Bolden and Holdren Fight Back

Cx'ers either haven't read the Augustine Report or are in denial about its truths. Read it, realize it was impartial, and you'll realize the new direction is the right direction.

"you'll realize the new direction is the right direction"

Please tell me where in the Augustine report does it mentioned canceling all projects and US HSF capability before you have any real plans in place?

Thomas Wolsey and the members of the Star Chamber would have been proud of the Augustine committee.

Why hasn't the main stream media picked up on Garvers deep ties to the commercial space industry? It's easy to see why Augustine came up with a commercial solution again. Maybe she can hire all those that will be dispalaced soon. What a cluster this is!

When congress gets to debating the president's plan, they could end the fuss by funding NASA to develop the HLV, keep Orion, and man-rate the HLV as an option.

Just call it "The Public Option."

:)

Is the "Obama Plan" really a plan? It's more of a vague outline that's open for variable interpretations. It would be nice if some leadership somewhere stood up and explained what's happening, what's going to happen and what's the goal (if there is one).

Even a "Hold on a minute, we're working on finishing up the details of something we'll get back to you" would have been something.

It's a worthy debate if Constellation was really the way to go. The other worthy debate is having any way to go as a whole. Spinning our wheels on 'technology development' isn't going to work since R&D needs purpose. We can't just bend aluminum and composites randomly and then figure out what it could do.

You're getting warmer ...

It's clear to me this decision was made long before the Augustine report, most likely even before the 2008 elections.

Anyway, Nov. 2010 is coming up fast and, thereafter, 2012. CxP in some revised for or another isn't over yet, not by a long shot.

This was bound to happen. I am a self admitted space geek but over the years life experience has shown that reality is much different than dreams and rationale thinking about space is necessary. We would all love to see men on the moon and someday Mars, but the reality of the cost is not going to allow it to happen anytime soon. NASA is very fortunate to get a budget increase this year amidst the present economic disaster. Krauthammer will belittle Obama no matter what he decides to do and many space program supporters will despise him because of the new direction. But it is time examine what is going on. Constellation has large problems, more financial then technical but both significant. It is still in design phases it was 3 years ago and plodding along as it is will take many more years to fly as stated by the Augustine commission and many other experts. A big budget increase could move that date forward but not much. And people can throw numbers around all they want such as NASA's budget is such a minor part of the federal budget and the stimulus could have paid for this but the reality is to a large part of the population that matters not at all. When you can't take your kid to the doctor, men in low earth orbit are a low priority. So given all the other priorities it is amazing NASA got a budget increase. The change of direction was due mainly to the fact this increase could not match what was needed. While many questions remain on where this will all lead, perhaps it is time to change some things from the way we were doing it and try something new. I believe commercial can safely take humans to LEO but that remains to be proven. If and when they do I would suspect it will be much cheaper than NASA. However I do believe there should be a defined goal announced in the relatively near term to better define what NASA will shoot for rather than simply the development of new enabling technologies. And Bolden has stated that will be a goal for the near future I believe.

Bolden and Holdren are the ones way off mark on their claim about "ISS crashing into the ocean":

1) ISS won't crash so long it gets reboosted periodically. That has NOTHING to do with either Orion or Falcon-9, and there's even a nice already built Interim Control Module (ICM) sitting at the Naval Research Lab (anyone remember when that was developed as a backup when the Russians were having delays with one of their ISS modules?). Rerefence: http://www.nrl.navy.mil/pao/pressRelease.php?Y=1997&R=7-97r

2) It takes quite a leap of faith claiming Orion won't be ready 'until after ISS crashes' while assuming Dragon/Falcon-9 instead will.

Bottom line, this shows to me that Bolden and Holdren are getting nervous and running out of claims they can actually back up with something other than their word.

The congress and the public must not buy into a non-plan for exploration. No plan = no progress. If the debate is how to resupply space station, you can get 10 resupply flights a year for less than $1B on a 100% successful launcher. The EELV family is up and running and is already on the U.S. taxpayer payroll. They were commercially developed and are proven. End of debate. Stop subsidizing IPO rip-offs for new, unproven launch providers under the name of looking for lower, unsubstantiated cost reductions.

That leaves plenty of money to refocus our exploration efforts on some near-term heavy lift launcher capable of leaving LEO. We'll also need a vehicle capable of operating out of LEO. Let's retool Orion to take advantage of the investment we've already made so it's more affordable then go forward. Nobody says Constellation needs to continue at it's current expensive pace. That said, nobody should advocate throwing out $9B of forward progress.

Let's end this push for "payback" for political flacks. If we need to use taxpayer money to pay-off Lori Garver's Soyuz training bill, let's use taxpayer money to do it and continue on a path of progress. If Elon Musk needs his payout, let's call his low cost Tesla loan payback and say "thanks for the interest". We need to get out of politics and into exploration.

Senator Nelson just had his say as well. See below link. Sounds like a big difference between the proposed "research heavy lift" versus continue with manned space flight saving parts of Cx. It will be interesting to see who wins this one.

http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20100217/NEWS02/2170348/1007/news02/Bill+Nelson++Manned+space+program+isn+t+dead+yet

"2) It takes quite a leap of faith claiming Orion won't be ready 'until after ISS crashes' while assuming Dragon/Falcon-9 instead will. "

1) Orion was never the long pole in the tent. It was always Ares I. Orion could have been ready by 2013/2014.

2) Since there's actually flight hardware for F9 at the Cape right now, while the Cx up until now only managed to fly a mockup bottle rocket called Ares I-X, it really doesn't require that big of a leap of faith.

3) SpaceX is not the only game in town.

Three paragraphs is the best they can muster to defend the Obama giant leap backwards? LOL

Man. It's beyond obvious that these two are more political appointees then doing their jobs for the American people.

Bolden is especially disappointing.

There is no plan under the Obama plan unless you count cancellation, drawback from VSE goals and replacing them with "international outreach" to "Muslim" countries, dispersing NASA funds to the four winds in hope a BEO seed will grow in twenty years, maybe.

Got news for Obama, he isn't president for life and you need a plan that has bipartisan congressional support for the long haul. This ain't it! LOL

If it's so great a plan and just the glorious answer to all woes...

Why does Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, Tom Jones, Homer Hickam speak so greatly against it???

And many others....

http://web.me.com/michaelokuda/CONSTELLATION/VOICES.html

Are they all so easily dismissed? I think not!

Save HSF at NASA. There is NO substitute.
http://www.supportconstellation.com

Having the F9 rocket at the Cape is nowhere near a human capable Dragon. It still requires a big leap of faith to assume they can qualify and deliver a crewed spacecraft in a timely manner.

"""Please tell me where in the Augustine report does it mentioned canceling all projects and US HSF capability before you have any real plans in place?""""

The majority of the options in the Augustine report dealt with non-CxP options. That included an all commercial option.

"""1) ISS won't crash so long it gets reboosted periodically."""

The plan was to dispose of ISS in 2016. If you don't fund utilization, what's the point of keeping it? CxP needed the ISS money.

""2) It takes quite a leap of faith claiming Orion won't be ready 'until after ISS crashes' while assuming Dragon/Falcon-9 instead will. ""

ISS was going to be de-orbited in 2016, giving Ares-I 6 years to arrive. Augustine said it would not arrive in time. With an extension to 2020, commercial crew has 10 years to arrive and estimates are that it will require far less time.

You don't do yourself any favors by not fairly characterizing the issue.

I've been hearing a lot of strident grousing from NASA employees & contractors on blogs and such. The other side hasn't been very loud, but there is one. In the course of my job, I've recently spoken to folks at the quieter centers (i.e. not JSC or MSFC), and the attitude I've seen is quite different. Senior engineers are as giddy as schoolgirls about the new plan. It is like a long dark age is over. They can finally speak their minds openly about the horrible mess that was Constellation. Morale is up 100%, and they are making plans to do the work NASA should have been doing for the last 40 years.

I understand and sympathize with the very human angst of losing your job, but it doesn't make you a very objective commentator on space policy. So (to the ones grousing loudest) did you get into the aerospace industry for job security? Not a student of history, eh?

An irony is that MSFC has suffered more than most by cuts to R&D over the years, with the loss of many advanced robotics, teleoperation, prox ops, in-space assembly projects just as they start to show progress. Not to mention losing the political fight with JSC which shut down the Neutral Buoyancy Research Facility (the only one used for research on advanced space operations, not just training). If MSFC gets with the program, it has a rich heritage of experience that could give it a head start in the new direction.

KimKolb wrote: "It would be nice if some leadership somewhere stood up and explained what's happening, what's going to happen and what's the goal (if there is one). Even a "Hold on a minute, we're working on finishing up the details of something we'll get back to you" would have been something."

Bolden has done the latter...

What does Krauthammer even know about the space program? He has already revealed himself to be ignorant with the claims he has made. Even 15 minutes worth of research would've corrected his errors, but he didn't care to bother. That reveals how important his opinions are.

Areo Speedwagon,

I don't recall Bolden saying anything of what NASA "will do". I do recall a comment from the Administrator that he'd like to go to Mars as a goal, but his personal ambitions for NASA are different what may or may not be marching orders handed down from above.

Though all credit to him that he admits and takes the fall for a poor rollout, though there have been no real efforts to really fix the rollout.

"Having the F9 rocket at the Cape is nowhere near a human capable Dragon."

Correct, but having actual launch vehicle hardware right now is still years ahead of where Cx is today. Not to mention ULA already has flight proven vehicles. Who knows, maybe LM can still field Orion Lite faster than SpaceX a crewed Dragon. One thing is for sure - Orion as envisioned by Cx was going nowhere before 2017.

@KimKob,

Bolden clearly said that they were working on the plan including timetables and objectives. He has also mentioned flexible path. On the arrival of the plan he has said:

"It [will be] more than a couple of weeks, but it's less than years," Bolden said. "

You suggested that he should have said, "Hold on a minute, we're working on finishing up the details of something we'll get back to you"

What's the difference?

KimKolb, by "latter" I was referring to your second sentence:

"Even a "Hold on a minute, we're working on finishing up the details of something we'll get back to you" would have been something."

He has stated that concrete milestones, intermediate goals, etc. are not set, but that they will be worked out in the next weeks and months.

I can't believe that the head of OSTP and the NASA administrator think that we can't get back to the moon by
2020 under "any budget". That is 10 years from now and we got to the moon in 10 years in the 1960's. Do the authors believe that American technical prowess has fallen so much in the last 50 years that we can't get men back to the moon under "any budget"??? I hope they really don't think that. If
they do then this administration's chief men on science and
technology should RESIGN immediately so we can get some people who are more optimistic about American know how. SHAME, SHAME, SHAME on them for writing such a pessimistic statement. To think that an astronaut would write such a thing!!! Shame on you Charlie Bolden. Do us a favor and resign.

Best hope not... the corporations, and the oligarchs who control them, don't like public options.

(Political background that segues into the relevant space stuff)

The public option in health care is actually a good bellwether as to what will happen here. The sacred common wisdom was that since we (the more than 65% of Americans who wanted it (more than 75% if polled with accurate explanation)) were just shy of 60 votes in the senate so we were all required to eat Obama's carefully, corporately, prepared shit sandwich instead. Now that that has been derailed and the Dems have been forced to admit that all we really need is 50 votes, Biden and reconciliation... well... guess what? We're no longer just short of the 60 votes for a public option in the senate... we're tragically and unavoidably just shy of 50 votes...

40? 30? 20? ... was never gonna happen no matter what? Bingo! We have winner!

And so with NASA HSF.

But neither will commercial get their day either... at least what they've been led to believe will happen.

I know... I know... Obama said he would... I know... you can stop crying now...

Obama has talked the grand talk and has stroked your commercial dreams to unheard of heights... care to guess what happens next?

While Obama is favorable even to relatively small enterprises such as Boeing et al he isn't going to lift a finger to steer any more federal funds to them than he has to.

That money is earmarked for the truly big players... and the big players just aren't that much into spaceflight.

HLVer,

My bad, I've never seen those comments. Thing is, since they're so far behind the information curve on this, they need to hammer this point home repeatedly.

SpaceWriter wrote: "Senator Nelson just had his say as well. See below link. Sounds like a big difference [...]"

So I read the link, and it seemed to me that Nelson downplayed any differences... noting that most of the extreme reaction was a result of poor PR. So it doesn't seem like there will be a big fight. Bolden has stated previously that the Constellation program will be examined for any "nuggets" that are worth pursuing further. I think Nelson earlier proposed a couple more Ares I test flights. Sounds like a negotiating point, we'll see what happens.

$6 billion over the next 5 years is chump change! The Augustine Commission recommended a NASA budget increase of $3 billion, that's $15 billion over the next 5 years.

Plus, we don't need any more pure R&D in order to build a heavy lift vehicle or an EDS stage or even fuel depots. We just need to do it! The best R&D programs come from actually trying to build something and do something-- not just sitting around dreaming about the future.

Our manned space program should be a-- space pioneering programing-- not a flag planting program. We don't need to go to the Moon or Mars just to plant more flags. We need to go there-- to stay-- so that private commercial companies can follow in order to exploit the natural resources of those new worlds and in order to begin the human colonization of the New Frontier.

Marcel F. Williams

Like many Obamaspace fans you just can't give a straight answer.

1) There was never a plan to deorbit ISS, just a statement that NASA funding for it was, in principle, only available through 2016 which begged the question on what happens next. This, once again, had nothing to do with Orion, Dragon, or their launchers.

2) Also, the year 2016 also happens to be the date that the oldest module on ISS (Zarya) reaches 18 years of age (and 22 years by the year 2020). The MIR space station, for comparison, was deorbited after 15 years in space. So, this is not about just ferrying people up and down to ISS but also starting to replace older modules with new ones (and deorbit the old ones) for a station we don't need.

3) The delays in ISS contruction came around long before Dr. Griffin and when some thought bringing on the Russians was a great idea that would save us all a bunch of money. Sure it did. That's why Griffin raised the issue of what to do next, either start replacing ISS modules (that is, essentially rebuild a new space station bit by bit) or focus on Constellation.

Fine, take advantage of ISS as much as we can, and not a penny more to launch new modules. Let Space-X et al get some venture capital to fund it themselves.

spacenerd99, The Report discusses getting rid of Ares I, and using Ares V Lite. It's unclear if the Flexible Path is truly their objective, however, NASA has stated the need for Heavy Lift (50+ mt) built by NASA (I personally think commercial space is up to the job though). This effectively cancels Cx. NASA is not canceling all projects, just a boondoggle that has sucked funds from the rest of NASA for half a decade, with no results except for a fake test flight and two Orion modules crushed into the ground.

And before you get so worked up about Dragon not being man rated, it passed COTS-A through C. It only needs an escape system that is acceptable by NASA to pass COTS-D. Really. It's that close to being man rated. I'm told it takes 18 months to fully man rate a vehicle. If that is the case and they have 3 years until the contract with Energia / Russia is up, then I think it is fully possible to have Dragon fully man rated. It'll come close, but it's possible. (Especially if they get fully funded by COTS-D.)

dmso, the Augustine Report was very balanced, it had 2 for private space (Greason, and assuming Chiao is private space), 3 for science (Chyba, Crawley, Kennel), 2 neutral (no ties to industry, Lyles, Ride), and 3 who have ties to contractor based industry (Augustine, Austin, Bejmuk). You could say that Augustine is in the "private" camp but given his previous track record he appears to be a balanced assessor. He says that it works if NASA gets several billion more per year. If Obama gave them that much, though, then there would be an argument, but as one could have easily predicted, NASA wasn't going to get a huge budget increase (the budget increase barely stays within inflation).

akear, public opinion isn't represented by a few very loud individuals who make hundreds of posts on space blogs.

Brunelleschi, yes, it is slightly possible that Congress decides to fund NASA fully, but as was said on The Space Show (Feb. 14th), it would actually hurt NASA. NASA doesn't want that extra money to work on a system that is a failure by all accounts. However, giving NASA copious amounts of funding will be disasterous politically, in this poor economy, so I would think that they don't have the courage to do it.

KimKolb, the "beginnings of a plan" will be released on Feb 24th or 25th (possibly earlier, but that's the time frame I'm expecting). All indications point to something similar to the Flexible Path as outlined in the Augustine Report. This makes it an excellent plan, since it forces NASA to make significant milestones on 2-4 year basis (as Brent Sherwood explained on The Space Show Feb. 14th). The current plan had no major milestones until the mid to late 2020s, that's a decade and a half of of absolute stagnation for the program. Under Flexible Path we will be exploring the inner solar system and making great strides with manned space within 10 years. Every few years, between administration changes (as politics tends to do, reset the landscape), each administration will then pick an objective that they can get their seal of approval on. NEOs? L-points? Moon? Mars?

Lowly Contractor, the decision was made after Bolden went to the NASA centers and asked what they wanted, according to Brent Sherwood (I really recommend that podcast, on The Space Show, Feb. 14th). Brent is sitting on a plan outline that really changes the NASA landscape for the better. It's only a few thousand workers and a few dozen politicians who are being very loud about the new direction. After the initial plan outline is released expect a lot of people in those centers to fight back. Because *their* jobs are on the line if Cx continues its path of bleeding NASA dry.

BTW, under the Cx plan the ISS was supposed to be decommissioned by 2015-2016, Ares I would not have flown, by all indications, until 2017-2018. So yes, under the current Cx direction the ISS would no longer be in orbit when Cx was finally getting in to space.

Dragon has 10 years (assuming ISS is decommissioned in 2020), Ares I had 5-6 (under the Cx timeline). Ares I wasn't even capable of making orbit. Falcon 9 will launch into orbit within the next 3 months. Orion wasn't man rated. Dragon is man rated to COTS-C level (able to attach to ISS and allow people to get inside it, in the vacuum of space). They just need COTS-D and Dragon is fully man rated. Orion couldn't even perform a parachute deployment. Dragon will use SRB chutes and deployment systems which are well understood. There's also Atlas, which has a flawless flight history, and which will be able to have an Orion Lite installed in due course.

If Dragon cannot be man rated in 3 years then we have serious problems. SpaceX built a manned capable rocket in 4 years, along with many of the other things I listed. If they can't put an escape system on the top of Dragon in 3 years, we are in trouble (and we would have been anyway since Ares I wasn't going to fly before ISS was sunk).

One last thing, since you responded while I was writing this rather long post. Saying ISS was going to be deorbited by that period of time is accurate, since once funding is cut from a program, it is not going to come back. Or at least, it is highly unlikely. The Augustine Report got that one right.

The reason ending ISS is a very very bad thing is that it destroys any reason for COTS. COTS needs a destination. Until COTS is developed enough (and Biglow is launching space hotels and we're launching moon fuel plants), it remains in a very precarious situation.

SpaceWriter, Nelson is a politician, he was initially for COTS-D (commercial crew), but he backtracked when his people realized that he was arguing for something that would hurt his constituency. The politicians are terrified of commercial crewed space, it means that their single issue platform gets destroyed. The reality is that most of these guys who are against it (especially Republicans) are probably not getting much sleep at night, assuming they have a conscious. They know that commercial space is good, and ideologically they know that Cx was a government funded boondoggle of epic proportions.

They just can't say it.

SpaceWriter, I read your link (after my post, sorry), and to me it appears that Nelson is actually on the fence with this one. That's pretty big.

Budget is policy. You couldnt get to the moon by 2020 if you kept ISS going with those budgets. Griffin was either counting on losing it or counting on more money.

And youve changed the subject. You were talking about timetables for ISS supply with Ares-I versus commercial crew. I was just pointing out the Augustine findings that Ares-I would not be available for ISS resupply if ISS was lost in 2016. Commercial crew with a 2020 station would have more time to come online and be of use.

They arent my findings. I just think it would serve your argument better to fairly discuss the issues involved.

> So it doesn't seem like there will be a big fight. Bolden has stated previously that the Constellation program will be examined for any "nuggets" that are worth pursuing further.

When there are changes, the losers can readily be identified (these specific people will be losing their jobs), but the winners cannot be clearly identified. The specific people losing their jobs will speak out VERY loudly, whereas the potential winners are not heard from.

I agree with Nelson that the White House handled it badly, however. The Humans Spaceflight program gets a plus up in its budget of $1 billion per year for several years, the ISS gets an extension to its life of 4 years, but everyone thinks Obama killed the human spaceflight.

All he is saying is "not this plan."

(1) There is a plan for de-orbiting ISS. It was required per the environmental impact statement. Contact JSC-OM.

(2) 2016 was the normal 6 year planning horizon for federal budgets a year ago. That was one reason why the ISS budget ran out that long. It did not go beyond that because that was all they were planning to at the time. The ISS lifetime was originally established as 10 years. Construction started in 1998, so the oldest modules have already been in orbit 10 years. The newest modules have been in orbit less than a week. Some of the Mir modules lasted for 15 years in orbit. Some of the current modules, like FGB and SM, actually were constructed in the 1980s, but updated and completed for launch 10-12 years ago.

(3) The new plan does call for additional ISS modules. The US has not been 'paying' for module construction and integration for over 10 years. Everything in the last 10 years has been bartered. The US gave Shuttle launch services and on orbit resources like electrical power and cooling, in exchange for ESA and others providing modules. Basically we've been trading operations for DDT&E. This means the US is very strong on operations, but has little recent DDT&E experience, which is one of the reasons why Orion has not gone smoothly.

I am quite confident that Constellation would not have gone by the wayside if NASA had made some real progress in developing the first step of the
Vision, namely replacing Shuttle, in a timely manner. That would have given everyone confidence and by now too much would have been invested to shut the first step down.

If Orion had been done correctly, smaller, lighter, then no Ares 1 would have been required at all. Focus could have been maintained on Orion and it would have been launched by an existing booster. Instead, the Orion - Ares incompatibility problems have meant multiple Orions have had to be defined and designed, and Ares 1 has slowed the entire process.

If at some later time the decision was made to go with something like an Ares 5, maybe a booster could have been developed based on a stand alone SRB. But, SRBs have been around for about 30 years now. Why didn't anyone think an SRB based booster, like an Ares 1, was a good idea until ESAS, 5 years ago? What suddenly changed?

Higher tech, lower cost, new ways of doing things like refueling ports (proposed for the original station/Freedom, nuclear electric or other advanced forms of propulsion and power for cislunar and trans-planetary are things that should have been in development for 40 years, but were deferred. Another advancement that is needed is much lower cost earth to LEO. It was attempted on Shuttle; now we know a lot more than we did 35 years ago.

Its time to come to the realization that ESAS, Constellation, was a very poorly thought out architecture that could not be implemented as originally proposed, and which caused a lot of other problems which management was unable to react to adequately. It is time to move on to a better idea.

> Please tell me where in the Augustine report does it mentioned canceling all projects and US HSF capability before you have any real plans in place?

Well, they were clear that the Constellation did not have a budget to do anything beyond leave Earth orbit, and that would be in the late 2020s. E.g., no lunar lander. As one member said, if NASA was handed a fully functioning Constellation program, they would have to immediately cancel it because they didn't have the budget to operate it.

But I agree with your point, I would have liked an alternative spelled out more clearly. What they have said regarding HSF:

(1) ISS will continue for another 4 years (it was scheduled to be scuttled ~2016).

(2) The US is going to heavily promote the private space industry for access to LEO (e.g., Boeing has seed money to design a capsule that can fly on Delta IV, Atlas V, and Falcon 9).

(3) The US is going to make post-2020 (aka, beyond LEO) an international effort, whereas in the previous effort the US was going to build, control, and pay for every core component from Earth's surface to the Lunar surface.

What is not laid out is what is going to happen beyond 2020.

Given point (3) above, perhaps the US shouldn't dictate what the rest of the world will be doing with us, and maybe (hopefully) there are active negotiations with international partners right now as to what they would like to do post-ISS.

> 1) ISS won't crash so long it gets reboosted periodically. That has NOTHING to do with either Orion or Falcon-9,

Well, yes and no. What people forget is that the cost of extending ISS would have been taken out of the budget of Constellation. Roughly speaking, every year of ISS extension meant a slippage of Constellation by one year.

The Ares I and Orion were over designed and overly expensive for taking humans just to LEO. They made sense in the context that costs born to develop Ares I could lower the cost of Ares V, and the extra costs for Orion would make sense only in Lunar missions.

> 2) It takes quite a leap of faith claiming Orion won't be ready 'until after ISS crashes' while assuming Dragon/Falcon-9 instead will.

Even under the original plan Ares I would have only had 1 year of service to the ISS before it was schedule to be scuttled in 2016, and then it would have been placed on hiatus for another 4 years.

But because of slippages in Ares I, Ares would probably have come out too late to support the 2016 termination date of ISS.

But with the ISS being extended until 2020, the extra costs to do this would be taken out of Constellation's budget. It would have slowed Ares I development, making delivery even later, and pretty much stopped development of Ares V for several years.

The potential that Falcon 9 (or any of the other candidates) could come online sooner than Ares I are

(1) They are required to secure outside sources of revenue, so in effect they grow the pot of money going to human spaceflight. It isn't just NASA money (as would be the case with Ares I + Orion), it is NASA money, plus additional investors, plus additional customers.

(2) They are building less capable systems -- smaller size without beyond LEO capability.

"The ruined US space industry will be Obama's watergate."

lol another day another funny quote

If they've lost Klyde Morris....

http://www.klydemorris.com/graphics/strips/2010/021510newklyde.gif

> A decade from now when you still can't sent humans into space we will just say "I told you so."

What will you say a decade from now if we have regular commercial crew/cargo transportation to the ISS and multiple private Bigelow stations, refuelable space tugs from LEO to other locations like lunar orbit, waystations in LEO and EML-1 for spacecraft assembly and refueling, commercial resupply of such waystations, utilizing those waystations for the first missions to NEOs, with sustainable crew landings on the Moon and Phobos a few years after? This is the sort of future the new plan enables, and a space program we can be proud of.

Has anyone really looked in detail at the financial plan of FalconX. It has a very low Isp compared to Deltas and Atlas vehicles. The Isp is directly proportional to the cost per pound to orbit. I dont think their is any denying it, Falcon X will cost more than already existing vehicles and to top it off, the government will have to pay even more when they use it so that that Ellon Musk can make a profit. Commercial launch is a net loosing deal, not just for space exploration, but for U.S. tax payers.

joshcryer,

Perhaps you could point me to where the standards for COTS-A through D are stated. Never heard of them. How many times have they been used before? What kind of actual tests with hardware do COTS-A through C entail?

"we got to the moon in 10 years in the 1960's."

True - but we had a running start on much of the hardware - although Von Braun is traditionally considered the father of the Saturn 5, development on what would become the F-1 engine was actually started in 1955 by Rocketdyne leading to a "full up" static test firing at Edwards in 1959.

Several years before the famous JFK moment.

(sorry MSFC)

All the milestones for COTS A-C and COTS D are here:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/216459main_spacex_amend_2.pdf

> It has a very low Isp compared to Deltas and Atlas vehicles. The Isp is directly proportional to the cost per pound to orbit. I dont think their is any denying it, Falcon X will cost more than already existing vehicles and to top it off, the government will have to pay even more when they use it so that that Ellon Musk can make a profit.

Huh? [citation needed]

Yeah, they're making some progress!!

"As for returning to the moon, the last administration's target of doing so by 2020 was by now unachievable under any budget. "

First time I've read any acknowledgment that CxP failure was more than budget.

Next, while it would be sort of fun to just let the Merchant7 plan play itself out and sit back and snidely chuckle at the arrogant commercial idiots when their many forthcoming failures and disasters happen.......

(and yes to the commercial believers, all of them really can and will fail, even ULA & Lockmart)

The commercial believers really don't get it either.

They don't get the unimaginable level of difficulty and skills and knowhow/streetsmarts on the ground, during design and manufacture and operations, that it really takes to succeed in hsf.

But then again, some of the hsf ingenious check and balance workflow processess might be considered the equivalent of proprietary trade secrets or might be ITAR restricted or something?

So, how to effectively explain that 50 yrs. worth of NASA/contractor hsf knowhow is not something that's easy enough to learn by newbies in just a few years in OJT mode?

If somebody can back that up with real numbers, that would probably be the most effective argument against the Merchant7 plan.

Sort of why I think it'd be better to finance the Merchant 7 via SBA loans that they will have to pay back, with interest, instead of just government subsidizing them with backdoor grants ala Boeing's Dreamliner fiasco.

Seems like somebody asked earlier if the Merchant 7 even had business plans that would pass muster with the SBA and regular biz lenders/investors?

spacenerd99, just to clarify, I didn't mean to say that they completed all of the milestones; I was talking about the review aspect and the award aspect. They got awarded for COTS A-C. Once the launch succeeds and they get their demos off the ground, they will have completed COTS A-C.

When I say that they passed, that means that NASA engineers sat down, looked at their equipment, at their design, and found it satisfactory. This means that once they demonstrate that they can actually do it as advertised, then they get the complete COTS funding.

NASA won't allow them to demo Dragon unless it passes all criteria stated.

> It only needs an escape system that is acceptable by NASA to pass COTS-D.

Having some kind of escape system isn't all that is needed. You have to have a big enough parachute system so that you don't hit the water too fast. You need a small enough parachute system so that you don't have a significant chance of blowing back into a land landing from a Pad Abort.

You may need to compromise the ascent trajectory to avoid landing aborting astronauts in the frigid North Atlantic over too much (any?) of the ascent trajectory going to the ISS from KSC. Can the Dragon (picking one of the entrants) perform later abort modes similar to those that planned to use Orion engines?

Many of the Apollo capsules (half?) overturned after splashdown. Is the Dragon a different enough vehicle not to need an uprighting system? If one is needed, where are they going to put it?

Matt_in_TX, you make some very fair points and I concede that I may be overstating how close SpaceX is to having a man rated vehicle, but they've achieved 14 of 22 milestones of COTS-A-C, and I think that's a good reason to be optimistic.

webbja said:

"Has anyone really looked in detail at the financial plan of FalconX."

Do you mean detailed breakdown? Probably a few dozen people at SpaceX. If you mean their schedule of projected costs for launches then that'd be a few thousand people... why do you ask?

"It has a very low Isp compared to Deltas and Atlas vehicles. The Isp is directly proportional to the cost per pound to orbit.

No.

You forgot to factor in the thrust-to-weight ratio (T/W) vs soecific impulse (Isp) vs cost of vehicle vs cost of running the launch service (overhead)...

... shall I go on?

The EELVs are subsidized as DoD launch assets... which is not a slam as it's why the US still has non-NASA medium launch capability.

As for raw Isp the Delta IV series first stage uses LH2 and LOX for greater specific impulse at a cost in thrust to weight. The Atlas V series first stage uses kerosene and LOX instead, sacrificing some Isp for greater T/W.

The SpaceX Merlin engine, used in the Falcon series, also uses kerosene and LOX for the first stage but sacrifices some more Isp in order to... build a much cheaper engine.

Thus your Isp-based argument is rather meaningless.

Musk charges more than Russia for launches at the moment, but his operation is American owned and operated and cheaper than the EELVs in the cases where Falcons I or X can do the same job.

And with NASA at least restrained from stomping commercial flight flat again in order to jack up their own payload manifests hopefully the SpaceX costs will come down... along with everyone elses.

"Obama and Bolden's vision of space should be renamed “Plan asinine from outer space”."

Stop trolling already, will ya?

> Having some kind of escape system isn't all that is needed. You have to have a big enough parachute system so that you don't hit the water too fast. You need a small enough parachute system so that you don't have a significant chance of blowing back into a land landing from a Pad Abort.

According to former Shuttle commander and SpaceX Astronaut Safety Vice President Ken Bowersox, the Dragon capsule uses 3 parachutes to land, although even if only 1 is used the rate of landing is still slower than Apollo's.

Purely FWIW, I don't think that much has changed in terms of overall strategy between Augustine and this new architecture strategy. NASA wants a small, light crew vehicle launched on a small LV to the ISS in the near term. Then, in time, BEO will be carried out using a heavy lifter and the time-scale (2020 or after for BEO) does not appear to have changed. The big (and painful) change is that, instead of NASA developing this in-house, as with Orion, Ares-I and -V, they are going to be entirely developed by commercial providers to a NASA specification instead. This might make the products more robust and their in-service time-lines more reliable.

However, and there is no getting around this, it will mean large-scale redundancies in places like Florida and Alabama. Unfortunately, that is what happens when programs end and facilities lose the confidence of senior management.

My big concern is the "sink or swim" approach. If the commercial providers cannot deliver on time or at a reasonable degree of reliability, there is no back-up plan. This is why I think Orion development, to be launched on an EELV-heavy, should continue, just in case the newer commercial ideas don't work out.

"the Dragon capsule uses 3 parachutes to land"

Have they performed any tests on the parachute system yet? What is their test schedule? I haven't been able to find much googling.

A lot is made of Orion parachute problems but no word is mentioned on any Dragon tests (other than a benign cargo test). I guess one thing we'll get with commercial companies providing human access to space is secrecy.

"They don't get the unimaginable level of difficulty and skills and knowhow/streetsmarts on the ground, during design and manufacture and operations, that it really takes to succeed in hsf."

That is nothing but hot air and chest thumping. Just ramblings from someone with little knowledge of spaceflight ops (manned and unmanned. It is amazing that Mercury and Gemini worked at all on unmanned launchers.

"some of the hsf ingenious check and balance workflow processes"

There is no such thing and it is just a false excuse for the bloated manpower numbers in the HSF.

I'm having log-in problems, so my apologies if this message is duplicated.
---
Brian,

On the issue of a smaller Orion, yes, I agree 100% with you.

The Apollo Command Module could fit 5 people in the Skylab Rescue Vehicle version and there was no need to oversize it just to fit one more person. To me the basic design requirement for Orion should have simple Apollo-like capsule capable to get 5 people to orbit on a single liquid core (+ solid rocket boosters) EELV. Once we needed 3-core EELVs just to launch Orion to LEO is where the costing fell apart.

For longer habitation in lunar/cislunar/NEO missions a 'Mission Module' not unlike what had been proposed for the 1981 Mars Mission (though much smaller, of course) would have provided all the additional space 3-4 astronauts would need for missions spanning 'months (and it could be either based on an empty EDS -similar to Skylab-, inflatable as per Bigelow's concepts, or a combination of the two). This MM would be launched separately, of course.

Charles Krauthammer did miss the gap between Mercury & Gemini then Apollo & Shuttle, (But I can forgive that).
We had a bright future in mind then with goals to achieve, (Even if we all did not agree on the shuttle).
The high ground will now be held by our enemies which we saved from the wreckage of history.
We are fools to allow this white house and congress to cripple us this way.
Please stand up and shout stop with me!
Lets the children back into the playpen and get some guts back into old glory!
LEO or Bust - LOL
Mars in 40 - LOL
Keep flying the shuttle till something is ready. Reduce the crew size and number of missions to (2) a year.

Carl Hewlett
Surfduke

"Quit now, you'll never make it. If you disregard this advice, you'll be halfway there." David Zucker

Amen re: Krauthammer; obviously determined to keep the ATK/Top NASA Brass tie-in going no matter what. "What" of course being cancellation anyway when the money inevitably dried up. VSE/Constellation as interpreted by Griffin/Horowitz courtesy of ATK(Morton-Thiokol name change BTW!) was another boondogle with fat profits for ATK regardless. Part of that plan meant quashing anything done before - e.g NLS 1992 and its derivative "DIRECT": the only economical answer to VSE and job retention post STS era, but by the by.
The NEW plan provides options and if the DIRECT people aren't exaggerating, makes it clear that we can go back to the moon - and elsewhere without the expensive build-to-suit Launch Vehicles a'la Saturn V and STS stack. We can also choose the methodology of getting there without being tied down: which is what eventually killed Apollo: its use on other ventures was limited. Once we have the means; Commercial Manned launchers and an HLV from the same source.
I would have kept Constellation and substituted "Jupiter" 130/24x and variants; initially with the existing Hardware for econ' reasons, but now I consider this plan better. For a start it is better balanced for a Space Agency that doesn't just do Manned Space; often forgotten!

> A lot is made of Orion parachute problems but no word is mentioned on any Dragon tests (other than a benign cargo test). I guess one thing we'll get with commercial companies providing human access to space is secrecy.

Back in 2007 they did computer simulations and actual splashdown tests with many different weights, impact speeds, drop angles, and verified that their tests matched up with the simulations. Here's the 2007 video:

http://mfile.akamai.com/22165/wmv/spacex.download.akamai.com/22165/Dragon_Splash_test.asx

I don't know what other parachute tests they've done, although earlier this year they performed parachute load testing on the capsule: http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

You shoul put once upon a time in front of that fairy tale.

@spacenerd99

'I guess one thing we'll get with commercial companies providing human access to space is secrecy.'

Well, they wouldn't want to give critics any actual information so they could perform an independent analysis to see how well the commercial venture was actually doing, now, would they? :-)

So basically the answer is no, nobody has any evidence of them doing actual drop tests of a capsule or simulated capsule from some altitude and actually deploying parachutes successfully and landing in the water.

I respect SpaceX but I nearly gasped in horror when reading that article on here the other day when it said:

"And once the Falcon 9 proves ready for cargo, it is straightforward to add seats, a carbon dioxide scrubber and other systems to make the capsule suitable for astronauts", Mr. Musk said. “The escape system and then flight testing the escape system are the only things of note,” he said.

Because you know developing an ECLSS system is so easy. Its not like you have to be able to actually keep the crew alive for several days on contingency or anything, you just need to throw in some carbon dioxide scrubbers and all. That statement alone makes me worry about the future - a lot.

@Spaceboy

'I respect SpaceX but I nearly gasped in horror when reading that article on here the other day'

I'm really enjoying that 'LEO on the Cheap' thing; here's a very apropos quote from it:

"Optimize unmanned launch systems for minimum cost and manned launch systems for maximum safety. Never again design a launch system to carry both personnel and payloads; do not design new unmanned systems to have a 'man-rateable' option.'

Maybe someone should give a copy to Elon... :-)

Yes, an ECLSS is indeed important. Did any of you guys pay attention to the CCDev award of $1.4M to Paragon for development of a compact "plug and play" air revitalization system that could be used on any number of commercial manned spacecraft designs?

Do any of you "industry insiders" ever take the time to read industry news sources or do you just get all your info from gossip and web pages?

I suggest talking a look at the current issue of AW&ST (February 15th) and reading the articles on pages 36 and 37. They are very informative on the broader scope of this new direction. All of this CxP talk smacks of tunnel vision thinking.

SpaceX is wisely allowing COTS-A-C to get completed before they run headlong in to completing Dragon for COTS-D.

That's how you actually manage a program.

Chrish,

There is a "head" start today. We have a VAB, launch complex 39, and the Michoud assembly facility. Also, much of the Ares hardware was planned to be derived from existing hardware such as the SRB and the J-2 engine. The Orion vehicle nearing PDR. In 1960 there was no Johnson Space Center/Mission Control. It is not like we are starting from scratch. In my opinion the "head starts" in 1960 and today are about equivalent.

The thing that greatly upset me was the implication that even with a blank check, our science and technology leaders don't think we can repeat what was done in the 1960's. Despite the fact that we have more infrastructure and more experience today. I doubt that Dr. Holdren and Administrator Bolden wrote those words. It was probably some staffer in OSTP who had been given an assignment to refute Krauthammer's op-ed piece from some politico in the White House.

The statement that we can't get back to the moon in ten years from now under ANY budget is ridiculous. If we devoted the same percentage of today's GDP that was done in the 1960's to the goal of putting men back on the moon I think we would be able to make up the 5 year head start that you mention about the F-1 engine. NASA's budget peaked at 0.8% of GDP in 1965. Today 0.8% of GDP is about $110 billion. It is 50 years later - there are more people and we are more productive hence the economy is bigger than in 1960. So I am sure that if we had the same commitment today that we did in 1960 then we could easily get men on the moon by 2020. With that kind of money you could throw all of Constellation away, start over and still make it. The fact is that was then and now the nation's commitment to manned spaceflight is not what it was then. So such spending on HSF is merely a pipe dream. But suggesting that we can't do it even if the pipe dream comes true -- that is truly a slap in the face of the men and women in America's aerospace industry today. I guess however wrote that sentence thinks that "today's" rocket scientists are just not as good as the ones our parents and grandparents had. Perhaps he or she wasn't thinking at all.

I'm in no position to judge, but I've heard that rocket scientists from the olden days were pretty hardcore. Johnny Rocket Student doesn't have the same morale he had when we all expected him to save us from the Russians. He can go out and play, or take more Business and Liberal Arts courses.

U.S. workers and designers are more "productive" due to increased reliance on automation. That's marginally helpful for lunar exploration. And our economy is bigger. Are you counting Wall Street? If I'm building a rocket I'd hire people with manufacturing experience. That's the sector by which I evaluate our engineering capability.

@forrestlumpkin

'much of the Ares hardware was planned to be derived from existing hardware such as the SRB and the J-2 engine.'

I think you got the wrong tense there ("planning to be") - the J-2X contract was awarded in mid-2007; P+W had major components in full-scale test by late 2008, and initial tests of the complete engine were supposed to happen in late summer of 2010. No idea if they are still on that schedule, and what the plans are in light of the Garver 'plan', but given that the design passed CDR at the end of 2008, I would expect they are well into fabrication at this point.

@JedL

'I've heard that rocket scientists from the olden days were pretty hardcore.'

I don't know about the scientists, but the engineers who actually built the rockets paid a very high price indeed. Not all the people Apollo killed died on Pad 34, and many others 'merely' had their health ruined through overwork.

{Doffs virtual hat in silent remembrance and respect.}