Obama Takes A Space Policy Victory Lap
"You almost want to get in and take off, don't you?" @POTUS says. pic.twitter.com/DfAJOGyBWR
— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) October 13, 2016
Interplanetary Frontiers, OSTP: Harnessing the Possibilities of Science, Technology, and Innovation
“At the beginning of his Administration, President Obama set out anew vision for space exploration, harking back to the spirit of possibility and exploration that defined the space race of the 1960s, while building upon and advancing 21st century technologies and capabilities. In 2010, the Administration restructured the U.S. civil space program to look forward to bold new goals, not backwards to old ones; to collaborate with, rather than compete with, American entrepreneurs; and to broaden participation and take advantage of new technologies being created at NASA and in America’s laboratories.”
Lets see. Eight years gone by and what really has been accomplished, specifically in human spaceflight? Still flying circles around the Earth, no way for the US to launch its own astronauts into space and lots of the space workforce laid off. Just sad. What goal has been achieved? Hum, none I think. No new pragmatic breakthroughs in propulsion or spaceflight medicine nor any broad scale returns to help people on the Earth. And we still have no defined goal with proven and sufficient support and unalterable funding. The world works on money and not good intentions and we can therefore not be surprised as to the current state of our space program. And if the President wants to take credit for this then more power to him.
Fair points, but then, what has ever been accomplished in human spaceflight since December 14, 1972 ?
I could not disagree with you more.
Thirty-two years ago, President Reagan had NASA’s mandate changed to include the following:
“(c) The Congress declares that the general welfare of the United States requires that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (as established by title II of this Act) seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space.”
He also signed The Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984. This allowed the start up of commercial launches. But congress have been VERY protective of their gravy train and it wasn’t until 1998 that the dynamic changed again.
President Clinton signed the Commercial Space Act of 1998 that set up the framework for commercial cargo and crew. It would take a shuttle accident in order to FINALLY break the paradigm.
In 2004, President Bush authorized a new space policy, The Vision for Space Exploration. This called for both commercial cargo and crew but it was impossible to get them both funded through congress. Even though the VSE called for no new rockets, The space states wanted their new rockets and the Ares 1 and Ares 5 were born. 12 billion dollars later, the program was over budget and behind schedule and a bi partisan congress refused to fund the Constellation program any longer and sent a budget to the President with no funding.
That brings us to the current head of the executive branch. President Obama, having to fight special interests every step of that way FINALLY was able to get commercial crew funded. Congress made sure it was slowed down by only funding 67% of the budget requests that were proposed. Until the last year.. an election year, they finally approved the full funding request.
President Obama also included funding for the start of commercial space station modules, with the first one currently docked to the International Space Station.
So when you ask: “What goal has been achieved?”
The thirty two YEAR goal of past Presidents and their drive to democratize space and to move it into our economic sphere of activity and so that anyone with the economic means will soon beable to visit space.
I’m not a big fan of Obama, but you gotta give him credit where’s it’s due…and commercial space would be high on that list.
As I think you point out, almost everything commercial in space today had their origins long before Obama.
Commercial space module? If you are talking Bigelow, that originated during first Bush’s SEI as Transhab. Bigelow bought the technology from NASA and was in business 20 years ago, and other than flying a technology demo (Bigelow had already flown several as free flyers before Obama), the current module has no intended use or user and with no follow ons planned. The major new commercial endeavor in human space has been CASIS (also with origins before Obama as an effort to establish an ISS national lab) and Obama owns the CASIS implementation, which has been a dismal failure and yet with no effort to self correct.
So I give credit to Obama for destroying what little was ongoing before eight years ago and for replacing it with nothing.
And remember, while initiated before Obama, chief downfall was the termination of Shuttle, now likely a decade before a replacement of any sort. While he did not initiate the termination, at the beginning of Obama’s tenure was the last opportunity to examine and implement other options, and Obama did nothing thus ensuring its demise.
And one other aspect to this, you would have thought that if there wasn’t going to be an indigenous US capability to launch and fly astronauts, an examination of how to get NASA operations under control, in favor of R&D would have been undertaken. Human space operations continues almost unabated and with little no focus on R&D.
So you can continue to spin Obama’s lies when what we have today is plain to see. Not much of a program, with no meaningful or realistic plan, and with an unbalanced NASA workforce focused on operations when they should have been focused on new development.
You must have failed to actually read what I wrote. I stated it was a THIRTY-TWO YEAR goal by SEVERAL past administrations BOTH Republican and Democratic. I stated President Obama is moving towards the culmination of ALL executives in the white house.
When President Clinton becomes President I believe you will see the final leg and a true full commercial station in LEO.
I believe they have a pill for that Obama syndrome you seem to be suffering from.
I did read what you wrote. As I started out, as you mentioned everything had been started prior to Obama.
I hope that “commercial transport” to and from ISS becomes an option, soon, because we are no longer purchasing seats from the Russians and we have no other way to get astronauts on board the $100 billion investment. Obama helped to terminate what we had available, and he did the minimum to get anything new ready to fly.
“a true full commercial station in LEO”. Right now we are not making much use of the first $100 billion station, so I am not sure what anyone would do with another station. WHo do you think would pay for it? If you really think this is a possibility you’ve probably been smoking some of that weed that Obama imbibes in.
If its a commercial station the firms renting space on it will pay for it.
Reading this blog for many years, it’s easy to identify and ignore commenters’ political predispositions.
Sometimes that requires ignoring their entire comment history.
Think stall and delay tactics….
The 2000s Congress replaced depot centric (use DOD fleet) with CxP which included Ares I, a LV that could not get off the ground due to solids (added by Nixon to Shuttle, not liquid strap ons) and Orion, a capsule that could not even return from an asteroid,forgot Apollo 13 adopted the lunar architecture to Mars. Obama?
The GB 2005 Ares I flaw was known at conception, but it took until 2010! to morph it into SLS (who would launch a 6mT capsule on a 100mT LV) because of stall, ‘just say no’.
GW passed Medicare Part D (presc. drugs) –76 % of the 96B will come from General Revenues, have done nothing to roll back its costs, blame ACA and spout ‘limited government’ and refuse ‘government regulations’ to cut taxpayer costs, or to make guns safer (SMART weapons).
Reagon passed No Child Left Behind replacing Head Start…someone is losing ground. They support charter schools that can bypass ‘gov regulations’ to funnel money anywhere. Creating competition diffuses resources, in more ways than one.
The election is rigged, yet how many states are controlled by what party that gerrymander districts and run the booths? Trickle down shifted 80% of new income to the top 1%..so how do these failed policies retain votes? Scorched earth marketing and character assassination? Climate change isn’t real?!
There are tremendous opportunities for new jobs and markets but it has taken USG looking after the interests of all because of the limits of capitalism.
https://youtu.be/l_htSPGAY7…
Presidents take the credit and blame for NASA programs, when their real culpability is on who they choose to appoint to lead and how hard they fight for the NASA policies they care about. Obama transition team, OMB, OSTP obviously supported commercial space and did what they could to build upon many good programs that had started in the past. But when Obama caved to Senator Nelson on his Administrator appointment, it was clear he wasn’t going to be strong enough to stand up to Congress. He showed this time and time again – his “deal” on SLS/Orion etc. The fact that he is still giving speeches and making appearances for commercial space is a testament to a couple of key staff members who have been able to get his attention on space occasionally and direct it to the most interesting projects.
Space advocates read too much into what presidents say on space.
Ever since President Kennedy space has become a check box issue. A President must say something on it to check the box, but as long as the pork keeps flowing to keep the southern Congress critters happy they are able to move on to more important issues.
The only real requirement Presidents have for NASA is that there is no serious accident so they won’t have waste any time on it.
There you go again, Vlad…with facts.
Can someone please point out to me the victory in space exploration to be lapped at this time. Sounds like he’s giving us the old “go get’um boys” as he walks out the door. To paraphrase that ‘been there, seen that, heard it before.’
True human spaceflight has been in the doldrums for almost a decade. Thankfully the shuttle fulfilled its promise towards the end. Like all of you I’m tired of the animations. I’m hoping that the seeds of commercialism will blossom and in a few years (of more frustrating waiting) we’ll see astronauts launching from US soil. Hopefully the initiative will be maintained now for the long run, NASA can successfully plan succession in the future and continuous human flight capability will be something the US can maintain as a priority.
“Thankfully the shuttle fulfilled its promise towards the end.”
I don’t think it did. Not even remotely close. But then, I’m old enough to actually remember what was originally promised. Please note, I am not blaming those who built and flew the thing. I’m blaming those who made the promises.
I’m old enough too, it built something big in orbit, and that was the original intention according to the von Braun paradigm. Ok so we didn’t go to Mars in the 1980’s – but it was satisfying to see the shuttle assemble the ISS.
So what about the promise of a “space truck” providing cheap, frequent access to orbit? That wasn’t inherent of Von Braun’s Mars concept and it also didn’t materialize
I agree on that point.