More Reaction

Gosh. Looks like all these people support President Obama's plan. Must be good then.

I am still trying to figure out why we will launch a spacecraft that can bring people back to earth without sending people up with it. Joe six-pack wants to know. Especially since it costs $50,000,000 + per person to ride with the Russians. BTW sending just two U.S. astronauts up in a year, will erase the budget cuts the president lauded in his budget. I'm just sayin'.

Simple, current American launch vehicles are cargo only. The Shuttle is finishing, in an emergency the Russian spacecraft would have failed and the Falcon 9 is several years away.

ummm..ever had a man rated ICBM???? Why can't we man rate theses eelv's? sounds like it'd be worth the cash...even if it costs a few billion...I mean, we are just printing and spending like it going out of style. Besides we are now subject to the whims of the russians...

All of us are missing the most important fact of the President's new space plan: making rendezvous with an Earth-crossing asteroid and figuring out ways to deflect those who threaten Earth in the future will constitute the most technologically challenging space mission ever attempted-and as of right now we have no idea how to do it. Once a manned spacecraft leaves the protection of the Earth's magnetosphere and exposes its crew to the solar wind, right now they'd be fried as a breakfast egg. The trip likely would take four or five months in transit-let's hope nothing breaks -like it does, regularly on the ISS-because sending a repair man is out of the question. Upper stages to propel the deep space ship? That doesn't exist either. And Obama wants NASA to make this first foray out into the solar system in 15 years?
We need to start working on this challenging assignment NOW my friends.

Frank, I love your optimism.

It is always safe to play any game where the 'win' of the game is allowed to come 'someday'. Hard dates by Obama mean nothing. Folks will plan sand charts around those dates and see they don't have enough money because they don't fully understand all the problems needed to be solved.

Notwithstanding Apollo, the dysfunctional WH/OMB/Congress/NASA relationship has resulted in all HSF 'games' being over budget, behind schedule, and less than promised.

President Obama's new 'game' is going to swallowed up by this dynamic. The impact is probably going to be delay delay delay delay. The reasons will vary as the dynamics of the WH/OMB/NASA/Congress are as shaky and unpredictable as ball bearings on ice.

Enjoy seeing Americans fly to the ISS on Soyuz Rockets, and then later, some delay beyond present day expectations, a Falcon Dragon, because when the ISS goes into the drink, or is bought from us by the Chinese to reduce our debt to them, it will be a long time before we see Americans, or humans of any nationality, venture BEO.

As you note in previous postings, the challenges are huge and the full breadth and scope of them is still hidden from us. We don't fully know what we don't know about the challenges, or how to solve them.

This is a recipe for politically acceptable delays and then folks will be saying: 'well, someday' we'll get BEO, we're just not sure when.'

Earthshine, what are the alternatives? if Congress winds up supporting this plan, it will be increasingly unlikely that it will be cut substantially later, for it will have emerged after what passes for a fairly intense national debate about space. In the hours after the space conference in Florida ended, Buzz Aldrin was on every broadcast and radio medium, from CBS News to Larry King, to the Howard Stern show.(full disclosure: I am Buzz's ghostwriter and communications advisor) In every case, moderators from Katie Couric to Stern to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell asked "what's in it for me?" After pulling out his new model of Phobos (I wonder if he has Opopis in his pocket) the old buzzard said "the lives of your kids and grandkids". Even Bob Schiefer stopped in his tracks. Of all the rationales for space exploration, we may have finally found the one that will resonate with the American people and their leaders. Who wants to cut back or kill a program that might save every living thing on Earth?

I know we've been there and done that, but I feel like if you can go to the moon you can go anywhere. I also believe that we need to learn how to live in a hostile space environment. Why not try to do it somewhere "close by"? I dunno, maybe have a chance to have a rescue in a timely manner, (the moon is only 3 or 4 days away)if something should go wrong, as it most likely will given a quick look back in history (1967,1986,& 2003). Once we get some recent, real-time experience living like that, we can get on the road to an asteroid, and then to Mars. I think that the president's view of been there done that is woefully short sighted. We had only 6 moon landings, all were on the near side at the mid equatorial regions. Their exploration was only within a small radius of their landing site. and the total time spent on the surface moonwalking was just less than 300 hours...or about 12 1/2 days. We barely got our legs underneath us when it comes to exploring the moon. What is so wrong with man rating an existing EELV? no one will answer that question, I think its a HUGE waste of $$$$$$$ to send a spacecraft that is capable of keeping a person safe in space and get them back to the earth safetly, should be able to deliver that same person up to space...Am I missing something? Why does this not make sense to me? Why is no one else asking these questions?

I agree with that concern, so again I ask why not keep building the Ares V?

I think we can all agree that heavy lift is a good thing, and that it is easier to build complex sub systems on a factory floor, than it is in orbit. How much more quickly could we have built the ISS or Buzz's Deep Space Transport System if we hadn't walked away from our ability to build a Saturn V class vehicle? We are already far along in development of many of the key components for Ares V. Why does OSTP seem intent on shoving this off into some vague future? Frank, this subject has been studied to death, and multiple times. Have you ever noticed that of late we tend to upgrade systems to barely meet our expected needs. Which is almost always underestimated. My God, 170mT to LEO! That's new or replacement modules for the ISS, a Hubble II telescope, preassembled on orbit fuel depots, large volume fuel delivery, or large complete components for a deep space vehicle. And it won't take 15 years to assemble on orbit. More than anyting else it gives the USA capacity and margin for unexpected and unthought of requirements. That's the long pole in the tent for BEO exploration. As an MD I understand that there are other biologic and technical requirements that need to be researched. But if we design, build and test that heavy lift system; and if we are smart enough to maintain the capability to produce it; then everything else can flow from that.

From listening to the discussions of the engineers here it sounds like it will take almost a decade to complete from this point. I see no benefit to waiting 5 years to decide on the design of an HLV. Will we then wait another 5 years to start work? And then how long before we complete and are ready to fly? Such a plan is fraught with difficulties. I agree with others on this blog that say we need to start and complete something. And Ares V or something very much like it is what will be required.

It is my belief that we have 3/Saturn V boosters laying on their sides as gate guards not primarily because of the accepted reason; budgetary constraints. I think the hardware wasn't utilized because unlike Americans in general, and space exploration advocates in specific, many people in the political class are very risk averse. Almost everything is the result of a political calculation, and not always what is in the long term intrest of the nation. I believe the discussion went something like this, "we've already landed 12 men on the moon. That's 6 American flags...been there done that. We had a close call with Apollo 13. I know we've already got the hardware built, and all that is left is operational costs for the missions, but why take the chance? The egg heads will just have to make do with the rocks they've got." I think this was very much part of the calculation made back in the early 70s. I also think it "might be part" of the calculation being made now, and is the reason for shoving the whole project out as far as possible. To paraphrase a line from the movie "Field of Dreams". "If you build it, you will have to go."

In my upcoming book, the attitudes of the members of the space committees in Congress from 1969 to 1972 show clearly a declining interest in moon missions. Safety was one factor, but the overriding factor was the cost and a general lack of interest in continuing the effort. At the same time, the lure of a logistics manned vehicle that promised to lower the cost and increase access to space was on the rise. The public wanted smaller space budgets and a Shuttle-type vehicle seemed perfect for the times. Apollo had outlived its primary rationale-beating the Soviets in a public humiliation. Poll after poll in 1969 showed people just didn't see a benefit to more lunar missions-a space truck that could haul experiments and average people did (that was the image, not the reality, of the Shuttle). Contrary to popular views today, manned moon flights were always less than popular with the public. Public support only rose past 50 percent once during that time, and the biggest increase for Apollo took place between 1995 and 1999, when Tom Hank's films restored some of the drama that had faded. Apollo was most popular 20 years after it had ended....while the Shuttle (not the station) remains popular year after year, accident or not. that's the simple truth. And manned missions to Mars don't fare that much better either..

"Why can't we man rate theses eelv's?"

That's a very good question. It sounds like Obama's trying to throw a bone to the current Orion workers, but it doesn't answer the question of why would give up HSF capability for up to 10 years?

They say that these commercial companies could be sending people to space in 3 years, but there's no evidence to support such a claim.

Seems like the obvious choice is to continue Orion on a working vehicle like the Delta 4 as a backup to the commercial spacecraft that may or may not appear.

We already gave up HSF capability for 10 years with Constellation because Ares I would not be operational before 2020. With commercial, we will surely beat that timeline. EELV's can be man-rated and it should be easier now that we relaxed our man-rating requirements because of Constellation (we went from two failure tolerant to single failure tolerant in May 2008). The problem with going back to the Moon first is that we would not be able to do anything else for the rest of this century. It was going to take us until 2040 to get back to the Moon with Constellation and we would not have been able to sustain the operational costs, much less build any kind of outpost there. Quite frankly, if we don't get the cost of getting to space down by an order of magnitude, spaceflight will become a thing of the past. It is ridiculous that it should take hundreds of billions of dollars to get to the Moon, but that is the reality.