Senate Bill Adds Shuttle Flight, New Shuttle-Derived Vehicle

simonbp writes "The Senate Commerce Committee this morning marked up a compromise NASA Authorization Act that rolls back some of Obama's plans for NASA, while keeping others. The bill adds at least one more shuttle flight, keeps Obama's technology demonstrators and commercial access to ISS (albeit at reduced funding), restores the Orion crew capsule, and replaces the Ares rockets with a Shuttle-Derived 'Space Launch System' for going to the ISS and Beyond, which could be ready as soon as 2015."

Comments

KILL IT

[CajunArson]

Preface: I'm firmly in the camp that believes that Bush wasn't as bad as we were all told and that Obama is nowhere as great as we've been all told but, Obama got the idea of privatizing LEO work 100% right. I'm getting tired of the rest of the weasels (in both parties) trying to shove even more pork into NASA instead of letting it do its job..
Hell I think the whole "foremost mission of NASA is to make Muslims feel like they are smart" is something that proves that the characters in Atlas Shrugged actually do exist in the real world, but if it means that NASA actually stops actually sabotaging private companies getting into orbit faster & better, I'm all for it! It would be a bonus if NASA actually kept doing the really out-there stuff that's way beyond Earth, but right now I'm not asking for much.

Re:KILL IT

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you read the book? Sure, it sucks, but the fact is, that line about "NASA's foremost mission" being one of outreach to the Muslim community could have come straight from one of its villains.

Only a fool rejects wisdom because of its source.

Re:KILL IT

[Grishnakh]

I'm firmly in the camp that believes that Bush wasn't as bad as we were all told and that Obama is nowhere as great as we've been all told

Nope. Bush was just as bad as we were all told, maybe worse. And Obama is just as bad, maybe worse (just in different ways).

As a gun enthusiast and 2nd Amendment supporter, however, I have to hand it to Obama. At least with Obama, I can now carry my handgun in National Parks. I couldn't do that for the whole time Bush was in power, even during the 6 years he had a Republican-controlled Congress working with him.

Re:KILL IT

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm of the opinion that every president that is elected is worse than their predecessor.

Re:KILL IT

[moosesocks]

That very well may be, but the comment we're referring to made zero sense. NASA exists to make muslims feel smart? How does that even begin to make sense? What does Atlas Shrugged have to do with any of this?

Re:KILL IT

[lgw]

The moment you mention "Atlas Shrugged" you marked yourself as a retard.

Your point is invalid.

Good day.

But you just mentioned "Atlas Shrugged" too, so now you're also marked as a retard. Oh, shit, I just did it too!

Re:KILL IT

[TheEyes]

...Hell I think the whole "foremost mission of NASA is to make Muslims feel like they are smart"...

Oh come on, you don't really think that's what was said, do you? Have you even heard the interview? What the guy was saying was that Obama tasked NASA with doing more joint research projects with other nations, including the Muslim world. NASA--and indeed, America's general commitment to scientific research and advanced technology--is one of the few things that every nation in the world respects America for, even nations like Turkey who have begun over the past decade to lose respect for everything else we do. It's perfectly reasonable to say that it would be a good idea to promote that side of America to the rest of the world, rather than sending in the troops all the time.

How many more intractable wars in distant countries do we need to get involved in before we start to realize you earn more goodwill from peaceful cooperation than from military encroachment? Note that I'm not talking about appeasement--evil still needs to be fought--but it wouldn't hurt to have a few allies along the way.

Re:KILL IT

[sznupi]

And the moral demise of youth will surely destroy civilisation very quickly... (we have written statements of that since Ancient Greece)

Re:KILL IT

[Shotgun]

Bolden said: “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,”

Quit trying to rewrite history. It is what it is, and it ain't what you're claiming.

Re:KILL IT

[Grishnakh]

And what happened to Ancient Greece? They were conquered by the Romans. Then the Romans rose to a great empire, and again, their civilization collapsed utterly (due to internal decay and corruption), leading to the 1000-year Dark Ages where technology went backwards, and learning was forgotten and lost. It took 1000-1500 years to get back to the level of civilization the Romans achieved during their reign.

What happened to the Romans is exactly what's happening to Western Civilization today (especially the USA). And it has nothing to do with morals, per se, but a greedy, corrupt, incompetent, and negligent ruling class that's driving society into the ground in order to satisfy their own short-term interests. Just like what happened to the Romans.

Wrong Direction

[Bruce Perens]

A bill that kills NASA entirely would be a better direction for space research and the United States. Unfortunately the department is too big a political pork football between various state representatives for it to ever be effective. Until we can structure a space organization that won't be a political football - and that's going to take a really radical change - we're only shooting ourselves in the foot.

Re:Wrong Direction

[Shakrai]

Until we can structure a space organization that won't be a political football

Short of a war that includes activities in space I really don't see how that's going to happen. There's no way to involve the Federal Government in anything remotely related to appropriations that won't become a political football.

Re:Wrong Direction

[Bruce Perens]

ARPA did a better job. If we have the will to define and stick to a mission, we can structure independence into it. If we don't have the will, maybe it's best left to non-government entities.

Re:Wrong Direction

[c0lo]

A bill that kills NASA entirely would be a better direction for space research and the United States.

Why? With what would you replace NASA so that the space research can continue?

Until we can structure a space organization that won't be a political football...

Oh, I see... So, replacing NASA is not because of the research it does, but because is done in a "political football" fashion?
If this is the problem, then why demolish demolish the stadium (i.e. NASA) if you actually blame the game played on the stadium?

Re:Wrong Direction

[sconeu]

And that falls under "short of a war", Bruce. ARPA was a DoD entity, not a civilian entity.

Re:Wrong Direction

[Chris Burke]

A bill that kills NASA entirely would be a better direction for space research and the United States.

Without NASA there would be virtually no space research in the United States, which is only "better" if you aren't in favor of space exploration to begin with. Nobody but NASA is going to launch missions like LISA, Cassini, Deep Impact, Mars Science Laboratory, etc etc. The only people on earth that are doing things like that are other governmental space agencies. Much like NSF, NASA serves a vital function of providing funding for projects that are infeasible for universities and unprofitable for private industry, with basic research that advances the state of knowledge and technology for the future.

The problem with NASA, the thing that makes it a political football, is the huge in-house rocket projects. The shuttle (and now derivatives) represent $billions/year all going to a single project and a small number of contractors. A giant target like that is tempting to get rid of, and nearly impossible for those profiting from it to let go of. Thus the political stalemate.

Yet all the interesting projects I mentioned, and all the technology programs that Obama wanted to have happen and which I pray to God won't be crippled by this compromise, are individually much cheaper. No single constituency has such a stake in them that they will fight tooth and nail to keep them, nor are they such tempting targets for cuts. They're more flexible, and also more broadly addressing the needs of future space exploration.

The shuttle-derived HLV, that does nothing but keep a contractor in business and let NASA have a rocket with its logo on the side, is the problem. Other than that, NASA is fine and does great work and saying it should be killed is the worst idea ever.

Re:Wrong Direction

[Grishnakh]

A bill that kills NASA entirely would be a better direction for space research and the United States.

That's great. Instead of what we have now, which is some very successful robotic missions (to Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, space telescopes, the Sun, etc.), and a space station that's somewhat useful for microgravity research and research on the effects of weightlessness on humans over long periods, we get nothing, and rely on ESA and JAXA to do all our space science for us. Space research isn't going to happen in the USA without NASA. Private companies certainly aren't going to do it, because there's no profit to be made gathering data about the moons of Saturn.

Until we can structure a space organization that won't be a political football - and that's going to take a really radical change

I don't see why it would be that hard. All we have to do is pass a law giving NASA far more autonomy in its operations, provide guaranteed funding that can't change without 5 years' notice, and merely give it specific goals to accomplish, any way it wants to. The problem is that Congress is too intimately involved in the details of NASA's operations, which is why there's NASA operations in so many states (because it's a political favor to the Congresscritters from those states), and this is also why NASA's mission keeps changing before it has time to even finish them, unless they're small missions (like robotic probes) that it can do in 2 years, before a new crop of Congresscritters takes office.

Re:Wrong Direction

[blueg3]

Don't you understand? The moment you kill NASA, private industry will rise to the space research and exploration challenge and do a better job for less money!

Re:Wrong Direction

[Grishnakh]

Yes, because there's so much profit to be made in sending probes to Saturnian moons...

Re:Wrong Direction

[Bruce Perens]

Uh-huh. I had a nice grant from ARPA at Pixar to work on movie-making software. Why, because they wanted to make 3D technology in the states economically viable. That way, they'd have it if they needed it for war. Unfortunately, not even I could keep SGI afloat with my one little grant.

So, that was my military mission. I don't really mind more like that happening.

Re:Wrong Direction

[Bruce Perens]

Caltech does just fine building MSL, without all that much help from NASA other than signing checks. You don't need NASA to give Caltech a grant.

Re:Wrong Direction

[Bruce Perens]

Well, today NASA to a great extent relies on Caltech to do the pure science programs for them. Mars Science Lab, etc. Why not cut out the middleman?

Re:Wrong Direction

[Grishnakh]

Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't NASA design and build all the equipment necessary? Yes, I realize a lot of University professors analyze the data brought back by NASA, but getting that data requires physical probes, which must be designed and constructed by engineers and technicians.

Even if NASA outsourced a lot of its work (which it always has--the Apollo rocket engines were built by Rocketdyne, not by NASA, for instance), there still has to be a government agency in place there to coordinate projects and handle funding and dealing with suppliers and putting it all together. Simply sending checks from the Treasury Department directly to some private companies under orders from Congress isn't going to accomplish much.

Re:Wrong Direction

[FleaPlus]

Well, today NASA to a great extent relies on Caltech to do the pure science programs for them. Mars Science Lab, etc. Why not cut out the middleman?

JPL is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) operated by Caltech, the only one NASA has. Other government agencies use the FFRDC approach to a greater extent, e.g. the DOE's national labs, and they tend to operate much more efficiently than government-operated centers. One of the really great recommendations of the 2004 Aldridge Commission was to evolve the existing NASA Centers into the FFRDCs, although Congress put this idea in the grave pretty quickly as it tends to make pork much more difficult.

Re:Wrong Direction

[Bruce Perens]

Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't NASA design and build all the equipment necessary?

No. They subcontract that.

Re:Wrong Direction

[trout007]

I'm not sure you understand how many NASA employees there are. It's less than 20,000 about 1/5 of the IRS or USDA. The purpose of NASA is to be the National Aeronautic and Space ADMINISTRATION. That means NASA is supposed to take the tax dollars from Congress and figure out how to use that to further the goals stated in the NASA Act. NASA doesn't have enough employees to build anything. They are there to figure out the projects needed, how much to fund them, and make sure the contractors are doing what they are supposed to do. So you are right that Caltech does fine on their own. NASA is really just there to write the specs and the checks. They do keep some technical employees at NASA just because you don't MBA's writing the technical specs and determining if the contractor met them. They are also there to keep some institutional knowledge to help younger companies out.

Re:Wrong Direction

[Bruce Perens]

They do keep some technical employees at NASA just because you don't MBA's writing the technical specs and determining if the contractor met them.

Yes, but all the reports I hear are that MBAs running the show is indeed happening. And folks with less qualification than MBAs in congress.

It needs to be run by scientists, and with independence.

Re:Wrong Direction

[DerekLyons]

Caltech does just fine building MSL, without all that much help from NASA other than signing checks.

Signing the checks, providing mission direction, providing design support and reviews, keeping the budget in check, keeping the plans from growing too grandiose, providing contract support, coordinating launch and DSN services, etc... etc...
 
Caltech/JPL builds some damn fine hardware and runs some damn fine missions - but you're a fool if you believe that all NASA does is 'sign the checks'.

Re:Wrong Direction

[TexVex]

It needs to be run by scientists, and with independence.

What, scientists don't have politics and all the bullshit that comes with it? How would scientists decide what projects to fund, towards what ends? You think just because someone is a professional in sciences that he or she is automatically altruistic? Good lord, some of these science peeps are the most condescending, lost-in-their-own-world, self-centered bastards imaginable!

Yeah, professional politicians suck. But I say, better the devil you know.

Re:Wrong Direction

[MidnightBrewer]

Our entire government needs to cut the pork out. Picking on only NASA isn't exactly fair, and they're hardly the worst offenders. Maintaining a space program is important for our political image on the international stage if nothing else; would you prefer that we going begging hat-in-hand to China for our next rockets? What are you going to do when one of our benevolent allies simply tells us no?

Space exploration is a noble goal, of course, and one that I fully support. Someday it will even be considered a necessity by more than a small minority, especially once we figure out how to monetize such things as asteroid mining. In the short term, we should be a lot more worried in the weaponization of space that's going to take off in the next few years. Not having a space program would be about as smart as scrapping the military.

Re:Wrong Direction

[sznupi]

Though "dickish words / actions" political image on the international stage means there's not that many of really benevolent allies left. And doesn't phallic imagery of rocket fits nicely into such trend? ;p

(BTW, the main showstopper for asteroid mining is that we don't have the technology & energy sources to make it viable; now, here's the best part: if you do have them, you don't really need to mine asteroids anyway, you have everything on Earth...only easier. And weaponization boils down to having a rocket capable of launching millions of ball bearings into orbit and triggering Kessler Syndrome...)

Re:Wrong Direction

[jgtg32a]

I think its a great idea and it's replacement needs to be a GSE just like Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac, basically the government gives them money and they do whatever.

Re:Wrong Direction

[jgtg32a]

Guarantee some sort of exclusive rights to whatever and they will.

Re:Wrong Direction

[atamido]

BTW, the main showstopper for asteroid mining is that we don't have the technology & energy sources to make it viable; now, here's the best part: if you do have them, you don't really need to mine asteroids anyway, you have everything on Earth...only easier.

I think you're lacking in some vision. There are a lot of useful things you can do in space, the problem is that unless someone actually figures out how to make a space elevator, getting materials into space will always be ridiculously expensive. Asteroids, on the other hand, are already in space.

Mining asteroids depends on two major tech developments:
1. Figuring out how to process raw asteroids into anything useful in space.
2. Fully automating said processes, as well as repair and maintenance processes.

At that point you're not worried about "energy sources" because you can just process asteroids into either nuclear power plants or solar panels. This brings me to my other point, things to make in space.

Once you have a self-sustaining facility processing asteroids into solar panels, you get all of the free energy you need. It becomes trivial to move the solar panels towards Earth to create an ever growing spaced based solar power station to provide power to Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

Of course, it all depends on overcoming those two technological hurdles.

Re:Wrong Direction

[sznupi]

I think you were carried away by works of fiction...because you omit completelly why all those useful things would be done on asteroids instead of simply...on Earth. Where, given the same (obviously) level of technology, they will be much easier, much cheaper, much more efficient.
That was the point above. "Free" energy from solar or nuclear won't mean much, BTW, if it has to be used mostly to sustain activities there; plus it's mostly about energy density. And how is this robot revolution in everyday life, envisioned half a century ago, going?

Look at this XX centuryf house envisioned 130 years ago. Or fish-like aircraft "leaving the opera in the year 2000"

Now, we have sources of energy / energy densities people from XIX century haven't even dreamed of - but we don't exactly do with them all those "glorious" things they envisioned. Hell, we mostly still get our energy from burning plants and animals, simply because that's cheaper.

Look in what disgrace the Shuttle has ended - a spacecraft probably very much influenced by depictions of spaceplanes in the science fiction of '30s, '40s or '50s (that's when Shuttle designers were kids) - which were in turn no doubt fueled by tremendous progress in aircraft back then...but turned out to have not much in common with space. We also don't live in Jetson-like housing with chimneys and submarine-like aircraft (even though we can build them). And my computer isn't very chatty.

Now, sure, times when we will become, in notable part, space-faring will come; but I would be surprised if it will have much to do per se with asteroid mining.

Re:Wrong Direction

[atamido]

Spaced based power is already possible, it simply isn't economical due to the previously mentioned difficulties of getting materials out of the gravity well into geostationary orbit. But that's not really the point. There are a number of things done better in space than on Earth. There are a number of minerals that are much more plentiful in space. And there is far less concern about dangerous byproducts in space. And on larger scales, getting enough mass up into space is simply impossible.

The funny thing is that energy production hasn't gotten much bigger in the past 40 years since nuclear power plants first started being used. We're basically building more of the same old technology to supply our power needs. The only thing on the horizon that offers an improvement is fusion, and that would probably require setting up mining on the moon to get enough He-3 (if it ever works).

I'm not sure where you're going with all of the "science fiction said we should have flying cars by now" talk. Are you trying to say that much greater robotic automation is not possible?

I never said we need to mine asteroid now, or even in a decade. I said there's a good reason to do it, but there are some big hurdles in the way first. I also think that these hurdles will be overcome at some point (many decades from now) and mining will happen.

If any serious space-faring is going to happen, we're going to mine asteroids first. There simply isn't another way to get enough material up there. (Excluding possible inventions such as space elevators.)

Re:Wrong Direction

[Grishnakh]

No, they won't. No one is going to put up billions of investment dollars with no hope of a return on that investment for several decades. Private industry only works for short-term profits. If there's no profit to be made within 5 years, it's not going to happen (and even that period is generous). Coupled with the fact that we don't even know yet if there's any valuable minerals or other resources there, guarantees that no private firm would bother.

Congress

[Machupo]

They should just mandate that NASA builds a space elevator by 2020 and be done with it...

Re:Congress

[the gnat]

They should just mandate that NASA builds a space elevator by 2020 and be done with it...

Are you being sarcastic, or just delusional?

Re:Congress

[0123456]

Are you being sarcastic, or just delusional?

It's about as likely to happen as NASA getting a new heavy lifter off the ground by 2015; not that it matters since they have no use for it.

Re:Congress

[RandomAdam]

Got to be sarcasm, there is no way we have the tech to build the fibre yet.....let alone get it into space in a controlled way.

Re:Congress

[Bruce Perens]

Heavy lifters might be safer for people on the ground than space elevators. Think about what happens if the belt breaks.

Re:Congress

[TheEyes]

Especially since the technology to actually build one doesn't exist yet, and won't for decades. Even the strongest carbon nanotubes that we can theoretically construct in laboratories today don't have the strength to keep a space elevator tethered to the Earth.

A launch loop, on the other hand, can be constructed with building materials available today; we just haven't done the necessary research to ensure the physics of a giant spinning chain are stable enough to work at that scale.

Bad, bad mistake.

[jd]

What we've got here is the worst of both worlds, reducing the effectiveness of both robotic and manned spaceflight, with no meaningful budget to pay for either. Adding one more Shuttle flight won't bridge any gap whatsoever, but to get an alternative launch vehicle any time soon is going to require ploughing in ten times the resources that had been allocated to the task. The new capsule plus the extra shuttle launch will, however, bleed cash away from other projects, making them far less likely to yield useful results. Thus, what you get is a lot of money wasted with no possibility of return, all for the sake of helping out some poor rocket provider who is running out of death merchants to sell to.

This is worse than bailing out the banks. At least the government was honest enough to say that it was the banks they were giving the money to. It was dishonest about everything else, sure, but at least there was at least one bullet point you could claim was sincere. In this case, there is a clearly defined effort to obscure who is getting the money and why. Perhaps because nobody is going to believe that this rocket vendor is too big to fail.

NASA gets nothing from this compromise. Let us understand that right from the start. NASA will lose. The only way NASA can win is if they get sane objectives AND the backing to make those objectives possible. Almost anything could be made "sane", if it were clearly stated and adequately funded and was likely to remain adequately funded from start to finish and was not going to be tortured into oblivion for political reasons. (The Space Shuttle should have been twice as good as it was, and even the Russians had a better space shuttle, but it was crippled in order to serve the selfish desires of politicians who put their popularity over not only the space program itself but also over the lives of those who would put that program into action.)

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[BearRanger]

I agree completely, it's a bad mistake. But you have to learn to think like a Congress-person. The money isn't being wasted. It's buying jobs in your constituency just before an election. The good of the organization or the country be damned. It's all about self preservation-- and by self preservation I mean re-election.

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[steve buttgereit]

Just wait till this same sensible decision making acumen of the political class is more powerfully governing our banking system, our health care system and our energy policy.

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[jd]

But you have to learn to think like a Congress-person

Errr, maybe the word you are looking for is "bribe"?

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[jd]

The DoE has managed the energy policy for decades. Since the Federal Reserve is selected by Congress, they've run the banking system for forever. Since the FDA controls the supply of meds and the CDC controls the demand, they've also had control of the parts of the health care system that really matter.

At the end of the day, though, corrupt politicians can be replaced. Corrupt businessmen cannot. It is not the fault of the system that voters deliberately and knowingly keep picking corrupt politicians to replace other corrupt politicians, that is purely the fault of the electorate. Indeed, even if they are being bribed, it is still their fault. They chose to accept the bribe and they chose to return the favour. The electorate needs to accept personal responsibility for the flaws in government because the electorate selected it.

(I would be greatly in favour of a change in the rules which allowed class-action lawsuits against voting districts that vote to re-elect any politician where that politician is later convicted of a serious crime and where it can be proven in court beyond reasonable doubt that the majority of people in that voting district re-elected that politician with the intent that said crime take place. The restrictions I'm suggesting are such that you'd almost never get such a case, but if there's no other way of getting voters to accept responsibility for where they cast their vote, anything that discourages abuse of the ballot box for personal gain has to be a good thing.)

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[Third Position]

Well, that's the intrinsic downside of democracy. Your political leaders have an incentive to whore for votes in the next election, and virtually no incentive to do what's best for the country in the long term.

I suppose there's an argument in there for monarchy - a king isn't subject to the fickle whims of the electorate, and since his offspring are going to inherit his throne, he has some incentive to leave them a country that's in fairly decent order.

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[steve buttgereit]

Lets see...

DoE: You're right and they have managed it for decades... and what was their mission? Oh yeah.. oversee the end of U.S. dependence on foreign oil in the wake of OPEC embargo of the 70's. They've done a stunning job, so now we want to given them greater influence in energy policy and to do it with greater power and money than before. I'm only sure you want them to be as successful in their future as they have been in their past.

The Fed: Yes, to a large degree you're right there, too. They have been managing the banking system for decades. And over the years they have been incredibly destructive. The Fed's cheap money monetary policy of the 90's helped inflate the .com asset bubble... which popped as soon as the Fed began tightening. They brought the rates back down, of course, and in conjunction with stimulus (in the form of the Bush tax breaks, without spending cuts) they helped to change the risk picture of real estate investing. Indeed, I'll have to dig up the quote, but Greenspan himself was urging the use of ARMs to finance housing... never mind the other financial regulatory policies from other areas of the Government (my favorite was Barney Frank's desire to "roll the dice" with looser Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae standards... I guess he crapped out). Boy that worked out real good. And Bernanke can't figure out why Gold is up? HA! But we're content to give more over to the Fed. I'm sure you want them to keep up their stellar track record worked out so well for us up to now.

See, I'd take 1000 corrupt businessmen over a corrupt politician any day of the week. There is nothing a corrupt businessman, by himself, can do to force me to do business with him. But a corrupt politician... he can force me to under threat of force, to do his will.

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[jd]

There's nothing a corrupt businessman can do? Oh, so you get to pick which power stations power the grid in your area? Thought not. You get to pick which PBX exchange your phone line connects to? (There aren't nearly as many as there are phone companies.) You get to pick which reservoir the water in your tap comes from? You get to pick which manufacturer develops the components in your car? (The car manufacturer probably didn't.) Do you choose the Operating System your bank uses? (Indirect business that involves your money is still business that involves your money.) In fact, what was the last thing you had genuine free choice (not forced in any way, shape or form) both directly and at the first level of indirection?

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[steve buttgereit]

...Further, the "free market" actually rewards corrupt businessmen, as does a system that allows non-person entities like corporations to spend unlimited funds on elections.

Oh.. you mean like Unions?

How much do you really think corporations or unions would want spend in campaigns if it weren't for the fact that politicians have power to subvert the free market through law, regulation and ultimately force? I bet not much.

In truth a free market only rewards those businessmen that provide something that someone else is willing to purchase. Politicians reward corrupt businessmen by ensuring that upstarts and competitors don't win on their merits in the marketplace.

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[steve buttgereit]

First your premise is flawed. Free choice does not mean absolute choice or that every set of choices includes rainbows and unicorns. Free market choice does boil down, ultimately, to one single decision: is the product or service that I desire worth more than that which I would have to give up to obtain it? If the answer is 'yes' then I proceed and make the buy, if 'no' then I don't. That is the only choice a truly free market offers you and you must use your own mind and morals to determine the answer.

That is the one choice a government bureaucrat does not offer you. They can subvert that choice through what are ultimately immoral and coercive means. So it's not bad enough that they are inept or 'corrupt' in ways such as the NASA handouts... but their very premise allows them to deny you the ability to apply your mind in how best to allocate the products of your labors for your own best interest.

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[sznupi]

Not intristic; if voters actually care what happens to the country in the long term, then "whoring" for that will also happen.

It's all a refelction of the society.

King, btw, only has an incentive to keep his dynasty from being overturned; that doesn't directly go towards "in fairly decent order."

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[Hemogoblin]

All politicians know the right thing to do, but they don't know how to get re-elected once they've done it.

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[jd]

Unions are first recorded in history around 300BC, became institutions around 1100 AD and were exercising collective bargaining and other union activities before 1349. (In contrast, laissez-faire does not get any use in economics outside of France until 1774.)

I'm just...curious as to what you imagine unions as doing for those 2074 years. Clearly it wasn't spending money on campaigns (a rather crass American invention that didn't spring up until much later). Nor was it much to do with the subversion of the free market or, indeed, force.

(In other words, don't blame Unionism if American unions happen to be corrupt - assuming they even are. If American unions are indeed corrupt, you still have to go back to the people who compose them, and that means people like you. You don't just get the system you deserve, you create it with your own hands in full knowledge of what you are doing. Don't blame the end result for not being what you'd like, it was you who made it that way.)

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[Shotgun]

The DoE has managed the energy policy for decades.

I seem to remember something about the electric power going out in the entire north east section of the United States. Glad that DoE is on the job. BTW, how are we doing with reducing our dependence on foreign oil?

Since the Federal Reserve is selected by Congress, they've run the banking system for forever.

And the fundamentals of our economy are strong. Thank you Federal Reserve!!

Since the FDA controls the supply of meds and the CDC controls the demand, they've also had control of the parts of the health care system that really matter.

You mean the health care system that is constantly denigrated as being the most expensive in the world. I bow to the preeminent intelligence of such great bureaucracy.

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[jd]

I would agree with you on that. No point burning money on Orion at this point. Actually, since the Russian Shuttle seems to be a superior design to the American one, it might not be such a bad idea if the US and Russia got together to do an analysis on whether it would be viable to reuse concepts from it or use it as a starting point in a manned space program.

For commercial space flight, I'd suggest an overhaul of regulations and a sensible international body to monitor it. Mis-communication nearly caused Russia to respond to a civilian rocket launch of, IIRC, a weather satellite with a full salvo of ICBMs after mistaking it for an attack. The last thing we need is for (very normal) corporate mishaps to trigger World War 3. Corporations haven't, as a rule, ever been in a position where that could easily be the outcome of office politics and have no mechanisms in place for dealing with such emergencies. As incompetent as governments are in emergencies at anything practical, they are extremely good at defusing tensions when necessary.

However, I don't think it should stop there. Almost no industry in history has ever successfully gone from being essentially a research program to being a major commercial program without going through a phase at some point where garage developers were able to contribute meaningfully. There are some that have (homebrew has done little for medical electronics or medical equipment in general), but they are exceptions and not the rule. The modern car is largely a product of early automobile engineers experimenting and then racing the results. The modern computer owes more to the surge in inventors playing with the microprocessor in the 70s and then trying to clone the IBM PC in the 1980s than it owes to the Honeywells or DECs of the previous era. (Yes, Ferranti, Honeywell, DEC and IBM were commercial, but they were largely selling to governments. What's more, when they did sell to business it was in a very limited role. The market didn't explode until after the garage era.)

But how is that going to happen? Amateur rockets, even the serious ones, are nothing compared to the engines you need to lift anything significant. This isn't just a matter of scale. Well, in a way it is. There are huge problems to overcome as the nozzle increases in size - one reason the Russians always opted for clusters of smaller rockets. It's technically easier, even though there's efficiency penalties to pay for that.

There are, however, problems that really could use a solution where amateur rocket enthusiasts could probably come up with valuable ideas and innovative solutions in a way neither government nor commerce ever could.

1) Rockets have very low efficiency in a thick atmosphere - one reason NASA has examined everything from turbine-assisted ramjets to ski-jumps as a way to eliminate the initial stage as a rocket. NASA simply hasn't been able to solve that problem, but it is plausible to say that this is because they've had their attention on too many targets and haven't had the resources to solve everything. No existing vehicle could use assisted launches, so it's a solution they could not have used any time soon even if they'd found one.

2) For much the same reason, NASA abandoned in around 1999-2000 its new blended-wing space-plane which would have had the performance of Concorde, twice the capacity of the Airbus 400 and the ability to reach true Low Earth Orbit. (It would have made White Knight look like a wet sardine.) Even if not used for civilian flights it would have been at worst an amazing launch vehicle in the same way White Knight is. A little more oomph and you'd have had a horizontal take-off and landing replacement for the Shuttle. (A modernized HOTOL, basically - a project not only abandoned in the Thatcher era but classified as well.) In consequence of all this abandonment and classification, the sum total of available knowledge in the civilian world is not very much. Although I doubt any private group could hope to build a true space plane, it does mean private groups can obtain knowledge and information about how blended-wing bodies and waveriders work in practice that is not readily available and would be considered far too blue-sky for commerce to go near.

Re:Bad, bad mistake.

[jd]

is the product or service that I desire worth more than that which I would have to give up to obtain it

That is not a useful - or even usable - method of understanding choice because it gives a false choice equal weight to any true choice. It also assumes that A and B are never synonymous. If I give you an apple and you give me back an identical apple (or even the same one), then I have not made any choice that was different from never having given the apple at all. In such a case, I have not chosen to "obtain" the apple over and above "keeping" it because the two are functionally identical. They were the same choice.

(Likewise, if I take an electron off an atom and replace it with another electron, the system will be in an identical state to how it started. It isn't merely similar, it is absolutely the same and no test could ever show that anything had ever happened. It would make absolutely no bloody sense to a physicist if you were to tell them that you chose which electrons were present. The statement has no meaning. It may not be "common sense", but virtually anything in life that is "common sense" is probably wrong.)

Re:Proven delivery system

[ColdWetDog]

Why spend billions debugging new stuff?

Because the 'old stuff' is very expensive to maintain, is inherently dangerous and the only thing it's good for is barking around in LEO.

If you want NASA to push out of LEO, you need some better systems. If you had enough money, then sure, you could keep the Shuttle and start on the Shiny New Thing but we don't have enough money, so it was felt that it is better to cut your losses and start over. Keeping the Shuttle pieces parts going is mostly a make work project for a couple of Senators and their constituents. It has no scientific or engineering value.

Name for the new 75mT launcher

[peacefinder]

The Porklauncher.

Re:Proven delivery system

[bigtrike]

Which delivery system is proven? The space shuttle is expensive, slow, and unsafe. Solid rockets are good for cargo, but not for people. Can't we just buy rockets from the russians to launch our people up and use older technology for cargo?

Re:Proven delivery system

[peacefinder]

Plus, as has been discussed somewhere the Senators evidently were not around to hear, the Shuttle program is dead. It's been dead as a program for about five years. Production lines are closed, staff fired, supplier contracts ended. Anything beyond the one additional mission that parts exist for would be hugely expensive, as the production would need to be started up again from scratch. (Consequently, that last one won't have any rescue shuttle on standby.)

Re:Proven delivery system

[nlinecomputers]

Right keep the system that cost us 14 lives and two expensive launch vehicles. Keep the system that never could do what is was originally advertised to do. It was a waste of money and resources that could have been better used for unmanned missions or even maned ones with better equipment and real goals.

Re:Proven delivery system

[DigiShaman]

Well, if there's a time gap between when the shuttle retires and when its replacement arrives, you will want to keep some spare parts laying around. What if someone spots an big-ass asteroid hurtling our way? We will need something that can fly Bruce Willis up there and save the day.

j/k

Help me with the timeline

[Cyclloid]

???: Ares; Constellation; Phase out shuttle

Obama: Privatize LEO; No moon; Heavy lift rocket for Mars & asteroids

Armstrong: Denounces Obama's space plans

NASA: Scales back Constellation program (against a congressional ban)

Senate: Heavy Lifter using old tech(Atlas)

NASA: 5 Million for robot prizes

Senate: Add 1+ shuttle flight(s?); Ares rocket replaced by shuttle rocket + Orion capsule

Accurate?

Re:Help me with the timeline

[Normal Dan]

I have no idea. I've been wondering this myself.

It seems as though our politicians keep changing things. I'm not really sure how I would feel as a NASA employee, or what to work on. Obama says, "Screw the moon, I'm setting up a 20 year project to go to Mars." A few years down the line the next president will say, "Screw Mars, I'm setting up a 20 year project to go to the moon." Meanwhile congress flip flops back and forth on all kinds of things.

We ought to just pick a few projects and STICK TO THEM!

Re:Help me with the timeline

[Man On Pink Corner]

Exactly. NASA is the Microsoft of government agencies. The engineers are capable of building great things, but any project worth doing is worth doing right, and any project worth doing right will probably take longer than the tenure of whatever politician or administrator sponsored it. When the new head honcho comes in, or the next election is held, the old administration's pet projects are put in a box and gassed.

Re:Help me with the timeline

[mbone]

You missed :

Aldrin : Strongly supports Obama's space plans.

Re:Help me with the timeline

[Cyclloid]

I agree to the "STICK TO THEM" policy in most cases(there are times when project sap vast amounts of money and still make little to no progress).

However, that being said what I would like to see is a set of 5-10 well outline projects with goals and have the people vote on the projects. No need for the easily influenced politicians to be involved when technology allows you to go directly to the people.

Also these projects could have a built in rule/law that the project could not be canceled until X number of years after started and only if it had missed 50% or more of its deadlines/milestones/goals during that time(allows cancellation for those money sapping unfeasible projects, but protects projects making progress).

Yes we don't want to have the people voting on every little project, but they could easily vote on the "lofty goal" of NASA every 8-10 years.

Re:Help me with the timeline

[Normal Dan]

I have mixed feeling about letting people vote on individual projects, people don't always vote for what's best. Voting on the "lofty goal" however might be an idea.

This however:

Also these projects could have a built in rule/law that the project could not be canceled until X number of years after started and only if it had missed 50% or more of its deadlines/milestones/goals during that time(allows cancellation for those money sapping unfeasible projects, but protects projects making progress).

I would support 100%. Other than hashing out the details I can't really think of anything to say to this except "I agree".

Re:Help me with the timeline

[Chris Burke]

Obama says, "Screw the moon, I'm setting up a 20 year project to go to Mars."

But that's not what he said. He said "I'm creating projects to develop technology that could enable a mission to Mars in 20 years", and that's a huge difference. He's talking about developing general technologies and capabilities that would be useful for a wide variety of missions outside of Mars, and if nobody wants to pull the trigger on the Mars mission in 20 years, we still have all the technology and capabilities. Mars was only mentioned to make the people who think we must have a specific mission happy (and it's not a bad policy to at least have a practical application in mind).

Whereas a definite "Mars in 20 years" would mean lots of development of tech designed for that mission and only that mission. 20 years to have enough technology in place that a Mars mission doesn't require that much specific development is a much more sensible, useful, and future-proof plan.

But hey, I guess having a giant expensive rocket that can't do anything rockets of 30 years ago couldn't do is nice too. :/

Re:Help me with the timeline

[FleaPlus]

Let me try, using your timeline as a base (feel free to modify/copy/reuse):

2003: Space Shuttle Columbia accident

2004: Bush announces Vision for Space Exploration for sustainable human presence on the Moon starting in 2020 as testbed for Mars exploration and expansion into the solar system, calls for shuttle retirement in 2010 and replacement crew capability in operation by 2014, calls for commercial cargo/crew to ISS and no new launch vehicles developed unless absolutely necessary, NASA solicits plans from industry for best ways to achieve these goals

2005: Sean O'Keefe resigns as NASA administrator, Bush appoints Michael Griffin and gives him free reign with NASA, Michael Griffin throws out industry studies and NASA releases ESAS study which has NASA design two rockets in-house instead of utilizing commercial rockets (The Ares I and V, coincidentally based on old designs Michael Griffin came up with), ostensibly because they're "safe, simple, and soon" compared to alternatives

2005-present: Ares I development slips in schedule a year for every year that it exists, costs balloon from a few billion dollars to tens of billions of dollars, 2020 lunar date becomes increasingly unachievable

2009: NASA and White House appoint Augustine Committee, consisting of best and brightest from aerospace and astronaut community, to evaluate Constellation's progress and come up with options for future of
human spaceflight at NASA; they release a report presenting a number of viable options for NASA's beyond-Earth exploration plans

February 2010: White House calls for boost to NASA's budget (but not as large as Augustine Committee presented) releases plan similar to Augustine Report's option 5B, calling for investments in commercial crew and long-neglected space technology and cancellation of Ares I, delays building of heavy-lift launcher until 2015 since it won't be needed until then; a lot of congressmen in space states freak out

March-July 2010: lots of back and forth discussion and congressional hearings, Armstrong and Cernan come out against White House Plans, Buzz Aldrin comes out in favor; NASA scales back Ares/Constellation program without congressional approval, ostensibly to comply with termination liability laws

June-July 2010: NASA announces a bunch of new space technology initiatives (contingent on White House funding plans coming through), including new Centennial Challenge prize competitions (Nanosatellite launch, night rover, and sample return robot challenge) , revived NIAC to research experimental concepts, in-space technology demonstrations/missions utilizing in-space refueling, inflatable modules, electric propulsion, and inflatable reentry shields, all launched on existing commercial rockets

Today (July 15): Senate comes out with compromise bill, adding 1+ shuttle flight using existing equipment (no backup rescue shuttle if there's a problem, though); immediate development of 75mt shuttle-derived rocket quite similar to the one proposed by the DIRECT project, more commercial crew, robotic precursor mission, and space technology funding than 2010 but much less than Obama requested (over three years $1.6B vs. $3.3B for commercial crew, $244M vs. $1.33B exploration robotic precursor missions, $2.1B vs. $8B space technology development/missions); White House and Congress potentially both support the compromise, though

Re:Help me with the timeline

[Third Position]

I'm not really sure how I would feel as a NASA employee, or what to work on.

The same way you feel when you're the employee of a large company that keeps initiating and canceling projects and can't seem to figure out what direction it's headed in. You find a way to look busy, and continue to collect your check without working too hard, since you know anything you put any effort into will never see the light of day, anyway. Guess what NASA's employees are probably doing?

We ought to just pick a few projects and STICK TO THEM!

Well, you've convinced me - try telling it to the government.

Re:Help me with the timeline

[lennier]

He's talking about developing general technologies and capabilities that would be useful for a wide variety of missions outside of Mars, and if nobody wants to pull the trigger on the Mars mission in 20 years, we still have all the technology and capabilities.

I'd be happy just with 1985's Orbital Transfer Vehicle.

Think you guys will have one of those built by 2030?

Re:Help me with the timeline

[Nyeerrmm]

Scaling back Constellation was not against congressional ban. What happened was that Bolden demanded that they take into account an accounting law that people had been ignoring, one that requires them to keep some cash on hand to help handle potential shutdowns.

This action was not against the law, but was in fact enforcing the law.

And how do the centennial challenges fit into this? $5 Million is pretty small compared to the questions around shuttle/Ares/CCDev.

Re:Help me with the timeline

[sznupi]

Does Transport Cargo Space System sound acceptable? Maybe even in this decade... (maybe - they are always notoriously underfunded; but Mir 3, probably in '20s, and supposedly with its main role of a "space drydock", should find such tug useful)

Re:Help me with the timeline

[jgtg32a]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcWweblGjnU

Re:Help me with the timeline

[Shotgun]

Yeah, but if the head guys adopted this way of thinking, they would have to come in and support the direction the last guy was heading. When it is all said and done, the first guy will get all the credit, 'cause it was "his" program (even though "she" was the one that did all the work).

Can't have that, now can we?

Insurance:

[Hartree]

The phrase "baby with the bathwater" comes to mind here. NASA does some things that no other US entity currently does.

We're about to rely on a foreign country as our sole source supplier for manned access to the ISS for at least several years. We don't have a backup. Just as you say NASA is a political football, international relations can be just as unpredictable. Right now we have a shortage of Pu-238 for RTGs in part because we felt we could buy what we needed from the Russians. That's fine. It's a good source for it. But, we didn't move ahead with funding for getting DOE ready to produce more. There's a contract dispute with the Russians that no one anticipated, and that's left us looking for other alternatives.

I prefer to keep a couple of shuttles around and launching at a low rate rather than just relying on Soyuz. Expensive, and hopefully unneeded, but most insurance is like that.

It gives us a backup that won't take years to be ready. Ultimately, a man rated Falcon 9 or some other private launcher would be a good solution. But, we don't have it yet.

Re:Insurance:

[couchslug]

We have no need to put humans in space urgently, nor a need to use the ISS. Those are dispensable projects.

Hand off the space program to the military, and stick to remote-manned missions. There is plenty of time to send tourists in the future.

Re:Insurance:

[Chris Burke]

The phrase "baby with the bathwater" comes to mind here. NASA does some things that no other US entity currently does.

Completely agreed but none of the things I care about are tied to the shuttle or derived vehicles.

We're about to rely on a foreign country as our sole source supplier for manned access to the ISS for at least several years.

It gives us a backup that won't take years to be ready. Ultimately, a man rated Falcon 9 or some other private launcher would be a good solution. But, we don't have it yet.

Except it will take years to be ready. The new schedule has the new HLV's first launch in 2015. SpaceX has claimed they could have their first manned launch in 2013.

Frankly I don't expect either schedule to hold, but I still think it's likely that SpaceX will be delivering crew to the ISS before the shuttle-derived launcher can, and at a greatly reduced cost too.

There is no circumstance under which we aren't dependent on the Russians for some period of time, so what is this plan getting us exactly?

Re:Insurance:

[mbone]

We're about to rely on a foreign country as our sole source supplier for manned access to the ISS for at least several years

No, we are about to rely on a private company, Space X, to ferry astronauts to the ISS. That seems reasonable to me, with the Russians as a backup / lifeboat.

Re:Insurance:

[Hartree]

I wasn't particularly arguing in favor of the congressional plan as far as the shuttle derived vehicle. I'm largely agnostic as to what sort of manned access we end up with. I just want to continue to have it. Private launchers would be great. They aren't ready yet. Neither is this proposed HLV based on shuttle tech.

What I was arguing for was a reduced shuttle program as a backup regardless of what we end up deciding to develop for the next launcher. The shuttles are aging, but they currently work. Use Soyuz as a bridge for access to the ISS, but don't rely on it as a sole source. Fly an occasional shuttle flight to keep the team practiced and the facilities checked out. Fully retire the shuttles when you actually have the next launch system ready.

If you don't have the money to develop the next launcher without completely shutting down the existing program, that indicates to me you probably just don't have the money, period. And that requires different aproaches, and gets us into the polical football arena that Perens mentioned.

Re:Insurance:

[Bruce Perens]

Well, ISS is more part of the problem than it is a program we need to support until some future date. What's it for? Not research, that is done better by other programs. It and the shuttle seem to have been designed to justify each other. And unlike interplanetary research, we actually do have free enterprise building near-earth capability.

Re:Insurance:

[Hartree]

Well, I'm sure that Elon Musk et al would like to present that as a done deal. But, they don't have a man rated rocket fully operational yet. I do think that ultimately it's a good solution.

Their latest test was very impressive. But, it's just one step on a several year track to being able to provide manned access to the ISS.

Both Soyuz and the shuttle are fully operational now. Not just likely to be in the future. I've watched a lot of projects that looked good not work out for whatever reason. And it's usually not purely technical. (American Rocket, anyone? It can be argued that mostly failed due to an automobile accident.)

Re:Insurance:

[FleaPlus]

No, we are about to rely on a private company, Space X, to ferry astronauts to the ISS.

Actually, even SpaceX's Elon Musk has stated that SpaceX will probably be a smaller provider, with the United Launch Alliance's Atlas rockets getting more of the commercial crew funding. For those unfamiliar with them, the ULA has had 40 consecutive successful launches in 40 months, often carrying multi-billion dollar DOD payloads critical to national security, so it's pretty indisputable that they have proven rockets. This produces a competitive market in commercial spaceflight, which is of the utmost importance to avoid all the problems inherent with monopolies.

Re:Insurance:

[Hartree]

That's a more general problem than just with the shuttle. What do they plan to fly on their HLV? Read the linked articles in the original post about the HLV study. It's all speculative at the moment, of the form "we could do this, or that". We're not terribly sure just where we're going to go other than maintaining presence at the ISS. I'd like that situation to improve, because a firm (but fairly open ended) goal helps direct a course for research better than just a general research funding intitiative.

My personal preference is still return to the moon to set up a base and learn about running a long duration base close to home rather than way over at Mars. But, I'm not wedded to that. Want an asteroid mission? Fine. Mars direct? Not my first choice, but I could easily be persuaded. I just want to keep pushing outward. LEO if that's all we can get. Out farther into the Solar system if we can get that.

As to the shuttle, it depends on how long you delay the first of the extra flights. It might end up being a cargo and crew flight just because we haven't planned anything, and it would take more time to get something more useful planned and built. When I say a low rate of launches, it could be every 2-3 years and still keep the capability around. Remember, this is mostly insurance. If Soyuz and or the follow on manned launcher doesn't work out, we've still got at least something that can be pretty quickly configured to take on those jobs.

By the time you fly the second one, surely (if not even for the first) something more substantial could be on board. I hate to say "launch it and they will come" but I've yet to see a problem of no proposals once you announce that you've got a flight to LEO leaving in a few years, especially one that can have human intervention with heavy payloads. One wonders what Bigelow Aerospace, for example, could do with a dedicated shuttle flight with a 3 year lead time.

Re:Insurance:

[Shotgun]

We're about to rely on a foreign country as our sole source supplier for manned access to the ISS for at least several years.

Which begs the question, "So?" Really, what is there at the Space Station that is so critical to access? Jelly-fish in space? (Was watching a talk about that experiment on the cable access NASA channel a few nights ago.)

If Russia sent up a capsule and said, "Heh, Americans, this is your last chance for a ride home", and then refused to take any more American up, what exactly would we have lost?

Re:Insurance:

[Chris Burke]

What I was arguing for was a reduced shuttle program as a backup regardless of what we end up deciding to develop for the next launcher. The shuttles are aging, but they currently work. Use Soyuz as a bridge for access to the ISS, but don't rely on it as a sole source.

The shuttle orbiters are aging, and currently on life support, surviving on scavenged working parts from other orbiters. The program has been on life support for years, and is way past due for retirement. Much of the program already has been retired. Consequently, we simply cannot continue the shuttle program until replacements are ready. The plan to add 1-2 more shuttle missions is simply taking advantage of what few spare parts we have left. After that, they will be gone, and the shuttle won't fly no matter who wants it to or how badly.

And so what? What's wrong with relying on Soyuz for a couple years? That program is still active, there are plenty of rockets and capsules, it's ridiculously cheaper to fly than our giant Jack-of-all-trades Flying Space Truck, and has an equivalent performance record with better crew survivability in the event of a disaster as well. It's better in every single way for the purpose of lifting crew or cargo to the ISS.

If you don't have the money to develop the next launcher without completely shutting down the existing program, that indicates to me you probably just don't have the money, period.

Not having the money to both fund the shuttle program indefinitely and build a new HLV does not imply we don't have the money for a new HLV. However, we don't have the money to do the HLV and all the vastly more important and useful stuff too. We need neither the shuttle nor the new HLV, and both should be canceled immediately in favor of actual progress.

Keeping the shuttle alive is the opposite of progress, and if they actually devoted the funds to do it, would succeed where the new HLV has failed to completely kill off all actual progress.

Re:Proven delivery system

[tsotha]

We could if the goal of NASA was to accomplish something. It's not. The goal of NASA is to steer contracts to campaign donors and to create jobs. That's why we're going to get a shuttle-derived program no matter what happens. Most likely it will end up like VentureStar or NASP - lots of money spent with nothing to show for it. But all that money is going somewhere.

Your tax dollars. Providing jobs for senators since 1788.

Re:Proven delivery system

[peragrin]

oddly enough the shuttle has the same safety as soyuz with roughly 2% failure. Of course no one wants to actually say that. We have lost 2 shuttles, but have launched 2.5 times more shuttles/people than russia has 3 man capsules.

No a new smaller reusable capsule for personnel launches, and then a larger heavy lift rocket for equipment combined with a manned space station would be a far better option. Instead of launching the lab up with every launch.

why spend money on this?

[gamecrusader]

time to spend our money on teleportation a much faster way of transfering things and transport any size thing any weight think about how much resources could be saved if we just built the space station on the ground then teleported it to space.
we could travel to the end of the universe in seconds
we wouldn't run out of room on the planet we could just teleport to the moon or mars or anyother part of the universe and live there.

Re:why spend money on this?

[kvezach]

Great idea! Why not spend money on a warp drive while we're at it?

Re:Proven delivery system

[Chris Burke]

If you want NASA to push out of LEO, you need some better systems.

If we want to get out of LEO, then we need to make getting to LEO cheaper and easier, and develop technology that will let us go from there as a separate step. Lifting everything we need for a manned moon or (ha!) Mars mission from the surface of the earth one one giant rocket is foolish and will just mean the mission scope is cut down to the point of, well, pointlessness.

Keeping the Shuttle pieces parts going is mostly a make work project for a couple of Senators and their constituents. It has no scientific or engineering value.

Don't forget it also apparently keeps prices down on ICBM parts, because the DOD is so strapped for cash they need NASA to subsidize their equipment(?!)

Oh well. At least the pointless moon mission is dead. Hopefully this compromise doesn't cripple the actual useful and new projects that will expand our capabilities. And hey, maybe we'll actually find a good use for our HLV to LEO, and not just find arbitrary ways to justify its existence.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Grishnakh]

That's fine and all, but the fact is that the STS systems are already developed and in production. New, better systems are only on the drawing board. It seems obvious that a sensible approach would be to use the existing systems (albeit in a new configuration) during a transition period until you're done designing and testing the new systems, and are able to transition to them.

The current idea, of simply abandoning the old STS systems and not replacing them with anything at all, and not having any capability to put humans into orbit at all (and relying on other countries for this), is absolutely stupid.

Keeping the Shuttle pieces parts going is mostly a make work project for a couple of Senators and their constituents. It has no scientific or engineering value.

How do you propose sending humans into LEO, without Shuttle pieces? Your choices seem to be 1) don't do it, or 2) ask the Russians for help. Stupid.

Re:Proven delivery system

[couchslug]

If we wanted RAPID technology development, we'd skip passengers for a few decades and perfect remote-manned systems first. We would not be trapped by the glacial pace dictated by protecting politically valuable astronauts.

Back in The Day, men and wooden ships were literally expendable. Now, humans are too valued to risk, and robots are required for practical space exploitation in any event. Humans don't "explore" anything, they are along for the ride. We can leave them on Earth and greatly speed development of exploratory machines instead.

Shuttle : No spare parts

[mbone]

I was told by people who work on the Shuttle that a decision to run another shuttle flight should have been made 1-2 years ago, that there are not enough spare parts to do this, and that this is basically throwing good money after bad.

Re:Shuttle : No spare parts

[sznupi]

Oh, they can just recertify the stuff they have for "one more flight" - lots of parts already were... (past scheduled replacement times, but allowed to fly under the condition of "not more than in X missions")

I'm sure it will be all fine.

Re:Shuttle : No spare parts

[mbone]

It's space flight. All will be fine, or people will be dead.

I think that the point is that they shut down the pipeline. There will be things that they need that won't be in the maintenance depot, so they will have to be made special purpose. That can certainly be done, but it will be slow and expensive.

Re:Shuttle : No spare parts

[sznupi]

Well - TBH, they certeinly can do one more flight rather easily. After all, the last (till now) Shuttle flight was supposed to have a "ready for launch" backup. So NASA will just use the readiness of the backup.

Re:Shuttle : No spare parts

[delt0r]

The space shuttle and constellation for that matter has always been good money after bad. Well except for the good part.

Re:Shuttle : No spare parts

[cyberfringe]

Right. The lead time is quite long on some parts. Contracts with suppliers have expired and manufacturing lines shut down. I doubt that another Shuttle flight is actually possible.

Too late

[S-100]

It's too late now to go back to the Shuttle. It should have been retired over a decade ago, and its only utility at this point is as a man-rated LEO transporter and (uneconomic) heavy lift booster The die is cast, so just pay Russia for the manned spaceflight services. It will be much cheaper, and no more dangerous.

But discontinuing Aries/Constellation is a mistake. Any accommodation for a Mars mission for those craft should be dropped as premature and uneconomic. Orion should be limited in scope to earth/moon shuttle visits and no more - and the timeline appropriately accelerated. With just sliderules and pencils we went from Mercury to Apollo in fewer years than the Constellation program has taken to do next to nothing. We're stuck in a cycle of increasing the capabilities of the program in order to make it "sexy", and by the time it's approved it's much more costly to build and will take much longer to develop.

So task Aries/Constellation with a moon mission, and leave LEO to private industry or contracting with the Russians. Instead of spending $2 billion on another shuttle flight, give 10 space start-ups $200 million each, and a free hand - I guarantee that in the end we will have much more to show from it.

Re:Too late

[Bruce Perens]

What is really wild is that this discussion goes on while X-37B is over our heads. Why not declassify it and leave it in the hands of DOD?

Re:Too late

[S-100]

X-37B is too small. We were already working on a bigger manned version: the X-38:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-38

Development was unceremoniously dropped in 2002 due to "budget cuts". All they needed was a shroud and a booster like they now use for the X-37B and there ya go, instant shuttle replacement. As for cargo, there's no reason to send up cargo on a man-rated craft. Need special handling in orbit? You have a crew already just hanging out in the ISS.

Re:Too late

[Bruce Perens]

Well, X-37B and X-38 seem to share a lot other than size, and the program's been in development all of that time.

Re:Too late

[FleaPlus]

Well, X-37B and X-38 seem to share a lot other than size, and the program's been in development all of that time.

SpaceDev's (now Sierra Nevada's) Dream Chaser is an upgraded version of the X-38 and planned to launch on an Atlas V, and is one of the top contenders for commercial access to LEO under the White House's plans for NASA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceDev_Dream_Chaser
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/awst/2010/02/22/AW_02_22_2010_p53-204735.xml&headline=Sierra%20Nevada%20Building%20On%20NASA%20Design

Re:Too late

[dbIII]

With just sliderules and pencils we went from Mercury to Apollo in fewer years than the Constellation program has taken to do next to nothing

Von Braun's body is a moulderin' in the ground and we aint got the moon no more.
Apollo was pretty well the payoff of continuing work from a growing group of experts since about 1940, a different group from those that worked on Mercury and they had the some groundwork for Apollo established before Mercury flew.
Aries/Constellation is surrounded by so much politics that it's hard to burrow down to what is real and if it's about being a pointless pork project. If care isn't taken a project could end up being far worse of a compromise that fails at it's initial objective than the shuttle was, paticularly since funding doesn't appear to be about need or merit - there's little to stop the worst solutions from winning since so little is decided on technical grounds.
Pork politics has killed astronauts and will kill again unless it is removed from the process.

Re:Too late

[Zanthrox]

Yeah -- discontinuing Aries/Constellation does seem an odd decision. Looking at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDwL6eVCQ2c it seems like it Ares was at least well on it's way to being working/viable with a successful prototype launch. I'd wonder how much savings there would be to going back to the drawing board and trying to re-derive something based on shuttle components.

Seems like it'd be helpful to fund some of this stuff differently -- seems having different administrations coming in and re-tasking NASA with new long-term missions-du-jour is just a formula for cancelled projects and waste..If we stuck to A mission (whatever it is) we'd probably be in much better shape..

Re:Too late

[lennier]

Development was unceremoniously dropped in 2002 due to "budget cuts".

Right at the height of post-9/11 paranoia while the military budget was being expanded and the Unitary Executive (tm) gave themselves unprecedented powers? Yeah sure it was "dropped"... dropped right on Mars! Whoosh! With OUR heat-ray!

Ok, I can dream...

Re:Too late

[Bruce Perens]

Yes, but the article you cited says it's now based on the HL-20. So, I would like to know how much of this actually came from either federal program. It sounds like the body shape, and that's it.

Re:Too late

[Nyeerrmm]

Unfortunately that 'prototype' shouldn't be called that. The Ares 1 was designed as a J-2X engine on top of a 5-segment SRB.

The Ares 1-X however was intended solely as a test of the aerodynamics of the launch vehicle. As such, none of the other components had to be anything like the final one. The first stage was merely a 4-segment SRB, the same type we use on the shuttle, with a dummy 5th segment. That may not sound like much, but changing the length of the engine chamber means they have to completely redesign the fuel grain and that won't be done till 2017ish. The second stage is still completely non-existant - the one on that launch is a dead mass. Even the control system is just one they stole from a Titan missile.

And all of that cost more than $500M. While I dislike bringing up SpaceX in this sense, because Falcon 9/Dragon is not as capable as Ares 1/Orion, this is comparable to all of the money that SpaceX has spent so far.

Sadly you've been fooled by a publicity stunt meant to convince people that a program that was way behind schedule and over budget was actually making progress.

Re:Too late

[winwar]

"But discontinuing Aries/Constellation is a mistake."

Why?

"So task Aries/Constellation with a moon mission..."

Why?

If you really are concerned about not wasting money then there is absolutely no point in either project. The chance of Aries/Constellation getting built is low. Even if it gets built, it will probably underperform and be overbudget. And it won't have any real purpose because we won't spend the money to go to the moon. And even if we do, it will be a colossal waste of money on a PR stunt just like it was the first time.

We can build the appropriate equipment after we decide we are serious about a long term human presence in space and what form we want it to be. The "build it and they will come" crap is a waste of time, money and effort.

Re:Too late

[khallow]

Yeah -- discontinuing Aries/Constellation does seem an odd decision. Looking at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDwL6eVCQ2c it seems like it Ares was at least well on it's way to being working/viable with a successful prototype launch. I'd wonder how much savings there would be to going back to the drawing board and trying to re-derive something based on shuttle components.

Keep in mind that we have the Delta IV Heavy, which already flies, and does whatever the Ares I could do (not the optimistic ESAS one, the one that would eventually have been built). And it seems to me that both the Atlas V Heavy and Falcon 9 heavy are more likely to be viable than the Ares I, simply because the makers have demonstrated experience in building rockets. Globally there are several other rockets present and near future with similar capabilities. There's no demonstrated need for a rocket to compete with all that (especially with US commercial space flight).

In case it isn't painfully clear from the above, I am completely against the Ares I because it competes with US commercial space flight. That means both that the vehicle will take payloads that would otherwise fly on a cheaper commercial vehicle *and* it provides incentive for government to interfere with the market either destroying commercial providers or regulating them so that the Ares I isn't threatened by them. We can have a space-faring civilization without NASA, but not without commercial space flight. The other problems with Ares I such as its cost, engineering problems, and bad planning (for example, waiting more than ten years to build the HLV that's supposed to justify the whole thing!) are in themselves deal-killers. But the first item means that the Ares program is a serious threat to long term US interests in space and on that basis alone should be promptly killed.

Re:Too late

[S-100]

Hey, to some people, every dollar spent "on space" is wasted. But most taxpayers are willing to support a space program with reasonably ambitious goals. Most government programs over-promise and under-deliver. That's not a reason not to do them at all, just to limit their scope. The government-funded part of the space program should concentrate on elements that are not practical for private endeavors. LEO is at the tipping point for private exploration and private companies should be encouraged to take over NASA's role there rather than being shooed away. NASA's unmanned programs can concentrate on pure science and exploration, but the manned programs should concentrate on a single ambitious task. And once private industry catches up, move the goal posts. Either that or don't bother doing anything at all. And to most Americans, that would be a sad day (and much like the present day).

Re:Too late

[FleaPlus]

Yes, but the article you cited says it's now based on the HL-20. So, I would like to know how much of this actually came from either federal program. It sounds like the body shape, and that's it.

Oh shoot, you're right, I'd forgotten about the switch to the HL-20 from the X-38 body shape for the Dream Chaser. The reuse of the body shape is actually a fairly big deal, though, as it means that it can take advantage of all the aerodynamic analysis and wind tunnel testing done with the earlier shape.

Re:Too late

[sznupi]

Don't be too suprised if the next mission beyond LEO will be essentially a private one.

Those are people responsible for every independently financed human spaceflight to date (excluding the first one, to Mir around 1990, IIRC) - now, consider they are not only relying on proven record of manufacturer of Soyuz (a spacecraft which was the first to carry large biological payload beyond LEO; we have few decades of experience with it; andit's still essentially capable of beyond - LEO operation), but also that Lunniy Korabl lander actually reached the status of flightworthy qualification.

Re:Too late

[rally2xs]

The vast majority of human knowledge is contained in brains, and not written down. So, sure, just kill manned spaceflight by the USA for 50 years or so while we "save money" and forget how to do it, wait to figure out what we really want to do, and while other countries continue to advance, and are mining the asteroids for rare earth minerals while we are wondering how to get out of the depression that has lasted... 50 years.

Re:Too late

[sznupi]

Sticking to bad ideas / wishes / endavours, merits be damned, doesn't end up fine for us; anywhere.

Re:Too late

[downix]

Ares was a boondoggle design forced on the engineers by management trying to maximize political paydirt. It was unworkable, unsafe, and inherently unflyable. It would not be fully functional until 2025, as first tier development on many components necessary had not yet even begun. The Ares launchers caused crippling compromises to Orion, sacrificing such features as two crew, part of the service life, ground landing, and reuse.

It helps to understand what Ares began as, and what they became. When originally proposed, there were 4 launchers written up, Ares I, III, IV and V. Ares I was a 4 segment SRB right off of the shuttle with an air-start version of the Shuttles RS-25 for upper stage. Ares III and IV were quick-develop using 3 and 4 RS-25, respectively, mounted to the bottom of the shuttles main fuel tank. Ares V was a 5 engine which also required stretching the shuttles main tank. Management decided on skipping the III and IV first-stage development (called LV 25 and 26 at the time) and pushing forward with Ares I and V. Then, someone decided on a need for a re-startable engine for the Ares I, the RS-25 is not restartable (as it was, to make it air-startable was difficult but not impossible, but to restart them is impossible due to the design). So, they needed the J-2S, but the J-2S off of Ares V was not strong enough, so new engine development, J-2X plus replace the shuttles SRB with new SRB which were 25% larger. But J-2X cost too much, and Ares V needed 2 of them, so they killed one, which then made Ares V not work, so scrapped the RS-25 there and replace with even larger Solid boosters, new engine again, and the Delta IV's RS-68. But the RS-68 has a critical problem of not handling too much heat (the two solid boosters produce TONS of BTU's) and would blow up mid-flight, requiring a new RS-68B model to solve that issue.....

And even now, it still cannot do its job.

Re:Too late

[S-100]

That epitomizes what is wrong at NASA. None of those crap designs should have made it off of a napkin.

Re:Too late

[downix]

Correct, the problem being management-driven vs engineer driven engineering. Now, the proposed design from the Senate is the Engineers design, the very design that they proposed in 1978, 1990, 2006... in short, every single time that this has come up, they keep pushing the same design and management keeps nixing it. Now, we are getting the heavy lift we should have had since the get-go.

Re:Proven delivery system

[FleaPlus]

Well, if there's a time gap between when the shuttle retires and when its replacement arrives, you will want to keep some spare parts laying around. What if someone spots an big-ass asteroid hurtling our way? We will need something that can fly Bruce Willis up there and save the day.

I know you're joking, but FYI the US already has quite a few commercial launchers available which could send up Bruce Willis and Steve Buscemi to the incoming asteroid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_II

Bruce, YOU are the wrong direction

[DanDD]

Bruce, you've always had a problem dealing with the establishment - HP, GNU, etc. You like to be in the limelight and run your own show. You don't play well with others, especially not on teams. You don't have the right kind of engineering background to comment intelligently on anything NASA does, although any warm blooded primate can fairly criticize the vast ineptitude of congress.

I think perhaps your dislike of congressional bumbling has spread a bit too far in your anti-establishment bashing of NASA. Bathwater analogies are very appropriate in this case. You rightly criticize the stupid directions NASA has been forced down, but your criticism goes a bit overboard here.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Third Position]

I'd say that pretty much all manned spaceflight from NASA is dead. I'd be very, very surprised if they get anything completed at all, considering their mandate seems to change every time you turn around.

Re:Proven delivery system

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention the ONLY reason the congress keeps kicking that dead horse is a little word called PORK. That is why on every single suggestion NASA has come up with for a new vehicle they have been hamstringed by the demand that X% of the craft be made of "Shuttle Derived parts" even though the shuttle was an absolute failure (look up the original statement: It was to be a "space truck" with about 1/3rd more carrying capacity and MUCH quicker turnaround for a lower cost per pound. It failed every goal it was designed for) so that they can keep parceling out cash to their districts.

Hell congress has turned NASA into such a fucked over pork generating clusterfuck we need to set up a WPA style "please fuck off" fund so when some congressman demands a stupid waste of cash like "shuttle derived parts" we can say "Here is a work project for your district. Please fuck off now" and get NASA back on track. Although personally I think NASA will be deader than Dixie in 5 years and it'll be other nations and commerical ventures that will take over. With two Viet Nam style clusterfucks on our hands and an economy that is starting to develop reigor mortis we just ain't got the funds for much of anything anymore. Doubt that will stop congress from writing checks as long as they can though.

Re:Proven delivery system

[peacefinder]

"That's fine and all, but the fact is that the STS systems are already developed and in production"

No, the STS systems are developed and were in production. It's no longer the case that they are in production. The launches remaining will be flown with parts on hand.

NASA was directed to close down the project several years ago and has faithfully executed its orders to do so. Now the supply chain is broken and scattered. (Staff fired, tooling scrapped, etc etc.) There is no reviving it without costs approaching well within a magnitude the development of a new system. The time to revive the shuttle (if ever there was one) passed no later than a year after Bush first killed it.

Re:Proven delivery system

[chaboud]

Don't forget communication latency. Human-driven robots need to either be semi-autonomous or be slow. At its closest to Earth, you're looking at about six minutes of round-trip latency for Martian control.

Re:Proven delivery system

[ColdWetDog]

If we want to get out of LEO, then we need to make getting to LEO cheaper and easier, and develop technology that will let us go from there as a separate step. Lifting everything we need for a manned moon or (ha!) Mars mission from the surface of the earth one one giant rocket is foolish and will just mean the mission scope is cut down to the point of, well, pointlessness.

True enough, but using the Shuttle (or parts thereof) doesn't appear to be the way to go. Nothing about the Shuttle is cheap or easy. Sure, take your lessons learned, improve on the technology that we've developed (the Shuttle engine is pretty impressive and seem to have the bugs worked out of it).

But as we've flogged to death on many a post here, the entire premise of the Space Shuttle was falsified from the beginning. Personally, I would be in favor of keeping it going as a servicer for the ISS until the next generation of craft is actually up and running. However, since (as has been pointed out), the production lines are dead AND the money isn't there, we have to scramble a bit for a decade or two. IMHO, for the foreseeable future, I'd stay in LEO and work out the nuts and bolts engineering of keeping people alive in space for extended periods of time. When you take six months to plan each space walk, you're not quite ready to venture out of the Van Allen belts.

Re:Proven delivery system

[cmowire]

It turns out that in business school classes on running defense contractors teach a fairly simple concept:

If your project isn't far enough along to survive cancellation when the power shifts in the white house, you fucked up.

Thus, NASA's problem isn't changing political whims, it's that the Constellation program was so far behind, overbudget, and mismanaged in 2009 that it got canned by the incoming administration.

Use what you got in creative ways:

[Hartree]

Well, regardless of the scientific merits, continuing access to ISS is one of the main points that can sell putting money into SpaceX and other private ventures in the near term. Once again, it may not be what we wanted, but it's what we've got.

Virgin Galactic and some others are gearing up for non-orbital tourist work on their own dime at the moment, but there aren't a whole lot of other manned projects I'd consider advanced contenders at the moment that don't in part rely on providing services to the government. The push for a man rated Falcon 9 certainly does.

I'd go more along with your ideas of doing away with NASA if I thought they had a lot of chance of working. The money saved likely wouldn't be spent on space at all if you didn't have an existing (and politically workable) space related entity to put it toward. That won't change without massive change of the whole government budget process which is, to say the least, a pretty ambitious goal. I'll settle for smaller ones.

Right now the political process is, again, not what we want, but what we've got. And I advise using it shamelessly to get something more to our liking.

(Odd how the discussions never change at some level. This is pretty much the same discussion that was happening in the 1980s on usenet. It's now SpaceX rather than AmRoc/Conestoga, etc.)

Re:Proven delivery system

[Teancum]

Don't forget it also apparently keeps prices down on ICBM parts, because the DOD is so strapped for cash they need NASA to subsidize their equipment(?!)

Oh well. At least the pointless moon mission is dead. Hopefully this compromise doesn't cripple the actual useful and new projects that will expand our capabilities. And hey, maybe we'll actually find a good use for our HLV to LEO, and not just find arbitrary ways to justify its existence.

The Moon mission was dead a couple of years ago... it just took Congress this long to recognize that fact and a change in the presidency (or rather a new NASA administrator to wake up to the fact). Constellation, as it was proposed, was simply unsustainable and required federal spending on spaceflight to be proportional to what NASA got in the 1960's to get it to happen. There is no possible way that Congress would have ever forked out that kind of money for a sustained effort that would have lasted decades.

In terms of orbital rocketry being similar to ICBMs, it should be pointed out that they are two very different engineering regimes and they don't really support each other... except for perhaps rocket nozzles and some minor parts like what would be in common between a farm tractor and a semi truck. They may technically do the same thing, but really are designed for very different tasks and aren't nearly as common as you would think.

The largest argument that seems to be in favor of NASA having continued development of the shuttle boosters and the Ares I is that it would act as a consumer for Ammonium Perchlorate.... the "solid" rocket fuel that is used in the SRBs. For myself, I think it would be far and away more profitable and perhaps even do better for public support of NASA to use the same money, consume even more rocket fuel, and simply make some fireworks for a really awesome 4th of July party. It would actually involve more workers to make the stuff and at least be something that ordinary Americans appreciate. Either that or cancel the program and save the money altogether... but if the money is going to be spent on merely keeping people employed and to keep this particular industry (the solid rocket fuel manufacturing companies) going at least it could be for something that will actually fly up into the sky. $10 billion USD will buy one heck of a lot of fireworks and put on a display that would be impressive as hell.

It might just help advance the development of rocketry at the same time... something that the Ares I simply won't do.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Teancum]

Considering the last manned spaceflight program to actually make it into orbit was started under the Johnson administration (the Space Shuttle), I would say that the established record for getting into space is pretty dismal indeed. Every single manned spaceflight vehicle that has ever been proposed since then (and in particular since the Nixon administration) has been systematically killed either the the subsequent or even current administrations involved. The question isn't why did this particular program (Constellation) die, but why did any succeed in the past at all?

Re:Proven delivery system

[Teancum]

The largest problem with the Space Shuttle is that the era is now over anyway. No more will be built, the production line for external tanks and SRBs has been killed, and the tooling for even putting up another flight simply can't happen. It would cost almost as much as simply finishing the Constellation program now as it would to restart the Shuttle program again... including building a new shuttle or two to replace the Columbia. Ideally if the Shuttle program was to continue, it would need six to eight orbiters and a whole bunch of effort that neither NASA nor Congress really want to get into doing.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Teancum]

The Space Shuttle is the Edsel of the space industry. It looks cool, is real shiny, and when you really get down to brass tacks it sucks big time. The Edsel is the very definition of a lemon of a vehicle. The Space Shuttle is a spacecraft designed by committee, incredibly dangerous for its crew, and could have done a much better job had there not been so many compromises on its design that it couldn't really do any of the missions it was intended to accomplish. It was also a system drastically overbudget and way, way behind schedule even when it launched, and that never really improved on subsequent flights.

left over parts

[buback]

The big caveat here is that there are enough parts sitting around for at least another 3 flights of shuttle hardware. We already paid for it to be built, so we should try to find a way to use it, and as cheaply as possible. Doing it cheaply means bolting on a payload with an engine instead of a shuttle.

The same budgetary things happened with Apollo. We had the hardware for Apollo 18, 19, and 20 ready to go, but funding got cut for them and that was that.

I've got a dumb question

[mollog]

I've got a dumb question. Why do they return the shuttle back to Earth? Or, why not build a part of the space station out of shuttles; you design the vehicle to serve as the body of the launch vehicle, and as part of the ISS. You could leave off a lot of those tiles if you weren't planning to return.

The crew returns to Earth via a reentry vehicle. Fill the vehicle with supplies, send it up there, and the crew comes back on a specialized reentry bus.

Re:I've got a dumb question

[Anonymous Coward]

The shuttle doesn't get high enough to stay in permanent orbit without a boost every 3-6 months due to atmospheric drag, exactly like the ISS which was put at that altitude only so it could be serviced by the shuttle.

IE, a shuttle space station, although a cool idea, would be another boondoggle requiring constant maintenance. We want permanent space installations, not another cash sink -- unless you're congress, I guess.

Re:I've got a dumb question

[srleffler]

Because somebody canceled the project to design the specialized reentry bus a few years ago.

Re:I've got a dumb question

[peacefinder]

A reasonable question. The shuttle is not the right design for that. It is expensive to build, is the wrong shape to stack well, and has lots of mass devoted to winged landing. It's also rated for about three weeks in orbit tops; beyond that it'll run out of many consumables and you'll have to start wondering if the tires will still hold air and suchlike.

But! If one had a design for an orbital habitat module suitably sized for launch on a cheap mass produced rocket - 20 tons to LEO is probably about right - and the capability to robotically assemble and supply them in orbit, one could in principle build an arbitrarily large modular orbital habitat. As big as budgets allow, anyway. The crew can ride up in different flights. And if one had an orbital fuel depot and robotic refueling capability, one could in principle push such a habitat somewhere beyond earth orbit.

Cool, huh?

That's the kind of capability NASA had been planning to develop before the senate fucked it up today.

Re:I've got a dumb question

[rts008]

But! If one had a design for an orbital habitat module suitably sized for launch on a cheap mass produced rocket - 20 tons to LEO is probably about right - and the capability to robotically assemble and supply them in orbit, one could in principle build an arbitrarily large modular orbital habitat. As big as budgets allow, anyway. The crew can ride up in different flights.

To take this farther, why not add comm and relay capabilities and lease these services out?

For example:
why should a comm company/corp build and launch a comsat when they can lease the same tech for less?
add redundancy to GPS
bolt on transciever dishes/apparatus for signal relay/repeater function
reduces space junk buildup

Think of the possibilities.

That's the kind of capability NASA had been planning to develop before the senate fucked it up today.

It seems to me that our legislature has made a game of setting NASA up for Epic Fail scenarios the past decade or so.

*disclaimer*
I am not an engineer, astrophysicist, rocket scientist, etc....just thinking about your comment. :-)

Re:I've got a dumb question

[peacefinder]

Comm relay and suchlike are very capably handled by commercial ventures already. There's little reason for NASA to be in that game, and lots of new stuff they could be doing instead.

Re:I've got a dumb question

[Orange Crush]

It would've had to be designed for that from the get-go. The shuttle as it exists would die in about 3 weeks in orbit and be more trouble than it's worth.

Re:I've got a dumb question

[CSfreakazoid]

The X-38 was killed in 2002. Just Saying.

Re:Proven delivery system

[tyrione]

I think everyone can agree they would love to build an orbiting Space Port. Build that out and then build a larger ship for deep space and you see where this is going.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Waffle Iron]

The main thing for which the the Shuttle is a "proven delivery system" is the transportation of breathtaking amounts of taxpayer money to a cabal of well-connected aerospace contractors.

Aside from that one feature, the design, capabilities and risk profile of the Shuttle launch system make almost zero sense.

Re:Proven delivery system

[twosat]

The Soyuz accidents were many years ago, while the last shuttle loss was only a few years ago. In fact, the Soyuz could have had a worse record; a Soyuz crew survived a launch fire over 20 years ago and were saved by the Lauch Abort System (LAS) rockets pulling them out of harm's way, something not available for the shuttle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_T-10-1. In addition the shuttles are very expensive and complicated to keep going. Having said that, the extra costs of a few more extra shuttle flights would be very small in contrast to the huge expense of developing and building the shuttles.

Re:Proven delivery system

[fotbr]

Yet, given the chance, I'd take a ride without a second thought.

Re:Proven delivery system

[jvillain]

They just need to mount a gun on the next project and it will get all the approval it needs and never have to worry about funding cuts.

Re:Proven delivery system

[moosesocks]

Personally, I would be in favor of keeping it going as a servicer for the ISS until the next generation of craft is actually up and running.

Soyuz is cheaper and safer. There's no scientific or engineering reason not to use it.

They've had a few close calls, but unlike the shuttle, the Soyuz capsule has modes of failure in which the cosmo/astronauts aboard do not die. Hell, a Soyuz rocket once exploded on the pad, and the astronauts aboard walked away from the incident with nothing more than minor injuries.

Re:Proven delivery system

[lgw]

Man to Mars orbit would be pretty handy, from a fuel costs perspective (no need to launch from the Martian surface), and would be close enough to oversee robots building for longer-term plans. But that still leaves some very hard problems as far as how to keep men alive in space for that long. I think the collateral benefits from such rmedical esearch would be worth the funding, however.

Re:Proven delivery system

[murdocj]

And yet, dismal as the USA's space record is, it's miles ahead of any other nation on earth.

I wish people would stop acting like the sky is falling. It's not. Space is big. Really, really big. We're going to be exploring it for a long time. It's not the end of the world if we spend a couple of years researching new technologies rather than just building bigger firecrackers to get into orbit.

Re:Proven delivery system

[winwar]

"How do you propose sending humans into LEO, without Shuttle pieces? Your choices seem to be 1) don't do it, or 2) ask the Russians for help. Stupid."

Both points 1 and 2 are perfectly valid. The primary reason to send humans into LEO is to staff the INTERNATIONAL Space Station of which Russia is part. We actually have NO NEED to send humans into space. If we did then I suspect we would have spent the money to keep the capability. Many people have the desire to send humans into space. Very different.

The only thing I find incredibly stupid is spending money to be able to send humans into space for no apparent reason. We don't send humans into space for research or exploration. We send them for PR and justify it with science. We always have.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Farmer Tim]

Could we lie about the asteroid and shoot them into space now?

Re:Proven delivery system

[Jesternaut]

When you take six months to plan each space walk, you're not quite ready to venture out of the Van Allen belts.

Spacewalks can be planned a lot faster than that if needed. During the STS-120 shuttle flight in 1997, a solar array on the Station accidentally tore while they were deploying it. So to fix it, they planned and executed a complete spacewalk from scratch, during the flight, in a total of only four days. The astronauts spent the third of those days building the various improvised tools and equipment they'd use to make the repair. It worked perfectly and the repair is holding up to this day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-120 -- see flight days 8 through 12.

Space activities are extremely scheduled and meticulous because they can be, not because they necessarily have to be.

Re:Proven delivery system

[pjt48108]

The Shuttle program was started under Nixon.

Re:Proven delivery system

[cashman73]

Don't forget it also apparently keeps prices down on ICBM parts, because the DOD is so strapped for cash they need NASA to subsidize their equipment(?!)

Well, in their defense, we'll need those used ICBM parts in 2063 so Zephram Cochrane can build the Phoenix, thereby making the first warp flight as well as contact with the Vulcans,. . .

Re:Proven delivery system

[slick7]

It turns out that in business school classes on running defense contractors teach a fairly simple concept:

If your project isn't far enough along to survive cancellation when the power shifts in the white house, you fucked up.

Thus, NASA's problem isn't changing political whims, it's that the Constellation program was so far behind, overbudget, and mismanaged in 2009 that it got canned by the incoming administration.

Business school had alot to do with the financial situation we're in now. Incompetent political administrations since Ronnie the Ray-gun, let the shuttle become what it is. The failure to continue building shuttles beyond the four, then five was and is short-sighted. In the long run, creating more economical and easily modified shuttles makes more sense.
The very first concept automobile and all concept vehicles are cost prohibitive. Only the use of mass production lowers the cost as well as making production economical, unless of course you have a bunch of idiots running the shuttle program into the ground like the auto industry did. What kind of bailout would that have been?

Re:Proven delivery system

[Cassius Corodes]

Well the key is weather those failures = death or just failure. As far as I can see the soyuz ones have not resulted in the death of the crew (although one did result in 1 ground staff death +injuries)

Shuttle shuttle shuttle

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I'm fucking sick of this stupid technology. Both astronauticides were the result of stupid shuttle technology.

Side-by-side. Bah. Rockets were meant to be cock-like. Erect. Vertical. Long necked, if you will.

The shuttle broke twice because of the side-by-side architecture. It's time to make rockets that looked like cocks, I mean rockets. Long, tall, and long.

Re:Shuttle shuttle shuttle

[spauldo]

There were quite a few astronaut fatalities back during the cockrocket days, as well. Granted, those were a long time ago, but we haven't sent anyone up in any U.S. spacecraft besides the shuttle in decades.

Re:Shuttle shuttle shuttle

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Really? How many fatalities in flight? One? How many due to the vertical architecture? None?

Komarov went kersplat on his landing, not during launch. The Americans burned in a fire, not even during flight!

The shuttle failure number one was because a flame could burn off the support right next to it. A vertical rocket would have no support right next to it to burn off.

The shuttle failure number two was because ice came off a tank located right next to the orbiter. They didn't bother to insulate vertical rockets because tons of falling ice didn't hit anything.

Did you know that when Skylab launched, a solar panel deployed early. They were in the atmosphere and it came out and was ripped right off the spacecraft. It didn't bring the rocket down.

So a side-by-side rocket can be brought down by a 1 pound chunk of foam. A vertical rocket is considerably more robust - even hundreds of pounds of metal and glass won't bring it down. That's because there's nothing important right next to you to get damageded by a problem.

Re:Shuttle shuttle shuttle

[spauldo]

Hrm, my bad, I misremembered. I thought there were a few fatal accidents back during the Mercury program. I was wrong.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Richard_at_work]

oddly enough the shuttle has the same safety as soyuz with roughly 2% failure. Of course no one wants to actually say that. We have lost 2 shuttles, but have launched 2.5 times more shuttles/people than russia has 3 man capsules.

One point that has to be made is that with the Shuttle its 'manned or no flight', while the Soyuz system is actually three different 'configurations' for different situations - the Soyuz manned capsule for launching three people into orbit plus a small payload, the Progress unmanned capsule for launching a medium payload into orbit and the Soyuz booster for launching other payloads.

Based on the above, I think the whole Soyuz/Shuttle record needs to be looked at from a different angle - as already noted, with the Shuttle the people are sent up regardless of whether the core mission requires it, and thats not a good situation.

Re:Proven delivery system

[rts008]

...and shoot them into space now?

Okay, they can be spaced, but not Liv Tyler!!
[link is safe for work and wife]

Re:Proven delivery system

[FST777]

The Spaceshuttle is able to get far bigger and heavier loads to the ISS than Soyuz. GP was talking about a servicer, the Soyuz is a pretty good people carrier, not so much a heavy servicer.

As far as I know, there is currently no spacecraft that can replace the Spacehuttle for transporting large parts to the ISS.

Re:Proven delivery system

[FST777]

I count at least 106 Soyuz missions. Where did you get that data?

Re:Proven delivery system

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

I wish people would stop acting like the sky is falling. It's not. Space is big. Really, really big. We're going to be exploring it for a long time. It's not the end of the world if we spend a couple of years researching new technologies rather than just building bigger firecrackers to get into orbit.
Sorry, the sky is falling. While we are researching new technologies, the next round of bread and circuses will arrive, and then there will be no political will to get back to space. Everyone will say, we haven't been there for awhile why go now? Repeat ad infinitum and space exploration(at least in the democratic nations) is dead.

Re:Proven delivery system

[sznupi]

Of course you didn't mention say how the irrecoverable Soyuz failures happened only at the very start, and in a situation of political pressures (in Soviet Union, by Soviet leadership...) to rush the program.

Re:Proven delivery system

[aix tom]

Atlas and Delta could be, with relatively minor changes.

United Launch Alliance evaluation (pdf)

VIII. Summary

        The EELVs are ready to support crew lift with flight proven vehicles that will have an even longer legacy of
flights by the crewed IOC date with superior demonstrated reliability compared to any new system. Our schedules
are grounded by ULA’s unmatched legacy of vehicle development and modifications programs and launch pad
developments.
        The Atlas V, with the relatively minor addition of an Emergency Detection System and a dedicated NASA
Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) and Mobile Launch Platform (MLP), is ready for commercial human spaceflight
and complies with NASA human rating standards. The 3 1/2 year integration span is likely shorter than the
development for any new commercial capsule that might fly on it.
        The Delta IV has ample performance to support the existing Orion vehicle, without Black Zones. The Delta IV
can support a mid-2014 Crewed IOC, which is superior to Orion launch alternatives. The proposed 37A pad is a
look-alike counterpart to the existing 37B pad with low development risk. Human rating the Delta is a relatively
modest activity, with the addition of an Emergency Detection System, an array of relatively small redundancy and
safety upgrades, both in the vehicle and the engines that are almost trivial compared to the original development of
the Delta IV.

Re:Proven delivery system

[sznupi]

Vast majority of our spacecraft are unmanned since the very beginning, so I'm not sure what are you proposing there...

Re:Proven delivery system

[sznupi]

Hence we have ISS to train just for that. Add:

a) some module with a radiation shelter not only inside water storage, but also basically inside fuel and oxidizer tanks

b) have two parts, connected and spinning when en route and in Mars orbit ...and you're good to go.

Re:Proven delivery system

[sznupi]

Oh, it's coming.

Re:Proven delivery system

[sznupi]

Still living in the '90s, eh?

Re:Proven delivery system

[sznupi]

Regarding engines - there are ways to go which are only slightly worse in raw performance numbers than SSME, but much more cost effective.

And first commerciall resupply sorties to ISS should happen in the next year.

Re:Proven delivery system

[space_hippy]

None of those are man rated. Which isn't a small feat.
But no one seems to care about that.

People complain that the Shuttle and Ares programs are expensive and dangerous. These same people will complain how dangerous Falcon is first time it blows up on the pad with people on top.

Re:Proven delivery system

[jgtg32a]

Lies, damn lies and statistics

Re:Proven delivery system

[FatAlb3rt]

They've had a few close calls, but unlike the shuttle, the Soyuz capsule has modes of failure in which the cosmo/astronauts aboard do not die. Hell, a Soyuz rocket once exploded on the pad, and the astronauts aboard walked away from the incident with nothing more than minor injuries.

Huh?

Re:Proven delivery system

[jgtg32a]

I think he's talking about skipping the human rating requirements

$200M a month to keep running

[peter303]

Whether a launch or not. Significant layoffs were to start in October for the final Feb 2011 launch.

Re:Proven delivery system

[sznupi]

The idiot just looked up the number of launches of "Soyuz" (without any scary additions to the name like "-U" or "-FG" for example) rocket, the first variant which was named like that (after the vehicle it started carrying back then) - really, all just R7 variants (though for the longest time also direct derivatives of the first Soyuz one)

What he did is especially ironic considering that the rocket flew over 1700 times, and according to ESA (for whom it is a very succesfull competition) is "the most reliable means of space travel" and "the most frequently used launch vehicle in the world."

Re:Proven delivery system

[peacefinder]

The definition of "man rated" is notoriously vague.

Example: There was a set of standards in place for the in-development Ares launchers to meet to be rated for human spaceflight. Unfortunately it turned out the launcher could not meet the standard. Of course with a big in-house launcher program on which NASA's future depends, failure to meet the human-rating standard was not an option.

So in 2008, they changed the standard.

Is this a recipe for success?

Re:Proven delivery system

[sznupi]

The Space Shuttle is a monumentally horrible servicer - it wastes around 80 tonnes of the mass it gets to LEO on its airframe. You can get a rocket with the payload capacity of the Shuttle in a much more cost efficient way - Ariane 5, Atlas V, Delta IV, Proton, take your pick (yes, some of those have somewhat lower payload to LEO, but some have higher; with new options already coming, some of them with ~2 times higher payload to LEO than Shuttle; though if you want to build a station in the most cost efficient way, you should probably go with Zenit for now - but this one can launch "only" 15 tonnes)

"Mir 2" part of the ISS was assembled using Proton & automatic rendezvous. The modules launched by Shuttle can be launched exclusivelly by the Shuttle, sure...but only because they were built like that, to make to vehicle appear useful.

Re:Liquid Tin Foil

[jd]

Since you clearly did not understand what I wrote, I will rephrase. Free choice requires that there be an ability to choose between non-identical options at both the initial point and at the first level beyond. The number of choices is immaterial so long as it remains above 1 after eliminating false options, duplicates and synonymous choices, and irrational choices. (An irrational choice would be one that no reasonable/rational person would consider a valid option in the context of whatever the situation is. Thus, jumping off a bridge is not a rational way of getting Internet access although it is arguably a choice of sorts. A monopolist could not offer that as proof of choice.) The first level matters because a choice of middlemen for the same product doesn't mean you have a useful choice. And that is where we probably differ. To me, if the choice has no impact on what happens, if you can point to no non-transient difference, then you have done nothing. If all roads lead to Rome then you have chosen nothing.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Chris Burke]

True enough, but using the Shuttle (or parts thereof) doesn't appear to be the way to go. Nothing about the Shuttle is cheap or easy.

For sure. By saying "We need to make it cheaper and easier", I was trying to implicitly agree with you that this means "not use the shuttle-derived HLV" :)

IMHO, for the foreseeable future, I'd stay in LEO and work out the nuts and bolts engineering of keeping people alive in space for extended periods of time. When you take six months to plan each space walk, you're not quite ready to venture out of the Van Allen belts.

Also agreed. There's a ton of technology, capability, and process development we can do in LEO that will be highly useful for anything else we want to do. But we've neglected doing any of it in favor of maintaining the shuttle. Hopefully it will only be reduced by this compromise, not completely neglected.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Chris Burke]

I'd say that pretty much all manned spaceflight from NASA is dead. I'd be very, very surprised if they get anything completed at all, considering their mandate seems to change every time you turn around.

When NASA astronauts fly to the ISS on a Falcon 9 rocket, I'm interested what you'll say about why that doesn't count.

And frankly I hope the 'mandate' for a shuttle contractor bailout gets turned around.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Shotgun]

personally I think NASA will be deader than Dixie in 5 years

Nah! It'll be doing just fine at its new mission of making Muslim nations feel better about their contributions to science and the maths.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Shotgun]

Is this a recipe for success?

Yes. If you define "success" correctly?

8*)

or is that 8*(

Re:Proven delivery system

[sznupi]

Yeah, in that mission - loss of one more engine (which nearly happened) = likely loss of the crew. In sensibly constructed launch vehicle - the whole rocket blows up = crew proceeds to land pretty much normally after few seconds of a bit rough acceleration.

Re:Proven delivery system

[sznupi]

I'd like to file a formal protest - this was supposed to be 1024x768.

apollo parts...

[snooo53]

Well to be fair, they weren't just thrown away...some were used to launch Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz missions, others were either shifted to earlier Apollo missions or not finished in the first place. Or are on display

Re:Proven delivery system

[sznupi]

Falcon is being built with man-rating in mind since the beginning. And without relaxing what "human rated" means, like NASA had to do with Ares so as to allow it to fly (and the way Shuttle was developed, it was also not to present man-rating standards)

Re:Proven delivery system

[CrimsonAvenger]

Note that none of your launchers are currently man-rated.

And note also that Taurus II isn't actually available. It's never flown, and isn't even expected to fly for almost a year.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Chris Burke]

The Moon mission was dead a couple of years ago... it just took Congress this long to recognize that fact and a change in the presidency (or rather a new NASA administrator to wake up to the fact). Constellation, as it was proposed, was simply unsustainable and required federal spending on spaceflight to be proportional to what NASA got in the 1960's to get it to happen. There is no possible way that Congress would have ever forked out that kind of money for a sustained effort that would have lasted decades.

Yes all of that is true, yet Congress could have (and could still) force NASA to spend a large fraction of it's budget trying to recreate Apollo. The writing was on the wall as far as it actually happening, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have thrown more money down the pit.

In terms of orbital rocketry being similar to ICBMs, it should be pointed out that they are two very different engineering regimes and they don't really support each other...

Hey, it wasn't my theory, it was some Senator's, and I was trying to make fun of it. :)

It might just help advance the development of rocketry at the same time... something that the Ares I simply won't do.

Ares was awful. I've said before that if we have to do a shuttle-derivative, then it should be more like DIRECT than Constellation, and thank goodness that seems to be the new plan. I mean, compared to forcing NASA to continue developing Ares. I'd much rather both get dropped and NASA spends all it's budget on doing interesting things in space, not funding an expensive rocket to get to LEO.

Re:Proven delivery system

[Teancum]

The origins of the Shuttle program, including the first drafts for the basic concepts, happened when James Webb was the NASA admin and Johnson was President. Yes, I'll admit that it was under the Nixon administration that the final design was settled upon and it was Nixon that signed the original authorization bill in terms of laying down actual hardware.

The design authorization, however, happened under the Johnson administration.

Political realities:

[Hartree]

A chance to avoid a major international incident? I'd hardly expect the US government to take that one lying down regardless of the actual value.

Space exploration doesn't exist in isolation. And right now, few politicians are going to seriously propose abandoning the ISS or just handing our part over to the international partners. I can just see the fun an opposing nominee would have with that. "We built a 100gigabuck or more station and my opponent wants to just give it up." I remember the reaction when Bush et al was wanting to de-orbit it in 2015 (my own included). Further, the other partners would need to come up with substitutes for our contributions both monetary and technical if they kept it going.

Up until recently, the lack of power, the restrictions on crew size, the ongoing construction meant that little could be done with the ISS. I wish that some of the facilities hadn't been cancelled (the centrifuge module for a biggie). Just because we were foolish about its uses in the past doesn't mean we have to continue to be so. Again, I think just shutting it down would invoke the baby and bathwater comparison.

The one area that really can't be duplicated without building something else like the ISS is the ability to study long term effects of microgravity on the human body. The Vomit Comet is great for some things, but the time duration is limited. If Bigelow Aerospace or some other gets their commercial station running, then that's a different story. But, again, it's not there yet.