Congress

Hearings: commercial space today, Mars next week

Later today the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on “Partnerships to Advance the Business of Space”. The hearing’s lineup of witnesses include some key people who have been involved in supporting commercial spaceflight in one manner or another, including former shuttle program manager Wayne Hale, former FAA associate administrator of commercial space transportation Patti Grace Smith, Commercial Spaceflight Federation president Michael Lopez-Alegria, and Purdue university professor Steven Collicott, who has been an advocate of using commercial suborbital vehicles for research. The 10 am EDT hearing will be webcast.

On Tuesday, the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee will look to Mars, with a hearing titled “Next Steps in Human Exploration to Mars and Beyond”. No witnesses have yet been announced for this hearing.

79 comments to Hearings: commercial space today, Mars next week

  • Not hard to guess who’ll show up today. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX). Maybe one or two Senators will make a token appearance.

    Place your bets on how long it takes Nelson to use the phrase “monster rocket.”

    • Guest

      It was pure torture. I can’t take it anymore. Even Hale was super scary.

      • Malmesbury

        Hale was talking sense as usual.

          • Guest

            Space is hard. Space is dangerous. Space is expensive. The US no longer needs nor wants ex-shuttle personnel to push commercial orbital space – we know where that gut us. More paperwork – totally the wrong direction there, Wayne.

            • Malmesbury

              You didn’t listen to his testimony then

            • Guest

              Yes and I read his written testimony. He’s a testified SLS and MPCV groupie.

              • Coastal Ron

                Guest prognosticated:

                Yes and I read his written testimony. He’s a testified SLS and MPCV groupie.

                Here is what Wayne Hale said about the SLS and MPCV in his written testimony:

                The SLS and the MPCV should be developed in conjunction with the commercial low earth orbit transportation systems.

                That was it.

                How you could infer that he is an “SLS and MPCV groupie” from that is beyond comprehension.

                Of course that wouldn’t be the first time you’ve said something beyond comprehension, so… ;-)

              • Guest

                My opinion of Wayne Hale is severely diminished over my already severely diminished of him. This is entirely based on that one comment of his and is entirely independent of your opinion. But thanks for not sharing it.

              • Coastal Ron

                Guest said:

                This is entirely based on that one comment of his and is entirely independent of your opinion.

                If that’s so, then you apparently lack the ability to understand context, since he was advocating FOR Commercial Crew & Cargo even IF the SLS & MPCV are available. He wasn’t advocating FOR the SLS & MPCV.

              • Guest

                I’m not parsing that, sorry. His sentence parses trivially.

                The message is clear. Over.

              • Malmesbury

                This is Space *Politics*

                Wayne Hale is on record as being strongly in favour of COTS and CC. In fact he wasn’t happy with the idea of moving CC to FAR and the increased costs that would bring.

                So, he is seen as a CC advocate – particularly by the supporters of Orion/SLS

                If he had given testimony that CC is all that is needed, even failing to mention Orion/SLS (let alone attacking them), that would have been taken as an attack on the current deal.

                This would have pissed off –

                1) SLS supporters
                2) CC supporters
                3) The moderate and uninvolved

                As it was, he emphasised CC and added the point about CC supporting BEO ops. i.e. he supported the compromise from the CC point of view.

                No one who is a CC advocate in politics wants to restart the fight now – no upside.

              • Guest

                Right. No fights for what you believe in. Wayne Hale isn’t willing to speak up for what is right, and what he believes in, in congressional testimony and in congressional record. He had is his chance. That’s the take away for me from this hearing. I say we need more of this kind of thing just to set the record straight for all of us observing here.

                Wayne Hale, Avid SLS and MPCV supporter.

              • common sense

                You know I agree with you. I too was watching the re-run of Marooned and when Chewbacca takes the girl from the Borgs, you know, in the stranded mini shuttle, well I too thought that if they had an ISS then all would be fine. The worse part is when (John) Wayne testifies that we need more government funded westerns to oppose those pseudo space thrillers. But in the end, when Elvis and Michael Jackson arrive on their SLS/F9 rockets, that my friend was great.

                Do you get those hallucinogens on prescription? Or just use whatever you find in the backyard?

              • Guest

                Common sense has the libertarian free market faux news debating points handy, awesome context free argument. Parse the sentence any way you want, it’s clear what Wayne Hale said in written congressional testimony.

                It’s his baggage, not mind.

            • Well, I’m glad I went and read what he wrote, and didn’t pay any attention to your pathetic and nutty attempt to summarize it.

            • common sense

              Actually when I need a little levity you are very useful I have to say.

              “Common sense has the libertarian free market faux news debating points handy, awesome context free argument.”

              Wow. I cannot even understand what you write. The “libertarian free market faux news”? Are you talking about Fox News? Wink-wink.

              “Parse the sentence any way you want,”

              I don’t “parse” sentence. Might explain a lot though.

              ” it’s clear what Wayne Hale said in written congressional testimony.”

              Well yeah. It is clear. Not for everyone though. Those who don’t have the proper parser and instead use their brain.

              “It’s his baggage, not mind.”

              Not sure what this means. What he said is a baggage? How do you carry the said baggage. And “not mind”? Well duh. If it’s a baggage, for sure it is not “mind”. Simple people like me use their brains to understand English and write and/or say words to build sentences, not parsers. But I see my problem now. I am not sophisticated enough. Maybe v1.2 will do, I am still working on it.

              Oh yeah I forgot. I don’t use hallucinogens either.

              Can’t wait for your reply Mr. SLS/F9.

          • Malmesbury

            He was, fairly subtly, arguing that people should get the hell out of the way of CC program and let it run. As opposed to trying to “fix it”, “improve it” etc.

            And that it was ultimately the only way we are likely to see costs drop. Without which anything beyond LEO is a dream.

            He paid the proper lip service to SLS/Orion, of course.

            • common sense

              I am very (pleasantly) surprised. For some reason I believed that Wayne had a hard time letting go of Shuttle and was not so warm about commercial efforts.

              My mistake.

              Well done Wayne.

            • Coastal Ron

              Thanks for the link to Wayne Hale’s written testimony Malmesbury. I think this paragraph showed how much he is concerned about what’s going on with Commercial Crew:

              Poised on the cusp of these new systems [Commercial Cargo & Crew], we run the risk of being penny wise and pound foolish as we make the same mistake that doomed the space shuttle to much higher cost operations: starving a spacecraft development program in the name of saving a few pennies for today’s budget bottom line resulting in the compromised systems that, if they fly at all, will not be cheap enough to enable business in space.

              That was putting it into a Shuttle context, whereas the reality for Commercial Crew is more likely either there is enough money, or there isn’t – Boeing for one won’t commit to finishing the CST-100 unless there is. In contrast, Boeing will take money from NASA to work on the SLS regardless if it ever flies or not… our tax dollars at work.

            • Hiram

              “There are many things which America needs to do for the present moment: provide for a strong military to protect us in a dangerous world, educate our children, care for our elderly and infirm, revitalize our transportation infrastructure of roads, bridges, airports, and more. All of these activities are of vital importance today. Space exploration is about the future.”

              Seems to me that those activities are of vital importance to the future as well. Dumb people don’t make for a good future, nor do collapsing bridges. What Wayne seems to be saying here is that space is about a future that has little or nothing to do with today. C’mon Wayne, you could have put that better.

              • common sense

                I think what he might be saying is that “space exploration” is not happening in a way that is on par with the rest of the activities he mentions. And that there is more potential to explore and reap benefits into the unknown. That is: We know what we get when we build a bridge but we don’t know what we get when we invest in space exploration – of course there is a flip side to that coin as in “we get nothing”… It is hidden in the future. Or something like that.

                I think overall it was still pretty good and coming from a Shuttle executive fairly significant.

              • Dark Blue Nine

                “What Wayne seems to be saying here is that space is about a future that has little or nothing to do with today. C’mon Wayne, you could have put that better.”

                I don’t expect a senior Shuttle manager to articulate a White House-level policy argument, but I do agree with the sentiment. Major government initiatives are never about the future. They are reactions to near-term events and needs. Apollo was not about some future for humanity in space. It was a reaction to Sputnik and Gagarin. Heck, if Kennedy didn’t need to look strong in the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, Apollo might never have started.

                A major human space exploration initiative has to address some pressing government, particularly White House, need today, e.g., pivot to China, economic stimulus/job creation, procurement reform, legacy, etc. Vague convictions that our future somehow lies out there may excite us space cadets, but they won’t move tax dollars.

    • Ferris Valyn

      Stephen,

      Well, he didn’t actually use the phrase monster rocket (or at least, I don’t recall him doing so).

      That said, make certain to listen to his last question. I won’t offer any other comment than that, but it is interesting

      • Coastal Ron

        I missed the hearing, so I’ll be interested to watch it once someone posts it. Or is it already up somewhere?

      • Coastal Ron

        Using the link that Stephen provided below, I was skipping through the testimony, but started listening to Wayne Hale just before 1:53:00. At that point, he starts talking about how Commercial Cargo & Crew are needed, as well as the the ISS, for any non-Flags & Footprint type exploration NASA wants to do. For the ISS, he even used my favorite example (the Urine Processor) to show how vital it is to be testing out our systems before we go on long trips.

        That general conversation then spurred Nelson to ask a question, which you may be referring to Ferris, and the comments regarding how Apollo skewed our views about exploration.

        Then in his last statement, Nelson said that they were working hard on funding Commercial Crew, and that he thought they were there (but not sure), and that the current successes of Orbital and SpaceX were helping with changing minds.

        I wonder if the potential SpaceX launch facility in Texas will inspire Senator Cruz to help with Commercial Crew?

        • Malmesbury

          The bit about CC supporting BEO is also a reminder to the pro-SLS crowd that COTS was pushed by Griffin because Ares I/V were too expensive to do all the operations required.

          • E.P. Grondine

            Just to sey some things straight, Griffin wanted manned flight to Mars – which was part of the VSE spec.

            The Ares 5 was scaled for that; the Ares 1 was scaled for Orion; Orion was scaled for 7 passengers, the same as shuttle; but more importantly Orion was scaled for ATK’s Ares 1 launcher.

            How the severe combustion oscillations of the Ares 1’s large solid grain nade it through NASA design and NASA SAFETY is still unknown. In as much as we do not know any of this in detail yet, most of the public “analysis” is not based on facts.

            In my view, If there was/is a DoD need for larger solid launcher of the Ares 1 class, then DoD should have paid for it.

            • Malmesbury

              This is the bunch that published the report that claimed that EELVs couldn’t launch humans, but only Ares I could. By having a “NASA G” as a unit. NASA Gs are worth less than EELV Gs, apparently…..

  • Heinrich Monroe

    Witnesses have now been announced. Spudis, Squyres, Friedman and Cooke. Three of the four don’t represent human space flight at all, and the fourth is retired from NASA. Three probably consider humans chasing an asteroid of at best marginal value to development of a human trip to Mars and beyond.

    • Coastal Ron

      Spudis will be lobbying for the Moon, not an asteroid.

      • common sense

        Yep. His plan is only what? $80 billion. That actually and a printer for all the money they gonna need to print.

        • Guest

          That’s only because he doesn’t have a plan. The real plan is much different and much cheaper.

          • Coastal Ron

            Guest said:

            That’s only because he doesn’t have a plan. The real plan is much different and much cheaper.

            Well I’ll let you debate Spudis and Lavoie about the Spudus/Lavoie plan, but they costed it out at $88B – and for what they costed out, I don’t think it can be done cheaper with currently known systems.

            I know you have imaginary systems that you think will fly for pennies, but since no one is interested in building them it is a little hard to say they are somehow less expensive than plans that have been actually published.

            • common sense

              Considering the way the costs go in aerospace. If your estimate is $88B then it will most likely cost $190B if not $270B. Want a proof? Check the cost of Constellation… Spudis’ $88B is purely imaginary. And that is that.

            • Guest

              With the moon any conventional plan is nonsense. I’ve already published my nonsensical plan. Wrap up lunar surface development with the lander which is already the rocket that you are developing to develop industrial space.

              All you get is an extremely useful deep space capable reusable launch vehicle out of the deal, so that vehicle had better be capable of landing on the moon in a single shot and capable of extreme industrial utility once it gets there. Nobody, certainly not Paul Spudis, has thought this through. And get this, I’ve simulated and published the plan I now have.

              I’ve been more or less working on this for decades, so what do I know? Show me your plan hotshot space cowboy keyboard jockey. If it’s EELV conventional it will get laughed off the forum stage in short order.

              It was hard enough figuring out the poles of the moon was the place in space. The space place. LEO and the ISS are for tourists and scientists.

              • Coastal Ron

                Guest said:

                And get this, I’ve simulated and published the plan I now have.

                Maybe I’ve missed it, but where is it published, and what is the title that I should be searching for?

                Show me your plan hotshot space cowboy keyboard jockey. If it’s EELV conventional it will get laughed off the forum stage in short order.

                As I’ve mentioned before many times, the plan that I like the best of those that have been peer-reviewed is the ULA one called “Affordable Exploration Architecture 2009” (AIAA 2009-6567).

                I have no idea what you consider laughable, but what the ULA plan does is show that a return to the Moon can be done with EELV-class rockets. As far as cost, any such plan currently requires more than what Congress is willing to fund, so they are all thought exercises – yours too.

                However if we were to compare the ULA proposal to one that is based on the SLS, then the ULA proposal would be less expensive. If we were to compare it to your proposal, in all likelihood the ULA proposal would be less expensive since the ULA proposal doesn’t depend on the use of Unobtanium like yours does.

                LEO and the ISS are for tourists and scientists.

                Is this supposed to be some sort of insult? Were you imagining someone would argue that LEO is the best place to do planetary landings? Weird.

              • common sense

                Today is a great Friday. Yeah!

                “Maybe I’ve missed it, but where is it published, and what is the title that I should be searching for?”

                It is published on his printer using the appropriate parser. When you develop such an unconventional yet inexpensive architecture you don’t need a title! Don’t you know?

                “As I’ve mentioned before many times, the plan that I like the best of those that have been peer-reviewed is the ULA one called “Affordable Exploration Architecture 2009” (AIAA 2009-6567).”

                Well it does not make use of SLS/F9 configurations now does it? How can you call that a plan? At best a nonsensical draft…

                “Is this supposed to be some sort of insult? Were you imagining someone would argue that LEO is the best place to do planetary landings? Weird.”

                Coastal I am impressed. The one above is pretty good I’d say. I am still laughing myself.

              • Coastal Ron

                common sense said:

                The one above is pretty good I’d say.

                Some things are just so obvious they write themselves…

              • Guest

                While you two good old boy delusional space cadets are carrying on a conversation that nobody cares about, Elon Musk is designing an engine easily capable to two stage to escape recovering the first stage for reuse, and I do believe a Mr. Jeff Bezos is working on one as well.

                Just consider yourselves lucky that you’ve had EELVs the last 10 years to occasionally launch a government satellite or deep space probe. They are not going to be used in any manned space program to the moon or Mars, or anywhere, ever. You guys just need to get over yourselves.

                Rocket lands on moon. Rocket is a ready made communications node, navigation node, energy collection surface and cryogenic storage tank. Possibly a habitat in the future, but that’s the best you’ll do here. LEO is very shortly going to be almost entirely a tourist destination. The rocket is irrelevant, I gave merely used the SLS/F9R concept to demonstrate the techniques using real world legacy systems, but it turns out we will have far better offerings in the very near future, and the SSME is far to sensitive to pressure head and acceleration to do the job in the manner that I have just suggested, and in print too.

                Since neither of you seem capable of understanding these concept, nor rationally and calmly and unemotionally commenting upon them, and neither of you have offered any alternatives besides the same old thing we’ve been hearing for the last decade now, then there is really nothing more to say to you. It’s like listening to a broken record, when the real action is in propulsion, habitats and docking nodes for the rockets and capsules that will soon be here to to the job in LEO. Oh, and spaceports. Lots of spaceports. People need jobs you know.

              • Coastal Ron

                Guest said:

                While you two good old boy delusional space cadets are carrying on a conversation that nobody cares about, Elon Musk is designing an engine …

                You’re relatively new here, but by now you should have figured out that Common Sense and I are both SpaceX supporters, and have been for years. Being relatively new here, you have some catching up to do on that point.

                That being said, both of us also know what SpaceX currently has, and what they have announced that they are working on. None of that is what you are hoping for.

                And I’m not sure if you know this, but Musk is not interested in going to the Moon. Not at all. His focus is on going to Mars. Maybe you missed the memo on this?

                It’s like listening to a broken record, when the real action is in propulsion, habitats and docking nodes for the rockets and capsules that will soon be here to to the job in LEO.

                Well, regarding broken records, now you know how we feel about you, eh? ;-)

                As for that other stuff, there is no money for it in NASA, and the part of the private sector that is working on that kind of stuff is not doing it for the Moon.

                But hey, keep on dreaming…

              • Guest

                And I’m not sure if you know this, but Musk is not interested in going to the Moon. Not at all. His focus is on going to Mars. Maybe you missed the memo on this?

                Gosh, and I thought his gig was selling launches and that he was going to pay for his Mars mission by selling those launches. And I specifically recall hearing him say he would be happy to drop people off in the vicinity of the moon on his way to Mars, and that seems to be confirmed by running some simple orbital sims with fuel heavy launch vehicles. Oh, silly me. I must have missed his Mars thing. Since nobody appears to be building any hardware to go to Mars besides NASA, it will be interesting to see how this all pans out in the end.

                This is fun. Dig as deep as you want. Let’s see, the pinnacle of space nuttery here seems to be represented by some guy named Bennett in Vermont (rabid science rejectionist) some guy named common sense (who believes common sense can solve any old complex engineering and scientific problems without numbers, equations and simulations, and Coastal Ron, some administrator somewhere who thinks EELVs are the ultimate evolution in launch vehicles. What a crowd here! Bye now. My standards of space nuttery include rational discussion and actual numbers, which are increasingly hard to find in a space policy forum where the space nuttery here is only exceeded by that in congress.

              • common sense

                Hey Coastal I think our new friend is breaking records. The old guard of trolls here should take notice. They are being quickly outrun!

              • Coastal Ron

                Guest said:

                My standards of space nuttery include rational discussion and actual numbers

                Funny, but I can point to a peer-reviewed lunar exploration proposal that does have numbers, and is very practical (AIAA 2009-6567). I can even point to another one [link] that validates the use of commercial launchers proposed in the other study.

                You CLAIM to have published an exploration proposal, but have yet to tell us where we can find it and what it’s called.

                I’ll let the facts speak for themselves…

              • Guest

                ULA based architectures are just not up to my standards of space nuttery, sorry, that may have worked in 2003 but its time is long past and the fact that they were just getting around to formulating and publishing it by 2009 should tell you something. And since you don’t even have your own space architecture to present to all of us here, then you aren’t even in the space nuttery business, sorry. Try harder. Thnx.

              • Coastal Ron

                Guest said:

                ULA based architectures are just not up to my standards of space nuttery…

                Interesting phrase – “space nuttery”. And how apt that you use it in conjunction with your own standards.

                As to “my standards”, since you are not anyone that is known in ANY field here, and therefore not a respected authority, it doesn’t matter what your standards are to me.

                But even though I may argue over how much ULA charges the U.S. Government for their services, I do respect the hardware and personnel, and apparently so do their peers, so their peer-reviewed study is a good starting point in my judgement.

                Since you refuse to let anyone see what you have proposed, who can make a judgement besides you?

                Still not sure why you go to all this trouble to claim you have a better plan, but you won’t point us to the published version of it. Wouldn’t that silence your critics?

                And since you don’t even have your own space architecture to present to all of us here

                In the years that I’ve been participating here, I’ve always been clear that my background has been in manufacturing operations. I’ve never claimed to be a rocket scientist or an engineer of any sort. But I do know costs, and I do know logistics, and that is the perspective I use to evaluate exploration plans.

                I did do a costing exercise a while back on an EML-1/2 station, and it closely matches what Boeing later published for the same so I think I make pretty good guesses.

                My study used a variety of launchers depending on what mix of SpaceX and non-SpaceX hardware people wanted to assume, and the result was to have a permanently occupied station at L1/2 for one year for $10B – it would be useable after that, but the focus was on building it and proving it out.

                I assumed the use of existing hardware designs, plus near-term hardware for things like fuel depots and space tugs. Nothing too expensive to develop though. I may publish the study some day, but I don’t have the time right now, and it’s not the direction anyone wants to go in Congress, so it’s not on anyones critical path.

                Where can I find your proposal?

              • common sense

                I know where to find the “Guest” proposal…

              • JimNobles

                Guest, I don’t know what you’ve got or what you haven’t got as far as your proposal goes. Post a link and live with the consequences. As it is now you look like a phoney. Post a link and let the jackals have a go at it. Maybe you have something, maybe you don’t.

      • DCSCA

        Spudis will be lobbying for the Moon, not an asteroid.

        That’s because the future is Luna, not LEO or NEO.

        • Coastal Ron

          DCSCA opined:

          That’s because the future is Luna, not LEO or NEO.

          What you continue to fail to grasp is that LEO is the least expensive place to be in space, and that is why our National Laboratory (the ISS) is there, and not in lunar orbit or on the Moon. The ISS is a place of work so we can figure out how to keep humans alive for long periods of time far away from Earth. It’s whats called “enabling our future space exploration” – can you understand that?

          LEO is also a natural transit point, and will end up being the location of many transportation nodes in the future, especially since the future of space exploration is not flying around in an Apollo style capsule – that is so last century.

          And no one has said that LEO is the pointy end of space exploration, you just imagine that.

          The Moon is also not “off limits”, it’s just not the future of space exploration for NASA, as everyone has been saying that Mars is the goal. However you are free to go there, and the sooner the better I say!

          So break open your piggy bank and start sending your money to a Musk-like entrepreneur that is focused on sending people to the Moon. Golden Spike would be a good one to start with.

          But the U.S. Taxpayer already paid for twelve people to romp around on the Moon, and we’re done. Get a clue.

          • DCSCA

            What you continue to fail to grasp is that LEO is the least expensive place to be in space,

            Really Ron? Well then if we’re going to use your metrics, the least expensive way to ‘be in space’ is to contract for seats on the operational Soyuz for the rest of the decade to access a doomed space platform using the $825 million until ISS splashes. And the ‘I’ in ‘ISS’ stands for ‘International’ not Ivan.’ Not waste it subsidizing just one year of CC development– a system that is years away from a crewed test flight let along going operational.

            The OBJECTIVE is to get ‘crews’ on orbit to conduct the elusive, nebulous, ‘valueable’ research. It does not matter from where they are launched from.

            and BTW, Ron, just becaue Congress labeled the ISS a ‘national lab’ doesnt make it so. Or perhaps you eat ketchup soup because the Reagan Administrationm labeled it a food.

            • Coastal Ron

              DCSCA opined:

              …the least expensive way to ‘be in space’ is to contract for seats on the operational Soyuz for the rest of the decade…

              Listen Putin-boi, unlike you, there are American’s that don’t want to be reliant on Russia for access to our space station, and Commercial Crew is not only that access, but it’s also a new revenue-generating industry for the U.S. And that industry will generate jobs here at home.

              Every dollar we send to Russia is a dollar that permanently leaves the country.

              The OBJECTIVE is to get ‘crews’ on orbit to conduct the elusive, nebulous, ‘valueable’ research.

              As you’ve admitted many times, you don’t follow what is happening with the ISS, so you are ignorant of the research that is taking place there that is the key for ANY space exploration we want to do. For instance, Chris Hadfield just returned from being the first Canadian ISS commander, and he has been in the news talking about how deleterious the effects of zero-G have been on his body. If we can’t mitigate such effects, then we are doomed to Apollo-style stunt trips for picking a few rocks and hitting a few golf balls – what a deal for $100B!

              just becaue Congress labeled the ISS a ‘national lab’ doesnt make it so

              Actually it does, since it’s within the power of Congress to designate such things.

              And again, the best place to study the problems and solutions to zero-G and space is IN space, and the least expensive location for that is LEO.

              Do you want to be stuck doing short space exploration trips forever?

        • @DCSCA,….Yes indeed, Paul Spudis has been a consistent champion of renewed Lunar exploration all these years. I find his writings & commentary to be brilliant, as well as his arguments in favor of NASA & America’s focus on Luna as our prime intermediate goal. I too, do NOT buy into this “ultimate destination” way of thinking. MARS CAN WAIT. The Moon is the place where we should be setting up shop; practicing the use of electrical & mechanical equipment upon a planetary surface. Every single proposed Mars mission scheme, has stages that could be very productively ‘rehearsed’ in both Lunar orbit & the surface. Some Mars plans have an earth-return vehice placed in areo-centric orbit, which awaits the human crew, flying unattended for a multi-month span of time. In Project Constellation, the Orion space-craft was to have been left in lunar orbit unattended while a lunar outpost-type expedition had been ferried down to the surface; later to be reached by the earth-returning crew, on its way back. Such a mission flight plan, would be an ideal technology-demonstrator. As would the unmanned landing of a lunar ‘earth-return’ vehicle: a lunar outpost mission will almost certainly involve an automated lander-craft, emplaced on the Moon ahead of a crew, arriving on board a conventional sortie-class lander. If they’d use the in-advance/previously landed vehicle, which has withstood a multi-month long stay in the lunar environment, up to that phase of the mission, for their return-to-lunar-orbit, then VOILA: you’d get another valuable technology demonstration for future interplanetary journeys.

          • Coastal Ron

            Chris Castro said:

            Such a mission flight plan, would be an ideal technology-demonstrator.

            No need to send it in orbit around the Moon Chris, we can just send it up to orbit the Earth for as long as you want, then send up a Commercial Crew vehicle to rendezvous with it to check it out and bring it back.

            You are always trying to over-complicate things…

            • @Coastal Ron,….I just want to see American astronauts do something more than bus-riding around in LEO!! Why, oh why do the Mars zealots always want the ‘easy way out’, by way of even MORE going around in circles, and even MORE “analog base” testing in the Utah desert/Ellesmere Island/Antarctica??! From the Moon enthusiast’s perspective, it looks like it is THEY who have lost the nerve to really do the brave stuff!! Low Earth Orbit is not only very dull & boring, it is also way too safe & easy!!!

              • Coastal Ron

                Chris Castro said:

                I just want to see American astronauts do something more than bus-riding around in LEO

                If you actually looked to see what was happening on the ISS, then you wouldn’t call it “bus riding”.

                Real science is being done on the ISS, and it’s the kind of science that is REQUIRED if we are to do anything more than Flags & Footprint type exploration.

                Or is that all you want to do? Flags & Footprint trips to the Moon? Pick up a few rocks, hit a few golf balls?

                We don’t know how to keep humans healthy in a zero-G environment long enough to successfully complete a trip to Mars – going to Mars before we know how to keep people alive and well is a waste of money.

                You are too shortsighted Chris.

    • Neil Shipley

      Squyres is on record as wanting humans on Mars following his rovers. Although last I heard, he did advocate for SLS. Probably out of ignorance on where that program is currently headed and the real driver behind it. So I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

      • amightywind

        Although last I heard, he did advocate for SLS. Probably out of ignorance on where that program is currently headed and the real driver behind it.

        Or he might realize, like many of us do, that that the US must up its game and loft much larger payloads to have a chance to visit Mars. Ignorant, Squyres is not.

        • Dark Blue Nine

          SLS is not needed to “loft much larger payloads… to visit Mars”, and its high costs preclude the development of such payloads.

        • NeilShipley

          Oh dear! Just when you had got a bit of cred’ you go and blow it.

        • josh

          the only way the us in going to send humans to mars if by giving spacex the funding to do so. nasa can’t and won’t do it. spacex can build a super heavy lifter for less than one tenth the amount it would take if the usual cronies (atk, lockmart etc.) got involved.

        • JimNobles

          -
          Ignorant, Squyres is not.

          If he’s ignorant about anything concerning heavy lift it’s about the chances that SLS actually has of becoming an asset to the American space program.

    • Guest

      You know just for once it would be nice if these people would invite people to testify who will speak truth to power. Cold harsh truth. In my view these committee hearings are only supposed to be called when there is an obvious PROBLEM and they need somebody to come in and read them the RIOT ACT, and not pat everybody on the back like good ol’boys. Thus far most of these people are special interest actors with regards to their testimony and statements and even their accomplishments.

      • Coastal Ron

        Guest said:

        You know just for once it would be nice if these people would invite people to testify who will speak truth to power.

        As long as we have our current form of government, that won’t happen. If it’s any solace, no one likes it, but then again not many people want to go to Congress and deal with making political sausage, so nothing changes.

        If only we had a dictator…

    • josh

      cooke was a failure as a nasa manager and is in no way qualified to give his opinion on this.

  • The webcast is online at this hideously long link but I’ll copy it and post it to YouTube where it will be easier to find.

  • I’m rendering the video to post it on YouTube, will provide the link in the morning.

    I noticed that, as predicted, the only Senators who showed up were Bill Nelson and Ted Cruz. Dan Coats (R-IN) was there but only to introduce Dr. Collicott from Purdue.

    I commend Senator Nelson for holding these hearings, but it’s clear that his colleagues don’t give a fig unless it’s about directing pork to their states.

  • Okay, here’s the YouTube version with fluff edited and slightly enlarged:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va6p3nNKpd4

    • Hiram

      You do understand that Senate Commerce now archives hearing videos on their website. The House has done this for a while, but the Senate only recently. Our Congress is moving into the 20th century! (Although we’re now in the 21st … so be it.)

      See http://tinyurl.com/laz5bxv . Hearing starts at about 45:00.

      Edited fluff?

  • Idle thought … Ted Cruz doesn’t go off on those paranoid rants like Kay Bailey Hutchison did. We’re not subjected to endless allegations about conspiracies to destroy SLS. These hearings, although attended by no one except Nelson and Cruz, are civil and sane.

  • common sense

    Just for fun…

    http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2010/12/the-space-shuttle-is-just-a-contrivance-to-keep-nasa-alive/

    “It’s obvious that the space shuttle is just a contrivance to keep NASA alive”

    The more things change the more they stay the same.

    Oh well.

  • DCSCA

    “Major government initiatives are never about the future.” spins dbn.

    Never ‘about the future,’ eh. Utter nonsense.

    Considering ‘Posterity’ is a key motivation for government initiatives. It has from the creation of this government- as written in the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America:

    “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

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