George Abbey, who ran NASA’s manned spaceflight program in the Goldin years, seems to be attempting to position himself to replace Mike Griffin with the advent of a Democrat administration. There are some grammar problems with this report of a recent speech by him (it reads sort of like a live blog of the speech). I know that you will all be shocked to hear this, but he doesn’t want to replace the Shuttle–he wants to keep operating it:

The space program needs realism, Abbey said. Putting an end point on the shuttle forces NASA to focus all of its remaining missions on the space station, giving little leeway for other missions.

What other missions? Other than Hubble, what does he have in mind? Surely he doesn’t think that we can afford to do deep space exploration with it as a launch vehicle?

If we don’t retire it, how long does he expect to be able to keep operating it? What happens when (not if) we lose another orbiter?

The major difference between the two craft, Abbey said, is versatility a handy attribute when working in space [sic–I assume that there is supposed to be some kind of punctuation after the word “versatility”]. (Orion) is not as capable as the shuttle it cant [sic] do any of the things the shuttle can do.

Well, it certainly can’t do all the things that the Shuttle can do, but it can certainly (at least in theory) deliver crew to space and back, which is one of the things that the Shuttle can do. Whether or not it even should be able to do all of the things that the Shuttle can do is barely even debatable any more, given the consensus of most observers of the program that a primary problem with Shuttle is that it had too many conflicting requirements. This is thinking right out of the early seventies, and it’s also thinking born of a career at NASA, in which it is automatically assumed that we can only afford one vehicle type, so it must do everything (ISS was severely crippled by this attitude as well). And of course any system that has to have so much capability, if it’s possible at all, will be very expensive to develop and operate, so the notion that we can only afford one becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I find his concern about other space nations misplaced. Certainly China isn’t going to make any great strides at their current place. And his spinoff argument is typical NASA fluff. The only thing he says that I agree with, in fact, is about ITAR (at least I assume that’s what he’s talking about when he says):

First, Abbey said too much government red tape is making it very difficult for wanting nations to purchase satellites from the U.S. The red tape is forcing nations to other competitors those competitors are surpassing us.

Of course, it’s hard to know exactly what he said, or meant, given the quality of the reportage.

I’ll probably have some commentary on this when I get more time (i.e., when relatives aren’t visiting for the weekend), but Jon Goff has an interesting post on some candid comments by Doug Stanley on ESAS. I’m sure that Doug is sincere in his beliefs that a) Mars is more important than the moon and b) ESAS is the best way under the political circumstances to make it happen. But I think he’s wrong on both counts, and more importantly it is not his place (or even Mike Griffin’s) to make policy. If he has problems with VSE as stated, and wants to do a touch and go on the moon (ignoring the president’s directive), he should work to get the policy changed, rather than pervert the architecture in his preferred direction without such a debate.

[Update on Monday morning]

More interactions with Dr. Stanley, from Keith Cowing.