Keeping A Cancelled Rocket Alive

"NASA itself also appears to be hedging its bets that the president's vision might not pass muster with Congress. KSC officials and contractors are pressing ahead with plans for test flights of a multibillion-dollar Ares I rocket that Obama wants to cancel."

Wouldn't it be illegal for NASA to do otherwise? Is this just bad reporting by Mark K. Matthews and Robert Block?

Dont they by law (via language in their appropriations bill) have to stay the course on the program of record ?

Obama is paddling upstream against some powerful forces. I don't mean the obvious ones, I mean that NASA isn't just another federal agency. It's an entity that defines Americans and even the entire human species. It makes leaps that are arguably evolutionary in scope.
I don't think that is "new age" or spiritual thinking either. So please don't accuse me of that. I am as unspiritual a person as you will find.
Simply life has power like many other forces of nature, it has transfrormed this earth unquestionbly, it expands outward and spreads. NASA is part of that. Obama is going against the grain of things larger then even the presidency.

FWIW, it looks like Boeing is pushing its SD-HLV In-line concept now.

Need to let common sense prevail here. If the time frame is a issue, then go the path of least resistance which is Shuttle derived HL. Things are already in place, just need to put the pieces together....quit trying to re-invent the wheel, just improve on it. Garver and the rest of the so called space visionaries are trying to stifle 50 years of NASA gains with slogans i.e. game-changing technology,bold new vision etc. They also tend to discount that we have already been to the moon...lets not go there again. Yea, we planted a flag and kicked some rock around....did we do anything substantial ? Lets get up there and do something tangible before China, Russia and India make it a outpost and pull some stunt on the world population. To do this we need HLV and Shuttle to keep our ISS safely operational and the HLV to get us to our next decided destination (Moon). Then we can let commercial clean the windows...maybe !

I have a question Geo: If the time frame is an issue what massive unitary payloads need to be launched by the Shuttle or SDHLV that can't be launched using EELV or even a Proton. Moreover isn't this a chance for the IPs to 'pay their way' by launching more HTVs and ATVs.

"Garver and the rest of the so called space visionaries" are putting forward a radical rethink on the BFR paradigm forced on WvB by the Moon Race and adopted by MDG for his "Apollo on Steroids."
I would suggest you inform yourself on the value of Propellant Depots, the cost benefits of Soviet style mass production and OASIS style architectures.
At the same time improvements in robotics and the negligible time lag between Earth and Moon means that we don't need Boots on the Ground.

Unless of course this is just a plea for American Exceptionalism and a need to relive the glory days when America was still 'winning' hearts and minds.
Perhaps that's what this is all about: 'rocket envy' and re-inventing an all American RD-180!

Hum, CessnaDriver, I think you should really focus on driving your Cessna... NASA as an evolutionary agent?

Whilst the pursuit of mastering outer space as a place to live and to use for its resources is of course a common concern of humanity as a whole, it does not follow that a) American participation in it is more vital than others on principle (rather than as a part of the overall activity); For all the Apollo program the Russians still lead way ahead in terms of numbers of launches, for instance, and b) It follows even less that NASA or more specifically the particular Constellation program is the only way to go on about it.

In actual fact, on the face of it the programs looked at by the new plan (detailed in a previous post) look far more into the direction of next-level expansion of presence than the Apollo on Steroids...

Wouarnud.

NASA does not define as many people as you believe. Most do not believe this re enactment of past glories is worth the cost in the age of trillion dollar deficits. I for one am writing my representatives to kill this retro program.

They also introduced an inline shuttle derived version for shuttling humans into orbit that doesn't use SRBs which could be a game changer for privately launched manned space vehicles.

If both the heavy lift vehicle and the people shuttle both use the same core and the same rocket engines, then this could help to drive down cost.

And if space tourism for the wealthy and space lotto winners takes off with perhaps dozens or even hundreds of manned space flights every year, then this could drive down the cost of the core vehicle and its rocket engines dramatically for both the commercial vehicles and the heavy lift vehicles.

Marcel F. Williams

I am interested, Bernie. What form of space program can you support?