Clark Lindsey finds Frank Sietzen’s bizarre thesis that we must continue with Constellation to avoid damaging NASA’s “reputation” for developing rockets upside down:
Instead of focusing on what it does worst, i.e. rocket-making, NASA should concentrate on what it does best: in-space operations and assembly. In the Hubble repair and upgrade missions and the construction of the ISS, NASA has displayed spectacular skill, knowledge, and adaptability. Such capabilities are essential to genuine spacefaring and they match perfectly with the currently available medium sized launchers. Very elaborate and ambitious space systems can be built from medium sized modules. Propellant depots, which will have a tremendously positive impact on in-space operations, can be supplied by such vehicles. This approach leads to high launch rates, which will bring down costs and raise reliability and safety.
The loss of NASA’s in-space assembly and operations skills would be comparable to the loss in capability that the agency suffered when it gave up Saturn and the lunar hardware at the end of the Apollo program. I hope the Augustine committee doesn’t let this happen.
Me, too. The most nutty thing about this is that it is NASA’s deliberate plan to abandon those capabilities, which are much more crucial to spacefaring than building yet another rocket.
Agreed! In Orion your not getting any farther out of the ship then your umbilical can reach from the back bulkhead.
And while I’m nit’ing. All the “we must have a 100+ ton lifter to get to moon and Mars” folks seem to have forgotten the shuttle was designed to lift and assemble ships far larger then that if required, and shuttle deployed lunar landers were designed and proposed. Not that fully integrated launches haven’t advantages – but its like folks have total amnesia about assemble in space or the idea of recover and reuse? Instead everyone, including space advocates, jumped back to Apollo as the zenith of exploration concepts?
What is the increasing population of LEO space debris going to do to on-orbit assembly (assuming we are doing the assembly in LEO)?
What is the increasing population of LEO space debris going to do to on-orbit assembly (assuming we are doing the assembly in LEO)
Increase its cost and risk…
But also perhaps make it easier to come up with solutions to it.
Of course, as you and many others here have already noted, Rand, NASA is no longer about spacefaring. Its all about job security for a few specialists. 🙁
This seems as good a thread (and blog) as any in which to ask…can someone explain the signifigance of this story to me?
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=31610
The document looks important, but I don’t understand what they’re trying to say…
Sorry, Frank, I have no idea. Keith should have made some comment as to why he thought it was important to post it.
Reading Frank’s short bit, I did not see Frank recommend staying the course with Ares or adopting another path. The sloppy writing equates MSFC with all of NASA, as though rejecting the Ares design would also reflect on the rest of NASA. Since JSC has been deeply involved in Ares as well – a decision to abandon that path would be seen as a vote of no confidence in the whole Constellation team.
As Rand says – NASA is much larger than Constellation. They are proposing to walk away from a lot of the expertise that they have developed and that is unfortunate. The current path would have the NASA of 2011 be mostly Constellation, more than it is today.
As a former Spacelab guy, I have a lot of sympathy for the folks at MSFC who have always had to fight for “their” share of the budget. Jan Davis was a tireless supporter of the MSFC for instance. They have lots of talent and expertise there.
Still – is the best path the one where we grab as big a budget as possible and then distribute it evenly – regardless of efficiencies we could identify? NO! This may be a time where we could move to a more efficient structure – though it will be painful.
An alternate future for NASA could be where they concentrate on exploration and on orbital operations. And where they just buy commercial launch services like the geosynch comm sat community does. Politically, NASA would then have to find something for the MSFC folks to do – some are moving over to the Missile Defense Agency anyway. It is sad to see the state of the team formed by Werner Von Braun – the team that developed the Saturn 5. But the world does move on.
With any luck we will jettison the Ares, accept some resignations from unhappy managers, and move on. MSFC can continue to manage ISS payloads and buy launch services.
Too bad we can’t move some of our excess NASA “centers” to MSFC – we have way too many centers now.