They're Still Drinking The Koolaid in Texas
Houston’s Space Problem: Johnson Space Center Has Lost Its Identity and Purpose, Houston Press
“However, former astronaut Bonnie Dunbar, now also a UH professor, argued that SpaceX and commercial flight are being touted as a solution but that the money being diverted from NASA to fund these endeavors will cost space exploration in the long run. “Industry is not poised to do the kind of research and development we need to do for space exploration,” she said.”
Keith’s note: This is typical of the pervasive ignorance that surrounds NASA – and it comes from decades of drinking the Koolaid. Bonnie Dunbar clearly has no idea what other commerical launches SpaceX has (or its long manifest backlog), how much private capital has been invested in SpaceX, or even the nature of what SpaceX does for NASA. It doesn’t do the research that she’s so worried about. It hauls groceries. Someday it will fly Texans. What these people do up there – with that cargo – is NASA’s call. They are buying a ride. Given the $500 million to $1 billion cost per launch of a shuttle, this is a bargain no matter how you look at it.
Generally a good article-captures the feeling of being on site at JSC today. There were a few errors but they don’t detract from the whole story. As far as Keith’s comment, Bonnie Dunbar was right-for most of the time she was at JSC they did real scientific and engineering research and developed real hardware; she left JSC a long time ago. The last 15 years you were just as likely to have a procedures writer or ISS meeting attendee or astronaut or someone else equally inexperienced, uneducated and untrained to come in and manage your development program. Now there are some small pockets of capable people but they are few and far between. JSC used to lead; they used to do a lot; now they have a hard time staying out of the way.
Kind of emblematic is the story they told about the mock Orbiter making its way. Maybe it was politics which caused the loss of a real Orbiter for JSC. But fact was, JSC and SCH put such little effort into their bid for Shuttle relics that they did not deserve any more than what they were given-as I recall one payload specialist chair was all they were originally bequeathed.
Obviously the JSC leaders thought someone would take care of the center. I wonder whether the leadership of the community relations organization
had any qualifications to generate a bid.
One of the things I have noticed over the years is how few of the top management in a variety of organizations, including JSC external relations, really have no actual “credentials” to lead the efforts they lead. In External Relations, it appears mainly to be HR people. In other, more technical organizations, a lot of people that never worked in the technical functions. Maybe NASA would do better if they had some people who were actually qualified for the jobs they hold. God knows, they get paid enough. There are plenty of qualified, experienced, educated people out there. It doesn’t seem to be a criteria, at leas not in JSC.
“the money being diverted from NASA to fund these endeavors will cost space exploration”
These kinds of comments are bizarre. Cheap launches hurt research? What sort of nonsense is being spread that these comments are so common?
SpaceX takes money away from space exploration. SpaceX is only repeating what NASA did in the ’60s. (And one I’m seeing a lot suddenly, so I assume it’s the new go-to talking-point for the lobbyists) SpaceX has never had a successful mission.
I disagree that they “don’t do the research”. SpaceX is developing new generation launchers, multiple new US-made rocket engines, multiple new capsules, new reentry systems, multiple new landing systems. They provide jobs for something like 3000 aerospace engineers in actual spacecraft development. (Which seems like a handy skill for, you know, a space program.)
NASA’s “space exploration research” is SLS/Orion. Commercial companies developing a rocket and capsule. How is SpaceX somehow less than that? Lower cost, of course, and way more bang-for-buck. But if SLS/Orion is “space exploration research” how is SpaceX not?
[Plus, are they not providing public “inspiration”? Isn’t that meant to be a big deal for NASA?]
From the publicly available information that I can find (Wikipedia), it looks like about 20% of SpaceX’s funding to date has come from private capital:
“As of May 2012, SpaceX had operated on total funding of approximately $1 billion in its first ten years of operation. Of this, private equity provided about $200M”
The bulk of funding so far has appears to have come from NASA & DOD (& foreign government) development contracts and progress payments and they obviously hope to make back their investment plus a lot of profit when they delivery on those government launch contracts. Presumably that fraction will reduce if & when they start to fly some of the contracted comsat launches, but that will be done with a rocket developed with funding from government contracts. Nothing wrong with that – it’s exactly the same thing EELV was supposed to do. Shame on the EELV guys for giving up and I hope SpaceX follows through and makes a lot of money, but private capital has been a small minority fraction of their startup development thus far.
So what if they threw in a little of their own seed money to start the company – virtually every other government contractor got founded the same way. Don’t misunderstand – I respect what SpaceX has accomplished and I like a lot of their plans, but we need to stop kidding ourselves that this is commercial spaceflight. It is not. It is still government funded spaceflight and they are just as much a goverenment contractor as everyone else. Kudos to them for shaking up the industry and best wishes for success, but if this were truly commercial space flight funded by private capital, there wouldn’t be any debate in the public arena about if or how much public funding should be directed their way.
Actually, SpaceX is commercial spaceflight. You need to define what commercial spaceflight is and is not, to make a statement about SpaceX being or not commercial spaceflight. As defined by NASA, commercial is –
http://www.nasa.gov/offices…
More generally, you are “commercial” when incentives are aligned between the government and the industry partner from development through to manufacturing and operations. Cost plus arrangements have never achieved such alignment of incentives as well as in the recent commercial cargo program.
Ultimately, NASA using a system also used by non-government users is very much about NASA being more “commercial”. Many other factors, like sharing early risks, co-investment, are also ingredients of being more “commercial”. While not all ingredients may be possible in every try at NASA partnering along a more “commercial” strategy, the SpaceX and Orbital efforts in commercial cargo definitely have many if not all of these “ingredients”. Programs such as SLS and Orion have none of the ingredients of “commercial”. One might better call these “contractual” programs, with their own factors defining them (sole use by NASA, cost plus, etc.)
So yes, NASA’s use of SpaceX is commercial.
That said, one day another thing may be added to the current list of commercial “ingredients”, which is full development by the private sector (no initial government co-investment). Regardless, many ingredients have already been made a part of NASA’s “commercial” programs, all with the intent of benefiting NASA’s bottom line ability to carry out it’s mission while also benefiting the health and competitiveness, the ability to stand on their own, for the US aerospace industry.
This same lack of understanding about “commercial” is evident in the poor editorial by the Houston Press. Sad, as the basic definition of “commercial” is not really that hard to grasp, especially in contrast to business as usual.
What bothers me first off is the photo of the astronaut wearing and tipping a velvet covered Stetson. After that, where does one begin? JSC has suffered cuts just like the other centers. JSC must look to its initial directive – to control human spaceflight missions as it primary strength. Human Spaceflight will continue to build on international cooperation. They need to act globally to continue to their role given to them by Kennedy and Johnson. SpaceX and commercial spaceflight is not a threat to JSC. It is JSC hitching their wagon to SLS and Orion that will ultimately cause more losses. The cost of building and maintaining SLS and Orion will handicap NASA leading to less human spaceflight, less work for JSC. The benefits to JSC of commercial heavy lift and commercial delivery of astronauts to LEO with final destinations either to ISS or beyond Earth orbit, is that more funds will be freed up for more frequent human spaceflight missions – exactly what JSC and Texas needs to tip their preferred ten gallon hat.
I disagree with TimR on a couple counts.
“JSC must look to its initial directive – to control human spaceflight missions as it primary strength”
No, this is something that got into the minds of a fraction of the JSC workers in the last 25 years of Shuttle operations (and continued with ISS). JSC was the Manned Spacecraft Center. It was named that because of he R&D and development of spacecraft and systems. In an era of less expense, greater autonomy, greater automation and planetary mission control needs to move back to the crew and the spacecraft, not with a huge operations organization. TimR’s feelings are precisely why JSC has been losing responsibilities, funding, and its role in spaceflight. NASA is not the USAF.
“The cost of building and maintaining SLS and Orion will handicap NASA”
I agree with this statement, however it was a poor job of requirements establishment and nonexistent design process led by your flight controllers than gave us the Orion which will be more expensive to support than Shuttle.
I agree with Paul451. SpaceX IS doing research. Research to develop new rockets and space capsules. Research to figure out how to make a first stage reusable. Research on a new liquid methane engine. Unfortunately because it is a private company we only get to see what they decide to share.
We don’t hear about any research on new rocket engines from the Rocketdyne/Aerojet monopoly. Seems like they only do research and development if NASA pays the bill.
I understand what Keith is saying too though. They aren’t participating in any research on the ISS at this time.
Well, I wouldn’t be too hard on them Kieth! Maybe I’m mellowing out. Some time ago I would have used words even stronger than “pervasive ignorance” and “drinking the kool-aid”.
Nowadays when I see these poorly written editorials I’m reminded of that old Gregory Peck speech in the movie “Other People’s Money”. He was well intentioned, but just could not come to grasp with the changes in the world around him, or that his inability to adapt had driven his company into irrelevance. He could not see he was part of the problem, and the world was moving on.
It’s always easier to get nostalgic about the good old days after all.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I think that there is a little bit of confusion. First, SpaceX and other companies are not doing Science Research, they are possibly doing Technology Research and Development but they are not doing Science. I do not agree with Dr. Dunbar. What SpaceX and Orbital and the other emerging Launch Providers is providing cost effective alternatives to the solutions that NASA has been using for launching robotic missions and humans into space. The “marginal cost” of a Shuttle launch was depending on how you computed the number somewhere in the .5 to 1B per launch range. My guess is SLS will be more than that figure, especially given the fact that the mission model will never provide the economy of scale that is required to get the cost per flight down.
There is plenty wrong with how NASA does its internal business, to blame this on the commercial launch providers, that is wrong. But clearly they are not doing science.
First point: this article is factually inaccurate and biased towards a very narrow – minded perspective. It gives almost no mention of the Commercial Crew program – even though Boeing’s is headed in Houston, does not mention companies such as Paragon that are supporting commercial crew companies and distorts how much has been spent by NASA on commercial crew – far less than $6B-without crediting the resources being contributed by the company investors – greatly magnifying the benefit of NASA’s investment.
Second: Wake up Texas Republicans (probably a redundant phase these days) – who sent Ted Cruz to Washington? What about the useless nut-job who represents JSC’s district, Steve Stockman? Contrast these extreme posers and others in the delegation with the effective representation provided by Senators Shelby (R-AL) and Mikulski (D-MD); their Centers get plenty of political support and effective representation as well.
Note that Shuttles used to fly three to five times a year with up to seven crew per mission – no wonder we needed a big astronaut office; now, JSC is in responsible for a nearly $4B budget for the international Space Station – which has two or three Americans onboard at any time for six months and soon, possibly for a year each. What’s the point of a large astronaut class given the current mission plan? How many astronauts do we need now for a 2030-ish Mars mission? Get over it – JSC is an operations center not a development or research site.
Finally, while considering Texas politicians, which Texan President and former two term Governor only visited JSC once? Yup – GW Bush; and that visit was just for the funeral of the Columbia crew. He was also the one who initiated Constellation but whose OMB office refused to put the extra monies originally promised to make it happen. No bucks, no Buck Rodgers – its still true.
The TX nut jobs, Cruz and Stockman, were elected by TX nuts.
Her perspective is logical in a simple kind of way.
1. We are getting so little money that our whole program is in danger of dying.
2. Our program is the most important.
3. Commercial Space is getting money that we desperately need.
4. Commercial Space shouldn’t get that money if it means the we can’t do our job.
Rationing money by dividing it up just delays death. It only makes sense if you think that rescue is going to arrive. If the current budget situation is the new reality, than you have to make the hard choices.
NASA gets slammed when it tries to make those choices. ex: diverting money to Webb telescope. It also get slammed when it doesn’t and tries to keep missions running without enough money to do so.
The problem with making the hard choices is that well meaning, rational people with expertise will disagree on what those choices will be.
Her perspective should be broader. One would think, given her background. Or as Picard would have said about the Enterprise-C, one ship here, now, would not make any difference. This wars over. One ship at the right time though, in the past, could make a world of difference to the future.
In that same way, what benefit SLS or Orion would get from some funds for Commercial Crew (because surely she does not mean to end commercial cargo, meaning the station too!) would make no difference to these programs. These funds would evaporate
as if no plus up ever even existed-in a poof of inefficient vapor and charting. But those same funds on commercial crew, well that could make a world of difference in the future.
Isn’t the only choice is to get rid of SLS and Orion and use that money to support folks like Spacex who are applying rocket resaerch ????
The most notable quotes in the article come from the two former center directors. They care enough about the community and the people to still be local:
“Kraft admits that something has changed in recent years. “Johnson Space
Center was the key element for NASA in manned space flight,” Kraft said.
“The best ideas, the new ideas, the ways to do something different, the
way to get to the moon, the way to overcome problems and dangers — it
usually came from Johnson Space Center. And that, for God’s sake, is
missing today.”
former JSC director George Abbey said “The center’s very identity and purpose are being lost… The entire space program is rudderless, lacking in bold leadership and without a clear direction”
The amount of money being diverted to the commercial companies is remarkably small by comparison with the amount going into programs like Orion and SLS. Yet the commercials are giving a remarkably valuable product and capability and it is even more remarkable given the slow roll and lack of progress by something like Orion. If you want to think about wasted money, think Griffin and Ares for a lot of money spent with little pay back.
Just read through half of the comments
Shouldn’t JSC be designing real Spaceships that never leave or land on earth?? Designing spinning spaceships with gravity and all that. Wouldn’t it be pretty easy to assemble these things at a ISS after flying the modules up on a falcon heavy?? Shouldn’t ISS be the core of a space port??