His latest nonsense:
The problem, from the perspective of commercial space supporters, is that Shank represents an institutional, NASA-centric viewpoint where it comes to space exploration. While at the space agency he supported the Bush-era Constellation program which was subsequently canceled by President Obama. In Congress, Shank helped support the Orion spacecraft and the heavy lift Space Launch System. Many commercial space advocates find these views abhorrent, believing that NASA should simply outsource its space exploration plans to the private sector, to companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin.
I don’t know any commercial space advocates who believe that. What we believe is that there is no need for NASA to be in the launch business.
Shank’s association with Mike Griffin has also raised some hackles. Griffin has been blamed, unfairly for the most part, for the troubles that beset Constellation before it was cancelled. In fact many of these problems, including the fact that the project was underfunded, occurred above his paygrade.
There is nothing unfair about blaming Mike Griffin for choosing a terrible rocket design that was certain to cost more than was allocated for it in the budget sandpile, in the belief that he could somehow talk Congress into increasing his budget.
Actually Gingrich advocated just such s policy turn, which I’ve seen advocated on various forums for years.
Mark, if you were a friend of the late Tom Wells, please send me an email.
Shank’s association with Mike Griffin has also raised some hackles. Griffin has been blamed, unfairly for the most part, for the troubles that beset Constellation before it was cancelled.
WHAT?! Griffin is the one who proposed Ares I/V even before he was made administrator in a study which should still be available online. An utterly unworkable solution. Solid first stages on a manned launch vehicle (Ares I)… A disaster in the making. The Orion capsule was also designed explicitly in a way that would require you to use Ares I to launch it making it too large to launch on an EELV, dooming its secondary purpose as a manned vehicle to ISS, unlike the designs in the prior OSP NASA program.
In fact many of these problems, including the fact that the project was underfunded, occurred above his paygrade.
Misleading at least if its not complete and utter bull! Ares/SLS has been funded with over $10 billion USD so far:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Funding_history_and_planning
It’s still nowhere close to operational. You could argue that “with enough funding” you could do an intergalactic mission. It’s plain bunk. They have been given more than enough money and time to do the vehicle and launcher designs already. SpaceX has designed whole launch vehicles from scratch with much less money. Even the EELV program was a lot cheaper and that was to develop two whole launcher families including new engines at considerable markup.
There is no excuse.