NASA Administrator Apprentice Update: Status Quo Candidates
Sen. Jeff Sessions Exerts Wide Influence Over Trump Space Plans, Wall Street Journal
“One sign of the influence Mr. Sessions has with the president-elect is that job seekers actively seek his support. Three former astronauts, including retired Air Force Lt. General Thomas Stafford, who was the head of NASA’s astronaut corps and later was instrumental in development of the B-2 Stealth bomber, have urged the Alabama lawmaker to support [Doug] Cooke’s bid to head NASA.”
More False Memories About the Origin (and Cost) of SLS, earlier post
“This op ed piece also appeared in The Hill last week. Oddly the same exact words in the Mike Griffin/Dan Dumbacher op ed in the Huntsville times (“Contrary to some suggestions, the SLS will be very competitive with the advertised price of commercial U.S. systems – on the order of $4.5 million per ton of payload.”) are to be found in an op ed “U.S. will keep lead in space with NASA’s launch system” that appeared several days ago in the Orlando Sentinel – but this op ed has Doug Cooke and Steve Cook as the authors. If you read the Huntsville Times and Orlando Sentinel op eds side by side you will see that they were clearly written by the same people. Once again the Ares V mafia is mounting a PR effort to convince everyone that they were right all along.”
Keith’s note: Steve Cook is on the NASA Landing Team headed by Griffin loyalist Chris Shank. And lest we forget, Mike Griffin is still trying to worm his way back into NASA. Although I cannot find any indication that Griffin ever publicly endorsed Trump (I can’t find any evidence that Doug Cooke did either) Mike Griffin did make a $500 political contribution – but to Jeb Bush.
Together Cooke, Cook, Shank, and Griffin represent the self-proclaimed “Band of Brothers” that originally gave us the Ares 1/Ares V cost/schedule nightmares – with the cancelled Ares V reborn as the new cost/schedule nightmare SLS. Haven’t we seen this movie before?
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It would seem that if Trump knew these former NASA leaders he would divest himself of them, they posses the “loser” traits that Trump harps against. Just look at what they have brought us in the past. I’d hate to be the person that brought them on to the team, as sooner or later they will screw up and will come before President Trump to explain. I can see Trump asking “who the hell brought these people on to screw NASA up”?
…competitive with the advertised price of commercial U.S. systems…
Wow, do we need to present any facts or can we just call that a blatant lie?
Apparently Griffin thinks SLS will cost $315m per launch.
NASA’s contract for just 6 new RS-25 engines is around $1.15 billion. Or over $190m per engine. Since there are four engines on the SLS core, that’s more than $760m per launch for the engines alone.
On Griffin’s budget, they could buy 1 and 2/3 engines.
This probably explains a lot about the Constellation program.
Well put. These rosy numbers are washed of all development costs, line start ups, and anything else that is not actually an installed part. Then, they cut that based on savings to come. Those engines are probably 20 mil or less in his budget.
6x new RS-25 engines for $1.15 billion?! How many COMPLETE Falcon Heavy launchers could one buy for that?!
It’s actually hard to say.
The listed price for FH is $90m, but that is for a recoverable launch, which is generally about 1/3rd of the payload of a full expendable launch.
If we take the simplest case and assume the full expendable launch cost is 3-times the list price ($240m), then you could afford nearly 5 full launches for $1.15b. So around 200-250 tonnes to LEO for the price of the engines on a single SLS launch.
However, taking the likely SLS/Orion funding starting now through the first five flights (the only ones with engines paid for) but ignoring sunk-costs over the last 20 years, you’re looking at more than $6b per SLS/Orion launch. The equivalent of 25 fully expendable FH launches for the price of a single SLS/Orion launch. Over 1200 tonnes to LEO equivalent for the price of a single 70 tonne to LEO launch.
I don’t know what price ULA will end up charging for a full Vulcan, but even if it was triple the my worst-case price of FH (so worst case of a worst case), you could still buy 8+ Vulcan launches for the price of a single SLS/Orion launch. 300 tonnes to LEO, plus a powerful upper-stage for BEO missions, for the price of a single 70 tonne to LEO launch.
It would be hard to imagine someone who would be worse than Doug Cooke. We owe him much of the mess we are in. He “shaped” CxP and then made sure the new team couldn’t replace it in the first year. He is certainly no leader.