Sagitta Cantina

April 19, 2018
RELEASE 18-027
Statements on Jim Bridenstine’s Senate Confirmation as NASA Administrator

U.S. Representative Jim Bridenstine, President Donald Trump’s nominee for NASA Administrator, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate Thursday, April 19, 2018.



The following are statements from Rep. Jim Bridenstine and acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot on Thursday’s U.S. Senate confirmation of Bridenstine as the 13th Administrator for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration:

"It is an honor to be confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as NASA Administrator,” said Bridenstine. “I am humbled by this opportunity, and I once again thank President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for their confidence. I look forward to working with the outstanding team at NASA to achieve the President’s vision for American leadership in space.”

“I’m very pleased to welcome Jim Bridenstine to NASA,” said Lightfoot. "He joins our great agency at a time when we are poised to accomplish historic milestones across the full spectrum of our work. Jim now takes the reins of this agency and its talented and dedicated workforce. I'm looking forward to him building on our great momentum and sharing our many strengths to help us make the next giants leaps on behalf of humanity. I also want express my heartfelt appreciation to the NASA team for all they accomplished during my time leading the agency."

For Bridenstine’s biographical information, visit:

https://bridenstine.house.gov/biography

For information about NASA’s missions, programs and activities, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

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Like Pruitt at the EPA, I expect him to be a great administrator.

1) Kill the SLS and apply those funds to something better, like getting back to the moon using the Falcon Heavy.
2) Get some more outer planet probe programs going. Way past time to put orbiters around Uranus and Neptune.
3) More new propulsion systems research, at least re-start the NERVA program.

Joe Wooten wrote:Like Pruitt at the EPA, I expect him to be a great administrator.

We can only hope... don't see how it can be much worse than what the last bunch in office did... "more of the same", "Been there, done that", and tasking NASA with "reaching out to the Muslim community"...

Joe Wooten wrote:1) Kill the SLS and apply those funds to something better, like getting back to the moon using the Falcon Heavy.

I think it's gonna take either another 10 years or so or one heck of an enema to achieve that... Gotta wash out all the "dead wood" and old "shuttle mafia" holdovers first... Saw a speech recently someone posted a link to from Bill Gerstenmaier... the old SOB looks like he's about 90 now, he should just move on and retire or get the h3ll out of the way for younger blood to actually DO something with the space program (reminds me of a quote Lincoln made while he was BEGGING General George McClellan to march out of Washington and attack the Confederacy, which he kept putting off, FINALLY moved across the river into Virginia late in the year, and then stopped again... "Perhaps if General McClellan isn't using the Army he would allow me to borrow it for awhile"...)

Anyway, in true "shuttle mafia" style, the whole gist of his speech was that "we MUST have SLS (and of course another ten years and several billion dollars to design and build SLS Block 2) because we simply cannot launch lunar or Mars missions on Falcon Heavy-- it's too small... We *envision* modules of well over 70 tonnes in orbit and *I don't think* we can break them up smaller, so SLS *will be REQUIRED* to do these sorts of missions."

Okay, for one thing, NASA has been "envisioning" different missions, modules, and designs for the last 30 years, but HASN'T BUILT A DAMN THING... therefore if one of the requirements at the get-go to designing actual blueprints for a module is "must be launchable on Falcon Heavy or equivalent" then it'll be designed to fit on Falcon Heavy or equivalent. SLS is *only* required if you *intentionally design* your modules so they *require* launch on SLS... (NASA is good at that... remember way back when 15 years ago now when the shuttle retirement had been announced in the wake of the Columbia disaster, and the plans "then" were to build a CEV (crew exploration vehicle) to replace shuttle (ie morphed into Orion) and NASA Administrator Sean O'keefe and Admiral Steidle's plan at that time was the "spiral development" of NASA capabilities... Of course this terrified the "shuttle mafia" which was of course then at their zenith of power, and so they got O'keefe and Steidle replaced with good "shuttle derived solution" proponents like Mike Griffin... Regardless that their own RAC-2 studies showed that basically a new Saturn V was a better idea, so they tweaked the findings to make shuttle derived "more affordable" and thus we got Ares I/Ares V, which ultimately spent billions and were cancelled after a tuna-can flight of an old shuttle booster as "Ares I-X" and Ares V got downsized into SLS block 1...

Folks then were saying, "we can launch CEV on Delta IV Heavy" which got the shuttle mafia foaming at the mouth, saying "it wasn't possible" and all sorts of nonsense, quoting "lofted trajectories" (to maximize payload on unmanned satellite launches) and other such fluff... when that was too transparent an argument, they then tweaked the design of the CEV and required that it **MUST** be 5.5 meters in diameter to perform its function...thereby making it *TOO BIG* to be launched on a Delta IV heavy (or any other EELV-derived solution)... Then later when early work on Ares I proved that ARES I ITSELF was *incapable* of launching a 5.5 meter CEV (Orion by this time), so the design was quietly downsized to 5 meters... then of course after 6 years of work and forcing a 'clean sheet' weight scrub of Orion's design in an ATTEMPT for Ares I's anemic performance to be capable of launching it, it was realized that Ares I was a dead end design and FINALLY scrapped after 7 years of work and about 9 billion dollars in development (and who knows HOW MUCH additional design work and cost and delay on Orion...)

I expect NO LESS from the same crowd who've shouted all along "we *MUST* have Ares I/ Ares V/ SLS/ SLS Block 2" than to pull the same tricks to keep SLS alive, despite the fact it's already obsolete and already obscenely expensive... *ANYTHING* to keep "their shuttle derived baby" alive, even if it means NO PAYLOADS and NO MISSIONS... (so what the h3ll are we building the damn thing for again?? I just finished reading Boris Chertok's "Rockets and People", and it's an enlightening (but very heavy) read (4 volumes of about 400-600 pages each). In this final volume, the last couple chapters are dedicated to the cancellation of N-1 and Glushko's takeover of Korolev's old design burea after Mishin's ouster... Glushko IMMEDIATELY set about getting N-1 cancelled (even though the next flight would almost certainly have worked) and getting *his own* pet design for a super-booster approved... which of course wasn't approved, but was reworked into what became Energia and Buran... which incidentally flew EXACTLY TWICE and was cancelled... at least N-1 flew 4 times (though never successfully). I see a similar fate for SLS "eventually"... may take another 5-10 years though; it may be flown a couple times and then quietly cancelled... Simple fact is NASA has NO BUDGET to fly *with* SLS-- it can either own/operate the launch vehicle, or it can design and build payloads-- NOT BOTH! (no money for it!)

Joe Wooten wrote:2) Get some more outer planet probe programs going. Way past time to put orbiters around Uranus and Neptune.

Yeah, that'd be nice... thing is, we need plutonium in order to do more deep space stuff... we're critically short of the plutonium isotope used as fuel in the RTG power generators necessary to power deep space and outer solar system missions-- the solar energy levels are FAR too low to power anything out there... Juno basically required 3 solar panels the size of semi trailers in order to provide electricity for an ultra-low power probe (designed to "sip" electricity) even at Jupiter... IOW Jupiter is *barely* achievable with solar power-- the outer solar system, NO WAY-- (inverse square law). Without the Dept. of Energy approving the manufacture of more of the required plutonium isotopes, there won't BE any more outer solar system probes...

Joe Wooten wrote:3) More new propulsion systems research, at least re-start the NERVA program.

I wouldn't hold my breath on that either... NERVA scared them to death in the late 60's... NO WAY it's gonna fly NOW... too many tree huggers and nutjobs that will never allow it, and too many hand-wringers in positions of power and authority. Like I said above, if DOE won't even get off their butts and approve breeding more plutonium for "safe" RTG's, they SURE aren't going to go for "live" reactors in space...

It's easier to just "do nothing" and leave it at that. Seems to be the main aim of NASA and gubmint in general nowdays...

Later! OL J R

Simple fact of the matter is, NASA enjoys spending money more than actually doing anything anymore... why they don't have a problem with designing an enlarged Apollo they've been working on for 15 years and a "plug-n-play" supposedly "easier/cheaper to develop" shuttle-derived rocket that they've been working on for 9 years and STILL have yet to fly. Nevermind actual MISSION MODULES or LUNAR MODULES or ANYTHING ELSE they actually need to go anywhere and do anything beyond maybe a zip around the Moon or something... Nothing's funded either; it's all just "low level research" ie sitting around dreaming up different hardware ideas (not designs, just "ideas" and of course "studies"...)

There's been a number of audacious proposals for outer planetary probes and stuff which have all been put in a permanent "holding pattern" or shot down entirely because of a lack of plutonium for RTG's... (and funding more or less).

NASA should be *forbidden* by Congress from owning/designing launch vehicles... it's like the early days of the shuttle when the gubmint *required* that ALL payloads be designed to be launched by shuttle, in order to "create demand" for shuttle launches, while simultaneously scrapping virtually ever expendable launch vehicle we had to *force* payloads onto the shuttle. Not much was exempt from that mandate. Of course the "law of unintended consequences" kicked in and basically the US companies who had been launching their satellites on expendable boosters balked at the costs and delays of flying on shuttle, as well as the additional requirements imposed on the design for launch by a MANNED SPACECRAFT to launch an UNMANNED SATELLITE, which greatly increased costs... So, when the French and ESA subsidized the creation of their highly successful Ariane launch vehicle, US commercial satellite customers FLOCKED to their doors to launch on cheaper Arianes... and of course in due time the Russians and Chinese got in on the action as well... Basically, we FUNDED the development of our competition, at the expense of our own capabilities. Now we're doing it again, paying the Russians to launch all our ISS astronauts for the last 8 years...

Later! OL J R

DOE is again producing plutonium for deep space reactors, but production is glacial. It will be several years before enough is ready. They had to re-start the least worn out reactor at Oak Ridge or Hanford to do it.