vse dead cause of shuttle

[spaceiscool]

after the griffin comment at the white house it is obvious to me that griffin is hard at finding the money for the vse. my opinon is clear and wont go into it as it gets people angry but after hearing griffin are you all worryed that the shuttle has become such an expeinsive waste of a space program that it might stop the vse in 2007 or 2008?

 

[esas_is_a_lie]

You will have to forgive my lack of surprise. As I mentioned on another thread here, the red marks on the matrix sheet presented today told the story people don't seem to want to believe.

 

[CalliArcale]

Wish I could comment, but I've not had a chance to watch NASA TV today. Do you happen to know if anybody might have the news conference archived? I have little hope of getting a good run-down on what was presented from the popular press; they tend to leave out huge portions of such news conferences (if they cover them at all). <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[lampblack]

Here are Griffin's remarks to the House Science Committee on Thursday:<br /><br />http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/full05/nov3/griffin.pdf<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#0000ff"><strong>Just tell the truth and let the chips fall...</strong></font> </div>

 

[thermionic]

Griffin says,...<br /> />>Nuclear propulsion will not be required until planning for Mars missions begins in earnest.<br /><br />It will be a nuclear rocket! I'm sold. As our President says, "Bring it on!". But then, he'd call it a nucular rocket. ???

 

[dobbins]

Start out by ignoring the spin the Trolls are trying to put on it.<br /><br />The gist is finishing the ISS and the CVE are NASA's two highest priorties. Any funding problems won't show up until FY 2008. The problem is projected savings on the Shuttle in FY 2008 through FY 2010 won't be as large as expected.<br /><br />

 

[nyarlathotep]

ISS is pretty useless without Node 3 for those who like to regularly, ahem, breathe. Elektron is out of service more time than its working.<br /><br />If anything, NASA should uncancel and boost this before they retire the shuttle. It'd be more than worth the extra billion that it would cost to launch it.

 

[nacnud]

Aparently the 4 racks of stuff in Node 3 has been found space elsewhere on the station, I don't know where though...

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">Here are Griffin's remarks to the House Science Committee on Thursday:</font>/i><br /><br />Better yet, watch the entire proceedings:<br />http://boss.streamos.com/real/hscience/sci05/110305.smi<br /><br />The actual meeting doesn't start until about 13 minutes into the webcast, and there is a break in the middle to allow some of the Congresspeople to cast a vote for something.<br /><br />While there were the concerns voiced in the regular media (cost overruns (or as Griffin says, programs that were under bid), cutting of science programs, etc.) for the most part it was quite the love-feast between Congress and Griffin. I am a fan of Griffin, but even I found it over the top. The Chairman kicks off the meeting by calling Griffin "our hero".<br /><br />What I found particularly heartwarming is that many of the Congresspeople recognized the importance of getting more Americans to earn advanced science and engineering degrees and that NASA plays an important role in encouraging this.</i>

 

[esas_is_a_lie]

Yes. The excellent NASAwatch.com has this link and several articles on the slow death of this vision. <br /><br />I would hope poeple like Dobbins take time to watch the hearing and take note on how the VSE is simply not going to happen.

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">I would hope poeple like Dobbins take time to watch the hearing and take note on how the VSE is simply not going to happen.</font>/i><br /><br />I did watch it, but I came away with a different, much more positive feeling.<br /><br />Congress seemed to <i><b>really</b></i> like Griffin, appreciated his candidness (perhaps more than NASA employee/contractors <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" />), and understood that he has had to make (and will continue to make) difficult challenges. The Congresspeople seemed more comfortable with Griffin's answers than the answers of others that have recently testified before this committee (I think NOAA was specifically mentioned).<br /><br />Griffin criticized past efforts that low-balled cost and time estimates, so you can expect financial and time cushions in the current ESAS.<br /><br />Congress understood the importance of science and engineering (and scientists and engineers) to the quality of life in America, and they understood that NASA played a major role in supporting and recruiting young people into these fields.<br /><br />My guess: Griffin has earned a lot of browny points for NASA, and should a budget crunch come, Congresspeople in this committee will protect NASA more than other programs under their responsibility.</i>

 

[BReif]

I tend to agree with you RadarRedux. I watched the breifing and the testimony as well, and came away with the same positive feeling. I came away with hope that the VSE is something that the Congress does want to fund, and does want to succeed. In fact, members of the committee stated exactly that, that trhey wanted Dr. Griffin to succeed and NASA to succeed. It is not difficult to see in that, they want the VSE to succeed. There probably will be difficult times ahead, but the overall vision of the spacw program has changed. Whether it happens quickly or slowly, depending upon the yearly budgets, the programs that NASA will undertake in manned spaceflight will be oriented toward the implementation of the vision outlined January 2004. <br /><br />Frankly, I am just not understanding where the negative posts, negative articles, and predictions of the death of the VSE is coming from. From all of the testimony, briefs, and from the House and Senate approving a NASA appropriations bill which endorsed the VSE as US national space policy, I would think that there would be quite a bit more hope out there. It is leading me to the conclusion that there are, in fact, anti-manned space advocates pushing that agenda on this board, and on NASAwatch.com. If you do not like space exploration, and do not care about or want a return to the moon, humans on mars, or a manned space program, why are you here? Seems to me, that is what all of the negativists are pushing on these boards lately...I don't see any real alternatives cominf from these posters to accomplish manned spaceflight goals, just venom toward the shuttle, ISS, and the VSE.<br /><br />

 

[digitalman2]

it seemed to me as I watched the senate hearing that the matrix Griffin was referring to spoke of 8 or 9 categories of financial management. This is related to the GAO's 45 recommendations that NASA needs to implement. It did seem to me that progress is being made however I don't see how you can expect him to right everything in just a short number of months that he has been Administrator. Given the current financial picture, I understand what you are trying to point out but it is equally likely that money is being wasted in various ways and few people could be in a position to know anything about it at all. Griffin did say he expects it to take until 2008 to sort out all the financial management issues. I have not read the GAO's recommendations but it sounds like it might be something worth tracking down to see exactly what the issues are. <br />

 

[CalliArcale]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Congress seemed to really like Griffin, appreciated his candidness (perhaps more than NASA employee/contractors ),<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />It is possible that this is why some people got a bad feeling. I don't want to speculate about any other member's feelings; they can explain those for themselves. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> And of course I myself missed it. But working for a contractor, I can say that there would be reasons for some folks to be worried. Perhaps Griffin is neccesary to get NASA focused and driving forward into space, but he's basically said it's going to mean cutting stuff. And that means cancelling contracts. Most NASA contractors work for the DoD too, and there've been some abrupt cuts and scalebacks there recently, some of them totally unexpected. Even the merest suggestion of more cuts may strike a lot of fear into some folks. I know I've been nervous about the space business at my company lately, althouhg it seems we've got some good stuff on the horizon, so it should be just fine, and probably quite profitable. But there's always that "what if" lurking in the back of the mind. What if programs get cancelled in favor of VSE, and then VSE itself gets cancelled, or mutated into something else (a la Shuttle)? It's not a comforting thought. Uncertainty is not a fun thing in this business. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[spaceiscool]

grifin spoke well but the people with the money don't want to do it and that has to be a sign of bad things unless 5,000,000,000 is just going to turn up under a tree? and thats not even for thje vse that is for the shuttle. i don't see how the vse will ever been started past drawings on paper before, but dont now for sure.

 

[spacester]

If you watched the whole thing, you see that the CEV funding is secure. It's Shuttle Ops that are put forward as the thing to cut or fund.<br /><br />For years now I’ve been bucking the prevailing wisdom on Congress and its support for NASA. Until recently, the common refrain was that they want to either cut funding or get the pork and they have no interest in space flight. My position is that NASA is popular with the public, so its popular with Congress.<br /><br />The problem has been that they keeping giving NASA money and they keep getting disappointed and lied to. All those space plane programs failed, the accounting has been bad to the point of absurdity, and when the NASA Administrator shows up, he lies to them. I don’t care who you are, that’s not acceptable.<br /><br />I still maintain that O’Keefe’s biggest accomplishment, and it was huge, is that he taught Congress that if they kept going about it the way they were, they would continue to force the Admin to lie, and so they changed their funding philosophy. The Stafford report – the older one – spelled it out for them, but they didn’t get it until they had the ultimate bean counter lie to them.<br /><br />So it’s only recently that they learned that you have to remove big projects from the vagaries of FYthis and FYthat, you need to bid correctly, add contingency, fully fund it and only if you do all that and more can you expect success. The Chairman ‘tested’ him on this, and Mike told him that if they accelerate CEV program and then back off on the funding in a couple years that you will certainly get inefficiency and you will over-run (like in the bad old days before I showed up).<br /><br />So there’s a reason why he’s their “hero”, they’ve got a guy who delivers results and doesn’t lie to them. These members of the Science Committee can now go to the floor and crow to their colleagues that they’ve fixed NASA and NASA needs more money. They couldn’t do that before. They’re all geeks to a degree, they’ve been want <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[cuddlyrocket]

I agree. I watched the whole thing (and read the transcript - all 111 pages of it!) and it's quite clear that the CEV is secure. The only concerns were whether accelerating it to bring it online in 2012 rather than 2014 was the right thing to do - both in terms of its own possible budgetary consequences if there were problems, but also because other programs were being put on hold whilst the CEV was brought about.<br /><br />The budget for the CEV is in place. There is a shortfall between the money allocated for the Shuttle program and the estimated cost of what they plan to do with the Shuttle - $3-5 billion, though more likely to be at the lower end. Griffin said that they were now looking at the Shuttle and CEV programs together, to see if there was any duplication that would allow for savings. Eventually (I seem to recall, six months) he will have a final figure for Shuttle operations.<br /><br />Not said, but pretty obviously, it will then be a choice of increasing the budget or reducing Shuttle operations. That choice will be for Congress to make.

 

[grooble]

Good, as i think some were afraid that the money to fund the shuttle operations would be siphoned from the CEV program.

 

[drwayne]

One thing to keep in mind about government oversight meetings (up to and including Congressional ones).<br /><br />It is entirely possible to have a hearing that appears to have strongly gone one way or the other (positive or negative), and have everyone go away, and later decisions turn out the opposite of the meeting.<br /><br />Wayne <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>"1) Give no quarter; 2) Take no prisoners; 3) Sink everything."  Admiral Jackie Fisher</p> </div>

 

[erioladastra]

"ISS is pretty useless without Node 3 for those who like to regularly, ahem, breathe. Elektron is out of service more time than its working. "<br /><br />Actually, as others have pointed out, the regen ECLSS is going in Node 2. And for the life of me I really could never figure out what Node 3 was for, other than a wimpy hab. As to Elektron - that is not factually correct. There have been hard intervals but if you look at 5 years of operation it has worked pretty well and it looks like they are on tract to understanding the current problems and come up with a solid system. Lets see how well regen ECLSS works at first when installed next year.

 

[erioladastra]

"If you watched the whole thing, you see that the CEV funding is secure. It's Shuttle Ops that are put forward as the thing to cut or fund. "<br /><br />Yes, that is what I have been saying. Griffin can't easily move the money around (it doesn't mean he can't but it would be very hard and he doesn't want to). But if congress/Bush want the Shuttle to keep flying to 2010 to complete ISS something has to be done with the budget.

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">But if congress/Bush want the Shuttle to keep flying to 2010 to complete ISS something has to be done with the budget.</font>/i><br /><br />Conspiracy theory time <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />One thing I have picked up about Griffin is that he likes to put in margins for budgets and timelines. Perhaps the previously announced budget will work IF everything goes off as clockwork, but since that rarely happens, Griffin is asking for the buffer money now instead of later.<br /><br />Should NASA actually complete ISS construction at the earliest possible time, that buffer money could then be redirected into CEV/CLV or HLV funding.</i>

 

[erioladastra]

"Conspiracy theory time"<br /><br />Understand the reaction. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> However, this is very real. NASA is cutting some serious projects right now to recover some of the money, the international partners are pushing real hard to fly early in under 8 flights (and ironically, the replaning would cost lots of $!). Also, NASA can't just move money from one pot to another - congress can, but NASA is very limited.

 

[kdavis007]

I wish you chicken littles calm down...

 

[spaceiscool]

they needed to killed the shuttle when it murderd seven people in 1986, instead they allowed the same incompetent fools to keep going to kill another seven. how long till seven more dead?