So far as NASA and the NRC report goes, well, IMHO it’s a train wreck and not going to get any better. Let’s hope to God that SpaceX can get their act together and keep moving the goal posts. The only issue they seem to be having is getting their birds off the ground – well in fairness it’s only been this launch that has tested them.

Sources say they’re making really good progress on their other fronts which include FH, Raptor, F9R, DragonFly, Dragon V2 and a couple of pads. Sheesh they have a lot going for a coupany of only 3,500 odd people when you start adding it up.

There’s a couple of interesting milestones coming up: the Fed. Court case and also the CCtCap award/s of which I think both are important. The case because if SpaceX get the chance to win some of those flights it’s more money to fund their future programs and the latter since this will mean faster development time for Dragon V2.

Cheers.

I never said they were doing their job. I was saying what they were supposed to be doing. To be fair, they are indeed “exploring strategy”. They just aren’t being very creative in making any. They’re at least using words like “Space exploration policy”, “key objectives”, and “stepping stone approach”. To the appropriators, the key is to throw money at congressional districts. They don’t do “policy” or “rationale”.

“http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/nasa-announces-arm-candidate-asteroids-study-contracts”

Even Marcia doesn’t have it quite right. ARM is about redirecting an asteroid (hence the acronym). Not about sending humans to fondle it. That’s a related program that is linked to ARM. Check out the ARCM (Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission) concept. I think finding an asteroid to redirect is a great idea, and I’ll bet that Roharbacher thinks it is too. One would like to believe, however, that in the interest of planetary protection, it is understood that bagging a rock isn’t of great forward value.

I don’t know her overall record, but in watching these hearings she’s struck me as having a functioning brain and a sense of what members of Congress are supposed to be doing for the country. Would there more like her.

Meanwhile, under the radar, SpaceX, et al, are actually beginning to get somewhere — or SpaceX would be if they would concentrate more on getting their rocket off the ground and little less on pointless legal battles over payloads they aren’t going to win anyway and couldn’t fit into their launch rate if they did.

— Donald

Only by not adequately funding it to an even greater degree than now. I don’t think any President likely to actually get elected is going to want to take that leap, nor would Congress support it. A couple of decades ago, that would not have been true, but today, too many special interests would get hurt.

The “worst” case that I foresee (which is actually the best case) is that said future President (at least if he or she is not from the South) will pull another Obama and try to cancel or gut SLS / Orion in favor of getting someone else to pay for the space program (via COTS and CCtCAP). If someone from the South gets elected, COTS and CCtCAP would be killed or neglected, which would effectively kill the ISS, and SLS / Orion would get the cash – which I believe would be the worst outcome because we’d spend vast sums of money we don’t have failing to get any human spaceflight. However, in that sense, you would be correct. . . .

— Donald

Everyone acknowledged that NASA HSF is in bad shape. The GOP wants to blame it on this administration. To his credit, Mitch Daniels won’t let them get away with that. It’s not about THIS administration, he repeated. It’s about how future administrations build upon each other. There isn’t a lot of utility, he said, about talking about individual administrations (which many of these members really wanted to talk about). That’s politics for you

There was an unconstructive swipe at Falcon 9H, and a swipe at Earth Science funding as well. That’s a forest and trees kind of a deal.

The premise that ARM was creating a lot of “dead-end technologies”, in the sense that they wouldn’t contribute to human space flight to Mars, was underscored by members.

The idea of cooperation with China was queried with some skepticism by several members. The co-chairs response was smart, that, you know, you really don’t know who’s going to be your friend in 30 years.

I found the discussion of roadmaps and pathways was curious. The Science Committee has proudly mandated that NASA develop a Human Exploration Roadmap that will “define the specific capabilities and technologies necessary to extend human presence to the surface of Mars and the sets and sequences of missions required to demonstrate such capabilities and technologies.” But now the NRC committee co-chairs are saying that no, roadmaps don’t quite do it. What you need is a “pathway”. Huh? Rep. Edwards was properly confused by this, saying that “I’m troubled by the distinction of ‘pathway’ from ‘roadmap’.” I can imagine. I think, but I’m not really sure, that a roadmap is just a plan, but a pathway is considered more of a commitment and a new level of discipline. But, as Edwards mused, it was probably just terminology. The joke here is that they can’t even agree on the words they want to use.

In theory, but not in practice. The 2010 NASA Authorization Act, which deferred any long-term strategy in favor of preserving Shuttle jobs at any cost now, being a prime case in point. And they haven’t articulated a coherent exploration plan that the appropriators could actually fund, in legislation or anywhere else, in the half decade since.

“Their derailment of the strategy to fondle an asteroid in cis-lunar space”

They can’t even get that right:

http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/nasa-announces-arm-candidate-asteroids-study-contracts

Yeah, you gotta love all the asterisks.

Oh, but our Director of Advanced Exploration Systems says that we’re going to deploy and supply “staging areas” in high lunar orbit! And at Phobos!

http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/gerstenmaier-praises-nrc-human-space-exploration-report

Using asterisked SLS launches with no payload besides MPCV at a launch rate of one every two years!

Oh, wait…

“Also, the exploration cadence after 2023 hangs in at one per two years.”

Well, that must be wrong! Gerst said that we have to launch at least once per year to maintain flight safety!

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/02/sls-launch-rate-repetitive-cadence-gerstenmaier/

What a train wreck…

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hclive10

Not yet linked to on the House Science site.