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China

Is China In Space To Win It?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
November 7, 2013
Filed under

As China’s space program rises, will NASA rise again? , Houston Chronicle
“China has the opportunity in coming years to surpass the United States in space programs, forcing the government to step up NASA funding to retain a leadership position, partner with the Chinese or risk falling behind, according to space policy experts. Russia is the other country that presently has the capacity to launch humans into space. Its space program, however, reliant upon technology designed nearly five decades ago, is getting by on past momentum. China’s space program, by contrast, is in ascendance.”
China, America and the Moon: Boldness and Abdication, Paul Spudis
“Our retreat from the challenge of the Moon puzzles even Chinese observers. Wu Ji, director general of the China National Space Science Center, reportedly is “dismayed by recent changes.” “I don’t know if your listeners or people living in the U.S. understand these changes,” he recently told NPR foreign correspondent Anthony Kuhn, “But as I observe them from the outside, I feel that America is gradually contracting and closing itself off. It’s a very strange thing.”
India lags China in space: ex-ISRO chief
“The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) may have sparked a debate on ‘space race’ between India and China, but former ISRO boss G Madhavan Nair says Beijing has already surged forward and is on course to have an upper hand in the field globally. “I think if somebody says that we can race with China and catch up with them. At the moment. We have lost the game very badly,” he said here. According to him, India and China were “almost equal” five years ago and, except in the area of manned mission, “we had everything in place”.”
American Moonwalkers Suggest Cooperation With China’s Moon Plans, earlier post
Partnering With China in Space?, earlier post
NASA Exploration Ideas – With Added China Bashing (Update), earlier post
More posts on China

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

50 responses to “Is China In Space To Win It?”

  1. DTARS says:
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    Now that Spacex has proven that recoverable boasters/rockets are possible. Who will be the next country or company to follow their lead? My bet is that China already has their designers planning to build recoverable versions of the long march now. Wouldn’t they be crazy to be just sitting on their hands now???

    Who will meet the Spacex challenge??

    • Spacetech says:
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      Did I miss something?
      How has SpaceX PROVEN that boosters/rockets are recoverable?
      I know they are working that angle but I don’t believe that they have done anything more than fishing spent pieces/parts out of the ocean.
      NASA recovered solid boosters cores for two and a half decades but just because something is retrieved doesn’t mean its completely reusable.

      • Duncan Law-Green says:
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        A. They’ve got a liquid-fuelled booster back from staging to 3m above the ocean, intact, with an engine running.
        B. They’ve repeatedly demonstrated hoverslam landings with a full-sized test vehicle.
        C. They’ve successfully fired Merlins over multiple full duty cycles.

        A in itself is a hell of an achievement. A+B+C is a solid tech base to build reusability on, and quite a bit more than “fishing parts out of the ocean”.

        • tutiger87 says:
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          When did they do A?

        • John Thomas says:
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          For A, they restarted the engine but I didn’t see where it was running until 3 m above the ocean
          “The spinning of the first stage centrifuged the propellant and caused
          the stage to run out of propellant before hitting the water.”
          To me this sounds like when the stage hit the atmosphere, it started spinning which caused the engine to shut off.

          • Duncan Law-Green says:
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            The final relight (the one which flamed out due to centrifuging) took place at low altitude.

            The final photo in this article was identified by Gwynne Shotwell as being at an altitude of 3m above the ocean:
            http://spacefellowship.com/

            If the engine was completely shut down at that point, why is there a visible backwash in the water?

          • hikingmike says:
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            I’m pretty curious about that last photo as well. Maybe that’s what the white backwash is. I guess it would look different if it was just a splash. However, the Shuttle’s solid rocket boosters made quite a splash when they hit the water even with 3 big parachutes. I thought it had shut down due to spinning and lack of fuel well before this. Maybe they are sandbagging this for some reason?

            http://gaberieger.wordpress

          • dogstar29 says:
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            I have read that the engine had shut down. It is not clear whether the ring of water is a splash or the backwash of an operating engine.

          • Duncan Law-Green says:
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            Here’s a video of Gwynne’s speech. The comments about the stage return attempt are at around the 25:00 mark.

            http://www.youtube.com/watc

            Yeah, it’s… odd. It doesn’t look like a splash to me, and things don’t splash when they’re still 10 feet above the water πŸ˜‰

      • J C says:
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        OK the real state of affairs is somewhere between the points you and DTARS have staked out. SpaceX has done significantly more than “fishing spent pieces/parts out of the water.” They relighted the engines on the Falcon first stage twice, as a test towards a guided reentry, the first step towards a stage recovery. To my knowledge NASA never did that, and the shuttle boosters, while recovered and refurbished, were not guided down. Second, the Grasshopper program is making steady progress toward a booster that returns to its launch site. NASA has done similar things and continues to do so, but the difference is that Grasshopper is focused on a particular goal and on integration with an existing, successful launch system.

        Now, do they have all the pieces put together? No. Is it guaranteed that they can make this work as advertised? No; even Elon Musk admits that. But they are closer to making it happen than anyone else, including NASA. If they are even modestly successful, it will be a game-changer for the space launch business. They haven’t got it yet, but I think the odds are more likely than not they will have at least a partially reusable system that requires less refurb than the shuttle, and it won’t be that far down the road.

        • Geoffrey Landis says:
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          “But they are closer to making it [recovery of the first stage] happen than anyone else, including NASA.”
          Uh, the first stage of the shuttle, the SSME. was recovered from the very first flight flight.
          It will indeed be a step forward when Space-X recovers their first stage engines, but it’s hardly worth deliberately forgetting that the shuttle existed.

          • J C says:
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            Nobody’s “forgetting” anything. The Shuttle and the Falcon are radically different configurations and mission profiles. In the sense that Shuttle had “stages” of any kind, the first stage more properly would have been the SSME’s, the ET, and the SRB’s. Once the SRB’s dropped off the SSME’s/ET functioned more as a second stage. The ONLY thing that was recovered from that stage was the engines, and they were recovered by flying them back with the orbiter to a human-piloted landing. That is nowhere near what SpaceX is trying to do, which is to autonomously land an intact rocket stage, restarting at least one booster and using its own guidance system. Nothing NASA has on the books can do that, and nothing I’m aware of, other than perhaps some research projects, even came close. One of the challenges with using the remaining SSME’s with SLS is to modify them for in-flight restart, which they were not designed to do.

            It’s not “forgetting” the Shuttle to leave it aside in a discussion of flyback boosters for vertical-stack launch systems. As a technological achievement, it was a marvel and will stand alone for a long time to come. But it is such a different approach that it’s not relevant to this conversation.

    • Enceladus says:
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      DTARS is a pure Space-X fanboy. He is beyond hope at this point. Ignore him.

  2. mfwright says:
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    from Paul Spudis article,
    “Our retreat from the challenge of the Moon puzzles even Chinese observers.”

    Maybe concept of exploration and expansion is simply no longer in the American psychic. There was a time when nobody had to ask “what does NASA do?” because it was obvious. Just like why back in 1800s nobody asked “why go West?” Right now we keep hearing that NASA question and almost everyone stumbles to answer because they want a clear answer that can be answered in 15 seconds or less. If you have to ask (i.e. why climb Everest) maybe exploration and expansion just ain’t for you.

    • Vladislaw says:
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      The pork premuim is so high now nothing is getting done. It costs like 200 million a month or about 2.4 billion just to keep them pushing brooms. Not much left over for hardware when every congressional porkonaut wants 5 engineers in their district to turn each bolt. MASSIVE waste of resources.

    • Mark_Flagler says:
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      China should have lessons in its own history that might explain this. The Ming dynasty, on the verge of becoming a world power in the 15th century, literally burned its ships and turned inward. Perhaps China sees something similar in the US today, and can’t understand why we didn’t learn from the Ming experience. If so, it’s probably because so few Americans even know there was a Ming dynasty, much less about its decisions–which were world shaping in the end.

      • Paul451 says:
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        But why doesn’t China learn from its own experience and set its massive commercial industry onto space? Why is it copying the command model that the US copied from the Soviets? Why not pay-on-delivery for service from their own commercial providers?

        Mass produced launchers. Mass produced satellites. Mass produced probes and rovers. Eventually mass produced capsules and space stations.

        • dogstar29 says:
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          The Chinese program is expanding its commercial launch capabilities as paying customers (domestic and foreign) appear. The manufacturing and prelaunch processing of its launch vehicles is quite efficient.

          The Chinese human spaceflight program, like ours, is not commercial and is entirely tax-supported. It’s purpose is to build national pride and international partnerships, and showcase aerospace capabilities to potential customers. It does not have to be as large as ours to accomplish this. It is an indication, not a driver, of a nation’s economic success.

          • Paul451 says:
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            I just think, what would give the nation pride like utterly dominating space. Like having individual Chinese companies with more capability than the entire US space program. Like hearing about Chinese probes/rovers at every planet and major moon. China dominating both government and commercial launches, not to mention doing the majority of science in space.

            Plus the Chinese government being able to order up a manned lunar landing via low cost off-the-shelf services.

            What they are doing seems the worst way to gain national pride. It seems weak and “me too” kind of pathetic. And it ignores how China has come to dominate world manufacturing.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            We do have a big lead in the move to commercial though. We have a lot more commercial aerospace companies that can move us into a straight commercial system before china can. I just a few short years we will have commercial access and destination for LEO.

      • mfwright says:
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        I asked a friend from Taiwan of what she thinks of this discussion, here is her reply:

        “Sure I like to see NASA embark on more space missions. Maybe China can be a good buddy to spur constructive competitive spirits like Russia did to USA’s space project with their Sputnik. JF Kennedy may not have made the bold decision to get on the Moon as soon as possible if it weren’t sparked by the “we have to do it before the Russians do it” mind set.

        However you have to have enough budget to burn. USA is wasting money in many aspects. Need to learn to be frugal like many other countries and also improve efficiency in many country sub structures in order to save enough budget for space programs. Too many Americans live on unrestricted borrowing and leave behind debts to following generations. This system would eventually crash in a disaster for the poor last generation. I saw some reports that each new born baby will have to share a large sum of debts before they can take their first look of the world when they are born. While medical advance allow retired seniors to live longer and longer while the economy is weak and fewer and fewer babies are born and successfully raised the shrinking work force would be hard pressed to feed themselves plus the growing number of retired mouths, let alone supporting any budge black holes like a moon project.

        Ming dynasty gave up ocean going because China was already rich with food, resources, …etc not only self – sustaining but can live a good life. Even to this day China still have greater potential in natural minerals and agricultural potential than Europe. Europe on the other hand was lacking resources and space so they had the urge to expand. As luck would have it, complacency, corruption brought the demise of a past world power and new world powers come to fill in its gap. The Asia mainland is so rich in resources and agricultural potential people there have their hands full just fighting with each other to control the vast land. Once you control good portion of the Chinese territory you can live well by yourself without connection to the outside, like the decades after Red China was born till it opened up to the world. Open to the world makes life better but not necessary for survival. In Europe even if a strong power conquers the whole Europe it would still be starved to death without resources from outside colonies, like the Nazi Germany and Napoleon’s short lived European dominance. Both were defeated by British (and later American) blockade to cut off resources supply and trading outside of Europe.”

      • Malaysian Chink says:
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        Admiral Zheng He made 7 trips to Africa. Ming dynasty had an armada of at least 200 ships, the largest Navy in the world. The armada had about 60,000 strong.

        This Naval endeavor is not for war, it is for trade, buying spices and herbal medicine from Arabs and residual imperial records saying that they even transport African exotic animals like giraffes, cheetahs and rhino for the Ming Emperor to see. Giraffes were fantasized as a legendary Chinese animal.

        Internal imperial courts politics decided that Naval power is not needed, since there will be no formidable threat from the sea, but the Brits and other Europeans gave them a real surprise. If the Ming could maintain their naval supremacy then, history has to be re-written.

        Zheng He lost influence and died a very unhappy man. He is a Muslim BTW and during one of his voyages, he dispatched one of Ming princesses to be married to a Persian prince.

        I have a Persian friend who said that there used to be an old saying, as beautiful as a Chinese princess. A Ming princess schooled in imperial court etiquette, donned with embroidered elaborate silk garment with a skin as smooth as silk to match will stand out like a stunning beauty. May be that is how the saying came about.

  3. DTARS says:
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    Again my question who will compete price with Spacex??? While we throw our human space flight money at SLS, won’t china be smart enough to copy Spacex AND use their money to smartly get humans in Space while we let Mr. Wolf and others keep us grounded with the SLS jobs program?? Do we have to wait for all these folks, congress and SLS enployees to retire first???

    PS. When you have a country that is ruled from the top, they can do the public space thing much better than a Democracy. More efficient!

    • Anonymous_Newbie says:
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      Give it a rest with all your SpaceX schilling. They are one of many, have had a few somewhat successful flights, but have failed to meet projections and milestones same as everyone else.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        with one HUGE difference, those failed projections were not being done under a cost plus fixed fee contract… so the taxpayers were not getting bilked out of billions.
        Those milestones were paid for by the companies FIRST, they had to do them on their own dime and when NASA was satisfied they were then paid a FIXED price.
        To try and claim that SpaceX is the same as the usual suspects who get no bid cost plus fixed fee contracts with enough escalator clauses in them they can reach the moon without a rocket .. is …well it is beyond silly to try and make a comparison.
        If you can not at least acknowledge that SpaceX is breaking the mold .. well then you are simply a SHILL for the stalinist big government method that is getting us no where fast.

  4. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Russia is the other country that presently has the capacity to launch humans into space. Its space program, however, reliant upon technology designed nearly five decades ago, is getting by on past momentum.

    Maybe Russia needs to rename their hardware elements whenever they upgrade them, then maybe this often-repeated wrong assumption will go away. They haven’t changed things that didn’t need to be changed, but the Soyuz has undergone a lot of technology improvements over the years.

    • hikingmike says:
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      Yeah I agree, and what about Angara? Coming soon. Not for human spaceflight but definitely will be used by their “space program”.

  5. Mark_Flagler says:
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    The articles tend to focus exclusively on NASA as the American space program. That’s no longer true; our space program now includes quasi-independent groups like SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, Orbital, Blue Origin, Bigelow, and others–In other words, the ‘commercial side’ of the effort.
    So NASA is not America’s only weapon in a race back to the moon, far from it.
    Different motives apply to the commercial sector, too. Bob Bigelow sees profits from hotels and science outposts in LEO and elsewhere, and he will probably start launching them within the next five to seven years. He also has laid out plans for a lunar base. So have companies in other countries.
    We can expect Blue Origin to follow at its own pace with its own agenda. Orbital may elect to crew-rate its systems (though I doubt it), and assuming SpaceShip Two works as planned, Virgin Galactic might go for an orbital capability at some point.
    Further, assuming success of the Falcon Heavy, the US will soon have the ability to send missions to the moon fairly cheaply, even if the cores are not re-used.
    The Heavy is rated at 53,000 kg to LEO and 13,200 kg to Mars. A fully packed unmanned Dragon (about 7500 kg) could be sent on a round trip to Mars in a single launch, and there have been rumors of a Heavy+Dragon circumlunar demonstration flight.
    Now recall that the Apollo, LM, and SM combined weighed about 45,000 kg. Use three Heavy launches to allow somewhat more comfortable and capable spacecraft, a TLI stage, and a safety margin; link the payloads in orbit and go. Dragon Rider would serve in place of Apollo, so the basic tasks would be to develop the lander and the TLI stage (which could probably be based on existing SpaceX technology.
    And if Japan or the ESA decided that it wanted humans on the moon, and price checked the Falcon Heavy, things in the next decade could get very interesting.
    The point isn’t so much that we could do this overnight (though five or six years seems possible with enough interest and funding), as that China is competing not just with NASA, but some smart, aggressive profit-driven enterprises. This is not a two-horse race; it’s far more complex than that.

    • Vladislaw says:
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      I would prefer to see a reusable EDS and Habitat launched….

    • dogstar29 says:
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      Many as NASA see our future as another race to the moon. It is more complex than that. Nations compete and cooperate at the same time, trying to show the value of their ideals while also building trade, commerce, and economic success. Building new technology, new commercial products and exports, creating new sustainable jobs, all these are likely to be a lot more important to our future than who lands on the moon. NASA needs to reexamine its priorities, particularly in the chronically underfunded technology development side.

  6. Vladislaw says:
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    Why do we never see any actual spending numbers with China? Are their budgets expanding? IF so? why do they so rarely launch humans? Just waiting until 2020 and they completion of their station?

    • Paul451 says:
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      Western estimates are that they’ve spent US$6b in total, and are now spending about US$2b/yr.

      • Forrest Lumpkin says:
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        $2B is a pretty big number!

        If the sequester continues, Bolden has stated that the FY 14 budget would be about $16.2 B. So while the China budget is still just 12 % of the NASA dollar value, I wonder if that might underestimate the size of the China program vs NASA given the differences in the economies of the two countries. It would be interesting to compare the head counts between the two programs. For example, if we assume that the average “cost” of a worker supported by NASA is $100K including salary, benefits and overhead (I know this is probably low but it is a nice round number), that would imply the head count for the US civilian space program is around 162000. I would suppose that the “cost” number in China is much lower (why else would lots of iPhones, etc. be manufactured there). If we assume that the China “cost” number is $25K, the the head count for China would be 80000!

        This doesn’t of course take into account differences in the average productivity of a “space worker” between the US and China as well as many other adjusting factors that would need to be considered in a more detailed and serious comparison. However one could make an argument based on the trends of the last decade that whatever productivity lead the US currently has relative to China, that the gap is narrowing. Also, given that China’s overall economy is growing faster than the US economy, the overall premise that China could overtake the US as the world leader in space exploration within a decade seems plausible. That may lead to a “Sputnik” type reaction in the US. I certainly hope so.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          I don’t think we can really compare NASA/US and China because of all the programs and technologies that NASA is engaged in which China space isn’t. If you compare planetary missions alone there’s a big difference in what the two countries have taken on, and many things, like aeronautics, are under completely different agencies and budgets than their space programs, unlike NASA.

        • Littrow says:
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          Average salary for degreed engineers in China was about $1000 five years ago. Figure it has doubled – that is still a million people working on their program over there. US salary is prob closer to $250,000.

        • LPHartswick says:
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          I seriously doubt we have a good understanding of how much they are spending and what their ultimate goals are. The Chinese government is a seriously scary group of people; and are not above twisting in the tender parts to get whatever they want. Look at their shenanigans with rare earth materials and their neighbors in their “sphere of influence.” Another great reason for our politicians to get their collective thumbs out…and invest appropriately on a continuing basis for America’s future in space. We need to go back to the Moon ASAP; and make consistent progress in developing the technologies to live and work there on an extended basis as an initial step to further exploration and development in the solar system.

  7. Anonymous says:
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    You can be darn sure that China is in it to win. There is incredible opportunity in Space for the US but the portal is narrow and we risk having it blocked unless we ramp up our efforts big time. Collaboration might be fine someday but there has to be a leader and we can’t allow it to be the Chinese. We know they have a global agenda which is greatly at odds with ours.

    • Vladislaw says:
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      What portal is narrow? Capital automatically flows to extra normal profits. If there is easy money to be made in space and America’s capital markets respond? You could see a flood of hundreds of billions into spaceflight almost overnight with just a few IPOs.

      • Anonymous says:
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        Whoever holds the high ground can make the portal as wide or narrow as they want.

        • Vladislaw says:
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          What are you talking about? Any country is free to put hardware and people into orbit. There isn’t any “high ground” in outer space.
          You still did not DEFINE what this PORTAL is?

    • Jafafa Hots says:
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      Yes! There can only be one leader!

      Because space is such a limited resource.

  8. Brian_M2525 says:
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    NASA has no idea what its goals are or should be in human space flight. It has not known for many years.

    Back a good 20 years ago NASA HSF transformed itself from a technology development organization to an operations organization. Maybe they were confused that they had something to do with the military. The military does missions and mainly operates hardware. That is not what NASA used to be about.

    With Shuttle and ISS it became all about operations. Except there is not that much operating to be done anymore. Shuttle is dead. ISS assembly is over. Most ISS operations are actually conducted from the ground. Astronauts are mainly lab techs.

    The entire organization is led by operations experts. They have no idea how to design, develop, build, test or certify anything. They are trying to re-learn by building Orion and Morpheus – spending a lot of money and a lot of time doing it.

    What is missing?

    NASA needs a vision and a goal for what it -NASA- is all about. It really is more about NASA’s role in technology, the economy, information, education. It might have something to do with the goals of landings on asteroids or the moon or Mars, but these are almost incidental.

    The operations people who lead NASA are not the right sort of people to figure it out as they have no relevant experience and few have any relevant education. They are still dreaming of flying missions. The missions will never come unless NASA figures out what its role is all about.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      They have no idea how to design, develop, build, test or certify anything.

      I agree with your diagnosis, but not necessarily with your prescription.

      Are you saying that NASA’s job should be to “design, develop, build, test [and] certify” things? If so, I would seriously reconsider that idea; if not, then much of what follows is irrelevant to your post.

      We need to think less about what NASA once was and is now, and concentrate on what NASA needs to be from here on out if it is to survive and succeed.

      Except in the case of small scale developmental prototyping, I think NASA should get almost entirely out of the design and build functions, especially the build. I can envision a lot of debate over the “design” part, but I think it would stem almost entirely from different interpretations of what we mean by design. I strongly feel that NASA should be designing in the “inventor” sense (new concepts, technologies, applications), but not in the mission hardware sense, except (sometimes perhaps) in the case of specialty instruments and sensors. I point to the record of JPL/CIT, who are not NASA, as a good example of what putting the right jobs in the right hands can efficiently and effectively accomplish.

      The contributor for each of the many functions, operations and skills that go into a NASA program should be whoever best possesses that capability as a strength, as opposed to trying to encompass everything within a local empire. One aspect of the old-school Apollo NASA that I think should be the same today is the importance of contractor / subcontractor management β€” the people who should be doing almost all of the designing, building, integrating, and operating of NASA programs, not NASA in-house armies.

      NASA has become a top-heavy, unmanageable house of cards, employing far more people than it should, and taking jobs away from the industry people who are more capable of performing many of these functions. In response, the two largest aerospace companies joined forces to create their own army, to everyone’s detriment.

      NASA can never go back to being totally NACA-like, but it has gone way too far in the other direction, and is continuing to do so. I don’t see how NASA, as it is, can be “fixed.” I believe that those who have been calling for a restructuring of what NASA does in house and what it contracts out β€” and how those contracts are written β€” are absolutely right. It would have to be done incrementally and therefore will take considerable time, but I think the government and the public would not begrudge NASA that time if a sensible and complete plan β€” and a precise explanation of why β€” were presented. That plan would have to include employment assistance agreements with the aerospace companies, so that job dislocations are minimized as much as possible, and any critical skills are not lost. Perhaps political capital can be gained by also promoting it as a major jobs program. One thing is clear: things as they are will not, of themselves, improve; they will only continue to degrade in the absence of conceptual changes.

      One final note about making changes: everyone must cooperate. At some point, years of service don’t buy you the ability to be obstinate. Anyone, at any level, who “fights back” should have a pink slip within 24 hours, and that policy needs to be made perfectly clear right up front. There is simply too much at stake to fart around any longer. Those in Congress and the White House who fight the necessary changes need to be given their walking papers at the next election, and the ability to do that starts with educating the public (and, I think, most of the rest of the politicians, too, unfortunately). Perhaps this could be a test case, showing “the people” that they can take back their government from the pork merchants if they’re willing to do a little more learning and a little more work.

      Big words from a small man, I realize; but I truly believe that all of the simple options have been exhausted. Big change is necessary to save America’s space program, and perhaps its future β€” in my humble opinion. What’s at stake is too important to not try.

      • Brian_M2525 says:
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        NASA may not have to be in the business of design, develop, build, test or certify anything

        – or they may be-

        if they are a research organization then they should be a participant in the development process;

        even if all they are, are contract monitors and managers, if they offer any value added then they ought to be experienced and have a good understanding-even if they do not do it themselves.

        In any case, NASA needs to figure out what their roles and responsibilities are.

        One of the problems with old-space commercial companies is that they are fully part of the military industrial complex and their first goal is to soak as many dollars as possible from the taxpayer. NASA should protect against this. Instead all we seem to hear from NASA is how they really need double the money or else they cannot work effectively. In this case they’ve become part of the problem, not the solution.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          Well put Brian, I absolutely agree. I maintain that Managers, Engineers, Scientists and Technicians are all professionals with their own skill sets and experience. They are not interchangeable. However, each of these disciplines (and others) require a certain basic understanding of what each of the others do in order to interact effectively.

          It would appear that NASA managers, and those responsible for placing NASA managers, don’t understand this (or are perhaps either incapable or powerless to act accordingly). Whatever the case, you can’t simply “promote” anyone into a management position who has not been properly trained for it and has not had at least some experience at it. Time and again, in several industries, I’ve seen or heard about senior engineers being promoted to management positions and failing miserably because they still tried to be engineers day to day, and weren’t doing the managing, except when forced to, and then doing it poorly.

          Realistically, being a good Manager, (or Engineer, Scientist or Technician) is partly an art, on top of education and experience, and art requires talent; and talents come in different amounts and combinations in each of us. Some people excel at one discipline and are hopelessly over their heads in another. And, as Heinlein pointed out, too many experts (wrongly) seem to think that their expertise automatically overflows into other fields; and the more of an expert someone is the more severely they make this mistake. (Despite all his credentials and attainments, I put Michael Griffin in this category).

          NASA, like everyone else, also has to deal with the promote from within as opposed to hiring from the outside problem. It’s great when you can successfully promote from within the ranks, but NASA’s track record would seem to clearly indicate that it generally doesn’t work out well in their case (there have been some exceptions).

          At the best of times this is a hard situation to deal with, but until NASA, as you said, figure[s] out what their roles and responsibilities are nothing is going to change. The problem I see here is that NASA has not been empowered to decide this for themselves. They are getting political mandates in this matter, but those mandates are ambiguous and forever changing, mainly because “who’s calling the shots” has become a hopeless mess, and the controlling legislation has long been ignored. This perhaps results from NASA being considered as, or at least treated as, “part of the military industrial complex,” as you’ve pointed out.

          The problem has been growing for a long time, so odds are it will also take a long time to fix it.

    • Anonymous_Newbie says:
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      “The entire organization is led by operations experts. They have no idea
      how to design, develop, build, test or certify anything.”

      I think you are too quick to dump all centers into a single bucket. There are several centers doing real research (perhaps not associated with HSF) and designing, developing, building, testing, certifying, and flying hardware. LADEE comes to mind as a recent example.

  9. Malaysian Chink says:
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    Most of you folks missed the point.

    The Japanese has made umpteen trips to ISS ferrying cargo. So are the Europeans for many years.

    But they dare not but a human on board their spacecraft ferrying cargo. The safety consideration in design a human-rated rockets are completely different.

    The safety factor in designing a human rated system is an open ended cost equation. How safe is safe and what is the dollar value attached to it.

    Space X is still tinkering with rocket systems. The life support system in a spacecraft is a very bulky system. How about docking? Space X do not have docking capability. Without the Canadarm 2, the Dragon capsule could not dock, it is called berthing and still having a lot of hiccups.

    The earliest estimate to have a human rated system is 2017, and if they can do it, in another 3 years time, they will have no place to put the astronauts when ISS is de-orbited in 2020.

    So Space X is going to design a space station again.

    Here is some facts,

    The Soviets achieved their 3 crew manned mission in its 8th attempt
    The US, in its 17th attempt.

    The Chinese in its 3rd,

    Don’t take my words for it, check it out.

    14 more manned space missions are simply money down the drain.

    • Vladislaw says:
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      There is EVERY reason to belive that the ISS will be extended until 2028. Bigelow Aerospace will launch their commercial station as soon as the United States has domestic commercial services to LEO. SpaceX has a bunch of second hand cargo carriers ready to fly to the Bigelow station.
      To try and compare what we knew about human spaceflight in the late 1950’s to the early 1960’s and compare it to what we know today along with the current computers, metalurgy and manufacturing technologies is just plain silly.
      You HONESTLY going to sit there and say SpaceX or Boeing are going to need 17 attempts to achieve human spaceflight?

  10. Gordy says:
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    I have good look on between the live and replay pictures on CCTV, they are different! I watched on Saturday night live, the 7500 horse power propeller didn’t blow out the dusts on the surface of the moon
    when it suspended above it, even on landing, the “big” landing feet
    (4), also not made the dust. It is weird. As known, the surface of moon has certain thickness of soft and losing dusts, and any mechanical movement will cause the dusting. However, the physical phenomenon is not shown on live pictures, instead, shown on replay. They have been
    modified to meet the real situation. It would be possible that the β€œlive”
    pictures shown to the is just computer simulation, to guarantee the success live show, while the after successful landing, then that pictures catched from Change 3 show to the world.