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The Upside of the NASA Budget
teeks99 writes "There are a lot of articles circulating about the new changes to the NASA budget, but this one goes into some of the details. From what I'm seeing, it looks great — cutting off the big, expensive, over-budget stuff and allowing a whole bunch of important and revolutionary programs to get going: commercial space transportation; keeping the ISS going (now that we've finally got it up and running); working on orbital propellant storage (so someday we can go off to the far flung places); automated rendezvous and docking (allowing multiple, smaller launches, which then form into one large spacecraft in orbit). Quoting: 'NASA is out of the business of putting people into low-earth orbit, and doesn't see getting back in to it. The Agency now sees its role as doing interesting things with people once they get there, hence its emphasis on in-orbit construction, heavy lift capabilities, and resource harvesting hardware. Given budgetary constraints and the real issues with the Constellation program, none of that is necessarily unreasonable.'"
There's also a pretty good article from space.com that talks about a couple of the different points
They go into some more detail about the commercial space transportation part paving the way for more "space tourist" like stuff. Obviously this will still be extremely expensive, but I hope that it could increase the total number of launches, and help bring some economies of scale.
This is also the reason I'm excited about the orbital propellant storage and automated rendezvous technology. These items will allow us to launch big (weight wise) missions by using a bunch of smaller launch vehicles, instead of one really huge (and really expensive) one.
This new program is far better than the old one. It is so very heartening to see in a NASA program a stated goal to reduce the cost of human spaceflight, along with R&D of enabling technologies (orbital refueling, etc). NASA is finally shifting its human spaceflight focus in the right direction. As I've heard said before, it's not NASA's job to put a man on Mars (or the moon). It's NASA's job to make it possible for National Geographic to put a man on Mars.
Now congress just has to not be a bunch of idiots and ruin it (possibly the greatest challenge to human spaceflight yet).
Well, Mexico did once send a killer whale to the moon for $200.
From the article:
allowing multiple, smaller launches, which then form into one large spacecraft in orbit
So NASA's building a version of Voltron?
Getting to LEO isn't rocket science, any more. We've been doing that for over 50 years, now.
By now it's rocket engineering, and appropriate for the private sector.
Keep NASA in the rocket science business - deep space, new technologies, etc. The goal here is for the private sector to do it faster and cheaper, enabling other things to piggyback on top - like even further out rocket science. Too much of NASA's attention is spent on that first 100-200 miles.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
OMG brilliant!
Build a cylindrical wall surrounding the launch complex and the outbound trajectory. Put a hefty airlock at the bottom, at ground level. Make the wall tall enough to poke out of the atmosphere. Install really big vacuum pumps.
Move the spacecraft into the wall through the airlock. Get everyone out of the walled area. Close the airlock and evacuate all the atmosphere from the walled region. (Pump it into the surrounding open air.)
When the walled in area is a hard vacuum, from ground to space, launch! The FAA has no say, because there's no atmosphere! The EPA has no say because there's no air!
The spacecraft never undergoes aerodynamic stress during launch and can be any dang shape you want! Spherical ship? No problem!
Note to all slashbots: I am joking. Maybe.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Please stop the FUD. Approximately nothing of what you have said is true, cdrguru.
The FAA's office of Space Transportation (AST) has a mandate written in its authorizing law to both regulate and promote commercial space activities. They take both parts of that quite seriously.
Please do not spread FUD.
I am not aware of any commercial space activity which was denied an AST license or permit. There have been a few "Can't fly from this airport" snafu's from the aviation side, who are alternately happy and sad about rockets, but the AST crew are doing the "promote" thing quite seriously.
Is it always a completely smooth relationship? No. Is any of the startup companies spending most of their time (more than 10-20%) on paperwork? No. People are getting licenses and permits, they're flying.
From a reasonable standpoint, someone does need to be an external review to make sure we don't kill someone on the ground. If the industry neglected that, we'd eventually *really* get shut down when we did something neglegent. The reviews and regulation are appropriate to avoid dropping rockets on some poor family some day, which would be a tragedy both for the victims and for the industry.
EPA has no authority, the FAA has a standing environmental finding that there's no significant impact from the reusable rocket industry.
Am I personally flying rockets? No. Have I had to talk to AST about some proposed activities? Some. Do I know the people flying stuff now (Xcor, Armadillo, Masten, Unreasonable)? Yes, in most cases for decade-plus and personally. When we all get together, most of the griping is about operational lessons, and learning new things about rocket design, and high-fives for new successes. Only a small fraction of it is regulatory. It's there, but we know how to deal with it.
That's just an observation. It's not intended to be criticism of the plan. I have plenty of criticism of the old plan, but I don't yet know enough about the new one.
And between the FAA and EPA it is almost impossible to get a license in the US.
Don't forget OSHA. And that's a GOOD thing IMO. Note that it didn't stop Space Ship One from reaching space. What it will stop is unscrupulous corporations from using a poisonous propellant because it's cheaper than a nontoxic one, and having pieces of the blown-up rocket land on somebody's house. Let alone shortcuts that endanger workers.
When they made the Blues Brothers movie they had to do tests to get FAA approval to drop the Nazi's Pinto from a helicopter in Chicago in that one scene; they wanted to make sure it would drop straight down instead of sailing into a residential neighborhood. After dropping three pintos in the Salt Flats in Utah, the FAA granted permission.
The EPA, FAA, and OSHA protects YOU from corporations who don't care whether you live or die, whether you realize it or not. They're not protecting you from yourself, they're protecting you from ME. Any corporation rich enough to put people in space are rich enough to get EPA, FAA and OSHA approval.
If government went away tomorrow, you'd be wishing it was back the day after.
Free Martian Whores!
Depends on the type of license. The manned reusable license is actually pretty well thought out. (Scaled was easily able to get such a license). The FAA is more than reasonable about that. You might want to actually research that.
Mexico is not really an option as American companies - or companies with primary American ownership/staff - are still subject to US laws. Space and associated technologies are too close to arms proliferation and the laws are written with that in mind.
The reality is that US companies can, and do, get all the necessary licenses.
What is difficult is the reverse engineering of existing technologies. Almost everything NASA paid for in X programs the last 30 years is still owned exclusively by the company whom they contracted the work. The Linear Aerospike engines that were tested for X-33 has been sitting on shelf at LockMart for almost 10 years, so other companies wanting to explore the concept have to rebuild the design. The only real design in the last decade to come out of NASA itself without outside contracts has been TransHab. (Which they promptly signed a sole-source distribution contract with Bigelow to handle).
And therein lies the problem with NASA. Their R&D programs are not like the old NACA development programs. The technology is not moving to off-the-shelf. They are on-the-shelf technologies because that is primarily where they stay. Any company that wants to build a small orbital vehicle will have to do that from scratch or with whatever they can leverage.
You really have no sense of where government money goes, do you? TANF (federally-funded welfare) is $16.5B. By contrast, the latest Pentagon budget request is $768.2B.
Welfare is a really tiny portion of our total expenses.
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
There's $3 billion in the budget starting immediately to develope a heavy lift capability, considering that Ares V developement wasn't suposed to start for several years yet. Whatever solution they come up with should be delivered earlier than the Ares V would have been.
The biggest spending areas are Medicare, Social Security, and Defense. Fiddling with any of these is a sure way to lose the next election, not only for yourself but for your party. So, no one will touch them except to add more to them and make the problem worse. Meanwhile, trying to even get taxes back up to where they were 10 years ago is political suicide. So, we're stuck with politicians doing the will of the people to stay in office, and the will of the people is more benefits, more defense, less taxes. This is obviously unsustainable, but no one seems to care. Oh sure, people go on TV screaming about it, and people grumble about it amongst themselves, but then what? Back in the late 1990s/early 2000s, we had a budget surplus. At that time, the few people suggesting we use it to pay down the debt were drowned out by those demanding it be "given back" in the form of a tax cut. Bush came into office and gave the people what they want, and we ended up back in the red again.
We need to raise taxes, cut benefits, and slash defense spending. We now spend more than every other country in the world combined on defense, at some point we have to say we're spending too much on it. Of course, if anyone even suggests cutting defense spending they're labeled as an unpatriotic terrorist sympathizer, and their political career goes down the toilet. Similarly, if anyone suggests cutting social security or Medicare, they're accused of wanting to kill old people, and old people vote more than anyone else. Talk about raising taxes, and you're a big government socialist. The whole system has gone off the rails, and everyone is too busy trying to tear everyone else down and look good for the voters to actually fix any of it. All we can accomplish is bickering about discretionary spending, which is such a small part of the budget that even taking it all the way down to zero wouldn't solve the problem.
End of rant.
This morning NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had a press conference where he gave more details on NASA's plans and announced the initial contracts for the $50 million commercial crew development contracts (was supposed to be $200 million, but most funding was diverted by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Al) towards Constellation). Mind that this is just for the first year, as the budget hasn't passed yet -- once the budget passes, future contracts will award a total of a few billion spread over a number of years. The video link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9YvIESqDUk
Here's my notes on the press conference:
(sorry about the heinous formatting)
Charles Bolden takes a moment to thank the Constellation team for their years of dedicated service
"We want to explore new worlds, we want to develop more innovative technologies, we want to foster new industries, and we want to increase our understanding of Earth, the solar system, and the universe."
"each awardee also proposed significant investment from other sources to leverage taxpayer investment"
Blue Origin
o $3.7 million award to fund "risk mitigation activities related to its development of pusher launch escape system, and to develop a composite crew module for structural testing."
Boeing
o $18 million for space transportation system which includes a 7-person capsule to launch on medium-lift expendable launch systems
Paragon
o small business
o has directly supported more than 70 spaceflight missions
o $1.4 million for a development unit of environmental control and lift support air revitalization system
Sierra Nevada
o $20 million for Dream Chaser, 7-person spacecraft to be launched on Atlas V-402 vehicle
ULA
o $6.7 million for emergency detection system to monitor vehicle health of Atlas V and Delta IV rockets
they are the vanguard; certainly adding to this group in the near future
comments from presidents/reps
o ULA
EDS work for commercial crew and making sure products are more reliable for all customers
o Blue Origin
pusher escape system, at back of capsule to avoid jettison event, not consumed on nominal launch so it lowers operating costs
composite capsule will improve durability over conventional technology and lower weight
o Boeing
principal teammate Bigelow Aerospace
Bigelow represents most probable near-term market for crew transportation to LEO other than NASA
want to satisfy both Bigelow's needs and NASA's
parallel with Bill Boeing's young company and airmail to delivering cargo and crew to ISS
o Paragon
developing air revitalization system
first of its kind: a turn-key system, usable on pretty much any spacecraft
had very first commercial experiment on ISS
o Sierra Nevada
developed under unfunded Space Act agreement for past two years
based on NASA's HL-20 from 20 years ago
o Orbital Sciences (ongoing COTS contract)
um, talked for quite a while
o SpaceX (ongoing COTS contract)
spoke about collaborations with NASA
Q&A
o Do you have a destination and timetable?
tiger teams working on destinations and putting together timetables now
o in-orbit refueling?