The Commercial sector is not, IMHO, a one-size fits all solution to this country’s HSF problem. Especially when political considerations-which, Ron, with all due respect, you’re ignoring. Members of Congress are out to protect their constituents and their interests. Ignoring the legitimate concerns of those members of Congress who have either NASA or contractor facilities doing SLS or Orion work is not a good way to go forward. It is not “Pork.” If you want those members of Congress to support a HSF program based on commercially available rockets-but still using Orion and the ATV-based service module, say, you have to offer them something. Either becoming a second-source supplier for whatever rocket is chosen, work on some kind of L2 Gateway (though the Skylab II proposal is my personal preference), or something else entirely, but they have to have a reason to vote for it. Vague promises of a “vibrant” U.S. domestic commercial launch industry a few years down the road are not sufficient, nor is “trust us” when pressed for “where are we going, when, and how?”

“This Administration’s lack of communication is well-known.”

And Congress has a well earned reputation for being deaf to many common sense proposals.

Stop pretending Congress is not part of your problem Matt.

“Want to know why members of Congress (at least the ones on the relevant committees) are still angry with the Administration? They don’t like being blindsided, and essentially being told “rubber-stamp” our proposals.”

You keep saying that Matt, but Congress gave Obama most of what he wanted. Apparently they weren’t THAT hurt.

Give it up Matt. If most of the Republican’s – Obama’s most vocal opponents – from Alabama, Florida and Texas voted IN AGREEMENT WITH OBAMA to cancel Constellation, then apparently Obama’s proposal made sense to them.

Time to move on Matt.

“you know as well as I do that politics gets in the way of everything.”

You say that, but then you contradict what you said and say:

“That FY 11 budget you passionately defend had zero chance because of the way it was presented”

And no, the Administration did not say:

“This is what we’re going to do, so, Congress, approve it without debate or discussion.”

You’re making that up. Are you intentionally lying, or have you deluded yourself into thinking this?

The NASA budget was submitted along with all the other budgets, and just like every budget every Administration knows that Congress can ignore what they give them. That is nothing new, for ANY AGENCY.

You apparently don’t know how our government works.

“Congress didn’t like getting blindsided…”

Funny, but Obama got most of what he wanted. I was disappointed that he didn’t get everything, but I understood the political sausage that happened. I also knew that the SLS and Orion ultimately would not survive, so I viewed it as a short-term set back. But make no mistake, Obama got most of what he wanted.

And just in case you missed my other post, I went back and looked at the House voting record, and the vast majority of Republicans in Alabama, Texas and Florida voted to kill Constellation. Constellation would not have been cancelled if the politicians were as “blindsided” as you say they were.

“SLS and Orion have the politcal support on The Hill.”

People said that about Constellation in 2009.

““Commecial Uber Alles” does not.”

You have no clue what you are saying, because no one has said that. And in case you haven’t noticed, the transportation systems that are making the most progress with the least money are commercial ones.

“Plain and simple.”

Yep, too bad you can’t understand it Matt.

“And it still wouldn’t solve the problem of the travel time. The radiation issue remains unsolved for round trip travel times in space of a year to a year and a half.”

Well propellant from the Moon wouldn’t solve that either, so are ready to drop lunar ISRU as any sort of factor in reaching Mars?

As far as the radiation goes, we are only going to reach Mars if we allow the people going to accept risks. Radiation is part of that, as is the possibility of no rescue if something bad were to go wrong. There are things that are being tested today to fully understand the radiation risk and possible mitigation strategies, so we’ll just have to see if they find solutions before we are ready to go. I think we will.

“Another issue is that NASA’s Design Reference Mission (DRM) doesn’t even include artificial gravity.”

If you look at the diameter requirements for artificial gravity, we won’t be able to afford it for quite a while. That’s why the zero-G research on the ISS is so important, and it looks like our 12+ years of research are starting to pay off. We can get to the orbit of Mars fine without artificial gravity.

“But we already know that astronauts after six months in zero-g are not able to even walk on return, requiring days to weeks of recuperation time.”

You’re not keeping up with the latest research. Astronauts don’t suffer the same debilitating effects as they used to, and that is why two astronauts will be doing a full one year experiment – to see if the mitigation strategies continue to work over long periods of time.

“But a bigger problem is the number of launches. It doesn’t seem likely you could launch a large rocket like that more than 3 or 4 times a year.”

You can have opinions on things like that, but in reality things like that will be based on facts, not opinions.

My background is manufacturing operations, and I’ve been the person who creates the master scheduling plan for a factory producing 1/2 $Billion in consumer products. Scaling up an existing factory is pretty easy once you’ve proven out your manufacturing processes.

The current SpaceX factory was initially set up to build 12 Falcon 1st stage bodies per year, plus 12 2nd stages. If they cannot perfect reusability in the near-term, then the only way to launch more rockets would be to build one or more factories (it could be one large one, as the current factory is really small). Building a new factory doesn’t take that long, even if you have to do it from scratch – call it a year or less.

So less than two years after getting a firm order to ramp up their launches of Falcon Heavy to whatever rate is needed (6/year, 12/year, etc.), they can be ready. And SpaceX is already trying to get two new launch facilities, which would be more than enough to handle that launch rate. They will be ready way before the payloads they need to carry will. Not an issue.

And if SpaceX does perfect reusability for the Falcon Heavy boosters, that lowers the number of 1st stages that have to be built, and likely lowers the costs too.

SpaceX won’t be the constraint, the payloads will.

Oh, come on. We know what ARM is going to look like. We know its conceptual architecture and implementation strategy. Yes, we even have a video. Gosh almighty, get out the popcorn and put your feet up! But we don’t have a clue what it’s supposed to be DOING. What is the goal? Hugging rocks? Capturing boulders? Going (sorta) far away? The rationale for ARM is, as has been discussed here repeatedly, largely lacking, mostly handwaving, and admittedly “flaky”. That being the case, it’s just grease for the SLS and Orion.

What the Administration hasn’t explained is what ARM is for. The Administration runs to Congress looking for big bucks and a quick signature on the basis of a video animation? DoD should make a video animation of terrorists being shot, and run to Congress to get that activity funded.

Frankly, this Administration has plenty to worry about besides human space flight, so it hands the ball to Bolden and Garver and trusts them to run with it. The “lack of leadership” of the Administration that Logsdon is pointing to is more a failure of leadership, in that Bolden and Garver didn’t know how to run. The “relatively crisp sense of what it’s role should be” given to NASA was “Do something good, and keep out of our face!”

http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2013/08/dean-of-u-s-space-policy-critical-of-president-obamas-handling-of-nasa/?cmpid=houtexhcat

John Logsdon, who has half a century of perspective closely following NASA, says the space agency’s human spaceflight program is floundering.

During a teleconference Thursday, reported by Space Policy Online, Logsdon said the following:

The “lack of leadership of this administration” has “put us in a situation which is unfortunate.”

By this time President Obama should have invited international partners to work together to define the future of the space program and should have given NASA “a relatively crisp sense of what it’s role should be,” he insisted, but Obama “hasn’t done that” and “that’s been very disappointing to me.”

In other words, Logsdon is critical of the administration’s decision to unilaterally push NASA into pursuing an asteroid mission for its human spaceflight program, rather than consulting with international partners. Like Congress, many of NASA’s international partners on the International Space Station would like to see the space agency return to the moon.

He’s not directly critical of NASA, which is caught between the White House and Congress, however.

Ron, you know as well as I do that politics gets in the way of everything. That FY 11 budget you passionately defend had zero chance because of the way it was presented: “This is what we’re going to do, so, Congress, approve it without debate or discussion.” WRONG. Congress didn’t like getting blindsided, and if the Administration was so passionate about it, why didn’t they spend the political capital pushing it through? SLS and Orion have the politcal support on The Hill. “Commecial Uber Alles” does not. Plain and simple.

Bob Clark

It may be a good reason, but it’s not one that ARM will serve significantly. In this picture, to the extent that ARM is about NEOs, it’s sold as being necessarily about planetary defense. That’s astonishingly naive. We can have a star party and go out and watch Perseids. As we do so, we can be proud of our efforts on behalf of planetary defense. I mean, we’re watching rocks from space, no?

But you’re right. It’s not about tracking and being aware of threats. That would be too responsible. It’s all about putting boots places (and finding a use for SLS).