Naysayers

The “naysayers” respond
 
SpacePolitics.com
 
Unlike the launch of Dragon two weeks ago, or its berthing with the International Space Station three days later, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) did not issue a statement about the successful splashdown of the Dragon last Thursday.
 
However, speaking last Thursday morning at the World Science Festival in New York—a few hours after Dragon left the ISS and a few hours before its reentry and splashdown—OSTP director John Holdren did mention the mission as an example of innovation and public-private partnerships that the administration is trying to support.
 
“This represents an entirely new model for the American space program,” he said in comments starting at the 15:15 mark of the video, “one initiated by this administration and one that, despite the handwringing of naysayers who said it would never work, now promises to change forever the nature of US space exploration and human spaceflight.”
 
Although one can quibble with Holdren’s claim that this model was initiated by the current administration—the SpaceX mission is part of the COTS program, which NASA started in 2005 during the George W. Bush Administration—the mission did appear to disprove Holdren’s unnamed “naysayers” who may have been skeptical about the capabilities of commercial operators.
 
Then, on Sunday, CBS’s “60 Minutes” reaired a segment about SpaceX that the show first broadcast in March. “60 Minutes” did include an update about the Dragon flight to the ISS, but the core of the segment was the same, including an interview with Elon Musk where he regretted that “American heroes” had been critical of the company. “You know, those guys are heroes of mine, so it’s really tough. You know, I wish they would come and visit, and see the hard work that we’re doing here. And I think that would change their mind,” Musk said.
 
One of “those guys”, former NASA flight director and JSC director Chris Kraft, objected to the characterization of himself as well as former astronauts Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan in the “60 Minutes” segment.
 
In a statement Kraft provided to the Houston Chronicle on the behalf of all three, Kraft said that “60 Minutes” presented “a distortion of the facts and the truth regarding SpaceX and people such as Neil Armstrong, Eugene Cernan and those of us that have been criticizing the present game plan of the U.S. Space Program.”
 
Kraft said they “commend” SpaceX on their recent achievement and their concerns are instead “the lack of recognition that unless the U.S. continues to advance the state of the art and invest the taxpayers money in a rational and affordable Space Program we will become a second rate nation and be left behind by those who recognize what is required.”
 
The statement doesn’t indicate why they waited until the second airing of the “60 Minutes” segment—after the SpaceX flight—to complain about that mischaracterization.
 
NASA heroes, SpaceX still at odds. Can’t we reach a detente here?
 
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy
 
As noted here and elsewhere, SpaceX had a brilliant success last week in completing a successful cargo spaceflight to and from the International Space Station.
 
Following the mission CBS’s 60 Minutes included a long segment on the company and its founder, Elon Musk, on Sunday night.
 
Today some of America’s Apollo heroes are taking exception with the segment, particularly the spot about 13 minutes in when Scott Pelley asks Musk about the cool reception that some of these NASA vets have given toward commercial space.
 
Here’s the relevant transcript:
 
There are American heroes who don’t like this idea. Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan have both testified against commercial spaceflight and the way that you’re developing it.
 
I was very sad to see that because those guys are heroes of mine. It’s really tough. I wish they would come and visit, and see the hardware we’re doing here. And I think that would change their mind.
 
They inspired you do to this, didn’t they?
 
Yes.
 
And to see them casting stones in your direction.
 
It’s difficult.
 
Did you expect them to cheer you on?
 
Certainly hoping they would.
 
What are you trying to prove to them?
 
What I’m trying to do is to make a significant difference in spaceflight and help make spaceflight accessible to almost anyone. And I would hope for as much support in that direction that we could receive.
 
What’s the problem? I received an e-mail from Chris Kraft, NASA’s first flight director, saying the 60 Minutes piece is a distortion of history and doesn’t reflect the views of those, including Kraft, Armstrong and Cernan, who have been editorializing about the Space Program.
 
Here’s the statement Kraft sent me on behalf of himself, Armstrong and Cernan:
 
What CBS and 60 Minutes did on Sunday evening was a distortion of the facts and the truth regarding SpaceX and people such as Neil Armstrong, Eugene Cernan and those of us that have been criticizing the present game plan of the U.S. Space Program.
 
We did not condemn the COTS Program. We commend SpaceX for their accomplishments and wish them every success in the future.
 
However, what they did — NASA and the US Space Industry did 50 years ago and without a road map. SpaceX had the benefit of all of this investment of the taxpayers money and without the taxpayers money today could not have accomplished the goals set by NASA — not by SpaceX.
 
But that is not the real story. The real story is what the U.S. did in the 1960’s  revolutionized the space industry and not only Space but the entire U.S.Industry. Indeed the ROI of the taxpayers money and the resulting explosion of technology provided by this investment revolutionized the entire world.
 
What we (The past leaders of the U.S. Space Program) are concerned about is the lack of recognition that unless the U.S. continues to advance the state of the art and invest the taxpayers money in a rational and affordable Space Program we will become a second rate nation and be left behind by those who recognize what is required.
 
That’s a reasonable viewpoint, and there’s no question these spaceflight luminaries have every reason to be concerned about the direction of NASA.
 
But to be equally fair they have said some not very nice things about SpaceX. Here’s what Cernan had to say about the company a year ago in an interview I conducted:
 
Do you have any hope for commercial space efforts, like SpaceX?
 
It has been the commercial space industry, under NASA’s leadership and guidance, that has allowed us to get to the moon and build a shuttle and everything that has happened in the last 50 years. To entirely turn it over without any oversight to the commercial sector, which is a word I question anyway, is going to take a long time. Some of these guys are highly qualified, but some are young entrepreneurs with a lot of money, and for them it’s kind of like a hobby. Not all of them. But some of them are making claims to get into space in five years for $10 billion, and even the Russians say it’s going to take twice as long if we put our eggs into that basket. I don’t have a lot of confidence in that end of the commercial space spectrum getting us back into orbit any time soon. I’d like to hear all these folks who call themselves commercial space tell me who their investors are. Tell me where their marketplace is. A commercial venture is supposed to use private money. And who are their users? Suppose we, NASA, have no need for their services. There’s no other marketplace for them. So is it really a commercial venture, or is it not? Is it a group of guys who have stars in their eyes and want to be a big space developer? I don’t know.
 
I don’t think they’ll come anywhere near accomplishing what they’ve said they can do. I said before Congress, and it’s still true today, they don’t yet know what they don’t know. We, if you’ll allow me to include myself with NASA, have been doing this for half a century. We have made mistakes. We’ve lost colleagues. Don’t you think we’ve learned from some of those mistakes? You bet your life we have. They have yet to learn from those mistakes. And I’m not willing as a taxpayer to sit here and pay them to make those mistakes before they can ever get where they think they can go. Now the good news side of this is there are some of the larger aerospace companies looking into getting into it, the Boeings, the Lockheed Martins, the ATKs, are now looking to compete in the commercial side of the business. That’s a little more encouraging. Those are the folks who have been working on everything we’ve done for the last 50 years. They know how it can be done.
 
Well, SpaceX knows how it can be done now, too.
 
What would be really constructive here would be for Armstrong, Cernan and Kraft to take Elon up on his offer of a visit to the company’s rocket-building facilities. That would generate a lot of positive buzz for everyone involved, and also give them a more powerful platform from which to make comments about what NASA is doing with the rest of its budget.
 
Kent Rominger