Since Sotomayor has made no more than a handful of important constitutional rulings in her judicial career, the fact that she got three of them badly wrong must be given great weight in assessing her nomination.
It’s hardly surprising that a president who has so little interest in property rights would nominate a judge with that predisposition.
The agenda for tomorrow’s first meeting of the Augustine commission has been posted. Clark Lindsey has it over at Space Transport News. I found this interesting:
3:30 pm – Alternative Architectures
DIRECT
Shuttle Side-mount Options
I understand that they have limited time for this first meeting, but I hope those aren’t the only alternatives they consider.
[Update a few minutes later]
The “alternate architectures” described above are alternate launch architectures. They need to broaden their thinking to alternate exploration architectures.
Why Barack Obama can’t fix the economy:
Last night, as I reread Robert Kiyosaki’s 1997 Bestseller Rich Dad Poor Dad, I realized why Barack Obama will be unable to do what is necessary to fix America’s economy. It’s not just that he believes in government intervention in business, although that’s a big part of it. But what makes it even worse is that President Obama is Poor Dad.
Read all.
There’s a lot to chew on in this Av Week article about costs of EELV versus Ares I:
A NASA-funded study found that a human-rated Delta IV heavy rocket could be a cheaper route to the International Space Station than NASA’s Ares I crew launch vehicle.
But the human-rated United Launch Alliance rocket would be less expensive only if the Ares V heavy-lift moon rocket development is deferred, the Aerospace Corp. study reports. And the Delta IV alternative could add two years or more to the “gap” in U.S. human access to orbit if it starts this year, according to the unreleased study obtained by Aviation Week.
I understand that Ares I was supposed to be a “down payment” on Ares V, and that if Ares I isn’t developed, but Ares V is on schedule, then Ares V has to absorb the development costs of those Ares I components that would have been book kept under it, thus increasing Ares V development costs. So it sort of makes sense that it will cost more overall if the money that would have gone into Ares I instead goes into “human rating” Delta IV, while much of the Ares I development costs would have to be paid in addition, with no Ares I for the money. I understand the theory. I think it’s bogus, of course, but it’s hard to know without (as usual) seeing the study assumptions.
Many observers, including me, find ludicrous the notion that a new rocket development could be ready sooner than “human rating” (I’m going to continue to use quotes on the phrase, because it’s meaningless, or means whatever NASA wants it to mean to justify whatever they want to do on a given day) an existing, reliable, insurable vehicle that already carries payloads worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ordered by Richard Gilbrech, the former associate administrator for exploration, the $500,000 study evaluated six different versions of the Delta IV heavy as an alternate to the Ares I, which NASA is developing in-house based on the solid-fuel first stage space shuttle boosters, the shuttle external tank, and the J-2 engine used in the upper stages of the Saturn V.
So, they spent about two and a half man years on the study. I wonder where they got the data for it? Presumably, they got Ares I data from NASA (wonder how much that was fudged?) and went to Boeing for the Delta data, as well as Rocketdyne for the engine numbers.
The study did not address the other U.S. Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) – a heavy-lift version of the Atlas V – because of “no clear advantages and several disadvantages,” including the difficulty in obtaining human-rating data on its Russian RD-180 engines.
Again with the “human-rating” mysticism. There is no such thing as a “human-rated” rocket engine. To the degree that “human rating” exists at all, it is a function of integrated system design, not individual systems.
Are they saying that they don’t understand the engine reliability? Or what? Again, this is a rocket that has an excellent record, with no in-flight engine failures of which I’m aware, and certainly none of a nature that would have prevented a safe abort. And as for whether or not they are “Russian,” Aerojet could establish domestic production fairly quickly any time the Air Force (or NASA) decided that was necessary, and were willing to pay for it.
And Atlas has better upper-stage performance than Delta (though probably one of the reasons that they looked at various new Delta configurations was to address the issue of the underpowered upper stage that was a concern during OSP). But if we want to have a robust transportation system for humans as well as cargo, it would make a lot of sense to invest enough to make Orion (or whatever) capable of launching on either vehicle. And I continue to believe, until I see a credible study with assumptions that indicates otherwise, that it would be cheaper to modify both EELVs to carry a capsule than to continue to move forward with Ares.
Now here’s where the numbers start to make no sense:
For the Delta IV heavy using a modified J-2X upper stage engine, the study found no real cost savings over the Ares I. But for the version using four RL-10s, Aerospace Corp. estimated design, development, test and evaluation would come in at about $2 billion less in fiscal 2009 dollars than the Ares I projections. Life-cycle costs for 14 flights of that version of the Delta to low Earth orbit would be about $16 billion, $3 billion less than Ares I in today’s dollars, the study found.
Obviously, since the J-2X is (despite its name) essentially a new engine, it will cost more than using RL-10s. But I don’t understand what they could be doing to the Delta that would cost as much as testing and resolving vibration and other issues with what’s essentially a new SRB first-stage for the Ares. It also seems to me that the Delta upper stage is simpler, because it doesn’t have to provide roll control for the entire stack, as the Ares upper stage does. Furthermore, I wonder if they assumed the same Launch Abort System for both vehicles, when the requirements for that of Ares are much more stringent, resulting in a much heavier and more complex system?
But the most amazing thing in this paragraph is an estimate of the “life cycle costs.”
In March, the GAO had an estimate of development costs alone for Ares I of $20B. So how can the total life cycle costs of fourteen flights be less than that? LCC would include not only development costs, but the fixed costs of operating over however many years those flights occur, and the marginal cost of the hardware for fourteen ships. If we assume four flights a year, that’s three and a half years of operations, for a dedicated pad that can’t be charged off to anything else. If the fixed costs are only a billion dollars a year, that adds three and half billion to the twenty. If the hardware costs only a hundred million per flight (I’m being very generous here, I suspect it will be higher) that adds another billion and a half, so we have an LCC up to twenty-five billion now (and a cost per flight of over a billion and a half each, or more than half as much again as a Shuttle flight — what a bargain). A lower flight rate would, of course, cost even more due to the extension of fixed costs into the out years.
On the other hand, we aren’t told what the “development costs” are for the Delta mods, but I would presume that it would continue to use the same pad that it currently does, which is shared with cargo flights, so fixed costs attributable to the crewed flights would be much less (though there might be some costs assigned from VAB ops in both cases).
Bottom line is that I find it hard to believe that the “life cycle cost” numbers are anywhere as close as indicated here.
Now, the last question is how it could possibly take longer to modify a Delta than to develop a new launcher. “Rocket Man” has a theory:
It was not surprising today, then, that Av Week would be handed a still unreleased report on the viability of EELVs to replace the mis-begotten Stick. Sure an EELV can do the job. And it can do the job less expensively. But guess what? It would take seven years to remake the rocket in human-rated form. Come again?
An already 8 for 9 rocket that carries multi-billion dollar satellites to orbit, has no problem getting insurance today. The design, development, and test phase has been paid for. Walk into your favorite EELV store and offer to buy several dozen and watch the prices fall.
But where to set the bar for human rating? If you are trying to get a new rocket built, and you’re paying for the study, you set the bar obnoxiously high. Only then can a real rocket fall behind in the race with a paper rocket. Without getting into the tit-for-tat arguments that the Italian Waiter’s minions are well studied for, there is only one more thing that our “risk is our middle name” astronauts would like to see over their heads at lift-off.
A reliable launch abort system.
And if a new one of those is going to take seven years to develop, shouldn’t we get someone else to take over the job from the current contractors?
(For the uninitiated, this blogger uses a lot of metaphors — Italian Waiter, for reasons unclear to me, is MSFC’s Ares manager, Steve Cook.)
Sounds right to me (and of course, as Bobby Block points out over at the Orlando Sentinel, this report is already obsolete, since it’s becoming accepted that Ares I won’t make its 2015 date anyway, which means that even if it really takes seven years to get a Delta ready to fly, it still doesn’t really increase the gap).
And this also ignores, as noted above the fact that a Delta LAS might be quite a bit less of a development risk than the one for Ares. It all depends on the requirements. And the assumptions. Something that we continue to not be allowed to see.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Oh, and as for Ares V being deferred? It’s already happening. Hopefully forever.
[Update a few minutes later]
Clark Lindsey wonders what ULA will do. I agree that now that Griffin is gone, the risk of Lockmart losing Orion out of political spite is much reduced. Boeing and ATK stand to lose the most if Ares goes down, but if there are Delta upgrades to be done, Boeing would benefit (and the jobs would be mostly in Huntsville, I’d guess).
[Update mid afternoon]
Clark Lindsey has further thoughts.
Alan Boyle has a quick roundup.
So Pete Siebold got the first type rating for White Knight Two.
OK, what does that mean? It implies to me that it’s an airplane. But it’s not going to be certified as an aircraft by AVR. So what does it mean to have a type rating for it?
I had a (semi) heated discussion with Will Whitehorn about this subject at the ISDC, over beers. I asked him how he can take passengers for weightless training in WK2 if he’s not getting certified under Part 25 (or whatever). His claim (and I’m not doubting his claim) is that George Nield has confirmed to him that all flights of WK2, with or without SS2, will be regulated by AST, and not AVR, because it’s part of a suborbital system. Thus, if AST deems that the training is necessary for passenger safety, they will be allowed to provide it on WK2, even without carrying the spacecraft itself.
Now, I could see them getting the thing an airworthiness certificate (from AVR) and then flying people in the plane as an experimental aircraft, with permission from the local FSDO, using the flight training exemption, which is what we used to do for weightless flights in the T-39 back in the early nineties. What I still don’t understand, regardless of how vehemently Will insists on it, is how AST can regulate an airplane, not engaged in suborbital flight. “Suborbital” flights were carefully defined in the legislation a few years ago (“thrust exceeding lift for significant portion of flight”), and a WK2 flight sans SS2 (i.e., it is no longer part of a suborbital system) whose thrust never exceeds its lift except briefly during take off, simply does not satisfy the criterion.
As I told Will then, expect a turf battle to crop up within the FAA once they start to actually fly passengers in the thing. I could be wrong, but can’t see AVR letting AST get away with it, and I think they’ll have the law on their side.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Another thought. Will the vehicle have an N number on the tail? If so, who will issue it?
[Update a couple minutes later]
D’oh!
I misread the post. He got a type rating for SS2. That raises different questions. Is AST now in the business of providing type ratings? Because SS2 is clearly a suborbital vehicle, and within their purview.
And is Siebold “type rated” for WK2, or is merely the “pilot”? Which was the original question. And the tail number question remains, for both vehicles. At least for SS2, since “N” designates US, how about an “NS” number, to indicate that it’s a space vehicle and to allow AST to maintain its own data base that wouldn’t interfere with AVR’s?
[Update early evening]
Double d’oh! I read it right the first time, as Ed Wright points out.
John Derbyshire says that government human spaceflight was largely pointless, and likely to end soon.
I don’t actually find much in there with which to disagree (I’ve pointed out the Zheng He analogy myself) — we have gotten horrible value for the money spent over the past forty years, and I do think that the hope is for private space. Though if the Augustine Commission could recognize and articulate the value to the nation and planet of becoming truly space faring, for things like planetary defense, and put forth a realistic plan to do it, I suppose that it’s possible it will survive somehow, but it will have to have sufficient pork content, which will defeat the purpose. But it’s hard to see Constellation continuing to exist in its current form.
I’m actually working on (or at least supposed to be working on) a longish piece for the summer issue of The New Atlantis on this subject.
[Tuesday afternoon update]
I will say that I think that “pointless” is too strong a word — as I said, we have gotten quite a bit of value, but not enough to justify the expenditure. And in many ways, Apollo has actually set us back from progress in space, by establishing a failed government-development model that lives on to this day in the form of Constellation. I hope that the Augustine Commission can finally fix this, but I fear that it won’t.
…and victimology:
One aspect of the speech that hasn’t received sufficient attention is the focus on victimology: Israelis were victims of the Holocaust, Palestinians victims of dislocation after the founding of Israel, Americans the victim of the 9/11 terrorists, Arabs the victims of Western imperialism, and so forth.
That this appeals to Obama is not surprising. He and I attended law school at the same time, Obama at Harvard and me at Yale. Victimology was all the rage. It gave one not only moral standing, but, oddly enough (like Sotomayor’s “wise Latina”) a certain level of intellectual standing.
During our first year in law school, there was a one-day nationwide “student strike for diversity” at elite law schools, including Harvard and Yale. (I don’t know for sure whether Obama was involved in this “strike,” but he gave a speech on behalf of uber-diversity advocate, and Harvard lawprof, Derrick Bell.) At Yale, students gave speeches throughout the day. What struck me at the time was how eager, almost desperate, the various student speech-givers were to be perceived as victims.
As he notes, Obama ignores, or seems unaware of or indifferent to, the real reasons that we support Israel, relative to its despotic neighbors. But I guess western liberal democracies just aren’t worth defending any more. After all, it’s all culturally relative.
Oh, and speaking of Marty Peretz (about whom we’d still like to know who he voted for), he’s wondering if Dennis Ross was removed from his planned position of envoy to Iran because he’s too hawkish, or too Jewish.
…and voted “present.“
Maybe TOTUS is on summer vacation.
[Update late afternoon]
Speak for America, Mr. President:
Some argue that the brave Iranians demonstrating for freedom and democracy would be better off if the American president somehow stayed out of the fight. Really? But Barack Obama is president. His statement wouldn’t be crafted by those dreaded neocons who vulgarly thought all people would like a chance to govern themselves and deserved some modicum of U.S. support in that endeavor. It would be written by subtle liberal internationalists, who would get the pitch and tone just right. And the statement wouldn’t be delivered by the notorious George Bush (who did, however, weigh in usefully in somewhat similar situations in Ukraine and Lebanon). It would be delivered by the popular and credible speaker-to-the-Muslim-world, Barack Obama. Does anyone really think that a strong Obama statement of solidarity with the Iranian people, and a strong rebuke to those who steal elections and shoot demonstrators, wouldn’t help the dissidents in Iran?
I don’t believe it. I don’t believe Barack Obama believes it. As he put it in The Audacity of Hope: “We can inspire and invite other people to assert their freedoms;…we can speak out on behalf of local leaders whose rights are violated; and we can apply economic and diplomatic pressure to those who repeatedly violate the rights of their own people.”
Maybe someone else wrote that book. He continues to vote “present.”
[Late afternoon update]
The State Department refuses to condemn the crackdown:
Lefties keep assuring me on Twitter that western meddling will only make it easier for the regime to demonize the protesters, but (a) the demonization’s going to happen anyway, (b) no one’s asking Obama to send in the Marines, just to speak up, and (c) Angela Merkel managed to issue a statement earlier today calling the Basij thuggery “completely unacceptable” without killing the uprising in its crib. And still, from the White House, nothing. To think, some commentators are accusing The One of “cowardly silence.”
You’ll also be pleased to know that, according to no less than the New York Times, Obama didn’t bother holding any meetings or conference calls about this yesterday. Remember: Health care is a “crisis.” This is but a “situation.”
Well, to be fair, perhaps they want to avoid charges of hypocrisy when they may have to do the same thing here next November.
From Carolyn Glick, who was never fooled by the Obama administration:
If the Palestinians follow through with their threat to renew their terror war against Israel it will be quite bad. This is so not because Israel will be unable to defend itself. Israel has the means to defend itself. It will be quite bad because, in light of the hostile treatment Israel is suffering at the hands of the Obama administration, and given the central role the U.S. under Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton is playing in arming and training the Palestinian army that will likely be attacking Israeli targets in Judea and Samaria, the U.S. may well side with the Arabs against Israel. The administration is already placing limitations on arms sales to Israel. In this event, Israel will have to move quickly to find other suppliers.
It is unlikely today that Arab states will go to war with Israel, although that could change quickly if Iran acquires nuclear weapons. In that event, the Iranians will be in a position to blackmail Arab states like Egypt and Jordan into abrogating their peace treaties with Israel and opening hostilities against it. Iran would accomplish this task by threatening to overthrow the Mubarak regime and the Hashemite Kingdom. It is this specter — along with the specter of nuclear attack and chronic terror violence conducted under Iran’s nuclear umbrella — that makes it essential for Israel to move quickly to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
LOPEZ: How nervous is Israel about Ahmadinejad’s “reelection”?
GLICK: In a round about sort of way, Ahmadinejad’s “reelection” empowers Israel to take the necessary action. By stealing the election, Ahmadinejad now stands in open opposition to the Iranian people. This decreases the likelihood that the public will rally around the regime in the event of an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear installations.
Ahmadinejad’s open hatred of the U.S. and his humiliation of the Obama administration will similarly make it more difficult politically for the administration to prevent Israel from striking Iran. If before the Iranian elections it was easy to see the administration signing on to U.N. Security Council sanctions against Israel in the event of an Israeli strike against Iran, or even shooting down Israeli aircraft en route to Iran, in their aftermath, such prospects seem more unlikely.
Emphasis mine. I wish that it were unthinkable, but it’s not.