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.”
Rand, you can’t blame the media (ok, you can) for repeating what intelligent people in the space community are saying.. there’s no “debate” going on as far as I can see, just bickering, and the media just picks up a single thread and runs with it.
For example, someone will say “Obama canceled the VSE” and a dozen people will reply with “No, Obama canceled Constellation, and Constellation != VSE” and will eloquently explain why that is the case. Then, ten minutes later, someone will say “Obama canceled the VSE”. Without acknowledgment of points challenged and points won, the conversation just continues to go around in circles.
Trent,
The problem is that there aren’t a lot of people in the press with the expertise to understand any of the issues involved. If you do not know what is actually going on and also don’t understand the history behind it, then what Obama is doing sounds bad. The few members of the press that do know something about all this are as likely as not members of (as Rand calls it) the Apollo Cargo Cult.
Chris, even people who understand the issues are repeating arguments that have been blown out of the water already. It’s true what they say about arguing on the Internet…
Trent,
It all depends on the level of understanding. Some of us know that Apollo was a fine system for doing what it was designed to do: get to the moon and back inside of a self imposed deadline. It was the fastest way to get there, not the best. It certainly wasn’t designed to promote permanent human occupation of space. That’s why repeating the architecture is such a bad idea. If the people covering the story understood all that, maybe they’d do a better job of reporting it.
The problem as I see it is simply that it’s being called the “Obama Policy”. That right there is enough to set a lot of people’s teeth on edge, since I’m hard-pressed to think of any other policy he’s gotten right in the past year. Literally everything he’s done seems intended to weaken or cripple the United States, and I’m by no means the only person who thinks that.
I like what Rand said a few weeks ago (paraphrasing), “The only reason the Obama Administration got this policy right is that Obama himself doesn’t care about space, and left it to some underlings who actually do get it.”
Trent,
[[[Chris, even people who understand the issues are repeating arguments that have been blown out of the water already.]]]
Perhaps some one should forward those arguments to Apollo astronauts like Jim Lowell and Eugene Cernan so they get to share the wisdom of the blogsphere and get with the “New Space” program đ
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8565243.stm
Page last updated at 03:34 GMT, Saturday, 13 March 2010
Obama Nasa plans ‘catastrophic’ say Moon astronauts
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
[[[Former Nasa astronauts who went to the Moon have told the BBC of their dismay at President Barack Obama’s decision to push back further Moon missions.]]]
Jim Lovell stated
[[[“Personally I think it will have catastrophic consequences in our ability to explore space and the spin-offs we get from space technology,” he said.
“They haven’t thought through the consequences.”]]]
Mike Griffin made Obama abandon the Moon? Rand, you sound a lot like people who blame George W. Bush for the One’s failings.
In what way have we abandoned the Moon? Just because we’re not going RIGHT F#$%ING NOW doesn’t mean we’re not going AT ALL.
I have been (and remain) mystified by this insistence on targets and deadlines. Those would appear to be things one needs/imposes when one is in a race/competition. AFAICT, the only entities we’re racing against is our own imagination.
While I disagree with The One on so (very) many points, this is one where either he or his people seem to have it right.
Thomas, if that article contained any actual arguments you might have a point. All you’ve linked to is some old dudes saying “well that’s a damn shame”.
Maybe someone might like to explain to them the reality that Constellation wasn’t going back to the Moon, ever, because it wasn’t executable.. and then you might get a “maybe if Obama gave NASA $3B/year more” argument.. and then you would have the situation I described..
People keep suggesting that somehow the President can just magically give NASA money. It’s been explained over and over that the appropriations committees of Congress give NASA money, not the President. But.. but.. what about stimulus money? Sigh, here we go AGAIN.
Burt Rutan, another “old dude”, isn’t a fan either of the new scheme to ‘go somewhere, sometime, maybe’.
Trent
What I find most maddening about the current debate on the internet over the new space policy, is the way defenders of the new policy invariably treat all critics of the new plan as supporters of Constellation.
Rand
“Obama didnât ânix the idea of going back to the moon in the near term.â 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.”
Formalize? If only that were true, a more honest debate would be taking place. In fact Obama is trying (as usual) to have things all ways, without admitting that real tradeoffs are involved. To eat his cake and have it too.
The new plan loudly trumpets that NASA will still conduct manned space exploration, while the fine print says not for the next ten to twenty years at least.
Certainly Constellation was a failed policy, but the new Obama policy is not a fix, it’s only a substitution. A substitution that won’t get NASA anywhere any sooner than Constellation would have.
Perhaps retrenchment in LEO is the correct course for NASA. That would be an honest debate. But that is not the debate taking place. Instead Obama pretends that NASA will still be going beyond LEO with manned spacecraft.
The media have certainly screwed up reporting on the new policy. Obama has not killed manned spaceflight. And the new policy promoting commercial manned flight to LEO is a positive and overdue development.
But the media, as bad as they have gotten the details, have stumbled onto a truth, like the proverbial broken clock. Because Obama has killed manned space exploration beyond LEO by NASA, at least for the foreseeable future.
Brad, Rutan’s comments were completely misconstrued by someone who is a Constellation supporter and has zero journalistic integrity.
Allow me to give you an example. Every now and then (like in that article) you’ll hear people say that the “Obama plan” cancels going back to the Moon in favor of the “flexible path”, and they’ll usually say something witty, like it’s a “path to no-where” or something.
Jeff Greason completely demolished this as nonsense.. yet the same argument keeps getting trotted out as to why Obama hates human spaceflight and is trying to kill the astronaut core.
Full text of Greason’s argument:
—
The Flexible Path, I think, was a really good piece of work.
It was in no sense my idea but when I came to fully understand it I fell in love with it.
And once you come to understand it, the logic behind it becomes just irresistible.
But it’s not a bumper sticker argument. So sometimes the people who are, sort of, wanna go whole hog to a planetary surface, I think, accidentally or purposefully misrepresent what flexible path is all about.
The short form of it is this: When you want to go to a planetary surface, you need a couple of big expensive pieces to do that.
You need whatever booster you’re going to use, and you need some kind of capsule, ya know, crew transport vehicle, call it what you will,
I’ll just call it a capsule for short, and you need the planetary lander.
Which is a fairly complicated system, and you need surface systems, whatever it is you’re going to do when you get to, for example, The Moon.
When you’re going to a low gravity location, a low gravity body, or an open point in space, you only need the booster, the capsule, and
some kind of habitation system, because they’re usually longer missions, that’s kinda the point of the mission – is they’re longer.
The surface systems and the transport hab are cheap, compared to everything else. The big chunks, budget-wise, are the booster, the capsule and the lander.
In a realistic future scenario, NASA’s budget is not going to double for a few years, while they go through the development, and then half again.
It’s going to stay, ya know, maybe it’s a little bigger, maybe it’s a little smaller, but it’s not going to go through these wild gyrations.
So, if you try to develop all three really expensive pieces at the same time, what you wind up doing is starving their development budget, so all of them get stretched out and cost a fortune.
If instead, you develop them in series, you can develop the capsule and the booster first, and then the lander.
If you do that, it turns out, because you’re not stretching the development out so much, which is a very expensive way to manage your budget, you can get all three pieces in almost the same time, by doing them sequentially, as you would if you did them in parallel.
But if you do them sequentially, and you do the booster and the capsule first, you get 4, 5, 6, 7 years, in which you can do exploration work with that system, while you’re working on the lander.
So the choice is not one of, do we or don’t we go to the Moon, that’s a completely false choice.
The choice is do we structure the program, for the same money, in a way in which, in addition to going back to the Moon, we get asteroids, lagrange points, maybe a Mars flyby, build up deep space experience that we’re going to need for Mars, instead of waiting 20 years and hoping that the public’s enthusiasm can be sustained.
—
Trent
I well understand Rutan’s position. While Rutan supports the commercial aspect, he is a critic of the exploration aspect of the new NASA plan.
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/hyperbola/2010/02/burt-rutan-sets-the-record-str.html
I have also been paying attention to what sources from NASA, such as NASA administrator Bolden, have been actually saying about the new Obama plan, as opposed to how some fans seemingly only see wish fulfillment. The Obama plan is NOT the Flexible Path, though it may share some traits.
Bolden has made clear, that in his opinion, that NASA is unable to send men anywhere yet with NASA’s current technology base. AND that an HLV is necessary to send men anywhere beyond LEO. So NASA will spend the next ten years flying the ISS and the next five years spending billions on HLV technology R&D. While hoping that a NASA HLV might first fly sometime between 2020 and 2030. Nor is there is anything in the Obama budget to push a new manned spacecraft, commercial or otherwise, to replace Orion in the role of beyond LEO missions.
That aimless plan isn’t the Flexible Path, it’s the Navel Gazing Path. The Obama plan doesn’t contain any specific destinations, or timelines to reach them, because the plan presumes reaching any destination is so far off into the future that’s it’s premature to name one. Why claim a destination prior to 2030 when the first HLV may not even fly until the year 2030?
Trent,
[[[Thomas, if that article contained any actual arguments you might have a point. All youâve linked to is some old dudes saying âwell thatâs a damn shameâ.]]]
The mistake you are assuming is that the new space policy will be decided using a rational decision model where facts and rational arguments have relevance.
But space policy is always determined based on a political decision model based on the traditional power struggle between stakeholders, Congress and the President. In this environment your factual arguments are merely noise that are overwhelmed by other factors.
In a political decision model opinions, especially those of individuals as highly respected as the Apollo astronauts, carry far more weight among the public then the reason arguments of unnamed policy analysis. So those “old dudes” as you call them are likely to have a much stronger impact on the decisions being made on the new policy then all the “new dudes” “proving” with logical arguments that the new policy is better in the blogsphere.
Also the case against Constellation is not as proven as you would think looking at the blogsphere. No where did the Augustine Committee say it was technically impossible, merely that it needed more funding to achieve its goals. But then that is the case with most launch systems.
But more to the point (which the Blogsphere misses by continuing its focus against Constellation) the decision space appears to have headed away from a Constellation versus New Space choice, into a choice between continuing Shuttle versus a sole reliance on new start commercial crew vehicles quickly coming online. And although New Space is looking good now I expect when the selection for commercial crew is made it will be old space firms that get the nod with updated versions of OSP on EELV being the winners. So all that will be accomplished is a step back to before VSE in terms of space access, not the leap forward many expected. As such the facts against Constellation have pretty much become irrelevant.
Brad,
Good analysis, but one nit pick.
[[[Certainly Constellation was a failed policy, but the new Obama policy is not a fix, itâs only a substitution. A substitution that wonât get NASA anywhere any sooner than Constellation would have.]]]
Constellation was not a policy, its a program. The policy is the Vision for Space Exploration. Constellation was the program that came out of NASA after it poured the VSE through its cultural filters. The same is going to happen to President Obama’s program which ignores those filters as much as President Bush did when he created the VSE.
That is why what will come out of NASA won’t be a flock on New Space HSF systems as many are thinking. Instead NASA will probably end up with two “commercial” versions of the old OSP designs flying on EELVs to support the ISS. And more paper studies on missions beyond LEO and HLVs to support them.
Hi All,
In terms of media misconception, this opinion piece by Florida Today continues it.
http://opinionmatters.flatoday.net/2010/03/spacex.html
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The problems with SpaceX
[[[Considering the launch record of SpaceX, this failed test is par for the course. Falcon 1, the predecessor of Falcon 9 had 3 failures out of 5 launches. Defective rockets are just the tip of the iceberg for Musk’s “on the cheap” projects. An electric sports car venture left early buyers with a 60% increase on the final price for the cars they committed to buy.
So far NASA has funded SpaceX to the tune of $200 million dollars with another $1.6 billion for future contracts . All this for an unproven rocket that has yet to even have a successful engine test-fire. For a company that is “supposed” to be a private venture they seem to be quite content in letting the American tax payer take all the financial risk. Our return won’t come in the return of jobs. SpaceX has been at the Cape for 2 years and only employs 50 technicians for the Falcon 9. If SpaceX wants to take over Low Earth Orbit operations they need to step up and pay their own way and get off the public dole. As the radical right is fond of saying, in the free enterprise system companies succeed or fail on their own merit. Why is SpaceX getting a sweetheart deal of $200 million and all the infrastructure Kennedy Space Center has to offer?]]]
This is what I sadly feel is just a taste of things to come for New Space firms like SpaceX now that they have emerged from the fringe to the center stage of space policy. And this will be nothing to the media out cry if SpaceX has real launch failure as is to be expected when testing new rockets.
Personally I hope Elon Musk doesn’t become the Preston Thomas Tucker or William Boeing of the space industry. I really feel for the difficult position the new Obama policy has put him and SpaceX in.
As I stated before, although many Space Advocates feel this new policy will result in a bright future for New Space I personally see it as its destruction. The New Space firms that survive will only do so by adopting the same behaviors as the successful Old Space firms have adopted, for the same reasons – self preservation and fiduciary responsibility to investors.
Thomas says:
[[[…the decision space appears to have headed away from a Constellation versus New Space choice, into a choice between continuing Shuttle versus a sole reliance on new start commercial crew vehicles quickly coming online. And although New Space is looking good now I expect when the selection for commercial crew is made it will be old space firms that get the nod with updated versions of OSP on EELV being the winners. So all that will be accomplished is a step back to before VSE in terms of space access, not the leap forward many expected. As such the facts against Constellation have pretty much become irrelevant.]]]
Which looks like a correct reading of the situation so far. This brings up some questions:
* Will SpaceX be harmed more then helped if/when the funding is yanked in favor of old space on EELV? Will SpaceX be able to pivot deftly enough to private customers in such a scenario? I suspect that that might well be possible — they will have a more mature booster at that point which will be marketable asset for launching comsats and other payloads. Selling seats on the capsule might be possible as well. A lot depends on how much control Elon retains as well as how deep his pockets and appetite are.
* Isn’t NASA better off with the on EELV rather then “the stick”? Certainly the development costs are dramatically less. The recurring costs ought to be less too . Safety is actually measurable, and in my belief, probably superior due to the longer experience base.
I love how when folks hate a Obama idea – the White House reaction is always they need to talk more because the public doesn’t understand — they never talk about listening to see if they have a point.
> Brad Says:
> March 13th, 2010 at 1:49 am
> What I find most maddening about the current debate on the internet
> over the new space policy, is the way defenders of the new policy
> invariably treat all critics of the new plan as supporters of Constellation.
Oh hell yeah! This “debate” broke down insanely fast to visious factions adn personal attacks. If you question the brillance of the Obama plan, or question why anyones so certain it will be followed up by wonderous stuff they assume –you just some Bush/Constellation loving zelot.
Suggest Constellation was a turd adn a horible backward design – your anti space, anti jobs for anericans, liberal, etc.
few stay rational in this debate.
> Brad Says:
> March 13th, 2010 at 2:14 am
>== In fact Obama is trying (as usual) to have things all ways, without
> admitting that real tradeoffs are involved. To eat his cake and have it too.
>
> The new plan loudly trumpets that NASA will still conduct manned
> space exploration, while the fine print says not for the next ten to
> twenty years at least. ===
Bingo!
Obama said his biggest strength is folks read into whatever he says, whatever they want to hear. Bolden and Garver are aluding to grand things – while explicitly saying in the fine print that none of them are on the board for anytime in their watch — or their successors.
Big cheer leading for grand hope and change — but delivering crap adn cutbacks. Typical.
> Brad Says:
> March 13th, 2010 at 4:45 am
> Bolden has made clear, that in his opinion, that NASA is unable
> to send men anywhere yet with NASAâs current technology base.
> AND that an HLV is necessary to send men anywhere beyond LEO.
> So NASA will spend the next ten years flying the ISS and the next
> five years spending billions on HLV technology R&D. ===
I did not hear billions on RLV tech. I heard billions on green tech adn climate change — and some HLV tech research (which is a joke given they listed no new tech they were going to research).
>===While hoping that a NASA HLV might first fly sometime between
> 2020 and 2030. Nor is there is anything in the Obama budget to
> push a new manned spacecraft, commercial or otherwise, to
> replace Orion in the role of beyond LEO missions.
And historically NASA never delivers unless they are faced with a deadline…
>==That aimless plan isnât the Flexible Path, itâs the Navel Gazing Path.
>The Obama plan doesnât contain any specific destinations, or timelines
> to reach them, because the plan presumes reaching any destination is
> so far off into the future thatâs itâs premature to name one. Why claim
> a destination prior to 2030 when the first HLV may not even fly until
> the year 2030?
đ
Yeah. Instead of opening the frounteer, or doing something because its hard. They are saying, “its hard, lets not try – maybe out children can try — or their children.”
> Thomas Matula Says:
> March 13th, 2010 at 9:12 am
> But space policy is always determined based on a political decision
> model based on the traditional power struggle between stakeholders,
> Congress and the President. In this environment your factual arguments
> are merely noise that are overwhelmed by other factors. ==
Sad but true. Even arguments that Constalation was unaffordable are meaningless in a political landscape.
>=
> But more to the point == the decision space appears to have headed
> away from a Constellation versus New Space choice, into a choice
> between continuing Shuttle versus a sole reliance on new start
> commercial crew vehicles quickly coming online. And although
> New Space is looking good now I expect when the selection for
> commercial crew is made it will be old space firms that get the
> nod with updated versions of OSP on EELV being the winners.
> So all that will be accomplished is a step back to before VSE in
> terms of space access, not the leap forward many expected. ==
Major major agree! Folks are assuming moneys going to flow out to Alt.space. “Comercials” includes the big firms that have always supported NASA. You can see the logic. “Well Boeings bid is a bit higher, but Boeings (or L/M orULA) have been building and flying the shutles, Saturns, etc since the start of the space program. Surly NASA should tae the lower risk option with firms with a generations long track record – rather then brand new start up companies who’ve never done anything in space?”
> Thomas Matula Says:
> March 13th, 2010 at 9:32 am
> In terms of media misconception, this opinion piece by Florida Today continues it.
>
> http://opinionmatters.flatoday.net/2010/03/spacex.html
> Thursday, March 11, 2010
> The problems with SpaceX…
Ouch.
Yeah, this is lots of amunition for NASA to use to brush of the new-space option.
Mike Griffin made Obama abandon the Moon?
Another brilliant display of reading miscomprehension.
Rand, you canât blame the media (ok, you can) for repeating what intelligent people in the space community are saying.
Sure you can. This is America. We demand actual critical thinking and investigation from our media. If they don’t do it we invent something better. Hence the internet.
“We demand actual critical thinking and investigation from our media.”
On Slashdot.org that would have gotten a mountain of “you must be new around here” posts. Unfortunately, the old media is a bit on the lazy side. They go with what fits whatever preconceived notion they went into a story with. If you are an old Apollo Cargo Cultist, then what Obama just did is horrible beyond belief. If you are big on new space, then it might be seen as good if not great.
Me, I think Obama did what he had the money and interest for. It is the default position. The money and political interest are not there for anything else. It’s the same old story of Administration B not wanting (or being able) to fund Administration A’s grand and glorious scheme to conquer the cosmos. All government based plans for manned space flight have to eventually bow to the reality of politics.
Chris L.
Unfortunately the use of terms like “Apollo Cult Cultist” just serves to lower the level of dialogue. It would be just as easy to refer to those that support President’s Obama’s plan as the “New Space Fanatics”. But all it would do is lower the dialogue even lower just as it has done in Washington.
…This is America. We demand actual critical thinking and investigation from our media.
;/
Have you watch the news crap we buy over the last couple decades? Jon Stewart shows up as one of the most trusted new sources in the nation.
> Thomas Matula Says:
> March 13th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
>== Unfortunately the use of terms like âApollo Cult Cultistâ just serves
> to lower the level of dialogue. ==
Sadly – itseems that about the level space advocates can manage.
đ
Thomas,
I can see where such a loaded term would not promote debate, so I will take it back for the sake of argument. How about “those who have more faith in the basic Apollo architecture than I do” instead?
On the issue of approving or disapproving of the Obama plan, I thought I was clear that I felt it was the only realistic option he had left, given the political and fiscal environment he (through his own actions partly) is operating from.
In an ideal world, Nixon would have continued to fund NASA at Apollo levels and we’d be on Mars by now. Unfortunately, that is not what happened and it wasn’t ever likely to happen. No administration is going to make that kind of fiscal commitment if the payoff isn’t something they’ll be able to take credit for.
What some of us are looking at and hoping for is that out of this default position, something good will happen. That good would be the promotion of New Space. Since the original plan wasn’t ever going to happen, that is the best case scenario.
In any case, my point was that the journalists who are covering this issue will generate stories in line with how they feel about the issue going in, not the facts. That observation still stands.
I would love it if people starting to referring to those who support the FY11 budget proposal as “New Space Advocates” or something similar. Maybe it would make the implementation of the FY11 budget more New Space as currently I consider it barely New Space at all.
But then again, in my book, SpaceX isn’t New Space.. they might smile kindly when they get called that, but inside they’re laughing.
Thomas, you pose great questions. Here are some answers:
Will SpaceX be harmed more then helped if/when the funding is yanked in favor of old space on EELV?
SpaceX as a financial entity will surely be harmed, since it has already made a profit off COTS and stands to make an even bigger profit off of CRS and if they win it Commercial Crew. These revenues and profits are far greater than anything they can reasonably expect from real commercial orders in the near term. (In the long term, if they come in at their cost estimates it will generate more real commercial demand, but that will take more than a decade to mature).
However, Elon Musk’s personal finances are not a public good. The core question for us taxpayers and space advocates is whether the cost of affordable space access will be harmed or helped. The answer is that SpaceX by bowing out of Commercial Crew would reduce the role of politics in its operations and that would greatly help to keep its costs from rising. (For example, the costs of gratuitously hiring from the NASA’s MOTS standing army as Bolden and many others have been lobbying SpaceX to do, the costs of NASA’s meddlesome man-rating bureaucracy, etc. etc.). Whether it’s too late for them to deftly pivot away from the road to government contractor and towards a focus on commercial satellites is a question only they can know the answer to. I am afraid they do not have a financial incentive to do so.
Isnât NASA better off with the on EELV rather then âthe stickâ?
Yes, but it’s very unclear whether the DoD will allow NASA’s man-rating bureaucracy to get anywhere near its EELVs. The USAF and NRO and NSA were burned badly by the Shuttle and have an institutional reflex against getting involved with Exploration Directorate again.
If the DoD wasn’t putting up barriers it would have made far more sense for NASA go with the EELVs instead of underwriting the development new rockets for cargo and crew to ISS. If NASA had done that in 2005 it would have completely eliminated “the gap” and the dependence on the Russians that astronaut fans keep fretting about. (There is of course no gap in launching real commercial and defense spacecraft as these wisely broke their ties with the Exploration Directorate long ago). The whole COTS thing was obviously done out of desperation, as using the EELVs was far more in keeping with NASA’s culture and is what they would have done if there hadn’t been major barriers to doing so. AFAIK those barriers still exist today.
BTW, the DoD is entirely justified having this attitude about the Exploration Directorate. Forcing defense payloads to share rides with astronauts severely crippled the U.S.’s security in the 1980s with effects that continued throughout the 1990s. I certainly hope that the DoD and ULA do not compromise our national security one iota in order to satisfy the needs of astronaut fans to narrow their dreaded “gap.”
Errata, those were Fred K’s questions not Thomas’s.
Thomas links to the following malicious bashing of SpaceX:
http://opinionmatters.flatoday.net/2010/03/spacex.html
Observe that the author, Fernando Rendon, is “a business agent for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 606.” He is undoubtedly speaking on behalf of the union leadership of the Space Coast workforce which has been protesting like mad the idea that they have to give up their cozy overpaid government or contractor jobs and get real and usually non-union jobs in the private sector.
Folks know that I’m no uncritical fan of SpaceX, but Mr. Rendon’s anti-SpaceX rhetoric so grotesquely distorts reality that it’s hard to avoid ascribing it to flat-out evil. If we are ever to have a healthy space program parasites like Mr. Rendon certainly do need to lose their jobs and pronto.
Brad, the problem is your expectations. You want a destination, and a deadline and you’re not getting one. Honestly, I don’t know why people have latched onto this concept as a good thing – it isn’t. Simply, declaring that NASA will return to the Moon by 2020 is a promise no President or Administrator can honestly make. 2020 is 10 years away.. that guy won’t have the job then, so how can he possibly promise that whoever does have the job will ensure that the mission is carried through to completion. Why are you demanding a false promise?
So what can Obama/Bolden actually promise? Well, if we want to be brutally honest, they can only promise stuff they can actually deliver before the end of 2012.. 2013 on the outside. That is, they can only honestly plan 2 or 3 years out. That said, we’ll forgive them if they plan 6 to 7 years out because, optimistically, they can reason the President will win a re-election. (btw, I don’t care to know your opinion on whether or not that that will happen, that’s not the discussion).
A planetary mission cannot be accomplished in that timeframe from where we are now. If we already had a booster and a capsule, sure, maybe then some future President/Administrator can promise a Moon mission.. all they have to do is make a lander in 8 years.. how hard is that?
Trent
Decisions that a Presidential administration makes about NASA do matter, even if they do not to fruition during the same administration. The choices Obama makes will likely force the course of NASA for at least the next 10 years no matter what a newer administration might prefer.
Take for example the ISS. Even though it is only just being completed after the end of two terms of the Bush administration, the actual plan and course of the ISS were set in the early days of the Clinton administration. We really should rename the ISS as Station Clinton. And even though the Bush administration wanted to chart a new path with VSE in 2004, it felt obligated to complete the ISS anyway.
Now that under Obama, the ISS will continue flying until 2010 (and possibly beyond), the true inertia of the paths chosen for NASA should be apparent. Just as the decisions made about the Space Shuttle by the Nixon administration trapped the future course of NASA for the following 40 years!
D’oh! Edit needed!
I meant to say “… the ISS will continue flying until 2020…” and not “… the ISS will continue flying until 2010…”.
> Chris L. Says:
> March 13th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
>
> == What some of us are looking at and hoping for is that out of this
> default position, something good will happen. That good would be
> the promotion of New Space. ==
I wouldn’t assume were actually going to get much promotion of newspace. They seem to be loading it with grants to support Boeing and L/M firming up proposals.
> Trent Waddington Says:
> March 13th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
>
> Brad, the problem is your expectations. You want a destination, and
> a deadline and youâre not getting one. Honestly, I donât know why
> people have latched onto this concept as a good thing – it isnât. ==
Really it is Trent. Because NASA historicaly never gets anything done if they are not ordered to by a date. Their political demands push them toward eternal spending – if they deliver, they stop workingon it – adn can be held accountable for the results.
>Brad Says:
> March 14th, 2010 at 12:49 am
> Take for example the ISS. Even though it is only just being completed
> after the end of two terms of the Bush administration, the actual plan
> and course of the ISS were set in the early days of the Clinton
> administration. ====
Actually it started in the ’80’s as space station Freedom under Reagan. The freedom program had NASA as the prime developer though – so they turned it over to Boeing as the prime – and it was to be canceled under Clinton. Clinton was convinced that it could be used to smooth over relations with Russia adn bait Russian scientists away from selling weapons internationally.
So ISS under various names has been going for close to a quarter century.
> Now that under Obama, the ISS will continue flying until 2020 (and possibly beyond),
Beyonds iffy. Both from a political standpoint – and technical. Major parts will wear out that were built to be serviced with a shuttle.
Brad & Kelly, the Shuttle and ISS are good examples of why we should not trap future administrations into a particular plan. Rather than forcing the hand of future Presidents and Congresses with the bridges-to-nowhere of yesteryear, flexible path keeps the options of future administrations open.
Also, the ISS & Shuttle, although in practice as frivolous and counterproductive as Constellation, are not obviously so to the eyes of the layman. In LEO the astronauts look like they are doing something useful (building stuff, microgravity science). In contrast, exploration beyond LEO is widely seen as an extravagant luxury. A perfect target for the budget axe in times like these. So the political persistence of Shuttle and ISS does not map well to the political persistence of beyond LEO missions.
No matter how much anybody may protest about it, claiming they have a futuristic “infrastructure” or the like, NASA missions beyond LEO are at their core one-time flag-and-footprints missions. Once they have achieved their big first they are longer exciting and get canceled. And whenever government finances become an especially big problem they get canceled before they even go, because they are the most visible kind of government spending.
googaw
As I pointed out, the Obama plan is NOT the Flexible Path and will divert NASA efforts for the next 10 years (and possibly longer). It will spend billions on HLV technology R&D and commit NASA to flying the ISS until 2020.
And I disagree that beyond LEO manned exploration is considered frivolous by “laymen”. The people of age today in positions of power in Congress, and the core demographic of the American public at their peak earning power, are the children of the Space Race. I believe opinion polling shows solid support for NASA and manned space exploration.
Before project Constellation became a full blown boondoggle, bipartisan majorities of Congress voted in support of the VSE strategy for NASA. That meant Congress didn’t try to stop the Bush plan for retirement of STS in 2010 and abandoning the ISS in 2016. That’s an indication that more than just pork was behind Congressional support of NASA.
Even though NASA spending has dwindled as a percentage of GDP compared to the peak spending under Apollo, the growth of the GDP since the 1965 gives NASA plenty of money to sustain a course of deep space exploration with manned spacecraft. Though it would be nice to have, NASA doesn’t require a huge budget increase to pursue what should be it’s core mission.
bipartisan majorities of Congress voted in support of the VSE strategy for NASA. That meant Congress didnât try to stop the Bush plan for retirement of STS in 2010 and abandoning the ISS in 2016.
Anybody can vote to express support. Anybody can declare a deadline. Talk is cheap. They didn’t vote for what counted, namely financial support sufficient to make the vision more than a hallucination.
The fact that they were so willing to quickly abandon the ISS once it was built demonstrates the extreme distortion involved in selling the ISS in the first place, not any lack of pork involved in building it or Constellation. An obvious conclusion to draw was that Constellation too was a fraud.
The Exploration Directorate needs a more accurate name. Perhaps the Department of Wishful Thinking. Aim for the stars and hit the pork barrel.
If you want to demand a date and a goal from NASA, choose one that is within the current President/Administrator’s term.. this will not only be asking them to make a promise that they will actually be able to keep, but will also encourage them to do it because they’ll actually get the credit when the goal is completed.
I expect the thinking you should be encouraging is “what can my contribution to the greater program be?”, not “what great vision can I come up with to replace the greater program?” every 8 years.
Actually I’m in favor of giving the Apollo cargo cultists the religious calendar they so desperately want. Let’s boldly declare we’re going to have astronauts make a pilgrimage to Phobos in 2027, a heavenly trek to the moon in 2030, and a grand extravaganza to Mars in 2033. If the world doesn’t come to an end in 2012.
Oh my won’t it be grand! It’s such a beautiful vision how could you possibly question it?! The only money we actually have to spend ourselves will be to produce the calendar in time for some anniversary of a splendid astronaut feat with spectacular graphics of all these future scheduled exploits of our grand heroes. If there’s enough demand we can also put out a video game. All the rest is naturally to be paid for by our children, not by us. Just take the idea of using other people’s money to fund our astronaut’s exploits the next level.
Anybody with a clue will know that this is fraudulent nonsense. The know-nothings who demand these deadlines will just have to end up disillusioned. When this future doesn’t come they can weep and gnash and moan about oh woe is me how much our nation has declined. But meanwhile it shuts up their content-free yaps.
googaw it sounds like your arguing in favor of discontinuing NASA adn space exploration adn development?
While I’ld agree NASA didn’t do much with its space capabilityies other then show peace things – they at least fielded adn tested abilities to do things. I don’t see terminating NASA adn abandoning all such capabilities now adn for the future, is a plus.
> googaw Says:
> March 14th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
>> bipartisan majorities of Congress voted in support of the VSE
>>strategy for NASA. That meant Congress didnât try to stop the
>> Bush plan for retirement of STS in 2010 and abandoning the ISS in 2016.
>== They didnât vote for what counted, namely financial support
> sufficient to make the vision more than a hallucination.
On the contrary – they weer to supportive. Had they not voted to fund it (even though they likely wouldn’t have funded enough later to cover it without cutting other nASA things they really didn’t wat to cut) it could have forced Griffen to adopt a less costly design that could do all the Ares/Orion/Altairs were to do. They were supportive enough on the budgets to give Griffen reasonable hope they might fund his pet project. Even though it was a staggeringly wastefull way to do it.
> Trent Waddington Says:
> March 14th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
> If you want to demand a date and a goal from NASA, choose one
> that is within the current President/Administratorâs term.. ==
Problem us, with all the gov overhead adn dawdeling – its almost impossible to field anything that quickly.
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.