Bolden Meets With Obama

Predictions: Increased emphasis on Earth-oriented remote sensing programs to support climate model studies. New initiatives for international cooperation to explore beyond LEO.

Don't forget funneling more "NASA funds" into education and outreach (whatever that term means) programs.

In order to save face for NASA, I predict that Obama and Bolden will choose one of the two NASA options for returning to the Moon: the cheaper one:-)

Marcel F. Williams

Augustine Panel said we do not have enough budget to do anything compelling. They went on to say that if we had more budget we could pursue an undefined flexible path. Now how compelling is that? What they did not discuss is that if we had more money, why should we not proceed with the program of record. After all, Norm himself said that there are no technical show-stoppers with Ares I / Ares V. If that is true, then Ares I has been shown to be by far the best option for crew safety.

I say we re-badge the program of record and get on with it...

Unfortunately, the Augustine Commission never properly evaluated the cheapest option (the Sidemount shuttle) since they lumped it in with a more expensive inline architecture (DIRECT).

The Augustine Commission also underestimated the amount of mass that the SD-HLV can transport into lunar orbit (the read Shannon's first presentation but apparently didn't look at the more extensive review of the SD-HLV concept that indicated that nearly 48 tonnes of net payload could be placed into lunar orbit.

NASA really doesn't have any money problems if they are allowed to do what they originally planned to do: end the $3 billion dollar a year shuttle program in 2011 and end the $2 billion dollar a year ISS program in 2016 in order to use those resources the lunar architecture program. But the commission didn't want end the ISS program and many in Congress are not comfortable being out of space for perhaps 5 years to a decade.

So if we want it all, we have to be willing to pay some want it all money!

Marcel F. Williams

Omegapoint,
I went over it on Selenian Boondocks (Keith is it ok to post a link?) last night. In order to execute on the Program of Record without killing ISS in 2015, you need an extra $7B per year to be added to NASA's Exploration budget. That gets you no increase in long-term R&D (which was gutted for Orion), gets you no investment in commercial crew services, gets you no funding for any lunar surface hardware (so even when you can go, you don't have much you can do when you get there), and gets you a program that barely puts 2 lunar missions on the lunar surface per year, starting 15 years from now, if nobody cancels it by then. Even doing one of the other more sane Moon First options gets you back to the Moon faster, for much less budget ($3B extra per year instead of $7B), gets you investment in commercial crew enough to foster a whole new US market, and gets you over a billion a year in advanced R&D to continually drive down the cost of future missions.

Seriously, do any of the supporters of the Program of Record ever actually look at the numbers, or what we're supposedly getting for all the money they want? Why should the US pay so much more for so much less? The Program of Record, even if executed perfectly from now on is a screw deal for the US public (outside of Huntsville, AL), and needs to be put out of our collective misery.

~Jon

jongoff

The Program of Record, even if executed perfectly from now on is a screw deal for the US public (outside of Huntsville, AL), and needs to be put out of our collective misery.

And while Sidemount proponents may claim that their design was somewhat underestimated there's no way in hell Sidemount can match the cost/benefit ratio of an inline launcher such as Direct.

One might perhaps pay a small amount more for inline (or possibly not (Direct says their numbers got shifted around as well) but in return one will get vastly increased capabilities that Sidemount cannot possibly match- now or ever.

The lowest power Direct configuration lofts over 70 tons to LEO. The J246 lofts upwards of a hundred tons. And all versions can carry PLF's from 8.4 meters to 12 meters in diameter.

Sidemount is left far behind and what little money might be saved in starting out with Sidemount will be lost when you are forced to assemble projects out of multiple ISS-diametered modules again... something that everyone seems to agree is a bad idea.

Sidemount was ordered up as an "Anything But Direct" emergency alternative... and unlike the POR of record Sidemount will actually work and be affordable... but it is neither the most economical nor the most efficient way to go forward using shuttle components.

Prediction:

1) ISS extended to 2020; Chinese invited to play
2) Ares 1 is canceled;
3) COTS for LEO routine access to ISS
4) Flexible path (with moon in the mix) is selected;however, no heavy lift or moon lander hardware development till decision of first mission is made, which will require International partnerships
5) With Cx money freed up, look for a reinvestment in R&D that supports Flexipath goals, with MSFC getting these now available funds to (ensure employment) lead the R&D developments
6) Look for something unexpected and viewed as a surprise
7) Verbal restatement about the important of Earth Science, with out any significant monies added to make a difference, but enough to let Obama say "I increased funding for NASA Earth Science"

I agree with everything EarthShine said except part of number 4. I believe the Shuttle Derived Side-mount HLV will go into development. The infrastructure is in place with minimal modification and most of the primary components are in place..

Ironically, the DIRECT team claim that it is their baby that has been unfairly handicapped by being lumped into the same category as the Side-mount! Learn from that what you will!

~*~*~*~

Onto the subject of the thread. My predictions (with my cynic's hat firmly in place):

1) There will be a "Dash for Commercial". CRS and CCDev will become the US-indigenous access to the ISS;

2) Orion will be deferred with the target IOC date pushed back to 2017 or even 2018, as it will have no serious role until after ISS retirement;

3) Ares-I will be cancelled as it has no role; All crew launch will be either in their mission spacecraft or by commercial provider;

4) Ares-I funding will be re-prioritised to getting the commercial providers up-and-running ASAP;

5) No further funding will be made available for the NASA cargo launcher, but the ACES common upper stage for EELV may be funded to improve EELV launch performance for crewed spaceflight applications;

5(a) Crewed EELV will be referred to as an 'interim' crew launcher and the EELV-H Phase 1s as 'interim' cargo launchers. However, the final products will never seem to progress far off of the drawing board;

6) We will have some kind of BEO program, post-ISS, described in vague terms. As it will be so far into the future (after the hypothetical 2nd Obama term) that the President will see no need to describe it in any detail.

Naturally, this will lead to a lengthy fight between the President and Congress, especially those who support PoR. The President may get around it by playing games with semantics:

* CxP isn't cancelled, it's deferred;

* CxP elements are not being cancelled, their details are just being changed a bit (canning Ares-I for EELV Phase 1 will be a bit hard to 'spin' in this manner but not impossible);

* There will be a BEO program - it's just that the exact details are still in review pending more concrete details on the mission capabilites of the new HLV.

I think either science or HSF will get a giant cut as we do a new redefinition of the priorities of NASA. I do not think we could do another launch of a new VSE (vision for space exploration) like under Bush.

Prediction:

Obama's Jan 22nd 2010 state of the union will be a copy and paste from JFK's May 25, 1961.

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03NationalNeeds05251961.htm

My predictions:

-- Bolden's getting prepped for the Obama admin's plan of action in the immediate future; this isn't a "discussion" so much as it's a heads-up for him.

-- Administration cancels existing architecture and buries it in the slow holiday news lull

-- New "vision" announced as part of State of the Union in January. What that will be... who knows?

"And while Sidemount proponents may claim that their design was somewhat underestimated there's no way in hell Sidemount can match the cost/benefit ratio of an inline launcher such as Direct."

The inline launcher is clearly a superior architecture over the Sidemount. However, with the Sidemount, you don't have to develop a brand new booster. And placing space shuttle main engines beneath a substantially modified external tank would be a-- brand new booster-- with all the safety and development problems that come with it. The inline version also uses an additional SSME which might make it more expensive than the Sidemount.

My hope with the Sidemount concept is that its development, will allow NASA enough money to-- immediately-- start fully funding the development of the Altair lunar landing vehicles so that we can return to the Moon before 2020. But I'm not so sure if we'd have the money to do that if Obama chose the DIRECT concept and it might delay Altair funding for another 5 or 6 years.

I should also note that there's a substantial cash prize for NASA at the end of the development and shuttle replacement phase (especially if the Congress decides to continue funding the shuttle until its replacement is ready). This is why its better to get the architecture built sooner than later.

After its development, the new lunar program will suddenly have $3 billion a year in shuttle money plus $3.4 billion a year in former Constellation development money plus the possible $3 billion a year increase in the NASA budget plus $2 billion a year if the ISS is decommissioned in 2016. NASA would suddenly have an $11.4 billion a year manned space program budget for a lunar program whose space vehicles have already been developed! That would be more than double the budget for the current manned space program (Shuttle plus ISS) that we have today!

Marcel F. Williams

Just an additional point, arising from Keith's scoop about upcoming governance changes at NASA.

I suspect that the President is going to put the blame for CxP running onto a sandbank on NASA's internal processes. Part of the new vision will be a comprehensive reorganisation of the agency. Maybe a few centres might be downgraded and downsized too.

Obama's decision: He will vote present

It will be a great revelation when the president finally decides to act. In order to save the new commercial launch companies from the political fate that the "Space-Industrial Complex" forces, including Senator Shelby, are trying to hand them, he would have to veto the huge budget bill that has a lot of items in it that Obama wants. He will have to decide which is more important. I will be surprised if he vetos the bill, but he still might find a way to support the COTS-type launchers with the bill signed. This would be very hard to do.

We definitely do need a true HLV. With propellant depots, the need for a very large capacity HLV would be reduced. I greatly admire all the work being done in designing the currently proposed alternatives to the Ares V, but the cost of operating any expendable HLV (using SRB's) will probably be too high to sustain any except a token exploration program, with a max of two launches per year. This is too slow a rate to support lunar development. Without an HLV, you cannot put a re-usable lunar or mars lander/ferry into LEO, which you have to do before you can use it!

One path forward would be to cancel the Ares 1, and develop and build which ever HLV design is the cheapest to operate (lowest lbs to orbit cost). Then, once the commercial crew and cargo system(s) to LEO are operating, put money into (or issue launch contract guarantees for) a fully reusable HLV, which would allow full lunar or Mars exploration operations to commence.

It is clear that the current NASA top leadership wants to effect real, effective and positive changes, but only the President has the power to push for them effectively. I can make no predictions as to what he will do.

zapkitty:

"... what little money might be saved in starting out with Sidemount will be lost when you are forced to assemble projects out of multiple ISS-diametered modules again... something that everyone seems to agree is a bad idea."

Who says that multiple ISS-diametered modules is a bad thing, and why? I haven't seen a lot of shouting about it but it seems that building ISS-like modules to use in long-duration exploration missions would be a good thing:
* We have existing designs that aren't very old (so good, relatively current documentation); obviously they would need some modification but the structure is there
* We have manufacturing capabilities to assemble them without a lot of retooling, since we've been doing it recently
* We have a good understanding of their structures and behavior during launch and use, as well as lessons learned from their use over the last several years
* We have a lot of "accessories" (power systems, crew quarters, crew health equipment, etc) already designed so additional ones could be built with less effort

... it seems like cost-wise that would be a *good* idea. What are the downsides?

It's great to come up with revolutionary new designs. But NASA seems to have a habit of throwing away things that work and starting from scratch, which costs more money, takes more time, and we end up with a sort of Kuhn loss where good ideas and lessons learned from past missions are intentionally forgotten. Since money is definitely an issue, and time is an issue inasmuch as the American public gets bored quickly when long stretches go by with nothing new, it seems like NASA would do better to take something from the Russian playbook and make some evolution of a existing, working system rather than throwing it all away. A sidemount launcher and ISS-like modules would mean a huge savings of time and effort for a lot of the basics. A mix of VASIMR and "traditional" propulsion methods could be attached to the modules; Orion could be saved as a landing vehicle (or they could stop work on it because it's stupid and resurrect the X-38, which was much farther along in its design when it was canceled than Orion is now); suddenly a big chunk of the design work is done much more quickly.

We could even get *really* crazy and (gasp! the horror!) use the money that we would have dumped in to designing brand-new vehicles in to another refit/evolution of the existing Shuttle fleet, and use them as launchers & landers. Upgrades of systems and materials could improve their launching capacity, and rework of the ground support organization could save huge amounts of money per launch. *And* in the meantime they could continue to support the ISS. But that's just crazy talk.

I'm tired of guessing. I never know what this President will do. I know what I want, but I'm sure it will be a far cry from what is done.

All of these other options are always so much cheaper until you start producing hardware, and that's when the rubber meets the road. Sounds like another faster, better, cheaper to me...and we all know how that worked out.

This is what I think, but not hope he will do. The president is going to scrap the VSE and Ares along with it. This is what he's wanted to do since coming to office. He will choose to reemphasize Earth Science as part of his overall emphasis on global warming. He will choose to extend ISS to 2020, and possibly beyond, mostly because of international partnerships. There will be increased funding for commercial crew & cargo transport to LEO only, which of course, will start to have budget creep as soon as they have to really do something. Comercial is now become the sheik and cool thing to do, because the private sector is going to save us all, and for half the price!

Americans will not stand on the surface of another celestial body again, until long after we are all dead and gone. Because somewhere along the line we've decided that we can tackle really big things anymore. It's all too difficult & too expensive. I have never heard so many excuses why we can't get there from here. Look around the world, where are all the truly great engineering projects being completed? Not here, I can tell you that. Possibly because somewhere over the rainbow they can make a decision, fund it adequately, and for longer than 4 years. Did you ever think, you would live to see the day when Americans weren't willing to spend just 1% of their budget in what would truly be an investment in their collective future?

I would hope the President would increase NASA funding by at least $10 billion per year. That would put a ton of people to work adequately fund a true vision for exploration along with the appropriate levels of research and development, and still cost less than 1% of the Federal Budget. But that's not whats going to happen. It'll be dressed up with fine words and a bow, but we'll be going around in circles for a long time to come.

He will decide something no one was thinking of or talking about.

1. President will propose additional funds to accelerate the development of J-2X engine. For Ares I 2nd stage.

2. Provide additional funds to accelerate development of Ares I launcher in order to meet 2015 launch date.

3. Extend one additional space shuttle mission beyond the current manifest. End shuttle program in 2011 after additional mission.

4. Increase funding for new CCDev program to accelerate commercial crew ISS transport development in US.

4. Renegotiate with ISS partners to extend space station to 2020 and continue contracting with RKK Energia for crew services until a US company can provide services by 2016.

5. Jump start development of Ares V heavy lift stage.

6. Propose new advance technology R&D agency for NASA.

7. Overall, increase NASA operating budget by $2 billion a year.

>So ... what do you think the President will decide?

He'll can NASA completely citing a report he will immediately release which concludes the Mayans we're right...we're all doomed on 12/21/2012.

:)

NASA badly needs to be re-organized!

But not by the usual suspects,

NASA should be rolled into the DoD budget with a comprehensive review from top to bottom akin to the DoD BRAC review.

Review ALL projects, ACCURATELY ascertain just what it's people are doing and why. Reel in projects that NASA is doing that some other agency should really be directing and so on.

NASA has entirely too much DEAD wood in it's ranks and way too many pet projects that are many times costly and irrelevant to anything productive.

The DoD could and would effectively clean house on the project and personnel levels without the usual multi-levels of bureaucratic red tape that permeates NASA from top to bottom.

Realign NASA, realign it's goals and make it a leaner meaner space agency that may actually have a real agenda.

Does NASA really need 9 field centers to accomplish current goals?

I know this would NOT a popular path to take but it is something the agency needs--but it wouldn't happen because a realignment would most likely cost many jobs and is not something the current administration would likely want to do at this time.

Too bad.........

Spiff out..............

Hey Spaceman,
No argument here that NASA needs a revolutionary realignment. But such a thing would never be accomplished by the DoD. The DoD civil servant side is so incredibly bureaucratic they make NASA look like a lean, mean fighting machine. I'd guess the money spent by DoD on boondoggle travel each year is more than the entire NASA budget.

The problem isn't diameter as such... it's the volume.

The ISS module design, needed to fit the shuttle payload bay, caused the station to be assembled over many flights which jacked up the complexity and thus the cost of design, construction and operations by several orders of magnitude.

If NASA had magically had an inline launcher with a 10 meter PLF at the start of ISS construction the equivalent volume of the entire current configuration of ISS could have been lofted in 3-5 launches depending on how you wanted to set it up.

The finished station would have been somewhat plainer in appearance with far fewer but larger core modules with smaller partner nation modules attached at will but the cost savings for R&D, construction and operations would have been enormous... and will still be considerable for future LEO and BEO operations if we go with inline now.

One current European concept is a large module to take over the ISS core functions when the original gear wears out. Jupiter can loft such an uber-module, indefinitely extending ISS and also reducing its operational costs*. Sidemount cannot loft this.

*(This extension would of course also benefit the commercial crew and resupply business.)

You would use ISS-style modules only when it is efficient to do so... and not because you have no other choice.

"You would use ISS-style modules only when it is efficient to do so... and not because you have no other choice."

The fact that we can make them and launch them *makes* them an efficient choice. Engineering is about compromise - there's never going to be a perfect solution to a problem this big. If NASA had been able to launch bigger modules, they would have launched bigger modules - fine. But don't confuse overall volume with usable volume. Making equipment racks deeper than the current ones may allow more equipment, but most of the racks aren't packed full of equipment - the front interface takes up a lot of area but the racks are generally an adequate size. If the racks were the same depth but a few feet taller, that gives a larger surface area for working, but presents big usability issues. Having a huge volume in the middle of the modules for crew members to do cartwheels for the TV may be fun, but isn't really relevant.

And if we're talking about available launchers dictating spacecraft design, I'm sure you're aware that the supposed set of capabilities of the Ares-I launch vehicle is having a HUGE impact on the capabilities of the Orion capsule - number of crew members, amount of cargo, etc. So the Orion capsule is being designed to fit on an Ares-I, then the mission capabilities are being set based on that. How is it any better? There are limitations to every design.

From an *efficiency* standpoint, doesn't it make more sense to use something that's well-understood and can be launched with current technology? Remember that time and money are resources we have to be efficient with. I always suspect that part of the reason that we haven't gone to Mars yet isn't because we don't have the technology, but because people insist that you have to re-invent the wheel for every new job.

At this point, human space flight may be back on the mat: House speaker questions more NASA funding, Mars trip.

From the link in a previous post "House speaker questions more NASA funding, Mars trip":

“Again, everything is in competition for the dollar, and a judgment will be made as to what it does in terms of job creation,” Pelosi said.

Hmmm, construction jobs for infrastructure, refurbishing school buildings, installing windmills, etc are OK, but I guess she's reserving judgment on whether high tech jobs for space exploration are of any real value to the country. Think hard, Nancy.

There will be no immediate change in Constellation, the appropriation bill just passed by Congress forbids changes without their approval. So you see, it doesn't matter what Obama and Bolden want to do. Congress controls the purse strings and therefore controls what NASA does. Personally, I think this is going too far and is a violation of the Separation of Powers in the Constitution. But hey, the president signed the bill into law, so he must agree. This is politics at its finest, Shelby and others aren't about to let the executive branch move billions of dollars out of their states without a fight.

I believe NASA should invest more in nuclear fusion propulsion.
Nuclear fusion concepts potentially applicable to space propulsion exist, most notably those involving electrostatic confinement of the nuclear core.
http://www.crossfirefusor.com/nuclear-fusion-reactor/overview.html