ESMD Gets Back To Basics

Keith,

Exactly. President Obama's budget reads like Craig Steidle's revenge. Somewhere in Annapolis an aero/astro professor is softly chuckling, while another in Huntsville is screaming. I know which one I'd rather take a class from.

- Jim

Steidle is a solid leader. I would love to have seen what could have been done under his leadership.

It makes no more sense to have a NASA with an under-emphasis on human spaceflight than it did to have a NASA with an over-emphasis

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2010/05/lyles-new-nasa-budget-harms-human-spaceflight.html

Amen

dancin in the moonlight, everybody's feelin warm and bright

Keith,

I have been wondering what Steidle has to say about the current state of affairs. Please review my past posts regarding this mater.

ex_navy also chimed in. An interesting subject (to me) was being discussed in a dying thread. I won't repost but look it up if you care.

Others are welcomed to comment.

..and 10 years ago ala Sam Venneri/Dennis Smith/Steve Isakowitz through the Space Launch Initiative (SLI) program.

Tech dev/demo is definitely needed if only to reduce risk...but NASA has a difficult time keeping it sold on the Hill. It isn't sexy and there's no vehicle..or destination. Spread the funds over as many appropriation states as you can.

I'm sure that there are NASA technologists that think it would be really cool if they could use tax dollars to work on the five sets of technologies listed here. But wouldn't it be novel if NASA first asked the public what kind of human civil space program we want?

My recollection is that Steidle wanted to shrink NASA to 200 CS and give all the money to industry using the (failed) DoD model of system development and acquisition. Had we followed his plan we would have even worse cost overruns than NASA's normal (and unacceptable) ones.

"Imagine if NASA had followed that path."

It is very easy to imagine what would have happened. The lack of a product from Steidle's endless spirals and the technologies with no mission had Congress ready to defund the VSE after the first year. It was Griffin's establishnment of a goal, product and schedule that got Congress on board.

We are right back in the middle of the Steidle-era peril. Human spaceflight has no product and no plan. What do you think Congress is going to do in FY12?

True enough.

I never really did like the spiral of spirals approach for development, however I really hated the steroids injections.

It is sad NASA has to learn (education) all over again.