Whiplash is No Way to Explore Space
Letter from Rep. Wolf and Smith To NASA About Mars Flyby 2021
“Last year the Administration championed an Asteroid Mission as a next step. However, the mission was not vetted by NASA’s own advisory committees or the stakeholder community before it was presented formally to Congress. Upon review, a majority of experts said that such a mission did not demonstrate sufficient technical applicability to an eventual Mars landing.”
Keith’s note: This is beyond hilarious. It is pathetic. Lamar Smith (upon the advice of Mike Griffin’s former staff on both sides of the dais) did not like Constellation’s cancellation so they immediately dismiss whatever this White House and NASA puts forward. They claim “a majority of experts” (who are they?) agree with them. So what do they do? They take a multi-millionaire’s ever-changing Powerpoint presentation (with no cost estimates) that NASA is expected to pay for with additional money no one has identified, and hold a hearing with NASA specifically banned – and no contrary opinions allowed.
But wait: this Mars flyby concept is also “not vetted by NASA’s own advisory committees or the stakeholder community” (their main complaint about the asteroid mission). But that doesn’t stop the contradictory hypocrisy on the part of Lamar Smith, Frank Wolf et al. They just direct NASA to study it. It should be obvious that whatever NASA says will be unacceptable by this committee. But who cares?
Then you see Republican NASA Administrator-in-waiting Scott Pace pontificating about what a space policy should be i.e. a bigger picture with missions selected to implement the grand plan. In fact Pace is saying that he wants to see this specific mission happen and that a space policy should then be crafted after the fact to justify it. He’s got his own ideas about space policy backward. Again, who cares?
Isn’t that the problem NASA/Congress/White House has had for the past 30+ years? They keep changing their mind about what they want NASA to do – and complain about what it is doing – but then go off and do something new anyway. Then they change the rules to justify what they have already done. And then just as they change the rules (or some big problem erupts) someone changes what NASA should be doing and the idiotic cycle starts all over again. And this process is fueled by partisan hearings that are actually pre-staged puppet shows with everything scripted toward a desired partisan outcome.
You can get neck damage trying to watch things swing back and forth. Imagine trying to distill a cogent, long-term policy from all of this. It is clearly impossible. Yet all of these half-baked, ever-changing ideas absolutely require a long-term bipartisan, multi-administration commitment in order to happen.
Whiplash is no way to explore space. Small wonder other countries are nipping at our heels. We make it so easy for them to do.
– Dennis Tito’s Congressional Infomercial – in 5 Tweets, earlier post
– The Band of Brothers Wants a Mars Flyby, earlier post
In commenting on these events linked to the upcoming hearing on a 2021 manned Mars flyby, the first question to ask oneself is – do you want to take these hucksters seriously. Oops! That pulled the rabbit out of the hat.
The main issue that these legislators, the subcommittee, the President and NASA are facing is the cost of SLS and Orion and the NASA budget pegged at ~$17 Billion. Furthermore, an alternative to SLS and Orion is quickly emerging, faster than the former can be completed, that is, commercial launch of crews and of the hardware for interplanetary travel. Additionally, the republicans shut down the government for weeks because they want to cut spending and reduce the deficit. Raising NASA’s budget and keeping SLS and Orion when far cheaper means are available goes completely against that grain.
It boils down to this, the hucksters in congress are feeling more pressure on SLS and Orion and realize a purpose is needed to stand a chance of completing them and saving those jobs in their districts and states. Sure NASA needs a long-term objective for human spaceflight. It is Mars. NASA first needs affordable launch vehicles. Secondly, it needs to make “destination Mars” an international program similar to ISS.
Recall – Shuttle was built to reduce the cost of human flight after Saturn. It did not. The Space Station was built as something that could be done with the Shuttle. The Station grew in cost and partnerships were built to share cost – International. The cost of Shuttle and ISS and the international cooperative the latter became, represents the program, time and funds that were needed to make a first human spaceflight to Mars.
If NASA undertakes a feasibility study, it will be of no greater level of maturity than the Asteroid Retrieval Mission actually less and no vetting. ARM began as an independent feasibility study by Caltech’s Keck Institute with 34 experts including some from JSC, GSFC, JPL, from universities, commercial and retired experts. More detailed study and fleshing out of the concept has continued with NASA HQ backing.
NASA was given a mandate by Obama to fly astronauts to an asteroid by 2025. The rationale was that it would be less expensive and fit into realistic funding levels for NASA and could function as a stepping stone for human spaceflight to Mars. Well, NASA realized that meeting that deadline of 2025 was not possible. So the Keck Study of 2012 appears as an alternative – bringing the mountain to Mohammed.
Maybe the biggest drawback of the ARM and Asteroid Initiative is that it takes out “long duration” with just a 3 or 4 week jaunt to a lunar orbiting asteroid. Some new and cool technology will most definitely come out of it but its a stretch to argue that a manned flight to the captured asteroid is any step towards Mars. Nevertheless, the Asteroid Initiative is important but needs to be reformulated without a manned mission. It needs to include B612’s Sentinel, a supporting ground observational program and a robotic survey program of dozens of small near-Earth asteroids that pass inside 1 or 2 Lunar distances of Earth. This latter survey could be accomplished cheaply using CubeSat or MicroSat probes dispatched from a parking orbit around the Earth. No humans, just robotics.
Executing the first steps to Mars and undertaking the equally valuable Asteroid Initiative can only be accomplished if the cost of launching humans is reduced. SLS/Orion like Shuttle and like Saturn before it, are not cost effective in light of the new commercial capabilities that are emerging.
,,,a robotic survey program of dozens of small near-Earth asteroids that pass inside 1 or 2 Lunar distances of Earth. This latter survey could be accomplished cheaply using CubeSat or MicroSat probes dispatched from a parking orbit around the Earth. No humans, just robotics.,,,
This Project already exists. It is called HUMMINGBIRDsCHARM (HsC). The pre-positioning in Earth orbit is one “operations and deployment” option among several that are possible.
That proposal is far from being the first or the last. There have been several. Some were submitted to the Asteroid Initiative RFI. Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries have their own plans.
“Whiplash is No Way to Explore Space”
HEY!!! I RESENT THAT REMARK!!! =|B-{
Amen! For once I totally agree with Keith!
There is no physical reason human spaceflight has to be expensive. The only thing you must have is energy, and all the fuel that gets the Falcon into orbit is a negligible fraction of the launch cost. Most of the money (even with Shuttle) goes into fabricating the launch vehicle that is then thrown away (ET) or must be totally rebuilt (SRBs). Even the reusable Orbiter was heavily damaged on almost every launch by foam falling off the expendable ET and needed expensive repairs.
That’s why SpaceX is building a reusable launch vehicle. When we can get into space cheaply, there will be practical things we can do there. It won’t be cheap, but neither will it be EXPENSIVE.
Mike Shupp: Would you like to be a Congressman who goes back to his district and has to tell people — week after week, year after year — that a couple hundred spacemen building a lunar base deserve the ten-twenty billion bucks spent on then each year, and that it’s just too bad nothing can be done for local unemployment?
In that hypothetical situation, I as a hypothetical congressman would be delighted to tell my constituents that billions of bucks spent on building a lunar base are justified. To support it, I’d mention the subsidies to the highly profitable oil industry, amounting AIUI to some $111 billion dollars over ten years. Cancel that, and we could afford to spend $10 billion per year on a lunar base. Or we could spend less on Luna and put the remainder into the PTC for wind energy, which could create thousands of non-exportable jobs — with a good share of them in my district.
Politicians can trump up seemingly plausible reasons for almost anything. That doesn’t make those reasons valid. Their current reasons are evidently designed in large part to keep them in office and their large donors happy, rather than to provide for the general welfare of their constituents and the country. I know; that’s not likely to change given the current state of the electorate. It is, however, still wrong.
Regarding your Coast Guard comparison, I think the Coast Guard is fulfilling its charter. IMO the same cannot be said of NASA. The space agency falls down especially with regard to item 2 of Sec 20102 (d) of the Space Act: “2. The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles.” NASA has consistently shown its work on space vehicles costs more and takes longer than the equivalent product developments by the private sector alone. SpaceX is only the most recent proof of that.
“The space agency falls down especially with regard to item 2 of Sec 20102 (d) of the Space Act: “2. The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles.” NASA has consistently shown its work on space vehicles costs more and takes longer than the equivalent product developments by the private sector alone. SpaceX is only the most recent proof of that.”
There’s no mention of cost…. just “usefulnes, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency.” And NASA is helping SpaceX with its vehicle, which can and should be interpreted as a fulfilment of that portion of the charter anyway.
I agree that it’s a good thing NASA is supporting private firms like SpaceX — without, I hasten to add, telling them what sort of spacecraft to build.
But over the longer term, vehicles for HSF developed by NASA or under its aegis have not improved the way vehicles for air transport have. I think this is because in large part vehicles are seen as justified only if they are developed for a specific mission. Airliners, by contrast, are developed to provide a general capability: getting people from place to place rapidly and safely through the air. NASA, in my opinion, is on the wrong track in this. (Harrison Schmitt said much the same thing IIRC.)
NASA does not deserve all of the blame, of course. A substantial share belongs to our short-sighted Congress, elected by a short-sighted public. But NASA could do more with what it has been given, simply by focusing on incremental development of capabilities. Once upon a time, it was doing so. But that ended with the X-15, or perhaps with Dryden’s lifting bodies.
well, air transportation and space transportation are very different beasts. the requirements between the two are really far apart, very difficult to compare them. It’s so much easier to fly than it is to go to space. but there have been tremendous strides in both thanks to NASA.
lifting bodies are only useful to get to and from LEO, though. and IF you need cross range and / or a landing on a runway.
I might suggest that even the title of the article concedes the ground, Keith. Accepting the premise that the only reason for human presence is “exploration” immediately shifts the ground to robotic activities. Development of space resources or settlement in space brings humans back in to the discussion.
Of course I agree that Mars Flyby — while a perfectly worthwhile mission — is a silly justification for SLS. It would be easy to architect such a mission without SLS and far, far cheaper. But it appears such a mission was still too expensive for private backers (not surprising), and so it lives on only as one more unfunded mission for the rocket in search of a mission, for those who don’t care what it might cost.
I have to call BS here. I see nothing that suggests Congress (or the Whitehouse) is blocking asteroid mining because of any fear of a faction of developing countries. And I see nothing that suggests any particular concern by any of those developing countries.
[Moreso, the first “mines” would likely be for water, and ideally fuel/LOx to supply on-orbit space activities. Developing nations have vastly more to worry about than whether someone does satellite refueling. And it will be a long time before any asteroid mine would be competing with terrestrial mines, or space manufactured products would be competing with terrestrial markets.]
Likewise, I doubt very much that a single politician (except maybe Newt) has given a single thought to the international political ramifications of lunar colonisation in 2199. For example, Musk has talked about sending 2 million colonists to Mars before he dies. Have you heard a single comment from a politician or diplomat from a developing country that talks about that at all, let alone objecting to it? So why would any US politician be sacrificing the US space program to appease such a non-existent complaint? And I’ve certainly not heard anyone except you ever bring this up as a reason to shut down or slow down HSF, or as a reason not to go to the moon or Mars.
And these people are not going to be happier because you are wasting billions of dollars per year on HSF that doesn’t actually achieve anything. I fail to see how crippling HSF, by diverting HSF programs down stupid unproductive paths, can possibly help politicians appeal to these people; therefore could not possibly motivate those politicians to cripple HSF.
I fail to see how fighting against lower cost HSF somehow appeases people who hate HSF.
You are massively overthinking this stuff. These are nonsensical reasons. They are not why Congress supports bad HSF over good. The sole and entire reason is that bad HSF lines the pockets of traditional contractors, across multiple NASA centres, in as many states as possible, and hence lines the pockets of those Congressmen who support those bad policies and practices. Hence they convince themselves that they are good policies and practices and that the failure must be someone else’s fault (Obama!). Meanwhile there’s only a tiny demographic/industry that supports the good HSF policies, which occasionally gets to sneak in something useful like COTS/CC, robot refueling tests, or BEAM. But either way, virtually no-one outside of NASA and the aerospace industry lobby has any influence on space policy.
You’re correct. There is no reason such an important field of study has to be jostled around by political entities. If politicians want to weigh in on how NASA is run they should a definite plan and include it in their campaign speech. Otherwise we should just have the leading scientists propose multiple long term plans and have the political leaders choose the main mission.