In light of the recent GAO report, Keith Cowing is being pretty hard on ESAS himself:

The CEV/CLV is already a debacle of epic proportions with the contractor teams saddled with requirements that change on a daily basis (as the GAO report infers [I think he means “implies”–rs]), a launch vehicle with severe technical deficiencies, and 8A small business set asides that guarantee that minimally competent companies with little experience in this realm are placed in the critical path of the program. The sense of doom is so bad that many of the top engineers at the primes refuse to work on the CEV, preferring to remain with the more stable military programs. Everyone is expecting a repeat of 1992/93 when the Space Exploration Initiative collapsed under the weight of unrealistic schedules, reduced budgets, and a new president from a different party who cared little for the return to the Moon effort.

I have to say that, from the inside of one of the contractor teams, I’m not seeing those kinds of things, at least to that degree, but I don’t necessarily have that much visibility. For example, I don’t know of any “top engineers” who have refused to work the program, but then, I don’t know that many “top engineers.” And we haven’t had a formal requirements change since January (at least until this week, when a new Systems Requirements Document came out), though there have been many questions about potential trades that need to be performed, from which one can infer requirements changes coming down the pike in the future (probably upon award in late August or early September).

[Update at 10:30 AM PDT]

As Keith notes in comments, I misread that. It’s a reader’s comment, not his. I was mislead because I didn’t read carefully, and there was only one.

In light of the recent GAO report, Keith Cowing is being pretty hard on ESAS himself:

The CEV/CLV is already a debacle of epic proportions with the contractor teams saddled with requirements that change on a daily basis (as the GAO report infers [I think he means “implies”–rs]), a launch vehicle with severe technical deficiencies, and 8A small business set asides that guarantee that minimally competent companies with little experience in this realm are placed in the critical path of the program. The sense of doom is so bad that many of the top engineers at the primes refuse to work on the CEV, preferring to remain with the more stable military programs. Everyone is expecting a repeat of 1992/93 when the Space Exploration Initiative collapsed under the weight of unrealistic schedules, reduced budgets, and a new president from a different party who cared little for the return to the Moon effort.

I have to say that, from the inside of one of the contractor teams, I’m not seeing those kinds of things, at least to that degree, but I don’t necessarily have that much visibility. For example, I don’t know of any “top engineers” who have refused to work the program, but then, I don’t know that many “top engineers.” And we haven’t had a formal requirements change since January (at least until this week, when a new Systems Requirements Document came out), though there have been many questions about potential trades that need to be performed, from which one can infer requirements changes coming down the pike in the future (probably upon award in late August or early September).

[Update at 10:30 AM PDT]

As Keith notes in comments, I misread that. It’s a reader’s comment, not his. I was mislead because I didn’t read carefully, and there was only one.

In light of the recent GAO report, Keith Cowing is being pretty hard on ESAS himself:

The CEV/CLV is already a debacle of epic proportions with the contractor teams saddled with requirements that change on a daily basis (as the GAO report infers [I think he means “implies”–rs]), a launch vehicle with severe technical deficiencies, and 8A small business set asides that guarantee that minimally competent companies with little experience in this realm are placed in the critical path of the program. The sense of doom is so bad that many of the top engineers at the primes refuse to work on the CEV, preferring to remain with the more stable military programs. Everyone is expecting a repeat of 1992/93 when the Space Exploration Initiative collapsed under the weight of unrealistic schedules, reduced budgets, and a new president from a different party who cared little for the return to the Moon effort.

I have to say that, from the inside of one of the contractor teams, I’m not seeing those kinds of things, at least to that degree, but I don’t necessarily have that much visibility. For example, I don’t know of any “top engineers” who have refused to work the program, but then, I don’t know that many “top engineers.” And we haven’t had a formal requirements change since January (at least until this week, when a new Systems Requirements Document came out), though there have been many questions about potential trades that need to be performed, from which one can infer requirements changes coming down the pike in the future (probably upon award in late August or early September).

[Update at 10:30 AM PDT]

As Keith notes in comments, I misread that. It’s a reader’s comment, not his. I was mislead because I didn’t read carefully, and there was only one.

My webmaster has augmented the image in my previous space fashion post. It does much more justice to Misuzu, to whom the camera is usually a friend (though a zoom in would have done much more so). He also sends along his idea of space fashion. (Warning, slightly work and family unsafe.)

Continue reading More Space Fashion →

This post is for the purpose of discussing the ceremony, and how we can propogate the meme, that we discussed on The Space Show today, per a suggestion from the host.

I’ll be on The Space Show at 7 PM Pacific with my webmaster, Bill Simon, discussing last week’s Apollo anniversary and the ceremony we came up with to celebrate it.

There wasn’t much worth taking pictures of at the conference in Vegas this past weekend, but Misuzu Onuki is always worth taking a picture of, and when she’s with her space fashions, it’s worth posting. The one on the left is a wedding dress, with wires in it to make the fringes “float” up as they would in weightlessness.

The Space Foundation has put their new white paper on line. Released at the conference this weekend (and summarized by Leonard David), it calls for cancelling Block I of the CEV (the one that’s designed to go to ISS), and using the funds to increase COTS funding, and restore aeronautics and space science that has been cut over the past couple years.

I should note that I haven’t been blogging much this week because I’m busy reviewing and rewriting requirements and verification statements for CEV Block I…

[Wednesday update]

There are a lot of reader comments over at NASA Watch.

Here’s an upbeat article in the local paper about this past weekend’s space conference in Las Vegas.

Michael Huang says that humans are scientifically useless. Taylor Dinerman says that (despite the uselessness of humans) solar physics is important (for those concerned with such things, ignore the demonic nature of the link URL). And Jeff writes about Bob Bigelow’s excellent rodeo adventure. (Other good stuff there as well, wander around the site.)