Quote from: Blackstar on 03/15/2017 03:12 pmOne question to ask is where the rocket design specs that Congress wrote into law came from...Well, now that you mention it, that seems a very intriguing possibility. Given the ease with which the 2010 NASA Authorization cleared Congress, I would have to think that he and Constellation's other supporters regarded it as a pretty good consolation prize. If this is actually what happened, I'd say the General demonstrated some sharp political smarts, even if it wasn't quite following the chain of command.
One question to ask is where the rocket design specs that Congress wrote into law came from...
But here's the more general point: don't think of "Congress" as if it is a point source with a single set of views and opinions and values and interests. It's a conglomeration of all of those things, to different amounts. There are SLS supporters in Congress who don't benefit at all from the pork. There are SLS "supporters" who actually don't care all that much about the issue, but have a gut instinct that it's the right approach and other approaches are wrong. And there are supporters of SLS who both benefit from it AND believe in it. Don't make the mistaken assumption that it's all cynical self-interest and hypocrisy and they actually secretly agree with your logic but are only voting the other way because of CASH$$$. Nope, you can benefit from something and truly believe in it at the same time.
The problem is that we are fundamentally arguing over the wrong things, and so is congress, by extension. Moon vs Mars vs Asteroid - what does that matter? The reason to pick moon or mars, SLS or not, etc... needs to be based on fundamental reasons - why does NASA exist? What do we hope to gain from spaceflight? And so forth. And we don't really get into this debate too often it seems.
Quote from: Political Hack Wannabe on 03/15/2017 07:39 pmThe problem is that we are fundamentally arguing over the wrong things, and so is congress, by extension. Moon vs Mars vs Asteroid - what does that matter? The reason to pick moon or mars, SLS or not, etc... needs to be based on fundamental reasons - why does NASA exist? What do we hope to gain from spaceflight? And so forth. And we don't really get into this debate too often it seems.Well said.The way I like to describe it is that NASA is a tool that the U.S. Government uses to solve national problems with solutions that involve the peaceful use of space.So before you can define a solution, you have to know what the problem is.
Quote from: Coastal Ron on 03/15/2017 08:24 pmQuote from: Political Hack Wannabe on 03/15/2017 07:39 pmThe problem is that we are fundamentally arguing over the wrong things, and so is congress, by extension. Moon vs Mars vs Asteroid - what does that matter? The reason to pick moon or mars, SLS or not, etc... needs to be based on fundamental reasons - why does NASA exist? What do we hope to gain from spaceflight? And so forth. And we don't really get into this debate too often it seems.Well said.The way I like to describe it is that NASA is a tool that the U.S. Government uses to solve national problems with solutions that involve the peaceful use of space.So before you can define a solution, you have to know what the problem is.There are many scientific problems that NASA solves per this definition: - weather forecasting- climate and earth resource monitoring- fundamental research in physics, through the astrophysics program- etc...However, most do not require manned spaceflight, which the central point to the SLS/Orion/manned exploration debate. There are other kinds of problems that were solved by manned spaceflight, namely "how to show the USA are more powerful than the USSR?", which resulted in Apollo, and "how to keep Russian rocket engineers busy so that they don't start spreading ICBM technology around?", which resulted in the ISS. These are not technical problems, but political ones. The issue with Orion and SLS is that they don't directly solve a scientific problem, and not a political one either.
Lar & Coastal Ron: I though technology development was a big part of what NACA did.
Quote from: Proponent on 03/11/2017 08:35 amI agree that the Obama administration's moves on space early on were very clumsy, even for a new administration. But when I put myself in Obama's shoes, the FY 2011 proposal doesn't seem crazy to me. You're only paying attention to the cancellation part, not the "what we're going to do next" part, which was pretty awful because there was no policy justification for it.Just off the top of my head the blunders in early 2010 were:-cancelling major programs without providing a sound justification for it-failing to produce a White House white paper/policy document that explained what they were trying to do-explaining what the post-Constellation goal was-briefing Congress before they released the budget and briefed the press (they made a lot of enemies they did not have to)-failing to understand that any rapid increase in any budget (such as the big R&D increase in the FY2011 budget) always gets a skeptical eye in Congress-scrambling after all the controversy to come up with a new goal, which led to Obama going to KSC and saying "It's asteroids."Lots of blundering there. Talk to people on Capitol Hill at the time and they will tell you that the administration did one of the worst roll outs of a new policy that they had ever seen. That kind of fumbling led many on the Hill to decide that the White House did not know what it was doing in space policy. And if the White House didn't know what they were doing, Congress figured, they (Congress) would take over the reins. That led to greater micromanagement and infighting. There's this common misconception that the only thing that mattered to the Congress was pork. But they also had this impression that the White House did not know what it was doing regarding space policy, so Congress was going to start dictating the decisions.
I agree that the Obama administration's moves on space early on were very clumsy, even for a new administration. But when I put myself in Obama's shoes, the FY 2011 proposal doesn't seem crazy to me.
An exploration program using both SLS and commercial rockets is something I have hoped would happen for a while. I am really glad to hear Gerst endorsing it (his comments about a cis-lunar outpost were also very promising). It makes the most sense from both a logistical and a political perspective. Logistically since SLS can only launch 1-2 times a year more capability is needed to launch cargo. FH can place a Destiny sized module in DRO as well as a Cygnus or a Dragon. Politically both OldSpace and NewSpace have their supporters in the political arena. Trying to do it all the NewSpace way or the OldSpace way will lead to damaging political fights. A compromise proposal like this preserves the most support for space exploration. What may end up happening is SLS will handle really large cargo (say BA-330 or a lunar lander) and crew (with co-manifested payloads) while FH and other commercial rockets handle cargo resupply and the smaller modules, with BLEO commercial crew on the horizon. With a couple of differences this a repeat of what is going on with LEO right now. NASA builds the outpost, initially crews it with a NASA owned spacecraft, contracts for commercial cargo, and finally contracts for commercial crew. What's not to like?In the space lecture I give to my students each semester I always include a slide with Nathan's (okan170) excellent render of FH on 39A and SLS on 39B with the caption of "Tag Team?" Looks like I can take the question mark out soon.
Three existing military rockets served NASA's manned space program just fine in the beginning. <snip>We don't need to recount the tortured history of SLS. What is germane is that new classes of HLV and SHLV are either at hand or about to go into development. These are quite capable of EOR assembly for a lunar architecture in the near future. Those capable of Mars architectures are not as certain, but look to be quite viable. Falcon wasn't originally intended for reuse, but its design fortuitously allowed it and proved the concept. The reusability factor alone is enough to begin thinking of closing out most existing launch systems in favor of new LVs designed for reuse from the get/go. Throwing good money after bad for an obsolete technology is silly. Even the cadre of senators who have championed SLS have to acknowledge that at some point.Not only will new commercial launchers be partially or fully reusable, they free NASA from the burden of building launchers that fly for around 10 minutes and allow them instead to focus on what to do once astronauts are IN space. Having a super launcher but no money for a mission, as has been said here for a long time, is absurd. Dumping SLS-Orion is not going to cost any time in the long run. It was only going to fly 4 times in the next 10 years and would be in need of new engines, boosters, SM, tower mods, habs, landers, rovers, etc., et al. Letting go and embracing new technology that is far more efficient and affordable is the only prudent option. Of course politicians are not always (or even often) prudent, but from the POV of economics and technology, it really is the only viable path forward.From one viewpoint, it means moving forward to new technology, but from another it is simply coming full circle and using launchers that NASA simply buys (or buys services) rather than builds. NASA HSF, freed of senate micromanagement, given a JPL like autonomy, with funds left over for missions could give us the same excitement as those heady early days.
But I keep coming back to this discussion of fundamental reasons because that is the only way we'll really build support for space going forward - getting fundamental reasons everyone can agree with
Quote from: Political Hack Wannabe on 03/15/2017 07:39 pmBut I keep coming back to this discussion of fundamental reasons because that is the only way we'll really build support for space going forward - getting fundamental reasons everyone can agree withFor me, this is the core. We do need some combined force of voices. Now it seems that there is much too much fighting for a larger piece of the pie when we really need a bigger pie.We can do more. We need to do more. Combined voices might be able to sway the budget makers that more is good. Since Apollo, more (as in budget) has seemed to become a bad word.
I really can't imagine this Truce lasting long not with people like Newt Gingrich hectoring for new space from the sidelines. Especially if someone like him gets the big job at NASA replacing Bolden.https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/nasa-spaceflight-chief-says-he-loves-all-of-the-rockets/
NASA doesn't need to do everything any more -- those days are gone.
But here's the more general point: don't think of "Congress" as if it is a point source with a single set of views and opinions and values and interests.
Here's general point #1: Welcome to democracy. This is how it works.
1-The reason they "wrote rocket specs into law" was because they had become convinced that unless they did that, the White House would ignore them. They felt they had to be very specific in everything.What people outside of DC space policy circles don't get is just how much damage Obama did when he rolled out that FY2011 NASA budget in February 2010. Members of Congress felt both blindsided and disrespected. Even members of his own party were angry. The NASA Authorization Act was signed in October 2010, after about 6+ months of members of Congress getting very annoyed with the White House (and NASA by extension) and believing that the people in the executive branch were not interested in listening or negotiating but only in dictating. They concluded that unless they wrote down exactly what they wanted, it would not get implemented.
2-* Why has Congress spent over $20 billion on Orion and SLS before even beginning to seriously ask what to do with the them?They did tell NASA what to do with them: Moon exploration was in the 2005 Act and repeated in the 2010 Act. It has been supplanted by Mars exploration. It's right there:"FINDINGS.—Congress makes the following findings: (1) The extension of the human presence from low-Earth orbit to other regions of space beyond low-Earth orbit will enable missions to the surface of the Moon and missions to deep space destinations such as near-Earth asteroids and Mars."
3-"made steady progress in developing and testing..."Because it has. Yeah, it might be behind schedule and over-budget, but that does not mean that it is not progressing, just that it is not progressing by the original schedule. Hardware is being built and tested and shipped. Go look at the press releases. Don't let hatred of SLS blind you to what is actually happening, even if you don't like it or think that there is a better solution.
in this case, the results of the democratic process, on this extremely unimportant issue, are readily explained if the key players (space-interested Congresspeople) are motivated principally by pork.
Quote from: Proponent on 03/19/2017 10:28 amin this case, the results of the democratic process, on this extremely unimportant issue, are readily explained if the key players (space-interested Congresspeople) are motivated principally by pork. By the logic you are employing, your entire rant can be explained if one assumes that you hate SLS.Reductio ad absurdum is a poor strategy for trying to understand why things turn out the way they do in a complex democratic process.
I have presented facts and have offered a hypothesis consistent with them. To put it in a nutshell, Congress continues to spend fund a program which, according to the experts it chose itself (the NRC, not to mention Augustine) will not achieve the exploration goals it claims to be interested in. What's your explanation for why Congress does that?