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Senators Want Big Rocket Instead of New Tech, Commercial Transportation
FleaPlus writes "Members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation are drafting a bill (due this week) which slashes NASA technology development/demonstrations, commercial space transportation, and new robotic missions to a small fraction of what the White House proposed earlier this year. The bill would instead redirect NASA funds to 'immediate' development of a government-designed heavy lift rocket, although it's still unclear if NASA can afford a heavy lifter in the long term or if (with the new technology the Senators seek to cut, like in-space refueling) it actually needs such a rocket. The Senators' rocket design dictates a payload of 75mT to orbit, uses the existing Ares contracts and Shuttle infrastructure as much as possible, and forces use of the solid rocket motors produced by Utah arms manufacturer ATK."
Pork.
As an aside, replace "NASA" with "useful government program" of your choosing and the sentence still works.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
Why are Senators designing rockets?
My guess is that they are not designing rockets so much as they are designing pork.
What happened to that hydrogen space gun someone was making.
I was unaware that the Senate had members who were NASA engineers.
...forces use of the solid rocket motors produced by Utah campaign donor ATK.
Maybe I'm just cynical, but that's how I read the last sentence.
This is the most brazen act of pork barrel politics since the Bridge to Nowhere. Actually, it *is* a bridge to nowhere.
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ATK, and the United Space Alliance on track once again to spend over $50 million for lobbying efforts in 2010, including educational activities like treating Congressmen to luxury box Springsteen tickets.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I agree Senators should stfu - but dictating a payload capacity is a requirement, not a design.
.
What else do you expect when the head of NASA says that his primary mission is to remind Muslims of all the contributions they made to science?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
and forces use of the solid rocket motors produced by Utah arms manufacturer ATK.
There is no such thing as a truly man rated solid booster. They can put on their manager hat instead of their engineer hat and ram it thru for political reasons, but that doesn't make it true or safe.
So, whats the technical solution?
Politicians are pretty stupid and/or they don't care as long as their Utah connection gets some dough. They don't really care about the technical needs. So I have occasionally daydreamed they should be hired to produce two giant smoke grenades, or something like that. They'd be a "safety system" since the "boosters" would be dead weight and if the actual rocket had a problem, it could eject the dead weight boosters to gain quite a bit of performance.
Or, rather than trying to generate net upward thrust, if they barely broke even with their own weight, maybe they'd be safer.
Its an interesting technical solution to a political problem.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Why can't congress just leave NASA the fuck alone and let it actually do something. Or barring that at least give it a mission and not micromanage a government agency of which congress cannot adequately manage. Since we will never elect a majority of rocket scientists for our representatives, what gives them the right to think that they should determine what an agency that deals with rocket science does. Do they micromanage the FBI, NSA, CIA? Do they think that they have the right much less the ability to tell people that know what they are doing what they should be doing. This is like a badly run business that has an accountant running the IT department. Shucks guys but microsoft gave us a deal on server products so we scrapped the linux boxes because our balance sheets told us its better.
..rocket designs you! Seriously, I grew up in the USSR and this is actually a scary reminder of what went on in that country -- it was common to manufacture all kinds of crap that nobody needs, and then dispose of it in a big bonfire. But hey, people have jobs (those who build the rocket AND those who dismantle it afterwards).
No wait, not the pigs, just the pork.
I can't wait for all the interesting and new technology that would actually expand our capabilities to get canceled in favor of a appeasing a government contractor who wants us to keep doing what we've been doing and all the people who can't get past Size of Rocket = Size of Nation's Cock.
News flash for the space mid-life-crisis crowd: Big rockets are really impressive... if you live in the 70s! You want NASA to regain it's mojo and reclaim the lead in space? Shuttle 2.0 ain't gonna do it. Everything that will be scrapped in favor of the pork project would.
The enemies of Democracy are
This is going to be the most expensive phalic symbol. Why not just give the senators $50 million worth of V14gR4.
They should therefore not be attempting to dictate the future of rocket science R/D in the appropriations bills. It's all fine and good to set lofty goals, but leave the nuts and bolts to the nuts and bolts people.
What saddens me is that they're talking about spending ridiculous amounts on human spaceflight, and a comparative pittance on sending up more 'bots. You don't need to look much further than Hayabusa or Spirit and Opportunity to see the potential for real Science to get done is staggering when you don't have to worry about sustaining all those pesky biological systems. IMHO, we should be devoting at least a fifth of the budget to non-human spaceflight and exploration.
Once we know what's up there, we can send the fleshbags.
... then they should look into a better way to get them to the launch sites, so they don't have to worry about railroad tunnels while designing rockets.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
As long as it's first mission is to jettison 537 federal elected representatives of the people into deep space, it has my full support. I'll even donate $100 to the cause.
In other news, the same senate committee proposed legislation requiring tail fins on all automobiles.
Proverbs 21:19
Incompetent Senators telling us that we don't need any more operations at hospitals, but replace them with blood-letting?
They are doing this for the same reason senators do anything else: to bring in votes, either by porking jobs to their constituents or by porking funding to their campaign donors.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
75 million tonnes. That is one impressive rocket! ;)
Senators love to brag about their "large rockets."
"Do you think he's maybe compensating for something?" -- Shrek
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Politics isn't rocket science! I think rocket science might be rocket science though.
...me want big rocket
I can see why DoD would want to keep the solid rocket companies in business, because those same companies also build and replace ICBMs. But surely DoD can figure out a way to pay to keep those companies in business without forcing NASA to go with solid rocket boosters.
Solid rockets are a good choice when you need to keep a rocket in storage for a while (like an ICBM hopefully), but for an active launch program it is a little less clear why you would go with solid fuel since they make lots more pollutants when you burn them.
I am absolutely sure that nobody in the industry has submitted research on this subject and the numbers are purely arbitrary.
Nobody on the Committee is from Utah, BTW. If this were a slaughterhouse order, it's more likely the big contracts would be proposed in New Mexico.
Is what will this be attached to? If it goes on its own, I would imagine Obama would give it the big red VETO
This is just retarded. The current plans were going to actually get NASA innovating again. This is harking back to the 60's, USA is the best, we can go to the moon. No shit, we've done it already. Let's move forward.
If that payload is described by the the TNT equivalent of a warhead, that makes sense.
I knew metric wasn't NASA's strong point, but 75 milli-tons? What?
Pork
Eventually we will and what will be left will be some lame POS that impresses noone.
Since when do a bunch of lawyers know dink about the best cost solution to any technical problem?
Want NASA to provide a heavy-lift capability? Give NASA a broad goal (say for example to get to the moon in ten years), get the hell out of the way and have NASA produce a design study showing cost-benefit trades for all options studied (including whatever the engineers think might be feasable / possible / affordable - who knows, maybe those engineers actually know a thing or two about what they do). If the projected costs come within the realm of feasibility, authorize a multi-year funding profile (with offramps for failed performace), and get the hell out of the way. Otherwise, any effort is doomed to failure as a political football.
- A Practicing Aerospace Engineer
PS: N(a)SA, the National Space Administration; lack of adequate funding has already killed any useful Aeronautics they might have once accomplished
I think it's more efficient if its first mission is to land on 537 politicians.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Why not let the Senators do the designs too? After all, it's not like it's Rocket Science!
I'm surprised this didn't make it higher - but this article in addition to this one about NASA to strengthen ties with Muslim world - is NASA getting repurprosed?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
But where do they get their campaign contributions?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Yeah, but "75mT"? It's nice to see US Senators trying to get to grips with this new fangled metric system when they specify their pork, but 75 milli-Tonnes would be 75KG. Perhaps NASA should fax their designated rocket motor supplier in Utah some of its own blueprints for a surface to air missile and just get on with whatever it is that NASA actually wants to do, which might actually be something useful.
Alternatively, they could just claim to be catering to their stated directive about "reaching out to Muslims" and tell the not-so-honorable Senator from Utah "We don't do pork anymore as it might offend Muslims."
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Toupeed, botoxed, lifted, make-uped, plastic faced and brain dead politicians: 1 Science, knowledge and NASA: 0
I'd like to see better orbital insertion technologies pursued. Like a mag-lev cannon or something. Rockets CANNOT be the most efficient way to orbit. Especially Heavy lift rockets. Grrrr
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Yeah, but "75mT"?
Hmm, I just realized that article linked in the summary didn't include a reference on the 75mt/mT/whatever requirement. Here's one that does:
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20100710/NEWS02/7100318/1007/Funding+may+alter+NASA+s+spaceflight+direction
While saying it was not the committee's place to design rockets, Nelson said the giant launcher -- capable of lifting at least 75 metric tons -- should be largely derived from shuttle systems and likely would use solid rocket boosters, like the Constellation program's
Ares I and Ares V rockets.
The "mT" thing is technically deprecated if I understand correctly, but for whatever reason is still quite common in aerospace circles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonne
T and mT and mt (especially in the combination mmt for million metric tons compare to Mt for megatonne) are also occasionally used, but all of these are deprecated since they conflict with internationally agreed SI symbols.
The NASA I grew up with is truly dead and gone. NASA was about going somewhere; we could go to the moon, I can't wait to see what's next. It's so hard looking at the pictures at the Apollo Archive without feeling melancholy about what NASA was, back in the 60s, and has never been since.
I wonder what Neil, Buzz and Michael are doing for fun these days.
Did y'all already forget... Last week NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told Al Jazeera one of his top priorities from President Obama is to reach out to Muslim countries. If Obama won't allow NASA to stay on-focus, the Senate should cut the funding.
aren't they supposed to have actual (and proven unbiased) studies to back stuff up before they can legislate it?
Why do I doubt that I will never see the US get back to the moon, let alone anywhere else, in my lifetime? I was a little kid when the moon missions ended, I don't even remember them. But it was exciting to know that something like that could be accomplished. Its revolting that this country doesn't really DO anything anymore. We will never get back to the moon. Hell, I bet we never get anything rebuilt on the twin tower's site.
What I noticed was that the article is against the new spending bill and that all the quoted sources in the article benefit from the current spending plan.
Every single one of the named sources is attached to and gets money from commercial space interests in some way.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Is 75 millitons, or about 75kg.
I thought we had that already!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Charles Bolden did make these comments. You can google it, it's out there. However the White House has made a statement stating that his comments were out of line and they had asked of him no such thing. They also stated they would be in touch with him about his comments. My guess is a bit of hand slapping went on.
Heck, I have a friend who is/was an engineer on the Ares rocket / Orion spacecraft; and he WANTS Ares to die. He would prefer that NASA get out of the rocket design and LEO-transport businesses. He really wants to work on experimental stuff. He feels that THAT is what NASA should do. Leave the LEO stuff to private businesses. (Obviously, with the caveat that NASA buys the use of them when needed.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
What the fuck is your problem? Poor Darkies? Go to hell. Race has jack shit to do with welfare status. You racist fuck
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Let's do it in reverse and require a degree in rocket science to be elected to Congress. I mean, after you do the math to land a robot on Mars, how hard can balancing a budget really be?
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Well, in a way, that is their job. People vote for senators in the hopes that the person will represent their state well and bring back wealth/resources.... the senator's job is to look after their state first and the nation second and ones that follow that will continue to get elected. The problem is they are operating as intended.
Where did you get that idea? Such things might be good for PR, but there is no implyed requirement for it.
the Tonne is a stupid name for a unit - its too easily confused with the old 2000lb short ton and the the imperial ton.
1000 Kilograms should be called a Megagram, like all the other SI units.
Maybe the Senate should pass a bill chnging the gravitational constant. It would be a lot easier to get off this rock if it had a lower escape velocity...
Apparently I mis-calibrated my sarcasm.
I was attempting to satirize the fact that any sort of government spending on social programs tends to fall victim to the backlash against the terrifying(but largely unverified) "Welfare Queen"(which, again regardless of statistics, is an explicitly racially identified character); while even the most transparently pointless dicking around with porky corporate contracts does not arouse the same ire.
Somehow, as long as the government spending results in some sort of corporate product(even if it is wholly ill-suited, grossly over budget, or simply canceled partway through) it avoids the dread stigma of being "welfare"(for some reason, farm subsidies also seem to escape this). On the other hand, if there is some chance that a poor person of the colored persuasion might get their hands on a thin slice, it instantly becomes "welfare", which is self-evidently an unsustainable "entitlement program" that is destroying America's moral fiber even as it wrecks its finances.
...a government-designed heavy lift rocket.
That statement is scary, very very scary.
(1) jobs
(2) jobs and "bragging rights", electability, pork, etc.
(3) military deadlift capability without letting anybody else in on the deal.
in the end Congress will get their way or nobody will get any way.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This potential bill means congressional support behind a Direct version of a shuttle replacement or something close enough not to matter. Direct is a design to replace the space shuttle with a rocket that puts the cargo and capsule on top of the tank, and moves the shuttle engines on the bottom of the tank. Without having to lift the load of the space shuttle itself, the rocket gets 77mT of cargo to orbit.
Re-using all the major shuttle components provides the cheapest possible option for a Heavy Lift Vehicle, not to mention the quickest, as a Direct design could be flying by 2013. The current plan from the administration doesn't even decide on a HLV design until 2015, let alone start the process of building and testing it. This is not a barrel of pork. Yes, somebody will make some money, but this is the cheapest option at the moment to keep a US heavy lift capability in the near future, and it will be built here in the US.
Current US lift capability stops at only 25mT in the Shuttle cargo bay to Low Earth Orbit. By funding a Direct style vehicle, we get a minimum of 75 mT to orbit without a second stage. This a very good thing. With further development of a second stage, the payload capacity increases to 115mT+. Not only that, but by putting the payload on top of the vehicle, a direct style rocket can support a payload as wide as 12m across (shuttle can only do 5m). So we get the ability to send more per launch and save over the life of a large project. For example, five flights of Direct would have been sufficient to build the ISS, versus the 40 shuttle launches it actually took.
By re-using the same engines and boosters as the space shuttle, we save billions (maybe $10 billion over time) in research and launch facility changes necessary for other designs (Ares would have required 2 new pad designs and new crawlers at a $1 billion a pop). The cost per launch for Direct will be less expensive as well. For comparison, recovery of the shuttle SRB's, refurbishment of the shuttle and launch costs per launch have averaged out to about $1.3 billion per launch. A Direct will cost somewhere north of $200 million for the launch vehicle, plus operating costs, but won't include refurbishment or recovery operations. For the immediate future NASA says it will launch the last shuttle in 2011, and after we'll be paying the Russians $20-30 million per seat for rides in a Soyuz
We save time in that we can have an un-manned cargo version of the vehicle doing test flights by 2013, whereas the engine testing alone for a liquid-fueled booster would take 5 years by the current plan. as all the parts are already man-rated (save for the modified ET), we could be launching Orion capsules on a Direct as soon as the Orions finish development in 2015 or so.
If this passes, I'll be one very happy space fan.
The Internet has no garbage collection
We must commercialize the space business. Let government run it and they will run it into the ground.
and if the CCCP was still around then we may of been on mars by now!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah, but "75mT"?
(...)
The "mT" thing is technically deprecated if I understand correctly, but for whatever reason is still quite common in aerospace circles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonne
At first I read mT as millitesla, which felt somewhat weird as a measure of carrying capacity...
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).
Yeah, well, MB and GB are generally deprecated as well, at least in the way that most here like to use them. Good luck with your karma if you bring that up, though!
75mT is an aviation-sector semi-standard unit abbreviation (for metric ton, btw) accepted by popular consensus. If it were instead taken to be an SI unit (either to poke fun at non-standard unit abbreviations, or from simple, and understandable, ignorance of the aviation-sector usage), it'd be millitesla.
The only way to get milliton from it is by being an asshole who think's he's da shit because he's mastered the SI prefixes, even though he still has no clue about the base units. But since /.'s moderation is so broken and/or filled by similarly ignorant assholes, the asshole gets +4 Insightful for that; I don't suppose it even makes sense bothering to point it out. Nobody cares about actually getting SI right, they just want a fapathon to their own superiority over all the engineers who actually use in/pound/s or similar consistent, non-SI systems.
they could just claim to be catering to their stated directive about "reaching out to Muslims"
- well, if the requirement is 75Kg and they are reaching out to Muslims, then I am assuming they are going to rich out to Muslims with a 75Kg warhead of some sort.
You can't handle the truth.
mT is milliteslas, which describes magnetic field strength. SI doesn't use tons, it uses kilograms.
I'll see your 537 politicians and raise you 9 SCOTUS justices and a half dozen Cabinet Secretaries. Or were you under the impression that these folks are not politicians as well?
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
The Senators' rocket design dictates a payload of 75mT to orbit
Millitons? As in 75 kilograms?
If only it was the capitalization... Also - so many people writing about SI, etc.; nobody putting the damn space between values and units.
One that hath name thou can not otter
So the solution is to get people all riled up about a poorly chosen comment and beat this dead horse some more?? How many times has this already been brought up in the thread? Nothing like a Big Distraction to get people to stop focusing on the real issues and waste time and energy debating something as trivial as this...
People say stupid things sometimes. So what?
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
He was talking about "foremost" in the context of the interview, not NASA as a whole.
Yes, he was.
""When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering,""
Your excuse for the guy was weasel words. He said what he said, and he wasn't taken out of context. Further, the White House itself has gently reprimanded him for his comments:
"But White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday, "That was not his task, and that's not the task of NASA." Gibbs said White House officials have spoken to Bolden and NASA about the comments."
If you'll read the Washington Post link, you'll see that this is just the tip of the iceberg for Bolden. The Post piece refers to him as, and I quote, a "headache for the White House".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Far be it from me to defend an institution that P.J. O'Rourke famously called the Parliament of Whores... but you need to re-examine your own "science be damned" statement. Because NASA is not science, and never has been. NASA was an inherently political creation for an inherently political goal: beating the Soviets in the space race. And NASA was born with big, fat, servings of pork to all the necessary states.
Science is, and always has been, a minor sideshow at NASA. If your main concern is science, then NASA is the wrong place to put all your hopes and dreams in. NASA, having served its purpose (Soviet Union, RIP) should be quietly put to death, and its job broken up amongst various existing agencies.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
For all you sci fi space adventure magical/religious cult true believers, "get off this rock" fanatics, and other gullible, deluded saps, this MUST be evidence enough of what is really driving NASA's manned space program. The point is to give as much money as possible to the defense/aerospace industry. The rest is just cosmetic bullshit for suckers.
Yeah, cutting the science out to make a really big expensive rocket. What a concept.
Suckers.
Yep. That's true even when the budget for just one single pork project exceeds the entire welfare budget.
For example TARP. Apparently it's only a drain on the economy if you want to afford basic staple foods. It's just fine if you need to fund the caviar luncheon on the summer yacht or to recover for yet another in a long line of high budget serial failures.
Alternatively, they could just claim to be catering to their stated directive about "reaching out to Muslims" and tell the not-so-honorable Senator from Utah "We don't do pork anymore as it might offend Muslims."
Well said
A Republican in a sex scandal with a woman ? Puh-lease!
Seems a waste to develop a new rocket when 75 milliTeslas (75 mT) of magnetic flux density in the form of a neodymium magnet doesn't weigh much.
One can only assume that the authors wished to express the SI related unit of 75 tonnes (75 t) or 75000 kg. Even in the US this unit is denoted by "t"
"Metric System of Measurement: Interpretation of the International System of Units for the United States" (PDF). Federal Register 63 (144): 40333–40340. July 28, 1998. 63 FR 40333.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Someone needed to complain about the very nonstandard unit, but what's a KG? 9.81 Kelvin metres per second squared?
The proper abbreviation is "kg." And there should always be a space before any unit.
That's not pork, that's access peddling. Similar in character, but pork is more local.
IMHO, has very little to do with either of these, however. This one is all about the upcoming elections. Every Senator on the committee who went for this proposal can haul it home and plaster disembodied figures in the billions all over their ads as proof of their own fiscal responsibility. It doesn't even have to make it to the floor. If it gets blocked they can just link it to an opponent's stance on something not necessarily related and score double points.
Reason #348 why it's so damned easy to get re-elected to the Senate.
Next you'll be saying you like emacs better than vi.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Societies use the allocation of resources to quell dissent and foster solidarity!
Not to piss on NASA or anything, but its makeup has alway been highly pork-y. There's a reason that NASA had most of its infrastructure built in the Southern US in the mid 1960s, when the Democratic party (such as it was at the time) was splitting between segregation-oriented southerners and northern labor constituencies, and the southern congressmen were always happy to side with Republicans on labor law X unless they were able to bring home a big contract, particularly after CRA '64. Johnson and Humphrey was frantic to keep their southern constituents, who'd FDR had successfully bought off with the TVA, REA and farm subsidies, from bolting, and NASA+defense spending was the way they did it, until Nixon and southern whites swung decisively Republican.
Mission control in Houston? Engine test facility in a backwater arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama? (And Space Camp too, for heaven's sakes!) Major components built in Louisiana? Green Bank observatory in West Virginia?
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
"...slashes NASA technology development/demonstrations, commercial space transportation, and new robotic missions to a small fraction of what the White House proposed earlier this year."
So they'll have a heavy launch vehicle, but hardly anything interesting left to put on it? Is that the plan?
No problems as long as you don't google ATK and click on images.
Fail.
It's hardly surprising to see Utah fighting to keep the original contracts. There are entire cities whose fate is tied to ATK launch systems. In a representative government, you have to represent the interests of your constituents; or at least pretend to. If a decision is made that will send entire cities into unemployment, your job is to represent and fight for those who face unemployment.
The senators and congressmen of other states may not care what happens to thousands of people in Utah, it's not their job. On the other hand, you can't really fault the senators and congressmen of Utah for doing their job and fighting for the livelihood of thousands of their constituents.
I'm sure the situation is the same for other Ares contractors.
There's something to be said for honoring the contracts that have been signed for the constellation program. Otherwise, we end up with the same political patronage that plagued the presidencies of the early 1800's; states that favored the current president gets jobs, and states that didn't have jobs taken away. Whether justified or not (I bet it's not), one accusation being leveled against the Obama administration is that the decision was made to hurt states that didn't vote for him.
The fact is that the Constellation program, while having NASA/government oversight, was designed by commercial entities, under contract. I just don't see how a rocket built designed and built by ATK & Boeing is "government", while SpaceX or Orbital is "commercial." They are both rockets designed and built by a corporation, and delivered to the government according to a contract.
There actually is a commercial market for unmanned spaceflight. There is a market for sattelite launch.
Manned spaceflight is a different matter entirely. There isn't a commercial reason to go to space - no untold fortunes to be had from resource collection (like metals or Helium-3), no riches to be had in exploring Mars or the moon... No interplanetary transportation of people between colonies, no transport of scientists to zero-g labs, etc. There are a few joy riders willing to spend a bit more than the launch cost, but that's not enough to justify the billions in investment. Truly "commercial" manned spaceflight shouldn't be completely dependent on the US Government. Sadly, that's all Oribal and SpaceX have for manned spaceflight. Trying to say they are somehow different from Boeing, Lockheed, or ATK is obfuscating the truth: That they are contractors to the government. Without the a government paying for manned spaceflight, SpaceX and Orbital have no way to turn a profit with manned spaceflight -- and neither does anybody else, for that matter.
The SpaceX and Orbital are latecomers to the shuttle replacement game; they want a do-over because they were still exploding on the launch pad when the Ares contracts were given out. It seems to me that there's a lot of lobbying by SpaceX and Orbital to get government contracts taken from their competition, and reassigned to them. It's a money grab by SpaceX and Orbital, and a transparent one at that.
If you weren't ready in time for the bidding, that's too bad; maybe next time.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
The real reason for this move is because China is planning to reach the Moon and then get a base on it before we can. So the Senators, in their infinite stupidity, are trying to figure out a way to make it happen and beat the Chinese at their game.
Which won't happen. We'll waste a lot of money and end up even further behind the technological curve. Instead of just giving up on manned space exploration(the point of which is?), they are going to spend every last penny that we have in a last-ditch attempt to keep up with China's juggernaut.
Simply put, the U.S. is soon to be a second-world nation and just has to learn to deal with it like the U.K. did after WWI when its empire pretty much just collapsed and they went from #1 to just another player. On a side note, I wonder how many unemployment checks one shuttle launch would pay for?
Our military is still flailing and failing at their mission in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the budget still grows. The addition of private contractors seems to have made them even less efficient.
I think your NASA example is premature. Let us wait until SpaceX has actually done something real with that vehicle.
I definitely fail to see how the VA's mission could be done better by the private sector.
Blar.
Members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation are drafting a bill (due this week) which slashes NASA technology development/demonstrations, commercial space transportation, and new robotic missions to a small fraction of what the White House proposed earlier this year.
Given that the hard and expensive part is breaking free of the earth's gravity, is it correct to say that the honorable and esteemed Senators are eliminating subsidies for "commercial space transportation", or ensuring that such potentially highly lucrative ventures have a 'Dawg to ride on the taxpayer's dime?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Dear US Congress and Executive Branch, Please divert a significant portion of defense spending to NASA. At least their mission makes more sense than wasting money maintaining your special interest groups "interests" overseas. I hope you recognize the flaws of a military state and divert this money to a more worthy cause. With regard, -Antisyzygy
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
One would hope that liberty, justice, philosophy, you know--doing "good" would motivate our politicians. It sort of disturbs me that you think stealing the largest slice of the public pie should be the primary motivator.
I want my Senator to protect our rights. I do not want him to do everything he can to buy votes.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Apart from the pork angle there's another thing: Even the original Bush plan for the Moon and Mars looked as if it were designed to get a heavy launcher at all costs. Now this. Really, building launchers at all is not something you need to be the US or Soviet Russia for. Every country not being exactly a developing country can do that now. Even private companies can do that.
Building something able to launch really big payloads though is different. This is hard and expensive and has so few uses that nobody even tries. It has one really good use though: Fscking big military optical and radar spysats. If you want to have an optical spysat in GSO you need more than a few thousand pounds up there. And if you want to have radar spysats with high resolution you also need some serious power and antennas up there.
Being able to launch 70 or more metric tons is something you can rely on nobody else that easily to repeat. And I think this was the real reason for Ares V and now for this. Having some really big eyes in the sky staring down hard day and night, *this* would make a difference. Everyone with half a brain can now time his operations so that no spysat is in the right place when he wants to get some things done without being seen.
What trade studies were done that decided a 75mT payload capacity was needed as opposed to a 50 or 60mT? Is there a linear increase in cost vs. payload capacity? Is 75mT some sort of optimum, balancing cost vs. development time vs. existing hardware capabilities?
Or is it a number pulled out of someone's ass?
Arguing requirement vs. design is mostly semantics at this point. What matters is where the number came from and what sort of analysis went into it (if any).
Same people who brought us Ada.
One thing I haven't seen discussed is that once this rocket is built, what the hell is going to fly on it? I don't see any mention of funding for building a 75mT payload that will then be ready to fly when the rocket is. Right now, all I see happening is that this giant rocket will be built and then will sit around for years waiting for something large enough to fly on it to be built.
Which raises another question: Do we even need it? What's the point in having a giant rocket without giant payloads to fly? What I would like to see is a study comparing the cost and timescale of doing the following two options:
1) Build this huge rocket, utilizing the expensive legacy shuttle hardware. Then design and build a huge payload as justification for your huge rocket. (Sound familiar, sort of like the ISS-Space shuttle relationship?) Fly this huge rocket a couple times per year, making you unable to amortize fixed costs (launch pads, support personnel, etc) over more launches. If the launcher fails, you've lost 75 mT of payload. Ouch. So you'll also need to spend more money making extra-sure that it'll succeed. Oh, and if you fail, your mission is completely grounded until the vehicle is fixed and re-tested and certified for flight again, because there are no other 75mT capacity launchers in existence.
2) Start designing and building payloads that will fit on existing (or near future) commercial launchers. Start a market for even more launches. Let some economies of scale come into the picture and reduce launch costs for you. Let commercial companies compete and bid for your business. If the launcher fails, you've lost a lot less payload than in option 1. Inconvenient, but not as devastating as losing option one's super-launcher. Also, if one of your commercial launchers does fail, you have some more to choose from to launch things in the meantime while the failed rocket is investigated, fixed, re-tested and re-certified. Your entire program does not have to grind to a halt while the launcher is fixed.
Now, which of those options would result in more activity in space? Personally, I think option 2 would be the way to go. More opportunity for cost saving. No single point of failure to get your stuff into orbit. You can start designing payloads to go up right away, instead of waiting for the funding to become available after your shuttle-derived super launcher is ready.
But, of course, what I wrote above does not matter to congress. All they care about is: Does this program pay back my donors enough for them to keep supporting me?
Fuel is cheap. Launchers still aren't. BDB FTW.
NASA should put money into developing Scramjets, Electromagnetic launching equipment for high subsonic launch of rockets (to reduce launch costs), Developing the Blended Wing Body Concept, and somehow (even though it's a Navy Project) the Brussard Polywell, and the cancelled NCSX project, if your feeling adventurous they should go ahead and put a nuclear reactor into space (assembled out of earth orbit in pieces so that reentry risks are minimised). And they should NOT be reaching out to any particular ethnic or religious minority, but should remain a equal opportuinity employer. The reason why the Apollo project was good is because it had not been done before, they need to keep doing things that have not been done before to justify their existence. Especially because in a decade or so they will not be unique in their capability due to commercial operations and other governments own space agencies.
senators who know nothing of space science giving nasa orders, nothing can go wrong here
Unlike private organizations, Govt organizations viz FBI, NSA, CIA etc are answerable and accountable to 535 Congress members.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
I particularly like the design that involves detonating a series of nukes to escape Earth's gravity well.
Because the head of NASA said that Obama told him that NASA's primary goal is to make Muslims feel good about their contributions to science.
Yeah, but "75mT"? It's nice to see US Senators trying to get to grips with this new fangled metric system when they specify their pork, but 75 milli-Tonnes would be 75KG.
More like 75 milli Tesla.
I thought it's supposed to be the idea for basis for a bill?
Nice catch, that would have lead to a shuttle disaster for sure.
or else!
No private health provider is going to sign that contract. There's no way to squeeze profits out of the VA and still keep level of service at even the current disappointing levels. Your suggestion is a red herring.
Blar.
I read milliTorr, a small unit of pressure. 1 Torr = 1 mmHg, 7.5 mT = 1 Pa.
Maybe they want to do away with a cargo hold and instead attach the payload to the outer shell by magnets?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Although I believe NASA has become an inefficient bureaucracy, I don't see how any company could possibly get work done getting redirected as often as NASA does. Off to lobby for NASA to build something we can make in MY state!
I'm afraid to elaborate ... but "big rockets"?
But we don't.
Every time the government contracts out to private industry, quality suffers and the cost savings are almost never realized.
Just look at Iraq.
Blar.