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John Frassanito & Assoc. via NASA
An artist's conception shows a future Orion crew vehicle on a Red Planet mission.
Pessimists are bemoaning the end of U.S. human spaceflight, but optimists see the next few years as a transition to a new paradigm that will energize commercial ventures and get astronauts beyond Earth orbit for the first time since the Nixon administration. Which way do you see it?
There seems to be plenty of gloom to go around as the space shuttle program nears its end. Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, a former member of the NASA Advisory Council and other commissions sizing up the space effort, had this to say via Twitter: "Apollo in 1969. Shuttle in 1981. Nothing in 2011. Our space program would look awesome to anyone living backwards through time."
One of the astronauts on the first space shuttle flight in 1981, Bob Crippen, told me that he was disappointed that the shuttle program's end would leave NASA "without the capability to put our astronauts in orbit ourselves." And he questioned whether NASA had the right vision for future exploration. "I personally favored going to the moon," he said.
The frustration flared up today during a House committee hearing with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden as the sole witness, or sole target. "We have waited for answers that have not come," Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Ralph Hall, R-Texas, told Bolden. "We have run out of patience. ... I would like to point out today that the committee reserves the right to open an investigation into these continued delays and join the investigation initiated by the Senate."
Bolden, a retired Marine general, took the hostile fire. "You have the right guy here to criticize," he said. "I am the leader of America's space program."
He laid out the main points of the post-shuttle plan:
- Rely on the Russians and other partners for resupply of the International Space Station, at least until U.S. companies can finish work on the space vehicles they're developing with NASA's backing. The first commercial cargo craft could be flying to the station by the end of this year, and U.S.-made "space taxis" could be taking on astronauts by 2015.
- Continue work on the Orion crew vehicle, which should be capable of carrying four astronauts on more ambitious trips beyond Earth orbit. Orion had been canceled as part of the Constellation back-to-the-moon program, after $5 billion had been spent on the program, but it was essentially resurrected as NASA's "multipurpose crew vehicle," or MPCV.
- Build a new Space Launch System, or SLS, which will be based on shuttle-era and Apollo-era rocket technology. The design for the SLS has not yet been announced, which is why members of Congress are so frustrated. Bolden said it could take until the end of summer or even longer to get the SLS plan through its financial review. Congress passed a law calling for the MPCV spaceship and the SLS rocket to be ready by 2016, but Bolden said the 2017-2020 time frame was more realistic.
- NASA is aiming to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, and to Mars and its moons by the mid-2030s. Other stopovers, ranging from the moon to gravitational balance points in outer space, may be added along the way.
"We are not abandoning human spaceflight," Bolden said. "American leadership in space will continue for at least the next half century because we have laid the foundation for success."
So there is an evolving plan for the future ... just as there was an evolving plan for the space shuttle system in the early to mid-1970s when the Apollo program came to an end. Under the best-case scenario, that plan will lead to actual flights within four to six years, which is less time than it took between the last Saturn 5 and the first shuttle launch. But there are lots of questions surrounding the post-shuttle plan:
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How much money will NASA get? A draft report from the House Appropriations Committee calls for trimming the space agency's budget by roughly 10 percent. (For details, check Space Policy Online, Parabolic Arc and Space News.) NASA officials as well as commercial spaceship developers say that budget reductions will slow down the transition to post-shuttle spaceflight even more.
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Will the commercial sector succeed? Right now, NASA is committed to paying the Russians $56 million for each seat on a station-bound Soyuz craft, and the price is due to go up in 2014. Commercial providers such as SpaceX, Sierra Nevada and the Boeing Co. say that they can beat that price, but that they need NASA's money to help cover development costs. Shuttle program veterans say the commercial providers still have to prove that their craft will be safe and reliable.
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Will the commercial space taxis for low Earth orbit and the Orion MPCV/SLS system for going beyond Earth orbit complement each other the way NASA hopes? Larry Price, Lockheed Martin Space Systems' deputy manager for the Orion program, told me that the two-track system served as an insurance policy for the post-shuttle space effort. "There's a little bit of competitive pressure," he acknowledged. "If the commercial guys run into any problem or delay for any reason, then we could back them up. And similarly, if we don't meet our milestones, the commercial guys could evolve into our niche."
After 30 years of grand successes, tragic failures and unfulfilled promises, the era of the space shuttle is ending. We may not yet know exactly what kind of American spaceship will be the next to fly. And because of that, thousands of people will be laid off by NASA and its contractors in the weeks ahead. But we're not witnessing the death of the American space program. At least that's the way Elon Musk, the millionaire founder of SpaceX, sees it.
"As far as I'm concerned, it's not the death of anything," he told me. "What we're really facing is quite the opposite. I think we're at the dawn of a new era of spaceflight, one which is going to advance much faster than it ever has in the past."
Now why would he say that? Over the next few days, we'll be presenting a series of Q&A interviews with Musk and other folks involved in shaping the post-shuttle era. What they've told me runs counter to the gloom-and-doom talk, but you might well have a different opinion. Feel free to weigh in with your comments.
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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If any of you have ever read Edward R Tufte's explanation of the Challenger accident, in his book "Visual Explanations", you would no longer question the fact that administrators need visionaries to lead us into space. I say Elon Musk is just one of those visionaries, and PLS let the administrators stay out of the way!
max headroom-2191278
Try reading this
and see if you come to the same conclusion. As for Elon Musk he is an entrepreneur who is interested in making money and not exploring space. His unique vehicle to get to suborbital space is interesting but is like comparing a Model T Ford to a Mustang Boss 302.
Please don't put Ed Tufte in the same topic with Elon Musk. I sat in on one of his 'love-ins' that he held about what is wrong with Microsoft PowerPoint and the history of visualization all so he can make his fee on each of us while he pushed on us his new free books...Yes the book is a great coffee table book; I use it to even out my coffee table so it doesn't wobble. That man is SO 1960s and lacks the vision that anyone [to include Elon Musk] has presented so far...Tufte could have saved me the 2.5 hours of my life by summarizing what I already learned in public speaking about accuracy, brevity, and clarity; the power of 3, 5, and 7, and keep your presentations down to 15 minutes; otherwise your audience will have glaze over their eyes there afterwards...WOW- I just told you everything I learned in less than five sentences...PAY ME! I want the $50,000 he made for that speaking engagement!
Oh, by the way: He didn't make any of those illustrations in his book; he 'lifted' them from others that had already created them from way back to the beginning of print work to present day...All he does is give credit to those that made the illustration, I am not sure, but he either pays the royalty fees (if any) for those illustrations or he gets around it by giving his book away for free during his speaking engagements, and then charges obscenely amounts of money for his speaking engagements to pay those cheap royalty fees (if any) and then sits on the rest of that pile of cash...GOTTA LOVE CAPITALISM!
[YAWN]
Tufte bores me...He is SO 20th century...
:-/
The thing to realize about any space flight in general is how expensive it is to perform from withing the earth's gravity well. To get past this huge problem at this point in s[pace exploration we need to move operations to a more viable location. I know the moon doesn't seem too viable but it is the best thing we have available and as difficult as it will be we need to use it to manufacture the vehicles we will be using to explore with in the coming years. Either the materials or a completely manufactured object can be electromagnetically slung from the moon's surface with relative ease due to a shallower gravity well and no atmosphere. I am really disappointed this has not been grasped by the scientific community and explained properly to those elected to power who are tasked with making it happen. BTW, this is so much a government level of effort to pull off that this recent talk about private enterprise stepping in is almost just a distraction. Huge amounts of funding are necessary, payback times are long but it is something we have to commit to if we want the human race to survive off our birthplace - planet earth.
Build the Moon base? You have my vote.
I think it is a little bit of both. I was lucky to be a Materials and Process Engineer on the Space Shuttle Main Engine program. Even on the Space Shuttle program the lack of leadership on the space program was evident. Now that lack of American leadership is more pronounced as manned spaceflight winds down.
We will probably not see a Moon or Mars colony in my lifetime and if we do it will likely be a Chinese lead effort.
joe,
unfortunately it appears that the post you were responding to was deleted. Don't know by whom though.
@Jonathan
Yea I see that, very odd.
When Moody's and S&P are warning the US of possible downgrade in its credit rating, the space program should take second fiddle to the fiscal health of the United States. Maybe even third or fourth. America seems to think it is different from Europe, that it only has to reduce its deficit, not its debt. In fact, we could lose the Cold War and not even realize it, because Russia's economy went into free fall after the Soviet Union's collapse, but the US just kept borrowing money, because it could. Russia couldn't.
It is more important to sustain financial viability of the US than to try to match science fiction stories. We can work on the technology to get us into space from the ground and through the dreams of entrepreneurs. If somebody beats us to some space object, they are probably flirting with agency downgrades also.
the S&P and Moody's warnings are not about cutting investment in Research and Development though. It isn't about short term spending problems, it is about longer term priorities. That investing is what we should be investing in because it is THAT which ensures the nations growth.
But hey, if you want future growth to happen in europe and china, then just let people know so that we can all just leave the country to move to greener pastures.
Bill, also do keep in mind, once again, that NASA is doing what it does on an annual budget that the DoD could blow through in a matter of hours. I think there are better areas we could focus budget cuts on than a little Department whose budget comprises less than 1% of the total annual federal budget.
My point is that everything should be on the table to balance the budget. Taxes, the space program, defense, Social Security. Everything.
See, there in lies the problem, you are advocating the government to look at reducing the budget of a department who could be funded in its entirety for many years, as Jonathan pointed out on a different post, by eliminated waste from Defense alone. There are far more appropriate areas to focus on before targeting these lower funded departments. Lets not even get started on Medicare and Medicaide. Social Security is almost entirely self funding, the only way that would contribute to the debt is if the Treasury had to pay back the bonds securing the debt against SSI(I.E. the SSI fund raiding that the government has been doing for 40+ years. Regardless SSI has its own funding method separate from tax revenue that everything else is paid from before the deficit borrowing kicks in).
Bill
EVERYTHING SHOULD be on the table, available for ANALYSIS to determine whether it should be cut.
As part of that process, we should determine:
a) is it wasteful - if yes cut.
b) would cutting it just end up transferring the costs to another entity, if yes, we need to determine if that is actually desirable. In other words how many people does it help.
c) does the entity serve to advance the nation in areas that are important for economic growth. If yes, then how can we cut that, if no, then maybe we should not cut it. POTS telephone subsidies for rural areas, which have been ongoing subsidies for phone companies since the 30's. We still give them out. That is something that should probably be cut now.
d) can the entity that would be impacted by such a cut be able to withstand such a cut. Cutting medicaid for example is something that would create a major negative in my opinion with this question, because the people on medicaid are those that in general can't buy health insurance in the first place, so cutting medicaid will just cut health care in the end.
These are the questions that should be asked, but the military should also be asked to answer this question. Does the trillion dollar plus cost of the F35 imply that we are going to save any lives of our soldiers? or is the risk of losing the plane/pilot due to mechanical failure higher now than of losing the same in combat.
I have no problems with having to justify NASA's budget, I can probably on paper justify a budget that is double what they get now. Can you do the same for your pet projects?
Jonathan: I'm glad you put all that out there for folks to ponder. I personally don't have any pet projects. Anything is expendable and we will deal with what falls after that. The politicians must compromise. That is the best solution and one that changes constantly. If it should be funded, then taxes should match it. Certainly interest payments on the debt should be matched with tax revenues. They are a necessary expenditure to please America's T-bill holders. Essentially, in my world, there are no absolutes.
Taken from a post on the front page about a similar argument to gut NASA
Seriously, actually I think the biggest contribution that the space program has made was in the creation of astro glide which has improved the sex lives of countless millions of people, as well as further improving the GOP's ability to repeatedly to F%^K people in the arse.
And yes, this was extremely cynical sarcasm.
@ Jonathan-2055273
Problem is, if the GOP were really using it, then it wouldn't hurt so much!
...lol
Well it was extreme sarcasm, so it doesn't have to be true. But hey, my gay friends are all very happy about that contribution from the space program. lol
Not only doesn't NASA fly to low Earth orbit any more, they don't fly passenger airlines either. And rightly so. NASA and the Soviet Union paved the way to low Earth orbit, now it's time to turn it over to someone else, and for NASA take on the next challenge: manned interplanetary travel. I don't think that's going to happen by present methods; it's going to take a new kind of engine, perhaps an ion drive.
Rocket science has become rocket engineering. Time to move on to the next step in science.
There will be changes, of course, but NASA and Kennedy Space Center are certainly not closing their doors. The lay-offs when Apollo was canceled were far more sweeping and disruptive, and the United States is still going to space (via the Russians and with unmanned missions). We're writing about a lot of these issues (and have launch video and photos as well as lots of other content) at LOFTY AMBITIONS BLOG.
If we could set aside the political, religious, philosophical and other “I have a personal axe to grind” positions for a moment, if we could take a look at what has been achieved over the last 50 or 60 years, and reflect upon the way our lives have been changed, mostly for the better because of the advances in science gained largely through their endeavours, we might conclude that NASA has been one of the most spectacularly successful organizations ever to have existed.
In terms of the future, as someone else pointed out, as research becomes science, and, as in turn, science becomes engineering, there is a logical transitioning of roles and responsibilities and NASA's future plans reflect just that.
They are not, nor should they be the L.E.O “Yellow Cab” company; as a result of their leadership and the knowledge they provide, others are now able to step into that role.
Take some time to review NASA's current “Job Jar”; to those who understand the challenges involved, it is a truly phenomenal game plan.
Will they get it 100% correct 100% of the time?
Of course not, when you are looking into the future, aiming to do things that nobody ever did before, asking, and attempting to answer questions no one else ever thought to ask, you will need to adjust your thinking on a continuous basis as new information is gained.
The death of NASA?
Rubbish.
This is the birth of a new era of discovery and being proud to have spent most of my working life as an aerospace engineer, I am in awe at what NASA and their partners have achieved thus far and I no doubts whatsoever that they will continue to lead the world in space research.
JTB - Excellent post. I agree 100%. Looking forward to many amazing and exciting discoveries in the years ahead.
The space programs are dead or close to dead because of overpopulation and over-consumption. It’s all laid out, (National Geographic, March 2011, page 72) in the chart graphic of a 3 dimensional cube. One axis measures population, the other measures technology based on patents. The third axis measures affluence based on GDP. Notice how the vertical axis of affluence adds to the shocking exponential growth after 1950.
Any child born after the mid '80's should not exist. That is the time our planet surpassed it's population carrying capacity. Peter Singer head of philosophy at Princeton did the fifth grade math in a 1999 NYT essay. By studying world statistics on overpopulation and over-consumption he found, if we're getting and spending more than 30k per year we're basically guilty of murder.
So basically everything is going to crap in a hand basket just as Revelations predicts. The only thing not mentioned is the exponential speed part. Humans don't intuitively grasp the exponential mean. Human evolution has stalled. So I believe all we can do is treat each other a lovingly as possible as we watch the whole world go to crap in a hand basket at exponential speed.
Okay, you got me when I read your first paragraph...But...
Then I read your second paragraph and contrary to the writing, those that were born post-mid1980s DO exist, so that model is shattered...Statistics can be swayed to provide support to one position or another so I take statistics lightly...We do spend more than $30k per year and life still goes on...This model is faulty and should be taken lightly as well...
You entered religion into this equation with your third paragraph. Yes, I am a God-fearing man, but at the same time, you are looking at a book/chapter in a book written by a man about one man's interpretation of the end of the world that we have no basis or foundation to know for sure what mental state he was in or what at the time period suggests his level of understanding. So his interpretation of what he believed to be the end of the world was taken as Gospel at that point in time. With everything in life being equal, self-fulfilling prophecies will be the death of us all...Take for instance that idiot that forcasted the rapture was going to occur last month; where is he now? In therapy for the stroke he suffered. We are all still here (aren't we?)...
I believe that overpopulation and food/clean water shortages ARE a threat to our National Security and something BIG will be needed to compensate. On one end of the spectrum are technological advances and new methods/business processes to facilitate controlling the population and increase food/clean water production...On the other end of the spectrum are natural disasters, world wars, and disease. Somewhere in the big scheme of things, there will be a happy medium that will cover all aspects of that spectrum to control our overpopulation.
Call it a correction to the World Order of things, but only simple people will say that it is the Book of Revelations. No one on this planet has the authority to declare the end of the world is upon us. Only you can declare that what we call our 'normal' way of life will be forever changed to something 'less normal' and after we have moved on and become worm food, the future generations will call what we declared 'less normal' as 'normal'...
Ya we could just sit around, moan about it and watch ourselves waste away. Or we could work to solve that problem, whether that be through planetary colonialization or some other solution we have yet to discover. I personal don't support the roll over and die method, and I am looking to NASA and the rest of the world's space programs to lead us to whatever solution there is to find.
Or start your own company and get some seed money from some philanthropic entities and or the U.S. Government...Why not? If you got the vision, some moxie, some spunk, and know how to talk convincingly-WHY NOT?
:-)
I'm very excited to see the Shuttle going away. It was a marvel of engineering, but required an army of workers to maintain it, resulting in ridiculously expensive space flight that nonetheless competed with commercial ventures due to giant government subsidies.
We need a space program, not a jobs program, and that's what we're going to get with the likes of SpaceX, Bigelow, Virgin, etc. Companies whose focus is on getting reliable, affordable results, rather than employing huge numbers of people in key congressional districts. It seems obvious to me that only now will we see real progress in improving performance and reducing costs.
Just imagine if computers were built by the National Computer Agency, whose chief (unstated) mission was to employ legions of people in the districts of important congressmen. We wouldn't be having this discussion here, because there would be no personal computers and no Internet. Instead, an industry formed, founded by some entrepreneurs in California, and now we all have supercomputers on our desks or in our pockets that would have been unimaginable in the Apollo days.
NASA has done great things, and continue to do them — but earth-to-orbit service isn't one that it can do a good job of, nor should it be doing. We need NASA mainly to get out of the way, and that's exactly what the retirement of STS means.
Joe
Apollo required an army of about 60,000 workers at the cape alone (not to mention all the other places that had people working on the program) to support 3 or 4 launches. The Space Shuttle had 6000 workers at the cap to support 9 or 10 launches a year. That is a pretty big cut for a single generation jump.
NASA - One small step for man, one giant coverup of information that could benefit mankind.