The Space Frontier Society has put together a new feature at their site, called NewSpace News. It has a nice roundup of links to stories of interest to fans of the new (private) space program(s).

Also, Rick Tumlinson has an editorial with some advice for Mike Griffin. Like many of us, he's underwhelmed by "Apollo on steroids":

It's dead Mike. That horse won't run. That dog won't hunt. The fat lady has sung. Or, to bring it closer to space, I'll quote Bill Paxton in the film Aliens: "Game over man!"

The bloated, business as usual, cost-plus, pork-based, design-bureau use-it-and-throw-it-away approach to space is a failure. The excitement and momentum that might have existed when the president aimed us toward the Moon, Mars and beyond has been squandered. It has been worn down by the dumping of vision in favor of pork, and the jettisoning of the President and Aldridge Commission's declarations that frontier infrastructure building based on commercial enterprise is a prime goal. Dumped in favor of getting a few folks on the Moon relatively quickly (for these timid times) and pretending that this will lead us on to Mars – with no intention of making either location supportable long term.

He could have saved alot of bandwidth by condensing his op ed into 2 sentences.
1. Nasa sucks.
2. Take the bucks from the old government-industrial complex and give them to a new government-industrial complex.

Or to be even more succinct
"Fire the coach!".

Thanks for posting this. Lots and lots of good stuff . To focus on one of Rick's suggestions, multi-year Congressional appropriations are an excellent idea yet utterly infeasible given our current political structure. If NASA gets some, DoD and HHS and the Farm Bureau will want multi-year appropriations and then its "Katie bar the door" on pork sausage flying out of DC.

I also doubt whether the 2005 Congress can lawfully prohibit the 2007 Congress from cancelling 2005 appropriations.

= = =

By the way, Rick's goal is settlement. Like I've been saying. Tourists go to PLAY. Settlers go to STAY.

Is it just me or is this a very cluttered website:

http://www.space-frontier.org/NewSpaceNews/nsn20051201.html

And I can't find the editorial on that messy page.

"Take the bucks from the old government-industrial complex and give them to a new government-industrial complex."

Agreed - but perhaps in an approach this inherently bad would be better than the alternative (asuming we are already ignoring political realities, of course).

And I can't find the editorial on that messy page.

It's not on that page. It's linked off the main page of the site.

"It's not on that page. It's linked off the main page of the site."

Oh, but that's the url that you provided.

I still think it is a cluttered site.

Direct link:

Do We Go to Play or Do We Go to Stay

Great title!

Rick's critique of the ESAS is a bit weak, as have been all the others. But he deserves kudos for some of his suggestions. (a) Because unlike other people he has actually made them and (b) many of them are actually kind of useful.

Maybe we need to paraphrase Churchill on ESAS:

It's a lousy plan, except compared to every other plan of equal detail that has been put forward.

Tweak ESAS? Of course.

IF t/space or SpaceDev actually fly crew, I'd like CEV to be modified to be capable of remaining on-orbit in LEO. Even with a genuine super shiny alt-space SSTO RLV, you still need something to carry crew from LEO to low lunar orbit, otherwise your SSTO RLV will be too heavy to actually work.

Combine a tweaked CEV that only re-enters Earth atmosphere in the event of emergency with alt-space crew taxis and private sector fuel depots and ESAS delivers most of what alt-space has been asking for.

And if t/space or SpaceDev fail? NASA still goes to the Moon.

= = =

Gut the whole thing and start over? Ain't going to happen. Griffin not only has bi-partisan Congressional support but there are rumblings the NASA budget may be increased next year with Congress fully aware of the ESAS architecture.

Several plans of equal detail were put forward in the CE&R studies. Several (perhaps most) of them were better.