JPL's Overruns and Gutting Mars Exploration
JPL’s math problem, Pasadena Sun
“Meanwhile, it would be foolhardy to impose a radical reduction in the Mars program. Exploring Mars is not the same as running a Laundromat. You can’t just close one day (or fiscal year) and then reopen the next without losing progress and expertise. Nor can you do so while staying ahead of other nations in the space race.”
NASA Leadership In Space Exploration Shaken, Aviation Week
“Because NASA is “protecting the civil service workforce,” job losses resulting from that cut will be felt among contractor personnel and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is run by the California Institute of Technology. Contractor job cuts are already well understood, according to Robinson, but the impact of changes in the Mars work at JPL remains to be seen. Overall, some 300-400 jobs that will be lost as development on MSL winds down may not be preserved with new work, Robinson says.”
NASA OIG: Final Report: NASA’s Management of the Mars Science Laboratory Project
“In February 2009, NASA delayed the MSL’s launch 2 years because of the late delivery of several critical components and instruments. This delay and the additional resources required to resolve the underlying technical issues increased the Project’s development costs by 86 percent, from $969 million to the current $1.8 billion, and its life-cycle costs by 56 percent, from $1.6 billion to the current $2.5 billion. In addition, due to planetary alignment the optimal launch window for a mission to Mars occurs every 26 months. If MSL was to be delayed again, the Project would require significant redesign at a cost of at least $570 million.”
Keith’s note: Mars Science Laboratory “Curiosity”, en route to Mars, is $1 billion over budget and 2 years late. The blame for this falls squarely on JPL’s shoulders. While it is foolish to gut future Mars exploration, it is the height of hypocrisy for JPLers to cry foul about budget cuts after they have abused the process by looking the other way as costs went out of control. Yet JPL has gotten smart about controlling costs before. After JPL crashed MPL and MCO into Mars (one crash being due to “math problems”) they rebounded with Spirit and Opportunity – talk about an absolutely incredible return on investment. Contrary to the Pasadena Sun’s comments, maybe the JPL folks could learn something from people who operate laundromats after all.
I think part of the 2 year delay was missing the planet alignment thing. Also, I think more than just one NASA center is involved in MSL, and there is something to be said for making sure everything is as flight ready as you can make it when you are sending just one multi billion dollar robot to another planet. It’s not like the money was spent outside the US and Technology spending should be seen as a good thing.
My memory of the Mars ’98 fiasco was it related to unrealistically low budget expectations, while MER was given a blank check. MER’s apparent budget success was simply due to launching on time, a task the program manager said he would never wish to repeat on that timescale (admittedly for two vehicles), due to the massive workload.
It is important to realize that why we don’t keep the metrics, don’t have the transparency to know good/bad/why … is the convenience of ignorance.
The belief that just spending money is all you need to do, it is the beginning as well as the ending. “Go out and buy something” makes it good.
Look at what this buys you – no one is accountable, no one needs to do better, no one need raise expectations that we can outcompete even ourselves.
We can solely view money as a projection of power – if we want fusion, we buy fusion. Want a man on the moon? Buy that too. But don’t look too closely at who/what/where/how/why those dollars go … you’ll mess up the deal! What are you doing – must be anti-American.
The convenience of ignorance is the opposite of “Yankee can-do”.
The Pasadena Sun said, “NASA should take a hard look at all programs, find the least harmful cuts, and work with White House officials and Congress to implement those, instead of the ones President Obama proposed”
That’s a great theory, but it’s been a long time since that process worked. Since budget allocations are made by Congress at the program level, and Congress makes a game out of denying or at least cutting back whatever the President asks for, NASA can “take a hard look” 20 times over and their recommendations/ requests will have no impact on the outcome. Lots of people are denying that this is true, but if you look at the actual events of the last few years, Congress, by virtue of its control of the money, is unilaterally deciding what major programs NASA does and doesn’t do. The prime example, of course, is SLS, a Congress-specified and Congress-mandated huge mistake. SLS has killed more programs than budget cutbacks will, and neither NASA nor the President had any control over that. The President finally signed off on it for the same reason that NASA finally stopped looking at alternatives and fell in line — it was clearly SLS or nothing, because Congress made damn sure that NASA and the whole process remained at an impasse, going nowhere, until they got agreement. At least this way NASA has the money to continue existing for one more year and can hopefully demonstrate the reality of SLS by inevitably failing to execute the SLS program on the insufficient funds provided and (eventually) sending SLS nowhere at all based on zero dollars provided to design or have built any mission hardware.
Steve
There is little doubt that SLS will be cancelled in the next year or two and billions more will have been wasted but this time the vast majority of the people working it know the final outcome as well. At least with Ares there was a period where it looked like it may become reality. How many inside NASA really think SLS will ever fly???
Steve, I challenge the accuracy of your statement about SLS killing more programs that budget cutbacks will. While not a direct replacement for shuttle, SLS is being funded at lower levels than shuttle, so shouldn’t that be freeing up $ in the human space flight account?.
Besides, wasn’t this story about JPL and overruns there?
Does anyone know if Spirit and Opportunity were done within the originally proposed budget?
No – they were not. Budget when selected was $665M. They ended up costing $820M.
You might want to stick to your day job in the art department, Doug. Do your math $820m – $665m = $155m. As for MSL, it is JPL’s fault and it is eating everyone’s lunch right now.
NASA OIG: Final Report: NASA’s Management of the Mars Science Laboratory Project
http://www.spaceref.com/new…
In February 2009, NASA delayed the MSL’s launch 2 years because of the late delivery of several critical components and instruments. This delay and the additional resources required to resolve the underlying technical issues increased the Project’s development costs by 86 percent, from $969 million to the current $1.8 billion, and its life-cycle costs by 56 percent, from $1.6 billion to the current $2.5 billion. In addition, due to planetary alignment the optimal launch window for a mission to Mars occurs every 26 months. If MSL was to be delayed again, the Project would require significant redesign at a cost of at least $570 million.
My bad – a typo. I was, however, replying to someones comment about MER – I made no comment regarding MSL.
what Typo? I asked if the MER rovers (which were given as a positive example) were done within budget, and you said no, and gave the numbers – I thought I remembered as much.
Point is, after the mission is successful, everyone forgets the cost overruns, which is why the PEs low-ball the estimate to begin with.
However, going over budget by 25%, or missing a launch window and incurring the extra costs are relatively minor sins, given that all of these systems are “first of their kind”.
When something like Ares I goes over budget the way it did, it is fundamentally wrong.
Ellison edited his comments to remove his math error where he said that it was “23$M over”. He has not bothered to tell you that he changed his post.
How on earth is MSL eating everyone’s lunch on a $155M overrun when JWST is running $8B over its originally proposed budget, with a percent overrun of close to 1000%??There’s no doubt at all where the SMD budget is getting flushed away.
Am I missing something? Doug Ellison provided the budget and actual numbers to support his response that Spirit and Opportunity were NOT done within the originally proposed budget, i.e. actual cost exceeded plan. What “math” contradicts this?
Ellison edited his comments to remove his math error where he said that it was “$23M over”. He has not bothered to tell you that he changed his post.
Mars Science Laboratory should already be exploring Mars but is now on its merry way due to recklessness on JPL scientist. There is no excuse for the cost overruns and faulty equipment work being done. It makes one wonder if it was done all on purpose for their own benefit. I hope the probe makes it and is a resounding success but if not,there will be hell to pay and I mean a ton of questions with investigations as a result. All because of FUBR that’s inexcusable. Taxpayers deserve the best.
I don’t think spending cuts at this point are a good idea. This may be part of the Obama reelection plan, but it may not be a good idea for the country.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/b…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
Apparently Obama plays a long game, which confuses people used to image and posturing as key factors behind political decision. His actions are consistent with someone trying to cut space spending, but it’s also consistent with drawing a sharper correlation between wasteful spending (JWST and SLS) and the consequences to other programs. Saving these two programs at the expense of more cost effective ideas, then blinking at the shouting idiots, “But this is what you wanted.” Giving SLS and JWST enough rope to hang their supporters.
I suspect this will be echoed throughout the entire budget request. Congressional pork will be fully funded, pre-emptively, while genuine programs will be cut to reduce the over-all budget. It makes it much clearer what that pork is doing.
Shoulda tested MSL’s landing system before flight. Going splat will not be greeted with joy.
Units error: check. Typo in software: check. Controller wired backwards: check. Deployment sensor installed upside-down: check. Faulty touchdown sensor: check. OK, ship it!
“Shoulda tested MSL’s landing system before flight”
How?
Having canceled Apollo for being too expensive.
Having continued to use a space vehicle that was supposed to make spaceflight cheap, safe and routine but did nothing more than make it more expensive and dangerous for 30 years. (Sorry Shuttle but this was reality.)And, finally, essentially going back to Apollo 40+ years later by having scaled up a saturn IB and strapping it with shuttle SRBs (which we can attribute a major disaster to) and calling it “a sustainable future for manned spaceflight” after having concluded Apollo was unsustainable.Turning a blind eye to the problem of lowering the costs of the price per pound to LEO and beyond, and essentially canceling and abandoning any progress in doing so–SLS or nothing.Now they are even asking us on how to use the ISS. LOL! I am not at all surprised about these JPL overruns and the gutting of Mars exploration.
One can expect any kind of incompetence from the people running NASA! They make some of the biggest and expensive mistakes an entity can do.
Shame on NASA! Its been nothing but short-lived instances of glory followed by years upon years of disappointment and lost opportunities with no end in sight!
….. Defunding commercial crew, and Spacex and new space are left with their little capsules and with x prizes from business and maybe even a lotto. These little companies join with the business community and thus the birth of the new commercial age for American Space flight.
NASA wasn’t helping much anyway, just burning money and getting in the way of the goal which is to make man a multiple planet species!
Finally Space flight is free of congress and has no choice but to work directly with business.
No longer must those that truly want to get into Space to harvest it’s resources have to wait for the selfish public management of NASA whose main concern only is to get funding to maintain their jobs.
The new start is slow but at least it’s in the right direction.
George H. Worthington IV
NASA should take a long hard look at all the bureaucracy it created and delete as much as possible.
@gpurcell That is flat out wrong. SLS is not the last, desperate hope hope for manned spaceflight. SLS is the last, desperate hope for government owned, opperated, and controlled manned spaceflight.
It is also why SLS will fail. It is already dead. Many of us saw this in 2010 and we screaming then to redirect into OCT and CCDev. The reason we are where we are are some in congress and some on the 7th, 8th, and 9th floor who want a job.
NASA is going to get a billion dollar shave come 2013. Everyone will have to pay their fair share. The only question then is will NASA re-align itself with best business practices, slimming down, and empowering trench engineers? Or will NASA hang on to Apollo command and control infrastructure. Either way Commercial, and the world for that matter, are blowing right by the rigid and arthritic NASA.
Respectfully,
Andrew Gasser
TEA Party in Space
“Because SLS is a last, desperate hope for manned spaceflight Steve.”
False hope is more destructive than no hope, in the long run, because it delays a response to the actual problem until there is less time, less resources available to actually do anything about it.
SLS is the “alternative healer” for cancer when NASA needs chemo and surgery. Sure it looks like you are “seeing a doctor” and “taking medicine”, but in reality you are just letting the disease progress untreated.
“The idea that SLS is “killing programs” is simply false–if it didn’t exist those dollars would be out of the NASA budget entirely, not spent somewhere you would like them to go.”
And yet, coincidentally, first Constellation and then SLS managed to cost almost exactly the annual budget for the shuttle program. And budget overruns on MSL and especially JWST correlate with the cancellation of other science missions. Almost as if the President and Congress have a particular amount in mind for NASA each year, regardless of how they distribute it. Tres tres mysterious.
Agree seeing NASA try to sell the sell me the tip of the spear line just leaves me cold.
I want. NASA to fix it self the system get fixed. I don’t see it!
NASA
Solve reuse able lift to leo
Do missions much cheaper!
Show me you are working to making commercial possible.
I’m joe Q I have been waiting 40 years only to see more of the same!
Show me!!! You owe me that!
Joe Q Tax Payer