Comments on: Obama campaign uses commercial crew awards to press Romney on his space policy

By: Rand Simberg

Rand Simberg — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 21:14:09 +0000

And I think commercial crew is probably okay, simply because I think the message has finally gotten through that cuts simply put us on Soyuz longer.

If that’s the case, why did they cut it again?

By: Das Boese

Das Boese — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 11:22:50 +0000

Stephen C. Smith wrote @ August 8th, 2012 at 7:51 pm

The nightmare scenario would be the Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress, and Romney in the White House. Then it comes down to the Ultra-Rich versus the Neocons versus the Tea Partiers

Not much of a fight, at least until the tea party realizes they’re being duped. I’m not holding my breath.

none of which gives a fig about NASA.

Yes, but in that scenario, the fate of NASA really isn’t of much importance, is it? Between the likely war against Iran and the second great depression, I don’t think it would be more than a footnote.

By: Robert G. Oler

Robert G. Oler — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 04:32:52 +0000

It is growing more and more unlikely that the Willard campaign will have a space policy…his campaign disarray grows almost daily. RGO

By: mike shupp

mike shupp — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 01:54:11 +0000

Sorry; my fault for being unclear. Those “robotic probes” are pretty much what I meant by “high-visibility programs”. Sample return missions from Mars, rovers on Titan, observatories at 1000 AUs, etc. have a bit of glamour despite their lack of human crews; they’d cost billions or dozens of billions and take decades to be achieved — just the sort of thing a politician might attack to show Seriousness.

By: Stephen C. Smith

Stephen C. Smith — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 23:51:02 +0000

mike shupp wrote:

A Romney administration would probably want to kill a couple of high visibility NASA programs to establish â€œthereâ€™s a new sheriff in town!â€

Well, I think good old-fashioned Congressional porking would stop Romney from killing “high visibility NASA programs.” SLS is probably death-penalty proof for a few more years. Commercial cargo should have two more successful flights before the new Congress is seated, so it would be hard to cancel that. And I think commercial crew is probably okay, simply because I think the message has finally gotten through that cuts simply put us on Soyuz longer.

More likely what would happen is that NASA would lose more money for research in new technologies, and robotic probes.

The nightmare scenario would be the Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress, and Romney in the White House. Then it comes down to the Ultra-Rich versus the Neocons versus the Tea Partiers — none of which gives a fig about NASA.

By: Googaw

Googaw — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 20:59:57 +0000

A Romney administration would probably want to kill a couple of high visibility NASA programs to establish â€œthereâ€™s a new sheriff in town!â€ (Where else could it go to make easy budget cuts that sound exciting?)

This. It’s what the space program needs, it’s what the politicians need, and it’s what we’re going to get, with either Romney or Obama.

By: Googaw

Googaw — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 20:50:33 +0000

But the point is that while a commercial company would give space a try and fail, there was only ever one failure here and there. There never was a surge in commercial investment. Till now.

Google “sunk cost fallacy”. When you combine this incredibly long string of failures — dozens of orbital HSF projects with the net result of failure to recover >99.5% of the costs throught real commercial revenues — and the large amounts of investments being put into orbital HSF today despite those many experiences, with the fact that real commercial revenues (i.e. revenues from private sector customers) remain a miniscule fraction of those investments, this is very strong evidence for a bubble – quite the opposite of being evidence for a genuine investment opportunity.

Yet there’s no hype like the heavenly hype. The NewSpace bubble continues to expand. You may still have time to get in the rocket while it’s going up!

By: mike shupp

mike shupp — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 14:27:39 +0000

Mr Smith – I think you’re optimistic. A Romney administration would probably want to kill a couple of high visibility NASA programs to establish “there’s a new sheriff in town!” (Where else could it go to make easy budget cuts that sound exciting?) And after that … I think it’d be hard going to even suggest significant new spending programs. Kill off a couple billion dollar planetary probes, stretch the first launch date of SLS by three or four years, make some speeches about the importance of commercial space flight… That’d look good to the voters — hey! it’d get the enthusiastic approval of 90% of the people who visit this web site.

OTOH… I think space policy for the next few years is going to be made by politicians willing to release their tax records.

By: Stephen C. Smith

Stephen C. Smith — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 10:14:07 +0000

Romney has had plenty opportunities to articulate a space policy. He’s passed. When Newt proposed a lunar program, Mitt said he’d fire anyone who proposed that. When asked what we should do if China sends astronauts to the Moon, Mitt said we should ask them to bring back our artifacts.

Romney has zero interest in space. In my opinion a Romney administration would turn up the porkfest meter (think Fletcher administration of NASA in the 1970s) without any meaningful direction or adequate funding.

By: Fred Willett

Fred Willett — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 08:17:15 +0000

There have been commercial failures in space. Beal comes to mind. Rotary Rocket. There is quite a long list, even if you leave out the projects that were only ever power points.
But the point is that while a commercial company would give space a try and fail, there was only ever one failure here and there. There never was a surge in commercial investment. Till now.
Nor is it fair to scorify Commercial for their failures. Their failures are few and far between. NASA on the other hand seems to be mainly failed programs.
Here’s a short list of cancelled NASA programs just of space transport and exploration vehicles from the last 20 years.
ALS NLS & shuttle-C, NASP, COMET, DC-XA, X34A, X34, Bantam, NASA X37, 2GRLV TSTO & CTV, Kistler K-1 Demo, PAD, Prometheus/JIMO, X43C, Altair, Orion, Ares 1 & V
Altogether 7% of NASA’s budget has been wasted on cancelled programs. In 20 years thats north of $21B. More than $1B a year.
Think what could have been achieved with that money.
But now, for the first time there is a real surge in commercial investment in space. For every dollar put up by NASA for COTS, CCDev, or CCiCap private companies are investing a dollar or more.
Why this sudden surge in commercial investment?
Because NASA has failed.
Shuttle went away.
Constellation was cancelled (It was too expensive and taking too long).
NASA had nothing.
No way of getting to space.
No viable space program.
Zip. Nada.
It was either give up the ISS and close down NASA altogether or turn to the only other option available. Commercial.
That’s where we’re at today.
And companies – seeing the writing on the wall – are jumping in. Even ATK are suddenly discovering that ole true religion of commerce.
Meanwhile NASA has decided to “leave LEO to commercial” while they concentrate on spending $18B to develop a vehicle to “explore BEO”.
It’s a nice fig leaf.
But I can’t help but wonder what will happen in 2 years when for all their expendature on SLS they still don’t have a LV but there is a commercial 53t LV available that’s cost NASA nothing to develop and only costs $125M a launch.