Loren Grush has the details.
This is just a proposal; as she notes, Culberson is likely to restore the Europa lander. And in general, the White House proposes, and Congress disposes. What really matters is what gets appropriated.
The worst thing about the NASA budget proposal is that SLS/Orion survive. https://t.co/rAXed575QU
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) March 17, 2017
Thoughts on the worthwhile difficulties of settling space.
An interesting history, including a bonus discussion of space tourism.
Entirely not unexpectedly, they have some terrible suggestions for Trump and NASA:
- Maintain the exploration of Mars as the organizing principle for NASA’s human spaceflight program
- Direct NASA to plan an executable, affordable path for sending humans to Mars orbit by 2033
- Expand NASA’s highly successful science portfolio
- Continue to grow and support the commercial space industry
- Initiate annual five percent increases to NASA’s budget for five years
The only good one is the fourth. Here are mine:
Should they be “permissionless”? Marcia Smith reports on an interesting hearing on the Hill last week, which I attended.
Trump is going to order a government-wide review of it.
If Trump really wants to review wasteful government spending, at NASA he can start with SLS/Orion: https://t.co/eR8yiprfgO
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) March 13, 2017
[Update a while later]
Congratulations to Altius Space Machines for their NASA SBIR Phase II win for cryo propellant transfer technology development. If we canceled SLS/Orion, we could found several thousand efforts like this.
Michael Totten says to brace yourself.
It’s too bad that Congress doesn’t take human spaceflight seriously, so we remain dependent on them.
I think that Kodiak will be hardest hit by this.
Bob Zimmerman has published an interesting and timely paper. I haven’t read it yet, but it can be downloaded from the Center For a New American Security, or from his site.
As I said, I went to the Satellite 2017 conference. Unfortunately, my flight was too early yesterday to catch this panel:
Shotwell also anticipates that using Falcon 9 rockets with pre-flown first stages will enable the company to execute on its backlog, which is currently loaded with customers that expected to have their satellites launched in 2016. SES-10 was one such mission.
“We do anticipate reflying about six vehicles, [with] pre-flown boosters this year, which should take some of the pressure off of production,” Shotwell said.
Let hope. I’ve been saying that the plans for the Apollo 8 re-enactment next year aren’t as unrealistic as some think (I give it about 30%). They have to get flying again, and they have to fly the heavy this year, and they have to get in those qualification flights, but I think those, not the Dragon itself, are the long pole in the tent. Once they have both pads going, they may in fact be able to work of that backlog, and if they’re regularly reflying first stages, that will be historic.