So, over at Red State, we have an editorial from a congressman trying to preserve the pork for his district, and falsely equating Constellation with American human spaceflight. The comments are almost universally equally ignorant. I searched them in vain for anyone who understands what’s actually going on.
You want to gather them all in a room and ask them some questions:
Do you know that NASA had nothing to do with GPS?
Do you know that NASA is getting an increase in its budget (and no, it’s not all going to global warming research and Muslim countries).
Do you know that the new plan will have people getting up to the station without the Russians much sooner, and for much less cost than the old one did?
Do you know that NASA has technology development plans that will make it much more affordable to send astronauts beyond low earth orbit? Plans that were going unfunded under the old program?
Do you know that the only parts of Constellation being worked on did nothing except get NASA astronauts to low earth orbit with a redundant rocket, at a cost of more than a billion dollars a flight? That the hardware needed to get beyond earth orbit wasn’t planned to be developed for years, and wasn’t even well defined?
Do you know that a commercial rocket will fly in the next few weeks with a commercial capsule that could deliver crew to orbit in the next three years or so. And that the rocket and capsule, and its manufacturing facilities were developed, and its launch pads modified for less than the cost of the Ares I-X flight test?
Sigh…
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, I kept plowing, and I finally found a couple commenters who get it:
No thanks to Constellation
utahtim Tuesday, June 29th at 7:12PM EDT (link)Constellation is bad rubbish and good riddance. You may be correct that Mr. Obama’s space policies will reduce the number of government jobs in Alabama and elsewhere, but claiming NASA is good at “human exploratory space flight” anymore is just plain wrong. NASA hasn’t put a man beyond low earth orbit (unless you count fixing Hubbell) since the 1970s, and when it has put people in low earth orbit, it’s only been a few government employees at a cost of roughly $1B a flight, and not very often at that. NASA doesn’t even have a good safety record. I favor the idea of human space exploration, but there are far better ways to go about it than with the expensive, bloated, dated, and constantly slipping government project that is Constellation. No thanks.
Not the NASA of Apollo
freeus Tuesday, June 29th at 8:04PM EDT (link)I have worked at KSC for almost 20 years and this is NOT the NASA that launched the Apollo missions. It has become no different than any other Government agency bogged down with endless rules, regulations, inefficiencies, and bloated beaurocracy. It took 25 years – YEARS! – to build the ISS and Constellation had spent nearly 10 billion over the past 5 years with little to show. I’m certainly not an Obama supporter, but cancelling Constellation (and Shuttle – another incredibly inefficient program) is the right thing to do. The way NASA has been operating for decades has got to stop.
Unfortunately they’re pretty scarce.
yea i saw that post. it was written by a rethug congress critter. figure it was a plea to save gov’t jobs. me: cut the gov’t. everywhere.
Rand — Curious: Do you think the regime is doing a good job of explaining their policy, or are they relying upon the newspace blogosphere to carry all their water? Could/should they be doing more?
Of course they should be doing more. PR-wise, this has been a disaster.
Could they? Probably not. It’s of a piece of the regime’s performance in all other areas.
benign
neglectincompetence is good sometimesReading those responses, one cannot help but marvel at all the illogic from the CINOs (Conservatives In Name Only).
Maybe the cognitive dissonance will help some of them get their heads out of their posteriors.
@Paul — It did for me. When I joined this conversation just a month or two ago, I was one of “them”, reacting negatively to the new policy out of a sense of patriotic pride shared by many conservatives. Being ignorant of what’s really going on commercially and of the drab details of the Cx program’s poor execution, all I knew was that “the good guys” had put us back on track through VSE and now “the bad guys” were derailing that vision and stealing a much anticipated source of pride, inspiration and wonder from me and my kids. (I had no clue at the time that Moon in 2020 wasn’t still on schedule, etc.)
As I’ve hung around here and at other blogs since then, though, the dissonance in my own desires became apparent, and I’ve begun to favor commercial more and more and seen the problems attendent to pursuing the POR. (Mind you, I’m trying to support the aims of the policy without strictly trusting or vocally supporting the policy itself — admittedly an exercise in political schizophrenia — simply because I don’t trust the administration and still can’t figure out how for the life of me they might actually have got it right this one time, heh.)
Wholeheartedly agree that the quality of debate is horrible.
But your frustration seems to be pushing you towards some over-simplifications.
Do you know that the new plan will have people getting up to the station without the Russians much sooner, and for much less cost than the old one did?
Must be able to divine two futures simultaneously
Do you know that a commercial rocket will fly in the next few weeks with a commercial capsule that could deliver crew to orbit in the next three years or so.
Um wait. It’s flying in the next few weeks, but it can’t deliver yet?
Sean Said: July 1st, 2010 at 4:17 pm
“Um wait. It’s flying in the next few weeks, but it can’t deliver yet?”
Rand meant the Falcon 9/Dragon launch for the NASA COTS – Demo 1. The Dragon capsule is the same design as they would use for crew, but without the crew-specific internals (seats, displays, controls, etc.). By qualifying the cargo version for COTS, they are also partially qualifying it for future crew versions.
SpaceX is in a pretty good position for future crew services, since they already have a capsule that will have a lot of launches for COTS (12 resupply missions), and they get to keep the capsules after each mission (NASA requires new capsules for each COTS delivery). The Dragon capsule is already built in the crew configuration (with windows), and all they would have to do is retrofit the interior for crew, and add a LAS (Launch Abort System). No one else will even be launching a capsule in the next three years, so they have a big jump on the crew services market.
Now they just need someone to give them a crew services contract. Time will tell…
still can’t figure out how for the life of me they might actually have got it right this one time, heh.
My guess? They did it, at least in part, to goad otherwise fiscal conservatives into a display of public hypocrisy. Or am I attributing to them too much cleverness?
Paul D.
They did it because they don’t believe in private enterprise and expect it to fail. When/If it doesn’t the administration will just have to find a new way to kill off HSF, perhaps with new harsh regulations for New Space.