False OSTP Memories of NASA's Journey To Nowhere
Obama’s top scientist talks shrinking budgets, Donald Trump, and his biggest regret, Nature
“[John Holdren]: We knew when we came in that we had to rebalance NASA, and we had a committee chaired by Norm Augustine that looked at the space programme and declared that Constellation [NASA’s human space-flight effort] was “unexecutable”. And that report informed what we did to scale Constellation way back. We still have an Orion multi-purpose space capsule. We still have the Space Launch System, a heavy-lift rocket, under development. But we scaled them back to the point that there was enough money to revitalize Earth observation, to revitalize planetary science, to revitalize robotic exploration, to think about new missions.”
Juno was a success- but there is precious little coming after it, Ars Technica
“There are some fairly big whoppers in there, so let’s unpack the response. It is absolutely true that the president convened the Augustine panel, and in the wake of the panel’s report, tried to scale Constellation back. However, when Congress objected, the Obama administration folded. In the last full year before Obama took office, fiscal year 2008, the agency spent $3.3 billion on exploration, which included Constellation. In fiscal year 2016, the agency will spend $4.0 billion on similar programs. It is not clear how a 21 percent budget increase can be considered scaling back NASA’s human exploration program. Moreover, when Obama assumed office, Constellation’s initial exploration aim was the Moon – an aim the Augustine report found to be “unsustainable.” Now NASA’s stated goal is to send humans to Mars- the so-called “Journey to Mars”- which is an order of magnitude more difficult both from an engineering and fiscal standpoint. In this sense, NASA’s goals have become more unexecutable, not less.”
– Preserving The Status Quo For The Journey To Nowhere, earlier post
– #JourneyToMars Via #ReturnToTheMoon, earlier post
– Previous exploration posts
One word comes to mind. incoherent.
Not sure why any of this would come as a surprise.
Prior to his inauguration, Obama said he would cut funds for NASA and particularly for human spaceflight. He did just what he said. As far as Democrats in general, other than Kennedy, who represented a fluke because of particular cold war issues of those few years, the Democrats have not been supportive of US government spending on space. Remember it was Johnson who cut the moon program to build the great society, Nixon started Shuttle. Carter did his best to neutralize NASA. Reagan started ISS. Clinton was ready to cut ISS but was talked into saving it only because of its international potential with the Russians. Both Bush’s tried to start lunar and planetary exploration programs. In both cases NASA’s managers were derelict in not finding a way to apply the constrained funding to build an executable program. The NASA Administration and Obama also saw to it that Shuttle was terminated with nothing else close to the starting blocks. The idea that such an advanced, capable system was trashed with not one iota of an effort to look at fixing any problems,- our predecessors who gave us Shuttle are surely rolling over in their graves today.
Obama tried but failed to end what had been Constellation. Constellation was a particularly shortsighted effort, apparently foisted upon NASA and the nation by an Administrator who had little to no understanding of spaceflight and a management team who came up with a ridiculous spacecraft design for the intended purpose, and,with that, failed to properly manage either budget or design. How simple, safe and soon turned into the heaviest, most expensive ($/pound) crew capsule ever imagined is beyond reason.
ISS, too, will cause the HSF program to face an existential threat within a few years thanks to really poor, shortsighted, NASA management. For decades, NASA courted scientists and academia and supported their research programs in the expectation the science community would support HSF in return. In their supreme ignorance, the current and recent NASA management threw that all away by terminating research programs in order to steal the meager funds for their contractors and operations teams. Then the same NASA managers wondered why there were so few payloads using ISS. Now we are hearing the same managers want to ‘commercialize’ LEO after they did their best to trash LEO utilization.
Amazing to see how far we have fallen in such a short time. . .
“The NASA Administration and Obama also saw to it that Shuttle was terminated…”
Not to mince words or anything, but G.W. cancelled the Shuttle…or rather scheduled it’s cancellation. He would have done it sooner, but we still had contractual obligations to lift some more ISS parts first. I read somewhere that each Shuttle flight after the second accident had to be treated as a much more expensive “return to flight” launch for safety reasons and that was considered unsustainable.
Yes, Bush reacted to the accident board recommendation to either re-certify Shuttle or terminate it. NASA managers called for it to be terminated. Gerstenmaier told Congress he needed the money from Shuttle to pay for Constellation. He let everyone know his priority. There were potential fixes for Shuttle. They were never explored. By the time Obama took office it was apparent, as espoused by Augustine, that Constellation and Orion were not flying anytime soon. NASA hype of “safe, simple, soon”, was bogus. Obama, Holdren, Bolden, Gerstenmaier, chose to do nothing differently.
The CAIB report clearly recommends that the Shuttle continue to fly until a new system for human launch is operational. It recommends that such a system be designed solely for human access to LEO, saying that the available resources are simply not sufficient to safely develop a system with more ambuitious goals. http://www.nasa.gov/externa…
Wasting billions of dollars on flying the death trap that was the STS would have been absolutely the wrong move. NASA can’t get it’s act together when it can dedicate itself 100% to a new launch system, imagine how half $#@ed the effort would be if they got to fall back on blaming their crew killing shuttle for diverting resources. Imagine if the resources that went into STS went into a Space X type development – we’d have been landing rockets on barges 10 years ago instead of wondering who the next foam strike was going to condemn.
Just to clarify my perspective on this, TMK _all_ the damage ever incurred on the Orbiter TPS was from impact by insulating foam from the ET, not by ice. There were a few cases of ice formation prelaunch but none that caused damage.
I absolutely agree that the operational cost of the Shuttle was a fundamental problem but I think it would be wrong to hold this to be specifically due to the contractor, United Space Alliance. To a great extent the man-hours, facilities, equipment, and hazardous operations needed to process the Shuttle were constrained by the original design and operational concept, which were not under USA’s control.
The issue with Shuttle was ice on the ET, and Saturn V had had similar problems. On Saturn they went to insulation inside the cryogenic tank in one case. On Shuttle no effort was made to even look at a fix. In fact there was never any effort to make any significant upgrades to Shuttle-very unusual on a 30+ year old aerospace vehicle. It would be worthwhile historical study to see how and why the Shuttle program went wrong.
The other issue on Shuttle was expense and the contractors to whom the processing work had been turned over, were all for keeping up costs since they made profit on every dollar of cost. There was absolutely no incentive to work more efficiently.
That’s your opinion, and you are certainly entitled to it. However it is not what the CAIB report says, which was the assertion made in the previous comment to which i replied.
Gerstenmaier told congress that LONG AFTER the decision was made to cancel the shuttle.
President Bush announced “The Vision for Space Exploration” on Jan. 14 th of 2004. At that time the the “constellation program” was ONLY a capsule that was to fly on EELV’s…
the Two rocket CONstellation program did not start until LONG AFTER the VSE. The final report of the ESAS came a year after the VSE called for no rockets. First they got rid of O’Keefe and Griffin was brought in. Griffin conducted the “60 day study” and concluded that EELV’s were to expensive and dangerous.
He then presented the ESAS and the two rocket constellation program.
Good summation. It’s appalling to see history so shamelessly rewritten. Hopefully commercial space companies (with NASA’s assistance) will lift us up from the ashes.
If you approach history with the view that Republicans stand next to God and Democrats are the Devil incarnate, and that all of history is explained solely by this dichotomy, then you will conclude … pretty much what you have concluded.
Would you conclude otherwise from the history under alternating administrations? I didn’t read Neal’s post to be politically biased, just showing that one party has more of a preference for human spaceflight than the other. I don’t think that’s any less true than saying that military spending increases under Republicans and is cut back under Democrats…
Bush announced a “vision for space exploration” that discarded decades of work toward sustainability, repeated the errors of Apollo, and set us on an unsustainable course. Obama did everything he could to preserve human spaceflight by proposing a practical and sustainable path through Space Technology and Commercial Crew. After eight years Congress finally realized he was right and fully funded Commercial Crew just in time to take credit for it.
“The errors of Apollo?” Apollo had accomplishments; got us to the moon and united a nation. Dare we compare that to STS which was an absolute failure – never got remotely close to promised reusable launch rates, wasn’t even completely reusable, couldn’t do anything for the USAF as promised, killed two crews, wasted 20 years and billions of dollars for what? Low Earth orbit??
I agree Apollo had successes. It’s primary failures were 1) unsustainable cost which made the entire program a dead end, and 2) the conclusion that the evolutionary approach to design of aerospace vehicles, including testing at the prototype stage, was unnecessary, and that we could substitute analysis of systems reliability on paper and go directly to a final design. The latter led directly to the erroneous decision early in the Shuttle program to freeze the design prior to the first flight.
Actually the Vision didn’t do that .. the ESAS that came after the VSE did it.
(from a post I did on Space News)
Gary wrote: “The next administration will hopefully pay for yet another review to show different numbers. What will you say when those goal posts move Vlad?”
Okay so you want me to drag out my dead horse and beat it some more? Fine, I have stated this over and over but will give you the long answer.
There has been a on going fight between congress and the executive branch over space transportation since the end of the Apollo program.
Nixon tried and failed and we got saddled with the Space Transportation System. The first actual break came under President Reagan and the opportunity was the first space shuttle accident. Reagan had the Space Act of 1958 amended to include:
“(c) The Congress declares that the general welfare of the United States requires that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (as established by title II of this Act) seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space”
http://history.nasa.gov/spa…
This is big and bold right at the top before ANYTHING else about what NASA is mandated to do.
The second item was President Reagan signed the:
Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
This allowed for commercial launches to start which was the first crack in the armor. But congress still refused funding commercial space as they should have. They had the STS so they were happy.
The next break came with the space station crisis and possible cancellation which gave the executive branch to sign the
Commercial Space Act of 1998
https://www.govtrack.us/con…
This called for commercial cargo and crew but congress didn’t fund until the next space shuttle accident. which was used by the next executive to the whitehouse, President Bush, where he called for it “The Vision for Space Exploration”.
What else did the VSE call for?
“NASA does not plan to develop new launch vehicle capabilities except where critical NASA needs—such as heavy lift—are not met by commercial or military systems. Depending on future human mission designs, NASA could decide to develop or acquire a heavy lift vehicle later this decade.”
WOW! The Bush Administration has absolutely NO PLANS to fund ANY new rockets. Funding for commercial cargo? Yes. Funding for commercial crew? Yes. Funding for a capsule to fly on a EELV? yes. Funding for a heavy lift? No sometime later in the decade once they were gone.
Well what else DID the Bush Administration want to fund?
“In the days of the Apollo program, human exploration systems employed expendable, single-use vehicles requiring large ground crews and careful monitoring. For future, sustainable exploration programs, NASA requires cost-effective vehicles that may be reused, have systems that could be applied to more than one destination, and are highly reliable and need only small ground crews. NASA plans to invest in a number of new approaches to exploration, such as robotic networks, modular systems, pre-positioned propellants, advanced power and propulsion, and in-space assembly, that could enable these kinds of vehicles.”
So the Executive branch wanted to fund commercial cargo and commercial crew to the ISS a down and dirty capsule and?
Space based, reusable, modular, flexible path, with advanced propulsion, fueled at depots, VEHICLES.
Sounds like the Nautilus X and not the SLS.
That was a non starter for congress so out with the old NASA Administrator and in with a new one.. the VSE Is tossed out .. “the 60 day study” was conducted and now we had the ESAS and TWO new rockets. But the executive branched managed to get commercial cargo with a provision for commercial crew – COTS Part D.
The next Executive called for a review on the Constellation Program and a BI PARTISAN congress REFUSED to fund the Constellaiton program and sent a funding bill to the President with zero funding.
But the White House made another trade with congress. Bush traded commercial cargo for Constellation, Obama traded commercial crew for the Space Launch System.
Now to your question. The Next executive to the White House, President Clinton, will at the end of her first term or start of her second term in 2020 call for a review and the space station will switch to commercial stations in 2024 and the MIGHT be the trade for the loss of the station and be canceled by the next President… if the SLS launches four times and use up the engines it will be about 2024..
Actually I am a centrist, leaning towards Democratic ideals, but I do know history.
I feel party is of little significance in this field, but a few counterexamples:
The history of NASA begins with the NACA as documented in Engineer in Charge. The NACA was chartered under the administration of Woodrow Wilson(D), in part because America was falling behind in the commercially critical race to conquer the air due to lack of federal support for research and development under the Taft(R) administration.
I remember how Ike (R) was caught with his pants down by Kruschev (C) with the Sputnik in ’57. We were so sure we were ahead that Werner von Braun (no party affiliation) was forbidden to work on satellites so “real” Americans could get the credit. After the debacle von B was given the green light and had Explorer I in orbit in 90 days.
President John F. Kennedy’s(D) address was presented to an extraordinary joint session of Congress:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
or heard the full address here:
http://www.jfklibrary.org/A…
There was an unprecedented increase in NASA funding under Johnson(D) and an equally precipitous decline under Nixon(R):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… Nixon cancelled three lunar landings and doomed Shuttle by forcing NASA to accept cuts in the development budget and DOD cargo bay requirements that together required the use of SRBs as a shortcut and made its cost unsustainable.
Shuttle was cancelled by Bush and the bridges had been burned to prevent it from being extended. President Obama asked NASA for any strategy to extend Shuttle, and ended up with at least two more flights than originally planned under Bush. Obama attempted to accelerate Commercial Crew, the only potential replacement, but his budget increases for CC were repeatedly rebuffed by Congress. It is finally dawning on Congress that CC is the only program that can return human launch to US soil.
Actually, Eisenhower wanted the Russians to be first to launch a satellite in order to have them demonstrate open skies so that he could establish reconnaissance satellites to keep an eye on their missiles and air force. The Russian Sputnik backfired on the Republicans. Kennedy set in motion Apollo, and so budgets increased for 3 years, from 64-66, After 1966, budgets began a precipitous decline under Johnson. Construction of Apollos and Saturns were cancelled under Johnson. And as far as cancellation of the 3 Apollo missions, you’d best talk to someone like Chris Kraft; They needed one Saturn V to launch Skylab. But the NASA management basically lost their nerve after Apollo 13 and did not want Apollo to become a memorial with a crew lost on the moon so NASA had more to do with the truncation of the moon landings than anyone else.
“Eisenhower(R) wanted the Soviets(C) to launch a satellite first”
That is an urban legend. Please read the actual history. https://www.archives.gov/ed…
Actually it was a foreign policy disaster. Ike blew his top when he found out we were beaten because of interservice rivalry between the Army and the Navy. No one at the time was discussing territorial claims in space.
Keep in mind that in the age of the Internet fabrications that sound plausible spread as fast as fact. I have read the history, and I’m old enough to remember the actual events.
The reference you provide is very superficial.
Here is a more complete analysis: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ame…
Contrary to your statement that no one had been discussing territorial claims, Eisenhower had been pushing for open skies since 1955. Although he approved the U-2, there was concern from the outset that it would be subject to USSR defensive systems.
As the PBS article and many documents declassified over the last couple of decades show, no one was anticipating that Sputnik would cause the furor that it did or that the reaction would be in the form of a space race, Von Braun, felt that in the end the Soviet preeminence first with Sputnik and then with Gagarin worked out well for history and for NASA, because if those Soviet successes had not occurred, Kennedy would not have challenged Americans to reach the moon and there would have been no moon landing in 1969, and probably not for many years after-I know I spoke with him about it.
I read the PBS article you linked to.Nowhere does it say or even suggest that Eisenhower wanted the Soviets to launch the first satellite.
That is an interesting site, I will read it in more detail later. It has this mention “At first, some in the Eisenhower administration downplayed the satellite as a “useless hunk of iron.”” Reminds me of an article in 1997 about 40th anniversary of Sputnik with interview of an engineer working at Baikoner. He said after launch they waited 90 minutes then heard the beep-beep thinking “we got it in orbit” and figured that’s kind of interesting but not really that big of a deal (also during this time Korolev was constantly struggling with the Politburo for resources), they went to bed. The next day Americans were screaming and that’s when Khrushchev realized he has a big one over the Americans.
But wait, those archives.gov documents are from hardcopies. These days it’s all emails that are subject to manipulation, lost, or like most someplace in the Big Data.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr…
I’m not old enough to remember that, but I have read a fair amount of history. Including real, printed books by academic historians, which make exactly this statement about Eisenhower’s views on Open Skies and a first orbital launch by the Soviets.
I’m not saying the story is true, and the presidential memo you reference is interesting. I’d just say this is neither an urban legend nor an Internet fabrication. It’s more likely a error by historians working too close to the date of the events, less-than-honest statements by participants (“of course we always meant to do that”) and/or self-serving autobiographies.
Yes, I agree. Urban legend was the wrong word. Rationalization of a mistake by saying “We always meant to do that.” is more like it, people actually in government made this claim. The “open skies” plan Ike actually proposed referred to aircraft reconassiance. http://www.history.com/this… To establish “open skies” in space the Soviets did not have to launch first, and in any case no one at the time was thinking about anti-satellite weapons. Satellites themselves were at the very limit of our imagination. Once in orbit, they were invulnerable.
The fall began when the 2000s Congress and POTUS cast aside depot centric with the flawed ESAS study and VSE to retain shuttle derived. NASA was directed to head to the moon and close the gap to LEO and ESAS (‘less than 3 launches required’ so 120mT/2 or 1 is a 70 and 130 mT LV QED) dictated shuttle and Apollo hardware all expendable because Congress would not let them spend the cash on anything else. R&D gutted.
Yet demonizing is all that those who hold decades old failed polices can conjure up to retain their votes….it solves nothing.
Amazing you managed to get so much total B.S. in to that response.
“Obama said he would cut funds for NASA and particularly for human spaceflight. He did just what he said”
Total B.S. President Obama proposed in the NASA budget a 6 billion over 5 year INCREASE of NEW FUNDING for commercial crew. Please explain how a 6 billion dollar increase in new funding is cutting human spaceflight?
“Obama also saw to it that Shuttle was terminated with nothing else close to the starting blocks. “
MORE total BS… President Bush said in 2004 that the Space Shuttle would be retired in Sept of 2010 after completing the space station. As Wayne Hale explained in DETAIL as soon as a manufacturer had completed the parts needed to finish that flight manifest the dies and jigs were destroyed and the companies started building new products. By 2008 the shuttel was DEAD. It would have taken years and billions to bring it back and a BI PARTISAN CONGRESS REFUSED to fund it’s return.
President Obama DID get funding passed for 2 additional shuttle flights not on that manifest including getting the AMS experiment sent to the ISS. So once again you are spreading BS>
“Obama tried but failed to end what had been Constellation.”
You obviously need a high school refresher course in basic Civics 101.
The President sends a NON BINDING budget PROPOSAL to congress. THIS congress has tossed out his budget proposals on day one. Republicans ROUTINELY have stated his budgets are dead on arrival. The President is required by LAW to spend any funding that is appropriated by congress. ONCE AGAIN…
A BI-PARTISAN CONGRESS voted on an authorization bill and then a appropriations bill where THEY voted for ZERO FUNDING of constellation program.THAT was the funding bill the congress sent to the President to sign.
If they would have voted to fund Constellation the President would have had to veto the entire funding bill not just the NASA funding to kill the Constellation program and his veto would have had to survive a veto over ride in the Senate. But none of that happened because congress REFUSED to fund Constellation. The congress then voted to fund SLS and once again.. the President did not choose to veto it so the funding bill had to be executed by the executive branch.
“…and declared that Constellation [NASA’s human space-flight effort]…”
I keep explaining this to people…The International Space Station “flies” in “space” and carries NASA “humans”. Constellation then and SLS now are not the only parts of “NASA’s human space flight effort”. Commercial crew was already in the works when Constellation was cancelled, so it was part of that “space flight effort” as well.
(blue in the face)
Some astronaut dude at the ATK test firing (I think his name was Stan) declared SLS as our “only chance to get to Mars” which is equal BS to the above.
What makes a NASA-built and Congress-Funded paper rocket more real than a less-expensive-and-therefore-more-likely-to-actually-fly commercially-built and customer-funded paper rocket?
If Congress just gave NASA money to build a Mars rocket, with no strings attached, there would be boots with red regolith on them already. All Congress knows how to add to the Mars effort is a decimal point to the cost.
Would like to agree with this assertion but the Apollo experience dictates otherwise.
Mars is not the Moon and the current effort doesn’t seem to resemble Apollo.
The Apollo days are over…in every meaningful way. There and back again to Mars will never be a one week trip. NASA needs Congress, but no one else does. Everyone wanting to go to Mars needs NASA assistance, IMO, but not necessarily their participation. Most of the technology is known about the how, just need to test better hows as we go.
I could go on and on.
Telling and retelling what happened before, then after Columbia, could occur from many points of view. Like therapy, telling the story and right, minus vaguery and …enhancements… may take some time. Holdren could have done better, admittedly. Much better.
I just don’t understand how, after the disaster that was STS program, there are still engineers wanting to put crew and cargo on the same stack given how vastly different the objectives are (one needs little mass but a fail proof life support system, one needs to put mass in space with no life support). Constellation seemed to be the only program that was going to put crew on a crew stack and safely get them to orbit and put the explosive cargo on a heavy lift cargo stack. Given your cargo stack could put tonnes of explosive fuel in orbit tenders could then be used to move from LEO to the massive stacks to operate out of LEO. Now.. should Constellation have been using a Space X style conventional reusable rocket (or maybe a plane launch like Scaled Composites) vs a SRB reusable rocket… that ultimately I think will be the penultimate question. If it turns out one day that you can have a crew launched SRB rocket then cancelling Constellation will have been a huge mistake. If not then replacing Ares I with a Space X dragon was the way to go. But going with a massive crew/cargo stack makes this Space Launch System (SLS) bird a jack of all trades and the master of none… which is no good when it comes to wanting cheap safe access to space.
Crew and cargo both need a reliable and inexpensive ride to orbit. The Ares I and V both used SRBs and LH2, the difference was mainly in size. Likewise the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. Shuttle type SRBs were designed 40 years ago; their reuse was not cost effective.