The Washington Post published an interview yesterday with NASA administrator Charles Bolden, primarily discussing leadership issues Bolden has faced in his four years at the top of the agency. Towards the end, though, the Post asks Bolden about NASA’s plans to direct an asteroid, in particular asking if that plan meets the goal established by President Obama in his 2010 Kennedy Space Center speech of sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025. The answer is worth excerpting in full:
Does the asteroid redirect mission, in which you send an astronaut to one that’s in lunar orbit, fulfill President Obama’s goal of going to an asteroid in 2025?
My answer is going to be flaky. The first segment we’ve got to do. We’ve got to identify and characterize many more asteroids than we have done so far. That’s essential for the protection of the planet. That’s critical.
The second segment, which is the redirect mission—it’s a robotic mission, it doesn’t involve humans at all—that’s really necessary for us to develop the technologies that we need to advance exploration. Is it absolutely necessary before you send humans to Mars to do that? No, but it sure would be nice to have all that risk brought down because you’ve done it with the asteroid redirect mission. If that’s successful and then we can get humans to an asteroid in lunar orbit, that more than fulfills my understanding of the president’s direction.
And this is subtle. I have this discussion with my science friends all the time and those who are purist. The president said by 2025 we should send humans to an asteroid. What he meant was, you should send humans to somewhere between Mars and Saturn, because that’s where the dominant asteroids in the asteroid belt are. But no, he didn’t say that. He said: humans to an asteroid.
There are a lot of different ways to do that. There are probably thousands of ways to do it. I think we have come up with the most practical way, given our budgetary constraints today. We’re bringing the asteroid to us.
And so whether I put an astronaut on an asteroid that’s in lunar orbit or put an astronaut on an asteroid that’s still in orbit around the sun between Mars and Jupiter, I don’t care. What’s important is: Have them there.
Bolden’s claim that President Obama meant “you should send humans to somewhere between Mars and Saturn, because that’s where the dominant asteroids in the asteroid belt are” is sure to raise more than a few eyebrows. It’s unlikely the president meant, or many interpreted him as meaning, that humans should go to the main belt (between Mars and Jupiter, not Saturn), a mission that would rival a Mars mission in its length and level of risk. Instead, the assumption was that NASA would send humans to a near Earth asteroid, a mission that could be accomplished on round trips of a year or less, depending on the specific mission.
In any case, Bolden argues that sending humans to an asteroid redirected into lunar orbit satisfies the goal in the president’s 2010 speech of humans to an asteroid, and helps buy down the risk for future humans Mars missions given current budget constraints. But even that is not universally accepted (perhaps a hint to the discussions he says he has “with my science friends… and those who are purist.”) For example, earlier this year, speaking at a meeting of the National Academies committee on human spaceflight, Steve Squyres noted that the president’s 2010 speech called for sending humans “beyond the Moon” to an asteroid in deep space, something that a mission to a very small asteroid redirected into lunar orbit would not appear to strictly satisfy.
I think of Charlie as the Yogi Berra of NASA. You understand what he means, but he says it in a “unique” way.
The video with that WaPo article gives you more context. It shows what a warm-hearted, deeply emotional man he is.
i much prefer sean o’keefe. if he hadn’t quit nasa they probably would be in much better shape overall. no constellation, cev fly-off, use of eelvs…
Would he not have been just as Congressionally hamstrung on the big things, as any other Administrator?
Probably not. O’Keefe was very well connected politically, especially on the appropriations committees. (He staffed Senate approps for eight years.) O’Keefe’s had also worked for/known Cheney since O’Keefe’s first years as a DOD budget. It’s a testimony to O’Keefe’s connections that he and his son were on the private flight that Ted Stevens died on.
Unlike Bolden, who is dictated to by Nelson, or Griffin, whom no one really listened to in terms of enacted budgets and programmatics, O’Keefe had powerful people he could approach to ask for something and get at least some of what he asked for.
Understanding budgets was a big bonus in O’Keefe’s favor.
An unrealistic budget for Constellation is what killed that program.
Bob Clark
“An unrealistic budget for Constellation is what killed that program.”
The budget was realistic for what was in the VSE.
But ESAS and Griffin’s implementation of Constellation blew the VSE budget out of the water.
If O’Keefe had stayed on…or wasn’t a former Admiral approached to take the NASA job after O’Keefe left but declined? Either way, we’d be in a lot better position, HSF-wise, than we are now.
Btw, there’s no guarantee about O’Keefe wanting EELVs. Does anyone know his views on HLV vs. EELVs? Or was he even asked?
i much prefer sean o’keefe. if he hadn’t quit nasa they probably would be in much better shape overall.
O’Keefe was a disaster. The guy could talk for an hour and say nothing. He excelled at gobbletgook talk and admitted his sole reason for taking the gig at NASA was to reign in costsfor shuttle and ISS ops for Cheney. O’kefe was a bad act.
O’Keefe proposed Constellation in 2004.
Which turned out to be a fiscal mess. He tried to crater thge last Hubble servicing flgiht as well. O’Keefe was a professional beancounter. He’d have been just as happy taking inventory at a Home Depot. .
Actually, no. The program they attempted to initiate at the direction of the Bush White House was the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE). The VSE was notable for wanting to develop the resources on the Moon to be used as a stepping stone for missions to further destinations such as to Mars and asteroids. This was actually an affordable program that would have returned us to the Moon and did not even need a super heavy lift vehicle, such as the Ares V.
It was after O’Keefe left, and Griffin took over, that the VSE morphed into the Constellation program, “Apollo on Steroids”, and unsustainable budgets.
Bob Clark
For those in love with Sean O’Keefe … I’ve posted on YouTube his September 3, 2003 appearance before the Senate Science Committee responding to the findings of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22_xfJbFdCs
I’ll leave it to individuals to judge his merits, but it’s an interesting contrast in personalities between O’Keefe and Charlie. One is a professional D.C. insider, the other a retired astronaut and military general with a gentle and sincere personality.
Whatever else you want to say about the two men, there’s no doubt in my mind that I’d trust Charlie.
Watching O’Keefe at a Congressional hearing can put the figures in the hearing room paintings to sleep. O’Keefe can talk for an hour and say nothing. No wonder Cheney loved him.
To my knowledge Bolden is the first guy to run NASA with a space background. O’Keefe had a reputation for being a ruthless cost cutter and he was brought in to count beans. It’s possible that’s what NASA needed, because although I didn’t think O’Keefe was that knowledgeable about anything space-related I did like his non-nonsense EELV-based Moon program before Griffin came in and canceled it.
I’d much rather have Bolden than O’Keefe, but if was up to either one of them we’d already be on the Moon and beyond, using EELVs, nuclear rockets and propellant depots.
Stephen, I usually agree with you on posts, but I have to disagree here. While Charlie is emotional in this video, the transcript and what he actually says shows a deep detachment and inability to explain what NASA is doing – and shows his complete lack of leadership. He says it is his job to explain the program to Congress and the American people and then he says NASA has a leadership gap and then he says the problem is Congress and the American people don’t understand what we’re doing. Now we all understand the leadership gap…
yup. bolden seems like a nice enough guy but he really doesn’t do a good job as administrator.
He final proved what I’ve been saying all along: Bolden is just a poor communicator. No doubt he was a fine astronaut, and an excellent Marine, but as NASA Administrator? Fugadabouttit, as Tony Soprano used to say.
This time around we got the court jester with no clothes.
“I think of Charlie as the Yogi Berra of NASA.” muses Stephen.
Problem is, Stephen, Berra was a great player but a lousy manaager for the Yankees. That’s why Steinbrenner fired him. The Peter Principle in play.
I didn’t think they were talking about a main belt Asteroid mission. That’s a bit out of our league at present. Surely the President’s advisors told him that.
In some future day after January 2017, it would be interesting to interview ex-President Obama and ask about such things. Just what was he briefed on concerning US HSF and what recommendations was he given concerning the moon, NEOs, main belt asteroids, Mars, funding, etc? His own background is not at all in space stuff, so he would have had to rely — necessarily and entirely properly — on input from elsewhere. What did those folks from elsewhere tell him and, not incidentally, who were they?
FWIW, I think that the answer will come down to basically: “We couldn’t afford to do anything other than keep what we already had going. The processes were too expensive, the management too reactionary and the experts too divided. The only way to keep HSF going was to maintain the status quo as far as possible and cut off the failing programs before they killed the program and possibly the agency.”
Bolden’s problem isn’t leadership. It’s clarity of thought. He couldn’t string together a coherent chain of logic if his life depended on it.
No wonder the Administration rolled on the hyper-expensive SLS, maintained the technically crippled MPCV, and tried to justify the ARM in the absence of any utility or rationale with Bolden serving as their chief civil space advisor. NASA’s exploration plan is as incoherent as its Administrator.
doesn’t leadership require some degree of logic?
Given the circumstances then as we know them then, what, if anything, has anyone proposed to do to rectify this situation, beyond cancellation? Lol. If the 2010 rollout was indeed the right direction, then why not now? Better late than never.
“doesn’t leadership require some degree of logic?”
Yes, but the reasoning abilities have to come first. Without them, the leader doesn’t know in what direction to apply his leadership abilities, as is abundantly apparent in Bolden’s flailing on ARM and his prior wishy-washiness on SLS/MPCV.
Bolden’s problem isn’t leadership. It’s clarity of thought.
nonsense. The Marine knows exactly what he is doing- defending the indefensible; ‘hold until relieved’ is his standing order as NASA administrator. He is carryingo ut the diretives for his CIC. Bolden is a military man through and through– and operating on the Peter Principle. If there as a space race in play today, this guy would be in the astronaut office, not NASA HQ.
Either he should’ve stayed on at the Astronaut Office, or, after returning to the USMC and wrapping up his final tour, stayed in retirement-and politely declining the offer to head NASA from the current Administration.
Charlies main job is to make sure Obama doesn’t look bad. Politicians are always concerned with looking good.
It would look bad for Obama if NASA had nothing going on, however measly, that moves Obama’s stated goals for NASA forward. Obama only says “Mars, and humans to Asteroids, and flexible path” because he wants to look good – not because he believes in the difference to the U.S. such goals would evoke.
Problem is, there is no money now, or for the foreseeable future to achieve these goals.
So, we play the Bill Clinton word games, (It depends on what you mean by the definition of ‘is’) and bring an asteroid to the moon, and spin it as satisfying Obama’s goals. Obama gets to look good. Word games
Of course, everyone sees through the phoniness of this. Or as Bolden admits, the ‘flakeyness’ of this.
The political class just loves to be admired for their in-authenticity. Obama, is no exception, and Bolden is wrapped up in supporting Obama in this dysfunctional admiration game.
Sheesh.
Bolden was not President Obama’s pick .. he was foisted on the President by the porkonaut from florida, Senator Nelson.
Does not matter. As a Marine, Bolden has deep loyalty to the U.S. and will do as Obama directs. And in this case, Obama’s direction is to ‘make me look good’.
Boldens’ un accessibility via media is designed to avoid Obama looking bad,as Bolden often says dumb stuff, as the honest man he is.
lol, you have a direct quote from obama, “make me look good”? seriously? why do you even say silly stuff like that?
obama had a very clear plan for nasa with the fy2011 budget request. cancel constellation, more than a billion a year for commercial crew and hlv development starting around 2015 (with spacex in the mix possibly). congress messed up and forced the sls on nasa. these are just the facts.
Obama’s 2011 budget, with respect to HSF Exploration, was ‘say the right stuff to look good’ but kick HSF Exploration down the road till after I am gone so I don’t have to deal with any problems or crisis on my watch’. All the “goals” are so far down the road he gets to look good by saying the ” right stuff” w/o having to be responsible for reproducing any results.
Congress of course disagrees and hoisted SLS and Orion on him.
But they only did that because Obama’s 2011 budget did not adequately address the Concerns of Congress, only the concerns of Obama. Had Obama taken the time to craft a budget/ approach to HSF Exploration that addresses all concerned parties, perhaps NASA’s predicament w SLS/ Orion would have been mitigated.
Arrogant leaders however think they are smarter than everyone else and don’t always reach out to others. Obama’s use of Executive Orders to circumvent th law ( many instances too long to list here) is a display of his arrogance.
Overall , incredibly poor leadership from all elected officials and Bolden.
And this dysfunction we see is just surrounding NASA. Imagine what is going on in similar fashion wrt the rest of the Federal Budget and other Federal programs. Stuff that bloggers to this site are not paying attention too.
Egad
I disagree, President Obama requested funding a lot of the tools we will need for future space exploration … we can keep PRETENDING we do not need fuel depots, closed loop life support, domestically produced main engines for any future heavy lift…
I agree. Funding R&D for undetermined missions is a great ‘kick the can down the road’ strategy. You get to say you are up to something w/o really being upto something.
So it is better to build hardware .. BEFORE you have closed loop nailed down… fuel depots and fuel handling .. nailed down..
hell … screw building any of the tools you need to build a sustainable space faring infrascture ..
just build a big freakin’ disposable rocket for 50 billion and costs 2 billion a launch .. and build a 16 billion dollar disposable capsule at ah billion a pop .. and spash 3 billion worth of hardware every mission ..
I want to do apollo again…
You ARE up to something .. creating the infrastructure for a gas n’ go space based program… and finally bury the apollo model once and for all.
I am not,suggesting the Apollo model. I am suggesting indifferent leadership has failed to generate a consensus around the concerns of al stakeholders and in the absence of such consensus puts forth an R&D plan that emphasizes technologies that are not aligned around a consensus for the eventual use of said technologies. Indifferent arrogant leadership gets to say nice things w/ o having to worry about results. Kick the can down the road baby cause I have other more pressing item on my legacy creating agenda!
The concerns of the stakeholders? They want FAR, cost plus with enough escalator clauses to reach the moon without a launch and the congressional stakeholders who want three people to turn every wrench. That is the system that makes it unsustainable. As we witnessed, there was nothing that could be offered, congress wanted what they wanted and that is what we have. By not finally cracking this .. we are .. in effect, kicking the can down the road, by allowing another over budget and schedule space project burn through the available funding.
With commercial crew on it’s final leg and bigelow ready to go by the time they launch … it will prove to the taxpayer that old pork model just wont fly anymore.
That is why I would have liked to see fuel depot worked on starting now, it is an actual technology that will be needed. Even if all elements of the technology didn’t pan out .. at least it was useful spending instead of make work for a project that will never fly, leaving us with nothing useful.
The dysfunction you site, I agree with; and its a sign of poor leadership all around. SLS/Orion as you say, is another version of kick the can down the road. Both Obama and Congress are playing the same game. How quaint. Too bad they can’t both play another game , together, that empowers Exploration; not just kick it down the road.
Make no mistake. Poor leadership. All around.
Okay James .. I agree with that part .. The point I was trying to make .. and I agree President Obama did now go out of his way to fight for space policy, I do not expect it either. It is such a fractional part of the budget, it barely gets an asterick on budget graphs. But the President DID offer a different road map, just like President Bush did. Neither of them were willing to take it to the mat though and make it a real fight over policy and ultimately implementing that stated policy.
yeah yeah, sure. blame obama, not congress. you must live in bizarro world.
I read the same program to which you’re referring, and I didn’t get any sense of “kick the can down the road”. I did get a sense of naivete. Obama thought he could just ask his space advisors what they wanted and give it to them.
My friends in the nuclear rocket office were ecstatic. They were told they were finally going to get some money. The orbital depot guys were told the same thing. Obama’s space policy advisors thought they could put together a space program that was designed to advance space exploration once and for all.
Boy, was that naive.
What happened next was a repeat of what happened when Richard M. Nixon thought he could cancel on the entrenched interests (it was actually Mayo, Erlichman and Schultz, to whom he had delegated space). Congress hated him and sought retribution, even the GOP side.
In the same way, Obama touched off a firestorm. And the rest became a negotiated compromise..
“obama had a very clear plan for nasa” says josh.
Except he didn’t– and today it is 180 degress from what his early campiagn position was. The current term floating around about Mr. O is ‘feckless.’ In so far as the space program goes, it fits. The guy has zero interest in it.
ofc he did, you denying the facts doesn’t change a thing. read the fy2011 budget proposal. it was a beautiful plan, congress messed up. end of sory.
What is especially lame about this is that what it comes down to, in Mr. Bolden’s eyes, is that we need to send humans to an asteroid because the President said we should. He’s analyzing the President’s words rather than what one would like to be the President’s motivations. “What’s important is: Have them there.” Sorry, Charlie, but that’s not what’s important.
I’m seeing a USMC officer smartly saluting his superior rather than a leader helping his superior flesh out coherent policy.
In floating the idea of a human visit to an asteroid as a goal, Obama was just tossing Charlie a football. Run with it, Charlie! Charlie doesn’t know which way to run, but holds it up proudly over his head so everyone can see what the President handed him. The Congressional front line defenders promptly flatten him.
I like Mr. Bolden but I pity the job he has to do. He has to play the game but deep down he must know what a charade American manned space exploration has become. It has become a whole lot of nothing, or more likely, just fantasy.
How many people really see a vision here or beleive that Orion will fly with astronauts anywhere beyonf L.E.O.? It is just very sad.
Bolden has saluted anf followed the ‘orders’ of his CIC: defending the indefensible. Marines excel at that. From that perspective, he’s done his duty– so ‘well done,’ Chatlie.
But he’s not a Marine anymore, and Obama didn’t hire him to be one – so “wake up”, Charlie.
Heads of departments carry out Administration policy.
Partly right. Heads of departments carry out large scale administration policy and also offer smart advice to their bosses, especially about detailed rationale for that large scale policy. What, you think that Obama was going to come up with a detailed rationale for sending a human to an asteroid? Nope. Someone without that detailed rationale made that suggestion to Obama, and Obama handed it to Bolden to pick up the pieces. Again, Obama just suggested that we ought to go to an asteroid. He wasn’t very specific why. Those specifics are what he pays Bolden to come up with. Bolden tripped over himself in trying to do that, now admittedly offering “flaky” rationale.
See, Administration policy coming out of the White House is a mile wide and an inch deep, but serious rationale requires some depth.
Or it may be that Bolden is just trying to disguise the fact that the emperor has no clothes.
i.e. there is no money to do what the Pres requested. All they can afford to do is send a robotic mission to drag something (anything) within range of the hardware they’ve actually got.
That’s a fair interpretation. Bolden, in his desire to achieve what his boss said we ought to do, twisted the meaning of his bosses words to fit with the hardware and funds they would actually have. Yep, boss, we’re going to an asteroid! It won’t be far away, and it won’t be big, but we’ll serve your command! (Hey, you didn’t SAY far away, and you didn’t SAY big!)
Someone assured Obama that NASA would have the money to do this job. Have to wonder what desk they’re hiding under now.
To make it easy on NASA, Bolden should have proudly organized an expedition to the Hoba meteorite in Namibia. Yes, there humans could stand on, and plant flags on an asteroid. Or what was once an asteroid. One that isn’t that big, nor that far away. In fact, Obama could show up there as well, and help the expedition. That would be cool, with our President standing on an asteroid, after pushing the other tourists off, and it would be really, really cheap. NASA could outfit a pickup truck with some new technology, and just go for it. Yeah, they wouldn’t need SLS or MPCV. That’s a problem …
How can you say he “saluted” the President? He has been undermining the President’s programs since he got in there, either actively or passively. He never even tried to explain or support the President’s 2011 budget (remember he worked with Coats on “Plan B” right away), commercial crew (lip service, but no comprehensive campaign) or now the asteroid mission. He just goes with what the last guy told him and the last guy is usually Bill Nelson or ATK. Obviously if anyone at the white house was paying attention, or was willing to spend an ounce of political capitol on NASA he would have been asked to leave long ago.
Why is this surprising to anyone? That was as incoherent as the rest of the policies of the Obama administration. Dear god! Three more years of this!
Stephen, please stop carrying the water for this administration. Yogi would have had a more coherent policy for NASA.
All this proves is how utterly directionless Obama space policy has been. We’ll be quite some time cleaning up the mess, provided the new president makes it a priority.
Heh. As opposed to the “direction” of the last administration, whose well defined direction was unimplementable and unaffordable. And you’re right. This administration took some time cleaning up the mess left by the last one. Probably more than it should have, given that it wasn’t a priority.
The direction of the Bush administration was was to extend our presence in the solar system through the Vision for Space Exploration. Through O’keefe it was, “go as you pay”. Probably with modified EELVs, (not my preferred option) and slower then I would have liked but it would have been steady progress toward a goal. That was scraped by this administration for what? I would like to say it his mess is caused by disinterest and not incompetence but given the state of this administrations foreign and domestic policies its definitely the latter.
The “go as you pay” mandate was preserved by this Administration. We’re building an SLS (which we can barely pay for) and an Orion. Actually, once we build SLS, we’ll barely be able to afford to go anywhere with it, but that’s go-as-you-pay! In particular, this Administration wants to make technology investments that make going more affordable, and making investments in commercial space that should lower costs in getting to LEO. So this Administration scrapped an overly ambitious program that was never really going to get us anywhere for a program that would at least preserve our ability to work in space. That incompetence is a result of disinterest. The efforts have been poorly marketed, and Charlie is holding the reins on that effort.
“The direction of the Bush administration was was to extend our presence in the solar system through the Vision for Space Exploration. Through O’keefe it was, “go as you payâ€. Probably with modified EELVs, (not my preferred option) and slower then I would have liked but it would have been steady progress toward a goal. That was scraped by this administration for what?”
O’Keefe’s VSE approach wasn’t scrapped by the Obama Administration. It was scrapped by Griffin, ESAS, and Constellation, which totally ignored go-as-you-pay and bet the farm on huge budget increases that never materialized.
“I would like to say it his mess is caused by disinterest and not incompetence but given the state of this administrations foreign and domestic policies its definitely the latter.”
The Obama Administration is responsible for the incompetence currently on display in the ARM proposal. The Obama Administration is also responsible for the incompetence on display in the slow-motion MPCV train wreck and SLS’s ridiculously high flight costs.
The Obama Administration is _not_ responsible for the poor assumptions in ESAS that killed the VSE and the technical incompetence and ridiculous costs that doomed Ares I and Constellation.
I’m rather amused by all of this historical revisionism concerning Constellation. It was not killed because it was “unaffordable.” Lord know the current POTUS is willing to spend a lot of money on programs of far less importance. It was killed because Obama wanted to and because he could.
Revisionism? It was killed because it was unaffordable just as the SLS will be killed because it is unaffordable. Using outdated rockets from the 1970`s the SLS is an example political engineering with no know mission other than political arrogance.
“It was not killed because it was ‘unaffordable.'”
The Augustine Committee said that it was unaffordable based on historical budget allocations to NASA. Bush II didn’t request the money that everyone knew that Constellation needed, and Congress didn’t lather that extra money into the approps bill. So that all spells “unaffordable”. All Obama did was to pull the rug out from under what had become a laughable fiscal pretense. As you say, he wanted to, and he could do that. Amen.
As to Obama spending lots of money on programs of far less importance, yes, he didn’t ask you about what you thought was important, and had to make up his priority list without you!
“All Obama did was to pull the rug out from under what had become a laughable fiscal pretense. As you say, he wanted to, and he could do that. Amen. ”
Actually no he couldn’t. The courts ruled during Nixon’s term that money appropriated by congress has to be executed by the Exective Office.
The President presents a non binding budget to congress. Congress voted and passed legislation (a law) not to fund constellation. The President signed it. Congress could have offered to fund constellation, just like they did with the SLS. In the case of the Constellation there wasn’t enough votes.
CONGRESS killed that program. The President signed it into law.
Formally, that is correct. Obama didn’t singlehandedly defund it. But Obama constituted the Augustine committee that did the rug pulling. The defunding was in response to the rug pulling. Amen. Congress killed the program by simply not funding it when the budget proposal didn’t want to fund it. It is indeed an important point that the demise of Constellation was fundamentally congressional agreement with the White House position.
So Obama REALLY wanted to save Constellation?
Bob Clark
No Robert, but by signing the 2010 NASA Authorization bill and the 2011 continuing resolution appropriating funds for SLS and Orion that’s exactly what he did. He even made a speech bragging about it at KSC.
It’s his problem. A minor problem, but his nevertheless. It’s his legacy.
No the President was against the Constellation program .. but in his first term he was against a lot of things.. doesn’t mean congress stopped funding them. The President can try and shape the budget, can promise high profile jobs and do some arm twisting, but if congress wants to fund something .. in order for the President to actually kill something, it has to be done with a Veto (which can be over ridden) or an executive order. The President did neither.
The execuative branch does not write the money bills, they have to originate in the house, it executes them.
you’re right. constellation wasn’t just killed because it was unaffordable. it was killed because it was unaffordable, about a decade behind schedule, technically unsound, unsustainable and downright boring.
Doubling the manned spaceflight budget for NASA during one of the worst recession’s in U.S. history is equivalent to unaffordable.
Bob Clark
“Doubling the manned spaceflight budget for NASA during one of the worst recession’s in U.S. history is equivalent to unaffordable.
Bob Clark”
Not if you;re a Kenysian. Government spending when you’re in a hole is a good thing.
“I’m rather amused by all of this historical revisionism concerning Constellation. It was not killed because it was “unaffordable.†Lord know the current POTUS is willing to spend a lot of money on programs of far less importance. It was killed because Obama wanted to and because he could.” says Mark.
Well said. And given Obama’s position on space early in his campaign, his current position is 180 degrees from it– and it is clearly not his but his staff that recommend it– he signed of and moved on. Obama has no interst in space.
“All this proves is how utterly directionless Obama space policy has been.” notes Mark.
In the out box in 2010 was direction enough. Wait for the next player o deck.
That may stem from disinterest.
I was struck recently to learn how high a percentage of the budget NASA was during the Apollo years, ca. 5%, whereas now it’s ca. 0.5%. To put that in perspective it would be like NASA having a budget of $180 billion a year now.
Obama of the left is well familiar of the calls during the Apollo years of spending all that money at home rather than on space. That disdain for NASA during that time by many may have an influence on his current views of the agency.
Bob Clark
“I was struck recently to learn how high a percentage of the budget NASA was during the Apollo years, ca. 5%, whereas now it’s ca. 0.5%. To put that in perspective it would be like NASA having a budget of $180 billion a year now.
Obama of the left is well familiar of the calls during the Apollo years of spending all that money at home rather than on space. That disdain for NASA during that time by many may have an influence on his current views of the agency.”
This is an idiotic argument. No President since Johnson has maintained NASA at such a high percentage of the budget. In fact, NASA has never had a budget above $20 billion. The sitting President is to blame for the idiocy of ARM and acquiescing to the idiocy of MPCV/SLS. But it’s ridiculous to blame the Obama Administration for not increasing NASA’s budget more than ten-fold to $180 billion. That’s Tinkerbell talk.
Seriously, you took that as a claim that Obama, or anybody, wanted to multiply the NASA budget by 10??? I can assure you nobody else made that reading.
The point was like many of a similar political view, Obama was not, and is not, a fan of large expenditures for NASA that could have gone to fund social programs.
Bob Clark
180 billion. good one. nasa will not and should not get this kind of money. they’re a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy. give nasa’s 18 billion to spacex and they will do more with it than nasa could do with 180 billion.
Of course. That amount of money, I see you agree, is unfathomable. But the point is it WAS like that during the Apollo years in terms of percentage of the federal budget.
Bob Clark
“Obama of the left is well familiar of the calls during the Apollo years of spending all that money at home rather than on space.” notes Bob.
Ironic as all the money WAS spent at home to get to space. Obama revealed the real problem just today at a WH ceremony honoring the ’72 Dolphins when he noted why they bothered to his people: “Most of my staff are in their 30s.” They simply didn’t get it. If you’er in your 30s and working in the WH, your benchmark in spaceflight sd s kid was Challenger, not Apollo. ‘Nuff said.
The President gave a VERY CLEAR picture of what the National space policy should be. Just because you hate the President with a passion, and automatically take the opposite side of his proposals .. doesn’t it wasn’t a clear picture. It was just not the crony capitalism you wanted to see for the usual suspects.
This blog showed a lot of supporters for his first NASA budget…
The porkonauts in congress killed it.. the policy we are following now is not the president’s it is the porkonaut policy we following .. the heaviest subsidies and crony capitalism it going to lockheed martin and boeing ..
so stop trying to blow smoke .. you are actually a laughing stock now .. as it clearly illustrated by your comments on your yahoo posts… I have never seen so many LOL’s about any commentator like you get.
“The President gave a VERY CLEAR picture of what the National space policy should be.” insists Vlad.
Except he didn’t, Vlad. And his 190 from his campaign position was a clear demonstration of how poorly crafted that policy is.
My apologies, it was clear to everyone on the space blogs who wrote in favor of it, including astronauts and republicans like Newt Gingrich… the only one who seems to think it was unclear was you.
“My apologies, it was clear to everyone on the space blogs who wrote in favor of it”
Which isn’t saying much, is it, Vlad. And Newt gingrich, Moon President is hardly a ringing endorsement, vlad. Mr. Obama’s 180 position on space policy from his early campaign positions speaks volumes about his disinterest in space policy. Forget abotu him. his admistration is essentially over on this issue.
Agreed, Mark. Totally agree. IMHO, Obama has been the worst President for NASA since Jimmy Carter (who had the anti-NASA Walter Mondale as VP).
Wow – so Charlie said that the President wanted to send a person past the orbit of Mars?? President Obama is a pretty smart guy but he has never been a space enthusiast and almost certainly has no idea what a technological challenge that is!! Charlie does know and he knows that we will be ready to do that for 50 years. The available technology MIGHT stretch as far as to take people to Mars, with maybe a 50/50 chance of someone making it back to Earth. But no way we have any chance of sending people to the Asteroid Belt and even hoping to have some of them arrive alive.
The current administration’s policy in space, IS indeed FLAKY. How the sheer farce involved in all this, evades some people, I’ll never know! First, the President declares the Moon to be worthless as a goal & jettisons the new manned Lunar project. Next, he proclaims a replacement goal of astronauts ‘visiting’ an asteroid—–any asteroid, and posits 2025 as the supposed deadline. Then, NASA & the space experts analyze all the devilish details, and finally conclude that THIS project just won’t fly: even reaching NEO’s with a manned capsule introduces too many technological unknowns, for such a flight to be do-able. Then, act two: somebody waves up their hand, and tells the assembly that, “Hey, if we can’t send a crew to an asteroid, why not just haul the darned thing back to LEO, where we could easily send a crew to investigate it?”
All the eyes in the chamber open wide, with tantalizement. Wow, what a genius idea: we’ll send a space-probe to latch onto the giant rock, and reel it in to near-Earth space! The finish line will just get moved close-by to Earth! The President gets his big space goal done: mission accomplishable! But then, someone in the room has to state the obvious: Not only are we taking the easy way out, by dragging the asteroidal rock to LEO, but we’re also taking an acute risk of inadvertently crash-landing the said space rock to Earth. Uh-oh, this’d make the assignment a tad-bit too dangerous, plus it keeps our astronauts stranded doing the same old LEO flying, that they’ve been doing for half-a-century——come to think of it. The “solution”: we haul the asteroid to a high-orbit around the Moon instead! You remember right, boys? THAT same ole’ dull & over-visited Moon, that the Prez told us we must never travel to again? Yup, in order to make a cislunar manned flight worth doing again, for the 21st century, we’ll just have to emplace an NEO rock right next door, to the exact-same, boring, “been there, done that” Moon. Our first deep space jaunt since 1972, shall now involve ignoring Luna, but swinging into orbit around it, anyway! We’ll have nothing to do with that lonely satellite, during this mission: instead, our grand assignment is to fly up-close to an artificially emplaced boulder-block. BOY, ARE WE GONNA LOOK STUPID, IF CHINA IS LANDING A CREWED LUNAR MODULE, AT AROUND THE SAME TIME!
“BOY, ARE WE GONNA LOOK STUPID, IF CHINA IS LANDING A CREWED LUNAR MODULE, AT AROUND THE SAME TIME!”
It depends on what they do with it. We may just end up looking smart!
“You remember right, boys? THAT same ole’ dull & over-visited Moon, that the Prez told us we must never travel to again?”
It depends on how you define “exploration”. If exploration is to go where we’ve never gone, Obama is right, and the Moon is off the table. Of course, what it comes down to is WHY we would return to the Moon, which, except for its loneliness, is not referred to at all in your text. Yes, federal expenditures actually have to make that “why” case. If the Chinese don’t have a “why” that is any better than showing everyone that they can do what we did forty years ago, BOY ARE WE GONNA LOOK SMART!
But that’s exactly right about an artificially emplaced boulder-block. It’s about going where we’ve never gone before, but for reasons that are somewhat obscure. It doesn’t pass the WHY test.
@ Hiram,….Har-dee-har-har! America going into deep space for the first time in 50 or 60 years, merely to lasso in an NEO rock—–and you think THAT’d be a better acheivement than the Chinese sending a fortnight-length landing stay on the Moon?! This continuing avoidance of Luna, by a large part of the space community, has reached such ludicrous proportions! While you speak all this negative talk, about China possibly “doing what we did forty years ago”, gee, I wonder what you’d think if they launched up an ISS-like space laboratory, instead??! Don’t LEO stations qualify as “been there, done that” also?? No matter what you guys in the Flexible Path camp say, the Moon still stands as a very instructional & technologically-challenging destination! Each & every one of those thorny problems, involved in interplanetary flight, that remain unsolved, can be tested out & dealt with on the Lunar surface & in Lunar orbit. Playing Mars astronaut in oversized tuna can tents in the high Arctic, won’t bring you any closer to treading the red dust in real life!
“Hiram,….Har-dee-har-har! America going into deep space for the first time in 50 or 60 years, merely to lasso in an NEO rock—–and you think THAT’d be a better acheivement than the Chinese sending a fortnight-length landing stay on the Moon?!”
No, I don’t believe that, and I never said that lassoing a NEO rock would be of much value. In fact, the rationale for ARM escapes me entirely. Most of your response to my post isn’t even relevant to what my post said. Why don’t you read a post before you respond to it?
“gee, I wonder what you’d think if they launched up an ISS-like space laboratory, instead??!”
Well, the Chinese launched a small station, and it seems to work well. Welcome to the club, guys! But yes, we already did that, and we did it really, really well. In fact, that’s why the Chinese have gotten rather thin press about that mission. No one seems greatly upset by it. They showed the world that they could do what we’ve already done. To the extent their station is ISS-like, that’s what I think.
Actually, it’s a good point about “been-there-done-that” with regard to LEO. Seems like the Mercury missions should have kept LEO off-limits to NASA exploration missions if that were the guiding strategy. I think that can be reconciled by understanding that, fundamentally, ISS isn’t really “exploration”. It’s about development. We’ve been there many times, and we know a lot about how to live there. But the distinction between exploration and development was, unfortunately, lost on Obama. I think the fault was that going back to the Moon has been sold by lunar return advocates as “exploration”. I think Obama was challenged to find something that sounded vaguely like something better than that for exploration.
@Hiram,….That stupid “been there, done that” argument always seems to stand in the way of what could be a glorious manned space future starting with the Moon. I have vehemently despised that absurd reasoning, that because our men have visited the Moon before, a vast stretch of decades ago, that there is now not anything further to do out there. The “we’ve been there already” argument serves only to keep us trapped in LEO, and really doing nothing but the things we’ve long since already been doing! It makes NO sense to me, whatsoever!
To all those Mars zealots out there, I would question: what’ll you all say, once the sixth successful Mars landing mission ends, and/or once the twelfth astronaut has successfully walked the surface there??? Will you all start singing the chorus of how the next destination from then on HAS TO BE DIFFERENT NEXT TIME??! How no one better ever go back, simply because “we’ve been there before”??!
Gentlemen, earthly exploration would never’ve involved anything more than basic surveying visits & encampments to any new continent or island, if the big national powers at the time had prohibited further & deeper exploration, once the initial discoverers had come home. Imagine if Antarctica had seen no further visitors after the 1911-12 polar-reaching missions? The International Geophysical Year wave of new human activity would never’ve happened, in the late 1950’s, all based on the excuse that “we’ve been there before”. (Can you imagine President Eisenhower making such a ridiculous remark, with regard to stopping renewed South Polar exploration?!)
“That stupid “been there, done that†argument always seems to stand in the way of what could be a glorious manned space future starting with the Moon.”
It could also be seen to stand in the way of what could be a couple of desperately lonely lunar outpost residents. Is there glory in that? Again, I’ll just say that Obama looks at “exploration” as going somewhere we’ve never been before.
Yes, I’ll imagine if Antarctica had seen no further visitors after the 1911-12 polar-reaching missions. Our nation would not be any worse off, and our national prestige would not be noticeably lower. We sent more visitors there precisely because Antarctica offered specific scientific advantages. They weren’t exploring Antarctica per se, but were exploring space science and climactic science.
After the sixth successful Mars mission ends, and if we haven’t by then figured out anything useful to do on Mars, by all means I’d look to new destinations.
Sending platoons of humans to use the Moon for ISRU makes sense only if a major human push into the cosmos is a priority. It may be so in the wet dreams of some, but is simply not to Congress or the White House.
@Hiram,…..Those “desperately lonely lunar outpost residents”, will be solving each & every one of those prickly problems posed by hypothetical interplanetary space-flight! Innovative new solutions to on-planet stays, beyond the Earth’s ionosphere, will spring about, because of the real-time challenge of having to grapple with the up-until-then unresolved issues. Renewed Moon expeditions will shed light on all of this.
Again, camping in the Arctic wilderness, & playing Marsonaut, in supposed “Mars analog bases”, has some severe weaknesses in terms of dealing with the actual conditions of far-deep space. The same goes for bio-domes & LEO stations: None of these things will be adequate for practicing/rehearsing the nitty-gritty of that stage play called “Staying Alive on a Six-Months-Trip-Away, Distant Planet”. (Actually, it’s even worse than that, because of the complexity of waiting for proper planetary alignments, it would mean NO week-to-week, alternating launch windows to return-to-Earth; to start a return-journey. Hence, the would-be Mars exile-time, inevitably would be way longer.)
Chris Castro said:
“Those “desperately lonely lunar outpost residentsâ€, will be solving each & every one of those prickly problems posed by hypothetical interplanetary space-flight!”
And how do you imagine they will be solving those prickly problems with far less logistical support and raw materials than what the practice locations have had?
Your lack of real-life experience means you really have no idea how hard it will be for doing ANYTHING in space, which is what the ISS has been showing us for over a decade.
For instance, raw material for seals can’t be made out of any raw material that is on the Moon, and seals will be wearing out constantly because of the abrasive composition of the lunar dust. No amount of ingenuity can solve a lack of basic raw material.
The fantasy that people living on the Moon can be self-sufficient is just that – a fantasy. The Moon will never be self-sufficient, mainly because it lacks an atmosphere and the complex compositions that are required to support life as we know it. Of course maybe you are not human…
“BOY, ARE WE GONNA LOOK STUPID, IF CHINA IS LANDING A CREWED LUNAR MODULE, AT AROUND THE SAME TIME!â€
It depends on what they do with it. We may just end up looking smart!
Except we won’t. Not wen politics rules the economic world and image over substance enhances power. In this era, if the next man on the mono is Chines,e the final nail in the coffin of the American century will be driven home.
@DCSCA,…..Agreed! The final coffin-nailing of the American century will have begun, the day Chinese spacemen land on the Moon, and exceed the surface stay time, of the longest Apollo expedition—–by then, probably 60 years into the past!
China then’ll proceed to try longer-staying missions, which’ll require the use of dynamic, new technological equipment & systems, for their lunar landers. Just staying on the Moon for so much as three weeks, will require the crew contending with the long lunar night, hence electrical-power-generation innovations. The possibility of having to survive a solar flare hit, will lead to radiation-protection system innovations; as the crew will be outside of the ionosphere. The fact that their space-suits & on-board machinery will have to contend with gritty lunar regolith, will mean new technological solutions to attenuate & reduce the effects of such continuous exposure.
In short, China will be THE NATION that first grapples with all of the basic, unsolved problems of manned interplanetary flight. Meanwhile, at around the same time, America is going to be entangled with lassoing & hauling an asteroid, & flying a crewed vehicle close-by to it, possibly in a high-lunar-orbit. Ironically, in the same gravity-sphere as the taikonauts; but the Americans will totally lack a landing craft, because fifteen or twenty years before, the Flexible Path people told us that we would never need just such a lander!
Chris Castro moaned:
“In short, China will be THE NATION that first grapples with all of the basic, unsolved problems of manned interplanetary flight. ”
What a laugh. They have problems bending sheets of aluminum for their upcoming Long March 5 rocket, and you think they are poised to conquer the solar system?
WHAT A LAUGH!!
At Coastal Ron,…..If they’re smart, and they eventually build a lunar lander, and banish all the ridiculous phobia against building one, that seems to’ve gripped all the Flexible Path adherents, then they’ve got the basic building blocks for resolving every one of the obdurate issues which are currently blocking an actual interplanetary expedition from taking off. NASA badly needs experience with planetary surface operations. Further decades spent exclusively in LEO will NOT yield the much-needed data!
The so-called Inspiration Mars crewed planetary flyby proposal, sounds farcical & ludicrous, considering just how little deep space experience we’ve got——the closest of which is more than 40 years ago! Where’s the life-support system that could withstand 501 days, without resupply or earth-sent-maintainance?——just to name one big item. The people promoting this “project”, are living in a fantasy world, in my view. Can you really envision such a mission’s launch, ready & on schedule to be launched in January of 2018, to meet the opportunity window?! Think about it: Zero experience since 1972, with sending a manned spacecraft via an earth departure stage, out of LEO. Remember that once they are far enough outbound, beyond cislunar space, that the crew will be inescapably commited to the huge 501 days away from Earth. Could the NASA of a mere four & a half years from now, be prepared to keep such a far-deep space crew alive for that giant span of time?!
The gloomy reality is that NASA will NOT even have launched another manned American capsule, to mere LEO, by January of 2017, when BO leaves office. Just how much new flight experience dealing with brand new spacecraft hardware will they’ve got before that momentous January of 2018 big expedition start?
By the looks of your post you must have forgot to your meds.
Now .. you are a liar … no other way to put it .. unless of course you can provide proof of these statements:
“First, the President declares the Moon to be worthless as a goal ”
Please provide proof the President said the moon was worthless as a goal?
The President stated that we had already been to luna before and therefore thought we could better press the technology boundries by picking a different target .. no where in the speech he gave at the Kennedy space center did he use the word worthless…
This is what he said regarding not making the moon the end all be all goal of the United State’s space exploration policy:
“So I believe it’s more important to ramp up our capabilities to reach — and operate at — a series of increasingly demanding targets, while advancing our technological capabilities with each step forward. ”
Again this goes to what Mark Witlessington stated.
The president called for 6 billion increase over 5 years for NASA…. congress shot it down.
The President stated:
“But I want to repeat — I want to repeat this: Critical to deep space exploration will be the development of breakthrough propulsion systems and other advanced technologies. So I’m challenging NASA to break through these barriers. And we’ll give you the resources to break through these barriers. And I know you will, with ingenuity and intensity, because that’s what you’ve always done”
Well there is another one .. mark witlessington said the president’s policy was directionless… here was another CLEARLY STATED DIRECTION.. but congress refused to fund it ..
President Obama .. like President Bush before him .. wanted NASA funded to start on a fuel depot.. here was another CLEARLY STATED DIRECTION but the porknauts refused to fund it.
The President stated:
“By buying the services of space transportation — rather than the vehicles themselves — we can continue to ensure rigorous safety standards are met. But we will also accelerate the pace of innovations as companies — from young startups to established leaders — compete to design and build and launch new means of carrying people and materials out of our atmosphere.”
He requested 6 billion over 5 years to FULLY FUND multiple companies to do commercial crew. Once again another CLEARLY STATED DIRECTION but congress refused to fund it.
The President stated:
“Fifty years after the creation of NASA, our goal is no longer just a destination to reach. Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even indefinite. And in fulfilling this task, we will not only extend humanity’s reach in space — we will strengthen America’s leadership here on Earth.”
WOW .. imagine that another CLEARLY STATED DIRECTION but congress refused to fund any of the tech laid out in his budget request…
Hell Dana R. had to ORDER NASA several times to finally have the fuel depot data released .. and what did NASA’s own internal study show?
Fuel depots are cheaper but congressional porkonauts want to give MASSIVE Subidies and crony capitalism to lockheed ATK and boeing..
16.5 BILLION for a freakin’ disposable capsule .. Mark witlessington doesn’t call that a subsidy or croney capitalism though .. lol
Is it really any wonder why Mark gets ssooo many LOL’s?
I feel I should speak up here. Even though he used some overly harsh language I think Vladislaw is correct. I think you’ve let that curious psychological ailment known as “Wingnuttery” gain such a foothold in your psyche that it has now seriously affected your thinking. To the point where some people think you have no common sense at all.
With each absurd statement and obviously false assertion, people’s respect for your ideas and thoughts is dimininished and your arguments become more ineffectual. You are indeed openly mocked.
You are are not the only one in this forum facing this situation but you may be the most intellectually agile. Can you recognize the problem, do something about it, and come back to reality? Or are satisfied with being thought of as something akin to an annoyance who really does not have much of value to contribute?
mark is either clueless or bought and paid for.
@Vladislaw,…..The President did denigrate the Moon as a destination, in his speech to NASA, in April of 2010. When I heard those infamously ignorant words of “we’ve been there before”, it was enough for me to change political parties, because I could never support the reduction of the nation’s spacefaring work to one-shot-spectacular stunts, where the destination had to be different each & every time!! Sure, lasso-ing an NEO rock & reeling it in to Earth space would undoubtedly be “different”. But what in heaven’s name does a rendezvous with a boulder get you, in terms of the technological breakthroughs necessary for viable interplanetary travel??!
But Chris … that is EXACTLY what you wanted this President to say about LEO, we have been there before lets goto the moon.
You are making a false agruement. Lori even said that the President did take the moon off the table for never revisiting, she stated he didn’t want it as a FIXED be all end all destination. Like President Bush, he wanted a more flexible system that was not designed solely for luna.
It would be like building cars and planes to only drive or fly a very limited fixed designation point that would mean redisigning for every destintion.
That is the reason we have gas stations, it gives the vehicle the ability to drive to many destinations. The same reason we should be building fuel depots and the Nautilus X
Remember, Vadislaw, there’s a difference between what you want NASA to do and what Congress will allow it to do. Again, the basic problem with this Administration is that they have poorly communicated their goals for NASA, and are paying the price for it. And I was willing to give this Administration a chance, but when he said “been there, done that,” whatever support I would have had evaporated then and there. Sen. Nelson and the other pro-NASA congresscritters have shown more leadership that anyone in the Administration, IMHO.
Want to blame someone for poor communication? The one you cite is leaving….and hopefully soon, Bolden will follow, and the Presidential Science Advisor (who also shares blame) will go with him.
The goals were CLEARLY expressed in the first budget for NASA .. a budget that was discarded immediatly and congress refused to fund anything other than the porktrain rocket to nowhere…
I am so tired of hearing if the President would have only communicated better… what a bunch of BS
It would not have mattered what he said .. NOTHING would have changed what congress wanted.
endless cost plus contracts and disposable hardware for the usual suspects in the space industrial complex and no funding for anything that breaks the traditional pork train.
Like it or not, that’s how Washington works. Again, Vadislaw, the opposition was bipartisan from the get-go. Not just Republicans like Shelby, Hutchinson, or Vitter, but Democrats-one of the most liberal members of the House-Shelia Jackson-Lee came out swinging-Houston is her district-JSC. And it wasn’t just the “Space states”, but others as well: when you have subcontractors, sub-sub contractors, and so on spread out in multiple states….well, you get the idea. Not to mention that a lot of the anger was also from Congresscritters upset that they had been blindsided, and prior to the decision, hadn’t been consulted. That was how NOT to get Congress on your side.
I was surprised by that number so I looked it up and apparently that is NASA’s estimate:
Orion spacecraft’s budget and tech concerns mount ‘Incremental’ work puts schedule, costs at risk, report says.
Aug. 16, 2013
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20130816/SPACE/308160026/Orion-spacecraft-s-budget-tech-concerns-mount
Something’s wrong when the development cost of just the capsule rises that high.
Really, it will soon become apparent that commercial space is the only way NASA will be able to accomplish manned spaceflight going forward.
Bob Clark
Yep, something was wrong a long time ago. Mainly in the design which has changed over time, along with the initial assumptions.
1. Basically, the Orion design geniuses thought they could simply scale-up the Apollo capsule outer mould line and then build from there all the rest. First big mistake.
2. Used existing legacy build methods
3. Used existing legacy build materials.
4. Cost plus contracting.
These have lead to problems with structural cracking of the pressure vessel as well as a heat shield Avcoat that also doesn’t meet the required standards. If you want an example of legacy materials and manufacturing, check out exactly how they create a heatshield for this beast. I guarantee you’ll be blown away.
Quote: “Technicians at Textron Defense Systems near Boston are applying Avcoat ablator material to some 330,000 cells of a honeycomb on the heat shield of NASA’s new Orion spacecraft. To ensure that each cell is filled correctly, they are individually X-rayed and a robot is used to machine the material, sanding off fractions of an inch so that the heat shield matches Orion’s precise plans.”
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2013/07/orion-heat-shie.html
And the flat budget has exacerbated this situtation since they are now delaying things like environmental system design and testing, abort tests, etc.
This is just a disaster but then, it was pretty much foreordained. I could go on but it’s just too depressing
Compare SpaceX COTS Dragon and Dragonrider program, Boeing CST-100 and Dreamchaser. Basic specifications provided by NASA, design and manufacturing decision left to the companies, fixed milestone payments. Optional milestones, fixed budget.
Yep – and this is Bolden’s legacy… continuing Orion and morphing Ares V to SLS. He and his buddies in Congress are getting what they wanted. Our only hope is commercial, but they are trying to kill that too by moving away from SAA’s and going to contracts.
To get a handle on that huge cost I looked up the cost of platinum. That development cost for the ca. 10,000 kg Orion is about 30 times what it would be if it were made of pure platinum!
So platinum still isn’t expensive enough to get the point across. How about diamonds?!? I looked up the price of diamonds and found this:
The Global Diamond Industry: Portrait of growth.
December 12, 2012 Bain report By Yury Spektorov, Olya Linde and Pierre-Laurent Wetli
GREAT POST! I have called the MPCV the gold plated gem incrusted disposable capsule .. but that still is under pricing what it is really costing.
trying out some new material, chris?
@ josh,…..Yes. I find it funny, how the Flexible Path people also, don’t just move the Lasso-of-an-Asteroid finish-line to LEO, or to the Lagrange point antipodal to Luna. That way, they wouldn’t have to even bother with seeing the natural satellite up-close, nor have to deal with the prickly issue of constructing an earth-escape rocket stage. [Yeah, yeah, I can envision how decelerating into a reachable elliptical or high earth orbit path, might pose the mission planners difficulty. Plus I know just how craven they all are, about the possibility of an accidental crash-land of their NEO on the home planet!]
Have faith, Chris. If we commercial supporters get our way there’ll be a Bigelow-Hab based lunar facility well before China will likely try to put one there. If we were relying solely on SLS we probably wouldn’t be able to do it though.
@Jim Nobles,……The commercial boys so far, show NO interest in the Moon, which I have always known. They’re only interested in the sensational, virgin-territory stuff! I have NO faith in their ability to create a viable crewed, deep space transport system. Hence I see the government space program as still a necessary evil, towards making it all happen——starting with the Moon. The Lassoing-an-Asteroid mission is a highly pointless & ludicrous idea, which I hope NASA doesn’t ultimately do.
The commercial boys so far, show NO interest in the Moon
How ignorant and idiotic. Have you never heard of Moon Express, or Shackleton Energy Company?
Or Golden Spike?
Or Robert Bigelow?
flexible path is not what nasa is doing. that would mean developing in space infrastructure and actually advancing the technology base. nasa hasn’t done that since the 60s. instead they’re forced to built another launcher.
i’m mostly interested in spacex going to mars cause that’s what’s actually going to happen. in time people like you will understand that, too.
Hi Josh.
Elon certainly wants to go to Mars but he’s stated his preference for a public-private effort. I don’t have any insight into whether or not he’d do it as a purely private effort but he’s also said he’s happy to supply vehicles to those companies and organisations that have a Mars objective so perhaps he would join forces with other private organisations. Who knows. I think it’d be great dependant on the organisations.
Cheers.
Whatever Obama’s motivations were I’m glad he did what he did . Not killing Cx, it was DOA when he took office, Obama just signed the Death Ceftificate. Obama got a comprise that kept commercial and ISS going even though it allowed SLS.
But imagine where we’d be if we got this OIG report and there was no Dragon, CST-100, and no Dream Chaser. And no falcon 9 and no Falcon Heavy on the way.
Great points. There would be no space program at all .. there would be nothing advancing or moving forward we would all be watching that NASA snail leaving a trail of pork slime across the landscape and nothing launching.
@Vladislaw,…..The thing is now, NASA is snailing along leaving a stream of corporate-entrepreneur slime——and then STILL LAUNCHING NOTHING. (That is, a new manned spacecraft, into an actual flight.)
Neither NASA or Commercial are scheduled to launch a new manned spacecraft yet. Wanna bet on who will do it first?
dragon will be ready looong before orion (2015 vs. 2021 at the earliest). you lose, chris.
Ewww…
Bob Clark
Vlad, you really skewered them. Impaled them, in fact!
Bob Clark
nightmare
dragon will be ready looong before orion (2015 vs. 2021 at the earliest). you lose, chris.
Wrong as usual Josh. Orion will be flying in 2014 on EFT-1. Dragon will not be ready until 2017, at the earliest and most likely will slip as CRS has slipped continually.
And how about using capital letters in your posts. You come off like a grade school child without them, but then again maybe that is your goal.
Crash, I’m sorry but you don’t know what you’re talking about. Manned Dragon first flight is scheduled for 2nd half 2015. It’s not an ISS flight, ISS won’t be ready for manned commercial flights until 2017 when the new docking system will be brought up by a cargo Dragon.
The “Orion” flight scheduled for next year isn’t manned. The first manned Orion flight is tentatively scheduled for 2021 although some people doubt it will make that date. They have A LOT of problems to solve before that thing is ready to fly people.
Yep, check my post above.
The VSE was announced in Jan of 2004 .. and the first crewed flight for a freakin disposable capsule SEVENTEEN YEARS later… and this clown show actually has supporters defending it…LOL
“Orion will be flying in 2014 on EFT-1. Dragon will not be ready until 2017″
You’re idiotically comparing apples and oranges, uncrewed to crewed launches.
EFT-1 is an uncrewed test launch. Dragon’s first uncrewed test launch was back in 2010. Assuming EFT-1 does launch in 2014, Orion will be five years, a half-decade, behind Dragon for its first uncrewed test launch.
Orion is a half-decade behind Dragon in crewed launches as well. Orion isn’t scheduled to launch a crewed mission until 2021. Even using your 2017 date, Dragon is give years ahead of Orion for its first crewed launch.
Think before you post, dummy.
“and most likely will slip as CRS has slipped continually”
CRS is an operational launch contract to service the ISS. Its schedule, including slips, are made to accommodate conflicting activity at the ISS. SpaceX isn’t slipping CRS missions. NASA is:
“NASA planners switch next SpaceX Dragon mission to 2014″
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/08/nasa-planners-switch-spacex-dragon-mission-2014/#.Ugwh2X7vDrM.twitter
If you’re really worried about schedule slips, then you should worry about Orion and EFT-1. Per the Government Accountability Office’s 2013 report on NASA large projects, Orion has “missed more internal milestones than anticipated†for EFT-1, including “delays in building and delivering hardware… which could threaten the launch currently scheduled for September 2014.â€
You might also want to pay attention to Orion’s mass, heat shield, and design database. According to the NASA IG and the GAO, Orion is massively overweight for EM-2, the heat shield has a cracking issue, and engineers are spending 3-5 hours per day just trying to upload files and drawings to a defective database.
Good luck getting EM-1 and EM-2 launched under those conditions.
“Dragon is give years ahead of Orion for its first crewed launch.â€
Give years ahead, huh? Obviously you are the clueless idiot.
Really? You complain about a typo? You have no other response to the complete take down of your monumental ignorance?
you’re quite the pathetic individual. i’m sure you know that.
“Dragon’s first uncrewed test launch was back in 2010.”
Decidely misleading if not inaccurate. It is you who are trying to compare apples to oranges. That vehicle was not configured to carry a crew and if memory serves, it lofted a wheel of cheese=- and if anybody was foolish enough to have tried to ride it, they’d be dead–there was no ECS to support human life. .
DCSCA mumbled:
“Decidely misleading if not inaccurate.”
What, that it was “un-crewed”?
You have shown before that you have trouble with reading comprehension, and you are showing it again. Sheesh.
“That vehicle [Dragon] was not configured to carry a crew”
And neither is the Orion MPCV that will be flown for EFT-1. Hence the comparison that DBN made.
See what I mean by an inability to understand what is written?
Again, sheesh.
Elon said that if anyone had been on that flight they would have had a “nice ride” so l suspect it is you who is being misleading. It was a short trip, two orbits as I recall, easily done in a spacesuit. Even if they opened their visor during the trip to eat a rice-krispie treat or something.
I know they were testing environmental systems since the first trip since they knew biological cargo was going to be on actual cargo runs.
It was pressurized, no suit required. Bowersox said he could have ridden it with a scuba tank and regulator and a bean-bag chair.
so the 2014 flight of orion is “configured to carry crew” then (it is not)? pretzel logic from dscsa, as usual.
If we’re talking unmanned flights, Dragon has already won…
And doing something truly operational, at that.
the first crewed flight of dragon is planned for 2015, the first crewed flight of orion is planned for 2021. dragon has already won when it comes to uncrewed flights since it has been to space several times while orion is still sitting on the ground. do your homework and please stop embarrassing yourself, facts are facts. btw: it’s telling that you’re bothered by me not using capital letters, lol…
Chris wrote:
“@Vladislaw,…..The thing is now, NASA is snailing along leaving a stream of corporate-entrepreneur slime——and then STILL LAUNCHING NOTHING. (That is, a new manned spacecraft, into an actual flight.)”
Okay .. lets put that to the test”still not launching nothing”. Since 2004 when the VSE was announced how many new sub orbital and orbital flights have their been for new launch vehicles by NASA and the private sector?
SS1
Falcon 1 four launches
Falcon 9 five launches
Bigelow – 2 test stations
Ares 1 – 0
Ares V – 0
SLS – 0
NON suborbital flights
SS2 – 1
Blue origin – 3
Falcon Grasshopper 3
Ares 1x – 1
——
can anyone add any I missed?
Gosh… I forgot about Armadillo and Masten .. about 10 flights?
The Armadillo is hibernating.
oh .. also .. UP aerospace has been doing launches.
I forgot about one other NASA launche, that lunar lander they have test fired on the tether .. I think it did one untethered flight?
Way off topic Vlad.
The topic is the Obama administration’s ever changing mission for NASA and how it was articulated recently by “Yogi” Bolden. I guess this is what was meant by “flexible path”.
I was responding to a statement directed straight at me. Talk to the person who is trying to make insanity on a bun sound appetizing.
The Morpheus lander attempted one untethered flight, it crashed.
NASA has built a second one which has been doing tethered flights at JSC. They intend to send it to KSC for untethered flights in a few months.
The next test flight is tomorrow Tuesday 20 August 2013.
They might have done better to keep working with Armadillo. Not sure of the total budget but I doubt NASA could do it cheaper.
Vlad, good points. It’s so obvious. The way to space is commercial space.
Bob Clark
Jeff,
You are misreading what Bolden meant to say. He is implying that the President said that NASA should rendez-vous with an asteroid but that he didn’t specify that it had to be asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.
And this is subtle. I have this discussion with my science friends all the time and those who are purist. The president said by 2025 we should send humans to an asteroid. What [according to his science friends] he meant was, you should send humans to somewhere between Mars and Saturn, because that’s where the dominant asteroids in the asteroid belt are. But no, he didn’t say that. He said: humans to an asteroid.
I’m no fan of the asteroid mission, but on second reading I have to say, in fairness to Bolden, that that is a more likely interpretation of what Bolden meant to say.
It certainly would have been clearer if Bolden had said these scientists claim Obama meant an asteroid between Mars and Saturn.
Still Bolden is not telling the whole story there in that it is virtually certain that Obama did mean going to a near Earth asteroid in its original orbit as a prelude to a longer Mars mission.
Bob Clark
Right after the President’s speech, NASA started presenting possible target asteroids .. there was not even the slightest hint or example of any asteroid that was as far away as Mars. They were all less than 35 million miles.
Hi Jeff & friends. I’m the reporter at the Post who asked that particular question, and listened closely to the response as I sat a few feet away. I believe he was using a rhetorical style that can easily be confusing, and in this case has confused people. The key line is: “But no, he didn’t say that.” Bolden was floating a conjectural statement by Obama and then saying no, Obama didn’t say that. It’s not the clearest way to make a point, obviously (and saying Saturn instead of Jupiter also didn’t help). But Jeff is correct: Bolden was forcefully saying that the ARM mission fulfills Obama’s goal of sending humans to an asteroid. You can decide if a trip to an object orbiting the moon is equivalent to a journey that would take a year and go into deep space far beyond the earth-moon system. The other question, for space-politics buffs only, is the relative importance of Obama’s 2010 directive, and the National Space Policy of going to an asteroid by 2025, versus other pressures and incentives that gave birth to the idea of the ARM. A larger factor may have been the fact that NASA is building the SLS and Orion and needs to explain to the public what it’s going to do with this expensive hardware that is overbuilt for trips to LEO. I hope people here got a chance to check out the story we published this weekend. Thanks for letting me chime in. Joel
I thought it would a great mission. We need space based, reusable, gas n’ go vehicles and fuel depots. The longer we can take road trips to multiple destinations testing equipment and getting all the infrastructure in place the better.
For me, the last thing we should be doing is fighting so hard to finally get out of the gravity well, then immediately plunge right back into one and getting bogged down. The pork premium that NASA pays for hardware would never allow us a sustaining presence with a base. Not unless all the commercial components are in place.
The problem Joel, is that Mr. Bolden has over the last several years demonstrated himself to be an ineffectual leader by both his actions (or lack thereof) and his befuddled demeanor.
Nobody is cutting this gentleman any slack any more. He’s done.
I had exactly the same impression as Joel, Bolden wasn’t confused, he was just explaining that ARM was the closest NASA could come to Obama’s request. But really Bolden should be explaining to the administration that none of the alternatives for Constellation are productive.
But really Bolden should be explaining to the administration that none of the alternatives for Constellation are productive.
??
I guess the offer by SpaceX for a 150 ton heavy lift for 2.5 billion… is unproductive.
Joel’s article is a good one, but it fails to call Bolden on his misinterpretation of Obama’s KSC speech. In that speech, the President is clear that Orion/MPCV is supposed to execute the “first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space” and that the target for the first of those missions should be an “asteroid”. Here’s the exact quote:
“And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. (Applause.) So we’ll start — we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. (Applause.)”
And here’s the full speech:
http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/trans/obama_ksc_trans.html
Clearly, an asteroid redirected to cislunar space is not “beyond the Moon” or in “deep space”. Bolden is wrong that the President “said ‘humans to an asteroid'” and it’s rhetorically wrong to imply that the science community is claiming that the asteroid has to be in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter (or Saturn or wherever Bolden thinks it is located). What the President said was “astronauts to an asteroid” located “beyond the Moon” somewhere in “deep space”.
(I’m not the only one who has noticed this. The chair of the NASA Advisory Council, Steve Squyres, made similar remarks in response to questions during testimony before the House Subcommittee on Space.)
The goal laid out in President’s speech doesn’t require that the target asteroid be located in the main asteroid belt. But a target asteroid in lunar orbit does not satisfy the President’s goal.
As good as Joel’s article is, it would be nice if the press pointed out Bolden’s selective (or poor) quoting from the President’s speech.
It would also be nice if Bolden had enough focus and clarity of thought to be able to capture directions from his boss that are more than one sentence in length. But I already made that point at the beginning of this thread and won’t belabor it here.
I agree and the sample mission examples, utilizing 2 Orion capsules all assumed a target that would provide at least a one month mission.
One has to wonder if before Obama said ” beyond moon, deep space, astronauts to an asteroid” if he had any inkling of what that might costmtomachieve that goal. I am not sure , but it might behoove someone to actually publicize the real, cost of doing so, then publicly challenge Obama to put his commitment to the goal into commitment of required monies to achieve said goal. This gives Obama a chance to back off sayings times have changed since his speech and to state some other less costly goal. Then Bolden does not have to Clintonize Obama’s words and look flakey in the process.
Thanks for the explanation Joel, but as others have stated, Bolden’s lack of clarity of thought goes well beyond just his communication style. He has never been fully on board with the transformation agenda at NASA and has been “mis-speaking” and “mis-stepping” for more than 4 years now, but the WH has had Garver to step in and try to clean up after him and communicate with more clarity. This can’t be easy from the #2 spot and I’ll bet she is relieved to be done for awhile.
Probably explains why Bolden is even more lost than ever now she’s gone. She at least, had a thorough understanding of, and the skills required to navigate and operate within the NASA bureaucracy, Congress and with the WH.
Thanks for that clarification.
Bob Clark
“A larger factor may have been the fact that NASA is building the SLS and Orion and needs to explain to the public what it’s going to do with this expensive hardware that is overbuilt for trips to LEO.”
When properly viewed through political glasses, it is a geo-political strategy for the United States. Just as SDI- or MAD– or for that matter, continuing NATO is.
DCSCA mumbled:
“When properly viewed through political glasses, it is a geo-political strategy for the United States.”
This weird chant of yours is pure cockamamy. PURE.
The SLS was a political fabrication to employ people in certain U.S. political states and districts, and the politicians that forced NASA to build it could care less about “geo-political strategy for the United States.”
When are you going to stop embarrassing yourself on this topic? You can’t even articulate what “geo-political” means in the context of the SLS – unless you mean how much money we’re borrowing from China to build this thing…
What a maroon!
Sorry DCSCA but that’s just crap. It’s a jobs program, that’s all.
Apologies, I re-phrase, “… that’s just rubbish. …”
I’ve looked hard, and I truly don’t believe anybody in Congress knows anything about space exploration or could string together the words “geopolitical strategy” along with “NASA”. None. If you know differently, please name him or her or them.