Budget cut for NASA?
Pat Flannery
Orion in LEO:
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/11/is-there-a-10-b.html
Pat
David Spain
NASA will be lucky to get Ares-I and Orion.
Maybe NASA will be re-directed to the COTS approach and contract
launch services with a man-rated the Dragon capsule?
Would Obama consider spining off ISS services to a quasi-public
corporation ala Amtrak and move NASA over to being more like
its NACA predecessor?
Dave
eatfastnoodle
whatever form it might take, the ISS still needs a boat load of money
to operate, money that neither the administration nor the congress is
willing to provide. I simply don't see anybody other than the
government to pick up such a large, from a business point of view,
unprofitable tab.
Pat Flannery
> Maybe NASA will be re-directed to the COTS approach and contract
> launch services with a man-rated the Dragon capsule?
It certainly does make a major opening for the COTS approach to things.
>
> Would Obama consider spining off ISS services to a quasi-public
> corporation ala Amtrak and move NASA over to being more like
> its NACA predecessor?
It would be great if that could happen, but NASA seems so dysfunctional
at the moment that it might be better to just kill it and start over
with something new.
About the only part of it that still does competent work is JPL and its
unmanned space probes. The rest of it is a bloated and unfocused mess
that seems primarily designed to ship tax dollars to as many
congressional districts, universities, and aerospace companies as
possible so they can develop technologies that aren't really needed at
the moment for any promulgated aerospace mission.
Pat
Pat Flannery
> On Nov 17, 3:50 pm,
>
> to operate, money that neither the administration nor the congress is
> willing to provide. I simply don't see anybody other than the
> government to pick up such a large, from a business point of view,
> unprofitable tab.
Its funding is probably secure till 2015, but I doubt there is much
chance it will go beyond that, although Russia wants to keep it up till
2020, and ESA and JAXA don't seem adverse to that idea either...if it
can be done at a fairly low cost.
A possible wild card was added today with Obama saying there is going to
be US/Chinese cooperation in space:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10399964-76.html
Shenzhou should be able to be modified to dock with the ISS without much
trouble, but the very low Chinese launch rate up to the moment makes one
wonder if they would consider that worth the effort and money to do even
if the ISS were to be kept up till 2020.
Pat
Brian Thorn
wrote:
>About the only part of it that still does competent work is JPL and its
>unmanned space probes.
How far is Curiosity overbudget and behind schedule again?
Brian
David Spain
> David Spain wrote:
>> Maybe NASA will be re-directed to the COTS approach and contract
>> launch services with a man-rated the Dragon capsule?
>
> It certainly does make a major opening for the COTS approach to things.
>
>>
>> Would Obama consider spining off ISS services to a quasi-public
>> corporation ala Amtrak and move NASA over to being more like
>> its NACA predecessor?
>
> It would be great if that could happen, but NASA seems so dysfunctional at the
> moment that it might be better to just kill it and start over with something
> new.
There is a possible precedent. If United Space Alliance or its equiv. would
accept a money-losing contract to support the ISS using a COTS launcher and
capsule, with the difference made up by the govt, that would be one way around
the ISS support dilemma and would perhaps be a more efficient way to directly
fund ISS support w/o the overhead of NASA centers not directly involved in ISS
ops.
Those NASA centers better find a good reason to exist if/when the NACA
conversion happens.
Dave
Pat Flannery
>> About the only part of it that still does competent work is JPL and its
>> unmanned space probes.
>
> How far is Curiosity overbudget and behind schedule again?
They did botch it with that one, but that was because they got carried
away with making it into some sort of atomic super rover rather than
just a step up from the MER's.
It was also dumb to just build one MSL and have all their eggs in one
basket if it crashes on landing.
Still, compared to NASA's manned efforts since the Shuttle, the unmanned
spacecraft have been doing very well indeed - with the MER's ranking
right up there with the Voyagers as our most successful spacecraft ever.
Pat
Brian Thorn
wrote:
>Brian Thorn wrote:
>>> About the only part of it that still does competent work is JPL and its
>>> unmanned space probes.
>>
>> How far is Curiosity overbudget and behind schedule again?
>
>They did botch it with that one,
...and Mars Observer, Mars Polar Lander, Mars Climate Orbiter, and
Genesis...
Brian
BradGuth
The USAF could easily take over, as should have been in charge to
begin with.
We're already told less than 1% of the truth as is, so what's the
difference if it were run by our USAF?
~ BG
BradGuth
Make it 50/50 USAF/private.
~ BG
David Spain
>
> Make it 50/50 USAF/private.
>
For the ISS that doesn't sound like a good idea and sets
a bad precedent. Esp. if one of the international partners
decides to do the same...
Like WWI aerial observers, how long before someone starts toting
a side arm and then here we go again!
Dave
Joseph Nebus
It really stands out, doesn't it, how in the past twenty years
something like one out of every three unmanned space probes has failed,
when in the years before 1990 something like two out of every three such
attempts succeeded instead.
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pat Flannery
>> Brian Thorn wrote:
>>>> About the only part of it that still does competent work is JPL and its
>>>> unmanned space probes.
>>> How far is Curiosity overbudget and behind schedule again?
>> They did botch it with that one,
>
> ...and Mars Observer, Mars Polar Lander, Mars Climate Orbiter, and
> Genesis...
Overall though, their success rate is running around 80%.
A lot of the above flops were due to Goldin's "Better, Faster, Cheaper"
approach, which, as many have said, means: "pick any two of the above".
They learned the hard way about the problems with that approach, and
pulled the MERs in on a pretty low budget versus the results they got
from them.
I would have much preferred to see some more MERs rather than MSL, as I
think you would get more overall data that way for your money and we now
know that their landing system works and the rovers are very tough indeed.
In comparison, the manned efforts since Shuttle have been a great
example of how to spend a huge amount of money for zero return, as
spacecraft after spacecraft is either proposed (or even gets started in
construction) only to get its plug pulled a couple of years later.
A good example of that is Orion.
They decided to base the return capsule shape on the Apollo CM, despite
the fact that the wide heatshield made the Apollo CM very heavy for its
internal volume (the whole three-module Soyuz spacecraft weighed around
the same as the Apollo CM, while boasting more internal volume for the
crew between the orbital and reentry modules).
If they had gone with the Soyuz gumdrop-shape for the Orion CM, they
might well have been able to house everything in it they wanted to
within their original weight estimates,* and avoided all the performance
shortfall problems with the Ares 1 booster they ran into once the weight
of the finished Orion became obvious.
But that fact, which should have been figured out a couple weeks into
the design process, was never addressed; and everything started to
unravel due to the slavish devotion of doing things the way they were
done during Apollo to "simplify" the design process and "save time and
money".
* Or made a Orion that you could launch on a Delta IV Heavy or Atlas V
Heavy.
Pat
Pat Flannery
>
> Like WWI aerial observers, how long before someone starts toting
> a side arm and then here we go again!
That already happened back during the Soviet Almaz program, when the
Salyut 3 space station was equipped with a cannon.
Pat
BradGuth
50/50 is what makes that notion impossible. Half public owned means
that policy and rules apply, unlike our kosher approved SEC whereas
anything goes as long as you're Jewish and support Republicans.
What is it about 9/11 that you think wasn't caused and/or allowed by
our government that never polices its own kind unless PR gets past the
point of no return?
At least at 50/50, one or the other might put a stop to whatever bad
ideas before it was too late. As it is, we're only allowed to know a
fraction of the whole truth, if that much.
~ BG
Pat Flannery
> It really stands out, doesn't it, how in the past twenty years
> something like one out of every three unmanned space probes has failed,
> when in the years before 1990 something like two out of every three such
> attempts succeeded instead.
It took me a second to catch that...that was pretty damn clever. :-D
Pat
David Spain
> 50/50 is what makes that notion impossible.
Which 50/50 partner? Smith or Wesson? Sturm or Ruger?
Bazalt or Degtyarev? Izhevsk or Tula?
Seriously, I don't see what the USAF gains with the ISS
that it could have for far less $$$ other ways.
The concept of manned milsats seems overly complex
for the missions at hand. Then there is the question of
what happens in times of tension. I'll coin a new
noun for this, call it 'provocativity'. It's one thing
to FOBS out a spy sat, its a whole nuther ball game
when its a manned spy station.
Dave
eatfastnoodle
It doesn't matter. Chinese made it loud and clear, if you carefully
review Chinese literature/newspaper, that they wanted to build their
own, might be much smaller initially, but nonetheless their own, space
station. I seriously don't think the whole "let's Chinese pick up the
tab" has any kind of realistic chance of happening, do you think
they're stupid? Paying money out of their pocket for NASA while the US
could still treat it as if it's American property?
Pat Flannery
> BradGuth <brad...@gmail.com> writes:
> The concept of manned milsats seems overly complex
> for the missions at hand.
That's what the USAF figured out in regards to its MOL program before
the MOL/KH-10 got built, and the Soviets figured out after they had
flown a couple of Almaz reconsat station missions (Salyuts 3 and 5).
The only real advantage you get over a unmanned reconsat is that the
crew can look for targets of opportunity to photograph on the surface of
the Earth, and for that you pay a huge weight penalty in regards to the
quarters and life support systems the crew needs to inhabit the station,
as well as needing more launches to exchange crews and bring up more
supplies for them.
All the weight for housing a crew could be weight given over to a much
more capable reconnaissance system with greater capabilities (IR and
multispectral filtering, etc.) and better photographic resolution via a
larger diameter mirror.
This became doubly obvious with the increasing degree of automation made
possible by advances in electronics and computing, and the ability to
transmit images generated by CCDs to the ground in a encoded form rather
than photographing them on film and having to recover the film from
orbit somehow.
Pat
Pat Flannery
>
> It doesn't matter. Chinese made it loud and clear, if you carefully
> review Chinese literature/newspaper, that they wanted to build their
> own, might be much smaller initially, but nonetheless their own, space
> station.
You aren't kidding about it being "much smaller"; I had assumed that
they were going to launch something around the size of the Russian
Salyut stations, but the artwork of their first station design shows
that it will only be around the size of a Shenzhou spacecraft:
http://www.thespacereview.com/archive/1231b.jpg
http://www.onepennysheet.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/473a.jpg
...and they are effectivly going to build something the Soviets planned
and rejected in favor of the Almaz/Salyut stations, that being the Soyuz
OIS:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/soyuz7ks.htm
They are awfully limited at the moment in what they can do because of
the payload capabilities of their CZ-2F booster.
Pat
BradGuth
> BradGuth <bradg...@gmail.com> writes:
> > 50/50 is what makes that notion impossible.
>
> Which 50/50 partner? Smith or Wesson? Sturm or Ruger?
> Bazalt or Degtyarev? Izhevsk or Tula?
>
> Seriously, I don't see what the USAF gains with the ISS
> that it could have for far less $$$ other ways.
I agree, as in ten fold better ways, but unless we dump ISS into the
Pacific ocean, we're kinda stuck with keeping it going.
>
> The concept of manned milsats seems overly complex
> for the missions at hand. Then there is the question of
> what happens in times of tension. I'll coin a new
> noun for this, call it 'provocativity'. It's one thing
> to FOBS out a spy sat, its a whole nuther ball game
> when its a manned spy station.
>
> Dave
Spys are all expendables, especially those working as double agents.
If they so happen to be sitting in ISS or some other manned spysat,
they're fair game (so to speak).
~ BG
BradGuth
> David Spain wrote:
Robo spys are just the ticket, at not 10% the unit mass and they
function as rad-hard 24/7, as well as the don't consume 1% the all-
inclusive energy and resources. That's a 1000:1 advantage right off
the bat.
~ BG
Brian Thorn
wrote:
>Overall though, their success rate is running around 80%.
Shuttle's is 98%. Exactly how 80% is competent and 98% isn't, I don't
quite understand.
>A lot of the above flops were due to Goldin's "Better, Faster, Cheaper"
>approach,
Irrelevant. A flop is a flop. If you're going to excuse mission
failures because of their budgets/design philosophy, we can play that
game with the manned side and aeronautics as well.
>In comparison, the manned efforts since Shuttle have been a great
>example of how to spend a huge amount of money for zero return,
X-30 (zero return might be an exaggeration, but it was a debacle)
X-33 (sort of, more RLV than manned program at that stage)
X-38 CRV (lifeboat concept, wasn't a huge amount of money)
OSP (morphed into Orion, still in progress.)
>spacecraft after spacecraft is either proposed (or even gets started in
>construction) only to get its plug pulled a couple of years later.
>A good example of that is Orion.
I must have missed Orion's cancellation. Cite?
>They decided to base the return capsule shape on the Apollo CM, despite
>the fact that the wide heatshield made the Apollo CM very heavy for its
>internal volume (the whole three-module Soyuz spacecraft weighed around
>the same as the Apollo CM, while boasting more internal volume for the
>crew between the orbital and reentry modules).
And an additional critical seperation event during entry, which has
already killed a crew and damn near killed a second. Plus Apollo has
far greater hypersonic lift, and Orion is primarily meant to come back
from the Moon.
>If they had gone with the Soyuz gumdrop-shape for the Orion CM, they
>might well have been able to house everything in it they wanted to
>within their original weight estimates,* and avoided all the performance
>shortfall problems with the Ares 1 booster they ran into once the weight
>of the finished Orion became obvious.
Orion is not NASA's problem, Ares I is. The original SSME Ares I
wouldn't have had the performance problems the current bastardization
does. Note that Orion's diet began almost instantly after Ares I went
to J-2X and FSB.
>* Or made a Orion that you could launch on a Delta IV Heavy or Atlas V
>Heavy.
Definitely, but NASA wasn't allowed to choose it. The authorization
bill explicitly says use Space Shuttle infrastructure to the greatest
extent possible. NASA's mistake was trying to make Ares I work without
SSME, instead of moving to something like DIRECT and just calling it
"Ares II".
Brian
Greg D. Moore (Strider)
news:EMGdnfb69p-pkJnW...@posted.northdakotatelephone...
w/o drugs, the common cold took a week and a half to two weeks to get over.
With drugs, it only lasted 10-14 days.
--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.
Greg D. Moore (Strider)
> They decided to base the return capsule shape on the Apollo CM, despite
> the fact that the wide heatshield made the Apollo CM very heavy for its
> internal volume (the whole three-module Soyuz spacecraft weighed around
> the same as the Apollo CM, while boasting more internal volume for the
> crew between the orbital and reentry modules).
I've always objected to that particular line of thought. I mean a tube 50m
long and .5m in diameter may have more internal volume, it's not very
useful.
From the impression I've gotten, the Soyuz may have more room, it's still
very cramped.
Pat Flannery
>
> From the impression I've gotten, the Soyuz may have more room, it's still
> very cramped.
The orbital module is pretty roomy, the reentry module is pretty
cramped, as the whole intention was to make it just big enough for the
crew to squeeze into for ascent or reentry to keep the weight of the
heatshield down by keeping its diameter small.
From a volume vs. weight viewpoint the closer you can approach a sphere
the better (and of course a sphere is also great from a pressurization
viewpoint).
The Soyuz reentry module gets a lot closer to a sphere* than the Apollo
CM ever did, and the orbital module is basically a sphere.
* In fact, NASA originally thought there was a spherical Voskhod capsule
lurking inside of the Soyuz reentry module:
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4209/p102.htm
Pat
George Orwell
> This would pretty much end Constellation and even kill off Ares and
> Orion in LEO:
> http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/11/is-there-a-10-b.html
>
If this really goes ahead and the U.S. starts joined exploration with
China it will truly mark the end of the U.S. as the dominant
Superpower. I mean, why would you help a rival (antagonist or not) to
gain parity in something which is the DEFINITIVE example of American
technological supremacy?
The U.S. has completely LOST its way and has its priorities completely
mixed up. Spending almost $1 Trillion (!) on a war (Iraq) which has
resulted in NOTHING substantial except a regime change. Yet $15 billion
is too much for the space program?!
If the U.S. has spend that $1 Trillion on the space program we could
have had a permanent base on Mars, the Moon and would have started
terraforming both Mars and Venus. Space tourism would have resulted in
thousands of U.S. jobs and countless billions in profits.
The demise of the U.S. will be the demise of the West in general and
could lead to more countries (even countries that previously aligned
themselves with the West) moving towards a dictatorial capitalist
system. They'll argue that as long as the economy is growing, people
will accept a totalitarian regime.
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BradGuth
> "Pat Flannery" <flan...@daktel.com> wrote in message
>
> news:MK6dnfJ0h54QSJ_W...@posted.northdakotatelephone...
>
> > This would pretty much end Constellation and even kill off Ares and
> > Orion in LEO:
> >http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/11/is-there-a-10-b.html
>
> If this really goes ahead and the U.S. starts joined exploration with
> China it will truly mark the end of the U.S. as the dominant
> Superpower. I mean, why would you help a rival (antagonist or not) to
> gain parity in something which is the DEFINITIVE example of American
> technological supremacy?
>
> The U.S. has completely LOST its way and has its priorities completely
> mixed up. Spending almost $1 Trillion (!) on a war (Iraq) which has
> resulted in NOTHING substantial except a regime change. Yet $15 billion
> is too much for the space program?!
That bogus war, the one before and their all-inclusive collateral
damage, including global inflation and corruption has actually been
costing us more than $1T/year. You have to include the cost of our
having ignored other critical matters of our national infrastructure.
>
> If the U.S. has spend that $1 Trillion on the space program we could
> have had a permanent base on Mars, the Moon and would have started
> terraforming both Mars and Venus. Space tourism would have resulted in
> thousands of U.S. jobs and countless billions in profits.
True, and it gets even a whole lot better when there's a return on
such off-world accomplishments.
>
> The demise of the U.S. will be the demise of the West in general and
> could lead to more countries (even countries that previously aligned
> themselves with the West) moving towards a dictatorial capitalist
> system. They'll argue that as long as the economy is growing, people
> will accept a totalitarian regime.
Many/most oil and fossil fuel product exporting nations are that way
as is, and even those exporting uranium or thorium are essentially
dictatorial capitalist. So, as long as those energy related reserves
exist, all is well and good with the dictatorial capitalist system.
~ BG
Damien Valentine
> If this really goes ahead and the U.S. starts joined exploration with
> China it will truly mark the end of the U.S. as the dominant
> Superpower. I mean, why would you help a rival (antagonist or not) to
> gain parity in something which is the DEFINITIVE example of American
> technological supremacy?
Don't panic. If you actually read the statement, it says:
"The United States and China look forward to expanding discussions on
space science cooperation and starting a dialogue on human space
flight and space exploration."
..."Discussions and dialogue", as opposed to "setting and achieving
clear goals with deadlines".
BradGuth
It's a start in the right direction, and should have happened decades
ago with Russia, as well as with China and India.
~ BG
Michael Gallagher
wrote:
>This would pretty much end Constellation and even kill off Ares and
>Orion in LEO:
>http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/11/is-there-a-10-b.html
>
>Pat
It could. However, the oroginal source article .....
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/os-atlantis-shuttle-launch-20091116,0,4658928.story
.... makes the point -- which shouldn't be surprising -- that
President Obama probably won't make a decision about human sapceflight
until February. And remember, this is the guy who makes stirring
speeches but keeps details close to the vest until too late. He's
also been known to change things depending on how much controversy he
runs into. The words "public option" come to mind.
I am not saying that he won't kill Orion Ares or that he will, just
that true to form, he's going to play it as close to the vest for as
long as possible, regardless of what little dribs or drabs come out
now and then. He did it during the campaign and he's doing it as
president.
So as nerve-wracking as the next few months will be for NASA
employees, maybe those of us whose jobs DON'T hang on it should calm
down a little. Granted, I keep doing "Obama Space Policy" searches in
Dogpile all the time. But pontificating about what WILL or WON'T
happen when Obama may not have even made up his mind yet may just be a
little counterproductive. Just a thought.
David Spain
> So as nerve-wracking as the next few months will be for NASA
> employees, maybe those of us whose jobs DON'T hang on it should calm
> down a little. Granted, I keep doing "Obama Space Policy" searches in
> Dogpile all the time. But pontificating about what WILL or WON'T
> happen when Obama may not have even made up his mind yet may just be a
> little counterproductive. Just a thought.
So, right now we're in a quantum superposition where all outcomes are possible!
Why decide until you actually look into the treasure chest and see the cash?
And why force the system into needless de-coherence with idle speculation!
Everyone enjoying the Constellation Lunar Base Program so far?
:-)
Dave
BradGuth
The only treasure chest cash to behold is an overdrawn credit card
that's drawn on the China National Bank.
Our "Constellation Lunar Base" is a joke, mostly because we don't have
the basics needed to back any of it. We don't even have Selene L1 to
work with, much less a viable fly-by-rocket lander or any Saturn VX.
~ BG
hereandthere
Most would rather go watch a couple of dudes and bad ass hoes kick the
shit out of an entire war-like conflict with excellent sound and AV at
the theater.
Rather than NASA's someday, don't mind the crippling breeze. "Like my
Car!".