Laurie Leshin attempted to tamp down the mindless hysteria over the new space policy yesterday:
The new plan represents “a change in approach and philosophy, but not a change in goal,” said Laurie Leshin, NASA deputy administrator for exploration, in a speech yesterday at a Marshall Institute event on space exploration policy in Washington. “The goal remains the same: to see human explorers out in the solar system.” The new focus on “sustainable and affordable” human space exploration isn’t that new, she said, noting that it was emphasized back in 2004 by the Aldridge Commission that evaluated the Vision for Space Exploration (a committee she served on when she was a professor at Arizona State University.) “We’ve come back to needing to have new and enabling approaches in order to make this a sustainable program for the future.”
To emphasize the need for technology development—one of the cornerstones of the new plan—to enable sustainable human space exploration, she put up a chart showing the mass needed to carry out the latest version of NASA’s Design Reference Mission for human Mars exploration. “If today, with today’s technology, decided we wanted to go to Mars, our mission would have a mass about 12 times of the space station,” she said. “It’s just impossible.” Various technologies, from reducing cryogenic boiloff to in situ resource utilization, can get it down to a more manageable level, she said. “It’s not that these technologies are nice to have, they’re absolutely required if we’re going to have a sustainable path out into the solar system.”
I wish that people would understand what a hopeless dead end Constellation was. Regardless of the new policy direction, its rotting carcass had to be cleared from the road. I assume that we’ll be seeing a lot more details and specifics in the coming weeks and months (probably at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in a couple weeks).
[Update a few minutes later]
One of the things that encourages me about the implementation of the new policy is that Dr. Leshin, the new head of the Exploration Directorate, was on the Aldridge Commission, and understands better than most the need for affordability and sustainability recommended by that body. I suspect she’ll do a lot better job than Mike Griffin’s NASA of implementing all, or at least most of the Aldridge recommendations.
It’s hard to get excited about any of this. It’s all going to go to zero before too long, as the US faces its existential financial crisis.
Unless Congress gets on-board it won’t be sustainable.
Bill,
It’s quite possible that the combination of “can get parochially-interested members of Congress on-board” and “is workable and long-term sustainable with the rest of Congress” is a null set. Most (say 90-95%) of Congress is only lightly interested in this, and only so long as it doesn’t threaten funding for stuff they do care about. Griffin tried the “politically sustainable path of least resistance” and see where it’s gotten us? Honestly, if certain members of Congress aren’t willing to budge an inch on NASA, it’s pretty much hopeless anyway, so may as well try for something useful first, and only fall back to throwing up our hands and writing NASA off. Instead of picking that as a preferred default strategy.
~Jon
Hopefully the commercial sector will be bootstrapped on time. Otherwise there may indeed by political pressure to completely cut off funding in space propulsion. Then again it would not be that much worse than the funding desert after Griffin got in NASA. Any decent propulsion R&D projects got canned in favor of redoing J-2 and using solids.
IMO Obama is doing two major mistakes. Stimulus money hemorrhaging on attempts to save failed businesses, not pulling troops from foreign wars quickly enough. His risk is not becoming the next Carter. It is becoming the next Johnson.
Sorry folks, but delusions of Empire are precisely that. I have little doubt the US will continue to be a major power in the future, however China and India just have so much more human capital it is painfully obvious the same thing that happened to the UK and France in the past will happen to the US and Russia. IMO the next global empire will come when infantry speed and firepower increase significantly, in such a way that even the parts of the planet where mechanized forces currently cannot thread safely will be reachable. That will take several technological leaps and a lot of manpower.
Jon,
There is a political aphorism which counsels “count the votes BEFORE calling for the vote”
By rolling out the FY2011 budget prior to lining up at least a few supporters in Congress, Bolden, Garver & company did their cause a grave disservice.
If even a few Democratic members of Congress were vocally supportive of the new direction, the political landscape would be very different today.
I wish that people would understand what a hopeless dead end Constellation was.
I wish more space activists would realize that this is true of far more than just Constellation.
Well I guess that settles it then, as we all know this administration would never mislead or lie.
Hopefully the commercial sector will be bootstrapped on time.
Back it this galaxy, real space commerce has long been bootstrapped and operating profitably.
What pleases me (and assuming this doesn’t all get derailed at some point) is the multiple reference to ‘solar system,’ and not the single-mindedness many have for Mars, which they consider the only ‘destination’ and/or ‘goal.’ They’ll not be happy with anything less than a (massively unlikely) Kennedy-esq commitment, which would be counter productive in that, like Apollo, it would tend to lead to architectures based more on time, plus over-optimization for that goal, and less on flexibility, cost and sustainability…