There Is More To All Of This. $5.9 Billion More.

Hope springs eternal? Maybe it's best to tune in a few months from now and see how the economy, tax revenues, and reelection prospects are doing.

Keith -

Seems that some blogs are picking this up:

http://www.floridatoday.com/content/blogs/space/

"$6 billion in new funding for NASA over the next five years"

No commitment on heavy lift though...

Does anyone know if Elon Musk/Space X has actually gone through a 'safety process' for the Falcon 9, like anything that flies on Shuttle would have to go through? Or was Space X just handed a document with safety requirements in it, and then the designed to it?
Big difference between the two.

Keith, can you say more about what kind of HLV is expected? There's some expert talk online that the HLV itself may not be fully commercial. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. Privatising an SDLV maybe?

Still not $3B per year that Augustine said was needed.

Bush put us back on course at least and perhaps the wind was not as needed, but we we're headed in the right direction. Obama got hold of the wheel and steered off in a direction that will serve his administrations short term needs, NOT America's.

Shame. Out sourcing NASA isn't going to accomplish the big goals, it's not a full solution.

I will fight for NASA and return to moon, and I will indeed fight to see that we have a President again that get's it.

The least expensive way to get an HLV is probably an EELV derivative. The savings from common facilities, common tooling, and other common infrastructure could be huge. The cost of the shuttle and all its derivatives is dominated by its massively inefficient infrastructure. They cost a fortune whether they fly or not.

Encouraging entrepreneurial efforts are a positive sign. It is likely the only way the nation can recover from the situation we find ourselves in today with human space flight.

As NASA had shown over the last five years, it had no ability to develop even the simplest concept.

It amazes me that the most senior of the NASA people, like Wayne Hale in his past week's blog, fails to recognize that others can and have done great jobs in space, while over the last decade NASA has come to represent big, corrupt, inefficient bureaucracy, big budgets and minimal accomplishments. How can someone like Hale have worked in the program for the last 20+ years and not recognized that commercial and non-NASA efforts
have been very successful, and instead he takes the chauvinistic approach that without NASA we are all doomed ?

Constellation was doomed,
-first because of the short-sightedness of the architecture, something NASA management was solely responsible for, and
- as much as anything else, because of the math and physics errors of the original Griffin - Horowitz plan, something that should have easily been recognized and dealt with in the first months of the program
- Constellation was doomed just as much by the team assembled to manage the program. They were a bunch of neophytes who mainly excelled in bureaucratic gamesmanship, not a one of them having a serious technical accomplishment behind them. Now that NASA and the nation has seen their inabilities, the goal needs to be to move these people into positions where they can do the least harm to the remaining organizations and people. Maybe they can still be trained.

"Bush put us back on course at least"

What an enormous crock - Bush sent NASA sailing off on ship with no rudder, no sails and a leaking hull!

Keith! Our heads are going to spin off our necks trying to keep up. This would be good news, for sure, if the details include definitive objectives and/or plans for exploration beyond LEO. Mainly I (perhaps most of us) are just afraid exploration itself is going to be abandoned. Still, I don't think this is the best news - my tinge of "socialism" prevents me from supporting total commercialization I guess. But, I guess if LockMartBoeingATK pitch Ares I/V as their "commercial" offering, that would count too, right? Or.... maybe I should just duck and cover now. Fact is, I'm beyond dismayed about Constellation being cancelled and I think it's the wrong strategy, but I will not argue with efforts to grow the commercial sector. I certainly wouldn't argue against the prospect of a Martian lander with the SpaceX logo on its side.

I forgot to mention, to Mike Hilton's comment, the Augustine Committee recommended an aggregate increase of around $3 billion by 2014, specifically, increasing the budget by roughly $1 billion per year until the total year-over-year is $3billion. So that would be like increasing a billion this year, next year and the next. They didn't recommend an increase of all $3 billion in a single year. So, this is pretty much in line with that, if not a bit greater.

Moony,

They are already trained.See Spacehab.

What does 'commercial' mean in the of manned space flight? Manned space flight has one user, the U.S. Government, so how can anything be considered 'commercial' at this point in space flight development?

"What an enormous crock - Bush sent NASA sailing off on ship with no rudder, no sails and a leaking hull!"

Hyperbole sir, hyperbole.

There was no talk of return to moon before then, and even Mars in the distant future.

Now those dreams are dashed on the rocks by Obama.

Bush at least knew what NASA was supposed to be doing.

Meaningless verbal sparring.

"Commercial" is when the government buys goods or services from a business... i.e. a non-government commercial entity.

Just because that entity may rely on government contracts does not make it any less commercial.

This particular mistakenly nitpicking argument does nothing and goes nowhere... and is frankly a waste of time. Why do people insist on it as if it made some sort of difference?

And when the first Bigelow goes up and is serviced by the same commercial entities that cut their teeth on ISS... what will the argument be then?

The last thing we want is another group of companies dependent on the US tax payers for their survival!

That's why I advocate allowing average citizens to show their support for private commercial launch companies by creating a national space lotto where winners could get a free ride into space.

Why should only astronauts,the wealthy and congressional members be the only ones to get a chance to travel into space? Why not let the rest of us have a chance to travel into space too!

Marcel F. Williams

Folks seem to be conflating the several and varied rumors and leaks: nothing I've heard so far has suggested that the HLV will be commercial.

That's one thing I hate about "government by leak, trial balloon and triangulation."

So correlating from all that's been released... and disregarding the POR-Griffin spam...

1 Maybe about a billion a year to promote commercial and to pay for...

2 ... upgrades at Kennedy to handle the increased commercial launches and...

3 ... a NASA HLV that will look remarkably like an J246-SH and...

4 ... perhaps a few hundred million extra each year to help NASA adjust to the new realities.

If that's an accurate reading then NASA was actually pretty lucky, considering the alternatives. Constellation itself actually died when the economy did and Ares has been a dead LV walking.

A question I still have is: will the Orion be salvaged for flexible-path missions? Seems likely but nothing was mentioned in the leakathon?

When Dragon (cargo) docks with the ISS, it becomes part of the pressurized volume of the station. So it has to meet all of the same requirements as any other module. That safety process is definitely being followed, per several SpaceX presentations which mention them passing the various levels of pre-flight safety review. A similar review process would have been followed at the component level for the DragonEye docking components that were delivered for on the last Shuttle flight.

As for as Falcon 9, it's a little more unclear. But since they are going through the formal review process with Dragon to become part of the pressurized volume of the ISS, I think it's reasonable to assume that they are smart enough to have talked with people at NASA and followed the correct design practices.

This has been done before in a sense - Orbital built SpaceHab which flew in the Shuttle cargo bay, and met all of the pertinent requirements.

If you follow the Direct guys (for instance here), then it seems that the new HLV will be a Jupiter 140SH/241SH (or something very much like it), with a possible first test flight in 2012.

The Constellation program needed to be put out of it's misery anyway.

And the entire Constellation staff, from DC to Florida to Houston to Alabama to Mississippi to California and wherever else need to all get gone too!

If Kay Bailey succeeds with Shuttle extension and Bill Nelson endorses it, and with the Obama plan for KSC, voters here in Florida should be happy enough for the Dems to suceed in the next Florida election.

But still skeptical of commercial rocket development plans for success and supposed safety of operations.

We (and that includes me) are wasting too much emotional energy, not to mention virtual paper and ink, on incomplete information.

Let's take the news as it dribbles out with a few grains of salt and go easy on our recriminations, despair, or relief until a more complete and official plan has emerged. Let's just hope one does emerge.

well first off i think the words of Mark Twain best describe what has occurred in the press today. " The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated." Nasa is a huge government entity spread over a lot of states with high electoral votes . The chief executive may change the direction of the agency but it would be political suicide for the party that tries to gut nasa. The agency has brought the human species to the brink of answering the big questions of existence. It seems ironic that just as we are on the brink of discovering exoplanets capable of hosting alien biology our human spaceflight program is being threatened with it's very existence.The agency certainly has it's share of failures in the form of all the paper rockets it failed to build in the 90's and to quote the physicist Freeman Dyson "The space station is just a welfare program for the aerospace industry" As shocking as that sounds we need to keep our scientists and engineers engaged and pressing the frontiers whether engaged in make work programs like ares or Obama's earth observation program we as a people can't afford to lose that skill set. We certainly can't afford to outsource such a national asset either so I feel the whole story has yet to play itself out.

On the one hand, this is very bad news. In effect, the abandonment of US space leadership at the governmental level, certainly for this administration, and the after effects will echo well into the future. As a result of this path that the Obama Administration has chosen, I think its very likely that the American people will end up looking on from the sidelines as other states take the lead, and ultimately, the next human on the lunar surface is probably not going to be an American. The abandonment of US leadership in space will not only mean further decline of the US aerospace sector, but less incentive on the part of the next generation of scientists and aerospace engineers - those in high school or college now - to pursue a career in Space. Such is the mark of the decline of the US as a world power.

On the other hand, this could be exactly what is needed - a real kick up the backside, especially if it leads to the American people being forced to watch as others - the Chinese, Indians, Russians and possibly Japanese - take the lead. The outcry will not be directed to restore NASA. I think a Government-led space effort is in its dying days. It will instead promote private industry and commercial space to make real progress, not just in getting humans and payload into LEO, but to take the next steps beyond to return to Cislunar space.

So I honestly cannot foresee how this will turn out. It could be a blessing in disguise, or it simply could be the end for US Space leadership. It in large part depends on how private industry grabs this opportunity and how far they can run with it. If Government regulation stifles opportunity and innovation, then I don't think the US will be a leading Space power by 2030, and may in fact, no longer be a Space power at all. If on the other hand, the commercial sector is really allowed to take off, in the same way commercial aviation took off in the 1930s, then its a whole new ball game, and getting back to the Moon may be merely one small step in a much longer journey.

But overall, I think its a sad day. I note that President Obama will be visiting Florida to begin development of a high speed train between Tampa and Disneyworld. At the same time, he's just gutted the Space Programme. What a slap in the face to the hundreds of thousands of men and women who have worked hard since 1961 to keep America in Space - not to mention the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia. If the worst happens, then their sacrifice will have been in vain.

As a kid in 1969, I watched Armstrong and Aldrin step onto the lunar surface. I tried to watch all the other Apollo missions, and ever since have wished we could go back. I'm 45 now, and I'm no longer as confident that the US will return in my lifetime. Ultimately, what matters is that humanity goes back to the Moon and beyond, and I'm sure someone will. But what a big come-down for America if it just gives up making giant leaps for mankind...

Malcolm
Canberra, Australia

...and what happens if/when Space X has financial difficulties and heads for bankruptcy court? Does the U.S. Government bail them out like wall street because they are the only player in HSF transport to the ISS?

Spacehab was a cost effective, efficient commercial operation. Each mission was costing NASA tens of millions of dollars. That compared, for example with costs of a billion dollars a mission for each NASA operated Spacelab, which could carry about the same.

Spacehab could easily manifest and fly hardware in weeks or days, while going the Shuttle or ISS route for the same hardware review, certification and manifesting required several months.

Spacehab is basically defunct today however. It was killed by NASA, which perceived it as a threat.

Funding the private sector for space exploration is a great idea and should be pursued, but not all at once. The reason private industry has not pursued it earlier is because there has been no profitability in it. Even now, from a business stand point, the profit is marginal and highly dependent on a government infrastructure for existence.
I applaud Elon Musk and Space X and wish them all the success in the world, but does anyone honestly believe that the cost will remain small after the first mishap? Yes, there will be mishaps, just as there are airline crashes, one of the safest modes of travel available. A transfer of service to private industry doesn’t necessarily mean a transfer of liability. We just bailed out the auto industry (not the first time either) which was managed, or mis-managed, by private industry. In the commercial sector the way to space tourism will be paved by government employees and payloads. With that much money being spent in private industry; do you really believe the government won’t “administrate” the allocation of those funds via stringent requirements? The bottom line is space travel is risky and expensive and will be for some time to come. The cost won’t be going down any time soon.

"The least expensive way to get an HLV is probably an EELV derivative."

Least expensive, maybe. But you'd end up with a pretty poor HLV. If it was based on EELV technology, you can drop the "H". The delta IV heavy can get about 25,000 kg to LEO. The Saturn V could get 118,000 kg (that's 4+ Delta IV Heavy launches), and Ares V (on paper) is/was projected to get 188,000 kg to LEO (thats 7+ Delta IV Heavy launches). To make an effective HLV, you're going to need some significant differences with the current EELVs, including diameter, which means a lot of different tooling.

I am not a Barack Obama supporter but I've had "hope" that he was going to at least get NASA back on the exploration track. The news in the last few days has led me to believe that this wasn't going to be the case. I was at least happy to see that we would see more commercial development (hopefully with more very COTS like programs). However, beyond that I was kinda depressed about it.

Today's "possible" news is like a beacon in the darkness.

Please let it be true.

Well, maybe not. If the ACES-41 common upper stage is funded, then the Heavy configurations of the EELVs will be able to lift about 40,000kg (Atlas-V) or 50,000kg (Delta-IV). That's not to be sniffed at. Add the crew vehicle and the ACES-derived propellent depots and vacuum lander into the mix and that is potentially quite a powerful system.

If it is funded, of course. Nearly $6B would be a big step down that road, even if they had to give SpaceX and OSC their cut too.

Moony,

Exactly. It was a death of a thousand paper cuts. I am afraid that it represents a model of things to come. I wonder if the the red-headed, step-child LSP model is going to be used. Probably not because it's not a "manned" program.

I think the only way to pull this off without NASA destroying the beginning of a great idea is to privatize the astronauts as well. Just a thought. NASA can swing a huge hammer when it's THEIR people taking the risk. Not that it has helped matters in the past.

Becoming a NASA astronaut on an actual mission seems to be more of a political endurance test than being anything exceptional these days.