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House Outlaws Obama's NASA Intervention

Posted by Soulskill on from the let's-argue-some-more dept.

TopSpin writes "NASA's Constellation Program and Ares rockets appear to have strong support in Congress. An appropriations bill passed by the House includes language that bars 'any efforts by NASA to cancel or change the current Constellation program without first seeking approval of Congress.' The Administration's appointed NASA leadership is being publicly hostile towards its traditional aerospace affiliations. As Charles Bolden put it to industry execs, 'We are going to be fighting and fussing over the coming year,' and 'Some of you are not going to like me because we are not going to do the same kind of things we've always done.'"

17 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Oink! Oink! by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's so very important not to change the carefully crafted pork that these projects tend to be once Congress gets their crusty little fingers on them.

    "Our minds are made up, don't confuse us with the facts".

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    1. Re:Oink! Oink! by TheKidWho · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Of course, I'm sure you've been on many decade long aerospace engineering projects to know how it should work.

    2. Re:Oink! Oink! by TheKidWho · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Right, let's just sit on our asses and wait for that Technological leap to appear out of nowhere so we can utilize the infinite resources in space. I mean that is how technology progresses right? Just sit on ones ass, somewhere someone will come up with the right idea.

    3. Re:Oink! Oink! by maxume · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Until someone makes a technological leap past chemical rockets, the resources of space are anything but infinite.

      And I don't think repeated practice with 40 year old chemical rocket technology is going to lead to that leap.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    4. Re:Oink! Oink! by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Of course, I'm sure you've been on many decade long aerospace engineering projects to know how it should work.

      I grew up around NASA - at the KSC and JSC. I watched as the US built up the space program from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo. I watched as Congress gutted NASA after Apollo and managed to create the kludge that is the Shuttle. I watched as NASA and it's contractors managed to get the Shuttle off the ground despite the roadblocks put up in front of if.

      I know enough to realize that rocket science is hard and that Congress, as a body, is no more able to micromanage booster technology than it is able to manage, well just about anything. Congress has a near perfect track record of solving the wrong problem, solving the right problem in the wrong way which results in not solving the problem, and / or doing anything but attempting to solve the problem along with a myriad of other generic inabilities.

      Congress should make general policy and let the people that know what they are doing implement it. Congress should NOT micromanage.

      And while you're at it, I'd like a Pony.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    5. Re:Oink! Oink! by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're confusing the ends with the means. The ultimate goal is to gain scientific knowledge and/or access to resources. This can currently be done more effectively without the additional cost of sending humans.

      The only current useful purpose for sending humans into space is to provide an exhibition of national bravado.

    6. Re:Oink! Oink! by Nyeerrmm · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, only a few years, but its pretty clear that this is not in the best interest of furthering space exploration, but rather in keeping jobs in a few congressional districts -- namely Huntsville, Alabama. Marshall Space Flight Center stands the most to lose if Ares falls through, but MSFC is in many ways a dinosaur of the Apollo era and hasn't transitioned to being a leaner, more efficient group.

      Consider this: for the cost of building Ares 1-X, the test-flight that consisted of a shuttle SRB with some dummy mass on top and made up to look like an Ares 1, what was essentially the worlds largest model rocket, cost $450M -- SpaceX, has developed one working rocket and has almost completed a larger one for around the same cost. While obviously the Ares program will cost more than what a company like SpaceX will spend, since they're building bigger rockets to do riskier things, there is something wrong when a mere model costs that much.

      The problem with micromanaging NASA through congress is that the only districts where its an issue that can make a difference in an election are the ones where they want to maintain the status quo, which is not working well. Everyone else who sees it and disagrees with its handling probably aren't going to swing their vote based on it, since there are a myriad of other, more immediate things to consider as well.

    7. Re:Oink! Oink! by jstults · · Score: 3, Interesting
      1. In June 2002, Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX).
      2. The Falcon 1 achieved orbit on its fourth attempt, on 28 September 2008.

      Check your assumptions, that's all Bolden's been asked by his boss to do, you should too.

    8. Re:Oink! Oink! by TheLink · · Score: 4, Informative

      But if the goal is to send people to space sustainably and for the long term, then NASA should be doing things like building and testing space stations that can spin and thus create artificial "gravity", and have decent radiation shielding. The long term goal should be creating space colonies, in _space_. Colonies where future generations of humans can live and reproduce. Thus the target would be developing technologies that would make it possible.

      Not working on sending people to Mars or the Moon. Getting to the moon has already been done.

      Getting people stuck on other gravity wells in the Solar System is silly and expensive. And talks of expensive, rushed (because of poor shielding and other issues), potentially one way trips to Mars are even more ridiculous.

      What's so great about living on the Moon or Mars? It's not like they are human friendly places. What can you get from Mars or Moon that you can't get from asteroids?

      There are plenty of asteroids to mine out there. Asteroids have a lot of water:

      http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050907_ceres_planet.html
      http://www.universetoday.com/2009/10/08/more-water-out-there-ice-found-on-asteroid/

      You might even be able to hollow out an asteroid and turn it into a space station.

      Just because we're living on a decent planet doesn't mean that getting stuck on other gravity wells should be our goal. We should only get stuck in one if it's as good as Earth (or almost as good). And the other planets and moons in the Solar System are far from meeting that mark.

      --
    9. Re:Oink! Oink! by ThreeGigs · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think you missed the point, as did anyone who modded it troll.

      The language that effectively ties NASA's hands was inserted in the bill by Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican from...drum roll please.... Alabama. Where NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is located.

      And that language boils down to: "no changes". Subcontract a part of the crew module out to Russia, Germany or France? No. Not unless Congress approves. Even if it'll get Ares off the ground sooner...nope. Cancel or delay Ares I to concentrate on Ares V? Nope. Even though Russia already has, and will continue to have, the capability to put people in orbit thus rendering Ares I redundant, while what's really needed is the heavy-lift capability of Ares V.

      Shelby wants one thing: Money in Alabama. So say bye bye to Kennedy Space center, and write off the US Government using commercially (read: private industry) available means to ferry crew to space. If SpaceX or Virgin Galactic manages to get people into LEO by 2015, NASA wouldn't be able to buy a seat without Congress' approval.

      The 'no changes' language has nothing to do with getting into space or not, and everything to do with making sure money flows to contractors in Alabama.

    10. Re:Oink! Oink! by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Informative

      I watched as Congress gutted NASA after Apollo and managed to create the kludge that is the Shuttle.

      In other words, even though 'grew up' around NASA, you prefer urban legends to facts.
       

      I know enough to realize that rocket science is hard and that Congress, as a body, is no more able to micromanage booster technology than it is able to manage, well just about anything.

      Had Congress micromanaged booster technology, you'd have a point. But the fact is, a reusable booster was on NASA's menu from very early on. Even while Gemini was flying, NASA was planning the Shuttle.
       
      Heck, remember Gemini was itself a political creation. As Mercury was winding down, NASA management realized that it would be years before Apollo flew and that they needed some Buck Rogers to keep the bucks flowing, so they dusted off an unsolicited McDonnell (not yet merged with Douglas) proposal for Mercury MKII and justified it was 'a development program for Apollo'. (Despite the fact that the Apollo design was already frozen.)
       

      I watched as NASA and it's contractors managed to get the Shuttle off the ground despite the roadblocks put up in front of if.

      Roadblocks largely put in front of it by NASA itself.
       
      Despite being clearly told that budgets would be limited in the future, NASA insisted on proposing an expensive Shuttle-Station-Mars program. When rebuked by Congress, NASA responded by promising to deliver a revolutionary new spacecraft on an extremely optimistic budget and an even more optimistic schedule. Many space historians believe that NASA had convinced itself, despite abundant evidence otherwise, that the austerity of the late 60's and early 70's was an aberration and that soon happy times and near blank checks would resume shortly. More than a few believe that, institutionally, NASA retains this conviction even today.

    11. Re:Oink! Oink! by khallow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Chemical rockets are not that limiting. For example, there's no reason that they can't attain similar economics as commercial airlines. You have similar energy needs (a long passenger jet flight consumes a similar amount of energy as it takes to reach orbit) and similar roles (carry passengers and cargo on "trips"). The profound difference is that there's maybe a few dozen rocket flights a year at best while there are somewhere around thirty thousand passenger jet flights per day just in the US.

      My view is that if rockets were flying at the same rate as passenger jets, fuel costs would be about a third of overall cost (as they are for passenger jets). That means roughly $300 per kg for vehicles using liquid oxygen and hydrogen or $100 per kg for vehicles using liquid oxygen and kerosene. That's well over an order of magnitude cheaper than today's price (and the cost goes down, if energy gets cheaper).

    12. Re:Oink! Oink! by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Insightful

      (Missions like fixing the Hubble telescope don't count, either. It would have been cheaper to build several Hubbles on an assembly line and launch them as they break than to send shuttle missions to service them.)

      Might have been cheaper, faster and more effective. But the Hubble servicing missions DID give us practice in doing repairs in space. That is the sort of practice and technique we're going to need if we plan on doing anything in space that approaches 'routine'. Like go to the asteroids / Mars / Moon.

      Saving one's bacon is a very strong motivator to getting something done. We need to do more of it. Or do you think that we won't have any equipment problems as we scale up our space activities?

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    13. Re:Oink! Oink! by RabidOverYou · · Score: 4, Funny

      > thermite and shit

      Take it from me, that's a bad combination.

      Rabid

  2. Well, I'm glad thats settled. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Funny

    I wouldn't want there to be any confusion about whether scientists or defense contractors are in charge of the direction of our space program.

    1. Re:Well, I'm glad thats settled. by biryokumaru · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, it can be a little more subtle than that. Eisenhower described the process thusly:

      Politicians are concerned about the welfare of their constituents. During wartime/other massive government spending in industry, more and more of those constituents become financially dependent on military/government contractor industry for jobs. To act in the best interest of their constituents, politicians are compelled to continue war, or to make other kinds of major fiscal decisions benefiting those industries.

      By promoting massive, wasteful spending on NASA, many politicians could be actively seeking the immediate best interest of their constituents.

      Representative democracy should fear the military industrial complex.

      --
      When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
  3. No Good Guys Here, but Separation of Powers = Good by rbrander · · Score: 4, Insightful

    NASA has always been used as a pork barrel, and the engineers who just want to fly birds have both used that shamelessly to get funded, and been victimized by it, in equal turns. It's hard to guess whether they would have created cheaper, simpler designs if feeding billions into the industrial complex (in all 50 states as often as possible) were not the more important goal than flying.

    Bottom line, I find it hard to cheer for either side when these spats come up. You always want to take the side of the homies (fund NASA, fly something cool somewhere), but NASA is spending so many millions per kilogram flown that the whole thing will ALWAYS be for a lucky tiny few as long as their big-iron design philosophy is enabled by those who LIVE to spend tax dollars (in their state).

    Silver lining though: Americans may have forgotten that their Congress has the power to tell the Executive branch "NO!". That the founders considered the legislature, NOT the executive, the first among three equals, because it directly represents the people on the most frequent election cycle.

    Who knows, this "make the executive branch moves illegal" power, now revived for the first time in years, may one day be used to make torture, fake intelligence, and war itself less likely instead of perfectly acceptable.