Jeff Hanley Dumps on Augustine

Jeff has a hell of a nerve, impugning the reputation, expertise or honesty of the Augustins Committee. All of the people on the committee actually have reputations and expertise. Jeff, and his entire management team's track record only consists of the last four years of spending a lot of money and time and having little to show for it.

Augustine is saying that proven existing launch systems are a good bet in the next few years for launching a manned vehicle.

Augustine has also said that given another $ 35 billion and another 8-10 years, the NASA Constellation team might get an Ares rocket to where it could be relied upon too (maybe, though the management team's track record is pretty dismal).

As far as safety, Orion/Ares is essentially a new vehicle with a number of unknowns. And, if we can only afford to launch one every six months, at best, it becomes expensive and lack of operational experience could also translate into safety issues.

Well at least Jeff is finally moving past denial on the future of the present Constellation - he's now on anger.

Jeff,

The next step is acceptance.

The obvious way to get rid of the "gap" is to cancel Constellation and extend Shuttle. In fact, the cancellation of Shuttle is inexplicable. Did anyone notice we just had four launches in five months? With seven people and tons of cargo on each? And what will Constellation have for the same money? One capsule and four people twice a year in LEO, after a five year gap?

The Augustine study concluded that the current HSF goals and schedule cannot fit into the current budget, and what you can fit in doesn't make sense by itself.

In order to reach that conclusion, they had to consider several alternatives, none of which is really known to be better or even viable. That's just part of system engineering -- look for low-hanging fruit. If NASA decides to divert to one of those options, more study is needed, including re-costing. Hanley should have said that instead. It's enough of a warning for now.