Humor, Political Commentary, Space

You Knew This Was Coming

13 Comments

Hitler is told that Constellation has been cancelled.

Of course, whoever made it falls into the common trap of equating Constellation with the human spaceflight program. I really don’t understand the thinking of people who complain that we will have to pay private industry to get to the ISS, as though Ares/Orion wouldn’t be much more expensive. I guess it’s OK to pay government employees, though, and cost-plus contractors.

[Update a few minutes later]

Alan Boyle has a roundup of reactions from…other people.

13 thoughts on “You Knew This Was Coming”

  1. I think this scene from “Downfall” has now surpassed Chazz Palminteri’s epiphany scene in “The Usual Suspects” for “parody” ripoffs.

    It’s getting old…

  3. I’ve only seen a couple, so it’s still pretty new to me. Curiosity got the better of me today, and I found a YouTube video with the actual words, just for grins.

  4. This is pretty cool, and sums up a lot of reaction I’ve seen in various places. Of course as I point out to them:

    !. As you said, the end of Constellation does NOT equal the end of US manned space flight (and ‘The Gap’ would’ve been there, regardless) in general, or a return to the Moon in particular…

    2. China can’t/won’t even average one LEO mission per year yet…

    3. India doesn’t plan to get to LEO for the first time, until 2016…

    4. The Russians (who’ve yet to leave LEO at all) didn’t exactly head out and conquer the Solar system in the six-year Apollo-Shuttle Gap (which was itself longer than expected). I don’t expect them to do so now, either…

    5. ALL of them are going to continue to do whatever they already planned (and budgeted) to do, NONE of them needed to wait for a US policy change for anything. It’s not as if space isn’t big enough.

  5. I am not concerned about the cancellation of Constellation, my concern is the abandonment of the VSE, the abandonment of manned space exploration period.

    I have all the confidence in the world that commercial space could achieve whatever goal we would choose to pursue in manned space exploration, but there is now no national goal beyond what we’ve already seen with STS for the past 30 years.

  6. Is the proposal to abandon the VSE as official policy? The deadlines would have to change, but the goals could remain. Of course, the difference between delaying something for 15-20 years and abandoning it altogether may be largely academic.

  8. > I really don’t understand the thinking of people who complain that
    > we will have to pay private industry to get to the ISS, as though
    > Ares/Orion wouldn’t be much more expensive. I guess it’s OK to
    > pay government employees, though, and cost-plus contractors.

    I think Rand NASA has pretty successfully hidden the fact that commercials do all the current launches. They design and build the ships, service and assemble them, train the astronauts, staff mission control. etc.

    So to the public NASA is the source of knowledge about flying in space.

    Though i have to call you on the issue of that being the only issue. The big thing is not that NASA is openly contracting with commercials to do space exploration – they just droped space exploration.

    As to Boyles round up Rutan, the aerospace designer behind the SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo rocket planes, has delighted in tweaking “Nay-Say.” He sometimes jokes that the space agency’s acronym stands for “No Adult Supervision Apparent.” But he turned serious in an e-mail sent to several journalists after this week’s unveiling of the NASA budget proposal:

    “I am for NASA doing either true Research, or doing forefront Exploration, with taxpayer dollars. Ares/Orion is more of a Development program than a Research program, so I am not depressed to see it disappear.

    “I am concerned to see NASA manned spaceflight disappear, since they provided world leadership in the ’60s and part of the ’70s. The result was America’s universities being the leader in science/engineering Ph.D.s. Many American kids will be depressed by the thought that our accomplishments will not be continued and thus America will fall deeper away from our previous leadership in engineering/science/math. I believe our future success depends on our ability to motivate our youth.

    “I would support a restructuring of goals and funding so NASA can be allowed to perform like the ’60s on space Research and on Exploration. There is not a shred of evidence that the president sees any value in those goals.”

  9. Buzz Aldrin at Huffington Post via Alan Boyle: “And if we want to use the moon as a steppingstone in the future, we’ll have to join with our international partners for the effort.”

    I am so SICK of hearing this constant refrain of “we can’t do this without international partners” and especially from folks like Aldrin who should know better.

    Why is it that these people think that human space exploration is so difficult, expensive, or whatever excuse these idiots make, that we, the United States of America, can’t do it without help? It is ridiculous. We went to the moon the first time without any international hand holding and the ISS is certainly not a poster child for the advantages of international space projects. The all American space station, Skylab, was built and launched at less than one tenth of the cost of ISS and even it were updated to ISS standards I am certain it would not exceed half of the ISS’s $100-150 billion cost. There is simply no evidence whatsoever that international space adventures are less costly than when we go it alone.

  10. There is simply no evidence whatsoever that international space adventures are less costly than when we go it alone.

    Actually, there’s a good bit of evidence that it increases costs, going by ISS.

    The real benefit of international cooperation is that it makes the program harder (not impossible, as we saw with the SSC, but harder) to kill. Whether this is a bug or a feature depends on your point of view.

  11. > Cecil Trotter Says:

    > I am so SICK of hearing this constant refrain of “we can’t do this
    > without international partners” and especially from folks like
    > Aldrin who should know better.
    >
    > Why is it that these people think that human space exploration
    > is so difficult, expensive, or whatever excuse these idiots make,
    > that we, the United States of America, can’t do it without help?
    > It is ridiculous. ==

    BIG agree. At best for the agencies, international programs end competition. Nothing progresses and faster then the least enthusiastic member –so theres no possibility of anyone being over shadowed.

    Course with all the extra political and bureaucratic overhead, the costs skyrocket adn little can get done.

  12. Charles Bolden yesterday:

    “The president has instructed me that this is going to be an international effort. We are going to expand our efforts with our international partners. My approach to all of this, in a true international partnership, when one of us succeeds, all of us succeeds.”

    Space exploration of the lowest common denominator. Sigh.

    I wish Elon Musk, Robert Bigelow and other American space entrepreneurs the best of luck because only through their work will Americans ever leave LEO again in my lifetime.

  13. > I wish Elon Musk, Robert Bigelow and other American space entrepreneurs
    > the best of luck because only through their work will Americans ever
    > leave LEO again in my lifetime.

    Yeah, that’s what I took out of the statements of Bolden and Garver. Maybe in 10-20 years they’ll build a HLV. Then maybe they’ll look at moving farther out the LEO. But Garver believes we could still get to the moon but 2050.

    Course that’s assuming we have a aerospace industry that long. Not assured given this adn more explicit efforts to colapse it down.

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