posted
Bush didn't give a crap about Nasa, and he revealed his own ignorance, in my opinion, in the way he treated it- like a political liability. Nasa can and has been used for such better things- thank god we got a democratic administration in after him, and one that at least had the balls to increase the budget for once. Go tell the Republicans the insane amount of money generated as a result of the Apollo program, and see what they have to say about that. High technology research is a gold mine, and Bush treated it like a hole in the ground. For shame.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
The thing Bush did that was brilliant though was he cut everything for after he left. Not enough money for the ISS, cut it in 2016. Space shuttles, cut them in 2010. He gave this vision and then gave it no funding, and acted shocked when it got no results and in general, people let him get away with it. All the backlash of his policies were set up to hit whoever came after him.
I do like that Obama has everything funded in his vision. That is a very nice aspect. I do think Orion Lite is pretty cheesy and pointless and a way to send some pork to Colorado. And I think with Dragon so close, we might as well keep shuttles going, instead of working out a deal with the Russians for 1-2 years. Switching systems only once is preferable to twice and it would be stupid to keep with the Russians when SpaceX can do it for half the cost (I am assuming that the numbers they gave nasa are accurate).
Also, nasa really needs to start advertising better all the stuff they are responsible for. Most people are completely unaware.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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scholarette, do you know what the comparative numbers are for cost between what we spent to send a shuttle up, what a Soyuz costs, what Dragon/Falcon 9 will cost, and what the new lift vehicle that was just scrapped would have cost? I'd love to see a side by side of it all.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Right now, I am having trouble finding my source on the numbers which is annoying because I know I recently read them, but I have read a bunch of stuff recently and so far, I can't refind this silly article (and to be honest, it also might have come from one of the nasa press conferences). It did not include the current shuttle (that one is like 200 million per month regardless of whether or not it is used. But my memory of how much it would cost per astronaut was 30 million for dragon, 58 million for Soyuz and 300 million for Constellation (I believe that number had projected development costs vs projected use over a certain amount of time since obviously we would not be renting it out on a per astronaut basis like we would soyuz or dragon). When I read those numbers, I thought dang, why would we not use Dragon then?
Sorry about not finding the link. It is driving me crazy right now. But I have been reading a lot of the nasa stuff lately, so there are a lot of potential places that stuff could have come from. We got tickets to the last launch (which was so awesome!) and I was reading everything about that too and watching all the press conferences (houston to florida is pretty far) in order to decide if we should fly out or cancel and all that had the up coming cancellation stuff in it too.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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Scholarette, I just read an interviews with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who said the Ares I/Orion combination would have cost $400 million per astronaut per trip, and the Falcon 9/Dragon concept would be $20 million per trip.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I imagine there is some variance in those numbers. If there was a range, it makes sense for the more pro-NASA people to cite NASA low range, Dragon high range and the SpaceX to do the reverse. Though with that kind of disparity, it really doesn't matter. As long as SpaceX is up to standards, they have a huge amount of leeway. I know the first time I read any numbers I thought, ok, constellation should be toast. I am surprised that those numbers haven't been more heavily publicized because they make the reasons for the decision so clear.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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posted
I think that's either a sign of the ineptitude of Obama's press office, or a sign of how little he cares about the issue. The former seems more likely than the latter, only because of politics. But then, he's pissing off Texans a lot more than Floridians, who are actually getting good stuff out of the deal.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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