NASA Sets New Human Launch Gap Record Today
Record today: 2091 days since STS-135 breaks record between ASTP and STS-1 longest gap in human launches from US soil. Soyuz is our ticket.
— Wayne Hale (@waynehale) April 18, 2017
Record today: 2091 days since STS-135 breaks record between ASTP and STS-1 longest gap in human launches from US soil. Soyuz is our ticket.
— Wayne Hale (@waynehale) April 18, 2017
Very sad! I was at the launch of STS-135, and when I suggested that this very thing would end up happening; I was scoffed at by some fellow attendees. I’m very unhappy to have been right :'(
Today (Apr 18) was actually 2098 days since STS-135 landed. The record was broken last week (2090 days)
Well, since we’re talking launches from US soil, it would be more appropriate to look at launch dates. ASTP launch -> STS-1 launch: 2098 days. That record was broken 6th April 2017 (2099 days since STS-135 launch).
Sucks. Plain sucks.
Sad!
Definitely not a milestone to be celebrating.
Additionally, I think it is particularly sad that NASA and the nation shut down Shuttle without even an attempt to make it safer, bring operational costs in line, or to use the resources that had been developed for Shuttle for the next generation of spacecraft. The entire idea of stepping backwards through history to try and re-establish an outmoded Apollo system makes absolutely zero sense.
Sadly, it does make ‘sense’—to some.
It just dawned on me that I had the opportunity & privilege of working with one member each from both of the book-end missions being referenced (ASTP, STS-1). Yes, it was indeed very cool… As much as I did appreciate it at the time, I wish I had been able to soak up more of the ‘amaze’ at the time.
Once we counted firsts. Now we count lasts.
This is not what the CAIB had in mind. The CAIB report clearly states that the Shuttle could and should have been kept flying until a replacement system for human launch was operational. It also states that the replacement system should be limited to human access to LEO because the US simply does not have the much greater financial resources and political committment needed to sustain a government-funded system for human spaceflight with more ambitious goals.
At that time the COTS-D concept appeared to provide the most immediate route to a Shuttle replacement, but COTS-D was never implemented. The later Commercial Crew Program is very much what the CAIB report suggested was needed, it’s just been delayed by (what else?) lack of funding.
Let’s dissect the hypocrisy in that final statement:
The ‘COMMERCIAL Crew Program has been delayed due to lack of FUNDING’..
‘Commercial’. …..’funding’..
‘Funding’ =government.
‘Commercial’ =not funded by the government.
If the COMMERCIAL Crew Program is being delayed due to lack of government funding, then either they are not truly commercial companies, or the delay is being caused by reasons other than lack of government funding.
The purpose of the Commercial Cargo/ Crew Program is to seed these commercial vehicles in their infancy, and ween them off the government teet as they grow into their own and begin garnering commercial contracts to sustain themselves. The purpose is NOT to continue feeding them like babies as they mature and become able to sustain themselves. Hence, the cost saving benefit of CCP.
Could additional funding be dedicated to Commercial Crew? Yes. Should it be? No -both companies are mature enough to foot the remainder of the bill and take care of themselves at this point like big adult companies.
Can’t live on momma NASA’s dime and call yourself a commercial company.
I don’t see anything hypocritical or contradictory about saying commercial crew services were delayed by a lack of funding. I think that means the same thing as “delayed by a lack of an anchor tenant willing to pay in advance.” All sorts of commercial project are delayed (or never get off the ground) for exactly that reason. In this case, the anchor tenant happens to be a government agency, but that doesn’t make the problem non-commercial.
The rest of your comments seem directed to continued government funding (beyond paying for transportation services.) I don’t think there are any plans to do so. But that doesn’t have anything to do with the delays in developing the spacecraft.
The Commercial Crew Program is, like traditional NACA projects running back to the dawn of aviation, a partnership between government and industry. Federal support for aerospace industry R&D has been a controversy since the 1920’s (see Hansen 1987) but in general has greatly benefitted the nation. Industry can provide any service for which a market exists, but lacks the capital to pay for research and development that will not result in a sustainable market for five years or more. The sooner that R&D gets completed, the sooner US industry can win an increasing share of the world commercial market and reduce cost for government procurement.
The government procures launch services from both NASA-managed and commercial suppliers. The latter has been managed by Space Act Agreements rather than traditional contracts, giving the commercial providers much greater control over system design and project management, and much less oversight. As a consequence, the “Commercial” providers can and do operate at much lower cost and market their systems aggressively in the commercial market. This distributes overhead (and risk) across a much larger market. In contrast, because traditional federal contracts often create incentives to raise costs, launch vehicles developed and markets via the traditonal federal contract system have not proven commercially competitive.
A lot of people are confused between the originally proposed “COTS” and what has actually been pursued.
The original program was started with minimal NASA funding and sought to encourage the development of unmanned and later manned logistics vehicles for ISS.
Later, when it was dictated by “the Administration” that Shuttle would not be extended beyond 2010 (later it was slightly extended to 2011 and by adding a single mission). Once planning for the Shuttle shut down became a ‘done deal’ and it became apparent that Orion would not fly on anything close to its intended schedule (remember the Constellation Program Manager said in 2008 that Orion would bew flying by 2014 and Sally Ride, on the Augustine committee said more likely 2018), then an alternate transportation method was sought. The only hope became what had been Commercial Crew.
Once the alternate transportation became a necessity, NASA used a normal Federal acquisition method to procure launch services. NASA management hoped (beyond reason some might say) that either Space X or Boeing would produce a vehicle in time to reduce the schedule lapse.
As originally intended, the “commercial” program was enabling a new industry, encouraging development of a new vehicle with little government money. As subsequently pursued it became a more traditional government procurement process of fee for service.
Schedule on Space-X and Boeing is still much better and cost much lower than the traditional spacecraft development procurement process used for Orion.
Mr. Woodard is correct; Shuttle was ended prematurely. NASA’s primary strategy was to end Shuttle and terminate all aspects of Shuttle, including its contracts and people, in favor of funding for Constellation. That was sheer stupidity. Remember, a heavy lift vehicle based much more on Shuttle, including on its existing but modified contracts and on its people, was a ready possibility that should have been much faster and less expensive. But NASA managers wanted Ares 1 and 5. The NASA managers also had little interest in continuing Shuttle, for safety reasons. They did not even think about system improvements. More stupidity.
So you can properly place the blame on “the Administration; NASA management is fully a part of that Administration. Through the first year of Obama a turnaround on Shuttle shut down was still possible. But no one in NASA management said it was needed.
Wayne Hale has said on more than one occasion that restarting Shuttle after 2008 was not possible due to the large number of unique supply contracts which had been phased out. There are varying opinions, but his reasoning is convincing. Moreover, it is difficult to see how Shuttle, Commercial Crew and Constellation could have been pursued simultaneously.
Shuttle incorporated several design elements which drove costs higher, including the large segmented SRBs, the high performance RS-25 engines, and the need for vertical assembly in the VAB. The use of hydrogen in a booster (Delta IV) or core stage (Shuttle/SDHLV/SLS) adds excessive cost because of the large fuel tank volume and large fuel flow rate engines required. This would have resulted in cost problems with a Shuttle derived HLV similar to what is being faced with the SLS.
I think you and Wayne Hale sort of miss the point. As Hale said, as time moved on it became more expensive and more difficult to reopen the supply and assembly lines. That was in 2008-2009. Three years later, in 2011, Congress established SLS and reestablished and reopened the supply and assembly lines that had previously supported ET, SRB, and SSME.
This had to have been, by far, the most inefficient and disruptive way to do things-lay everyone off, shut everything down, and then get everything restarted, yet with no capability to fly people for another decade.
The hardware supply lines for the Orbiter alone were relatively minimal by comparison.
A Shuttle derived HLV might have been economically feasible in only one situation; if Bush had not cancelled Shuttle and had not initiated Constellation, and the HLV was close enough to the Shuttle configuration to use the same parts suppliers, GSE, and facilities with little or no modification.
In that situation the same facilities, pads, and production contracts could have been shared between the new HLV and the ongoing Shuttle program. Simply reusing Shuttle parts in a new vehicle does not save money.
Agree, but such a vision had been long in existence at NASA. But the development money needed for a SDHLV was never forthcoming from Congress.
Basically you are referring to the original Shuttle C version for heavy lift.
http://www.astronautix.com/…
IMO, it was long long ago too late by that time. The STS program had been operational for 24 years without a major upgrade. The last orbiter (Endeavour) was completed in 1991 and was built from existing stocks of spare parts.
Not only was there no-one who had worked on developing the STS in the ’70s still working, few who had been trained by the people who developed the STS were still working by that time.
The “experienced” Shuttle workforce were actually entirely without experience at “developing the Shuttle”.
And the system they would have been trying to modify was hideously complex and fragile, “house of cards” engineering where changing even a small part rippled through the whole stack.
Yes, and if done in 2008 they could have spread out the launch rate using existing elements to reduce the gap even more.
But the second accident terrified the bureaucrats, just as Apollo 13 did for Project Apollo, and they went into their safe place by getting rid of Shuttle as soon as possible to avoid another accident. It was an emotional, not a rational decision.
This is a tad disingenuous. Apollo/Saturn funding was slashed even before the first moon landing. It just took NASA a long time to realize that the gravy train of Cold War manned space funding was coming to an end.
The Shuttle wasn’t ended prematurely, it was ended 10-15 years too late.
The Shuttle’s replacement was started too late, its first replacement should have begun design development in the late ’70s, and flown by the late ’80s. And the first few attempts were handled about as badly as they could have been handled, not only ignoring every lesson from the Shuttle, but deliberately doing everything the Shuttle was telling them was wrong.
I wonder how many more times this subject will be debated in these hallowed halls.
Until everyone realises that I’m right.
(I’d add a smiley, but I’m not sure if I’m joking.)
There were attempts made during the 1970’s and 1980’s proposing a replacement, but they were ignored.
http://www.astronautix.com/…
http://www.astronautix.com/…
SSTOs. Learning the wrong lesson from the Shuttle.
Developing a Shuttle replacement in the 1970s would have been premature. A replacement should have been designed based on flight experience with the Shuttle. And it’s goals should have been using that experience to actually achieve the Shuttle’s original goals. Ideally, the Shuttle should never have been considered on operational vehicle; it was really a test or experimental vehicle, and should have been considered a way to learn how to build an operational vehicle.
[Quibbles only, I strongly agree with your comment.]
I meant the design-level work equivalent to the multiple first-draft proposals done in the ’60s for what became the STS architecture.
I consider it appropriate to start work on a replacement based on the experience of designing/building the original.
So in the case of the Shuttle, the difference in knowledge between 1972 and 1979 is sufficient to begin developing the next version. Major development work (equivalent of STS after 1972) wouldn’t start until after the first version is flying (early ’80s).
It’s the third version that benefits from operational experience from the first version (plus extra development experience from the second version.)
Of course, this requires that the process of incremental development is understood and supported by everyone involved.
The danger for NASA, and the reason current practice is what it is, is that it’s almost guaranteed that they’ll lose funding for any second/third version. Future development is too tempting a target for both managers and Congress. Deferring development is functionally the same as cancelling it.
Therefore everyone assumes that the first version will be the only one that will be funded; hence everyone throws every wish-list into that first (and only) version.
Indeed, had it been developed through a series of prototypes with incrimental improvement until a satisfactory design was achieved, we might have seen something very different. Within the first few flights most of the major problems were apparent. Unfortunately the design was frozen before the first flight.
Not according to Wayne Hale the manager of the shuttle .. he said it was DEAD and would not be brought back unless BILLIONS in new funding were appropriated by congress which was NEVER going to happen. He stated the production lines IMMEDIATELY started closing down after 2004 annoncement of retirement. As soon as enough parts were produced for the missions slated on books the parts lines closed down and that was that.
You misunderstand when people say “delayed due to lack of funding”. They are referring to the continual reduction in funding in the first five years of Commercial Crew, they are not talking about funding over and above the request.
If funding is halved and the schedule is doubled, frankly you got off easy. Usually, if you the halve the funding for a program, you blow out the delivery date by much more than double; it’s rarely linear.
The purpose of commercial cargo and commercial crew is to buy launch services desired by NASA at a price less than it would cost NASA to develop the capability through a conventional program. And where such services don’t exist, or don’t meet NASA’s requirements, to cause its creation.
So you think Boeing and SpaceX should supply the ISS at their own expense? You think that makes any sense?
Re: “‘Commercial’ =not funded by the government.”
NASA is the only customer for the products and services of this program just as the DoD is the only customer for nuclear powered aircraft carriers, and we don’t expect the shipyard to chip-in for what is truly the DoD’s bill.
Both are without doubt commercial government purchases.
If Congress had written authorization bills that didn’t focus on the SLS to the exclusion of other priorities, this “Soyuz is our ticket.” gap might have ended some time ago.
Perhaps I have been experiencing hallucinations, but I seem to have seen an incredible number of true commercial launches departing without government funding on the Falcon (development supported in past by NASA). I’ve also seen unprecidented landing and reuse of boosters, without specific NASA funding.
Commercial use of the same launch vehicles used by the government was supposed to be a cornerstone of cost control for the EELV program, but it failed to occur. Now it’s working.
The merging of the two EELVs, Atlas V and Delta IV, into one company was supposedly done as a cost saving measure. But in the long term, it did away with competition, so there was never as much money saved (in the long run) as the government had hoped.
It’s only working today because SpaceX is now openly competing with ULA for government launches.
SpaceX is also openly competing with everyone else for commercial launches.
Off-topic, but where was the savings meant to occur?
The two vehicles share no common components or vehicle-specific launch infrastructure (such as TELs, fuelling systems, etc). And presumably very little of the ground handling, vehicle assembly and payload integration overlaps.
The rationale was that the same personnel would support both programs, since they both had low launch rates. In reality Boeing was losing money and capitulated to Lockheed. A lot of the Boeing people were laid off, and eventually the Delta IV will be retired as soon as ULA has a new heavy lift vehicle. The elimination of competition, as would have been expected, allowed ULA to raise prices and become very profitable, but this also made the EELV business a very attractive target for SpaceX. With competition restored, ULA is again reducing costs.
You have not hallucinating about commercial cargo Mr Woodward. Many are delighted with progress and freely acknowledge the Falcon 9 to be the most sophisticated and cost-effective LV of it’s type.
Given that the topic for this thread is “NASA Sets New Human Launch Gap*”, and to the chagrin of many, we still patiently wait for the new era of commercial crew flights from US soil to arrive.
Bring on October 2018!.
“Commercial” is the word used to describe these programs because the NASA oversight (i.e. spending on NASA personnel and overhead) is far less than a traditional NASA program where NASA owns the designs, vehicles, and etc. In the “commercial” programs, the contractors own the designs, vehicles, and etc. and are free to sell their use to other customers.
This is a far cry from the “socialist” SLS/Orion program that has extremely high overhead costs by comparison.
The bottom line is that “commercial” style contracts are far cheaper to the US taxpayer than traditional NASA contracts. They are a great way for NASA to “do more with less funding”, since it seems pretty clear that Congress isn’t willing to fund any actual, meaningful, missions for SLS/Orion (e.g. landing on the moon or Mars).
That is the silliest comment yet… pretending to be clueless about how aquistion works makes you look just plain silly.
I always taught “Contracted” Crew Program would be more accurate, but it doesn’t have the PR value as the word Commercial has…
“limited to human access to LEO” <- that seems to be where it went wrong. Ares/SLS were definitely not intended for LEO and commercial crew (or any other variety of LEO crew, including direct govt launched crew) could have been accelerated greatly with access those Ares/SLS development funds.
Except that the only viable way to free up money for a replacement was to kill the shuttle program. Congress wasn’t about to fund a replacement and the shuttle program at the same time because that would have meant needing to increase NASA funding by several billion dollars per year for many years to come (i.e. hiring many people to work on the replacement while keeping all of the space shuttle workers too).
Once an agency gets an increase like this, it’s challenging to cut its budget in the future. In this case, when the space shuttle finally would have been cancelled, cuts would have happened in many Congressional districts. This would have been hard for the Congressmen to “sell” to their constituents.
See Tim Blaxland’s comment below.
There was another option. Remember OSP?
https://www.nasa.gov/home/h…
If they had kept it instead of going to Constellation as the program of record there would have been no gap. I should note that the Boeing CST100 has its roots in their OSP design.
http://www.thespacereview.c…
Yeah, I remember OSP.
And before that was the ACRV (assured crew return vehicle) for the space station. The problem all along seems to be that instead of just building the simplest vehicle to get the job done (i.e. a reasonably sized capsule for use as a “taxi”), NASA consistently wants to do something bigger, grander, and more expensive! Then the program gets canned and is sometimes reborn as something slightly different (i.e. CEV, Orion, and etc.). All the while NASA keeps setting requirements that are unreasonable for the thing.
ACRV need only have been a simple capsule which reused the Apollo CM’s aerodynamic design. But, somehow it eventually morphed into the Orbital Space PLANE with scant justification for the far more expensive “plane” bit.
You can thank a certain Dr. Griffin for this. If he hadn’t screwed up O’Keefe/Steidle path, there would be a CEV.
Maybe its just because I am so much older now, but the gap between ASTP and STS-1 seemed a lot longer…
Yep, it’s because you’re older. Time seems to pass faster the older we get.
Shameful
NASA was created in 1958 for one purpose: To make sure the United States never again lost its lead in aerospace – period. We at NASA have, essentially, failed in that, our core mission. We need to go back to first principles across the board.
We do have people who will help – if we just had to courage to argue for it. I’ll give two recent examples.
Both the recently-passed NASA 2017 Authorization Act, as well as this week’s report from the NASA Office of Inspector General, make clear that NASA found a winning tool in what is now often called the “COTS Model”; i.e., that particular model of NASA partnering with industry, using funded Space Act Agreements in a cost-sharing way that led to a more rapid — and much cheaper – development of a competitive, US-based capability; first for the commercial cargo program, and later, for the first phases of the commercial crew program. Both the act of Congress, and the Inspector General’s report, within the space of a few weeks, make it clear that NASA should be using that tool more.
NASA has not used that tool to start a new project since 2010. And it’s not just because of the opposition of a few congress folks (tho that exists, and it has been proven, can be overcome). It’s because of the internal bureaucratic resistance within NASA. Good managers at HQ have had good examples and tried to do so; and all have been thwarted.
That’s just one set of examples. But my point is: We/NASA have lost our way; and any time we seem to stumble over the Truth, our own bureaucracy forces us to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and hurry on in the same old direction, as if nothing had happened.
We desperately – and I mean desperately – need two new leaders at the top of NASA who can work with this White House, and this Congress, to make NASA more relevant to America and the world than we have been. And it is not a question of more money. I’ve been in NASA 42 years, including 9 years as a Senior Executive, and worked at several Centers. $19B is a lot of money, but with it, we’re doing less, with that money.
We are capable of doing more. But it will require the right two people at the top– or there is no chance, no matter what the ‘policy’ is. The last several years of relatively weak agency leadership at the top has demonstrated that.
I agree that it’s quite a bit of money, and that cost control is the long pole in any major program. What do you suggest we cut?
“Good managers at HQ have had good examples and tried to do so; and all have been thwarted.”
WHO twarted the actions? NAME NAMES!
Even telling you the names of the folks who have tried valiantly would be counterproductive and have negative consequences. Sorry.
“WHO thwarted”. He’s asking for the names of the villains, not the heroes.
Heh.
exactly .. make them answer on the forums and blogs for their actions.
The nameless masses, at least in part. The problem includes what is sometimes called organizational culture. People within an organization settle into a way of doing things, and often it’s impossible to change that. A manager at NASA headquarters could, for example, try to eliminate duplication of work at various NASA centers. But it won’t happen, because people at two different centers, doing the same work, will justify why _they_ should be the one to do it. That’s not making up excuses to keep their jobs, it’s often a sincere that their job is best done in a particular way or as part of a particular part of a program. Of course, some of it is about protecting jobs. I’ve heard managers say, as if it were completely obvious, that they have a responsibility to the people they manage and that includes finding work for them after the current project ends. Feelings like that make any policy but “full employment at all NASA centers” hard to implement.
“NASA has not used that tool to start a new project since 2010.”
Perhaps you aren’t familiar with Lunar Catalyst, where NASA is working with multiple lunar lander development companies?
Zero funding.
I’ve always said that STS-135 was the end of NASA human spaceflight and I still stand by that. SLS will never fly. Commercial crew is the only hope for US human spaceflight. Even if SLS flies by some miracle, it will be another 2000 days before it flies crew.
I understand the frustration. What do you think will be NASA’s solution to stop buying seats on the Soyuz?
NASA already announced they will still buy seats even after commercial crew is operational…
Yes, they need it as an emergency return vehicle since the never went forward on the X-38 for that role.
After both commercial crew vehicles are operational, with those alone, the agency will then be in the same position it is now; i.e., exactly the right number of seats (with no spares) for going up, coming down, and emergencies. NASA therefore hopes to negotiate an agreement with Russia whereby safety and operational flexibility is increased above today’s levels, by agreeing that both sides can ride either sides vehicles. Really has nothing to do with the X-38, in my view; since, at this point in history, we are not ready to, science fiction-like, have a permanent escape capsule attached- and left hanging, unused, year after year – and then suddenly have to trust it to work perfectly in an emergency. People want a relatively ‘fresh’ spacecraft, whose exact condition is known.
Someday the permanently attached rescue return units will be here. But not today.
Great answer DP H, thanks!
However the Dragon and Star-something-or-other can rotate like Soyuz and remain attached between crew rotations.
I know the Shuttle was shutdown by the Bush administration but Obama really nailed the coffin shut as he did so very little for HSF during his term.
As of right now, it’s President Trump who holds the cards for the forseeable future. We certainly don’t have hundreds of billions of dollars to go to the moon or mars and NASA doesn’t want to stay stuck in LEO. Asteroid ain’t gonna happen. What can be done?
Except you failed to mention Obama did for starting the commercial crew program which would already be flying if congress would not have cut everyone of his requests… but .. lets not mention congress… sheesh https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
President Obama simply continued the existing development strategy of COTS, just renaming COTS-D to CCP. And the real work for CCP was done by Lori Graver who pushed it.
Wow, Tom, you’re off base. First off, COTS-D–the proposed (by the JSC COTS office) 4th phase of COTS which would have been crew transportation capability development – was never, ever, approved, or funded, by anyone. And no one at the COTS program office ever (seriously) were allowed to work on it. Ever.
Secondly, Lori Garver – as part of the Obama Administration– helped steer the Commercial Crew Program, operated out of KSC with new personnel, into existence; first during setting things up as part of the Obama Transition Team, and later as Deputy.
I agree with you about Garver. Obama appointed Garver, she was his transition team leader for space and would have been Administrator except that a clique of old boys objected. I have difficulty understanding the hatred directed at her, but perhaps it was her focus on reducing the cost of human spaceflight so that it would be accessible to more than a handful of government employees.
http://spacenews.com/op-ed-…
The program was started under Bush and Griffith. Under Obama it was simply converted to a more typical government fee for service contract.
COTS was started but Part D funding was not used for commercial crew griffin moved that funding to Ares 1 which effectively killed the start of commercial crew. It was started as a new program with 50 million from the stimulus under Obama.
Meanwhile, a generation of engineers who came to NASA looking to do great things, has been wasted.