One cheer for the President's space plan

> RE: "This is the first thing to come out of the Bush White House that
> I support 100%. "
> It is far from clear to me what came out of the White House on this
> other than a photo-op.

The PR aspect is pretty much a given. I'll give him that in return for
the positives in his plan.

> They are going to increase NASA's budget 5%, but mandate space craft
> that may not be possible to build,

Why is CEV not possible to build? It's just a stretch Apollo capsule,
launched on an existing booster (like CRV/OSP), with a mission-specific
service module. It's a big step back from Shuttle, which is exactly
what is needed - It's not a truck, it's more of a Jeep. This gets NASA
out of the launcher development business (which it should never have
been in in the first place, but that's a different story).

> and put a date when ISS won't be supported (I guess no matter how
> useful it might be found to be).

If it's useful, let the administration in office at the time make the
call. Right now it's just a big money pit in the sky, producing little
science, and consuming resources. It will never live up to all the
promises, for basic reasons (like the high vibration environment). ISS
exists to keep Russian space scientists busy (i.e. not freelancing for
Iraq, Iran, North Korea, etc.) and to provide a destination for the
shuttle. Those are the political realities that lead to it's being
funded in the first place, and the design reflects political, not
scientific, needs.

> Was NASA not already considering another space craft and the Moon and
> Mars options?

Nothing with a snowball's chance in hell of being funded over the
necessary timescale. Also many of the Mars concepts involved nuclear
propulsion or power, which simply isn't politically viable (note that
Bush's pro-nucular stance isn't in the critical path of the RTTM plan,
another reason to like it, since it increases political viability).
NASA has had fantasies about Mars since before Apollo 11, but they all
depend on Apollo levels of funding (or more), which are never coming
back.

> I like the 5% increase, is that what you agree with? What else? Jay
> Huebner

I don't think there's a need for even 5%. Money will be freed up as
ISS nears completion (the ISS spending hump is already past), and
additional money will be freed up when Shuttle is retired. The
remainder of the funds could be found by streamlining and eliminating
useless duplication (which is not to suggest all duplication is useless
- sometimes it creates competition which is very positive in driving
down costs and encouraging innovation). The main obstacles to shaking
money out of the cobwebs are political, so the additional funds are
helpful since it reduces the need for political fights. The main money
sink in the short term will be development of CEV, which will come
entirely from OSP, plus the 5%.

Major increases in funding just makes NASA a more attractive target
when budgets have to be cut and powerful people have pet projects they
want to protect. Fat budgets will take a bigger hit than lean ones.
Keeping NASA at close to level funding will make it much less likely to
get hit with budget cuts - every time there's a major cut, things have
to be redesigned, often from scratch - that's what kept happening to
Space Station Freedom, one of the reasons it never went anywhere
(despite spending huge gobs of cash). The only way ISS got built was
because it was turned into a foreign policy/national security issue on
top of everything else, and even then the budget got jerked around,
slowing things down and wasting money.

Slow and steady wins the race.

......Andrew