Go take the poll. I picked the last choice, but I think that Clark must have voted for the penultimate one. But between the two of them, they currently grab about sixty percent of the vote. The others are mostly down in the noise. Don’t expect the powers that be to pay any attention, though.
Oh, and here’s the official NASA version. Note which options are missing. Steve Gonzales has thoughts, and asks for input.
As Clark Lindsey notes, even if we can believe the Probabilistic Risk Analysis that declares Ares “twice as safe” as an EELV (of course, to do that, we’d have to first actually see it…), that’s a pretty pathetic safety improvement considering the billions of dollars and many years that it will cost us. Considering how high the operational costs will be, it’s not likely to fly very much, anyway (I can’t see more than a four lunar missions a year, given the the budget likely to be available at the outrageous per-mission cost for the Constellation architecture). So the difference between, say, 0.999 and 0.995 is likely to be academic. Particularly when most of the hazards in a lunar mission occur after orbit has been attained. I am increasingly less and less impressed by Mike Griffin’s vaunted intelligence, and don’t miss him as administrator, even if he’s never replaced.
Speaking of which, this is indicative either of how disconnected with policy the president’s press secretary is, or how low a priority space policy is (and perhaps some depressing combination of the two):
“Q: Robert, the James A. Baker Institute is recommending that the Obama administration defer another lunar shot, and instead focus on energy and climate change. Does the White House have a reaction on that?
MR. GIBBS: I don’t have anything particularly from — I would point you to folks over at NASA. I don’t have any particular guidance on that.”
What would the “folks over at NASA” know about it? Policy has to come from the White House, but so far, it seems lacking. Clearly the administration is (over)interested in energy and climate change, but to set that up as an alternative to a “lunar shot” is a false choice. Of course, characterizing VSE as a “lunar shot” is simply a display of ignorance on the part of the questioner, but I suspect that this will be representative of the clueless quality of the space policy debate to come. If there is one.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Oh, and just in case you thought that Ares 1 didn’t have enough technical problems, here’s a new one — post-staging recontact:
This so-called recontact problem could end an Ares I mission – possibly catastrophically – during ascent. Failure could come seconds after firing of the separation pyrotechnics, if the upper stage’s J-2X engine does not provide enough power fast enough to stop it from slowing down and colliding with the first stage and its motor, which would still be providing residual thrust.
This is what caused SpaceX’ third failure. It will be a lot harder for NASA to solve, though.
SpaceX had the problem because they made a change to their first-stage propulsion that resulted in a slightly longer thrust tailoff than they expected. It was solved by simply decreasing the delay between separation and upper-stage ignition.
NASA doesn’t have this option, necessarily, because there are relatively large dispersions in thrust tailoff for an SRB, so it may be hard to find an optimal and reliable delay duration between separation and ignition. This wasn’t a problem for Shuttle because it doesn’t actually stage — it does a parallel burn, and the SSMEs are already at full thrust when the solids separate, and it can easily outrun them. But now, since they’ve come up with the brilliant concept of a solid first stage with an air-start second, they have a new serious risk in the program. And Ares-1X will tell them absolutely nothing about how to solve it.
[Update a few minutes later]
One more point. I’d like Dr. Griffin to tell us what he thinks an astronaut’s life is worth. Because clearly it’s not infinite. He has decided that making it twice as safe is worth billions, but even then, it’s not “safe” in absolute terms (because nothing is, this side of the grave). So we’ve established what he is — one of those heartless bastards who are willing to kill astronauts to pinch pennies. Now we’re just haggling over the price. I’d like to know what it is, though clearly, it’s a lot higher than my own estimate.
You will be as shocked as I was to hear that Bob Zubrin thinks that we should stimulate the economy by sending people to Mars.
Several people, including Clark Lindsey and Keith Cowing, have linked to this Onion article:
“It’s always ‘Are the solid rocket boosters functioning at full capacity?’ and ‘Do the liquid oxygen prevalves operate as required?’ with John,” Discovery commander James Reid said. “If it weren’t for that guy, we’d already be in space by now.”
In addition to his insistence on mission coordinates being 100 percent accurate, Wilkins reportedly spends all his time obsessing about Discovery’s general purpose computers, which ignite the main engines and ensure that the craft can safely reach the speed of 18,000 mph.
“Is there anything John doesn’t worry about?” said Michael Dennigan, the shuttle crew’s second-in-command. “This isn’t rocket science—you’d think he’d try to relax a bit.”
Since he was assigned to it last year, Wilkins has aborted the NASA mission for a wide range of seemingly unimportant reasons, including a 4-inch crack in the exterior hull of the ship, the failure of several engine cut-off sensors, and what has been described as “the smallest of possible thunderstorms.”
I didn’t see it, but I understand that the original version actually called out John Shannon by name, but they later changed it to “Wilkins,” perhaps after complaints from PAO (or maybe John himself, though I imagine he’d have a sense of humor about it).
There actually is a grain of truth to this (though not, as far as I know, with John Shannon). I thought that they delayed a launch (that I attended) needlessly a couple years ago (under the Wayne Hale regime), and I have a more extensive discussion of that particular issue here. But as far as I know, John is doing a good job of balancing safety and cost/schedule.
Yesterday, over at Space Politics, I saw a very peculiar comment:
…NASA failed to achieve the goal of low cost shuttle operations when they failed to pursue the privatization of the shuttle transportation system. Regrettably this failure may cost the lives of another shuttle crew as one of the cost saving features of the privatized shuttle would have been crew escape pods…a fatal flaw.
To which I responded: “Huh?”
Then, today, over at the Orlando Sentinel space blog, I saw something seemingly similar, from the same person:
Sen. Bill Nelson is backing a dead horse. If his staff had done their homework they know Ares I Orion shuttle replacement is not feasible. Too expensive to develop and to operate. Sen. Nelson is driving nails in NASA’s coffin…and maybe a shuttle crew by not supporting the shuttle crew escape pods…see: wwwnasaproblems.com [sic]
Posted by: Don Nelson | February 06, 2009 at 10:33 AM
So I corrected the URL by putting a dot between the “www” and “nasaproblems,” and wandered over there to see what was going on.
What a mess. Ignoring the site design, very little of this makes any sense, either from a business or technical standpoint.
I don’t have the time or the energy to delve into all the problems, but just to respond to the blog comments, I don’t know what “opportunity” NASA ever had to privatize the Shuttle. I actually supported a privatization study by USA back in the nineties, and it was very difficult to come up with a scenario that would make any kind of business sense for Shuttle privatization, given its intrinsically high costs, with little demand for it outside of government. And that’s ignoring all of the intrinsic institutional resistance that NASA and particularly JSC had to handing over the keys to anyone else.
But even if it could have been privatized, the notion that adding “crew escape pods” (even assuming that it is even really technically feasible) to the existing design would somehow “reduce costs” is absolutely loopy. What is the basis of this claim? Similarly, why would a private entity do this?
Putting a crew escape system into the orbiter as designed makes zero economic sense. As I’ve noted many times, crew are replaceable, while orbiters are not. If the Shuttle isn’t safe enough to fly crew, it’s not reliable enough to fly at all, as we’ve learned with the Challenger and Columbia losses, because we’re now down to a fleet of three vehicles, and it would cost billions to replace them, even if it made economic sense to operate them privately. That, in fact, is why we’re retiring it. The notion of privatizing Shuttle at this late date is utterly ludicrous.
This is obviously the work of an engineer, and not a program analyst.
A Delta II, out of Vandenberg, with a new weather satellite, with a ten-minute window starting at 2:22 AM Pacific. The place I’m staying has a good view from the roof patio, but I’m afraid that the Pacific storm moving in tonight and tomorrow will obscure it. On the other hand, it may also delay it. If they don’t get out tonight, though, I’d guess they’ll have to scrub until after the second front moves through on Saturday.
Keith Cowing notes that President Obama read to schoolkids about the moon landings.
It would be nice to think that this is a harbinger for his space policy, but I would note that he’s been in office for two weeks now, and despite all the rumors prior to the inauguration, NASA continues to operate on an acting administrator. Of course, it would actually be unusual for an administration to name a NASA administrator so early. This is because it’s hard to find a candidate who is both capable and willing to do the job. The other reason is that space isn’t important…
(Republican) New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg has accepted President Obama’s nomination to be the new Secretary of Commerce. Apparently, a deal has been cut to allow this to occur without a change in the balance of power in the Senate, by having the Democrat governor appoint a Republican to replace him.
From a space standpoint, a lot of people in the commercial space community were excited about the Richardson pick, because of his very visible and active support of commercial space and space tourism. As head of the Commerce Department, he could have been helpful to that cause, through the Office of Commercial Space, and perhaps helping ameliorate ITAR and other regulatory issues. But Gregg is a cipher on these issues, so it isn’t clear whether this is good, bad or indifferent for commercial space. It’s probably not a subject to which he’s given much thought. On the other hand, he’s reportedly a smart guy, and perhaps educable if people can get to him early.
Clark Lindsey deconstructs the latest argument that human spaceflight vehicles must be “certified.”
And yes, I have arrived safely in LA. Without my luggage (meant to last a month). Again.
At least this time it wasn’t a non-stop, so they have the excuse of missing the connection in Dallas.
It’s hard to believe, but the Columbia disintegrated, with seven crew, over the skies of Texas six years ago today. And our space policy remains as screwed up as ever.
[Update in the evening]
Clark Lindsey has links to some musical tributes to the disasters. Also, for those who missed the link on the earlier anniversaries this week, here are my thoughts a year ago on the cluster of space disasters at the end of January and early February.
[Bumped]