Obama's NASA Dilemma

I have been giving a talk, Aim High, which proposes redirecting some of NASA resources towards a national energy project. Navigate to the Aim High talk at:
http://rethinkingnuclearpower.googlepages.com

I worry we won't be able to afford NASA and other programs if things keep going this way.  Again, this morning, more news of layoffs and a tumbling market.

Obama as next president of the United States has the hitoric opportunity,not just to decide the fate of the space shuttle, a very limited decision at this moment, but to finally redirect the entire space plan to a more profit oriented one, creating new jobs and opportunities.
The change needed is to switch from an Earth- based plan , as is now, to a space based one for the future utiizing resources already in space, deflected asteroids, as launching bases as well as cycler spaceships .
A serious study about this possibility will show tremendous advantages, saving time in the overall space development picture at a fraction of current costs and promoting a private gold rush to space initiatives.

Please, Mr. President, dump the shuttle program ASAP and kill all attempts to put a man on Mars. Work on closing the SSS (Silly Space Station) soon.

Place whatever money is available into robotic probes and remote sensing. Trying to put a creature that breathes air, must eat and that requires an extremely narrow range of temperature to survive into a vacuum is crazy. Instead let this creature put his or her brain to use designing fabulous instruments that will do his/her bidding in all manner of harsh environments and for a relative pittance! Putting a man on the moon was a groovy stunt from a time when we were all growing our hair long, but please, please give NASA the haircut it has needed ever since.

Ares is a bad architecture for current and future U.S. launch needs. It has very little in common with the Shuttle, so development costs have skyrocketed (so to speak). Almost all aspects of the two vehicle designs (Ares-I and Ares-V) are brand new, so delays are inevitable.

The Orion crew capsule has been scaled back dramatically: crew size was reduced from six to four, safety features have been deleted, and landing on land (instead of ocean) has been abandoned. All because the Ares-I is overweight and under-performing.

The Ares-I is too small. It will barely be able reach orbit (if it works at all), and even then there is no cargo capacity for ISS support missions. The Ares-V is way, way too big, and getting bigger, more expensive, and further off into the future all the time. The solution is to use a single launch vehicle design that can support ISS missions, support a fully functional Orion spacecraft, AND support Moon, NEO, and Mars missions in the future.

The plan is DIRECT 2.0, www.directlauncher.com, and the vehicle is Jupiter. Not too big, not too small, it's just right! Plus, it re-uses much more of the Shuttle's hardware with as little modification as possible.

The trick is to get Mike Griffin to admit that Ares is a bad design and drop it before it is too late. Right now, that is not happening. We may need some "change" from higher up to get things moving again.

Mark S.
Dallas, TX

The Shuttle should be extended as this is the most responsible thing to do to both protect our $100 billion investment in the ISS, reduce the reliance on the Russian Progress and Soyuz carriers, continue to employ our highly specialized space personnel and continue to serve the intended purpose of the ISS as stated in President Regan's state of the union address, "to save and enhance lives on earth".

A few companies are currently flying commercially valuable products to space with great results; Spacehab has just returned with a vaccine target for salmonella; and Richard Garriott, the space tourist and son of a famous NASA astronaut who flew in SpaceLab, just went up to the station and grew valuable protein crystals that will soon lead to the discovery of new drug treatments. So this ends the argument that microgravity has no commercial use as the Spacehab success proves the otherwise. The reason that there were no famous micro-g discoveries to date was due to how NASA funded and managed the experiments; first remember, NASA saw one primary goal, to build the ISS not micro-g science. Also, the micro-g science money (very little) was 100% funneled to U.S. university scientists and while each project had to have an explanation as to its commercial value, this was not a requirement to receive micro-g money; in fact NASA never put much thought into commercialization as they did not see the Agency as a venture capital fund that would or could determine the commercial value of a product or service. Again, Spacehab is a commercial company that is spending investors money and has now proved the skeptics wrong as the company has a commercial vaccine that was develpoped in micro-g that is being filed with the FDA (as per their 10-K. Spacehab has said that it will continue to fly even more vaccine targets. Therefore the Shuttle needs to continue to fly so that the taxpayers will receive the benefits of saving and enhancing their lives from products produced in space. That was the vision, now give it a chance!

The ISS will be complete by 2010 and NASA is very busy to meet that deadline. Once finished, the extended Shuttle flights would be used for crew change and the delivery of cargo and micro-g manufacturing. There is more than enough capacity for manufacturing on the ISS as the U.S. has their own Express Racks (micro-g processing facilities) and under the barter agreement with the Europeans and Japanese where the U.S. delivered their modules (Columbus & Kibo) in the Shuttle, the U.S. gets half of the Express Rack capacity of these two very large and very modern modules. It would be a shame to turn our backs on this incredibly valuable and unique micro-g facility that the U.S. taxpayers have been paying for over 15 years just when it has begun to bear fruit.

Moreover, if the U.S retired the Shuttle and only had the Russian solution to rely on, NASA would not be able to increase the ISS crew size from the current 3 to the planed 6 in 2010 due to the experience we had when Columbia STS-107 crashed and the Shuttles were grounded requiring the U.S. to depend 100% on the Russians for both crew and cargo; during this three year GAP, the U.S. was forced to reduce the crew size down from 3 to 2 due to the limited cargo that the Progress and Soyuz can carry and the limited rockets the Russians could produce. So, even though the U.S. has recently paid billions for the expansion of the on-orbit facilities to house 6 full time crew members, without the Shuttle this goal could not be maintained. Extending the Shuttle would solve this problem.

As for the Constellation program, we should colonize the moon but there are a few things that came up along the way that must change our way of thinking; first, the Ares development has hit some significant problems as the solid rocket design has oscillation problems that threaten to rattle it apart(this problem has been known about since the 1970s); also the Ares has proven to be under powered for the task of providing cargo and men to the ISS; this not very successful development is extremely expensive at $3.4 billion per year for another 5 years (per NASA); and the program is very behind schedule at 2014+(was 2011). NASA’s approach to this problem is all wrong as they want to retire the Shuttle so that even more money can be spent on their Ares rocket development being convinced that money will solve all their problems, but lets face it, they had their chance and now the delay is causing international problems and red faced reliance on the Russians. Concluding, once again, that it would be a better idea to continue to fly the Shuttle until a replacement can be found.

The replacement would be the Atlas V as it is a very safe and reliable rocket that has successfully flown over 225 times with only one mishap back in the early 1980’s (better than the Shuttle); it can easily reach the ISS; can carry massive cargo (Atlas=5 metric tons, Progress/Soyuz=2.3 metric tons, Shuttle=30 metric tons); can carry the Orion manned rated spacecraft (now under development by NASA) and it can be easily man rated per a report by Lockheed years ago. Also, don’t forget there are other potential replacement options, there is the European spacecraft the ATK (but cannot re-enter the atmosphere) and the new Japanese HTV (which can re-enter but can’t carry humans) and then there is the U.S. public/private partnership, COTS lead by the Pay Pal founder Elon Musk and his Space-X Falcon 9; of all of these, the European ATK is the only one currently flying but is limited as it can’t carry any crew; the other rockets and spacecraft are under development and won’t be ready for crew delivery until 2014.

And, there is one other issue that can’t be ignored, global warming. The majority of the world’s public considers it a big problem and NASA can help as Earth observation satellites are great at watching melting icebergs and glaciers. Satellites are also great at staring down through the atmosphere with sensors that can determine the causes of global warming and determine a much needed solution. Therefore, NASA needs to spend a significant amount of their resources on observing the Earth and providing technical solutions to the problem.

This brings us to the conclusion and the only reasonable solution given the circumstances:

1. Extend the Shuttle until there is a replacement probably 2012
2. Develop the Orion to fly on the Atlas V as a Shuttle replacement in 2012
3. Keep the Constellation program going, just slow it down to a 2020 completion
4. Put the money that is saved slowing Constellation into Earth observation satellites

Regarding any discussion as to terminating NASA, this is completely preposterous as the Agency is a very large contributor to what keeps the U.S. at the forefront of technology. Eliminating this competitive edge is absurd. There is no doubt that NASA could spend their money more wisely and could be a lot better at commercializing products that come out of the Agency, but to eliminate its existence is not an option.

I think I have covered the top issues and provided the obvious solutions to circumvent the Russian concern, commercialize the taxpayer’s $100 billion investment in the ISS and generally keeping all the politicians and workforce happy.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's public space program. The National Aeronautics and Space Act established NASA on July 29, 1958. In addition to the space program, it is also responsible for long-term civilian and military aerospace research. Since February 2006 NASA's self-described mission statement is to "pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research." Samim Anghaie is the next name to be added to the growing list of people that are getting busted for fraud. He and his wife Sousan Anghaie have been arrested on charges of money laundering and defrauding NASA, to the tune of about $3.4 million. Samim Anghaie and his wife were both (generously) paid to develop uranium technologies for NASA, and instead of doing so they both went on an epic-shopping spree. What little research and testing was done by family members in their employ, didn't receive any payment for it. Both are respected members of their communities, highly educated and authorities in their field, which is a strange turn for someone like Samim Anghaie.

Why are we diddling around with 'Apollo' style technology?

Burt Rutan has the right idea.  What we need is a 'micro-shuttle'.  Built durable, re-usable, relatively cheap, and easy to maintain.  I picture something that carries up to four men, and/or a modest payload.  Shaped like the current shuttles, only much smaller with a better wing to weight ratio.  Also, a tough ceramo-plastic heat proof underbelly rather than those fragile tiles.

A heavy lift aircraft lifts the shuttle high and fast, then top of the wing solid boosters carry it most of the way to the I.S.S.

Get the price of a mission under $5 Million, and then charge the space tourists $10 Million and turn a flipping profit on it.

MadPoet.