In the coming weeks some in Congress will try to kill America's future in space as they desperately work to prop up the tax sucking, pork eating dreamslaying monster known as the Constellation rocket program. Right now a bought and paid for cabal of hypocritical puppets in the House and Senate are trying to prop up this corpse of a dead end plan to go to the Moon and Mars that not only failed to deliver on President Bush's promise of a permanent U.S. presence in space, but continues to eat the budgets of the very exploration it was meant to support.
Worse, in order to line the pockets of a few old space contractors, those who support what I call the Constellation Hallucination want to block President Obama's plan to re-invigorate our space program that gets NASA back to exploring by kickstarting our commercial NewSpace transportation industry. With some democrats turning against their own president and so-called conservatives lying to their own constituents about the choice between their strangely socialist space agenda and the NewSpace frontier enabling Obama's space plan, it is obviously all about the money -- our money, and making sure it goes into the right pockets, not into opening space.
Those defending the status quo with hollow arguments that the president's plan is destroying our space program have succeeded so far in confusing the public as to what this is all about, and made American enterprise look like the bad guys while defending a NASA human spaceflight status quo that has been a failure to launch when it comes to the dreams they have peddled us for all the decades since Apollo.
This battle is full of ironies, for example, President Obama's plan actually helps achieve President Bush's of a permanent U.S. presence beyond Earth orbit. In fact it will allow us to go anywhere in the solar system and actually stay there, rather than leaving behind flags and footprints because we spent so much just getting off the Earth we can't afford to stay.
Why? Because the new plan creates infrastructure and a new partnership between public funded exploration and private enterprise. It lowers space transportation costs by employing the innovative brilliance of U.S. private firms to carry payloads and people on the short hop to low Earth orbit, develops a strong orbital infrastructure much like a coastal port system, and focuses NASA on the much more difficult and challenging work of creating systems to carry astronauts between worlds to explore.
And let's face it, NASA has utterly failed in any of these areas since Apollo. For example, the space shuttle, though a magnificent machine, was sold to the people as being able to fly 50 times a year, yet as it is being forced to retire, the barely five times a year it reached orbit looks good compared to the alternatives.
The new White House plan does the following:
•Increases our investment in space exploration and operations.
Contrary to the lies from the socialist space program's defenders, NASA's budget will go up, to a new high of $19 billion, including almost $200 million to extend the space station we are just finishing building to 2020, reversing cuts in science by billions of dollars and investing $6 billion so multiple U.S. vehicles can fly to and from the space station.
•It ends sole source, non-competitive cost plus contracting.
Remember the million dollar toilet? The new plan calls for fixed price contracts based on actual delivery of services and goods to firms who actually compete for the work. Cost plus means you get let's say 10% of whatever you spend. That means if my contract costs 1 million dollars I get to keep $100k. But if I can make the project cost $10 million I get to keep a cool million. Now you see how we have been flushing our money away? The new plan closes the lid on this drain of your money.
•It shifts taxpayer funds from re-inventing the space truck to investment in new R&D on deep space technologies and advanced propulsion systems for use between planets.
Instead of pumping billions into an unflyable old style government rocket that has more in common with the 1960s than the 21st century, NASA will focus on developing ways to travel quickly between the Earth, Moon, Mars and the asteroids, and support work on such ideas as how to re-fuel rockets in space rather than throwing them away.
And it does all of this in a way that for the first time draws the tremendous creativity and energy of our citizen run private companies into the mix, letting them take over the been there done that transport of payloads and people on the first short hop to orbit, and freeing tens of billions of dollars and the rest of our nation's space agency and explorers to get back to their real job -- exploring!
Meanwhile, your local congress people are trying to push a bill known as HR 5781 that continues to feed the dinosaur of old aerospace by keeping Constellation alive and wounding NewSpace. Both HR 5781 and its Senate equivalent go out of their way to kill our chances of ever going anywhere in space. Instead they keep the cash flowing to the same cost plus contracts that have eaten billions of dollars of your money and delivered virtually nothing flyable. It creates new paper spaceships that not only waste billions of dollars doing what commercial firms can do better cheaper and faster, and guts science and research projects at centers and universities across the nation while doing it.
Even worse in some ways, congress wants to waste billions competing with them by funding NASA vehicles like the Orion space capsule, a paper "lifeboat" that does the same thing companies like SpaceX and Boeing/Bigelow are proposing to do anyway for their own space businesses anyway, only much, much more expensively and in a way that may kill off some of the companies' possible investors along the way.
This ironic hostility towards new U.S. space firms has manifest itself in ways that boggle the mind, and clearly point to an effort to kill this new industry before it upsets the current space pork farm. One of the most insulting parts is that while essentially banning NASA from moving full speed ahead to cut cost saving contracts with U.S. commercial NewSpace firms to carry astronauts to the space station in the nearer term, Congress wants to spend billions of dollars of your money buying seats from the Russians in one of the most outrageous and literally out of this world outsourcing scams I have ever heard of!
So it's up to you America. You can sit back and let the dreamstealers feed you their Constellation hallucination as they pick your pocket and deny your children's dreams of their future in space as they have done for the last 40 years, promising everything and delivering nothing, or will you try a bet on American know how and ingenuity? Call the people you put in office to look out for you and tell them you want tomorrow back.
So private companies are the answer only when they work on certain projects? Boeing is okay working with Bigelow Aerospace, but not when working on Constellation?
And how is Orion a paper spacecraft? They actually have built something that is now being tested. It is as much "paper" as SpaceX's Dragon (meaning not at all) and less so than the Bigelow/Boeing capsule.
I find it funny that NewSapce, which says it can do it better than government, is pushing so hard for government funding. If you are so good, do it yourself.
There's already a comment below about how fixed price contracts can be as expensive, or more so, than cost plus (especially the difficult new design stuff). It's the contract modifications that bite the budget and everybody already in the space biz is fully aware of that.
There's much government info about it - it's free to look up and read all about it too.
I call it as I see it. I also work in the field and get my hands "dirty" on space projects. (view the video "orphans of Apollo" for when I helped lead a team that leased the Mir space station.)
And, seemingly odd for this place, I use my own name when I write.
Both were bad ideas, imho, and seem intended just to stall NASA & future US human spaceflight program.
The question to investigate, is why?
Even if he happens to be right, I'm just not interested in anybody who considers this to be reasonable discourse. Apparently his primary goal is to be to demonize anybody who disagrees with them.
"dreamslaying monster" = Obama's plan invested in tomorrow's technology (increased R&D) & leveraged tax money among multiple commercial companies instead of dumping it into an Apollo version #2 (which we couldn't afford anyway). The House version denounces these ideas by introducing their latest bill. Again, disheartening.
And as for "Apollo version #2," this is such a silly canard brought about by a bad analogy. Have you seen the Boeing capsule? Very Apollo-esque. If you launch capsules on the top of your rocket, there are very similar designs.
Why is it so bad to go back to the moon? We've only been to six places that were very similar. I don't know Egypt because I've been to NYC, and in the same way we don't know the moon. President Obama's plan lays the foundation for more "flags and footstep" missions with it's "been there done that" attitude. As is, it will not produce any big architecture for a spacefaring society. The increase in tech funding is great, and so are other pushes, but ignoring the moon is stupid.
If people actually read the Augustine Report instead of just cherrypicking the parts they liked, they would have seen that for all its faults, Constellation was praised as a well-run program. There were very valid criticisms in there. But it needed to be retooled, probably with more investment in private corporations, but this plan of throwing the baby out with the bathwater just will ensure that no program that has to last more than one presidential term ever goes to completion.
They are the new piggies at the trough and the House has called them on it by not funding them at
the levels the Senate was willing to. If you are commercial program sell stock for your funding. I believe the author of this article has a finical interest in the government funding "commercial ventures" PS your tax dollars are going to pay for a system that will take space tourist for rides at 20 million a hop.
The cheapest way to stay in space at the moment is to keep the shuttle flying. It exceeds every thing commercial space says they can do at a cost of 3 billion a year out of a17 billion dollar a year NASA budget.
1. It would not be that hard or expensive to get Atlas V or Delta IV manrated. And falcon 9 is nearly manrated.
2. Boeing & ULA are hardly new biggies
3. NASA's budget is 19 B under Obama, not 17. And the total price tag for Commercial Crew is $6 B over 5 years.
AtlasV and DeltaIV are added in this for what? We wouldn't need SpaceX if this alternative was put into motion. And under the DOD budget to boot this was a White House option early in Obama's term. Hadn't heard a word about it in a few years.
SpaceX calms they are man rated. NASA hasn't given the spec's to them yet.
19 billion is next years budget 17 billion was for 2009. I remember a 500 million increase for 2010 and I didn't think we passed 18 billion for 2010. But you got me on that one.
If commercials budget is 6 billion for the next 5 years what was the point of this article we are replying to?
Delta IV won't be man rated. Atlas V could be, but ULA hasn't done it yet because there is not enough ROI, yet.
-Shuttle should be fully recertified, especially the Orbiters, before I'd feel comfortable with further extensions. That would be a worthy task for the soon to be Shuttle layoffees and is a sort of "shovel ready" project for use of not-stimulus funds. Another worthy task for shuttle workers would be to review Station design and ops processes for any potential future time-bombs (such as the recent coolant pump failure, past computer issues, etc.)
-Change from "the cheapest way" to "the reliable way" to stay in space... only because we don't actual cost data yet from the commercial side (SpaceX behind schedule 2+ yrs with COTS, etc. etc.) to acurately state cheaper-ness, much less safetier-ness or reliabler-ness to make any credible comparisons.
The Constellation program has pretty much been shut down already. The House bill referenced in the article does not revive it, and it is very unlikely to be the final product when the House and Senate reconcile different versions of a NASA bill. The Senate version is much better and everyone knows it-and it is not Constellation.
There is much debate in the space community over the speed at which NASA and the US need to convert to commercial space, which is what the writer is arguing for. The bottom line is that NASA actually started the ball rolling with a commercial program, and it won't be competing with the commercials- WHEN they are ready. Right now they are not ready, and the Senate bill has NASA developing a rocket for NASA.
That rocket won't be built by NASA either, it will be done by commercial companies.
It's all pork, the only difference is who owns the pig!
LOL & agree! I didn't see any space system that he's actually designed or developed, so I was wondering about that "expert" claim too!
But disagree with ya about commercial space viability - see other comments below.
And they are ready, since 2 of the rockets are already flying. And the real issue isn't whether it'll be built by commercial companies, but rather, whether they'll be built under cost-plus contracts or fixed price - ie whether they can have infinite cost-overruns & program delays.
If two of the other rockets are already flying, why aren't they man-rated and ready? There are reasons.
The latest charts from NASA show that they want fixed price for the rocket that goes forward, BTW.
With the many talented people who's skills are not being utilized to their fullest extent, Obama's program could push the US space program back out in front. We led the world into space, but we are now falling behind many other nations.
Leading the world in technology is more than just waving a large foam finger in the air, it is showing the world that we have the creativity and knowledge to be the leader.
Agree that Constellation was a rocket plan to nowhere, but a critical thinker reader might need an explanation about what's technically wrong with it - along with citing some backup data (shouldn't be too hard to find).
NASA's failure history with a variety of proposed Shuttle replacements just never quite seemed to work right. Makes ya wonder how they ever managed to go from Apollo to such a radical design change with Shuttle so fast (used mostly incumbents who actually knew what they were doing?).
But, the commercial-is-better-faster-cheaper allegations lack evidence as well. There's a long history of come & gone-into-bankruptcy of commercial space companies since the 70's (and funding was not the major prob). Their collective track record is as abysmal (or more so) than NASA's Shuttle replacement history.
So, as Feynman once said, the above conclusions are "based on what"?
There is a former NASA project, the X-37B (unmanned version) that DARPA seems to have successfully developed - and upstaged both NASA & commercial space so far. Seems like the most viable thing to do would be for NASA to modify it to support heavy lift cargo and manned operations.
Then again, since the AF has the EELV rockets going up from the Cape for mostly their stuff, if a Shuttle replacement actually succeeds in a few years - range schedule conflicts?
not, as you say, on the "trucking" aspects of space.
NASA and the FAA should also be coordinating the traffic control for space.
NASA should be creating rules about space junk, and systems to reduce it.
The Manned Mars mission is premature, we need the commodity lift systems first.
I'm not sure the Kerosenes oxygen private rockets can provide that, but it can do well till we figure something better out.
I would like to see NASA help JP Aerospace,work on the scram jet, Electromagnetic first stages, ion rockets, and permanent robot observational platforms all over our solar system.
NASA mostly uses private companies for all the space stuff anyway. So you want the private companies to design the new systems, fine.
I not thrilled about letting giant BP like companies getting to actually RUN a space program without FAA regulation times 10.
That's not the same thing as "using a private company".
I', ok with private designs, not with private regulation and operation.
That's where private enterprise does so well. They redefine the problem, they come at it a completely new and "ridiculous" way.
we agree NASA should have final say on safety, standards and such, but the new approaches must not be unfairly discouraged.
NASA should, if they have not already, publish at set of standards for private designs and programs, open to discussion and changes as needed.