The Upside of the NASA Budget 283
teeks99 writes "There are a lot of articles circulating about the new changes to the NASA budget, but this one goes into some of the details. From what I'm seeing, it looks great — cutting off the big, expensive, over-budget stuff and allowing a whole bunch of important and revolutionary programs to get going: commercial space transportation; keeping the ISS going (now that we've finally got it up and running); working on orbital propellant storage (so someday we can go off to the far flung places); automated rendezvous and docking (allowing multiple, smaller launches, which then form into one large spacecraft in orbit). Quoting: 'NASA is out of the business of putting people into low-earth orbit, and doesn't see getting back in to it. The Agency now sees its role as doing interesting things with people once they get there, hence its emphasis on in-orbit construction, heavy lift capabilities, and resource harvesting hardware. Given budgetary constraints and the real issues with the Constellation program, none of that is necessarily unreasonable.'"
Stupid, really (Score:1, Informative)
You can change the NASA budget all you want, but the major impediments to commercial space launches are still the FAA and the EPA. If you can't get a license for a launch, you aren't going anywhere. And between the FAA and EPA it is almost impossible to get a license in the US.
Maybe Mexico would be open to allowing their skies to be used and for the remote possibility of some kind of pollution. Unfortunately, it is pretty clear they have not been open in the past - or we would be doing it.
News Analysis (Score:1, Informative)
FUD (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Stupid, really (Score:2, Informative)
That's weird, looks like SpaceX easily obtained permission to launch from Cape Canaveral. http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&um=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=spacex+canaveral+launch+falcon+9 [google.com]
Re:Stupid, really (Score:5, Informative)
Please stop the FUD. Approximately nothing of what you have said is true, cdrguru.
The FAA's office of Space Transportation (AST) has a mandate written in its authorizing law to both regulate and promote commercial space activities. They take both parts of that quite seriously.
Please do not spread FUD.
I am not aware of any commercial space activity which was denied an AST license or permit. There have been a few "Can't fly from this airport" snafu's from the aviation side, who are alternately happy and sad about rockets, but the AST crew are doing the "promote" thing quite seriously.
Is it always a completely smooth relationship? No. Is any of the startup companies spending most of their time (more than 10-20%) on paperwork? No. People are getting licenses and permits, they're flying.
From a reasonable standpoint, someone does need to be an external review to make sure we don't kill someone on the ground. If the industry neglected that, we'd eventually *really* get shut down when we did something neglegent. The reviews and regulation are appropriate to avoid dropping rockets on some poor family some day, which would be a tragedy both for the victims and for the industry.
EPA has no authority, the FAA has a standing environmental finding that there's no significant impact from the reusable rocket industry.
Am I personally flying rockets? No. Have I had to talk to AST about some proposed activities? Some. Do I know the people flying stuff now (Xcor, Armadillo, Masten, Unreasonable)? Yes, in most cases for decade-plus and personally. When we all get together, most of the griping is about operational lessons, and learning new things about rocket design, and high-fives for new successes. Only a small fraction of it is regulatory. It's there, but we know how to deal with it.
Re:Stupid, really (Score:5, Informative)
And between the FAA and EPA it is almost impossible to get a license in the US.
Don't forget OSHA. And that's a GOOD thing IMO. Note that it didn't stop Space Ship One from reaching space. What it will stop is unscrupulous corporations from using a poisonous propellant because it's cheaper than a nontoxic one, and having pieces of the blown-up rocket land on somebody's house. Let alone shortcuts that endanger workers.
When they made the Blues Brothers movie they had to do tests to get FAA approval to drop the Nazi's Pinto from a helicopter in Chicago in that one scene; they wanted to make sure it would drop straight down instead of sailing into a residential neighborhood. After dropping three pintos in the Salt Flats in Utah, the FAA granted permission.
The EPA, FAA, and OSHA protects YOU from corporations who don't care whether you live or die, whether you realize it or not. They're not protecting you from yourself, they're protecting you from ME. Any corporation rich enough to put people in space are rich enough to get EPA, FAA and OSHA approval.
If government went away tomorrow, you'd be wishing it was back the day after.
Re:A breath of fresh air (Score:5, Informative)
You simply can't make the arguement that's NASA's fault we havn't been back to the moon since the early 70s and have never been to Mars. NASA had plans for a third round of Apollo missions and had mission plans to bel anding us on Mars by 1985. 1985! Thats 25 years ago!
Why didn't they do it? Not for any lack of know-how, willingness, or determination. It was for lack of funds. Congress cut the hell out of NASA's budget. Perhaps it was NASA's fault for expecting that Apollo era funding would continue, but you can't say they didn't WANT to do all the things you're saying they didn't accomplish.
Re:Just wanted to say (Score:5, Informative)
You really have no sense of where government money goes, do you? TANF (federally-funded welfare) is $16.5B. By contrast, the latest Pentagon budget request is $768.2B.
Welfare is a really tiny portion of our total expenses.
Re:A breath of fresh air (Score:3, Informative)
If you had a choice of LEO capable companies, wouldn't you be more apt to choose one that's gone to the moon?
That's a pretty big if. There are no LEO capable companies.
Honestly guys (Score:1, Informative)
Look, I don't normally post to Slashdot, so you're welcome to ignore this, but replacing a bunch of years-old over budget project with a bunch of new un-started ones is just a great way to clear the balance sheet for future years-old over budget projects. Going to space, especially with the safety we expect (I don't think explorers to America were as stringent on survival rates), is both unexpectedly difficult and unexpectedly expensive. Much like Joel Spolsky rails against throwing everything out and starting "fresh," because it's a waste of time, this too is just a further waste of time. Imagine if in the middle of the Apollo program we were over budget and behind. If we decided to throw all that initial work out then and start anew, we'd never have gone to the moon. It is time to finish this.
On an unrelated note, please stop worrying about the debt you've left your future generations. It doesn't work like that. If we don't spend the money now to fix what ails us and to escape the recession, your children will be born into a place the same debt and no job prospects. Instead we should be spending everything we can to get the economy humming and inflate away our debts.
Notes from press conference on commercial crew (Score:5, Informative)
This morning NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had a press conference where he gave more details on NASA's plans and announced the initial contracts for the $50 million commercial crew development contracts (was supposed to be $200 million, but most funding was diverted by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Al) towards Constellation). Mind that this is just for the first year, as the budget hasn't passed yet -- once the budget passes, future contracts will award a total of a few billion spread over a number of years. The video link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9YvIESqDUk [youtube.com]
Here's my notes on the press conference:
(sorry about the heinous formatting)
Charles Bolden takes a moment to thank the Constellation team for their years of dedicated service
"We want to explore new worlds, we want to develop more innovative technologies, we want to foster new industries, and we want to increase our understanding of Earth, the solar system, and the universe."
"each awardee also proposed significant investment from other sources to leverage taxpayer investment"
Blue Origin
o $3.7 million award to fund "risk mitigation activities related to its development of pusher launch escape system, and to develop a composite crew module for structural testing."
Boeing
o $18 million for space transportation system which includes a 7-person capsule to launch on medium-lift expendable launch systems
Paragon
o small business
o has directly supported more than 70 spaceflight missions
o $1.4 million for a development unit of environmental control and lift support air revitalization system
Sierra Nevada
o $20 million for Dream Chaser, 7-person spacecraft to be launched on Atlas V-402 vehicle
ULA
o $6.7 million for emergency detection system to monitor vehicle health of Atlas V and Delta IV rockets
they are the vanguard; certainly adding to this group in the near future
comments from presidents/reps
o ULA
EDS work for commercial crew and making sure products are more reliable for all customers
o Blue Origin
pusher escape system, at back of capsule to avoid jettison event, not consumed on nominal launch so it lowers operating costs
composite capsule will improve durability over conventional technology and lower weight
o Boeing
principal teammate Bigelow Aerospace
Bigelow represents most probable near-term market for crew transportation to LEO other than NASA
want to satisfy both Bigelow's needs and NASA's
parallel with Bill Boeing's young company and airmail to delivering cargo and crew to ISS
o Paragon
developing air revitalization system
first of its kind: a turn-key system, usable on pretty much any spacecraft
had very first commercial experiment on ISS
o Sierra Nevada
developed under unfunded Space Act agreement for past two years
based on NASA's HL-20 from 20 years ago
o Orbital Sciences (ongoing COTS contract)
um, talked for quite a while
o SpaceX (ongoing COTS contract)
spoke about collaborations with NASA
Q&A
o Do you have a destination and timetable?
tiger teams working on destinations and putting together timetables now
o in-orbit refueling?
Re:A breath of fresh air (Score:3, Informative)
It receives some funding from government grants but i think National Geographic does too. So essentially both organisations historically fill the same niche for different countries.