More food for thought from NASA veteran, Homer Hickam

[Admin]

http://www.homerhickam.com/cgi-bin/blog.cgi

Enjoy and send feedback.

/Admin

[Admin]

Is X-37B an option to the Space Shuttle as Homer suggests?

/Admin

[desktopsimmer]

There was to be an orbital test version on a shuttle mission, X-37B_OTV-1, but sadly Columbia happened and the mission was scrubbed

Interesting reading on the wikipedia page, The hightlighed bit is interesting:

The first flight of the X-37B is slated for 20 April 2010 on an Atlas V rocket from SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.[8] The spacecraft will be placed into low Earth orbit for testing, then it will be de-orbited for landing. The landing is to occur on a runway at Vandenberg Air Force Base with Edwards Air Force Base as the alternate site. The duration of the mission hasn't been announced, although an Air Force spokesperson has said the vehicle has a requirement to be on-orbit for up to 270 days.

[Moonwalker]

For rational reasons NASA can not and won't continue to exist the way it did in the past. An expensive and old structured governmental job keeping program won't bring humans anywhere beyond LEO again without pumping uselessly billions of dollars into it. NASA really has to be restructured and Bolden now has the hard job to tell people they are indeed no longer needed.

It is understandable that people become nervous whenever jobs are being canceled. They come up with tons of ideas and alternatives. But the first thing is to do changes at first. If the government does not take those steps now, NASA will be lost in terms of manned exploration. The Bush administration Constellation path already has contributed a huge damage to NASA. Something like the X-37B or a two-stage-to-orbit crewed aerospacecraft would be just another dead-end horse that does not take humans anywhere beyond LEO. However, it might be an option to the Shuttle if NASA would get the goal to just stay in LEO right into the second half of this century.

With due respect, but Homer Hickam sounds like those people get their toys taken away.

[Admin]

And, with all due respect, others may sound like "NASA is dead whatever it takes" and still sound equally reasonable This means that it is irrelevant what HH "sounds" like to a specific person, because to others he may sound totally different - this is a matter of subjective opinion. HH has not been "playing with his toys" for years. Now he is just as content with writing about them and their history. He will have plenty to write about even if NASA and the US Space Program are killed - AMOF maybe he'll have a lot more to write and earn more $ in that case. So the "toys" remark is not fair and I suspect, was placed to ridiculize HH and irrelevantly re-inforce the argument against his position.  This doesn't sound like a lot of "due respect" to me.

Considering that HH has no job to lose (he is a retired NASA employee), can see $ whatever happens to NASA, and given his long and relevant period with NASA, I for one, tend to listen to what he has to say, form an opinion, but never ridiculize, even if I happen to disagree with him.

/Admin     

There will alway be people arguing for and against NASA as an organization, for and against NASA's space program, each one having his own personal, political, commercial, ideological and also irrelevant reasons.

Fact is that regardless of any speculation, Senate and Congress (i.e. "the People") will decide in this case.   

[Moonwalker]

I'm not arguing against NASA and I don't think NASA is dead whatever it takes. I just mention the matter of fact that NASAs current manned project structure is not sustainable. The required changes to do new steps past STS requires a reduced number of employees and some other significant changes. That's sadly not my subjective opinion. The Augustine Commission, its conclusions and the Constellation deadlock is stone cold reality the NASA management and US government has to rationally deal with.