Recently in Ares Category

credit: NASA / caption: plenty has been done and there is plenty more for Constellation

When this blogger saw the headline of this 30 March article by Aviation Week's senior space editor Frank Morring it seemed that the "program of record" that dare not speak its name had finally broken cover and spoken to the media after a self imposed vow of silence

But alas no, even Aviation Week's article had no detail on what was going on with Constellation and so there was still everything to play for, time to hit the phones and email - again

Now, by way of leaked emails, it seems that Constellation's management are preparing for any eventuality

But way back at the beginning on the 1 February the newly published fiscal year 2011 (1 October 2010 to 30 September 2011) budget request for NASA had notably continued funding the Moon return Constellation programme until 2012, even if it was cancelled this year

This blogger decided that whatever anyone thought of the programme's merit it was worth giving the space agency a call. A call to find out how the Ares and Orion and lunar surface systems project offices were planning to spend in FY2010 and FY2011 the $8 billion odd budgeted for for Constellation

"The president proposes and the Congress disposes," is a phrase Democratic party senator for Florida Bill Nelson has been using a lot since the 1 February publication of president Barack Obama's fiscal year 2011 NASA budget

With such a contentious ongoing debate about the Obama space plan and one bill already put forward to radically change it, it is no surprise that someone like Nelson would add to the NASA budget

The Houston Chronicle reports that the $746 million, or $1 billion depending on what you read, that was voted through by the Senate on Wednesday 21 April was achieved with an argument about defence and not exploration. In the Youtube video above hear Nelson talk about the solid rocket booster technology needs of US defence and possible future Ares I-Xs; there is a lot of background noise on the video

NASAWatch has an interesting perspective here from an alleged Congressional staffer explaining that Congress can basically force its own space programme on Obama

credit: spacepolicyonline.com / caption: the schedule slide that will come to haunt Obama's flexible path

In a president George W. Bush-like moment NASA administrator Charles Bolden is reported to have said: "it is the uneasiest thing we could do". Uneasiest? Don't you mean it is one of the hardest things you could do?

And Bolden might not want to admit it but his allegedly executable non-Constellation programme is ultimately, in capabilities terms, just as challenging and probably unexecutable as Bush's Constellation in technology and funding 

Why? We now know that president Barack Obama's plan for NASA is to work towards a 2025 asteroid rendezvous and a mid-2030s Mars mission that would not land. Constellation had Mars as an aspiration but its goal was to begin Moon missions from 2018 with a landing soon after and the slow build up of a permanent lunar base from the early 2020s

Surely they are very different? Look again

One has to wonder what on Earth (pun intended) president Barack Obama, his administration and the NASA management team think will be accomplished with a 1h 55min chin wag between "senior officials, space leaders, academic experts, industry leaders and others" about the future of US space exploration

Public relations disaster is one accomplishment that this blogger can envisage. If everyone comes out of the conference (see timing below - all times in Eastern Daylight Time) declaring the Obama plan a fantastic vision the event will be criticised as a White House whitewash and if a single individual speaks out against it, the reports will be of a divided conference

Hyperbola suspects the outcome will be far far worse

We are told Obama will have some "private time" with politicians attending the event. Anything other than the president's ageement to a wish list of space transportation projects is going to see those politicians attack the new space plan. And it won't stop there, academics will likely go on the record to say they don't agree with all or parts of the plan while industry will simply brief journalists, off the record, about why the plan doesn't make sense 

It is not obvious at what point the media get to question the president and, or his conference participants but I would imagine that certain politicians and corporations are already on the phone to Florida based and national media. Is it a conference or is it Obama's last space stand?

The afternoon to save exploration in full

13:30h NASA tv begins President Barack Obama KSC visit coverage
14:25h President Obama speech in Operations & Checkout building
15:45h Conference overview
           with NASA admininstrator Charles Bolden, Norman Augustine, John Holdren
16:25h Conference breakout sessions
           - increasing access to and utilization of the International Space Station
           - jumpstarting the new technologies to take us beyond
           - expanding our reach into the Solar System
           - harnessing space to expand economic opportunity
17:40h Conference wrap-up with Bolden and breakout session moderators

The 15:45h conference overview and 16:25h breakout sessions will all take place in the Operations & Checkout building

Watch former NASA astronaut and now Boeing space exploration general manager and vice president Brewster Shaw talk Ares I crew launch vehicle upper stages and Ares V cargo launch vehicle design contracts in this video from the National Space Symposium in 2009. He also talks about the "8-10,000" direct job losses expected if Shuttle retires without substantial progress on Ares V. He is referring to the Chinese at the beginning of the video because if I remember correctly (I was at this briefing) he had just come from a meeting with China's space programme officials. This video is part two, for part one go through to the extended portion of the blog post

Boeing tells Hyperbola that its own video from the 2010 Boeing National Space Symposium exploration briefing will be posted here so check back soon

More details of President Barack Obama's visit to NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) are emerging. It is now clear that KSC's operations and checkout building (and not the center's training auditorium), refurbished for use with the Constellation programme's Orion crew exploration vehicle, will be the stage for the head of state's speech about his plan that cancels that Moon return programme. Is this proof Obama can't do irony? The official security alert is below

The O&C Facility will be closed to all personnel on Thursday, April 15, from 7:00 a.m to 7:00 p.m., to accommodate President Obama's visit.  All services within the building, to include but not limited to, fitness center, Rehabworks, massage, cafeteria, sundry store, etc., will be closed.  No access will be permitted unless previously authorized and included on an approved entry authorization list.  Parking will not be permitted in the O&C east parking lot or the front curb parking area.  All vehicles, including GSA vehicles, must be removed from these areas no later than 7 a.m. on Thursday, April 15^th.  The O&C west parking lot will be partially closed.  All vehicles, including GSA vehicles, must relocate to the western-most portion of this parking lot (closer to the Training Auditorium).

In that great tradition of immoveable objects encountering the unstoppable force it seems the force has won out and the object, the flexible path aka plan A, is succumbing to Congressional will

Certainly if you believe what NASAWatch thinks is happening behind closed doors, which it seems even Utah's elected officials and Floridian politicians can't access, then its going to be all change for the president Barack Obama budget request for 2011

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (see video above) is all for Shuttle extensions while between the many tears NASA administrator Charles Bolden stuck to the script and told the BBC that its game-over for Shuttle; words he didn't repeat during his visit to Hunstville, Alabama last week

For more defence of the flexible path approach go here for C-SPAN video of the spaceflight panel at the George C Marshall Institute which spacepolitics.com reported on last week

But for some levity how about Venezualan space programme goals and troubled New York governor David Paterson's hopes for an orbiter for his state - dream on Paterson

Here is a 9min 41s clip from NASA administrator Charles Bolden's 23 March appearence at the House of Representatives' Committee on Appropriatons' subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing on NASA. Other Youtube clips of this hearing can be found here care of someone called ISSmania6

For the 24 March NASA hearing for the space and aeronautics subcommittee of the House of Representatives' science and technology committee click here to launch the archived webcast

credit: spacepolicyonline.com / caption: Garver's presentation click on it for a large version in this browser window

So according to NASA administrator Charles Bolden in the Congressional hearing yesterday the US will get back to the Moon before the Chinese - but will they?

As the Constellation programme progressed it was always interesting to dig around for the latest multi-program integrated milestone schedule that would occasionally be available officially or unofficially on the web somewhere. That helpful document showed graphically, in every sense, the inevitable slips of an under funded Moon return programme

Earlier this month NASA deputy administrator Lori Beth Garver gave us a new milestone schedule to scrutinise - even if it has the word notional across it - when she gave a presentation at the American Astronautical Society's Goddard Memorial Symposium (held 9-11 March)

Garver's powerpoint (one assumes) slides - shown in this blog care of a new website called spacepolicyonline.com - show an Obama space plan timeline and a version of the Constellation programme schedule

Looking at the slide above (and Garver's second slide - see extended blog portion - that shows a Constellation timeline) the question that comes to Hyperbola's mind is, if Constellation was an exploration programme that was unexecutable with the available budget why is the Obama plan any more executable?

Is Mars going to be the destination president Barack Obama will declare on 15 April, tax day? What could draw better responses than apparently announcing an unbelievable expensive lofty goal on the day US citizens have to file their tax returns?

For more reactions to the ongoing debate, reporting about the various states vocal politicians and more go here and here and even here and there is this from the Huntsville Times. While Space Florida gets $10 million to mitigate the thousands of job losses coming the Sunshine State's way