President Trump Links NASA To The Space Force
Keith’s note: It is rather obvious from prior comments – and especially this tweet from today – that President Trump equates NASA activities and those associated with his whole Space Force thing. Given 60 years of civilian focus, this could represent a significant change for NASA. Let’s see how NASA, OSTP, DoD, and the National Space Council try to parse, spin, unpack, and otherwise explain this tweet. Maybe someone will finally explain what Space Force is and what NASA’s role is with it. NASA Adminstrator Bridenstine retweeted this tweet and has spent more time talking about Space Force than anyone else. Perhaps he knows what is really going on.
Thank you President @realDonaldTrump. Soon, we will once again send American astronauts from American soil on American rockets. https://t.co/9hWaHmFEli
— Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) August 3, 2018
Jim’s probably hoping he’ll get distracted and stop talking about it. I think thats been the primary Pentagon response.
Maybe it is a short form of saying ‘May the force be with you…’?
Actually not all American rockets. Trumps buddy Putin will provide the engines for Atlas. The Russians can sneer and make snide comments on Sputnik for awhile longer. Trump is not much of a patriot(make America and NASA great again,We are great now and will be greater). He could use ATK SRB all American rockets!
http://www.spacedaily.com/r…
From our good Aussie friends down under.
Yep, Old Space clings to its old rockets, outdated international supply chains and old expendable rockets. Is it any wonder the cost is so high?
But as soon as the BFR is flying NASA will have two independent all-American ways to reach the ISS and will be able to drop the Russian dependent Boeing System.
There are a couple of state players that seem to see the writing on the wall .. japan, china .. tossing a couple bucks at reuse.
They will just not mention the Russian engines and we are the laughingstocks of the world, then they will put the AR-1 engine in Atlas or use the new ULA launcher I predict. Laughable.
All this talk about NASA “coming back” irks me. It reflects a view of human spaceflight as NASA’s primary focus, while relegating the numerous very scientifically productive robotic missions to the background. NASA hasn’t been down. We have numerous Earth science and astrophysics missions going on in Earth orbit. We have a whole fleet of spacecraft operating on and around Mars, along with missions to asteroids, Jupiter, and soon the Sun. NASA has been doing fine.
If NASA does start doing real efforts like putting people on the moon as opposed to Obama’s going to Mars in 20 years, it could very well be an improvement under Trump. It’s still too early to make a determination that NASA is better or worse under Trump and those that make such statements after such a short time period are likely talking political nonsense.
There is nothing that leads me to believe that will happen in a timely fashion (i.e. during this Administration ). The only “solid” proposal out of NASA during this Administration is for the Deep Space Gateway, which does NOT include a crewed lander, surface EVA suits, crewed rover, and etc.
The DSG concept pre-dates Trump. It was originally part of the asteroid-return mission, under NextSTEP, planned in 2015, issued in early 2016. IIRC, DSP was formally announced around a month after Trump took office, presumably trying to make it a fait accompli in the new Administration. Six months later, NextSTEP issued the request for power & propulsion proposals. This year, they changed the name to LOP-G after Trump issued his space policy. That’s the only achievement under this Administration, changing the name.
Interesting, in both cases, it serves as an indicator of how worthless SLS/Orion are. NASA couldn’t do an asteroid mission, and they can’t land on the moon. Gateway is as far from Earth as SLS/Orion can travel, and LOP is as close to the moon as they can get. It’s a symbol of their failure.
Mars is fairly well covered, but NASA only has three Mars orbiters (plus two rovers, possibly just one now, on the surface.) I think I’d call that a squadron rather than a fleet.
It irks me because nothing has actually improved within the agency, nor in Congress’ direction for the agency.
Pretty much every flagship program, science or human, is being managed as incompetently as ever. ISS, Orion, ISS, Webb…
I have some problems with the efficiency of NASA’s planetary science program, but there is at least one good thing I can say about its management. It’s pretty rare for a cost-capped mission to go way over budget. Of the Discovery and New Frontiers programs, some missions have gone over, but I can’t think of any which were a factor of two over. Even Cassini, once it had a cost cap slapped on in 1992, stayed within it. (In all cases, I mean through end of prime mission; the cost cap is only intended to apply to the prime mission not extended missions operations.) The huge overruns (over a factor of two) have been in the flagship (formally large, strategic) missions like MSL/Curiosity, which were not developed under a cost cap.
The use of NASA facilities by the private sector is not an innovation of the Trump administration. It dates back at least to the launch of Telstar I.
NASA of course procures DOD support for human spaceflight, but this is only peripherally related to the primary DOD mission. The military was closely integrated with NASA for the classified Shuttle launches, but ultimately the DOD determined that this was not a productive strategy for them, and I do not expect to see it again. The reality is that all space-based elements of the DOD are for the forseable future going to be robotic, and with the exception of access to scientific data, such as predictions of global warming, DOD does not believe it requires NASA capabilities.
I’m not even sure if the Department of Defense depends on NASA for scientific data. They certainly use it, but (as far as I know) mostly for long term things. You mentioned global warming. That would be long-term climate modeling, and I can see how that’s worth knowing for things like planning base construction. (What’s the weather going to be like in 25 years and are we putting in enough drainage?)
But I’m not sure I’d use the word “depend” for those applications. For things they actually do depend on, they tend to use their own resources. The DoD has its own weather satellites, tracks objects in orbit (even debris) with their own assets, etc. If it’s anything they’re likely to need in a war or other crisis, I think the military has a strong preference for keeping it in house.
To the contrary. The DoD’s weather satellite program is in complete disarray (or was, they finally seem to be getting their act together somewhat). It has been since the forced separation of the marriage between DoD and NOAA (plus NASA) in the NPOESS program (what a mess that program was; interesting that the prime contractor for it was Northrop Grumman, who is responsible for the James Webb telescope; but I digress).
At the moment, and for the foreseeable future (as they still try to rise from the ashes of that program), they heavily rely on data from NOAA’s JPSS sytem; the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) has a direct spigot to the data from JPSS satellites, as does (I think) the Navy’s NAVOCEANO.
And even when (if) they finally get their act together, the DoD will primariy focus on measurements they won’t be able to get from NOAA (and NASA); the civilian weather satellite system will continue to provide much of the information they need and use. (By the way, if I’m not mistaken, NOAA now handles operations for all of the DOD weather satellites as well as their own.)
One unfortunate example of the military going its own way is the decision by the Air Force to develop it’s own numerical weather forecast model instead of contributing to a combined effort to improve the current model as they had in the past. This is a mistake that will cost this country in the long run.
I guess my information was fairly dated. But in the context of a “Space Force”, that raises some questions. One purpose for such an organization I’ve seen reported is to protect military space assets. Either making them more robust to attempts to disable them, or by architectures which make it easy to replace disabled satellites without loosing capability. If we’re talking about DoD satellites, I could see ways to do that. But if the military is relying on NASA and NOAA satellites (or, as you note, if they continue to do so), how would that work? Dictating requirements and constellation architectures to civil agencies would be, to put it mildly, an administrative nightmare.
Those are good questions. But you’re talking about a concept put forward by someone (Trump) who has no idea what he’s talking about, who just thinks that having a “Space Force” would be neat. So don’t expect this administration to have any answers, they don’t.
Why do you think the DoD (Mattis) tried to walk back what Trump said? There are a lot more questions right now than answers (including, but not to limited how the DoD would safeguard civilian space assets they rely on).
Clearly, a lot more thought needs to go into how such an entity would function, and even whether it makes sense. But again, don’t expect this administration to do any thinking. Why start now?
There were indeed 9 astronauts announced for Commercial Crew. Everything else that the President said in that tweet is wrong. So obviously the informed remarks on the future of Space exploration that came from his office, that Keith reported on several days ago, came from someone else’s brain.
Anyone surprised?
Bridenstine very diplomatically thanked him for his remarks, without embracing the silly parts of what he said.
And to think I wasn’t sure I was going to like him. 😉
Trump is just a senile old man who spouts random bits of vaguely connected information, similar to Reagan but much worse.
Certainly donald’s brain and fingers are not connected, those tweets can’t be analyzed for actual guidance. Bridenstine just answered as a politician – cherry picking the parts that he agreed with.
Yep. I wrote awhile back that Bridenstine was very smart or a good actor. He is a politician. Nelson was correct. A politician should not be admin. What he and they do is get briefed. They then remember a few talking points and read off papers as he did at the ceremony. Maybe eventually he will be able to talk to you or me about Space. He will have to do a lot reading and research as we do. Will he get fired for making Trump report fake news that we had all American rockets!?
The statement is correct for SpaceX, and folks have been pushing ULA for years to end its dependence on Russia for engines.
Administrator Bridentstine is doing a good job. I won’t hold him responsible to explain the hastily written, ill conceived ramblings of a 72 year old baby.
How about a thank you to President Obama who had to fight the republicans to get funding for commercial crew, who chopped funding at every point causing delays .,. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
True, but he could have told NASA to convert a Dragon1 to Crew for a very low price, quickly for backup to the Soyuz and hugely expensive SpaceX and Boeing Crew programs. But SpaceX and Boeing stopped that because it might have taken over and their programs dropped I think. Money talks.
Boeing might have worked to stop it, but SpaceX would have done that in a minute if asked.
in ½ the time for ⅓ the cost. Mas o menos.
Possibly. It certainly wouldn’t have taken much to bolt a few crew couches in Dragon 1 and stuck astronauts in launch/entry suits in them.
But, NASA wanted a robust launch abort system, which Dragon 1 lacks. And they wanted “manual control”, and a host of other things that Dragon 1 lacks. So by the time you pile on all of NASA’s requirements, you get Dragon 2. Dragon 2 stems from NASA requirements, not from the bare minimum necessary to get a crew to ISS and back.
How about a big thank you to Lori Graver who did all the fighting for it after President Obama killed Project Constellatio, cut NASA funding and then just walked away from the agency, choosing not to spend one bit of political capital on NASA after he had his Kennedy style photo op.
wow he killed it without a veto simply by telling mitch mcconnell no .. AMAZING .. I am surprised that Obama simply didn’t put a big ZERO under military ….and end all that spending ..
since as you say .. All Obama had to do was send a non binding budget proposal to the republicans with a big ZERO and they would all vote it down for him..
You know perfectly well that he made a pork deal replacing it with the SLS. Gee, what a short memory…
https://www.nasa.gov/about/…
The birth of SLS.
“Next, we will invest more than $3 billion to conduct research on an advanced “heavy lift rocket” — a vehicle to efficiently send into orbit the crew capsules, propulsion systems, and large quantities of supplies needed to reach deep space. In developing this new vehicle, we will not only look at revising or modifying older models; we want to look at new designs, new materials, new technologies that will transform not just where we can go but what we can do when we get there. And we will finalize a rocket design no later than 2015 and then begin to build it. “
Congress only cared about the pork flow continuing and that is what he offered them in the new heavy lift vehicle – the future SLS. And don’t forget he also proposed the Orion capsule for use on the ISS in addition to CCP.
“In addition, as part of this effort, we will build on the good work already done on the Orion crew capsule. I’ve directed Charlie Bolden to immediately begin developing a rescue vehicle using this technology, so we are not forced to rely on foreign providers if it becomes necessary to quickly bring our people home from the International Space Station. And this Orion effort will be part of the technological foundation for advanced spacecraft to be used in future deep space missions.”
Do you really think that if President Obama had his way and NASA had gone ahead with the Orion as a “rescue” vehicle for the ISS that CCP would have survived?
And then he bragged how killing off Project Constellation was moving NASA forward.
“There are also those who criticized our decision to end parts of Constellation as one that will hinder space exploration below low Earth orbit. But it’s precisely by investing in groundbreaking research and innovative companies that we will have the potential to rapidly transform our capabilities — even as we build on the important work already completed, through projects like Orion, for future missions. And unlike the previous program, we are setting a course with specific and achievable milestones.”
And then he just walked away from NASA.
The only reason CCP even exists was that Lori Garver pushed hard for it and probably only sold him on it by pointing out the votes it would get in Florida for him. So yes, President Obama set HSF back years with his policies at NASA. Talks to him NASA has the twin Albatrosses of the SLS/Orion and ISS eating up its budget for the foreseeable future.
It wasn’t Orion, it was nicknamed “Orion Lite” but it was intended to be a entirely different capsule – possibly a different contractor. A light, low cost capsule capable of being launched on Atlas V. Nothing to do with the Constellation Orion, nor what we ended up with under SLS.
Two other things: The speech you are quoting dates before SLS was even proposed. He was talking about his own proposal. Kill Constellation, shrink Orion, use the freed funding to restore the science budget and restore and expand tech development – the latter including tech for a HLV. In the actual budget proposal, the latter was initially to focus on a new generation of big engines. A-la the F-1 program preceding and enabling Saturn V. (And this need for new engines was carried over into a smaller DoD program. So it’s not like wasn’t actually necessary.)
The other thing is that the speech was also made before commercial cargo had flown. He even mentions the still untried Falcon 9, awaiting it’s first launch. Commercial crew was therefore a huge gamble. Hence Orion-lite made sense. Congresses requirement’s for “deep space (but only as far as the moon)” Orion didn’t.
If Obama’s (or Garver’s if you prefer) proposal had been passed, it would have renewed NASA. And the industry. Look at the biggest recent movement in the industry, SpaceX, Bigelow, Blue and even Rocketdyne’s AR-1. Sired from Fastrac, Transhab, and the new engine funding. Old NASA tech program, even older NASA tech program, and DoD trying to make up for a lack of NASA engine programs.
Now imagine what billions of new tech development dollars could seed. Instead it went on SLS.
Congress was even wilder. They told NASA to use SLS to go to ISS. Not Orion with a Shuttle SRB, although that may have been good enough for them. I think they may have even put up some money to do it. I don’t know how NASA has got away with ignoring this crazy idea. A billion $ each flight. About like the Shuttle I guess was there idea.
Probably because SLS/Orion wouldn’t be ready to fly crew in the time required to service the ISS.
Funny how time lines have changed since Mr. Musk’s successes.
The question is: Is he making money. No one can say so for sure. He better, given Tesla’s issues.
SLS emerged directly from the Heavy Lift Rocket President Obama proposed and he did nothing to stop it, so like it or not President Obama is responsible for the SLS/Orion.
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/…
“In 2015, NASA completed the critical design review — a first for a NASA human-rated launch vehicle since the space shuttle almost 40 years ago.”
SLS and Orion were impsed as legislative requirements by Congress, let by Senator Shelby, after the cancellation of Constellation, and forced the cancellation of almost the entire space technology program Obama had proposed.
My personal opinionis that there is nothing to be gained by political polarization, but blaming Obama for SLS is simply revisionism. It would be more productive to focus on persuading both parties in Congress to support a more practical strategy.
No. You can repeat it as often as you want, but it’s bullshit. We know what Obama’s budget proposal actually requested, because it’s public record. The biggest, first HLV research goal was a new family of hydrocarbon engines. It was considered critical precisely because recycling Shuttle parts was, and remains, retarded.
Tell me which President that has spent REAL political capital on space since Kennedy and Johnson….
Why exclude Presidents Kennedy and Johnson? They were not interested in space, but in showing up the Russians. Space was just a convenient platform for doing so.
Convenient and critical. Kennedy started the Moon Race as a nonlethal substitute for the nuclear arms race, which came closer to destroying civilization than most people who did not live through it realize.
And when the development for Apollo/Saturn started winding down, the budget cutting started (years before the successful crewed lunar landing). When space nuts say “NASA just needs a purpose again, like we had with Apollo/Saturn!” I just shake my head because what they’re really asking for is to repeat history. We don’t want that!
What we want is NASA working on tech for US firms to use just like NACA did for the early US aircraft industry. NASA building its own (expendable) launch vehicles today makes about as much sense as it would have for NACA to run its own passenger airline.
I agree. NACA did not even fly solo across the Atlantic, although NACA technology was essential for Lindberg’s flight. A viable commercial market for human spaceflight requires roughly a factor of ten reduction in cost per passenger, just as was needed in the early 20th century for commercial air travel to become viable. That might be a more suitable goal for NASA than putting boots on Mars.
NASA doesn’t build it’s own vehicles. All those folks building vehicles are contractors, just like its always been.
There is a huge difference between NASA operated vehicles like Saturn V, the space shuttle, and SLS versus and NASA buying a launch on an existing launch vehicle like Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Atlas V, or Delta IV Heavy. Same goes for owning and operating Orion versus paying for a ride in Dragon 2 or Starliner.
I agree Garver dereves more credit than she gets. However the funding which would have been available from the elimination of Constellation was to be allocated, under Obama, to a major new program in space technology, which we still need.
The President has directed the establishment of a “Space Force”, equal to the other branches. So, that brings up some interesting dilemmas. Since, presumably, there is no sudden influx of cash, this force will have to be made from parts of other programs. Which parts? Well, although the Air Force exists, the other branches still fly airplanes.
“All of the armed services fly aircraft – fixed wing, rotary-wing, and even RPVs. However, there are differences. Only the Air Force flies strategic bombers and heavy-lift cargo planes (C-5 and C-17). The USAF, Navy, and Marines all fly fighters, but the Army and Coast Guard do not.” from Wikipedia.
So using this model, presumably the other branches will still fly satellites that they deem necessary for their operational capability. What does that leave? Well, NASA of course. Although founded as a non-military organization, this is historically an anomaly. I can easily see their earth monitoring science capability partitioned out to NOAA, Environment, or whoever, leaving their deep space and astronaut corps vulnerable to be transferred to the new Space Force. This is in line with Star Trek and their Starfleet. And we all know where the President gets his inspiration from, which is TV. So, I think the new Space Force should be called what it really is, Starfleet!
Will Trump kill Commercial Crew once he figures out that it was started under Obama?
Please everybody, tell him it was his idea first.