I did, however, catch a bit of commentary on the radio while running errands Friday afternoon. Not sure what show it was (didn’t recognize the host — name was something like “Joe Pax”), but I tuned in just in time to hear a rant about how the end of the Shuttle program without a replacement on hand was a national tragedy, and that it came about because Obama cancelled Bush’s space policy only because it was Bush’s space policy.

Let’s unpack that, shall we?

The “national tragedy” bit simply repeated the received (un)wisdom that the end of Shuttle = end of US manned space exploration. Not so — NASA civil servant astronauts will still be flying to the predominantly-US International Space Station for the foreseeable future, albeit via the Russian Soyuz. New domestically-built and -launched spacecraft are a couple years out, so yes, we won’t be able to send NASA astronauts up on American-made vehicles for a while, but that does not equate to the end of an American presence in space. This part, though, I can understand — if someone hasn’t been following post-Columbia space policy, it may seem as though we are simply shutting down the manned side of NASA and giving up on space.

The worse flaw in his argument is the assertion (very strongly and unambiguously made by the host) that Obama cancelled the policy because it was Bush’s. This is utter bullshit, which a few minutes of research would have revealed as such. The policy that Obama cancelled (in part) was Mike Griffin’s, not George W. Bush’s. (While it’s true that Griffin reported to Bush who was in turn ultimately responsible, Constellation was unquestionably Griffin’s ill-begotten baby.) Bush gave us the broad policy of the VSE, which was later hijacked at the implementation level by Mike Griffin for his own vanity projects — the crowning glory of which was his Ares I launcher.

Griffin’s Constellation architecture is what was largely cancelled in February 2010, and with good reason — it was ill-conceived, over-sold, over-budget, under-performing, and behind schedule (more on that last in a moment). Obama’s cancellation of Griffin’s program was arguably the only good thing the man has accomplished as President, and it was done not out of spite for his predecessor (which I admittedly wouldn’t put beyond him), but because of the aforementioned problems.

And this brings us to the “gap” in American manned access to space, which was the inspiration for the rant. Had it not been for Griffin’s Ares-based Constellation architecture and its follow-on effects on the design of Orion, Orion might well have been ready to fly by now, or at the least with a minimal “gap” between Shuttle flyout and Orion IOC. Constant redesigns of Ares I and trouble meeting its performance goals meant redesigns and ultimately the stripping down of Orion, which in turn led to schedule slips with the latter. Had Orion (whether in in the original lifting-body form or the Griffin-mandated capsule form) been directed to fly on an EELV — in-production rockets with known performance characteristics and much more benign flight environments — a good portion of its development schedule slip could have been avoided. Which means we would have had little if any “gap” to cause radio talk show hosts consternation, nor reason for said hosts to suspect partisan motivations behind a necessary shift in space policy.

To be fair, when I came back to the program about fifteen minutes later, the host was admitting (apparently at the prompting of a caller I had missed in the meantime) that the shift to a more commercial orientation for manned access to space was a welcome development. But rather than rethink his earlier foolishness, he stuck to his guns and (incredibly, for a supposedly right-wing, pro-business, free-markets type of host) expressed doubt that commercial providers could ever fill that role. Which is disappointing — if people who are supposed to favor private enterprise allow their “national greatness” emotional priorities take precedence over letting a new industry take root, who will defend the new industry against those who don’t favor private enterprise?

NASA’s Pad Abort 1 will be the first fully integrated flight test of the launch abort system being developed for the Orion crew vehicle. The test is part of an ongoing mission to develop safer vehicles for human spaceflight applications.

Hmm…then again, maybe it won’t be.

What a change ten months can make.

While last year, the dome tooling was still mostly in place (a few of the mechanical assembly pedestals had been pulled up), most of the mechanical assembly area and associated material cribs have been cleared out, leaving behind only the more complicated tools used for NC machining of the SRB fittings. Last year, there was still a pair of LOx tanks in post-proof inspection near the end of the production line, and an LH2 tank which had just had its forward dome (the last major segment) welded on. Today, all of the weld tools (domes, barrels, ogives, and major weld) had been mothballed and wrapped up, along with the large milling machines and lathes used to trim the various segments – it was like walking through a winter storage facility filled with shrink-wrapped boats.

What impressed me the most, however, was that for the first time in twelve-plus years, I saw areas of the factory with the lights turned off.

What this suggests is that there isn’t any hardware work going on to extend the Shuttle program beyond the number of tanks currently on-hand or in final assembly. If, as rumored, NASA is directed to extend the Shuttle program, they’d better start soon if they don’t want to end up with the long gap such an extension would be meant to avoid or minimize – due simply to the time lag in tank manufacturing.  And if what I was told about spares is true, it may only be possible to manufacture two additional tanks, assuming at that that everything would go perfectly and none of the spare components on order or in house have unrepairable defects or damage. With the one flightworthy tank I’m told will be left over at the end of the Shuttle program, that means an extension of at most three flights before the supply chain would need to be restarted — at considerable expense and delay.

I think Michael Mealing comes closest to my own attitude towards this development:

President Obama’s new policy for NASA is the most fiscally conservative and downright capitalist policy to come along since the agency was founded. 

And yes, it really boggles my mind that that should be the case. Obama? Capitalist? Who’da thunk? As one co-worker quipped today, Obama seems confused: he wants to nationalize a private industry in healthcare, but privatize the national program in manned space. One thing that has really surprised me today is how many of my friends have called or emailed me, expressing shock and disappointment that we are now “abandoning” space – unwittingly accepting the premise that a government program is our only possible means of getting people there. The perception that government is the sole entity capable of conducting manned spaceflight is so ingrained and unquestioned that it doesn’t seem to occur to even those who claim to be capitalists to question it.

But of course, I have to temper my surprise and excitement at this prospect, much as I did regarding the newfound enthusiasm for nuclear power Mr. Obama expressed in his SOTU last week. There’s going to be a lot of haggling to get the Congressional NASA caucus on board with this (although one Senator who could have been expected to be among the biggest roadblocks seems to be climbing on board – however reluctantly). It’s going to take some time, and who knows, just as ESAS made a dog’s breakfast of the VSE, so too could Congressional compromises and NASA resistance turn the promise of this new policy direction into yet another dead end.

As with the big healthcare speech back in September (the occasion of the NPR incident), my commentary was delivered in the more transitory medium of live heckling of the teevee screen. This time around there wasn’t a neighboring table of kool-aid-guzzling Obama worshippers hissing and whining back at me, unfortunately, which took a bit of the fun out of it.

Apart from Fox’s amusing Drudge-like juxtapositions of lines from the speech with camera shots of topically-relevant politicians, there was only one thing that I liked about this SOTU: Mr. Obama’s promise to push for next-generation nuclear power in the U.S.. Of course, just like his promises to freeze (parts of) federal spending, expand government transparency, and usher in a new bipartisan civility, I realize that we are as likely to see any action on that promise as we are to see the National Mall host unicorn chariot races.

The rest of the speech was a nauseating stew of all-things-to-all-people statism and incongruous attempts to steal the fiscal responsibility and small government themes the Republicans are gearing up to campaign on in the fall, seasoned with the usual Democrat pathos and anger and garnished liberally with Mr. Obama’s trademark nose-high smugness. Noticeably absent yet again was any mention of NASA or space policy in general. “So what’s new?”, one might ask. Amid all the yammering about green energy trendy greenwashing scams and investment in taxpayer subsidization of (politcally sexy) science and technology, it’s still a little surprising that federal space policy didn’t merit a mention this time around, especially if the rumors are true that a change in that policy towards more climate monitoring (green!) and commercial services (jobs!) is imminent.

So far nothing official, although his subsequent Kremlin-watching post suggests the Congressional supporters of the Stick are getting out the paddles and adrenaline for heroic measures.

Reports suggest that the new NASA budget could cancel elements of Constellation and replace the ISS crew ferry missions with commercial vehicles, accelerated to flight by government funding.  Which is excellent news, overall, though it could make things very interesting on the job front in the near future should Orion be one of those elements.

While I’d much rather see commercial space services develop organically, to the extent that the new policy resembles the “Air Mail” scenario promoted by many commercial space advocates it’s at least a sizeable improvement over the NASA-centric program of record.

I can’t say that I’m thrilled at the possibility of handing off Altair and the hypothetical lunar base to international partners, given the distortions that imposed on the ISS (e.g.: the higher-inclination orbit that allowed Soyuz to reach ISS from Kazakhstan). Nor am I especially enthusiastic about the possibility of accelerating the development of the unneeded Ares V, but I do recognize that it would be a political necessity to appease Sen. Shelby (R-Huntsville Makework Jobs) should Ares I actually get the long-overdue and well-deserved axe. Nor am I thrilled that NASA may be given $1-4B more, given the waste that has already plagued Constellation (Ares-1X, MLAS, and Ares I design mitigations, for example).

The potential stocking stuffers in this story, though, are the appearance that commercial cargo to ISS is finally being taken seriously as a part of NASA’s operations, and (personally, since I work on Orion) the possibility that Orion could switch to riding an EELV as it should have from the beginning. If true, the former will be a big boost to a true commercial space transportation industry, and the latter will make our design job on Orion a heck of a lot easier through more benign launch and abort environments and mass margins (not to mention the stack won’t look like a corndog any more — that’s just embarrassing).  While the rumored policy update does nothing to address what I consider to be the root problem — NASA shouldn’t be doing this stuff in the first place, but rather (if anything at all) encouraging through tech transfer and incentives the growth of robust private sector space industries — it would at least be a step towards a somewhat more sensible way of doing what the agency has been tasked with doing.

Nonetheless, I see another LAS architecture trade study in our future…

Can’t find any other information or pictures/video just yet, though.

UPDATE 6/29: evidently it didn’t launch – the twitter feed was for another launch that day, and only appeared to reference MLAS. The launch was delayed again, and according to the Wallops Web Calendar is now scheduled for July 8.