NASA Watch has a draft of the NAC statement on LEO operations and ISS transition. It’s as though it’s posted from an alternate reality:
Even after a shift of focus to cis-lunar space and beyond has occurred, NASA may need to maintain some capability to get astronauts into low Earth orbit. If the Agency concludes that such a capability is necessary, it would be unwise to assume the existence of commercial demand for human access to LEO that may or may not materialize. Taking steps to encourage commercial activity in LEO may not be adequate to guarantee a successful transition.
So WTF is this supposed to mean? By NASA “maintaining some capability,” do they mean on a NASA owned/operated rocket? When Commercial Crew is operational (and there is zero reason to believe that won’t happen, regardless of how much Congress attempts to delay it with budget cuts), that will be how NASA gets its astronauts into LEO. Even in the very unlikely event that no commercial demand emerges, that capability will remain in place for as long as NASA wants to use it, at a much lower cost than NASA has ever gotten anyone into space. So can someone on the NAC explain to me what this word salad means? What are they proposing? Because if they’re proposing SLS/Orion, that’s economically insane.
per Humpty Dumpty – “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
We all know that they are afraid that Dad’s going to take away their gas money and make them ride the (Commercial Crew) bus. This statement is their teenage rationalization transmogrified into bureaucratese.
I think they mean “don’t assume that if NASA shuts down Commercial Crew contracts some other customer(s) will keep those vehicles flying. If you want to keep that capability, you need to maintain it yourself until it can certainly stand on its own.”
If that’s what they mean, that’s what they should say.
On the contrary, it makes perfect economic sense. Under the government system, the more money they spend, the more money they get. They are responding rationally to the economic incentives Congress creates for them.
“We choose to build SLS, and do these other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. Because no other goal will be more impressive to mankind or more expensive to accomplish.”
You keep thinking you can fix NASA so it will act like private enterprise instead of a government agency. As the late Milton Friedman said, you want a cat that barks. And you’re constantly frustrated when the cat continues to act like a cat.
You keep thinking you can fix NASA so it will act like private enterprise instead of a government agency.
Ed, please stop attempting to read my mind. You continue to suck at it.
I am not reading your mind, I am reading your words.
In your mind, you are “not trying to fix NASA.”
Yet, your posts are filled with constant whining about how NASA doesn’t behave the way you’d like, NASA doesn’t fund the programs you’d like, NASA could accomplish wonders if you were king… as if any of that we’re likely to happen.
You reject alternatives from people like Newt Gingrich, telling us that the most successful Speaker of the House in recent memory “doesn’t understand politics.” Then, in another post, you’ll quote the sage wisdom of Rick Tumlinson.
You might as well wish for a unicorn while you’re at it.
I am not reading your mind, I am reading your words.
You are reading my words, and continually failing in your attempts to read my mind.
Meanwhile, Ted Cruz has called for the US to build an orbital ballistic-missile defense system — a return to Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.
Such a program would generate enormous demand for launches and on-orbit infrastructure, but the “New Space” pundits ignore it completely, because it isn’t NASA (and because old hippies like Tumlinson are allergic to the idea of weapons in space.) Just as they have largely ignored DARPA’s XS-1.
Instead, we get a constant, steady drone about SLS and ISS.
Ed, I’m absolutely gobsmacked by your self-contraditions.
On the one hand, you object to having any hopes for a NASA-industry-investment project (Commercial Crew) that has been going on for years, is producing actual hardware results and could fly within a very short time.
On the other, you ask us to believe in some fantasy that some years from now SDI will be revived and _that_ will be the government program that saves our bacon?
Puh-lease.
He’s Edward. I’m Ed.
I hate to bother you with inconvenient facts, Charles, but COTS hasn’t produced anything like the hardware that was promised.
We were told that COTS would enable *multiple* startup companies to build reusable launch vehicles. I believe you used the phrase “let a thousand rockets fly.”
If the “New Space” goal was to return the NASA space program to 60’s style capsules, built mainly by old-line contractors with only a single new entrant, you should have said to from the start. Changing the definite of success after the fact is nothing but bait and switch.
Having said that, I don’t understand why you persist in seeing any other policy idea as a threat to COTS. That didn’t make any sense 10 years ago, when SFF threw Centennial Challenges and ZGZT under the bus, and it still doesn’t make sense today.
Another story that’s never mentioned: Jeb Bush recently said Newt Gingrich’s Moon colony prize “made a lot of sense” to him.
You can say that Jeb “doesn’t understand political reality” any better than Newt — but how many actual politicians have publicly endorsed your plan?
I don’t have a “plan” to endorse, publicly or privately. But please, continue to fail to read my mind. I know you won’t stop trying.
Again, I can’t read your mind, only your words.
Like these words on this Kickstarter page which claim you will “show a better way” to “clear the road to Mars.”
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1960236542/clearing-the-roadblock-to-mars
Let me guess, you’re going to quibble about words and claim a “way” is not the same as a “plan”?
I don’t have a “plan” to endorse, publicly or privately. I’m with Edward on this one. Your Kickstarter isn’t formulating a plan?
Not really. More of a philosophy, and a range of ideas. Planning is for socialists.
Fair enough, the . Let me rephrase the question: How many politicians agree with your philosophy and range of ideas?
You’ve said that Newt’s ideas are not politically realistic (and your ideas, presumably, are). I’d like to know what you base that on. If it’s simply your own respective political experience, I have to say that Newt has a slight edge in that area.
How many politicians agree with your philosophy and range of ideas?
I’ve no idea. Likely not many. But almost none of them have even been exposed to my ideas, and most of them don’t give a rat’s patoot about space policy.
So, “almost none” of the politicians are aware of your ideas, and most of them don’t care. And you “don’t have a plan” to change that? Or think you need a plan, because “plans are for socialists”?
That does not sound like the definition of political viability to me.
Actually, it’s worse than you state. Many politicians *have* of ideas similar to yours, especially the idea of cancelling SLS — and they *do* give “a rat’s patottie” about it. In fact, they *hate* the idea.
On the other hand, many politicians have heard Newt’s ideas. At least one Presidential candidate thinks his Moon settlement idea “makes a lot of sense.” Furthermore, Newt knows how to lobby politicians and has personal contacts and connections which you lack.
I see no evidence that your non-plan is more “politically realistic” than Newt’s.
And you “don’t have a plan” to change that?
My “plan” to change that is to publish my next project and disseminate it on the Hill. What other plan should I have?
What other plan should I have?
Something that hasn’t been tried, and failed, repeatedly in the past?
You aren’t the first person to distribute a document asking Congress to cancel SLS and fund his own ideas, or even the tenth. There’s no logical reason to expect you will be more successful.
There are plenty of things you could advocate which don’t face the same entrenched political opposition.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Edward, you keep doing the same thing over and over that you’ve been doing for years, and haven’t gotten thousands of people into space. Are you insane?
I am not doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. You don’t even understand what I’m doing, and I see no point in trying to make you understand. Your opinion and continued failed attempts at mind reading about my activities is utterly irrelevant to me.
I have a crazy idea. I don’t go over to your website and try to tell you what to do with your time. Stop lecturing me about what you fantasize that I want to do.
Okay, I apologize for thinking you were trying to get Congress to cancel SLS. I don’t know what gave me that idea — some of your postings and articles *seemed* to imply that — but obviously, I cannot read your mind.
I am not telling you to do anything with your time. I was advising you *not* to waste your time tilting at the SLS windmill, but since that was a nutty fantasy and you don’t intend to do any such thing, my advice would be redundant.
I am not telling you to do anything with your time. I was advising you *not* to waste your time tilting at the SLS windmill
One of these statements is not like the other.
What plan? Speaking of which, how’s the kickstarter coming?
Slowly, but it tends to accelerate as I get into it. Always new fodder in the news for it.
To me, the word salad they used makes perfect sense, if one considers motive.
Those words *could* be interpreted to mean: “We’re going to have SLS/Orion anyway, so it’d be a good idea to make them capable of ISS mission, in case of emergency need.” That argument would actually make some sense if the capability could be achieved very easily and cheaply vs. an SLS/Orion that can’t, for technical reasons, do ISS. My guess is this interpretation is what they are hoping for.
My guess as to the real intent of the word salad is this; it’s an excuse to use the above to siphon money from CC into the black hole that is SLS/Orion.
Even after a shift of focus to cis-lunar space and beyond has occurred
I think could be the important part. ISS isn’t supposed to last forever. A shift to cis-lunar space may mean there is no NASA outpost in LEO.
maintain some capability to get astronauts into low Earth orbit
This implies a launcher but could it also mean a station like ISS? In order to “get” into LEO you also need someplace to go unless you want to chill in your capsule.
it would be unwise to assume the existence of commercial demand for human access to LEO
Access isn’t determined just by the ability to launch something to LEO but also to do something when there, like dock with a station and engage in a variety of activities over varied periods of time. There is demand for launchers but there is also demand for access to a place like the ISS. The two go hand in hand to some extent.
So maybe the paragraph quoted is an expression of worry over whether or not there will be a replacement to the ISS from the commercial sector. Right now, is there a company other than Bigelow that is close to being able to replace the ISS?
I remember that post about Tethers Unlimited a week or two back and Dennis Wingo has been teasing people but the future is uncertain.
“a shift of focus to cis-lunar space and beyond”
Like the “Pivot to Asia”, I’m sure the US Government will make that happen real soon now.
But it already happened, we are on the hashtag to Mars! Kinda skipping the cis-lunar part and the Mars part looks really uncertain but…
ISS isn’t supposed to last forever.
You haven’t been following space-policy news. NewSpace groups like PoliSpace and SFF have called for NASA to continue the ISS moneypit indefinitely and greatly expand it.
On the Space Show, SFF’s president James Pura and political director Aaron Oesterle called for NASA to double the size of the ISS crew. A few weeks later, Jim Muncy spoke at Space Access where he voiced his belief that ISS could accommodate 1000 people living and working on orbit.
Yes, people are calling for extending its life and with some success but it isn’t supposed to last forever. NASA has a vested interest in keeping it going but that might change when there are alternatives that also meets NASA’s needs. NASA’s budget has been fairly flat, it will be hard for them to maintain the ISS at current funding levels and expand outposts around the Moon and Mars. A private facility that meets NASA’s needs and can sustain itself would allow them to focus elsewhere.
Maybe that is too idealistic.
I’d be curious to see what the ISS would look like configured to house 1000 people. It wouldn’t look very much like the current ISS and probably would be better off done from scratch. At that point, maybe a COTS like approach would be taken or maybe Bigelow will have the market cornered.
NASA wants to retire ISS as soon as possible. But they want to see commercial infrastructure in place to replace it first.
It should be interesting to see how that plays out between private companies and NASA. Would NASA use a COTS like approach or just want to verify that these companies have systems and processes that NASA finds acceptable?
A private facility that meets NASA’s needs and can sustain itself would allow them to focus elsewhere.
If this hypothetical facility is developed to meet NASA’s needs, NASA will have to pay for it — either up front or over time. And being designed to NASA requirements, it will still be very expensive. As Robert Heinlein said, an elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.
There is another alternative: private facilities built to meet the needs of *private* customers. I know that’s an “Old Space” idea, but maybe it’s worth trying?
Interesting Ars Technica report coming out of the NAC meeting as well: