Bolden: No More Flagship Missions (Update: Bolden Flip Flops)
Are the Days of NASA’s Science Flagship Missions Over?, Space Policy Online (last week)
“NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden had a tough message for the space science community today – forget about flagship missions, they’re not affordable today. At the very same time on Capitol Hill, however, the chairman of one of NASA’s key committees was expressing enthusiasm about a mission to Europa – unquestionably a flagship mission. The disconnect could not be more stark. Flagship missions are NASA’s most expensive (over $1 billion) and risky space science missions, but offer exceptional scientific payoff.”
Statement of Administrator Charles Bolden Regarding NASA’s Commitment to Flagship Missions
“NASA remains committed to planning, launching and operating flagship missions that meet the challenging objectives of our science, technology and aeronautics communities as identified through decadal surveys, advisory groups, the Administration and Congress. We are dedicated to pursuing the most cost-effective ways to accomplish this goal in order to provide balance with an increased cadence of missions that vary in size, destination and complexity.”
Right. 2020 Mars rover is budgeted at $1.5B – and thats the starting price on this auction. We all know which way the price tags move.
Is Bolden saying its canned ? Didn’t think so ..
FWIW, I interpret this statement as meaning no new Flagship-class missions will be authorised. Existing missions (2020 Rover and JWST, for example) are safe.
Funny how Mars lobby can “lock in” a $1.5B expenditure 6 years in advance even in the times of everything else getting cut left and right, but things like outer planets, lunar surface missions just never have enough cash.
Not to mention the rover that’s already there that we cannot afford and is going to compete with Cassini…arguably one of NASA’s crown jewels.
More rheteric that ebbs and flows over time. I remember when Cassini was touted as the last Flagship mission EVER.
Are we going to try the Daniel Goldin “faster, cheaper, better” debacle plan all over again? That really sucks, especially since the Flagship missions bring home the science. Think of how much we’ve gotten out of Cassini.
Considering the Pu-238 situation, though, it’s not surprising. They’ll barely be making enough of it to put it on their New Horizons missions, never mind a Flagship mission on top of that.
The problem with cheaper better faster was that it simply cut a bunch of steps but retained the flagship mentality (pick 2 of 3 is the old adage). If all things go well, cbf is great! But problems often crop up.
Is there a way to do things cheaper and better but simply slower?
First consider JWST. The report shows the cost overruns occurred because of no reserves for ‘threats’ in the baseline program, a flat budget deferred work (doubles or triples deferred costs?), and the departing 2008 Congress cut the FY09 budget by 100M (~20%) (See Fig 5.3 http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/499…
How could any government or contractor program manager add in costs of threats or to reduce threats without reserves on a flat budget? With a current year ~20% budget cut?
JWST worked the difficult areas first, and the program status in 2011 reflects this emphasis: Mirrors and Instruments were 90% Complete. Sunshield 10%, Spacecraft bus 25%, Assembly/Testing 3%. Since it was a flagship, the cascading effect of the deferred work is shown in Figure 5.6.
Now consider SLS/Constellation that was to ‘close the gap’ by 2010, but it started four, no five engine development programs along the way (was it not off the shelf hardware?), abandoned Ares I and J2X, and spent a total of 60 days showing it was the most cost effective solution to start a $100B program.
Recall that NASA requires TRL 6 at PDR, but has little cash to mature technologies at a significantly lower cost than giving it flagship status.
Consider creating roadmaps for high priority technology maturation but funded at a low level. For example, see the ATLAST Technology Development plan. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/…
“If we can can afford a “full speed ahead” pace, each period would last one year.” If not, then budget each technology and perhaps it takes 3 or 4 years to reach TRL-6 as a more serial approach is taken. All technologies would plan to complete TRL-6 milestones with a least a year margin before a mission PDR.”
Most of the professional program managers and ‘bean counters’ already understand this engineering process in great depth. What is happening to their plans?
Having worked on a CBF program that failed, there’s another issue: human fallout. After our mission failed, it was so emotionally devastating that half the staff quit, taking decades of experience with them. Now, the idea was that we could afford to lose a few missions, because there would be so many going on that people would just jump to another, and the loss of any one mission wasn’t such a big deal. The reality was that there weren’t all these little programs, it was still just a handful and our team worked on this one almost exclusively. And we failed due to inadequate GSE (ground support equipment), which left a critical system (in hindsight) under-characterized. And it was inadequate because we were told we couldn’t afford the better system we needed.
So the “let’s do some cheaper missions” actually tends to turn into “let’s have a lot of failures and make NASA even worse”. It’s not a linear cost savings.
Wouldn’t this be solved if Better-Faster-Cheaper missions weren’t still silos? Ie, if they were instead a series of incremental missions.
Would your team have been so devastated if they were already working on Fail-Sat 2… 3… 4…? Each incorporating lessons learned from the previous.
It seems like BFC was just conventionally managed one-off missions, merely stripped of funding and resources. Worst of both worlds.
[I’m not suggesting you had enough funding under BFC to do this. I’m suggesting this as an alternative to Flagship missions. Break the funding into multiple step-wise missions. Prove the simplest stripped down core in flight, then incrementally add capability. Once you’re flying a full system, upgrade the core on the next one. Then upgrade the instruments around the improved capacity of the core on following flights. Rinse, repeat.]
Paul,
I agree with cb450sc that the human element is a factor; in fact, in my experience, there are several ways in which programs didn’t go as planned, because of the perceptions that people held, before during and after the program.
In one industry were I worked, it was absolute gospel that if any section of a program took longer than was shown in the schedule, then the whole program would take longer and would cost more, and there was absolutely no way to escape either one. This sort of hasty generalization is nonsense, but the irrational power that I’ve seen it exert over people is amazing. They believed it, so it happened.
Of course, things work the other way, too. When people work hard and well, and a successful program “goes out the door,” a little piece of each contributor goes with it. There’s an emotional attachment in that satisfaction which carries over and makes those people, that team, even more productive, and more content, on the next program.
I’ve learned that managing the people is the job, and the rest is just details. In addressing any new program problem I always made the first step making sure that the people were in good shape.
I’m not suggesting that a failed program doesn’t damage morale, I’m thinking of the difference in what a failure means when it’s the Mk1 test launch, versus when it’s the only and final system.
[For real world examples, imagine being on the SpaceX Falcon1 dev team, versus being on the Mars Polar Lander dev team.]
Paul,
I didn’t mean to imply that you were dismissing or minimizing the human element; I was just trying to emphasize it.
I’m a big believer in your proposed incremental missions concept , and long have been. There are many advantages to the concept, and I think they’re so obvious that I won’t try to list them here. Of course, it’s not a 100% solution to morale problems brought on by failures, even small failures. Whatever program a team happens to be in the middle of (or at the end of, as the case may be) is going to be their primary emotional driver (in the workplace). Even if we’ve just finished a very large program (or increment) with great success, if the current task is not going well it affects our emotions and our performance (or, as the Navy Seals say, “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday“).
Although I’m now way off topic for this thread, let me say again that managing the people is the manager’s job, and the rest is just details. From what I read here on NASA Watch, and get from other sources, it would seem that many managers on all levels at NASA haven’t learned this yet, or for some reason choose not to believe it, to everyone’s loss. Of course, if there really are going to be no more flagship missions, and the lesser missions continue to fail to get funding as well, then I guess NASA management styles are not going to matter for too much longer.
Breaking the missions up to prove tech is fine for inner planet missions. The longer flight times for outer planet missions would prohibit that course of action being practical in flight hardware upgrades for follow-on missions.
[Long long post. This is a hobby-horse of mine.]
See, you’re still stuck in “silo” thinking. One project with one goal.
A basic spacecraft core (nav & pointing, propulsion, comms, power, etc) is usable at a variety of targets. From the moon to asteroids, to Mars, to Mercury. The basic flock of instruments is also useful at a variety of targets. That means that the earlier, simpler vehicles can still be used in minor missions that none-the-less test them fully.
So you might flight-test a Mk1 stripped down spacecraft bus in orbit (sans instruments). A Mk1 core with basic instruments at the moon, say. Several Mk1’s each with different sets of test instruments at more distant targets. An uprated Mk2 core with all the proven Mk1 instruments at a further target. And finally Mk2 core with uprated Mk2 instruments at your Flagship target, or several to several targets, since you should be running them off the assembly-line by now. [Then you put your hand up for funding for Mk3 & 4 over the next decade.]
Example, the JWST. The planned configuration should have been the fourth or fifth telescope in the family, not the first and only. For example, you might start with a test of, say, the inner few mirrors, and the most basic spacecraft bus, launched to ISS, with power/comms/pointing/propulsion supplied by the station. Essentially whatever you can develop in 12-18 months is your Mk1. [Note, ISS is… dirty… the mirrors will be coated quickly, limiting actual useful work. However, as an Earth-observation platform, it would still be a fun distraction for the ISS crew, like the Cupola. But being at ISS will allow astronauts to add and replace new systems for testing. It would be a permanent test-bed for instruments and equipment.]
Once you’ve proven the basic core, you upgrade to something with the approximate capacity of HST, serving as a testbed to develop compatible instruments. Then add the full deployable mirror system, but no cooling and no multi-layered sunshield. Once that’s proven, you develop, test and add more and more elements until you reach the originally intended full capacity.
Two things to note: This would certainly be more expensive than the original proposed budget, but I sincerely believe no more expensive than the actual $9b+ budget. And many of the intermediate steps would be useful in their own right, increasing your return on investment.
The final configuration would also inevitably be more reliable then the actual JWST, since it would be the fourth or fifth or seventh off the line; the team would be honed and battle-hardened before they build it, not after they are done and disbanded. (And if it did fail, whipping up another one would be inexpensive and routine.)
And that team, and that capacity, would be ideally placed to start developing the Next Next Generation Space Telescope. And that NNGST would start with now off-the-shelf NGST instruments around an upgraded core…
Flip side: Imagine if SpaceX had tried to develop the Falcon Heavy/Merlin 2 concept as their first and only launcher. What would that look like today? My guess is something like SLS. Only worse because of the lack of $2.7b/yr funding.
Likewise, contrast the step-wise development from Mercury to Apollo 17 with the single-design-in-a-single-step development of the Space Shuttle. How bad and how expensive would Apollo have been had there been one design and one flight? And how much better the shuttle had NASA gone through multiple steps during the seventies and early ’80s?
You’re spot on.
I went to a talk last week by members of the Cassini team. Someone in the audience asked why there wasn’t a Cassini-2 for Uranus and a Cassini-3 for Neptune, basically the same vehicle with slight improvements. The reply was sort of “we want a completely new design for each mission”. Obviously then the NRE stays very high. Also with the long transit times it would have been easy to transition the same ops team from one mission to the next to the next.
“we want a completely new design for each mission”.
Which is exactly the opposite of early spaceflight era – you had series of increasingly more complex spacecraft launching on regular schedule ( Surveyor, Mariner , Ranger, Luna, Venera etc etc )
Chang’e program seems to have picked that paradigm.
I am well aware of the White Mouse and Elephant concept to build methods that have been used in the past. I also am aware that you can’t build the airplane in-flight for long outer planet missions. The longer missions have higher cost for developement and opps. Common core buses and other such off the self tech are not always the answer to such endeavors, (but should be used when applicable). If you are going out there the cost will be out there too.
That might be true for planetary missions, but it really isn’t for astrophysics missions. They really tend to go in very large jumps, mostly due to technology changes. There’s a list about 100 deep for different kinds of astrophysics missions, everything from x-ray telescopes to formation-flying interferometers. Each decade you get maybe one flagship mission and perhaps a half-dozen small explorers. As a result they are almost all very different from each other, and by the time any one science topic gets a shot at another mission, things have changed enough that the technology transfer is conceptual at best.
You mean New Frontiers. Also, not every outer planets mission requires Pu-238.
My mistake. And while you don’t necessarily have to have the Pu-238 for an Outer Planets mission, it’s still by and far the best power source for them. Juno’s going to run on solar power, but it takes three solar panels each with 9 ft by 29 ft dimensions, and it gets 486 W out of that (eventually degrading further). Cassini gets over 600 W of power from its Pu-238.
Bolden is an undertaker.
I wonder is he isn’t sly like a fox. Everywhere the right is saying we spend too much. He’s just jumping on the bandwagon so he can call himself and NASA a team player. “Look at us! No big spending, no siree!”, while looking down the road.
Or not.
Sean O’Keefe declared there would be no Shuttle mission to Hubble. Griffin put it back on schedule. To dismiss flagship missions even in the present crisis is short-sighted. There will be flagship missions in NASA’s near-term. Provisions can be made to make small and presently smaller steps in developing flagship concepts and design. Its not necessary to eliminate them. But I agree with Bolden that more smaller missions is a good idea but not by cannibalizing all funds earmarked for flagships.
Bolden has said as much during these times, that NASA has to think out of the box. There are a lot of NASA researchers doing so on a daily basis. Its part of the job and notion of NASA. However, the budget impact on big missions calls for more rethinking. Unfortunately, Bolden and others fail to rethink the possibility of ditching SLS for emerging commercial as a way of saving the NASA budget, planetary scientists, projects and missions across the agency.
If the manned program (HEOMD) is unwilling to take advantage of the full potential of low-cost commercial launch vehicles, then SMD (robotic missions) should. Consider the JPL Europa Clipper concept. The concept slides are impressive, well done. A first criticism is that they considered only Atlas V and SLS. The Falcon 9 has a less effective upper stage than the Atlas Centaur but Falcon Heavy will be coming on line. SMD Discovery or Flagship missions could employ these cost effective alternatives. An Atlas 551 costs $250M to lift 8900 kg to GTO. The Falcon Heavy will lift 21000 kg to GTO for $135M. More than twice as much payload for nearly half the cost.
SMD missions could take from the playbook that Bolden-HQ-SLS refuse to consider. Utilize smaller heavy lift vehicles and merge components in LEO to carry out interplanetary missions. A solution for Europa Clipper using Falcons could do without such a scenario but considering the low cost, upper stages for transfer to solar orbit could be placed in LEO. Inexpensive solid motors might be employed or could a upper stage with necessary fuel be hoisted by a Falcon 9 and mated to the Clipper Europa probe. Fuel depots have already been considered for interplanetary travel including robotics. This desperate time for SMD could call for moving away from Atlas/Delta and using less costly Falcons and a design for storing reusable upper stages at a fuel depot.
As another example, the Atlas V 551 was 1/4th the total cost of the Jupiter Juno mission ($1.1B). Saving $120M in launch cost could be used to develop lighter weight and more robust electronics, reducing mass or more funds for more rigorous testing.
But the choice of launch vehicle is an easy can to kick around. Using the Jovian system as the target, a flagship mission involves three factors that raise the cost – radiation shielding, mass and power. If launch costs could be halved while payload lift increased, this would provide more flexibility to engineers designing shielding or power systems. More funds could be diverted to developing miniaturized rad-hard electronics.
While missions like Europa Clipper must be conceived with fixed choices in technology and not with what might become available with some luck, the present circumstances are reducing available funds for early development. If SMD takes the high road and commits to the less expensive and more capable new commercial vehicles, the projected cost of launching any Discovery and Flagship mission can be reduced and funds can be shifted to solving some of these technical challenges sooner. Clipper and other farther off missions could design with confidence that cost and more investment in R&D would make enabling technologies ready for use. Present development paths for many technologies have a progression to higher TRL that takes too many years to be considered for many possible missions such as Clipper.
Another approach to work around the lack of the high energy upper stage would be the one that Dawn/DS-1 took – ion propulsion. Solid kick stages work too of course.
ESA deep space missions seem to go for ion drives – maybe because they have smaller budgets to begin with.
Actually, the last time I worked on an RFI for a mission concept (for those NRO telescopes), we were explicitly told to assume availability of a Falcon 9 launch vehicle as part of the costing. So they are clearly on the radar.
SpaceX is working on the Raptor which is a Methalox engine of around 650klb thrust. This may be overpowered for an upper stage although they’re now saying that the Merlin 1D can produce 15% more sea level thrust than originally expected so they now have a more capable upper stage engine.
SLS for Crew is wasteful. I agree. SLS for Cargo is essential.
Not at the expected cost. No mission can afford SLS period and anyway, there’s no money available for such missions. SLS sucks up all the cash.
Good Post.
It brought two things to mind. First, with respect to SMD going with Falcons, everything that’s been going on lately considered, it would appear it’s just a matter of time before SMD has to go with Falcons (unless a comparable alternative suddenly shows up) because there simply will not be money made available for the current, more costly options. If it’s going to happen anyhow, why not sooner rather than later? It’ll put a little more money back in their pocket.
Second, with Falcon 9, but more specifically Falcon Heavy, a lot of proposals are being considered in the blogosphere, but in how many cases has the availability date of a finished, tested, deliverable LV been compared to the preferred (or even available) launch windows? Generally speaking, the further out we move the destination, the fewer and farther apart the launch opportunities become.
Agree. It needs to be sooner. If SMD does begin choosing the less expensive Falcons and particularly if commercial demand increases, SpaceX will have the enviable task of ramping up production. I do not think an EELV of ULA can evolve into anything competitve. Likewise, the Europeans, Russians do not have anything soon. The Falcons will be in a league of their own for at least 5 years, maybe closer to 10. But manned mars missions will need a 120 mT class LV. With aggressive requirements, SpaceX could be the only viable competitor for a contract for Super Heavy Lift. There could be NASA technology transfer that accelerates development of a upper stage for Falcon (interplanetary) but I suspect SpaceX would rather have design plans ready to proceed with what they have only mentioned – Merlin 2.
Each SLS/Orion launch is a flagship mission, at least in terms of cost.
so were the Shuttle launches.
Shuttle launches, at least over the last decade did something tangible – they put ISS together.
And the SLS launches will do interesting things too, i’m sure. I’d like to see a mission to Phobos, at least to get something cool out of the investment.
ISS was a funded payload – also supported by multiple international agreements. In fact, Shuttle was envisioned and designed from the outset to put together a modular space station Freedom.
yes, i know. space station construction was one of the primary jobs the Shuttles were supposed to do, and it did so very well.
um. ok, what’s the downvote for? the Shuttles did a great job of assembling the ISS. i don’t think that there’s many who would dispute that.
Yes I’d dispute it. They could have used EELV and achieved the same result with far less cost.
…and I’m sure a camera team will fly up from Muskopolis to watch it, and give it a warm round of applause when it arrives.
Interesting things like what? I know only about Orion and “humans to asteroid” thing. And I do not know about ANY other program for SLS that is actually PAID.
You know, MONIES. No buck, no buck rogers.
all space exploration is interesting. i can’t imagine a mission that wouldn’t be. i already said i’d like to see a mission to Phobos.
This is a really poor argument. In 1975 what Shuttle cargo and destinations were “PAID” for? None. Are the early, relatively plain (by future standards) missions of the 1980s any different than what is being proposed now with the SLS? Or what about the more ambitious missions of the 1990s followed by the supremely ambitious construction of the ISS in the 2000s? Was that paid for in the 1970s?
That’s why it’s a rubbish argument. The SLS will be the launcher that builds the Gateway station in a future decade. The SLS will be the platform of choice for ATLAST and any ambitious outer-solar system probes in the 2030s and 2040s. They’re just ideas… just as the Hubble Space Telescope was just an idea in 1975, just as a Space Station more capable than Skylab was an idea in 1975, just as Galileo and the Chandra X-Ray observatory were just ideas in 1975. Unfunded, brilliant ideas.
The Shuttle was essentially a play in three Acts. 80s, 90s, 00s. Until the 130t capability is reached in 2030, we’re living in the SLS’s Act I, what was the 1980s for the shuttle. The Meat of the program will come in Act II and Act III.
So be patient.
” In 1975 what Shuttle cargo and destinations were “PAID” for? None.”
Not true. Spacelab work started in 1974. Candarm in 1975. Not to mention first Getaway Specials and other satellites like Anik C that were started years before launch of first Shuttle.
Comparison between STS and SLS are apples and oranges anyway, as Shuttle promised (falsely) low cost and quick turnaround. SLS does not even bother with that, and each launch will be more expensive than Shuttle. This makes case of “build it and they will come” even weaker, especially considering current budget reality.
“So be patient.”
It will be cancelled in few years. Why bother?
I guess my first question is: Did you live through the mid 70’s? The shuttles missions had little or no planning during that time. The dirve/hope was to fly intime to reboost and refurb skylab first thing. That as we all know did not happen. The time between apollo and shuttle was up and down on support and funding. There will be SLS as much as you would like it to be burnt in the harbor before gestation. The country must have a heavy lift cap that is not hostage to the ego of elon musk. It is nice to think that the world would advance out of the cradle on the falcon alone but the risk of all the eggs in a megalomanic basket are way too high. This is not Lori’s world anymore, THANK GOD!
If you are afraid of SpaceX monopoly, don’t worry. After SpaceX actually pulls it off, rest will do it too, just few year later.
Excellent point. I think this is coded language for “we’re going to keep Boeing happy while laying off scientists”.
And just the same, would there even be a JWST as we know it, were the SLS to be ready today? Of course not. But because it wasn’t, we’re sinking $8.9 billion in the beast that ate space science, complete with it’s magical unfurling mirror. That mirror, technology developed at great expense, will never be used on this scale ever again due to (a) its costs and (b) the lack of need for it with a launch that has an 8.5m payload shroud. JWST’s successor telescope will be essentially nothing like it. It’s hard to imagine what will ever be. From an investment standpoint, that’s a very, very bad thing.
Frankly, the JWST debacle makes me extremely unsympathetic to this plight. And what of the 2020 Rover that is going to be MSL with a new science kit… is there an actual point to it? Or is it more of the same, which is really a geology science program being dressed up in the never ending “search” for life on Mars (a search that has been conducted, funny enough, without the use of a drill, at least until the 2016 Lander) to justify it’s great and ongoing expense?
Sure. Let’s go to Europa. And let’s kill the 2020 Mars Rover, and delay the we’re at it, the NRO-sourced WFIRST, to do it.
There is JWST, but lets not forget MSL’s own overruns. Curiosity, sitting on Mars now has moved to “good achievement, valuable asset” – but it didn’t come cheap. No reason to believe that next one is going to come cheaper.
When the news about 2020 rover came out, AND InSight being selected too, there was lots of grumbling about the Mars myopia. Maybe its time to think about this a little more.
Agreed. Mars myopia was hype. It was always about a vested interest banging a lot of pots and pans when their previously-believed funding cash flow was threatened.
Few things of course illustrate how bankrupt their position is than this slide: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/ms…
So Mars 2020 is the precursor to Mars Sample Return, which makes InSIght the precursor to the precursor. And that makes Curiosity… what exactly? Like why is it in Gale Crater then, if not to do what Mars 2020 is proposed to do?
Before I worked in software, I worked in robotics labs (after college) where I witnessed research intentionally slowed down to stretch out the funding horizon. It was very frustrating to me. It was glacially incremental… far more than software development. In my personal opinion, that’s what we’ve seen with Mars exploration: a funding horizon stretched out far beyond necessity. It’s fascinating to me that the ExoMars rover was basically going to do Mars 2020 with InSight’s drill and maybe cache some samples. Apparently the ESA can skip the three rovers/landers NASA deems essential.
It’s probably to late to terminate InSight. But Mars 2020 should really be looked at. After all, isn’t Curiosity supposed to be working until the mid to late 2020s? Maybe by then they can integrate a 2 meter drill on the MSL platform. But before then, let’s go new places like Europa and Uranus… not, you know, yet another low latitude Mars crater.
The time has come for JPL to be the master of it’s own destiny! Fund them as a stand alone exploration agency. Stop robbing Peter to pay Paul in the back room at NASA HQ. Path finder missions for targeted tech testing/R&D/Science, and Ships of the line for mature exploration. The money is there guys. It is all about moving the bureaucratic elephant out of the way. Shutting down Maryland and rolling the opps there to JPL would help too.
JPL is the most expensive way to do things at NASA. The best way to preserve flagship missions is to find a cheaper way to do them and you cannot get JPL to do *anything* cheaper. As for your claim that the “money is there’, no it is not. Not even close. NASA has to start making some difficult decisions given the budget runout they are being asked to conform to.
And if SLS and Webb get the “forever-funding” plan that the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is leaning toward, finding a cheaper way that uses a scalpel rather than a chainsaw will be difficult to do.
I respect your opinion and would hope that you applied research to you comments on the SOP at JPL. I respectfly disagree on the availablity of funding for mandated missions. I ran a multi-billion dollar enterprise for 15+ years and know all to well about miss management of project funding. It is plain to see that Smarter Faster Cheaper is the way to go, but only if the Q.A. can be upgraded this round. NASA needs to close Houston and consolidate Human Spaceflight opps at the cape. All the other centers need to be spun off private and public, all separated out according to their afflictions. This will provide the focus needed to work within funding alotted.
With respect to your opinion, I don’t see how anyone can paint all of NASA with the same brush. Every center has it’s own strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncrasies, and can only be assessed within the context of those.
In eliminating duplications, first you need to make sure they really are duplications (perhaps the people on the job know a little bit more about the details than outsiders), and second you need to compare their suppliers, customers, service contractors, etc. in each case and the relative costs associated with each (transport, storage, insurance, rents, and so on). Although I have no first-hand knowledge of the numbers involved, I was assured, not that many years ago, by someone from NASA HQ who did know that there was a wide variation from center to center, and that when you compared apples and apples JPL apples were the most expensive. Where they were was a significant cost driver, but definitely not the only one.
(That conversation came about because he was responding to my question about why certain NASA internal libraries were being closed up and the books being given away. It would seem that NASA has been doing some cost-saving consolidation for a while)
I suspect you are almost certainly quite right that there’s big money to be saved, but getting to the truth about where and how to do so would be a very complicated undertaking, not an off the top of the head thing.
“It is plain to see that Smarter Faster Cheaper is the way to go“
pilgrim, can you please explain what you mean by this? You may be absolutely right, but I don’t understand how one would make it possible. Thanks.
Smarter -Faster-Cheaper refer was made to show my solidarity and understanding for the concept of streamlining Funding Allocations-Time Sensitive Windows of Opp.-Intelligent Hardware/Property Acquisitions.
As for Your NASA Centers Comments:
1. Most are pork projects that have a few important puzzle pieces that are needed for compliance with NASA’s charter.
2. This does not mean that we should not close-consolidate-spin off, if it does not directly interfere with on going missions or National Security/Defense Interests.
3. They are mostly local pork and god knows it would be a hell of a fight to realign them.
I won’t presume to argue your three points because I don’t have anywhere near enough first-hand knowledge to address them properly.
But as a general statement, for what it’s worth, I’ve found that any such wide-sweeping statements that start with words like “Most” and “mostly” turn out to have been made with very little in the way of actual detailed investigation to back them up.
Time and again I’ve seen that people will identify a small number of items that they consider to be problems and then paste the “problem” label across an entire organization based on little more than their own disappointment. Then other, similarly dissatisfied people pick up those unsupported statements and repeat them. In today’s Blogosphere world such sentiments can then snowball almost over night.
I, too, like many others, am unhappy with many things at NASA and affecting NASA, but I try not to think/suggest that every NASA program and team of people has the same attributes just because they are NASA. Each one deserves to stand or fall based on its own merits.
Just my opinion.
PS: I’m afraid your response to, what is Smarter-Faster-Cheaper, didn’t clear anything up for me.
Your comment goes to show that JPL is good at marketing themselves. I always like the giant JPL decals they put all over everything. JPL does less with more and actively seeks to take work from other centers.
As long as JPL continues the string of successful projects, this cash cow will continue to flourish.
That’s a tough one to argue. To be fair to the other centers, JPL seems to get programs that are generally either similar to ones they did previously, or logical extensions / extrapolations of their previous programs. I strongly suspect they have access to far more opportunity-seeking grads and post-grads willing to work long hours for less compensation than what the other NASA centers get. That’s a win-win clearly in JPL’s favor.
We Have Given The Space Station To The Russians(Which Cost The U.S Billions To Build), We Just Gave The Chinese The Moon, U.S Is No Longer The Leaders In Technology . Thanks Obama, And Bolden. Shame On Our So Called Leaders
Just lay the blame squarely on those who authorize appropriations for NASA and make it tough for any U.S. president or NASA administrator. They are the ones who left dozens of American astronauts queueing for a Soyuz seat and, soon, planetary scientists bereft of new destinations to probe. Russia and China deserve their present good fortune.
Until you fix the “how projects are managed” problem, it really doesn’t matter.
It’s beginning to look like that the new NASA emblem should be a plain white, unmarked flag. It also looks it’s new motto should be: “We don’t do that anymore.”
Bingo.
AMEN!
it looks to me as though the US is joining the “past power” club … along with Britian, France, Spain, Portugual, Italy, Greece, …
when you start saying “the things we want to do are too expensive” it sounds like the UK withdrawing from their commonwealth/empire during the 50s and 60s.
and if you don’t have “flagship” missions, what do you have ? if “flagship” missions are high profile expensive ones (compared to other smaller ones), then if you remove the expensive ones then whatever remains becomes “flagship” (to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes). and what do you have to inspire employees, taxpayers, …
it also may be a matter of priorities. During Cold War, priorities were rockets for ICBMs but remove the USAF logo and put on a NASA logo to explore the solar system. Now during this War On Terror, priorities are drones and surveillance. US probably become a past power like USSR.
We are not the past just yet! With real leadership in the W.H. and a Senate that does the will of the Bill Payers, We can still rebound. As for the Russians, (LOL), don’t think they are going to become oil any time soon. They hold a big energy stick and are swinging it with a big bear forearm. They are playing the field right now and slowly rebuilding.
I am afraid I do not understand what “real leadership” would do differently. The NASA budget is controlled by the House, more specifically by Frank Wolf (R-VA). To get more flagship missions would require a larger budget and the Bill Payers do not want that. The only way to get more flagship missions would be to cancel you-know-what.
This and many other Bill Payers do want that! As for leadership, (LOL), that will come with the next election cycle. Once the reality sinks in from the China lunar stunt and the Russians rolling out a new and improved heavy lifter from tractor factory 21, funds will flow. The Senate and WH are not doing the will of the people on so many levels. The only solution long term is a confederacy. A repealing of the 17th amendment would help short term. As for the white house hope and change are on the way lol.
“Once the reality sinks in from the China lunar stunt and the Russians rolling out a new and improved heavy lifter from tractor factory 21, funds will flow.”
GW Bush and Reagan both proclaimed major new initiatives but neither actually increased the budget, leading to interminable delays in Station and an unfunded mandate for Constellation.
Nonsense yourself. You’re exercising selective memory. You’ve conveniently overlooked every proposal and request that the Administration has made for NASA and Congress has flatly turned down — for no other reason than that Obama made it. Obama wanted to spend more on education, which is a commendable decision, and would have to draw money from all over. Obama said that the US has been to the Moon, which was true, and at that time no one had given him any proposals or reasons for going back that could justify planning to do so. Idealism and generalities are neither rationale nor a plan. As far as NASA goes, I’d say Obama is guilty of only one thing — being President.
Do you then assert that he has disdain for every other possible recipient that didn’t get stimulus money?
I don’t see “proportion of the federal budget” as a meaningful measure, only absolute dollars, adjusted annually for changed buying power (basically inflation and extra money printed). In this context, I wouldn’t call NASA’s budget changes “sharp.”
I would have liked to see NASA get some of the stimulus money, too, but it would not have been consistent with the stated purpose of the stimulus, which was not only to stimulate selected areas of the economy, but also to do so where the results could be realized as quickly as possible, as evidenced by the fact that the majority of the money was paid out in the first 2-3 years instead of spread out evenly over a decade. NASA, for all its importance, does not offer the likelihood for either short-term ROI or job creation at a per capita cost comparable to other recipients.
I wouldn’t consider anything relating NASA to the stimulus to have been politically motivated, as much as it’s easy to try and hang it on the politicians, given the amount of damage they’ve collectively done to NASA in so many other matters.
I’m sure there’s a method to Charlies madness. He’s probably just trying to bring attention to NASA’s funding woes.