Making Space Policy That Does Not Get Erased
NASA’s recent woes took root with loss of space shuttle program, Houston Chronicle
“The decision to end the shuttle program came in 2004 as President George W. Bush’s administration shifted its focus to frontiers beyond Earth’s orbit. But with too few coins to divvy up amongst its many projects and a lack of political direction, the history-making agency instead has been forced to change course virtually every four years as political winds change. “NASA’s budget and policy seem to be based on Twitter,” said Keith Cowing, editor of NASA Watch, a website devoted to space news. “It’s like, ‘How can I come up with something in 280 characters?’ We can’t think long term. We can’t think multi-administrations.” That leaves space agency leaders wondering what will happen after the 2020 election. President Donald Trump has pushed to bolster human exploration — with an eye toward the moon and then onto Mars — but what happens if he isn’t re-elected is anyone’s guess. Policy fluctuations “can be difficult to weather,” Mark Geyer, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, previously told the Houston Chronicle. “It can cause fluctuations in the space program and that’s hard if you’re trying to move the country forward. But that’s life, so you need to develop strategies to navigate that.”
The article is as direcionless as the program it criticizes. It fails to mention that the CAIB report actually recommended that the Shuttle could keep flying safely until anw US human space launch capability was in place, and that human launch capabiliy should be limited to LEO and return, then called Orbital Space Plane but essentially what Commercial Crew is today, The reason for this strategy, as the CAIB presciently pointed out, was that the funding would not be available to safely accomplish a more ambitious goal. Why on Earth do so may people claim to know what the CAIB recommended without ever bothering to read the report?
Second, the article holds Bush blameless for cancelling Shuttle prematurely and both Bush and Trump blameless for saying vague things about the Moon and Mars without ever naming a realistic cost and finding adequate funds, while blaming Obama for changing the goal to Mars when his goal was to actually cancel the Constellation program and put the money into Commercial Crew and space technology, a much more focussed and realisic strategy, only to be forced by Congress to build SLS and then fnd a mission for it.
As George Santayana famously said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Santayana is often misquoted and the whole quote is about building on the past. This is exactly what the SLS is doing by utilizing technology from the shuttle program to provide a path into deep space. I believe the SLS is necessary and the ISS and commercial crew are not. Bridenstine is focused on going beyond LEO. I am with him and hopefully he will carry on into the next democratic administration. Since he has recanted his climate change denial this is likely.
We’ve been burning more then $2 billion a year on SLS with nothing to show for it yet. Also, the Exploration Upper Stage is on hold and the Block 2 SLS is just a fantasy at this point.
And the icing on the cake is the fact that SLS is 100% expendable. So launch costs are very optimistically $1 billion per launch. The high cost of SLS is simply unsustainable and there is no realistic way of bringing costs down because absolutely nothing is reusable.
At the rate SLS is coming you’ll shut down ISS and commercial crew and then you will have no space program at all. No one is going beyond LEO to do anything meaningful for decades-maybe the 2040s, although at the rate these things actually get done if we say 2040s now it might be another 50 years.
The Dragon and Starliner will have to be rated for prolonged storage just to serve as escape vehicles for the ISS. All they need is a hab module and a propulsion module which could be launched separately for an Earth Orbit Rendezvous assembly, or launched together on the BFR.
Launching the Dragon2 on the BFR/BFS for a deep space mission would be like using a luxury liner to launch a power boat for a transocean crossing.
Now I could see an argument for using the BFR/BFS to transport a small lunar lander to the Moon, one that would carry the equipment to prepare a landing site for the BFS. But that would be about the same as sending a rowboat ashore to prepare an anchorage for that oceanliner.
“…that would be about the same as sending a rowboat ashore to prepare an anchorage for that oceanliner.” That’s not unheard of for the military. Landing craft aren’t much bigger than rowboats (well, both are small compared to ocean-going ships.) Some of the people they’ve taken to shore during invasions have been engineers to build shore facilities for cargo ships (or airfields.)
For BFR, there is a substantial benefit to in situ refueling after landing (either no the Moon, to the extent you can, or on Mars.) I can easily see the first mission have a BFR carrying a lander with an in situ fuel plant, but not landing itself. Once the plant is up and running, you could land the BFR without risk of stranding it on the surface due to production problems.
The “lander” model favored by Apollo has very little future when the available hardware includes BFR – a spaceship worthy of the great SF novels of John Campbell. When you arrive at the destination, just turn your ship around and land on the rockets!
No need for two sets of towels, although policymakers appear not to be listening.
Not necessarily. For an in situ fuel (or propellent) factory a one-way trip makes sense. There’s no point is dragging it back when you could automate it, leave it running between manned landings, and slowly filling up some big storage tanks. At the same time, an initial plant might not work out. The deposits might not be as extensive and expected, the equipment could break down (especially at first, since teething pains and infant mortality are known problems.)
On the one hand, in situ propellent is so helpful that you’d want a round-trip vehicle like BFR to use it from the start. On the other hand, in situ production may (probably will) not be very reliable. Even at the price SpaceX is claiming, a BFR is a very expensive piece of hardware to risk (not to mention the crew.) You wouldn’t want to land one, be counting on in situ propellent, and then find out it isn’t going to be available.
I think a separate landing of the propellent plant, in advance, and then letting it fill up storage tanks, is a viable possibility. The other option would be initial BFR landings without plans to use in situ resources, and with the massive reduction in payload that implies.
(Note that when I say BFR, I’m really talking about a vehicle along those lines. You could substitute New Armstrong or whatever.)
Yes, a good analogy. Another advantage of sending the lander (10-15 tons) first is that it could make sure the surface at the landing site would support the massive (200-300 ton) BFS without any issues. They might even build a landing pad using the lunar regolith, something that research at the University of Hawaii have been working on.
The placement of navigation aids at the landing site would be another useful function.
Dr. M: If I’m right, you’re a fan of SF, particularly some of the early ideas floated by ACC. Your comment reminded me of Clarke’s “A Fall of Moon Dust”, in which — help me here — a vehicle of some sort finds itself trapped (?) below the surface of Luna. The idea is that, owing to billions of years having been pelted by micrometeoroids, the surface of the moon is covered by extremely fine ‘dust’, and hence the title. The dust is tens of meters thick as well as possessing electric characteristics and a peculiar ‘stickiness’.
Clarke goes after this concept in his usual fashion, detailing the physical properties of this material, and the unique requirements of a rescue mission.
It was one of Clarke’s juveniles, I think, but obviously memorable. At least 55 years have passed since I read it.
SLS is a dead end that will drag the space program under if it isn’t dropped soon. It is a huge mistake for NASA to use it for the critical path for the Gateway and Orion. When it gets cancelled for excessive cost over runs those programs will go as well.
NASA is basically betting the farm that Congress will not cut SLS, but with it’s first flight keeps slipping and EM2 slipping a point will soon be reached where even Senator Shelby will not be able to protect it.
It’s one thing to point out the shortcomings of SLS, or to go on and on about “pork”, or whatever. And it’s fairly simply to take pot-shots at the program.
However, it is something else again to imagine a political path that would take one from here to a future human space program that depends on civilian launchers.
I take that to be your point – that when SLS finally succumbs – that a very clear and obvious route must be either in place, or sufficiently well-described by existing hardware; and that if not we will face another decade or more hiatus.
That is at least one reason why criticism of SLS must be carefully phrased. What we do not want is for SLS cooties to attach to HSF.
That is going to be very tricky indeed. I wonder if Mr. B. is up to the task.
Why wouldn’t that be reasonable? The only potential problem I could see is that the government probably doesn’t want to wait in line behind civilian customers, but the government could set up a contract where there are multiple dedicated modules sitting on standby for government missions to avoid having to wait.
Well, he did say a _political_ path. Contracting out launch services would involve competitive bids. That may not send the right amount of money to the right congressional districts. But a fair number of people also like the idea of NASA flying rockets, and that preference is political.
But another obstacle, which might be called internal politics, is giving up a certain amount of control. When I buy a plane ticket and charge it to a NASA contract, I don’t expect NASA inspectors to be on the tarmac kicking the tires and making sure they loaded the correct amount of fuel. Even when NASA is buying plane tickets for much more important people (say administrators or astronauts), they don’t do that. They (and I) just assume the airline is following FAA safety rules and getting it right.
But their is a culture of seeing everything and checking everything within NASA’s human spaceflight directorate. That’s one thing slowing down commercial crew. So there are some political issues to be solved before NASA starts treating commercial launches like commercial aircraft flights.
True, but is NASA doing the same level of over sight for the Soyuz launches? Or just trusting the Russians because the Russian wouldn’t allow them to do so.
Did I mention these are political issues? When different standards are applied to different people doing basically similar work, I tend to think of political issues.
Sam: Dr. Crary covered for my own clumsy wording. I was thinking that negativity towards SLS could easily transfer to HSF generally:
A: “Just look at the cost over runs of that rocket!”
B: “I know! But SpaceX, and Bezos, and others, are showing much lower prices, don’t forget.”
A: “Oh, sure they are! Just wait until the true numbers come out! They are just low balling to get a fat government contract!”
Or a conversation to that effect. Or other conversations. The point is that the benefits of civilian vendors must be more than lower prices.
Or, as I’ve already heard and some recent editorials have tried to claim:
A: “Well, they can’t possibly do as good a job for a tenth the price. They must be cutting corners somewhere. If we count on them, we’ll be in trouble when the other shoe hits the ground.”
I suppose I thought the space industry sufficiently small that there would be personal contact amongst SX and (using a convenient term) Old Space; and that this personal contact would transfer a measure of reassurance. The OS guys would see the New Space guys as qualified colleagues.
At least that is how I imagine the trenches.
(BTW is see that the folks over at your old job [SwRI, if not mistaken?] have made a convincing case for a Pluto orbiter that would also orbit a Kuiper object, no new science required).
I wasn’t necessarily thinking of the engineers. SpaceX, LMA, Boeing, etc. employees do talk to each other. You generally aren’t supposed to talk about the project you’re working on, at least not in detail, so the communication isn’t perfect. But you also have people you used to work with, and know well, before taking a job at another company.
I don’t think there is any real lack of confidence in SpaceX, although I have heard concerns about how hard they work people, whether that’s a good idea (people who work that many hours a week probably aren’t at peak performance) and whether or not their best people might burn out. But what I was really thinking of is the marketing and political lobbying. If you are trying to sell a launch, and you can say SpaceX’s prices just have to be too good to be true, that could sound convincing.
As far as the SwRI concept for a Pluto mission, yes, I’ve hear of it. And I do know some of the people involved. I need to email a old friend and ask her for a copy of the paper. The orbital tour and then using a Charon gravity assist to go to another KBO is a really nice idea. It makes perfect sense (it’s escape velocity is almost three times it’s orbital velocity, which makes it the best moons for gravity assists in the solar system.) And I have a great deal of confidence in the person who did that part of the study. I still want to know how they plan to get to Pluto in a reasonable time and still be able to stop, and I’m not sure I’d prefer a Pluto orbiter over an Uranus or Neptune orbiter. But it is a very cool mission concept.
I saw that article and it would seem to me that a FH or BFR/BFS would be a good option as a launcher. Both should have the ability to provide the power for a quicker passage than New Horizon.
Technical that could be correct. But that wasn’t the point of the study, at least as far as I can tell from the press release. They not only describing a good mission, they described one which requires no new technology development. That is, something we could confidently start working on right now. Using BFR wouldn’t fit that bill, and Falcon Heavy would need a kick stage. So those options were probably outside the scope of the study.
“no new technology development”
That’s what struck me as well. We’ve talked here quite a bit about assigning “blame” for various cost overruns on advanced projects; getting each part ready for tech review is a huge impediment. But not in this case.
In fat the whole thing is kinda sneaky (in a good way)! A great way to get your project funded particularly in this environment.
Avoiding technology development is something many missions consider, at least the competitively selected ones. GRAIL and MAVEN, for example, didn’t involve much in the way of technology development. They were basically taking instruments which had been used to study the Earth, adapting them a bit, and getting them to the Moon (GRAIL) and Mars (MAVEN.) It’s a strong selling point in the proposal. And, not to belabor the point, both GRAIL and MAVEN came in on budget and on schedule. But it can also be a disadvantage. Doing something new and exciting is also a strong selling point in a proposal.
I wonder just how fast a trip to Pluto could actually be. There would be so many variables, of course; but for extra credit, how fast could we achieve orbit at Pluto? Both with no planetary assists. What could be done with a vehicle like BFR, for instance?
But a fun exercise, perhaps, for those qualified to do it? I don’t mean a Cassini-size package (2500 kg), nor even Galileo (2,000 kg). Something like New Horizons, but maybe bulked up a bit to add a few more instruments (1000kg, perhaps; NH is 400 kg).
SX says that BFR can orbit 100,000kg at Mars, with orbital refueling (at Earth, presumably).
Let’s assume that we heard some signals from some ET; they are out in the Kuiper Belt, very secretive; we just happened to grab a radio signal, and we want to get something out there to do some reconnaissance.
We can’t be stealthy. But can we be fast? What’s the shortest time, from a fully refueled Earth orbit, to reach and orbit Pluto with BFR (figuring it’s the fastest of any hardware existing or nearly so). No humans aboard, just, say, 1,000 kg. Can BFR do this by itself, and if so, how quickly? Or perhaps FH, with a third stage (yet to be developed).
I really don’t know. That’s one part of the SwRI study I’d really like to see. The press release mentioned using Charon encounters, once in orbit, to do a good orbital tour and then eject the spacecraft from the system and off to an encounter with another KBO. That’s a great idea. After slapping my head and wondering why it never occurred to me, I can see exactly how that would work and why it’s a great idea. Getting to Pluto in a reasonable time and then getting into orbit is a different matter. I can’t see how to make it work. Unfortunately, that part of the study doesn’t seem to be in print yet. It was just presented at the DPS conference last week.
I think a Jupiter flyby would be necessary. For a direct trajectory, even with multiple upper stages, I can’t see any solution that doesn’t take half a century. (Note that New Horizons needed both a Centaur _and_ a solid rocket kick stage _and_ still needed a Jupiter flyby.)
With a Jupiter flyby, I think we could scale from New Horizons. That was a nine-year trip. Based on the approach velocity and assuming storable fuels, and either staging or drop tanks, I think you could get a fifth of the launch mass into Pluto-Charon orbit. The 480 kg launch mass of New Horizons took a Atlas V 551, which is as big as they get.
As a ballpark guess, I think that means a New Horizons-sized orbiter might be possible with a Falcon Heavy launch. A BFR could launch a larger spacecraft, but my gut feeling is that you couldn’t use that to speed up the trip by much. Without a Jupiter flyby, the answer is way too long, and with a Jupiter flyby, I’m not sure a higher launch velocity would speed up the trip by a whole lot.
” an Uranus or Neptune orbiter”
That was my reaction as well. The details of various flybys, though, are quite exciting.
NASA self-identity does seems to cling to the past when it launched NASA astronauts on NASA rockets, a practice that started with Apollo 7 in 1968. The challenge will be to move NASA away from the past paradigm
Although NASA has in a sense already transitioned to commercial providers for HSF since they have been buying their seats for years from the Russians. So really, the actual challenge is to get NASA to buy American and to learn to trust American launch firms to provide a better value 🙂
It should also be noted that NASA did successfully transitioned to commercial providers for its robotic missions years ago. Its only an odd mission like Europa Clipper that is linked to the SLS. So I think there is hope for the future.
Just to clarify, you mean NASA has transitioned to commercial _launch_ providers for its robotic missions. That’s true (except for Clipper and some wishful thinking about what other very large missions could be possible with SLS launches.)
For the spacecraft themselves and for the ground support and operations infrastructure, it’s still a mixed bag. Competed missions like the Explorer, Discovery and New Frontiers lines typically use spacecraft built either by the PI institution or a industry partner. But the large strategic spacecraft (i.e. flagship missions) are often built by a NASA center. NASA doesn’t really trust outside institutions with robotic missions that are too big or important.
Arguably, SLS is an attempt to recreate the past, not to build on it. To a large extent, it’s the same pieces put together in a different way. That’s not completely fair, but take the RS-25. In the process of developing it and using it as the Shuttle’s main engines, I think we learned that you can take designing for peak performance too far. That a slightly lower performance engine would be good enough for the job and vastly less expensive. _Building_ on that experience would mean designing a new and less complex engine, not restarting the production line for the RS-25.
In a sense, this is like an adventure tourists who wants to repeat Scott’s trip to the South Pole using the exact same gear and supplies he used. That’s a recreation or reenactment (and, hopefully, not a completely successful reenactment.) In contrast, the current logistical support for the Amundsen-Scott station at the pole _builds_ on the Scott and Shackleton expeditions without using the same gear or supplies.
Santayana was not talking about building blindly on the past, he was talking about learning from the past so that we do not have to repeat its painful lessons, i.e. the use of large solid fueled boosters in hman spaceflight. While his original writing in “Life of Reason” did not include the phrase “those who forget the mistakes of the past” he himself occasionally phrased it in this way in later writing. He felt the invention of written history provided the means to correct the problem. He would have been deeply disappointed to learn of a future in which everyone has instant access to history and yet ignores it.
My estimation of Brindenstine is that he is a pragmatist and will support the administration. If the next president does not want SLS, he will go along with that. if he really wants to continue to be Administrator. He is technically astute enough to understand the problems with the concept and the available alternatives. However as Obama found, it is difficult to fight Congress on an issue like this; one cannot shut down the government over the NASA budget.
…blaming Obama for changing the goal to Mars when his goal was to actually cancel the Constellation program and put the money into Commercial Crew and space technology, a much more focussed and realisic strategy, only to be forced by Congress to build SLS and then fnd a mission for it.
His announced goal was to cancel Constellation and redirect the money outside NASA. It was said so several times before the election. He was no more forced to build SLS than any other president would have. If the administration felt it was important, they would have had a more politically palatable plan to present to Congress, and as importantly, spent political capital to get it passed. The long, long delay in getting a new administrator showed that the administration had no plan for NASA that would have attracted someone to the job.
A similar complaint about the current administration is valid also. TBH, there hasn’t been a president willing to spend any political capital for quite a while.
IMHO, we’re never going to see a president expend political capital on NASA. Former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin’s choice of Ares I plus Ares V as a launch architecture was seriously flawed because it essentially assumed that NASA would get a budget increase for actual payloads. And do note you can’t solely blame the president for this. The Congress controls the federal budget, not the Administration.
Also, the Obama Administration’s request for commercial crew funding was consistently cut by Congress at the same time they kept giving SLS/Orion more than requested. One of those programs is nearly ready to fly while the other is still burning billions in cash each year with nothing to show for it.
Year after year, during the Obama adminitration, the administration request fot Commercal Crew was slashed. The NASA budget was and is micromanaged by the House Appropriations Subcommittee that actually writes the budget. Absent a line item veto, Congress can and often does include pet projects in budget bills, and SLS/Orion was in this category.
It is difficult to draw any “sense of Congress” conclusions from those budget reductions. Motivation might simply be to strip away anything with the name ‘Obama’ attached (which appears to be the obsession, for instance, with ACA).
Before my interest in space policy began an upward ramp about 25 years or so ago I figured that Congress was making informed decisions, based mostly on the work of very smart staff people.
That does not appear to explain key decisions, at least not in full.
“we’re never going to see a president expend political capital on NASA”
Oh, you mean until the aliens show up, I suppose?
It should be easy for a pivot in 2020 if Trump loses given SLS/Orion will probably have not flown anything by then thus it is a blank slate on what the next administration will ask in their batch of spaghetti that HEOMD will whip to see if it sticks . If Trump does win he will have seen four years wasted towards achieving his goal of returning to the surface of the moon with no foreseeable achievement of that goal in a second term. By 2024 he will be lucky if EM-2 flies at the current rate of schedule slips/delays/budget overruns. At least commercial crew should be up and running to ISS before end of first term and maybe commercial cargo to moon by end of second term .but unless there is a pivot to commercial crew via BFR, New Shepard or someone else cislunar space will remain tales of wonder from 50+ years ago.
If BFR is flying by next year as Elon Musk is promising the writing will be on the wall for the SLS among all but its most fanatic supporters. Actually, I am beginning to think that is this Administration’s strategy, to play out the clock until commercial systems are online and then just kill SLS/Orion/Gateway when they become national laughing stocks in favor of renting the private Cislunar space infrastructure for NASA needs.
You are assigning far too much foresight to this – or any – Administration.
I think the point of the article is that, for whatever reason, whether foolish Administrators, or foolish Presidents, or pronouncement from the CAIB, NASA started down an absolutely foolish path 15 years ago. Even after repeatedly seeing they could not pull it off, they refused to change direction. In retrospect, the right decision was made at the end of Apollo, to develop a step-by-step transportation infrastructure of which Shuttle was one key element. Retro-throwaway capsules for “exploration” was absolutely the wrong decision. Dr. Griffin, Dr. Logsdon and the others who criticized Shuttle and Station killed the program. Now we have no Shuttle, no transportation infrastructure, no means of exploration for another quarter century or longer, a “safe simple soon” solution that was going to be flying before Shuttle ended yet is still probably a decade from carrying an astronaut. I hope Mr. Musk and his compatriots come through for us and the nation because NASA has let us all down.
The problem with NASA started with President Bush the first and his first attempt to make Mars a goal. The ISS, like the Gateway, was just done because NASA had a launch system and it needed to find something for it to do to justify its existence.
“a “safe simple soon” solution that was going to be flying before Shuttle ended yet is still probably a decade from carrying an astronaut”….and that is after a full fifteen years of development work! And more than $10 billion spent on only the return capsule with Europeans providing the service module. These people had no idea what they were doing and poorly managed the contractors too.And now they are promoting the people responsible for this debacle to even higher leadership positions like center director. Ugh!!!,
” Now we have no Shuttle ” <– Good. It cost over $24k/lb of payload capacity launched, and killed 14 astronauts. It several times came within seconds of killing more.
” no transportation infrastructure ” <– Now that’s funny, payloads are lofted on US origin rockets carrying our and foreign payloads quite commonly, and for under $2k/lb, and as low as $1.4k/lb is a plausible price for it. As soon as NASA can approve it’s own paperwork, we’ll be launching astronauts again, and on an actually operational as opposed to development vehicle.
Folks. The NASA Malaise is simply a subset of the American Malaise.
America appears to be split on just about every issue, but in reality that’s not true.
What’s happened IS simple, though; a minority party has fashioned itself into almost irrevocable power by taking advantage of the election system and by practicing some very stern self-control. It’s remarkable, really.
The result: in 2016, a President who lost the popular vote by 2.9 Million votes; in 2000, a president lost by .5 M votes. Similarly, voters prefer more liberal positions, but canny district alignments by one party in many states has denied them a voice.
What could go wrong?
Remember, America is a Republic, not a Democracy, so popular vote is irrelevant, particularly when most of it is concentrated in only a couple of mega-states.
As Inigo Montoya might say, I don’t think republic means what you think it means… A republic can certainly have a president elected by popular vote. For better or worse, our republic doesn’t work that way.
And I don’t think you understand Article IV of the Constitution. The United States is a Federal Republic made up of a federation of individual states. That is why there is no federal official elected nationalwide by the general public, but instead each state elects its own representatives. That is why there is an electoral college and there is no direct vote for the President/Vice-President. It was designed specifically to prevent a handful of states, or even one state, with huge populations from steam rolling the rest of the nation.
If you look at that majority in the last election it was due entirely to a single state, California and it’s voting pattern.
Or to put it another way. Imagine what would be the outcome if the Sec-General of the United Nations was elected by popular vote.
Heh, and you must have missed the last sentence of my post… in any case there is nothing about the meaning of the term “federal republic” which precludes election of a president by popular vote. I don’t know if it ever has happened historically, but as I said, for better or worse, it’s not the way our system works.
When you’re talking about the popular vote it’s kind of meaningless to say that the majority is due to one state…
Also I imagine there likely are many who wouldn’t have a problem with the UN sec-general being elected by popular vote… a bit impractical though.
First, most presidents have been elected by the electoral College while also winning the popular vote. Second, the United States is a union of semi-independent states each of which is a republic. That is why they have different laws governing members of the Electoral College.
But you ignore that the key advantage of the electoral college is that a candidate is forced to take into account the needs of all the regions of the nation, not just a couple of states with large populations. It prevents one or two regions from dominating the others as is the case in many other nations, ones that elect their leaders using popular vote, a dominance that often creates a feeling of disinfranchisment in those regions.
What you also ignore is that the Constitution was not created to enable the majority to rule but to protect the minority from being dominated by a popular majority. That is why the popular vote nationwide doesn’t count for electing the president/vice-president on the nation.
And returning this to the topic, it is why NASA had its facilities spread among the many states by the Kennedy Administration, to build the political support for it. It is also why most of NASA’s programs and goals change slowly. If you look at the details you will see that most of President’s Trump space policy is the same as President Obama’s which except for his killing Project Constellation and replacing it with ARM, was the same as President’s Bush’s space policy. If you do the historical research you will see that the Gateway has its roots in the Obama Administration and will probably survive beyond the Trump Administration since it’s something NASA wants.
That’s all very well and good I’m sure, but you either replied to the wrong post (perhaps you were trying to reply to Mr. Spencer?) or you again missed key portions of (or misread) my posts, since:
“…you ignore that the key advantage of the electoral college…”
and:
“… what you also ignore is that the Constitution was not created to enable the majority to rule…”
have nothing to do with anything I wrote. I (twice now) explicitly indicated I was not articulating any particular value judgement on our (I assume you are a US citizen) system of presidential election.
The point I made was that stating that a country is a republic (or federal republic) says nothing about how a president or other members of the federal government are elected. The Federal Republic of Germany has a parliamentary system, we have… well, our own system. And, as I indicated, there could also be a federal republic where a president was elected by direct popular vote, although I’m not aware of such a case (haven’t checked).
Regarding your point on NASA’s history, I’d imagine that if US presidents were directly elected by popular vote it would change little the political calculation indicated and our NASA centers would still be spread around the country, etc…
True, North Korea is a republic as is Ireland, so the term is used loosely. And both “elect” their leaders by popular vote.
But yes, it would greatly change how elections are run in the United States. Candidates would spend all their time in a handful of big cities and ignore the rest of the country since it’s too thinly populated to matter. It would create exactly the type of popular tyranny the Founders feared and wanted to avoid.
We’ve really gotten of topic, but you’ve just touched on one of my concerns about our current implementation of a republican government. It assumes the minorities (social and economic, not just the modern usage implying ethnic minorities) to be protected are geographically separated on large scales. In 1788, that was true. Sailors and merchants in Rhode Island were different from workers and factory owners in Pennsylvania or farmers and planters in Virginia. Today, the same distinctions are much less of state by state matter. Residents of urban Denver have more in common with residents of urban Chicago than rural residents of eastern Colorado. (And the folks in eastern Colorado have more in common with the people in rural, southern Illinois.) So I’m not convinced that the state by state protection you describe is currently able to achieve its original goal.
It’s simply a matter of law. Laws, including hte Constitution, are subject to change based on the legal process itself. For example, the Founders assumed the Electors would make independent decisions, they never anticipated state laws mandating their votes and making the concept of electing knowlegable people to make an independent decision anachronistic. The Civil War demonstrated that federal policy preempts state policy. We can debate whether it is desirable or fair, but a growing fraction of Americans think that like many laws predating the Civil War, the Electoral College is no longer appropriate.
Personally I like balance. After 8 years of Obama’s liberal excesses, it was time for a Conservative so I am happy one won. Its unfortunate he doesn’t act Presidential….soon enough we will see a swing in the other direction.
Professor, I have no intention of picking an argument with someone more knowledgeable. But I will call you out for hijacking the argument.
Republic or democracy, I observe a relatively low congruence between the sensibilities of the people and those of the governing class.
This is a receipt for disaster.
I agree, there has been a disconnect in values and sensibilities for a while. It is likely a reason why only 61.4% voted in the 2016 election.
https://www.census.gov/news…
A statistics question to the smart people here:
In assessing widget construction quality, a certain number of randomly selected widgets (“n”) are taken from the population (‘”p”) and are tested for standards compliance.
“n” is chosen to produce reliable test results within the confidence level.
This is very basic statistics, a subject discussed frequently here.
So, let “n” correspond to the number of voters in p who actually vote.
The question: how large must “n” be then in order to test the result within whatever confidence level?
Yes, I now, lots of things dirty the results. I’m simply wondering about the validity – or not – of the approach.
EDIT: In non-statistical terms: wouldn’t 50% 0f the voters choose the same candidate as 100% of the voters? No? What about 60%? or 70% How big a sample is needed?
No, 50% of the voters would not choose the same candidate as 100% of them. Not if they were randomly chosen. The random luck of the draw might mean a unrepresentative number of people favoring one candidate would be in that 50%. If the vote were really a 50/50 split, and you randomly selected 10 voters, there is a one in a thousand chance you’d end up with ten Democrats. (Well, a 1 in 1024 chance, for the purists.)
I’m not sure if you actually wanted the numbers, but for a near 50/50 split, then the uncertainty would be the square root for the number of people sampled, divided by two. 100 people surveyed means 50 +- 5 on each side. 10,000 people surveyed means 5,000 +- 50. That’s 50%+-5% and 50%+-0.5%, respectively. But that’s the easy answer.
If it isn’t 50/50 (e.g. how many will vote for the Green Party), the uncertainty grows. In fact, with a small number of people surveyed, it’s possible you’d completely miss a small minority. In theory, the full number of voters doesn’t matter, but that’s not really true. The larger the group, the greater the odds that it would contain multiple factions, or multiple groups with different interests. You’d need enough people surveyed to make sure they were all well-sampled. (Farmers, factory workers and computer programmers have different interests and vote in different way, just as parts off different production lines can be more or less reliable.)
And, to make matters worse, there are systematic errors in surveys which aren’t possible to overcome. By definition, they do not include the views of people who habitually say no when asked if they have a few minutes to spare for a survey. The accuracy of the survey depends on the assumption that those people are different from those willing to be surveyed. When asked if they plan to vote, people may lie (not wanting to admit they aren’t) or simply not be too serious about it (saying yes, when they mean yes as long as the line isn’t too long or it isn’t raining or something else comes up.) Honestly, even subtle things like the time the surveyor calls, or wether the numbers called include cell phones or only landlines (or, in the past more than now, listed versus unlisted numbers) can bias the survey.
You’ve expanded my question (thank you), but the thrust remains the same.
Widgets, too, may fail for any number of reasons. That is why n is chosen with great care, and why wouldn’t it be the same for voters? sure you’d pick up all sorts of fringe voters, but so what? If sufficiently fringe they’d disappear far past .05 just like they do in actuality.
And, sure, there are all sorts of ways that surveys fail technically. and while too many years have passed between 2018 and a statistics course, the principles would remain the same: we are defining the confidence we have that n accurately reflects p.
So I suppose you are saying that the variables in this sort of research are not sufficiently well understood?
I’m saying the variables may be understood but impossible to control for. There are also enough variables that I’m not sure if they are all known, and I don’t think it would be practical to consider all of them. That may be why polls don’t survey more people. The typical +-3% sort of numbers I see reported are consistent with about a thousand responses. (Which probably means three thousand calls, when you allow for people who won’t answer or don’t plan to vote.) They could obviously call more people than that. But if there are factors at the 2-3% level, which they simply can’t correct for, then why bother?
Examples of things you can’t correct for include people who are not willing to take a few minutes and answer your questions. If their views are different from those of people who are willing to talk to you, the results of your poll will be off. It’s like trying to determine the reliability of parts made on two production lines while only being able to consider parts from one of those lines.
That’s also why low voter turn out is a problem. The 60% who do vote are different from the 40% who don’t. They may have some pet issue they are particularly worried about. They may be richer (and therefore able to take time off from work, or go the polls after work without having to rush home to take care of the kids, or something similar.) Whatever the reason, it isn’t random, so the 60% who do vote are not a representative sample. Wether or not that’s a bad thing is a separate issue. I know it’s usually considered a bad thing. But the other side of the coin is that people who do vote are more likely to have followed the issues and are less likely to be voting based on how someone looks on TV or what he can write using only 280 characters.
Those variables that you mention could represent the most significant data.
In politics we want to know how voters have aggregated around some issue or other (and have not similarly aggregated in previous or future elections).
In other situations (non-political), we would do small “test sampling” to both identify and control for those groups.
The notion in my own mind about sample size and accuracy needs more thought I suppose.
Here is a very good article on calculating sample size that will help.
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/medi…
Yes. Thank you.
Good analysis. Also many respondents that are surveyed will just give what they see is the socially acceptable answer instead of their true beliefs.
That’s why I really wish the exact wording of the questions was reported more often. That can bias the answer. Consider, “would you vote for someone with political positions and experience similar to X?” versus, “would you vote for someone like X?” Depending on the emphasis, the later could imply something negative about X, and bias the respondent to say no.
The so called glory days of NASA in the 1960s were in response to the USSR space program early successes, but also eight of those years took place under the JFK and LBJ administrations who both focused on a manned lunar landing with no changes. JFK wanted it and LBJ spent 8 years building NASA infrastructure in key southern states (Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida that LBJ needed political support from during his administration. By the time LBJ left office in early 1969 everything needed for a manned lunar landing had been bought, designed, built and flight tested (except for the lunar module). Only 2 test flights remained before Apollo 11 would attempt the lunar landing 6 months after LBJ left office. If Orion and SLS had been managed like that, it would have been flying crewed missions 5 years ago.
Yes, it is almost as if NASA drags it’s feet to prevent programs from maturing it doesn’t want.
shocking!
The JFK/Moon landing example never really works that well because that was a political anomaly. JFK not only “focused” on a single goal, he was willing to spend huge sums of money on it at what was essentially a war time level (it was during the Cold War after all) and congress went along with it for that reason. However it was never intended for that level of spending to continue, in fact after the major development activities were completed the funding was already declining even before the first Moon landing had occurred.
It’s a lot easier to manage things when there is plenty of money. While it’s assumed this will only lead to waste, it actually allows you to develop things at the most efficient pace, whereas with inadequate funding you have to spread development over additional years, resulting in a higher total cost. Or you have to go with hardware designs that cost less to build but have higher long term costs. All of this can create a spiral similar to getting into debt that can be hard to get out of.
Yet NASA still gets a lot of money and it can definitely be argued that there is waste and inefficiency and much more could be done with the money that they do have. But unfortunately it’s not as simple as just setting and focusing on a single JFK like goal. What’s just as important is setting goals that are affordable within the budget that you are dealt. When you don’t then things drag on for years or eventually get cancelled.
Whether or not commercial providers take over the human spaceflight industry, NASA needs long-term goals set by Congress, not by the President.
Congress should pass a law stating what the next target is: Moon Base, Mars, Asteroid, whatever, as long as they stick to it. That way the next administration can’t just come in and say “the last guy’s multi-decade effort is stupid, drop that and start work on this totally awesome new multi-decade effort.”
It is not workable that the Office of the President is setting goals that require sustained effort long after the current President is gone. The next administration’s priorities will always be different than the current administration’s even if it’s “just” the VP getting promoted to big-P.
That’s an interesting idea, and one in keeping with the actual jobs assigned by the Constitution. The President’s job is, technically, to recommend things to Congress and then make sure whatever Congress voted to do is “faithfully executed.” In an equally technically way, it’s Congress’ job to set policy. So, strictly speaking, it ought to be Congress who decides if NASA should send astronauts to the Moon, or Mars, or no where at all.
But that isn’t how things work today; regardless of what the Constitution says, people expect the President to set policy, and that’s usually what happens when his party controls Congress (with no policy and deadlock when the opposition party controls Congress.) Except for the growth of deadlock and the hard, party-line resistance to compromise, that’s been true for a long time. Perhaps “a long time” is the wrong phrase. Things have, occasionally worked that way, but I don’t think it would be correct to say, “it used to work that way and now it doesn’t.” I don’t think a historical trend is involved.
Laws may be revoked as easily as passed. The only way to keep a focus on the Moon through multiple administrations is to create a Lunar Development Corporation whose only reason for existence is to explore and build lunar infrastructure.
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/me…
There is something to be said for social inertia. A large group is less likely to change their collective mind than a single person. And even if the composition of the large group gradually changes, their views may be more stable than the change when one person in charge is replaced by another. I suspect a space policy set by Congress would be more stable than one set by a President. SLS funding might be an example of that. Unfortunately, that’s an example of stable support for a bad idea…