TrumpSpace Update
Expect changes in the "beachhead" team @NASA HQ in the coming weeks as frustrated participants give up due to lack of direction at #NASA pic.twitter.com/K3Kf71GGkd
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) February 20, 2017
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Expect changes in the "beachhead" team @NASA HQ in the coming weeks as frustrated participants give up due to lack of direction at #NASA pic.twitter.com/K3Kf71GGkd
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) February 20, 2017
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How would that be a “dream team”? Unless… Scott Pace would be strong enough to make up for Rep. Bridenstine’s weaknesses; ie to fight to protect science in general, and climate science in particular. Is that true?
Impetus meaning the White House was interested in SLS/Orion early with crew and asked for the risk assessment?
Or meaning let’s try to show progress and crew sooner or White House will cancel us based on how the beachhead players are lining up against old space?
It’ll be fun watching the Trump White House cancel SLS when the Obama White House couldn’t. Of course, he could just do to SLS what Obama did to Constellation. Do you remember the year of delays and uncertainty within NASA that resulted? Can the Constellation/SLS dream survive Trump and Congress fighting over its fate for a year, with Falcon Heavy and New Glenn on the horizon?
We may be watching the final act in this play. It’s possible that even Nov. 2018 is not soon enough to save SLS without a crew aboard. Can they even fly with crew by Nov. 2018, in the currently planned EM-1 configuration? I wouldn’t put it past SpaceX to fly Red Dragon pressurized just to show that they can, and if successful it’d be in-flight to Mars when EM-1 launches for a mere moon-loop. If operational flights of FH start this summer as planned, and Red Dragon flies, and Dragon V2 carries crew to the ISS in 2018 like Musk and Shotwell say it will, they could…and likely would…fly a crewed Dragon on an FH at least once before EM-2 in 2021. They’d find customers for that. There would still be plenty of room in the lead time to arrange it too.
Yes, the swamp denizens likely sense the SLS is in trouble, especially with Elon Musk having a direct channel as advisor.
Launching astronauts on SLS before the first commercial crew flight would allow NASA to claim commercial crew was a failure because it took so long, ignoring how it was starved for funding to feed the SLS. A successful flight could allow them the arguments they would need to bring the CST100 in house as a “NASA program” to “fix” the failure of commercial crew, something Boeing would not object to.
So it may be an act of desperation on the part of the swamp denizens to hang on to their old way of life.
As a side note, rather then go to the EM L1 they could just go to the ISS, a much safer option since the Orion could be checked out at the ISS before returning, and claim victory over commercial crew. Most folks outside the space community wouldn’t care about the difference. They would just see NASA launching astronauts from America again and be happy.
“Launching astronauts on SLS before the first commercial crew flight would allow NASA to claim commercial crew was a failure because it took so long”
Or chain New Space to LEO…thereby providing job security in deep space for their Congresses golden bird and securing for themselves cushy jobs at Boing after they retire from Government service.
The current design (recently checked this) for the Orion does not have a rendezvous sensor – so that is another change that would have to be made to the system. Difficult? No, but more changes stacking up would mean more risk.
I love the cartoon, but as a physicist, I’m not sure about some of the terms in the equation. Zero divided by zero is always hard to evaluate.
Not zero, really; Sum (nonsense) —> reality.
I can believe that this White House was ignorant (I’m trying to be charitable) enough about manned flight safety, risk management, and how far along the plans for EM-1 are to ask, but I’m disappointed that Lightfoot didn’t have the knowledge or perhaps the backbone to say that’s not the way you do things, because space is hard.
It’s demonstrably more complicated than simple ignorance. These comments aren’t meant to be partisan, or disagreeable; just what I (think) I see.
In “Airport”, an old movie, and with the benefit of a pilot on the ground whispering I her ear, the flight attendant lands a 747 at LAX. It’s preposterous, of course. Landing that big bird isn’t like playing chess, complicated though the game is. It’s akin to 3D chess.
So here we have a supremely confident “deal maker” who, assessing the federal government and her policies from afar, concludes “it can’t be that hard”. But it is hard. Running the country is like running a very poorly constrained model. Except it’s reality.
It’s popular to think that any of us could get elected and then slip on the shoes of power. That’s the American ideal, isn’t it? “By the people?” And so they arrive in Washington, armed with a political touchstone- that less government is better, that taxation is some sort of thievery, among others.
Decisions are made by applying simplistic touchstones in the way that architects depend on conceptual statements to derive form. You want less regulation? Fine! Go ahead and dump mine tailings. It makes perfect sense in that worldview.
Emboldened by conceptual purity, animated by righteousness, and unschooled in the nuance of public governance, there naturally occurs a wholesale floundering. After election the candidates are forced to swim in the political sea, an arena both disdained and mis-understood. Floundering- a natural consequence of naivety- is passed off by blaming the press, or Obama, or whatever.
As a result they naturally conclude that every sea creature is there to attack them; they wildly about in barely concealed fear as the winds blow, waves representing the natural political landscape often denying a clear view of the ocean as a whole.
OK. That metaphor has done double duty.
The actions and reactions of current administration, in summary, is entirely predictable and natural, which is why a bit of experience (and wide reading) makes a better administration. And the very idea of sending a manned SLS rocket to the moon before planned is the best representation of this immature problem assessment.
The government is not only queer, it is queerer than you can suppose. Or something like that.
Not only preposterous, but not in the actual movie(s)! Dean Martin lands the bomb-damaged 707 in the first Airport, Charleton Heston (with Karen Black’s assistance) lands the air-to-air-collision-damaged 747 in ’75 (after mid-air pilot transfer from a helicopter), the 747 floats off the ocean bottom in ’77, and George Kennedy lands the Concorde in ’79 in spite of a terrorist missile. Did I miss one?
Getting one’s facts straight always helps to bolster an argument…
I believe he mean’t Airplane … a Leslie Nielsen spinoff
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Yup. Thanks!
So, you’re either saying that the original WSJ article about recommending a circumlunar flyoff of crews on Orion/SLS and a commercial capsule on commercial launcher(s) was inaccurate, or that someone in the White House has removed the commercial element? I wonder if they checked with Vice President Pence about this?
Sounds like the classic example of cross paradigm miscommunication. President Trump in his campaign was critical on how NASA isn’t able to launch its own astronauts anymore. I could see him sending NASA an inquiring into how soon it could launch its own astronauts again.
Now in sending this, likely prompted by Elon Musk, he was probably referring to commercial crew – what NASA needed to move it forward since most folks outside of NASA would see this as NASA launching its own astronauts again instead of the having to ride on Soyuz..
But NASA, not seeing commercial crew as NASA launching astronauts but nothing more than a domestic replacement for paying for Soyuz flights, assumed he must be referring to their pet program, the great and wonderful SLS. And since it takes years between launches for the SLS the only option they would see would be putting astronauts on the first test flight. Hence the study on putting astronauts on the first flight.
“[NASA sees] commercial crew…as nothing more than a domestic replacement for paying for Soyuz flights”
I wish I had some insight into just how close this assessment is to reality. Truly NASA is in a very tough spot on SLS. It’s very easy to take pot-shots at management–I do it myself- but at least some of them are very smart people as capable of assessing the SLS/CC picture. And bleak it must be from inside NASA, forced as they are to crow about SLS, all the while watching a slipping schedule, mostly superior capabilities of FH, and a laughable budget/flight rate.
Blah blah blah….
And another generation of engineers who, when they got out of school, thought that they’d be working on the next big thing, gets hoodwinked.
What a fantastical series of posts; SLS is in such terrible trouble, (despite a study no doubt greenlit by the White House to look at launching it crewed earlier) that Trump will cancel it despite the fact that it will cost jobs and anger in states that provided about a third of his narrow electoral vote victory and despite the fact that the Senate last week and likely the House next week passed a NASA transition Authorization that specifically endorsed SLS and Orion. Instead, pressurized Red Dragons on Falcon Heavies from SpaceX – which always delivers on schedule and with 100% reliability – will come to the rescue. These will be developed and funded by an eccentric billionaire whose car company is hemmoraging cash, will soon face real electric car competition from established luxury brands even as the Obama tax subsidies will expire in June, further depressing demand.
My question is, is this a credible scenario? If you think so, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn that’s for sale!