Jeff Foust says that the Pete Worden bandwagon is gaining momentum, with open support from Senator Brownback.

I'd love to see it happen, but I just can't believe that he'll be named by the White House, and if he is, he may have tough sledding getting confirmed, even with the Senator's support. Based on his history of pretty blunt comments about NASA and the mainstream aerospace industry, he threatens too many rice bowls, particularly in Houston and Florida.

"I’m absolutely convinced that we don’t ever need to fly the shuttle again. We’ve got three of them. Put them in the Smithsonian ... school parking lots. Kids can climb on them," said Worden, whose 30-year career spans a range of space duties, including stints at the White House National Space Council, the White House Office of Science and Technology and recently as a legislative fellow for U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Commerce science, technology and space subcommittee.

"I’m a veteran NASA basher," said Worden, who was on detail from his job as a research professor at the University of Arizona while he worked for Brownback. Worden said his Capitol Hill experience demonstrated to him that NASA actually stood for "Never A Straight Answer."

I'd bet that as the home Senator from JSC, Kay Bailey Hutchison would effectively blue slip his nomination by herself.

Is it worth pushing anyway? His ideas seem like a major game change for the better.

During the NH primary in 2000 I personally got to ask Mr Bush what he thought the government's
role is space exploration was, my recolection of his verbal answer....

In low earth orbit, the private sector ought to
be the ones building and developing, with the government contracting the services it needs.

Father out the it's clear that things like Mars exploration need to be funded by the governement,
but the government should not take all the risk.
He dicsusseed the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars polar lander failures in some detail, (this was before they had figured out why MPL had failed)
it was very clear to me that he was a bit of a space buff and took a personal interest in the topic. He went on to say he would prefer a situation where the private contractor shared the risks, and some significcant part of the payment was tied to mission success.

Given that answer I would not at all be suprized if bush appoints someone that wil shake up the works at NASA.

Given that answer I would not at all be suprized if bush appoints someone that wil shake up the works at NASA.

Maybe, but he didn't the last time (though that may have been the intent). O'Keefe was captured by the bureaucracy fairly early on due to his lack of knowledge of the field (one bit of evidence of that is his buying into the myth that reusable vehicles can't be done, and that they're not the key to reducing launch costs).

Anyway, as I said, even if Bush were to appoint him, it might be a battle to get him confirmed. General Worden seems to have never learned the old inside-the-Beltway adage, "Friends come and go, but enemies are forever."

> Anyway, as I said, even if Bush were to appoint him, it might be a battle to get him confirmed

It would be an entertaining battle, at the very least. Which might be worthwhile in itself, since it would publicly expose a lot of issues (and agendas) at a very high level.

It would be an entertaining battle, at the very least. Which might be worthwhile in itself, since it would publicly expose a lot of issues (and agendas) at a very high level.

Well, that's certainly true, but I still have trouble believing that the administration is that willing to rock the boat. On the other hand, he's tipping lots of other dinghies out there, so maybe this is just one more area in which the president wants to be remembered as consequential.

Is it worth pushing anyway? His ideas seem like a major game change for the better.

What can we actually do to try and sway things in Worden's favor?

Considering I may well be the first person to drop his name in cyberspace, I am sure that is equal to most normal gypsy curses.

I have been trying to bend the universe to my iron will and I have been frighteningly too sucessful this year(Not to mention taking a 19 year old knock-out brunette with a track and field scholarship(you could bounce a quater off her gluteius maximus!) to my 20th year High School reunion! Living well really is the best revenge!). Gen Worden getting the top honcho position is proabally asking God for too much.

Still, Christmas is coming soon and I gotta ask for something......

Rand, a serious question:

Maybe, but he didn't the last time (though that may have been the intent). O'Keefe was captured by the bureaucracy fairly early on due to his lack of knowledge of the field (one bit of evidence of that is his buying into the myth that reusable vehicles can't be done, and that they're not the key to reducing launch costs).

Okay, we have our RLV. How much LH2 or LOX can it schlep up to LEO? How many flights are needed to supply a fuel depot so you can go somewhere interesting?

> Okay, we have our RLV. How much LH2 or LOX can it schlep up to LEO? How many flights are needed
> to supply a fuel depot so you can go somewhere interesting?

Why do you assume the figure of merit is the number of flights, rather than the number of dollars?

Okay, we have our RLV. How much LH2 or LOX can it schlep up to LEO? How many flights are needed to supply a fuel depot so you can go somewhere interesting?

If you're just shipping fuel to orbit, you don't need a reusable vehicle. A ballpark figure would be 10 kilograms of fuel+oxidant consumed for every kilogram delivered to orbit.

> Okay, we have our RLV. How much LH2 or LOX can it schlep up to LEO? How many flights are needed
> to supply a fuel depot so you can go somewhere interesting?

> If you're just shipping fuel to orbit, you don't need a reusable vehicle

You do if you want a fuel depot that can support more than a trivial, Apollo-like number of flights.

> A ballpark figure would be 10 kilograms of fuel+oxidant consumed for every kilogram delivered to orbit.

And $10,000+ worth of expensive hardware (or $2,000+ if you're talking about Russian hardware).

The fuel and oxidizer is trivial.

We need a space cannon to launch simple consumables.

> We need a space cannon to launch simple consumables.

Yeah, and we need a Fedex cannon to send overnight packages. :-)