Lori says that the battle between the White House and the Congress over space policy is over.
I’m not sure what this means. Does it mean that NASA is going to stand aside and hope that the Senate and House stalemate? Probably.
I found this bit interesting:
Marshall Director Robert Lightfoot accompanied Garver to the editorial board meeting and said his center is ready to get to work on a heavy-lift rocket.
“We don’t need to study it anymore,” Lightfoot said.
However, he said NASA can’t release its heavy-lift acquisition strategy until it knows what the new rocket must be capable of doing. That still hasn’t been decided, he said.
Great. We’ll design a rocket without knowing what its requirements are, as Congress has already done.
Actually, he’s wrong. The only thing that the Congress (or at least those in Congress involved in space policy) thinks that the rocket needs to be “capable of doing” is preserving jobs in the right places.
How about a $5B cut to NASA’s budget next year?
Rand: You just claimed over on SpacePolitics.com that “Most people wouldn’t even notice.” if NASA did not have heavy lift.
Garver: “What NASA wants now is robust work on a new heavy-lift rocket starting next year.”
Well, it sounds like Garver is not most people anymore 😉
They have to build the rocket so that we’ll know how much it will lift.
This is all becoming a sick joke. They don’t need any new rocket at all. Soon they won’t need any other vehicles as well. One day people will look up and wonder what NASA actually does with the money we give them and they won’t have an answer.
Yes, we know how to build a heavy lift rocket. We just don’t know waht we are going to do with it once it’s bult. The answere is ‘nothing’, since NASA won’t have any more budget money.
A CR is looking more and more attractive, and it is what I’ve been hoping for anyway. The more time and money NASA wastes on Ares I, the more of the workforce is laid off and the more of the shuttle infrastructure is dismantled the better the chance that a manned Dragon is operational before Orion and the new SDLV.
One key thing in the article is the notion that MSFC will lead the Heavy Lifter program. I thought that would be the case, but there are a lot of people at JSC thinking it would run the program.
Yes, we know how to build a heavy lift rocket. We just don’t know waht we are going to do with it once it’s bult. The answer is ‘nothing’, since NASA won’t have any more budget money.
We could make some additional impressive lawn ornaments.
Well actually, the Saturn rockets and the F-1 rocket engine were developed in advance of knowing what they were good for.
The impression I have from various readings on the topic is that there was the Sputnik Crisis, not only did the Soviets get first into orbit, their rocket was a lot more powerful in thrust and payload than the Atlas, which was a crisis by itself.
These Soviet and U.S. rockets were developed as carriers for the H-bomb, and the Atlas was smaller than the R-7 “Semyorka” on account that U.S. engineers were given a lighter H-bomb to carry. But a lot of the Cold War was impressions and perceptions, not only among the U.S. and Soviet military analysts, but among the voting public and among the non-aligned world presented with the option of “choosing sides.” The Soviets were orbiting one-ton payloads (Sputnik 3) whereas the Americans were orbiting mere pounds (Explorer and Vanguard).
Thus Saturn and F-1 got their impetus well in advance of Project Apollo and knowing the Moon to be a destination and even the architecture of the rocket and the mission to get there.
Furthermore, even when the bestiary of Nova and Saturn models settled down into what was to become the Saturn V (for heavy lift, Saturn Ib for medium lift), and even when lunar orbit rendezvous was chosen as the mission architecture, the Saturn V was designed well oversized, where Von Braun added the fifth F-1 engine based on Von Braun’s hunch that the spacecraft people were going to bust their weight budget, which they did and then some, largely because of the lander in comparison to the Spartan early proposals of a guy-in-a-spacesuit riding an open platform.
A NASA built heavy lift launch vehicle with solid rocket boosters will never become operational. NASA might get it to the test flight stage around 2020, but other commercial rockets will be available and dramatically cheaper by that time, so the NASA built heavy-lift rocket will be cancelled.
The Orion CEV will eventually be cancelled as well for a cheaper commerical space ship.
NASA has not built a human spaceship or a rocket since the Space Shuttle in the 1970’s, and it is unfortunate that Congress is setting up NASA to fail again.
Gotta love the 75mt requirement without any idea what 75mt is for. When asked the proponents say “well, I guess we’ll start with 75mt and then uprate it later”. No doubt by using 5-seg SRBs.
Of course, it’s a net win for propellant depots because without a Saturn class booster they’re going to have to do tanking flights, even if they’re big fat tankers.
Gotta love the 75mt requirement without any idea what 75mt is for.
I thought the 75mt requirement was to weed out the EELVs.
Thus Saturn and F-1 got their impetus well in advance of Project Apollo and knowing the Moon to be a destination
Apollo started earlier than your realize. It predated the decision to go to the Moon. Originally, it was simply the successor to Mercury for Earth orbital missions and *perhaps* some circumlunar flights but no landing contemplated.
That’s something to keep in mind when self-styled experts say NASA needs Orion because “it’s impossible to upgrade a capsule that wasn’t originally designed for it.”
Garver provides more evidence that the original Obama HLV plan was not just a $3 billion con-job to fool the rubes. HLV has always been part of the Obama plan. Other than wishful thinking there was no reason to think otherwise.
As for the early history of NASA, Saturn HLV, Apollo mission requirements and the Space Race, I think it’s telling the F-1 engine project began in 1955 which was two years Before Sputnik. There was no Space Race or Apollo project when the F-1 project began. It seems the first static test of the F-1 engine was in 1959!