In Leaked Email, NASA Chief Vents On Shuttle Program's End

jerryasher writes "In a leaked memo, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin discusses 'the jihad' to prematurely terminate the Shuttle and what that means for the International Space Station. One implication: there may come a long interval when only our Russian Allies are aboard the Space Station. Add that bit of irony to your new cold war kit and then wonder why Griffin discusses why we wouldn't sabotage the Space Station, and how and why the memo got leaked in the first place."

Re:So let's stop faffing around

[cohensh]

Part of the point of this is that it takes an incredible amount of time and money to send something into space. Adding one more flight will not be a huge issue, because there is a rescue flight scheduled for the last current shuttle flight. But after that to add a flight would be a ton of work. With the knowledge that the shuttle program was coming to an end the ability to make the antique parts that the shuttle flies on is diminished, as no one makes them anymore. (To give an idea of how old the hardware is, the navigation system runs on something like 512 K) It would cost in the order of $400 million dollars per additional flight. Also, to speed up Constellation it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars per month, and even with expanded funding there is a limit to how fast it can be realized. In short, everyone is asking for money, NASA included, and lots of people question how important manned space flight actually is.

Re:So let's stop faffing around

[Anonymous Coward]

And get something new and awesomer in the skies to replace it.

Something that could get people going wow again would be nice.

In an age where even the 130 tonne Ares V is getting yawns, there is realistically only one rocket [wikipedia.org] that could potentially impress people.

Re:Source of leak?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate the fad of anonymous sources today.

Doesn't anonymous source = baseless article?

Read the article, narcberry -- it's obvious that Griffin acknowledges the content of the e-mail was his. The reason documents like this are leaked is that someone on the inside feels it's important for the public to know, but the person has a position to protect. The leaker is anonymous, but the source is NASA Administrator Mike Griffin.

Re:So let's stop faffing around

[darth dickinson]

America does not profit from the "captured oil fields". The profits are going to Iraq, when we *buy* their oil at *market prices*.

Chinese spcae lab in 2010 (frmo wikipedia)

[Anonymous Coward]

The PRC initially designed the Shenzhou spacecraft with docking technologies imported from Russia, therefore compatible with the International Space Station (ISS). The Shenzhou 8 unmanned space laboratory module, the Shenzhou 9 unmanned Shenzhou cargo and a manned Shenzhou 10 will be docked in late 2010 to form a first step small orbital space laboratory complex. This first step will allow China to master key technologies prerequisites for the following larger permanent space station. The Shenzhou 11 mission will carry the second crew to the complex

Re:My problem with the article

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I heard that a retail 12 megapixel camera attached to a retail telescope can, from orbit, discriminate objects as small as fingerprints, and that advanced video analysis software can identify an individual by his gait if not by his impossible-to-mask facial features. Doesn't that make you wonder what the kind or money that launches stuff into orbit could buy? Could they scan you for cancer? Do I have your attention yet?

You heard wrong. First of all, a 12 megapixel camera has trouble picking up fingerprints here on earth, unless the surface and lighting are conducive. Second, with a 1-meter aperture, the THEORETICAL limit for resolution would be picking up something 6 inches in diameter. With a 2.4 meter aperture (about the limit for optics going into space. It's the size of the Hubble, in case you were wondering), the (again, theoretical) limit of resolution that could be achieved is 3 inches in diameter.

Both of those numbers are, again, entirely theoretical. That's assuming you weren't looking through ~70 miles of turbulent, dusty atmosphere.

So unless the US Government beat the laws of electromagnetic diffraction and didn't tell anybody...

Stephen Metschan said it best

[QuantumG]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1188/1 [thespacereview.com]

Time is short. Senior NASA management is committed to beginning the destruction of the tooling used to construct the Space Shuttle's External Tank as early as next month. This destruction is completely unnecessary to support the current Ares 1 production plan because the floor space NASA plans to use is not occupied by the External Tank tooling. The only apparent objective of beginning the destruction of this $12-billion national asset next month, used by both the Space Shuttle and Jupiter Launch System, is to maliciously eliminate any competition to the current plan. In an attempt to put a halt to this unnecessary destruction of government property, the Senate version of 2009 NASA authorization bill sought to make this imminent action of the NASA administrator explicitly illegal. Specifically, the Senate provision directed the NASA administrator "to terminate or suspend any activity of the Agency that, if continued, would preclude the continued safe and effective flight of the Space Shuttle Orbiter after fiscal year 2010." Unfortunately, this provision, that cost us nothing to include yet wisely keeps our options open, was removed from the Senate-House conference bill just before the summer recess.

Not only the Russians....

[Anonymous Coward]

"One implication: there may come a long interval when only our Russian Allies are aboard the Space Station..."

AFAICT there will soon be Chinese up there as well - they announced a space walk for later this month yesterday....

So when we get back to the ISS we'd better get used to borsch, vodka and two helpings of No.27....

Re:My problem with the article

[Bronster]

It's not so much auto-focus as taking multiple pictures over time and eliminating the blur. Obviously slightly less useful for moving things than stationary things, unless you can define the movement accurately and input that into the algorithm (for example a car moving in a straight line at relatively constant speed)

I'm posting this not so much for you as for other people reading "automagic" and not understanding there's actually science for that magic :)

(what can a TLA do with an unlimited budget? I shudder to think. Probably waste (unlimited - delta) of it. What they do with the delta though, that's interesting.

Re:And he's absolutely right

[marco.antonio.costa]

No prob on the offtopic, I'm probably gonna get downmodded for it too... Mods on /. have been unforgiving lately. :-P

So... those financial bubbles are the result of unsustainable malinvestment caused by distorting intervention in the market's signaling systems like prices, interest rates and availability of credit.

To give the mortgage crisis as an example, both Freddie and Fannie had special ties and treatment by the government that led them to purchase very risky subprime loans that regular market-bound enterprises wouldn't touch with a 20-foot pole.

I'm reading this paper [cato.org] right now about some common myths about free trade and markets. Pretty interesting read it you got the time to kill.

Re:So let's stop faffing around

[rumith]

1. Since the Iraqi oil reserves currently belong to American (and some British) oil companies, the Iraqi government's profit comes from taxes imposed on the said companies. This way, US oil consumers buy it from US oil producers at market prices.
2. Iraq exports oil to Europe and Japan as well. If this is the case, these parties are actually paying the US companies, too.

Neo-Cold War Thinking Much...?

[Dr La]

It is interesting how both source and the discussion here is almost entirely about the USA versus Russia. The fact that Europe is also involved, and now actually has it's own (unmanned, but there is talk about a manned version) space vehicle to reach the ISS (the ATV) independent of either Russian Soyuz/Progress or American Shuttle flights, is completely ignored. Europeans will also continue to fly aboard Russian Soyuz flights (certainly now Kourou is ready to launch Soyuz rockets).

Engineering

[florescent_beige]

I'll take Griffin's assertions of context at face value and assume he thinks it's the right thing to replace the STS with Constellation.

He did, however, say the retirement of the STS was not based on engineering. I can see why he might say that.

The most incredible thing about the STS is the main engine, both incredibly amazing and incredibly problematic. The development of those machines as been long and winding. Here [enginehistory.org] is a nice summary of the problems they had just up to first flight.

The thing is, work on improving those engines has continued non-stop since 1972, and finally their performance and reliability is in the ballpark of where is was originally spec'd to be.

Mainly due to new fuel [spaceref.com] and oxidizer [spaceref.com] turbopumps.

And now they throw it all away. I just don't get it. It's too Arrow-esque for me.

Why not re-do the STS instead of re-doing Apollo?

Re:Safer?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Soviet/Russian shuttle was cancelled because the USSR fell and the money ran out. The Russians have the advantage that they didn't scrap their existing launch capability and heavy launchers, so not having a shuttle was not a major blow. In fact it's proven to be an advantage!

Link to the leaked memo

[stretchpuppy]

I didn't see a link to the memo, here it is:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=29133 [spaceref.com]

Re:allowing speech is hard

[ArcherB]

Besides, an economic downturn, or more accurately, slow-down in growth, is not the best time to raise taxes.

Suuuure. That's the story now. When the economy was roaring, it was not the best time to raise taxes either - because we should give some of the 'windfall' 'back' to taxpayers.

I don't believe that raising taxes on the rich will have any seriously negative effects at any time - except maybe for a revolt of the rich.

That depends on how you define "rich" and how you plan on taxing them. Maybe a tax on dividends? Then you are taxing grandma's retirement fund and you hamper investment (read: growth that produces jobs). Tax incomes? Sure, then the fat-cats you were planning on taxing get their "incomes" by different means (like a company provided million dollar home, fleet of cars, private jet and exorbitant "spending account"). Tax the big businesses directly? Then the businesses pass those taxes on to the consumers and EVERYONE pays them.

Sorry, but there is no way to simply "tax the rich" without catching a few working class in the net.