The Shuttle Atlantis landed this morning, bringing to an end the second era of American manned spaceflight. Also brought to an end is much real chance of a third era of American manned spaceflight based on the NASA model. Before Apollo ended, the Space Shuttle was on the horizon. Today, NASA has not a single vehicle on the horizon to launch American astronauts into space.
However, there is one hopeful difference: on the horizon are *other* American manned space vehicles… just not *NASA* vehicles. Companies like SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, Blue Origin, Scaled Composites, Xcor and others are all working as diligently as their finances will allow to produce the next generation of American manned space launch systems. I’d expect SpaceX, with their already-flown Dragon capsule atop their Falcon 9 launcher to be the first commercial manned spacecraft, and hopefully within the next few years.
The libertarian in me will rejoice when American private companies are selling flights into space. The cynic in me realizes that the US FedGuv will probably do what it always does… use the power of regulation and taxation to make this as difficult as possible. The space nut in me knows that while the commercial sector is by far the preferred way to go to develop new launchers, NASA still should have played a role. Not to design them, not to pick and choose winners before the fact, but to point to a destination and say “We don’t care who or how, but whatever can get us and our stuff to this destination on that schedule, we’ll buy.” Sadly, NASA is quickly being converted into an empty shell.
While private enterprise is the best way to procure launchers, NASA programs are the best way to inspire. This, of course, means NASA programs that point Out There, that push the envelope, whose reach exceeds its grasp, all those old cliches. By not having such, spaceflight changes from inspirational to a depressing reminder of things that once were but are no more.
Yes, it’ll be great when we can point to Dragon capsules and say “Americans have these.” But without a meaningful NASA, there just seems like there’ll be something missing. Kinda like being proud of all those jetliners produced by Boeing private enterprise, but wondering if maybe we aughtta have a government “Air Force” as well.
You really want to know what I want? You really want to know the truth, yes? I want my people to reclaim their rightful place in the galaxy. I want to see the Americans stretch forth their hand again, and command the stars. I want a rebirth of glory, a renaissance of power. I want us to be what we used to be! I want…I want it all back the way that it was!
21 Responses to “That’s that”
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Scott,
Thankfully, they didn’t have it land yesterday.
Madoc
I see the future and thus, maybe not for many years but like this.
With China, India, Iran, etc… all gearing up their space programs I see the US turning to two seperate launch paths.
Private: This will be the big and strange one, it’ll start with sub -> orbital jaunts for the rich, and acting as space busses for transporting to and from the space station, slowing taking the business away from Russia’s “Age of Soyuz.” And will begin to evolve towards more commercialization of space, companies contracting sattelite launches, their own smaller, to eventually bigger space stations for manufacture of specialized goods and for research that NASA has always covetted, and eventually once they discover “gold and riches in them there mars and asteroids,” manned exploration bankrolled by the idea of coming back with some form of material wealth. These could of course also be government backed, but private industry will encompass the majority of it.
Government: NASA will continue to do research, sending research astronauts up on private spacecraft and Air Force, yeah you read right Air Force spacecraft. The Air Force will take back much of the space program from NASA, possibly even the Navy, working together to develop new launch vehicles for “national defense,” or to act as transports and heavy lifters for other projects. An Air Force military space station will then be established, especially after certain other nations start to build their own space stations, cold war histeria again. For the most part though NASA will become a regulatory agency, and become something of an FAA with research capacity, sort of like NACA was before it became NASA.
I have to say that when I first heard about the idea of Commercial Crew/Cargo I was dismissive of it. In some ways I felt like we’d be giving up the control of space travel, but after thinking about it I’ve come around to the idea.
SpaceX has done an amazing job so far and I’m excited for their next few launches to fully prove the Dragon/Falcon combo. A little more investment and they’ll people in space (fingers crossed) before 2015.
I’m less hopeful for the other contenders right now, it doesn’t seem like they’ve made much progress, but I’m willing to admit that maybe SpaceX just has better PR and I’m not hearing as much about Orbital, et al.
I’m ready to subscribe to a model in which NASA pushes a mission and research for beyond LEO missions while buying Dragons to get to ISS and LEO transfer points to other other spacecraft en route to the Moon, asteroids or Mars.
NASA needs a mission, a direction, and as you say, without it it’s an empty shell. I’d support any politician that is willing to stand up and fight for a good mission and then stand behind it for the potentially lengthy time that it will take to accomplish that mission.
There are places in space that we have to go, and we must go boldly.
If you compare SpaceX’s launch schedule as it stands now with its launch schedule as it stood a few months ago, you will see that they dropped several launches from the manifest, and I am expecting them to drop a few more before the year is out. Not saying they’re about to go under, but I do think that they were overly optimistic about their capabilities, and we should expect them to perhaps proceed a little slower than we originally hoped/expected.
“I want a rebirth of glory, a renaissance of power. I want us to be what we used to be! I want…I want it all back the way that it was!”
A-freaking-men.
I want my country back. My pride, my future, and my dreams. Everything we’ve lost in the last 40 years.
Private is great, but no business model will make any of the above happen.
I’m not American, since I was born in Italy and I also live there, but regarding American manned spaceflight I have exactly the same feeling expressed so well by Scott.
I was born in 1968 and when I was a child NASA “was” THE manned spaceflight agency, no matter if Russians were the first in Space or was the only ones still flying in late 70’s (more or less like today). So at that time the perception of spaceflight was something like “NASA-driven”.
I always regarded Constellation programme like a sort of “Italian ambush” (sorry but in Italy we don’t trust in our politicians and policy-driven things) and also seen CEV/Orion with a sort of suspect (too Apollo-ish to be real), but I’m a real enthusiast and strong supporter of SpaceX activities.
OK I’ve rather prefer a spaceplane instead of a capsule but Dragon is clever enough to cath my attention. But…but as Scott wrote Dragon itself without a clear space strategy would mean nothing, what would it worth an F-22 or F-35 without an Air Force to buy and to use them?
“I want a rebirth of glory, a renaissance of power. I want us to be what we used to be! I want…I want it all back the way that it was!”
Well, that’s the conservative mantra if I ever heard it; but you had better remember while we were going to the Moon, we were also sinking deeper and deeper into a dead-end war we would lose in Vietnam, with far more fatalities than Irag and Afghanistan put together. In fact, back then they had the “advantage” of many seriously wounded troops dying before getting medical care; nowadays they are far more likely to survive their extreme injuries, but live afterwards in a seriously compromised state with limbs missing and concussive brain damage from IED’s.
Of course, back then our aims were more modest: Save South Vietnam from communism; not save the whole world from bad Muslims who want to get control of that oil God put under their countries so we could find it.
>we were also sinking deeper and deeper into a dead-end war we would lose in Vietnam,
OK, this cannot go by without comment. I cannot understand how, when the historical facts are plain, people continue to spout the lie that the US lost the war in Viet Nam. The communists did *not* defeat the US. The US pulled out of South Viet Nam, it is true…. *AFTER* a peace treaty was signed that ended the war and left South Viet Nam un-conquered by the communists. In terms of what the US wanted to accomplish… we *won.* It was a few years later, when the US was effectively gone from SVN, that North Viet Nam violated the treaty, invaded the South and conquered it. This time, the US Congress decided to do nothing.
More relevant to this particular discussion was Apollo getting strangled by the growth of the welfare state. Apollo ended (effectively) in 73. VN ended (for the US) in 73. But Social Security and the “Great Society” programs would continue to grow and fester and compromise our economy to this day.
I think Pat missed the Babylon 5 reference…
Ambassador Londo Mollari: Do you really want to know what I want? Do you really want to know the truth? I want my people to reclaim their rightful place in the galaxy. I want to see the Centauri stretch forth their hand again and command the stars. I want a rebirth of glory, a renaissance of power! I want to stop running through my life like a man late for an appointment, afraid to look back or look forward. I want us to be what we used to be! I want… I want it all back the way it was. Does that answer your question?
So you’re comparing Scott to Londo? I don’t know if that’s terribly flattering, or bodes well for his future… 😀
“It was a few years later, when the US was effectively gone from SVN, that North Viet Nam violated the treaty, invaded the South and conquered it. This time, the US Congress decided to do nothing.”
Our last troops withdrew on March 29, 1973.
Well, at least officialy, though a US solder was killed on April 29, 1975…a few hours later Saigon surrendered.
You can call Korea a draw, but this one we lost.
South Vietnam fell under communist control, which it was the whole point of the war to prevent from occurring. As soon as we pulled the last of our troops out and declared “Peace With Honor” what was going to happen next was a foregone conclusion and both we and the South Vietnamese government knew it.
The ARVN wasn’t up to taking on the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese on its own; my older brother was stationed at a fire base outside Hue with the 101st Airborne Division during the war, and he had no high opinion of them; they broke down into four groups:
1. Competent and dedicated troops, NCO’s, and officers – rare.
2. Incompetent officers from rich families who were ordering troops to fight while staying far out of harm’s way themselves – way too common.
3. Troops and NCO’s who would suddenly go somewhere else as soon as any fighting started – very common.
4. ARVN troops, NCO’s, and officers who were actually VC spies or selling info to the VC – way, way, too common.
They could figure out where they were going to do a helicopter landing operation, and six hours later when they got there, there was around a 75% chance the enemy would already have the place surrounded. That was just how badly the South Vietnamese military and government was infiltrated.
> Our last troops withdrew on March 29, 1973.
> Well, at least officialy, though a US solder was killed on April 29, 1975…a few hours later Saigon surrendered.
> You can call Korea a draw, but this one we lost.
Paris Peace Accords signed January 27, 1973, with immediate cease fire. In June of 1973, Congress passed the Case-Church amendment to block any attempt to militarily support the South if the North invaded. Another refusal by C ongress to support the South in January of 1975 effectively sealed SVN’s fate.
The US left Viet Nam with a cease-fire in place. A cease fire that was being pissed on by both the North and the South. but nevertheless, the war was officially stopped when we left. When we left, SVN was an independant nation. Congressional refusal to provide assistance emboldened the Commies, who took the opportunity.
Since the US was *not* in the war to conquer the North, there would have been no leaving SVN that would have been risk-free for the South.
A few important lessosn were learned in the VN war, such as:
Don’t trust commies
Don’t trust Congress
If you are going to fight, fight to destroy your enemy utterly, to drive him from power and make sure that he can never gain power again.
“If you are going to fight, fight to destroy your enemy utterly, to drive him from power and make sure that he can never gain power again.”
People like you gave us My Lai.
Really? That’s the best you have? Anyone who has to fight and wants to win is automatically the moral equivalent of someone committing a massacre?
How else *should* someone fight? Should you fight for a stalemate, so that the pain death and misery will be stretched out for as long as possible? Should you fight to lose, and hope that your patheticness will embarrass the other side into surrender? Should you fight jsut hard enough to just barely win, so that your enemy will rise to threaten you the moment you turn your back?
What ever happened to private organizations, such as the National Geographic Society, mounting great expeditions of exploration? What happened to wealthy men building great astronomical observatories as a lasting legacy? We’ve ceded too much to dependence on Big Government.
A couple of dudes in a bicycle shop built an aircraft back in the day. Why can’t a couple dudes in a bicycle shop today build the next 747? There’s your answer.
Because a 747 won’t fit in a bicycle shop???
2 guys in a garage couldn’t build a 747. Private industry can, and does, build such aircraft without government funding. Private industry is now developing launch vehicles far more affordable than anything out of NASA, with the hope of making a profit.
“Notice to National Geographic Magazine subscribers:
To fund the Society’s Mars mission, we will be raising the yearly subscription price to $500.00.
Although this may seem excessive, we intend to include striking photography of ‘Beavers Around The World’ each month, including ‘The Beavers Of Sweden’ as our first article, complete with a fold-out supplement to adorn your wall or bedroom ceiling.”
Maybe it’s time to dust off the Space Cub plans.
I still think NASA needs in-house LV capability myself. You all might have heard me make these arguements before in other forums, but for waht it is worth.
Spaceflight–orbital spaceflight (not putting Celestrons on ME-163 Komets as XCOR might–talking about a solution looking for a problem)–is hard, More TVA than MSN.
Moores law doesn’t apply to rockets.
That we will be forced to ride R-7s, which have outlived Saturns, Geminis, shuttles, etc while the alt.spacers bumble along seems proof enough to me at least that spaceflight is one thing big governments can do well with the proper motivation. Korolyov never had to beg for money on Dragons Den or Shark Tank.
Now of course, Ayn Rand’s religion is that private methods are the best–but not so fast. If you get libertarian businessmen of all stripes in a room together, and talk about the evils of big airlines and their bailouts, bad service unions, etc–they will all of course say that the free market will solve all ills. This was the basis of James Fallows book Free Flight: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Fallows
Problem is, when it comes time for, say, Very Light Jets, things slow down. According to Fallows entrepreneurs have a class grudge against venture capitalists, who might get their idea of do-it-yourself aerospace from watching the movie EXPLORERS. Venture capitalists what to invest as little money as possible, then reap the biggest reward. That’s fine if you want to invest in computer games and software some code monkeys can g’nip-g’nop on their keyboards, with few front-end costs–but aerospace?
Not so much:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_light_jet
If I were to give Scott 500 million dollars and myself the same amount–and he got to making aerospace products and I were to support the meth habits of all Alabama trailer parks–he still goes broke faster than I would.
Now, if you become filthy rich off software and what have you–Facebook, Paypal, Doom, Amazon (some brick and mortar there)–then you can operate at a loss if you believe in space for its own sake, or wait for a gov’t contract–but doing something for its own sake with no profitability–except for gov’t contrqacts–is that really capitalism anymore.
Best to keep Arsenal method, and keep contractors on the short leash. Well, that is what Mike Griffin tried, and you saw how ULA/DoD howled at that.