There's a second installment up of Keith Cowing and Frank Sietzen's history of the decision to reformulate national space policy. It has additional detail on the plan, and indicates that the planned gap between Shuttle end and CEV operations is three years, not four (earliest lunar flight possibly in 2013), to be filled with Russian capability.

Here's the part that I found interesting, and hasn't been discussed much.

With a new focus on human exploration, the ISS will now be focused specifically on human physiology and factors needed to flight certify humans for long-duration space travel. Any research failing to contribute to this focus will be dropped from NASA's space station research plan.

So-called microgravity science investigations into metallurgical and materials sciences will be dropped, as will overtly commercial and fundamental life science research that does not have a human life science linkage.

Other nations will likely continue their own research plans using their resource allocations on the ISS -- but the U.S. portion will have a human exploration focus first and foremost. And even that will probably end by the middle of the next decade, with the station possibly taken over by the international partners, or perhaps a commercial concern.

The station has always had incompatible requirements (an inevitable result of the decision to have a single station) and this is one of them. Life sciences cause disturbances that interfere with good-quality microgravity, necessary for the materials research. This decision doesn't make that problem go away--it just makes it the Europeans' and Japanese' problem. We'll do our treadmill work and exercise, while they get exercised over the poor quality of their lab environment, until we pull out and hand it over to them.

But at least we're starting to develop a sane policy toward station. Despite all the hype over the years, microgravity research has never panned out in accordance with the hoopla and promises. Perhaps there is still some potential there, but it will await a dedicated station that's affordable to access on a timely basis. ISS never was that, and perhaps never will be.

Gotta like the modularity of the CEV, though; some of my earlier low-level criticism has been obviated, and it looks like they've learned a lesson or two.

I of course remain in complete agreement with your bottom-up approach of getting as many people into space as possible and allowing emergent behavior to ensue.

This is good-- if microgravity research is useful, then let commercial interests pay for it. But if we are going to have any sort of extended presence in earth orbit or beyond, there are a host of medical questions that need to be addressed. Not just in physiology, but in the medical sciences-- for example, how does one do dentistry in free-fall? Or simple surgery? 'Cause if a Mars mission takes two years, you can't just ground the prime mission commander and send up his replacement (like expedition Nine is doing) or evacuate to Earth if someone gets really sick (as the Russians did several times).

"The soonest a CEV could launch to the moon was perhaps 2013. NASA needed to retire the shuttle as soon as possible, so it was decided to terminate the program in 2010, when ISS assembly was completed."

"This action would leave a three-year gap, however, wherein NASA would depend on Soyuz spacecraft."

What I don't understand is why it's going to take ten [expletive deleted] years to come up with Apollo Mark 2. Is this thing going to be another overengineered, safety-is-the-only-consideration, fiasco like everything else NASA has done since Skylab?

And there's something wrong with the whole three-year gap business. Notice is says that it won't be ready to go to the Moon until 2013. But when will it be ready for Low Earth Orbit is not mentioned. Just because Apollo went to lunar orbit on the second try doesn't mean we can't be launching this CEV for two or three years prior to a lunar mission.

FYI, I have analyzed the new 15-year budget plan over at the Space Frontier Foundation's "Return to the Moon" board.

http://www.space-frontier.org/cgi-bin/BBS/MoonBase/read/1241

I was taken aback and a little stunned by the total cost of this thing. It really may not be any cheaper than Apollo (which cost $90 billion at 1999 rates through 1970), although the schedule is not as ambitious. And if you divide the billion$ by the number of years from start to first manned landing, it likely will be almost as expensive as the 1989 Space Exploration Initiative "90-day study"!!!! Despite the high cost, it doesn't sound as if the goal is a true moonbase by 2020 either -- just an "extended human presence".

MARCU$

"how does one do dentistry in free-fall? Or simple surgery?"

Given the length of time it'll take to get to Mars, I have to wonder if it might not make sense to simply build a spinning spaceship and provide some pseudo-gravity for the astronauts en route. Either some TransHab modules tethered together and spun around their hub, or a small O'Neill vivarium with rockets attached. Going the whole way in free fall strikes me as an invitation to disaster.

Re: medical issues on long-duration missions:

Is any serious work being done on propulsion systems that would permit extended periods of 1g acceleraton? We'd get there faster if we didn't have to coast all the way.

The fundamental trouble with medical science on ISS will remain: the sample population is minuscule, and no magic will change that.

The 'disturbance' issue you raise was never all that much of a concern. I used to get paid to worry about this when I worked at NASA (manager, pressurized payload accomodtions NASA SSFPO). Indeed these 'disturbances' were mostly a myth and what small problems that existed were ironed out a decade ago by thoughful paylaod design and activity scheduling. There were microgravity reuqirements levied upon all payloads. There will be no 'problems' for Europe and Japan to deal with since they do not exist in the first place.

The problem being addressed now is how to focus the US assets on ISS toward a single goal with some strategy behind it rather than try and make everyone happy even if the ratioale for some of these experiments was rather tenuous and esoteric to begin with.

A money question. Professor Jeffrey Bell writes that the pre-speech "leaks" were for President Bush to call for a 5% annual increase in NASA's budget each year for 5 years yet the final speech called for an additional 1 billion to be spread over 5 years. That is a big difference.

Link here -

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nasa-04c.html

Any insights into this?

I stand by my article. Things were in a slight state of flux in Nov/Dec as to the final amount. We will be getting a NASA brief on more budget details next week and I will post an article after that. WH fact sheet shows 5% for FY 05,06,07 and 1% for the next two years.

FY 05 will be 16.2 up from 15.4 in FY 2004 - that's $800m increase.

5% of 16.2 is 810m for FY 06=17.82
5% of 17.82 is 891m for 18.71 for FY 07 etc

Keith,

Thank you very much for straightening that out!

You are very much the man these days! You have called it right on the money so far!

Sometimes progress is only made after retirements and funerals. See http://www.hmx.com/AAS_Briefing_Edited.pdf

for a CEV available near-term.

Couple of questions and comments (1) Can you do a lot of useful research with the three person limit on the ISS? Assuming the three are not building the station, patching holes, and aren't all American it seems unlikely that the Americans on the ISS are going to get a lot of practical research done. (2) When comparing with Apollo budgets don't forget that NASA had to build up the NASA infrastructure from nothing. That will not have to be done again. Also consider that many of the ideas have been thought out already. I don't know if they got to schematics or what but the CEV has been drawn up and Shuttle C has been well thought out. Apollo started from zero. If you think of all that then the new project will be far more expensive. (3) Astonauts on their way to Mars will have their tubes tied (if a coed crew is sent) and their wisdom teeth and appendixes removed before takeoff. They will be prodded and poked by doctors for months before launch turning up anything from future baldness problems to cancer. If you do all that, and pick the best and brightest we have, the chances of illness not related to an accident are fairly limited. Radiation issues can't be properly studded in ISS's low orbit. One of the Mir cosmonauts was in microgravity long enough to get a lot of data. Delaying even a moment for that kind of health issues is foolish.

"Delaying even a moment for that kind of health issues is foolish. "

I am a space life scientist. You are wrong. The russians rarely took any data form these long stays. All we know is that they survivied. We are not sure how they did it. Small sample sizes can allow big problems to not surface immediately. You need to have a number of folks up there for long periods of time.

Keith,
Was there any mention by anyone in the administration about how this re-focusing of space priorities might affect other departments? Specifically Commerce and the FAA? It would seem odd not to re-align all of the other space related activities in the executive branch.

Keith, no doubt you are correct and a lot better informed than I am on the subject. I have no problem with getting all the research possible done before the launch date, I just don't think the launch date should wait for the research because I don't think the research can ever be totally complete.

WRT "Keith, Was there any mention by anyone in the administration about how this re-focusing of space priorities might affect other departments? Specifically Commerce and the FAA? It would seem odd not to re-align all of the other space related activities in the executive branch."

All of the standard notions were tossed around - send this part of NASA here, bring that part of another agency into NASA, etc. Like a lot of other stuff this was all dimissed early as mising the point: NASA needed a clear crisp focus, it needed to decide between hugging the shuttle or moving on to something else. All of these spin-off, spin-in options just moved a "problem" from one place to another.

WRT "Keith, no doubt you are correct and a lot better informed than I am on the subject. I have no problem with getting all the research possible done before the launch date, I just don't think the launch date should wait for the research because I don't think the research can ever be totally complete."

While previous work on human physiology is somewhat scattered, it is not irrelevant and it has pointed out a lot of what is going on. For example. If you can come up with a way to send humans to Mars and back without centrifugation you can save yourself billions in terms of design complexity, mass, etc. If ISS can be targetted to answer those sort of questions then it makes sense to do that research first. I doubt any formal committment to go to Mars is on the horizon any earlier than the middle of the next decade- around the time NASA will have completed a decade of this focused human research and is equipped with much better answers.

I thought bone loss leveled out after so many months in microgravity and the muscles could be maintained somewhat with daily exercise. Do I have that wrong, or am I missing something?

WRT: "I thought bone loss leveled out after so many months in microgravity and the muscles could be maintained somewhat with daily exercise. Do I have that wrong, or am I missing something? "

It does drop of some, but it does not stop and the total amount of bone lost continues as one is exposed to microgravity. And so far much of that bone loss has been shown to be permanent.

It seems Keith has colonized Rand's comment system! ;-)

People keep asking me questions.

And you keep giving them answers.

And that a good thing!

Not as good as free jumbo shrimp but still a good thing!

Keith,
Actually I was asking more in terms of whether or not this was always going to be a NASA only process or whether we can expect any impacts outside the agency. I know your focus is NASA but it seems you are saying that the rest of the executive branch can safely ignore the entire policy shift? If so, then does that mean NASA is going to be the agency that handles all of the interactions with the private sector that you talked about in Part 3?

NASA is the focus for all of this. You may recall Buhs made a rather clear statement that he had confidence in NASA's ability - and that of Sean O'Keefe - to implement this policy. As I understand this, as I said, the options for adjusting the playing field were discounted early on. As for commercial interactions, yes NASA will do that as well. I do not know that any such shift is underway for any other agency. But then again I try and focus on one topic and don't spend a lot of time listening for changes elsewhere. If O'Keefe needs help with some interactions with other agencies he can easily pick up the phone and call the WH.

I have a question with all the changes like the station and the hubble why doesn't NASA sell those assets to the highest bidder?