VP Pence Visited Ames Today
Remarks by Vice President Pence to NASA’s Ames Research Center Employees and Guests
“And unlike in years past, under this President’s leadership, I’m proud to report we not only have the will, we not only have the support of the American people, we not only have the greatest innovators and inventors, but we also have the budgets to match. We’re going to give NASA the resources they need to accomplish their mission. In fact, this President has already signed into law the largest budget ever for this agency in the modern era, and we’re about to add another billion and a half.”
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Is the money *actually* coming, or is it Bush 1 all over again?
No! Everything Pence said is either fantasy or an outright lie. There is no extra money coming.
Yes, which is exactly the excuse he needs to scrap SLS/Orion when SpaceX provides rides on its Starship, since it will be left as the only option to send American astronauts to the Moon. And if Elon Musk hits his numbers the cost will be only $10 million to deliver the first ship load of America astronauts, an amount President Trump could paid for out of his own pocket to further show up the Congressional Pork Senators. ??
If Mr. Musk is correct about both the cost and payload capacity of Starship, the price of the tickets wouldn’t matter. Salary for astronaut training, the cost of EVA suits (lunar surface capable), mission control operations, etc. would far exceed the claimed price of a ticket on Starship. NASA isn’t currently set up to really take advantage of a two order of magnitude drop in launch costs.
Yes, it will take a bit of doing for NASA to adapt to Starship. I mean imagine delivering a 100 tons of rovers to the lunar surface in an cargo only version, or a 100 tons of rovers to Mars in a demonstration flight for $10-15 million. Not to mention bringing 40 tons of samples to give to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory. I don’t think NASA would have a clue of how to react…
In terms of astronauts, the suits will be expensive, but would be reusable. Also thinking about it they wouldn’t need to be NASA Astronauts, just American astronauts. I wonder just how many of the current 44 active NASA astronauts would quit NASA if SpaceX offered to hire them for a lunar mission, or to be lunar tour guides. ?
I wasn’t thinking of the direct cost or available mass, so much as the whole process. It’s geared to the idea that everything must work, and the process of designing, planning and building thing is geared towards assuring that.
The fact is, if SpaceX could really deliver a 100 kg robotic rover to the lunar surface for $150,000, it makes absolutely no sense to spend $10 million to make sure it works. Just buy parts from the local hardware store (well, maybe not quite that), build it for $500,000 and take a 50% chance of it failing. If it does, well, you can always try again. But the whole institutional culture of NASA doesn’t think that way. I’ve heard people from NASA centers say that sort of approach is utterly unacceptable for _CubeSats_. (Well, at least, ones doing anything worthwhile. They might think of “toys” to train aerospace engineering students as a different matter.) If SpaceX could provide 100-tonne payloads to the lunar surface for $15 million, I can honestly imagine NASA insisting on spending $1 billion to develop the payload.
Hopefully there will be a mass retirement of the over 50 crowd at NASA as a result of the SLS debacle and the young folk will take over. Experience running a railroad using steam engines doesn’t count for much when you replaced them all with diesel-electric locomotives.
I understand your point. And, although I’m just a bit over 50, I won’t take it personally. But you are right about one thing. A big change in the way things work will mean big changes for the people involved. For many, it may be like being pushed off a boat. You learn to swim really fast or you sink.
I’m over 60, but really as you note it’s about being able to see the opportunities and change your way of thinking to take advantage. Some managers and leaders are “young” at heart and able to do so. Others, even younger ones, are so set in the “but this is how we have always done it” mindset they become barriers to the organization’s being able to thrive in the new environment.
I wonder if Elon Musk will do a Tesla and include a couple of Tesla’s new pickups as cargo when he lands on the Moon. They should be able to work, although they will need different tires. Their cargo area would hold a lot of instruments for deployment and return to the ships with a lot of samples. It would make a great commercial for them. ?
There’s been fairly wide criticism, however, about the lack of experience at the NASA Centers, both personal and institutional. I’m not sure either line of thinking is helpful.
I might say the reverse. Both criticisms may be valid. It helps to have people who are willing to scrap old approaches and try new things. But you also need people with the experience to invent new ways of doing things which make sense. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find (and recruit) people who are both experienced with how and why things have been done, and not too attached to the ways of doing things.
Yes, that is really the great challenge in NASA’s future.
I have heard SpaceX wants people who are 20 years old and have 30 years of experience. I’m 68 and I’m not even sure what i want to do when I grow up.
The reality is a bit more complicated than “no extra money coming”.
1. The lunar gateway is fully funded in 2019 appropriation, at $500M per year. After the 2024 landing goal is announced, Bridenstine scaled back the gateway to a minimal configuration, this saved $300M per year which he intends to spend on lunar landers.
2. He also asked an additional $700M in 2020 for lunar landers, the house appropriation ignored this, but senate picked it up and added it to the 2020 appropriation bill, this modified bill is now waiting for house approval.
3. For 2021 and onward, they may need more funding than 2020 once the landers start building hardware. How much more depends on which companies they pick to build the landers, the companies in competition are a combined team of Blue Origin/Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman vs Boeing vs possibly SpaceX.
Overall I think the current situation is a lot better than Bush 1, more or less comparable to Bush 2.
Budgets to match?
Has he seen the deficit?
On a related issue, the WH/ NASA have owned up to the actual cost of SLS.
This is the death knell. NASA is pleading for someone to get that turkey off their necks – and, I’m very sorry to say that, as there are so many fine engineers and others, and their families, all depending on this project.
But once NASA owns that number it means that all of the backroom dealing has done nothing to remove SLS. This is a Hail Mary.
It’s also why VP Pence shows up.
Even if ‘Starship’ weren’t in the pipeline; I still say that Falcon Heavy and the upcoming Vulcan-Centaur should’ve been enough to put SLS down the crapper where it belongs…
Sadly the dark side of the Force is strong…
And the New Glenn. The Blue origin factory complex at KSC is gigantic, like nothing I have seen before, a dozen buildings including the main assembly building with the world’s largest CNC composite winding machine.
No doubt their potential is very high. Though I have heard from a source that Blue’s drive is low and they are just not putting enough people and effort into their concepts and operations as a whole – at least in terms of competing with anyone. More than a few people have joked that they wished Blue had a lot more Ferociter and a bit less Gradatim!!
Did he really say “Ames” and “NASA” more often than “American”?
FYI, photos from Ames photogs at
https://ails.arc.nasa.gov/G…
America, great, trump didn’t seem to fare that well in the cloud…