Commercial Crew Did Not Start With Trump. Just Sayin'
With respect Mr. Administrator, the @Commercial_Crew program started in 2010 – and you took over as the head of @NASA in 2018. I am thankful for the continued support from you and the Administration but if there is a President to thank for this milestone, it’s @BarackObama pic.twitter.com/eIUHYgGRvW
— Garrett Reisman (@astro_g_dogg) May 23, 2020
Chart from Commercial crew update at NASA NAC HEO committee meeting https://t.co/3PszBJt8nx
FWIW this slide is presented by the Trump administration about @NASA successes & is the probably best “Thanks Obama” evidence WRT their 8 yr support of commercial crew. Just sayin' 😉 pic.twitter.com/l9qT0SbacP
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) May 13, 2020
Funny, I got criticized in a posting just the other day that Trump would claim credit for this. No surprises here.
No there isn’t, and the fact that he is claiming credit for it demonstrates that he knows how to be President of the United States.
taking credit for someone else’s work isn’t presidential. Trump might be in office when it happened, but he’s not the one the started the program.
By taking credit for something he did not do? Hardly presidential.
I didn’t say that it’s Presidential. Presidential is an ideal that all of us non-Presidents aspire to. It exists in the same land of beer rivers and unicorns that fart rainbows. I said that it is what Presidents do.
If anything goes wrong it will be this Administration that will get the blame by the media, not President Obama, so that gives President Trump ownership of it. Reward goes with risk.
Unless of course President Obama is willing to claim responsibility for anything that goes wrong from his cutting NASA budgets/programs and by doing so forcing astronauts to use commercial spacecraft to reach the ISS.
wait, last I checked, the House approved the budget–which was ran by republicans. You can rightfully blame Obama for signing it, but equal criticism must also go towards republicans since they passed the budget Obama signed.
Well by that logic since the House Republicans approved funding for Commercial Crew the Republicans also are responsible for it. And as the nominal head of the Republican Party that allows President Trump to take a bow on their behalf for it.?
You’ve made that comment many times, and each time it is just plain silly.
Example: the House passed another round of Covid spending a few weeks ago, as n example. The WH said ‘DOA’. The Senate went home.
How is it “silly” to point out that blame–and praise–doesn’t deserves to be thrust upon one party? It takes BOTH parties to pass a budget. There are lots of negations going on behind the scenes that make it possible to pass. The only time one party deserves all the blame (or praise) is when one party has a majority in all 3 branches.
Exactly, it is time to heed President’s Washington’s words and end the partisanship in Washington. Also it is well to remember there are also the civil servants at NASA who have it in their power to help make a program successful, or if they wish, establish barriers to its success as may, (I say MAY as we don’t know the details), have been the recent case with Doug Loverro.
Keith is absolutely correct about this and it needed to be said. Further, constant republican under-funding of commercial crew in general and Space X in particular while pouring money on SLS slowed progress until is was almost a decade until crewed flight from the United States.
Commercial cargo and crew had plenty of enemies on both sides of the aisle. and don’t tell me it didn’t I have religiously watched the different committee meetings going back to 2009.
Yes senator Shelby is a cretin but so is his counterpart.
It was bipartisan under-funding and to state other wise is untrue.
No the Republicans fought commercial crew as a unified party.
Keith some of the biggest proponents of Commercial Crew/Cargo and Commercial spaceflight in general were republican’s ie Dana Rohrabacher,John Culberson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Kevin McCarthy and plenty of other’s too.
I’t isn’t as black and white as some people would like to make it out to be!
Just like the boondoggles of SLS and Orion
there are plenty of critters on both sides.
And they had little impact on what Republican House and Senate appropriators did at budget time when they gutted commercial crew to pay for SLS/Orion.
And yet the Dem’s weren’t too bothered because Commercial Crew/COT’s was originally only a justification for the SLS/Orion programs to get the go ahead.
I don’t doubt for one moment, that most behind the SLS would have ever expected Commercial Crew to actually happen and the money just sent to the SLS/Orion programs.
Isn’t it obvious in SLS’s design that it’s actually meant to go to the station? Given it’s fairly under-powered. Also look at Orion’s design why has it become so heavy?
As pointed out by other posters both cant fly to the moon and dock to a Ascent/Descent Vehicle like Apollo did.
Coincidences I think not….
SLS was not meant to go to ISS. Do some research before you post this sort of nonsense here. Seriously.
Do yours Keith.. Orion and SLS were the backup for ISS crew access from the start..
The prime mission for SLS and Orion was not ISS. They had that ability but at a horrible cost and immense inefficiency. They were not intended for ISS. This argument is at an end.
There might still be some dilusional Congressfolk including it in their letters to Santa Clause.
You seem to forget Orion was supposed to be launched to Earth orbit by the diminutive Ares 1. NASA was chasing its own tail because Orion was too big and heavy and the SRB, even lengthened, did not have the throw capability. Orion got smaller several ti mes. Ares upper stage for bigger. It was a good demonstration of NASAs poor aerospace engineering capability. There is a reason Orion is more than a decade late.
Orion on *Ares-1* was the backup plan to ISS. Remember Ares-1?
Keith is right. While SLS/Orion never really got a defined Program Of Record mission (unless you count ARM), it was always understood that it would be a BEO mission.
You may be thinking of plans mooted to use Ares I/Block I Orion for ISS transport, as part of Constellation. But Constellation, too, always had BEO as its target. Using it for ISS transport was simply a secondary use of it.
Can anyone explain why the Orion crew capsule remained so large, after its Congressional resurrection in 2010? A capsule mass which directly impairs the capacity of Orion to do beyond LEO missions?
Who made that decision? NASA? Congress? And why did anyone in the Obama administration let that happen? Who was in charge?
Who solidified the SLS+Orion configuration back in 2010, that NASA is forced to live with today?
it was designed for SLS to lift – not for smaller rockets to launch.
Orion was meant to be heavy from the get-go. A Design Feature, if you will. Mike Griffin made it so, to make it too heavy for any other existing rocket (Atlas V or Delta IV) to carry it. Therefore, we must have SLS…. and the rest is history.
Yes, I know that Griffin probably sized the original Orion so that it was too heavy for something like an Delta IV or Atlas V, preserving a rationale for using the Ares I as the launch vehicle. In fact, the original Orion was going to have a capsule diameter of 5.5 meters! At least that came down to 5 meters.
But that does not explain why Orion remained at that size after the Bush administration was over and Griffin was out.
Since Obama cancelled project Constellation and then Congress resurrected Orion and mandated the SLS, NASA should have had a clean sheet with which to continue Orion and not been limited by any of the rationales of Griffin. Yet Orion remained essentially unchanged, except for substitution of the Lockheed-Martin service module with the so-called “European Service Module”.
So who made the decision at NASA, sometime from 2010 to 2011, to keep Orion with the same overweight oversized crew capsule? That Orion capsule obesity is at the root of many of the problems NASA has today with crafting a lunar mission, from too little Delta-V for the Orion to too little excess payload capacity of the SLS.
Yes, Dr. Michael Griffin was probably the worst Administrator NASA has had, not only pushing his Planetary Society Study Architecture on Project Constellation dooming it to failure, but also for killing the OSP Program that actually had a very good chance of minimizing if not preventing the launch gap. Boeing’s CST-100 on an Atlas V is basically the same architecture they proposed for it.
Astronauts, and one in particular wanted the Orion big in order to fit a private potty. Based on the Dragon, If stripped of steam gauges and hard wired switches an Apollo would ha ve had a lot more room.
Although the 2010 Authorization Act did specify that the Orion capsule would be an alternative to Commercial Crew to service ISS in an emergency it did not mention the SLS which was not designed yet. Instead the Orion was expected to be launched on another launch vehicle.
Since it is now too heavy to be launched on most rockets it is unlikely to be considered to be an option although an effort to fund a study in 2017 did try to revive the idea of it being an emergency option to service the ISS. Incidently the requirement for the Orion to be able to service the ISS if needed is still Federal Law.
From 42 USC 18323: Multi-purpose crew vehicle which is based on the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. The link below shows the wording of the law is still in effect as of May 23, 2020
https://uscode.house.gov/vi…
“(3) The capability to provide an alternative means of delivery of crew and cargo to the ISS, in the event other vehicles, whether commercial vehicles or partner-supplied vehicles, are unable to perform that function.”
Thats your legal interpretation of the act.
Quote from Senator Aderholt at the House Appropriations Science Subcommittee, April 8, 2014
“to fund Orion and the SLS closer to their authorized amount’s, in order to ensure they can meet there authorized role for being the back up for crew transportation to ISS in 2017”
Quote from Bolden in regard’s to SLS and Orion being the back up to commercial crew at that same committee:
“If I don’t get money to bring about commercial capability, Then we will have to revert to government capability to get our astronauts to LEO and that will divert funds away from exploration, away from the mission for which SLS and Orion have been designed”
The SLS did not exist in 2010 when the authorization was passed, it was still just a proposal for a Heavy Lift vehicle, so it couldn’t be mentioned in it.
(1) IN GENERAL.—The Space Launch System developed
pursuant to subsection (b) shall be designed to have, at a
minimum, the following:
(D) The capability to serve as a backup system for
supplying and supporting ISS cargo requirements or crew
delivery requirements not otherwise met by available
commercial or partner-supplied vehicles.
You keep making the same point and you need to stop doing so. The prime purpose of SLS/Orion was Moon, Mars. A back up capability was to go to ISS for contingency purposes. You are now a troll which seems to match your fake name and avatar picture. Go that?
The 2010 NASA authorization act expressly called for a super heavy lifter capable of delivering 130mT to low earth orbit, and that it should launch by the end of 2016. Clearly, Congressional leadership was aiming for something pretty big.
But the RAC teams Bolden put together in 2011 to figure out how to do it, with the funding available, quickly determined that these were utterly incompatible goals. Congress could have it big or they could have it fast, but not both. NASA managers then shifted into trying to phase in SLS’s development, which is how we got Block 1 (only 95mT to LEO) as an interim launcher, until Block 1B and Block 2 could be developed. (Of course, even Block 1 turned out not to be “fast” either…)
Of course, what NASA’s teams *also* figured out was that kerosene/LOX fueled alternatives consistently graded out better than Shuttle derived architectures across the board. But since that wouldn’t have made use of legacy contractor and center workforces (as required by Congress), that option was dead in the water.
The initial SLS capability for 2016 was the 70MT version. However it was supposed to advance in follow-on years.
Presidential budget requests are only suggestions of intent…even with a Congress of their own party. Presidents and Congresses have different priorities.
Indeed. And the irony of this opposition was not lost on the commenters here: pro-business Republicans in opposition.
As I recall the opposition was based largely on the contracts, and related. Some, though, felt that the government ‘should not pick winners’; this was, and remains, about as asinine a statement I’ve ever heard.
The current lunar landing effort is similar. NASA simply said: get me from orbit and onto the ground (this being a stunning simplification, but it’s to the point).
And the irony of this opposition was not lost on the commenters here: pro-business Republicans in opposition.
It’s another example of how often pork trumps principle on the Hill.
And just look at the HLS awards: The only vocal opposition expressed so far on the Hill over the past month has come from Kendra Horn and Eddie Bernice Johnson. Who both have certain contractors and subcontractors in their congressional districts.
Excuse me? A lot of us Republicans supported it. When there was zero political payoff in doing so.
Hi James I’d just like to say that I hope that you will take Great pride at the launch on Wednesday.
You are a true Champion and have led the way with your tireless efforts, That haven’t gone unnoticed, Far from it. Take a bow!
And Thank you good Sir.
NASA’s paltry investment paid of handsomely, pointed out recently by Mr. Berger:
https://arstechnica.com/fea…
A lot of the opposition to Commercial Crew (and concomittant support for SLS, which got overfunded) was definitely Republican. No doubt about it.
But it’s worth noting that Democrats retained control of the Senate until January 2015. Republicans could not have gutted Commercial Crew funding in FY2011-15 all by themselves.
An obvious bunch of snicker-worthy know-nothings.
Edmund Burke: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it”. These guys? They will repeat mistakes, then claim victory.
We now return viewers to their normal non-partisan programming.
According to Barlett’s Familiar Quotations, Burke said “People will not look forward to prosperity who never look backward to their ancestors.” From Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wi…
We now return to…checking our foundations.
Technically, what the Administrator stated is accurate. The launch is taking place ‘under’ the current admin’s management. [I suspect he chose his words carefully.]
Did not CCP at least partly (and tortuously) grow out of the original framework inside VSE (Steidle’s plans for OSP/OST) and then commercial cargo (Griffin), which began under GWB? The Obama admin certainly deserves the credit for formerly embracing & launching the CCP program, but it had roots. Didn’t it?
Yes, COTS-D as shown below.
https://www.nasa.gov/conten…
and
http://nasawatch.com/archiv…
and
http://nasawatch.com/archiv…
But with Project Constellation gone it became NASA’s only hope to launch Americans to the ISS so it was rebranded the Commercial Crew Program so NASA was no longer restricted by its agreement with SpaceX for a COTS-D follow on and could open it for wider bidding since Orbital ATK already elected not to do COTS-D. NASA wanted more than just SpaceX as an option.
Again, working within those arcane acquistion guidelines…
Incidently, President Obama’s early funding of COTS-D likely signaled his intention to keep his campiagn promise on Project Constellation although it was recognized until his speech at KSFC offically killing Constellation as the program of record.
Yes. In my opinion; Constellation didn’t need cancellation, just pragmatic alteration. Because here we are; a decade on in effect trying to resuscitate it with Artemis…
Yes, the SLS/Orion took the place of Ares I/Orion while commercial heavy lift is taking the place of Ares V.
The Orion could have been shifted to the existing Delta IV heavy and been kept as an ISS option.
Yes, and, I’m always setting folks straight on which President actually canceled the Space Shuttle too. People don’t like stopping to read anything longer than a sound-bite.
And which president cancelled Apollo (Richard Nixon) . We had a system that landed men on the moon, and we had paid a fortune for that capability. Then we walked away from it. The Soviets dropped their jaws on the floor. It could have been so much more. Did he cancel it because it was initiated by Kennedy? Quite possibly.
As with the rest of this discussion, there is SO much more to Nixon’s decision than what you are insinuating here. The COUNTRY essentially cancelled Apollo; we’d won the Moon race and the public was emotionally (& financially) done with it. While I wish things had gone differently, Apollo was on the way ‘out’ starting in 1966.
The one thing I would fault the Nixon admin for with no caveats is cancelling Apollos 18 & 19 (Apollo 20’s hardware had already been diverted into Skylab). That hardware was already in the pipeline so this decision is a perfect example of an admin being penny-wise & pound-foolish.
I often wonder if it was just the money or if the close call on Apollo 13 caused the folks involved to count their blessings and decide to move on before a crew was lost. A good gambler knows when to quit and count their winnings.
That was absolutely part of the mindset, even among NASA management.
The US public, except for a month or two right around Apollo 11, was not supportive of Apollo, particularly the amount of money being spent. NASA leadership was deeply concerned about killing an astronaut and having to leave him on or orbiting the Moon. That was not a legacy they wanted. They felt they had met the national goal on Apollo 11 and that Apollo was a dangerous system, likely to kill someone. Apollo might just as easily have been terminated even earlier than A17.
I think the reason they went as far as Apollo 17 was to satisfy the science community by sending a real geologist to the Moon. They likely decided that once that box was crossed off the list they could safely quit.
Johnson terminated Apollo and Saturn production after 1966. Nixon had little to do with Apollo other than a famous phone call and visit a returning Apollo 11 crew. Nixon was responsible for approving Shuttle. Carter tried to terminate Shuttle but was unsuccessful.
Yes, Bush announced Shuttle would be shut down, he then kept it going as long as would be required. It was under Obama’s leadership that Shuttle was terminated, then Constellation, then NASAs vision was redirected to nonsensical asteroid missions, and the ability to launch astronauts lapsed for nearly a decade. Trump has been vociferously prospace. If Trump loses later this year NASA may soon be back on the Obama plan.
I’m just going to cut and paste my response to a similarly misinformed post from earlier: Ugh – this is so frustrating! When I arrived on transition in November of ’08 I found it was too late to extend the shuttle beyond two more flights (I asked Gerst and this is what he told me) – so we added those to the budget – which Bush/Griffin were not funding. We also found that the replacement (Ares/Orion) would not get to space until 2017 – but it needed funds from de-orbiting ISS in 2015, so there would be no where for it to go. We put COTS -D (~350M) funding for SpaceX in the ’08/’09 stimulus bill – but acting Administrator Scolese and Shelby took it out and put it toward CxP (it equaled their monthly burn-rate – so there is that). President Obama’s first full budget request had an increase of $700M for NASA and a $6B increase in the 5-year run out. It started commercial crew at $500M in yr one and had a $6B 5-year budget for its development. Congress and self-interested industry refused to fund most of this budget request and forced us to keep the CxP contracts at ~$4B a year. This left very little money left for Obama priorities – commercial crew, technology development, earth sciences, 21st century infrastructure improvements etc. It was difficult to justify additional increases when the Hill just kept taking money from our priorities (commercial crew and tech) and putting it into their own – SLS and Orion. So we did everything possible to reduce the gap – we extended shuttle and prioritized commercial crew. I’ll try to finish the book to get you the whole story… lots of twists and turns!
Thank you, Ms. Garver, for the facts, troubling as they appear, at least to some; and, for joining the fray, at least while you are able.
If there’s any justice, you’ll be more directly involved later this year.
I agree. Ms. Graver is probably the only hope of VP Biden having a rational space platform.
The plan was to continue the shuttle long enough to finish building the space station, and Obama followed the plan. His experts recommended that Constellation be terminated, and he followed their advice.
I didn’t like the way he did it, his “been there done that” attitude towards the Moon, or the cancellation of the Mars date without a follow-up.
Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh?
Leadership is more than simply creating new government programs. It is also the wisdom to continue with an existing program in order to reach a goal faster. So in this case President Trump choosing to continue support Commercial Crew instead of killing it and going in another direction is also leadership.
Yes, and I recall that during the transition that course was not a sure thing. Trump’s knee-jerk reaction to anything with Obama’s name on it was to kill it. Instead he doubled down on it and continues to put both action and reatoric on the commercial crew and fixed price contracting side of the NASA equation.
I think NASA was ‘forced’ to rely upon the commercial program under Obama and that it was less a strategic decision to support the commercial effort. Some NASA leaders were dead set against it at the start. Several other decisions might have been made. Obama could have continued Shuttle changing the Bush decision. Initially it would be by stretching out the time between missions. Many of those who had developed Shuttle wanted efforts made to fix it. But then current NASA leadership was scared of Shuttle and wanted all the Shuttle dollars to go into Orion so Shuttle was shut down as quickly as they could. Remember Orion was going to be flying crew to ISS as early as 2011, or so said its program manager only a few years before. But Sally Ride and Norm Augustine showed that the late teens, 2017 or 2018 was more likely for Orion to be available. Now in 2020 Orion still probably wont carry crew for another 3 years and that was after having got all the money and turning the Service Module responsibility over to ESA which scavenged the ATVs out of the ISS budget. And given that there is no reusability and the expense of every mission and every Orion launch, Orion can no longer be relied upon for ISS at all. Remember in 2007-08 Orion was supposed to be carrying crew to ISS. Is there any evidence that Obama genuinely was supportive of Commercial Crew or was it just what was left and the least cost? Remember Obama wanted no part of the Moon because Buzz had already done that. Years were wasted on ficticious and useless asteroid missions. Trump has accelerated and focused the program back on the Moon and commercialization. I am afraid that if Trump loses this year NASA will be headed back to nowhere.
Yes, President Obama pushed the human space flight program at NASA into a decline that is only now being reversed a decade later after his “Photo Op” speech at KSFC in April 2010. And given the Democratic Party’s desire to kill anything associated with President Trump it is likely that Artemis will be killed as soon as a Democratic Administration takes power especially given the lack of support by the Democratic members of the House Committee overseeing space.
And what leadership has Trump shown? Running around playing cowboy isn’t leadership.
He once said that NASA was closed before he took office. That is the biggest bunch of horse manure. But that’s to be expected from him.
Ongoing NASA programs don’t always get carried across with changes in Presidential power transitions. This one did…without enthusiastic Congressional support. Trump could have killed it and didn’t and for that we do owe him a (perhaps begrudging) thank you.
I know this is a novel concept, but why can’t we thank BOTH presidents?
I’m glad to see that Obama’s support for commercial space is being recognized, but the Trump administration also supported Commercial Crew for 3.5 years. And Bridenstine’s job hasn’t been a cake walk, both providers had serious ground testing failures, one of them also had in-flight testing failure, it took serious work to get the program back on track, I think he should get some credit for that.
Trump has said that NASA was closed before he became President. That is ridiculously untrue.
The reality is that President Obama did cut NASA budgets during his Administration with NASA receiving far less money during his last year in office than when he took over. And even though the decision was made by the Bush Administration to retire the Shuttle President Obama did nothing to speed a replacement system to reach the ISS to close the gap. Since for many Americans basically see NASA as being about human space launch NASA did “close” it in their perception. And it is perception that counts with voters.
Tell me, do you know how the budget process works? Because last I checked, republicans AND democrats passed those budgets Obama signed.
Yes, the President takes the lead in proposing a budget and then Congress acts on it after negotiating with them and the Senate. Which parts of the President’s budget survive depends greatly on which parts Presidents are willing to invest political capital fighting for.
Er, the Senate is part of Congress…
Yes, that should have been House, not Congress. But the key is its a give and take process in building a budget. And Presidents spend their political capital fighting for what is important to them.
and then as soon as President Obama opens his mouth mcconnell screams fillibuster
Ugh – this is so frustrating! When I arrived on transition in November of ’08 I found it was too late to extend the shuttle beyond two more flights (I asked Gerst and this is what he told me) – so we added those to the budget – which Bush/Griffin were not funding. We also found that the replacement (Ares/Orion) would not get to space until 2017 – but it needed funds from de-orbiting ISS in 2015, so there would be no where for it to go. We put COTS -D (~350M) funding for SpaceX in the ’08/’09 stimulus bill – but acting Administrator Scolese and Shelby took it out and put it toward CxP (it equaled their monthly burn-rate – so there is that). President Obama’s first full budget request had an increase of $700M for NASA and a $6B increase in the 5-year run out. It started commercial crew at $500M in yr one and had a $6B 5-year budget for its development. Congress and self-interested industry refused to fund most of this budget request and forced us to keep the CxP contracts at ~$4B a year. This left very little money left for Obama priorities – commercial crew, technology development, earth sciences, 21st century infrastructure improvements etc. It was difficult to justify additional increases when the Hill just kept taking money from our priorities (commercial crew and tech) and putting it into their own – SLS and Orion. So we did everything possible to reduce the gap – we extended shuttle and prioritized commercial crew. I’ll try to finish the book to get you the whole story… lots of twists and turns!
Gerst was not a fan of continuing Shuttle regardless of whether it was simply stretching time between missions or trying to add more flights. Maybe he told you what he wanted you to hear. Obama redirected NASA to an asteroid (which did not exist). For the next 7 years NASA went in circles.
I agree.. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Isn’t the acting Administrator suppose to follow the wishes of the President? If so why didn’t his actions have consequences if he redirected the funding? or did they?
Also I think that it would have been very unlikely Congress, not to mention the Russians, would have allowed the ISS to be retired in 2015 even if that was in the plan for Project Constellation. That means that Congress would have been forced to find money to fund it and Ares I/Orion as well as the program of record. It’s no different than the money they keeping putting into the JWST despite its delays and budget issues. Indeed, I suspect that given the resources sunk into it ISS will stay in orbit and be used as long as it’s functional. Only after an anomaly makes it unsafe to occupy will it be dropped into the ocean.
Also if Gerst was the last word on it why were there were individuals in Congress like Rep. Kosmas who strongly believed the Shuttles could be extended? I know it was a supply chain issue, but there are ways of restarting supply chains even if expensive and difficult. And yes there would have still been a gap until the new supply chain kicked in although it would have likely been much shorter. In any case It will be interesting to hear the full story on it eventually instead of just the bits and pieces that have come out on it so far.
And BTW, if anyone deserves credit for Commercial Crew it’s you as you kept fighting for it so long.
“Isn’t the acting Administrator suppose to follow the wishes of the President?”
This comment must be taken in a different way hen it comes from a learned man such as yourself, Professor.
Following this logic, each House/Senate member would need a poll of some sort in advance of any vote. She is to accede to the wishes of those represented, isn’t she?
No. In fact, the degree to which a representative diverges could be a measure of leadership; the People retain control of the seat by the simple expedient of the next election. But this is not news.
Except the NASA Administrator, and Acting Administrator, is the politically appointed director of the agency who serves at the whim of the President. One email/phone call by the President and they are gone as Administrator. So it is really no different than someone who works for you being told to purchase trees and they decide to spend the money on sod instead. If you did not approve of their actions you could fire them for that. ?
You are correct and the answer is that it would have been in the President’s purview to replace him with a different person as acting administrator. The issue didn’t surface to senior enough White House officials, so the President was not made aware. From the end of transition – January 20, until confirmed July 15 – I had to leave the agency, awaiting confirmation.
I really hope that you write that book. It will be important to hear from someone who was there what actually happened in this critical period of NASA’s history.
Whi!e Ms Garvers statements clarify some things to some extent her statements are a bit self serving. Obama did not lead human space flight; well perhaps he was leading from behind. The prior human space programs were destroyed under Obama. Obama’s asteroid mission did not survive; in fact was never real. First they would go to an asteroid. But Orion did not have the capability to reach any sizeable asteroid and so finally the mission became to retrieve a boulder (later just a small rock) from an asteroid. In the end no ne of it made any sense at all. remember Obama’s goal was to turn NASA to stud ying global warming; you can study it all you want but in the end humans have very little effect on climate.
I agree with most of you what you wrote. However,Shuttle could not have been improved or even continued operating. It was past the time to give up the ship. After 2 vehicles & 14 people lost, the weaknesses of the system were visible to anyone looking. There would never be a way out of a failing shuttle and that became unbearable. The supply chain could not have been restarted because many components were obsolete. The right answer was Commercial Crew. NASA now has two capsules to take people to LEO. All we need is additional components, (service modules & landers) on orbit refueling and we can go beyond Earth orbit. Certainly to the Moon and vicinity.
As Wayne Hale noted in this blog post it would be possible to re-establish the supply chain for it, but it would be expensive and it would have taken time to recertify new suppliers. Of course if the civil servants at NASA were opposed to keeping the Shuttle they would have raised the barriers that had to be overcome even higher.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/wayn…
Shutting down the shuttle
August 28, 2008
And as a side note, let’s not forget that similar logistics problems likely had to be overcome to use the Shuttle’s 1970’s era SRB and RS-25 engines in the SLS. But in this case the civil servants at NASA wanted to do it.
Which is why I interpret Gerst saying it was too late to mean that NASA simply wasn’t interested in making a Shuttle extension work.
The quoted Wayne Hale’s blog entry was not optimistic at all, about keeping the suppliers or restarting production by new vendors…. Read it again, Wayne agrees that Shuttle was done. He gave several reasons supporting its retirement.
Wayne Hale, like Gerst and Bolden And several of the Shuttle Program managers before were operations engineers with no experience designing or developing anything. If some design and development people had been in charge Shuttle would have gotten more attention. They introduced another problem too which was keeping Shuttle operations costs artificially high. There was a takeover by ‘operator’s in the mid 1980s which destroyed NASAs human space flight engineering organization and funneled the money to maintain a bigger much more expensive ops organization, NASA and contractor. We’ve now seen how that turned out. As it is now we will have lots of redundant retro capsules none of which have the capability of a Shuttle. And the NASA and Boeing capsule programs have been really poorly managed, way over budget and decades beyond schedule. people seem to forget that the capabilities and experience of the Apollo engineers was lost once Shuttle was first developed.
It was NASA leadership who shut the supply chain down as quick as possible. And they had no interest in restarting it. Virtually everyone involved in Shuttle’s development wanted it continued, improved. and fixed. There were designs on the drawing board for insulation inside the ET, for example, and for upgraded wing leading edges and improved tiles and for aerodynamic deflection of airflow. NASA leadership chose not to study anything and instead would tell Congress that Shuttle had an Achilles heel and that its technology was passe. So now we will have 3 capsules none with the capabilities of a Space Shuttle. I think Musk and his Starship are the right direction and will be real. Space X and Dream Chaser will hold ISS for awhile though the full capability of ISS will never be realized. Maybe with Senator Shelby behind it Orion will one day take people to lunar space. Orion may well be the limit of NASAs human space effort. We are already seeing others move beyond NASAs limitations. Even on the upcoming Dragon flight, NASA is not leading.
Thank you, Ms Garver. Some of you guys pay attention to what she says – the Lady was *there*!!
Looking forward to that book, Lori!
“The reality is that President Obama did cut NASA budgets during his Administration “
You mean his non binding budget PROPOSALS?
“Obama did nothing to speed a replacement system to reach the ISS to close the gap.”
You mean when he proposed increasing the commercial crew program funding and republicans voted to cut that budget proposal?
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Of course you are assuming that more money into commercial crew would have closed the gap. But it appears SpaceX just used the Commercial Crew funding to go in a radically different direction with Dragon2 extending its development time by several years. Since it’s only competition was Boeing it had nothing to fear by doing so. Firms like SpaceX work best when money is tight and they are forced to be creative with their solutions.
The only assumption made were in your statement.
So expain how more money would have gotten Dragon2 flying earlier… As for Boeing, they actually moved fairly fast for an old space firms recycling their OSP. But as we see it still wasn’t ready for prime time given the problems on its first flight.
Well according to NASA, the CSF and the OIG under funding slowed the program down and increased the launch gap.
“Washington, D.C.–Today the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the FY 2016 Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) Appropriations Bill. The bill increases NASA’s budget by $279 million above its FY 2015 budget, but underfunds NASA’s Commercial Crew program by more than $300 million. Failing to fully fund the Commercial Crew program in FY 2016 would result in the United States human spaceflight gap being extended, again, and ensuring further payments to the Russians for launches of American astronauts to the ISS beyond 2017. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Vice-Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, offered an amendment that would have restored the $300 million to the Commercial Crew program, avoiding a further gap and reliance on the Russians. The Committee failed to adopt the amendment.
Full funding for the Commercial Crew program is necessary to support NASA’s CCtCap Contract, as was strongly recommended by NASA’s independent Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) for the safety, reliability and the best schedule performance. The ASAP, in its most recent annual report, expressed concern over the impact of insufficient funding for the Commercial Crew program on contractual obligations: “Under these Firm Fixed Price contracts, the contractor receives pre-determined payments for completion of pre-defined work. If the [Commercial Crew] Program does not receive sufficient funding, the contractor cannot be directed to ‘slow down’ without an equitable adjustment (increase) in fixed price. Alternatively, reducing the scope of certification work to accommodate funding shortfalls could affect safety.”
Last month during the ASAP’s 2015 Second Quarterly Meeting, NASA’s independent safety advisory panel reiterated its funding concerns: “Now that the companies are under fixed-price contracts, it is important for all to recognize that if NASA does not receive the appropriations that it is counting on, it will have a very significant impact on schedule, and we will end up relying on the Russians beyond the 2017 target.”
“We understand that as long as the 2011 budget caps remain in place, Congress will be forced to make tough tradeoffs regarding funding priorities,” said CSF President Eric Stallmer. “With that said, fully funding NASA’s Commercial Crew program should be viewed as a priority, as strongly recommended on numerous occasions by NASA’s independent Aerospace Safety and Advisory Panel. We applaud Senator Mikulski’s effort to amend the bill, which would have responsibly funded the Commercial Crew program at this critical stage in development and safety certification. While Senator Mikulski’s effort came up short today, we look forward to continuing to work with the Committee to find ways to fully fund the Commercial Crew program and avoid unnecessarily extending our reliance on the Russians.””
http://www.commercialspacef…
Not surprise they said it, but saying it and detailing why are two different things. Remember the Falcon was launching the Drago Cargo to the ISS as part of COTS in that time frame so it should have been simple for NASA to have put together a price/to do list of what was needed to use it for crew to ISS.a price which I suspect would have been within those funding limits.
It sounds instead that a decision by NASA to do a clean sheet program was really the major factor in the delay. It may be another example of FAR getting in the way of doing what clearly needs to be done to accomplish a goal.
Wrong. Congress cut Obama Administration requests.
Because he wasn’t willing to spend political capital fighting for it. So overall NASA budgets went down under his Administration.
And remember what President Truman said about where the buck stops.
Isn’t it important to remember the context of the times?
The takeover of Congress by Democrats in the 2006 election? The economic crisis of 2008? The takeover of the U.S. House by Republicans in the 2010 election?
As I recall, between the economic crisis and the partisan gridlock in Congress, all Federal spending was in a sort of limbo, as well as the NASA budget.
Probably all presidents have cut the NASA budget since Kennedy.
He’s only passed 2 NASA budgets. His first year in office was an Obama era budget.
The “origins” story is much longer ago than Bush era COTS. Facilitating entry of commercial practices and companies into LEO transportation probably go back to Reagan, first Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama & Trump. When I was at NASA in the 1990’s we funded Alt Access for commercial companies like Kister, Kelly, Rotary Rocket, CSI and Beal Aerospace as well as DCX, X-33 and Venturstar. Earlier Congressional leaders were also supportive of the concept such as Newt Gingrich and Dana Rohrabacher. Presidents take credit for stuff that happen on their watch and NASA Administrators work for Presidents. Let’s just be glad we have come this far and that companies like SpaceX, Blue, Virgin, ULA, LM and even Boeing are stepping up to the plate! I’ve worked for this day since the 1980’s with hundreds of people and just want it to be successful! As the saying goes – Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
First successful commercial human space flight effort was NASA Code C’s Spacehab (NASA’s Commercial Middeck Augmentation Module), which began under Reagan/Beggs in 1985 and which first flew in 1993. For a cost of around $20 million NASA got turnkey payload in orbit – it included all aspects of engineering, integration, safety, crew training, mission support – for a payload roughly equivalent to SpaceLab which was costing hundreds of millions of $ a mission and which never flew more than about once every couple years. Later Spacehab and the later Spacehab double module were signed up for the Mir missions, and then for ISS, flying every few months. Another effort at the same time was Space Industries Industrial Space Facility, which was not successful because NASA thought it to be competitive with ISS.
Spacehab started earlier as a passenger carrying module for Shuttle. The idea was converted to a module to supplement the middeck for carrying either locker or rack sized payloads.
Your persistent predilection for citing first-person facts, Ms. Garver, is really annoying 🙂
(And appreciated; thank you).
Actually it goes back the Clinton Administration and the passing of The Commercial Space Act of 1998, this is congress called on NASA to acquire both commercial cargo and crew services. Congress only paid it lip service though as the space states representatives and senators never provided any actual funding for it. It was the space shuttle accident that the executive branch actually used to get their foot in the door for commercial services and start COTS.
“TITLE II–FEDERAL ACQUISITION OF SPACE TRANSPORTATION SERVICES
(a) In General.–Except as otherwise provided in this section, the Federal Government shall acquire space transportation services from United States commercial providers whenever such services are required in the course of its activities. To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers.”
https://www.nasa.gov/office…
What you may not know is that that provision, while it sounds good, was actually weaker than the law governing NASA at that time… but the provision extended the coverage to DOD and NOAA as well. We did this to force DOD towards buying commercial launches.
Title I of the Act also mandated commercial resupply and crew transfer of ISS. I wrote that section of Title I.
I agree. I am not a fan of the current president but you are correct on this one. All presidents take credit for anything that happens during their time in office.
Not like this.
Ok. Nothing Trump does is like, “anything” else. =)
And don’t forget how he always gives a shout-out to NASA during his State of the Union speeches when other President tend to skip over it.
On another thread. If there is a delay it’s quite possible he may return for the second attempt. Remember he doesn’t always do what is expected.
I do believe the very first commercial use of Human Space Flight was the Get Away Special (GAS) Program. Before the Space Shuttle took it’s first launch, the Get Away Special (GAS) program was formed; codified into Code of Federal Regulations: 14-CFR-1214.9.
Users paid $500 deposit to reserve a flight on the Shuttle; then plunked down the remainder of their $2500 or $5000 launch fee once integration processes started. Users were from the commercial, government, international, or education sectors. (Pricing increased over time with Domestic educational users paying between $3000-$10000, and other entities between $8000 and $27000)
The GAS Program provided the users either 2.5 or 5.0 cubic foot canisters for their experiments. The crew enabled experiment power via switch in the flight deck.
GAS payloads were used to provide center of mass balance for the Space Shuttle, and few either on the side wall or a cross bay carrier in the Shuttles Cargo Bay.
Dr. Gil Moore of Utah State University, still building and flying student satellites today, in his 90’s, was the first GAS customer aboard STS-4 in 1982.
167 GAS payloads flew from 1982 thru 2002.
It was an amazing program that along with the Hitchhiker and Student Experiment Module (SEM) program utilized/optimized available up mass on the Shuttle; giving the American tax payer the most cargo bay payload for its money. Commercial payloads also flew as Hitchhiker experiments.
These programs were terminated post Columbia accident, as NASA did not want anything in the Shuttle cargo bay other than ISS assembly components.
I got to know Gil Moore when I was a college student in the 70s. He’s still active. An amazing man who always takes time out for young people.
We all can debate this here for eternity, however, regarding the general public (most haven’t heard of Artemis or SLS before) will basically get the message it was Trump that started commercial space (I mean really, anyone else besides us same 25 or so people here going to look up the history?). Though this mission is notable as first HSF from US soil, it will be tarnished with Trump’s attendance (he ain’t a poster boy for widespread admiration). I think backlash will also be a blemish for NASA as many general public suffering economic hardship and very few are actually involved with the space program.
Yes, some will say the overall space program will bring economic benefits (all boats will rise) but I’m pessimistic. I see enormous wealth growth for some, ever increasing tent cities for many. If you examine you will see those that go into space are a very exclusive few, we may see numbers increase but I think more along the lines of those with expensive business jets. Unlike when many were excited during the Apollo program, i.e. my grandfather was in his sixties during that time meaning he was in his 20s when crossing the Atlantic by air was very daring and dangerous. So back in my days I figured when I will be an old man, I can buy a ticket on the Pan Am Orion to go to orbit and have a drink at Hilton Space Station 5. We’re 20% into the 21st century and still doubts about landing on the moon.
Of course if something happens a lot of folks here who do know the history, along with the national media, will blame it on his Administration and be looking for blood, especially from President Trump and Administrator Bridenstine who he appointed. The Congress, especially the Democratic House, will be having hearings and be denouncing Commercial Crew as Republican Corporate Welfare. I wonder, when the witch hunt starts, who on this thread will be praising President Obama for it, or join the rest in blaming it on President Trump.
Reward goes with risk in leadership.
Even just the brief portion of Lori Garver’s book released today clarifies a lot of things: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/0…
Before everybody get crazy about Bridenstine’s tweet…read it again…he said we are once again “launching” under Trump – factually correct.