The Romney Campaign has a Space Policy Etch-A-Sketch
According to this statement from the Romney campaign by Scott Pace: “We have enjoyed a half-century of leadership in space, but that leadership is eroding due to multiple policy and management mistakes by the current Administration. Our nation’s space efforts require clear, decisive, and steadfast leadership to determine exactly where we are going and the larger purposes behind our space program in support of vital national interests. A Romney Administration will provide the steadiness of purpose, coherence, and bipartisan support that our nation’s space community needs and deserves.”
The Romney position paper states: “For the first time since the dawn of the Space Age, the United States has no clear plan for putting its own astronauts into space. We have a space station that we cannot send astronauts to without Russian transportation.”
Keith’s note: Scott Pace’s comments evidence total amnesia on his part. Regardless of whether you think it was a good or bad idea, the plan to retire the Space Shuttle and rely upon Russia to transport Americans to the ISS for a number of years was put in place by the Bush Administration – not the Obama Administration. After working in the Bush White House, Scott Pace spent 4 years with Mike Griffin at NASA during the Bush Administration implementing this policy. The net result under their leadership was a gap between shuttle retirement and Constellation implementation that grew, costs that rose, and performance that dropped. Looks like Pace, Griffin et al have their own Etch-A-Sketch when it comes to space policy. Just shake it and the past goes away.
Mike Griffin/Scott Pace Road Show Update, earlier post
I believe this election cycle is over?
President Obama’s space policy adopted the previous administration policy to have a gap and rely on Russian transportation. This is a clear fact.
They had a chance to change all that but chose not to. If President Obama had not changed the existing space policy and just modified it, yes, I would agree that its the fault of the previous administration for causing the gap. But because a new space exploration policy was created to replace the previous one, they chose to adopt some of the previous mistakes and hence therefor its their issue now and can no longer use as an excuse to blame the previous administration.
You have to take accountability for your actions and not make excuses because you inherited.
Are you suggesting there was some action Obama could have taken that would’ve resulted in a smaller or zero-length gap? Continuing Constellation was extremely unlikely to produce a viable crew vehicle before 2014, and that was just the expected completion date back in 2007 with the program facing additional delays due to insufficient funding.
Meanwhile, CCDev was started in 2008 and now we expect to see crew capsules in 2015, right around the same time that Ares I optimistically may have been ready.
The only conditions under which you can lay the blame of the gap on Obama’s administration is if you believe Ares I could’ve been ready to fly within a few months of the Shuttle program being shut down. I’d like to think the debate on this possibility has been put to rest by now. So saying Obama didn’t help matters just makes him guilty as well, it doesn’t let Bush off the hook.
Obama’s space policy could have simply downsized the space shuttle program to two orbitals or possibly even one with the others as backup, limit its use for cargo and crew transportation and termination of those programs that allow the space shuttle to do all other functions that supported the space station for building and support. Basically operate it with a skeletal crew.
Postpone the funding of SLS until a Crew Exploration Vehicle with launch capability is built (Boeing CEV on Atlas). Divert money to building Crewed Dragon Capsule sooner.
The notion of a “skeletal” Shuttle program scares me. We’re talking about 20-30 year old craft with rather extensive maintenance and post-landing refurbishing needs. Even at $65M per seat, the Soyuz is still cheaper than the Shuttle was for crew transportation. Yes, it may have been an option, but it would’ve also meant that those additional billions of shuttle operations couldn’t be diverted to other programs.
Also, the funding and timing of SLS was not Obama’s choice to make, it was mandated by the Senate.
Yohan,
The Shuttles were painfully expensive to fly, as you know, and they would have been even more expensive if there were only two of them flying. The standing army that serviced them and cost so much would not be full-time employed doing only two, if they were refurbished at the previous rate. And to refurb and refly each orbiter more often would have cost more again and increased the known risks and dangers. To “operate it with a skeletal crew” was never a viable option either. And the gap would continue indefinitely because there would be too little money to develop new things if the Shuttles were still being paid for. The Shuttles are lovely machines but they are old hardware and old technology. Their time is done.
Steve
“Obama’s space policy could have simply downsized the space shuttle program to two orbitals or possibly even one with the others as backup,”
The production lines were closed under Bush. The last two shuttle flights, that were added after Obama took office, used up the last spares. It wasn’t just about Presidential direction, the shuttle program was over. It would have cost more to restart production, no matter how few flights per year, than NASA had. The people who told you Obama killed the shuttle, lied. The people who told you Obama could have kept the shuttle flying if he really wanted to, also lied. To save time, you should treat anything those people tell you in the future as a lie.
The only option Obama had for shortening the gap was to cancel Constellation to free up funds… exactly what Obama tried to do. Congress tried to block every attempt to kill Constellation, then created SLS to keep as much of Constellation alive as possible.
Even now, compare the annual budget of SLS with the annual budget for Commercial Crew and COTS combined. Compare the total funds spent on the failed Ares I development, with the total cost of Commercial Crew so far.
“Divert money to building Crewed Dragon Capsule sooner.”
Every attempt to do so was opposed by Congress. Every budget request for commercial crew has been cut down. (Even zeroed entirely in the House version of the budget.) Those continuous cuts have delayed development, increasing the HSF “gap”.
So to sum up: Bush cancelled shuttle without a replacement in place. Agreed to Griffin’s idiotic Constellation program, even though there was a more reasonable alternative that had already been proposed [by O’keefe] (of which COTS was the first stage.)
Obama extended the shuttle program as much as physically possible. He tried to cancel Constellation. He extended COTS into Commercial Crew.
House Republicans have repeatedly tried to kill Commercial Crew. Senate Republicans (and some Democrats) have tried to preserve Constellation by any means necessary, regardless of the cost to the tax payers or the US space program.
There’s plenty to criticise Obama over, but this ain’t it.
And lest we forget, the ability to get our crews to the ISS after the Shuttle was shut down was handed over to the previous administration and ATK (1st stage) and Boeing (2nd stage) and Lockheed Martin (Orion) to the tune of billions a year – on just Orion Ares I.
After 4 years and billions spent, all that was had was a notion that perhaps things with Orion Ares I might get a first operational flight by 2016 (maybe), for even billions more. For an added segment to an old system, a new small liquid stage, and a crew capsule. The later stage and capsule not a far variation in actual technical capability from a Falcon 1st stage and a cargo Dragon capsule (already pressurized and returnable mind you) – all of which was had for an order of magnitude less dollars.
This re-writing of facts by the Romney campaign is pathetic.
“Our nation’s space efforts require clear, decisive, and steadfast leadership to determine exactly where we are going and the larger purposes behind our space program in support of vital national interests. A Romney Administration will provide the steadiness of purpose, coherence, and bipartisan support that our nation’s space community needs and deserves.”
The above seems reasonable enough. However, reading between the lines, what it doesn’t say is that the George W. Bush Constellation and return to Moon plan was right, and that we should go back to it. And that could be done (not that I advise it) by simply regarding the Liberty rocket as Ares 1 and the SLS as Ares 5. So Romney seems to be abandoning Constellation by omission.
Romney has baggage with Constellation whether he admits it or not. He needs to say in a “clear, decisive, and steadfast” way that we will go back to it, or he’s admitting that Obama’s cancellation of it was right.
And yet, that’s exactly what he can never do, because the one indisputable aspect of Constellation was that there was never enough money allocated to do it, and the amount of money necessary to do it was never, ever going to be allocated. Now, we know that Romney is Mr. Fiscal, and everything in his policy is about the money. So Romney can never speak up again in favor of Constellation without appearing to be a massive hypocrite, because the necessary money would be even less likely to appear under a Republican regime, especially the Romney-Ryan team. All he can do is completely avoid using the word Constellation without shooting himself in the foot.
Steve
In Obama’s first year, he exercised brave and strong leadership on the nations space program. Much to the exasperation of many, especially industry contractors whose pockets were getting stuffed, he pulled the plug on Constellation. That was a program that was fiscally unexecutable with a completely unactionable timeline. For exactly that reason it marked a singular lack of leadership on the part of his predecessor, who kept it on life support as he pushed everything to the right.
Yep, you bet. The failure of Constellation was due to lack of leadership by the president who started it. Obama fixed that.
Obama was happy spending large amounts of money in other areas, pulling the nation out of desperate financial straits. In no way shape or form is does NASA expenditures meet those desperate straits.
The Romney campaign space policy is hilarious if just that most of it is whining about Obama’s perceived failings, and many of the space priorities being largely the same as that of the current administration.
“The successful docking of the SpaceX Dragon capsule with the International Space Station was an achievement on par with any in recent memory.”
Did Mr. Romney really say that? Hilarious. An achievement on par with any in recent memory? Wow, that’s quite an, er, compliment. I guess that means that any accomplishments in recent memory were on par with it. SpaceX folks ought to be shaking their heads in disbelief. That’s the quote that Pace et al highlight at the conclusion of this white paper. That, folks, is the best that Romney’s space policy team could get out of him. That being the case, it says a LOT.
Now, Obama hasn’t come out with much better, but this isn’t a space policy white paper that anyone should be proud of.
Is it really “amnesia”, and not opportunistic posturing by Pace?
I have known Scott for a long time. He is an honest, smart man. This is all about politics.
It doesn’t seem to me that “go anywhere right now” is a metric for success that NASA should be held up to. Of course, you mean humans that would go anywhere right now. NASA is busy sending our eyes and other senses to many far away places right now, and learning what we need to learn to send humans farther as well.
But NASA simply doesn’t have the money for a grand Apollo-like plan. Obama’s not going to ask for it because Congress won’t give it. W didn’t even ask for it either, though his Constellation program desperately needed it.
Obama lied? Well, he did say that he supported returning to the Moon by 2020. That was in his campaign, before he got to look under the hood of Constellation. What he meant was that he was willing to support a successful program. Constellation was not. Let’s get this right. If you call that a LIE, than all he was doing was innocently repeating a LIE. There, I said it. We can criticize him more for naively accepting that Constellation was fiscally executable than for lying.
I guess if we decide, in a Romney administration, to build a habitat on the lunar surface, we’ll be able to say that he LIED, right? Remember everyone he promised to fire? Accusations about lies are not very constructive.
With all due respect to Neil Armstrong, his insights into modern space policy aren’t much better than that of his his Apollo comrades. He was just saying, as people are wont to say, that “we need more people like me.”
Oh gosh. Obama waited a year to focus on what NASA was doing. Whatever could have distracted him? Oh, maybe it was the apocalytically collapsing economy that W left him with, ya think?
It’s time for change because this isn’t working, but the change is going to come from a healthy economy, and not from a presidential pronouncement.