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National Space Council Meeting

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
August 20, 2019
National Space Council Meeting

NASA Television to Broadcast Sixth Meeting of the National Space Council
“NASA Television and the agency’s website will provide live coverage of the sixth meeting of the National Space Council at 9:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday, Aug. 20, from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. This meeting will address a whole-of-government effort for deep space exploration, prospective cooperation with international partners, and strengthening U.S. commercial space leadership.”
Panel: “Innovative Space Initiatives”
– Rex Geveden, President and Chief Executive Officer, BWX Technologies, Inc.
– Dr. Clive Neal, Professor, College of Engineering, University of Notre Dame
– Dr. Saralyn Mark, Founder and President, iGIANT® and SolaMed Solutions, LLC
– Dr. Elizabeth Turtle, Planetary Scientist, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Watch live at https://www.nasa.gov/live/

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

17 responses to “National Space Council Meeting”

  1. Michael Spencer says:
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    “a whole-of-government effort for deep space exploration, prospective cooperation with international partners, and strengthening U.S. commercial space leadership.”

    We are witness to a demonstration of Aristotle’s famous horror vacui: ‘nature abhors a vacuum.’ The described domain is properly the province of NASA: an Agency hobbled by the very flag-carrying crazies now riding to America’s rescue.

    I’m just sickened by my own hardening view.

    • MAGA_Ken says:
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      The flag carrying crazies are trying to restore some vigor to NASA.

      • Tom Billings says:
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        Yes, but they are trying to do so without submitting to leadership of academia. That submission would lose them many of the votes they need to stay in office. The result is that any “vigor” cannot be admitted by those who define themselves by their academic certification.

        Then, there is the problem/s with getting *any* money for “Artemis” that is not funneled through MSFC, or some other vassal of the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. We will be seeing a deviously serpentine path to any success they will achieve, at best. With luck, the demonstration along this path that political allocation of resources is inferior to market allocations in producing spaceflight results will be sufficiently intense that NASA, in the future, will be a bit less strait-jacketed by Congress.

  2. MAGA_Ken says:
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    Thanks for the tweet updates in the side bar.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Indeed. I especially appreciated the characterization of Mr. Pence, which I admit surprised me, exposing my own incorrect assessment.

      Those of us in the peanut gallery have no real way to assess this sort of performance.

  3. mfwright says:
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    Couple things that bother me on overall strategy: They’re always including Mars in same sentence with the moon. And the specification is the next person to step on the moon has to be a woman. Though everyone in the astronaut corps are highly qualified, that specification has baggage like Valentina Tereshkova (she only got that flight because she is a woman). Women that are astronauts can carry their own, they don’t need “help.” [grammer edit]

    But be sure the door swings in direction to who you want to exit first (i.e. Grumman made the door righthanded on Apollo so the commander had to be the first one out).

    • MAGA_Ken says:
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      Also “sustainable”.

      Nothing about Artemis is “sustainable” (as in it costs low enough that future Congresses won’t choke on it).

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      That’s the first time I’ve heard that about the door. As far as I am aware, among the person first out, indeed naming the crew, was a whirlwind. If true this is a fascinating bit of trivia.

      • fcrary says:
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        In a recent interview, Dr. Aldrin said the decision over who went out was just that, a decision. I forget if he attributed it to Mr. Kraft or Mr. Slayton. But it definitely wasn’t a Grumman engineer.

        • mfwright says:
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          I read (I think) the book “Apollo: Race to the Moon” there wasn’t enough room for the LMP to step over the open door to exit first. You are right, there was a discussion of who will go out first, if it was to be Aldrin then I think the door design decided by a Grumman engineer would have prevented that.

          Now that politicians have set a requirement to land humans on the moon by 2024, this means design, build, test has to begin now. Besides the door, there are a lot of other elements that will be defined in the next few months that will determine how human lunar missions will be performed. Like Orion, Dragon2, Starliner, Dreamchaser, once that general shape/size is chosen it will be with us for decades. Whether it will fly or be sustainable…

          • fcrary says:
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            If the design only allows one of the astronauts to be the first out, that will affect astronaut selection. As Dr. Aldrin described it, someone just didn’t think he was the right person for the media circus and national image stuff which would accompany being the first person on the Moon. If the door’s design had forces the LM pilot to be the first out, he probably wouldn’t have been on Apollo 11. With Artemis, if the lander design requires that the geologist get out before the mission commander, they will simply select a female geologist rather than a female commander.

    • chuckc192000 says:
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      I don’t believe that story about the hatch. There was enough room to move around in the LEM that either astronaut could have used either hand to open the hatch.
      Including women on the first Artemis moon landing (if there is one) makes up for the injustice of all the women being kicked out of the astronaut corps in the early days of the space program.

  4. Tom Mazowiesky says:
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    I’ve been an enthusiastic supporter of the space program since I saw Friendship 7 launch in 1962. I want a robust, long term plan for the exploration of space, but…

    Now I know that Hollywood is not real life, but look at the NASA portrayed in ‘Armageddon’ and the real life NASA. Should we be confronted by a planet killing asteroid, NASA would still be trying to organize the committees to study it when the asteroid hit the planet. Now it’s not just NASA, its pretty much all of government. It’s a behemoth and it just doesn’t move very quickly in any direction.

    While its good to see enthusiasm (at least for a while) by the current administration, I don’t know if that can be translated into real action and progress. And if in 2020 a new administration takes over, space exploration will be the first program cut (are those rockets green? No, NO FUNDING FOR YOU! – apologies to Jerry Seinfeid).

    The nature of space exploration really doesn’t lend itself to the 4-8 year political cycle in this country. I’m beginning to believe that it will be commercial interests that define the long term exploration of space. It’s probably the right way to go, looking at history new territories were opened and developed for commercial reasons, not for any lofty ‘in the name of… fill in the blank’ ideas. Maybe it is cynicism but people really do follow the profit motive. The country may tolerate a certain sum of taxpayer money for ‘science’ but it has it’s limits. So here’s hoping the Elon and Jeff find enough money in the future to keep their efforts going.

    I think that Keith’s tweets are right on the money, but unfortunately no one at NASA will listen.

    • chuckc192000 says:
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      There may be other valid reasons, but absolutely NOBODY is going to cut funding for the space program because the rockets aren’t green.

      • fcrary says:
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        Well, there are limits. If memory serves, the Soviets looked into a hydrogen/fluorine rocket for an upper stage. I think everyone felt hydrofluoric acid exhaust in the upper atmosphere would have been a bad idea.