Obama Moves to Counter China With Pentagon-NASA Link

 news, politics, spacecraft
Jan 032009
 

From Bloomberg.com:

 Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency’s planned launch vehicle, which isn’t slated to fly until 2015, according to people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team.

Hmmm. “inter-service commonality.” Where have I heard of that idea before?

Hmmm…

Yeah, a real winner, that was…

“No, really! It was pure genius!!!”

 Posted by at 2:52 am

  3 Responses to “Obama Moves to Counter China With Pentagon-NASA Link”

  1. robin says:
    January 3, 2009 at 6:42 am

    No, Obama _should_ be telling NASA, ‘go to the rocket makers, tell them we want this, and this, we want it by then, and we’re not willing to pay more than this much, like the airlines, or the military (sometimes) do.’
    Or maybe I’m being too sensible, again.

  2. Randy Campbell says:
    January 8, 2009 at 4:28 pm

    Actually Scott it’s not about a “new” inter-service Launch Vehicle….
    It’s about using the EELVs that we HAVE and heavy configurations that we’ve already designed instead of trying to build the “stick” and calling it “new-and-exciting” :o)

    Of course the MAJOR problem with this is it won’t keep the Shuttle operations staff going and it won’t help make more of a case for building the “Aries-V” (might as well call it the Mars-Direct-Launch-Vehicle which is really what Griffen wanted in the FIRST place :o) and it would mean going ‘back’ to things we just “know” won’t work like orbital assembly and orbital fuel depots and actual on-orbit infrastructure…

    But we should have already been convinced by Dr. Zubrin and the Mars Society that having anything but DIRECT, (opps, that is “Direct” :o) launch vehicles and a focused Mars program are just a waste of money… Right?

    Randy

  3. admin says:
    January 8, 2009 at 10:51 pm

    > It’s about using the EELVs that we HAVE and heavy configurations that we’ve already designed

    Sorry, no. The sad fact is that even if the existing rockets were perfectly capable of lobbing an Orion CSM into the appropriate orbit, NASA would demand a boatload of NASA-specific changes. That’s what they do.

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