More Sour Grapes From Scott Horowitz

Horowitz does have a point when it comes to the sunny projections for the Falcon9. Until the bird has flown and demonstrated undeniably it works, it's hard to fully believe their three year schedule.

I'm still convinced that ULA/EELV will eventually have much to say in this new world.

I'm curious about Scott's comments regarding Falcon 1's flight history. Which of Flights 4 and 5 does he consider to be a partial failure, and why?

I admire Space-X's ability to fail three times in a row, and each time to get back on the pad, learn the lessons to be learned, and keep on moving ahead. The courage to fail, and the fortitude to keep on going anyway, is something that we're no longer allowed to do in today's NASA

With that said, in retrospect Space-X would have done better following the Ares-1X strategy of launching a first-stage test instead of trying an all-up launch, including a customer's satellite, on the first time they ever tried to fly a rocket. It does make sense to proceed step by step. There's a lot to be said for the "build a little, fly a little" philosophy.

Rockets for manned space flight developed by private companies will have their day. But its obvious the unlike Russia's Energia Company, they don't currently have the rockets to do the job. Therefore, there is no logical reason for NASA to commit itself to launch NASA astronauts exclusively through private companies that don't have a working rocket.

Besides, NASA is supposed to be going beyond LEO. But these private companies are working on rockets that only go to LEO. Since these private companies claim that they can do things a trillion times cheaper than NASA, I'd give the five most viable companies $100 million a year for ten years to develop their manned space flight capability. But I wouldn't give them any NASA contracts since these companies claim that they don't need government to make money. Government is just in the way:-)

Marcel F. Williams

Well, more criticism of the developmental program of Ares from you is to be expceted. But now look what your contributiions to cancelling Ares leave us with. We have to plead with the White House to keep Constellation going. President Obama came in saying NASA needs a direction. What kind of "change" is this, derail;ing & destroying this fantastic, slowly building Moon, Mars and beyond vision? And from someone who was compared with Kennedy, a Cheif Executive who kept defending & supporting NASA as it struggled through the problems to bring us to history's greatest acheivement ever. Thank goodness there were no massively self-serving, joyfully attacking bloggers in that day, you would have stopped NASA a hundred times over before that glorious achievement came. "You ain't done good, y'all" Restore Ares, lets work the problems with experience, with proven technologies rather than leaving uncertainties & the destruction of CxP.

Keith, I can't believe your tirade is still going. Your relentless hacking & hacking & havcking away has contributed to leaving us all destroyed. Since this contribution to killing our return to the moon is related to damaging potentials, dreams & future of our youth, your attacking is particularly resckless. Is there ever a point when you should just swallow the relentless attacking of a developmental program? Particularly as you may be contributing to now leaving everything cancelled, and possibly handing the moon over to the iron fisted military government of China?? We were getting closer to the great dream of a lab on the moon, and you've helped pull the rug out from under us. What kind of idiocy is this: "Well done y'all," as joyfully keep assailing and leaving us with nothing. Your merciless attacks of one of NASA, one of the greatest things America has had in its heritage and for our youth, have me wondering this question. What's the difference between disgruntled former postal worker and a disgruntled former NASA worker?

Keith's note: Its fun to shoot the messenger - anonymously - isn't it "spfiles" aka "Visionabove".

Since you asked, these people worked their asses off on Constellation - and they did so with the best of intentions. The problem was not with the vast majority of folks working on this but rather the managers of the program and the antiquated system in place at NASA that prevents quality control and common sense from being injected into the process such that bad decisions get halted or fixed while there is time to fix them.

But placing the blame on me for Constellation's woes is ludicrous to say the least - and leads me to question your intelligence - whoever you are.

Visitors to NasaWatch, please look at the Ares 1-x test article in WIKIPEDIA.com instead of the discussions here. Especially students who may be visiting. Lets help save CxP and stop some of the attacking, at least for the young who need science, engineering & general inspiration. Lets finish all the developmemnt of Ares. But thank you Keith for some of this and for looking at my comments. Moon Lab 2020!!!

Whether the private sector, government or some comibination of the two is developing a rocket, one thing you can be sure of is that it won't be easy. The two most prominent examples of privately developed rockets that are actually flying today (Pegasus and Falcon 1) both went through difficult early days. In the case of the more mature Pegasus system, a very reliable rocket resulted in the end, but it happened after a series of failures. We should expect a similar pattern for any privately developed HSF rocket. Of course the 'privately developed' label is simplistic: Atlas V and Delta IV while private in a sense both received large government subsidies. Then there's the irony of using Soviet-derived engines in some 'private' rockets (Taurus 2 = NK33, Altlas V=RD-180). So the whole public vs. private debate should really be recast into finding what's the right balance between the two.

Although I have great admiration for Elon Musk and all of SpaceX, Falcon 9 will not take us to the moon. Musk himself has said that NASA needs to be the ones working where there is no current commercial market.

You can argue with NASA's methodology, but the end result of killing the Constellation program is going to be a further delay in returning humans to the moon, and quite possibly allowing the Chinese to get there before us. This is not something to be celebrated.

@spfiles All credibility with anything you ever posted is gone. Wiki, really?

The problem with people whining and bemoaning Keith is that he really is 100% correct. This has nothing to do with the engineers and scientists in the trenches, working diligently as they can to try to make a square peg fit through a round hole.

The problem lies with the past administrator and his lieutenants who damn near ruined HSF. They have no integrity. That is all water under the bridge. A few still remain but they are being isolated.

This may be the one thing that saves Obama's re-election. While nationalizing banks and auto companies, he turns to the private sector to fix NASA. Say what you want about SpaceX, they are flying. They are learning. NASA's early history was also filled with failure.

In an age where we use the most sophisticated computers, NASA could not produce a product due to poor management and bureaucratic gridlock. It took a British citizen and some brave engineers to dust off and improve NLS without a budget to come up with a better product.

The government needs to get out of the way and let the private companies produce.

I am not so naive as to give the entire budget to the commercial industry, but milestones work. If the commercial entity fails, you move on.

tl;dr too bad. This is the realization NASA Leadership seem to have made.

Good for them... and that small band of rebels moonlighting as "rocket scientists".

VR
RS327

Once again, I want to remind the critics of commercial spaceflight that ULA is a commercial company. ULA is flying two very successful families of intermediate-class launchers, each of which could play a role in NASA human spaceflight. Also, ULA has proposed at various times that it could develop a heavy launcher and I am confident they could do so. They are, after all, supported by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which have successfully supported NASA through its entire history.

Constellation was never going to the Moon or beyond. That is a false claim that was never going to come true. Can't you people see that? Five years and 8 billion dollars into it and the program has only reached PDR!!! I repeat, PDR!!! And the PDR does not meet the Agency's own requirements for design maturity at this stage. TBD's dominate this program still. Program management and Agency management's only response is to strong-arm dissenters, reject all comments pointing out serious engineering issues, declare victory, and move on. This program was on a path to complete failure, it HAS to be canceled. It cannot succeed. The only dark part of this whole thing is that pork-barrel politics in Congress may very well override anything Obama proposes and Constellation could be fully funded next year. Constellation can only be canceled by Congress. The 2010 budget that was signed into law specifically prohibits changes to Constellation or even initiation of any alternatives to it using either Constellation funds or any other funding source. It was craftily worded by Shelby to prevent any perturbations to his district or the program of record. I can only hope that the administration wins the battle because to stay on the current course would be the REAL end to human spaceflight for NASA and the U.S. Our credibility would be so damaged that the entire Agency, not just human spaceflight, would be dismantled.

We are not giving up on space flight. We are going to do what NASA should have been doing years ago. Let commercial industry supply crew access to LEO while NASA develops a heavy lift vehicle and performs R&D. Don't tell me industry can't do it because they have been. NASA does not build or fly rockets, we pay contractors to do that for us. What we need is for NASA to get out of the way, write performance-based contracts to get exactly what we want, and hold the contractor's feet to the fire to meet those contracts. But NASA needs to stay in an oversight role rather than managing the design because we are terrible at it. We lost that capability over the 30-year operational life of the Shuttle.

Lockheed, Martin Marietta, Rockwell, General Dynamics, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Northrup Gumman. These are the companies that built America's space program and every manned rocket from Mercury to Shuttle and you are telling me that private industry can't do this? That is laughable. I'd bet you a year's salary that if I gave any current major aerospace corporation $8 billion dollars, they would be flying operational flights in 5 years. All we have is a PDR paper rocket.

Scott Horowitz has no integrity left. He (and Griffin) concocted the "Scotty Rocket" to feed billions to the company he left to head up ESMD. He's a sell-out. Probably was a nice guy, but he has strayed. It happens to the weak ones.

The second A in NASA is for Administration. We don't need to be designing flight hardware. Just like the Air Force wrote requirements for an EELV and pays for the launches NASA can and should do the same thing. One big advantage that private companies have over NASA is they do not have to report to congress when a rocket fails. Elan just ponies up some more cash.

LOL! Constellation was not killed by a blog! While that's very flattering for Keith....Constellation collapsed under its own weight.

Keith...sometimes I wonder about you and the things you say...or rather how you say them...

But what really gets me going is when fellow readers like spfiles and M.F. Williams post things like they have above. Their comments about Ares I remind me of the line in The Wizard of Oz..."Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!!" And it amazes me how much people who think you are wrong and bad for the program (maybe YOU are the all powerful OZ! haha) seem to spend a lot of time on this site.

Some people find nothing more offensive than the truth.

Keep shining the light.

Just a question. If NASA is going to buy manned launch services. Can't Boeing and LM as USA buy the remaining space shuttles and use them and charge NASA? It is the only Human Rated Launch System we have in operation.

Falcon 9 will not take us to the moon.

Heh. True, but neither will Ares I, whether it is cancelled or not.

Horrowitz would have been well advised to at least do his homework before criticizing SpaceX. Not that his point is completely invalid, it's not totally valid either. Maybe SpaceX should have also adopted the paralysis by analysis approach to developing vehicles. Who knows, we could have still been waiting for F1 inaugural launch that way.

I would also like to know which aspect of two successful orbital launches in a row he considers partial failure, as opposed to the glorious, suborbital two-minute joyride that was Ares I-X.

I'm all in favor of human space flight. It does not matter to me the 'how' we get there, as long as we get there and are doing something worthwhile for the American Taxpayer.

Clearly, the POR was not going to get the money it needed to be a useful expenditure of taxpayer dollars. Blame who you will for that; it's water under the bridge.

The U.S Government did not 'build' the transcontinental railroad. Legislation was passed that created a payment plan for miles of track laid. Private companies secured the capital they needed to 'do the work' of laying the tracks. When they accumulated 'miles of track' they got paid.

That is a model that works.

NASA in its early days was not the bureaucracy it is today. It was not a fearful of screwing up then as it is today. There was a clear concern of the American public that was felt deeply and widely about 'beating the ruskies' to the moon; hence there was deep and wide political support. Today , that is not the case; hence there is only parochial support for the POR. You need more than parochial support to sustain the expensive and long term goals of the POR

It is time for NASA to empower others in HSF, not to 'do it themselves'.

And what I find really disheartening is the continued waste of money that is going on at NASA. Just look at the article about the "topping off" of the mobile launch platform for the Ares 1. Hasn't anyone in NASA heard of "just in time" manufacturing? Since the original plan was not to launch the next Ares 1 test until 2013 or 2014 what could be the possible justification to build this so early in the program other than "let's spend as much money as possible so we are too big to fail"? This reminds me of the completed Venture Star launch facility that was completed and must be sitting rusting in the desert.

dbooker,

The reason for building the ML so early is because Congress had not heard of "just in time" financing. So while holding off on building the ML would of been smart we wouldn't have the money in the later years to build it JIT. Also government agencies are not allowed to not spend some of their budget and hold it until they need it. This one rule causes substantial amount of waste.

I don't think many people understand what NASA really is. Its not just an agency designed to explore the solar system. Its also a government aerospace R&D company.

The vehicles that NASA has had commissioned to developed for it by private industry are pretty much X-vehicles-- experimental space craft. Our astronauts are heroes, because they risk their lives flying aboard these X-vehicles. And some have died just as people died during the development of manned air flight.

In an R&D program, not every vehicle developed is going to work the way you thought it would. That's why you build them and not just dream about them.

Some thought that the Space Shuttle might be the DC-3 of manned launch vehicles. Of course, the shuttle turned out to be too large to be an efficient people shuttle and launched too little payload to be an efficient heavy lifter. So, economically, the shuttle turned out to be the worst of both worlds. But that's how you learn!

If we had never developed the shuttle, I'm sure there would be many engineers out there today arguing how a reusable winged space craft like a space shuttle would dramatically reduce the cost of space flight:-)

But spending billions every year to find out what works and what doesn't work in order to eventually gain easy and efficient access to the stupendous resources of the New Frontier is worth it, IMO. And we actually learned some very important lessons about space flight during the shuttle era.

Marcel F. Williams

@newpapyrus, The Russians and Europeans seem to have some faith in the idea of winged reusable spacecraft. I do as well -- it is very hard to believe that in the 37-odd years since the Shuttle was orginally designed that some improvements in aerospace technologies haven't happened. ;-)

@ugordon - I have faith in SpaceX achieving their goals. I do have reasonable doubts about them meeting their ambitious schedule, however. Other firms have struggled with many of the same things through the history of air and spacecraft.

There seems to be a lot of "who needs NASA" talk on this web site, or something along those lines. Here is a quote from Elon Musk.

"The ongoing evolution of the commercial space industry was recently featured as the cover story (“The New Space Rush”) in Popular Science magazine. The article provided a great perspective on the industry as a whole, but I disagree with the subheading, “Who Needs NASA?”. If you read the article, it's clear their intent was just to convey excitement for the developments in commercial space, but obviously NASA is and always will be critical to the future of space exploration, particularly at the outer edge where there is no commercial market. Without NASA, SpaceX certainly would not be where it is today."

So, realistically, what is NASA's role in providing a market for SpaceX or other commercial companies? If that role is to do things with a long timeline a company like SpaceX may have less chances to survive, at least in terms of fixed price COTS shrinked wrapped rockets. Time is money. This "as to date vague flexible path to whatever" isn't going to cut it, unless of course SpaceX becomes cost-plus. But, isn't that Orbital, etc.?

As far as I know, the Joint Strike Fighter is a model for "commercial COTS cost-plus aircraft", at least in terms of hands off by DoD. Is that where HSF is going? In the last five flights of Falcon 1, only one satellite has been inserted. I'm guessing that's not the outcome SpaceX was hoping for. So, I don't envy the job of the individual determining the price of a new COTS rocket. It makes cost-plus attractive.

@dbooker
The ML structure was built so early because it is in the critical path to the first test launch of Ares I. The tower is complete, but there are still structural details to finish. Then work can begin on the installation of dozens of subsystems that are a separate design and fabrication effort; umbilicals, fuel and oxidizer lines, pneumatics, hydraulics, electrical power, instrumentation, etc. This will take two and a half more years. Then there's verification and validation testing, then integrated testing with the launch pad and VAB. All this has to be done before the first full test flight vehicle arrives for stacking nearly a half year before the first test flight in 2013. It is not a conspiracy, but an engineering reality that most ground systems have to be started years before the flight vehicle arrives because it takes years to design, fabricate, test and activate for even the first test flight.

100% correct? ..not even close - nor your statements. SpaceX is not 'operational' yet as you imply. KC refers to Atlas - the current EELV is dependent upon Russians engines; 'cobbled together' as Keith (whoever that is) would say. Delta/Atlas has ceded 75% of the commercial market to Arianne. Sea Launch is bankrupt. ILS now uses the Proton exclusively. Be careful what u ask for - you may be ruining the entire Aerospace industry.

The fact that you keep spouting that the AI-X flight suffered an "anomalous post-staging flight profile" shows how ignorant of the actual details of the Ares Program that you are, Cowing. It was well known that the second stage was unstable and would tumble on separation (with ~98% certainty).

Editor's note: "well known"? So that is why all - I repeat all - of NASA's official animations, graphics, briefing charts - things created by CxP itself - showed a silky smooth flight of both first and second stages as being what they anticipated.

The staging event itself was not of interest; GN&C of the first stage, and measurement of TO and ascent aeroacoustics was the focus of the flight. Staging was irrelevant to the objectives of the flight, and the second-stage tumbling limited the size of the impact region. Damage to the first stage resulted from the failure of a single coupler in the parachute system; finding such problems is the point of early test flights.

No, wait. I've commented here on two other occasions that the AI-X separation event occured exactly as predicted, and was not "anomalous" in any way. So no, I was wrong - it's not ignorance that causes you to keep spouting this erroneous information, it's intellectual dishonesty!

Editor's note: now I am "dishonest". Bad Keith. Oh well, I suppose you can find the official NASA animations or graphics - published in advance of the mission - that showed that the vehicle's second stage would behave the way that it did. URL, please.

Do you know what the static margin on the second stage is? I'm not surprised that it's unstable. But given the dynamic pressure it did catch my interest that it tumbled at the rate that it did.

The 30 day report, http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/409037main_AresI-X_PF_Report.pdf, did say "Post-separation tumble of the Upper Stage Simulator was expected due to mass properties and aerodynamic forces" So I will give NASA the benefit of the doubt. I hope they would not fudge about that.