Forty-five years ago today, I was sitting home on the floor in my pajamas, watching the television, as the first American astronaut went into earth orbit. I don’t recall the suspense about the heat shield, but it may be that it wasn’t broadcast live, occurring behind the scenes. Or it may be that I was just too young to make sense of what was going on.
It’s my earliest recollection of the human space program, a subject that became one of lifelong fascination to me, and a career.
It’s not really news, but the latest Orion manifest update shows how pitifully little we’re getting for the many billions of taxpayer dollars that this program will cost. Two flights per year at four astronauts per flight. The Shuttle can carry seven. so it can carry almost as many in a single flight as the Orion will carry in a year.
I’d be willing to be that the program cost in that time period will be (at a minimum) on the order of a couple billion per annum. So that means that each ride will be costing us a quarter of a billion dollars. That’s each ticket, not each flight. And that doesn’t include any amortization of the development costs of either the vehicle itself, or the new launcher. And they told us that Shuttle cost too much.
It also highlights my point about too many astronauts and too few flight slots. If this is the best we can do, then we really should give up on a federal manned space program.
[Monday morning update]
Some thoughts from Louise Riofrio on the oversized astronaut “corps.”
Sorry for the lack of warning, but I’m about to go on the air with David Livingston at The Space Show (12:30 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time).
Homer Hickam has similar thoughts to mine on why Nowak cracked, with some recommendations, which are opposite to mine. His are to reduce the astronaut office, while mine are to open up flight opportunities. Either way, the situation has to be brought into balance.
Just checking in from London Towne (literally–I just checked in to my hotel). It’s noon here, early in the US, but not so early that my TCSDaily piece isn’t up. I have some thoughts on Lisa Nowak, and NASA.
I’m having dinner with Perry De Havilland tonight, and then off on the train to Brussels on the morrow.
Of an old story: waste, fraud and abuse at the National Reconnaissance Office.
Unfortunately, as the article points out, it’s very hard to oversee a program as secret as this one. I think that we actually need to scrap the agency and start over from scratch with some fresh thinking, which would include responsive space, rather than the fragile and vulnerable battlestar galacticas, such as the Keyhole series.
Dan Schmelzer has a breakdown. As I suspected, financing rounds are early progress milestones. For RpK, its second one is coming up this month. I assume that they have until the end of the month to meet it.
[Late morning update]
I just realized that my first sentence could be misinterpreted. I mean he has a breakdown of the COTS documents. I didn’t mean to cast aspersions on his mental health, which (unlike, apparently, Lisa Nowak) I trust is fine.
Lots more budget discussion over at Space Politics today.
As I noted yesterday, I think that this is the biggest problem with ESAS:
Griffin will be gone in January 2009. He needs to put his overall strategy in place
Alan Boyle has a roundup of thoughts over Mrs. Nowack’s escapades. And he beats me to the punch on the article title–guess I’ll have to come up with a new one.
Alan Boyle has a roundup of thoughts over Mrs. Nowack’s escapades. And he beats me to the punch on the article title–guess I’ll have to come up with a new one.