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Senators Blast NASA For Lacking Vision
An anonymous reader writes "A Senate science subcommittee clashed with NASA's chief on Wednesday, saying the agency and the White House lacked a clear vision and goal for the program. Skeptical senators told the space agency that it should not just talk about plans, but set out to do something specific. Lawmakers expressed a bipartisan opposition to the agency's plans and the initiatives of the Obama White House." Updated 23:13 GMT by timothy: Reader Trent Waddington contributes this video link to the hearing, if you want to come to your own conclusions.
You do realize that the plans were unworkable, the designs flawed, and the very engineers for them introduced alternative designs which could be produced sooner/faster/cheaper. Look up "Ares V Base Heating Issue" sometime.
The management at NASA and the special interests behind key areas kept pushing for Constellation due to it's huge R&D budget, despite the laws of physics which stated that it would never work with the designs as/is. And Obama pulled the plug on the dead-man-walking. It was obvious 5 years ago that this would happen, which is why NASA's engineers "moonlighted" and introduced the DIRECT launch design.
Here is what they proposed. It could be ready from approval to launch within 36 months, as it is based on existing technologies *and* it has already passed PDR. If it looks familiar to you space nuts, you might remember it as the Regan-era National Launch System. Now it is called Jupiter.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esCGYkVhhnY&feature=channel
Watch the Senate Hearing yourself, a lot more interesting stuff happened.
How we know is more important than what we know.
NASA has spread around the work to the maximum number of congressional districts to maximize their political support. But ask those same congressmen what they are willing to give up...ask them how important it is to balance the budget and even ...gasp..to begin paying off some debts..and they go quiet about what they want to give up...except to demand that the budget be balanced (but let someone else's district pay for it).
Obama puts a freeze on some agencies spending and already the constituencies are whining.
Where are politicians with guts who care more about the future of the country than getting elected with phony promises and posturing?
I can't believe the grandstanding coming out of the US government nowadays. From berating car company executives for flying in their jets (no, they should buy multi-million dollar jets and just let them rot), to coming down on Toyoda as if he were the embodiment of all evil (yeah, US manufacturers NEVER had recalls. I have yet to see the Toyota equivalent of the Ford Pinto), and now NASA.
Oh we took away all your funding and tied you up in red tape, but now we will complain that you lack vision and have not made any progress! It's NASA's fault for literally not delivering the moon, on a budget that would be barely noticed by an average defense contractor. Because it's ok to pour $65 billion into F-22's, the 140+ million dollar planes that always seem to be in the shop (68% readiness you know if I paid $140 million I want the damned thing to work), but no additional funding is required to move forwards in space exploration (the NASA budget has been fairly constant at all time lows since 1993).
It's the politicians in the US that need fixing. They didn't listen when the public said "no" to more war. They didn't listen when the public said "no" to the bailouts. They didn't listen when the public said "no" to the stimulus. There's a pattern here. "Voting" isn't going to change anything... real democracy died a long time ago, victim to the two party system set up by special interests.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The Apollo program cost about $145 billion in 2008 dollars (Wikipedia), and quite a lot more if you factor in the orbital programs (Mercury, Gemini) which led up to Apollo. That's not exactly peanuts. They only get about $18 billion a year right now.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Then, of course, there is the pork. Representative Olsen, not of the senate, has voting against the economic stimulus package, which consensus seems to indicate that it has stopped the hemorrhaging of jobs, and now he is complaining that a few thousand government employees are going to lose their jobs. What is it Pete? Do we want to balance the budget or keep support a federal jobs program where the average salary is over 70K a year? Sure the NASA jobs are great, but the budget is the budget. These jobs and ancillary costs could save over a billion a year. I know that Clear Lake is the probably the most federally subsidized place in America, but we really need real jobs based on capitalism, not socialism.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Disclaimer: I work for the space program, but I'm not high enough to make these decisions.
Some people will never be happy. All the dreams of the last 50 years are about to come true, and all people can do is bitch!
Look, chemical powered rockets have not changed much since the development of the SSME. So why are we only now getting private space launch? Because there was nowhere reasonable to go! ISS cargo is an easy enough mission for non-cutting edge rocketry, and since it is manned there is a long term need for supply flights that won't go away.
The future looks like this:
1. NASA guarantees it be buy x flights at y price from now until 2020.
2. Multiple vendors (currently SpaceX, Orbital, Lockheed, Boeing, and others) use this promise to secure capital to develop launchers.
3. Several years of regular supply flights gives ample qualification of the new boosters.
4. Once confidence is gained, NASA transitions from buying human flights from Russians to buying flights from Americans. Lots of politicians get reelected.
5. All the tech for better than chemical rocket launch now has a concrete mission to design for. Someone perfects laser ablative launch of cargo to ISS and does it much cheaper. Someone else gets an even cheaper launch option going.
6. NASA works on designs for solar system manned exploration craft. Design is steady and largely free from political pressure.
7. Private cargo launch matures, and one day both it and the NASA designs are ready.
8. ISS, which is now a largely private operation, is sold off or deorbited at its end of life.
9. NASA (and hell, maybe even private spacecraft) launch on commercial boosters and usher in a new era.
Look, promises smomishes. Unfunded mandates scmuded fandates. This is the ONLY way to get beyond LEO in a sustained manner by the 2050s ( when I will retire). You all should be overjoyed.
No, I think it's actually an enlarged Apollo module and maybe a cargo module on top of a Shuttle fuel tank, with Shuttle main engines on the bottom of it, and Shuttle boosters strapped to the sides.
Apollo's F1 engines used kerosene, whereas the Shuttle's main engines use LOX and liquid H2, IIRC, so the two aren't really compatible, plus it's unlikely they'd go back to kerosene after already having the infrastructure in place for the newer fuels. Finally, the SSMEs (Space Shuttle Main Engines) are already developed and tested, so it's not hard to simply make more, or reuse the ones they already have. Building more F1 Apollo engines would probably be a big challenge since they haven't made any in decades and the plans are probably lost in a file cabinet somewhere, and all the fixtures and such are gone.
It's a perfectly sensible design, unlike an entirely-new design like the Ares. It reuses components that already exist and are highly tested and perfected, and simply jettisons the Orbiter and replaces it with a new capsule on top. It should be cheap and easy to build, unlike the Ares, and shouldn't have any problems except maybe for the capsule part, since that's the only new part.
NASA: "Hey, look what we can do!"
Senate: "F*@$! Look how much money that costs! Stop that!"
NASA: "Um, well, we can do this too..."
Congress: "That's too &%$*!#@ dangerous! Shut it down! Shut it down!"
NASA: "Well, maybe we could try this... it doesn't cost quite so much, and it's safer. Is that okay?"
Senate: "I guess so. And take your sister with you."
NASA: "All right. Here goes..."
Congress: "That's TOO LOUD! Knock it off, and go to your room!"
NASA: *SULK*
Senate: "Why doesn't NASA DO anything? They have no ambition, and lack vision. Where did they go wrong?"