Any use of the phrase “science project” or “toy rocket” or “hobbyist” with regard to ULA and SpaceX at this point will identify the user as either clueless or disingenuous. Certainly no one worth paying attention to, at least on the subject of space policy. Note, this is a comment spurred more by the commentary over at Space Politics than anything in particular here. It was just a perfect storm. đ
49 thoughts on “To Whom It May Concern”
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100% correct. Any elected official who transgresses in this manner should be tossed out.
If it was up to me, that is…
Duly noted, sir. đ I knew some folks talked bad about SpaceX like that — didn’t know ULA came under similar fire.
O_o
I find it interesting that, after having heavy involvement in the design and development of the Shuttle, the military gradually withdrew from any participation, and instead focused on EELV. The justification for that was that they needed *assured* access to space, something they said (and Congress agreed) was not possible relying on NASA.
Now the structure set up to *assure* our DoD access to space is called a “science project” to launch “toy rockets,” run by “hobbyists.” I guess reality is whatever it needs to be at the moment for some people…
I’m just trying to match rhetoric with rhetoric. I guess that makes me disingenuous. đ
BBB
And yet the same folks that complain about bloggers using the terms “hobbyists” to refer to their “teams” have no problem using the term Apollo Cargo Cultists for those with the opposite viewpoint….
So to be fair that phase should be also be used to identify someone who is not interested in a rational discussion of space policy.
I don’t know what “the opposite viewpoint” is. There are many viewpoints. I reserve the phrase “Apollo Cargo Cultist” for people who think that anything that doesn’t look like Apollo (a destination, a date, on an unsustainably expensive NASA-specified ginormous rocket) isn’t human space exploration, and is the “end of the human spaceflight program.”
MfK
[[[I find it interesting that, after having heavy involvement in the design and development of the Shuttle, the military gradually withdrew from any participation, and instead focused on EELV.]]]
No, merely the problems with Challenger, Atlas and Titian in the late 1980’s showing the USAF the need to have more then a single spacelifter. And the realization that commercial demand for launch services for U.S. launch systems was not sufficient to result in one, hence the EELV which survives now on government funding.
Rand,
[[[that anything that doesnât look like Apollo (a destination, a date, on an unsustainably expensive NASA-specified ginormous rocket) isnât human space exploration,]]]
Obama’s space policy has a destination, Mars, a date, sometime in the 2030’s and requires a NASA built HLV (unsustainably expensive NASA-specified ginormous rocket), so I guess that makes supporters of it Apollo Cargo Cultists by your definition….
“2030s” is not a date in the same sense that “by the end of the decade” is, and since we don’t know what the NASA HLV looks like (or even if it will ultimately be built) we can’t possibly know what its cost will be. The main focus of the Obama policy is on building capabilities that will reduce cost that allows us to go to multiple places. The destinations and dates, such as they are, are just sops for the saps who insist on them.
And yet the same folks that complain about bloggers using the terms âhobbyistsâ to refer to their âteamsâ have no problem using the term Apollo Cargo Cultists for those with the opposite viewpointâŚ.
I find the term “team” telling. There are many people who have a specific favourite launch vehicle (usually an SDLV) that they want to “win”. They are very eager for a “compromise” that guarantees their “team” a place at the table. On the other side are not usually people pushing a specific launch vehicle, but those arguing for a fair set of rules that does not pick a winner in advance and even allows multiple winners, based on merit.
One wants their vehicle to win, the other wants a level playing field.
I think Rand might agree that an HLV to be built starting sometime toward the end of an Obama second term, for a destination over 20 years hence, is pretty safe. It will be over taken by events but keeps the dinosaurs fixated on the distant view whilst the mammals finish the job of starving them and eating their young.
I suspect we will have some hefty private lift vehicles before this decade is out. There will be an F9H and then something after it if there actually is a need.
I fully expect the first human on Mars to be carrying a corporate flag, although for PR they’ll probably plant an Old Glory first.
The main focus of the Obama policy is on building capabilities that will reduce cost that allows us to go to multiple places.
At best it is building some supporting capabilities that will stimulate the real capabilities that will reduce cost. That appears to be the best we can hope for at the moment.
[[[The destinations and dates, such as they are, are just sops for the saps who insist on them.]]]
Hmmm, reminds me of the phase by Yogi Berra, – If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
In this case maybe nowhere…
Not nowhere, LEO actually, a place very few of us can afford to visit. Halfway to the rest of the solar system.
Martijn Meijering,
[[[One wants their vehicle to win, the other wants a level playing field.]]]
Unfortunately for New Space advocates it is about the “team”.
For example, for years the New Space bloggers demanded NASA buy reduced gravity services from Zero-G instead of providing them in house as they always did. Finally NASA was forced to give in. Well now the results are in.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=31067
Seems the outsourcing to Zero-G is resulting in flights that are of much poorer quality then the in-house flights, almost useless for research needs, and they also appear to be more expensive then NASA doing it themselves. Makes you wonder if this is a preview of “commercial crew”.
Did they advocate Zero Gravity specifically or commercial procurement? If the former, then I disagree with that. For the record, do you deny cheering on team SDLV?
Martijn Meijering,
[[[Not nowhere, LEO actually, a place very few of us can afford to visit. Halfway to the rest of the solar system.]]]
We have been stuck in LEO for 40 years. I see nothing wonderful about being stuck there for another 40 years.
We have been stuck in LEO for 40 years.
I’ve been “stuck” on the surface for 37 of those 40 years. I’d love to be able to visit LEO, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to afford it. I hope I’ll live to see my grandchildren (should I have any) being able to choose to go to LEO. The Obama plan may be the most important step in that direction in a generation. The Shuttle could have made it possible a generation earlier if it had succeeded, which it obviously did not.
Martijn Meijering,
[[[Did they advocate Zero Gravity specifically or commercial procurement?]]]
False choice given Zero-G is the only commercial firm available that has an aircraft large enough to replace the in-house C-9.
Then maybe they should sell the C-9 to someone…
Martijn Meijering,
[[[The Obama plan may be the most important step in that direction in a generation.]]]
The underlying assumption is that the best way to get a commercial vehicle is to design one for government use first. In reality all you get with that approach is another government vehicle, in this case throwbacks to the 1960’s, that will be unlikely to get you or your grandkids into space.
The C-9 isn’t certified for zero-G flights.
The underlying assumption is that the best way to get a commercial vehicle is to design one for government use first.
No, it’s not an underlying assumption at all. It’s certainly not an assumption that SpaceX made with either Falcon or Dragon development.
And as for Zero-G charging more for lower quality, there’s no way to know, because NASA doesn’t know what its own aircraft costs. And they’re flying an aircraft that has never been certified by the FAA do do weightles flights (having to operate on Part 121, which NASA exempts itself from, is one of the things that jacks up Zero-G’s costs).
Martijn Meijering,
[[[Then maybe they should sell the C-9 to someoneâŚ]]]
There are plenty of surplus DC-9’s on the market if someone wants to buy one for reduced gravity.
But if you read the report it appears the problems are not aircraft related as the C-9 performed as well as the KC-135. No reason the B-727 should not do as well. It appears operationally related. It also appears that the difference needs of commercial markets versus NASA needs are a factor.
Space tourists seem happy enough to just be floating for a few seconds, no matter how short or rough it is. by contrast NASA needs are much more specific, so experiments, including testing of hardware for orbit, may be done properly.
The underlying assumption is that the best way to get a commercial vehicle is to design one for government use first.
No, that’s not the underlying assumption at all, which is that procuring launch services commercially and competitively will lead the market to develop cheap lift. If all Obama does is to get NASA out of the launch business, then it will be a major breakthrough. All future exploration would have to go through the private launch services market. And eventually exploration will be back on the table.
NASA should not specify a particular vehicle, it should develop spacecraft in such a way that they can be launched on existing launch vehicles, which is easy. Propellant could be launched even more easily, even on very small vehicles. Cheap lift (even just cheap small lift) is all we need to become a spacefaring civilisation.
As I said above, NASA will not develop that cheap small lift, not should it even try, but it will create the circumstances under which cheap small lift could emerge through market forces.
Rand,
The fact that fewer flights are being made under the same budget would be an indicators that costs are higher with the commercial option.
[[[(having to operate on Part 121, which NASA exempts itself from, is one of the things that jacks up Zero-Gâs costs).]]]
That is because Zero-G chooses to fly private paying customers on the same craft. NASA should not have to subsidize those private customers by paying more for the services it uses.
Martijn Meijering,
NASA has been out of the launch business for many, many years in terms of its robotic missions. Has it made any difference in the satellite launch market? Has it resulted in any new cheap satellite launch systems?
Why do you think getting it out of the human space launch market will have any different result?
Why do you think getting it out of the human space launch market will have any different result?
I expect that to have only a modest effect, but it will be of great help to Robert Bigelow. I’m talking about exploration with its enormous need for launch services. If done on commercial launchers it would provide enough demand to finance commercial R&D of cheap lift vehicles.
The fact that fewer flights are being made under the same budget would be an indicators that costs are higher with the commercial option.
Don’t confuse NASA statements with facts. As I said, NASA doesn’t know what anything it does costs. Its books are too much of a mess.
That is because Zero-G chooses to fly private paying customers on the same craft.
If Zero-G couldn’t fly private customers, its costs to NASA would be even higher, because it would have much less business to amortize the costs over. And then it would become exactly the kind of business that you claim is non-commercial, because it has only the government as a customer. I wish that there was only one Tom Matula, instead of the different ones we see in different threads.
NASA should not have to subsidize those private customers by paying more for the services it uses.
NASA paying more for higher-quality zero gee is not “subsidizing private customers.” Do you ever think before you type?
Has it made any difference in the satellite launch market? Has it resulted in any new cheap satellite launch systems?
Do you mean besides SpaceX?
Rand,
[[[Has it made any difference in the satellite launch market? Has it resulted in any new cheap satellite launch systems?
Do you mean besides SpaceX?]]]
Wow! One new competitor after nearly 20 years… Change we can believe in.
It beats the hell out of none. And many more are in the pipeline. They’re just coming at it from a different direction.
Rand,
There is one Tom Matula, one with a strong foundation of economics as a science, not a philosophy, which seems to be a problem for those that advocate faith based economic perspectives.
[[[NASA paying more for higher-quality zero gee is not âsubsidizing private customers.â Do you ever think before you type?]]]
If they are paying more because the FAA certification that is needed for private customers was included as part of Zero-G’s cost structure in their NASA contract then yes, NASA is subsidizing their private business. But then we also don’t know what their profit margin is on the NASA contract since they are a private firm.
Also NASA is paying more for LOWER quality Zero-G. Read the report before you respond. That is a key part, it reports the quality of Zero-G’s service is so far BELOW the quality of the NASA in-house flights the Zero-G’s flights are nearly useless to researchers.
In short the New Space solution to reduced gravity flights is both lower quality and more expensive, not cheaper nor better that what NASA was doing in house.
Rand,
[[[It beats the hell out of none. And many more are in the pipeline. Theyâre just coming at it from a different direction.]]]
There have been many in the pipeline for the last 20 years. But unless they score a government contract they never seem to get out of the pipeline.
“No, merely the problems with Challenger, Atlas and Titian in the late 1980âs showing the USAF the need to have more then a single spacelifter.”
No, the Air Force had planned, in the 1970s, to buy 3 shuttles (the Blue Shuttle program). It was mainly their input (a euphemism) which sized the payload bay, and mandated wings for a never-used cross-range “requirement.” They funded SLC-6’s conversion at Vandenberg, and expected to launch a dozen shuttles from there a year. But the cost of shuttle was becoming evident by the late 1970s, and Blue Shuttle went away.
They fell back to training a cadre of mission specialists who could fly classified missions on the NASA shuttles. Gary Payton was one, and one of the few who ever flew. But the Air Force became more and more disenchanted with shuttle, and by1985 was pretty much done with it. Challenger sealed the deal.
The problem was that USAF was a nuisance to NASA, and received low-priority treatment as a s result. USAF had no *assured* access to anything.
The year Challenger blew up, so did every other launch vehicle then in the inventory. We had NO access space for a time, let alone *assured* access.
EELV was the DoD way of getting control of its own destiny. It mandated two vehicle families, to avoid single-point failure, and supposedly to keep cost down through competition. It *mandated* EELV be used for commercial purposes in an effort to keep cost down. But when ITAR and the cost of flying on extremely over-designed and expensive machines combined, the commercial market (mostly foreign) turned up its nose and went away. ULA was formed in a further effort to keep cost down. It isn’t commercial any more, as a business.
But they DO assure DoD access to space. And they sure as hell aren’t hobby shops.
“”2030s” is not a date in the same sense that “by the end of the decade” is, and since we donât know what the NASA HLV looks like (or even if it will ultimately be built) we canât possibly know what its cost will be.
The main focus of the Obama policy is on building capabilities that will reduce cost that allows us to go to multiple places. The destinations and dates, such as they are, are just sops for the saps who insist on them.”
Now just one cotton picking minute.
The datelines in the Obama plan are “just for the saps who insist on them”?
Is this Rand admitting the Obama plan contains some blatant deceptions? Or is it just Rand rationalizing the parts of the Obama plan he doesn’t like?
Come on now. If POR was bad because of unrealistic and unsustainable costs (and it was), then the Obama plan in key aspects is just as bad if not worse!
Three billion dollars in HLV “research and development” over the next five years is a lot of real life money to spend for just to con some “saps”. The Obama plan supposedly schedules it’s new “game changing” HLV for a 30 day manned asteroid mission in 2025. The plan even hints at a week long circumlunar mission as early as 2021!
That means all that new flight hardware would have to be fully developed between now and 2021, even though Obama’s budget expands ISS operations from 2015 to beyond 2020. How can NASA afford ISS operations and big new projects at the same time? The Bush budget was much more realistic in retiring ISS in 2016.
So then. How much more realistic and sensible is the Obama budget/schedule compared to POR? I don’t see any improvement.
Let me be perfectly clear. It’s a good thing that Obama wants to expand spending on basic space flight technology and provide greater opportunity for private manned spaceflight to LEO. But the rest of the Obama plan is even more of a budget/schedule fantasy than the cancelled POR!
Am I supposed to take comfort in Rand’s assertion that the Obama NASA budget/schedule is just a great big lie? But what if Rand is right, but not in the way he hopes. What if the con is to keep NASA stuck in LEO indefinitely, while fooling the space fans with unrealistic promises of beyond LEO manned operations?
I am not in any “camp”, unless it’s the camp that will get humanity into space in the greatest numbers, for the greatest duration, to the greatest distances, and in the least amount of time, private public or otherwise. And I am nobody’s pawn. I was a critic of the Ares rockets before, and now I am critical of the Obama deep space plan.
There have been many in the pipeline for the last 20 years. But unless they score a government contract they never seem to get out of the pipeline.
Tom, you seem to ignore the fact that government involvement kills competition. They pick who wins and who loses because of the high cost of entry. Not just this government, subsidies are everywhere making it almost impossible for others to compete.
SpaceX success points out that if one can do it, others can too. Government money didn’t head there way until they were already on the path to success.
MfK,
[[[It was mainly their input (a euphemism) which sized the payload bay, and mandated wings for a never-used cross-range ârequirement.â]]]
The cross range requirement was based on being able to return to VAFB at the end of the first “orbit” if they needed to abort, otherwise they would have no option but the Pacific Ocean. It also allowed aborts to Easter Island if they failed to achieve orbit.
Ken,
[[[They pick who wins and who loses because of the high cost of entry. Not just this government, subsidies are everywhere making it almost impossible for others to compete.]]]
Yes and they picked SpaceX as one of the winners making it harder for other firms to compete with him.
[[[Government money didnât head there way until they were already on the path to success.]]]
Check the timeline of their federal contracts, including the contract for the satellite on the first launch attempt for the Falcon 1.
[[[Tom, you seem to ignore the fact that government involvement kills competition.]]]
No, I don’t ignore it, that is the foundation of my opinion that “commercial crew” will not result in the solution needed for private human spaceflight to be a market success. In short commercial crew will delay the emergence of a true commercial human spaceflight industry by making it nearly impossible for the firms not selected by NASA for commercial crew to raise capital.
[[[Read the report before you respond. That is a key part, it reports the quality of Zero-Gâs service is so far BELOW the quality of the NASA in-house flights the Zero-Gâs flights are nearly useless to researchers.]]]
Excuse me. That is NOT what it says.
It says that they are meeting the performance levels specified in the contract most of the time, but they think the contractually specified performance levels should be increased.
Nowhere does it mention what levels of micro-G the previous NASA in-house service met or how they compared to the levels specified in the private contract.
If Zero-G is meeting contractual requirements for quality of services, and from all the articles I have read this is the case, then it’s a problem with NASA’s contracting office which wrote poor requirements that don’t meet actual needs.
There is one Tom Matula, one with a strong foundation of economics as a science, not a philosophy, which seems to be a problem for those that advocate faith based economic perspectives.
This might be part of the problem right here. The scientific method is rather weak when applied to economics, especially macroeconomic models. It is nearly impossible for us to run proper experiments as can be done in some of the hard science fields (with controls, changing few variables at a time, etc) on any part of the problem of making a transition from an Earth-centric civilization to some sort of dispersed, space-faring civilization (but remotely possible, we might be one such experiment by a group of galactic experimenters trying such things).
Hypothesis building is particularly cumbersome because most such are unprovable simply because initial conditions aren’t met (that is, they are predictions with conditions that have to be met for the prediction to be valid). For example, the well known paper, A Rocket a Day Keeps Costs Away basically puts together the hypothesis that a very high launch rate (once a day) launch vehicle is low cost and high reliability compared to current vehicles. The problem though is that no one launches any sort of significant rocket like that (sounding or orbital rocket) at that frequency (well, not since the V-2 rocket, an example discussed in the paper). So the hypothesis doesn’t have a useful test (aside from the V-2 example).
My view is that we can’t argue space technology or strategy based on scientific grounds because there simply isn’t enough evidence for that to work. Instead, we argue through analogy to other fields, by study of the few examples we have in aerospace and space research that apply, and by estimating the properties and cost/benefit of technology models (eg, the Constellation technology, ACES Advanced Common Evolved Stage), Apollo program expansion). Economically, there are models that seem to work and analogies to other periods of human history and current human industries that have some validity. But ultimately, we can’t be confident in what we model to the degree that would support a scientific approach.
That means taking serious risks whenever you go beyond hand waving to bending metal.
Karl,
You are thinking of the old paradigm of economics, the one that was dominate until the end of the 20th Century that was based on a physics model of static relationships, and resulted in the endless debates about socialism versus capitalism. The fact that so many folks are still rooted in this outdated mindset is a key part of the nation’s economic problems, not to mention space development.
The emerging paradigm called “complexity economics” eliminates the micro-macro divide and view economics from the perspective of evolutionary systems theory. It explains how minor policy differences may result in completely different outcomes.
For example , under the old model, government spending for a stimulus is all the same.
Under the new model HOW its spent makes a huge difference in its effectiveness. Spending on a new bridge that cuts travel time between two cities, and saves lots of money for trucking firms over many decades in the future, is an effective stimulus. Spending it on salaries of government workers that would be laid off, giving them an additional year of work, is not a effective stimulus.
The book below is a good introduction to the new complexity economics and a summary of the research that has been done on it over the last 25 years.
Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics Eric D. Beinhocker Harvard Business School Press; 2006
I recommend it to ALL space advocates who are interested in learning how new industries do emerge and prosper, or fail to succeed based on policy decisions and the structure of the external environment they exist in.
Also you could give Rand a hand by ordering it from Amazon via his link.
Yes, a rocket a day would reduces costs of access, the key is to get to a point where there is a profitable market demand for a rocket a day.
Alan,
Yes, part of the problem was the contract was not as specific as it needed to be in spelling out the requirements. NASA just assumed they would provide the same quality of service.
However, this is exactly why a government contract for an ash tray is 10 pages long, because, based on experience, the government has found out if it does not cover every specific detail private firms may not provide the government with the quality it needs.
You are thinking of the old paradigm of economics, the one that was dominate until the end of the 20th Century that was based on a physics model of static relationships, and resulted in the endless debates about socialism versus capitalism. The fact that so many folks are still rooted in this outdated mindset is a key part of the nationâs economic problems, not to mention space development.
No, I was thinking of macroeconomics, which is merely economics restricted to a certain scope. Scope is one of the fundamental restrictions on a model. Just because there’s a new paradigm, doesn’t mean that it will appear different when subjected to the scope restriction of existing models.
Thomas, the book you mention sounds quite interesting. I’ll check it out when I get a chance.
Karl,
The problem is macroeconomics deals with economic policy on the national level. Space policy decisions fall under microeconomics, as do most economic decisions at the level of a specific industry. One problem with the traditional paradigm was the lack of a clear linkage between microeconomics and macroeconomics.
Yes, you will find the book very interesting and valuable. I used it as a supplemental text in a Ph.D. course I taught last year and the students found it really put what they were learning about global economic history and industrial development in perspective.
Thomas, thanks for the pointer to the book.
I’ve spent way too much of the past year trying to explain the relative usefulness of “government spending” and “government infrastructure spending.” Then arguing over what is actually infrastructure.
Al,
Yes, its amazing how folks will try to twist the term infrastructure to fit their pet project.
Tom