Obama Space Plan: Return to Moon: "No Go"

Be prepared to laugh.

 

I'm personally really angry that the budget contains no money for the Constellation Program.

 

GM and Chrysler were a priority

 

Why? The last 5 didn't really have any money for it either.

GM has also paid back their debt.

 

Not yet. GM is hoping to have it paid off by June.

 

Ah, you're correct.

 

It does. $500 to cover the press releases explaining to the PR department at Space Camp why they shouldn't bother building simulators for the Constellation program.

It was a piece of shit to begin with, so I'm happy to see it gone. Better to spend that money on the SpaceX Dragon when it debuts later this year.

 

I tried posting some of those links to the Scifi Wire discussion on the subject, but my post doesn't appear to have been approved yet.....ah well.

It's really astonishing how many people see this as a bad thing.

 

I think people are mostly very disappointed. I know I am.

It's a mixed feeling, though. I was very happy to read that NASA will remain involved with the ISS until at least 2016 and possibly longer. It would've been a terrible waste to deorbit the station this soon.

But, despite all the drawbacks of the Constellation program, increased funding for a new HLV seems a bit wasteful. NASA was already on its way to do that, wasn't it? Okay, Ares V probably wouldn't have been a viable option, but why dismiss all the work of the past years and do it all over again?

To me, Bolden's remarks seemed just a lot of hot air that disguised the fact that NASA really won't be doing anything much that is new in the near future.

I just don't have much faith in commerical enterprises being up to the task any time soon. SpaceX may prove me wrong, and I hope they will, but who else is as far as they are? Relying on these companies seems a big gamble to me.
Well, at least we'll always have Soyuz to get to the ISS.

 

So the shuttle hasn't been reprieved -- the last flight is still this year, correct?

Can't say I blame the change in emphasis. The Ares 1-X looked like a bad joke -- I'm not sure I would even trust NASA to develop a heavy lift vehicle.

 

I'm sure they gained large amounts of experience if nothing else. That work isn't all for naught.

NASA hasn't been doing anything new for decades, really. *Something* needed to be done to break through that stalemate. We went to the moon 40 years ago, and under Constellation, it would have taken us another 20 to get back. Small, achievable steps forward will demonstrably increase our capability and just maybe even get us back up there sooner.

 

Yes. The orbiter Discovery will conduct mission STS-133 between approximately September 16 and 26, 2010.

 

All remaining Shuttle missions:

STS-130 (Endeavour, February 2010)

STS-131 (Discovery, March 2010)

STS-132 (Atlantis, May 2010)

STS-134 (Endeavour, July/August 2010)

STS-133 (Discovery, September 2010)

 

That's a pretty ambitious launch schedule.

 

Seems somewhat odd that STS-134 is scheduled before STS-133.

 

I'll be shocked if we get 'em all off before the end of the year.

Happened before. STS-107 (Columbia) launched between STS-113 and STS-114.

 

What really strikes me about this whole thing is that NASA and/or Obama need better PR people. Everyone is in an uproar about this for no good reason, because the people who should be explaining the benefits have not done so loudly enough.

 

What benefits? (aside from commercial LEO) Will the new HLV even take off and will there be a mission for it? Havent seen any dates or details on flexible path that was floating around. NASA looks doomed post 2020 which is contributing to the uproar. They also should've at least kept the crew exploration vehical and modify a Delta rocket as backup to the commercial sector if that gets setbacks.

 

Well, I consider having goals that align realistically with funding to be a benefit.

Given that most of the experts were ripping pretty hard on Ares for years, and that a significantly higher budget increase would have been required to make Constellation a feasible goal, getting rid of that dead weight was a good first step.

Constellation was the hare. This new approach is the tortoise. It may take longer, but in the long run, I suspect this will turn out to be the right decision to finally begin advancing our space technology again. It's been stagnant long enough.

 

^The fear with this new plan is that now NASA will be canceled one small program at a time. He offsets public outcry by saying "see, I increased the budget. I just got rid of that bad Constellation program. I am pro space". But later on he can slowly decrease that budget by killing small individual programs.

<crosses fingers that this is not true>