Lousy ones, that is. I think we may be able to add this one to the list:
The Crew Exploration Vehicle, the associated Crew Launch Vehicle, and later the Heavy Lift Vehicle, will be the 21st century space equivalent of our interstate highways. This is the core infrastructure that will enable us to travel from the surface of the Earth to the Moon, Mars, and the near-Earth asteroids.
This kind of space travel is utter bilge.
[Via Geek Press]
Perhaps Mark Whittington is right. We should have followed the path blazed by the early Iberian explorers:
Toledo, New Castille. March 1492.
Today Don Miguel de Grifo, the head of the Royal Transatlantic Exploring Administration, made the eagerly awaited announcement as to how the Administration would pursue Their Majesties’ Vision for Transatlantic Exploration. To the disappointment of some, he turned down the suggestion of the Italian explorer Columbus that the program utilize already-existing, commercially-available caravels staged from the Canary Islands. “The Administration has no means of Atlantic-rating these craft safely. Spanish lives are too precious to be wasted in this endeavor. Furthermore,” he added, “the idea of staging the voyages in the Canary Islands is too complicated, and I fear that constructing the necessary docks and shipyards in the Canaries might become too expensive, even though they would then enable further voyages more cheaply.”
Advocates protested, saying “If you’re in the Canaries, you’re halfway to anywhere in the Atlantic,” citing the favorable winds prevailing from that spot. de Grifo responded “That is true, and someday we will build docks in the Canaries. But for now, we must sail directly from Spain to China, and the ships must be large enough to carry all supplies needed for the entire voyage.”
Rather than going with the commercially-available caravels, de Grifo announced that the Royal Galley Arsenal of Barcelona would build an existing design of a large war galley. “Galleys are a tried-and-true technology that has worked for centuries.” He denied that the Count of Barcelona had demanded that the Arsenal be used to provide the ships for the expedition as a price of political support for the plan in the Cortes. “We are doing this because it is technologically the right thing to do. Simple. Safe. Soon.” Questions about what had caused his change of position versus his previous support of caravels several years prior went unanswered.
Barcelona, Aragon. July 1494.
Administrator Don Miguel de Grifo announced today that the Erís transatlantic vehicle program was in fine shape, but that some revisions would have to be made. It is now apparent that the galley design selected, although effective in its original role in Mediterranean warfare, would be too small to carry the needed supplies for crew and galley slaves for a full transatlantic voyage to China. Therefore, the shipyard workers would be instructed to cut the hull in half and insert a new, lengthy section equal to a fourth of the galley’s original weight. According to de Grifo, it was an easy modification and would not affect the ship’s seaworthiness. It would, however, delay the start of the program by several years, and increase the cost by several hundred million maravedis.
Barcelona, Aragon. August 1498.
The troubled transatlantic program of Ferdinand and Isabella has run into further problems as Administrator Don Miguel de Grifo announced that the agency would require more time and money to fix several minor technical issues that had arisen in the development of its China galley. Simulations have suggested that the galley, originally designed for Mediterranean seas, would be shaken to pieces by the heavier waves of the Atlantic. Also, the insertion of the extra hull section has altered the seaworthiness of the whole design, leading to fears that the craft would snap in half in heavy seas. “Nothing a little more time and money would not cure,” said de Grifo.
Toledo, March 1500.
The Spanish court was today shaken by news arriving from Lisbon that a Portuguese navigator had accidentally discovered a vast new land in the Western ocean, when his ship had made an unexpectedly wide turn in rounding the horn of Africa. The land, which he dubbed “Brazil” after the island of mythology, appeared to be a new continent. Additionally, word arriving from Rome suggested that the Pope was about to issue a bull declaring this new continent exclusive property of Portugal, and off limits to other nations without a license from the Portuguese king.
Toledo. April 1500.
Today Their Majesties formally terminated their transatlantic program, which was now pointless in the wake of the Pope’s monopoly on Atlantic voyaging. The galley under construction in Barcelona is to be broken up for firewood, as it was in any case unlikely to be seaworthy for any purpose.
[Attribution to Jim Bennett
It’s not news to anyone who has been reading him (and me, among others) for years, but Henry Spencer explains once again why NASA’s architecture choice is the wrong one (and no, I’m not talking about Ares):
There is also a longer-term advantage: if you decide to launch everything on one big rocket, what happens when you outgrow that rocket? Even if your early expeditions stay within the rocket’s capacity, presumably you’ll want to do bigger and more complex ones later. What then? Develop a still-larger rocket?
Even people who don’t want to depend on orbital assembly for the first expeditions to the Moon (or Mars, or wherever) often will concede that it will be necessary eventually. But then, where’s the gain in delaying it?
If you’re going to want to do orbital assembly anyway, you’re better off starting it right away, so even early expeditions can benefit from it. The only reason to delay it is if you think there won’t be any later expeditions – if you’re planning a dead-end programme.
I’ve never seen anyone even attempt to refute this logic.
[Update on Tuesday afternoon]
Well, here’s an attempt, but it uses ludicrous analogies:
One can only imagine someone talking to Prince Henry the Navigator circi 1410 and trying to convince him that adapting steam power (then known since Heron of Alexandria) to ships would be desirable to why not start now and stop messing with those quaint, wind powered caravels. Or someone else trying to sell jet engines to Lindbergh before crossing the Atlantic. Forever delaying doing things until the technology is “just right” doesn’t work very well.
No one is proposing the equivalent of steam power in the fifteenth century or jets in the nineteen twenties (though in the latter case, they weren’t far off). That would be akin to demanding a space elevator, or anti-matter rockets.
Nor is anyone, including me or Henry, proposing “forever delaying doing things until the technology is ‘just right.'” The technology for propellant depots could have been well in hand years ago had NASA stayed in the technology business, instead of cutting off all funding to it to redo what was done forty years ago. An assembly-based architecture could still easily be in place just as fast as NASA’s Constellation plans, and much cheaper, particularly given appropriate incentives to private industry. We are proposing that NASA plan for the future, with an affordable and sustainable plan, instead of looking to the past.
[Bumped]
[Mid-afternoon update]
It strikes me that this paragraph from my extended version of The Path Not Taken is relevant:
While the report of the Aldridge Commission on the new vision, released in June, had some good recommendations in it, it also had a few potentially disastrous ones. Perhaps the most damaging statement in it was to declare heavy-lift launch systems to be an “enabling technology” for carrying out the vision. This is a phrase of art in the engineering world meaning that, absent such a technology, the goal is unachievable. The commission is claiming that we cannot send humans beyond low earth orbit without a much larger launch vehicle than anything existing. If they had used the phrase “enhancing technology,” meaning that it’s not an absolute necessity, but that it makes things easier to do, I’d have less complaint, but as they’ve stated it, it commits us to an expensive development of a new launch system, that shows no promise of actually reducing costs. Moreover, it commits us to an approach to exploration that, like Apollo, is not affordable or sustainable.
I hope that this is a recommendation that can be revisited.
When I wrote The Path Not Taken, over four years ago, for The New Atlantis, the original draft had to be cut to meet page-count requirements on the dead-tree edition (and it was also edited somewhat for style and content). I’ve decided to put the original, unedited draft on line for those interested, because it made some points that ended up on the cutting-room floor in the published piece, particularly regarding vehicle reliability.
It’s an even longer read now than the published one, but enjoy. Or not.
…over at Ian Musgrave’s place, Down Under.
A lot of space enthusiasts have been enthused about Obama’s pick for Commerce Secretary, based on his support for commercial space. Unfortunately, his staff is under investigation for a pay-to-play scandal. I’d like to say I’m shocked, but there’s an old saying (and I’ve had some experience with it in looking for spaceport consulting work) that New Mexico is “Louisiana with jalapenosgreen chiles.” And this doesn’t help much with the transition, on top of the Blogojevich thing.
In a discussion of Peter Diamandis’ recommendations to NASA (most of which I broadly agree with), Ferris Valyn makes the classical error in discussing government spending:
As for your other point:
You’re contradicting your statement that there is no guaranteed ROI. Money spent on NASA is money NOT spent on everything/anything else. You are assuming your conclusion is true and using that in your argument to prove your conclusion [otherwise known as “begging the question” — rs]. That’s not allowed.
Money spent, whether wisely or not, always grows the economy. Whether its the 60 cents I spent to buy gum, or government buying a new power plants, that money always grows the economy. The fundemental question is, whether it grows the economy in a way that we want to grow it. And while I will agree that we haven’t proven that space development grows the economy 100% in the way we want, I would argue that space development has a large preponderance of evidence supporting it.
No, it is quite possible to spend money and shrink the economy (and few entities are better at doing this than governments — see, for example, Soviet Socialist Republics, Union of). For instance (to use the classical example), we could institute a government program to pay half of the populace to dig holes, and the other half to fill them. How fast does Ferris think that the economy will “grow” under such a program?
This is also one of the classic lousy arguments that space advocates use to advocate. I discussed it in a column a few years ago. Space spending has to be justified on its merits, in terms of the return we get for it in terms of actual space activity. It can’t be justified simply as “spending” that “always grows the economy,” because there are potentially many other means of “spending” (such as simply letting the taxpayers keep their own money) that are much more effective at doing so.
Joel Achenbach has a piece at the WaPo today on the ongoing NASA/transition foofaraw:
Griffin’s pugnaciousness may not have been the most politically savvy way to lobby to keep his job, but no one could say it was out of character.
No kidding. I found this tragic:
With multiple degrees, including a doctorate in aerospace engineering, Griffin is not reluctant to reveal the confidence he has in his judgments. And he may be lobbying for the ambitious Constellation program as much as for himself. He has always been a true believer in what he calls “the majesty of spaceflight,” and he fervently hopes to see human civilization expand across the solar system.
I believe that he hopes that, which is why it’s such a shame that he’s done more to set us back from that goal in the past three years than anyone else.
And this is an attitude I’ve never understood:
Ed Weiler, a NASA associate administrator (occasionally mentioned in the space community as a potential successor to Griffin), would like to see his boss stick around for a while, particularly with the tricky space shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope coming up next spring.
“I’d certainly like to have a leader who was an experienced engineer or whatever,” Weiler said.
Why? Why should the NASA administrator be an experienced engineer? Doesn’t NASA have people at lower levels who are competent to oversee a Shuttle flight, even one for the Hubble repair? Is it the job of the administrator to micromanage at that level?
I never had a problem with Sean O’Keefe not being an engineer — I don’t expect a good NASA administrator to be an engineer. O’Keefe’s problem was not a lack of technical expertise, but the fact that he got gun shy after Columbia, and was no longer able to be decisive or lead, because he feared too much having to tell another set of families on the tarmack that their loved ones were gone.
In general, I don’t think it hurts to have some technical knowledge, though in the case of Griffin, I think it did, because he doesn’t/didn’t understand what the job of the administrator is, which is not to get involved in engineering and drive the results of trade studies in favor of one’s own pet designs. Arguably the best NASA administrator (and there aren’t many good ones — most of them have been bad) was Jim Webb, at least in terms of carrying out administration policy and accomplishing the goal. He was a lawyer.
Some thoughts from Thomas James.
Mark Whittington now “thinks” (to use the word generously, since it is without evidence) that Doug Cooke has made his imaginary friends in his imaginary “Internet Rocketeers Club” “very angry.” I wonder if he “thinks” they’re so angry that they’re going to go after him with their Illudium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulators.
Of course, to be fair, it’s hard to provide evidence about the emotions of imaginary friends.
It certainly doesn’t make me very angry. In fact, it doesn’t make me angry at all. Like all of Mark’s posts about his imaginary friends, who don’t seem to have names, I find it amusing. Of course, I don’t really care much what Doug Cooke says. But anonymous.space has a response to it in comments at Space Politics:
“‘I attended the review myself, and despite what was said in the blogosphere and the sensational media, it was very professionally done,’ he said.”
Cooke’s memory of the Ares I PDR is at complete odds with the written record.
Many reviewer comments highlighted the PDR’s lack of technical substance and preference for requirements processing over actual design analysis. It was arguably a System Requirements Review (SRR, which should have been completed much earlier in the program), not a Preliminary Design Review (PDR). Among the comments making these points:
[snip many comments worth following the link to read]
Finally, Cooke’s comment here from the STA luncheon:
“So we asked a lot of hard questions, and I have to say that the team was especially well-prepared.”
Just makes no sense. If the team had been well-prepared, then they wouldn’t have earned so many yellow and yellow/red grades in the review. Out of ten grades, Ares I earned four yellow grades and three yellow/red grades. As NASA’s next human space flight system, Ares I should be a model of technical excellence. Instead, the program hasn’t done its homework (or is finding its homework too difficult, given the constraints on the design) and is earning average or below average grades in seven out of ten areas — about as close to failing as a program could get.
The specific technical concerns pointed out by the reviewers in the yellow/red grades include ridiculously stupid issues, like document interfaces and physical clearances, that should have been resolved long before PDR. Examples are:
“- No formal process for control of models and analysis.
– Areas of known failure still need to be worked, including liftoff clearances.
– Process for producing and resolving issues between Level 2 and Level 3 interface requirement documents and interface control documents is unclear, including the roles and responsibilities of managers and integrators and the approval process for identifying the baseline and making changes to it.
– Numerous known disconnects and “TBDs” in the interface requirement documents, including an eight inch difference between the first stage and ground system and assumption of extended nozzle performance not incorporated in actual first and ground system designs.”For several decades, Cooke has been a stalwart human space exploration architecture designer and line engineer on the STS and ISS program. But, and forgive my French, if this is the kind of crap that’s going to pass for technical excellence with the new ESMD AA in an Ares I PDR (or any other NASA technical review), then NASA needs yet another a new ESMD AA, and Cooke should go back to architecture studies. The program simply can’t afford for things to keep going the way they are.
Doug Cooke, like Mike Griffin, is likely a short timer. It’s pretty hard to get very wound up about his attempts to whitewash this disaster. I suspect that it will be over soon enough.
[Monday morning update]
From another comment, on Ares’ compliance with the Aldridge Commission recommendations:
I’d argue that the approach that is being taken with the Ares transportation system in particular doesn’t advance U.S. science, economic, or security interests, is not sustainable or affordable, does little to advance technologies, knowledge, and infrastructure, does little to promote international and commercial participation, and “builds in-house” rather than “acquiring” crew transportation to the ISS. In fact, the Ares approach not only doesn’t advance these areas, but it actually harms a lot of them, for example, by competing with them or absorbing funding from them.
But other than that, it’s great.
[Another Monday morning update]
Hilarious. Now Mark imagines that this post is “very heated.”
Mark seems to have a great deal of difficulty discerning actual emotions of others, or perhaps projects his own on them. For some bizarre reason, he often imagines that I am “angry” or full of “rage,” or “heated,” when I rarely, if ever display this, either personally, or on line. I think that some people are simply emotionally blind.
I can’t even parse this:
Now I can understand Rand being not angry at Doug Cooke, He treated the Internet Rocketeer Club with supreme contempt. But me? I wonder what the obsession is?
Can anyone figure out what he’s attempting to say here? I can’t. He can understand me being “not angry” at Doug Cooke? Well, that’s good, I guess, since I’m not angry at Doug Cooke. Or at Mark. But who is the (inappropriately capitalized) “He” who treated Mark’s imaginary friends with “supreme contempt”? Me? Doug Cooke? And is “He” also treating Mark with “supreme contempt”?
Well, if amused ridicule of his ungrammatical fantasies constitutes that, I guess I’ll have to plead guilty.
[Early afternoon update]
Clark Lindsey correctly points out that Doug Cooke is confused. It wasn’t Mark’s imaginary Internet Rocketeer Club that dissed his PDR — it was NASA employees who actually participated in it. Admittedly, some of us in the blogosphere pointed this out, but he’s shooting the messenger here.