More Trump Staff Changes at NASA HQ (Update)
Keith’s 29 March update: NASA HQ sources report that Jeff Waksman was escorted out of the building by NASA security. Greg Autry was similarly escorted out of the building last year. Erik Noble did not get a golden watch either. But at least they were not fired by Twitter. FWIW no one who has devoted their time to NASA really deserves this sort of treatment. The Trump politicals at NASA are not a friendly bunch. Its like Game of Thrones. Tick tock.
Keith’s 28 March note: Sources report that Trump political employee Jeff Waksman, Special Assistant to the Administrator, has been fired. There has been a certain amount of in-fighting amongst the Trump political appointees on the 9th floor at NASA HQ. Waksman is the third one to be fired in the past year. There will probably be at least one more departure in the near future.
– How Jonathan Dimock Auditioned To Be NASA White House Liaison, earlier post
– Chief of Staff Erik Noble Has Left NASA, earlier post
– Palace Intrigue On The 9th Floor At NASA HQ, earlier post
– Beachhead Team Members At NASA HQ, earlier post
– NASA Headquarters Transition Update – New 9th Floor Faces, earlier post
– Jeff Waksman, LinkedIn
“Member of President’s “Beachhead” team at NASA, with a focus on policy/strategy/budget. Tasks include:
• Work with NASA’s Strategy & Policy team, as well as both internal and external stakeholders, to develop policy and budget options for the incoming Administrator.
• Coordinate with the Executive Office of the President to ensure consistency of purpose, and to make sure that the White House’s vision of space exploration and science/technology development is fulfilled.
• Assist NASA leadership with development of the President’s FY2018 budget request and NASA’s updated Strategic Plan.
• Work to increase efficiency within NASA, including both government reform and also helping the various NASA centers and NASA mission directorates to work more closely together.
As part of this role, served as a member of the President-elect’s transition team on the NASA Landing Team from December 2016-January 2017, working with a highly skilled and experienced team to craft an agency policy plan for NASA.”
Did he get fired because he couldn’t get the agency focused on a near term plan for returning to the Moon and get them off this wasting time at a gateway. Pretty clear the agency isn’t on board with the president and space council request of returning to the moon moon not just for flags and footprints but to live and explore. They seem more of taking a wait out the president and keep pushing for Mars by stalling and using gateway as a weak strategy of potential progress for the 2020 decade.
Just look at gerst’s circular logic (we need SLS cause of the architecture we are using, we designed the architecture to require sls) with respect to Wayne’s falcon heavy question .
Good lord, I almost sprayed my tea when I read Gerst’s comments about FH not being able to handle notional paypoads they haven’t even designed yet ?
Yes – CLASSIC ‘not invented here’ syndrome. Imagine if the architects of Project Mercury or Gemini had said; “No – we don’t want your Atlas and Titan boosters; we’re gonna spend years and billions with a ‘B’ to design and build our own launchers… Sheesh!
Actually there was a rivalry between the services over which rockets they were willing to use, and that infested the early civilian space program and played into the design factions that developed.
Yes, the rivalry was there. But at least they could choose from some already developed or in-development launchers.
The first attempt was the Vanguard, which was indeed a new in-house design specifically for the space program. Only after a couple of embarrasing failures did von Braun get the green light to launch Explorer 1 on the Redstone, sorry “Jupiter C”, which was derived from the V2. The Vanguard ultimately worked, but only after the same kind of learning curve that von Braun went through with the V2, and Musk with the Falcon 1.
Worth remembering that the US Army had, or claimed to have, a Jupiter rocket able to loft small satellites — at least a year before the actual deed.
Yup; Wayne Hale is onto it! Falcon Heavy is on the verge of becoming operational and is capable of launching enough mass for crewed, lunar Sortie missions; if it were launched in pairs. The mission architecture’s mass could be even better if the elements were launched in 2x 2-pairs of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy as distributed mass. And the same concept could also apply to twinned launches of ‘New Glenn’ and Vulcan/ACES. SLS is a deliriously costly dinosaur, before it ever launches…
Except that musk does not appear to be interested in developing anything for the FH for lunar sorties. He does not even plan an human rating it .. by the time hardware could be developed to utilize the FH spacex plans to already be flying the BFS and BFR
The man-rating thing is just a philosophy based on Elon’s much larger interest in pushing on to the BFRs. If asked by a customer willing to pay – NASA or others – then he could man rate it in short order. I referred to dual-launches of the Falcon 9, Block 5 and the Falcon Heavy in regards to a notional Lunar mission architecture:
Launch 1 – 20+plus ton Lunar Lander goes up on F9 and loiters. A day or so later; Launch 2 – Falcon Heavy places it’s upper stage in orbit with plenty of propellant left aboard. The Lunar Lander docks with a docking unit atop the stage and burns to TLI. A few days later, the Falcon stage places the Lander into lunar parking orbit.
At the next lunar launch window, repeat the process with 1x more each of F9 & FH; sending a ‘Command Module’ with crew to rendezvous with the waiting Lander in lunar orbit. Crew transfers to Lander and performs mission not dissimilar to Apollo – but probably with much longer stay times. The Command Module could be an upgraded Dragon 2 with a ‘Propulsion Pallet’ in it’s trunk section – this is designed to have enough delta-v to depart the Moon for TEI at the end of mission. The Command Module could also be another craft – adapted from an existing vehicle or a new-design.
If the mission requires unmanned Cargo flights – just send the Lander derivative straight to the surface. NASA and/or other entities need money to build PAYLOADS. Currently SLS and some other projects are sucking up all the funding oxygen. Without a major funding boost and support – NASA wont be able to afford a decent crewed Lunar Lander. Developing a reusable Lander could certainly be future mission enablers…
The larger pieces of the ISS were not launched on crewed missions. It would be an insane escalation of price and risk to put people on the same launch as a piece of infrastructure. Whether Mr. Musk is interested in the business is a separate question.
Some of the larger pieces of ISS were launched on the Space Shuttle.
Sorry; thanks. I was thinking of the 19,000 – 20,000 lb. parts like Zarya, Zvezda, and Nauka, which were launched on Protons. But there were a bunch of 14,000 – 15,000 lb. parts launched on Shuttles.
Elon has explicitly stated that he has nothing against the Moon and would be happy to sell launches to anyone who wants to go there. They have also stated that they would develop crossfeed if a customer required it. I believe that the same would be true of human-rating the FH. So, Elon’s actions can be affected by sufficient NASA funding if we were to have a Lunar COTS program.
The key, lacking piece of hardware for a FH-based lunar crew program is the lander. The XEUS concept could start with just the modification of a Centaur upper stage to land on the Moon belly down. Masten and ULA has long been ready to do that modification. It’s hard for me to believe that modifying an existing upper stage would take longer than it would take to design and develop the BFS, do a series of increasing hops, BFS-SSTO with re-entry, develop the BFB, a series of BFB hops, then combined launch, and test re-entry at lunar and Martian speeds…and with any delays due to crashes which SpaceX has had many. We should start Lunar COTS now and then transition to BFR as that gets closer to reality.
Wayne has wide respect. This could be interesting.
> Did he get fired because he couldn’t get the agency focused on a near term plan for returning to the Moon and get them off this wasting time at a gateway.
No. I met with and spoke with him at LEAG and Waksman was completely supportive of the Gateway and couldn’t understand arguments against it. None of these guys are able to objectively understand the technical options. They are policy guys. So, it doesn’t matter to them what is technically possible or less costly. Rather, they believe that the Gateway has support, is advocated by NASA and probably Pace, can continue the ISS partnerships, and will make good use of the biggest rocket in the world – the SLS. They are incapable of and uninterested in looking at more cost-effective architectures based around using the FH. Alex McDonald is the same as Waksman. I just hope that they are replaced by honest souls who can understand and who will advise their superiors of architectural options that are far more cost-effective and achieve much greater results and sooner. SpaceDevelopment.org
If I had to guess, I’d say that Waksman’s firing has to do with him being a presumably Democrat holdover and the Administration wants people that they won’t fear will leak and undermine the Administration.
why are we still talking about “beachhead” staff ? we’ve over a 1/4 of the way through this “adventure”, we should be in Paris by now !? Maybe with no Administrator then there’s no need for Administrator Advisors ?
I wonder if it’s envisioned that this position is the political side of running NASA, the commissar if you will. Then the Administrator should be more technical and less political.
Maybe because the Congress has only gotten around to approving his first appointee for NASA, the CFO.
Or maybe he should’ve sent people who knew what the heck they wee doing instead of folks who helped out on the campaign trail.
If I recall the last CFO at NASA, under President Obama, had a BS in Astronomy and a MPA. The current Acting CFO has an BA in Anthropology and a MPA. Generally a MPA only has a single course in budgets and maybe one in accounting. So neither is exactly what you would look for in a qualified CFO in industry.
By contrast the new CFO, Jeff DeWitt actually has a BBA in Finance.
You really want to debate the qualifications of political appointments? Rick Perry? Ben Carson? C’mon man…
Do you want to discuss the qualifications of President Obama’s picks? Both awarded jobs to political supporters, it’s how the two party system works.
This, ladies and germs, would be an example of what is usually called ‘False Equivalency”; practiced herein by an educated person who really should, and probably does, know better.
https://krugman.blogs.nytim…
(Yes, I know, Dr. Krugman isn’t exactly a moderate, middle-of-the-road guy; but he makes points worth viewing.)
[Note: Apocryphal stories need not apply].
He just doesn’t get it. President Trump was elected because he was an outsider. Senator Sanders would have won if he had been nomiated by the Democrats.
I’m certain Mr. DeWitt is well qualified, but how much relationship is there between Finance, as studied at the undergraduate level, and the way the government funds, keeps track of, and expends funds? I guess the accounting course helps.
A great deal more than a non-finance major gets in the “budget for idiots” course that is usually their only exposure in a MPA program. But then just look at his record as Treasurer of the State of Arizona. Really, NASA is a huge step down and President Trump must have given him some very good reasons to accept. Or he might just want the challenge of fixing a government agency famous for massive cost overruns.
I had a chance to discuss the slow pace of the appointment confirmations with my congressman this week. There are 78 nominees awaiting votes after having been approved by committees. He said there are holds placed on every one by Chuck Schumer and Jeff Merkley so they can only get two confirmation votes each week the senate is in session undercurrent rules (they are not in session this week or next). It is causing some problems. The nominee for ambassador to Germany has been widely praised by both sides, but he isn’t getting a vote soon. The thirty year state dept. employee who has worked for the last 4 administrations can’t get approved to represent us in talks about Syrian chemical weapons so we don’t have a seat at the table. The nuclear regulatory commission doesn’t have a quorum so it can’t do anything. I don’t know the qualifications of the rest, but this hold on every nominee has nothing to do with qualifications and everything to do with politics. Mitch McConnell is talking about changing the rules on holds, but it is unlikely he will do it.
Shall we talk about the purposeful slow dragging of the last guy’s nominees? Not saying two wrongs make a right but, I’m just sayin’….
Or the Republican payback when the next President is Democratic. This is exactly why President Washington warned America about political parties. And why so many folks are fed up with both parties.
Holds on George H.W. Bush dragged out confirmations to an average of 8.15 months. Then retaliation under Clinton pushed his confirmations to 8.53 months after nomination. Retaliation in 2001 stretched George W. Bush’s nominations to around 9.00 months. This trend is nothing new. Don’t you just love politicians?
Won’t happen. Just look at the recent changes at the VA for instance, where experience in running a $200B origination are, like knowledge of Excel in the secretarial pool, a “plus, not required”.
The Administrator is the point person for, among other things, relating with Congress. By definition, it’s a political position, which is why it’s subject to Congressional confirmation.
Reminds me of Politburu infighting of Soviet Russia.
Can anyone calculate the amount of money and time wasted by this administration in turn over and lack of accomplishment or shear wast of time? Does anyone really care?
Regrettably, I think you answered your own question.
More to the point is that it doesn’t seem to matter. The civil servants that do the actual work seem to be doing fine running the agencies without the political appointees to provide “leadership”. Astronauts are going to ISS, spacecraft are being launched to make “amazing” new discoveries, flagship programs like the JWST and SLS are running massive overruns and slipping their schedules, plans are going forward for the very expensive LOP-G that will be the next flagship HSF program to have massive cost overruns and delays. Business as usual for NASA.
Many folks assumed that in the Swamp all those politically appointed agency leaders were nothing but figureheads who were mostly ignored by the bureaucrats. President Trump is showing this is probably an accurate assessment.
This shows one of the advantages of having a well-trained, professional civil service with strong protections against political changes.
except that the civil service has it’s own agenda. I suggest watching an episode of “Yes, Minister” to see how the civil service forms policy decisions.
Or, can anyone calculate the amount of money and time wasted by the readers of this-here blog, who should be doing something, you know, productive? 🙂
How about the time and money wasted by the Democrats in their obstruction of even non-controversial nominees?
John, please try to pay attention.
“The Trump politicals at NASA are not a friendly bunch”
This is the self-righteous behavior of the True Believer, seen most often in the religious zealotry of calvinists, many Baptists, and, of course, Sunni Muslims.
In some cases this political smugness is worse, as practitioners can be said to be “acting for the President of the United States!”, and of course the ever-popular “elections have consequences”.
And it is worth pointing out the inverse relationship between personal idolatry and ability; those least likely to ever succeed on personal merit bask in a sort of authority by osmosis.
You forgot scientists and the bureaucrats who believe the only reason taxpayers exist is to provide them funding. There is nothing more self-righteous that a scientist having their billion dollar program cut for overruns. Just look at the WFIRST researchers as the most recent example. And then there are are bureaucrats who get self-righteous at being told that their budgets are being cut because some of the things they do are no longer necessary.
Yup, engineers and managers never acted self-righteously, only the “scientists and bureaucrats.” Nor any of the aerospace companies that benefit from go-nowhere nightmares like SLS. I suspect the WFIRST contractors were the first ones to lobby Congress for more dough rather than a cancellation.
Its Congress who decides to go by decadal survey priorities, and unfortunately, even with supposedly professionally vetted cost estimates as part of that process, cost at confirmation (that is, before the traditional cost growth for large projects with significant technical risk) is almost always significantly higher than the survey prediction. Yet Congress goes along.
Are the scientists “greedy?” Sure, for more data, more knowledge, &c. You don’t have to be surprised by that. What’s amazing is that Congress falls for it pretty much every time, despite the laws set up to prevent projects going too far off the rails. Ya think it might have something to do with the lack of engineering and project management expertise in both Congress and their staffs?
And how much knowledge has the JWST produced in the last 23 years? How many ground based observatories could it have funded that would have produced even more knowledge? No they are self righteous about their project and don’t care if it takes money from other “lesser” science research.
Yep, as long at the taxpayer money flows no one will rock the boat. And when anyone starts to ask if the billions and billions are worth it and threaten to cut the “entitled” funding everyone who benefits get self righteous about how it’s critcal to the survive – fill in the blank with the science or government activity the taxpayers are asking to spend their money more wisely.
Over half of those who earn Ph.D’s in astronomy fail to find employment and leave the field. How many of those could be hired with the billions of the JWST overruns. What could they have contributed to build human knowledge using Earth based telescopes or cheaper space based ones?
And your expertese to make is assessment is…..? And of what relevance is this comment to the subject of beachhead appointments? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Teaching graduate and doctoral level courses on how to make organizations more effective, including how to develop appropriate metrics. And just what is your expertise?
So no real science, engineering or management experience in space programs, right? Just an academic in another field? That’s ok…it’s an open forum, so we’re all free to express our opinions, even about stuff we don’t understand. 40+ years of planning and creating and managing space programs for USG and Commericial sectors. I have abouit $10B of stuff I lead in orbit or in advanced stages of development. 100% mision success. Multiple degrees in engineering and management. Success in both FFP and Cost+ environments.
Then you could probably chime in on a question I’ve been asking people who build planetary and heliophysics hardware. If you’d been shooting for (and achieving) only a 90% mission success rate, how much would that $10 billion of stuff cost? $5 billion? Less?
It’s an excellent question. There’s no simple answer to it other than “it depends.” Consider the relationship between acceptable mission risk and cost. Generally, more mission risk that is allowed, the lower the cost because of a large number of factors including lower cost components, less stringent testing, less paperwork, fewer reviews, less oversight, etc. Depending on the program that may or may not have a significant impact on actual probability of success. You could “skip steps” and get lucky, right? Another factor is complexity, especially when a mission has either lots of new technology and/or lots of moving parts. NASA established different mission classifications (https://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.go… to allow for programs to operate with different levels of risk and associated cost. Class A is for all crewed missions and those robotic missions deemed strategically important, e.g., HST, Cassini, etc. Class B missions, e.g., New Frontiers and Discovery, allow some risks to be taken. Class C, even more risk is allowed. Etc. I’ve worked on missions of all four classes. So one way of reframing your question is: “what if a Class A mission was redefined to be a Class B mission, might it have worked?” It certainly would have cost less, but there’s no way to know if it would have succeeded. Another way to have cut costs for the same mission risk class was to descope the mission, i.e., make it less capable. That’s been done in the past for programs in development, but all of the stakeholders have to be onboard with that decision.
Actually, it’s the cost more than the risks I’m trying to pin down. For the risks, it does depend on lots of things (since I think it terms of planetary missions duration is a big one, both a long cruise and duration for a healthy extended mission.) But I can at least some citable sources.
The National Academies report on CubeSats said that 67% of them were fully or partially successful (through 2015, and I’ve been told that’s iffy since it depends on who builds them…) while Class C/D missions had a 80% success rate and Class A/B missions had a 90% success rate. 90% for Class A/B is consistent with the Discovery program. With 11 missions flown, they’ve got one success and one partial failure. Call it 9.5 out of 11 or 86% (or 91% if you insist that Genesis was a success not a partial one.)
But for the cost, I’m having more trouble. I asked someone who’s done instruments or missions across the whole range. He didn’t know of any studies, but for a equally capable spacecraft (same measurement requirements, etc.) he thought the difference between Class A/B and C/D was about a factor of two or three. That was just one person’s guess. But, again, that’s consistent with the one example I could track down numbers on. Turning GRACE (Class C) into GRAIL or GRACE-FO (Class B) was a factor of 2.4 or 2.5.
What I’m trying to do is make a statement like, “If Discovery missions were developed to Class C rather than Class B standards, they would have been able to fly 22 rather than 11 missions. Class C missions average a success rate of 80%, so that probably would have resulted in 17 to 18 successful missions. 17 is greater than 9.5.” Unfortunately, for the cost difference, all I’ve got is someone’s gut feeling and one example.
You nailed one of the problems is the lack of a large data set from which to draw conclusions. To look over a large number of missions, you also are looking over a large span of time during which there’s been a lot of new technology introduced into all parts of the process. So it’s really hard to draw any firm conclusions.
I take your point about the size of the data set, but ask from the point of view of a layman: to some extent isn’t the data set self-limiting? Some have asked, for instance, why the railroad is re-invented for each mission (not always true, but still). This has the effect of both expanding the envelope, and at the same time creating oranges where apples once were?
Were there more similarities, 10 missions or so might be considered fertile ground, although I have read your expanded comments on the process and the inevitable changes.
Most of the recent Mars missions have used common subsystems to save money. I believe that the Insight lander is largely derived from an engineering model that Lockheed Martin had from an earlier Mars lander. The same is true for Curiosity and the Mars 2020 rover from JPL and it’s supply chain.
That’s commonality at the subsystem level, which isn’t really the same. For example, I’d say MSL/Curiosity and Mars 2020 don’t have too much in common because Mars 2020 had a phase A and B. That might sound like heresy. But think about what phase B and the PDR are supposed to be about.
Phase B is about developing a preliminary design. If Mars 2020 really was that much like MSL, then the Mars 2020 preliminary design would be the MSL as-flown design. They could have cut directly to the PDR. Of course, they did make lots of changes. And the magnitude of those changes should be reflected by the relative duration of and effort required for their phase B work. There actually wasn’t a huge difference.
Have you ever proposed downsizing or down rating a project and how was it received?
As Elon Musk has turned the launch industry up side down by super innovating.. if YOU were to propose a project like that .. SLASHING the cost of doing a probe .. how would it be received? Would it get funding?
You’re mixing two things. Downsizing or down rating a project can easily mean cutting capability, not cost. Mr. Musk’s company has cut cost while keeping capabilities fixed (i.e. Falcon 9 and a mid- to high-range Delta are comparable.)
Saying you could the same thing for much less, in the context of a NASA mission will get you two places. One is a rejected proposal, on the grounds that your budget is unrealistic (cost models are based on extrapolating from passed missions, so innovative ideas to cut costs score poorly.) The other is people getting mad at you. In some cases, a decadal survey has called for (eventually) doing a particular large mission, and a decade later you could realistically claim the same results could be accomplished by a smaller, lower cost mission. But a more popular choice would be to use the the decadal survey to justify a similar, but more capable mission at the higher price.
Saying you can do less for the same price isn’t unheard of. It’s called a descope, and it’s what missions end up doing when they are badly offtrack. Removing Cassini’s scan platform (plus a number of less visible deletions) is one example. The chronograph on WFIRST might be another. That’s never popular, but it’s understood that it’s sometimes necessary. But missions (at least Discover, New Frontiers and, I think, Explorer missions) are supposed to include this in the proposal. Listing what they would descope if they had to, and when they would hit a “performance floor” below which the mission would be canceled.
As far as I know, lowering cost and capability at the same time hasn’t happened after selection. But it has happened on paper. Specifically, people have put together proposals for very similar missions aimed at different NASA mission lines. For example, a Jupiter flyby mission with goals very similar to Juno was proposed as a Discovery mission, by the same team that proposed Juno as a New Frontiers. Of course, being a single flyby, it wouldn’t have done nearly as good a job.
I know it was two different things.. I was asking him if had every proposed one OR the other.
SIRTF, AKA, Spitzer experienced several paradigm shifts during its evolution. It was originally supposed to be the SHUTTLE InfraRed Telescope Facility, flying repeatedly on the “frequent” flights of the Shuttle. We figured out that “frequent” was going to be not “weekly” but quarterly, so it morphed into a free-flyer, saving $$ because it wouldn’t have to be human rated. The only way folks could figure out how to get it cold enough was to build the telescope inside of a huge Dewar (think very large Thermos bottle). The cost grew to northward of $2B. Then we figured out from studies of a passively cooled IR telescope study called Edison that one could achieve quite a bit of cooling passively used nested radiators, reducing the Dewar size and saving $$. This was an unexpected surprise as the engineers at MSFC working on AXAF (now called Chandra) couldn’t figure out why the x-ray optics were getting so cold. Their problem was SIRTF’s solution. So this idea was infused into SIRTF, enabling it to obtain enough lifetime to meet its Level 1 science requirements by using a much smaller Dewar. The orbit changed from 1000 km circular to an innovative drift-away orbit to increase observational efficiency (HST spends 2/3 of its time not observing because it has to avoid the Earth, Moon and Sun). Finally, decisions were made to eliminate moving parts that eliminated observational modes to cut costs late in the program, with an acceptable loss of science. The point of all of this is that there’s a ton of innovative thinking and sacrifices that go on to help solve really hard technical problems and save $$ by NASA, its contractors and the science community. Most of this flies totally under the radar screen of the space pundits. Musk et al are doing amazing things in space launch. But in my book, folks doing robotic science missions don’t get enough credit for some amazing accomplishments as well. Best recent example is the New Horizons mission. I’m looking forward to reading Alan and David’s book about how it happened – shameless plug for a new book to be released on May 1. 🙂
Since you have put a number of science payloads in space perhaps you could answer this question. Why does NASA spend so much to develop a good design only to abandon it after one or two missions?
The twin Mars rovers are a good example. Given their performsnce they seem well suited to the Martian environment. Why didn’t NASA follow up with a dozen more of the same design?
The cost per rover should have gone down since the R&D was paid for in the first pair allowing more science per dollar. It seems a dozen rovers launched to Mars over the next 3 or 4 launch windows could have returned a lot more data points economically, especially since, as a proven design, some could be sent into high risk landing zones where the Martian geology would be very interesting. Imagine for example one landing on the flank of Mons Olympics or perhaps in its crater area. Or another near the edge of one of the ice caps. Even if it only lasted to the first snows of Winter it would have provided more insight on Mars, and with a number of others working on the surface, it’s loss after a single season would be worth it.
Yet NASA abandoned what was a successful design only to spend a large amount on the Curiosity rover. It seems one factor in the high costs is insisting each mission is a “fresh start” maximizing the engineering R&D expenses.
You mean why, aside from the fact that managers at NASA centers and in industry like getting paid to design and develop hardware? (Or, if you prefer a different phrasing, retain a skilled workforce.)
I think quite a bit of it is due to the way NASA (and, actually, NSF) select proposals. They want and expect a proposal to answer specific questions. In some cases, to provide a binary, this or that, answer about which of two competing theories is correct. For flight missions, the hardware is supposed to be designed and customized to answering those questions. Anything else would be suboptimal.
From that point of view, the MER rovers answered the questions they were designed to answer. Why would you want to send more? “What’s on the other side of the next hill?” isn’t the sort of exploration the system is set up to fund. If the new set of rovers would answer different questions, that’s fine. But if so, why is the MER design the best for that?
The same could be said for Kepler (which is running out of fuel and ending in a few months) and TESS (which will launch in a few weeks.) Kepler was designed to address specific questions about exoplanets, and largely statistical ones. (What fraction of star have planets, how many multi-planet systems, what size distribution, etc.) It’s done that. Flying another, identical mission would improve the statistics. But doubling the number of start sampled only reduces the error bars by 29%. So the follow-on mission, TESS, is designed to address different questions about exoplanets. That implies different measurement requirements, and therefore a different spacecraft and different instruments.
What you’d want to do with many, many more Mars rovers like Spirit and Curiosity _is_ the “What’s on the other side of the hill?” exploration. Where you’re trying to look everywhere and just see what’s out there. Personally, I’m all for that. But it’s with tight budgets and low flight rates, that approach is up against people who can point to a specific result their mission will produce, and people who can say looking at the other side of hill is a “fishing expedition”; you can’t prove there will be anything there, so it might be a waste of time.
And, before you say it, Yes. A dramatic decrease in launch costs and dramatic increase in flight opportunities would change all that.
Except going to see what is over the next hill is exactly the purpose of exploration. Charles Darwin didn’t set out to discover Evolution, he set out merely to collect specimens for the Royal Museum. He would have probably never made the discovery of his collecting was limited to Europe. The same is true of many breakthroughs in science.
Exploring Mars is just that, exploring. And there is a lot of Mars still unexplored. And I expect if the public had a say they would fund that type of exploration.
Also the Moon should have taught scientists a lesson. They “answered” the question of lunar water during Project Apollo, failing to find any. But we now know they mostly looked in the wrong places. And the one time they may have found it, on Apollo 15, they discounted it as a contimate from mishandeling the samples. Yet, the latest hydrogen map shows Apollo 15 landed in a location that was marginal for water. Hopefully someone will be taking another look at the Apollo 15 samples.
And that raises another question. If NASA scientists are through with the old rover designs why not make them available to ESA or Japan. I am sure the scientists there would like to have access to a proven design they could launch on the Ariane V or H2. I am sure such tech transfer could get approval in terms of ITAR.
I’m not disagreeing, I’m describing how NASA selects missions. The problem with funding “real” exploration (as you define it), is that NASA doesn’t have the budget to fund everything. Unlike a privately funded venture, they have to have a reason to fund one mission rather than another. (Mr. Musk can fund Mars projects and Mr. Bezos can fund lunar projects, simply by saying, “It’s my money and I think Mars/the Moon is cool.”) That’s caused the NASA process be biased towards answering specific questions rather than just seeing what’s out there.
Although, to be entirely honest, that’s how missions get selected. Not necessarily what they actually do. Many of the scientists involved know the value of just looking around, the missions do quite a bit of that once they get to their destinations, and most of the results do come from that rather than answering some predefined questions. But you can’t say that in a proposal and expect NASA to select it.
Yes, that is the real hope of the future, moving beyond the NASA monopoly and being more inclusive in terms of scientific research. And following roads NASA rejected, like the Cyclops Telescope to search for SETI. The Allen Array funded by Paul Allen finally built it 40 years after NASA rejected it.
Systems like BFR, as you note, will lower the cost of space science by a couple of orders of magnitude bringing it within the reach of small colleges, high schools and even wealthy amateurs. The Cube Sat Revolution is just a taste of what will be possible in the near future.
What you are suggesting would probably create lower cost rovers but wouldn’t address what the customers have stated as their priorities. The objective is to maximize the science return for missions defined by the Decadal Survey in terms of science objectives which define the goals of Flagship missions and goals for missions to be selected by the AO process, i.e., Discovery and New Frontiers. This process has been around for quite some time and everyone involved with it has applauded it for being the principal reason for the success of NASA Space Science. It’s the best in the world. Policymakers appreciate the clarity with which priorities are set and supported across the community. That’s why most new missions get funded and supported, even through the eventual schedule delays and cost over-runs.
To do what you suggest would require additional funds allocated solely for future Mars rovers. Unless more money is provided, these funds are already allocated for Europa and other future Decadal Survey priorities. There used to be Mars Exploration Program (within the Planetary Science Division) that was managed in somewhat of a self-contained manner with the Planetary Science Division. The customers base – the Planetary Science community – felt that this created an imbalance with a disproportionate share of resources being allocated on Mars vs. other destinations, e.g., the Outer Planets, Venus. So out year planning resources were removed from the MEP so that these resources could better address the overall priorities as reflected by the Decadal Survey. In the meantime, tons of data have come back from Cassini that has convinced the planetary science community that missions to Europa, Titan and Enceladus are extremely important. Congress has agreed and that’s where a lot of future resources will be allocated over the next few years. It’s my understanding that the next step in the MEP will be in the direction of a Mars Sample Return mission. This will require lots of new technology, e.g., a Mars Ascent Vehicle. Even though reducing the costs of future Mars rovers would be attractive, it’s not a high priority, given these other needs.
Generally customers are considered to be the folks actually paying for the good and service – taxpayers. The scientists therefore are not techically “customers” but just the benefactors of the service NASA is providing and taxpayers are funding. The fact that they are viewed as customers explains a lot. No wonder their behavior is similar to kids in a candy store, always wanting what is biggest and shinest.
Perhaps one way to reform the system and to encourage more responsible decisions, from the viewpoint of taxpayers, would be to make the scientists actual customers And just give them a fix budget each year allowing them to “buy” missions with it, either from NASA or a private entity. The budget would be fixed and they wouldn’t get anymore for that year. So if they choose to spend their money on most expensive and risky option they won’t get to buy anything else that year. Money not spent in that year could be allowed to accumulate for the future. Of course money allocated to multi-year missions would limit the amount they have in those years to spend on new ones. This might encourage them to not throw away perfectly good technology for the latest shiny thing they see.
Technically, the customers are actually Congress, since they ultimately make the buying decision. They have been pleased with the current process and often rely on science advice, unlike the current administration which appears not to value science as evidenced by its policy actions and budget proposals. Fortunately, Congress has been acting far more responsibly in these matters.
Congress seemed pleased with the current process and the roles of scientists in the decision-making process. Ask anyone on the Hill knowledgeable that that’s what you’ll hear.
The comments about scientists wining is amusing as it seems that you are the one wining about what is arguably the most successful part of our civilian space program. Could there be improvements made? Of course. It happens every year. The comments above also demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding about the scientific process and about how advanced technology programs are planned and developed. Maybe the ideas above might make for an interesting faculty meeting debate in the economics department? Academics will argue and debate endlessly…even about stuff that they know little about. That’s what makes it so much fun!
Yes, you have to be a “real scientist” to understand the scientific process. How many times have I heard that? Actually I understand it well as the scientific method is the basis of research in the social sciences, and it’s focused on strongly because of the complexity of the topic. That is because you are not able to divide your research elements into little static bits to experiment with as in physics or chemistry, you have to study the entire system. I remember how easy it was to do experiments in Chemistry and how it was an easy “A” because of the simple equations and formula. The same with the physics labs I took at New Mexico Tech.
One important element is repeating observations to verify the results, but its often missing in space science. The Viking experiments are a good example. They have never been repeated with additional controls to determine which of the hypothesis were correct. Instead researchers just argued for the non-life explanation.
https://phys.org/news/2016-…
In another example I noted above the presence of water in a sample from Apollo 15 was dismissed as contamination, yet recent orbital surveys show it was the only Apollo mission that landed were water should be present.
One problem of course are the academic journals, the currency of science, which only publish “new” results and not studies that repeat earlier research. This of course is one of big drivers for doing “new” research which you note is the driver of these high cost missions.
As for Congress being happy, remember their motive is different than taxpayers. Its not their money. They just want to see money flowing into their districts. As long as it does they could care less what scientists spent on.
The JWST is a good example. Although the Congress Critters will cry crocodile tears at the hearing for the cost overruns, secretly they are probably glad it brought an extra ten years of employment and money to the districts it is built and tested in.
In practice, scientists do get handed a flat budget and decide how to spend in. The decadal surveys (which I personally think are not so great a process) are how the scientific community decides how to spend it.
One problem is that the real customers (the tax payers) don’t want to see the same thing again and again. Driving lots of rovers across the surface of Mars means sending back more-or-less the same view for days or months on end. Studying a planet’s atmosphere is best done by sending back images and spectra of the same thing, apart from the clouds moving, day after day. That’s boring, and lots of scientists feel they wouldn’t even get a flat budget if they made that a priority. So there is a push for the new and exciting which comes from the public (or congress.)
The other problem, which is curable, is having a particular mission which is listed as a priority and whose costs get out of control. The only way to make people take a cost cap seriously is to enforce it. That may mean canceling a high priority mission. But if we don’t, we’re effectively giving a blank check to whoever managed to get their pet project listed as the highest priority in a decadal survey.
I’m not sure where to start.
I don’t think the decadal survey process is so great at maximizing scientific return, and I’m definitely not the only one. It may be the best at assuring continued science funding, but that’s a different matter.
I’m not sure about astrophysics, but in planetary, there are many apples to oranges choices that go into it. How can you compare the value of studying the atmosphere of Jupiter with studying the interior of Mars? I know there also sorts of diverse astrophysical studies, but most of the big telescopes I’ve seen have at least some value to most of them. InSight will tell us absolutely nothing about the atmosphere of Jupiter, while JWST (designed largely with cosmology in mind) will. That means, at least in planetary science, you can’t say that listing a Mars sample return as the top priority means the whole planetary science community is behind doing it and nothing (or very little) else. In fact, if you look beyond the specific missions, the highest priority was a balanced program of large, medium and small missions as well as research and analysis funding.
In any case, I’m also uncomfortable with the role the decadal survey’s play in justifying cost overruns at the expense of other missions and research funding. At least in planetary science, we’ve been burned by missions (and people at headquarters) who took the survey and said “You said it was the top priority, that means we have to do it regardless of the cost and even if it means to the exclusion of everything else.” Things have never quite gone that far, but they have definitely gone in that direction on a few occasions.
And, just as a footnote, the Mars Exploration Program is alive and well ($600 million in the requested FY19 budget.) There was a trade over some money going from the Mars program to other things in return for allowing Mars mission within the scope of the Discovery program.
The sample return mission, and the wide support for it, leaves me with many unanswered questions. It’s similar to Phoenix, in that samples are from a single or very narrow selection of sites, yet at huge expense.
When I send soil samples up to the University of Florida for analysis, I usually send two samples from each representative site; and those sites are taken to be as disparate as I can make them, consistent with projected use. Site A, for instance, has samples a few feet from each other; same for Site B, and so forth.
And I often find that samples taken a few feet apart show dramatically different markers, or at least the ones I care about: pH, of course, but also [Mg], [Nx], [Mn], etc. In my case I adjust my fertilizer recommendations.
But the point about limited sources is a good one; and my own experience here on earth is on the micro scale. On Mars how do we even begin to characterize soils with these limited sample sets? Is it the case that we ‘have to start somewhere’? Maybe. But unless a wide region is characterized, the support for a sample return mission with foreseeable tech, at least to this non-scientist.
I decided to check what the current Decadal Survey says before replying, and I’m afraid I’m disappointed. It has a section on why a Mars sample return is important, but it consists of two things: A few paragraphs saying, “It’s important because we’ve been saying it’s important for decades, go look up the following references,” and explaining why doing the analysis in a terrestrial lab is better than doing it in situ. The later is a valid point, but for the former, I’d rather have seen a paragraph summarizing the reasons as opposed to two paragraphs of assertions (even if the assertions come with references; readers of documents like a decadal survey rarely dig into the references.)
You’re point about the diversity of samples, even on small scales, an important issue. Unfortunately, the Decadal Survey doesn’t directly address it. They talk about wanting samples for “chemical, isotopic and morphological signatures.” In the case of isotopes, they should be well mixed. But that’s not rigorously true on global scales.
For chemical signatures and rock/mineral morphology, I can see that varying on small scales. (Although I’m surprised you see differences in terrestrial soils on the scale of feet; I’d expect that in rock but I’d think soil would be more well mixed.) I’m also concerned with another difference from terrestrial sampling. If your two samples, from a foot or so apart, are very different and the difference is important to you, you can go back and collect a third (or fourth and fifth) sample. So can a terrestrial geologist, although going back to a remote location might be a pain and not happen for a few months or years. I don’t see that happening with a Mars sample return.
Along these lines, the text in the Decadal Survey actually raises more concerns for me. Then note that there are meteorites we are (almost) certain came from Mars. But they are all igneous rocks. (I think they actually found one that wasn’t, after the Survey was written.) The Survey makes a point of how diverse Mars is, and the value of samples of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, rocks which have been aqueously altered. And all the potentially interesting sites (e.g. dry lake bed versus hydrothermal systems.) After reading that, I don’t see how one sample return mission could do the job. A rover would be able to collect samples from different locations, but they’d all be within a few (tens of?) kilometers or so of the landing site. I don’t see that sampling the sort of planetary diversity they describe.
What I’d really like to see, in the next Decadal Survey, would be a real, terrestrial geologist’s views on the subject. I’m not sure what a dozen, 10 gram (one third of an ounce) samples can tell you, especially if they are all collected within a short distance of each other (and with no potential for a revisit.)
If your lander can’t travel far from the landing site, would it be better to get the biggest possible sample rather than several small one?
Terrestrial labs don’t need a very large sample for most purposes. So it isn’t clear how much extra benefit you’d get from larger samples. It looks like the current plan (for Mars 2020) is to collect 30, 15 gram samples.
The rover is based on Curiosity, and that one’s traveled 18 kilometers so far (about 3 km/year.) I think it’s reasonable to expect thirty different and interesting sample sites within range, especially if they find bedded deposits. Several samples from different strata might be interesting.
When I said one landing site didn’t seem enough, I was thinking of larger scales. You can find a spot with thirty good places within rover range. But you aren’t going to find one with a dry lake bed, fluvial deposits, good candidates for hydrothermal systems, etc. all with rover range. Those different terrains are hundreds of kilometers apart, not a few.
“I’m surprised you see differences in terrestrial soils on the scale of feet”
An unfair comparison, on my part: normally this is the result of some human interaction, often adjacent construction debris buried and then leached.
Still, the point is that my eyes can’t tell the difference.
“there’s no way to know if it would have succeeded”
This might be a good point for the resident expert on metric development to chime in?
You just proved the point I made. Space management is so different it has nothing to learn from other industries or fields of study. That is why it was so easy for an outsider like Elon Musk to shake the field up. I expect Jeff Bezos will be doing the same.
BTW my dissertation was on commercial spaceports and I have been publishing academic papers in the field since 1993, some with co-authors with experience in space going back to the Gemini days. But they were open to new ideas and not as self righteous as many are at NASA now, another sign of a badly aging organization.
Having had a few days to think about this-
At first your point about space management being unique seemed so clearly true, particularly as you mentioned SX. But there have been many very large and complicated space projects- Mercury, Gemini, then Apollo, each more complex than the last, HST, STS, and ISS all come to mind.
It’s true that SX has adopted vertical management, but that’s hardly new. Lots of companies make choices about how much each piece should be manufactured in-house; in space, the chief advantage is the uniqueness of many different parts subject to concurrent developmental.
And surely, though perhaps more prosaic, are the design efforts of GM/Saturn, and indeed any large car company.
I believe it’s far fewer than half the PhD astronomers who remain in the field. At least, when it comes to planetary science, a survey a few years ago came up with about 20%. (Although there were some problems with that survey; it was self reporting and some of the other questions had clearly incorrect answers. E.g. the female scientist who said there weren’t any woman in her department. She meant was thinking of tenured professors.) But some of those people who leave the field don’t do so because of money.
In terms of telescopes and how much astronomy could be done from the ground for the cost of JWST, I don’t think that’s a realistic comparison. There are basic limits to what you can do from the ground. Asking about lower cost, orbital telescopes might be a better question.
I do see some stubbornness when it comes to a mission listed as the top priority in a decadal survey. (Oddly WFIRST really is the top priority for the 2010-2020 astrophysics decadal survey. If it had followed the logic used by planetary decadal surveys, completing, launching and operating JWST would have been.)
It seems like many people think of the priorities listed by one of these surveys as a schedule. Do number one first, then number two, then number three, etc. But if the number one priority is too expensive, would it be better to skip it and have the budget to do numbers two through seven?
That is something they put into the current planetary decadal survey. The top priority was to do the first step towards a Mars sample return. But only if it could be done at a reasonable price (they got a $4 billion estimate for MAX-C and said they wanted to see if it could be done for under $2 billion.) If it couldn’t be done at a reasonable price, the survey said NASA should skip it and do a Europa orbiter, but again only if that was possible at an affordable price. If not, then start looking into a Uranus or Neptune orbiter. That’s a prioritized list, but also with instructions on how to reprioritize if budgets go down or cost get out of scope.
I have worked at two NASA centers plus HQ, and have never run into one of those scientists. A question I heard often at NSSC in the early 2000’s was: Are we getting the best deal for the tax payer? Even during a 6 year stint with an UARC, I witness extreme care on how federal funds were used. Also keep in mind that it is very, very hard to win research funds. Certainly NASA screws up, but we do hard stuff, and I suspect that many of these mistakes are forced errors. If you want to look for waste, there are other larger agencies that deserve more attention.
I’m not sure I’d say the question they ask is, “Are we getting the best deal for the tax payer?” Working with people at JPL and GSFC, it would be more like, “Are we being careful how we spend tax payer money?” The difference is an attitude towards risk. A very common view is that, since lots of tax payer money is involved, doing as much as possible (or as practical) to reduce risk is inherently good. Doing otherwise would be gambling with the taxpayers’ money, which is irresponsible. I disagree with that view, because it _isn’t_ getting the best deal for the taxpayers.
That risk posture drives costs up by a factor of a few (at least) without a similar increase in the probability of a successful mission. Which is a better deal for the public? One successful mission, or, for the same cost, two equally productive and successful missions and one failure?
so your mission fails and in the press conference you say “sure we could have made it better, decreased the chance of failure. Next question” …”How much money did you just waste against how much it would have cost to fix the problem?”
I’d say it saved enough for another complete mission. Would you spend $200,000 to insure a $200,000 house? The problem isn’t getting tough questions after a failure. It’s being willing and able to answer the.
But the questions would still remain; and while your answer is logical, and defensible, it would not fly, at least partly because reporters have no way to assess the answer.
That approach would certainly be a hard sell for a multi-billion dollar mission (read impossible), unless it was a non-NASA mission. The hypothetical, rich, eccentric patron might be convinced.
I’m approaching this from the other end of the price range. When it comes to a $25 or $50 million mission, the idea of slightly higher risk and substantially lower cost might be accepted. It would be interesting to prove that such a mission could accomplish to goals of a $125 million (e.g. Small Explorer) mission with a more conservative risk posture.
The reaction to the loss of Mars Climate Orbiter resulted in more mirth than outrage. You could be right.
I wonder if having real, monetary insurance policy would help science missions take more risk. Right now government missions are “self-insured” which basically means no insurance. For the launch part government mission should be able to tap into existing launch insurance industry, this would allow you to get another launch if one failed. The money to rebuild the spacecraft may be harder, since I’m not sure commercial satellite insurance would cover this, may need to be a government sponsored fund, each mission contribute a certain percentage into this fund and it can be used to help rebuild failed mission.
I’m not sure if it’s all about money. First of all, some missions have been reflown after a failure (Mars Phoenix was essentially a Mars Polar Lander reflight) while others aren’t (e.g. CONTOUR.) But the standards are a little contradictory. If reflight is a viable option, the risk classification can be lower. In practice, reflights generally happen when the mission is a big deal for NASA strategic goals. But if a mission is a big deal for strategic goals, then a more conservative risk posture is expected.
On top of that, some of the standards seem to imply an intangible value. The table defining the various risk classes includes “National Significance.” I take that to mean, “Is a failure going to end up on the front page of the New York Times” and “Are you going to make NASA and the US look incompetent by mixing up pounds and Newtons?” So, if it’s high enough profile, then even insurance to fund a reflight wouldn’t allow a more relaxed risk posture.
Finally, I think there would be resistance to setting aside money for insurance or to permit an easy reflight. Some people in the field would think money is better spent on designing to prevent failures, rather than on contingencies to deal with a failure if it happens. I think that displays a poor understanding of “fault tolerant”, but there are people around who think that way.
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“like Game of Thrones” … but without the extra-curricular adult activity (not sure on your posting guidelines) ?
Sad, but predictable. What a waste of time and money. I am truly sick of it. Mid-term elections are coming.
Wonder how many books will be published by people fired by trump?