NASA's Inspector General Is Auditing SLS Yet Again
OIG announces an audit to assess NASA’s efforts to manage the Space Launch System program costs and contracts.
— NASA OIG (@NASAOIG) November 5, 2018
OIG announces an audit to assess NASA’s efforts to manage the Space Launch System program costs and contracts.
— NASA OIG (@NASAOIG) November 5, 2018
I’m sure there are good reasons for the OIG to do yet another audit of the SLS program. But it just occurred to me that this is effectively a jobs program building on a jobs program. Auditing the SLS program probably amounts to a full time job for a number of people, and promises to provide them with continued employment for years.
^^brilliant.
Where is the corresponding OIG audit of the Orion Program. 12 years in and still no crewed test flight how are they flying below the audit radar?
Could be included in the SLS audit?
Because if the audits are able to build the case for doing away with the SLS the Orion will also disappear, since SLS is the only launch vehicle suitable for the Orion. The same will be true for the Gateway. Get rid of the SLS and the whole house of cards it supports will fall.
So..what do you do with all the people, some of whom are doing excellent work, in spite of the bs?
Excellent work on a project like SLS still results in SLS. I’d be updating my resume and my Linkedin profile every damn day if I was assigned to SLS.
That’s an interesting point. I know of some institutions where it’s considered a management responsibility to make sure there is work for their employees. The employees expect that, unless something goes badly wrong, there will be a project for them to transfer to once their current one ends (even if it’s cancelled.) On the other extreme, there are some places where a soft money researcher is expected to pull in his own contracts and grants, and if he can’t he doesn’t get paid. Of course, those are extremes, and most places are somewhere in between. But it does raise an interesting question: In awarding or cancelling contracts, should “what do we do with the people?” be a legitimate question?
I was thinking more along the lines of jumping ship before it sinks so that I’d have a job on a project that’s far less likely to be cancelled. Having a gap in pay isn’t something I’d want to deal with, if I could avoid it.
The people I know who’ve worked on large government projects for large aerospace contractors with know full well if their large government project is cancelled, there will be massive layoffs. Certain key people will be kept and put on other projects, but the majority of the “worker bees” are always out of a job. But, they also know that other contractors, who won new contracts, will be hiring. So unless government spending is down, overall, they aren’t in such a dire situation even if they are given a pink slip.
When I graduated in ’92 with my aerospace engineering degree, the aerospace market was down overall. So I got a job with the company where I did my co-op job. My career ever since has been writing engineering software. This has resulted in a steady paycheck ever since. I’m likely not making “the big bucks”, compared to a top gun aerospace engineering job, but I have never gotten a pink slip either.
True, and that lack of flexibility is one of the problems with NASA. I suppose they could follow the Japanese model and let them become “window workers”- workers who had jobs guaranteed for life, but when the economy shifted and there was nothing to do they would just show up for work and then spend the day looking out the window. But that would be a real waste of talent and experience. I bet if NASA was manadated to get out of the launch business they would find a way to make the shift.
When Shuttle was cancelled the civil servants were reassigned. The USA contractors (virtually all the people who were actually hands-on with the flight hardware) were unceremoniously laid off and had to find other work or retire.
Remember the NASA budget won’t change all that much. You use the money that is saved to develop human and robotic spacecraft that will serve as payloads for the commercial launch vehicles. Instead those workers that are now in competition with the FH, New Glenn, BFR/BFS will use their expertise to push the boundaries of space exploration with payloads that leverage the reduction in costs to space. In short, instead of reinventing the wagon wheel they use that $3 billion to start work on the next level of technology.
I know we’ve been here before, but… Developing launch vehicles and spacecraft require significantly different skills, experience and institutional facilities. For example, solid rockets, to the extent that they are useful, are useful for launch vehicles not the payload or the spacecraft. Just about any work involving aerodynamics stops mattering once the spacecraft is in space.
Switching from launch vehicle to spacecraft work might not change the bottom line. As you point out, the budget and the number of people employed might stay the same, and the jobs might even stay in the same congressional districts. But it wouldn’t be the same people or the same companies (or divisions of the same companies.)
True, but that is a problem many firms have to address as the needs change in an organization. Perhaps some sort of retraining program might be in order. Or perhaps buyouts and early retirements with new young engineers replacing the older ones, which would address another problem NASA has of a rapidly aging workforce.
This is definitely a known problem, but you are describing how a commercial company would deal with it. In the case of government civil servants or employees at big (or “old space”) companies, there are other issues. Do those employees want to be retrained or take early retirement? Would the older workers consider such a policy to be age discrimination? I think there would be objections to the solutions you suggest. That raises two questions. Should we care about those objections? And, do those objections drive political mandates from Congress?
The mental picture that you paint assumes that there is a body of workers out there ready to take on the newly-defined jobs.
Using your categories: when solid rocket people are needed, they are available; and their numbers will be replaced by formerly-employed booster people.
But this isn’t the case at all.
No it isn’t and the available workforce is an issue. It just isn’t the one I was worrying about (in that comment.) I was just saying you couldn’t had a NASA center a new task and the same budget, and expect it wouldn’t have a dramatic impact on the center, the employees and the local economy. It will, and there will be lots of people who prefer the status quo. So, politically, telling Marshall to stop building rockets and start building spacecraft would be a very big deal.
“the money that is saved”
Which reminded me of the so-called saved money after the war in Vietnam, money that never appeared.
That is what President Obama tried to do by shifting funds from Constellation to Space Technology and Commercial launch.
Solids won’t go away entirely. Don’t forget there is the Ground Based Strategic Deterrence system that will be coming on line (Minuteman IV?). Even if SLS isn’t cancelled, I would bet the SRB’s will be replaced by liquid propellant boosters…eventually. Sadly, some of the workforce will have to do what my generation did in the late 1980’s and when Shuttle was scuttled…”When it’s steamboat time you steamboat. When it isn’t you do something else!” (Anybody need any custom leather sporting goods?) 😉
If SLS soldiers on, expect Northrup Grumman Innovation Systems (formerly Orbital ATK) to propose a variation of their OmegA filament wound boosters as an “advanced solid rocket booster” upgrade to SLS. Since the development costs will be super low, that would trump any liquid fueled rocket booster upgrade. This is doubly true since a lot of the development problems with SLS are with the core, liquid, stage. This has no doubt soured SLS management on liquids to some extent.
Monolithic (single-segment) solids are optimal for missiles, which are smaller than launch vehicles and have to be fired on short notice. Even the monolithic SRBs used on the Atlas are reasonably practical. But I do not see a practical case for large segmented SRBs, currently used only on Ariane V and potentially SLS due to operational cost and risks, and the infeasibility of reuse.
Excluding Orion, could not everything NASA planned to launch be launched commercially to places in Cis-Lunar space? Could not commercial cargo and passenger transportation services be spiraled outward to those various lunar orbits?
In theory. But not necessarily as currently envisioned. The current concept for Gateway would have to go back to the drawing board. But, as a matter of fact, it’s not really off the drawing board at this point, so that’s not such a big deal. It isn’t true to say that NASA cis-lunar operations depend on SLS. It is true to say that NASA’s _current_ plans for cis-lunar operations do depend on SLS.
I’m not sure what to make ofd your comments here, Professor. By “house of cards” are you criticizing the integrated nature of these three+ projects?
NASA is frequently criticized for proceeding with disparate projects that are exactly the opposite. So while my own sense is that SLS is less than desirable, I don’t criticize the integrated nature of the programs.
There IS this charge to make, though: that Gateway, Orion+ were developed simply to give SLS- a machine that NASA simply “wanted”- something immediately to do.
If I were the Orion or Gateway project manager, I’d be nervous about the dependency. It’s not really a good thing to have something you can not control on the critical path for your project. Europa Clipper is in a much better situation. They want to launch on SLS. But if something happens to SLS, they have other options. Orion and Gateway don’t have a plan B.
Good.
Anyone know how long these typically take?
Having perused a few of these reports I’ve noticed that they appear to carry a degree of focus. This makes sense, at least to me. Without clear focus, in the end you get something like a Special Prosecutor.
Which got me thinking. Say it’s your job as the OIG Office of the Big Dog (OBD) to establish and design these investigations. Where would you center your investigations?