Main Engine Cut OffRegardless of how you think our collective plans should be organized, we can all agree that we’d rather see something happen. Let’s be honest about where we’re headed, and get on with it.
Architectures like these could flourish with the budget levels that SLS and Orion receive. Things are coming to a head now with the NASA exploration program, and it’s hard to say where it will go. No matter what, the next few years are going to be thrilling.
Interestingly, he didn’t rule out a near-free return trajectory, which is seeming more likely for the currently-planned EM-2. As I said in the latest episode of the podcast, “Then what?” is the most important question this study has to answer. Putting crew on EM-1 and leaving the entire roadmap after that unchanged doesn’t accomplish anything more than a stunt.
A Florida budget proposal for the 2017-18 fiscal year includes a $17 million investment in Launch Complex 36, which Blue Origin will match.
While we don’t yet have hard details on which direction NASA programs are headed during the Trump administration, we have started to get some hints. The leadership of the Congressional subcommittees that NASA depends on will be largely unchanged, and Boeing and SpaceX were each promised 4 more Commercial Crew flights. I also talk a little bit about how the Air Force One and F-35 situations apply to NASA programs.
Chris Bergin of NASASpaceFlight, with an encyclopedic post about the work that will need to take place—between EM-1 and 2—to revamp the Mobile Launcher to support the Exploration Upper Stage.
It’s important to keep the budgets of NASA and other governmental agencies in context: NASA is spending billions per year on Orion’s development. Roscosmos is spending an average of $122 million per year on Federation.
They’re around $30 million under budget. It’s great to see a New Frontiers mission come in that far under budget.
Aside from this being an election year plea to avoid cancellation of a struggling program, I’m not sure where the idea comes from that SLS will be rid of development in the 2020s.
While the majority of this SpaceNews article by Jeff Foust is focused on Congressional wrestling over how much money Europa Clipper should receive, there are a few other tidbits of interest.