This Year @NASA
Marc’s note: NASA has released this edition of “This Year @NASA”. Enjoy the highlights.
Marc’s note: NASA has released this edition of “This Year @NASA”. Enjoy the highlights.
At 12:06… A tractor LAS on the Dragon. Hmmm… weren’t we told all along that this is very wasteful and that the great draco thrusters could do all that and still make coffee in the morning?
“At 12:06… A tractor LAS on the Dragon“
I assume that you are referring to the animation shown during the segment about the February COTS demo flight (see attached picture). For some reason for this segment NASA decided to reuse an old 2009 SpaceX animation. You can find this animation on the SpaceX website by clicking on Video Gallery, then selecting the video dated 02/09/2009 and titled “Crew Transport to ISS (simulation)”
Much has changed in the nearly three years since that animation was made. This past October NASA approved the CCDev preliminary design review for the reusable pusher LAS on Dragon.
I’m not sure why they put it there. Not only is SpaceX planning on a pusher LAS, so is Boeing for the CST. Orion/MPCV is the only one doing the old tractor LAS.
Without the Shuttle, what will they comment on next year? Without a way for our guys to get to the ISS, except on board the Russian, (sometimes they don’t work) boosters, what will they say.
Hopefully a few of the commercial boys will have great success this year. We need it.
Human space flight certainly isn’t the totality of NASA. There’ll be loads of stories than can tell in next years video: Messenger, MSL, and GRAIL will all have some results. Kepler will continue its success, and commercial partners will continue their test flights and first COTS deliveries. There’ll be CCDev news.
We’re at a point between manned programs. It’s natural that there would be a brief pause, just as there was after Apollo. If you don’t like the pause, then start encouraging friends and neighbors to support more funding (read: more taxes) for NASA. Do the same for your congressmen and whoever gets elected president next November.
Robin
This was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen come out of NASA PAO. From the tone of this video, all NASA seems to care about are prototypes (that we’ll figure out some use for later) and social engineering projects. Educational outreach only works when NASA is actually doing something that the kids can get excited about. GSFC was only mentioned once. That is probably because it is still stuck in the old-fashioned NASA where exploring space and building hardware was the goal. I’m sure HQ will bring them into line soon.
Did they mention Kepler’s Discovery of Earth-sized extra-solar planets, Messenger’s orbit insertion at Mercury, or Cassini catching a Titan rain storm? I skipped around the video and couldn’t find these… I did see some webbies and some stuff on public service announcements shown on NASA TV.
The RAD on MSL says that the radiation on MSL is only 4X what the baseline was sitting on the pad(From SWRI).That sounds really low.ISS was 10x after a solar flare came through.I have found much higher numbers for ISS.Did you know that radiation is lower at Solar Min?Not as strong a Sun magnetic field to deflect the radiation.This is backward from what I had thought it was.I am looking for more from RAD.
At solar minimum, outbound solar radiation is lower, inbound cosmic radiation is higher. Depends what you’re worried about.
Depressing…disgusting. Very unfortunate video but based on the reality show that NASA has become; really a tragic year.
Most likely this is Nasa’s human spaceflight program’s epitaph. At least for the last 30 years Nasa had Shuttle they could always turn back to. SLS and Orion will never have a place; they are just waste. Waste of time, and money. This is what we get for putting our faith in an inept and corrupt bureaucracy.
I think dividing the video by centers was a mistake, as was making the entire first half HSF, and ending with the STEM and PR fluff. All of the currently happening science programs, from Earth and right out to the limits of the solar system, were crammed into the middle, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people only skimmed that part.
Many of the comments here seem to equate NASA with HSF activities (or lack of activity) only, which is unfortunate. There are a lot of good planetary science missions ongoing and just beginning, as well as the telescopes learning about the universe, that made this a very good year for NASA science, but that seems to be overshadowed by the whole SLS/Soyuz saga, which is a shame.
Steve
The pause is not natural, in fact it is wasteful. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board recommended that the Shuttle continue to fly until a replacement vehicle (at that time assumed to be the Orbital Space Plane) was operational. The CAIB specifically recommended against any attempt to replace Shuttle with a vehicle intended to go beyond LEO because the resources were not available.
The “gap” is entirely the result of poor planning by the Bush Administration, which proclaimed an extremely expensive new program (“Apollo on $teroids) while also cutting taxes. This required cancellation of Shuttle to create the illusion that it could be done “free”, though in fact the real cost was far higher than Bush acknowledged and, it is becoming clear, is unaffordable.
You can call it the Bush Administration’s fault, but it was really Griffin’s and his alone. Bush gave NASA the authority to pursue what NASA felt it needed to pursue. O’Keefe and Steidle, were pursuing a smaller more cost effective fly-back vehicle. Griffin came in and turned that around and decided to go with Apollo on Steroids, an ill-conceived idea he had dreamed up and written about years earlier. No one within the Bush Administration tried to tell him to do anything different because they figured NASA knew what it needed to be doing. No one within NASA had the courage and honesty to speak up about what they felt was good, bad or achievable in reasonable order. NASA has had the authority and responsibility right from the start to decide what needs to pursue and yet the lack of vision and timidity of the NASA ‘leaders’ means they go off on wild goose chases. We are pursuing one (actually two) right now, called SLS and MPCV. MPCV is not needed. SLS could probably be more cost effecively achieved in a different manner. I’m convinced that Congress edicted these not because Congress believed these were required for NASA’s purposes, but because no one from NASA was putting forward any other ideas, and Congress felt NASA needed to continue working on something.
“Bush gave NASA the authority to pursue what NASA felt it needed to pursue. […] Griffin came in and turned that around and decided to go with Apollo on Steroids,” […] “and yet the lack of vision and timidity of the NASA ‘leaders’ means they go off on wild goose chases.”
Griffin displays strong leadership and the result was a boondoggle. Bolden shows weak leadership and the result is a boondoggle. Bush proclaims a Grand Vision for NASA, and the result is an underfunded overspending boondoggle. Obama weakly suggests a practical but uninspiring path forward, and the result is an underfunded overspending boondoggle.
No doubt Griffin was bold, just stupid when it came to strategy and design decisions.
First, his command module was far too large for its purpose. The main purpose, emergency escape-what you want is minimum size, not maximum; a nominal earth return capsule-first you really do not want a capsule, second you dont want to throw it away, and third, you dont want it splashing in the ocean. Most significant of all, he did not have a booster for it.
Second, his moon missions had no goal or strategy other than landing on the moon in exactly the same way as Apollo. There was no outpost, no base, no large pressurized rovers. He even characterized it as Apollo on steroids. The steroids soon dissipated as the crew size was reduced to barely larger than Apollo and a lander less capable. If he had characterized it as “we are picking up where Apollo left off”, that would have had a more positive effect.
Third, he should have been looking for a way to do this cost effectively and to establish the first elements very quickly. But his over sized capsule and undersized booster were not going to be ready for 15 years. That was just the first step. His strategy to pay for his over sized capsule and underpowered booster was to shut down everything else NASA does in order to pay for them. Shut down Shuttle, shut down ISS, shut down science missions, shut down aero.
There was not a strategy. For all his smarts, there was little intelligence. Apparently all of his high ranking ops people, set up to lead Constellation, could do nothing other than salute, say ”yes sir” and fail miserably to give him anything he needed. They all worked together effectively to wreck the program and so far no recovery is in sight.
I agree that Constellation a) wasn’t a good plan, b) had nothing to do with Bush’s VSE anyway. My oft repeated comment was aimed at the incessantly repeated idea that NASA would somehow turn into a competent agency if the current or next Administrator/President showed “Leadership” or “Vision”.
And it’s not just from advocates on blogs, the same fantasy seems to infest NASA itself. Treading water, blaming everyone but themselves for repeated failure, hoping that someone will show “Leadership” and then the Apollo greatness will magically return (and throwing everything bar the kitchen sink onto the already underfunded main program(s).)
But Presidents have announced grand visions. NASA administrators have committed the agency to singular visions and brooked no argument. And the result is still failure of the major programs.
Congress isn’t going to change, if anything they’re getting worse. The Prime contractors aren’t going to become charities for NASA’s benefit, the FAR act isn’t going to change, and NASA’s budget is going to decline (at least in terms of buying power, and probably in actual dollars.) Waiting for their Prince to ride in and rescue them hasn’t worked for the last 40 years, why will it work in the next 40?