Space Policy: Lack of Details and Lots of Differing Opinions

"We're at the very beginning of trying to understand what this really does mean," said Bolden, himself a former astronaut. "We can't give any answers until we find out what the follow-on programs will be, and what people we can transition to them." Charles Bolden

Let's face it gang, the Obama administration has no plan other than killing the Constellation Program. All the other talk of "New, Bold and Exciting" is merely a tactic to take our eyes off of the real deal, the end of U.S. manned spaceflight by NASA. Yep, that's leadership.

I'm afraid that stopping one direction is much easier than agreeing on a new one.

As my name suggests, I am a young guy only recently out of school. I don't understand how Constellation could get canceled with absolutely no plan to replace it? I listened to 2-star Bolden tell us that the new plan is Bold, Ambitious, Exciting, blah blah blah, but now we find out that he has no clue at all what the new plan is??? How can NOTHING be Bold and Ambitious?

Geoffrey, On the extreme contrary, starting things is easy; stopping things is very hard, especially in Washington with all its entrenched interests. Obama chose to do the hard thing first rather than lose a whole year and several billion dollars due to the budget cycle. My hat is off to him. That took serious courage.

When your leaky boat and finally starts sinking, you don't stop to draw up blueprints for a replacement boat!

This was the line from Bolden that struck me (from the WSJ story): "Ideally [NASA will be] flying a heavy-lift launch capability between 2020 and 2030."

That's right, _best case_ is 10-20 years. So it could easily be more than 20 years?

Someone earlier quoted that classic line from 'Red October': "You arrogant ass, you're killed us all!", and applied it to Griffin. Seem to me like it really ought to apply to the Aries critics.

The Boston Globe article says "NASA is now engaged on a quick study of what really are the technologies we need to have another go at human space flight beyond the earth."

"quick study" ???

quick = able to respond without delay

From what I saw, the studying of a HLV was going to take up about 3-4 years in the new budget proposal with NO mention of when to actually build a HLV or a destination for a HLV.

How can the proposed study be deemed "quick"?

WTF man !! I wish sites would publish the truth.

Oh, and if we forgot there was a study done back in 2004 and we were on our way to building what came of that study. Now we need another quick study huh? That's how this is being perceived?

I'm going back to watching my Hitler video now...

Geoffrey had it partly correct, and you do, too. For NASA changing directions is very hard. When Bush announced his "vision" NASA went into a 2+ year planning cycle that had two false starts before Constellation got started. At least that time NASA had a vague direction to pursue. This time NASA has only a stop order without a new direction to address. I fear that most of the base in the aerospace industry will move on after the coming layoffs. If we flush all those years of experience from the system, getting restarted in any direction will be nearly impossible and far more expensive than Obama or his acolytes expect. Given Washington's proclivities, that will make NASA ripe for really serious reductions in the out years. Watch for more merging of NASA and NOAA missions in the coming years.

I hate to burst anyone's bubble but U.S. manned spaceflight is going to end in about 12 months regardless of what program goes forward. Beyond that, did anyone REALLY think Ares V was going to be flying anytime before the 2020-2030 time frame?

From many of the comments being posted this last week you'd like we just killed an operational (or soon to be operational) system, not the paper tiger that was Constellation.

What scares me is that NASA top officials actually believe that a new manned spaceflight capability can be flying in 3 to 5 years. Until they get realistic, I don't believe much of what they say.

YoungEngineer ... you may be young, but I couldn't agree with you any more. Presumably, there will be some sort of "plan" for the future (the future is very near ... a matter of months 'til FY2011 starts). But if all the talent is laid off, who's going to do the planning? They'd better hurry, but even now, morale is so low that it may be hard to find anyone dedicated enough to do it.

To be fair, it has been known for some time that Ares I was not the answer. Things kept getting worse. Many concepts were laid on the table that would work, and work well ... but stubbornness of management got in the way.

The more I read, and more importantly, the more I listen to Gen. Bolden, it's clear they do not have a clue how this is going to unfold or what the end result is they are trying to achieve.

It's one thing to say "BOLD, EXCITING, and AMBITIOUS. I can get into that. ...but when there does not seem to be a plan for how all the technology development is geared towards a specific endeavor, I'm not inclined to get on board.

My heart goes out to my friends and colleagues out at JSC. Looks like the HSF competencies they have developed over the past 50 years is going to be diluted by focusing on technology development vs. actual HSF missions.

Barring some strange unforeseen string of events, Obama wont be in office a decade from now. Its unlikely that Bolden will survive as administrator this long.

Since they've just reinforced the standing precedent by taking a knife to the Bush program (as Bush had done to Clintons ideas, and Clinton to Bush 1's) I'd find it hard to believe in a plan that "maybe" comes to fruition in two decades.

What matters is whats on the agenda to happen immediately.
You can say Man will be standing on mars decades from now... but that's a blatant lie unless you've done something remarkable to insure this happens.

@Mike Schriber

"did anyone REALLY think Ares V was going to be flying anytime before the 2020-2030 time frame?"

Depends how much budget it got.

"like we just killed an operational (or soon to be operational) system, not the paper tiger that was Constellation."

Constellation had problems (especially Aries I), but there was a heck of a lot more there than the vapourware/dreamware we're currently being peddled.

@Maxwell

"Barring some strange unforeseen string of events, Obama wont be in office a decade from now."

Bolden did make one fairly astute observation in the JSC event: whatever program NASA goes with, make it international - because it's a lot harder to kill an international program when the USGovt changes its whimsy of the week.

Does anything think that ISS would have survived to make it through to the operational system of today (no opinion stated on whether it is a useful system) if it weren't an international program? The same kind of ankle-biting that killed Aries would have killed it a long time ago.

I am still waiting for the Constellation supporters to explain exactly what they thought they could do with the projected NASA budgets. They think their dreams of Lunar exploration was funded. It wasn't. It never really was. It was just a welfare program for rocket scientists -- enough money to keep people in key districts employed but not enough to actually do anything of importance. Hey, it might hurt to hear that, but it is true.

As far as the criticism about the lack of vision for what NASA should do next. I agree. Changing direction is OK, but they should tell us what the new direction is.

On several occasions I have heard Robert Zubrin talk about the need to have a short-term goal, like 10 year or less. He pointed out that if most of the goal could not be reached within one presidential administration, there is a really good chance that it will be cancelled. Zubrin may be a nut, but he is a smart nut.

Some of the stated budget is,

Critical Technology Demonstration: $7.82B over 5 yrs
Heavy Lift and Propulsion Technology: $3.1B over 5 yrs
Robotic Precursor Missions: $3.05B over 5 yrs
Commercial Crew and Cargo: $6.11B over 5 yrs
21st Century Launch Complex: $1.93B over 5 yrs.
Space Technology: $4.93B over 5 yrs.

So, if NASA management doesn't have details, or anything particular in mind, how did management come up with these numbers? I guess they came out of where the sun don't shine. And I don't mean the dark side of the moon.

The distribution of money above doesn't seem to indicate that the space side of NASA wants to build anything over the next five years, except crew and cargo to ISS and 21st Century Launch Complex. I assume over the next few months Bolden will reach out to the various centers to get ideas on how to spend the money. Since direction is not coming from the top, it will come from various NASA groups and individuals. The money will be spread out among fiefdoms. PhDs will be hired and some people will be retrained into researchers or to support research. And, a number of the individuals with the knowledge of the devils that are in details of operations or of building things in the real world will be gone.

The funny part of this posting is the link to the NY Times editorial. The NYT has been so consistently wrong in its opinions about spaceflight (all the way back to telling Robert Goddard that rockets can't work in a vacuum) that it has no credibility in this subject matter (or others?) and what they write so borders on comedy that they should consider running comics in its place.

I'm very disappointed with the "yes we can" president. John F. Kennedy he most certainly is not. I expected better when I voted for him, and to not even have a well defined plan at this point is unacceptable. An open-ended research program does not provide a clear mission for NASA. We need specific goals, with dates and milestones attached to them.

On the one hand, Gen. Bolden claims that this magical commercial solution will get us beyond LEO sooner than Constellation would have. Then we hear that we won't leave LEO until sometime beyond 2020 with this new plan. So, which is it?

If your going to cancel the current architecture, you have to replace it with a new more efficient architecture. And there were many substantially cheaper alternatives to the Ares I/V architecture-- even one presented by NASA itself.

But Obama decided to cancel the current architecture and simply sit back and think about the future.

Canceling things and then doing nothing is not hard. Its just doing nothing!

Marcel F. Williams

Here's a great question? How are you going to retain the talent at these centers when it will most likely take a number of months to finalize your "vision" enough to actually put out an RFP for that vision and get contractors to bid on it and then get the people in place to fill those slots?

The vision, RFP, and proposals take a ton of time.

But meanwhile, you want to end Constellation after RFP (next month as far as I know).

So, do you plan on keeping people on Constellation long enough (close out funds maybe?) for them to possibly move to the new program (whatever that is)... ??

Or do you think Bolden will lay them off and expect them to sit around doing nothing while they wait to be interviewed for the new program?

I have talked to many of those people and they are looking at going elsewhere (other states, other fields outside of space). They can't sit around and wait for HOPE, sorry...

The way this part of the conversion to the new program is handled, in my mind will be one of the major successes or downfalls of the new program.

This time, Zubrin is exactly right! Any plan that NASA commits itself to has to a plan that can be achieved within 5 to 10 years.

Apollo was such a plan. And it worked!

There's no logical reason why the US can't return to the Moon again before the end of the decade. Once the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous plan was decided upon in 1962, we were on the Moon in just 7 years. And with a directly shuttle derived architecture we could do that again!

"Yes, we can!" President Obama. "Yes, we can!"

Marcel F. Williams

The estimated schedule, based on budget profiles, for Constellation leaving LEO was the late 2020s.

To paraphrase Kennedy, "Why go to the Moon?"

I don't think NASA or anyone else came up with a good answer that lots of people could agree on.

"Why go to Mars?" I think Zubrin had two good answers for that. First, it is the most likely place we will find evidence of life (past or present) outside Earth, and that will be a big transformational moment in human history. Second, it has the resources to sustain human colonies. The Augustine Commission and Bolden all seemed much more excited about Mars than the Moon.

Constellation could leave LEO empty in the late 2020s. It couldn't leave with a Lunar payload until some time in the 2030s, if ever, according to the Augustine Committee.

CadetOne:
~Mars is the most likely place to find evidence of life outside earth...

SOOO many folks think that finding evidence of life on Mars would be transformational for our society. Just like some thought that finding extra-solar planets would be.

I don't think so. Sci fi (not to mention plenty of bad TV & movies) has so numbed people to the novelty of the notion of alien life that finding microbes (or fossils thereof) anywhere off Earth is going to be just one big ho-hum moment...just like finding water on the Moon was, even though that discovery may represent the key to conquering the entire solar system. It might upset a few narrow-minded folks who still live inside a flat-earth mentality (who'll claim it's a hoax anyway), but transformational? I wouldn't count on it.

When an intelligent species lands on (or wormholes its way to) the Ellipse in Washington DC and communicates that it wants to establish interstellar relations with (or conquer) us, well, THAT might be transformational. But finding a few bugs on Mars? Hardly. This ain't 1968 any more, and we're not in an old Clarke story...

If Constellation had continued, does anyone think it was realistic to assume, in this economy, Congress would have approved and extra $3+ billion a year to accelerate Ares V development such that a moon mission would be possible by 2020 or shrink the gap with Ares I?

If it upsets you that manned spaceflight is ending - where were you when Bush scrapped the shuttle in 2005?

Several people here say Obama and Bolden have replaced something with nothing, and specifically a viable program of HSF to the Moon and Mars with a total vacuum. This is somewhere between deep pessimism, selective memory, and lying.

-- The Augustine committee looked at Constellation and concluded it was severely underfunded for the task and schedule. It is not a viable plan that we can stack as a reference against whatever transpires from Obama's proposal.

-- Stretching the schedule would therefore have been the only alternative, meaning heavy lift vehicles would not be coming on line much earlier than 2020-30.

-- The new proposal _increases_ the funding for HSF. It advances the goal of routine HSF to LEO in a few years. This is a lot different from "nothing". Easy access to a closer goal arguably can be compared to difficult access to a farther goal.

-- With Constellation, the huge majority of US funds for HSF went into ONE concept for doing it and one team to do it. The Obama proposal is to expand that to several, and to leverage competition to elicit the best concepts.

-- The Obama proposal does not rule out a program to reach out to the Moon and Mars, it simply deletes an arbitrary and impossible deadline for doing it. He proposes we gain a firm foothold in LEO and then spread out, instead of struggling for a toehold everywhere. And he proposes applying US ingenuity a different way.

I completely agree Mike Schriber. Under Constellation, the first launch of a human on Orion would not be until Early 2017 at the EARLIEST and the construction of Ares V would not start until after that which means it would be roughly 2021 before Ares V would be able to do its first test flight IF, and only IF, it was properly funded all the way through and there were no more delays.

So the comments that it might be 10 years at the minimum before an HLV is built is really not that bad when you look at the reality of Constellation.

The new NASA path that has not been truly defined yet is solving the problems we were ignoring. Under Constellation we were going to build great big rockets to put humans on the moon, but we were not going to to adequate research on the medical issues such as radiation exposure for weeks to months on the moon before we got there. NASA, through the direction of Congress and previous administrations was putting the cart before the horse. Now, NASA is putting the horse first. NASA is going to identify many of the problems that were being ignored and once those problems are solved, then NASA will put humans in space beyond LEO.

Does anyone here seriously believe that Ares V would have got us beyond LEO before 2020? Anyone? The delays were piling up, you can do a google search for it and find many many reports of this. It simply wasn't going to happen.

Bolden suggested that the timeframe we are on will not be as delayed as Cx and will in fact be faster.

Depends on how much budget!? We know how much budget Ares V was getting which is why we also know it wouldn't be flying anytime sooner than 2025 or so.

I'm wondering what vaporware/dreamware you're talking about? When I looked a few hours ago the Atlas V launch tomorrow morning was still on schedule. There's also a nearly complete Falcon 9 launch vehicle at Cape Canaveral, along with it's new pad and integration facility. On the other hand, there's not much Constellation flight hardware to be found. Did I miss something?

Marcel, there are two logical reasons why we can't be back on the moon before the end of the decade... money and public interest (actually, the lack of both).

"I am still waiting for the Constellation supporters to explain exactly what they thought they could do with the projected NASA budgets."

Orion 1 Launch 2014, unmanned
Orion 2 Launch 2014, crewed to ISS

New budget:

No US crew access to space by 2015 or later. You may dream about "commercial" space but there is no "commercial" space.

"We can fly Orion in 2013”, says John Karas, the VP and General Manager of Human Space Flight for Lockheed Martin. Lockheed is the prime contractor for NASA’s Orion capsule."

This is the only option, with "real" hardware to get US crew access to space. I don't know how you folks can call Constellation vaporware and tout the reality of SpaceX. SpaceX record to date - 2 successes out of 5 tries. Why do we want to re-learn all the lessons of the past at taxpayers expense just because of this mythical commercial enterprise?" Companies with "real" experience would have never had the failures SpaceX had.

Space travel is hard and it takes more than just words in a budget to make it a reality.

Let's consider this from a 'before vs. after' approach.

BEFORE OBAMA:

NASA had a vision of a manned space exploration program that encompassed landings on the Moon by the 2020s, and a manned Mars mission, ideally by the 2030s. It had the mission architecture - Constellation - that given appropriate funding, would have made such a vision a practical one. The main problem was that is never given proper funding, and so like so many other 'visions' foundered on the shoals of a hard reality where Government - and the American people - failed to support the goals of NASA to land on the Moon and go on to Mars. As the Augustine Commission made very clear, a landing on the Moon using Constellation by 2020 was not possible with the then constraints on funding - it was a manned space programme going nowhere. But at least NASA had a goal and had hardware to develop to achieve the goal.

AFTER OBAMA:

The manned space program is effectively dead in the water. Obama cancels Constellation, and walks away from the vision of Moon, Mars and Beyond. His solution is to rely on Commercial Space Corporations delivering the means to access Space, with some vaguer notion of going beyond LEO at some point in the future, through some form of international cooperative approach. There are two positive things in the Obama perspective on manned Space. The first is in developing commercial space capabilities, and the second is developing new technologies to allow humans to travel in space more effectively. But the two positives are undermined by a vague and unconvincing commitment on the part of government to make them happen. Everything else here is a negative.

The US, under President Obama, has given up on manned space exploration for the foreseeable future. There is no strong and firm commitment to return to manned space exploration in the future by Obama. There is no vision, no timetable, no plan. Worse, is an air of contempt by the Obama Administration ("we don't need to go to the Moon again") for the thousands of NASA and subcontractor employees who have worked under difficult circumstances to make the Moon, Mars and Beyond vision achievable. The Obama Administration tossed aside decades of US leadership in manned space in the space of a few days, with little regard to the future, because it is simply is not interested in that particular future.

Those in Congress whose states are directly affected by this will fight, but I'm enough of a realist to know that this decision won't be reversed in any time soon, and the US will simply have to accept losing its place at the front. A future President may have a different view, and so there is still hope that something can be salvaged either by 2012 or by 2016, but what damage will be done to NASA in the interim in terms of lost skills, workforce, momentum, and morale, and how far back might the US slip against its key competitors - China and Russia?

As I said, the commitment to commercial space, and a commitment, however vague, to developing new spacecraft technology for interplanetary missions, are both commendable, and I fully support those. But there was no need to rip the heart out of America's role in space to make such commitments happen. A real leader would have recognised the source of the problem - lack of funding and support, and like JFK in 1961, made a bold decision to take the US forward. Some would argue that what Obama has done achieves this goal, but until we see some firm commitments to commercial space, and to advanced spacecraft technology, I'm not convinced. Nor am I convinced that an idealistic belief in the path of international cooperation is the solution - are the Chinese or the Russians really going to wait patiently for the US to catch up again?

This is a very dark cloud, with a few silver linings that may bear fruit at some point. But mostly its a very dark cloud.

I can see it now. Its 2024, and China has just landed a crew of Taikonauts near Tranquility Base. They are providing mission coverage in beautiful high definition. China proclaims it as proof that China has become a true global power. The Americans get to watch on their TVs. What a come down for the once space leader.

Malcolm,

Canberra, Australia

"On the other hand, there's not much Constellation flight hardware to be found. Did I miss something?"

Go to nasa.gov and look up Contellation and Orion and show me any "commercial" vendor that has done that much testing and has that much hardware relative to US crew access to space.

Also note that most of the testing is directed at safety of the crew. Crew safety is important! How long do you think SpaceX will survive if they have a failure with crew aboard.

How much abort system testing has SpaceX done... ZERO.

Don't get lost in the "HLV" discussion and the commercial myth. HLV is the last of our worries. Any competent corporation right now could build an HLV with a government contract. What is critical in this budget is NO US CREW ACCESS TO SPACE! Don't worry about beyond LEO, worry about LEO first.

Again, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, the old budget had no viable U.S. crew access to space on a U.S. vehicle either. There is a big difference between plans and reality (as the Augustine Commission pointed out).

The Falcon 9 has been designed according to published NASA human rated vehicle specifications. That's not saying much since NASA has been changing it's criteria to meet Ares 1 capabilities (or lack thereof) but there it is. ULA has stated that human rating the Atlas V presents no significant challenges and is just a matter of getting a contract to do the work. The major pacing items on both vehicles is the launch abort system. One should keep in mind that the LAS for Ares is far from complete as well and that the systems already developed in that program are also applicable to commercial vehicles.

Crew safety is important but so is actually flying. At this point Ares 1 is 100% safe because it's never flown and it's likely that it never will. Atlas V has demonstrated reliability and performance. If you think that Boeing and Lockheed-Martin can do a good job on Ares/Orion then there is no logical reason to think they won't also do a good job on a man rated Atlas V.

Malcolm, writing off the U.S. and talking up the Chinese is simply not justified. China's capabilities and technology in manned vehicles, robotics, launch vehicles, satellites and planetary probes is so far behind it's not even a fair comparison. The estimated budget for China's space program is 1/10th of NASA's budget. They are making progress and doing a good job (with Russian assistance) but they have a long way to go. Succeeding in space is more than flags and footprints on the moon. It requires (among other things) robust, diversified and low cost access to LEO, expertise at constructing and servicing vehicles in orbit and critically, international partnerships which allow for projects too large for any one nation to undertake. If we follow through on the goals of the new NASA directives we'll be laying the groundwork for real exploration and exploration of space, not just grandstanding.

Mike,

You make some valid points, but its your final sentence that worries me the most, starting with the big 'IF...' at the beginning. If Obama had made a commitment to really fund commercial space and to really fund advanced spacecraft technologies - as in a political commitment in terms of his own credibility as a President, in the same way that Kennedy's 'we go to the Moon' commitment was made, then I'd be far more relaxed. But it was not that sort of commitment. There was a funding promise, but as you know, funding decisions can be changed at the stroke of a pen.

Furthermore, if Obama really were serious about a future in Space, he would not have cancelled Ares V, or at the very least, he would have made a firmer commitment to a heavy lift launch vehicle much sooner than has been made. No matter what we develop in terms of commercial space capabilities, as you say so eloquently in your comment, Ares V makes a great deal of sense, irrespective of whether we are going back to the Moon or not. That vehicle can allow the US so much flexibility in terms of launching payloads into LEO and beyond. The Europeans understand this which is why they have developed Ariane V.

Re China, yes, you are right - they are currently behind the US, in terms of what they are doing now. But I have a feeling that they will not follow a steady-state path in the same way the US has done over the decades. They will go for sudden big advances. Ask yourself why the Chinese are engaging in manned spaceflight? Its not to do science, and its not to develop international partnerships. We are entering a competitive multipolar world, in which China and Russia will not be our strategic partners. For the Chinese its about geopolitics, and for them, flags and footprints really do matter. They see manned space as a key indicator of their rise to global power, and so they will go for high visibility, high prestige goals. The Moon is the highest ground, and the Chinese are already suggesting a lunar landing by 2022 is possible.

The basic truth is that come 2011, the US will no longer be a manned space power. It will depend on the two other manned space powers - Russia and China - to get crew up to the ISS, and that approach as at the mercy of stable relations, something which I'm sure you accept is not a given. There are no guarantees that commercial space will deliver a viable capability for crew transfer to the ISS before later in the next decade, and in the meantime China and Russia will have the opportunity to gain the lead, even if their technology is not quite as elegant or as advanced as America's. They will want to preserve that edge. Hence my original point - I can't quite see Moscow and Beijing waiting for the US to catch up so that cooperative space efforts can be undertaken.

This all sounds very 'space race' and competitor driven, but that's how I see things, set against the broader strategic context of a competitive multipolar international order. Space is not immune from the pressures or forces emerging from that order.

cheers,

Malcolm

@Mike S

"The Falcon 9 has been designed according to published NASA human rated vehicle specifications."

The above is SpaceX Myth number 290. SpaceX has been designed for NASA human rated vehicle specifications for a PRESSURIZED MODULE MATED TO ISS!!!!! That is, they cant cause a leak on station, they cant introduce a toxic environment to ISS and they have to have some ECLSS consumables so that they dont suck up ISS's air. They have done nothing to design a vehicle for launch, ascent, ECLSS to keep a crew alive for a couple days, re-entry and landing human rating standards! Nothing at all! They have done nothing for a launch abort system and they have done nothing with NASA safety to determine what they need to do to human rate a launch vehicle.

Is there anything specifically preventing LockMart/Boeing/USA/ULA from proposing Ares I as a commercial LEO launcher?

Less than truthful statements ? :

"Constellation had problems (especially Aries I), but there was a heck of a lot more there than the vapourware/dreamware we're currently being peddled."

"Go to nasa.gov and look up Contellation and Orion and show me any "commercial" vendor that has done that much testing and has that much hardware relative to US crew access to space."

"We can fly Orion in 2013”, says John Karas, the VP and General Manager of Human Space Flight for Lockheed Martin. Lockheed is the prime contractor for NASA’s Orion capsule."

Orion is the same program that:
- is not yet past PDR after five years of work
- that several independent studies have said cannot fly before 2017, more realistically 2019.

Yes, it should have been flying in 2013; actually the first flight was supposed to have been in 2008 according to the Vision.

The fiction is that Orion hardware was being tested. Some shapes, not quite mock-ups, were being tested. It is hard to test hardware for a design which does not yet exist.

Obama alone slowed down NASA progress?!? Give me a break!
From Nixon on we have played games with both democratic and republican presidents and all NASA administrators that we would boldly go into space, just not now. Leave bold for a future administration and lie about glorious goals and ambitions for the future.
I would prefer a realistic budget and goals than imaginary dishonest budgets, NASA welfare, and almost half a century of lies. The fact that we are still in low earth orbit makes it difficult for me to believe NASA has done anything since 1973 except lie with exotic power point presentations and flowery speech.

I can see where your confusion on this issue is coming from. You appear to be talking about the Dragon cargo vehicle while I (and others) are referring to the Falcon 9 launch vehicle.

The Dragon cargo vehicle has indeed been designed according to ISS specifications for pressurized cargo carriers (just like the Progress, ATV and HTV). However, SpaceX has also designed the Dragon to support a crewed configuration with the addition of a life support system, manual overide control system and launch abort system. There is a very high degree of commonalty between the pressurized cargo and crewed versions of Dragon.

Unlike Orion, which only exists on paper, Dragon pressurized cargo flight vehicles exist and are currently being prepared for launch.

You assertions about SpaceX having done nothing to determine what they need to do to human rate their launch system is simply incorrect. SpaceX didn't hire Ken Bowersox as VP of astronaut safety and mission assurance as a publicity stunt. They certainly do need to develop a launch abort system. That's the primary pacing item for crewed flight. That's also the case for Orion. Orbital has the contract to develop the Orion LAS and I'm sure they'd accept a contract from SpaceX to do the same for Dragon (if SpaceX doesn't do it in-house or with another contractor). The LAS for Dragon will be much smaller the for Orion and have to cope with much more benign abort environments and modes. This will likely result in an easier to develop system.

Falcon 9 and Dragon will have at least ten or more unmanned test and cargo flights before a crewed launch could take place. Those flights will tell the tale.

I agree. It's a very big "if" and that word needs to be there to qualify any statement made about future programs. The past has shown that there is no certainty that any program will survive past a change in congresses or administrations. Constellation is simply the latest reminder. Obama is certainly not Kennedy and this isn't 1962.

China may indeed follow a non-linear development path but right now it's pure speculation. A Chinese landing on the moon would be impressive but it's something we did 40 years ago. Would anyone be impressed if China mounted an overland expedition to the South Pole? Russia is in worse shape than us with regard to access beyond LEO. They have great plans but no money to execute them.

Heavy lift is very important but it's also incredibly expensive. That's why there are no current heavy lift boosters. Keep in mind that the Ariane 5 ECA and Atlas V are very similar in throw weight while the Delta IV Heavy offers slightly more capacity. None of these even approach the lifting capacity of the Saturn V or proposed Ares V configurations.

The key to a viable exploration architecture is international cooperation and a significant sharing of work. The insistence by the United States on a having a complete end to end architecture with total control of the critical path is simply not sustainable. If this stance changes we have the opportunity for real progress by letting different countries focus on parts of the system that when combined make a complete architecture. We all succeed or fail together.

There are lots of problems with that plan.

Firstly, and critically, Boeing have ideas of their own about commercial crew and those are going on top of an EELV. Similarly, if Lockheed Martin decide to produce a commercial Orion, it will almost certainly go on an EELV. Neither company has any motivation to offer support to a threat to their own products.

The EELVs have performance and cost benefits over Ares-I and are fully tested whilst only an aerodynamic replica has flown for Ares-I.

Secondly, Ares-I requires the development of a new 5m upper stage and a new J-2X engine. The EELVs and even Falcon-9 already have their engines. This gives them a great schedule and cost advantage (less development cash needed). It makes no sense to push for a rocket needing billions of $s over years to fly when already-extant rockets are available.

Finally, Ares-I has a very low performance (probably less than 20t to LEO) and cannot push a cargo beyond that. This makes it very limited as a launch vehicle and, in all likelihood, commercially non-viable. EELVs can launch cargo, satellites and space probes as well as crew vehicles.

Overall, if it were not the fact that it formed part of CxP, Ares-I would never had even existed.

Mike,

Thanks for the comment, and I take on board what you say. I am dubious of international cooperation as the best way forward. It's like arms control - it works when its in everyone's best interest for it to work. But I don't see the Chinese or the Russians thinking along those terms, especially if they manage to gain an advantage whilst the US is planet bound for at least the next ten years (commercial vehicles will take time, and I don't count US astronauts paying for rides on Soyuz as constituting US manned spaceflight). I guess the question one needs to ask is 'why should they help the US?'. I'm basing my argument on the broader context of strategic rivalry, not just purely in terms of space exploration. There was no interest on the part of the Soviets in the 1960s to cooperate with the US to get to the Moon, because prestige and strategic interest was the driving force. I think in the next decade and beyond, prestige will matter once again, especially for a rising power like China and a resurgent power like Russia.

The US certainly could (and in my opinion should) turn to Japan and India, as well as Europe, as logical space partners. If the relationship between the US and Russia improves, then more could possibly be done there, but I'm willing to bet that it will deteriorate. So don't count on that. And I see no reason why a public-private partnership between Government and Commercial Industry could not work, providing Government does not stifle private industry's ability to innovate and develop new approaches to achieving the goal in a more cost effective and agile manner. Government could learn an awful lot from the Apple / Google approach to business, and how it could be applied in Space, and I think that commercial space needs to adopt this approach if it is to merely avoid replicating NASA on a smaller scale.

There is also the inherent negative of Space Cooperation in that it does slow things down because there is more inertia and more bureaucratic drag in a cooperative approach. It will take longer to get everything done because multiple partners and thus multiple agendas and interests have to be satisfied, and so inevitably there is a degree of lowest common denominator approach that emerges. I'm not saying that international space cooperation is bad, full stop. What I am saying is that its not risk free, and we need to avoid becoming idealistic about it to such an extent that we engage in cooperation without understanding those risks.

Re the Chinese landing on the Moon, and why its important - its important especially if it happens when the US is stuck on terra firma, and its manned space programme is in tatters. It does not matter that the US did it first in 1969 - if the Chinese do it in 2022, when we are still trying to work out how to get ourselves back into LEO, it sends a very strong message of China's rise to superpower status, and conversely, US decline, and a lot of people will focus on that. In the same way that China's handling of the Global Financial Crisis, as the US struggled, sent a powerful signal to the rest of the world that strategic power is shifting to Asia, a Chinese moon landing in 2022, as the US looked on, would send a strong signal about changing power structures, and the 'astropolitics' (to borrow from Everett Dolman) would be going China's way.

This is a Space website, and its important not to let it become too focused on politics, but the reality is that politics impinges directly on where the US is going in Space, not just in terms of domestic politics, but also in terms of international relations in the 21st Century. So its vital to see this challenge in broader terms, in my opinion.

cheers,

Malcolm

Canberra, Australia

@Jimmy, speaking of "Less than truthful statements ?:"

"Orion is the same program that:
- is not yet past PDR after five years of work
- that several independent studies have said cannot fly before 2017, more realistically 2019.

You know this how? Obviously not from working in the industry. Orion completed PDR in August 2009. BTW, that was after 3 years of work.

"Yes, it should have been flying in 2013; actually the first flight was supposed to have been in 2008 according to the Vision."

That would be truly amazing considering Lockheed won the contract and it began in October 2006. Orion has always maintained they could be ready by 2013 or 2014 at the latest. The delays predicted by Augustine were based on Ares I, not Orion.

"The fiction is that Orion hardware was being tested. Some shapes, not quite mock-ups, were being tested. It is hard to test hardware for a design which does not yet exist."

Again, you know this how? Orion has done much more testing of a human rated vehicle than the new space companies have even dreamed about yet. Including drop tests (which unfortunately failed, due to the rigging set up, not the Orion parachutes), PORT testing of a full scale and mass mockup in the ocean to test and demonstrate retreival techniques. Successful tests of the abort system motors. The Pad Abort 1 vehicle is close to be ready and should launch sometime in the next 60 days. Orion has built tons of real hardware and tested tons of real and mockup hardware. The design does exist and has for quite a while. The thing that has slowed it down is the underperforming Ares I.

As for the people who mock Ares I. Sorry, but Ares I-X was a real test of an actual rocket to simulate the mass of the vehicle and how it would behave in flight. Althought the 5th segment was a dummy and the rest of the vehicle was mass only. The naysayers said Ares I-X would never get off the pad, but it did. It actually did it only 6 months behind schedule from the start of the program! That in itself is pretty amazing. However, we learned valuable data from that test - even the roll out to the pad showed that the models have been overly conservative. The 5 segment booster ground test at ATK also went very well - this is the first stage of Ares. There have been J-2X tests to support the second stage development. So really everything Ares has done is on par with or better than what Falcon has done, until Falcon successfully launches a Falcon 9 - I would say they are neck and neck.

The funny thing is that people think commercial is going to save us and be radically different, but in reality, Boeing and Lockheed are going to step in, man rate the Delta IV and than we will be back in the same place we started. In terms of crew to LEO at least. We just wont have anything else.

@Spaceboy

'The above is SpaceX Myth number 290.'

To be fair, I'm not sure SpaceX themselves are responsible for that - it might be SpaceX fans mis-understanding something.