Today’s selection of space policy/politics related links
- Bolden, Stakeholders Pleased with How NASA Fares in 2014 Omnibus Spending Bill – SpaceNews.com
- Spending bill holds ‘a big win’ for NASA projects – Florida Today
- DARPA Chief Says Space Programs Are Too Slow and Costly – SpaceNews.com
- Interview with Andrew Nelson of XCOR – Space Trade Magazine – mostly about spaceflight regulations
- Coincidence or counteroffensive? NASA broadens Space Launch System defense (video) – Huntsville Times
- So NASA is now trying to sell the space science community on the marvelous notion that the SLS can carry giant space science spacecraft.”With SLS, you can design a spacecraft even larger than the space shuttle that carried Hubble. It’s going to open up an entirely new way of thinking about how we plan and design planetary science missions.”Where the money to pay for such giant missions and for the giant cost of launching them on the SLS launches is not explained. Such an entirely new way of thinking has a name – Insanity.
- Manned Mission to Mars By 2030s Is Really Possible, Experts Say – Space.com
Update:
The NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel once again shows that it judges the safety of a human spaceflight development program according to the degree that it looks like previous such programs at NASA. If it is not a top-down agency managed program with cost-plus subcontracting and ever escalating costs, then it simply must be less safe.
ASAP cannot, of course, specify any actual technical shortcomings in the commercial systems being developed. It can only point to superficial differences in the way the commercial crew program is configured and the fact that its costs are low.
I see nothing in the report about the fact that the rockets used for the commercial crew spacecraft will have flown many times unmanned prior to crew flights and will continue to fly unmanned payloads in parallel with the crew program. ASAP had shown no reluctance to have NASA astronauts fly on an Ares I after just one test flight and they appear to have no qualms in crew flights on the SLS/Orion after just one test flight. Apparently, real world flight hardware experience is trivial to ASAP compared to stacks of paper studies and proper FAR procurement procedures.
- 2013 Annual Report – NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (pdf)
- NASA Panel Issues Warning on ‘Space Taxis’: Advisory Committee Says Funding Shortfalls Threaten Safety of Planned Commercial Craft – WSJ.com
More policy links:
- The Commercial Spaceflight Federation Applauds Passage of Bill Providing Funding for Commercial Programs and Renewal of Government Risk-Sharing – CSF
- NASA Budget: Flat is the New Up – Parabolic Arc
Update 2:
- Government should butt out of space race: The private sector is getting us to the moon faster and for a cheaper price. – Rand Simberg/USA Today
- Congress to NASA: Don’t You Dare Steal Money Away from Planetary Science Again -The Planetary Society
- NASA to GAO on protest over $2B SAIC contract: You got it wrong – Washington Business Journal
**************************