SpaceX's Dragon capsule captured by ISS

[GIThruster]

Well Tom, we seem to agree on a lot more than you imply. I didn't say I thought Bush had done any better in supplying vision. It was after all Bush and Griffin that cut funding for advanced propulsion research which is my real passion. I was responding to the statement about Obama's vision, and trying not to gag. I agree, there has been a distinct lack of vision all around but I would note some exceptions.

Although Gore is not one of my favorite people, I appreciate what he tried to do with X-33 and Venturestar. Had mid-level NASA management not been so mistaken about so many things, that idea could have worked. They could have started with a team that actually knew something about building composite structures, and they would have known from the start they couldn't have the concave surfaces in the tank that caused the seams. Burt Rutan would never have made those mistakes. They could have tried to save money and used SSME's instead of trying to develop the aerospike, or the people working on the aerospike could have come forward much earlier and said they need this enormous heat sink and can't make their weight budget. They could have provided better systems engineering and headed off these troubles a couple billion dollars early and we might be flying Venturestar today. So I can't say NASA and the White House have been devoid of vision since the 60's. There have been exceptions.

Shuttle, no matter it's faults, was the product of real vision. the first reusable spacecaraft, with all it's flaws had the utility of putting crew and cargo together, and it had a toilet. One could write pages about what a huge step forward Shuttle was despite it's flaws. The official decision to pursue Shuttle came from the White House in 1969 and was primarily the project of Vice President Agnew.

Spacelab was inspired. I don't recall if it was Nixon, Agnew or Ford who decided to collaborate with ESA, but that decision certainly came from the White House.

ISS likewise was inspired. You can complain that this is not "exploration", but the lessons learned about long term physiological effects of micro-gravity, anti-radiation treatments, and other medical applications, international cooperation, and a host of other important issues were all important stepping stones we shouldn't take for granted.

It's also not true to say "no manager in NASA has experience making anything like Nautilus work". Fact is, Nautilus X is based on the same hardware as ISS. If there were a strong vision to routinely fly a TRITON powered Nautilus X all over our planetary system, NASA could get the job done, especially if they had the direction from POTUS to contract out all the parts. But yeah you're right, that won't happen because that doesn't line the pockets of the various senators' constituents.

And it's important to note, none of this stuff remotely resembles Apollo, and as most at NASA these last ten years claim there is no one at NASA who understands any of the old Apollo gear, not a single one who could build an F1 engine, it's pretty hard to see why you want to blame some sort of "Apollo Culture". As you seem to have an inside view of this I'd certainly like to know more what you mean.

There is plenty of blame to go around, but my point was only that Obama is NOT providing vision, and he's not. Comments here about "Obama's vision" are completely misguided.

I don't know anything about your group in Portland, I will just tell you that no one I know in the aerospace business thinks NASA is where the future is. You're saying at the beginning of your post that no one agrees with this, but then go on to post primarily agreements with this. So I'll just say it again. Everyone I know has their expectations for the future based not on NASA, but on private industry like SpaceX, Bigelow, Virgin Galactic, Planetary Resources, and yes even the good old boys at N-G, L-M, Boeing, etc. NASA, is building the SLS, which we do not need and cannot afford. So just in what sense can you call them relevant? In what sense is NASA other than dead? Doesn't it concern you that a year after we have our next President, next year or 5 years from now, SLS will be scrapped and we'll start all over again. If that takes 5 years, Atlas will be man rated and there will be no reason whatsoever to build SLS.

I'm just being honest to note that if Obama were the man of vision he and his supporters pretend, we would have a relevant human spaceflight program, and we do not. NASA has lost its way. By final way of illustration I'll note to you, that several different groups have continued to solve the problems all those years ago on X-33, and if NASA were to try to build it today with SSME's, they could likely do this for less than SLS, and run it much more cheaply. And then of course since we have Falcon, and Atlas, we could instead of building another launch vehicle, build the TRITON and go to Saturn.

So lets be honest, is it fair to say Obama has vision, or NASA is relevant?

[GIThruster]

NASA is lost at sea, and the burden of leadership is squarely on the Chief Executive--Barack Obama.

That is BS.
Commercial crew is a huge success. Pretty much everything else that NASA has money enough to do is also a huge success.

Yeah, but CCDev is the follow on of COTS, and that all started before Obama came to office. It's not his vision. It was already upright and a part of the NASA culture back when Obama was promising during the Democratic primaries to cut NASA's budget by $5B.

And personally, though I expect this will be a very unpopular opinion, I have to object that expensive programs like James Webb are a success. It was a bad idea right from the start, to plan to launch a telescope to a Lagrange Point where it cannot be serviced. One of the reasons JWST is so over budget is that they are trying to design it so that it cannot fail. IMHO, this defies common sense. Didn't we learn anything from Hubble? Of course telescopes can fail. Common sense dictates you first build the transportation infrastructure to go to L2, before you launch multi-billion dollar instruments there. I don't see how anyone could consider JWST a success.

[Skipjack]

I appreciate what he tried to do with X-33 and Venturestar. Had mid-level NASA management not been so mistaken about so many things, that idea could have worked. They could have started with a team that actually knew something about building composite structures, and they would have known from the start they couldn't have the concave surfaces in the tank that caused the seams. Burt Rutan would never have made those mistakes. They could have tried to save money and used SSME's instead of trying to develop the aerospike, or the people working on the aerospike could have come forward much earlier and said they need this enormous heat sink and can't make their weight budget. They could have provided better systems engineering and headed off these troubles a couple billion dollars early and we might be flying Venturestar today. So I can't say NASA and the White House have been devoid of vision since the 60's. There have been exceptions.

No the X-33/Venturestar was a bad idea from the start. Another example where NASA and space politics failed at the fundamental level.
1. Like the shuttle, the Venture Star was a failed design based on (politically motivated) completely idiotic requirements on a single vehicle. It made many of the same mistakes. Like trying to have one vehicle doing it all. It once again had to have a huge crossrange. It had to be heavy lifter and it had to transport crew. Idiotic!
2. NASA chose the Lockmart design because it was the technically most ambitious. Facepalm.
3. It was once again a mega project with multibillion cost plus contracts going to a single supplier.
4. The X-33 was only the suborbital prototype and it was already hundreds of millions over budget at the time it was canceled.
5. The Venture Star based on the X33 was completely out of hand anyway. They could not get the weight under control and the lifting body design sucked so they made the wings bigger and bigger with every design iteration (since they also HAD to have the crossrange for some insane reason). That added even more weight and in the end the payload module had to be in a pod that would piggiback on the actual vehicle. It was a complete mess and the much less powerful SSMEs would have made things even worse.
6. They should have still tried to finish it using the aluminium tank that they already had. So they would at least be able to do some testflights with that thing to learn something from it. I

I would have much rather see them continue the DC-X/DC-Y/Deltaclipper project. But NASA decided to cancel it (after being chronically underfunded for years) in favor of the much more ambitious X-33, which cost orders of magnitude more and never flew.
Typical Apollo- style mega project thinking by NASA. When they cancelled the X-33, I finally realized what was wrong with that organization. GiT has not learned it until this day...

with all it's flaws had the utility of putting crew and cargo together

Idiotic! One of the major design flaws that made the shuttle the crappy monster that it was. You would not transport people with a 18 wheeler, would you?
There is a reason why we separate the transport of people and cargo almost everywhere else.

and it had a toilet.

So did Apollo.

Nautilus X is based on the same hardware as ISS.

With the addition of inflatable modules like Bigelow uses (based on NASA development).

There is plenty of blame to go around, but my point was only that Obama is NOT providing vision, and he's not. Comments here about "Obama's vision" are completely misguided.

People like you dont accept something as vision unless it involves an Apollo size mega billion USD project.

Everyone I know has their expectations for the future based not on NASA,

The future of what? Space transport? Why does this have to be NASAs job? Besides SpaceX and co highly depend on the administrations vision, which involves employing and paying these companies to develop new spacecraft and launchers.

NASA, is building the SLS, which we do not need and cannot afford. So just in what sense can you call them relevant? In what sense is NASA other than dead?

You do understand that NASA is more than just about transporting humans into space, right? Personally I think that this is absolutely NOT the job that NASA should be doing. NASA should be doing research and development of new technologies that can then be licensed by industry to build launchers and spacecraft that NASA can buy off the shelf for much less. This also means competition and redudancy.
Either way, NASA should be doing research and development, not space launch. They have demonstrated over 30 years that they are best not in the launcher business...

I'm just being honest to note that if Obama were the man of vision he and his supporters pretend, we would have a relevant human spaceflight program, and we do not

Again, NASA is not just about human spaceflight and it does have a human spaceflight program through CCDev, a better one than they have ever had and one that - after 40 years of one failure after the other- will finally take off too...

I'll note to you, that several different groups have continued to solve the problems all those years ago on X-33, and if NASA were to try to build it today with SSME's, they could likely do this for less than SLS, and run it much more cheaply.

It would not work. The SSLMEs are not strong enough. They are too high maintenance too. An engine that has to be taken apart and reassembled between flights is not a good basis for an RLV!
Plus the X-33 was only suborbital. The Venture Star was to be orbital and that was not even close to anything... see above...

Yeah, but CCDev is the follow on of COTS, and that all started before Obama came to office.

That would have been COTS-D which was never funded and also would have had less competitors and less funding.
CCDev is much bigger and much more targetted than COTS-D would have been.

It was already upright and a part of the NASA culture back when Obama was promising during the Democratic primaries to cut NASA's budget by $5B.

IIRC, he never said such thing. He wanted to delay Constellation by 5 years. IIRC, Constellation which was already billions over budget by then and would have needed a huge increase in NASA funding to be completed on schedule was also meant to get a budget increase in the following years to prepare for BEO missions. IIRC, he always had planned to use commercial providers to close the resulting gap.
So it was not about cutting funding for NASA, but reducing the scheduled funding for Constellation, which quite frankly was as good as dead already anyway (and never a good idea to begin with).

[GIThruster]

Sorry I didn't read much of your post. It was bad enough to have you demonstrate your ignorance with calling X-33 "idiotic" for putting crew and cargo together when X-33 and Venturestar were both designed to be unmanned. Crazy to read that X-33 had wings. It was the worst to have you post that Apollo had a toilet. I couldn't get past that. You're obviously posting up these strong opines based primarily on ignorance and I can't see reading through them. I will just note that in all history, putting crew and cargo together has made complete sense as this greatly reduces logistical support requirements, and 18 wheelers do indeed have crew.

[Skipjack]

It was bad enough to have you demonstrate your ignorance with calling X-33 idiotic for putting crew and cargo together when X-33 and Venturestar were both unmanned and never planned to be man rated.

The X-33 was meant to be unmanned. The Venture Star was meant to have a crew module. It is you, who is ignorant!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_Star

it was expected to optionally carry passengers as cargo.

It was the worst to have you post that Apollo had a toilet.

Ok, calling the Apollo waste management system a toilet was probably a stretch. It was an early attempt at something like that. It was certainly not a real toilet like you find on the spaceshuttle.
So yeah the space shuttle had a real toilet versus the thing that Apollo had. What a great achievement in human spaceflight. That sure made it all worht the billions of USD per flight cost and the low flightrate...

Crazy to read that X-33 had wings.

Venture star did and they got bigger with every design iteration. It became somewhat of an industry joke. I remember the entire alt space usenet group laughing (or complaining) about it.

[GIThruster]

Read your own link.

"While the requirement was for an unmanned launcher, it was expected to optionally carry passengers as cargo."

Hence--NO CREW.

A toilet is a big deal if you plan to be in space. Wear a diaper for a week and tell us you don't appreciate toilets. A truly spacefaring people do not wear diapers.

And just on a personal note, especially being a European, you ought to think twice about calling the shuttle "idiotic". With as many things one could complain about based on a desire for more efficiency, it was and is a source of national pride. When it was designed in the late 60's and 70's, the goal was to provide robust flight service aboard a real spaceship, complete with the ability for large groups to live and function in space for extended periods of time, and we flew them more than 100 missions.

What has Austria done in the last 45 years that you seem to think you can call such an accomplishment "idiotic"? Just because you don't understand and agree with the need for significant cross-range does not make the requirement "idiotic". There's apparently a great deal you don't understand, so best case scenario is you cease and desist offending Americans concerning OUR space program.

[Skipjack]

It started out as this:
http://www.starfiretor.com/PIX/6_FUTURE ... Martin.gif

Then went to this
http://i.space.com/images/i/9140/origin ... 1302606355

and ended as this:
http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/r ... age1.shtml

[Skipjack]

Ok, I guess that passengers are not "manned" and "manrated".
Whatever...

[Skipjack]

A toilet is a big deal if you plan to be in space. Wear a diaper for a week and tell us you don't appreciate toilets.

Apollo did not require astronauts to poop into diapers. It was almost as bad, but not quite.

the goal was to provide robust flight service aboard a real spaceship, complete with the ability for large groups to live and function in space for extended periods of time, and we flew them more than 100 missions.

It killed 14 people and it held the development back for decades. It was a failed design. It does not matter whether I am European or not, I can still call a failed design, a failed design, when I see it!

[Skipjack]

Just because you don't understand and agree with the need for significant cross-range does not make the requirement "idiotic".

Yes it does and everyone who has concerned himself with the problem of affordable spaceflight and RLVs will explain to you that this was one of the many idiotic requirements that made both the space shuttle and the X33 the crap they turned out to be. The shuttle had to do tooo many things at once and it ended up doing most of them badly... well apart from managing the shit of the astronauts appearently!

Oh and just to make it clear I am very aware of the reasons for the crossrange. I still think they were a stupid requirement for a first generation RLV (attempt at it anyway).

[GIThruster]

You sound like you're reading one disgruntled aerospace engineer over at NSF, who makes this point as often as he can. What he, and you, do not understand is that in the 60's and 70's when the Shuttle was designed, economy was not the issue. The issue was to demonstrate what real spaceflight should look like, and for very practical purposes, that included cross-range. The desire was to one day demonstrate flights to orbit as routine, and this requires cross-range so you have ample options on return.

There are many ways we might complain about Shuttle, but in general they all concern economy. The Shuttle was, contrary to popular opinion; not designed for economy. Well before its first flight it was obvious the machine that had been designed would be expensive to fly, but it would also continue to wow the world at what American's can accomplish when they set their minds to it. Sure, it would have been more efficient without a robotic arm, but it was USEFUL with a robotic arm. Sure, it would have been more efficient without a toilet, but it was USFUL to have a toilet.

No one in their right mind would ever argue that Shuttle was an economical way of flying to space, but we all know, economy is not what NASA is all about.

[Skipjack]

What he, and you, do not understand is that in the 60's and 70's when the Shuttle was designed, economy was not the issue.

Absolutely not true! Many of the design decisions (and quite a few of the bad ones) were made for cost saving reasons!
Go read up on this!
The cost factor caused politics to require the shuttle to serve both NASA and also the DOD. So it had to be capable of doing black ops. That caused the requirement for the shuttle to be able to always land on a NATO airfield. If you remember half of the world was part of the eastern block back then. This was why the shuttles crossrange was what it was. The same applied to the X-33.
Of course the shuttle then ended up being so expensive to use, that the DOD almost never cared to do so and rather relied on the EELVs, which were much cheaper.
So this allone was a double failure actually. The initial requirement caused the shuttle design to go into unfavorable directions and then the same thing caused those that made those requirements to not use it...
Failed design!

And it is NOT just one disgruntled engineer! There are many of them that think the same way.

[GIThruster]

the goal was to provide robust flight service aboard a real spaceship, complete with the ability for large groups to live and function in space for extended periods of time, and we flew them more than 100 missions.

It killed 14 people and it held the development back for decades. It was a failed design. It does not matter whether I am European or not, I can still call a failed design, a failed design, when I see it!

Shuttle did not kill 14 people. An accident killed 14 people, out of more than 700 it took to space. You're playing fast and loose with words to pretend you're making real statements when you're not. What development did Shuttle hold back for decades? "THE development"? "the development" of what?

[GIThruster]

Just because you don't understand and agree with the need for significant cross-range does not make the requirement "idiotic".

Yes it does and everyone who has concerned himself with the problem of affordable spaceflight and RLVs will explain to you that this was one of the many idiotic requirements that made both the space shuttle and the X33 the crap they turned out to be.

Concerned with affordable spaceflight? Are you mad? There's no such thing as "affordable spaceflight". That's a fiction invented by self-important engineers who want to deprecate Shuttle so they sound smarter than those that went before them.

There has never been, nor will ever be anything close to "affordable spaceflight" using rockets, unless you're only considering billionaires. Anyone with third grade math knows that rockets are simply never going to be safe, quick, convenient nor affordable. They're ROCKETS for crying out loud!

Take out your bogus "affordability" criteria and you'll see shuttle was an amazing machine and program, start to finish. When DOD interjected the cross-range criteria, "affordability" was not anywhere concerned. The fact they operate X-37B around the same criteria clearly demonstrates that economy is not always the most salient consideration.

[Skipjack]

Concerned with affordable spaceflight? Are you mad? There's no such ting as "affordable spaceflight". That's a fiction invented by self-important engineers who want to deprecate Shuttle so they sound smarter than those that went before them.

What a weird statement to make! SpaceX will bring people to the ISS for less than 30 million per seat. Not cheap by any means, but it is certainly a huge step down from the 60 million Russia is charging and we dont even have to talk about the prices for a seat on the shuttle or the SLS...
And if all goes well and SpaceX can do reusability, then the price will go down even further. I think that less than 1 million per seat is doable, which would put millionares in the position of being able to afford a flight, not just billionares... Note though that Richard Garriot is also just a millionare, not a billionare...