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Commercial Space Crew Supporters Posit a Conspiracy Theory Involving Funding Shortages
MarkWhittington writes: The Space Access Society, a group that advocates for government funded, commercially operated spacecraft, examined the annual fight between supporters of the heavy lift Space Launch System and supporters of the commercial crew program in a recent communique. In the view of the SAS and other commercial crew supporters, Congress, on the behalf of the big rocket supporters, has been shorting funding for the commercial crew spacecraft in favor of the SLS. On the surface there seems to be no reason for this, as the two undertake different missions. The Space Access Society posits a conspiracy theory so immense that at first glance would seem to be in the same class as the Apollo moonlanding hoax, The SAS accuses Space Launch System supporters of trying to arrange the premature end of the International Space Station to free up funding for the big rocket and related projects.
Because Whittington is a well known clown that floods inane space related submissions
Because they don't do what we want!!! Therefore.... Conspiracy!!!1!!!11!!!!1!!!!!eleven!!!!
Do these people pay attention to literally anything else? I have no idea whether they're right, wrong, or whatever, but if they are right then Occam's razor would suggest lobbyists and stupidity, in that order.
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Or the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Bully! Bully!
There must be a conspiracy because Big Rocket is involved. At best, Big Rocket is evil. Making fun of this means I'm obviously a paid shill. And it's highly likely that I'm also backed by Big Karma.
The SLS exists to give pork to established NASA contractors. SpaceX is trying to get stuff into space cheaply.
SpaceX is centralized in a few districts so it gets relatively little support. On the other hand, the SLS has pork divided up over the whole country. Thus, if you are a politician, and want pork, you want to support the SLS. The fact that the SLS makes no scientific or financial sense whatsoever, does not factor into the decision to vote against SpaceX. To bring pork to your district, SLS is the correct program.
Unfortunately, SLS has went the way of many of the more recent military purchase programs. Yes, the F-35 can be built, but why? Yes the SLS can be built, but is this really the best way? do we really need it? Given SpaceX's development trajectory, will the SLS ever be needed? Really needed?
It's the public republican stance/platform that all science and technology should be defunded in favor of creationism and weapon-capable vehicles like the heavy rockets.
Since the government is ran by the republicans (and democrats that will vote whatever the republicans want to avoid a shutdown) it doesn't surprise me at all.
No conspiracy, just regular business. Wait until we get a republican in office, the first things on the chopping block are affordable health insurance, non-proliferation and other peace treaties and humane treatment of foreigners.
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Its not a conspiracy, its fact. More than a few congress critters don't like ISS and would like to see it die. The whole touchy feely aspect of nations cooperating instead of constantly stabbing each other in the backs is probably point one. There are also more reasonable cost aspects, ISS has been extremely expensive, far more expensive than it had to be to accommodate so may disparate nations designs. Still others probably think SLS is some big, sexy spaceship that will take us to far more interesting places, ignoring the fact that it will probably only do so for a short time because of the massive costs and little if any returns. Only then do you get into the fraud/pork drives from congress members in districts that will see money & prestige from building parts for the "new rocket ship".
We need the ever bigger rockets to launch a ridiculous amount of nuclear war heads to some imaginary enemy! And for that we need a ridiculous amount of nuclear weapons manufacturing and simulations, so that every represented State can get their very own supercomputer center and plutonium pipeline. And then we can again inject some fluorine into water supply to create the enemy from what ever is scary big at that time and use those weapons. A population with good teeth will surely go along with our schemes!
Uh oh, prepare to be modded -infinity by the Space Nutter Central Command!
has been shorting funding for the commercial crew spacecraft
Ugh, is "shorting" a verb now as well? I knew it was some weird thing you can do with share options, but I didn't realise we needed a replacement for "reducing."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Because Whittington is a well known clown that floods inane space related submissions
... and this one is especially inane, because much of the information in the summary is wrong. Some members of SAS may advocate for "government funded, commercially operated spacecraft", but that is not a specific goal of the organization itself. SAS includes big aerospace companies, like Boeing and Lockheed, who benefit from "cost plus" pork. But it also includes smaller companies, and libertarian kooks, who think government is the problem, not the solution. Their main function is to organize conferences and provide a forum for discussing issues.
President Obama is the one who created this fight and has been using it politically.
In every single year since his 2010 NASA budget proposal advocated killing-off the bi-partisan Constellation program with no planned replacement, the President has fought a money game with congress over NASA. Each year he simultaneously claims he has too much money for the project congress wants to fund (SLS) and he tries all sorts of bureaucratic slight-of-hand to shift money from SLS/Orion to Commercial Crew. In each year he also slowly slips the SLS schedule and blames the slippage on Orion's service module (which he farmed-out to Europe because he said we could not afford to build it in the US) or slow progress on required infrastructure (which he also blames on funding). This REALLY angers a bunch of people in congress. When Obama has been offered the option of fully-funding both programs, which would bust a budget cap, he refuses to do this unless congress lets him bust the caps across the entire budget (something he knows will never happen).
Obama's supporters then use this fight to attack congress and some even claim congress is opposing him on this because he is black. This fight benefits him politically and he is the one who created it (by unilaterally cancelling Constellation and, after many months of congressional anger, producing a non-plan as his NASA plan) and he's the one driving the fight with a seemingly unending list of attempt to shift money congress mandated BY LAW for SLS into Commercial Crew without the legal authority to do it.
"Conspiracy theory"? What a stupid thing to label it. Washington is all about different groups paying congressman off to divert the flow of cash dollars. If you don't realize that you're hopelessly naive.
I shared this exact same view just a few years ago. But as I've been watching the International Space Station crews and their broadcasts, I took more of an interest in the latest space exploration developments.
As it turns out, many companies have come to believe that it is going to be relatively easy to reach out and grab asteroids and mine them, and to mine resources from other bodies such as moons and planets in our solar system.
There is actually a lot of matter in space. Perhaps not relative to the vast emptiness of space itself, no, but compared to the resources we are constrained to here on Earth there is a lot more waiting for us "out there". And many scientists and corporate leaders are now convinced that those resources represent a significant return on investment.
Which is actually great news for the rest of us who are stuck on Earth. If one of our greatest concerns for the future of humanity is the potential for sudden escalation of consumption and therefore scarcity of resources (spoiler: it is), then one of the best things we can do is spent x*y*z of those resources and get ax*by*cz back (where x, y, z are resources and a, b, c are scalars greater than 1), where "back" means "back here on Earth where they can be used".
I spent a number of years telling people we should defund NASA and that the last thing we should attempt is some expensive, far-out journey to putting astronauts uselessness and senselessly on the surface of Mars. I've since changed my mind and if anything is obvious it's that space mining operations are going to be an inevitable part of our relatively near future.
I think our concerns and bickering, now, and the energy we put behind those, should be directed at concern for our welfare and well-being in our imminent space-mining future. Already, we're seeing trends where whomever can achieve some progress on the corporate mission to mine space is congratulated, no matter what the invisible costs. Case in point, India being congratulated on very cheaply getting a satellite into orbit -- in American newspapers. How many Americans reading those newspapers recalled having their jobs outsourced to India? How many reading those newspapers laughed because it's easy to keep things cheap in a country where most people don't have clean water and 3/5 of the country don't enjoy what are considered basic human rights?
If we don't watch closely what's happening and get with the program, we'll just get squashed, all but manacled and forced into "one-way-ticket" space programs where we spend months stranded on drifting asteroids waiting for the cargo pick-up to arrive.
If you don't think it's a grim future think again. Everything about space travel has its closest analog in seafaring. And seafaring is a horrible occupation under any but the most disciplined forms of organization. And corporate bottom lines are not very good examples by which to discipline an organization.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
The international space station is dead. The point of it was cooperation between the US and Russia.
That's over.
We are paying the Russians. We don't want to do that.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It's just a big rocket, right? Fire comes out of the bottom and it goes up. It is big so it can launch bigger stuff at once. Looks like the Saturn V over again. Boring but practical.
Here's an idea : why not launch single use, single module space stations? with the people inside.
No resupply : astronauts do their space stuff, and when the life support runs out they get out and come back on Earth. Experiments may continue to run unattended. There may be another, small return capsule for whatever products/samples. When you're done, deorbit the fucker let it burn and crash.
You will have expanded one super-heavy launcher, rather than a hundred launches for assembly, repair, supply, crew transfer ; and the station itself doesn't have to support all these things.
They both sound like massive crony capitalism to me, so just cut them both.
Ok, NASA does not need either one, but the title must be concise.
rockets, which can put ~120 tons into LEO in one piece current in production: 0
rockets, which can put ~120 tons into LEO in one piece currently in development: 1
non-US spacecraft for putting people into orbit currently in production: 2
non-US spacecraft for putting people into orbit currently in development: 1
non-US spacecraft for putting people into orbit currently in very early development: 1
US spacecraft non commercial crew, for putting people into orbit currently in development: 1
US spacecraft for putting people into orbit unsafely, currently in production: 1
For spacecraft nations, I am refering to
Russia, China
India
Iran
NASA MPCV
Spacex Dragon
The NASA MPCV will weigh around ~23 tons, and carry 4 people. The commercial crews will weigh around 10 tons, and carry 7 people, so MPCV can do it, but it will be expensive to launch. Alternately, astronauts can be shoved into a Dragon capsule, and launched on an Atlas V. The Atlas V has had 50+ consecutive successful launches. It will probably be safer than Gemini.
Given the potential to choose from 3, or 4, vehicles to get into orbit, and 2 other suboptimal vehicles, I think it is a good idea to not develop any further spacecraft for putting humans into orbit. But, Boeing has good lobbyists.
I wonder how many space nutters actually work in the industry. On things other than simulated Mars colonization plans.
It accomplished sucking up enough money to kill the SCSC.
Probably very few. Anyone who works with the reality of space and the technology we actually have understands that none of the space delusions for babies from the Space Age will never, ever happen.
Dude, get over it: she's married, she's been for 15+ years now. She has three kids. She's HAPPY with him. She's not "going through a phase". And you're not "wearing her down", you'te STALKING her. Didn't that restraining order make it clear enough? Get a grip on what's left of your life before you lose it all. You can't even flip burgers with your record now.
You're not allowed to criticise anything to do with Space on slashdot. (Except NASA, because government).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it