Category Archives: Business

Business, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

NASA’s Bureaucracy

October 1, 2015 Rand Simberg 2 Comments

This comment over at NASA Watch is a pretty good description of the problem, on the 57th anniversary of the agency transforming from the NACA (which it needs to return to) to NASA:

In another current post on NW, Wayne Hale laments that the lengthy list of specifications is going to kill the commercial crew effort. Why this lengthy list of specs? Maybe because the NASA people who wrote the program requirements had no actual experience in developing any space hardware, and they did not know which specs to select, so they just included them all?

I should also note that it is not because more experienced and more qualified people were not available in these instances of program management, vehicle design, or spec writing. There were people with experience in Shuttle, Spacehab (commercial), Mir systems development, and with DOD programs, but the NASA management went with people they “knew” despite their lack of experience. You can look all the way to the top of the program, the AA for manned spaceflight, and he has little more experience, and so how can he provide the guidance for others to “learn the trade”. In fact he appears to have been responsible for naming a large number of his contemporaries, all from his old organization, payload operations, to leading positions. I don’t think they’ve worked out too well.

The mission ops directorate has the right idea-they require people to be certified and as they get certified their careers progress and they move from document writer to flight controller to flight director. The other technical/engineering disciplines do not have this and so we wound up in a situation where virtually anyone with a degree can be selected for almost any position.

Now, especially after 3 decades of ISS, you have the big bureaucracy in which the main experience base is in meeting attendance. And the people without the experience in the top positions are fearful of the people who actually have any education and experience. This is a corrupt bureaucracy.

That Wayne Hale post, from five years ago, is sadly prophetic.

Business, Space, Technology and Society

Blue Origin

September 30, 2015 Rand Simberg 4 Comments

The company announces that it’s completed a hundred successful tests of its staged-combustion turbomachinery. It’s a little misleading to show a full-engine test, with shock diamonds, though. Also, they don’t say if there have been any failures. Particularly of the rapid-unscheduled-disassembly type.

Meanwhile, Aerojet Rockedyne continues to beg for money.

[Update a few minutes later]

George Sowers just tweeted to me that these were subscale tests, not full scale. Hopefully, that’s next.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The FAA Learning Period

September 29, 2015 Rand Simberg 4 Comments

It was due to expire tomorrow. Congress just extended it for six months (assuming the president signs the bill, which he likely will).

Reportedly, this was to buy time to resolve differences between the House (who wants a ten-year extension) and the Senate (which wants five years) in conferencing the space bills in the coming weeks.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The Climate Fascists Get Bit

September 29, 2015 Rand Simberg

…by the Streisand effect:

You can imagine the horror on the signatories’ faces when they realised that some very determined people were about to take a close interest in their financial arrangements and those of their colleagues at IGES.

I’m not sure taking the letter down is going to help much though.

Nope. Too late.

Business, Space, Technology and Society, Weird

The Golden Spike Company

September 24, 2015 Rand Simberg 2 Comments

Their domain has become available.

It could be that they simply forgot to renew, but this doesn’t seem like a good sign.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

We Need A War On Termites

September 24, 2015 Rand Simberg 18 Comments

Not just because of the damage they cause to our property, but because they generate ten times as much CO2 as all of human fossil-fuel combustion?

If that’s true, the policy implications would seem sort of profound.

Business, Law, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Space Policy Mess On The Hill

September 24, 2015 Rand Simberg 1 Comment

Michael Listner (at his new space-law blog) has a good description of the difficulty of reconciling the House and Senate bills.

However, even if the learning period expires next week, George Nield knows that both houses want to extend it, and he’s not going to waste any resources trying to suddenly start rule making.

Business, Health, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Dear Hillary

September 22, 2015 Rand Simberg 4 Comments

A debate over a law is never “over”:

As this debate moves forward toward the next election I would hope that Republicans and conservatives take the opportunity to remind voters that our entire system of government is, to varying degrees, a flexible and constantly shifting beast. Obamacare is, beyond question, the law of the land as it stands today. It’s also true that a couple of aspects of it have been challenged through the proper rules of order and have survived the test all the way to the highest court. But absolutely none of that has magically transformed this piece of legislation into some sort of natural law, essential human right or sacred text brought down on stone tablets from Mount Sinai.

The law of the land is as permanent as the voters decide it should be. Its expiration date may never come or it may be swept way with the next meeting of the legislature. There is no debate over the law which ever truly ends as long as there are those left who wish to debate it.

It’s almost as thought they want to silence dissent.

Transterrestrial Musings