TrumpSpace Previews
What Will Trump’s Space Program Look Like?, Lori Garver, Scientific American
“A Gingrich/Walker aligned NASA leadership team would likely advance an agenda that increases support for entrepreneurial space and re-focuses NASA on the Moon as the next human destination. Neither are big supporters of spending billions of dollars on large, government programs, numerous programs would be reviewed for possible cancellation or adjustment such as SLS, Orion, ISS, Mars 2020 etc. A Griffin return would also likely refocus NASA’s human exploration goals on the Moon, but would be more open to continuing SLS and Orion, at the expense of ISS. Either agenda would almost certainly include continuation of the commercial crew program.”
Trump: “I Will Free NASA” From Being Just a LEO Space Logistics Agency, Space Policy Online
“Did you ever see what’s going on with space, with Russia and different places? And us? We’re, like, we’re like watching. Isn’t that nice? So much is learned from that, too. “A cornerstone of my policy is we will substantially expand public private partnerships to maximize the amount of investment and funding that is available for space exploration and development. This means launching and operating major space assets, right here, that employ thousands and spur innovation and fuel economic growth. “I will free NASA from the restriction of serving primarily as a logistics agency for low earth orbit activity. Big deal. “Instead we will refocus its mission on space exploration. Under a Trump administration, Florida and America will lead the way into the stars. With a victory in November, everything will change. Just think about what we can accomplish in 100 days.”
Trump’s space policy reaches for Mars and the stars, op ed, Space News
“NASA’s core missions must be exploration and science – and inspirational! These are the fundamental underpinnings of a Trump civilian space program. NASA should be focused primarily on deep space activities rather than Earth-centric work that is better handled by other agencies. Human exploration of our entire solar system by the end of this century should be NASA’s focus and goal. Developing the technologies to meet that goal would severely challenge our present knowledge base, but that should be a reason for exploration and science. Space station activities must also remain robust given their long delayed, but now functioning, research potential. 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.”
It is very sad to see what @BarackObama has done with NASA. He has gutted the program and made us dependent on the Russians.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2012
Didn’t America explore the whole Solar System (sans Pluto) by the end of the last century?
Indeed. Juno, Cassini- what are they, shopped liver?
The lack of knowledge easily gained by simply reading a newspaper is appalling.
Hang on, America.
They are just robots, mere scouts for the humans to follow. Although many space advocates have settled for robotic exploration to the average American only boots on the ground count as real exploration.
But its not a lack of knowledge as you believe, but merely a different understanding of what exploration is supposed to be.
What a short sighted, self centered, [deleted] opinion. (Sorry, Keith. But this isn’t political.). Exploration is learning what is over the next mountain or across the next sea. You have to know what is there, not necessarily be there yourself. Have you ever been to Antarticia? Probably not, but you and the rest of humanity knows what is there, because others have gone. Does it really matter if your knowledge of Antarticia come from another person or a robot? You still know what is there!
We can learn what is there on other planets, moons, asteroids, and other bodies by exploring virtually. With robots we can do so much more because we don’t have to wait 30 years, or more. And it is cheaper, so we can do so many more missions.
It takes people to conceive these missions, to sell them, to design, build, and test them, to operate these missions. There are probably more people who have been involved in the Cassini Mission to Saturn than in all three of Columbus’ voyages, combined.
The Cassini/Columbus comparison is interesting. I’d have to check, but I think more people have gotten PhDs working with just one of Cassini’s instruments, than the entire (24 person) crew of the Nina.
True perhaps, but which ones would be more likely to get a ticker-tape parade for their accomplishments?
I don’t think the crew of the Nina got a ticker-tape parade. Columbus got a good welcome after his first voyage, but his crew were, as far as I know, simply treated like sailor returning from a long trip. With planetary missions, it doesn’t seem too different: Press coverage for a few PIs, and little attention to the large number of people who did the majority of the work.With Columbus, that was one “PI” out of 90 people on his first voyage. For Cassini, it’s more like a dozen out of a thousand.
I see you choose to miss the point so I will make it clearer. The Apollo astronauts got ticker-tape parades for being explorers. The PI’s for the Ranger, Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter missions didn’t. The Mercury astronauts got their parades for exploring space, but not the builders of the dozens of satellites that went first.
I may have missed your point, but now that you state it more closely, I disagree with it. I do not think public acclaim and ticker-tape parades are a valid measure of successful exploration. I believe the measure is the amount of new knowledge obtained.
Thanks for the great illustration of the huge gap between how space policy experts view space success and how the taxpayers that fund it view it. Is it any wonder that taxpayer support for space is a mile wide and an inch deep?
If Lyndon Johnson hadn’t distributed the pork around NASA would have probably been closed down after Project Apollo, but the desire for pork keeps it alive. It will allow it to survive the Trump Administration and enable the space science community to continue in its isolation.
You just used to key phrase. We started out talking about space “exploration”. Now you’re talking about standards for “space success.” If the goal is to impress the public, then you need to do one thing. If you want to _explore_ or learn about the solar system, then you need to do different things.
The problem with being in an echo chamber is that it’s often difficult to understand what others say, so again I will try to make it clearer.
The grant based economy of space scientists you refer to has a very narrow definition of space exploration as existing to produce scientific papers to generate new grant funding. It fits their world view and the view in Washington of space policy being an extension of science policy. And so they measure space exploration success by the output of scientific papers as you indicate.
What I am discussing is the view of the rest of America. It is based on a more traditional view exploration in general and of space exploration in particular as expansion of humans (boots on
the ground) into the Solar System and incorporating it into the economic sphere of humanity. This fits with the origin of the term “Exploration” which dates to the 16th Century during the great Age of Exploration when Europeans expanded their economic influence globally. That is why the public measures success by where humans (boots on the ground) have been in searching for ways to increase the economic wealth of humanity. Robots are merely scouts for future human expansion into space.
Sadly it’s this gap of world views that accounts for the public’s indifference to space exploration. You keep showing them the pretty pictures of alien worlds and they want to know when humans (boots on the ground) will go there to explore.
I think we are talking to cross-purposes. My point is that publicity and accomplishments are not the same thing. For examples which your definition would call “real” exploration, consider Lewis and Clark. Meriweather Lewis and William Clark didn’t publish much in the way of results and were virtually unknown in their own time (or until about a century later.) Similarly, Raul Amundsen’s exploration, especially the Northwest Passage, is virtually unknown in comparison to Robert Scott’s lesser accomplishments. That’s all about marketing and how good someone is at media relations. I don’t see that as a useful measure of what does and does not constitute “exploration.”
On the academic side, I’ve seen really fundamental discoveries published in just a few pages, and I’ve seen fairly insignificant results which someone managed to stretch out into half a dozen papers. The former is impressive because of the content; the later is just someone padding their resume.
For the identification of “boots on the ground” as “real” exploration, that’s historically been true simply because, historically, there has been no alternative. Lewis and Clark couldn’t exactly have sent a drone to the Pacific coast. Now, I’m not so sure if that standard applies. Certainly, as you pointed out, the occasional robotic mission (no matter what the results) doesn’t have the same popular appeal. But now that the costs are going down, I wouldn’t bet against the robots.
I’ve said before that, getting a small, Pathfinder-sized rover to the Moon is not all that expensive. I’d honestly say universities might be able to fund it from rich alumni (certainly, if Berkeley did, Stanford alumni wouldn’t want to be outdone.) So, what would have more public appeal as “exploration”? Dozens university teams, each personally driving a small rover around on the moon, for months, or getting to watch a couple of middle-aged, government employees walk around on the lunar surface for a couple days? I’d say the personal involvement of a large number of people would win out over the interest in human versus robot presence.
Lewis and Clark were very well known in their day and the reports in the press of the beavers they found in the Rockies marked the beginning of the Rockies fur boom.
But yes, we are at cross purposes. You see exploration in the narrow view of generating scientific knowledge. I see it as enabling the expansion of humanity (humans not just robots) into the Solar System with scientific knowledge being merely a spin-off as it was in the Age of Exploration.
Well, Wikipedia is not the most reliable source of information, but it is one of the most convenient:
“References to Lewis and Clark “scarcely appeared” in history books even during the United States Centennial in 1876 and the expedition was largely forgotten.[9][10] Lewis and Clark began to gain new attention around the start of the 20th century. Both the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, in St. Louis, and the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, in Portland, Oregon, showcased Lewis and Clark as American pioneers. However, the story remained relatively shallow—a celebration of U.S. conquest and personal adventures—until the mid-century, since which time it has been more thoroughly researched and retold in many forms to a growing audience.[9]”
Actually, I’m not limiting my view of exploration to scientific discoveries. I see the value in going somewhere just to go there (or even simply for the sake of being in motion.) I’m just saying that you can’t measure success by the media reaction. Being given a ticker-tape parade doesn’t define exploration. You can get one without doing anything of note (beyond having a good press agent) and you can do great things without ever getting a parade in your honor.
I came up with it while writing the post.
I would be interested in your results if you look the Casini/Columbus personel numbers.
I’ll try to dig it up. The Columbus’ first expedition was 90 people (24 on the Nina, 26 on the Pinta and 40 on the Santa Maria.) For Cassini, we put some statistics into the extended mission senior review proposals, and I can try to dig them up. But that’s not a public document and therefore not citable. Also, for students, I know there was some double counting (students who worked on two instruments were reported by both when polled) and some ambiguities with international degree systems (the US Bachelors-Masters-Doctorate system isn’t exactly how things work in Europe.)
But, for one single instrument on Cassini, and one with a relatively small team (CAPS), I can think of a dozen PhD’s off the top of my head. The total’s probably closer to 20, since I’m probably forgetting some people. That’s just people who got their PhD working on the instrument and its results, not even close to everyone involved.
But I think this sort of comparison should be normalized in some way. What was the population of Spain in 1492, compared to the population is the US and Europe around 1990-2020? What fraction of the population was involved in Columbus’ expedition compared to Cassini?
You are confusing analysis with opinion. Although you may view that as exploration many Americans do not. You don’t have to sell me on your definition, you have to sell them on it.
The robotic exploration of space is great, but I have a presentation that I give sometimes at book events that talks about Cassini and from reactions I get I can tell you that most normal people don’t know what it is. Just us space geeks.
Too many people think that NASA is currently dead and out of business just because it doesn’t launch people into space. At least once a month I point out to someone that the ISS flies humans through space and therefore NASA’s human spaceflight program really does still exist and does many wonderful things.
But launch Justin Bieber to Saturn, just once… 😉
Are you saying, “Been there, done that.”?
I assumed that statement was referring to human exploration.
No need to assume; that’s what the statement said .. HUMAN exploration of the entire solar system by the end of the century as a goal.
The urge to conclusively prove superiority by mocking seems to be so strong, it prevents people from reading to the end of the sentence. Or understanding it.
No, no we did not…respectfully….exploration is not a few visits to the moon, or a quick fly by of places like Uranus, Neptune and Pluto..or even some years long rovers on Mars …..you can’t say we have truly explored these places and others….we have only dipped our toe into our solar system
In over 100,000 years of habitation we haven’t even fully explored and certainty don’t, and may never, fully understand the Earth. What are your true goals?
I agree totally..but true goals? I don’t get you. Exploration never ends. It’s in our nature I think…we must explore all that there is…it is ongoing and never ending human endeavor
But with the rapid advances in AI exploration doesn’t necessarily mean sending biological humans, at least until we have the technology to make it practical.
Well, the moons of Uranus are a good example of what we haven’t done. Due to their obliquity and the season of our one and only spacecraft flyby, we do not know anything about half of their surface. The other half was in darkness. I wouldn’t call 50% completely unknown “explored” in any meaningful sense.
A Uranus (and Neptune!) orbiter! May I live to see it.
It took 5 years from 2005 to cancel CxP, which was to ‘close the gap’ by 2009, even though it was known Ares I could not loft Orion due LAS mass, to not rely on the Russians, nor the DOD fleet. Seriously.
These pathetic leaders continue to wrongfully cast their venom everywhere but themselves. The same folks who gave you ESAS “must be less than 3 launches” and the flawed VSE “lunar prepares NASA for Mars”, have now…wait for it….
Just blindly saying that you would, or would like to “expand public private partnerships to maximize the amount of investment and funding” without answering the fundamental question, the one that has and continues to allude all space, and other policy makers in this country, is to waste time and to waste people lives who have dedicated them to such goals and hopeful futures. That fundamental question should then be immediately followed with a plan full of short term attainable goals, each striving for the single goal that answered that fundamental question. And if you have not figured out what that question is yet, like so many in positions of power, that question is WHY. If you cannot answer that question with a succinct and sustainable answer you condemn the future to a crawling progress beset by the multitude of stupid human tricks that divert attention and support. The cycle continues. This is the prime example of why Mars has always been 20-30 years away over the past 60 years.
Riiiiight! wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Obama gutted NASA AND cut defense spending. It is appalling what passes for “facts” anymore. Apparently you can say anything you like these days and the majority of the public will just nod and agree. So I guess Obama canceled the shuttle now too. I think it was Obama that gave the OK to launch Challenger wasn’t it? And where was Obama on 9/11? WHY wasn’t he in the oval office directing things? – Slacker!
We dont need no stinkin facts… oh dang.. wrong movie..
Obama did cancel the shuttle replacement program.
As he should have and based on recommendations by the HSF committee (Augustine Commission) – who determined “The Committee judged the 9-year old Constellation Program to be so behind schedule, underfunded and over budget that meeting any of its goals would not be possible”. I was actually talking to Elon Musk prior to the cancellation and I predicted that Congress would cancel Ares-I when they found out how messed up it was, he was in agreement.
They only killed “the stick”, which most everyone realized was the right thing to do. Maybe these guys will have the guts to do what Obama attempted to do at the beginning of his Presidency…
The Constellation program was not intended as a Shuttle replacement, since the original plan was to withdraw from the ISS program at assembly complete. Constellation was intended as a replacement for Apollo. Obama continued the ISS program and initiated Commercial Crew as a replacement for Shuttle.
After shuttle, the plan was to go to the moon, hence the shuttle replacement was Constellation. Whether it was going to succeed is another topic for debate but Constellation was canceled before any replacement was proposed.
I’m not so sure about that. The Shuttle was always about transportation to LEO. Constellation wasn’t about replacing that capability (or, at least, not fully replacing it.) Going on to the Moon, in a Shuttle/ISS/Von Braun world, would have been about using LEO infrastructure to decrease the cost of travel to the Moon. Constellation wouldn’t really have been along that path.
Although Shuttle had started shutting down by the time Obama took office, they did bring the question of shutting it down to him and he decided to do nothing.
After Obama’s first year or 18 months it was too late to turn the shut down around. Bush had said it would not be shut down until there was a replacement and ISS assembly was complete. Under Griffin, Orion MPCV was going to be flying by 2011 (funny). Remember Augustine was brought in and his committee when his program manager said they’d be test flying in 2010 and operating Orion by 2014, Sally Ride said 2018 or 2019 was more likely (Sally wins, Griffin, Hanley and Geyer were about 10 years off). While the Shuttle termination actions were premature, Obama had the opportunity to fix things, turn them around, or speed up Orion and instead Obama chose to do absolutely nothing. In fact, Orion and SLS were brought back by Congress when it was obvious that Obama was going to do nothing at all. And remember during his campaign Obama said that NASA was going to go into a 5 year or longer hiatus so he could put its budget into education. Obama did little there too, and in fact his henchman disemboweled NASA the NASA education effort, thinking the Smithsonian, Department of Education and NSF would take over the space education job.
Wayne Hale, Aug 2008, prior to Obama’s arrival…
“We started shutting down the shuttle four years ago (2004) . That horse has left the barn. “
Ares I (‘to close the gap by 2009’ prior to shuttle retirement), in 2005, could not loft Orion because of LAS mass, so how could Orion fly? Augustine stated that NASA required 3B/yr given SLS/Orion–they have no missions because Orion has the wrong heat shield to return from an asteroid. CxP plan: shuttle shutdown ISS splashdown by 2015 and still required a plus up…the famous sand chart.
Do not need facts ….the new norm?
https://blogs.nasa.gov/wayn…
http://s1077.photobucket.co…
Yes, there was an attitude problem on the part of some NASA managers (the same attitude that always kept the costs high and never improved on safety or capability) but as was pointed out by many including the first Shuttle Program Manager, the entire Shuttle system was approved in 1972, then it was designed, manufactured, and the first tests occurred in 1977. It would have been much easier, faster and less expensive to re-establish what had been in place in 2004 or 2008 and improve upon it rather than throw it all away-which brings us back to today’s program that has yet to achieve any objectives, cannot launch an American astronaut, and is not on a track to enable anything anytime soon.
Could shuttle ever have evolved into something truly representative of the original vision? I think that’s what you are asking.
I’ve wondered about that – the idea that STS should have been developed and improved rather than abandoned. Incrementalism is a solid approach – but is it appropriate in this case?
Does it make sense to throw 80 tons (the mass of an empty orbiter) plus another 10 tons (as I recall the mass of an empty external tank) into orbit and then bring it back? when the capacity of STS was around 25 tons? And for about $1B for each launch? (Close enough).
It’s probably more logical to put big loads on the end of a rocket, even expendable rockets. STS a pretty cool notion that simply won’t ever work out because it is conceptually flawed, victim of the rocket equation. Oh, sure, there were lots of improvements that could have been made, but in the end we took nearly 100 tons to orbit and back for the sake of 25 tons.
That’s my view, incrementalism aside, and machines like Sabre aside as well.
Ya, you can’t trust that mainstream media. It’s not like they put out facts that are provable or disprovable. Why bother thinking critically, absorbing facts, checking unknown details, and making your own judgements? You can just switch to another media source that sounds more like what you want to hear. We’re not going to take “it” anymore (“it” being that thing I won’t try defining that is to blame for all my problems).
No bucks…No Buck Rogers…
NASA has a reasonable budget. The difficulty is persuading Congress to let the agency do something useful with it.
I can not believe that anything good, for space exploration, or anything else, can come from bad intentions.
Such eloquence.
Donald Trump said whatever the crowd in front of him wanted to hear. His comments were not based on analysis of economics, history or practicality. Anyone who voted for him based on what he said while campaigning is likely to be disappointed. However, he does like real estate with his name on it, so NASA should propose a Trump mars base.
My biggest concern is that Trump and his Republican allies in Congress will try to cancel all of NASA’s climate change observation missions. Democrats in the House and Senate might be able to delay some of those plans, so what will Trump be able to accomplish on this through executive orders? Also, if NASA is ordered to suspend various missions already in place, how quickly would they be able to do so? I am hoping the bureaucracy at NASA would be able to bottle up some of those orders.
On a related note, I am hoping that other countries or even sympathetic corporations within the U.S. might be able to take over some climate change observation missions. For example, perhaps Google and SpaceX could jointly put together and launch small satellites to observe the effects of climate change on earth.
Not try to…will. NOAA and USGS will need to take up that slack. It’s more their job than NASA’s anyway.
We live in a world where a private firm in Israel is building a moon rover to fly on a SpaceX rocket. In such a world I’m sure NOAA can arrange to build and fly its own climate science satellites.
NOAA has trouble just building weather satellites .
My 12 year old has trouble driving a car.
Besides…Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Orbital…they build great satellites. NOAA are NASA partners…so they have plenty of access to that knowledge base.
The only reason NASA does climate science is so that they can feed from that trough like everyone else.
Or perhaps the fact that observing the Earth from Space is designated as a NASA mission in the NASA charter.
Good point.
How many Earth-focused satellites currently orbit Earth and what percentage of them were NASA-funded projects?
My point is that with enough money, aerospace contacts and University research projects YOU, Daniel, can launch a climate science satellite. Don’t worry about scientists…build it and they will come. You’d be up to your armpits in them. Every part that required participation by a government-funded space agency, no longer requires a government-funded space agency. The growth of the tech during the next four years will expand that logic gap far enough to damage people’s credibility who continue to insist that NASA participation is necessary. Do the deniers deserve to win that fight?
I’m just trying to understand where I (or any university researcher) gets “enough money”.
Currently the money comes from the NASA budget and NASA funds inhouse and university research teams to build instruments and aerospace companies to build and launch the satellites. What happens when the money is not available from the NASA budget?
I think there’s more money for this than you realize. Green energy is a market disruptor and it is growing. There has to be something feeding it somewhere. I got into a discussion about this elsewhere and the impression that I got from it was that the science side has folks clambering for grants in that area to get in on the action.
They said they needed NASA for credibility for the cause…not financial support.
I have no insider info on this myself, so if I’m wrong about the funding then please enlighten me with specifics.
Well, if they don’t need NASA financial support, more power to them, but it would be interesting to see more details. I’m just not aware of any major private funding effort to actually build and operate climate monitoring satellites. But in that case, why do they need NASA to add credibility?
Actually, for a focused (e.g. single measurement) and short-duration mission, you can do serious atmospheric science with a CubeSat. If you do it right, that could be “only” a few million dollars. That’s low enough that NSF or NOAA might fund it (and NSF has already done this sort of thing.) I could even imagine a private company or a university putting up that much money. But only to establish themselves, and put themselves in a better position to obtain future government contracts. I can’t really think of viable, long-term funding sources other than the government. But I also think the price is low enough that NASA isn’t the only government source.
Doesn’t a cubesat have to have a relatively short orbital lifetime to avoid creating a debris hazard? My thought was that for testing new sensors mounting on the ISS external payload facility might be less expensive and would avoid logistical problems with data download and pointing accuracy, as well as facilitating periodic changouts of the sensor package. That said, ultimately climate science requires global coverage and a consistent orbital path, usually sun-synchronous, so at some point when a sensor technology is ready a full-up satellite is needed to carry it.
There are many ways to do this. CubeSats do, typically, have less that two year lifetimes. Part of that is reducing orbital debris, part of it is using COTS parts that just don’t last as long in space as the expensive stuff. Pointing isn’t much of an issue, since there are now 0.5U attitude control systems with good (0.005 deg) pointing accuracy. That’s flight tested as of earlier this year (on the MinXSS CubeSat.) Short lifetimes could, however, be an advantage for instrument development. You don’t get it back, but if a CubeSat is cheap enough and you can refly it every year or two, that might be viable.
For “real science”, CubeSats might be the right answer. Some scientists may like a carefully selected and controlled orbit. But it isn’t clear that’s the right choice. Which would be better for global coverage? Three big spacecraft in exactly the right orbit, or fifty small ones in more-or-less the right orbit? It would certainly be easier to maintain and incrementally upgrade the constellation of fifty small satellites, compared to making sure you have the funding for a big, expensive replacement satellite once a decade.
The opponents of climate research do not plan to transfer climate research resources from NASA to NOAA, in fact they have never suggested NOAA would receive any additional resources. They plan to terminate funding for climate research, period.
Those opponents you speak off are on the downswing and NASA having that duality of purpose just gives them ammunition. “NASA must explore the solar system and get out of Earth orbit…except for climate science projects.” Doesn’t that sound silly to more than just me? Besides, if NASA flies the same or similar instruments to Mars and Venus then they can just relabel it all “Planetary Science” and were all good, but somehow the proponents of climate research don’t seem to be all that exited about mixing Planetary science data in with their models for some reason.
The proponents of climate research had (and someday will again have) enough Government power to move funding to NOAA to build their own climate science satellites. However, today there is plenty of climate science funding floating around. Individual research projects that need satellite support can pool their funding, hire a contractor to build them a bus, then partner with NOAA and NASA and build their instruments. Then they can either fly them cheap…or they just can fly them on weather satellites. Everyone here has repeatedly noted more than once that it costs more to directly involve NASA than to not to. If I’m wrong and climate science funding is actually scarce, then not involving NASA would get more bang for the buck anyway.
At one time, NASA’s Earth observing program was advertised as a “mission to planet Earth.” But I think the real reason you don’t see a whole lot of planetary data folded into terrestrial climate science is the quality and quantity of the planetary data. Terrestrial work requires continuos coverage at multiple points (for surface measurements) or frequent, global coverage (for orbital measurements.) The closest planetary scientists have is probably Mars, with (at best) one surface met station and a few satellites which give partial coverage from instruments which were designed to do other things as well.
I understand. The public wants to see NASA working on something tangible to them. I’m saying that for several years NASA has, at several levels, declared that they intended to eventually leave planet Earth to other agencies and private enterprise and focus their efforts on exploring the rest of the Solar System. After you totally strip off both sides of the politics of climate science, and add in the “NASA go far away now” mandate, it starts to make a lot less sense for NASA to do Earth climate studies…except in a comparative way within the context of Planetary Science.
Espessially when you consider just how easy and cheap building and flying satellites has recently started to become. The days of NASA needing to have their finger in every space-related pie are coming to a close. I haven’t heard any practical reasons why NASA needs to do Climate Science that didn’t boil down to, essentially, “Well…because they’re…NASA…you know? They’re just…like…the mighty NASA!”
I’ve heard one good reason for NASA to be involved in Earth observing spacecraft. NOAA and other institutions are primarily operational. They use existing technology to achieve their goals; they do not (in general) develop new technology. NASA, on the other hand, is focused on technology development (among other things.) So, I’d say it makes sense for NOAA to handle spacecraft which are using existing technology to study the Earth’s climate. But when it comes to developing new instruments and measurement techniques, NASA would probably be the better choice.
True, but maybe they can do that as a quiet partner.
Or…sometimes they can apply those new instruments and measuring techniques to Mars and call it Planetary Science, then spin-off the tech and use it on Earth measurements. The only difference between (Earth) Climate Science and Planetary Science is adding one more planet to the study…and everyone likes Mars “atmospheric studies”.
Also, too much emphasis on newness gives the deniers more ammo. They say that it prevents accurate straight-up comparisons from year to year and use it to explain away upward trends. It makes climate change look more like a conspiracy…”Let’s find new ways to make the planet look warmer”.
The data and the long term trends are critical to leaders planning for the future so as to create good policies forward, especially since energy and climate are national security issues. For example, the current projections of the cost due to the environmental impact ranges from 100B to 1T/yr (model dependent, but look at the low number!), keystone may create a few K jobs for a few years, and manufacturing jobs in renewable energy is substantial. Its one thing to go with what folks feel, but to teach them false things..
Actually landing heavy objects on Mars will be extremely costly, and when making a value judgement, low gravity well asteroids which brought the earth all of its resources show much more opportunity, as does Earth observation, for new markets and economic security.
“The data and the long term trends are critical to leaders planning for the future so as to create good policies forward…”
I’ve heard about this objective, but never actually witnessed that result. “Leaders” on both sides of the isle don’t care about the details…nor understand them. Deniers will deny and supporters will support….both in general terms and for their own reasons that have little to do with actual data.
As for Mars…landing a vehicle is hard, hitching a ride on one maybe not so much someday.
To some extent, you could reclassify technology development as planetary, atmospheric science work. But not completely. The trades between spacecraft/payload mass and capability are very different. Earth orbiting spacecraft can use incredibly high data volume data sets, since telemetry is not a huge problem. And, on the ground, planetary scientists rarely worry about how to merge data from dozens of spacecraft, each sending back megabits of data per second (although most of wish we had that problem…)
Que? They just won the Presidency.
I meant in a more general sense.
Besides, it’s hard be sure at this point exactly how this year’s campaign rheoric will end up playing out as far as actual policy is concerned.
(See how I tip-toed around on that second part to avoid annoying Keith. 😉
All of Trump’s key advisors are climate deniers. Every name that’s been floated for a cabinet position is a climate denier. Their stated policy is to remove climate research funding across all Federal agencies.
There’s not a lot of ambiguity.
It is not about annoying me. Its about staying on topic, that’s all.
Yes, and I appreciate you keeping us in task, Keith. Thank you.
“However, today there is plenty of climate science funding floating around.”
Do you mean in the federal budget? In what department? Or non-federal funds? From what organization?
Something I read somewhere. I seem to recall that it is project specific private grants mixed with Government funds from various levels but I don’t recall exactly.
Possibly you could let us know more specifics, I have not seen anything about this and there are obviously researchers that would like to apply. I am not suggesting it doesn’t exist, only that we need more information to determine if such funding exists.
I’ll try to hunt it up. One of the times that Congress voted on it, I voiced my opinion…I don’t remember if it was here, on Facebook, or on my blog. It stimulateld some. crosstalk amoung some folks (like here) and that’s where I came away with the assumption that NASA isn’t as much of a bringer of funding to climate science as it is a partaker of it…or perhaps a seperate funding path for it. That was where someone said that the effort was in need of NASA’s credibility.
Current policy is that NASA does science, and NOAA does operational weather forecasting. BIG difference. But generally, NASA GSFC builds the NOAA spacecraft and transfers them to NOAA to collect weather data. However, that doesn’t mean that NOAA scientists doesn’t do some research. And occasionally, NOAA uses a NASA instrument for operational weather predictions. The SeaWinds instrument is an example of the second class
I don’t really know how much money NASA spends on climate research each year, but I do know that Obama transferred money from Planetary Science to earth Science 6 or 7 years ago. If you don’t believe me, then explain that to me and several hundred others who were laid off.
I want to see that money put back, Joseph, but I would have preferred it had been done by Climate Science advocates instead of the crowd that is going to do it…for data integrity reasons.
I would also like to see how much a spacecraft bus built by NASA GSFC costs vs a template bus from…say…Orbital, Boeing, or Lockheed-Martin. I might bet a paycheck (not much) that it is less. it might even be shockingly less. I don’t have access to those numbers, but someone in here might.
NOAA’s budget is even more laughable than ours. About $5B a year, of which perhaps half goes to NESDIS, their division responsible for earth environmental satellites. They have to manage the fisheries and all that other stuff out of the rest. Like managing a global ship fleet. They would need more money.
I’m actually not sure how quickly a President could terminate NASA programs. Some things (research grants) can be cut off fairly abruptly and without congressional involvement. Flight missions would probably take at least one budget cycle, and might be overruled if Congress adds the correct words to the budget. But, remember, the majority in Congress seem to agree with Mr. Trump on this. I can also imagine some creative re-branding. I doubt Mr. Trump objects to improved weather forecasting. With a little creative writing, many climate change observations could be justified on that, or a similarly acceptable, basis.
Yeah, but why should we put all this money and work into better weather forecasting ourselves? We have to make those other countries pay for their fair share.
But who knows. It sounds like he may have changed his tune on NATO, Thank God!
I cannot imagine Griffin would be a serious consideration for Administrator. He destroyed the Vision, came up with an unworkable solution for exploration, was instrumental in shutting down Shuttle before it should have been and really did not play well with others-it was always his way, all of the time,lets not listen to facts or reason. I see it as the end of NASA. That kind of technical expertise is not needed in an Administrator. What is needed is a politician who can work the system. Griffin might make sense in an Associate Administrator or Program Manager, in a technical role, but even there he needs to learn to work with and listen to the technical expertise. He’s a prima dona, and not Administrator material. At his age, it is probably too late to start learning now how to work with people.
However, the Republican leadership likes him, he’s been a loyal defender of SLS. If Trump doesn’t care about space, and Gingrich/Walker have their eyes on other gigs, then throwing Congress a bone like Griffin is an easy way to build support.
For anyone interested this is the space session of the Report from the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry that Rep. Walker was in charge of.
http://www.nss.org/resource…
Unfortunately since it came out just before the Columbia Accident it quickly became a moot point, but it may have some insights on his positions on space. Note the call for supporting space tourism and discussion of space settlement as goal included in it.
Also, on a related note, Luxembourg just proposed a draft law that agrees with the U.S. Space Resources Act that the OST allows private ventures to mine Celestial Bodies. Except that to influence regulation of commercial activities in space.
“It will likely be a bit of both – partisan on Earth sciences and parochial on district pork. “
No news there. Cancelling SLS/Orion, which seems to be where several predictions are diplomatically pointed, will be no easier for Trump than it was for Obama. Congress runs that show, for its own “parochial interests”.
Still, he might find a way to pursued them…bit not before the 2018 test launch I’m thinking.
Griffin would likely push for a down-select to a single vendor (Boeing) in a traditional NASA-managed cost-plus contract. Something which already has support amongst the usual suspects in Congress. Effectively it would end commercial-crew in any meaningful sense.
Actually a good political move would be to appoint Lori Graver as NASA Administrator. It would be an easy way to show bipartisanship while having someone that would take NASA in the direction President Trump and Rep. Walker seem to want it to go.
I sincerely doubt that Lori would be picked by this incoming administration. I am certain that Lori agrees with my prediction.
True. Sadly that is one of the problems of government, the party you owe allegiance to is considered more important than your qualifications for the job. This is the opposite of the business world President elect Trump comes from where skills are important and generally no one cares which party you belong to. Hopefully he will bring this attitude to Washington as he stated in his speech of wanting to hire the best and the brightest to fix America.
But you are probably right and he will appoint someone from the proper political party instead.
While I’m skeptical of such a choice too, the President-Elect just spent an entire (successful) campaign befuddling a lot of professional commentator-prognosticators.
Having served on many Boards for various groups I have observed what I call the ‘roll up the shirt sleeves’ attitude.
Which is to day, a new group of folks, otherwise well-meaning, are elected or appointed and are fully prepared to throw out the baby and the bathwater.
I setup a complex computer system to run Temple Shalom here in Naples when I was VP. It was based on state of the art DB software available at the time (and now laughable). The system worked like a charm.
When I resigned after deferring the presidency the new guys threw out the system because it ran on a Macintosh.
It’s a (very) small example of the kind of iconoclastic decision making we so often see, a refusal to build on earlier achievements of either party, a sense that earlier decisions were rooted in a Weltanschauung somehow just plain wrong.
It might be true but it’s not leadership. And it’s practiced so widely that fingers cannot be pointed.
I’ve seen the same thing with long-duration NASA missions. Even if a spacecraft won’t get to its destination for years, you can’t launch without fairly detailed plans for how it will be operated once it gets there. So quite a bit of pre-launch time and effort goes into developing the ground system, operational organization and practices, testing all of the same, etc. Then, five years after launch, people have moved on to other projects or jobs, new people come in, and the new people say, “I don’t think we should do it that way; I’ve got a better idea.” All the pre-launch work on operations gets scrapped, and the whole effort is repeated. Honestly, I can see a good side to having two tries to get it right. But a turn-over in people does seem to imply quite a bit of reinventing the wheel, with all the inefficiency that implies. People just don’t seem to like saying, “I wouldn’t do it that way, but it works. Let’s just live with it.”