In response to Trump budget, NASA ending separate technology plan
Even though Congress has yet to formally consider President Trump's new budget for NASA, the space agency is already moving swiftly to implement some of its core principles. Among those is a White House desire to end a separate program within the agency focused on the development of advanced new spaceflight technologies intended to keep NASA at the cutting edge.
With an annual budget that has varied between $500 million and $1 billion, the Space Technology Mission Directorate was created in 2010 to develop the kinds of technology NASA needed to explore deeper into space, such as advanced propulsion and power systems, in-space manufacturing, and new means of landing on far-off worlds. If humans really were to expand beyond low-Earth orbit, research and development of these new technologies was deemed critical.
[...] According to internal emails obtained by Ars, this [realignment towards the Space Launch System and Orion] is already happening. The emails characterize the change as a "restructuring" and assign NASA official James Reuter to serve as acting associate administrator for the space technology program. Prior to coming to NASA headquarters from Marshall Space Flight Center in 2015, Reuter played a management role overseeing development of the SLS rocket and Orion.
Some former space technology officials have begun sounding the alarm about these changes being made without oversight from Congress. "Disastrous news!" tweeted Mason Peck on Thursday morning. He served as the space agency's chief technologist earlier this decade. "NASA is already dismantling STMD even though the President's budget is only a month old. Don't give up. We need Space Technology if we want NASA to have a bold future. I hope Congress will reject this gutting of NASA's technology investments."
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Trump on Falcon Heavy: "I'm so used to hearing different numbers with NASA"
During a cabinet meeting on Thursday inside the White House, President Donald Trump called attention to several model rockets on the table before him. They included an Atlas V, a Falcon 9, a Space Launch System, and more. The president seemed enthused to see the launch vehicles. "Before me are some rocket ships," the president said. "You haven't seen that for this country in a long time."
Then, in remarks probably best characterized as spur of the moment, the president proceeded to absolutely demolish the government's own effort to build rockets by noting the recent launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket. He cited the cost as $80 million. (The list price on SpaceX's website is $90 million.)
"I noticed the prices of the last one they say cost $80 million," Trump said. "If the government did it, the same thing would have cost probably 40 or 50 times that amount of money. I mean literally. When I heard $80 million, I'm so used to hearing different numbers with NASA.''
NASA has not, in fact, set a price for flying the SLS rocket. But Ars has previously estimated that, including the billions of dollars in development cost, the per-flight fees for the SLS rocket will probably be close to $3 billion. Indeed, the development costs of SLS and its ground systems between now and its first flight could purchase 86 launches of the privately developed Falcon Heavy rocket. So President Trump's estimate of NASA's costs compared to private industry does not appear to be wildly off the mark.
[*] SLS: Space Launch System
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NASA Moving to Scale Back the Space Technology Mission Directorate
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @12:55AM (3 children)
Coal fire propulsion is good enough for American spaceships!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @01:10AM (2 children)
Dirty Coal or Clean Coal?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @01:12AM
Dirty coal sits in the back of the fuel tank.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Saturday March 03 2018, @02:03AM
> Dirty Coal or Clean Coal?
Doesn't matter: in space, no one can hear you cough.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday March 03 2018, @02:44AM (1 child)
The obvious takyon is rebuttal khallow. End of the Socialist Science that was NASA?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday March 03 2018, @02:53AM
There's nothing good about prioritizing the SLS money drain at the expense of low-cost stuff like the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts [wikipedia.org]. Although it remains to be seen how bad the cuts would be, since they plan to "[fold STMD] into NASA's 'Exploration' program".
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]