Category Archives: Space

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

How Much Does Safety Cost?

26 Comments

And how much should it cost? Over at my Pajamas Media piece this weekend, frequent TTM commenter “bbbeard” comments:

SpaceX has a launch record of 3 complete failures and two successes. What is disturbing about the SpaceX failures is that they hinged on relatively major oversights. Take the Demo2 flight, for example. SpaceX’s post-flight analysis showed that incorrect propellant utilization parameters were uploaded into the engine computer, a textbook case of sloppy configuration control. There was a recontact during staging, which initiated a slosh event — that was not mitigated because the LOX tank had no baffles. These are the kind of rookie mistakes that get you labeled as a “hobbyist”. It will take more than two successful flights to show that Elon Musk’s company has outgrown its hobbyist mentality and is ready to tackle human spaceflight.

Safety is the elephant in the foyer that you have not addressed. STS has suffered two launch failures in 132 missions (counting Columbia’s foam strike as a launch failure) — and what no one in NewSpace seems able to admit is that that loss rate is unacceptable. You can deny all you want that NASA is up to the job of designing a vehicle significantly safer than STS, but it is a fact that Ares is being designed to tough and unprecedented requirements for loss of crew rates — and Atlas and Delta never were. You claim Atlas has an “unbroken string of many dozens of successful flights” but by my count only 20 of the 21 flights of Atlas V have been successful — and that is an unacceptable loss rate. Only 2 out 3 Delta IV-Heavy flights have been successful — and that is an unacceptable loss rate.

Unlike SpaceX, the engineers at Boeing and Lockheed are the best in the business. But they were never directed to make Atlas and Delta reliable enough for human spaceflight. Using those platforms as human launch vehicles would be a step backward from STS safety levels, which are already unacceptably high.

What your argument boils down to is that you, Rand Simberg, think that the extra reliability that Ares aspires to is not worth the price tag. You may be right, you may be wrong. But why won’t you explain that that is your argument, instead of simplistically blaming NASA for poor cost control?

Man, there’s a lot to unpack there. I don’t know if I have time to deal with it right now, but let me at least lay out the issues. One is what an “acceptable” level of safety is (particularly relative to the reliability required to deliver a satellite worth a billion dollars). Another is how it is achieved. A third is how much it should cost to do so. A fourth is how much someone who had pretty much the same experience as other “professionals” in developing rockets for the first time can be said to be a “hobbyist.” (I would note as an aside that I don’t intrinsically accept “hobbyist” and “amateur” as pejoratives vis a vis “professionals” — many amateurs and hobbyists can be better than professionals — they just don’t choose to do it for a living. Space historian Henry Spencer comes to mind. I don’t think that there is anyone on the planet who is more familiar with both space history and space technology than Henry, but it’s not his day job.)

Anyway, I’m trying to figure out how to earn a living myself, so have at it in comments for now. I may weigh in later.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

A Space Glossary

The other day, a commenter said that he thought that Constellation was just the rocket and capsule. Many people don’t know what Constellation (and other things) are, and aren’t, which is what feeds part of the ignorant hysteria that we’ve seen in the press and on the Hill since the new budget was bumblingly introduced in February (and unfortunately, the administrator remains poor on his messaging and communications capability, with his talk about “bailouts” for the commercial sector). Anyway, as a probably futile attempt to clear the fog, I have a glossary and explanation up over at PJM today.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

A Waste Of Time And Money

51 Comments

The Orlando Sentinel, like me, is concerned about politics dragging out decisions on the new space policy. A couple points, though. Retiring the Shuttle isn’t “Obama’s plan” — that decision was made over six years ago, by the Bush administration. Similarly, this seems like a strange criticism:

Mr. Obama’s plan also calls for abandoning NASA’s next manned program, Constellation, and its goal of reaching the moon by 2020 for a new program that would aim for farther destinations. But the best the president has promised is that astronauts would be reaching asteroids sometime in the mid-2020s, and flying around Mars sometimes in the 2030s.

Those goals are so distant, they’re almost meaningless. Such a time lag would put at risk America’s legacy of leadership in manned space exploration.

Let’s see… 2020 for the moon minus 2004 when it was announced: sixteen years. 2025 for an asteroid minus 2010 when it was announced: fifteen years. The Obama plan seems to be a slightly less distant goal than the VSE. Did they complain then?

A resolution may not come till the end of the year, when lawmakers give final approval to the 2011 budget.

That’s far too long for space policy to be in limbo. There’s room for a reasonable compromise — perhaps keeping Constellation with a different rocket, or moving up the timeline for a new manned program.

I wouldn’t assume that there will even be one by the end of the year, and there may be a whole new set of lawmakers involved in the final 2011 budget. In fact, we know that Alan Mollohan won’t be committee chair next year.

And what does “keeping Constellation with a different rocket” mean? The Ares was one of the defining features of Constellation. Do they mean restoring the lunar goal? Or what?

[Update a while later]

A commenter asks:

What is there to Constellation but the rocket and the capsule? I didn’t know anything else existed.

A lot of people are in that boat. A lack of understanding of what Constellation is (and isn’t) is one of the sources of the policy confusion. I’ve actually written an article about that, that I hope will be published soon at Pajamas Media. But briefly, Constellation was all of the elements needed to get astronauts back to the lunar surface, but most of them were scheduled to be developed years from now. Only “the rocket and the capsule” are/were under current development.

Space

It’s Always Something

6 Comments

A loose ball bearing on a camera may prevent the shuttle Atlantis from making its last flight today.

For want of a nail…

[Update a few minutes later]

Guess they decided it wasn’t enough of an issue to scrub for, or they resolved it. Launch still on in a few minutes.

[Update shortly after lift off]

Sounds like everything’s going fine so far.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

What Is A “Bail Out”?

47 Comments

Can anyone explain to me what Bolden means when he says that he might have to “bail out” commercial space? Does it mean that he’ll have to keep pouring money into them until they deliver the needed product/service? What else could it mean? And if so, are the current cost-plus Ares/Orion contracts “bail outs”? At least with commercial, we have a chance of getting out of that mode. With the POR, “bail outs” (and very expensive ones — fifty billion for both Ares and Orion, though still not as big as GM/Chrysler) are the default.

Political Commentary, Space

The Astronaut Show

52 Comments

The Senate hearings have begun. The first and last man on the moon will be testifying. While they’re certainly admirable men, I’m not sure what they have to contribute to this discussion. They know nothing about affordable or sustainable programs. They are in fact experts on those with the opposite characteristics. Here’s the webcast, and Alan Boyle is tweeting it.

[Update mid afternoon]

Sigh…

Cernan says it “might take as much as a full decade and would take 2-3 times as much” money as budgeted to launch new commercial spaceships.

When did Gene Cernan become a cost estimating expert? And this, from Cowing’s feed:

Cernan: had telecon last week; Bolden said comm space may need bailout like GM/Chrysler – may be largest bailout in history.

Bigger than TARP? Bigger than GM/Chrysler? Bigger than the thirty-five billion dollars that Ares I was projected to cost, if all went well? When SpaceX has spent less than a billion to date, and they’re most of the way there?

Words fail.

And of course, who can gainsay them? They walked on the moon.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I don’t know whether to be angry, or sad about this. Gene Cernan is up there spouting utter nonsense to senators. Did someone else give him these bizarre talking points, or is he just making it up? Either way, it tarnishes him badly.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Is someone going to ask Bolden to confirm this, or is he no longer a witness?

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s another gem of innumeracy from Captain Cernan:

Cernan: Let’s put a box on the 1040 for taxpayers to give an extra penny to NASA. I bet we’d get enough $ to do all we wanted.

Let’s be generous and assume that there are a hundred and fifty million US taxpayers. By my accounting, that would give us a whopping $1.5M a year.

It’s like he’s just talking without thinking, and making this stuff up on the fly.

[Update a few minutes later]

I have more thoughts on “bail outs” here.

[Update late afternoon]

Clark has some brief thoughts, and links:

From Sen. Hutchison capturing cosmic rays for energy production to Sen. Rockefeller transporting Sir Isaac Newton to 1880s Baltimore, it was a typical Congressional hearing on a technical topic.

The country’s in the very best of hands.

[Update a few minutes later]

It was nice to see Senator Brownback saying sensible things. I just got an email from the Commercial Spaceflight Federation with a quote:

I am a strong supporter of NASA, as I mentioned, and of the commercial space industry … With the impending retirement of the Shuttle, NASA is now assuming a much different role than in our past space effort, and I think there is great opportunity to have a space program that leads the world but will be a space program that is firmly embedded in opportunity for all. By opening up commercial space, it ensures a strong future for the US and the competitive aerospace industry.

I think it helped that Pete Worden was on his staff for a while a few years ago.

[Evening update]

Alan Boyle has a story on the hearings today, and Clark Lindsey has expanded on his initial thoughts.