8 thoughts on “NASA’s Blurry Vision”

  1. I’ve got an inchoate notion bouncing around in my head, which is that one of the fundamental problems with the vision is that it’s too concrete, by which I mean that we were going to build an CEV (now Orion) and put it on top of an Ares I or Ares V (now SLS), and that’s pretty much it. We did the same thing with the Space Shuttle, designed the ultimate dream craft and then contenting ourselves with its limitations and trying to operate the one vehicle type until the end of time.

    A more abstract vision would be that we’ll develop a new flight vehicle and launcher every X years, and that while finishing up one we’ll be working up the next, in a never-ending stream of constant refinement and development based on the flaws, limitations, and potentials of the vehicles we’re using at any given time, building in planned obsolescence to prevent stagnation in the design centers or flight operations.

    This would entail a switch in emphasis from individual programs as the end-all in human spaceflight to managing multiple concurrent programs, whether farmed out to the private sector or handled internally, modeling NASA after CCDev and JPL instead of spending decades building the ultimate craft for whatever random mission Congress dictates, without even a plan as to what is to follow. My point is illustrated by the lack of official post-Orion design ideas bouncing around.

    NASA strikes me as a couple who devotes enormous energy to building their dream house, and when completed they don’t have a plan other than to live in it until they die – or retire to Florida. What would work better is to treat each project as a fixer-upper that will be flipped as soon as it’s done, so we can start fixing up a bigger house.

    1. You’re confusion the VSE with Constellation. They were never the same thing.

      What would work better is to treat each project as a fixer-upper that will be flipped as soon as it’s done, so we can start fixing up a bigger house.

      That sounds productive. Government doesn’t do that.

    2. What would work better is to treat each project as a fixer-upper that will be flipped as soon as it’s done, so we can start fixing up a bigger house.

      The COTS cargo/crew programs are like that, with multiple centers of innovation. We’ve got, in the current round, two new cargo vehicles and three crew vehicles. Cygnus is getting an upgrade, I see, so OSC is fixing it up. SpaceX is upgrading as well, with the new thrusters for crewed Dragon. SNC is looking at multiple DreamChaser versions.

      In the above cases, we know where the vehicles are going and what they’re supposed to do. The COTS programs, even underfunded in the case of crew transport, are working because of two well-defined missions. But we don’t know what’s coming next. Will we want another space station? If not, LEO stuff isn’t needed. As Rand says, there’s just no unambiguous plan there, except to build the BFR and eventually do something with it. But we still don’t know what.

  2. If the government wants to send people into space, it should buy capabilities, not systems. For example, the capability to send X people into LEO would be met by systems from different companies just the same as the ability to transport X people from point A to point B on the Earth can be met by many different airlines flying many different types of planes. NASA would let a contract (or buy tickets) to send 5 people to the ISS (or whereever) and companies like SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada would offer up their prices and schedules.

  3. If any of us were given NASA’s annual funding, we’d come up with better ways to spend it to help private enterprise expand into commercial space activities. The simplest being X prizes. Not all of it’s funding… just one year would do it.

    The problem isn’t cost. Cost is simply a way to short circuit thinking about it. “It cost too much… Well then, that settles that.” But it doesn’t. Cost is meaningless by itself in regard to a business case. Cost only matters when you don’t have it. If you do have it, and not before, that’s when you can make a business decision. That decision involves ROI, not cost.

    The assets to pay for any level of space settlement (more expansively defined as the economic development that goes with it) already exists. A contract (settlement charter) provides that all colonists arrive with the assets to pursue their own individual dreams (and most sure way to ensure economic expansion.)

    That most people don’t see this is the problem. Even Bas Lansdorp want to create a new class of slaves rather than free independent land owners. The good news is it doesn’t matter. However colonists get there they will assert their freedom but not if their minds are already enslaved… as the minds of most in the Obama era have been. By most I mean everyone that doesn’t understand fundamentals of ownership such as the right to make reasonable claims on that which is unowned.

  4. Point of order : CE&R studies in 2004/early 2005 were already referring to the yet to be designed CEV and lunar systems as “Constellation”. ESAS-conceived Ares I / V and fat orion were not the first to bear that label.

    1. Which ones? I don’t recall that at Boeing. In any event, I think that (to the limited degree they’re aware of what it is at all) most people think of Constellation as the output of ESAS.

  5. A bunch of CE&R reports from early 2005 refer to it as Constellation, they are still availabe through web archives. And i know most people think of Constellation as output of ESAS, but that’s not entirely historically accurate.

    I got a bunch of links saved from web archives, the word Constellation figures in multiple of these, see below. Anyway, i’m not on a crusade to set things straight, but i think its remarkable how pre-Griffin VSE implementation details have been promptly and completely forgotten by everyone.
    Note that all this happened before ULA formation was announced, so technically LockMart and Boeing were still in some sort of “competition” to provide launch services for the CEV that was also sort of intended to be competitively selected between two major industry coalitions.

    ( sorry had to put links in pastebin as comments dont allow too many of them )
    http://pastebin.com/TAqJFnnu

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