That Was Fast

Congressman Dana Rohranbacher’s office has issued a press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 24, 2011

Contact: Tara Setmayer
202-225-2415

Rohrabacher Statement on Implications of Russian Soyuz Launch Failure

Calls for Emergency Funding of U.S. Commercial Crew Systems to End Dependency on Russian Launch Vehicles

Washington, DC- Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) issued the following statement in reaction to today’s failure of the Russian Progress Soyuz cargo rocket:

“Today, Russia’s Soyuz launch vehicle failed to boost the Progress M-12M cargo ship into orbit to deliver needed supplies to the International Space Station. This failure should be a cause of grave concern, and a moment of reexamination of America’s space strategy,” said Rohrabacher.

“Today’s Russian rocket failure will interrupt ISS cargo deliveries, and could threaten crew transportation as well. NASA needs to conduct an investigation before another Soyuz spacecraft with new ISS crew members can be launched, and it is unknown how long such an investigation will take.”

“I hope this is a minor problem with a quick and simple fix,” said Rohrabacher. “But this episode underscores America’s need for reliable launch systems of its own to carry cargo and crew into space. The only way to achieve this goal is to place more emphasis on commercial cargo and crew systems currently being developed by American companies.

“We need to get on with the task of building affordable launch systems to meet our nation’s needs for access to low Earth orbit, instead of promoting grandiose concepts which keep us vulnerable in the short and medium terms. The most responsible course of action for the United States is to dramatically accelerate the commercial crew systems already under development.

“I am calling on General Bolden, the NASA Administrator, to propose an emergency transfer of funding from unobligated balances in other programs, including the Space Launch System, to NASA’s commercial crew initiative. Funding should be used to speed up the efforts of the four current industry partners to develop their systems and potentially expand the recent awards to include the best applicants for launch vehicle development.

“NASA could potentially transfer several hundred million dollars from this long term development concept, since the SLS project has not even started, to the more urgently needed systems that can launch astronauts to ISS, reliably and affordably. This transfer will boost the development of American controlled technology and greatly reduce our dependence on the Russians.”

Rep. Rohrabacher is a senior member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Tara Olivia Setmayer | Communications Director
Office of Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46)
2300 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
( 202.225.2415 (main)
tara.setmayer@mail.house.gov

Emphases in original. It hasn’t been put up on the office web site yet.

Expect the usual idiots to chime in and say that this is because SpaceX is in Rohrabacher’s district. Even though it’s in Maxine Waters’ district, and Rohrabacher’s district is mostly in another county.

It will be interesting to see the porkers’ response, particularly Chairman Hall’s.

[Update a while later]

Jeff Foust has a post up at Space Politics on this as well.

[Late evening update]

The press release is now at the congressional web site.

25 thoughts on “That Was Fast”

  1. I sure hope this release actually gets some press. It could really force some rethinking and real movement forward.

  2. Point failures have a way of biting you in the posterior at very inconvenient times. Although I have some reservations about SpaceX’s business plan, I hope they can launch this November. Given how close they are to the proposed launch date, they are probably constrained by integration and test activities not money.

    It might help some of the other players advance their work, however.

  3. It is interesting to me that the SLS is the only project that Dana wants to practice predatory budgeting on. It seems to me that he is using this incident as an excuse to try to kill SLS rather than to enhance commercial crew. In any event, is there any evidence that more money would advance the advent of ccrew.

  4. Atta boy, Dana!

    Oh, and the real question, Mark, is whether there is any evidence that NASA can complete SLS/MPCV given *any* amount of money. I can look back thee decades or more, and find none whatsoever…

  5. I bet he had that statement lying around just in case. Maybe we can think of a few other scenarios that could benefit from a quick press release.

  6. It is interesting to me that the SLS is the only project that Dana wants to practice predatory budgeting on.

    Hardly surprising. It’s the hugest blatant waste of money in the agency’s budget. The money has to come from somewhere.

    In any event, is there any evidence that more money would advance the advent of ccrew.

    The budget request was $850M. The appropriation was for much less than half that. What more evidence do you want?

    Given how close they are to the proposed launch date, they are probably constrained by integration and test activities not money.

    The additional funds aren’t needed for their COTS test this year, they’re needed to accelerate development of their ECLSS and launch abort system.

  7. “Oh, and the real question, Mark, is whether there is any evidence that NASA can complete SLS/MPCV given *any* amount of money. I can look back thee decades or more, and find none whatsoever…”

    The SLS has only been extant for about a year.

    However, how about we appropriate adequeate funding for a change and see. Maybe we should defund the crony capitalist commercial crew to help pay for it, since we’re talking about predatory budgeting. We could stick an Orion on an enhance EELV, as I’ve seen many suggest, and have that be our ISS space taxi.

  8. And when SpaceX has its next launch failure ,or first spacecraft failure, or OSC, one presumes the usual suspects will be just as quick to argue, “But this episode underscores America’s need for reliable launch systems of its own to carry cargo and crew into space. The only way to achieve this goal is to place more emphasis on properly certified cargo and crew systems currently being developed by NASA”. All Hail SLS!

    They will, after all, have as much fact and logic on their side as Rohrabacher. Most of us here want COTS and CCdev to succeed, but one failure of one competing system is a poor argument for that cause.

  9. Mark, I agree and I intend to hold you to it. If we can’t appropriate adequate funding for SLS then it should not go ahead. Currently the analysis is suggesting that SLS will cost so much that it will be impossible to appropriate adequate funding. When that becomes fact, will you stop advocating for it?

  10. It is interesting to me that the SLS is the only project that Dana wants to practice predatory budgeting on

    Only because you have serious problems reading the English language, Mark.

    Dana said, “an emergency transfer of funding from unobligated balances in other programs, including the Space Launch System.”

    In English, that does not mean only SLS. It means other programs, one of which is SLS.

  11. The problem is not one failure on the Russian system. The failure will be fixed and the Russian program will go on.
    The problem is that the failure is on the ONLY system currently available.
    If SpaceX’s Dragon fails it is backed up by CST-100, Dream Chaser, The Blue Origin thingie and Soyuz, or a subset thereof if NASA down selects to just 2 vehicles.
    The point is that you need redundancy. Without it we have the current situation. The Russian failure puts the ISS at risk. A 2nd and 3rd string of cargo and crew delivery systems mitigates that risk.
    And at just $850M for 2 or more commercial crew systems it’s a bargain.
    Fund CCdev.
    It’s required much more urgently than SLS.

  12. “It’s the hugest blatant waste of money in the agency’s budget.”

    I would give that distinction to the Webb Hubble myself.

  13. I would give that distinction to the Webb Hubble myself.

    No, SLS is bigger. And Webb would at least provide something useful if it ever got successfully completed.

  14. There has got to be something said for going 600% over budget. And I question the short-term value of pictures of 12 billion year old stars. Nice to have? Yes. Necessary today? I would posit no. They aren’t going anywhere. Imagine what commercial crew could do with the Webb Hubble’s $8BN. I would say Musk could build his BFR Falcon X, One of our other commerical entrants like Masten, Armadillo or Blue Origin a nice Lunar Lander inside that sum too and mabey have enough left over for ULA to build Jon’s Prop Depot.

    I deem it the Webb Hubble in honor of Webb Hubble and his Arkansas largess.

  15. The JWST program would also give something very bad if it was ever successfully completed: like Hubble it would be another “proof” that throwing more money into a sinkhole *can* fill it up. When, five years later, after JWST is done and the cosmologists are fighting for their next space telescope, the obvious path will be to over promise and under quote. Who cares if this new telescope goes over the budget and schedule promised? If we had given up on Hubble and JWST, we wouldn’t know about [cosmological puzzle], which is exactly what [new telescope] is going to help us to explain, they’ll say.

  16. Who cares if this new telescope goes over the budget and schedule promised?

    There could still be a purge of the responsible managers.

  17. So when do we reach the point where we let private industry fund this stuff? I for one haven’t seen the the payback from the space station, so (unless someone has better data, and I’d be happy to see it) why go there? Just because its there? Sorry, not good enough. We already have plenty of rockets that launch satellites to LEO. In my 8 years at Vandenberg I saw plenty of them. Hell, I walked the pads at 3 different SLCs in my time. I still don’t understand why gummint space is necessary at this point. The feds should solicit bids for launch services and get out of the non-DOD development stuff altogether. Call me a heretic if you want.

  18. We could stick an Orion on an enhance EELV

    Except for the fact that Orion does not yet exist.

    Doesn’t the “space policy analyst with a BA in history” know even that much?

  19. So when do we reach the point where we let private industry fund this stuff?

    When there is enough demand. That could happen quickly if NASA were forced out of the launch business and concentrated on spacecraft, missions and destinations instead. Or it could happen slowly as innovative companies inch their way towards suborbit and then orbit. Or something in between if CCDev is successful and Robert Bigelow is too.

  20. “The SLS has only been extant for about a year.”

    What does that have to do with anything? I’m talking about NASP, NLS, ALS, X-33, X-34.0, X-34.1, Bantam, and Ares 1, not to mention the FasTrac and Linear Aerospike Engine. NASA hasn’t finished any launcher or even a new engine development in the past 30 years, despite billions in expenditures. That SLS “has only been extant for a year” [sic] means that it hasn’t crumbled yet.

    In truth, SLS isn’t “extant” at all. It is a set of PowerPoint slides, and nit even publicly available ones at that.

  21. As currently mandated, SLS will consume about 1/5th of the entire NASA budget for years to come. Once developed, it’ll continue to consume large sums of money each year to maintain the support personnel and infrastructure whether SLS flies or not.

    What are the opportunity costs? What must we give up in order to have SLS? What useful purpose (other than as a jobs program) does SLS serve? What payloads are being developed for SLS to carry? Are there alternative means to achieve the same goals other than developing SLS?

  22. Speaking of “predatory budgeting” (a RINO term if there ever was one), does anyone else find it’s interesting that the only means Mark (and Hutchison, Shelby, etc.) ever propose for funding SLS is gutting other NASA programs?

    Congress could afford to fund SLS easily, if they gave up just one of the big spending programs they enacted while Bush was in office. The prescription drug benefit, No Child Left Behind, the TSA boondoggle — any one of those would do the job. No need to even touch the Obama programs.

    Yet, none of the RINOs have offered up those programs. They would rather eliminate commercial access to the International Space Station, space science, aeronautics, etc.

    So, maintaining America’s leadership in space and aeronautics is less important than increasing the size of the welfare state, overturning principles of Federalism, and strip-searching grandmothers at airports?

    Right, Mark? 🙂

  23. >>Oh, and the real question, Mark, is whether there is any evidence that NASA can complete SLS/MPCV given *any* amount of money.

    This is not a particularly well thought out question.

    You see, things completeness can be measured on how close to their original purpose are they.

    As SLS original purpose is to maintain jobs and keep money flowing into certain districts, by very definition as soon as *any* amount of money is flowing, its complete. As soon as the money stops, its incomplete.

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