Space Station Freedom Deja Vu All Over Again

Please Keith spare us the drama of your response.

Editor's note: Yawn, its my blog ... there are plenty f Keith-Free places to post if you find this one to be so annoying. Constellation's problems began a long time ago - in case you did not notice, I made a few comments about that.

You said in an earlier post today that you would have kept Orion and the Moon as a goal. Well your buddy Obama got what he wanted due to support from people like yourself and others on this forum. If you really supported Orion, then you and others would have been critical of the proposed budget. But that would be too make to ask from a group of individuals who praise everything Obama does.

Instead of cancelling Cx, the budget should have redirected it. Now all of Cx is dead. There is no money for Orion and manned spaceflight is on hold until some future date when commercial gets us back to LEO.

Fortunately I am not one of those who will be affected by the cancellation but I know many who will. I pray that they will land on there feet and hopefully come out of this stronger.

Yes indeed, which young person that has endured 5+ years of University would want to come to NASA and work under these circumstances.

I know of many and they continue to come notwithstanding those comments from the editor of this site.

However, the Engineers with experience is something else entirely as I have seen many leave NASA to private sector DOD jobs and other Government agencies.

NASA will have lots of young faces very soon!

Pad Rat

Editor's note: sadly, you are right. And then we'll wake up and discover what was lost and have to recreate it all over again.

I am a young engineer in my 20's (Orion, Predator UAV) and HSF was my dream. My parents met working Apollo, and I wanted more than anything to be a part of that. I was about to quit college until the VSE was announced, and I thought "Finally! NASA is gong to be doing big things again, and I want to be a part of that. I need to get my ass in gear and study."

I CHOSE to work on Orion. I had multiple offers for more money and I still chose Orion. This is why I reject the notion that all CxP engineers are "welfare engineers", as if we couldn't find work otherwise.

That desire is lost more and more each day as teams are gutted and people are sent packing prematurely. Now I am most likely about to be shown the door, not because of nonperformance on my part. I'm lucky to have lasted this long.

NASA has been stuck in Shuttle\ISS mode since before I was born. My friends my age who also grew up around NASA don't even follow it, and I believe this is partially why. This is why the new plan does not excite me, I've seen it already. BEO HSF is being pushed back indefinitely, we are going to until we can use these "game changing" technologies. I am sick of NASA waiting (or being forced to), always having excuses.

I hope that NASA one day is able to somehow dodge this political environment, but I really have my doubts now. I have been told over and over my by elder co-workers that they have never seen it handled in this manner.

I hope that NASA one day is able to live its dreams again and become un-routine. Until then, most likely more DoD projects where in the middle of it I get emailed a video of the vehicle I work on killing people. That is until NASA HSF is back in action.

"What newly-minted graduate in their right mind is going to want to pursue a career at NASA when the agency runs itself like this?"

Ones like me. Ones who is this their calling. If its just a job to others, they will pack their bags and not look back. The issue is NASA no longer having room for new young engineers, and not having programs that are enticing and exciting to work for. THAT is why you will see graduates look elsewhere.

It is just not logical to keep building up capability and then cancelling things and let the capability slip.

NASA needs long term protection from the political winds. Big projects take time and stability.

If NASA had been funded to develop newer vehicles while the shuttles had 10 years to go, we wouldn't have rushed into CxP, only to see support for it wane.

CxP work has changed NASA into a much better place. Forget about just CxP, think about the capability that CxP work has added. It would be a shame to watch that unravel.

It seems that at least some part of the Constellation personnel would be excellent choices for the commercial launch services to take on for the $6B of funding for launch vehicles. It doesn't seem like there's been enough bureaucratic or political consideration of how to best effect this.

You have, in this article, given two wonderful examples of neat, groundbreaking programs initiated by republican presidents that have been started and were well underway, then cut to ribbons along with all of those jobs (and each one is a real person)by the democrat who followed in office. Thankfully the ISS turned out nicely except now we are dependent on a fragile alliance with Russia for a ride up to the thing. Why in the wide world of space, does anyone with a job in the space industry vote for people who have a vendetta against anything they didn't think of? Here is your Hope enjoy the Change...

Keith -

Thanks, a well put first hand commentary from someone who has "been there/done that". I feel horrible for the staff who have poured their hearts into these projects, only to watch short-sighted bureaucrats muck it up.

The idea that NASA should be shielded from the political winds is ridiculous given that NASA is a publically funded agency of the federal government totally accountable to the Congress for support and for performance evaluations. So long as you take public funds, you will be subjected to the constant prying of elected public officials who unfortunately usually have little or no time to get anything but a superficial briefing by staff of what the main issues are. That is our system of government. Private firms such as Spacex have only a limited requirement to reveal corporate data to the public; usually it is far less that what it must share with government funders such as NASA and DoD. They have no requirement to release vehicle flight data or performance specifics to anybody outside of their customers.

First Cowings does everything he can to oppose Constellation, then he bemoans the damage that does. Quick, where are those double-faced images ?

Editor's note> I guess you do not read NASA Watch very often.

So long as you take public funds, you will be subjected to the constant prying of elected public officials who unfortunately usually have little or no time to get anything but a superficial briefing by staff of what the main issues are.

Indeed! Note well how federal funding has "helped" public education. Once, as you say, "you take public funds" you are subject to their dictate. The numerous recent "handouts" to companies will have them experiencing the "love" of their benefactor for years to come.

Of course the disastrous, decades long social engineering experiment is the best visible example of dictated once-they-have-their-hooks-in-you ineptitude, as you so well describe as, "constant prying of elected public officials who unfortunately usually have little or no time to get anything but a superficial briefing by staff of what the main issues are."

The actual implementation of how the public money is spent is passed down the food chain to organized self interest groups, thankful to their government benefactor, while those under them are left to suffer the consequences of how things are weighted.

The Vision was good and two different Congresses (with different majority rule) endorsed the Vision. The way NASA chose to implement VSE has lead us here.

The Vision is still the correct path, waiting to be implemented in the manner that was originally spelled out, Moon, Mars, Beyond.

I disagree.

It is not logical to invest in something that requires long term thinking and committment and leave a structure in place for that investment to wither away, get built back up again, and wither again. It's wasteful.

It is possible in government, just look at the DoD. Some projects come and go, sure, but we don't have complete changes in direction every time the winds blow. NASA just needs some of the protection from it that the DoD has.

Due to the nature and cost of NASA work, it's logical to find a way to protect and stabilize the investments it makes so we don't hear "been there/done that."

"You have, in this article, given two wonderful examples of neat, groundbreaking programs initiated by republican presidents that have been started and were well underway, then cut to ribbons along with all of those jobs (and each one is a real person)by the democrat who followed in office."

Which is of course a complete lie - except if you consider Bush a Republican in his first term and Democrat the second.

Keith -

Thanks, a well put first hand commentary from someone who has "been there/done that". I feel horrible for the staff who have poured their hearts into these projects, only to watch short-sighted bureaucrats muck it up.

NASA, White House, Congress, and the contractors should never have let things come to this point. They should have been honest with the numbers and what they committed to do.

Politicians being honest. Sure. Do I have to break the bad news to you about the tooth fairy and Santa Claus? Sorry, but as government continues to grow bigger, more and more people will be subject to their self-serving lies and dishonesty. NASA is just another symptom of how broken our government has become.

I think what's needed is a sensible compromise, perhaps punt the LEO crew access to the commercial sector, keep the Orion as exploration/hispeed reentry vehicle, and then develop an earth departure stage that can be assembled in orbit at lower cost that what was planned in the POR?

Obama campaigned that his politics were all about compromise, stop playing childish games, etc..

"They should have been honest with the numbers and what they committed to do. The money to keep everything going is not there - it never was and it never will be. The powers that be did not exercise responsibility and now thousands of hard working people get the shaft as a result of bad management"

Keith - I think you have said it just as it needs to be said. A lot of individuals at the lower echelons and the entire program is now hurting because of lack of responsibility and bad management.

The investigation I would like to see is how did we get such poor managers into those positions of responsibility.

Nixon terminated NASA's ability to fly to the Moon.And then he joked with Eugene Cernan that he'd probably be the last astronaut to ever walk on the Moon in the 20th century. Nixon was right, of course, because he made it so!

Now President Obama not only wants to continue the Nixon policy but he's also trying to terminate NASA's ability to fly into orbit. NASA is a government program that the President clearly doesn't like!

Why should American tax payers pay nearly $20 billion a year for an agency that the President won't allow to do anything? They won't!

And maybe that's really the President's long term plan for NASA: to ensure that the tax payers and Congress will turn their backs on NASA funding so that he can eventually send that money down the black hole of the social welfare programs-- government programs that he does like.

Marcel F. Williams

One shouldn't characterize Astropat's description as 'a complete lie'. It would better be described as an oversimplification of history. There is no denying that Freedom was begun by a Republican administration and significantly downsized by a Democrat one, and certainly Constellation was begun under a Republican administration and is being mostly cancelled under a Democrat one.

Barebones, these are facts. But of course Freedom was already getting downsized (Phase I/Phase II) in a Republican administration prior to the follow-on 'democrat' redesign through Option A into ISS, and budget-wise it's kinda hard to claim that Constellation was "well on its way". [SEI's history is its own little story along these lines...consult "Mars Wars".]

Sadly, the primary pattern of the past four decades (shuttle included) has been

a) Republican administration proposes new space program/development effort but doesn't fund it sufficiently to realize its full potential,

then

b)the following democrat administration scales back the project even if they increase NASA's budget slightly to pursue their own specific interests (Carter's reluctant stepping in on shuttle for national security reasons being an exception).

But this time there's a significant twist. While one can obviously characterize Obamaspace as a scaling back of the previous program (ISS extension excepted), one can't deny that it's a radical new direction, something that hasn't been seen from the democrats since JFK's technocracy turnabout from Eisenhower's conservative keep-it-low-key approach of holding to minimum direct govt involvement.

Of course, whether or not US human space exploration will survive the radical new turnabout (and its imposed stasis on pursuing BEO mission operations vs component technologies) remains an open question.

Yeah, Obama is simply doing what the majority of the American people want. For those working in HSF, how many times in casual conversations with people do you have to justify why we go to space? At some point we will all have to come to grips with the idea that the majority wins, and most American could care less about the space program (it doesn't make for good T.V.).

This scenario reminds me of chess club in high school. You don't see a whole lot of giant stadiums being built for attendants at chess tournaments between two area high schools... Just a thought.

The way things are going in the gulf there may be another coarse correction in 2013? If a compromise isn't found by November it may be difficult for the Administration to do anything in the next two years.

Keith, thank you for summarizing the true tragedy of Constellation. It is not an evil plot by Obama or some other simplistic explanation.
I suggest one problem is NASA administrators have not been advocates for their agency, as the Secretary of Defense has been for DOD, but have been all to willing to please the current administration - both democrat and republican - at the expense of long term objectives.

KC,
If you read everything here, you would find that there was a discussion re: the space station Freedom (now ISS)AND the CXP. Freedom was begun in the Reagan era,see, he was a Republican. Then in 1995 when it was redesigned,and a lot of jobs went away as Keith stated and was a part of, Bill Clinton was responsible for that,he was a Democrat...Then Bush, a Republican, started The Vision for Space Exploration, which CXP was a part of. Obama, a democrat is in the process of killing that, and all the jobs with it...I hope that this clears up any ambiguity that was present.

Editor's note: Bush proposed VSE and then walked away from the funding commitments that he had promised. 5 years of under funding left the Constellation program in the sad state that it is now in. Obama is simply putting the program out of its misery. Bush starved it to death.

Keith,

I would like to offer my apology for my rather snide remarks last night. I know a lot of folks who will lose their jobs due to Shuttle ending and Cx cancellation, so I let my emotions get the best of me.

Thanks for posting it anyway.

As for going to a Keith free site..I would prefer to stay here. I don't agree with many on this forum but it is better to argue here than just be part of a cheerleading blog where everyone agrees with me.

Thanks for providing the service.

Editor's note: My pleasure - and yes I do tend to get under people's skin from time to time