This is bad news:
Mr. Sessions has heavily influenced the makeup of the transition team for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, these people said, with many of those appointed favoring greater emphasis on manned exploration missions to the moon and deeper into the solar system.
Candidates for NASA administrator also are being vetted, in part, by Mr. Sessions or his associates, while officials at Boeing Co. and other legacy aerospace giants increasingly believe Mr. Sessions will help temper possible changes inside NASA that would hurt existing, big-ticket projects to ultimately send astronauts to Mars.
Not coincidentally, such exploration would rely heavily on scientists, workers and rocket technology based in Alabama, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. Mr. Sessions over the years has been a champion of the agency’s proposed heavy-lift rocket, dubbed Space Launch System, or SLS, and helped protect its roughly $2 billion-a-year price tag from cutbacks proposed by the Obama White House.
I like how Pasztor unironically talks about SLS/Orion as part of sending “astronauts to Mars,” when they’re almost completely irrelevant to it. This pork-mongering is part of the tragedy of Apollo.
This is the first time I’ve seen Doug Cooke’s name as a potential NASA administrator. He’d be as bad as, or worse than, a second stint by Mike Griffin.
[Update a while later]
Yes, Trump should focus on the government, not Boeing or Lockmart. They’re just doing what they’re incented to do.
And he should take a look at SLS.
Let’s pretend for a moment, purely hypothetically, that Sessions has a record on space that we totally agree with. In that hypothetical universe, I *still* have to ask the question: what the hell is a DOJ nominee doing being involved in NASA? That makes as much sense as having the next surgeon general or HUD secretary making changes at the Pentagon.
So, I find this very objectionable even if Sessions wasn’t, um, Jeff Sessions. I’m thrilled with him as the new head of DOJ, but when it comes to space, I’d prefer that the man not even be allowed to look skyward when out for a walk on a starry night, and I think letting him pick the next administrator is a great way to get the worst person for the job.
Sounds like Sessions is doing two jobs at the moment, helping pick Trump’s cabinet and appointed to be Attorney General. I wouldn’t worry about that unless of course, you’re worried about Sessions’ fitness for either job.
On the plus side, Trump has already criticized the cost of the new Air Force One and the F-35 program. Somebody needs to put a bug in his ear about SLS.
SLS is a stupid waste of money, but is it a priority? They need to cut the biggest items they can first.
Politics hasn’t changed just because Trump was elected. But Trump could very well be receptive to any size cut that could get quickly done. He can’t afford to get bogged down in too many fights because he has an awful lot to reverse that took decades to get entrenched.
In the grand scheme of things, SLS is small potatoes. IRS, DOE, EPA, are much more significant.
I am less worried about SLS surviving than the COTS programs getting cut.
Indeed. A cut of NASA’s budget won’t work. It needs to be a direct cut of SLS budget. Otherwise NASA’s bureaucracy will protect their jobs first. I hope that doesn’t happen, and that Trump gets a revolving door rule in place before the cuts come. We need some people to learn how things work in competitive markets.
I could be wrong but I think the impact of what NASA does will be smaller and smaller as private space companies grow and grow.
They will make a lot of noise but the noise will have less and less meaning as time goes on.
Yes billions are wasted on SLS as well as the time of many skilled engineers and scientists. But that waste will become less and less significant as time goes on. The market is going to remove space travel from their hands.
I could be wrong but I think the impact of what NASA does will be smaller and smaller as private space companies grow and grow.
It could be the opposite, where the strength of the private market allows NASA to have a larger impact. The free market is a force multiplier for the government, should they choose to view things that way.
SLS (and Orion) were always going to be hard to kill until the case for doing so became overwhelming.
A big start would be commercial super heavy lifters regularly flying payloads, starting with Falcon Heavy – and, eventually, New Glenn and Vulcan.
Likewise with Orion: a solid dozen successful trips to orbit by Starliner and Dragon will be evidence that’s a lot harder to ignore in reconsidering Orion’s future.
So until 2020, the porktastic P.O.R. is likely safe. The only debate will be over what missions it will get. And there is not likely to be much funding to be had for those.