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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.