How Two Presidents Failed to Reform NASA - but succeeded anyway

Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama tried to reform NASA, but were not successful.

At least not the way they had hoped, but the changes they made fundamentally reshaped NASA and will continue to reshape it in the future

00:00 Intro
00:41 Keeping Shuttle Flying was the goal
02:20 A new idea pops up
03:49 NASA wants all the missions
05:04 The commercial space act gets in the way
06:46 Ares I and Ares V show up
07:25 Commercial cargo
08:47 NASA used to be great at development
11:28 Ares I-X flies
12:16 Obama shows up with another set of new ideas
12:30 Constellation is not affordable
13:19 The Status Quo Strikes Back
13:54 What Obama hoped to do
15:01 The status quo version
17:11 President Bush Gave us Commercial Cargo and SpaceX
17:35 President Obama gave us commercial crew
20:04 Presidents Bush and Obama gave us commercial moon landers
21:00 Summary
21:30 If you enjoyed this video / outro

@Eager_Space on Twitter

[dsdy]

Moral of the story: "There's too much to fix" doesn't mean you shouldn't try

[sipbipmip]

Don't forget about Saturn 1b as a human rated launcher.

[joeteichert]

So when it was greenlit, the SLS was expected to be the only U.S. rocket capable of reaching the moon, and now SpaceX is well on it's way to doing the same for less. I'd look for ways to reinvent myself if I were SLS supppliers.

[GlennSchmelzle]

An excellent rundown of the civilian side. There's another side to the story, the US Military who influences through their Darpa budgets. Ashlee Vance's "When the heavens went on sale" goes into how this impacted NASA and private providers. Would love a video that talks more about that.

[WasatchWind]

The idea that they wanted to fly shuttle into the 2020s is insane, I can't believe they wanted to hold onto it for that long.

[hygri]

"Eeeagerrr I love it. Ethereal yet creepy.

[csours]

Whenever you say crewed mission, I say crude mission. It's fun!
Crude Spaceflight is more expensive than Un-crude for some reason.

[anekdoche]

ahh yes, pink E, my favorite YouTube channel

[cleed]

This one of the best videos you've made.

[iantaylor]

I love the way your knowledge allows you to step back and explain the big picture. Thank you.

[mrrolandlawrence]

amazing. watching soon as i saw it come up in the feed :)

[TexanMiror]

haha, I started cursing once the name Griffin came up. Then, when Bill "baggage" Nelsons name came up, I cursed some more. There's too many useless politicians out there. Corrupt traitors, the lot of them. Screw SLS, and all the nonsense that led up to it. I saw it happen, even when SpaceX barely began flying Falcon 9 - that entire model, it was the future. Screw anybody who was "cautious" about commercialization. It was obvious it would be the better choice going forward. I hope Europe realizes it soon, as well.
Good video overview. Very neutral overall, unlike my comment. Thank you!

[benprishtina]

I worked on the constellation program, I remember all of this, I worked on the program from 2009 to 2010, when I left voluntarily for another opportunity. I worked on the Electrical Ground Support Equipment for Ares I and Ares V, which turned into SLS.

[Nowhereman]

At @7:26 to 8:26 you left out a LOT of COTS history that's critical for context.

You forgot to mention that there was Kistler Spaceplanes that was selected alongside SpaceX for COTS first. Kistler was offering their K-1 fully reusable 2-stage medium-lift rocket. Kistler unfortunately couldn't close their business case as well as secure their funding as part of their milestones they were required to meet, and then subsequently kicked out of COTS in October 2007.

About 6 months later Orbital ATK was selected to replace Kistler. So, it really took about 5 years from selection to first flight in April 2013 of Antares and then a few months later the first Cygnus flying on the 2nd Antares flight.

[James-lkpu]

Do you see any way NASA can "cancel" SLS or get themselves out of the pit their in(economical pit)? Would they even want to that?

[SpaceAdvocate]

We live in exciting times. I think we're getting to the point where we actually return to the moon and go beyond it, after decades of minimal progress.

[asper]

when youre born in 2002, and have been interested in spaceflight since like 7 years, this channel gets you going on so much so fast, you should rewach it several times, to actually grasp what was happening before i cared. Thanks a lot for the amount of information. its so much easer to understand what was happening in the past!

[zhongxina]

another great video from an underrated channel

[Jason-gqfo]

Man imagine all the science and probes nasa could do if they ditched SLS

[infernosgaming]

To summarize and analogize, it's like if right before WWII, the Army Air Corps decided to build its own fighter from scratch but then also planned to buy Warhawk and Mustang as they become available while still paying for all the wind tunnel time and other research and development costs that come with making a fighter plane.