17 thoughts on “Comeback Kid”

  1. I completely agree.

    I’m optimistic on this issue.  Previous monster rockets have been delayed and have gone over budget thereby either canceling other priorities or getting cancelled itself.  When this happens to the SLS, it won’t be able to stand when a couple of Falcon Heavies can do the job and it won’t be able to stand in the face of the success of the COTS programs.  The moment the SLS is cancelled, more than enough money will be freed up.  America’s space program will be on an irreversible successful path.

  2. You didn’t see many civil servants in those videos Sunday night. JPL’s very good at planetary exploration, but they’re definitely not going to lead NASA.

  3. Killing Orion seems more useful than killing Webb, as long as NASA isn’t allowed to do megaprojects like Webb in the future.

  4. Rand,

    Exactly, its not NASA, its Congress.

    Congress doesn’t meddle in the planetary exploration program to the same extent it meddles in HSF. So NASA is able to focus on doing a job and finishing it instead of changing directions with each change of the political winds.

  5. Tom,
    While I agree completely that planetary science doesn’t see anywhere near as much meddling as HSF, the whole “we’d be making more progress if it wasn’t for all the changes in direction” argument isn’t very convincing. With the budget that NASA has been and is likely to get, we’d probably still be talking about 2019-2021 as the initial operational flight for CxP. I think the reason HSF changes direction with political change so much is more that HSF is screwed up, and new presidents are more likely to fix broken programs from their predecessors than to fix programs of their own that are going off the rails.

    ~Jon

    1. Jon,
      Jon,

      Actually HSF was pretty stable until Columbia resulted in NASA being pushed into retiring the Space Shuttle early under President Bush. Then it became a political football between the New Space Contractors and the Old Space Contractors pushing each other aside for space at the NASA feeding trough. But Mike Griffin also had a lot do with it since he was more interested in playing chief engineer than being NASA administrator.

      Tom

    2. I actually thought things were going swell with OSP (except for the name of the competition) and the Boeing/Lockmart EELV derived vehicle proposals. Then Griffin showed up, stopped everything, and started implementing his ESAS proposal. After pissing away billions and years passing by it got cancelled without flying a single test article using the final configuration. Heck they didn’t even fly or hotfire a stage in the final configuration. They hadn’t even finished the final configuration. Every once in a while they changed the proposed engines. First it was RS-68, then it was a modified RS-68, then it was the SSME, then it was a cheaper SSME, whatever. The only time I have seen a more mismanaged project was the ESA Hermes but at least they had the excuse it was being built by a lot of countries with separate agendas.

      1. Godzilla,

        I agree. Either of the OSP vehicles would have worked well for supporting the ISS and with the money wasted on Constellation both could have probably been built and flying now.

        But of course then there wouldn’t be any excuse for the COTS/CCDev/CCP/CCiCAP/What will it be called tomorrow program.

      2. You’re rewriting history.

        Orbital Space Plane became the Crewed Rescue Vehicle under Sean O’Keefe. Then Bush renamed it Crewed Exploration Vehicle (which sounded like a pickup truck in the oil patch.)

        All of that happened before “Griffin showed up.”

        There’s a direct line from OSP to Orion.

        What you’re really saying is OSP was going swell until it got funding and NASA started building it. Programs *always* evolve once they get funding and go from concept to PDR to CDR to hardware. If you don’t like the way OSP evolved, that’s fine, but to suggest that NASA would have stuck to the original conceptual designs if not for Mike Griffin is nonsense. It never works that way.

        In 2004, some of us predicted that the Bush Vision of Space Exploration would quickly become Apollo II. That was considered heresy at the time, but we were right. Yet now, everyone acts as if that evolution was unpredictable.

        Everyone says “the problem isn’t VSE, it’s Constellation” — but VSE without Constellation was just viewgraphs, like OSP. If you like NASA’s viewgraphs but don’t like the hardware that comes out of them, what does that say about the process?

        By the way, Griffin’s concept didn’t start with ESAS. It began with a study he conducted at the Planetary Society, before he became NASA Administrator — and New Spacers loved the time. As did Planetary Society executive director Lou Friedman. By the time they started to hate it, Congress had already allocated billions of dollars, and it was very hard to shut it down. Be careful what you ask for.

        1. Edward,

          Funny how 2 of the 3 picks for CCiCap look like contenders for the OSP, so if anything the CCiCap is its continuation, not Orion. But that damages the New Space myth so I am sure you will find a way to twist history. 🙂

          But I am glad you agree that is was under President Bush and Michael Griffin that NASA HSF took a dive under. Makes you wonder what will happen if Governor Romney wins and Michael Griffin returns to NASA for a repeat performance.

  6. Curiosity has been in development since 04-05ish. I fail to see how it’s a sign of a “new” anything. It’s a holdover, and a great one, but the real indication of a new NASA is if Space X keeps delivering cargo and the CCiCAP awards go (relatively) smoothly.

    I remain ambivalent on Orion. This is one project where it can be argued that political meddling and direction changes have noticeably retarded its progress. LM, otherwise, has done well with its development, all things considered.

    1. The expensive Mars mission NASA was going to do with Europe was scrapped due to its escalating costs. Instead Planetary Science was sent back to the drawing board to come up with a more sustainable strategy.

      1. Ya, that’s what I thought. It is a shame that NASA had to cancel their next Mars mission considering the Mars missions are just about they only thing they have been good at.

        1. I suspect the OMB looked at the trend is mission costs, increasing to the 2.5 billion gambled on this mission and decided it was time to pull the plug before NASA got another ISS tar baby. Hopefully the plan due out this month for Mars exploration will be a return to reality and sustainability.

  8. But look, if you got a rover on the surface of Mars, you didn’t land that rover. There were lots of smarter, harder working folks before you that built the roads and bridges that made landing that rover on Mars possible. And that’s why it is absolutely necessary for Obama to slash the planetary science budget by 20%.

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