Details of Presidential Space Flyby Continue to Emerge

WHERES. MY. MOON.

Wow, two hours on the ground. What kind of support is that? I can just see it. He steps off Air Force One; he starts to tour the major facilities; somewhere along the way he puts on a shuttle bunny suit, with reporters cameras clicking away; and then at 3pm he gives his "rah rah rag, go team go" speach. He gets on the plane at 3:30pm and off he goes at 3:45.

Ho hum

He has dinner plans that night. A $30,000 a couple Democratic National committee fundraiser at Gloria Estefan's house in Miami Beach.

So, when everyone said he is coming to KSC because he cares about space doesn't appear to be so convincing seeing that KSC just happens to be on his way to Miami.

Now, it looks like visiting KSC was just a "layover" for him to stretch his legs instead of really going out of his way to come here.

Oh this is just too funny. And it is so funny because it is so typical of Obama, and that makes it sad at the same time.

I wonder if all you NASA fanboys who were so convinced of Obama's campaign rhetoric about the space program are now ready to face the music that you have been had by a political operative? Probably not. But it is kind of hard to look at the total amount of time he will spend on this "summit" and come to any conclusion that he honestly and truly gives a rat's behind about NASA, its people, or its contractors, much less America's leadership in space exploration.

This is signature Obama all the way.

Wow. That is much weaker then my low expectations were for him at this "event".

No bunny suit photos. Kerry paid dearly for that mistake, they won't make that one again.

> just happens to be on his way to Miami

Delusional.

Damn - two hours from touchdown to wheels up – to put it delicately, that guy is quicker than a seventeen year old sailor on his first visit to a house of ill repute.

I have a difficult time keeping up with the American Lexicon with its ever-shifting definitions, but in the old days (last week) a “summit” was a high-level meeting with all your key players participating. This sounds like nothing more than a layover for fuel and a photo op.

To all my friends out at KSC – beware of any blue puddles left on the ramp where they parked Air Force 1 – they may be the most significant thing he leaves behind.

He won't bunny up. John Kerry made that mistake.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/01/1559519/star-power-estefans-to-host-obama.html

Just in case anyone thought I was making it up...

Over on NASA Spaceflight it is being reported that it isn't even a "summit" anymore. It is a "Policy Statement". So, basically, Obama is going to land, press some flesh and watch some PowerPoints about commercial spaceflight, eductional outreach to the Third World and space-based environmental monitoring. Then he will deliver a speech about why he is right and then leave.

I forgot to mention in my first note that as the Prez is giving his speech, a wise KSC employee is playing "Memory" and "The Way we Were" over a loud speaker. Hee hee.

To make any progress on the economic development of space our socialist-style government-monopoly aerospace welfare program has to end. This is The End, and The Beginning.

I've said it once and I will say it again:

If it was your long-term plan to end human spaceflight you'd be taking exactly the steps that Obama is taking--kill the existing jobs, delay any direct work on future systems, and promise a bright future with some technological development. Then, when the existing program is shut down and there is nothing concrete, end the ambiguous future plans.

It is clear that Obama doesn't care about space, thinks the resources used for NASA would be better directed elsewhere, and has been given a golden opportunity to kill it due to the gap that developed between shuttle operations ending and a new system coming online. It is was his wing of the Democratic Party has wanted to do since the late 1960s.

How inspirational! A quick stop-off on the way to a fundraiser. I don't think this President really cares all that much about NASA, despite the extra $6 billion over 5 years. He's not about any compromise. Regardless of the funding problems with Constellation, it is the GOAL of going back to the Moon that makes the program worthwhile. We should never have left the Moon. If Congress passes Obama's horrible space plan, it should be compared to Nixon's cancellation of Apollo. Already Obama will be known for his desire to end government owned exploration of space. I'm sure some commercial companies want to explore space on their own, but who will the first customer be? The gov't, not the public. The public market just isn't large enough.

As the Columbia investigation board proclaimed, NASA needed a vision, and that vision has to include a destination and timeline. But now we have to face this prospect of commercial crew launches, only 200 miles up. Commercializing space is a great goal (asteroid mining, space hotels, etc.) but we have to get beyond LEO first. I find it difficult to see how commercial ventures will get funding to take any of us to the Moon. At some point we have to go back to the Moon. If this policy passes, there is no commitment to any destination within any timeframe.

Obama had a campaign ad in which he stated "Where's my moon?". Well, he took it away, just like Nixon. I hope Congress fights this. If anything, the goal of landing Americans on the moon again should be re-vamped or re-architectured, not eliminated. I mean, at the very least, tell us we'll have a crewed asteroid flyby in 2025, or lunar flyby. But just flights to ISS for another 10 years? They just don't want us to leave the gravity well.

I don't care how much time he spends on the ground or how much show they put on. What's important is what emerges.

Of all of policy debates going on, this one is the most far-reaching, since it affects what our space program will look like over the next couple of decades.

Constellation was IMO a plan that lead nowhere - I am glad to see it go. If we get a path to an interplanetary manned program, that's the deal maker. In the long run, it's the only deal maker for me.

I liked the heavy lift vehicle, but it's not an absolute must. Orion-lite, meh, maybe, depends on what SpaceX does.

I did like the compromise idea though, since it got the most amount of people on board, even if it sounded expensive. I'd much rather they spend extra $ on all-of-the-above than waste it on basically anything else...

I guess we'll wait and see.

You know Keith, when I saw that you had changed the title of this article from "summit" to "fly-by" the first thing that popped into my mind was that stunt / photo-op gone wrong last year with Air Force One and the Statue of Liberty.

Damn you, I'll be walking around with a grin on my face all weekend now.

Why should he even bother with this,,,,,isn't fund raising more important than American leadership and jobs?....

This reminds me of the last time a President visited a NASA facility. That was George Bush visiting HQ in 2004 to give his "rousing" VSE inauguration speech. That was also a flyby. He checked up mockups of the MER rovers, went to the auditorium, did his stuff and then bolted. He was there for a little over an hour, max.

Budget numbers and follow-on statements were the telling sign here. The budget stayed flat and didn't support the agenda of record (ESAS). A year or two later, when asked a question about NASA and VSE while on a tour, he stammered around as if he had never heard of it.

So for all you Obama bashers out there, you've just got to realize that the only politicians who "give a rat's behind" about space are those with NASA and space program constituents, which is a very small portion of the overall congress. All the others could care less, and would most likely want NASA's $18B for other things.

No compromise????

How surprising! Look at how far they came to ensure that everybody's input was included on health care! Why, they even had a health care summ....

Never mind.

I hate to admit...but your opinion is not beyond the realm of possibility...

IMHO this situation...if it plays out this way...will lead to a couple of things.

1) NASA folks closer to retirement will say "Hey, I guess I won't be around to participate in anything that comes along that far down the line...so I might as well retire." - That takes care of part of the work force.

2) Younger people are not tempted to work at NASA...certainly not the BETTER ones. That further shrinks the work force.

Thus....you are left with a smaller work force that can't do much and is happy to just have a Govt job.

NASA then truly becomes NA$A in the extreme and is nothing put political pork for various members of Congress. (Ok...more so)

I had hoped that this plan was either 1) a negotiation point to get the program to a place it needs to be 2) a "shaking out" of the bad influences that would allow an INTERESTED administration to reform NASA.

My hope for that fades. And will too much damage will have been done by 2012 to recover???

Sorry...I'm just depressed. For the better young people at NASA (civil servant/contractor) JUST a paycheck is not going to cut it long term. These people are still motivated by a DREAM.

This is better then hoped for. Heck I would leave for Miami myself! within the half hour.
Most federal agencies are doing just fine without the president giving them a pat head. There there NASA it will be OK!

cheers!

"It is clear that Obama doesn't care about space, thinks the resources used for NASA would be better directed elsewhere, and has been given a golden opportunity to kill it due to the gap that developed between shuttle operations ending and a new system coming online. It is was his wing of the Democratic Party has wanted to do since the late 1960s."

I agree with you. It was that wing of the Democratic Party that conspired with Nixon to end any possibility of setting up a base on the Moon by decommissioning our heavy lift capability.

Democrats and Republicans who care about the future of our manned space program and the technological future of our country need to reject this mission to nowhere. And NASA needs to present Congress with an alternative architecture that can replace the space shuttle and get us permanently back to the Moon both faster and cheaper-- which is really not that hard to do, IMO!

Marcel F. Williams

Say what you will, but Obama is spending two hours more at KSC than "W" ever did. He never visited KSC. After setting in motion the cancellation of Shuttle and the layoff of thousands way back in 2004, Bush wouldn't dare have showed his face around here. He knew his decision would be left to the next president to suffer the consequences, like so many of his ill-conceived policies. This is just another mess left by Bush that Obama has to deal with. No wonder his popularity is waning, Americans have the attention span of a two-year-old.

Ergo: ...things will be as already described;take your pink slips and let the Time Servers I/C get on with: "make it look like your doing something, when in truth you're doing nothing at all". Classic Clinton stuff...

> I forgot to mention in my first note that as the Prez is giving his speech, a wise KSC employee is playing "Memory" and "The Way we Were" over a loud speaker. Hee hee.

KSC is the wrong place to picket. The fund raiser is a much better location. The guests can be persuaded that publicly getting caught giving money to a politician on the same day that he betrayed Florida is a bad idea.

I have to say there is an air of unreality about some of these comments.

I am a space cadet from before sputnik, but some of these comments make me want to ask who the "H" do you think you are. Don't you know that the real unemployment rate in this country is 16% or more? That if you throw in underemployment you are looking at one in 5 working aged Americans? Your complaining because 20000 well educated technical people, whose skills are valuable elsewhere are going to have to make some changes they didn't count on? Tell it to the Millions of your fellow Americans who were middle class a few months ago, and who will go to bed tonight hungry.

Give me a break. April 15th. is the day you have the honor of paying your taxes to support this great nation. Be glad somebody is being at least thoughtful about the way those tax dollars are being spent. It isn't like Obama is spending less on space. He is trying rationalize the program given today's realities. He won't get everything he wants and nieter will anyone else.

Get over it.

Blaming the decision makers (plural emphasized) is dodging the responsibility for the outcome. Even the hated Nixon had a competent NASA to rely on after Apollo.

The decision to end STS after completion of the ISS should have been a wake-up call to NASA. The legendary can-do agency was too fat to get down the firepole. Now they are blaming the cook while the town burns down.

Just as the children suffer for the sins of their fathers, the people suffer the corruption of their government.

NASA IS the government.

A NASA guy blaming the government.

Pot, kettle.

"If we get a path to an interplanetary manned program, that's the deal maker. In the long run, it's the only deal maker for me.

I liked the heavy lift vehicle, but it's not an absolute must."

and just how do you expect to build the exploration ships without a way to lift them off the ground.

Technology development cannot happen in isolation. You need to have a destination and a plan for getting there before you can define the technology to develop.

"If we get a path to an interplanetary manned program, that's the deal maker. In the long run, it's the only deal maker for me.

I liked the heavy lift vehicle, but it's not an absolute must."

and just how do you expect to build the exploration ships without a way to lift them off the ground.

Technology development cannot happen in isolation. You need to have a destination and a plan for getting there before you can define the technology to develop.

When Buzz Aldrin was on Jimmy Kimmel's show, after Aldrin was eliminated from "Dancing With The Stars," Kimmel asked Aldrin, "If you go back to the Moon, will you take me with you?" (Or words to that effect.) Aldrin's prompt reply was, "Do you speak Chinese?" Aldrin followed it up quickly by saying that we should give China, India, Japan and whoever else the benefit of our technological lead in sending humans beyond LEO.

I thought the first comment was right on the money, but, of course, Buzz was trying to be politically correct with the followup.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If Obama's course is followed, the United States is about to become the Portugal of the Space Age! :(

I wish we knew whether Obama himself is making these plans, or if his people or the NASA people or the Nelson people are organizing this.

The thing that non-KSC space folks don't seem to get is that human launches with astronauts are a big tourism boon in Florida.

Not as much as during the Apollo era or the 80s for Shuttle, cargo launches don't get anywhere close to the tourism level (& unless somebody like Bill Gates takes a ride in the iffy SpaceX launch, they won't get much of a tourist draw either):

Launch reignites space love
http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/400564/mark-woods/2010-04-10/launch-reignites-space-love

Punch em in the wallet, now that's a good idea!

Such a short stop leaves me less than convinced he's going to say anything more than "Hi! NASA is great peoples, now stop complaining and do what I said. Bye!".

I hope I'm wrong and he can convince us how great this new plan is in record time...

This thing is going to be an utter debacle. If this visit comes off as it currently appears, it will cause more political harm than good.

Arrogance is not an attractive trait.

gpurcell said, "If it was your long-term plan to end human spaceflight you'd be taking exactly the steps that Obama is taking--kill the existing jobs, delay any direct work on future systems, and promise a bright future with some technological development. Then, when the existing program is shut down and there is nothing concrete, end the ambiguous future plans."

I very much disagree. If the President wanted to end human space flight all he would have had to do was leave the dysfunctional constellation program the way it was and then propose slight NASA budget reductions, because, you know, things are hard all over and everyone has to make adjustments while we get our financial house in order. He could just leave NASA in the same mess he found it when he came into office and then nickle and dime it to death during his term. That's the way you kill the human spaceflight program.

But instead he did exactly the opposite. He appointed a commission to try and find out what the problems were. Once the findings were in he made a budget proposal which he and his advisors (mostly his advisors I'd suspect) think would most directly address the problems as well as implement the changes and improvements suggested by the findings. He introduced a budget proposal that actually gives more money to NASA. He may not get the extra money from congress but he's trying to get it. He proposed a much more commercial approach to LEO access, something the private aerospace sector has wanted for years. He killed an under-performing and budget-busting Ares 1 program that, if continued, would have been too expensive to build and operate while being completely inadequate for our needs. Some people complain that the President canceled constellation but all he really canceled was Ares I. The rest of constellation was a far off dream or maybe a fantasy.

It ticks me off when people spread disinformation like that I quoted above. It is so obviously false that it makes me wonder what their motives are. Maybe it is just emotional and they have simply gotten confused and mistaken their fears for reality. At any rate, we don't have to sit still and let this nonsense go unchallenged.

Kieth and others might have been willing or unwilling partners in a "trial balloon" that might yet emerge, not before redundant NASA workers but before congress this fall.Even in congress a compromise will not work unless the white house and the senate and house leadership and there appropriations add in another Billion or so per year to the pot for just maybe shuttle C and at least paper study's on how to evolve EELV crew taxi into flexible path in 5 years time after the taxi has been paid for.
The new hydrocarbon engine and in space engine should be a part of an architecture for all space users.

Editor's note: I am not a willing or unwilling partner in anything. Sorry.

FWIW, I think that you're right.

Oh, he'll dress it up with lots of pretty words like "inspirational", "progress" and "dreams". He'll tug at heart-strings by talking about kiddies in ghettoes who can't read, the need to save the poor Polar Bear and his dream of global peace.

However, in the end it will be distilled down to one paragraph:

"I am in charge and I am always right. Shut up because I don't care what you think."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If Obama's course is followed, the United States is about to become the Portugal of the Space Age! :(...

that assumes that there is a "Spain". In terms of treasure no nation has poured more into human spaceflight then the US...and today it gets about the least out of it. We no longer have a commercial launcher industry that competes internationally, most of the "US" modules on the space station were made somewhere else...

and yet there is no evidence that any other nation is trying to do something that the US is not. "Spain" did not go as a national project to the new world. It wasnt even trying to go to the "new world" when the Queen hired out a free lancer to take the project outside of the government...and find a route to something that would make money.

Robert G. Oler

Well, the white House staffer sending out the invites should know that a lot of people don't answer phone calls that come up on caller ID as "no number". That's how the number comes up, for good reason of course. But they should at least leave a voicemail. I don't know if I was being invited or if I was merely being harrassed by a telemarketer. Considering I am a member of the local space-related news media and I work for a local special interest organization, it's entirely possible I missed an invitation. Not that it will really make a difference, but it's about the most newsworthy event around here and I will have to cover it regardless of whether I am there or in my office.

You have a choice.

You can either have a BEO spacecraft *or* a heavy lift vehicle. You can have the former in a few years, the latter depends on whether you insist on Shuttle derived or not.

The reality is that an Orion lite + small hab module can be launched on a Delta IV as soon as it is ready, can rendezvous with a Centaur upper stage and go around the Moon years before the 50th anniversary of Apollo VIII.

As soon as you have demonstrated propellant transfer, you can do more.

Even just the Phase I EELV upgrade gives you a 45 MT launcher on the Delta IV heavy. You can do lunar surface or NEO missions then.

If you insist on Constellation, you won't get to lunar orbit before 2030.

Your choice.

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If Obama's course is followed, the United States is about to become the Portugal of the Space Age! :(...

that assumes that there is a "Spain". In terms of treasure no nation has poured more into human spaceflight then the US...and today it gets about the least out of it. We no longer have a commercial launcher industry that competes internationally, most of the "US" modules on the space station were made somewhere else...
and yet there is no evidence that any other nation is trying to do something that the US is not. "Spain" did not go as a national project to the new world. It wasnt even trying to go to the "new world" when the Queen hired out a free lancer to take the project outside of the government...and find a route to something that would make money."

So what you're saying is, Obama really should scrap what he's thinking of, and instead try and really push getting a much more commercial slant on human spaceflight.

I like how people pretend that Obama just dreamed this plan up while on the john. It's like the Augustine Commission never happened. A number of Augustine folks have embraced the new plan, including a detailed endorsement by Edward Crowley.

Some of you guys have apparently been living on a fantasy planet since about 1970. Obama proposes significantly increasing NASA's budget, re-directing it toward advanced aerospace R&D, boosting scientific exploration, and killing off the ill-conceived money-wasting make-work porklifters. This is the *best* proposal to come out the White House since Lyndon Johnson, or maybe Eisenhower. And for this you want to rip Obama a new one. Amazing. You should move to Red China, where they still do things the old-fashioned way.

actually most Americans dont want a massive exploration program. Robert G. Oler

Thus....you are left with a smaller work force that can't do much and is happy to just have a Govt job.

As opposed to the current, larger workforce that can't _____ and is happy to just have a Govt job?

Where's the smiling Obama sporting NASA lapel pin picture now?

Hindsight is 20-20, but it's clear now. In any disagreement between the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (on one hand) and NASA (on the other), OSTP will win every time. It doesn't much matter whether Charlie Bolden thinks the U.S. should build a heavy-lift space vehicle. If you check out John P. Holdren's vita, it's clear that the man is devoted to environmental science. Exploration? Not so much.

Everyone's been asking the wrong question. It is not "What will Obama do," or "what will Charlie Bolden do." The only question that really matters in the current policy discussion is, "What will John P. Holdren do" as the president's chosen go-to guy for science policy.

He's not necessarily opposed to exploration, but it's clearly not where his heart lies. He's much more concerned about issues closer to home.

Nothing about the 2011 NASA budget or the upcoming KSC "fly-by" should have surprised anybody, given who's really calling the shots.

Looks like somebody in South Florida heard ya!

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/11/1573919_p3/space-coast-jobs-and-dollars-at.html?commentSort=TimeStampAscending&pageNum=1#Comments_Container

@richard schumacher

Democratic spin-meistering & sugar-coating the outsourcing of the current Shuttle workforce's jobs to Russia & commercial companies/Merchant 7, (who are routinely late & overbudget) FEELS like a Slap In The Face to them.

And because Obama personally promised the KSC Shuttle workforce 100% job retention, they also FEEL betrayed.

They do not care one iota for any schmoozy spin from Bolden, Garver, Holdren, et. al

The Shuttle workforce does want Obama to manup & speak for himself to their face(s) - and explain exacty how he can betray his promise to them with a clear conscious and why their jobs are being outsourced to unreliable and unproven vendors and foreign countries.

Going back to the moon was important to them for the same reason that it was for Apollo, because the belief is that US technological superiority is mandatory for national security.

Because the wrong-stuff NASA CxP crowd demonstrated lack of technological superiority and general know-how, the Shuttle workforce feels the moon return is critical to prove the US can do it. Mars tech R&D and launch demonstration capability is so far in the future, it doesn't seem to have any near term launch prospects.

So, the republican spin for CxP was just as ludricrous as the dems spin to outsource Shuttle work to Merchant 7 & Russia.

Spin meistering jargon from either party doesn't fly in the Florida shuttle workforce community, period.

And when it comes to all things space, Florida voters listen to their friends and family in the Shuttle workforce - not the politicians.

The Augustine Commission recommended a Flexible Path. Unfortunately, Obama is offering 'NO Path'. No Path is not the Flexible Path!

Marcel F. Williams

No.

It is the worst proposal for NASA since Nixon cancelled Apollo.

Obama proposes gutting HSF at NASA and wants to spread the so called "increase" to the four totally unproven and nascent winds of a non-existant commercial HSF industry with destinations beyond LEO vaguely mentioned for some future day. No details on when or how or even truly IF we ever go BEO ever! But oh we will study global warming and reach out to "muslim" countries as goals.

It's a fatal plan. It's a plan for a nation that is fading from global leadership and dominance on the frontiers.

Nobody is buying this as the next great step, it's a giant shrug of the shoulders and walking away from our nations dreams because they are just too hard.

Apollo heroes call on Americans to save US spaceflight programme

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7094862.ece

Heroes of the Apollo 13 Moon mission have called on the public to help to save America’s manned spaceflight programme as President Obama prepares to defend his plans to scrap it.

At an appearance marking the 40th anniversary of the lunar expedition that turned into one of history’s greatest rescue stories, the retired astronauts Jim Lovell and Fred Haise urged people to lobby Congress to block the President’s proposal and throw Constellation a lifeline.

Best articles of the day for the florida perspective:

Launch reignites space love
http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/400564/mark-woods/2010-04-10/launch-reignites-space-love

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/11/v-fullstory/1573919/space-coast-jobs-and-dollars-at.html

Note for Dibello, et al: most regular folks think of space tourism as Thousands of manned launch Watchers - not a dozen or so passengers, so comparisons to other theoretical commercial launch sites don't mean much for that aspect - unless, again, there's a Bill Gates or Miley Cyrus onboard (and republicans best get off that CxP airbus folly too)

ooh, one more & good job (for a change) Mr. Chang

So commercial Merchant7 folks - the truth be told:

Aerospace Business Has Its Doubts About Plans to Revamp NASAhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/science/space/12rocket.html

You base this on what? Opinion polls? Opinion polls are so easy to rig to get the answer that you want that it has long ceased to be a joke.

However, in this context, what "the majority of Americans" want or don't want is irrelevant. We are talking about what he is essentially going to say to the several thousand people who are about to lose their jobs, not his message to the country at large.

"I like how people pretend that Obama just dreamed this plan up while on the john. It's like the Augustine Commission never happened"

I think we're all too aware of what the commission said.
This situation is not unlike the aftermath of Apollo 1, When America awoke to find its high priced moon system was a dangerous piece of junk. One that would need serious retooling and still might not work.
What we needed was someone to come in fresh on Monday morning, step up to the plate, and proceed to fix things in a methodical and aggressive manner.

Augustine said as much. We needed to either fish or cut bait. Make the investment or give up.

Obama is expecting to be praised for choosing the latter...

Keith
what I meant by my post above is that your source knew there was not any intention yet to offer a compromise but wanted to Gage a public response to the idea of a compromise, so the source leaks the idea to someone hence " trail balloon" or in our case a "trail rocket" :):)
your response is most interesting so? does this mean your source does believe there was an idea of a compromise and maybe the compromise would have been between white science office and NASA?, and then later the congress?
my guess of course but then your article or source makes no mention of how this compromise would have been paid for.I would have liked to have seen the shuttle C and a EELV exploration architecture together at least transitionally

How about that, even owners of ULA are now starting to realize the cost figure don't add up. It doesn't take much imagination to realize it's only time until the new-starters like Falcon-9, or Minotaur, decide to move into the business of launching satellites for the DoD.

----

The New York Times (4/12, A14, Chang) reports Boeing and Lockheed Martin "will happily sell rockets to carry astronauts into space, but the companies are leery about taking a leading role in President Obama's vision for" NASA. According to the article, this may be "another hurdle" for the new policy. Boeing reportedly is "skeptical" in its assessment of the program, with officials saying they are waiting for the "business case" of the policy to be described. According to the article, "If NASA were the only customer, the space taxi business might be too small...and too risky for Boeing or Lockheed Martin to invest much time and money."

"It ticks me off when people spread disinformation like that I quoted above. It is so obviously false that it makes me wonder what their motives are. Maybe it is just emotional and they have simply gotten confused and mistaken their fears for reality. At any rate, we don't have to sit still and let this nonsense go unchallenged."

"Obviously false"? I don't think those words mean what you think they mean. Look, I'm not an engineer, I don't know about whether DIRECT or Sidemount or whatever is a good system or anything on the technical side of issues. What I am working expert in, however, is how to direct (or not to direct) funds through the appropriations process. The primary rule in that calculation is that current legislatures cannot bind future legislatures through spending plans. What truly binds future legislatures is inertia, continuing to spend at or around the same level as was done in the past...and the primary element driving this inertia.

That's why Bush's plan to retire shuttle and replace it was always such a dangerous gamble--the entire manned spaceflight program would be in a very exposed state in between the retirement of shuttle and the new system. Now, in my view shuttle had to be retired--the alternative was to keep flying until we killed another crew and ended the program in tragedy. But NASA--primarily Griffin--should have never allowed itself to get into a situation where not only was the gap wide but that there was no real evidence that their existing plans would work at all. Imagine how different the situation today would be if, instead of blowing all of the money on Ares I, NASA would have instead developed an economical Orion Lite that could be lifted by a number of launch systems AND been close to flight tests on an HLV of some type. Obama simply would not be in a position to end manned spaceflight--the position he is in today. (He also might not be in a position to do so if NASA hadn't screwed the pooch on X-33 and selected the highest technical challenge--thanks Dan Goldin).

Which brings me to my final point. Obama told everyone during the campaign exactly what his plan for space was--to delay the development of manned spaceflight and divert the money into social programs. Moreover this is exactly the mindset we should have expected from him given his ideological and political background.

NASA's inability to develop the follow on system provides him the opportunity to do this permanently. Sure, he promises big money in the future. But what has he done with real money to date? Stimulus--NASA got virtually nothing. Budget--OMB cut the manned account before the commission ever delivered its report, leaving them to beg for funding just to get back to previous levels (which they didn't get). Somehow, however, his vague promises of future funds directed to NASA projects that don't even exist yet in new locations is somehow credible? You really think that will survive in Congress? Or that Obama will raise a single finger in defense of it? Please.

Right now, manned spaceflight rests on a knife's edge. If Elon Musk and private industry cannot get it right almost immediately then the last shuttle flight will be the last US-directed manned spaceflight more many years, potentially many decades.

The administartion couldn't keep the existing program because it would have lasted long past their current term and even the following term and bleed money they wanted to use elsewhere, whcih they cleary indicated as their reak desire during the campagin. They only became big fans of human space flight when it become necessary to win Florida.

Standard governement playbook for canceling popular development programs is to cancel them in favor of R&D for technolgies that are game changing or provide a technological leap that once mature will be used to build an even better capability. Saw it several time while I was working in DOD development programs. My guess is that the R&D money for HLV and the demonstration activities will be cancelled after the next election with the arguement that the huge budget deficets can no longer support the spending. Commercial crew might get choppded as well if they can't come in as cheap as Soyuz. So this isn't disinformation or obviously false but my opinion based on my experience in similar situation's.

Last if the adminstration really was interested in BEO we wouldn't have the current maybe someday program. We would go back to the moon now or soon and get the operational experience we need to do deep space missions while working on the technology to go to Mars or asteriods. We did it before so it is certainly achievable without waiting for technology to mature.

So shutting down Shuttle is fine. I am not worried about the gap (which was created when we kept cancelling every HSF program after 1995)we can always just keep buying Soyuz. I am ok with commercial crew although I don't think we should be funding their development costs, just a promise that we would use their vehilce if they build something that meets NASA needs. Even ok with killing Constellation if you actually replaced it with a real plan to go beyond LEO, although I don't see how killing Constellation completely makes that happen more quickly (see repeated cancellation of follow on Shuttle vehicles). But the current plan doesn't make sense to me if you really want to go beyond LEO and explore. It makes sense to me if your goal is to wind down government HSF over the next two to four years.

I'm noticing more awareness to the pickle we are in. Reading some magazines while waiting for a smog on the truck I found an article lamenting the state of things at NASA and the Obama plan.

There is a bit of an awakening to expect from the nation as it starts to sink in that Shuttle will be no more and that Obama is trying to kill NASA's replacement and big goals.

It's an unpopular move, and it's not going to help his plunging approval numbers for forcing other unpopular things on the nation. He would be wise to back off on this. I think America has had about enough. Any congress person opposing him is going to look the hero on this.

I agree with you. I never realized when I was 12 yrs watching the first moon walk that we --the United States will come down to this.
Company (in Phoenix where I work is ( to be WAS )) working on the avionics for Orion. Problem has always been the Ares I (i.e. first stage). We were constantly redesigning to a changing avionics architecture as directed by LM because of weight and power issues. IF only Griffin let up and let Ares I have a liquid first stage (more flexible adjusting for performance than that solid ) we'll be further along now, or at least went with Orion lite and dumped the stick (but kept the J2 developement and SRB support to prepare for some Ares V version) that can be upgraded to moon role. Also NASA never got the level of support from Bush and congress since VSE was announced.

I did not vote for Obama because I know who he is.

How could this effect things for NASA?.....

Congress sees no budget rush

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35647.html

From the NY Times article linked by AnObamanaut:

But Loren B. Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, a policy group financed by military contractors, said Boeing is more skeptical in private.

“I think people who have been in the launcher business for many years find it hard to take the president’s plan seriously,” Dr. Thompson said. “They think it sounds like an elaborate wake for the human spaceflight program more than a plan for moving forward.”

I fear that this is the sad truth. Without a time line and specific goals, NASA is now simply an R&D agency as far as HSF beyond Earth orbit goes.

Jim is dead on here.

Also, folks who keep saying there isn't a goal and path here - uhh, maybe wait until Thursday?

But, remember, pick two of goal, path/timeline, money - you can't get all three. Sustainability means you need to choose the latter as one constraint, which means you only get to choose one of the first two. Sustainability, and avoiding the mistakes of Apollo, are critical here.

CessnaDriver said:

"I'm noticing more awareness to the pickle we are in. Reading some magazines while waiting for a smog on the truck I found an article lamenting the state of things at NASA and the Obama plan."

And what was the publication? What was its readership or political backing? The trouble with your claim is that the people who are whining and complaining are the ones getting air time and print. The people who like this plan haven't been so vocal, because they're not under threat. The average Joe on a street outside of Cocoa Beach or Clear Lake only reacts to the propaganda..."Oh, Obama's killing our space program??? What a terrible thing to do!"...without really understanding the details. So, your argument that the magazine in your Jiffy Lube waiting room somehow reflects the American opinion is weak.

The fact is that the average public doesn't know enough to provide an educated opinion, and the rest of us can only predict how this will all turn out. And frankly, though there is risk in Obama's strategy, no one can say it will certainly fail, and if it succeeds, it will put us in a better standing than we would have had under the "old" approach.

As to the comments made earlier about how the aerospace companies are showing skepticism, of COURSE they will. They are the trillion dollar behemoths that will have to revise their entire engineering and business process to compete with a fleet-footed company like SpaceX. They know this will be painful. Look at GM and the push to have quality and gas mileage that matches up to the Japanese auto manufacturers. They whine and complain until they're forced to change. Same thing here.

On the positive side, I see the latest details of budget allocations as a strong move forward. I see the beginnings of modified roles for KSC and JSC. I see solid signs of ESMD-driven robotic precursors, with targets following the Flexible Path. Spending billions without knowing more about where we're going (outside of the moon, which LRO and others have been making huge strides towards) is unwise. Buying down risk of long-duration spaceflight with new technologies will mean we'll spend less later. You see, Obama's plan might fit some people's model of how a president would cancel HSF, but it also fits the model of a president that wants to see this done right, sustainably, and on budget. I, personally, do not want another flags and footprints Apollo, and see this new approach as a way to make this all last.

It was one of the mainstream magazines, Motor Trend I think.

Look, when you have Neil deGrasse Tyson on Colbert Report voicing concerns, it's getting elevated to the masses believe me.

Nobody wants flags and footprints Apollo.
It was always Moon, Mars, Beyond as the goals.

What details are there to understand?
NASA out of HSF game and commercial to LEO.
Oh yeah, maybe Mars when we invent warp drive.

Look, we have to be *told* just how bold and exciting it is! LOL

Please. Bold and exciting is obvious and people know it when they see it.

This ain't it.

And, in addition, launching humans into space is not the only form of HSF that there is, in the 21st Century and beyond. We still have ISS on-orbit, and Americans are expected to keep up residence there for a long time, plus it is still operationally controlled from JSC. That's real HSF - it's actual humans, in space, not just humans getting into space. NASA needs to be working on the frontier, not spending $ on working out, again, how to get there. The economic sphere then fills in behind the frontier. In this case, getting folks to LEO. Hopefully we'll be having the same discussions in a century or so, when we are ready to drop government provision of solar system transport, while the government/governments works on interstellar transport.

The flyby looks like it will be little more than a sales pitch and campaign photo op (think: Kosmas and Obama in a photo together at KSC for her to use in her re-election bid). Whatever happens, it's not going to be KSC PAO's fault. I've gotten the impression, from speaking with a number of people up there, that they're as frustrated as any of us... and even more so since their jobs are also on the line. Think about it, why would KSC need a huge public affairs operation and state of the art facilities if nothing is flying from there? I doubt the press will have as much interest in "covering" the activities at a solar farm. PAO's in a pickle just like the rest of us. Unfortunately, they also have to bear the brunt of the public's and media's frustration.

I will say this, if the President is not going to meet with the workforce, then all the community, business and political leaders should boycott the "summit". Period. We really have heard enough and we're tired of it. There's nothing new, nothing's changing vis-a-vis the systematic dismantling of KSC (and others) and we're being taken advantage of and then dropped to the side of the road because the Democrats know Brevard County is a lost cause for them, so why try? People who work at NASA who are trying to hold onto some shred of hope for their careers need to get a clue and accept the truth that they simply don't care about you in D.C. so go help yourselves and your families, make careers changes, retire or whatever you need to do to continue to make out well in life because the shuttle is going. Constellation is gone. That fight is over.

comparing Astronauts to super models is NOT a good thing...

Robert G. Oler

The polls are from the same folks who do a pretty good job predicting elections.

As for the jobs. Who cares? Really who cares other then the folks who are losing them (who care a great deal)...the rest of America is going through very hard times. The jobs of a few people who produce not a lot of things that are valuable are not the currency of people who for instance once flew for major airlines and now dont.

Robert G. Oler

Yeah! Who cares if our scientist and engineers don't have a job!

Why would America want to employ more aerospace scientist and engineers? Our investment in space technology over the past 50 years has really ruined this country:-)

Look at all the third world countries that don't invest in science in technology. They get tons of-- free money-- from the rich countries. And if we stop investing in science in technology, we could get some of that-- free money-- too from the rich countries-- because we'll need it:-)

Marcel F. Williams

The only thing being **canceled** is a program that an independent review panel of experts determined was unlikely to achieve its stated objective without a massive ($6 bil+ more per year for five years) infusion of funds. Neither Obama nor anyone else is abandoning humans to the moon. Just humans to the moon under the Constellation program. Either you believe in the Augustine report or you don't. Some people seem to have forgotten about it and the role it likely played in shaping the FY2011 budget cycle. Rather than repeat the exercise, the FY2011 budget attempts to spend real money developing real advanced launch and in-space systems technologies while fully funding research aboard the ISS. What I hope the President says Thursday is the context within which these technologies are to be developed and tested. And we all hope that will be human settlement of Mars via a building block approach, by 2030.

"And frankly, though there is risk in Obama's strategy, no one can say it will certainly fail"

ummmmm, Yes They Can!

Just like the Shuttle workers, CornDogRocket and others, told Griffin/Cooke/Cook/Hanley/etc. that CxP wouldn't work - technically & financially - (and btw, there might have been more critical CxP showstoppers down at the lower levels that didn't get elevated or public - ya know, cuz of that CxP shoot-the-messenger mentality).

Dems are are as much in denial, and behaving just as badly, about the Merchant 7 plan I'm extremly disappointed to say.

I'm sorry, Frank, but that's pure revisionism. Let's remember the sequence of events properly, shall we:

1) Commission called.
2) OMB cuts NASA budget significantly BEFORE Commission report which
3) Puts the Commission in a much tighter box on their recommendations since they have to ask for "increases" simply to get back to prior year appropriation levels.

I'm not arguing that Constellation was a good program--clearly it had massive flaws, probably fatal flaws. But your belief that Obama, in recognizing that situation, must therefore support a new and different program is both logically questionable as well as unsupported by any evidence in his background and history.

Too bad NASA employees do not have an open door invitation to the White House as UAW workers have.

Problem is that the canceled program is being replaced with nothing but some cool science programs. By the time the cool "game changing" R&D is finished 10 years later then we can have another 3 year discusion on where to go now and then 15 years later we might actually go there. So you might be lucky to make it somewhere by 2035 but their sure as hell aren't going to be any American settlements on Mars.

Yes ISS is real HSF but it is a dead end. Few of the operational skills we use for ISS are applicable to BEO operations. So while it needs to be utilized and supported it's not going to help us expand the frontier.

Sure hope this isn't a repeat of Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football that has happened many times before.

Ex-Navy

While it is true that Admin hasn't connected the dots of their investments, they are not "science projects". Some of the tech demos will fly in 3-4 years, and will enable a much more affordable exploration strategy immediately thereafter. Not just in 10 years.

And you're wrong about ISS. We can use ISS do do tech demos, and we can use automated rendezvous and docking to do exploration. It is true that locking ourselves in to just ISS would be terrible, but an ISS in service of exploration will make much more sense than it has to date.

I always thought it was silly to continue to fly Shuttle expensively to complete ISS, only to splash it 5 years later in 2015. But that was Dr. Griffin's plan. He didn't keep his loathing for ISS, or our Russian partners there, a secret.

-- Son of a Navy guy and Navy gal