Bolden Stands His Ground

Strawman alert!

"US commercial spaceflight is untried or untested."

Commercial *human* spaceflight actually.

It's sad seeing someone like Bolden desperately trying to defend the Obama/Garver disaster.
They've done nothing but lose ground since day one of introduction.

It has very few champions outside of the Obama club.

"It has very few champions outside of the Obama club."

There you go trolling again. One-note Cessna.

There are many people who see merit to the Obama proposal, and you've already read some of their comments here. It has both opposition and support, contradicting your dogged assertions. Labeling it the "Obama/Garver" plan is also a strawman argument, and it's pure speculation, with no factual basis. The plan's demise is not assured, as you confidently declare.

I've no doubt that there are smart people in 'commercial industry' that would know how to design, build, test and fly a human rated launch vehicle.

Indeed, as Bolden notes, history has enough evidence to make this case for the 'smarts' of the people working in commercial enterprise.

What history also shows us that the paradigm of 'free market commercial space', has not developed with their own capital, with their own leadership any man rated launch vehicle... and few non man rated vehicles.

Once the government tax payer dollars are involved, the distinction that Bolden is making is bankrupt. Indeed, was the Atlas V developed inside the commercial free market enterprise? Or was it government led with government tax dollars?

People are not buying Gen Boldens attempt at blurring the distinction between government led, government dollars, with commercial industry technical expertise involved, and a purely commercial paradigm as I distinguish.

Perhaps President Obama will make the case better when he visits Florida in April.

Bolden's words are well worth listening to. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that this shift to commercial support for LEO activities won't be successful. There certainly is no objective reason for declaring US manned space efforts dead. Sure it's dramatic to make shrill statements about the end of the US manned space effort, but it does nothing but decrease the signal to noise ratio of the discussion. A move toward more objectivity and critical thought would be a welcome change.

"What history also shows us that the paradigm of 'free market commercial space', has not developed with their own capital, with their own leadership any man rated launch vehicle... and few non man rated vehicles."

Makes me think , here we are nearly 10 years downstream of the great film 2001: A Space Odyssey,
who's technological milieu makes the present look like an anachronism!
So it goes.

Bolden: "Some have argued that the Constellation program was the symbol of American leadership in space. I think they have been misled. An unsustainable program, as described in the Augustine Committee Report, with no funding planned to support the ISS beyond 2015 and no definitive, funded plans for a heavy lift launch vehicle necessary for exploration beyond low Earth orbit can hardly be considered a symbol of American leadership in space."

Very well put. Enough of this "design bureau", 20th century, Apollo on Viagra exploration program. Its the 21st century and certainly time for an injection of "capitalism" into our space program.

This change to the space policy has been a long time coming. But I'm glad it finally got here.

I believe we have a president that had only a general interest in the space program when he had the problems associated with it dumped into his lap. So he set up a panel of experienced people and had them give him recommendations. And now he's acting on those recommendations as well as he feels he can. I think he did the right thing.

The Ares 1 turned out to be a dog of a program. I'm sorry but it just is. It needed to go. If everything had gone right with its development it might have had a chance but that didn't happen. May all those who worked on Ares 1 go on to greater and more wonderful things but may Ares 1 rest in peace.

Now we have a chance to develop the assets that are required for real infrastructure in space and exploring the solar system. A real space program instead of trying to repeat our fathers' accomplishments.

We've known Ares 1 probably wasn't going to make the grade for probably a couple of years or more. Was anyone really surprised by this?

Well said, EarthShine. The "new" commercial distinctions are bogus.

I'm sure that US companies could design and build a human spacecraft. The problem is how long it would take and how much it would cost.

There are many examples of high tech projects that start out with bold promises but then get bogged down in actually making something and getting it to work. And the further into the project you are and when problems occur and schedules slip, you are forced to pay more money to the company because to start over would take even longer to complete the project.

The recent proposed cancellation and lack of plans on any replacement show the administration's inexperience with complicated hi-tech projects.

I agree that there are commercial launch companies quite capable of designing, building and launching manned spacecraft. The obvious question then becomes, why are we not using them instead of SpaceX and, to a lesser extent, Orbital Sciences? SpaceX in particular has no track record with manned flight, and their unmanned success rate is not stellar. Yet we are dumping a couple of billion dollars on these companies through COTS with the idea that they will soon be ferrying astronauts to the ISS.

At least Boeing deals with safely flying people every day through their aircraft. It is not quite the same as spaceflight, but their experience and mindset from those operations is what is needed for commercial ISS astronaut service.

I am not necessarily against commercial space companies providing LEO cargo service including astronauts, but I question why small businesses with minimal experience are the front-runners and the presumptive winners of these contracts.

"Labeling it the "Obama/Garver" plan is also a strawman argument, and it's pure speculation, with no factual basis."

If this was really Bolden's plan,the one he submitted to OSTP and OMB then why aren't there any details about the follow on program? Surely a Marine General would already have a detailed follow plan for exploration before he proposed killing the existing plan. Surely 6 months as Administrator is enough time to come up with that plan. The fact that in the days and weeks after the budget roll out he and the center directors appeared to be completely surprised by this and unable to explain what the plan was beyond generalities tells me this wasn't his plan and if it isn't his who else's plan could it be but Obama's

"There certainly is no objective reason for declaring US manned space efforts dead."

That's true if you think being stuck in low earth orbit permanently while other nations go to the moon and beyond is an acceptable manned space program. Until a see a real plan with milestones and due dates to go beyond LEO then the current proposal to go some time in the future when we have game changing technology is just propaganda to placate space enthusiasts until they can quitely kill the R&D programs a few years down the road when the technology doesn't show progress. I have seen this playbook before.

I just wish Bolden would be honest and come out and say NASA is getting out of the spaceflight buisness. NASA will finish operating ISS and then will revert back to being a NACA type R&D organization and will leave all vehicle design and operations to the commercial sector including deciding where and when to send humans in space. That's what they are really proposing but they don't want to be seen as abandoning manned space flight given it's popularity with the public so they hold out this fiction of someday going to MARS or some other unknown destination.

"I question why small businesses with minimal experience are the front-runners and the presumptive winners of these contracts."

It's the risk vs. utility (perceived reward) equation. Small business are trying to make it big and that's worth a gamble. Big business is big already. Their primary concern is to stay that way, and therefore will not take unnecessary risks with their own money. A pity, but you can't fight it.

The risk arises because there is little actual business to be done in space, because there is no one living there. All astronauts to date are tourists - the Apollo astronauts took bottled air and packed lunches.

Don't forget that, although commercial air transport came rapidly after the invention of the aeroplanes, aeroplanes land where we can live and breath.

Musk and Bigelow are betting that there will be enough Earth-paid work to keep them going until this changes.

But it will only really change when we have closed-cycle life systems, ISRU and ISFR. IMO this is why the new plan is so very important. Never mind the damned rocket - it will get built when it is needed.

> Strawman alert!
> "US commercial spaceflight is untried or untested."
> Commercial *human* spaceflight actually.

You'd have a point if he was comparing commercial companies to the shuttle. But he's not.

He's comparing commercial companies to ATK and Lockheed Martin, the companies which make the Ares 1 rocket and capsule. And compared to ULA and Boeing, they are all similarly unqualified.

David44149 said: "I agree that there are commercial launch companies quite capable of designing, building and launching manned spacecraft. The obvious question then becomes, why are we not using them instead of SpaceX and, to a lesser extent, Orbital Sciences?"

Very good question David. I would be happy to accept the President's budget plan if we would replace NASA bureaucracy with private industry companies which have proven track records building launch vehicles and manned aircraft, both military and civil.

Relying on these start-ups with little experience and a very shallow depth of engineering talent is taking a huge gamble on the future.

Because everyone's decided that we don't have to re-do Apollo and instead should re-do Vostok, Soyuze, Mercury, Gemini, and the shuttle program in learning how to orbit men and build space stations.

Heavens forbid we model our primary exploration program after the most successful and ambitious program of ages past.

Lockheed, ATK, Boeing and all now have to scale back their offerings so they can compete with smaller Rocket vendors. All with the handicap of knowing how much it costs to make things work right the first time, every time.

I believe that commercial space companies, like SpaceX for example, are the front-runners right now because they are the ones that stepped forward and started building equipment and testing it out. They also articulated their goals so those goals were easily understood. And those goals seem to address what many people feel are serious flaws in the program.

I suspect that once the larger, more established companies are sure the old way of doing things is really going away many of them will bring their expertise and experience to bear in the new environment. I don't think that will happen as long as there is some doubt that the old way will prevail (god forbid) or a compromise will be reached where the old way mostly prevails.

Change, especially when your job is affected is hard. The Vision of Space Exploration is inspiring. But it is time to face the facts:
- The previous administration canceled the shuttle
- The previous administration planned to cancel ISS in 2015
- Constellation was over sold an proven to be unsustainable
- With Ares I/Orion slipping from 2012 to 2017 Constellation was forcing massive KSC job cuts
- Under Constellation American crew access to space this decade was questionable, lunar missions a fantasy and Mars was completely discarded

After 5 years and 9 billion dollars I'm glad that the new administration is finally forcing the country to wake up to reality. The only sad part is that congress forced another year and $3B to be flushed down the Constellation toilet.

The proposed changes bring back hope that America can sustain our human presence in LEO, that America can lead the world to realize the Vision.

Under Constellation American crew access to space this decade was questionable, lunar missions a fantasy and Mars was completely discarded

And under the "new direction," American crew access to space this decade is still questionable, lunar missions are completely discarded and Mars is a complete fantasy.

Yes, change is inspiring indeed.

But Paul, I don't think we can say lunar missions are completely discarded. Seems probable we'll still have a rich lunar robotic program, simply because ISRU tests are back in this budget. I think teleoperation will be big.

The lunar program pretty much went on hold 2 years ago, and was killed a year ago, once Altair, etc, went away. This budget gives the chance of putting it back on some form of financial footing. Even if funding had come back, Augustine demonstrated we probably were looking at late 2030's, potentially early 2040's, before more lunar surface missions. This budget puts human missions back in the mid-20's.

Now, a big chunk of my pay cheque comes from lunar human systems work, and we're in a time of worry, but I see this letting a lot of us in human exploration systems work get to do some serious exploration a lot sooner, and sustainably.

Crew access to space in this decade was going to be in large measure dependent on commercial or foreign providers, regardless.

Under Constellation, we would have had no capability for lunar or planetary landings for 25 years or longer. So I think the real issue was landing and surface operations.

Under the new architecture, the idea is to take what we have today and use it to maximum extent, and evolve from today's systems: commercial, Shuttle, ISS, and their subsystems, to more capable systems that can go further, including very possibly missions to the moon, L-points, asteroids, and planets.

That is where it differs from Constellation.

Constellation threw everything away in favor of totally new boosters, vehicles, and capabilities.

Even on this forum there are now few who support this new space policy.
It is dead in the water.

You, too, akear. Cheerleading for something that isn't really happening. Go back and read the rest of the posts here. You'll find there's a balance of support and opposition; and the supporters are more level-headed than the opponents.

Earthshine, the important difference between CxP (led by NASA, built by industry) and fully commercial HSF (e.g. SpaceX as we hope it'll turn out) is that the latter is engineered for a low enough operational cost that private customers probably can be found. By contrast, there is no way you could spin off Ares I into a space tourism business. With a viable toehold in space tourism, commercial HSF would have a chance of getting frequent enough flights to transition into the "airline" business regime, with all the benefits that can bring.

Can you say TRAITOR?? Stabbing in the back his 'own' astronaut corps...and the nation!!

Jeez, that's a pretty extreme point of view. I can take the opposite assumptions:
* What about all the future astronauts that he's helping?
* What about the languishing commercial HSF industry that he's now fostering?
* What about the foundering US exploration program that he's just put a brick foundation under?

Take your medication and call me in the morning.

Papa. I hope you are right about Space X developing a system that is cheaper to operate than a NASA led one.

And, consider that OSC, in partnership with Darpa developed the Pegasus Rocket way back in the 1990's. As NASA began using it, and paying for it, and insisting on modifying it, the price went up and through the roof.

The early NASA missions that used that rocket paid something like $13M. After an early failure and a NASA led mishap board, changes were made ( you know how this story ends). Today, Pegasus is what $35M?

Space X can tell you as well that the cost to NASA of one of their Falcon 1's is more than twice what a non NASA (and probably non DoD) customer pays. This I learned from a VP of Space X who is the government liaison; the reason is all the requirements NASA puts on Space X to fly a NASA mission.

So, while Space X is on the path now to efficiency in operations and low recurring cost impact, lets see what happens with the NASA Astronaut Office starts to look over the hardware, after a problem occurs and a NASA mishap board makes recommendations for changes, after all the various NASA interests start expressing concerns (legitimate from their POV) etc. ..and we'll see where this story ends.

"Relying on these start-ups with little experience and a very shallow depth of engineering talent is taking a huge gamble on the future"

Is it me, or does it seem like there are a group of semi-professional trolls planting mountains of FUD at strategic points around the internet?

As for the quoted text above, where do people think SpaceX is getting the engineering talent from? The answer is that SpaceX is hiring the best and the brightest away from the big aerospace companies and NASA itself. I know because I was toiling away at NASA when I got that life changing call from a SpaceX recruiter. I didn't have to think too hard before jumping ship, and I certainly haven't looked back.

-Antoine

Excellent speech!

Hiring smart people does not make you experienced or proficient at human spaceflight. You also have the management, policies, procedures and quality assurance at the company to make high rel products and catch mistakes as much as possible.

This is derived from years of experience building these craft. That is one reason why a Boeing or LM would have the best chance at delivering on their promises while SpaceX would have a worse chance.

They ARE ALREADY designing and building manned spacecraft, and have done so since before Sputnik. Did you not follow the Orion bidding process, where nearly 15 companies offered proposals, and all were rejected except those that slavishly followed NASA in-house design. This tradition goes way back to Apollo.

"They ARE ALREADY designing and building manned spacecraft, and have done so since before Sputnik."

Huh? SpaceX was only founded in 2002 so your statement is not correct.

If you check the message I was replying to, Antoine Lavoisier was talking about SpaceX and had said "where do people think SpaceX is getting the engineering talent from".