Dramatic Changes Ahead

I have more thoughts on anniversaries, and the new space policy, over at PJM.

[Update a few minutes later]

I would make one other point. If we’ve lost the moon, it happened five years ago when Mike Griffin came out with the ESAS results. Constellation was never going to get us back to the moon, in any affordable or sustainable way. As I noted in the previous post, the new policy is much more in keeping with the recommendations of the Aldridge Commission than Mike Griffin’s plans ever were.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jeff Foust says that it’s silly season in space policy.

As he says, we could wait until Monday to see what the policy actually is before fulminating about it, but where’s the fun in that?

10 thoughts on “Dramatic Changes Ahead”

  1. What exactly happens will take some time to tell. I do believe Obama is hostile to NASA, but that may not be a totally bad thing. If SpaceX is successful with Dragon in 2 years, which is padding over current timeline, then those thinking LEO is lost are chicken littles. The moon is no more closer today than it was in 80’s, 90’s, or 00’s. Nobody is in any hurry to get there. The Chinese may try first, but right now, they have only managed 3 manned missions in 5 years. We’ll see if they get a spacestation up and running this year…

  2. I would make one other point. If we’ve lost the moon, it happened five years ago when Mike Griffin came out with the ESAS results. Constellation was never going to get us back to the moon, in any affordable or sustainable

    Very sad statement but very true as well. I am not shedding a tear at the demise of the ESAS architecture. I saw one article that blamed the support and continuation of the ISS to blame for the loss of constellation but in the end, ISS will be the savior of not only exploration, but the development of commercial space as well.

  3. Shelby: “a welfare program for amateur rocket companies.”

    Beats a welfare program for Alabama residents.

    Sir.

  4. Shelby: “a welfare program for amateur rocket companies.”

    Von Braun was an amateur rocketeer until he was hired by the government.

  5. Yeah, I wonder how big a company has to get before he considers them professional. I would’ve thought that with about 100,000 employees each, that LM and Boeing would count, but what would I know? The thing that pisses me off the most is that this tool supposedly represents ULA as one of his constituents (Delta-IV’s assembly line is less than 20 miles from MSFC). If it weren’t for the huge costs of moving and setting up facilities that big, I’d be looking for a different state to sponsor them if I were ULA.

    ~Jon

  6. It isn’t the cancellation of the “Constellation” program that bothers me. What bothers me is replacing it with an effort that attempts to study why snow melts in summer.

  7. The FAA started it, with their amateur classification for vehicles below a certain gross lift-off mass (not that SpaceX flies anything in that class). No-one complains about being called amateurs when it suits them 🙂

  8. With the rumors flying last week, Obama and Biden *both* went to a “townhall meeting” in Florida to announce an $8 billion federal grant for a bullet train. In their minds, the additional jobs that will go away by canceling Constellation will be offset by the jobs created by bullet train. So even though no one will likely go from space activities to working on the bullet train, everything is okay because “people” are a big amorphous mass, not a collection of individuals…

    What’s even funnier about this is that the jobs will likely go to Japanese, who have the most experience with bullet trains. I’d be willing to bet that no track is ever laid for this. $8 billion is not enough to do the environmental impact statement, which will come back negative anyway.

  9. The really disappointing thing is that this is more about cutting spending than redirecting spending in a more promising direction. The notion of boosting private access to space and working on longer-range visits to Mars means nothing unless there’s a true commitment to fund it.

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