Jim Bridenstine confirmed as NASA Administrator

15 Responses to Jim Bridenstine confirmed as NASA Administrator

1. Joe says:

   April 19, 2018 at 4:43 pm

   Congratulations to Rep. Bridenstine (now Adm, Bridenstine) indeed.

   It was really close (50 to 49 with every Democrat voting against him) lets hope that does not provide a pretext for some to claim he is not a “legitimate” Administrator and thus oppose the new direction.

   Still very good news.
   • Gary Church says:

     April 21, 2018 at 8:59 pm

     The good news is not yet: when he stays on the job after the only couple of years away next election it will then be good news. It is quite possible a democrat President will keep him if he points the space agency at the Moon in a big way.

     Once the SLS starts flying and it becomes obvious the U.S. is going back to the Moon as the leading spacefaring nation on planet Earth……
2. Michael Wright says:

   April 19, 2018 at 4:55 pm

   “small inexpensive missions can be sent early to roughly characterize the ice.”

   Now this would be interesting if lunar rover missions don’t take resources away from Mars rover missions.

   “define the requirements for a human lunar lander.”

   My concern is this means will have to spend real money now to build actual hardware now (as for Mars landers can put that off 20 years into the future), but can this actually happen?

   There’s lots of political baggage kicking around but it would be interesting if something real were to happen instead of artwork. We also have other players such as SpaceX and Blue Origin that didn’t exist when SEI and VSE existed.
   • Joe says:

     April 19, 2018 at 7:36 pm

     “We also have other players such as SpaceX and Blue Origin that didn’t exist when SEI and VSE existed.”

     Blue Origin and ULA are likely be the initial major participants in any public/private partnerships (if they materialize) to produce lunar landers as both have existing proposals for such vehicles.

     (1) “Now this would be interesting if lunar rover missions don’t take resources away from Mars rover missions.”

     (2) “My concern is this means will have to spend real money now to build actual hardware now (as for Mars landers can put that off 20 years into the future), but can this actually happen?”

     In those two statements you have identified the challenge. Unless the overall budget significantly increases (sadly unlikely), there will have to be significant shifts in funds from other areas of the budget to lunar goals. That is going to be a controversial process, but unless it happens nothing of significance is going to get done; on the Moon or anyplace else.
     • Gary Church says:

       April 21, 2018 at 9:06 pm

       “That is going to be a controversial process-”

       Splash the space-station-to-nowhere and that funding has to go somewhere. Somebody is going to have to sign off on profoundly dosing and debilitating astronauts on that gateway-now-called-something-else.

       I predict nobody is going to sign off on that so no money is going there.

       The 130 ton payload SLS is the only path to “significance” and that is hopefully what Bridenstine will funnel funding into.
3. gbaikie says:

   April 19, 2018 at 6:15 pm

   That is interesting.
   I would say it requires NASA to work closely with private sector, which is asking a lot from NASA, or I would say NASA has never done this before.And

   I would also say this seems to be pushing Mars exploration further into future than I like.
   But there are real problems with doing Mars exploration as soon as I would like.

   I have for long time thought NASA should focus on getting crew to Mars within 3 to 4 month trip
   time and I think this approach could lend to doing that.
   • Michael Wright says:

     April 20, 2018 at 5:05 pm

     “requires NASA to work closely with private sector”

     It seems to me NASA has been working with the private sector since the beginning as there never is or was a US Govt rocket factory, All hardware was built by contractors, most people at Centers are contractors. Policies and what gets funded depends on elected officials (who all got their positions from private campaign contributions). Maybe this has been going on for slow long these longtime players carry a lot of baggage that the new “space mob” does not have.

     Maybe it comes down to what Joe wrote “there will have to be significant shifts in funds from other areas of the budget to lunar goals.”
     • gbaikie says:

       April 21, 2018 at 3:30 am

       Perhaps “requires NASA to work closely with private sector” is badly worded.
       Maybe, instead, “requires NASA to have magical relationship with private sector,” would conveys better what I meant.
       Main point is, it will be a true wonder to behold, as it has never occurred before.
       • Joe says:

         April 21, 2018 at 10:43 am

         Actually any “magic” in a government/private joint venture will have to come from the private side of the equation.

         Absent any significant increase in funds for hardware development, the contractors will have to accept a larger portion of the expense and technical risk. Blue Origin is already doing that to some extent and ULA is expressing the willingness to do so.

         In any case that hypothetical increase in private funding will not cover all the support required, and an increase of government funding to lunar activities will be required.

         Time will tell.
         • gbaikie says:

           April 21, 2018 at 5:49 pm

           “Actually any “magic” in a government/private joint venture will have to come from the private side of the equation.”
           The government tends to corrupt the “magic”.
           Private makes money, government prints money.
           Now private can print money, as it can offer stocks, and
           public can choose to exchange government printed currency for stocks (a private currency).
           People buy stocks to make money or to have share in
           wealth created by a company.

           It is possible to invest in various kinds of exploration, but our nation as assigned to task of space exploration to a government agency, called NASA.

           What is needed is exploration of the lunar poles.
           NASA should have started exploring the lunar at poles, decades ago, but NASA has been focused on other things. It appears NASA might soon, do the job, it was suppose to.

           NASA job shouldn’t be to mine or settle anywhere in space.
           NASA is suppose to have a limited budget, and private sector has an unlimited budget.
           Getting money in terms private investment is not a problem that needs solving. What is needed is reducing the risk and that can be done by exploration.

           The problem is government tends to have a low opinion of the private sector and government people tend to think they could do a better job of doing the private sectors job. This is only a deluded destructive fantasy.
4. DJE1 says:

   April 19, 2018 at 8:25 pm

   By all accounts that I have read about him, he should be a great administrator. And hopefully he will support the direction of small, robotic missions to the moon first, since it makes all kinds of sense, to characterize the ice deposits and the terrain on the sun-lit ridges that we are looking at setting up a base at. Meanwhile, this will give us a few years to see what develops with the private space companies before spending big bucks on a manned lunar lander. And let’s have another look at the Lunar Gateway project or whatever they are calling it these days, I think it is ludicrous to have a space station in deep space, without the protection of our magnetic shield. So, we shall see.
5. nova9 says:

   April 19, 2018 at 10:21 pm

   Now that Bridenstine is the new NASA administrator, Congress and the current administration needs to move swiftly with a COTS and CCP for lunar operations. This should be a $3 billion a year program or programs funded by both NASA and the DOD, IMO.

   NASA , the DOD, and American private industry needs to be able to deploy astronauts and other passengers to the lunar surface but also be able to deploy large and heavy objects to the lunar surface including large lunar habitat components. Concepts such as the ULA’s XEUS, Lockheed Martin’s MADV and perhaps a reusable version of Boeing’s Altair might have the inside track for cargo and crew transportation development funding from NASA and the DOD.

   Equally as important, IMO, is the need to aggressively develop and deploy propellant producing water depots at LEO, the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, and on the lunar surface. No matter how many billions of tonnes of ice exist at the lunar poles, the exploitation of lunar ice will only continue to be a dream if propellant producing water depots are not already deployed and operational within cis-lunar space by the time humans return to the Moon. Water for such depots could initially come from commercial launches from the Earth’s surface with the long term economic goal (within a decade’s time) of producing and transporting water from the lunar surface to the rest of cis-lunar space.

   Marcel
6. Gary Church says:

   April 20, 2018 at 12:42 am

   He has stated clearly the ice on the Moon is the critical resource and going after that is going to take a state sponsored program of Super Heavy Lift Vehicle launches. There is nothing close to the SLS as a launcher that can quickly evolve into the 130 metric ton payload range.

   The SLS is nothing more than the Space Shuttle in another form and will fly for the next 30 years even better than it did the last thirty. The absurdly low launch frequency of the SLS is the first problem to solve. Core and engine production must be expanded to enable 6-8 launches per year.

   The ISS has to go and the funding redirected into the SLS. Immediately. The Blue Moon is the most likely piece of hardware to go on top of the SLS. This is a pretty inflexible path and there is not much to say about it except the single worst enemy of success is going to be the NewSpace mob.

   With an SHLV and Lander going every couple months to the Moon the second problem to solve is how can such a program be justified to the taxpayer? What return will Americans get from this investment? The solution to the second problem is straightforward and involves the DOD.

   On Friday a body about the same size as the one that flattened 700 square miles of Siberia in 1908 missed us by half the distance to the Moon. Moving the nuclear arsenal into deep space months away from Earth with a fleet of atomic spaceships makes perfect sense for 3 reasons:

   1. Our nuclear forces are due to be overhauled to the tune of over a trillion dollars and spending that money on spaceships instead of vulnerable subs, bombers, and missile silos would be wise.

   2. The other superpowers would follow our lead and basing the arsenals in deep space on human-crewed spaceships would ratchet down the present launch-on-warning situation and make for far, far, less chance of a nuclear war. This would be so simply because it will no longer be a matter of a few minutes in which to make a decision to launch.

   3. Earth would be protected from any impact threat by these superpower spaceship fleets.
   • Vladislaw says:

     April 21, 2018 at 2:31 pm

     “There is nothing close to the SLS as a launcher that can quickly evolve into the 130 metric ton payload range.”

     What is this timeframe for the SLS that is going to quickly evolve into the 130 ton range? I have seen nothing about the Block II coming online anytime soon.
     • Joe says:

       April 21, 2018 at 4:40 pm

       The restrictions on the SLS in terms of launch rate and expanding payload capacity are politically imposed.

       Congress (at the time controlled by the democrats) imposed the SLS on the Obama Administration and the Administration did everything it could to not comply with the congressional edict.

       What an actual reasonable launch rate and expansion rate will depend on whether or not to expend the effort to correct those politically imposed short comings.

       Time will tell.

Comments are closed.