Well, here is the first, big obvious result of the new administrator:

After examining many options, we have formed a policy on institutional support of systems engineering and integration in the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate portfolio, which underscores the importance of reinforcing the Government's internal systems engineering competency. Accordingly, NASA has concluded that Government personnel at Headquarters and NASA Centers will implement systems engineering and integration in Constellation Systems and other areas of the Exploration program. Consequently, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate will not be releasing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for an Industry systems engineering and integration contractor.

For months, Admiral Steidle, head of EMSD has been saying that 2005 was "the year of system integration," and it's been clear that he wanted to let a contract out for this task in time to help get CEV off to a good start by the end of the year. There are a lot of issues and history associated with how NASA does large-systems integration, enough to fill more than one book, but the basic issues are competence of the agency, ability to hire/fire/compensate the best people for the job under civil service rules, and avoidance of institutional conflicts of interest if it's performed by a hardware contractor. My sense had been that NASA was going to let a contract for this (as they did with the Shuttle--it went to Rockwell in conjunction with their win of the Orbiter contract), and put in place firewalls and other procedures to minimize conflict-of-interest concerns.

But according to this release, it looks to me as though Dr. Griffin has decided to preempt the Admiral, and thinks that he can oversee his civil servants adequately to do the job in house, and he wants to start to build up the capability to do so. This throws a wrench in the works of all the major contractors' plans for Constellation. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out, particularly combined with the desire to accelerate the CEV program (the desire is to move first flight up from 2014 to 2010, which puts schedule pressure on a lot of things in this decade).

I hope that some NASA types who are in the know will be at the Space Access Conference, and that I can pick their brains a little over a beer.

And now we have the cancellation of all of the roadmap committees. What gives?

Well if they want to get things rolling as soon as possible then wouldn't they just want to take what they already know and have in house and roll with it? After all it could very well be that NASA felt the sting of Scaled Composites showing that a handful of engineers with Apple computers can design a carrier/suborbital vehicle for chump change. Surely, our 'elite' NASA engineers with super computers and advanced materials at their disposal can mimick those results.

Also, I'm certain a great deal of pride has been lost over not having any American capability to deliver humans to orbit. I sense a great urgency to get that capability back and to see that it continues immediately after the Shuttle is retired.

But the point the Aldridge Commission was trying to make is that NASA should be getting out of the business of mimicking and competing with the private sector in favor of simply contracting out the entire mission, not just making widgets to government specs that government employees put together and run.

> But the point the Aldridge Commission was trying to make is that NASA
> should be getting out of the business of mimicking and competing with
> the private sector in favor of simply contracting out the entire
> mission, not just making widgets to government specs that government employees
> put together and run.

Did you ever read the Aldridge Commission report? It specifically stated that human spaceflight was to "remain the province of government." The role of the private sectors was limited to "participating" in the government program (i.e., making widgets to government specs that government employees put together and run).

The problem is that the phrase "the Government's internal systems engineering competency" is pretty much an oxymoron. I think the best that can be said is that NASA may be less incompetent than others. Besides, stating that human spaceflight should remain in the hands of the Feds just means that the Aldridge commission thought that the Gov't should not simply buy rides on a private manned s/c. (Which is why I think there's a fighting chance that the first NASA crew to Mars may be greeted by private explorers.)

- Eric.

I wonder if this implies a certain feeling that the contract system is broken. It's just damned slow, expensive, and heavy in paperwork. Send out an RFP, wait a year or two. Get proposals back. Issue contracts for further analysis. Wait some more. Narrow down the list of competitors. Dole out more funds. Wait some more. Along each step of the way are reams of paperwork, ass-covering directives, etc.

Rutan looked at working on one of these NASA contracts and bailed after seeing how much of his company's time would be spent shuffling papers and preparing interim reports.