More Details And A Slightly Better Opinion

01/15/04 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

After reading Blake Powers' The “New” Space Initiative and comments from Dan (Happy Fun Pundit) in this thread on Transterrestrial Musings, I think that this might end up being a little better than the hype yesterday suggested.

As in many things political, the truth is never in the rhetoric, but in the actual documents. The image to the right is from the PDF that contains details on the actual budgeting. Notice that there is no money for launch vehicle development. You could speculate that it would be lumped in with the CEV budget but that isn't large enough to fund both a lunar lander and a launch system. Plus, all of the plans suggest that this thing will be an 'Apollo' style 'capsule on a stack', which means it should go on anything with large lift capabilities.

Which, to my eyes, looks like a potential win for the likes of SpaceX and Kistler Aerospace. As well as a kick in the teeth wrapped with a little vindication to Andrew Beal. But, as with all things NASA, the entire vision can be scuttled by midlevel engineers intent on protecting their fiefdoms. I sure hope Mr. Okeefe uses this opportunity to clean house.