O'Keefe And Grunsfeld Support Biden's Space Vision
Joe Biden is the best choice for space progress, Opinion, Sean O’Keefe and John Grunsfeld, Florida Today
“Biden knows that NASA has accomplished a great deal by evolving and adapting to rapid change. Through his public service, Biden has had an important influence to forge bipartisan support for NASA. Seeing the vast potential of the burgeoning commercial space industry, the Obama-Biden Administration helped NASA seize opportunities to extend our exploration reach and conduct its other important activities. The recent NASA/SpaceX launch of American astronauts to the International Space Station was set in motion by a strategy devised in the George W. Bush Administration and enabled by policies established by the Obama-Biden Administration and is yielding results now. After the Falcon 9 launch in May, Biden noted, “We planted the seeds of today’s success during the 2009 Recovery Act. According to NASA, it has now saved taxpayers up to $30 billion and invigorated an aerospace industry in Florida that accounts for more than 130,000 jobs in the state.”
For advocates concerned space never gets enuf attention during presidential campaigns, O'Keefe's endorsement of Biden is significant. Don't forget, he was a two-time GOP appointee. Also remember the @BarackObama @JoeBiden administration was very supportive of commercial space.
— Alan Ladwig (@SpaceArtAl) July 29, 2020
As a scientist, highly experienced astronaut, associate administrator, and mountaineer, John has exceptional insight into the proper scope and direction of our space program.
Except that if he is endorsing a vision that has no plan attached to it he is no better than any other politician.
I wonder what vision they are speaking of? Biden’s message did not seem particularly clear what he was supporting. Until I see some details I am assuming Biden’s plan is a continuation of Obama and Obama did no favors for the space program.
Honestly, this is what I’ve come to expect from any campaign regarding NASA support. Everyone supports NASA, but specifics are always lacking, often until months (or years) into the actual Administration. You’re just not going to get details out of a campaign.
Agreed. Campaign platforms are political documents, meant to build coalitions and avoid offense as much as possible. The platform is not the right place to look for policy directions. For that, past performance and who they’ve hired as advisors are the best guide.
who laid the ground work for commercial space ? wasn’t it Obama ?
COTS was started under George W. Bush as part of the VSE. Everyone since then had a hand in making it happen of course.
And COTS was based on Alt-Access proposals that were even older.
The current commercialization efforts go back to Reagan and Beggs in the early 1980s. Remember the original purpose of the station was for commercial use. That was why Reagan supported it, to start new industries and commerce in orbit. Spacehab in the 1990s showed that commercial completion form contracts were an order of magnitude or more, less than NASA cost plus. Commercial cargo and crew were a low cost insurance policy in case Orion took longer than the 5 years that Griffin was counting on. It looks like it will be closer to 20 years until it flies.
No disrespect to VP Biden, but how can people endorse his “space vision” when he’s never laid one out? The Obama administration made some good and some bad decisions about space, but what does Joe Biden think we should should do now? One paragraph of draft text in a party platform isn’t enough to judge anyone’s vision.
As others have said before me, Joe Biden has not put out any sort of details. We can assume that he would probably continue the Obama plan which would put emphasis on commercial space like Boeing and SpaceX. I could live with that but would like to see more specifics.
I’d love to know more and I’d love for him to be an enthusiastic supporter. However, this year, it won’t be the issue I’ll be voting on.
If O’Keefe has remained the NASA Administrator we would probably have return to the Moon by now as the NASA planning committees would have never proposed the crazy shuttle based architecture that Dr. Griffin forced on NASA. Instead NASA would have gone ahead with the OSP and EOR using existing launch vehicles.
As much as I am a fan of O’Keefe & rue his premature retirement from NASA, I wonder if the SLS albatross was going to show up anyway without Griffin’s ESAS-Constellation juggernaut. Did not Congress mandate the shuttle-derivation of Ares 5 and thereby in turn SLS?
Things indeed seemed like they were proceeding under O’Keefe & Steidle toward smart new ways of accomplishing the VSE, but federal organizations are ultimately (as t-87 here often points out) obligated to do the bidding of the C-folks holding the purse strings who claim to represent the people. Was O’Keefe’s Washington acumen sufficient to head them off or finagle them into accepting the smart new ways?
I’d like to think so, but…I’m not so sure. Pork is an awfully well-established juggernaut which possesses a relentless persistence…one might even call it a sustainability.
No, Congress didn’t get the idea of shuttle based architecture until Administrator Griffin proposed it. Then of course they were all for keeping the pork flowing.
Shuttle-derived concepts were around decades before Griffin took the reins. The pending demise of Shuttle would have brought them forward anyway.
Yes, way back in the late 1980’s Robert Zubrin proposed a shuttle derived HLV vehicle that looked a lot like the Ares V/SLS even to the point of having crew launch on it. But NASA showed little interest in it or similar designs until Administrator Griffin came along and pushed on NASA the architecture he developed in the study he did for the Planetary Society on NASA. Indeed, most of the NASA planning that was going on at the time was looking at either EELV designs like the OSP or designs offered by New Space advocates.
I do not know how history would have unfolded if Administrator O’Keefe had stayed. Neither, Dr. M, do you. Such is the reality (or, truly, lack of reality) of alternate history speculation.
I am only trying to make the point that enough factors were in play during the early 2000s— including SD’ed HLLV designs floating around since at least 1976 (see the Outlook for Space study and even Rockwell’s booklet about STS) and especially the looming demise of STS (which became more real as the decade unfolded), that O’Keefe might have had more to contend with than merely unimpeded implementation of his & Steidle’s specific vision for the Vision.
I think we both agree that Griffin’s choices, however motivated and/or shaped, introduced monster difficulties for NASA’s exploration efforts. [I remember him pointing out somewhere in print or verbally that maximum use of Shuttle assets was a congressional mandate, not necessarily a design-driven requirement; whether he authored or shaped the bill behind the scenes I have no inkling whatsoever.]
O’Keefe’s talents & successes (as much as they were able to achieve prior to his departure) offered much promise, but not certainty.
True, but unlike Dr. Griffin, Administrator O’Keefe was not an engineer and so was willing to let NASA’s engineers come up with the best solution, then he would fight for it in Congress in the language that Congress would understand, costs and benefits. Actually when you think about it all three of the best NASA Administrators (Webb, O’Keefe, and Bridenstine) were non-engineers because the Administrator’s job is not an engineering one, but one of selling NASA ideas to Congress who pays for it.
Indeed. I have thought about exactly these points for many years.
My feeling has always been that Griffin was really a DOD guy at heart and wanted Ares I/V to keep solid fuel tech capacity employed.