Video: Remarks of President Obama at KSC

I sat I watched as he talked about how committed he is to human space flight I listened. Although it sounded to me as if buzz had written his speech. I liked what I heard on the in general but lets be honest its easy to make promises if your not around anymore to help implement them.. I mean come on 2015 is the best you can do ? then whoever gets elected in 2012 god forbid a republican then everything he said today was for nothing. So I take it for what it was.. I speech from a politician trying keep his constituency and his voters happy. I personally think the Orion concession was to keep a few extra jobs and to say well at least we can evacuate our own people now.

It appears that Obama wants to wait for breakthrough technologies before going to the asteroids and Mars. Ok but, I don't see the problem in establishing a HSF Program Office for these destinations right now. It would certainly cut down on the long-term planning by at least a decade.

Also, Buzz really enjoyed having his name mentioned a couple of times today.

What did he accomplish that he couldn't have done from the white house months ago with this speech?

Seems like a flyby to me.
He boogied out of there pretty fast to get to the big democrat fundraiser. He could have stuck around for hours and toured all the incredible stuff and meet and greet the grunts that make NASA happen.

Oh well.

Congress is what matters now.
It's obvious little will change there because of this.

Seems like a photo op flyby to me, considering there was no interaction.

He did clarify the 2015 HLV design choice date which was helpful. On the other hand the tired been there done that argument against Moon visits makes sense only if you expect to do nothing more than get more rocks for return to Earth. Which is of course ridiculous; people were hoping to use the moon as a springboard for the colonization of the solar system.

Much still remains to be seen. There are too few specifics. Personally, I am curious as to what space transportation tech they will want to explore.

Honestly, this is the exact same act that ever President who has ever spoken about NASA has done. Sure, it has a few new twists and a different spin on an old dream (going to Mars), but the result is going to be the same.

Like Constellation, The ISS, Space Station Freedom, the Space Shuttle, Apollo Applications, and even Apollo itself, the next administration, intent for some reason to put some new spin on wherever this plan is in 2013 or 2017, will chop it up, move the pieces around and hand the American people yet another new plan that they say will eventually pay off sometime in the future.

Call me cynical, but as much as I'd love to see Chang-Diaz engine propelling a truly deep space manned vehicle, or a Ares V-class heavy lift rocket that would be required to build it actually being built, I don't see either happening for just this reason - this country's inability to formulate a plan and stick to it.

Honestly, this is why the United States is getting its clocked cleaned on everything from foreign policy to economics to infrastructure while third-world countries like Brazil are surging. We've forgotten how to design and them execute grand strategies. They're thinking long term. We have truly become a culture that only lives in the now. And look what it has gotten us. Decrepit infrastructure. An educational system in perpetual need of fixing. A NASA that is no closer to its next step in 2010 than it was in 2003.

Will this plan get human beings to Mars one-day? Probably. So would have Constellation. So would have DIRECT. So would have George H.W. Bush's plan and a 1970s-1980s Apollo follow up. Given enough time, resources and money, they all could have done it. Sure they may have been different in scale, scope and time frame, but the end point was the same.

It be nice if there would be a congressional and presidential commitment to - for the love of god - stick to one plan until it's fully executed. But I rather doubt it.

"Frankly, we've been to the moon before ..."

Yes, and the other day a friend gave me a ticket to a Baseball game. It was great, I saw one inning and a guy from our side hit a homerun. I left then, since now I know all about baseball. Turns out that our team lost after all. Now when I asked my neighbor about going to the superbowl he looked at me kind of funny. Now he gives sports tickets to the young family down the street.

We have not really been there for any significant amount of time.

Silly boys.
Fred: "So I take it for what it was.. I speech from a politician trying keep his constituency and his voters happy."
...and to pitch his program for the first time, perhaps? You know, to convince people? The previous sales pitch was a dry budget document. Don't you think a speech would be a better approach? This was it.

ChuckM: "It appears that Obama wants to wait for breakthrough technologies before going to the asteroids and Mars. "
Yes, naturally. It makes better sense to buy a bicycle before going cycling, to invent aircraft before going flying, to invent... oh, you get the idea.

I think there is an aspect to the Orion concession that seems to be overlooked. The chiefs at USA were getting antsy about a fixed price contract for providing commercial launch services and there buy in is critical for getting congressional support. But NASA can't do anything for USA contractually that they aren’t doing for SpaceX/Orbital, et al. SOOOO... NASA re-designates a skinny Orion as a crew escape module to be hauled to the space station by a Delta 4/Atlas 5. NASA pays for the virtual completion of the Orion, and the fearing for the ELV's. So USA' coasts and risks are cut to a point where they can agree to a fixed coast contract. They absorb the cost of man rating the EELV’s and upgrading the Orion avionics.

Looks to me like KSC is the big winner over JSC and Marshal. Then again no big surprise the president Isn’t getting any Texas or Mississippi electoral votes anyway.

Obama's plan is all about getting some place nobody's been first (flag planting), not going some place and doing something after getting there.
It makes sense to go to Luna first to develop and mature technology while going to the asteroids, Mars and beyond.
With Obama's entitlement mentality and deficit spending record, none of this will happen.

So we've gone from "We chose to go to the Moon,"(Kennedy) down to "” Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before.” (Obama)

That pretty much says it all as far as what Obama believes the New Frontier is all about. I guess he wouldn't have made that 'Louisiana Purchase' if he were president instead Jefferson. Besides we had plenty of land already in the US:-)

Marcel F. Williams

..."ChuckM: "It appears that Obama wants to wait for breakthrough technologies before going to the asteroids and Mars. "
Yes, naturally. It makes better sense to buy a bicycle before going cycling, to invent aircraft before going flying, to invent... oh, you get the idea"

No, frankly I DON'T get the idea. The president didn't walk to Miami after the event because he's waiting for a "breakthrough" in aircraft technology, he got on his mid-1960s era design 747 and flew off without seeing the irony.

I'm getting beyond sick of this "breakthrough" BS. This administration is playing on the "where's my flying car" attitude so prevalent among the space "enthusiast" community.

Grow up! In engineering form follows function, especially in aerospace engineering.

Show any random person off the street a picture of a 1957 707 next to a 2009 A340 and ask him which is the "newer" airplane. Odds are 50-50 he/she will pick the 707 as it's a sleeker, but similar looking aircraft.

So: re-inventing the Russian RD170 (at twice the price) will give us a HLLV? What?

We threw away the Saturn V.
Now we are throwing away the SRB/ET/SSME

We threw away NERVA
So now we're gonna play in the sandbox for years pretending the nation will pay for a TWO-HUNDRED MILLION WATT space qualified nuclear electric power system for VISIMAR (on steroids)?

Oh, and then there's the "fuel depot" canard.
I'm old enough to remember "Men Into Space" "Tankers In Space"...I have a DVD of it now. How utterly Orwellian to tag HLLV and high energy upper-stages as "backward" somehow.

I've just had it with all the lies, distortions and narrow constituency groups.
My moment of Zen came when Obama with the school kids were interviewing the ISS crew. After two ISS crewmen dutifully repeated, at length, the party line about studying the effects of zero gravity so we can "some day" travel to other planets, an 8 year old girl (from Nebraska as I recall) asked the obvious question "when are you going to make artificial gravity?" The answer was a quick "well we could, but the spaceship would have to be really big...next question".
I hope she was a plant from the Mars Society.

Oh well, centripetal acceleration and tethers are just wild theories.

We're getting the space program we deserve. How pathetic.

End of rant.
-SJ

OK...

I am willing to bet anyone here that 5 years from now all of what was said to day will be for absolute naught....

So... 5 years from now... I will even give it 6 years...

The majority the following will have taken place:

a. We will be relying on the Russians to take us to LEO and to the ISS (or may still be launching the space shuttle in a very limited scale),

b. The commercial efforts to launch US astronauts will be in an untested mode and no astronaut will have ever gone up in one,

c. We will have gotten bogged down in research regarding a HLV and will not be even close to making a decision about it,

d. There will be no Orion-lite ever launched,

e. Any sort of Beyond Earth Orbit manned spacecraft will be just designs with no major development taking place,

d. All of you Obama space policy supporters will be wondering why this set of decisions was ever made,

e. the VAB at KSC will be virtually unused for a significant period of time (except for the occasional shuttle launch),

f. The Chinese will have significantly advanced their efforts to land on the moon,

and

g. Most of the NASA workers and aerospace workers that used to be involved with the program will have transitioned to service industry jobs or to food service-type employment.

Papa, I agree with you about buying the bike first. What I am implying is that it makes more sense to establish a Program Office so that its engineers can work with technology developers to provide the best "bike" possible. Doing this will reduce the long-term planning for missions to the asteroids and Mars by at least a decade.
The manner in which Obama mentioned the development of new tecnologies sounded like poor program planning.

Finally, I don't buy obama's mid 2030s milestone for landing on Mars. As a nation we could do it in 10-12 years if the political will and required budgets existed. But then I am not in charge:)

"I predict five years from now there won't be any ____"fill in the blank.
Oh yes, let's declare defeat and sob now. Waaaa! Waaaa! That Obama, he didn't give me what I wanted. Bad man!That'll inspire the next generation.
As someone once said, we're going out into the solar system. the rest of you naysayers and gutless wonders can stay behind and wait for the sun to expand and eat your lunch.
And when we wave bye bye we'll be riding Elon Musk's Falcon XXX.

I think the ONLY reason that Orion super-lite was added back is because of the argument that the US needed a human space transport program; that we dared not go forward with no program.

Fact is there is no need for it at all. Either you are with Obama and the rationale he stated today, that US industry can do as well or better than Russian industry in providing a vehicle, or not.

Fact is, if left to LM, they can do the job and probably do it quickly. Based on the recent Constellation experience, if they put the same NASA people, or the same sort of people (similar background and inexperience in development), in charge, then its unlikely this will be flying by the time the next President takes office in 2 years, and it will likely go the way of Orion-1, since there is no need for it, and since b y then one of the commercial suppliers will be close to operational.

The real concern is that we have a HLV largely ready to go today; minimal cost and schedule to get a Shuttle derived vehicle ready. Thanks to really stupid NASA management for the last several years, the country is about to flush it away. In 2015 everyone will wonder how we could have been so stupid in 2010 as we are trying to regroup.

Great.... $18 Billion a year that produces nothing but studies and viewgraphs. It takes Obama another 5 years just to decide on a heavy lift launcher, (well, it did take him 5 months to decide on what dog to get his kids so I'm not surprised.) We could have built Shuttle-C in the 1980's when I was at Rockwell International when the concept was first studied. And why can't we start building the Ares V today? Oh wait, that's "old technology" let's sit around with our thumb up our... to come up with "new" technologies.

It's about hardware folks, that's the end result, that's all that matters is what's flying. Let's build soemthing for our money instead of never-ending studies. Billions and billions, years and years before anything gets built. But wait, if you re-elect Obama, by 2015 he promises to "decide" which HLV to build... and you trust him to keep his word just like he for Constellation? Suckers!

And about Obama's "been there, done that" comment in justifying giving up the moon to be developed by other more adventurous nations? It's about the Real Estate and who own's our closest neighbor and the military high ground! The moon is a territory for those willing to develope it, utilize and sell it's resources, build an infrastructure and set that territory's future laws. Do you think the Chinese after spending their money to do so, will just let anybody stop by without a passport because of the plaque we left on the leg of a lander? Do you think the UN has the backbone enforce the laws of the Outer Space Treaty if another nation establishes a military presence there to enforce its will? Laughable if it was not such a serious subject.

You can laugh now, but the nation who spends the money to develope the moon is who in essence "owns it". I don't want to spend billions and years to fly out to a rock, I want our nation's legacy, laws, language and traditions extended closer to home and can be seen in the evening sky. Red Moon Rising? We just saw the first steps in that direction today.

"As someone once said, we're going out into the solar system. the rest of you naysayers and gutless wonders can stay behind and wait for the sun to expand and eat your lunch."

Pretty harsh language. Yet I totally agree with it. I've never seen such a bunch of whiney-butt people who are part of the problem rather than being part of the solution.

To them I say, "Dudes, we are going into space and into the future. You're welcome to come along if you want to but, to be honest, it won't hurt our feelings if you don't."

Peace & Out

The first fatal accident that the Falcon suffers during its growing pains will result in 99% of customers choosing a reliable Russian rocket. Then the term Space X will have a new meaning:-)

Marcel F. Williams

LOL

NASA has a Direction now. The idea is THINK! The old thought is follow the paper instructions! I could not be happier on TAX day!

NASA will move forward now, no more steroids to rip off other programs to fund the MOON!

I think you mean a Russian Angara-5 heavy lifter...

:)

That's precisely what the Flagship Technology Demonstrators Program is for, as I understand it.

You need to learn about the budget process, Obama doesn't have a deficit spending record. FY09 was Bush's budget and the record $1.4 trillion deficit is his. FY10 is Obama's first budget, and you can start blaming him after that. Even though it is ultimately a result of Bush's reckless policies, as of the end of this fiscal year you can start pinning it on Obama. The only Bush disaster worse than the economy was his space policy. But now we have a chance to fix that.

Really? That's the argument you are going with? Fine, take your toys and leave this sandbox.

I am duly impressed, sir. You could give my 13 y.o. nephew a run for his money in online exchanges. Unless of course you were trying to be funny, but.. I just don't know. Doesn't seem that way.

NASA's most important two jobs, arguably, over the last 5 years were (1) get Orion flying to and from ISS; as much to establish the HSF foothold on a new program to replace Shuttle and (2) communicate for the benefit of all why we were going back to the moon (a long duration base supported by ISRU and expanding over time.

NASA failed miserably on both counts. They got wrapped around the axle on Orion and Ares. Literally they were chasing their tail-for years. They forgot what they were going for and started getting wrapped around the exploration/science axle. They couldn't explain what they were doing and why to anyone; they forgot why they were doing it, themselves.

What was ludicrous was the ancient astronauts of Apollo coming forward this week to try and re-establish Constellation. Why would we reestablish a program that was not doing the job-could not do the job.

The logical step that would have led to a cohesive protest to the Obama plan was to save, temporarily, Shuttle, in order to derive from it an HLV. This capability is needed for the nexty 15-20 years for ISS. It will be needed in the future for exploration.

The Obama argument that the decision was made long ago holds no water. The decision had also been made long ago to abandon ISS, but we're not doing that.

Make no mistake, Obama is killing the Shuttle capability, just as 40 years ago, the US mistakenly killed the Saturn capability. In five years it will, once again, be like starting over. The Constellation huggers have killed much of American human space flight.

We can hang on to ISS as long as we can count on our international partners.

But without the Internationals, US HSF is dead. And the current NASA management along with a former Administrator was responsible for killing it.

OK, first of all, you people clearly didnt get the memo, it is not Orion, it is Oreon. Which is apparently a vehicle made of Oreo cookies. Presumably so that in the event of the astronauts having to flee station, they can live off of the spacecraft itself for up to 6 weeks.

That being said - what is wrong with you people that speech was an endless litany of lies.

He went on and on about Buzz Aldrin and how great Buzz Adrin is. Hey Mr. President, where's Neil Armstrong, where's Gene Cerna? Where's Jim Lovell, where are the other 27 astronauts, mission directors and program managers from Apollo who signed the 2 letters you received a few days ago? Why were they invited to your rah rah rally, only fans need apply? Oh yeah, because that is the way you operate, dissenters are never welcome, god forbid we should have those in a democracy.

So besides the endless litany of lies starting with the endless claim of increasing NASA's budegt by $6 billion. I like the part where he said "the last time I was here I made a very clear promise that I would help in the transition into a new program to make sure people who were all ready going through a tough time here in this region were helped"

Whoa - revisionist history - just watched that speech a couple weeks ago, I believe it was a promise to accelerate the Constellation program and the next generation launch vehicles and a promise that not a single job would be lost on the space coast - and they lapped it up. Now it is "I would help with transition"? And that help come in the form of 2500 jobs where 14000 are being lost, and most of those 2500 jobs are construction jobs? WTF? And they are lapping it up again.

There is so much more I would like to say, but why bother the Obamabots will continue their litany of he is all wise and powerful be silent heathen republican (which btw, I am a democrat). I think I'll write an editorial instead.

But I will just say this, am I the only one who saw the EXTREME irony and absurdity in his proudly proclaiming that he is extending ISS for 5 or more years and then saying 5 minutes later that there is no reason to go to the Moon because we have been there before? Well does that mean hopefully they will cancel dancing with the stars because Buzz has been there before? Look for the silver lilning boys, look for the silver lining.

I also noticed that the speech published at spaceref.com is not complete. It does not contain his exchange about Kosmas in the beginning nor the one later in the speech. I dont know what else may be missing.

BTW - *love* the picture at the top, I thing it is truly demonic.

This might seem like a flame reply, but I swear it’s not. I just want to point up some things that might help the level of communication on this blog. I am a recovering politician so I am careful with words. Notice in my post I use words like “I think” followed by my speculations that use words like “seems to be” or “Looks to me like”. While you begin your reply with “I think” then you follow with words that sound like rock solid assertions of fact “ONLY”, “Either… Or”, “Fact is”. Your comments like my comments are speculation. Some of them convincing to me, some not. Please watch your use of words. It matters.

Here is what “I think”. The President is first and foremost a politician and a good one. I am a
politician. Many of my friends are politicians. As a politician in office, he is interested primarily in what he can get done to put his mark on American society in a very difficult situation, and getting reelected in 2012 (not necessarily in that order). BTW this is his job, this is what our system wants and needs him to do. It’s not my fault if it’s not the way civics was taught in your high school. I would worry about him if he had any other motives. I am not worried about him.

His goal today and everyday is to get what he wants out of congress while giving as little credit as possible to the opposition. Yes he could have done a Shuttle derived HLV, but that would cost more money than he wants to spend and it’s not his. Keep in mind that only his 2011 budget really matters and that not so much as you might think. Everything else is pie in the sky by and by. The likelihood is that there will be no authorization voted in congress (primarily because of the press of business). So we will get a continuing resolution sometime late this year, which is a continuation of the 2010 budget… hmmm. The presidents priorities will show up in the 2012 budget. Neither you or I know what will be in that.

To a politician the one interesting and sort of new thing that matters about the presidents “vision”, is the fact that doing and funding big things in little pieces makes it harder for future Presidents to grand stand by canceling the prior Presidents big program. That is a big change I can believe in.

I also think that we need an advanced technology hydrocarbon engine. To get larger payloads into LEO more cheaply. I don’t think using Russian rocket engines in an Atlas 5 is a good idea. It’s really not good for our space industry. That’s probably what they mean by HLV development. What is an HLV? You can classify about anything as an HLV compared to a bottle rocket. Their making the decision in 2015? Gee a year before he leaves office! What a coincidence! Doesn’t matter, whatever gets built, if anything, won’t cost much on his watch and it won’t be his anyway. President Clinton can then do with it what she can;->

I thought Michael Foale was very good in the breakout panel he was on. Too bad he can't run for President. :)

http://www.nasa.gov/mp4/444955main_iss_panel2.mp4

I don't think it matters what SpaceX or Orbital does, they aren't likely to win the big money.

With their experience, record of success, and deep political connections, the old guard is likely crowd out any competition.
Maybe it costs more to play with them, but they offer more and the public is going to be hungry for progress in the post Obama era.

While I thought it was nice of the President to say he intended to be around for the next manned moon/mars missions... I wonder why he didn't just put in motion himself instead of waiting for his successors to do it.

America has had a space program for about a half century now and after achieving the incredible accomplishment of putting men on the moon, we have spent decades in LEO. We were never going to break out of LEO with Constellation, the way it was designed. If we continued with Constellation, we would have been lucky to plant a flag on the moon in a few decades.

IMHO, NASA has become too much of a jobs program, overweight in managers and depends too much on cost plus programs. We need the competition that companies like SpaceX can bring and the fact that if commercial companies take over LEO supply and transport, then NASA will be able to concentrate on the truly exciting adventure of reaching again beyond LEO.

Will all commercial companies survive in a competitive space market? Of course not, but I believe that SpaceX not only will survive, but that they will one day be held up as a model of cost effectiveness that other companies will try emulate.

I know that I am damn glad SpaceX exists and if they can bring down costs to LEO, then they will have been instrumental in helping our country to reach out beyond LEO, in a sustainable manner.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what we are supposed to study for 5 years before we decide to build an HLV. I just don't get it. Is that 5 years to write a requirements document? Is it to design the system architecture? I just don't get what I am going to be doing for the next 5 years.

Actually, you cannot say this. You have no proof of what will happen or even when it will happen. NASA has had three fatal accidents and clearly, the last two accidents has effected NASA in that they cannot take risk. They are so adverse to risk that they are stuck.

Did England, Spain, and Portugal call it quits when entire expeditions were lost at sea? Nope, they kept pushing.

This line of thinking is the same arrogant, dogmatic, haughty attitude that come from space elitists who insist that only NASA approved vehicles carry astronauts into space.

The truth is we have no idea when Falcon 9 will carry a crew at all. Additionally, if and when a LOC event occurs with Falcon 9 and Dragon it will be investigated and corrected, much like Challenger and Columbia.

This whole line of irrational thinking is puzzling coming from the engineers and leaders who are supposed to be leading our nation into space.

RS327

PS Fred, I want a president who gives a damn about our space program. I do not want a president who does a drive by at KSC so the DNC doesn't have to pick up the tab for the 30,000 dollar a plate fundraiser that President Obama is attending. Convenient, isn't it?

So... if an Orion Lite is posted at ISS, that eliminates any need for Dragon, et. al. to be space-worthy for a full six months. A Dragon will fly in -- drop off new crew members -- and promptly take old crew members home using the same vehicle. Thus, the presence of the Orion capsule simplifies the environment for the companies that'll be providing taxi service.

Plus, Orion will facilitate an increase in the overall station crew from six to seven.

These things will be accomplished courtesy of an investment that -- for the most part -- has already been made.

The whining is making less and less sense.

Well Frank, I guess I'm going to join the naysayers and gutless wonders club with Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan. But before you swallow the black capsule, and see just how far down the rabbit hole goes, please answer a couple of questions for me.

Why are we going to take 5 years to determine the architecture of the next HLV? Hasn't that already been studied to death multiple times? Hasn't this nation already built an HLV or two? Didn't we already test fire a 5 segment SRB? Aren't people workin on the J2X right now? What game changing technology do we need to build a 120 mT to LEO vehicle? I remember watching one lift off when I was 10. As my dad would say "JM&J snap out of it."

Why do we need to build the Orion ultralight; other than keep the Udall's happy? Certainly not to go to Mars, because the Yugo version that they want to build will have to be beefed up significantly for that august mission.

I'd call that idea Project Mirage. It's supposed to happen sometime in the distant mid 2030's. I humbly suggest that you and I will be in our dotage and perhaps diapers before that happens. Trust me, the closer you get to this fantasy, the further it will receed into the mist.

By pass that boring old Moon, and off you go to Mars! Ugh! Talk about the Roanoke colony! You think we're going to send people over 60,000,000 miles away thru interplanitary space to a hostile environment without having actually lived a few years outside the magnetosphere of the Earth. Oh let's say somewhere like the Moon maybe. Where, if you get in it up to your neck, you're only 3 days from home. I bet Jim Lovell would have an interesting perspective on that one.

But none of this is really going to matter anyway, because this is all just "pie in the sky" BS. Have you ever read anything this science advisor has written about his thoughts on human space flight?

I listened the President sounded a lot like another president when he told us mission accomplished. "No one is more committed to human space flight than I am." Well maybe, but you might want to ask some of those naysayer and gutless octogenarians, what a president that is committed to human space flight looks like. Because they were the last ones to see one. He asked questions, he wanted to know the details, he wanted to see the launches, and he burned their ears off wanting to wring them dry of information on the subject. If they think there's "Something Rotten in Denmark", you should probably pull your head out of the ostrich hole and look around. The crew you're hanging with may not be your friends.

Look, I want America to remain the #1 space faring nation, but we're not going to get there by wishful thinking. If America wants to continue to lead in this field, we need to appropriate adequate amounts of funding over a defined period of time, and commensurate with our $3.8 trillion budget. We need to build real hardware, and go to real places like the moon with some regularity, and learn to survive there. And yes, we need to do all this while we also invest in technology research and development. Yes, we will have to learn to pat our head, and rub our tummy at the same time. I know its hard, but you get what you pay for, and the exploration of an environment as hostile as space is going to depend on the government for the foreseeable future.

Boy, wouldn't it be something to compare Obama's speech with the Vision for Space Exploration announcement! "Unlike in the previous administration, a plan with specific and achievable milestones." Constellation had specific milestones and, conceptual flaws notwithstanding, there is reason to suppose they were achievable. I call as witness the pages of explanations offered up as comments on this site every time it missed a milestone; claims of bureaucratic feebleness and failure of leadership presaged the collapse by too long an interval to be attributed to sour grapes (or Monday morning quarterbacking). Well, maybe these new milestones will be more easily achievable. Of course, we need those "breakthroughs" to come in on schedule. That "existing technologies" tactic is what doomed Constellation from the start. The government will provide the "resources" to make the breakthroughs happen, so naturally they will happen. "We can't keep doing things they way we've been doing." I agree, the cycle of promising, mismanaging, and canceling in synch with the election cycle has to stop.

i ADMIT TO BEING SICK AND TIRED OF ALL THIS BELLYACHING. No matter what Obama does somebody whines about it. no moon? boo hoo. A HLV? taking too long. Asteroids? Why not a comet. And on and on it goes. Don't point your finger on me but at those who call defeatest before the first shot was even fired. They crucified poor Obama before he even stood up to explain.
It's time for us all to come together to get this program moving. We got Mars. What possibly more could any sane person ask for during a recession???

A sane person would ask for the Moon as it is much more doable. We didnt get Mars we got a fantasy and a bag of lies. Get this program moving? What program? The unmanned Orion on the expendable vehicle that has no destination and no purpose unless we are abandoning station? Poor Obama???Maybe it is the fact that it took him 10 weeks to get up to speak after the budget was announced and took him 17 months to talk about space at all. Or maybe it was the fact that the budget was announced 4 months after Augustine published their final report. Or maybe its the fact that the augustine panel was started 6 months after he took office. Or maybe its the fact that an administrator was not chosen for 7 months or any of the endless other excuses for the delays about the policies and why there is no policy yet, and why there is no administrator yet and why there is no this, that or the other yet. They are making this stuff up as they go along and it is painfully obvious and THAT is why we are frustrated. 17 months since he was elected, over 14 months since he took office. Seem to recall a report by the GAO that the Shuttle Program transition to Constellation Program was one of the top 10 issues the new president/administration needed to work on when he took office - apparently, he didnt think it ranked very high.

I also called it that he would mention for the billionth time his annoying grandfather's shoulder's anecdote. I did not however, see the annoying Tang joke coming.

I totally agree, Frank!

This is the first US President (and, yes, I include JFK) to set up an interplanetary path, milestones, and timeline for human exploration of Deep Space. Not just missions to the Moon, like in the 60's, but how we go beyond, and into the Beyond. This is a major, historic, day in building the future of the human species, as Elon Musk has said. We need to come together and make this happen. The pessimists and naysayers can stay behind, and not be involved in the future of our species, but the doers need to come together, and get us out into The Black.

I hate to say it but I guess I agree with JonathanN's rather Pessimistic view.

I didn't hear anything in this plan that makes me think the NASA organization, as it has existed for the past 20 years, can produce the most important results the president spoke about. NASA needs a mission, It NEEDS a destination, IT NEEDS a schedule, it needs a budget, and it NEEDS consistent leadership. This speech, and the presidents "plan" provides only money and almost no mission or leadership. Oh I forgot the about the mission starting in 2025, it may as well be 2125.

Unfortunately, I do see is lots and lots on conferences, papers, studies, videos, simulations, and of course fancy multi-media presentations in NASA's future, based on what I heard from Our President.

Mr President, NASA is a Science and Engineering organization and its heart. These guys are smart, many are really smart at, and this is important, what they do. Studying and thinking is an important step, but it should be a relatively small one. And it's one that NEEDS to be limited by leadership. These guys need to build to a clear goal, a mission, a destination, a schedule, hell even a spec.

Give these guys up to 5 years to study an HLV and it will take 6 years with everyone wishing they had just a few more years to get it right. We have several good workable HLV designs now. OK, lets take 6 months and decide what our needs our and the build the one that is closest.

With on orbit re-fueling, we can explore plenty right now, using just old fashioned chemical rockets (with aero-braking). Yes, I know you can't aero-brake at the moon, nor do you need too. A lot of what you claim you want to do can be done with out a "leap into the future".

Your speech, Mr President, just seems to kick the bending of metal down the road and that, to me, is sad.

Mr President, unless the NASA organization can be fundamentally changed, rocked at its core, this plan will most probably NOT get US space explorers to MARS before we kick the bucket (we are about the same age). We will see tourists orbit the moon before US explorers get there.

And just so you know, it takes an incredible amount of hubris to say, "been there, done that", about he surface of the moon. Buzz Aldrin, one of my personal heroes, has hubris to spare. I guess he figures he was there so that box is checked off for humanity. Don't jump on board that band wagon, it makes you sound like an idiot.

Handing over human LEO transportation before either of the of the companies have shown they can reliably move cargo is a giant leap of faith and is extremely risky. Let's see them move cargo a few years, OK ?

I can agree with many of what you call goals. I call them wishes. But Sir, wishing for a vibrant human exploration program does not make it so, no matter how much money you throw at it.

I sincerely hope I am wrong. mfm

Frank, I'm with you. I'm tired of the whining and temper tantrums. But we're getting much more than Mars. We're getting a commitment of support for commercial space development far beyond COTS. We're getting the possibility of an open frontier, if we can keep it (to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin.)

It's becoming more clear that President Obama will get his program through Congress. Making room for Orion nailed down support in Colorado, Florida, and elsewhere. If California, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, and Mississippi haven't figured out how much they benefit from the new program, most of them soon will. The Congressional question is how soon the program passes and in what shape.

The broadly relevant question now is how we can help the President's program succeed. What changes or developments would strengthen the program? That's what I want to discuss from now on.

I have a question for anybody in-the-know behind the WH-Hdqtr scenes (but not if you're just political blathering):

NSF has a pretty lively discussion going on and I thought I read that there's actually a method to the lunacy madness.

It's apparently that the Obama policy is a veiled political stunt intended to appear as if they support HSF but actually punting the responsibility for sucessful implementation results to a future administration?

The political strategery being that he gets to take the credit down the road for the concept & inspiration if it succeeds, but doesn't have to take the blame if it fails, because it'll be another administation's fault for bad implementation (sorta like CxP implementation failure#?

Then, thought I read there too that Garver specifically is against Shuttle extension for fear of accident. #At least that's supposed to be their story and they're sticking to it, for today anyway#.

And the Merchant 7 is an especially clever political crapshoot, since actual commercial human flights wouldn't likely occur until a future administration also. So again, they also might get to take credit for success, but none of the blame for future failure?

They also punt Shuttle extension responsiblity on Congress so they can't be blamed for any potential accident.

Does anybody really know if that's accurate?

If so, doesn't sound bold, brave, or inspirational and if true, wouldn't they be concerned about a failed MSL, during launch or later, too? #Or is it going to suffer technical glitches for the next 7 years).

Then there's apparently some ranting from Homer Hickham about university research slush funding or something?

Frank: I used to respect much of your writing, in spite of sometimes having differences with your opinions. But I do not respect name-calling, yelling, and immature rhetoric ("boo hoo"? you actually wrote "boo hoo" as an argument?) My respect may mean nothing to you; at this point in the reduced level of discourse, that wouldn't surprise me. So it goes.

warp: You (and Frank, in an earlier post) need to make up your minds. Do you think "[WE} need to come together" (presumably by shutting up dissenting voices), or do you wish to have those who have a different position "stay behind"? What makes you think we intend to stay behind?

If the path into space turns out to go through the Moon, and some of us follow that path, will you be content to have tourist rides to LEO on the Merchant 7, until the sun "eats your lunch", or might you want "us" to invite you along and be a little more open-minded to dissent than "you"?

And might you all be a little premature in praising Elon Musk as an independent, although his current path to success depends very heavily on US tax dollars?

Warp, thank God folks like you make some sense! You are RIGHT on! Instead of whining about the 30 percent we didn't get (Shuttle extension, runway landers) we need to start fighting for the 70 percent we got-or else we may wind up with 100 percent of nothing! And FWIW I propose we call the new booster....Nova!

I really only have a simple question for NASA to answer: How long will the US be dependent on the IPs for crew launch? Plans for BEO are fine and good but, in a year's time, the US won't even have crew and ISS cargo launch capability to LEO without the help of IPs. That leaves a very big first step to take before even thinking of deep space.

I think that, without a target date for commercial crew launch, the risk is that it will remain 'in development' in perpetuity. I think that it would be advisable to give them a deadline and also develop the Orion-Lite/EELV as a backup. It seems that NASA is deliberately risking a long HSF stand-down in order to guarantee a starter market for commercial crew launch.

As matters stand, the plan appears to be "throw money, wait and hope". I hope I'm wrong but that is the impression that I've got.

Some rather disjointed thoughts are emerging from my muddled brain this morning:

NOT EVEN A FREEKING BONE! This Obama guy is a serious power freak. I can't imagine any of his "advisers" having a problem with adding a couple more shuttle flights, there aren't any really strong arguments against it. This seems to be perversely personal and will be perceived as such by many. I'm afraid that that might be the point of his actions.

Frank, we got nothing but paper. A continuation of NASAs modern legacy. But it is very expensive paper and we paid for it so it must be good.

And the paper will be delivered to the Beltway gods and the Beltway gods shall bless the papermakers.

It kind of sucks that the "commercial" sector is the only real way out at this point. NASA is abandoning their own hand-trained drones and getting a new boyfriend to do their bidding. I hope the new boyfriend realizes that that new purse they are eyeing is attached to some pretty seriously damaged goods.

The nature of entrepreneurs is to identify and produce something that people want and then move on. Whats to prevent Mr. Musk from selling out, especially when he gets sick of it, (it's coming, believe me) maybe even to the Chinese? The government?

The "been there" statement was ridiculous. How can something like that get through the reviews?

It really is an insult to those who worked on Apollo to get to the moon. All that effort, all that time away from the family is now minimalized as "been there, done that, got the t-shirt". Listen to any of the Apollo veterans and they'll let you know just how tough a job it really was.

It wasn't the only part of the speech I had a problem with, but it was the most egregious!

Bullying comments like Sietzen's really have no place. The fact of the matter is, the moon is close, it is strategically and economically important, it is on the way outward, we can get there for the long haul. We need to be there and really haven't been there anymore than Columbus had been to all but a tiny part of the America's.

"I'm still trying to wrap my head around what we are supposed to study for 5 years before we decide to build an HLV"

Why chasing propulsion unicorns of course.
That may or may not exist.

Remember the original Obama plan was to delay NASA plans five years and spend it on "education"?

Thinking back, we all now Columbus, Magellen, Lewis and Clark and Capain Cook all would have postponed their plans waiting for the next big thing right?

Right?.....

I'm all for R&D of course.
But my God! This is insanity.

Let's explore by not exploring.
Let's save NASA human spaceflight by stopping NASA human spaceflight.

It's Orwellian.

That is why you see the great legends of space exploration rejecting this so strongly.

You really have to be under the Obama spell to buy into this rot. Or of course a CEO of the Merchant 7.

Warp

I'd put down the Obama-ade if I were you.

Perhaps you can point out the physical hardware that will be built in the remaining Obama years that actually gets us out of LEO under the Obama plan?

Oh, there will be none of course.
Yeah, little details like that I tend to notice through all the campign promise type rhetoric.
We all know what that's worth now.

ORION was going to get us out of LEO of course. And that hardware exists today. But hey, Obama wants it to be an escape pod for ISS now.

It's a *fatal* plan. That is straight from Story Musgrave.

We haven't heard the last from Armstrong and all the others. I bet some wish they would just go away or be like Buzz and "see the light". Congress will not sign on to this.

There will be much more "compromise" before this is over. Mark my words.

And Orion will survive as a BEO crewed vehicle.

Frank, we have had Mars before several times and those proposals were no less solid than this one and yet they never materialized. Even the asteroids are 15 years from now, given the presidential/congressional elections and budget cycles between here and there it is no way a firm path. flexible yes because at anytime it can be cancelled on a whim. what are the tech milestones to know we are ready to go past the moon? What are the specs for the mission? for the HLV what are you trying to put in orbit (fairing size/mass) you may say the tech will drive the architecture but honestly if I am trying to build an engine module do I have to get it inside a 25,000 lbm/ 5m fairing envelope or 10,000lbm/3m cause the answer and development are going to be different. There is barely any more detail now than when this was rolled out Feb 1.

agree and I think Time magazine summed that comment up best: Obama did declare firmly that there will be no return trip to the moon. "We've been there before," he said. "There's a lot more of space to explore." Of course, when you've landed at only six spots on the moon, all within hailing distance of the lunar equator, and the Apollo 11 exploration covered an area barely bigger than the infield of a baseball diamond, it's not too much to suggest there's a lot more of the moon still left to explore.

Warp and Frank, even though the plan is likely to cost my wife her job (she still works at a major contractor that will be experiencing big layoffs because they have been retaining people to support shuttle ops and those heads are now definitively going away) I'll come aboard with you guys - as soon as I see the R&D moneys disbursed and put to use on REAL R&D that looks likely to result in hardware rather than powerpoints.

I was in the industry long enough to live through SEI, ALS, SSF, Shuttle-C (Was I jazzed when we worked on that mockup!), Shuttle-Z, NLS, NASP, X-33, X-34, etc, ad nauseum. I've seen, like many of the "whiners" here, scandalous amounts of money vaporize in studies and research over the years without seeing anybody cutting metal for flight hardware.

Do you think people in the industry WANT to be doing make-work? Many, perhaps most of them, have true passion and dedication to getting humans off the planet. It's hard, and it requires skills that ought to at least allow people to earn a living wage and buy luxuries like, say, a house. If they are skeptical that this change in direction will result in a true transformation, it might be because they understand that most in congress have an engineering IQ approaching zero and they have regarded NASA programs, when they considered them at all, as jobs producers - period. So, will these politicians just transfer funds to more conventional-looking pork in an election year, or actually go along with Obama's plan (which I dearly hope acquires some focus and a sense of urgency) ? I'll wait and see on that hurdle, then hope for the focus. But I need to be convinced this course change is really going to be executed properly.

By the way, Warp, I absolutely agree that RD-180 powering one of our two DOD launchers is a terrible idea, both from a national security standpoint and from a national industrial base POV. During the early EELV era, around 1995 IIRC, Rocketdyne was an unsuccessful bidder on the domestic license production of RD-180, and several of us manufacturing engineers were in a meeting to discuss what infrastructure changes this might entail. I laughed out loud at one point, and when asked why, I'm afraid I was honest and told the room that we were operating in fantasyland - no way was RD-180 production ever going to happen on US soil. Simply made no sense for the Russians to allow it, and delay and obstruction would suffice to insure that Atlas V was operating with us dependent on them with no ability to produce the system here, and no real leverage to force the issue. Even then, I don't think anybody believed the high flight rate models we were seeing for EELV, though were were fired up as we worked on those first RS-68 development engines.

Anyway, it is true that organizations like Rocketdyne ARE national assets, and it isn't because of the buildings and their contents, it's because of the unique, specialized knowledge and experienced residing in the brains and hands of their people - and their passion. These people generally don't think of their jobs as suckling at the taxpayer nipple - they are genuinely dedicated to mission. Please give them credit for that. We're poised to lose much of that painfully-gained knowhow, and factors like the RD-180 choice loom large.

In Rocketdyne's case, many of those folks are heading out the door, taking their skills off to unplanned early retirements or other jobs, because we can't seem to work an orderly transition between spaceflight eras. Most of them won't be back in the industry, since they will be established in their new lives before any new hydrocarbon engine program progresses to the manufacturing phase. Frankly, having had my heart broken once when I was laid off, there's no way I'd go back.

I'll tell you something, though - We always had the ability to produce engines at lower cost if we froze a design and built some numbers, but squeezing out an SSME or two a year plus a trickle of RS-27s wasn't how to do it. We found the advances and relative simplicity and producability of RS-68 exciting even though we recognized that we would be shutting down entire sections of the old manufacturing plant that would no longer be needed. We were ready to do it, knowing that we'd lose a fair number of our shop force through retirements, but with enough younger folks weaned on SSME and RS-27 and moving into key slots on RS-68 and stuff like the X-33 aerospike engine and ready to carry the legacy forward. Too bad that moment has passed and those people are moving out of the industry. Replacing them isn't impossible, but it will require a very costly learning curve. A coherent national space policy could have avoided this.

After a night to think about it, I'm even more with Frank and warp. All you nay sayers, take a vacation from your funk, and look at some possibilities. First, if ULA enters the market, successful commercial transport to LEO is guaranteed. Just look at the record of both EELV families with an honest mind and try to come to any other conclusion. This is a test.

Once you have efficient transport to LEO, then a BEO transport system gets you on the road to any where that that does NOT sit at the bottom of a gravity well - Lagrange points, asteroids, small moons, etc. The changes you need for different destinations are incremental and evolutionary - faster propulsion for this one, longer system life for that one, etc.

BUT to get into and out of each gravity well needs a completely separate major system development project. What works for the Earth's moon won't work for Mars. So let's bring in international partners for each gravity well project to cut our own costs while still reaching the destination. But, get this, we would still control the interplanetary transportation system! And it will will be expensive enough that we're unlikely to have peer competitors any time soon.

O'Neill warned us about gravity wells, but I didn't realize it would become a decisive design consideration this soon until I thought about the separate architectures.

Meanwhile, the growth of our commercial enterprises in space should produce the volume to drive our unit costs down and ensure we don't get serious price competition, either.

I'm liking this more and more.

The fact of the matter is we are not going back to the moon except robotically. Ain't gonna happem. And unless our Republican friends want to restore the POR with an extra $6 bil a year just for it, won't be happening under a change of administrations either. get used to it. Mars via asteroids and Phobos is what's in.

I think, IMHO, I'm allowed from time to time to vent a bit. Everyone else gets that chance, so i'm taking it, too.
Nobody should take it personally. I am fed up with much I read and hear about this sea change in space direction. Respectfully, i'm not the one who is ":boo hoo"ing about this monumental change(s).

"Honestly, this is the exact same act that ever President who has ever spoken about NASA has done. Sure, it has a few new twists ... but the result is going to be the same.
... the next administration, intent for some reason to put some new spin on wherever this plan is in 2013 or 2017, will chop it up, move the pieces around and hand the American people yet another new plan that they say will eventually pay off sometime in the future.
... I don't see either happening for just this reason - this country's inability to formulate a plan and stick to it.
... Given enough time, resources and money, they all could have done it. Sure they may have been different in scale, scope and time frame, but the end point was the same.
It [would] be nice if there would be a congressional and presidential commitment to - for the love of god - stick to one plan until it's fully executed. But I rather doubt it."

But hey, look at the bright side, The Stick is Dead! Yeahhh!!

PS: Yours was perhaps the best post I've seen in weeks.

First I found the whole speech to be distasteful. The President struck me as petulant and offended that he had to even come to KSC and defend his program. Also found his comments regarding Constellation to be delibertly misleading at best or outright lies at their worst. That said let's look at what he proposed.

Commercial Space Flight? I think this is completely misrepresented. This is not a commercial crew program but the government just choosing a different contractor, different vehicle and a different ops concept (LEO only vehicles instead of one vehicle for both LEO and BEO). Can they do it? Yes but it will take much longer then they are promising. I haven't ever seen a realistic development schedule on this forum. Will it be cheaper then Orion and Ares 1, yes but that's because it has significantly reduced requirements and I fear they will cut out testing to save money (even NASA does this but commercial will have even more incentive to rationalize away the need to do testing).

Orion crew rescue? My guess is this became necessary when the Merchant 7 realized they were going to be expected to provide crew rescue function as part of the requirements and didn't want the expense and schedule impacts which would dely their IOC even more. So they squawked to the administration and got the requirement removed by this slight of hand which also helps the President politically but saving jobs in Colorado. Operationally and technically it doesn't make sense to have two different vehicles that are capable of doing the same functions but it does make sense politcally. I am curious where the funding for doing the Orion super lite development is going to come from since that hasn't been idnentified and the PResident didn't indicate that he would boost NASA funding even more to do it. So overall it's acceptable.

HLV design decision by 2015? Still unclear to me if NASA is going to actually create a HLV Program office now and start working on the design for the Presidnet to sign off on in 2015 or if we are going to just do disparate R&D till then, look at he state of technology in 2015 and then decide if we will start the program office and vehicle development effort. If it is the first then you might have usable vehicle by 2025. If it's the latter it will probably get killed off in 2015 or even sooner. Even if it isn't killed off you won't have a HLV until 2030 under that scenario. Personally I am agnostic on the need for a HLV. Seen plenty of other proposals for ways to do BEO without HLV. Far as I am concerned just pick one and go build it instead of studying it to death. Also given these realistic schedules doesn't look to me that we get back to BEO any quicker then the POR.

Asteroid 2025 and Mars by 2030? Going to these places first is a bad idea. People keep fogetting that we no longer have any experience in doing BEO space flight. The point in going back to the moon and building a permanent settlement is to develop and test under real life conditions the ops concepts, flight rules, and hardwre requirements for doing BEO operations. You do that first on the moon that is only 3 days away so that when the inevitable anomalies occur (because you don't know what you don't know)you have a good shot at getting your people home and not killing them. The arguement that we have "already been there done that" is ignorant,shows a lack of understanding about our BEO capabilities, and shows a profound lack of understanding of the risk that they are asking the first crews to accept. Finally to make the dates proposed by the President you wouldn't be able to go to the moon as part of the build up. First flight is to an asteriod. This plan strikes me as Apollo on caffine instead of Apollo on steriods in that it is another boots and flags mission, just to Mars instead of the moon. So I think this part of the plan is bad and extremely high risk.

Technology Development? 2 of the 4 proposed programs (inflight refueling and automated rendezvous and docking) have already been demonstrated so why do we need to do R&D? Just build them into whatever follow on vehicle you want. The others are fine although.

Overall I don't find this plan to be signifcantly better or more sustainable then Constellation. It won't provde BEO capability any quicker then the POR would have. It has some serious flaws and a lot of programmatic risk of being cancelled in the future. I haven't seen any discussion about what roles international partners could play (Russians already now how to do automated rendezvous and inflight refueling). However if we can start the HLV development right away rather then waiting 5 years then we might be able to pull this off despite it's flaws. Best support I can give this is that it's better then nothing.

One more comment on going back to the moon. We have the technology to build and operate a research station in Antarctica year round, surely we can do the same now on the moon. We can build our experience and develop our techniques and requirements in parallel with the R&D work that is going on for the Mars mission. That way when the hardware is ready to go then operationally we will be ready to go as well.

"We have several good workable HLV designs now. OK, lets take 6 months and decide what our needs our and the build the one that is closest."

Better yet, why don't we just keep building the one we are already building?

Not only is it part-way done, there are already advanced improvement parts coming down the pipline from the R+D part of the agency, such as stitched composite structural parts.

All of which we are about to throw away. (See previous post.)

Michael Buffer to the crowd:

Let's get ready to RRRumble !!!

President Obama to NASA:

Let's get ready to get RRReady !!!!

Sigh.

mfm

"I've seen, like many of the "whiners" here, scandalous amounts of money vaporize in studies and research over the years without seeing anybody cutting metal for flight hardware.
...
In Rocketdyne's case, many of those folks are heading out the door, taking their skills off to unplanned early retirements or other jobs..
Frankly, having had my heart broken once when I was laid off, there's no way I'd go back."

Exactly. And it's not just Rocketdyne, I've heard the same thing is going on with people in other areas, at other contractors - the best young people are leaving, while it's still easy for them to do so, before they have kids and a mortgage. And it doesn't take a layoff to do it - have 5 years of your productive life thrown down the drain with no real outcome, and it's pretty upsetting.

"even though we recognized that we would be shutting down entire sections of the old manufacturing plant that would no longer be needed. We were ready to do it, knowing that we'd lose a fair number of our shop force through retirements, but with enough younger folks ... ready to carry the legacy forward. Too bad that moment has passed and those people are moving out of the industry. Replacing them isn't impossible, but it will require a very costly learning curve."

People are willing to give a lot when they think they are really going somewhere (look at Apollo, the time and energy everyone, at NASA and the contractors, put in). And the best and the sharpest are willing to give most of all. Take away the destination, and they all head for the exits - there are other ways to change the world.

"Rocketdyne was an unsuccessful bidder on the domestic license production of RD-180 ... no way was RD-180 production ever going to happen on US soil. ... dependent on them with no ability to produce the system here"

True, but having had them close up to study, and flying them, will have been useful. Not as much as bulding them from scratch, knowing what materials to use, getting the fabrication processes, etc. But better than not seeing them at all... A lot of times in technology, knowing something is doable really is half the battle.

Constellation was not without problems, few people liked its architecture of a solid booster first stage rocket. Much Apollo and shuttle heritage technology was used, not for technical reasons, but due to budget constraints. Developing a program with new technology costs more, so Constellation was making use of much of the experience acquired during past programs. Its critics view it as just a resurrection of the Apollo program. In the President's own words, we need to "not only look at revising or modifying older models but look at new designs, materials, and technologies". What engineer wouldn't support developing a new design? According to the President, however, Constellation's major fault was not having realistic expectations within its allocated budget. This is precisely the fault of his new plan! New designs cost more, not in studying them which is what the president's budget supports, but in actually creating them. The new role of NASA, according to his vision, is to do research. The vastly more costly and complicated part, a development program, will be dealt with in the future. The logic is that studies and research would show us new ways to do things cheaper and more efficiently, but cost in the aerospace business has much less to do with technology than with processes and procedures.

What does all of this mean? Most people support the development of commercial space travel, the disagreement is whether we should place all of our bets on it. Our leadership in space very much depends on it. With the space shuttle retirement and Constellation shut down, the question is what is the aerospace industry to do next? The highly skilled workforce in rocket propulsion, launch operations, and aerospace technology, already strained due to the retirements, could easily diminish below a critical capacity in the coming years. This is not about saving jobs, this is about saving irreplaceable technical skills and experience, without which a new development program in the future would be vastly more costly and inefficient. If we cannot afford a program like Constellation now, in the era of massive government spending, what hope is there that in the future we would make such commitment with new (and likely more expensive) technologies and an inexperienced work force?

Even better Noel. But hey, let's study it for 5 more years, maybe we will discover anti-gravity by then.

When is that next presidential election again ?

Bush at least (and I am no Bush fan) gave NASA a mission, he just picked the wrong guy to execute that mission and then ignored NASA.

Can't we just say the moon is up for grabs. Like a homestead thingy or something. Give folks a chance at gain, maybe some will take the risk.

Such drama here!
I chose to be hopeful, A demonstration in 5 years of a inflatable space craft is truly exciting and kick start Bigalow.
A demonstration of a tanker and fuel depot in the next 5 years is truly exciting,it might kick start the EELV/ACES folks and there commercial and DOD customers.
A new hydrocarbon engine in 5 years will mean that it can be shared with a human EELV heavy lifter and the commercial/DOD
someone over on that other forum posted that the Russians where right on with Energia, a modular heavy lifter who's CBC's are "commercial" launchers. this post reminded me that Energia looks so much like the idea of a shuttle ET with Delta-IV's as CBC's, A shuttle/EELV hybrid.such a large HLV must wait till 2015! why?
IF fuel depot/tanker/inflatable hab works...........
you do not need a HLLV! or if you do it can be that super EELV that lofts just a bit less then 100 MT to LEO. the president did announce a goal, Flexible path and I would have preferred if he had stated say Phobos by 2030. Flexible path offers a unique opportunity to join in common cause the space science community and human space flight community's. we can start with a international very large telescope at a Lagrange point,it would be designed to be human tended and operated in part by humans collocated with the telescope.Properly funding both the telescope and the space station at the lagrange point would excite the public but also would join human space flight and space scientists in that common cause in seeking funding for this endeavor.Repeat this at Phobos with human/robot exploration

Just brief words of support, Frank, for your welcome islands of lucidity amongst a morass of innuendo, propaganda and negativity; not to mention: bad spelling, punctuation and grammar! I for one will not be bothering to riposte, even to some of the most outrageous statements of 'fact.'
Alas it would seem that America is in the process of tearing itself apart fueled by a MSM that delights in disinformation. It would seem that MiniTru is alive and well and on cable.

If the posters here, they know who they are and the Astronauts of yesteryear cannot appreciate the new paradigm of exploration afforded by Deep Space Vehicles. "Away team missions" conducted by tele-robotics. The necessity of closing the life support loop. And the 1001 technologies we have to master NOW so we can go THEN. Well so be it. It is their loss. 1999 AO-10 is looking pretty good to me!
"Let us not speak of them - look and pass by." Dante Inf. III 51

ex navy, footless and Noel,

If you put your three posts together it pretty much says it all, IMHO. If you stitch these stories together some accurate extrapolations may be possible.

The point about the lack of vehicles in 2011 is quite interesting and cooberates something I heard a little birdie say.

There quite possibly are entities being positioned to hoark this windfall as we speak. It's the "Can't let money go unspent, better to waste it than lose it" mentality we all know and love so much.

I wish these guys were as good with rockets as they are with budget shenanigans.

whats most fascinating about arguments here and on other forums is that almost everyone is adverse to any kind of compromise.
even compromise that appears in aerospace cooperation reports that appears to me to have some engineering and cost engineering data is for the most part ignored by most folks on the many forums out there.I will post these documents when I find them but when people respond to them it appears that the document was not read.
Are engineers not schooled in the scientific method?
you read a document and comment on passages and refute or agree with them with your own comments backed up with your own citations or references to other documents.A moderator on another forum removed my inline text of the ED Crowley MIT white paper of 9 April 2010* with out messaging me as to why (stealth editing)when I discovered this I was told the inline text was not understandable to the readers
* http://web.mit.edu/press/images/reports/space-report.pdf
I am confused, I now my grammar is not the best, or spelling, but a MIT paper by members of the Augustine Commission released days before the Presidents speech? why would engineers have problems reading a document such as this?

I wish my stepfather was still alive! he was in the 1960's an engineer involved with the early EELV's he knew his "customer" was a space probe or a DOD payload, I never heard him discuss a competitor or some other engineers work with such disrespect or derision as on these forums be they NASA space flight or watch or unmannedspaceflight
(when it comes to humans)
watch this
http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/aeroastro/videos/4840-the-future-of-human-spaceflight-the-augustine-report-and-its-implications

A history of space flight, but not only from an engineering point of view but history, you must watch about half way through.

"Developing a program with new technology costs more, so Constellation was making use of much of the experience acquired during past programs. .. In the President's own words, we need to "not only look at revising or modifying older models but look at new designs, materials, and technologies". .. According to the President, however, Constellation's major fault was not having realistic expectations within its allocated budget. This is precisely the fault of his new plan! New designs cost more, not in studying them which is what the president's budget supports, but in actually creating them. .. The vastly more costly and complicated part, a development program, will be dealt with in the future. The logic is that studies and research would show us new ways to do things cheaper and more efficiently, but cost in the aerospace business has much less to do with technology than with processes and procedures."

Exactly. And to top the irony, the program he killed had more advanced technology (hydrolox, composite engine bells, etc) than most of the commercial programs that are notionally replacing it.

Brobof, your kind words are most appreciated indeed.
Under the original plan of the VSE, the moon was to be but a testing ground for the kind of advanced technologies that would be needed for more distant missions. Remember Bush actually said "in situ" resources? But as costs climbed, the moonbase became the central focus of Constellation. Advanced technologies were sacrificed and nobody suggested testing anything there, because there wasn't any money left for them. Under a more sane world- the Wernher Von Braun approach -each step along the way would build upon the other. But in our world, we became stuck on Luna.
Obama is right-there are plenty of more interesting places to journey to in space. Let's then go there.

I agree with you on a lot of things Noel. JohnathanN's post was excellent, and so was Obamanaut's. Sometimes we forget that despite our opposing views, almost everybody who posts here wants to expand our frontiers in space; just the ways and means differ. But there are others in DC, in both parties, for whom this is strictly about political advantage and CYA.

Can we agree that heavy lift is a good thing? That it is easier to build complex equipment in California or New York, on a factory floor, than it is at L2; at least for the foreseeable future? How much more quickly could we have built the ISS; or Buzz's Deep Space Transport system if we hadn't given the Saturn V the deep six? I know, talking about Ares I sends people into status epilepticus around here, but what about Ares V? We are already far along in development of most of the key components for it. Why is the President intent on shoving this off into some never-never land? My God, 170mT to LEO! That's new or replacement modules for the ISS, a Hubble II,or preassembled on orbit fuel depots, or the capacity for large scale fuel delivery, or large complete components of a deep space vehicle, that won't take 15 years to assemble. Did you watch the astronauts struggle with that ammonia tank? I'd swallow almost anything else they want to do as long as the keep building the HLV that we are already working on. That's the long pole in the tent. If we design, build and test the system; and if we are smart enough to maintain the capability to produce it; then everything else can flow from that.

I'm sure there are many people who will love to tell me why I'm wrong. I wait with bated breath.

True it is that this isn't the first time a President has asked for Mars. What makes this time any different? If Congress funds the program as it is proposed, the raft of technology research all aims in that direction. Every bit is (or will be we hope) orchestrated to support humans to deep space. And I think there is a fatigue factor we haven't discussed. If Congress is persuaded to support this plan, it makes a radical change or shift further down the road less likely. Everyone on both sides has spoken about their concerns about stopping and restarting the space program. It may be thatthey actually support one approach and then stick with it, even if they don't wholly support everything in there. if you believe in manned spacerflight, then you just have to support humans to Mars; otherwise close down the whole thing. While using the moon as a stepping stone makes sense, it doens't have the funds to do that and the more distant missions. Yes we need more details-one shouldn't expect the whole baby to arrive with diapers and a basenet and college tuition. Patience my friends. Same as true for heavy lift. It won't take five years and everyone knows this. i think they are being cautious. And if a refuelable upper stage is desired, we could see a Block i and 2 approach as was used for the Apollo CSM and was proposed at one point for the Shuttle.
I'd be inclined to give NASA a bit of a break. The turbulence over there must have been thick enough to cut with a knife with everyone shopping their own ideas. Now they have to vfold it all into a cogent plan. They can do this.

I wasn't being condesending, I was being nice. i guess you don't know the difference, but with such a negative attitude I can understand why.
The Augustine panel, since you wish to quote them, said that to bring Constellation on track, fully fund Ares V and Altair needed $6 billion more per year for the next five years to catch up. But while it found no technical barrier to the POR, it strongly suggested the money could be better spent on Flexible path. So called because it could support multiple destinations in deep space using the same equipment. A lunar lander and a lunar base is spent on, well, the moon.
And yes, patience is needed. Unity is needed, too.
Your graceless, tactless and classless attitude towards any form of consensus approach to the space program is testiment to our problems today, not the prospect of solutions.
You're entitled to your opinion; I am entitled to mine. Senseless negativity isn't a rationale for progress, and yes you are right about one thing: you are no friend of mine.

Nothing worse than a whiner whining about whiners. You just don't like to hear any other opinions than your own....just like our leader. I've never heard the use of the word "I" and "..the previous administration" than this guy.

Frank, I'd kill this thread. It's become a hangout for some of the most negative people who post about our space program. The have absolutely nothing of value to contribute.

Mr. Nobles, thanks for your advice and observation. I'll cease playing their game with this last post.
The space industry isn't known for cohesiveness. But if anything is to emerge from these difficult days, all of must put aside our differences and disagreements and work together for the future of the effort we all love.
And thanks again for your post.

Some of us may be negative in your perception but we're not clueless or in denial of reality. Cheerleading is a pretty shallow advocation.

"those who might still be a little more open-minded and a little less dogmatic"
lol no rilly I lolled!

It's not a conversation when people keep *on* repeating the same baseless assertions about the "gutting" of human spaceflight & etc... When they can't see the subtleties of Frank's comments: pearls of irony... it's not surprising that they can't see the subtleties of the FlexPath: pearls of wisdom...

Bullying? Try a reading a few threads that allow Thomas Lee Elifritz posting rights!

The only thing that is subtle that is going on is that the government is subtly taking your money and subtly not delivering any value. Some people can see through this charade, other not.