Category Archives: Space

Political Commentary, Space

Risk, And Space History

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Jon Goff has an instructive post on NASA’s supposed risk aversion, and points out that had they taken the same attitude half a century ago, Apollo would likely have failed (as Constellation seems likely to fail today, ironically, because it’s too much like Apollo, but without either the requirements or the management talent of that project).

But this opens up a much broader discussion of risk. There are multiple kinds of risk for a space project (and technology projects in general). There is technical risk — the risk that what you are trying to do may not be achievable within the schedule or budget because the technologies haven’t been sufficiently demonstrated and there are too many unknowns (both “known” and “unknown”). There is program risk — the risk that you may not manage the various aspects (including risk) of the project adequately, also resulting in cost increases and/or schedule slips (it is clear that this has happened to Constellation, as many have been pointing out for years). There is market risk — the risk that the thing that you’re building won’t actually satisfy the need. And for government programs, there is political risk — the risk that your project will lose political support prior to completion (actually sort of the government version of market risk, except that you’ll often find out that the market has disappeared prior to project completion, which is, I suppose, a feature rather than a bug).

A key element of being a successful project manager is managing and mitigating these risks. A lot of it happens at the very beginning of the project, when it’s a lot cheaper to do risk mitigation, and decisions taken have long-term consequences.

In that context. Mike Griffin failed the day that he selected the current architecture, because it had so much risk (of all varieties described above) cooked in right from the get go.

Not having access to the probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) that is a standard management tool for such decisions (I’m being generous in the assumption that one was actually performed, and the decision based on it) it appears to an outsider that no risk was considered other than purely technical. NASA (in defiance of one of the roles stated in its charter) chose the path that was deemed to have the best chance of success because it broke no new technological soil. In its own parlance, it chose to develop launch systems built from components of high TRLs (Technology Readiness Level). That is, they had been demonstrated operationally in the operational environment, in previous programs. Of course, because they didn’t really understand the operational environments (it’s a lot more than just flying through the atmosphere and going into space), it bit them on the ass, and took out a lot of meat (almost doubling the initial estimates of development cost, and slipping the schedule one year per year since it started). “Demonstrated in the environment” includes the environment of an integrated launch system. For instance, the fact that the SRBs only killed one Shuttle crew didn’t make them safe or, in isolation, “human rated.” And the fact that the vibration environment when they were structurally buffered from the crew system by a tank full of a million and a half pounds of propellant was minimally acceptable didn’t mean that it was a good idea to put a much smaller stage directly on top of them.

They probably considered program risk, but assumed that it was non-existent, because they were running the program, and who was better at managing programs than them? They apparently completely ignored political risk, or misassessed it. They seemed to think that the way to maintain program support was to completely ignore the recommendations of the Aldridge Commission — to make it affordable, sustainable, support commercial activities and national security — and instead to cater to the parochial demands of a few Senators on the Hill, particularly Senator Shelby. That one hasn’t bitten them on the ass yet, but it probably will when the Augustine recommendations come out in the fall, removing whatever glutiginous meat remained.

The tragic thing, as Jon points out, is that in avoiding the narrow technical risk of delivering, storing, manipulating propellants on orbit, something that is absolutely essential for future space exploration and space development (because they’ll never be able to come up with a launch system that can do a Mars mission in a single launch), and focusing all their efforts on a perceived “low-risk” but unnecessary new launch system, and in ignoring the systems necessary to get beyond LEO (as opposed to simply getting to orbit, which the private sector has had down for years) they have wiped out more billions in taxpayer dollars, and allowed the day that we would once again go beyond earth orbit, to recede far into the future.

At least, that is, if the lunar-bound vehicle has the word “NASA” on its side.

Fortunately, some of us, more attuned to the real risks, have other ideas.

Business, Economics, Space

X-Prize Foundation Overreach?

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Clark Lindsey points out a potential issue with the Lunar Landing Challenge:

Section 4 of the document, especially subsection 4.2, seems overly aggressive to me with respect to the X PRIZE Foundation’s clams to media rights. Apparently, a team has to give up the right to any income generated from their own videos, photos, etc. even for preparatory activities away from the place and day they attempt the competition flights. In fact, sounds like even posting a video on YouTube requires permission from XPF.

I don’t understand why XPF should get all of these rights just for managing the contest for NASA. I don’t see such rights going to the Spaceward Foundation in the rules (pdf) for the Power Beaming Challenge.

I agree. Since the prize money is put up by NASA, how does XPF have sufficient “skin in the game” to justify this clause? I’ve already received an email from one potential participant that this is a “deal killer.”

As I asked him, though, what does that mean? It seems to me that if you enter into this agreement, you believe that the expected value of the prize (purse times estimated probability of win) exceeds the potential revenues from media use of the event. If you believe that the latter is the main value, and not the purse itself, then you wouldn’t enter, but would instead simply perform the feat independently, video it, and make a big deal that you had done what was needed except unofficially, thus embarrassing NASA and the XPF, taking away the value of the competition itself, while generating more publicity (and perhaps potential customers) than actually winning the prize (see Prejean, Carrie).

On the other hand, if you consider NASA a potential customer for your vehicles, you might not want to do that. It is something that, to quote the “Fat Man” from The Maltese Falcon, “calls for the most delicate judgment on both sides. ‘Cause as you know, sir, in the heat of action men are likely to forget where their best interests lie and let their emotions carry them away…”

Media Criticism, Space

“Hate” Speech

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Mark Whittington seems to suffer from an almost autistic inability to properly gauge the emotions of others — the same malady as many self-described liberals seem to suffer, when they describe as “hate speech” or “racist” words with which they simply disagree. He often irrationally refers to my posts as “rants,” or “seething,” or “filled with rage,” though in each and every case I was perfectly calm when composing them, and no one else ever sees the supposed anger. And when called on it, he can never justify it, or point to the exact words that he finds so rage filled (and indeed, ignores requests to do so, usually simply repeating the slander).

Here’s an example (not of me, this time, fortunately):

Some interesting words of wisdom from Mike Griffin along with, sadly, words of hate in the comments section.

Well, I read those comments (only two of them at the time of this posting — I can’t speak for what might appear there in the future), and I saw nothing “hateful” about them. They simply pointed out inconsistencies in the former administrator’s words, and between words and deeds. One need not “hate” someone to point out flaws in their arguments. I wonder why Mark views the world in such emotional extremes?

[Thursday morning update]

Amazing. He’s still at it.

Mind, there are a few things about which one can criticize Dr. Griffin’s tenure at NASA, mainly by using 20 20 hindsight. But really, some of the posts I have read makes one wonder if he drinks the blood of virgins and eats the flesh of the young, so filled with rage they are.

Note that (as always) he can’t point to any particular “rage-filled” post or comment, and show us the “hateful” words. Just like his imaginary friends at the “Internet Rocketeers Club,” we are simply supposed to accept that such things exist in reality, and not just in Mark’s mind.

And of course, there, as he did here, he says that I accused him of being a liberal, once again indicating his apparent inability to comprehend written English. And no, Mark, there is nothing “hateful” about pointing out either that, or your apparent inability to properly gauge others’ emotional states. It is purely an unemotional, clinical observation.

[Bumped]

History, Social Commentary, Space, Space History

Well, He Meant “…A Man…”

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…but he didn’t quite say it:

Riley and Olsson…concluded that Commander Armstrong and his family members do pronounce the word “a” in a discernible way.

And based on broadcasts from Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from the surface of the Moon, it is clear that the word “a” was easily transmitted to Earth without being obliterated.

But their analysis of the intonation of the phrase strongly suggests Commander Armstrong had intended to say “a man”. There is a rising pitch in the word “man” and a falling pitch when he says “mankind”.

According to Mr Olsson: “This indicates that he’s doing what we all do in our speech, he was contrasting using speech – indicating that he knows the difference between man and mankind and that he meant man as in ‘a man’ not ‘humanity’.”

I think it’s safe to say that this has been analyzed to death at this point. It’s only been forty years.

Space, Technology and Society

Space Solar Powerballs

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Trevor Brown proposes spherical solar power satellites.

This isn’t a new idea. I wrote a paper on it back in the early nineties for an SPS conference, and I think that Geoff Landis has done some work on it as well (for instance, here’s a report of a talk that he gave on it at the 1996 ISDC, which was the last one that I attended prior to by going to Dallas two years ago — ctrl-F for “spherical”). It does vastly simplify the design issues, because it is no longer necessary to point the panels at the sun. One of the comments there needs some elaboration:

While the surface area of the sphere facing the Sun matches your calculations, the whole side would not be available for power generation. The so-called Beta angle, or the Sun angle, affects the total amount of power converted. Also, while a sphere would not need rigid station-keeping and attitude control to collect solar energy, the transmitter back to Earth certainly will. Also, a large spherical structure would be more taxing on a station-keeping/attitude control system than a more planar design. These caveats in mind, this is a creative alternative.

With regard to the needed area, the beta-angle effect means that at any orientation, you’re only getting the effective solar panel area of the cross-section of the sphere. That is, while the hemisphere has twice the area of the circular cross section, the non-zero beta angle of all points except that at the center of the illuminated area means that you need twice the solar panel that would be necessary if it were a flat circle. Add to this the fact that you have just as much area on the side in shadow, and it means that you need four times the total solar panel area to get the equivalent collection capacity of a pointed flat plate. So you have to postulate very cheap panels for this to make economic sense. But if you can get them, the simplification of the design is worth a lot.

As for pointing the transmitter, that’s actually not so tough a job. You hang it down below the sphere, and it will remain vertical, due to gravity gradient restoring torques. You could point it with control cables all around its circumference, attached to the sphere. In addition to inflating it, I also considered putting a charge on its surface to keep it spherical, but it would take a lot of ions, particularly for a big one, and inflating is probably a better solution, though subject to leaks, and the need for gas resupply.

One other point. I actually considered a fleet of them in MEO, continuously switching from one rectenna to the next as they orbit, to reduce the size of the transmitter antenna, which gets kind of humungous out at GEO.

Economics, Political Commentary, Space

DIRECT Rebuttal Thoughts

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I had missed this when they were posted, but the Chair Force Engineer had some thoughts on DIRECT a couple weeks ago, here and here.

“Wow.” Are we to believe that ESAS was designed with little or no consideration of what the supporting infrastructure would cost? It would certainly explain why we’re stuck with the unaffordable Ares I and Ares V.

I’d like to say that I’m surprised, but sadly, I’m not.

Further NASA statements such as “Ares I + Ares V uses 15 SRB segments, while two Jupiter 232’s use 16 segments” also reveal an incredibly simplistic approach to cost estimation. Such simple methods might be appropriate for pre-algebra students. Professional cost estimators ought to know better. That’s why cost estimation is so difficult; there may literally be thousands of dependent and independent variables that make up the true cost of the system over its lifetime. Saving a few million in rocket hardware may have bigger reprocussions with development dollars, standing army costs, and infrastructure costs. It’s best summed up on Slide 26, where Jupiter’s higher launch costs (measured in tens of millions per launch) are offset by the savings of billions in development costs.

We’d have to see a full life-cycle cost accounting with assumptions to know whether or not it’s a good saving to cut development cost at the price of higher ops costs. It depends on how much you’re going to fly. But I suspect that it probably is, because the up-front costs are in expensive near-term dollars whereas the flight costs are down stream and discounted, and the flight rate will probably never get big enough to justify spending more on development to reduce marginal cost per flight. That’s always the problem with expendables.

I really need to write up my talk on marginal costs from Space Access.