“Ray” over at the Vision Restoration blog writes about the ridiculous discussion last week on SLS/Orion:
This past week rewarded us with a panel discussion Removing the Barriers to Deep Space Exploration. The subject of the panel turned out to be the SLS heavy lift rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Surprisingly, in spite of the title of the panel, the discussion was not about cancelling SLS and Orion to allow funding to go to the robotic precursor missions, exploration technology development, and affordable space infrastructure needed for actual deep space exploration that have largely been squashed by the SLS/Orion pair. In fact, the discussion really didn’t seem to be about barriers to deep space exploration at all. Instead, it seemed like a snugglefest of love for the expensive capsule and even more wildly expensive rocket.
I weary of even writing about it any more, it’s so unutterably absurd.
Meanwhile as Doug Messier points out at Space Review, while we in the US have high hopes for the research potential of ISS, other ‘partners’ are thinking of pulling out in 2020. So as Commercial Crew slips, commercial uses get the plug pulled, and both domestic and foreign Old Space get back to business as usual by the start of the next decade.
We can’t win, we can’t even break even. Maybe we’ll have some suborbitals starting a new path by the end of the year. Just wait another 40 years and we may be back to where we could have been if SLS/Orion pork weren’t the highest priority of all.
No, I’m not in a good mood.
.. and there’s no-one waiting to step up to take over the ISS like there was for Mir. It’s a Rube Goldberg machine up there that requires constant attention just to keep running.
Charles, I know you’re a young pup (at least it your own eyes), but before you blame “old space” for all your problems, I think you should do some reading.
I recommend you start with G. Harry Stine’s “The Third Industrial Revolution” (written 1975) and “Earth Satellites and the Race for Space Superiority (written in 1957, just before Sputnik).
You’ll find that Stine’s views on commercialization make “new space” look downright reactionary. Furthermore, the vision he outlined in “Earth Satellites…” was commonplace in the 1950’s. The idea of space as a government monopoly did not really take hold until after Sputnik.
The “new space” lobby chose to put all its eggs in the COTS/CCDev basket. It deliberately crafted a strategy that put COTS/CCDev and ISS in the critical path, creating multiple potential single-point failures. That’s always a bad idea. It’s the sort of thing “old spacers” like Stine warned about, time and time again, but “new spacers” wouldn’t listen.
In “old space,” commercial meant private enterprise servicing private customers. Serving government customers, under a different set of rules, wasn’t called “commercial,” it was called “procurement reform.”
The “new space” lobby *could* have called for policies that help all space ventures, not just selected NASA contractors like SpaceX, but it refused. Technology prizes, tax incentives, property rights, regulatory and liability reform — over and over again, “new space” leaders told us these these things were Politically Incorrect. We were told that “COTS is more important,” and any other policy would somehow detract from COTS.
So, now you’re running into the sort of problems that procurement reform always runs into — problems you were warned about — and you have no Plan B.
If “new space” had listened to old-timers like Harry Stine, it would not be in this mess. Just being old doesn’t make someone stupid. (I also suggest that you take another look at “new space” and see how old your leaders really are. It’s amazing that they can still say these things with a straight face.)
Edward,
I agree. New Space has just become the the new space contractors. The assimilation of New Space has begun and resistance is futile 🙂
Until we get government back under control, SLS is just a symptom.
A very astute observation.
“Bigelow Aerospace’s plans for private space stations is [sic] dependent upon the ability of NASA’s commercial crew program to produce affordable human space transportation systems. The company is initially targeting sovereign governments as station tenants. If Bigelow is successful, the company could draw away support from NASA’s efforts to continue ISS operations. The effort would also build up the space capabilities of foreign nations. ”
This just doesn’t make sense to me.
1. Bigelow’s plans aren’t dependent on NASA, they are dependent on SpaceX. (Bigelow’s touchingly naive faith in Boeing notwithstanding.)
2. The author seems to be hinting here that IT’S A BAD THING if a commercial company runs a successful space station business (which would necessarily rely on commercial launch services), thus somehow diminishing support for ISS. What? Who cares? The Wright Brothers severely diminished support for Samuel Langley, and that worked out just fine.
Am I just reading it wrong?
I don’t think you’re reading it wrong.
Bigelow has a hard slog to get even a minor station up there. If you think dealing with NASA is fickle (it is), try dealing with other space agencies. They’re not only cash strapped, (in a way NASA would never understand), they’re constantly fighting for mere existence (and rightly so, it’s not something any government should be doing in my opinion.)
Mike Griffin was on The Space Show the other week, making various silly points about “the good of the nation” and such, but one thing I think he got right: a lunar base is a heck of a better market than an orbital space station. Bigelow seems to agree. Problem is, no-one has the cash to get the ball rolling – not even NASA.
“….while we in the US have high hopes for the research potential of ISS, …”
We do?
I never did.
And the public isn’t being informed any better either, at least in one little way. I was at Kennedy today and watched the Maven mission launch off with my son (he’s 4, and loved it). But over the loudspeakers, and from the tour guides, there were lots of breathless praise for the cost-plus contractors and bland assurances that SLS/Orion would launch in 2017 and be on their way to Mars “sometime in the ’20s”. SpaceX or Orbital? Nada. Nothing mentioned at all, even though they’ve both been to ISS now.
It really isn’t about “made in America”; it’s really about government control. Congress would rather ally themselves with the Russians than American companies if it means giving up local pork. Disgraceful.
“I was at Kennedy today and watched the Maven mission launch off with my son (he’s 4, and loved it)”
<– jealous.
Imagine if even $1 billion a year was spent on developing next generation power sources for manned and unmanned space exploration. Such as: fission reactors, RTGs (funding of which just got cut), RF and laser based power beaming over long distances and SPS technology (useful for exploration of any surface in the solar system especially Mars, Europa, Titan, Venus, comets/asteroids, etc.), batteries/super-capacitors, and fuel cells.
Also imagine if even $1 billion a year was spent on developing on orbit assembly technologies, especially orbital tugs and propellant depots.
And right there that’s just the SLS budget, essentially. If you also cut Orion you could spend more than a billion a year developing next generation electric propulsion (e.g. pulsed plasma propulsion, which has been demonstrated on a small scale but needs more development work to bring it maturation and which has a very favorable Isp/thrust combination to enable use of EP on manned missions).