Campaign '12

Space policy advice for the candidates

As the campaign between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney ramps up, the candidates are getting plenty of advice, solicited and unsolicited, about a wide range of issues. That includes space, with a couple of recent op-eds offering some proposals—although perhaps too vague or unrealistic to be acted upon.

Writing for NBCNews.com, reporter/commentator Jay Barbree wants space policy on the “presidential to-do list”. Doing what, exactly, isn’t clear yet (this essay was the first of a five-part series), but he clearly wants the US to restore its human spaceflight capability as soon as possible. To President Obama, he says that most “space veterans” approve of the goals of his policy, but that he should not “prop up the newcomers while giving short shrift to America’s most experienced aerospace companies”, citing specifically the funding SpaceX has received while ATK “is still trying to get in on the funding for space station resupply.”

Barbree also suggests to Gov. Romney that his proposals for a blue-ribbon panel to review the nation’s space policy are unnecessary: “Take it from a reporter who has covered NASA for every day of its five decades in existence: America’s space program does not need another busload of suits with untanned faces stabbing holes in the air, debating over things about which they know little.” (If tanned faces are indeed correlated with space expertise, perhaps the Romney campaign should consider ditching its current space policy team with the cast of Jersey Shore.)

While Barbree didn’t dwell on specifics about what the US space policy should be, Madhu Thangavelu of USC offers a specific proposal in a CNN essay: create a Cabinet-level “Department of Space”. The idea itself isn’t new, but in his essay, Thangavelu sees this department as coordinating public and private, domestic and international space efforts. He claims this department, which would appear to create another layer of bureaucracy on top of existing agencies, would instead “help NASA remove layers of bureaucratic burden” and also help companies “cut through government bureaucracies” ranging from FAA to OSHA. (Wouldn’t every industry love having a Cabinet-level department running interference on OSHA for them?) He suggests, for example, that such a department could resolve export control issues, although the current problem is that satellites and related components are explicitly placed on the US Munitions List by Congress, and thus Congress, and not an existing or proposed department, must act to at least allow the executive branch to remove them.

Thangavelu didn’t specifically direct this proposal at the Obama or Romney campaigns, but one item in there suggests that, if he did, the concept would likely be dead on arrival: he notes a USC study “presented a case that a Department of Space should operate at a budget level of $60 billion,” with a third of that going to NASA (how the rest would be spent isn’t mentioned.) A proposal to roughly triple civil space spending probably isn’t going to get much traction in the current political environment.

64 comments to Space policy advice for the candidates

  • mike shupp

    I didn’t get a warm friendly feeling that Thangavelu himself had much idea of what a 60 billion buck Department of space would do. Take the current NASA budget, which he wouldn’t change much, add in NOAA space programs and FAA space-related stuff, and you get to maybe 22-23 billion. Overseeing space tourism isn’t going to add much. Maybe some elaborate scheme for cleaning up orbital debris could be performed, for another 5-10 billion — but I’d be much suprised to see such a program within the next 40 years.

  • Why some people think all the problems of human spaceflight can be solved by throwing more money at an inefficient and bloated bureaucracy viewed by Congress as pork is beyond me.

    Even Barbree thinks in terms of pork:

    Forty-five years later, one of the relative newcomers to the space business, SpaceX, is receiving roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars from NASA — while one of the shuttle program’s longtime contractors, ATK, is still trying to get in on the funding for space station resupply.

    Why?! The government doesn’t owe ATK life-support, any more than the government owes the stagecoach industry life-support.

    ATK is currently conducting a huge media blitz hoping to pressure NASA into selecting Liberty as a winner in the CCiCap competition. No other candidate has a media blitz. That’s because they chose to compete based on the merits of their technology. ATK running a media blitz suggests to me they know they can’t win on the merits. One has to wonder how much lobbying money they’re throwing around behind the scenes with Congress to pressure NASA.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “If tanned faces are indeed correlated with space expertise, perhaps the Romney campaign should consider ditching its current space policy team with the cast of Jersey Shore.”

    Farmers, tinkerbells, and… guidos?

    “Thangavelu… notes a USC study ‘presented a case that a Department of Space should operate at a budget level of $60 billion'”

    A triple tinkerbell.

  • amightywind

    Thangavelu sees this department as coordinating public and private, domestic and international space efforts.

    Sounds like another mushy transnational bureaucracy. No thanks. We already have one with the ISS, and its works poorly.

    The military has always accompanied the entrepreneur in the expansion of US economic interests. The Department of Space should reside in the Department of Defense.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “The government doesn’t owe ATK life-support, any more than the government owes the stagecoach industry life-support.”

    Farmer Barbee seems to have forgotten that ATK already has its life-support subsidy in the form of SLS.

  • common sense

    This is getting beyond silly. We cannot properly manage NASA alone and we are going to create a Dept. of Space???? Are we getting the Space Marines as well to fight China on the Moon?

    As for Barbree… Trying to get a job at ATK? Reminds me of a couple of our finest contributors here…

    Whatever.

  • MrEarl

    The Liberty design is very interesting including a capasity to bring up a 5k lb cargo container with each launch. However, I think ATK got enough money through Aries I devopment so that they can bring this baby in on their own dime.

  • MrEarl

    I thought everyone knew that the more layers of government you placed on program the more efficiant you make things.

    Oiey Vie …….

  • In a policy vein having tossed around the notion of a Department of Space and a “Space Patrol” in my view both are bad ideas whose time has not come.

    About the worse idea(s) floating around are to make space special. Space and Human spaceflight should be just another place and another mode for operations for humans, industry, and the agencies of The Republic to accomplish various task. The KEY HERE is that the TASK should be things that justify themselves on their own.

    There might come a time in the future where both notions (a dedicated space arm of the armed forces and a “department” to deal with space issues but we are some decades if not a half century away from that.

    The theory needs to be to cut down the illuminatee that is merely paper turners…NASA already has far to many of those. RGO

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 11:43 am

    Are you suggesting that they will get the 2nd stage for free as well? You’re dreaming my friend.

    And I will refrain on the Liberty design ;)

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 11:59 am

    “There might come a time in the future where both notions (a dedicated space arm of the armed forces and a “department” to deal with space issues but we are some decades if not a half century away from that.”

    Such thing ALREADY exists in pretty much in the Army, Navy and Air Force. Maybe we’ll consolidate at some point and we might include Intelligence. But for now…

    Personally I would see a Space Academy emerging once commercial ops are working. Something like the Merchant Marine eventually. And I don’t think we are that far.

  • common sense

    And btw a Space Academy and Merchant Marine thing would use existing NASA resources at JSC and KSC at least. They would use the existing people, maybe not all of them but the purpose would be here and now.

    Some of these resources are emerging in the private sector but I think NASA at least here has all the experience necessary to get it going quickly.

  • MrEarl

    I’m suggesting that with the money NASA payed for Aries I, they should bring the design to completetion without further need for funding which they said they would do. It will just take longer.

  • Rocket Realist

    On a related subject – anyone have any fresh news on whether Griffin/Pace still have the inside track with Romney?

    My thought on who should run NASA under Romney, if and when: Bolden. There’s precedent for NASA Administrators crossing between Administrations, and what Bolden is doing with the necessarily limited NASA budget is more or less working.

    Meanwhile, the only other qualified people who want the job (or at least who are publicly campaigning for it) are diehard champions of a program that was very obviously not going to work on anything but a (massively unlikely) rapidly growing NASA budget.

    If Romney were to reinstall Griffin, there’s a good chance the result would be a major embarrassment within a few years. Bolden would be a lot less likely to be a distraction from other, higher Romney Administration priorities.

  • common sense wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 12:23 pm

    Rich Kolker and I have given a lot of thought as to how some sort of future space organizational structure evolves and is steered…and we are in my view in the first stages of that.

    At some point in my view NASA does emerge as a space technology agency and in some measure maybe as a “Space academy” in terms of being a place (like the National Test Pilots school) where people can be sent for basic training and orientation in space ops…

    The latter is some distance in the future although one can see how that emerges as time goes on.

    The technology aspect is enormously important and NASA needs to move as the preponderance of the agency to it.

    At some point if there is a commercial space infrastructure from which to pull from (ie we didnt invent C-130’s to service the South Pole) we will find that it is “easy” to push the technology on current infrastructure to do human exploration.

    Rich Kolker came up with the idea of “Lewis and Clark” agencies…ie a sort of assembly that does “single things” and then goes away…

    RGO

  • MrEarl wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 12:31 pm

    I am a critic of ATK and I think that the non rocket part of it is “interesting” not entertaining but interesting. the rocket is boring RGO

  • Once this election is done if Obama gets (as daily becomes more possible…grin) a second term what he needs to do is stop compromising and simply push forward in events that do his signature on history and that includes space policy.

    Right now what we have is a curious mix of (mostly) GOP policies that have failed (ie the big booster on the Apollo redux poking along consuming money) with a good and vibrant “new economy” starting to flourish in the new space and new ideas from old space companies.

    The trick is that the new economy is working. SpaceX just cleaned the Delta 2’s clock on cost per pound to orbit. RGO

  • amightywind

    My thought on who should run NASA under Romney, if and when: Bolden.

    Be assured that there is no chance of this. Obama appointments are radioactive. I only hope Romney moves even faster than Obama to replace the NASA Administrator. For NASA to really be reformed it will have to be purged of leftists deep into the organisation.

    what Bolden is doing with the necessarily limited NASA budget is more or less working.

    Whittington put it best. Our’s is a Potemkin space program.

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 12:58 pm

    Yes NTPS or http://www.nastarcenter.com/training/space and I think there is more. But it will be somewhat independent of NASA, kinda of like the various military academies.

    I think Obama had a huge ship to steer and it did quite well actually. More to come I hope in his second term. Although it did not get published (?) I had an earlier post that said that if Condi Rice becomes the VP on Romney’s list then Obama may have a hard time. We’ll see. And yes it relates to space politics/policy. The VP role in space policy is or at least used to be important, e.g. National Space Council…

  • Vladislaw

    Barbee wrote:

    “To President Obama, he says that most “space veterans” approve of the goals of his policy, but that he should not “prop up the newcomers while giving short shrift to America’s most experienced aerospace companies”, citing specifically the funding SpaceX has received while ATK “is still trying to get in on the funding for space station resupply.””

    ATK has been sucking on the government pork train for 30 years with the shuttle .. why the hell didn’t they invest some of those freakin BILLIONS into a liberty vehicle?

    Rake in billions of overpriced products and now whine you are being cut out because the taxpayers won’t fund you anymore…. to bad.

  • Vladislaw

    MrEarl wroteL

    “I just said interesting design…..”

    ATk said, when Russia was charging 56 million a seat, that their price would be comprible to Russia’s prices. That would put an ATK launch at around 400 million a pop.

    SpaceX 140 million for crew, 133 million for cargo. Or 273 million, a savings for NASA of 117 million, at two crew flights per year … one free discovery class probe per year from the savings.

    Come on people, this is a no brainer.

  • MrEarl

    Wow Oler, to call you an Obama partisan would be an understatement!!! It’s only July and the Obama campaign makes the 2004 “Swift Boat” campaign look positively ethical. LOL.

    As much as Barbree and others would like space to even be mentioned, the economy will be the top three concerns and decision points of this election.

    While the Space Academy seems like a good idea, until there are actually private space stations/laboratories in orbit and no unemployed astronauts/cosmonauts to man them I don’t see that happening. At least for the next 15 to 20 years.
    SpaceX may have cleaned the Delta 2’s proverbial clock but the Falcon 9 still has a long way to go to reach the Delta’s long string of success and reliability. NASA has just ordered 3 new Delta 2’s, but fear not, NASA has ordered a Falcon 9 also.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    A $60 billion “Department of Space” is clearly a nonstarter, though I would love to see the study that suggested that NASA could do all that technology, science, and exploration for $20 billion and that $40 billion is needed for “coordination.” That sounds like a prescription for bureaucracy on steroids.

    I’ll withhold judgment on Barbee’s ideas until all of them are rolled out. I suspected by “tanned faces” he is being metaphorical and not literal.

  • common sense wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 1:16 pm

    “Yes NTPS or http://www.nastarcenter.com/training/space and I think there is more. But it will be somewhat independent of NASA, kinda of like the various military academies.

    I think Obama had a huge ship to steer and it did quite well actually. More to come I hope in his second term. Although it did not get published (?) I had an earlier post that said that if Condi Rice becomes the VP on Romney’s list then Obama may have a hard time.”

    it is in my view a product of national infrastructure for the government to run as a function of national power some sort of space training center where things like WETF’s and other parts can be grouped and used as a national resource.

    Condi Rice as VP would in my view be a godsend for Obama…there would be two days of “wow” and then the hammering would start on her iraq statements. She wont be picked, she is pro choice. RGO

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 1:51 pm

    I did not say an Academy ought to be set up next week. I said that we could use the current resources of NASA to see to it. As commercial space gains its footing. Of course if commercial space fails then it is all moot. But if commercial space fails then the whole enchilada will go the way of the dodo.

    As for Delta 2 vs. Falcon 9, try and remember the prognostic of some people on even F9 going to orbit a couple years ago… For now SpaceX is marching in the right direction, kicking axx and taking names. For better or worse.

  • MrEarl wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 1:51 pm

    Wow Oler, to call you an Obama partisan would be an understatement!!! It’s only July and the Obama campaign makes the 2004 “Swift Boat” campaign look positively ethical. LOL.”

    LOL…there is no way not to be partisan in the Presidential race. For all intents and purposes we are down to the “choices” (OK Willard’s VP needs to play but that wont change anything) and one is either or either…(Pronunciation important here)…

    In terms of all issues there is nothing that would get me to vote for Willard…he and his policies are in my view catastrophic for my vision of America.

    As for “swift boating”…you have not seen anything yet. Obama was angling toward that…but we are in a non opo campaign driven storm that threatens to attack Willards basic honesty. A candidates basic honesty has never been an issue in modern American politics…we are headed that way with Mitt the Liar. That is a bonus of the bain issue…even Fox News Brett Hume and Kristol from TWS are calling on him to release his tax returns…when we find out in the “non groomed for Presidential years” he paid either no or very low taxes on a lot of money…the game is simply over. They will either come out and that will be bad or there will be this drip drip drip which will fuel the fears or independents who are going to determine this election

    You will find that shortly “ex astronaut and cosmonaut” is not that big of a calling card in terms of people who start to fly in space. Most of them replicate the “Bowersox” experience ie someone who cannot adapt to new times…and the new space companies will find that competently trained people even on initial flights…will do just fine.

    I know for a fact that one major new space company is looking, for instance at people who have spent sometime on submarines instead of “old astronauts”.

    The Delta 2’s were a gift for the contractor. I realize that the 9 has some distance to go for Delta’s record but before long we are going to look at the Delta 2 as the 707 in the age of well the 777 or 787…

    Pound for cost per pound the 9 is a better buy and is the future. RGO

  • Vladislaw wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 1:36 pm

    What is the ATK price for Liberty? RGO

  • Heinrich Monroe

    Ah, I’m supposed to “take it from a reporter” how to set U.S. space policy? No thanks, Jay! Barbree seems to be convinced that the people on these committees know very little. Gosh, Jay, one wonders why you weren’t chosen for such committees given that you want us to think that you know more. Maybe it’s because you know a lot less then they do, but you have the public voice to grouse loudly about it.

    What bothers me about Romney’s response to questions of space policy isn’t so much a proposal to set up a committee to consider it, but that this reaction is precisely what you say when you don’t have a frigging clue about what the issues are. Obama was there. He may still be there. But Romney appears to be there too.

    I would feel a bit more confident about Romney and human space flight if he showed the slightest shred of a clue about the issues, challenges, and opportunities here.

  • A M Swallow

    The next president could start demonstration mining on the Moon within his first term. The first mission could be the RESOLVE rover on the Morpheus lander.

    TRL states of the equipment

    RESOLVE – TRL 5
    Morpheus – TRL 5
    Atlas 5 launch vehicle – TRL 9

    TRL = Technology Readiness Level,
    1 = a scientist has seen something,
    9 = the machine works and has been used in space.

    The RESOLE rover and Morpheus lander will need cheap parts (available for the local shops) replacing by space rated parts. Space rated parts can take radiation and very cold temperature but cost ~10 times the price.

  • yg1968

    Barbree’s daughter worked for ATK for many years.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “NASA has just ordered 3 new Delta 2’s”

    They’re old Delta IIs. ULA has five unused Delta IIs on hand, and NASA bought launches on three of them.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    The one interesting aspect of these proposals, along with certain ones put forward by Frank Wolf, is the utter vacuum left in space policy by both Obama’s incompetence and hostility and by Romney’s seeming indifference. Since it seems increasingly clear that Obama is imploding, Romney may do well to get Scott Pace and Mike Griffin to hurry a long with letting him know what his own space policy is going to be.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “What is the ATK price for Liberty?”

    ATK has claimed that Liberty’s manned mission price will be comparable to what NASA pays for Soyuz missions today. That would put it at around $60 million per seat, or triple SpaceX’s Dragon seat price ($20 million).

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 2:07 pm

    In my post that did not get published I said that Condi would be a smart move but yeah considering the level of the campaign on several issues that might not happen.Regardless of her position on issues she is a real smart lady unlike others and would really be a plus to Romney’s campaign I think. I think she can handle Iraq whether I like it or not. That is with the US voters at large, not necessarily with me… or you.

  • common sense

    @ A M Swallow wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 3:17 pm

    “The next president could start demonstration mining on the Moon within his first term”

    I am not sure what it will take to make people come back to earth. This will NEVER EVER happen. If there is any form of ISRU on the Moon or elsewhere it will be done by the private sector. There is NO money for anything like this. None, zip, nada, nothing.

  • Heinrich Monroe

    The next president could start demonstration mining on the Moon within his first term. The first mission could be the RESOLVE rover on the Morpheus lander.

    Uh, right. In four years we’re going to be doing demonstration mining on the Moon? Whatcha smokin?

    Morpheus is a propulsion system. Nothing else. What separates MORPHEUS from a real lunar landing is a lot of development and testing. In-space control systems, comm, nav, ..

    But I agree with the other response that demonstration mining is not something that’s going to be a federally funded investment. Federal dollars may well go toward resource identification, but not mining.

  • Vladislaw

    Robert, at the time I read that from ATK the Russians were charging 56 million a seat so 392 million for a seven seat Liberty launch.

    They have a cargo boot also but I REALLY can’t see ATK throwing in the 5 tons of cargo for free. I believe they would charge closer to the 450 million Delta IV heavy price.

  • pathfinder_01

    “Space rated parts can take radiation and very cold temperature but cost ~10 times the price.”

    That is often why they cost ten times the price. You need to demonstrate that it can handle the cold and radiation or not. Cold can make some metals brittle and radiation is not good for electronics.

    The problem isn’t if we can mine on the moon. There is nothing on the moon preventing mining. The problem is for what purpose are you mining on the moon and does that make sense.

    At the moment high launch cost and high spacecraft costs as well as lack of market are a barrier to any lunar industrialization. Put tourists on the moon and your rover could pick up moon rocks as souvenirs. Put any sort of base and maybe local resources are cheaper than import (depends heavily on the resource, amount of usage, and difficultly of accessing it).

    This is really something better left to the private sector as not only do you need to be able to mine, you need to be able to do so at a profit or else makes little sense.

  • Mark R. Whittington wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 4:30 pm

    is the utter vacuum left in space policy by ..”

    I am going to start calling you “five year plan Whittington”…Obama unlike Willard the scared has a space policy…it is centered along private enterprise; just like we (and that includes you) use to argue that it needed to be.

    What is your obsession with some grand government plan to go places?

    As for Obama imploding…you can wish. He has Willard on the run with even the right wing arguing as to why Willard wont release his tax returns. the argument even on conservative circles is not “What Willard did at Bain” but “why wont he tell us what he did”…it is unknown in modern politics for a major party candidate to get the label “Liar” but its starting to stick to Willard…

    As one person said “Pick Palin for VP maybe her incompetence will cover his lying ” RGO

  • Coastal Ron

    MrEarl wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 1:51 pm

    SpaceX may have cleaned the Delta 2’s proverbial clock but the Falcon 9 still has a long way to go to reach the Delta’s long string of success and reliability.

    SpaceX has already demonstrated that the Falcon 9 is reliable enough for NASA to start using. That they didn’t place all their orders with SpaceX instead of the combination with ULA’s Delta II would likely be a combination of redundancy and internal price-be-damned ULA support.

    However, as has already been pointed out, ULA has end-of-lifed Delta II, and there are only two more available at this point. And considering the price differential ($137M vs $82M), there is no reason to order more Delta II’s, and no reason for ULA to expect that building more Delta II’s are a good idea.

    The Mrs and I just came back from a short vacation, and during part of it we had a pretty good view of a glacier. The space business has some of the same attributes in that things look like they are moving slowly, but unseen forces are already changing the landscape of the space industry, and they will become more and more apparent as time wears on. If you can’t see that SpaceX is gathering momentum, then you don’t know what indicators you should be looking at.

    For instance, that one NASA order for SpaceX just cost ULA somewhere around $180M in direct revenue. Sure that doesn’t hurt them today, but think about their cost structure – they rely on orders from both NASA and the Air Force (for DoD & NRO). As SpaceX starts garnering more and more orders, watch for the call by ULA (or it’s paid supporters) that it needs “special” protection in order to stay in business. They will claim that having only one company providing critical launch services is a bad idea, forgetting of course that up until this year they had no competition in the EELV class of launchers. Oh the irony.

  • Coastal Ron

    Mark R. Whittington wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 4:30 pm

    …is the utter vacuum left in space policy by both Obama’s incompetence and hostility…

    Submitting budgets to Congress that would increase NASA’s budget is incompetence or hostile? Weird.

    Embracing a space policy that was voiced by Reagan but left to languish by Bush 43 (Commercial Crew) is incompetence or hostile? Weird.

    Canceling a program that was far over budget and far behind schedule (Constellation), and would have only repeated the achievements of 40 years earlier is incompetence and hostile? Weird.

    Proposing to invest in technology and capabilities instead of gigantic unaffordable rockets is incompetence and hostile? Weird.

  • A M Swallow

    Getting to Lunar orbit is the job of the Atlas 5. Landing the Morpheus is the job of the ALHAT equipment, which is due to be flight tested at the Kennedy Space Centre within days.

    A full mining operation is naturally a private sector operation. A small demonstration of the new technology can however be done by the government. Particularly since NASA has paid for the development of the RESOLVE equipment.

    Depending on who runs it such a mission is unlikely to cost more than a couple of billion.

  • Coastal Ron

    Jay Barbee said:

    Forty-five years later, one of the relative newcomers to the space business, SpaceX, is receiving roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars from NASA — while one of the shuttle program’s longtime contractors, ATK, is still trying to get in on the funding for space station resupply.

    A couple of thoughts on his comments.

    First of all, ATK is really just a sub-contractor for aerospace systems. They are not a full-up space launch service provider like Boeing or Lockheed Martin, so equating them to SpaceX, which IS a full-up space launch service provider is apples and oranges.

    Secondly, if everyone will dig back into their memory, SpaceX has been able to find customers that will take a risk with them. And not only NASA, but the Air Force, Canada’s MDC, SES, Iridium and many others. Those customers were not swayed by powerpoint presentations and bedazzled by stories of life as an internet entrepreneur, Musk and SpaceX had to open their company up to tremendous scrutiny and review – they won those orders because they were able to show that their designs were sound, and their company had the management and financial resources to see the customer orders through.

    There is nothing holding back ATK from following a similar route.

    ATK feels they have a workable design for a rocket, and I have no doubt that given enough time and money they can get it to fly safely. That is not a question in my mind. What I do question is the market need for what they are offering. Capacity-wise it’s really a competitor to Delta IV Heavy, but I think the vibration issues will keep sensitive DoD/NRO payloads from flying on it. And though it’s price is closer to Atlas V, they really need to be competing with Falcon 9 now, not Atlas V. They have missed the mark on that market.

    For the ATK Liberty spacecraft, they are late to the CCDev party. Where were they when the first CCDev round was up for grabs? They offered their rocket, but they didn’t offer up the spacecraft, so NASA already has plenty of inside knowledge on how the current CCDev spacecraft meet their needs. And the Liberty capsule is really overbuilt for NASA’s needs. Barbee has it wrong when he says “ATK, is still trying to get in on the funding for space station resupply“. ATK is competing for transporting crew, and crew only. Their cargo option is interesting but completely unneeded, so it just adds cost if anything. They are up against a lean group of competitors for capsules, of which they are competing directly with Dragon (already proven & much less expensive) and CST-100 (proven company and less expensive design).

    If ATK wants to be a player, then they need to convince customers to pay them money. That hasn’t happened yet, and I see no reason for that to change.

  • BeanCounterfromDownunder

    Further to DBN’s comment, there are no more Delta II’s being produced. Enough parts for 5 and now that NASA has purchased 3 or those, only 2 left. What after that? Only SpaceX F9 v1.0, v1.1, and FH to come and these are new birds, latest technology, no legacy parts, lower cost, higher launch rates based on current manifest.
    SpaceX wraps up the market. End of story.

  • E.P. Grondine

    Here we are talking about crummy ATK’s crummy rocket again,

    While the really important news is Planetary Resources plan to use Virgin Galatic’s air launch vehicle for launching their neo tracking sats. The cost is pocket change for the backers, and it will leave them competitive with Orbital in the air launch of small sats.

  • Heinrich Monroe

    Depending on who runs it such a mission is unlikely to cost more than a couple of billion.

    That IS high class stuff you’re smokin’. The federal government will NEVER invest in a mining operation, even if it costs only “a couple of billion”. Well, water ice? That’s just matter of digging and hauling somewhere warm. He-3? Like hell. Palladium, umm, why? As I said, the federal government will invest heavily in understanding what’s there, not in demonstrating getting it out. It will certainly not do so as long as the result isn’t a key component of future plans. Not dreams, plans. We have no plans, zero, nada, for reaching out to any destination that unambiguously requires mining the Moon. We have dreams, but not plans. When we have real plans for colonizing the solar system, we can return to this discussion.

    ALHAT is a hazard avoidance component of the descent and landing control system. It isn’t the whole thing. Morpheus is mostly a descent propulsion technology development effort. It happens to have some avionics tacked on to it. There is a lot more to a lunar lander development project than that. Morpheus is a nice project, but it’s done on the cheap and, well, you get what you pay for.

  • South Jersey Engineer

    Mr. Barbree claims:

    “Forty-five years later, one of the relative newcomers to the space business, SpaceX, is receiving roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars from NASA — while one of the shuttle program’s longtime contractors, ATK, is still trying to get in on the funding for space station resupply.”

    So far SpaceX has received ~ $400 million from NASA for work that has been accomplished compared to what I imagined was far more that ATK received for their part in an over budget and underperforming $13 billion Constellation program, no part of which made it into orbit.

    Mr. Barbree stated this after claiming:

    “Most space veterans agree with those goals, Mr. President, but with a cautionary note: Don’t prop up the newcomers while giving short shrift to America’s most experienced aerospace companies. This happened before, when the White House took the contract from the experienced and gave it to the inexperienced. In 1967, the Apollo 1 astronauts paid with their lives in a launch-pad fire.”

    Everything I have read says the problems were due to an overly ambitious schedule due to a percieved need to beat the Soviets to the moon. North American Aviation was far from being an “inexperienced” contractor having built the X-15 and many fighters and bombers. And besides, NASA was intimately involved in oversight of the program at the time of the fire.

    While knocking down SpaceX and shilling for ATK, Mr. Barbree conveniently forgets ATK/Thiokol’s involvement in the Challenger disaster (caused by their solid rocket booster) that Shuttle astronauts paid with their lives.

  • Fred Willett

    BeanCounterfromDownunder wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 9:53 pm
    Further to DBN’s comment, there are no more Delta II’s being produced. Enough parts for 5 and now that NASA has purchased 3 or those, only 2 left. What after that? Only SpaceX F9 v1.0, v1.1, and FH to come and these are new birds, latest technology, no legacy parts, lower cost, higher launch rates based on current manifest.
    SpaceX wraps up the market. End of story.

    Not quite. Orbitals Antares (Taurus 2) is in Delta 2 class and comes on line shortly.

  • Robert G. Oler wrote:

    You will find that shortly “ex astronaut and cosmonaut” is not that big of a calling card in terms of people who start to fly in space. Most of them replicate the “Bowersox” experience ie someone who cannot adapt to new times…and the new space companies will find that competently trained people even on initial flights…will do just fine.

    I know for a fact that one major new space company is looking, for instance at people who have spent sometime on submarines instead of “old astronauts”.

    I’m currently reading, Living and Working in Space: The NASA History of Skylab by Compton and Benson. I’m reading about how they started realizing during early design that no one had given thought to habitability, just what experiments would be on board.

    The early designs were shared with the astronauts, who played down habitability.

    I found this paragraph most enlightening:

    Chris Kraft, MSC’s deputy director, put the matter with characteristic bluntness as soon as the tour was over. “I think,” he told his chief, “that everyone who has a feel for the problems of living in space came away from the Skylab tour with the same thought — that insufficient attention has been paid to how the astronauts are going to live during those very tedious missions.” No matter that the contractors had all protested that the crews had reviewed their work; Kraft said the astronauts should not have the last word anyway. “They are too prone to accept a make-shift situation on the basis of ‘that’s the way things have been done in the past.'”

    Immediately I thought of Armstrong, Lovell and Cernan freaking out over the NewSpace companies.

    The tour of Skylab mockups referenced in the passage was in April 1970, when all three were active in the Apollo program. So certainly Kraft had them, or at least their colleagues, in mind when he uttered that sentence.

  • Vladislaw

    E.P. Grondine wrote:

    “While the really important news is Planetary Resources plan to use Virgin Galatic’s air launch vehicle for launching their neo tracking sats. The cost is pocket change for the backers, and it will leave them competitive with Orbital in the air launch of small sats.”

    Did you get the latest mailing from Planetary Resources? They mentioned that the Virgin airlaunch system, at only a 500 pound payload, could launch 8 of their first telescopes at a time. I didn’t realize they were going to be that small.

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi Vlad –

    The telescopes don’t look that small, so I’m wondering what they have in mind. I don’t see how the payload shroud or center of mass restraints could work.

  • E.P. Grondine

    PS – I’m old enough to remember when Orbital Sciences was “newspace”.

    As to how the public feels about ATK, if you tell them NASA spent $30 per head on a rocket from ATK that could not work, they understand it, and aren’t very happy about it.

    I’m still trying to figure out what Griffin was thinking.

  • Stephen C. Smith wrote @ July 18th, 2012 at 5:53 am

    Yeah…I have had a suspicion that along with “we have to do it the NASA way” is part of the “we will try others here”.

    As long as there is good training and good training tools any “new” non astronauts/space people will do as good as the other folks did in their first run (or as bad depending on their gifts) …and how well someone does (other then their own gifts) is probably more dependent on the training program and aides then it is anything else.

    AND one does not come with the markers of previous training issues and operational efforts which in the case of NASA training are probably flawed. There has never been a larger group of kiss a and suck a as there is the folks in the astronaut office. You can see this by the non issue raising lead up to the Challenger and Columbia accidents. Not a single astronaut as best one can tell said “wow this blowby shouldnt be happening” and the last com with Columbia about the foam was so pandering as to be insulting to just about any regular pilot. Unless there is something on some non public loop about the foam not a single one of the people up there ask any serious questions about the foam…just “Roger”

    What this argues for in my view is broadening out not only the skill sets but the type of people who are being picked to go into space. I am curious what fallout there will be over the racks brought up by SpaceX that simply never got turned on…sigh

    Wonder how much that happens. RGO

  • Torbjörn Larsson, OM

    “Their cargo option is interesting but completely unneeded, so it just adds cost if anything.”

    As long as we are all dumping on ATK, their promo video is one-sided (natch). They claim that one mission can do the work, crew and pressurized cargo delivery, that other suppliers need two missions for. But if we consider other options than crew, they too would need two missions for the whole potential cargo cycle w return of cargo.

    As long as they are beat on cost, the minor flexibility with 2-in-1 for some options aren’t much. (I liked their design tho’.)

    @ Robert G. Oler:

    Can you spill the space beans on “the racks brought up by SpaceX that simply never got turned on”? Mysterious instead of clarifying – who was at fault (and what happened)?

  • Jeff Honeyman

    Barbree talks about the ATK SRB’s having 221 successful launches in a row. It appears that he’s referring to the 110 post-Challenger-explosion Shuttle flights (that one was #25 of 135 missions) and the one Ares 1-X flight. How he can responsibly NOT mention the eensy issue with the SRB’s & Challenger is a mystery to me. Granted that journalism’s not what it once was, but that omission makes this article feel to me like a serious and not particularly responsible drinking and regurgitation of ATK Kool-Aid.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “How he can responsibly NOT mention the eensy issue with the SRB’s & Challenger is a mystery to me. Granted that journalism’s not what it once was, but that omission makes this article feel to me like a serious and not particularly responsible drinking and regurgitation of ATK Kool-Aid.”

    In fairness to ATK, er, Morton Thiokol, their engineers (like Boisjoly) did warn NASA about launching the o-rings in cold environment. Thiokol management did eventually reverse itself and recommend a go for launch, but only after NASA managers like Hardy and Mulloy ignored their warnings and bullied them into it.

    Earlier, both Thiokol and MSFC had discovered that the o-rings needed reinforcing, but those changes were not made before the Challenger mission.

    The technical issues with Liberty have little to do with Challenger, and instead are attributable to the single-stick, first-stage SRB, second-stage LOX/LH2, and inline capsule configuration itself.

  • DCSCA

    As what can arguably said to be the last of the ‘old time’ space correspondents from the ‘glory days’ left standing, if not alive, Barbree has the chronicled ‘street cred’ to present a factual, (seasoned with a biased rah-rah nuance) day-to-day reportage on the space ops of NASA over the swath of time from the inception of the ‘Space Age.’ But the space program does not operate in a vaccum, so to speak, and the context of the times and competing priorities play a role in what makes the presidential to-do list. Barbree surely knows NASA pressed to have a Cabinet chair decades ago only to be denied a seat at the table. But the 2010’s aren’t the 1960’s, Jay. HSF simply is not a national priority in this era and any American civil space advocate, intoxicated by the heydays of the ’60s, who’s wholly honest with themselves, should sober up and recognize HSF on the scale desired is a luxury expense incongruent with the Age of Austerity facing struggling Americans for years to come. It is increasingly obtuse in a time when people are trying to hold on to the basics of life- to simply find jobs, secure healthcare and buy food- in an era with unemployment projections near 9% for years to come.

    “While Barbree didn’t dwell on specifics about what the US space policy should be…”

    And he shouldn’t. Barbree is unqualified to extrapolate and incorporate those years of basic, regional news reporting and his accompanying opinions from his Florida perch (where he has been based for NBC the whole time) into musings on shaping national policy. It is beyond the area of his competence.

    He’s a reporter– and as with his colleagues who covered the ‘glory days’- a bit of a cheerleader for the beat he covered as well. That’s all. He’s no more qualified to inject himself into shaping national space policy than other broadcast reporters of his era, like the late Walter Cronkite (who flunked HS physics) or the knowledgeable but loathed Jules Bergman, etc., etc. This goes for print reporters as well. Journalists watch the passing parade and chronicle events that become the ‘first draft of history.’ If they want to plan policy, they best run for office.

  • BeanCounterfromDownunder

    Fred Willett wrote @ July 18th, 2012 at 5:16 am
    ‘Not quite. Orbitals Antares (Taurus 2) is in Delta 2 class and comes on line shortly.’
    Yes that may be available however it’s currently only manifested for the NASA CRS not any other missions and their are several unknowns. Can it be commercially competitive wrt cost? Is it being designed to be sufficiently flexible wrt payloads? Is there a development path after CRS? Obital is an integrator in that they aren’t really making anything only putting the parts together therefore they may not have longer term control over their suppliers – so that’s another question.
    Lots of unknowns around the Antares vehicle.

  • BeanCounterfromDownunder

    I’m in agreeance with RGO on the astronaut issues. With the ISS operational and no longer in construction mode, what has been done to expand the skill set of the occupants? Nothing that I’ve seen out of that office nor on any NASA website and I’ve looked.
    Seems to me that NASA is still very focused on pilots rather than reseachers, space mechanics, etc. They really need to change their focus and hence their recruitment strategies. Future crew delivery vehicles will be basically automated and no real need for the old style NASA pilot and the needs of the ISS: operational maintenance and repair, research capabilities.

  • Vladislaw

    E.P. Grondine wrote:

    “The telescopes don’t look that small, so I’m wondering what they have in mind. I don’t see how the payload shroud or center of mass restraints could work.”

    Ya, I wonder if he made a mistake saying it could launch eight units at a time. Here is the stats:

    “To fully leverage the flexibility of LauncherOne and the ability to fly from the broadest possible range of potential launch locations, exact up-mass capability will be calculated based on the specific requirements of each mission. As a general rule, LauncherOne in its most typical configuration will be capable of delivering on the order of 500 lb (225 kg) to low inclination Low Earth Orbit, and 225 lb (100 kg) to a higher altitude, Sun-Synchronous Low Earth Orbit. Other configurations may offer significantly greater performance.

    The maximum allowable payload volume is quite large for a launch vehicle of this class. Payloads will be accommodated within a fairing approximately 40 inches (1 meter) in diameter, with a cylindrical shape for the first 30 inches (77 cm) and a conical section above.”

    That really is pretty small volume for eight units. One at a time the way it looks.

  • Coastal Ron

    BeanCounterfromDownunder wrote @ July 18th, 2012 at 9:48 pm

    Obital is an integrator in that they aren’t really making anything only putting the parts together therefore they may not have longer term control over their suppliers – so that’s another question.
    Lots of unknowns around the Antares vehicle.

    Orbital is more than an integrator, since they have been a launch provider with their Pegasus, Taurus and Minotaur rockets, and they even build satellites. A pretty well rounded company.

    I don’t know what the market is for Antares outside of the CRS program, but I do like the route Orbital took. No doubt Orbital is operating in the shadow of SpaceX, but in comparison to everyone else I do like their modular approach as it speeds development and buys down risk.

    The downside is that by using major components from other companies you also have to pay them for their profit, so costs are not as low as they could be if they built everything themselves (like SpaceX), but since they are in a niche part of the market maybe that’s OK. Time will tell, although I haven’t heard of any non-NASA orders for Antares.

    I also like the Cygnus spacecraft for the same reasons, especially since they are using their satellite bus as the service module. I hope they can grow that into it’s own product, such as a space tug.

    Orbital Sciences has a lot of potential, but they have to find customers for their services, and that means they have to make correct guesses on where the market is going – it’s not just hardware execution that determines the viability of a company.

  • A M Swallow

    Heinrich Monroe wrote @ July 17th, 2012 at 11:50 pm

    ALHAT is a hazard avoidance component of the descent and landing control system. It isn’t the whole thing. Morpheus is mostly a descent propulsion technology development effort. It happens to have some avionics tacked on to it. There is a lot more to a lunar lander development project than that. Morpheus is a nice project, but it’s done on the cheap and, well, you get what you pay for.

    In simple terms cheapness gives you get what you need and nothing more.

    Space navigation could use the Space Technology developed by the New Millenium program. ST5 gives ‘Miniature spinning sun sensor’ and ST6 ‘Inertial Stellar Compass’.

    The rover would be something like RESOLVE.

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