Transterrestrial Musings

I’m as shocked as the rest of you to learn that the Russians are jacking up the price for ISS support again:

That’s $70.6 million per seat — well above the previous price tag of about $65 million.

Just your standard inflation, I’m sure. Bolden is right:

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said if Congress had approved the space agency’s request for more funding for its commercial space effort, the latest contract would have been unnecessary. He is urging full funding of the Obama administration’s 2014 budget request of $821 million for the commercial crew program.

“Because the funding for the President’s plan has been significantly reduced, we now won’t be able to support American launches until 2017,” Bolden, a former shuttle commander, wrote in a NASA blog.

It could take longer if Congress does not fully support the 2014 request, he said.

“Further delays in our Commercial Crew Program and its impact on our human spaceflight program are unacceptable,” Bolden said.

But they’ll keep wasting money on SLS.

Here’s what I write in the book:

What is nuclear non-proliferation worth to us? This shouldn’t be an issue of civil space policy, but it is. There is a U.S. law called the Iran/North-Korea/Syria Non-Proliferation Act (INKSNA), which states that we will not trade with any nation that supports any of those countries in the development of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Russia has been doing both for years, and in order for us to continue to utilize their services for ISS access and lifeboats, Congress has to continually waive the law, essentially rendering it toothless with respect to one of the most significant violators of it (in early January of 2013, they did so out to 2020). If (as earlier discussed) we were to start using Falcon-9/Dragon sooner, even without its abort system, we could stop depending on the Russians, and stop shipping money to a nation that is indifferent to our security, if not outright hostile to it. Why don’t we? Because we don’t want to risk the lives of an astronaut crew, even though the Falcon-9/Dragon is probably as, or more, reliable at this point than anything we flew in the 1960s. Same thing applies for the Atlas and the Boeing CST capsule.

I think that it’s “safe enough” right now to end our dependence on the Russians. Despite their stated desire for three nines of safety, I’d bet that most people in the astronaut office would agree, and if there are some who don’t, no one held a gun to their heads to be an astronaut. In our unwillingness to do this, we are saying that the life of an astronaut crew is more valuable than preventing Iran from getting nukes, or to be more precise, we don’t think that non-proliferation is worth risking their lives. I don’t think that’s the case, and I’d guess that few astronauts do, either, but in its continuing hyperconcern about safety, that is exactly the message that we are getting from Congress. Now obviously, we see many men and women willing to risk their lives for national security every day, in Afghanistan (and now in other places in the Middle East). If I were an astronaut, I’d be insulted that Congresspeople don’t think that I’d be willing to. But if it’s true, then maybe we need some new astronauts, because the current ones, if they’re demanding three nines, don’t have the Right Stuff.

But space isn’t important.