Augustine Speaks
Chuck Divine has some notes from Norm Augustine’s telecon today with the NASA Advisory Committee.
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Rand Simberg: just a recovering aerospace engineer.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Augustine agrees that todays NASA is the best ever. Minority reports weaken the main and will only be tolerated.
I’m wrong often enough to ask that someone I respect tell me why these are not disturbing sentiments.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Were propellant depots mentioned?
July 16th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Hm, well it looks like Augustine mentioned Lagrange points and asteroid missions, so that’s something in the propellant depot ballpark, if not specifically.
July 16th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
The commission will have lots to say about NASA being given challenges without adequate financing.
Nonsense. Ideally, the Commission would have lots to say about NASA spending $34 billion on Ares 1 to duplicate the capabilities of private sector space launch. NASA’s budget is quite adequate to push human spaceflight to the Moon, given the right exploration architecture.
July 16th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Dan Goldin thought about propellant depots:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/HLR.html
Well, so much for that.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:32 am
I agree that “best ever” is pretty, apologizing in advance, Hare-raising. Maybe the sarcasm didn’t come through.
But I would say, since Augustine is charged with coming to some sort of consensus and hopefully he takes this job extremely seriously, it’s not out of bounds to insist on a unified report for the President. “Tolerated” means exactly that, I guess, so there might well indeed be dissenting statements made. The other committee members are heavy hitters too, at least each one almost certainly thinks so.
On the other hand, at this point in the four-decade train wreck that is US government space policy, I would not be surprised by any crazy thing the committee comes up with.
July 17th, 2009 at 10:33 am
“He asked who will get the report and choose among the options. Augustine replied that his gut impression would be that the President must choose”
I feel like such things should be established from the beginning.
July 17th, 2009 at 10:40 am
“I would not be surprised by any crazy thing the committee comes up with.”
You mean like, gerbil powered lunar tug gravity trains? Or, some such….
July 17th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Josh, don’t speak of it. The Gerbil Mafia at MSFC is already way too powerful.
July 17th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Amtrak in Spaaaaaccccceeeee!
July 17th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
If they’re just presenting “options” and not recommendations, I wouldn’t be surprised just to see them repackage the presenations we saw in June and maybe put a little star next to Not-Shuttle C and throw in a wink when discussing EELV.
Otherwise, I get the feeling this will all end with a whimper, rather than a bang.
It’s pretty shocking that in just forty years we lost the ability to put a man on the moon, and put a man in orbit.
July 17th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
“The Gerbil Mafia at MSFC is already way too powerful.”
Fortunately they are easy to spot from the collection of wood chips under their desk.