White House on Space: Ready, Fire, Aim

Well said.

And a few questions: "Does changing the 'content' of what NASA does really alter the 'thinking' of the past 40 years?

Where is this 'new thinking' that is needed to solve the problems of the 'old thinking' (to paraphrase Einstein)going to come from? New leadership at the top has proven not to be effective in introducing 'new thinking'.

This is a well written thoughtful analysis of the foundation for the new plan and why it is essential. I do not understand why Charlie is not speaking in these terms.

Nicely Done John

Robert G. Oler

... which all means that most of the people on this site will be dead and buried before we leave LEO...

1. If they put any chemical in any kind of tank and launch a rocket its still old tech.

2. The Apollo era ended when we got parked in LEO for the last 40 years

3. The apparently lack of any discernible direction,goal or data on the "new " plans for HSF by officials inside this administration is what makes space nerds like myself take pause.

Apollo era spending %4 of the budget
Now 1 1/6 of %1 of the budget

That tells how unimportant HSF has become to congress.

Once Apollo 18 and 19 were canceled the governmental budget cut flood gates opened its been down hill ever since.

Damn the Gravity!

Well thought out and well researched. That Dr. Logsdon.

While I do not agree with everything D. L has to say, for instance shutting down Shuttle is something he had more than just a little to do with, and I totally disagree with that move, the fact is that Constellation was on a path to nowhere and spending money at an outrageous rate with little to show for it.

Fact is, there might be a reason to get back to the moon when we can afford it and when its not a drain on resources. That was something that definitely has been poorly articulated by the President, but then the President is turning out to be inadequate on many levels and in many areas besides space.

The job to articulate the plan and rationale is NASA's. No one else is going to do it. Its time that Charlie Bolden gets himself a communications staff
that knows how to do the job. They screwed up on Shuttle. They've been screwing up on ISS for decades which is why no one knows about it. They screwed up on Constellation which was why no one was aware of its mission and why the public was not at all supportive of lunar or Mars landings. If Bolden does not get this situation fixed then we've given him more credit than he deserves.

Fact is, all the argument over the moon or not the moon is a waste of breath. Constellation, which was working the problem, was not going to get us there for another two decades or longer, so really anything they were expending significant resources on was a waste. Technology, capabilities, people and a myriad of other things will be a lot different in another decade or two, and we really should not be investing a lot of money in projects that are not planned for more than 5 or 10 years out. It really doesnt matter what Obama has to say. He'll be long gone by the time a decision needs to be made. Same thing for Armstrong, Lovell, Cernan, Spudis...they're all having a theoretical argument unless of course we get an extra influx of 100 billion that is not now planned.

What we do need now are logical follow-ons to where we are today. We definitely do not need another dead end Apollo, which is where Griffin's Constellation plan was taking us as Logsdon notes.

Shuttle is real. Shuttle has real capabilities. We ought to be getting everything we can out of the Shuttle investment. That means heavy lift. That means robotics. It means a lot of existing systems and if we are interested in continuing the brainpower that knows Shuttle, now is the time to start on the follow-ons; NOT in five years. Really this should have been started years ago. Another NASA management failure.

ISS is real. It has real capabilities today. The systems we are working on ISS today should be the systems harvested for the near future. That might mean a sortie vehicle that can go into higher earth orbits or around the moon or to the NEOs or even planetary fly-bys. The same people working the systems for ISS today need to be augmented a little bit and then the experts need to be applied to both ISS and the derived vehicle.

NASA management needs to get this new plan going, and they need to do it in the next several weeks. Or they all ought to be fired. Personally I am pretty sick of the lack of leadership in the Agency. It begins at the Centers with the Program and Center managers, continues up the chain to the AAs - every last one of them - and so far Bolden and Obama have nothing to be proud of either, though they are newer so I'll give them a break so far since they are neophytes.

It is hard to argue against much of what Logsdon says, but the problem with the proposed approach is that it ignores the realities of how the government works. Without specific goals and dates, the Congress will quickly lose interest, and the funding for all these new technologies will become very low priority (if it is actually possible for it to be a lower priority than it is now). Every year the can will get kicked down the road a little further, and eventually it'll all get zeroed out in the name of fiscal responsibility.

Anyone else think Obama has created a space policy "oil spill" that will take years to clean up? Feels like that anyways.

To many people the Apollo era symbolized visionary leadership, bold exploration, and globe shaking change as the technology of science fiction became real.
In a desperate attempt to not repeat Apollo, it looks like we're going to repeat the shuttle era instead. That also began with the promise of cheap and regular flights to low earth orbit which were supposed to open the space frontier for all kinds of new possibilities.

The end problem is that, once again, few of the people responsible for this change in direction will be around to get the blame if it doesn't pan out.
That being the case, I don't think its unusual for us to expect something more iron clad than a rushed outline and an off the cuff promise of great things to come.

Libby, your sentiment is right on... right until you start throwing out ideas of your own :) The experts have already considered Shuttle extension and building a space ship with ISS hardware and talent. Unfortunately neither of these ideas are good, so the new plan takes a different path. Cheap LEO access and new BEO tech is what I believe the good Dr. said.

Apollo showed us that we could get to the Moon. The next step should have been a lunar base so that we could exploit lunar resources in order to reduce the cost of space travel.

But Nixon trapped NASA at LEO which continues to this day. Now Obama wants to trap NASA at LEO for at least another 15 years while developing so called 'game changing technologies that might get us to an asteroid.

At this rate, China, Russia, Japan, and even private industry will be exploiting lunar and asteroid resources long before NASA even gets to an asteroid.

Marcel F. Williams

Personally, I think Obama's "Look But Don't Touch" approach to manned space flight is ill-advised. I'm getting very tired of being told that makes me a relic of the Apollo Era, or that I have "vested interests in continuing the space status quo".

And I have to say I find Dr Logsdon's analysis less than convincing. It is now more than 40 years since men first landed on the moon, and no doubt there is much blame to spread over those who ended Apollo and could never find a succesful continuation program. But rather than keep it all within NASA, shouldn't a tiny little smidgen of that blame fall on the 6 or 7 US presidents who decided humans should stay in LEO?

Eh, I'd give it a "B."

He raises good points, but left something out. Not only is the plan not being “sold” and causing a huge stink, it lacks a mechanism for stability. Anyone who has been watching space policymaking for 4 decades should bring this up. In other words, NASA has had to scrap expensive projects and change direction more than once, and it is happening again. People need to stop blaming NASA for this. The changes come from Washington. There is no guarantee that if NASA stops mid-stream on CxP and farms the rocket building out, the plan will change again with the political winds. It would be nice to see a political scientist explain how this problem could be solved.

BTW-NASA is not moving on from the Apollo era, it is moving on from the Shuttle era. Try and keep up, professor!

There is something missing in the huge fuss over NASA’s direction if you focus on Apollo and not the Shuttle. The Shuttle was flown for so long, NASA design capabilities were not maintained at the level required to crank out new rockets. Whatever you think about CxP, it is a fact that part of the cost was rebuilding that capability again. That bill has been paid. The workforce is looking at the proposed changes thinking “We just got the band back together, and you want it to split up again?”

People do need to keep an open mind. Change is coming one way or the other. When the President spoke at KFC in April to talk about what he wants NASA to be, a lot of us were watching for that Kennedy sound bite. We didn’t get it. When the NASA admin took the plan to Congress, he got hammered and had to say “I’ll get back with you on that” too many times. The new direction needs to be sold, and it needs to be sincere.

A much needed article, although it's a pity that such clear and visionary explanations of the new strategy don't seem to carry the same force as hurt and angry tirades.

There's one big omission though IMO. Logsdon says

"One element ... is the proposal that the private sector take on a larger role in providing transportation services for people travelling to low Earth orbit. This fundamentally is a side issue to the main thrust of the strategy — developing capabilities for going beyond Earth orbit."

True, it's a side issue to the question of best how to use NASAs finite resources in this century.

But it is a pivotal issue if space is ever to be opened to more than a handful of government sponsored astronauts. Which would make NASA relevant to more people and therefore help support funding for further exploration. And so on.

I don't understand the problem with a focused R&D program. Many machines that made Apollo happen were developed before Apollo without a schedule to go to the Moon. The F-1 was started in 1955, years before Mercury flew.

An R&D program of many small projects with some kind of guidance ("things conducive to BEO exploration") could yield new technologies so that we can take another crack at this in a few years with new tools.

Obama's dismissal of the Moon upsets me but it doesn't matter. For the duration of Obama's term(s), America's going to be riding Soyuz and fighting our way back into LEO. The Moon and Mars don't even matter right now.

Furthermore, Constellation wasn't conducive to opening up the Moon to us, or utilizing its resources, and if it doesn't do that, its nothing but a few hundred billion dollars worth of trivia.

If you don't think the Moon can be mined or utilized, than you're only going there for science trivia.

If all you want is science trivia, Mars kicks the Moon's rear full stop.

"It begins at the Centers with the Program and Center managers, continues up the chain to the AAs - every last one of them - and so far Bolden and Obama have nothing to be proud of either, though they are newer so I'll give them a break so far since they are neophytes".

Sorry, you've got this backwards. Bolden, Garver and by extension Obama are the ones reponsible for the new "plan" and are responsible for the "leadership". The Centers? The CDs are threatened with being fired if they do anything. The PMs? They ARE fired. Why the heck do you expect "leadership" from the Centers/Programs when such initiative is immediately hit with a wrecking ball form HQ?

I disagree with his statement that Apollo was a dead end it certainly was not the Apollo applications program showed what could have been dun

Skylab was an excellent space station at a fraction of the cost of the ISS

there could have been a Mars and Venus flyby missions in 1975 bell corp did study s for NASA now obama is talking about 2025 !

a space tug launched via saturn v and a moon base and nuclear variant of the 3rd stage was all possible

Apollo certainly was not a dead end

Robert Law

"That restart would be followed by another five to seven years of developing new systems based on that foundation, then a series of human missions to various destinations beyond Earth orbit."

This of course is NOT part of the new "plan" - as in there is no indiciation in the President's budget proposal of the architecture studies and system development needed to accomplish it. This is pure speculation on Logsdon's part.

This may be what many HOPE is coming down the road, but it will most likely fall to the next administration to decide. What counts with THIS administration is what is proposed in the budget, which is a LONG way from Logsdon's interpretation.

I see no evidence that the Obama "plan" is anything more tha a disguised cancellation of human space exploration by the united States.

"The report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board is being cited in the current debate as if it were scripture..."

This ia a cop-out by Logsdon and I have heard him do it before. Is NASA supposed to pick-and-choose the parts of the CAIB report that it likes and ignore the rest? The CAIB clearly states as a finding that NASA should replace the Shuttle as the primary means of earth-to-orbit crew transport. Nowhere in the CAIB does it say that the NASA culture is so broken that this reponsibility should be turned over soley to the private sector.

Logsdon should stand behind his participation in the CAIB report or point out what he thinks was erroneous about it.

"Fact is, there might be a reason to get back to the moon when we can afford it and when its not a drain on resources."

Right, 2009's GDP was 14.43 trillion dollars. 25 billion a year would get us to the moon and the entire solar system... and beyond. So, if we "wasted" that money, that would bring the GDP down to 14.41 trillion dollars.

And the Iraq War costs us 12 billion a month.

So, when you say drain on our resourses... what country do you think we live in?

We had the worst financial collapse in about 100 years, and we still had a 14 trillion dollar GDP, highest in the world. With all due respect, if the NASA budget was 50 billion, it would still be in the noise.

Please spare us how NASA, in anyway, even if they just take the money and do nothing, has an impact on our "resources."

But I will say, laying off a potential of 200 thousand engineers (includes contractor flowdown support across the nation), does have a significant "drain" on our knowledge, capability, and morale of this Nation.

I can only echo the comments of my former Apollo mentors. We are better than Shuttle and Space Station. The daring that took us to the moon became hostage to PC Washington politicians whose only space plan they have is to how to get their names in the press.

I have news for Prof. Logsdon. The "new space strategy" of the White House isn't a naturally found object, like say a humanoid fossil, that is subject to interpretation by various wise people. It is a human creation that, if anyone should be able to explain, it should be the creators. There isn't intellectual space for the likes of Prof. Logsdon to come riding on his white horse crying "Don't worry White House if you can't explain this gobbeldygook! Super Prof. Logsdon will provide you with a coherent interpretation for your fresh bucket of do-do!"

Of course Logsdon has done us a service, even if inadvertently, by admitting that the new strategy is incoherent. But he's not actually achieved what he set out to do!

Can Logsdon point to any worthwhile program that got off the ground and achieved something without having a goal in mind? A program of that kind has in-built incoherence! No additional interpretation needed! You can imagine the entire space program community essentially "puttering around" in their labs and workshops coming up with things to amuse themselves. That's essentially what this "bold and exciting" path boils down to, nothing more. And when Neil Armstrong and others point out the deficiencies in this path, the proponents do not, as we should expect, counter it with well thought out arguments. No, they just work to discredit the messenger! That's what that fraud Holdren did when he dismissed Armstrong's points with "you can expect that the first man on the Moon will want us to go back there" (I'm paraphrasing Holdren but the meaning is correct)

Before you decide to abandon the work done on the Constellation, throw away the nine billion invested in it and turn the space community upside down, I think the least we can expect is a well thought out plan from the powers that be telling us where we're going to go. All Logsdon can come up with is that this involves a restart as if it's a trivial matter, a button to be pressed, a mere rebooting of your PC, not noting that the work of hundreds of thousands of man hours and billions of dollars will just get wiped clean.

There are some absolute gems Logsdon's come up with. The big deficiency of the Apollo program, according to him, was that "it had a commitment to a specific destination on a specific schedule". That has to be abandoned! Is this an elaborate joke on his part? Man, with friends like these, I don't think the Holdren/Bolden clique (yes, yes, I know Bolden is just the yes man but I thought I'd throw his name in anyway) needs enemies. "It will be a challenge to maintain focus" he says without a touch of irony, but this will "pave the way for U.S leadership" On what planet would that be, pray?

"One element of the new strategy ... is the proposal that the private sector take on a larger role ..." says the wise and coherent Logsdon. That's only another straw man set up by the Holdren clique to avoid answering the critics' questions. It really is nobody's case that the private sector should not take on a larger role. The criticism is that the private sector is simply not far enough along to be able to provide safe reliable transportation to low Earth orbit. By all means support them, hold their hands but do not fall for slick marketing, against all contrary evidence, and abandon the work already done.

"even private industry will be exploiting lunar and asteroid resources long before NASA even gets to an asteroid."

That is the point. NASA does not do exploitation. That is private industry's job.

The last quote of Logsdon should read "One element of the new strategy that is serving as a lightning rod for opponents ..." I missed quoting the important bit (highlighted) ...

"but the problem with the proposed approach is that it ignores the realities of how the government works. Without specific goals and dates, the Congress will quickly lose interest, and the funding for all these new technologies will become very low priority (if it is actually possible for it to be a lower priority than it is now). Every year the can will get kicked down the road a little further, and eventually it'll all get zeroed out in the name of fiscal responsibility."

Joe, you capture in a nutshell the main fault with Obama's plan. The promise of BEO HSF and exploration would never be realized. Obama can compromise and save much of what he wants. If he doesn't compromise The U. S. HSF program will have a very bleak future. I think Sen. Nelson's approach outlined in his authorization letter to Sen. Mulkulski is a good framework for a compromise. I hope Obama and Bolden come to their senses and soon!

Libby

Shuttle may be real, but its also real expensive.

You want to know what is also real, but cheap? EELVs. Falcon 9, Taurus 2. Those are real, and cheap.

Shuttle is a dead end.

From NASAengineerdotcom

He raises good points, but left something out. Not only is the plan not being “sold” and causing a huge stink, it lacks a mechanism for stability. Anyone who has been watching space policymaking for 4 decades should bring this up. In other words, NASA has had to scrap expensive projects and change direction more than once, and it is happening again. People need to stop blaming NASA for this. The changes come from Washington. There is no guarantee that if NASA stops mid-stream on CxP and farms the rocket building out, the plan will change again with the political winds. It would be nice to see a political scientist explain how this problem could be solved.

You don't need a political scientist. The way you get stability is to have something that operates at a different schedule than the government, with its focus on single year budgeting, as well as election year cycles. You have to have something that will further disrupt that schedule. And the best place that can come from is the creation of a new industry, that serves private customers, when it comes to human spaceflight.

If Commercial crew gets funded, it will serve private markets (and will have a reason to find even more markets), which mean that the systems are going to get used more often and operated. This is going to provide stability.

Also, the Shuttle Era was really an attempt use Apollo planning and organizations for developing cheap access. NASA still hasn't gotten out of that mold.

NASA design capabilities were not maintained at the level required to crank out new rockets. Whatever you think about CxP, it is a fact that part of the cost was rebuilding that capability again. That bill has been paid. The workforce is looking at the proposed changes thinking “We just got the band back together, and you want it to split up again?”

Because what no one has answered is WHY NASA should have this capability? Private industry already has it. The fact that we have the EELVs & the Falcon 9 prove that this capability exists outside of NASA. So why does NASA need something like this, if it exists in private industry?

Finally, I agree, it needs to be sold better. That I don't disagree with at all

"than keep it all within NASA, shouldn't a tiny little smidgen of that blame fall on the 6 or 7 US presidents who decided humans should stay in LEO? "

yes and no

NASA did not flounder because it could not go past LEO...it floundered because the management structure of the agency buckled. And the management structure buckled because the agency was tasked, and accepted doing an R&D project (the shuttle) which was suppose to turn into an operational project (space transportation) and really the agency did not have a clue about how to pull it off. This is the same reason, Frank Borman had a competent career at NASA but when he went to Eastern virtually killed the airline.

The cracks started early in shuttle R&D. At some point as the dollars clearly were inadequate to build a vehicle which would do what the shuttle was suppose to do, NASA management (at the administrator level) should have called a time out and had a high level discussion (this is about Carter's time) trying to figure out what vehicle could be built for what mission...on the dollars that existed.

Instead the management allowed a lot of compromises to be made which destroyed the ability of the system to operate as promised (XX number of flights a year at YY dollars per pound). They did not manage to build that vehicle, but they did build one that could fly 7-10 times a year..the problem then became that the folks who were tasked with flying the vehicle never could factor economics into the operation of the system.

This particularly became true when Challenger happen. All the wrong lessons were learned from that failure. Few if any in MOD come from an operational culture. Almost all are "clones" of the Apollo culture and that has degraded with the years. The station went off track for the same exact reasons. 8 billion dollars to build the "dual keel" was as Ed boland remarked "a joke".

Organizations cannot test fly and fly operationally. In the military those are the previews of two different chains. Boeing stopped operating airplanes and building them a long time ago.

This is why SDI can do Delta Clipper and NASA cannot do Transhab (or insert any of the projects that have floundered). This is why Constellation has become a boondoggle. It should be incomprehensible to everyone that NASA has spent 10 billion dollars on 'derivative' hardware and nothing is flying. There is no excuse for that.

If there is a blame on politicians it is not that they kept NASA in LEO, it is that they started tasking an R&D agency with operational things...and in the process got the worst of both worlds. NASA would have screwed up a Moon base.

Robert G. Oler

"Can Logsdon point to any worthwhile program that got off the ground and achieved something without having a goal in mind?"

John can take his own stab at this...but I can point out a few.

When the US invested money in the turbojet airplane it did not have a specific "airplane" in mind for the effort. Indeed when the US got the turbojet (or at least the centrifugal compressor version from the Brits) after some thought in the office of strategic planning the US decided NOT to pursue the engine as something of use in WW2. Admiral Rockford got it correct "we will win this war without it". For Germany of course the calculus was different, it was their cities being bombed.

When the US invested money in Syncom it did not have a specific goal in mind. The entire notion was to test the system to see if it even could be done with the technology in use then.

The propfan was a pure technology effort (which was neat but they couldnt fix the noise), the X-51 has no specific goal nor the X-37 as was the X-15.

I could go own. The US has a long history of technology development with no specific goal in mind other then to see if the technology proves out. Some have changed America, others not so much.

Robert G. Oler

The first half of the "analysis" is fine. The second half is buffoonery.

Systems engineering 101: Without a goal there is no basis for making any decisions: What are the fundamental problems we should focus on first and what are less important problems? Should we invest in this technology or that technology? Has this or that succeeded? Should we continue to invest in this or that? Etc,, etc,. etc.

... and a goal without a schedule is never achieved!

The first half of the "analysis" is fine. The second half is buffoonery.

Systems engineering 101: Without a goal there is no basis for making any decisions: What are the fundamental problems we should focus on first and what are less important problems? Should we invest in this technology or that technology? Has this or that succeeded? Should we continue to invest in this or that? Etc,, etc,. etc.

... and a goal without a schedule is never achieved!

Excellent response to this article.
Thank you.

"That is the point. NASA does not do exploitation. That is private industry's job."

The problem is, private industry is only getting $1.2 billion a year from a $18 to $19 billion a year NASA budget.

If this is all a plan to replace NASA with private industry then why do the tax payers have to continue paying the other $17 to $18 billion a year to an agency that, according to the anti-government advocates, is really not supposed to be doing anything?

NASA's job is to do what's best for the public interest in the New Frontier. Private industry's job is to try and make a profit in the New Frontier.

Marcel F. Williams

"The problem is, private industry is only getting $1.2 billion a year from a $18 to $19 billion a year NASA budget."

Again, the problem is your comprehension and lack of basic understanding what NASA's role is. NASA does R&D and exploration. If private industry is going to exploit something such as an asteroid or tourism, it doesn't need NASA funding. NASA only provides funding to meet its needs.

"NASA's job is to do what's best for the public interest in the New Frontier."

And that does not include building bases.

I disagree with his statement that Apollo was a dead end it certainly was not the Apollo applications program showed what could have been dun

Apollo was never a dead end until congress made it that way in the spring of 1968 when the manufacturing was ended on the Saturn V, the NERVA program was killed, and post J missions were killed.

There were many missions (I was surprised actually), that were planned, many of which look similar to the ESAS type missions, including landings in the polar regions, multiple LM's on the surface at a time, resupply missions, and much exploration.

A hypothetical here is what would have happened had the water that has been discovered in the past couple of years had been found in 1970? Don't even make the argument that it could not have happened. The Gamma Ray Spectrometer that flew on Apollo 15 and 16 was similar to the one that flew on Lunar Prospector decades later. The water that Paul Spudis writes about today from the Mini-RF instrument, comes from nothing more than a radar beam, all 100% doable in 1970.

One of the most interesting confirmations of the elevated water content on the Moon comes from a reevaluation of the Apollo surface data. In many Apollo samples there were elevated water measurements. These were discarded as contamination from terrestrial sources. After the data was returned from Mcubed, Paul's radar on Chandrayaan, and the other planetary mission (Cassini?), we now have a far greater understanding of the mechanism for water implantation and retention on the Moon. if this had been done 40 years ago rather than last year, we might be living in a different world today.

Be that as it may, to state that Apollo was a dead end, especially that far along in the implementation phase, says more about the politics of the era than it says about the hardware. Something really bad cracked in our national persona in that horrible year of 1968, something that has haunted us and kept us from doing what we know that we can do.

I feel that our political masters have no concept anymore of what to do to move our nation forward and that it is time for the private sector to step up, with money and technology, to lead the way. I found it interesting in the movie "When World's Collide" (the old one from the 50's), that it was not governments that built the spaceship that saved mankind, it was a private rich person. We need more of those people now.

The Moon does not belong to private industry. It belongs to the people of this planet. Governments will eventually decide what areas on the Moon that they will allow private industry to exploit.

Private companies will be glad to see a government base when they are attempting to set up their own factories and colonies on the hostile lunar surface just as settlers were happy to see government forts in America's wild frontier.

Marcel F. Williams

Below is the criticism of the Obama plan.
"Without specific goals and dates, the Congress will quickly lose interest, and the funding for all these new technologies will become very low priority (if it is actually possible for it to be a lower priority than it is now). Every year the can will get kicked down the road a little further, and eventually it'll all get zeroed out in the name of fiscal responsibility."
Guys, where have you been? That is where we have been since 1973 (in LEO), not where we suddenly find ourselves under Obama. I do not know if Obama will be any better, but I welcome any potential change from the great power point presentations to be fully funded always ten years in the future. And you bet, a series of republican and democratic presidents as well as docile NASA administrators are to blame for allowing this without raising a stink.

newpapyrus: The Moon belongs to whomever has the wetware+wealth+foresight to get them there to mine and process its resources! The idea that "governments will eventually decide what areas on the Moon that they will allow private industry to exploit" is nonsense. Just ask the Russian or Chinese.

Agreed ,

Look at the numbers ever since Apollo 18 and 19 were canceled NASA's budget has been cut by every subsequent administration. So to say Obama killed HSF has no truth. Although it does feel as if he trying to pull the plug on the respirator.

Damn the Gravity!

Some comments on your comments:

Joe
Without specific goals and dates, the Congress will quickly lose interest , and the funding for all these new technologies will become very low priority

Ed Griffith
That is where we have been since 1973 (in LEO), not where we suddenly find ourselves under Obama.
manup "Fact is, there might be a reason to get back to the moon when we can afford it and when its not a drain on resources."

So, when you say drain on our resourses... what country do you think we live in?

Libby-Congress and the President have been showing they have little interest in space since Kennedy. Even Kennedy said quite explicitly that “he wasn’t that interested in space; its a nice thing to do, we ought to spend a little money on it”. His goal was to win the moon race as a political move. No President since has been any different and neither has anyone in Congress other than a couple astronauts, an astronaut’s wife, and people representing their space districts, shown any more interest.

Everyone has been content to give civil space about .6% +/- of the Federal budget each year since the end of Apollo. Nixon and the forerunner of the OMB established that amount and basically told NASA to ‘go see what you can do with that’. Bush(2nd) in the Vision, basically told NASA exactly the same thing. Griffin set off on Constellation thinking that someone would pay for it. That was a mistake, NASA had already been told not to expect any additional significant amount.

Sure, if NASA and the people who benefit from NASA's work(contractors)built the case that space was worth more of an investment and if they made any kind of a serious effort to communicate why its valuable, they might be given more. That is the business case that people have been talking about for the last 18 months.

Lets remind ourselves that NASA has failed totally at communicating its value. ISS has been up there for more than a decade and less than a quarter of the investors have heard of it. During the height of Constellation, poll after poll showed Americans to be against more manned moon landings or Mars missions. Sure if NASA took communicating with its public seriously, and assuming there is real value (return on investment) in what we do, they would change the dollar amounts and NASA would get more. It has not happened in the last 40 years. Most Americans think NASA is great. Most Americans have no idea what NASA does or why.

RC
The experts have already considered Shuttle extension and building a space ship with ISS hardware and talent and decided against it.

Libby-I think everyone has pretty much given up on restartng full Shuttle production. Thats not the same as an HLV.

Show me where they have decided against either the Shuttle derived HLV or an ISS based sortie craft. As near as I can tell no one has decided for or against since no one has brought forward a viable plan.

newpapyrus
Apollo … The next step should have been a lunar base so that we could exploit lunar resources in order to reduce the cost of space travel….But Nixon trapped NASA at LEO.

Dennis Wingo
Apollo was never a dead end until congress made it that way in the spring of 1968 when the manufacturing was ended on the Saturn V, the NERVA program was killed, and post J missions were killed.

robert_law
Apollo certainly was not a dead end.

Libby-The President had the option of putting in more money for NASA in 1968 and decided he couldn’t afford it, and Congress agreed. The President was Johnson, who was probably the most supportive President the space program ever had.

Apollo wasn’t a dead end if you consider that the brainpower that learned on Apollo was the same brainpower the developed the Shuttle. Hardware wise there is little flying today, or even 25 years ago, that came directly from Apollo other than the intelligence of those people.

Apollo might not have been a dead end if it had been affordable and if it wasn’t so risky. Talk to the human space flight managers who worked Apollo and Apollo Applications and almost everyone will tell you there was little interest in continuing with Apollo lunar missions because of risk. Talk to Chris Kraft and about his discussions with Gilruth, Low and others. Remember there were two more Saturns and a Apollo CSM and LM completed and ready to fly (more CSMs and Saturns if you consider the Skylab launch vehicle and ASTP) and they decided against using them. Don’t talk to the rocket engineers from MSFC. The rocket men will all tell you they wanted to build more and they wanted to make them bigger. But they were responsible mainly for the first 10 minutes of the missions (a few more hours if you count TLI).

Dr_Manhattan
Program and Center managers, continues up the chain to the AAs

Sorry, you've got this backwards. Bolden, Garver and by extension Obama are the ones responsible.

Bolden and Garver are both NASA. The Program and Center Managers all work for those two. They have what is called a management council that is supposed to determine how to move forward. Don’t expect Obama or Congress to tell NASA management what to do and as I said up above, none of those people really care what NASA does with its money. They cannot agree among themselves.

NASA management needs to bring forward a workable plan and ‘sell’ it to Obama and Congress,

Robert Oler
The cracks started early in shuttle R&D. At some point as the dollars clearly were inadequate to build a vehicle which would do what the shuttle was suppose to do.

Ferris.Valyn
Shuttle may be real, but its also real expensive. what is also real, but cheap? EELVs. Falcon 9, Taurus 2.

The Shuttle that was built was the best that the best and most experienced space engineers on earth could do with the relatively fixed amount of $ per year in 72-77, which was the height of the development effort. It was sized specifically because they knew it would have to carry station sized modules (and critical DOD satellites). It was cutting edge technology at the time (and it still is).

As far as building any of the fly-back booster configurations, that would have really been a nightmare. Now the Orbiter takes 85% of the cost of every Shuttle launch. SRBs and ETs are relatively cheap. Now think if you had an Orbiter, plus another Orbiter three times the size of the current one, with three times the number of SSMEs, and had to maintain both.

Was Shuttle as cost effective as it might have been? In 1986 the STSOC contract largely turned over Shuttle operations to a commercial vendor, and it got more expensive.

No EELVs including Falcon 9 or Taurus 2 come anywhere close to doing what a Shuttle does or what a Shuttle derived vehicle could do. Falcon and Taurus are relatively puny rockets with 10 minute lifetimes. Shuttles carry crews and several times the payload that either of those vehicles ever will. Shuttles carry the payloads up and back.

Come back in about 10-15 years when you have some experience building and flying something bigger, more complex, and that actually flies multi-week missions before returning, and then we can talk about what you can do for less.

"Few if any in MOD come from an operational culture". That is ridiculous.

As far as building any of the fly-back booster configurations, that would have really been a nightmare. Now the Orbiter takes 85% of the cost of every Shuttle launch. SRBs and ETs are relatively cheap. Now think if you had an Orbiter, plus another Orbiter three times the size of the current one, with three times the number of SSMEs, and had to maintain both.

This is not what Von Braun was proposing. The original proposal from MSFC was for the S1C to be a flyback system. It would not go anywhere near orbital velocity and would have an autonomous landing capability. The Orbiters actually had that built into their software and they do darn near land themselves so you can't really say that it was impossible or well beyond the state of the art.

Therefore the S1C flyback would have been an extension of the existing Saturn system, using the same production lines and resources. It would have retained the basic S1C design which could still be used for missions to the Moon and beyond.

MSFC was darn near ready to fly the NERVA nuclear stage. It had passed its ground qualification tests and the flightweight engine had been built and tested. It only remained to integrate it into the SIVB. IF you read the congressional testimony of Von Braun and Webb from the 1964-1966 timeframe (which I have), you will find that the VAB was designed for the handling and fueling of the NERVA SIVB.

With the NERVA SIVB the delivered mass to TLI increased from 48 tons to 98 tons. The NERVA was specifically designed to be able to be returned to Earth orbit and eventually it was planned to refuel it and turn it into a cislunar cycler.

Apollo might not have been a dead end if it had been affordable and if it wasn’t so risky. Talk to the human space flight managers who worked Apollo and Apollo Applications and almost everyone will tell you there was little interest in continuing with Apollo lunar missions because of risk. Talk to Chris Kraft and about his discussions with Gilruth, Low and others. Remember there were two more Saturns and a Apollo CSM and LM completed and ready to fly (more CSMs and Saturns if you consider the Skylab launch vehicle and ASTP) and they decided against using them. Don’t talk to the rocket engineers from MSFC. The rocket men will all tell you they wanted to build more and they wanted to make them bigger. But they were responsible mainly for the first 10 minutes of the missions (a few more hours if you count TLI).

While I do understand that KRaft and others had this opinion it is actually quite mystifying in some respects and quite wrong in others. Von Braun had an uprating path for the Saturn V that was pretty much ready to fly in the development of the F1A engine (1.75 million lbs thrust vs 1.5 million for the F1), the J2S (increase to 256k lbs thrust vs the 232k lbs thrust of the J2), and the NERVA. The only change in the vehicle configuration would be to stretch the stages a bit to accomodate more fuel and thus more payload. This would have caused only very small changes to the existing industrial infrastructure.

By what you are saying you are showing that the risk was not in the launch vehicles but in the Apollo CSM and LM system. They were pretty darn sporty but the post J missions had the option to pre-fly a LM cargo vehicle to the Moon with another Saturn V and have a backup LM on the surface. With the rapid advance in avionics during the early 70's most of the problems with the system could have been solved. The booster was very robust, and MSFC was the shining star of NASA at the time. For JSC to lose heart was an amazing loss to the nation.

To not fly the last to Saturn missions was beyond criminal in my opinion. By 1972 the first science results from the examination of lunar materials brought back showed the ISRU potential. With the uprated engines (from what I saw at MSFC in the late 80's there was at least two flight sets of F1A and J2S engines built (maybe they were straight J2's), the delivered mass with the crew would have gone up considerably, allowing for at least a one week stay on the surface.

As for the STS system, yes the orbiter is wonderful. It would have been more wonderful as the upper stage of a Saturn. It would have retained its capabilities without the SRB's that killed seven people or the ET that killed another seven.

You don't need a specific goal to keep Congress interested. All you need is a plan that keeps the greatest amount of money flowing to the states of members who matter (or think they do). Anything beyond that is superfluous.

Well at least one thing von Braun was right about "late to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise".

Engineers (most of NASA and NASA management) do not usually think this way. They all think that if they do a good job someone will notice. Thats not enough.

Its time that NASA starts doing some serious advertising in the form of education and communications, or things will not get any better.

Maybe the new guy selected for PAO can help but first he has to overcome the bureaucratic systems of the existing very poorly run programs.

Of course each of those programs had goals. The US invested money in turbojet technology because we had a good idea that it could be used to power planes – all planes! That is a goal. And we know we want planes because we want to fly all over the globe. Why does it need to be a specific airplane? The X-15 had a goal – to understand high speed flight to name one. And the reason for that was that we wanted to develop faster planes.

OK here’s how the “bold exciting policy” is different. It’s a “we don’t know where we’re going but you know what, we’ll get there faster than somebody or something.” It puts the cart before the horse to put it simply. As so many have pointed out, if we don’t know what we want how do we know what technologies to develop?

If Mars is the destination, the logical next step is to outline the technologies needed and the steps to be taken that will make it possible. Then a perfectly logical next step IMO (and so many others), is a trip to the MOON not only to regain and grow the Apollo experience but to test engines like the VASIMR that can't be tested on Earth. All the experience of Apollo has been flushed down the toilet simply because the people have retired. There’s only so much that is retained from that era through reports and data and hardware. If you don’t think the Moon is necessary before Mars, kindly outline the logic behind your conclusions! Don’t dismiss it as a case of “been there, done that”. Is that how decisions are made with MY hard earned money? That will absolutely not do!

Indeed, the fact that the administration will not engage in a cogent, reasonable discussion on the matter, tells me that there’s more than meets the eye on this one.

"Of course each of those programs had goals."

they were all technology goals not "destination" specific goals. Those efforts are indistinguishable in product from the efforts that the new Obama plan calls for. Space refueling, new engines...affordable lift....they are all technology efforts which if successful make things possible that are literally not dreamed of today. Much as the nation went from a turbojet engine that had a hot section time of 10 hours to one that is in the many thousands.

No one working on the early turbojets said "this helps us build the 747 one day"...

The destination "mania" is in my view a hopeless relic of Apollo. What it calls for is a narrowly centered "program" whose efforts are not to develop technology that have any use outside of the effort...but simply to accomplish the goal and then not much else. What the "destination" people want is a "goal" to build a 747..back in 1956.

In my view we will do far better over the next 10 years if we have technology demonstrators that attempt to do with various space technologies what efforts in the 1950's (and 1930's) did with aviation...ie knock down some of the various issues that at some point are joined together to then do something specific (A bomber that can bomb Tokyo and carry the "gadget").

We have had endless goals in the last 40 years...and met some of them (the space station) and not met some of them ...but in the end the technology from them has proved meaningless to the rest of society.

If you want "destinations" enjoy the uncrewed projects...that is what they do.

Robert G. Oler

And this is clearly the intent of the current administration to put manned space exploration to the path to extinction. The funding shortfall that everyone says is so insurmountable is $3B US per year. Anyone watching or listening to the news should see that that kind of money is thrown at this or than program on at least a weekly basis. Unfortunately due to its expense Space Exploration, i.e. more than just launching a payload or two, can only be pursued by governments. And with such a capricious benefactor real progress is hard to sustain.

And if one more person comes off with the line that "We've explored the Moon, why go back?" ... It's about more than planting flags and gathering a few rocks. Just like the ISS is showing us what it takes to operate a spaceborne vessel for extended periods of time we need to learn how to operate on airless, cosmic ray bombarded surfaces before we can claim even an asteroid, let alone Mars.

I think that your comments are a pretty reasonably accurate way of looking at things. I would offer a couple suggestions however.

What we need to be doing is trying out new kinds of technologies and techniques. Its not the goal of Project Mercury, which was to put men in space and into orbit, and its not the goal of Project Apollo which was to land men on the moon.

Constellation was not well received because instead of aiming for developing new capabilities, it aimed to repeat the goals of Mercury (get people into orbit) and Apollo (land people on the moon). Constellation failed because even on the first goal, which should have been near term, reasonably affordable, and fairly simple to implement (safe, simple, soon), they pretty much failed to meet any of those goals. In part it was because they made some very poor strategic decisions as far as size of the capsule and capacity of the launcher.

What we really need is more like a Gemini capability, which actually is just how Dr. Griffin described it originally before he went off half cocked on 'Apollo on steroids'. The technologies are generally associated with manned spacecraft: ECLSS, power, propulsion, radiation protection, etc. This means a sortie spacecraft and the ability to launch some size-able payloads, probably similar in size to Shuttle sizes and masses. The technology testbeds ought to come in time but in the meantime a place to carry the systems for testing is needed both for launch and for in space use. A few systems might 'fit' on ISS. But for those that need to be tested changing orbits, going into deep space, a carrier/bus and the launch capability are both needed. Those we should be starting on now.

You might be interested in spending an extra .5 or 1% on a Constellation-like program but very few others in the US are.

Congress and the Presidents have decided that they do not want to spend that much. They've said NASA's budget is as much as they want to spend - that they added some this coming year is only because Augustine gave sort of an ultimatum that said if you don't add a little bit, NASA should go out of business.

Orion as a replacement for Shuttle was a reasonable thing to do if it could have met the criteria as a replacement to support ISS and if had been on a reasonable schedule with less than the money that was already being put into it (Constellation by taking funds for science, technology, and threatening others' programs had already destroyed some programs and was wrecking a lot of support and good will towards NASA.

The American people (look up the Gallup and Zogby polls on space for the last 10 years) have repeatedly said there is no need to be spending money to send people back to the moon or to Mars.

It is not that the case cannot be made to the President, Congress and the US people that the space program deserves more, but so far NASA has not made that effort; they have never really even tried.

For instance a repeated comment from polls is that instead of spending money in space, on the moon and mars, the money ought to be spent on domestic programs. This means that people think the money is being launched into space and not being used for domestic workers' salaries.

Another issue is that when it comes to things that are relevant to the taxpayer, taxpayers have identified smoke detectors, medical imaging systems, heart defibrillators, weather satellites, robotics, GPS, battery powered devices, and satellite communications. None are specifically related to people in space even though a couple are derived spin-offs from manned programs. But no one thinks of these things as coming from the space program at all and no one thinks we ought to be spending billions on men on the moon in order to develop new types of batteries.

Another issue is that there are serious issues in the US about an inadequate number of kids getting interested and studying science and technical subjects. This is a real national security issue and would be one of the easiest ways to make a case for NASA getting more money. NASA gives lip service to having concern about this, but has no focused program to get kids interested. The communications and education efforts are disjointed, haphazard, and money is going to the wrong groups. People have studied this, identified this as an issue, and no one in a leadership position in NASA has seen to it that NASA change direction. Don't say that education or communications are not NASA's jobs. NASA is specifically chartered b y the original Space Act that this is its job, and a lot of money - hundreds of millions of dollars - goes to this purpose. In the space sciences, they have had a real education program and strategy for a dozen years and they've been pretty successful. That is why people know ab out mars mission and the Hubble Telescope.

Manned space is different.

NASA's biggest, most expensive, premier program is ISS and take a look at the educational programs they've have - there are few and none that reach a national audience. Take a look at the people working this issue and you will find almost no one with any credentials.

NASA needs to change its ways or this battle can go on a long time.