Joel Achenbach comments on the “botched rollout” of the new space plans:
The Administration failed to control the narrative. We are a species that communicates with, and makes sense of the world through, stories (as someone wrote a while back). My piece the other day in The Post quoted Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) saying that folks in Florida think Obama killed the manned space program. Of course, Obama actually boosted funding for NASA, and a lot of money is going into technology development. But he nixed the idea of going back to the moon in the near term. Where will we go instead? Unclear. Undecided. The moon is still a possibility, but maybe we’ll go to an asteroid or the moons of Mars.
Obama didn’t “nix the idea of going back to the moon in the near term.” Mike Griffin did that, de facto, when he chose his disastrous Apollo on Geritol architecture. All that Obama (or rather, the people who came up with the new policy) did was to formalize the notion. It is in fact likely that we’ll get back to the moon sooner with the new plans than we had any hope to in the old one. If the media had actually paid attention to, or better yet, read the Augustine report, they would understand this. I will give him credit, though, for not succumbing to the mindless hysteria about Obama having “killed the manned space program.”
Kelly Starks:
they at least fielded and tested abilities to do things.
This can be done for a fraction of the costs with small-scale X-projects.
I don’t see terminating NASA
Who said anything about terminating NASA? The problems lie primarily in one of several parts of NASA, namely in the Exploration Directorate.
googaw Says:
March 14th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
>Kelly Starks:
>> they at least fielded and tested abilities to do things.
> This can be done for a fraction of the costs with small-scale X-projects.
How do you do X-tests of biulding a space station or tearing down and rebuilding a big sat?
Did you realize these were the subscale tests? The point of the shuttle was to allow big lunar and mars exploration craft to be constructed. Service the craft that could open up the beyond LEO space. build commercial orbital factories etc.
A lot of that was preempted by various Washington Games – but now its all being thrown out and the idea of really using space and preparing to move out in anything beyond the flags and footprint scale, COMPLETLY abandoned – even reviled by Griffen.
>>I don’t see terminating NASA
> Who said anything about terminating NASA? ==
NASA doesn’t do aerospace, will no longer do maned space, is abandoning most of its inspace capacities. No plans to do anything of scale or importance – well ever really.
Its dead jim.
> Brad Says:
> March 14th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
> googaw
>
> Why don’t you dial it back a bit. You won’t convince anyone
> to listen to your point of view if you so quickly resort to snark
> and name calling. It only demonstrates that your position is too
> weak to stand on it’s own.
On this blog – its becoming policy. So its hard to disaprove of visitors going for it.
Did you realize [Shuttle and ISS] were the subscale tests?
Good grief, Shuttle and ISS themselves are very far into economic fantasyland due in no small part to being oversized. As for what they might be sub-scale tests of, we are talking astronomical orders of magnitude outside any sort of economic reality. But that’s what we get when market discipline is out of the picture — boundless economic error.
but now its all being thrown out and the idea of really using space and preparing to move out in anything beyond the flags and footprint scale, COMPLETLY abandoned
It’s something called economic reality. Or do you have a business plan for this that doesn’t depend upon hypothetical markets and tens of billions from Uncle Sugar?
Not coincidental to the cancellation of Constellation, Moody’s is warning that the U.S. may have its debt downgraded from AAA for the first time in our history.
Meanwhile, real space commerce chugs merrily along oblivious to the weeping and gnashing of teeth associated with events at the Exploration Directorate.
NASA doesn’t do aerospace
NASA does do some quite valuable aerospace research, and could do much more if astronaut projects weren’t using so much of the funding to accomplish so little.
> googaw Says:
>March 15th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
>> Did you realize [Shuttle and ISS] were the subscale tests?
> Good grief, Shuttle and ISS themselves are very far into economic
> fantasyland due in no small part to being oversized. ==
No their size had little to do with it. The shuttle program and ISS combined would have been dwarfed by the cost of Griffens return to the moon. Development of Ares-1 and Orion combined – though tiny, were 3 times the same year costs of shuttle dev. Even though shuttle was several times the size.
Course the big problem for NASA, was waste was more popular then results. So cleaning up the shuttle config to dramatically drop its cost, increase its flight rate – butthat would be very counter productive adn hurt nASA ability to do any mission.
>== As for what they might be sub-scale tests of, we are talking
> astronomical orders of magnitude outside any sort of economic reality. ==
😉
Shuttle and station were to prove out the concept of asembling large even huge craft in space. Stations to space factories. The massive craft needed to get people to Mars adn back safely. HLVs can’t do that unless you launch fleets for each flight, adn that gets insane. ..adn really wastefull.
>>==but now its all being thrown out and the idea of really using
>> space and preparing to move out in anything beyond the flags
>> and footprint scale, COMPLETLY abandoned
> It’s something called economic reality. ==
Not really. It doesn’t have to cost that much -certaiunly much less then the plans for the moon – or ISS. Obviously you can just shrugg off ever doing space in any real way, but if you want to do it, you need capabilities.
> Or do you have a business plan for this that doesn’t depend upon
> hypothetical markets and tens of billions from Uncle Sugar?
For deep space exploration or national research?
>==
> Meanwhile, real space commerce chugs merrily along oblivious to
> the weeping and gnashing of teeth associated with events at the
> Exploration Directorate.
Really? Even they are falling far short of plans — arguably possibly dieing as well.
>> NASA doesn’t do aerospace
> NASA does do some quite valuable aerospace research, and could
> do much more if astronaut projects weren’t using so much of the
> funding to accomplish so little.
No, NASA isn’t a business. its capital is votes in congress, not $ in a bank. Aerospace research doesn’t get a lot of public – hence congressional – interest. Griffens problem was he wanted to scale NASA way down, but needed to keep the costs up to maintain congressional support. He hoped few launches would be more exciting then lots of routine ones. So they’ld get more public excitement. But if he let the costs drop – adn laid off lots of people – Congress would shut down theprogram.
Weird world of DC Oz “economics”.
😉