There are some interesting comments over at this NASA Watch thread about the impending death of Ares 1. This one was particularly sad, but jibes with my experience over the years, and talking to others who have worked for and with Marshall:

I left MSFC last year after dedicating many years of my life to our nations space program (9 years contractor and 9 years civil servant). I consider that time completely squandered. I would never recommend an aerospace career to any bright young person.

The general mood at MSFC is pure apathy tempered only by greed. Keep in mind a GS-13 civil servant (anyone with 10 yrs experience) is knocking down $90K plus per year, 3-4 weeks vacation per year, great benefits, and near total job security. Needless to say – not very many of them are going to rock the boat. In this kind of environment, managers pretty much do what they want since few of the working troops will challenge them and hold them accountable. The primary promotion criterea at the center is how well you “obey” (ie kiss butt). The resulting incompetence at all levels of management is beyond belief.

Ares I is a perfect example of what this environment produces. Remember what ESAS said was “off-the-shelf” 4 segment SRBs and J-2. How that vehicle could ever meet requirements when the upgraded 5 segment SRB and new turbopump J-2 equipped vehicle barely meets requirements is a question some investigation board should ask. But I can already tell you why that vehicle was recommended. Because the top dog said so. And when the top dog says do it then pesky little things like physics or economics matter not to MSFC/NASA management.

I’ve told family for years “If the American people knew how bad things were at NASA – they would shut it down”. There is no solution for NASA. You can’t salvage it. You can’t fix it. It’s over. The cancer that is politics has ravaged our once great space agency enough. Be humane and put it out of its misery.

That’s unlikely to happen, of course, for political reasons, but the Aldridge recommendation to convert the centers to FFRDCs was an attempt to fix some of those problems.

On another topic, a frequent commenter who calls himself “Ben the Space Brit” has some mistaken thoughts on propellant depots:

Propellent depot-based architecture requires a huge commitment to a sustained LEO infrastructure. To the uninitiated, that means building, maintaining and continually refilling specially-designed satellites that act as ‘gas stations in the sky’.

Right now, there is no reason to do this except to have an EELV-based lunar archetecture and to express commitment to a hazy concept of commercial HSF. Simply put, no politician would right now be willing to commit money to such an open-ended venture. The advantage of a HLLV is that it is something that you spend a big amount on once and then operate at a reduced cost. Depots are something that you have to spend on and then keep spending to keep them operational.

Now, it is true that, in the long run, a depot-based architecture will be key to keeping an early-stage lunar outpost operational. However, just as money for commercial Earth-to-LEO developments only became seriously available when there was a destination (ISS), I do not consider it likely that money for depots and other LEO infrastructure of its type will become available until after the outpost is operational, thus creating a clear target for the investment.

IMHO, depots will never be politically acceptable as a precursor to a lunar mission, only as an investment to bring down maintenance and logistics costs for it once in place. You will still need an HLLV to put the outpost in place and also act as the LV for the precursor survey missions.

This makes no sense whatsoever to me. Where is the evidence that an HLLV will “operate at a reduced cost”? The only example we have is Saturn. It did not have low operational costs. There is no reason to believe that an Ares V, or any other wet dream of the heavy lifter fetishists will do so, either. Why does he think that heavy lifters aren’t “something that you have to spend on and then keep spending to keep them operational”? That is an excellent description of a heavy lifter, and the heavier the lifter, the lower the flight rate, which means that you never get your average costs down to anything reasonable.

Depots, on the other hand, shouldn’t require much in the way of ongoing costs, once in place, except perhaps replacing them every few years. Their cost of use should be quite low, and they allow the cost of propellants (the vast bulk of mass that has to be delivered for missions beyond LEO) to drop by encouraging competition among providers. And such an architecture is much more robust, particularly with multiple redundant depots. If a depot fails, you switch over to another one. If a launch system fails, you switch over to another one. But if you only have a single heavy lifter (and does anyone imagine that we’re going to develop two?) and it has a stand down (and don’t say that it won’t), you’re out of business until you get it running again.

There may be good arguments against a depot-based architecture, but I haven’t heard any yet. They always seem to be rationalizations to defend an irrational devotion to big rockets.

[Update a few minutes later]

One of the subtitles (or themes) of my piece at The New Atlantis (which will be on line Real Soon Now) could be “BFRs? We don’t need no stinkin’ BFRs.”

[Another update a few minutes later]

There’s an interesting discussion in comments over at Selenian Boondocks about the politics of selling propellant depots.

…one giant leap for commercial spaceflight?

My thoughts on SpaceX, Constellation, and Senator Shelby, over at PJM today.