17 thoughts on “Jerry Ross”

  1. Aside from the Commercial Crew discussion, which is similar whining as Matula; I don’t see much to be frightening. Fatalistic and pessimistic, but not frightening. NASA’s manned spaceflight program is a mess. Although he says go back to Constellation; he then mentions Constellation has the same flaws as SLS. While this could be viewed as foolish on his part, I took it to mean Constellation was far more reasonable than SLS with the same flaws. Constellation fixing the flaws would be closer to SpaceX, which he never mentions directly. I think his take on Virgin Galatic is mostly right in terms of its function today, but he does lack imagination, which if that is your point about him leading NASA, then yes… we can see how NASA’s leadership lead to them where they are today.

  2. Yikes. How about asking this guy if he prefers to be paying MORE money to the Russians instead of paying less money to the Commercial Crew contractors. As for Orion it has been taking forever and the cost has certainly not been cheap for something that has had effectively ZERO launches so far. Billions for no launches. How is Commercial Crew starving the Orion budget when it is clearly so much lower funded to begin with and includes the price of the actual launcher?

    As for the Commercial Crew vehicles not being tested and safe proofed and what backup in case of an accident he can ask the dead crews of Challenger and Columbia how well the NASA procurement model works in terms of safety. It does not work. If he is concerned about availability the option available is to increase redundancy by selecting more than one Commercial Crew supplier. Even the USAF figured that one out.

  3. To respond to some of his specific claims, it’s simply fantasy to say that the Commercial Crew programs have gutted Orion / SLS funding. SLS alone receives nearly $2 billion a year in funding, and that’s even during the previous several years where it’s been mostly documentation and red tape. CCDev has received a tiny fraction of that amount and has in no way pushed either Orion or SLS behind schedule.

    Moreover, NASA has had and will have an enormous amount of oversight into the design and operations of any of the commercial crew operators. The idea that such systems will be in any way less safe or reliable than conventionally procured vehicles is ridiculous. Is a 747 less reliable or safe than a B-52? Does the government flinch at purchasing flights on 747s? Meanwhile, every single US government procured manned spacecraft has had one or more serious and potentially life threatening (or in fact fatal) accidents during operation. Implying that NASA’s record in manned spaceflight is pristine and no private company could possibly match it is frankly counterfactual.

    1. That “enormous amount of oversight into the design and operations” simply increases cost. That, in turn, means lower flight rates, less testing — and less safety.

      The 747 and B-52 are misleading examples. It took many generations of vehicles and millions of hours of flight time to learn all the potential problems and appropriate fixes before anyone could design a 747 or B-52.

      After 50 years, the space industry has less experience developing and operating various vehicle types than the aviation industry had prior to World War I. We will never gain that experience if we continue to do things the NASA way. Yet, we are told how wonderful it is that NewSpace contractors are “learning from NASA” and adapting their designs and business processes to meet 1000 different NASA requirements.

  4. “One of the things that really bothers me is, okay, one of these guys ‘wins’ and builds a capsule or semi-winged vehicle and we start launching our crews on that. We don’t have nearly the insight, nearly the confidence or knowledge about those vehicles and their testing, certification, safety, their margins and maybe we don’t even get to operate them, maybe we’re just paying for a ride. All of that is a poor way for the U.S. federal government to be launching their crew members into space when we ought to be doing it ourselves with the safest vehicles we know how to build and we ought to be doing it with our own teams to launch them and control them.”

    NASA is embedded so far up these company’s rears that they know what the janitors feed their dogs on Wednesdays.

  5. A nice pithy summary of the delusional NASA Company Man point of view. Best argument ever for the next administration to take a meat axe to NASA as it exists and start over from scratch.

  6. The commercial crew program is a disgrace. It’s disheartening that even a dyed-in-the-wool statist like Jerry Ross can see that. All of us have thought of steps SpaceX could have taken over the last 6 years to get this program moving faster – and yes, every one of them would have upset the apple cart and risked the termination of the program, so what? Instead we have Elon Musk parroting the safety-is-the-highest-priority mantra of never flying anyone.

  7. Commercial crew isn’t perfect. But it’s still much better than the alternative (i.e., a government runned program).

    1. Well, it’s certainly true that it’s not a very effective way to waste taxpayer’s money. “A government runned program” it is, and that’s the problem. So far the commercial crew program has produced nothing of value and even if everything goes perfectly, it won’t do much more than pull a few flights back to the US that would have gone to the Russians. There won’t be any cost savings. There won’t be any non-government astronauts flying – NASA has already forbid it. There’s significant doubt whether any other customers will show up – Bigelow is still saying he will wait for two independent providers before he puts up a destination.

      1. The argument that a program produced nothing of value before it actually flew can be used about any program, even Apollo.
        The important facts is that it is progressing at much lower cost then the usual fully government financed program.

        Bob Clark

      2. So far the commercial crew program has produced nothing of value

        It has produced the Dragon V2 and the Dreamchaser. I think they both have value. YMMV.

        There won’t be any cost savings.

        $140 million to launch seven crew on Dragon V2 vs. the same $140 million to launch two on Soyuz. Looks like quite a savings to me.

        There won’t be any non-government astronauts flying – NASA has already forbid it.

        All NASA has said is that missions they purchase will be on the rent-a-car model; no company-paid driver required. Everyone on-board NASA crew transfer missions will be a NASA employee. This in no way precludes SpaceX from taking commercial astronauts up on flights paid for by non-NASA clients. They can do this with one or two SpaceX pilots aboard, airline-style, or they can offer the same rent-a-car model favored by NASA and train client personnel to fly Dragon V2.

        There’s significant doubt whether any other customers will show up – Bigelow is still saying he will wait for two independent providers before he puts up a destination.

        I have the advantage of writing this reply four days in the future, relative to your comment, so I don’t disparage you for failing to be clairvoyant, but Bigelow announced two days ago the hiring of two ex-NASA astronauts to:

        a. Recruit four more astronauts by year’s end and more after that.

        b. Develop operational procedures for BA330-based orbital stations.

        c. Represent Bigelow’s interests in Washington.

        The first twin BA330-based station is to go up in 2017. The crew is to be rotated four to six times a year. Just the first Bigelow station will generate several times more annual crew transport business than the ISS.

        I’m guessing that Spacex’s track record to-date and ULA’s sudden loss of an assured engine supply for the Atlas V have impelled Bigelow to forego his erstwhile two-suppliers-in-place criterion in favor of taking a modest risk and getting things moving before he winds up being the Richard Branson of orbital real estate.

    2. You assume that those are the only two alternatives. They aren’t.

      For example: Congress could have aside money to buy commercial launches to ISS, with no strings, from any company that could supply them. Or it could have offered a cash prize for the first company to demonstrate a commercial launch service to ISS. Or it could have created tax incentives for that purpose. Or some combination of the above.

      That assumes that the purpose of the program is to carry NASA astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, rather than doing something more useful. If you allow that, the number of possibilities expands greatly.

      1. Or they could have just said “okay, show us what you can do” to SpaceX back in 2006 when they accepted their COTS-D bid instead of saying “we’ll give you the go-ahead for that later” and then forgetting about it.

        The milestones:

        Project Management Plan Review and Crew Demo 1 System Requirements Review $27.42M
        Financing D1 $10M
        Crew Demo 1 System Preliminary Design Review $22.42M
        Crew Demo 2 System Requirements Review $25.42M
        Crew Demo 1 Critical Design Review $20.42M
        Crew Demo 2 System Preliminary Design Review $20.42M
        Crew Demo 1 Demonstration Readiness Review $20.42M
        Crew Demo 3 System Requirements Review $25.42M
        Financing 2D $10M
        Crew Demo 2 Critical Design Review $18.42M
        Crew Demo 3 System Preliminary Design Review $20.42M
        Crew Demo 1 Mission $15.42M
        Crew Demo 2 Demonstration Readiness Review $18.42M
        Crew Demo 3 Critical Design Review $18.42M
        Crew Demo 2 Mission $8.42M
        Crew Demo 3 Demonstration Readiness Review $18.42M
        Crew Demo 3 Mission $8.42M
        Total $308.3M

        Straight forward simple milestones that worked just fine for cargo. As I read Gary Hudson say once, if they’d been allowed to do crew from the start they would have had both done earlier because it’s a heck of a lot easier to put a human in the loop than it is to build a robot. They also wouldn’t have had this diversion into berthing with the robotic arm.

        It’s a shame that so few people understand that the commercial crew program has one purpose: slow down SpaceX so Boeing can compete. It’s taken so long that now Boeing has lost interest.

        1. In other words, you were hoping the horse would learn how to sing. And you’re disappointed because it continues to act like a horse and not a soprano.

          Institutions, like animals, have innate characteristics. You cannot expect NASA to behave contrary to its nature simply because you want it to.

          No one who had experience with government contracts would have expected things to go the way you hoped.

          1. It got pretty damn close to that for commercial cargo. Those milestones were available in 2006 and could have happened just like that, but Boeing was successful at blocking it.

          2. could have happened just like that

            “Coulda shoulda woulda.” That’s the problem with NewSpace, Trent. You guys look at NASA and imagine what *could* happen if you give them another great big pot of money. The optimistic, best-case scenario. You never stop to think about what’s *likely* to happen with the money — the “Law of Unintended Consequences.”

            You expect NASA to manage every program the way *you* want them to, rather than the way *they* want to — something that never happens in the real world — and you’re shocked when that doesn’t happen. Why is that?

          3. All I’m saying is that people shit in the pool and we should acknowledge that. We should name them and assign blame where it is due. If everyone said “that’s the way it is” nothing would ever change.

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