Griffin has since realized that being confrontational with the Obama team is not the right way to go about things. Obama’s made it pretty clear that he’s willing to work with everybody, Democrats and Republicans, but only if they are team players…. which Griffin definitely has not been. Griffin, and friends and family, have been lobbying the Obama team pretty heavily since then for Griffin to retain his job.
Griffin became head of NASA in 2005 at the same time that President Bush started to implement his “Vision for Space Exploration”, announced in 2004. The Vision laid out a plan to return to the moon and maybe even send men to Mars in the coming decades.
The Vision calls for the International Space Station (ISS) to be completed by 2010, at which point the shuttle would be retired. It also is the origin of NASA’s Orion spacecraft (which has since been expanded into the Constellation project). Finally, the Vision calls for lunar exploration with robots by 2008 and men by 2020, as well as robots to other planets and maybe crewed missions as well.
Obviously, we’ve fallen a bit behind. We’ve not sent any robots to the moon in the last year, and the ISS won’t be completed by the time the shuttle is retired (which is still on-target for 2010).
Griffin’s main cause for contention, though, is the Obama team’s concern that Constellation is a bit of a boondoggle. The transition team has been exploring the feasibilty of scrapping some parts of Constellation as a means of belt-tightening in this economic environment. The current projected costs of the entirety of Project Constellation are $97B through 2020, and $200B through 2030.
Constellation is an umbrella project encompassing several smaller projects. First, there is Orion, the shuttle replacement. Orion harkens back to 1960s style spacecraft, looking on the outside like an Apollo module on steroids (it will have more than double the volume). It will hold up to 6 crew, and the capsule will be reusable for up to 10 launches. On the inside, the controls will take advantage of modern tech, using “glass cockpit” computerized displays, automated docking (which the Russians and Europeans have been using for some time; we’ve never had a craft that didn’t require manual piloting for docking maneuvers) and much more advanced computers than the 1960s Apollo computers or 1970s/80s Shuttle computers.
Ares is the launcher that will get Orion into space, like the Saturn rockets took Apollo up. There are actually two Ares rockets being designed, the Ares I and the Ares V. Ares I will be the launcher for Orion, and Ares V will be used to launch cargo. Unlike the Shuttle program, crew and cargo will be launched separately and dock in space. The argument here is that this allows the two different Ares rockets to be optimized for their individual purposes.
Altair is the Lunar Module of the Constellation program. Altair will take four people down to the lunar surface and back up again. Altair has not yet been fully designed, but the concept is a lot like the original Lunar Module, but bigger.
Finally, there is the Earth Departure Stage (EDS), which will take the Orion and Altair out of Earth orbit to the moon. The EDS and Altair will be launched on an Ares V, rendezvous with the Orion (launched on an Ares I) and the whole shebang will go off to the moon (and back).
The Obama campaign has apparently been asking around to find out if significant savings could be obtained by cancelling Ares altogether, scaling back Orion, and using existing military rockets to lift Orion et al into space. This is the original conflict that got Griffin suggesting that the Obama team wasn’t competent to evaluate launch options.
All this is taking place against the backdrop of a possible Space Race Mark II, this time against the Chinese, who are planning lunar-bound launches starting in 2013 (probably bound for lunar orbit with landing later). While the moon isn’t really the strategic target it was viewed as in the 1950s, it would demonstrate who’s the boss in space.
Scientists are not happy with the manned program, as sending men into space is far more expensive than unmanned robots. Compare Constellation at $8B and more per year with $800M initial outlay and $20M/year for the Mars rovers. But it looks like politics and geopolitics will be driving the space program for the near future, even though Obama seems inclined to agree with the scientists on this one – at least, he did fairly early in the campaign.
So it looks like Griffin is out… but who’s in? Several names have been rumored, including former astronaut Major General Charles Bolden, former astronaut Sally Ride and Lori Garver. But this is really still very much up in the air; the transition hasn’t said anything about this post. Yet.
Her scientific background pales badly in comparison to Griffin’s. Her previous work at NASA was in “Policy and Planning” (whatever that means). Give Griffin the credit he deserves for having straightened out an agency which had become riddled with problems before his arrival. And, yes, many of those problems were the result of the present administration.
Well, now, I don’t recall actually taking sides, or saying that Garver is or is not actually qualified to lead the transition team.
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p>But to come out and say it, I’m not sure you need a scientific expert running the NASA review team for the transition. Transition agency review is about policy, budgets, and what we’re getting for our investment dollars. The Obama team wants to know what (money) will be saved and what (opportunities) will be lost if we axe Ares. It literally does not take a rocket scientist to figure that out – just somebody who understands the broader issues and is willing to listen to the rocket scientists.
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p>Having said that, I will readily agree that you want a keen scientific mind actually running NASA. (I’m a big fan of his picks to run DOE and NOAA, for example.) Running the agency is very different from running the transition review team. I’m not sure Garver would be a good pick to actually lead NASA – but I don’t know enough about her to say that with a certainty.
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p>And I don’t mean to deny any of Griffin’s accomplishments. Getting the Constellation project off the ground (so to speak) is a big deal, whether or not you agree with manned spaceflight (which I’m still up in the air about, so to speak). But you can’t deny his recent actions have been, at best, impolitic.
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p>My attempt here was to go into some detail about these actions and the background, as well as what NASA’s been up to.
I think there’s scientific benefit to space exploration and science, but I’m afraid that we’re going for publicity bang rather than science, to the point where we won’t get either. The two main missions of NASA seem to be:
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p>1. Build and maintain a space station, for purposes of…building and maintaining a space station.
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p>2. Go to the Moon, for purposes of…beating the Chinese to the Moon.
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p>I’d like to see a more science-centered approach to NASA:
1. Lots of upper-atmosphere work, especially on climate change and patterns.
2. Unmanned space flight not focused on “conditions for life”. This includes more probes to the Asteroid Belt.
3. Maintenance of the Shuttle program, which is probably the most successful one to date.
4. Return to tough, basic construction. When lightning struck a Mercury capsule during a launch, nothing was effected. Now, the instruments are so delicate that they scrub launches and landings over the chance of lightning, which incurs huge costs.
The space station is a huge waste of money. The scientific value of (unmanned) things like Hubble and the Mars Rover, for example, has been so much greater than the space station. It’s an orbiting piece of junk that serves no evident purpose. We should pull out and stop throwing good money after bad.
Who? Why, Transhumanists, of course.
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p>That’s written by Nick Bostrom, one of the founders of the World Transhumanist Society and is director of the “Future of Humanity Institute” at Oxford University. He also wrote a Boston Globe op-ed earlier this year about what it would mean if we found any evidence of life on Mars.
He feels that our greatest ultitmate responsibility as a society, in order to make life anything more than mere pangs of triumphs and tribulations that ultimately mean nothing, is to go out and explore the universe, like Star Trek. Otherwise, we are failures, and it’s terrible news. Finding evidence of life on Mars would be “the worst news ever displayed on the front page of a newspaper,” because it would probably mean that “the human species is doomed to fail ever to reach technological maturity.” But he’s not a mere Trekkie sitting at the Trekkie table in the lunch room, he’s grown up now and actually serious, he’s influencing funding and policy decisions based on what has to be recognized as misanthropy. He has apparently influenced the Globe’s misanthropic worldview, too.
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p>I don’t think we’d be failures if we lived on this planet as long as we could and enjoyed life as much as we could. I think it’s really sad that some people feel such angst and alienation from the real triumphs and tribulations that are not mere birth pangs of something better than us, but are real living consciousnesses fully experiencing and rejoicing in this wonderful planet right now.
I don’t see how you get from anything you quoted (and no, I didn’t click through and read anything else) to him being a misanthrope. Countless people through the ages have striven to make the world a better place. We’d be living in caves as long as we could and enjoying life as much as we could, without them. Innovation, and the desire to innovate and improve the human condition, are completely natural and not the signs of misanthropy.
is not what he is talking about. He’s already looking past the world, and the people on it. To him, it sucks and it’s meaningless; the whole world and all the life forms living on it just ugly, stupid, embarrassingly primitive fools, nowhere near as great as what he imagines it should be (or could imagine if it were imaginable, but we aren’t even capable of imagining how great it should be, we suck so much).
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p>He doesn’t care about making the world a better place, he just wants to get off it.
OK, now you’re just making stuff up. I went and read the entirety of the Boston Globe article, and there’s none of that in there. I stand by my original comment. He’s a far-reaching thinker. But you see this sort of stuff – envisioning the far future – all the time in science fiction. Doesn’t make SF authors misanthropes, and it doesn’t make this guy one either.
Given the tremendous costs of proving out the technology, though, it would make more sense to pursue space exploration through shared international missions rather than through competing national programs.
But then again, we can barely get anything going on Antarctica, Patagonia, Siberia, and other hostile earthbound locations. We know less about the floor of the ocean than we do about the moon. I’m all for the idea of colonization, but we don’t have the expertise — much less the means — to make it happen yet.
The space shuttle and the international space stations have complementary missions. The shuttle ferries people and materiel to the space station. The space station was built so that that shuttle would have somewhere to go. See? Its easy.
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p>If you look at manned space travel from the standpoint of either pure science or applied technology, you probably can’t justify the cost and risk. Its the element of adventure that gives it such appeal–what’s that worth? I’m not sure I can say.