U.S. Science Envoy Program (2018)
“The Honorable Charles Frank Bolden Jr., (USMC-Ret.), recently retired from service as the 12th Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). At NASA, Bolden oversaw the safe transition from 30 years of Space Shuttle missions to a new era of exploration focused on full utilization of the International Space Station and space and aeronautics technology development. As a Science Envoy for Space, Gen. Bolden will promote American leadership in space exploration and emphasize the importance of commercial opportunities.”
India won’t re-invent wheel with human mission: US space envoy, The Times of India
“Major General Charles Frank Bolden, the former NASA administrator who has been appointed the US’ first space envoy, says there’s no reason for Indians to be apprehensive about the Indian Space Research Organisation’s proposed human spaceflight mission as the space agency won’t be reinvent.”

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

8 replies on “Charlie Bolden, Space Envoy”

  1. Re-usable launch vehicles are a hot topic of discussion, especially on the cost front…

    The jury is still out in my opinion. We shouldn’t make an early
    judgment that re-usability is the solution to drive down cost as we
    don’t have enough data to make any firm determination. We tried it for 30 years with the space shuttle, but we couldn’t make it a cost-effective programme because we consciously chose to take apart the entire shuttle and put it back together after every flight.

    But there are examples of reusable vehicles…?

    I am only saying that it’s still early days. The commercial airplane business would have never got off the ground if they had to take every engine out and inspect it after every flight. Companies like South West showed that if you can’t land, spend 15-20 minutes and roll again, you are not going to make money. That was a business innovation for commercial airlines business, and that is what Elon Musk is doing with SpaceX for space launches. He’s changing the model and the paradigm. The thinking is to launch, come back and recover, load it up again and launch and have inspections only once in around five flights…Will he ever get there? I don’t know.

    Oh, come on. There have been 18 flights on reused SpaceX boosters in the past 3 years, if I’m reading Wikipedia correctly. Some of those went up more than twice. The argument here is basically “We couldn’t make it work in the shuttle, so it hasn’t been proven to work, except by the people who’ve proven it, but that wasn’t shuttle, so I’m suspicious.” Are you still on someone’s payroll?

    1. I don’t want to give him too much benefit of the doubt but I think it’s possible that he just poorly worded an opinion that reusability is not necessarily by itself an automatic cure-all for reducing launch costs, and he used the Shuttle as an example perhaps for an audience that isn’t as familiar with that part of the Shuttle’s history as we are. He seemed to indicate that he believes that reusability has the potential to greatly lower costs but since it’s still early he’s not quite ready for some reason to believe that it will be “the solution to drive down cost”.

      Then again he got the facts wrong on the post-launch tradition of beans and cornbread, referring to it as “beans and sausage”. Although the beans were apparently cooked with ham, but that’s probably stretching benefit of the doubt a bit too far.

      1. For sure. The Administrator has a difficult job in the best of times. And this Administrator is a smart guy, able to see the wall, and the handwriting. He’s simply doing a dance.

    2. I’m torn. On the one hand, I think he’s being too hard on reusability. There is evidence (and good logic) that reusability will reduce cost. The example of the Shuttle simply proves that it isn’t automatic, and some reusable designs aren’t worth it. But he even says that was because “we consciously chose” to build something that had to be taken apart and put together between flights.

      On the other hand, I don’t think we have a good example of a reusable launch vehicle reducing costs. The Falcon 9 is the only one on the way to proving this. So far, we’ve only seen one or two reflights per first stage, and from the turn-around time, they have been doing some non-trivial work between flights. That’s not yet the promised ten flights between major maintenance and perhaps a hundred over the rocket’s lifetime. We don’t know what the turn-around work costs. And we don’t know what the attrition rate will be. Until we see serious cost numbers (which will come in the form of what SpaceX charges for a launch) we don’t know how good this example of reusability will be.

      Remember, the cost of a launch was quite low before they reflew anything. I’m waiting for the launch costs to fall even further before being completely convinced. Of course, there’s no particular reason why SpaceX would lower the cost. They’ve got plenty of customers at the current price, so they could just keep it the same and pocket the savings provided by reusability. I don’t think we’d ever know.

      1. So. You’re a “show me the money” kinda guy, amirite? It goes along with the scientific bent, one supposes. And in this case, while at first I wondered where you are going, in the end I think you’ve nailed it.

        But: posit Mr. Musk not able to do the ‘quick turnaround’ that is imagined: wherein he lands the boosters, fuels them, screws on the payload, and away we go. Or that there’s a week required during launches of the same booster, while something more time intensive is required.

        Even so, Mr. Musk has changed the mindset of many interested in access to space. He has shown that the sort of gargantuan overkill that was our beloved STS is the wrong direction, and that some sort of “stick” design will be with us for a long time. More important he’s changed the conversation. Compare, for instance, what’s known about human evolution: yes, humans and chimps share a common ancestor, so long ago; but humans for sure did not evolve from chimps. Similarly rockets.

        And, no, I can’t fit Dream Chaser into this amateur assessment.

        And what about the Administrator’s comments, you might ask, in which he talks about STS? I’d say that the Congressman walks a very fine line and serves many constituents.

        And I’d say that, at least in some sense (and this is a little painful): what Administrator Bridenstine says on the subject just doesn’t matter.

        1. Sure. I was commenting on the proven value of reusability and how reusable the Falcon will prove to be. But, as you say, even if they don’t get much mileage out of reusability, SpaceX has really changed things.

          Just yesterday, in connection with a concept for a planetary mission a colleague is thinking of, I looked up what various rockets could launch towards Jupiter (assuming an Earth gravity assist.) A fully expended Falcon Heavy outperforms a Delta IV Heavy. That’s more payload, for about a third the cost, with no reusability. Reusability will only make that better. I’m just not sure how much better, and how much we can really expect for a first-generation reusable vehicle.

  2. My wife and I have connections in India, and so try to keep up with the issues there. Space is far from center stage, but the criticism comes from a predictable place: “With all the problems we have here on Earth…”

    India has problems, in spades. But they manage to run a lean and admirable space program. Ordinary Indians revere high tech and ISRO is a shining example.

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