Posted on 08/11/2008 1:22:49 PM PDT by anymouse
In a news conference Monday, NASA managers discussed how the agency will be adjusting the budget, schedule and technical performance milestones for its Constellation Program to ensure the first crewed flight of the Ares I rocket and Orion crew capsule in March 2015.
The Constellation Program is developing the spacecraft and systems, including the Ares I and Ares V rockets, the Orion crew exploration vehicle, and the Altair lunar lander, that will take astronauts to the International Space Station after the retirement of the space shuttle, and eventually return humans to the moon.
"Since the program's inception, NASA has been working an aggressive plan to achieve flight capability before our March 2015 target," said Rick Gilbrech, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We are still confident the Constellation Program will make its first flight to the International Space Station on or before that date. Our new path forward better aligns our project schedules with our existing funds to ensure we can address the unplanned challenges that always arise when developing a complex flight system."
NASA will retire the space shuttles in 2010 and had established a goal of achieving flight capability for the Constellation Program before 2015 to narrow the gap in America's human spaceflight capability. As such, NASA aligned Constellation contracts and internal milestones against a date much earlier than March 2015 to incentivize an earlier flight capability.
As part of an annual budget process that evaluates the program's budget, schedule and technical performance milestones, NASA will be working with its contractors to discuss how program plans and internal milestones should be adjusted -- a process that will take several months and require contract modifications and associated milestone realignments. Such adjustments are not unusual for a complex development program as work matures and schedules and resources are aligned.
For more information about the Constellation Program, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/constellation
space ping
Doesn’t matter. The world will end in 2012..............
With things heating up in the Soviet, er, Russia, I wonder how that will affect the ISS? BTW, I think we should keep the shuttle flying until we get the new Apollo (Orion) clone off the ground. Looking back, we should have kept Apollo in the first place, but for now, I think we should keep the shuttles until we get the Orion flying.
The recent news from Georgia should escalate the need to reduce the gap between shuttle and constellation.
Relying on the Soyuz is not anything anyone is relishing.
“I think we should keep the shuttles until we get the Orion flying.”
In a perfect world.
Money money money money money.
Shuttle eats pure money and burns it right out it’s engine bells.
NASA is already quietly (or maybe not so quietly) planning to keep the shuttle flying past 2010.
I think it is more than the money Ash. NASA does not have enough big buildings to continue preparing shuttle launches and build the new rockets. Their plans call for using the same buildings and towers, so they have to shut them down, retool, and work the new program. They have no plans or buildings for parallel shuttle/development efforts.
Don’t know whether this was a ploy to get more massive funding or not. Griffin does not seem that kind of guy. I think they really are stuck without options.
The Atlas V is being man rated and could help fill the gap. Anyway, if Obama is elected NASA will be sliced and diced into irrelevance.
It certainly sucks any way you look at it.
I think the best case is shuttle to retire on time.
No extension beyond, and push hard to reduce the gap between and get Ares I and Orion going sooner then planned.
We have had gaps before, five years is just too long.
Though if Obama were to win, I would expect even longer. If at all, and forget return to moon with Obama for sure.
> Relying on the Soyuz is not anything anyone is relishing.
Especially after it (pick one):
a. kills some astronauts, or
b. has a no-surprise ticket price increase when
STS stands down
Burt Rutan stands a better chance of getting to ISS
than anything NASA is designing to replace the shuttle.
Not gonna happen. NASA doesn’t have enough spare parts to keep flying the shuttle past 2010. They may not have enough to make it to 2010.
Rumor has it that “the Stick” aka the Ares I just isn’t going to work. (For those not in the know, the Ares I is a launch vehicle openly designed with the primary mission of keeping as many NASA employees and industry contractors employed as possible. Getting the Orion spacecraft into orbit is its secondary mission.) It seems that the Stick is just too low-powered and kludgy to loft the Orion into a useful orbit with any modicum of safety.
My opinion (near-worthless, since I’m not a rocket scientist) is that NASA should drop the Stick in favor of launching everything on the Ares V (the new heavy lift booster) or on a commercial launcher such as the Delta Heavy.
The whole program has become a joke. Pathetic.
Is the stick dying?Complete text
posted by Robert Block on Aug 8, 2008 10:36:29 AMThere are rumblings of discord in the NASA family over the agency’s troubled Ares I moon rocket. According to well-placed sources inside NASA, the astronaut office is deeply unhappy with the design of Ares as it emerges from an important review that is in the process of being finished up now.
The concern is so great, the sources say, that there is some talk at the highest levels of NASA about the possibility of ditching the Ares, with its unconventional stick-like solid rocket booster first stage, in favor of a more conventional rocket design – one that sounds like the shuttle launch system without the shuttle.
Such a move would be a dramatic, if not embarrassing about-face. NASA has insisted that the Ares is the safest, cheapest and simplest design available and that a host of technical woes, including jack-hammer-like vibrations on liftoff, were easily fixable glitches.
NASA still denies that there is any problem.
[ ... ]
But sources say the public pronouncements are just posturing by the agency to buy time, following a deal between NASA’s top brass and the astronauts to address their concerns fully after the design review is finished next month. [ ... ] The Astronauts Office portion of the review concerns itself principally with the safety of the human occupants aboard the rocket. [ ... ] Engineers are concerned that the rocket may not be powerful enough to lift the capsule with all the bells and whistles the astronauts want. [ ... ] Earlier this year, there were reports of a fight between NASA designers and the Astronaut Office about the designers wanting to remove redundant safety systems as a way to slim down the capsule. (The astronauts won and the safety systems got put back.)
In the face of the latest reports of trouble, sources say that NASA leaders are looking at a possible replacement design [ ... ] a rocket capable of getting astronauts to the international space station and low Earth orbit, allowing NASA to work on the larger Ares V rocket that would provide the heavy lift necessary to be able to return humans to the moon.
“[It’s] … still being debated; looks like they want to minimize the embarrassment for certain NASA executives,” said one source.
On top of all this “good news” anybody else wondering what happens to manned access to ISS after the shuttle stops flying until 2015 when Constellation may or may not fly, especially with the Russians invading Georgia, a NATO applicant? What happens to ISS period, when one key partner (Russia) starts waging war on allies of the other partners?
“Burt Rutan stands a better chance of getting to ISS
than anything NASA is designing to replace the shuttle.”
I’m sure he could, but I doubt it would be in time.
The ESA Jules Verne cargo module is being looked at for conversion to crewed missions. But you need an entry vehicle for it.
NASA is already pulling money out of Orion related programs to keep the shuttle program office operating. Whether they can or not, they are.
NASA simply needs all the resources it can get for its software team of global temperature adjustment engineers, there simply is nothing left available for such irrelevant ventures as advancing the human frontier
NASA simply needs all the resources it can get for its software team of global temperature adjustment engineers, there simply is nothing left available for such irrelevant ventures as advancing the human frontier
NASA simply needs all the resources it can get for its software team of global temperature adjustment engineers, there simply is nothing left available for such irrelevant ventures as advancing the human frontier
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