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Exploration

NASA's Moon To Mars Town Hall

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 31, 2019
Filed under
NASA's Moon To Mars Town Hall

Town Hall with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine
“Headquarters is hosting an agencywide town hall with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on Monday, April 1, at 1:30 p.m. EDT. Please join the Administrator for this important discussion on our Moon to Mars plans. All employees, contractors and civil servants, are encouraged to participate in person at Headquarters in the Webb auditorium or at the designated viewing location at their center. The event will air live on NASA Television (public channel), through your center cable or streaming distribution, and on the agency’s website at https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

30 responses to “NASA's Moon To Mars Town Hall”

  1. ThomasLMatula says:
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    On April 1st, an interesting choice of days given NASA’s record on returning humans to the Moon, and then going to Mars. I wonder if Administrator Bridenstine is sending a message about what he thinks about it.

  2. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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    I am more interested in the center all hands and how they couch their response. Are they all in and up for the challenge or going to slow roll support saying they need to wait for congress authorization and approriations? 2024 is not far away and waiting six months for fy20 blessing is wasting like 10% of your schedule. Would not be a prudent move for leaders but expected behavior for retired in place managers.

    • spacegaucho says:
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      Well there is a little thing called the law. They are not supposed to divert Congressionally appropriated funds. Years ago some Administrators had the authority to move a percentage of funds around but I don’t think that is still the case. Which begs the question of what game Bridenstine is playing. Is he trying to get more funding for SLS? Is he setting up HSF to fail? Is he serious about reorganizing NASA to do this? If he was serious about this I doubt he would keep going to “(not) the Rocket City (anymore)” to talk about his plans.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        I expect the strategy will be just marking time until after the election. If Preseident Trumps wins, then he will have the power to pivot to commercial providers. If he loses there won’t be any return to the Moon, just the continued slow motion train wreck of SLS/Orion/Gateway. SpaceX and Blue Origin are the only hope for this goal being achieved.

        • Tom McIvor says:
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          None of the Democratic candidates have announced their space plans, so saying that Trump losing would mean no return to the moon ever (as if returning to the moon would be a good reason to vote for him) is rather silly.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            No, it’s just recognizing the climate in politics today. If President Trump is for it, the Democrats must be against it.

            The border wall is a good Illustration. It was started under President Clinton in the 1990’s. President Bush and President Obama added hundreds of miles to it in their Administrations. But when President Trump wanted to close the last gaps in it, and used a more effective design based on the experienced gained with the original sections, the Democrats went bonkers, even though it was a Democrat who started it.

            No, if President Trump is for the Moon it will be required politically for the Democrat candidates to be against it. They may promote the Gateway, or return to the ARM, and of course advocate for Mars since it was the goal of record of President Obama, but politically the Moon will be off limits as a goal.

            BTW it should be noted that the Democrat Chair of the space committee has already set the tone by criticizing President Trump’s cut to science at NASA while calling for a lunar return.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            WOW .. it sounds EXACTLY like the identical playbook the republicans used against President Obama .. ZERO honeymoon.. if Obama was for it republicans were against it.. karma ..

            “The Party of No: New Details on the GOP Plot to Obstruct Obama”

            “TIME just published “The Party of No,” an article adapted from my new book, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era. It reveals some of my reporting on the Republican plot to obstruct President Obama before he even took office, including secret meetings led by House GOP whip Eric Cantor (in December 2008) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (in early January 2009) in which they laid out their daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance to a popular President-elect during an economic emergency. “If he was for it,” former Ohio Senator George Voinovich explained, “we had to be against it.” The excerpt includes a special bonus nugget of Mitt Romney dissing the Tea Party.”

            http://swampland.time.com/2

            It is hilarious that obstructing President Obama was okay .. not a peep from republicans.. heck they CHEERED every time they defeated a proposal .. but put that same shoe on the republicans. and listen to them HOWL

            LOL … laughable ..They were told .. over and over and over and over .. this strategy would come back to haunt them.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Yep, and to bring this around to the topic again, don’t forget President Obama killing President Bush’s VSE and his goal of returning to the Moon, which is why there is no lunar lander to go with the SLS/Orion. Actually when you think about it there was a lot of Democrat opposition to President Bush while in office for “stealing” the election from Al Gore.

            But that just provides more support for my prediction that if the Democrats win the lunar return will be dropped and all NASA will have is the “Gateway to no where”.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            Then you failed miserably to actually read what President Obama PROPOSED. ..I do not mean what he ended up signing .. but what his actual proposed budget was that was turned down. As it was went over on Space Politics LINE BY LINE… it was more inline with the VSE than what came out of congress.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Do you have a link to it? Did it include funding for the Altair?

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            Funny enough, we’re still waiting on SLS/Orion despite the killing of a crewed lander which wasn’t really funded anyway. So is killing an unfunded project really killing it?

            At any rate, despite the back and forth about the destination, funding for SLS/Orion has been consistent (pretty much always funded at a higher level than what the Administration requests).

            I seriously doubt SLS would have flown sooner with more money considering they’re already getting more than they’ve asked for. NASA/Boeing just doesn’t seem to be capable of producing something that actually flies in a reasonable time frame, despite the billions of dollars the program has received.

          • fcrary says:
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            Killing an unfunded project can really be killing it. If there was a plan to use it and to fund it in time to build the hardware in time for the planned use, then it was “alive” despite the lack of funding. That’s happened with things like the Shuttle’s cryogenic upper stage, follow on launch vehicles to the Shuttle, ideas for DSN upgrades and some in space power and propulsion efforts. Of course, if the idea was just a pipe dream and there were never any solid plans to eventually fund and use it, then I guess it was never really alive. I’ll let someone else debate which category Altair falls into…

          • MAGA_Ken says:
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            Obama had a 2/3rds majority in the Senate and massive majority in the House for two years. No amount of Republican obstruction could keep him from getting what he wanted.

            3 Republicans voted for Obama’s 2009 Stimulus package.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            “But when President Trump wanted to close the last gaps in it”

            Unworthy and disingenuous.

            Lots of people are against the wall for a lot of good reasons, chiefly because it’s not always the best security solution.

            There are those who object on political grounds.

            And then there are many who see the President’s language describing our South American neighbors in the most loathsome and abhorrent terms as plainly unAmerican. Add the simple fact that the United Stated stands as a place for refugees to come, and if they can prove their status, find comfort.

        • tutiger87 says:
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          No they aren’t the only hope.

        • chuckc192000 says:
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          This initiative won’t amount to anything except a few lines at Trump rallies about how he’s saved NASA and made America great again in space. He’s not really serious about it. There will be no new funding forthcoming.

      • fcrary says:
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        There’s still a fair amount of discretionary authority in NASA’s budget, certainly at the percent level. It isn’t a matter of diverting funds, it’s vagueness in the language of the appropriation bills. Except for specific earmarks, most of the money is appropriated for fairly general uses. Things like developing hardware to support lunar missions. Congress may have been thinking of LOP-Gateway and lunar landings off sometime a decade from now. But if that’s not in the text of the bill they passed, the administration can redirect that to a lunar lander for a return to the surface in 2024. (Well, there is also a matter of presenting an operating plan to Congress and getting an authorization bill passed, but that’s often full of equally vague language which allows administrative discretion.)

      • Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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        They have center and directorate level innovation funds, cm&o, AES and stmd can focus on lunar tech needs as well before they get the full blessing with fy20 authorization and appropriation language.

        • spacegaucho says:
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          Center level innovation funds won’t get them very far. They were pathetic (at least at GRC)

  3. MAGA_Ken says:
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    They got a plan

    http://www.bigsur-inspirati