Gullible

There’s a long piece over at GQ by Sean Wilsey, about NASA.

This discussion with Jeff Hanley and Doug Cooke is sort of pathetic:

I began by saying, “The public at large has no idea what the Constellation program is or, really, that it even exists.” This brought on strong cringing, after which both men’s faces sank into resigned sadness. They nodded beleagueredly at each other.

Then I asked if the Ares rockets weren’t maybe a mistake.

Hanley, the midwesterner, cool and restrained, in an off-white suit jacket: “The Ares V’s the biggest rocket anybody will have ever built. This gets lost in discussions of performance. To redesign and human-rate”—i.e., make it safe for humans to fly into orbit on it—“an existing launch vehicle would cost a lot of time. There’s a lot of momentum behind Ares. It’ll improve crew safety by a factor of ten. Airlines have a one-in-10,000 fatality rate. The shuttle has a one-in-sixty…as safe as getting in your car.… We’re shooting for one in 1,000.”

Cooke, in a blazer, from behind his lunch: “Preliminary design review went very well.”

First of all, if he’d done a little research, instead of just taking the NASA employees’ word for it, he’d know that in fact the PDR was a disaster, and not even properly completed. And Hanley’s response as to whether or not Ares is the right thing isn’t responsive — it’s evasive. How does the fact that Ares V is the biggest rocket ever built justify that it’s the right thing to do? It doesn’t. What madness is it to think that “redesigning” and “human rating” an existing reliable vehicle will take longer than developing an entirely new one? He’s simply snowing the journalist, spouting the party line. Not to mention just pulling reliability numbers out of his nethers. He has no more idea of how much Ares will improve safety than people knew about Shuttle’s reliability in 1985.

He’s clearly become an uncritical fan boy:

…that evening I found myself walking around my hotel room saying, “It really does stupefy me how great this agency is and how little the country appreciates it.”

There is the usual assumption that NASA can do no wrong, and that it’s taking the best approach possible to get us to the stars, and that there’s nothing wrong with it that a little more public appreciation and bigger budgets wouldn’t help. It doesn’t even seem to occur to him that there might be other ways, that would not only cost less money, but give us a lot more results. It’s the typical binary world of “NASA is great” or “cancel the space program,” with no nuance or understanding of the underlying issues and pathologies of the space industrial complex. I hope that he’ll be a little less gullible, and take a broader view when he researches and writes his book.

As an aside, I worked with Clinton Dorris (Altair manager) for a couple weeks a few years ago in DC, when we were both working for the ARES Corporation. He’s a good guy.

And I find it irritating when people refer to the Zero G aircraft as the “Vomit Comet.” I would think that Zero G would be annoyed as well, because they work hard to avoid that, while the NASA KC-135 (which has had that nickname for decades) almost takes it as a perverse point of pride that they make people sick.

[Late evening update]

Jeez, Looeez. Jay Barbree makes Sean Wilsey (who has responded in comments) look like a cynical skeptic in comparison. He seems to have quaffed an entire barrel of the NASA koolaid. Check out this fantasy history:

President Bush gathered the best minds and experts of the day and told them to get started.

“It’ll be cheaper to modify an unmanned rocket like the Atlas 5 or Delta 4,” said one.

“Right,” agreed another, but they soon found the Atlas 5 and the Delta 4 didn’t have the power. They would have to be beefed up.

It was back to the drawing board, and the drawing board kept pointing them back to Apollo, to the kind of system the Russians had been flying successfully for five decades.

First they would need the safest hardware out there. They would need to build a rocket that would fly only astronauts. They had had it with the “one rocket fits all” boys, and they studied and tested, and studied and tested again. And they came up with a beauty. The first stage would be made from the space shuttle’s solid rocket boosters.

Then, they needed a second stage. Again, back to Apollo — the magnificent J-2 engine.

“Must have an astronaut escape system,” one insisted. “Can’t have another Challenger.”

“Got it,” assured another, pointing to the drawing of a rocket escape tower. “This baby’s computer will boost the living to safety in a microsecond — do it from the moment of ignition.”

“Must fly a low trajectory so the crew can survive anywhere along the way,” offered a third.

“Right. Low profile all the way out.”

“Delta 4 and Atlas 5 can’t do that. Right?”

“Right. Their flight profiles are too high.”

“This has got to be the safest rocket ever flown.”

“How about 1-in-3,000 odds?”

“Great. The space shuttle is about 1 in 75, right?

“Or less.”

“And Delta 4 and Atlas 5?”

“About a third, if that.”

It was obvious that the new rocket design, dubbed the Ares I, was the safe way to go for putting humans into orbit. The master planners realized they would also need a heavy-lift monster — a rocket bigger than Apollo’s Saturn V.

Again, they reached for proven hardware. This rocket, called the Ares V, would haul record-setting loads into Earth orbit. There, astronauts would pick them up for trips most anywhere in the solar system.

“It was obvious.”

Simple. Safe. Soon.

I’m embarrassed for him. He’s supposed to be a veteran space reporter. Maybe that’s why NASA is such a mess.

[Wednesday morning update]

More thoughts from Clark Lindsey. I hadn’t noted this, but he’s right — you’d never know from the Wilsey piece that Zero G is a completely private company, and has nothing to do with NASA, except for attempts to sell services to them:

I can appreciate the enthusiasm of someone like Mr. Wilsey for space exploration and for NASA’s Space Age accomplishments. On the other hand, such articles typically express the standard NASA is Space, Space is NASA attitude that became so dominant in the 1960s. Mr. Wilsey, for example, describes his experience of weightlessness on a ZERO G aircraft but he does not explain that ZERO-G is a private company independent of the agency. This could have led to a discussion of developments with commercial human spaceflight. Instead, a reader will most likely finish the article with the impression that the only thing going on today in space is NASA’s attempt to repeat Apollo.

Of course, the piece was supposed to be about NASA, so he couldn’t necessarily be expected to stray down that (more interesting) alleyway, but he should have made it more clear (particularly with the confusion over calling the Zero G aircraft NASA’s trademarked name).

Also, the more I think about it, the more simultaneously dismayed and astounded I am by the penultimate graf of the Jay Barbree piece:

The problem seems to be that Project Constellation was formed with a Republican in the White House — and because of this, some want a redo. But they have a problem: how to get around the fact that Constellation is sound. It’s the safest human spaceflight project ever put to paper. Opponents are groping for anything to tear it down.

This is truly wackadoodle stuff. “The problem seems to be…” Seems to be to whom? Jay Barbree? Because he can’t imagine any sane reason to oppose this (schedule slip slidin’ away, development costs up by a factor of two and a half, refusal to show the numbers on how “safe” it is, insane operational costs) it must be because we don’t like George Bush? This is like inverse BDS.

We don’t have to come up with some way to “get around the fact that Constellation is sound.” That’s not a fact. It’s an opinion (and a ludicrous one on the objective evidence), based on Jay spending too much time with his NASA buds, and too little independent investigation and critical thinking. As I said, I’m embarrassed for him.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I must have been too tired last night to pay proper attention — perhaps I was just too appalled at the rewriting of the history of Constellation, and got stuck on the first page. The more I read this piece, the more incoherent and rambling it becomes, wandering from the standard myth that the Apollo I fire was all North American’s fault (it wasn’t) to nutty paranoia about a “monopoly” of launch pads by “America’s largest military conglomerate,” Boeing-Lockheed Martin.

Jay. Please. There is no such “conglomerate” as “Boeing-Lockheed Martin.” ULA is a joint venture of the two of them, and the parent companies are largely hands off. ULA is not a “military” entity. It is a commercial launch company. And it has no plans, as far as I know, to utilize either pad 39, even if we end up launching on EELVs.

I can see why NASA gave him a public service medal, though. He apparently does them the “public” service of dutifully parroting whatever they tell him, when he’s not coming up with loopy tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories.

[Bumped]

[Thursday morning update]

Welcome Instapundit readers. Lots more around the blog, and if you’re just interested in space, and not the politics, just click on that category. “Rocket Man” over at Rockets’n’Such has another comment on the Barbree piece:

Wow. Let’s repeat that. “The safest human spaceflight project ever put to paper.”

And let’s hope it stays that way, right there, safe on the paper.

Indeed.

14 thoughts on “Gullible”

  1. The Constellation PR department is making a major push. Add this MSNBC piece to the mix

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31496353/

    The Ares V would use much of the same hardware as the Ares I. That would cost Americans $14.1 billion to $16.6 billion less than developing a heavy-lift rocket based on the Delta 4 or Atlas 5, NASA’s accountants say.

    NASA named the project Constellation. Along with the Ares rockets, the project calls for building a manned spacecraft called Orion and a lunar lander called Altair.

    The Constellation space system is simple. It would be 45 times safer than the space shuttle, and three times safer than any modified rocket in use today. It’s a system that could serve America for most of the upcoming century.

    and this

    The problem seems to be that Project Constellation was formed with a Republican in the White House — and because of this, some want a redo. But they have a problem: how to get around the fact that Constellation is sound. It’s the safest human spaceflight project ever put to paper. Opponents are groping for anything to tear it down.

  2. Dear Mr. Simberg,

    Thanks for the read, and the thoughtful response. It did occur to me that careful readers could well come to the conclusions you’ve detailed above. I’m glad to encourage dialogue! And very interested to see what the Review Committee will conclude.

    All best,

    Sean Wilsey

  3. This is why I don’t read print media unless I’m stuck on a long flight. They throw writers who know nothing about the topic on a case with no research budget or help and tight deadlines. So we get NASA propaganda, or Obamaganda, or whatever. The companies not only deserve to fail, but we would be better off without ’em.

  4. Hmmm, it almost reads as if Jay Barbee is being facetious. Out of curiosity though, I really don’t know, what are the reliability stats on Delta 4 and Atlas 5, do they really suffer a catatstrophic failure every 25 launches or so?

  5. They throw writers who know nothing about the topic on a case with no research budget or help and tight deadlines.

    What’s embarrassing about this is that Barbree is a veteran space reporter. Or should I say “reporter”?

  6. The shuttle has a one-in-sixty…as safe as getting in your car.…

    Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. So if I get a crack in the chassis of my car while I’m getting out to the driveway, it will make the car explode when I get back? There is also the small fact that I have driven my car more times than there have been shuttle trips, and I’m not dead yet. Well, maybe, just maybe if they are counting passenger deaths per miles traveled that could work.

    Constelation isn’t the problem. i.e. the goal of getting outside LEO and to the Moon. The problem is with the technical solutions presented and being developed by Mr. Griffin. Which suck. They are over cost, late, problems haven’t been fixed yet. Let’s face it. The X-33 and X-34 were canceled and they were further ahead than this project is!

  7. “…It’s a system that could serve America for most of the upcoming century.”

    That long? I’d hope that would not be true of *any* ELV, no matter how good, fast, or cheap…

  8. It is worth repeating, daily if need be, Mike Griffin quotes from the following 2005 article (Jeff Foust word’s in asterisks, Griffin in quotes):

    http://www.thespacereview.com/article/339/1

    *While Griffin has praised the general goals of the vision, he was critical at the March 2004 hearing about how much some aspects of the plan would cost. … Griffin argued in his testimony that this seemed “somewhat high”, asking, “Why we are expecting so little for the money which has been allocated?” *

    *One of the hallmarks of the Vision for Space Exploration is that it sets out a timetable for completing the ISS and retiring the shuttle, as well as eventually phasing out NASA participation in the station around the middle of the next decade, freeing up money to spend on exploration programs. In previous testimony, though, Griffin has made it clear that, if anything, he would like to speed up the timetable for these two projects.*

    *In other testimony, Griffin has made it clear that he is not opposed to using EELV vehicles effectively unmodified from their current versions to launch crewed vehicles. In a May 2003 hearing by the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee on NASA’s Orbital Space Plane (OSP) program—a short-lived effort to develop a manned spacecraft that was superseded by the CEV—Griffin noted that the term “man rating” dated back to efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to modify ICBMs to carry capsules. “This involved a number of factors such as pogo suppression, structural stiffening, and other details not particularly germane to today’s expendable vehicles. The concept of ‘man rating’ in this sense is, I believe, no longer very relevant.”

    He argued that EELVs and other expendable vehicles are already called upon to launch high-value unmanned payloads. “What, precisely, are the precautions that we would take to safeguard a human crew that we would deliberately omit when launching, say, a billion-dollar Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission?” he asked. “The answer is, of course, ‘none’. While we appropriately value human life very highly, the investment we make in most unmanned missions is quite sufficient to capture our full attention.”*

    *Indeed, in his May 2003 testimony on OSP he seemed frustrated that the OSP might not enter operation until 2012: “If the OSP program requires more than five years—at the outside—from authorization to proceed until first flight, it is being done wrong.”*

    Next year will be 5 years for Ares I.

  9. God, the press is flying into its own alternate reality.
    And I thought Rob Coppinger was an Ares cheerleader.

    The PAO spoon feeds these “reporters”.

    Pull your socks up, journalists! There’s a story there! Listen to the engineers! Get independent views!

  10. I can see why NASA gave him a public service medal, though. He apparently does them the “public” service of dutifully parroting whatever they tell him,

    Tom Wolfe called the press the “Victorian gentleman” whose job was to report “proper feelings” about NASA.

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