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What yesterday’s National Space Council meeting really reveals

Link here. While most news articles about yesterday’s third public meeting of the National Space Council are focused on Trump’s apparently off-the-cuff announcement that he wants a new military branch dubbed the “Space Force,” the story at the link provides a nice summary of the entire meeting, including a look at the presentations by four astronauts, two scientists, and one businessman.

The panel of former astronauts also offered some more general advice, including the importance of international and commercial partnerships, seeking bipartisan support to ensure the long-term viability of NASA’s exploration plan, and more outreach to the public. “We have got to get the support of the American people by getting the message out to people,” Collins said.

That panel came after another panel of two space scientists and one businessman who has flown payloads on the ISS. They argued for the importance of both human and robotic exploration, rather than one taking precedence over the other.

One of the astronauts came out against LOP-G, but his alternative suggestion was not really very different from that proposed by the other astronauts, calling for a massive NASA-run Apollo-style government space project:

Appearing on a panel during the meeting at the White House, Terry Virts said that the proposed Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, a human-tended facility in orbit around the moon, wasn’t an effective next step in human spaceflight beyond Earth orbit after the International Space Station. “It essentially calls for building another orbital space station, a skill my colleagues and I have already demonstrated on the ISS,” he said. “Gateway will only slow us down, taking time and precious dollars away from the goal of returning to the lunar surface and eventually flying to Mars.”

Virts wasn’t specific on what should replace the Gateway as that next step but called for an Apollo-like model of stepping-stone missions to return to the moon, with ISS, he said, serving well as the Mercury role.

Meanwhile, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine gave his full endorsement of LOP-G.

Virts’ comments came after NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the Gateway played an essential role in developing a long-term, sustainable human presence at the moon. “This is our opportunity to have more access to more parts of the moon than ever before,” he said of the Gateway, a reference to its ability to shift orbits using its electric propulsion system. He also played up the role of the Gateway in bringing in international and commercial partners while taking a leadership role in space exploration.

“The goal is sustainability,” he said. “When we’re going to the moon, as the president said in his speech, this time we’re going to stay, and the Gateway gives us that great opportunity.”

What we can glean from these presentations, all very carefully staged by the council to support what it wants the government to do in space, is that the Trump administration is going full gang-busters for another big Kennedy-like government space program, launched by SLS. They haven’t announced it yet, but they are definitely moving to propose such a program.

And such a program will cost billions, take forever to do anything (if it does anything at all), and accomplish nothing but spread pork to congressional districts while sustaining the big space companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing and possibly reshaping the new space companies — tempted by the big cash being offered by the government — into becoming as bloated and as uncreative.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

9 comments

  • mkent

    Trump’s directive regarding the Space Force was not an off-the-cuff comment. It was a pre-planned announcement that had been in the works for weeks. The Pentagon was given weeks of warning that it was coming.

  • Fred K

    > What we can glean from these presentations, all very carefully staged by the council to support what it wants the government to do in space, is that the Trump administration is going full gang-busters for another big Kennedy-like government space program, launched by SLS. They haven’t announced it yet, but they are definitely moving to propose such a program.

    Perhaps. Reading the tea leaves is difficult.

    Perhaps we will see SLS + LOPG + Fixed price contracts to actually accomplish real things.

    At least that’s my hope.

  • wayne

    mkent–
    yes, I myself took him to be totally on-prompter.

    DJT Space Council remarks
    June 18, 2018
    https://youtu.be/oPo5JcMiiuo
    21:29
    [A year ago (or so, if I recall) he did make a ‘space-force’ remark, that was off-the-cuff.]

    Join the Mobile Infantry
    (service btw, guarantees’ Citizenship)
    Starship Troopers
    https://youtu.be/dlT5xr5o7E4

  • We have lost the American soul when we no longer ask ourselves what can *I* do to make something happen, but rather ask what we can demand others do for us.

    The era of Big Government Space should be coming to a close. The tech, financing, and organizational structure are all in place for a de-centralized human space effort. In space as so many things, people should be doing for themselves and ignoring government. It’s called freedom.

  • wodun

    Perhaps we will see SLS + LOPG + Fixed price contracts to actually accomplish real things.

    At least that’s my hope.

    LOPG is supposed to be constructed with a COTS like approach where providers have to demonstrate capability before selections are made. Supply of the station is also supposed to be done commercially. Initial construction is the only thing SLS is needed for.

    It does look like there will be a big lunar program but it we have to remember that the SLS/Orion/LOP-G is only part of it and the prospecting missions wont use SLS/Orion/LOP-G. Commercial entities wont be using SLS and they will soon eclipse SLS in demonstrated capability. Perhaps SLS will be retired after launching a couple LOP-G nodes and the Europa mission.

  • mike shupp

    Nothing like sending off Explorers now and then to demonstrate LEADERSHIP to all the world.

    Personally, I’d like to see a dozen science bases with a couple hundred people in each of them sprinkled around the Moon and a couple thousand colonists spreading over Mars in Iowa-sized settlements and miners jumping from here to there all across the Asteroid Belt.

    But I’m a rotten excuse for a modern American citizen.

  • Localfluff

    Since NASA completely ignores the Moon, is it possible that instead the military Space Force will secure the Peaks of Eternal Lights before the Chinese? If there is any potential conflict area in space, that’s it. Maybe it is best to keep NASA out of the way.

  • Col Beausabre

    With the establishment of the Space Force, it means that its officer candidates will, in fact, be “space cadets”

  • Localfluff

    @Col Beausabre
    :-D

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