Category Archives: Space

Political Commentary, Space

Conservative Porkers

15 Comments

…on parade in Utah:

The idea of alternatives to shuttle- and Ares-derived concepts, both of which used solid rocket motors, is anathema to the Utah senators and congressmen. “I join my colleagues in admonishing NASA to strictly adhere to the law and use solid rocket motors in the development of the new Space Launch System,” Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) said in the statement. “Today’s meeting confirms that we are in a long-term fight over the future of NASA’s manned space flight program,” added Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT). “I remain very concerned that NASA continues to delay the transition from Constellation systems toward the new heavy-lift program while they needlessly explore private start-up technologies that remain unproven, require more money and are unfit for human-rated space travel.”

What complete nonsense. They require much less money, and are far safer than solids. And ULA doesn’t employ “start-up technologies.” Both Atlas and Delta have been flying for years, with no major failures. I wonder if he really believes this, or if he’s lying? Time to get Pork Busters and the Utah Tea Party after them. And this is a battle over the future of NASA’s manned space flight program, they’re the ones endangering it, by insisting on unaffordable solutions that will wipe out its budget. But it’s not — it’s just a battle over Utah jobs. I hope that Hatch loses his primary in 2012, as Bennett did this year. I sure won’t miss him.

Political Commentary, Space

Time For Heads To Roll

40 Comments

I have a piece up at AOL News calling for a new NASA administrator.

[Update a while later]

My favorite comment over there so far (there are about thirty, most of them pretty dumb):

Are you sure it’s not just because he’s black??? I’ve rarely heard that much hatred and pure BS except from racists! What proof do you have for these theories of yours? Other then way much Rush!!

Wow, this guy has me pegged.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here’s another gem, from “RetardedPalin”:

Its the Republicans that see NASA as a waste of money. Bush cut NASA funding. Christians don’t believe there’s any reason to be looking at space or going there.

Sigh…

[Update a while later]

Here’s another highly perceptive comment:

Where did you buy that fully loaded Manure spreader? Thats some load of disrespect for a former Marine Corps General, enjoy your NASA retirement check you republican old f@rt. it is your generation that heaped these problems upon us.

Every day I look in the mail for my NASA retirement check, but it’s never there.

Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Requirements Mess

5 Comments

“Ray” has a good comment over at NASA Watch on the NASA Commercial Crew requirements:

Oh I just cannot wait for these requirements to finally see the light of day. I am going to have a field day with them (because, of course, any requirements the GOV levies on commercial enterprises are subject to public comment). Without even reading them, just based on Wayne’s words and my knowledge of existing substandard NASA requirements (current human rating requirements is but one example), I can tell they are going to be a bunch of unsubstantiable doo doo.

I am just getting warmed up, but here are the first two issues I have for these requirements mongers:

1) How many of these existing requirements are actually validated? And if so, what are the principles against which they are validated (I hope someone answers this with a CFR citation!)
2) For all those requirements in this set that are not yet validated (a viable situation), I would hope that NASA will clearly and unambiguously identify each and every validation plan for each and every requirement levied.

My specialty over the last 10 years of my career is going into troubled programs and laying waste to all their BS, unverifiable, or outright wrong requirements. The best way to prevent such problems like this from happening is following model-based systems engineering principles, which I am pretty sure NASA has not done in this case. If they actually did, then when they release the requirements for public comment, they should also be expected to release the fully coherent operational, functional, and physical architecture models. If they do not or cannot, then all they are doing is politics, not engineering.

I will take this task on as part of my duty as an American engineer to make sure NASA is NOT permitted to make these kinds of mistakes in systems engineering that they have made before. It is well understood by professionals in systems engineering that each “shall statement” has a dollar amount attached to it. Many contractors use this as a metric (e.g. so many dollars for each well-formed, substantiated, and traceable requirement). When requirements are found that are not verifiable, not measureable, not coherent, or not traceable, the “cost fudge factor” on those requirements is usually somewhere around 4-5x that of a well-formed requirement.

What we are seeing here is the EXACT same problem that DoD has. It is the single biggest problem that government, overall, has that causes over budget and blown schedule technology programs. If We The People let this happen without a whimper, we deserve what we get.

Actually, I would go further. In order to figure out what the “shall” statement is going to cost, you have to look at the verification statement(s). In the last few years of my own curmudgeonhood, I will no longer accept a requirement without one (or more, if necessary). Because in my experience, the verification statements are the foundation for a test plan, and that’s where the costs of a program can really balloon. A requirement without a verification statement has no value, and isn’t a real requirement. I would also add that when I was working CEV (before it became Orion), NASA had imposed some truly ridiculous requirements on it (e.g., it had to survive a bird strike at 10,000 feet).

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Regrets, I Have A Few

8 Comments

Wayne Hale thinks that he posted in haste. But the problem remains:

Now I have re-read it and have some additional thoughts. It is clear that this is a vast scaling down from the requirements that say, Ares-1 and Orion had. And many of the paragraphs say that the specifications and standards can be replaced with alternatives, or with other standards that “meet the intent of” spec such and such. That is good. And to the casual reader that sounds like a big change. Unfortunately, it is not. Having to prove that an alternative standard is just as good as the standard NASA listed is an uphill battle. The adjudicator will be some GS-13 who has lived with one standard his whole career, understands it thoroughly, probably sat on the technical committee that wrote it, and loves it. Proving that his baby is ugly is going to be time consuming, and probably fruitless. I speak from sad experience.

So, what is my recommendation? Simple. Do what the Launch Services Program does: require that providers HAVE standards and follow them – don’t make them pick particular processes or standards, let the flexible, nimble, [your adjective here] commercial firms pick what suits their business best. As long as they have standards and stick to them – that is what we should require.

I would note that this is the FAA’s approach for launch licensing of passenger flights, until the industry matures sufficiently to develop certification standards (a point in time that is many years off).

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Wise Up, Conservatives

35 Comments

Time to realize that the Apollo era is over. Iain Murray and I have a piece up at The American Spectator in response to that dumb blog post at Forbes last week. Many of the comments seem to utterly miss the point, though. And I have to say, I hadn’t previously been aware that I was a “committed leftist.” Though if I were a leftist, committing me would probably be the appropriate thing to do.

[Late morning update]

I am reliably informed that Loren Thompson, the guy who wrote that thing at Forbes, is bought and paid for by Lockmart. I would have mentioned that in the AmSpec piece had I known earlier.

And Mark Whittington has a hilarious comment, though (as always) completely inadvertently.

Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

About That “Missile” Off The Coast

37 Comments

I’ve gotten requests in comments and email for my thoughts, but I really don’t know much more than anyone else. I didn’t see it myself, but this explanation looks like the most likely one to me. Fortunately, it’s also the most benign one. I do think it’s a good reminder, though, that we need to get serious about missile defense.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here’s a lengthy disquisition on the contrail theory.

Political Commentary, Space

A One-Paragraph Spec

11 Comments

Thoughts on NASA procurement problems over at Space News:

To an outsider, it seems self-evident that NASA’s procurement process is the thing that is broken, or we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Look at Falcon 9, from drawing board to successful first flight in much less than 10 years, and an expenditure on the order of half a billion dollars, and compare that with Ares 1, and tell me NASA still knows how to run programs. Compare it further with the program requirements documents for Mercury and Gemini, highly successful programs back when we knew a lot less about spaceflight than we do today.

There’s no way Ares 1 and the Orion crew capsule should have cost anywhere near what they were costing, or take anything like as much time as they were taking, to get up and fly. Whether the problem lies within NASA, or with the government procurement rules within which NASA is constrained to operate, is a question that needs answering. But the end result is the same: another decade lost, and American astronauts sitting by the side of the road with their thumbs out, waiting for the next Soyuz launch.

Arguably our most successful manned program, the Gemini program, was conducted from start to finish in less than five years. It cost (including 10 crewed flights) somewhere between $5 billion and $7 billion adjusted for inflation — less than we have spent on Constellation/Ares without even making it to our first orbital test flight. Gemini did everything we need from a crewed spacecraft, at least until we get out of cislunar space. Put a beefed-up heat shield on it and it could have gone to the Moon, and there were some studies for that. That’s what we did when the U.S. had a cumulative total experience in manned spaceflight of three man-days — not man-years, not even man-months.

I am not an engineer. My degrees are in history and business. If I am anything, I am a historian. So, as a historian, I ask: What’s so hard about replicating this level of capability, with technology that’s 40 years more mature?

Well, as another (amateur) historian, I’ll answer the question. That was then, this is now. In the sixties, actually accomplishing things in space was important, because we were in a race with the Soviets. Today, developing useful space hardware isn’t important. Maintaining jobs in certain congressional districts is.