Congress, NASA

More concerns about commercial crew and Congressional language

Even before the House took up the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill last week, the administration warned that it considered the bill unacceptable, citing in a statement of administration policy concerns about the bill’s provisions, including the reduced funding levels and “restrictive report language” for NASA’s commercial crew program. This was widely communicated as a veto threat against the bill based on that language, although that is something of an oversimplification, since the NASA language was just one paragraph in a four-page document outlining the various issues the administration had with the bill.

During the debate of the bill in the House on Wednesday, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) raised his own concerns about the program and the report language regarding it accompanying the bill. “I believe it makes a flawed comparison between commercial crew program partners and the energy firm of Solyndra,” he said, referring to the report, in a colloquy with Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), the chairman of the appropriations CJS subcommittee, during the debate on the bill Wednesday afternoon. “In addition, it requires an immediate downselect to a single program partner, which I do not believe is the best path to move forward.”

Rohrabacher went on to say he did share some concerns Wolf has with the program. “NASA has not shared a clear, comprehensive management plan for the program, despite repeated requests,” he said. “Instead, they have made inconsistent and confusing statements abut the program’s purpose, timeline, design, cost, and procurement methods.” He said he hoped there would be the opportunity to discuss “some alternative approaches” that address those concerns while achieving the program’s goals. “With that in mind, I am willing to work with NASA to help come up with a new plan that will do just that.”

Wolf offered a sympathetic response. “I believe that despite our differences—and there may not really be that much of a difference—we share a common goal of providing reliable domestic access to the space station in the fastest, most cost-effective manner,” he said, adding that if Rohrabacher believes that he can work with NASA to come up with a improved plan, “we want to work with him.”

In a statement issued after the colloquy, Rohrabacher expressed his frustration with both NASA and Congress about the state of the program. “NASA and this Administration have not been able to sell this basic idea” of the benefits of commercial crew, he said. “Congress has embraced a measured approach to this idea; too slowly and timidly from my point of view. It seems NASA is itself confused, or maybe suffers from internal conflicts over the specific goals and approaches. The agency has not told a clear and convincing story to win this initiative the funding and freedom of action it requires.”

“As a champion of Commercial Crew, I am no longer willing to give NASA the benefit of every doubt on this program. NASA must do better,” Rohrabacher said later in the statement. “NASA must get behind a more effective and transparent commercial crew strategy and program plan. We’ve made a lot of progress in recent years, but we cannot move forward simply on momentum.”

The next day, NASA administrator Charles Bolden spoke out against any effort to limit competition in the commercial crew program. “Despite a bi-partisan agreement to ensure American astronauts are traveling into space on U.S. built spacecraft as soon as possible, some want to short-change this job-creating initiative and limit competition in the commercial space arena,” he said in remarks prepared for a meeting Thursday of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) in Washington. (Emphasis in original.)

“Ending competition by down-selecting to a sole commercial space company could double the cost of developing a privately built human spaceflight system and it will leave us in the same position we find ourselves today — having only one option for getting our astronauts to the space station,” Bolden said. “We are hopeful we can work to resolve these issues and keep this important initiative on track.”

Florida Today, meanwhile, has taken an aggressive stance on the issue, with two of its columnists criticizing the Space Coast’s two members of Congress, Reps. Sandy Adams (R) and Bill Posey (R), for voting in favor of the overall appropriations bill despite the commercial crew funding levels and language. Posey told the newspaper’s John Kelly that limited funds force NASA to make an earlier downselect: “In a perfect world, with unlimited funds, you wouldn’t have to do that, but that is not the world we live in today.”

“What I can’t understand is why House members” like Adams and Posey “would vote to halt the only bargain NASA has going,” Florida Today’s Matt Reed said in his own column. “Today, NASA’s budget represents .48 percent of federal spending. The commercial crew competition accounts for 1/18th of that. And Congress is concerned… why?”

63 comments to More concerns about commercial crew and Congressional language

  • Dana Rohrabacher said:

    In a statement issued after the colloquy, Rohrabacher expressed his frustration with both NASA and Congress about the state of the program. “NASA and this Administration have not been able to sell this basic idea” of the benefits of commercial crew, he said. “Congress has embraced a measured approach to this idea; too slowly and timidly from my point of view. It seems NASA is itself confused, or maybe suffers from internal conflicts over the specific goals and approaches. The agency has not told a clear and convincing story to win this initiative the funding and freedom of action it requires.”

    Poppycock, Dana.

    I’ve watched those hearings. Time and again, Charlie Bolden has explained it until he’s blue in the face. Your idiotic self-absorbed porking colleagues are not interested in the facts, only in how this will benefit their re-election campaigns.

    Dana, you’ve had plenty of opportunity to explain it to your colleagues. I’ve watched these hearings, and you rarely speak up other than during the five minutes you’re alloted for questions. You have plenty of opportunity to go knock on their office doors and explain it to them, since they won’t listen to Charlie.

    I appreciate your support for commercial space, but don’t blame the Administration. You know better. Just because this is an election year doesn’t justify your playing scapegoat.

  • Rant Reader

    These people and people like them are isolated and immune from internet ranting, Stephan. Nice rant, though.

  • A M Swallow

    The political differences between single supply and multiple supplies include:

    a. jobs in more than one constituency for instance SpaceX is based in California and Blue Origin in Washington state.

    b. a single supplier play campaign contributions once only and this has probably already been paid, where as multiple supplies may have to lobby for each rocket NASA launches.

    c. several senators are likely to get campaign contributions from firms in their states. for instance the Boeing space office is in Texas and Sierra Nevada Corporation in Colorado.

    d. redundancy means that NASA does not have to stop launching because a supplier has gone out of business or stopped making the vehicle. This means that NASA solves the space equivalent of Solyndra by simply buying from a rival manufacture. (The clever people at NASA have already predicted and prepared for these type of problems, unless some politician sabotages the solution.)

  • Dark Blue Nine

    I have to agree with Stephen. Rohrbacher’s (or his staff’s) space policy instincts and inclinations are good, but he lacks follow-through. I recall in the formative days of X-33 that Rohrbacher sponsored an amendment to ensure that the program had two competing vehicles, which could have produced a much better outcome for that program. Unfortunately, Rohrbacher failed to even show up on the floor when his amendment came up.

    Half-hearted (or cynically false) attempts at change are par for the course with most congressmen on most issues, but actions (or the lack thereof) still speak louder than words.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Stephen Smith is one of the bright folks on this forum…I’ll just say this in a little different note.

    While I think Charlie has talked a lot about the need for commercial cargo/crew…he nor his boss has in my viewpoint explained the larger picture of why this is important…why commercial launch companies are important.

    That wont change the pork riders…but there is an astonishing lack to me anyway of “vision” here. RGO

  • Malmesbury

    Commercial crew can also be see as a threat to the structure of politics.

    Currently, big government program’s are closely controlled by the Congress Criters. Even when some competition is allowed the winner is a political pick. Selecting a single provider before anything real is built ensures that these judgements are less… embarrassing. And no, the YF22, YF23, X35 and X36 don’t change that – they were flying mock ups that had very little in common with the actual planes built a decade later. Except a similarity in shape. In contrast NASA are threatening to fly multiple real competitors. Bit hard to pick the political choice if some fool builds a better spacecraft.

    Another problem is the SAA agreements. FAR ensures political control of where in the US the money is spent. Under SAA some idiot might allocate work on the basis on the best or cheapest place in the country. Which is plain wrong.

    The whole concept of politics is to control who wins and where the winner spends the cash. This gives the pols their importance in the loop – pretty hard to horse trade with no horse.

    An open competition between real, working systems, built wherever the vendor fancies shuts the Congress Critters out of the loop. Takes their power away as they see it.

  • It was the administration that terminated NASA’s return to the Moon while attempting to use Commercial Crew Development as a replacement for NASA’s manned space program. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress rejected this idea and had to force the administration to accept the SLS/MPCV program.

    The administration was clearly not pleased and attempted to drag its feet on SLS development which caused even more hostility from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, causing them to become hostile against using tax payer funds for Commercial Crew development.

    The administration has now put America in a situation where both NASA’s manned space program and the private commercial manned space programs are both underfunded.

    The near term beneficiary of Commercial Crew Development is certainly not NASA since extending the life of the ISS as a $3 billion a year make-work program for private spaceflight companies takes away $3 billion a year in funds that NASA could use for manned beyond Leo programs.

    Plus there’s not even enough traffic (3 to 6 manned flights every year) to the ISS from the US side to sustain more than one or two private companies.

    Space X has wisely started to embrace space tourism to private commercial space stations (the only sustainable way multiple private manned spaceflight companies can stay afloat) , probably because it knows that the fix may be in against it if Congress forces the administration to settle on just two Commercial Crew Companies to transport astronauts to the ISS. And there’s no doubt in my mind that there is going to be strong pressure in Congress to support the ULA and ATK/Astrium as the only two commercial crew companies hired by NASA to transport astronauts to the ISS.

    Marcel F. Williams

  • Doug Lassiter

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 4:50 am
    “It was the administration that terminated NASA’s return to the Moon while attempting to use Commercial Crew Development as a replacement for NASA’s manned space program.”

    Curious reading of the facts. This administration terminated Constellation because it was headed vastly over budget, was going to be seriously delayed, and was, in the words of the Augustine Committee, fiscally unexecutable. Congress showed no willingness to support it at the funding level it needed to succeed. The administration terminated it because that was the smart thing to do.

    To say that the administration tried to “replace” Constellation with commercial crew is just bunk. No one with any space policy smarts had any glimmer of belief that commercial space was a replacement for Constellation. Commercial crew had no aspirations of sending people to the Moon and, for that matter, Constellation had no aspirations of sending people to ISS.

    “The administration has now put America in a situation where both NASA’s manned space program and the private commercial manned space programs are both underfunded.”

    Excuse me? SLS and MPCV are fully funded. The porkers in Congress won that battle. The administration has repeatedly presented Congress with a properly generous proposed investment in commercial space. Congress has repeatedly rejected it.

    “Plus there’s not even enough traffic (3 to 6 manned flights every year) to the ISS from the US side to sustain more than one or two private companies. ”

    If you’re worried about insufficient traffic to support a program, just wait until SLS! Commercial access to LEO has ramifications that, in principle, go well beyond access to ISS.

  • KDP

    Is it possible that Rohrabacher is deftly offering Wolf a face-saving way out of his previous stupidity?

  • amightywind

    Down select has been baked in by congress for months. KBH first suggested it last year. The NASA has been slow to get the hint, or more likely, they are deploying their familiar passive/aggressive tactics. Yes, the NASA leadership is timid. There is not a technical manager among them.

    could double the cost of developing a privately built human spaceflight system and it will leave us in the same position we find ourselves today — having only one option for getting our astronauts to the space station

    Why should reducing the number of CCDev2 entrants from 4 to 1 raise costs? Give one project the funding it needs and pull in the schedule. The CCDev2 thing was crazy anyway given that Ares I/Orion were well along in development. Orion could have been in service by 2014.

  • John

    Is it the really about Republicans vs the current administration? If the Obama administration really wanted commercial crew to be viable they would have pushed for that development. No signs here. In fact Congress has avoided committing to the development of a reliable crew vehicle since 2005. Obama knew Ares1 was an experimental junker, yet made no moves.

  • Space X has wisely started to embrace space tourism to private commercial space stations

    SpaceX has always embraced that. Please stop flaunting your ignorance.

  • Vladislaw

    Marcel wrote:

    “It was the administration that terminated NASA’s return to the Moon while attempting to use Commercial Crew Development as a replacement for NASA’s manned space program.”

    Who pays you to write this? Seriously .. you sound like you are a paid shill, because no one can be that divorced from reality.

    Please explain to me how the President can terminate a program like Constellation, without utilizing a veto?

    The President’s budget is absolutely non binding, hell in most causes it isn’t anything more that a mild suggestion.

    The President’s budget didn’t include funding for Constellation, you seem to think that is the end of it. The President waves his magic wand and the program ends.

    Congress could have continued funding for Constellation. In order for the President to be guilty of ending the program that is what congress would have had to do. Vote for funding Constellation and then the President would have had to veto it and the veto would have had to be sustained in the Senate.

    Congress didn’t fund Constellation. Do you understand that Marcel?

    CONGRESS decided that the moon program was so far behind schedule and had busted the budget so bad that they couldn’t fund it any longer.

  • Coastal Ron

    John wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 10:49 am

    If the Obama administration really wanted commercial crew to be viable they would have pushed for that development. No signs here.

    Are you not aware of the CCDev program? We’re already into phase two of it, and phase three (CCiCAP) proposals have already been submitted.

    Are you not aware that the Administration is asking Congress to fund the CCDev/CCiCap program for $830M per year going forward? That the NASA Administrator has argued in front of Congress numerous times that the program should be fully funded, and not partially funded like what Congress is doing?

    How in any way are these not signs that the Administration wants Commercial Crew to be viable?

    Weird.

    Obama knew Ares1 was an experimental junker, yet made no moves.

    Aren’t you aware that he cancelled the program Ares I was part of?

    Double weird.

  • CONGRESS decided that the moon program was so far behind schedule and had busted the budget so bad that they couldn’t fund it any longer.

    Except now it looks like they’re trying to resurrect it under another name, with all its flaws, including Ares 1 aka Liberty.

  • Vladislaw

    A small wind wrote:

    “Why should reducing the number of CCDev2 entrants from 4 to 1 raise costs?”

    Gosh I don’t know. I mean if we analyze the last 40 years of NASA contracting under FAR we have always enjoyed ‘ on time and on budget’ results.

    Cost plus, fixed fee contracts with a bunch of escalator clauses have always proved that this is the best method, along with a non competitive bidding process.

    If we want low cost and speedy results from NASA we should down select to a single non competitively bid, provider and sign a cost plus FAR contract.

    As windy knows. Cost plus is the safest, surest contract method to ensure we get a great low price and speedy results.

  • amightywind

    Congress didn’t fund Constellation. Do you understand that Marcel?

    The democrats dominated congress and the Whitehouse in 2009, the year the last budget was passed. They have sleazily passed irresponsible continuing resolutions ever since – better to lock in political favors for their supporters. The sabotage of the space program is their responsibly alone.

  • D. Messier

    NASA and the Obama Administration certainly have made mistakes in rolling the plan out and selling it over the years. However, the reality is that NASA has explained this plan to Congress over and over and over again, the plan isn’t really that complicated, and key Congressional leaders weren’t going to buy it no matter what anyone told them.

    Since we can’t rerun history, it’s impossible to know what would have happened if NASA had sold this plan better. We might be further along with it. But, it’s possible we would be more or less where we are now. The ideas here are simply too radical of a change for the folks who control Congress.

    I’m giving Rohrabacher the benefit of the doubt here in assuming that his trashing of NASA and the Administration provides him some political cover to try to roll back this down select idea. I sincerely hope that’s true and that Rohrabacher makes a serious effort to change things. His rhetoric on behalf of commercial space always seems to outweigh his actions.

  • @Doug Lassiter

    As a strong opponent of the Constellation program, I was glad the Ares I/V architecture was terminated because there were much more efficient architectures that could have gotten the job done much sooner and cheaper. But no one expected Obama to terminate NASA’s return to the Moon!

    Then Obama added insult to injury by going to NASA and saying the following words in front of NASA employees:

    “Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before.”

    Those are words that will live in infamy, IMO!

    Then he went on a walking tour with Elon Musk almost as if NASA was some kind of thing of the past.

    Excuse me by the administration not only terminated the Constellation program but also allowed the Space Shuttle program to end. So there would have been no manned space program out there besides the commercial crew companies. And the Obama administration wanted it that way!

    The SLS is not fully funded since there’s not even enough money to develop the upper stage (CPS). And there will be multiple year delays between test flights for the SLS because of lack of funding. There’s also no serious funding for any manned lunar landing vehicles or any asteroid exploratory vehicles.

    Marcel F. Williams

  • @Vladislaw

    The man went to NASA and said the following words:

    “Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before.”

    It can’t get much clearer than that!

    Congress expected a cheaper architecture to return to the Moon. Obama decided that there was no logical reason to go to the Moon in the first place. And he said so!

    Marcel F. Williams

  • @ Vladislaw wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 11:03 am

    “Congress didn’t fund Constellation. Do you understand that Marcel?”

    Actually, that’s not true. The Constellation program (a program that I was strongly against, by the way) was to be funded by terminating the Shuttle program, adding $3 billion a year to the Constellation’s $3.4 billion a year budget and then by eventually terminating the ISS program after 2015 which would have added another $2 billion in annual funding to the Constellation program.

    That would have eventually given the Constellation program more than $8 billion a year in annual funding. So NASA felt that they could get the job done with the funds that they had by simply terminating other programs.

    In comparison, the far more economically efficient SLS/MPCV program is about $3 billion a year (that’s less than Constellation funding when NASA still had the space shuttle in operation). And the administration is trying to reduce that to under $3 billion annually.

    Marcel F. Williams

  • Coastal Ron

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 2:34 pm

    It can’t get much clearer than that! [i.e. “We’ve been there before”]

    Are you not aware that we’ve been there before?

    Or are you objecting to the idea of doing something we’ve never done before, like going beyond Earth’s orbit (BEO) and rendezvousing with an asteroid?

    So far the only ideas I’ve heard you promote about going back to the Moon seem to center around resource extraction, which is clearly not NASA’s charter. You and others have failed to provide a compelling reason for U.S. Taxpayers to fund your Moon junkets.

    The challenge of sending humans to rendezvous with an asteroid is clearly rooted in solving the challenges we have in eventually reaching Mars (a bigger goal of the VSE than going to the Moon), so the business case for that type of mission is easy for just about everyone to see.

    Republicans and Democrats in Congress agree that the Moon is not a near-term program goal, and they also agree that further research in LEO on the only permanently occupied foothold we have in space is a good thing.

    I don’t see the Moon situation changing with either a Obama 2nd term or Romney administration, so you better figure out how to live with disappointment for a while… ;-)

  • E.P. Grondine

    The US could have had DIRECT and 2 manned launch systems for the money wasted on Ares 1.

    The comparison of Solyndra with SpaceX is a false analogy, used to support specious charges of.”croney capitalism”.

    What did in Solyndra was the delivery of a bad piece of manufacturing equipment, and the lack of deep enough pockets to handle that.

  • ArtieT

    Constellation was unexecutable because it lacked the funding necessary for it to succeed.

    Clear. Got it. I’m with you.

    Does anybody think SLS/MPCV has sufficient funds to do whatever its mission is supposed to be?

    Oh, (head slap), now I get it, as long as you DO NOT SPECIFY A SPECIFIC Mission goal for the program, (as is the case for SLS/MPCV) it is okay to pour billions down a rat hole.

    Whew, Gladd I got that.

  • Doug Lassiter

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 2:28 pm
    “Excuse me by the administration not only terminated the Constellation program but also allowed the Space Shuttle program to end. So there would have been no manned space program out there besides the commercial crew companies. And the Obama administration wanted it that way! ”

    You really mean there would be no U.S. human launch architecture besides that from the commercial crew companies. But there will be. It’s called MPCV, and (unfortunately) SLS. U.S. manned space flight will continue. Just not necessarily on NASA launchers for a while. That MPCV and SLS won’t be ready for almost a decade is no fault of Obama’s. Obama “allowed” the Space Shuttle to end (as his predecessor planned) because what it was for was to build ISS. ISS being complete, and given the safety issues with Shuttle, it was sensible to retire it, and to use the money to develop new, better things. It would be nice to have BEO human spaceflight sooner, but Congress would never allocate the money needed to do so.

    “The SLS is not fully funded since there’s not even enough money to develop the upper stage (CPS).”

    The Block 0 SLS has no CPS. The upper stage may actually be a DCSS, which doesn’t require a lot of development budget. Might as well think it through before budgeting money.

    Obama put plans to go to the Moon on hold because, quite frankly, we couldn’t afford it. We probably can’t afford going to an asteroid either, but by putting that goal way out to the right, everyone is free to wave their magic wands. We have to try hard to draw a distinction between what we “should have” and what we “can have”. Congress alone determines the latter.

  • @Coastal Ron

    Actually, we’ve never been to the lunar poles and have never set up a permanent or semipermanent outpost at the lunar poles to exploit its ice resources. And practically every space faring nation on Earth recognizes the value of exploiting lunar ice resources at the lunar poles.

    Its far easier to go safely go to the moons of Mars than to go to an asteroid. The moons of Mars are also a valuable economic ice resource that could be exploited in a fashion similar to exploiting ice at the lunar poles.

    But the Moon is the key to going to Mars since several hundred tonnes of mass shielding is probably going to be required to protecting astronauts from several years of exposure to galactic radiation and potential solar events. And the cheapest source for such mass shielding is from the lunar poles. And the best place to launch such heavy vessels to Mars is at the Lagrange points, not at LEO.

    Marcel F. Williams

  • @Dough Lassiter

    The Obama administration didn’t want the SLS/MPCV program. Congress forced it down their throats.

    And again, Obama clearly said what he thought about returning to the Moon:

    “Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before.”

    Again, it can’t get much clearer than that. And this is from a man that I’m probably going to have to begrudgingly vote for in November:-)

    Marcel F. Williams

  • joe

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 3:49 pm
    “You really mean there would be no U.S. human launch architecture besides that from the commercial crew companies. But there will be. It’s called MPCV, and (unfortunately) SLS.”

    Revisionist history this soon after the fact? If the original Obama proposal had not been modified by a bi-partisan congress (over the objections of the administration), there would have been no MPCV. Yes Obama finally ‘embraced’ it (first as a CRV only), but only after it was forced on him.

  • Coastal Ron

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 4:19 pm

    Actually, we’ve never been to the lunar poles and have never set up a permanent or semipermanent outpost at the lunar poles to exploit its ice resources.

    Well we haven’t built floating cities either, so what’s your point?

    I know you believe that all we need is water from the Moon in order to survive in space, but that’s just plain lunacy. Water from Earth will be far cheaper for the foreseeable future, so going to the Moon for water would be an expensive distraction if we truly do need water for our journey to Mars.

    I know Other People’s Money (OPM) is not important to you, but here is the simple math about your “several hundred tonnes of mass shielding is probably going to be required” problem. 200,000 kg of water can be ferried to LEO for about the following:

    Delta IV Heavy = $4B
    Falcon Heavy = $0.5B
    SLS = ~$6B

    Even the SLS will be far cheaper to use than your idea. No need to set up a lunar colony, and no need to spend the $87B and spend the 17 years the Spudis/Lavoie plan says it will take for building a water extraction operation on the Moon.

    You have yet to provide a financial business case that bolsters your lunar dreams. And you have yet to say why NASA should be tasked with morphing into a mining company instead of sticking with space exploration. Or do you just want the contract running through NASA because they have no clue how to do lunar mining, and your favorite companies will get fat profits?

  • pathfinder_01

    “Revisionist history this soon after the fact? If the original Obama proposal had not been modified by a bi-partisan congress (over the objections of the administration), there would have been no MPCV. Yes Obama finally ‘embraced’ it (first as a CRV only), but only after it was forced on him.”

    True, but frankly, the MPCV is both expensive and disposable. At an estimated 500 million to 800 million a unit, you are not going to do much exploration with such a craft. I think the best thing was to scrap the whole of consetlation. I can see a commercial use for the MPCV, but barely one.

    The idea was to work less on rockets(we know how to build thoose) and more on technology…we know less how to build that.

  • DCSCA

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 4:26 pm
    “Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before.”

    That’s Garver/OMB-speak. He got a summary white paper, took a recommendation and delivered it in his KSC speech, then tossed space in the out box for Term 1 and moved on to more pressing problems. Obama has no interest in space – it’s simply not top tier agenda matter. Hillary Clintron is one of the few people in decades at that level of government who has expressed a personal interest in HSF. Although we may have found imagery, unconfirmed as of now, which may substantiate Obama’s comments of attending an Apollo crew return in Hawaii at Hickham. At the Apollo 13 crew ceremony in Hawaii- he may be visible in the crowd up on the shoulders of his grandfather briefly and may have been captured in the official NASA film of the flight in general release. Whether its positively him or not remains unconfirned at this writing.

  • DCSCA

    “But the Moon is the key to going to Mars …”

    Yep.

  • On a more positive and optimistic note for the future …

    NASA’s KSC YouTube channel NASAKennedy has posted a new video that details all the plans for upgrading KSC and its new missions:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMCr04GXQeM

    There’s also this new article about all the upgrades coming at the VAB:

    http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/ground/vabrefurbishment.html

    This is due to the $500 million in the current fiscal year budget.

    The Obama administration is investing in NASA’s infrastructure. It’s not a “sexy” line item in the NASA budget but a very necessary one.

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 3:10 pm

    “Are you not aware that we’ve been there before?”

    “The larger human exploration goals, however, lie beyond LEO: Luna, the lunar Lagrangian points, Mars and its natural satellites, and Near Earth Objects including meteoroids, comets, and asteroids. Last year I testified to this committee on the rationale for selecting Luna and its environs as the preferred initial option for America ’s exploration beyond Earth orbit.All that I have learned in the past year has just reinforced that opinion. Predicting the future is inherently risky, but the proposed Space Launch System (SLS) includes many proven and reliable components which suggest that its development could be relatively trouble free. If that proves to be so, it would bode well for exploration.”- Neil A. Armstrong
    source-
    http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans…gov/…/092211_Armstrong.pdf

  • Vladislaw

    And just think, if Orion would have been defunded CCDEV might have received adequate funding and we would be a lot closer to launching, closer than Orion is.

    8-10 billion for a disposable capsule, how much are they going to cost, 1 billion a pop? Launched on the SLS at 1.5 billion per launch? Gosh … I can hardly wait. 2.5 billion to put 4 people into LEO.

    Oh that’s right, I forget about the 30-40 billion in development costs, man those first couple flights are sure going to be spendy.

  • Vladislaw

    Rand Simberg wrote:

    “Except now it looks like they’re trying to resurrect it under another name, with all its flaws, including Ares 1 aka Liberty.”

    You are a lot closer to these issues so I would like to ask … is there any chance in hell that Liberty will get funded by NASA?

  • Vladislaw

    windy wrote:

    “The democrats dominated congress and the Whitehouse in 2009, the year the last budget was passed.”

    Ya, man those democrats were so powerful they kept Senator Shelby from inserting language that tied NASA’s hands for a year and cost the tax payers almost a quarter of a billion dollars. WHEW those democrats were tough!

  • BeanCounterfromDownunder

    DCSCA wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 6:15 pm

    ‘All that I have learned in the past year has just reinforced that opinion. Predicting the future is inherently risky, but the proposed Space Launch System (SLS) includes many proven and reliable components which suggest that its development could be relatively trouble free. If that proves to be so, it would bode well for exploration.”- Neil A. Armstrong’

    It suggests nothing of the sort. Armstrong’s clearly forgotten any systems engineering he ever knew if he truly believes you can put a heap of components together and say they’ll work as a whole simply because they worked individually. I’m not an engineer but I at least, understand the fallacy in that argument. Anyone who has a smattering of systems knowledge knows that. Clearly you don’t if you keep quoting Armstrong in this.

  • Doug Lassiter

    joe et al wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 4:26 pm
    “If the original Obama proposal had not been modified by a bi-partisan congress (over the objections of the administration), there would have been no MPCV. Yes Obama finally ‘embraced’ it (first as a CRV only), but only after it was forced on him.”

    My understanding is that the administration was not confident that we could develop an affordable and capable deep space architecture. There still is no payload money for SLS, so while it may turn out to be a capable launcher, it’s not a capable architecture. Their skepticism, it even now appears, was well founded. As to access to ISS, yes, the administration was willing to bet the farm that commercial could provide. But let’s be clear. The congressional pressure to invest in MPCV and SLS came not from a noble desire to explore space, but to stuff constituents pockets with cash.

    As to the Moon being a compelling destination, I guess the unresolved question is why? Same with an asteroid. You want to get water? Why? Oh, to make it easier to travel through space? Why? Maybe to expand the species? Maybe to hit a jackpot in resources?

    I’ll remind everyone that congressional direction to NASA never says why. Something about wanting to “explore”, and some blather about “inspiration”. Nothing about colonization. Almost nothing about getting rich. In fact, Congress has specifically challenged NASA and the NRC to come up with a credible destination and rationale for human space flight. Why? Well, gosh, because Congress doesn’t know why. When Congress says “Colonize, young man!”, we need to be digging for water on the lunar poles like crazy. Until they do, any such goals are made up out of whole cloth.

    Congress not only holds the purse strings, but ultimately has to point the finger. They’ve done the former, but have been pathetically incapable of doing the latter, except pointing to pockets that need to be stuffed.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 6:15 pm

    Last year I [Neil Armstrong] testified to this committee on the rationale for selecting Luna and its environs as the preferred initial option for America ’s exploration beyond Earth orbit.

    “Initial option”? Apparently he doesn’t remember that we’ve visited the Moon before either. In fact he was there. Picture in the paper and everything.

    Of course maybe it was just a poor choice of words on his part, and what he meant to say was “the preferred option for going back for our 7th visit to the Moon”? Cuz, you know, we’ve been there a bunch of times already.

    Then the person who benefited from a space program funded at 4.41% of the Federal Budget mused:

    Predicting the future is inherently risky, but the proposed Space Launch System (SLS) includes many proven and reliable components…

    Truly Armstrong has been out of the space business so long that he doesn’t realize that it takes more than a collection of #6 screws and buckets of black & white paint in order to make a rocket that is cost effective and reliable.

    If he had bothered to do any investigation at all he would have found that none of the major components of the SLS have ever flown. Not that they haven’t flown together (which they haven’t), but NEVER FLOWN. And we’re talking about the production version of the SLS, not the franken-test versions that use leftover parts from other programs. Sure those worked, although not on the test versions of the SLS.

    Did Armstrong forget that components aren’t “human rated”, but systems are?

    Once again our little internet troll has failed to make it’s point. What a surprise.

  • joe

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 9:59 pm
    “My understanding is that the administration was not confident that we could develop an affordable and capable deep space architecture. There still is no payload money for SLS, so while it may turn out to be a capable launcher, it’s not a capable architecture. Their skepticism, it even now appears, was well founded. As to access to ISS, yes, the administration was willing to bet the farm that commercial could provide.”

    Your original statement (to which my comment applied) was: “You really mean there would be no U.S. human launch architecture besides that from the commercial crew companies. But there will be. It’s called MPCV, and (unfortunately) SLS.” That implies that the MPCV was Obama’s idea (or at least cordially accepted by the administration). That was incorrect and still is. Another discussion of why you think the original Obama space policy (with no MPCV) was a good idea does not change that fact.

    “But let’s be clear. The congressional pressure to invest in MPCV and SLS came not from a noble desire to explore space, but to stuff constituents pockets with cash.”

    So you can read minds (and attribute – of course- corrupt motives to anyone who disagrees with you). Can you also tell us who will win the next Kentucky Derby?

  • Doug Lassiter

    joe wrote @ May 15th, 2012 at 8:51 am
    “Your original statement (to which my comment applied) was: “You really mean there would be no U.S. human launch architecture besides that from the commercial crew companies. But there will be. It’s called MPCV, and (unfortunately) SLS.” That implies that the MPCV was Obama’s idea (or at least cordially accepted by the administration).”

    No, it doesn’t imply that in the least.

    The plan of the administration was to access ISS via commercial, and they sent that plan to Congress. Congress decided that wasn’t wise, and changed the plan to feature MPCV (SLS really doesn’t have a lot to do with access to ISS). Obama signed the bill, probably somewhat reluctantly. The checks are being written. And so, as I said, “there will be” a U.S. human launch architecture. Obama doesn’t have to take any bows for it.

    “So you can read minds (and attribute – of course- corrupt motives to anyone who disagrees with you). Can you also tell us who will win the next Kentucky Derby?”

    I can read minds of politicians. Horses are another matter. One can argue about which is more intelligent. There is nothing “corrupt” about steering federal money to ones own district. That’s an odd way to put it. Electoral success is based primarily on the ability to do so. You’re saying that it is a coincidence that legislators from Alabama, Texas and Florida just happen to be passionate about NASA space efforts? They are doing what they were elected to do, which is to steer money into their districts. They are very, very good at it.

  • Vladislaw

    “So you can read minds (and attribute – of course- corrupt motives to anyone who disagrees with you). Can you also tell us who will win the next Kentucky Derby?”

    If lobbying firms were able to publically stuff the judges pockets with cash before the race, I believe we would find that the winner would be the one that spent the most money lobbying the judges of the contest.

    Of course the judges would have to first disqualify all the faster horses or set up roadblocks. Like say, Griffin did with the ESAS and basically disqualified the Atlas V and Delta IV before the race.

    Or what congress is currently doing with the CCDEV and putting up roadblocks, lower the funding, running down the companies as being hobbies or lack the abilty to even enter the race.

    I would say it is almost always all about the money and getting reelected first and foremost.

  • …is there any chance in hell that Liberty will get funded by NASA?

    Obviously ATK thinks so, or they wouldn’t be pushing and lobbying so hard for it.

  • joe

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ May 15th, 2012 at 9:34 am

    “No, it doesn’t imply that in the least.”

    If anyone wants to go through your discussion with Marcel and arrive at that conclusion that is their privilege, but I am not going through another one of these episodes where you torture the English language to make the words mean what you want them to now (as opposed to when you said them).

    “There is nothing “corrupt” about steering federal money to ones own district. That’s an odd way to put it. Electoral success is based primarily on the ability to do so.” …. They are doing what they were elected to do, which is to steer money into their districts. They are very, very good at it.”

    So when you say things like: ““But let’s be clear. The congressional pressure to invest in MPCV and SLS came not from a noble desire to explore space, but to stuff constituents pockets with cash.” you now assert you are paying them a complement. It would be interesting to know what you would say about someone you actually intended to insult.

    I know you feel the need to have the last word, so have it. As far as I am concerned this discussion is completed.

  • Doug Lassiter

    joe wrote @ May 15th, 2012 at 11:49 am

    Good grief. Calm down. You’re a new poster here, and maybe you just need to take a deep breath.

    Your displeasure with my language is your own business and, I guess, your own problem. If you have a point to make, do so. You haven’t made a strong one here. Sounds like you don’t intend to either. The way these discussion forums work is by doing, well, discussion. You do discussion with words. Yes, I make my words mean what I want them to, because that’s what discussion is all about. As to whether my words are getting tortured, well, you’ll have to ask them.

    Do I assert that I am paying congressional legislators a compliment by saying that they are stuffing their constituents pockets full of cash? Well, that’s their job in the eyes of their constituents. I’m not complimenting that activity nor criticizing it. It’s what keeps them in Congress, and they do it well. The lobbyists and contributors to those legislators are out to get precisely that. To get their pockets stuffed.

    What defines nobility to a legislator is getting reelected. Why? Because that means they’re serving their constituents. Doing that is indeed a noble job. It’s about those constituents, and not about the legislator. You can stuff their pockets with cash using graft, or you can do it with jobs and investment. I think everyone we’re talking about tries to do it with the latter. They do it legally. But it’s not about exploring space. It’s about money.

  • DCSCA

    @amightywind wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 1:23 pm

    “Congress didn’t fund Constellation. Do you understand that Marcel? The democrats dominated congress and the Whitehouse in 2009, the year the last budget was passed. They have sleazily passed irresponsible continuing resolutions ever since – better to lock in political favors for their supporters. The sabotage of the space program is their responsibly alone.”

    Not alone, Windy. Dubya did little to court Congress for financing VSE properly and dealing w/space was not a priority; war was and dealing with a transition in space policy was forced on him due to Columbia. Same flame out by the Bush’s happened to Pappy ‘s initiative back in ’89, after a grand July 20th roll out…. and as recently reiterated in Aldrin’s book, ‘Magnificent Desolation,’ the Democrat majority in Congress simply scuttled it as Pappy did little to court compromise for financing the proposals. It was in all the papers. TV, too.

    @Rand Simberg wrote @ May 14th, 2012 at 10:51 am

    “Space X has wisely started to embrace space tourism to private commercial space stations. SpaceX has always embraced that. Please stop flaunting your ignorance.”

    Musk/Musketeers have an avoidance habit of retreating to the fictional fantasies and musing about what he’s ‘going to do’ when the harsh realities of the here and now close in, shining a light on what he’s failing to do- of late, to simply meet a launch date. But the ‘hey-look-over-there-not-here’ avoidance makes great chaff for press releases.

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ May 15th, 2012 at 12:33 am

    Always encouraging to see commercialists bashing apollonauts in general and Armstrong in particular. Keep it up– great platform for persuasion. LOL

  • Malmesbury

    The entire process of government is about steering the money. SAA agreements cut across the grain precisely because they allow the contractor to spend the money in any state they choose.

    From the point of view of a pol this is crazy – they vote appropriations, and the money might not even end up in the constituency of someone *they had made a political deal with*!!

    Worse yet, they are cut out of the decision about the winner. The whole purpose of politicians in modern America it to make deals about who gets what.

    Merely voting the money, letting NASA decide who won and letting the companies decide how to spend their money…… To them, that’s removing their purpose. It’s attacking the system. It’s unAmerican.

    Spending 10 times as much on a FAA contract to a proper provider who knows how things work and is properly grateful is obviously better. If the rocket doesn’t actually get built or the project collapses – well, there is always next time. The rocket will have done its main job anyway – converted tax money into controlled political power.

  • joe

    Vladislaw wrote @ May 15th, 2012 at 9:57 am
    “If lobbying firms were able to publically stuff the judges pockets with cash before the race, I believe we would find that the winner would be the one that spent the most money lobbying the judges of the contest.”

    Lobbyist as villains. Sure is a good thing a pure company like Space X would never stoop to something as crass as lobbying.

    http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2012/05/kl-gates-deploys-large-lobbying-team-for-new-client-spacex.html

  • Doug Lassiter

    joe wrote @ May 16th, 2012 at 10:22 am
    “Lobbyist as villains. Sure is a good thing a pure company like Space X would never stoop to something as crass as lobbying.”

    A “pure” company? Nice concept. The only one I can think of is maybe Ben and Jerry’s, but they don’t do space technology. “Constellation Crunch” anyone? You think Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon, etc. etc. etc. etc. don’t have lobbyists? Can you name a single significant space technology company (or even university) that doesn’t have a certified lobbyist on staff? Musk may value his independence in the industry, but he’s not dumb.

    Lobbyists may be “crass”, but it’s the way the game is played. Lots of “stooping” going on out there. I don’t think anyone out there is really standing erect. “Villains”? Well, lobbyists are paid to inform Congress, and I guess in that respect they’re as villainous as the whole advertising agency business. One wonders who is more villainous. The lobbyists, or the Congressional leaders who put themselves in the hands of those lobbyists.

  • Vladislaw

    As I said Joe, the firm that spends the MOST CASH, SpaceX isn’t even in the same ballpark as Boeing.

  • joe

    Vladislaw wrote @ May 16th, 2012 at 1:27 pm
    “As I said Joe, the firm that spends the MOST CASH, SpaceX isn’t even in the same ballpark as Boeing.”

    Could you possibly provide details on how much more Boeing (and other ‘old space’ companies) spends specifically on space related lobbying?

    I do not doubt that Space X spends less total on lobbying than Boeing, Lockheed, and ATK (you know all the usual villains). But all those companies have far more diverse portfolios (with space activities being one of the smallest parts), whereas Space X (as its name suggests is lobbying mainly – if not entirely on space). Just comparing totals does not tell you anything about who is lobbying most intensely (or as you like to put it with the “MOST CASH”) in that area.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “Down select has been baked in by congress for months… The [sic] NASA has been slow to get the hint”

    The plan for the CCiCap phase of commercial crew has always been to downselect to two performers this year:

    “Officials are in the middle of evaluating industrial bids for the commercial crew program’s next phase, with a goal of selecting at least two companies by August to continue developing rockets and spacecraft for the next two years.”

    http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1205/02commercialcrew/

    Despite Rep. Wolf and staffer Shana Dale’s feigned (or worse, actual) ignorance, this has been a widely advertised fact.

    “There is not a technical manager among them.”

    Since when has Gerst not been a “technical manager”?

    “Why should reducing the number of CCDev2 entrants from 4″

    No one is talking about maintaining four performers. You’re buying into the same paper tiger as Wolf and Dale.

    “to 1 raise costs?”

    For the same reason that Soyuz seat prices have gone up since Shuttle’s retirement — a single performer creates a monopoly that puts NASA at the mercy of that sole performer’s pricing.

    C’mon, this is basic economics.

    “Orion could have been in service by 2014.”

    No, before Constellation was terminated, Ares I/Orion was showing March 2016, not 2014, for its first ISS crew rotation. And CxP had “zero percent confidence” in that schedule:

    http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/03/aresorion-slipping-18-months-shuttle-extension-upper-hand/

    And that was the best assessment of Orion’s own naturally optimistic program office.

    The independent Aerospace Corp. and Augustine Committee put the earliest Ares I/Orion flight at 2017, with a most likely date in 2019.

    The CBO and GAO had even worse scenarios.

    “The democrats dominated congress and the Whitehouse in 2009, the year the last budget was passed.”

    No, Senate Republicans like Hutchison and Shelby were responsible for much of the language in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. Moreover, the Republican majority in the House passed that legislation by a large margin.

    Not too good with facts, are you buddy?

  • joe

    Dark Blue Nine wrote @ May 16th, 2012 at 3:48 pm

    “The plan for the CCiCap phase of commercial crew has always been to downselect to two performers this year:
    “Officials are in the middle of evaluating industrial bids for the commercial crew program’s next phase, with a goal of selecting at least two companies by August to continue developing rockets and spacecraft for the next two years.””

    Not that this is likely to do any good, but someone saying they have “a goal of selecting at least two companies” is not the same as your saying “plan …. has always been to downselect to two performers”.

    At “at least two companies” could be any number two or greater (presumably limited in this case to four).

  • Vladislaw

    In 2009 Boeing was spending almost 18 million and 3 million to pacs. SpaceX was less than a 1 million.

  • joe

    Vladislaw wrote @ May 16th, 2012 at 4:48 pm
    “In 2009 Boeing was spending almost 18 million and 3 million to pacs. SpaceX was less than a 1 million.”

    Accepting your numbers as accurate, those are total numbers.

    Boeing is a very big company with many different interest for which they have reason to lobby. I worked in their space organization for quite a while and the internal joke was that we were a hobby for upper management – they liked us, but we were just not that important. So the part of that 21 million that would be devoted to space lobbying would likely be commensurately smaller

    Space X is a small company devoted (as far as I know) entirely to space (their name certainly suggests that). All of their lobbying money would be devoted to space.

    Therefore, comparing Boeings totals to Space X totals just does not tell you anything.

  • Coastal Ron

    joe wrote @ May 16th, 2012 at 5:10 pm

    So the part of that 21 million that would be devoted to space lobbying would likely be commensurately smaller

    Lobbyists are lobbying specifically for just one product or service, but for the company in general. If the product in play today is jet fighters, then they focus on jet fighters. If the product tomorrow is spacecraft, they focus on spacecraft.

    Keep in mind too that it’s also a brand that they are pushing, so in that case they don’t even has to say a product, but just Boeing has been a loyal supporter of Congressperson X, or has X amount of Boeing employees in their district, regardless if that’s where the government spending in question will happen – you scratch my back, I scratch yours type of stuff.

    SpaceX has far fewer employees, and far less impact on the number of congressional districts, so it has to focus more on pushing single issue lobbying. That’s a lot harder when you’re a company that has only been around for 10 years versus a company that is synonymous with a whole sector of the economy.

  • Doug Lassiter

    joe wrote @ May 16th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
    “I do not doubt that Space X spends less total on lobbying than Boeing, Lockheed, and ATK (you know all the usual villains).”

    The usual villains. That’s hilarious. Of course, what you’re after is a metric for crassness. Right? Or maybe to see who can stoop lower. Sort of a space limbo, eh? Yep, that’s the dance they’re doing. I guess you’d call it dirty dancing.

    “Therefore, comparing Boeings totals to Space X totals just does not tell you anything.”

    Nor does SpaceX’s totals. Lobbying is an investment to get ones message across. I think lobbying budget is far less significant in political action than political contributions. If I’m a legislator, and I have a big check from Boeing, the fact that SpaceX’s check is smaller is what counts. I don’t care if it’s about commercial airliners or defense hardware or space. I don’t care if SpaceX is sending only ten people up to the Hill instead of the fifty from Boeing. If the check is from Boeing, and it’s big, whether it’s to me or a PAC I like, that’s what counts.

  • Vladislaw

    Joe, agreed.

    I couldn’t find how they broke up their lobbying efforts, short of looking at every individual on the house and senate committees.

    I had read an article relating to this and it had Boeing spending about 10 times the amount of SpaceX, 2.5mil versus 250k, but I couldn’t find that link so the numbers I gave was from the open secrets website.

    They had industry spending by committee but it looked like aerospace wasn’t a catagory they were tracking.

  • Vladislaw

    Dark Blue wrote:

    “No, before Constellation was terminated, Ares I/Orion was showing March 2016, not 2014, for its first ISS crew rotation. “

    Didn’t Augustine or maybe Jeff Greason say that it was going to be 2017-2019 before a crewed Ares 1 flight?

  • joe

    Vladislaw wrote @ May 16th, 2012 at 7:06 pm
    “I couldn’t find how they broke up their lobbying efforts, short of looking at every individual on the house and senate committees.”

    Understood. Since none of these companies (Space X included – except that it can be assumed that all their lobbying money is going to space related activities) are going to give their breakdowns it is impossible to get an idea of how much they are spending pushing any particular area.

    Having been a Boeing Stockholder I can tell you that (at least in the past) they used to make more money selling buses to towns/cities than they did on space.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “Didn’t Augustine or maybe Jeff Greason say that it was going to be 2017-2019 before a crewed Ares 1 flight?”

    Yes. A little later in my earlier post, I wrote:

    “The independent Aerospace Corp. and Augustine Committee put the earliest Ares I/Orion flight at 2017, with a most likely date in 2019.”

    To be clear, this was a major conclusion that the Augustine Committee put in its report, based on analysis by the Aerospace Corp. It wasn’t just a statement by Augustine himself or Greason.

  • common sense

    @ Dark Blue Nine wrote @ May 17th, 2012 at 12:26 am

    Facts, facts, facts!!! They make you sick don’t they?

    At least we all know that MPCV WILL fly on some EELV in the not so distant future, 2014 is it now? With or without LAS, with or without SM, with or without parachutes, with or without a crew… Anyway, we know that an EELV will fly sometime in the future. Maybe. Now if they write MPCV on the shroud that MUST be an MPCV under the shroud. Come on it would be written on it. And that my friends is a fact. Or some fact, well some kind of a fact. A not so real fact.

    Dare I say factitious? Could not help, sorry.

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