Head of NASA’s commercial program picked as chief of manned space
NASA’s administrator Jim Bridenstine yesterday announced that he has chosen Kathy Lueders to be the new head of the agency’s human exploration program.
In her most recent positions at NASA Lueders has been in charge first of the ISS commercial cargo program, followed by the ISS commercial crew program. She now heads the entire manned program, including Artemis.
This appointment appears to be great news for the emerging new commercial space sector (led by SpaceX), as Lueders’ close contact with them for the past half decade or so means she has seen up front the advantages of both competition and private enterprise. I suspect she will not look kindly at the endless delays at SLS and Orion, even if she has to play the political game of publicly appearing to support those projects. Like her predecessor Doug Loverro, she will be open to awarding contracts to whoever can get the job done best, rather than favoring the traditional big space contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin, as Loverro’s predecessor Bill Gerstenmaier had often done.
NASA’s shift from being the builder of space systems to the buyer of space systems is going to accelerate.
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
NASA’s administrator Jim Bridenstine yesterday announced that he has chosen Kathy Lueders to be the new head of the agency’s human exploration program.
In her most recent positions at NASA Lueders has been in charge first of the ISS commercial cargo program, followed by the ISS commercial crew program. She now heads the entire manned program, including Artemis.
This appointment appears to be great news for the emerging new commercial space sector (led by SpaceX), as Lueders’ close contact with them for the past half decade or so means she has seen up front the advantages of both competition and private enterprise. I suspect she will not look kindly at the endless delays at SLS and Orion, even if she has to play the political game of publicly appearing to support those projects. Like her predecessor Doug Loverro, she will be open to awarding contracts to whoever can get the job done best, rather than favoring the traditional big space contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin, as Loverro’s predecessor Bill Gerstenmaier had often done.
NASA’s shift from being the builder of space systems to the buyer of space systems is going to accelerate.
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
Terrific and well-deserved choice for all the reasons you laid out.
A very positive sign of things to come.
Bridenstine knows the score. He knew it, demonstrably by his published writings, before being picked for NASA admin. But he made some unpopular noises about global warming, and he’s a Republican, so OF COURSE people crapped all over him on the various space sites like SpaceNews, nasawatch, nsf etc.
Turns out he’s the best NASA admin since Webb. Actually probably better than Webb. He’s turning space over to the PEOPLE.
Yes, but…
While I hate to sound like a “noisy negativist” — a tip of the hat to Stanton Friedman — all of these good things at NASA will last only so long as the Trump Administration remains in Washington. Without that, all of the baleful policies of the last few administrations will quickly reassert themselves, and all of the momentum toward a Second Space Age will be
lost. Leadership makes a difference.
In truth, it is much *worse* than this. In case you have not noticed, the new radical narrative about “cancelling” almost every aspect of American culture includes going into space to do useful and profitable things for ordinary people, and our friends at Antifa and BLM have very different priorities about how money will be spent once they obtain political power.
Think in terms of having the same kind of “protests” at Launch Complex 39A as now obtain in Minneapolis and in Seattle. (Or the ongoing “protests” at Mauna Kea.) Won’t *that* be fun.
As the saying goes, you may not be interested in politics, but POLITICS IS INTERESTED IN YOU, and — like it or not — keeping the Trump Administration in power is the only chance that we have for promoting mankind’s free exploration and utilization of space. Recall that centuries ago China was the leader in the exploration of the earth, but court politics apparently intervened, and they voluntarily conceded the project to the Europeans.
As Nick Dupree writes:
“Part of the reason so much speculation surrounds Zheng He’s later voyages is the records of them were destroyed. After the Yong-le Emperor died in 1424, Zheng He lost his influence. Conservative Confucians assumed control of the Imperial court, and seeking “inner perfection” first, implemented very isolationist policies. Also, the new emperor needed to devote considerable resources to beating back Mongol hordes in the north and expanding the Great Wall of China to keep them out, and Zheng He’s lavish missions, which were mostly for prestige (and unlike European explorations were not self-funding with loot) were no longer financially viable. The new emperor burned Zheng He’s glorious ships, destroyed a lot of his documents, and banned maritime trade. Though the subsequent emperor lifted the ban and let Zheng He voyage again, a lot was lost.”
http://www.nickscrusade.org/chinas-age-of-discovery-the-voyages-of-zheng-he/
Hummmm; “inner perfection” (i.e., being woke), it seems like we’ve heard this term before.
@Milt
The Europeans at that time had simpler ship technology than Zheng He at the time, but it was good enough for global ocean travel.
Likewise, today, the Chinese are testing open-cycle methalox engines. They’re simpler than the FFSC Raptor engine, but might be good enough for a Chinese knockoff Starship. But they’re not going to build knockoff Starships until Prophet Elon Musk proves his Starship.
This must be fake news. Republicans hate women.
Milt wrote: “all of these good things at NASA will last only so long as the Trump Administration remains in Washington. Without that, all of the baleful policies of the last few administrations will quickly reassert themselves, and all of the momentum toward a Second Space Age will be lost.”
I don’t think this is the case. The Democrats take credit for starting Commercial Crew, despite it being a follow-on from Bush’s Commercial Resupply, to be implemented when Resupply worked as planned. With the exception of some representatives, commercial space seems to be a generally bipartisan issue. Commercial space probably does not depend upon which party or who is in the White House or Congress. The government may be realizing that it can spend less of its own money if commercial companies spend more of their own.
I have created a list of advantages of having a strong commercial space industry over government space industry. Can anyone think of additional advantages?
1. Free market capitalism is our economic philosophy, preferred over central control by government. It shows the world that our economic system, freedom, and liberty work anywhere, even in space, even with the limitations of the draconian Outer Space Treaty that discourages our economic system.*
2. Free market capitalism pursues projects, exploration, and products that are expected to pay for themselves, becoming self sustaining.
3. Commercial space is less fickle than government space.** Once we start using available resources, such as geostationary orbit, commercial space is motivated to stay.
4. Lightly regulated free markets result in competition, which result in reduced prices and satisfied customers.
5. Lower prices result in more customers, encouraging more companies to enter the market, who innovate more efficiencies or improved products, which result in more customers.
6. Commercial space is motivated to pursue exploration that will produce revenue and profits, production that customers want and are willing to pay for.
7. A competitive commercial space industry is motivated to continuously improve products and services.
8. A competitive commercial space industry is motivated to optimize performance in relation to cost.
9. When governments run things, all we get is what the governments want. When the citizenry runs things, we get what we the citizens want.
10. Commercial space will find profits from going to the Moon and other places, building space stations, exploring the usefulness of space and free fall, and building space habitats or settlements. Profit is the reward for finding improved efficiencies in the products that customers are willing to buy.
11. Commercial space has incentive to find better efficiencies to reduce costs or improve products.***
12. Commercial space spends its own money for development, relieving the taxpayer from funding space projects.
13. Commercial space, because it spends its own money, has incentive to rapidly develop new technologies and methods, and to do this development at lower cost than government does.****
14. Commercial space can be more agile than government space. It can make changes to budgets and priorities faster than Congress can.
15. Commercial space can mine and manufacture in space, reducing the amount of pollution on Earth.
16. Free markets act to meet the demands and needs of the market. (In space, governments are still the major market customer.)
17. Free markets seek out new markets and new customers.
18. As commercial space becomes a larger economy than government space, governments will have less opportunity to choose winners and losers in the space industry.
Freedom provides the opportunity to act on a variety of motivations.
* The French gifted the U.S., on her centennial, with the Statue of Liberty as a light shining onto the rest of the world to show the way to become as free and liberated as America. Due to a silly poem, many people misinterpret the statue’s purpose is to be a beacon for the rest of the world to come to America.
** Project Apollo was abandoned after a decade, once going to the Moon bored the government. Commercial communications is going strong after more than half a century, and commercial observation after two decades. Commercial space will keep us from ending up like Apollo, abandoning a perfectly good opportunity just because government lost interest.
*** SpaceX rapidly reduced the price of orbital launch, then further reduced the price by recovering and reusing Falcon first stages.
**** Constellation was cancelled after seven years, and its follow on SLS is taking an additional dozen years until first launch. ISS was first proposed in 1982, first funded in 1984, first segments launched in 1999, and construction completed and declared operational in 2012. Government seems more interested in space as a jobs program than as an exploration program. Constellation and Artemis rocket and capsule are costing about $40 billion to develop over two decades, but commercial resupply and crew services cost around $12 billion to develop two rocket types (Antares and Falcon) and five spacecraft types (Cygnus, Dragon, Starliner, Crew Dragon, and Dream Chaser), each developed in about half a dozen years.
@ Edward
Somewhere in the mix note that the strength of commercial is that inefficient companies go away. They fail and are replaced or not as demand dictates. Commercial is not a monolithic entity. Price is information, information that is denied to governmental operations for the most part.
John hare,
Thank you. Those are important concepts under free markets. The possibility of failure is what drives the remaining companies to find more efficiencies, and demand is the feedback as to whether the companies have succeeded.
19. Free markets weed out unsuccessful ideas and products.
20. Free markets eliminate inefficiencies and the companies that are least efficient. Government may operate as inefficiently as it pleases.
21. Price and demand is feedback for companies, helping to determine the supply needed, but governments may ignore demand and may charge all the traffic will bear. https://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/All%20the%20Traffic%20Will%20Bear