The rumors are now official: NASA will announce the winners of the commercial crew contracts on Friday.
The decision on NASA’s manned commercial crew contracts will be made this week, according to new rumors.
NASA successfully completed today a parachute drop test of its Orion capsule.
Another opinion: NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is costing 320 times more than NASA’s commercial space program.
In other words, having NASA build a rocket and capsule makes no financial sense. At these numbers, SLS cannot survive.
Tantalizing hints: Has Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser been picked as one of two finalists in NASA’s competition to ferry crew and cargo to ISS?
The only program surveying the southern sky for dangerous asteroids has lost its NASA funding and will end this month.
NASA today unveiled for the press the Orion capsule scheduled for the program’s first test flight in 2014.
Today’s unveiling was essentially a PR event designed to boost political support for the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion capsule program. And though we should definitely give kudos to Lockheed Martin for its progress on Orion, it is also important to note that the building of this capsule took 8 years and about $6.5 billion. And it won’t go into space for still another two years at best. Compare that to SpaceX’s Dragon, which took about four years from concept to launch, with a cost of about $1 billion.
It is this contrast that is worrying the political supporters of SLS and Orion. Consider for example this quote from the above article:
But the Orion schedule assumes steady funding by Congress, which is an open question given the current debate over federal budget deficits, taxes and a general push to reduce federal spending. “We have to be concerned about that because we are in an era of government spending where you have to do more with a limited amount,” Nelson said. “That, of course, is going to be one of the main things we’re going to have to look at in the future.” [emphasis mine]
Nelson has been a big backer of SLS from the moment Congress decided to force it down NASA’s throat. It is very clear from his comments above however that he recognizes the political difficulties that this very expensive program faces.
As I’ve said before, I expect SLS to die sometime in the next three years. Faced with a ungodly federal deficit, the next Congress is going to look for ways to save money and — assuming the commercial space companies like SpaceX continue to have success — Congress will see this program as one of those ways.
The FAA and NASA have worked out their differences concerning their regulation of private commercial space.
Essentially, NASA has finally conceded with this agreement that it has no control over a private space launch that is not flying to a NASA facility. That the FAA continues to have as much regulatory control is bad enough, but getting NASA out of the loop will at least ease the bureaucratic burden for private companies.
NASA has released more information about the two space telescopes the National Reconnaissance Office has donated to them.
Good news: Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) has backed down and modified the language he had inserted in the NASA budget bill that would have limited the number of commercial space companies NASA could subsidize.
From Clark Lindsey:
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) , who is Chairman on the Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations committee, put language into the recent House budget for NASA that requiree NASA to down-select immediately to one primary contractor in the commercial crew program. This would obviously eliminate competition on price and rule out redundancy in case one system is grounded. He has now relented and is willing to allow for “2.5 (two full and one partial) CCiCAP awards”.
As I wrote earlier, the success of Dragon is putting strong political pressure on Congress to support the independent commercial space companies over the NASA-built and very expensive Space Launch System (SLS) that Congress had mandated. Expect to see more elected officials back down in the coming year, with the eventually elimination of SLS from the budget.
The scientist suing JPL because he thinks he was fired due to his religious beliefs wants $1.36 million, according to court papers filed early last month.
How a trucking company employee solved the mystery of the missing NASA telescope.
Life imitates a television mystery: A truck transporting a NASA balloon telescope worth millions has disappeared in Dallas in route from Minnesota to Texas.
The truth revealed in pictures: A side-by-side comparison of the mission controls of NASA and SpaceX during Dragon’s arrival at ISS.
The differences tell us a lot. I ask an additional question: Why was there a need for two full mission controls?
Several key elected officials who have generally been hostile to commercial space have commented positively to the successful launch of the Dragon capsule last night.
First, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) released this short statement:
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Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) on Monday attacked the House version of NASA’s budget that required the agency to make a quick decision on its commercial manned launch company.
Nelson faces a difficult election campaign from the right. Thus, I suspect he has realized that he is better off promoting free enterprise than local pork. It is unfortunate that the Republicans in the House haven’t yet realized this.
Republican space socialism update.
Simberg summarizes well the foolishness coming from Congress when it comes to budgeting NASA and commercial space.
Theater: The White House today threatened to veto the House budget because of NOAA and NASA trims.
The financial foolishness in Congress, by Republicans this time, continues. In making its budget recommendations for NASA, the report [pdf] of the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee also demands that NASA immediately choose one commercial company for its commercial space program. (Hat tip to Clark Lindsey for spotting this.)
The number of ways this action is counter-productive almost can’t be counted.
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NASA budget battles: House panel proposes giving commercial space $500 million.
The Obama administration proposed giving commercial space $830 million, the Senate appropriations subpanel earlier this week proposed $525 million. All in all, this looks good for commercial space.
One other thing: that the House did not propose taking from NOAA the job of launching weather satellites and giving it to NASA is more proof to me that the proposal was merely an attempt by Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) to shift federal dollars to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
A Senate panel today proposed shifting the responsibility for building weather satellites from NOAA to NASA.
It is very unclear from this article why the Senate panel proposed this shift. They claim it will save money but I don’t see how.
What I can guess is that there is probably a turf war going on in Congress over this money. For example, shifting these weather satellites to NASA almost certainly means that the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland will get more money, which is almost certainly why Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) is for it.
One thought however: NASA generally focuses on individual missions, not long term operational stuff like weather. I suspect it probably is not a good idea to give this work to NASA.
The same article above also outlined the panel’s proposals for other areas of NASA’s budget. To me, the key issue is the budget for commercial space. The White House requested $830 million. The Senate panel has instead proposed $525 million.
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There are really only two important stories today concerning space exploration. The story that is getting the most coverage is the big news that the space shuttle Discovery is making its last flight, flying over Washington, DC, as it is delivered to the Smithsonian for permanent display.
Of these stories, only Irene Klotz of Discovery News seems to really get it. This is not an event to celebrate or get excited about. It is the end of an American achievement, brought to a close probably three to five years prematurely so that the United States now cannot even send its own astronauts to its own space station.
The other news, actually far more important, has gotten far less coverage, and includes three different stories all really about the same thing.
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USA, NASA’s prime contractor for operating the space shuttle, on Friday laid off nine percent of its work force.
I honestly have to ask: why did it take so long? The last shuttle flight was in July of last year. It couldn’t possibly have required that many people to prepare these spacecraft for display in museums.
Update: Typo corrected. Thank you Erik.
More news from commercial space: Assuming it gets the necessary funds, Boeing anticipates flight tests of its CST-100 reusable manned capsule by 2016.
This story is part of the on-going lobbying effort to convince the Luddites in Congress to subsidize the new commercial space companies. To get some context, even if Congress gives NASA all of the money it has requested for this program, the annual cost will still be less than a third of the NASA-built Space Launch System, and will get us four different ways to get humans and cargo into orbit, and do it in far less time.
A new consensus: Fifty top NASA experts, including astronauts, scientists, and engineers, have issued a letter demanding that NASA stop making global warming claims in press releases and websites.
We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.
The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.
The individuals who signed this letter comprise a who’s-who from NASA’s science and space exploration work over the past fifty years. Their willingness to sign such a letter cannot be dismissed lightly.
Mark your calendar: Decision day for the SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon test flight on April 30 will be April 16.
NASA management yesterday extended funding for all but one of its on-going astrophysics missions, including Hubble, Kepler, Chandra, and Fermi.
According to a statement from NASA headquarters, all missions will continue in fiscal years 2013 and 2014. The guest observer programme for the Chandra X-ray Observatory would even be augmented. Only Spitzer, an infrared telescope, would be phased out earlier than the mission wanted, in 2015.
There is some justification for ending Spitzer’s funding early, as the spacecraft’s cameras have lost their ability to stay as cold as designed to do their full range of infrared observations.
The NASA administrator, Charles Bolden, has balked at the Europe-China negotiations for docking a Chinese manned craft at ISS.
I don’t know what Bolden can do about this, however, as we don’t have the ability to get to our own space station, while Europe and the Chinese do.
The Buzz Lightyear toy that flew on space shuttle has been donated to the Smithsonian.
This news item illustrates the sad state of the American space program, when the arrival at a museum of a foot-high plastic toy that had been in space merits major news coverage. Worse, if we instead wanted to bring this toy back to ISS, we can’t, at least not without begging help from someone else.
A report issued today illustrates once again to me that those running our space program in both Congress and the Obama administration have a profound lack of common sense or basic intelligence:
The NASA Advisory Council (NAC) – a body that provides the NASA Administrator with counsel and advice on programs and issues of importance to the Agency – has insisted a human exploration plan, or at least a destination, should be selected as soon as possible.
This request specifically applies to the Space Launch System (SLS), the heavy-lift rocket mandated by Congress that will use the Orion capsule. SLS is also the same rocket system that is costing the taxpayers $3 billion per year, and is expected to cost between $18 to $60 billion total by the time it flies its first operational mission in about nine years. The advisory council also noted that
While the vehicle hardware development is now moving forward at full speed, specific destinations – or a roadmap – is still lacking from NASA’s exploration plan.
It took nine different committees plus a central committee formed from the original nine committees to come to this Earth-shattering conclusion.
To put it in plain English, Congress and the Obama administration have committed billions of taxpayer dollars to the construction of a rocket and manned capsule without ever putting much thought into the specific mission they want to send that rocket and capsule on.
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