NASA Advisory Council Meeting March 31 – April 1 2016, NASA
“Dr. Wanda Austin asked Mr. Bolden to discuss how NASA plans to work with the Presidential transition teams to maintain progress on NASA’s current programs and activities. Mr. Bolden explained that the Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of 2010 allows each political party, after their nominating convention, to assemble transition teams . Beginning in August 2016, NASA will have access to those transition teams. NASA ‘s intent is to be proactive with the transition teams and tell them as much as possible about NASA, its programs, and the President’s vision and remind them, similar to the Hippocratic Oath, first of all to “do no harm. “The Nation is embarked as the leader of the world on an ambitious space exploration program. NASA has put together a great set of science programs. It has a more robust aeronautics program than at any time in the recent history of the Agency, and a technology development program that is helping to develop the cutting edge technologies that would be needed not just for the Journey to Mars but across the NASA portfolio. NASA will not wait for the transition teams to come to NASA, but will go to them.”
“The Council discussed the upcoming transition in Presidential Administrations. Dr. Peterson advised that it would be important to be prepared to be proactive and present the transition teams with a plan for Mars. Mr. Hale reported that he had worked with the last transition team and learned that space policy is made at the White House. He asserted, “It is setting the expectation too high to suggest that NASA can affect the formulation of space policy.” Ms. Blakey advised that it is important to know who is listened to on the transition teams.”
Election only the start of a long-term NASA transition, SpaceNews
“While both Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump established transition teams after accepting their parties’ nominations this summer, months ahead of the Nov. 8 general election, that planning has yet to involve “landing teams” for NASA. “We’re at the point now where, any day now, we could hear about individual names for the landing team for NASA,” said Michael French, NASA chief of staff, speaking at a meeting of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) here. “NASA has not received this information yet.”
Keith’s note: Interesting. With regard to presidential transition teams Charlie Bolden said “NASA will not wait for the transition teams to come to NASA, but will go to them”. Now, with regard to who is on these transition teams, his chief of staff says “NASA has not received this information yet”. So … I guess no one followed Bolden’s direction to seek out the transition teams. In my experience, transition teams never reveal their membership until after an election, so I am not sure he’d know who to talk to anyway . If you compare Bolden’s and French’s approaches they seem to be the opposite of each other. I wonder who is giving NASA HQ advice on all of this?
– Now NASA Wants Special Treatment From Congress, earlier post
As Keith’s little pictogram implies, in order to assist either team in a transition, I would think that first the NASA people would need to know what they are doing, what is important, where they are going and why. Basically this means they need a strategy and a plan. NASA has been lost in space for about the last 8 years. No strategy, no plan…mainly I think they are just hoping that either SpaceX or Boeing can get one of those capsules ready before the Soyuz contract ends; and that nothing big fails on ISS; and that some of our international friends offer ‘seats’ on future planetary missions. The idea that NASA is going to Mars is a fiction designed to cover up the real situation.
“It is setting the expectation too high to suggest that NASA can affect the formulation of space policy.”
So true.
[Psst! Wanna know where space policy is formulated?
http://www.shelby.senate.go… ]
Maybe you are right-maybe things have changed in the last 12 years. But in 2004, NASA formulated the Vision and got Congressional and Presidential buy-in. Congress repeatedly asked NASA officials, ‘do you really thing we ought to terminate Shuttle’, and their response was ‘we have to, to get the money’. In the 80s, James Beggs told Congress and the President that his goal was to establish the Space Station. In 1970, NASA decided that the most important goal was the continuation of human space flight and launch capacity for astronauts and modules, which was the Space Shuttle. So in every past case, NASA established the plan. In 1961, NASA decided the best option was a moon landing. By the way, one NASA guy, George Low, formulated selection and the rationale for Apollo, Shuttle and Station. We need a visionary like that today.
The Vision for Space Exploration did not get congessional buy in. The VSE called for no new rockets.
Congress immediately had Griffin brought in and conduct the 60 day study. That brought to the the ESAS which totally rewrote the VSE. Now instead of a quick capsule on an EELV we got TWO new rockets and the 14000 jobs that O’Keefe said would be lost were now saved. 12 billion dollars later and not one single orbital test flight, congress sent President Obama a funding bill with no funding for Constellation.
and then the next boondoggle started. Bush traded commercial cargo for Constellation. Obama traded SLS/Orion for commercial crew.
Guess what Clinton will trade for a commercial space station?
Which proves that politics ain’t rocket science.
No, you are wrong. Griffin did not get in until 2005. There was more than a year of another Program Manager for Constellation and a plan to develop a small winged vehicle to rpelace the Shuttle, and a depot-centric system for cislunar development that a large group of architecture teams were working on. O’Keefe’s vision was thoroughly bought into by everyone that needed to and was the basis for Bush’s 2004 Vision statement. Griffin came 18 months later, and hijacked the Vision and the process. Not only was Griffin not a politician, he also was not much of a rocket scientist.
..rewriting history since the facts do not support your position. 2004 VSE was modified to include 3 flaws: 1) lunar prepares NASA for Mars 2) by 2020 3) not build new LVs. The 1.5 launch architecture was to enable LEO/BEO with Ares 1, 5 to help reduce the massive costs but exclude DOD/IP fleet, retain shuttle, as directed by Pres and controlling Congress.
By placing a date to lunar “to prepare for Mars”, no new system could be developed within 0 budget with acceptable risk (TRL 5 by PDR). R&D was gutted, sent to CxP, crew up top with the Apollo capsule-TRL 9. Nothing would happen until ISS splashdown or $3B/yr plus up.
No ‘large’ groups worked on depot centric as most had little knowledge of the concept, and the concepts matured significantly as indicated in the 2010s depot studies. While flexible path was trashed, a few understood it genius: a balance of ops/R&D would enable BEO+new markets by ‘expanding the problem’-same $.
Imagine the disappointment when Ares I could not loft Orion due to solids. 70mT of boiloff staging Ares V for Mars DRM 5. Orion could not return from asteroid or Mars, but *now* LEO had to be supported by the DOD fleet. Not dead yet, Congress specifies 70 and 130mT.
Griffin spent significant effort trying to right Ares I mandated by Congress. His pre-ESAS white paper suggest different approaches to the flawed-at-the-last-minute VSE, wrote but not read by its authors. “common hardware that can be reused” requiring in space refueling.
“GWP: Stage 2 initiates human exploration of the solar system with a variety of destinations including near Earth objects such as asteroids, the Lagrange points; and the vicinities of the moon and Mars. Note that human landings on the moon or Mars are not included, although landings on the Martian moons (Phobos or Deimos) could be made, as they have negligible gravitational attraction and no atmosphere …both safer and more cost effective than going directly to the planetary surfaces as landing and ascent vehicles would not be required.”
GWP: “SEL2 is an excellent location for space telescopes…and these telescopes will require servicing. SEL2 is also an excellent point from which to stage missions beyond Earth’s gravitational field. Such a staging node is of no value for a single planetary expedition or for an architecture built primarily around expendable mission hardware. An interplanetary vehicle station at SEL2 is reused for many trips to multiple destinations, the energy savings achieved through the use of such a staging node are significant…and supplies can be ferried on slower but more efficient trajectories, possibly using EP.”
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lun…
http://www.spaceref.com/new…
http://www.forbes.com/sites…
The ESAS defined the architecture it came out in nov. of 2005
http://www.nasa.gov/explora…
The constellation mentioned in the VSE was still undefined.
There were ongoing strategy and architecture working groups looking at systems requirements and in situ resource utilization when Griffin’s “study” bypassed everything else and edicted a solution that was technically untenable and fiscally unsupportable. As your quote from NASAWatch indicates, there were a lot of people who felt Griffin was bypassing bona fide engineering processes. He derailed the Vision at that point. All you heard after that from the top NASA managers was that the “sand chart” showed they had to have more money-a lot of it” and that was also the reason given to Congress that they had to terminate Shuttle in order to get the money. But in proceeding with shutting down Shuttle, NASA managers failed to use the Shuttle systems, infrastructure or personnel to develop the new booster. So it was the worst of all possible scenarios. They threw away everything Shuttle had accomplished, got rid of all the Shuttle expertise, and then started on a new vehicle. Orion was going to be a repeat of Apollo-which was not supportable long term. A heavy lift unmanned launcher, most likely a side mount, would have been far more advantageous and faster, using much of the Shuttle systems, infrastructure, suppliers and personnel. NASA decided to go with something far more expensive in time and money. It took Obama to try and shut it down, and Congress got involved when NASA failed to come forward with an alternative plan.
Sadly you continue to mix facts with fiction, RB, in all of your posts. Congress demanded shuttle derived. What is the best shuttle derived LV to close LEO gap, head BEO, fit budget?
The answer is of course Ares I and V, but it does not fit the budget w/o efficiency gains.
Everything shuttle derived is also not reuseable in direct conflict with long term sustainability. And with reuse, even 50mT is toooo big.
The moral is if you start with the wrong LV components, it cost alot and Congress did not provide funding for their unfunded mandate.
A sidemount is simply ridiculous since shuttle had serious safety concerns (foam shedding and joints next to heat shield). Further, the cheapest, safest route forward was LV 24/25 “SLS” (significant margin for LAS) , but it could not close the gap because no one would launch a 10mT capsule on a 70-100mT LV to ISS…it simply is tooooo big. SLS opened the door however for c. cargo and crew. Think about it…very very carefully 😉
The changes to CxP were simply a (very dedicated) response to the unfortunate penalty of including solids with crew. Most know that reduced costs, increased performance create more risk. That is the genius behind depot centric: Take risk to lower costs with the dirt cheap payload of the mission, dirt cheap, Class D propellant. This increases flight rate to provide demonstrated reliability as long as its a common configuration as well as find those unknown unknowns for the Class A payload.
The designs can be scaled to super HLV class once the concept is matured, e.g. Falcon to Falcon Heavy to ITS which have goals of reuse, unlike shuttle derived, which makes it DOA.
Congress dictates 3B/yr on SLS/Orion. Its against the Law for NASA to plan “alternatively”. Parts of NASA did suggest alternatives.
http://www.spaceref.com/new…
You are right, ESAS was completed in November 2005. Griffin had the answer in September (as seen here), 2 months before the study was completed-in reality the ESAS was a study to vindicate Griffin preconceived notions. http://www.space.com/1567-n…
“Editor’s note: As reported here last week, briefings regarding Mike Griffin’s 60 day study have been underway for congressional and industry representatives in Washington. Not everyone gets the same briefing however. Reports from these briefings speak of lack of budget data, lack of a firm or final design for the heavy launch vehicle, and a general feel of disorganization within the presentations. External reviewers are citing a number of problems with they have been presented. Contractors are miffed because they don’t think things have been thought through thoroughly – and that some very simple questions cannot be answered. The ISS partner nations are not happy campers either.”
http://nasawatch.com/archiv…
Craig Steidle headed the effort from January 2004 to June of 2005. His intent was for industry to do a fly-off of vehicles intended to replace Shuttle. NASA would select the winner that would be brought to full operational status. Steidle would also develop a series of unmanned lunar probes to explore options for surface systems on the moon. Steidle did not want NASA involved in technical development and did his best to avoid NASA participation, which was politically unwise.
Griffin started in April 2005. And lasted through 2008. He left NASA in January 2009. He had written a paper years earlier about developing an Apollo like capsule that could launch into orbit on a Shuttle SRB. Several forces sought to keep SRBs in development since they used most of the propellant otherwise used for US military missiles. Under Griffin, the vehicle configuration was dictated. He formed a requirements organization that was composed of people who had little to no background in human space flight requirements. So requirements were never properly developed nor vetted. The vehicle’s initial intended purpose as a MultiPurpose Crew Vehicle was to carry crews of 7 to and from ISS and would begin flying in 2009 and carrying crews by 2011. It was supposed to land on land and be reusable. The only problem was that he dictated a vehicle size which was too large and massive to be carried to orbit on the Ares 1 solid rocket booster. Griffin failed to reconcile orbital vehicle mass with launch vehicle capacity. So NASA was chasing its tail as the capsule kept getting smaller and they kept trying to develop a concept for a larger Ares upper stage. A later version of the capsule was supposed to serve as an “Apollo on steroids” command module for lunar exploration missions, and then eventually for planetary missions. As the Constellation program progressed, every year the launch date would slip another year. By the time of Augustine’s investigation, the Constellation managers were saying they could have Orion flying by 2014. Sally Ride, on the Augustine committee, said 2018 or 2019 was likely. The Orion size and mass was never reconciled with the Ares 1 booster. Early in Griffin’s tenure, one could probably have dismissed the program’s problem by thinking Griffin did not listen to subordinates (a problem he had during his first NASA tenure around 1990, and which helped cause the premature demise of the first President Bush’s Space Exploration Initiative vision aanounced on the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11 in 1989, but by the time of Augustine, Griffin had been gone for 2 years and the program management still could not get their arms around the capsule and the rocket, so I think it was simply lacking NASA management expertise throughout.
Eventually they reduced the size of the Orion, reduced to 4 crew from the original 7, gave up on land landings, and reusability, and traded ISS services for 2 ESA built OPrion service modules, gave up on Ares 1 and and went to a downsized version of the Ares 5 that we now call SLS. Orion is still about on the 2019 schedule with a first crewed launch around 2022. But it has grown so expensive that only a couple of them are actually being built.
I think a lot of the problem was that during earlier programs, the NASA technical/engineering organizations were responsible for defining first the requirements and later the design, before selecting contractors to build the systems. During the Space Station, NASA did most of the design (it is largely the design flying today), but the contractors (particularly Boeing who bought out everyone else) put a second rate team on it and could not get the big elements built and ready to fly. This caused delays and large cost increases.
When Dan Goldin came in as Administrator from industry, Goldin saw this as a problem with the NASA workforce, and excluded experienced NASA people from the station program. In reality it was a political (work package) and contractor problem. Thanks to Goldin and then his NASA Station management team who had no design or development experience and little knowledge of NASA engineering, they cost the program tremendously. But instead of correcting the problem during Constellation, the NASA leadership felt that it was not required to have any actual experience at the helm and so much of the Constellation organization was filled with people with little relevant expertise (I don’t think they have recovered even today). And ISS continues to suffer from similar problems. Station continues to have problems in getting payloads on in a timely and inexpensive fashion, and in fact have run off most of their ‘best customers’, only about 35% of Station payloads fly a second time. With Shuttle, Spacelab, Spacehab and Mir, there were plenty of experienced payload integrators, none of whom made it into Station to serve in similar capacity. Most of those people are long gone now-those programs were over decades ago.
Commercial Cargo got started during Griffin’s tenure as part of the philosophy to turn LEO over to industry while NASA was going to explore (Moon and Mars). NASA is real happy that Space X and OSC have come through with vehicles that have been pretty successful, since NASA’s own vehicle to help with ISS servicing and logistics (Orion) is well over a decade behind its original need date.
“Several forces sought to keep SRBs in development since they used most of the propellant otherwise used for US military missiles. “
It’s my impression that most missiles use nitrocellulose/nitroglycerine (i.e. smokeless powder) based propellants (“double-base”), rather than the ammonium perchlorate/aluminum-based (“composite”) propellants used in launch vehicles and satellite kick motors. The latter are not as energetic and produce a lot of smoke, which is undesirable in a missile because it makes them easier to detect.
http://www.islandgroup.com/… To keep manufacturing SRBs to maintain capacity for perchlorate fuels is absurd. It would be infinitely cheaper to simply pay ATK to keep the production capacity available.
The use of an SRB-based booster did not make any technical sense, but it was a political decision that for some reason the technical management all went along with. There were serious concerns with aborts from an SRB, and there were serious pressure and thrust oscillations-for which they were subsequently trying to add shock absorbers to the already overweight capsule.
Of course NASA can affect the formulation of space policy. The White House and OMB have a lot of power, but the appointed leadership of the agency can (and sometimes does) influence space policy. The problem last time was that the Administrator didn’t work well with the WH or OMB, so he missed his chance to affect policy much after transition.
Transition team: So, we need to know if there are any issues of urgency? Things the President may wish to address sooner rather than later.
NASA: Nope, we are good to go!
Transition team: Great, so what’s the plan?
NASA: Plan? There is no plan. Plan’s just create issues. We have no plan! Isn’t it sheer genius?
Transition team: OK, let’s go back, to the first question…
As a physician I have to point out that it is a popular misconception that the phrase “First do no harm” (Latin: Primum non nocere) is a part of the Hippocratic oath.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Still, the manner in which physicians practice, in the main, is summarized by that nicely turned phrase.
The manner in which they believe they practice. The reality for some is more like “First show us the money.”
A provocative comment.
Recently a world-famous hand surgeon ‘corrected’ Dupuytren’s contracture in my left small finger. After 8 weeks my hand looks exactly like it did earlier- there’s a hook where my finger should be.
On the other hand, my Family Practitioner – a neighbor – is available 24/7, responds to texting, checks on me and my wife and has for 20 years.
My cousin is a wound specialist in Denver and complains constantly about the cost of hiring physicians. Some of the demands made are truly astonishing.
Every doctor is being pressured by insurance companies private and public. On the one hand many of us see that marble floored offices and high fees are part of the same basket. On the other hand, having your income subject to a third party has to be discouraging.
It’s a very mixed bag.
It it makes you feel any better most of the buildings at Kennedy Space Center are pretty much plain and functional by comparison with the local medical establishments.
“”The Nation is embarked as the leader of the world on an ambitious space exploration program.”
Really? Who knew!