Bridenstine Begins To Make His Mark on NASA Lunar Policy
NASA Expands Plans for Moon Exploration: More Missions, More Science
“NASA is returning to the Moon with commercial and international partners as part of an overall agency Exploration Campaign in support of Space Policy Directive 1. It all starts with robotic missions on the lunar surface, as well as a Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway for astronauts in space beyond the Moon. Right now, NASA is preparing to purchase new small lunar payload delivery services, develop lunar landers, and conduct more research on the Moon’s surface ahead of a human return. And that long-term exploration and development of the Moon will give us the experience for the next giant leap – human missions to Mars and destinations beyond.”
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Keith’s note: NASA Administrator Bridenstine was clearly caught off guard last week hours after he was sworn in when it became clear that his staff had cancelled a prominent lunar mission, Resource Prospector. A few hours after the dust settled he was tweeting about it – from his perspective. One look at the title of this NASA press release (“More Missions, More Science”) and his tweets should leave little doubt that he is calling the shots.
Next week there is a Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) Industry Day at NASA HQ. While these events have a lot of Q&A for potential contractors, there are a lot of NASA presentations scheduled – and Bridenstine tweeted that he would be there. If NASA is really interested in getting the word out about its lunar ambitions, putting this event on NASA TV would be an easy way to start by broadening the reach of this otherwise closed off event. No word yet if any of the event will be presented live to a larger audience.
– Trying To Understand What NASA Is Saying About Resource Prospector, earlier post
– Commercial Lunar Payload Services (Update), earlier post
I wonder if Moon Express will be able to get NASA money. http://moonexpress.com/
Not with that level of detail. The goals and measurements have to be spelled out before NASA would even pay to fly something on a balloon. On the other hand, those people may have all those details and just didn’t put them on their web page.
But that raises interesting questions about what sort of missions NASA will be sending to the Moon and how they will be selected. Since they are talking about lunar payload services, they are presumably talking about flying a significant number of missions. It they were thinking of just one or two, there wouldn’t be any benefit over unique designs. So is that going to be payloads developed by NASA centers? Or competed like a Discovery mission where anyone can propose anything that matches very broad goals? Or a strategic decision on the next mission’s goals and an open competition to develop and fly something which achieves those goals?
Seems there should be some simple way to leverage the LXP teams. Maybe a demonstration program with similar requirements as the LXP to prove designs? Do an RFP and fund rides for four of them, a pair of landers on a single Falcon 9R. Buying two flights of a Falcon 9R should not cost that much since it’s reusable. The two that perform the best then get contracts to carry instrument packages on later flights.
Excellent questions about what NASA will put on commercial landers and how it’ll be selected and developed. I would guess much of that process is still TBD.
Worth getting sensible thoughts into the mix right now, as it would be quite embarrassing (not to mention a huge opportunity missed) if a procedural/cultural mismatch left NASA with landers but no payloads.
My very general two-cents-worth: NASA will likely need to bend their instrument/payload development process sharply in the direction of faster/cheaper/accepting-higher-per-mission-risk to get the most out of this presumed much higher number of payloads landed.
That would probably be wise. If they do go for class D missions, it would make it much easier to certify the landing services. That would be even easier than Commercial Cargo was. And we shouldn’t forget orbiters as well; the same approach of low cost missions and frequent flight opportunities solves the problem of low lunar orbits. If you only expect a few months of operations, you wouldn’t really mind orbits which aren’t stable for six months.
Elaborate a bit on “class D missions”? I gather it’s a term of art in NASA science mission classes, and I’m not familiar with the implications. (thanks!)
NASA classifies missions as “A” to “D” based on how important they are and how willing they are to risk a mission failing. The classification determines how much work (and money) goes into identifying and elimiating risks and how conservative design requirements have to be (e.g. using hardware which hasn’t been flown before, or whether hardware has to be tested to 20 degrees beyond the expected operating temperature, rather than 10 or 40 degrees.) It also defines the certification requirements for the launch vehicle. I assume that would also be the case for a commercial lunar lander taking the payload to the surface of the Moon.
Class A means things like flagship missions (highly important, multi-billion dollar missions or anything involving astronauts.) Class D missions are things that don’t cost much, at least not by NASA standards (call it under $50 million) and which few people would consider a failure to be the end of their world. All CubeSats are class D or sub-class D, Explorer missions are class C or B. Discovery missions are usually B, and, as I said New Frontiers and flagship missions are class A.
In terms of launch (and presumably landing) services, NASA will fly a class D mission on the first flight of a new vehicle. A class A mission requires a vehicle which has made six successful flights, or three successful flights in a row, or something similar. (E.g. a new version of a previously qualified vehicle doesn’t need as many success to qualify.)
One needs to look at the RP cancellation from the perspective of commercial space. It’s not so much of a failure of the lunar return policy as it is a desire by Bridenstine and many others to promote commercial activities any way that they can. If RP had already been a commercially-oriented program then it wouldn’t have been cancelled. My perspective is that it is the RP data that matters most. Whichever approach can get us those results the soonest should be the approach that we should take.
What commercial activities? There is one customer in space and that is NASA; and that is not the definition of commercial. There are very few if any sources of income generation regarding humans off Earth in the foreseeable future. It will take a complete redirection of human spaceflight and this is not going to happen soon.
It’s just NASA Speak – just as with Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew. But it’s about bringing in a new group of lean New Space contractors for lunar missions, good timing with the failure of the Google X-Prize.
BTW, the Lunar Resource Prospecter was going to be a secondary payload on the SLS flight, so this is taking part of one of the missions from it for what it’s worth. It will be interesting to see if the Congress Critters supporting SLS say anything. If not maybe other payloads may be move off of it.
Resource not Lunar. Lunar Prospector was an orbiter that flew in the ’90s. Resource Prospector is the cancelled rover.
True, but reusing names of spacecraft might be something we should get used to. It’s also traditional in other contexts; the US Navy planning to build, what?, the seventh or eighth USS Enterprise? I’ve lost count.
Thanks! I fixed it.
Linguistics/syntax is a huge problem between NASA and the public and the public specifically defines and reacts to the word “commercial” in a very different manner than does NASA. NASAs selling of its future using that word is extremely misleading. Similar to how they use the word “Science” as if it was a box of something magical. If you cant communicate precisely you cant really do anything else precisely.
Do you have a reference for that? The secondary payloads for EM-1 are thirteen CubeSats. There are no secondary payloads planned Europa Clipper. And, as far as I know, the secondary payloads for for EM-2 haven’t been selected. Actually, a draft AO about that is out, and it implies EM-2 secondary payloads would be CubeSats only, not ESPA-class.
This is where I saw it.
http://www.parabolicarc.com…
“Program officials are exploring various launch options. One possibility is to fly it as a secondary payload aboard the second flight of the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft. That flight, which would be the first with crew aboard Orion, is scheduled for 2021, but it is likely to slip into 2022 or 2023.”
Commercial Cargo actually succeeded at sticking to a commercial-style development process, with relatively loose and flexible NASA oversight. With highly successful results.
Commercial Crew, alas, after a certain point had no choice but to let the “safety” mob swarm all over the process, with results we’re seeing now in delays and cost.
Keeping history from repeating when landers grow to the point of carrying people will be an interesting challenge.
You are correct and your point is well taken. But I’m explaining the reason why RP was cancelled and the instruments stated to presumably fly on landers owner not by NASA but by private companies.
My view: “Commercial” here needs to refer to the lander development process.
IE, NASA puts out a short-and-sweet performance spec, then buys landers that meet the spec WITHOUT endlessly micromanaging the hardware development process ever-farther up various diminishing-returns curves.
Otherwise there’s no chance this initiative will actually result in significant numbers of near-term landing opportunities within likely budgets.
The “Lunar COTS” approach is noticeably different than that . That approach would set up milestone payments so that the companies don’t have to go too far out on a financial limb before having the chance of being paid.
Except that Bridenstine wasn’t aware of the cancellation before (or immediately after) it occurred. The cancellation also doesn’t appear to be related to commercial lunar programs, but due to a budget issue in transferring the program (but not its budget) between two NASA agencies.
The back-rationalisation that it has something to do with Bridenstine embracing commercial-space seems to be an afterthought to save face.
As I said, it’s not just about Bridenstine. There are many pro-commercial advocates. It’s a broad trend to head in that direction. What they were doing is saying, “We’ve got these small commercial landers coming on line. Does it make sense for the government to develop landers and rovers when there are a lot of GLXP-type companies that are developing these things”? But small landers have a problem turning a profit — hence Donald’s comment below. So, what can NASA do to encourage these companies. OK, so we’ll hire them to do a lot of small science missions. OK, so RP gets the axe. It’s transferred to SMD. But the RP instruments are kept but will be placed on the so-called commercial landers. I believe that that is the general thinking behind what is going on here. I don’t have a problem with it per se unless it delays the RP results or becomes a substitute to delay developing the capability to send crew to the lunar surface.
Except that the sequence of events doesn’t feel in any way like the kind of thought-out plan you are describing.
Yes, this is all seems like face-saving spin. Seems that SMD wasn’t really interested in RP in its current form. Probably too small… they probably want to do a flagship MSL style lunar mission, and are now proposing landers (not rovers) as the cheapest face saving approach until such a mission can be put together.
Their isn’t much scientific support for a flagship (technically large strategic) mission to the Moon. A polar sample return is on the list of potential New Frontiers missions, and lunar Discovery missions are certainly on the table. But things like the current Decadal Survey don’t mention anything about multi-billion dollar lunar missions.
If SMD didn’t find RP interesting, it was probably more about the mission’s goals. At all levels, SMD likes to hear about how proposed work will address important scientific problems. Work which is a good idea for other reasons, would help some later project address scientific questions, or deals with non-scientific “strategic knowledge gaps” isn’t a huge priority for the science side of NASA. They do put some money into those sorts of things, but not a huge amount. So a mission, which was initially framed in terms of filling a “strategic knowledge gap” for human exploration, just wouldn’t really fit in if someone asked, “why is SMD doing this?”
Yeah, I was being a little cynical/flippant. And I think you’re right about it having more to do with the mission goals… begs the question of why it was transferred in the first place.
An excellent point, but if LP was conceived as a human flight precursor (which the name sort of suggests) then its hard to see why it was transferred to SMD in the first place.
“Bridenstine wasn’t aware of the cancellation before (or immediately after) it occurred”
That’s an interesting assertion that I’ve wondered about (see another post in this thread). Do you know this for a fact? That he didn’t know? I’m asking because I want to limit the number of rabbit holes to explore…
Bridenstine (or whoever runs his twitter acct) bragged about RP after it was cancelled. Suggesting he hadn’t been informed about the cancellation. Certainly suggesting that he hadn’t directed the cancellation. (I mean, if I gave an order that I wanted something cancelled, even if I hadn’t realised that the cancellation had gone through today, I certainly wouldn’t be praising the thing I’d ordered cancelled.)
I have no answer to your other post’s questions about “Why”. It smells like Directorate politics between HEOMD and SMD.
Thanks. I must limit my own views to what can be seen standing outside in the rain.
And what I see is a shift in policy mere hours before the new guy shows up It’s the kind of thing that needs an answer.
So they’re killing Prospector so they can use its components on future lunar robotic missions? Why not just fund future lunar robotic missions without killing the existing one?
Maybe sending a message that existing projects that are running years behind is unacceptable? That it won’t be business as usual.
I believe that if they put out a schedule for the replacement missions, and actually keep to it.
Ha, ha, ha. Choke.
If so, it’s not sending the message very clearly. Why not wait a few months for the Preliminary Design Review and Key Decision Point C? That’s the official time when NASA management says, “yes, we are going to fly this” or “no, the budget/schedule/whatever isn’t viable.” Or, if it is intended to announce a new policy, how about a policy statement to go along with the decision. The simple fact that people are wondering about and debating why Resource Prospector was canceled proves NASA did not send a clear message.
[slightly tangential]:
What can be said to characterize costs up to “Preliminary Design Review and Key Decision Point C”? Are the costs still minimal? I suppose it varies according to the class proposed, but how much is spent studying feasibility before the light changes to green, I wonder?
It varies more with novelty than mission class. If you are doing something new, you need to do a fair amount of prototyping and testing before going into a PDR. If the mission is more about getting existing instruments to a new place (e.g. a clone of the New Horizons mission going to a different KBO), then there wouldn’t be as much work prior to PDR.
My gut feeling was more that it’s more 10% and less than 30% of the mission’s budget (excluding launch costs.) I did a quick check on the budget and schedule for the latest two Discovery missions (now in Phase B). They look to be spending about 20% of their budget to get to PDR.
So it looks like the RP project is cancelled but the RP science will get accomplished somewhere/somehow else ?
For the project to cancelled as it was, it makes sense that it lost it’s funding/support. yes? Either in Congress or in NASA project management. Either the funds are available or they aren’t.
We’ve heard that the project responsibility moved departments but not the budget. yes? well, that’s just typical organisational “cluster …”
But the news from NASA isn’t (as I read it) that RP is reinstated, just that the science will carry forward … somehow.
Do we Know why RP was cancelled ? Possibly the project has been by-passed by some developments ? Possibly the project was going to become another hole in the budget for sinking money ?? Possibly it was unfunded this year ??
It was moved to from Exploration to SMD without moving the funding to actually complete the program, so SMD cancelled it.
That’s the entirety of it. It has nothing to do with being bypassed by commercial developments or changing WH priorities or the new Administrator or anything else.
There has to be a little more to it than that. In the FY19 proposed budget, SMD got a $200 million increase for “Lunar Discovery and Exploration.” With only half of FY18 left to go, it wouldn’t have been to hard to scrape up enough money to keep RP going (or on hold) until October 1. Maybe someone wanted to do things differently; maybe someone didn’t think RP fit within the scope of “discovery and exploration” (whatever that means.) Maybe any number of things. But, even though it was my initial reaction, I don’t think it’s just moving the project without moving the budget.
However the timing still doesn’t fit this being driven by anything external to NASA.
Bottom line, the can keeps getting kicked down the road. No humans on the Moon anytime soon (>5 years), and no humans on Mars (>30 years). Then one or two administration changes and national financial difficulties, and so on. This is not new and it will keep happening making these estimates perpetually renewed.
The cancellation is not a big deal. There was no spacecraft under serious development. Only the instruments were funded seriously. From chatter on the NSF forum from person with some insight to the Lunar Prospector program.
That’s odd. I thought the letter from the LEAG chairs said it was heading towards Preliminary Design Review later this year. How could a project go into PDR without a spacecraft design? I’ve only worked with the science side of NASA, and this was originally on the human exploration side. But can the two be that different? If so, would the people in SMD even know what to make of a mission in phase B without any spacecraft design?
If nothing else is done, at least be consistent. i.e. both Administrator and press releases say RP is cancelled, or both say it is not, or both say the systems/experiments will be repackaged into a new concept.
Question: Was RP supposed to fly on the EM-2 mission when the SLS Block 1b was “scheduled” to be the launch vehicle? If I have followed this correctly, when it was announced that the EM-2 mission is now supposed to use the Block 1, with its lower lift capability, that “some previously planned instrumentation” would be omitted from that mission, does that mean RP was some or all of the “instrumentation” to be omitted? If that’s the case, then it will take “commercial” resources to get anything to the Moon. (Can we say Falcon Heavy or BFR, boys & girls?) Maybe this is a way for Bridenstine to work around the shortcomings and budget expansion of the SLS program without saying so.
“To infinity and beyond!” (Motto of SLS budget analysts!)
I think you are asking for a clear, self-consistent payload manifest for SLS launches. And one that doesn’t change on a monthly basis. That may be an unrealistic expectation.
The reference that Dr. Matula provided talks about the RP project “exploring” to option of flying as a secondary payload on EM-2. That implies a stage in planning where the details are really just a bunch of ideas people are looking into. So it isn’t clear how changes in the plans for EM-2 (Block 1 or Block 1B SLS) would have impacted RP.
In terms of technical details, it isn’t clear what flying RP as a secondary payload on SLS would involve. They have modified the inter-tank structure (or the payload interface, I forget which) to accommodate CubeSats. They have not done so for the larger, ESPA-class secondary payloads. How much work that would take is unclear. I also doubt that RP, landing systems and rover combined, could have been an ESPA-class payload. That’s under 180 kg and under a meter on every side. And accommodating a custom, secondary payload gets expensive. Overall, I’m not sure how viable an option flying on EM-2 was.
I was surprised when I saw the reference as I had assumed they would just use an Atlas V for it. However, it appears they didn’t get that far in planning for it.
“it became clear that his staff had cancelled a prominent lunar mission, Resource Prospector”
The real story here is in exactly why this key decision was made hours before Mr. B takes over.
This kind of decision in advance of a new boss is hard to explain. I wish I knew, but don’t, exactly how much communication occurred between staff folks and Mr. B before the confirmation. Was he part of the decision process? If so, perhaps he wanted to be rid of the project before setting foot in the elevator; the wy it was hailed gives him lots of cover. Or maybe not.
And if not, why not? Why would this happen before confirmation? It can’t be simple incompetence, can it?