A dispatch from an alternate reality:
I know you all have seen the public discourse regarding Ares and Orion and shuttle, and understandably such discourse can temper our resolve to push forward — if we let it. But, let’s review the bidding. First, we should remind ourselves, as we saw in intimate detail at last summer’s Lunar Capability Concept Review (arguably the finest such review the team has yet executed), that the Ares I/Ares V/Orion/Altair transportation system is highly integrated and keenly designed to open the lunar frontier to us in the years to come. Our driving requirements of going anywhere on the Moon, staying twice as long as Apollo in a sortie mode, sending twice as many crew members, and enabling their return at any time, must remain at the forefront of any consideration to alter the nation’s exploration launch architecture. I assure each of you that we are doing all we can to communicate this key aspect of our baseline plan — it is about much more than launching Orion to LEO (Low Earth Orbit).
And where did those (trivial) requirements come from?
We don’t know, because the agency continues to refuse to show its work.
But it’s pretty pathetic that forty years after Apollo, it thinks it the height of ambition to spend tens of billions of dollars on a system that, even in the unlikely event that it works as currently designed, within budget and schedule, will only do twice the number of crew for twice the duration for billions of dollars per flight. Such a paltry goal simply isn’t worth the money, even if we ignore all the design and management issues. If NASA doesn’t want to get serious about space, then it should stop wasting the taxpayers’ money, and let someone else have it who is.
Amen, Rand.
What I’d like to know is: Just how intimate was that Lunar Capability Concept Review? And (with apologies to Craig Ferguson) how much of Columbia’s main export was available? And how many fine ‘herbal’ cigarettes?
These items would be a better justification for NASA’s fixation on the Griffin architecture than their ‘serious’ arguments… 😉
So why not comment back at
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Constellation/posts/post_1232998458107.html
I suppose it’s too much to expect that the high administration in NASA will ever realise that the three most important things are cost, cost, and cost?
Have you tried the simple (but no doubt tedious) approach of filing a FOIA request for the inputs/guidelines to the 60 day studies that got us the current architecture?
The first few million dollars of NASA’s money is probably best spent on detailed CGI models of Apollo and subsidies of historical dramatizations so that the cargo cult can continue at least until 2050.
I have filed a FOI request no response. Alot of other people have filed FOI requests with NASA regarding the ESAS Study and no response. The new Administration is trying to make ALL govt. agencies more open to the public. People from the Direct Team have recently filed a new freedom of Information request. Please feel free to file a FOI request for Appendixes 6A-6F of the ESAS Study–the head of stduy said they were going to available so far that has not been the case.
Neat idea Sam. I’d suggest we appoint ourselves the high priests of the cargo cult and demand tribute from “the natives” …but…oh..yeah, Boeing, Lockmart et al already do that to the taxpayers thru NASA
Have you tried the simple (but no doubt tedious) approach of filing a FOIA request for the inputs/guidelines to the 60 day studies that got us the current architecture?
There’s no need to. The principle input is available on the Planetary Society’s website. It was co-authored by Mike Griffin, and it’s substantially identical to he output of the 60-day study.
http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/aim_for_mars/study-report.pdf
The fact that this architecture came from an organization that’s been hostile to human spaceflight for to decades should have been a warning signal.
NASA is extremely serious about space. It seriously wants space to go away. Unfortunately, space won’t do that; which is why the lingua franca of the Solar System will be Mandarin – or maybe Hindi.
(Note that “space” in this context means “humans in space”.)
I have a small question for the experts here. Has a comparative study ever been done on the costs of repairing Hubble using a shuttle mission, vs. simply replacing it – probably with an improved telescope? How much did Hubble cost, and how much does each repair mission cost? Of course, deorbiting Hubble and replacing it would not serve as an excuse for continuing to maintain the poorly designed, hugely expensive and difficult-to-maintain abortion that is the Shuttle.
One ought to have been able to see the true mission of NASA as early as the early 60’s, when Orion (the real one) was discarded in favour of a rapidly expanding series of disintegrating totem poles.
NASA was created in order to get a few men to the Moon and back ahead of the Soviets, and to hell with the cost. Maybe that was necessary, but given that fact it ought to have been disbanded after Apollo. The real tragedy is that if the powers-that-be had had any guts it wouldn’t have been the Moon by 1969 – it would have been Callisto.