Congress Kicks The Commercial Crew Can Down The Road
Congress, Don’t Make Us Hitch Rides With Russia. Love, NASA, Charlie Bolden via Wired
“Saturday will mark 1,500 days since the Space Shuttle touched down for the final time. Grounding human spaceflights was always supposed to be temporary as we made the necessary transition to a new generation of spacecraft, operated by American commercial carriers. Likewise, paying for seats on Russian spacecraft to send our astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) was always intended to be a stopgap. Had Congress adequately funded President Obama’s Commercial Crew proposal, we could have been making final preparations this year to once again launch American astronauts to space from American soil aboard American spacecraft. Instead we are faced with uncertaintyand we will continue to be so long as Congress resists fully investing in Commercial Crew.”
– Why Is Congress Stalling NASA’s Commercial Crew Program?, earlier post
– NASA Buys More Soyuz Flights Since Congress Constantly Cuts Commercial Crew, earlier post
– Mikulski Tries Unsuccessfully To Prevent Commercial Crew Funding Decrease, earlier post
I admit that I didn’t catch the by line when I started reading this article earlier today. The willingness of the author to speak aggressively about the, at best foolish, at worst openly damaging to the nation, budgeting priorities of Congress was refreshing.
Then I checked to see who the author was and saw Charlie Bolden’s name. Imagine my surprise.
I’m very pleased that he’s grown teeth and isn’t afraid to use them. Here’s hoping that he’s willing to be relentless about it, too.
Without full funding, the next risky step Boldin will likely have to take is to fully fund one of the two participants because two US providers > one US provider + Russia >> 0 US + Russia. It will be difficult to select the LV that will be retired, carries Russian engines, and/or has non-common configurations requiring multiple certifications for Class A Cargo and Class A Crew.
If you are surprised that the General has grown teeth you haven’t looked at the calendar.
I decided to not to mention the impending end of the current administration, as anything to do with President Obama generally ends up being red meat in public fora. I fully understand that the approach of January 20, 2017 provides a certain level of freedom to the members of the executive branch.
All that considered, I frankly didn’t think that Charlie had it in him. He’s been so milquetoast for so long.
He’s a soldier with a life-time of following orders behind him.
Probably the title should have been, Congress delays Commercial Crew to keep it from competing with SLS Orion again.
How is commercial crew going to compete with SLS/Orion? They are for BEO missions. Nothing from commercial crew is going BEO.
Except they are talking about Orion as a “backup for” commercial crew. That’s the first step down the slippery slope to “replacement for”.
You just answered your own question I think.
No commercial crew/robot spaceships or rockets will be doing BEO missions, because SLS will be doing them instead, lumbering along sucking up money and opportunity. Time will pass and you will be old like me, saying why did so little happen?
Commercial crew capsules won’t be doing any BEO missions because they can’t handle the environment. A modified D2 might be able to handle some cargo hauls to a cis-lunar station but carrying humans is another matter.
Also how will SLS replace FH, F9, and Atlas/Vulcan? They will have plenty of missions to keep them busy and none of them can handle Orion or the big payloads that SLS is needed for.
SLS isn’t like the shuttle. It isn’t intended to replace the commercial market or be in the commercial market. Its job is human exploration beyond Low Earth Orbit.
Read Henry Vanderbilt’s answer carefully Joe.
Seems the fact is that SLS Orion is a ripoff.
By supporting SLS Orion to anywhere, you are hindering progress.
I want big rockets to go to the moon and Mars too, but it has to be affordable or it just dies like Saturn Apollo did.
Reusable Raptors is your fastest path.
I don’t buy the argument commercial does LEO while “we” piss around and burn money BEO.
All your dreams to LEO and BEO depend on SpaceX sticking that barge landing sooner than later.
(See my response to him below)
Oh please. This is just silly. Why does everything have to be “SpaceX this or SpaceX that?” Elon Musk could die tomorrow and SpaceX would become just an ordinary launch provider (Note: I love SpaceX and Elon Musk, just making a point). Why this need to put all our eggs in one basket?
To say that SLS/Orion are “hindering” progress is absurd. We are going back to cis-lunar space after 40 years. I call that progress and that is the least of what they can do.
“I don’t buy the argument commercial does LEO while “we” piss around and burn money BEO.”
If you are saying what I think you are saying (commercial can’t do LEO unless NASA subsidizes them) then how the heck are they going to do BEO?
SLS is more affordable than the shuttle and we flew that for 30 years.
Absurd?
On Twitter
Guys in the know discuss ways to refuel in Space without using the d word (depot)
Our government people actively stop any funding of fuel depots because it is a threat to SLS.
@dtarsgeorge
I am not against fuel depots. I just think they should be used with a big rocket (SLS/BFR). We don’t have an infinite amount of money so some things have to be worked on first. Even SpaceX has gone this direction. Since SLS has capabilities independent of depots I think it is good idea to work on it first.
Also as you have pointed out the ACES stage is being developed commercially which means it should cost less and be more sustainable outside the governmental funding system.
Thing is that the Orion isn’t big enough to serve as sole crew capsule for anything longer than a cis-lunar mission. Which means you need dedicated a dedicated deep-space hab in any case, so your the capsule serves primarily as a safe launch and re-entry vehicle. Since such a capsule has to be built much heavier than a dedicated deep space module, it makes sense to keep it small. Orion and its massive heat shield will be so much dead weight once incorperated into a deep space vehicle. No, the Dragon isn’t a deep space vehicle, but it makes a more logical starting point than the explicitly cis-lunar design of the constellation-derived Orion.
Couple of things. First of all Dragon V2 would have to be upgraded to be used BEO and that would mean more mass. Also lets not forget that NASA is looking at DRO as the staging area for a Mars mission. Therefore you have to get there first. Orion is the only game in town.
Also the “dead weight” of the SM can be put to good use to slow the capsule down on re-entry, reducing strain on the heat shield.
An upgraded V2 would still be much less massive than Orion. As for the service module, I had presumed that it would not be taken along, since it would be redundant with required hardware on the spacecraft. If it is, that is even more extra weight. In any case both vehicles are capable of taking a direct re-entry from mars HTO.
This is getting circular. NASA hasn’t decided anything about how to get astronauts to Mars. So you can’t say getting to a lunar DRO is the mandatory starting point. It seems like you’re saying a manned Mars mission would have to use SLS because it has to use an architecture which requires SLS’ capabilities. I think it’s much more up in the air than that.
Also extra mass (or mass per area) hurts on reentry. It means going deeper into the atmosphere before slowing, and that means a higher peak heating.
In addition, I don’t see how a Dragon would need serious modifications for the suggested application. If it’s just the reentry capsule (and some larger module is used for living space, which Orion would also need), and for use on return to Earth, all it has to do is sit empty for the round trip to Mars. It’s already designed to sit empty and waiting at ISS for, I think, six months. Increasing that storage time is about the only change I can think of.
No DRO isn’t “mandatory” but it has several advantages and without Orion and SLS its ability to be used as a departure point will have to be discarded.
Sure it might require the same amount of fuel but what you are missing is that the fuel is provided by the rocket (or SEP tug) transporting the components of an MTV vs. the MTV itself. That way you can build your fuel tanks smaller and that saves time and money.
Also it allows easy reuse of an MTV vs. having to use a ton of fuel or areocapture to get it into LEO again.
Also if SEP is used we wouldn’t have to care about the time it took to get components out of LEO since they were unmanned. Otherwise the crew would have to spend a long time in the Van Allen belts.
Remember that rockets and capsules are not Legos. They are designed for certain activities and while they can modified to an extent there are limits. Dragon is designed to be a LEO taxi. Nothing wrong with that and I think Dragon is awesome. But it doesn’t have the redundancies that Orion has or the capabilities needed to be used effectively BLEO.
Also if we used an architecture where the Mars lander is sent ahead to Mars orbit something like Orion would be quite helpful to transfer the crew from an MTV to a Mars lander.
So in all Orion keeps more options open for a Mars mission. Otherwise you would have to stage in LEO and Dragon would still have to be extensively modified.
‘A deep space vehicle’.
I guess I always imagined that we would design and build actual spaceships. They would be accessed by ferry-rocket from Earth or Mars but would never be closer to the surface than orbit.
Why is building a capsule on earth and launching it a better scenario?
I think the “deep space vehicle” that EtOH mentioned is doing almost exactly what you are suggesting.
The reason we need something like Orion is because it is easier to begin the process of leaving Earth Orbit and heading to Mars while in DRO or somewhere similar in the lunar vicinity. Hence you need a cis-lunar vehicle to get you to the staging point.
It might make sense to put a fuel depot in DRO, but so long as you can refuel there, it makes more sense to assemble load the crew in LEO. The only scenario I can think of where that wouldn’t be the case would be with solar electric propulsion, where the climb to DRO would take a long time. But SEP is so slow in general that it doesn’t seem likely for manned missions any time soon.
That isn’t really true. LEO to Mars and near-lunar orbits to Mars work out to have nearly the same delta-v. Look up Oberth effects or maneuvers. I did, once, think of a way to use near-lunar refueling to shorten the trip time, but you still need to leave LEO with as much fuel as a Hohmann transfer to Mars.
Yeah, fuel depots in low lunar orbits are nonsense. But distant retrograde lunar orbit has very low capture delta-V from TLI, as well as low delta-V to escape. I’m not convinced that it’s the best strategy, but it does potentially let you refuel after climbing out of earth’s well, without spending much fuel on the rendezvous.
Well the vehicle I am talking about would be assembled in orbit, but it almost certainly includes a capsule. If the habitation and service modules are for one mission only (like the apollo program) then you save a large amount of propellant mass by not slowing down into LEO, and just re-entering directly, in which case you need a reentry capsule as part of your craft. Even if this isn’t the plan, its smart to have as a backup option. But that capsule doesn’t need to be large.
Propulsion. Direct entry or aerocapture are really attractive compared to using chemical rockets to enter orbit. Without something like a nuclear.thermal.rocket, a.low Earth to low Mars spaceship isn’t viable compared to throw-away habitat modules for the trip and entry capsules at the destination. (Yes, I know about cycling ships and other things, but that’s not the same thing as what Michael was describing.)
[deleted]
More senators from SLS states trying to delay commercial crew again Joe!!!!!!
http://www.usatoday.com/sto…
“How is commercial crew going to compete with SLS/Orion?”
The truth everyone keeps missing (or in some cases, tap-dancing around) is that Commercial Crew competes with SLS/Orion in two ways:
– By potentially making it obvious that SLS/Orion development (and operating) costs are many times higher than the actual capability involved would cost if you removed the political imperative to have that particular development organization do it. There will be a huge loss of face (and funding follows face) if/when Commercial Crew succeeds.
– By making it far less likely that ISS will end up shut down prematurely due to a single-point failure (Soyuz), said shutdown then freeing up the entire Human Spaceflight funding stream for an SLS/Orion-centric megamission to Mars. When a policy courts disaster for no apparent reason, always ask, who benefits from that disaster?
I might even be tempted to go along with the latter scheme, just to see them do *something*, if not for the powerful suspicion that the end result would be that, even given the entire HSF funding stream (around $8 billion/year currently), they’d STILL blow past the budget by 50% or more and be shut down – but only after yet another wasted decade. Consider that the JPL study this spring found that, given the entire HSF budget for an SLS-based program, they might just, barely, if all went well, reach Mars orbit in two more decades. Then consider how often in the past all has gone well with such programs. (The most obvious case in point, given that it’s essentially the same organization and vehicles, is Constellation’s death-by-blown-budget.)
Response to point 1:
First of all I disagree that the annual operating costs are going to be much larger than the annual development costs. If you look back through shuttle, Hubble, et. al you will see that annual operating costs were less than or not that much larger than development costs.
Second what capability for BEO will the commercial crew vehicles have that will exceed SLS/Orion or even be on par with them? You need at least 3 Falcon Heavy launches to match SLS when it comes to BEO.
Dragon 2 and CST-100 in their current configurations can’t go BEO. Even if Dragon could for the sake of argument (and FH was human rated) it could only fly around the moon with no ability to abort or go into orbit.
Response to second point:
So you are saying that Congress wants ISS to fail so it can give more money to SLS/Orion? Then why did they just extend it to 2024 and give commercial crew more time to become established?
JPL’s budget has ISS continuing to at least 2024 and also has a note explaining what would happen if ISS is extended to 2028. ISS will have to be deorbited at some point. What is bad about rededicating that money to reach Mars? Also who said that NASA has to build everything? Maybe SpaceX can design the Mars lander and contribute in other ways.
I don’t think the point about face implies Falcon Heavy would have the same capabilities.as SLS. It.won’t. But someone could (and probably would) say SLS gives three times the capability of FH at much, much more than three times the cost. That could lead to all sorts.of embarrassing questions about traditional NASA and aerospace.industry program management and accounting. Some people would end up with egg on their face, and I suspect.some of those people would.just as.soon see the questions never.come up.
You seem to be arguing points I never made. (Insert Wolfgang Pauli quote.)
To expand on my actual first point, Commercial Cargo total costs per new booster/capsule combination were around $400 million. Commercial Crew (being run with considerably more traditional Old-NASA overhead) costs through first operational flight (including previous crewed test flight) will be around $2.6 billion per booster/capsule combination.
SLS/Orion costs through first crewed test flight? On the order of $40 billion. (See http://www.space-access.org… for details.) (And that’s the 70-tonne version; don’t even ask what the new upper stage and other upgrades for the 100+ tonne version will then bring the total to.)(Or the costs to then expand the ground systems to support more than two flights a year for an actual major program.)(Or the costs, done Old-NASA syle, for all the other major systems required for an actual Mars program. Or to support and operate it all.)(Since you didn’t ask, I’ll tell you: On the rough order of a quarter trillion, requiring a major long-term increase in NASA’s exploration budget that AIN’T gonna happen, from a discussion I had with Keith around here a month or so back.)
Getting back to merely the cost through first flight, that’s 100 times COTS costs, and 15 times Commercial Crew costs. Yeah, SLS/Orion is several times larger than either Commercial Crew system – but that size is supposed to bring economies of scale. (Rocket costs typically scale far more strongly with parts count than with size.) Twice, even three times the CCP cost might be reasonable. At fifteen times the cost, something’s very wrong.
As Popeye would say, “how embarrasskin’…”
As for Congress wanting this or that, “Congress” doesn’t monolithically want *anything*. Congress is a collection of coalitions and factions. (Its fundamental purpose is in fact to allow these to work out national compromises.)
Now, does a regional *faction* in Congress want ISS to fail so they can divert the funding to a grand SLS-based exploration program? Wrong question. Knowing that would require mind-reading (absent a massive speaking-the-unspeakable indiscretion by some faction member.)
But, does a regional faction in Congress potentially hugely *benefit* from premature ISS shutdown if Soyuz fails before Commercial Crew is ready – so sad, but it can be blamed on the Russians, that FACTION had nothing to do with it? You’re damn right it does. And they’d have to be idiots not to know it.
Always ask, cui bono? And when the answer is, the same people who’ve been slow-rolling Commercial Crew from the start, well, it gets sort of hard to write it off as mere coincidence.
Thanks to Congress, NASA’s best days are behind it.
Congress and an indifferent (at best) White House.
And the lack of a Space Race to provide NASA with “blank check” funding. Former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin started NASA down the failed road of Ares I and Ares V, despite NASA’s own studies indicating that this was not the best way forward. You want to blame someone for the position NASA is in today, blame Michael Griffin. His was the failure of leadership which has landed us squarely in today’s mess of SLS sucking up the budget while Commercial Crew is hampered at every turn.
As promised I prodded/asked Senator Cruz to fully fund commercial crew. Here is his response.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Ya .. global warming funding is what is killing commerical crew funding.
I was told the same thing by a staff member at Representative Posey’s office, that the reason Commercial Crew was cut was that NASA should not be engaged in climate research. What does he say at the end? “I’m not political.”? ROTFL.
That may not be all. GW may have triggered thousands of Pacific walrus to head shore on the northwest coast of Alaska last week due to less sea ice. Declining sea ice can change the phytoplankton blooms, throwing off the feeding cycles of animals along the entire feed chain–so its not just one species.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/th…
Great job Joe, surprised he talked that long…
I am not. Cruz is really up to speed on this. He also knows if he goes after the SLS Titanic like many of us would like he would be crushed.
He is a statesman.
SLS isn’t a Titanic. It isn’t perfect but it can do the job.
Cruz seems supportive of both commercial crew and SLS and I think that is a good thing.
I’d have trouble saying that SLS “can do the job.” I haven’t seen a clear, specific description of what, exactly, the “job” is.
The job description is to get humanity beyond LEO again. Has the sequence of missions been mapped out fully to everyones’ satisfaction? No, but we know what it is capable of doing.
I don’t think you really mean that. Simply getting “humanity beyond LEO again” could mean as little as a single, ~10 hour trip on a geostationary transfer orbit. Up to GEO and back, without stopping. I doubt that is the job you are thinking of, but that would satisfy the requirement you stated. If you mean something more, then I’d have to know what before I could say if SLS can do it. (And saying the requirement is to do as much as SLS can would be circular logic.)
There a lot of things that SLS can do and some of what it can do has already been been mapped out in DRMs and other mission proposals. (cis-lunar space station, lunar orbit, lunar landing, Mars transfer ship construction, outer planets probes ect.)
I agree that NASA hasn’t been specific enough about missions beyond EM-1 and EM-2 but it is blatantly obvious that NASA is planning to use SLS for BLEO human exploration culminating in a mission to Mars.
Also why does SLS have to endure so much scrutiny about its usage but commercial crew doesn’t? What exactly is commercial crew supposed to do after ISS is de-orbited? At least SLS usage is not constrained by a space station retirement date.
To answer my own question like SLS NASA and others are planning to use CC for a new commercial space station. Are there concrete, funded plans for one yet? No, but with luck there will be in the near future. Why can’t SLS get the same benefit of the doubt?
Except for lunar orbit (an Apollo 8 reflight) and high-end unmanned planetary probes, SLS can’t do any of the things on your list. A future, enhanced and as-yet unfunded version could, with additional hardware (e.g. a lunar lander.)
I think the difference between SLS and CC is a flow down of requirements, a traceability matrix or two, and all the things I normally don’t find all that useful. You (in theory) start with specific.goals, decide what requirements are needed to achieve those.goals, then decide what hardware is needed to satisfy those requirements, etc. Somewhere along the line, you check the costs and decide if the stated goals are worth it. With CC, this has been done, for goals which go no farther than the planned end of ISS. Even if the program does nothing else, the costs are justified. Anything beyond is a bonus.
I’ve never seen the same logic later out for SLS. The current program’s goals are too limited, and.the longer term goals (e.g. Mars.missions) are.too vaguely defined to flow.down into requirements or evaluate.the appropriateness of the hardware or its.cost.
No it is a rocket to no where with no mission and is way to expensive to use in a realistic economic scenario. We will spend 10s, if not a 100, billion developing a rocket that may fly three times.
We should be spending 10s, if not a 100, billion on mission hardware that can fly on Atlas, Delta, and Falcon.
Way too expensive to use? Over 30 years we spent $300 Billion to fly the shuttle and build the ISS. Yet somehow that was economically feasible. SLS/Orion and other constituent elements (like say a Skylab II station or a lunar lander) should cost less than or equal to the shuttle over the same time frame.
While sending stuff up in bit size chunks has worked well enough for ISS doing that for a lunar space station or a Mars Transfer vehicle isn’t the right way to go.
First as everyone here loves to yell about SLS there is a cost factor. ISS cost a pretty nickel to put up there. Doing it in fewer shots ala Skylab reduces cost.
Also lets not forget that ISS took a ton of construction work and the unique capabilities of the shuttle to put together. Doing that in lunar orbit would be a non-starter (even in LEO it would be a major challenge).
Much of that was wasted due to numerous re-designs of the space station. Many of the early shuttle missions were “make-work” missions because the space station did not yet exist. So, instead of docking with a space station, NASA was using this very expensive national asset on missions that were launching satellites and performing a few experiments before returning a few short days later.
I agree with you to a point Jeff. Some of those “make work missions” had a huge impact (Hubble) but for the most part they were doing what you describe.
However, they didn’t really have much choice. They wanted to build a space station but it wasn’t ready yet. They couldn’t just shut down shuttle launches until they were ready to build ISS.
They were able to keep shuttle launches going until they were able to start building the station without bankrupting NASA or the country. In the end we got a fully functioning station that has worked pretty well for 15 years.
My point was that the country could “afford” to utilize SLS since it was able to afford launching shuttle and building the ISS. Even if the big payloads (Skylab II or Mars vehicle parts) have to wait a little while we could still get a lot done with the payloads available. So SLS’s “make work” missions if you will should have at least as much impact as the shuttle and probably more.
I agree. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that the “make work” missions proposed for SLS so far are quite uninspiring. With the space shuttle, there was some appeal for the vehicle itself since it did so much both in orbit and when it landed on a runway (which was a huge departure from the capsules of the past).
But, with Orion, I fear that same appeal will be largely absent. It has no airlock, no cargo bay, no remote manipulator arm, and etc. And when it comes back, it will unceremoniously drop into the ocean, bobbing helplessly, awaiting retrieval by the US Navy. In comparison to a space shuttle landing, it seems a tad anticlimactic to go back to a landing mode not used in the US since 1975.
I fear with SLS/Orion, the public’s patience with “make work” missions will not last, especially if two different commercial crew vehicles start flying to ISS at a cost far less than the SLS/Orion missions. At some point, someone is going to start screaming that the Emperor has no clothes.
I would not put it past the SLS/Orion political supporters to oppose commercial crew since they too will surely know how that a successful commercial crew program will make SLS/Orion look like a huge waste of time and money.
The Emperor has no clothes!!!!!!!!!!
Actually, he’s a politician. He managed to avoid answering the question, making it sound like he’s funding commercial crew, even as he massively slashed the budget.
It’s also hilarious to hear him claiming that basic science that doesn’t serve the interests of his deep-pocketed donors is “political”, while his funding of the money pit that is SLS is good for America.
We’re not buying it, Senator.
To be fair Todd he doesn’t control the budget, Senator Shelby does. That said Cruz could make a stink about it and score political points for doing so but he doesn’t.
Thanks Vlad. My only regret is that I didn’t get more time to push the Russian angle. Looking tough against Putin is something the presidential candidates want and one way of doing that would be to accelerate CC.
Sounded like he side stepped your question, to me, Joe.
Seems to me he promised only to give your giant SLS more money and guarantee there is more liquid water to dump those billion dollar boosters in.
Cool you asked him though 🙂 Maybe you made a difference
You are right that he sidestepped my question DTARS. That disappointed me but otherwise his answer was pretty NASA positive.
Give SLS a little slack DTARS. It isn’t perfect but nothing else can do the job for the foreseeable future and its design is a sound one. Instead of seeing a workable BEO rocket get canceled I would like to see human beings leave LEO before I have kids in high school.
Somehow I’m not impressed by the Senator’s comments (but thank you for asking him and getting his comments.) I could almost fill in the gaps and turn what he said into something logical. Iff (sic) you assume ISS is not about exploration or what NASA is really supposed to be doing, then his statements make some sense. But I’m not sure I agree, and the way he said it makes me feel he isn’t too familiar with the issues or implications. He sounded like he was just using memorized catch phrases. I wish I could expect more from our elected officials.
We don’t have CC funding because…Obama!
Commercial Crew will only succeed when it has been made free from the shackles that are SLS. In every CC story there is always reference to the spectre that is the Senate Launch System, the SLS Titanic.
It is not hard Congress, if you want Americans riding American Rockets then you have to fully fund CC.
It really is that simple.
Can we please stop making this an SLS vs. CC fight? To paraphrase Gandhi poking each other in the eye will make the whole space program blind. Sure they are in the same area of NASA but they serve complementary, not opposing, objectives.
To put this bickering in another perspective what if every time NASA was funding a New Horizons, Cassini, or a Juno everybody studying the inner planets fought tooth and nail to get them canceled (because their probes were “shackled” to the outer planet probes). What if the opposite happened? We have got to stop this pointless bickering and support each other. If we do we get LEO and BEO with CC and SLS/Orion. If we don’t we may well end up having neither.
Well, there are some who say that NASA is so Mars-centric that missions to Neptune, Uranus, and Europa are way to the right, as they say. Using plutonium for Mars projects would be a good supporting argument.
In the case of competition between supporters of various planetary probes, the debate is one of scientific priorities. Each mission is a reasonable strategy for exploring a particular planet. In the case of the SLS and CC, the debate is one of the best strategy for advancing human spaceflight. For many of us, cost is the most critical parameter in determining whether human spaceflight will be viable.
No, even for planetary science, cost is part.of the discussion. Even when everyone involved agrees that all the missions under discussion would accomplish excellent science, the cost is still there. One $4 billion mission versus 10, $400 million missions. Delaying a $400 million mission versus freeing up $100 million for small grants to fully study the results of.previous missions. Etc.
But cost cannot be the only factor. Sure SLS and Orion cost more than CC but they offer far more capability and reach. We don’t cancel something like Curiosity because Insight costs less. I love CC as much as the next guy but all that they will used for in their current configuration is sending people to LEO and back. That is fine and dandy and we should invest in CC but we have been stuck in LEO for 40 years.
Since SLS and Orion offer the capability to break out of LEO (potentially for good if the Skylab II or similar proposals are followed) they are worth the extra cost. (which is not apocalyptic as some would have us believe).
If handled correctly SLS/Orion are going to play the same role the shuttle did for commercial crew. Namely establish a base or foothold in cislunar space or beyond which serves as an anchor point for the commercial side (like ISS does for CC today). If ISS didn’t exist then CC wouldn’t exist, period.
Joe You want to go BEO Soon
Here is an idea?
ISS/ Hermes Project
Instead canceling ISS You cancel SLS Orion and remodel ISS into Hermes or Buzz’s recycler.
Now your Leo program is no longer in conflict with BEO program. You have all that money to build a real spaceship!!
You start selling this idea during the movie. Even a Guy like me can see how much ISS looks like Hermes.
As modules are added to ISS/hermes we can do more science with it. The centrifuge can test Martin and lunar gravity.
Bigelow habs could attach to the Hermes beam for outfitting before being boosted to the moon.
Of course you would have fuel depots too.
While Hermes is being built it could serve as HUB from lunar missions as Von Braun intended
All this construction equipment would be provided to Leo by commercial rockets falcon 9 falcon H Vulcan raptor.
Maybe you even get Boeing and Lockheed to do lots of the upgrades and the propulsion system, COTS only of course.
This is George Bush seniors Mars battle star galactica plan just being completed.
Joe we don’t just want to go BEO.
We want to build a sustainable highway!
Use only the parts of ISS that are useful as they suggest still combining the prprograms. Maybe some of the parts that are too heavy for Hermes could be sold off, not dumped in the ocean.
Hermes? Spaceplane?! Cognitive Care?!! http://www.fp7-hermes.eu/
Help :0 Thanking you in advance.
Think there is anything behind specifically mentioning Missouri, Michigan, and Minnesota? Is Mr. Bolden talking to congressional members of those states, or someone else?
Non space states, but perhaps they are touching commercial crew in some way?
I seem to remember a map that the commercial crew office sent out that said companies in 35 states or so were contributing to CC.
Here it is.
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/d…
There are SpaceX suppliers in my state of Michigan.
http://www.brownsvilleheral…
A list of similar-sounding words is an effective, rhetorical speaking (or writing) technique. But I’d bet on swing votes in Congress rather than a classical education. I don’t think a significant amount of SLS funding goes to those states.
Congressional support of SLS/Orion for jobs reasons, coupled with their lack of adequate support for Commercial Crew, with jobs in more states, is hypocrisy. I think that the state name dropping was intended to illustrate that. If billions of $$$ worth of SLS/Orion space jobs are good, then more millions of $$$ worth of space jobs on top of that, in more states, should be better. Go figure.
Just to play devil’s advocate, one could just as well say that if Obama hadn’t cancelled Constellation, Ares-I would already be flying Orion to the ISS. Sure, it would have cost more, and sure, Ares-V and Altair would still be 10 years off. But at least we would have been launching American astronauts on American systems.
Meanwhile, SLS has passed its CDR and hardware is being built, engines are being tested, Orion for EM-1 is being built, flight software is being validated, etc.
SLS is much further along now than CxP ever was.
It is certainly possible to make SLS fly. The problem is deciding what missions the nation can afford to perform with SLS. The legacy design requires massive facilities and the attendant high overhead.
> Orion for EM-1 is being built,
Including its heat shield?
And if so, in the monolithic Avcoat version that flew in EFT-1 or the 180ish block Avcoat version that has been recommended by Lockheed and semi-accepted by NASA?
See
http://oiir.hq.nasa.gov/asa…
and
http://oiir.hq.nasa.gov/asa…
the second of which says,
“Another [issue] was the heatshield status. In the past, there have been issues on the Orion heatshield from a host of areas. One was the underlying structure and another was the thermal protection system itself. The decision was made to go
from a monolithic heatshield to a block heatshield (both use Avcoat). That decision is not yet final, but the Program is moving toward using a mosaic block system, bonded to the structure itself. Each has its challenges. Cracks were an issue with the monolithic heatshield. With the Avcoat block, the issue is the adherence (bonding) of the block. There is risk associated with both approaches. Neither is a mature system that has been demonstrated. Due to fiscal reasons, the selection of one has become necessary. CAPT Jett clarified that the Orion Control Board made the decision to change the heatshield design to Avcoat block, but there was a dissenting opinion that has not been resolved. The issue is being carried forward to the Agency level. Both heatshield designs have challenges that needs [sic] to be closely watched.”
Not supporting CC equals to supporting Russia. We have heard similar logic such as not supporting the H-bomb equals to supporting communism. I really can’t like this article. Mr. Bolden really should walk to the Hill and sit down with the politicians and try to find a way to get things done. Instead he wrote a bad article….
Having watched a number of these hearings, the people now in charge in Congress have no interest in getting things done. Their interest is in opposing Mr. Obama and bringing federal dollars to their districts while “shrinking government”.
Exactly so. Never lose sight of “the government IS the problem”, a maxim that explains a lot of the decision-making in Congress.
And while I am dancing on the edge of Mr. Cowing’s nerves: our country is suffering in so many areas due to our failure to adequately tax ourselves. Roads and bridges, blah blah blah.
In my county- Collier is one of the richest in Florida and the country- the county has insufficient funds to keep the beaches clean. Modest taxes would take care of it.
But the over-reaching sense in our country is to reduce government. This won’t change for at least another decade.
Great speaches may be the key phrase. I’ve heard various opinions about Kennedy’s actual interest in the space program, versus his need to use it for various political purposes. But he did, for one reason or another, support it and made several excellent speaches to support it. Obama is, arguably, the best orator who has been president since Kennedy. One thing I am sure about, is the fact he has not applied this talent to this issue.
Kennedy was explicit regarding his geopolitical goals for the Moon Race, and his reasoning was convincing and accurate. But some of us who lived through it were sadly disappointed by the “Flags and footprints” focus of Apollo which made it not only economically unsustainable but almost forgotten by the public after the first flight. Von Braun would have preferred an evolutionary approach based on infrastructure in LEO.
I don’t think anything I wrote disagrees with you statements. My point way that both Kennedy and Obama were/are the best presidential orators of the past century. Kennedy, for whatever reasons, used this talent to promote the space program. Obama, for whatever reasons, has chosen not to do so.
IMO kennedy did not promote the space program. He used the space program to promote a valid geopolitical goal (reducing the risk of nuclear war) but in doing so set the space program on a non-sustainable course. Today the most valid geopolitical goal for human spaceflight is the building of trust between potential nuclear adversaries through collaboration rather than competition. China understands this, and is building a collaborative effort with both Europe and Russia.
To be fair, early on Mr. Obama tried to put human (and robotic) spaceflight on a sustainable course, abandoning the expensive Ares and pushing LEO infrastructure supported by CCP and a major program in space technology. But once it became clear that Congress had the upper hand with SLS, Mr. Obama perhaps understandably withdrew form the fray rather than falling on his sword.
He was also somewhat busy with some serious problems left over when he took office, to be fair.
Is this Senator Shelby’s doing? I swear he does this every year.
Can you cite some examples where THIS President has lead the republicans in the house down a road they didn’t want? After all around 80 republicans said they would fight every proposal made by this president, even in they favored the proprosal, they would still vote no. I alway get a chuckle when people say if only the President would .. the senate’s record shattering filibusters tells you the story of republicans willing to work with this President, they are willing to obstruct even polciies they favor.
This is plain political science, not politics:
One fact is simply this: Mr. Obama like every President must choose his battles; an opposition Congress makes this even more important, and it limits what he can do. This is proper. The people elected a right-wing Congress for a reason. We have seen the voice of the people in the way Congress has voted.
It’s a bit disingenuous to elect the current Congress and then charge the President with a failure of leadership, don’t you think?
oh so President Bush was filibustered over 400 times? plus over 200 fillibuster threats .. No president, that has EVER asked for a minimum wage increase .. have EVER been denied.. EXCEPT Obama.
Obama had more posts unfilled because the senate refused to allow a vote then all past Presidents.. COMBINED. Do you understand that ? Over 140 agency departments were still run by Bush appointments.
You just refuse to see. Look at google or yahoo .. for records that THIS president has set because of congress’s refusal to let THIS president be President.
You’re being critical of Obama “not trying” when you know full well those attempts will be futile. There isn’t much point in beating a dead horse. It’s wasted effort.
The Space Race of the 1960s was a proxy war with the Soviet Union. No president today could successfully do what JFK did because the global socioeconomic/political situation is completely different today.
I am finding myself agreeing with our relentless right-wing friend.
Perhaps the planet has stopped in her orbit?
In the past, Republican presidents have had time off too. What a load of bologna.
The sort of “blank check” funding that NASA got in the 1960’s is never coming back. NASA Administrators need to take this into account when coming up with grand plans. Ares I and Ares V were ill-conceived as the next generation transportation architecture for NASA.
Mostly throw-away launchers of extreme size requiring massive ground infrastructure are relics of the 1960’s which hold back NASA in the long term. We’re seeing that today with *zero* sensible missions funded for SLS. There simply isn’t the money to fund the hardware necessary.
Waiting for huge funding increases for NASA as a necessary part of a grand plan to go beyond LEO is insanity.
The problem is that the majority in Congress would rather send more millions to Vladimir Putin then let Barak Obama succeed in adequately funding Commercial Crew. We need to ask why our representatives are acting against the national interest to advance their political goals.
http://www.usatoday.com/sto…
https://youtu.be/Hy9_fsL6uS8
More delay tactics from SLS church