NASA Hits The Pause Button Again On The Back-To-The-Moon Thing (Update)
NASA human spaceflight directorate reorganization on hold, Space News
“During a June 1 webinar by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, NASA Associate Administrator Steve Jurczyk said that a reorganization of the agency’s Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate will be delayed until after the agency hires a successor to Doug Loverro, who left the agency May 19.”
Keith’s 4 June update: Bringing Mark Geyer back to NASA HQ to run HEOMD will make many people in the organization comfortable since there’d be a certain Gerstenmaier-like familiarity. But Jim Bridenstine originally replaced Bill Gerstenmaier with a new face and approach so as to refocus HEOMD to make the Artemis 2024 lunar landing feasible. Now a lot of that will be dialed back to the way it was before Doug Loverro took over. Between pandemic delays, election year uncertainties, and chronic SLS/Orion delays and cost overruns, Mark Geyer certainly has an immense challenge ahead of him.
Today’s JSC chatter suggests that Mark Geyer has been asked to be the new HEOMD AA.
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) June 4, 2020
Keith’s 2 June note: When former HEOMD AA Bill Gerstenmaier was fired last summer it took NASA 6 months to replace him. During that time major aspects of Artemis and SLS were put on hold or dialed back until a replacement could be found. The new AA Doug Loverro showed up in early 2020 and did what he was told to do and the system bounced him as a result. Now NASA is searching for a replacement for Loverro who, himself, was a replacement. And once again NASA is putting things on hold – as if the pandemic-caused delays were not bad enough.
If NASA follows precedent it will take quite some time to replace Loverro. The reorganization of HEOMD was planned based on a top to bottom assessment of HEOMD – by HEOMD. One would think that the reorganization was independent of one person’s opinion and that it had broad organizational buy-in. Guess not.
Now NASA will put the whole Artemis thing on hold again for months until someone takes the job and then stay on hold for a few more months more while the new person gets up to speed and takes ownership of HEOMD. There is simply no way NASA will ever meet the Moon landing deadlines it has been given if every decision has the fate/opinion of one NASA employee as a potential single point of failure. If NASA cannot come up with a fault tolerant way to manage its people on Earth then the whole Moon thing is not going to happen as planned. Just sayin’.
The bitter irony is that Doug Loverro supposedly violated the rules/law in order to give Artemis a better chance of making it to the moon by 2024. But his actions appear to be causing yet another delay. Ugh.
It’s not Loverro’s actions directly that are causing this delay. NASA could implement his proposed organization ( or something tweaked to comply with regulations) if it wanted to. My guess is the reorg still wasn’t radical enough to try to meet the 2024 deadline. I remain just a little bit skeptical that there wasn’t something else that contributed to his removal.
Or it was too radical for those at NASA trying to run out the clock to see if the election results in a new Administration with a new less demanding goal for NASA.
Yes, I should have said too radical for NASA management but not radical enough to meet the 2024 deadline.
You are just guessing again.
But it’s not a bad guess. Agency cost within NASA, especially costs along the lines of allowing programs to become a long-term pork farm to please the right member of Congress, are hardly a new thing. If your point above, that internal NASA approvals were complete, and Congress was the last hurdle, is correct, then that last hurdle may be more effort than some feel is worthwhile.
Keeping a change sitting in the bureaucratic aging bin until something else, like an election, kills it, is hardly a new tactic. Mind you, I don’t think it is a usable tactic this time around, but in the Portland area I’m seeing rather desperate fantasies running through the streets.
I am stating my opinion based on how government agencies behave when given a task by a politician they feel is impractical. If VP Biden or another Democratic candidate is elected the 2024 goal will likely be tossed in favor of a more “rational” space policy. It May include a lunar return, but on a looser schedule. Odds are there will also be a new NASA Administrator with new marching orders if a Democratic Administration comes into power in a few months.
There IS a sort of ‘bureaucratic momentum’ at every level. This isn’t necessarily (always) a bad thing, in my view.
It’s popular to criticize government ‘lethargy’. I do it myself. But government serve the needs of disparate interests: of ALL the people, meaning a sort of ‘go-slow’ can often contribute to consensus building.
It can also do the opposite.
No guessing? Please, Mr. Moderator, say it ain’t so! Facts are just such squirmy little things!
Let’s find out why Loverro was fired before we start politicizing the process.
As a government agency run by a political appointee and subject to the often conflicting political based desires of Congress and the Administration almost any personnel decision at this level already has a political element included in the decision matrix for it. Yes, it would be nice to know why Doug Loverro resigned, but that knowledge won’t eliminate the political element involved in finding his replacement.
No the reorg was signed off on my everyone at NASA and only needed some congressional review.
True that his actions didn’t directly cause this delay. But, if he was the one championing this reorg, and he leaves the organization, that could leave us in the situation described. If there is no champion for change, change won’t happen because organizational change is always hard.
I’m just spit-balling and speculating here. I have no knowledge of the direct inner workings of NASA management. In fact, I despise office politics and try to avoid becoming tangled in it.
unless the OIG Audit invalidates the HLS BAA awards to SpaceX, Blue’s National Team or Dynetics I don’t think the reorg being paused will hold up their work to develop their landers.
“There is simply no way NASA will ever meet the Moon landing deadlines it has been given….” I think you could have stopped there, if we’re discussing a well engineered and safe as is reasonable program.
I think for SpaceX this may be just noise. They are focussed on getting their next generation spacecraft operational. Yes they have won some bids for the lunar program that NASA has specified – cargo to the Gateway Space Station, and a lander from Gateway to the Lunar surface. But their Starship will be capable of both of these things, and more, and so they are bidding as needed, because they want those funds, but they are meanwhile continuing to build their vision of the architecture that is needed.
Elon has been very clear about this, that F9 in current form is the last iteration, and will be abandoned when Starship is ready. That’s a huge leap, hard to see how it works given the way the satellite business is currently shaped. But what do I know.
That is why SpaceX is building the Starlink system. He knows the satellite industry won’t be able to adapt fast enough to close the business model for the Starship, so he applied the same mass production techniques to building satellites so he will be able to tap directly into economic demand for satellite services.
The HEOMD reorganization was designed to make the Directorate more efficient and organized along the lines needed for ISS operations and Artemis. If that improved efficiency isn ow on hold, by definition, it will impact NASA’s ability to meet the 2024 landing date. Otherwise, why strive for more efficiency in the first place?
Well, maybe NASA will be able to buy seats on SpaceX’s spaceship when it flies to and lands on the Moon.
They’re testing the mission abort system.
What this illustrates is just success or failure of a major space program depends on a single person assigned to a HQ position. Astronauts are presented more often and are more popular, however, they have backups (if Doug or Bob got sick, there’s others that can jump in and DM-2 will go as scheduled). Think of the alternate universe where we never made it to the moon because Low, Gilruth, Phillips, and/or others got bounced.
He was apparently fired for breaking the acquisition regs. Poor judgement even if someone told him to do that.
No reason was given so you are just making assumptions.
This was reported but it does not answer the question. NASA has skirted acquisition regulations in the past (the formation of United Space Alliance and the original Space Act funding of Commercial Crew come to mind) without anyone being fired.
And its all very sad and just another symptom of all the associated variables and problems that have perpetually kept humans from going to Mars to the proverbial “30 years from now” of which any Moon return was a side bar and now once again in danger of failing. So much money and time and worker vested careers and emotions seemingly wasted. WHEN will they ever learn? Do THEY even care?
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Come November there might just be a regime change at the top; Democrats will be driving. The human space program will once again be sidelined in favor of global warming studies, or some such nonsense. Let’s put $$trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in to trying to reduce the temperature by a fraction of a degree, and with it trash the U.S. economy. Besides why would we want anyone else in the world to pay for anything at all? Moon and Mars will be off the table for another four years. Everyone remembers Obama. This will be the second coming. For those of us who experienced Apollo and thought we might live to see the next man and first woman on the Moon, this will be the end of our hopes.
You do realize, don’t you that the average temp during the last ice age was only about 6.7°C cooler than it is now, right? See, context is important when talking about numbers. In some contexts small numbers don’t matter. A carpenter isn’t bothered if he cuts a 2×4 50 nanometers too short. Heck, he can’t even measure that, so it’s irrelevant. However if the engineer finishing an astronomical mirror screws up and leaves an error in the surface 50 nanometers tall, that can be a big problem.
You clearly missed the importance that context. Parts of a degree can absolutely make a significant change to the climate.
Generalizing makes for a failed argument, and your generalization about Democrats is such a failure. No doubt you’ll bristle if someone generalizes about conservatives.
Obama? You did see that SpaceX just launched the first US manned space mission since the end of the Shuttle program didn’t you? You do realize that Obama had much to do with, right?
Partisan commentary is inherently weak and flawed. Relying on it to make an argument isn’t part of critical thinking.
What really contributes to NASA’s inability to plan long term is the change in power that happens every 4 to 8 years. What’s needed is a law or something that gives NASA some stability in direction. Unfortunately, that will never happen given the divide and positions of Democrats AND Republicans in Washington D.C.
Good luck to Mark Geyer. He’s going to need all the help he can get.
As the original manger for Orion and JSC Director he should be up to speed if he takes over.