I’d be interested to hear what Norm has to say on Friday, but I’m going to be on a plane to San Francisco at the time. Guess I’ll find out when I get to my room, or the conference on Friday night.
Category Archives: Space
The Mess At NASA
There are some interesting comments over at this NASA Watch thread about the impending death of Ares 1. This one was particularly sad, but jibes with my experience over the years, and talking to others who have worked for and with Marshall:
I left MSFC last year after dedicating many years of my life to our nations space program (9 years contractor and 9 years civil servant). I consider that time completely squandered. I would never recommend an aerospace career to any bright young person.
The general mood at MSFC is pure apathy tempered only by greed. Keep in mind a GS-13 civil servant (anyone with 10 yrs experience) is knocking down $90K plus per year, 3-4 weeks vacation per year, great benefits, and near total job security. Needless to say – not very many of them are going to rock the boat. In this kind of environment, managers pretty much do what they want since few of the working troops will challenge them and hold them accountable. The primary promotion criterea at the center is how well you “obey” (ie kiss butt). The resulting incompetence at all levels of management is beyond belief.
Ares I is a perfect example of what this environment produces. Remember what ESAS said was “off-the-shelf” 4 segment SRBs and J-2. How that vehicle could ever meet requirements when the upgraded 5 segment SRB and new turbopump J-2 equipped vehicle barely meets requirements is a question some investigation board should ask. But I can already tell you why that vehicle was recommended. Because the top dog said so. And when the top dog says do it then pesky little things like physics or economics matter not to MSFC/NASA management.
I’ve told family for years “If the American people knew how bad things were at NASA – they would shut it down”. There is no solution for NASA. You can’t salvage it. You can’t fix it. It’s over. The cancer that is politics has ravaged our once great space agency enough. Be humane and put it out of its misery.
That’s unlikely to happen, of course, for political reasons, but the Aldridge recommendation to convert the centers to FFRDCs was an attempt to fix some of those problems.
On another topic, a frequent commenter who calls himself “Ben the Space Brit” has some mistaken thoughts on propellant depots:
Propellent depot-based architecture requires a huge commitment to a sustained LEO infrastructure. To the uninitiated, that means building, maintaining and continually refilling specially-designed satellites that act as ‘gas stations in the sky’.
Right now, there is no reason to do this except to have an EELV-based lunar archetecture and to express commitment to a hazy concept of commercial HSF. Simply put, no politician would right now be willing to commit money to such an open-ended venture. The advantage of a HLLV is that it is something that you spend a big amount on once and then operate at a reduced cost. Depots are something that you have to spend on and then keep spending to keep them operational.
Now, it is true that, in the long run, a depot-based architecture will be key to keeping an early-stage lunar outpost operational. However, just as money for commercial Earth-to-LEO developments only became seriously available when there was a destination (ISS), I do not consider it likely that money for depots and other LEO infrastructure of its type will become available until after the outpost is operational, thus creating a clear target for the investment.
IMHO, depots will never be politically acceptable as a precursor to a lunar mission, only as an investment to bring down maintenance and logistics costs for it once in place. You will still need an HLLV to put the outpost in place and also act as the LV for the precursor survey missions.
This makes no sense whatsoever to me. Where is the evidence that an HLLV will “operate at a reduced cost”? The only example we have is Saturn. It did not have low operational costs. There is no reason to believe that an Ares V, or any other wet dream of the heavy lifter fetishists will do so, either. Why does he think that heavy lifters aren’t “something that you have to spend on and then keep spending to keep them operational”? That is an excellent description of a heavy lifter, and the heavier the lifter, the lower the flight rate, which means that you never get your average costs down to anything reasonable.
Depots, on the other hand, shouldn’t require much in the way of ongoing costs, once in place, except perhaps replacing them every few years. Their cost of use should be quite low, and they allow the cost of propellants (the vast bulk of mass that has to be delivered for missions beyond LEO) to drop by encouraging competition among providers. And such an architecture is much more robust, particularly with multiple redundant depots. If a depot fails, you switch over to another one. If a launch system fails, you switch over to another one. But if you only have a single heavy lifter (and does anyone imagine that we’re going to develop two?) and it has a stand down (and don’t say that it won’t), you’re out of business until you get it running again.
There may be good arguments against a depot-based architecture, but I haven’t heard any yet. They always seem to be rationalizations to defend an irrational devotion to big rockets.
[Update a few minutes later]
One of the subtitles (or themes) of my piece at The New Atlantis (which will be on line Real Soon Now) could be “BFRs? We don’t need no stinkin’ BFRs.”
[Another update a few minutes later]
There’s an interesting discussion in comments over at Selenian Boondocks about the politics of selling propellant depots.
One Small Launch Of A Rocket
…one giant leap for commercial spaceflight?
My thoughts on SpaceX, Constellation, and Senator Shelby, over at PJM today.
Reading The Handwriting On The Wall
Even NASA seems to realize that the end is near for Ares I.
For more than a week now, engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., including some working on Ares I, have been pulled from their current duties to study creation of a smaller version of the Ares V that could carry both crew and heavy equipment.
NASA confirms that it is looking at different versions of the Ares V, though a spokeswoman played down the significance of the review.
“This is nothing new, and as a part of these ongoing … studies the program continues to look at a wide variety of options on Ares V as is standard practice in formulation,” said NASA spokeswoman Ashley Edwards in a statement.
But NASA insiders and contractors familiar with the work say that the work is far from “standard practice” and could herald the demise of the Ares I.
“They are looking at a whole new launch architecture,” said one NASA contractor familiar with the study. “Although it’s still too early to pronounce Ares I dead, it is safe to assume that members of the committees have doubts about it.”
Gee, you think?
Falcon 1 Status
This post is about a half hour before launch. I’m listening to the countdown status on the webcast.
[Update a little before 11 PM EDT]
They’re now at T minus fifteen, on a weather hold, hoping to pick it up in less than half an hour at T minus three something.
[Update just before midnight EDT]
It looks like a successful launch. Congratulations, SpaceX. This is a huge milestone — the first successful delivery of a payload into orbit. Now on to a successful Falcon 9 launch later this year.
[Morning update]
The launch seemed to be entirely successful. Clark Lindsey has some thoughts on the implications. I particularly like the last one:
Sen. Shelby should be forced to watch the launch video over and over…
I’m sure he’s seething this morning, assuming that someone had the moxie to tell him about it.
Will The Shuttle Launch Tonight?
I wouldn’t bet on it. The weather at the Cape isn’t looking much better than it has been for the last few nights, including Friday night, when lightning strikes on the launch site caused a scrub for Saturday night. When the Air Force and NASA were choosing launch sites in the late fifties and early sixties, the Cape was an attractive location for many reasons, but one of the negatives was the fact that Florida is pretty much the lightning capital of the nation. More people are killed by strikes here than anywhere else (it helps to have a large population, of course). But at the time, it wasn’t truly appreciated what a problem this would be. The first major lightning issue occurred on Apollo XII (next flight after the one whose fortieth anniversary we’ll be celebrating, or at least remembering over the next few days), when lightning struck the vehicle during launch, and basically dazed the avionics. The crew had the presence of mind to do a reboot, and the mission ended up being a success.
The next major event was almost twenty years later, in the spring of 1987 (not long after the Challenger loss, and the Titan IV failure at Vandenberg that caused both systems to be shut down for some time). An Atlas-Centaur carrying a Navy comsat was destroyed by lightning that caused its control system to go haywire right after launch. The current commit criteria that kept the Shuttle from launching last night, and may do so again tonight, were derived from those events. If anyone is interested in the details, there’s an interesting paper on the subject from the Aerospace Corporation.
What I found interesting is the fact that the vehicles themselves induce the lightning. I think that this speaks to the utility of a two-stage vehicle without a long rocket exhaust plume that contacts the ground providing a conductive path. This wouldn’t be a problem for an air-launched system that could ferry. And of course, such a system wouldn’t be tied to a fixed launch site, like Cape Canaveral. As we remember Apollo, people in Brevard Country should understand and be proud that while their region played a key role in space history, and may have helped win the Cold War, geography will not always be destiny.
[Update about 8 PM eastern]
Did I call it or what?
Spacelaunch Falcon 1 attempt has been put off until 10:30 EDT.
The Folly Of Apollo
Some thoughts from Jerry Pournelle, in response to the Derbyshire piece a few weeks ago:
Years after Apollo I had a conversation with John R. Pierce, Chief Technologist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. John said that we’d made a mistake. In Heinlein’s future history, we go to the moon in stages first developing sub-orbital capabilities, then satellites, and finally went to the Moon; and we should have done it that way this time.
At the time I get somewhat angry in my disagreement with him, but it’s pretty clear John was right. He really meant that we should have learned to build space ships, real reusable ships that could fly suborbital, then orbital, then be refueled in orbit — rather than developing a bit disintegrating totem pole that could only be used once. I think he was right, and we may have to do it all over again before we can become a space-faring nation.
This will be one of the themes of my upcoming piece at The New Atlantis.
[Monday afternoon update]
Paul Dietz notes in comments that the Pournelle response was actually to a different Derbyshire post, that I hadn’t seen. He says that Apollo wasn’t a mere folly, but a magnificent one.
[Bumped]
Follow The Mission Live
For those too young to remember it, here’s a story about web site that’s going to recreate the Apollo XI mission in real time, starting just before the launch anniversary on Thursday.
Mike And The Giant Carrot
There’s been quite a bit of discussion in the space blogosphere about the former administrator’s latest shot at the Augustine panel and the very notion of questioning his plans and judgement, chock full of straw men and non sequiturs.
Clark Lindsey commented on it over the weekend, and Doug Messier and “Rocketman” had further critiques today:
While the Eminent Scholar and Professor should be developing course outlines, pop quizzes, and final exams, he is instead complaining about the ongoing review of the debacle he left behind. What he fails to comprehend is that he didn’t do what he said he claimed he would do within the established boundaries of dollars and time. Incremental progress would have been recognized and treated fairly. Spending profusely and having nothing to show for it is another matter altogether.
The absurdity starts with the very title of the piece — “Griffin Says Fear Of Risk Hurting Space Program.”
Huh?
The title is apparently based on this quote:
“We are less willing to take risks of any kind, whether it be financial risk, technical risk or human risk, or the risk of just plain breaking hardware,” he said. “Being adverse [sic*] to risk is not what made this country what it is. I’ll just say that. The willingness to take measured risks is what made this country what it is.”
Hey, that all sounds great. Who could disagree? But why in the world is Mike Griffin complaining about it? Is his irony meter busted again?
This coming from a man whose proposed solution was “Simple, Safe, Soon.” From a man who proposed nothing bold, or innovative, but instead decided to engage in cargo-cult engineering, and look back to the way the great gods of Apollo did it forty years ago. Is he saying that he was forced to come up with that solution because of our supposed “fear of risk”?
Whose fear of risk is he talking about? Because the only risk aversion I see is coming from Mike Griffin himself. He feared to risk serious money on COTS. He feared to risk a new and innovative approach that could have not only fit within the budget, but actually satisfy the recommendations of the Aldridge Commission. He feared to risk reliance on a private sector that has been putting payloads reliably into space for decades. And now he’s accusing us of risk aversion?
We didn’t ask him for “Simple, Safe, Soon.” He was tasked to come up with a plan that would fit within the budget profile, and hit some basic capability milestones. Admiral Steidle was well underway toward coming up with one when Dr. Griffin gave him his walking papers and substituted his own plan, uninformed by previous trade studies or Aldridge recommendations. One of the reasons that he is no longer administrator is that he failed that assignment.
This sycophantic interview is rich:
“If we do a review every four or five years to see if NASA’s on the right path,” he said, “we’re never going to get a product. I mean, you can’t grow carrots by pulling them up out of the ground to see how they’re growing.”
Last time I grew some, carrots grew in a few weeks. It didn’t take them five years. And in fact, you do pull one occasionally to see how they’re doing. But then, I always grew lots of them, so one could spare a progress check occasionally. And I was never dumb enough to attempt to grow a single, giant carrot, large enough to feed an entire family for a decade, and wait five years for it.
And you know, even in China, and the old Soviet Union, they thought that it made sense to check every half decade or so to see how the Five-Year Plan was working out. But no, Dr. Griffin’s plans shouldn’t be questioned that often. We must simply be patient, and trust him, the Supreme Rocket Leader, and let the carrot grow, for decades if need be.
“The need for the (current space study commission headed by Norman Augustine) is motivated solely by the public controversy over whether NASA got it right, if you will, in the architectural choices being made following the (explosion of the shuttle Columbia in 2003),” he said.
“I happen to think that NASA got it right,” Griffin said, “but if it isn’t exactly right and isn’t exactly perfect, I would argue, ‘So what?’ The question is not is it perfect? Is it good enough? Will it work? Is it one of the acceptable choices … if so, shut up and move on.”
…Griffin clearly admires the days when America needed big projects and simply got them done.
“When the country desperately wanted an ICBM 50 years ago to counter the Russians, they didn’t ask … what it would cost.”
“Shut up and move on.” Who, after all, are we to question the great Michael Griffin?
Of course when we needed ICBMs, or even when we went to the moon the first time, we didn’t ask what it would cost. We were in an existential conflict with a totalitarian enemy that would destroy us and our way of life had it been able to. But that was then, this is now. If we are going to have a program that is not a race, but is (one more time) “affordable and sustainable,” it is insane to think that we can come up with one without asking what it costs.
And of course he thinks NASA (i.e., Mike Griffin) got it right. What else would he be expected to think? Particularly when he “got it right” even before coming into the agency, and hired his own OSC buddies to perform a brief perfunctory study to validate what was a fait accompli once he was named administrator? This is why we don’t have people review their own work, or at least we don’t have only them review their own work, particularly when the stakes in national capability and taxpayer dollars are so high. And even more particularly when the results of the work are a budget that has exploded far beyond plan, a schedule that continues to slip to the right, and a product that will be a failure by the standards of the Aldridge Commission, even if it’s a success by its own internal, drinking-its-own-bathwater criteria.
We aren’t seeking a “perfect” plan, Dr. Griffin. We are seeking one that meets the criteria that you were given. It is not “good enough.” It will not “work,” if by “work,” you mean provide an affordable and sustainable infrastructure that will allow us to go beyond earth orbit with more than a handful of astronauts per year at a cost of less than many billions per trip. You failed.
It’s time, long past time, to “look under the hood.” That the White House didn’t do so long ago is a failure of the Bush administration as well. It shouldn’t have had to take a change in administration to review the glorious Griffin Fifteen-Year Plan. The fact that it is finally happening is one of the very few reasons (for me, at least) to be happy that we got an administration change.
Oh, and as for “shut up and move on”? I think that at this point a lot of people wish that Dr. Griffin, physician, would heal thyself.
*This is one of my pet peeves, as I note over at Clark’s place. The article says risk “adverse.” It’s not clear if the former administrator actually used the word, or a reporter transcribed it incorrectly and the editor didn’t pick it up. There is no such thing as being “risk adverse,” despite the wide-spread usage of the phrase. It is an aversion, or a desire to avoid risk, not a risk undertaken in adversity.
[Afternoon update]
Related thoughts over at Vision Restoration:
I would suggest that the most pressing problems with the current architecture are not of the “Will it work?” variety. There are a number of technical problems with the current architecture, and it remains to be seen whether or not these technical problems will be resolved. These are of concern.
However, the crucial problem with the ESAS-derived approach is that even if it eventually works in the sense of getting astronauts to the Moon, it will not achieve the goals it was supposed to achieve. I have gone into more detail in other posts on the goals of the Vision for Space Exploration that were later emphasized by the Aldridge Commission, and how the current architecture completely misses the point of those goals. However, one only has to read the charter of the HSF Committee to see some of the flaws with the current architecture.
None so blind…
Cross Your Fingers
Well, actually, engineers aren’t supposed to be superstitious like that, but here’s hoping for a successful Falcon 1 launch this evening (late afternoon on the west coast).