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Commercialization

Schism in House Science Committee Leadership Over SLS/MPCV

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 11, 2013
Filed under , , , ,

Mr. Rohrabacher’s Additional Views on the Science Space & Technology FY 2014 Budget
“We continue to hear that the SLS/MPCV system will serve as a back-up for Earth-to-orbit transportation in the unlikely event that none of the other systems in development are successful. Last year’s request for this “back-up system” was more than 300% of the appropriated level of the primary system. By acting on this type of faulty logic, we have created a national debt as large as our GDP and still our nation refuses to take its foot off the deficit spending accelerator. SLS is unaffordable, and with relatively modest expenditures on specific technology development, we do not need a heavy lift vehicle of that class to explore the Moon, Mars, or near-Earth asteroids.”
Views and Estimates for FY 2014 Budget, House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (NASA)
“While NASA’s Commercial Crew program could be the primary means of transporting American astronauts, we cannot be solely reliant on this program. The Orion MPCV, Space Launch System, and Commercial Crew programs require a program track with a sufficient budget to support the Space Station as soon as possible in preparation for the next steps of human exploration beyond Low Earth Orbit and ensure American preeminence in space.”
Keith’s note: It would seem that the Chairman and the Vice Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology have a fundamental disagreement when it comes to the implementation of NASA’s human and commercial space flight priorities.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

77 responses to “Schism in House Science Committee Leadership Over SLS/MPCV”

  1. Gonzo_Skeptic says:
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    SLS is a “back-up” system?

    That’s like buying an 18-wheeler tractor/trailer to go grocery shopping in case your Prius has trouble.

    • richard_schumacher says:
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      More like building one from scratch.  

      Please send comments in support of sanity (that is, killing SLS) to your Representative:
      http://www.house.gov/repres

      Like most Representatives Congressman Rohrabacker accepts email only from his constituents, but everyone else can call or write him:
      http://rohrabacher.house.gov/

    • Andrew Gasser says:
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      Yes – SLS is the back up

      • TerryG says:
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        Yes – If you believe a government built ocean liner should back up commercially built jet aircraft.

        SLS is completely the wrong size of solution for LEO. Boeing, SpaceX, Orbital and SNC – with NASA leadership – provide sufficient redundancy that no further back up is necessary.

        • mattmcc80 says:
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          The redundancy you’re referring to assumes more than one provider will receive a commercial crew contract after CCDev completes.  In the current political landscape, I don’t see how NASA could possibly get funding for that.  They’re very lucky Congressman Wolf failed to force them to down-select to one company last year.

          That said, if one of the spacecraft that doesn’t receive a NASA contract is operated anyway for other customers, they could always be brought in by NASA as needed, and simply be paid on a case-by-case basis.  But that also means the company would need to have a business case for keeping the spacecraft operational without NASA money.  SpaceX obviously intends to do that, but Boeing has been pretty clear that without a NASA contract, they’re not interested in keeping CST-100 around.  Sierra Nevada, I think, would like to operate Dream Chaser with or without NASA, but I think they may be a bit optimistic.

          • John Gardi says:
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            Matt:

            Of course Wolf knew that by down-selecting to only one ‘commercial’ contractor that SLS would become a ‘backup’ by the very nature of being the only other ‘program of record’. He isn’t even thinking (or caring) whether this was good for the country or the taxpayer. He’s literally, consciously, trying to rig the system to protect his pet project. Pure self interest.

            I’m sure Wolf’s greatest fear is SpaceX. As I’ve mentioned before, SpaceX has ‘gone rouge’ many times, ‘cutting out’ the middle man (Washingtion) by dealing directly with states and municipalities. The only hook to damage them (and thus protect his interests (and clients)) is NASA’s commercial crew program. Other then that, SpaceX is pretty much untouchable by Washington.

            tinker

  2. Denniswingo says:
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    And so it begins…..

  3. Brian_M2525 says:
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    “the Chairman and the Vice Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology have a fundamental disagreement when it comes to the implementation of NASA’s human and commercial space flight priorities”
    Are there priorities?
    What are they?
    I think there ought to be clear priorities. Programs should be established and implemented to meet them. 
    Orion does not seem to meet any priorities for any function or mission.
    We might need a heavy lift booster but is SLS the most effective way to achieve it? 

    • Gonzo_Skeptic says:
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      Are there priorities? What are they?

      The only clear priority is to deliver space pork to the appropriate congressional districts in a timely and loud manner so the voters know it has arrived.

      Any hardware or science produced are mere artifacts of the process.

  4. david says:
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    Interesting that a couple of paragraphs were omitted from the summary, most notably:
    Our Exploration program continues to be problematic, in that the funding is inadequate to the mission. The plan didn’t fit under the funding level anticipated by the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-267), and now that we have considerably less to work with we refuse to acknowledge reality. The single most important message of the Augustine Commission was that you cannot succeed when your mission does not match your funding.

    • rktsci says:
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      The Orion project office won’t admit it, nor will most of NASA, but they know that if SLS was killed and Orion moved to EELV and/or Falcon, money would be saved and NASA could develop exploration payloads with the saved funds.

  5. Mark_Flagler says:
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    FWIW, I believe the Orion/EELV combo is the (alleged) backup for ISS missions, though whether it will be ready in time is another issue.

    More to the point, the House and Senate are being pulled in several directions on SLS/Orion.
    Some want the pork (or jobs in their district)
    A few want the mass-to-LEO capability.
    Many want neither, and think the program(s) should be defunded (and these are among the most vocal and stubborn people in the House).
    I can envision blood in the rotunda before this is settled.

    • rktsci says:
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      Orion dropped the ISS mission a few years ago. Right now the schedule is pretty much cost-driven. They are building and designing what they can afford.

  6. Mark_Flagler says:
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    “…With relatively modest expenditures on specific technology development, we do not need a heavy lift vehicle of that class to explore the Moon, Mars, or near-Earth asteroids.”
    If we assume assembly of large spacecraft in LEO, Rohrabacher is technically correct. Relatively little that we now envision could not be done using multiple launches of vehicles like Falcon Heavy.
    I would be more sympathetic toward SLS if it were more heavily invested in developing new technologies, but instead it is leaning heavily on off-the-shelf tech. 
    Personally, I think the investment in SLS is questionable; I would rather see those funds spent developing spacecraft.

  7. mmeijeri says:
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    “with relatively modest expenditures on specific technology
    development, we do not need a heavy lift vehicle of that class to
    explore the Moon, Mars, or near-Earth asteroids”This is not true either. We don’t need *any* technology development (though there are lots of areas where it could be useful), and we don’t need *any* HLV, not just of SLS class but of any class. Even EELV Phase1 or FH are not necessary.As much as some people hoping for research grants or ways to run an otherwise unviable SBIR shop might want people to believe otherwise, we don’t need more technology development. We have many years of technology development behind us that aren’t even close to being used to their full extent. If you leave it to the researchers and SBIR shop proprietors we’ll get decades of useless technology development, because technology isn’t useful until you actually, you know, start using it.Shilling for research grants for unneeded R&D so you get to run a small business in the aerospace sector is the moral equivalent of shilling for SLS so you get to have an overpaid job in the exploration program.

    • Todd Austin says:
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      SpaceX has two FH flights on its manifest. One is for the Air Force, the other for Intelsat. It appears they have found a market for this launch vehicle. If it is not necessary, why are their customers willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to catch a ride on it?

      • mmeijeri says:
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        I meant it isn’t necessary for exploration. I’m all for FH, but for its projected launch prices, not its payload to LEO. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s not terribly helpful either.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      Shilling for research grants for unneeded R&D…

      mmeijeri,

      Please define “unneeded.”  You make it sound as if you think there is no need for any R&D at all.

      • mmeijeri says:
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        I meant unneeded to avoid the need for an HLV “of that class” or of any class, and unneeded to to to the moon, NEOs, Phobos & Deimos, Mars and beyond. But while it is not necessary for all that, it could certainly be useful.

        More importantly, we do need lots of R&D to make space launch radically cheaper. I know this is the holy grail of spaceflight, but that has a very good reason. We need cheap lift, or we’ll never have meaningful numbers of people in space, and without that manned spaceflight doesn’t seem worth it to me.

        I happen to believe that the best way to allocate funding to R&D for cheap lift and more generally for a cost-effective space transportation infrastructure is through a large and fiercely competitive propellant launch market. We have, and have long had, all the technology needed to make that happen.

  8. Tom Sellick says:
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    I see an Orion-Soyuz Test Project in the future.

  9. chriswilson68 says:
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    Even if the opposition to SLS/Orion isn’t enough to kill the program in the next year or two, it’s likely to be enough to force a deal that saves commercial crew.

    When commercial crew is operational, and when Falcon Heavy is operational, that’s when we can finally kill SLS and Orion for good.

  10. Stuart J. Gray says:
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    Another thing I have been wanting to say is that “IF they built SLS NON-man rated, it would cost about half of what it would cost man-rated”. They could launch only very large payloads and check them out prior to even sending the astronauts. We have enough automated systems currently that the arguement that the astronauts need to go with the payload is outdated.

    But Congress doesnt use logic.

    • JimNobles says:
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       I would never have made the heavy lifter concept man rated. What were they thinking? They have smaller vehicles for people.

      I realize the answer to what they were thinking… They really truly are trying to rebuild their fathers’ Apollo rocket aren’t they. This would be darkly funny if it wasn’t for the resources wasted.

      • Edward M. Grant says:
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        So you don’t think SLS will be safe enough to launch astronauts, but it will be safe enough to launch what will inevitably, because of their size, be multi-billion dollar payloads and probably irreplaceable in any reasonable timescale?

        • JimNobles says:
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           First, I don’t think SLS will ever become operational at all. It just costs too much to build and operate. I do believe it is a gigantic works program that politicians were able to put in place to benefit their districts and contributors. I think that’s the basic truth of its existence.

          Second, there is no reason to risk people’s lives by forcing them to launch on a big cargo rocket. Separating crew from cargo was decided as a good idea years ago. We will have certified people launchers working long before we need to launch 100+ tons of cargo on SLS.

          Third, human-rating a cargo vehicle just adds to its development cost. There’s no reason at all to do this unless foolish people really are thinking of SLS as a suped-up Saturn V replacement in order to re-live the glories of their father’s space program.

          • Edward M. Grant says:
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            I think you miss the point.

            Suppose you’re assembling your Mars mission in orbit ready to go in a couple of months, the kind of thing SLS is supposed to be used for.

            If you lose your crew when a rocket explodes, you launch the backup crew ASAP. Sucks for the people who died, but the mission goes ahead.

            If you lose your multi-billion dollar Mars lander when a rocket explodes, that’s it. Mission’s over. You can’t build a replacement before you’ve missed the launch window, so try again in a few years.

            If you’re serious about spaceflight, how can you possibly launch hugely expensive, hard to replace cargo on a launcher which you wouldn’t trust with the crew?

          • JimNobles says:
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             I think you already know the answer. In America now, for good or worse, one astronaut’s life is worth more than any payload no matter how expensive.

            I accept that reality until and if it changes.

        • Steve Pemberton says:
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          What you are referring to is reliability, i.e. making it to orbit, but there is more to it than that.  High reliability is of course a top priority for both manned and unmanned launchers.  The big difference between manned and unmanned is what happens to the payload if a failure does occur.  With unmanned launchers, any failure which causes the payload to not achieve orbit means total loss of payload.  The aftermath of the failure in that case doesn’t really matter.  Whether the rocket immediately explodes and shreds the payload into a million pieces, or whether the payload survives intact all the way down to the water doesn’t really matter, either way it’s a total loss (with the possible exception of internal cargo in a Dragon capsule).  For that reason engineers designing unmanned launchers only have to concentrate on reliability, they don’t have to think about what happens to the payload if the launcher malfunctions.  Other than of course range safety requirements.  

          With manned launchers they absolutely have to think about what happens to the payload (i.e. crew) if the launcher malfunctions.  And they can’t just put the onus on the capsule manufacturer to build in adequate LAS, because it’s not just the spacecraft that is human-rated, it’s the entire launch system.  That even includes the launch pad and launch communication centers.  

          The launcher itself will have to have built into it numerous sensors and abort triggers that can communicate directly with the spacecraft’s computers so that the LAS system can be automatically and instantaneously activated if needed, even preemptively if possible in case for example pressures in the launch vehicle are climbing quickly and an explosion is imminent.

          And while the engineers may not always have much control over what happens to the vehicle after a failure, especially a catastrophic one, as part of receiving a man-rating they will be required to provide detailed analysis of what exactly they expect will happen to the vehicle in various failure scenarios.  And it’s possible that they will be required to modify the design in some cases to mitigate some of the failure consequences in order to give the crew a better chance of getting away.

          Of course one could make the argument that all of this is needed whether the rocket is big or small, but the presumption is that smaller human-rated rockets capable of taking a crew to LEO will already exist, so no need to re-invent that wheel you just need to build yourself a highly reliable big cargo rocket if that’s what you think you need and skip the hit on cost and schedule that man-rating will entail.

      • Scott Bender says:
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        You see, there was this group of people who really had a hate on for the Constellation project.  They convinced or swayed NASA that a single launcher was better.  This group was called DIRECT and SLS is what we got for their efforts. 🙁

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wik

    • mmeijeri says:
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      The biggest problem with SLS is not its cost, but its opportunity cost. With an SLS in operational use there won’t be a large and fiercely competitive propellant launch market. It is far better for SLS to be used exclusively for crew, so that cargo (mostly propellant), which makes up the bulk of the IMLEO, is launched on commercial launchers. A manned SLS is also less likely to be successful, and therefore more attractive, because it needs to fail if we are to make progress.

      • Paul451 says:
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        Yeah, but what if SLS just barely works. Like the shuttle. Not good, not safe, but not quite bad enough or unsafe enough to get cancelled… year after year, sucking up enough funding to displace any possible successor, just by existing.

        • Michael Reynolds says:
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          It makes me shudder to think that this is even a possibility.

        • mmeijeri says:
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          Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of too. A crew-only SLS would be much better than a cargo-only SLS, but it’s only a theoretical possibility, since there’s no way the powers that be are going to let commercial launchers launch the cargo (mostly propellant), precisely because it makes up the bulk of the IMLEO.

    • rktsci says:
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      If you read the requirements (and I have) man rating doesn’t cost that much. About all you need is redundant sensors to look for problems, and a data link to the manned portion to feed them enough data to say “get off the booster”.

      • Stuart J. Gray says:
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        Apparently you dont know enough about development costs of flight avionics and the difference between Class 1(man-rated) and Class 4(allow risk). The differences in process alone is HUGE.

        • dogstar29 says:
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          I agree. Within NASA-managed programs there are massive differences in oversight and development procedures, and requirements for paper fault-tree analysis and hardware redundancy that contribute little or nothing to real-world reliability. That said, SpaceX seems to feel it can avoid some of these requirements and still, like Soyuz, be accepted as man-rated.

        • rktsci says:
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          I did the first presentation to the STS safety panel of a proposed STS payload that had computer control of hazardous functions. (Alas, it was killed as we were going into SRR.) I also wrote requirements for several STS and ISS flight equipment projects. And I was one of the author/editors for the top level requirements and IRDs for a current major manned spaceflight project. I’m very familiar with the man rating requirements. They have been streamlined over the last 10 years.

          There is an AIAA paper from ULA on man rating the Atlas and Delta. Costs aren’t that high to retrofit them for human flight.

    • Todd Austin says:
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      On the contrary, they are highly logical. Their goal are two-fold. One is to garner positive media coverage. The other is to attract campaign contributions with which they can disseminate advertising (of dubious veracity). With a sufficient quantity of these two they will be re-elected.

      Your goal, in contrast, might be humans to Mars.The fact that their actions to won’t fulfill your goals doesn’t make them illogical.

  11. NewSpacePaleontologist says:
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    You can smell the death of US human spaceflight.
    The NewSpace Zealots, for all their good intentions, will destroy human spaceflight in the United States. They would rather kill other systems than co-exist. Once Orion-SLS goes we are totally dependent upon new systems which cannot be successful in the time and cost promised. We have seen with SpaceX and Orbital that cost over runs and doubling of schedule occurs even in non-government managed space programs. How long will we fund the new systems when there is nowhere for them to go? How do you make a commercial market out of 2 or 3 missions (if that)?
    And, while we are at it, a word about pork. Do not think that the “commercial” companies do not believe in government pork. Where are their commercial customers with money deposited for orbital flights? Where is their commercial investor funding? They believe in pork – they just want it in their bellies instead of the old school companies’.
    Thank God for China. They recognize the value of a human space program and are willing to pay for it. The United States is too poor. We have beat the drum about how expensive spaceflight is that we have convinced ourselves that it is too expensive for the western world and thusly can be done only with international financial support. It does appear China will lead the way now.

    • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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       Um… you do know about SpaceX having a long customer list (to the point where I’m not sure they’ll be able to fit them all in), don’t you?

    • mattmcc80 says:
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      First off, I don’t think it’s productive to discuss SLS and Orion as if they’re one program that has to be a package deal.  They’re not.  They can be used separately (Indeed, Orion’s first flight will not involve SLS), which means one could be cancelled while leaving the other alone.  Second, opposition to SLS and/or Orion does not implicitly make someone a “NewSpace” person.  (Though I’ve seen some pretty broad and almost contradictory definitions of that term, so maybe that implication does hold in some people’s minds)

      I would love to see both commercial crew and NASA in-house spacecraft design co-exist, except that I don’t see a use case for SLS, and to date I don’t think anyone in NASA or Congress has identified one.  They’re basically operating on the theory that if they build it, someone will think of a mission that justifies its existence and massive expense.

      Unless and until an actual mission is spelled out and funded, SLS development isn’t going to be advancing human spaceflight one bit.  That’s a lot of money which could be spent on programs that actually would move us forward.  Why wouldn’t we want NASA to buy launch services from commercial providers and focus its money on what it’s actually good at?  More importantly, shouldn’t government funding be focused on programs which don’t have a business case already, as launch services do?  The USPS doesn’t design its own diesel engines because it can buy them from businesses which make money selling diesel engines.

      Here’s the key for SLS: A mission that justifies its existence must be one that other platforms like Atlas, Delta, or Falcon either couldn’t possibly do, or would be demonstrably more expensive to employ.

      Now, Orion.  Commercial crew has a defined mission (ISS service) and the potential to sell services to other customers such as countries interested in buying BIgelow stations (At least seven countries have signed MoU’s with Bigelow).  I agree that two or three missions a year does not make a viable commercial market, and if Boeing doesn’t get a commercial crew contract from NASA I’d be pretty surprised if they didn’t cancel CST-100.  They aren’t investing much of their own money in CCDev (as NASA’s review last year stated) and they don’t seem to be overly interested in finding other markets for it.  SpaceX, on the other hand, is already using hardware very close to what it would be flying for human transportation anyway.  So if doesn’t get enough human transportation flights in a given year, it still has other uses for its rockets and capsules.

      Where’s Orion’s defined mission?  If the only thing Orion ever does is go to ISS, that’s all the evidence anyone needs to prove it was never needed in the first place.  NASA could sell Orion spacecraft to other countries, just like how the DoD sell fighter jets, but I don’t see that being likely.

      • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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         Lets turn Orion into a Mars transfer vehicle by adding a service module with big fuel tanks and an inflatable living area plus consumables.  A Bigelow BA 300 masses 20 tonnes.

        Delta-V LEO -> MTO -> LMO
        = 4.3 + 2.7 = 7.0 km/s

        Delta-V LMO -> MTO -> EEO (C3=0) & reentry
        = 2.7 + 0.6 = 3.3 km/s

        total 7.0 + 3.3 = 10.3 km/s

        LOX/methane engines with Isp 321 are now available

    • Todd Austin says:
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      What is your basis for these assertions? State your evidence that SpaceX ‘cannot be successful in the time and cost promised’.

      You state ‘Where are their commercial customers’. Take a look:

      http://www.spacex.com/launc

      About 25% is the US government. 75% are not.

      As for a supposed lack of investors, see http://www.spacex.com/compa

      “SpaceX is a private company owned by management and employees, with minority investments from Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Valor Equity Partners.” Musk also famously has $100 million of his own skin in the game.

      Yes, SpaceX has received and continues to receive government funding. NASA has itself admitted that SpaceX has developed its systems for about 1/10 of what it would have cost NASA to do through its old system of cost-plus contracting. Their per-launch prices are undercutting even the heavily-subsidized Chinese.

      Every time SpaceX launches a rocket for the US government, we, the taxpayers, save money. I think that’s a heck of a good investment.

      • NewSpacePaleontologist says:
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        Todd,
        This discussion is about commercial crew. SpaceX has not announced any commercial crew customers.
         
        When talking about success in cost and schedule, check your history instead of marketing talking points.
         
        In COTS, with the contract signed 8/18/2006, SpaceX was supposed to fly its 3rd demo in September 2009. That was delayed (and combined with the second) occurring May 22, 2012. The schedule grew from 36 to 69 months (almost 100%).
        In CRS, there was to have been 4 completed missions by the end of 2012. There are to have been 7 missions by the end of 2013. We are in the middle of the 2nd mission. Five more are required by the end of 2013 to be on schedule. I doubt this will happen.
         
        Why should I believe that commercial crew will be any different?
        In spaceflight, neither the government nor the “commercial” companies have learned to present a credible schedule that allows them to sell the program. The real schedules and costs would result in programs being killed before they start.
         
        I do not hate commercial, I actually support it. It is the blind supporters who do not recognize reality that are creating unreasonable expectations which cause me concern. These unreasonable expectations will eventually come to haunt.

        • John Gardi says:
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           NSP:

          Commercial crew will be ready for commercial customers by the time they get their act together. For the same reason that SpaceX owes NASA big time for the help developing cargo launch capability, others will benefit from NASA’s help developing crew capability.

          It’s really the best investment that the government has ever made in the future of American spaceflight because it has a future! Do you see Saturn Vs or Space Shuttles today? See what I mean?

          tinker

    • Paul451 says:
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      You’ve had your way of doing things for the entirety of the US space program. And it’s not working. Are we one jot better off than we were in 1972? So can we please try something different? Can you give us that? Just once? If it doesn’t work, so be it. But it’s not like things are getting better doing it your way.

      We don’t even need to convert all of NASA over to the new way, commercial crew is just 2.5% of NASA’s budget. 1/40th. Can’t you let us have that, just to give it a try, without acting like a spoilt brat being forced to share for the first time?

    • HyperJ says:
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      “Once Orion-SLS goes we are totally dependent upon new systems which cannot be successful in the time and cost promised.”
      Speaking of programs that cannot be successful in the time and cost promised – Are you referring to Orion/SLS or some other system? Because it certainly fits Orion/SLS better than any other project.

    • Andrew Gasser says:
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      Fear.  Uncertainty.  Doubt.  That is what you speak.  So do I… not about commercial crew but about NASA’s budget.

      One of us is right… me.

    • Mark_Flagler says:
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      NSP, kindly explain how cost over-runs occur on fixed-price, milestone-based contracts. 

      Kindly explain conclusions reached in this study:
      http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/586

      • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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         Cost overruns can happen on fixed price contracts.  It is just that the company has to pay the extra rather than the government.

    • chriswilson68 says:
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      “Once Orion-SLS goes we are totally dependent upon new systems which cannot be successful in the time and cost promised.”

      Wow, do you really not see the irony in this statement?

    • chriswilson68 says:
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      “Thank God for China. They recognize the value of a human space program
      and are willing to pay for it. The United States is too poor.”

      Do you mean the same United States that spends as much on its civilian space program as the entire rest of the world (China included) combined?  Do you mean the same United States whose military space program spends more than the military space programs of the entire rest of the world (China included) combined?

      The United States has a permanent human presence in space on a huge space station that was largely financed and put in orbit by the United States.  China is still working on the things the United States did in space in the 1960s — one-off spacewalks, docking, etc.

      The United States is currently developing 4 different vehicles capable of taking humans between the surface and orbit, including a lifting-body design (Dream Chaser) and a system that is closing in on being largely re-usable (Falcon 9/Dragon).  China has nothing close.

      In the United States, even a private non-profit organization financed by a single wealthy individual is working on something far beyond the current capabilities of China — sending a human crew on a Mars flyby.

  12. Ben Russell-Gough says:
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    Ultimately, it boils down to this: In the current budgetary environment, a super-sized HLV is too expensive except on an unsupportably long time-line.  Something has to be done to get NASA-HSF back into the business of building and flying missions rather than slowly slogging along to building a rocket that will be available at the end of the decade… maybe.  That means giving up SLS and putting Orion on a more quick-to-deploy launcher.

    Why didn’t this happen the minute NASA came up with the “first crewed flight in 2021” timeline? Personally, I think that there are some decision-makers who think that building the rocket is more important than actually carrying out missions and others who have been advised that, without it, there are no missions possible.

  13. Isaac Mooers says:
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    Cancel the SLS   and redefine the MPCV into the nautilus-x .
    We need fuel depots and a fleet, not pork rockets.

  14. Bob160 says:
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    Rohrabacher is correct. The “bet” money is all on the double zero. That is a natural for Congress. And before the results are in the bet will be taken off the table. That is natural for Congress too. Cheer him on folks if you want your dollars to be spent efficiently, the sooner the sooner we get there.

  15. Joe Latrell says:
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    I say give the government an opportunity here. FUnd SLS for the full amounts needed for the next 3 years if and only if they will fund commercial crew for $1 billion. If CC can produce results in 3-4 years, kill the SLS and divert all remaining funds to the CC projects.

    SLS has no mission, no market and nothing to carry.

    • cuibono1969 says:
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      Meanwhile, that’s a lot of money wasted on the SLS. 🙁

      Maybe an emergency need will crop up for heavy-ish lift, and SLS won’t be ready or affordable. So they’ll go to SpaceX and the FH.  The same thing happened after Sputnik with the failure of Vanguard, and the government quickly called on von Braun to lift Explorer 1.

    • chriswilson68 says:
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      “FUnd SLS for the full amounts needed for the next 3 years if and only if they will fund commercial crew for $1 billion. … SLS has no mission, no market and nothing to carry. “

      You’re happy to have many billions wasted if we can just get one billion spent effectively?  That’s a pretty sad statement about how broken our space program is.

  16. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    I thought that the commercial crew program was developed to create the backup (and the backup for the backup) by funding development of multiple spacecraft and launch vehicles. Calling SLS a backup to that is ludicrous. Is the ‘backup’ idea really about doing things ‘the old way’ in case fixed priced contracts don’t work out or is it as many of you say: an excuse to keep the pork flowing as long as possible?

    SpaceX is not shopping for the best financial incentive deal while they are looking for their new launch pad site, they are perusing the best legislative deal. They will take the deal that gives them the best long term security and legal protection, especially from politicians. They’ve done this before. In Hawthorne, they arranged a fixed tax schedule with the municipality for ten years. It wasn’t much of a tax brake but it gave SpaceX one less variable cost to worry about and Hawthorne’s city council could count on predictable revenue for a decade. Win, win.

    Elon Musk recently did say that: “…having a good heart does matter!”

    He seems to have built a ‘good heart’ into his businesses too. There is no good and certainly no heart in the SLS program!

    tinker

    • Paul451 says:
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      I think you’ll find that Rohrabacher is calling SLS “backup” to mock it, not to defend it.

      • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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        You have to admit that using a 70t IMLEO HLV to launch a 20-30t crew vehicle to LEO sounds a bit silly.  At least the DIRECT proposal included a passive cargo barge that enabled the system to be used for cargo upmass too.

      • John Gardi says:
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        Paul:

        Yeah, I got that part, I was just rubbing it in.

        Folks:

        I believe Falcon Heavy will do just fine as a ‘heavy lifter’. Fifty tonnes is plenty for just about any mission component I can think of. Single shot ‘all up’ missions are for cowards who don’t want to risk their desk jobs on a few docking procedures.

        The sooner the plug is pulled on SLS the better. The people who want SLS don’t give a damn about space. To them, it’s just a money hole that they can profit from. The money saved and redirected to commercial development could make America the leader in continuous, sustainable human spaceflight… fast!

        For some reason, supporters of SLS don’t seem to want that either.

        tinker

        • tutiger87 says:
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          I give a damn about space. And I want to see SLS.

          The problem is not the rocket. I personally would love to see a huge rocket. As a kid, I dreamed of seeing something like the Saturn V in my lifetime. The more mass to orbit per launch, the better.

          The problems are the bureaucracy and Congress. And I dont see it getting smaller anytime soon.  

          I bet if Elon had it in his mind to build a 150 mT rocket, he could do it faster and cheaper..

          • Duncan Law-Green says:
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            I bet Elon has it in his mind to build a 150 mT+ rocket, and WILL do it faster and cheaper.

            We just have to wait until next year to find out what MCT (Mars Colony Transport?) is…

    • Andrew Gasser says:
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      Then you are calling Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (Ret) Ludicrous (as well as all the senators and congressmen/women who have a center in thair state or district).  The 2010 Authorization Act clearly states SLS is the backup to CCDev.

      Overkill?  Yes

      Guaranteeing jobs at JSC and MSFC?  You bet your sweet… bippie.

      • John Gardi says:
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        Andrew:

        I really didn’t mean to state the obvious. How can you expect rational thought from a politician. After all, they’re appointed by a committee (voters) without any thought or recourse as to whether they have the skills to do the job. It’s the nature of the beast.

        The less SpaceX has to deal with politics, the more successful they will be. SLS, fortunately, has no place to hide. It’s politicians and nothing or nothing at all for them. It’s not a matter of whether they’ll get away with it, it’s a matter of how much the principles can milk taxpayers for before SLS is cancelled!

        tinker

  17. dogstar29 says:
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    Rohrabacher apparently has close ties to SpaceX, which explains his position. At first I naively thought he was opposed to SLS because he genuinely believed it was a waste of tax dollars.

    • Mark_Flagler says:
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      Kindly document that statement.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        SpaceX headquarters are just outside his district and the company is one of his top five contributors, and no doubt there are other contributions from SpaceX executives.
         http://ballotpedia.org/wiki

        Don’t get me wrong; he may really believe SLS should be canceled, but that’s probably not why he took the position he did. Hardly anyone in Congress can afford to vote their conscience.

        • Mark_Flagler says:
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          I’m not holding the Congressman up as a paragon, but it’s worth pointing out that he gets four times as much money from real-estate interests ($40,200) as he does from SpaceX ($9500, including individual contributions), three times as much from retirees and more than twice as much from health professionals and the air-transport industry.
          Now if he wanted to convert the SLS into medical-
          office condos, I’d say he’d been bought, but given the amounts involved and the fact that his opinion of SLS is shared by many, Rohrabacher seems to be what passes for an honest man in today’s Congress.
          Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/

    • cuibono1969 says:
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      Rohrabacher is a libertarian, who believes in commercial space (not cost-plus state giganticism). SpaceX have given him money for supporting this position, just as they (or Elon) gave money to Obama when he was championing CcDev (where is the Prez now??).

      He is principled. Your wrath might be better directed at the congresscritters who conflate ‘space program’ with ‘local jobs programs’ imo.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        I have absolutely nothing against Congressman Rohrabacher, in fact I am overjoyed he took the position he did. I am just being realistic about Congress and campaign funds. As to Mr. Obama, he has given considerable support to Commercial Crew and repeatedly requested a major increase in funding for it, but it’s up to us, the public, to get it more support in Congress.

  18. Isaac Mooers says:
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    Cancel the SLS rocket,with the unused funds money fast track the ComCrew and Orion onto a delta 4H EELV. Build a fuel depot based architecture and expand into the L# points. America will be back in space in 2 years pushing the boundary, Higher, Faster!

  19. Bernardo de la Paz says:
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    Funny how well Congressional opinions align with whether or not dollars flow to contractors in their districts. This is nothing more than one Congressman defending “his” contractors by attacking some other Congressman’s contractors and vice-versa. The same old DC money game.

  20. ForestvilLee says:
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    Ah the Commercial Firsters are one again attempting to muddy the waters.  It’s been shown many times that there are no commercial products capable of providing sufficient space lift to enable SUSTAINED space development.  Sorry folks, but if you’re in it for more than just seeing a few boot prints here and there then let the government start building us and architecture with the SLS which our companies can take advantage of later.  And stop acting like the government system is in competition with the commercial ones, the government builds space vehicles through private contractors, the same private contractors who turn around offer those same designs on the commercial market when a business case can be made.