OSTP Space Summit Conference Update

So help me if Aldrin is there, they better have balance.

I want Cernan or Schmitt there!

Neill Armstrong also appears to be troubled by the Obama administration's decisions and apparently talked to Bolden about it!

Marcel

Agreed!

Every KSC worker, every community in Brevard needs to line the roadways into the conference area holding signs and letting themselves be heard. They are not just fighting for KSC, but for our Human Space Flight Program and everyone else that works in it all across the country.

Talked with Senator Nelson's office today and told his aide in a civil manner my opposition to the cancellation of Constellation. I told him how angry people were at KSC and his aide hung up on me. I guess they just don't want to hear the voters at all. Mr. Nelson will hear the voters in 2012. They will remember him supporting Obama while they are still struggling to put food on their tables and the launch pads are rusting away in 2012.

Editor's note: Did you call the Senate office in Washington or a local one in Florida? I am not doubting your story, but I would be astonished if someone in the DC office hung up on you. I think I know enough about Nelson's staff and how other senate offices work to know that they take this issue and their constituents rather seriously. I'll bet you got someone new on the staff.

I would also recommend that employees from the other space centers around the country bus in to protest at this "Summit."

I have spoken to Stephen Metschan and he is absolutely not organizing an sort of a rally or protest. I'm not sure where that information came from but it is absolutely false. He continues to promote his compromise solution which can be read here: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1571/1

Editor's note: I am sorry but that is simply not true - and Stephen Metschan knows it. He has been trying to help organize a rally at KSC.

Of all the government agencies out there, NASA is the one agency that shouldn't be a job program. If SpaceX can build a (true, bi-propellant high ISP) rocket with less than 1000 employees, than NASA should stop making rockets.

NASA should do what NASA is good at, and buy stuff like rocket transport on the market.

I hate it when special interests and self-entitled people start pulling a holier-than-thou attitude about how their private good is synonymous with the global interest. Give it a rest. You got fat, and canceling your job is not the same as canceling the manned space program.

Maybe they will invite Mr Musk to explain how easy HSF is and how fast he will be ready to fly a crewed vehicle. Then he can explain why his engines failed to start. I always say if this was easy everyone would be doing it. Welcome back to reality Mr Musk and Mr President.

We're really sorry for making look so easy!!!

Stephen Metschan is not organizing a rally or protest. I have spoken Directly with him and instead he continues to work to promote his compromise solution.

Editor's note: I am sorry but that is simply not true - and Stephen Metschan knows it. He has been trying to help organize a rally at KSC.

I wonder what criteria Obama's staff will use as a measure of success coming out of this gathering?

Is he trying to win over the opposition? If so, it will take more than this gathering.

Is he there to simply speak his vision and why he decided to put forth the plan he has put forth? If so, he doesn't need this forum - he can simply make a speech or release a presser.

Is he going so he can, ala Bill Clinton, to feel your pain?

What will be the measure of success from Obama's POV?

I have a really simple question

Can I get an invite?

Can you help out a guy Keith? :D

It was a simple ground sequencer S/W issue, not opening up a ground, vehicle-external, He2 (for turbine spin-up) isolation valve, to do with the fact that the facility in FL is different from the one at SpaceX test facilities. Nothing on the bird failed to work.

By all accounts, the Falcon 9 (which has been tested extensively) was totally nominal and ready for ignition. These kinds of glitches have happened with NASA vehicles at KSC lots of times, including many times with Shuttle in both Dev and Operations (indeed, usually, in the Shuttle case, it's an actual hardware failure). Some tests require the fully integrated launcher, tower, and pad, and ground systems. That's why you do pad tests, of course.

So, the line of code for the pad He2 isol valve open goes into the ground S/W (no changes to F9), they run some IV&V, and retry in a matter of days.

They were within a fraction of a second of ignition, and about 2 seconds of a perfectly completed test. Not many new launchers reach this deep into the count on their second fueled pad test, and first hotfire attempt. It's quite impressive compared to usual NASA ops in vehicle development, especially given how lean a crew size they have. Also, in addition, it's impressive for the total dev cost, dev time, recycle time, etc.

Falcon 9, like with the Russians and Soyuz, is, indeed, designed not just to make it look easy, but to be well-designed enough for its actual task and operation to be easier, which is the entire point of R&D development, in addition to using commercial processes and trades. That's what gets you from LEO spaceflight being an experiment (the big problem identified with STS, by CAIB) each time you fly your launcher to being a reliable, sustainable, thing that folks do for us; meanwhile NASA and other space agencies concentrate on putting their best minds on problems that were not primarily solved in the 1950s.

Falken - who made it look easy? The Ares team wishes it looked easy...

5 years in order to get to a semi-successful launch of a first stage of an Ares 1, and with 4-segments at that?

That's not my definition of making it look easy. It's my definition of showing incompetence. I was embarrassed to see that as the symbol of our space prowesses.

Showing the world that we're too scared to build a high-ISP rocket so we're resorting to solids? Every other country - Russia, India, China - can build real launchers, and we're showing our lead by that?

SpaceX built a brand new rocket, two stages, and brand new engines, in less time than it took NASA to launch a suborbital shuttle booster.

Yeah, you go.

It’s hard to build and launch rockets if your organization manages cogs on a wheel, i.e., people who need to be told what to do. It’s easy, however, if the organization is full of linchpins, i.e., people who don’t need to be told what to do.

Thanks to the Russians selling tickets to space to anyone with the money and willing to take the risk, which they have demonstrated over and over, these types of new lean organizations are growing. This growth is expected to explode in a massive capability of putting people and cargo in space 10 times cheaper and equivalently safer than how access to space was accomplished in the past.

Stand aside because here they come.

It's almost as if Keith was trolling for Direct responses. Which would be rather sad, but not very surprising at this stage.

Editor's note: I am sorry but that is simply not true - and Stephen Metschan knows it. He has been trying to help organize a rally at KSC.

Folks:

You just have to look at the Johnson Space Center Transhab project to get an idea of what happens to good ideas. They did their research fast and cheap. It was innovative and forward thinking in true NASA tradition. Then some "lawmaker" got up and said something like "We're not going to put some balloon in space!" and the project hit a dead end.

Now Bigelow Aerospace has leveraged the technology, launched two test articles and is negotiating with aerospace industries for a launch vehicle and spacecraft to support the system. A good deal with enormous returns on the original government investment. Everybody benefits, not just Bigelow Aerospace.

Now lets look at Direct Launch. Same scenario. Good research done on the cheap. Utilizes existing hardware, infrastructure and workforce. Builds upon the Shuttle legacy instead of starting from scratch while increasing the payload capacity by three of four times. Flexible to different missions in LEO and beyond.

What's not to like here?

Are your "lawmakers" going to send this idea to the trash bin like they did with Transhab?

Looking at their past track record... probably.

tinker

This is wonderful
Better then I could have hoped for.

This is important right now, as public and private colleges and universities across the country reckon with shrinking endowments and tightening budgets. But this is also incredibly important for our future. As Vannevar Bush, who served as scientific advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, famously said: "Basic scientific research is scientific capital."

the party has not even started yet...

social science is alive & well

I agree that canceling someone's job isn't the end of manned space flight but canceling your BEO program without replacing it with a real program that builds and flies hardware with milestones and dates is the end of any real leadership in manned spaceflight.

"simple ground sequencer S/W issue....These kinds of glitches have happened with NASA vehicles at KSC lots of times, including many times with Shuttle in both Dev and Operations"

uh, NOT!

warp & akear have the correct assessment (it's indicative of the larger problem in SpaceX's cheaper-better-faster methodology that keeps rearing up in one "glitch" after another)

sooooooo, SpaceX is "beta testing" live ground and flight software against live ground and flight hardware?

instead of using models(ala SAIL/CDDT)?
hmmmmmmm

btw, somebody tell the big FL event planners that nobody at KSC thinks much of "industry experts"

They forgot one line of code because the launch pad is different from the test stand? I am sorry but that is pretty basic engineering and operations to know the differences between your test stand and actual operations and then check your hardware and software to make sure you have accounted for these differences. How does SpaceX do software validation and verification? How do they determine the requirements of their software?

As opposed to SpaceX taking 7 years to achieve 2 out of 5 sucessful launches?

"we're too scared to build a high-ISP rocket so we're resorting to solids"

The Falcon 9 is not a high ISP rocket. Their web site lists a sea level ISP of 275 and it appears that the SRB used for Ares I has an ISP of around 269. So they're both equivalent.

The shuttle engines were high ISP. There's nothing to support your statement that "we're too scared" but rather it costs more to develop high ISP engines.

Editor's note: Did you call the Senate office in Washington or a local one in Florida? I am not doubting your story, but I would be astonished if someone in the DC office hung up on you. I think I know enough about Nelson's staff and how other senate offices work to know that they take this issue and their constituents rather seriously. I'll bet you got someone new on the staff.

Keith,

I called the Washington office. This is not the first time this has happened. They did the same thing during the "stimlus" bill last year when they bothered to empty their voice mail and answer the phone. I'm just a voter, so I am further down the ladder than someone like you who is a reporter. A senator fears a reporter far more than a voter due to your wider audience. Not fair for the voter, but it is a fact of life.

2-out-of-5 is a battle cry. Three failure on the first launch vehicle of a company with no old lineage seems reasonable. Especially since they were not random but rather got progressively better. Launch 3 was 99% there, and 4 and 5 are two consecutive good ones. I think that's a fair record.

I agree the sequencing glitch is troubling. I also think it's 50-50 that they can launch this one successfully. But since they're private, they're on their own, to live or die. Unlike Shuttle, that with a bad track record, was practically uncancelable. Witness this latest round.

Point taken about the ISP, but it doesn't change the bigger picture. I'm also all in favor of a heavy launcher, maybe even Hydrogen based - but built privately. Take the Shuttle engine technology, which was developed on public funds, license it out to 3-4 firms, and let them have at it.

As for industry experts, it might be that they don't think highly of KSC either, so it's all mutual...

oh, and Trans-hub - perfect example.

Why-o-why would we want well-engineered technology at the hands of politicians, when their set of priorities is by definition all screwed up?

Same technology, at the hands of either greedy or starry-eyed CEOs (as the case may be), will either do better, of die and be replaced by other greedy or starry-eyed CEOs and companies. Welcome to America - that's how it is supposed to work.

So all Obama is saying here is - here's the same money, even more, but instead of building a politically controlled rocket, spend it on commercial rockets. I don't see the fault.

As of January 03 2006, AADC has yet to sign a single launch contract for a private enterprise payload!.
Yet, they continue to claim that commercial aerospace companies are "lining up" to launch telecommunications satellites at the KLC.
Taxpayer funds continue to be the sole support of the KLC - taxpayer federal funds coupled with grants from the State of Alaska now total 50 MILLION DOLLARS just for construction!

@ newpapyrus

Do we have a quote from Armstrong? I had not heard anything yet.

I've had brief correspondence with Musgrave and he was less then thrilled with the new plan calling it "fatal".

I wish all these guys would get together soon and speak with one voice for NASA HSF.

H2O2 engines have better performance, but my impression is that they have higher life cycle costs (design, build, operate). You also have handling problems with H2 because of the smaller molecule.

I think the better approach is for O2/Kerosene. It doesn't have as good a performance as H2O2, but it's cheaper to build and more robust.

That's just my impression as an engineer. I'm not an engine engineer so I can't speak from experience.

Interesting, half of the posts are about the Falcon 9 abort, I wonder why? Maybe it has to do with NASAWATCH deciding not to post anything about it as a subject of its own. If I didn't know better I would think NASAWATCH is protecting the image of companies like SpaceX, even though it clearly relates to NASA's interests.

Editor's note: try refreshing your browser once in a while http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/03/a-hotfire-for-f.html

If it is true, then it would appear that all the comm's between NASA/Industry and the DIRECT team have been no more than "we're open-minded really" window dressing. I suspect the first pink-slips will be going to the engineers in NASA who foolishly "fessed up" to the DIRECT connection...
Ergo: without HLVs BEOHSF is DEAD. Better get used to it I suppose.

In an interview on MSNBC, Jay Barbree said that Neil
Armstrong called Bolden because he was concerned about NASAs new direction:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/35709113#35709113

Well, like it or not, there's a fundamental problem with this communication:

Scrapping Shuttle (By Bush) and cancellation of Ares (By Obama) are A) good moves for the Space program, and B) bad for the KSC workforce.

There's no way to reconcile this or gloss it over - jobs at KSC will be lost. Inefficient or redundant jobs, maybe, but don't tell that to the guy that's losing his specialized job and has a family to feed - he's not going to be your friend no matter what.

If you're cleaning house, you will not be popular.

Still has to be done though, if we want a viable space program. I hope most of these people will be absorbed by industry, but looking at the sheer number of people supporting Shuttle/Ares, it's probably not going to happen.

I find it hard to believe Obama has the time to actually master this issue.

I expect he'll hit key high level issues and let some NASA staff and Augustine committee members talk it out.

It is hard to lose when your talking points are "the ISS is necessary, science research is necessary, technology research is necessary, significantly lower cost access to orbit is necessary," and "we're out of money"

"As it stands now, the people who are most affected by these OSTP policies are the least involved in this event. That is fundamentally wrong and inconsistent with an Administration that heralded openness and transparency as the hallmarks of their new way of doing business."

In other words, the People don't count - until you can con them into voting for you; then it's BAU. So much for "Democracy".

Well said Keith.

In stating that: "In other words, the President needs to do something in a way that resonates with how he got the job in the first place.", I take it you mean he has to continue to tell bald face lies to whichever audience he is facing. We need to come to grips with it, the guy doesn't have an honest bone in his body and his incompetence is only overshadowed by his tremendously large and unearned ego.

I wish all these guys would get together soon and speak with one voice for NASA HSF.

They will, soon.

What a mess. I fear continuing this fight will only hurt. The White House will unlikely back away from canceling Constellation, and Congress will refuse to fund commercial crew. Everybody loses.

The Constellation program is/was not viable with the budget constraints imposed on it.

The only way to even stand a chance of reducing the "gap" is to gut all other programs from NASA, since Congress is not going to increase NASA's overall budget.

There's no sense throwing money into a project that has failed in schedule, cost , and performance, other than to preserve a few pork barrel jobs.

The only option for narrowing the so-called "HSF gap" is the path the President has chosen. Cheaper and faster.

The solution is to properly fund such endeavors.
This can be done.

Obama's introduction of his plan to gut HSF at NASA, walk away from 9 billion dollars spent, walk away from the VSE goals, and scatter future funds to the four nascent winds of unproven and as of yet non-existant commercial endeavors has been a disaster.

Massive resistance to this giant leap backwards is evident.

There may not be agreement on the best ways to go forward post Constellation proper, but Obama's so called "plan" ain't it.

It will not survive congress intact.
Let that sink in right now.
That is the political reality.
Congress and the American people are going to have more say in what future America has in space then Obama.

America will NEVER accept a lesser NASA.

This space "summit" is a joke.
It's obviously going to be an extremely tightly controlled orchestrated attempt by Obama's handlers to "save" this mess.

It's already failed, they have no clue.

Cessnadriver, you need to get a grip. There is absolutely no talk within Congress or the Administration about saving Constellation. Everyone recognizes a failure when they see one. Rather, the talk is about Shuttle extensions and whether to build a shuttle derived heavy lift vehicle. No one wants to throw good money after the bad already spent on Constellation.

I agree it is a shame: had Constellation been managed properly, it could have met its dates and be flying right now. It didn't come close to its dates, its management was atrocious, the problem is institutional with NASA and Bolden is going to fix it, one way or the other. The outcome of all this will be a better NASA, not a lesser one.

As far as how this event is orchestrated, thank Bush II for setting the tone for how Town Halls are handled now-a-days. At least the protesters won't get peppered sprayed, as they did in the last Administration.

No matter what your position on our Presidents NASA budget, We all should recognize that there will be no "proper funding" of continued flights for the Space Shuttle, or continuation of the Constelation. Congress can denie funds, but they can't manage NASA. The President is visiting KSC on TAX DAY! Get it, TAX DAY. Most Americans would as soon do away with NASA all together on tax day. I think you can count on the President gently remind the folks in the NASA echo chamber of that fact. You can negotiate for a shuttle derived heavy lift, you can negotiate for a downsized Orion for use with a Delta IV heavy or an Atlas V, but other than that you are getting the Presidents program and you can take that easy or you can take that hard. I am so sick of NASA whiners. Get over it. The federal credit card is charged up and your getting what you get.

well YEAH for Rahm - somebody up there in DCLand seems to be catching on!

Is it possible to get an invite if not a current employee (hint hint)?

@ ex_navy:

"that is pretty basic engineering and operations to know the differences between your test stand and actual operations and then check your hardware and software to make sure you have accounted for these differences. How does SpaceX do software validation and verification? How do they determine the requirements of their software?"

right on! getting it right on a do-over is no special achievement there SpaceX (never enough time to do it right the first time, but there's always enough time for a do-over seeems to be a pattern, huh?)

Does anyone know if work towards some kind of compromise is going on behind the scenes? What I would do is have my people (Rahm Emmauel, John Holden, etc.) working with the hold-outs to find some compromise that they can accept and won't break the bank. Then, on the 15th, soar impressively into KSC, listen gravely to all the learned opinions from my hand-picked bunch of 'yes-men' and intellectual catspaws and then announce that, based on these expert opinions, I have come up with the compromise that had actually been hammered out by my political attack dogs over the previous month.

What sort of compromise?

* Shuttle retirement postponed to 2011;
* Schedule stretched, moving the last two missions from this year to next year plus as many extra missions as there are resources now to fly (no extra ET and RSRM production);
* Orion gets saved and will fly on Atlas-VH, initially - It will be characterised as a 'public-private partnership' spacecraft, "As a back-up to the newer commercial providers";
* The ACES common upper stage is approved with some kind of basic BEO missions beginning after 2015 or 2016 using multiple EELV Phase 1 launches and LEO assembly, possibly initially using ISS as a staging point.

This will be characterised as a 'refinement' of the plan, based on assessments made since its announcement as to actual requirements. Shuttle retirement and an advanced-technology HLV, entering service after 2020 will still be the baseline along with a massive funding transfer from operations to R&D.

Where does the massive funding transfer from ops to R&D come from in your Plan? Your still flying Orion, paying commercial crew and operating ISS. So the only funds avaialble to transfer to R&D are the same that were avavailable under the original COnstellation plan which I don't think folks on this board would characterize as massive.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703909804575124772932031294.html?mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews

This does not sound good for SpaceX or the whole Obamavision of being all commercial. The launch may be slipping by as much as from April to late summer. Maybe they aren't as ready as people thought as they are needing NASA experts to help them look at some things. Uh oh....

"Cessnadriver, you need to get a grip. There is absolutely no talk within Congress or the Administration about saving Constellation."

Looks like there is someone other than Cessnadriver, (who is usually right on with this topic) who needs to get a grip and reality check. Look here for that check.
http://blogs.chron.com/txpotomac/2010/03/post_222.html

Reading this post, and other similar ones, day after day, continues to leave me baffled. It seems that so many of you (NASA and Congress people included) are living entirely in the now, as if today and maybe the rest of this year are all that matter.

30 years from now do you still want to be flying the Shuttle? 30 years from now do you still want to be flying ballistic capsules? Both of these are 1960's technology. "Apollo on steroids" says it pretty clearly.

Instead of endless proposals for how to keep doing what has been happening for decades, how about
giving some serious thought to what President Obama's plan needs to include in order to get us into the future. We have an opportunity at this time to contribute (positively) to the new plan if we are willing, individually and collectively, to realize that change is necessary, which means R&D.

There will be jobs losses and changes it's true, but there will almost certainly be a great many more jobs lost in the longer term if we insist on programs that are unsustainable and therefore certain to fail.

Those who read what the politicians write complain that it's all about jobs. From a politician's
perspective it is all about jobs; that's what they were elected to provide and protect. But theirs is
certainly not the only perspective.

The future of space travel, exploration, etc. will not magically take care of its self. So please, stop all of the pointless argument and whining, and ask yourselves one simple question: NASA's plan (and therefore America's plan) for the next few years is an opportunity to break the status quo and try to invent the future - How can I contribute?

Please think about it.

Thanks

Are we reading the same article?! To me, this means a halt in the withdrawal of commercial firms in using SPACE X services. Also I'm willing to bet with Rahm Emmanuel getting in on the act together with "LoriGarv" over @ NASA,that Elon Musk's SPACE X will be in a better situation - than OSC for example - for obtaining future NASA work.
As for your comment,apart from recent hires, the workforce is very inexperienced; which is why they're making mistakes that old hands do only rarely:if they're true professionals that is. But Musk has always found a helping hand from one or more branches of government: check out TESLA Cars...

Make that O2H2 or "Hydrolox" since H2O2 refers chemically to Hydrogen Peroxide - an inferior oxidizer to LOX!

The acvtual S.L Isp is 238sec for the ATK SRB and similar for UTC, Aerojet and Hercules SRMs. So the Kerolox engines are better, but in comparison with the high Isp values, the Russians achieve with their Kerolox engines, rather inferior.

> 30 years from now do you still want to be flying ballistic capsules? ...1960's technology. "Apollo on steroids" says it pretty clearly.

To change this you need a major breakthrough in physics. This is not NASA territory. It is DoE and university research.

"Where does the massive funding transfer from ops to R&D come from in your Plan?"

From the same place that it comes from in the Holden/Garver plan, of course. People often forget that Orion/EELV would be just as much a commercial system as, say, Dragon/Falcon-9. A commercially-sourced capsule, on a commercially-sourced launcher. That the capusle would have originally been NASA owned and operated is simply a detail.

Yes, dead on. Maybe it's because I'm an academic, and a European by birth (albeit educated in the US), but I really feel folks need to ask where we want to be 100 years from now, and ask how we get there. With CxP, each day of the program was ending up more than a day until significant BEO activities. Lunar work at CxP had pretty much stopped two years ago, and effectively was canceled a year ago. Even with cash to get everything on track, Augustine pointed out the shear unsustainable cost of the launches, and the remarkably low launch rate. We are just seeing the US President step in to try to find something sustainable, which helps the US move from trailing so far in tech development, to getting back to the cutting edge.

Agreed, it's nice to see things in your lifetime - I moved from quantum black hole physics work to space systems work because I thought I might see results of my work in my lifetime, but, in the end, we need to be building a future for our species.

We know how to do LEO launch - let that go to industry. If NASA is going to be doing LEO launch work, it should be working to catch up with the Europeans on SABRE and other technologies that will make launch to LEO cheap one day. NASA and other space agencies need to sit at the R&D edge. Indeed, if commercial and academic and others can't move in to the new frontier as NASA helps open it up, it's not frontier.

> 30 years from now do you still want to be flying ballistic capsules? ...1960's technology. "Apollo on steroids" says it pretty clearly.

To change this you need a major breakthrough in physics. This is not NASA territory. It is DoE and university research.

Not really. Von Braun and others were pointing out how to do this in the 1950's. If you leave Earth human launch and EDL to purely LEO systems, then spaceplanes and lifting bodies can do it. Indeed, the USAF flies an experiment in that direction next month, the Europeans have an experiment in that direction, and Shuttle and Buran have shown that can be done. Furthermore, one of the original CEV options was not a capsule but a lifting body.

The trick is to have anything that goes beyond LEO not be expected to do EDL, so you need on-orbit refuel and assembly, provision, etc, to allow those vehicles to exist, and to only be flown up once, reducing costs. That's why those technologies are up-front in the the President's new vision. He is just moving us from the 1940s concepts that were used for a rush program for Apollo in the 60's, to 1950's concepts. Apollo was never designed to be sustainable. The one clever bit about Apollo was the LM and having a purely in-space vehicle. The concepts expressed in the recent, more detailed, version of the NASA budget lead you towards being able to have most of the initial upmass end up in in-space systems.

Once you can do that, you can reach those in-space systems via capsules, commercially provided, and then slowly proceed to air-breathers, lifting bodies, next-gen spaceplanes, what have you, without crippling the exploration program in waiting for the next LEO human launcher or another HLV.

ISS also showed us that we can do in-space assembly, and that's why it's also important in the new vision.

Using new physics may help one day, but we don't need it for major new strides in capability right now. We have 60 years of new technologies we need to start investing in space flight, already.

> The trick is to have anything that goes beyond LEO not be expected to do EDL,...

So what's the point of a lifting body. A capsule is just as good.

And now you have a deceleration problem since you don't have aerobraking.

And IMHO it all begins and ends in the need for a hypersonic, maneuverable winged reentry vehicle if you are serious about returning samples from a space station. Not the bext commercial customer for something that requires a splashdown and the U.S. Navy to haul yourself out of the drink!

We were working on next generation spaceplanes in the 90's. Then the entire Reusable Launch Vehicle program was cancelled under GW Bush. The X-37 was picked up by DOD, and will presumably be launched soon, at least for one flight. But the program is apparently now classified and it seems unlikely NASA will get any of the data. We know human spaceflight is possible. Apollo proved it, and we don't to prove it again. We need to make human spaceflight practical.

Crossrange and horizontal landing. And a lifting body can aerobrake. Though a capsule can have some crossrange. The Canadians who designed Gemini wanted it to have a parasail, originally, just for that.

If you mean decel for vehicle returning from BEO, back to LEO (to stay), you can still aerobrake via a balute, or you can be using something like VASIMR, further down the road.

>Crossrange and horizontal landing. And a lifting body can aerobrake.

No I'm not talking about EDL. Lifting body will have its wings ripped off on a high-speed reentry from BEO.

>If you mean decel for vehicle returning from BEO, back to LEO (to stay), you can still aerobrake via a balute, or you can be using something like VASIMR, further down the road.

VASIMR sounds great for deep space probes but I doubt it has the specific impulse for manned BEO deceleration.

Balute = Tether aerodynamic planetary capture. Good grief. You want to swop out capsule+tried-and-true-reentry shields for this?

Given these types of far-fetched, arm-chair hand-waving arguments, I'll go with the POR.

> VASIMR sounds great for deep space probes but I doubt it has the specific impulse for manned BEO deceleration.

correction, it probably has a very high efficiency but not the delta-v.

My main concern with Commercial Crew is their lack of operational flight experience, not their ability to design a vehicle. If Orion/EELV is commercially owned and operated how is that any different from any of the other proposals currently funded? Why waste money funding three different production lines? I would propose going a more traditional route. Stop all government development funding for Commercial Crew. Release a RFP for Commercial Crew vehicle operations with fly off of dem/val systems (vehicle, ground processing, flight operations) in 3 years. From the submitted proposals downselect to two to actual build the dem/val systems. Have a flyoff in the 3 years, pick a winner with IOC within 2 years. Robust competition with no development cost to NASA.

Nothing that goes beyond LEO would have wings, if you see what I said above. That's the entire point - only systems going to surface will be the ones purely operating to and from LEO. The issue is decel to low-orbit.

The idea is not to wait around until LEO launch tech improves - so we can steadily improve those, and get on with building on ISS and working on in-space systes nad infrastructure.

JPL has done this to get into low Mars orbit, gently, with no protection, and if you're not going to full EDL, but only aerocapture-aided circularization, you only have to drop into a low-enough periapsis to your destination to start to circularize via shallow, mild, aerocapture until you've dropped your C3 and apoapsis enough for a LEO bird to come and get your crew off.

It's the LEO bird that could be a lifting body (and then we're just into Shuttle, Dynasoar, etc, etc, including new European, USAF, and Indian experiments).

You can also just use a high orbital/EML fuel depot, and then come down to LEO for pickup.

Basically, the only thing driving us to highly restricted capsule approaches is the EDL. With orbital depots and other 1950s in-space concepts, without any new physics, you remove that constraint. You just remove needing to EDL with most of your system. It's must as LOR enabled Apollo by removing the need to have your LM do anything apart from operate at the Moon. No reason your main vehicle needs to ever operate lower than LEO.

This stuff goes way back and isn't new. It's just that we keep taking shortcuts, and not doing the thing that makes missions sustainable. Orbital fuel depots usually become cheaper after 3 reuses of the interplanetary vehicle, even before you mix in other tech.

It's hard to see if we want to use balutes or not, but, again, they go way back, and you can use solid aerocapture shields. If you have enough control on your periapsis, and can at least bring yourself below C3=0 initially, you can make the hypersonic aerothermodynamics as light as you want, and keep heating reasonable. That goes back to Von Braun for sure, and maybe even Tsiolkovsky.

VASIMR can probably do it for lunar return, using next-gen solar panels, when you crunch the numbers, but, yup, we're going to need a big boost in specific power for interplanetary return, and may just need to be chemical for that, right now.

But hopefully the summit will allow a proper, long-term, intelligent, multi-century thinking, discussion to happen.

The latest update today indicates to me that Obama is really backing his new plan, and he's going to try convincing those people at the town hall meeting how much better for America the new direction is, even if it does sacrifice jobs in the short term, many more people will be employed by a robust private space industry. Many many more.

The latest update does nothing but underscore the standard issue so called "town hall" will be the standard strictly controlled PR event to "charm" his critics. There is nothing "town hall" about it.

Can anyone from a nearby town attend? LOL

Gimme a break.

Total disaster for human spaceflight and NASA is what it is. Gutting a nation defining national agency of it's primary purpose is not "better for America" by any measure.

It's repugnant is what it is.

Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, Jim Lovell, Frank Borman, Tom Jones, Winston Scott, Kent Rominger, Charles Duke, Scott Carpenter and more of America's astronauts are thumbs down on the Obama/Garver plan.

They are not wrong. Why should anyone think Obama/Garver knows more then the above on the matter?

If their is such a robust commercial HSF market that exists that will provides all of these thousands of jobs why do the commercial companies need NASA money to bring their products to market?

There is no sustainable HSF market at this time. Once ISS is gone, where will they go?

Whatever plan there is, it will go the route of the ELV and come down eventually to one company providing the capability. Then NASA will be left with whatever functions that spacecraft has, either a bare minimum taxi or a multi function spacecraft capable of operation between LEO and lunar orbit.

The President can refuse all it wants, but Nov. 2010 is right around the corner, and then what goes around comes around on Jan. 2013.

Yes, this is indeed a mess, but this is because of his own poor judgement going back to those statements before the 2008 elections.

In other words do it the tried and trusted Military procurement process way! So what do we need NASA for? If you want things done right, sack the bureaucrats!

I want Armstrong: I believe the term is stepping up to the plate. In his case it's coming out of the recluse closet and letting "Bammyboy" have a few words of cool wisdom - in front of an audience. Do the man a world of good. Ballroom dancing yet!?! Now I know why Armstrong's foot was first on the Moon!

On the other hand it'll be good to see Obama's explanations to the workforce as to how he's going to find new, well paying, decent Space Industry jobs for them with his new plan...

CessnaDriver, Obama does control his town hall meetings, but he actually takes tough questions. There's no way that he's going to have a town hall meeting where the questions are all cute, it would be epicly bad PR. It's going to go in to it with confidence that the new direction is good for America and that anyone who is against it is against the American space program. That's politics.

But it's also true. We're capitalists. The UK is looking in to starting up a space industry. Why? Because space has been one of the few sectors to survive the economic downturn. Commerce needs space now, there's no going back. We can only go forward by building a robust private space industry.

As Shotwell said at the Commerce hearings. NASA is just under half of their F9 launch manifest. That's a very powerful statement.

Actually it is not because in the military way the government pays for the development effort. I was leaning more towards traditional government services purchase approach with longer acquisition time since the services currently don't exist. Worked when I was on active duty.

What's going to happen is that the President is going to authorize one more shuttle flight so everyone keeps their jobs until this November election is over, then, retire the shuttle. No president in their right mind would layoff thousands of people right before an election.

Joe,

What will he announce to win the votes of the Constellation workers? Another shuttle flight does nothing for them.

And your comment makes it sound like 1 extra launch will all of the sudden get shuttle workers to vote Democratic in the November elections...Don't think so!

If I'm not mistaken by the time this meeting takes place the stage will have been properly set:

HAL-9000: What is going to happen?
Dave: Something wonderful.
HAL-9000: I'm afraid.
Dave: Don't be. We'll be together.
HAL-9000: Where will we be?
Dave: Where I am now.
(2010) or
"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Commerical won't get us to the Moon or Mars in our lifetimes.

This is the political reality for the Obama/Garver plan and the sooner he realizes it the better.
He will concede much ground when it is over.

"There really isn't any support" for the administration's original proposal, Mr. Wolf said in an interview. Opposition to the White House's budget submission "appears overwhelming," the lawmaker said, adding that a bipartisan group already has the votes to block it on the appropriations panel and probably on the floor of the House.

"There's no need for [NASA] to push something that nobody is in favor of," Mr. Wolf said.
"

Commerical won't get us to the Moon or Mars in our lifetimes.

Fortunately commercial does not have to get us to the Moon or Mars in our lifetimes. What Commercial can do is:
a. Get astronauts to and from a Commercial spacestation at LEO.
b. Get a second spacestation, suitable for EML2, to a launch pad.

NASA would have to arrange:
1. To get the second spacestation to EML2.
2. A means of moving astronauts between the spacestations.
3. Propellant depots at the spacestations, possibly commercially run.
4. Organise space tug(s) able to refill EML2 propellant depot.
5. A lunar lander with ascent stage at EML2.

Moon bases, Phobos bases and Mars Landers etc. can follow.

Commercial is the only way *you* will get to Mars or the Moon. Unless you are a young Astronaut or Cosmonaut or Taikonaut in training. In the near future ordinary folks with perhaps more money than sense will get a Commercial suborbital joy ride and eventually even access to a Commercial Zero Gee "rabu hoteru" with Commercial Honey MOONs as the obvious next stage!

In truth NASA had an opportunity (Well several opportunities.) ...to develop a state run space transportation system e.g. OASIS; utilising the STS. But such a system would merely have transported an elite few pilots and scientists to the lunar surface. In the new paradigm a new generation of virtual spacefarers will be exploring the Moon tele-robotically. And not like the Lunokhods or Rovers of yore. This will be immersive hands on Avatar exploration that even the youngest space cadet can experience.

Alas the role of the professional Astronaut or Cosmonaut or Taikonaut in training will not be the gung ho Boots n' Flags pioneer but the operator of the local 'Bot repair franchise.
What's the betting that Americans will be repairing the Chinese Bots and the Chinese: American ones
http://change.gov/

from the OS article:
"There is some talk about a Town Hall meeting with space workers, but many people — not least KSC Center Director Bob Cabana — are reportedly opposed to the idea because tensions are running high at KSC."

ya think, LoL?

and Garver's presence at KSC probably just made it worse - is she that dense?

CxP folks were mostly located in the O&C & Station buildings.

Most Shuttle (engineering & quality & safety types) are in OSB I & II, VAB, LCC control rooms, and the MFF cafeteria - try a casual, unannounced MBWA day (without cameras or management) prior to the big PR event if ya really want to hear genuine concerns and listen.

Might be better for Garver/Holdren to stay away too. Most folks can believe that a politician was ill advised, whereas Garver/Holdren are perceived to be as hsf clueless as the CxP crowd and seem to have their own anti-KSC agenda(s).

imho

@ Lauri Garver: "According to KSC officials, Garver really liked the O&C building because it was designed to be energy-efficient and could be used to assemble commercial capsules that would launch from nearby pads."

If I am Elon Musk, or David Thompson, or any other CEO competing for 'crewed' launch services, I do not set one foot on federal property. I design my rocket so it must be assembled in my facilities, not the VAB, I design my system to be launched from my pad, not KSC pads, I design my systems to be operated from my control room, not KSC LCC.

Bolden and Garver seem to want to save jobs by using existing NASA infrastructure to house/support the Merchant 7. Forget about it.

I generally agree with your points with a couple of points of my own:

"NASA would have to arrange:
2. A means of moving astronauts between the spacestations."

Certainly, this would fall to NASA initially. However, I wouldn't be surprised that, if required, commercial HSF providers could also transfer crew and cargo to the EML halo orbits.

"3. Propellant depots at the spacestations, possibly commercially run.
4. Organise space tug(s) able to refill EML2 propellant depot."

Propellent tank delivery to LEO would be another obvious commercial spaceflight application. And why only use tugs for fuel delivery? You can use slow tugs to carry any non-perishable cargo. There's no point spending money on an EDS unless there is a clear need for quick delivery.

"5. A lunar lander with ascent stage at EML2."

It would probably be better to have a single-stage fully-reusable design that can carry either crew compartments or cargo racks depending on the requirements. Cargo racks would be left on the surface and crew modules could be parked at the space station during cargo delivery runs.

Earthshine,
That might be correct if they were doing everything with their own money. But they're not.
Part of NASA's budget is going to them. You don't think NASA might have any say so in where they launch from? Plus, if Nasa is already going to have a firing room designed for Commercial companiees to use then that's one less expense for commercial and one less thing for them to worry about.

Unless you think they should just take NASA's money and help with fixing problems such as the latest cork issue and then tell them to F off about launching on KSC property.

"2. A means of moving astronauts between the spacestations."

Certainly, this would fall to NASA initially. However, I wouldn't be surprised that, if required, commercial HSF providers could also transfer crew and cargo to the EML halo orbits.

There is a major high level design decision here - how do the people get back from EML2? If they perform a direct reentry then larger LV with larger heatshields will be needed. If return via LEO spacestation is chosen then a chemical transfer vehicle that cycles back to LEO needs developing. Either method can work but I suspect that we cannot afford both.

"5. A lunar lander with ascent stage at EML2."

It would probably be better to have a single-stage fully-reusable design that can carry either crew compartments or cargo racks depending on the requirements. Cargo racks would be left on the surface and crew modules could be parked at the space station during cargo delivery runs.

This is another big design decision. Expendable or reusable lunar landers. Something for a different thread.

There is nothing free or low cost about anything at KSC. Just something as seemingly inconsequential as the costs/manpower/time/aggravation associated with adhering to the ridiculous and ever churning IT policies, if they were known (depends on who you ask), would be enough to send any cost-conscious company screaming for the gate.

That example is just one that popped into my head. It doesn't show up on most technical planning folks radar screen until it's too late. Before you know it, you have been forced to hire an army of someones relatives to keep NASA from shaking you down with the threat of shutting down your network/workflow/logistics... for some supposed non-compliance issue that puts you dead in the water for a day, or a week, or more.

And that is just one tiny little element in the giant sea of crap that an outsider will have to wade through and smile like they like it. The possible horror story scenarios are endless. Anybody here familiar with KSC configuration management?

Anyone that shows up with just the intention of launching a rocket at KSC had better bring a big wallet and a pocket full of Valium.

That is why Boeing/LM, etc will prevail if a KSC launch is required. KSC is their home turf. They know how to play the game without losing their shirts.

The moment you see a KSC launch requirement being thrown around you should know the fix is in. IMHO as always.