posted 05-14-2010 02:49 PM               

Armstrong: With regard to President Obama's 2010 plan, I have yet to find a person in NASA, the Defense Department, the Air Force, the National Academies, industry, or academia that had any knowledge of the plan prior to its announcement. Rumors abound that neither the NASA Administrator nor the President's Science and Technology Advisor were knowledgeable about the plan.

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Originally posted by Matt T:
So with none of the usual suspects involved it would be very interesting to know who DID advise the president.

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posted 05-17-2010 05:48 PM               

• U.S. House of Representatives
  Science and Technology Committee
  Review of the Proposed National Aeronautics and Space Administration Human Spaceflight Plan
  Testifying: Charles Bolden, Neil Armstrong, Eugene Cernan, Thomas Young
  2318 Rayburn House Office Building, 10:00 - 12:00 p.m.

posted 05-18-2010 03:07 AM               

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Originally posted by ejectr:
...but rather have to sit in front of a bunch of know nothing do nothing congressmen to plead the obvious.

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Originally posted by 328KF:
...it is neither their job nor their place to put counterprosals on the table.

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posted 05-31-2010 09:18 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Matt T:
So with none of the usual suspects involved it would be very interesting to know who DID advise the president.

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posted 06-17-2010 11:39 PM               

Frustrated by a lack of visibility into the planning and analysis underpinning NASA's dramatic shift in course for its human spaceflight program, House lawmakers have given NASA Administrator Charles Bolden until June 25 to deliver all records, charts, e-mails, voice messages and other supporting materials used in drafting the agency's 2011 budget proposal...

Specifically, the letter demands all records relating to the development of NASA's human spaceflight proposal that was unveiled along with the agency's $19 billion spending request for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, "including any analysis of the executability of the proposed plan through 2025." The letter also demands all records relating to the formulation of NASA's revised human spaceflight proposal announced by U.S. President Barack Obama April 15, which would retain a slimmed-down version of Constellation's Orion crew capsule to serve as an emergency crew lifeboat aboard the international space station.

In addition, the committee wants all NASA records relating to any budgetary analysis as well as estimates of the employment impact of canceling the Constellation program and implementing the new plan, "both for the agency and for the private sector," the letter said. The lawmakers requested that the materials be delivered to the committee's room in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill "no later than close of business on Friday June 25, 2010."

posted 06-30-2010 07:58 AM               

Would members of the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, in the markup of their FY11 appropriations bill Tuesday, signal their willingness to support the White House's new direction for human spaceflight or defend the existing Constellation program? The answer is... neither. The subcommittee elected not to take a position on the program, instead deferring to authorizers.

"Any major change to the direction of the Nation's space program should come through an authorization passed by Congress and signed into law by the President," Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), chairman of the subcommittee, said in his opening statement. "Unfortunately, a determination about the direction of the space program has been effectively on hold for well over a year. First, we waited for the recommendations of the Augustine Commission; next we waited for the Administration to react to those recommendations; and since early this year, we have waited for the authorizing committees to take action. In the meantime, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been invested in procurements and technology development that may or may not have a role in NASA's human exploration future."

"Until that program is defined through an enacted authorization, this Subcommittee has no business in appropriating even more funding for uncertain program outcomes," he concluded. "Accordingly, this bill makes the funding for Human Space Exploration available only after the enactment of such authorization legislation." That puts a new emphasis on, and power to, authorizers in both the House and Senate who have yet to put forward authorizing legislation -- bills that in prior years have often been considered useful but not mandatory.

posted 07-01-2010 10:06 AM               

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Originally posted by Jay Chladek:
You can't just leave the budget out in the open and not approve one until after the November elections...

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As it is, it's unlikely that Congress will complete the budget-approval process -- for NASA and most other agencies -- before the congressional elections in November, which means that the budgets for most agencies will likely be determined by a continuing resolution.

posted 07-01-2010 03:42 PM               

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas)

"The decision to extend America's shuttle program by moving these flights will safeguard our nation's human spaceflight capability while providing needed support and equipment for the International Space Station," said Senator Hutchison. "Moving these existing flights is an important first step in maintaining our capabilities while we assess and plan for the station's needs and work on a bipartisan compromise on NASA's future."

"Today's news that the Shuttle program has been officially extended until at least February of next year is a welcome development that will help preserve jobs and ease the transition for the Space Coast. The extension shows the importance of our successful efforts to eliminate the hard deadline for Shuttle retirement, which would have ended the Shuttle program in September of this year."

posted 07-01-2010 06:24 PM               

Weird.

posted 07-12-2010 10:08 AM               

Though the bill effectively cancels the delayed and over-budget Constellation moon-rocket program -- as Obama requested in his NASA budget -- it would repurpose that money to build a new heavy-lift rocket while largely ignoring the president's call to fund new space-faring technology and commercial rockets that would send humans into space...

It proposes spending $11.3 billion through 2013 to develop the rocket and a fully-loaded Orion crew capsule capable of flying humans to the moon and beyond. It authorizes spending $1.3 billion on Orion and $1.9 billion on the new rocket next year. The aim of the bill is to have the new rocket and capsule ready to fly by 2016.

It also orders NASA to "utilize existing contracts, investments, workforce, industrial base, and capabilities from the space shuttle and former Orion and Ares I projects." This could save billions in termination costs but force NASA to continue using ATK's solid-rocket motors that the White House had hoped to scrap in favor of a liquid-fueled rocket, like the Saturn V that launched astronauts to the moon in 1969.

At the same time, the bill would provide three-year appropriations totaling $250 million for robotic missions intended to pave the way for human deep-space exploration, $1.7 billion for technology research and development and $890 million to help commercial rocket companies develop space taxis for astronauts.

By comparison, the administration had proposed $1.3 billion for robotic missions, $5.5 billion for technology development and $3.3 billion on commercial rocket companies between 2011 and 2013. Obama also wanted to develop only a scaled-down Orion to act as a lifeboat on the space station.

The bill would forbid NASA from spending any money on service contracts with commercial-rocket companies in 2011 and allow it in 2012 only if NASA can satisfy six requirements. Those include coming up with standards that commercial rocket firms would use to make their rockets safe for humans, along with devising a congressionally approved system to buy private rocket services for astronauts.

posted 07-13-2010 02:25 PM               

The concerns from some lobbyists about KSC going back to more hardware rather then R&D in Florida I think are not as well thought out as R&D doesn't require as much manpower as hardware and would result in more of a loss of jobs in that region then they say. KSC has always been more of the testing and flight base among the NASA centers while Glenn, Langley and Dryden are the R&D facilities. I believe that trying to turn KSC into more of an R&D location would result in a few turf wars, similar to what sometimes happened between Marshall and Johnson during the days of space station development.

Besides, developing hardware IS a form of R&D. The result at the end is a practical application, not just some technology that then has to be applied to something practical (which takes more time to develop).

posted 07-14-2010 03:22 PM               

We are building consensus in what has otherwise been a consensus-less position of the future of the manned space program. The President had proposed one thing. He altered that. Different people have different ideas. Different aerospace companies all looking to have a certain part of the manned space program also have their different ideas.

Out of this mix, we are trying to bring together Senators to build a consensus in a bipartisan way; the space program is not only not partisan, it is not even bipartisan. It is nonpartisan - to be able to do this in a fairly unanimous way.

I am happy to report to the Senate that I think we are getting there. I believe what we will have is the essence of the President's proposal. It will still have the continuation of the President's proposal for competition among commercial space companies to deliver not only cargo to the International Space Station, of which the President recommended, and we will certainly authorize extending the life of the space station to 2020, something on which we have spent $100 billion. It did not make sense, as was proposed before, to cut it out in 2015, something we spent that much money on and are just now completing its construction.

These commercial companies would, in this authorization bill, have the direction as to how they go about man rating their systems in order to have the safety, when you strap human beings on to rockets that defy the laws of gravity, to take a human being into low-Earth orbit to rendezvous and dock with the space station and to return safely. That is one thing.

The next thing on which we are building a consensus is to accelerate the development of a heavy-lift vehicle. The President said no later than 2015. We are going to authorize NASA to start in 2011 and to take a lot of the existing technology and build upon that, make it evolvable with a heavy-lift vehicle that would be in the range of 75 metric tons in order to get space assets in the low-Earth orbit to ultimately fulfill the President's goal as stated in his speech to the Kennedy Space Center, which was to go to Mars by a flexible path. His specific timeline was to rendezvous and land on an asteroid by 2025. We accelerate the development of the heavy-lift vehicle.

Because the hardware is there and ready, will be on the pad, we are going to authorize an additional flight of the space shuttle. This is the shuttle that they call the 'launch on need.' It is a second space shuttle that is on the pad for the remaining two, in case they get into trouble. It becomes a rescue shuttle to get the marooned astronauts, were that to be the case.

The fact is, they are doing so well now, and now that we are going to and from the space station on these final two missions, the likelihood of anything happening is de minimis and, therefore, we are going to authorize the flying of that last shuttle, the launch on need, because we believe there is a minimal risk. If something did happen on ascent - such as a piece of foam coming off and hitting the wing and knocking a hole in it, which was the cause of the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia back in 2003 - then the astronauts would be able to take safe harbor in the International Space Station, and they would then be able to be returned to Earth by other vehicles, such as the Russian Soyuz, which is a permanent lifeboat that is attached - two of them - to the International Space Station.

We will continue in this authorization bill a robust research and development program. We will continue the President's recommendations for his science budget, for his aeronautics budget of NASA, and all of this will be within the amount of money the President has proposed.

This NASA authorization bill will be for three years. We are expecting that we will be able to take this up this Thursday and to pass it out of the full Commerce Committee.

We, of course, in respect to the appropriations process, have been in close consultation with our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee. How the authorization committee and the Appropriations Committee worked together has been a good example of considerable cooperation.

posted 07-14-2010 09:53 PM               

Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Bill Nelson to Discuss Major Breakthrough on NASA Reauthorization Bill

Tomorrow, U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida), Chairman of the Commerce Subcommittee on Science and Space, will be joined by a number of their colleagues at a press conference on Thursday, July 15 at 11:45 a.m. EST in the Senate Radio and TV Gallery to discuss a major breakthrough on the NASA reauthorization bill. Tomorrow morning before the press conference, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will meet in an executive session to mark up the NASA reauthorization bill.