Thursday, October 22, 2009

White House Panel Favors Commercial Crew Taxis

A White House panel says NASA probably should scrap the Ares I rocket and invest in the development of commercial astronaut crew transportation to low Earth orbit -- a commercial space taxi service.

Panel chairman Norman Augustine and Ed Crawley of MIT say NASA should act as an anchor tenant and provide financial incentives -- as much as $5 billion -- to develop commercial launch services for U.S. astronaut crews -- a job done to date by the U.S. government through NASA. Such a move would be a major shift in policy.

Among findings:

++NASA's Project Constellation is on an unsustainable trajectory due to a mismatch in the amount of money in its budget and the mission NASA is attempting to accomplish.

++The Ares I and Orion would not be ready to fly until 2017 and commercial companies might be able to provide taxi services at an earlier date.

++NASA should drop development of the Ares I rocket. The panel said the rocket was the right selection when the Constellation architecture was developed, that any technical problems could be surmounted, but that times have change. The panel believes NASA should consider commercial crew taxis.

++International Space Station operations should be extended through at least 2020.

++NASA likely will not be able to finish six final International Space Station construction by the end of 2010 and the White House and Congress should provide for shuttle operations through Fiscal Year 2011. The panel offered two options for extending the shuttle: add one mission to make use of the agency's final external tank, now slated for rescue duty if required on NASA's last shuttle flight; or extend the shuttle program and fly at a minimum rate of two missions per year to support the International Space Station. The committee did not make a recommendation or voice support for any of the shuttle options. Clearly they are leaving the future of the shuttle program in the hands of policy-makers at the White House.

++NASA should develop a strong technology development program. Its current one has "atrophied."

++The White House and Congress should ramp up NASA's budget with an extra $3 billion between now and 2014 and then sustain the budget at that level while providing for increases to cover inflation.

++NASA should move swiftly to develop a human-rated heavy-lift launcher as a fallback option in case commercial crew taxi services are not available.

++NASA should fly missions to orbit the moon and Mars and Phobos and Deimos and land on asteroids -- so-called "flexible path missions -- rather than go to moon or Mars directly.

++NASA should scale back the capabilities of its Orion spacecraft and develop a relatively simple Gemini-type capsule that could accommodate three people. Panel members believe such a craft could be fielded more rapidly than the Ares-Orion combo and the Orion Lite could be launched by commercial launch services companies.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love it. They say NASA should use commerical launch services since it would be cheaper than developing their own and then they say "NASA should move swiftly to develop a human-rated heavy-lift launcher as a fallback option in case commercial crew taxi services are not available".

If you don't ahve the money to do it as the primary method, how can you possible have the money to do it as a back up?

Stephen C. Smith said...

Thank you to the Augustine Panel for all the work, and to President Obama for ordering the first serious discussion and debate of our space program in many years.

Although I don't agree with all the conclusions and recommendations, this was a healthy exercise for our country and will help restore NASA to its well-deserved prominent place in space exploration and aeronautics research.

Anonymous said...

http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=116054&provider=rss

Anonymous said...

The Augustine report is the "first serious discussion and debate"? What about the VSE?
To remind, VSE stands for Vision for Space Exploration. Vision.
Congress debated and the executive debated and Nasa debated the whole thing for about 1 year and that is much longer than the Augustine panel existed.
I think you'd be more accurate to say the Augustine report is the first challenge to the VSE, from the Executive branch, that suggested alternatives to the VSE,
What is that vision? Scale down from the technically feasible Ares I to Delta IV or Atlas V.
Scale down from the inner solar system capable Orion to a LEO only capsule
Puny vision.

Given the awful budget problems that Obama has tee'd up for himself in the out years, I see no hope that a Augustine endorsed idea of a heavy lifter will go beyond CATIA what if's and design exercises. This report has laid the basis to focus Nasa on the ISS and only the ISS over the next 10+ years.

Puny vision.

Conor said...

"NASA likely will not be able to finish six final International Space Station construction by the end of 2011"
2010 surely?

Spaceman said...

"The panel offered two options for extending the shuttle: add one mission to make use of the agency's final external tank, now slated for rescue duty if required on NASA's last shuttle flight; or extend the shuttle program and fly at a minimum rate of two missions per year to support the International Space Station." ****It's cheaper to keep her (Shuttle)***. It works and was made to last to 2020. Companies should still make designs for a replacement but only replace the Shuttle when it works. Who would you rather give your money? CHINA OR RUSSIA? At least, space workers spend most of your tax dollers in the USA to support YOUR job!!!

Matt Wronkiewicz said...

Rich, I'm not sure where you're coming from. They agreed with you that Ares I was technically feasible. However, because of development delays, it doesn't support the ISS and building and operating it would push beyond-LEO space exploration further into the future. They looked at the alternative of putting Orion on a Delta IV, and found that it isn't any better than Ares I. They also recommended that NASA continue to develop the inner-Solar System capable Orion. If you are interested in the future of human space exploration, I suggest you go to http://hsf.nasa.gov and read the final report.

Anonymous said...

One of the things I dislike about this report is the "wiring"
of the usual "outsourcing" mindset to others for LEO Cargo delivery. If those companies believe they can make money doing it they should give it a shot...ON THEIR DIME NOT ON THE TAXPAYERS, otherwise let NASA keep the funds and do it themselves. Its America...no pain no gain.

Anonymous said...

Real estate on the cheap. . . .Brevard is done.

Anonymous said...

Is it just me, or does seem pretty wishy washy?

I agree with Spaceman...the shuttle works and is barely past 1/4 of it's intended life...at least as far as vehicle workload is concerned. Keep sending up two or three a year to support the ISS until we know for sure we have a replacement ready and that works. Goodness.

Anonymous said...

We all know that legislation gets passed by horse trading - I'll vote for your project if you vote for mine. So, here's an idea. Senator Nelson should grow a backbone and tell the president that he will not vote for any health care until Obama full funds NASA and the space program.

Anonymous said...

iT dOESN'T SOUND LIKE ANYTHING IS "HERE" TO ME. mORE bLAH, bLAH!

Unknown said...

I agree with a lot of the comments from the Austine report and some of the comments here. I think that they should go even further and re-purpose NASA with a clear mission of the Human Exploration the Solar System (which is something that they have mentioned in their report). Leave LEO to the commercial sector and make absolutely sure that NASA has a reliable and safe commercial service to and from LEO. Then NASA uses the ISS as the gateway to the Solar System (Moon, Mars, asteroid). With the LEO rocket development program canceled, NASA can focus its resources on building spaceships optimised for deep space travel and vacuum travel. These new breed of deep space spaceships are the ones that will eventually meet all the goals that has been setup by President Bush (return to the moon), by the Mars enthusiastic crowd (manned mission to Mars), and the Augustine Panel (mission to Asteroids). These new deep space spaceships do not need to have the weight penalty of re-entry vehicles as they will always remain in space, be parked near the ISS or at the Lagrange points and be reused to travel between several points in the Solar System after re-fuelling

Anonymous said...

They should just close the whole thing down , and let private industry go for it...if they want it which I doubt....hey it's LOOSER now..face it !!!

Anonymous said...

The DIRECT Team has done a great job promoting Option 4b:
http://vimeo.com/7209149

Anonymous said...

Anonymous @ 5:26pm, that "wiring" of money you are complaining about is one of the reasons we have commercial air travel today. Much of the same "wiring" was done in the early days of aviation. This is no different.

Anonymous said...

Is it just me or does this administration seem bent on surrendering our role as the world's only superpower? To voluntarily give up space dominance because we can't spend an additional 3 billion a year is pathetic. To do so while we throw away 800 billion to special interest groups is criminal.

God help us all.

Anonymous said...

Some people say that we don't need Battlestar Galactica to go to Mars... I say why not? :) We need to realise that LEO is different to deep space, a different medium in which to travel if you want to put it this way. Once we understand this, we can have ships that fits each purpose. Ships optimised for LEO (Space Shuttle, SpaceX Dragon etc) that are good at what they do, i.e to bring people/cargo up to LEO and down again (hence re-entry tiles). And ships optimised for in space travel, built in space and that will remain in space. Once astronauts are in LEO or the ISS, they can transfer to these new class of space ships to explorer the solar system

Anonymous said...

Times are a changing and you better be prepared and able to change with them or suffer the consequences. Agree or disagree with the proposal...the gravy train is over.

Graham said...

Right then over to the chinese,Goodbye moon missions flown by america.What a total cop out.!! Don't bitch about it later on when they control the rights to all the helium 3 gas in the soil up there. Pathetic it truly is .!

Anonymous said...

NASA is entirely to blame for this fiasco. It should have man-rated either Delta 4 or Atlas 5 for Orion years ago. Instead, it chose to align itself with ATK for the Ares 1. I personally favour commercial crew transportation. But would also like to see the Shuttle continue flying now that there are no deep-space missions for astronauts envisioned before ISS retirement