Finger Pointing Amongst The Faithful
Von Braun Symposium speech Oct. 29, 2015, Wayne Hale
“Two years ago I spoke to this conference and told you that we need to fly soon and fly often. We need to figure out how that can be done. Today we are not two years closer to the first human flight of our exploration systems. If anything we are farther away. No wonder I’m frustrated. If we are honest with each other, then we will acknowledge we are all frustrated. In our frustration it is natural to try to place blame somewhere. John Adams once famously remarked that ‘One disreputable man is a disgrace; Two disreputable men are a law-firm, and Three or more disreputable men are called a Congress.” Ho ho ho. We all like that. But listen to me: It is not the Congress’s fault we are where we are. If anything, they are accurately representing their constituent’s views. Do you want to blame the President? It is not the President’s fault. Do you want to blame OMB, OSTP, the Big Aerospace Corporations, the little New Space disruptors? It is easy to point the finger and blame somebody else. But I am here to tell you all in the family now that they are not to blame. If you want to know who to blame, look in the mirror.”
Be nice to Wayne. He’s all right, and this is good stuff even if it’s well-tread ground.
I’ve been thinking about the “cub package” idea myself. You can make it work, as long as you don’t lose too much fuel in the process of getting the fuel where it needs to go and the spacecraft is built within 10 years of being greenlit. Maybe if you bit the bullet and simply went with non-cryogenic fuels even with the lower ISP . . .
All destinations, within a flat budget, and the most missions over a 2-3 decade time frame to address the Grand Challenges.
The current plan is 8x 28 day flights by 2028. Since 70% of the mass is propellant, are piper cubs all that bad?
The penalty for reduced ISP is a staggering ~25% increase in IMLEO for cryogenic methane over LH2 increase (and larger for non cryogenic fuels). Do EP tugs L2-Mars reduce costs? With insitu resource extraction from asteroids? Should the plan be flexible to develop key technologies with high payoffs, collect some vital crew health data in LEO and L2, and simply raise the TRLs before embarking such a grand set of missions?
I’m more of a heavy lift fan myself, but I think it’s possible to do piper cubs. My only main concern is that if you’re only launching smaller rockets, that extends to your fuel tanks as well (unless you try and build a fuel tank in orbit) – your fuel depot would be constrained in size dimensions as well in ways that would make it harder to store fuel.
. . . But, you work with what you got. And at the very least, doing with commercial rockets would strengthen the launch industry even more and create a strong constituency for keeping up the launch schedule.
Agreed with the point: “you work with what you got”.
The only way forward in the current budget environment is to do what ULA suggested in their EELV-derived Mars architecture and cluster multiple smaller fuel tanks in a BIG way.
Its simply economics and excess capacity. The DOD is also reducing flight rate as costs are too high for the existing budget. ULA states they are not competitive without cadence and a new LV also. IOW: there is a need for more space assets and missions, and a new smaller LV, not more LV capacity. Increased flight rate should reduce costs and may create new markets. Is this worth the risk?
A EELV 7m+ fairing is possible + the depot is launched empty, so few of these tanks should easily take the crew to Mars in 3 months, if EP can preposition the return propellant.
Even the shuttle designers wanted a re-useable lower stage, so the size of LV should be based on the mission set(s) and costs. Why develop a HLV is you plan to go once when its non common with EELV?
There is much work and challenges ahead and the community has many Young Padawans.
http://images.spaceref.com/…
This shows various propellent depots. lofting a large enough empty tank does not appear to be a problem.
There is an image on this page that shows a multi tank design.
http://www.spaceref.com/new…
ULA already knows pretty much everything it needs to know in order to build and fly a cryogenic fuel depot. Much of the required tech already flies on Centaur and most of the remainder will fly on the ACES upper stage for Vulcan. The only bit of the puzzle that might need some serious R&D is cryogenic fuel transfer in zero gravity.
But even cryogenic fuel transfer can build on the non-cryogenic demonstrations which have already been done. That and the Russians have been doing storable fuel transfers from Progress vehicles to their space stations for decades.
I think it was a rhetorical point Keith (and Marcia) hence:
“The organizers said I can’t leave you without a historical lesson. So now the media can turn back on he cameras again. (what? they hadn’t really turned them off?)”
Anyway both yourself and Marcia are inside the Family!
Either way it is a good speech overall with an important message.
Great speech, but as Wayne points out, it appears to be falling on deaf ears as costs keep going up and schedules keep slipping. We are no closer to our future in space today than we were 2 years ago or 10 years ago when Constellation was getting into gear to build something NASA couldn’t afford. Fact is Wayne appears to have learned the lessons but the NASA hierarchy-they are still pretending. Too bad that when Wayne was in a position of authority he chose not to speak out and move NASA in the appropriate direction.
Just speculating, but maybe he didn’t know that while he was at NASA. Perhaps being inside the NASA echo chamber meant he couldn’t learn those lessons while he was there.
He wasn’t being literal about the media not covering his talk. He was just making a point that the media would take what he had to say out of context. He was obviously spot-on there (as usual).
Well said on many points – on SLS and Orion, about the need to “look in the mirror”, about being creative, “not just technically but *financially* and organizationally as well” – “*IN THE EXISTING ENVIRONMENT*”.
I find myself in discussions too often that are all gripes or just lay blame, on Congress, on Shelby, on the current administration, on Science, on budget splits, on ISS, whatever. A constructive discussion rarely follows. This dysfunction in NASA goes beyond techno-geeks who “get uncomfortable whenever the conversation turns to finances or organization.” This is about failing to create a culture about real improvement, real results, and real progress, about expanding who goes to space and what we do there – public AND private – vs. armies of people enamored of the techno-gagetry they’ve been fiddling with, forever.
Looking in the mirror we end up with brilliant people who have been raised to cooperate, to avoid anything to do with budgets, or results, or planning, like the plague We end up with people even defending doing things just like we did them before, even after the griping and complaining – right down to their kool-aid moment.
A small handful of people are left who take any chance to point out many of the same things Mr. Hale points out. Ask for action though and the troops disappear. Ahh yes, “Houston we have a problem”, and having looked in the mirror-I agree-it is us.
Recall when Musk told the Augustine commission he could/would build a BFR for 2 or 3 billion dollars?
And they laughed in disbelief.
Well Nasa needs to fire Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and let Spacex build MCT on a COTS agreement
That would get NASA and affordable Reusable BFR designed to go to Mars.
NASA is going to Mars right?????
SLS and Orion will be cancel anyway. And NASA will end up helping SpaceX go to Mars anyway.
Replacing a contractor that doesn’t perform is not finger pointing 🙂
It’s called doing your job
There is zero indication that SLS and Orion are anywhere close to being canceled.
Like I don’t even understand how this nonsense – and to be clear, it is nonsense – arises. SLS and Orion are so hilarious protected in Congress, it would take wholesale changes in who is elected and their priorities, to make the statement “SLS and Orion will be canceled anyway” legitimate.
It’s this kind of disconnection from reality that has the broader still ridiculously proposing alternatives to the SLS… as if it were 2005 all over again. Let’s be clear: the only other rocket that is reasonably capable are the Faclon family. Atlas V and Delta IV are going away. Wishing for reusable EELV first stages is delusional. It’s especially delusional when they’d have to be built by ULA, which spent a decade basically doing nothing to move EELVs forward while SpaceX developed a space program from scratch.
And then there is the orbital fuel depot dream.
The merits or demerits of SLS aside, the wishful thinking at this point exhibited by lots of folks in this thread is pitiful as it is dangerous.
The debate is over, SLS won. The alternatives. Move on. We can argue about the proper course about liquid versus solid boosters for it or something else equally ridiculous if we need something to argue about.
Then falcon heavy will fly, and then a SpaceX raptor BFR will be in the works well before SLS flies. And the world will watch NASA dump billions and billions in the ocean while SpaceX has rocket that is cheaper than now. Compared to SpaceX, NASA human Spaceflight will look even more like a joke than it does today.
NASA needs to dump SLS and the old contracting model or it will sink with it in the near future.
I’m afraid I have to agree with Jonathan…that really does sound delusional.
You said
“Wishing for reusable EELV first stages is delusional. It’s especially delusional when they’d have to be built by ULA, “
Why do they have to be built by ULA????
Spacex can do it cheaper and better.
Both NASA’s internal and public documentation has stated, repeatedly, that utilzing SAA’s that are fixed price and milestone based are not only less expensive by 4 to 10 times but also proved to be faster schedule wise. It requires the contractor to put some skin in the game because they have to fund the milestone on their own dime first and only once NASA is satisfied to they get paid.
Congress steadfastly has been opposed to ulitizing this option for either the CEV (Orion) or the SLS. Instead, with eyes wide open, Congress marches forward with a unsustainable system.
“The second nightmare is more probable: that on January 20, 2017 a new administration will roll into office; they won’t know what to do about space because it is never a big election issue;
slide: funny old people
They wheel Norm Augustine out from the retirement home to lead another blue-ribbon commission study on what the nation should do in space. The commission says the exact same thing that every other study and blue-ribbon commission has said for the past 40 years – NASA should go back to the moon, to Mars, to the other places, but that unless there is a significant increase in the budget NASA will not be able to anything very interesting.
And so on February 1, 2018, the new administration, with lots of higher priorities, cuts the big rocket and the deep space capsule and we are left to try to figure out how to get to Mars with Piper cubs . . .
slide: Multiple Piper Cubs
What do you call it when you do the same thing over and over again and expect different results?
If we are to conquer the universe then we have got to change our tactics. We must steal the playbook from those disruptive forces who can get things done IN THE EXISTING ENVIRONMENT.”
I don’t think it plays out that way precisely. Things were different during Augustine’s last commission then they are now. The battle was between Ares I & V, and other options, such as versions of a “cub package”, and the Direct team (“who are you people?”) didn’t really get anywhere with them unfortunately. Maybe by then it was too late for Direct anyway. The lines and tooling that Direct was hoping to preserve where already shut down. So SLS (Ares V) eventually won out well after the Commission ended.
But now (or soon), it would seem, another commission is what is needed. One that pits SLS versus new options that did not seem possible in 2009. Perhaps it is too soon for FH has not yet flown. Reusability has not yet worked, which could make a “cub package”, while remaining a logistical nightmare, far far less expensive. Could be worth the nightmare to do something, rather than nothing. There are people way smarter than me on this that can figure it out.
A new commission could have new options, perhaps options including the disruptive forces that Wayne refers to. Any new commission that does not, would be wearing blinders. So new options, and a new result…perhaps. But it is not the Commission, in the end, anyway. It is still Congress and the President.
Soon, but not quiet yet. Like Michael Griffin once said, they (commercial/SpaceX) “can’t deliver laundry to the ISS, let alone the crew to wear it.” Unfortunately for us and TBTB, the time when the disruptive force becomes a viable option, is after the disruptive force is already sitting on their chest, suffocating them.
LOL .. like Griffin can talk.. he blew through 12 BILLION and couldn’t even deliver ONE single suborbital flight… He put his thumb on the scale for the ESAS that said EELV’s were to expensive not reliable and unsafe then delivered the Ares I boondoggle… Griffin has lost all crediablity.
Here we go, fourteen messages in and Vlad is already pointing the finger and blaming somebody.
Hey pal, did you even bother to read Wayne’s speech?
Yes, does that mean, because I have read someone’s OPINION piece I am automatically obligated to agree with it?
He states that congress is not the problem, could Wayne or anyone at NASA go before a space committee and demand they “use what we have”?
That was the point of “The Vision for Space Exploration” use what we have.. how did congress respond to that? They dumped the Administrator, brought in a new one who gave us the 60 day study and why we needed a new massive cost plus, fixed fee, sole sourced FAR contracted develpment program for a new rocket that the VSE said we were not going to build.
My apologies if MY opinion is upsetting.. but I believe there is blame to lay on a contracting system 50 years in the making that costing the Nation resources better spent in a more effient manner.
>obligated to agree with it?
No, of course not.
But maybe, voluntarily, in the spirit of Wayne’s speech, look in the mirror, shut the hell up and just comment on the post itself (the speech) without going off on the usual tirade about X, Y or Z?
Lord, I’m such a Pollyanna.
Well as a taxpayer, I can publically advocate my position, which I do, I can write congressional members, which I do, and donate a few bucks here and there to try and advance what I talk about. So I can look in the mirror and see I am not the problem. And continuing to point out road blocks for private sector capital movement (finger pointing) is something I will not stop doing. There are problems and forces that are at work that is counter productive and I aill keep shouting from the roof tops and point those out until they are finally gone.
Oh for cripes sake, relax. I was only foolishly suggesting that we stop finger pointing and confine comments to Wayne’s speech just for this *one* little post, I did not call for government storm troopers to arrest and gag you. Geesh.
It’s like asking the audience for the Q & A after a public talk, to please ask a question and not make a speech. Never happens.
Some Mace in the face is the solution. But I digress.
I like Vladislaw’s speeches. (And thanks for not calling in the storm troopers. 😉
Constellation was in initiated under Sean O’Keefe.
Project Constellation was started under O’Keefe, this was the CEV capsule that was being bid on by boeing and Lockheed.. that project was discontintued under Griffin .. after the 60 day study that project was scraped and the ESAS took over and it was the named the Constellation Program which now included the new Ares I and Ares V .. neither of which were mentioned in the VSE or under PROJECT constellation..
You are now finger pointing and blaming ergo you are part of the problem.
The main thrust of Wayne’s piece was that we should use what we have. To NOT identify WHY we are not flying what we have is to by definiton not solve the problem he outlines. We were told by the then NASA Adminisrator we could not utilize what we have. It was to expensive not safe and was unreliable.
The commentor then pointed the Griffin’s finger at commercial space being the problem.
My apologies for rocking a boat.
Just to be clear, to quote someone is not necessarily to agree with them. It is part of the historical record that I can’t deny.
In order to do this:
“We must steal the playbook from those disruptive forces who can get things done IN THE EXISTING ENVIRONMENT.”
you must have a plan to defeat those with vested interest in the status quo who will use things like Griffin’s comments as their argument against innovation.
Of course there is going to be *some* finger pointing when Griffin was the genesis of the current mess we’re in. He crafted a manned space transportation architecture that he knew Congress would love due to the high pork content.
Unfortunately, the sane way out of the current situation would require Congress to stop the pork to Orion and SLS. Throwing good money after bad is falling straight into the sunk cost fallacy trap.
The only practical way out that I see is to let SLS/Orion collapse under its own weight and to do what Wayne seems to advocate when he says we should use what we have. The disruption in US manned spaceflight caused by commercial cargo and commercial crew makes commercial launch the obvious choice for the foundation of a beyond LEO space transportation architecture.
Building on that would be commercial fuel depots. ULA has the tech for that, they just have not been given the chance to fly a cryogenic demonstration mission (which the engineers have proposed as an add-on on an existing Centaur flight). For the billions wasted on SLS, we could have done the development work necessary for cryogenic fuel depots by now.
Standing on my chair clapping 🙂
Well, he did talk, and certain powerful people listened. What to you, and me, would be a rational loss of his credibility, does not necessarily translate to The Powers That Be. They ate it up because in some cases it served their own political interests. Nelson and KBH and Shelby patted themselves on their backs for “reaching across the aisle” to give us SLS.
And griffin pointed his finger at spacex pointed his finger at ULA and said if only the constellation would have saved the day and made it to the moon after only 18 years. .. ya I saw the highlights.
What is TBTB?
I’m thinking The Powers That Be. The Bold and The Beautiful fits, too, but it doesn’t always apply to politicians ;-).
The Best and The Brightest?
There was a time when if someone asked what does NASA do, no need to answer that question because everyone knew what NASA does even if they don’t. Like nowadays nobody asks what does Google or Facebook do because everyone knows what they do even if they don’t.
I don’t really have any answers on how to get out of this paradigm of last 40 years of referencing Apollo and Star Trek to current situation. There is the New Space (some complain they’re just hobby rocketeers wanting fed govt handouts), I wonder if they can scale up instead of putting just a few tons into LEO every other month of so.
Amusing pictures Keith chooses for illustrations to an article.
Why are they no closer to flying SLS?
Why the schedule slip?
Not to point fingers or anything. But isn’t this simply a case of the contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin screwing around on their fat juicey cost plus contracts?????
I recall Miles O’Brian interviewing, I think it was the Orion Lockheed Martin CEO, on 60 minutes, I think???
Miles point blank asked the guy is this anyway to build a spacecraft? And the guy laughed and said, No!
It was disgusting to watch!!!!
I’m not sure if it was Lockheed or Boeing he was interviewing and it could have been on the news hour. I have tried to find the video with no luck???
Anyone recall it? and can find it??
I wouldn’t be surprised if the companies made it hard to access.
Miles REALLY showed the truth that made them and the whole program look really pitiful.
Ripped offed taxpayer
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I found this one, but said it would not play in my country… He is talking to Lockmart about COTS and Orion..
https://uploads.disquscdn.c… It said it wouldn’t play in my country either and I’m from the US lol
Hmmmm????
What country is spaceflight now from??
When I did a search on Yahoo, it allows you to put the cursor over vids and it plays some .. O’Brian was asking what did COTS mean for Orion and if it was cost effective.. didn’t hear the answer.
VPN is very useful in such situations.
VPN means??????
Vodka Probably Not
Virtual Private Network. Guess your access to google is down, right George? 🙂
I use VPN quite a bit in the office and especially on my phone. And I imagine lots of others here do, too.
I suspect most VPN is used for torrents. Or not.
“If you want to know who to blame, look in the mirror. . . Yes, the blame falls on all of us the true believers. Why is that? Because we expect too much from others.”
So now what?
I disagree in a trivial way with Mr. Hale. Although I remember the Cub well, it is not simply small, it is an older technology and no longer practical. SpaceX and similar new designs may be small in terms of gross weight, but they actually represent newer technologies and may be able to accomplish more at lower cost.
Von Braun himself originally proposed a large station in LEO (and reusable shuttles) as the first step to the Moon and Mars. The reason a direct flight with the Saturn V was more practical for Apollo was promarily because it allowed the underlying political goal (really just a single successful round trip was needed) to be accomplished more quickly.
The Piper Cub option came originally from von Braun. Hale was just citing it. About the same time von Braun was pushing his large fabric inflatable large station, Von Braun was pushing innovative concepts, like clustering Redstone and Jupiter Missiles into larger launch vehicles; the origin of the Saturn 1. At the same time in the early 1950s that von Braun was thinking big stations, Krafft von Ehricke, another German emigre, now working for Convair who built the Atlas ICBM, was proposing a smaller station based on existing technology: 3 Atlas ICBMs, and serviced by small winged ferry vehicles.
—
This is one of my favorite quotes, hope posting it in this thread is not being too cryptic.
“It is the dead who govern. Look you, man, how they work their will upon us! Who have made the laws? The dead! Who have made the customs that we obey and that form and shape our lives? The dead! And the titles to our lands? Have not the dead devised them? If a surveyor runs a line he begins at some corner the dead set up; and if one goes to law upon a question the judge looks backward through his books until he finds how the dead have settled it – and he follows that. And all the writers, when they would give weight and authority to their opinions, quote the dead; and the orators who preach and lecture -are not their mouths filled with words that the dead have spoken? Why man, our lives follow grooves that the dead have run with their thumbnails!”
M. Davisson Post, Uncle Abner.
My point being that it’s the system we work within – set up by the dead – that’s the problem, we need to break from that system, otherwise we’re just doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.