A Mission to Nowhere

These quotes don't shock me really,its the kind of go for it , can do attitude test pilots have and had back then, that's the kind of attitude that got guys these got to the moon. Although, its negative tone is a bit unfortunate.

Yeah but what do any of those guys know? LOL

Maybe a lecture from Obama is all they need to be convinced of what a bold new exciting direction it is.

"Yeah but what do any of those guys know? LOL"

They know what we all know: if you throw enough money at something, you can probably find a way of doing it. The problem is, the US hasn't been willing to do that since the late-1960's and I see no signs that anything has changed. So, in the absence of an effectively infinite budget, what can you do? Not sure that these Apollo-era astronauts can share much of value on that.

Cernan just told the truth! There is no mission!

And with no mission, a $19 billion dollar a year NASA budget to build nothing and to go no place becomes politically unsustainable.

Marcel F. Williams

"Yeah but what do any of those guys know? LOL"

They know what we all know: if you throw enough money at something, you can probably find a way of doing it. The problem is, the US hasn't been willing to do that since the late-1960's and I see no signs that anything has changed. So, in the absence of an effectively infinite budget, what can you do? Not sure that these Apollo-era astronauts can share much of value on that.

ROFL!)

hey Cessna - in the spirit of finding common ground.......although your enthusiasm for CxP is misguided - you're correct that a rah rah speech/lecture won't work at KSC with the Shuttle folks (& FL voters either)

listen up Mr. Rahm:
More talk without action and results will not get FL votes (e.g. the no Shuttle workforce job losses campaign promise).

"Yeah but what do any of those guys know?"
Ans:: The old way of doing things: big budgets and a cold war mentality.
Times change, alas some people's mindsets don't! The Flexible Path calls for flexible thinking too. A rigid mindset will not suffice in a (rapidly) changing world!

Mind you Cernan is right. Deep space is a whole lotta Nowhere! I just hope that we become as proficient at sailing these "new seas" as we have the old ones. Whilst the Earth may be seven tenths ocean, our solar system is... warning BOTE calculation:
Volume of 'Land' (And I'm including the Sun as uninhabitable desert!)
Sun + planets = 14124543910000000 km^3
Volume of solar system, say: termination shock at 13314210491.5 km. Average of 94 AU (Voyager 1) and 84 AU (Voyager 2)=
9886324591921402140698341355480 km^3
Ratio:: Somewhere : Nowhere 1:699939386001838.13940214805530524
say 1 to 7x10^14 in case the Oort is bigger than we thought! (Anyone care to check the maths?)
I wonder if Neil et al have heard of Dyson Bubbles?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#Dyson_bubble

So, apparantly astronauts whose experience was during the cold war are easily dismissed as "old thinking"? LOL

Come on guys. That's nonsense. If one of theses guys was singing Obama/Garver plan praises it would be oh how enlightened he is I suppose? LOL

And yes, we do not fund NASA properly, it does not mean the answer is.... to keep NOT funding NASA properly! The answer is also not to take their moneys and give it to the four unproven nascent HSF commercial winds and cross our fingers and click our heels together.

Not a cold war astronaut.........

Dean of the College of Aeronautics at Florida Tech and a former NASA astronaut Winston Scott

http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20100307/NEWS0204/3070321/1004/OPINION

"Question: President Barack Obama's plan for NASA represents a major shift in how NASA operates. Is that a shift in the right direction?

ANSWER:
It is my belief that the shift proposed by the current administration is in the wrong direction. It is a giant step backwards for the United States. We, the U.S., could easily lose our lead in space exploration and fall behind Russia, China and other countries.

QUESTION:
Can commercial companies provide astronauts with a safe ride? What will they have to do to prove their safety?
ANSWER:
I support the desire to have commercial companies play a larger role in space exploration. But I believe commercial companies are a long ways from being able to provide a ride, let alone a safe ride, for humans to orbit. These companies should have to meet, at minimum, current standards for safety."

I am not for Consetllation as is, I am for Constellation 2.0, for lack of a better term, and my flexible path is whatever resolves the problems and gets Orion and American astronauts back to the moon to stay in short order. In other words, I am not fighting for Ares I. I am fighting for the VSE at NASA and Constellation is the container of that for now. I will be happy to cede ground from Constellation 1.0 for something better, not worse like the Obama/Garver disaster.

Mend it don't end it. Very simple. It may mean big changes like DIRECT or god knows what. But it sure ain't cancel it and take the moneys elswhere.

Wrong ... flexible path means having an architecture than can take you to different places, and the destination, scope, and number of missions can then change according to budgets. The Obama Space Plan essentially boils down to $19B/yr going into a scaterring of generic R&D, Mission to Planet Earth II, and a return to the days of "better, faster, cheaper" but this time with humans on-board. And, of course, no wonder the Russians are 'ecstatic' ... CHA CHING!

This is so absurd it's unlikely to survive beyond Jan. 2013.

"Under the president's proposed budget, it is a mission to nowhere." - Gene Cernan

Would that be the same proposed NASA budget in which the White House requested an *increase*? During the Great Recession?

These three astronauts should be lamenting that their beloved agency completely dropped the ballwith the Vision for Space Exploration by indulging in a fantasy exploration architecture that wouldn't have fit *any* budget likely to come out of the White House and Congress.

NASA could have done it right this decade, instead of repeating the mistakes of the Space Exploration Initiative.

I'm exceedingly glad to see Neil is finally getting on board. In a recent Flightglobal interview he accurately pointed out that the reason we haven't gone back to the moon is the lack of competition. Come on you Russians and Chinese, we NEED you! Shape up and scare the living daylights out of us...AGAIN!

How can NASA and Constellation be blamed when proper budgets for success were not provided for the tasks given?

There is a very big problem with just accepting the most critical problem. Proper funding.
And it really is chump change in the big picture.

The article nails it...

"Nasa's spending, at around $19bn a year, accounts for 0.5 per cent of the total federal budget - down from almost 5 per cent at the peak of the Apollo programme. In 1966 the government spent more on Nasa than on health and human services; this year the health and services budget will be almost 50 times greater than Nasa's. While not even the wildest enthusiast advocates a return to expenditure on the Apollo scale, Mr Pulham argues that the US should be willing to devote 1 per cent of the budget to Nasa, as it did in the early 1990s.

That would permit the agency to resume development of Constellation, while encouraging innovative private companies to enter the field."

Great quote, and well said.

Another thing, some may wish to disregard the opinions of those three gentlemen with "rigid mindsets" but when it counted most they had more than hot air to offer up for our country's exploration of space. They've been around a long time, and seen much, so if they suspect that there is someting rotten in Denmark, we would do well to heed them.

How can NASA and Constellation be blamed when proper budgets for success were not provided for the tasks given?

I take a backseat to no-one in my admiration of these guys as astronauts. But their understanding of politics and history is not special, and neither is yours.

Where were they in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s when all the money was going toward Shuttle and Station, and essentially none for development of workable next-gen launch vehicles for crew and cargo?

Where were these guys in 2004-6 when the decision was made to scrap STS flights after 2010, abandon ISS in 2015, and to develop Apollo on Steroids as our bold shining vision? Could anyone have predicted that wouldn't meet both the budget and the schedule (no gap)? Uh... yeah, actually. Yeah.

Under GW Bush's leadership, in the 4 years after the VSE, he boldly advanced the notion that we should double our spending on science and technology -- except NASA. (Remember the American Competitiveness Initiative?) Time after time, he sent in budgets with big increases for NIH, NSF, NOAA -- and barely cost of living for NASA. He laid on a new mandate for HSF to the Moon and Mars, and then gave NASA an apple, a PBJ sandwich, and a pat on the back.

In light of this, did Griffin write a budget for reaching the Moon in 2020 on $18-20B/year, and demand a design for that budget? No, he chose something glorious, that might have been possible with $25-30B/year.

CxP was a brittle program based on an oversized behemoth concept, from the moment Griffin got his hands on it. You can't divorce the money and schedule problems from the megalomania that came out of those first ESAS studies. And you can't blame Congress for not funding a luxury Hummer when the budget going in was for a Chevy Blazer.

So this year, when we're still digging out from the 2008 bank meltdown but Republicans are starting to grouse about the deficit -- as though that was a mild head cold back in Sept 2008 -- now you want Obama to pretend this is 1998, and we're rolling in surplus? He's proposing a couple of Corollas, and you're complaining it's not a Hummer AND a boat. Why does the US owe you this?

Papa-I agree with you, totally. NASA has been resting on its moon landing and Shuttle development laurels of 45 and 35 years ago. Since that time its become a ponderous, inefficient bureaucracy.

If the goal is simply a jobs program in which nothing new is developed, then we ought to operate the way in which NASA has been operating. In this case the taxpayers are paying enough to keep people working. There is no need for expanding NASA's budget.

If NASA wants to once again show the nation it can produce value, then maybe it would be worth increasing NASA's budget. Constellation was the epitomy of a too large, too expensive, too slow multi-generational system; it was more like ISS on steroids. ISS has potential value now that its finished, but it took far too long and was far too expensive to develop and still is too expensive to operate.

NASA became an entitlement program over the last couple of decades.

NASA needs to start showing some genuine progress. I think that is the message Mr.Obama is trying to deliver.

"The Obama Space Plan essentially boils down to $19B/yr going into a scaterring of generic R&D"
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/02/space-policy-no.html#comment-29347
...says it far better than I ever can. How NASA has got away with NOT doing such R&D is a mystery to me.
Rigid thinking perhaps?

"Mission to Planet Earth II" and why not? It might just disprove all that AGW hype. Or it might not. Either way, surely it's good to know. And we might just find out a little more about ourselves in the process!

"and a return to the days of "better, faster, cheaper" but this time with humans on-board"
Is this a dig at Commercial? I think you will find it's Better and Cheaper. After all "The Gap" is not Elon's fault! He'll get there in his own time. As will Orbital and ULA and Virgin Galactic for that matter!

"And, of course, no wonder the Russians are 'ecstatic' ... CHA CHING!"
and
"Come on you Russians and Chinese, we NEED you! Shape up and scare the living daylights out of us...AGAIN! "
(Krispace March 18, 2010 1:41 PM)
Cold war thinking SIGH! And anyway the new boogyman to scare you into funding your enormous MIC is "muslin extremist terrists" or something like that. Just as believable as the Commies of McCarthy...
On a more positive note. TING!
moonman replied to comment from Papa (March 19, 2010 8:07 AM)
"NASA has been resting on its moon landing and Shuttle development laurels of 45 and 35 years ago. Since that time its become a ponderous, inefficient bureaucracy."
Fanned as they say at HuffPo! Although one would be tempted to strike NASA and insert America!

The Times They Are A-Changin'

http://mog.com/music/Bob_Dylan/The_Times_They_Are_A-Changin%27/The_Times_They_Are_A-Changin%27

1964. Prophetic or what!