Armchair experts

One source of continuing amusement and exasperation is the pontificating of the “armchair experts” regarding the future of the U.S. space program. They proliferate on spaceflight forums. Many are of the opinion that NASA should “get out” of designing and launching rockets, and leave this to the “expertise” of private industry (despite NASA employing hordes of experts and launched rockets for 50 years or so). This commenter on a NASA Watch article had what I thought was a great rebuff:

Sorry to rain on the “private space is great” parade, but as of today they have yet to make even one orbit of this rock for all of the money they’ve spent.

What happened to the second flight of SpaceShipOne? No floating candy as it falls back to Earth, unable to break free of the gravity well.

Listen up, people! This isn’t aviation, nor ocean sailing. It’s spaceflight, and it’s much more difficult to accomplish than it looks. Sure, NASA and the Russians make it look easy, but 50 years ago, it wasn’t. And if you are realistic about it, it still is not easy. Other than submarining, it’s the most difficult activity known to humanity.

So keep on trumpeting the “accomplishments” of the private space industry, but don’t be so quick to turn over access to space to the same people who brought us the meltdown of our financial system. 30 years ago, trusting Wall Street with your retirement made as much sense as playing the ponies. It still does.

Meanwhile, Stevie Wonder created a song just for the “private space industry”: “You Haven’t Done Nothing”.

Orbit the planet. Bring the pilot back alive. Then we’ll talk.

“Perhaps a better analogy would be ‘Why doesn’t the federal government farm out its automobile transportation needs to Hertz or Avis or Enterprise Rent-A-Car’ ‘Why should the government own cars?’ ‘The government should get out of the car ownership business’.”

Yes, by all means, let’s turn this over to companies who will collude to give the government a “special rate”. And please, spare me any talk about “competition”.

When Warren Buffett and Bill Gates pony up their billions for private spaceflight, then we the taxpayers will do the same.

We buy enough snake oil every day!

– Posted by: Dave H. at July 24, 2009 9:01 p.m.

There doesn’t seem to be the equivalent for the Russian space program; perhaps there are some on Russian-language forums, but I can’t read these.

“Alexey Leonov: ‘I Could See Armstrong Bouncing on the Moon’ ”, Roskosmos, 20/7 (a better-formatted version at Russia Today). A lengthy interview with cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov on various topics, including the Apollo Moon landings (he gets irate at those who believe the program was faked), Yurii Gagarin’s death, and the prospect of a Mars mission (not any time soon).

Cosmonaut Gennadii Padalka, currently in orbit on the ISS, accumulated 500 days in space on 18/7, over 3 missions (Soyuz TM-28, TMA-4/ISS-9, TMA-14/ISS-19).

Cash-strapped

Expedition 14’s spacewalk yesterday suffered a few glitches. The exit from Pirs was delayed by 1h 17m as Mikhail had to exit his spacesuit to straighten a kinked cooling suit hose. They also had some trouble opening the hatch because of an obstruction. There was also problems setting up for the golf stunt (wasting about 38m) and Mikhail only managed to get off one shot before having to move onto the other tasks. The initial order of the successive tasks was subsequently changed. The spacewalk was shortened as the initial delay meant they used up consumables (the lithium hydroxide CO₂ scrubbers in their spacesuits); TsUP tend to be conservative with spacewalk length. You can follow the LIVE: ISS Expedition 14 Spacewalk and Golf Stunt thread at NASASpaceflight.com.

I initially thought cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov was doing the Russian communications between the cosmonauts and TsUP, but it turned out to be another Sergei K – Kireevichev – so I was rather disappointed about that!

The spacewalk lasted 5h 38m, from 00:17 to 05:55 UTC.

“Spacewalker takes orbital golf shot”, MSNBC.com. Naturally the golf stunt got the most attention from the media, no doubt pleasing the company who sponsored it, but (again) making the Russian Space Agency look like cheap salesmen who would pawn their own grandmothers to get some cash. (The media usually include the phrase “cash-strapped” whenever referring to the Russian space program.) I would like to have a few choice words with those in the RSA who make cosmonauts do these stupid promotions. It is not what the Russian space program should be about.

It follows other commercial ventures at the space station that the Russian space agency has allowed, sometimes to the chagrin of NASA. The cash-strapped Russians have allowed Pizza Hut to paint its logo on a rocket and have a pizza delivered to the space station. And it once charged PepsiCo $5 million to have cosmonauts float a replica of a soda can outside the Mir space station.

NASA has taken a grin-and-bear-it attitude. The U.S. space agency is indebted to its Russian partner for flying U.S. astronauts to the space station while shuttles were grounded after the Columbia disaster.

An unrelated source of dismay is that the daily ISS On-Orbit Status reports seem to have stopped (the last posted 6 October, and they have been very erratic this year). An email I sent to Spaceref came back with the reply that they had stopped receiving them, for some reason. The Reports are posted in the L2 section of NASASpaceflight.com, but that section is paid subscriber-only, which I can’t afford (I don’t have a credit card, anyway). I am very disappointed as they were the only detailed source of daily life on the ISS (I think they are for NASA personnel in the ISS program).

Silly stunts

The Dumb Golf Stunt is set to happen during the spacewalk on 22/23 November, performed by Mikhail Tyurin. I really hate this aspect of the Russian space program; I am sure none of the cosmonauts joined their profession in order to be glorified salespeople. It’s undignified and the Russian government should increase their funding so that the space agency gets enough money and doesn’t have to resort to such tacky commercialism. The government space programs should be about exploring and colonizing space, not this nonsense.

Expedition 14 Mission Status Briefing Materials, NASA ISS site.