Striking a Balance on Shuttle Shut Down

"Bolden is still holding out for the continuation of Constellation - beyond the Orion "Lite" proposal currently being offered."

Maybe that US Marine blood isn't diluted by foul DC water as bad as we thought.

Is he attempting to manage Obama and steer him in the right direction?

The way I see it, Orion remaining capable of beyond LEO ops is critical to preserve.
Is that what he is after?

Well, that's much much better.

Bolden and Garver and Holdren need to step down then.

Obviously Bolden is still unaware of CxP technical showstoppers (have to do more than just "look" under the hood for frickin sakes, many posters here & elsewhere even offered to tell ya where to find em, geesh!)

And Bill Nelson obviously doesn't understand Contractor/Corporate Politics and apparently doesn't even know when he's being played (hint - Always).

Do you really think ex-astronauts are any diff than Nascar Drivers for product hawking, or have better ethics than any other Corporate execs name-any-industry?

Holdren just seems to favor nuke projects - maybe Hawaii could give those launches a try.

And Garver is apparently so naive that she actually believes Merchant 7 price quotes.

So where's those GM robots when ya need em:

Mission Control is now much more occupied with preventing a major shutdown on the space station

http://www.wesh.com/spacenews/23153455/detail.html

Bolden is hoping Constellation continues? If I'm reading that I think it's great! It is definately the first I have heard of this.
As far as shuttle extension, I could understand one more flight (since they only have one spare external tank). Two more flights would mean building just one tank from scratch which Nasa has said would take two years to do. So under this scenario two tanks can't "appear" in one year and I hope they wouldn't bring all the facilities back online to make just one tank. When is shuttle ever going to end so we can have money for future projects? Dang...

And my question earlier today was possibly answered in the newspaper article. Will the supposed 2500 new jobs that Obama will create above and beyond Constellation be in the aerospace industry? The unfortunate answer seems to be NO.
The modernization they talk about to KSC will be construction jobs and not things like the new engineering jobs for the pads or new modern servers/network upgrades being done in the LCC to replace outdated technology. All of which are currently underway as part of Constellation.
Sorry Obama, the space center workers want you to bring them jobs in their field!
Maybe the 40 million dollars to help them find work will help them go out of state and far far away from NASA.
It's sad, all they talk about is fixing job loss. Why don't you just say you are keeping Constellation and adding 2500 shuttle employees to it?
My guess is people would be pretty happy. But the way you say it scares everyone to death because NO one knows what is going to happen next.

Two things about this article and Keith's note strike me here.

First, it seems that President Obama is bending over backwards to offer an olive branch to KSC workers, while little or no mention is made of the fate of JSC and MSFC workers.

The second is, and I could be completly off base here, is that he appears to be positioning himself to offer up Charlie Bolden as a sacrificial lamb.

Paraphrased; I wanted to do more for the shuttle workers but Charlie is resisting, he's dead set on the continuation of Constellation ...

I may have been asleep at the wheel but this is the first time I have heard anything that would indicate that Charlie is anything but 100% behind the "charting a bold new course for NASA" as outlined in the President's proposed budget.

(I would have worded that differently, that I thought Charlie was behind the Presidents original plan, but things change so much and so frequently, that I am not sure I could ID the "Original Plan" if I had to)

Politics suck

I'm not sure what's going on here but I am pretty sure congress isn't going to fund shuttle another year and fund Constellation at the same time. There are a lot of Senators and Congress people that have unemployment problems in their own states and I suspect they are going to want some of that money for their own constituents.

We might have a situation here where "Constellation" is reinstated but with new details added, like NASA proceeds at the pace it deems prudent and if commercial access to ISS becomes feasible NASA is entitled to substitute those assets for hardware built in house.

More than likely though, congress won't agree and they'll pass a continuing resolution and the people who are assigned to the dysfunction Ares I program will get a free years worth of unemployment checks for doing mostly busy work. Nice.

This doesn't sound like a well-focused plan for future human space flight. It sounds like a "kick the can down the road" program that's apt to endure for for another ten years or so -- till ISS is ready to fall out of the skies. The bright side, if any, is that gives New Space enthusiasts time and opportunity to prove their case (or disprove it, as may be). And in ten years the grumbling former astronauts and many of those annoying Baby Boomers who so irritate Keith and Frank will be six feet under.

Extended shuttle flights, Orion light, etc. all just sound like more of the same political and jobs motivated decisions driving NASA.

If this is what NASA has become then throw in the towel for any hope of real change and long term investment and technological breakthroughs. Why not just continue to pour billions into LEO jobs supporting stuff and give up any idea of actually trying to make progress on space exploration technology, especially if it means jobs will be lost in the short term. Hey, if jobs are still threatened, NASA can start building pyramids at KSC to store Shuttles.

One of the big problems with the current space effort is that too many people are needed on earth to get one person into LEO.

Adding more Shuttle flights may help Senators keep their jobs but in the long run will cause many more people lose theirs.

The whole short term moaning and groaning about the WH actually trying to find a long term plan to get NASA exploration beyond LEO makes me sick.

Maybe it's just his public game face for his bosses, but I believe Charlie's latest words were "Constellation is dead". Sounded like he didnt want to talk about it at all. If he really is fighting for sanity (which would be a modified Constellation Program) he would make this public knowledge, instead of sitting around as the public whipping boy for this circus freakshow that has been going on for 10 weeks (like Griffin would have) and if he wasnt listened to or was told to shut up, he would resign and then he would hit the the news shows.

For the record, an unmanned Orion "lite" rescue vehicle docked to station launched on an expendable is acctually even more depressing than a cancelled Orion vehicle.

Hopefully when they are driving the President from the landing site to the O&C, they can avert his eyes from the 350 foot tall mobile launcher standing off to the side of the road by showing him the bald eagle nest on the other side of the road, wouldnt want that brand new massive piece of hardware to interfere with his thoughts of building a state of the art 21st century launch complex at KSC. Dont know what he will make of the 100% refurbished, pristine, state of the art O&C high bay either. Maybe he will think it is really "neat".

I dont know what he will say tomorrow, it clearly doesnt matter anyway, but I am sure we will here for the billionth time about how he sat on his grandfather's shoulders.

For the person who made the comment about JSC and MSFC above - um, yeah, clearly we do not matter. We are not a swing state. Get out the "For Sale" sign.

Charlie Bolden holding out for continuation of the Constellation program?! Now you're just making stuff up. Bolden has been a very staunch supporter of the president's policy so it's hard to believe that he is holding up extension of shuttle flights to get the Constellation program continued.
Is this the same source that gave you the grand compromise from last week?

Continuation of Constellation? I wish could Keith could give us more than that, but I understand.

Maybe continued J2-X and/or 5-seg development in conjunction with kero-lox research?.

"Bolden is still holding out for the continuation of Constellation - beyond the Orion "Lite" proposal currently being offered."

...really? That's interesting. Where are you hearing that from? Anything you can disclose? I'm not trying to call you out or anything, I'm genuinely curious, 'cause it's quite interesting if it's true.

If Bolden is indeed trying to resist Constellation cancellation, it might explain why he's been so unconvincing in his attempts to sell the President's budget proposal...

"If he really is fighting for sanity (which would be a modified Constellation Program) he would make this public knowledge..."

I don't think that he would. It would be inappropriate for him to be seen publically disagreeing with the President on a matter of policy unless he plans to resign and send a copy of his scathing resignation letter to the media. If he is fighting to achieve something constructive (maybe Orion on EELV as a CLV and some manner of D-SDLV as CaLV as Keith's sources have suggested?) then behind the scenes is the way to do it.

Obama, Holden and Emmanuel will appreciate the respect being shown to them. They will be more willing to listen rather than just destroy him politically the way that I recall they tried to with Gabrielle Giffords.

The O&C highbay is a perfect allegory for the future of KSC. It's glory days are over, scrubbed clean of it's storied past where people actually did real work and now it sits "ready for the 21st century", empty and useless, waiting on the hope of a future program that has already been canceled.

Today, it is a destination for our "tourist" president, instead of a stepping stone to mankind's destiny in God's universe.

Look closely today, there's nothing there.... and the Emporer is indeed naked.

When our children look down that long room ,it should have been full of stars.

Yes, send more money to KSC so NASA can repeat what passes for a success story these days.

"Orion Lite" sounds fairly useless if it is launched unmanned. It's always good to have a ride home, but somehow, you've got to get people TO the ISS first. The only way this works is if an individual Orion capsule is extremely long lived (a year or even two - amounting to a semi-permanent addition to the ISS) or your intended taxi is extremely short lived

"Continuation of Constellation"? Maybe pieces and parts, as suggested by asmuniz, above, but not as a program and not the "Stick."

ONE additional year of shuttle ops (two flights)? I see this as less of an "olive branch" and more of a "bone". The answer is either one or five/six.

To those of you in Florida - Obama lied through his teeth, and we all knew it at the time, when he campaigned down there in 2008. I don't know how much I'd trust him, now.

"ONE additional year of shuttle ops (two flights)? I see this as less of an "olive branch" and more of a "bone". The answer is either one or five/six."

FWIW, more than that would be quite difficult because there aren't enough complete ETs in stock and it would take too long to assemble them. However, the AMS flight moved to CY2011, which is probably necessary anyway, and STS-135 added to the manifest would do the job of putting off the job cuts for another year (the sort of empty gesture that a modern politician is excellent at). I've got conflicting signals as to whether STS-136 would be possible - there is one other ET available but it is apparently of an obsolete type and might not be safe to use.

ET-122 is the one damaged by Katrina that is the LON tank for STS-133. That one could be flown.

ET-94 - as I understand it - was used by testing by the CAIB. It is 7500 pounds heavier than the ones currently in use.

ET-139
ET-140
ET-141 are all partially built tanks @ Michoud.
My understanding is it would take about 6 months to re-hire and re-certify to resume construction. If they are going to use a "Shuttle-C" type heavy lift, then they'd need to do that anyway.

In my opinion - STS-135 is a no-brainer. If you are going to do STS-136, then you may as well do 137 and 138 in 2012.

"things change so much and so frequently, that I am not sure I could ID the "Original Plan" if I had to"

Oh, that's easy. 'Spend a bunch of money on cool stuff and hope something works.' You know, "the audacity of hope", and all that?