Congress, NASA

House subcommittee approves authorization bill, but its fate beyond the House remains unclear

Wednesday’s markup of a NASA authorization bill by the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee played out as expected. Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), ranking member of the subcommittee, offered the version of an authorization bill she introduced earlier this week as an amendment in the form of a substitute to the Republican-led bill. After debate, the subcommittee voted down the Edwards bill along party lines, with all Republicans voting against the amendment and all Democrats voting for it. The subcommittee then voted in favor of the original bill, again on a strict party line vote, sending it on to the full committee for consideration.

The main thrust of Edwards’s argument was that her bill authorized the appropriate funding levels for NASA, unlike the Republican bill that hewed to lower funding levels to comply with the Budget Control Act. “I’ve yet to find anything in the Budget Control Act that stipulates what funding committees can authorize, because the Budget Control Act doesn’t limit authorization in any way,” she said. “You can be fiscally conservative and still support this amendment.”

Edwards even questioned two Republican members of the subcommittee with NASA facilities in their districts, Mo Brooks of Alabama (MSFC) and Bill Posey of Florida (KSC), asking them if they preferred the higher authorized funding levels for efforts like the Space Launch System and Exploration Ground Systems in her bill. Neither were swayed by her argument, though. “I like the additional funding that is in the minority proposal for the Marshall Space Flight Center and for NASA generally,” Brooks said. “However, it is financially irresponsible because the minority does not come up with a way to pay for it.”

Rep. Stephen Palazzo (R-MS), chairman of the subcommittee, said the authorization had to follow the lower funding profile in the Republican version if the bill had any chance of passage. “Our goal is to bring a workable bill that can pass both houses,” he said as debate on the Democratic bill version concluded. “The reality is, if we ignore the Budget Control Act, which many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle voted for, the bill is dead on arrival in both the House and the Senate. It would never make it to the House floor, and, ironically, it would not have the unanimous consent it needs to move it in the Senate.”

However, while the bill in its current form may make it to the House floor and pass there, its odds of passage in the Senate in that form seem much lower. Last month Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) was critical of the draft version of the House bill, in particular the overall authorized spending level. “I’m not going to approve of keeping it at 16.8 [billion dollars], because it would run the space program and NASA into a ditch,” he said at a Space Transportation Association luncheon. The Senate has not introduced its version of an authorization bill yet, although appropriators there will be marking up a spending bill on Tuesday.

The Edwards bill was the only amendment the subcommittee considered Wednesday, although after the vote Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), vice-chair of the full committee, called for a revision of one section of the bill regarding commercial crew. Section 215 of the bill calls for the use of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) “cost-type” contracts for future phases of the commercial crew program. “Forcing commercial crew into a cost-type contract, as Section 215 would do, would undermine all the benefits of the program, all the benefits the program is designed to bring about,” he said. He was also critical of the section’s reliance on advice from the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), saying its experience is based on “older and previous models” of doing business. “We must not open the door to allowing these advisory committees to actually becoming the policy-setting committees.”

Rohrabacher said he voted for the bill on the understanding that this concern would be addressed before the full committee marks up the bill. “Yes, of course we will work with him as we move forward to full committee,” Palazzo said, without expressing support or opposition to Rohrabacher’s concerns.

63 comments to House subcommittee approves authorization bill, but its fate beyond the House remains unclear

  • Coastal Ron

    Neither bill does what any NASA supporter wants, so I don’t see much to get excited about. More underfunding, more avoiding any true direction for NASA – nothing new for the House…

    • amightywind

      I support NASA and I approve of the House bill.

      • DCSCA

        Ah, Windy. It’s worth noting today just how empty these press release projects and paper dreams pitched by NewsSpace truly are. 44 years ago this morning, July 16, 1969, the United States government, through it’s properly budgeted space agency, NASA, – then having 8 years of seasoned HSF experience– launched Apollo 11 on the first lunar landing flight. And four and a half decades later,’commercial space,’ ‘NewSpace,’ ‘private enterprise’– or whatever you want to label it, has failed to even attempt to launch, orbit and return anybody from LEO- let alone attempting trips to the moon. Which makes their clucking and chatter about lunar golden spikes, ballooned hotels, Martian flybys and Red Planet retirement colonies all the more quaint– and feeble attempts at false equivalency with experienced and proven government HSF capabilities.

  • MECO

    Is it underfunded or too much content? Sort of two sides of the same coin…depending on how you look at it. What’s the difference, some might say? Well, I think the difference is how you solve it. And we must solve it, because the disconnect is too big and too fundamental to sustain.

    As advocates for space, we naturally see it as the underfunded side of the coin and seek to get more money to match it with the mission. That’s a good plan if there is a reasonable chance of getting the increase. But I don’t think that’s the reality we face today. The road is not going to bear the $17.7B requested, much less the $18B some have proposed. At the end of the day for FY14 and for the foreseeable future NASA funding will probably be less $17B, maybe significantly less. If you disagree, please make a convincing argument to support your case.

    It maybe sad, but in this budget environment, policy will be driven by budget reality. Over the last several years the basic strategy has been to set the goal and try to get the resources to follow the goal. I think that has failed. The community and political establishment would be best served by putting together the best program based on budget reality, not wishful thinking. Budget will drive policy. The sooner that happens, the sooner the space program can get on a sustainable track. It may not be the glorious program we all would ideally want, but it will get it moving forward.

    • Hiram

      I think a better way to look at it is that budget drives policy when the policy can’t drive. At least for human spaceflight, the work that NASA proposed to do just wasn’t that exciting. It was “press on”, rather than “lean in”. When what NASA does is considered justified by an arbitrary (say, level) budget number, that arbitrary budget number seems expendable. That’s the way it’s been for a very long time. That’s what the word “arbitrary” means.

      What the Authorization process should be doing, ideally, is to consider what NASA has proposed to do, and get Congress excited about it. The Authorization process should consider historical dollar allocations, but if something shows great value to the nation, the Authorizers should be the ones to point it out and recommend added expenditures. They should be the ones telling the Approriators, yep, this is REALLY worth it.

      Now, the Authorizers just have what NASA has given them, and if there isn’t anything to get really excited about, the Authorizers can’t be asked to make something up about it being worth it.

      For the House Space subcommittee to sigh and say, well, we need to cut NASA like we cut everything else, it just means that to them that what NASA proposes to do is just as good as everything else. It’s not better than anything else. It’s a shame, but that’s probably exactly right.

    • DCSCA

      “It maybe sad, but in this budget environment, policy will be driven by budget reality.”

      And budgets for various agencies are determined by the political realities they are meant to service– those realities dictate the budget. NASA simply is not a priority now for government. Whih should be of no consequence to private enterprised HSF firms. Unless they want the funding. And given the nature of American government– to be reactive, not proactive, the NASA budget will not change unless an external event is thrust upon the nation– and even that may not kindle action– it may just get a shrug.

  • Matt McClanahan

    If the commercial crew program does become just another FAR cost-plus contract, I’d just love to see SpaceX and Sierra Nevada bow out and say “No, thanks, we’d rather stay in control of our spacecraft’s future.” Let Boeing have it, they’re already enjoying a cost-plus blank check with SLS anyway. SAA’s are what made COTS/CRS a success, abandoning them for commercial crew is a great way to end up with a much more expensive, longer development process.

  • MECO

    Sanity check. If NASA’s budget remains flat (which may be optimsitc), what destinations, if any, are realitically achievable? Under the current budget, about $7B goes to human space , about half of which is for ISS, so there’s about $3.5B left for BEO? Is it possible to get to any of the destinations on that budget? (keep in mind the one thing Congress seems to agree on with NASA is that it remain a diverse multimission agency, so you can’t dump a bunch of other programs to free up money).

    • Hiram

      You mean destinations that are rocks for humans to step on? Sanity check. There aren’t that many rocks around. The zombie-like focus about rocky “destinations” and footprints is a sad hold-over from Apollo. The human space flight destinations we may be able to afford are those that develop new technologies to support humans in space, and understanding biological factors that pertain. Allegedly, we may be able to afford an SLS and Orion someday, though their rocky destinations may end up, at least in the near term, being a concrete launch pad in Florida.

      We can probably send humans back into lunar orbit, and to Lagrange points, and do some cruising in cis-lunar space. If you believe the proponents of ARRM, we can afford to fetch and visit a small boulder (or a small pile of sand with grains stuck together with Van der Waals forces). But I don’t think many people believe them.

      What a flat or decreasing NASA budget ensures is that that the finances of the nation are incrementally closer to being in the black. There must be a flag and a footprint that Congress can proudly plant on that fact.

      • DCSCA

        “You mean destinations that are rocks for humans to step on? Sanity check. There aren’t that many rocks around. The zombie-like focus about rocky “destinations” and footprints is a sad hold-over from Apollo.” muses Hiram.

        Except it’s not. That’s the whole point of it all in this era. If you’re advocating falling from one star system to another, you’re unfortunately locked in the wrong millenium, fella. It’s taken 50,000 years o crawl out of the slime and out to the moon. Heading to the stars is a long way off for our species and, frankly, it’s not really ready to settle Mars. The politicsadn the technologies point to a return to Luna. We’re mature enought to manage that.

    • Dark Blue Nine

      “If NASA’s budget remains flat (which may be optimsitc), what destinations, if any, are realitically achievable? Under the current budget, about $7B goes to human space, about half of which is for ISS, so there’s about $3.5B left for BEO?”

      Actually, NASA spends $2.9-3.0B annually on exploration systems development and advanced exploration systems, not $3.5B. Here’s the FY14 budget PDF for reference:

      http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/750614main_NASA_FY_2014_Budget_Estimates-508.pdf

      My nitpicking aside, the key is not the total, but how it’s spent. NASA’s problem is that it’s spending $2.7B per year of that ~$3B exploration budget on just the launch vehicle (SLS) and capsule (MPCV) from now through the 2020s. That only leaves ~$2-300M per year to develop and operate the other parts of an exploration architecture. That’s not enough to get the other architecture elements built and to mount missions. (Imagine spending 90% of your household budget on commuting costs for the next two decades. Doesn’t leave much for anything else.) Even NASA’s internal documentation shows that there is no money for “In-Space Hardware” until after 2030 with SLS and MPCV, and that was under much better $18B+ budget scenarios than the $16B+ scenarios that NASA is now facing. See page 8 in this presentation:

      http://images.spaceref.com/news/2011/NASA.SLS.Budget.Aug.2011.pdf

      “Is it possible to get to any of the destinations on that budget?”

      Yes, if you drop SLS and MPCV, multiple destinations are easily accessible for ~$3B per year.

      Golden Spike costs the development and flight testing of a two-person lunar landing architecture at $6.4B. Golden Spike doesn’t use SLS or MPCV, but NASA could afford the Golden Spike architecture with just over two years of the current exploration budget. Golden Spike costs repeat missions at $1.5B each. NASA could afford two of the Golden Spike lunar landing missions a year with the current exploration budget. See p. 34-36 in their analysis here:

      http://goldenspikecompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/French-et-al.-Architecture-Paper-in-AIAA-Journal-of-Spacecraft-and-Rockets.pdf

      Inspiration Mars costs their two-person, free-return, Mars circumnavigation mission at $1-2B.

      http://www.inspirationmars.org/IEEE_Aerospace_TITO-CARRICO_Feasibility_Analysis_for_a_Manned_Mars_Free-Return_Mission_in_2018.pdf

      http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/01/expert-dennis-titos-mars-flyby-has-1-in-3-chance-of-succeeding

      The Inspiration Mars mission must launch in 2018. But between 2014 and 2018 — which is five years at $3 billion per year or $15 billion total — NASA’s exploration budget could pay for the Golden Spike lunar architecture ($6.4B) and a repeat lunar mission ($1.5B), the Inspiration Mars mission ($2B), and still have a little over $5 billion left over. That would almost certainly be enough to modify a copy of the Inspiration Mars architecture for a NEO rendezvous.

      In short, over the next five years, NASA’s $3 billion annual exploration budget could pay to get two crews back to the Moon, send a third crew around Mars, and send a fourth crew to a near-Earth asteroid. But only if the funds going to SLS and MPCV over the next five years went to these architectures and missions instead.

      Over longer timeframes, other studies demonstrate that NASA could save tens of billions of dollars if it didn’t go the SLS route. NASA’s Human Exploration Framework Team (HEFT) costed an HLLV/SLS-based human NEO architecture (including multiple robotic precursor missions to the asteroid and human precursor missions to E-M Lagrange points) at $143B through 2030+. Georgia Tech showed that the same NEO campaign could be mounted for $73-97B (depending on specific assumptions), if the HLLV/SLS was dropped in favor of an in-space propellant depot and other launchers. That’s a savings of $46-70B.

      http://images.spaceref.com/news/2011/F9Prop.Depot.pdf

      Despite all the whining about sequestration and current and foreseeable budget woes, NASA’s human space exploration budget is large enough to do a lot in human space exploration. But it can’t do anything as long as 90% of that budget is tied to the SLS/MPCV albatross.

      • MECO

        Call me a skeptic…but I don’t believe any of the numbers that groups like Golden Spike and others put out there.

        • Dark Blue Nine

          It’s fine to be a skeptic, but if you want a serious discussion, you have to be more specific about what Golden Spike got wrong. Did they misquote SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch costs? Did they misquote ATK’s Castor costs? Did they forget costs X, Y, Z? An argument from personal belief, especially given the experience behind the Golden Spike architecture, isn’t very persuasive. The fact that multiple industry and university studies (Golden Spike, Inspiration Mars, Georgia Tech, and ULA, among others) are pointing to these much lower cost architectures also tells us something about who’s probably wrong (Congress, NASA) about the true costs of these missions when unshackled from artificial constraints like SLS and MPCV and who’s probably right (pretty much everyone else).

          I’d also point out that even if Golden Spike and their ilk are way off in their costs, those architectures are still much more affordable and will do much more than NASA can with do when burdened by SLS and MPCV. I laid out two human lunar landings, a human Mars circumnavigation mission, and a human NEO mission that could be accomplished with five years of NASA’s exploration budget. Let’s say that I and all those studies are wrong and everything in my scenario doubles in cost. Even with doubled costs, that scenario could still all be done with a decade (10 years) of NASA’s exploration budget. Compared to what NASA will do over the next decade — or even the next two decades — with SLS and MPCV, that’s a huge improvement.

          • MECO

            I am skeptical. Would like to be proven wrong, but have seen too many of these promises broken over the decades. Have you ever looked at a paper called on NASA cost estimating, “Joint Confidence Level Paradox – History of Denial”. Tons of historical perspective. I tried to paste a link, but wouldn’t do it properly, but Google it.

            • Dark Blue Nine

              That paper is about NASA’s historical problems with producing good cost estimates. From the abstract’s first paragraph:

              “NASA purports to seek joint probable cost and schedule reality for our programs – yet we intentionally omit discernable risks from our comprehensive analyses studies. Underestimating risk vicissitudes (and consequently under-shooting cost and schedule projections) is a well verified NASA phenomenon. However, NASA rarely acknowledges publicly this pattern of aiming high and shooting low. Cost and schedule estimating candidness has proven difficult to come by. NASA should actively pursue a course that will change our prevailing reluctance to “tell it like it is in the cost and schedule world.” The goal of this paper is to be a catalyst in facilitating that change.”

              It would be wrong and illogical to assume that other organizations in a sector suffer from NASA’s problems (or any other organization’s problems in that sector). Just because my neighbor is a bad driver, doesn’t mean that I’m a bad driver. Guilt isn’t proven by association. You have to show that I’m a bad driver independent of my neighbor.

              Moreover, there’s evidence that shows the contrary — that private organizations, once freed of the perverse incentives of government contracting, can produce on budget and for costs substantially less than what NASA and Air Force cost models say that they should cost. For example, NAFCOM estimates for Falcon 9 development were three times what it actually cost to develop that launch vehicle. See this presentation:

              http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/586023main_8-3-11_NAFCOM.pdf

              Again, it’s fine to be skeptical. But what are we more skeptical of? Multiple industry and university studies showing that human space exploration targets can be achieved for a fraction of the money and time that NASA is spending on SLS and MPCV if freed of those vehicle and contracting constraints? Or that SLS and MPCV are magically going to come in billions under budget, allowing habs, landers, transit stages and all the other missing pieces of a real human planetary exploration to come together when NASA’s own documents show that isn’t true?

              There’s no perfect bet here, but I’d bet on the former over the latter, any day.

              FWIW…

              • Hiram

                I too have some skepticism about Golden Spike’s cost estimates, if just that their management team is largely made up of business leaders with rather little large-project technical expertise. Also, the give-us-some-money-and-we’ll-give-it-a-go crowd are often in it for the money. Pays the salaries until they pull the plug. But their enthusiasm is certainly infectious.

                The issue here is whether a commercial cost estimate even applies to NASA. There is a lot of evidence that it doesn’t. NASA’s zero-risk safety policies, top-heavy management, and mandate to distribute dollars equally around powerful districts make it highly unlikely that a Golden Spike cost is anything close to a NASA cost. Remember that we’re talking about what Congress should authorize NASA to do, not what Golden Spike can do.

              • Dark Blue Nine

                “if just that their management team is largely made up of business leaders with rather little large-project technical expertise”

                That’s not true. Gerry Griffin was an Apollo flight director and JSC center director. Alan Stern is the PI for the $650M New Horizons mission to Pluto and is a former associate administrator for NASA’s Science Directorate. Jim French helped develop engines for the Saturn LVs and the Apollo LM, and worked Mariner, Viking, and Voyager. Max Vozoff ran Dragon development for SpaceX. Etc., etc.

              • Hiram

                Alan Stern is not an engineer. He’s a scientist with science project management expertise, as well as NASA science management. And there are indeed a few folks with large project technical expertise, but the management of Golden Spike isn’t dominated by them. For a project where cost realism is a big issue, some deep technical expertise is essential.

        • DCSCA

          “Call me a skeptic…but I don’t believe any of the numbers that groups like Golden Spike and others put out there.”

          Ditto. It’s all science fiction and a feeble pitch at false equivalency.

          It is mid-2013 and NewSpace has no credibility is orbital HSF ops— it has flown NOBODY.

          So pitching false equivlancy w/gov’t space ops– ops w/over half a century in HSF operations- planning and architecture with silly chatter about golden lunar spikes and Falcon fluff does nothing but reinforce the fundamental truth that government space projects of scale is the future for HSF. How fast that future arrives has less to do w/t space community and more to do w/t geo-politics of events foreign and domestic on Earth.

      • DCSCA

        SLS.MPCV is a geo-political strategy for the United States. Get over it. Better still, get flying somebody– until then, the PRC has more credbility on chatter about HSF ops than nybody in the NewSpace camp.

        • Dark Blue Nine

          “NewSpace has no credibility is orbital HSF ops”

          Gerry Griffin was an Apollo flight director and JSC center director. Jim French helped develop engines for the Saturn LVs and the Apollo LM.

          Don’t be a dumbass. Your Apollo heroes work for the “NewSpace” sector you despise so much.

          “gov’t space ops”

          U.S. “gov’t space ops” wouldn’t exist without foreign vehicles for crew transport and domestic commercial vehicles for cargo transport.

          Don’t be dumbass. There is no such thing as pure U.S. “gov’t space ops” anymore.

          “ops w/over half a century in HSF operations”

          Operations with a half-century in operations?

          You’re an illiterate idiot.

          “How fast that future arrives has… more to do w/t geo-politics of events foreign and domestic on Earth.”

          Good luck with that, Tinkerbell. Those “geo-politics” are driving the NASA budget below levels that haven’t been seen in decades:

          http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2013/20130712-house-proposes-smallest-nasa-budget-since-1986.html

          “SLS.MPCV is a geo-political strategy for the United States.”

          To do what? What “geo-political [sic]” goals is this “strategy” supposed to achieve? Where are these goals enshrined in current policy?

          “the PRC has more credbility on chatter about HSF ops than nybody”

          You should learn how to spell “credbility [sic]” before writing about it.

          What an idiot “nybody”.

  • James

    The future for NASA is as follows, and is easily predictable (Cause that’s how its been going for quite some time):

    Flat and declining budgets, combined with rising costs of all development efforts (Human Space Flight as well as Robotic) will lead to fewer missions which take longer to do.

    It does not matter what is put on NASA’s plate, they just won’t be able to get to all that is there. Missions will be pushed off the budget planning horizon, strung out over decades.

    No real progress will be made.

    This is a recipe for shutting down NASA. It’s just going to take some time to play itself out.

    • James

      Here is a nice graph from planetary.org that shows NASA purchasing power since 1982. Since 1990, it’s going down, down , down, down. A few blips up here and there, but any engineer or scientist worth their salt can see a trend.

      And, mission costs have gone up up up up..

      Recipe for irrelevance.

      http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2013/20130712-house-proposes-smallest-nasa-budget-since-1986.html

      • Hiram

        By that metric, compared to the inflation adjusted numbers from the 1960s, NASA would already be completely retired, and probably should have been in the 1970s. Any engineer or scientist worth their salt should have been able to see the trend. Of course, by that metric, the Department of Defense would also be retired. Any warrior worth their salt could see the trend in that agency budget as well. Rest in peace.

        The mistake here is to use budget levels as a measure of relevance. On the contrary, it’s the lack of relevance that begets the lack of budget. Which is why the “1%” or “penny for NASA” advocates are so silly. They presume that if you pump lots of money into NASA, it will automatically become more relevant. That’s policy crap, and those folks (including Neil Tyson) should know better.

        Now, the DoD is less relevant? Really? You bet. Now that the Cold War is over, it really is.

        The recipe for irrelevance is a strategic plan that the nation isn’t all that interested in.

      • Fred Willett

        Meanwhile the total space economy tops $300M and grows by an amount greater than NASA’s total budget every year. Indeed space is one of the fastest growing corners of the global economy.
        Perhaps that is why so many billionaires are suddenly taking an interest in space.

        • Fred Willett

          N.B. From 2011 to 2012 the space economy grew by $28B.

          • MECO

            I think if you dig into the numbers on the space economy (eg Space Foundation report), you’ll find that a very large part of what is included in that definition is fixed and mobile service communications, such as Direct Home TV, VSAT services, etc. the numbers include revenues from such services, sales of ground terminals, etc. The portion of the “space economy” for spacecraft and launch vehicles is modest. The portion for exploration related space is relatively small.

            • Fred Willett

              Perfectly true. Launch for example makes up about 1%. But the biggest proportion (about 60%) is commercial ground and space assets and it is there that the growth is being generated. Certainly not all of it in space but equally certainly space related.
              Over time this press of capital will be looking for new places to invest in space and new ventures in space will become common place. We’ve all ready seen new start ups like Planetary Resources, Golden Spike and others begin to plan off earth enterprises. Some, maybe even most will fail, but some will succeed and grow.
              That’s capitalism.
              It is what will take us to Mars.
              Not, as much as I like ‘em, NASA.

              • DCSCA

                “That’s capitalism.
                It is what will take us to Mars.” dreams Freddo.

                Except it won’t.

                Over the 80-plus year history of modern rocketry, EVERY time “capitalism” has been presented w/t ‘opportunity’ to assume leadership in this field, it has balked and let government assume the burdens of risk and development. In Germany, private ‘rocket clubs’ all but disappeared as sponsorships evaporated– so they turned to government which kept von Braun and his teams flush w/Reichmarks for the military in the 30s. In the same era, Goddard was all but starved for financing, save help from Guggenheim w/influence from an interested Lindbergh. When Sputnik flew, it was government which stepped in and responded– not private enterprise– and Explorer 1 was launched on top of a modified military missile. No sir, this technology has been pushed forward by governments, under various guises, for geo-political and military purposes– not for ‘capitalism’– that is, to ‘make a buck.’ ‘Reaganomics,’ ‘capitalism,’ or what ever ‘ism’ you want to label it– is not going to move people out into the solar system. It has always been a follow along, cashing in where it could, And to think otherwiaw is Reaganesque residue long overdue for purging from the system politik. the only place private enterprise presented a business plan for a space expedition was in a Hollywood film called, Destination Moon– and the motrivation to ‘make a buck’ was mining uranium on Luna. Government space projects of scale will- and have, as Apollo demonstrated, move humans out into the solar system. Commercial space will not. It has not even flown anybosy into LEO. America has NASA. NewSpace has nada.

  • Hiram

    “No real progress will be made.”

    I guess it depends how you define “real progress”, don’t you think? Yes, if “real progress” is defined as feet on rocks, it may be a rough ride.

    It probably won’t be about shutting down NASA, because NASA does a lot more than trying to put feet on rocks. In fact, putting feet on rocks isn’t even part of NASA’s charter. But one can well envision federally funded human space flight in this nation petering out, especially if human spaceflight is decided to be contingent with putting feet on rocks.

    As to the adventure and excitement about putting feet on rocks, well, you get what you pay for.

    • James

      I don’t care how you define progress. NASA will be doing less less less. And it costs a certain amount to maintain the ‘roads and commodes’ for the 10 (er 11 if you count JPL, and Barabar Mukulski certainly does) NASA Centers.

      However, since the Congress Critters don’t care about anything but getting re elected, they’ll never consent to shutting down a NASA Center. So, at some point, you’ll have Centers open and operating, i.e. lawns being mowed, roads plowed in the winter, trash being collected (once every two weeks instead of the once a week we have now), etc.

      And you’ll have an army of employees with nothing to do. Just check out what’s going on at the manned centers, and even JPL and Goddard in the years ahead. Not enough work for the amount of employees.

      But hey, let Congress stick their heads in the sand, cause it’s warm and cozy down there

      • James

        I meant if you count ‘APL’, in Laurel MD.

      • Hiram

        “I don’t care how you define progress.”

        Really? Well, don’t go anywhere near trying to make policy.

        “NASA will be doing less less less.”

        Which is why you need to define progress. Because by many metrics of progress, NASA is doing a lot. It’s just not doing what you want it to do.

        “Just check out what’s going on at the manned centers, and even JPL and Goddard in the years ahead. Not enough work for the amount of employees.”

        Do you care how you define “work”? If you’re talking about cutting metal on flagship space missions, yes there won’t be as much work. If you’re talking about exercising creativity, exploring design concepts,and doing research with ongoing missions, there is going to be plenty of work. The people you have at these centers are high enough quality that they’re not going to be twiddling their fingers.

        “But hey, let Congress stick their heads in the sand, cause it’s warm and cozy down there”

        That is, of course, what it’s all about, and why NASA won’t go away. NASA is a firehose for dollars that can be aimed at particular districts. Congress mouths words like “exploration” and “inspiration”, but that’s not the bottom line to them.

        • James

          Most of the work at the Centers is not targeted at flagships. It’s the other missions.

          NASA robotic space flight centers (Goddard, JPL, APL) are not R&D centers. They do missions. Any technology that is being researched is being done with a mission as the target. There is very little SMD monies for moving technologies along in the TRL 1 to 3, range, or 4 to 5. To get to TRL 6, there must be a mission budget available to tap into. And what SMD money there is , is prioritized towards those technologies that will enable a future mission – flagship or not.

          This is also true of HSF centers.

          Center have some R&D they can play with, but this money is being cut, and it competes with other Center expenses. And it all comes from HQ anyway

          And when budgets fall, technology money is always raided to pay for mission overruns.

          Yes, the workers are creative, high quality. Don’t kid yourself though, NASA Centers are not geared towards R&D. What little of it there is, is going towards a mission.

          NASA is , with the exception of Aeronautics, a mission driven enterprise.

          When budgets get cut, and the quantity of missions declines, then all that goes with that, including whatever R&D was being funded, also stops.

          • Hiram

            The points you make are good ones, but I think you’re getting a little off-topic here. The original point was that there isn’t enough work for the employees at NASA to do. But what you’re saying now is that there isn’t enough “mission work” for them to do. That’s different, and it’s exactly right. But the idea that NASA Centers aren’t geared towards R&D is a bit of a simplification. That’s not an agency construct, but a management decision.

            A decade or two ago, Codes R and U were flinging large amounts of money for technology and engineering development (including low TRL stuff) at all centers. But with regard to JPL and GSFC, which get most of their money from SMD, a clear decision was made in SMD to remove funding for non-mission directed R&D. That is, R&D is most certainly done at those centers, but it’s higher TRL stuff. That was a management decision that, with a reduction in the number of missions, probably needs to get reexamined.

            In a way, that reexamination is already happening on an agency-wide scale, with increased emphasis and funding for the Space Technology directorate. That funding line is NOT mission directed, and while Congress is reluctant to bump it up very much, the Administration would desperately like to do so.

            So it’s exactly right that when the quantity of missions decline, then attached R&D funding declines. But that’s not a going-out-of-business proposition. The management solution to that, which is a well proven strategy at NASA, is to do R&D funding that isn’t attached to specific missions, but is capability directed.

            Probably time to start thinking about how to define progress and work, no?

            • James

              Code R and Code U were indeed flinging large amounts of money for technology around NASA. They are now extinct; the result of slow decline in budget – a trend that is continuing.

              When the going gets tough at NASA, technology gets slashed.

              There is a sea change going on at NASA; it is much safer for Administrations to keep moving the goal posts of expensive missions way off into the future, and substitute commitment to those missions, i.e. commensurate budgets, with rhetoric about the future exciting missions, and new Directorates(Space Technology directorate) aimed at ‘R&D’.

              R&D is a safe game to play – no big monies, can keep the top dollar amount low, and lower, and lower,’cause the impact to slipping R&D is not the same as slipping a mission schedule, or a mission budget.

              It will be an interesting dynamic to watch unfold.

              • Hiram

                No, the trend is not continuing. The Space Technology directorate is trying to provide non-mission specific funding for technology development. Lots of funding. Half a billion dollars last year, with a request for a lot more this year. It’s more than rhetoric. The Administration wants to give Space Technology more money. It’s Congress that keeps cutting the budget that the Administration wants to give them.

                But you’re right, if you want to preserve the agency, and at least for human spaceflight have no cogent plans, R&D is a safe game to play, and that’s exactly what’s going on.

                By the same token, your original comment that NASA will be doing “less less less” is founded on a definition of “progress” that seems to ignore R&D. Please do care about your definitions.

              • Dark Blue Nine

                “No, the trend is not continuing. The Space Technology directorate is trying to provide non-mission specific funding for technology development. Lots of funding. Half a billion dollars last year, with a request for a lot more this year. It’s more than rhetoric.”

                I have to disagree. Since early in the Obama Administration, NASA has been trying to dramatically increase the Space Technology budget and failing. The latest bills are knocking them back down to $500 million from the Administration’s FY14 request. And most of that will go to the Congressionally mandated and terribly ineffective SBIR/STTR paper mills.

                Even when they get funding, the leadership of Space Technology Directorate doesn’t follow priorities or get much of anything demonstrated in space. They commissioned the National Academies to lay out priorities for the next decade of NASA space technology investments:

                http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/feb/HQ_12-039_NRC_Roadmaps.html

                The top two near-term flight demonstrations in the report are ASRGs and commercial cryo propellant management. So what big flight demonstrations is NASA’s Space Technology Directorate pursuing? Solar sails and green propellants, neither of which even shows up in the decadal report:

                http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/crosscutting_capability/tech_demo_missions.html

                http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/aug/HQ_12-281_Green_Propellants.html

                When they manage to actually fund a priority, like the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration mission, it’s slipping year-for-year. It was supposed to launch in 2015 and is now scheduled for 2017. Even simple flight demonstration projects, like the Nanosat Launch Challenge, get cancelled and on false grounds:

                http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2197/1

                They claim the prize overlapped with the DARPA ALASA program, even though that program is aimed at 200kg satellites, not 1kg satellites like the Nanosat Launch Challenge. When you claim that programs overlap when they actually differ by more than two orders of magnitude, you’re either technically illiterate or dishonest.

                The taxpayer has spent something around $2-3 billion on NASA’s Space Technology Director and its predecessor program since its creation several years ago. The only technology they’ve managed to get demonstrated in space in that time is one mission consisting of three, 1U cubesats run on Android smartphones. That’s a horrible cost/benefit ratio. By contrast, the Air Force Space Test Program, gets one to a handful of missions flown every year on a budget of a little more than $50M per year.

                NASA desperately needs an effective space technology development and flight test program, but the one it has is a joke.

              • Hiram

                I’m not saying that the STD has thus far been very effective, but just that NASA management now includes a line that is directed with the overall goal of trying to provide funding for non-mission directed technology. Your complaints about the way it is being managed are justified, but that’s a different issue.

                The point was just that R&D investment is more than “rhetoric”.

                The fact that Congress is not supportive of these investments is indeed disappointing, but the Directorate really needs to get it’s feet on the ground and demonstrate clear actionability of their priorities. The NRC study was an effort to do that. Congress wants feet on rocks, not R&D, but it needs to understand that it can mainly just afford the latter.

              • Dark Blue Nine

                “The point was just that R&D investment is more than ‘rhetoric’.”

                And my point is that it has become mere rhetoric. If the Administration and NASA were more serious than Congress about R&D investment at NASA, they would have successfully obtained an increase in the Space Technology Program/Directorate budget or the Program/Directorate would be pursuing the clear priorities they asked for or the Program/Directorate would have gotten more demonstrated in space over the past several years than three Android cubesats (or some combination of the above). They’ve done none of that, which, combined with no change in the management of the Space Technology Program/Directorate, is a strong indicator that the Space Technology Program/Directorate is not a priority for or taken seriously by NASA leadership or the White House.

              • Hiram

                The example of solar sails is a poor one. That unproven technology is irrelevant to human spaceflight, but actually quite important to SMD, which would like to do stationkeeping at Lagrange points as well as pole-sitting satellites.

                Your complaints are valid, but they are valid for a directionless Space Technology Directorate, which has been the case for the last few years. Now that the NRC exercise is complete, STD has a peer reviewed, stakeholder-driven investment plan.

                Also, the management of STD has changed entirely. Mike Gazarik and Jim Reuther are the new leaders of that organization, and their goal is to abide and be guided by the new strategic planning.

                “If the Administration and NASA were more serious than Congress about R&D investment at NASA, they would have successfully obtained an increase in the Space Technology Program/Directorate budget”

                Huh? The Administration and NASA can propose an increase in the STD budget, which they have strongly, but it’s up to Congress to GIVE STD that money. You can’t criticize the Administration and NASA for not printing dollar bills.

              • Dark Blue Nine

                “Your complaints are valid, but they are valid for a directionless Space Technology Directorate, which has been the case for the last few years. Now that the NRC exercise is complete…”

                The NRC delivered the final report a year-and-a-half ago and the interim report two-and-a-half years ago. Those reports clearly laid out near-term flight demonstrations of an ASRG and industry cryo propellant management as priorities. The leadership of the Space Technology Directorate (and the Space Technology Program that preceded it) have had plenty of time to change direction and pursue the NRC priorities. They haven’t. Instead, they’re pursuing flight demonstrations of technologies, like green propellants and solar sails, that don’t even show up in the NRC report. Two years after the NRC report that the leadership of the Space Technology Directorate asked for, the Space Technology Directorate is still directionless with respect to that report’s priorities.

                “Also, the management of STD has changed entirely. Mike Gazarik and Jim Reuther are the new leaders of that organization”

                Gazarik and Reuther were Bobby Braun’s lieutenants under the Space Technology Program, and previously worked on Braun’s Mars reentry vehicles. I have nothing against Braun, his old team, or the fact that he brought in people he had previously worked with when he became NASA’s Chief Technologist. (I’d do the same.) But you’re kidding yourself if you think there’s been a major change in management direction because Braun went back to Georgia Tech and Gazarik and Reuther were left in place. These guys have been working together for years and years and are part of the same club.

                Unlike Braun, Gazarik and Reuther themselves are under-qualified to lead a large, multi-project, technology development and demonstration organization. They were subsystem engineers under Braun and Gazarik ran some roads and commodes at Langley. But neither has managed full flight projects or managed multiple, parallel technology development projects.

                Their inability to follow simple NRC priorities or get significant spaceflight demonstrations launched is indicative of these weaknesses. The false excuses they used to terminate the Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge indicates that they may also be technically incompetent or dishonest (or both) at some level.

                “their goal is to abide and be guided by the new strategic planning.”

                If that’s their goal, they haven’t pursued it in two-odd years with respect to the NRC report.

                Worse, STD leadership apparently can’t even tell the difference between flight-proven and unproven technologies. Japan’s IKAROS mission proved out solar sails three (!) years ago. Sweden’s Prisma mission also proved out green propellants three (!) years ago. Even worse, green propellants are being adopted in the marketplace by commercial missions like Skybox.

                STP leadership has no business selecting and pursuing missions to demonstrate technologies that don’t appear among the NRC’s priorities, that were flight-proven overseas years ago, and that are already in the marketplace. That’s a total waste of taxpayer resources, and the limited budget that the Space Technology Program/Directorate has to work with.

                “The Administration and NASA can propose an increase in the STD budget, which they have strongly, but it’s up to Congress to GIVE STD that money”

                If it’s a priority, it’s up to the Administration and NASA to lobby and convince Congress to fund NASA’s space technology effort at higher levels. They’ve repeatedly failed (in fact, not really tried) for years now. As much as you and I wish space technology was a budget and management priority for the White House and NASA leadership, it’s not.

                We’ll know that NASA space technology is a priority when there’s a real change in management or the program starts following the NRC priorities or it obtains a significant budget increase (or some combination of the above). Until that time, it’s just a meandering mess.

                “The example of solar sails is a poor one. That unproven technology”

                Again, that technology has been proven by Japan’s IKAROS mission. That, and the fact that it’s not an NRC priority, is why the Space Technology Program/Directorate should not be pursuing another solar sail mission.

                “is irrelevant to human spaceflight, but actually quite important to SMD, which would like to do stationkeeping at Lagrange points as well as pole-sitting satellites.”

                I have nothing against solar sails (or green propellants), and you’re right that solar sails may enable a limited class of new space physics/weather missions.

                But that doesn’t change the fact that they are not NRC space technology priorities or that they were flight proven overseas years ago. If NASA’s Science Mission Directorate or NOAA wants to pursue a solar sail pole-sitter with the Japanese, great. If Skybox wants to incorporate ECAPS green propellant into its remote sensing microsatellite constellation, great. But the leadership of NASA’s Space Technology Program/Directorate has no business spending tens of millions of dollars from their limited budget doing a repetitive demonstration of these non-priority technologies.

                The leadership of the Space Technology Directorate needs to do their job, which is getting unproven, NRC priority technologies flight demonstrated. They haven’t done their job in two-odd years, and need to be replaced or get some adult supervision. Neither seems to be in the offing given the lack of action by NASA leadership and the Administration.

  • MECO

    I believe James is pretty much spot on. Hiram also has a point on how you define progress, but I think once the ship starts sinking it takes most of the rest with it (human and robotic). NASA’s space programs will become what happened to aeronautics at NASA, a shadow of its former self and only marginally relevant.

    I think what political leaders need is a clear and realistic sense of what the options are for NASA’s future, along with sober estimates of cost, risk, and schedule. Expectations for human space need a major reset and scaling back (current ideas may be interesting but their totally unaffordable…gotta stop kidding ourselves).

    For too long people have said NASA’s asked to do too much with too little. While true, it has become an overused cliche. People say it and then just move on. The disconnect needs to be studied and spelled out so that priorities can be set. It probably requires chopping off some significant part of NASA, but the sooner the better. Otherwise the ship will indeed sink into irrelevancy.

    • Hiram

      The comparison with NASA Aeronautics is an interesting one. It’s a shadow of its former self, but it still exists, and is still considered important by the Administration and Congress. I would hardly call what it does as “marginally relevant”, though commercial and DoD research has replaced a lot of what it used to do. The work on aircraft noise and emissions isn’t duplicated anywhere else. The diminishment of NASA Aeronautics has hardly caused the ship to sink.

      The expectations for human space flight are getting examined in some detail by the NRC Committee on Human Spaceflight. While few people believe this committee will dare tread outside of the stale rationale for human spaceflight we’ve been working under, it might just help provoke some real national conversation about it. That is, Congress has formally asked the question … “but what’s it for??” As we should all.

      No question that if the expectation for federally funded human space flight is putting feet on rocks, affordable expectations need a major reset. One can blather on and on about how NASA is asked to do too much with too little. The time may have come to bite the bullet and just ask it to do less. No question that what is happening is a recipe for shutting down the NASA we dream about. But it’s not going to shut down the NASA that exists, and is defined by the Space Act.

      NASA Science, for example, has largely steered clear of human spaceflight, and that wall between the directorates insulates SMD from what happens to human spaceflight. Human spaceflight has not been particularly enabling to SMD goals. In view of the flailing of the NASA human spaceflight program, that wall was probably a smart construct, in retrospect.

      • Fred Willett

        A few years ago I noted that NASA was around 10% of the global space economy and risked becoming irrelevant. They are now down to 5.6% and falling.

        • Hiram

          Macintoshes are about 2% of the global PC economy. That doesn’t seem to have made them irrelevant.

          The importance of NASA as a federal agency has nothing to do with the global space economy. In fact, it’s a huge success that the U.S. space economy is much less dependent on NASA than it used to be.

        • Coastal Ron

          Fred Willett said:

          A few years ago I noted that NASA was around 10% of the global space economy and risked becoming irrelevant. They are now down to 5.6% and falling.

          It depends on what NASA is supposed to be. If it’s supposed to compete in the launch services sector, then yes that isn’t much.

          But I think everyone would agree these days that the government doesn’t need to be in the commercial launch business. However there is lots of debate as to whether the government should be in the government launch business, which for NASA really only means launching the rare HLV-sized payloads (I’m being generous there since in reality they don’t exist).

          So what should NASA’s role be with it’s meager budget? If NASA’s budget was focused on helping the U.S. space community grow faster, that meager budget could go a long ways.

          We have already seen the success of the COTS program, and the CCDev/CCiCap program has been doing pretty good too – relatively small amounts of money invested to create new industry capabilities. NASA’s role also went beyond just being an investor, since NASA directly helped with knowledge and facilities. That to me is a great use of tax payer money.

          Contrast that with the SLS and MPCV programs, and it’s clear where the U.S. Taxpayer gets the most ROI for their contribution. In that light NASA’s budget is probably enough, if spent more wisely. The big question is whether the politicians will let NASA spend it’s money more wisely…

  • MECO

    Good discussion. I suspect that there will always by a govt agency called NASA, but unless it, its overseers, industry, and the space and science communities, get real about scaling back goals and programs to something sustainable and resilient to funding volatility, then it will just wither.

    I think the House authorization bill reflects a reasonably realistic funding level. They should be applauded for attempting to bring reality to this. Now, while the funding level is realistic, the bill still has way too much content. NASA has way too many programs, too much infrastructure and too many people. I’d like to see a broad federal BRAC to include NASA, NOAA, DOD, DOE, NIST, etc. Heck, NASA might even come out on the upside of such a BRAC. I know BRAC’s cost money in the near term, but it needs to be done. Otherwise, we’ll just keep paying the bill every year for capacity we dont need or cant afford. How long are we going to waste money before addressing what clearly needs fixing.

    I’m not optimistic the government can be disciplined enough to do a draw down in a smart way. The space community plays an important role in informing policymakers on what the options are. The community needs to provide realistic, constructive proposals on what the choices are:(human space, robotic space, technology, aeronautics, infrastructure). We can either have a controlled landing (as bumpy as it will be) or a crash landing.

    • Hiram

      What do you mean by “reasonably realistic” for the funding level? You mean, as close as possible to previous budgets but acknowledging that purse strings are tightening? That description ought not define “realism”. Realism should be driven by how funding meets national goals and needs, not how funding meets previous funding. If NASA’s budget in the 1960s was kept “reasonably realistic” in this way, we would never have put humans on the Moon.

      To the extent that the bill says …

      POLICY.— It is the policy of the United States that the development of capabilities and technologies necessary for human missions to lunar orbit, the surface of the Moon, the surface of Mars, and beyond shall be the goals of the Administration’s human space flight program.

      … it probably isn’t realistic. This bill doesn’t bring any sort of reality to that policy goal. It’s just whistling dixie, and we all know it.

      As to how long we’re going to waste money before addressing what clearly needs fixing, we’re going to be wasting money until we have a cogent and credible plan for what we want to do that is even remotely affordable. We’re not even close to having that now. Yeah, what’s realistic is that if we can’t think of any way to get the taxpayer excited about NASA activities, getting close to what NASA got last time is a “reasonable” default to hope for. As in, keep your head down, and hope that no one in Congress tries to make a real value judgement.

      • DCSCA

        “Yeah, what’s realistic is that if we can’t think of any way to get the taxpayer excited about NASA activities, getting close to what NASA got last time is a “reasonable” default to hope for. As in, keep your head down, and hope that no one in Congress tries to make a real value judgement.”

        In other words, Project Muddlethrough is right on track through the remainder of the Obama Administration. Look to HRC for a new beginning. She has an interest in HSF. Obama does not.

  • MECO

    By reasonably realistic funding I mean the level of funding the road will bear. (not what the budget should be to do all that NASA has been told to). Sorry for the confusion.

    I believe the rod will bear berween $16B to $17B, and that may be optimistic. Everyone should be planning accordingly. Some would reject this and argue that budget should follow policy and that’s true in an idealistic situation, but that’s not the case now; not for NASA and not for any fedaral program. Programs must be cut to fit the budget, not the otherway around. We can accept that and deal with it by putting together the best program and cutting that which is lower priority (everyone has their opinion, so not an easy process, with lots of programmatically and political impacts).

    Some may believe we just need a better argument so that Congress, White House, public etc. will have an epiphany and make NASA a priority, but It’s just not in the cards, imho. Sorry to say, but I can’t imagine any scenario in the forseeable future that would make NASA a real priority. That doesnt mean it’s not valuable, it’s just that it’s not going to escape the overall trend of budget cutting. So, let’s get to work and lay out the options based on what the road will bear.

    • DCSCA

      “Sorry to say, but I can’t imagine any scenario in the forseeable future that would make NASA a real priority.” muses MECO.

      Depends on who is in office. HRC has a genuine interest in space. Obama has none. And if the PRC presses on toward Luna– it may fall to her administration- in term one or two= to react– or not. Which has been the American characteristic for ‘civil’ space ops since Sputnik.

  • Hiram

    $16 is still a highly arbitrary number. To be honest, if Congress wanted to take a long hard look at prospects for NASA human space flight, it could offer the agency a lot less.

    Let’s be clear about what that $16-17B buys. It buys the illusion that we might be sending humans to Mars someday. $10B probably won’t buy that illusion. But that firehose of federal dollars into congressional districts is dependent on keeping up that illusion. Congress needs to spend that much to make it barely credible. That bare credibility is enough to justify expenditures on ISS and SLS. Now, at $18B, even the illusion of Constellation could no longer be sustained. That’s what happens to illusions that are unaffordable.

  • SLS promises four 70T launches through 2025 at a cost of $41B or $10B investment per launch;
    http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/pages/images/stories/SLS_budget_Integration_2011-08.pdf

    Thus the GOP has created their own reason to cancel the program down the road. If they can be anti-Obama in any legislation they have proven to take that route regardless. NASA is as clear an example as any other.

    Not that it matters, the private heavy lifters will price these things off the launch pad, just as they’re beginning to do with ULA on the military side. Hopefully the private heavy lifters can come along before too much money is wasted prior to cancellation of SLS (or before China shows Congress how its done)

  • Space Review has a good review of SLS Cost:

    http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2330/1

    Launching every four years as seems probable ups the cost per flight to $9B (including development costs) over the anticipated lifetime of SLS.

    At what point will this project be cancelled?

  • DCSCA

    Golden Spike costs the development and flight testing of a two-person lunar landing architecture at $6.4B. Golden Spike doesn’t use SLS or MPCV, but NASA could afford the Golden Spike architecture with just over two years of the current exploration budget. Golden Spike costs repeat missions at $1.5B each. NASA could afford two of the Golden Spike lunar landing missions a year with the current exploration budget.

    Golden Spike is science fiction. ‘Things To Come’ – a work od science fiction too. According, anny attemnpt by NewSpacers to make compariosnd of this kind of foolishness to government space ops in work is false equivalency. NewSpace has flown nobody. and chatter bout lunar trips and Martian colonies is that much more spittle on the grill.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “Golden Spike is science fiction.”

    It’s a real company, whose management include Apollo veterans like Gerry Griffin and Jim French, that is letting contracts with majors like Northrop Grumman on human lunar lander development.

    http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/01/golden-spike-northrop-grumman-lunar-lander/

    http://moonandback.com/2013/05/08/northrop-grumman-completes-lunar-lander-study-for-golden-spike/

    Contrast that with NASA’s current work on human lunar landers, which is nonexistent. That’s science fiction.

    “anny attemnpt by NewSpacers to make compariosnd”

    Learn the English language, you illiterate idiot.

  • DCSCA

    “It’s a real company” spins dbn.

    Which mweans nothing. Becauae it peddles nothiing. Science fiction. Zero flight experience. Deke Slayton worked with Conestoga. Aldrin hosted WWF in Canada. So that gives wrestling credibility in your eyes. Corporate window dressing for guys at the end of their careers is private enterpreise 101, dbn. If you’re going to play the game, brush up on the rules.

    You peddle false equivalency, dbn. NewSpace has flown nobody. That’s the bottom line. And that frustration spills over into desperation when you hurl personal attacks at posters rather than crewed spacecraft into orbit. Get over yourself. If you spent as much energy getting somebody up as you do trying to tear government space ops down, you’d have been flying by now and have some viable credibility in HSF. Until then, America has NASA; NewSpace has nada.

  • Crash Davis

    Well said DCSCA.
    And while you’re at it DBN, go get your shine box!

    • Dark Blue Nine

      “Well said DCSCA.”

      You probably have issues with reading comprehension, but in case you didn’t realize it, the other poster dismissed one of the heroes of the Apollo 13 rescue in order to discredit a private effort to return astronauts to the Moon.

      That’s probably not an argument that you want to subscribe to.

      “And while you’re at it DBN, go get your shine box!”

      Wow! You can misquote a line from Goodfellas! Congratulations! You’re now a top debater and qualified aerospace engineer! Keep up the good work!

      Idiot #2.

    • DCSCA

      “Well said DCSCA.
      And while you’re at it DBN, go get your shine box!” notes Crash.

      You gotta feel bad for NewSpacers, Crash, when the PRC has demonstrated more HSF experience in a decade than ‘private enterprise’ has even attempted since the days of Gagarin and Glenn. When it comes to HSF experiecne, America has 50 years of NASA. HewSpace has 50 years of nada.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “Corporate window dressing for guys at the end of their careers is private enterpreise 101″

    So Gerry Griffin — the lead flight director for Apollo 12, 15, and 17 who played a critical role in saving the lives of the Apollo 13 crew and later served as the director of Johnson Space Center — loses all his “credibility in HSF ops” because he’s leading a private effort to return astronauts to the Moon? Really? This is your argument? To discredit a private human space exploration effort by dismissing an Apollo flight director who helped save astronaut lives?

    So Jim French — an engineer who helped design, develop, and test Saturn V and Apollo LM engines, an engineer whose papers are credited by Bob Zubrin as the inspiration for the Mars DIRECT architecture, an engineer who wrote the classic reference book “Space Vehicle Design” — loses all his “credibility in HSF ops” because he developed and wrote a paper on a private architecture to return astronauts to the Moon? Really? This is your argument? To discredit a private human space exploration effort by dismissing an engineer who was critical to the Apollo effort?

    Your blind hatred of any private human space activity is irrational and idiotic.

    Idiot.

    “trying to tear government space ops down”

    What U.S. human space flight “government space ops” are you talking about? NASA relies on Soyuz for crew transport and Falcon 9/Dragon for cargo transport. Except for ISS on-orbit operations, NASA is out of the “space ops” business.

    Get a grip on reality, idiot.

    “Aldrin hosted WWF in Canada. So that gives wrestling credibility in your eyes.”

    It was the WWE, not the WWF:

    http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/05/buzz-aldrin-gue.html

    Keep working on that “credibility” thing, and let us know when you figure out the English alphabet.

    Idiot.

    “when you hurl personal attacks”

    It’s not a personal attack. It’s a statement of fact. You’re an illiterate idiot. Your latest post contains multiple errors, like this one:

    “Which mweans nothing.”

    And this one:

    “Becauae it”

    And this one:

    “peddles nothiing”

    You write like Elmer Fudd talks.

    Stop posting and learn the English language, you illiterate idiot.

    • DCSCA

      “This is your argument? To discredit a private human space exploration effort…” spins dbn.

      In fact, there is no ‘effort’ to discredit as it is effortless. “Private” HSF on an orbital scale- which is all thst really matters today- is science fiction. Your ‘argument’ is pure false equivalency. And anti-government, privatize everything’ fellas like you don’t like being outed– especially as w/o ‘government’ subsidizing a faux market like the ISS and seed monies for projects to service same, NewSpace is stalled, if not dead.

      NewSpace ‘private enterprised’ HSF- at least on an orbital, lunar and interplanetary scale, is science fiction; paper projects– and paper seems to be a big part of commercial’s rationale as you so often point to it. It’s a feeble attempt at false equivalency with established and experienced government HSF ops. And you know it. And being outted for it frustrates you. Understandable.

      ” NASA is out of the “space ops” business.: says dbn. this, of course, will be news to the crew aboard the ISS and Congress, which has been budgeting for it.

      Deke SLayton was corporte window dressing for the Conestoga people as his career wound down. Heck, McDivitt fronted for Rockwell back in the day; Haise for Locheed as well for shuttle servicing contracting. Even Armstrong sat on several BoDs– including Marathon Oil– for years, something not lost on Bolden BTW. And we know why. Gerry Griffin is corporate window dressing as well.(BTW, he is nearly 80 years old now so the face in the window you’re embracing for NewSpace ain’t that new, is it.)—And along w/t rest, ‘corporate window dressing’ all. [And BTW, no one engineer was ‘critical’ to Apollo– that’s a slap by a NewSpacer at the 400,000 people who made Apollo a reality.] Corporate window dressing is SOP. It’s one of the reasons why Musk was so desperate for old Apollo hands to stop by for a photo op as a validation.

      Those old hands would be fools not to take a paycheck at their ages to act as consultants and pen paper propoeals between tee times. Corporate window dressing, that’s all they are, dbn. And you know it. Still, if you are going to start attaching ‘street cred’ to same, then by your same metrics, the weighted insights by the likes of the late Neil Armstrong, Lovell, Cernan, Stafford, Kraft, Lunney, et al, challenging the credbility of NewSpace proposals are equally valid.

      “Your blind hatred of any private human space activity…” spins dbn.

      You’re projecting again. False equivalency can do that. For as we know, “private HSF activity” since 1961 has failed to even attempt to launch orbit and return anybody safely. ‘Actively flying nobody’- which is your position, is not a metric for establishing equivalency for real world flight experience by government space agencies.

      For instance, the United States government successfully launched six Mercury missions, twelve Gemini flights and four Apollo flights- two to lunar vicinity- before launching a lunar landing mission 44 year ago yesterday (7/16/69). Several Apollos, Skylab and three decades of shuttle ops after that, NewSpace, ‘commercial space’ ‘private snterprised’ space or whatever you want to label it, has failed launch, orbit and safely return anybody from LEO, let along attempt cislunar flights or voyages to Mars.

      Endless posting paper proposals about NewSpace HSF is your attempt to establish false equivalency, which doesn’t fly, figuratlvely and literally, w/established and experienced government HSF ops.

      In fact, the only ‘hatred’- a strong term used by you BTW- seen on this forum has been your endless rants opposing SLS/MPCV and related government HSF projects of scale in an effort to establish false equivalency for NewSpace without flying anybody. But it’s excusable- at least by this poster- because NewSpacers are frustrated by their failures to get flying. All of us who are space advocates want to keep peopl flying– but the smarter ones prefer to stop going in circle,s no place, fast and press on w/BEO ops. Of course, DCSCA apologizes for typos. Always have. However, that they distress you remains a source of amusement and reinforces how easily it is to disteract and get you into the weeds.

      “NASA relies on Soyuz for crew transport and Falcon 9/Dragon for cargo transport.” misleading and inaccurate spin, of course. Progress has been the chief supply ship over the history of the ISS– and they actually dock w/t orbiting zombie BTW. Shuttle ops ended two summers ago. Space X is only a recent effort– and its flights few- a redundancy wasting dwindling resources to service a space platform reprsenting Cold War policy planning from an era long over.

      Angry rants and personal attacks arent’ going to get NewSpacer flying any sooner nor win over converts. The best way to earn some street cred is to stop spinning andd start flying. Get some one up, asround and down safely. Until then, it’s all talk. America has NASA. NewSpace has nada. You want ‘street cred,’ forget the window dressing. Fly someone.

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