The Senate hearings have begun. The first and last man on the moon will be testifying. While they’re certainly admirable men, I’m not sure what they have to contribute to this discussion. They know nothing about affordable or sustainable programs. They are in fact experts on those with the opposite characteristics. Here’s the webcast, and Alan Boyle is tweeting it.
[Update mid afternoon]
Sigh…
Cernan says it “might take as much as a full decade and would take 2-3 times as much” money as budgeted to launch new commercial spaceships.
When did Gene Cernan become a cost estimating expert? And this, from Cowing’s feed:
Cernan: had telecon last week; Bolden said comm space may need bailout like GM/Chrysler – may be largest bailout in history.
Bigger than TARP? Bigger than GM/Chrysler? Bigger than the thirty-five billion dollars that Ares I was projected to cost, if all went well? When SpaceX has spent less than a billion to date, and they’re most of the way there?
Words fail.
And of course, who can gainsay them? They walked on the moon.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I don’t know whether to be angry, or sad about this. Gene Cernan is up there spouting utter nonsense to senators. Did someone else give him these bizarre talking points, or is he just making it up? Either way, it tarnishes him badly.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Is someone going to ask Bolden to confirm this, or is he no longer a witness?
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s another gem of innumeracy from Captain Cernan:
Cernan: Let’s put a box on the 1040 for taxpayers to give an extra penny to NASA. I bet we’d get enough $ to do all we wanted.
Let’s be generous and assume that there are a hundred and fifty million US taxpayers. By my accounting, that would give us a whopping $1.5M a year.
It’s like he’s just talking without thinking, and making this stuff up on the fly.
[Update a few minutes later]
I have more thoughts on “bail outs” here.
[Update late afternoon]
Clark has some brief thoughts, and links:
From Sen. Hutchison capturing cosmic rays for energy production to Sen. Rockefeller transporting Sir Isaac Newton to 1880s Baltimore, it was a typical Congressional hearing on a technical topic.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
[Update a few minutes later]
It was nice to see Senator Brownback saying sensible things. I just got an email from the Commercial Spaceflight Federation with a quote:
I am a strong supporter of NASA, as I mentioned, and of the commercial space industry … With the impending retirement of the Shuttle, NASA is now assuming a much different role than in our past space effort, and I think there is great opportunity to have a space program that leads the world but will be a space program that is firmly embedded in opportunity for all. By opening up commercial space, it ensures a strong future for the US and the competitive aerospace industry.
I think it helped that Pete Worden was on his staff for a while a few years ago.
[Evening update]
Alan Boyle has a story on the hearings today, and Clark Lindsey has expanded on his initial thoughts.
Until credible, private founded and managed destinations appear, the point is moot.
This destination focus fallacy is classical Apollo think – one of the reasons for the current situation.
If your question is really about where is the market? Then that is a very good question with a great many answers.
I would perhaps remind you that the global space market/industry is already 1-2 orders of magnitude greater than that needed to justify the development of low cost space infrastructure. Not that the development of low cost space infrastructure will necessarily be based on existing markets – which are perhaps not the lowest or largest hanging fruit.
Way to take a sentence out of context. I spoke of “privately founded and managed destinations.” You know, the whole reason a launcher and a spacecraft would even exist?
Apparently so many answers that the Augustinophiles can’t even be bothered to provide one.
Global space market growth is overwhelmingly dominated by satellite services. At $140 billion in 2007 that’s that’s fifty percent of the total pile, twelve times larger than the launch industry, and six times larger than the satellite manufacturing industry. And none of that has to do with manned anything.
You just can’t say “infrastructure” and hand wave that into a justification for launching people and what they need to live up there. You need actual destinations that support actual people, presumably doing something that earns the launch provider and orbital host actual money. Currently, there’s only one such destination with a viable funding stream for its operational costs–and that’s going away as soon as 2020; possibly sooner.