Coincidentally found this story on NextBigFuture, with links.

Go Elon.

Well, I was really surprised Obama chose to do a deal now. I don’t understand what good that does him if there’s going to be a CR. He seemed to be in a very strong position that was getting stronger by the day. SDLV backers needed a compromise fast, Obama not so much, or so it seemed. The real reason probably doesn’t have much to do with space, and I wonder what secret deal was done. It would also be interesting to know what motivated Rockefeller to support the new proposal. What’s in it for him?

They’re all for private industry until it comes to risking the big NASA-plexes in their home states. At that point, suddenly only government knows how to do space launching effectively, notwithstanding any and all evidence (Falcon 9 versus Ares I) to the contrary.

The long term key may simply be to find a way to build up a sizable private industry workforce that congresscritters will start feeling just as vested in protecting.

While I bow to Jon’s greater technical expertise in this area, the politics of this should have surprised no one. Indeed, it lays bear the unreality of the last three (well, last five, if you want to get right down to it) presidential administrations’ space plans. Each put forth ambitious plans that not only accepted absurdly low cost projections at face value, but failed to take account of congressional political realities – realities that the Johnson and Nixon administrations more or less have locked us into. VentureStar and Constellation simply tried to do too much at once with too little funding and never secured much congressional protection because there weren’t sufficient vested interests to protect them when the succeeding administration decided to axe them.

Obama’s proposal put forth no splashy new system, by contrast, but proved just as politically unrealistic. If the Senate bill demands a shuttle derived-HLV without a clear mission, Obama provided neither a launch system or a mission – just a nebulous plan to research for several years (til he’s out of office) and then decide on a launcher. The politics don’t work that way, however; the likely result would be neither a mission nor a launcher, nor even (I would argue, regrettably) sufficient funding for a truly robust COTS private industry. The perfect can’t be the enemy of the good – something Bush should have realized before letting Griffin have his head in abandoning an actual SDLV in favor of the biggest, baddest booster ever built.

The continued lack of a clear mission is something I put to lack of administration leadership – hoping to get that out of Congress is a lot to hope for. Having said that: While I know just enough to recognize Jon’s point that the 150mt requirement is inflated and unnecessary for most ambitious BEO missions, and I concede that BEO does not absolutely require a HLV, it does make it considerably easier, and preservation of (what remains) of shuttle heritage infrastructure and workforce is simply going to get more congressional support than new, untested policy alternatives, amped-up COTS included. Of course, a lot of STS infrastructure has already been lost; this decision for a (likely DIRECT-ish) SDLV would have made more sense five years ago.

At the end of the day we’re in this sorry mess because there’s been very little real interest in space by any administration since the 60′s, and what little congressional support has been largely tied to jobs in key constituencies. That’s unlikely to change. Space advocates simply have to recognize this and work with it.

Wow Jon, very nice. It seems you are without any honor. Sad really.

No secret master-plan, it was the half-bakery that I read as “we’re not serious about these bits.” Ie, Orion and the HLV seemed out of sync with the rest of the plan. I took that to mean that they were last minute tacked-on tokens to quell post-Ares distress within NASA. (If that makes sense.)

As you say, I may have been reading too much into it. Something about fuel depots + asteroid missions (+ SpaceX + Bigelow) tapped into that old boys-own-space-adventure thrill(*), whereas Ares/Orion gave me an “oh no, not again” sinking feeling.(**)

(* I’ve been aching for someone to build a proper spaceship. Assembled in space, reusable, refuelable. ISS with a nuke and a plasma drive, flying around deep space for years at a time… Something about Obama’s plan felt like a fellow fanboi was trying to steer NASA towards that.)

(** I’m curious if that was also the reaction amongst those who actually bend aerospace metal for a living.)

((Ps. Thanks for that link to the actual budget language. Looking through it, it’s hard to see any resemblance to anything I saw anticipating it; certainly nothing justifying their “we’re saving teh space program from the Obama-monster!!!1″ rants. It actually seems a 95% win for Obama. <Shrug>))

NASA could have hired ULA to develop EELV Phase 1 which would fit that description. There is no technical justification for SDLV, even if you believe 40-50mT is necessary. And if you wanted 70mT, then you could do that with Atlas Phase 2, even without a new kerolox engine or even with one if politics dictated the need for it. The 150mT number was designed to lock in SDLV.

There are no two ways about this, this is a deeply corrupt and potentially very harmful decision.

I think that a better balance needed to be struck between embracing true commercial contracting and the new space sector and ensuring we don’t loose our industrial base. This bill I fear though has just swung too far in the opposite direction.

I don’t think it was realistic to expect private development of an HLV starting by 2015, even one as small as 40 MT to LEO, there just isn’t any market for such a launcher. Heck, I’ll be pleased as punch if SpaceX manages to get the Falcon 9H flying by 2015!

Even governments aren’t being very ambitious these days. China is taking tortoise steps toward the Long March 5 which will have close to 14 MT to GEO payload in it’s largest configuration. While Russia wastes effort on recreating Proton capabilities in a new all-Russian vehicle to be launched from Russian-only sites.

I also don’t think it was realistic to hope the new Obama plan contained some secret master-plan to evade HLV. They aren’t that clever. Just look at how long it took them to finish devising the plan, and how poorly they then presented the plan even internally to NASA. It was if someone was still working on the plans, hidden away under the hood even as they rolled it out. Half-baked.

And here is some early reaction from the Obama administration to the Senate bill, “The bill contains the critical elements necessary for achieving the President’s vision for NASA, it recognizes that Constellation is no longer the right program for achieving our boldest ambitions, it helps launch a commercial space transportation industry, it embraces the President’s proposal for an additional $6 billion for NASA, it extends the International Space Station and it represents an important first step towards helping us achieve the key goals the President laid out,” said White House spokesman Nick Shapiro.

http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/109181-commerce-committee-approves-nasa-compromise