Trump Space Advisors Omit Support of SLS, Orion, ARM, #JourneytoMars
Trump’s space policy reaches for Mars and the stars, Op Ed, Space News
“A 21st century space policy requires a bold combination of public missions, commercial solutions and the agility to address real threats and real opportunities. To craft such a policy, government must recognize that space is no longer the province of governments alone. Ronald Reagan anticipated this revolution long ago when he signed the 1984 Commercial Space Launch Act. … Creating the technologies necessary to meet these goals would push us into the forefront of technological development and benefit our economy for decades to come. However, NASA cannot be expected to do this kind of 21st century Apollo-like mission if it is forced to accept outdated operational structures, contracting procedures, and bureaucracies created in the last century.”
Keith’s note: Former congresman, veteran space consultant, and Trump advisor Robert Walker is one of the two authors of this op ed. No mention is made of SLS, Orion, or ARM – yet a list of specific commercial companies and their capabilities – Orbital ATK, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Paragon, Sierra Nevada, United Launch Alliance, Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace is included. Moreover a warning against Apollo-like missions (#JourneyToMars) is made.
“it makes little sense for numerous launch vehicles to be developed at taxpayer cost, all with essentially the same technology and payload capacity. Coordinated policy would end such duplication of effort and quickly determine where there are private sector solutions that do not necessarily require government investment.”
Duplication of effort as in Boeing and SpaceX?
Sounds like in part a bow shot at the excesses of the EELV program. A more modern context is, spending billions on SLS in a market where you have Vulcan ACES, Falcon Heavy, New Glenn, New Armstrong and, good-lord, ITS in the pipeline makes zero sense at all.
“same … payload capacity.” That does not sound like he is planning to cancel SLS as it has a higher payload capacity. Long and hard experience has taught me not to apply wishful thinking to ambiguous statements.
I suggest you take your own advice. The “taxpayer cost” is clearly SLS. It is obvious from Bob Walker’s positions over the years – he is a commercial space zealot (in a good way). There is no way he is suggesting taking the competition out of launch vehicle development. SpaceX has plans for Falcon heavy variants that are close to the “same… payload capacity”. And before you say this is a “paper rocket”… it is no more a paper rocket than SLS is and will certainly launch sooner and much more often – at ZERO cost to the taxpayer.
Of course I agree. But cancelling any major program is difficult, as Mr. Obama discovered.
There are a few things from the Trump camp (not only this statement) that make sense. Every once in a while, before he goes wildly off message- be does call out Gov’t waste of all stripes. Shame not much of that make it through the nonsense. Sure would have been nice to have an issues oriented run.
Just for laughs- (For folks closer to the numbers than I am) I wonder what the contract closeout costs are on SLS, I mean all in- The new engine(s), production line(s), Orion, etc. 3 Billion? 5? I think, unlike Constellation- the SLS pork behemoth is too big/entrenched to stop.
Termination costs are still a lot less than those needed to continue with the charade. NASA CFO Beth Robinson made sure of that! Probably why she isn’t there anymore. NASA didn’t seem to appreciate those who were really looking out for the taxpayers.
“does call out Gov’t waste of all stripes.”
What is waste and what is not waste is subject to interpretation. “I will cut govt waste!” good sound bite but without details it can be anyone’s guess. Many outside this list feel the space program is govt waste and should be terminated.
“3 Billion?”
Yes, it is always $3B. $3B is number used for options presented by Augustine II commission, $3B is what Obama proposed for additional R&D for NASA in 2010, $3B is what Shuttle ops were, $3B is what ISS ops costs, etc. I commented in Paul Spudis blog of this $3B value, Spudis in response to the legendary “$3 billion additional” meme, reminded his readers of his 2012 article, http://www.spudislunarresou… (Part one of five).
There is some art to making up numbers. One, two and five sound too common-place. If you use those numbers, people would think you were rounding or guessing. Three is a good, made-up number because it doesn’t sound like it’s made up. In a similar manner, Senator McCarthy’s claim, that he had a list of 57 communist party members working in the State Department, would have been much less believable if he had said 50 or 60. 57 has a nice, specific sound to it.
Yep, he will hit the reset button if elected. What a surprise.
The deal has already been made to cancel SLS/Orion as a result of better alternatives forward. Another sad attempt at deceit, branding other folks ‘buildings’ as your own.
Real leaders stand and applaud good policy (link below), often at great expense and attacks. Others sit and stall and delay.
The delay was out of the respect and appreciation of the dedicated and very talented workforce. So will “You’re Fired” follow…or will the best interests of the nation be considered?
“Say a hardworking American loses his job — we shouldn’t just make sure he can get unemployment insurance; we should make sure that program encourages him to retrain for a business that’s ready to hire him ” Benefits? –> Kill ACA.
New jobs in the energy sector –> supports coal, oil subsidies, climate change isn’t real,….same ole same ole (>100 sign no climate tax pledge), or deny 50 yrs of oil remain, do nothing.
“We didn’t deny Sputnik was up there (laughter) We didn’t argue about the science (climate change;), or shrink our R&D budgets”) Fortunately, there is leadership to create good policy to create jobs and protect the environment at the same time and balance all of America’s and the world needs.
“How do we reinvent that Spirit of Innovation? Why pass up the chance for American business to produce the energy of the future, producing more jobs at the same time?”
https://youtu.be/cCXSO-3mt5…
Reset button needs hit. NASA’s manned space program should be working on deep space HAB modules, landers, orbiters, and etc. Leave the “taxi” service to commercial crew and create a “commercial HLV” program which will award contracts to no less than two winners (just like commercial cargo and commercial crew). Add to that a “commercial LEO fuel depot” as well.
Between ULA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin, we simply do not need NASA to develop yet another unaffordable heavy launch system.
So we will spin the Washington space policy roulette wheel one more time and hope to win 🙂
“Your lucky number is: None. Your lucky color is: Dead.” (from Neil Gaiman, in _American_Gods_.)
I would have thought that after the Challenger disaster that NASA would have gotten the message that they absolutely should not be in the launch vehicle business anymore. But, Mike Griffin, former NASA Administrator, clearly didn’t get the message and instead was the architect of the Ares I plus Ares V transportation architecture.
Curious comment. How do accidents forbear further activity?
After the Challenger disaster, NASA was barred, by law, from launching “commercial” payloads. The law stopped short of barring NASA from developing new launch vehicles. Also, the Air Force dropped out of the shuttle program as well (they instead used Titan IV followed by Atlas V and Delta IV).
But, I would have expected NASA to rely on commercial launches rather than developing yet another NASA launch vehicle whose flight rate would be limited due to the fact that it could only be used for NASA launches. It is hard to envision any reasonable flight rate coming out of any NASA heavy launch vehicle program due to a clear lack of external customers.
Well done and so pleased (and surprised) to see an official campaign statement of this detail. Trump now makes it extremely clear he would cancel SLS/Orion. The statement “it makes little sense for numerous launch vehicles to be developed at taxpayer cost” leaves little to the imagination. We need to hope that the HRC crowd won’t have a knee-jerk reaction and start supporting SLS/Orion. Her Space News answers avoided the specifics and focused on innovation and commercial partnerships. Not quite as clear what she will do.
Now they are trying to take credit for cancelling their decades old failed policies! Perhaps this is why they call for term limits, so they can take credit as ‘change agents’ –> no *corporate* knowledge. SLS/Orion should not have been built gutting R&D, but now copy policy positions from other platforms. The Rapidly Changing Policy Positions continues…Inconceivable!
“Creating the technologies necessary to meet these goals would push us into the forefront of technological development and benefit our economy for decades to come.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/poli…
http://spacenews.com/38912g…
https://youtu.be/qhXjcZdk5QQ
Last time I checked, Orion wasn’t a launch vehicle.
what details? Is was a word salad.
Compared to some of Mr. Trump’s statements on other topics, I think this was a marvel of clarity and detail. In addition, some of the ideas were not disastrously bad.
Walker is a special interest talking through Trump.
“”In 2001 he was appointed by President George W. Bush to chair the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry. He also served on the President’s Commission on Implementation of the United States Space Exploration Policy (2004) and the President’s Commission on the United States Postal Service (2005).
His name had been circulated as a possible NASA administrator following the 2004 resignation of Sean O’Keefe. He is now on the board of directors of The Aerospace Corporation and Space Adventures, and has served as chairman of the board of the Space Foundation.””
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
“Human exploration of our entire solar system by the end of this century should be NASA’s focus and goal.”
President Obama suggested the same thing, stated we had been to the moon lets go to Mars. There has been no push from Congress to do this, other than funding the monster rocket boondoggle.
“Developing the technologies to meet that goal would severely challenge our present knowledge base, but that should be a reason for exploration and science.”
President Obama’s first NASA budget proposal did just that. It was shot down in congress and the monster rocket sucked up all the funding.
“However, the U.S., working with the international community, should seek new participants in its mission and look to transitioning the station to a quasi-public facility supported by international contributions and resupplied utilizing commercially available services.”
That is exactly what has been happening ALREADY. It was turned into a national lab. Commercial activities are growing. NASA has added a commercial test habitat and has moved towards adding commercial habitat modules.
“However, NASA cannot be expected to do this kind of 21st century Apollo-like mission if it is forced to accept outdated operational structures, contracting procedures,”
NASA is aware of this and that is why it adopted the COTS model and utilizing SAA’s with milestones where companies have to put their own skin into the game.
“A Trump administration would end the lack of proper coordination by reinstituting a national space policy council headed by the vice president.”
Didn’t President Obama already try this by using NACA again? Don’t recall on this one.
“Here, it makes little sense for numerous launch vehicles to be developed at taxpayer cost, all with essentially the same technology and payload capacity. Coordinated policy would end such duplication of effort and quickly determine where there are private sector solutions that do not necessarily require government investment.”
No it is called REDUNDANCY. No more single string fault systems like the Space Shuttle. The Nation needs multiple services providers in all areas of commercial cargo services. Commercial passenger services and commercial destinations in LEO and other points in CIS-Lunar space.
“Public-private partnerships should be the foundation of our space efforts. Such partnerships offer not only the benefit of reduced costs, but the benefit of partners capable of thinking outside of bureaucratic structures and regulations.”
And that is EXACTLY what NASA has been doing starting with President Bush and continued under President Obama.
All in all?
They basically gave a word salad with not one single mention of an actual budget funding line needed or a special program. All we know is it will be great again.
If I were a betting man, I would say this is an irrelevant post because Trump is not getting elected.
What actually will happen under Clinton administration is what the focus should be on.
My bets are on a female head of NASA when HRC is elected.
Lori Garver, who will push more commercial and hopefully kill that boondoggle SLS and Orion.
We can only hope. The SLS/Orion does seem like a huge boondoggle at this point & is taking too long to get launch ready. The SLS/Orion project is delaying American human spaceflight by almost 10 years & costing more than it’s worth. It should be scrapped & replaced by SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System which would be a 100% reusable booster & spacecraft making it cheaper & the spacecraft would actually be capable of going to & landing on Mars unlike Orion which would only serve as a ferry craft to & from a larger interplanetary spacecraft that would be built in earth orbit anyway.
I wouldn’t bet on a female NASA administrator if Clinton is elected. I would expect more female officials at that level, as well as at higher (cabinet) levels. But I would also expect complaints about reverse discrimination. Clinton is a very smart politician, and will probably be careful to diffuse such complaints, by keeping her appointments gender-balanced. My guess is this consideration will determine the gender of appointments she doesn’t really care about. That could go either way, and I strongly suspect the NASA administrator is on the “doesn’t really care about” list.
Lori Garver was her policy adviser that last time Clinton ran. She has already been 2nd in command at NASA which gives her experience.
True, But I am thinking she is after bigger game. Maybe running the FAA. It would fit with her leaving NASA to be General Manager of the Air Line Pilots Association
The FAA annual budget at $16B is slightly lower than NASA; isn’t that how these things are measured in Washington?
Not necessarily. Consider things like media coverage. But by Washington standards, I’d think NASA would be more prestigious than the FAA. The NASA administrator rarely gets front page media coverage, but it does happen occasionally. I can’t remember the last time I saw the FAA administrator mentioned in a news article. I’m not even sure what his or her name is.
I think you’re missing my point. Graver may be an ideal choice when it comes to experience and past work for the new president (assuming Clinton is the next president.) I’m not debating that. I’m saying Clinton may not make appointments based on those qualifications. She might make appointments based on thinking, “I don’t want some jerk on Fox News complaining about 60% of my appointments being women, so I’d better appoint some men. If that means appointing less qualified people, fine, I’ll make sure those are appointments which don’t really matter.”
They forgot to mention Bigelow Aerospace who would be crucial in making low cost inflatable transit habitats for future manned Mars missions & recintly deployed a test version of an inflatable habitat called B.E.A.M. They don’t make rockets or anything like that but they will be important if they want low cost orbital space stations & deep space habitats in the next 5 to 10 years.
Also The SLS/Orion program will not be sustainable in the long term unless NASA’s funding is greatly increased. To make something that is 100% expendable with a partially reusable capsule that costs about $500 million per launch is not a good idea with a tight human spaceflight budget. SLS/Orion should be scrapped & replaced with a commercial alternatave like SpaceX’s upcoming BFR booster & Interplanetary Transport System which would be 100% reusable with some monor refurbishment & could cary crew & cargo or a combination of both to Mars & beyond. SLS/Orion would only be usefull for a few trips to the moon or to a larger interplanetary spacecraft which would take a bunch of cargo SLS flights & crew flights to construct & that would just balloon the cost of a Mars mission tenfold. With a two stage to Mars reusable transport spacecraft the cost would be significantly reduced therefore making SLS/Orion a pointless boondoggle.