Disappointed NASA Flight Controller
My awesome nephews touring the Space Shuttle Mission Control in 2007 when we used to send humans to space. #tbt pic.twitter.com/fyQNVTn909
— Mike Allyn (@FCTMike) September 12, 2014
@FCTMike It must be a slow news week if @NASAWatch is re-posting photos of other people's nephews. Little creepy, Keith.
— Johnathan Kim (@JohnathanKim) September 12, 2014
Keith’s note: @FCTMike publicly tweeted something interesting (that overtly refers to a photo) and NASA Watch told people about it. Its clearly a slow flight controlling day at NASA for @JohnathanKim
Keith’s update: The original tweet has apparently been deleted. Indeed, both Twitter accounts – @FCTMike and @JohnathanKim – have apparently been deleted. That is a little strange. That said, you can see what was originally posted. I am not going to post a screen grab.
Humans are no longer in space? When America used to have Americans in space? Are there no Americans in space on the ISS?
or
Do you mean America is no longer operating a 1.5 billion per launch vehicle and a per seat price that was so enormous it would even make the Russians blush?
Don’t you worry. If the SLS/Orion actually ever flys humans to space, the cost per seat will be a billion dollars a seat to LEO and mission control will be humming again every two years when they launch.
It was pretty clear he meant when the United States used to send people up with its own launch vehicles. Looking forward to 2017 when that will happen once again.
You mean that launch vehicle that sent the most people into space in human history, launched Hubble, Galileo, and numerous other satellites, built the ISS, and inspired millions (perhaps billions) around the world including myself? Did you ever see a shuttle launch in person? Sure the shuttle wasn’t perfect but that is no reason to treat it like it was some bridge to nowhere that nobody uses.
Dragon or CST-100 or Dream Chaser will do great as space taxis but they don’t have anywhere close to the capability of the shuttle.
SLS/Orion aren’t going to LEO. They are going BEO.
I didn’t “treat it like it was some bridge to nowhere” I said the per seat costs of the Space Shuttle were insane. A sane country would have moved that transportation system into the commercial sector. The opportunity costs of the space shuttle killed us for 30 years. Three decades of loss because the pork was always more important than actual accomplishments in space. Reagan had this added to the NASA mandate for a reason.
“(c) Commercial Use of Space.–Congress declares that the general welfare of the United States requires that the Administration seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space.”
He also worked to get the Commercial Space Act of 1984 passed. The Executive branch has long understood how the shuttle was holding us back. President Clinton signed the commercial space act of 1998 and the next Executive, President Bush immediatly took advantage and managed to get commercial cargo funding through congress and most recently the next executive President Obama managed to finally get commercial crew and some sanity into our space transportation systems.
You can laud the STS all you want, but when you have a checkbook like uncle sugar has to throw around you seemed absolutely amazed at what can be accomplished by the government when they are throwing ten times the amount of taxpayer funds at a transportation system than is actually needed.
The Shuttle at least had the goal of making human spaceflight not just possible, but practical. With Constellation we forgot that cost is always the limiting resource.
A bunch of payloads were launched from the Shuttle because it was mandated as THE US launch system. In fact, the payloads had to be designed for it and had to be put on hold when Challenger was lost.
Yep, they were launched on the Shuttle by mandate instead of the cheaper expendables they could have been launched on.
The shuttle was a great achievement as an x-vehicle, but was ONLY experimental and fatally compromised by demands from competing sectors before it was even built, and then falsely sold and publicized as economically operational and even potentially quasi-commercial.
True but we wouldn’t have been able to rescue malfunctioning satellites or service the Hubble without the capabilities of the shuttle. If we hadn’t had the space shuttle Hubble would be known today as a failure.
I wonder how many more telescopes could have been built and launched for the dollars spent focussing on the launch vehicle and not on the scientific mission.
@FCTMike was just posting a #tbc “throw back Thursday” memory. Keith is stirring up a little controversy to keep folks coming back to NasaWatch at Mikes expense. Of course #tbt can also mean “truth be told” but that opens a whole other can of worms.
He said what he said. He hasn’t deleted the tweet. He works for NASA. Its interesting. Others feel the same way. So I posted it. Have a nice day.
Naw, he’s just referring to a time when U.S. astronauts didn’t have to bum a ride to the ISS on a Putin-Mobile.
All true. But it was one bitchin’ machine.
So was the Spruce Goose.
Interesting comparison, but to make a true comparison the Spruce Goose would have needed to have been operational for thirty years, performing functions that no other vehicle was capable of, and after its retirement leaving a void in capability that remains unfilled
It might have cost more for us to launch, but at least the money was primarily staying in the US providing our people jobs instead of keeping the Russians employed. I think you knew what Mike was referring to.
After all, space is all about jobs. Who cares if a launch vehicle is far too expensive to use on a regular basis as part of a sustainable program. That vehicle just needs to provide jobs, which are an essential component of pork. Who cares about practicality or sustainability.
Here Keith is using a tweet to start an interesting discussion.
Today I saw an idea you might find interesting Vladislaw.
The idea
Spacex should spilt into two companies
Spacex launch which goes public and Spacex R&D which stays private, safely under Elon Musks control.
Best of both worlds 🙂
This idea was tweeted by
@John_Gardi
Just A. Tinker
Part of the reason I have been hooked on NASA Watch is the opportunity to read creative ideas/possible solutions from minds like Tinkers
Cute kids.
Obviously he’s alluding to the gap years we are in, but does it really matter that the U.S. is paying for rides on Soyuz? As long as ISS astronauts have access otherwise NASA HSF truly is dead and buried, and those 13 Americans killed high above Florida and Texas perished for nothing.
I disagree. The 13 who died in the Shuttle and the 3 who died in Apollo gave their lives for great endeavors that stand on their own and require no validation by the actions of people who came later.
Agree. “Haroon” is trying to score cheap debate points on a blog at their expense.
Not scoring “cheap debate points” at anyones expense. But facts speak for themselves: when the Columbia was lost only Soyuz maintained NASA’s permanent astronaut presence in LEO. Challenger’s loss combined with the end of the Cold War led to the merging of the Shuttle and Mir as a forerunner to the space station. Both shuttle crews (as I have read in obituaries and general interviews) strove for a U.S space program in which a space station plays a key role in human exploration of other worlds. So no shame for American taxpayers – inside and outside NASA – to pay whatever it takes to ensure the largely shuttle-built and maintained ISS remains occupied until a U.S. commercial crew provider is ready.
There is no mention of either crew in the original post. Raising their loss is a cheap way to score points. I count family members of both crews as personal friends, so color me biased in this regard.
NASA HSF gets access to space at the whim of Vladimir Putin. Given recent events in Europe and increasing sanctions against Russia’s actions, who knows how long that access will last?
(cries for his country’s lost dreams)
My question for Mike. Should we have cancelled Shuttle before we had another system operational?
commercial crew funding was supposed to start long before it actually did get funding. Griffith moved COTS-D funding to the Ares i and no funding was allowed towards commercial until the stimulas and even then, out 767 billion dollars only 50 milion was allowed to go towards commercial crew. President Obama requested 6 billion over five years to fully fund commercial crew. The house only allowed a one year funding of 270 million.
Yes the shuttle should have been canceled but blame congress for blocking commercial crew funding for 6 years.
I agree. Mr. Obama attempted to close the gap but was stymied by Congress.
Was it really that fun going to LEO over and over and over again?
In a word, yes. I didn’t hear a single returning crewmember complain about the boredom. Nor am I aware of anyone who was offered a place on a mission and turned it down because it was “only” LEO. However there was one person so bored with LEO that he ordered both Shuttle _and_ ISS abandoned to finance “Apollo on Steroids”.
Yep, these few exceptional folks that go to LEO are beyond giddy to get out of their respective military service and go up 200 measly miles into LEO now and then.
The rest of the 7 billion people on earth yawn.
The (then) 3 billion yawned during the second Moon landing. The NASA mission isn’t to run thrill shows. It’s to advance aerospace technology to create new, viable spheres of commerce, research, and tourism. It’s to learn about the Earth and space, and particularly about phenomena which may affect the survival of civilization. It’s to provide practical benefits for America.
You are commiting a fallecy of logic .. unless of course you can explain how you determined that indeed seven BILLION people yawned.
Did you pay to have polling conducted?
Have seven billion poeple send in photos of themselves yawning when the topic of LEO came up?
I am just curious because just a rudimentary understanding of space tourism would show that polls show there is not a yawn factor for a number as large as you are projecting.
If I recall Cernnan said something about ‘boredom’ on the return back to Earth on Apollo 17 (or 10).
Can’t ask Mike directly since I don’t know him, but if by “when we used to send humans into space” he meant America launching them then that’s correct. Assuming he was a flight controller during launches, I’d miss that, too.
Why wouldn’t “we” mean “the people who worked in this room”?
Sure it could, but I’m not sure I understand your point?
We sent humans beyond LEO just seven times before both Congress and the taxpayers decided it produced nothing of practical value and was too expensive to continue with the technology of the day. Unfortunately the legacy technology chosen for SLS/Orion was equally expensive. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.
We can argue all day about this. The first Orion rolled out yesterday. The future is ahead. Looking forward to it.
Well… it’s not really an Orion; it’s an aerodynamic mock-up for a re-entry test but that’s a discussion for another thread.
And the future of human spaceflight is the Dragon and other vehicles which will make human spaceflight practical,not justpossible. Orion, like its predecessor Apollo, is unfortunately much too expensive to fly more than a handful of Americans into space.
Yes Mark.. the future is ahead, and I look forward to it (2015 is going to be a great year for space enthusiasts). But I disagree on Orion being part of that. I’m interested, sure! But is it *the* future? I find that prediction.. premature.
Try to imagine this out — what if this upcoming test fails in it’s objectives, or worse, doesn’t return in one piece? Will we learn and adjust, or abandon? If this test flight fails, I see Orion in danger of going the way of VentureStar. And since VS gives us precedence of cancelling a program after Billions spent, we can’t say that Orion is “too big to fail”.
Keith, what was your reason for bringing Mike’s tweet to
NASA Watch? Was it to use him as an example of Americans who do not even know
we still have U.S. astronauts in space every day aboard the ISS. Was it to empathize
with him at the lack of progress in human spaceflight? There are lots of folks who are disappointed with
the direction that they think human spaceflight is going in the United States.
It’s depressing how long it is taking NASA to get us back in the game of
launching humans to space to do true exploration. May be your point is that the science is the
important part, and who launches the people in to space does not concern you as
long as the science is getting done. I
agree with you that the results of the limited science that is being done on
the space station is being poorly communicated.
I’m following the developments
of all the organizations that are trying to get us in better control of our
destiny in space and I am hopeful that the best solution will be chosen. I realize there is a good chance the political
considerations may rule the day. A prefer a future that does not have is rely
on a corrupt country run by an ex-KGB agent for our human access to space.
I have enjoyed
reading NASA watch over the years and have learned things here that I have not learned
at other space related websites. I hope you continue to focus more on the big
picture issues and not distract us with the wistful musings of a flight
controller who longs for better days.
He works at NASA. He tweeted something that I have heard others at NASA say. I thought it was interesting so I posted it.
Um, Keith, you have seen the movie: Capricorn One?
Yes. More than once. Its a classic!
Regarding the update, hopefully they weren’t told to delete the accounts. If they decided on their own, that’s one thing, but these types of posts from people who actually work on the space program are far more interesting and engaging than standard PR.