Quote from: Coastal Ron on 03/13/2017 10:16 pmUnless there is a specific and long-term need, the U.S. Government should not have a need to own space transportation systems, and should instead focus on the activities at the end points of transportation systems.Would you rule out a role for government in develop transportation technology?
Unless there is a specific and long-term need, the U.S. Government should not have a need to own space transportation systems, and should instead focus on the activities at the end points of transportation systems.
Quote from: Eric Hedman on 03/10/2017 05:42 pmThe only time I met Gen. Bolden was shortly after the "Muslim outreach" comments. Up close he comes across as very personable and likeable. I always wondered how he was prepped for his trip to the middle east. I suspect the State Department gave him some talking points that they thought would go over well where he was. Comments by people in his position don't say isolated to the intended audience. Better thought needs to go into what gets said practically anywhere because of who will eventually hear them.Yes, he was probably given some talking points. But he had a bad habit of forgetting what he was supposed to say and I think that's what happened when he gave that interview. It's a real shame too, because that's not that hard a message to convey. He could have said "The United States has many allies in the Muslim world. I'm here to reach out to them and make connections and talk about possible ways that we can cooperate in exploring the solar system and studying the universe." Easy. NASA has a great brand, particularly overseas. All he had to do was put a little spin on that brand and he'd win. Instead, he flubbed it and for years later whenever an article about NASA appeared on some conservative website you inevitably saw dipshits making comments about NASA being a "Muslim outreach agency."If you watched him in public talks later on he often pulled out his notecards and read from them. Every talk he gave then somehow became tied to the human spaceflight program. Heck, I ran a meeting around 2012 or so that included a lot of top aeronautics (i.e. airplanes) experts. Bolden gave a talk and started discussing the great human spaceflight program. Nobody cared--they wanted to discuss airplanes--but that was his default position. Eventually, around 2015 or so, somebody came up with the "#JourneytoMars" and not only did NASA start putting that in every single press release, but Bolden started mentioning it in all of his talks, even when he was talking about flying New Horizons past Pluto. It was on the notecards, so he read it. But he needed the notecards because without them he would say things that got him into trouble.
The only time I met Gen. Bolden was shortly after the "Muslim outreach" comments. Up close he comes across as very personable and likeable. I always wondered how he was prepped for his trip to the middle east. I suspect the State Department gave him some talking points that they thought would go over well where he was. Comments by people in his position don't say isolated to the intended audience. Better thought needs to go into what gets said practically anywhere because of who will eventually hear them.
The JPL analogy is not true. Congress still dicks with them.
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.
Regarding the graphic that Mr. Gerstenmaier presented, I have a questionDoes everyone think that is accurate? For example, Is Vulcan and New Glenn in the notional category, or should they be more in the advanced development stage?
Could there be an equilibrium where Orion doesn't ever fly (except perhaps w/o people on EM-1), but SLS flies every couple of years...
...to loft heavy payloads like the lunar outpost that's discussed in another thread, and NASA procures all crew vehicles from commercial providers? I'm not talking about whether it's a good use of money, or right, or..., but in the political sense. Could Congress get behind such an idea?
Could there be an equilibrium where Orion doesn't ever fly (except perhaps w/o people on EM-1), but SLS flies every couple of years to loft heavy payloads like the lunar outpost that's discussed in another thread, and NASA procures all crew vehicles from commercial providers? I'm not talking about whether it's a good use of money, or right, or..., but in the political sense. Could Congress get behind such an idea?Without the need for Orion, that program's money could go into building payloads, at no increase to NASA's budget.
Quote from: jgoldader on 03/14/2017 06:02 pmCould there be an equilibrium where Orion doesn't ever fly (except perhaps w/o people on EM-1), but SLS flies every couple of years...NASA has stated that the MINIMUM safe flight cadence is launching the SLS NO LESS THAN every 12 months. That is the minimum flight rate, so NASA would need payloads that fit into that 12 month cadence, no matter what they are.Only rotating crew at a Deep Space Habitat once every 12 months doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, especially since such a station won't be a remote outpost, but a science station that is proving how we can expand humanity out into space.
The mostly pragmatic, trying to live in the actual world we are in now..... says all that..... but also this... yes, face it, we have to put up with SLS because no way can congress depork to that level fast enough, so sure, loft habs and giant single piece equipment with it.
SNIP* Why does the 2010 Act write rocket specs into law? Even if Congress felt the need to supply leadership that should have come from the president, why would it address engineering issues, especially since it has declined to address top-level issues, like whether the goal is returning to the moon, going to an NEA or Mars, which might reasonably be regarded within politicians' purview?SNIP2-* Why has Congress spent over $20 billion on Orion and SLS before even beginning to seriously ask what to do with the them?3-* With Orion and SLS years behind schedule and, therefore, billions over budget, why would the 2017 Authorization say (Para. 421[a][1]) that "NASA has made steady progress in developing and testing the Space Launch System and Orion exploration systems"?
Bolden strikes me as an intelligent and decent person, who was miscast as NASA administrator.
The thing that really puzzles me is how someone who has a tough time staying on message and wears his emotions on his sleeve ever became a Marine Corps general. That in turn makes me wonder, in my more skeptical moods, whether he was not at times dissembling. Perhaps he was actually rather more focused than he liked to let on but found a softer public persona useful.
I wonder further, given his long and deep experience with the Shuttle, whether he might have been an agent of the Shuttle ecosystem, never on board with the administration's FY 2011 plan for NASA to begin with. Maybe he did not want FY 2011 rolled out well.
Congress has been signaling to the White House for a long time that it wants NASA to do beyond low Earth exploration missions (Moon, then Mars). But Congress can only do so much. It can largely signal that is what it wants, but it cannot enact it on its own. So Congress has pushed for the big rocket, but it cannot dictate all the other necessary things. It can mostly signal, by requiring NASA to establish a roadmap, for example, and then pushing the White House to start implementing that roadmap. And remember: the Obama White House didn't really want to go beyond low Earth orbit, especially if it was going to cost a lot more money. Go back and find the original FY2011 budget proposal--it killed Constellation, but did not replace it with a new program to go beyond LEO. Only after a lot of yelling did the administration suddenly invent the asteroid mission, which it never bothered to fund. You cannot talk about a lack of progress as if the White House had no involvement at all.
One question to ask is where the rocket design specs that Congress wrote into law came from...