Noel

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• Commented on Fuel Depots and Congress

  "Cancel SLS — Save HSF!" Why bother with the intermediate step? Just cancel government HSF and be done with the entire long, painful, saga. Noel...

• Commented on SLS Procurement: Still Waiting For The Details (Update)

  "NASA ain't cheap and certainly ain't efficient (especially if you divide work amongst all centers, who show time and again they do not always work well together)." That's one of the things that really ticked me about the cancellation of...

• Commented on Big Rocket - But Where Will It Go?

  "More like an expensive, inefficient Ares V ... (using the most complex and only reusable first stage engine ever built, not to mention the most expensive) ... But I suppose that smells too much like Ares V and Constellation, right?...

• Commented on SLS Foot Dragging Continues

  "The idea that Congress could be so stupid as to completely eliminate the US national space agency and all of its programs is right out of science fiction" Congress do something incredibly stupid? Nah, you're right, that could never happen....

• Commented on More Climate Change Arm Waving

  "Judith Curry ... ha[s] been totally debunked as [a] denier[], by experts all across the board. What [she is] pushing is total bunk." Say what? This is the same Judith Curry who thinks that "nothing she [has] encountered led her...

• Commented on More Climate Change Arm Waving

  @Keith "no one ever plays with a full deck when they make these pro- or anti-arguments. They just wave their arms." Alas, I have to agree with you there. I have been looking for genuinely open-minded specialists on this subject...

• Commented on Russia Has Decided To Throw the ISS Away in 2020 (Update)

  "The only thing to do after that is to figure the best way to change the orbital inclination of ISS" Wow. Just wow. I'm floored by a back-of-the-envelope sense of how much delta-v/energy would be required to do that. Without...

• Commented on Rejoice Comrades! Glorious Era of Soyuz Begins (Update)

  "We might be able to do better with our various US commercial providers ... but it's not at all obvious that we can be cheaper. Russia is charging what the market will bear, unrelated to their costs. As any good...

• Commented on Official NASA Shuttle Talking Points

  "What 'free market' are you talking about? Where's the business plan for the Commercial Spaceflight Federation showing a majority of non-government customers?" I would have thought that "Mind, it might work" would have indicated that I myself was somewhat dubious...

• Commented on Official NASA Shuttle Talking Points

  "The reality is that NASA will never again build a vehicle. Most NASA insiders agree with this. Most see the Commercial Crew as waiting for the miracle of a market. Most see the SLS and MPCV as temporary until Obama...

• Commented on Official NASA Shuttle Talking Points

  "If NASA has to keep spending $3 billion a year plus for the ISS, then it should be de-orbited in 2016 so that money can be used for beyond LEO missions" I sort of tend to agree with you -...

• Commented on Mike Griffin is Still Unhappy

  "To me is it so disingenuous to hear Bolden and Garver basically lie about [t]he 'President's commitment to human space exploration.' We're not stupid. They know the truth and why they remain willing participants in this sham is beyond me."...

• Commented on Ed Weiler Thinks Obama's JWST Budget = "Road to Nowhere"

  "How do you 'kill' a #1 Decadal Survey priority without decimating the scientific community and the process? That's never been done before." Not in astronomy, no. But they did kill the SSC, thereby doing bad things to physics. The irony...

• Commented on Ed Weiler Thinks Obama's JWST Budget = "Road to Nowhere"

  "As an independent agency, NASA answers directly to the White House. All it would take is one phone call from the WH and major heads would roll for mismanaging billions over years." And by all indications no such phone call...

• Commented on Mike Griffin was against the Space Shuttle before he was for it

  "If what we wanted was the capabilities of the Shuttle specifically, than of course we should have kept it and continued developing it incrementally with all the cool upgrades that were planned - and imagined - for it." You're forgetting...

• Commented on Mike Griffin was against the Space Shuttle before he was for it

  "He was against COTS and still is." Not to defend Mr. Griffin's comments here (which I agree don't hold water), but the COTS 'cargo to the ISS' program was pushed by him. Perhaps you're thinking of manned COTS (which he...

• Commented on Today's Hearing: Where is the SLS Selection?

  "SLS has no such flight qualified vehicle." I wasn't thinking at all about the SLS (about which I don't really care, one way or the other), just pointing out that the two other heavy launchers in that list have actually...

• Commented on Today's Hearing: Where is the SLS Selection?

  "Atlas V Heavy. Falcon Heavy. Delta IV Heavy. Ariane 5. ... These have some kind of history" Umm, neither the Atlas V Heavy or Falcon Heavy have ever been built, let alone flown. Sure, both use a lot of components...

• Commented on Today's Hearing: Where is the SLS Selection?

  "by now SpaceX was supposed to be on Dragon 3 carrying astronauts" Maybe they hired the scheduling people who used to work on Constellation? (Ducks :-). Noel...

• Commented on Save Webb Campaign Begins (Update)

  "Webb is regarded as the best admin that NASA ever had. He took NASA from a handful of disparate NACA centers and assembled it into an organization that got to the moon about 8 years after he took over." I...

• Commented on Congressional Move to Cancel Webb

  @CB450SC Thanks for such a beautifully clear description of the issue. Although lots of moving parts aren't a total bar to success - look at the Mars rovers - talk about complicated mechanical systems! First the entry/landing, then it has...

• Commented on Save Webb Campaign Begins (Update)

  "Cancel it and serve Northrop with a five year ban. This is the perfect chance to make an example of a project whose budget has and will explode ... and is about a decade behind schedule. Kill it, then make...

• Commented on Two Views: Where Have We Been - Where Are We Going?

  "All this stuff about Asteroids first and skipping the moon and "orbiting Mars" ... has one thing in common: it allows NASA to skip a full blown lander." My take is much more cynical. They are both a long way...

• Commented on House Appropriations Committee Targets NASA for Deep Budget Cut

  "most recently the Wall Street bailout went to GOP investors by and large" This would be the same bailout money that the administration is now crowing has been basically entirely repaid (with interest)? Noel...

• Commented on House Appropriations Committee Targets NASA for Deep Budget Cut

  "for most of the comments so far, I'm rather perplexed... Here we have a program (JWST) that is estimated to cost at least 5-6 times it's original budget (and hard telling how much more it will go up...), and is...

• Commented on Full Range of Opinions and Emotions Surrounds Last Shuttle Flight

  Will the last person out of the US manned space program please turn out the lights? Thanks. Noel...

• Commented on Last Minute Plea To Not Retire Shuttle Fleet

  Agree with pretty much everything that's been said here (except the NewSpace fanboyism). The shuttle had an incredible set of capabilities, but it was horrendously expensive, and fundamentally unsafe. A great step forward, but a journey is more than one...

• Commented on Building Upon Kennedy's Space Legacy - Half A Century Later

  @Steve Whitfield "comments about Bolden and O'Keefe. ... Neither one went after the job; they were both asked to do it" This has nothing to do with evaluating how well they did the job, once they had it. "Bolden had...

• Commented on Building Upon Kennedy's Space Legacy - Half A Century Later

  "Flying a steel brick on top of the Ares 1 test vehicle did absolutely nothing to show how the stack would work with a live second stage full of liquid propellants." Well, this is something of a rathole, since Constellation...

• Commented on Building Upon Kennedy's Space Legacy - Half A Century Later

  Dennis may well be correct that the SLS is a rocket without a mission. However, on a number of other points, he is incorrect. First, the now-cancelled and dead Griffin Constellation program was more than a 'flag on Mars' effort...