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On Orbit => Real NASA Space Shuttle Missions => Topic started by: Admin on July 16, 2010, 09:41:55 PM
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Senate approved a new STS flight, and revives parts of the Constellation program!
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-07/senate-committee-unanimously-authorizes-one-more-shuttle-flight-more-ambitious-space-goals
/Admin
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A very good news!
I'm very happy to see that STS 135 will eventually fly, and of course that NASA will have again a spacecraft and the glorious day started with mercury are not ended yet.
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:)
Richard R
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Hooray for the extra shuttle flight. We will see about the rest. As we found with Ares, even after they have begun test flying doesn't mean the program is safe. Lets hope for the best. :)
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!!!!!!!!!!
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:D 8) :D
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It doesn't mean that STS-135 will actually happen. It still has to get full Senate approval, and I presume House approval too.
What a Congressional Committee approves and what actually happens is not always one and the same.
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It doesn't mean that STS-135 will actually happen. It still has to get full Senate approval, and I presume House approval too.
What a Congressional Committee approves and what actually happens is not always one and the same.
This is absoutly true. Alot of people want this though. I suspect the HLV will be a much harder sell. This is an election year and Congress needs to give out "free" stuff. We will see what happens with funding.
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There is not a single reason yet to be happy. One more STS mission, potentially, and the heavy lift vehicle, still potentially. There is a bunch of valid reasons to be deeply concerned about the future of the US manned space flight program for this decade, and likely deep into the next decade as well.
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Yes, but this is at least a step forward. Stop the pessimism please =p
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Yes, but this is at least a step forward. Stop the pessimism please =p
Usually I'm a big optimist ;)
But in this case there is not a lot to be optimistic about. The future of NASA's manned program is anything but certain yet (or in other words: there is none at all at the moment). Especially now that we have seen how they messed up with Constellation for years, and how they're messing up any further proposals. Politicians have learned exactly nothing since the end of Apollo and the pre-STS era. We need less dependant commercial space industries rather than space agencies as never before. Otherwise the future of manned exploration beyond low earth orbit looks like the past 38 years: pretty dark and quiet.
A state never is a good businessman. As long as manned space flight will remain a miserable puppet of politicians and their agendas, there is no reason to feel happy especially these days. Those programs wax and wane in conjunction with their political agendas. Whenever people hear that truth, they like to use the the big word "but": but without the government we wouldn't have seen Gagarin, Glenn, Armstrong etc. doing what they did. No. It was the Cold War which was the only key event that opened the doors for the age of manned space flight. Politicians never were seriously interested in manned space flight and the corresponding sciences. Less than ever Obama. What he does just is what everybody previously did as well: political run-of-the-mill lip service. And the congress and senate is even worse. They don't understand space flight and how to do things right at all. The criticism already is as big as it was on Constellation for years (also in direction of the NASA leadership)...
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Yes, but this is at least a step forward. Stop the pessimism please =p
Usually I'm a big optimist ;)
But in this case there is not a lot to be optimistic about. The future of NASA's manned program is anything but certain yet (or in other words: there is none at all at the moment). Especially now that we have seen how they messed up with Constellation for years, and how they're messing up any further proposals. Politicians have learned exactly nothing since the end of Apollo and the pre-STS era. We need less dependant commercial space industries rather than space agencies as never before. Otherwise the future of manned exploration beyond low earth orbit looks like the past 38 years: pretty dark and quiet.
A state never is a good businessman. As long as manned space flight will remain a miserable puppet of politicians and their agendas, there is no reason to feel happy especially these days. Those programs wax and wane in conjunction with their political agendas. Whenever people hear that truth, they like to use the the big word "but": but without the government we wouldn't have seen Gagarin, Glenn, Armstrong etc. doing what they did. No. It was the Cold War which was the only key event that opened the doors for the age of manned space flight. Politicians never were seriously interested in manned space flight and the corresponding sciences. Less than ever Obama. What he does just is what everybody previously did as well: political run-of-the-mill lip service. And the congress and senate is even worse. They don't understand space flight and how to do things right at all. The criticism already is as big as it was on Constellation for years (also in direction of the NASA leadership)...
Real space exploration, and especially manned space exploration will never be performed by commercial companies: they don't have the resources and their board of directors and stockholders will never agree to an ROI of 30 years or more. There is no short-time profit in space exploration so I don't expect any sane "businessman" to "go boldly where no man has been before".
That will not happen.
Ever.
/Admin
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Real space exploration, and especially manned space exploration will never be performed by commercial companies: they don't have the resources and their board of directors and stockholders will never agree to an ROI of 30 years or more. There is no short-time profit in space exploration so I don't expect any sane "businessman" to "go boldly where no man has been before".
That will not happen.
Ever.
/Admin
And Columbus and not even Lindbergh would have expecetd that these days you can get a ticket and fly from Europe to the USA in just 6-10 hours, whether you want to arrive on the US east coast or west coast, with a 200+ tons flying machine.
A lot of People also thought that launching rockets will never happen commercially. Today 50% of all Russian launches are commercial launches already. 30% of all European launches are commerical (whilst Arianespace gets more than a billion Euros revenue each year). But only 6% of US launches are commercially which depends on the narrow minds in Washington, once more proved by the senate.
A lot of people still think that launching rockets and men into space is something that can be only done by bloated bureaucracies (I thought this as well but it's off the track and really has no wide future). Space flight always has been performed by commercial companies in the US. Without them we would have seen no Boeing 707, no lunar landar, no SaturnV, no Space Shuttle etc. (and NASA just would have been a small office block in Washington). Those companies are basically involved in military and commercial aviation technologies. For space flight they just get paid by the state. But they do have actually much more effecient resources than NASA. Just take a look at Boeing. They're capable to build a 747 within only ~90 days, several of them in parallel. Without those companies we wouldn't have seen anything in the stratosphere and in space since the 1950's.
SpaceX is the first company that fully developed and launched rockets privately and so silenced a lot of sceptics. They've already got the biggest commercial contract in space flight history and their goal is to perform manned space flight. Other companies will emerge in the wirde future. It's the beginning of what a lof of serious space people call for since the 1970's already. The way things still work these days NASA has no glorious future anymore. Things already have started to become bad, and it's only the beginning. The senate isn't doing anything good to NASA (but only to jobs).
http://www.commercialspaceflight.org/?p=1277
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight
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SpaceX is the first company that fully developed and launched rockets privately and so silenced a lot of sceptics.
They did so primarily with funding from the government(NASA). $349M out of $500M spent so far according to Musk. Columbus was also funded by the government.
http://www.spacenews.com/venture_space/100611-spacex-drop-dragon-flight.html
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Moonwalker,
Columbus did it with the sponsorship of the Spanish Crown - not really pocket money, and they were after shorter routes to the spice of India, and later, his following "discoverers" after the New World's Slaves and Gold. Discovery and exploration was an side-effect of conquest, genocide and exploitation.
As for Lindbergh? That's not exploration - it's maxxing out existing transportation! Or maybe exploring how far human arrogance can go (in this specific case). And the ROI was immediate - instant glory and recognition - same as with those who follow his steps, and went for similar records and such.
Anyway, please don't confuse attempts to Guiness records with true exploration.
I am happy that there are more people know the difference between transportation and exploration than those who don't.
I for one, am not putting my money on any exo-planetary exploration done by SpaceX - not after listening to the latest SpaceX lecture (by their CEO) about their BUSINESS plan: transportation and satellite launch. IF they will do any kind of vehicles rated for true, planetary manned space exploration, it will be only with heavy governmental funding, but for that, the government (NASA) must have a manned space exploration in the first place.
Don't want to believe it? Ask SpaceX!
/Admin
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Vostok, Mercury, Gemini and Apollo was "true exploration". Those programs did test, try and enable things humans had never done before. But today, what the Space Shuttle does for example (and Soyuz as well) isn't "true exploration" anymore in the first place. STS basically is a transportation system that was meant to be commercially sucessful and self-profitable, which was the only reasoning that enabled its funding. But NASA's structure still does not enable an efficient program yet. Constellation was another example of a big epic fail. It's not because "it is always expensive". It is because of the way NASA gets and distributes money and how the whole thing works (it's a big national job keeping program and a big bureaucracy).
Commercial space flight does not mean that people directly pay companies. It means a different way of distributing the money. Of course SpaceX gets money from NASA, i.e. the government. But the difference is that SpaceX works more efficient with that money. For the development cost of Falcon 9, including Dragon (only ~370 million USD), NASA wouldn't even have managed to clean the floor inside the VAB. Of course it's ironic but we shouldn't forget that Constellation has swallowed 9 billion USD whilst there is not a single piece of an Ares 1 second stage and no Orion (beside mockups). All we've seen is animations and 3d videos. 50 more billion USD would have been required to finish the thing and make it fly whilst it would have been more costly to operate than the Shuttle (with 50% less payload capability). A lot of people still didn't realize that the way NASA works they won't return to space manned anytime soon, at least not by wasting billions whilst it could be done less costly. The world has significantly changed since the early 1970's when the Shuttle program got the go.
Not NASA, but SpaceX got the biggest commercial contract in space flight history with Iridium Communications Inc. (about 500 million USD). And again, 50% of all Russian launches are commercial launches whilst NASA does only about 6% comercial launches. NASA is in a downward spiral. And the senate isn't going to make it any better. NASA needs reforms. Reforms that will hurt a lot of people but it's necessary if NASA wants to keep a reasonable level of funding for manned access to space...
I now that I'm not making a lot of friends when I say this: the big times of big manned space programs are over. There are only two ways: more commercialisation or international partnership.
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895
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Moonwalker, all you're talking is "transportation". While the early stages of anything can in some cases be called indeed "exploration", after a while, they become "routine" and stop being that.
But putting a man on Mars is exploration. In order to do that, we need to learn ways to live on an extra-terrestrial body, and the Moon is a good candidate.
Going to the Moon and living there for 10-15 years is a step which cannot be avoided on the quest for putting man on Mars.
THAT is exploration!
Nobody claimed that STS is exploration so it's a waste of time arguing about this. It's also a waste of time arguing about the semantics of transportation vs. exploration, although it seems that you're freely swapping the two to match the argument.
For this purpose, here is the definition of exploration as it appears in www.dictionary.net:
"The act of exploring, penetrating, or ranging over for purposes of discovery, especially of geographical discovery; examination; as, the exploration of unknown countries"
So forget SpaceX doing any exploration for the time being.
SpaceX may know how to build LEO platforms, but none of them has been certified for manned LEO yet. That puts it right with Vostok and Gemini, but definitely not with Apollo or with what is necessary for reaching the Moon or Mars.
Oh, and one last thing: manned space exploration does not mean only "building the transportation to get there". It also means training the crew, building and maintaing the right logistics, planning, etc. etc. It means having the right multi-disciplinary staff and the right multi-disciplinary experience Even if SpaceX knew how to do that (which it doesn't), it definitely doesn't have the resources for that.
So whether you like it or not, NASA is the only body which has the means and potential to do true manned space exploration. Now what it needs is somebody to put it back on its original track and exploration goals, clean of irrelevant politics (become the State Department with its "Muslim world outreach"), irrelevant goals (becoming NOAA with its "hurricane research" program), and of irrelevant politicians (too many to name here).
/Admin
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NASA is the only body which has the means and potential to do true manned space exploration.
Theoretically NASA can do almost everything if you just put enough money into it. But practically NASA suffers from structural issues and bad management. Below 100 billion USD NASA wouldn't even be able to perform a sustainable Moon program (it just includes a few footprints but no Moon base). And these days nobody wants to pay that money anmore, which is quite understandable. With 50 billion USD they would have build nothing more than a significantly reduced Ares 1 with a significantly reduced Orion on top of it. It did not include any Moon hardware and not any ISS support missions and operating costs. It's just the pure development costs. And this is the problem. Now they're talking about a heavy launcher. But you can mark my words: NASA won't, in it's current state, build and operate any manned heavy launcher, less than ever fly to Moon or Mars.
Yes, NASA is capable to do everything from the technical and logistical point of view. But you won't find any sponsor, not even congress, who puts hundreds of billions into such a bureaucracy to fly to the Moon again to just produce new footprints. Without reforms and/or without international partnership, NASA is grounded. If at all they might be stuck in LEO sometime late 2010's or 2020's. People have to get rid of the old misbelief that exploration can only be done by a big governmental body. If you free up NASA's rescources and make it available and open for industries, things can be done not only quicker but also less expensive. Of course it also requires tax money. But it's a different way of distribution.
Without reforms or without partnership, Europe and Russia will remain in space alone in future. The decision maker in the US, like a lot of people, still suffer from the old illusion that manned space exploration is something only for governments. But times have changed. As we see things happen, NASA won't fly to anywhere within this decade. Not even into LEO...
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Well, I forgot to mention that not all decision maker in the US suffer from the illusion that manned space exploration is something only for agencies. Luckily there are wise people in Washington who call for commercial crew support. Let's hope they'll pass it otherwise NASA once again will have lots of bad days in future.
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As any organization, especially gov ones, NASA needs to be streamlined and focused. That's what I'm saying too. But this needs to be done in a responsible manner.
As for NASA involving commercial companies in space exploration, that's a hardly new thing. I am not aware of any single major program not relying on commercial outsourcing at a certain degree.
Regarding cooperation with other agencies: NASA's been there too, quite substantially so no news here.
NASA must however LEAD and MANAGE the program on the US side. It cannot be restructured and streamlined into self-destruction and irrelevancy. That's exactly what the current administration has been expecting it to do ever since it came to the White House.
/Admin
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As any organization, especially gov ones, NASA needs to be streamlined and focused. That's what I'm saying too. But this needs to be done in a responsible manner.
Absolutely. But this is not going to happen ever since the announcement of Constellation. And it is not going to happen by the latest plans as well. Even less as it would have been the case with Constellation. To quote former NASA administrator Mike Griffin from August 6: "We’re not going anywhere and we’re going to spend a lot of money doing it."
We really should enjoy the last Space Shuttle missions, as it will be the last manned US flights until we all will be much older when we might witness a new reasonable and payable program. I'm so glad we have SSM2007 and hopefully SSM2010 soon ;D It will be the only manned US stuff lifting off within this decade once the Shuttle has been retired, well at least on our screens...
NASA is in a downward spiral. And it is not going to be any better by the current plans.
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As any organization, especially gov ones, NASA needs to be streamlined and focused. That's what I'm saying too. But this needs to be done in a responsible manner.
Absolutely. But this is not going to happen ever since the announcement of Constellation. And it is not going to happen by the latest plans as well. Even less as it would have been the case with Constellation. To quote former NASA administrator Mike Griffin from August 6: "We’re not going anywhere and we’re going to spend a lot of money doing it."
Enjoy the last Space Shuttle missions, as it will be the last manned US flights until we all will be much older when we might witness a new reasonable and payable program. I'm so glad we have SSM2007 and hopefully SSM2010 soon ;D It will be the only manned US stuff lifting off within this decade once the Shuttle has been retired, well at least on our screens...
NASA is in a downward spiral. And it is not going to be any better by the current plans.
I don't want to speculate what it is going to happen to NASA. Life is full of surprises and disappointments. We can only somehow "control" the future of SSM ;)
Oh, BTW, STS-135 is a reality <g> so the last Shuttle flight is on June 2011 (if it's not postponed like STS-133and STS-134)
/Admin
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Admin, that has not been passed by the house or the president. Only the senate. It is becoming more likely but not a guarantee yet
For what it's worth, the Senate approved their version of the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2010 last night, which includes approval of STS-135. This is a good step forward but we still need the House and Obama, the latter of which I fear will be very difficult.
-nathan.moeller on NSF STS-135 thread
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Admin, that has not been passed by the house or the president. Only the senate. It is becoming more likely but not a guarantee yet
For what it's worth, the Senate approved their version of the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2010 last night, which includes approval of STS-135. This is a good step forward but we still need the House and Obama, the latter of which I fear will be very difficult.
-nathan.moeller on NSF STS-135 thread
Did you forget when I "hinted" that Constellation was dead before it went official? Now fast-forward to today ;)
/Admin
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Admin, that has not been passed by the house or the president. Only the senate. It is becoming more likely but not a guarantee yet
For what it's worth, the Senate approved their version of the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2010 last night, which includes approval of STS-135. This is a good step forward but we still need the House and Obama, the latter of which I fear will be very difficult.
-nathan.moeller on NSF STS-135 thread
Haha yeah but this is something that hasn't happened yet so even an insider couldn't know...
Did you forget when I "hinted" that Constellation was dead before it went official? Now fast-forward to today ;)
/Admin
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Admin, that has not been passed by the house or the president. Only the senate. It is becoming more likely but not a guarantee yet
For what it's worth, the Senate approved their version of the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2010 last night, which includes approval of STS-135. This is a good step forward but we still need the House and Obama, the latter of which I fear will be very difficult.
-nathan.moeller on NSF STS-135 thread
Haha yeah but this is something that hasn't happened yet so even an insider couldn't know...
Did you forget when I "hinted" that Constellation was dead before it went official? Now fast-forward to today ;)
/Admin
There is a difference between "hasn't happened yet" and "hasn't been announced yet" ;)
/Admin
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:)
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Okay, now the next step is to get Congress to approve STS-136 through 138 using leftover lightweight ET's to fly minimum payload weight missions to station through 2012, until new super lightweight ET's can start rolling off the production line again by 2013 to support STS-139 and future flights.
I can dream, can't I?
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NASASpaceflight is writing an article, a known Houston Flight controller is dancing happily... and NASA Spaceflight had this to say:
"STS-135 becomes "Real Planned Mission to the ISS June 28, 2011" - memos arriving, will write article asap."
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It's great to see the Shuttle perform a few more missions. But we shouldn't forget that the Shuttle will be retired definitely, and by extending the Shuttle program, the serious trouble NASA has to cope with won't be fixed at all. As much as I love the Shuttle, I see no reason to dance, sadly. NASA remains to be in deep s**t...
But all my hope now goes to SSM2010 ;D
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Its good news about STS-135 but all good things must end, I would give my right arm to keep her flying but cannot see that happen. I will be able to tell my grandkids in 40 or 50 year about the time humans learned to use fire to make rockets and then live in space for months/years at a time. By then we will have used up most of the oil/gas and we will all be back living in caves all because somewhere along the way we forgot how to imagine what could be.
I dont normaly post links but this song fits very well into this post
" Fire in the Sky"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ryd_p20XEU&feature=player_embedded
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Its good news about STS-135 but all good things must end, I would give my right arm to keep her flying but cannot see that happen.
A lot of people would give arms and legs, but just without to realize the real problems inside NASA.
I will be able to tell my grandkids in 40 or 50 year about the time humans learned to use fire to make rockets and then live in space for months/years at a time. By then we will have used up most of the oil/gas and we will all be back living in caves all because somewhere along the way we forgot how to imagine what could be.
It's unlikely that there won't be oil anymore until the 2050's. Promises that the oil reserves are comming to an end "soon" are being made for 100 years already. In 1919 they estimated that the oil reserves will come to an end in the 1930's. In 1948 they said that the oil reserves will come to an end in the 1960's. Since then they always predict ~35 years. It's partly a market mechanism and partly based on environmentalism. Scaring people can be useful for making more money. It works well and it's not only related to oil reserves. It's also about more natural disasters and an upcoming climate catastrophe (all caused by New Zealand cow farting), more crime, more war, propagating global epidemics by verbally turning influenzaviruses into something like deadly killer viruses etc... (and even this is not a new mechanism of the pharma industries http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASibLqwVbsk, and as for catastrophic climate change prophecies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvsAIyUAGyY).
The future always is going to become worse, never good. It seems that this is natural human thinking (and business as well as media induced thinking anyway). In fact, the world does not become worse at all. The worst things we already got over (inquisition, oppression, education only for aristocrats, WWI, WWII, the cold war, etc.). And it's also a misconception that humans never learn and that history repeats itself. People who always say so actually have no clue of history, i.e. human progress.
As for the oil again: "We have grossly underestimated mankind’s ability to find new reserves of petroleum, as well as our capacity to raise recovery rates and tap fields once thought inaccessible or impossible to produce". Abdallah Dschum, CEO of Aramco (the biggest petroleum drilling company). He is convinced that we have lifted less than 10% of the oil for now. But anyway, by the time when the oil is going to come to an end, which won't happen within any foreseeable timeframe, we will be able to cope with. The world is not going to end suddenly only because we can't use oil anymore ;)
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The problem is that we have enough oil to run out of breathable air and clean water until 2050! :-\
/Admin