Here’s a web site where you can weigh in. Pete Worden is currently in the lead by a large amount.
[Update a few minutes later]
Heh. You get a choice of two Wesleys — Huntress and Crusher.
[Update late afternoon]
Neil H. has set up a betting pool on who it will be.
Mike Griffin made a speech this morning at the Space Transportation Association breakfast (something he has been doing annually since he became administrator).
Jeff Foust has some notes from it. I just read it.
The problem, as always, is that NASA never provides any data to support his assertions — we must simply take his word for it. For instance, when he says:
Beyond the costs involved, our probabilistic risk assessment for loss of crew on Ares 1 showed it to be twice as safe – I repeat, twice as safe – as a human-rated EELV-derived vehicle. This figure of merit was a significant factor in our decision to go with the Shuttle-derived Ares 1, yet is ignored by almost everyone suggesting that we make a change. I cannot responsibly ignore it, for reasons having nothing to do with money. But if to someone else it is just about the money, then the cost of unreliability must be considered. Incurring even one additional accident through the use of a less-reliable system wipes out all of the savings of the hypothetically cheaper vehicle. Solely from a fiscal perspective, we should be willing to pay a premium for safety, if necessary.
Who can argue with that? But if it’s true, release the PRA, with its assumptions. Show us how and why it’s “twice as safe.”
There is no discussion, of course, of how this satisfies the Aldridge Commission requirements to be “affordable and sustainable,” and to contribute to national security and promote private enterprise. That’s because it doesn’t.
And this is what I find most annoying about his defense, because it’s a theme that recurs often with him:
But no matter what decisions we make, we at NASA cannot possibly make everyone happy. Most decisions will produce an unhappy outcome for someone. That is not by itself a symptom of incompetence, bad intentions, or a lack of integrity on our part, as some have contended. Allocation of public funds to any particular alternative inevitably leaves aggrieved parties who will not receive those funds.
There is an implicit assumption here that all his critics are craven, and not acting in good faith — that their only reason for criticism is because they have a pecuniary interest in a different solution. I’ve never accused him of incompetence, bad intentions or a lack of integrity — I simply think that he’s mistaken. But he is implicitly accusing me, and every other person who thinks that there are better solutions, of the latter, when he says that we’re just in it for the money. And he does it often enough that one does have to wonder if there is some psychological projection going on.
Newsflash, Mike. I’m not likely to financially benefit from any choice that NASA makes (at least no more likely than I would be with the current architecture). I’ll either get consulting work from a NASA contractor or NASA itself (should I need it) or not, regardless of the vehicle design. I in fact don’t even offer any specific alternative with regard to launch vehicles, because I think that issue is beside the point of the much broader one — how to make it affordable for many people to go beyond earth orbit, and not just a few NASA astronauts. And I argue for that not because I think I’ll get rich if he chooses an alternative, but because I think that the nation will.
I want to see a different approach because I care about our future in space, and I find the current one a waste of taxpayers’ money. That doesn’t mean that I think that Dr. Griffin doesn’t care about our space future, or the taxpayers’ dollars — clearly he is not indifferent to either. But we fundamentally disagree about the best means to achieve the goal. And this attitude of his that anyone who disagrees with him is doing it for the money is just one more reason that I won’t miss him.
[Early evening update]
Clark Lindsey has further thoughts.
As he notes, the crux of the issue is whether or not we need a heavy lifter. Again, people look to the success of Apollo, and assume that it was successful because we did it in a single launch. And it was. But Apollo had different goals than we do (or at least we should) now. Apollo was a race, and it had unlimited funds, and a limited goal — to land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth before the Soviets could do so. Now, budgets are tight, and the goal is to build a sustainable infrastructure.
Any new rethinking of NASA plans have to be held up to the template laid out by the Aldridge Commission, something that the Sixty-Day Study clearly never did. And we have to do that fundamental trade that Mike Griffin was unwilling to do. Do we want to get economies of scale through activity levels, or through vehicle size? The former is much more likely to give us true economy, and a lot more bang for the buck, than the latter. Apollo on Steroids isn’t even close to the right approach.
[Update a few minutes later]
With regard to the issue of whether or not Ares is safer than Atlas (and ignoring the fact that, as Clark points out obliquely, a paper rocket is always safer than a real one), why the emphasis on ascent safety? As Jon Goff noted a while back (link not handy), most of the risk to crew in a lunar mission happens after they get into orbit, so focusing on launch safety isn’t necessarily a smart use of funds if you’re worried about safety overall.
And you know what else? Despite what Mike said this morning, I’ll bet they didn’t even include costs of unreliability in their overall trade, because the flight rate is so low, and the assumed reliability is so high for such a low rate, that the expected value of mission loss is probably in the noise. He could prove me wrong, though, by just releasing the data…
…to come up with the space toilet of the future.
Count me out.
I think that it’s pretty much a fait accompli that someone will, and probably in less than three weeks. On The Space Show on Sunday, David Livingston asked me if I’d heard any rumors who might be the next administrator. I told him that the only name that I’d heard (and not from any off-the-record discussions) was Charlie Bolden. Bobbie Block has a blog post up now confirming him as a front runner.
I have no idea, assuming that he is in fact going to be chosen, and accepts, what this would mean for the agency, or my own desires for its future direction. The last time we had an astronaut as administrator (Dick Truly), it was kind of a disaster. He basically went to war with the GHW Bush administration over the Space Exploration Initiative, going so far as to send his congressional liaison over to the Hill to lobby against it, in preference to focusing on the space station, which eventually got him fired and replace by Dan Goldin (frying pan, fire). One shouldn’t draw grand conclusions from a single example (though many love to do so with Apollo, Shuttle, and ISS), but we have one unfortunate result of our one experiment with an astronaut administrator.
The other candidates mentioned are Scott Hubbard, Sally Ride (another astronaut, of whom I have good reason to think would be a disaster, from my point of view, because she doesn’t seem to share my own space vision based on past statements and activities), Wes Huntress and Alan Stern. Of those four, the only one that I can say right now that I’d like to see get the job is Alan Stern, based on his past comments about needing to harness private enterprise much more than the agency has been. For what it’s worth, Keith Cowing claims that none of them are interested in the job, with the possible exception of Hubbard.
What I found interesting though, is the last bit:
The current head of Obama’s transition team, Lori Garver, is hoping to be deputy administrator.
Lori has told me herself that she has no interest in being administrator, so this is consistent with that, at least. But I think it would be a mistake. I actually think that it’s more important for the deputy to be technical, with technical management experience, whereas the administrator need (even, perhaps in light of the Griffin experience, should) not be. The deputy is sort of like the COO of the agency, managing daily operations and coordinating the centers. The administrator is more like the CEO, and should be laying out strategy, and interacting with the public, White House and Congress. So while not necessarily endorsing her for either, I actually think that, assuming I had to make a choice, she’d be a better pick for administrator than deputy.
I’ve never talked about Ruben Van Mitchell much here, but he was a key player in the development of useful launch regulations, both on Hill and at the FAA, over the years. Unfortunately, he will do so no more. Condolences to family and friends.
[Bumped to Tuesday morning update]
There are a lot of justified encomia from space policy people (some of them high-powered) in comments at NASA Watch.
Here is my take on that silly story about the Obama administration “merging” NASA and the Air Force to keep the Yellow Peril from beating us to the moon.
Would entry heating from orbit pop a kernel of popcorn?
I don’t really have time to think about it much right now, but the answer is (as is often the case), it depends…
I’ll be on The Space Show tomorrow at 3 PM Eastern (noon Pacific), to discuss Ares, Shuttle, EELVs, alternate architectures, Mike Griffin’s job prospects, etc.
[Monday afternoon update, with a bump]
The podcast is now available.
It would be nice to say that I was surprised by Richardson’s…errrr…issues. But I wasn’t.
At all.
For one thing, it was hardly news. But it’s also not like this is anything new. There have been lots of shady behavior and associations with the New Mexico governor, going back to his stint in the Clinton administration. He probably didn’t know why the White House wanted him to find a job for former intern Monica Lewinsky, but unless he was stupid, he had to have figured out (at least after interviewing her) that it wasn’t because she was going to light the UN on fire with her diplomatic skills and encyclopedic knowledge of world affairs (though other types of affairs wouldn’t have been out of the question).
And as I noted a few weeks ago, when a state is characterized by insiders as “Lousiana with chiles,” it’s unlikely that the governor himself isn’t in the thick of the corruption. It also makes one wonder what kinds of deals that Virgin Galactic had to cut, perhaps partly under the table, to get the lease agreement signed. If so, was this really the Great WhiteHispanic Hope for commercial space, in Washington or elsewhere?
Anyway, Jonah Goldberg has some more impressions from his book tour:
With the exception of Bill Clinton, it’s difficult to think of a major politician who has been plagued more persistently by troubling rumors of all sorts. When I was in New Mexico not long ago, it felt like I was visiting Little Rock in the way everyone had a sketchy story, theory or little-known fact. Some was very vague, some of it was clearly over the top, and some of it was quite plausible. My guess, and this is only a guess, is that Obama has dodged a bullet here.
Of course, the question is why did it take so long for the bullet dodging to occur? How did he get the nomination in the first place? Should the president-elect blame it on bad staff again? Why can’t this guy find good help? As a reader at Instapundit writes: “They told me if I voted for McCain, I’d have a President who didn’t properly vet his nominees –- and they were right!”
[Update early afternoon]
Pejman Yousafzadeh has some useful thoughts on a replacement:
The Richardson withdrawal represents a remarkable stumble by a transition process that has been notable until now for its sure-footedness and its ability to garner praise from both Democrats and Republicans for the professionalism of its execution and for the quality of its appointees. It promoted the president-elect to say that Richardson “would have brought to the job of commerce secretary and our economic team great insights accumulated through an extraordinary career in federal and state office,” just before throwing Richardson under the bus. To this comment, my RedState colleague Francis Cianfrocca replies: “That makes me feel wonderful! Hey Mr. Obama, how about picking a Commerce Secretary with great insights accumulated though an extraordinary career in COMMERCE?” It’s not a bad idea. One of the commerce secretary’s responsibilities is to be an advocate for the formulation and implementation of trade policies and nowadays, the political class doesn’t seem to have the first clue how best to conduct trade policy. One would think that with the memory of the misguided Smoot-Hawley tariff — one of the epic fails of the 20th century — still relatively fresh in our minds, we would not veer towards protectionism. And yet, we see that the incoming Obama administration sought to counterbalance the appointment of a pro-free trade United States trade representative in Ron Kirk with the appointment of the anti-free trade — and pro-card check — Hilda Solis to the Labor Department. Given this antediluvian personnel appointment, we need a commerce secretary who has both read and understands the powerful point behind Frederic Bastiat’s most famous parody, but since the president-elect seems determined to choose his commerce secretary from the ranks of government rather than from the ranks of those who actually have firsthand experience with, you know, commerce, I’m not optimistic on this front.
Neither am I. Let’s hope for a surprise.
[Afternoon update]
This CBS report says that Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius is on the short list to replace him as the nominee. I have no idea what that means for space commerce.
Though this MIT report on the future of human spaceflight came out a few weeks ago, I haven’t yet taken the time to read it, other than to read through the summary, which I found underwhelming. Fortunately, Jim Oberg has, and explains why I did in today’s issue of The Space Review:
…it promotes some non-historic and deeply troubling myths of space policy that have led to grief in the past and, if accepted for future decisions, could serve as a roadmap for frustration and disaster.
Fundamentally, the sense of the report remains torn between opposing goals: using space in the “best interest of the United States”, and using space in the best interests of the world as a whole.
First, it falls for the classic wish-fulfillment fantasy that playing nice together in space—forming partnerships on significant space projects—can actually compel terrestrial nations to become more friendly to each other despite deep-seated conflicting goals. Second, the report promotes the view that the cost of large space projects can only be afforded if they are shared by an international alliance—contrary to all experience, including that of the ISS, that splitting national responsibilities for integrated projects makes them more expensive, not less. And thirdly, it promotes a dangerously diversionary and dead-ended theory for the root cause of space disasters such as the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew: that there was just not enough money, a factor that can easily be fixed by budgetary largesse. Using such views as foundations for policy decisions in the coming years can only result in more waste, more losses, and a lot more tears.
There are also lesser issues, which can be dealt with in a follow-on review. Fundamentally, the sense of the report remains torn between opposing goals: using space in the “best interest of the United States”, and using space in the best interests of the world as a whole. While not a zero-sum game, “space leadership” does tend to benefit those who have it over those who do not, mainly in curtailing options to the secondary players and compelling dependent status on them for important space functions (think GPS). And while selling a policy aimed at benefiting the paying country (the US) may have domestic political value, too nationalistic a sales job at home could make selling it to potential partners more awkward.
Yes, such reports by academics often have this aerie-faerie, kumbaya quality that is divorced from real history or the real world, as I noted a few years ago. As Oberg points out, this politically correct fetish for internationalism for internationalism’s sake has actually held us back and cost us more than going it alone would have, despite claims (i.e., false rationalizations) to the contrary. But as he also notes, there’s always another danger to these kinds of groupthink reports:
The report’s treatment of spaceflight safety is inexplicably muddled, considering the talent available to the group.
Ignoring the factual inaccuracies, I think that muddling is an almost inevitable consequence of report-by-committee, because it’s always hard to get full agreement and consensus on such things, and it can fall prey to the Committee Effect. I’m wondering how it was actually done. Was it a bunch of inputs that were stitched together, or did one person sit down, take the inputs provided, and try to put together a coherent story? The latter is much more difficult (for that one person) but the former rarely provides a coherent (or consistent or fully accurate) narrative. In any event, like most space policy reports of this kind (see Commission Report, Aldridge), it will simply be put on the shelf to collect dust. Which, in this case, might not be the worst thing.