At the risk of violating a trademark, I can only say, heh:

NASA’s various attempts to develop new space transports, particularly fully reusable launch vehicles, in the past decade or so have not been successful. However, rather than revealing poor planning and management, NASA said those failures proved that RLVs were not feasible with current technology. So if the CEV program collapses due to overruns colliding with a no-growth budget, I guess that will prove that capsules on expendables are not feasible with current technology.

Today is the forty-fifth anniversary of the first man in space, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first flight of the Space Shuttle. If you want to celebrate, it’s also the fifth anniversary of Yuri’s Night. Go find a party near you.

[Update a few minutes later]

I have some thoughts on this anniversary over at National Review (note, it’s been edited somewhat from what I submitted).

[Update in the afternoon]

Mark is whining again:

First, Rand has presented a breath taking lack of specifics in his suggestions on how to improve the space program.

I only had nine hundred words. I’ve offered many specifics, many times, in many places. It was an anniversary commemoration, not a policy white paper.

Amidst the big anniversary tomorrow, it’s easy to forget that it’s been exactly thirty-six years since Apollo XIII headed off on its ill-fated voyage around the moon. It occurred at an inauspicious time, for those who are triskaidekaphobic.

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s also been five years since the X-33 died. That didn’t happen soon enough.

I disagree with this, though:

NASA was willing to take the risks inherent in the winged potato for one reason: LockMart was willing to put its money where its mouth was, to a degree that Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas, or Boeing weren’t. LockMart had even touted its orbital “VentureStar” as a replacement for the shuttle and Titan IV, ready for flight between 2004 and 2006.

This isn’t true, for two reasons. First, NASA picked it because they were enamored with the technology. Second, there’s no evidence that Lockheed was “willing to put its money where its mouth was,” and quite a bit to the contrary. Their business plan was a joke, and not a good one, but NASA was unable to distinguish between a good and a bad business plan. If Lockheed had really been willing to put its money where its mouth was, it would have made the investment to complete the program. I don’t believe for a minute that Lockheed-Martin management ever intended to develop Vstar with their own money. They just told NASA what it wanted to hear.

James Taylor, a graduate student at University of Washington studying human migration, has one of the best records on my site, Space-Shot.com. Said Taylor,

I think I’m managing well over 75%…. Right now, I’m stuck at level 4 with three open plays. I need some more competition to go against me so we can get a flight faster. This is the ‘bring-it-on’ moment. There certainly were enough of us who wanted to be astronauts as children. Now that we have the chance, I don’t see the grown-ups putting their money where their dreams once were.

There is another player that bought in at level 6. It only takes 4096 players at that level to win a trip to space. Regarding his level 4 plays, Taylor said, “I didn’t buy those plays at that level, I won my way there–although I challenge everyone to buy in at my level and try to knock me out!”

…just shocked to hear that the exploration mission hardware has outgrown the planned launchers:

Once characterized as “Apollo on steroids” by NASA administrator Mike Griffin, the architecture surrounding the ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture Study) has grown too heavy for its launch vehicles.

I wish there were more to the story. The last bit, about a rendezvous thousands of kilometers above the far side of the moon is tantalizing. Are they proposing to use L-2 instead of L-1? Why? Inquiring minds want to know.

This was (almost) inevitable. And it shows the shortsightedness of the “Apollo on steroids” approach. By insisting on doing it all in one and a half launches, they put off the day that we developed the necessary spacefaring capabilities of orbital rendezvous, docking and routine operations, including propellant transfer and storage. What did they plan to do when after a few lunar flights, they decided to go to Mars? Develop a Seadragon?

[Update a couple minutes later]

I see that I was channelling Clark Lindsey (as often is the case). He has more, including the fact that it was apparently due to their (other shortsighted) decision to abandon methane.

And a big D’OH! There was a lot more to the story that I mentioned above–I just didn’t realize that I had to scroll down. Yes, it is an L-2 architecture. Let me go read, and think about it, and I’ll have more later.

[Not much later]

OK, I’ve at least glanced through it, and here are initial thoughts. First, the understatement:

It appears that the changes made to the ESAS architecture in the near-term may have long-term ramifications for the entire VSE.

Which was exactly why Steidle wanted to perform the CE&R studies–to consider all of these possibilities, and their implications, both short term and long. But the architecture that NASA came up with doesn’t resemble any of them (as far as I know). There’s little evidence that they even bothered to look at the reports–they’re simply gathering virtual dust on the servers.

I like a Lagrange rendezvous point, but all of the analysis that we did at Boeing indicated that L-1 was a better choice than L-2. The advantage of L-1 is that it’s always visible from earth, and it’s a relatively short trip home from there. We were strongly driven in our trades by NASA demands (unreasonable ones, in my opinion) that astronauts be able to get home in an arbitrarily short amount of time. The disadvantage of L-1 is the propulsion cost, and L-2 is indeed more efficient from that standpoint. But it wasn’t considered in the Boeing CE&R studies because of the trip-time constraint. Its other problem is that unlike L-1, which is continually visible from earth, L-2 never is. For communications, a relay satellite in a halo orbit, or a series of them in lunar orbit, will be required.

I would think that the problems they’re running into at this point would justify a complete reconsideration of their approach, including their previous aversion to orbital operations and propellant depots. Not to mention, as Clark points out, methane. It’s funny, because I was just in a telecon a little while ago in which I was told to expect “big changes” in CEV. Now I understand what that means. It will be interesting to see how this ripples down, and right now, it makes it hard for the contractors to move forward in requirements analysis.

…just shocked to hear that the exploration mission hardware has outgrown the planned launchers:

Once characterized as “Apollo on steroids” by NASA administrator Mike Griffin, the architecture surrounding the ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture Study) has grown too heavy for its launch vehicles.

I wish there were more to the story. The last bit, about a rendezvous thousands of kilometers above the far side of the moon is tantalizing. Are they proposing to use L-2 instead of L-1? Why? Inquiring minds want to know.

This was (almost) inevitable. And it shows the shortsightedness of the “Apollo on steroids” approach. By insisting on doing it all in one and a half launches, they put off the day that we developed the necessary spacefaring capabilities of orbital rendezvous, docking and routine operations, including propellant transfer and storage. What did they plan to do when after a few lunar flights, they decided to go to Mars? Develop a Seadragon?

[Update a couple minutes later]

I see that I was channelling Clark Lindsey (as often is the case). He has more, including the fact that it was apparently due to their (other shortsighted) decision to abandon methane.

And a big D’OH! There was a lot more to the story that I mentioned above–I just didn’t realize that I had to scroll down. Yes, it is an L-2 architecture. Let me go read, and think about it, and I’ll have more later.

[Not much later]

OK, I’ve at least glanced through it, and here are initial thoughts. First, the understatement:

It appears that the changes made to the ESAS architecture in the near-term may have long-term ramifications for the entire VSE.

Which was exactly why Steidle wanted to perform the CE&R studies–to consider all of these possibilities, and their implications, both short term and long. But the architecture that NASA came up with doesn’t resemble any of them (as far as I know). There’s little evidence that they even bothered to look at the reports–they’re simply gathering virtual dust on the servers.

I like a Lagrange rendezvous point, but all of the analysis that we did at Boeing indicated that L-1 was a better choice than L-2. The advantage of L-1 is that it’s always visible from earth, and it’s a relatively short trip home from there. We were strongly driven in our trades by NASA demands (unreasonable ones, in my opinion) that astronauts be able to get home in an arbitrarily short amount of time. The disadvantage of L-1 is the propulsion cost, and L-2 is indeed more efficient from that standpoint. But it wasn’t considered in the Boeing CE&R studies because of the trip-time constraint. Its other problem is that unlike L-1, which is continually visible from earth, L-2 never is. For communications, a relay satellite in a halo orbit, or a series of them in lunar orbit, will be required.

I would think that the problems they’re running into at this point would justify a complete reconsideration of their approach, including their previous aversion to orbital operations and propellant depots. Not to mention, as Clark points out, methane. It’s funny, because I was just in a telecon a little while ago in which I was told to expect “big changes” in CEV. Now I understand what that means. It will be interesting to see how this ripples down, and right now, it makes it hard for the contractors to move forward in requirements analysis.

…just shocked to hear that the exploration mission hardware has outgrown the planned launchers:

Once characterized as “Apollo on steroids” by NASA administrator Mike Griffin, the architecture surrounding the ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture Study) has grown too heavy for its launch vehicles.

I wish there were more to the story. The last bit, about a rendezvous thousands of kilometers above the far side of the moon is tantalizing. Are they proposing to use L-2 instead of L-1? Why? Inquiring minds want to know.

This was (almost) inevitable. And it shows the shortsightedness of the “Apollo on steroids” approach. By insisting on doing it all in one and a half launches, they put off the day that we developed the necessary spacefaring capabilities of orbital rendezvous, docking and routine operations, including propellant transfer and storage. What did they plan to do when after a few lunar flights, they decided to go to Mars? Develop a Seadragon?

[Update a couple minutes later]

I see that I was channelling Clark Lindsey (as often is the case). He has more, including the fact that it was apparently due to their (other shortsighted) decision to abandon methane.

And a big D’OH! There was a lot more to the story that I mentioned above–I just didn’t realize that I had to scroll down. Yes, it is an L-2 architecture. Let me go read, and think about it, and I’ll have more later.

[Not much later]

OK, I’ve at least glanced through it, and here are initial thoughts. First, the understatement:

It appears that the changes made to the ESAS architecture in the near-term may have long-term ramifications for the entire VSE.

Which was exactly why Steidle wanted to perform the CE&R studies–to consider all of these possibilities, and their implications, both short term and long. But the architecture that NASA came up with doesn’t resemble any of them (as far as I know). There’s little evidence that they even bothered to look at the reports–they’re simply gathering virtual dust on the servers.

I like a Lagrange rendezvous point, but all of the analysis that we did at Boeing indicated that L-1 was a better choice than L-2. The advantage of L-1 is that it’s always visible from earth, and it’s a relatively short trip home from there. We were strongly driven in our trades by NASA demands (unreasonable ones, in my opinion) that astronauts be able to get home in an arbitrarily short amount of time. The disadvantage of L-1 is the propulsion cost, and L-2 is indeed more efficient from that standpoint. But it wasn’t considered in the Boeing CE&R studies because of the trip-time constraint. Its other problem is that unlike L-1, which is continually visible from earth, L-2 never is. For communications, a relay satellite in a halo orbit, or a series of them in lunar orbit, will be required.

I would think that the problems they’re running into at this point would justify a complete reconsideration of their approach, including their previous aversion to orbital operations and propellant depots. Not to mention, as Clark points out, methane. It’s funny, because I was just in a telecon a little while ago in which I was told to expect “big changes” in CEV. Now I understand what that means. It will be interesting to see how this ripples down, and right now, it makes it hard for the contractors to move forward in requirements analysis.

X-37 finally had a successful flight today, but a not-so-successful landing:

…the vehicle experienced an “anomaly” and went off the runway, DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker told me. The X-37 team is investigating what went wrong, and no further information was available immediately, Walker said.

No apparent word as to how much damage, if any, and what caused it.

I put up a level 9 entry on eBay for my Space-Shot.com tournament to win a trip to space on Rocketplane. This was Joe Latrell’s entry for winning the SpaceShot, Inc. beta 1 tournament and he will get the proceeds of the sale. He is ineligible to use it himself because he is on the advisory board. Face value $750 for an entry to compete against 511 other players for a trip to space, starting price $499. The price needs to rise 15% to be 1/512 of the retail value of the prize ($192,500 ticket plus $100,000 cash).

SpaceShot also received Rocketplane congratulations on a successful launch.

Poor Mark Whittington. He continues to grasp at any straw that offers him hope of the Great Race with the yellow hordes, despite their obvious slow pace and uncertain plans for their human spaceflight program.

Sadly for him, Dwayne Day sets the record straight, in comments:

I’m increasingly surprised by the shallowness of the coverage that the Chinese space program is receiving from spacedaily.com’s Australian commentator. See, for instance, here.

The commentator, Morris Jones, speculates based upon limited knowledge and data. For starters, he was not even _at_ the talk by Mr. Luo Ge (I was), and is making his judgments based upon a Reuters news article. That article was essentially accurate, but did not discuss Luo’s comments in detail or really in context. Thus any conclusions that one draws from the article are going to be a distorted assessment of what Luo actually said.

Read all, if you’re interested in this subject.