posted 05-24-2010 02:28 PM               

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Originally posted by BNorton:
But if you know of such a manned spacecraft - a true commercial one: designed with private capital, built with private capital, and making a profit for its operator - a photo would help, even a grainy low light blurry video would offer some hope that the mythical creature exists.

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posted 05-24-2010 03:57 PM               

(Howard Cosell voice): And Pearlman comes out swinging today folks!

I tire of having some relatively inconsequential verbiage in my posts picked apart while not getting at the real issues.

I simply ask this question to kind of sum up the whole commercial crew/ common man to space spinoff theory:

If there are, as pointed out, 400 billionaires in the United States and approximately 8 million millionaires, and their hunger to go on an orbital flight is so insatiable, why are they not investing in private manned spaceflight companies NOW?

Of course, it will be pointed out that a very select few are, and that's great...I can name them too. But that's what should be done. Private investment for private adventures. Not taxpayer-funded development of exclusive rich-boy rides.

The potential for LEO to become a destination for only the extremely wealthy for the rest of my lifetime is an abhorrent waste of the taxpayer's money and the technologies developed since the 1950's to get them there.

posted 05-24-2010 04:15 PM            

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Originally posted by BNorton:
It went a long way in getting the US to the moon.

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Thanks for making my point. Apollo is part of a bygone era, would you agree? Prestige spurred what was necessary then but this is a different world today.

Of course, the Chinese may go it alone but it has pitfalls. It's unsustainable, as the Russians came to realise with its now defunct Buran/Energia programme.

posted 05-24-2010 04:47 PM               

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Originally posted by 328KF:
...why are they not investing in private manned spaceflight companies NOW?

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And then there are the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who are among those investing millions of their own personal wealth into advancing commercial spaceflight.

NASA is not proposing to hand checks to companies that haven't already substantially invested in their own projects, nor is NASA proposing to provide them with a majority of the funding necessary to develop and build the spacecraft.

quote:

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Not taxpayer-funded development of exclusive rich-boy rides.

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posted 05-24-2010 08:41 PM               

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
I'll be happy to show you the photos you requested if you will show me where it is written that a company is not commercial if it accepts money from the government as either an investor and/or customer.

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If this is what you believe to be commericial, then it's a commercial program now. So what then is the point of President Obama's plan? Wow, the Administration is proposing a commercial space start-up when they already have commercial space. We are worse off than I thought!

posted 05-24-2010 11:52 PM               

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Originally posted by issman1:
Of course, the Chinese may go it alone but it has pitfalls. It's unsustainable, as the Russians came to realise with its now defunct Buran/Energia programme.

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Unsustainable? From a Westerner's standpoint maybe. The "advantage" of not being a democracy is that there are no "elections", so a given program can last decades. The Chinese will get there. They are simply not in a hurry by setting unrealistic deadlines, which are unsustainable.

posted 05-25-2010 12:02 AM               

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
Under the President's proposal, taxpayers are being asked to help fund part of the development of commercial launch services for NASA astronauts...

Commercial spaceflight will bolster the U.S. space launch industry, which is currently trailing other countries, enhancing the nation's standing on the world market.

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posted 05-25-2010 12:05 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by 328KF:
If there are, as pointed out, 400 billionaires in the United States and approximately 8 million millionaires, and their hunger to go on an orbital flight is so insatiable, why are they not investing in private manned spaceflight companies NOW?

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posted 05-25-2010 03:50 AM            

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Originally posted by cspg:
The Chinese will get there. They are simply not in a hurry by setting unrealistic deadlines, which are unsustainable.

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That sounds like more conjecture. But at least you and I are in agreement that "deadlines" in 21st century human spaceflight are "unrealistic". Constellation was all about "deadlines" that have proven "unsustainable".

Ludicrously, there are some Americans who feel they must beat China in a race to the Moon. Of course, no such race exists but they're staking the future of NASA (if not their very survival as a nation) upon it.

posted 05-25-2010 06:29 AM               

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Originally posted by issman1:
As I've written on other threads, perhaps it's time the US and China co-operated?

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They have a total of 3 days (?) in manned spaceflight. What could they possibly bring to the table?

posted 05-25-2010 08:20 AM            

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Originally posted by jimsz:
There is no benefit to the US to cooperate with anyone, especially China... There is nothing the US has to gain from international partners.

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posted 05-25-2010 09:33 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by issman1:
deorbit ISS and tell the international astronauts in Houston to return to their home agencies. NASA will be grounded for years to come (as it would have been without Soyuz after Columbia).

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posted 05-25-2010 09:57 AM               

Yes, Apollo was unique, a product of the times. The Space Shuttle was also the product of that same era. There was then some political will, albeit it very limited under Nixon, to continue manned spaceflight.

Recent history has shown that there is very little “political will” to support a US manned spaceflight program. Yes, I know there is currently lots of talk, from the President on down, about the importance of spaceflight. But where is the real support? Where is the money to back up the words? Oh, that’s right; NASA gets an extra billion for a couple of years, mainly for earth observation, etc. But where is the real money? The US congress has shown a willingness over the years to spend huge sums on almost anything else…and they continue to show this spend mentality. Need $20 billion for this program, no problem. Need $200 billion for that program, no problem. Need an extra $3 billion for NASA, we have a problem.

The proof of lack of real support is in the large gap between Shuttle and Orion. If it were so important to everyone, as they now say, there would not have been a gap. Orion had support because of jobs and because it was viewed as a continuation of manned spaceflight…and no one was really willing to kill the manned spaceflight program. Like the wording or not, the current Administration plan kills the US manned spaceflight program. (Yes, we know astronauts will fly on Soyuz. Hopefully we do not need to argue about what constitutes a true program…right now there are only three: US, Russia, and China.)

Also, if it were as important as the President now says (“It’s not a luxury.”), where is the emergency program to have a functional craft ASAP? It’s not there….not even the “low” 1% spending during shuttle development and construction.

So what is the point? The point is, by ending the manned spaceflight program now and putting off a possible (not even guaranteed) US craft to 5 to10 years into the future, and in consideration of the lack of real congressional support, the need for any program becomes smaller and smaller with time. After all, the US budget has a serious balance problem. Under the existing Administration’s budget proposal for NASA, it will be extremely easy to go from $19 billion to $8 billion. Once you end something like manned spaceflight, the justification for starting it again, especially in the current budget situation, becomes extremely difficult.

posted 05-25-2010 10:41 AM               

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Originally posted by BNorton:
Like the wording or not, the current Administration plan kills the US manned spaceflight program.

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First, if the gap is killing the U.S. manned spaceflight program, then it isn't the current Administration who's at fault; the gap was permanently in place before Obama took office. That ship had sailed and no amount of money would have been able to turn that tide (nor was that a disputed fact until just now, as everyone from Congress to the former NASA Administrator to industry leaders to independent analysts came to the same conclusion).

Second, might I remind you that manned spaceflight doesn't end with the launch? The International Space Station is one of, if not the largest manned spaceflight program the U.S. has ever undertaken, dwarfing Apollo in its scale, engineering accomplishments, mission planning and soon-to-be science.

A proposal that includes extending ISS operations out to at least 2020, if not 2028, is by definition not dead.

quote:

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Originally posted by BNorton:
...do you think his idea is worth this high risk?

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Presidents H.W. Bush, Clinton and W. Bush helped set the foundation on which the proposal put forth by President Obama will be built upon.

Obama cannot even take credit for providing the burgeoning industry with what it has needed to finally gain a foothold: a pressing need (see what I just wrote about the gap above).

Advisory committees have for decades been recommending that NASA more fully embrace the capabilities of the U.S. space industry and get out of the low Earth orbit access business. President Obama is following those recommendations.

As for the "high" risk, "high" is highly subjective.

As the failure of the X-33 program demonstrated, it is perhaps an even greater risk to put all of NASA's faith in one contractor to build a successor to the space shuttle. When the X-33 folded, NASA wasn't able to turn to another contractor to pick up where Lockheed left off, but was faced with returning to square one.

Now we're opening the field to all of NASA's contractors, old and new, to do what they do best: design and build capable and reliable spacecraft. Now we can regain some of the benefits of a space race, wherein competition provides a strong incentive for companies to produce.

You write about the lack of political support but if you truly believe that then the answer is staring you plainly in the face: do everything and anything you can to eventually and ultimately remove the government from the barrier to entry.

posted 05-25-2010 11:19 AM               

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
First, if the gap is killing the U.S. manned spaceflight program, then it isn't the current Administration who's at fault; the gap was permanently in place before Obama took office.

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Your comments about the station again show you did not read what I wrote. I know the US will buy seats to keep flying astronauts up to the station.

Wow, so the Discovery craft, etc. on 2001 were all commercial? There were commercial craft on Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. So what? That's science fiction... just like, I will add, a true commercial program in the next ten to twenty years will be.

Again, the point I have tried to make many times in the past: there is no commercial market. Manned orbital spaceflight, for the foreseeable future, is in the domain of governments. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. Stop it (manned spaceflight) and it will be hard to start again.

Your belief that there will be multiple spacecraft to fill the void ... this is so far from the real business world where companies have to make a profit...I am very sorry that I cannot find a reasonable response.

posted 05-25-2010 11:44 AM               

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Originally posted by BNorton:
No where in what I wrote, to which you respond, did I say the exiting gap was the sole fault of the current President.

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posted 05-25-2010 12:59 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
The move towards commercial spaceflight can be traced back to ... the opening space scene of "2001: A Space Odyssey," where every spacecraft you see is commercially operated.

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posted 05-25-2010 01:40 PM               

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Originally posted by mikej:
I sure hope we won't have to wait for an extra-terrestrial intelligence to send black monoliths to imbue our commercial sector with the knowledge...

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posted 05-25-2010 02:10 PM               

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
Did you, or did you not write, that "the current Administration plan kills the US manned spaceflight program," which you then directly linked to the gap by equating the death to astronauts riding on Soyuz spacecraft?

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Uh...those are a few words I typed...but out of context. Before that I spoke of the GAP between the Shuttle and Orion. FYI: This gap was there before Obama took office. The point being, if manned spaceflight were all that important as Senator Nelson, the President, and others have said it is, then why the gap? Because support for manned orbital spaceflight, etc. is actually weak. Everyone, until this President, has been reluctant to kill the program.

(By the way, he, Obama, is the President now, not Bush, not Clinton, not Carter. The problem is his and the results of his administration's action or lack of action are his, be they good or bad. This is not a "blame game". This is about fixing a problem and keeping a capability. It's about the existing budget proposal.)

Please stop putting words into my comments. I have never written in this thread or any other forum that I am against commercial spaceflight. But as I have typed many times, its time is not now. NASA should continue promoting commercial efforts, as they have done in the past, just not at the complete and total expense of the government manned program...because commercial is not ready.

When this exceptionally poorly designed plan of the Administration fails, it will be very difficult from a political standpoint to start back up the existing program of record or any other manned program. Obviously, if it does not fail, that would be great; but the risk is so high, it will most likely fail. This opinion is obviously not mine alone. As mentioned in past posts, even some of the President's plan supporters, such as Mr. Aldrin, do not agree with the President's plan when you listen to what they think NASA and others should be doing.

Please try to separate your politics from comments. If you wish to take it, you have the last word.

posted 05-25-2010 04:31 PM               

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Originally posted by BNorton:
Obviously, if it does not fail, that would be great; but the risk is so high, it will most likely fail.

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We get to a point where repeating the same approach and expecting a different result is is the definition of failure.

After the Challenger accident in 1986, many said that if we ever lost another shuttle in flight, it would be the end of manned space flight. We tragically lost Columbia in 2003, and yet we pressed on.

posted 05-25-2010 08:12 PM            

To be honest I don’t care who launches what where, with the proviso that it’s for peaceful purposes, I just want to see men and women going into space and furthering our knowledge of it. I think the ISS is a tremendous achievement that will help in this. To say ditch it now after spending millions on it is just insane. It’s the one bright spark in an otherwise very uncertain future. In fact we should all be relieved that it’s up there because without it the reasons for sending men and women into space would be greatly reduced.

My fear is, that with the U.S. out of the business of launching their own manned spacecraft for a very long time, we could be entering a phase where we have little to look forward. I guess the shuttle has made us blasé about going into space and to be honest I’m going to miss it’s frequency of launch although looking at the images of it up there now, it does seem to be under utilised with a nearly empty cargo bay.

As for the commercial sector coming to the rescue, don’t hold your breath. I think it took about 6 million dollars to extend the life of the unmanned Phoenix Mars probe by about 3 months. These are the kind of figures required for being in space. And it’s not like the old days of discovering the world by sailing ship because those craft didn’t have to sustain the kinds of forces and environments that spacecraft do just to leave and return to their home ports. Going into space and coming back again isn't something that your average Joe Bloggs can do in a canoe.

The trouble is, I want it all now, I want humans living in moon bases and astronauts scooping up Martian soil. I want people exploring the waters on the moons of Saturn and voyagers leaving the solar system for the stars. Unfortunately we don’t live in those days. We live in the days where all of that is a long, long way off. We live in the days of squabbling over who is going to pay for sending a few rich tourists on sub-orbital flights. We live in the days where a beautiful but overly complex and fragile reusable spacecraft launched by primitive SRB rockets is about to be retired and there simply is nothing but words to replace it.

NASA's Constellation program gave us all a brief moment of hope for a new renaissance in space travel but now it's cancelled we are right back to square one talking about business ventures, corporate funding and my country won't fly with his country because blah blah blah....all very boring earthly matters.

posted 05-28-2010 01:25 PM               

"I want to acknowledge your congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas, because every time I meet with her, including the flight down here, she reminds me of how important our NASA programs are and how important this facility is".

"The bottom line is nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space than I am".

posted 05-28-2010 02:39 PM               

Kosmas reminds the President beacause KSC is within her district and she's in for a tough fight for re-elction. Every US Representative reminds the President about important programs and places within their district every chance they get.

As for WHY the President needs this reminder. I don't think he does because like him or hate him he's an intelligent man. But everyone needs to remember that whomever is President has thousands of issues that vie for his attention everyday.

posted 05-31-2010 10:27 PM               

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Originally posted by ross426:
Has anybody watched Neil Armstrong's and Gene Cernan's latest comments from Spaceflight Now's This Week in Space?

That Elon Musk (SpaceX) needs an attitude adjustment.

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Wow, I never thought anyone could open their mouth and insert BOTH legs with such a comment, but Elon just managed to do it.

Unless I am mistaken, Neil has said PhD in Aerospace Engineering from Purdue and was INVITED to attend MIT until one of his professors said he didn't need to go to MIT to get a quality education. He is the guy who test flew the X-15 for NASA and also did some very good test pilot work in support of the X-20. He was doing stuff LONG before Dr. Rendezvous was.

posted 06-01-2010 04:55 AM            

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Originally posted by Jay Chladek:
Wow, I never thought anyone could open their mouth and insert BOTH legs with such a comment, but Elon just managed to do it.

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posted 06-01-2010 07:00 AM               

I want SpaceX (and Orbital) to succeed as well but I don't want to wait until they do.

What Musk needs to consider in his youthful hubris is that Neil did not personally attack him. He simply expressed concern about the ability for commercial companies to take over LEO operations at this time.

For him to say that Neil is "just a pilot" is as stupid a comment as the President saying "that we've been to the Moon" as if there is nothing else to learn there.

posted 06-01-2010 12:39 PM               

The idea of contracting with the private sector for launch and transport to LEO is not new. The difference under the new direction is the termination of any capability by the federal government of the United States to send people into space.

For 50 years, America has maintained this ability through an infrastructure of cutting-edge industrial hardware, specialized facilities and a skilled work force. By adopting the new program, we will lose - probably irretrievably - this space-faring infrastructure and, most certainly, our highly trained, motivated and experienced work force. It will be prohibitively expensive and difficult to restart our manned program after five to 10 years of agency navel-gazing, effectively signaling the end of America's manned space program and our leadership in space.

posted 06-01-2010 10:49 PM               

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Originally posted by issman1:
At least Elon Musk is putting his money where his "mouth" is, unlike others.

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Sorry, there is a difference between putting your money toward an effort to make an independent launch system and spacecraft and using a mouth to accuse probably one of the most intelligent engineers on the planet that they are "being used" and "just a pilot" so their opinion shouldn't hold as much weight as somebody with a "degree from MIT". That is not putting one's money where their mouth is, that is trying to play a stupid game of trying to shoot holes in the opposition by resorting to simple "name calling".

If an accusation like that is made, he needs to back it up with proof that Neil is being manipulated. He sure as heck can't prove Neil is "just a pilot". I am pretty sure that if he looks, I doubt he is going to find anyone is manipulating Neil.

Elon needs to get an education quick that in this business, talk is cheap. You only back it up with success, success and success coming after some failure to show that you learned your lessons and applied them to the next success. Space X sure as heck can't play fast and loose with the range safety guys at CCAFS. You don't fly until THEY say you are ready to fly.

posted 06-02-2010 03:50 AM            

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Originally posted by Matt T:
Don't forget - that's also your money he's putting where his mouth is.

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posted 06-02-2010 05:27 AM            

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Originally posted by Matt T:
It's the same company that put them on the moon, operated a fleet of the most advanced spacecraft in history, launched and assembled most of the space station that you're very fond of...

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