Frank Sietzen, over at the Space Transportation Association, has responded to this week’s Fox column. I think that Frank is a good guy, but bear in mind in reading this that his organization survives in large part from donations from Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and other smaller beneficiaries of the SLI program.

Fox News’ article by writer Rand Simberg concerning the space shuttle program and the NASA Space Launch Initiative (SLI) demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of both programs, and of the nation?s space transportation policy and industry.

Contrary to the writer’s whims, the space shuttle system was never “dramatically overspecified”.

“Whims”? It’s not whims, it’s an opinion, shared by most objective observers in the industry, and strongly supported by the historical record.

Anyway, this seems to be a key point of contention. Let’s see how he supports it.

The original design, of a first generation partially reusable vehicle was modified to conform to the political and budget realities of the 1970s. Given the actual system as built, the shuttle has performed magnificently across more than two decades. A national policy decision made some thirty years ago called for the shuttles to fly commercial, military, and civil space payloads and cargoes. But that process was ended by President Ronald Reagan following the 1986 Challenger accident.

Let’s see, it was going to fly commercial, military and civil space cargoes.

Actually, it was designed to do much more than that, and its original 65,000 lb, fifteen-foot diameter payload capability was (if I recall correctly) driven by a (secret) requirement from the Air Force. Note that he ignores the cross-range issue. He also ignores the capability to do week-long missions, and the ability to carry science racks, and act as a temporary space station.

Oh, and by the way, it was supposed to do this with about half the development budget that NASA originally requested.

I’m still waiting for the part in which he refutes my contention that it was overspecified…

Since that time, the nation’s fleet of four shuttles have flown increasingly complex missions.

Note, like many in the industry, he says this as though it’s a feature, and not a bug. Complex missions, particularly when NASA prepares for them with months of training, are one of the reasons that Shuttle flights are expensive.

Following a transition to a commercial operator, millions of dollars have been saved from previous operational costs, and returned to the federal treasury.

How many millions of dollars, Frank? This sounds like a verbal sleight of hand.

Even a generously low estimate for the cost of a Shuttle launch is still several hundred million. “Millions of dollars” could be, say, five million dollars. In an annual budget of three billion or so, this would be chickenfeed. It’s hard to tell if it is or not, because he’s not very precise.

I’d like very much to think that he’s not just tossing out the word “millions” and counting on people to be impressed because it sounds like a lot of money…

And note again that he still hasn’t refuted my contention that the Shuttle was overspecified.

In these recent years, space shuttle flights have been increasingly safe, have launched more to a pre-set schedule than ever before, and increased flight safety. By whatever measurement one may choose, this system, now entering its third decade, has been a programmatic success for America and the space industry that builds and operates it.

I give up. I guess he’s not going to support his statement. He’s just going to change the subject. He must be just assuming that simply saying that I’m wrong makes it so.

I assume that he’s now transitioned to rebut my statement that Shuttle was a policy failure. He does so by setting forth his own criteria.

It’s safe(r), and it keeps a schedule better than it used to.

That’s the sole basis on which he claims programmatic success. He doesn’t mention cost, because that would blow his argument out of the water.

The original spec for Shuttle, in terms of flight rate and cost, was, if I recall correctly, sixty flights a year, and fifty-five million per flight. Instead, it’s about four flights a year, and an order of magnitude greater.

I guess you can call Shuttle a success if you decide to move the goal posts after the fact. I think that to do so is disingenuous. Your mileage may vary.

But no machine can or should fly forever. To begin the long term planning for a future generation of more advanced reusable craft, NASA has initiated a follow-on program called the Space Launch Initiative. Often referred to as “SLI”, the project has brought millions of dollars of government funding for technology advancements in spacecraft structures, propulsion, and vehicle operations. The SLI program has been- and we at STA hope it will continue to be ?a place within the federal budget where much needed research and development funding occurs for future launch technologies.

For much of the past decade, NASA and the Department of Defense have underfunded its technology and research programs with respect to launch systems. Both SLI, and the Defense Department’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle programs have been efforts to reverse that decline in federal investments. But continuous investments, and system enhancements to both reusable as well as expendable systems are needed.

Note that he says nothing about what the actual goal of SLI is. He also assumes that the only thing holding us back from cheap access to space is the fact that NASA and the Air Force haven’t been spending enough on that magic talisman of the NASA and Air Force engineer–“technology.”

There is no discussion of the institutional barriers, which are much more formidable. If SLI is only about technology, then the money would be better spent elsewhere, because technology development per se is neither necessary or sufficient to provide more routine access and lower launch costs.

Note also that he ignores the issue of replacing one single-point failure–Shuttle–with another one–Shuttle II. That was the wet dream of SLI, and that is why the program must be restructured.

Contrary to Mr. Simberg’s contentions, there is a space transportation industry. It consists of space shuttle operations, commercial expendable launch vehicles, a space propulsion industry element, and the need for long term research for the future.

Even if I grant his point that there is an industry (I was really referring to manned space), a “need” is not part of an industry. And “space shuttle operations” is a monopoly–hardly a sign of a healthy industry.

I have no objection to long-term research–it will eventually produce immeasurable benefits. It’s what NASA should be doing. What NASA shouldn’t be doing is dictating what the next generation of space transports will look like. I’m not as concerned with “eventually” as with the near future, and our continuing inability to affordably deliver passengers and cargo to space en masse, and return them.

If that’s a criterion for a space industry, then we most assuredly do not have one.

The nation can best assure its access to space by a balanced role of industry participation and federal investments.

This is just vague motherhood. Who could argue? The issue is the nature of that participation and those investments.

Both shuttle and SLI are vital elements of that access.

I read nothing prior to this statement to support it.

Basically, this whole thing comes across as boiler-plate PR pablum. I suspect that it was stenography from a Boeing flack in Crystal City, to try to salvage the disappearing SLI budget. I’m disappointed in Frank, because I would have hoped that STA would have had a more thoughtful response on this critical public-policy issue. We need to have a serious discussion–not regurgitations of NASA PAO and industry disgorgements.

It’s similar to what happened in Missouri with Mel Carnahan, except he was just a candidate, not the Senator.

I don’t know what Minnesota law is in comparison, but I’d guess he stays on the ballot, and if he wins, then Ventura will appoint another Senator (presumably a Democrat, though there’s no requirement for that). In theory, Ventura could appoint a replacement before the election, but I doubt if he’d bother, since it might become moot if the Republican wins. Whoever he appointed would only be Senator until January in that case.

On the other hand, it might be good for him to make the appointment now, because that would make the upcoming election a special election, in which case the Republican would take office on election day, just as Talent will in Missouri if he wins.

On the other other hand, maybe Ventura has to appoint someone ASAP, to fill the seat and maintain Minnesota’s representation in the Senate, particularly since they’re going to have to go back into session after the election for unfinished business.

My fear is that this is bad news for the Republicans, because the people of Minnesota might actually be more inclined to vote for a generic Democrat than they were for Wellstone.

[Updated thought, a few minutes later]

Will Ventura appoint himself?

[Another update at 2 PM PDT]

Now the rumor is that Mondale is in the running to replace Wellstone on the ballot. Like New Jersey, they’re replacing another non-viable candidate with a geezer.

As one wag on Free Republic put it, they’re passing the torch on to an old generation…

I disagreed with him on most issues, and hoped that he would lose his election, but he always seemed a decent, principled man, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to the family and friends of Senator Wellstone.

I don’t think that anyone wanted to see the Republicans regain control of the Senate in this tragic way.

Qatar, the country in which we’ve built up new logistics bases, and from which our attack on Iraq will most likely be launched, may present a model for a modern Middle East (link for subscribers only, unfortunately).

In the past seven years, this tiny emirate has gone through a social revolution that has given women — and men — freedoms unheard of in most of the Arabian Peninsula. From lifting the prohibition on alcohol to abolishing censorship, Qatar has gone to great lengths to underscore just how different it is from Saudi Arabia. In the capital of Doha, which the Lonely Planet guidebook called the “dullest place on Earth” just a few years ago, nightclubs advertise happy hours and women cruise down the palm- tree-lined boulevards at the wheels of oversize sport-utility vehicles.

and

Even relatively liberal Saudis voice frustration with the tiny emirate. “A small country will always be a small country, and influence can only be gained by cultivating ties with neighbors and working with them as a team,” scoffs Abdelaziz al Fayez, a member of the foreign-affairs committee in Saudi Arabia’s appointed legislature, Majlis al Shura. The Qatari social reforms, he adds, just “show a willingness to uproot their roots in order to please outsiders.”

That makes some Qataris both angry and proud. “It’s not important whether our reforms bother the neighbors, it’s important whether they satisfy the Qatari society,” says Ahmed Ali, editor of the biggest of Qatar’s three Arabic- language dailies, Al Watan. “Maybe change in this entire traditionalist region will start right here, in the smallest country.”

OK, it looks like they caught the guy(s).

Hmmmm…an African-American fellow by the name of Muhammed. Nope, no Muslims here, folks, nothing to see, move along.

The disappointment among the press corps that it wasn’t an evil right-wing white militia type is almost palpable. Now they don’t get to talk about the culture of hate, and blame Rush Limbaugh, and talk radio, and all of us evil right-wing bloggers. In particular they don’t get to do it two weeks before a mid-term election, in which they can paint Republicans as bigoted enablers of right-wing violence.

But of course, they could talk about the Saudi-funded maddrassas and mosques, and the Nation of Islam, and screwie Louie Farrakhan (one news report indicated that he was a body guard for the (less-than-a) Million Moronan March), and how all of their hate speech incited this evil and weak-minded man to violence.

I’m sure they’ll start any minute.

Any minute now.

[crickets chirping]

[Update on Thursday night, about 10 PM PDT]

Jonah Goldberg says the same thing I do, except he uses a lot more words. And he has a lot more data, which I didn’t have the legwork or time to gather. And it’s a lot more interesting and entertaining read.

Go read it.

NASA may, thankfully, be about to make major changes in its vaunted “Space Launch Initiative,” known in acronym shorthand as SLI.

A major review of the program scheduled for November has been rescheduled, with no definite new date. Its future is in flux, as policy in space transportation (particularly reusable space transportation) is clearly being rethought.

There are a number of factors that drive this. The current plan is based on the (in my opinion, flawed) doctrine from the Clinton Administration that NASA would be responsible for reusable vehicles, and the Air Force would take the lead for expendable ones. But with the shakeup in the military space program being instigated by Don Rumsfeld, the assumptions behind this philosophy, to the degree that they were ever valid, are becoming more dubious by the day.

The Air Force, if it is to exercise the sort of “space control” envisioned by the new Rumsfeld policy recommendations, is going to have to have routine access to space, perhaps with crew aboard. This will only be accomplished (at least economically) with fast-response reusable systems. It is pointless to move forward with SLI in its current form until its relationship with military space activities, currently non-existent, can be resolved.

But the more significant policy revisit is driven by recognition of the fact that the program was incoherent, and directed by space-agency agendas not necessarily congruent with low-cost access.

The original idea of SLI, started in the wake of the disastrous X-33 program, was that NASA would take the lead in developing technology for “next-generation” launch systems. This was code word for new reusable space transportation systems.

More importantly, hijacked by various factions at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and the Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, it was really a plan to build a replacement for the current Space Shuttle, to be developed and operated by NASA, and thus preserve the current empires and fiefdoms that make the present Space Shuttle so costly and inefficient, and ensuring a continued costly monopoly of manned space by the agency for decades to come.

This agenda is revealed by the wording in popular accounts of the program’s purpose, in which the definite article is generally used to describe the desired outcome.

“The next-generation vehicle.”

“The ‘Shuttle II'”

“The Shuttle replacement.”

Note the implicit assumption–there will be a replacement for the current Shuttle and it will be a replacement, not replacements (plural).

In the space community, the question is often asked, “What will the next Shuttle look like?” Popular articles about space similarly speculate on the nature of the “next Shuttle.” The question is often asked “can we get a Shuttle to the Moon?” (The answer is no).

Clearly, “Shuttle” has become synonymous in the minds of many in the public with space vehicle.

In his great work, Analects, the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucious wrote that if he was ever asked for wisdom by the government, the first thing he would tell them was that, before he could provide such advice, a rectification of names would be required.

If names are not rectified, then language will not be in accord with truth.

If language is not in accord with truth, then things cannot be accomplished.

It would be well for the government in general, and NASA in particular, to heed this admonition.

As a humble beginning to such a rectification of names, I hereby propose that we purge the word “Shuttle” from our national space vocabulary. As applied to space vehicles, it is a word from a different era. It was an era still in the Cold War, when few could imagine a space program without NASA in charge, when few could imagine free enterprise offering rides into space. It became a symbol of a national space program, one size fits all–a vehicle that could build space stations, resupply space stations, and indeed (as a fallback position, in case the funding didn’t come through for space stations in the future) be a space station itself.

Shuttle was dramatically overspecified. Its payload capacity was too large. Its ability to change direction on entry (called cross range), which made its wings much larger than otherwise needed, was dictated not by NASA’s requirements, but by the Department of Defense, whose blessing was necessary for program approval. It wasn’t just a truck, but a Winnebago, capable of acting as a space hotel and science lab as well as a delivery system. These, among other reasons, are why it is so expensive, and such a policy failure.

Yes, while Shuttle is a magnificent technical achievement, it truly is a catastrophic policy failure–a failure made almost tangible, in half-billion-dollar increments each time it flies, a few times a year.

And the failure is not in its design–it is in its requirements, its very philosophy, the very notion that a single system can be all things to all people, or even all things to all parts of our space agency. Anything that replaces the Shuttle, in terms of those requirements, will suffer from the same flaws and failures.

We don’t need a replacement for the Shuttle.

We need a space transportation industry.

It should be like our air transportation industry, or our ground transportation industry, competitive and flexible, to meet the needs of individuals and large corporations, and it should be based on the principles of a market economy–not the wish list of government bureaucrats.

We don’t have a “national airplane.” We don’t have a “national truck,” or a “national bus.” We have a variety of vehicles, tailored to a variety of markets at variety of prices for different customers and desires.

Three decades ago, with hope in our hearts, fresh from our lunar success, we initiated the first Space Shuttle program. If we wish a vibrant future in space, one in which thousands of people will venture off the planet in pursuit of their dreams, we should hope, even more, that it’s also our last.

[Update on Friday night]

Frank Sietzen at the Space Transportation Association has responded to the column.

I’ve responded to his response.

Billy Beck is (more than) upset about this.

Me, too. We all need to defend Remington.

The headline to this story is mistitled. It should instead read “Most Americans Ignorant Of The Facts About Bullet ‘Fingerprinting’.”

It says that most Americans believe that bullet fingerprinting would solve the shooting spree in Tidewater country.

So what? What are we to make of this? What is the point? Scientific subjects, and matters of fact, are not fit topics for opinion polls. The public, in its hysteria and lack of knowlege, may have such an opinion, but there’s no basis for it, and it shouldn’t be used as a basis for public policy.

Here’s a NASA employee who isn’t impressed with the new NASA Information Technology czar.

Apparently, Mr. Strassmann recently took a tour of the Information Technology aspects of NASA and described it as like “an archaeological expedition”; not an entirely flattering remark, but perhaps he said it to a crowd of employees summoned to a parking lot somewhere, which would bring it up to NASA’s standards. One thing Mr. Strassmann might want to educate himself on is the small budget issues that have been eating NASA alive for the last few years: it is something of a challenge to revamp a center’s computing strategy while the space station is moaning “Feed Me!” Also, he might interrupt his chanting of “One NASA, Good NASA” long enough to notice that NASA is, in fact, quite diverse, with quite diverse computing needs.

We range from the people at the Cape who fill the tanks with fuel and push the big red button to the folks in Cleveland who are trying to figure out how to get the blue light to come out of the warp nacelles. The same dumb terminal fiber-coupled to his new computing center at Marshall is not going to meet all those needs. And finally, I have to wonder just who Mr. Strassmann visited on his archaeological expedition. I can state for a fact that he didn?t visit me: if he can look at what I am doing and see it as fossilized footprints in the creek bed of computing, then one of us has our plug out of the wall, and it is not me.

Iain Murray, in drug-warrior mode, is upset at Reason magazine for saying that a family whose house was torched by a drug dealer whom they’d been trying to get out of the neighborhood were more casualties of the drug war. He compares the drug dealer to the sniper, and accuses Reason of a double standard because in the case of the former, they say that the sniper is solely responsible, whereas in the case of the latter, they pin part of the blame on drug policy.

I don’t see the double standard, because the two cases are different. There’s no discernable policy that caused the sniper to snipe (at least not based on evidence seen to date), but clearly, if drugs were legal, it’s unlikely that that particular person would even be a dealer, since he’d probably be off engaged in some more lucrative (illegal) activity. The dealer has a reason for his action (though not an excuse or justification) that stems from the brutal incentives put in place by drug laws. At least it can be said of him that there is a rational (albeit evil) purpose to his targeting those individuals. The sniper is killing people randomly. There is a difference.

But in the comments section, some related issues came up. Iain claims that there’s no problem with outlawing drugs, because “society wants it.” I disagreed, stating that I thought that most or all federal drug laws are unconstitutional under (among other things), the Tenth Amendment.

The reason that we have the Bill of Rights is to protect us from things that society may “want,” like rounding up people of a certain ethnicity and interning them, or silencing a group of people with a certain point of view. The “interest of society” is not sufficient to deprive people of their rights, and while I have no desire to do so, I have trouble seeing how I don’t have an intrinsic right to burn vegetation and suck it into my lungs. They’re my lungs. If I go out and commit some actual crime as a result, then justice should be served, but the simple act of ingesting a substance is not, or at least, should not be, a crime.

One of the problems with federalizing this (and indeed, in federalizing many crimes, as currently seems to be the trend, unless we can get a Supreme Court that will roll back this overreach) is that there’s no way to do any social experiments.

The drug warriors take it as a given that drug laws minimize drug use and harm, purely on a theoretical basis, since there’s little empirical evidence to support it. There is an assumption behind them that drug laws suppress drug use, and that absent them, many more would take drugs. They may be right, but it’s difficult to know, because we dont have any labs in which to test the proposition in any kind of controlled way.

One of the beauties of the original concept of federalism was that the states would serve as such social laboratories, and could try different policies in accordance to their culture and the will of their own people. It probably is constitutional for a state to regulate (and even outlaw) drugs–the liquor and tobacco example provides plenty of precedent.

But because Washington has taken away the prerogative, we have no opportunity to do such experiments, and see what really is the best solution to this pressing social problem. Regardless of their opinions on the effectiveness and justice of drug prohibition, self-identified conservatives should be concerned by the fact that, as in many other policies, we have an overbearing government in Washington that has decided that one size fits all.