posted 05-25-2011 02:07 AM               

The response to Kennedy's bold challenge a half-century ago has led to America's unchallenged leadership in space. We take enormous pride in all that has been accomplished in the past 50 years. And we have the people, the skills and the wherewithal to continue to excel and reach challenging goals in space exploration.

But today, America's leadership in space is slipping. NASA's human spaceflight program is in substantial disarray with no clear-cut mission in the offing. We will have no rockets to carry humans to low-Earth orbit and beyond for an indeterminate number of years. Congress has mandated the development of rocket launchers and spacecraft to explore the near-solar system beyond Earth orbit. But NASA has not yet announced a convincing strategy for their use. After a half-century of remarkable progress, a coherent plan for maintaining America's leadership in space exploration is no longer apparent...

posted 05-25-2011 05:25 AM               

Is Obama grounding JFK's space legacy?

posted 05-25-2011 12:44 PM               

Too bad there's not going to be a live webcast of the talk.

posted 05-25-2011 05:45 PM               

For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last.

posted 05-26-2011 05:50 AM            

Sadly, these Apollo legends come across as bitter old men than anything else. I'm especially disappointed by Mr. Armstrong, knowing that he had the best part of 42 years to lobby key lawmakers and shape NASA human spaceflight.

posted 05-26-2011 06:51 AM               

What Armstrong, Lovell, and Cernan miss in their op-ed is the current muddled situation regarding human spaceflight is not itself the problem, but instead a symptom of a deeper issue: space simply doesn't have the same priority as it did 50 years ago, when it served as a proxy battlefield for the Cold War.

It's easy to "support" a program by passing authorization legislation that provides policy direction but doesn't include funding; backing up that policy with the funding needed to implement has been much more difficult, as recent years have demonstrated.

Moreover, it's not likely to get any easier in the years to come as members of Congress seek to cut federal spending.

The challenge today is either to come up with a new compelling rationale for human spaceflight that makes it a higher priority and thus wins support for additional funding, or to find new ways to make do with less.

posted 05-26-2011 09:01 AM               

Rare earth elements presents a case in point. China now produces over 95% of the worlds rare earth elements. They are cutting back on their exports by quite a bit with exports in 2011 in the 12,00 ton range down from 35,000 tons a few years earlier. In addition in a few years supply needs will exceed production by some 40,000 tons.

While the US, Canada and other other countries do have deposits, they are expensive to develop(ones from Mars, if there are any, I imagine even more so). More problematic on Earth are the environmental consequences. Rare earths are usually found with some radioactive materials so managing the mines and their wastes presents a problem.

Of course there maybe no rare earth elements on Mars or asteroids, but we have to get there to find out.

posted 05-26-2011 02:38 PM               

Obama's transition team read the paper, they even thanked us before they made their decision to end Constellation.

Commercial spaceflight is a myth. The government is paying either way. Most of the commercial guys don't know, what they don't know yet. I hope Dragon works, because we are putting all our eggs in one basket (sure, Boeing and Lockheed are looking at some type of system, but they want Federal money now).

The biggest line out of the Op-Ed piece to me was the reduction in NASA's budget in the new fiscal year. That is what is really happening. We are defunding spaceflight. At least, until the Russians make it very painful to hitch a ride on a Soyuz. Then do we go back to launching humans or drop spaceflight all together?

posted 05-26-2011 04:32 PM               

We often complain that the Apollo astronauts have not done enough to "push" for manned space exploration. What do we want them to do? These guys served their country well. They performed their missions and now they are retired. They don't owe anyone anything. We as a society should be inspired enough by their flights to want to build upon their success alone.

Apollo was canceled early because the White House and Congress felt the race had been won, the mission accomplished and wanted to refocus the money elsewhere. They were also becoming risk-adverse that a tragic accident could happen. The public was bored with moon walks. The public called their local TV stations when moon walks pre-empted their favorite TV shows. That apathy made it politically acceptable to cut the program short.

NASA is often crticized that they don't spend enough time and resources telling the world how much their work benefits society. That's just wrong. All the information you could possibly want is available online or at Teacher Resource Centers. The problem is that that type of informaton is not always "sexy".

We live in a world where more people vote for their favorite singer than the President of the United States. Where a handful of twenty-somethings living together is must-see TV. Until we get our collective heads out of our backsides and re-prioritze what we care about, things will not change.

posted 05-27-2011 01:04 PM               

Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan are genuine American heroes who brought immense courage and competence to the historic manned moon missions they led. Obviously, they are more than entitled to their opinions about the best way forward for America's space program today.

But their opinions would be more worthy of attention if they were based on a more accurate understanding of where we are, how we got here, and how President Obama's space policy, far from "grounding" JFK's space legacy, is positioning us to revitalize it with new technology, new capabilities and new destinations...

posted 05-27-2011 01:24 PM               

...developing and using new technologies to send astronauts to an asteroid for the first time, and then moving onward to Mars — rather than spending the bulk of our limited resources to return astronauts to the moon 50 or 60 years after we did that the first time.

posted 05-27-2011 01:41 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by SpaceAholic:
Pretty pathetic response.

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You want to return to the moon, fine, that's admirable. But just because others want to see a return to basic R&D, or want to embrace burgeoning commercial efforts or want to push directly to Mars or go to an asteroid doesn't make their view any more or less pathentic than your own.

I'm sorry, but this wholesale discounting of the opposite point of view does more harm than good.

quote:

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Originally posted by fredtrav:
I am disappointed in Charles Bolden parroting this line. I understand he wants to keep his job, but I did expect better.

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posted 05-27-2011 02:33 PM               

Robert, as far as complaining to hear one complain, I do not agree. If people do not complain, then the current state of affairs will not improve and will only get worse in the future. Besides making ones views known here, everyone should be writing their congressmen and senators. I have.

posted 05-27-2011 03:04 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by fredtrav:
If people do not complain, then the current state of affairs will not improve and will only get worse in the future.

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posted 05-27-2011 03:55 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by fredtrav:
Obama has been eviscerating NASA.

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quote:

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Constellation was a program that had been approved by a Republican president.

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posted 05-27-2011 04:24 PM               

Get Harrison Schmitt back in as well.

posted 05-27-2011 07:33 PM               

There is nothing concrete in their statement. Just a lot of pap about "Tomorrowland" with no substance.

Not to be critical, but Issman, look at the balanced view. Armstrong, Cernan and Lovell served their country already and are voicing an opinion. As you have consistently voiced yours on this board. Don't be bitter when someone opposes your view. I assume that you have a very vested interest in commercial spaceflight. If you don't, then what drives you?

Now if you guys think Holderen is pro Space, then you don't know him. He is a avowed environmentalist, who announced in a speech to over 200 MIT aero/astro students that "the next big Apollo type project would be in energy and the environment." I was there, as was Neil Armstrong. Spaceflight is dead with this administration. Holderen is an MIT guy and we know him up here. He doesn't care about spaceflight. He is a Global Warming advocate.

Also, MB, Armstrong, Cernan and Lovell have been speaking out and testifying in Congress about maintaining human spaceflight for over two years now and all they have been told is that they are bitter, doddering old fools. To me that is like saying that the veterans of WW2 are wimps. Armstrong, Cernan and Lovell have been fighting the fight that we don't have the power to fight.

I might add that we should take a good look at HOW that heavy lift booster got into the Congressional budget.

Finally, I agree with Robert. Let's not bicker or criticize. Let's figure out what WE can do to further human spaceflight in America.

posted 05-27-2011 10:01 PM               

My issue is with their Opt Ed isn't their view but its timing; it should have been written prior to 2008, when the Constellation program was initiated and when proper budgetary support was needed. If Gene Cernan and Jim Lovell had raised their consternation then (along with many others who saw Constellation's budget and did not speak up) maybe we would not be in the mess that we are in now.

What really upsets me is when Administrator Bolden has to sit in these Congressional hearings and has to put up with listening to Senator Shelby, Senator Nelson and other congressional representatives berating the president's cancellation of the Constellation Program, while totally ignoring their complicity in its demise by not providing proper funding. I so wish that Bolden or some future administrator would call Congress to the carpet on this.

posted 05-28-2011 01:10 AM               

But their opinions would be more worthy of attention if they were based on a more accurate understanding of where we are, how we got here, and how President Obama's space policy, far from "grounding" JFK's space legacy, is positioning us to revitalize it with new technology, new capabilities and new destinations...

posted 05-28-2011 03:30 AM            

Isn't the Obama administration entitled to respond (no matter how it's interpreted)?

...what drives you?

I may have spoken in favour of commercial spaceflight, but have no vested interest. More than that I want humans to populate space en masse. Right now the US commercial sector offers more hope of that than anything NASA, ESA or Roscosmos will do.

posted 05-28-2011 06:41 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by issman1:
Right now the US commercial sector offers more hope of that than anything NASA, ESA or Roscosmos will do...

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Point 1: Larry, I agree and concur with your points completely.

Point 2: Issman, please help me to understand how the US commercial sector offers "more hope" than anyone else, absent NASA and other federal funding? If the US gov't announced today that the commercial sector now "has the ball" on spaceflight, so NASA will return to pure research... will the commercial sector still offer more hope?

At this point, the commercial sector is almost totally reliant upon federal funding for the development of future systems. Left to their own devices, the list of commercial space providers -- particularly those offering "hope" of manned systems -- would shrink quite noticeably.

Point 3: Cernan, Lovell, Armstrong, and other Apollo astronauts who speak out are able to influence the process mush more than any individual citizen, and the majority of their impact is unseen by the general public because they have access. They can contact individual members of Congress and actually receive a call back. They can meet with the President. They can call Charlie Bolden, and he will listen (whether he agrees or not). I believe these gentlemen are doing all they can to make a difference, but quite frankly the current administration is not at all receptive to what they are selling.

posted 05-28-2011 07:10 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by capoetc:
help me to understand how the US commercial sector offers "more hope" than anyone else, absent NASA and other federal funding?

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The next 50 years has to be different. One must look back at history in how the US and other national governments seeded entrepreneurial air and rail travel to get a sense how greater access can be provided for public space travel. Otherwise, let's leave things as they are and get nowhere.

quote:

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astronauts who speak out are able to influence the process

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posted 05-28-2011 07:33 AM              

quote:

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Originally posted by Larry McGlynn:
He doesn't care about spaceflight. He is a Global Warming advocate.

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Your use of the qualifier "avowed" is an unfortunate attempt to make the term "environmentalist" into a perjorative, as though having pro-environment views is somehow undesirable. If a desire for clean air, water, and food along with healthy, functioning ecosystems that underpin all human prosperity is incompatible with human spaceflight, then that is a case that you certainly have not made, and I wish you the best of luck in attempting to do so.

As for Holdren not caring about human spaceflight, I do not know the man, and that is entirely possible. But the history of Presidential Science Advisors holding such a view is a long one dating back to Eisenhower and Kennedy, and so an assertion that such institutional position is policy-dispositive one way or another is, again, a difficult case to argue.

Please correct me if my reading of your comment is wrong, but it certainly seems to me that "bickering and finger-pointing" is exactly what was contained therein. I suggest to you that rather than this kind of unproductive mode of thinking, it would be far more valuable to investigate why public support for spaceflight has waned, and how to make a more compelling case for broader support given other, more immediately relevant priorities of most people - whether one agrees with those priorities or not.

posted 05-28-2011 08:09 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by arjuna:
As for Holdren not caring about human spaceflight, I do not know the man, and that is entirely possible.

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posted 05-28-2011 06:40 PM              

quote:

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Originally posted by SpaceAholic:
I would also add that supporting a clean environment and subscribing to the Environmentalist Movement are not the same thing as the later has been co-opted to support objectives beyond the former.

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posted 05-28-2011 10:18 PM               

Now that I have said that, I can also say that I have seen Holdren in action. The demoralizing effect that he had on a whole graduate class of motivated MIT aeronautical engineering students was devastating.

The last argument on environment is an emotional one. Emotions won't help human spaceflight now.

As you pointed out, Science Advisors have not been friendly to human spaceflight. Jerome Wiesner, President Kennedy's Science Advisor argued against human spaceflight. I might also add that Dr. Wiesner was the president of MIT also.

Also, if you had studied the sociological aspect of spaceflight, then you would also understand that the public (as well as scientists) were never really interested in spaceflight, even in the 1960's. We, my friends, are the minority. Always have been.

And to people who pointed out that Cernan, Armstrong and Lovell should have been arguing about underfunding NASA, understand that underfunding has been NASA's way of life since the late 1960's.

Also, the White House and the OMB set the annual budget and not Congress. Presidents have cut the budget since Johnson. So don't be too hard on the Apollo astronauts who speak out at the further reduction of the NASA budget.

As for commercial spaceflight, one hopes that one of them is successful.

Rail and air travel of the 19th and 20th of Century are not comparable to spaceflight. There is no easy destination for colonists or commercial ventures to move to. You must look at how mankind manages operations in Antarctica to understand living and operating in the hostile space.

Talk about space, but don't denigrate guys who have been there and have an opinion.

posted 05-29-2011 04:30 AM            

No-one is comparing human spaceflight with air or rail travel. But in the early days of aviation and the railways there was government assistance in the form of seed money. That's essentially what NASA is doing today.

When stating my wish for humans to "populate space" (on here and other cS discussions), I allude to the establishment of accessible habitats in near Earth space including the Moon. I'm happy for government astronauts to explore the solar system, which is a clear-cut difference from what the legends are suggesting. They don't even want commercial entities involved in ISS.

posted 05-29-2011 07:40 AM               

This administration has just recently decided to go in another direction.

posted 05-29-2011 04:03 PM               

Sure, let commercial space companies populate LEO. Let NASA continue exploration. That is not what the current administration has done. They wanted to completely cancel Constellation.

That big booster wasn't added by NASA. It was added by Congress. NASA may want to take the credit for the Big Booster, but Congress added that to the NASA budget and made it law.

Now, I am not a huge fan of the big booster, because we can rendezvous in space. Rendezvous was something NASA was not sure of in the 1950's, when the Saturn series of rockets were being designed. Smaller ELVs can be used by NASA and the military which does lower production costs. We can rendezvous and there are still problems to be resolved with multiple launches and rendezvous, but they can be solved.

The ISS mandate was a "throw in." It took so long to build the ISS and it would be abandoned by the US in 2015. The other investing countries were a little upset. In fact, a MIT graduate from Japan with the JAXA's support was exploring how to keep the ISS going once America dropped out of the station.

You don't know how close we were to completely being shut down in manned spaceflight.

In fact, Steve Pace said this morning on CBS that we still could see the end of US human spaceflight.

We are lucky these guys are speaking out. Let's not beat the messengers.

Anyway, you guys keep fighting or human spaceflight will come to an end for this country.

posted 05-30-2011 12:28 AM              

I suppose my perspective is shaped by the observation that we are increasingly a society incapable of having a rational debate because we tend to ascribe bad faith motivations to those with whom we have policy disagreements. Talk radio and cable news are good examples of how pervasive this has become, and that we're all (I include myself as well) susceptible to its perniciousness. I like to believe - perhaps naively - that spaceflight has the potential to bring out the best in people, so I tend to bristle when I think I see ideological pigeonholing. So to put a nail in this: present company excluded.

As you point out, space advocates are a minority constituency in a world of increasingly competitive and contentious policy and budget priorities. I think this calls for alliances across the conventional political spectrum - and this strategy will obviously be facilitated by respecting those tactical allies' opposing views on other issues.

In plain English, we should all try to stop seeing those who may have different opinions on particular non-space issues as opponents, but rather as potential allies that we just haven't yet been able to convince.

posted 05-30-2011 07:19 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by arjuna:
In plain English, we should all try to stop seeing those who may have different opinions on particular non-space issues as opponents, but rather as potential allies that we just haven't yet been able to convince.

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posted 05-30-2011 09:05 AM               

We have done that to some degree already; the U.S. has raised the profile of European, Canadian and Japanese space efforts beyond what they could do themselves. There's a reason why the partners in the International Space Station all acknowledge the U.S. as their leader, and it is not just about money but how we've brought them into the program as equals.

posted 05-30-2011 05:24 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Blackarrow:
I must point out that it was the Soviet Union which "led the world into space"

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But yes, of course, the Soviet Union was first into space and the first to fly international passengers. Though again, one might question if the motives of the USSR were to create other leaders or instead to further grow its followers...

quote:

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Is anyone pushing for this? If not, why not?

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