Jeff Foust (who also has a summary of the current political state of play over at The Space Review today) has some initial budget numbers:
That building block approach includes heavy-lift launch vehicle R&D, “vigorous” technology development work in areas like automated rendezvous and docking and propellant transfer, and a “steady stream of precursor robotic exploration missions”.
For those who foolishly think that this new direction is the “end of human spaceflight” or even “the end of human spaceflight beyond LEO,” what do they think that those precursors are for? Not to mention the tech development work?
I guess, to them, that if you’re not repeating the folly of Apollo, you’re not doing “real” human spaceflight.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the OMB document (doesn’t look like a permalink, though):
NASA’s Constellation program – based largely on existing technologies – was based on a vision of returning astronauts back to the Moon by 2020. However, the program was over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies. Using a broad range of criteria an independent review panel determined that even if fully funded, NASA’s program to repeat many of the achievements of the Apollo era, 50 years later, was the least attractive approach to space exploration as compared to potential alternatives. Furthermore, NASA’s attempts to pursue its moon goals, while inadequate to that task, had drawn funding away from other NASA programs, including robotic space exploration, science, and Earth observations. The President’s Budget cancels Constellation and replaces it with a bold new approach that invests in the building blocks of a more capable approach to space exploration.
Killing off a dead end and reinvesting in something that actually has a hope of achieving the goals. Gosh, what a concept.
One thing that’s not clear yet, absent more perusal. When they say cancel Constellation, does that include Orion? Not that I’d cry, but I’m curious. Orion’s requirements, after all, are integral with the Constellation architecture, which is clearly dead now, so the program will need some rethinking regardless.
And is this just the opening position in a budget battle with Congress, with it and perhaps some kind of heavy lifter as bargaining chips?
[Update a few minutes later]
Bobby Block has more analysis over at The Write Stuff:
The flagship enterprise will be developing on-orbit refueling and automated approaches and docking technologies.
…Lots of parallels are being drawn with how the federal government used mail contracts to develop the aviation industry.
So far, I’m liking pretty much everything I’m seeing.
[Update mid morning PST]
Clark Lindsey has some notes from the announcement. This is a huge breath of fresh air, at least so far. Which is not to say it’s perfect, but it can be a long way from that and still a huge improvement over the previous plans.
[Update a couple minutes later]
A summary from George Herbert, over at the Arocket list:
Well, it’s out. As predicted, wth some additional benefits.
Constellation outright cancelled, message from the top on down.
$2.5 B of the new $6 B funding over 5 years (beyond flat) is in Earth Observation science missions. Major (claimed) focus on technologies for affordable long term human exploration of the solar system, including orbital demonstrations of propellant tank farm and orbital propellant transfers, automated rendezvous and docking (presumably, of human-sized vehicles, and vehicles far from earth), closed loop ECLSS, a new first stage booster engine (presumably big enough for a HLV), I think I saw mention of deep space propulsion. [all of the things that Mike Griffin starved to feed Apollo on Steroids — rs]
They’re explicitly stepping away from a roadmap, and onto the technology base that most of us long term experienced enthusiasts have been pushing for.
If I had to summarize my first impressions, especially of Bolden’s statement –
“We were doing Flags and Footprints. The President and I don’t want to do that. We want to colonize space for real. We’re going to do the foundations for that now.”
I assume that last is a summary of Bolden’s statement, not a quote.
Whether or not they follow through, this is (IMNSHO) the most visionary space policy that the nation has ever had. Now to see how badly Congress screws it up.
[Another update]
The thing that amazes me is that when I read comments from those defending Ares, and Constellation, and NASA, at places like Space Politics and The Write Stuff, is that they are entirely devoid of facts and logic. These people live in some bizarre alternate reality in which NASA didn’t kill fourteen astronauts at the cost of hundred of billions of dollars, Lockheed Martin has ever sent someone into space, SpaceX has achieved nothing, etc. In Senator Shelby’s case, I can understand that he is completely motivated to lie or delude himself about such things by what he perceives to be his political interest, but I can’t figure out what drives the irrationality of others with no dog in the fight except apparent blind NASA worship.
[Update a few minutes later]
I have some more thoughts on Ares, astronauts and safety.
And if you missed my post on Obama’s conservative (even if inadvertent) space policy, it’s here.
[Update a few minutes later]
If your only template for a “successful” human spaceflight program is Apollo (big rocket, firm deadline, big bucks, a few NASA astronauts walking on some planet), then I can see why you’d be disappointed when instead the program is for enabling lots of destinations, by lots of people, with no specific deadline or destination. These are the same people who would apparently say that Lewis and Clark was “real exploration of the west,” and all those miners and trappers wandering around were just hobbyists. And that the government should have built its own heavy-lift railroad instead of giving land grants.
[Afternoon update]
Buzz likes it. No one would know the folly of repeating Apollo better than him.
[Update a while later]
More thoughts from Michael Mealing.
[Update a few minutes later]
With regard to the knee-jerk irrational complaints from many, this reminds me very much of six years ago, when the Vision for Space Exploration was announced. Many “progressive” and pro-space bloggers opposed it, even though they admitted to liking the idea. Why? Because it was proposed by the BusHitler, so there was obviously a catch, and he was up to no good. I’m seeing a lot of the same kind of partisan nonsense in opposition to this. This is the most truly visionary space policy ever (and that includes the Apollo speech), yet a lot of people are cavilling about it because it was proposed by Barack Obama. This is stupid.
You talk as though there are dozens of private-sector LEO spaceflight operations RIGHT NOW. In fact there are NONE
No, I don’t talk that way at all. You must have trouble understanding verb tenses — or do you think Constellation is landing men on the Moon “RIGHT NOW”?
INSPIRATION IS NECESSARY. The elephant in the room of the aerospace industry is that new students are NOT COMING INTO IT. Everyone in the industry is over forty
No, not “everyone” is over forty.
Right now, I have a stack of emails from a US ambassador and other State Department officials on behalf of a European researcher who wants to come to the US — because of the spaceflight programs you think are so worthless.
She’s in her twenties, not her forties. The ambassador says she’s a “rock star” in her own country.
Yes, inspiration is necessary, and that’s exactly why Constellation must die. If people aren’t inspired by your program, whose fault is that?
(Bet you don’t come up with the right answer. 🙂
Now here we have people saying that spaceflight isn’t useful,
No, we have people saying the exact opposite, and we have you misquoting them.
You don’t inspire people by being afraid to try anything new.
You don’t inspire people by running up the national debt just to make spaceflight *less* affordable and *less* attainable.
You don’t inspire people by laying off — or permanently grounding — most of NASA’s astronauts.
You don’t inspire people by telling them the only thing they have to look forward to is a rerun of the 1960’s.
> Are the long-term effects of partial gravity (between zero and one
> gee) long known, or too trivial to justify?
Nearly. Its pretty clear they arn’t tolerable to humans — but no ones planing to fund studys of it that I know of.
So, you have no data, but the answer is “pretty clear” to you?
Part of the R&D in the new NASA budget is developing an ISS centrifuge module to perform such studies.
Before you trash the program, maybe you should find out what it is?
NASA reduced from explorers, to trucking and builders, to tourists visiting the station they built – or facilities staffs maintaining it.
No, just the opposite. Private enterprise will do the trucking and the building, while NASA “focuses its gaze on the cosmic horizon beyond Earth.”
> Edward Wright Says:
> February 1st, 2010 at 5:19 pm
>
>>> Are the long-term effects of partial gravity (between zero and one
>>> gee) long known, or too trivial to justify?
>>Nearly. Its pretty clear they arn’t tolerable to humans — but no
>> ones planing to fund studys of it that I know of.
> So, you have no data, but the answer is “pretty clear” to you?
Why do you think I, or folks in general, have no data on this? They know the mechanism of the damage, and how to do analogs on Earth. (adn of course have done inverse tests by studying effects of increased G on lab animals. Its not complicated. At best you would get a slowed down degradation in Partial G. How much doesn’t mater to much. Its not like your going to push the edges in mission plans. You design for less exposure then has proven acceptable in zero G.
> Part of the R&D in the new NASA budget is developing an ISS
> centrifuge module to perform such studies.
NASA budgets had lots of such things in them over the years. They all get droped. They don’t serve much purpose to Congress and hence NASA.
> Edward Wright Says:
> February 1st, 2010 at 5:25 pm
>> NASA reduced from explorers, to trucking and builders, to tourists
>> visiting the station they built – or facilities staffs maintaining it.
> No, just the opposite. Private enterprise will do the trucking and the
> building, while NASA “focuses its gaze on the cosmic horizon beyond Earth.”
Check the budget directives ED. NASA not going to be looking out – its going to be looking down toward Earth, or to service the ISS until they can dump it without looking to bad. –or until it falls apart.
The only thing I’ve learned after watching this for the last 20+ years is that if a program can’t be completed in 7 years there’s no point starting. Was the Apollo-on-roids program perfect. Of course not. But it was going to get us there, and that has to count for something. Hell, if I was going to revive any program it would be the original Orion project. For anyone out there morning this decision look at it this way, if the poll numbers don’t change we will get yet another vision for NASA in three years.
> Boogel Says:
> February 1st, 2010 at 5:51 pm
> == For anyone out there morning this decision look at it this way,
> if the poll numbers don’t change we will get yet another vision for
> NASA in three years.
😉
Good point.
OK, I’m no Obamanista, and I think this plan for NASA is probably due more to his disinterest in space than his interest in it, but it’s encouraging nonetheless. A couple of thoughts, though:
(1) I’m very puzzled by the initial allocation of development funds for crewed vehicles. $20 million to Sierra Nevada (owners of SpaceDev), but not one cent to SpaceX? Which already has development models of a man-capable spacecraft built? Which only needs to add an escape system to be viable? What’s going on here?
(2) There will be a lot riding on the debut flight of Falcon 9. If it fails, the Shelbys and Nelsons of the Senate will crow that this proves internet billionaire startups can’t deliver a reliable space vehicle. Which means the big, established companies like LockMart will have a virtual lock on launch vehicles and spacecraft.
So while Elon Musk must have grinned a big grin when he saw Obama’s budget, he must realize now how high the stakes really are.
(3) I had another look at the Dream Chaser lifting body proposed by SpaceDev / Sierra Nevada. Interesting to think the HL 20 lifting body design might actually carry crew one day. But, with this design, how do you dock with the ISS? Seems to be no easy way to stick a docking collar / transfer tunnel on this design.
Hog dropping are the kindest words I can think of for this “New” NASA budget.
From the Orlando Sentinel:
“The White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change.”
My sources are telling me that Japan is much more deeply invested in a space elevator than Tokyo let’s on. A working model by 2024 is the goal.
The Obama Administration knows that the closing of the Ares and Constellation programs will make it impossible for NASA and its contractors to ever reconstitute the engineering teams that design and build these launch vehicles. With development lead times in space science and heavy lift vehicles often exceeding ten to fifteen years, the Obama Administration also knows America could easily be decades behind Russia, China, Brazil and Japan in the manned colonization of the moon and Mars and in the harvesting of metal ores from the asteroid belt. So why is manned exploration being shelved? Why does the Obama Administration deliberately leave the United States without any real American “heavy lift” vehicles in the foreseeable future?
The answer is simply this; Obama and his closest advisors loathe America and its successes. NASA has had a disproportionate share of American successes. There were the technological successes of the space program, the successes of the moon landings, and the on-going successes of Hubble and Cassini. Further Obama and his advisors understand that manned missions create a patriotic unity that comes from a shared national experience. These are positive emotions that link the country together, a huge political negative for a political Administration that happily feeds on racial discord and economic class warfare.
Obama’s loathing of America knows no bounds, so NASA and the future of a new manifest destiny into space must be derailed. Obama rightly views NASA as an inspiration for a new generation of Americans, trumpeting the American character to the rest of the world, saying, “America and her people are dynamic proof of what man can dream and achieve.” Reasons enough for this President to remove even the vestiges of life support from the future of American manned space exploration.
Well, I just got home and there are already over 50 comments about the new Obama space budget. My first impressions on the new policy…
The Good: The final death of the NASA ESAS/Constellation plan. This was a wasteful and badly conceived plan and I marvel at how the supposed experts at NASA ever wanted it. Good riddance.
Commercial manned access to LEO encouraged. About time!
The Bad: The death of VSE in all but name. By reducing beyond LEO plans to nothing more than directionless and doubtless interminable R&D, the possible date of a manned mission beyond LEO is postponed indefinitely.
This is an old trick that was most recently used to stall homeland Ballistic Missile Defense during the Clinton years. The peace-at-any-price wing of the Democratic Party (meaning the only wing that really matters) was always against ballistic missile defense but found it hard to oppose politically. Their solution was to study it to death. That way BMD would never be deployed but the Democrats could also avoid the accusation of killing the program outright. That policy stance ended up spending tens of billions of dollars without producing anything useful to national defense.
This is the same problem I see with the Obama space policy. As the problem is — there doesn’t seem to be a space policy. There is no timeline, no suggested architecture, no overall strategy put forth to achieve beyond LEO manned space exploration. And without some kind of leadership NASA and Congress will happily spin it’s wheels forever.
There is no lack of good plans or promising technology to ease manned deep space exploration. This topic has been studied and analyzed to the nth degree over the last 50 years. What’s needed now, is to pick a path, to provide some measure of direction and prioritization of effort.
Bottom Line: ESAS/Constellation was a bad plan. The problem is Obama has not replaced it with an alternative plan. ESAS/Constellation would have taken until 2028 to reach the moon. But under the Obama non-plan it’s likely that no destination beyond LEO will be reached before 2028 either.
It’s back to the future for NASA; nothing but endless LEO operations for the foreseeable future. Obama has lived down to my 2007/08 expectations of his space policy.
DensityDuck said:
INSPIRATION IS NECESSARY. The elephant in the room of the aerospace industry is that new students are NOT COMING INTO IT.
I enjoyed a successful but tepid career in software consulting in my mid 20’s. It was not my passion, but it was honest work that paid the bills, and the only space option at the time was BoeLockMart or NASA. I was just not interested in being a cost-plus mouse maverick for life. SpaceShipOne launched when I was 23, and I made the trip to see it go. I’ve seen countless Shuttle launches in my life. I remember looking at NASA posters in my classrooms and reading Popular Science articles about NASP and X-33 all while I was growing up. All of that together did not inspire me like SpaceShipOne.
I am currently finishing my MSc. in Aero Engineering, and I just accepted an offer from one of those unproven commercial wannabes who have never launched a human into space. Future teachers get excited about directed educational initiatives. Future engineers and entrepreneurs get excited about sheer, outright accomplishment. Innovators want to innovate, and we are by nature and training difficult to sell a bill of goods to. If you want to inspire young people, doubling down on uninspirational programs is not the way to do it.
That’s just it though, Brad. Even a wildly defunded NASA dumping just a few billion into private space would be a huge boon to the industry. Plus, it will take the uncertainty of keeping the investors on the side lines looking at what NASA is going to do in space next. By putting NASA in the position to acquire services through private industry it will make them a customer instead of a service provider. This will no doubt lead to regulatory and licensing changes.
Good point Josh. Every dollar paid by NASA to purchase a ride is worth double – once because it is going to commercial companies, and twice because it is not going to compete with commercial companies. It’s as though Bill Gates sold all his Microsoft stock and started purchasing Macs with it.
Josh
So you have no problem with killing VSE? No problem with a y2030+ first beyond LEO mission?
Obama doesn’t have a plan. He’s just punting.
Hope and Change…
What I hope is that past practices will not be followed.
I expect they will be though.
To summarise other posts:
—–
Bottom line.
NASA human space flight won’t just be confined to LEO, it will now be limited to the ISS – via other peoples taxis – for the foreseeable future. To study climate change.
No replacement for shuttle.
No new program for NASA to build for.
—–
As I said elsewhere, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings, but an enlightened program certainly seems possible now.
—–
You’d have to be a monumentally naive f’n sucker to believe any promises, projections, or predictions to come out of the Obama administration.
—–
The future of US spaceflight is evident from this decision, and it isn’t in space. It will be a never-ending process of each administration axing the prior administration’s plans for space, only to lay down their own plan which will be axed and replaced with a newer, more visionary plan.
—–
I think NASA’s budget is being set up to shrink, in absolute terms, over the rest of the Obama adimistration and probably beyond.
—–
The Obama Administration knows that the closing of the Ares and Constellation programs will make it impossible for NASA and its contractors to ever reconstitute the engineering teams that design and build these launch vehicles.
—–
Bottom Line: ESAS/Constellation was a bad plan. The problem is Obama has not replaced it with an alternative plan.
—–
So… Good or Bad? I think.. it was necessary. The old way of doing things got us where we are today. My fear, and my expectation, is that it will be replaced by nothing. The 6Bn over 5 years will be trimmed to just the 3.5Bn for Earth Sciences, and there will be cuts elsewhere. Startup funds for commercial enterprises won’t be followed up. Necessary payloads, such as MilSats, will go via launchers made by the Big Boys as per usual. Commercial sats will go via whoever’s the cheapest, as per usual. Science R&D sats will piggyback where they can. But outside of LEO? Better start learning Mandarin.
Around 2021, after the 2-term GOP administration that will be too busy clearing up the Obama Charlie Foxtrot, we may see a re-start. By then there will be some commercial infrastructure. Return to the moon in 2035, following the Chinese by a few years is not impossible.
Brad,
So you have no problem with killing VSE? No problem with a y2030+ first beyond LEO mission?
Obama doesn’t have a plan. He’s just punting.
We won’t be waiting twenty years for a BEO mission if Obama’s budget request got granted. If even half the technologies they are trying to bring to fruition come even halfway to delivering their potential, we’ll be seeing BEO missions probably this decade.
And quite frankly, in some cases punting isn’t a bad thing. When there’s a lot of unknowns, and lots of game-changing technologies that still need to be tried out, it might be better not to lock ourselves into a decision prematurely. This isn’t a “lets study this forever” cop-out, but a serious engineering suggestion. Once we know if depots for instance are demonstrated and ready for primetime, and if commercial crew manage to step up, it may turn out that completely different options have now become affordable. If you pin everything to a timeline and a destination, it’s really easy for the myopic to say “OMG we can’t put those risky technologies on the critical path! We have to assume they won’t work or we’ll blow our schedule/budget!” and then once they’ve been relegated to the backburner, two things happen: a) the primary plan ends up being to expensive and gets scrapped shortly thereafter, b) that cool technology never gets developed.
~Jon
Brad, I have no problem with NASA having no plan for beyond LEO before 2030, as long as NASA is encouraging development that will make it possible for ME to go beyond LEO in my lifetime.
If you pin everything to a timeline and a destination, it’s really easy for the myopic to say “OMG we can’t put those risky technologies on the critical path!
I disagree strongly with this. The mistake is not to keep unproven technologies off the critical path. The real mistake is pinning everything on a timeline and a destination. But it would also be a mistake not to have a timeline and destinations at all. Not that you were saying that. It’s OK, even important, to have deadlines. It’s not OK to have unproven technologies on the critical path to your next deadline.
Putting things on the critical path just to get them funded is a fool’s game in my opinion. That is what killed Constellation, though in that case by putting new systems not new technologies on the critical path. The real solution is to have a separate technology development program. It should focus on specific technologies based on risk, strategic importance and time needed to develop them. In this way technology development doesn’t have operations and politicians breathing down its neck and operations don’t have to worry about technology development taking longer than expected.
Obama’s new plan wisely does have technology development. They’re even focusing on some of the most important things. The plan doesn’t have deadlines for beyond LEO so far and that’s fine as long as there are deadlines for the things they want to do in LEO. In this way the risky things are off the critical path for the foreseeable future.
Note that I’m not saying you shouldn’t put unproven technologies on the critical path to exploration, just that you shouldn’t put them on the critical path to your next operational deadline. In other words if you intend to go beyond LEO soon. There is a good, though not necessarily conclusive case for not going beyond LEO until we have cryogenic propellant transfer.
Even so it is good to be aware of just how far you can get with a given set of technologies before you need something new. Your recent blog post on early lunar missions was an example of that. Huntress’ incremental plan towards Mars was another example. As you will know I’ve thought about that a lot too. Conversely it is good to take a given new technology and to try to think of the smallest possible step in that direction that could still be usefully deployed on real missions.
Jon said, “We won’t be waiting twenty years for a BEO mission if Obama’s budget request got granted. If even half the technologies they are trying to bring to fruition come even halfway to delivering their potential, we’ll be seeing BEO missions probably this decade.”
Jon, I’m afraid you are being unrealistically optimistic. As I posted earlier, I’ve seen Obama’s space gambit played before by Clinton with BMD policy. Didn’t you see Lori Garver dodge the question about WHEN there would be a beyond LEO mission? Should Obama get reelected I doubt there will be any NASA mission beyond LEO before 2020.
Now I admit that under the current plan there is a chance of some commercial HEO flight, or even a lunar flyby before 2020, but that would likely happen anyway regardless of what NASA does. There are some people who would love to see NASA get out of the exploration business because they believe commercial interests would pick up the slack, and they might see the new Obama plan as going in that direction. They may even be right.
But that is not what the Obama NASA plan is advertised as. The administration claims NASA will do manned exploration beyond LEO, just don’t ask then when or how because they refuse to provide any answers. Oh wait they did answer, sort of. “Before 2028.” Yeah, right!
I’m all in favor of commercial space development, but I’m also in favor in NASA manned space exploration. And in my opinion Obama punted and that’s just another way of saying that Obama has given up and he is putting some pretty window dressing on the cow chip to fool the rubes. It’s all just political B.S.
Jon also said, “And quite frankly, in some cases punting isn’t a bad thing. When there’s a lot of unknowns, and lots of game-changing technologies that still need to be tried out, it might be better not to lock ourselves into a decision prematurely. This isn’t a “lets study this forever” cop-out, but a serious engineering suggestion.”
The problem with ESAS/Constellation wasn’t that NASA picked a timeline and technology path prematurely. The problem was NASA picked a bad timeline and technology path. If NASA is ever going to go anywhere they can’t avoid making timeline/technology choices, they just need to make better choices. Avoiding them won’t get NASA anywhere. The current Obama plan isn’t avoiding premature choices, it’s avoiding choosing altogether! I believe the plan is a deliberate policy to do nothing but aimless research, at least until the end of a second Obama term of office.
The only thing that has kept many game changing technologies, such as NTR propulsion, from actual development into operational hardware is the will to go somewhere that could exploit such a game changing technology. That truth was painfully clear from the book “To the end of the Solar System.” http://www.amazon.com/End-Solar-System-Nuclear-Rocket/dp/0813122678
Another example is the current Mars sample return mission planning, which refuses to include ISRU technology because it adds some mission risk despite potential mission savings. What short sighted silliness. And how typical. As I’ve already posted the history of spaceflight is riddled with such stories.
> ursa5000 Says:
> February 1st, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Hog dropping are the kindest words I can think of for this “New” NASA >
> “The White House will direct NASA to concentrate on
> Earth-science projects — principally, researching and
> monitoring climate change.”
OMBs announcement confirmed this.
> The Obama Administration knows that the closing of the Ares
> and Constellation programs will make it impossible for NASA
> and its contractors to ever reconstitute the engineering teams
> that design and build these launch vehicles. With development
> lead times in space science and heavy lift vehicles often
> exceeding ten to fifteen years, == So why is manned
> exploration being shelved? ==
If you remember durnig the campain when asked about space he said teh space program was of no value, no longer inspired people etc – but thought NASA should be focused no Climate change and Earth observation..
He backed off when the backlash from Florida was endangering his winning Floridas electoral votes. But then he stalled and launched the Augustine panel which inevitably found VSE was grosely underfunded. With that as political cover he can do a major “resrtucturing”. Effectivly ending maned space other then the ISS, and focusing NASA on climate change studies. Throw in a couple utterly redundant research programs like autonomous docking, zero G fluid transfer for refueling, research nito HLV technologies, and MAYBE a centrafuge on the ISS – and as we’ve seen – the space advocates are bought off.
Long term, NASA gets phased out with nothing to do to justify itself or generate any political support amoung the general public (next year he can “regretfully” cut NASA budget more due to the incresingly huge deficits). A politically astute way to kill a high profile agency. First srtip off anything that it does that interests voters. They cut it while offering similar amounts of pork through channels he prefers.
> Around 2021, after the 2-term GOP administration that will
>be too busy clearing up the Obama Charlie Foxtrot, we may
>see a re-start. By then there will be some commercial
>infrastructure. Return to the moon in 2035, following the
> Chinese by a few years is not impossible.<
Assistent NASA administrator Lori garvers statment that she beleaves its possible we could see a man on the moon and other places “within our lifetime” (I.E. by mid century) keeps haunting me.
> Jonathan Goff Says:
> == We won’t be waiting twenty years for a BEO mission
> if Obama’s budget request got granted. If even half the
> technologies they are trying to bring to fruition come even
> halfway to delivering their potential, we’ll be seeing
> BEO missions probably this decade. ===
Jon, half the technologies they are trynig to “bring to fruition” are decades old!! These are research projects – they are low grade industrial product development – for products they never plan to buy!!
Hi, I’m apparently one of the ‘NASA fan-boys’ that Pathetic Earthling was enjoying a good chuckle at. I came across to read up on what exactly it is that you ‘NASA hate-boys’ (is that correct? apologies if I have the terminology wrong) find so appealing about the cancellation of Constellation. Well I have to say I loved this from Rand –
“I’d rather have a good plan that won’t be followed through on than a lousy one. At least with the latter, you have a chance, and can continue to fight for follow through, and call them out on it when it doesn’t happen.”
That first sentence is beautiful 🙂 As for the second – yeah, good luck with that. I’m off now to ‘call out’ NASA for cancelling Constellation, that’ll work.
Actually, that second sentence was meant to be “former.”
And no, we’re not “NASA hate-boys.” But thanks for asking.
Jon said, “We won’t be waiting twenty years for a BEO mission if Obama’s budget request got granted. If even half the technologies they are trying to bring to fruition come even halfway to delivering their potential, we’ll be seeing BEO missions probably this decade.”
Jon, I’m afraid you are being unrealistically optimistic.
I would agree in the case of NASA. However, I think there is a better than 50% chance that we will see a commercial circumlunar mission before 2019 is over, probably brokered if not flown by an American company.
So, people who are defending NASA’s official plan for human exploration of the inner solar system are now called “NASA haters,” while people who are trying to undermine that plan call themselves “NASA fanboys”?
You can’t buy irony like that anymore. 🙂
“…people who are defending NASA’s official plan for human exploration of the inner solar system…”
And Oceania has ALWAYS been at war with Eurasia!
Oh dear… the Obama Reality Distortion Field is cranked up to 11.
He’s not a fan of NASA – go back and see what he said pre-election.
He don’t give a damn what you think of the fact that he’s not a fan of NASA.
There’s no commercial market for manned spaceflight. There’s only 1 government funded customer, so any company that sells them something is effectively government subsidised.
At the current, very optimistic rate of development, assuming nothing goes wrong and it all works out according to plan (did that ever happen… anywhere?) the best we can hope for is 3 or 4 capsule-on-missile “missions” to the ISS to conduct more vital research into worm reproduction, pictures of blobs of water in zero-G and a new IMAX camera. The the bucks run out, ISS ends up in the Pacific and oops – there’s nowhere to send the brave “spam-in-a-can” explorers to. And then what?
“Trips to Mars that take weeks instead of nearly a year” – fantastic! Obama can now change the laws of Physics! Is there no end to his powers? First Al Gore gives us the internet, now Obama gives us the warp drive! All this from a single term President. I wonder what direction the next President’s NASA review will send us?
It’s all very sad, but depressingly predictable. There’s going to be an awful lot of explaining to do, and egg on faces in 5 to 10 years time when the realisation finally sets in that of all the possible scenarios that could have been imagined, this one was the absolute worst.