The Coalition for Deep Space Dancing Dinosaurs
Support builds for Bridenstine to lead NASA despite past skepticism on climate change, Washington Post
“The Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, representing many of the big legacy contractors, said it also welcomed the nomination, saying Bridenstine “has been an active and vocal advocate for space on Capitol Hill.” But in a subsequent statement to The Washignton Post, the coalition’s president, Mary Lynne Dittmar, backed away from a full endorsement, saying, “We look forward to learning more from Rep. Bridenstine during the Senate confirmation hearings.”
Keith’s note: This is the dilenma that Mary Lynne Dittmar and her organization face. They want to have it both ways. On one hand they envision a world where there is no SpaceX or Blue Origin – just the usual aerospace suspects building the giant Senate-designed SLS mega-rocket where everyone gets a piece of the contracting pie. On the other hand they resent the success of upstarts like SpaceX and Blue Origin and want to be seen as being just as sexy and cutting edge and able to “compete” in a commercial marketplace. Alas that is just impossible. Its like expecting a big dinosaur to eat an entire forest every day and yet still be able to tap dance when they are done eating.
Bridenstine has signaled an interest in seeing SLS and other big NASA projects through. Yet he also talks about lots of paradigm shifting ideas that are antithetical to the status quo. This drives Dittmar et al nuts. Stay tuned.
Well, maybe it’s not a zero-sum game anymore. I believe Mr Stallmer had it exactly right in the WaPo article…“It’s not ‘or.’ It’s ‘and,’ ” said Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. “It’s the notion that you can have the traditional approach and you can have this newer commercial approach, and both could yield great benefits to the agency. Bridenstine understands as well as anyone the capabilities that are offered by both of these sectors.” Let’s keep an open mind.
Can you afford a sole source, unaffordable, cost plus, pork driven set of projects (SLS, Orion etc) mixed in with competitive partnering, firm fixed price, commercial approaches that want to grow the space sector, in a portfolio the budget for which is losing purchasing power every year? I think not.
In the short term, you bet you can. Just watch it. Do you believe that the federal government functions solely by the rules of the free market? Ultimately, ruthless efficiency will win, but not by ‘tomorrow’.
There is little “free market” in programs like the F-35. DOD picks a single winner and then “sole sources” the thing with depressingly predictable results.
Funny thing is that everyone talks as if space flight, especially manned, follows any historical standard business or economic model. It doesn’t. Only the Earth satellite business does. So the whole use of the term “commercial” is a farce, especially when the only customer is a government.
Bridenstine has an existing history. It’s not like he’s an unknown.
Hey, everyone has an existing history. What’s that old investment chestnut….”Past performance is no guarantee of future results”.
While this is true for investments, we’re talking about one person with a history. Things that are different just aren’t the same.
Or, “cant teach an old dog new tricks”
Nuts.
Whether or not the pie is made bigger is irrelevant. The new guys now own the pie.
As far as I can see, Old Space has nothing to answer the challenge (aside from a risible plan to parachute some engines, a plan plainly demonstrating paucity of thinking). And the Europeans claiming they can win on price? Equally laughable.
Not as long as they can say, “well, you get what you pay for.” and have people take them seriously.
That will change (slowly) the longer SpaceX goes without losing another payload.
As I posted elsewhere, if SpaceX keeps successfully launching a variety of payloads and successfully recovering and reusing the first stages, pretty soon the drive-by media and the public will pay about as much attention to it (and other successful private launch companies) as the public does to a schedule airline!
The little mammals are scurrying around the feet of the big dinosaurs!
Go SpaceX! Go Blue Origin! Go Sierra Nevada!
Ad LEO! Ad Luna! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!
“Mary Lynne Dittmar and her organization”
Can we not play along with the pretence of these types of fake groups? Dittmar is just a spokesperson for a handful of contractors. She has no dilemma, nor an organisation. She just says what she’s told to say, by the PR managers within those companies.
Actually they formed a 501(s)(3) recently – after years of being ad hoc – but yes. they funding comes from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Orbital ATK, and Northrop Grumman.
I am not concerned with the legal status of the name Dittmar uses for her PR work.
I’m bothered that she (like all such fake groups) gets treated as anything more than what she is, a nameless spokesperson for her employers.
Lockheed/etc are perfectly capable of wheeling out their own in-house and contract PR people, to speak directly for the companies, in the name of the company. Why hide behind fake groups? Because it works. It hides their involvement (even in the rare case that the journalist throws in a disclaimer), it creates the appearance of external, independent support for their cause.
If these fictional associations, institutes, partnerships, coalitions, etc didn’t work for their funders, if it didn’t result in the media giving them undue respect, taking the lie at face value, and if it didn’t then work on the public, no-one would set them up. Unless people pour scorn on the very nature of these fictional groups at every opportunity, they will continue to work. Not just to include the boilerplate disclaimer about the funders, but to ridicule the very existence of the fake group.
[Yeah, I know I’m flogging a dead horse. But what else am I supposed to do with it?]
This is all fake news. My company is a member of the Coalition. I’ve known Dr. Dittmar for 20 years. It’s true that the Coalition is funded by founders Boeing Lockheed Martin Orbital ATK Aerojet Rocketdyne Northrop Grumman but also 60 OTHER COMPANIES with all manner of customers, including lots of small and medium sized businesses – some commerical companies – all dues-paying members. Funny how NASAWatch only talks about 5.
Our company is a small firm that does business across the sector with both government and commercial companies. From the day she took over the Coalition it is been an “and not or” organization (long before Mr. Stallmer was quoted using the Coalition’s “AndNotOr” hashtag in the Washington Post.) Every statement I have read by the Coalition about programs has included support for space science and commercial cargo and the ISS as well as yes SLS Orion and ground systems. She is well known for talking about the importance of a gov’t AND private venture approach to U.S. space policy (she was doing this in the 1990’s when I met her.) In recent testimony on the Hill she spoke out on behalf of commercial and international partnerships on the ISS and beyond. She never says anything she doesn’t believe and friends told me she took the job to restructure and re-envision the Coalition even though she knew the kind of insults spewed here would be shoveled at her. As a member of the Space Studies Board of the National Academies and a senior advisor to NASA and other agencies across multiple Administrations the disrespect shown to her here is really sad but unfortunately seems to fit with what happens to a lot of highly visible women in this business. (Lori Garver put up with the same thing.)
Most important to us the Coalition is huge supporter of small business regardless of pedigree or customer base. The Coalition gives access to and visibility with audiences we never have had without it and has helped us do some “matchmaking” for the purposes of business development. Like many other small businesses we are the only manufacturing hub in the region and our work in NASA programs has enabled us to employ people in our community and expand our business portfolio to include customers from other sectors – including commercial space. The Coalition sponsors member events and also helps provide information to small businesses that they would otherwise have to pay people to get. As a small business we can’t afford full time personnel to do this. If only for this reason the Coalition is a bargain at any price. As an entrepreneur herself Dr. D “gets” small business and helps wherever she can and the Coalition has encouraged and counseled small entrepreneurial companies by featuring them in newsletters and on the web and supports companies as they enter into new deals, through social media. For members of the organization as with most of the space community Mary Lynne’s door is always open and she provides sound business and policy advice that is worth its weight in gold.
NASAWatch cherry-picks information, doesn’t check facts, makes up things up (like saying something “drives Dittmar et al nuts” – pure fiction) – and chooses to take cheap shots whenever it wants to. Meanwhile the Coalition continues to support its members – particularly its small companies – while the organization as a whole supports all of NASA’s programs of record in human spaceflight and space science and looks to support commercial space companies who are mature enough to be interested in simply doing business rather than play the “either or” game.
I’ll wait to see if this gets published.
Signed, a satisfied Coalition Member
But you just can’t bring yourself to identify your company or use your name … and you use a fake email address and an anonymizer service to mask your location. Yawn.
I’m not authorized to speak for my company and which is why I post anonymously. Interesting that you do not take this tact with people who also post anonymously and agree with you.
You use fake emails and anonymizers to hide your identity, claim to represent some company that you are afraid to identify, and then attack other people – all while hiding. You raised the issue of “courage”. You have none.
My comment did not claim special insider knowledge that I’m not allowed to talk about but trust me it’s true. Had I claimed such, I’m sure Keith would have mocked me the same way.
(Aside, my actual email address is visible to Keith, and my IP (unless my ISP is doing something weird) is my IP. Between the three, he knows my full name and approx. location.)
Thank you for an alternative view. No doubt there are benefits to small businesses offered by the coalition, chiefly, as I understand it, access to business opportunities with the Big Boys.
In the main, though, I take our proprietor’s point: that the coalition stands for ‘old space’ (a dicey term, to be sure), and has shown antipathy to the new players, mostly because these new guys are challenging the old ways of doing business. To that extent, at least, the coalition is a bit backward facing.
The future of space activity no longer belongs to Boeing et.al.- at least insofar as Im can observe.
Perhaps your company is in the wrong coalition?
Meanwhile, this whole discussion ignores Bridenstine’s past unwillingness to agree that climate change is real – even though NASA is one of our best agencies for understanding it – or that he has previously supported plans to gut NASA’s science portfolio in favor of just focusing on Pioneering. NASA is bigger than just the SLS/”Commercial” debate.
Trump is spiking EPA, NIH, NOAA and other government agencies with political appointees tasked to stamp out [research on] climate change. However this is purely political, he has no personal stake either way. If we can build enough popular momentum behind the issue, Trump will find it expedient to change course and will order the “commissars” to do likewise. Of course that is less satisfactory than relying on actual data and scientific debate, but that seems to be the new reality [show].
I hate how successfully you rickrolled me with a soundless gif.
Ditto. Thanks loads, Hari! That gif loop with those lyrics is haunting me like a visual earworm!!