Dramatic Changes Ahead for NASA
The end of January has some deadly anniversaries for NASA. January 27 was the 43rd anniversary of the death of three astronauts on the launch pad in the Apollo I fire. January 28 was the 24th anniversary of the Challenger loss, which traumatized a generation of schoolchildren now in their thirties and early forties. They sat in their schoolrooms and watched it get torn apart live on television with Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space, aboard. And Monday, February 1, will be the anniversary of the Columbia’s tragic breakup over the skies of Texas, also killing all aboard.
While the Challenger event caused people to question continuing the shuttle program in the eighties, the Columbia loss was the last straw, which ultimately determined that the program would have to come to a close. That decision was made a little less than a year afterward, on January 14, 2004, when President Bush announced a new space policy called the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE).
Part of that plan was that the shuttle would be retired in 2010 after completion of the International Space Station (ISS), and eventually replaced to some degree by a new “crew exploration vehicle,” though there would be a gap of two or three years between the last shuttle flight and the operations of the new system.
Unfortunately, the crew exploration vehicle (now called Orion) and the launcher that NASA decided to develop to deliver it to orbit, the Ares I, are far behind schedule and vastly over budget. There are a lot of technical issues remaining, which means that the “gap” between the end of shuttle operations and the initial operations of its ostensible “replacement” has grown to at least seven years, according to the Augustine panel report released last fall.
And now that 2010 has arrived, some defenders of the shuttle, such as Florida Congressman Bill Posey, are fighting a rear-guard action to extend it (primarily over concern about the lost jobs), with the only existing alternative to rely on the Russians for human access to the ISS for however many years it takes until either NASA or private industry comes up with a home-grown solution.
Unfortunately for them, such an extension is unrealistic. The manufacturing lines for expendable parts (such as the external tank) have been shut down for some time now, and restarting them would cost years and billions. And there are only three vehicles left, a bare minimum to sustain operations, with a cost (again) of years and billions to build any more. So if the program is extended, it would only have a few flights left, and slowing the flight rate to once per year, simply to maintain the capability, might increase the risk as the workers forget jobs that are done so seldom. There is an optimal flight rate for cost and safety, and that would be far below it.
In any event, the administration has tipped its hand as to its plans for the future of NASA human space flight. Administrator Charles Bolden of NASA is scheduled to discuss them with the space community, at least in broad outline, on Monday (just coincidentally the seventh anniversary of the Columbia disaster). Some speculated that the president would make an announcement in the State of the Union address, but that didn’t happen. The Orlando Sentinel reported on Tuesday that Constellation, including the Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles, will be canceled, along with any specific plans to return to the moon.
Such an apparent retrenchment would not be something that the administration would want to highlight so publicly, even if it’s sound policy. And it’s hardly a surprise, given the budget difficulties pointed out by the Augustine panel last year. Those budget difficulties will only become worse, particularly with the administration’s announcement in the past few days of a planned freeze on non-defense discretionary spending. NASA is less than one percent of the total federal budget, but it’s a much larger percentage of that part of it over which the administration actually has some control.
Finally we have a president with sound priorities. NASA has long been a socio-political construct of white men with Euro-centric imperialist ambitions to conquer space.
Personally, me thinks NASA should be shooting for the stars (and moon, again) and leave the low orbit stuff to the private entities you mention. The next big technology leaps to go farther in space will require government funding – Richard Branson is rich, but not that rich.
I think this image that was posted a couple days ago pretty much sums up the way I feel and I’m sure a lot of others.
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/01/climate-scientists-obama-kill-space-exploration-for-america-global-warming-steals-a-nations-soul.html
The space agency will give up plans to go to the moon and concentrate instead on uninspiring low risk money draining same-same endeavors.
There – fixed that for you.
This was forecast decades ago when NASA shifted focus from manned space flights to robotic probes. With no men involved, there was no excitement. Nobody gets fired up over toaster ovens orbiting Mars. If it were men orbiting Mars, we would still have a space program instead of an enormous hole being filled with money.
Scientists have only themselves to blame.
The space program produced trillions in economic development. Microprocessors, cell phones, the list is to long to do here. Unfortunately, NASA never really advertised the economic offshoots of the space program.
So now we see if the USA can exploit space thru capitalism. First we need a POTUS that doesn’t hate capitalism and isn’t working hard to destroy it.
$787 Billion dollars for something or another…but the F-22 and Constellation program get cancelled.
This is just a part, but a rather big part, of the reengineering of America from powerful and prosperous to dying and decadent.
This is the folly of weakness as a religion. This is Obama.
NASA has an illustrious past, but their recent participation in the global warming scam has tarred their image. (PJ article by Joseph D’Aleo) I’m not sure an agency that has betrayed science should be trusted with any type of research.
At some time in the distant future, if mankind even makes it to the distant future, the texts will be full of notes about the 20th Century age of space exploration and the climax of the greatest of the competitors the United States of America’s effort climaxed and then halted with an astronaut named Eugene Cernnan closing the door on the Lunar Excursion Module in 1972. It will then relate in the next few paragraphs how the mighty United States turned strangely inward, at the height of greatness and the door step of eternity the nation turned to gaze at its navel. It fretted over what it could never solve, and by the early 21st century in a fit of national suicide walked away from space to leave it to corporate interests.
No American ever landed on any other planetary body again. India, China and the Russian Empire stretched into space, colonized the moon, and sent explorers to Mars. Meanwhile the US merely dissolved into squabbling factions, lacking the national cohesion to be much more than a side bar pretenter and dreamer.
Obama is murdering the US Space program. He is starving it of initiative, value, and purpose. He is doing it for self-centered and short sighted political gain.
The nations that will leapfrog us to the next two stages of exploration, the Moon colonization, and the trips to Mars, seem to understand what is necessary regardless of the dicey nature of their national governments.
The fantasy that corporations will spend the immense capital to invest in risky exploration with no lines to direct capital return is Utopian drivel. Most corporations have now exhausted the profitable usefulness of space. They have no interests in going there. There is nothing to be gained for them or their shareholders in any lifetime that matters to them.
Exploration of the unknown is a sovereign, not a corporate act. The One has no interest in the concept of national sovereignty and has once again proven it by foreclosing sovereignty’s boldest act, to go THERE because it is THERE.
Who knew as I sat on the floor of our quarters at Fort Monroe in the cooling evening sea breeze of July 20, 1969 that my family and I would witness the climax of American greatness?
Sad.
The Mighty Fahvaag
I agree with Nandie. This is a national shame. We will voluntarily be taking a back seat to China, Russia, India and Japan in the years ahead, and why? So Obama can piss away the nation’s wealth on his social programs!
Look at how much has been spent on “The Great Society” since the mid-60s and compare that to what has been spent on the space program since the mid-60s. Which program has borne fruit? To redirect the space program of the United States of America to the role of a very high tech weather balloon is an outrage!
The Obama administration can squander $800 billion on a stimulus bill which has done nothing but serve as payoff for political allies. Hell, we can blow $3 billion on a cash for clunkers program. But we can’t fund our own space program with an eye to the future?
Three years is looking like an eternity…and it may be “forever” for NASA.
This is the first of many surrenders for US dominance in the world. We have become Britain.
NASA is a government agency like the DMV. Politicians and bureaucrats are deciding the best way to explore space. Or rather: Politicians and bureaucrats are deciding the best way to increase their campaign coffers and government salaries. Efficient use of resources and maintaining a reasonable ROI is not in their top 100 of priorities.
Dramatic Changes Ahead for NASA
And about time; “NASA delenda est” (TagLine?)
but politics is the art of the possible,
and half a loaf is better than no bread.
Hopefully one of the first changes will be
a discrediting of NASA’s propaganda points,
including the one about how only certificated
experts can understand why LEO launches are
so technically difficult and extremely expensive.
Next: “Difficulty is proportional to Distance”
Per Heinlein: “Once you are in LEO, you are halfway to anywhere.”
Last point: Space exploration is fine for National Geographic;
Space _Exploitation_ by for-profit private enterprise is for
the rest of us, who need to encourage entrepreneurs to generate
all the new wealth they can, to help pay off our astronomical debts.
Alice: Go back to your restaurant, and take Bob, Carol and Ted with you!!
Going to the Moon should be much more like taking a flight from Boston to LA. Yes, it is very different, but the experience for the traveller should be made much the same.
This is something NASA and by extension Government can never do.
NASA is why we have no colonies on the Moon. NASA is why we have no hotels, factories, and colonies in orbit.
NASA is the problem. It should be disbanded.
How do we colonize the Solar System?
It’s easy. Capitalism. People will swarm all over the Solar System if they can make money off it. Start with tourism. That will evolve into permanent habitation. Once off-Earth economies are born they will grow and spread. Investors on Earth and the rest of us do not need products or services from Space in order to make investing in Space a good choice. What’s needed is a link to a prosperous SS Economy. What could that be? Stocks, loans, etc.
The meme that the Federal Government is the Nation is the root of this problem. Get rid of NASA and let free people replace it with what should have been there all along.
Space Exploration is more than just economics, it’s hope and inspiration
Obama is the ultimate disgrace.
no hope. no inspiration.
Obama brings change I don’t want and I do not believe in.
I hear they are selling the shuttles off cheap,why not fly one up there loaded with supplies/solar panels and such?
Dock it to the station and leave it there for storage experiments etc? a cheap addition to the ISS,
Bob
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hey, politics, engineers, scientists, why are you lose your time?
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you already have the solution to your problems!
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just look towards this side!
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there is only ONE person in the world that has…
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said that the Ares-1 was “too expensive”… in 2005…
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proposed the RIGHT shuttle-derived rocket (the FAST-SLV aka Ares-5-lite) in 2006…
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said that the 5-segments SRB can’t work… in 2006…
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said that the Ares-1 can’t fly… in 2007…
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etc. etc. etc.
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yes, he isn’t american… but, who cares?
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you just need to give away a retired Shuttle to have the solutions to your problems…
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too much?
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no, it’s less than 1% of the money burned by NASA to (only) add a 5th segment to the SRB…
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do you REALLY want to SAVE the Constellation and Moon program?
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do you REALLY want to CUT the US spaceflight GAP?
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if the answer is YES then read this article: http://ow.ly/10hxl
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Too bad there isn’t a clean and safe energy source on the moon. Then maybe Obambam might want to spend tax payers dollars on NASA instead of stupid green jobs. OH WAIT THERE IS. Check out the link.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=is-moons-sci-fi-vision-of-lunar-hel-2009-06-12
Vindico Libertas:
This is the first of many surrenders for US dominance in the world. We have become Britain.
Jan 30, 2010 – 10:16 am
Britain exhausted herself fighting two world wars, and arguably saved Western Civilization in the bargain. We, on the other hand, are cutting our own throat in the name of political correctness.
This statement is just simply wrong:
“. . .the Challenger loss, which traumatized a generation of schoolchildren now in their thirties and early forties.”
I worked at the Space Center in Range Operations when Challenger blew up. The next day the local school kids in Titusville, Melbourne, etc., were telling what they considered jokes. One of the milder ones went like this: “Christa McAuliffe was asked by her husband if she’d take a bath at home before her flight and she said “No, you go ahead and shower and I’ll wash ashore.”
It’s the parents projecting trauma onto the kids. They were effected but hardly as described. It’s the same with the Pearl Harbor, JFK’s killing, ML King’s killing and 9/11. Only a very few were unable to cope (which is the definition of traumatized). The kids almost immediately coped and integrated the experience into their lives. Thankfully, we’re simply not that fragile.
What NASA really needs to do is to clean out the nest of vipers at it’s GISS facilities and purge itself of scientists that are practising politics instead of science.
A trillion for absolutely nothing but no funding for exploration and space science. Obama’s not the Antichrist, he’s the Antikennedy.
Let it be known that there is no one alive who has ever disliked the very idea of a “President Hussein” and his “Democrap” minions being in control of the government of this once-great nation than me! That being said, I have never agreed with the waste, fraud, and national abuse that NASA perpetrated on this country for the last few decades. The long saga of flag-waving justification by government bureaucrats at NASA and their cohort of shills to continue throwing billions of dollars at circus-show projects needed to end sometime. Let it happen now!
The next big step is to bring an end to the “national greatness” malarkey that has been used to justify squandering trillions of dollars using the US military as a backstop police force and gaggle of social workers to the entire world for the past sixty years.
It would seem that nothing short of national bankruptcy could shake the belief in this folly. And we are almost there.
The Mighty Fahvaag took the words out of my mouth – well said!
We may never become Britian, but we sure could become Pakistan…
Evidently, the author dislikes manned space travel despite his prior qualifications – surely he sits beside those who say all this would have happened anyway so there was no need for us to spend the money in the first place – if you can follow that ‘logic’. Or like Alice above who disagrees with most everyone and everything not her.
Drama Queen Changes Ahead for NASA
And about time; NASA needs to be destroyed.
but politics is the art of the possible,
and half a loaf is better than no bread.
Hopefully one of the first changes will be
a discrediting of NASA’s propaganda points,
including the one about how only certificated
experts can understand why LEO launches are
so technically difficult and extremely expensive.
Next: “Difficulty is proportional to Distance”
Per Heinlein: “Once you are in LEO, you are halfway to anywhere.”
Last point: Space exploration is fine for National Geographic;
Space _Exploitation_ by for-profit private enterprise is for
the rest of us, who need to encourage entrepreneurs to generate
all the new wealth they can, to help pay off our astronomical debts.
True
But also remember what Heinlein said about railroads.
As I’ve mentioned in the pass I currently do work for NASA at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, as such I’m of two minds on this.
First off I’m the guy who sends the signals up and down to those “toasters” around Mars (like that description BTW). My station is one of only three world wide designed to track any spacecraft outside of earth orbit. As such I was jazzed about any talk of going back to the moon, so Obmama killing that program annoys me.
On the other hand I know first hand how poorly NASA is managed, and as such everyone working under it (like myself). I personally believe that private industry will be the ones to push us into space on a more permanent level and if Obama’s pullback of NASA from Manned flight opens the door for Priavate industry to do it’s thing more’s the better!
So yeah I’m very conflicted on this, but at the same time I think this is hilarious stupid since he’s basically saving pennies while spending thousands.
While NASA’s Apollo moon missions may have made us all feel good to be Americans, they provided very little tangible benefits for the amount of taxpayer dollars spent. The Space Shuttle and Space Station were even worse investments of taxpayer money. Another moon mission would be more of the same.
The country would be better served if NASA would abandon its fascination with multi-billion dollar, interplanetary boondoggles that provide no real benefit for earthbound taxpayers. And instead focused on more mundane objectives such as improving the safety, cost and reliability of air travel. Imagine if NASA spent the $4 billion annual Space Shuttle budget on reducing airport delays instead? Every American taxpayer would benefit from that. No taxpayers really benefit from another Space Shuttle launch.
Obama’s cancellation of the constellation program is an unqualified disaster. Yes, NASA is a bureaucracy. Yes, it has misspent billions over the years. Yes, it could outsource lift to the private sector. But NASA’s importance in building our national pride and our national reputation is incalculable. I’m at a loss for words to describe my contempt for those like President Obama who can’t understand why this is important. JFK understood: “We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” That is what America’s motto used to be. Now it is simply: “Let’s be dollar wise and yuan foolish.”
There are thousands of pages of listings detailing all the thing that the Space Program brought into everyday life, riff raff. Try googling it.
I agree with several of the above speakers- India and China will take over in space. I’ve already written as much in a short story for my sci-fi work. Too bad it is proving out, but then a lot of sci-fi oft times does prove out.
Now, if you will excuse me, I am going hunting for some blackelk, before it speaks again.
@ 20. M@rk: Obama as Anti-Kennedy
Still longing for Camelot ?
JFK was offered three options for the Moon Race;
He chose the cheapest one, which got Apollo
to the moon, winning the Space Race and making
Kennedy’s political brownie point, and then _stopped_.
NASA had a perfectly good Saturn 5 Stack left over;
They chopped it up and put the pieces out front
as a lawn ornament: NASA must be destroyed.
Regarding 1; Of course NASA is socio political construct of predominantly white men, who else would go to the moon, except maybe mad dogs Englishmen? You shouldn’t bemoan the people who brought you the medium, the Internet, that allows to you pitch a bit… If it were not for those white male social constructs you couldn’t enjoy those new and improved maxi I-pads. Capitalism, forever meeting the needs of the ingrates.
Don, I’m gonna give her the second barrel.
If it wasn’t for white men, she would be sitting in a cave, scratching her fleas. A COLD cave. 99% of the human race’s technological progress can be laid at the feet of white men. Look around the room you are in and pick out an object then google it. You will find a white man involved in the invention, creation and manufacture of that object.
I read where 7,000 NASA workers will be out of a job when the shuttle program ends. Apparently those NASA workers are not unionized.