We'll start with an article from this week's Space Review Obama's modest proposal:no hue, no cry?, by Greg Zsidisin. Its the first in a 2 part piece.
In it, gives an overview to the Obama's proposed funding delay for the Ares Moon/Mars program, and instead spending the money on education. He also gives a brief explainer on the other candidates space policy, and then talks about when he asked a question to senator Obama about his space policy.
After a brief summary of the policy, I asked, "Why are you specifically pitting the space program against education, and where’s the vision in shutting down the [human] space program?"
Mr Zsidisin then borrows from the Chicago Tribune.
During the question-and-answer portion of an event at a recreational center here, Obama was asked about the nation's space program.
"I grew up on Star Trek," Obama said. "I believe in the final frontier."
But Obama said he does not agree with the way the space program is now being run and thinks funding should be trimmed until the mission is clearer.
"NASA has lost focus and is no longer associated with inspiration," he said. "I don't think our kids are watching the space shuttle launches. It used to be a remarkable thing. It doesn't even pass for news anymore."
Mr Zsidisin then goes on to make a couple final points - First, that it seems that the space community is likely to have, in Zsidisin's words, "antagonistic President who considers space little more than a budget target". Second, that the space community hasn't come together to offer up another proposal that Obama might be more inclined to get behind, and that he will investigate that more in part 2 of his essay.
The whole thing has me annoyed, frankly speaking. I am a little annoyed at Zsidisin, because for one, I'd like to know his political leanings (I don't know him, and sometimes these questions can take an antagonistic attitude, and those worry me, especially when facing a potentially hostile audience. But I am more annoyed at Senator Obama - First, I am annoyed at the implication the only role space has to play is via inspiration and science, and second, that its Nasa's fault for not being inspiring (or rather, relevant) enough. Nasa is part of the executive branch, and the Nasa administrator and Nasa policy is developed by the President. If Nasa isn't doing its job, then the fault lies with the executive branch, and most specifically, with the president.
So the question that really needs to be asked - what is and will be Senator Obama's policy in regards to space? And, yes, I know I've blogged about this many times, but its important to keep asking, because space policy will prove to be very important, IMHO.
UPDATE
Apparently Obama got asked about it at a Q&A in Columbus - here is the exchange
Q: What do you plan to do with the space agency? Like right now they're currently underfunded, they, at first they didn't know if they were going to be able to operate Spirit rover. What do plan to do with it?
Obama: I think that, I, uh. I grew up with the space program. Most of you young people here were born during the shuttle era. I was the Apollo era. I remember, you know, watching, you know, the moon landing. I was living in Hawaii when I was growing up, so the astronauts would actually, you know, land in the Pacific and then get brought into Honolulu and it was incredible memories and incredibly inspiring. And by the way inspired a whole generation of people to get engaged in math and science in a way that we haven't - that we need to renew. So I'm a big supporter of the space program. I think it needs to be redefined, though. We've kind of lost a sense of mission in terms of what it is that NASA should be trying to achieve and I think that we've gotta make some big decisions about whether or not, are we going to try to send manned, you know, space launches, or are we better off in terms of what we're learning sending unmanned probes which oftentimes are cheaper and less dangerous, but yield more information.
And that's a major debate I'm going to want to convene when I'm president of the United States. What direction do we take the space program in? Once we have a sense of what's going to be most valuable for us in terms of gaining knowledge, then I think we'll able to adjust the budget so that we're going all out on what it is that we've decided to do.
I'll offer up more thoughts on this later (probably tomorrow's post).
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The second thing that really annoyed me was Mike Griffin's comments to the Senate Appropriations Committee. Griffin is not comfortable on relying on other countries for "strategic capabilities" - most often, this is in reference to providing access to the station.
There are 3 likely options to combat this need, to insure our access to the station. The first is to continue flying the shuttle past its retirement date, of 2010. The second is to accelerate the development (IE increase funding) of the the Orion/Ares I vehicles, and the third is to increase the funding on COTS, and pursue whats called Option D capablities. For those who don't know, the idea behind COTS is to have private industry, through some governmental funding, but largely private financing, to fund the development and demonstration of a vehicle that can provide cargo resupply to the station, and then the idea is that Nasa would purchase the services from said company (or any company) to deliver cargo and supplies to the station. In addition to the cargo capabilities, there has always been what has been termed Option D, which would also provide crew access to the station. However, where-as there has been money allocated for the cargo flights, no money has ever been allocated for crew flights.
Anyway, that should give you enough background. As I said, Griffin was testifying before congress, and during the testimoney, he was asked about dealing with the gap in access, and specifically COTS. His response was to give it a vote of no confidence. Borrowing from the Spacepolitics article,
After providing an overview of COTS, he said, "we are focusing initially on cargo because, I just want to be clear with everybody, we already have a mechanism for getting crews to the station with the Soyuz system, but unless we can bring some new commercial capabilities online, we really have no cargo resupply. So, actually, of the two, the most important COTS capability to me right now is cargo, and I must be honest about that."
He added that he would "very much like to see" a COTS crew capability developed, but that he doubted that "even with their [the COTS companies’] best efforts, even if more money were provided, that COTS crew transportation capability will arrive in time to be available after the shuttle retires or even by the end of the current contract with Russia in 2012.
He was then asked if the best option to close the "gap" was to increase funding and accellerate development of Orion and Ares I, and said that that was indeed the best option.
The reality of the situation is quite different. First, there is his concern with regard to providing cargo access to the station - he talks about it like that when the shuttle stops flying, there will be no method to deliever cargo to the station. The reality is that currently, we already have Progress vehicle's flying cargo to the station, and if soyuz is good enough for our crews, and Progress is a derivative of Soyuz (which it is) then there is no reason to assume that we can't keep using progress. In addition, there is the European ATV vehicle. Already, the first ATV, the Jules Verne, is in orbit, DOCKED to the station. And finally, there is the Japanease H-II Transfer Vehicle. Now, I know that we'd like to use as many US products as we can, but even if we were to stop flying the shuttle tomorrow, there is plenty of cargo option to the station, unless we insist on following this administration's ideal of pissing off the entire world. (and none of this really involves the COTS people)
On the other hand, there is only 2 methods of bring crews to station, and with the retirement of the shuttle, we will be left only with Soyuz, to take our crews to space.
Now, this brings me to two important points - funding and vehicle selection. The total amount of money being spent on COTS is $500 million. Pulling numbers from Wikipedia (admittedly not the best source, but a good start), nasa has spent over $1 Billion dollars already on Orion - and Griffin wants us to believe that the "best option" to get crews to the station is from Orion?
And then there was the vehicle selection - while I think the selection of the Dragon/Falcon combination from SpaceX was indeed an excellent choice, the decision after RPK's failure to secure funding, and to give the contract to Orbital Science, and their Cygnus spacecraft is a very questionable idea. First, unlike Dragon (or many of the other options, including some unfunded deals that nasa is working with) Cygnus has no manned capability or follow-on. Second, in addition to needing to fund the development of a new spacecraft (which wasn't avoidable) the Orbital Science proposal also requires the development of a new rocket. Given that reality, and given the reality about Orion and Ares I and the difficulties faced during the development process, as well as some other factors, one has to begin to wonder if Griffin and company are holding back good options that could be used to resupply the station (like Dreamchaser on the already existing Atlas V) so that they can continue to pursue the Ares I.
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Finally, there is the "proposal" to commercialize the Ares I. Many people have called bullshit on this, from Keith Cowing over at Nasawatch, to Rand Simberg, to Clark Lindsey over at Hobbyspace. The idea that Ares I will be commercialized is frankly ridiculous - Solid rockets produce much more vibrations than liquid fueled rockets, and most people won't want to put their multi-million dollar communication satellite on what is effectively a truck with no springs. And then there is the fact that the market for medium launchers, at the current price, is over saturated.
Frankly, as someone pointed out, this is more about ATK doing a PR move, so that it looks like we are getting more for the tax money being spent on Ares I than we are getting. If ATK had put a fair amount of its own money into the Ares I, I might find this more believable, but they've put almost none of their own money into this, unlike Delta IV, or Atlas V, or Falcon 9.
And people wonder why there is a flat spot on my skull, and a whole in my wall.
