Don't Pay Too Much Attention to Space Policy Experts
Walker and Logsdon debating what Columbia Acdnt Inv Bd said about shuttle. Logsdon: Bush decision to kill shuttle was "stupid" #AsimovDebate
— Marcia Smith (@SpcPlcyOnline) March 20, 2014
Logsdon on the decision by Bush Administration in 2004 to retire shuttle: "It was a stupid decision." #asimovdebate
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) March 20, 2014
It’s Time To Retire The Shuttle, John Logsdon, 16 October 2008, Washington Post
“The shuttle is also very expensive to operate; this year’s shuttle budget is close to $3 billion. If the United States continues to spend that money on flying the shuttle beyond 2010, it will take even longer to develop a replacement vehicle, further delaying U.S. plans to venture beyond low Earth orbit. … The space shuttle is a remarkable technological achievement, but replacing it soon is the best path to the future. We should not let false pride or international tensions get in the way of an intelligent approach to exploring the final frontier.”
Keith’s note: John Logsdon was for shutting down the Space Shuttle program – before he thought it was “stupid”.
Too late now John.
Really tragic and stupid that people were taken in by the idea that they needed to shut it all down in order mto start flying again soon. Shutting everything down and throwing it all away was never the right answer. Now we have nothing, and likely we will continue to have nothing until well into the nextdecade.
We have nothing because NASA replaced one government operated mega-program with another (Ares I and Ares V which morphed into SLS). Companies like SpaceX and Orbital have proven that developing new launch vehicles need not cost billions of dollars and many years of calendar time.
It wasn’t NASA that replaced the programs you mention, but it was the Bush Jr. Administration, the Obama Administration and the Congress.
It was Mike Griffin, former NASA Administrator, who was instrumental in dreaming up the Ares I and Ares V as well as mandating a new manned capsule that “could not” be flown on an EELV. That abomination of a vision led directly to SLS/Orion.
Soooo…. the Orion is about to be launched on the Delta IV, clearly an EELV. Does that mean Griffin’s design _failed_ to meet its objective? Ironic, no?
The EFT-1 Orion is not the fully-featured or fully fueled, heaviest version intended for crew.
Yes good point, but the original plan for any missions beyond ISS was to rendezvous with another stage launched on the Ares V (i.e. SLS or FH) so the service module and extra fuel could be in that package. Not that I advocate using Orion, it’s just that the ESAS rammed through the idea that nothing could possibly work except Orion and Ares I.
Much of the delta-V requirement is for aborts during beyond LEO missions. An unmanned test article doesn’t need to abort.
A manned Orion doesn’t have to go beyond LEO before docking with the upper stage. I don’t think the Orion would need the minuteman missile sized abort rocket; it was needed mainly to escape an onrushing SRB. The Delta can simply terminate thrust.
Maybe Mr Logsdon was for shutting the Shuttles down before he found out that most of the money spent per year on them was NOT going to be magically transferred to the replacement(s). NASA suffered an almost immediate $1.6 billion dollar budget cut upon their retirement, if I’m remembering things right… 🙁
I guess Logsdon is just wishy-washy.
And he was wrong about venturing beyond Low Earth orbit..NASA ain’t gonna do that.
It looks like Logsdon speaks whatever he wants when he has a camera and/or microphone in his face. I never found this man credible regarding any space policy. I remember the day the New Exploration Vision was announced in 2004. When I got home after work there was Logsdon on CNN. He was asked the question as to why the White House established this new initiative. His response: No real reason.
John is a very smart person and knows a lot about space policy and history. That said, he has clearly flip flopped on this issue and has not explained why.
for what it’s worth, I’m reading John Young’s book “Forever Young” and he wrote in early 1970s STS development costs were capped lower than what planners wanted even though everyone knew operational costs would be higher. However it will not be Nixon’s problem when Shuttle was to begin flying.
The CAIB report clearly stated that the shuttle replacement should be designed solely to take people to and from LEO, saying that any more ambitious plan would fail because, based on the record since Apollo, the taxpayers would simply not provide the resources such a program would require. They were dead center bull on that one.
To bad Griffin did not read the CAIB report, nor apparently, did Logsdon since he said: “flying the shuttle beyond 2010, it will take even longer to develop a replacement vehicle, further delaying U.S. plans to venture beyond low Earth orbit.” As to killing the Shuttle, what the CAIB actually said was that Shuttle should be retired as soon as the replacement system was operational, leaving no gap, not after a gap of 8-10 years. it’s bizarre that people can argue for years about what was clearly said in print.
Senator Nelson may be changing his mind on SLS vs Commercial Crew. Suggest everyone call his Washington office today to encourage him on this. Billnelson.senate.gov.
He has also public stated two totally different opinion on the same issue i.e. shuttle program termination – its not that I agree or disagree with his stance – but I do note that it is blatantly clear that he has publicly stated two totally contradictory positions on the same question. I can’t tell which one he agrees with.
This is just ‘gotcha’, Keith. Why can’t people change their minds, anyway? Especially in light of new facts? And six years later? And especially in space policy?
Yea, he ought to explain, and no doubt will. Too many people are afraid to revise earlier views as the world moves on and circumstances change.
Thanks Michael. Playing “gotcha” keeps Keith in business. Plus quoting one word – “stupid” – out of the context of the whole point I was making is a bit unprofessional. That point was that if it had been known in 2004 that the U.S. would not have a U.S. system for carrying astronauts to the ISS for six or more years after the last shuttle flight, the decision to retire the shuttle was “stupid.” Admittedly, hindsight is wonderful. If you want to see the whole point I was trying to make, the video of the debate is now on You Tube. This remark is near the end.
Dr. Logsdon, it’s wonderful to have you join the debate in person. But I would like to ask about your statement that shuttle retirement was needed to speed BEO human spaceflight. Did you agree with the statements in the CAIB report that the shuttle replacement should be designed solely for access to LEO because the nation would not provide sufficient resources for a more ambitious program? The Constellation program, from its inception, was the specific type of program the CAIB report warned would fail.
First of all, and related to one of your earlier comments, I was a member of CAIB, so I know what the report said. Your summary is not correct. We said that the shuttle replacement should not combine carry people and cargo at the same time, but did not tie that recommendation to any view on a “more ambitious” program.. On the kind of relatively flat NASA budget that the Bush administration was projecting even as it announced the Vision for Spaec Exploration, it would not have been possible to operate the shuttle after 2010 to service the station, once assembly was complete, and also invest in the launcher and spacecraft required to return to the Moon before 2020. The post-Columbia NASA was also very concerned about how risky the shuttle was, and that was the primary reason Mike Griffin wanted after he took over in 2005 to retire it as soon as possible. That concern was not “stupid,” by the way; what turned out to be stupid – a better word would have been “ill-considered” – was actually retiring the shuttle when any replacement was slipping a year or more into the future every year.
“With the amount of risk inherent in the Space Shuttle, the first step should be to reach an agreement that the overriding mission of the replacement system is to move humans safely and reliably into and out of Earth orbit. To
demand more would be to fall into the same trap as all previous, unsuccessful, efforts.” – CAIB Report, V1,pg 211
The “previous, unsuccessful, efforts” cited in the last sentence of your quote from the CAIB report referred in particular to the NASP and X-33 programs, both single stage to orbit LEO vehicles that were technologically too ambitious. There was no linkage to more ambitious efforts beyond LEO.
From CAIB Report Ch 9:
“The United States needs improved access for humans to low-Earth orbit as a foundation for whatever directions the nationʼs space program takes in the future.”
“it is in the nation’s interest to replace the Shuttle as soon as possible as the primary means for transporting humans to and from Earth orbit. At least in the mid-term, that replacement will be some form of what NASA now characterizes as an Orbital Space Plane… The design of the system should give overriding priority to crew safety, rather than trade safety against other performance criteria, such as low cost and reusability, or against advanced space operation capabilities other than crew transfer.“
I would note that the OSP was specifically designed to be launched on an EELV class booster and was not intended for flight beyond LEO; it was essentially the same concept as today’s Commercial Crew proposals.
By about 2006, it was impossible to add more Shuttle flights because of having turned off the supply lines. However lengthening out the time between missions did not require adding additional missions. So safety of flight was not affected, other than flying once every year or so is not real healthy for any vehicle and yet that is exactly what is planned for Orion and SLS-actually once a year might be pushing it with Orion and SLS,once ever two or three years may be more realistic.
By 2007-8 Orion and Ares had already been slipping year-for year for 2 years and so by that time it would have made sense to extend out the time between Shuttle launches.
The serious failure was that the Orion design was not optimal for any mission. That it was too large and too heavy was obvious and when they had to reduce crew size because of mass it became public and yet management didn’t step in to take action..
The handwriting was on the wall that Orion and Ares schedules were slipping in plenty of time for NASA to have chosen to space out the Shuttle launches. Orion was not going to be flying with people for at least a decade per Augustine in 2009 which was a year after it had become obvious to anyone paying attention..
There were options. The fact that NASA management failed to discuss a change to their already broken plan was the failure. We are now experiencing the result.
The important thing is to learn from the past so we can make better decisions in the future. Unfortunately all the shuttle workers were fired without even asking them to talk about the lessons they learned from all their thousands of person-years of hands-on experience.
Why ask them when the Big Dogs in Washington have all the answers?
There were a few people trying to warn that exactly what has happened was going to happen, 3 years ago, 5 years ago…even longer. The easiest thing would have been to slow the Shuttle launch rate, maybe a launch once a year to extend things out. Some of the retired senior management were writing and calling Presidents, Congress, Administrators. What was disgusting was how the current management said and did nothing and pretended there was no issue. A bunch of lemings, foolish, naive, incompetent, gullible, idiots….
What really hurts are the layoffs and premature loss of careers especially for the more senior, older workers, though the current NASA management was purposely try to get rid of older workers so they were not too concerned.
Well, they succeeded and now there is barely a program remaining. And if the Russians invade one or two more countries as Putin is getting ready for, we will lose what little we have left.
slowing Shuttle launch rate would have done nothing, NASA would still have 7000 wokers to content with, that is the big expense, parts for refurbishing are cheap relative to labor.
Using your people effectively, particularly experienced and capable people, is a matter of management, which NASA is doing a poor job with. As far as money, why do you think that with $3 billion a year they could launch 2 or 3 times a year and yet now with pretty much the same budget they are launching 0 times a year and with no prospects for launches for another 7-8-10 years? It was, as others here have pointed out, exactly your stupid concept that we had to stop Shuttle in order to be able to build something else. Its not happening.
Personally I worked Shuttle, station, and moon base planning simultaneously. That is because I was empowered with responsibility for a specific function and not focused only on a single solution. What I learned on a flying program like Shuttle was what was going into the design for station and concept development for moon base.
NASA is not making good use of its people and its simply because NASA is doing a poor management job.
I agree, 200 million a month if the shuttle flew or not.. that was 2.4 billion a year just to keep the brooms going add in the costs of keeping the lights on and.. That would have made one shuttle flight a year an INSANE cost to put 20 tons into LEO and 7 people.. the sooner we FINALLY make the transistion into commercial space transportation we will finally start seeing REAL innovations and a lot more realistic prices.
“The world has changed” is certainly a fine reason for changing your mind about something. You might be, in all fairness considered insane if the yorld changed and you didn’t consider changing your opinions. It’s also perfectly reasonable for someone to say, “In hindsight, what I thought was a good idea ten years ago now looks like a pretty dumb idea.”
But when it comes to someone’s credibility, I like to see someone saying so. Openly saying that the world has changed, and your opinions have changed as a result is honest and credible. Saying you were just plain wrong a decade ago also doesn’t bother me. But I do wonder about someone’s honesty and credibility when he completely reverses his opinion, doesn’t mention that he’s done so, and apparently just hopes no one will notice.