Rogozin is threatening to cut off US access to the ISS, on the same day that the House space subcommittee marks up a bill declaring that “safety is the highest priority.”
Idiots.
39 thoughts on ““Get A Trampoline””
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Rogozin is threatening to cut off US access to the ISS, on the same day that the House space subcommittee marks up a bill declaring that “safety is the highest priority.”
Idiots.
Comments are closed.
Rogozin is both an idiot and a Stalinist (used to hang a portrait of old Joe on his office wall); even the Moscow Times described the trampoline remark as coming from a man “never at a loss for words.” He’s “Putin’s Rottweiler” when it comes to space.
The US Congress doesn’t have any excuses for idiocy on the topic – we can describe its behavior but it will let the ISS go and try to “crash” build a US RD-180 before switching to Falcon/Dragon.
On a related topic, did you get the book?
Yes, and it is excellent. And not because of the check that was included with it, either 😉
When will we see a review?
Surely there’s a quiet push to get Dragon ready for manned missions to the ISS muy pronto. While I doubt the Russians would actually use force to seize the station, which, of course, would be an act of war against the U.S. (and some other countries, for that matter), they could certainly stop ferrying astronauts. Given the huge investment we have in the ISS (regardless of whether we should’ve dumped so much money into it), it would seem unwise to just hope everything comes out okay.
With our current government, who knows whether this is happening or not? I bet not.
Based on conversations I’ve had, I bet not as well.
Oh, well, what’s another $100 billion meteor when you’re already spending trillions you don’t have?
Idiots? You’re being too kind Rand.
This whole situation is revealing about our short sighted politicians and how international cooperation can backfire. We are so intertwined with Russia in space that we cant cut the cords. As Rand has pointed out many times, we violate treaties just to fly our astronauts on Russian launchers. And our EELV program relies heavily on Russian engines. This has been the status quo for some time now. It is causing us a lot of headaches.
Cooperation with Russia was intended to make war less likely. Even in the event of war, a lot of people assume that ISS operations with the Russians would continue. However, the same factors that make it less likely for Russia to wage war on us, also prevent us from using all the tools available to deal with Russian aggression.
Politicians from both parties in congress need to pulls their heads out. They deserve a lot of criticism over this. President, I will have more flexibility after the election, Obama also deserves substantial criticism for treating Russia as his bff and throwing our allies under the bus.
The original plan was not to solely rely on Russia for crewed launches and lifeboats. I blame this on the time wasted not implementing things like the X-38 CRV, OSP, CEV, etc. The list of aborted vehicle programs is quite long.
Which “original plan” was that?
I know the idea was to use the Shuttle to carry crew to the US segment. But in case of an emergency it was never going to work as a lifeboat vehicle. You could not keep it in space for prolonged periods. That was why the X-38 was proposed as a lifeboat vehicle. Since they canned X-38 the alternative lifeboat was supposedly going to be two Soyuz capsules parked on the station. That was supposedly an interim solution until the OSP, CRV, or whatever was read. I still remember the sketches proposing to launch it on a Delta IV Heavy or Atlas V vehicle.
Before that there was X-33, Space Launch Initiative (i.e. Shuttle II) and the assorted mess that was supposed to actually replace the Shuttle Transportation System. But lets ignore that.
X-38 was facing budgetary spiral and needing to launch it with a Atlas 5 was going to make it
pretty expensive. It’s why the ESA dumped Hermes.
The economics of a NASA crew capsule wasn’t good in the 90s and well, the Orion
spacecraft is pretty expensive.
Using the Soyuz was a good deal, especially when the shuttle went offline. However, with the rise of Falcon 9, and Antares a lot of options are becoming more interesting.
You obviously don’t read Wayne Hales’ blog. X-38 was the one part of the US segment that was on time and under budget. It was sacrificed to show everyone that this time (We mean it!), we were really serious about getting the ISS budget under control.
With all due respect to wayne, I’m going to withhold judgement.
I’ve sat in far too many rooms, with far too many program managers who say
“This is all going great” and 2 years later, it’s a mess.
If we were smart, we’d be working quietly with SpaceX and others to do several things. One is to prep a contingency cargo Dragon for crew transport (this could be done in a matter of weeks). I think it’s a certainty that of all existing US space vehicles, cargo Dragon is the closest thing we have to a crew-capable vehicle, so it’s the obvious choice if Russia cuts off Soyuz rides.
But, my guess is they’ll never do it, because Cargo Dragon doesn’t have a LAS (Neither did Shuttle, or for that matter, Gemini, which used ejection seats) and they’d much prefer the US suffer the massive humiliation and loss of ISS that take a small risk of a kind we routinely took in the past.
Yes, they are that stupid.
At the moment the Russians couldn’t be writing a better script for SpaceX – here is Elon’s latest two tweets:
I hope this will also be enough for ESA to push the Ariane 5 ME program faster. Depending on Soyuz to launch the Galileo constellation is not good.
As I’ve been pointing out for awhile, now, the crew-capable version of Dragon already exists, else SpaceX would not be planning pad and in-flight tests of its abort system as early as this summer. Nice to see that Elon has now made this fairly obvious point explicit. There is, therefore, no need to cobble something together based on cargo Dragon; the real deal is sitting in final assembly at Hawthorne.
With the hardware a given, the only question I have about its readiness for service is whether or not there are still any incomplete avionics software items on the critical path. If there are, then the time required to finish these up defines the minimum time from “Go” that crew Dragon would require to be ready for initial test launch. If no such items exist, the crew Dragon is, in effect, available now. I take it as a given that, in a declared emergency, the two additional leisurely year’s worth of i-dotting, t-crossing, report filing and review meetings now mandated by NASA prior to its currently declared date of earliest first flight could be dispensed with.
I think you are being a bit optimistic. If Crew Dragon was ready, it would be flying now. But it isn’t.
The time could certainly be shortened, but not dispensed with. I don’t think you understand what level of effort is needed.
If Crew Dragon was ready, it would be flying now.
If it was important to fly now, they’d declare it ready and fly.
Are you really that naive?
Do you really think SpaceX has it ready, hidden away somewhere, just waiting two years for NASA to complete their paperwork?
I’m all for flying with acceptable risk, but sometimes something that isn’t ready actually isn’t ready. (as in – couldn’t fly – period) The pieces that undoubtedly remain can be accelerated, but not jumped over.
So, if an asteroid was about to hit NYC, and the only way to stop it was to get people up on a Dragon in a couple weeks, you think we couldn’t do that?
I understand what it takes to build aerospace hardware. Generally speaking, for instance, one has to build more hardware and software to perform an unmanned test of a system that will be manned in normal operation, than is needed to actually operate said system in normal flight trim with a crew aboard. SpaceX plans its first launch abort system test of Dragon 2 this summer. Ergo, the thing exists in flyable form and is, essentially, ready to go.
I also understand politics and money. The politics are that SpaceX is the producer, but NASA is the customer. NASA has to wrest its budget from Congress every year. One of the ways they do this is to whine that less than full funding will mean delays. Congress has been notably stingy with Commercial Crew funds. NASA has no choice, as it sees things, but to stretch out the schedule – regardless of whether “required” in any objective sense – in order to maintain its credibility, such as it is, with Congress. “See! You were stingy to us! Now it’s gonna be late!” In the absence of full funding, NASA will snivel, whine and foot-drag to insure its predictions of schedule slippage come true. This doesn’t benefit the nation, of course, but, at least in the minds of its management, it benefits NASA.
Finally, I understand that complicated systems get rushed through their allegedly “inflexible” remaining development schedules all the time when a suitable emergency – usually a war – arises. The B-29 was fielded with engines full of magnesium components that tended, initially, to catch fire in mid-air. The risks taken in flying American astronauts atop Atlas, Titan and Saturn rockets in the 60’s are reasonably well-known to space enthusiasts. Every one of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo flights was appreciably more dangerous than the initial crewed test flight of Dragon 2 is going to be. A bit closer in time, the JSTARS aircraft was rushed into service during Desert Storm even though its development schedule called for even more additional time than Dragon 2’s development schedule has left. The USAF and the contractor worked the bugs out in the field.
IMO, gleaned from Shotwell’s Space Show interview, it looks like the landing thrusters could be a delay before what is considered for the capsule to operational. Also, the docking mechanism. That want that thing to meet all of its goals before it flies.
Those are desirements, not requirements.
I listened to that interview too. Don’t know what you’re referring to as I recall no such hedging on her part. As to the “landing thrusters” they’re the same Super Dracos used for launch abort. They’re tanned, rested, tested and ready.
Dick Eagleson wrote;
I take it as a given that, in a declared emergency, the two additional leisurely year’s worth of i-dotting, t-crossing, report filing and review meetings now mandated by NASA prior to its currently declared date of earliest first flight could be dispensed with.
Sorry, but I don’t see how you can take that as a given. In a sane world you could, but not this one.
Looks like you were right regarding a crew Dragon existing, and if it exists, it could probably be made ready to fly in a few months, assuming some common-sense prevailed (such as canceling the max-Q LAS test, a regime we’ve never tested a LAS at, and which requires a full-up launch vehicle, something else we’ve never done for a LAS test).
However, the above paragraph is an unrealistic scenario, for it requires common sense, a commodity which is somewhat harder to come by in government than unobtanium.
Couldn’t the max-Q abort test use a dummy second stage that is ballasted to the correct weight?
The max-Q test could be one of the cargo runs to the I.S.S.
Oooopsss Just kidding.
Agree about D.C. common sense being more dear than unobtanium. But if the Russians do something as obviously aggressive as cutting off access to ISS, even the mainstream media won’t be able to keep that off the front pages. The majority of Americans who pay no attention to space matters at all in the normal course of affairs will have certain truths forcibly called to their attention – like the fact that we have a real manned spaceship ready to go and all that’s holding it back is institutional unwillingness to flout “protocol” under any circumstances. They will not see the wisdom in splashing a $100 billion investment just because a few corrupt hacks in the Congress and a bunch of old-women-in-skirts NASA bureaucrats don’t wish to do the obviously sensible thing and get Dragon 2 – if that’s the au courant terminology – operational ASAP and break the Russian blockade. Good luck to the powers that be trying to sell that load of road apples to John Q. Public.
As for the mere existence of crewed Dragon, Dragonrider (as I believe it at least used to be called) or Dragon 2 – take your pick of nomenclature – that was trivially deriveable given SpaceX’s declared timeline for the LAS tests and the realities of aerospace manufacturing leadtimes. You can’t put one of those puppies together from raw metal sheet and billet overnight. Ergo, at least the first test article had to be either done or so close the difference hardly mattered and the second was probably well along. The first one intended to actually carry crew on a test flight is probably extant to at least some extent too. Maybe others as well.
Go ahead, Comrade Rogozin. Make my day!
Oh, I agree with you in the main, except I do think that the powers that be will indeed futility attempt to sell this particular load of road apples when the fertilizer hits the air impeller.
Okay, suppose the Russians cut of US access to ISS. They can’t run ISS by themselves, so, it soon ends up abandoned, or they detach their Zevetya module… either way, ISS is coming down, and it’s plenty big enough to do a lot of damage if it comes down in the wrong place (a lot would survive reentry). Imagine the media spectacular of that station death watch… and the Russians wouldn’t be worried; it’d only be a danger to areas between 51.6N and 51.6 S. This would be both a disaster and an abject humiliation for the US.
But… on the other hand, from the perspective of DC, Dragon might be worse. Using it would expose the wastefulness and incompetence that have been wrecking the US space program for decades. I think they’d find that a far bigger downside than the real disaster, and so they might find blocking the Dragon option with red tape the least bad option.
Remember, we’re not talking sane people here, we’re talking politicians. 🙂
I understand where you’re coming from, but NASA politics are far from the only politics involved in any ISS-denial scenario. Most importantly, such a move by Russia would constitute an even more emphatic thumb in the eye to Mr. Obama than Russian machinations in Syria and Ukraine. Unlike those earthbound situations, however, Mr. Obama has both a viable course of action and considerable incentive (November elections – Hello?) to do something that has a good probability of success instead of his usual dithering and indecision. What the mandarins of NASA think about it won’t matter when the President works out the politcal calculus as it affects him. If he concludes that a bold stroke might even save the Democrats the Senate in 2014, he’d authorize a by-any-means-necessary Dragon 2 mission in a New York minute.
Sounds like the Dragon for the in-flight abort test Dragon is ready to show off since he is saying “flight design hardware”. That is unless he has a couple more Dragon hiding around. Will have to patiently wait until 29 May.
Since crewed Dragon is almost ready and could soon fly SpaceX employees into orbit, I think it’s time to ask how those employees will be affected by the new IRS push to treat company provided food as taxable income, a policy aimed at highly successful tech firms that use free employee cafeterias as a perk. But instead of valuing the cafeteria meal at $10 or $20, the space meal might be $5,000 or $10K, and over the course of a reasonable mission the taxes on food might exceed the astronaut’s gross income.
Just thought I’d point that out, and thank Obama for closing such an obvious loophole in employee compensation.
Obama space policy: Don’t eat and hold your breath.
Those are exciting announcements from SpaceX.
Orbital To Build, SpaceX To Launch, Thaicom 8 in 2016
Ah, the sweet, sweet sound of commercial satellites launching on US-built & launched LVs.
A lot of snorted and spewed coffee at Arianespace and ILS this morning.
Add it to the list including SES-9 and SES-10. Sounds like Thaicom and SES are happy repeat customers.
#NoTrampolineRequired #CaliforniaGarages
accelerated, but not jumped over
Really Lars?
If they jump over the LAS…
…does that prevent crew?
…do they need new software?
…do they need two expensive launch abort tests?
They already have seating for seven and comfortable room for ten to evaluate it.
They already have temperature control and power.
Oxygen isn’t a problem with multiple solutions ready.
CO2 scrubbing is gas light technology.
Crew control isn’t needed but will probably interface readily with existing systems. The software changes would be trivial since it already works without manual control. To emphasize, it could be jumped over.
What exactly prevents crew from being launched today?
Do you really think the dragon with nostrils was just a mockup given Elon’s desire to avoid waste? It wasn’t well hidden.