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Lugo's GRC Reorganization Plan Continues

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 28, 2012
Filed under , ,

Cleveland’s Glenn Research Center seeking stability with uncertainties ahead for NASA, Cleveland Plain Dealer
“During an eight-week stretch this summer, for instance, a prominent NASA blogger reported that Lugo was about to be replaced (he wasn’t), and a former NASA administrator advising Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign warned that the space agency was planning to scrap all human space flight work and eliminate its 244 jobs at Glenn. (Both NASA and the White House issued unusually blunt denials.)”
Keith’s note: Charlie Bolden is not happy with the waves that Ray Lugo is making. Lugo has been told to put his reorganization on hold by NASA HQ but it would seem that he is still moving ahead with it. Stay tuned.
Lugo’s Big Mistake: Changes Ahead at GRC Halted, earier post
Bolden Seeks To Replace Multiple Center Directors, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

2 responses to “Lugo's GRC Reorganization Plan Continues”

  1. Spaceman888 says:
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    Is GRC NASA’s contribution to national comic relief – because they sure are funny, all the wat to the top.  Ray Lugo ought to get back to his executive travel scheduling and building renovation  activities where he really excelled, and start listening to Charlie.  I read the article on Cleveland.com and it struck me that the taxpayers have been funding this laughing stock roughly $700 million a year, or the roughly total dollars SpaceX spent to develop two engines, two launch vehicles, and the Dragon capsule – and they did it roughly five years.  Or in other words, the the U.S. taxpayers have funded GRC roughly 17 times the SpaceX’s development cost and what is the result – another reorganization!!!!!!!  Reorganize around power, propulsion, and materials expertise ey, we have heard that one a few times before.  And haven’t they been working on Sterling engine technology for 30 years!!!!!  Must be like fine wine making.  And do you really need 3300 people to do things other people including industry are doing.  Can GRC add any value to the incredible technology being developed at Boeing (materials) GE or Pratt (jet engines)?  I’ll have to review all the latest aeronautics and material papers authored by GRC researchers, must be some great stuff happening behind the fence next to Hopkins.  I wonder if the Plain Dealer could write an article, or maybe a series of article, that describes all the great things that GRC has achieved with the $12 billion it has spent over the last 17 years.  That’s a lot of green stuff.  And if you consider NASA spent roughly $10 billion on Constellation and will spend another $4 billion a year on Orion/SLS with operational capability sometime near 2020, you got start asking yourself what in the hell NASA is doing – or better yet, what they are not doing.  My guess is nothing more than wasting a lot of tax payers money.  And oh yea, they tell me I’m not paying my fair share of taxes.  What a rip-off.    

    • muomega0 says:
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      In reality, GRC could provide many technologies for the Exploration program.  The reog is simply to make things more efficient.  It does not change the reason why ready to fly technologies are not in place today.

      Here is why.

      ——

      Spending $20B on SLS/Ares provides an architecture that will be $86B more expensive than depot centric.  Fraud, waste, abuse?

      Oh wait, ESAS justified the “need” for an unsustainable HLV, and Congress pitched the depot centric, sustainable architecture.

      Then, the previous NASA administrator/Congress gutted the space technology and maturation program funding for HLV, and offered the non-MSFC engineers and researchers the rewarding program of generating Ares requirements, LAS assessments, as well as building ares avionics, service module, and a Lox/methane system, etc. 

      Lox/methane was cancelled a few months later, to build a hypergolic lander, which *drove* the Ares V launch vehicle design to ~ 140 mT.  Service module/lander then cancelled for lack of adequate funding ( get it?–unsustainable plan).    

      Then the same admin stated that NASA could save money if GRC was not included in parts of the Constellation program, while *four* new engine programs, not needed by NASA continue: (a) J2X, b) 5 seg, c) SSME to RS68 to SSME, opps that SRM design adds 20,000 lbs of LAS to Orion, so better d) build liq strap ons.

      Do not forget that GRC lead launch vehicle IV&V for over 3 decades, then had the capability cancelled and moved south.  A few years later:  ESAS!  What happened to the inputs from GRC?  Do you know what they  were?

      —–
      Let’s take a look however at the exact words by a Congressional Staffer is response to the following questions:

      Is Braun (NASA Chief Technologist) really saying that NASA will ignore the clear direction of
      Congress and go off to do whatever they feel like doing?  That does not
      seem like a winning strategy for maintaining NASA’s funding level. Who
      does he think is writing the checks for this HLV?

      “I can assure you such comments are not viewed positively by those in the
      Congress who believe they have sent a clear message that the FY 2011
      “plan” regarding follow-on launch vehicles and human spaceflight
      direction beyond LEO was, and now certifiably is, DOA. Remember Bobby
      Braun was brought in to oversee the HUGE redirection of formerly
      Constellation program funds in advanced r and d; the directionless
      “honey-pots” of open-ended research that were a major point of criticism
      for many in the Congress when the FY 2011 Budget Request was released.
      The majority of those funds were redirected–in both House and Senate
      bills–back to vehicle development. So he’s precisely the person NOT to
      ask about NASA’s intent or approach to development of launch vehicles
      under the terms soon to be established as the law of the land. He’s
      correct in saying that engineers, and not politicians, will design the
      follow-on vehicles. But engineers have to obey not only the laws of
      physics, but the law of the land, as well, if they are working on
      government-funded programs.”

      If NASA, as an agency,  lead the architecture trade studies, then NASA would be using EELVS and COTS for crew to LEO today, depots would be well on the way to development and use, the technology challenges would be funded, and NASA would be on the path to sustainable architectures and hence postponement of lunar, asteroid, and Mars mission plans would not be on hold.

      ————–

      Your comments are without foundation.