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Narrowing the Space Flight Gap
MarkWhittington writes with an article on the AssociatedContent site, discussing the impending US space flight gap. Between 2010 (the end of the shuttle era) and 2015 (expected date for the launch of the Orion project) the United States will have little or no spaceflight capability. This is an obvious concern to some members of Congress and NASA. "Is all, therefore, doom and gloom? Not necessarily. Just over a year ago, NASA chose two companies for its Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems (COTS) program ... The goal of COTS was for the two companies to build prototype space craft capable of delivering crews and cargo to the International Space Station. A second phase of the COTS program would consist of a competition for a contract to actually deliver crews and cargo to ISS after 2010 ... Private industry may well come to the rescue and preserve American access to space, at least until Orion becomes operational."
Try 1: In Soviet Russia, the government bails out private industry!
Try 2: I for one welcome our new private sector spacefaring overlords!
Try 3 Yes, it can exit the atmosphere, but can it run Linux?
Try 4: 2010: Google puts up a spacecraft before Microsoft. Chair sales skyrocket (as do some of the chairs).
There, that should cover it.
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
Clearly, we need the Chinese to do it for us. And maybe the Sovie^H^H^HRussians. And let's not forget the mineshaft gap!
-l
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So if companies are to be contracted to build and operate a transport system to the ISS, would it be too far-fetched to think that these companies might look at other possible revenue streams from their development work? I could see a privately owned/operated spacecraft doing a better job of opening up the space tourism market, even if a ticket is still obscenely expensive.
At the present time, only one company is developing such craft. There is the risk that no other company will step up and we'll have a space Microsoft. Why can we trust private enterprise with this when only one company is interested?
Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!
But seriously, why do US political rhetorics always seem to have that military touch?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
If we can push out a space delivery system that is "good enough" in such a short time, why bother with Orion?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
COTSS? Commercial Off The Shelf Spaceflight?
Well if Broken Government[tm] can't do it in-house then they'll just have to do it out-house, err, I mean outsource it! Does Blackwater contract out astronauts?
(okay, so if you don't work for the US Govt then you won't "get it" - pay no attention to the crazy mumbling old guy)
-- How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.
In all seriousness, defense of the space program in monetary terms - that I've heard - is that it's a catalyst for long-term research. I don't see how 5 years without any planned manned launches changes that - it just restricts the research options to things related to unmanned space flight. It's not like NASA is closing up shop for 5 years or anything.
I work in the space industry, on the Landsat satellite program.
There's a law that we must have an operating Landsat satellite -- it's that important to geology, agriculture, urban planning, etc. Landsats 1-7 were all specified and built by the government or its contractors.
In the early 2000s it came time to build Landsat 8 (known as LDCM, because nobody likes the abbreviation 'L8'). The government directive was to use the COTS program: Buy data from an existing commercial satellite, or get a commercial company to build and operate it for profit, with the government its preferred customer.
But there are no satellites that create the precise kind of data that Landsat needs. And when companies measured the profit potential of building the right kind of satellite, they walked away. If I recall the COTS LDCM request for proposal got zero bidders.
The government has finally given up on its free market fever and allowed LDCM to be a non-COTS system. Meanwhile, because we dicked around trying to shoehorn a government project into a commercial venture, we're going to be 4-8 years late in launching the next Landsat satellite. Assuming budgetary problems don't kill the entire 30+ year program.
COTS, and the recent governmental zeal to make everything part of the free market, is what has crippled and bankrupted the US space program. Some things are just better if done by governments, and at this point in history spaceflight is one of those things.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
One day a cosmic, catastrophic event will occur. Will your species be ready?
Read my Very Short "Stories"
I predict a hack in the slashcode to filter &btnl in google.com links very soon.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
It is private industry that is building all the stuff anyway. It is just some of the project management that is done at NASA.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
...in our current government, it's a politics thing. Before, it was "America Must Be First in Space to Beat Out Those Reds!" (not my words, believe me) - and we weren't first. Now, it's, "golly, let's cut funding because this thing is too expensive." This is the government trying to get out of doing anything related to space research - we're too busy blowing people up and trying to decrypt 128-bit (1024? 2048? 10240-bit?) keys to get at personal data - both of which require enormous amounts of money in and of themselves.
The U.S. really needs to wake up and get a clue - there was so much benefit, scientifically, financially and morally from NASA, that we really need to continue this. *sigh*
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I've been meaning to ask somebody this, but I don't know who. Maybe some of the space nerd junkies can chime in if they know...
What's to prevent the next president from rescinding the 2010 shuttle shutdown date? In preparation I know suppliers have been cut loose and long-range parts and spares capability has been shut down already. There are only so many external tanks on order and IIRC the production line has been shut down on a lot of the expendable pieces needed to fly the space shuttle. But is the 2010 drop-dead cutoff date cast in stone, or is there enough in the pipeline to run another couple of years' worth of shuttle missions? Inquiring minds want to know.
Regardless of your views on the wisdom and practicality of maintaining a national manned space flight program, one fact is indisputable. Bush decided that the shuttles should stop flying after 2010, and if Bush decided it you can bet your ass it was the wrong decision for any number of reasons.
It may seem as if human capability is receding for the moment, but that just means that one or two millenia from now the Apollo landing sites (and possibly the Constellation landing sites, if we continue to value flags and footprints over sustainability) will be more popular attractions than Antoninus's and Hadrian's Walls. There's a poignancy about a monument saying "This is as far as they got before they started to decline" which can really draw the tourists.
Thank you for your Libertarian, "drown government in a bath tub" input, Mr. Norquist. Developing the infrastructure and knowledge to explore the universe is such as waste of time. By the way, Grover. I would have loved to have heard your fiscal conservative input while your party was generating $2 trillion dollars in debt for a bogus war and handouts to friendly corporations like Halliburton, even after they'd been busted screwing the government out of "hundreds of millions of dollars." But, I suppose we need to focus on the money wasted by scientists, bridges to nowhere, and all the welfare crack moms that are the real cause of our excessive governmetn spending.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Regardless of your views on the wisdom and practicality of maintaining a national manned space flight program, one fact is indisputable. Bush decided that the shuttles should stop flying after 2010, and if Bush decided it you can bet your ass it was the wrong decision for any number of reasons.
Actually, no, it's not Bush's fault. After the Columbia Accident, for safety considerations, NASA was directed to recertify the space shuttles for flight worthiness after 2010. This is a hugely expensive proposition, and it seemed to make more sense to just terminate the program, and proceed as fast as possible with Constellation.
Sure, a new President could appoint a new NASA Administrator, who could theoretically, ignore the recommendations of the safety board. However, if an accident did happen, then, the first thing that would happen would be that the board would say, "hah, we told you so", and the result would be an enormous embarrassment for the new administration.
Or, Congress could appropriate the additional money needed to NASA to do this certification, and fly the shuttle concurrently, or longer. However, it could turn out that, as a result of certification, that, the shuttles need a lot of new parts, etc, and, gasp, maybe things that are pushing 20-30 years old should not be flying at Mach 17.
Honestly, I think NASA would have been better off if Bush had stuck to his guns and gone for nucleared powered spaceflight and the prometheus project. The current MARS stack is all chemical based. Had we funded Prometheus, and JIMO, then, it would have been much better off for space. However, there's absolutely no way the left wing of the Democratic Party would stand for it, for three reasons. a) They don't like nuclear power, b) Putting a nuclear reactor on a space craft they like even less, and c) hard core lefties see space flight in general, and NASA in particular, as an unnecessary expense and would rather feed the homeless first.
To be fair, the far right would cut NASA as a federal subsidy of something that should be privatized. Really, NASA exists largely because of the imperial aspirations of Neocon Republicans coinciding with the scientific wishes of the moderate Republicans and Democdrats. But yeah, politics makes strange bedfellows, and you could see far left congressman getting a bill to kill NASA being cosigned by far right congresssman.
This is my sig.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Its sad someone modded you down for that statement.
What is the effect of not having shuttle launches for the next four years?
Will satellites not be able to go into space?
Nope, we have many rockets (foreign and US) which will throw them into space.
Will our military security be impaired?
Nope, shuttles will be flying from Vandenburg, when needed (extremely rare). They aren't part of NASA's budget.
Will space science be shutdown?
Nope.
Will the ISS be shutdown?
Nope, it will run for another six years with Russian/European rockets.
Will the Hubble be repaired, and have money for a more cost effective space launch system?
Yep.
Congratulations. Slashdot revived the 1950's Missle Gap story.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
So 2010 is the end of US manned spaceflight. There won't be a replacement for the Shuttle. NASA tried four times before, and never even got close to flight hardware. Why should this time be any different?
The Shuttle was designed in the 1960s. Back then, NASA could hire top people. A huge number of experienced aircraft designers were available. Today, who goes into aerospace? NASA is sometimes called "the world's largest sheltered workshop". Aerospace is now so slow-paced that it takes decades to build anything.
The GAO Report on the Orion program indicates that there are significant problems. The most serious is the usual one with large spacecraft - weight growth in the upper stages, requiring huge increases in the size of lower stages. NASA's plan involves adding another section to the Shuttle-type solid rocket boosters, and there are real questions as to whether the resulting stack will be strong enough. (Remember, that's how Challenger blew up; failure at the solid rocket booster joints.)
Will lift a thousand tons to orbit in a reusable and totally non-polluting craft. (Yup, the exhaust isn't radioactive at all.) But it's "nucular", and therefore terrible. Even though we could finally launch a bunch of solar powersats and turn the U.S. into a net energy exporter...
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
apparently he is an FOSS developer, perhaps he would like a reminder he is hosting a malicious site, good to see the Linux community is full of such nice people perhaps he doesnt care but i expect his ISP will his # +33 681122062 his ISP abuse@tiscali.fr
So, are you just too stupid to realize you called him a Libertarian THEN called him a Republican, or are you just so twisted in knots by your hatred for the Republicans that you have to squeeze in a slam every chance you get?
Or is it that you're just stupid?
1) Manned spaceflight is of very limited value to government. We don't need astronauts up there to have spy satellites and other military hardware.
2) It's a mistake to equivocate the government having no manned spaceflight capability with the United States having no manned spaceflight capability. Private spaceflight will go forth unimpeded, and if you think humans are going to colonize space via NASA, well, evidence since 1969 (and analogous events hundreds of years prior), political science, and economics say this is highly unlikely. The US wasn't truly colonized by governments, but people looking to strike it rich. Government bureaucrats don't make good explorers or entrepreneurs, just good exploiters.
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in the U.S. is the military-industrial-CONGRESSIONAL complex.
All I could see was General Buck Turgidson yelling, "Gentlemen, we must not allow a space flight gap!"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Depends on the catastrophe ...
... captcha = "bastards")
If it's a nearby supernovae spewing radiation for hundreds of lightyears and we've only colonised the rest of the solar system, we're still fucked.
If it's a highly energetic magnetar spewing radiation for thousands of lightyears and we've somehow managed to colonise a small chunk of this sector of the galaxy, we're still fucked.
If it's a Douglas Adams novel, we're fucked no matter what.
(LMFAO
There's an interesting section on mitigating risk, but it doesn't specifically mention the worst case (and quite possible scenario) that the fission rocket blows up somewhere in the atmosphere. What's the radiation damage then? I'm not a nuclear or rocket scientist but I don't see that discussed.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Pigs...... In.......... Space....!
This whole privatization of government thing has been such a boondoggle. Particularly when it comes to technology there is simply no motive to innovate. For example, we get power form coal and 1960s era nuclear reactors because continuing to do the same thing costs less in the short run than investing in finding better ways to do it.
What would you have thought in 1969 (had you been alive) when Armstrong landed on the moon, if someone asked you where the US space program would be in 2007?
Colonies on the Moon? Sure.
Humans on Mars? Check.
Remote exploration of the outer planets? Probably.
The US unable to launch a manned mission into orbit? Absolutely not.
But here we are. Armstrong will most likely be dead before we go back to the Moon.
What a terrible shame.
It's called DIRECT, which was created by people from within NASA, and would have flights ready by 2012. Read the proposal and wonder why we're not doing this - it almost makes too much sense: http://directlauncher.com/
After Columbia. And two years after Challenger.
Thats how long you have to put orders in advance for disposables like the fuel tanks.
When I saw "2001" a year before the moon landing it was generally thought most of that stuff was possible save for the aliens and a super-smart computer. But little of it was realized. Sniffle, sniffle.
Totally unfair moderation on parent. Not everyone who reads this site is a star trek loving space nerd.
No longer an option - The Vandenberg shuttle launch facility was dismantled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_Air_Force_Base#Space_Shuttle
Shuttles will be flying from Vandenburg? The next shuttle launch from California will be the first.
I don't believe the government won't have any humans in space capability, just the public nasa projects will have a gap. I think there's been a black budget pure military effort right along the whole time. Can't prove it of course, but still think they have one. I also think it is at most two stage to orbit, perhaps even just one. Possibly an offshoot of the x series craft, and something like rutan builds, just 50 years worth of effort into it. It may not carry much or have a huge crew, but it is just too improbable to think they *wouldn't* want this capability, and given the huge sums that disappear into the black budgets...well..
Well, you got the long-term part right.
The body of knowledge related to engineering manned space flight systems resides 50% in thousands of volumes of documents from Apollo forward, and 90% in the minds of a small group of very capable engineers. Any 1-year gap in productively employing those people, and they, being capable, will move on to something else for which they can be paid. When you finally assemble the $$$, you find that the expertise needed to provide the return has retired or otherwise moved on.
That's at the design level. At the execution level, a similar effect occurs, but in this case you can lose a lot even if you don't lose the personnel. In an effort as complicated as a manned launch, there are about 100,000 things that can go wrong. 99,900 of those things are documented, with preventatives and correctives-- somewhere. But if you haven't been through the process for five years, you're better off starting from scratch than trying to re-assemble an execution system.
I don't give a hoot about manned space flight. But if we can see ourselves doing it in 2020, we have two choices: either a) plan on spending 2015-2020 ramping back up, with attendant casualties; or b) don't stop.
Just because Public Law 101-611 requires NASA to, where possible, procure launch services from the private sector in a commercially reasonable is no reason to stop government bureaucrats from announcing they intend to offer government services that compete in commercial markets. This is NASA after all -- the organization that is bringing the frontier of space to humanity real soon now for the last half century... Thank goodness they didn't do anything nasty to NASA the way they did to the satellite bureaucrats back in the 1960s when they banned government from competing with commercial satellite industries, or we might have seen manned space flight basically stay stagnated with access limited to an elite few chosen for reasons having little to do with opening a real frontier for humanity!
Seastead this.
Non-military space flight isn't the proper role of government anyway.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
SpaceX is currently 0 for 2 on attempts to reach orbit (although they claim reaching orbit was a secondary objective of their test flights so far, so the second one was counted as successful based on the demonstration of operation of all components up to second stage ignition). They are still developing the launcher big enough to orbit a manned capsule, as well as the capsules themselves. The other COTS candidate was just re-picked last month after Rocketplane Kistler failed to meet objectives stipulated under the contract. They're years behind where SpaceX is, aside from the fact that one of their partners, ATK Thiokol, already has shown they know how to build boosters (they make the shuttle SRB's). Whether that team can put together the whole system on time and economically enough is still a big question.
On the other hand, the Orion project has an added bit of (expensive) security in the form of their long history of being the experts, and the more substantial funding available. In short, they have resources not provided by COTS.
More importantly, the COTS proposals aren't good enough for what NASA wants Orion to do, which is basically become the standard people mover for the next several decades. While it may seem like a step back from SpaceX's Falcon 9/Dragon combo with only 6 passengers instead of 7, it actually has quite a bit more versatility, with sufficient delta V for additional manuevering, sufficient control to dock itself, supplies for longer missions, and intentional adaptability for other missions. This includes being able to survive re-entry from a lunar-earth trajectory or even a Mars-earth trajectory, and being able to steer significant amounts during re-entry for easier recoverability. NASA actually envisions attaching an Orion capsule to a spacecraft returning a crew from Mars, which would separate as it approached earth.
COTS is only bank-rolling on the capability to reach the ISS, be docked with assistance from the robotic arm, and deorbit safely.
What about the other 75%?
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/orl-shuttle0607dec06,0,25309.story?page=1
I can't tell if the interest is Pork or Science from the newspaper article, but I find it strange that practically ALL of the Texas Congressional delegation wrote a letter to Bush. Also, some of the members 'talked' with the head of NASA.
Space X has their Falcon 1 pretty much done, and ESA has their quite reliable Ariane rockets. NASA has not invested much in their replacement to the shuttle yet, but Congress is making up its mind.
If there's a time to get the NASA out of the space launch business, now or the near future is it.
Well, Bigelow certainly couldn't get any support from the current startups and instead had to cancel a mission to cover inflation. Now it's NASA's turn again.
Let's see, ion engines weren't used for propulsion in outer space until the 90s. Yes there was nuclear thermal with about 3 times the ISP of chemical rockets, but there's still more.
People need at least a meter of shielding to keep from dying for radiation. People also need to get their wastes recycled and food generated, including all essential vitamin and amino acids. Don't forget the difficulties in keeping the people in Biosphere 2 alive. They had to spend most of their waking time farming and killing off organisms going after their food. They couldn't just use pesticides or many of our time saving modern farming practices. Now, try throwing into orbit something like biosphere with proper shielding.
We're going nowhere until we have genetic engineering down, or are willing to use nuclear weapons for propulsion.
One day, you're gonna die. Get over yourself.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
You could make the same argument for a scheme to build a roof over the entire country. Wouldn't the spin-offs be more likely to have useful applications on earth if the funds went to, say, a crash project to improve sustainable power generation?
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Ha! Yes, exactly, I was actually thinking how reminiscent this story is of the 'missile gap' nonsense as I wrote the comment. Congratulations, you must be nearly as old as I am ;)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
You forgot the following money sinks: - tearing up the concrete interstate highways and replacing them with temporary blacktop that has to be ground up and resurfaced yearly; - maintenence money for bridges and tunnels that seems to disappear until a bridge actually falls down; - insane subsidies to agribusiness (about 50 cents a gallon) to grow crops for ethanol fuel at a loss, keep those SUVs going with cheap fuel as a further subsidy to GM/Ford/Chrysler - the criminal 'justice' system which has dropped the presumption of innocence and now warehouses in jails as many of the problematic as possible - public subsidies to private real estate speculation: taxing income rather than land. I could go on all day.
Uhh, I think you replied to the wrong comment dude.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
So NASA wants to go to private industry and say "spend billions developing something that we'll use for 5 years and then go back to our own stuff"? The only question is whether private industry will laugh at them to their face, or just behind their back...
Erh. Orion?
So they will actually move to the only reasonable vehicle to put mass into orbit? That is, nuclear warhead powered (im)pulse rocket? Well, that's cool. Way cool.
I hope they didn't just steal the name from a cool project for something lame such as same-old, same-old ho-hum rocketry..
Still thinking of chemical rockets...
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Uh, I think you missed the point of my argument.