done with Soyuz, but that is not the business case that Boeing or the others are using for starting up their crew transportation businesses. As I have stated previously (and what Space Adventures has been doing), for the foreseeable future space tourism will be an outgrowth of our capabilities in space (i.e. transportation, destinations, etc.), not a main driver.
Even Bigelow Aerospace is only providing habitat services, and with a planned stay of one month, that is not really tourism oriented. One can only run around the inside of an empty space station so many times before they get bored. At least the ISS is a place of work, where visitors are getting a “behind the scenes” experience of a working laboratory. But the ISS is not set up for a constant stream of visitors, so again, tourism fits in where it can, but doesn’t drive the overall need.
I’ve been following this website for sometime, though I’ve only only ever posted once. I’m an aerospace engineering student on the verge of entering the industry, so all of these issues will directly affect myself and my peers in terms of future job prospects.
The impression I get from my fellow students is rather different than the very politicized debates that go on here. My peers all think that Scaled Composites, Blue Origin SpaceX, and the rest are sexier than NASA/Oldspace, but not because they’re champions of libertarian-style free-market economics. Rather, they seem to enthused by the fact that SpaceX is actually doing things.
I grew up watching NASA astronauts putter about in LEO. As I gained meaningful knowledge about spaceflight I concluded that the Star Trek-esque vision of mankind exploring and living among the stars was a childish pipe dream. Through junior high and high school I anticipated going into business or law, but then I heard about some of the ambitions of the so-called “newspace” companies.
People my age lived through the short-lived and over-optimistic promises of NASP, DC-X, Venture Star, Constellation and the rest. I was very pessimistic about humanity’s future in space. When suddenly a single company builds a family of launch vehicles from the ground up–with no previous experience, or sends people into suborbital space, or otherwise proffers physical evidence of progress it catches our attention.
For someone who’s only ever known low-profile LEO missions, hearing Jeff Greason and Elon Musk talk about their desire to make our species multiplanetary really fires up the imagination.
For all their failings, and whether or not they have a good business case, I would not have chosen to become an engineer without them–and I can confidently say that there are plenty other young people like me. I know many personally.
Young people like me don’t care about the older generation’s polarizing politics. We just want to see real physical progress instead of the empty promises of the 80s and 90s.
amightywind wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 4:35 pm
“Oh, the public knows what’s going on all right.”
Not really. It’s pretty apparent that the public doesn’t pay much attention to space issues unless they are in the news. But after they watch the SpaceX “David vs Goliath story” on 60 Minutes this Sunday, they are going to be much more aware of how expensive “old space” is versus “new space”.
Just out of curiosity, SpaceX plans to launch a full-up test of their capsule on 4/30, and if they are successful they will have received a grand total of… (drum roll)… $396M. For less than the cost of an Ares I-X dummy test flight ($445M) the U.S. gets a fully-certified cargo transport vehicle for Low Earth Orbit.
Taking about 6 years, it did take longer than SpaceX thought, but they haven’t received anything extra because of the delay. Orion on the other hand is now in it’s 7th year of production, has consumed, what, $4B and counting, and it is hoped to fly it’s first test flight after 11 years of effort and an additional $4B.
Now if you put those two programs side by side for Mr. & Mrs. Taxpayer, they are going to be very disappointed in the Orion program. Very. And wait till they find out that Congress is forcing NASA to build the largest rocket in the world, but that no one has the money to use it. Can you say “boondoggle”?
“Industry has begun to notice the slips at SpaceX.”
We shouldn’t pretend that couple month software slips on new launch hardware are anything unusual in this industry:
Launch of NASA’s NuSTAR Mission Postponed Due to Launch Vehicle Software Issues
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=36444
I shall support my congresswoman, and leader of the Tea party caucus, Michelle Bachmann, to whom I have contributed financially, to do the right thing, the American thing, and get behind the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft…or else. I shall exhort her not to be deceived by TPIS astroturfers.
There’s not enough palms in the world for me to face right now.
Wingnut wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
“We just want to see real physical progress instead of the empty promises of the 80s and 90s.”
I wish you and your colleagues the best of luck. it’s an exciting time to be in aerospace.
When you enter the industry workforce, what would your dream project be? Regardless if it’s a funded program or not.
@Wingnut
“Young people like me don’t care about the older generation’s polarizing politics. We just want to see real physical progress instead of the empty promises of the 80s and 90s.”
Hear! Hear!
You give me hope.
@Doug Lassiter wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Nice try but in fact it is clearly you projecting ‘fear’ from the elite perch in the ivory tower- as a $1.2 billion failure w/Curiosity craters not only the spacecraft but science mission planning and budget requests for same as a reassessment would rightly be in order. Pretty bad PR- and lousy science- if you slam a $1.2 billion rover into the Martian surface and create a pile of radioactively contaminated junk, compliments of the American taxpayer. It’s a pretty ‘iffy’ landing sequence and August is only five months away so waiting to see if it arrives intact isn’t too long. And if all goes as well as planned — and hoped– after all the ‘laurels and hardy’ handshakes are exchanged, “2” would rightly have earned full finding and an upgrade. Wait and see.
But contrary to your ‘fears’ the more cost-effective science probes you can design and fly, the better- it’s just that these probes are supposed to be getting less expensive and Curiosity is on the wrong trajectory in the budget universe— up. With $1.2 billion costs for a one-off and w/t high percentage of failure rates for Mars missions it’s wise- and smart– to wait and see. It’s only five months away. There’s nothing to worry about… nothing to fear up there– or down here in fron of a review board,…. right? LOL Or you can always as the private sector to sponsor it– Musk and Branson have deep pockets.
@Wingnut wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Well, at you age, you might be on the crest of some interesting times.
Just remember one thing: Space exploitation is not space exploration.
But they can co-exist and depending on how you calibrate what rewards you. In today’s environment, if you go w/commercial, you’re career will most likely be busy in the short term, fairly lucrative but your long term career inspirations dashed and condemed to LEO operations and the drive for profits. Remember, the goal of a private enterprised commercial space firm is the same as Target or McDonald’s- to make a profit, not explore and colonize planets, in spite of Master Musk’s publixized intent to retire on Mars. LOL. That’s commercial’s immediate future.
If you’re dreaming of interplanetary travel, it’s just a bad break or accident of timing you were cheated of the challenge of the 10-year Apollo moon landing experience but that was really a unique set of circumstances born of the Cold War. But that denial puts you with Kepler, Goddard, Galileo, Verne and Wells to name a few. They missed it, too. Rather than swooning over charlatans like Musk, re-visit Arthur C. Clarke, Willy Ley, Sagan, O’Neill — or Von Braun.
Von Braun knew the engineering and the mechanics of how to pull the levers of government purse strings and get the means to reach an end but made the Faustian bargain for it. Clarke had the difference between commerical exploitation and government exploration motivations and rationales fairly well defined. For the current battles at hand, his perspective is prescient.
The problem today is that commercial wants to use government as a crutch for ‘faux’ markets, funding and profiteering at the taxpayer expense. Clarke saw them striking out on their own in LEO for commerce and leaving exploration to the government space agency. On the other hand, the government space agency finds itself in an endless battle to maintain a steady budget stream for long range planning and still fights off or absorbs annual cuts, then readjusting plans over and over rather than just go fly. And for decades since Apollo, cannot afford the largess to invest in a long term BEO HSF exploration program because of the yearly battles. So today, elements of the agency are forced to use commerical as a rationale for maintaining any HSF operations as a raison d’etre at all for a NASA woefully overdue for an overhaul, post-shuttle. You might be the new blood it needs.
So if you want a flurry of small LEO missions that go in circles, go commercial. Those of us longer in the tooth have the ‘been there, done that’ experience in our lives. If you want to go BEO w/fewer, long duration missions but press on and explore outward, go w/the government space program. Remember your Tom Lehrer about Von Braun, too- ‘In German und in English I learned how to countdown; Und I’m learning Chinese, says Wernher Von Braun.”
But most of all, keep in mind what Robert Goddard wrote to HG Wells in 1932: “There can be no thought of finishing, for ‘aiming at the stars’ both figuratively and literally, is a problem to occupy generations, so no matter how much progress one makes, there’s always the thrill of just beginning.”
So get started. And good luck.
@Dark Blue Nine wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 6:55 pm
“We shouldn’t pretend that couple month software slips on new launch hardware are anything unusual in this industry” False equivalency.
@amightywind wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 4:35 pm
Relax, Windy. SpaceX may one day duplicate what the Russian Progress supply ships have been doing for thirty years but Bowersox didn’t punch out for nothing.
@Coastal Ron wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 6:26 pm
They’ll learn from the clan up on West 57th St., that ‘Old space’ has been orbiting humans for half a century and flew men to the moon while ‘New space’ has failed to launch, orbit and safely return anybody, but flown a wheel of cheese and wants government subsidies for a faux market. And that Musk is quite the PT Barnum. His Colbert Report appearance remains priceless.
@Coastal Ron wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 6:01 pm
No, w/respect to Clarke’s piece, it has just become more prominent in public discourse today, and not ‘frivolous’– Clarke’s word, as he flushed out markets in hims piece and that the leading motivations for commercial LEO operations were as industrial and manufacturing platforms and tourism would follow along when launch costs dramatically dropped. If he was alive and wrote it today, chances are it would’nt be the last area he’d address. That’s all. Read it sometime- it’s not bad and acrually helps your position.
Mary Lynne Dittmar wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Believe you lost track of the conversation. Ron/DCSCA were exchanging views from the Clarke Epilogue, ‘Beyond Apollo’ at the end of a book tited “First On The Moon’ published in 1970, in which Clarke has a section on ‘The Business Of Space’ and from his perspective he thought manufacturing and industrial commerce would lead commercial into LEO operations on their own as the ‘market’ – leaving BEO to government space efforts and that tourism, ‘frivolous’ – Clarke’s term – the last, and then though lucrative market to develop, would depend on launch costs dropping to $10/lb., ETO. Today the tourism pitch is just more prominent in public chatter than it was in ’70 from Clarke’s perspective.
Wingnut wrote:
When suddenly a single company builds a family of launch vehicles from the ground up–with no previous experience, or sends people into suborbital space, or otherwise proffers physical evidence of progress it catches our attention.
For someone who’s only ever known low-profile LEO missions, hearing Jeff Greason and Elon Musk talk about their desire to make our species multiplanetary really fires up the imagination.
I think you’re right.
The media only pays attention when a story will generate ratings or subscriptions. The event has to “catch our attention,” as you put it.
60 Minutes finally figured that out.
My hope is that when Dragon flies to ISS in late April/early May, the novelty will catch the attention of the rest of the mainstream media.
Of course, that would mean that the mainstream media would have to admit (a) the ISS exists, and (b) they’ve been wrong the last year when they were telling us Obama cancelled the space program.
It will be very interesting to see how a successful flight affects the rhetoric coming out of Congress. Politicians love to attach themselves to a winner. The future of commercial crew very much rides on not just the success of Dragon, but also the publicity that comes with the success of Dragon. If Dragon performs well and nuts like Hall and Wolf try to slash the commercial crew budget, hopefully the press will focus a spotlight on them and ask why.
So that’s what the future of American government spaceflight boils down to, boys and girls — how much favorable publicity we get out of a successful demo flight.
“We shouldn’t pretend that couple month software slips on new launch hardware are anything unusual in this industry.” This is false equivalency by Musketeers.
NASA doesnt have anything to prove. It has a half century of established and hard won credibility as a government space agency. SpaceX has everything to prove as a provider of profitable goods and services. Slick PR, be it endless press releases w/schedule slippages promising things to come or a profile package for ’60 Minutes’- won’t buy credibility. Only selling a successful, reliable, operational service will — service being lofting cargo and crews. And as private enterprised firm, Musketeers will have to do it the ‘Smith Barney’ old-fashioned way… and earn it. So far, they’ve earned nothing.
“We just want to see real physical progress instead of the empty promises of the 80s and 90s.â€
Nuspace has many times more empty promises.
“My peers all think that Scaled Composites, Blue Origin SpaceX, and the rest are sexier than NASA/Oldspace, but not because they’re champions of libertarian-style free-market economics. Rather, they seem to enthused by the fact that SpaceX is actually doing things.”
Yep, it is the “American Idol” generation. Flash, hype and sexier are better than substance.
As for doing things, your peers need to do some research and see what is really going on.
Look was “Old Space” Lockheed did in 2011.
Juno, GRAIL, MSL (entry vehicle), SBIRS, JCSAT, etc
You need to straddle the fence. Neither Nu or Old Space are the end all. The future is going to be a blend of them.
“NASA doesnt have anything to prove.”
Apart from building a spacecraft that doesn’t use waivers as a replacement for safety. Apart from meeting a budget. Apart from things like that.
We better hope that however it happens, whether through government funding or not, that commercial crew is brought on line just as quickly as possible, otherwise we’ll be spending a billion a year or more to fly astronauts on Soyuz, and those trips won’t be guaranteed and the prices will be going up even higher.
Orion/MPCV and the SLS will never happen. There is no plan that makes any sense for where they would go or what they would do. NASA and Congress made a foolish decision to try and support these; they will never be affordable or supportable. and at the rate these programs are spending money with the lack of progress they are showing, they will not be flying for decades if ever. If NASA were to get serious they could have an Orion capsule flying in a few years. The fact that they’ve been working for 7 years, with another 9 years to go before they are ready to fly means they ar enot serious.
Best to shut the Orion and SLS efforts down and put everything into commercial prospects. Maybe NASA people could be retrained to do R&D and try to develop some advancements in technology, which was the old model for how NACA operated.
“False equivalency.”
No, it’s not. Both are launch vehicles with new hardware requiring additional software work that has delayed their launch by a couple months each.
“NASA doesnt have anything to prove.”
This isn’t about NASA. This is about two commercial launch providers, SpaceX and OSC.
DCSCA wrote @ March 17th, 2012 at 2:52 am
“Nice try but in fact it is clearly you projecting ‘fear’ from the elite perch in the ivory tower- as a $1.2 billion failure w/Curiosity craters not only the spacecraft but science mission planning and budget requests for same as a reassessment would rightly be in order. Pretty bad PR- and lousy science- if you slam a $1.2 billion rover into the Martian surface and create a pile of radioactively contaminated junk, compliments of the American taxpayer.”
Wow, counting failures before they hatch is exactly what you’re doing. You’ve got some big “if”s here. JPL engineers don’t consider MSL to have an “iffy” landing sequence. If they did, they wouldn’t be doing it. What’s their incentive to plow a $1B mission into the regolith? It’s a novel strategy, and lots of things have to go right, but that’s the case for any planetary landing. If it does go right, they’ve proved something we can be really proud of, and build on. Exploration is about doing hard things. I recall the same things being said about the MER landings. Airbags???
Radioactively contaminated junk on Mars? You mean like Lunokhod on the Moon? Got news for you, but radioisotope powered and heated spacecraft are going to be the way things are going to get done on Mars, until we have fission units that demand even more safety measures. All of those are going to have to land. I’ll bet some of them make craters. So if the idea of radioactive craters offends you, we should stop sending anything to Mars.
The budget of Curiosity doesn’t define any kind of “trajectory”. It’s an expensive mission, and we’ll do expensive missions if we can afford them. Why? Because they do more.
You keep coming back to “high percentage of failure rates for Mars missions”. What decade are you living in? We just set our clocks ahead an hour. Did you accidentally set yours back twenty years? The success of U.S. Mars missions has been extraordinary for the last two decades. Don’t make stuff up. (And don’t pay the Russians to do a Mars mission for you!)
Wingnut wrote:
“People my age lived through the short-lived and over-optimistic promises of NASP, DC-X, Venture Star, Constellation and the rest. I was very pessimistic about humanity’s future in space. When suddenly a single company builds a family of launch vehicles from the ground up–with no previous experience, or sends people into suborbital space, or otherwise proffers physical evidence of progress it catches our attention.
For someone who’s only ever known low-profile LEO missions, hearing Jeff Greason and Elon Musk talk about their desire to make our species multiplanetary really fires up the imagination.”
I have alluded to this several times when I say you have to keep the ‘dream’ alive.
The reason I say this is because I was literally astounded at how many inventors/theorists have stated that answers came to them in dreams. We all know you can program yourself to dream but high intensity people who live and breath their subject also tend to dream about their subject more often.
The reason I am so behind commercial space versus NASA is because you rarely ever get to exercise it through NASA, they are so risk adverse nothing gets done because costs escalate to the point of project collapse.
Then the congressional porksters just haul out either a new name for the same thing or a slightly different concept that those in the know are sure will never be completed anyway.
We need young stem students dreaming today’s impossible for tomorrow’s can do.
Wingnut wrote @ March 16th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Good luck in finishing your studies and then throughout the career you have. You seem to have a good base for the rest of your life and I hope that you enjoy it AND find it both professionally and entertainingly satisfying.
If I might offer a modest suggestion.
never lose sight in your personal enjoyment and fullfillment of what “you” and “your team” are doing…thats hard when you shift the gaze out to far into the larger picture of either the project in general or world affairs in specific. Strive to be the best and most honorable in what “you and the team” are doing in things that your actions can personally affect…and hope by that example others are inspired to do likewise…
If you do that you will find both happiness in your personal life…and a great deal of professional satisfaction in preparing your life for whatever comes next…others will notice and there will be a “next”…there always is.
One other modest suggestion. Never think of anything as “the high point of your career” except what you are doing now…
Not much here but I guess platitudes but someone a few decades ago came me the same advise and I have learned that whenever I feel “less” it is because I ignored it. take care.. Robert G. Oler
Doug Lassiter wrote @ March 17th, 2012 at 11:12 am
I have not followed it all that much…but I assume that the landing technique on Curiosity was designed to save mass in the landing platform? How much did they save.
Anyway good luck to them. I am sure that they worked out as many variables as they could and we all need to wish them well. To bad there is not going to be video from a “third party” perspective…the sequence should be impressive (either way…grin) RGO
Robert G. Oler wrote @ March 17th, 2012 at 1:53 pm
“To bad there is not going to be video from a “third party†perspective…the sequence should be impressive”
There wasn’t a third party perspective for Spirit or Opportunity either. But the animation is wonderful. I show that animation to upper elementary school kids routinely (followed by real pictures of Mars from them), and they get SO excited. I’ll tell ya, showing those kids pictures of smiling astronauts on ISS, or videos of them flipping themselves over doesn’t get anyone very excited. The animations from Curiosity are, of course, already out, and when I start showing those, it’s going to blow their little minds! Call it “inspiration” if you want. But I call it excitement, wonder, and pride.
Doug Lassiter wrote @ March 17th, 2012 at 2:33 pm
Oh yeah the animation is good….(personal note I am quite proud to have at least “the carrier” on record from both Spirit and Opportunity on Mars if only my dish were larger)…somehow I “Knew” bags would work. I really hope this does…a guess is it will…my only concern is the “rates” on the vehicle as the descent occurs…but doubtless they have thought that out.
Helo’s come aboard small ships in a “similar” but not the same (grin) fashion. RGO
@Doug Lassiter wrote @ March 17th, 2012 at 11:12 am
“Radioactively contaminated junk on Mars? You mean like Lunokhod on the Moon?”
You’re tilting at windmills, Doug. Lunokhods 1 & 2 didn’t crash on the moon. Why waiting five months to see how Curiosity’s arrival turns out elicits fear from you is somewhat perplexing, unless securing budget commitments for futrure missions are more important than ascertaining if the one you have flying now is a success. It’s as if once it’s up, move on to the next mission and get it in work and so far along, they can’t afford to cancel it- and the results of what’s flying don’t matter to you- securing the next round of funding does. That’s ivory tower stuff. Which explains your comment: “The budget of Curiosity doesn’t define any kind of “trajectoryâ€.” Of course, it does, and it’s going the wrong way– up. $1.2 billion- and that may be low-balled- is quite high for a probe to a planet with a high percentage of failure rates. The costs are supposed to be dropping and budgets dictate everything. So unless you have plans to get Elon and Richard to sponsor a Mars rover mission and they don’t caer what it costs, to borrow a line someone actually said, quoted in a book and movie, ‘No bucks, no Buck Rogers’– and that goes for the Robotics Rogers as well.
@DougLassiter- A postscript- give the schools kids as much PAO materials you can- it was a big hit in the 60s- classes would write JPL and NASA for info and they’d mail back packets of great stuff the kids put up all over the schools. Sagan used to do that alot, too. Von Braun as well. JPL did it for decades but that but stopped- cost considerations, of course- and began directing inquiries from individuals, classes and students to the website rather than mail hard copies of materials to the kids- like telling your kid to go to the library or go read a book- but what they failed to understand is what you experienced first hand- that kids react to the personal interaction- of opening a parcel, or a presentation of interest from the space people, where they can ask you questions face to face– you take the trouble to go to an elementary school and interact, which is stellar. The late Wally Schirra did that, too- he’d ‘visit’ elementary schools in the San Diego area all the time to cultivate interest and interact with the kids. Sally Ride does it, too. My own niece, an elementary school student, experienced it with her. Keep it up.
DCSCA wrote @ March 17th, 2012 at 6:03 pm
“is quite high for a probe to a planet with a high percentage of failure rates.”
You’re ignoring facts again. And what have we told you about using hyperbola?
The facts are that the U.S. has had six straight successful missions to Mars over the past 11 years. And with MSL continuing the trend of sending increasing more capable rovers, I’d say you are sounding like Chick Little again. Space is not a safe place, and the only way to find out if something new can work on a distant planet is to try it on a distant planet.
As has been pointed out to you, if Apollo had followed the path you advocate for unmanned mission we’d still be waiting to launch Apollo 17.
I’ll also bet you didn’t know that we had already reached the limits of the size payloads we could land on Mars, did you? If the MSL sky crane works, then that opens the door for progressively larger payloads to be landed Mars, and THAT could be key to eventually landing humans on Mars (#4 on MLS’s list of Goals & Objectives).
If you want safe exploration, explore your basement. If you want to explore other worlds, then you have to take calculated risks, and that is what the Mars exploration programs have been doing, and doing very well overall.
DCSCA wrote @ March 17th, 2012 at 6:03 pm
“Why waiting five months to see how Curiosity’s arrival turns out elicits fear from you is somewhat perplexing, unless securing budget commitments for futrure missions are more important than ascertaining if the one you have flying now is a success.”
Real simple. Curiosity got a new start five or six years ago. At that time, we could have told all the engineers who would be working on next gen Mars rovers to stand down until summer of 2012. Go do something else for a while. These are, by the way, not engineers who get matrixed easily into other tasks. OK, Curiosity lands, and it’s successful. Hey guys, you can all come back now and pick up where you left off! It doesn’t work that way. That’s a hugely expensive way to plan. In fact, standard management strategy is that lessons are best learned by people who are actually working on a project.
So let’s say Curiosity crashes. OK, the fault-finding committee will take many months to deliberate and come to some conclusion. For the MCO failure, their conclusion was that ONE NUMBER was wrong. An atmospheric parameter. OK, sure glad we had all those people stand down so we could get that ONE NUMBER right. A number that has zero relevance to architecture. My fear is simple. That we’ll end up wasting lots of money, and skipping launch opportunities.
I’ll say it again. The budget of Curiosity doesn’t define any kind of trajectory any more than the budget for Constellation defined a trajectory. If you have the money to spend on big projects, go for it. “Costs are supposed to be dropping”? Huh? Costs never drop when you’re trying to do increasingly ambitious things. In fact, its the confidence you gain with less expensive successful missions that justify those more ambitious and costly ones.
Again, “high failure rates”. You still haven’t pointed me at where, in the last twenty years of U.S. Mars exploration, all those failures are. From your view, Mars must be covered with craters with shreds of American flags scattered around their rims. Of course, by your view, our success with lunar exploration was similarly dismal. Do you know that fully half of the Ranger missions failed? Oh my! Don’t even think about sending more probes to the Moon! As I said, the Apollo program, in which at least three new missions were being planned while the first one was going was, by your view, not smartly run.
DCSCA wrote @ March 17th, 2012 at 6:03 pm
, ‘No bucks, no Buck Rogers’– and that goes for the Robotics Rogers as well.>>
well if there are no bucks there are no Buck Rogers…but I am not sure that the Bucks come for simply our mythic heroes in the Astronaut corps. JWST seems to be getting them.
Actually the days of the American people caring that Buck is in space…are kind of over. RGO
Doug Lassiter wrote @ March 17th, 2012 at 7:14 pm
“Real simple. Curiosity got a new start five or six years ago.”
Then a five month wait until the fate of Curiosity is known is no big deal. And you might want to reassess your musings on comparing Lunokhodso to Curiosity as Lunokhod’s primary power source was the hinged solar panel on top, not the radisotope for heating whereas Curiosity’s primary power source is the RTG.
@Coastal Ron wrote @ March 17th, 2012 at 7:09 pm
=yawn= “The exploration of Mars has come at a considerable financial cost with roughly two-thirds of all spacecraft destined for Mars failing before completing their missions, with some failing before they even begin.” – source- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars
In fact, it is you who are ignoring facts. =sigh=
AW –
Ares 1 is dead.
What part of “dead” are you having problems understanding?
Great advice from RGO:
“never lose sight in your personal enjoyment and fulfillment of what “you†and “your team†are doing…
Never think of anything as “the high point of your career†except what you are doing now…”
I’d add: space engineering is a field awash in sci-fi-addled daydreaming and economic fantasies that destroy other peoples’ money and dreams alike Forget about all the hype, tune out the wide variety of scammers chasing NASA contracts, and work on things that you and a team of people you all know personally can actually design and finish and get built and above all, make of use to many people.
Design things that can actually be of great use to people on rational budgets, so useful that they will voluntarily pony up more money to buy more. Violently refuse to work on project that are not of this nature. Tune out the hype from pretend prophets about fantasized futures and tune in what the people who are actually using what you design are saying and thinking.
By satisfying your customers, you will as a result yourself have a high level of satisfaction, in sharp contrast with the bitterness so common among previous generations of space engineers and space fans who were deluded by chasing of awesome-sounding NASA sci-fi contracts, into designing and hyping bridges to nowhere and for nobody. These were the economically illiterate concoctions of entertaining fiction authors and NASA-chasing marketing departments, and inevitably (in hindsight) those who followed these pied pipers saw their fantasies dashed. By being inspired to serve the real needs of real people, rather than the fantasy aspirations of the unaccountable, you will avoid much pain that others who have made your career choice have experienced.
@Coastal Ron wrote @ March 17th, 2012 at 7:09 pm
You’re the person who believes space has been conquered and that a mere total of just 57 hours of lunar surface activities by the six Apollo crews 40 years ago constitutes ‘conquering’ the moon. =eyeroll= With that kind of weak, short-sighted judgment it’s little wonder commercial space advocacy has been going no place fast since ’72. Suggest you read that aforementioned piece by Clarke.
@Doug Lassiter wrote @ March 17th, 2012 at 7:14 pm
You keep reaffirming the ivory tower persepective. Whether you like it or not, budgets matter a great deal in the Age of Austerity, particularly when one probe broaches the billion dollar mark targeted to a planet where probed have a high failure rate. Red flag on budgets for red planet probes. The costs are supposed to be going down and reliability rise. To your credit, it’s remarkable that Opportunity is still operating. Let’s hope a little of its luck rubbed off on Curiosity. Time will tell– about five months of time– and we’ll know how it’ll go. So it’s prudent managment to wait and see how the arrival plays out.
I received the below last night in e-mail from the National Space Society.
National Space Society Legislative Alert
The National Space Society (NSS) calls on its membership to take action now.
The President’s proposed budget for NASA for Fiscal Year 2013 was released in early February. At the end of February, NSS led the space advocacy community to the halls of Congress in the annual grassroots visit known as the “Space Exploration Alliance’s Legislative Blitz”, during which we met with 100 congressional offices to show strong constituent support for our nation’s civil space program. However, the NASA budget is not immune to the unprecedented budgetary pressures facing our nation. Now, more than ever before, it is absolutely critical that the voices of the entire space advocacy community be heard in this debate.
Each of us has an opportunity to directly participate, right now, without going to Washington. But we must act now.
The House of Representatives’ Committee on Appropriations allows any and all Congresspersons to submit “programmatic” funding requests to fully fund, increase, or cut the level of funding for any discretionary federal program. For example, with regard to the NASA budget, Members can ask the Appropriations Committee to provide full funding for items such as the “space technology program” or “commercial crew”, as only two examples.
The deadline for such requests to be turned in by Members of Congress is just a few days away: Tuesday, March 20
th at 5 p.m. EDT. NSS urges you to contact your Member of Congress by the close of business on Monday, March 19th and ask for full support for the NASA budget:
1. Information as to the name and D.C. office phone number of your U.S. Representative can be found by going to the bottom of the Legislative Action page on the NSS website, at http://www.nss.org/legislative/, and by entering your zip code.
2. Call your Representative’s D.C. office between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. EDT.
3. Tell the person who answers the phone that you are a constituent, and ask to speak with the staff member who handles “NASA Appropriations”.
4. When you speak with that staffer (or, if you can’t reach that staffer, leave a message):
a) say that you are a constituent;
b) that you would like your Representative to request that the House Appropriations Committee fully fund NASA; and if you have a specific program within NASA that you personally support (such as the “space technology program” or “commercial crew”), tell the staffer which program (see below for more information); and,
c) that you request your Representative to submit a Programmatic Funding Request to the Commerce, Justice, Science Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee on the Committee’s website (see below) in support.
d) In speaking with the staffer, feel free to use any or all of the following points that NSS as an organization supports:
i. The “Talking Points” from the just completed Legislative Blitz, which can be found on the NSS website, at http://www.nss.org/legislative/blitz/2012/SEA_talking_points_2012.pdf.
ii. The similar points raised last fall by the NSS in the “National Space Society’s Call to Action for American Leadership in Civil Space”, which can also be found on our website, at http://www.nss.org/legislative/positions/Call_for_US_Leadership_in_Space.pdf.
iii. Feel free to refer the staffer to the above links.
5. Also ask the staffer if your Representative will commit to supporting NASA and the specific program within the NASA budget that you personally support. Regardless of the response, be respectful and courteous throughout, and thank the staffer for listening and for his/her time.
6. After the call, send an e-mail to Rick Zucker, NSS Executive Vice President ( at rick.zucker@nss.org), with your name, the name of your congressperson, the staffer’s name, what the staffer said, and any other comments you might have.
Useful information for you to have at the ready, to help the staffer (two examples given below):
1. The online form that they will need (a “Dear Colleague” request) for the 2013 Fiscal Year program request process is at appropriations.house.gov.
2. Examples of specific programs:
a. To support full funding for “Space Technology”: The “request type” is “Program”. The “Subcommittee/Agency/Account” is “Commerce Justice Science, NASA, Space Technology”. The “Program Title” is “Space Technology”. The “Description” is “R&D in new innovative space technologies to open the space frontier to human exploration, development & settlement”. The “Funding” is “Support the President’s FY2013 budget request”. (They will need to attach a signed letter from your Representative endorsing this and any other requests they are making.)
b. To support full funding for “Commercial Space”: The “request type” is “Program”. The “Subcommittee/Agency/Account” is “Commerce Justice Science, NASA, Exploration”. The “Program Title” is “Commercial Spaceflight, Commercial Crew”. The “Description” is “Develop new U.S. private sector ISS crew transport systems”. The “Funding” is “Support the President’s FY2013 budget request”. (They will need to attach a signed letter from the Representative endorsing this and any other requests they are making.)
This is an opportunity that does not come along very often. Please help support our nation’s civil space program.
April 30th is getting closer. Lots riding on it. More politically it seems than just about any other I can recall. Could it be called a ‘tipping point’? Perhaps not but stranger things have happened.
DCSCA wrote @ March 18th, 2012 at 12:31 am
“To your credit, it’s remarkable that Opportunity is still operating.”
I take no credit for that, nor the success of Spirit, that also outlasted it’s prime mission by a factor of twenty or thirty.
“Whether you like it or not, budgets matter a great deal in the Age of Austerity”
Whether you like it or not, budgets matter even if you’re not in an austere age. The important point is if you get value for your budget. Curiosity is expensive because it’ll do a lot. To the extent that doing a lot is important, that money is worth it. It makes no sense to draw a line in budgetary sand and say that over this particular amount it isn’t worth it. That’s not policy, it’s playing with a red pen.
” targeted to a planet where probed have a high failure rate. ”
OK, I hear ya. If you’re going to continue to be delusional about mission failure rates, and their impact on U.S. space policy, I can think of better things to do.
DCSCA wrote @ March 18th, 2012 at 12:31 am
“You’re the person who believes space has been conquered”
Local space, for sure, and that’s the area of space that I was talking about.
You don’t think that Armstrong and Aldrin conquered the Moon in the same way that Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay did Everest?
When I think of conquering something, I think of mastering it. As I said before, and maybe you’ve forgotten, we landed and returned safely from the Moon six times, and even felt safe enough to play golf and do some off-road driving. Oooh, the Moon sure conquered us on that one.
The Shuttle flew to LEO over 130 times – we haven’t conquered getting to LEO?
We’ve had rotating shifts of people living on the International Space Station for over 11 years – you don’t think we’ve conquered doing that?
Now we now need to lower costs and find ways to survive for longer periods of time in space, as well as further distances away from Earth. But this is expanding on what we’ve already done and learned.
I’d say if you can do something on a routine and predictable basis, you’ve conquered it. How would you define “conquered”, and how would you define all of our accomplishments in space today?
“The Shuttle flew to LEO over 130 times – we haven’t conquered getting to LEO?
We’ve had rotating shifts of people living on the International Space Station for over 11 years – you don’t think we’ve conquered doing that?”
No more than Apollo constituted a “conquest” of the moon. We learned how to routinely and predictably land astronauts on the moon and bring them home again — but we also realized it was costing us far more than it was worth to keep doing it. So we stopped doing it. Basically the same thing — stretched out over a much longer period of agony, since unlike Apollo it was actually sold as being economically useful — occurred with the Shuttle.
Throwing up economically useless astronaut cathedrals whether in the name of “exploration” or “infrastructure” does not constitute anything remotely approaching a “conquest”. What did the Shuttle “win” for us? It was a dead-end project and with it we _lost_ — we lost opportunity, we lost hundreds of billions of dollars, and we lost rational design for space transportation. Its bastard offspring SLS is still costing us.
Similar for ISS and LEO “infrastructure”. How much longer will we keep funded a “national laboratory” where the science produced costs thousands of times more than a normal national laboratory? It’s yet another dead-end space station. The whole idea of a space station was always stupendously stupid, since the utility we get out of space comes from a wide diversity of orbits, but our dogmatic cult is still unable to learn from experience after all this time.
The real metric for conquest of a region of space should be: how much use is humanity getting out of that region? Are we making economically sustainable progress there? Is it enough to motivate us to stay in , or indeed keep expanding, our use of that region? In that sense we’ve conquered GEO and some polar orbits (spy and science satellites) — commerce and the military have been using and re-using those orbits and capabilities for decades to solve practical problems for billions of people, and their use continues to grow. Economically sustainable use — that is the only kind of conquest that in the long run really matters.
Googaw wrote @ March 18th, 2012 at 5:24 pm
“…but we also realized it [sending humans to the Moon] was costing us far more than it was worth to keep doing it.”
No revisionist history please. The Apollo Moon program was political, and though you could claim that it was shortened in length because of it’s overall cost, the goal was never anything to do with economics.
“Similar for ISS and LEO “infrastructureâ€. How much longer will we keep funded a “national laboratory†where the science produced costs thousands of times more than a normal national laboratory?”
The answer is A) until Congress decides to stop paying for it, or B) until you can show us how to get the same science done in a 1G environment that currently can only be done in a sustained zero G environment.
“The real metric for conquest of a region of space should be: how much use is humanity getting out of that region?”
OK, but you’re forgetting the time component of that.
Let’s say you spend $100M to build and transport a satellite to GEO. The first day that your new satellite is operating, you have to average $100M/day to break-even. But by the second day you only need $50M/day. Of course you’re not getting anywhere close to that in revenue, but you are betting that over the LIFETIME of that satellite it will return a net positive ROI, with the lifetime being measured in years (if not decades).
Just in the satellite industry, when would you say that the U.S. Government started seeing a net positive ROI on the taxpayer money invested in opening up space? Have we yet?
I see our efforts to expand our human presence out into space the same way. – a big upfront investment that will take a long, long time to pay off. Oh, and lots of failed efforts along the way, and like I’ve said before, the Shuttle would be counted as a partial failure because it failed in it’s announced goals of lowering the cost to access space.
Maybe you and DCSCA can predict what space hardware and which programs will be worth the money before they are even funded, but that of course is delusional (which has always been apparent with anything DCSCA says).
I don’t think we need to increase NASA’s budget, but I do think we need to spend it more wisely. A monument to pork in the shape of a rocket doesn’t do that, but programs that focus on addressing acknowledged gaps in our understanding of how to stay alive in space and how to stay alive when we reach Mars or the Moon is a good use of taxpayer money. Again, it’s an investment, and the U.S. Government does lots of that on behalf of it’s citizens.
“The real metric for conquest of a region of space should be: how much use is humanity getting out of that region?’
No. And Clarke addresses this. Space exploitation is not space exploration. Again, Clarke addresses the metrics and calibrations of conquest fairly well in his ‘Beyond Apollo’ epilogue. With respect to space, LEO is ripe for the immediate metric of commercial exploitation purposes but not at the expense of financing government exploration programs. The two are really separate and attempts to blend the two have hurt both. This is where space has gone off track. The ideological poisons associated with trying to privative elements of government space programs has beome a crutch for private enterprised firms lacking the moxie to strike out on their own and a means to an end for government space programs desperate to maintain a raison ‘d’etre in tight times. Clarke saw them as separate efforts, with the private sector financing LEO exploitation and government supporting BEO exploration in this era. The political idealogy that wants to privatize all things government, from post offices to space programs, is the same simple-mindedness that wants to privatize Medicare and Social Security.
@CoastalRon “I don’t think we need to increase NASA’s budget…”
In fact, it should be doubled, as NdT has said as well in his recent book & media appearences.
“… but I do think we need to spend it more wisely.” In which case, terminating all subsidies for commercial LEO HSF would be the first and wisest move of all. Space exploitation is not space exploration.
Googaw wrote @ March 18th, 2012 at 5:24 pm
“In that sense we’ve conquered GEO and some polar orbits (spy and science satellites) — commerce and the military have been using and re-using those orbits and capabilities for decades to solve practical problems for billions of people, and their use continues to grow. Economically sustainable use — that is the only kind of conquest that in the long run really matters.”
OK – how do you measure ROI on a military satellite?
How do you know you’re spending too much or too little on building fleets of DoD/NRO satellites?
And no “it keeps us safe” mumbo jumbo. You use the term “Economically sustainable” – define it in those terms.
Coastal Ron: “when would you say that the U.S. Government started seeing a net positive ROI on the taxpayer money invested in opening up space? Have we yet?”
Well, (a) few of NASA’s decisions based on ROI, and (b) even where they are, NASA managers, and the Congressfolk who fund them, are about the last people I would trust to properly measure or estimate ROI. Their experience is dominated by politics and seldom has involved the particular kind of real business in which they purport to be “investing.”
Even less would I trust go estimate ROI space activists who get their ideas from the economic fantasies of sci-fi. And you should hardly trust yourselves, either. Look at the track record of projects you’ve supported in the past: Shuttle, National Aerospace Plane, ISS . Colossal losses, all of them. Bizarrely diseconomical distortions of the scale and other design parameters of our space technology.
The time-tested way to determine whether a project actually had an ROI, and then to measure what that ROI was, is to see whether a company or company unit pursuing the project grows or at least stay in business based on voluntary private sector customers. By that measure, while there are a wide variety of important orbits, GEO is and long has been the epicenter of space development, based primarily on the communications business. Whatever the military equivalent of ROI is, there’s good reason to believe that the military properly thinks it’s getting that out of the spysats in polar orbits and GEO. Quite the opposite is the case for most of what NASA does, especially HSF.
As for HSF, you’ve seriously got to ask yourself how many colossally costly failures you will observe before you admit that the ROI just isn’t there. Quite the opposite, we have to measure HSF by LOI — hundreds of billions of dollars lost on these “investments”. Will you tolerate indefinitely large costs of such failures, as long as it’s those suckers called taxpayers rather than you personally paying for them? If not, how many hundred billion dollars is too many? Or are we yet again to predict that ROI is Right Around the Corner, This Time It’s Different ™ ?
“Maybe you and DCSCA can predict…”
It’s the people claiming that they are making “investments” who are purporting to predict the future. It’s you with you insistence that we all agree on some central plan who is purporting to predict the future. I’m calling you out. I’m observing that you have no actually useful ability to predict or plan these things — and that the ROIs activists like you have predicted in the past have been astronomically off the mark — in reality LOIs — astronomical losses on the cult dogma “investments”.
The 60 Minutes segment on SpaceX started 43 minutes late due to NCAA basketball.
Once it started, though, the segment was awesome. Very fair, very factual. They aired the clip of Gene Cernan bashing commercial space before Congress, and it really made him look petty and bitter.
This was probably the best publicity ever by the mainstream media for commercial space. Hopefully it’s online soon because everyone should see it.
Update … The 60 Minutes segment on SpaceX is online:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50121782n
Enjoy.
DCSCA wrote @ March 18th, 2012 at 7:02 pm
“No. And Clarke addresses this.”
You know, you’re starting to sound as rigidly bound to what dead people say as some Republicans do about Reagan. And knowing how much you adore Reagan, you should take that as a clue about how your constant advice to send people back to the 60’s is being interpreted (hint: you’re out of touch).
Clarke talked about issues from the perspective of the late 60’s, not the issues of 42 years later. If he was doing a book epilogue today, he would have an updated frame of reference to comment on – a large commercial satellite & launch industry, the Shuttle, Mir, the ISS, government and commercial industries – a lot has changed over four decades…
“In fact, it should be doubled, as NdT has said…”
Wow. A reference from someone that isn’t a long dead corpse.
However, you of all people should be aware that we are borrowing 43 cents of every dollar we spend, so you’re being hypocritical. Again.
And why doubled? What is it that we can’t do today that we’ll be able to do with double the money? Why not triple? Or only 50% more? Why should taxpayers agree to your proposal to take more money out of their pockets?
The way I see it, if NASA got double the money, Congress would waste twice as much. How do you convince everyone that Congress will spend more money more wisely?
You raise more questions than you answer.
Googaw wrote @ March 18th, 2012 at 7:50 pm
“The time-tested way to determine whether a project actually had an ROI, and then to measure what that ROI was, is to see whether a company or company unit pursuing the project grows or at least stay in business based on voluntary private sector customers.”
Huh? You should change your screen name to “Hem n’ haw”.
You. Not some unmentionable industry or company unit. You. What is your assessment? So again:
“When would you say that the U.S. Government started seeing a net positive ROI on the taxpayer money invested in opening up space? Have we yet?â€
A simple answer, and a simple explanation will suffice.
My opinion is “Yes”, that taxpayer investment in starting up our space-related stuff has provided a positive ROI from the commercial satellite industry and related services. In fact I think we’ve seen the normal multiplier effect that takes place with terrestrial infrastructure.
@Stephen C. Smith wrote @ March 18th, 2012 at 8:13 pm
LOL enjoy, indeed- two lies in the teaser alone. Lots of gloss, little grit, few fact, near tears and plenty of holes. KoD was the nix by Neil and Gene. Classic, airy, airline magazine fare, courtesy of television’s most famous and lucrative ‘news magazine,’ “60 Minutes.” They still know how to do it, Don.
@Coastal Ron wrote @ March 18th, 2012 at 8:37 pm
In fact, Clarke was talking about comunication satellites decades before they became a reality, too. You’re just resisting reviewing his vision, which is fairly prescient, as usual. But to dismiss even considering his perspective and how he calibrated time frames in conjunction w/t the evolution of discovery with use speaks volumes about your own perspective. You’re back to the fish bowl thing- which he addresses as well.
Coastal Ron wrote @ March 18th, 2012 at 9:41 pm
“I’m calling you out. I’m observing that you have no actually useful ability to predict or plan these things”
Likely you don’t either, so we’re even. In fact I’m not even involved in aerospace or politics.
However I’m a taxpayer that is interested in how my money is spent, and I have had a life-long passion for all things space.
Since most of my career was in making sure that things got done (i.e. project management, manufacturing management, etc.), I see there is a lack of an overall goal that unites the combined efforts of our government, the science community, and U.S. industry. Some is be expected, but for a long time we have suffered from way too much.
For instance, the ISS is really only useful if we plan to expand humanity out into space. If the U.S. Government suddenly had no interest in that happening, then we would stop supporting it and bring everyone home. However our government does want to make a continuing investment so we can go to Mars eventually. I support that as a taxpayer. But there is a big enough lack of consensus on the sequence of getting to Mars that we’re making little progress, and wasting a lot of time and money.
So I advocate from the outside, hoping that I can help. Maybe not. But space is a passion to me, so I’ll sustain myself with the small “wins”, and hope that my voice contributes in some positive fashion.
Coastal Ron: “When would you say that the U.S. Government started seeing a net positive ROI on the taxpayer money invested in opening up space? ”
The answer, which should be too obvious to have to state, is that the U.S. federal government obviously has not, and will not, get more money out of NASA than they taxpayers and bond buyers put in. You did know that ROI has a straightforward non-euphemistic definition, did you not? It’s the direct return, accounted for in standard accounting terms, of money earned from money invested. Given that nearly all federal revenue, including the stuff NASA spends, comes from taxes, they hardly need ROI. Actual ROI in the U.S. government is an extremely rare occurrence — the U.S. Patent Office (from patent filing fees) and, sometimes, the U.S. Post Office are the only two examples that come to mind.
As for comsats, they are a spinoff of the 1950s missile race and the secret military satellite projects of the late 1950s. The technological breakthrough they are most thoroughly dependent on was the Bell Labs semiconductor work, without which neither the solar cells nor the miniaturized electronics of satellites would be feasible. NASA’s role was by comparison quite brief and quite negligible.
Bell Labs’ work was privately funded and was completely justified by their direct practical goal, making phone switches faster. Eisenhower’s missile and satellite projects of the 1950s were sufficiently justified in military terms alone. Unlike NASA’s economic fantasies, the precursors of comsats didn’t need to be justified by alleged and unpredictable spinoffs or by euphemistic bureaucrat-speak definitions of “ROI”. They were practical innovations on their own, and thus far more likely than taxpayer-funded sci-fi to give rise to other practical innovations and new industries.
@Googaw wrote @ March 18th, 2012 at 11:14 pm
As a kid in NJ, recall my neighbor worked at Bell Labs and on Telstar– quite proud of it- invited the whole neighborhood over to watch a film about it in his home as it was a big advance at the time– if memory serves, it was in ’62.
“the ISS is really only useful if we plan to expand humanity out into space.”
What is “expanding humanity out into space” supposed to mean? If it’s supposed to mean space colonization, the ISS has nothing more to do with that goal than a voodoo doll has to do with the person the doll is supposed to represent. There are many very difficult problems that need to be solved before we in the far future can colonize space, and ISS doesn’t solve any of them.
Even if you don’t mean space colonization, and just care about an Apollo-like stunt to Mars and nothing more, ISS doesn’t contribute to even that goal in any substantial way that Skylab, Salyut, and Mir haven’t already. Did you notice they aren’t even doing Mars-duration stays on the ISS? The cosmonaut stays on Mir were longer. This is remarkably good evidence, if any more evidence were needed, that they don’t seriously plan to send astronauts to Mars any time in the foreseeable future. It’s just hype to get other things funded. Mostly it’s just hype to keep their useless jobs working on their useless cathedrals in the lowest possible orbit they can get away with. They are taking your dreams and twisting them and bamboozling you.
Googaw wrote @ March 18th, 2012 at 11:14 pm
“As for comsats, they are a spinoff of the 1950s missile race and the secret military satellite projects of the late 1950s. The technological breakthrough they are most thoroughly dependent on was the Bell Labs semiconductor work, without which neither the solar cells nor the miniaturized electronics of satellites would be feasible. NASA’s role was by comparison quite brief and quite negligible. ”
I agree with the last sentence…I dont agree much with the rest. Sorry but it is pretty important.
Comsats are almost a “James Burke” Connections synergy of technology that all came together at about the right time…and some very bright people who saw all that and put together a proposal…and NASA which had the rockets and to some extent the money.
Syncom 1-3 are a tour de force of putting together technology and making it work…in the scheme of things they are far more important then the Telstar or Relay experiments which were going on simultaneously…or the military efforts with Advent and the Vega upper stage…
Ironically had the military pursued Advent…they probably would have been slower leaving HF for the prime comm things…Syncom (and DoD experiments with it) pushed the DoD into a much simpler but quite effective system which allowed them to start the transition from HF (and other Moonbounce was big) to the Birds.
I am not trying to score debate points here but it is important to understand the uniqueness of the Syncom experiment because in my view it is the only template we have for a successful technology venture that resulted in a marketable product…we will have to come up with something similar if human spaceflight is ever to be “a profit center”.
As I personal note I have long had three “pieces” of Syncom technology. Two of my dishes are old Syncom dishes…and I have some old downlink equipment…I am in the process of restoring some uplink equipment to be used (hopefully) In the “Syncom at 50″ experiment.
Robert G. Oler WB5MZO
Googaw wrote @ March 18th, 2012 at 11:14 pm
“The answer, which should be too obvious to have to state…”
Apparently not obvious enough. Maybe I could have phrased the question a little better, but I go with the idea that the purpose for government is to benefit it’s citizens. To do what individuals and companies can’t or won’t do on their own. The government collects money from us, our representatives (like the NASA Appropriators who called the meeting for this Wednesday) determine how that money is to be spent, and then we sit back and see if it benefits us collectively, or in some cases individually (hopefully in a lawful way).
“…is that the U.S. federal government obviously has not, and will not, get more money out of NASA than they taxpayers and bond buyers put in.”
NASA sells bonds? Congress determines how much money NASA gets, regardless how much money the U.S. Government takes in.
Ok, back to the subject at hand. So you think there is no multiplier effect to NASA research? That the spending of money on NASA – or anything – is essentially a drag on the economy? A net negative ROI, so to speak?
Odd.
“The technological breakthrough they are most thoroughly dependent on was the Bell Labs semiconductor work, without which neither the solar cells nor the miniaturized electronics of satellites would be feasible.”
Guess you saw that NYT diagram about Bell Labs, huh? I think you’re as gaga over Bell Labs as your buddy DCSCA is over von Braun and Clarke. And just as much relevancy…
Coastal Ron wrote:
“when would you say that the U.S. Government started seeing a net positive ROI on the taxpayer money invested in opening up space? Have we yet?”
When the tax revenue from the new taxable economic activity has paid back the original investment by the government.
We are nowhere even close. NASA can be doing a lot more investment where you can achieve better multiplier effects then they are getting.
BTW we are trying a Relay 1 50 anniversary…problem is that the Syncoms were turned off working…Relay 1 and 2 had some issue. WB5MZO
Coastal Ron wrote @ March 19th, 2012 at 1:07 am
Ok, back to the subject at hand. So you think there is no multiplier effect to NASA research? That the spending of money on NASA – or anything – is essentially a drag on the economy? A net negative ROI, so to speak?>>
It is not negative but its closer to neutral then it is to well positive….but you have to be careful and deliniate what you mean by “NASA spending”.
Aviation more then pays for itself…but then there is not a lot of aviation dollars and bureacrcay that has to be overcome in the “net effect”…and there is a saleable product. For instance…we are slowly on the march to replacing hydraulic flight controls with electric motors…that research has more or less been lead by NASA Langley and Lewis. More and more of the “nickle seven” is moving toward dual flight controls (ie one side with hydraulics and the other with electrics).
Human spaceflight not so much. There is a very very large group of people to feed and the product is not aimed at producing either infrastructurer that the country can use…nor really technology that spins off…
Here in Clear Lake the numbers are such that really any “federal facility” would bring about the same amount of multiplier in the community for the money spent…ie its mostly the salary distribution that is the money changer.
Robert
Vladislaw wrote @ March 19th, 2012 at 1:09 am
“We are nowhere even close. NASA can be doing a lot more investment where you can achieve better multiplier effects then they are getting.”
In what areas should we have NASA focusing to do that?
“Odd.”
Being skeptical of government agency propaganda is quite normal and healthy, actually.
Robert G. Oler wrote @ March 19th, 2012 at 10:39 am
“Aviation more then pays for itself…but then there is not a lot of aviation dollars and bureacrcay that has to be overcome in the “net effectâ€â€¦and there is a saleable product.”
OK, so tax dollars spent by NASA in the area of aviation (the first ‘A’ in NASA) has had a net positive return from what you can see? That NASA effort spent solving tough problems for the commercial aviation industry has made aviation safer, more efficient, etc.
I would agree with that, but it’s pretty clear that Congress has lost sight of that.
I also do agree that the two sides of NASA, aviation & space, don’t have the same goals and the same taxpayer ROI. As you point out, there is a huge economy built up around aviation – lots of customers and money.
Even for space we can break it out into the commercial side like satellites, and the “exploration” side. Does NASA do much with commercial satellites these days? I don’t see it in their budget if it’s there.
So this really gets back to our goals and expectations for space exploration. Should we be doing it, and if so, what is the emphasis we should use between remote sensing exploration (probes, rovers, etc.) and human exploration? And what is the expected payoff? What should taxpayers expect for the money NASA spends, besides the normal recirculation/redistribution effect of government spending?
At the highest levels of our government, there is a generally accepted view that the next big goal is sending humans to Mars. No timeframes, but that’s why there is such a focus on all things Mars, including the lack of spending on it by the proposed FY2013 Administration budget.
But I think in some ways this lack of an overt plan for going to Mars is causing us to waste time & money. If you look at the list of things that NASA says we need to solve before going to Mars, it’s a huge list, and not a lot of it is being worked on by things Congress is funding. Nowhere on the list is a need for a mega-rocket, but radiation mitigation and gravity-related health issues rank right at the top. What if we put $38B into radiation mitigation and artificial gravity spacecraft instead of the SLS?
I think as long as we don’t have an agreed upon roadmap for our human exploration plans – not dates per se, just a roadmap that everyone works towards – that it’s impossible to know whether what we’re doing will really pay off in the future. That it won’t be easy for taxpayers to “connect the dots” between, say, the ISS and landing the first human on Mars.
My $0.02
That the spending of money on NASA – or anything – is essentially a drag on the economy? A net negative ROI, so to speak?
Odd.
I think it has a negative net ROI, but then I’m an odd guy.
It could theoretically have an enormously positive impact on the commercial viability of manned spaceflight, but while that would be exciting, it would still count as a negative net ROI.
“At the highest levels of our government, there is a generally accepted view that the next big goal is sending humans to Mars.”
Not even close. You’ve been bamboozled.
“I think you’re as gaga over Bell Labs as your buddy DCSCA is over von Braun and Clarke. And just as much relevancy… ;-)”
If you don’t understand the crucial role that solar cells and microelectronics play in satellites — and especially how they made satellites far less expensive and far more functional by 1960 than would otherwise have been possible — then I’m afraid you’ve got some very profound gaps in your knowledge. These innovations fundamentally changed the course of space development — indeed, without them economical space development would not have been possible. As for the role of Bell Labs in bringing about those innovations, I just described it. Or you could just Google. It’s not exactly a deeply held secret.
My main point is not to agree with NYT that Bell Labs was the font of all innovation — they weren’t — the point which you continue to miss is that innovation cannot be centrally planned. It proceeds very unpredictably, but tends to follow the general pattern of solutions to some practical engineering problems leading to solutions to other practical engineering problems. NASA HSF has in fact fallen far short of other forms of government “investment”, much less private laboratories, in producing valuable innovations.
As for the role of dogmatic sci-fi “visions” like those promoted by von Braun , for example in promoting those stupendously stupid sinkholes of hundreds of billions of dollars, space stations, it has been profoundly negative. von Braun, and those who inspired him and were inspired by him in the pages of pulp fiction, spun preposterous economic fantasies (e.g. in the profoundly misguided Collier’s articles).
His acolytes have never adapted their dogmas to even the 1950s innovation of the semiconductor, much less the variety of radical innovations that followed from it. They adhere with fanatic tenacity to a belief that was an economic fantasy before the 1950s, and obsolete after it. They are like priests insisting that we should still build cathedrals out of stone long after steel has been invented. (And they further insist that taxpayers rather than parishioners should be paying for these cult fetishes!). Utter driveling idiots when it comes to reasoning about economics, business, and their consequences for technology. Yet via the exigencies of the Cold War they and their horrendously misguided “visions’ have long dominated NASA politics.
Googaw wrote @ March 19th, 2012 at 3:23 pm
“Not even close. You’ve been bamboozled.”
Well apparently you’re not listening. Although maybe you figure if you listen to a politician that you will get hypnotized and will be forever turned into a zombie (or whatever meme you’re onto now). Sheesh.
But since there is no official/overt plan to go to Mars, no one is telling me or you anything – that was the whole point of what I said. I guess you missed that. You have to look at what people are saying and doing.
Take the VSE for instance:
“Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations“. The implementation part of the Moon effort was botched, but the big goal was Mars, not the Moon (unless you’re a member of “Moon First”).
One of the four goals of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is “Plan for a human mission to Mars“. Why else send so many rovers and probes to one planet?
Part of the rationale for the SLS is for missions to Mars, and in case you missed it, many members of Congress are not happy with the proposed FY2013 NASA Budget, which doesn’t spend enough on Mars missions.
There’s more, and it adds up for me, but like I said it’s not well organized, and that causes a lot of wasted time and money.
Robert G. Oler wrote @ March 19th, 2012 at 10:39 am
“Aviation more then pays for itself…
“not really- it gets quite a but of government ‘subsidies’ and most of the major commercial carriers have bankruptcy issues.”
“As for the role of dogmatic sci-fi “visions†like those promoted by von Braun…”
Wernher Von Braun was an engineer, not a ‘sci-fi’ visionary and proposed space projects based on the technologies at hand and the capacity to build upon them. And Clarke, although best remembered today for his sci-fi novels and ‘2001,’ penned many prescient works couched in real world space activities and extrapolated projectionx based on the technologies of his times. He hasn’t been gone all that long, either.
DCSCA wrote @ March 19th, 2012 at 5:20 pm
“not really- it gets quite a but of government ‘subsidies’ and most of the major commercial carriers have bankruptcy issues.”
The topic is taxpayers, not airline investors. Have taxpayers benefited from the spending government has done (with our tax money) in aviation?
And do you realize that you were quoting yourself? And seriously dude, don’t you have spell check in your browser? A fifth grader spells better than you. Or is your browser from the 60’s too?
DCSCA wrote @ March 19th, 2012 at 5:10 pm
Robert G. Oler wrote @ March 19th, 2012 at 10:39 am
“Aviation more then pays for itself…
you replied
“not really- it gets quite a but of government ‘subsidies’ and most of the major commercial carriers have bankruptcy issues.â€
..I was not talking about aviation as an industry but if you read the entire post instead of knee jerking an answer you would have noticed I was refering to the first A (Aeronautics) in NASA…
Having said that commercial aviation as an industry more then repays the federal investment in the infrastructure.
try and follow the conversation RGO
Coastal Ron wrote:
“In what areas should we have NASA focusing to do that?”
There are several economic types of the multiplier effect. If NASA has X amount of funds to pursue a project where there are many sub contractors they can say that a contractor, in order to get the contract they must supply some of the funds themselves. This was how the EELV project started out, Boeing and Lockheed had to put of funds themselves, this multiplied the dollars going to the project allowing the government to get more hardware for the dollars invested.
Are any of the major contractors for the SLS investing their own funds?
Buying data versus contracting for a probe.
If NASA just put out a price they would pay for X data, multiple suppliers would be forced to actually commit the funds into hardware first before the government spends a dime, another way to get a multiplier effect.
Prizes are another way, NASA utilizes this but not as much as they could be.
Coastal, you’re confusing propaganda with planning. Of course everybody who can possibly spin their mission as being related to getting astronauts to Mars spins it as such to get the support of the Mars Society fanatics. Everybody wants people writing to their Congressmen to support their project.
If, however, there was an actual serious plan to go to Mars, the first thing NASA would do is actually have astronauts stay on ISS for Mars missions durations, see what problems arise, and try to solve them. But they don’t. The problems are so serious, and a Mars astronaut mission is otherwise so far removed from technological, economic, and political reality, that this experiment would cost NASA politically far more than it would gain.
It’s great PR to help justify this or that mission as by spinning it as somehow related to heavenly pilgrims on Mars, but it would be drastically bad PR for NSASA to actually have an astronaut wasting away and ruining their body for life on TV. If NASA thought otherwise they could quite easily do this simple experiment on ISS. That they haven’t, after many years of sending astronauts to ISS, and still don’t plan to, speaks volumes. If they can’t even bother to run this experiment in the relative safety of LEO, do you think they have any intention of running it farther away? That glorious heavenly pilgrimage you think is an agreed-on “plan” is a pure pipe dream used only for gulling the gullible.
Googaw wrote @ March 19th, 2012 at 6:23 pm
“If, however, there was an actual serious plan to go to Mars, the first thing NASA would do is actually have astronauts stay on ISS for Mars missions durations, see what problems arise, and try to solve them.”
I don’t think you know what’s going on with the ISS. A six month stay in zero G tells us a lot about the conditions that astronauts will have to deal with on a trip to Mars – which takes about six months. Fancy that.
Just this month it was in the news about eye vision problems being caused by what they think is a lack of gravity, and the condition could be deleterious during a full-duration Mars mission duration (it can be bad after 6 months). Best we find these issues in small chunks of experimentation instead of blinding our astronauts in the name of science. Dontcha think?
What would you suggest? Send a crew of six on a long voyage and see if they survive? I’m sure you’ll be the first to volunteer.
Health issues for future Mars exploration missions is a high priority, but there are so many more issues that we have to overcome that are NOT being addressed, that anyone who understands the issues (I’m not including you) would know that regardless what our politicians want, it’s not happening while they squander $Billions on unneeded pork projects.
Have a look at the FISO website, and download their “NASA Space Technology Roadmaps and Priorities” presentation.
So no, I don’t believe what politicians promise, but I do listen to what they are saying, and especially to what they are spending money on. And most think they are helping us get closer to Mars, but because of a lack of overall coordination, we’re not getting there anywhere near as fast as they might think.
Coastal Ron wrote @ March 19th, 2012 at 2:12 pm
So this really gets back to our goals and expectations for space exploration. >>
this is a point I have been making here and other places for sometime. In the end at the cost that human exploration takes, there is no possible justification for it. People have been trying to find justification. Whittington and Wind and others have the Chinese taking over the Moon…so we have to go there (why they would want the moon is never really answered)…”A great power explores space with humans” but there is really no evidence of that…
The one example of space exploration was the lunar goal…and it is something that has stuck in people’s mind for a long time; and we have never really found the synergy to recreate it. And I doubt we will.
In the end human exploration of space is never going to happen unless the cost come down many factors…and “the why” at least gets partially answered. I dont agree that there is anything inevitable with the notion of “people (or Americans) on Mars”…some people in the political world might express those notions, but there is no political support for any of this.
The dream is for “the killer app” on the space station, and I doubt it will come. The field is simply to small unless random chance just pops up on the station.
In the end we will never really see what humans can do in explotation of space…until the cost go down, private enterprise gets involved and the field opens a lot RGO
@Robert G. Oler wrote @ March 19th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
“Aviation more then pays for itself…’ – “..I was not talking about aviation as an industry…”
Nice try.
Robert G. Oler wrote @ March 20th, 2012 at 12:48 am
“this is a point I have been making here and other places for sometime. In the end at the cost that human exploration takes, there is no possible justification for it.”
Can humans expand our species away from Earth? Completely unknown.
How quickly could we find out? It certainly has been a generational thing so far, and there is no reason to think it won’t take many more generations just to figure out if we’re getting close to being successful.
Should we keep pursuing it? I’ll agree that it’s an article of faith at this point, and it really does boil down to whether the taxpayer of today wants to be funding an experiment that may not have a positive outcome. But it could.
Maybe some people look at it like an insurance policy that they have to pay into every month. Someday they may need it, but maybe not.
But this does get back to how much money should we take away from taxpayers for this experiment. I don’t think they would want anymore money going to NASA, or at least not until they see some clear evidence that more is needed.
And who is right? What if your great-grandkids live to see a large asteroid hit Earth. Would you have wished we spent time and money becoming a multi-planet species? If you don’t – that you’re dead and you don’t care about your future offspring – then what we’re spending on on HSF and anything beyond Earth is a waste.
Heady questions.
Meanwhile, back to the original topic for this thread …
I propose House Appropriations Committee NASA Budget Hearing Drinking Game, although I warn you to do this at home because you will be in no shape to drive by the end of the hearing
(1) Chair Frank Wolf mentions China … Take a drink.
(2) Representative mentions jobs in his/her district … Take a drink.
(3) Charlie Bolden cries … Take a drink.
(4) Representative accuses Obama administration of stealing SLS money for commercial crew … Take a drink.
(5) For each representative who does not attend the meeting … Take a drink.
(6) Representative muses whether we’d be better off continuing to pay Russia than investing in American aerospace to fly U.S. astronauts … Take a drink.
(7) Representative claims Obama cancelled the Space Shuttle … Take a drink.
(8) Representative thinks Constellation is still the current program … Take a drink.
(9) Representative claims SLS/Orion is a backup option for space taxi to the ISS … Take a drink.
(10) Representative accuses Obama of surrendering our space program to another nation … One drink for each country listed.
Any other suggestions?
Googaw wrote @ March 19th, 2012 at 6:23 pm
“If, however, there was an actual serious plan to go to Mars, the first thing NASA would do is actually have astronauts stay on ISS for Mars missions durations, see what problems arise, and try to solve them.â€
Part 2
Oh, and here is an interesting news item about NASA wanting to use the ISS for a Mars mission dry run.
According to your measure, I guess they are serious about Mars…
Coastal Ron wrote @ March 20th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
Robert G. Oler wrote @ March 20th, 2012 at 12:48 am
“this is a point I have been making here and other places for sometime. In the end at the cost that human exploration takes, there is no possible justification for it.â€
you replied:
“Can humans expand our species away from Earth? Completely unknown.”
The problem is that when societies tend to tackle technological efforts for which they are vastly immature for…usually end up proving the futility of the effort period and move away from it. The Vikings trying to settle “North America” were clearly out of their league in terms of the technologies to do so…and there needed to be some “non exploration” development before the effort was doable. (we have had our own history of that actually the SST issue was just to technologically immature to even attempt to be successful.)
Our space faring technology (including cost and utilization) are so immature that any effort to “settle the planets” (or anywhere off world) is doomed to glorious failure.
What we need to do is to proceed along other lines and hope the great impact is far enough away so we have the technology to deal with it. RGO
Robert G. Oler wrote @ March 20th, 2012 at 9:12 pm
“Our space faring technology (including cost and utilization) are so immature that any effort to “settle the planets†(or anywhere off world) is doomed to glorious failure.”
Today, sure.
And yet 100 years ago we were just getting used to driving cars instead of horses (the Model T was only 4 years old), and 57 years later we were walking on the Moon. It’s hard to predict technological tipping points.
Besides the big question of whether humans can live out their lives in 1/6 or 1/3 gravity (lots of known zero G gravity issues), I think we’re not that far away from being able to survive long-term in space, and then it’s just a cost issue for being able to travel between planets. Not next year, but maybe in 57 years or so.
Two main things holding us back though. The first is money, and it is rightly the biggest one. Part of that can be mitigated if we can dramatically drop the cost to get payloads to orbit. Musk thinks he might have found the right combination of technology & technique, so maybe we’ll know soon.
The other is a focused approach to doing this. I’ve mentioned it before, so suffice it to say that I don’t see one today, which I think leads to a lot of wasted time and money. I also think the approach should be international, or at least with international partners that we trust. There would probably be some inefficiency inherent in that approach (like there was building the ISS), but I think spreading the risks/costs makes up for it.
Oh, and public buy-in from our political leaders. Or not. We’re in kind of a middle area right now – no firm yes, no firm no.
Stephen C. Smith wrote @ March 20th, 2012 at 7:57 pm
JD Black RGO
Coastal, the irony is that I too have a strong belief in the importance of future space colonization — it’s my main motivation for posting here. The basic problem here is that you have no idea what space colonization entails: that is to say, what the most important problems are that need to be solved. Your theory amounts to voodoo doll space colonization — launch a few useless astronauts today, and that will somehow lead to launching even more people in the future, and so on, until, viola, space is colonized. It’s all merely a matter of the “survival” or our voodoo dolls and “a cost issue for being able to travel between the planets.” No need for a self-sufficient high-tech economy and ecosystem and all those entail to survive that dreaded asteroid. Space has a cosmic magic that way!
In reality, neither the ISS, nor the hypothetical moon bases and Mars missions would solve any of the most important problems facing (what you at least admit to be far future) space colonization. Indeed, since most of these problems are economic in nature, these preposterously expensive, completely unprofitable (except via government contracts) and completely dependent astronaut cathedrals take us in the opposite direction of where we need to go: which is expanding and improving space industry and transportation, or the precursors of future space industry: for example subsea extraction telerobotics, which is developing most of the technology we will need for future space extraction industries, essential to “living off the land” instead of launching everything out of a deep gravity well.
By solving practical problems of real commerce and security that we can actually solve now, we create self-sustaining and growing industries where one practical innovation leads to the next. That, and not heavenly voodoo, is the key to growing our capabilities towards space colonization.
You can watch this morning’s appropriations hearing at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_SuLjt_kr4
Googaw wrote @ March 21st, 2012 at 1:22 pm
I see that voodoo is your meme of the day. I’ll see what I can work in…
“By solving practical problems of real commerce and security that we can actually solve now, we create self-sustaining and growing industries where one practical innovation leads to the next.”
No argument there. But none of that happens without pouring money into those areas before reaping the rewards. Fully functioning and profitable industries don’t appear overnight you know. And that appears to be our major area of disagreement.
So far we have been investing in space for 3-4 generations (counting at birth), and what profitable, fully commercial (i.e. no government support at all), industries do we have to show for it? Satellites services. I don’t even count the launch services part since a lot of it is government subsidized in one way or another.
“The basic problem here is that you have no idea what space colonization entails”
Au contrare. I’ve never stated that I did. In fact I have been clearly stating on this blog thread that no one knows if we can even thrive as a species off planet Earth. That’s part of the reason why I think NASA’s money is being spent incorrectly, because it’s not addressing survivability issues – we’re not going to Mars, or likely not even to the Moon for more than short jaunts until we solve the huge number of health issues. We are far more fragile than our technology.
But everything we want to do must be done by investing far before the need. It’s the same here on Earth, it’s just that we do it so well that most people (like you apparently) never see it or realize what’s happening. On the news today I heard a discussion about oil exploration, and one oil industry person said that one oil company had invested $10B into just developing an Alaska oil field – no oil production has even started.
It’s the same with space, but it’s going to be a much larger investment over a much longer period of time. And like I was telling Oler, no one knows when tipping points come – those times when suddenly it becomes much easier to do something.
IF SpaceX were to perfect reusable rockets, and IF autonomous rovers were perfected, then the Moon could be explored and mined for a much lower cost than what we can do today, and that might change the economic equation for building structures in space. What structures? Rotating space stations that allow humans to live in space without the detrimental side-effects of zero-G.
Is that the way the future will unfold? I doubt it. But we won’t get there at all if we don’t invest in the future – whatever amount that may be.
COLONY:
“a group of people who leave their native country to form in a new land a settlement subject to, or connected with, the parent nation.”
History has shown many examples where people have left their parent country to form a colony in a distant land only to fail. One thing that all colonies seem to share is that the colonists will own land when they get there and can start being self suffient. This also provided them with a lot of relatively cheap resources.
I can not imagine a group of people calling themselves a colony but no one is a landowner.
Space Coast Rep. Sandy Adams sent a letter March 20 to Appropriations chair Frank Wolf requesting NASA’s proposed FY13 funding be cut by 40%, from the requested $830 million to $500 million.
Thanks to redistricting, she won’t be my representative after this year. Good riddance.