[FPSPACE] Ares 1/ Ares 5 or Direct: Surprise

[Charles Vick]

Do not tell me that everything is fine and that everything is ok with NASA
and the new Ares-1 human booster Orion CEV spacecraft program with  design
weight constraints ignoring safety requirements because that is to deceive
one's self into delusions asking for certain catastrophic failure and loss
of human spacefarer's life. For there to be so much publicity about the
design issues with employees clearly in open rebellion says volumes about
things that are not right with in NASA It also suggest that management has
lost control which is doubly serious implying that a stand down is required
once the political transition takes place.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: fpspace-bounces at friends-partners.org
[mailto:fpspace-bounces at friends-partners.org] On Behalf Of E.P. Grondine
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2009 1:50 PM
To: fpspace at friends-partners.org
Subject: [FPSPACE] Ares 1/ Ares 5 or Direct: Surprise

 

For all of you in the cheaper seats - 

In their PR campaign Griffin and Thiokol continue to try to frame this
question as either Ares 1 or continuing Shuttle, while in truth the option
space is far different, and while the general public may not know it, we do.
Today Thiokol began promoting the line how good Ares 5 will be for space
based astronomy, hoping to add astronomers to the Zubrinite Mars Nuts as
their base of support for Ares 1/Ares 5. 

Ongoing Thiokol PR lines are the amount of money already spent (wasted) on
Ares 1, and how Ares 1 will come out on top in any comparison with Direct, a
comparison they want done now, while their supporters are still in place.

Two key points:
Bolden lobbied for Thiokol.
Gration worked on Obama's space policy statement.

It is claimed that Gration has no NASA experience, even though he worked as
a White House Fellow with Hans Marks. And the fact is that Gration had
detailed space experience as a user of space products while commanding, and
knows Defense space issues thoroughly. 

Gration also knows his physics and engineering. Anybody want to speculate on
his involvement with members of the Direct team (the folks trained by von
Braun's men)? Anybody want to try to parse Gration's involvement in Direct
out of the Obama space policy statement?

Perhaps Thiokol counts on no one knowing how vicious they can be, but then
Space Team Obama has a lot of experience. It looks like they are simply
choosing not to engage with Thiokol at this point, preferring to simply wait
until Griffin's appointment expires. 

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas (despite its faults due to my stroke, truly a
great book, in my opinion - write me for details on the fpspace special)











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