AL, UT Republicans demand more Ares spending.

[SirNitram]

Link

WASHINGTON — Two Republican lawmakers today moved to block White House efforts to kill NASA’s Constellation program, adding an amendment to a broad budget bill that prohibits NASA from taking steps to terminate efforts to return astronauts to the moon.

The provision, inserted in an emergency spending bill aimed at funding military operations in Afghanistan, is the latest salvo in a months-long battle between Congress and the White House on what to do with NASA after the agency retires the space shuttle fleet at the end of the year.

The measure by Republican Sens. Richard Shelby of Alabama and Bob Bennett of Utah would force NASA to keep spending money on the Constellation moon program in 2010, even though President Barack Obama wants to cancel a key component: the Ares rockets that would boost an Apollo-like capsule into orbit (pictured at left).

The White House wants to replace the shuttle with commercial rockets and focus NASA engineers on building a futuristic spacecraft that could put astronauts on an asteroid by 2025. Some members of Congress want to keep the Constellation, which already has cost $9 billion but has been plagued by problems that would make it impossible to meet its goal of a lunar return mission by 2020.

Both Shelby and Bennett hail from states with ties to Constellation contracts. Each took credit for inserting the measure, which still must survive votes in the Senate and House before becoming law.

“I remain confident that this administration has made a critical mistake in cancelling the Constellation and Ares programs. I will continue to make it a top priority this year to reverse the president’s decision and restore Constellation and the Ares rocket booster,” said Bennett in a statement.

Last year, Shelby inserted a similar provision in another 2010 spending measure. That latest language largely reiterates that message.

The full text of the provision is below:

Provided further, That notwithstanding any other provision of law or regulation, funds made available for Constellation in Fiscal Year 2010 for “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exploration” and from previous appropriations for “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exploration” shall be available to fund continued performance of Constellation contracts, and performance of such Constellation contracts may not be terminated for convenience by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Fiscal Year 2010.

The story itself spins hard to make this about continuing the moon mission, but the posted text of the amendment makes it clear: This isn't about finishing Ares, testing Ares, or using Ares. It's about the money being continuing, for delicious pork. If it had been written to enforce funding for Ares to completion and use, in addition to the new projects, I would not object(I am a firm beleiver in more NASA all the time.).

[Kuroji]

This is one of the parts of American politics that disgusts me. Can't get what you want? Find something that's more important, stick something in there to get what you want, and if someone doesn't want to do it you can accuse your opponents of not caring about our troops or blocking funds for the war against terror. It's doubly bad when it's blatant that they don't care about the program, just getting their buddies cash through the program.

[Einzige]

Of course they are. The "conservatives" in these areas are not now and have never been legitimate fiscal conservatives.

[Ma Deuce]

I am a firm beleiver in more NASA all the time.

Then you have no business supporting Obama's "faith-based space initiative" (kudos to Alan Grayson for coming up with that one). I also love how you're complaining about "creating pork for political buddies" when that is exactly what ObamaSpace is. As I recall, a certain Mr. Elon Musk (did I ever mention how much I despise that man, along with all the other New Space advocates?) donated heavily to Obama's campaign, and as I see it, this is Obama paying him back. Privitizing parts of NASAs operations are the only thing that is clear about this "plan", which is also served by keeping that useless millsone that is the ISS aloft past 2016 to make work for these New Space companies, a tacit admission that commercial spaceflight is nowhere near ready for prime time. All the rest is smoke and mirrors and will inevitably go nowhere even more surely than Bush the Elder's SEI did.

Nothing would make me happier than to see SpaceX go belly up and it's snake oil-selling boss reduced to pauperdom. Maybe that will put the rest of those free-market worshiping New Space idiots in their place.

[Guardsman Bass]

It's good to know that Bob Bennett, despite the fact that he's more or less going to lose his seat this November because of the primary defeat, is spending some of his last months in office protecting the manned spaceflight program.

Not that there isn't an element of self-interest involved, of course - we've got Thiokol up in northern Utah, among other companies.

[Darth Holbytlan]

Provided further, That notwithstanding any other provision of law or regulation, funds made available for Constellation in Fiscal Year 2010 for “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exploration” and from previous appropriations for “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exploration” shall be available to fund continued performance of Constellation contracts, and performance of such Constellation contracts may not be terminated for convenience by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Fiscal Year 2010.

The story itself spins hard to make this about continuing the moon mission, but the posted text of the amendment makes it clear: This isn't about finishing Ares, testing Ares, or using Ares. It's about the money being continuing, for delicious pork. If it had been written to enforce funding for Ares to completion and use, in addition to the new projects, I would not object(I am a firm beleiver in more NASA all the time.).

Huh? The law already prevents the Obama administration from canceling Constellation, per se—see below. This bill just prevents them from bypassing that restriction by defunding the program. As an amendment to a budget bill what else do you expect it to say?

“Orbital Sciences Corporation is in receipt of a notice of funding limitations from our customer, Lockheed Martin, that no additional funds are forthcoming for the remainder of GFY 2010. As ATK is aware, the current run-out date is April 30, 2010,” told ATK in an April 20 letter Gregory Pappas, who is the subcontracts manager at OSC. This “does not constitute a Contract termination,” the official added in the letter. This is a loophole found in the laws Congress passed this December, to ensure the space agency and the US president do not shut down Constellation on their own.

[MKSheppard]

Nothing would make me happier than to see SpaceX go belly up and it's snake oil-selling boss reduced to pauperdom. Maybe that will put the rest of those free-market worshiping New Space idiots in their place.

Hate them much?

Sadly, a lot of people have been drinking the space X kool aid over HERE

SpaceX's entire business program seems to simply be built around buzzwords, and what little detail they release on their website for potential buyers is a sphagetti soup of vague statements -- like for example; the second stage for Falcon 9 is simply the first stage lengthened and that this saves tooling and manufacturing costs. They leave out the fact that common stage diameters are so blindingly obvious, everyone does that.

They don't explain how they plan to efficiently manufacture and flight certify rockets which use increasingly larger clusters of 125,000 lbf Merlin engines. You have to proof fire each one, do a final wrap up and check out; then ship it to the main SpaceX facility where it will carefully be piped into a first stage of nine engines -- the plumbing for that must be a nightmare to QC!

They don't explain how their experience with a 34 tonne rocket (Falcon 1), which suffered 60% failure rate during its few flights will somehow seamlessly transfer to operating a 325 tonne rocket (Falcon 9).

[Temujin]

Of course they are. The "conservatives" in these areas are not now and have never been legitimate fiscal conservatives.

The only thing "conservative" about these chuckle fucks is their basic tribalistic level of thinking which relates directly to their social outlook (progress bad, m'kay; don't go out of the cave, its dangerous out there, and there are "different" people out there you might have to interact with).

[Temujin]

Nothing would make me happier than to see SpaceX go belly up and it's snake oil-selling boss reduced to pauperdom. Maybe that will put the rest of those free-market worshiping New Space idiots in their place.

Hate them much?

Sadly, a lot of people have been drinking the space X kool aid over HERE

SpaceX's entire business program seems to simply be built around buzzwords, and what little detail they release on their website for potential buyers is a sphagetti soup of vague statements -- like for example; the second stage for Falcon 9 is simply the first stage lengthened and that this saves tooling and manufacturing costs. They leave out the fact that common stage diameters are so blindingly obvious, everyone does that.

They don't explain how they plan to efficiently manufacture and flight certify rockets which use increasingly larger clusters of 125,000 lbf Merlin engines. You have to proof fire each one, do a final wrap up and check out; then ship it to the main SpaceX facility where it will carefully be piped into a first stage of nine engines -- the plumbing for that must be a nightmare to QC!

They don't explain how their experience with a 34 tonne rocket (Falcon 1), which suffered 60% failure rate during its few flights will somehow seamlessly transfer to operating a 325 tonne rocket (Falcon 9).

I'm sick of hearing about those assholes as well. There is no fucking way any private organization is going make any headway into space; aside from a few rich dreamers who have money to burn on their hobbies. The sheer amount of money they're going to have to sink for the long term before they see any payoff, if they see any payoff, will certainly dissuade any serious corporate operation. I think all they're doing is trying to show enough of a capability that someone, i.e., the government, will throw some lucrative contracts their way; that of course they won't fully deliver on.

[Starglider]

Maybe that will put the rest of those free-market worshiping New Space idiots in their place.

SpaceX does seem rather dubious, Blue Origin even moreso. However I am now quite optimistic about Scaled Composites / Virgin Galactic now that they've changed their business plan. They were going to go straight from high-altitude (100km, mach 3.5) joyrides to orbital trips, which is too much of a jump to be credible. The new plan is to make intercontinental suborbital hops the next step, which is a much better idea. It's an incremental step in propulsion and heat shielding that can still make decent revenue.

[MKSheppard]

What's so great is if you look at NASA COTS on Wiki....it's fun.

Boeing proposed their Delta IV flying the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle.

Lockheed Martin proposed their Atlas V flying the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle.

SpaceDev proposed using a ULA provided Atlas V to loft their own spaceplane design (based off HL-20) into orbit.

Yet....NASA picks Rocketplane Kistler and SpaceX -- instead of picking companies that leverage proven launch vehicles with proven or already developed spacecraft (Boeing/LM); or companies that mate a proven launch vehicle with their own design (SpaceDev)....they pick a pair of companies which have never developed a damn thing to use an all new launch vehicle to launch an all new spacecraft.

And one of those companies -- Kistler -- folded, and their contract was picked up by Orbital Sciences; later on.

While Orbital has a much more solid pedigree than the other "all new systems" competitors, in that they've actually developed hardware (Pegasus Air Launch); Taurus II is a pretty big leap for OSC.

At least Orbital was smart enough to contract a bit of first stage work out to OKB-586 Yuzhonye, which has previous experience in the big rocket arena, having designed no less than the SS-18 SATAN heavy ICBM.

[SirNitram]

I am a firm beleiver in more NASA all the time.

Then you have no business supporting Obama's "faith-based space initiative" (kudos to Alan Grayson for coming up with that one).

Really? Heavy lifting and planning missions to NEO's are 'faith based'? Making NASA work on do something useful instead of just making a Saturn V knockoff so we can take more pictures on the moon is 'no business' of a supporter of more nasa? Blow it out your asshole. You can rant about the losers at SpaceX or New Space or Mom And Pop's Orbital Tours. I don't see how 'pushing for more commercial space attempts' is 'SpaceX and their pals.'. Believe it if you wish. Ain't my issue. But don't try and shove this crap down my throat just because you want a moon trip.

Holbytlan, a Budget Bill can have an amendment for anything. Amendments rather specifically do whatever the hell people like. The Senate specifically allows these 'Nongermane amendments' in all but a few cases.

[Guardsman Bass]

The new plan is to make intercontinental suborbital hops the next step, which is a much better idea. It's an incremental step in propulsion and heat shielding that can still make decent revenue.

Is that for travel purposes (i.e., they're hoping they can start a series of suborbital trips that offer expensive but very fast transit across Earth), or just for zero-g tourism? Their website implies the latter, but it would be nice if they could get the former going as well (and avoid some of the political issues that hobbled SST).

[Iosef Cross]

There is no fucking way any private organization is going make any headway into space; aside from a few rich dreamers who have money to burn on their hobbies. The sheer amount of money they're going to have to sink for the long term before they see any payoff, if they see any payoff, will certainly dissuade any serious corporate operation. I think all they're doing is trying to show enough of a capability that someone, i.e., the government, will throw some lucrative contracts their way; that of course they won't fully deliver on.

You mean that private companies will never break the "space barrier"? Well, the fact is that maned space travel will only become a routine when private companies exploit space for commercial reasons (other than satellites). Today, space travel is just a creative way of trowing money away and only the government can afford to trow money away since they can get money through taxes, while companies need to turn out a profit.

[MKSheppard]

Heavy lifting and planning missions to NEO's are 'faith based'?

So where's the fucking heavy lifter? There will be studies, but no decision on a heavy launch vehicle until...2015. Which is a utterly gutless decision. All he has to do is simply issue a contract to ULA for development of a Delta IV Super-Heavy that utilizes strap on boosters for heavy launch...there have been proposals made for that.

Meanwhile, Ares V already had the major design decisions made; and was about to transition into engineering development at the rate of a billion a year when Obama zeroed out it's budget last year.

Making NASA work on do something useful instead of just making a Saturn V knockoff so we can take more pictures on the moon is 'no business' of a supporter of more nasa? Blow it out your asshole.

You fucking nimrod. How the fuck do you expect to get to Mars (Obama's goal) without a fucking saturn V knockoff? Magic space pixies lifting stuff into orbit?

[SirNitram]

If we're gonna make a multiple-month journey, we better have something better than a Saturn V and it's carbon copies, Shep. The Saturn V managed alot fewer days, with alot fewer crew, and much less intense power output. Knocking off a moon rocket is simply not gonna cut it for a longer mission.

[Starglider]

If we're gonna make a multiple-month journey, we better have something better than a Saturn V and it's carbon copies, Shep. The Saturn V managed alot fewer days

That is a nonsensical comparison. Saturn V and Ares V are boosters, not spacecraft. Shep is specifically talking about heavy lift boosters, Orion and how much it looks like Apollo are irrelevant. Heavy lift boosters are necessary for any kind of serious spacecraft. A vehicle capable of reaching Mars will almost certainly require multiple heavy payloads docked together in orbit. Trying to assemble one from Atlas scale payloads, much less Falcon 9 scale ones is a complete non-starter. Canceling Ares V removes a critical component of any useful future space program, for no sane reason.

[MKSheppard]

If we're gonna make a multiple-month journey, we better have something better than a Saturn V and it's carbon copies, Shep.

You are a fucking idiot.

Know how many tons Saturn V could put into LEO? 119 metric tons.

Know how many tons Ares V would have lifted into LEO? 160 metric tons.

But sure, keep blubbering on about how fucking retarded you are.

As for the spacecraft itself:



Apollo CM: 3.9m diameter; 10.4 m3 pressurized volume
Orion Cycle 3 CM: 5.5m diameter, 30.6m3 pressurized volume

Holy fuck, three times the internal volume!

And even you could send Apollo on long missions; as shown by this study of a 400 day Venus flyby mission using slightly evolved Apollo Hardware (Block IV CSM and wet workshop S-IVB)

Link to huge pic

[Temujin]

You mean that private companies will never break the "space barrier"? Well, the fact is that maned space travel will only become a routine when private companies exploit space for commercial reasons (other than satellites). Today, space travel is just a creative way of trowing money away and only the government can afford to trow money away since they can get money through taxes, while companies need to turn out a profit.

No, the fact is to establish a permanent presence in space (which includes routine manned spaceflight), you need to have a long term vision, and the patience to see it out through thick and thin; and large amounts of resources (i.e., cash) that you can essentially flush away for years, if not decades, before you establish enough of an infrastructure in space to actually start seeing a return on your investment.

Corporations have traditionally shown neither. Short term thinking and the maximization of profits is the order of the day. If companies will not get into space until they can turn a profit, than they won't be getting into space; that is until the government paves the way, spends the money, develops the technology and infrastructure (unless they're contractors), and basically does all of the work for them. And then like the leeches they are they will jump in and try to take credit, cry that they shouldn't be regulated, while creating one disaster after another while trying to turn a profit. Fuck'em!

[Zixinus]

As someone who is a bit confused about the whole tit-for-that: was NASA's future program always this politicized? Or is this a new thing, another ground for Republicans and Democrats to fight over?

[Mr. Coffee]

Wait a fucking second, so now it's bad and it's "pork" to try and keep a system we've spend billions of dollars developing and is actually on budget and working in order to keep your constituents jobs secured? Nitram, lay of the goddamned Kool-Aid. Of course Senator Shelby is going to try and keep something like Ares going, and I wouldn't at all be surprised to find that our other senator, Jeremiah Denton, is working for the same. Considering that NASA and the related aerospace contractors represent a sizable amount of jobs and revenues for the state, no shit they want to keep those jobs and revenues here instead of pissing it all away on whatever idiot pipedream our Nimrod-in-Chief has cooked up in it's stead.

[Temujin]

As someone who is a bit confused about the whole tit-for-that: was NASA's future program always this politicized? Or is this a new thing, another ground for Republicans and Democrats to fight over?

I honestly don't recall it being so, at least not anywhere near as intently. IIRC NASA was one area where both sides could essentially agree, just quibble and nitpick over minor differences.

[Ma Deuce]

I am a firm beleiver in more NASA all the time.

Then you have no business supporting Obama's "faith-based space initiative" (kudos to Alan Grayson for coming up with that one).

Really? Heavy lifting and planning missions to NEO's are 'faith based'?

There is no plan to go to NEOs you drooling moron; there's essentially nothing more than a vague statement that says "we want to go to a NEO", which is the case for just about all of ObamaSpace's missions beyond LEO: no definite description for either hardware or mission profile. But what I (and Grayson) were actually referring to as "faith based" was privatizing NASA's spacecraft design and contracting all manned flights to LEO to these upstarts like SpaceX who have absolutely no proven track record, a massive gamble even by the most optimistic standard. You really think SpaceX or any of it's contemporaries will be putting humans in orbit within the next few years like Obamaspace is counting on?

Making NASA work on do something useful instead of just making a Saturn V knockoff so we can take more pictures on the moon is 'no business' of a supporter of more nasa? Blow it out your asshole.

And why don't you take the massive strawman you've built of Constellation as an "Apollo rerun" (along with your baseless "lol baldly injuneered" claims) and blow that out your ass, you useless waste of genetic material. Constellation for instance also planned for NEO missions. I also question why you think the moon in unimportant for further manned exploration given how little of it Apollo was really able to explore, especially if it means something useful like a long-term manned lunar outpost. But no, instead of "land on the moon and take pictures", you'd be content with "land on mars and take pictures" instead of actual useful development at destinations we can actually reach in the near future . So tell me, why is it a bad idea to go back to the moon, and even if it is, why is it necessary to throw out every fucking piece of hardware Constellation has already produced and replace it with vaporware, in so doing discarding the recommendations of the same expert panel Obama set up for the purpose of deciding the future of manned spaceflight?

You can rant about the losers at SpaceX or New Space or Mom And Pop's Orbital Tours. I don't see how 'pushing for more commercial space attempts' is 'SpaceX and their pals.'. Believe it if you wish. Ain't my issue.

Since you won't even attempt to refute this, I'll assume you can't, but I digress. Let me put it this way: Encouraging commercial space development doesn't necessary mean carving off and privatizing a significant portion of NASA's operations and making it totally dependent on upstart companies like SpaceX that have no proven ability to to handle them, and are quite possibly decades away from being able to do so. Of course, doing so could be quite profitable for those companies even if it totally screws over NASA, but then that seems to be the point.

But don't try and shove this crap down my throat just because you want a moon trip.

[/quote]

As opposed to the crap you've been trying to shove down everyone else's throat since this plan emerged just because Saint Barrack Who Can Say Or Do No Wrong endorses it? Why don't you accept it: your hero doesn't give a shit about NASA or manned spaceflight. Lets not forget that candidate Obama actually proposed cutting NASA's budget to pay for a proposed preschool education program. Nothing wrong with such a program, but the fact that he wanted to raid the 1% of the federal government's budget that goes to NASA is quite telling.

As someone who is a bit confused about the whole tit-for-that: was NASA's future program always this politicized? Or is this a new thing, another ground for Republicans and Democrats to fight over?

In this case it really isn't a republican vs. democrat feud; it's basically the Obama administration vs. all of congress. Almost nobody from either party in either the house or senate is sold on Obamaspace (some of it's most strident opponents are liberal democrats like Grayson), so frankly it seems quite unlikely it will become reality. There was also no feud when Constellation was proposed and adopted, and has consistently maintained support from both parties (even if nobody wants to give it the funding level it really needs to meet it's deadlines)

[MKSheppard]

I also question why you think the moon in unimportant for further manned exploration given how little of it Apollo was really able to explore

The Apollos which flew to the moon could only land at equatorial landing sites on the moon due to delta vee limitations. Constellation/Orion would have been able to land on ALL of the moon.

[SirNitram]

I've always viewed the moon as useless from an exploration perspective because we won't learn much new there. But. I believe, after consideration of the points, a calm mind, and an injection of reality, that it is long past time to concede. I wasn't arguing sensibly, and so I concede all points(The badly engineered is a direct reference to the crazy that designed it in the first place and made a highly public sulk about people daring to check his work.). I still don't think this amendment is gonna do much for Ares(It simply authorizes more payments, not puts it back into the work, and yes, you could craft such an amendment for this bill) but it will line pockets, and frankly.. Let's face it. There won't be strong support for any space missions anytime soon. Photo-ops are nice, but the Congress prefers dumping money into other kinds of pits.