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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."
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?
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
Wrong COTS, though I do see what you're saying, even if I prefer that method in the long run (a large number of smaller cheaper cooperative satellites, although there are still cases where you'll need the larger special-built ones, and LandSat definitely sounds like one of them).
This COTS is the Commercial Orbital Transport System, which is a very very good program in my mind, because its funding the development of a much lower cost launch vehicle through a program where success is measured in results, not effort. Saying that, I am a bit of a SpaceX fanboy, but I am so because I feel they have a good chance to really improve the launch business significantly, and launch costs and reliability are still the single biggest driving factor to make space flight cheaper and more commonplace. If only Rocketplane Kistler had managed to keep up, more competition would be better still.
Yet another choice of poor acronyms to confuse things.
As a graduate student in Aerospace Engineering, I'd disagree with your assessment. Those of us coming up through school now have gotten to know the space program during the 'return to flight' period and we recognize that human space-flight is not a given. It seems to me that the long continuation of the STS created some complacency and 'this is the way its always been done' mentality.
However, the new people coming up aren't as trapped in those paradigms, and I really feel that my generation is up to the challenge of doing what the Apollo generation did, but for cheaper, and in a sustainable way.
While its true that NASA isn't the beacon for intellectual challenge in the workplace that it was seen as in the 60's, I'd say Google best fulfills that role now, there are still plenty of very intelligent, very driven young people coming up in the space industry. We don't believe that the current way of doing things is the right way, and I feel we have the attitude needed, because we know that our failure could very well mean the end of human spaceflight for a long time, not just a 5 or 10 year delay.
With a large portion of the space industry retiring soon (something like 30%-40% in the next 10 years) my generation will be very involved in the future, and I have a lot of hope for what we can do.
Don't forget the important part, funding. Where are Boeing and Lockheed going the get the hundreds of billions of dollars to develop and build spacecraft? How are they going to pay the sub-contractors? Those are 2 huge companies but they need the backing of a government to pay for things.
The ban would not be permanent, but merely limited to the 2008 fiscal year. The point is not to keep NASA from Mars, but to force additional funding for what is currently an unfunded mandate. In 2004, when Bush announced his new space goals, NASA's budget was $15.5 billion. In 2007, the budget was only $16.3 billion. Adjusted for inflation, NASA's budget has been DECREASING despite having a mandate to undertake a new era of spaceflight. The Bush administration needs to work with Congress to dramatically increase NASA's funding levels.
With this temporary ban on manned Mars exploration, it can be interpreted that the Congress wants NASA to maintain its current scientific missions, including robotics, without cannibalizing them in order to pay for development of the manned Mars mission.