That Time Obama Killed A Return To The Moon
Here’s why a Clinton administration might pivot NASA back to the Moon, Ars Technica
“Obama killed Constellation after convening a committee in 2009 that was led by Norm Augustine, which reviewed Constellation and other options for US human spaceflight programs. One of that committee’s members, former astronaut Leroy Chiao, said Monday night, “The Constellation program, frankly, had a lot of funding problems and some pretty serious technical problems. You know it probably was the right thing to do to cancel it. But it didn’t mean we should not go to the Moon.” Moreover, Chiao suggested the decision to remove the Moon as a possible destination was driven by politics, rather than what might be best for the US space enterprise. “Frankly, it came down to us on the committee to not talk too much about the Moon, because there was no way this administration was going to go there, because it was W’s program,” he said. “Ok, that’s a pretty stupid reason not to go to the Moon. I’m hopeful with this election cycle that maybe the moon will be a possibility again.”
And again the pendulum shall swing, to Mars to Moon to Asteroid to Mars to Moon to… And nothing of substance shall be achieved in our lifetimes. 4 years of 50 years, time disappears very fast.
The Moon might “stick” as a destination, though, if they get that international base set up. You’ll have commercial providers for the supply and crew runs who will then become a potent lobby for their preservation and possible expansion, helping to sustain it for potentially decades.
I agree that commercial logistics, including prepositioning supplies and equipment for individual missions, should be given very serious consideration.
But, though less expensive than #JourneytoMars, returning to the Moon is still going to take considerably more money than NASA currently has. Among other things, a full-scale service module and lander have to be developed and one each of them procured for each mission, along with one SLS and one Orion(*). Either the Congress is going to have to pony up the dollars on a continuing basis or international partners will have to agree to take on very serious levels of spending.
(*) I’m assuming NASA’s HSF will remain SLS/Orion-centric for the foreseeable future. If that changes, RttM might get cheaper.
Imagine looking up at, say, Clavius Base (thanks, Arthur), and seeing a bright point of light against the blackness of lunar night.
In many ways it would be far more inspiring than a Mars colony.
It’s a sight I’ll likely not live to see.
From what I have gathered,Mrs. Clinton will proceed “business as usual” I’m not sure how the other candidate would go,but I fail to see a pivot…Please enlighten me…
Sooo…
What happens to SLS if, just IF, SpaceX actually does an orbital test flight of ITS in the 2020-2022 timeframe? Worse, a Mars landing – uncrewed or crewed – in the mid-2020’s?
They have Raptor on the stand, doing more than burp tests.
The ITS Spaceships structural LOX tank prototype has undergone tests….somewhere.
+ what propriatory items, SpaceX’s or partners, we don’t know about. The tank certainly brought folks up short.
Also keeping in mind, we haven’t seen the Boca Chica launch mount(s) or service structure(s).
The first and most disastrous “pivot” in the 21st century was to decision by Mike Griffin to abandon LEO and the incremental strategy and instead return to the Apollo motif and leap “boldly” to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. This lead, over a decade later, to the laying off of almost everyone with hands-on experience maintaining reusable spacecraft.
“Business as usual” for HRC will hopefully include continuing Obama’s efforts to fully fund the commercial cargo and crew program and a return to rationality.
As to SLS/Orion, the prudent thing for HRC to do may be to leave its direction up to Congress, since they are likely to issue a mandate anyway. Designating the Moon as its goal rather than Mars will have minimal impact since lunar orbit is the farthest destination the current system can reach.
I was one of those later off. Along with the rest of the brain trust. They say that there are technology problems in going to the moon? We been there done that so why are they lying about going back? I helped process tps repairs on all four shuttles. We have the technology just not the kehones.
The people like you who kept the Shuttle flying, in my opinion, did the impossible every day.
It’s going to run into issues, though. If they really do a “lunar village” with international partners, then they’re going to need more than an incredibly expensive rocket that only launches every two years for building, crewing, and supplying said village.
Solving for lunar only resulted in SLS/Orion. No thanks.
The moon has nothing to do with interplanetary travel, nor creating new commercial markets, nor new Exploration.
To enable deep space exploration beyond the moon requires hardware that can perform 3 to 6 month long trips in microg and full GCR, landing heavy objects on Mars, but most importantly: #1 Economic access to space.
For once, a POTUS did not kick the can down the road and stated the obvious, as did Augustine: unless you add 3B/y to NASA budget- given SLS/Orion/ISS- no BEO missions…..
The 2000s Congress cut taxes, implemented trickle down and created yet another unfunded mandate. The current just-say-no, stall+delay, part of Congress continues retain decade old expendable hardware elements that are a) 10 to 100 times more expensive than incremental alternatives, b) cannot return from an asteroid mission nor Mars c) forget Apollo 13 and thinks a “20 day capsule to the moon landing without an atmosphere” prepares NASA for BEO. Absolutely Deplorable.
SLS/Orion/ISS killed and continue to kill all BEO missions because the costs of operating old stuff. SLS/Orion/ISS gut R&D. Instead:
* Refill on orbit – 5-10x less size and cost
* Spread the lift capacity to reduce costs/schedule-Include IPs
* Reuse+ refilling makes performance shortfalls incremental
Designing for lunar only is a recipe for disaster once again…
Start with a LEO depot, then add L2 and Mars depots. Develop reuseable cyclers from L2 to the vicinity of Mars to demonstrate the ability of the equipment to function on these long duration missions in the proper environment. Send precursor missions to demonstrate the ability to land heavy objects on Mars, and ISRU on asteroids, avoid gravity wells to save costs unless this is economically demonstrated (ITS?).
In some ways, selecting Mars as the first in what will surely be steady expansion is analogous to abandoning Apollo in favor of STS.
Luna is within our grasp, with off the shelf tech, mostly (yes, there are life support and radiation issues). The moon could be reached by NASA, Blue Origin, or SX. And while I don’t see retro population research in India or China or Russia, all three have the ability to reach the moon within a few short years.
What a remarkable thing.
The moon is a logical expansion, a much smaller step. And while Mars and Luna have radically different kit requirements, they also share much, including the training of the public to support regular (and high) payments to support the colony, to let such a base to seep into the public conscious in the way that Antarctica has.
That larger issue- the public accepting humans as a space farer, accepting that space is a place that is naturally to be occupied- is not to be denied. It’s true that the ISS failed to do that, but it’s also true that ISS made the first small step.
It wasn’t decided by Griffin. It was decided by President George W. Bush, largely in response to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report. And it was reaffirmed by Congress in the 2005 and 2008 NASA authorization acts. Also, the decision wasn’t made to “abandon” LEO, but to retire (instead of trying to recertify) the Shuttle. The VSE, the Aldridge Report, and Mike Griffin’s COTS initiatives all talked about commercial space taking over LEO. Since then we have extended ISS operations by 8 years to support Mars research, and only just starting to pry open innovative new commercial applications in LEO (cf. NanoRacks, MadeInSpace, etc…).
And what the heck was the “incremental strategy” of which you speak? NASA spent 4 years and billions on RLVs and an Orbital Space Plane, on top of the 4+ years for X-33. We had to literally shut down the Shuttle before NASA could make progress on a new launch vehicle. Meanwhile, four new commercial launch vehicles were developed using PPPs and more are coming.
Had STS been allowed to evolve- what is your view about what might have actually evolved?
As it’s turned out we’ve learned that hauling so much tonnage up and back with 1980’s tech was a non-starter.
And as it has developed, there have been no commercial efforts to extend shuttle tech, possibly because development would have been very expensive, but also perhaps because it was a technological dead end.
It’s what comes to mind when folks talk about STS, bemoaning the lack of development. What could have come out of serious work to use STS as a starting point to a modern generation of space planes?
The X-37 Orbital Test Vehicle? It’s not a direct descendant of the Shuttle, but it’s a second generation VTHL spaceplane, and its design almost certainly benefited from lessons learned from the Shuttle.
The incremental strategy or spiral architecture with respect to space exploration included reuse+refilling so that performance shortfalls could be incremental–with the recognition that NASA required *many* technologies to explore at *significantly* less cost as described in the VSE and the grand Challenges.
A new NASA LV? The original VSE stated that “NASA does not plan to develop new launch vehicle capabilities except where critical NASA needs—such as heavy lift—are not met by commercial or military systems” Note the US and world had excess launch (expendable) capacity and reuse (SpaceX, RLVs, OSP) was still not demonstrated, but the flexible path included in space refueling as well (depots, tankers).
Perhaps you mean a LV certified to fly crew, which ironically, was *prohibited* by the 2005 Space Policy?
Boeing’s Amplification factor and ULA papers showed that a space gas station which would allow up to 15 times more payload (2-3X nominally) to be sent BEO. Because most of the mass necessary to get to the moon is propellant, a space gas station WOULD eliminate the need for a heavy-lift launcher altogether, increasing the launch rate of smaller, cheaper vehicles, which in turn cuts costs for BEO w/ increased flight rate and shifting HLV costs to payload/R&D.
So while most agreed that even the Shuttle was *never *going to meet its original goals (cost, reuse) (indeed, after a decade, every evolution of shuttle derived has not lowered its costs), the incremental, spiral, flexible, approach focused on technology development and utilizing the existing DOD fleet (which could evolve as well) which would disrupt a base over multiple states.
Bush appointed O’Keefe who selected the spiral architecture. Oops. To retain shuttle derived required a short term goal (lunar by 2020), and the 60 day ESAS (must be less than 3 launches) so that 130mT 6 day lunar sorties (130mT/ 1 or 2 = 70 and 130mT LV).
Ares/Orion were driven entirely by lunar, and when vetted, they have significant shortcomings including $, as WAS ALREADY WELL KNOWN.
So even with HLV/Orion, alternative LVs have/are being developed. A significant advantage of the depot centric, LV independent architecture, is that dirt cheap, Class D propellant, which is greater than 70% of the mass, can be delivered by taking risks with reusables to provide a demonstrated reliability as long as they are common with the Class A payload configuration.
VSE: “For future, sustainable exploration programs, NASA requires cost-effective vehicles that may be reused, have systems that could be applied to more than one destination, and are highly reliable and need only small ground crews. NASA plans to invest in a number of new approaches to exploration, such as robotic networks, modular systems, pre-positioned propellants, advanced power and propulsion, and in-space assembly, that could enable these kinds of vehicles” http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/555…
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/50…
http://www.nextbigfuture.co…
” Recognizing the schedule burdens placed on unmanned payloads launched using human rated systems, we understand that the DOD and NASA believe that separating human rated space exploration from unmanned payload launch will best achieve reliable and affordable assured access to space while maintaining our industrial base in both liquid and solid propulsion launch systems.”
1. DOD/NASA will utilize EELV for all payloads 5- 20mT
2. NASA will development Crew LV derived from Space Shuttle solid boosters 20 to 30 mT class{no cargo!}
http://www.rand.org/content…
Not hardly worthy of more discussion. Bush or Obama, who cares? Constellation as conceived, aka Apollo on steroids, isn’t sustainable and reflects zero vision.
In 1961, NASA was asked what could they do and what should they do. The answer came back, a manned moon landing, and about 18 months later, NASA determined how and when. In 1970, NASA described what was required to do Skylab. In 1971, NASA decided Shuttle was critical and what it would look like. Between 1981 and 1986, NASA leaders convinced Reagan of the need and later design for Station.
All of these were NASA’s visions. The right people were always convinced to support.
Constellation, the asteroid retrieval, and Mars by way of Orion are not convincing or supportable visions.
Prior decisions were always based on logical steps forward that made use of the current technology to advance future capabilities.
Everything is sustainable if the politicians want to sustain it. We emptied out the bank vaults and poured money like water into the desert sand and watched it disappear. If 2% of the federal budget is unsustainable, then nothing is sustainable. That’s what has the country wheezing right now.
The original “Constellation”, as outlined in Bush’s VSE, wasn’t a bad concept. It was the hijacking of that program to push Ares, which led to the Apollo-on-steroids limitation.
Remember, Bush’s original justification for the moon was to develop refuelling infrastructure for a future Mars/BEO program; hence a primary focus on polar landings.
Turning it into a small number of short-duration 4-man (then 2-man), equatorial landings came later, under Mike Griffin. Necessitated by the limitations of the Ares-based architecture and the effect it had on funding.
That pivot is definitely going to happen, especially if they can get the Russians, ESA, India, and maybe even the Chinese on board for a joint crewed set of missions on the Moon. It’s just technically easier, and they’ll be looking for a new international space project for when the ISS ends its mission. Meanwhile, the Mars mission would require a major commitment of extra money as planned and find few partners abroad.
I don’t think it’s particularly useful as a “stepping stone” to anywhere, but the low-gravity research might be useful in that regard, and of course lunar research in of itself has value (although not enough to merit the cost of sending humans considering the closeness to Earth IMHO). It would be nice to know if there are any “thresholds” on the damage that lower gravity does to humans, or if it simply scales.
On the bright side, if a commercial aerospace complex with political heft builds around the supply and crew transfer runs from Earth to the Moon and back, that could help sustain a lunar base in the long run.
I’ll indulge in a little “pat on the back” here. Way back when this admin first arrive in DC and nuked Constellation, I wrote on this very website that killing the most important piece of Constellation, the moon, and setting this asteroid retrieval scheme in motion was pure politics. And nothing but politics. The moon was GW Bush’s goal, so it had to go.
Setting the Moon as a goal would have required additional funding for landers and surface basing hardware, and Congress chose not to appropriate the funding. As Jonathan points out, if Congress had wanted the Moon as a goal, they could simply have required it. Instead they accepted what they knew was just a maneuver to keep the SLS/Orion funding on track without committing significant additional money for an actual landing.
And when O came to DC, who was in charge? Nancy and Harry. And they just swallowed whatever O offered up.
Excuse me, but appropriations are determined by members of Congress who have personal interests in their districts and power on committees.
Congress nuked Constellation ..
The president sent a NON BINDING budget PROPOSAL to congress
sheesh
The president signed the budget bill cancelling Constellation. If the president wasn’t responsible then Bush isn’t responsible for the tremendous spending in his last term in response to the financial crisis.
The House and Senate could have included funding against the President’s wishes. Which is EXACTLY what they did with SLS. The president did not want that either.
In order for the President to kill a program they have to veto the funding bill for that project. Congress took a vote and a bipartisan congress voted NOT to fund constellation, THAT was the funding bill sent to the President. When the congress funded SLS the president did not expend the political capital to veto the funding bill. So we were stuck with SLS… exactly the case if congress would have voted to fund Constellation
The President of the United States has effectively lost control of NASA. Clinton or Trump can thank Obama’s stealthy attempt to basically cancel manned spaceflight spending (and Congress’s response) for that.
The President, whoever it may be, can have whatever plan they like. Congress has shown, since 2010, they’re not remotely interested in whatever any administration thinks. They decided they want to fund SLS at certain levels. They decided they want to fund Commercial at certain levels. And every year we go through the same old dance whereby the president proposes, Congress rejects, Bolden shakes his fist and says “if only you meddlers would do what we wanted!” and Congress retorts, passes a bill, and the President signs it anyway. It is really a movie we’ve seen five or six times. We all know how it ends. The most amazing part is they try and refight the fight every year rather than just fast forwarding to the end whereby the Administration gets basically nothing it wants.
Let’s not delude ourselves for a microsecond that this is on the verge of changing. Don’t want SLS? You got a lot of congressmen and senators to replace. Because that is exactly what it will take. Don’t want to go to mars and prefer LEO or the Moon (or god help us, another spaceplane) first? Good luck convincing Congress. Because they will decide to pay for it. It’s a simple as that. Whereas once Congress basically rubber stamped a President’s agenda on Space, unambitious as it was, that’s over done.
Frankly I view it as a positive. The absolutely last thing we need is another damned President offering another damned vision (that nobody cares, everyone forgets about and they never put political capital behind) full of florid language about reaching to the stars or something. The Space Program in the hand of Senators and Congressmen, can and will transcend administrations and offer longer term stability. Reagan, Bush ’41, Clinton and Bush ’43 all lead the charge in “next generation” space systems and destinations. All gave “major policy speeches” that were mostly a waste of oxygen. And we got zilch for it. Congress takes the lead on SLS, and for better or worse, things actually get built. Because money and law gets things built past a certain stage, not “the vision thing”.
The bully pulpit ain’t worth spit this day in age, when it comes to space, end of story.
I agree Congress can get SLS built. However it isn’t clear whether this is a useful goal. If the president fights to divert more of the NASA budget towards research and development of practical value to the nation, and succeeds only partially, then it may still be the best course. Note the gradual increase in Commercial Crew funding as it becomes apparent to Congress that it will succeed, and they will want to take credit for it.
This isn’t about the usefulness of the SLS. It’s about “who decides”. Technical merits or failings of the SLS decides, it was staggeringly foolish and naive for anyone to ever bet against it getting to this stage. Because Congress decides NASA’s direction now more than anytime in at least my memory, and the President has little they can do about it.
I say this because the goal post kept betting moved. First it was that the SLS would never survive Obama’s re-election. Then it was that it would be canceled by 2014. Then it became “fly once”. Then it became “fly a couple of times”. Now it’s “fly once every two years” (which is based off of a years old worst-case scenario contingency).
Why am I calling it foolish and naive that that even happened? Because the entire thesis of the SLS being canceled or curtailed by those dates, for whatever reason, would involve the very same people who have been the SLS’s biggest pushers in Congress to do a 180 and cancel it, something that more often than not brings lots of money to their home districts. To put it another way, it’s always been a remarkably stupid bet that that would happen. Those Senators and congressmen would never do that.
You are correct that as Commercial has shown merit (and let’s be clear, when Obama announced the end of CxP, commercial crew was neonatal) Congress has increased funding for it. But it’s taken zero dollars out of SLS funding, a program which only seems to get more than it requests. It’s pretty clear that Commercial and SLS occupy two different domains – Commercial for LEO and NEO. SLS for Lunar, Mars and mega-missions. Seeing a world where Congress regards them not in direct competition but as different tools for different destinations. seems pretty likely to me. It reflects the status quo where both get funded. And you’re right, Congress will take credit. The only way Congress actually cancels the SLS is if commercial acts as a money funnel to their districts and states in the same manner.
But none of this means that just because Hillary or Trump is President, that the people who have voted one way will change on a dime. Not just for this, but almost any policy. I know it’s been kind of a thing this year, that the candidates have said even less than usual about space. But I think that’s a fantastic thing because the last we need is another “leadership figure” coming in with a fresh vision. My vision of going to Mars doesn’t begin some absurd speech and Kennedy-esque call to action that echos through the ages. It’s stealthy. It’s NASA, via commercial or SLS, doing it discretely in it’s budget, piece by piece, over 15 years or so, until 8 months out when people read on their 2030s news app “NASA manned Mars mission on Pace to launch in September” and they learn about it for the first time. It dodges posturing egotist politicians, cancellation and sticker shock by hiding in the budget and being authorized and funded every year by a cadre of senators and congressmen who are protecting money to their districts. Call it the “Make Pork Pay Off” strategy.
A space program like that is far more enduring and protected than some monument to one President’s legacy.
Good points. I especially like this one:
“The only way Congress actually cancels the SLS is if commercial acts as a money funnel to their districts and states in the same manner.”
That day will come…but it’s gonna take a while.
Actually it’s based on the number of engines available. 16. Four flights. That’s it. With no new engines until 2027 at the earliest.
If the EM-1 flight is in 2018, that leaves three flights between then and 2027, so assuming Flight-5 in 2028, that’s around one launch every 2.5 years.
That’s not “worst case”, it’s actually best case – the maximum flight-rate based on available resources.
Not even that. CCDev received its first $50m in 2010. It was not even born when Obama tried to kill Ares.
Aside:
There was no such progression. The same people who said SLS will never fly are still saying it. The same people who said it’ll fly “once” (meaning either EM-1 or -2 depending on whether they mean just SLS or a manned SLS flight) are still saying that. And those, like myself, who talk about one flight every two years (or worse) have been saying that all along.
The “moving goal posts” is only because you’ve lumped all SLS-opponents in your mind as if they are single person.
” Obama’s stealthy attempt to basically cancel manned spaceflight spending “
LOL
President Obama went to florida and proposed 6 billion in NEW ADDITIONAL funding for NASA to fully fund COMMERCIAL manned flight…
man you are so off base it is crazy
“So NASA, from the start, several months ago when I issued my budget, was one of the areas where we didn’t just maintain a freeze but we actually increased funding by $6 billion. “
http://www.nasa.gov/about/o…
The new funding wasn’t proposed until later after canceling the shuttle replacement and people started complaining.
Read what Wayne Hale wrote. The space shuttle was DEAD before Obama took office. As soon as contractors were told, in 2004, by President Bush that the space shuttle would be retired in 2010, the manufacturers built enough space parts to finish the manifest. They tore down the jigs and tooling and moved on to other projects. It would take billions and years to RESTART the shuttle program. The program was canceled in 2004 with the announcement of the Vision for Space Exploration.
You’ve been singing that song over and over, Vlad, with no apparent effect on those who insist Mr. Obama is the devil incarnate. Keep singing, though.
OMG! Most of the money he talked about during that visit was to lessen the adverse economic impact on the
people that worked at Kennedy, and vendors that fed off of those Federal dollars. Politics, not space was foremost in his mind at that time. It appears we have to rehash this again. I know you “new space guys” think the President is your buddy ,but nothing could be further from the truth. As far as I can see he likes Commercial Space for 2 reasons.
1. It is cheap, cheap, cheap. You guys promise 10 pounds of exploration for 1 pound of Gold. Whether it’s true or not in the long run, it looks great on the balance sheet. The exploration of space seems to be the only government funded project that our President appears to dislike. And it appears that you guys have feet of clay just like NASA, and your schedule often slips too.
2. Commercial Space also takes the National Space Program of the American People, and reduces it to a line item on a very long budget. Several times in the past 55 years tragedies have occurred in the exploration of space. Things like the recent
explosion on the pad, except with national heroes onboard, and investigations that were so thorough they would make a gastroenterologist blush. The only
reason the program survived, I believe is that the lawyers and accountants involved in those decisions (people who by their very nature are risk averse), looked over the edge and decided that the American people wouldn’t be too happy if their Space Program was declared a failure and shut down. The only alternative for them was to soldier on in a slow, be grudging, and neglectful manner. They provided funding at a basic life support level, doing one project at a time, with very limited goals. They set up to 0 sum game. If you do SLS & Orion, you can’t do Altair, or lunar surface life systems, or in situ resource development, or on orbital refueling, or Nerva, or for that matter Commercial cargo and eventually crew. To explore the solar system the American political class has to decide they’re willing to spend the appropriate amount of capital to successfully chew gum and walk at the same time. They sit there thinking all that money, for risky venture? And wear is the upside politically for me if things go bad? And you know when they do go bad, I’m not as good at reciting soaring rhetoric is Ronald Reagan was with Challenger. It’s much easier to say we don’t have to spend the capital needed to do a coordinated program of exploration and Mr. Musk, et al. will make all of our problems go away. That’s like subcontracting out the military. It also makes the whole venture ride on 1or 2 men’s heartbeat & personal peak. Dodgy, very dodgy.
However if what happened last month happened on a commercial crewed mission the investigation involved would be pretty ugly, and you’d find out real quick how fast they line item can be zeroed out.
In case you think that this is a partisan rant, let me assure you that I believe Republican & Democratic Presidents are largely equal opportunity offenders. Maybe it has something to do with the educational system that many of the people drawn to power just don’t get it.
What we have now is like a dog that plays checkers. He doesn’t do it very well, but one is amazed that he does it at all. Imperfect, but at the end of the day we will have a very nice HLV that can take us anywhere we want to go, assuming the politicians want to go anywhere. I think the moon should be our first stop to learn and grow. First we turn over, then we crawl, then we stand, then we walk, then we run, and may be at the end of that line somebody will make a profit. Have a nice day!
“Commercial Space also takes the National Space Program of the American People, and reduces it to a line item on a very long budget. “
That national space program is about half the NASA’s budget, 8-10 billion a year. This from an annual federal budget of over 3.5 TRILLION dollars. Space spending the last three decades HAS been an EXTREMELY small line item on a very long budget and commercial space does not change that.
What commercial space DOES do is brings MORE capital into the aerospace sector. This investment of capital has exploded in recent years. When President Reagan changed NASA’s mandate to include this:
“(c) The Congress declares that the general welfare of the United States requires that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (as established by title II of this Act) seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space.”
He also signed the commercial space launch act. At this time there was not a single venture capital firm dedicated to commercial space activities and not a single angel investment firm for commercial space.
That means billions in capital from the capital markets had no real easy entry into space projects. Today there are more than two dozen and last year we say RECORD BREAKING amounts of capital flowing into commercial space.
“This has made the commercial sector increasingly active for investors. A January report from aerospace consulting firm the Tauri Group found that space start-ups have attracted more than $13.3 billion of investment, including $5.1 billion of debt financing,”
http://www.latimes.com/busi…
“VCs Invested More in Space Startups Last Year Than in the Previous 15 Years Combined”
http://fortune.com/2016/02/…
When you guys are rolling in the bucks let me know. What you have right now are bunch of.com millionaires with more money than Crassus, who’ve made their mountain of Gold elsewhere, and are engaged in their avocation. With the exception of Mr. Musk I’m not sure any of them are willing to spend their last dollar on a very risky endeavor. Venture capitalist come & go, and they’re are the very definition of people who cut their losses when troubles on the horizon. And in aviation trouble is always on the horizon. You guys are always comparing the exploration of space to past models of Yankee bootstrap commerce. Yet if you look over the history of aviation, its graveyard is littered with the bones of people who thought they knew how to do it faster and better. And that was in environment with lower energies, and where you could breathe the air and drink the water.
It is littered with the heroic bodies of folks adding to the body of knowledge. These people and the machines they drive are the PhDs of the effort to learn about aviation. The X15, for example, is equivalent to publishing in Science or Nature.
It is characteristic of the industry to push the envelope in specialized craft. X15 again was not on a path to commercial aircraft. It was abandoned because the engineering data return had been tapped out.
Lots of other examples.
So the aerospace sector and commercial space sectors would be better off if NO commercial capital markets were pushing capital into space projects..
Okay .. got it
My concern is not with them spending their own money on their own space endeavors. My concern is pushing to make them the only game in town, because I don’t think it’s going to be a self sustaining business venture in BEO anything close to our life time. As an adolescent I read and enjoyed “The Man Who Sold the Moon” but I’m 60 now and have seen the way the world works. For the commercial vision to work in the short term that you’re talking about Mr. Musk et al are going to need a huge infusion of cash from mostly the government, with extraordinary tort relief, and given their “cost saving” mechanisms, and an increased tolerance by the pubic for “adverse events”. If I may be so bold, that sounds like sovereign immunity to me, something that only the government has. You guys are always Quoting the history of capitalism to us along withe vision of great commercial advances such as the panama canal, opening of America, the transcontinental railroad, and the expansion of commercial aviation. Each was littered with many financial failures, and were also littered with a great deal of human mortality. I’m pretty certain the exploration of the solar system will be a governmental endeavor; and that it will not be as easy, profitable or safe as Rosie Scenario would have us believe.
Yep.
Your point about capital into commercial space is so true…where else was such a small investment by the Feds had such a huge effect?
Got to agree here. The inmates really are running the asylum.
“It’s politics now because NASA has a lack of technical leadership”
Politics is NASA is not a priority, half a century ago they were (imperative to beat the Reds to the Moon). Even though NASA had many other activities as defined in the Space Act. It really comes down to priorities, i.e. NSA is a much higher priority (look at dollar amount budgeted). For most people NASA is not a priority, this list is example as we have a small group that post comments here as compared to Reddit on other subjects.
Other than that, perhaps the Moon can now be put into view (you can see it with the naked eye) and we will see more notable people talk about it besides Spudis and Wingo.
The important thing is that they pick a target beyond LEO and stick to it. The real waste was the shuttle program (STS) which gave the bureaucracy a task regularly scheduling expensive shuttle fights which contributed at the end of the day contributed very little to public excitement for space, little knowledge we could not get with satellites and cost us time, capital and good crews. But NASA was launching and recovering manned crews that they could do so on autopilot without any real strategy or vision. Let SpaceX handle LEO; the real question strategically is what next and why. A base on the moon to really understand gravity on the human body? A base on Mars for eventual colonization? Hell- asteroids for minerals or Mercury for solar power and radioactives. The easy one is a new space telescope or a real permanent space station at L5 to test artificial gravity/long duration outside LEO which has never been done. People complain about Apollo on steroids; the Apollo missions in 10 years excited the imagination and pushed engineering and scientific learning in a way 100 years of launching a shuttle into LEO and back never could do. It doesn’t matter if it takes 20 years, just pick a mission and stick to it. Switching every 5 years makes a 20 year plan worthless. Also… putting crew and cargo on the same stack makes no sense.
I agree, pick a mission and stick with it. Overturning prior directives simply because they belonged to a predecessor is not great policy.
Neither is not voting for an issue simply because some credit falls to the other side, but that’s how Congress works these days.
Picking ‘a’ mission is the wrong approach. Pick n missions over m years for the $. Flexible path means Mars is within reach incrementally. NASA can have 100s of missions for the same budget (science, HSF, or tech. demos). L2, Mars, asteroids, and lunar. One simply needs the depots/tugs first.
Designing ‘to Mars’ with a LV *independent* reduces launch costs for DOD, NASA, and new markets. Depots are filled when there is no DOD or commercial manifest. Picking ‘a’ mission narrows everything to one LV – bad business plan. Demonstrated reliability of reuse launching dirt cheap Class D propellant. NASA continued to send men to the moon long after the public lost interest. Let multiple LVs handle ‘LEO’.
NASA is going nowhere given the current plan. Build an inexpensive gas station and travel the solar system. Nothing more inspirational than telling the next gen that we don’t know how to do many things yet, and we need your help.
https://youtu.be/_3BxBeLzbg8
It’s been obvious all along that the human spaceflight policy of the current administration was never anything more sophisticated than, “Whatever you do, don’t go to the moon because we’re against whatever the previous guys were for.” Interesting though to see it actually admitted to by somebody who was there.
I see no reason to hold out hope for any improvement from another Clinton administration. Remember, it was the first version that went all out to kill the space station with no alternate plan and almost succeeded until Gore proposed using it as an excuse to play house with the Russians.
“Whatever you do, don’t go to the moon because we’re against whatever the previous guys were for”
I’m not sure I’ve seen direct evidence that the Administration opposed any space policy because it was proposed by Mr. Bush.
No, there never is any direct evidence, or an observed quid pro quo either. Been there, done that….Good Grief Charlie Brown!
Well, up until now, there was no evidence. Just a suspicion based on appearances. But now there is evidence, in the form of this person quoted in the article saying that is what was happening when he was involved. Which is really the fundamental point of this thread in the first place. Conclusive proof? I dunno, but the interesting point is that a person with inside knowledge has publicly made the accusation.
Please provide the reference, something more specific than “word came down”. Who said it? What did they say?
Wow, it’s weird how distorted people’s interpretations of events are.
(I suspect the same distortion is true of Chiao’s recollection. Hence “Word came down…”, ie, office gossip, rather than “Gerst told me…” or something specific.)
Under Reagan and Bush Sr, the Freedom Space Station program had spent its entire $9b development budget without creating a single piece of launchable hardware. It had gone through seven major design revisions and was still overweight, overbudget, too complex to build, had too little power and had lost most of its science-capability.
A large part of Congress wanted the program cut. IIRC, its last budget passed Congress by a single vote. So the new Clinton Administration asked the agency for three realistic options that would be viable under the existing budget and capability. Option A was to strip the current design to the bones to make it do-able on NASA’s existing budget. That’s what Clinton chose (nicknamed “Space Station Alpha” because it was option-A).
Note:
– Clinton was trying to save the program.
– Russian involvement wasn’t anywhere on the cards at that stage.
(Option B was essentially the previous 1991 “Fred” design; expensive and unviable but supported by the FSS-faction in Congress. Option C was to develop an expendable version of Shuttle-C and use it to put up a Skylab-like single-module station; fun, but no chance of getting through Congress.)
Later, with the collapse of the Russian space program, they became concerned about the exodus of Russian rocket engineers to high-risk nations (Iran/Iraq/Pakistan/NK/etc). That’s when they proposed merging “Alpha” with Mir-2, starting with the joint Mir-Shuttle missions.
In a way, Clinton’s situation was the same that Obama faced with Ares/Constellation; just not as you remember it. They both inherited utterly failed programs (grossly underbid and overpromised, and completely mismanaged) which required billions in extra funding (that Congress had no intention of delivering) in order to merely deliver the most cut-down version.
The actual 2010 budget proposal:
– One extra shuttle mission to use up the last of the available hardware.
– Reinstating COTS-D (as “commercial crew”).
– A cut-down Atlas-launched crew capsule (“Orion-lite”) as backup for commercial crew.
– Restoring the science budget (cut by 25% under Griffin).
– Refocusing Constellation funding on a major technology development push (tech-dev was slaughtered under Griffin), such as the Griffin-cancelled Prometheus nuclear reactor, and I recall the fuel-depot advocates had a spring in their step for a couple of months, so I suspect the internal expectation was that depots were on the list.
– Giving extra funding to the agency, for a $1 billion-per-year new engine development program for a future HLV development.
– Some kind of token, manned BEO mission to give the tech-dev program some focus. With a manned asteroid-rendezvous being the stated example, ie, long duration BEO.
That actually seems pretty sophisticated to me.
If I was writing a wish-list for the new President, it’d be virtually the same. I’d twist it to fit my personal biases, obviously, and update it slightly to reflect current development (SpaceX/BO/Bigelow/ULA-Vulcan), but looking at what NASA needs in 2016, the list is barely changed to what Obama/Garver/etc saw in 2009.