We noted here earlier this week that, in a speech last week, Office of Science and Technology Policy director John Holdren may have gone a little too far in taking credit for the recent successful SpaceX Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) test flight. “This represents an entirely new model for the American space program,†Holdren said, “one initiated by this administration.” COTS, of course, got its start in the previous administration, although the current administration has doubled down with its support for commercial crew in addition to commercial cargo.
That comment also got the attention of Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS), chairman of the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee. In his opening statement at a hearing Wednesday morning about the commercial launch indemnification regime, he took a tangent to bring up Holdren’s comment. “Mr. Holdren’s statement is, at best, misleading,” Palazzo said, citing COTS’s origins in 2005 and the SpaceX COTS award a year later. “Let the record be clear.”
Palazzo also emphasized that point in a separate press release from the committee, which included that portion of his opening statement. A bit of irony, though: the release makes multiple references to “Space-X”. The diminutive form of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is formally spelled by the company as “SpaceX”, not “Space-X”, “Space X”, or even, on one occasion recently in the media, “Space 10″. Let the record be clear.
Rule 1 of politics: Always look good. If that means lying, so what; If that means distorting the facts, so what.
Although it was not named COTS, the program technically goes back to the ISS Alternate Access Program started in the late Clinton Administration by OMB staff. That program suffered from assignment to an SOMD manager preoccupied with other tasks and no SAA solicitation path, was cancelled in the aftermath of Columbia and reborn in the VSE, placed under an dedicated ESMD manager (ironically from OMB) who understood SAAs, and eventually named COTS.
This is typical GOP tactics…when something starts to succeed then take credit for it. and say it was Bush43…dont be goofy. RGO
Of course if the Dragon had blown up on the pad, it would have been all Bush’s fault.
Mark R. Whittington wrote @ June 6th, 2012 at 9:42 pm
“Of course if the Dragon had blown up on the pad, it would have been all Bush’s fault.”
In no way am I a fan of Michael Griffin, but I do give him credit for being the NASA Administrator in charge when the COTS program made it’s awards. No matter his motivations, he got it going on the path we are on today. Thank you Mike.
However if I had to point to the real initiator of the COTS program, I would say it’s was President Reagan’s 1988 space policy (NSDD 293), which is called “Presidential Directive on National Space Policy”. It stated:
“The directive states that the United States government shall not preclude or deter the continuing development of a separate, non-governmental Commercial Space Sector. Expanding private sector investment in space by the market-driven Commercial Sector generates economic benefits for the Nation and supports governmental Space Sectors with an increasing range of space goods and services. Governmental Space Sectors shall purchase commercially available space goods and services to the fullest extent feasible and shall not conduct [3] activities with potential commercial applications that preclude or deter Commercial Sector space activities except for national security or public safety reasons. Commercial Sector space activities shall be supervised or regulated only to the extent required by law, national security, international obligations, and public safety.”
COTS, and now Commercial Crew, are both examples of that policy being put in action. The SLS in my view violates that policy in that the Commercial Sector was never given the opportunity to prove they could meet the needs of the government.
You could even say that Griffin violated the policy with his directive to build his Ares I & V rockets. Congress is complicit in these violations too, which I think is a combination of ignorance (there is a space policy?) and greed (government contracts bring home more bacon).
Just like Bush 43’s VSE, space policies are only relevant if people want them to be – they don’t carry the force of law. Otherwise they are just “historical documents”.
Mark R. Whittington wrote @ June 6th, 2012 at 9:42 pm
Of course if the Dragon had blown up on the pad, it would have been all Bush’s fault.>>
only the very uninformed and politically idiotic would have said that…and I would have pointed out their stupidity. Instead people like you push one political lie after another and buy one lie after another. like the WMD in Iraq which you have never apologized for
You should condemn members of the GOP who support corporate pork…you use to. now all you are is a partisan hack RGO
Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan.
Success has many fathers and mothers. When I was Policy Director at ASA during the Clinton years, and prior, COTS was a movement we supported as presented by Jim Muncey and others in the commercial space community. NASA adopted it under Bush and began to fund it. Obama brought it to fruition. Can we agree this was actually a collaboration of both parties over time, and many inside and outside of government?
“Of course if the Dragon had blown up on the pad, it would have been all Bush’s fault.”
in other words “Success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan”
RGO – bit personal don’t ya think! Not that I don’t agree with the general thrust of the remarks.
@Oler,
COTS was fully defined, initiated and implemented under Bush 43. It represents a practical and measured approach to encouraging the commercial space industry — In stark contrast to the reckless approach to commercial crew we see flapping its way from the administration and back and forth through Congress. You are deluded and a partisan political ignoramus to think otherwise. Holdren is a marginal scientist and a neophyte political lackey to credit the Obama administration with SpaceX’s recent success.
Oler, quit talking about WMD… NON-SEQUITUR!!!! You are as ill-equipped to discuss foreign policy as you are space policy. You generalize about GOP space orientation, when prior to the Obama administration, it was possible to find examples from both parties with a variety of opinions on space program priorities. In short, it was people like Garver and Holdren that turned the space program into just one more example of bitter partisan politics.
Holdren got it wrong. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he was taking credit where it wasn’t due. In any case, people make rhetorical mistakes all the time.
Where credit *is* due is that the Obama administration went all-chips-in with the commercial program. The Bush administration’s program of record was Constellation, but that wasn’t going to fly people until at least 2017, and the ISS was scheduled to be defunded in 2016 to pay for it. The Obama administration saved the ISS by cancelling Constellation, and using commercial cargo/crew as the means of transportation to the ISS. Under the Bush administration, the Ares I was being built to fly to a place that would no longer exist when the vehicle was ready, and COTS was for flying cargo to a place that wouldn’t exist much longer either.
So Holdren should be taking credit for saving the ISS and relying on innovative 21st Century technology to get there, created by the private sector with support from NASA.
“COTS was fully defined, initiated and implemented under Bush 43. It represents a practical and measured approach to encouraging the commercial space industry — In stark contrast to the reckless approach to commercial crew we see flapping its way from the administration and back and forth through Congress.”
There’s nothing more reckless about commercial crew than commercial cargo. SpaceX’s COTS agreement with NASA actually had an option to prove out crew transport if SpaceX was successful on cargo demonstrations. That agreement was drawn up under the Bush II Administration.
In stark contrast to the reckless approach to expendable heavy lift launch vehicles and deep space capsules we see flapping its way from the administration and back and forth through Congress.
I fixed that for you. In more ways than you can even imagine.
It’s pretty silly for the GOP to fight the Obama administration at every turn on commercial spaceflight while simultaneously claiming “if it works, we get the credit”. COTS did start under Bush, but it was a stopgap until the ISS was to be defunded in 2015. One of the two Bush-era awards went to RpK-ATK, which could not even deliver, and afterward went to Orbital, which has a good cargo carrier actually designed to the requirements but as a result has no crew transport or entry capability. There is no evidence COTS itself led to commercial crew. The Bush administration did not fund commercial crew, did not produce any plans that led to it, and indeed it would have been foolish for them to do so since they did not plan to maintain any manned LEO infrastructure.
Musk led the concept from the beginning, with a clear engineering vision and a design that met COTS requirementrs while being designed from the outset to carry passengers. Bolden, Garver, and the Obama administration went all out to support it. So far, the GOP in Congress (and Senator Nelson) have simultaneously reveled in COTS success and the potential of CCCP (Commercial Crew and Cargo Program) while strangling it for funds, and the GOP has tried shamelessly to eliminate SpaceX (which they see as left-leaning although it is, ironically, nonunion), all the while pouring many times the money into a much larger Bush program with no possibility of success.
Let’s stop fighting and start working together. If the GOP supports commercial crew let them fund the full Administration request of $850M/yr. If the are not willing to fully fund it, they do not support it, and they deserve no credit for it.
Musk intended to do what he intended to do.
The political reaction to his effort, and the public’s perception of it, and the corporate (NGO) reactions to it will be written in some future history.
Griffin’s performance as NASA Administrator will also be the subject of a future NASA history. It will be all source, and at that time it is likely Griffin will also give the standard oral interviews.
The NRO sat has a wider field of vision than Hubble, and could be used in the NEO detection and charcterization effort.
Daddy wrote @ June 7th, 2012 at 12:21 am
@Oler,
COTS was fully defined, initiated and implemented under Bush 43. It represents a practical and measured approach to encouraging the commercial space industry — In stark contrast to the reckless approach to commercial crew we see flapping its way from the administration and back and forth through Congress….
|
OK I give everyone a chance. explain to me how they are different?
As for the WMD’s. People who make authoritative statements such as Whittington did about things; (and me for that matter) when they are proven wrong should at least have the courage to admit that AND to stop making the same goofy statements on other topics.
Whittington has in one measure or another gotten everything wrong about Iraq. If Bush or his flunkies said it, Mark W bought it hook line and sinker. He is a non critical thinker when it comes to politics and political thought.
Whittington use to advocate policies in spaceflight which finally were adopted by the government, this government, and then he turned against them with no articulated reason. He should as should anyone be mocked for that.
I suspect that will soon include you as I doubt you can articulate a difference between how commercial crew is going v cargo…but I give everyone one pass. RGO
BeanCounterfromDownunder wrote @ June 6th, 2012 at 11:23 pm
RGO – bit personal don’t ya think! Not that I don’t agree with the general thrust of the remarks.>>
Not really.
The right wing in this country has been on the attack in a personal fashion since the Clinton years…and when all the opposition does is point out that things in their attack are not consistent (Little Honey for Clinton bad, Gingrich OK ), then they retreat into “you are attacking me personally”..
An engagement on logical consistency is not an attack; it is a valid means of pointing out the validity of the argument. Whittington use to support exactly what Obama is doing. The reason he turned against it is because Obama is doing it. Whittington bought everything Bush said; including Bush’s ravings on Space policy.
you dont have to go back to far on this forum where I pointed out about a year after Cx was started how it would go off track. The only thing I got wrong was how fast it happened.
When I am wrong (and I am) I dont mind admitting it…sometimes I am just wrong and other times “to excited” (grin) ..but the essence of informed discussion is to at least be logical.
IT IS NOT LOGICAL to call the commercial cargo deal “crony capitalism” and yet support SLS…Sorry those people should be mocked and hard.
RGO
Kathleen Connell wrote @ June 6th, 2012 at 11:05 pm
NASA adopted it under Bush and began to fund it. Obama brought it to fruition. >
we can agree on this…the rest we would have to be very careful.
There is a matter called “competency of pursuit” meaning “how well was the notion or effort done particularly under the group that is trying to come into the credit realm after the fact.
As SpaceX has neared its victory lap; I have always wondered what Mike Griffin actually thinks about those days in the big office…ie on commercial resupply.
I dont know what his real views were on the subject; but from what he has said since leaving office it strikes me that his stewardship of the program was weak. I havent heard Mike do much since SpaceX flew (sorry been rather busy so I might have missed it) but his statements even in the face of one milestone after the other concerning the commercial cargo effort were derogatory of the policy.
it is important to note that “of the policy”.
Then there is that idiot Scott Pace whose statements afterwards seem like a petulant child.
my working theory is that Griffin sort of set up by his picks the program to fail…ie I suspect he picked the two groups who he thought were less likely to succeed then any of the other groups. If you go back to his statements when Kistler was tossed (and of course Mike was on his way out as well) they seem less.
Since leaving the Papacy Mike has been nothing but critical of the policy…even (and this is important) in the wake of its continued move forward and Cx year by year floundering (mostly under his watch).
Griffin should be blamed for two things:
The first is the floundering of Cx. It is pretty clear that Mike cant manage a candy store at the airport. He had reasonable amounts of cash and the program was going nowhere but out of budget and schedule.
Second he should be blamed for the “gap” in human spaceflight (not that I think this is all that important). Managing is a series of choices designed to do a goal. Mikes goal was to build his cathedrals in space (ie the big launcher)…nothing else really mattered.
I feel about like commercial resupply as I do Bush and Ossama Son of Ladin. After acting like thugs torturing people, spending a lot of money and all the other things Bush did in his years since 9/11/2001…Bush was no where nearer to catching Ossama then he was on 9/10/2001. At least by the time he flew back to TExas he knew who OBL was.
So linking the efforts with Obama’s which actually deleted OBL from the order of battle is like saying Mike Griffin was the father of commercial space. LOL
RGO
It should be understood that federal investment in commercial cargo was a fundamental priority of the Vision for Space Exploration, and was strongly endorsed by the Bush administration. Although it began on Mike Griffin’s watch, it was hardly his own vision. It was handed to him as a job to get done. In fact, Griffin was very skeptical about commercial crew activity. My suspicion is that had he not been handed the COTS job, he would not have devoted energy to make it happen.
But Bush and Griffin were too busy fiscally blowing up other efforts on the pad (Constellation) to spend a lot of time on this.
COTS origins were not in 2005, so the correcting statement is incorrect.
COTS origins were not in 2005, so the correcting statement is incorrect.
So when did the COTS program begin?
@Kathleen Connell wrote @ June 6th, 2012 at 11:05 pm
“Success has many fathers and mothers…”
And defeat is an orphan. Quite Kennedyesque.
“When I was Policy Director at ASA during the Clinton years, and prior, COTS was a movement we supported as presented by Jim Muncey and others in the commercial space community. NASA adopted it under Bush and began to fund it. Obama brought it to fruition. Can we agree this was actually a collaboration of both parties over time, and many inside and outside of government?”
Sure. However, bear in mind, using analogy and substituting Apollo, ‘NASA adopted Apollo uinder the Kennedy Administration and began to fund it. LBJ brought it to fruition. [ Then Nixon took the victory lap and terminated the program.] LBJ deserves much of the credit– but that usually goes to JFK simply for pointing and saying, ‘go there.’
@Robert G. Oler wrote @ June 6th, 2012 at 10:11 pm @Mark R. Whittington wrote @ June 6th, 2012 at 9:42 pm
“Of course if the Dragon had blown up on the pad, it would have been all Bush’s fault.>>” “…only the very uninformed and politically idiotic would have said that…and I would have pointed out their stupidity.”
Pot. Kettle. Black. We can start w/yours and it’s a lengthy list- begin w/- “This is Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic”– except it’s not. Or the go-to gem, “spaceflight isn’t hard.” Except it is…
Re Whittington, a hypothetical, of course, The administration would say – as it has in the past w/other areas it has invested political and fiscal capital as well- that it’s a private company and pointed to Space X for a Vanguard moment, etc. Busy Americans who paused to give it any thought- as it would have been just another failed satellite lofting- would just blame NASA. And that’s the real problem. Space X can rightly claim any success for their hardware, and its inside baseball stuff, but when there’s a ‘bad day’— they’ll be lost in the smoke and fire of blame and it will be NASA that takes the heat for any failures in the media and in public discourse. But then, life is unfair.
Bob wrote @ June 7th, 2012 at 2:20 pm
“So when did the COTS program begin?”
Clark has a good write up about that over at HobbySpace.
The short version is that the VSE called out for it, and the COTS program was the implementation of that requirement. Griffin just happened to be the NASA Administrator of record during a portion of time from it being defined to successful completion by it’s participants (SpaceX now, OSC next year).
Or as other people have pointed out, it was Griffin’s job to implement the COTS program, so how much credit does someone get for implementing something they didn’t start?
Anyways, thanks Mike. Although too bad you didn’t do as good a job on Constellation and JWST as you did on COTS…
The right wing in this country has been on the attack in a personal fashion since the Clinton years…
Yes, because the left wing in this country never does anything like that.
[rest of typical off-topic Oler “right wing” derangement snipped]
“Anyways, thanks Mike.”
Griffin actually cut in half (from $1B to $500M) the budget that O’Keefe & Co. had set aside for the program that was later named COTS to help feed the vehicles, later named Ares I and Orion, coming out of Stanley’s ESAS study. Griffin later gave a nice STA speech on COTS (that was probably written by others), but he materially harmed the program instead of supporting it.
Griffin cut other programs to practically zero (nuke power/propulsion, non-human microgravity research, etc.) to feed the ESAS budget wedge. I imagine that he would have done the same with COTS if not for a couple key White House staffers.
“Although too bad you didn’t do as good a job on Constellation and JWST as you did on COTS…”
Unlike the ESAS study terms or the few open solicitations under Constellation, Griffin didn’t bother to review the COTS Space Act Announcement (the solicitation) before it went out. Given how poorly ESAS, Ares I, Orion, and other projects with his heavy fingerprints on them turned out, probably the best thing Griffin could have done for COTS was give it the benign neglect that he did.
Rand Simberg wrote @ June 7th, 2012 at 3:23 pm
“The right wing in this country has been on the attack in a personal fashion since the Clinton years…”
you replied:
Yes, because the left wing in this country never does anything like that.
….
My two year old is very very developed for her physical age and my wife and I have already started to try and teach her that “equivalency” in behavior is not a valid reason. So even if the proposition you made were accurate the fact that “one side does it” is never an excuse for the other side to do it…particularly because all that is and it must be obvious to all, an excuse for a race to the bottom in politics.
What has always amazed me about the Clinton “impeachment” is not the tone deaf part of the GOP (most Americans were against it, as I became) but the fact that clinton et al never blew the cover on Newt. I know that they knew about it; because a friend of mine, a college classmate who worked on Capital Hill at the time…knew about “Newt’s Honey”.
Worse for me was the shoddiness of the “trial”. There is not a single scintilla of words spoken under oath. The GOP Senate never not once called a single witness. Wonder why that was?
Anyway the notion that people like Whittington (and I konw that you disagree with him) can walk around calling the commercial efforts “corporate cronyism” and yet do a Newt and support things which are the essence of corporate cronyism, is not something that should be tolerated or is a personal attack by pointing it out.
Whittington has never answered on this forum or anywhere why he considers SLS not corporate cronyism RGO
From ‘The Vision for Space Exploration’ dated Feb 2004
“C. Space Transportation Capabilities Supporting Exploration
• Develop a new crew exploration vehicle to provide crew transportation for missions beyond low Earth orbit;
« Conduct the initial test flight before the end of this decade in order to provide an operational capability to support human exploration missions no later than 2014;
•Separate to the maximum practical extent crew from cargo transportation to the International Space Station and for launching exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit;
« Acquire cargo transportation as soon as practical and affordable to support missions to and from the International Space Station; and
« Acquire crew transportation to and from the International Space Station, as required, after the Space Shuttle is retired from service.
It might not have had the COTS program title but NASA was ordered to aquire the services at the start of 2004 when O’Keefe was still around.
COTS capability D was supposed to start being funded after the shuttle was retired. Which actually made no sense if you wanted a seemless transition for crew exchange. This is why the Ares 1 / Orion were plan A and was going to be utilized for that until the commercial crew come online, which was plan B.
Possiblely in the hopes that the Ares1 would be so successful that congress would forget all about commercial crew. President Obama, for me, looks like he mearly picked up exactly where President Bush left off, Start funding commercial crew after the Shuttle was retired in 2010.
So when did the COTS program begin?
See answers above. By whoever designed and wrote the VSE. And most likely it was really put in motion by Steidle, the 2005 announcement was just giving a label to an already existing program.
@DarkBlue
Thanks, now I understand the ESAS thing a little better. I never knew who was actually responsible or how such an incredibly biased and obviously inaccurate report could be produced.
As to commercial space, those who voted for full funding of the administration request ($850M/yr) can take credit,regardless of party. Those who voted to slash it by over 50%, regardless of party, have no claim on credit for its accomplishments.
Both the current and past administrations deserve credit for the success of COTS, it is not “goofy” in the least.
Who are these people who still claim Bush lied us into Iraq? Do the people here who can remember the minutia from Apollo launches really have such a flawed memory when it comes to more recent history? Didn’t take more than 5 comments before this tread went OT.
Guess what, the war in Iraq is over and we won. Both administrations deserve credit for that too. Both administrations also deserve credit for the efforts that lead to the death of OBL.
Sometimes people with different politics actually do work toward a common goal.
Worse for me was the shoddiness of the “trialâ€. There is not a single scintilla of words spoken under oath. The GOP Senate never not once called a single witness. Wonder why that was?
Because they were political cowards, afraid of losing another election. And you idiotically continue to pull the discussion off the topic of space politics.
vulture4 wrote:
I never knew who was actually responsible or how such an incredibly biased and obviously inaccurate report could be produced.”
It would seem criminal. The way they by passed EELV’s. If NASA would have built a simplier version of a cargo/crew capsule that could launch on the Atlas these arguements would have never even taken place. They could have EASILY beat the 2014 deadline. Considering they had a such a huge difference in funding compared to the commercials.
Lockmart has been spening a BILLION a year for a freakin’ capsule? How many years in total? 2005/6 – 2017?
wodun wrote @ June 7th, 2012 at 9:12 pm
Both the current and past administrations deserve credit for the success of COTS, >>
it is not like Taft and TR taking credit for the Canal…
the problem I have with your comments is that if the Dragon had failed to any degree then the person who would have been the loudest in a total critique of the entire program…..
would have been Griffin.
He just would not have said “well new effort restart etc”, in my view he would have done what he has been doing since leaving The Papacy…he would have mocked the entire effort; his “bag of underwear” speech.
Hard to give credit to someone who does that.
“Do the people here who can remember the minutia from Apollo launches really have such a flawed memory when it comes to more recent history? ”
No, its just the people who are making up both.
A modest note. “Victory” in politics is more or less “achieving defined goals”. and politicians run away from things when those goals become difficult to achieve. This is why Bush went from Ossama “dead or alive” to “I really dont care about him” (or something like that)…
It is why Griffin has been amazingly quiet about Dragon and Scott Pace is making “Pace statements” (ie ones bordering on special needs class).
If you define Victory in Iraq as removing Saddam wow!!! get the aircraft carrier out and put a banner on it labeled Mission Accomplish. The rest…not so much RGO
Stop being goofy.
“Acquire crew transportation to and from the International Space Station, as required, after the Space Shuttle is retired from service.”
From where? Here is Bush’s speech:
“The Crew Exploration Vehicle will be capable of ferrying astronauts and scientists to the Space Station after the shuttle is retired.”
There is not one word about commercial space in Bush’s speech, cargo or crew. The Bush administration approved the initial commercial cargo demonstration as a stopgap until the ISS was dropped (by the US) in 2015. All the funding for actual commercial cargo ops and all the actual proposals, planning and funding for commercial crew were initiated by President Obama. The only reason I’m making this point is that the GOP is still fighting tooth and nail against commercial crew. Like Posey who says he deserves the credit for commercial crew for sponsoring a meaningless bill that provides no funding at all, and then says “there isn’t enough money” to fund the administration request, while putting the difference into another meaningless Constellation test flight and years of buying seats on Soyuz. In a local rally I heard him attack the president with language I can only call vicious. If you’re not on the team, you don’t get the credit.
http://history.nasa.gov/Bush%20SEP.htm
Read the speech. Bush said NOTHING about commercial cargo or commercial crew: He only said the CEV would provide access to the ISS after Shuttle is terminated. Program Manager Wayne Hale (hardly a closet Socialist) said in 2008 that Shuttle could not be restarted.
But the GOP blames Obama for the end of Shuttle and will not accept any of the responsibility for themselves. Now they want credit for Commercial Crew even as they are blocking the administration funding request, and of course trying to force out SpaceX, which they see as not Republican enough, through a rigged “downselect”.
Posey is proud he has only two years of college, and the local voters are happy to have a representative who makes life so simple.
@Robert G. Oler wrote @ June 7th, 2012 at 11:53 am
“The right wing in this country has been on the attack in a personal fashion since the Clinton years…”
:… the Clinton years…” Goofy. A lot longer. Apparently you missed the Birchers accusing Ike of being a commie. Best you head to that public library to learn some history.
I’m just pleased that space policy archeology has finally found a home…
The engineering effort began in the late 1980’s.
Musk came in about 2002-2003.
If not for my stroke, I could give you some firmer dates, but that is as best as I can remember it now.
In my usual manner, I will make that statement without citing sources.
Once again, Musk was going to do what he intended to do, and the rest of it is the perception of others of that effort.
I don’t think that a level playing field and no obstacles is too much to ask for.