More Voodoo Rocket Science From Mike Griffin
Futron Releases 2012 Space Competitiveness Index, SpaceRef.biz
“Futron has released its 2012 Space Competitiveness Index marking the 5th anniversary of the yearly publication. According to the report, the United States remains the overall leader in space competitiveness but is seeing a decline for the 5th year in a row.”
Ex-NASA boss defends GW Bush “vision” (again…), Doctorlinda (Linda Billings)
“Griffin told the committee that he’s grown “tired” of pronouncements that the United States is “the world’s leader in space.”* “We barely rank number 3…. Our vision today is mostly talk,” he said, insisting that the Constellation program put in place in response to President Bush’s so-called “Vision for Space Exploration” was, and still is, a good plan and affordable to execute. He asserted that Bush’s strategy was “the right strategy, was endorsed by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and did not a massive increase in the NASA budget.”
Keith’s note: What is Mike Griffin Smoking? Futron shows the U.S. in #1 position but Griffin claims that it is #3. Does Griffin know something that the experts at Futron do not know? Where does Griffin get his data? Is he going to share the numbers with the rest of us? Is this some secret campaign data that the Romney folks have unearthed or just more hot air and sour grapes on Mike’s part? Truth be known: Mike Griffin needs the U.S. to be in an inferior and declining position so as to hype his own voodoo rocket science. It makes no sense otherwise. He seems to think that if he just says things often enough that people will think what he says is true.
Mike Griffin/Scott Pace Road Show Update, earlier post
“Once again Mike Griffin and Scott Pace are using a third party forum to (1) whine about the big game they lost in high school and (2) advance their personal views – views that may or may not represent the Romney campaign – which is (3) an organization that they may or may not represent depending on how they (4) want the media to report what they say or did not say so as to (5) stay in the news so that (6) one of them gets to run NASA (again).”
It was Griffin’s ignoring of the original Bush VSE and substituting his own plan that led us to where we are today…..
Note the budget/time it will take to fly EELV/CST100.
About the time it would have taken with Stiedel.
And Shuttle program would have still been running full bore.
Thus, no gap, no major issues on transition, redundancy.
But … a greater likelihood that Atlas Phase 2 would have cratered anything NLS/ESAS would have suggested. That was the “original sin” … why the “black zone” myths, and all the FUD.
Aren’t we are still on the Constellation path with some slight mods? The program was cancelled in name, but Orion continues and so does a slightly downsized Ares 5-actually 2 versions in work so eventually we’ll get back to an Ares 5 lift capability.
Griffin’s Ares 1 caused a significant delay to the program and we’re getting around that now, although if ATK continues they’ll even have Ares 1 ready in time to meet up with Orion when its ready.
The other big change is not crashing ISS into the sea immediately. Its alright, at the rate Orion and SLS are coming along, we don’t need to refocus our manpower and dollars on landers for about 15-20 years.
The real question is why Griffin’s pronouncement of safe, simple, soon turned into questionable, complex enough to cause a 20 year delay, and a hell of a lot more money than had ever been budgeted or even spoken of. The real question is why Constellation did not get on the right path to begin with, and even while Griffin was there landers were delayed and bases and the rest of the surface infrastructure was no longer even being discussed.
As far as an exploration program, whats the rush? Griffin’s right, we don’t have much of an exploration program and will not have one for a generation, but what we have was set up mainly while Griffin was in his position. For those of us over 35, we probably will not live long enough to see NASA place another man on the moon and certainly Mars is decades beyond that. I wonder why something like Orion, little more than an old-style Apollo CM, is taking 15-20 years and I have lost track of the billions of dollars-I guess its using the Shuttle’s budget each year. Griffin might be a brilliant man but he and his helpers sure messed this one up.
The potential saviour in all this is commercial crew first to reach orbit then followed by exploration missions. We have to hope that Space-X and the other do the job or Griffin will be right, and we will be third rate.
Aren’t we are still on the Constellation path with some slight mods?
Yep, and that is the problem.
a slightly downsized Ares 5-actually 2 versions in work so eventually we’ll get back to an Ares 5 lift capability.
Yep, and that is the problem.
The real question is why Griffin’s pronouncement of safe, simple, soon turned into questionable, complex enough to cause a 20 year delay, and a hell of a lot more money than had ever been budgeted or even spoken of.
Yep, and that is the problem that was pointed out in the beginning as the critical flaw in Constellation. In the very early days of the VSE MSFC trotted up to headquarters and told Craig Steidle that he had to have heavy lift in order to implement the VSE. Instead of doing that, he commissioned studies (the CE&R reports) to see if it could be done without heavy lift. Those are some pretty good studies, and they conclusively showed that a HLV was not needed.
However, by the time the CE&R reports came out, OKeefe and Steidle were gone and Griffin & co ignored them. That is why we got stuck with ESAS and the Constellation architecture. Mike knew exactly what he wanted to do when he came into the agency and as the old saying goes, the devil take the hindmost.
That is why Constellation failed. There is an old saying that the Army is always fighting the last war. Well Mike Griffin’s NASA wanted to do is as they stated themselves, “Apollo on Steroids”. We have to look to the future, not the past for our answers today.
The Side-Mount Shuttle Derived HLV would have been good enough to get up and running a decent Lunar transport architecture – plenty of lifting power to deploy big propellant depots and large solar-electric tugs. Then, after using up the Shuttle program assets, move on to uprated EELVs (modestly uprated to keep costs down). With reusable multi-purpose Lunar Landers at L-1 and a man-tended Station at L-2 – Cislunar Space would be mastered.
Use this infrastructure to go to an Asteroid next, then Phobos, then the Martian surface… Later? Ceres. Then much later…?
It would have been a very good political compromise that would have not resulted in the mass unemployment on the space coast of FL.
Yes, but sadly the Shuttle political industrial complex wasn’t willing to compromise.
It wasn’t them. JSC was behind the Shuttle C. MSFC and Mike Griffin were not. My next door neighbor in Alabama at the time was the head of procurement for the ET at MSFC and the orders came from headquarters to kill all of the contracts.
You seem disappointed.
The Side-Mount Shuttle Derived HLV would have been good enough to get up and running a decent Lunar transport architecture
So are current EELVs. That would have left money for a lander, and for lots of launches, which over time could have reduced launch prices by enough to make fully commercial manned spaceflight a reality.
The assumption that there will “‘be money left for a lander” etc after a heavy lifter or even uprated EELV is cancelled cannot be proven until it actually happens. The excuses to cut space budgets never sleep. People have been saying that “It will all happen when SLS goes away”. I don’t think so, but I’d be happy to be wrong. Either way, it wont take us long to find out…
OK fair enough, there would have been plenty of money if Congress had been happy to keep funding NASA at roughly the same rate as the past thirty years. I agree it is hardly self-evident they would have. But if it hadn’t happened, it would have been because of a lack of will, not because it would have required much more money.
What a fool and a liar. Griffin is the reason the USA is tumbling down the charts.
” Is this some secret campaign data that the Romney folks have unearthed or just more hot air and sour grapes on Mike’s part?”
The latter. IMO he’s angling to be re-appointed as NASA Administrator in a Romney administration.
The Constellation/SLS HLV architecture is $60B to $80B more expensive over 20 years than the smaller LV, depot centric architecture–the pre-Bush baseline.
Can anyone explain the HLV architecture selection which costs $3B to $4B/year more? Recall that all the ESAS issues that eliminated smaller LV (black zones, docking risk, etc) have all been refuted.
Bottom line: SLS product lines are not needed and SLS product lines have no commonality with the rest of the US fleet–ask the auto makers about the viability of this practice.
There is a better, flexible plan. So Long Shuttle, time to move forward.
Unfortunately, rather than apply the Constellation savings to mission hardware and desperately needed technology development, NASA has been *forced* to build a 70 to 130 metric tonne LV called SLS because of the NASA 2010 Authorization Act, the so called “Shelby clause”. Worse, the Act specifies that all BEO exploration is conducted with SLS/ORION, while COTS services of ISS end in 2020.
With the SLS architecture, NASA then builds a L2 gateway depot before a LEO depot?! Seriously? It is so comical. Alternative architectures, launch vehicles, nor technology development need not apply.
The world has excess launch capacity and the U.S. could be more competitive in pricing if the smaller LVs were utilized more for NASA needs. An HLV offers *nothing* to provide the US world leadership.
NASA can play a key leadership role in exploration by simply taking advantage of this excess launch capacity and using the HLV savings for mission hardware.
Almost the entire NASA community wants to move forward and start addressing the many NASA Technology Challenges.
Leadership results from developing new technologies, a sustainable architecture, and *perhaps* new discoveries or economic benefits will result from the exploration missions.
Actually, it was under Bush and O’Keefe that NASA funded industry studies on HOW to implement the Vision for Space Exploration. Innovative proposals came in with excellent ideas for how to carry out lunar expeditions without an increase in NASA’s budget.
It was Griffin who came in, threw all that work away, and set NASA on a path towards heavy lifters — which NONE of the previous studies had recommended. He speaks often of the “bipartisan support” for his plan — and of course, who would be surprised that a plan promising pork for all would be supported by the authorizing committee? But, as should have been obvious, the appropriating committee that has to come up with the money NEVER bought in to the fantasy budgets that Griffin assumed would materialize.
At least Constellation was a plan that didn’t put NASA on life support. Obama’s goals are so far off that they seem like a fantasy. We can argue about the cost and whether or not we like Griffin or Bush but the truth is that this administration hates space exploration. What is going on with the SLS and Orion was forced upon them by Congress.
Read graham’s and Wingo’s comments up above. We are on the Constellation Program plan today. NASA is spending all the money that Constellation was ever supposed to get on SLS and Orion. Constellation is the plan that put NASA on life support.
“Griffin’s angling to be re-appointed as NASA Administrator in a Romney administration.”
I’m not much of a fan of either candidate but this would be reason enough to give Obama a second term.
So you believe that President Obama made a mistake by moving to domestic commercial service providers for human access to LEO instead of a government monopoly? That he did this because he hates space exploration?
No, he did it because he hates business.
Hahaha! well done
Constellation (or should I say “Consternation”) put NASA on life support in the first place. It is your villain, not your hero.
So, you were sold something, that even if John McCain had become president instead, would have shut down too. Probably even sooner – he had a real short fuse for NASA – ask Dan Goldin if you don’t believe it (he’s also said as much to many).
You can’t have unrealistic, fantasy plans and expect to get deterministic, affordable , reliable results. All we got for $10B was a fake rocket built out of a spare Shuttle booster, with compromised results that were covered up (separation failure, recovery failure, performance shortfall).
But with the magical thinking of spin, it became .. TIME’s “Invention of the year!”.
Is the US great … or what? Even our failures … can be recatagorized as successes. In this case … four times in a row!
How Can We Be #1 without A viable space program?
In the US alone
1)ISS
2)Probes, landers, rovers
3)Amazing NASA, NOAA, NRO Satellites (and ones we don’t know about in the Black budget world)
4)X-37 (two of em)
5)Hypersonics
6)Hubble (and it’s two former NRO buddies)
7) Space X, Orbital Sciences
8)Coming Soon, Stratolaunch!
9)Atlas and Delta heavies
How do you define Viable- Only with Big expensive new boosters to feed the massive Military contractor workforce?
I dunno why I feed the trolls. Sigh. Sorry all, my bad.
Don’t you just love it when people who have failed in the past,resurface to attempt to claim glory that befailed them when they were originally in charge years ago,who speak of programs that were proven to be cost prohibitive in hopes of their rebirth? He couldn’t handle it then and can’t handle it now.
The message we all need to send to Griffin is,”Know your role and shut your mouth!”.
Griffin is like an incurable illness that has infected NASA. This man is a plague. There is no forseable cure. He will leach off the agency until he passes.
Bolden, with all of his management issues is like a Saint compared to this guy.
Bolden >>> Griffin.
That says a lot.
You left leaning loons need to get your heads out
of the Washington beltway and ask folks what they think of the mission to the
rock somewhere out there. America sees the present obama vision as a road to
nowhere. Your bashing of Griffin is getting really old. Nassau Goi is an
inverted thinker. Bolden is a yes man on the way to the waterfall at full
speed, obama is taking us there all the while breaking the bank in the process.
Next year when we have a responsible President, we may have a NASA budget cut in
half along with many other agencies due to the damage done by BO. Giving money
to mom and pop rocket companies to sit on the ground while tens of thousands of
good NASA contractor engineers get pink slips is shear madness. The party of
spending will soon get a taste of its own medicine.
John, as a Reagan Republican, you are an [deleted]. The tragic thing about it is that the policies that the Obama administration are putting forward in space are exactly the same ones that republicans like Dana Rohrbacher pushed ten years ago.
That the republican party has allowed itself to be hijacked by a former democrat (Shelby) into supporting policies and programs (SLS and Constellation) that are diametrically opposed to everything that republican space efforts supported for decades indicates just how blind some people have become in their partisanship.
If republicans cannot stand up and say that at least in this area, and at this time, that the democrats are getting this right and lets support it in a bipartisan manner, then there is little hope for our country in any sphere of politics. Hell if we had the brains of Bill Clinton we would say that it is about damn time that the democrats started supporting policies that republicans fought for years for and then march forward in this area hand and hand.
Quit being a fool of a partisan on space.
Orrin Hatch is a Republican. and there would be zero discussion of using solid rocket motors on sls if it weren’t for him. and over the last two decades he’s done more to hold up the “Republican” ideas than any democrat because they threatened the now on life support standing gravy train at promontory. Obama’s only pursuing his course because he doesn’t really care about space. it’s a cheap way to focus on other priorities that he does care about without having to admit he thinks only in terms of the inner city. and to the extent he’s interested in space it’s only to view it as resources diverted from his precious urban areas…
I just care about what’s best for America.
So far that looks more like COTS 2+, MSL’s successful landing, and perhaps the upcoming CCiCAP.
Solids I don”t think so.
Don’t care if someone loves citys or whatever.
So if Obama’s smart enough to back things that win for America, well thats just plain good. I want America to succeed.
Its that simple.
Uhhh, someone needs to visit the wikipedia page for SpaceX
Keith, I find your site excellent however you need to accept that Mike
Griffin is right, the US is slipping in rank when it comes to prowess in
space. And if the SLS ever goes ahead it will be built with Apollo/Constellation in mind. Thats if it ever gets off the ground. The capsule being built is based on Griffins ideas. Now Keith, get over your bias against Griffin as it will prevent you having clarity when it comes to reporting anything to do with him.
(sigh) I am not about to just change my opinion because one person demands that I do so. If you do not like NASA Watch then perhaps you need to stop reading it.
The US has been slipping since Mike Griffin injected himself – his exit from the scene would improve matters.
You need to look to evidence-based decision making, not faith-based. The evidence was accumulated at the start of the Bush administration – clear and obvious, and NEVER refuted.
It is Mike Griffin’s intellectual dishonesty that has cost America the moon for decades, that you have to get over and come out of denial on. Do the research yourself, and if you are honest, you’ll come to the same conclusion. Because that’s where the body of evidence points.
Now, you can go and attempt to reinterpret facts if you like, redefining reality to suit. Many do so. It’s above my humble skills to understand such “God like” views from Mt Olympus. I just work with physics, math, finance, and engineering. Things that are deterministic. Work by physical laws. It greatly constrains what I do.
But then, the things that are created … work … return value … deterministically.
Mike doesn’t.
It seems you are also reinterpreting facts e.g. NASA has not slipped and yet are using Russian technology to get to LEO. For the first time NASA has no real plan. I could go on and on.
I could go on and on.
Yes you do. But you don’t say anything.
For the first time NASA has no real plan.
Garbage.
You want to land on the moon, it starts with a lunar lander, not a rocket so big and unaffordable its only bound to get … cancelled.
CxP would never do a lander – they spent $10B poorly attempting to recreate a Delta IV Heavy capability – failing 3 times at it (4 if you count Liberty’s missing CCiCAP).
So there hasn’t been a plan. Perhaps you were … fooled?
NASA has not slipped and yet are using Russian technology to get to LEO.
Look, shortly after coming into office, George W Bush killed off X-38, which was 50 million short of completion, and replaced an American CRV with Soyuz. That’s where we got Soyuz from.
As to Orion, it was started not long after as part of OSP. Was supposed to fly on EELV, and would have started the then lunar “spiral” if Griffin hadn’t nixed it. We’d have been back to the moon by now, before Shuttle conclusion, if a bunch of idiots hadn’t talked Bush out of an incremental program that they thought was to cheap and would take to long, so they got one too expensive, and … even longer.
I lived it. Know every step intimately. So stop with this political nonsense.
failing 3 times
What are the three times? Maybe the 4 seg SRB, SSME-powered upper stage was failure #1. Technically, it need not have been a failure. The 5 seg SRB + J2X would be failure #2. What’s failure #3?
#3 Altair
This is not a slam on the engineering teams designing Altair (I know several of them), but for the concept itself and the requirements that drove the design.
Very few people ever made this connection but the Altair lander is directly derived from the First Lunar Outpost lander, all the way down to the shared graphics.
This lander was far over specified for absolutely no good reason. Well, the reason was that the Altair lander was set up for what I call the touch and go scenario of several sorties to the Moon rather than a lunar outpost.
There is a way in government contracting to get what you want, all the while telling people that this is not what you want. The entire ESAS architecture was set up and optimized for a chemical propulsion human Mars mission. The Ares V (VI) + Ares 1 was simply not required if your first goal (which the VSE explicitly stated) was the Moon.
The weight requirements of the Altair lander drove the launch vehicle requirements from day one. The decision was made to have a lunar outpost, thus you simply did not need a lander of that size and capability.
I had a discussion with one of the Boeing systems engineers in Huntsville about this after it was finally found that the Ares V missed the TLI mass to push the Orion/Altair combination by over five tons. He finally admitted that it was underpowered but that it was not their fault that the Orion/Altair was overweight. This is when they started talking about the Ares VI, and even larger and more unaffordable launch vehicle, thus getting what Griffin wanted.
The humans to Mars thing is what killed Constellation. We could be on the Moon today, in force, with Shuttle C, and with systems that we already know how to build. Shuttle C would have been the political compromise that kept the Shuttle marching army going and would have left enough money to build a much smaller lander, when coupled with a SEP.
It disgusts me what happened.
Yet the same is true with EELVs (politics aside), and if the lander had been refuelable as it easily could have been, then it need not even have been small. Indeed the lander is easier to make refuelable than an EDS and you wouldn’t even need a separate depot for it. They could still have spent a lot of pork in Huntsville and Houston on surface hardware, but we would have had both a lunar program, probably incorporating your cherished ISRU, and a large and fiercely competitive propellant launch market.
The entire ESAS architecture was set up and optimized for a chemical propulsion human Mars mission.
More specifically it was set up for manned missions to Mars using an SDLV. The latter does not follow from the former. You could do this with existing EELVs, although you might prefer Atlas Phase 1, not so much for the smallish HLV, but for the ACES upper stage which can serve as a large EDS. Mars was not the problem, the SDLV was the problem.
Just some ideas here, thought I would put them with my dream NASA leader lololol
Steve said
“George,
Don’t you ever let go of that lunch box. Ever!”
Steve
While morning he death of my Ipod, I am back to typing with two fingers again and not seeing what I write till I get to the end of each line lolol
Ideas
The Spacex commercial space tax exemption lolol
What if Mr. Gasser was so upset about how we waste money on public NASA space that he started a group that would donate money to commercial or Spacex instead of paying their tax share that went to NASA. Whatever your Tax share you deduct X, your NASA percentage and donate it to Commercial Space. Lolol
I think that could get the attention of a few people on Capital Hill lol don’t you think??? I read here all the time that Congress has all this power because they control the purse. Well guess what it’s not their purse, its MINE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Didn’t we start this country with a Tax revolt?? Well maybe its time???
Just another hair brain idea of mine Mr. Gasser
Let me know what you think.
With respect
Fred Flintstone should the IRS ask lolol
With no internet at the cabin and a dead Ipod I doubt I’ll get to hear the mars landing this weekend till long after its done. Some on here think it may not make it and all that negative kind of talk.
My thoughts lol????
Has a very wise man once said
GO!!!! Baby go!!!!!!!
Lol The parrot
Space capability corner
Tick redesign update in preparation for design review. lol
I may need to do a new Mc donalds napkin drawing lol
Since Mr. C told me that NASA is scared to build or use any launchers that would require assembly in space, and ME told me months back that we can’t fly around Leo and do things.
I decided we need a better safer space suit, so I proposed one that had a big backpack chamber in the back and a docking hatch.
Well like Ticks, I think that this thing should have fabric chamber built out of bigelow materials. This chamber should be over a 6 ft frame that is where the pilot sits(silly me, you don’t need to seat in LEO) at one end and this holds the fuel tanks. The back hatch should be mounted to this frame and is folded for storage to Leo . thrusters also fold out from the frame once in orbit.
Fuel I have no clue ????
Question
To burn methane for rocket engines once in orbit, do you need liquid oxygen or can you just use a compressed gas like oxygen or air????
Wouldn’t it be cool if you used waste from your Space agriculture to run your space construction equipment.
Well I’m sure many of you have thought of Space suits like this before to make Space walking Safer . Any suggestions would be fun to hear.
Problem
Where do I post this without interrupting threads on other subjects?
I don’t know?
What if NASA watch had an idea thread posted for ideas people have. Is that a good idea or a bad idea????
How will commercial tourism Space serve steak and chicken and fish in their restaurants. lolol
Animal farm ideas lol
Big artificial lungs and stomachs fed lawn cuttings from land inside the gravity wheel to nureish a blood supply that grows meat from cow parts. Couldn’t some genetic engineering remove the legs, bones and head of cows pretty easily so you just grow meat.
invasion of the body snatchers, you want some tender steak or not?
If we had a big gravity wheel up there, couldn’t we add Bigelow habs all the way to the center for growing stuff? And maybe even feed an artificial meat machine like I suggest???
Japan just carried fish tanks to outer space, ever thought about scuba diving in a large Bigelow hab filled with water to farm fish????
Steve
I’m no good at politics
I am to used to you having 100 days to build this. Start screaming to get their attention.
I read that Elon and Cameron may get another mars movie out. Do me a favor and if you can help Tinker get a version of his lifter in there do it!!!!!
So if I want to see Musks Mars plan I may have to go buy tickets and popcorn lolol
Sounds like commercial space is almost here lolol.
DTARS; is their any POINT to your rambling, stream of conciousness stuff?? For my part I’m growing a little tired of it, and I’d bet a Lottery ticket others who visit here are, too.
Wow do you really type these out on a mobile device? 🙂
Stream of consciousness, lol, true.
Not any more mike lol. I guess they would rather I just NASA WATCH