Bolden Says SLS “Will Go Away,” Expects Few Other Changes at NASA if Biden Elected
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
Former NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says he expects the agency’s expensive Space Launch System (SLS) will go away under during the next presidential term.
“SLS will go away. It could go away during a Biden administration or a next Trump administration … because at some point commercial entities are going to catch up,” he told Politico. “They are really going to build a heavy lift launch vehicle sort of like SLS that they will be able to fly for a much cheaper price than NASA can do SLS. That’s just the way it works.”
Congress will have something to say about the giant rocket designed to return astronauts to the moon under NASA’s Artemis program. Legislators have protected SLS and its two related programs, the Orion spacecraft and Exploration Ground Systems, despite large cost overruns and years of delays.
Critics have long advocated canceling SLS in favor of using SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy booster, which is already flying, and the Super Heavy and Starship boosters Elon Musk’s company is developing.
Blue Origin is also developing the New Glenn rocket, which could fill some of NASA’s needs for sending crews and supplies to the moon.
Aside from SLS, Bolden told Politico that he does not expect major space policy changes if Democrat Joe Biden wins the presidential election in November. Biden would likely focus NASA a bit more on Earth science as part of a larger effort to combat global warming, he said.
There is broad, bipartisan support for returning U.S. astronauts to the moon. The main disagreement is the schedule for doing so. Democrats who control the House of Representatives have rejected the Trump Administration’s plan to move the landing date up from 2028 to 2024.
The House Science Committee has not provided the budget increase NASA says it needs to meet the earlier date in its funding bill for fiscal year 2021. That measure will need to be reconciled with a more supportive bill from the Republican-controlled Senate.
The Obama Administration in which Biden served as vice president spent more money on Earth observation at NASA and global chance research across the federal government. The Trump Administration has been hostile to those initiatives.
Bolden said he has considered returning as NASA administrator if he was offered the job. However, he suggested Biden make history by appointing a woman for the first time in the agency’s history.
“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it … but I think it’s critical to have a woman,” he said. “There are well-qualified women out there who are steeped in history in terms of their involvement with NASA or other organizations,” Bolden added.
46 responses to “Bolden Says SLS “Will Go Away,” Expects Few Other Changes at NASA if Biden Elected”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I think Bridenstine has a better shot at being the NASA Administrator in a Biden administration than Charlie Bolden. Biden has a bipartisan aesthetic that he wants to push. I don’t think that’s going to work out for him if he is elected. He’ll be a lame duck on day one, a transitional leader. But he’s going to try, and Bridenstine might be a convenient totem of his intent. If not, Bolden is probably right about a woman getting picked.
Fingers crossed that his SLS prediction comes to fruition quickly.
Charlie said he had thought about it, but his recommendation that Biden hire a woman suggests he isn’t really serious about returning. Dan Goldin survived a change in party, so maybe Bridenstine might as well. Difficult to say.
Bridenstine needs to go. Garver is the one to have in there. Griffin under W pushed Commercial space, but when the GOP and some dems wanted to kill commercial space, it was Garver that kept it going. In fact, Bolden would have allowed commercial space to die.
I like Lori Garver, which is to say I usually find myself in agreement with her positions and she belongs to my political tribe. That editorial she penned in the Washington Post last year, “Forget new manned missions in space. NASA should focus on saving Earth,” went over like a lead balloon, though, and she is not a good public speaker. I’m willing to cut her some slack on the editorial, since she is currently the leader and spokesperson for an environmental org focused on tackling climate change. But I disagree with that position. I don’t want to forget about new
mannedcrewed missions in space.Here is a non-paywalled copy of that opinion piece: Forget new manned missions in space. NASA should focus on saving Earth.
Garver is the obvious Dem pick for a woman administrator, with the second choice being Dava Newman of MIT.
I liked her until that piece.
But overall I don’t think she has the political chops for the job. From what I’ve seen, she’s more about what is technically the best path forward, but, being right, she rubs many people in the establishment the wrong way. Bridenstine, in contrast, knows that politics is the art of the possible and has demonstrated the ability to steer the ship through murky and hazard-filled political waters
It has been fun watching Bridenstine moving the ball upfield.
has he done that?
Bridenstine got himself the job by aggressively campaigning for it, starting well before the election. Years before.
He sold Artemis to the administration, promising them whatever he had to to get them on board. He got the vice president personally vested as the chairman of the “space council” and titular cheerleader-in-chief for Artemis.
He immediately set to smacking Boeing around, letting them know that this was not going to be a cost plus free ride into the fuzzy, distant future. He’s let them know that their participation is not absolutely required. Have they gotten the message? I don’t know. But he’s been saying that, from day one, out loud, over and over, every way he can, at evey opportunity, and a lot of people have been hearing it, and some of them are believing it, and that is how one goes about fashioning reality in one’s own image in a democratic system. Whether you hate the Green New Deal or you love the Green New Deal, the reason why we are debating the Green New Deal is somebody spoke the words aloud, and suddenly it was a thing with which to be contended. That’s how it’s done.
He’s consistently pushed commercial services as the new model going forward. He shook up senior management in Human Exploration and Operations. The champion of commercial crew is now in the top seat. Look at that.
He publicly smacked SpaceX down for not focusing on what he wanted them to focus on, and that seemingly worked. The seeming is all that matters. It inoculated him from accusations that he’s overly enthralled with SpaceX, freeing him up to use their continued success as a cudgel against those who want things to remain the way they have been lo these many years. The guy’s got moves.
He launched American astronauts on an American rocket from American soil, restoring independent access to the ISS, and immediately started using it as a validation of the commercial services model. On a side note, he also used that opportunity to bring back Charlie Bolden, hugs all around, which was a good move for internal morale and a signal to a strengthening Democratic party that NASA is the exception to the partisan divide. Maybe it was also a move to marginally increase his chances of staying on through a change in administrations. Or maybe he’s just a class act and wanted Charlie to be there to enjoy the fruits of his labors. Maybe all three.
He’s got the NASA caucus in Congress singing out of the Artemis songbook, though they haven’t all settled on the same tune. They’ve bought into the Moon project, though they are not all bought into the 2024 scramble. Good. Let them argue over that. Bridenstine has always known 2024 was a bit of palaver. One way to land on the Moon in 2028 is to say you’re going to do it in 2024. More importantly, the only way to get Trump on board was to convince him the there was something in it for him.
Congress is still determined to protect their patronage system, but they are on the defensive, and therefore more likely to reach compromises that allow forward progress to continue. In politics, lots of choices are not binary. In fact, that is the case in most instances. Politics is the art of compromise. Absolutes do not work in a civil society. Capitalism functions under the same constraints. It’s a game that is meant to be played well, but you are not allowed to win the game outright. Partial victories only. Jeff Bezos can be the richest guy in the world, but as soon as it becomes obvious that he will eventually own everything, we will rend him limb from limb and piss on his dead corpse. Because we’re civil.
Bridenstine got CLPS going. He’s got the Lunar Lander at least initiated, pushing it forward as much as it can be in an election year with no budget. He’s pushing it as a commercial service against Congressional resistance, as well he should, and he has a real shot of prevailing, assuming he’s still around to do so.
He’s rolled out the Artemis Accords. The what now? The thing that says capitalism in space is what we’re going to be doing and inviting the rest of the world to join us in that endeavor. He said the thing out loud, spoke it into being, inviting the discussion internationally and encouraging private capital to get involved. In theory, this is a State Department initiative, but so far the State Department, currently run by corrupt, morally bankrupt, inept thugs, has chimed in with, “yeah, what he said.”
As for SLS, Bridenstine salutes the flag and sings its praises in a ceremonial way. He speechifies at every milestone. Those speeches always involve talking about “public/private partnerships”, of course. But every slip and budget overrun gets announced on a Tuesday morning, not a Friday afternoon, figuratively speaking.
Bridenstine knows he cannot make war upon Congress and slay it. He has to persuade it, pressure it, weaken its position with accomplishments, speak the truths aloud that it does not want to hear in ways that are persuasive without being belligerent. He doesn’t say that SLS/Orion is a millstone hanging from his neck, he just walks around in public view with the millstone hanging from his neck and lets it speak for itself. And he talks about all the cool things we are going to do in space, emphasizing those elements of the plan that don’t involve the carrying of millstones.
To me, it looks like Bridenstine has been productive. I like him. I think he’s a good NASA Administrator. He’s also quite fit, a natty dresser and an excellent public speaker. Not bad for a climate change denying Okie.
all I see is a lot of talk
JimBo has done nothing but talk…in the end he has not fixed SLS, not stopped it nor reached an alternate program…he has not gotten support for a lunar program in terms of cash
we are nowhere different then when he walked in the door
You also don’t think Elon Musk has done anything but talk. So you can apparently hear okay, but you don’t seem to be able to see. Kind of odd for a man in your profession. I guess these newfangled planes do fly themselves.
no
Indeed. And he has a very decent shot at putting it into the end zone by 2024.
Garver and I have certainlyhad our shouting matches with each other…but 🙂 all things pass.
My prediction for a biden administration is a few things
1. the lunar goal as it is now will go. Garver said in her op ed what every real non space industrial complex person in the Congress thinks…absent some major cost reduction there is no reason to send people to do what increasingly robots can do better…in other words to change where humans are in the exploration “spear”
2. if there isa Biden administration (which I hope there will be) the country will be running 4-6 trillion dollar deficits…and well no one is going to advocate spending money to send mythic heroes to the moon, even a woman
3. Jimbo will go. Garver is themost likely choice for it. (this is what Charlie is advocating) she is in with the Hillary crowd, I dont know how much she is in with the Biden crowd
4. SLS in any event is gone. cost are exploding…it will probably cost about 3 billion a launch…
First, of course, there has to be a Biden administration – which would quickly become a Harris administration. I don’t think the majority of the American public are very eager to have a President who got started in politics giving Lewinskis to Willie Brown and parlayed that into a job as prosecutor where she specialized in convicting the innocent. We’ve already had one self-involved and thoroughly incompetent black President. I don’t think we’re up for a second one quite so soon.
But then you also thought Bernie was going to be the nominee, so there’s that.
which would quickly become a Harris administration.
thats trump koolaide. there is no data to support that
and btw you are racist
WTF is she thinking?
I did not see that. Before.
I agree with her that NASA has to do more on earth science, but killing manned missions is foolish. Because of manned missions, space is about to get cheap, making earth science possible.
Hmm.
Dava is suddenly looking awesome.
Dava is not really qualified, she lack managerial skills.
A better candidate is Kathy Sullivan.
I’m no great fan of Charlie Bolden, but actual history completely negates your premise. Bolden wouldn’t have let commercial space die because he had the opportunity to simply stand aside and let the Space Pork Caucus kill it and didn’t do that. Garver was a good advocate for commercial space, but she wasn’t in charge. Charlie was.
His ideas about commercial space “staying in its place” (LEO) were certainly retrograde, but he correctly realized he didn’t really have a choice about Commercial Cargo and Crew because Shuttle was winding inexorably down and there simply was no alternative if ISS was to remain a going concern. He certainly never bought into the goofy fantasy entertained by some of the Space Pork Caucusoids that SLS and Orion could do taxi duty to ISS as well as go the Moon/Mars/an asteroid draft pick to be named later.
He was a man of limited vision, but he wasn’t blind.
Garver, I’ve already commented on above. She seems to have drunk deeply of the Global Warming Kool-Aid somewhere along the way and now wants to convert NASA into a climate warrior agency that abandons manned spaceflight.
History does NOT negate it. Bolden was in favor of stopping new space. He has always backed old space and NASA doing things the old way. It was Lori that pushed for the CCXDev. Otherwise, it would have been stopped. And it was NOT charlie in Charge. It was OBAMA. Lori convinced him, not Bolden to do the right thing.
As to your last paragraph, I agree with her that we MUST deal with Climate change and soon. Sadly, she is not thinking right, at least that article shows that. Manhattan projects work great for when you have 1 thing to develop. Developing a Bomb, a launch ROCKET, or even a nuclear space tug, is great for a Manhattan project. You focus on 1 -3 types of items with a lot of talent and yes, you can accomplish an end goal. HOWEVER, going to the moon, mars, or solving climate change does NOT work well with Manhattan projects. Instead, you need to solve LOTS of small to large issues. For this, you need cross-pollination of ideas. For example, we should be doing decent funding of geothermal energy here on earth esp. around our super volcanoes (helping to solve not only climate change, but national security by limiting the damage from future eruption) . This would give O&G industry something else to work on, but that same technology would then work on Mars and moon. Likewise, Nuclear power is absolutely need on earth, by the DoD, and yes, by NASA. Solar works for the moon/mars, but like here, it is NOT available 24x7x365. As such, depending on it for ALL energy needs is foolish. manned/crewed spaceflight to the moon/mars needs to be pushed ALONG with climate change solutions. Hell, we should even create bio-sphere 3 and R&D what issues are really going on with climate change and environmental issues while looking at what is needed for the moon/mars.
I have absolutely NO idea what she is thinking now by pushing that, but once I saw that, I have to say that I liked Newman a whole lot more.
Absent evidence, your accusations about Bolden are unsubstantiated opinion. Which pretty much puts them in the same category as your equally irrational animus against the sterling Jim Bridenstine. Those voices in your head telling you these things are just manifestations of your stage-four TDS.
As a non-sufferer from climate change hysteria, I see no “urgency” about “solving” a non-problem. That said, I’d also like to see a lot more nuclear baseload power.
I’m very dubious that any sort of energy extraction scheme is likely to mitigate our indefinite-future supervolcano problem but I wouldn’t say you nay even so. But good luck getting the tree-huggers to sign off on doing anything of a major industrial nature anywhere near Yellowstone Park.
As to what Garver is currently thinking you ignore the obvious – she’s <i<>ceased thinking and has joined one of the several left-wing secular cults now busily hoovering up the weak-minded and easily led among your ideological brethren – i.e, pretty much all of them. Climate hysteria, “systemic racism,” “gender fluidity” – why couldn’t you all just join Scientology or something?
“sterling Jim Bridenstine.”
You have to be kidding. About the ONLY way that he is sterling is if you are a fan of the SLS, ORion and CST-100, and wish to see loads more $ flow to his friends.
As a climate-change denialist, I put you in the same category as flat earthers, anti-vaxers, ‘GMO’ group that does not even understand what they are following and am amazed that you back nuclear power, since it competes directly with your beloved coal and oil. Me? I will continue to acknowledge SCIENCE and LOGIC on all of this. Likewise, I will push for cheaper/better EVs to replace LICE vehicles that burn O&G. In part for climate change and more so because for the last 40 years, I have been opposed to burning O&G since it really is ‘black gold’. You will need a chemistry background to truly understand why.
Garver has apparently fallen off the deep-end. I was a fan of hers because I was aware of insider knowledge concerning new space. Sadly, she appears to be as weak-minded as you are.
Please stick to facts as opposed to your BS.
SLS is a creature of Congress and will only go away if something like Starship/Super Heavy makes a laughing stock of it. Congress will then of course have hearings to assign responsibility for the SLS and it’s waste of Taxpayer dollars. Congress of course will be shown to be just a victim of the misinformation provided to it by the parties (NASA and it’s Contractors) the hearing identifies as being responsible for the money wasted on SLS. Of course if the contractors have kept up their campaign contributions to Congress then they will probably join Congress as victims of NASA’s SLS misinformation.
There will be no hearings, and no apologies. It’ll all just be attributed to Shelby. The easy out is the lack of payloads.That’s what will kill it
They can throw some blame Bill Nelson’s way while they’re at it.
thats right, it will just go away magically vanish like other virus
just humor
It’s “when”, not “if”.
I agree with Andrew, though. There will be no hearings to assign blame. Everyone who is paying attention knows the deal, and the folks who aren’t paying attention aren’t paying attention, so there is no need to answer to them.
Agree. SLS will be quietly buried some moonless night in an unmarked grave and everyone involved will have convenient attacks of amnesia.
With Starship SN8 soon being a complete airframe & headed for a 60,000 ft test flight & landing within a few weeks, Starship may be ready sooner than expected.
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
yeah by 2024
Crew Dragon exploded on a test stand in July of 2019. Bob and Doug launched to the ISS less than a year later. Some people predicted that would not happen.
You’ve reeled those goalposts back in enough we only disagree by about 3 years now. You’ve even knocked a year off your comment of 24 hours previous. My goodness, if this keeps up, you may soon be progressing almost as fast as Elon’s boys at Boca Chica.
SLS goes away if ever an administration and the Congress get serious about “some goal” for NASA to do in space, not on earth which is where SLS and Orions mission is. this is why its easy to see that Trump nor Jimbo were really serious about a lunar goal. as long as SLS is in the critical path, the goal is subservient to the goal of spending money to keep the Apollo/shuttle infrastructure going.
if you are waiting for Starship you are going to wait for awhile. its fantasy to think that Starship is going to orbit in the first half of this decade OR that the infrastructure is going to exist in this first half to launch it then fuel it then go someplace else. thats Musk world…but its not going to happen. the leap from where they are now to that happening is bigger then any Musk has ever taken, even leaping to the Falcon 1 from nothing
there are several goals that could be put in place which supplant “the first woman on the moon” but all of them require something likely to be in short supply for a long time…thats serious federal dollars.
and that will be the tradeoff..there is a lot of money spending on SLS and Orion …if there is ever a goal…that is where the money comes from Robert
It’s not a fantasy. It’s looking quite possible. Even NASA seem to agree : by giving SpaceX money for a proposal including an unmanned lunar landing by 2022.
not much money
Elon doesn’t need much.
Lori Garver would be superior to Bridenstine. She is the one that pushed Commercial Space, while GOP were busying pushing SLS, Orion, etc.
Bridenstine has been very good and very innovative. Also very politically astute about what fights to pick and when to pick them.
But Garver, based on her recent op-ed suggesting NASA abandon manned spaceflight to concentrate on Earth observation and climate change, would have been a terrible substitute and would be an equally terrible replacement. With her sitting first chair, we wouldn’t have Artemis or anything connected to it.
I believe if Biden wins, big IF given trends in the Midwest & FL, they’ll nominate Lori Garver or Dava Newman. More likely Garver.
Billionaire Bloomberg to spend $100 million in Florida to help Biden
Well, that’s $100 million he won’t have to make mischief somewhere else where it might have been more effective.
Hopefully, Lori Garver gets the nod.
She is IDEAL for NASA.
No. She’s ideal for NOAA, where no human involvement above the hurricane hunters is necessary.
She has already been to NASA as a deputy. Better to focus on new people who come from inside NASA like Kathy Lueders.
I would add this. As much as I admire Charlie.
IF SLS goes away NASA changes enormously. NASA has been on this path for sometime but they are now at a place where they (and the policy dictated to them) have spent 30 plus billion dollars and gotten nearly nothing. I dont care that SLS was forced on them. to have spent that muchmoney and come up with buttkas is pretty much the end of the Apollo NASA.
where NASA will devolve to is sort of airline status. a contracting agency much as they did with commercial crew and cargo to accomplish modest goals that can be accomplished with commercial off the shelf goods OR goods slightly modified
and that is going to change the various goals that politicans give it. the failure to build SLS in some workable form …is catastrophic if you loved the Apollo NASA (whichI did not)
SLS is a jobs program with a set of specs that was handed to NASA. A project they never wanted and knew would do nothing but take money away from more promising science missions. Apollo worked because they were given an outcome, a date and a blank check. Part of “worked” is a huge body of science and engineering that didn’t exist before. NASA doesn’t need to be cost efficient in a commercial sense. Its projects need to push the limits and be so unique that their payback is knowledge. I see them as the LRF (Long Range Foundation) in the Heinlein story “Time for the Stars”.
NASA is about aerospace and aviation. To convert it to an Earth sciences only agency is silly. It needs to be doing big projects that don’t make sense for commercial entities and pure scientific research that might take decades to mean anything.
NASA needs to blaze the trail to establishing an outpost on the moon and they let commercial entities take over the Earth-Moon run while booking seats from time to time to go and do science.
Apollo hardware was very mission specific. it wasn’t discussed in committees to find ways to make it more flexible to cope with differing missions. SLS is more like the Shuttle in being a multi-role craft that is not very good at much of anything over a Saturn V’s single purpose. Yes, the SV was used for Skylab and a hook up with the USSR, but that’s because they were there sitting around, not because the designers were considering those missions from day one.
If the goal is to return to the moon and continue advancing the state of the art to use the moon for medical, engineering and astronomy research, a set of craft need to be developed specifically for just that. In the process, maybe there will some parts of those that will apply to other missions. If it means parts aren’t useful for other purposes, that’s ok too. I don’t believe in tabula rasa, but I do believe in goals driving the design over reusing things just because they are there.
so you are saying that only NASA can “continue advancing the state of the art to use the moon for medical,
engineering and astronomy research, a set of craft need to be developed
specifically for just that. In the process, maybe there will some parts
of those that will apply to other missions. I”?