Obama Backs New Launcher and Bigger NASA Budget

[Jake]

...Nasrudin Hodja...

One awesome dude. I read some of those when I was a kid.

On another note<--- this is a little old, but maybe it can give some insight when budgeting discussions arise.

 

[Jake]

Sorry, updated the link with a more relevant one. 63% is not that far off though.

 

[SiberianTiger]

It's not an attitude so much as an observation. The space program in the US is centrally planned, my attitude has little to do with what happens.

Sorry for misunderstanding. I meant your administrations' attitude, not yours own.

 

[the.punk]

Are they going to cancle AresI only and keep the rest of constellation? Or are they going to cancle the whole Constellation for something completly new?

 

[Eagle]

Are they going to chancle Ares I only and keep the rest of constellation? Or are they going to chancle the whole Constellation for something completly new?

Knowing NASA,

 

[Kurt M. Weber]

There are a lot of people who are in love with manned spaceflight.

I'm one of them.

But I also recognize that there are plenty of people who don't, and so I'm not willing to hold a gun to those peoples' heads and force them, through their tax dollars, to fund something just because I want it.

Why are so many people here so enthusiastic about doing just that?

 

[Xyon]

Governments do that on a daily basis...

 

[Fixerger]

>on a simpler heavy-lift vehicle that could be ready to fly as early as 2018

SDLV? Jupiter?

 

[hnsptr]

That is still to vague to say anything about it. Obama could as well meant "Kill NASA gently" with it. Also I don't know what he means with "Europe and Japan could build lunar modules". Does he think "Yes, we can" does miracles in spaceflight? We have just barely managed to get the ATV done here, despite all political forces to make life harder. And still have not even found the guts to make a fully manned spacecraft out of the ATV. And now we should build lunar module stuff? Maybe in 2025 at the current pace and funding. But not before 2018.

I have to agree. "Kill NASA gently" seems to happen if you ask me. NASA has the biggest problem ever I think: no manned access to space for many years. When Apollo was over, they already had the Shuttle in the drawer. But this time they have nothing. Ares I isn't going to fly which is not a miracle. And an Orion does not exist. What else do they have to offer? The clock is running. Barely one year to go and they will have to rely on Russian technology if they want to send astronauts to ISS.

I'm curious about the European role Obama seems to have in mind. Europe should build a lunar lander? And NASA should build a heavy lift launcher? Then what? Make a few foot prints on lunar soil? What about ISS? What about the future of space flight?

 

[Ark]

IMO, this huge gap in manned spaceflight just makes it easier to kill NASA quietly. After two or three years of no launches for the pittance of money we're putting into them, nobody's going to cry if a mission slated for a decade in the future gets canceled. After Challenger and Columbia dragged NASA's dirty bureaucratic laundry out for everyone to see, I think the nation lost interest and more importantly lost faith. The public isn't entirely stupid, they know the difference between Kennedy ordering the country to go to the moon and the current NASA putting out cheap animated clips of vehicles I optimistically won't see operational before I'm 35 or 40.

 

[Andy44]

Let's try to keep this on topic, folks. Launchers and NASA budget and so forth.

 

[Ark]

If we would start using taxes only for what really everybody wants...

Everybody wants something different. Ultimately we rely on the government to levy taxes and spend as they please because if we decided it ourselves, the important stuff would never get done.

Getting back to NASA, I have to reexpress serious doubts that they'll be able to drop everything for half a decade and spontaneously say one day "Well, we have enough money, let's start flying again!". The VFSE was all nice-sounding politics back during Bush, but it didn't come with a budget boost to make any of it happen. When was the last time a company shut down for a few years just to save enough money to open again?

The alternative is to buy everything from the private sector, but that'll just turn NASA into another military-industrial complex, vulnerable to extreme gouging and corruption because there aren't any alternatives. NASA would just become a check-writing front for corporate handouts, again much like our military. Combine that with existing public sentiment against NASA and you have a lot of people who wouldn't shed a tear at seeing the inactive agency closed down.

What they really need is about double the budget, a vastly accelerated timetable (as in, within our bloody lifespans), and some actual, flying hardware to show off to the public.

 

[garyw]

O-F Staff Note - Thread Reopened. Please keep the thread on topic. Discussions on economic policy can be held in this thread.

 

[2552]

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2010/01/bolden-review-hlv-friday-sidemount-doubt-in-linessme-boost/

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden will review the findings of his “special team” – which he set up to evaluate all Heavy Lift alternatives to the current plan – on Friday. Pre-empting the overview, Exploration Project officials all-but ruled out the Sidemount HLV, whilst noting a couple of In-line heavy lifters – one of which appears to be a DIRECT Jupiter launch vehicle – made it through to the Bolden meeting.

As to which In-line vehicles were being referenced, the only concepts that have received positive attention are variants of vehicles that are not unlike the appearance of an Ares V, one of which is understood to be a Jupiter-241 Stretched Heavy.

Seems thing are looking better than ever for DIRECT.

 

[Ark]

Ah man, I liked the Sidemount. That was the cheapest of the cheap.

 

[Andy44]

Ah man, I liked the Sidemount. That was the cheapest of the cheap.

I agree, Sidemount is also my favorite. High paykoad mass, and lots of payload options. But it is what it is...(I hate that expression).