The new national space policy is out. Jeff Foust has some related links and initial thoughts.
First, the good news (and this is assuming that the people I’m linking are correct — I haven’t had time to read through it myself). As Clark points out, the policy to support NASA’s chartered requirement to encourage maximize the use of commercial activity now has a lot more detail. As Gary Hudson notes in comments, any sane reading of it kills the Orion lifeboat, at least as a sole-source Lockmart cost-plust ($4.5B?!) program.
The bad news, as related in this discussion kicked off by Neil Halelamien at NASA Spaceflight, is that the overall human spaceflight goals have been weakened considerably (per the comment from Bill White). I didn’t expect (and don’t care all that much) that the moon is no longer a goal (as I said, we’ll probably have a new policy in a less than three years anyway, and the old one wasn’t getting us to the moon). But it looks to me like the main thrust of the VSE has been lost, if true. The 2006 policy (which was based in part on the 2004 VSE), said that the goal was to “implement and sustain an innovative human and robotic exploration program with the objective of extending human presence across the solar system.”
The new policy deletes this and apparently replaces it with: “Pursue human and robotic initiatives to develop innovative technologies, foster new industries, strengthen international partnerships, inspire our Nation and the world, increase humanity’s understanding of the Earth, enhance scientific discovery, and explore our solar system and the universe beyond.”
From the standpoint of extending humans into space beyond earth, this is pretty weak tea in comparison. It in fact doesn’t require it. “Human and robotic initiatives” could mean having people in the space station monitoring robots exploring Mars. It doesn’t require humans on Mars, or anywhere beyond LEO (and perhaps even that). It could even just mean that humans at JPL will mind the robots. It all comes back to the outdated and useless notion that NASA is only about “science” and exploration. The old policy contained the word “explore,” but it was clearly much more than that, in its extending human presence language. The new policy has reverted to the exploration goal as an end in itself, rather than a means, and is a huge step backwards.
I don’t know whether this was deliberate or not (but given Holdren’s ideology, I’m assuming the worst), but clearly the goal of extending humanity into the solar system, which to me was the key element in the VSE missing for, well, forever in previous space policy has been abandoned. I am open to hearing an explanation from an administration official (most likely in the White House) as to why this language was changed, but for now, I consider it a betrayal of what much of the space community has been fighting for for decades, and thought we had won six and a half years ago.
Since the beginning of this administration, despite my strong disagreement with it on almost every other policy, I have been giving it the benefit of the doubt, defending it against many with whom I agree on other issues. I will continue to fight for the technologies needed to expand humans beyond the earth, and the needed commercialization of earth-to-orbit transportation for both crew and cargo, and I remain glad that we’ve killed off the parasitic monstrosity of Constellation, but I cannot, and will not defend this new policy document, at least in regard to that goal statement.
[Update a while later]
Well, that will teach me to post without Reading The Whole Thing. “Major Tom” says it contains these words:
The Administrator of NASA shall:
– Set far-reaching exploration milestones. By 2025, begin crewed missions beyond the moon, including sending humans to an asteroid. By the mid-2030s, send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth;
So that’s pretty clear. I’d still like to know when the wording changed, though. “Extending human presence across the solar system” wasn’t an explicit advocacy of space settlements, but it clearly implied more than mere exploration, at least to me. The solar system is sufficiently large that it implies people living in space, far beyond LEO and even Greater Metropolitan Earth.
I think it’s nuts that NASA has anything to do with science. Why do we have the NSF, then? Space science should go through the same process as any other kind of science: investigators that it interests write a grant proposal to the NSF, who funds or doesn’t fund it as they see fit, according to the usual proposal-review process, and then those lucky few who get money figure out how to spend it to get the data they need. Maybe they need to form a consortium to pay for a rocket and a satellite, which they’ll design and contract for themselves.
NASA should be about manned space flight, period. Stuff related to national security, for the most part, with some national prestige stuff thrown in. Or sponsoring innovation and research in astronautics. But this crap of serving two masters, and having endless efforts of the space science side to cannibalize the manned space flight side, and vice versa, is insane. Does that happen anywhere else? Do people who want to build better airplanes have to compete with those who want to use existing airplanes to collect data on the atmosphere? It’s almost as if NOAA was in the business of building airships for the purpose of a new form of aerial cargo transport as well as putting instruments on balloons to do science on hurricanes.
I for one am wholly unsurprised by this Administration’s priorities. They are simply taking the cheapest possible option, because they don’t give a damn about manned space flight at all. They’d zero it out if they could. I think the alt-space people should be very careful about getting too far in bed with them, because their ultimate aims are very different. Yes, they may do some good for now, but in the long run, they’re not friends of any kind of manned space flight. It will take only one accidental death on SS2, for example, to turn Virgin into BP or Wall Street, in desperate need of “regulation.”
The new policy sounds WEAKER on commercialization, not stronger:
“Use to the maximum practical extent” versus just “encourage”. Granted, if Cx represents the efforts of the administration that put out the 2006 policy, then it failed to follow through. But should I trust this administration to be more pro-business than that one?
Not just encouraging the commercial space sector but encouraging and facilitating its growth. That can be interpreted as stronger, not weaker. Time will tell if this new policy is adopted and how it will turn out.
txhsdad, the following is stated elsewhere in the 2010 NSP:
> Purchase and use commercial space capabilities and services to the maximum practical extent when such capabilities and services are available in the marketplace and meet United States Government requirements
In other words, the 2010 NSP encompasses everything that the 2006 NSP did with regards to commercial space, but also explicitly adds that the US federal government should be promoting commercial spaceflight.
@Matijn — Agreed, time will tell, but it seems stronger to me to say “we will buy commercial” than it is to say “we will encourage and facilitate”. The latter is just so much motherhood without any accountability. Efforts to facilitate and encourage are subjective, procurement of commercial is less so — as plainly demonstrated by the 2006 admin’s clear violation of their own policy via Cx.
txhsdad, you know the document says more than just that one paragraph right? Clark has a bullet point list of 12 items pulled from the document which says exactly what you’re saying it doesn’t.
Really, policy statements don’t mean much in a practical sense – and given obama’s emphasis up until now this is no real surprise.
Rand, here is the wording relevant to the issue you bring up:
” The United States will advance a bold new approach to space
exploration. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will
engage in a program of human and robotic exploration of the solar
system, develop new and transformative technologies for more affordable
human exploration beyond the Earth, seek partnerships with the private
sector to enable commercial spaceflight capabilities for the transport
of crew and cargo to and from the International Space Station, and begin
human missions to new destinations by 2025.”
I think the last sentence sort of says what we want to hear.
You can do anything, as long as the implementation date is 20+ years in the future.
Rand, like you I like the commercial part, am unhappy with the lack of “extending human presence.”
For the moment, however, I’m not going to get too concerned about the latter, reserving that right for later. For manifold other reasons we can hope that this Administration may be long gone before that – if it ever – has any real negative effect.
Meanwhile if their favorable parts about commercial, and the other actions about it and technology in the NASA budget proposals can survive in some form, we will have built a hugely more suitable private and public set of tools for that “extended human presence.”
These are the core parts of the Administration space policy, whether they are aware of all of it or not: disposing of Apollo-era high cost structures, giving a bit (or more) of a spur to commercial, and getting some relatively low cost, high payoff infrastructure tech work done (finally). These are also the cause of the incredible ‘war’ going on both within and outside of NASA. If we can make progress on these fronts we will have taken a huge step forward.
That is the battle for now, and what we have to concentrate on for now. (Though by dumping the language about extended presence the Administration does possibly add energy to the Constellation maniacs. The answer to that is, of course, that Constellation would do nothing to create any realizable extended presence.)
the overall human spaceflight goals have been weakened considerably
What?? I am shocked. No, really, I am.
Carl Pham: I for one am wholly unsurprised by this Administration’s priorities. They are simply taking the cheapest possible option, because they don’t give a damn about manned space flight at all. They’d zero it out if they could. I think the alt-space people should be very careful about getting too far in bed with them, because their ultimate aims are very different.
Absolute, 100%, unequivocal truth.
Whatever the political beliefs of scientists like Holdren, at this point in their careers they’re all just science bureaurats, not real researchers toiling away in the field or in their laboratories to advance human knowledge. For truly useful and productive advice on science policy, maybe we should set up a committee made up of science fiction writers. A committee with the likes of Neal Stephenson, Allen Steel, Stephen Baxter, and an old line writer like Larry Niven on it could probably come with with some interesting ideas.
M. Gallagher
Mike Gallagher wrote
an old line writer like Larry Niven on it could probably come with with some interesting ideas.
Niven not only wrote some great hard sci-fi stories, he put together anthologies of equally talented writers (such as “N-Space”) that explores some of the concepts and considerations we are facing right now as we try to get off this planet in a sustainable manner.
Highly recommended!
As far as the Policy is concerned, you can choose to see it any way you want. I find the addition of commercial space to the framework as something that will have a long lasting impact on how we go about getting things done.
I’m encouraged.
The problem appears to be it says too much which means it lacks focus. An administrator is then free to choose what to ignore. A more focused document, more restrictive, would limit that.
I think it’s nuts that NASA has anything to do with science.
This suggests to me that Carl is advocating more focus as well.
Really, policy statements don’t mean much in a practical sense
VSE vs ESAS clearly demonstrated that. While official policy was based or at least in the same vein as VSE, ESAS was diametrically opposite.
NASA should be about manned space flight, period.
The first “A” in NASA is for aeronautics. If you’re going to take that stance, then at least revive NACA so aeronautics won’t continue to be treated like a neglected stepchild.
Maybe move the NACA stuff over to FAA and let NASA focus on space?
Seems kinda redundant to have NASA doing aeronautics when you have an FAA writing all the regs and stuff.
Seems kinda redundant to have NASA doing aeronautics when you have an FAA writing all the regs and stuff.
It’s not redundant at all. The FAA is a regulatory agency. It doesn’t do aeronautical research and has no capability to do so, nor is it chartered to. That’s what the NACA did until it was absorbed into NASA, and it’s what NASA should continue to do as well.
Rand: “but given Holdren’s ideology, I’m assuming the worst”
Finally, welcome back to reality.
@Rand — I know FAA is regulatory, I was just trying to make the point that it would make more sense (to me, anyways) to have the aeronautical reasearch done by the aeronautical agency, i.e., the FAA. Let NASA focus on black skies while FAA focuses on blue ones. JMHO.
No, FAA is not an “aeronautical agency.” It is a regulatory transportation agency. It doesn’t make sense for it to be doing basic research. That’s not its charter.
If it’s going to be spun off of NASA, then it should be resurrected as the NACA. But it makes sense for NASA to do it, because just as there’s no bright line between the atmosphere and space, the disciplines of aerodynamics and gas dynamics needed for both air and space blend together. Vehicles that go to and from space have to travel through the atmosphere. That’s why they call it “aerospace.”
Finally, welcome back to reality.
I never left it. However, we’re still awaiting your arrival here.
It worries me that the Union of Concerned Scientists support it.
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/obama-space-policy-a-return-to-traditional-0415.html
I wonder what I am missing 🙂
You’re missing the fact that their support is completely orthogonal to human spaceflight, which is what we’ve been discussing.
Not necessarily since many see robotics and HSF as a zero sum game.