Its Getting Harder To Stop Constellation

Another gravely serious concern.......

"Asked if the group could threaten to slash the NASA budget in other ways to protest the cuts, Sessions did not rule it out.

"I don't know what the threats will be. Things could develop in that way," Sessions said"

This is GREAT NEWS! Our Human Space Flight Program and Constellation may yet survive thankfully.

Work has already stopped.

Some people have already cleaned out their desks and checked out. Jacobs will have it's final list of cuts June 29. Everyone affected will check out by June 30.

Seems like a stalemate to me. There are 435 members of congress so if 65 want to prevent demise of Constellation, there must be just as many, both Republicans and Democrats, who feel otherwise. And we are back to the same problem, there might be the political will to keep it alive at current funding levels, but not the will to fund it beyond that to fully fund the program to get these rockets done. So while nobody gets laid-off, we still end up with a minor flag planting display.

Would that mean that the ISS will be forced down earlier than necessary to make room in the budget? That would suck. We just got the thing completely built.

Without ISS, where does Orion (on a Ares I?) fly too?

Then there are all the other programs that I don't want to see cut. The next generations of space telescopes. Probes to Europa and so on.

Political stalemate or not, at least SpaceX is still making progress, getting contracts for more private/commercial launches, making a profit, despite whatever Musk's personal finances might be doing. So when I read in the Orlando article the "we are concerned that other countries will forge ahead of us, challenging our space dominance as we literally cede the higher ground to our foreign competitors" it is SpaceX that is taking the commercial launch business back from Russia, who had forged ahead and been dominating that market.

What if we get our Amercian HLV, but it isn't Ares V? Will that still placate the politicians? What if we achieve our higher ground on Merlin 2's?

I predicted to a senior person at an unnamed NASA center that if the ended up in a fight that what would happen is that in November when a republican leaning, deficit slashing congress came into power that NASA could end up with a $14 billion per year budget.

Looks like they are well on their way to making this happen.

What a joke NASA has become.

Instead of scientists, engineers, and explorers arguing about what to build and what planets to visit, politicians concerned about jobs in their home state get to decide the fate of the agency. As long as jobs are preserved, they couldn't care less what NASA does. How will anything interesting and with a reasonable cost ever get done like this?

In the meantime, SpaceX makes lean, sound engineering and management decisions and produces rockets for a fraction of NASA's budget.

If the Constellation jobs program continues in this absurd manner, it will be the end of NASA. Maybe it's too late anyway.

When the Falcon 9 took off, my heart sank. I realized what a completely incompetent agency I had been so enamored with for so many years.

Looks like they are well on their way to making this happen.

A last desperate roll of the dice?

"Work has already stopped."

Isn't that a bit like arguing against commercial manned space because work has not yet begun?
In the case of constellation there was a good bit of equipment, staff, and infrastructure already existing or in the works. Even a resumption of shuttle operations in full is only a matter of budget (granted, it would be horridly expensive to restart).

What happens in November could be a real crapshoot.
The end problem will be that space is a minor issue when it comes to politicians. Those who support it do so because its happening in their state.
When its no longer happening, is there enough residual support for a commercial space program of similar scale to what NASA has now?

When the cheerleaders have been silenced and the remainder vary between "its too expensive" and "don't know, don't care" the end result could well be an across the board cut.

The unfortunate reality is that Constellation wasn't spread out for technical reasons, but because that is what it takes to retain the needed political support.

I would guess the opposite. Republicans will try to correct Obama mistakes that Americans aren't happy with which this is definately one of them. Second, this money deal with national defense, at least that is what they say which gets reported all the time and republicans are pro military. Third, this govt money is employing people who want jobs, republicans target welfare, unemployment and programs that help people who don't want to work.

What part of 'not a viable program without a $3B/year infusion' do these 62 of the 435 House members not get ?

If Congress wants to alot of $ to go nowhere it actually makes alot more sense to extend Shuttle then to continue Constellation. Although insane in expense and lacking in purpose, atleast you get a definite capability in a relatively near timeframe and we get to keep ISS going through 2020. With Constellation you don't even get a definite LEO capability until 2019...and with the ISS in the Pacific, what's the point of LEO in 2019 ?

Who is the "they" that is well on their way to making this happen? Who fault is it?

At my level of NASA nobody cares anymore about what we do. We just want to know what to work on and to quite wasting time arguing.

Ah, news to US Congress . . . it is already too late! Constellation is DEAD! Too little, and still late!
Subcontractors with Lockheed have already received notices that they are done. We are expecting to receive budgets to get us through the fiscal year and that the numbers will be '0'. There are layoffs everywhere, MSF, JSC, KSC, Denver, etc.
Now, do you think that as an engineer with a home that I am going to sit around and wait for Congress and the Administration to get off their collective butts to make a decision and bring me back to work?! Hell, no, I am going to find a job to pay my mortgage so I don't lose my house and be able to pay my medical along with all the other essentials like food.
Those of us who have worked hard up to this point, our attitude is now screw NASA because of their attitude towards contractors. Besides they can't seem to get their 'heads' out of their butts long enough to see they have no direction. No wonder they can't provide Congress with their budgetary plan, they simply don't have one!!!
This situation is pathetic and abusive!
I am sorry to say that my country no longer has ANY leadership! Let's not just talk about NASA.

Hello Dennis.

That is not a completely impossible scenario, indeed it might be becoming the default "drift" no matter what happens in terms of Obama's (or whoever put it together) space policy.

First I see nothing that says Obama is not going to get Constellation canceled, he is going to get his way on almost everything in terms of the direction NASA is going. In my view "heavy lift" is looking more and more like "growth versions" of the Atlas and Delta which is also nicely what the DoD wants. But that aside.

Just as none of the opposition forces to Obama's plans have been able to articulate either a single alternative OR A REASON FOR IT...sadly the Administration (and the Administrator) have been almost tone deaf in articulating the baseline reason for a change in direction at NASA.

The Administrator speaks and says (to paraphrase) "if we go my direction we go to (insert destination here) faster etc"...and yet there is no real political support to go to (insert destination) outside the beltway or inside the administration (or any potential one)...no where does any supporter of the new direction make the case that this empowers American industry, could bring the commercial launch industry back to the US, perhaps generates tax revenue not spend it... etc

Hence I can see a scenario where in the wake of an election process that might turn on "reducing federal spending" that NASA gets "its fair share" of cuts as a hatchet goes to programs big and small. Or perhaps more then its fair share of cuts because almost no one agrees on what the agency is suppose to be doing; and the rhetoric from those who support it is so out of touch with the fiscal and political realities in the country that few others rise to support them.

A major disappointment of mine in this entire debate is that no one of any political significance is trying to explain "why we have a NASA" in terms that people outside the space fan groups find relevant. This includes both pro Obama space plans and those opposed to them.

On the Administration side I am trying to figure out who is to blame for this. Charlie has not in my view done all that well himself...and Lori? I am told by some folks who are now lobbyist, but one use to be COS for a Texas Senator and is a classmate...that she is not very effective on the Hill. Someone at least needs to write better speeches for Charlie.

anyway interesting thought you had

Robert G. Oler

Not really. It is about continuing the program with the money already allotted. Getting more money to pour down this rat hole is another matter.

On the Administration side I am trying to figure out who is to blame for this.

White House Science Adviser Advocated 'De-Development' of the United States

White House Science ‘Czar’ Tells Students: U.S. Can’t Expect to Be Number One in Science and Technology Forever

Just as none of the opposition forces to Obama's plans have been able to articulate either a single alternative OR A REASON FOR IT.

Speech by OSTP Director John Marburger to the 44th Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium

The New Space Race

Well, if you want to find someone to blame in the administration for just about anything, the Conservative News Service (as CNS used to be known), is a great place to look! They'll hand you names, and you won't even have to think, or come up with compelling rationale to share about how it relates to NASA.

As to "de-developing" the United States, spending huge amounts of money to return people to the Moon to plant another flag, to twiddle thumbs and pick up rocks with fingers, could credibly de-develop our nation. In that it's money that could be spent on other things that actually develop our nation! I'm not saying that a return to the Moon can't be important. There is certainly a lot we can learn from the Moon, and it might even be necessary to send people back there to learn it. But it might not be.

The assumption that shooting bodies at the Moon makes for a developed nation is kind of funny, don't you think?

Thanks Anne for that excellent post by John Marburger:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19999

I hate to demonize any individual but the director of White House Office Science and Technology Policy, John P. Holdren is starting to seem more and more like Darth Vader every day:-(

Marcel F. Williams

A major disappointment of mine in this entire debate is that no one of any political significance is trying to explain "why we have a NASA" in terms that people outside the space fan groups find relevant. This includes both pro Obama space plans and those opposed to them.

Not disagreeing with what you are saying.

The problem in the political sphere is that there is no one of any consequence with the intellectual background to make the argument. We live in an era where lawyers run the country and the political machines and they are intellectually ill equipped by training and temperment to understand the issues or make a coherent argument on the subject.

Uh, yeah, with all due respect, I'm going to have to take those first two links with a rather large grain of salt, given that the sources is the self-proclaimed "Conservative News Service." Particularly the second one, since I haven't been able to find another source for those comments (I'm not doubting that he said that, but a transcript with full context would be nice).

Two points:

a/ "While the consumer class thrives, great disparities remain. The 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent."
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/810

b/ LHC: "Eat my proton dust FermiLab!" (apocryphal :)
http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/

And I would argue that the most advanced bit of space kit out there is also European: The ATV.

With regard to Marburger there is more commonality between his Vision and that of President Obama than would meet the eye.
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/06/video-reasontv.html#comment-36712 refers.

But here's a link from the opposite Camp:
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/marburgers_legacy/

Have the two ever met? Oh to be a party to those discussions!

If you don't like the source, please point out where their reporting is incorrect.

With all due respect, after reading John Marburger's speech I linked, how can you state that Marburger concurs with Obama and his science adviser, John Holdren on U.S. manned space exploration.

Did you read John Marburger's speech?
Please do when you have the time.
He answers your questions, quite clearly.

a/ "While the consumer class thrives, great disparities remain. The 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent."

This is exactly the space advocates point. To back up slightly, it is the argument of the limits to growth crowd and the environmental movement that the Earth does not have the resources to allow The rest of the world to come up to our level of consumption. At our current level of technology our community agrees with this.

The solution is to not force the U.S. to de-develop in order that we all live in the same state of misery as Africa, but that we know that there are sufficient resources just in the range of the Earth to the asteroid belt to allow for a level of affluence on a global scale that would make the current U.S. consumption a microspeck of what our potential is.

Mr. Obama, for all of the good of the new space policy, has no clue that this is the case or he would put more political capital toward it. That is what leadership is, that is what the understanding of our community provides, and yet the lawyers simply don't understand or believe that this is the case.

They are wrong.

It's essential for ALL of us to take one step back, cool down, and find a REAL compromise. The funding issue (even the additional $3B that the Augustine Commission said was needed) is just jump change as far as National spending goes.

We're all going to have to give up something. I believe it is feasible to keep Commercial Human Space AND Orion/Ares-V 'lite' for 'beyond LEO'. There's no need to go back to the drawing board for a HLV.

Like L. Friedman (Planetary Society) recently quoted from Ben Franklin ... "We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately".

Dennis when you say "and yet the lawyers simply don't understand" you are wrong. They understand everything. If you don't believe it, ask them. Some of the lawyers I have met could have been in a room with Albert Einstein and be convinced that they were the smartest in the room about comprehending physics.

Dennis when you say "and yet the lawyers simply don't understand" you are wrong. They understand everything. If you don't believe it, ask them. Some of the lawyers I have met could have been in a room with Albert Einstein and be convinced that they were the smartest in the room about comprehending physics.

Rueful laugh.

That is the core problem at the end of the day.

This is why we need to get more private money involved.

I think the reason why everyone that supperts CXP is upset it because, we have to rely on someone else to get us up to space. We knew we were going to have a 3-5 year gap, so when they canceled the program of record, there is the question of "How long till we can get up there ourselves?" The uncertainty involved causes much anxiety.

In one word: Sustainability!

Apollo was not sustainable, the Shuttle wasn't really but you persevered in the face of two disasters and horrendous operational costs. But in sustaining the STS, NASA lost the ability to sustain itself in other vital areas: The lunar transportation architecture proposed under ESAS Constellation was even less sustainable than the Apollo Program.

Whilst disagreeing on almost everything else including whether PBAN is truly toxic, I think they would agree that developing a sustainable internationalised space infrastructure may *just* save us from resource wars and technological collapse.

Or not.

Biodiversity:
http://gbo3.cbd.int/the-outlook/gbo3/executive-summary.aspx
"The target agreed by the world's Governments in 2002, "to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth", has not been met."

Holocene Extinction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
Currently running at three species per hour!

Human Extinction:
http://www.physorg.com/news196489543.html
Talk about fun! Personally I think human extinction is unlikely and the technical skills *may* be sustained to give us a second chance after the Crunch in 2030-2040.
We may need a technological Ark.

This, however, is not sustainable.
Note the location of Cuba!

The agenda of this by-hook-or-by-crook administration is the "greening" of NASA.

They will co-opt and devalue as much as they can while they are in power. They want to level the playing field by weakening us to a point that we can be managed.

The delay, divide and conquer tactics are moving along nicely.

Makes one want to call out, "It's a COOK BOOK!"

Here's a site (butterfly and all) I'm sure you are acquainted with. First link is to their latest "concern" about U.S. Space Policy and International Cooperation. This group has been knocking the U.S. and promoting a environmental, social communal agenda since it was formed by students and faculty at MIT in 1969.

Citizens and Scientists for Environmental Solutions AKA Union of Concerned Scientists

And that brings us to the present, 40 years later:

John Holdren Could Strengthen Federal Science: Appointments could Become Science Dream Team

"The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism And Other Essays" explains a lot about those who push to de-develop an advanced society (and put the brakes on more development)in order to retreat to "happier" days. They romanticize about the wisdom of ancients, lured by the siren call of getting a conscience, with their long held belief in the absolute superiority of anyone, over those who advance civilization. It's "romantic primitivism" a "revolt of the civilized against civilization."

They will tell people living in poverty how beautiful their lives are; Alaskans should just gaze upon their landscapes and not drill their land for oil and profit, despite pleas from desperately poor communities who want to improve their lives so their children can have a dream and a future. This scenario (with different strokes but with the same crippling outcome) is repeated over and over again in places like Africa and Australia, where intellectuals worship the "primitive" while denying them a way out.

We're watching the "greening" of NASA and the U.S. by "intellectuals" who believe that they know what is best for the rest of us.

Astropat said:

I think the reason why everyone that supperts CXP is upset it because, we have to rely on someone else to get us up to space. We knew we were going to have a 3-5 year gap, so when they canceled the program of record, there is the question of "How long till we can get up there ourselves?" The uncertainty involved causes much anxiety.

Gee, maybe the program of record shouldn't have promised to deliver astronauts to ISS by 2012 or earlier, then changed their design to push back to at least 2015, then throwing everything off Orion to save weight while keeping up their bombing attacks on the RADICAL CONCEPT that Delta IV-H could launch Orion right up until Bolden arrived.

And maybe those same people shouldn't be fighting against Commercial Crew now, given that Boeing and ULA can get folks up there in less than 4 years, and Elon potentially a lot less.

Besides, it wasn't like CxP was ever going to launch ANY OF US into space. Affordability was not its design driver.

- Jim

This is the guy advising the President..
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/21/obamas-science-czar-considered-forced-abortions-sterilization-population-growth/

This guy advocated forced sterilization, forced abortion and mass sterilization by spiking drinking water? Obama sure knows how to pick em.

Yes. President Obama's Science Adviser, John Holdren, has a lot of plans for us.

.....“Angry opposition to de-development can be expected from some technologists who are used to having their schemes for progress accepted without question by a dazzled public," the authors wrote. "SSTs (solid state technologies), space colonies, thermonuclear weapons and delivery systems, geodesic domes over cities, fission power, giant automobiles, plastic wrappings, genetic engineering, disposable packages and containers, synthetic pesticides, and the like are supposed to be accepted as self-evidently desirable.”

They added: “However, many technologists now correctly perceive that, if the ODCs (over developed countries) are to be de-developed and civilization is to persist, the halcyon days of unquestioning public acceptance of technological ‘progress’ must disappear forever.”.....

Source

Well, it's not what they report, it's what they *don't* report. They don't mention the content of the rest of his speech, whatever it may have been. And, curiously enough, they are the *only* source, it seems, for this particular comment- which is odd, since if it really were as scandalous as you seem to be implying, you'd figure at the very least that say, Fox News or one of the other right-leaning news sources would have picked it up. But everything you've posted has come from CNS.

In any case, while Holdren may have been a certified whackjob back in the '60s and '70s, I don't see what documents written 40 years ago, in the midst of a rising energy crisis and before the Green Revolution are necessarily indicative of his views on things *today*, particularly on NASA (which after all, is the topic at hand). With all due respect, this reeks of trying to play the fear card- you might as well as have shouted "BOOGEDY BOOGEDY BOOGEDY COMMUNISM!"

To quote Buffalo Springfield, "Paranoia strikes deep/into your life it will creep/it starts when you're always afraid...."

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/boeing-new-capsule-concept-100625.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

near the end of the article, there are quotes and comments associating SpaceX's success with a drive by all parties to reduce the cost of spaceflight. That in itself is quite significant. Thanks Elon.

...In any case, while Holdren may have been a certified whackjob back in the '60s and '70s, I don't see what documents written 40 years ago, in the midst of a rising energy crisis and before the Green Revolution are necessarily indicative of his views on things *today*, ...

You mentioned communism spacermase, interesting.
A lot of people believe the Sixties radicals populate the Green (as you put it) Revolution. Interesting. You may have highlighted a truth here, although, I get the feeling you don't see it as a problem, as you amusingly phrased it, as "BOOGEDY BOOGEDY BOOGEDY COMMUNISM."

You really need to study up on the evils of a closed communist society spacemase. You look extremely foolish.

I get your point! I really do. As Heinlein commented on Technological Progress (and I paraphrase) "Sure we make mistakes. Big mistakes. But we are moving so fast they can't catch up with us."
Ahem. Providing we don't trip and break a leg.
Or a blowout preventer.

The (re)greening of NASA is a natural evolution from its hard core Big Science roots. In the "white heat of the technological revolution" I too believed that Big Science would solve all our problems. And they could have. Robots have not freed us from mindless toil. Fusion is still decades away and we have no MoonBase!

Alas rampant consumerism (vide the latest Apple phone release) and global inequalities, environmental degradation and most of all the population explosion have stymied the technological utopia.

The oil crisis of 1973 should have been a wake up call. The West chose to hit the snooze bar until 79-81(snooze); 2008(snooze)and now the emergency wind up Alarm has finally kicked in. Time to DO something!

Our species cannot afford these grand space gestures without a meaningful return. Hence the problems in justifying HSF. The answer is trivial of course, as surveys have already indicated public support for: Planetary Protection from Asteroids and, I would add, from ourselves, and Space based Solar Power.

IMHO O'Neill was one of the first to try to wean NASA from its militaristic state run Commie beating propaganda machine origins and replace it with a project that would provide America with energy without the need for conflict: Nicaragua; Columbia; Bolivia;... Iraq, Iran, etc. Or despots: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, etc.

Anne PLEASE don't conflate Environmentalism with Anti-Technology! Or, even, Anti-Americanism. This is not so. This originates in the propaganda of the far right and the corporates that including the environmental costs of any development is a step away from communism. The current economic model relies on believing the propaganda that OUR world is THEIR world and as such an unexhaustable resource to be despoiled for the almighty Dollar/ Euro/ Pound/ Rouble...

The real bottom line is not the profit but the loss. Koyaanisqatsi.

Anne: In researching this response I found this.
"Space Solar Power: A Fresh Look" before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the House Committee on Science, October 24, 1997."
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/legaff/solar.html

Note the name of the Chair!

I have never stated I believed in communism; in fact, I don't- the entire theory is based on numerous logical fallacies, and, sooner or later, is doomed to failure.

What I'm saying is, I think you're seeing things that aren't actually there. Did some in the newborn environmentalist movement believe in communism back in the 60's and 70's? Oh, certainly. But a lot of them also probably believed in the Age of Aquarius. I guess what I'm saying is that I feel you fail to grasp that people are capable of changing their opinions over time .

I have seen no reason to believe that Holdren has maintained these fews- in fact, his most recent speeches on the subject are in-line with what we've learned in just the past 15 years or so- namely, that as affluence and average lifespan goes up, population growth goes down. People have fewer children, since now you can safely assume most of your children will survive into adulthood, and you don't need as many people as possible to keep your subsidence farming going. You don't need to coerce anyone, because they'll happily do it for themselves.

Space policy (vis-a-vis space based solar power, for example) may actually end up being a major component of that.