Congress

Nelson quashes speculation on a gubernatorial run

The speculation was at least fun while it lasted. On Thursday, Roll Call reported that Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), one of the few senators who shows a strong interest in space, was mulling a run for governor of Florida in 2014. Nelson was reelected to the Senate in 2012 and thus would not have to give up his seat to run for governor, unless he decided to resign to focus full-time on a gubernatorial run. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), who worked closely with Nelson on space policy, opted not to resign when she ran for governor of Texas in 2010; she lost the Republican primary to incumbent Rick Perry, and decided to retire instead of run again for the Senate in 2012.

That speculation, though, didn’t last long. On Friday, Nelson told MSNBC that he had “no intention of running for governor” in 2014. “I love this job as senator, except that I am very, very frustrated” by the difficulty in building consensus on issues, he said.

Nelson’s departure from the Senate, either to campaign for office or if he was elected governor, would have created something of a policy vacuum in the Senate on space issues. Nelson serves as the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee, and is usually joined in hearings there by only the committee’s new ranking member, freshman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who won the seat vacated by the retiring Hutchison.

Nelson also mentioned space in his latest newsletter last week, citing the new asteroid initiative in the administration’s 2014 budget request for NASA. “I announced that NASA is planning to catch an asteroid and place it in orbit around the moon,” he wrote, a reference to his statement about the initiative that came out several days before the official budget rollout. “And the program will mean jobs for Florida, and a reinvigorated space agency,” he added, without elaborating on exactly how many jobs, and where, would be enabled by this plan.

41 comments to Nelson quashes speculation on a gubernatorial run

  • Robert G. Oler

    The politics in FL dont favor Nelson running for Gov. The GOP Gov is not liked and Charlie Crist is now a Dem so he will likely get the nod. RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Nelson is one of the few “space people” who you just look back and at scratch you’re head and say “why is he a dolt? or at least acting that way?”

    There are an entire slew of “functional morons” like say Sheila Jackson Lee or Pete Olsen or the like who just simply dont have a clue and do what the prevailing winds dictate to feed the pork in their districts.

    But Nelson (like say Charlie Bolden) is a smart guy who must see what SLS/Orion and yes Webb are doing to the agency…simply destroying it, they must see that there is zero political support for any massive expensive program in human spaceflight…so they support two programs (leave Webb out of it) which are simply taking the agency into oblivion.

    There is a real possibility that NASA simply cannot “close the loop” on Orion ie get it under mass and have any real functionality left in it. For Pete’s sake this is aknock off of the Apollo capsule and what this calls into question in a large way is the basic engineering and management competence of the agency.

    Normally they would get a pass on it; except in this sequence of events not only has SpaceX managed to invent a crew capable vehicle and rocket from scratch on far less then Orion spends in a YEAR…but OSC has managed to lego together a rocket and most likely will make their “delivery” system capable and flying again on far less then what Orion is consuming in a year.

    At the very least what one imagines that Nelson should do is go to the folks running the program and say “What the frack” and have a pretty serious talk with them about what the future holds. This is of course Charlie Bolden’s job…and yet they seem simply unable to do it.

    SLS and Orion are in the process of killing the very foundation of NASA. In the end before the next Presidential election one or more of the Commercial crew folks will have glued together the parts and flown in space Americans…

    And Nelson should be asking why Orion is “so hard”

    It is an amazing failure of leadership to both the agency which he claims to love…and his folks at home.

    Robert G. Oler

    • Malmesbury

      Not to mention CST-100….

      The concept of which came from engineers frustrated by the “big capsule” approach.

      Dreamchaser is also pretty embarrassing for NASA is some ways…

    • My two cents worth …

      Like many in Congress, Senator Nelson grew up during the Apollo era. It’s the only paradigm they know, so they keep trying to resurrect Apollo, thinking we’ll get excited again about spending $150 billion on retrieving more Moon rocks.

      But as we’ve discussed here ad nauseam, those who believe it don’t understand the accidental confluence of political currents that led to Apollo. It was a one-time fluke that won’t happen again.

      Nelson was also an “astronaut” in name only, but in any case he has friends at NASA, including real astronauts who flew in the 1980s. They too worship Apollo. Some of them might even have been hired during the Apollo era, or were at least trained by the Apollo-era astronauts (e.g. John Young). So there’s a certain desired to placate the astronauts of that era who also see Apollo as the paradigm.

      Finally, there’s simply good ol’ pork politics. Having watched many of these hearings now, I’m convinced that Nelson “gets it” when it comes to ISS, the potential of microgravitational research, and the need for commercial cargo/crew. But he also realizes there’s no pork (yet) in NewSpace. There’s still plenty of pork in the space-industrial complex. He also knew that Hutchison, Shelby and Hatch were out there with knives sharpened to kill NewSpace in its cradle if anyone made an attempt to end their pork, e.g. Constellation in 2010.

      So he helped the White House make the Faustian bargain we have today — shove $3 billion/year at the space-industrial complex for SLS/MPCV, and we won’t kill NewSpace. As we’ve seen, the porkers continue to threaten to murder NewSpace if they don’t get every single penny of their pork.

      As the MSNBC quote above indicates, he’s very frustrated by the inability to get political consensus in the Senate. He’s old school. He’s probably very proud of the 2010 compromise, because it reached across partisan lines by falling back on porkery. If you watch the recent Senate space subcommittee hearings, it’s just Nelson and Ted Cruz (R-TX). Cruz is very complimentary of Nelson, making it clear that Nelson is teaching him in the ways of space politics.

      Nobody else on that subcommittee bothers to show up. So by taking Cruz under his wing, Nelson probably figures he’s doing things the old school way, teaching Cruz in the ways of porkery, hoping that it will help to reach across partisan lines.

      My opinion is that Nelson means well, and with him gone things would be far worse than they are now. But they’re pretty bad because of the pork politics he himself practices.

      • Robert G. Oler

        I buy all that Stephen…what I dont get is how the actual “performance” on these programs is tolerated by the very people who want them? RGO

        • Robert G. Oler wrote:

          I buy all that Stephen…what I dont get is how the actual “performance” on these programs is tolerated by the very people who want them?

          Because they have no other option.

          If they cancel SLS or MPCV or JWST, it means jobs lost in their states and districts. Everyone understands their pork is at stake. Vote to cancel my pork, and I’ll vote to cancel yours.

          The day will come when we have a crewed version of the SpaceX Dragon and a flight-tested version of the Falcon Heavy. That will be the tipping point where they will have an option, and the political pressure will be there to start killing these programs.

          Shelby still claims SLS/MPCV is a backup for crewed flight to ISS, which we all know is ridiculous. But so long as they all claim that, we have no other option. So we wait for Dragon and CST-100 and Dream Chaser.

          • Robert G. Oler

            I agree with that but why are the vehicles floundering in their design? They have plenty of money and no one is forcing engineering decisions on them…RGO

            • Robert G. Oler wrote:

              They have plenty of money and no one is forcing engineering decisions on them.

              Well, like you said … There’s no clock. No deadline. No man-on-Moon-by-end-of-decade.

              Charlie Bolden knows that if he tries to roll heads he’ll get a lot of grief from the politicians who get campaign money from LockMart. The whole point of saving Orion from the ax was to placate LockMart.

              They’ll launch the test vehicle next year on the Delta IV. When 2017 rolls around, Charlie will be retired and a new administration will be in office. It will be someone else’s problem to deal with the porkers.

              If we’d done the crew vehicle by competition like commercial crew, it wouldn’t be an issue. The current embarrassment shows just how bad the traditional way of doing business really is. But Congress doesn’t care.

              • Justin Kugler

                Well, there was a CEV competition… only NASA didn’t pick Lockheed’s actual CEV design. They picked Lockheed’s management strategy.

              • Malmesbury

                The SR-71 was designed on a shoe string, by a small group of highly motivated experts.

                Interesting contrast….

              • common sense

                Justin is correct and the design, at least the original one is that of… You guessed it… The competition that lost.

                Now about the Skunks, I know this company somewhere in SoCal that was essentially working on the same principles. Surprisingly, they got two rockets and a capsule working on a shoestring budget.

                Talent is irreplaceable for everything else there is Mastercard.

  • vulture4

    There’s no indication from what I read that the captured asteroid would be put in orbit “around the moon” though it would presumably be in a cislunar orbit, possibly at a Lagrange point.

    I agree that Crist has a higher profile than Nelson and would have a better chance at the nomination. Crist and Nelson are both middle-of-the-roaders with no clear difference in ideological position.

  • DCSCA

    “Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), who worked closely with Nelson on space policy…”

    Going in circles, no place, fast.

    • JimNobles

      DCSCA said,
      “Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), who worked closely with Nelson on space policy…”

      Going in circles, no place, fast.

      The two Senators mentioned are part of the gang keeping SLS and MPCV going. Are you saying SLS and MPCV are “going in circles, no place, fast” now?

      That’s a refreshing view from you. Glad you’ve finally joined the winning side. Welcome aboard.

  • Fred Willett

    It’s all very well to accuse Nelson and other senators of just being pork merchants but hearing were held: People from NASA got up and said a big rocket was necessary to do Moon or Mars or anything substantial BEO.
    It was NASA’s accepted mantra from the glory days of Apollo. To do anything first build a big rocket.
    So Congress acceded.
    And yes there was a desire to protect jobs, but in its heart it was what NASA wanted. A big rocket.
    As it turns out history has moved on. The day of the large government program carrying people to the moon are gone. The next decade is the age of commercial space. It’s compasnies like SpaceX, Orbital, Boeing, SNC, Bigelow, PR, DSI, that will shape the new age and carry us to LEO and beyond LEO.
    NASA can’t help. They’re yesterday’s heros. Let them fade into the past.
    Vale

    • Ferris Valyn

      Fred – its not about a big rocket. I submit that it was something that was a clear NASA rocket, that was derived from the shuttle.

      • Fred Willett

        Yea. Big.

        • Fred Willett

          To elaborate. Shuttle lifted 24t to orbit ( or there abouts).
          SLS is to lift 70t, 105t & 130t.

          • Ferris Valyn

            Fred – if all they wanted was big, why didn’t they do it commercially? Grow the Atlas or Falcon or Delta?

            • pathfinder-01

              “if all they wanted was big, why didn’t they do it commercially? Grow the Atlas or Falcon or Delta?”

              Atlas and Delta are built by ULA and do not use the Shuttle worforce. The political support for the space program comes from keeping this group employed..and NASA’s budget really can not do anything worth while with the large shuttle workforce.

  • Fred Willett

    Yea, all right. Before anybody takes me to task I am over stating the case. Deliberately so.
    NASA still does good work in a lot of areas. But they are locked in to building SLS and MPCV and it is killing them.

    • Robert G. Oler

      “. But they are locked in to building SLS and MPCV and it is killing them.”

      but this is what I dont understand…why?

      OK I dont agree with SLS or Orion but gee they have spent a lot of money and both programs are messes…how can that be? Really its some issues of basic program management and basic engineering…

      I read the story on Orion and just shake my head going “how the frack did this happen” RGO

      • Coastal Ron

        Robert G. Oler said:

        OK I dont agree with SLS or Orion but gee they have spent a lot of money and both programs are messes…how can that be? Really its some issues of basic program management and basic engineering…

        Faulty requirements.

        Remember where we are today with the SLS and MPCV trace back all the way to Michael Griffin, the Constellation program, and to a certain degree the entrenched pork from flying the Shuttle for 30 years.

        Griffin was a BFR/HLV proponent, and in order to pay for part of the Ares V he created the fake need for the Ares I (i.e. did Delta IV Heavy have “black zones” or not). At the same time Griffin decided to use Apollo as the template for returning to the Moon, so he upsized the Apollo capsule (i.e. “Apollo on steroids” as he called it). The Orion had to fit on the Ares I, but since the Ares I ran through multiple design changes (see the evolution here), it kept having to change it’s design too.

        Jump to 2010, Congress agrees with Obama about the need to cancel the Constellation program, but a few in Congress listen to a few not-in-NASA to “recommend” to NASA what the requirements should be for a 70-130mt Space Launch System. Of course the requirements mandate the use of existing hardware, not a clean sheet engineering approach, and it has to be government owned. Add in the downsized Orion (i.e. the MPCV), which was already downsized many times from the Ares I lift issues, and I’m not sure you can get any more muddled requirements in a $40B set of programs.

        No doubt there are program management issues that can be traced back to bad decisions, but the overall requirements for the SLS and MPCV – even if managed perfectly – don’t allow for a low cost and highly usable exploration system.

        And the blame for this goes back to politics, both at the individual and congressional level.

        • I’ll vote for Coastal Ron’s interpretation. :-)

        • pathfinder-01

          “ Faulty requirements.”

          Yeap. Here is what Apollo did support a crew of 3 for 14 days at 5psi in 100% oxygen. They had to modify for Skylab and add a battery(and also as a result of Apollo 13) that was charged by Skylab so that the capsule could stay in space longer.

          Here is what Orion attempted to do support a crew of 4 in space for 21 days, at 14 PSI(and needs to be if it wants to dock with the ISS) with a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere. Support itself 6 months with or without a space station. And get launched on Ares -1 with the resulting escape and oscillation issues.

          You have increased the size of the capsule, increased the crew, increased the pressure at which it operates need to carry nitrogen for said atmosphere, need to carry solar panels/batteries and water because fuel cells are not a good power source for long duration spaceflight.

          All Apollo had to do was land a man on the moon. Orion was shooting for anywhere access to the moon which is much harder. It was shooting for being able to support a moon base-Apollo could not. They changed requirements and tried to squeeze it all into the Apollo shaped capsule because its aerodynamics are well known but could you imagine the disaster of trying to make something like the Wright brother’s plane do more than simply barely carry one person into the sky, say something like keep the same shape/mostly same materials and fly ten time longer.

  • James

    There is not enough money in any of the NASA Mission Directorates to fund anything that weighs 70t, 105t, or 130t. The money just isn’t there.

    And on top of that, OMB is now telling NASA (thanks JWST, MSL) that all of NASA Science will get 1 flagship mission per decade. 1. Not 1 each for each of the Science Divisions (Astro, Planetary, Helio, Earth) So don’t look for SMD to come up with something for SLS.

    That leaves the manned space flight budget to fund something to fly on SLS.

    I don’t see a logical path, vision, etc. that allows for SLS to be properly used.

    Am I missing something?

    • Guest

      The only way to make the SLS work now is to go even bigger. Let Musk do the methane thing and go to a new ten meter core boosted by methane variations of the crossfeeding Falcon Heavies or whatever. Even the kerolox versions would work. Put a J2-X in the center position and an integrated hypergolic or alternative fuel attitude control, fuel settling and landing systems and you’ll be sitting pretty on the moon in no time.

      And get rid of the astronauts and payloads. This is all about water, oxygen and carbon dioxide down in the deep thermal hole.

      • Coastal Ron

        Guest said:

        The only way to make the SLS work now is to go even bigger.

        Or, kill it and figure out what is really needed. I vote to kill it.

        Let Musk do the methane thing and go to a new ten meter core boosted by methane variations of the crossfeeding Falcon Heavies or whatever.

        While we’re at it, let’s also pretend that we’ll use pink unicorns to help push this monster to orbit.

        And get rid of the astronauts and payloads. This is all about water, oxygen and carbon dioxide down in the deep thermal hole.

        Gee, and I thought we needed the water, oxygen and carbon dioxide for the astronauts and payloads. Silly me.

        • JimNobles

          -
          Ron said, “Let Musk do the methane thing and go to a new ten meter core boosted by methane variations of the crossfeeding Falcon Heavies or whatever.”

          While we’re at it, let’s also pretend that we’ll use pink unicorns to help push this monster to orbit.

          You don’t think he can do it? Build a super heavy that works? if he continues to believe he is going to need one?

          I believe he can. I’m certain he believes he can. I’m sure his team believes they can. They’ve floated the price of $3Billon to get the prototype up. I’d double that but he is more of an optimist than I am.

          Plus, he probably knows stuff I don’t.

        • Guest

          That’s why you’re still advocating for a failed and useless human space flight program. If you can’t do large scale long term cryogens out there, there is no point.

          You guys just don’t get it yet. There is no money for astronauts and payloads, there is only money for the rocket. If the rocket isn’t your payload, you’ve got nothing.

    • amightywind

      There is not enough money in any of the NASA Mission Directorates to fund anything that weighs 70t, 105t, or 130t. The money just isn’t there.

      Then maybe the directorates should be consolidated so something large can be funded. Build and they will come…

    • Fred Willett

      am I missing something.
      No.
      Given enough dollars NASA could build SLS and fly missions to the Moon, Mars, or where ever you like.
      The problem is that they’re never going to get enough money to build anything like that.
      Building anything the NASA way might be more expensive than if commercial does it, but the costs of doing it are understood and for something as basic as a rocket (even SLS) the costs are known.
      Congress said build SLS and gave them 2/3 of the necessary budget.
      The results are inevitable.

      • Guest

        Given enough dollars NASA could build SLS and fly missions to the Moon, Mars, or where ever you like.

        That’s just not true, sorry. It’s the process that they have used to design the SLS and the manner in which they intend to fly it that is the fundamental problem here. For a total of 50 billion dollars wasted on this boondoggle endeavor we could have industrial cryogenic infrastructure on the moon by now.

        This thing (SLS and Orion) either needs to be immediately ended or the launch vehicle itself needs to start with a clean sheet using reusable technology and a launch vehicle as payload paradigm, otherwise expect the worst from this.

        This is incompetence bordering on malfeasance already now.

        • Malmesbury

          Politics meant that the $50bn wasn’t available for projects other than building a giant rocket out of Shuttle Lego.

          The politicians who want Shuttle Lego will be somewhat upset that they won’t get a moon program or whatever. Somewhat. The money will have been spent in their districts of the districts of those politicians they have bi-lateral appropriations deals with – “We vote for my thing and we will vote for yours, together”

          They will be 80-90% happy.

        • Coastal Ron

          Guest said:

          This is incompetence bordering on malfeasance already now.

          And yet you want to make the SLS bigger. What’s bigger than malfeasance? ;-)

          • Guest

            What’s bigger than malfeasance?

            Rescue. Not even salvage, this is outright rescue. Closing the cost to value ratio with respect to space colonization using a resource exploitation model.

            They say they want to explore in an expendable rocket and capsule with a 21 day loiter time, but with a little extra effort you have a large moon base.

            Using twin crossfeeding Falcon Heavies as SRB replacements on a 10 meter stack with four SSMEs and a center J2 specifically designed to land on the pole of the moon will pretty much get you anywhere with extra. It’s very nearly 10 million lbf of thrust. That should satisfy any rocket weenies biggest fantasy or nightmare. If the boosters are reusable, the VLB could handle up to four of these at once, or at least that was the initial design. With ten meter cores all you have to do is add extra reusable boosters.

            You just can’t make this stuff up, it has to evolve. This is my evolution. I did my part. Either you want a lunar base and space colonization or you don’t. The bigger problem is finding a place for all the space tourists when Mr. Musk closes the loop on capsule reusability. That’s an entirely different problem however, since any lunar colonization efforts will be unmanned for the foreseeable future. I just really like the idea of permanent cryogenic infrastructure supporting large rotating solar arrays that require zero attitude control fuel and present very little orbital debris issues as well.

            • Guest

              Just in case anyone is interested in pursuing this conversation further (I doubt it, but you never know, perhaps Mr. Nelson himself would like to join in here, since it is his monster rocket) there is an Arxiv paper discussing the instrumentation on Prospector and LRO instrumentation and their sensitivity and resolution. arxiv.org/abs/1304.8123, How well do we know the polar hydrogen distribution on the Moon?, L.F.A. Teodoro, V.R.Eke, R.C. Elphic, W.C. Feldman and D.J Lawrence. This should put some of it to rest.

  • DCSCA

    Congratulations to Branson and his team on a successful test flight.

  • Fred Willett

    Yes. Congrats to Branson, VG and Scaled. This is a space program that’s actually working and at a fraction of the cost of SLS.

    • Neil Shipley

      It’s a sub-orbital space program, not an orbital one. There’s a world of difference. The first is relatively easy, the second, not so easy but still seems to be easier than what NASA and the old brigade would have us believe.
      If you want to compare SLS with anyone then SpaceX is probably the one.

      That said, congrat’s to Scaled, VG, and Branson for hanging in there.

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