Restless in Huntsville, Houston, and on the Hill

Funny how all the noise is coming from politicians who have NASA centers or CxP contractor facilities located in their states or districts. Good this this isn't all about money, jobs and wining elections...

These parts of the Houston Chronicle "Mars is our Mission" article are quite interesting:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6859370.html

NASA's emerging exploration plan will call for safely sending humans to Mars, possibly by the 2030s, and de-emphasize exploration of the moon, the agency's leader said Tuesday.
“That is my personal vision,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “I am confident that, when I say humans on Mars is a goal for the nation, not just NASA, I'm saying that because I believe the president will back me up.”
Bolden cited appearances set before congressional committees on Feb. 24 and 25 as a deadline for creating the “beginnings of a plan” for human exploration.
At those hearings, Bolden said, he will be able only to give a range of dates for a Mars trip because scientific questions, such as mitigating radiation exposure and bone loss, remain unanswered.
But he confidently said the 2030s, even the early 2030s, were viable if given a reasonable and sustained budget.

... But Bolden's comments Tuesday, made at a Houston Chronicle editorial board meeting, indicate the president hopes to reach Mars before the timeline envisioned by the Constellation program.
Bolden said this could be accomplished by sending robotic or possibly human missions to the lunar surface, but to skip the costly and timely step of building a permanent lunar base.
“I don't see us colonizing the moon as some people do,” he said. “That's not NASA's job. Our job is to explore.”

... Bolden said he would like to use some of the money previously earmarked for Constellation's Ares I rocket to fund newer technologies that might get humans to Mars more quickly.
“I think the path that (Obama) has asked us to go down now gives us a better chance of getting to some destinations, if not as fast, maybe even faster in some cases because there are technologies that we overlooked, or just pushed aside, because we couldn't afford them for the last several years we've been developing the Constellation program,” Bolden said.
His task during the next two weeks will be to flesh out more details for the Mars vision, and then sell the plan to a skeptical Congress that ultimately will have to approve funding.

"Good this this isn't all about money, jobs and wining elections..."

If you remember after Apollo, a lot of knowledge, experience, and know-how was lost during the gap leading up to the shuttle. A lot of people can tell you that it was a shame we just allowed that knowledge to be forgotten or lost in archives, and allowed the experience to dissolve into other industries. Although what you cite is certainly a concern for the politicians, a bigger concern is letting the knowledge, experience, and know-how of the current NASA workforce to be lost to other industries, or just plain forgotten.

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it"

“I don't see us colonizing the moon as some people do,” he said. “That's not NASA's job. Our job is to explore.”

I don't recall Moon colonization as a part of the Constellation program. I guess he's saying there's nothing to explore on the moon?

Going to Mars is sounding like another Apollo. Once we do it once, are we going to drop it since to do anything more would be colonization and that's not NASA's job.

"We are going to fight, fight, fight to ensure that the next person who steps on the moon is an American."

This is just re-fighting old battles. The next step has to be different, whatever the chosen destination. Remember: the Chinese are still on Flags and Footprints. The US has built the International Space Station (practically).

In-flight refuelling, closed cycle life support, radiation protection for long duration missions and ISRU/ISFR do not sound such heroic accomplishments as landing on the Moon or Mars, but imagine how it would seem if the Chinese did them first?

To me, both the Moon and Mars are just destinations. OK, pretty impressive destinations, but still not the point of the exercise. The real challenge is to work out what are people going to do in space, how we can make a living. (There's only so much sight seeing you can afford).

COTS is a great approach - not because commercial projects are quicker and more cost effective then government projects, but simply because commercial organisations are finding business interests in space. Musk started without waiting for COTS. Bigelow is building accomodation and hasn't even got a ride. (Talk about Cohones). Helping this along has got to be a good thing and is probably yours and my best and only chance of getting into space ourselves.

Sure, the Flexible Path is pretty vague at the moment, and maybe the current administration will snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in the same way the last one did with VSE. But, then again, maybe it won't.

So this genius administrator cancels Constellation and then tries to figure out what to do in wake of that decision. Shouldn't the genius have thought of that BEFORE killing off Constellation? What a boob!

BTW, I've talked to a number of engineers working on Constellation and, to a man, they tell me Griffin was the most respected (among engineers) admin NASA has had since von Braun. He could intelligently discuss every aspect of Constellation architecture. I have to assume Aldrin bad-mouths Constellation because his architecture didn't prevail.

I strongly disagree with Mr. Bolden. Helping to expand human civilization off the Earth should be at the core of our manned space program. If all we want to do is simply explore, then robots can do that a lot cheaper than humans can.

That doesn't mean that NASA should colonize the Moon and Mars and the rest of the solar system. It just means that NASA and NASA astronauts should be the-- space pioneers-- that will enable private industry to make that happen.

Helping private industry to develop their own manned space flight capability helps to promote space colonization. However, none of this would be possible if NASA-- astronaut pioneers-- hadn't already ventured into space.

NASA's manned and unmanned pioneering efforts in space have been a tremendous boon to the American economy and to the economy of the world. And if NASA establishes a permanent base on the lunar surface, this pioneering effort will also enable our society to expand humans and private commercial industries to the new continent of the Moon which will help to grow our economy and to enhance the survival of our species.

Marcel F. Williams

I find it fascinating that no one has responded to the million dollar question. Lots of opinions on both sides but no one has responded as to how we are going to replace manned heavy lift capabilities which have almost been canceled. Please don't say we are going to research and study it. Without a mission and a goal all the research and studies will be money down the drain, leaving a country in second or third place in technology and defense. It is that simple. I am open to anyone who has answers. The silence is what bothers me....

I thought the whole purpose of going to the moon WAS TO GET TO MARS. We would use the moon base to travel to Mars since there is no gravity but I am not a rocket scientist of course. I think cancelling the entire Constellation program is ridculous at time when we are supposed to create jobs, not kill them

Yes, the only politicians that are vocal about the proposed “plan” are those with NASA centers. They might, I stress might, have some notion of how many jobs, and years of expertise, will be lost. The rest of our elected officials have NO idea what is going on. You only need to watch Mr. Augustine’s briefing of the House sub-committees as evidence of this.
We find ourselves in a sad state. The general public could care less about NASA, let alone manned exploration of space. With larger issues like the economy hitting people in the face every day, very few people understand what has been proposed.
The “plan” as described sends the existing NASA contractor workforce (@JSC, KSC, and MSFC) out the door. A few small contractors will then be responsible for designing and building new vehicles, some of NASA will be peaking over their shoulder to make sure everything goes well, and the remainder of NASA will become an R&D organization, and that is it. There is no more to the “plan”. It was scary enough to kill the shuttle before the follow on vehicle was ready, but it is a whole other level of stupid to kill the next thing, in favor of rhetoric for “game changing technology” and a program with no defined goals or destinations.
If NASA looses the knowledge (i.e. people) of how to build and operate launch vehicles, and the gambles on commercial providers don’t pay off, manned space flight from the US is dead. Once this national capability is gone, it will be gone forever. There is no going back. The country no longer has the interest or money needed to resurrect it.
I’m very much in favor of a commercial approach, but not now, and certainly not by gambling our national space flight capability to achieve it.

Ed-I think you've summed up what I feel is good about that part of the NASA budget. I also think that the part for ARMD to develop new aviation fuels will have some good spinoff into the research into new rockets. Wouldn't the space companies use their new-found income to hire the engineers & techs who wouldn't have places in a more R&D oriented NASA? Wouldn't they want to take advantage of the centers' facilites, just like some airplane manufacturers do with LaRc's wind tunnels? I think what was needed was some thought as to how this should be presented.

I really like the plans they actually have with the privitization and station extension and R&D, I really do.

But they are *not* going to Mars.

How dare he keep bringing up Mars?

Why is Mars interesting? Because it can be colonized. What is going to Mars and not colonizing it? Apollo to Mars.

You know what was a great plan to do Apollo to Mars? Constellation.

This is nothing but rubbing it in.

Cx was going to build ISS 2.0 on the moon. Every time I say this I have never had anyone dispute it. Because it is completely true. Once the ISS 2.0 base on the moon was built they were then going to completely abandon it for a Mars mission. No, really. Seriously. Read ESAS. It was the most incomprehensibly bad plan I had ever seen. I'm a Mars advocate first and foremost, but every time people talked about Cx and the moon being "necessary" I would get upset, because people didn't *know* what Cx was actually doing on the moon. I could be happy if Cx was going to do ISRU on the moon, if they were going to build manufacturing facilities.

I advocate teleoperated robotic missions on the moon with massive ISRU capability. Send robots to harvest regolith, send robots to refine regolith, send robots to make sterling power generators (very simple technology that can be machined by any automated machining system). This is massively cheaper than sending humans, and it builds a long term presence on the surface of the moon. Use VASIMR tugs to take big shipments to the moon at a very low mass to fuel ratio.

Then the commercial space can say "hey we have a moon city now let's start charging people to go there." Pow, NASA just colonized the moon and it never had to land one single human on it.

neuronexmachina, it is very heartening to see the new direction take us to Mars with advanced propulsion technology and at least a decade sooner than Cx was going to.

spacenerd99, Cx was supposed to build a base on the moon that astronauts lived in for a year before we went to Mars, it'd take at least two decades to build it (from now, about a decade from Ares V), and would cost at least 3 times ISS. The ISRU aspects of Cx (ESAS) were cut back dramatically.

jski, it's not hard to "see" what you can do when you have all your funding back because you canceled a program that was not going to achieve anything until the mid 2020s. Griffin is a hero for Cx'ers, who can blame them, they got money that Griffin was bleeding from the rest of NASA. If I had money pouring over my head for whatever project I was doing (regardless of technical aspects of that project), I'd be happy, too.

newpapyrus, Cx did not in any way "help expand human civilization off of Earth." It relied on chemical rockets, for one. It abandoned any sort of useful ISRU, secondly. Indeed, Cx led to DRM 5.0 (Design Reference Mission) losing a lot of its ISRU capability on Mars, because they wanted to justify the moon mission. DRM 3.0 wanted to make fuel on Mars for the return trip. DRM 5.0 doesn't have that. Why? Because you aren't making fuel with Cx on the moon.

SpaceWriter, you don't need to lift 188 mt to LEO if you have nuclear based advanced propulsion. This is a point so many people seem to be neglecting to see with the new direction. Ares V could lift 188 mt to LEO, but only 71 mt to TLI (Trans Lunar Orbit). Why? Because it's chemical. Delta IV or Falcon 9 Heavy can get around 25-30 mt to LEO, how much can they get to TLI with VASIMR or other nuclear tech? 20-25 mt.

janet, it was supposed to get us to Mars, but if you look at the deadlines, if you look at what they were really doing on the moon, you would see that it was like building a second International Space Station on the moon. While I think the construction of the ISS was an admirable and amazing task of human ingenuity, doing it again would be a step backwards. We need ISRU (in-situ resource utilization) if we want to get off this rock. We need a manufacturing base on the moon. Cx did not do that. Advanced R&D through the new NASA direction, might just (I know I'm going to be lobbying for it).

...and funny how all the bold new direction is being handed out to contributors and cronies. Do u really think NASA - A for aeronautics, S for space - should be getting climate handouts. If we're COTS - can't NOAA sign a check? Why do we need inflatables in space?, ISS is already there. In-space propellant transfer - without an application?

Question: if Constellation was cancelled due to its 'unsustainable' nature; who here thinks and in-space assembly of device (nuclear?) to go to Mars in 5 days will be correctly funded?

snkarma, 5 days is impossible with the funding we have (that's a dozen Ares V's, quite a massive ship), 4 months is doable. It's only 6 launches of an Atlas, Delta or Falcon Heavy. ISS has made us experts at in-space assembly, we'd have it down in no time. A refueling station, likewise, would only be a few launches of the heavy options we'll have in 10 years, especially if it had inflatable fuel storage.

I admit we may need a super heavy option. It would be needed if we wanted to shorten the transit time to a month rather than 4 (unless you think we can shoot up 20 Heavies to the refueling station, approx $4 billion assuming $200 million per shot, cool to think about).

The key is to have a program that can scale gracefully to the funding available. You can't just put together grand over-budget plans and hope that more funding will come from above just because you want it.

It is clear there is momentum growing against cancelling NASA's Constellation goals.

Congress is not warming up to it AT all that is certain.

There are web pages sprouting up now as well in resistance to the cancellation.

Mike Okuda (famous for his work on Star Trek and graphics for NASA) has kicked off a web page very focused on contacting all represenatives on this matter......

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

We aren't giving up!
We're just getting started.

> I don't recall Moon colonization as a part of the Constellation program.

I think that is a source of a lot of the arguments here. Constellation really didn't have enough money to do much of anything, but it was heavily promoted as being an enabler of lots of things. I recall seeing documents of outposts, expanding in size with each mission, on a specific rim of a specific crater on the south pole. The search for ice in the cold traps in those craters were important because they would support colonies and development of fuel for missions to Mars. Vehicles were being developed to rove out from multiple outposts. Giant telescopes were to be built on the far side of the Moon.

Constellation was a vessel into which people poured their own expectations. There were probably dozens of different dreams that were dashed by the cancellation of Constellation, but how many of those dreams were actually budgeted for?

NASA could build a small Moon base and run it. If they so some ISRU after say 1 year the base could be sold to a lunar miner mining company and/or space tourist company.

JoshCryer...Couldn't agree more but the plan that has been proposed does not address anything close to what you are speaking of. It does not address anything which is my point which no one has answered yet. Studying nuclear is not a viable option. Starting a nuclear rocket program with a specific goal is however a real plan.

Anyone see the Boeing (Commercial) concept for their capsule today? Wow, looks just like the Orion NASA is building via contract with that other commercial owned company Lockheed Martin.

Looks to me like the administration just wants to move the program out of NASA facilities via Orbital, SpaceX and shift the funds to them. Where am I going wrong here?

@jski

'Griffin was the most respected (among engineers) admin NASA has had since von Braun.'

Umm, von Braun was never Administrator; the highest he ever got (in terms of real powwer) was Centre Director (at Marshall).

I also don't agree that one has to be an excellent engineer to be a great Administrator. One of NASA's greatest was Jim Webb, who was a lawyer. Of course, he did have a deputy who was a truly great engineer, Hugh Dryden, to whom he deferred on technical questions (Webb was 'Mr. Outside'; Dryden was 'Mr. Inside', and is probably more responsible than anyone else for the success of Apollo), so I have to admit there is some point to your plaint.

Sorry, but the Constellation Program as it was being run did itself in.

Human space flight as we have known it, including Shuttle and Constellation, were done in by the incompetence of NASA management over the last 5-6 years.

The original goal was to have an Orion capsule (aka CEV) to replace the Shuttle flying by 2008 and being used regularly for crew transport by 2012. Constellation was spending a lot of money on a lot of things, but their plan to fly the CEV/Orion was falling six months further behind for every year spent on the project. Two independent assessments in the last year identified it might be ready to fly in 2017 though 2019 was more likely.

Constellation had no new technology; it was a revamp of old technologies. New technology efforts, like in-situ resource utilization were specifically groundruled out because of issues identified with costs and detraction from the lunar sortie mission concept.

The stated goal of the new Obama/Bolden plan is to lay out the new technologies to be developed on the way to Mars.

Constellation never had a plan for a moonbase. They had only developed their plan to the point of having a repeat of an Apollo mission. There was discussion of moon bases early, after the Vision was announced, but the Constellation management thought that sorties in an unlikely rover would be more fun.

Commercial manned programs, like the successful Spacehab commercial contracts, were far more efficient, faster, and were costing about 1% what a similar government run project cost. Literally, they were charging under $20 million a turnkey mission in the 1990s; the same mission on a Spacelab cost a billion dollars with armies of engineers and operators at Houston, Huntsville and Kennedy.

Constellation was not going to take NASA or the nation anywhere, except to the poorhouse. It was a great jobs program. It just was not delivering any products.

They had a chance to prove they could do the job; build and fly the relatively simple and non-complex Orion capsule in a reasonable amount of time.

Constellation failed.

Something had to change.

"...you don't need to lift 188 mt to LEO if you have nuclear based advanced propulsion."

That depends on what you want to do. Mars would still need a lot more than 200mt even with advanced prop. Nuclear based prop would be great for going from LEO to anywhere else, but if you want to land or take off from anything significant, you're going to need plenty of old-fashioned chemical rocket fuel. The types of advanced propulsion we currently have (as well as the types we might have in the next 50 years) don't have nearly the thrust you need to land (aerobraking aside) or take off from anything sizeable.

I see that fiscally conservative to Republicans means cutting spending in other people's districts, not your own. The title of this post implies that KSC is not restless even though we stand to lose the lion's share of jobs due to the end of the Shuttle program. Those engineers that think Griffin was the best Administrator ever are just as incompetent as Mike. He's was an arrogant ass who destroyed the future of human space flight by ruining any chance we had at a successful Shuttle replacement by forcing his PERSONAL rocket concept on NASA. He should be prosecuted as criminally liable for wasting billions of dollars and 5 years that we could ill afford at this crucial time. Griffin destroyed human space flight before Obama was even a Senator. CxP huggers are a albatross around this agency's neck. If you don't like it, move on, we don't need you. That was Griffin's management style.

One area that the Dragon commercial spacecraft (and probably all proposed spacecraft other than Orion) wouldn't help with is for off nominal situations. To dock with the ISS, the Dragon requires a stable station and a working robot arm on the station.

SpaceWriter, I agree that the details are lacking, and that is admittedly unfortunate. But the stuff I envisioned is perfectly in line with the rhetoric coming out of NASA. Remotely operated robots, for instance, were mentioned on several occasions. That will undoubtedly be in the R&D path of discussions. Especially if guys like me (and the few other people who agree with me as that being a good path) lobby for it.

Bolden said they'd have a more clearly defined plan by the end of the month (when he has to go to those hearings). It's going to be interesting to watch, I expect him to get a lot of heat from those people possum was referring to. I think he's up to the challenge.

BTW, NASA did build two nuclear reactors in the past decade, they have not had much funding for such stuff in the past, though. The funding will certainly be there, the question is whether or not they'll get it. Solar is not powering VASIMR / ion. You need nuclear, and this has to be a real commitment to nuclear, with that I agree with you. Note, they do probably need to do more R&D because you need the reactor to be down to around 4kg / kW or even .5kg / kW, this is non-trivial, but physically possible. The advanced part of the initiative really means that, advanced. If they can develop a reactor around 4kg / kW, but it's only 50 kW, they will have to scale it up for our vehicles (or prove that it can scale), etc.

The Ares I/V architecture was a huge mistake! But its an even bigger mistake on Obama's part by failing to endorse much cheaper alternatives such as the directly shuttle derived architectures.

And why Bolden continues to believe that tax payers should pay huge amounts of money for space adventurism for an elite few rather than supporting efforts for a permanent and continuously growing presence on the Moon and Mars is beyond me.

Marcel F. Williams

Poss,

There are a few reasons why KSC is not getting any attention in the press:

1) No one at the Florida Today can write a coherent sentence. The only way FT will do anything but a puff piece delivered to them by the Cabana boys is when it involves a crime and they can get their info from the police instead.

2) KSC is regarded by NASA as a whole as a bunch of "hicks" and a necessary evil when launching and expendable when not. KSC has not tried hard/been allowed to do much to change this view. JSC is KSCs political master. KSC management knew this was coming for a long time but decided to bury their heads in the sand and "focus on the task at hand" rather than trying to effectively mitigate their now miserable collective future.

3) KSC is toast. Nothing can be said or done that will make any real difference in it's future. They were forced to sell their soul to the operations world and will now reap the rewards of specialization. You can't turn a bunch of feather-bedding ops weenies into a real R&D organization other than in name only. Those people come from two different tribes. The real R&D money will be sent to the more capable centers that have invested in R&D because they have more capable people closer to the money trough.

3) KSC will be thrown a bone to keep Nelson going along with the program and the remaining NASA people can turn KSC into Disney World East with tax dollars. The pads will remain for the tourists. Maybe they can set an Orbiter on it and give tours. The MLP deck would make a great photo background especially for the Chinese who will laugh a lot and no one will know why. They'll need a lot of money to upgrade the elevators.

The precious "specialized skills" of the existing people launching the orbiters would and should become obsolete with any new program.

BTW: The Chinese, with Russian "help", will be the first to put a nuclear reactor in space.

As always, IMHO.

@Jimmy

'Constellation had no new technology'

Say what? For example (this is one area I happen to know some detail about), the baseline structural technology for Aries 5 is Lithium-Aluminium (yes, not a new technology in aerospace overall, but it is new for manned space), and they are looking at a bunch of composite techniques (some of them very advanced indeed) as alternatives - they are (were, I guess, now) planning to use one of them instead, if it beats out LiAl on enough axes - weight, durability, etc.

Since you don't seem to know even simple stuff like that, it's hard to take anything else you say with much weight.

Oops, that's what I get for relying on the NASA Shuttle web-site (great site, lots of engineering detail, but I guess it's not toally current). The SLWT ET does use AlLi, it turns out, so AlLi is not new to manned space. But they are looking at composites (including some advanced stuff that's not even in commercial aero yet) for stucture on Constellation, and there is plenty of new technology elsewhere in Constellation already (e.g. carbon bell in the J2-X).