Launching NASA on a Path to Nowhere: Analysis (4 time shuttle astronaut rips Obama plan)

Read the whole thing. Tom Jones is right!

OBAMA MUST BE STOPPED!

Privatizing some tasks is good. But privatizing the whole of NASA human spaceflight makes about as much sense as privatizing the US Marines!

The nations that lead on the frontiers, dictate the course of human history.

Obama is destroying our nation.

Stop him!

ping

Sorry, but those funds must be redirected to folks who think it’s time for the rich to “pay up.”

The title is perfect: Launched on a path to nowhere.

Constellation wasn’t perfect, even not a good plan, rather politic, but at least was one with clear objectives, that gave after forty years some leading to NASA.

To boldy niot go where no one has gone before...

Ad Astra per Asperia.

^Not

The astronaut’s just pissed because his buddies have lost their glory ride to nowhere (low earth orbit aboard the ISS). Maybe if they put together a good resume they can be part of the privatization of space. Coming soon to a launchpad near you.

Obama is wrong, so are you.

LOL! Well, you’ve got me. That rebuttal is just too fact filled and rational to answer.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4344512.html
“”Is Obama’s just-released NASA budget the “death march for the future of U.S. human space flight,” as Senator Richard Shelby proclaims on his website today? Or is it in fact a new beginning for the space agency?

Obama’s proposed 2011 budget actually increases NASA’s budget by $6 billion. What has Shelby and others up in arms is Obama’s plan to axe the big-ticket return-to-the-moon program, launched without adequate funding by his predecessor. Nine billion dollars in the hole and counting, the Constellation program has been busy trying to reclaim NASA’s glory days with an inherently flawed design.

The design relies on an elongated version of the solid rocket booster that doomed Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986. Solid rocket boosters cannot be shut down in an emergency and this segmented version relies on what amounts to giant washers to keep hot gases in, adding multiple points of failure compared with a liquid-fuel design. As shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane said in his book Riding Rockets, “At the most fundamental level, modern solid rocket boosters are no different from the first rockets launched by the Chinese thousands of years ago—after ignition they have to work because nothing can be done if they don’t. And, typically, when they do not work, the failure mode is catastrophic.”

The new budget calls for a course correction—for putting money back into the kind of basic research NASA does best, keeping the space station going through at least 2020, and hiring private contractors for crew and cargo flights. It’s a boon to private space flight companies such as SpaceX but an anathema to politicians who want to keep riding a very lucrative gravy train building paper spaceships. As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said today during a commercial space telecon organized in response to the budget request, “There are certain members of congress who cannot be swayed by any rational argument. They simply want the answer to be that funding continues in their district independent of any sound basis for it.”

I would argue that the new direction is not just the best option for NASA, but the only one. NASA already has no choice but to rely on the Russians for rides to the International Space Station after the shuttle retires this year. It’s an embarrassment. Obama’s budget will open the door to homegrown solutions for crew and cargo delivery to the space station, while providing much needed research funding for the development of next-gen technologies such as heavy-lift rockets and on-orbit refueling depots.

It’s a step that’s long overdue, though not one without peril. The private sector will have some very big shoes to fill, without the track record to prove that it’s up to the job. And can it succeed without succumbing to the kind of bloat that has eaten our defense budget alive? Working with the government tends to increase the amount of paperwork and oversight, along with the bureaucracy required to handle that extra workload, so it’s a legitimate concern. But, after all, the goal is to reduce the cost of reaching space. It has become clear to the right people, including many engineers and managers at NASA, that the traditional way of doing things hasn’t been working. NASA and the White House have every incentive to keep out of the way of the private contracts as much as possible.

A bigger danger is that NASA could become the only customer for the fledgling spaceflight companies, making them de facto arms of the government, with all the attendant problems, and keeping them at the mercy of changing political winds. That’s one reason Robert Bigelow, CEO of Bigelow Aerospace, which is developing commercial space stations, shuns government financing. “We don’t have NASA currently on our radar screen as a client,” he said during today’s telecon.

These bold moves are sure to touch off a battle in Congress. Constellation won’t die an easy death. But in its place, NASA will have the kind of clear direction along with the budget and a reasonable timeline for getting there that it has lacked for 40 years. NASA will maintain the space station—finally to be completed this year and ready for use as a fully-functional research outpost—with the help of the private sector, and conduct the research, robotic and otherwise, for pushing beyond low Earth orbit. JFK’s let’s-go-to-the-moon-in-this-decade battle cry it isn’t. But in some ways it’s even more exciting, because it points the way to truly sustainable development in space.

(Michael Belfiore is the author of Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space.)””

A great part of NASA should be privatized and the only public funding for NASA should be that which is directly related to the national defense.

Moreover, manned missions to the moon and mars are nonsense as the same objectives can be reached by unmanned craft to conduct scientific research.

This is worse than the Apollo 1 disaster...

when we lost Virgil I. “Gruff Gus” Grissom, Ed “first EVA” White and Roger Chafee.

Pretty soon the only a-hole supporting this killer of the USA...

will be Jimmy “look at my nuts” Carter...

and then, only so Carter doesn’t go down on history as the absolutely worst friggin president...ever!!

Incompetence can be forgiven, but evil requires payback!!

Tooooo bad they can only

rip . . . his . . .

plans.

Would that someone could rip the usurped offices from his treasonous hands.

Ahhhh will be done . . . in due course . . . . sigh . . . . after how much MORE destruction?

LOL! Well, you’ve got me. That rebuttal is just too fact filled and rational to answer.

So was your first comment, so you started it dummy!.

A comment from a NASA scientist my brother knows:

Let me begin by saying that I am a civil servant "rocket scientist" at Johnson Space Center. I have been with NASA for 20 years, first in Northern California and now in Houston. I grew up in Dallas so I have enjoyed the Morning News all my life. I would like make a few points: 1) Manned space flight is and will be for some time to come a government funded endeavor. There is simply no industry today that will be able to sell anything of sufficient revenue to the American people which require putting men in space. The main space industries which are or could be self sufficient are communication satellites (including GPS), and earth observation satellites (including weather). Government has funded much of these developments and continues to subsidize a few of them. However, we could very easily transfer much of the current government subsidies to the the public. We could do this, for example, by adding a surcharge on GPS receivers to pay for the development, launch, and operating costs GPS satellites (of course the Air Force would be the single largest customer and may balk because they want to be able to encrypt all GPS signals in a time of hostilities - this would upset Joe Q. Public who has contributed an extra $25 or whatever for their GPS receiver). Similarly, we could charge newspapers, TV stations, and others for the weather satellite information they use. People would pay for that by paying more for their paper and television or they would have to watch more commercials. People would grumble of course, but they would pay it. Knowing where you are and when and where the next hurricane will hit is something people will pay a little extra TODAY in the cost of their GPS receiver, newspaper, or television set. They would pay for that valuable which they need. The debate of if and how to do this boils down to the debate on the role of government. A debate I do not wish to engage in. However, there is no way we could add a surcharge today to anything that would cover the cost of manned space flight. So whether NASA or SpaceX builds the launch vehicles and spacecraft, the government will have to pay for/buy them. That may not be the case in the future when we mine asteroids and develop self sufficient colonies on the Moon/Mars. At that time there may be enough "products" to support a manned space flight industry that can survive with government funds. 2) So, why send people into space if it doesn't currently make economic sense? Good question, here are my thoughts. Humans need to explore and find more living space and natural resources. The exploration of the New World by Columbus and those that followed him did not bring instant wealth to Europeans. Eventually it did as trade between the New World and Europe grew and as people began to colonize and industrialize the New World. (The big losers were of course Native Americans - but again another debate I wish to refrain from.) However that eventual benefit from this exploration most likely would have never occurred (or maybe much much later) had not Ferdinand and Isabel funded with state money Columbus' expeditions. (I am sure other explorers were similarly supportted by "patrons", but my history knowledge is not that extensive). Similarly we will never get to the point of mining the moon and colonizing these places without an initial government investment. No corporation is willing to invest that kind of money if the beginning of the resulting revenue stream is decades in the future. The stockholders don't want profitability in 30-50-100 years when they are likely to be dead - they want it next year or at most 5-7 years in the future. This is very much the case for manned space exploration. If government doesn't kick start it with funding, it isn't going to happen except maybe way in the future when we have so destroyed and exploited this planet that we will have to do something. I think use of government funds so that the capability exists sooner rather than later when driven as a planet to desperation. The only other solution I see is limiting the humans on the planet to a sustainable number - say a billion or two. And how are we going to do that without Big Brother??? I don't know. 3) Robots are great. I really like them. However they still are not as capable as a human in terms of exploration. Making them think on their own is still a developing technology and controlling them from earth can be difficult when the radio communication round trip time gets large. Of course robots are getting smarter all the time, but I believe it will be a long long time before they can replace ALL the things astronauts can do. There is room in space exploration for both humans and robots. They are more complementary to each other than most people realize. Now about Obama's budget. As a NASA employee and a space enthusiast there is a lot to like about the budget. It does provide increased funding albeit at about the rate of inflation when viewed over the 5 year span. This is less than the rate of projected GDP growth - so while the budget is increasing NASA will still, over the 5 year time frame, become a slightly smaller part of the overall American economy. Hey but I can't complain about this fact in the light that NASA could have been frozen at FY10 $ like apparently much of the rest of the non-security discretionary portion of the budget (which by the way is only about 25% of the total budget of $3.8 trillion - yes trillion with a T). So while NASA's about $20 Billion is a lot of money, it is a small part of the overall economy which is about $14 trillion. We as Americans spend about as much on NASA as we do on the motion picture industry. And since the budget is a constant with respect to inflation NASA will employ directly or through contractors just about as many people as today. With the ending of Constellation and Shuttle though it will not be the same people in those jobs, the jobs will not be with the same companies or even in exactly the same locations. The transition will be painful and NASA is at risk of losing a lot of talented people during the transition. And remember, technology is really people and their skills. To say that we can just dust of the the Saturn V and Apollo blueprints today and quickly redo Apollo just like we did in 1968-1973 is very naive. It would take a lot of time and money for us as a nation to resurrect the Apollo/Saturn V capability. This is not "technology that we have in the bank" - it has been lost - the engineers and technicians are no longer working and the factories and launch facilities have either been shut down or long ago converted to the Shuttle program. Also, there are a lot of good words in the budget about developing new technologies, bolstering earth observations, renewed commitment astro- and heliophysics missions, a modest increase for aeronautics (most people don't realize that only about 40-45% of NASA's budget is spent on manned exploration), and extending the life of ISS, etc. etc. All good stuff - some with obvious economic benefit for humans and some with more the benefit of increasing our knowledge of the world/universe. The latter is not so much a benefit that will put food on the table or another car in the garage, but still it is of the more intangible benefit of making us more knowledgeable as a society. Something humans have always put value in. My main issue with Obama's NASA budget is the COMPLETE cancellation of Orion. This means that we will have NO capability or even something significant on the drawing board to get astronauts into low Earth orbit after the Shuttle retires in a year. We will be totally dependent on the Russian Soyuz. I can see canceling the parts of Constellation devoted to the moon mission - namely Ares V and the lunar lander - as being prudent in the current fiscal situation. I could even see some sense in canceling Ares I and trying to modify Orion to go on a Delta IV, Atlas V, or a yet to be flown Falcon 9 Heavy - I wouldn't agree with such a choice, but I could see the reasons behind it. But to cancel Orion to me just seems insane. Yes, I know the new plan is to get some young entrepreneur with his dot com billions to create a company to built a human rated spacecraft that can operate on orbit and then safely re-entry. And that is going to happen in five or so years so that we only have to rely on Soyuz for those 5 or so years???? Call me extremely skeptical about that. Yes, yes I know about SpaceX, and I am in fact extremely impressed with what Mr. Musk has been able to accomplish on his own dime in 6-7 years. But to date, SpaceX has still not flown the Falcon 9 and upgrading the Dragon cargo craft (also yet to fly) to a spacecraft that can carry humans to orbit and back to the ground will be a major undertaking. They are very smart guys at SpaceX and they may be able pull it off with private funds - if any one can I would place my bet on them. But for us as a nation to put our entire manned space flight future in the capable hands but as yet unproven capability (of a human rated spacecraft) of Mr. Musk or another enthusiastic entrepreneur seems so risky as to be foolhardy. My thought would be we should continue with at least Orion and try to get it (or a smaller version) on an existing launch vehicle (Delta, Atlas, or Falcon). At the same time we could still be encouraging commercial entities to develop an ISS crew transfer spacecraft. It could be 6-person if we scale Orion to 3-4 persons and then it would bring an added complement to Orion in terms of additional capability and a second transport method so that we would still be able to access ISS if one of the two spacecraft requires significant grounding because of a technical issue. We all remember the complete reliance we had on Soyuz after the Columbia disaster. These are just my thoughts which in no way represent the position of my employer, NASA. Oh and yes, SpaceX does test all its rockets in McGregor near Waco, but most of its jobs are in Hawthorne, CA where most or all of the design, engineering and fabrication of the Falcon rockets occur. While the Texas congressional delegation likes those jobs in McGregor, they aren't nearly the 8000-10,000 or so jobs (civil servants and contractors) at NASA Johnson in Houston. I would ask the earlier poster to consider this.

sorry about the formatting

Change you can believe in.

obamalamadingdong

That sums it up very nicely. This is the only thing Obama has done that I completely agree with. If NASA can be saved it will have to divest itself of the manned program and return to it’s roots as an agent of exploration.

Reformatting for sanity: Let me begin by saying that I am a civil servant "rocket scientist" at Johnson Space Center. I have been with NASA for 20 years, first in Northern California and now in Houston.

I grew up in Dallas so I have enjoyed the Morning News all my life. I would like make a few points:

1) Manned space flight is and will be for some time to come a government funded endeavor. There is simply no industry today that will be able to sell anything of sufficient revenue to the American people which require putting men in space.
The main space industries which are or could be self sufficient are communication satellites (including GPS), and earth observation satellites (including weather). Government has funded much of these developments and continues to subsidize a few of them.
However, we could very easily transfer much of the current government subsidies to the the public.
We could do this, for example, by adding a surcharge on GPS receivers to pay for the development, launch, and operating costs GPS satellites (of course the Air Force would be the single largest customer and may balk because they want to be able to encrypt all GPS signals in a time of hostilities - this would upset Joe Q. Public who has contributed an extra $25 or whatever for their GPS receiver).
Similarly, we could charge newspapers, TV stations, and others for the weather satellite information they use. People would pay for that by paying more for their paper and television or they would have to watch more commercials. People would grumble of course, but they would pay it. Knowing where you are and when and where the next hurricane will hit is something people will pay a little extra TODAY in the cost of their GPS receiver, newspaper, or television set. They would pay for that valuable which they need. The debate of if and how to do this boils down to the debate on the role of government. A debate I do not wish to engage in.
However, there is no way we could add a surcharge today to anything that would cover the cost of manned space flight. So whether NASA or SpaceX builds the launch vehicles and spacecraft, the government will have to pay for/buy them. That may not be the case in the future when we mine asteroids and develop self sufficient colonies on the Moon/Mars. At that time there may be enough "products" to support a manned space flight industry that can survive with government funds.

2) So, why send people into space if it doesn't currently make economic sense? Good question, here are my thoughts. Humans need to explore and find more living space and natural resources.
The exploration of the New World by Columbus and those that followed him did not bring instant wealth to Europeans. Eventually it did as trade between the New World and Europe grew and as people began to colonize and industrialize the New World. (The big losers were of course Native Americans - but again another debate I wish to refrain from.) However that eventual benefit from this exploration most likely would have never occurred (or maybe much much later) had not Ferdinand and Isabel funded with state money Columbus' expeditions. (I am sure other explorers were similarly supportted by "patrons", but my history knowledge is not that extensive).
Similarly we will never get to the point of mining the moon and colonizing these places without an initial government investment. No corporation is willing to invest that kind of money if the beginning of the resulting revenue stream is decades in the future. The stockholders don't want profitability in 30-50-100 years when they are likely to be dead - they want it next year or at most 5-7 years in the future.
This is very much the case for manned space exploration. If government doesn't kick start it with funding, it isn't going to happen except maybe way in the future when we have so destroyed and exploited this planet that we will have to do something.
I think use of government funds so that the capability exists sooner rather than later when driven as a planet to desperation. The only other solution I see is limiting the humans on the planet to a sustainable number - say a billion or two. And how are we going to do that without Big Brother??? I don't know.

3) Robots are great. I really like them. However they still are not as capable as a human in terms of exploration. Making them think on their own is still a developing technology and controlling them from earth can be difficult when the radio communication round trip time gets large. Of course robots are getting smarter all the time, but I believe it will be a long long time before they can replace ALL the things astronauts can do. There is room in space exploration for both humans and robots. They are more complementary to each other than most people realize.

Now about Obama's budget. As a NASA employee and a space enthusiast there is a lot to like about the budget. It does provide increased funding albeit at about the rate of inflation when viewed over the 5 year span. This is less than the rate of projected GDP growth - so while the budget is increasing NASA will still, over the 5 year time frame, become a slightly smaller part of the overall American economy. Hey but I can't complain about this fact in the light that NASA could have been frozen at FY10 $ like apparently much of the rest of the non-security discretionary portion of the budget (which by the way is only about 25% of the total budget of $3.8 trillion - yes trillion with a T).
So while NASA's about $20 Billion is a lot of money, it is a small part of the overall economy which is about $14 trillion. We as Americans spend about as much on NASA as we do on the motion picture industry. And since the budget is a constant with respect to inflation NASA will employ directly or through contractors just about as many people as today.

With the ending of Constellation and Shuttle though it will not be the same people in those jobs, the jobs will not be with the same companies or even in exactly the same locations. The transition will be painful and NASA is at risk of losing a lot of talented people during the transition. And remember, technology is really people and their skills. To say that we can just dust of the the Saturn V and Apollo blueprints today and quickly redo Apollo just like we did in 1968-1973 is very naive. It would take a lot of time and money for us as a nation to resurrect the Apollo/Saturn V capability. This is not "technology that we have in the bank" - it has been lost - the engineers and technicians are no longer working and the factories and launch facilities have either been shut down or long ago converted to the Shuttle program.

Also, there are a lot of good words in the budget about developing new technologies, bolstering earth observations, renewed commitment astro- and heliophysics missions, a modest increase for aeronautics (most people don't realize that only about 40-45% of NASA's budget is spent on manned exploration), and extending the life of ISS, etc. etc. All good stuff - some with obvious economic benefit for humans and some with more the benefit of increasing our knowledge of the world/universe. The latter is not so much a benefit that will put food on the table or another car in the garage, but still it is of the more intangible benefit of making us more knowledgeable as a society. Something humans have always put value in.

My main issue with Obama's NASA budget is the COMPLETE cancellation of Orion. This means that we will have NO capability or even something significant on the drawing board to get astronauts into low Earth orbit after the Shuttle retires in a year. We will be totally dependent on the Russian Soyuz. I can see canceling the parts of Constellation devoted to the moon mission - namely Ares V and the lunar lander - as being prudent in the current fiscal situation. I could even see some sense in canceling Ares I and trying to modify Orion to go on a Delta IV, Atlas V, or a yet to be flown Falcon 9 Heavy - I wouldn't agree with such a choice, but I could see the reasons behind it. But to cancel Orion to me just seems insane. Yes, I know the new plan is to get some young entrepreneur with his dot com billions to create a company to built a human rated spacecraft that can operate on orbit and then safely re-entry. And that is going to happen in five or so years so that we only have to rely on Soyuz for those 5 or so years???? Call me extremely skeptical about that. Yes, yes I know about SpaceX, and I am in fact extremely impressed with what Mr. Musk has been able to accomplish on his own dime in 6-7 years. But to date, SpaceX has still not flown the Falcon 9 and upgrading the Dragon cargo craft (also yet to fly) to a spacecraft that can carry humans to orbit and back to the ground will be a major undertaking. They are very smart guys at SpaceX and they may be able pull it off with private funds - if any one can I would place my bet on them. But for us as a nation to put our entire manned space flight future in the capable hands but as yet unproven capability (of a human rated spacecraft) of Mr. Musk or another enthusiastic entrepreneur seems so risky as to be foolhardy. My thought would be we should continue with at least Orion and try to get it (or a smaller version) on an existing launch vehicle (Delta, Atlas, or Falcon). At the same time we could still be encouraging commercial entities to develop an ISS crew transfer spacecraft. It could be 6-person if we scale Orion to 3-4 persons and then it would bring an added complement to Orion in terms of additional capability and a second transport method so that we would still be able to access ISS if one of the two spacecraft requires significant grounding because of a technical issue. We all remember the complete reliance we had on Soyuz after the Columbia disaster.

These are just my thoughts which in no way represent the position of my employer, NASA. Oh and yes, SpaceX does test all its rockets in McGregor near Waco, but most of its jobs are in Hawthorne, CA where most or all of the design, engineering and fabrication of the Falcon rockets occur. While the Texas congressional delegation likes those jobs in McGregor, they aren't nearly the 8000-10,000 or so jobs (civil servants and contractors) at NASA Johnson in Houston. I would ask the earlier poster to consider this.

Nope. I made three objective statements in that post. The astronaut is displeased because for the last several decades the astronaut corps has dominated NASA and it’s budget. Losing that position is what he’s complaining about.

The ISS is irrelevant. No science is accomplished there and we’ve proven many times with numerous other programs that man can ride around the planet for a long time and when he gets back to earth it takes a while to recuperate. Proving that over and over ad infinitum is a ride to nowhere.

If Astronauts want to participate in the privatization of space (which is indeed coming to a launchpad near you) they can do so and their skills would be very useful.

Spending money on wasteful programs like manned moon flights and Mars flights is a jobs program. The fact that Bush initiated it doesn’t make it otherwise. It never ceases to amaze me how supposed conservatives on this site can come to the defense of a bloated govt agency like NASA and claim with a straight face that they want smaller govt and fiscal conservatism. You can’t have it both ways.