Shuttle Launch Director Embarrassed

[APG85]

"Launch Direction Mike Leinbach – highly respected throughout the Shuttle community – addressed the entire launch team, telling them he knew what everyone was going through with the end of the program imminent, before going further by noting how he was “embarrassed” with the political and administration leaders for not transitioning the space program on to a new endeavor, as has been the case in the past.

Mr Leinbach received a well deserved standing ovation from the teams."

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/05/ ... pointment/

[mustangdriver]

Ending our own manned space flights will come back to bite us.

[APG85]

Couple of good articles below...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03484.html

http://dailycaller.com/2010/02/09/obama ... ce-flight/

[Robbie Stuart]

Ending our own manned space flights will come back to bite us.

AMEN Brother!

[CAPFlyer]

Guys, hold your horses for a minute though because it looks like there is something on the horizon -

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/ma ... ision.html

Personally, I think that cancelling Constellation was the right decision. The private sector designs for the CEV were much better and more economical than Constellation and the worst part was that NASA spent a lot of money on having people design the CEV and then tossed them all out in favor of their own design that was simply an enlargement of the original Apollo design, and did not use the new technologies available to their fullest as the LMCO, Boeing, and other submissions did.

Plus, NEO operations are something that should be commercially viable in this day and age, so by putting it to the private sector has been overdue. NASA needs to be looking forward and further (like getting to Mars finally) instead of having to spend time and resources on just getting into the same orbit we've been going to since the 1960's.

[APG85]

Tossing manned spaceflight to the private sector is unrealistic...at least for the next decade. Cancelling the Shuttle and Constellation is a horrendous mistake that will have mammoth repercussions for our aerospace industries. The trickle-down effect is already being felt. We are basically handing OUR space station that WE funded (100 billion) over to the Russians and out of the goodness of their hearts, they are going to charge us 60 million a seat to get to it. All it will take is one political squabble and they can stop us from getting there all together.
The US manned space program is a national treasure, a source of pride and it cements the US as a superpower. We are essentially cancelling it and our children will never forgive us for our short-sightedness. History will not look kindly on this decision....

[Invader26]

has America lost its way? I'm not looking forward to the Chinese etc taking the lead but as they say the Golden Rule is that the man with the bag of gold makes the rules....

let's get drunk...

[APG85]

Here's a spectacular image of Endeavour and ISS taken the other day...

[CAPFlyer]

Tossing manned spaceflight to the private sector is unrealistic...at least for the next decade.

Is it? Then how come we have 2 planned launches of private vehicles to the ISS with dockings before the end of the year, one planned to have cargo certification by the end of the year as well, and both planning to have human certification by 2013?

BTW, this is compared to the independent assessment of the Constellation program of having the first manned Constellation flight to ISS in 2017 (see: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/hsf/home/index.html).

Just check out SpaceX, who's been on time and on budget to date with their Dragon module and may make their first docking in a couple months with the COTS demo flight #2 instead of the one in November.

If you have doubts, just check the COTS website - http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/cots_project.html

[APG85]

Tossing manned spaceflight to the private sector is unrealistic...at least for the next decade.

Is it? Then how come we have 2 planned launches of private vehicles to the ISS with dockings before the end of the year, one planned to have cargo certification by the end of the year as well, and both planning to have human certification by 2013?

BTW, this is compared to the independent assessment of the Constellation program of having the first manned Constellation flight to ISS in 2017 (see: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/hsf/home/index.html).

Just check out SpaceX, who's been on time and on budget to date with their Dragon module and may make their first docking in a couple months with the COTS demo flight #2 instead of the one in November.

If you have doubts, just check the COTS website - http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/cots_project.html

Maybe...time will tell.

Krauthammers excellent article (an exert below) is being echoed throughout the space industry:

"Of course, the administration presents the abdication as a great leap forward: Launching humans will be turned over to the private sector, while NASA's efforts will be directed toward landing on Mars.

This is nonsense. It would be swell for private companies to take over launching astronauts. But they cannot do it. It's too expensive. It's too experimental. And the safety standards for getting people up and down reliably are just unreachably high."

[shrike]

It's overly simplistic (and I'm on only my first cup of coffee for the day), but I can't halp but feel some parallels with Air Mail. Slower development and too much regulation, but the Govt sponsored and subsidized the beginnings. Now commercial concerns will take over, develop, adapt, streamline spaceflight and turn it into a profitable enterprise.

Of course thirty years on, someone in Govt will decide that it's 'corrupt' and take over for a short period of time until they realize that they are no better qualified anymore than the Air Corps was in '34....

[APG85]

It's overly simplistic (and I'm on only my first cup of coffee for the day), but I can't halp but feel some parallels with Air Mail. Slower development and too much regulation, but the Govt sponsored and subsidized the beginnings. Now commercial concerns will take over, develop, adapt, streamline spaceflight and turn it into a profitable enterprise.

Of course thirty years on, someone in Govt will decide that it's 'corrupt' and take over for a short period of time until they realize that they are no better qualified anymore than the Air Corps was in '34....

Commercial spaceflight is a myth. The government is paying the bill either way. I would be nice if Dragon works, because we are putting all our eggs in one basket (Boeing and Lockheed are looking at some type of system, but they want Federal money now).

We are defunding spaceflight. At least, until the Russians make it very painful to hitch a ride on a Soyuz (which they are already beginning to do) . There is a very real potential for them to take control of ISS completely.

The old Apollo guys are the only ones speaking out and not long from now, they won't be here to voice their concerns.

Either way, a huge step backwards from the Shuttle which is finally at it's peak operational capability. We'll never again see a winged vehicle land on a runway with astronauts at the controls. Pretty sad...

[CAPFlyer]

Sorry, but the Apollo guys speaking out loudest are speaking out in favor of Private Sector operations with Buzz Aldrin leading the way as he has for almost 2 decades.

[davidbray]

Sorry, but the Apollo guys speaking out loudest are speaking out in favor of Private Sector operations with Buzz Aldrin leading the way as he has for almost 2 decades.

If I recall correctly, he's the only Apollo guy speaking out for it. The rest all signed a rather kind letter to the president (Armstrong included) stating that he made the exact wrong decision turning things over the the private sector.

[APG85]

Sorry, but the Apollo guys speaking out loudest are speaking out in favor of Private Sector operations with Buzz Aldrin leading the way as he has for almost 2 decades.

If I recall correctly, he's the only Apollo guy speaking out for it. The rest all signed a rather kind letter to the president (Armstrong included) stating that he made the exact wrong decision turning things over the the private sector.

Correct!