And the Porker of the Month is...

[Skipjack]

Sen. Richard Shelby (R), Alabama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojo3Kc3V ... r_embedded

Lets give him some applouse!

[MSimon]

Honor dies where interest lies.

[Diogenes]

Sen. Richard Shelby (R), Alabama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojo3Kc3V ... r_embedded

Lets give him some applouse!

An example of why we need term limits, and an example of what the Democrats have been doing for the last 50 years, but on less worthwhile stuff, like housing projects and welfare. It's time for Democrats, and "Democrat lite" congressmen to go away and pray we don't come after them for what they've done.

[GIThruster]

It's silly to not expect this sort of thing. Where do folks think the jobs are going to be lost at the close of Constellation? Marshall (not mentioned in the vid) has as many folks involved as does Johnson.

Tens of thousands of people are going to lose their jobs. I'm not saying they shouldn't, but if you were their congressman, you'd have reason to write some pork. Those are your constituents.

Not saying what SHOULD be. Just saying what is.

[Aero]

How many times in our lifetime has government's change in direction cost us thousands if not 100's of thousands of jobs? It's part of the price we pay for having big government employment programs. We shouldn't have pursued a high tech education and worked on the Apollo program if we expected our education and experience to remain beneficial to us. And we should have slacked off and not won the cold war if we wanted to continue working in the defense industry. The current change in the space program is just an example of what happens when we train and work in a field that has no established, generally accepted economic need. Politicians will spend the money elsewhere in order to employ their own constituency.

[GIThruster]

That's all true but it's also fair to recognize that if NASA engineers had not bungled the X-33/Venturestar program by failing to realize they needed real composite specialists to design a tank without seams from the start (read "Scaled Composites") then we'd have a real replacement for shuttle by now.

NASA, Al Gore, the posers who pretended they could do the job when they could not, all placed us where we are today. Oh yeah, lets include the aerospike morons who said one thing ("we can build it for X weight") and then did another ("oh yeah, we need this fantastic slab of copper as a heat sink. . .is that Okay?")

[Skipjack]

Mmmm, the X33 failed for many more reasons than just the composite tank. The aluminium tank that they built as a replacement, was actually LIGHTER than the composite tank.
The X33 failed because it was to ambitious. NASA, once again, wanted to many things at once. They did not just want an RLV, they also wanted to develop and test new technology in the process. Instead of lowering some of the requirements in order to get an operational vehicle, with more off the shelf parts, they had demands that were to hard to fullfill. It also did not help that the contract with Lockmart was another one of those cost plus programmes. This caused Lockmart to be slow and sloppy. There were gigantic budget overruns and the whole project was very late.
If you compare the thing to constellation, you might be able to see a pattern there.
The sad truth is that NASA has been incapable of developing launch vehicles, ever since von Braun left.
I personally consider the shuttle also a failure, btw.
The same happened when they took over the DC-X from the military. That also got run into the ground.
NASA is one of the examples where big government does not work (anymore). It was fullfilling its duties quite well during the moon race, but only because money did not matter.
Once money and sustainability became factors, things quickly went down the drain.
Every LV designed since the Saturn V is an example why the government should not have a say in the development of LVs.
Constellation is a failure for the very same reasons. It is a government run job creation programme. The big problem with this programme is that it is not only expensive, it also prevents private, more efficient enterprise from doing something on their own.
Also, you have to wonder: Why cant the same people that want to build the rockets for the Constellation programme, not build the same rockets for the Commercial Crew?
Because they already know that they can not bring it without more money!
They already know that they will again overrun the budget! That is why they are not even caring to compete for commercial crew, or the resupply contracts.
Sorry, but I dont see why there have to be expensive government programmes to support companies, that do not even want to be competitive in a free market.
No, NASAs job should be the research of new, enabling technologies for future LVs (that would be built by commercial companies, licensing that technology). Nobody says that this development cant be handled by the same companies that were involved with constellation. Of course, they would have to work with strict milestones and in a competitive environment.

[GIThruster]

Agreed except I would add about the tank, that although aluminum was lighter than the composite tank that was built, they knew from the start that an aluminum tank would be too expensive for Venturestar, without which the entire program would fail whether X-33 flew or not. If from the start of X-33, there had been composite specialists aboard the design team, they would have explained that in order for the tank to be lighter than the aluminum version, it had to avoid seams. It is only because the composite tank that was built had so many seams that it was heavier than the aluminum one, and then it went and delaminated, because the composite people did not have the appropriate expertise.

Add to that the nonsense with the aerospike and you have the failure we saw. Both these issues were foreseeable and avoidable. And yes, Von Braun would not have made these mistakes, nor would Kelly Johnson, nor would Burt Rutan.

[MSimon]

Constellation is a failure for the very same reasons. It is a government run job creation programme.

You also have to consider what was gained: a generation of engineers who are now energizing private space.

[Skipjack]

You also have to consider what was gained: a generation of engineers who are now energizing private space.

I dont see it that way, sorry.
They could have just as well been created by private programmes and the NASA research projects that I talked about above.

[MSimon]

You also have to consider what was gained: a generation of engineers who are now energizing private space.

I dont see it that way, sorry.
They could have just as well been created by private programmes and the NASA research projects that I talked about above.

They work for NASA for 40 years. Retire. Go to work in private space for low $$$ (they are retired) and a piece of the action.

I'm not talking about ideal. Just what is.

[Aero]

You also have to consider what was gained: a generation of engineers who are now energizing private space.

ROFLMAO
And how many engineers are energizing private space? And how many engineers are in a generation of engineers? Only a very small fraction of that generation of engineers actually worked in the field of engineering for more than a few years. That was not a gain, but a big waste of our best and brightest.

[Josh Cryer]

Shelby isn't a porker, he's a frick moron. The new direction benefits his state more than any other state. MSFC is in AL, Atlas and Delta are built in AL. His state is poised to receive more jobs than any other state thanks to Obama's budget for NASA.

It's absurd. He needs to lose his job. Alabamans need to be clued in and someone needs to run against him and point out how utterly asinine his position is.

A senator from AL supporting wholly a completely different state (UT, the only loser in Obama's new budget), the guy needs to be impeached. The only rational explanation for his behavior is political bribery. The only option other than bribery is insanity, which by itself should be an impeachable offense.

[Josh Cryer]

You also have to consider what was gained: a generation of engineers who are now energizing private space.

Nah, Cx was almost wholly based on military space and status quo cost plus contracts. Many of these people have been in the business for decades, their employee base has not changed significantly. Boeing's average age is 46, 1 in 3 of Lockheed Martin are over 50. Many of the people working on Cx are retirees, hanging on to play with rockets, getting paid obscene amounts of money achieving very little and forcing the taxpayer to take all of the risk.

There's only one "private space" company out there and it's SpaceX. Both ULA and Orbital are going to have to adapt if they are going to compete with SpaceX, and that means firing or sending into early retirement all of those folks who have been running the space program for so long.

Sad fact but the current rocket launching companies for the United States have been riding on the government dime for far too long, with 10:1 of their launches being government payloads. SpaceX is changing that (1:1), but it will be quite awhile before they're getting more money from the private sector than they are from government (they're about halfway there now, government pays about 2:1 for launches, so while they're 1:1 for the number of launches, revenue-side they're 2:1 government, this must change, they need to be 3:1 private launches to make it happen).

Interestingly, as it stands now, SpaceX is probably going to wind up hiring more older people (people who formerly worked for ULA/Lockmart) in order to meet their doubling of employees quota that they've set (they must build a full up Merlin engine every 3 days for the foreseeable future, this means doubling their work force at least twice).

I'm with Skipjack and Aero on this one. Our engineering (particularly aerospace) field is sorely lacking. Especially when it comes to private engineers (not government / military contractors).

[MSimon]

You also have to consider what was gained: a generation of engineers who are now energizing private space.

ROFLMAO
And how many engineers are energizing private space? And how many engineers are in a generation of engineers? Only a very small fraction of that generation of engineers actually worked in the field of engineering for more than a few years. That was not a gain, but a big waste of our best and brightest.

Ah. You were hoping to avoid entropy?