It looks like the Senate is moving forward on a NASA authorization bill:
In its current version, the bill would direct NASA to fly one more space shuttle mission in the second half of next year. The bill would also in effect restore full capabilities to the Constellation program’s Orion crew capsule by telling NASA to build a spacecraft that can undertake deep-space missions to destinations like the moon or an asteroid.
In April, President Obama said he wanted to retain the Orion crew capsule after shuttering the Constellation program, but as a stripped-down lifeboat for the International Space Station.
The authorization also directs NASA to start development of a new heavy-lift rocket immediately rather than waiting as late as 2015 in the president’s proposal.
First, the good news. Like Francisco Franco, Ares is still dead.
The bad news: they’re going to waste billions on a heavy lifter, when they don’t even know what its requirements are (other than full employment for the Marshall Space Flight Center). They’re also going to waste money on Orion. On the other hand, these programs will take so long to develop that they’ll probably die of fiscal atrophy before we can waste money attempting to operate either of them, and it will have become clear that they’re unneeded, if they don’t steal all the money from technology development. I wish that I were more sanguine that they won’t do that.
The other problem is that this will complicate commercial crew, because Boeing isn’t going to want to have to compete with a taxpayer-subsidized Orion for their commercial crew capsule. On the other hand, again, it will take a long time to develop, and Boeing may have more immediate customers, such as Bigelow, and they may assume (correctly) that even with the development subsidy, it won’t be competitive for crew transport to orbit or as a lifeboat, even with the reduced launch abort system requirements now that Ares is gone. And SpaceX will continue Dragon development regardless.
Of course, as the article points out, the Senate bill isn’t a done deal yet, nor have they reconciled it with the House, which may have different ideas. So it’s still unclear what the final authorization will say, or even if there will be one this year. If one is to go by history, there won’t be.
[Evening update]
Clark Lindsey has more thoughts. He’s (not unexpectedly) unhappy. But given what a disaster this Congress has been on every other front, why would we expect better?
There was talk the other day that this would be a separate bill and vulnerable to a presidential veto. Any word on this?
There was talk the other day that this would be a separate bill and vulnerable to a presidential veto. Any word on this?
I haven’t heard, but on those rare occasions that there is an authorization bill, it is generally stand alone. Of course, that doesn’t preclude anyone from piggybacking similar wording into other bills. And doing so doesn’t actually require NASA to spend the money on it, especially if it’s not specifically appropriated.
As much as I hope the fight will continue to put the Shuttle program out of our misery, and I wish no-one had ever told the politicians about heavy lift, and Orion really is a big fat pork pie, I guess we could tolerate this authorization bill.. what really matters is the allocations.
I can’t help but think of how people like Vitter have slammed the Obama Administration for not including them in NASA planning, but they won’t share with anyone else now. Heaven forbid they should actually give anyone else a say. This has become just another stupid skirmish between the Executive and Legislative branches.
I am concerned, too, that space technology R&D will be what suffers in the push to “restore” Orion and build a heavy-lift booster for as-yet-undefined reasons. Dr. Bobby Braun has a good plan and he deserves the opportunity to show how it can work.
Any word on whether they want Orion to return people to Earth’s surface or would it be transformed into a pure space ship?
IMO if we rely on private industry to get things and people into LEO, then the government should be focusing on going from LEO to where ever.
Hi All,
Looks like some of the savings will come from delaying commercial crew.
[[[It would also slow down a rush to invest in commercial rockets]]]
I wonder what the HLV will be and if it will be a SD HLV. The articles is unclear on it but it would seem likely if Ares I is indeed being sidelined.
I can define the reasons for reviving heavy lift now, in terms of jobs in Utah. That, of course, assumes it will be shuttle-derived, and use solids. I think there’s a fairly good chance that will be the case, even though it’s the worst possible solution in terms of cost. There is a big, nasty political drive on to make sure we will always have that particular cross to bear…
does anyone know what the new HLV will lift?
Probably Rush Limbaugh will say the HLV with solids is essential to continuing the great NASA tradition of developing missiles for our national defense
I’m not kidding, he actually believes the agency has been developing rockets for that purpose for decades, heard him say it about a month ago.
That guy has a phone right? Maybe you should call his show and set him straight.
Martijn Meijering,
Waste of time, the Great Rush is never wrong. He will just say don’t understand it or explain how you are a liberal who has been brain-washed so bad you will never understand it.
Especially anything about the military, self important people can always claim that they have “inside” knowledge and you’re not “in the loop”, and they don’t have to provide a shred of evidence because it’s classified.
Speaking as an instinctive conservative/libertarian myself, Limbaugh represents a certain ‘type’ with which I’m familiar. They don’t give a rat’s behind about spaceflight per se, don’t research anything about it, and when they do mention it it’s clear that they only think of it as an adjunct to the DoD.
“does anyone know what the new HLV will lift?”
I think this is the question that begs to be asked. A HLV would be nice to have, but is there really a need for a heavy vehicle when there is no funding or mission to sustain the idea?
The Saturn V was a marvelous vehicle that could throw a whole bunch of stuff into orbit. In one launch, it was able to send into space a vehicle (Skylab) with more than half of the usable living space of the ISS. If the second Skylab had been sent to orbit (instead of left sitting in the Smithsonian), it could have conceivably been made into a platform even larger than the current ISS… with only one or two additional launches.
My point is that anybody defending a HLV simply must respond to the question of why the Saturn V was canceled and why this vehicle is not going to meet the same fate. “If we build it, missions will come” is not a valid philosophy that justifies spending billions on a space launcher that will never be used.
If Congress was of the mind to increase NASA funding to incredible heights and make it a national priority to establish an American state on Mars (I’m thinking really big here) at the cost of trillions of dollars (over the course of the next century), I think a heavy launcher could not just be justified but would be absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, given current funding levels that are not going to rise significantly, the first act of the next President after Obama (2012 or 2016… it doesn’t matter when) will be to cancel the HLV and scrap whatever hardware is built.
Perhaps this is due to the recent holiday period that I’m thinking of this, but here is a “what if” idea: The purpose of the HLV and Orion programs is to keep a labor pool busy until we need their efforts for a future war. The money isn’t there for anything beyond LEO anyway. Perhaps the billions spent on these programs for “rocket research” and to keep the Ammonium perchlorate fabrication plants busy ought to be spent on developing a federally funded fireworks display for several of the major cities in America. A billion dollars per city ought to give one heck of an entertaining display and at least give back to the taxpayers who are paying for everything. Such an effort might even cause some real research on rocketry to happen if the developers realize that the rocket is going to blow up anyway, so let’s really push the envelope with some high altitude displays.
I don’t think this would happen either, but it would be a better use of taxpayer money, or at least be more honest with the fact that we aren’t getting anywhere with NASA. Bread and Circuses are what everybody is demanding anyway.
If there’s anything we learned from the ISS boondoggle, it’s that orbital assembly works. Sure, it isn’t easy but it works. The only justification for a heavier lift booster than the ones we currently have flying or available in the near term (Delta IV Heavy, Atlas V Heavy, Falcon 9 Heavy) is if there exists one or more absolutely critical components are too large or heavy to fly on our existing boosters. Even then, before spending billions on an HLV for just those components, it’d be a good idea to do a trade study to see if there was an alternative that didn’t require those oversized components.
No analogy is perfect but this is similar to our military’s airlift capabilities. For smaller payloads or those that need to go into short tactical airfields, we have several hundred C-130s. For larger payloads that still need rough field capability, there are about 100 C-17s. For even bigger payloads, there are about 80 C-5s. If you need your new piece of military equipment to be airlifted, it has to fit into one of those three planes. That imposes a constraint on your equipment design because it would cost many billions of dollars to build a larger plane to carry something bigger.*
Similarly, engineers designing equipment for future spaceflights should be constrained by the capability of the existing boosters. These boosters have some upgrade capability and that could loosen the constraints somewhat. The only way to justify spending billions on an HLV is if you can prove that doing so will save billions on the cost of the planned mission (a dubious prospect given history).
*In peacetime, you could hire the Russians to carry it in an An-124 or even the An-225 but that’s only if they’re agreeable.
Perhaps the billions spent on these programs for “rocket research” and to keep the Ammonium perchlorate fabrication plants busy ought to be spent on developing a federally funded fireworks display for several of the major cities in America.
That’s funny. I was thinking they should use this money for the world’s biggest and most expensive clustered bottle rocket, coated with a papier-mâché of $100 bills. The launch platform could be made from solid gold with diamonds.
A HLV would be nice to have
Even that isn’t true until we have cheap lift because having an HLV gets in the way of one of the best ways of achieving cheap lift in the near future.
“disaster this Congress ”
This disaster falls directly on the shoulders of Obama, Bolden, Augustine and Garver for the ill fated ameuature attempt to force the flex path down the throats of congress and NASA.
A boondoggle from its conception Flex has stimied and gutted our manned space program and left us entirely dependent on the Russians.
I’m all for a transition to a more commercialized NASA. However this debacle demonstrates total lack of planning and experience one of the most ill conceived awkward attempts at launching a “new direction” I have ever seen. Its damaging to both commercial and NASA the effects of which will only serve to prolong the gap.
Congress already had bought into burning the ISS in 2015 and phasing out the shuttle. Now we’re stuck with funding the ISS until 2025-2030 with no clear plan, vision, goal or road map to organize the efforts and spending into concise clear cut path forward. We are experiencing “FLEX” unleased and the resulting KOAS of space program without a mission, goal or destination. OMG what a circus!
ill fated ameuature attempt to force the flex path down the throats of congress and NASA.
It’s too early to tell if it is ill-fated, notwithstanding your wishful thinking.
And there was nothing amateurish about their attempt. They kept the special interests in Congress in the dark for as long as possible and distracted them with side discussions. They knew there was going to be fierce resistance and if they had revealed their intentions earlier they would have made it easier for the various factions that make up the Shuttle mafia to coordinate their efforts. Instead they were having fights over Ares Lite vs DIRECT vs sidemount and Moon vs Mars vs Flexible Path.
Their efforts to sell the plan to the general public on the other hand were a disaster.
Bolden needs to go and go fast. His lack of ability to lead and guide NASA out of this FLEX MUCK borders on total disregard for the institution he was tasked to lead. I thought Griffin was as bad as it could get. I was wrong Bolden is more concerned with aiding foreign radicals than guiding NASA out of this stymied FLEX muck. At a time when NASA needs leadership and focus Bolden is off playing foreign ambassadore. Bolden now appears to be nothing more than a political puppet a whimp lacking the backbone, vision and leadership required to forge a path forward amongst all the political wrangling. Bolden please reach down inside find that marine choose a path forward get focused on the task ahead and lead with vision and authority. Stop being a puppet and be your own man. There are some good aspect to FLEX. However they will be lost amongst all the vague KOAS if someone doesn’t step up give it some direction, definition, accountability, focus and leadership. Going to Mars in 2030 something just doesn’t cut it. In short get your sh_t wound up tight and stick with it. Let the public know that congress needs to get on with and fast. Give congress some kind of defined guidance as to FLEX is to be, what it will do and how and when it will do it. And yes your going to have to give em something like HLV only do it wisely, dangle the carrot.