Industrial Base Impact of Shuttle and Constellation Decisions
NASA Human Space Flight Industrial Base in the Post-Space Shuttle/Constellation Environment, Bureau of Industry and Security’s Office of Technology Evaluation
“The Shuttle retirement and CxP transition will impact future NASA HSF programs through a loss of unique skills, capabilities, products, and services by select suppliers. The assessment highlights and prioritizes immediate areas of concern for NASA, with focus on the 150 survey respondents that identified themselves as dependent on NASA. Within the group of 150 NASA- dependent companies, the 46 NASA-dependent companies that reported negative net profit margins for at least one year from 2007-2010 should be given particular attention. Without continued business opportunities, these companies have the highest potential of shutting down. Ongoing efforts to develop a deep-space exploration capsule and heavy-lift rocket capability are important first steps to maintaining capabilities, and should be viewed as the building blocks to spur a sustainable HSF supply chain.”
If NASA – and by extension I suppose; Mike Griffin – had chosen the Side-Mount Shuttle Derived Heavy lift launch vehicle they could have kept much of the workforce and ended up relatively quickly and ‘relatively cheaply’ with a useful Heavy Lift capability for ‘The Moon, Mars & Beyond’. Much of the wrong-headed CXP expenditure (Ares 1 & V) could have been avoided. But you’ve only got to read back over several years of Space Blogsite’s postings to see that many already know this. My post is merely a Recap.
Would it not be safer to launch on something with the SRB’s below you?
You beat me to it…. Exactly my words…. (matt that is)
If you can’t cook, arguing about the recipe is probably missing the point.
I see nothing in side-mount that would have changed the fundamental problems with how NASA does business.
Nope but it would have solved the workforce problems outlined in this article. The sidemount would be flying today and we could be building payloads rather than having NASA Civil servants ready to slash their wrists in two week long SLS requirements meetings…
Been there, done that. What worries me is that now NASA wants to establish “requirements” for commercial crew.
This would only have been practical had Shuttle not been canceled, so infrastructure and overhead could be shared. With Shuttle cancelled no program using Shuttle technology can be economically viable since it must bear the entire cost of overhead and infrastructure, including SRB production and LC-39 operation.
Ongoing efforts to develop a deep-space exploration capsule and heavy-lift rocket capability are important first steps to maintaining capabilities, and should be viewed as the building blocks to spur a sustainable HSF supply chain.”
Maybe we need to start looking at the problem from a different perspective than throwing all of the money away on a big rocket that only helps a few incumbents and their supply chain.
“Maybe we need to start looking at the problem from a different perspective than throwing all of the money away on a big rocket that only helps a few incumbents and their supply chain.”
But one has to understand that the primary goal of the NASA HSF structure has become *EXACTLY* that – to spend big money in incumbent congressional districts through the contractor supply chain. Actually going somewhere and exploring isn’t near the top of the priorities for the backers of Shuttle, CxP, and now SLS. The same players keep being involved.
It is after all a very sweet deal – getting paid billions every year for delivering very little – so they fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. Don’t you all remember how hard the administration had to fight for Commercial Crew funding? (which ended up being tied to SLS funding – surprise…)
The whole NASA HSF structure (including the contractors) needs to be severely reformed or scrapped. It has lost all sense of its original efficiency, and what its goals should be. It’s time to put the chronically sick animal down, and invest in new blood, new approaches.
The shuttle was a design from the 1970s that turned out to be horribly expensive for what it delivered. Why would anyone assume maintaining the supply chain for a bloated, 30+-year-old system would be a good thing?
The whole idea of shutting down the shuttle program was to replace it with something better. You don’t get something better using the same old supply chain.
The Shuttle was a design forced on NASA by Cap Weinburger (head of OMB under Nixon). It was well known at the time that the TAOS STS would have the lowest development costs and the highest operational cost of the various designs considered. Nixon did not care, he and Cap wanted the costs during their time in the White house kept low.
Just as George W. Bush kept the (apparent) cost of Constellation low by cancelling Shuttle and planning to cancel ISS, and deferring most development during his term, and never providing an accurate prediction of future operational costs. The problem now is that future costs are still untenable, and Congress may soon have to come to grips with that.
George W. Bush did none of that. His chosen guy, Sean O’Keefe and his team was moving in the right direction, see the H&RT and CE&R studies. It was O’Keefe’s successor, Dr. Griffin that changed that with the ESAS study.
Seemingly because it was maintaining that supply chain and its associated jobs that was the objective, not delivering an operational launch system.
The shuttle contained high reliability, high performance hardware with tight tolerances that required a specialized workforce. Don’t confuse a 1970’s design with 1970’s hardware. A lot of the actual hardware was more modern. And the skills to keep it functioning to meet the hi-rel manned spaceflight needs are indeed very unique.
While making spaceflight simple and easier to maintain would be desirable to keep costs down, we are not there yet and a long ways off from being there.
Note to Industry and Security’s Office of Technology Evaluation:
The retirement of the Space Shuttle and the cancellation of Constellation (which would have given less for more) were a blessing! Both were yokes which absorbed enough resources to prevent any movement toward human exploration or expansion into the Solar System. The Space Shuttle stymied any advancement in human endeavors beyond Earth orbit for Decades!
Why? Because there wasn’t a penny left over to develop BEO human spacecraft even though the Space Shuttle would have been a perfect platform to carry, assemble, outfit and crew BEO missions, all of which have been proven out in building the ISS.
You get what you pay for.
As for the brain trust that worked on those programs? Many are retiring from the Space Shuttle Program. Others are migrating to the leaner, meaner companies like SpaceX (but only the best… and only the ones willing to get there hands dirty), bringing those skills to a new generation.
What you are bemoaning is the loss of a system that got the job done with a sledge hammer; big money, big programs, big payrolls and a whole bureaucracy designed around covering ones ass, all of which have been proven out by NASA and their contractors in the last three decades.
You get what you ask for.
tinker
“but only the best… and only the ones willing to get there hands dirty”
by that you mean Nasa contract workers were mostly mediocre workers who didn’t like to get their hands dirty?
Ralphy:
Goodness no! But for anyone who had ‘Manager’ in their former title, I might be more cautious before considering to hire them :).
Most of the USA people I knew were experienced and capable. They have all been fired and most have had to find other careers.
In the end; things cost what they cost – you can only force price reductions through innovation and volume/demand which we thankfully are seeing more of these days. But progress is STILL too slow I.M.O. and things are still deemed too costly. Many people thought that getting rid of the Shuttle would free up that money for better things; Wrong – NASA were NEVER going to be allowed to keep the same funding without Shuttle. Shortly after STS-135 landed NASA had more than a billion bucks slashed from their budget.
Chicken-and-egg: “You don’t need/want Shuttle anymore? We’re gonna cut you!If you thought you could take that same amount of funding and apply it to more efficient technologies and architectures, think again,” was what effectively could have been said.
An ever tightening, ever decreasing spiral downwards is the trend we are seeing. The U.S. HAD the foundation for a future Heavy Lift system – the Shuttle ‘Stack’. It flew quite well for 30 years, lifting hundreds of people and thousands of tons of payload into LEO (and sometimes beyond). The Shuttle did NOT make the U.S. broke; America afforded the Shuttle system just fine, for decades. To end its somewhat Low Earth Orbit ‘dead-endedness’, it should have been converted into a Heavy lifter to send humans to the Moon, Asteroids and Mars. Once an infrastructure of Propellant Depots and re-usable propulsion stages (SEP and/or NEP) had been established – a TRUE set of ‘Golden Spikes’ – then its expense could be converted/handed over to Commercial Space and their launchers.
The Shuttle Stack never reached its true potential, which was ALL I was trying to point out in my original post. America has now virtually thrown away the two Heavy Lift systems it developed – Saturn & STS. The Shuttle remnants might get to live on in SLS, but I’m not optimistic as the majority of ‘Space Cadets’ and some Politicians seem to hate it with a lust. Space X might get to do cool things with their big rockets and I’ll cheer them on when they do. But unless the Falcons, Deltas, Atlas and so on don’t get to strut their stuff as a unified fleet contributing to an Exploration Plan and Infrastructure, most of our speculations and postings will have little or no meaning in the end….. 🙁
Matt:
Like you, I would have been happy with a side mount payload launcher based on the Shuttle stack. In parallel with the manned Shuttle program, some progress might have even been made in crewed BEO missions. But as a follow on launcher, post Shuttle, there’s no rational for such a thing.
tinker
Somewhere back up the cyber-highway I took a detour to a website that had a gallery of hi-res photos of the delapidated Soviet-era Buran shuttle that flew exactly once, and Energia superbooster that was launched maybe three times , and their support facilities. Pix from Baiknour and the manufacturing-integrations complexes up near Moscow or wherever. It was sad to see a total of five orbiters, three intended to actually fly and two ground/drop test versions, including the one with the jet engines to practice touch and go’s. The hangars, flight lines, the pads…all were crumbling and corroding away. A couple of the orbiters ended up in city parks alongside MiG’s and tanks and such.
Very stark. Very much an eye opener and a reason to ponder our own space heritage.
Within the group of 150 NASA- dependent companies, the 46 NASA-dependent companies that reported negative net profit margins for at least one year from 2007-2010 should be given particular attention.
I heard that the United Launch Alliance and ATK were struggling with controlling costs, too. Yes, NASA should pay attention to their net profit margins and give them particular attention … while ignoring innovative firms that could disrupt the expensive status quo with post-Shuttle era launch technology.
Sounds like rear-view mirror industrial policy to me. Furthermore “NASA-dependent companies” sounds like a rather sad category to fall in.
The words “controlling” and “costs” used together in the same sentence are foreign terms used in the same sentence of a cost + contracting world.
Unless something is done, the whole supply chain – including stablers, groomers, cartwheelers and blacksmiths – could soon be facing closure in many parts of the country. A major effort to forestall this loss of technological competence should be made by the government immediately subsidizing horse-and-cart operations and putting barriers in the way of competetive technologies, especially the FordX company….
Lots of ignorant anti-shuttle posts here; the HSF supply chain is the key reason we have at least 3 commercial crew efforts underway and Orion; even SpaceX isn’t trying to reinvent every wheel on their own – they use companies like Honeywell that got their space bonafides through NASA. Understanding the systems engineering needed to get uber high 9’s of reliability, the near perfect traceability, etc. is why we are getting such solid results for our human space efforts – that requires companies that know how to do the business and helps assure we don’t wind up with a bunch of dead astronauts.
Shuttle cost a lot – but it only flew 4 or five times a year on average; how much would an airliner cost if you had 3 of them and hardly ever flew? a LOT!
You miss the point that all these things that SpaceX and co. stole from NASA which allow them to develop fast cheap and well are, by definition, also available to NASA and the primes. And yet… they were still trapped with the shuttle for 30 years… and now trapped with the cost of Constellation/SLS/Orion… and JWST… and…
I must disagree with you on one point: Space X was given help, they didn’t steal anything. Far sighted individuals saw to it that Space X received the help it needed. Everything from US Army Pacific launch location to help with the Merlin engine. Plus, Space X received almost a billion $ in incremental goal payments. NASA wanted a new contractor paradigm shift (or was ordered to make it so) and it went forth and got it.
That is NASA/NACA’s original mission. To help US industry do its job better, faster, and more competitively in US and foreign commercial and government markets. It was Apollo that got people thinking that industry was the servant of NASA. It should be the other way around, as it once was.
What exactly did SpaceX “steal”? Please be specific.
I’m a supporter of SpaceX. A common criticism (such as JadedObs) is that SpaceX can only do what they do because of the technology/techniques developed by NASA. It misses the point that anything developed by NASA was certainly available to NASA.
I was using the most derisive language I could so there was no weasling around this point. It doesn’t matter how much advantage JadedObs thinks SpaceX got from NASA, because whatever they got was, by definition, also available to NASA and its principle contractors. Therefore any failure of NASA and the Primes to match SpaceX is their own.
I would also point out that Elon Musk was willing to put his money behind his promises. That is a refreshing point of view compared to the standard government vendor/contractor mode of operation. When as an individual you are willing to put a $250 million up front money behind your project, it makes waves and it gives cache to the idea that your project is worthy of receiving help. Heck, I would of been willing to do what Elon did, too, but uh, alas, I am unfortunately, am in impecunious circumstances. So no soup for me. But rest assured my intentions were the best!
Sounds like NASA KSC investigation. They could not solve a simple case, but they are awesome at given out speeding tickets and getting involved in HR cases. I can’t believe they still have a SWAT team. Nothing to defend. Bunch of “cop want to be’s”. Want to save millions of dollars at KSC, get rid of all the ridiculas NASA pretend cops, let the contractor do their jobs. Go get a real education and lets do some real science at KSC instead of spending hours coming up with speed traps.
This article, and a few others I’ve seen lately, seem to me to be carefully veiled appeals by “the other side.” Many of us have argued for so long that NASA should be a space program, not a jobs program, but here we have an article and study that are basically an appeal to perpetuate the jobs program, thinly hidden behind other nice sounding arguments, even including national pride. I certainly could be wrong, but it looks like a con job to me.
The article talks about many skills/capabilities that won’t be maintained: but 1) it doesn’t name which ones they are; and 2) it does nothing to show that they will be necessary at any point in the future (making stone knives is a lost skill as well).
Anyone who isn’t motivated solely by a jobs program and/or pork will tell you that whatever we do in space must be sustainable and affordable. This means that we’ll never (in a sane world) do anything like the Space Shuttle again, where the operational costs are astronomical. So how many of those potentially lost skills actually matter? Which ones will we ever actually want to use again in sustainable endeavors? Losing those capabilities that will never be employed again (hopefully) is no loss at all, except from an historical perspective, perhaps.
Bottom line, this study and the article about it are both seriously incomplete and contain invalid “logic,” and I sincerely hope that they won’t be used by anyone as a basis for decisions. In my opinion, it’s yet another completely biased snow job, with root motivations that have nothing to do with HSF success.
Steve
This just in ( December 10 ) ; Kazakhstan making big noise about kicking the Russians completely off the Baiknour launch base , completely. The only place for launching Protons and manned Soyuz + progress freighters , therefore crews and useable regular supplies to ISS. Russia pays Kazakhstan about $ 120 million per year to lease the place. or put another way , all the proceeds from launching two Americans to ISS at $ 60 mill per seat. SOunds like it might not be just about the money this time around….
(quote) ALMATY, Kazakhstan — The head of Kazakhstan’s space agency said Monday
that Russia’s lease of a launch facility in the Central Asian nation,
the only site worldwide currently being used to get astronauts to the
International Space Station, may be suspended. ( endquote- from AP story in Washington Post )
They are launching the Soyuz out of Korou, The facilities are built to support the manned launches according to documents that I have seen.