Here’s an article at Aviation Week with more detail on what the administration plans for a NASA program restructuring (though I’ve heard via some of my own beltway sources that the architecture actually isn’t that well defined yet, and won’t be immediately–Wednesday’s speech will be more broad-brush).

One bit that I found of interest (and one which some people, who fantasize that this has anything to do with concerns about Chinese competition, should note):

“You have the accident to thank for this,” said one source of the new presidential policy, which Bush signed last month after an interagency review of space policy triggered by the report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB). The review and Bush’s decision have been closely held, and those who described it spoke only on condition of anonymity.

However, if this is all correct, then I’m a little less concerned.

OSP dead? RIP, and good riddance.

If it takes them ten years to develop the CEV, that’s plenty of time to get private activities going in LEO, making it ultimately pointless, or perhaps useable as a space-only vehicle, if the design isn’t too insane. The main thing is that it will keep NASA busy with something new that won’t be competing with the private sector.

I’ve pretty much given up any hope of getting sensible policy out of the administration (or for that matter, any administration), at least with respect to NASA, but that’s all right. I’m more concerned that they do no harm, and this policy shows some promise of not doing too much damage to our prospects for opening up space. It will only be hard on the taxpayers, but that’s nothing new, and in the context of the total federal budget hurricane, it’s spitting in the wind.

Any presidential vision ought, then, to include a way of eventually wrestling space activities out of the agency?s clutches and into the hands of the private sector.

From The Economist.

It’s not always a good plan or one with serious intent, mind you, but there’s always a plan. Good ol’ evolutionary psychology.

[via Andrew Lloyd]

It’s not always a good plan or one with serious intent, mind you, but there’s always a plan. Good ol’ evolutionary psychology.

[via Andrew Lloyd]

It’s not always a good plan or one with serious intent, mind you, but there’s always a plan. Good ol’ evolutionary psychology.

[via Andrew Lloyd]

Jeff Foust has started up yet another blog–on space politics. He also has some good stuff over at The Space Review today: a roundup of space policy positions of the Democrat candidates for president, and some suggestions for the president from Rick Tumlinson, with very little of which I disagree.

Any discussion of a permanent return to the Moon (RTM) must be centered on two overriding questions: ?why?? and ?how?? The answers to each of those questions are interrelated. If we go for the wrong reasons we will fail. If we go for the right reasons and do it the wrong way, we will fail. And if we don?t go at all, then we will have failed in a way that will send ripples down through the ages….

…NASA must shed operational activities such as LEO transport and running the space station. The Orbital Space Plane should be canceled?now. Prizes, multiple source contracts, investment and tax incentives must be put in place to encourage the new ?Alt.Space? firms to take over human transport to space, and drive the traditional aerospace giants to modernize or get out of the field. The space station should be mothballed, handed to our partners, or be taken over by a quasi-commercial Space Station Authority as a destination for commercial and university users. ISS and other NASA pet projects must not be grafted onto a moon project simply because they exist. If they really support it they are in, if not, they are out.

RTWT

I’m apparently in good company in my concerns about the administration’s new space policy.

…a sustained human presence on the moon, advocates say, is best achieved by harnessing the full creativity of the commercial sector.

“It is my hope that this new vision does have an ample opportunity for the commercial sector,” said Courtney Stadd, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe’s former chief of staff who left the space agency for private industry in late 2003. “If it is limited to just a few astronauts exploring the moon and Mars, as we learned after Apollo 17, it will not grab and sustain public attention.”

David Gump, president of Fairfax, Va.-based LunaCorp and author of the 1990 book, “Space Enterprise: Beyond NASA,” agreed.

“It’s up to the administration on which path it takes into the forest,” Gump said. “If it welcomes private participation, life is good.”

We’ll find out Wednesday, if Keith is right. Or perhaps not. Even if the president makes a formal address, it would still be possible to do so without getting into the implementation details (though I would argue that this is an argument of philosophy and purpose, as much as implementation, and certainly should be specifically addressed in such a policy announcement).

I’m blogging from the heart of hanging chad country, in Lauderdale by the Sea. I flew out here Friday, but didn’t have internet access until today. I’m sitting by the pool of the Shore Haven Inn, a block from the beach, on a wireless connection. The hotel even provides wireless access cards for laptops for guests (like me) who haven’t yet brought their machines up to date.

I see that there’s a lot of buzz in the blogosphere about the upcoming space policy announcement, and the comments section has been lively in my last post. I’ll be commenting on well, not all, but some of this after I get my bearings.

Frank Sietzen and Keith Cowing are claiming an exclusive on the administration’s new space policy, to be announced next week. Apparently they were waiting to see whether the Mars mission was going to be successful. [update: Keith writes in comments that the timing wasn’t related to the Mars landing, but doesn’t explain what did drive it.]

The visionary new space plan would be the most ambitious project entrusted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration since the Apollo moon landings of three decades ago.

Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that NASA has been, or can be, reformed sufficiently to entrust it with such a project. I’m not sure what a “CEV” is–they don’t explain that–but I’m inferring that it’s perhaps a “Crew Excursion Vehicle,” which the Orbital Space Plane program will be morphed into. That would explain why the OSP Request For Proposal has been delayed. NASA probably knew that this was coming, and that the requirements just changed, probably necessitating a do over of the recently completed Systems Design Review.

Anyway, if true, I’m disappointed. I was hoping for a vision, rather than a destination, and one that included the American people. This is just picking up where Apollo left off, and that was a very expensive way to go. It seems to continue the philosophy that, as Trix are for kids, space is for NASA astronauts, who the rest of us get to watch on teevee. It also implies that reusable launchers don’t make sense, or can’t be done, which doesn’t help investment prospects for them privately.

If they were going to return to the sixties, it would have been much better if they’d picked up instead where the X-15 left off.

Fortunately, the private sector is doing that, and ultimately, I suspect that NASA isn’t going to be very relevant to the opening of space, regardless of this. If nothing else, assuming that it gets approval, such a program might keep them busy enough to at least not get in the way.

[Update at 8:15 PM PST]

Someone over at sci.space.policy points out this worrisome little bit:

Sources said Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing programs that do not support the new effort.

Does that mean no more (among other things) robotic exploration of the outer planets?