Jeff Foust has some tea leaves, in several posts, here, here, and here.

He also has a sign that Dr. Griffin has worn out his welcome on the Hill:

“We have been working together up until now. We’re not doing so well at the moment… I’m counting the days, one year and eight-and-a-half months and we’ll have a new administrator.”

I'd be selling prospects for ESAS short at this point, if there were an obvious way to do it. It would be easier if the contractor were Boeing, rather than Lockheed Martin, whose Atlas vehicle seems ascendant in the real market right now.

[Update a few minutes later]

I can't help but note that the only time that Republican Mark Whittington agrees with Democrat Barbara Mikulski's constituent-indulging fantasies is when they coincide with his own for a race with the Chinese.

[Update late evening]

Keith Cowing has a theory on Senator Shelby's sudden distaste for the NASA administrator:

It would seem by virtue of these remarks (which seem to border on being a slow motion temper tantrum) that Sen. Shelby is becoming increasingly frustrated now that his party is in the minority and he is less able to bully Mike Griffin - and NASA - around.

That's the way that space policy will be until it's an industry, rather than a rent-seeking enterprise for politicians.

Why do you think Lockheed is looking for human spaceflight options for the EELVs? It saw the writing on the wall for the Ares I a while back.

Unforunately by focusing on an architecture that could be used for Mars, and protecting the Mars robotic program from cuts, he has probably killed any chance of a lunar return and doomed NASA to LEO for another decade.

BTW expect the Shuttle to fly beyond 2010. The number of missions will be the same as currently planned, they will just be flown at a slower rate. As Altantis has shown a flight rate of more then 3 a year under the new rules is probably not feasible.

Barbara Mikulski is the kind of patron of science first modeled by Pope Urban VIII. She introduced the distinction between "useful" and "curiosity driven" (blech) research at the NSF. Someone should invent a time machine for the sole purpose of sending her sorry saggy behind back to the 1918 influenza epidemic so she can learn the hard way -- as some people must -- the value of a steady attention to pure science. That a cultural heir of Copernicus should behave this way is shameful.

The Ares system is the titanic headed for an iceberg. The captain of the ship, when told that there is an iceberg ahead, says FULL SPEED AHEAD, I am an engineer and I am sure that we can break through!

The problem with people like "Babs" and my sort of good friend (grin) Mark Whittington is that neither of them can explain a reason for NASA funding other then to find some imaginary enemy who is going to do dire things.

The PRC if anything is a threat economically...they are in the process of forming up the infrastructure to build air transport category airplanes and that is much more threatening then an imaginary race to the Moon.

Mark if you read this...why is Bush privatizing things so slowly snails are moving faster? The Mark Whittington I knew was all for privatization under well Clinton...

Robert

Rand - I'm not sure how Babs becoming Churchillian about the Chinese is suppose to impress the good people of Maryland, a Democratic state filled with people somewhat skeptical of foreign menaces. I wonder how much of VSE that Goddard is going to get as compared to JSC, for example, just to shoot down the pork angle.

The premise of the post seems to be wide of reality. The chatter on the hill seems to be all about adding money to NASA's budget, not taking away. Griffin is in dutch because he tried to cancel lunar robotic landers.

Oler - Clearly you have not bothered to read by piece in the Washington Post about COTS nor my various pieces (including the one in the Post) advocating extending that to lunar operations once the base is established. But handling the truth is not one of your strengths, I realize.

Posted by MarkWhittington at April 18, 2007 08:57 PM

Mark...I have read your piece in the Post...gee 500 million over five years...

One trivial step for Free enterprise in a bucket that includes in five years...what 20 billion for government infrastructure?

500 million five years....20 or billion five years...

yeah there is commitment.

Then the lunar base "once it is up and running"...

Why not in its construction Mark?

Since if it follows the "giant steps" of the space station which started in 1984 and this is 2007...it will be two decades in construction (oh sorry we are not done with the space station!)

Not exactly VICTORY AT SEA

Robert

> The problem with people like "Babs" and my sort of good friend (grin) Mark Whittington is that neither
> of them can explain a reason for NASA funding other then to find some imaginary enemy who is going
> to do dire things.

There's another problem. For the sake of argument, assume Mark is right, then we face a military and economic Pearl Harbor on the Moon.

In that case, why isn't he calling for the United States to accelerate military spaceplane development? Establish a separate Space Force? Build a military base on the Moon? Create incentives for private enterprise to reduce the cost of space operations and return Americans to the Moon immediately, instead of waiting 14 years?

It's as if someone in the 30's predicted the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor, then said that US policy in the Pacific should be limited to establishing a base for half a dozen USGS scientists -- and maybe allowing private enterprise to fly five or six "COTS" flights to Hawaii each year "once the base is established." No development of a Navy, Air Force, or Merchant Marine.

Posted by Edward Wright at April 19, 2007 02:47 AM

Yes...that is part of the problem but I would suggest that there is an even larger one.

Due to the fact that the industrial/government complex in major systems (not just weapons) procurement has become a decades long affair the US seems incapable of responding to an emerging and evolving threat.

Whittington and others answer seems to be "lets have another multi decades long government project (to a destination that we like) and then and only then lets give private industry a try"...

The problem is that 1) there is no method of sustaining private industry development until that happy moment, 2) the government infrastructure that the taxpayer dollars have created is already firmly in place (read politically in place) and 3) the sustaining of the government infrastructure is the only politically sustainable reason to sustain the project (ie it isnt accomplishing anything sustainable on its own).

It was a VIBRANT private sector industry well managed that defeated the Japanese and Germans in WWII...what we have now is a decades long leviathan that just continues regardless of success or failure.

Robert

> It was a VIBRANT private sector industry well managed that defeated
> the Japanese and Germans in WWII...

And a strong military. Both of which are noteably absent in the current vision of space exploration.

Even if you accept Mark's credo that only the government can go to the Moon, NASA is not the entire government. If there's a national security threat that requires the government has to build a lunar base, why should that job fall to a civilian research agency rather than the military -- the part of the government that's designed to deal with threats to national security?

I'll bet you credits to navy beans Mark won't answer that question. :-)