Strategy? Strategy?! We Don't Need No Stinkin' Strategy

Author Gaetano Marano says the Augustine Commission only provided options that were already well known and that what's missing is a clear strategy for the future of U.S. manned spaceflight.

What can I say?  When the man's right, he's right.

Lawmakers Criticize Obama Space Panel

The Augustine Commission, the group of government and industry space-experienced folks who have been studying America’s manned space flight plans and found them lacking, have come under Congressional criticism.

The commission feels NASA can’t get to the moon by 2020 with their shuttle replacement rocket, and that other plans need to be pursued. NASA is out of airspeed, altitude, ideas, and is short on cash. The Commission says they need another $3 billion per year to fulfill their charter. However, there are few-to-no shovel-ready ideas immediately available.

Representative Gabrielle Giffords said the options the commission provided were cartoon-like.

Panel chair Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed-Martin shot back with the line of the day to Giffords, saying “I respect your feelings; I must question your facts.”

NASA Appears To Needs More Public Affairs Officers

Using the bully pulpit of the Space Shuttle, astronaut Jose Hernandez says world leaders need to work together, and that the U.S. immigration system needs to be reformed so illegal immigrants can work openly in America and retire in a "traditional U.S. system."

AP author Julie Watson goes on to note (I think without irony) "the American dream for Mexicans and their families is fading."

Bring Your Questions for Buzz Aldrin

Certainly an interesting man who has lived an interesting life. He's an Air Force guy, so you gotta dig him.

Start-Ups Are Poised For Latest Space Race

Andy Pasztor of the WSJ reports the administration is "leaning towards outsourcing major components of its space program." This would mean some competition (or even cancellation!) for the planned NASA-sponsored Ares programs which (in six to eight years) will be used to resupply the International Space Station with materials and astronauts. To paraphrase Emil Faber, "Competition is good."


The Air Force would like the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle to get man-rated. That would allow them to have some of the cost-burden of that program, which was supposed to provide cost savings of at least 25 percent on USAF launches (cue Bob Euker sound-bite: "Just a bit outside") to other users. Likewise, commercial providers like Orbital Sciences, and SpaceX will be in the mix, too. However, don't expect the Ares programs to go down without a fight.


Also, while the President "has confirmed his commitment to human space exploration," the next part of the challenge will be to understand exactly what the President means by 'human space exploration.'


We are already at the point where human space exploration--currently defined by orbiting the earth in the ISS--fails to satisfy. One manned trip to the Moon may satisfy for a short while, but after that...

"Manned space" needs to provide a vision of space travel that is not completely disconnected with reality. Space tourism may be the start. Perhaps the lessons learned in space tourism and the technologies developed in that aspect of the space economy will be applied to the space domain in general. I think it is space's best hope.

Ares Needs a Death Panel

(Cue Death Star music--not Death Is A Star)

What can I say? They're right.

Exploration plan doesn't fit in current budget, panel says

NASA is underfunded. They need an extra $50 billion or so across the next ten years to do what they're supposed to do.

Given the anticipated national-level direction and funding trend for this sort of discretionary endeavor, NASA should expect to be riding on a man-rated version of the Delta IV and cancel their Ares programs.

There will be little Congressional consensus towards plussing NASA up to perform their "program of record."

And let's consider the ISS as a point of comparison. As Taylor Dinerman reports, the ISS went from an $8 billion program estimate in 1984 to an actual program costing about $100 billion as we speak. So that $50 billion estimate the Augustine panel has come up might well end up being much more than they've anticipated.

Report: NASA can't keep up with killer asteroids

I knew a guy who'd get asteroids so bad he could barely sit down.

In 2005, Congress gave NASA the job of spotting 90 percent of the asteroids and comets that might threaten life across the earth. These are, by definition, considered to be objects 1km or larger and NASA is getting close to fulfilling that responsibility. More recently, Congress also directed NASA to track any objects 140 meters or larger. However, the administration has not requested, nor has Congress provided the funds to fulfill this requirement. As such, NASA is not on track to satisfying that part of the requirement.

The AP article in the headline, derived from a report from the National Academy of Sciences, again brings to mind my first law of space operations: if it ain't funded, it ain't.

It next brings to mind another shortcoming in the congressional mandate itself: if you don't know how many objects there are, with any confidence, how can you task NASA to find 90 percent of them? Wouldn't the first job be to inventory these objects?

Ok, we'll skip that. NASA estimates there are about 20,000 objects in our solar system big enough to have a major "impact" (so to speak) for life on earth. They know where about 6,000 of them are.

For some reason, the U.S. is the only country with an active government-sponsored effort regarding the threat. I'm sure all the rest of the world thinks this is vitally important work, although it is apparently not important enough for them to spend money on. This raises another question: are we right in trying to solve this conundrum, or are they right in letting us serve as bill-payers and try and solve it ourselves?

Besides praying, what would we do if a comet or asteroid were to threaten the earth? Probably wish we'd funded some "space weapons."

U.S. Spaceflight Gap Wider Than Thought

The bottom line: the shuttle won't retire on time and its replacement won't be ready on time. Those are some preliminary findings of the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, led by Norm Augustine and briefed by former astronaut Sally Ride.

In total, the delays could add another year without a U.S. provided ride to the ISS. That gap could be mitigated by adding one or more shuttle missions. Man-rating the Delta IV EELV won't change the timelines appreciably.

The ISS may be a beneficiary of this review. The ISS is planned for deorbit in 2016, but the panel seems poised to advocate it stay on orbit longer. Why? Because the planned deorbit might hurt NASA partners and "U.S. leadership in space."

I cringe at that type of attitude. Rather, what should be considered is how (or if) our partners are helping us achieve the ISS's objectives and what could be done if we didn't have to support the money-sucking ISS.

Air Force: NASA's New Rocket Unsafe for Astronauts

The Air Force thinks the crew escape capsule for the shuttle replacement, known as the Ares I, will not allow the crew to escape if a low-altitude disaster were to occur. Given the capsule's nylon parachutes might well have to fly through a massive debris-field of flaming chunks of solid rocket motor, that seems reasonable.

Historically, the crew escape module is analogous to a very expensive good luck charm--it really is not up to getting the job done and is rather a kind of tool to ease the astronaut's cognitive dissonance about a near-ground (in this scenario, about 30 to 60 seconds into the flight profile) mishap. What does the shuttle have, you ask? Nothing. Remember? It was engineered to fail only once every 10,000 missions.

NASA says the Air Force's sample size in coming to this conclusion--one mishap involving a Titan IV in 1998--is too small.

A lesson is when you man-rate anything, the costs go through the roof. Likewise, there is no reasonable way to plan for every contingency.

Space Program Struggles for Direction

Struggles for direction is an apt characterization, but it the article should be titled "Manned Space Program Struggles for Direction." The next article in the series could then be Military Space Program Struggles With Affordability.

Just a thought.