NASA transition team questions Ares/Orion

The Obama space policy transition team asks some good questions: Obama Team Seeks Data On Possible Changes To Ares, Orion - Space News/Space.com

The questionnaire, "NASA Presidential Transition Team Requests for Information," asks agency officials to provide the latest information on Ares 1, Orion and the planned Ares 5 heavy-lift cargo launcher, and to calculate the near-term close-out costs and longer-term savings associated with canceling those programs. The questionnaire also contemplates a scenario where Ares 1 would be canceled but development of the Ares 5 would continue.

While the questionnaire, a copy of which was obtained by Space News, also asks NASA to provide a cost estimate for accelerating the first operational flight of Ares 1 and Orion from the current target date of March 2015 to as soon as 2013, NASA was not asked to study the cost implications of canceling any of its other programs, including the significantly overbudget 2009 Mars Science Laboratory or the James Webb Space Telescope.

Obama's NASA transition team also asked agency officials to investigate how much it would cost and how long it would take to build a smaller version of Orion and human-rate an Atlas 5 or Delta 4 expendable rocket to serve as its launcher.

Additionally, the questionnaire requests that NASA "[e]stimate the feasibility of designing a resized Orion capsule that could be launched by international launch vehicles such as the [European] Ariane 5 or the [Japanese] H2A."

The transition team also wants information from NASA about accelerating plans for using the agency's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to fund demonstrations of vehicles capable of carrying crews to the international space station, a proposal Obama supported during his campaign. NASA is not asked what it could save by canceling COTS. Nor is NASA asked to contemplate canceling the space shuttle or space station programs, although the transition team does request the budget implications of flying the shuttle until 2015 and committing to U.S. utilization of the space station through 2020.

Posted 11/28/08 | 16:36:52 by TopSpacer | Filed under: Space Transport Policies

Comments

"the questionnaire requests that NASA "[e]stimate the feasibility of designing a RESIZED Orion capsule that could be launched by international launch vehicles such as the [European] ARIANE-5"

it remembers "something" to me...

Posted by The Truth at 11/28/08 16:48:02

It's really great to hear that they're at least curious about using EELVs to launch humans and accelerating COTS.

Posted by Neil H. at 11/28/08 18:24:45

Excellent news. Lets hope for answers that retain some semblance to truth.

Posted by kert at 11/29/08 06:37:16

The most interesting part of this is the last paragraph:

"Obama's NASA transition team also appears to be interested in a number of specific projects that have more or less languished in recent years. Among those projects are: the Deep Space Climate Observatory;, a mothballed Earth-observing satellite formerly known as Triana; agency efforts to catalog asteroids and comets that could threaten Earth; and the harnessing of space-based solar power for use on Earth."

I wonder if they are only playing with the idea, or if they are serious about SSP....

Posted by Ian at 11/29/08 08:38:58

"Excellent news. Lets hope for answers that retain some semblance to truth."

I agree.

For some of the questions, it would be good for them to also ask the relevant parties outside NASA to avoid any tilting in the answers and to get answers from those closest to the work in question.

In many cases, thorough independent second opinions would be good to eventually get, too, as NASA and other space organizations have a hard time giving accurate schedule/cost estimates.

It's good that they aren't taking requirements like the size of Orion (which I interpret as number of crew) for granted. A lot of the Ares problems started with requirements.

I wonder what kinds of answers they'd get if propellant depots were in the questions as alternatives to heavy lift?

It sure will be difficult to achieve the various goals in Obama's space policy in areas like Earth Observation, Aeronautics, education, and commercial space with today's budget and economic situation and Constellation on its current course.

Posted by red at 11/29/08 08:59:42

The fact that these questions are even being asked shows a far wider vision of possible American options for NASA & private space efforts than I'd expected. I'm much more optimistic that we can avoid the sinkhole of the 2 Ares launchers.
-Paradox

Posted by Paradox Olbers at 11/29/08 13:09:12

I hope the Transition team has considered
the tendency of NASA managers to outright
lie about basic facts.

I expect they will lowball the Ares 1 and 5 continuation
highball the cancellation costs and highball the
costs of resizing the Orion or even worse
lie about what it can do.

Posted by anonymous at 11/30/08 18:14:46

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