Note to everyone: this is the Senate Authorization language, the House must agree, or there's no Authorization. Also, even if this is enacted into law, the people who write the checks, the Appropriations folks, must also agree - and its sure that they won't. Authorization's job is to make people happy, Appropriations' job is to get things actually running.
Hahaha, someone should tell 51D about this. Someone might be left wondering "which center is KFC?"
Glad to see some good news come out of Congress for once. Now the fun part starts...the ball is now in NASA's court to do the right thing.
Quote from: gladiator1332 on 07/16/2010 01:08 amGlad to see some good news come out of Congress for once. Now the fun part starts...the ball is now in NASA's court to do the right thing. The ball is not in NASA's court yet. It still will be a bit before this bill makes it through Congress; today was another step in that process, but there are several remaining.
Quote from: psloss on 07/16/2010 01:17 amQuote from: gladiator1332 on 07/16/2010 01:08 amGlad to see some good news come out of Congress for once. Now the fun part starts...the ball is now in NASA's court to do the right thing. The ball is not in NASA's court yet. It still will be a bit before this bill makes it through Congress; today was another step in that process, but there are several remaining.Perhaps, but with Senate and Presidential support it would not be too much of a leap to see forward work being done to support the draft bill as is was being done for the proposed FY2011, work for STS-135/136 has already been worked for a while per L2 sources.
Quote from: yg1968 on 07/16/2010 12:53 amQuote from: yg1968 on 07/15/2010 07:58 pmQuote from: neilh on 07/15/2010 06:09 pmQuote from: neilh on 07/15/2010 05:25 pmNelson's statement:http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=326398&I don't think anybody posted it yet, but here's Chairman Rockefeller's opening statement and summary of "key elements" of the bill:http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=4ae69fe8-581d-4d10-85b0-5b15643680b9According to Nelson's statement, $1.6B will be going to commercial crew development. So it's a bit more than in the July 13th proposed bill. It just occurred to me that Nelson is possibly including the extra COTS money in his $1.6B total. So commercial crew might be less than $1.6B.I just read it through again, and you are indeed correct: "And, it bolsters commercial space ventures by allocating about $1.6 billion for development in the next three years"Supposedly Warner's and Boxer's amendments for increased commercial crew and space technology funding were incorporated, though. If so, where's the money?
Quote from: yg1968 on 07/15/2010 07:58 pmQuote from: neilh on 07/15/2010 06:09 pmQuote from: neilh on 07/15/2010 05:25 pmNelson's statement:http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=326398&I don't think anybody posted it yet, but here's Chairman Rockefeller's opening statement and summary of "key elements" of the bill:http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=4ae69fe8-581d-4d10-85b0-5b15643680b9According to Nelson's statement, $1.6B will be going to commercial crew development. So it's a bit more than in the July 13th proposed bill. It just occurred to me that Nelson is possibly including the extra COTS money in his $1.6B total. So commercial crew might be less than $1.6B.
Quote from: neilh on 07/15/2010 06:09 pmQuote from: neilh on 07/15/2010 05:25 pmNelson's statement:http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=326398&I don't think anybody posted it yet, but here's Chairman Rockefeller's opening statement and summary of "key elements" of the bill:http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=4ae69fe8-581d-4d10-85b0-5b15643680b9According to Nelson's statement, $1.6B will be going to commercial crew development. So it's a bit more than in the July 13th proposed bill.
Quote from: neilh on 07/15/2010 05:25 pmNelson's statement:http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=326398&I don't think anybody posted it yet, but here's Chairman Rockefeller's opening statement and summary of "key elements" of the bill:http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=4ae69fe8-581d-4d10-85b0-5b15643680b9
Nelson's statement:http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=326398&
I suspect that some of the amendement passed but were for much lesser amounts. They said the amendements as modified. The modifications most of been to the amounts proposed.
Quote from: yg1968 on 07/16/2010 01:43 amI suspect that some of the amendments passed but were for much lesser amounts. They said that the amendments were passed but as modified. The modifications must have been to the amounts proposed. Definitely another question for 51D Mascot, but listening to Senator Hutchison's motion again in the archived webcast, I do not hear an amendment from Senator Warner in the list she read. (As SpaceDave noted a few posts back.)
I suspect that some of the amendments passed but were for much lesser amounts. They said that the amendments were passed but as modified. The modifications must have been to the amounts proposed.
Quote from: Cog_in_the_machine on 07/15/2010 07:40 pmHahaha, someone should tell 51D about this. Someone might be left wondering "which center is KFC?"Hehe...good thing initials aren't used in the actual legislative text, where "Kennedy Space Center" is spelled out, as opposed to this excerpt from the Section-by-Section description. This is what happens when someone is asked to quickly pull together a summary of the bill to send around (Wednesday morning) when the bill was distributed to Member offices, and those working on the bill don't read through the draft carefully enough--or too soon after eating fried chicken, as suggested--to catch it. It has been passed on to the "appropriate authorities" to at least correct the version on the Committee website. "Thank ya muchly, phantomdj!!"
I'm happy to see congress directing Nasa to build a new heavy lift launcher. But this all just seems like 2004 all over again. What's going to happen when a new administration takes office? 2016 is a long ways away. Our problem is we keep switching gears every 5-10 years.
I think the motto of the day should be the famous quote from Sir Winston:“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.”
Both jongoff and NOofC mentioned something, and it does deserve some discussion: a system was rewarded today (some refer to it as the Arsenal system) that hasn't successfully completed a HSF system since the Shuttle. Rewarding failure strikes many as a recipe for continued failure, especially when the alternative was to join hands with the Air Force and commercial space to build a new, exciting kerolox architecture with an eye to reducing operating costs. Now NASA is going off alone again with a HLV that most likely will have no other customer.
A failure to produce a working launch system, or the production of a launcher with a failure rate approaching that of the Shuttle will call the entire NASA HSF program into question.
Success moving forward is vital; we can't afford another VentureStar or Ares 1. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and hope we can find the money for fuel depots and that kerolox engine just in case the Arsenal system fails once again.