56 replies on “Who Speaks To The President About Human Spaceflight?”

  1. This administration has left NASA missionless, hapless, and hopeless. Until Obama leaves office, NASA will drift aimlessly like so much flotsam in space.

    1. NASA will remain on the wrong course until Obama leaves office because it will require the 2016 elections to alter Capitol Hill and provide the first year of a new presidency to provide the chance to change course, set NASA on the right track.

      Congress is the problem. Since the 1990s, Congress has progressively become more corrupt and intractable regardless of who is in the White House.

      1. The midterms might shake up congress a tad providing a little more leaway on some space issues. Mitch ” I never met a fillibuster I didn’t like” McConnell might be on the way out …

        1. The track I would advocate is for space advocacy groups to organize politically for the 2016 general elections. What little that can be done now is: 1) keep politicians from making a Mars flyby the “first mission” for SLS/Orion, 2) passing HR 3625 that makes terminating SLS/Orion even more difficult. They are organizing to some degree. For example, sending an entourage to Capitol Hill last week but from the summary on Planetary.org, it wasn’t encouraging… but you have to start somewhere.

          One thing that is more clear today is that USA needs to quickly end our dependence on Russia for our human spaceflight. It is a strong argument for increasing funding to Commercial Crew to assure that at least there are not further delays or better yet, the timeline for commencement is moved up. Realistically though, throwing vast loads of more funds at the problem would not gain anything more than 6 to 12 months. So we are stuck with Russians flying Americans to ISS for 2 or 3 more years.

          1. The President’s original budget, 6 billion over 5 years for commercial crew and the fully funded new domestic engines for med. heavy lift…. it sure is an “I told you so” moment but no one in the administration is using that right now… they should be exploiting it

          2. I agree the best, and only, path to avoid having to depend on Soyuz is Commercial Crew. Increasing the Commercial Crew budget at least to match the Administration request is essential to achieve this in a timely manner. Cuts to Commercial Crew have already prolonged our dependence on Soyuz for at least a year. And the amount of money involved is only about $250M/year, less than one twelth what is being spent on SLS/Orion.

            What I cannot come to grips with is how the money being spent on SLS/Orion, now over $3 billion per year, plus significant overhead, provides any geopolitical, commercial, or scientific return to the US taxpayers. Is a Republican president going to ask for a tax increase to pay for an indefinite campaign of lunar and Mars bases at an additional $3B per year? I don’t think so. They see what happened to Gingrich when he even mentioned lunar bases. In Florida. So SLS/Orion will never have a mission and will eventually be cancelled, more than likely, like Apollo, by the next Republican president. The money will be lost, and we will have nothing to show for it.

            If you don’t believe that, try to get Congress to appropriate money for lunar and Mars missions. The $12 billion that will probably be spent on SLS/Orion before it is cancelled would accomplish a great deal more if it were devoted to aeronautics, science, and technology development.

    2. As opposed to every other administration, right? There’s never been a cohesive long-term plan for human spaceflight, and that isn’t likely to change any time soon.

      Fortunately, that’s not all that NASA does. There’s more to space exploration than human spaceflight. Imagine how many truly amazing exploration probes we could have for the cost of just one year of SLS/Orion development cost.

      1. Bush at least gave NASA a direction: Vision for Space Exploration … flawed as it may have been. The goal to return to the moon was at least credible. This asteroid thing ain’t. No one takes it seriously. At least no one in Huntsville I know of.

        For whatever it’s worth, the best part of Vision for Space Exploration was the goal of establishing a permanent presence on the Moon. And what is our goal now? Who the hell knows?

        1. And Congress immediately got a new Administrator Griffin who tossed out the VSE with the “60 day study” and gave us the ESAS .. which did everything the exact opposite as was laid out in the VSE.

          1. The VSE contained few specifics, but it is hard to see how Constellation violated it. The plans for Constellation were presented to Congress by O’Keefe while he was still Administrator. The _only_ additional NASA funding suggested by president Bush was $200M/yr for five years, a total of $1B. http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/548…

    3. This administration has left NASA missionless, hapless, and hopeless.

      While Obama did not help (nor did Congress), the NASA management, and this includes managers in place today as well as Griffin and Constellation management all did a great job setting NASA up for this collapse. They should have kept Shuttle going a little longer and planned a transition and they did not. Orion is not now and never was the first step towards a practical and sustainable architecture and the technical difficulties, costs and extended schedule for its development has condemned NASA to live without an indigenous human space flight capability. Even if Orion flies on something like its current planned schedule (already a decade behind the plan nine years ago, its not sustainable and will not lead to reduced cost access to space, which should have been the priority. The ONLY hope is for one of the commercial suppliers to put human capability in place SOON. The longer Orion continues the more damage it does to NASAs HSF programs.

      1. They could not have kept the shuttle going a little while longer. As soon as President Bush announced, in Jan of 2004, that the space shuttle was to be retired in Sept 2010 the production lines started closing down. As soon as they built enough parts to finish out the launch manifest those production lines were torn up and rebuilt, tooling and dies etc all gone. By the time President Obama came in the Shuttle was already and done deal. The President did manage to get funding for the last two flights that effectively used up the last of the shuttle parts. It was going to take YEARS and BILLIONS to get those production lines built, staffed and up running. Where were the billions going to come from? what would have to be defunded in order to moved those billions to the shuttle?
        As wayne hale wrote on his blog.. the shuttle was dead by the time Obama came in and would have never got the funding.

        1. They did not need to add more flights so no additional hardware was required. They needed to slow the flight rate and begin to move people to alternative jobs. Instead they maintained the flight rate, finished the flights, laid everyone off and lost a lot of expertise. Now they have no flight program and no capability to put anyone in orbit, have lost a lot of experience and yet the budget is about the same.

          In my estimation it was poorly planned, injurious to a lot of people, and left the US in a compromised position.

          1. I believe that the flight rate could not have been dragged out. President Bush said that NASA would meet our international obligations and finish the ISS by launching their modules. President Obama did extend the Shuttle past the 2010 date into 2011. What expertise was lost? How to service a space shuttle? The Nation had no plans of building another shuttle program. I do not see what three crews for inspecting and replacing damaged heat shield tiles were for, the three crews for rebuilding the engines after each flight, NASA was moving towards disposable engines. Under O’Keefe, a lot of the shuttle personal were going to get laid off. When Griffin came in a new plan, the ESAS was adopted and saved a lot of jobs in congressional districts. What was poorly planned was President Bush not standing up for the VSE and allowed NASA to downsize and allow that 200 million a month goto actual hardware.

          2. You seem to be thinking backwards.
            First, NASA and Griffin did not come up with a workable and sustainable strategy. ESAS was not am implementation of the Vision. Orion’s design is a mistake which we are seeing in the ridiculously high costs and ridiculously long development phase. There were many easier ways to do the job.
            Second-you ask what are those people for, working on heat shields and engines? They were for maintaining a US HSF capability, It something we no longer have and will not have for many more years.
            Keeping Shuttles flying a few years longer would have taken care of many people and allowed them time to transition to the next program. You learn to care more about people.
            Third, for those that could leave, we did not need to maintain three separate crews of people if we reduced the flight rate.

          3. I believe the point was that when the shuttle was retired those workers would be retired also because NASA was going to move to commerical, as per the VSE.

          4. “ESAS was not an implementation of the Vision.” I have read both, and it’s hard for me to see where they differ.

    4. What makes you think it’s Obama’s fault? Do you really think America has enough money for another Apollo program? And if it did, what practical benefit would it provide?

  3. The fate of human spaceflight through NASA depends on the 2016 election. There are two paths possible. SLS and Orion could continue, become operational and NASA can operate their exclusive launch capability at a high cost. With commercial alternatives now present, year after year, it will be more obvious that SLS and Orion are very costly. Under this scenario, they will be phased out by around 2025, in my opinion. I don’t see any way they continue in light of the changes occurring in the commercial sector; dramatic drops in cost. And under this scenario, NASA can undertake a single manned Mars flyby-like mission with SLS/Orion. A possible outcome of continuing SLS and Orion is a $1 Billion annual increase, promoted by Shelby and House republicans to finance the hardware needed to give SLS and Orion that something to do. The second possibility is that the 2016 elections opens a brief window where a new president and changes in the House and Senate can make a change of course and halt SLS and Orion and choose commercial for both all manned launches and the payloads needed to travel beyond LEO; using integration of hardware in LEO and later fuel depots to reduce costs further. The difference in the two scenarios is 10 years and about $50 Billion. Using humans to Mars as a mile marker, it means a choice between the 2030s or the 2040s.

    1. “NASA can undertake a single manned Mars flyby-like mission with SLS/Orion”

      No, they can’t. Orion would require upgrades from what is now planned and SLS would require an upgrade to the next gen upper stage. A mission module with adequately redundant critical systems and adequate radiation protection. Orion is at best an over sized, over mass Apollo CSM replacement for lunar missions.

      One of the funnies this discussion precipitated is that Orion is not a capable interplanetary vehicle or a capable interplanetary return vehicle. Which is funny because Lockheed and NASA people have been claiming for years that Orion is required over Dragon since Orion is designed for interplanetary and Dragon is not. Orion is not either.

      Without an immediate infusion of a lot of money and clear definition of the mission and support of its requirements, substantial upgrades, and expansion of the hardware deliverables, this is not happening.

      .

    2. Rocky,
      There are no commerical alternatives to Orion or SLS. This makes a reasonable cost comparison difficult at best. Note that both of those vehicles are architected to permit the development of other necessary hardware (landers/ascent vehicles and habitats) for human mars missions on a flat inflation adjusted budget. Note that much of the hardware developed for SLS/Orion are to be reused in the other elements.
      For a perspective on NASA HSF spending: we spend more on sustaining ISS ($3B per year) than on SLS and Orion development combined.

      The launch vehicles and spacecraft you seem to be thinking of are suitable only for operating in low earth orbit. If you want to expand humand presence into the solar system you need vehicles like SLS and Orion (in addition to landers/ascent vehicles and surface habitats).

      In other words, your suggestions are reasonable if you are soley interested in maintaining the ISS centric industrial base that has been stuck in low earth orbit for decades.

      1. SLS (block 1) and Orion have development life-cycles extending well beyond that of Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 and the human-rated Dragon. SLS is only reaching Critical Design Review this year while Falcon Heavy has a launch date sometime this year.

        Both Orion and Dragon are suited for only re-entry from Lunar excursions and will need upgrade to travel and return from further out (re-entry). Both are only suited for launch and re-entry. A habitat is needed for inter-planetary travel.

        Falcons are just as suitable for travel beyond LEO. F9 has carried payloads to GTO. F9 and Heavy can put payloads into transfer orbits to Mars or an asteroid. But whether SLS or Falcons, NASA will need larger transfer stages. Surely, NASA has more plans for upper stage development for SLS but just look at the billion dollars wasted on the J2X, an engine to no where. If all you want is a flyby of Mars, SLS can do this but at what cost? Beyond such a flyby, NASA will need much more total impulse to deliver the materials for a Mars mission to the surface. This is where we need to honestly look just 5 or 10 years into the future and realize how much we can save by going commercial.

        The resistance to NASA using the innovative (“disruptive technology”) SpaceX developments is tragic. It is due to the power of entrenched corporations such as Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, their ULA, ATK and others. This stands in the way of NASA taking advantage of a technological opportunity.

        Politically, it is difficult to stop projects like SLS and Orion. It is hard on the engineers involved but NASA can be fair to these teams and contractors have clauses for early-termination.

      2. There are no commercial alternatives to Orion? Well considering OIG stated that the four person, disposable, water landing Orion is going to cost 16.5 BILLION to develop I would have to agree there is no commercial, gold plated, gem encrusted, alternative to Orion. But consider this … why would you want another 16 billion dollar commercial pork pie alternative?

        A commenter complained about commercial crew on the Space Politics blog and stated this:

        Chris wrote:

        “Further, all this bravado-talk about Commercial Crew developing new man-rated capsules, is turning out to be a huge joke! Sure, they’ve got us unmanned cargo craft to visit the ISS, but designing & successfully flying a manned craft is going to prove to be way too hard of a task, for these hobbyists.”

        A great answer was provided by Michael Kent:

        “Let’s see. Boeing designed and built the Mercury capsule, the Gemini capsule, and the Apollo capsule. They were the prime contractor for Skylab. They designed and built the Space Shuttle orbiter, performed Shuttle payload processing, and as half of USA refurbished the Shuttle between flights, including the Orbiter Maintenance Down Periods. Boeing is also the prime contractor for ISS, having designed and built the truss and designed the American pressurized modules and built the first few.

        Boeing also designed the manned X-15 and unmanned X-40, X-37, X-43, and X-51 spaceplanes and the Delta Clipper, building all but the X-43.

        In short, every vehicle in which NASA has ever sent a crew into space was designed and built by Boeing. To you, this makes them a “hobbyist.”

        Meanwhile the prime contractor for the Orion MPCV, Lockheed Martin, has never designed or built a manned spacecraft of any kind. I suppose to you this makes them a “professional.”

        There’s a reason why Lockheed is taking 15 years and $16.5 billion to take a four-man expendable sea-landing capsule and Boeing is taking six years and about $2 billion to take a seven-man re-usable land-landing capsule from start to first manned flight. And it isn’t because the faster, better, cheaper one is a hobbyist.

        “Prediction: by the time Inauguration Day, January 2017 gets here, NOT a single American astronaut will’ve been flown, on an American vehicle.”

        That would still be 4-1/2 years before the first manned flight of Orion, which started four years earlier.”

        1. Is this what was said on the forums? I guess give some more years and the names along with knowledge McDonnell and North American will disappear when the last of those born in 20th century die of old age.

    3. Rocky, I will be amazed if even one presidential candidate actually says the words “Fuel Depot”.

  4. Keith,
    Neil Tyson is a huge supporter of human spaceflight, and I’m surprised you aren’t aware of that. In my opinion that picture represents a spectrum. On the left we have Bill Nye (actively dislikes humans in space), in the middle Obama (couldn’t care less), and on the right we have Tyson (believes NASA would languish without HSF).

    1. Is Tyson asking Congress to support full funding for commercial crew? Is he supporting the asteroid mission? Is he asking for full funding for HEOMD? In order to support something you have to say that you support something – not guess that people think you might.

      1. Here’s Tyson’s testimony before the Senate:

        https://www.youtube.com/wat…

        And here’s the written version:

        http://www.commerce.senate….

        It’s vague, yes, but do you really need him to promote your specific, favorite program(s)? He’s there to raise NASA’s profile and generate broad support for the mission of exploration (human AND robotic), which
        hopefully translates into greater funding for that work. This speech and related work became the basis of the Penny 4 NASA movement, AKA “we ought to double NASA’s budget because it’s that important to our future.”

        Your cynicism isn’t helping.

  5. The notion that the private sector is going to provide some magic super discounted free ride to Mars or anywhere else is ludicrous — at best. Elon Musk didn’t get rich by giving away his services or equipment. He did it by making a hell of a profit on everything he does. We need to stick with what we are developing and actually complete it. If we need more money to explore space with humans — and we do — we need to ask for it and make sure we get it. Democrats or Republicans, the price for exploration won’t go down. Congress needs to face that and kick in to let us move forward. We are like kids who keep going in a circle instead of moving ahead. Let’s finish the job and get on with the business of exploration. SLS and Orion will be nearly if not fully completed by then and ready for what ever we ask them to do. So let’s quit bit–ing and get on with it.

    1. thats nuts… you believe that a government porkpie program sets the real world market prices? Russia was selling seats for 20 million until the shuttle was retired by President Bush and then suddenly 70 million a seat… We do not need more money… we need the porkonauts in congress cut out of a national TRANSPORTATION issue… something NASA should not even be a part of.. we do not ask a government agency like NASA to design any other form of transportation for a reason.

  6. I don’t know if that is true. Tyson has spoken of the importance of NASA funded human spaceflight in contrast to commercial space, but he is not against human spaceflight.

    Bob Clark

  8. As a member, I think the Bill Nye and the Planetary Society are strong supporters of Human Space Flight.

    http://www.planetary.org/bl…

    Defending planetary science budgets doesn’t mean you don’t support human exploration too.

    1. Is Nye asking Congress to support full funding for commercial crew? Is he supporting the asteroid mission? Is he asking for full funding for HEOMD? In order to support something you have to say that you support something – not guess that people think you might.

      1. I believe the primary focus of the lobbying is Planetary Science, but the white paper is clearly in support of HSF. I expect Bill Nye and Neil Degrasse Tyson are in favor of fully funding all these programs. Remember the 1% campaign? Regarding commercial crew, there was a significant SpaceX presence at Planet Fest including the prototype Dragon with the super-dracos. Elon Musk spoke at the co-located Mars Society meeting and the Planet Fest party. I believe the majority of Planetary folks want more HSF not less, but at the same time more Planetary Science funding, not less. The founder of the Planetary Society Carl Sagan in his book “Pale Blue Dot” is very much in support of human exploration.

      2. I wanted to say something about the National Space Society. I assume their primary focus is on HSF but they also support robotic exploration. I would hope that NSS and the Planetary Society coordinate their lobbying efforts since I expect there is some overlap in membership. I’m a member of both.

  9. The Impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The question is going to arise from different camps as to what the US
    should do with its dependence on Russia for human spaceflight. Right
    wingers in Congress will take advantage of this and call for escalating
    the budget for NASA to build NASA’s own in-house capability. Costly –
    not reasonable but profitable to the old-time contractors. But the
    fastest path to freeing us from Russian dependence is to accelerate
    commercial crew by delivering more funds to SpaceX, Sierra Nevada and
    Boeing, across the board. And its a lot more cost-effective than raising
    the NASA budget by several billion. We are stuck with Russian flights for while no matter what we do quickly but an accelerated Commercial Crew could cut the time from maybe 2017 to 2016, sooner if in a real rush. Just depends on how bad circumstances get and no one who is rational wants direct conflict between NATO/US and Russian forces.

    1. As much as I like the thought that this crisis will focus minds, I’m pretty sure that, should there be a serious breakdown with the Russian Federation, restoring US-indigenous crewed launch will be fairly low down on the agenda, if considered at all.

      1. Sure low priority but still discussions will begin. If the invasion stops at Crimea, then Russia will face financial repercussions but something not so severe that Russia would retaliate by cutting off gas supplies to western Europe. If it gets that level of east-west conflict, then you see funding increases for Commercial Crew Program. And it will likely still take two more years even if you dumped a billion in the program.

    2. Rocky have you seen anything from an American politian on this yet? I would have thought the some members would have jumped on this.

      1. Ukraine crisis might be yesterday’s news already. The Crimea is now Russia’s consolation prize. It will not be returned ever or it will be a long while. If it escalates due to the “surrender” ultimatum Russian troops gave Ukrainian troops and/or Russia invades eastern Ukraine, then Washington politicians with NASA interests will start talking. Russia might just hold here and we will see what the UN, EU and US does to impart the repercussions they are all warning of.

  11. Keith

    You suggesting that either of these professional entertainment CLOWNS influences the white house on Human Spaceflight,is a joke. Right?

    1. I’ll assume you don’t follow science. Clowns? You do not get what they do. They bring science to the masses in an understandable way and excite people, especially young people, about science, something that is very much needed in a country that is so bad at science, is so anti-science, and has an alarming level of scientific illiteracy.

      Name calling, as you do, has no place.

      1. Mr. Squared

        To call a professional clown a clown is not name calling. When my children were young I recall watching Bill Nye the science guy with them. I even recall Bill being dressed up as nasel mucus.You may note that I didn’t find the three stoggie joke funny either. As important as these men’s job may be as teachers, I find the thought of them having a lot of influence on the direction of our Human Space program obsurd.

        Our manned space program is very important. It should be to overcome the physical and economic hurdles to make it possible to settle outer space and near by planets. This settlement push, should go hand and hand with a robotic space machine revolution that paves the way to future resources for man kind. Our future survival will most likely depend on what we do today.

        Isn’t the fact that some media personalities can(COULD correction for Mr. Squared) influence our space program be a lot the problem?

        We have no solid plan to get us off this rock. And if we have to wonder which clown is buddies with the president we never will.

        1. We’ll since there is no knowledge of them being advisors to the President on space exploration, your fears are at best misplaced.

          When evidence in hand, let us know. Note that a photo is not evidence of anything other than close proximity during the imaging process.

          1. Good! I hope you are correct sir.

            And with tools like photo shop most likely the photo is evidense of nothing.

            Why did you choose to pick on me instead of the Larry moe and… joke? Hummm?

            Only two more weeks till we get to see another small step perhaps giant leap in rocket history.

            Your favorite Spacex fan Mr. Squared 🙂

            PS Please note that I asked Keith if this was a joke in the first place before you went off, as I knew you would, on the definition of a clown.

            Good evening Sir

    2. Bill Nye (aka Planetary Society CEO, I believe Tyson is on the board) and the Planetary Society and all it’s members regularly lobby the white house and congress.

  12. Does the NASA Adminstrator speak to Obama about human spaceflight? I recall he was once an enthusiastic supporter, but that was in a previous job.

  14. A man walking on the beach finds lamp, out pops a genie.
    “You have one wish.”
    Man says: “I want to live forever.”
    “Sorry I can’t do that one.”
    Man: “Ok, I want to live until Congress fully funds manned space flight.”
    Genie, smiling: ” Good thinking.”

  16. A critical problem NASA and our nation faces is the increasing politicization of people both inside and outside the agency. The basis of one’s opinions becomes the idea that one person or political leader is good or evil and therefore anything he proposes is good or bad. Anything that happens that we don’t like is the fault of “evil people”. Anything good is the responsibility of those we consider virtuous. There is no room for reason or discussion, no room for science or debate that is needed to find the best answers to questions that have no simple answers.

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