Category Archives: Space

Political Commentary, Space

Please, No

31 Comments

A new candidate for NASA administrator, according to NASAWatch.

There is nothing in his resume that makes me think that he understands anything at all about space policy issues, and the fact that he’s worked with Hans Mark gives me the heebies, if not full jeebies.

As for this quote:

The general also has some strong views of his own: ‘I believe if you could get rid of all the nuclear weapons this would be a wonderful world,’ he says.”

I wouldn’t disagree with the sentiment, as far as it goes, but what does it imply in terms of his beliefs and potential acts? Does he think this is an attainable goal, or is it some out-of-context quote about what he’d do if he had a magic wand? If the former, what policies would he promote to achieve it (not that NASA administrator has much to do with that)?

There is nothing here that gives me a good feeling about this potential pick. Not that the Obama administration cares what I think, of course.

[Update a few minutes later]

I know, you’re asking, “what’s the problem with Hans Mark?”

The trivial reason is that he was the one who recommended Mike Griffin to the Bush administration. A more substantive one is that he has made many statements, or at least implications, over the years that private citizens have no business being in space, and that it’s a realm only for government astronauts. Which would be in keeping with his German upbringing and long NASA pedigree. He is a government space man, first, last, always.

[One more before-bed thought]

The general is reportedly very close to the president elect. That can either be very good, or very bad, depending on just what it is he/they want to do. The last time we had a NASA administrator close to the president, it worked out pretty well (Jim Webb, Apollo). Whatever he wants to do, he can count on White House support from the top, if he gets the job. The question remains: what will the Obama space policy be?

[Wednesday morning update]

Mark Whittington once again displays his complete inability to sanely read the emotions of other people. It’s nutty to think that I’m in a “blind panic.” It’s just as dumb when he claims that I’m “full of rage,” or any of the other extreme emotions that he often misattributes to me. But that’s Mark — perhaps he’s just projecting or something.

And Jeff Foust has more on the potential pick.

[Bumped]

[Early afternoon update]

FWIW, there’s an interesting comment over at NASAWatch, from someone who calls himself “Space Exec”:

It’s well known that Gration was angling for a top job in the Department of Defense in the Obama Administration. During the campaign he had an opportunity to be involved in creating Obama’s space policy, but barely engaged due to lack of interest and quickly pivoted over to other things – leaving the job to 20-something policy staffer Carlos Monje instead.

If he’s appointed, the signal sent to the entire space community will be that NASA is nothing more than a consolation prize for the Presidents’ buddy who couldn’t get the job he wanted. Or, at best, maybe NASA is some kind of training wheels for Gration to prove his management abilities.

How soon until he has his eyes on some of the slots at DoD that will be opening up when Gates leaves (Secretary of the Air Force, for example)? Is he really going to be effective if his term is only one or two years? Is he going to have the respect of the NASA team given his apparent lack of interest in space science or exploration?

If this is the case, it reminds me of the Frosch appointment during the Carter administration. Bob Frosch reportedly wanted to run NOAA (something for which his previous career better suited him) but that post went to someone in more political favor, and he ended up with NASA as a consolation prize. We don’t need someone at the agency right now with little previous interest in space, and whose eyes are on a bigger (in his mind) prize. But we’ll see.

[Bumped again]

[Mid-afternoon update]

I’ve verified the Frosch story. It’s actually very interesting.

Political Commentary, Space

On Autopilot

6 Comments

OK, I was going to comment on the space portion of the president’s interview as well:

Q: Over the last eight years, they’ve had to make some decisions on priorities and spending. I was wondering how you assess how well NASA has done during your presidency and what do you think lies ahead for space exploration, and particularly manned space exploration.

THE PRESIDENT: I was very concerned about the dwindling enthusiasm for NASA when I first got here. And the reason why — and so we did a whole study of NASA and its future, and it became apparent to me that the space shuttle was losing its glamour and, frankly, people weren’t convinced of its necessity. And the space station was important, but it just didn’t have — the mission itself didn’t capture a lot of folks — the imagination of a lot of folks in Congress.

And so we changed the mission, as you know, of NASA. We said we’re going to stop flying the shuttle in 2010 and develop a Orion rocket or Orion launching vehicle to go to the moon, to get back to lunar exploration. And the purpose there is to eventually settle in and develop enough facility in the Moon to then be able to go beyond.

And so my first purpose on the NASA issue was to develop a mission that would excite the scientists, the employees, and the Congress. That has been accomplished. I know there is a gap that concerns people, and that would be the gap between the last shuttle and the beginning of the new Orion rocket program. Nevertheless, I do think it’s — the mission has to be very relevant. And so I’ve been a believer in NASA and space exploration since I’ve been the President, and I’m excited about the new mission.

I’d say first that he didn’t seem to think it necessary to excite the American people — just the “scientists” (whatever he means by that), the “employees” (of NASA? of the contractors? all of the above?) and the Congress. Perhaps, though, that was an oversight. I do think, though, that it reveals a conventional mindset — that space is about “science.” It also reveals that he is a) familiar with the broad outlines of the plan that he announced exactly five years ago (was it really that long?) on Wednesday and that b) he is familiar with only the broad outlines. He knows that the capsule has been since named Orion, and either doesn’t know, or has forgotten the name of the launcher (Ares).

I don’t think that this is a reflection on his intelligence so much as his focus. There have been arguments over at Space Politics over how much culpability the administration has in the developing disaster of ESAS/Constellation/whatever, since the new policy was announced half a decade ago. It is certainly not in keeping with either the Aldridge Commission recommendations (as I remind my readers on probably more than a weekly basis), nor with the goals stated by John Marburger (the White House science adviser) to bring the solar system within the economic sphere of humanity.

I agree that ultimately the buck stops in the Oval Office, and that the Bush administration is responsible for letting NASA drop the ball by not supervising them sufficiently. But I disagree with those who say that it has engaged in a crime of commission (i.e., it actually actively directed and approved the current direction), rather than omission (just not paying much attention). I believe that it was the latter, and I think that the president’s statement is evidence for that. They were forced to divert themselves from more pressing issues in 2003 to focus on space policy as a result of the loss of Columbia (now almost six years ago at the beginning of next month). They came up with new policy, and then, a little over a year later, hired a new administrator to implement it.

He came highly credentialed and recommended. They thought that once he was in place, they could go refocus on more pressing issues They expected him to do it right, and didn’t want or expect to have to look over his shoulder to make sure that he did, particularly when he was supposed to be the expert rocket scientist. As a result, Mike Griffin had free reign to drive the program into the ditch, with little attention or interference from the White House.

And once again, we see that civil space is unimportant. I’d like to Hope that this will Change in the new administration. Well, I do hope so. But I don’t expect it.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Still Floundering

15 Comments

Once again, we have a pathetic defense of the current architecture, in which (following up on the Friday Griffin speech) we are once again assured that NASA looked at all the options, and this really is the best one, trust us. And once again, there is no data or supporting documentation or assumptions provided to support the bald assertions:

NASA looked at a wide variety of launch concepts — from the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (Atlas V, Delta IV), Space Shuttle (including Shuttle C, Direct type approaches and other solid and liquid rocket booster propelled systems) combinations, foreign systems and clean sheet designs.

The Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) was chartered in the spring of 2005 to recommend a fundamental architecture for supporting International Space Station, Lunar and Mars transportation.

Using data from previous and ongoing studies (several hundred vehicles), and consisting of a team of knowledgeable experts from inside and outside NASA, this study compared many launch and staging options for safety, effectiveness, performance, flexibility, risk and affordability.

This reminds me of the last scene in the first Indiana Jones movie:

“We have top men studying this.”

“Who?!“

“Top. Men.”

Well, in this case, we know who the “top men” are — names like Doug Stanley, and Scott Horowitz, and Mike Griffin. But we still have never seen the actual process by which these top men came up with this travesty.

And they wonder why we don’t trust them.

Clark Lindsey responds:

Just to give my same old refutation in a different way, I’ll list the major weaknesses of the program as seen by someone who wants humanity to become genuinely spacefaring:

  • Ares I/V/Orion will be stupendously expensive both to develop and to operate.

  • Furthermore, these systems do not provide any technology development path towards future vehicles that would be less expensive to develop and operate.
  • They do not contribute to the development of a robust in-space transportation infrastructure.
  • And thus they do not lead to lower cost in-space transportation either.
  • Even if Constellation performs as promised, the very modest lunar surface capabilities it provides will not compensate for its staggering costs.
  • The opportunity costs will be enormous as well:
  • Money going to Ares I/V will not go towards development of crucial technologies such as fuel depots, orbital tugs, in situ resource extraction systems, etc.
  • And the money will also not go towards buying the services of commercial providers who would drive down the costs of spaceflight via the economies of scale arising from large scale delivery of propellants, components, and crews to orbit.

Now does NASA disagree with these characterizations of their plan, or do they disagree that these are worthwhile figures of merit? Do they think those conditions unnecessary to become spacefaring? Or do they think that our becoming spacefaring is unnecessary?

It must be one or the other, but these topics never even seem to be discussed.

[Update early afternoon]

It occurs to me that, sometime during the accumulation of all of his degrees, Dr. Griffin was likely to have been penalized (or at least warned about a penalty) for turning in an assignment requiring math and physics with just the answer, without showing his work, including assumptions. In fact, even if the answer is wrong (because, for example, you punched a calculator button incorrectly), you’ll often get partial (and in some cases even full) credit, because the most important part of the exercise is understanding the problem and how to solve it, not just coming up with an answer. I certainly had this drilled into me, and I don’t know anyone with a technical or hard science degree who did not.

All we’re asking of you, Mike, is to show your work, just like you did in school. You don’t get a pass on this just because you’re NASA administrator. Not even when you have multiple engineering and management degrees and are a “rocket scientist.”

[Monday morning update]

Architecture, not point design.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Why?

58 Comments

Dennis Wingo says that we need a compelling reason for a space program, and we don’t currently have it. I agree. This is the space policy debate that we need to have, and never really have, at least not since the early post-Sputnik period. There is no way to come up with the right transportation architecture/infrastructure if we don’t understand the requirements, and we don’t really understand why we’re doing it. People persist in thinking that the VSE was a destination (the moon, then Mars), and then proceed to argue about whether or not it was the right destination. But it was, or should have been, much more than that — it was a statement that we are no longer going to be confined to low earth orbit, as we had been since 1972. But the failure was in articulating why we should move beyond LEO. Dennis has done as good a job of that here as anyone to date.

I would also note that it’s hard to generate enthusiasm for spending money, or astronauts’ lives, when we don’t know why they’re doing it. As I wrote a couple years ago:

Our national reaction to the loss of a shuttle crew, viewed by the proverbial anthropologist’s Martian (or perhaps better yet, a Vulcan), would seem irrational. After all, we risk, and lose, people in all kinds of endeavors, every day. We send soldiers out to brave IEDs and RPGs in Iraq. We watch firefighters go into burning buildings. Even in more mundane, relatively safe activities, people die — in mines, in construction, in commercial fishing. Why is it that we get so upset when we lose astronauts, who are ostensibly exploring the final frontier, arguably as dangerous a job as they come? One Internet wag has noted that, “…to judge by the fuss that gets made when a few of them die, astronauts clearly are priceless national assets — exactly the sort of people you should not be risking in an experimental-class vehicle.”

What upset people so much about the deaths in Columbia, I think, was not that they died, but that they died in such a seemingly trivial yet expensive pursuit. They weren’t exploring the universe — they were boring a multi-hundred-thousand-mile-long hole in the vacuum a couple hundred miles above the planet, with children’s science-fair experiments. We were upset because space isn’t important, and we considered the astronauts’ lives more important than the mission. If they had been exploring another hostile, alien planet, and died, we would have been saddened, but not shocked — it happens in the movies all the time. If they had been on a mission to divert an asteroid, preventing it from hitting the planet (a la the movie Armageddon, albeit with more correspondence to the reality of physics), we would have mourned, but also been inured to their loss as true national heroes in the service of their country (and planet). It would be recognized that what they were doing was of national importance, just as is the job of every soldier and Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But space remains unimportant, and it will continue to be as long as we haven’t gotten the public and polity to buy in on a compelling “why.”

Space, Weird

“Audacious”

16 Comments

That’s one word for this plan, that Tariq Malik uses, presumably to be polite:

The co-founder of a rocket launch firm has proposed an audacious plan to send astronauts on a one-way trek to Mars using a pair of tethered U.S. space shuttles that would parachute to the Martian surface.

Inventor Eric Knight, a co-founder of the rocket firm UP Aerospace, detailed the plan – which he’s billed “Mars on a Shoestring” – in a thought exercise designed to encourage unconventional thinking for future human spaceflight.

“My thought paper is a mental exercise to encourage new ideas,” Knight told SPACE.com in an e-mail interview. “I also hope it spurs a re-evaluation of the timeline for human exploration of Mars. Twenty years seems like an eternity, given that we were able to get to the moon in less than 10 years – and we were essentially doing so ‘from scratch.'”

I’m less polite, so I’ll just call it what it is — insane. I don’t have time to detail all of the things that are wrong with it, but have at it in comments.