Also, what is the US going to do for manned launches until Dragon and Dream Chaser are ready?
What was the US going to do until the Ares I was ready to launch in 2017-2019, and Ares V was ready in the 2030s? That's what we had with the old program.
It's worth noting that NASA is only able to award $50 million this year due to interference by Congress. They had initially wanted $150M in commercial seed funding, but most of this was diverted by Congress -- in particularly Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Al) -- towards the soon-to-be-cancelled Constellation project.
Toward the end of Administrator Bolden's presentation at the National Press Club (0:48:40) he mentioned that "game changing technology enables us to go to Mars in days, not months". Is this grounded in any reasonable expectation of propulsion development over even the next several decades?
As this was an off-the-cuff response to a question, I'm guessing this he misspoke. On a number of occasions though he's spoken about getting to Mars in a matter of weeks, which is potentially quite doable with technologies like VASIMR, particularly if you launch your lander and return spacecraft to Mars orbit or Phobos separately.
Billion dollar companies will buy up these small entities and we'll be back to $2billion launches in no time...
I think that's the first time I've ever heard somebody describe Boeing as a "small entity." Their Delta IV rocket can lift more payload to orbit than the Space Shuttle (and has been doing so for several years), at a price an order of magnitude lower than the Shuttle's.
You can change the NASA budget all you want, but the major impediments to commercial space launches are still the FAA and the EPA. If you can't get a license for a launch, you aren't going anywhere. And between the FAA and EPA it is almost impossible to get a license in the US.
This may have been true in the past, but in the last few years, largely thanks to the efforts of many in the space community, the regulations are much less insane than they were before. Even smaller rocketry companies like Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems get along with the FAA reasonably well.
We are never going to get out of sight with our current propellant technology. The money spent on this is a waste, like building yet another pony express station. Its time to focus in another direction.
Ack, not this again. When it comes to getting out of LEO, prices can still easily drop one or two orders of magnitude with propellant-based rockets. After all, fuel is just 1% of the cost of launching a rocket. By decreasing costs you'll grow the market, which will provide the future demand necessary for the various non-propellant technologies (space elevators, beam propulsion, whatever) to be successful.
Also, it's worth noting that when Constellation started going overbudget NASA ended up finding money by canceling most of its technology development efforts, including things like non-propellant propulsion. The idea is to bring research into those technologies back with the expanded funding of R&D.
This morning NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had a press conference where he gave more details on NASA's plans and announced the initial contracts for the $50 million commercial crew development contracts (was supposed to be $200 million, but most funding was diverted by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Al) towards Constellation). Mind that this is just for the first year, as the budget hasn't passed yet -- once the budget passes, future contracts will award a total of a few billion spread over a number of years. The video link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9YvIESqDUk
Here's my notes on the press conference:
(sorry about the heinous formatting)
Charles Bolden takes a moment to thank the Constellation team for their years of dedicated service
"We want to explore new worlds, we want to develop more innovative technologies, we want to foster new industries, and we want to increase our understanding of Earth, the solar system, and the universe."
"each awardee also proposed significant investment from other sources to leverage taxpayer investment"
Blue Origin o $3.7 million award to fund "risk mitigation activities related to its development of pusher launch escape system, and to develop a composite crew module for structural testing."
Boeing o $18 million for space transportation system which includes a 7-person capsule to launch on medium-lift expendable launch systems
Paragon o small business o has directly supported more than 70 spaceflight missions o $1.4 million for a development unit of environmental control and lift support air revitalization system
Sierra Nevada o $20 million for Dream Chaser, 7-person spacecraft to be launched on Atlas V-402 vehicle
ULA o $6.7 million for emergency detection system to monitor vehicle health of Atlas V and Delta IV rockets
they are the vanguard; certainly adding to this group in the near future
comments from presidents/reps o ULA
EDS work for commercial crew and making sure products are more reliable for all customers o Blue Origin
pusher escape system, at back of capsule to avoid jettison event, not consumed on nominal launch so it lowers operating costs
composite capsule will improve durability over conventional technology and lower weight o Boeing
principal teammate Bigelow Aerospace
Bigelow represents most probable near-term market for crew transportation to LEO other than NASA
want to satisfy both Bigelow's needs and NASA's
parallel with Bill Boeing's young company and airmail to delivering cargo and crew to ISS o Paragon
developing air revitalization system
first of its kind: a turn-key system, usable on pretty much any spacecraft
had very first commercial experiment on ISS o Sierra Nevada
developed under unfunded Space Act agreement for past two years
based on NASA's HL-20 from 20 years ago o Orbital Sciences (ongoing COTS contract)
um, talked for quite a while o SpaceX (ongoing COTS contract)
spoke about collaborations with NASA
Q&A o Do you have a destination and timetable?
tiger teams working on destinations and putting together timetables now o in-orbit refueling?
Doomed is country that is paying a lot for unemployment benefits and welfare and little for space research.
You do realize that the new budget has an additional $6 billion for NASA than it previously had, much of it dedicated to reviving research & development at NASA, right?
I can see making dissemination of nuclear rocket propulsion data illegal, but electric moon buggies? This is so dumb it's beyond words.
There's a sadly amusing anecdote from Bigelow Aerospace about this, regarding a display table for the prototype space station they launched into orbit a few years ago:
"In the spring of 2006 Robert Bigelow needed to take a stand on a trip to Russia to keep a satellite off the floor. The stand was made of aluminium. It had a circular base and legs. It was, says the entrepreneur and head of Bigelow Aerospace in Nevada, "indistinguishable from a common coffee table". Nonetheless, the American authorities told Mr Bigelow that this coffee table was part of a satellite assembly and so counted as a munition. During the trip it would have to be guarded by two security officers at all times."
All I've seen is that the manned stuff is getting defunded.
Just one particularly problem-ridden program (Constellation) is being canceled, but NASA is forging full ahead with manned spaceflight and related tech development. I have a story on it current in the submission queue:
By revitalizing tech development (most of which had been defunded to pay for Constellation) and doing things like setting up refueling stations in orbit and Lagrange points, we can make future manned exploration more sustainable.
Huh? How does an inflatable lunar habitat or an electric moon buggie qualify as an "armament"? They're not even useful (or operable) on this planet! This is just idiotic.
Yes, ITAR is quite idiotic, as it makes public discussion of many different varieties of space-related illegal. Keep in mind that this is the same ITAR which made it illegal to distribute encryption code back in the 1990s. The President said during his SOTU address that he would be attempting to reform it, but we'll see how that works out.
So if the government decides to defund manned exploration, companies like Bigelow will have no customers (again, unless they sign up the Chinese).
I'm not sure if you've read the latest news, but NASA's actually getting a decent-sized funding boost.
"If we can deploy and gang together modules in low-Earth orbit, you can do it in L1...and you are 85 percent of the way to the moon," Bigelow said. In fact, one scenario Bigelow Aerospace has already blueprinted is the soft landing of a trio of attached BA-330 modules -- including astronauts -- on the moon.
The result: instant moon base, something the size of the International Space Station, Bigelow advised. The self-propelled base could even blast itself into lunar orbit, or move from spot to spot on the moon, he said.
"We would lease those lunar facilities to our clients. That keeps the price down. If we sell something instead of lease something, the price really jumps," Bigelow said.
NASA's getting more of a budget ($6 billion over 5 years). Also, NASA will be reviving its R&D efforts, which were mostly ended to fund Ares/Constellation when it started going overbudget. Here's my recent slashdot submission below... please up-mod it if you think it's worthwhile!
"The White House and NASA have revealed in this year's budget proposal their new plans for the agency. The big news is that NASA's budget-consuming Constellation program has been cancelled, as the project was 'over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies,' and would mostly be a repetition of Apollo-era achievements with a handful of astronauts. NASA will also be getting a budget boost of $6 billion over 5 years. Technological development and testing programs will be revived and expanded, in order to develop new capabilities and make exploration activities more cost-effective with key technologies like in-orbit propellant transfer and advanced in-space propulsion. There will be a steady stream of robotic missions to perform science, scout locations, and demonstrate tech needed for future human missions. Research and development will also be done to support future heavy-lift rockets with more capacity and lower operation costs. NASA will be maximizing the return on its investment in the ISS, extending it past 2016 and deploying new reseach facilities (potentially including a long-desired centrifuge to study human physiology in space). NASA will also use commercial contracts for routine human and cargo transportation to the space station, as it already does for most unmanned missions, which will 'help create thousands of new jobs and help reduce the cost of human access to space.' More details will be provided by NASA Administrator (and former astronaut) Charles Bolden over the coming week, and then NASA has to get its plans through a potentially-hostile Congress."
What company, with several billion dollars at it's disposal, has an incentive to go to the moon or Mars? What would the incentive be?
This is pretty much what the proposal is -- having private industry focus on the well-understood problem of low-Earth orbit access, so that NASA can use its limited funds to explore the actual frontiers (i.e. Moon/Mars).
The private industry is decades away from what NASA can do today.
This is a common meme, but unfortunately quite false. Private industry has been successfully designing and building new orbital rockets for years (Delta IV, Delta IV Heavy, Atlas V, Falcon 1, Pegasus, etc.). In contrast, NASA hasn't successfully designed a new orbital rocket in ~30 years, although they've had several severe management-related failures (X-33, X-34, NLS, etc.).
Also, keep in mind that NASA already uses commercial rockets for all of its unmanned launches -- craft like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers weren't launched on NASA rockets, but on commercial Boeing Delta II Heavies.
They're never going to get us into mars, because there's simply no profit in it.
Which is precisely the reason the proposed plan is better. By letting private rockets handle the routine problem of accessing low-Earth orbit, NASA can use its limited funds to focus on actual exploration instead of rocket-building.
It's a choice between outsourcing to "small" (relatively) companies vs. outsourcing to huge corporate giants (Lockheed, Boeing, etc), which they currently do. The former should give much better pricing and innovation, at the downside of greater risk.
Actually, the important choice seems to be between monopolistic single-supplier cost-plus contracts, as are currently used, vs. fixed-price commercial contracts with multiple competitors. In the ideal scenario, you have both the small and large companies operating in parallel, and the ones who make the better product get more of (but not all of) the purchases.
i am more interested in ranting about healthcare. you have every right to now detest me, and/ or appreciate my honesty
The reason privatization has problems in healthcare is because it's something that everybody needs regardless of the price, and paying for healthcare is something that has made many people bankrupt. I don't see how any of that applies to rocket launches.
For those of you who are wondering about this and not just using it to blast Obama/dems with ever breath, then read the last 10 pages of the Direct forum. In a nut shell, Boeing, et. al. will be building Direct and offering it for commercial space. Yes, SpaceX, Orbital, and even the EELVs will have their role in space. HOWEVER, direct will now be allowed to be developed by Boeing and offered for commercial launches.
Mod parent up! This is pretty much the most interesting comment in the entire discussion.
I wonder if this is also a reason for why the United Launch Alliance (operator of EELV launches) has been pushing the (Lockheed Martin-built) Atlas V for commercial spaceflight instead of Boeing's Delta IV heavy. I wonder if the Atlas V would still try to compete with a Boeing-operated DIRECT/Jupiter, or if there would be pressure from Boeing on the ULA to withdraw the Atlas V from the commercial spaceflight market.
That was a very nice rant, but could you give some specifics on why you think NASA's current model of using single-source cost-plus contracts and keeping tight control on the design is better than the proposed model of multiple companies competing for fixed-price contracts for launch services? Keep in mind that the latter model is what NASA already uses for all of its unmanned launches -- do you think this was a bad idea?
There is in fact no difference, just an illusion of competition. What is needed is for them to remove the regulations that exist against private space travel.
One of the things mentioned in this year's SOTU address was reform of ITAR, which is one of the larger regulatory messes facing private space companies.
How are for-profit corporations going to be any faster at turning around a space vehicle than NASA?
Because in one case the design would be optimized for fast turnaround and minimizing the number of support personnel, while in the other case it's optimized for delivering as many jobs to key congressional districts as possible.
Then again, it's not like the current private spaceflight corporations have exactly been racking up the numbers of completed flights
Um... the United Launch Alliance, one of the private spaceflight corporations which will likely be competing for commercial spaceflight contracts, just launched its 36th successful mission in 36 months.
2016 for India (at a cost of $2.76 billion) seems like a long way off, but it should be noted that NASA's similarly-capable Ares I isn't expected to be ready to launch people until 2017-2019 at a cost of ~$40 billion. The Ares I has also been under development since 2005, while the Indian launch plans have just been announced.
Then again, fixed-price commercial capsules from the United Launch Alliance or SpaceX (on their already-proven rockets like the Atlas V) would be ready 2013-2015 if they received a few billion in funding, which would beat both India and NASA on schedule and be competitive with India (and be an order of magnitude less than NASA) on price.
From the summary: "Instead, NASA will be focused on terrestrial science, such as monitoring global warming."
From the actual article: "In the meantime, the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects -- principally, researching and monitoring climate change -- and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system possible. There will also be funding for private companies to develop capsules and rockets that can be used as space taxis to take astronauts on fixed-price contracts to and from the International Space Station -- a major change in the way the agency has done business for the past 50 years."
I'm ambivalent about more Earth-science projects, but IMHO bringing back tech development at NASA with a focus on exploring the inner solar system is the way to go. Not many people seem to realize this, but many/most of the technology development programs in NASA were canceled so that their funding could be diverted towards developing the problem-ridden Ares I medium-lift rocket. The mention of exploring asteroids and the inner solar system is likely a reference to a Flexible Path to Mars architecture, which builds a robust in-space architecture instead of focusing on deep gravity wells like the Moon. It's counter-intuitive, but it's actually energetically easier to travel to an asteroid or the Martian moon Phobos than it is to go to the Moon, and the infrastructure you create for doing so is more applicable to other endeavours in the inner solar system. Establishing in-space refueling depots and mining fuel/water from asteroids will go much more towards making us a spacefaring civilization than landing on the Moon again.
Finally, the emphasize on using fixed-price commercial contracts instead of cost-plus single-source contracts for traveling to Earth orbit will go a long way towards freeing up funds for beyond-Earth exploration, as commercial companies can focus on the well-understood problem of traveling to low-Earth orbit while NASA can focus on beyond.
Yep, that's brilliant. After you've already looked into a new heavy lift rocket and are in the middle of the development process, let's scrap the whole program. Then let's start a new program to look into developing a new heavy lift rocket.
Are you at all familiar with the Ares development program? It's been totally screwed up from the beginning. There are far better and less expensive architectures (like DIRECT or EELV-based) out there.
After billions of taxpayer dollars spent, what do we have with NASA? Nothing but a crappy robot stuck in the sand. Typical government incompetence. The *billions* spend on this mars rover fiasco could easily have been better spent by the private sector, who would have run this project with great speed, cost effectiveness and no doubt better results in every way. When will we ever learn that the private sector is better at space exploration (and everything else, really) than the bloated inefficient union-run government?
Nice try, but you rather failed in your anti-commercial snark attempt. Spirit and Opportunity (and several other Mars missions) were launched on a commercial Delta II rocket. The project was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is an FFRDC, meaning that unlike any of the other NASA centers (which typically produce far more mediocre work) it's staffed and managed by a non-government entity, in this case the California Institute of Technology. The post-Columbia Aldridge Commission recommended turning the other NASA centers into FFRDCs as it would encourage them to "It would revitalize innovation, work effectively with the private sector, and stimulate local economic development." Of course, this was massively opposed by certain Congressmen whose districts might receive less money under such an arrangement, and so nothing came of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, what is the US going to do for manned launches until Dragon and Dream Chaser are ready?
What was the US going to do until the Ares I was ready to launch in 2017-2019, and Ares V was ready in the 2030s? That's what we had with the old program.
It's worth noting that NASA is only able to award $50 million this year due to interference by Congress. They had initially wanted $150M in commercial seed funding, but most of this was diverted by Congress -- in particularly Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Al) -- towards the soon-to-be-cancelled Constellation project.
Toward the end of Administrator Bolden's presentation at the National Press Club (0:48:40) he mentioned that "game changing technology enables us to go to Mars in days, not months". Is this grounded in any reasonable expectation of propulsion development over even the next several decades?
As this was an off-the-cuff response to a question, I'm guessing this he misspoke. On a number of occasions though he's spoken about getting to Mars in a matter of weeks, which is potentially quite doable with technologies like VASIMR, particularly if you launch your lander and return spacecraft to Mars orbit or Phobos separately.
Billion dollar companies will buy up these small entities and we'll be back to $2billion launches in no time...
I think that's the first time I've ever heard somebody describe Boeing as a "small entity." Their Delta IV rocket can lift more payload to orbit than the Space Shuttle (and has been doing so for several years), at a price an order of magnitude lower than the Shuttle's.
You can change the NASA budget all you want, but the major impediments to commercial space launches are still the FAA and the EPA. If you can't get a license for a launch, you aren't going anywhere. And between the FAA and EPA it is almost impossible to get a license in the US.
This may have been true in the past, but in the last few years, largely thanks to the efforts of many in the space community, the regulations are much less insane than they were before. Even smaller rocketry companies like Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems get along with the FAA reasonably well.
We are never going to get out of sight with our current propellant technology. The money spent on this is a waste, like building yet another pony express station. Its time to focus in another direction.
Ack, not this again. When it comes to getting out of LEO, prices can still easily drop one or two orders of magnitude with propellant-based rockets. After all, fuel is just 1% of the cost of launching a rocket. By decreasing costs you'll grow the market, which will provide the future demand necessary for the various non-propellant technologies (space elevators, beam propulsion, whatever) to be successful.
Also, it's worth noting that when Constellation started going overbudget NASA ended up finding money by canceling most of its technology development efforts, including things like non-propellant propulsion. The idea is to bring research into those technologies back with the expanded funding of R&D.
This morning NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had a press conference where he gave more details on NASA's plans and announced the initial contracts for the $50 million commercial crew development contracts (was supposed to be $200 million, but most funding was diverted by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Al) towards Constellation). Mind that this is just for the first year, as the budget hasn't passed yet -- once the budget passes, future contracts will award a total of a few billion spread over a number of years. The video link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9YvIESqDUk
Here's my notes on the press conference:
(sorry about the heinous formatting)
Charles Bolden takes a moment to thank the Constellation team for their years of dedicated service
"We want to explore new worlds, we want to develop more innovative technologies, we want to foster new industries, and we want to increase our understanding of Earth, the solar system, and the universe."
"each awardee also proposed significant investment from other sources to leverage taxpayer investment"
Blue Origin
o $3.7 million award to fund "risk mitigation activities related to its development of pusher launch escape system, and to develop a composite crew module for structural testing."
Boeing
o $18 million for space transportation system which includes a 7-person capsule to launch on medium-lift expendable launch systems
Paragon
o small business
o has directly supported more than 70 spaceflight missions
o $1.4 million for a development unit of environmental control and lift support air revitalization system
Sierra Nevada
o $20 million for Dream Chaser, 7-person spacecraft to be launched on Atlas V-402 vehicle
ULA
o $6.7 million for emergency detection system to monitor vehicle health of Atlas V and Delta IV rockets
they are the vanguard; certainly adding to this group in the near future
comments from presidents/reps
o ULA
EDS work for commercial crew and making sure products are more reliable for all customers
o Blue Origin
pusher escape system, at back of capsule to avoid jettison event, not consumed on nominal launch so it lowers operating costs
composite capsule will improve durability over conventional technology and lower weight
o Boeing
principal teammate Bigelow Aerospace
Bigelow represents most probable near-term market for crew transportation to LEO other than NASA
want to satisfy both Bigelow's needs and NASA's
parallel with Bill Boeing's young company and airmail to delivering cargo and crew to ISS
o Paragon
developing air revitalization system
first of its kind: a turn-key system, usable on pretty much any spacecraft
had very first commercial experiment on ISS
o Sierra Nevada
developed under unfunded Space Act agreement for past two years
based on NASA's HL-20 from 20 years ago
o Orbital Sciences (ongoing COTS contract)
um, talked for quite a while
o SpaceX (ongoing COTS contract)
spoke about collaborations with NASA
Q&A
o Do you have a destination and timetable?
tiger teams working on destinations and putting together timetables now
o in-orbit refueling?
Doomed is country that is paying a lot for unemployment benefits and welfare and little for space research.
You do realize that the new budget has an additional $6 billion for NASA than it previously had, much of it dedicated to reviving research & development at NASA, right?
Should they do manned space? Environmental monitoring? Aerospace R+D? Deep space science? These all require very different infrastructure.
However, lowering launch costs, one of the main goals of the new R&D program, facilitates all of those things.
I can see making dissemination of nuclear rocket propulsion data illegal, but electric moon buggies? This is so dumb it's beyond words.
There's a sadly amusing anecdote from Bigelow Aerospace about this, regarding a display table for the prototype space station they launched into orbit a few years ago:
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2008/08/itar-coffee-tables-and-munitions.html
"In the spring of 2006 Robert Bigelow needed to take a stand on a trip to Russia to keep a satellite off the floor. The stand was made of aluminium. It had a circular base and legs. It was, says the entrepreneur and head of Bigelow Aerospace in Nevada, "indistinguishable from a common coffee table". Nonetheless, the American authorities told Mr Bigelow that this coffee table was part of a satellite assembly and so counted as a munition. During the trip it would have to be guarded by two security officers at all times."
All I've seen is that the manned stuff is getting defunded.
Just one particularly problem-ridden program (Constellation) is being canceled, but NASA is forging full ahead with manned spaceflight and related tech development. I have a story on it current in the submission queue:
http://slashdot.org/submission/1163232/New-Path-For-NASA-Revealed
By revitalizing tech development (most of which had been defunded to pay for Constellation) and doing things like setting up refueling stations in orbit and Lagrange points, we can make future manned exploration more sustainable.
Huh? How does an inflatable lunar habitat or an electric moon buggie qualify as an "armament"? They're not even useful (or operable) on this planet! This is just idiotic.
Yes, ITAR is quite idiotic, as it makes public discussion of many different varieties of space-related illegal. Keep in mind that this is the same ITAR which made it illegal to distribute encryption code back in the 1990s. The President said during his SOTU address that he would be attempting to reform it, but we'll see how that works out.
So if the government decides to defund manned exploration, companies like Bigelow will have no customers (again, unless they sign up the Chinese).
I'm not sure if you've read the latest news, but NASA's actually getting a decent-sized funding boost.
No, they should publish everything freely on the internet, since they're not going to make use of any of it.
This would likely result in jailtime under ITAR arms regulations.
Other Americans aren't going to use it either; what is some private company going to do with plans for an inflatable lunar habitat?
Um, that's actually one of Bigelow Aerospace's business markets.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/private-space-stations-bigelow-100120.html
"If we can deploy and gang together modules in low-Earth orbit, you can do it in L1...and you are 85 percent of the way to the moon," Bigelow said. In fact, one scenario Bigelow Aerospace has already blueprinted is the soft landing of a trio of attached BA-330 modules -- including astronauts -- on the moon.
The result: instant moon base, something the size of the International Space Station, Bigelow advised. The self-propelled base could even blast itself into lunar orbit, or move from spot to spot on the moon, he said.
"We would lease those lunar facilities to our clients. That keeps the price down. If we sell something instead of lease something, the price really jumps," Bigelow said.
NASA's getting more of a budget ($6 billion over 5 years). Also, NASA will be reviving its R&D efforts, which were mostly ended to fund Ares/Constellation when it started going overbudget. Here's my recent slashdot submission below... please up-mod it if you think it's worthwhile!
http://slashdot.org/submission/1163232/New-Path-For-NASA-Revealed
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/factsheet_department_nasa/
New Path For NASA Revealed
"The White House and NASA have revealed in this year's budget proposal their new plans for the agency. The big news is that NASA's budget-consuming Constellation program has been cancelled, as the project was 'over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies,' and would mostly be a repetition of Apollo-era achievements with a handful of astronauts. NASA will also be getting a budget boost of $6 billion over 5 years. Technological development and testing programs will be revived and expanded, in order to develop new capabilities and make exploration activities more cost-effective with key technologies like in-orbit propellant transfer and advanced in-space propulsion. There will be a steady stream of robotic missions to perform science, scout locations, and demonstrate tech needed for future human missions. Research and development will also be done to support future heavy-lift rockets with more capacity and lower operation costs. NASA will be maximizing the return on its investment in the ISS, extending it past 2016 and deploying new reseach facilities (potentially including a long-desired centrifuge to study human physiology in space). NASA will also use commercial contracts for routine human and cargo transportation to the space station, as it already does for most unmanned missions, which will 'help create thousands of new jobs and help reduce the cost of human access to space.' More details will be provided by NASA Administrator (and former astronaut) Charles Bolden over the coming week, and then NASA has to get its plans through a potentially-hostile Congress."
What company, with several billion dollars at it's disposal, has an incentive to go to the moon or Mars? What would the incentive be?
This is pretty much what the proposal is -- having private industry focus on the well-understood problem of low-Earth orbit access, so that NASA can use its limited funds to explore the actual frontiers (i.e. Moon/Mars).
The private industry is decades away from what NASA can do today.
This is a common meme, but unfortunately quite false. Private industry has been successfully designing and building new orbital rockets for years (Delta IV, Delta IV Heavy, Atlas V, Falcon 1, Pegasus, etc.). In contrast, NASA hasn't successfully designed a new orbital rocket in ~30 years, although they've had several severe management-related failures (X-33, X-34, NLS, etc.).
Also, keep in mind that NASA already uses commercial rockets for all of its unmanned launches -- craft like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers weren't launched on NASA rockets, but on commercial Boeing Delta II Heavies.
They're never going to get us into mars, because there's simply no profit in it.
Which is precisely the reason the proposed plan is better. By letting private rockets handle the routine problem of accessing low-Earth orbit, NASA can use its limited funds to focus on actual exploration instead of rocket-building.
It's a choice between outsourcing to "small" (relatively) companies vs. outsourcing to huge corporate giants (Lockheed, Boeing, etc), which they currently do. The former should give much better pricing and innovation, at the downside of greater risk.
Actually, the important choice seems to be between monopolistic single-supplier cost-plus contracts, as are currently used, vs. fixed-price commercial contracts with multiple competitors. In the ideal scenario, you have both the small and large companies operating in parallel, and the ones who make the better product get more of (but not all of) the purchases.
i am more interested in ranting about healthcare. you have every right to now detest me, and/ or appreciate my honesty
The reason privatization has problems in healthcare is because it's something that everybody needs regardless of the price, and paying for healthcare is something that has made many people bankrupt. I don't see how any of that applies to rocket launches.
For those of you who are wondering about this and not just using it to blast Obama/dems with ever breath,
then read the last 10 pages of the Direct forum.
In a nut shell, Boeing, et. al. will be building Direct and offering it for commercial space. Yes, SpaceX, Orbital, and even the EELVs will have their role in space. HOWEVER, direct will now be allowed to be developed by Boeing and offered for commercial launches.
Mod parent up! This is pretty much the most interesting comment in the entire discussion.
I wonder if this is also a reason for why the United Launch Alliance (operator of EELV launches) has been pushing the (Lockheed Martin-built) Atlas V for commercial spaceflight instead of Boeing's Delta IV heavy. I wonder if the Atlas V would still try to compete with a Boeing-operated DIRECT/Jupiter, or if there would be pressure from Boeing on the ULA to withdraw the Atlas V from the commercial spaceflight market.
That was a very nice rant, but could you give some specifics on why you think NASA's current model of using single-source cost-plus contracts and keeping tight control on the design is better than the proposed model of multiple companies competing for fixed-price contracts for launch services? Keep in mind that the latter model is what NASA already uses for all of its unmanned launches -- do you think this was a bad idea?
There is in fact no difference, just an illusion of competition. What is needed is for them to remove the regulations that exist against private space travel.
One of the things mentioned in this year's SOTU address was reform of ITAR, which is one of the larger regulatory messes facing private space companies.
How are for-profit corporations going to be any faster at turning around a space vehicle than NASA?
Because in one case the design would be optimized for fast turnaround and minimizing the number of support personnel, while in the other case it's optimized for delivering as many jobs to key congressional districts as possible.
Then again, it's not like the current private spaceflight corporations have exactly been racking up the numbers of completed flights
Um... the United Launch Alliance, one of the private spaceflight corporations which will likely be competing for commercial spaceflight contracts, just launched its 36th successful mission in 36 months.
2016 for India (at a cost of $2.76 billion) seems like a long way off, but it should be noted that NASA's similarly-capable Ares I isn't expected to be ready to launch people until 2017-2019 at a cost of ~$40 billion. The Ares I has also been under development since 2005, while the Indian launch plans have just been announced.
Then again, fixed-price commercial capsules from the United Launch Alliance or SpaceX (on their already-proven rockets like the Atlas V) would be ready 2013-2015 if they received a few billion in funding, which would beat both India and NASA on schedule and be competitive with India (and be an order of magnitude less than NASA) on price.
From the summary: "Instead, NASA will be focused on terrestrial science, such as monitoring global warming."
From the actual article: "In the meantime, the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects -- principally, researching and monitoring climate change -- and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system possible. There will also be funding for private companies to develop capsules and rockets that can be used as space taxis to take astronauts on fixed-price contracts to and from the International Space Station -- a major change in the way the agency has done business for the past 50 years."
I'm ambivalent about more Earth-science projects, but IMHO bringing back tech development at NASA with a focus on exploring the inner solar system is the way to go. Not many people seem to realize this, but many/most of the technology development programs in NASA were canceled so that their funding could be diverted towards developing the problem-ridden Ares I medium-lift rocket. The mention of exploring asteroids and the inner solar system is likely a reference to a Flexible Path to Mars architecture, which builds a robust in-space architecture instead of focusing on deep gravity wells like the Moon. It's counter-intuitive, but it's actually energetically easier to travel to an asteroid or the Martian moon Phobos than it is to go to the Moon, and the infrastructure you create for doing so is more applicable to other endeavours in the inner solar system. Establishing in-space refueling depots and mining fuel/water from asteroids will go much more towards making us a spacefaring civilization than landing on the Moon again.
Finally, the emphasize on using fixed-price commercial contracts instead of cost-plus single-source contracts for traveling to Earth orbit will go a long way towards freeing up funds for beyond-Earth exploration, as commercial companies can focus on the well-understood problem of traveling to low-Earth orbit while NASA can focus on beyond.
Yep, that's brilliant. After you've already looked into a new heavy lift rocket and are in the middle of the development process, let's scrap the whole program. Then let's start a new program to look into developing a new heavy lift rocket.
Are you at all familiar with the Ares development program? It's been totally screwed up from the beginning. There are far better and less expensive architectures (like DIRECT or EELV-based) out there.
After billions of taxpayer dollars spent, what do we have with NASA? Nothing but a crappy robot stuck in the sand. Typical government incompetence. The *billions* spend on this mars rover fiasco could easily have been better spent by the private sector, who would have run this project with great speed, cost effectiveness and no doubt better results in every way. When will we ever learn that the private sector is better at space exploration (and everything else, really) than the bloated inefficient union-run government?
Nice try, but you rather failed in your anti-commercial snark attempt. Spirit and Opportunity (and several other Mars missions) were launched on a commercial Delta II rocket. The project was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is an FFRDC, meaning that unlike any of the other NASA centers (which typically produce far more mediocre work) it's staffed and managed by a non-government entity, in this case the California Institute of Technology. The post-Columbia Aldridge Commission recommended turning the other NASA centers into FFRDCs as it would encourage them to "It would revitalize innovation, work effectively with the private sector, and stimulate local economic development." Of course, this was massively opposed by certain Congressmen whose districts might receive less money under such an arrangement, and so nothing came of it.