Doug McKinnon is the latest “conservative” to bash American industry, complete with the now-standard out-of-context Rutan quote:
For the past five decades, the United States has held that title. With his decision to cancel NASA’s human spaceflight program and outsource it to private industry, Mr. Obama has now ensured that the People’s Republic of China with its military run program or Russia, will now wrest the title from us and hold it for decades or more.
I feel like I’m playing whack-a-mole.
Hint: NASA’s human spaceflight program has not been cancelled. All that was cancelled was their bloated, unnecessary new rocket. And the notion that China is ever going to be ahead of us in this area, let alone “for decades or more,” when there are superior rockets to theirs sitting on the pad in Florida right now, is ludicrous.
And then we have this bit of sophistry, from the smartest guy in the room.
Michael Griffin, the former administrator of NASA and himself a strong advocate of true “commercial” space, feels the president is misreading private sector capabilities as well as long-term viability. Griffin said to me, “Suborbital flight takes about 2 percent of the energy needed for orbital flight. Understanding that, the reality is that the commercial space industry is a number of years away from fielding economical, capable, reliable, and logistically dependable transportation just for cargo. With human spaceflight being harder yet.”
Nice diversion from the topic. No suborbital flight producer is contemplating going after this market any time soon. And yes, it is a “number of years away,” if that number is “one” or “two.” How economical, or logistically dependable was the Shuttle? How “economical, and logistically dependable” would Ares have been?
I used to think that he had convinced himself that what he was saying was true, but now I just think that he’s a deliberate liar, perfectly willing to gull the gullible.
[Update a couple minutes later]
You’ve gotta love the failed irony sensor here:
Neither space nor our future in it should be a partisan issue driven by politics of the moment.
I sure wish that these folks really believed that. If he’s really a “long-time consultant on space,” it’s kind of frightening, but it would explain why the policy is such a mess.
[Update a minute or two later]
And of course, the first commenter credits NASA with teflon. The myths that just won’t die.
[One more update]
OK, I see that this isn’t a new piece, just new to me. It was from the week of the Florida speech. I wonder if anyone has responded it to it over there yet?
Policy analysis is always a prisoner of the paradigm its conducted it, and yours is conducted from the perspective of New Space, so its only rational from the New Space perspective.
Thank you for he misdiagnosis, doctor.
I don’t think that from the standpoint of either a taxpayer or someone to whom access to space is important (for commercial and military reasons) that we should rely on a single launch vehicle type to get to orbit. That’s not a “New Space” perspective — it’s simply a hard-headed reality.
Perhaps NASA would have gone back to Gemini on Titian, but I suspect not.
Or Dyna Soar on Titan, which would be an Atlas V + Dream Chaser avant la lettre, into which it could have evolved seamlessly. If they had the money and knowledge to build a large spaceplane, then they also had the money and knowledge to build a smaller spaceplane. In that case they could have used the money spend to develop what was effectively an HLV (abeit one with small net payloads) on say, a small space station. Had they done that, we could have started doing moon missions again ten years ago.
Martijn,
[[[Or Dyna Soar on Titan, which would be an Atlas V + Dream Chaser avant la lettre, into which it could have evolved seamlessly. ]]]
You honestly think NASA would have considered what was an USAF project? Yes, right.
Rand.
[[[I don’t think that from the standpoint of either a taxpayer or someone to whom access to space is important (for commercial and military reasons) that we should rely on a single launch vehicle type to get to orbit.]]]
The problem is there is no evidence that a market existed in 1972 for more then a single launcher with the capability of Shuttle. Indeed, in order to provide two non-Shuttle options today Boeing and Lockheed Martin needed to form ULA, with USAF support.
Indeed, in order to provide two non-Shuttle options today Boeing and Lockheed Martin needed to form ULA, with USAF support.
That’s because of a) ITAR and b) they cost too damn much. It still doesn’t make it a good idea to have the government develop yet another one-size-fits-none solution. There are sound theoretical reasons why it is incompetent at this, and we now have at least one empirical example.
You honestly think NASA would have considered what was an USAF project?
Of course not, but they should have done something similar. The money to develop the orbiters could have bought them something like HL-20. The money saved by not building a new launch vehicle could have gone towards improvements like nontoxic propulsion, less maintenance-intensive metallic TPS, a small space station etc.
Evidence?
You assert that without the Shuttle there were no future prospects for HSF This is absurd. If we’d never before put humans in space you might make the false arguments that people did at the time. But the genie is out of the bottle. The history of humanity insures the future of HSF regardless of politics over a small space of time. We at least learned that the shuttle was the wrong way to go (because we could have accomplished more for much less cost.) The shuttle did not perform as promised. It did perform and we did learn from it. As Rand has pointed out, we often learned the wrong thing. Asserting no HSF w/o shuttle is one of those wrong things.