Which "Compromise" Will Prevail?

And the commercial aspirations inherent in the White House plans? They are reduced the point of being window dressing - if not outright irrelevant.

Commercial spaceflight aspirations? Congress is clearly hostile and positioning to drive emerging private spaceflight players out of the market.

If commercial human spaceflight players are unable to close their business case with a hostile Congress, they'll have to be persistent and wait for NASA to fail to deploy a government-operated system in budget and on schedule - or depend entirely on non-NASA customers.

If Congress continues to authorize most of NASA's human spaceflight spending for only government-operated launcher and capsule projects, I will not be surprised at all if NASA continues to depend on Soyuz for the life of the International Space Station.

Given an inflation-adjusted stable budget, at NASA's current cash burn rate, they're not going to fly on their own rocket until later than 2018. Since it is more than likely that NASA's budget will be cut in the out years, NASA's not going to fly to the Station on its own rocket - ever.

Maybe the 2020s will be interesting for American spaceflight.

The Obama administration is really not interested in a manned government space program. Its obvious that they see it as a waste of tax payer dollars that could be better spent on other social programs. So just turning everything over to private industry makes perfect sense to them!

Ironically, the Republicans are finally seeing the value of NASA as a government program and are actually advocating a 'public option' for access to orbit.

Promoting private commercial manned spaceflight should not mean terminating the government's ability to fly humans into space. There needs to be a strong US government civilian presence in space.

Marcel F. Williams

"There needs to be a strong US government civilian presence in space."

For what? Let's see the proof.

If it's dependent on government budgets, then it's not commercial space flight. 'Commercial' in this context just means somebody elses pet contractor(s).

A true compromise, such as emerged from the Senate Authorization bill last week, can't be expected to gut commercial crew and space technology but will probably have to face a "public option" manned system. That's why it's called a compromise....

Keith, to answer your question: no
Don't you find it ironic that both Bush and Obama announced big space initiatives, then basically walked away when the going got tough. What is it with these political leaders -- and what does such disinterest say about the future of NASA and civil space?What would JFK do? Reagan? Honest Abe? Any student of history can tell you when a President fails to defend his policy initiatives, those initiatives were never truly part of the President's agenda in the first place. In the case of Bush, it was all Sean O'Keefe. In the case of Obama, who? John Holdgren? Lori Garver?

Yes Frank and thus why I've been more right than wrong on this topic for the last year. Over the years I have learned to go on the historical trend and not my personal desires or agenda. That is hard for some people to do and I must admit it took some hard lessons for me to finally accept it as the way it is. Lots of people got upset with me on this blog because I would say things like "Cx is not dead yet and "commercial" space is not a done deal long term etc." (I don't have a dog in the fight and was merely giving my opinion based on a lot of years of experience here so maybe that is why I was able to be objective and see it for what it is.)

It appears that Keith is right and the fix is in and it is very much as one would expect based on the history of our space program and how WDC works. We can all wish and hope it would be different but I'd rather live in reality and make it work from there.

So expect minor changes for "commercial" space and novel rocket approaches and expect much more of the way we've always done business - and you will be more right than wrong. If you want real change you need to go home and paint the house or buy a new car.

I try not to be cynical, however...

Every once in a while I envision the same scenario: Many months ago the White House staff is in a meeting. When the agenda item NASA comes up, everybody at the table admits that they really have no idea at all what to do about NASA.

Someone suggests, "let's throw together something minimal, non-committal and non-specific, that's perhaps slightly controversial, just throw it out there, and then let everybody else fight about it until they either figure out a good answer or come up with a compromise. Then, whatever happens, it won't be our fault."

I know, it sounds silly. But, then again, how else do you explain their continual inactivity in terms of defending their plan.

As for what NASA itself could or should have done to support the ObamaSpace Plan, exactly who at NASA is in a position to have done anything? Remember the One-NASA concept? It never happened. NASA is a puzzle with too many pieces. No matter what "plan" is adopted at this point, I feel certain there is going to be some major reorganization at NASA. Whether it's a useful organization is a whole other question.

As a final thought: since the politicians have seen fit to "design" the space program, perhaps it's only fair that some of the NASA engineers, technicians, and scientists get to run the government for a while.

Steve

The white house has compromised on everything else, so I don't see why they won't compromise on this?

They have a good case for their bill, but who really cares to be convinced? It is less un-American than the other bills. Doing many smaller things means many more successes. And high-tech R&D is largely what people think NASA is (should be) doing anyway. But who cares outside the pork states?

Anyone remember the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste respository? Sure you do -- Congress and the Executive Branch (and the state of Nevada) have been industriously .... being industrious .... on that little idea since 1978. And what progress has been made in a 1/3 of a century? What do you think?

Lots of precedent for kicking programs downstream in this country. It's part of our natural culture I sometimes think, a dark side of the American Exceptionalism our politicians enjoy proclaiming.

But maybe I'm wrong. We got a new health care bill recently that all the politicians agreed on. In a few more days I'm sure we'll all be shaking hands over a budget proposal that gets the federal government back to earning a surplus early in Obama's next term. School boards across the nation have insisted that students need to learn Darwinian evolution. Opposition to a woman's Right To Chose is fading everywhere. Legalization of marijuana and cocaine is just months away. Cities and states across America are revising building codes and dictating improvements in energy consumption to forestall the effects of Antropogenic Global Warming.

Now that we've reached a national concensus on these trifling little issues, surely we can soon forge agreement on goals and means for continuing our manned space program. I'm certain the path ahead will be equally obvious and as earnestly embraced by all parties to the discussion!

Keith and Frank,

I hate to say this but I knew this Whitehouse would not carry through with their plans. I had a huge issue with their plan from the beginning when there really was no plan just a hodgepodge of ideas. I could see this train wreck from 100 miles.

That being said, there was 1 piece, the Flagship Technologies, that was a good idea. Unfortunately this administration could not talk about the huge elephant in the room which is in space nuclear power. Without that you can forget VASMIR, Mars, or anything beyond the Moon.

Now we have Congress essentially telling Team Obama, that we are not going to listen to anything you say. Obama's weakness in the polls does not help him either.

$ 4 billion for commercial crew on both Atlas and Delta, we can say we had a fly off under contracting law.
or
both get loans to developed both projects,but congress agrees that the $4 billion saved will be spent on a massive buy of launchers even if some are stored for a time.
EELV is a modular system so EELV heavy becomes a fall back measure to a failed Orion/side mount possibility.

DOE pays for study on molten salt Thorium/spent nuclear fuel as part of a combined space based solar/nuclear power architecture, this is 30+ years out from now.
nuclear waste trust fund pays for launching spent fuel dissolved in molten salt out the biosphere.
this is a massive launch vehicle buy :):):)