There is a strong rumor that the administration has zeroed out all funding for further development of a manned rocket at NASA. Essentially eliminating the ability of the US to launch astronauts on a US launcher. According to the study NASA will announce a willingness to purchase a ticket on any privately developed manned launchers-but no such rockets exist.
My question is: do people with an opinion on this believe that the administration is actually trying to kill the manned space program or is it a negociating tactic with the Republicans? Almost all the NASA facilities supporting manned space flight (Houston, Alabama, Florida, MS) are in “red” states.
Is Obama really trying to kill NASA or is he just trying to get the attention (or force the republicans to pay attention to congressional democrats) of the Republicans?
I hope it is just politics, but I can’t really tell.
Like it or not, with the staggering deficit, piss poor economy, double digit unemployment etc., I have to imagine these next few years are going to be a mighty lean stretch for programs like NASA, which the general public has often been a bit sceptical about anyway.
I bet a lot of NASA workers are dusting off their resumes and getting ready for the worst…
I for one will be glad if they cancel all plans for manned space missions. Robots can give us so much more information for fractions of the cost.
The government has nothing more to gain by having people in orbit around the earth - and Mars missions can’t give us anything substantial that sending robots couldn’t. If the government is cutting costs this seems like an obvious program to kill.
Let private industry indulge people’s quest to ‘be’ in space.
The Constellation program to return to the moon is certainly dead. Probably also the Ares I and Ares V lifting bodies to replace the space shuttle. A couple links below, there are many others is you search. NASA will focus on Earth Sciences, read: climate change issues. Space exploration is back burner now. Looks like we will be hitching rides to the ISS and beyond on Chinese equipment.
Eh, its frustrating, but probably a better decision then letting Ares development linger on for another ten years, consuming resources, before finally getting axed by someone else.
According to the Augustine Report, Ares I was going to cost 40 billion, 1 billion per launch ! and not beable to fly for another decade (at which time the ISS, which it was in part designed to fly to, will be de-orbited, killing part of the purpose of building the thing in the first place). I think the US should spend more on manned exploration, but even I’d have trouble signing off on that.
I think the offical startegy is supposed to be released by the new NASA director Feb 1st, so I guess we’ll find out then.
This brings to mind a marvelous observation I read years ago on Slashdot. With apologies to the author, I’ll quote it here. With China and India starting their space programs, I think it’s even more relevant now.
China, America, and the Moon by DevilsEngine
At the dawn of the 15th century, China ruled the seas. An armada of Chinese
ships explored Japan, Tiawan, and the islands of the Pacific. Turning west, they
reached Arabia and sailed all the way to the east coast of Africa. The ships
were much larger than anything that had sailed the seas before. The largest were
400 feet long and 150 wide and carried nine masts. They were larger than
anything that would be seen in the west for centuries to come. The Chinese
fleets were fabulously successful. They carried loads of Chinese silk and
porcelain to western ports and returned with all the riches of Africa and
Arabia. Between the turn of the century and 1433, the treasure fleets sailed
seven times. These expeditions established a vast trade network for China. They
also included military conquests that brought a huge amount of land under
Chinese control. At the conclusion of the last expedition, the Chinese Empire
reached the Persian Gulf. The next expedition might had rounded the horn of
Africa. China might have “discovered” and even colonized Europe. The ships held
unmatched technology and were easily capable of reaching the Americas. China
stood at the brink of dominating the world.
But there was no next expedition.
Instead, there was a change in political control. The new Ming
emperors pulled back the fleets. The treasure ships were allowed to rot or
deliberately burned to prevent their use. China turned inward, became insular,
abandoned its distant colonies. It would be the Europeans that went on to
discover the New World. And Europeans who would reach, and dominate, much of
China for centuries to come. In 1969, Neil Armstrong placed his foot in a
slightly gritty powder and left the first human mark on the moon. The United
States had conducted a series of expeditions into space, using successively more
capable craft. The rocket that delivered men to the moon was 363’ long, the
largest ever made. They were the most technologically advanced devices of their
time. Under Democratic leadership, they had reached another world. Seven times,
from 1969 to 1972, craft from the United States reached the moon. They were
fabulously successful. They delivered a bounty of knowledge, a peaceful
explosion of technology, and a focus for the world. America stood at the brink
of endless possibilities. Another push might have established colonies, it might
have lead to clean and endless energy, it might have…
I don’t think Obama is out to “kill” the manned space program or even stick it to red state congresscritters. He probably just sees this as a good way to help cut spending in a bad economy.
NASA still has many enthusiastic supporters (myself included), but it’s something that most people have a hard time getting fired up about these days.
And let’s face it, for all the billions we’ve spent, how much has the manned space program really accomplished since the advent of the space shuttle?
I imagine even Obama’s toughest critics aren’t going to make a big stink about this, which I’m sure makes the decision to cut funding even easier.
And the unemployment rate ticks up a little higher, not only due to the loss of NASA jobs, but the vendors and contractor’s employees that supply their programs.
Which is really the largest and most realistic objection to canceling the Constellation program; the loss of jobs in critical districts. The actual science done by the manned program is paltry compared to what is obtained from unmanned spacecraft and landers, but the manned program is the flagship for NASA, and while the unmanned programs have to compete for their small fraction of the space program budget, their costs (still in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, not counting launch costs) are masked by the cost of a single shuttle launch. When people think of NASA, they generally think of astronauts planting a flag on the Moon, not a probe flitting through space for years between planets.
I’m not clear why. The Space Transportation System (STS) is a failure in many respects (fiscally, logistically, though curiously not in terms of reliability and safety, as the ultimate reliability numbers have fallen well within the estimated range of a catastrophic failure every 50 to 100 flights). While I think there are a number of technical problems with the Ares family of rockets (especially the adapted five-segment SRB-based Ares I) and the lack of direction of the program overall, moving back toward dedicated or modular space launch vehicles for particular applications (manned launch, heavy lift, TLI, et cetera) that can evolve and expand is better than a single design vehicle for all tasks, and the STS in particular has a number of inherent design issues that cannot be resolved within the scope of the current design or materials technology. Adapting STS-developed technology, on the other hand, as in the DIRECT proposal, has some real benefits in an orderly, robust progression of propulsion technology and reuse of existing facilities and tooling.
The only reason I want to see the Shuttle program continue is that I built part of the simulator, so as long as they’re flying it, I can feel I have a hand in the space program. (As I said, it’s a selfish reason.)
I agree that the program’s been a failure. It’s a far cry from the “space truck” that was promised. (I seem to remember the idea of weekly launches.) The International Space Station also makes no sense.
And the jobs argument to continue the space program is the same one that they make to continue useless military projects. Basically NASA is in thrall to the same military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about, and which is bankrupting the country.
No one knowledgeable about the actual technical capabilities of the STS ever promised this. The maximum number of planned missions, based on a fleet size of 5, was 18-24 per year, giving about a 2-3 month turnaround per Orbiter. This assumed about three times the planned fabrication capacity of the Michoud Assembly Facilities for the External Tank, limited reuse and refurb of the Solid Rocket Motors (the USAF “Blue Shuttle” program would have used filament wound case SRMs to reduce weight and increase payload to polar orbit launch out of SLC-6 at VAFB), and a life-cycle of three or more uses of the Shuttle Main Engines before tear-down and refurb. The reality once the design was flight-like, is that they knew the system would never average more than three launches per vehicle per year and a minimum turnaround of 3 months (post-Challenger 5-6 months). Many of the problems of the STS come from the compromises made in order to allow adequate cross range (the ability to fly perpendicular to its ballistic trajectory during re-entry) to support the above-mentioned USAF polar orbit missions; without that design constraint, it would have been much different vehicle, likely a true lifting body with much reduced leading edge vulnerabilities
Well, yes and no. Many military and aerospace development programs result in advances in technology that benefit the nation as a whole quite outside of any military benefit; the development of the Minuteman II guidance set led to production-grade integrated processors, for instance. The problem is that many of these programs, like the STS, come with a bureaucracy and industrial constituency that becomes entrenched in preserving their program in situ rather than advancing onto developing novel technology. The Shuttle is a perfect example of this; rather than using the lessons learned from the initial design and improving upon it with an evolutionary design (using truly reusable liquid flyback boosters and moving to a true lifting body) they continued to operate the same system with only very minor upgrades. Although other development programs were in-process, they were subject to mercurial funding, indifferent technical support, lackluster oversight, and ultimately cancellation.
While one can argue the cost effectiveness of the Space Shuttle, the couple dollars per US citizen per launch is in the noise when it comes to outa control spending/political policies/whatevers bringing the economy down.
Yes, there are plenty of plausible reasons why manned space flight should and could be significantly cheaper. But it isnt breaking the bank by any means in which case I am firmly for doing it if for no other reason than maintaining that capability. If we ever NEED it and don’t have it AT or near that time, unless we got 10 years or more to spare to get it again we are outa luck.
The 40 billion in development and operational costs for Ares will pay for about another 100 shuttle launches IIRC.
Yeah, when you are poor and you car milage sucks, it would probably be better long term to get the hybrid. But if you can’t afford that, its still better to keep the gas guzzler and use it sparingly rather than just trash it and give up ever driving again.
Maybe, but supposedly the plan is just to move the people who were working on Ares I and V over to designing a new Heavy Lift Vehicle. If they also extend shuttle flights out another few years (I don’t know if they will, but supposedly the new plan extends the ISS, so it doesn’t seem implausible that keeping the Shutte operational would also be included), I would expect more jobs would end up being saved then if they had just continued with the current plan, at least in the short term.