Taking Space Exploration Beyond Traditional Partnerships

I agree this is becoming a pathetic farce.

You know, some critics have always said that the Human Space Flight Program was nothing but a government welfare program. They may finally be right since NASA employees now have no where to go, no mission, no ability to put astronauts in orbit, and no true leaders in their management (just Obama's "yes" boys." They will become non-productive government workers just like all the other government bureaucrats after September.

This is very frustrating for those of us that have dedicated our lives to the idea of human space exploration. Commercial/Government or both I don't care but this directionless and political posturing can't be good for our future of space flight.

From the outreach article "Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver said recently that the next time NASA lands on the moon it would be part of an international exploration effort."
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Is this a case of talking out of both sides of the mouth or what? Lunar has been canceled don't ya know and replaced with a vague 'personal vision' of going to Mars.

Given that Indonesia has been piggybacking on a U.S. and ESA launches for while now, I don't know why you're so surprised by this.

In any case, this sounds like more an off-hand comment than a declarative policy statement.

Agreed, NASA is being used as a political entity to reach out to other nations instead of what it was chartered to do. NASA tax dollars are spent by Americans for Americans and should be used to employ American workers not engage middle eastern nations.

This is laughable.

NASA has no plan, they have no goal, but it is important to reach out to predominantly Muslim countries to do what?

First they repeast "commercial" in everything they say with no foundation of an actual "market"

I guess now that we need a "market," we will create one based on international dimplomacy. And the proponents of the new budget complain that Constellation was just a welfare program for engineers. What is this???

Also, FYI, Ms. Garver keeps touting that we want to reduce our ITAR regulations. Everyone here knows that we have ITAR regulations in the interest of National Secturity, right?

So, lets see, the new NASA paradigm is:

International Diplomacy
Creating a non-sustainable market
Not flying humans to space
and
Releasing our technical knowledge to anyone who wants it

That sounds like a much better way to spend almost $100b over the next 5 years at NASA than what we were doing before.

More fodder to use against Obama when time comes for congress to address what it is NASA is supposed to be doing.

What a joke.

Hey, that's the first thing that pops into Americans minds when you say NASA right?

Reaching out to "muslim" countries. Whatever that is supposed to mean.

Obama is cooking his own political goose with this nonsense.

IIRC, they just signed some new agreements with Israel a few weeks ago dealing with lunar science.

Sorry to disagree with you.

Constellation was an example of a non-sustainable program with a nonsustainable-really a nonexistent- market, that would not have been flying humans into space any time soon and not flying humans to the moon or planets for generations; likely the American Congress and people would not have supported it for long and it would never have reached its long term goals. No one ever provided substantive rationale for what
NASA was trying to do.

Even the near term goals of Constellation were not going to be met until it was too late.

Shuttle was a technological advancement well beyond Apollo and it was too large, too complicated, and while it had tremendous capabilities, we really could not keep it flying.

The real mistake of Shuttle was not in the Shuttle itself, but in our failure to capitalize what we learned on Shuttle and develop a better, more supportable infrastructure based on it while we still had the people with its expertise.

Reverting back to an Apollo like approach was not a move forward in any way, shape or form.

While we do not yet know whether the new approach will be successful, its goal is clearly to develop new technologies, new capabilities and new industry that might allow us to move forward in a more cost effective, supportable manner.

Its too bad NASA went off on a tangent with Constellation. It was costly to the US taxpayer and it will be costly for many of the Constellation workers.

Constellation was not affordable, not supportable and not sustainable.

If you read the Vision, the Obama-Bolden approach is largely what was called for 6 years ago.

If the US and the world is going to be successful, we need to move in a new direction. That is what the Bolden-Obama strategy is all about.

The Obama-Bolden "Vision" is nothing but a poorly written science fiction paper. Constellation was an actual working program with hardware, ground support equipment, and workers. Also, they have had one successful launch already despite the naysayers on this site that said it couldn't fly.

Moonman, I don't know if you work in the Human Space Flight Program, but I did, and I saw this program come to life and it's potential. All you have with Obama is what normally comes with him, all show and no substance.

Bolden is going to find that history will not remember him for his shuttle missions, or for his military service, but as the man who ended 50 years of American Human Space Flight. That is a type of infamy I would rather not have.

I'm amazed that anyone would be against using the space program to reach out to our Muslim neighbors. Budgets for NASA were much larger when the cold war was it's main raison d'etre. Denying opportunities for the space program to add value in new areas is equivalent, IMO, to fighting for reduced budgets for human space flight.

You folks need to get a life. Constellation was a complete farce and you people just can't get past that. Ares I was going to be more expensive than Shuttle, less safe than Shuttle, and far less capable than Shuttle. So bad, in fact, that Ares V was never going to see the light of day. You all seem to think we need a schedule with a point destination at the end of it. Well guess what. That doesn't work because the schedule slips, the costs mount, and the capability dwindles until you end up at the end and have to quit with nothing to show for it. That was Constellation. The only joke about this whole thing is all the incompetent idiots who continue whining about the cancellation of the biggest joke in NASA history. Get over it, it's gone. Congress can't save it, no one can. This new plan is so much more superior. It is not about setting unobtainable goals but about steady progress to make a serious effort to advance our capabilities in space. I've worked for NASA at KSC for 28 years and this is by far the most exciting prospect for this Agency since landing on the Moon. Maybe your children will get to go to space instead of a few select glorified civil servants. You naysayers are the same idiots that said Clinton sold out Space Station when it went international, and now we know that it would be in the Pacific Ocean had it not been for that visionary decision. Looking back in 20 years, this will be seen as the pivotal moment in history when NASA was brought back from the brink of disaster. I am telling you people that do not work for NASA that Constellation was going to be the last human spaceflight program. It was going to bring down the entire Agency in miserable failure. Now there is hope.

Possum, the only farce is the Obama plan. Sorry.
And quite frankly those that defend it are sounding pretty farcical too lately.

The American people through congress were not screaming for NASA to do muslim outreach instead of reaching for the moon. Shocking I know, but it's factual.

It is a huge mistake. Obama's political capitial is dwindling fast. CNN just had a poll that showed most would NOT re-elect him. Congress is not going to rubber stamp this farce of a plan. Most of them are worried about getting re-elected and standing behind these bizarre Obama plans is not exacty going to endear them to the electorate. And electorate that is thinking very hard about "throwing the bums out" as the expression goes this election cycle.

That's exactly right. The biggest tragedy of NASA in the past thirty years was not capitalizing on our investment and technological advances in the Space Shuttle to develop follow-on vehicles. We should be on a second or third generation Space Transportation System by now instead of flying the same old original vehicles. How many 707's do you still see in mainline revenue service or F-14's still in military service?

Possum,

Because you are so vehement about your position and now that i know you work for NASA, I am going to take a slightly different position than I have been taking.

While I am in support of Constellation and I will go as far as defending decisions in defining the architecture by NASA administration and give the NASA workforce credit for their operations expertise, I will say this.

I do place a significant blame on the failure of Constellation on the NASA workforce. Being a contract employee and having worked on both DOD programs and NASA programs, I can say that there were times that I didn't think NASA had a clue on how to develop a program and their incessant desire to continue to change requirements and baseline will be the main driver in Constellation's death. It was not Constellation that was going to bring down the Agency, it was the Agency itself and the Agency could still bring itself down. I might even reverse that and say that Constellation and the hard work of the contractors had the opportunity to make the Agency shine again.

I also strongly protest the 2011 budget proposal because it leaves that same NASA workforce in place to attempt to somehow spur commercial markets. Based on Constellation experience, they will run that into the ground also.

And, while the NASA civil servants will continue to have jobs (the administrative budget is constant in this budget), contract employees will suffer greatly with this change. So while some at NASA will come to realize that "this isn't all that bad," there are a lot of contractor employees that don't get that chance. So you go on and do your research in your NASA job and we "incompetent idiots" will just look for a way to find a job.

Therefore, if I had to choose between the two, I would pick the program of record because at least the entire workforce was finally beginning to gel and there was progress being made. I really have no confidence that this "unclear" budget proposal will net us anything.

possum, hard to continually counter the disinformation being spread by Cx'ers. I've convinced several hardline Cx'ers on my own forums, or at least got them to see how unwise Cx was for our space program.

These guys have had more than enough time to understand how reality works, so it is unlikely we will ever get through to them. I suggest they listen to Greason on The Space Show (mp3 at link) and then try to make up their mind. Other than that I don't know how to continue to responding to the disinformation.

Look at it this way.. We got some kick ass CGI animation from Cx I wonder how much that cost? I saw no completed no hardware . I don't count what essentially was a STS srb with a dummy plywood mockup on top. Wonder how much that farce cost the taxpayers? It felt like such a " look we are doing something " stunt. Any Ideas what they are going to do with the new towers(partially)the erected already? wonder how much that cost the tax payer? ALL WASTED MONEY NOW.. It's sad :(

If this is about 'establishing partnerships' then we're doomed, because both Soyuz and Ariane already dominate the international market (and soon the Chinese will join in).

If Elon Musk believes he can get others to also scrap their HSF and, instead, give him a check he's in for a surprise.

No wonder the Russians are drooling over the new 'Space Plan' ... CHA-CHING!

@moonman

'Reverting back to an Apollo like approach was not a move forward in any way, shape or form.'

So why is it that every other real (as opposed to vapour-ware) project targeted to orbital, both commercial (in the US) and government (elsewhere), 'looks like Apollo' (multi-stage chemical rockets)?

All this arguing about Constellation vs other stuff is all a waste of breath. The US is not going to have any HSF for a long time to come (if ever).

Congratulations, ankle-biters.

I guess America has to grow up a bit in certain respects.
How can US ask to have allies in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and not build with the same allies an international space infrastructure?
The world already depends on US technology, shall we talk about GPS, WIndows and Internet, for instance? But foreign countries are stuck to silly and paranoid ITAR rules applied to civilian and scientific missions.
To some extent there is more new technology in the 787 than in any current space program: and the 787 is also built abroad. And this while a lot of American citizen fly regularly on European and Brazilian airliners.
Grow up, it is time to work together with international partners on an even basis. Europe is ready for any kind of mission.
On the other hand I doubt that a dedicated opening to the Muslim world for what regard space will produce any positive effect in reducing the current state of tension we live in.

The animations are not cheap. But they looked really good.

The Ares 1X mock up test cost in total just under $500 million ($1/2 billion).

I wonder how they could spend that much on that one test, given that an entire Shuttle launch is about the same marginal cost.

Space Shuttle, Buran, Hermes, Sanger, Klipper, X-38, X-37, X-40, X-41....., not to mention all the failed US attempts.

Everyone has been trying to repeat the success of Shuttle, but on a more efficient, less costly footing.

The Russians got their initial try functioning, and it did not use SRBs. X-37 will fly into orbit shortly.

The holy grail is a reasonably low cost earth the LEO 'shuttle'.

I agree with you completely. NASA is too incompetent to implement CxP, especially senior management. The worst legacy of Shuttle was to destroy NASA design know-how through atrophy from 30 years of operations. I can count on my fingers and toes the number of competent managers who know design at KSC. Without that leadership experience, the younger folks can not learn. I think that the civil service workforce ought to be reduced dramatically, probably 75%. All we need is some competent engineers to manage the contractors. Or that 75% could lead research for the future, but need to stay out of the launch business. I believe this is what the new plan is all about. The commercial approach will ultimately create more jobs for the contractors in the long run for launch services, but the interim will be tough. It was going to be that way with CxP anyway after Shuttle because operations was 10 years away and possibly would never have happened. This plan is better, not worse, for contractors because CxP was could not afford to hire all the people from Shuttle, at least the 7,000+ at KSC.

I agree with you completely. Its probably as bad or even worse at other centers.

Jobs were and still are routinely filled by people without the requisite knowledge or experience. They don't even look at the job descriptions to see if people are qualified. I am really surprised that the IG has not come down on the management.

One real problem to do as you suggest, though, is that in order to eliminate civil servants you go basically by rank and date of rank. If you eliminate any significant fraction of the civil service workforce, you wind up with all high ranking inexperienced incompetents staying to [continue to] manage the contracts and you eliminate all of the technical experience.

This is probably a good time to remember how & why NASA (originally N.A.C.A.) was created:

http://www.planetfreebook.com/Classic_collection/classic_books_author_ABC_PDF_edited_filenames/Bilstein.%20Roger%20E!Orders%20of%20Magnitude%20-A%20History%20of%20the%20NACA%20.pdf