The News Is Not Bad Everywhere

Yes:

It is good news everywhere you go! Change is good! This gets the neural system used once again. It is much better then an injection of steroids, LOL.

After a fire new life begins! where the soil is good...

For those critical of the budget proposal for lacking a detailed plan, the budget proposal is a strategic document and not a detailed plan. It is up to NASA to develop the detailed plan for implementation, which it is actively doing. This budget more accurately reflects a strategy that is inline with the VSE than any previous strategy or detailed plans put forth by NASA, i.e., Constellation. Constellation would not get us back to the surface of the Moon until well into the 2030's, way off the 2020 mark laid down by the VSE. Having lost precious years and billions of dollars, we will not get back to the Moon for 20 years or so if that is a destination we choose. As for Obama's campaign promise to "accelerate the Shuttle replacement", he is keeping that promise because commercial space will most surely get us back to LEO and ISS before Ares I ever would have, and it will do so much cheaper and safer than Constellation ever could. Not only will it do it quicker, safer, and cheaper, but it will not require abandoning a $50 billion investment in ISS which is the only LEO destination we have.

Looks like divide and conquer. Among those who feared for their jobs some have been spared. These people will now try to resist attempts to make further changes.

Its a good make work program that just spends lots of money without really getting anything done. That's easy to do!

Marcel F. Williams

The bad news is at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) formerly known as the Manned Space Center (MSC). This is where the unique skills and facilities to plan a manned mission, train crew and flight control teams, and accomplish the mission reside. With no new US manned spacecraft to replace Shuttle, these capabilities will quickly evaporate. The loss of this skill-base will set the United States back to the 1960s in Human Space Flight. The remarkable US HSF history and memories will remain but the people who can do it will not be Americans. Consider how competitive any pro football team would be if they played no games for several seasons.

While the transition to an R&D focused agency is difficult if not traumatic, the benefits to human spaceflight and the ability of the United States to send astronauts beyond LEO are starting to come clear. Rather than killing manned spaceflight, Obama has breathed new life and started the agency on a sustainable path to future achievements. This was previously impossible when the Shuttle's operational needs consumed the agency's budget year after year.
For all the talk about the VSE, the Bush administration first failed to fund the $1 billion extra it promised in 2004, and secondly Congress itself, under both party control, appropriated even less. Complaining about under funding Constellation comes a wee bit late from both sides of the aisle. Now, with the Shuttle itself in transition either to a SD HLV or to full retirement, there is money for revolutions in space transportation and human space exploration. Now, making people understand this is the order of the day....

Frank,

The one problem is if the funding for the new projects will actually continue once they start.

For example the R&D for a HLV would be a easy target for deferring in future budgets since so far there is not a rigid timetable to develop one.

The technology demonstrators are also good targets to pick off one at a time in future budgets if they have schedule slips and no real Congressional champions.

Commercial crew might also find itself subject to cuts and revisions based on the problems usually associated with test flight programs. Will NASA, and Congress, have the fortitude to stay the course if one or more test flights of the proposed commercial crew vehicles go bad? After all, that is what test flights are for, but the record of the Shuttle flight and Saturn V test flight might have created the wrong mindset about test flights always going as planned.

That is perhaps the chief weakness of the new budget, the possibility of it suffering a slow death of a thousand small cuts over the years for a thousand different reasons.

And of course, without a clear unifying program and vision it makes it even easier for the next administration to throw it out and start from scratch, especially if this administration has already taken the political hit from the layoffs from the Shuttle program retirement.

Just some things to think about.

"Rather than killing manned spaceflight, Obama has breathed new life and started the agency on a sustainable path to future achievements"

Unfortunately there is no evidence to support that, only a lot of promises. It's been stated that this commercial path could have people flying in less than 3 years, but realistically it will be more like 5 to 10 years.

Even with this so-called Orion Lite, which sounds like Obama's way to address this issue, unless it is nearly identical to the current Orion except for the removal of moon only hardware, this is still likely to take longer than 3 years.

Frank Sietzen: While the transition to an R&D focused agency is difficult if not traumatic, the benefits to human spaceflight and the ability of the United States to send astronauts beyond LEO are starting to come clear.

Frank...this is nothing new. In fact, the transition of NASA into an R&D focused agency was initiated by Goldin in the early 1990's. The continued, dominating presence of the Space Shuttle and ISS is what kept the operations mentality alive and well in NASA. In some ways, the Griffin era was an aberration - a diversionary blip in a transition that was set into motion years ago.

Now that Shuttle is nearing its end, the resistance to this change will weaken.

"This is where the unique skills and facilities to plan a manned mission, train crew and flight control teams, and accomplish the mission reside. With no new US manned spacecraft to replace Shuttle, these capabilities will quickly evaporate."

Wow - I hadn't realized they were shutting down the mission planning and support for ISS, or the US mission control for ISS, or that they were canceling the US astronaut corp involvement in ISS. That's horrible.

Tom, the same could be said for a man-to-Mars goal. What is to stop future Congresses or presidents to slip such a goal a year, five years or more? Truth be told there is no escape from shifts in priorities, no matter under what rubric the plan or program. Seems to me the best they can do is put the technology development plan into some structure of priorities and keep pushing ther envelope...

"The bad news is at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) formerly known as the Manned Space Center (MSC)."

Johnson's original name was the Manned Spacecraft Center. It was all about designing, developing and building manned spacecraft. So if the goal is to get JSC back to doing its original job, it is not bad news.

"This is where the unique skills and facilities to plan a manned mission, train crew and flight control teams, and accomplish the mission reside."

The bad news is for those people focused solely on operations, planning missions, training crew, flight control, and mission implementation.

While operations was always a significant piece, in the early years the operations end was a relatively small subset of each program. The major job was developing the technologies and spacecraft.

"With no new US manned spacecraft to replace Shuttle, these capabilities will quickly evaporate. The loss of this skill-base will set the United States back to the 1960s in Human Space Flight."

The US has not designed or developed a manned spacecraft in close to 20 years, nearly a generation. Most of US developed pieces of ISS was done by then. Since that time the focus has been solely on operations.

"The remarkable US HSF history and memories will remain but the people who can do it will not be Americans."

The US managers overseeing ISS have been giving the development responsibilities for the US elements of ISS to our international partners for more than a decade. We were trading US-performed Shuttle launches and ISS mission operations in exchange for Russian and European spacecraft development, because the managers, almost all of whom came from an operations background, did not see the value of maintaining a US knowledge-base in spacecraft design and development. So there are already relatively few Americans who have done hardware development for manned space.

Shuttle represents a huge investment on the part of the American people, probably a quarter trillion dollars over more than a generation. Primarily Shuttle, and to a lesser extent, ISS, represents the US knowledge about designing and building manned spacecraft. By curtailing Shuttle and the people who support it, we are throwing away billions of dollars of expertise, when we should have been using it to develop the next generation of space vehicle.

The bad news is shutting down Shuttle before its time. This is very shortsighted and really represents a betrayal of trust in our future.

If Johnson can get back on track to develop a new spacecraft, and extend our current technologies then the news is not bad at all - its just moving JSC back to the job it was supposed to have been doing all along.

Technology development here, technology development there - how is one to know what technologies to develop until you have a destination and plan for getting there ?

Something that's troubling me these days is the apparent mind-set of so many of the recent posters. Their unstated assumption seems to be that we should keep doing, or planning to do, the same old things, in the same old ways, just bigger.

We need to go back to the Moon -- OK, but to do what, exactly.

Humans to Mars -- same logic.

We need a bloody big 100T+ booster -- maybe, why, exactly.

In short, it's the same old Christmas List mentality: I want such and such; why; because I want it, period.

I strongly believe that we need to go to the Moon, Mars, asteroids, etc., BUT we should be going in order to accomplish specific goals (IN DETAIL). A destination is not a program. If you can't list all of a program's goals and details, then you don't know what your requirements are. If you don't know what your requirements are, you can't possibly know what hardware, software, (resources of any kind) you really need.

That, to me, is what screwed Constellation, right from the start. They picked a destination and then immediately started designing hardware. That's not engineering, that's playing around. Is it any wonder we've heard so many stories about unhappy NASA engineers?

If we went back to the Moon today, it would, for the most part, be a reenactment of Apollo, which is pointless. I agree fully with Charles Bolden about Mars; we don't know enough yet to pull it off. With all due respect to Robert Zubrin and his followers, The Case for Mars would also be a reenactment of Apollo, in my mind, and was dependent on the Saturn V.

There is science that needs to be done. There is engineering that needs to be done. These are what the new "R&D" NASA Plan is all about. Too many people have told me that it's not NASA's job to solve the science and engineering needs; that it's up to the physicists. Sorry folks, there's a lot of science and engineering between Apollo and Star Trek. We don't need revolution (jumping straight to Star Trek), we need evolution -- continually evolving what we have -- which can be done in smaller, more-manageable programs than what the Apollo-era enthusiasts imagined.

Many of the NASA programs that were discontinued, were canned because they were too big, and therefore too long and too expensive. If we had an overall "game plan" that included integrated smaller programs, we would have a synergy that evolved our knowledge base, and, more importantly, a delay in one or two programs wouldn't destroy the overall game plan. NASA has had major problems managing (and even statusing) large programs, so give them a bunch of smaller ones instead. The aggregate (overall game plan) becomes much easier to manage than one mega-program, like Constellation. But first we have to get over this hang-up that every program must have a destination.

Sorry this post ended up being so long. This is something that I've been thinking about (as an engineer, not a manager) for a very long time. I'm curious to learn how others might feel about this concept. Does it make sense, or is there an obvious hole in it that I'm just not seeing.

Thanks

Frank, what sustainable path? Obama's not sending us to the Moon. In fact, Bolden clearly said that the US doesn't need a Moon base and doesn't think it would be a big deal if other nations returned to the Moon without us.

So what path are you talking about?

Marcel

"The bad news is at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) formerly known as the Manned Space Center (MSC)."

Johnson's original name was the Manned Spacecraft Center. It was all about designing, developing and building manned spacecraft. So if the goal is to get JSC back to doing its original job, it is not bad news.

Not sure I follow this. Orion is canceled (Orion lite will be "commercial" only), it was largely being built from JSC contractors and Denver. There is no alternate craft for NASA to build at this time. CCDev is now a joint KSC effort. And the goal is to reduce NASA oversight on the CCDev efforts, right?

So with Orion people being sent home and no new NASA craft on the table (as of now at least), how is JSC getting back to designing, developing and building manned spacecraft? Which effort is this?

Frank,

[[[Tom, the same could be said for a man-to-Mars goal. What is to stop future Congresses or presidents to slip such a goal a year, five years or more? Truth be told there is no escape from shifts in priorities, no matter under what rubric the plan or program.]]]

True, but if there is a central goal and destination it takes a much larger political effort to cut and refocus NASA's budget, witness the current debate over Constellation, then when is just a collection of low profile technology and research projects. For example, if the 2012 NASA Budget cuts the funding for HLV research will it trigger the same level of debate we are having now? Probably not.

goNASA got the name wrong. It was the Manned SPACECRAFT Center, not the Manned Space Center.

goNASA got the functions wrong. He said it was all about flying missions. It was actually all about developing new capabilities and flying new vehicles with new capabilities.

Constellation did not represent a new capability. It was trying to re-create Apollo using technology that was not more advanced.

The new technologies line item in the budget represents, we hope, the re-establishment of an engineering function to develop new technologies and then build a new, more capable, more advanced vehicle.

OK. Name the other NASA center that can plan, train, and fly a human space mission. And by the way ISS does not have an ascent or entry phase which are the most compelx.

moonman

I think you missed the point. While I am personnaly not fan of Constellation or the flight hardware the program was building, the US MUST retain the technology/skills for Human Space Flight. Currently, the NASA Center where those skills reside is JSC. With no US system for human transportation to/from LEO, I don't see how those skills will be retained. I think it premature to believe the US commercial sector can accomplish this and consequently we will be second place to other countries.

I stand corrected on Manned Space Center vs Manned Spacecraft Center but my point is the same. JSC can only develop manned spacecraft that are part of an authorized program and the current Presidential proposal has none. So I guess we must hope SpaceX, or Orbital, or some other US company can figure it out. In the mean time we can watch Russia, China, ESA, and India press ahead.

R&D is a good thing but it does not play well in the international news. Actual spaceflight successes are required. We can say we have a new propulsion system while China lands on the moon. I think the world will look at China, not our new propulsion system.

NASA should not be about jobs. NASA should not be about votes. NASA should be about US technology superiority.

The problem with that line of reasoning what's left in NASA after the wholesale cancellation of CxP will not be, in the minds of many, worth continuing to fund at $20B/yr in constant US$. Budgetary pressures will soon start eating up these R&D-without-a-mission projects. The European Space Agency has quite a decent space program, including ISS support, at a mere 25% of NASA's current budget and that's not going to go unnoticed in Congress.

The irony is that by 2020 ULA will likely end up in the chopping block instead of, as they had hoped, inherit the Ares funding. They'll simply be unable to compete with Space-X, or Orbital, once they eventually prove they can send humans to space and DoD payloads.

"While the transition to an R&D focused agency"

I keep hearing on this site that this is this administration's plan for NASA, to change it from a mission oriented organization to a R&D organization. The problem is that the only people saying that are people on this site. I haven't once heard Bolden, Garver, Holden or the President state that as their goal for NASA. They are trying to spin this as NASA still being an exploration agency with missions to fly, eventually, and places to go, eventually. Problem is that R&D oraganizations aren't equipped to actually execute missions. That's the reason DOD has DARPA to do R&D, and the uniformed militaty does it's technological development inside of actual development programs focused on creating usable hardware for defined missions.

So if the goal is to change NASA into a DARPA or NACA to support commercial space flight then why isn't the administration saying that? It's either because that isn't the goal of the administration (and people should stop trying to sell this plan that way)or it is their goal but they know it is politically unpopular and they are trying to hide it.

ex-Navy, you should read the detailed budget support documents and Bolden's testimony before the house space subcommittee. The large increases for technology research isn't just for the sake of doing research. It is to establish technological capabilities to make future use of in space transportation and human exploration.

Blakey Calls for a U.S. Space Strategy

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., April 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a speech today, AIA President and CEO Marion C. Blakey asked President Obama to lay out a clear strategy for human spaceflight with concrete timelines and goals when he comes to Florida for a space summit this week.

"In 1962, President Kennedy didn't say we'd go to the moon today; he said, this decade," Blakey said at a meeting of the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach, Fla. "Despite the financial troubles that lapped at his feet, President Kennedy stepped up to the challenge and urged us forward, with a goal and a vision and a plan. Today, a lack of urgency and specificity will not sustain the vision and, as we know, where there's no vision, the programs -- and the skills and workforce that go with them -- perish."

President Obama is scheduled to speak Thursday in Florida on the future of the space program.

Blakey insisted that America needs specific metrics for a concrete commitment to human spaceflight beyond low earth orbit, including clear goals and milestones. Shifting the focus of human spaceflight programs is not necessarily a bad thing as long as the main goal is keeping America strong and in the lead.

"We require a roadmap for the future, with milestones along the way and a sense of urgency that space exploration is important to our country and proclaims in clear terms that this is who we are as Americans," Blakey concluded.

Founded in 1919, the Aerospace Industries Association represents the nation's leading manufacturers and suppliers of civil, military, and business aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aircraft systems, space systems, aircraft engines, materiel, and related components, equipment services, and information technology.

Reply to Lowly Contractor:

Lowly Contractor, thank you for your reply.

I guess the modus operandi was set when President Kennedy said the words "Moon" and "decade," and ever since then people have demanded a destination and a time frame.

The problem is, on a large program (Moon, Mars, etc.) I don't believe that anyone, or any group, can determine a time frame that is even close to the truth (+/- years) because of the complexity of the unknowns; so every program is going to slip on schedule and budget (especially when programs are generally bid optimistically in order to get the contract).

One advantage I saw in an "overall game plan" made up of smaller programs is that the smaller programs can be executed, in a logical order, as each year's budget allows -- things may get delayed, but nothing completed gets thrown away (like has happened with so many previous NASA programs -- fund it for years, then scrap it before it's done).

If the overall game plan has been constructed properly, then each finished small program is a useful contribution to the future.

That just leaves the problem of taking money from one program and giving it to another, which seems to me to be the major program-killing culprit over the last 20-30 years.

I'm a Canadian, but I've been following NASA since Freedom 7. It was my understanding that once Congress passes on a budget plan (whether as is, or modified) it essentially has the effect of law, and no one, not even the President or Congress, can simply ignore it and move the money around as they please. Yet this is what NASA under the Griffin administration did repeatedly in order to try and keep Constellation alive. And I saw no evidence of any consequences for this, and no action taken to stop it from recurring. Technically, they broke the law with impunity. With all of the oversight that NASA is subjected to, how did this happen? No matter what the future course of events is, I would say that this definitely needs to be fixed.

I believe that the new R&D plan is a good move, but there's so much relevant information that I'm simply not privy to. I'm trying seriously to understand how things got to this point, and whether there is a "way out" that will actually get NASA, private space companies, and the rest of the world onto the "space path" that humanity needs.

Thank you for taking the time to help me out.

Steve

What would you like President Obama to announce ? What would make you happy ? Mars in 25 years ? A colony on the moon by 2035 ?

We had an announcement by the last President, endorsed and accepted by the last NASA Administrator, that we would be on the Moon again by 2020, maybe even sooner.

It was meaningless.

It was a waste of money and time, and people and jobs, and now, thanks to those two, we are about to throw away everything the US program has worked towards for the last 29 years; we are about the waste the Shuttle program.

Fact is you have not a clue of what would make you happy. You just whine and complain.

Before we could send a man into orbit in 1962, we had to figure out what were the critical things such a mission would require, and we had to fly the mission unmanned.

Before we could carry out Apollo, we had to define the requirements of a moon mission: 100,000 lb to the moon; a two week mission; re-entry from 25000 mi/hr, rendezvous, docking, spacewalking and a functional spacesuit...

What now needs to be done is to assess and determine what we need for a Mars mission. Does it require a base on the moon ? Does it require 3 year missions ? Does it require artificial G ? Does it require adequate radiation protection ? Doe sit require nuclear or some other form of power or propulsion ? At what levels ?

The last bunch, more than five years ago, accepted the idea of a mission to the moon and the best they could do was an Apollo repeat.

It is time to lay out a reasonable plan. We know the budget, somewhere around 1/2 to 1 % of the federal budget. Now we need to develop a reasonable plan to get us there.

I understand what is in the budget but that is not the issue. The issue is what is NASA's mission? What role do you envision for NASA going forward? That makes a huge difference in evaluating the merits of the current budget proposals for NASA. Again I haven't heard any discussion from NASA leadership that NASA is changing to a R&D organization and by definition, abandoning it's role in executing missions. In fact they take great pains to say they are not abandoning leading missions out beyond LEO. So given that statement I have to consider the current budget proposal a failure because all that R&D is occuring in a vaccum and won't lead to an actual vehicle or system to go anywhere beyond LEO. Also any arguement that this plan is ok because it is just taking NASA back to being a R&D organization is invalid because that is not the stated goal of the administration. Or maybe it is but they aren't willing to be upfront about what they really want to do because of the political cost (see Obama's first plan for NASA during the campaign).

So I"ll say it again that if these new technologies are goign to be used in a future vehicle then why not create the program to build the vehicle and do the techncology development inside that program so that you get something you can actually use. My guess is that if you do that in any realistic way you will see that it costs as much if not more and takes even longer then if you fully funded Constellation. So any future vehcile will face the same issues of either requiring increased funding for NASA or having to be slipped or cancelled because we can't afford it.

"It was my understanding that once Congress passes on a budget plan (whether as is, or modified) it essentially has the effect of law, and no one, not even the President or Congress, can simply ignore it and move the money around as they please."

Depends on whether you are talking about budget proposals or appropriations and how the money is actually appropriated. Budgets can be approved with guidance on how much money should be provided and where it should be spent but those are just guidlines. The appropriations bills actuall fund the programs and put the money into specific funding lines. Depending on what type of funding line is used the executive branch may have no discretion on how the money is spent or complete discretion. An example from my Navy flying days
is that the funding line for aircraft fuel and could only be used to purchase fuel, however our parts and supply funding could be used to by parts, flight gear, or office supplies as decided by the CO. Another was R&D money that we got ofr doing flight testing could be used to fun anything we choose.

So my guess is that any reallocation of money done inside NASA was consistent with the authority provided by Congress within the appropriations process. If it wasn't the loosing organizations would have been in front of Congress and the press exposing the illegal activity.

Looking at the technology demonstartion programs I wonder why we need a standalone development program for two of them. DARPA has already demonstrated in flight refueling with Orbital Express proram as has the Russians with Progress and SM on ISS. Russians also routinely do automated rendezvous and docking so it is not like these are emerging or immature technology needing extensive stand alone development.