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Because the con artist shut down the government, or at least part of it, only essential personnel at NASA will be on duty when the flyby happens.

"During the Shutdown Furlough, you will be in a nonpay, nonduty status. During this time, you will not be permitted to serve NASA as an unpaid volunteer. You must remain away from your worksite, and may not work at home, in another location, or participate in events hosted by non-NASA entities in your official capacity like speeches or speakers bureau engagements, unless and until recalled."

This also affects another NASA flyby the same day:

The shutdown also means NASA has had to turn to another contractor lab, the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson, to document when another space agency probe, OSIRIS-REx, goes into orbit around the asteroid Bennu, another milestone scheduled for New Year's Eve. NASA TV will similarly cover those announcements, according to Bridenstine.

Someone I know from another site has a niece whose husband works at NASA and is a big supporter of the con artist. He's taking a little bit of pleasure knowing the guy won't be around for the momentous occasion and won't get to see it until afterwards. Nor is he getting paid and won't get a pay raise next year.

Heck, even the normal landings in Soyuz spacecraft are pretty rough - over a third of all NASA astronauts who had flown in Soyuz capsules as of late 2016 were injured during landing.

Heh... On this week's "Space Boffins" podcast, they interviewed a European astronaut who had flown the Soyuz several times. He described a Soyuz landing as "a series of catastrophic events." On his first one, the Russians commented on the soft landing, he replied "You call *that* a soft landing?!?!" and they said "You're alive. That's a soft landing."

Yes, Soyuz 7K-T No.39 / Soyuz 18a and Soyuz 7K-ST No. 16L / Soyuz T-10-1. There have also been similar high-G experiences in Soyuz capsules from other causes, such as Soyuz 33, Soyuz TMA-1, and Soyuz TMA-11.

Nominal G forces in an abort in a Soyuz capsule are 15g. Sometimes they can be even more. The landing site is also untargeted in an abort and can be hazardous. Heck, even the normal landings in Soyuz spacecraft are pretty rough - over a third of all NASA astronauts who had flown in Soyuz capsules as of late 2016 were injured during landing.

NASA's Rescue Expertise Is Needed Again - In Thailand http://nasawatch.com/archives/...

Homer Hickam, author of "October Sky" (Rocket Boys), showed this item his dad invented in 1948, https://uploads.disquscdn.com/...

You reference a "staunchly formal notice" and where it was posted but can't include a link?

Permit: http://images.spaceref.com/new...

Reference page: http://nasawatch.com/archives/...

"editor".. sheesh

discussion of that at NASAwatch, http://nasawatch.com/archives/...

or routinely check http://nasawatch.com/ for the latest gossip.

How about this? Or maybe this?

So yes, NASA does not use SI units exclusively.

The RD-181-equipped Antares rocket

Mentioned only in passing, the RD-181 is Russia-designed and created rocket engine...

While lower-level Democrats are gleefully spreading rumours about Trump being a Putin's man, the Democratic Administration continues to buy this high technology from the adversary. In a typical manifestation of hair-splitting, even though Congress banned the use of RD-180 in 2015, NASA claims, use of RD-181 is acceptable...

The last statement in the summary is completely uncalled for.

Ned Wright is known to have a pretty sharp wit. Besides, Myhrvold used his notoriety to grandstand with the press before his work was peer-reviewed, basically calling Wright a moron. I would get a little testy too.

If Myhrvold wants to play the YOU-ARE-NOT-CREDIBLE-BECAUSE-YOUR-ORGANIZATION-MAKES-BAD-SOFTWARE game, he need only mention Mars Climate Orbiter. Oops! See how that works?

Not to mention Spaceport Command and Control System (SCCS) Doh!

Not even the second
http://nasawatch.com/archives/...

LOL.
Yeah. No.

Yes, he did say that.

And the White House denied that he was "charged" to do Muslim outreach.

My take is that Bolden was pandering to the Muslim audience, based on broader goals that he was given by Obama.

http://nasawatch.com/archives/... Ummm no.

From Bush's 2005 speech "New Vision for Space Exploration Program:

"To meet this goal, we will return the Space Shuttle to flight as soon as possible, consistent with safety concerns and the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. The Shuttle's chief purpose over the next several years will be to help finish assembly of the International Space Station. In 2010, the Space Shuttle -- after nearly 30 years of duty -- will be retired from service. "

The est of his speech is in the link.

You are entitled to your own opinion, you are not entitled to your own facts.

Bush cancelled the Shuttle program, and that is a fact. This is why as an independent, I don't like Republicans, they are four flushing liars. and proud of it.

The RSO aborted at 20 seconds. That was probably the first explosion in the video.

Haha, you first have to convince NASA there's a problem. Last I heard (as of 2009), NASA is still using imperial units for development of the future replacement for the Space Shuttle.

They were purposely not invited. Then they were sort of not invited (Read the TFA, it's weird). Now they've invited everyone else to join their party.

If it's your party, you get to decide on the decorations and the cuisine.

Maybe it was not as cool as they thought it was

... for electing Obama.

Check out what Obama want's Bolden to do. Direct quote from Bolden:

"When I became the NASA administrator, (President Obama) charged me with three things," Bolden said in the interview which aired last week. "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering."

Their "foremost" task is to make Muslims feel good. He literally said that. Yet he still heads NASA

Thanks, jackasses, for electing Obama.

That is no direct quote from Bolden at all - that is a myth.

Actually it is a direct quote in an interview with Al Jazeera (at the 1:20 ish mark) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e857ZcuIfnI

... for electing Obama.

Check out what Obama want's Bolden to do. Direct quote from Bolden:

"When I became the NASA administrator, (President Obama) charged me with three things," Bolden said in the interview which aired last week. "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering."

Their "foremost" task is to make Muslims feel good. He literally said that. Yet he still heads NASA

Thanks, jackasses, for electing Obama.

That is no direct quote from Bolden at all - that is a myth.

In 1990s NASA administrator Dan Goldin had a eradication program to rid the NASA worm. NASAwatch had a "worm watch" page to identify those worms that escaped eradication i.e. photo of visitor center on Mountain View phone book has object with the worm, and Hubble Space Telescope (oops, kinda hard to get rid of that). Occasionally the discussion comes back, http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/03/worm-watch.html

NASA has already stated that they won't be the leader in space exploration anymore

Liar.

As you call people names, please describe the emperor's clothes in more details.

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2012/08/focus-charlie-f.html

The government, since it does not have a profit motive, but obviously should not operate at a loss per launch, either, should be as competitive if not more so than the private company

Well regardless of what "should" be the case, SpaceX builds rockets much more cheaply than NASA does according to NASA itself.

Chances are the insurance, liability, that is would be less for the government for two reasons. First, it's launch sites tend to be over the ocean or the middle of the desert, so there is less chance of damage to others if a catastrophe occurs

Currently, SpaceX launches from Cape Carnaveral. That's also where NASA launches. These are the same. But clearly SpaceX could build their launch site anywhere it wanted to, and if it was paying for insurance it would surely choose a location to minimize its liability.

Second, and probably more importantly, the government is large enough that it can safely self insure itself against the risk.

If the government is so good at insurance, why doesn't it offer insurance to its contractors? In any case, the choice of insurance is independent of the choice whether to build your rocket yourself or have someone else do it for you.

So the question would remain, with all other costs being equal, why should the taxpayer take on the risk of a private launch vehicle so somebody else can receive the profit from the launch?

As I've said, it is much cheaper for the government to contract out SpaceX than to launch its own rockets, that's why everybody is so excited about SpaceX.

This is but one of several articles about this topic:

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2011/05/spacex-explains.html

You can do some web searches on the topic if you want as well to get some other opinions on the topic, but it was in the news awhile back. Or perhaps Aviation Week is a two bit blog that doesn't matter much and is an unreliable source?

One of the articles talks about rumors of MAJOR cuts forthcoming at NASA (in the 50+% range) for the 2013 budget. If that's true, it explains why they've been gutting so many programs recently. It's likely that the administration has had this in the works for at least the last year or two. And with cuts like that, it's not like NASA is going to have much choice. They've already cut the shuttle program and taken a big hit on the Webb telescope. It's likely they'll cut a bunch of other stuff before they're done (wouldn't even surprise me if they abandon ISS ahead of schedule).

This guy put it very succinctly.

Right now, we Americans are money grubbing war mongering bullying little people who cling to past greatness like a middle aged ex-high school football star who thinks we still "got it".

We hear and approve of people who continue with our illusions of greatness and "American exceptionalism" and think that if we just believe the right way, everything will work out. Unfortunately, belief alone doesn't do anything - you have to do.

We've lost our ability to dream, to do, and to accomplish.

Hah, okay I see the marvin reference now. I was looking at http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2010/11/more-plutonium.html and feeling unhappy. Your humor works better than flaming.

This link works as well: http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2011/06/spacex-vs-valdo.html

MPCV is the new way to say Orion. The Constellation program became politically radioactive, so they renamed it's flagship project.

No, Obama canceled Orion, renamed it and the relaunched it with his name on it.

MPCV is the new way to say Orion. The Constellation program became politically radioactive, so they renamed it's flagship project.

Thanks to self-interested politicians like Utah's Orrin Hatch and others who'd rather fatten up on pork, China has a viable space program, while the US just has a money sink that keeps corporations flush in fat lobbying budgets.

Sean and his son Jonathon are reported banged up but okay.

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/08/sean-okeefe-and.html

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/08/political-comme.html

Political Commentary Disguised as a Video Game Review

Keith's note: I got an email from an editor at Popular Mechanics asking me to consider posting a link to this article on NASA Watch. I read the article and responded that I thought that the author had used the excuse of reviewing a video game as an opportunity to just dump on NASA, Obama's space policy, etc. Indeed, the bulk of the article seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with the video game it purports to review. Rather it goes on at length about how bad NASA has been. The editor tried again and again to convince me that I was wrong, but in re-reading the article I am now firmly of the opinion I originally voiced.

To be honest I have not played the game since it is not functional on Macs without running windows. So I have no idea if it is as "excruciatingly boring" as the reviewer claims it to be. That said, NASA aimed this game at an audience: students. This review makes no mention as to whether the reviewer is a student or if any students were asked to review the game and provide feedback for inclusion in this "review". So if there is a mismatch between reviewer and intended audience one would expect that the review is inherently flawed, yes?

If Popular Mechanics wants to dump on NASA, by all means, have at it. But trying to cloak political commentary under the guise of a game review is rather misleading to prospective readers.

Keith's note: This is hilarious. Ares 1-X was a suborbital mission with a fake second stage, a first stage motor different than the final one, and used borrowed avionics. Falcon 9 flew an operational vehicle first time out of the hanagr and put a payload into orbit at a small fraction of the cost that an Ares would require. Falcon 9 has a better chance of closing the gap than Ares 1 will. Apparently the good senator (her staff that is) are utterly unaware of the fact that Ares 1 will not achieve any of its milestones until after Falcon 9 has already done so. Yet we never hear anything from her about that, do we?

As for Sen Shelby's comments, It would seem that SpaceX is better equipped to do what "NASA accomplished in 1964" than the NASA of 2010 can accomplish - and do so faster - and more cheaply. Ares 1 would cost much more and be ready later than Falcon 9.

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/04/video-neil-degr.html

Yesterday I stumbled upon this speech he made at the University of Buffalo recently. If you haven't heard this guy before, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better introduction than this video. He's great.

I can see making dissemination of nuclear rocket propulsion data illegal, but electric moon buggies? This is so dumb it's beyond words.

There's a sadly amusing anecdote from Bigelow Aerospace about this, regarding a display table for the prototype space station they launched into orbit a few years ago:

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2008/08/itar-coffee-tables-and-munitions.html

"In the spring of 2006 Robert Bigelow needed to take a stand on a trip to Russia to keep a satellite off the floor. The stand was made of aluminium. It had a circular base and legs. It was, says the entrepreneur and head of Bigelow Aerospace in Nevada, "indistinguishable from a common coffee table". Nonetheless, the American authorities told Mr Bigelow that this coffee table was part of a satellite assembly and so counted as a munition. During the trip it would have to be guarded by two security officers at all times."

All I've seen is that the manned stuff is getting defunded.

Just one particularly problem-ridden program (Constellation) is being canceled, but NASA is forging full ahead with manned spaceflight and related tech development. I have a story on it current in the submission queue:

http://slashdot.org/submission/1163232/New-Path-For-NASA-Revealed

By revitalizing tech development (most of which had been defunded to pay for Constellation) and doing things like setting up refueling stations in orbit and Lagrange points, we can make future manned exploration more sustainable.

We should then get some management that actually has a pair, and can deal with the politics to find practical solutions without worry what congressional district parts are made in or which NASA center does the work.

That's nice in theory, but unfortunately when it comes down to it, Congress has all of the funding power. If an administrator tried to rock the boat too much, they'd just find that politically-powerful and fiscally threatened Congressmen would remove funding for whatever they were trying to do. Example:

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/06/sen-shelbys-crusade-against-commercial-space.html

It actually isn't just space the two countries are planning on cooperating on. Not sure how much beef is behind this statement, but here's a snippet of the joint statement by Presidents Obama and Hu during Obama's visit to China:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/joint-press-statement-president-obama-and-president-hu-china
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/11/china-and-us-to.html

The complementing departments of China and the United States have already signed a number of cooperation agreements, including the MOU to enhanced cooperation on climate change, energy and environment. The two sides have also officially launched the initiative of developing a China-U.S. clean energy research center.

Both President Obama and I said that we are willing to act on the basis of mutual benefit and reciprocity to deepen our cooperation on counterterrorism, law enforcement, science, technology, outer space, civil aviation, and engage in cooperation in space exploration, high-speed railway infrastructure, in agriculture, health, and other fields. And we also agreed to work together to continue to promote even greater progress in the growth of military-to-military ties.

According to a comment over at NASA Watch, this is going to be at least conceptually based on the NEBULA cloud computing platform developed by NASA Ames. It seems pretty cool and potentially quite useful. Calling it an "app store" is a really dumb analogy though, and gives absolutely no idea of what it actually entails:

http://nebula.nasa.gov/
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2009/09/ames_will_help.html

I am the Project Coordinator for Nebula, the cloud computing pilot at NASA Ames. Nebula has been in R&D and under development for well over a year. There are many reasons that a large organization, such as NASA, would explore cloud. The Nebula team did an extensive trade study to see what public clouds out there could meet NASA's needs. None did. Either they were not fast and powerful enough to handle NASA's massive data sets or they did not comply with security requirements. NASA needed its own cloud. I won't go into technical specifics (you can read about them at http://nebula.nasa.gov/ but the Nebula team ended up creating something that is smart, powerful, and incredibly energy-efficient to boot.

NASA was approached by the Feds because Nebula solves some cloud problems that are common among other Government Agencies. It is wicked fast, complies with FISMA and can scale to Government-sized demands. It is also rather forward-thinking in that it is built using open-source components and is incredibly energy efficient. Again, Nebula was created with NASA - not the Feds - in mind, but when they caught wind, they were interested too.

I suggest that people spend some time reading about what is actually going on before they jump to conclusions. To my knowledge there have been no announcements that Ames will orchestrate the Fed's move to cloud computing or develop any new systems or technologies that were not already under development. NASA has been responsible for a number of innovative new technologies over the years. Memory foam, for example. NASA invented it, but are they out there selling mattresses? :) Some people seem so caught up in the politics that they have completely missed the point.

Posted by: Gretchen at September 16, 2009 8:42 PM

Seriously, use it to stimulate PRIVATE innovation and investment, instead of trying to manually command-and-control the economy. The government can't do, or direct people to do, things with half the efficiency that entrepreneurs can.

Ideally, yes. Unfortunately, the problem from a political standpoint is that because the money goes to whoever does the best job instead of whoever lives in a particular congressional district, this is a really difficult thing to do -- that's why this prize is only $1.5 million, which is basically a rounding error when it comes to federal budgets. For example, recently NASA wanted to use $150 million of its stimulus funding to stimulate commercial spaceflight. Senator Richard Shelby (R-Al) put up a fuss and blocked NASA's overall stimulus funding until they diverted that money to the (diseased and broken) Ares I rocket program based in his state.

http://www.spacepolitics.com/2009/07/03/shelby-wins-battle-on-stimulus-funding/
http://commercialspacegateway.com/item/21342-a-brief-history-review-for-sen
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2009/07/sen_shelby_gets.html

This recent NewScientist article overviews a recent report from the NSS co-authored by Buzz Aldrin with a similar conclusion, Astronaut-authored report says NASA needs new direction [newscientist.com]

Coincidentally, the Flexible Path option is essentially the same as the early- and mid-term (pre-2030) stages of Buzz Aldrin's proposed plan for NASA. The plan has construction of LEO and L-1 refueling stations, trips to L2 in 2016, the Comet Wirtanen in 2018, the asteroids 2001 GP2 and (potential planet-striker) Apophis in 2020 and 2022, Phobos missions starting in 2024, then Mars in 2032.

Of course, most of these comments are made pseudonymously and should be therefore be taken with a grain of salt, but they're still quite interesting:

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2009/07/ares_doubts_con.html

Sources report that Steve Cook and his team were preoccupied on Friday with the ramifications of this report going public. Several meetings were held on Friday and another was planned for Saturday morning. Lots of finger pointing and asking questions along the lines of "who knew what and when did they know it?" and "how do we respond?" was reported to have happened on Friday. A briefing is being prepared for NASA Administrator Bolden for presentation as early as Monday.

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2009/07/usaf_orion_crew.html

When people at MSFC tried to discuss this in 2007/2008 "Niki the aborts manager" shut them down and made sure two most vocal left the group.

Of course, most of these comments are made pseudonymously and should be therefore be taken with a grain of salt, but they're still quite interesting:

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2009/07/ares_doubts_con.html

Sources report that Steve Cook and his team were preoccupied on Friday with the ramifications of this report going public. Several meetings were held on Friday and another was planned for Saturday morning. Lots of finger pointing and asking questions along the lines of "who knew what and when did they know it?" and "how do we respond?" was reported to have happened on Friday. A briefing is being prepared for NASA Administrator Bolden for presentation as early as Monday.

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2009/07/usaf_orion_crew.html

When people at MSFC tried to discuss this in 2007/2008 "Niki the aborts manager" shut them down and made sure two most vocal left the group.

The Apollo engineers had a pretty accurate idea of what they were setting out to accomplish.
Yes, a limited political stunt, with almost no real effects to the humanity at large.
.
while Columbus stumbled across the New World despite sheer ignorance and wrongheadedness.
Yes, and opened up a whole new continent ( for western world anyway ) for trade and colonization, almost immediately bringing massive economic gains for the homeland, and enabling people to migrate to new lands later on and settle there..
.
So yes, diametrically opposite..
.
Apollo _could_ have had similar effects as Columbus voyage, but it was done by government-mandated socialist organization, which never intended to open up space for the rest of the people. Free enterprise never had a chance..
.
Theres a way to do it better, but it requires radical rethinking on how we do things in space..
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2009/06/why_the_moon_he.html

(I'll also note that they don't use NASA equipment to do this; they buy or build their own hardware).

Check NASAWatch to see some inacuracies in this Bloomberg story.

What happened to this organisation that managed to put people on the moon, that managed to build a huge telescope in orbit around the earth, that even built a permanently manned space station? How is it possible they can't even design a rocket to take us to the moon?

IMHO a lot of the problems can be traced back to bad management by current NASA administrator Michael Griffin. Back in 2005, prior to Griffin's arrival, NASA's original plan for a new manned launch vehicle, two competing teams of companies would have been selected, and they would be running unpiloted test launches this year. Based on those test launches and what was learned about their designs, the best vehicle design would have been selected. My suspicion is that at least one of the rockets would have been a modified version of an already-proven design, such as the Boeing Delta IV or Lockheed Martin Atlas V.

Then midway through 2005 Mike Griffin came in. He had his own pet design from a paper he had written, and had the requirements for the US's new manned launcher redone. Coincidentally, under the new requirements Griffin's design was the only one which satisfied. The engineers at NASA have been doing what they can, but it seems that Griffin's design has some pretty severe inherent flaws. The engineers have been trying to issue their concerns, but ignored or silenced by management.

I think this farewell message by one of the engineers working on Ares sums things up well:

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2008/08/a_farewell_mess.html

At the highest levels, there seems to be a belief that you can mandate reality, followed by a refusal to accept any information that runs counter to that mandate. I'm sure you can all think of multiple examples (having nothing to do with CAD) without trying very hard. This reminds me of Clark's law: "Sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice". I've heard others use terms like "arrogance combined with ignorance". ... Then between us workers and the highest levels of management another problem exists. As one person put it: "Where does the bad news stop going up?" Again, I'm sure you all know of situations where people are trying to raise red flags, but somehow they never get addressed.

This is a low weight solution. The impact on mass to orbit is approx 1200 - 1400 pounds which is within the mass margin on the Ares side.

Very good points. This is exactly why we need to have a Plan-B, and move forward with the old Shuttle-C concepts as described by Dennis Wingo and others.

What to do when ESAS & the VSE Fail

Why this hasn't been addressed floors me as a logically thinking person, and enrages me as a tax payer. You won't need to change the VAB, the Launchpads, the crawler, etc. You're taking advantage of previous case studies. You're maintain the Orbiter capability for rare occasions such as future Hubble or other servicing missions. However, given that most of the comments to this article revolve around the stupid elephant, I can see how NASA and our gov't gets away with what it is.

While it does look a bit like astroturfing, the AC's right - Obama does plan (p15) to significantly cut NASA's funding to get money for his education plan.

It's stupid and shortsighted, and probably my biggest objection to Obama, but since McCain also wants to cut NASA's funding, and he's a social conservative, I'll still probably vote for Obama. Anyway, quasi-offtopic, I know, but it is relevant to whether we'll be out there in the future, looking for the sources of things like this.