NASA, White House

Space policy? It’s complicated

Shortly after SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket placed the company’s Dragon spacecraft into orbit early Tuesday, the White House issued a congratulatory statement from John Holdren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. “Partnering with U.S. companies such as SpaceX to provide cargo and eventually crew service to the International Space Station is a cornerstone of the President’s plan for maintaining America’s leadership in space,” he said in the one-paragraph statement. “This expanded role for the private sector will free up more of NASA’s resources to do what NASA does best — tackle the most demanding technological challenges in space, including those of human space flight beyond low Earth orbit.”

A few hours later, Holdren brought up space policy in a different setting: at “The Science of Science Communication” colloquium at the National Academies of Science in Washington. At the meeting, ScienceInsider reports, Holdren mentioned the challenge of communicating that plan for “maintaining America’s leadership in space” he cited in his statement yesterday. The problem, in essence, is that space policy is too complex an issue to communicate simply, he claimed.

“It’s an interesting object lesson about how difficult it is to communicate when the messages require a lot of references to analysis and detail,” Holdren said, as quoted by ScienceInsider. Criticism of the plan, by comparison, was much simpler, he suggested: “the counter-messages are very simple: Losing leadership, no vision, and giving up proven technologies for unproven ones. It’s a real challenge.” The administration had “fabulous” responses for those criticisms, he said, “but the answers were basically too complicated. So in many respects, we haven’t won that communications battle about NASA.”

What isn’t mentioned in the article, though, is whether Holdren believes some of setbacks in the “communications battle” regarding space policy were self-inflicted. One of the biggest criticisms of the administration’s plans for NASA was how that plan was rolled out over two years ago: tucked into the administration’s 2011 budget request, with little or no communication with congressional stakeholders prior to the public release of the budget. That immediately put the administration on the defensive. A better rollout would not have eliminated all of the criticism about the plan, but it might have made Holdren’s job a little less complicated.

146 comments to Space policy? It’s complicated

  • I’m reading a book called Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America by Shawn Lawrence Otto. Shawn makes many points, one of them being that scientists are incapable of simply and clearing communicating their points.

    Holdren saying it’s “complicated” is one clear example of this.

  • Marcel F. Williams

    I’m glad to see that Dr. Evil (Holdren) is still alive and kicking! Now he blames Obama’s poor space policy on a failure to communicate?

    The President terminated our return to the Moon just after billions of tonnes of precious water ice was detected at the lunar poles, probably one of the most important discoveries of this new century. And then Bolden says it’s perfectly fine if the Chinese are on the lunar surface and we’re not. They have no one to blame but themselves!

    Marcel F. Williams

  • ArtieT

    “This expanded role for the private sector will free up more of NASA’s resources to do what NASA does best — tackle the most demanding technological challenges in space, including those of human space flight beyond low Earth orbit”

    Well, no. Resources won’t be freed up for anything else. NASA’s budget continues to decline in real spending power. And what’s left goes to SLS/MPCV, whose future is one word “CANCELLATION”. Savings result in less budget.

    IMHO , Obama is indifferent to NASA.

  • amightywind

    is that space policy is too complex an issue to communicate simply, he claimed.

    Rolls eyes. I find his lack of introspection and accountabilty typical for the Obama administration. It ain’t that complicated. Build large rocket. Train crew. Launch said rocket. Plant flag on terra nova.

  • Daddy

    Holdren is a perfect example of a science nerd given way too much influence over national space policy. He doesn’t understand how to craft a policy that clearly defines practical technical achievement. He, Garver, the OMB weenies and cell phone consultants laid out the NASA space policy in a vacuum. No one in the aerospace industry, space academia, or anyone of any standing authority in NASA was consulted. That’s not a failure of communication… That’s a failure of scientific and technical hubris.

    We know better, it’s too complicated for you to understand. Just do it!

  • Griffin Michele

    We know better, it’s too complicated for you to understand. Just do it!

    In other words do what we tell you to do no matter what you think of it..

    That sounds like the vacuum of the previous administration to me.

    The political divide is great and can’t be breached here.

  • Robert G. Oler

    “It’s an interesting object lesson about how difficult it is to communicate when the messages require a lot of references to analysis and detail,” Holdren said, as quoted by ScienceInsider. Criticism of the plan, by comparison, was much simpler, he suggested: “the counter-messages are very simple: Losing leadership, no vision, and giving up proven technologies for unproven ones. It’s a real challenge.”

    LOL

    space policy is not challenging, but space politics is…and the quote above is kind of what I call “Obama babble”.

    First off the politics are challenging, even for the best. If you dont believe that then go back a few threads and read the “post” by Jim Muncy expressing a mixture of emotions on the failure of “Mr. Newt” and his space policy to catch hold among people who should have just rushed toward it. I dont know who Jim (and Mr. Newt) are more chagrined at…if it is the people who should have been for it “here” and other places or it is the surprise that the “illuminate” of GOP space policy (Griffin et al) who rushed to be Romney’s cudgel didnt sign up on board.

    Since almost all of us here are not very consequential I would suggest the latter (although it still must have been entertaining that people like Whittington did not jump on board)…

    And in my view point that alone illustrates the point.

    Space politics are really about “destination” only to the unwashed masses (grin). For the real power players it is about JOBS and MONEY from the federal government to the various corporations that are making most of them wealthy (or will when they leave Congress).

    The word that describes it all is “stakeholders”. Meaning the corporations and government officials who have a “stake” in how the dollars are spread…It doesnt matter if the plan is to land someone on a planet around Alpha Centauri in the year 2555 (if man is still alive) as long as it includes Orion/SLS/JSC/KSC/something from Alabama…”we are good” with it…if it can hold political support.

    Griffin’s joke of a “non partisan” policy is really a “spread the wealth” so that the stakeholders are fed.

    That is what it has come down to today. Go read the responses by mostly Republican lawmakers who should just be jumping up and down on SpaceX and free enterprise…and people who dont bat an eye at every delay in Cx or SLS or Orion are “concerned” that SpaceX “finally” flew…LOL Olson on his facebook page even linked SpaceX delay to a lack of support by Obama.

    What Holdren seems to really be expressing is the chagrin that Muncy had…in that he and the Administration seem unable to figure out the rhetoric to counter the folks who are managing the wealth transfer of the middle class to various corporations…but do it under the rhetoric that keeps their “low information voter base” all for the changes.

    I suggest that this chagrins Garver as well…she and Holdren and even up to Obama must be surprised that the corporate elites have turned on them so nicely in the last three years…and the reason that they have is that the Obama administration in general and Garver in specific (whose job I assume is to manage the political shop at NASA) has been unable to counter the right wing babble…and what the corporations see in a return of “Willard” and all the other corporate flunkies….is better access to the trough.

    I suspect that Garver etal really believed that if they syphoned off 3 billion or so a year to feed the SLS/Orion corporate machine…that this machine would sit there and simply much on the trough.

    But they can see what is coming as well..the money is drying up and performance will beat non performance even when non performance is the political favorite.

    The Obama administration in general is one of the worst political shops that I have seen in a winning candidate…and to some Garver mimics that. Bolden through her has failed to craft an alternative message about what free enterprise coming alive in human spaceflight means for The Republic (jobs) and for the notion of space efforts in general…All you get is the standard line “This expanded role for the private sector will free up more of NASA’s resources to do what NASA does best — tackle the most demanding technological challenges in space, including those of human space flight beyond low Earth orbit.”

    Which is one of the most goofy lines that the administration repeats.

    Its stunning to me how the Obama administration is politically goofy having pistol whipped McCain in the 08 election…but then they had Palin helping them there I guess. RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 8:18 am

    “Rolls eyes. I find his lack of introspection and accountabilty typical for the Obama administration. It ain’t that complicated. Build large rocket. Train crew. Launch said rocket. Plant flag on terra nova.”

    actually it is tougher then that even for the GOP…what you wrote is the rhetoric that keeps low information voters like you and other right wing trogs synched up.

    But for the real power players it goes like this “Build large rocket that has contracts in various districts that keep all the folks who have come to depend on federal contracts in business so that mostly red states can have some good jobs (as oppossed to the Walmart jobs most of them have) and the corporations can be fed. Rocket must have solids from Utah et etc. Sell people on Chinese taking over the supposed destination so that they will cough up money….train crew, get good pictures, plant flag chant TEAM USA then have masses go back to their Walmart jobs feeling good about their poverty”

    RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 6:50 am

    I’m reading a book called Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America by Shawn Lawrence Otto. Shawn makes many points, one of them being that scientists are incapable of simply and clearing communicating their points.

    Holdren saying it’s “complicated” is one clear example of this.”

    usually that is the case but it is harder here…Holdren is messing in a game he and Garver are amateurs at. It is OK they are in an administration where the political guys who are in charge think that since they beat McCain they are Karl Rove…and they are not. Karl Rove beat Al Gore…Axelrod beat McCain who had his own foot in mouth and Palin to sing along…

    Of course Axelrod is saddled with a President who really doesnt know how to lead flies to warm shit RGO

  • Dave Huntsman

    In addition to the poor rollout, the biggest problem is that the two political leaders of NASA have not been out aggressively explaining and defending the policy the last three years. The off-the-cuff speech Charlie Bolden made yesterday was perfect in explaining the policy ……… yet, where has he been the last three years, when this needed to be done daily, to each and every constituency?

  • ArtieT

    @ Daddy: “No one in the aerospace industry, space academia, or anyone of any standing authority in NASA was consulted. That’s not a failure of communication… That’s a failure of scientific and technical hubris”

    That is also called “Obama’s indifference to NASA’, despite his rhetoric that science and technology advancements are important to the nation.

    To be fair, Romney is equally indifferent.

    Our political system is filled with lawyers; as long as that continues, the real commitment to advancing science and technology, via the pull of bold goals, vs. creating STEM programs, will be wanting.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 7:00 am

    The President terminated our return to the Moon just after billions of tonnes of precious water ice was detected at the lunar poles, probably one of the most important discoveries of this new century.>>

    and go ask the American people if anyone cares? They dont. who cares are the corporations that feed at the trough of the federal government …and they use people like you RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Dave Huntsman wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 10:24 am

    In addition to the poor rollout, the biggest problem is that the two political leaders of NASA have not been out aggressively explaining and defending the policy the last three years>>

    YEs yes and yes…it is stunning to me how badly the NASA political shop (and this is Garver) is running RGO

  • amightywind

    as oppossed to the Walmart jobs most of them have

    Many red states are just becoming industrialized, as opposed to the deindustrialization of the union-rotted blue states. They are also younger. So the Walmart, and McDonalds jobs are welcome. In blue states they scorn Walmart jobs but demand 99 weeks of unemployment. Pompous liberals, like yourself, encourage this. It is wrong to be contemptuous of anyone who works for a living. Besides, I bought a big block of Walmart at 49. :)

    The President terminated our return to the Moon just after billions of tonnes of precious water ice was detected at the lunar poles, probably one of the most important discoveries of this new century.

    This is a great point considering the entire Mars program has been sold on the nauseating phrase ‘follow the water’. Obama abandoned the moon just as it was becoming interesting again.

    Holdren’s comments are indicative of the growing problem of selling our pointless and extravagant ISS expenditures to the public. Of course amightywind has seen this coming for months.

  • common sense

    I think Robert et al. that you are wrong, or at the very least not right, describing the WH.

    Think of it. SpaceX flew successfully yet again. Commercial crew has good chance to happen if the rest of the mission is successful. A lot is hanging on SpaceX shoulders, but so far… And yes it is risky to do all those in one single mission. Everyone in this business knows the odds are against SpaceX, at least every one who knows something. It is a test flight not only for the vhicles but for the policy a will and YOU know it. You MUST know it.

    Holdren is absolutely right. Suffice to read the ignorant comments of several contributors here even those who claim to be part of this industry. The WH is fighting a system that has been in place for the last what 50 years. It will not happen over night but considering the progress made for the past 4/5 years it just is mind blowing. And as someone (in)famous once put it “heads will explode in D.C.” and Huntsville and Houston and… And well they are!

    Give credit where it is deserved. Please.

  • MrEarl

    “One of the biggest criticisms of the administration’s plans for NASA was how that plan was rolled out over two years ago: tucked into the administration’s 2011 budget request, with little or no communication with congressional stakeholders prior to the public release of the budget.”
    That’s what I’ve been saying since the initial shock of that budget subsided in 2010 and recently expounded upon with DBN in a recent thread.
    About Holdren; “The problem, in essence, is that space policy is too complex an issue to communicate simply, he claimed.”
    JFK seemed to do it pretty well 50 years ago. You have to make space relevant to the average American. JFK did that by tying in the space program with our Cold War competition with the Soviet Union.
    Obama could have done that by tying the space program into the general public perception that money spent on innovation in space brings benefits to the nation. Expound on that by relating how development money spent by companies to provide crew and cargo services to the ISS and R&D expenditures by NASA for moon, asteroid and Mars exploration will lead to technological and economic expansion just like the Apollo program did in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s. You can argue as to whether that was the case but in the perception of the American public is was the case.
    Holdren and Griffin, while supporting opposite positions, seem to hold the same fatal flaw, contempt for anyone who doesn’t naturally agree with their brilliant conclusions.

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 11:38 am

    You are so right and well guess… wrong.

    What you are accusing them, in essence, is to be poor communicators. Since it is precisely what they did.

    Okay how many scientists/engineers do you know? And I mean it sincerely. How many of those would you say are good at communication with the general public? Think about it.

    As for JFK there will never be (hopefully!) another period of time just like then. Stop rehashing the past. Watch the future grow in front of you. Some trivialize the generation of the iPad, Facebook and the likes. But those who trivialize are just plain wrong. Just watch. There is a guy in 2007/2008 who understood that and he sits in the WH.

    Communication will never ever take place with a televised grandiose statement. Ever. Those are for the baby-boomers and they are in their way out.

  • @Robert G. Oler

    “and go ask the American people if anyone cares? They dont. who cares are the corporations that feed at the trough of the federal government …and they use people like you RGO”

    Americans will care when they see a Chinese flag on the Moon and American space companies on their knees begging Chinese companies for good deals on cheap (a lot cheaper than from the Earth) lunar water, air, and fuel from the lunar surface. And no entity kisses the posteriors of the ruling oligarchy in China more than US companies so they’ll feel no regrets in purchasing lunar resources from China while transferring more of America’s wealth to China’s ruling oligarchy.

    Both Obama and Romney see no problem with fascist China economically dominating both the heavens and the Earth.

    Marcel F. Williams

  • well

    Many of the dedicated opponents of the administration are looking for political and rhetorical victories, not a serious review of policy. They are unreachable and actively looking to confuse other people on the issue.

    Dedicated opponents of a change to the system are sometimes better, sometimes not.

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 11:34 am >>and

    MrEarl wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 11:38 am

    there has been enormous progress made, but it is being made outside any political context…particularly in terms of the greater issues that faced/face The Republic.

    MrEarl in my view is correct in that “Obama could have done that by tying the space program into the general public perception that money spent on innovation in space brings benefits to the nation. ”

    the problem is that 1) Obama has not a clue how to sell any of the policies he is pushing and 2) The political shop at NASA is just fracken tone deaf.

    There is no real hint as to how “commercial crew/cargo” are innovators that will change the US economy. Where is Bolden or Garver talking about the jobs Musk (and to some extent Orbital) and all the other competitors for the crew/cargo have created? Where is Bolden or Garver talking about the notions of affordable lift to orbit bringing the commercial satellite launch industry back to the US?

    instead they have this stock phrase which is ““Partnering with U.S. companies such as SpaceX to provide cargo and eventually crew service to the International Space Station is a cornerstone of the President’s plan for maintaining America’s leadership in space,”

    It is like the HAL9000 repeating over and over “I have the greatest enthusiasm for this mission” no wonder Holdren is losing the communication battle to “America must be great in space”…sigh RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 11:22 am

    It is wrong to be contemptuous of anyone who works for a living.>>

    and if I was you would have a complaint. I am contemptuous of companies that treat their employees like indentured servants. Thats Walmart. RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 11:22 am

    . Of course amightywind has seen this coming for months.”

    You are speaking of yourself in the third person…are you the Queen? RGO

  • @MrEarl
    “JFK seemed to do it pretty well 50 years ago. You have to make space relevant to the average American. JFK did that by tying in the space program with our Cold War competition with the Soviet Union.”
    One problem with that analogy. As you said, he had the Cold War to give the space program a sense of urgency. Without that, it wouldn’t have happened. Without a modern event similar to the nightmare giving Sputnik moment and/or an accompanying similar Yuri Gagarin moment, it couldn’t happen now no matter who proposes it. The substitutes you indicate just won’t resonate in the public with the same level of urgency that they did in a time when everyone thought the U.S and USSR could be lobbing nuclear weapons at each other any minute, bringing an abrupt and catastrophic end of civilization with hardly a moment’s notice.

  • No one seems to be raising the question, “Communicate to whom?”

    There are several different audiences here:

    * Members of Congress — All they care about is “how much pork will this bring to my district/state?” As we’ve seen in the hearings, representatives like Ralph Hall (R-TX) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) are clueless, if not half-senile. Porkers like Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX; interesting how TX keeps coming up) and, to a lesser extent, Bill Nelson (D-FL) want billions spent on a “monster rocket” with no missions or destinations just so they can keep obsolete jobs in their states.

    I really doubt there’s anything the Administration could say to these people. They don’t care about what’s best for the nation. They only care about what’s best for their re-election. Constellation and its spawn SLS are perfect programs for Congressional pork, but they don’t actually accomplish anything in the national interest.

    * The Space-Industrial Complex — Even more self-interested than the members of Congress, and closely intertwined. We’re starting to see some traditional members of the aerospace industry dip their metaphorical toes into the welcoming waters of NewSpace — Boeing, LockMart, ATK. Perhaps this is a sign the winds are changing direction. If so, they’ll tack with the wind.

    * National Media — Again, not really interested in anything NASA has to say unless it generates ratings/sells newspapers/increases hits on a web site. The national media has dumbed down its science coverage. We have a few exceptions like Miles O’Brien at PBS and John Zarrella at CNN and Alan Boyle at MSNBC, but by and large the media couldn’t care less. They delivered the obituary last year for the Shuttle, told people the space program was over, and moved on. Some of them are probably shocked and confused by the SpaceX launch to the ISS.

    The bright side is that, as I suspected, at least for the next few days space will be in the national limelight as Dragon attempts to berth with the ISS. Hopefully that will penetrate the general public’s cluelessness. Which brings us to …

    * The General Public — Again, why should they care? It’s entertainment to most of them. They like to watch “smoke and fire” but otherwise the space program from their perspective has no meaning in their daily lives.

    Now, the General Public can be a NASA ally if motivated. They can influence the Members of Congress and the National Media. But most people don’t want to be motivated. They want to sit on their butts and watch American Idol. Heaven forbid reality TV be interrupted for live coverage of history being made in space.

    I’ve found some success in motivating the General Public by explaining to them that exploiting the microgravity of Low Earth Orbit can lead to medical and industrial discoveries, e.g. the potential salmonella and MRSA vaccines. The recent discovery with the 5-LOX enzyme might help us with immune systems, aging and bone loss.

    Those are things that resonate with most people, because it can affect their daily lives.

    But how to communicate that to the General Public when the National Media won’t pay attention?

    The NASA Channel is watched by very few people. We can’t even get NASA HD here in Merritt Island, home of KSC. We get the analog channel but not HD.

    This is part of what is discussed in Shawn Otto’s book referenced above. He argues that scientists need to learn how to better communicate, but also actively engage the community rather than reacting to bad news. Scientists have been taught for generations *not* to engage, but to stay in their labs — with the rare exception of a Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye.

    Otto argues that science is, in fact, politics and it is anti-authoritarian because it challenges assumptions. So perhaps one way to “communicate” is to become more “political” by actively and openly challenging politicians in the public arena, even running for office.

    And that leaves one final group …

    * The Space Geeks — We are perhaps the “core” constituency, but statistically we are irrelevant. We spend most of our time infighting. (Read above for examples.) We have advocacy groups like the National Space Society and the Planetary Society but those have a poor track record of influencing national policy.

    Communicating may seem complicated, but it’s even more complicated to get people to listen — especially when it’s something they don’t want to hear.

  • Vladislaw

    Robert wrote:

    “Space politics are really about “destination” only to the unwashed masses (grin).”

    In one Administrator Bolden’s first news confrences, I believe it was the introduction to the new CCDEV players, he stated what Americans are interested in.

    Firsts, He made it very clear from apparent polling NASA did. America didn’t want the day to day looking for samples. They tuned in for firsts, got bored and moved on.

    He explained the new policies were supposed to be designed around taking advantage of some of that by producing a lot of firsts. So maybe not so much destination, as there are only so many but doing things for the first time and get those press releases.

  • reader

    Hydrogen signature at lunar poles has been known since Clementine and Lunar Prospector. Nothing “suddenly made moon interesting again” during either Obama, or even Bush administration.
    All the more recent Japanese, Indian, Chinese and one ( yes, 1 ) US probe have just solidified earlier hypotheses, regular scientific method at work.

  • common sense

    I think it is fairly simple why they cannot communicate anything. The new plan will result in massive lay-offs. Not something you want to tell anyone these days.

    But come on. Who the heck cares?

    What is important is that the foundation of a new direction for space, in particular HSF, has been laid. And after meandering for some years (as btw I predicted quite some time ago) the old cost-plus scheme is soon to be history.

    I don’t care about grandiose statements for the few. I care for the actual change. A change I can believe in. Sorry I had to say it. And it is happening. With President Obama it is happening.

    I will say this though. If the whole commercial thing flops then you can kiss good-bye any HSF for a long time, save for Soyuz rides…

  • Egad

    > a “monster rocket” with no missions or destinations

    Speaking of that and going wildly off topic for a moment, what’s happened to the “what can we do with SLS?” study John Shannon has been heading? I thought it was due out last month.

  • “Rolls eyes. I find his lack of introspection and accountabilty typical for the Obama administration. It ain’t that complicated. Build large rocket. Train crew. Launch said rocket. Plant flag on terra nova.”

    And the European Theater of War was just sailing across the English Channel, followed by a hike to Berlin…

    Windy, devil – details.

    Which ‘Big Rocket?’ (and why?) To be launched when? Costing how much? Plant flag…and then what? (we didn’t have a good answer the last time, either)

  • amightywind

    Which ‘Big Rocket?’

    Ares V EDS, Ares I/Orion our previous architecture.

    (and why?)

    To support BEO exploration: lunar landing via Altair; the Plymouth Rock mission outlined by Lockmart. I would add it is feasible to rendezvous with very small asteroids temporarily caught in the Earth Moon gravity well.

    To be launched when?

    When it is finished. At Hughes Space and Comm when a satellite project used to get behind we would work three shifts. It definitely focused the mind. I suggest we do that. If we restarted the project now it could fly in 2017.

    Costing how much?

    The sum of the combined current allocation for HSF, ISS, ‘commercial’, and earth and climate sciences. About $6 billion/yr give or take. Or about 15% of the cost of the food stamp program. I would take no prisoners.

    Plant flag…and then what?

    I’m sure Columbus was at a loss too. The process typically goes, conquer, exploit, prosper.

  • common sense

    “I’m sure Columbus was at a loss too.”

    I suppose this suggests that Columbus was sent on a mission with no defined goal. He was just sent just because Spain could pay for it. And then you wonder why Spain kinda disappeared as a super power?

    By the same token it suggests that while on our way to the Moon we might end up oh I don’t know on Mars maybe?

    It’s a great analogy. I think that amightywind ought to sell the policy for the next GOP WH if there ever is one. At least amightywind understands how to talk to the GOP base electorate. Well done.

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 2:40 pm

    I’m sure Columbus was at a loss too>>

    You would be wrong RGO

  • Vladislaw

    Stephen C. Smith wrote:

    Excellent post. I have one question.

    “So perhaps one way to “communicate” is to become more “political” by actively and openly challenging politicians in the public arena, even running for office.”

    Wouldn’t that be the end of their career, in some cases, because the grant money would dry up?

    I can only think of Hansen at NASA that has been able to vocal publically and he seemed to get very lucky he wasn’t fired.

  • Olly Frisco

    The problem is bigger than Holdren and bigger than poor communications. There is no one in the administration, and that includes NASA, Bolden and the rest, who have a clue of what they are doing, where they are going, or why, There is no leadership. The compound that with an ambivalent White House.

  • common sense

    @ Olly Frisco wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 4:35 pm

    Thanks for the clarification! Very helpful.

  • GeeSpace

    To put it simply
    If the Ddirector of the Office of Science and Technology Policy can not explain science and technology (uncluding space policy)m he or she should be fired immediately if not sooner.

    A function fothe Director is to explain science in understandable terms to the general public and the his boss, the President of the United States

  • common sense

    @ GeeSpace wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 5:00 pm

    He and the others did explain. But 1) no one was listening and 2) what is the scientific literacy culture in the US? Oh and yes maybe 3) Why would they dedicate more time than what they did to $18B/yr ? Why?

    Just for fun Global Warming is a lot more important to this nation than HSF or even NASA as a whole. And for some reason the only people who don’t get it are in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy#Public_opinion

    Whatever.

  • pathfinder_01

    “There is no real hint as to how “commercial crew/cargo” are innovators that will change the US economy. Where is Bolden or Garver talking about the jobs Musk (and to some extent Orbital) and all the other competitors for the crew/cargo have created? Where is Bolden or Garver talking about the notions of affordable lift to orbit bringing the commercial satellite launch industry back to the US?”

    Bolden tried in 2010/2011, he was drowned out by the “uncertainty” of the shuttle shutdown, Congress, ect. Plus remember the nature of commercial space is different. The shuttle kept up 10,000 jobs. Space X, ULA, and Orbital, might hire only a few hundred of these folks. It is rather like shutting down an old fashioned steal mill and replacing it with a mini mill. The latter may make more economic sense but the former employed far more people net effect will be job losses.

  • DCSCA

    “The problem, in essence, is that space policy is too complex an issue to communicate simply, [Holdren] claimed.”

    Except it’s not. For instance:

    “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” – JFK, 5/25/61

    Accordingly, here’s some space policy to communicate to Holdren simply: “You’re fired.”

    @Stephen C. Smith wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 1:10 pm

    “The NASA Channel is watched by very few people… But how to communicate that to the General Public when the National Media won’t pay attention? …. The NASA Channel is watched by very few people. We can’t even get NASA HD here in Merritt Island, home of KSC. We get the analog channel but not HD.”

    Except, of course, you get the real thing as well, out your front door. =eyeroll= As to ‘paying attention’- you can’t watch something not available to you- and bear in mind, not everyone uses the web to access video in their busy days. In fact, NASA Select is viewed when carried by cablers- usually in university towns- however it is often bumped by money-hungry cable systems because it is not a profit making channel. For example, cablers will dump NASA Select in favor of another home shopping channel because a cable carrier earns a percentage from every purchase made on the channel. Not so w/NASA Select. You can’t watch NASA Select if it isn’t on the menu and in many places, it piggybacks on C-SPAN, which has to fight for cable channels in some regions as well.

    “”National Media — Again, not really interested in anything NASA has to say unless it generates ratings/sells newspapers/increases hits on a web site. The national media has dumbed down its science coverage. We have a few exceptions like Miles O’Brien at PBS and John Zarrella at CNN and Alan Boyle at MSNBC, but by and large the media couldn’t care less…. ”

    Inaccurate.

    In fact, the national media – particularly television- does show interest— interest in good pictures. Make a pretty picture and you make the news. Wire service stories run in papers and on the web as well. But in this cost-cutting era, when news divisions are now profit centers (unlike in the days of Cronkite,) news directors and assignment editors with an eye on the budget simply are not going to waste money and send news crews to watch a rocket fizzle at 4 AM, when they can take the free feed. Many cable outlets maintain a high standard for science docs, etc. PBS’s NOVA never fails to deliver as well as Discovery, etc. The cable news outlets are a diffferent matter. Fox was pretty good at covering shuttle operations live as the feed was free inspite of its incredibly illiterate and poorly informed corral of newsreaders assigned to cover them. MSNBC usually picks up the packages prepped by NBC News to supplement their live coverage, at least they did during the shuttle era and they had the seasoned input from Jay Barbree as well and CBS News has begun to air more spacial news since Pelley assumed the anchor/ME chair and Couric departed and she made no secret of pushing medical news given the fate of her husband. Such is the power of he ME spot which explains ABC’s weakness in science-related coverage. However, static imagery of floating astronauts pushing buttons or cargo ships delivering sundries are pretty mundane in 2012. Planetary imagery is normally aired if it’s good TV. Good pictures grab viewers. Dragon’s rendevous should make the media however it’s on a holiday travel day and could easily be bumped by airport and highway congestion coverage.

    Historically, when NASA captures good imagery, the media usually takes the feed (the price is right) and it makes the papers/TV. And FYI, CNN’s technology unit, where their space-related reportage operated from, was disbanded several years ago- more’s the pity- as a cost saving move which is why O’Brien left. His PBS gig is paltry by comparison and Zarrella is a regional correspondent, left to cover matters space if they arise in his footprint, or parades in Key West, but he’s not O’Brien– or the late John Holliman, either. Once upon a time, before the perimeter fences and security ruled, aviation buffs would go to airports to watch the planes land and take off– some enthusiasts even catalogued glimpsed tail numbers as a hobby. Not so much anymore. You cannot make people watch something they have no interest in- and watching launches of cargo satellites into orbit or probes off to Mars is decidely uninteresting to most Americans these days. Maybe not so to other folks in other lands. LEO space operations have become less a matter of science and more a matter of commerce. O’Brien essentially reiterated this last night on PBS, not ing we pretty much know how to operate in LEO. The news is how the deals are cut and that’s business, not science.

  • There comes a point in time where the “old way of doing things” just becomes obsolete. This can be said of the industrial complex or unions. This could be said of both Democrats and Republicans. The dogma that plagues debates and shuts people down is destructive.

    The massive mis-information campaigns against ordinary citizens, not to mention issues such as space policy is sickening. There is nothing wrong with trying to reshape our space program when it has had such poor performance. Everyone has excuses why Project X failed or Mission Y was canceled.

    The system is broke – and simply throwing money at the problem does not work. It only strengthens crony capitalism. Moreover, in case you missed the memo, the United States is very broke. We simply cannot afford SLS, CxP, Shuttle, and JWST. Something needs to change.

    Things like COTS/CRS, the CCDev program, with SAAs are a change that is working. Of course you will have those who simply go on rants or tirades about how they are not, but then we simply look to events to see that they really are.

    Finally, the fact that people will not support COTS/CRS, CCDev, and SAAs merely because President X or Assistant Administrator Y are from Party Z is petty, myopic, and childish. TEA Party in Space does not care who came up with the idea, only that is it a viable solution to a problem.

    People can continue to get on their soap boxes and continue their diatribes, but the truth is the programs that is COTS/CRS, the CCDev program, and SAAs are working and people from both sides of the isle can take credit for it.

    There is more than enough work to accomplish – this petty bickering between the left and right has got to stop or you might as well surrender space to the Russians and Chinese.

    Respectfully,
    Andrew Gasser
    TEA Party in Space

  • Vladislaw wrote:

    Wouldn’t that be the end of their career, in some cases, because the grant money would dry up?

    Well, that’s why I’m waiting until I get to the end of Shawn’s book to find out what he says about that. :-)

    Carl Sagan was an activist — he got arrested for protesting at a nuclear bomb test site — but he never ran for office. He was also shunned by many of his peers for his “going public,” so to speak.

    Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t seem to have this problem for now, but then he’s never moved into the political arena as Sagan did.

    Bottom line, our nation is becoming more scientifically illiterate and suffering from denialism. Entire news channels are dedicated to promoting ignorance. We need to figure out a strategy to combat this or this nation will be in even deeper trouble than it is now.

    If Romney gets elected, kiss the space program goodbye. He’s made it clear he has no space vision and joked that if China goes to the Moon we should ask them to bring back our artifacts. So we need to be sure that the public understands the consequences of not investing in space exploration and exploitation.

  • Coastal Ron

    amightywind wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 2:40 PM

    To support BEO exploration

    Which is unfunded.

    Any money spent supporting a program that doesn’t exist is not money well spent.

    Who are the customers for your Ares V/SLS? What alternatives have been tried, but the customers say they need something bigger? Other than powerpoint plans, there is no hard demand for anything bigger than what we have.

  • James Ader

    The problem of lack of leadership, lack of direction, and lack of communications extends well beyond DC and well beyond exploration. Only within the last few weeks as a result of the CASIS Florida debacle, Gersenmier and the JSC ISS Program came to the apparently sudden realization that ISS was basically completed about 3 years ago and they probably should have been seeking users and payloads. Gersenmier said they had sort of been focused more on the assembly (over in 2009). Talk about no leadership-you have a $100 billion asset in orbit, time is running out for it, and they forgot they were supposed to figure out a use for it. That’s NASA’s biggest program, with thousands of people working on it, but apparently they did not realize what they were working on.

  • Coastal Ron

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 1:10 pm

    Well said.

    I agree the public in general has no interest in space. I have a pretty wide and diverse circle of friends, and even the one with a NASA sticker on his truck is not concerned that we haven’t returned to the Moon or otherwise gone BEO.

    Not that it’s an indication of public interest, but certainly the media has been interested in what SpaceX is doing with this COTS test flight. And coverage, which is mainly accurate in content and effusive in excitement, is telling the public that this is a big deal.

    Since the public had forgotten about spaceflight after the last Shuttle flight, this is grabbing their attention – if only for a brief moment – and reminding the public that the U.S. is not only doing things in space (“oh yeah, I forgot we have a space station up there”), but also highlighting American industry at a time where everyone would love to hear American industry success stories.

    I think the space enthusiasts that beat the drum of “we need a space policy to make us proud” tend to forget that most of the Apollo missions were poorly followed by the American public (and this is before the advent of cable TV), and the majority of the Shuttle missions were mere footnotes in the paper (at most).

    Unless the media can turn picking rocks on an airless body in space as exciting as watching truck drivers drive on ice road, or fishermen crab fishing, space will continue to be just another place we go to work. As it should be.

    Which means we need to go beyond the “excitement” of space as a justification of spending vast sums of taxpayer money, and look at space as an incremental investment in our future.

  • amightywind

    Just for fun Global Warming is a lot more important to this nation than HS

    Since the top of this thread is ‘its complicated’ consider this. Crack a book on control systems and understand the mathematical meaning of controllability of a dynamic system. Then understand an earth climate model with CO2 as an input. Then tell me if you can express control of the system – oh I don’t know, maybe the ideal target temperature would be that of Woodstock 1968 at 40 degrees north. Then tell me if you can implement that control with political structures, at the expense of 4 billion people trying to escape poverty. Do you now realise how completely crazy you global warming types are?

    If the rationale for NASA is so complicated that it ties the tongue of a genius like Holdren, perhaps it is time to simplify the rationale.

  • Googaw

    Not only is space policy far too complicated to communicate. It’s also far too complicated for any human, even the most intelligent and knowledgeable, to get right.

    That’s why we have markets. Markets are how we let good economic policies win and bad ones lose. Real markets with private buyers as well as private sellers, not pretend markets with a government monopsonist. Central planning doesn’t work, and if the Soviet Union, East Germany, and North Korea didn’t already convince you of that, the ongoing travails with “the” space program certainly should.

  • I’ll also throw into the hopper this Christian Science Monitor article which suggests that maybe this whole “communication” issue is generational.

    The people who are screaming about “missions” and “destinations” are generally older, people who grew up on Apollo. The younger generation — those who will benefit from the ISS and exploitation of Low Earth Orbit — are much more excited about the current direction, and commercial space in particular.

    To quote from the article:

    These big ideas highlight a point that emerges from conversations with educators and one-time students now hard at work designing and building hardware. Although the Apollo program that carried men to the moon in the late 1960s and 1970s continues to serve as a kind of eternal torch of inspiration for some, the generation at hand appears to draw much of its inspiration from the space program at hand.

    In that sense, I think NASA is doing a great job of reaching out through the communications channels this generation uses. NASA is very active on Twitter, creating “tweetups” and “#NASASocials”. NASA is posting lots of videos on YouTube, and is active on FaceBook. NASA just released an upgrade to its mobile app.

    The older generations don’t use this stuff, therefore they’re unaware of it, or if they are might disrespect it.

    In a way, NASA has chosen this “alternate” route because the mainstream media has gone in the toilet.

    I’m very active now on Twitter (shameless plug — @spacekscblog) and it’s resulted in networking with a number of folks, including media types like Miles O’Brien and John Zarrella. Miles left CNN after the network closed its science bureau. John loves space but he’s a generic CNN correspondent based in Miami; he does what he can but tomorrow he might be standing on the shoreline reporting on a hurricane.

    The point is a new communications network is growing for those who will be critical to the next generation of spaceflight. They ignore the traditional channels. They know all about SpaceX and the ISS and NewSpace.

    Now, how that translates into influencing Congress, I’ve no idea. But then I’m counting on commercial space to make Congress irrelevant.

  • Frank Glover

    “Which ‘Big Rocket?’

    Ares V EDS, Ares I/Orion our previous architecture.

    (and why?)

    To support BEO exploration: lunar landing via Altair; the Plymouth Rock mission outlined by Lockmart. I would add it is feasible to rendezvous with very small asteroids temporarily caught in the Earth Moon gravity well.”

    For give my apparent lack of specificity. Actually, my question really was; “Why *that* particular ‘Big Rocket’ as opposed to other possible designs…or any ‘Big Rocket’ at all? (as opposed to [gasp] orbital assembly of components launched on smaller, already in production rockets) At the probable cost per mission (whenever they began), it would be interesting to see if the plug would be pulled before the numbers of launches exceeded the number of fingers I possess…

    “To be launched when?

    When it is finished. At Hughes Space and Comm when a satellite project used to get behind we would work three shifts. It definitely focused the mind. I suggest we do that. If we restarted the project now it could fly in 2017. ”

    Hmm. Yes, find the money to work round the clock on a launcher with no dramatic requirement to justify it. That kind of thing normally happens only on a war footing…and there are no known enemies at the locations you listed. Good luck with that.

    “Costing how much?

    The sum of the combined current allocation for HSF, ISS, ‘commercial’, and earth and climate sciences. About $6 billion/yr give or take. Or about 15% of the cost of the food stamp program. I would take no prisoners.”

    So, this effectively becomes NASA’s only space project. That, too, should be ‘interesting’ (please don’t miss the sarcasm) to justify.

    And yes,we already know that social programs aren’t safe from you, but the reminder is helpful.

    “Plant flag…and then what?

    I’m sure Columbus was at a loss too. The process typically goes, conquer, exploit, prosper.”

    Columbus merely set out to find an alternative route to the Asian spice trade. But he underestimated the size of Earth, and there were these two continents in his way (just as well, he’d likely not have made it, otherwise) that few in Europe, including himself, had any idea existed. Land (and people…at least that’s blessedly not a factor this time) to conquer were not part of his original thinking.

    But thank you for those…clarifications.

  • James Ader

    …simplify the rationale
    The rationale is pretty simple and I think Elon Musk has figured it out; expand the realm of travel for people and the economic sphere. NASA and its military industrialist contractors were going after cost+ contracts and power. The contractors went after the gold. NASA went after the power which is why NASA has been so concerned with public attention and acceptance. NASA and its contractors have wasted enough time and American taxpayer money. The way in which NASA’s human space flight program has been managed for many years has been all about their maintaining the appearance of power. But NASA has been stagnating with little new on the scene since Shuttle’s first missions, and even Orion is a throwback to an earlier period. But government’s proper role is R&D, standards and regulations, not operations. It is finally time for a new model.

  • well

    They explain it every chance they get. Ive heard the message quite often myself but people are not particularly interested. Most Americans couldnt tell you what is happening with the space program because they ultimately don’t care. They didnt care under Bush either.

    Add in those who lie and distort NASA’s message for fun or profit and of course we are where we are. This is not new.

  • James Louis

    When you look at the waste and the delays of the last 25 years of Shuttle, and the waste of an ISS that they forgot to find users for, and the throwback Orion that has no mission, you begin to realize just how lousy NASA’s management of the program has been. The last real progress was the development of Shuttle. NASA keeps demanding more money, but as long as they keep wasting what they get, why would they deserve more?

  • DCSCA

    “Entire news channels are dedicated to promoting ignorance. We need to figure out a strategy to combat this or this nation will be in even deeper trouble than it is now.”

    No. Entire news channels are devoted to making as much money as they can delivering a profitable product to a customer base. Just like Space X.

    If you don’t like it. Don’t watch. The power rests in your hands w/t remote control.

  • DCSCA

    “The shuttle kept up 10,000 jobs. Space X, ULA, and Orbital, might hire only a few hundred of these folks.”

    HP (run by Meg Whitman, who was backed for CA governor and protege of Mitt Romney and on his short list for Sec. of Treasury) announced this evening it is laying off 27,000 people. This is the kind of down-to-earth news that trumps media coverage of ‘a few hundred hires by Space X’ or it’s lofting of a cargo satellite.

  • DCSCA

    @Stephen C. Smith wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 9:30 pm

    “I’ll also throw into the hopper this Christian Science Monitor article which suggests that maybe this whole “communication” issue is generational.”

    Except it’s not. If anything, the capacity to ‘communicate’ is not an issue at all- it has never been better. The fact that policy is poorly articulated is more a problem of the presenter, regardless of generation, not the content of the presentation. JFK had no problem. LBJ had no problem. Nor did Reagan.

    “The people who are screaming about “missions” and “destinations” are generally older, people who grew up on Apollo.”

    This is just foolish, as you’re advocating an aimlessness void of the discipline every individual- or generation- finds in striving toward a goal. Your commercialist propaganda slip is showing, dear.

    “The younger generation — those who will benefit from the ISS and exploitation of Low Earth Orbit — are much more excited about the current direction, and commercial space in particular.”

    You mean this ‘ISS”- the policy goal articulated over 28 years ago by that destination-driven-mission-minded generation ?!?!:

    “Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade. A space station will permit quantum leaps in our research in science, communications, in metals, and in lifesaving medicines which could be manufactured only in space. We want our friends to help us meet these challenges and share in their benefits. NASA will invite other countries to participate so we can strengthen peace, build prosperity, and expand freedom for all who share our goals.” – President Ronald Reagan, State of the Union speech, January, 1984.

    Over 28 years ago. Reagan was nearly 73. And you pitch they’re =eyeroll= ‘excited’ about it??

    In fact, you are. They are not. They’re saddled w/t burden of it.

    Here we are, nearly three decades later and you spin your own diminished, selfish expectations as ‘excitement’ as a rationale in adding $100+billion to their debt load and $3 billion/yr for ‘operational costs’ for a Cold War relic, conceived in the Reagan era before most of them were born. It’s not exciting at all, Smitty. In fact, the diminished expectations of going in circles and no place fast traps them for years to come. You’re a Pied Piper for Poor Planning. You’re selling their future short, Smitty. And the wise ones won’t be taken in.

    A doomed-to-Pacific-splash space platform, which after 11 years on orbit has failed to deliver any appreciable ROI to justify the expense is a poor tally for calibrating “benefit.” It’s no moon shot, Smitty. It’s no lunar colony. It’s no Mars probe. By magnifying the importance of it in your own eyes you are diminishing a vision for their future. They’re smart enough to know there is no benefit being saddled with the massive debt to pay for something you crave and their parents weren’t all that sure of to begin with– left over from a geo-political era long gone and has no relevance to their world.

    The young know space exploitation is not space exploration. And the young yearn to explore, Smitty. The bright ones know LEO is a ticket to no where, going no place fast. And the smart ones get excited when they land their rovers on Mars or foster plans to move BEO, the quicker, the better.

  • An anecdote …

    My wife returned home last night from a trip to Italy. On the second flight from Charlotte to Orlando, she was on the same row as a man who was reading about the SpaceX Dragon launch. He said aloud, “Why are they launching that? The space station is abandoned.”

    My wife dutifully replied, “It’s not abandoned. It’s been continuously occupied for over a decade. NASA has astronauts up there now.”

    “Oh.” And then he moved on to something else.

    You have to wonder if 99% of Americans are totally clueless about the world they live in …

  • Robert G. Oler recalled:

    Kolker and I did alright on this one…note the year

    You wrote about Tom DeLay … Who has that district now? Is it Pete Olson?

    You also wrote in 2004:

    Human spaceflight in the past 30 years has suffered from one basic defect. It has no tangible connection to our economy or society.

    I think that’s changing. Not just with the commercial craft, but the effort now via CASIS to attract potential customers.

    I’ve read so many articles in recent days, I can’t remember the source, but one of them was about how the SpaceX-Bigelow partnership might one day hand off LEO microgravity research to the private sector. Charlie Bolden himself noted that some research isn’t best suited for the ISS because crew are aboard, where “some guy is running on a treadmill” or words to that effect. It was suggested that the Bigelow stations might have no one on board permanently.

    It’s all headed in the right direction. Maybe not as fast as some might like. But it’s headed in the right direction.

  • @Stephen C. Smith
    “… including media types like Miles O’Brien and John Zarrella.
    Then you might attempt to straighten Miles out about SLS. He thinks it’s a good thing and that NASA’s budget should be increased primarily to have more money for SLS. See: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june12/spacex_05-22.html

    On the plus side, he is a very strong supporter of Commercial Crew as evidenced in the above link.

  • BeancounterFromDownunder

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 6:18 am
    Yep you could be right. When you look at some of the leadership you’ve got to wonder. But don’t worry too much, it’s pretty much the same in every Western Democracy. Most people only get interested when things hit their hip pockets.

  • BeancounterFromDownunder

    SpaceX Dragon is still green and on the next step with a fly around the station. This is looking really promising.

  • common sense

    @amightywind wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 7:58 pm

    “Do you now realise how completely crazy you global warming types are?”

    Do you know the difference between engineering (“controllability of a dynamic system”) and science (“earth climate model”)?

    Do you know what deterministic means?

    Do you realize how more ignorant you appear through each one of your posts?

    “Then tell me if you can express control of the system – oh I don’t know, maybe the ideal target temperature would be that of Woodstock 1968 at 40 degrees north.”

    Do you know how stupid you would look if you were to ask this questions in front of climate scientists, any scientists for that matter? These questions are only good for mentally challenged individuals and I am probably insulting them. No wonder the US educational system and resulting uneducated people are the laughing stock of the world.

    “If the rationale for NASA is so complicated that it ties the tongue of a genius like Holdren, perhaps it is time to simplify the rationale.”

    You mix up engineering, science and politics. And to some degree they are a our climatologist know. But in your view it seems that it all ha to be reduced to some big rocket which denotes some other challenges you may have. Will you ever grow up? Some day?

  • Coastal Ron

    Apollo Boy (aka DCSCA) wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 6:04 am

    “I’ll also throw into the hopper this Christian Science Monitor article which suggests that maybe this whole “communication” issue is generational.”

    Except it’s not.

    You have proven Stephen’s point, since you of all people epitomize the type of person that is firmly anchored in the past and doesn’t understand what’s going on today.

    I have been heartened at the media coverage of this COTS mission, since it indicates that the media (and by extension a good part of the public) lives in the moment for what we do in space, not the past.

    The other thread from the media is that the U.S. is gaining back a capability that we lost with the retirement of the Shuttle. You can feel that sense of pride for the scrappy startup (the proverbial American dream), and the team effort by NASA and SpaceX (i.e. a public/private effort that actually works).

    And for those that care about money, the media has been very good at pointing out that this will lower our costs to support missions in space. Showing fiscal responsibility in these hard economic times resonates with taxpayers, especially when porkers in Congress are spending $30B to build a rocket no one can afford to use. I’ll take that contrast any day.

    This is shaping up to be a good decade for those that truly care about expanding our presence in space.

  • common sense

    @ Stephen C. Smith wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 6:18 am

    “You have to wonder if 99% of Americans are totally clueless about the world they live in …”

    Yes they are.

    Off topic sorry but try and remember all the questions surrounding 9/11 and it is a bit more important than HSF. “Why were we attacked?”. Most everybody has no clue as to the implications of our foreign policy and our way of living. HSF??? NASA??? SpaceX??? There is work to do my friend, a lot of work.

    Now on a positive note I would say that thanks to the Internet it may change for the better for the newer generations. I hope.

  • vulture4

    “via CASIS to attract potential customers.”

    CASIS (apparently) won the contract because they said they would produce commercial customers for ISS who would turn it into a tech bonanza. Their competitors did not say they could do this, maybe because they know it cannot be done. Naturally the contract was awarded to CASIS.

  • Meg Whitman was also backed by Elon Musk during her failed campaign for governor.

    Marcel F. Williams

  • @Coastal Ron

    How do you lower cost for tax payers by extended the life of an unnecessary $3 billion a year big government space station? This is going to cost the tax payers at least $15 billion dollars beyond 2015 and possible a lot more.

    Sorry, but using the ISS as work-fare for private space companies is an enormously bad idea. And there isn’t even enough traffic to the ISS to support more than one or two companies.

    But now they’re talking about using the ISS for space tourism: a government space station directly competing against private space station companies like Bigelow. Unbelievable!!!!!

    Marcel F. Williams

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi Frank –

    “I’m sure Columbus was at a loss too. The process typically goes, conquer, exploit, prosper.”

    “Columbus merely set out to find an alternative route to the Asian spice trade. But he underestimated the size of Earth, and there were these two continents in his way (just as well, he’d likely not have made it, otherwise) that few in Europe, including himself, had any idea existed. Land (and people…at least that’s blessedly not a factor this time) to conquer were not part of his original thinking.”

    Sorry, but that is not correct. Read “Codex 636″.

    Also, your analogy does not hold either. People were already living well when Columbus and others showed up. There was no need for life support; as far as costs go, a ship could be built by a village.

    While many space supporters decry the ISS, exactly what technologies will be necessary for BEO activity? Aren’t they being developed by the ISS?

  • E.P. Grondine

    “Communicating may seem complicated, but it’s even more complicated to get people to listen — especially when it’s something they don’t want to hear.”

    So true – try communicating on the impact hazard.

    Holdren’s communication job is actually easier than he pretends. All he needs to say is “ATK is a crummy company which could not deliver a crummy launcher anywhere near on time or on budget.”, except do it in a “polite” manner.

  • common sense

    @DCSCA wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 10:51 pm

    “The power rests in your hands w/t remote control.”

    Just to be sure, you know we are using HD TV these days. But more so. How many people relevant to this discussion are actually watching any TV? Do you know?

    Maybe you’ll learn something watching fewer reruns of Apollo 13 and reading more you know… news… Ironic for a self-proclaimed journalist, isn’t it?

    Then again, I did enjoy Apollo 13, From the Earth to the Moon, etc…

    I have to say time flies so fast. One day I watch Cernan on the Moon another day I work CEV yet another day newspapers disappear along with TV and Apollo becomes irrelevant and back to Cernan… What can you do?

    Well whenever you have time try and read for comprehension as they say. You know those pesky seemingly intangible very real things…

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/business/media/young-people-are-watching-but-less-often-on-tv.html?pagewanted=all

  • DCSCA

    @Stephen C. Smith wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 6:18 am

    ?????

    An anecdote …

    There’s a space enthusiast who lives in Merritt Island, Florida who posts regularly on this forum who complains that he cannot get NASA Select on his HDTV system yet if he put down his remote, he can see a launch real time if he stepped out his front door- a privledge most Americans do not have. ‘You have to wonder if 99% of Americans are totally clueless about the world they live in …’ indeed. Or what’s literally going on in front of their eyes outside their homes. =eyeroll= Worse still, the question the man on the plane asked remains valid- ‘why are they launching that’ when Progress spacecraft are already servicing the ISS and been servicing LEO space platformd for over 34 years. He may not be as ‘clueless’ as you think.

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 10:41 am

    LOL Everyone understands the damage done condemning another generation to LEO ops, going in circles, no place fast. .

  • DCSCA

    @James Louis wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 10:50 pm

    ‘When you look at the waste and the delays of the last 25 years of Shuttle, and the waste of an ISS that they forgot to find users for, and the throwback Orion that has no mission, you begin to realize just how lousy NASA’s management of the program has been.’

    The VSE articulated a strategic space policy which was reiterated in concise fashion by Neil Armstrong in Congressional hearings, affirmed, as he noted by two Congresses through a change of control. Then scuttled by the Obama folks Problem was, it was underfunded and nobody’s listening.

  • DCSCA

    “[RGO] also wrote in 2004: ‘Human spaceflight in the past 30 years has suffered from one basic defect. It has no tangible connection to our economy or society.'” This is just nonsense as every aspect of HSF has a firm, tangible connection to the economy and society– it is not magically created out of nothing- it employs people, advances technologies and adds values to the economy in every locale it operates. .

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 2:57 pm

    Everyone understands the damage done condemning another generation to LEO ops, going in circles, no place fast.

    “Everyone”? According to you, you don’t even live in the U.S., so you’re going to have to step outside of your echo chamber and provide a variety of verifiable news sources to back up your unfounded theories. I won’t hold my breath.

    Also, what you continue to fail to understand is that creating a redundant cargo and crew transportation system frees up NASA from having to depend on gigantic, expensive and under-used government rockets. The less money NASA spends on government-owned/government-run transportation, the more it can spend on leaving LEO. It’s people like you that keep us from leaving LEO.

    I know you favor taxpayer funded pork missions to the Moon, but those are disposable and don’t provide anything lasting beyond footprints and pictures. Been there, done that.

  • Hey Robert. I can dig back further than you. This one is from an article you published in Space Policy Digest in 1999:

    “NASA and the companies that feed at its trough push technology innovations to make new vehicles because each project is a gold mine of dollars. Retired USAF LtCol Jess Sponable makes the point that what America needs is not newer launch technology, “but today’s technology applied….to achieve aircraft-like operational efficiencies.”

    That will not come without a free enterprise contractual environment. Government expenditures should reward success and punish failure not reward friends and punish enemies. One wonders how many Titans would fail if the contractor simply didn’t get paid for those that blew up or left their payloads in useless orbits. Instead of a Presidential board to assess the recent spate of launch vehicle failures there should have been a contract with the launch service provider that made them totally responsible for the product.”

  • Coastal Ron

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 1:20 pm

    How do you lower cost for tax payers by extended building the life of an unnecessary $3 billion a year big government space station rocket?

    There I fixed your sentence. And the answer is to cancel that $3B/year pork rocket.

    The ISS, which is a Congressionally designated National Laboratory, is helping us figure out how to live in work in space. If you don’t think that is important, then you are not a supporter of human spaceflight.

    But now they’re talking about using the ISS for space tourism

    Were you asleep between 2001 and 2009? Russia was the pioneer in space tourism, and it will be a natural outgrowth of the excess capacity Commercial Crew spacecraft will have to offer.

    But there may not be any excess capacity for tourism for quite a while, even with seven seats on a commercial crew vehicle. Why?

    Because if NASA buys/leases a trip versus buying individual seats, then they will want to send up their own temporary visitors. NASA has stated they want to do this, and why wouldn’t they? Engineers and scientists could take short trips up to work on problems or observe ongoing experiments just like they did on Shuttle.

    Even the other ISS partners would want to send up temporary visitors, since the cost will be a bargain compared to previous alternatives. I think there is a lot of demand for lower cost transportation that was hidden by the monopoly of the Shuttle.

    You continue to be constrained by the paradigms of yesterday – you need to look at what people are actually doing in space, and what they would do if given the opportunity. It’s not the SLS, that’s for sure.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 3:28 pm

    “[RGO] also wrote in 2004: ‘Human spaceflight in the past 30 years has suffered from one basic defect. It has no tangible connection to our economy or society.’”

    you replied:
    This is just nonsense as every aspect of HSF has a firm, tangible connection to the economy and society– it is not magically created out of nothing- it employs people, advances technologies and adds values to the economy in every locale it operates. .”

    NO.

    that is the NASA and industry claim…and in a very narrow sense it is accurate but only in the narrow sense that dumping a LOT of federal money in any location with the really good federal and first tier contractor jobs associated with it does change the dynamics.

    I could for instance talk about Clear Lake…but lets try UTAH and ATK. Utah is a red state low wage low benefit state…ie the jobs are mostly “Windy” jobs meaning jobs which are barely subsistence and dont leave a lot of discretionary income and little or no benefits.

    ATK employees are due to the nature of the work and the contracts almost “federal” meaning they have high salaries relative to the local population and good benefits…which mean that they drive the health care providers in the region.

    A University of Houston study that I have been reviewing and is about to come out…noted that the chief spin off of the space program in Clear Lake was the jump starting of the medical facilities there which sprung up BECAUSE of the federal and first tier contractor jobs which had excellent health care.

    Other wise the jobs are just jobs…because there is nothing that comes back to the community from the product itself.,,as say contrasting with the building of NASA Parkway or 646 here in Santa Fe.

    NASA and its contractors love to push “spin offs” but really it is like going to the Moon to get power tools goofy. There is not a single piece of major space technology from the Apollo or shuttle program that is used in human or otherwise spaceflight passed the Apollo or shuttle program. When Boeing and Lockmart needed a new launch vehicle (the EELV) they didnt go to either old Apollo engines or Shuttle hardware.

    Put another way, the prison complex (Federal mostly) in Beaumont has as large an impact on its community as NASA does…the only trade off is the number of employees and the GS ratio.

    That there was no economic connection from the shuttle is obvious…there is no one going out of business from the shuttle ending…other then those who were feeding at the trough.

    Sorry you are just spouting rhetoric here. RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 6:31 am

    “I’ve read so many articles in recent days, I can’t remember the source, but one of them was about how the SpaceX-Bigelow partnership might one day hand off LEO microgravity research to the private sector. Charlie Bolden himself noted that some research isn’t best suited for the ISS because crew are aboard, where “some guy is running on a treadmill” or words to that effect.”

    Olson has Tom DeLay’s seat..

    A couple of points to your post.

    Charlie is a bright guy so his statement is amusing to me. Some years ago when Rich Kolker lived here we were biking and I sort of announced to him that I had more or less turned against the station; having supported it for sometime…and as Rich is thoughtful he asked why and my reply was “they cannot define what it is going to do, they cant define how it will be built, they are just building it to build it” (I know this because I used a version of it in my op ed on the subject…and used it directed at Lori Garver at some NSS thing a few months later)

    My “guess” is that the one thing ISS can possible do well (although it is mostly in the wrong orbit) is be a rally point for spacecraft assembly and repair. Wingo has had endless ideas/ideals for doing that and most of them are viable in my view. Having looked at some long term “g” readouts my guess is that the station is for a lot of reasons not the least of which is its environment going to flounder as a microgee facility.

    That should have been known a few decades ago.

    having said that. In my view the main role for the station now is as a product magnet…and as a technology notion of “what not to do” in the next effort…which probably will be by private industry or some X-37 like notion.

    Right now I know of 4 universities who are putting together proposals to either get money and fly things on Dragon lab or on a Bigelow station…

    As for “things moving”. I agree but in the end the entire US system right now is in motion. This is going to be in my view the most interesting and vital political contest in my lifetime…even though it is between two weaklings…and in my view space (DRagon/SLS mix) is actually going to play a role. RGO

  • DCSCA

    “…you need to look at what people are actually doing in space…”

    We see it. You embrace it; that is, going in circles in LEO. Going no place, fast.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 3:28 pm

    This is just nonsense as every aspect of HSF has a firm, tangible connection to the economy and society…

    What you’re talking about is the effect on the economy from government spending tax dollars on HSF, which is no different than the government spending tax dollars on defense, health, or just about any other segment of the government.

    In fact, I could argue that taxpayer money spent through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides a much higher ROI to the taxpayer than money spent on HSF.

    Plus, HSF spending is not driven by an economic need, which was the original assertion that Oler made. So far it’s only driven by a political desire to spend money on HSF.

    Whether that long term strategy provides the taxpayer an ROI above and beyond just dumping dollars into the economy is still undetermined, which is why any way we can reduce spending on the non-science parts of NASA (like providing supplies to NASA facilities) is so important.

    You still need to take that Economics 101 class I recommended years ago. Don’t they have colleges in the country you’re living in?

  • Kate Morgan

    “There is no real hint as to how “commercial crew/cargo” are innovators that will change the US economy. Where is Bolden or Garver talking about the jobs Musk (and to some extent Orbital) and all the other competitors for the crew/cargo have created? Where is Bolden or Garver talking about the notions of affordable lift to orbit bringing the commercial satellite launch industry back to the US?”

    Really? You have not heard Garver say this over and over in her speeches these last few years? The Wall Street Journal just took her to task for emphasizing this point (classic). Here is a quote from her recent speech (all can be found on the NASA website)…

    “Finally, a word about NASA’s commitment to commercial space transportation. At NASA, we believe that commercial space transportation is vital to the future of human space exploration and to the strengthening of the American economy. As we chart a new course to send humans deeper into space than ever before, we are stimulating innovation within the private sector to develop and operate safe, reliable and affordable commercial space transportation systems.
    We are committed to ensuring that American companies, launching from U.S. soil, transport our astronauts and their cargo to the International Space Station and other low Earth orbit destinations. In calendar year, 2012, we will see the first commercial flights to the International SpaceStation and we are on track to have American companies transporting our astronauts to Station by 2017, ending the outsourcing of this work and creating good paying jobs here in the United States. This approach will provide assured access to the station, strengthen America’s space industry, and provide a catalyst for future business ventures to capitalize on affordable access to space.”

    Whether you like her or not, at least she has been clear and consisitent.

  • Rhyolite

    Holdren is wrong. He is thinking like a scientist rather than a politician. Science cultures say, “I you didn’t understand then it is my fault for not explaining it well”.

    In reality, those that most vocally didn’t understand and a pecuniary interest for not understanding.

    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it” – Upton Sinclair

  • Idle thought driving home …

    Since the mainstream media love drama and conflict to sell papers/generate ratings/increase web site hits, how’s about …

    SpaceX and Boeing engage in an advertising war?

    Each could run TV ads smacking around each other. SpaceX run ads like the Apple ads mocking the fake Bill Gates, only this time it’s a Boeing exec. Boeing could run ads showing the Super Guppy swallowing whole a Dragon capsule and burping.

    This could evolve into a reality TV series. Call it “NewSpace Wars.” Each episode could open with a Star Wars crawl and a pompous overture.

    Then they could bring in celebrity guest stars. William Shatner could fly on a CST-100 while Carrie Fisher could fly on a Dragon.

    Demeaning, yes, but the mainstream media and the disinterested general public would finally take notice.

    Best of all, it would cost much less than the SLS. :-)

  • Googaw

    You have to wonder if 99% of Americans are totally clueless.

    In other words, astronaut worshippers and believers in sci-fi dogmas from the middle of the last century wonder why 99% of Americans don’t share beliefs they hold so dogmatically that they mistake them for knowledge.

    Who is clueless in this scenario is quite another matter.

    The problem here isn’t the American public, nor is it the media. The problem is the message. As Newt Gingrich’s donors and supporters found out to their chagrin, it’s sheer crackpottery. It’s disrupted ceramic that has managed to get ahold of several billion dollars a year of federal funding, but crackpottery none the less for that.

  • pathfinder_01

    “But now they’re talking about using the ISS for space tourism: a government space station directly competing against private space station companies like Bigelow. Unbelievable!!!!!”

    Bigelow does not want to run a hotel. He wants to build modules for and lease modules to others (coperations, governments). As he does not have a station capable of supporting a crew in space the ISS is going to have to do till then and having two desinations could make for more return trips.

    “ Sorry, but using the ISS as work-fare for private space companies is an enormously bad idea. And there isn’t even enough traffic to the ISS to support more than one or two companies.”

    All you need is two. Having the ISS means they know they have one customer NASA instead of a distant and risky customer Bigleow.

    “How do you lower cost for tax payers by extended the life of an unnecessary $3 billion a year big government space station? This is going to cost the tax payers at least $15 billion dollars beyond 2015 and possible a lot more.”

    If you use private industry to do the job cheaper. Let see 1.6 billion for 12 space X flights vs. 3 billion a year just to keep the shuttle online. A moon base will cost far more to operate and supply. Lunar water does not solve all your problems.

  • pathfinder_01

    “How do you lower cost for tax payers by extended the life of an unnecessary $3 billion a year big government space station? This is going to cost the tax payers at least $15 billion dollars beyond 2015 and possible a lot more.”

    In addition the Falcon 9 creates two points of leverage for expansion into BEO space. The first is the booster FH. Since FH does not need to support all of its own costs on its own (there really isn’t much use for a 50 ton to LEO booster outside of manned spaceflight). They could keep the capability of producing a FH at relatively little cost. A 50 ton EDS would be cheaper and easier to develop than SLS and would be enough to push a capsule or lunar lender to L1/l2. So the next time a President wants to land on the moon, he does not need to spend tens of billions of dollars, trash the ISS and spend more than a decade achieving the goal.

    The second point of leverage is by putting cargo via dragon up so cheaply, you could work on something like SEP to take the cargo to the moon. A SEP tug docks with dragon and carries it on to the moon which again could be cheaper than using a HLV for the task.

    Here is one way to l1/l2 that becomes available circa 2016. Launch Orion on a FH or Atlas. Launched unmanned to the ISS. If you do this it will cost about 125 million for FH or maybe 200 million for Atlas. Doing so unmanned also reduces the cost per unit of Orion from about $840 million to $597 million according to HEFT:

    http://www.nasawatch.com/images/heft.presentation.pdf

    And reduces the cost of the launcher since you would need a Delta Heavy to do the same job if manned. (Which might push the launch cost up to 350-400 million).

    Use of the Dragon capsule would likely be far cheaper, but that is another story. So far about $722-$797 million for capsule and launcher. A commercial crew flight might cost about 300 million total, but remember they can carry 7. 4 to the ISS and 2-3 for a BEO mission. The BEO budget now only needs to come up with about 43 million per astronaut rather than billions to keep its own separate rocket. So add in $129 million to crew the mission.

    So now we are at $926 million. Add 125 to launch the upper stage and we just crossed the billion mark $1,051 million. So long as the upper stage costs less than 1billion(which is very likely) you now have a mission to l1/l2 for less than the cost of keeping the shuttle or SLS around(3-4 billion a year). There is a window from the ISS to l1/l2 that opens every ten days.

    That is how the use of for profit commercial advances NASA’s mission. NASA would then only need to work on the elements that are needed Orion, EDS stage(which by the way could be launched on a 25 ton rocket and still get Orion to l1/l2 from ISS).

  • DCSCA

    @Stephen C. Smith wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 7:26 pm

    Music: Mozart, Requiem For the Dead
    Fade up on imaged of Jimmy Doohan
    Dissolve to image of Gordo Cooper;
    Dissolve to urns loaded into a Falcon;
    Dissolve to failure and splash to waery grave;
    Dissolve to second try, multi cut montage;
    Dissolve to orbital jettison:
    VO, Simon Oakland styled, at ‘Amen’-
    “Space X – when it absolutely, postively, may or may not get there.”
    Fade to black.

  • DCSCA

    @Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 5:34 pm

    NO. That is the NASA and industry claim…Uh, yes, that is reality, not a claim. A reality you acknowledge yourself. =eyeroll=

  • DCSCA

    “It’s an interesting object lesson about how difficult it is to communicate when the messages require a lot of references to analysis and detail,” Holdren said.”

    Except it’s not.

    Per Neil Armstrong’s testimony to Congress in 2010, noting space policy reaffirmed by two Congresses after a change in control:

    “Finish the intenational space station, return to the moon, establish a permanent presence there and venture onward toward Mars.”

    Fire Holdren.

  • Martijn Meijering

    So the next time a President wants to land on the moon, he does not need to spend tens of billions of dollars, trash the ISS and spend more than a decade achieving the goal.

    You don’t need FH for that either. EOR in LEO is good enough to get a capsule or 20-25mT of payload to L1/L2, which is plenty.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 3:43 am

    goofy

    RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    In a so far flawless mission Dragon was captured by ISS at 8:56 CDT while over northern Australia. “Out came the swagman”

    I hope all you anti free enterprise folks know how much I am enjoying this moment! RGO

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 4:47 am

    Per Neil Armstrong’s testimony to Congress in 2010…

    His message resonated so much that Congress immediately cancelled the return to Moon program. Great job Neil.

    I’m sure they didn’t cancel the program in response to his testimony, but that’s a good indication how much Neil Armstrong matters in space policy today (i.e. not at all).

    Apparently you haven’t noticed, living outside of the U.S. and all, but Shuttle astronauts are the ones in power positions today, not Apollo astronauts, especially in industry (which influence politics through lobbyists).

    And now with the 1st generation of NewSpace programs reaching fruition and performing successfully (like Dragon’s capture by the ISS today), we’ll finally be able to shed the rest of our Apollo cargo-cult thinking and realign our space efforts to something more affordable, realistic, and successful.

    Neil should have taken up Elon’s offer to stop by and see the future. Maybe now he will…

  • common sense

    If we could only fire imbeciles…

    Hey Space Exploitation just started today!

    You know, E.X.P.L.O.I.T.A.T.I.O.N.

    Now be a jolly good sport. You lost, admit it and go back to your Apollo cave.

    Cheers.

  • Paul

    I hope all you anti free enterprise folks know how much I am enjoying this moment! RGO

    http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/26/how-to-make-a-schadenfreude-pie/

  • Robert G. Oler

    Kate Morgan wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 7:13 pm

    Is this to me?

    I listen or read “most” but not all speeches that Lori B. Garver gives…I would agree that she is consistent, but in reality she is about as clear as the speeches her “boss’ gives concerning his policy in Afland…

    Now I realize that Garver has either her speeches written for her or has them vetted, that is not her fault, it is a function of the office she has.

    But the speeches sound a lot like Garver in her time at NSS, for everything and really against nothing.

    There are two courses available for human spaceflight (and to some extent uncrewed exploration as well). it is a future (that to use Garver’s word) that keeps the “stakeholders” happy or it is a future that actually accomplishes something…

    there is a simple choice here. Garver simply wont make it (and of course that might be a choice of her boss) RGO

  • Paul

    The difficulty of explanation follows directly from the lack of an agreed on purpose for the manned space program (and, no, a destination is not a purpose.)

  • Coastal Ron

    Today will eventually be recognized as a tipping point policy-wise.

    Commercial companies has long proven that they could build, launch and operate satellites.

    Commercial companies have long proven that they could build and successfully launch rockets.

    Now a commercial company has proven that it can build a cargo spacecraft that can autonomously rendezvous with a human-tended destination in space, and second company is likely to come online within a year.

    Little by little this transfer of responsibility, from governments to the private sector, will influence space policy. Instead of the first decision being “how big of a new rocket should the government build”, and which states need to be supported with pork portions of the program, more effort can be focused on the merits of the science or the objective.

    That doesn’t remove the challenge of getting the space community and the political world to agree what should be the next government-funded effort beyond LEO. If any.

    Moon next? An asteroid next? Mars next?

    We still lack a consensus on both the why and the where, and I don’t blame politicians for that, I see it as a true lack of need. Why do we need to go anywhere beyond LEO? Poll regular Americans, and you won’t hear a big need to go anywhere in space, at least not without some recognized “National Imperative” like an alien invasion or the threat of an asteroid wiping us out.

    John F. Kennedy was able to articulate one that lasted, and the Shuttle was arguably a bi-product of that. The ISS was able to emerge from the post Soviet Union breakup as an international way to do science in space.

    But now we’ve run out of big reasons to spend big money beyond where we are today.

    Small money, sure, Americans have always been willing to support science. And this is why lowering the cost to do things in space is so important, since no sane person would assume that NASA is going to getting an increase in their budget anytime soon, so if anyone wants to get out of LEO, low-cost approaches are the only sane alternative.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Paul wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 12:10 pm

    After enduring so many years of the nuts bringing one misery after another…I am yes enjoying their angst. One can almost see the folks who are sitting in the corner sulking tearing up models of The Dragon or sticking pins in a Falcon9 model…

    I’ll have some pie. RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Coastal Ron wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 1:52 pm

    History loves ironies May20-21 1927 Lindbergh flew the Atlantic…

    Dragon’s flight will be seen as the space equivalent of that. RGO

  • DCSCA

    Coastal Ron wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 1:52 pm

    “Today will eventually be recognized as a tipping point policy-wise.”

    Except it won’t.

    Today, May 25, is already recognized for a much more significant and historic event. On May 25, 1961, John F. Kennedy delivered his special message to Congress which included the crisp, concise, geo-political/exploratory space policy assertion: “I believe trhis nation should commit itself to acheiving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

    And today, you celebrate the pathetically diminished, myopic vision of grabbing a can full of groceries. To day you celebrate condemning another generation to going no place fast; to going in circles in LEO. Sad. Space exploitation is not space exploration. LEO is a ticket to no place.

    “Lttle by little this transfer of responsibility, from governments to the private sector, will influence space policy.” Lke Halliburtion has done for the DoD, eh. You don’t recognize a bad thing even it grapples you by the docking node.

    And keep dissing Armstrong. It’s sure to help your sales pitch in the aerospace community. “Apparently you haven’t noticed, living outside of the U.S. and all, but Shuttle astronauts are the ones in power positions today, not Apollo astronauts, especially in industry (which influence politics through lobbyists).” To borrow a phrase from Oler- ‘goofy’. Shuttle crews and managers are part of the problem. Leato count times zones, =eyeroll=

    @Kate Morgan wrote @ May 24th, 2012 at 7:13 pm

    Garver is part of the problem. She’s a lobbyist, no more, no less, and hardly speaks for NASA but more for NASA’s clique of commercialists. She has no interest in HSF, just contracting. Garver never met ana aerospace contract she didn’t like. And her support of the ISS over a return to the moon in her NSS days remains an exercise in poor judgement. She’s bad for NASA and the quicker she is jettisoned from the agency, the better.

    @common sense wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 11:30 am

    “If we could only fire imbeciles”…

    We can. We got rid of Griffin. We can get rid of useless muddlers like Garver and Holdren and Bolden as well.

    Space ‘e.x.p.l.o.i.t.a.t.i.o.n.’ is not space exploration.

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 9:45 am

    LOL Stop projecting.

  • amightywind

    Neil should have taken up Elon’s offer to stop by and see the future. Maybe now he will…

    The future in a partial re-implementation of Gemini 8? Not sure he’d be impressed. Neil recently gave an interview.

    “NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve,” he said. “It’s sad that we are turning the program in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people.”

    NASA has been reduced to muslim outreach and political patronage. I wish I didn’t have to be a curmudgeon at this age.

    Do you know the difference between engineering (“controllability of a dynamic system”) and science (“earth climate model”)?

    No difference, which is my point. Climate change hysterics base their predictions on dynamic models. The mathematics of control systems do not vary with the context in which they are applied. Global warming hysterics want to ‘fix’ the climate by modulating the output of CO2. I am suggesting using the tools they appeal to that the idea is untenable.

    Congratulations to SpaceX. Its a new day! A new era! A new dawn! A game changer! (Well, at least an underwear changer on the ISS, as they receive their long awaited supplies.) Elon Musk is the new Tony Stark. Or… its just Friday and time for happy hour…

  • Coastal Ron

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 2:21 pm

    History loves ironies May20-21 1927 Lindbergh flew the Atlantic…

    85 years ago – within the lifetime of quite a few people.

    Dragon’s flight will be seen as the space equivalent of that.

    Yep. And it would be fun to be around in another 85 years to see if the same level of advancement has occurred as between Lindbergh and Lindbergh’s commercial equivalent today.

    Although I don’t expect much on the materials side, since lacking the discovery of a previously undiscovered power source we’ll still be limited by the same laws of physics that we are today.

    But I do think that robotic exploration will be taken to the next level pretty soon with far more autonomy and far more capability. That type of exploration risks no human life, yet returns the same (if not more) amount of “being there” video, which these days is the primary method of “customer engagement” (the customer being the U.S. Taxpayer).

    And since we can afford to send far more unmanned explorers to more places, the ability to keep the public engaged in space exploration goes up. And engagement means the taxpayer is more likely to keep supporting space exploration.

  • Robert G. Oler

    What was unique about the Spirit of St. Louis is that it proved flight across the Atlantic was within the reach of not only humanity but most important in the US…within the reach of true private enterprise.

    What separates (or did things have changed some) American aviation from the aviation industries of Europe and Britain was not the notion of competency; but that free enterprise was driving the designs and operation of aviation assets.

    Dragon is a creature of private enterprise. There is little or no NASA involvement in the technology or the design. And lets face it the Dragon could have taken people to the station. The needs to make Dragon “people friendly” are compared to the technology hurdles the vehicle has cleared…trivial.

    When Lindbergh landed in Paris few could see a 747 400 carrying hundreds across the Atlantic…but there is a clear line between the two…and whatever comes in the future. There is a starting point now for a line that can with proper policies in the US…send commercial space operations with people into the future.

    SpaceX has shown it is possible to build rockets and spacecraft AND OPERATE THEM with the same basics that Americans do aviation and a lot of other things…

    …and that is a very very big deal.

    what do you want to bet that they fly a crewed Dragon by the end of 2013?
    RGO

  • DCSCA

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 10:06 am

    “I hope all you anti free enterprise folks know how much I am enjoying this moment! RGO”

    Except it’s not. It’s government subsidied, as you need reminded:

    “In October 2009 NASA provided a pre-solicitation notice regarding an effort to be funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The commercial crew enabling work would include a “base task” of refurbishing and reactivating SLC-40 power transfer switches, performing maintenance on the lower Aerospace Ground Equipment (AGE) substation and motor control centers, installing bollards around piping, replacing the door frame and threshold for the Falcon Support Building mechanical room and repairing fencing around the complex perimeter. Several optional tasks would include work installing conductive flooring in the Hangar Hypergol area, performing corrosion control inspection and maintenance of the lightning protection tower’s structural steel, upgrading and refurbishing other facility equipment and performing corrosion control on rail cars and pad lighting poles, painting several buildings, repairing and improving roads, and hydro-seeding the complex.”

    Any attempt to tout SpaceX as a true private enterprise space venture is inaccurate.

  • John Malkin

    Coastal Ron wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 1:52 pm

    Moon next? An asteroid next? Mars next?

    It’s a good day and year to be a Dragon says I, an old Chinese dragon. In a few days SpaceX will have their second Dragon drop test from space. Fingers crossed.

    I would love for SpaceX to circle the moon (Unmanned Apollo 8 Mission) next year with a Dragon. I bet SpaceX could do it with the FH demo. I haven’t heard any official payload.

    ATK tweeted essentially commercials for Liberty after the SpaceX launch. There tweets after the successful berth seem worried and several RT from them knocked SpaceX.

    Policy will change and I hope congress will give additional funding to Commercial Crew so we can have affordable redundant space access.

  • DCSCA

    Coastal Ron wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 10:11 am

    “Neil should have taken up Elon’s offer to stop by and see the future.”

    ROFLMAO Armstrong made the future. Armstrong participated in shaping the future. Armstrong has seen satellite and launch vehicle assembly plants before and ‘cut his teeth’ as he said to Congress, in rockets and HSF as well as in the X-15, orbital flight and a lunar landing techniques long before Musk and most of Space X’s staff was born as well. (CNN reports the average age of Space X staff is 30; Musk is 40.). Celebrating anew experiences Armstrong accomplished in ’66 is pretty pathetic, but then, that’s all they’ve got to look forward to. Armstrong knows the complexities involved. He has seen an Atlas/Agena launch in 1966. He pioneered rendezvous and docking in LEO in 1966 (docking still eludes Space X BTW). And he knows Progress spacecraft have been docking and servicing LEO space platforms for over 34 years, long before Space X even existed. =yawn= What you fail to comprehend yet continue to celebrate by magnifying its importance is the redundant repetition of what Progress spacecraft have been routinely doing for three and a half decades- and doing it better BTW- in LEO. A decade from now, when the ISS is in its Pacific grave, LEO cargo runs will have gotten you no further out into space. You’ll be right where you are now. LEO is a ticket to no place, going in circles. Armstrong knows this. Cernan knows this. Lovell knows this. Kraft knows this. Smart space advocates know this. And channelling resources into LEO operations condemns another generation to going no place fast. Truly, truly short-sighted and tragic. Reagan proposed this Cold War relic of a space station 28 years ago… and for three decades, it has been an expensive anvil, championed by the likes of Garver and others, condemning the country to LEO for far too long. Space exploitation is not space exploration.

  • josh

    neil armstrong is clueless nowadays, tragic really. same for cernan. buzz aldrin on the other hand went with the times.
    btw: kraft opposes sls.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 7:06 pm

    Armstrong made the future.

    Nope, but I think I see where you dream up this stuff. You think Neil Armstrong designed the Saturn V, Apollo spacecraft and lunar lander all by himself. Sorry to burst your bubble, but he didn’t.

    Neither was he a politician fighting for funding for NASA, nor was he an aerospace executive that built the hardware and knew the costs. He never even became part of the NASA management that ran programs. Other than being the hired talent, he has no special relevance to our current efforts in space.

    I don’t know if you know this, but Armstrong was only in space for less that 9 days total – there’s probably 200 Shuttle/ISS astronauts with far more time in space than Armstrong, and quite a few with time on multiple spacecraft plus a space station. Yet you ignore them. Why?

    In any case, you have failed again and again to support any of your assertions for why Neil Armstrong, or any other astronaut that hasn’t flown in 40 years, is relevant today in our post-Shuttle reality. Apollo was two generations back, and a new generation of astronauts has taken over.

    Get used to it.

  • John Malkin wrote:

    ATK tweeted essentially commercials for Liberty after the SpaceX launch. There tweets after the successful berth seem worried and several RT from them knocked SpaceX.

    Yeah, really tacky. They were doing everything they could to piggyback on SpaceX’s success.

    In general, the Liberty promotional bandwagon has been very heavy-handed. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out ATK hired some political consulting firm to run all this.

  • Here’s another significant aspect of today’s event:

    An American astronaut, aided by a Dutch astronaut, used a Canadian robot arm to grapple and berth a spacecraft made by a South African emigrant to the U.S. They berthed it to an international space station whose co-tenants are Russian.

    Truly an American success story.

  • Das Boese

    DCSCA wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 5:27 pm

    So… if the government replaces old street lights in a red light district, are they subsidizing prostitution?
    If the government repairs a railway bridge, are they subsidizing manufacturers of trains?
    If the government refurbishes an airfield used by contractors to move air cargo for them, are they subsidizing those companies?

  • DCSCA

    @Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 2:21 pm

    “Coastal Ron wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 1:52 pm History loves ironies May20-21 1927 Lindbergh flew the Atlantic…Dragon’s flight will be seen as the space equivalent of that. RGO…

    Except it’s not.

    You just wish it was. For starts, Lindbergh piloted his craft- it was a manned aeroplane flight- one way. The unmanned cargo Dragon followed in the wake of half a century of thousands of satellite launches from the Cape and, of course, nearly 35 years of successful servicing of LEO space platforms by Progress spacecraft. =eyeroll=

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 3:55 pm

    “What was unique about the Spirit of St. Louis is that it proved flight across the Atlantic was within the reach of not only humanity but most important in the US…within the reach of true private enterprise.”

    ROFLMAO ‘within the reach of humanity??’ Alcock & Brown, both humans BTW, made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in 1919. What was ‘unique’ about Lindy’s flight was he piloted his single-engine monoplane from NY to Paris, non-stop– and alone. And, of course, Lindy didn’t secure a contract from Ortig for several flights before commiting to fly for the prize. =eyeroll=.

    @amightywind wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 3:14 pm

    “The future in a partial re-implementation of Gemini 8? Not sure he’d be impressed. Neil recently gave an interview. “NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve,” he said. “It’s sad that we are turning the program in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people.”

    Precisely. The Empire State Building is a space program… to ants. Similarly, 30-somethings high-fiving lofting a can of groceries from Florida to LEO for six hours of berthing procedures (so much for the ‘scientific research’ Pettit did today) magnifies the importance of a tragically diminished vision. Russian Progress spacecraft have been routinely servicing LEO space platforms- and doiing it better BTW by docking- for nearly 35 years. No doubt the folks at Baikonur quietly smiled. 51 years to the day after JFK’s challenge to land men on the moon, celebrating a very mid-60’s era feat of orbital rendezvous is, in fact… sadly quaint. And a decade from now, when the ISS is in its watery Pacific grave and the cargo Dragons are lobby ornaments in a corporate office park or in some museum, we’ll be no further beyond LEO than we are right now and another generation will reach middle age and realize they have been trapped just going in circles sinde that day in 1984, when Reagan proposed the space station to begin with. Armstrong is right. So too are Lovell, Cernan, Kraft, et al.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 5:27 pm

    enjoy your life and your opinions. RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    John Malkin wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 6:45 pm

    “I would love for SpaceX to circle the moon (Unmanned Apollo 8 Mission) next year with a Dragon. I bet SpaceX could do it with the FH demo. I haven’t heard any official payload.”

    that would be an interesting demo…there is no official payload they are shopping trying to find someone who would crank up as a semi paying payload…and there are some ideas kicking around in the national security apparatus on this (at least some that I have heard of so there are likely ones I have not).

    From a “demo” standpoint it would make a lot of sense for them to combine a heavy with a large shroud demo…but the larger shroud would add a level of risk on the aerodynamics coupled with the side boosters…A Dragon on top would be a shape that they have good aerodynamic data on, then the question would just be the interaction with the side boosters…then the entire issue comes down to the cross tanking….which I suspect is a fairly manageable risk.

    I know some trajectories have been run with a Vandy launch, a “long” trunk with both some service module (ie heavy propulsion features) and the use of the second stage as a service module…on a lunar free return.

    It would make a entertaining effort. I suspect that they will try and fly a crew in 13. RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Coastal Ron wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 3:45 pm

    What is unclear today but was “clear” in Lindy’s time is that (as numerous people are fond of pointing out) there was a market for air travel between established population centers…and when the technology was up to it, that included transocean hopes.

    it is not clear, although I believe ones will be found that there is a large market for humans in space; certainly not on a perm basis (there is no market there) or even on a temp basis such as oil rigs. There certainly is no equivalent of the “cities” on Earth to fly between.

    BUT that is never going to be found out as a function of government spaceflight.

    The issue is a combination of “cost” to orbit and cost of personnel. Right now if you are a NASA astronaut you spend 1) years hanging around learning to be a NASA astronaut and 2) you have an enormous support staff helping you be a NASA astronaut. Thats not only “on flights” it is also even when you are sitting around the office doing not a lot.

    the question is can you develop a flight structure that has people who fly in space…who are at best supported by say 10-12 people per person even in the runup stage…and can they be productive in the time that they are not flying?

    In otherwords can space workers become more like oil field workers and less (to the apology of an old Navy sea chant) “the spoiled and pampered pets of Uncle Sam” RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    John Malkin wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 6:45 pm

    ATK tweeted essentially commercials for Liberty after the SpaceX launch. There tweets after the successful berth seem worried and several RT from them knocked SpaceX.

    would you be so kind as to post some or direct me to them? I dont tweet (sigh) RGO

  • Jim

    “History loves ironies May20-21 1927 Lindbergh flew the Atlantic…”

    “Dragon’s flight will be seen as the space equivalent of that.”

    Yep. And it would be fun to be around in another 85 years to see if the same level of advancement has occurred as between Lindbergh and Lindbergh’s commercial equivalent today.

    People like DCSCA and Neil Armstrong are living in the past. Sure, Armstrong is a historic figure in the same way as Lilienthal or Wright. But using NASA’s and Armstrong’s methods are what has advanced space flight so little in the last 40 years. Elon Musk and Space-X are the Donald Douglas of our age, hopefully. Dragon and Falcon are the DC-3. Yes, people flew 32 years earlier but now an airplane is a cost effective thing that can be used for commerce. NASA needs to get back to its NACA roots and begin to do something useful. The big difference is that we graduated from the Wright Flyer to the DC-3 in 32 years.

    Unfortunately its been more than 50 years since Mercury accomplished the first US manned orbit or 44 since Armstrong accomplished his first docking. The problem is that NASA has been treating every docking as though it were the first. It put them out of the manned space business because they could not afford the operations team they had created and grew since the 60s.

    Musk’s reinvention is what makes the future possible.

  • Vladislaw

    “I would love for SpaceX to circle the moon (Unmanned Apollo 8 Mission) next year with a Dragon. I bet SpaceX could do it with the FH demo. I haven’t heard any official payload.”

    I think it would be even more effective if they used the crew version of the Dragon capsule.

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 1:52 pm

    “We still lack a consensus on both the why and the where…”

    Except we don’t. Two Congresses agreed, as reitereated per Armstrong’s testimony you so blantantly ridiculed, upon the following plan of procedure:

    “Finish the intenational space station, return to the moon, establish a permanent presence there and venture onward toward Mars.”

    @John Malkin wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 6:45 pm

    “I would love for SpaceX to circle the moon (Unmanned Apollo 8 Mission) next year with a Dragon.”

    An ‘unmanned’ Apollo 8 mission’ would, require a ‘Dragon’ to place itself into lunar orbit. A flight to just ‘circle the moon’ – a circumlunar flight in a FRT-would be similar to an unmanned Zond flight flown decades ago in ’68.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 7:06 pm

    sigh

    “LEO is a ticket to no place, going in circles.”

    the lunar landings were a ticket to nowhere…they ended almost before they started…the cutbacks were on going before old Neil and Buzz and Mike even took off. RGO

  • pathfinder_01

    “Any attempt to tout SpaceX as a true private enterprise space venture is inaccurate.”

    Airports and Train stations often used quite a bit of public funding(even when the railroads were private). ULA actually does get a subsidy and NASA and the state of Virginia helped refurbish the Virginia Space port for Orbital. There is no such thing as a launch company that does not receive some government money or assistance anywhere on this planet. In fact no form of transportation works without some subsidies (even your car…the gas tax is not enough to keep up all the roads in this country).

    Anyway would you prefer those launch pad jobs stay in the marshal islands?

  • Robert G. Oler

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76767.html

    an interesting read on the politics of SpaceX and other commercial providers. RGO

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 7:51 pm

    “I agree the public in general has no interest in space.”

    Except they do.

    Seems you’re completely unaware of the incredble commercial success of such spacial materials as ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Star Wars’ ‘Apollo 13′ and the hugely successful Emmy Award winning ‘From The Earth to The Moon.’

  • pathfinder_01

    “He pioneered rendezvous and docking in LEO in 1966 (docking still eludes Space X BTW).”

    Docking is so….1960ies….if what you are carring is cargo.

    Cargo dragon and Cygnus don’t dock for good reason nor does HTV. Berthing uses the ISS’s CBM ports which have larger hatches. Basically a berthed spacecraft becomes a temporary addition to the ISS because they use the robot arm they don’t collide with the station with great force and this allows a larger hatch(less shock absorbing needed). The CBM is what holds the modules of the US side of the ISS together. It was also used by the MPLM the shuttle carried.

    A docking port like the one that Soyuz, Progress, ATV and the CBM to APAS docking port the shuttle used would be narrower. Since the CBM requires the use of the robot arm to both come and go (which might not be available in an emergency) manned spacecraft prefer to dock with the ISS. The ccdev craft plan to use the NDS (same as Orion by the way). Dragon is planned to carry a CBM to NDS adaptor and if we ever get nice to China, the Shuttle’s Russian designed APAS could be used by the Chinese. In addition the NDS is to be used by Orion and is based on the international docking standard.

  • Robert G. Oler wrote:

    would you be so kind as to post some or direct me to them? I dont tweet (sigh) RGO

    Go to this link and you can read through all of them:

    https://twitter.com/#!/ATKRocketNews

    Here’s one of them:

    RT @MichaelEBunn: Way to go SpaceX. Let the 2nd space race begin. Wait. 1 horse does not make a race. Let’s go @LibertyLaunch @ATKRocketNews

  • DCSCA

    @Jim wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 11:06 pm
    “History loves ironies May20-21 1927 Lindbergh flew the Atlantic…”
    “Dragon’s flight will be seen as the space equivalent of that.” Yep.

    Uh, nope. For starts, Lindbergh piloted his plane himself. The cargo Dragon was unmanned and was launched in the wake of half a century of successful satellite flights from the Cape. It has more in common w/an Atlas/Agena launch circa 1966– and every Russian Progress launch since 1978. What was ‘unique’ about Lindy’s flight was he piloted his single-engine monoplane from NY to Paris, non-stop– and alone. And, of course, Lindy didn’t secure a contract from Ortig for several flights before commiting to fly for the prize. It cheapens Lindbergh’s accomplishment by lowering it in a comparison to lofting a can full of groceries.

    “Musk’s reinvention is what makes the future possible.” This is nonsense. Progress spacecraft have been doing it better and long before Dragon ever flew–for over 34 years- and better BTW, by docking. Musk reinvented nothing. In fact, he’s quite retro, replicating what Progress has been doing for decades approximating Armstrong himself pioneered in the mid-60s. See Gemini 8 for details. “Dragon and Falcon are the DC-3.” Uh no, Progress and Soyuz have earned that comparison after several decades of service. “But using NASA’s and Armstrong’s methods are what has advanced space flight so little in the last 40 years.” Uh no, it was Nixon who cut everything but shuttle for development as Apollo ramped down and Reagan proposed the space station 28 years ago in his 1984 SOTU speech– a Cold War relic championed by lobbyist Lori Garver in her NSS days over a return to the moon. Garver never met a government contract she didnt love. Condemning HSF to LEO operations has been a matter of space policy decisions, not technical capacity or the vision and support of thel ikes of Armstrong, Lovell, Cernan et al., as evidenced by their own voyages to Luna. =eyeroll=

    @Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 12:08 am

    “the lunar landings were a ticket to nowhere”

    Except they’re not. But to someone snookered with the magnified importance of diminished goals found in a LEO cargo flight, replicating what Progress has been doing- beter BTW- for nearly 36 years–, such limitred vision is expected. Best you bone up on your Alcock & Brown as well.

    @Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 10:46 pm

    Except it’s a matter of fact; of public record. =eyeroll=

    … ” I suspect that they will try and fly a crew in 13. RGO” Bolden reiterated on Friday that ’17 is NASA’s conservative target date for the Diminished Vision. Of course, if/when Space X is down-selected out of the running, they’ll try to fly nobody w/o a contract.

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 8:36 pm

    “Armstrong made the future.”Nope.’
    Uh, yep– and Lindy’s flight was just 33.5 hours, lots of people have flown longer and farther, so by your logic, his flight means littler at all. Except it does, which is why you cling to it. But keep dissing Armstrong. Great for your sales pitch. =eyeroll=

  • @Coastal Ron
    But I do think that robotic exploration will be taken to the next level pretty soon with far more autonomy and far more capability. That type of exploration risks no human life, yet returns the same (if not more) amount of “being there” video, which these days is the primary method of “customer engagement” (the customer being the U.S. Taxpayer).
    Yes, there will be a lot more robotic exploration due to cost drops, but we’ll see humans going into deep space in ever larger steps until we get to Mars. To do otherwise would defeat Musk’s whole reason for doing this (to make humanity multiplanetary). It will happen much faster when SLS is finally cancelled, since that is the main thing slowing us up.

    AvWeek has an article about the waste being perpetrated by certain members of Congress in this respect. Though it doesn’t mention SLS by name it does allude to it, “Sadly, as bureaucrats place more trust in entrepreneurs and innovators—and the private sector takes bigger risks—powerful members of Congress seem determined to hold fast to the cost-plus, micromanaged procurement models of yesteryear. ”
    http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_05_28_2012_p66-461881.xml

  • MrEarl

    As Craig Fergisun says; “It’s a great for America!”
    With Dragon safely berthed at the ISS, LEO transport can be left to commercial space ventures while NASA can concentrate on exploration using SLS and MPCV! :-)

  • Robert G. Oler

    pathfinder_01 wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 2:30 am

    at some point you will find the “crewed” vehicles give up on “docking” as well and head for berthing…and that the CBM ports become the “standard” for people exchange as well… RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 12:56 am
    “Seems you’re completely unaware of the incredble commercial success of such spacial materials as ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Star Wars’ ‘Apollo 13′ and the hugely successful Emmy Award winning ‘From The Earth to The Moon.’””

    except they dont mean anything. Battlestar Galactica was enormously successful and it had almost nothing to do with space…really what you are talking about is good stories well told that are set in space…

    I realize that this is pearls before swine…but I opine.

    It is always difficult to write history 40-50 years removed from an event…although in our amped up world it is becoming easier…however it is unlikely that the events of human spaceflight in the 60’s will be seen in “isolation” as historical game changers.

    A great man (grin) once said that the future is brought on by events or an event in the present which change the course of the past…and the test of that is does the event exist in isolation in terms of near history or is it wrapped up in the general events of the time. If it is the later it is hard to see that it changed “the timeline”.

    An example of a historical game changer would be the atomic device…but look farther back in history and examine both Columbus and the Vikings exploration efforts. The Vikings are not even seen at all by “modern” people…Columbus is but he is seen only by historians in the context of the times…otherwise his efforts are seen as a stand alone event which started essentially another historical time line…

    The Apollo effort will be remembered (there are things on the Moon which will serve as a reminder and the historical record is better today then during the Vikings time)…but they will likely be remembered not as a function of a stand alone event; but in the context of the times…and that timeline.

    A first brush of history is that they will be seen in the context of superpower confrontation …particularly in light of the notion that superpowers are probably fading from the world stage. it might not even get that.

    If there is a lunar future timeline…whoever/whatever event is the first dot on that line…will be the historical game changer. And while the Apollo effort will always be a curiosity it probably wont be part of that line.

    EVEN if the Chinese (or Indians or iranians) were to go to the Moon…and if they cannot generate a timeline of history…then it is unlikely that they would be looked at in so much as say Columbus or the Wright flyer or the gadget or Syncom 2 or the Apple 2. And more like periodic revisits to the RMS Titanic or some other historical event.

    100 years from now people are more likely to go to a museum and stare in some awe and Syncom 2 and 3 then they are the Apollo hardware.

    RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 12:06 am

    An ‘unmanned’ Apollo 8 mission’ would, require a ‘Dragon’ to place itself into lunar orbit. A flight to just ‘circle the moon’ – a circumlunar flight in a FRT-would be similar to an unmanned Zond flight flown decades ago in ’68.>>

    Yet NASA thinks it is a big enough deal where that is the effort that “they” want to use for their maiden SLS effort.

    You dont understand history very well I see…oh well par. RGO

  • Googaw

    Two Congresses agreed…return [astronauts] to the moon, establish a permanent presence there and venture onward toward Mars.

    “Agreed” how? All talk, no money for these obsolete fantasies.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 12:56 am

    such spacial materials as ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Star Wars’ ‘Apollo 13…

    Roddenberry described Star Trek as a “Wagon Train to the stars”, so I don’t think that bolsters your assertion. It, like Star Wars (a fantasy) and Apollo 13 (a drama) were great entertainment, but I didn’t hear people demand a new space program after they were shown.

    To say that those movies bolster interest in space means that movies like “Apollo 18″ and “Plan 9 from Outer Space” do the same. Not!

    We’re not going to shovel $Billions into NASA for your entertainment purposes. People don’t want to watch HD video of people picking up rocks on some lifeless gray landmass in space.

    Buy a DVR if you need entertainment – don’t expect the U.S. Taxpayer to fund it for you.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Jim wrote @ May 25th, 2012 at 11:06 pm

    People like DCSCA and Neil Armstrong are living in the past. Sure, Armstrong is a historic figure in the same way as Lilienthal or Wright. >>

    see my above post to DCSCA…I would be surprised if Armstrong is viewed in the same historical light as the Wright Brothers…or Columbus or even Zeb Pike…by both lay people and certainly by historians.

    The lunar effort(s) of the US and Soviets of the 60’s will most likely not be seen in isolation ie game changer events on their own but more likely they will be seen as caught up in the historical events of the time which more or less shaped a future timeline that had little or nothing to do with the individual efforts. There is in historical terms nothing “off of” Apollo…there was no hardware that haad any use, there was no capability that had any use…the effort wrapped itself pretty quickly in the history books…and its only relevance to today is the instance by some groups in trying to repeat it.

    The Soviet effort with Saluyt (spell) has more of historical timeline then Apollo because it is in the same one that includes ISS…which is at least still producing “dots” in the timeline…and if commercial efforts in the US come out of that timeline…and bear fruit then that timeline…and maybe some future lunar dots will be the one that generates historical remembrance…because it will be in some measure responsible for “the future” becoming some groups present.

    What is at best annoying and at worst shows how they have aged and that most of them are now “old” is the walkaround by the Apollo historical figures whose only handle in history is really the weight that people contemporary with them place on them…arguing for a continuance of the past in large measure because that is the only thing that they understand.

    Armstrong et al are the battleship admirals of today (or the carrier admirals take your pick) arguing to keep what they know. RGO

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 12:06 am

    Two Congresses agreed, as reitereated per Armstrong’s testimony you so blantantly ridiculed…

    Do you lock your memory out of recent history updates? Do you have dementia?

    2010 – Armstrong testified, and then Congress cancelled the Constellation program. Since then Congress has reaffirmed that they don’t want a Moon program.

    And what is our justification for a new Moon program – that Neil Armstrong wants us to go back? Yeah, right.

    What a maroon.

  • pathfinder_01

    ‘at some point you will find the “crewed” vehicles give up on “docking” as well and head for berthing…and that the CBM ports become the “standard” for people exchange as well… RGO”

    Not likely or at least not soon. The difference between docking and berthing is that a docking craft may make use of the robot arm to assist it—the shuttle did once I think. A berthing craft requires it.

    This has implications in terms of emergency escape (need a working arm) and in case you need to board for a repair /rescue mission (i.e. need a robot arm). There are ways you could rig something to allow an emergency escape from the CBM, but just not worth the hassle and I doubt you could rig something to allow emergency enterance from the CBM.

    However one nice thing about the CBM is that you could move temporary modules and docking ports around as needed.

  • Robert G. Oler

    pathfinder_01 wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 12:31 pm

    Not likely or at least not soon>>

    Not soon but its coming. Emergency escape is/will eventually go the way of the same notion on nuclear submarines…RGO

  • DCSCA

    @GeeSpace wrote @ May 23rd, 2012 at 5:00 pm

    “To put it simply: If the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy can not explain science and technology (uncluding space policy)m he or she should be fired immediately if not sooner.”

    Yep.

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 12:31 pm

    And what is our justification for a new Moon program – that Neil Armstrong wants us to go back? Yeah, right.

    No, wrong. The full policy statement articulately reiterated by Armstrong, formulated by the Bush administration based on recomendations from the CAIB report reads: “Finish the intenational space station, return to the moon, establish a permanent presence there and venture onward toward Mars.”

    “Since then [2010] Congress has reaffirmed that they don’t want a Moon program.” =yawn= No, Congress simply underfunded the programs associated w/t the aforementioned policy for several years (wars are expensive) and the current administration did a 180 on its space policy pronouncements from the campaign and scuttled it. . What a maroon, indeed.

    @Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 12:25 pm

    “I would be surprised if Armstrong is viewed in the same historical light as the Wright Brothers… ”

    So would Armstrong (and anybody else for that matter) as he’d immediately refute any attempt at such a comparison. It’s as absurd as equating an unmanned satellite launch in the wake of thousands of other satellite launches over half a century w/t solo piloting of a single-engined monoplane on a non-stop, one-way flight between NY and Paris. -eyeroll=

    @Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 12:15 pm

    Goofy. But if you wanna pitch dropping a Dragon into luinar orbit as a demo, go for it. Frankly a manned suborbital flight would carry more weight (so to spea) that is, magnify importance for Diminished vision propagandists such as yourself. But then, we’ve already established on this thread (and others) how you dont understand history very.…oh well. Remember to bone up on Alcock & Brown.

  • DCSCA

    @Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 12:13 pm

    “Except they dont mean anything.”

    Except they do.

    If there was no interest (aka market) hundreds of millions of dollars would not have been spent/invested to maintain production of same over the decades to reap billions in profits. =eyeroll= The interest exists, as the success of the likes of Wells, Clarke, Heinlein, Asmov, Bradbury, etc. reaffirm. Pearls of wisdom…sober up, and catch up on Alcock & Brown.

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 12:24 pm

    “People don’t want to watch HD video of people picking up rocks on some lifeless gray landmass in space”

    Except they do. =eyeroll= And it’s available in stores, too.

    http://www.spacecraftfilms.com.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
    …oh well. Remember to bone up on Alcock & Brown.>>

    Knowing history and historical details is quite a bit different from understanding its affect/effect on the present.

    Armstrong and Aldrin might indeed be the modern Alcock and Brown…(and that Collins fellow…well being the father of a soap opera star is not bad! LOL) RGO

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ May 26th, 2012 at 4:40 pm

    Except they do. And it’s available in stores, too.

    I love it when you end up proving my points for me.

    That website you cite as “proof” gets less than 3,000 unique visitors a month – during a good month. And using normal internet sales sell-thru, that would mean that less than 100 people a month are ordering those videos. Likely those are retired aerospace workers wanting to remember their past.

    As a comparison, this automatic cat litter box website gets 8X more visitors per month. Even SpacePolitics.com gets more hits than your website does.

    You obsess over the past – the vast majority of the U.S. doesn’t, which is why you see so much media coverage for your beloved Musk and SpaceX.

    Thanks for proving my point.

  • Vladislaw

    DC Society for Creative Anachronisms wrote:

    “The full policy statement articulately reiterated by Armstrong, formulated by the Bush administration based on recomendations from the CAIB report reads: “Finish the intenational space station, return to the moon, establish a permanent presence there and venture onward toward Mars.” “

    Well, if you want to be TECHNICAL about President Bush’s policy statement he also said this:

    “For cargo transport to the Space Station after 2010, NASA will rely on existing or new commercial cargo transport systems, as well as international partner cargo transport systems. NASA does not plan to develop new launch vehicle capabilities”

    Oh and this little gem:

    “In the days of the Apollo program, human exploration systems employed expendable, single-use vehicles requiring large ground crews and careful monitoring. For future, sustainable exploration programs, NASA requires cost-effective vehicles that may be reused, have systems that could be applied to more than one destination, and are highly reliable and need only small ground crews. NASA plans to invest in a number of new approaches to exploration, such as robotic networks, modular systems, pre-positioned propellants, advanced power and propulsion, and in-space assembly, that could enable these kinds of vehicles.”

    Okay, now that we are looking at the full policy statement by President Bush, what was he saying:

    A) Reusable
    B) flexible enough for multiple destinations
    C) Small ground crews
    D) fuel depot
    E) module
    F) Assembled in space

    Gosh, what happened? Where is the fuel depots? The in space assembled vehicles, flexible enough to goto multiple destinations.

    It seems you forgot to articulate this part of President Bush’s policy.

    If I didn’t know better this sounds like the Nautilus X.

  • DCSCA

    Vladislaw wrote @ May 27th, 2012 at 12:44 pm

    If you want to be ‘technical’ the quote is directly from Armstrong in his own words as noted, as aired on C-SPAN. It’s in their archives.

  • Vladislaw

    But you are using that quote as a defense for your own views. So if you are going to support want Armstrong said to reinforce your views you would still be obliged to support ALL of what it said and not cherry pick the “going to the moon on a big rocket” which was not contained in the original policy at all.

  • @Mr. Earl
    “With Dragon safely berthed at the ISS, LEO transport can be left to commercial space ventures while NASA can concentrate on exploration using SLS and MPCV! “
    Totally agree with you about, “With Dragon safely berthed at the ISS, LEO transport can be left to commercial space ventures while NASA can concentrate on exploration”. The part saying. “using SLS and MPCV!” is utter delusion, since continuing that would actually slow down NASA frontier exploration for reasons that have been explained to you over and over again, ad nauseum. You, Marcel, and Chris don’t need a space exploration program, you already live on another planet where the laws of logic do not apply.

  • common sense

    @ Rick Boozer wrote @ May 28th, 2012 at 6:43 pm

    I think that Mr.Earl is not in the same league as Marcel, Chris etc.

    It seems to me that Mr.Earl wants to compromise rather than really push for SLS/MPCV. Now of course he is wrong about SLS/MPCV and I suspect he knows it. ;) His logic it seems to me is to abide by Congress’ logic if there is any.

    Further, Congress will let go of SLS/MPCV as soon as they feel 1) Commercial is safe (enough) and 2) when sequestration makes it obvious SLS/MPCV is a total waste. Watch Dragon reenters soon…

    Ah if ATK/LMT could get any cash for their monstrosity, that would ease the pain…

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