Texas Responds To NASA Lunar Lander Management In Alabama
When asked why no one from the Texas delegation showed up at this event (despite being invited) @JimBridenstine punted and deferred to the members of Congress.
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) August 16, 2019
FYI @SenTedCruz @RepBrianBabin WRT claims that @NASA_Johnson is center of expertise in human lunar landers based on Apollo experience: that design & operations happened 50 yrs ago. Apollo human expertise left JSC long ago. All remaining expertise now sits in @NASA storage boxes. pic.twitter.com/K8qdJSBpTp
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) August 16, 2019
Statement by Rep. Brian Babin Regarding NASA’s Decision To Award Lunar Lander Program Management to Marshall Space Flight Center
“I am disappointed by the decision from NASA to not place the lunar lander program management at the Johnson Space Center (JSC),” said Babin. “Marshall Space Flight Center does tremendous work for our nation’s space program, but the knowledge base and skill set for this task unquestionably resides at JSC where the Apollo lunar lander program was successfully managed.”
Statement by Sen. Ted Cruz Regarding NASA’s Decision To Award Lunar Lander Program Management to Marshall Space Flight Center
“As NASA moves forward with their plans I will use every tool at my disposal to ensure the Johnson Space Center remains the crown jewel in human space exploration.”
Cruz, Cornyn, Babin Call On NASA to Award Lunar Lander Program to Johnson Space Center
“In response to a news report that NASA will designate the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to lead the development of the human-classed lunar lander for the Artemis program over the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas – which has served as NASA’s lead center for human spaceflight for more than half a century – U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) along with Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) today urged NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine to reconsider his decision and refrain from an official announcement until an official briefing is held.”
It will be interesting to hear Sen. Shelby’s response. Hmmm, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee vs. The State of Texas. Somebody pass me a bowl of popcorn.
Just to make it more fun, Mr. Babin is the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Space, House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
Citing JSC’s hardware experience from the Apollo program? Really? The Apollo lunar lander was designed and in production fifty years ago. There may be a few people around seventy years old and still working at Johnson. But they would have been very junior when Apollo was in development. And the way aerospace projects are managed has changed a lot since then. Not all for the good, but we do have things like a computer on every desk, email and electronic file transfer instead of fax and snail mail.
Just don’t forget about the advantages the Apollo managers had having the phone and local watering hole. In his biography Gene Kranz talked about the problems they solved talking things over after work over a beer. Also most of the managers were workers once, and they knew their way around the workshop when they visited to talk to their team F2F instead of texting across the table in the meeting room.
The chief lesson that has been forgotten about why Apollo was successful was the clear lines of separation between hardware elements and management responsibilities. It was difficult enough having the stages of the Saturn built by different contractors but at least they were managed by one organization. Same thing with the Apollo modules. The idea NASA will split the lander into pieces to be manged by different centers is nuts and will not turn out well. Especially when they want an accelerated schedule and a very constrained budget.
Concur. It used to be called the Manned (oops) Spacecraft Center for a reason before it became JSC. Cracks in a system often appear along the seams of joined components.
JSC lost its way beginning in the 1980s when they declared themselves “the operations center” and Kraft, Lunney and others forming USA to operate Shuttle eliminated subsystem managers and many of the Engineering Directorate funcstions. They figured out after many years it was stupid but have still never completely recovered. MSFC in the meantime has repeatedly tried to move in and take over manned spaceship design. Weak leadership at JSC now and in recent years has allowed it.
In the shuttle era orbiter was managed by JSC and et/srb by msfc with shuttle program doing the overall integration the centers made it work so is this really going to be more difficult especially given all the elements will be built by one company so they can integrate internally despite their split NASA overlords.
Orbiter was a separate entity from ET and SRB and the system only worked together for minutes of a multi week mission, and lets not forget that Challenger happened because MSFC refused to report technical issues to JSC. So yes, splitting the vehicle into pieces to be built and managed by different centers is stupid and will not work well.
The centers aren’t building anything the commercial company will build all the elements and internally integrate regardless of the NASA overlords. While msfc may have refused to report issues to JSC the hardware wasn’t all built by one company like this will be. Commercial crew splits oversight between KSC and JSC yet the hardware is built where SpaceX and Boeing want.
One company building all the hardware doesn’t match what we’ve heard. If they have separate project offices for the orbital transfer, descent and ascent vehicles (plus a fourth office for overall management), that means separate contracts. No one would be crazy enough to set up four offices at two centers to manage one contract. Separate contracts means separate selections, and that probably means different companies doing the different pieces. This is not the organizational setup for something commercial crew or commercial cargo.
It also implies a much more hands-on approach by the centers. I believe Mr. Bridenstine said there would by 87 jobs at Johnson. I don’t think even NASA would need that many people to handle the contracts while stepping back and letting a private company do all the work.
Go reread the fed biz ops. Appendix H solicitation is for an integrated human lander. Appendix E allowed for studying different elements. The 87 folks are split between three or more companies who will be awarded money to begin working on their integrated HLS providing both inline, oversight and System integration type functions. Appendix H asks a collaboration plan for what support they will need from NASA in terms of expertise for various subsystems. This is a balance between mostly hands off of commercial crew and totally inline of Orion.
That’s what the plan was when the solicitation went out. I can’t find the date for it, but the awards were in May of this year. That’s just two months after the target landing date moved from 2028 to 2024. So I’m pretty sure that solicitation was about a 2028 landing. Now search through that Appendix H, or possibly the whole document. They always have weasel words, about how a solicitation or even an award does not commit NASA to anything.
So we’ve got a pre-Artemis (i.e. 2028 landing date) plan, which is as you describe. We also have some more recent statements and lander development plans, about a 2024 landing, which do not seem to match that earlier plan. It seems, to me at least, as if NASA has changed its mind about how to develop a lander. At least, a lander for a 2024 landing. Mr. Bridenstine hinted about a two-stage approach; the lander for a “sustainable” presence (2028 onward) might very be what the earlier solicitation and awards implied.
Appendix H is in draft solicitation and was released in response to the march VP speech of 2024 by any means necessary. Prior to VP speech appendix E was going to get multiple different companies building transit, descent and refueling elements and NASA was going to build Ascent element internal for a 2028 landing. Post VP speech appendix E became 6 month studies and long lead procurement of test articles. Appendix H was drafted and is being refined for final release soon to select several companies to build complete integrated Landers for 2024 and 2025 with a following lander services contract to provide reusable ascent and transit elements refueled at a Depot to support multiple missions over ten year life.
Good points about Challenger. Not to be outdone, JSC (Mission Management Team) folks disregarded recommendations from engineers who asked for DoD assets to inspect the Columbia after the foam strike. Therefore, it was JSC’s fault we did not find out Columbia was “mortally wounded” soon after the start of the mission. The second Shuttle accident was also NASA management’s fault, once again. However, I will forever believe it was best we did not know while the mission was still in orbit. Imagine the anguish of a broken shuttle in orbit…. It would have been like Apollo 13 all over again.
They had time to mount a rescue mission to Columbia if they had taken action immediately.
Not according to the CAIB report. Or, at least, my reading of it. A rescue would have been either very high risk or very unlikely to get up before consumables on Columbia ran out
The CAIB report seemed to suggest it was very feasible. Here are the relevant paragraphs (the formatting may be a little off):
Rescuing the STS-107 Crew with Atlantis
Accelerating the processing of Atlantis for early launch and rendezvouswith Columbia was by far the most complex task in the rescue scenario. On Columbia’s Flight Day Four, Atlantis was in the Orbiter Processing
Facility at Kennedy Space Center with its main engines installed and only 41 days from its scheduled March 1 launch. The Solid Rocket
Boosters were already mated with the External Tank in the Vehicle Assembly Building. By working three around-the-clock shifts seven days a week, Atlantis could be readied for launch, with no necessary testing skipped, by February 10. If launch processing and countdown proceeded smoothly, this would provide a five-day window, from February 10 to
February 15, in which Atlantis could rendezvous with Columbia before Columbia’s consumables ran out. According to records, the weather on these days allowed a launch. Atlantis would be launched with a crew of
four: a commander, pilot, and two astronauts trained for spacewalks. In January, seven commanders, seven pilots, and nine spacewalk-trained astronauts were available. During the rendezvous on Atlantis’s first day
in orbit, the two Orbiters would maneuver to face each other with their payload bay doors open.
Suited Columbia crew members would then be transferred to Atlantis via spacewalks. Atlantis would return with four crew members on the
flight deck and seven in the mid-deck. Mission Control would then configure Co-lumbia for a de-orbit burn that would ditch the Orbiter in
the Pacific Ocean, or would have the Columbia crew take it to a higher orbit for a possible subsequent repair mission if more thorough repairs could be developed.
This rescue was considered challenging but feasible. To succeed, it required problem-free processing of Atlantis and a flawless launch
countdown. If Program managers had un-derstood the threat that the bipod foam strike posed and were able to unequivocally determine before Flight Day Seven that there was potentially catastrophic damage to the
left wing, these repair and rescue plans would most likely have been developed, and a rescue would have been conceivable.
Nope. I do not see it as “feasible”, not even probable. Possible, maybe, on paper.
Executing this comprehensive plan liste here, would have been total and utter madness. Even with a green light schedule, (nothing goes wrong) this list is too long and complex. I think Murphy’s Law.
If we thought we had seen pressure on NASA to launch Challenger when they did, multiply that by orders of magnitude…
And, technically after a “major malfunction” such as Challenger, the shuttle fleet was automatically grounded, until such a review, repairs or modifications. Imagine the anguish of Apollo 13, magnified by video and audio chats between the crew and their families…. ufff. It makes my stomach drop. =( I believe it was better we did not know.
In all my years at MSFC, I never once observed JSC not getting its way when it came to crew operations. Things have changed but not this much. My assumption is JSC doesn’t want anything to do with Artemis or going back to the moon and Mr. Bridenstine got frustrated with their obvious foot-dragging. JSC wants Mars because, for one thing, that will mean their Apollo/Shuttle template stays intact with the astronauts and a huge marching army mission control in Houston. But with the moon, they see so many players including commercial that it may be JSC has decided to roll the dice, hoping to wait out the Trump administration and letting the moon go to anybody who wants it and a pox on all their houses. Whether this will be seen as wise in hindsight shall be seen. If MSFC flubs it, JSC can always say, “See? We told you so.” If commercial beats MSFC, JSC can say, “See? We told you we needed to go to Mars.” JSC may have a pretty good bet here. For MSFC to pull off a lunar lander and beat Elon will require complete JSC cooperation and full access to their astronauts. It might even mean moving some of crew folks to Huntsville which you can expect JSC to explode if that’s even contemplated because without the astronauts, it loses much of its reason to exist. We live in weird times but no matter what JSC, MSFC, or NASA writ large ends up doing, a revolution is coming in their direction and the carts are rolling over the cobblestones and the old lady with the knitting needles is pulling up her chair.
If so, Johnson may be disappointed. With a Mars mission, there will be about a 10 to 40 minute two-way light time delay in communications. Mission control won’t be able to function in the Apollo/Shuttle style. The crew would have to have much more autonomy, and that means much less need for that standing army in mission control.
It’s also clear from the newer launch vehicles and robotic spacecraft (at least to me), that you don’t need a standing army to reliably operate a spacecraft. Computers have come a long way, and they can be programmed to do things watch telemetry and sound an alarm if something’s out of limits (or trending and getting close to limits.)
JSC, like all NASA centers, has a great deal of expertise in asking for (let’s say) a hundred employees when they only need fifty. It’s a game government agencies play. If we go to Mars, JSC will get its marching army and that will mean more than some guys in skinny ties behind consoles often with little to do but necessary just in case. The vast numbers include back room technical personnel plus training personnel, simulation teams, etc., etc. They will also load on the astronauts just as they have in the last so many years with no way other than the Russians to get them into space. The more astronauts, the more power. And, of course, since it will take many years to actually mount human missions to Mars, they get to have all those people being prepared for the missions when they happen. The Roosevelt administration during the Depression could have learned a thing or two from the way present federal agencies budget. To stimulate the economy, you don’t have to actually build the Hoover dam. You just hire the people to do it!
As you say, Johnson isn’t the only NASA center to do this. And I really doubt this is unique to NASA. The one case where it’s semi-excusable is when a project really needs someone, but the schedule has a few months where they don’t have anything for him to do. You can’t tell him to take a few months of unpaid leave, other projects may not want to bring in a temp, and it’s not like NASA will let you put someone on a retainer.
I’ve seen people deal with this by inventing make-work tasks. But that’s can hurt the next project. Someone ends up saying, “Last time, we decided X was necessary, so we ought to do it this time as well.” Then the make-work tasks from one project get built into the next as a necessary task.
Morpheus was a prime example of make-work. The Morpheus crash sure gave NASA a black eye right after the landing of Curiosity on Mars.
You are right about this. Ha! I am familiar with NASA “Make-Work” projects.
I am sorry for the guys in the team. But, I must admit, it was very exciting to watch that Morpheus blow up and burn to the ground. It did go wrong very quickly. Shortly after taking off, it took a dive off to the side. Spectacular explosion, if you can find the video. The video stayed on until the fire truck came with the water cannon and put it out.
Homer, MSFC was famous for doing this on Spacelab. the most expensive payload by mission to ever fly on Shuttle. Yet the technology was archaic and never upgraded.
I attended a panel at the US Space & Rocket Center here in Huntsville yesterday that had the original Spacelab managers talking about how it was done. It occurred to me that Spacelab had a lot more to do with the way human spaceflight has evolved than Apollo. Although I worked on Spacelab for over a decade, how the decisions were made to bring it to fruition was before my time. I learned a few things.
Homer Hickam wrote: “JSC wants Mars because,”
When you say “JSC” it is as nebulous as saying “the government”. There are literally thousands of people that work there but not all of those people are decision makers. I can not imagine there is more than a small handful that can actually direct the actions of the center. Is it possible for you to actually put a name to this “JSC” ? NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine picked Mark S Geyer to head JSC, would he be someone giving these foot dragging marching orders? Or do we just never put a face to the actions?
I doubt you’ll ever find an organization that big, where everyone shares the same views on policy. But there are many ways for the information and ideas to flow up to the top. And most of them don’t involve malicious intent or scheming.
Many low level managers do feel a responsibility to find work for the people they manage. If their group or section or whatever is going to be running low on work (and therefore charge numbers and therefore the ability to pay people), that information gets passed on to more senior managers. Who are thinking in terms of what they can do to bring in new projects, not have to fire people, and not lose talent they will need in the future.
I suspect there is also a fairly deep, unconscious and widespread view at JSC about their place in the human space program and within NASA. I’ve never worked with them, but I know you see this at other centers. I know lots of people at JPL, and quite a few were shocked, if not appalled, by the New Horizons and MAVEN selections. The idea that NASA would fly a major planetary mission or any sort of Mars mission, without JPL just wasn’t something they could get their heads around. I suspect people at Johnson think the same way about human spaceflight. I suspect that means those lower-level managers aren’t asking their superiors if there’s any Artemis work for their team. They’re assuming there will be and making sure senior management knows what their people can do, and how important it is to fold that into the big picture decisions. They are also the ones explaining how what they can provide is vitally important to a successful lunar program.
A long answer and once again .. not a single name of anyone just the nebulous JSC and “managers”
you state:
“And most of them don’t involve malicious intent or scheming.”
But Homer stated: “My assumption is JSC doesn’t want anything to do with Artemis or going back to the moon and Mr. Bridenstine got frustrated with their obvious foot-dragging. “
Which is the exact opposite of what you wrote.
Obvious foot dragging by WHO?
Bridenstine is frustrated with WHO?
The janitor? The IT guy? A secretary?
Isn’t there a SINGLE NAME of an actual person that does SOMETHING?
I keep reading that Orion doesn’t have enough oomph to go to low lunar orbit. Does anyone know how close it can actually orbit the moon and get back to Earth with it’s current service module?
500 miles, 1000 miles?
A question for the smart and informed people around here- by which I mean those, unlike me, who actually work in the industry, and have actual knowledge, in addition to opinions…
A couple of recent pieces in the press have claimed the ISS is by and large controlled and operated by our Russian friends; that the Russians make most front-line decisions, and that our people at JSC are left in a role described as ‘observer’ much of the time. These pieces were entirely toneless, as if everybody knows this. I didn’t.
My question is obvious: is this a fair characterization? What is the relationship between JSC and Russian controllers? Wikipedia says:
Keith’s piece, on the other hand, delves into political views and statements. I wonder if Sen. Cruz or Rep. Babin are any more fully informed than I am when they point to JSC’s long history and experience. So often we see politicians attempting to overlay a political POV onto a subject they know little or nothing about.
JSC, and the people working there, is most certainly amongst the Crown Jewels. It is also a very expensive part of NASA: lots and lots of controllers (“Go flight!”), each station requiring three shifts, and each controller requiring something of an army consisting of staff and other support.
I am not looking for biased, anti-governmental screeds; heck, I can do that by myself. I’m simply seeking a dispassionate description, and I want to know a bit more about current conditions.
(I’d be grateful to anyone providing a link where I can take a deeper dive into operations).
IMO, the most important maintenance task of the ISS is to keep boosting it back up to altitude. The Russian do own & operate the propulsion module, which is primary means of raising the ISS orbit periodically or as required. I believe it was also done by the Shuttle when it visited the ISS, but I do not fully understand how the Shuttle did it. i.e. Could they just fire the RCS and push on the adapter port? Is that inline of the center of mass? I claim ignorance from here on… =)
Oh,I don’t know,it is kind of nice to see the politicians fighting over this. It makes it seem like they actually care about the space program. Well, Ok, maybe the money it brings to the state is part of that. But hey, that is not what they are saying in public, and any publicity is … 🙂