Working in outerspace to benefit planet Earth
Constellation Passes Design Review
Yesterday’s New York Times article on the space summit/budget is worth citing again for this very critical section: “Even as the administration called Constellation “fundamentally un-executable” on Sunday in announcing the meeting, the program passed a two-day preliminary design review last week.
In an e-mail message to people working on Constellation, Lauri N. Hansen, the lead for systems engineering and integration, wrote, “The final results showed that we have a sound design.”
Although there was no press release, the PDR is a significant milestone for the Constellation program. From NASA’s webpage: NASA Completes Constellation Preliminary Design Review.
NASA has successfully completed the preliminary design review for the Constellation Program’s plan to carry crew and small cargo payloads to the International Space Station.
Conducted at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the review examined the current designs for the Ares I launch vehicle and the Orion crew exploration vehicle and assessed where the program stands on its planned technical approach to meet requirements for a fully integrated mission to the space station.
A preliminary design review is one of a series of reviews performed before NASA builds flight hardware. The review process serves as a “gate” between development stages of a system and progresses to more detailed parts of the vehicle design, assessed to ensure the overall system will meet all NASA requirements for safe and reliable flight.This type of review process identifies technical and management challenges and addresses ways to reduce potential risks as a project goes forward.
With the completion of this review, the Constellation Program will spend the next several months completing preliminary design reviews for its spacesuits, mission operations and ground operations and beginning detailed designs for future missions.
In an e-mail message to people working on Constellation, Lauri N. Hansen, the lead for systems engineering and integration, wrote, “The final results showed that we have a sound design.”
Although there was no press release, the PDR is a significant milestone for the Constellation program. From NASA’s webpage: NASA Completes Constellation Preliminary Design Review.
NASA has successfully completed the preliminary design review for the Constellation Program’s plan to carry crew and small cargo payloads to the International Space Station.
Conducted at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the review examined the current designs for the Ares I launch vehicle and the Orion crew exploration vehicle and assessed where the program stands on its planned technical approach to meet requirements for a fully integrated mission to the space station.
A preliminary design review is one of a series of reviews performed before NASA builds flight hardware. The review process serves as a “gate” between development stages of a system and progresses to more detailed parts of the vehicle design, assessed to ensure the overall system will meet all NASA requirements for safe and reliable flight.This type of review process identifies technical and management challenges and addresses ways to reduce potential risks as a project goes forward.
With the completion of this review, the Constellation Program will spend the next several months completing preliminary design reviews for its spacesuits, mission operations and ground operations and beginning detailed designs for future missions.
You're Making a Mistake: Here's Why
When I was a child, once a year my elementary school would bring in this enormous inflatable dome made for viewing projections of the stars and constellations. It would be set up in the library and just walking by it would give me goosebumps. When it was finally my class’ turn to visit this blow-up universe, I was the first in line. Imagine 40 some second graders lying on their backs on a library floor. Of course there was a great deal of giggling, squirming, and general disinterest—but not for me. I would lie there year after year, in tune with it all and taking it in as though I was truly sailing through outer space. I guess you could say I caught the bug. However, my story seems to be a rarity in the 21st Century.
They say Americans are no longer excited about space. They say after the Apollo missions, the public shut off their black and white televisions and never turned them on again to see it all in full color. In recent years NASA's failures have been the only public focus on their endless efforts and milestones—until now.
The Constellation program is shocking the ever-latent pulse of a NASA out of touch with the American public since the moon landing. This program holds the potential to reel in your next door neighbor, the worker at the corner market and even your uncle who always laments over government spending. Constellation will tempt people to once again take the time to look up at a pristine night sky and marvel at the possibilities. Americans lost this precious curiosity somewhere along the way and this is our chance to get it back.
As we in the space community are well aware, recent budget cuts have completely ended the Constellation's efforts and sent thousands of people with years of time and effort invested in this program reeling. This change was, in large part, the result of an effort put forth by a group dissidents preaching against Constellation itself. This group contends that going back to the moon is a waste of time and funding and instead suggest that NASA focus on going directly to Mars. If this shall be the rationale, we must stop and examine all the facts instead of entertaining whimsical notions.
First, an American has not stepped foot on a celestial body since 1972. That’s right, we have no more first-hand knowledge than we did at the close of the Apollo program. It is being suggested by this new regime that we send out brave American lives to one of the harshest environments imaginable armed with no more colonization experience than that of Buzz Aldrin. At the risk of throwing out painfully fitting clichés—how can we expect them to run when all we know how to do is crawl while blindfolded?
That being said, there’s the perhaps more prominent issue of funding. NASA has a very specific architecture guiding them through the adventures that Orion and Ares are destined to yield. Attempting to completely revamp it now would mean an incomprehensible monetary loss. Breaking contracts with government contractors is not cheap and is sure to rack up a pretty penny in lost revenue comparable to the program's cost in the first place.
Aside from this conveniently overlooked fact, the loss of time and most definitely employment on the part of thousands of hard working blue collar and white color Americans who have spent years on these projects is an inevitably unfortunate fate.
Constellation is the Apollo of our day; not in man’s return to the moon but rather the birth of a new United States space program in the eyes of all mankind. Ares and Orion have the potential to breathe new life into scientific discovery itself. We don’t want, at this crucial moment, to set ourselves up to fail when the world so desperately needs us to succeed.
From black and white to high definition, the days of families crowded around their televisions watching man explore new worlds are indeed upon us once again. I cannot be any more clear on this next point: this is truly a gift. It is of the utmost importance, in this day as no other, that we not gamble with this good faith by foolishly abandoning all reasonable logic. Throwing away Constellation doesn’t just affect us anymore. It puts at risk the dreams of generations to come—the dreams that all wide-eyed elementary students have come to rely on as they lose themselves in a ceiling blanketed with Constellation dreams.
-Alexandra Rolwes
They say Americans are no longer excited about space. They say after the Apollo missions, the public shut off their black and white televisions and never turned them on again to see it all in full color. In recent years NASA's failures have been the only public focus on their endless efforts and milestones—until now.
The Constellation program is shocking the ever-latent pulse of a NASA out of touch with the American public since the moon landing. This program holds the potential to reel in your next door neighbor, the worker at the corner market and even your uncle who always laments over government spending. Constellation will tempt people to once again take the time to look up at a pristine night sky and marvel at the possibilities. Americans lost this precious curiosity somewhere along the way and this is our chance to get it back.
As we in the space community are well aware, recent budget cuts have completely ended the Constellation's efforts and sent thousands of people with years of time and effort invested in this program reeling. This change was, in large part, the result of an effort put forth by a group dissidents preaching against Constellation itself. This group contends that going back to the moon is a waste of time and funding and instead suggest that NASA focus on going directly to Mars. If this shall be the rationale, we must stop and examine all the facts instead of entertaining whimsical notions.
First, an American has not stepped foot on a celestial body since 1972. That’s right, we have no more first-hand knowledge than we did at the close of the Apollo program. It is being suggested by this new regime that we send out brave American lives to one of the harshest environments imaginable armed with no more colonization experience than that of Buzz Aldrin. At the risk of throwing out painfully fitting clichés—how can we expect them to run when all we know how to do is crawl while blindfolded?
That being said, there’s the perhaps more prominent issue of funding. NASA has a very specific architecture guiding them through the adventures that Orion and Ares are destined to yield. Attempting to completely revamp it now would mean an incomprehensible monetary loss. Breaking contracts with government contractors is not cheap and is sure to rack up a pretty penny in lost revenue comparable to the program's cost in the first place.
Aside from this conveniently overlooked fact, the loss of time and most definitely employment on the part of thousands of hard working blue collar and white color Americans who have spent years on these projects is an inevitably unfortunate fate.
Constellation is the Apollo of our day; not in man’s return to the moon but rather the birth of a new United States space program in the eyes of all mankind. Ares and Orion have the potential to breathe new life into scientific discovery itself. We don’t want, at this crucial moment, to set ourselves up to fail when the world so desperately needs us to succeed.
From black and white to high definition, the days of families crowded around their televisions watching man explore new worlds are indeed upon us once again. I cannot be any more clear on this next point: this is truly a gift. It is of the utmost importance, in this day as no other, that we not gamble with this good faith by foolishly abandoning all reasonable logic. Throwing away Constellation doesn’t just affect us anymore. It puts at risk the dreams of generations to come—the dreams that all wide-eyed elementary students have come to rely on as they lose themselves in a ceiling blanketed with Constellation dreams.
-Alexandra Rolwes
A Letter from the Real Space Cowboys
February 15, 2010
Dear Mr. & Mrs. America:
There has never been, and likely never will be, another government program that expedites technological innovation so much as the U.S. space program. There is not another program that has so successfully rallied a nation, inspired youngsters toward academic achievement or established the U.S. as the world leader in technology.
The manned space program has, in particular, been a source of our nation’s strength and character. But an Achilles heel in the form of our country’s executive branch threatens a mortal wound. Under the Obama 2011 budget, the U.S. will no longer ferry humans into space— no moon, no Mars. The source of much of America’s inspiration and spirit, the impetus for so much discovery, technology and imagination, is in jeopardy. The demise of America’s space program is just another step in the dismantling of our nation.
Where's the vision put so eloquently in 1962 when President Kennedy said," serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills." President Kennedy delivered a vision to the American public that demanded courage, imagination and follow-through. The long-term focus has always been to progressively conquer new frontiers. Certainly, that focus has been shared by both government and private enterprise but to withdraw government from manned space flight will surely obliterate those far-reaching frontiers and precipitously lower our nation’s preeminence in technology.
We are the only country to ever conquer the high ground, the moon. And now we are to give that up to the Russians and Chinese who are committed to having a permanent presence there? The national security implications are starkly real. From the high ground, foreign governments will have greater access to monitor U.S. technology assets in Earth orbit. Whoever controls the high ground becomes the world’s leader in technology.
We ask you to join those members of Congress who have the fortitude and courage to embrace the vision that has become part of our nation’s signature and who are advocates of returning to the moon and maintaining America’s leadership role in the exploration of space.
Respectfully,
Mercury, Gemini and Apollo Astronauts
Scott Carpenter
Gene Cernan
Charlie Duke
The Real Space Cowboys
Creator Ed Buckbee
Dear Mr. & Mrs. America:
There has never been, and likely never will be, another government program that expedites technological innovation so much as the U.S. space program. There is not another program that has so successfully rallied a nation, inspired youngsters toward academic achievement or established the U.S. as the world leader in technology.
The manned space program has, in particular, been a source of our nation’s strength and character. But an Achilles heel in the form of our country’s executive branch threatens a mortal wound. Under the Obama 2011 budget, the U.S. will no longer ferry humans into space— no moon, no Mars. The source of much of America’s inspiration and spirit, the impetus for so much discovery, technology and imagination, is in jeopardy. The demise of America’s space program is just another step in the dismantling of our nation.
Where's the vision put so eloquently in 1962 when President Kennedy said," serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills." President Kennedy delivered a vision to the American public that demanded courage, imagination and follow-through. The long-term focus has always been to progressively conquer new frontiers. Certainly, that focus has been shared by both government and private enterprise but to withdraw government from manned space flight will surely obliterate those far-reaching frontiers and precipitously lower our nation’s preeminence in technology.
We are the only country to ever conquer the high ground, the moon. And now we are to give that up to the Russians and Chinese who are committed to having a permanent presence there? The national security implications are starkly real. From the high ground, foreign governments will have greater access to monitor U.S. technology assets in Earth orbit. Whoever controls the high ground becomes the world’s leader in technology.
We ask you to join those members of Congress who have the fortitude and courage to embrace the vision that has become part of our nation’s signature and who are advocates of returning to the moon and maintaining America’s leadership role in the exploration of space.
Respectfully,
Mercury, Gemini and Apollo Astronauts
Scott Carpenter
Gene Cernan
Charlie Duke
The Real Space Cowboys
Creator Ed Buckbee
Closing the New Frontier
By Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON -- "We have an agreement until 2012 that Russia will be responsible for this," says Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency, about ferrying astronauts from other countries into low-Earth orbit. "But after that? Excuse me, but the prices should be absolutely different then!"
The Russians may be new at capitalism but they know how it works. When you have a monopoly, you charge monopoly prices. Within months, Russia will have a monopoly on rides into space.
By the end of this year, there will be no shuttle, no U.S. manned space program, no way for us to get into space. We're not talking about Mars or the moon here. We're talking about low-Earth orbit, which the U.S. has dominated for nearly half a century and from which it is now retiring with nary a whimper.
Our absence from low-Earth orbit was meant to last a few years, the interval between the retirement of the fatally fragile space shuttle and its replacement with the Constellation program (Ares booster, Orion capsule, Altair lunar lander) to take astronauts more cheaply and safely back to space.
But the Obama 2011 budget kills Constellation. Instead, we shall have nothing. For the first time since John Glenn flew in 1962, the U.S. will have no access of its own for humans into space -- and no prospect of getting there in the foreseeable future.
Of course, the administration presents the abdication as a great leap forward: Launching humans will now be turned over to the private sector, while NASA's efforts will be directed toward landing on Mars.
This is nonsense. It would be swell for private companies to take over launching astronauts. But they cannot do it. It's too expensive. It's too experimental. And the safety standards for actually getting people up and down reliably are just unreachably high.
Sure, decades from now there will be a robust private space-travel industry. But that is a long time. In the interim, space will be owned by Russia and then China. The president waxes seriously nationalist at the thought of China or India surpassing us in speculative "clean energy." Yet he is quite prepared to gratuitously give up our spectacular lead in human space exploration.
As for Mars, more nonsense. Mars is just too far away. And how do you get there without the stepping stones of Ares and Orion? If we can't afford an Ares rocket to get us into orbit and to the moon, how long will it take to develop a revolutionary new propulsion system that will take us not a quarter-million miles but 35 million miles?
To say nothing of the effects of long-term weightlessness, of long-term cosmic ray exposure, and of the intolerable risk to astronaut safety involved in any Mars trip -- six months of contingencies versus three days for a moon trip.
Of course, the whole Mars project as substitute for the moon is simply a ruse. It's like the classic bait-and-switch for high-tech military spending: Kill the doable in the name of some distant sophisticated alternative, which either never gets developed or is simply killed later in the name of yet another, even more sophisticated alternative of the further future. A classic example is the B-1 bomber, which was canceled in the 1970s in favor of the over-the-horizon B-2 stealth bomber, which was then killed in the 1990s after a production run of only 21 (instead of 132) in the name of post-Cold War obsolescence.
Moreover, there is the question of seriousness. When John F. Kennedy pledged to go to the moon, he meant it. He had an intense personal commitment to the enterprise. He delivered speeches remembered to this day. He dedicated astronomical sums to make it happen.
At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA was consuming almost 4 percent of the federal budget, which in terms of the 2011 budget is about $150 billion. Today the manned space program will die for want of $3 billion a year -- 1/300th of last year's stimulus package with its endless make-work projects that will leave not a trace on the national consciousness.
As for President Obama's commitment to beyond-lunar space: Has he given a single speech, devoted an iota of political capital to it?
Obama's NASA budget perfectly captures the difference in spirit between Kennedy's liberalism and Obama's. Kennedy's was an expansive, bold, outward-looking summons. Obama's is a constricted inward-looking call to retreat.
Fifty years ago, Kennedy opened the New Frontier. Obama has just shut it.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Copyright 2010, Washington Post Writers Group
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/12/closing_the_new_frontier_100276.html at February 12, 2010 - 04:58:18 PM CST
WASHINGTON -- "We have an agreement until 2012 that Russia will be responsible for this," says Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency, about ferrying astronauts from other countries into low-Earth orbit. "But after that? Excuse me, but the prices should be absolutely different then!"
The Russians may be new at capitalism but they know how it works. When you have a monopoly, you charge monopoly prices. Within months, Russia will have a monopoly on rides into space.
By the end of this year, there will be no shuttle, no U.S. manned space program, no way for us to get into space. We're not talking about Mars or the moon here. We're talking about low-Earth orbit, which the U.S. has dominated for nearly half a century and from which it is now retiring with nary a whimper.
Our absence from low-Earth orbit was meant to last a few years, the interval between the retirement of the fatally fragile space shuttle and its replacement with the Constellation program (Ares booster, Orion capsule, Altair lunar lander) to take astronauts more cheaply and safely back to space.
But the Obama 2011 budget kills Constellation. Instead, we shall have nothing. For the first time since John Glenn flew in 1962, the U.S. will have no access of its own for humans into space -- and no prospect of getting there in the foreseeable future.
Of course, the administration presents the abdication as a great leap forward: Launching humans will now be turned over to the private sector, while NASA's efforts will be directed toward landing on Mars.
This is nonsense. It would be swell for private companies to take over launching astronauts. But they cannot do it. It's too expensive. It's too experimental. And the safety standards for actually getting people up and down reliably are just unreachably high.
Sure, decades from now there will be a robust private space-travel industry. But that is a long time. In the interim, space will be owned by Russia and then China. The president waxes seriously nationalist at the thought of China or India surpassing us in speculative "clean energy." Yet he is quite prepared to gratuitously give up our spectacular lead in human space exploration.
As for Mars, more nonsense. Mars is just too far away. And how do you get there without the stepping stones of Ares and Orion? If we can't afford an Ares rocket to get us into orbit and to the moon, how long will it take to develop a revolutionary new propulsion system that will take us not a quarter-million miles but 35 million miles?
To say nothing of the effects of long-term weightlessness, of long-term cosmic ray exposure, and of the intolerable risk to astronaut safety involved in any Mars trip -- six months of contingencies versus three days for a moon trip.
Of course, the whole Mars project as substitute for the moon is simply a ruse. It's like the classic bait-and-switch for high-tech military spending: Kill the doable in the name of some distant sophisticated alternative, which either never gets developed or is simply killed later in the name of yet another, even more sophisticated alternative of the further future. A classic example is the B-1 bomber, which was canceled in the 1970s in favor of the over-the-horizon B-2 stealth bomber, which was then killed in the 1990s after a production run of only 21 (instead of 132) in the name of post-Cold War obsolescence.
Moreover, there is the question of seriousness. When John F. Kennedy pledged to go to the moon, he meant it. He had an intense personal commitment to the enterprise. He delivered speeches remembered to this day. He dedicated astronomical sums to make it happen.
At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA was consuming almost 4 percent of the federal budget, which in terms of the 2011 budget is about $150 billion. Today the manned space program will die for want of $3 billion a year -- 1/300th of last year's stimulus package with its endless make-work projects that will leave not a trace on the national consciousness.
As for President Obama's commitment to beyond-lunar space: Has he given a single speech, devoted an iota of political capital to it?
Obama's NASA budget perfectly captures the difference in spirit between Kennedy's liberalism and Obama's. Kennedy's was an expansive, bold, outward-looking summons. Obama's is a constricted inward-looking call to retreat.
Fifty years ago, Kennedy opened the New Frontier. Obama has just shut it.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Copyright 2010, Washington Post Writers Group
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/12/closing_the_new_frontier_100276.html at February 12, 2010 - 04:58:18 PM CST
The Case Against Private Space
By TAYLOR DINERMAN – Feb 13, Wall Street Journal
President Barack Obama's proposed plan for NASA bets that the private sector—small, entrepreneurial firms as well as traditional aerospace companies—can safely carry the burden of flying U.S. astronauts into space at a fraction of the former price. The main idea: to spend $6 billion over the next five years to help develop new commercial spacecraft capable of carrying humans.
The private sector simply is not up for the job. For one, NASA will have to establish a system to certify commercial orbital vehicles as safe for human transport, and with government bureaucracy, that will take years. Never mind the challenges of obtaining insurance.
Entrepreneurial companies have consistently overpromised and under-delivered. Over the past 30 years, over a dozen start-ups have tried to break into the launch business. The only one to make the transition into a respectably sized space company is Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va. Building vehicles capable of going into orbit is not for the fainthearted or the undercapitalized.
The companies that have survived have done so mostly by relying on U.S. government Small Business Innovation Research contracts, one or more angel investors, or both. Big aerospace firms tempted to join NASA's new projects will remember the public-private partnership fiasco when Lockheed Martin's X-33 design was chosen to replace the space shuttle in 1996. Before it was canceled in 2001 this program cost the government $912 million and Lockheed Martin $357 million.
Of the smaller failures, there was Rotary Rocket in California, which promised to revolutionize space travel with a combination helicopter and rocket and closed down in 2001. In 1997, Texas banker Andrew Beal announced that his firm, Beal Aerospace, was going to build a new large rocket. He shut it down in 2000.
In the 1990s, Kistler Aerospace designed a reusable launcher using reconditioned Russian engines. In 2006, reorganized as Rocketplane Kistler, it won a share in a NASA program designed to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. When the company did not meet a financial milestone the following year, NASA withdrew financing.
Blue Origin, a secretive spacecraft development firm owned by Amazon.com Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, is interesting because it uses concepts and technology for reusable vehicles originally developed by the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. In the early 1990s, the organization set up the DC-X program, and its suborbital test vehicle flew 12 times before it was destroyed in a landing accident.
The Clinton administration saw the DC-X as a Reagan/Bush legacy program, and was happy to cancel it after the accident. The sad lesson of the DC-X is that some politicians won't keep their predecessors' programs going, no matter how promising. To turn the DC-X into a space launch vehicle would have taken at least a couple of decades and a few billion in investments. Yet the total cost might not have been much more than the amount the government has spent on other failed launch vehicle development programs over the past 20 years.
Recent history shows that development programs take a long time to mature, but when they do they can produce excellent results. Since it was given the go-ahead in 1984, the space station has faced delays, cost overruns and an unceasing barrage of criticism. Yet NASA kept at it. With the full-time six-person crew now operational, the range of technological and scientific work being done has increased dramatically, from fluid physics experiments to tests on the effects of microgravity on human physiology.
George W. Bush's promising Constellation human spaceflight program—which would be killed under Mr. Obama's plan—has already cost $9 billion since 2004. It is hard to imagine how the private sector can build a replacement for the spacecraft and booster rockets of Constellation, let alone a program to get America back to the moon, with the relatively paltry sum of $6 billion and the scattershot funding approach that NASA's leaders are proposing.
The Augustine Commission's recent report to the White House was entitled "Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation." The space entrepreneurs may claim that they can send people into space for a fraction of the previous cost, but they have not yet proved it. NASA's policy is neither bold nor new; it is yet another exercise in budget-driven program cancellation. Until the American government can bring itself to choose a path and stick to it for more than a single administration, its claim to be worthy of a great nation will be in doubt.
—Taylor Dinerman writes a regular column for thespacereview.com and is a member of the board of advisers of Space Energy, a company working on space-solar-power concepts.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059263418508030.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines#printMode
President Barack Obama's proposed plan for NASA bets that the private sector—small, entrepreneurial firms as well as traditional aerospace companies—can safely carry the burden of flying U.S. astronauts into space at a fraction of the former price. The main idea: to spend $6 billion over the next five years to help develop new commercial spacecraft capable of carrying humans.
The private sector simply is not up for the job. For one, NASA will have to establish a system to certify commercial orbital vehicles as safe for human transport, and with government bureaucracy, that will take years. Never mind the challenges of obtaining insurance.
Entrepreneurial companies have consistently overpromised and under-delivered. Over the past 30 years, over a dozen start-ups have tried to break into the launch business. The only one to make the transition into a respectably sized space company is Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va. Building vehicles capable of going into orbit is not for the fainthearted or the undercapitalized.
The companies that have survived have done so mostly by relying on U.S. government Small Business Innovation Research contracts, one or more angel investors, or both. Big aerospace firms tempted to join NASA's new projects will remember the public-private partnership fiasco when Lockheed Martin's X-33 design was chosen to replace the space shuttle in 1996. Before it was canceled in 2001 this program cost the government $912 million and Lockheed Martin $357 million.
Of the smaller failures, there was Rotary Rocket in California, which promised to revolutionize space travel with a combination helicopter and rocket and closed down in 2001. In 1997, Texas banker Andrew Beal announced that his firm, Beal Aerospace, was going to build a new large rocket. He shut it down in 2000.
In the 1990s, Kistler Aerospace designed a reusable launcher using reconditioned Russian engines. In 2006, reorganized as Rocketplane Kistler, it won a share in a NASA program designed to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. When the company did not meet a financial milestone the following year, NASA withdrew financing.
Blue Origin, a secretive spacecraft development firm owned by Amazon.com Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, is interesting because it uses concepts and technology for reusable vehicles originally developed by the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. In the early 1990s, the organization set up the DC-X program, and its suborbital test vehicle flew 12 times before it was destroyed in a landing accident.
The Clinton administration saw the DC-X as a Reagan/Bush legacy program, and was happy to cancel it after the accident. The sad lesson of the DC-X is that some politicians won't keep their predecessors' programs going, no matter how promising. To turn the DC-X into a space launch vehicle would have taken at least a couple of decades and a few billion in investments. Yet the total cost might not have been much more than the amount the government has spent on other failed launch vehicle development programs over the past 20 years.
Recent history shows that development programs take a long time to mature, but when they do they can produce excellent results. Since it was given the go-ahead in 1984, the space station has faced delays, cost overruns and an unceasing barrage of criticism. Yet NASA kept at it. With the full-time six-person crew now operational, the range of technological and scientific work being done has increased dramatically, from fluid physics experiments to tests on the effects of microgravity on human physiology.
George W. Bush's promising Constellation human spaceflight program—which would be killed under Mr. Obama's plan—has already cost $9 billion since 2004. It is hard to imagine how the private sector can build a replacement for the spacecraft and booster rockets of Constellation, let alone a program to get America back to the moon, with the relatively paltry sum of $6 billion and the scattershot funding approach that NASA's leaders are proposing.
The Augustine Commission's recent report to the White House was entitled "Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation." The space entrepreneurs may claim that they can send people into space for a fraction of the previous cost, but they have not yet proved it. NASA's policy is neither bold nor new; it is yet another exercise in budget-driven program cancellation. Until the American government can bring itself to choose a path and stick to it for more than a single administration, its claim to be worthy of a great nation will be in doubt.
—Taylor Dinerman writes a regular column for thespacereview.com and is a member of the board of advisers of Space Energy, a company working on space-solar-power concepts.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059263418508030.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines#printMode
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