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Commercialization

Coalition for Deep Space Exploration: Do As I Say – Not As I Do

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 8, 2017
Filed under
Coalition for Deep Space Exploration: Do As I Say – Not As I Do

Could NASA and SpaceX cooperation turn into competition?
“… So, it came as a surprise to NASA when SpaceX founder Elon Musk held a conference call in February announcing plans to use a powerful rocket that hasn’t yet flown to sling private tourists around the moon next year–an ambitious timeline, according to Mary Lynne Dittmar who represents some of SpaceX’s competitors through the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration. “If you’re putting all the schedule pressure on, you are essentially — you’re automatically assuming more risk. You’re automatically creating an environment where you are operating at higher risk because you have to meet the deadline,” Dittmar explained. Dittmar said she is concerned about the 2018 deadline for SpaceX.”
Keith’s note: Meanwhile Mary Lynne Dittmar’s favorite rocket – the one she’s paid to promote (SLS) is years behind schedule, over budget, and fraught with ongoing software and manufacturing errors. SpaceX launches (and lands) rockets on a regular basis. Falcon Heavy is composed three of these rockets strapped together and will launch soon. SLS will not launch until 2020 (maybe) and then not again for 2-4 years. Infrequent launches are one easy way to generate a lot of programmatic risk. So … who has more in-house, currently functional operational experience under their belt, Mary Lynne? Certainly not the SLS folks.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

56 responses to “Coalition for Deep Space Exploration: Do As I Say – Not As I Do”

  1. TheBrett says:
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    SpaceX’s flights will probably be delayed to 2020 as well, if not longer. Delays are normal – the Falcon Heavy itself has been delayed for years, and the capsule they’d be using for the circumlunar flight isn’t space-tested with humans aboard yet.

    I hope it doesn’t lead to any rift between the crewed NASA program and SpaceX. I’d like some of those new astronaut-candidates to be able to fly somewhere other than Low Earth Orbit some day.

    • Paul451 says:
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      SpaceX’s flights will probably be delayed to 2020 as well, if not longer.

      What are you talking about, they are already flying.

      • TheBrett says:
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        I was talking about the Falcon Heavy “swing round the Moon with two tourists” mission. Their flights in general are obviously on-going.

        • Skinny_Lu says:
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          Like Keith said, the final piece of the Falcon Heavy puzzle is making three cores function as one vehicle. Not to minimize the integration job of 27 engines, it is a relatively small step from of what they have flying today. Falcon Heavy is so much, much closer to reality than SLS, we should not be comparing them. I can already imagine two Booster landing simultaneously, back at the Cape.

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            To be fair, the first Falcon Heavy flight is being described as experimental and Musk is setting expectations that he thinks it has a 50/50 shot at success. Strapping three boosters together is the easy part, IMHO. The hard part is getting them to successfully separate during flight. Any “hang up” or “recontact” would likely destroy the entire stack very quickly.

          • Skinny_Lu says:
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            I agree. Come to think about it, SpaceX will probably come up with a new way of separating the side boosters from the center core. Both Delta IV and Atlas V use solid boosters and Delta IV Heavy has to drop the two side boosters. For these events, they use retro-propulsion to get the spent boosters away from the center core. However, those systems are expendable and SX does not like using explosives or solid propulsion to separate stages or fairings. I do wonder what their approach is.

          • Zed_WEASEL says:
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            Not really a mystery. The current cold gas reaction control systems on the Falcon 9 core.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            “However, those systems are expendable and SX does not like using explosives or solid propulsion to separate stages or fairings”

            Retro-propulsion is already part of the profile forest, no? Leaving only the physical separation issue?

            (Maybe a big, pre-compressed spring…)

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Thanks…I wondered where the problem would be, recognizing that there are obvious plumbing issues. Elon said at one time that the problem was more difficult than they expected. STS never experienced an issue with jettisoning the solids.

            About the last thing he wants is another case of rocket stages bumping into one another.

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            Falcon Heavy won’t do cross-feeding due to the performance improvements made by using the latest “full thrust” version of Falcon 9’s first stage as the basis for the boosters (which are pretty much Falcon 9 first stages with nose cones) and the core first stage. Eliminating cross feeding of propellants reduces the risk.

            The shuttle SRBs had small solid rocket motors on the top and bottom which were used for separation from the ET. I’m guessing Falcon Heavy won’t use solid separation motors, but rather thrust vectoring of the Merlin engines and cold gas thrusters at the nose of the booster to steer clear of the core stage.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Using, if I understand correctly, the same tech that’s used to guide the cores back to a vertical landing.

            The non-rocket scientist in me wonders if that sort of system can react rapidly enough. I always wondered if those cold-gas devices play a part in the separation of Stage 2 as well, or if they rely on lighting up the second stage after a suitable delay to ensure separation.

    • Tim Blaxland says:
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      Launch targets are typically specified as NET (“no earlier than”) dates, so delays from target dates are the norm for the industry. You can be sure Dittmar knows this but chooses to ignore it.

      BTW, it’s not really consistent logic to criticise SpaceX for slipping launch dates, and simultaneously criticise them for schedule pressure.

      Despite slipping dates, SpaceX are by and large making more meaningful progress than most others in the game.

      • kcowing says:
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        And no mater if they slip and slip again and again they still manage to fly real missions again and again and again. Meanwhile, SLS ….?

        • dbooker says:
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          Right. Dittmarr doesn’t get the idea that deadlines are better than dead ends…

      • Steve Pemberton says:
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        I agree, after all schedule pressure is usually something that others put on you, not something you put on yourself. I’m not aware of anyone putting pressure on Musk to do the lunar fly-around, other than maybe a hyper excited tourist.

        • fcrary says:
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          Strictly speaking, Mr. Musk could be putting pressure on his employees to make a deadline. But we’ve seen no evidence of that, nor any evidence he’s done so in the past. When SpaceX can’t make a deadline, they seem pretty good about letting it slip rather than rushing things.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            I recommend Ashlee Vance’s “Elon Musk” for a somewhat different characterization of Mr. Musk’s approach to motivating people. He is famously fierce.

          • fcrary says:
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            I might look that book up, but I as a bit doubtful about biographies of living people. The real details don’t come out until the important figures are in their graves. At the same time, I don’t approve of naming places or ships after a living person. I’m in favor of letting future generations decided how important someone really was.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            (Sorry this turned into a book report…)

            So true, but in this case, I was familiar with Mr. Vance’s writing.

            People are complicated. Vance points out, as you do, that he can only report the facts, and that assessment of Mr. Musk’s life at this point is a bit early. Vance had full access as he quotes about everyone with interaction with Mr. Musk.

            On the issue of how Mr. Musk motivates people: he is aided by the sheer coolness of what he is doing. SX is about the only place on the planet where folks can do what they do – and, expect to see something flying. Quickly.

            Highly motivational, but Mr. Vance points out that Mr. Musk can be, to coin a phrase, a bit of a dick head.

            It’s so tempting to compare Mr. Jobs and Mr. Musk, partly as I read the bios sequentially, partly because their work product is so similar in the sense of bending existing knowledge into a new and useful framework.

            Mr. Musk is completely merciless, and like Mr. Jobs issues praise sparingly. Mr. Jobs, was famously loyal. Mr. Musk, not so much. Both were completely confident in the ability to imagine excellence and impatient with anything else.

            Note that Mr. Jobs vigorously sought Walter Isaacson, well-known biographer, who originally resisted, saying that it was too early in Mr. Jobs’ life to write a bio. Little did he know. The book is free of Jobs’ interference, unlike anything else that he did. He once criticized the oxygen masks used when he was in the hospital, offering sketches of six better designs; so too the O2 saturation monitors they put on the end of your finger. Mr. Musk refused to sign-off on the Tesla unless the door handles were made to automatically recede. They do.

            Worthy of mention: Mr. Musk is a dedicated father, giving his six sons the gift of time even as he runs several major endeavors. He retains a full staff, frequently taking the six boys, via personal jet, on camping trips to the Sierras or to Japan or similar adventures. Mr. Jobs’ parental failure came to be a singular source of sadness and shame later in his life (he reconciled with his daughter in the end).

            I’m completely addicted to audio books, which is how I came across the book, right after the Jobs bio (also by a trustworthy writer).

            “I’m in favor of letting future generations decided how important someone really was”

            Yes. This is why I posted the question elsewhere about how NASA might be viewed in 50 or 100 years. Still, there is great value in current biographies, not the least of which are the lessons one can take into one’s own life.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      I think a lot will hinge on how well the first Falcon Heavy test flight goes. If it is successful, or almost successful, then I would think SpaceX will hopefully not have to slip the Falcon Heavy schedule much. But if Falcon Heavy has a spectacular failure that reveals some sort of issue that can’t easily be fixed, then surely the schedule will slip by quite a bit.

  2. getitdoneinspace says:
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    Soooo much interesting space news to report on and CBS chooses to report on a problem that does not even exist.

    And I wish the space industry would choose spokespeople that promote space rather than make totally ridiculous claims like suggesting that the date of 2018 is a deadline that SpaceX has forced itself to meet. That was a date that was a placeholder on a calendar to get the troops rallying in a positive direction. Many of Dittmar’s comments are just hogwash through and through.

    • fcrary says:
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      I’m afraid the “space industry” is, in fact, an industry. You aren’t going to see the companies involved promoting their competitors products. Could you imagine Ford and GM getting together and issuing a statement saying nice things about the cars Toyota makes? I agree that misleading statements to slam the competition is excessive, but these press statements are about marketing, not ethics.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      This isn’t for the industry to do. It’s for lazy journalists to figure out.

      • Paul451 says:
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        Except the journalist knew what she was:

        “…Dittmar who represents some of SpaceX’s competitors through the [fake organisation]…”

        and ran the quotes anyway.

        Unfortunately, corporate news has a culture of playing along with these phony “coalitions” and “institutes” and “centres”, even when they know exactly what they are and who is paying for them. It gives them an easy he-said, she-said pseudo-controversy. Cut’n’paste stories to fill pages/minutes/clickbait.

        Frankly, it’s rare that they would even bother to put in that disclaimer, most of the time they just run it straight as if the “coalition” was a real organisation, rather than someone pretending.

        • fcrary says:
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          I’ve found that a good sign about a news source is statements that their owner is a party to the story, or (in the case of science) bothering to include statements from researchers who are not authors of the study in question. That’s depressingly rare, especially in the case of North American news sources.

  3. BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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    A point that seems to have been overlooked is that Elon has offered that flight to NASA first if they want it. So much for competition.
    Cheers

  4. Brian_M2525 says:
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    I wonder who is paying for this marketing arm of SLS/Orion? I am very surprised that, given where the funding comes from, NASA is permitted to pay for marketing. No doubt they need the smoke and mirrors because the real thing is not happening, but as it is they are wasting a tremendous amount of my taxpayer money, and I don’t want them spending more than necessary. The same group that is pulling out of supporting education is OK with wasting money on hype.

    • kcowing says:
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      Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Orbital ATK

    • fcrary says:
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      Strictly speaking, taxpayer money isn’t being spend on marketing for SLS. NASA pays its contractors, and those payments include profits. The contractors can spend those profits on whatever they like. (Well, on anything legal.) If they like, they can spend it on buying each other expensive meals at a fancy hotel in Colorado (excuse me, attending a space symposium.) If they like, those companies can simply pass on the profits to their shareholders. Or, again if they like, they can spend it on marketing. Including marketing for the government projects which funded the original contracts.

  5. Mark Thompson says:
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    I have a question for any structural engineers on the site. I would imagine that Falcon heavy places unique and significant new physical stresses on the three Falcon rockets. Presumably, they will need attach points at least at the top and bottom of each rocket. They are reusing two cores for this flight. So were these cores already engineered for the stresses imparted by the heavy configuration? Was the structural attach point already built into the Falcon 9 all along? It would seem to me that a potential catastrophic failure would be the structure holding the rockets together might fail. This structure will need to be pretty strong, yet it also needs to be jettisonable (is that a word?) because the outer cores exhaust their fuel first. So it sounds like both outer cores land nearly simultaneously. Does Spacex have a way for each to monitor the location of the other and avoid a mid air collision? It is my understanding that the third core will land at sea since it travels so much further and will not be able to land. In any event, when we do get to a Falcon Heavy launch it will be a major viewing event.

    • Steve Pemberton says:
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      Whether additional structure and contact points were built into the F9 stages from the beginning, or planned that the modifications could be done later is a good question. But Musk seems to be willing to accept extra weight for greater flexibility, so I won’t be too surprised if most if not all of it was already built in.

      Unless they have already said, I guess we’ll know the answer if we see F9 stages moving back and forth between roles as F9 core booster and FH side boosters, that would indicate that the modifications were already built in, or at least that the stages can be easily reconfigured for either role. However if we only see them going in one direction, i.e. once a FH side booster always a FH side booster, then we will know that some non-reversible modifications were needed to the previously flown boosters.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        The rockets are already designed for lifting from horizontal to vertical. Presumably there’s a point along the length of the rocket designed for crane attachment, a point likely quite narrowly defined.

        • Steve Pemberton says:
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          So maybe the lifting point(s) were over-engineered just enough to enable them to also be used as FH contact points. Unneeded weight for use as an F9 first stage, but making the boosters dual-use.

          Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why they decided against cross-feed, maybe that would have added too much unneeded weight to an F9 first stage

    • Not Invented Here says:
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      The bottom structure attachment point is part of the Octaweb, this is where most of the stress is applied. The Falcon 9 Octaweb is not exactly the same as the Falcon Heavy side booster’s, so when they convert one to the other, they had to do some work to tear it apart and put it back together.

    • Paul451 says:
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      Presumably, they will need attach points at least at the top and bottom of each rocket.

      All F9 first-stages have hard-points below the interstage and on the thrust frame, where they fix the transport rings during assembly, fit-out, and transport. The thrust-frame hard-points are also used for the holddowns during launch, and the interstage obviously carries the mass of the entire upper-stage and payload.

      The centre stage has extra mods, apparently. But the side-boosters are supposedly pretty stock.

      avoid a mid air collision

      Launchers have been throwing away side-boosters for decades. It’s a solved problem.

  6. Michael Spencer says:
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    Ms. Dittmar is a concern troll setting up a straw man argument, sowing dissension where there is none and deflecting attention from SLS with comments that are increasingly disingenuous.

    • jamesmuncy says:
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      It’s Dr. Dittmar.

      • kcowing says:
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        Its also proper to say Ms. Dittmar. If this was the NY Times (and other news publications) that is what they’d call her – unless she had a M.D. – then its “Dr.”

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Same in my local paper. I never understood the thinking, but that’s what the Style Books say.

        • kcowing says:
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          But she has a very real PhD and I tend to call people Dr. if they have a PhD or a MD – unless I simply refer to them by their name sans any title.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        It is indeed and thank you.

      • Paul451 says:
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        It’s “A spokesperson for the SLS primary contractors”.

        Flacks don’t deserve names, they sure as hell don’t deserve respect.

        • jamesmuncy says:
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          Paul,

          I’m a flack. I have a name and some people even respect me.

          And I sure as hell respect my adversaries. Especially competent ones. It keeps me on my toes to fight them.

          – Jim

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          I don’t think anybody would label Dr. Dittmar as a flack; she’s simply advocating her position and that’s her job. Those not familiar with her, though, would take her comments as representative of the broader industry, which is much more nuanced.

          • Paul451 says:
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            she’s simply advocating her position

            No, she’s advocating the position she is paid to advocate. If she was paid to advocate a different position, she’d advocate that. She herself, therefore, is an irrelevant component, her qualifications are likewise irrelevant. Only her employers are relevant.

            She is “a spokesperson for the SLS primary contractors”, and nothing more.

            Hence, in writing about what she says, using her name (let alone her title) is not only pointless, it’s actually misleading.

            And it is, of course, intentionally misleading. That’s why companies create these fake groups to lobby on their behalf, to create the fiction that there are independent voices who agree with their position.

            Aside: If we, the public, want to end the lies and corruption riddling in politics, law and business, we have to stop letting them manipulate our standards (respect, courtesy, etc) to rig the game against us.

      • fcrary says:
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        In some circles, using “Dr” as a title is almost a sign of disrespect. I’ve heard planetary scientists (prestigious ones at that) say they think less of people who insist on putting that “Dr” in front of their name. It’s a matter of having to remind people (or thinking you need to remind people) that you are a scientist, rather than letting the value of your words speak for themselves.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Depends on circumstances, no? For general readers, the salutation provides needed qualification?

          • fcrary says:
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            Actually, the salutation doesn’t provide me with much useful information. What sort of Doctor is she? She’s commenting on aerospace engineering and management of large, high-tech projects. If I knew she had a PhD in aerospace engineering, or a doctoral degree in a field relevant to management, it might tell me something. But, for all I know, she could be a medical doctor, a biologist, a professor of history, or even a priest who is an expert on theology. The title “Doctor” can mean a wide range of different things. Just slapping a “Dr” in front of the name doesn’t tell me much.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            At the minimum it says that the person is knowledgable about research methodology and has some proven expertise in critical thinking.

  7. Neal Aldin says:
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    Any way you look at it, 2 things are certain: (1) NASA’s SLS (and Orion) performance has been absolutely dismal. Way over budget, years (in the case of Orion, a decade) behind schedule, and for SLS, using components that were mainly designed and used previously during Shuttle. Not only this, but a capsule and a rocket with an undefined mission. With one exception, losiñg the crew on an early launch, it is hard to imagine how this cluster-xxxk could have turned out worse. (2) Space-X, their Falcon and Dragon capsules, could hardly have been a more exciting, progressive, well managed achievement, all done on an exceptionally low budget and and according to reasonable schedules.

    • Brian_M2525 says:
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      “a capsule and a rocket with an unidentified mission”
      That was the first step NASA missed. When they missed that one, it established a precedent for how the remainder would proceed. Even today they do not talk about a plan or a sequence. just another piece of hardware, a “gateway” space station out in the middle of nowhere. Whats the point? We can put those new young astronaut faces out there for a year, Nothing to see, nothing to do, except slowly be fried by radiation. NASA doesn’t need marketeers; it needs some planners and stratericians. ,

      • fcrary says:
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        That has been true since 1970, roughly. The Shuttle was originally intended to provide routine, cheap access to orbit, which would enable a big space station, which would be used as an assembly point for a Mars mission. But President Nixon and Congress were unwilling to fund more than a descoped Shuttle. Without the longer-term goals, that didn’t accomplish as much as it could have. I think that was the real start of NASA’s journey to nowhere.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Why is this so obvious and yet not proclaimed as an outrage?

    • SJG_2010 says:
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      You forgot to mention the stupidity in man-rating a space truck…. WHY does SLS need to be man-rated? Answer – IT DOESNT, and NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN. We figured out a long time ago how to launch large payloads and operate them from the ground without people. THEN when the payload checks out – SEND THE PEOPLE on a smaller man-rated launcher.