Category Archives: Business

NASA’s Future

I just got an email on deep background from an employee of a NASA contractor:

NASAWatch linked to a story today that NASA has an exploration plan they intend to announce shortly. Here’s a possible starting point for this plan, based on tidbits that I’ve assembled. Think of it as a “tin foil hat” scenario.

The first piece that fell into place was at “Technology Day” at JSC. One of the exhibits was about using propellant depots as an enabler for exploration space missions. The booth was manned by the civil servant that was responsible for the depot study that was leaked earlier this year, where JSC Safety & Mission Assurance endorsed depots as a safe, reliable way to enable low cost access to space. In discussion with him, he said that the past NASA opposition to them was based on a view that you had to have an unbroken string of successful flights to the depot, thus lowering mission success. However, S&MA has proposed an “n of m” model, where the probability of success for a full depot can be higher than the probability that the vehicle to be fueled gets there. He elaborated on this to say they had even pitched this as a way to bootstrap the commercial launch providers by reserving up the deliveries to them. He said they had suggested that the “m” deliveries be divided up among the two cheapest two bidders, the cheapest getting more launches. By having two providers, you guard against a vehicle being grounded for an extended time, you just exercise an option with the other provider for more missions. He also said that NASA would only pay for successful deliveries. Finally, he said that HQ had been “receptive” to the pitch.

Second, this triggered a memory of some briefings I had seen on cryocoolers for cryogenic propellants. Remember that initially, Orion was supposed to have a Methane/Oxygen main engine, the better to support ISRU at the Moon and Mars, and has a 6 month loiter time in LLO. Obviously you need good cryocoolers for that. There were hints that there was a classified program that had an LH2 cryocooler that had been tested or even flown and would work for this. So, now you have the possibility of being able to store LH2 and LOX in a depot for a long time.

Third, at an Orion program review this past summer, [a high NASA official] asked if Orion could produce two vehicles per year. (The answer was yes, btw.) He also said that NASA HQ had an exploration mission plan worked out, but it wouldn’t be released until after the election so that it wouldn’t be a political football.

Let’s put this together:
– There is no way that NASA can afford two launches per year of SLS/Orion, they can barely afford the one every 4 years in the current plan.
– NASA HQ receptive to depots. Possible off-the-shelf cryocooler available.
– The Obama administration is very supportive of SpaceX and other commercial providers. Elon Musk has said that a couple of missions/year to ISS is not enough to keep them going.
– Recent public discussion of how there is no money for payloads on SLS due to the high cost.
– Leak of L-2 orbital base idea.

My tinfoil hat leads me to believe that NASA[HQ] wants to:
– Cancel SLS and launch Orion on Delta/Atlas/Falcon
– Divert the savings from SLS to propellant depots and mission equipment
– Launch the depot and missions on commercial heavy lift launchers
– Do some kind of deep space exploration mission

While MSFC will be enraged by SLS going away, give them the propellant depot, refueling mission management, and deep space upper stages and they have cutting edge R&D work to keep them busy. It also gives the NewSpace companies something to keep the assembly lines open, and gets NASA out of the trucking business. [My emphasis]

None of this would surprise me. Here is my response:

What you’re saying is that HQ is coming or has come to their senses (assuming that they’d ever believed in SLS), and that this may become administration policy. My concern is that the money coming from SLS won’t go to the depots but will instead just be the cut for the sequestration/budget deal. The flip side of that is that any money going to Marshall for depots will be down the usual rat hole anyway. What NASA should be doing for depots is tech demos (and if they want to give a sop to Shelby to allow them to waste billions, that’s fine), but the business model should be like COTS/CCDev: have private industry build/operate the depots, and NASA pays for propellant and storage.

BTW, the argument that a depot-based approach increased mission risk was always insane, and generally just FUD to defend HLV, unless promulgated by someone technically clueless. Such people will remain nameless, except one example has the initials of MW…

Re-Elect Obama

…so we can see just how much worse it can be.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Spite and revenge is the new “hope and change”:

For Obama, this entire campaign has felt like revenge against Romney, and against the kind of people Obama thinks Romney represents. Obama could have spent the last several months talking about his own record and his plans to change direction from our current economic stagnation that has kept the level of employment in the population at or near 30-year lows. Instead, Obama approached this election as a personal mission of revenge, and left the door open for Romney to present the only vision of change for the future in this campaign. Romney defined his campaign as an expression of love rather than revenge. So what Obama said on Friday was no gaffe. It’s just the obvious takeaway from a relentlessly empty and negative campaign.

But he’s “likable.” I guess.

Mike Bloomberg

…is no Rudy Giuliani:

Michael Bloomberg must have hoped that Sandy would be his own 9/11. A population in shock turned to the mayor in their hour of need. He dominated the airwaves; he issued decrees. He seized the occasion to speak out on the big issues: climate change, endorsing a president. He worked to project an air of authority and calm: the Marathon would go on.

It must have looked for a while as if he had done a Rudy and resuscitated a tired mayoralty, relaunching a national career. Perhaps a cabinet appointment in a second Obama administration, perhaps another shot at an independent presidential campaign.

It is looking less that way by the hour. As the true dimensions of the damage in New York gradually appear, as the death toll mounts and as chaos at the gas stations and devastation in Staten Island undercut the narrative that the city has responded effectively to the challenge, Mayor Bloomberg looks more like the hapless officials of New Orleans than Rudy Giuliani or Chris Christie. The decision to divert badly needed resources to the Marathon looks callow. Big talk about climate change fails to impress; surely if the Mayor was so concerned about climate change he could have invested more time in flood preparations. It’s not the fault of conservative GOP climate skeptics that New York did so little to prepare for the rising sea levels that so trouble the mayor.

Actually, he is starting to look more like a Nagin.

[Update a while later]

The “Stop The Marathon” Facebook page is up. It really is amazing that Bloomberg is doing this when people are suffering on Staten Island, which is always the forgotten borough..

So how’s that Bloomberg endorsement working out for you, Mr. President? It would be pretty funny if, between this and reticence to go to the polls by disaffected Democrats, the Democrats lose in New York and New Jersey. Not to mention Connecticut.

[Update a couple minutes later]

A Staten Island tweet.

[Another update]

Cries for help replaced by a loss of words.

But the marathon must go on.

[Update a couple minutes later]

“The city of New York right now is talking about getting water out of the Battery Tunnel and preparing for a marathon,” U.S. Rep. Rep. Michael Grimm said. “We’re pulling bodies out of the water. You see the disconnect here?”

Hey, get with the program. There’s a marathon to run.

[Update]

It gets even more insane: “If you’re not familiar with SI the Verazzano Bridge is the only ground connection to rest of city. It’s CLOSED for the marathon.”

Maybe they should just secede and join New Jersey.

[Another update]

“I want to go home, but there is no home.”