Feb 012010
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/factsheet_department_nasa/
In short, Ares 1, Ares V, Orion all cancelled. Shuttle to end after five more flights, ISS to drag on for a few more years – requiring Russians to fly Americans, since we won’t have a means of getting to orbit ourselves.
<> Yes, Constellation was behind schedule and over budget. But now it’s cancelled… meaning all the money spent was *wasted,* and all the time spent was *wasted.* And unless the entepreneurs really step up, or if the USAF has something secret hidden away somewhere, this is pretty much the end of the road for American manned spaceflight.
19 Responses to “Obama cancels Constellation”
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This is why the first moonbases will be serving curry and stir-fry on their menu.
Now I have a legitimate question. There’s only so many Shuttle misions left.
So what happens to the cadre of qualified Shuttle pilots and crew?
Guess we’ll have to keep watching.
> So what happens to the cadre of qualified Shuttle pilots and crew?
Another question (probably been answered, and easily Googled, but I’m either too lazy, or too annoyed to bother)… what happens with the standaing army of Shuttle workers? Specifically… if your job was to Do Something Important on Shuttle prep or refurb, you’ve known for several years that Shuttle was coming to an end… but that Ares would in some part replace it. Now, there’s nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not a damn thing on the job horizon. So unless you’re ready to retire, right now your highest goal is to Find Another Job. And if one comes open *today,* you leave *today,* because by the end of the Shuttle program, the new job probably won’t be open, and you’ll be competing against all your current co-workers.
So if the best and brightest are fleeing the sinking ship, my guess is that the chances of something being screwed up have gone way up.
The announcement only warranted a teleconference. Apparently, it wasn’t worth a press conference. Attempting to sweep the announcement under the rug and, at the same time, showing the Administration’s contempt for space exploration.
Lovely. I could barely stand listening to the teleconference. It was so full of bureaucratic doubletalk that it made me sick. I truly hope Congress does not let him get away with this.
It’ll be interesting to see how Florida voters treat President Obama in 2012.
There were already signs of private launch systems being capable of human launch before Ares was ready, if guberment lets them.
THAT GOD DAM HYPOCRITES
>However, the program was over budget, behind schedule, and
>lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies.
how was the guys blocking NASA geting innovative new technologies.?
CAPTIOL HILL (Rep&Dem)
first: NO you not buy russian or european technologies !
second: NO you dont get budget for development them self
three: you don’t have new technologies ? so we shut you down !
so it for Burt Rutan Space Ship Three to get ISS
while Space X …
you think realy bring Dragon with Manned Crew to ISS ?
me not !
let see wat next President election 2012 wins: female, Republican…
Ares-1/5:
Ares-1 was over budget and not able to meet program goals, the amount of hardware that had to be added to lessen KNOWN issues overwhelmed the mass budget that had artifically been inlfated in the first place to rule-out the use of the already exsisting EELV launchers.
Money wasted? Yep, but it was wasted by a top-down NASA management decision that forced the program down a dead-end street.
Over and above the issue with Ares-1, the Ares-5 vehicle would have required a complete overhaul of any and all exsisting Shuttle assets which was specifically NOT part of the overall program goals and was in fact directly against the original mandate! None of the exsisting Shuttle components or facilities could have been used to produce, or launch the Ares-V as designed and the required budget to tear-down and rebuild the entire launch system to handle the Ares-V would have required a major increase in NASA budget far BEYOND any possible increase listed in any of NASAs budget projections.
“Commercial” is a very slippery word in government circles and it is most likely though Congress will put up a ‘show’ fight for the program they have already been handed a way out: They will authorize the “Orion-Lite” version to be launched on the current EELV vehicles and continue to press ahead with the COTS program. They will continue to “dangle” a possible “Shuttle-Derived-Heavy-Lift” vehicle in front of NASA while never actually authorizing any real work to be done, as they have for decades already. Congress (neither party) is interested in manned spaceflight or anything else NASA does outside of what kickbacks and pork deals they can instert into various programs and there is no indication that this will change in the near (or far) future.
Strangly enough the “outraged” Congress people have been confronted numerous times with OPTIONS for retainng the Shuttle work force including alternative launch vehicle programs that would have narrowed if not eliminated the launch “gap” and would have continued to employ the currently (much reduced already) work force but chose instead to “fully support” a program that not only would NOT retain the work force but woud require a complete dismantling of the current shuttle technology and processing in favor of a distantly hinted “super” program at some future date.
No one has come closer to killing American manned space flight than Congress and they tend to keep trying every year while whining and complaining that there is some OTHER reason for NASA and Americas troubles.
Yet time and time again Presidential Admininstrations are “blamed” for the issues and Congress gets a ‘pass’ as though they are NOT in total charge of the NASA budget and directly in charge of direction of NASA goals and programs.
Obama, like Bush before him, can “mandate” or “direct” or “suggest” all he wants but the ONE and ONLY truth is that NOTHING any President does or says has ANY effect on NASA other than what Congress allows to happen. IF Congress didn’t want to follow the Presidents new budget they are NOT required too and they can if they wish in fact OVERRIDE any such Presidential budget with their own.
But they WANT this, both politically and economincally. This covers them as they will of course “try” to “fight” this “stupid decision” and scream to high heaven and any media that will carry the message that this is NOT THEIR FAULT! Even though it is clearly visible that Congress authorized and approved of the program even though they fully understood it did NOT meet ANY of the goals for the VSE and was in fact in direct condtrediction to the majority of requirements laid out for the program.
But people still refuse to see the facts. Congress had no buy-in, no interest what-so-ever in the Presidents “Vison for Space Exploration” and said as much every opportunity they got. They choose to ignore anything but the most expensive, lowest performance suggested course of action all the while “complaining” over the short-falls of the very architecture THEY themselves were backing! And even this new opportunity allows them to continue to pour pork funding down the hole while covering their actions by decrying that none of this is their fault. And people will buy it…
Randy
How can His Highness spend so much goddamn money and not have anything for space? Christ, just what he threw at GM to purchase those union votes (with our taxpayer dollars) would have kept this program healthy.
This is a tragic day for US space flight. I never expected to witness this: I wanted to see a man on Mars and what I get it’s the cancellation of manned SF. NASA, you’ve done a great job, but from now on China and India will take over, thank you.
So let me see if I understand.
I was born six weeks before the dawn of the Space Age.
The Eagle landed when I was 11.
Assuming this jamoke wins another term, it’s entirely possible that we’re looking at 2017 before another program can even get started. Assume (highly optimistically) that we can still build large liquid engines and spacecraft in 2017. It’s probable that it would be at least 2025 before a actual mission could take place, more like 2029.
So, almost a sixty year gap between lunar flights . . and I’ll be 70. (Assuming I last that long. My dad died when he was 69.)
Now I know why older people get depressed.
Oh well, maybe in the interim the Chinese will lend us enough money to send a couple of talk show celebs up to their moon base. That would sort of be like an American mission, right?
BHO has pissed off so many of us that it’s unlikely that he’ll ever work outside Chicago after this gig. What worries me is that he’s dug such a deep hole that getting cash for space after he’s gone is going to be difficult. I still think this may be the time for our space workers at all levels to consider emigrating to Russia. I do not expect private operators to fill in the blank spots resulting from this decision.
“A Russian craft, flown by Russians, carrying a few poor Americans, who need our help. That also doesn’t look too bad on the front page of Pravda.”
That’s quote from the old movie “2010”. How sad is it that this quote is now becoming reality.
We won the Space Race but who’s really getting the last laugh.
Thank you, Mr President. Thanks for nothing, you schmuck!
And one other note?
You need to eat your own words. You want to eliminate unemployment? Well guess what? You just created more.
Frakkin hypocrite….
“So if the best and brightest are fleeing the sinking ship, my guess is that the chances of something being screwed up have gone way up.”
That scenario is keeping some of us awake at night …….
It’s a scenario I’ve seen happen. Specifically at United Tech in California… when it became clear that the company was going under, many started looking for other jobs. And when it was *announced* that the company would go under in around a years time, people started fleeing. Hell, I was one of ’em. Of course, being a design engineer and not a manufacturing guy, my utility to the company at that stage was pretty minimal, but still…
Aerojet and the other companies were under orders from the US Government to not poach UT employees for quite a long time. But once that injunction was lifted… hell, I think I got my response from ATK within a few days. Aerojet had themsevles a job fair just down the road.
I’m all for space exploration, but was an Apollo retread a really good idea?
It’s not at all clear to me that we could’ve done any better. Remember, whatever experience was gained during Apollo has largely been lost due to death and retirement.
Notwithstanding that I work in the space industry and that my future is likely to be dierctly and negatively impacted by this change, it is a plain fact that the real reason Ares was cancelled was that there simply wasn’t a compelling reason to go to the moon for the bulk of the American population. We space nerds can decry it, bemoan it and bitch about it, but the truth is that in 5 years neither the Bush administration nor NASA managed to get anyone in the general population even mildly excited about Constellation or the VSE. Absolutely no-one gave/gives a sh*t.
If people aren’t excited, then politicians will play “who’ll get the most pork” with NASA’s budget for as long as it takes to suck it all to their districts whether anything ever flies. Certainly, they have no interest in actually going anywhere and if that’s the case they’ll keep demanding expensive programs for their districts whether it’s a good plan or not.
As for Ares itself, it was doomed as soon as they built the initial configuration around a second stage air startable SSME, something that is patently impossible and, when the inevitable shift to the J-2xxx happened, the entire configuration completely unwound itself. Everything else was a sad, drawn-out death rattle.
If we, the space nerds, want anyone to go to the Moon, we have to find and support some real and tangible reason to do it. Something that will resonate with the general public. With luck, somthing that makes people money or at least, makes people’s lives visibly better. Without that, no-one in the west is going anywhere that will require a long, expensive development plan. Not the moon, Mars, NEOs, nothing. It’s sad, it’s demoralising, but that’s the facts, Jack. The public doesn’t care and are too short sighted & self absorbed to do ANYTHING that is simply the right thing to do.
Paul
I remember trawling through old issues of aerospace mag at my university library. I found an issue that came out right after Apollo 11. There was an opinion piece there that said “finally we have a robust infrastructure for exploring the Solar system” (something to that effect)… Much the same can be found in Kamanin’s diaries (from astronautix.com):
“1970 April 18 – Kamanin considers the Apollo 13 mission.
He believes it was a ‘true test’ of American technical capability in space. The saving of the American astronauts demonstrated the robust redundancy in the American Saturn V – Apollo design, as compared with the Soviet N1-L3. The latter, Kamanin remarks, is a bad launch vehicle, boosting a bad spacecraft. Kamanin sees the Soviet science fiction film Solaris – and finds it too fantastic for his taste. ”
In (my) hindsight, NASA should’ve stuck with evolving the Saturn/Apollo combo. The Soviet space program was so demoralised at that time, that it decided to copycat the American one. Hence the me-too Energia/Buran which gobbled the majority of funding (Soyuz and Salyut were run on a shoestring budget). So both space programs would have been better off.
This decision by the President is a TOTAL DISGRACE to ALL AMERICANS. Here we have Mr. Obama in his state of the Union address last week exulting the importance of getting our youth interested in math & science so America can compete and lead the global marketplace and this week cuts Constellation’s throat;Thus taking away the very inspiration this country needs to do so. Plus what about all the men & women who put in so much effort into making this program a reality, who will probably lose there jobs so that more Wall Street scumbags can get bailed out. Now on the other hand, we wouldn’t be in this position. If some of the decision makers at NASA had a set of balls to stay committed to a program once it has started like the X-30 and X-33 to name a few and/or past administrations had the vision and strong leadership necessary,
some the U.S. hasn’t had since 1967.
I gave this country 12 years of service. And for what?
A nation that doesn’t really give s**t about anything anymore. Our kids are the stupidest on the planet and the overall population is apathetic about pretty much everything.
This nation today gets more excited over “Jersey Shore” and Lady Gaga than us going back to the moon.
Constellation getting cancelled because nobody gives a s**t just speaks of greater things wrong with this country overall.
Pathetic!
If I didn’t have one last, little gleaming shred of hope that things will get better and a lack of funds, I’d be ashamed to call myself American, pack my s**t, and move to Canada.
Pathetic! Wake up, America!