Business, Political Commentary, Space

Our Space Policy Chickens

3 Comments

…have come home to roost. I’ve started blogging at Open Market.

[Evening update]

Can I call them, or what?

I wrote:

It will be interesting to see how those in Congress who have been demanding that NASA build a heavy-lift vehicle for which there is no mission with insufficient funding, while starving Commercial Crew, will respond. Judging by history, it will be with non sequiturs, and bashing of American enterprise by supposed conservatives and Republicans, such as Senator Shelby of Alabama (the senator from NASA Marshall Space Flight Center), Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas (the senator from Johnson Space Center), and Orrin Hatch of Utah (the senator from ATK, manufacturer of the giant Shuttle solid boosters that the Congress insists be used in the new launcher), or Science Committee Chairman (from Johnson Space Center) Ralph Hall.

Emphases mine. And Senator Hutchison responds on cue:

This failure underscores the importance of successful development of our own National capabilities and at the same time demonstrates the risks with having limited options for ISS supply and crew rotation. As we have already seen with the multi-year delay with commercial providers of cargo to the space station, the country would greatly benefit from the timely implementation of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and development of the Space Launch System (SLS) as a back-up system.”

She also dispatches this from Planet Hutchison:

“Last Friday NASA received the independent cost assessment for the SLS that was requested by OMB. OMB is expected to be briefed on the results of this assessment tomorrow. This additional independent cost assessment confirms what NASA officials have known for months: The NASA approach to human space flight is sound, achievable, and can be initiated within our currently constrained fiscal limitations.

Let me translate: “The independent cost assessment confirms that NASA’s own estimates are overoptimistic, and there is no way in this fiscal universe that Congress is going to provide enough funds to sustain this over the long haul, regardless of its merit (which is feebly little), but I’ll be out of here next year, so what do I care?”

3 thoughts on “Our Space Policy Chickens”

  1. How can the SLS be considered as a back-up system for delivering crews to the ISS in any conceivable fiscal universe?

    The SLS with a LEO capsule sized to match it could send what, two entire NFL teams to the ISS, a station which is overwhelmed with a dozen? But there’s no budget item or even a proposal to build a capsule a tenth as large.

    The only option I can see in the near term for SLS missions is to fulfil what a recent NASA ISS astronaut said, which is that in orbit, you can’t have too many M&M’s. M&M’s have a high hydrogen and carbon content and should make good radiation shielding. On top of being regular food, emergency food, and indulgence food, they can also be piped around a ship with simple ducts and fans without all the leakage and electrical risks of moving liquids like water. So I figure an SLS ISS support mission would best deliver 600 lbs of astronauts and 100,000 lbs of M&M’s.

    Another option for the SLS is to launch Steinway pianos, since one day we’ll build a big orbiting space habitat and the occupants will inevitably want a concert piano at some point, if just to dress up a bar.

    With no payloads and no money for payload (if we build the SLS), we might as well launch something heavy and cheap (by satellite standards). A truckload of M&M’s, pianos, or perhaps several Senators and their entire staff on an Amtrak locomotive (high speed rail!).

  2. Also, it’s not much of a backup if it arrives somewhere in the twenties and if it costs more money than the thing it is supposed to back up! What they really mean is that they want to use LEO missions as a backup mission for SLS / MPCV if beyond LEO missions don’t materialise as seems likely if SLS / MPCV consume most of the funding.

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