Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

NASA’s Future

32 Comments

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…

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Re-Elect Obama

17 Comments

…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.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Stakes On Tuesday

12 Comments

…here are six of them:

anyone who thinks it doesn’t really matter whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney wins next Tuesday is, to put it bluntly, delusional.

The court is very important, but here’s one that they don’t mention. If Obama is impeached and removed over Benghazi (and anyone who doesn’t think this is a possibility is also delusional), we’ll have a President Biden.

[Update a couple minutes later]

When we deceive:

We are now in a surreal situation in which the administration, its congressional protectors, and the compliant media are all in a no-comment holding pattern until after the election, when the truth will come out, in the same way that Watergate could no longer be suppressed after the 1972 election. It is only a matter of time when those who told initial untruths leak information about who told them to promulgate such unbelievable narratives. And we still do not know exactly why the ambassador was in Benghazi, with whom he was meeting, what exactly was the U.S. doing or not doing in postbellum Libya, and why did Stevens so fear for the safety of his people in a country declared a model of U.S. and allied intervention.

The secretary of state is in a bind. Susan Rice was groomed to replace her, as she prepared to successfully bow out after the reelection of Barack Obama, ostensibly to ready herself for Clinton 3.0. Now she dares not leave, given that in her absence her directorship at State will be scapegoated by the administration and the Obama-fed media. So she stays, as Susan Rice recedes into the background after being used — and subsequently humiliated — in advancing a scripted administration falsehood about the video. Amid this chaos, there will be some officials, who warned of the danger, who knew Libya was not safe, who wanted to send help to our trapped contingent, who did not think the attack came from mere protesters angry over a video, who were enraged by the cover-up, who resented the blame-gaming — and who will ultimately not stay quiet.

If they’re true patriots, they’ll start talking before Tuesday.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

The Nanny State

6 Comments

Yet another problem with it.

The problem with nanny state governance isn’t just that it’s intrusive. It isn’t just that it stifles business with over-regulation, and it isn’t just that it empowers busybodies and costs money. It’s that it distracts government from the really big jobs that it ought to be doing.

Mayor Bloomberg has done an admirable job under great pressure as the city reels from Sandy’s attack. But an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure. The city needed flood protection for its subways and electricity grid—and it didn’t get it. If the Mayor had spent less time and less of his political capital focusing on minutiae, this storm could have played out very differently.

And the problem with big federal government is that it spends too many resources that aren’t its business, and it resultingly neglects the things that are.