RIP NASA Manned Space

[unixronin]

On the seventh anniversary of the fall of Columbia, President Obama has just de-facto killed NASA Manned Space.

I have no words.

Wait, yes, I do.

"Burn in hell."

---

UPDATE:

I note that Bill Gawne (wcg) linked to an article er, quoted a NASA release pointing out that although the entire Constellation program is being axed and there is no other NASA manned booster presently left in line to replace the Shuttle, the shuttle is going to fly out its final five planned missions, and NASA plans to develop a future launch program more capable than Constellation (and hopefully with less reliance on the Morton-Thiokol solid boosters).  So the picture is not as black as the news reports first made it appear.  It's not the end-of-NASA-manned-space that the news reports made it out to be.  (I won't speculate on the reasons, but it's entirely possible they simply didn't understand.)

It is still almost the most callously insensitive timing possible.  To make the announcement now is, IMHO, a slap in the face to everyone who picked up after Columbia and said "We can go on, we can overcome this and do better."

Comments

[ithildae]

I did note the date. I am not surprised. President Obama has far too many spending priorities that have nothing to do with science or learning. I have no adequate words to express my disappointment. I want to be a citizen of a nation with Vision and a sense of excitement for the future, and what we can learn there. This takes a great deal of that away from that, for me.

[ganainm]

Come on, you should know better than to draw any conclusions from anything Fox News says. Yes, the timing was insensitive (assuming Fox got the date right!). But Fox's story says nothing about what NASA will be funding: unmanned missions that will return as much data for far less money than manned flights, which gets more sensible all the time with our progress in robotics. Sometimes (as with the Hubble telescope) you really need a couple of guys with tools, but most of the time you don't -- witness the Mars rovers.

I think in another hundred years people will wonder at our penchant for sending flesh and blood into lethal environments to do things that silicon and titanium could do as well for a tenth the cost and with none of the danger. Robots will be mining asteroids, terraforming Mars, and setting up factories on the moons of Jupiter, and we'll be kicking back with cold ones on the beaches of this sweetest of all planets. Those who crave danger and discomfort will still have Everest and Antarctica, or the Moon for the really hard-core.

[dr-nebula.livejournal.com]

Bastard. I'm with you - 'burn in hell'.

[fatcook.livejournal.com]

WFT?
No words can cover this, none at all.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Constellation is being killed.

The Augustine Commission report (http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/396093main_HSF_Cmte_FinalReport.pdf) states that Constellation will suffer delays that make it unsuitable for supporting the International Space Station, and the same task can be done more cheaply and on a similar timetable in the private sector.

Do you disagree?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that so far, the only existing private-sector booster with any pretensions at all to heavy lift is SpaceX's Falcon. It's starting to become more reliable, but if I recall correctly, hasn't enough delta-V to reach the ISS.

I will note that Bill Gawne (wcg) linked to an article pointing out that although the entire Constellation program is being axed and there is nothing left in line to replace the Shuttle, the shuttle is going to fly out its final five planned missions, and NASA plans to develop a future launch program more capable than Constellation (and hopefully with less reliance on the Morton-Thiokol solid boosters). So the picture is not as black as the news reports first made it appear.

[lonewolf545.livejournal.com]

Except that who really thinks NASA will have any more success with another line of boosters than they've had with ARES? A LOT of institutional knowledge was being relearned through ARES, will those engineers necessarily stick around with Constellation being canceled, in the hopes they'll get picked up for the next series of boosters?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That's the downside. Then again, if they move on to private-sector space companies, that could be good too.

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

Which is why I personally see this whole deal as an upside. I'm not fond of NASA, and if the whole organization were abolished tomorrow I wouldn't shed even a small tear.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Ars has a nice summary (http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/02/nasa-reboots-focuses-on-cheaper-sustainable-exploration.ars).

[selfishgene.livejournal.com]

'and do better' - NASA can't do better. It is a government agency with vast overhead. Anything they do takes more than 10 times longer than skunkworks used to take. In spite of vastly better facilities than were available in the 1950s. I think shutting down NASA would actually be the quickest way to space.
All these management factors, from the managers themselves to process to history to culture could better be called the corporate DNA ... I would bet you any amount of money I could get to the GAP faster starting from scratch than starting from Walmart ... Corporate DNA acts as a value multiplier. The best corporate DNA has a multiplier greater than one, meaning that it increases the value of the people and physical assets in the corporation. (http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/12/why_its_ok_if_g.html)

[wyrdling.livejournal.com]

the shuttle program needs to go. kaput. we can do better. and, i'll have to say, nasa's shuttle program is, sadly, old, rarely updated, poorly patched, not-tested-well-enough bloatware.
if nothing else, we can do our best to try to make sure no one else gets smeared into the stratosphere in those things.

i strongly hope they do follow through on continuing to push to space. i can't argue with the idea that it should be done a bit more efficiently, though.