Looking Backward And Forward In Space
No, human space exploration is not a dead end, op ed, Marillyn Hewson (Locheed Martin), Washington Post
“For Post columnist David Von Drehle, NASA’s renewed focus on human space exploration is “unnecessary” and “a dead end.” I fundamentally disagree with this assessment. I was excited to see President Trump ensure that the United States remains the leader in space by reestablishing the National Space Council. Under the leadership of Vice President Pence, the council held a meeting last week for the first time in nearly 25 years, announcing a distinct objective: promote a clear U.S. space policy and enact the reforms necessary to strengthen American leadership in space. Von Drehle’s argument against human space exploration boils down to three main questions, and I’d like to address each of them.”
The mission to Mars is one stupid leap for mankind, op ed, Washington Post
Keith’s note: Sigh. Marillyn Hewson’s pro-human spaceflight op ed response to the anti-human spaceflight op ed by David Von Drehle is as formulaic and uninspired as Drehle’s is ignorant and incorrect. Of course Lockheed Martin is going to support whatever NASA wants to pay them to do and of course they are going to plug their product line (Orion, SLS, Mars Base Camp). One would hope that the reason we explore and utilize space involves more than just the whims of big aerospace parroting back NASA’s old talking points.
As for the humans vs robots thing: America (and other countries) sends a wide array of robotic space missions ranging from small cubesats to large space telescopes and human missions to low Earth orbit and beyond. This is done because different missions require different tools. All space missions are a mixture of humans and robotics regardless of where the human may physically reside. We’re not at the point yet where a robot can completely replace a human. Nor are we at the point where a human can go everywhere that only robots currently dare to go. Even a cursory look at how we have explored Earth will show that exploration has always been a mixture of humans and their technology – with technology going ahead of humans. But in the end, with few exceptions, humans eventually go to all of the places where their technological avatars first visited. Because that is what humans do.
A new NASA Administrator will soon take the helm at NASA. Rep. Bridenstine will be the youngest person to ever hold that position. He likely first saw “Star Wars” on VHS. Apollo Moon landings were always history for his generation. His generation also saw the shuttle come and go with two crews lost. While there are now people with grandchildren who have never seen a human walk on another world there are also millions of children in high school who have never known a world where humans did not permanently live in space. To Bridenstine’s generation and the one following his, space has been a constant thing that people do. Its normal.
Yet the people making or purporting to represent space policy are from older generations (i.e mine). They seem to be stuck on reliving past glories more than they are on using new space technology to visit places we’ve never visited to do things we’ve never done before. NASA is still stuck on echoes of Mike Griffin’s “Apollo on Steroids” meme in the form of SLS and Orion. And the budgets needed to pay for these old ways of doing things threaten to undermine NASA’s research portfolio.
Is it a coincidence that the most ground-breaking, cost-effective, and imaginative technology is focused on human exploration and that it is not being developed by NASA? Instead it is being developed by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and their companies filled with 20-something employees. The hottest thing in space right now is cubesats that can be built with parts you can order online. The generations that are now looking toward their future in space see it as something that anyone should be able to achieve. To them space exploration is participatory. It is not a spectator sport.
It is perfectly fine to seek inspiration from Apollo. That is perhaps its greatest legacy. But the world has changed in the intervening half century. People are no longer content to watch someone else go into space. They want to sign up and go – themselves.
Just as arm waving inaccurate op eds by editorial page writers mislead people, pronouncements from aerospace behemoths about the old way of doing things in space – for the same old tired reasons – mislead people as well. NASA needs to figure out how to support and enable a participatory space program and then stand back and allow this to happen.
I would hope that when the National Space Council selects the membership for its external panel that there will be young people selected to serve on it. I also hope that the panel will look forward eagerly to decades of space exploration yet to come instead of looking back nostalgically at decades of space exploration long since past.
Was that stay the course of piece ghost written at headquarters?
Typical stay the course, looking back and resting on their laurels mantra from LM and their ilk of SLS/Orion cheerleaders.
To make matters worse there are rumors that the agency is actually entertaining the idea to just tell the council that by staying the course everything is going okay. That basically the presentation on gateway they had ready for the Hillary Transition team just needs a new cover sheet. That somehow a plan that needs almost 10 years before any hardware is put in cislunar space for a crew to fly to is the plan that is going to win over this president. Does he seem like the push over type to believe the rocket scientists or more of a “You are Fired, Get to the Chopper!” type of leadership style.
Do they honestly believe career wise, and politically that offering up that by 2024 flying SLS/Orion twice (only once crewed) to cislunar space gets anywhere close to the goal of boots on the Moon that the president has asked them to study? Mcmurdo base in Antarctica might be in for some new SES level maintenance staff if they really go forward with this as the only concept.
Somebody need to put together an independent design optimization team, this is another John Houbolt moment for the space program. An iDOT to take an honest and clean sheet assessment of what is available and coming online near term that we can use to build towards the goal of boots on the surface of the Moon. If next year commercial crew is supposed to start flying and some new launch vehicles are supposed to be available does that not open up the trade space for what you can accomplish by 2024? A team not worried about political blowback from Congress or fiefdoms getting up in arms, but to find a path forward and a plan where the agency can work on making some progress for actual human exploration.
There are ways to carve up the architecture to keep congress happy and folks working because this is not a base closure scenario, but finding new things for teams to work on. For example instead of a rocket that goes from KSC to space what about say a rocket that goes from lunar orbit to the surface and back again. It’s not the size of the engine that matters MSFC but what you do with it. We don’t build rockets to launch our unmanned deep spacecraft and earth satellites so why does that have to be the sole domain of NASA for deep space crew?
If we are turning over LEO to commercial then turn it over completely and get into the business of focusing on the architecture pieces like Habs, Landers, transit vehicles, Gateway stations and the contracts to get that built and let crew and cargo access go commercial.
How does the Agency believe that to propose staying the course and continue to spend $40B and 18 years to get to EM-2 is what will garner support from the Space Council and the administration without investigating and offering up alternatives. You have 45 days use them is that too naive to ask?
Sorry if this went somewhat off on a tangent but this op ed just is another symptom of the malaise that is keeping us grounded. While old space opines on the good ole days, new space is landing first stages and talking about exploration on a faster pace than the agency seems able to achieve with almost 50 years head start.
NASA knows, like all government agencies, that Presidents are regularly replaced. So just drag your feet, keep your head down and keep your Congress Critters fed so they are fat and happy and the calls for change, new direction, and innovation will pass. It’s how bureaucrats survive in the Swamp.
There are only two things that have the ability to challenge this, and give bureaucrats nightmares. The first is a President who see space as important enough to spend political capital to force a radical change on the agency even if it involves a big Congressional battle.
Or two, a high value crisis (lost of ISS?) that forces the agency on to everyone’s radar. Otherwise NASA will just keep on drifting.
The flow of pork to Congressional Districts usually takes care of the first one, making the political cost too high. President Obama learned that lesson and just left NASA alone after he had his Kennedy style photo-op.
Not putting astronauts at risk is the bureaucratic response to prevent the latter one. Which is why flying beyond the ISS will always be pushed further and further out.
NASA will explore by 2092 to celebrate 600 yrs of discovery with program of record. Carlin’s American Dream: MAGA.
Congress, actually parts of Congress, knows, that Presidents are regularly replaced. Donor agendas (carbon, estate tax, outsource more programs..) are unpopular, which means Congress can also be replaced. The solution has been one or two term ‘parrots’, Gerrymandered Districts+ Citizen’s United through SCOTUS appointments, and just drag your feet when in the minority. This past election was so important that the Party of Red took targeted fake news to a new low.
There are only two things that have the ability to challenge this,
change Citizen’s United and gerrymandered districts, difficult with the current SCOTUS+the nuclear option. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”.
The short timers that are in Congress are not really a factor as they have limited power. It is only those with power, Committee Chairs and ranking members, Congress Critters who have been there for decades, who NASA needs to keep fat and happy. The newbies will fall in line, or they will leave the Swamp.
Indeed. We are currently learning who is really in charge in America.
Which is what the Founding Fathers intended. Remember the USA was created as a Republic and Republics are run by the legislative body.
That was also how the country was governed for most of its history. The view we have today of a strong President being in charge is largely the result of the Administrations of Lincoln and the two Roosevelts.
But that is because they knew how to cut back room deals with Congress on things that were important to them which is what made their Administrations effective and gave the impression of them being all powerful. President Kennedy knew as well, and had Vice-President Johnson who really knew how to dangle carrots and twist arms to get things done, which was why four of President Kennedy’s five space goals were accomplished (weather says, comsats, better launch systems, and the Moon landing). The only goal that wasn’t was NERVA and it’s ceased to be important when there was no longer a geopolitical need to reach Mars.
For most of its history, the United States has done fairly well without anyone really being in charge. In a few years (and with luck) we may learn from Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos that we can have space exploration without having any one, single person or group in charge of it. It wouldn’t be a space _program_, but I can live with that.
This is not even directly on topic, but shall we reiterate some more poignant elements of Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design ?
33. (Patton’s Law of Program Planning) A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.
34. (Roosevelt’s Law of Task Planning) Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.
….
38. Capabilities drive requirements, regardless of what the systems engineering textbooks say.
39. Any exploration program which “just happens” to include a new launch vehicle is, de facto, a launch vehicle program.
39. (alternate formulation) The three keys to keeping a new manned space program affordable and on schedule:
1) No new launch vehicles.
2) No new launch vehicles.
3) Whatever you do, don’t develop any new launch vehicles.
Grand Challenge #1: Economic Access to Space.
VSE required an architecture based on reuse.
Is it a surprise that a few billionaires decided to *develop new LV* based on reuse? SLS DOA at $10K/kg and hence the goal to celebrate 600 yrs of discovery: ‘mooning’ by 2092.
“Is it a coincidence that the most ground-breaking, cost-effective, … technology … is not being developed by NASA?”
No. Congress stole from the NASA community the ability to innovate and advance today’s ‘imaginative’ concepts –squashed for decades. What’s amoral is that they took fake news to a new low to retain Citizen’s United and gerrymandered districts, coupled with climate denial appointments/parrots — all of which have created a long string of illogical decisions.
“A human can instantly sense, analyze and respond to his or her surroundings in ways that robots never could.”
It’s pretty tough to watch a booster land tail-first and convince yourself that any human could do it; the speed and precison of the calculations are beyond us. Humans will go, but only when the cost is affordable. In the meantime we will send robots as close to ourselves in intelligence as possible, and considerably better at surviving in the hostile environment of space.
Neil did it. And he did it with precision collision avoidance.
Yes, and Mars and the Moon are littered with robots that couldn’t do it.
Yet we had successes on Mars as long ago as Viking, and we have learned from failures. The MERs and later Curiosity were successful, as was Huygens on Titan. Even Armstrong’s hand-flown landing of Apollo 11, spectacular as it was, followed several successful Surveyor landings.
Not completely. The Apollo LM landed per its computer’s direction. The astronaut could command slight changes in parameters, like slowing the rate of descent or slowing the rate at which the vehicle was moving horizontally over the surface. So the astronaut definitely could modify some parameters, but the automated system still was doing much of the work of setting thrust, setting gimbal parameters, maintaining attitude.
The computers certainly helped, but the Lunar Module wasn’t exactly what we’d call fly-by-wire today. When it came to things like picking final landing site, the astronauts very much in control (e.g. shifting to avoid boulders or small craters.)
I disagree. It might not have been quite as sophisticated as fly-by-wire systems commonly found in advanced air craft today, but it was most definitely fly-by-wire. In fact it was based in large measure on earlier systems, like that used for the X-15, that Neil himself had helped to design. The big difference today are the more sophisticated sensor systems that could identify terrain, identify that the LM was on a trajectory that was off the originally planned path, but as far as the control system the LM was a fly-by-wire system. Read the book Digital Apollo by David Mindell.
Fly-by-wire probably wasn’t the best way to phrase it, since the controls were not mechanically linked to anything. But modern systems do have a great deal of filtering and processing between the pilot and the control surfaces (for aircraft) or thrusters (for spacecraft.) There are also automatic feedback to maintain stable flight without constant action by the pilot. I think the Apollo LM had some, but not as sophisticated as modern, commercial aircraft.
The nominal approach was automatic. Armstrong took manual control because he observed that the inertial guidance system was off course (later found to due to an unanticipated impulse fromt he LM separation springs) and would have set the vehicle down in an area covered by boulders. Landing with only a few seconds of fuel left, he spectacularly showed the capability of a human pilot. But he was selected in part because of his superb piloting skills, and it cannot be assumed that other pilots, even other astronauts, would necessarily be as good.
In contrast in the mundane world of navigation and guidance systems, although it may take years to develop a system, consistent and reliable performance can ultimately be achieved.
Oddly, this was one issue I noticed in a story about Mr. Musk’s presentation on BFR and his Mars plans. On the subject of point-to-point passenger flights, a supposed expert was quoted saying such a flight would be impractical because of the stress it would put on the pilot. I don’t think people are used to the idea of unpiloted (or automatically driven) vehicles carrying passengers.
Where did you see this?
I honestly don’t remember. Google’s mobile-friendly search engine provides a clipping service. When you open it, it does a search of online news sites for items of interest (based on your browsing history.) In the week or so after Mr. Musk’s speech, it gave me a large number of stories on SpaceX and BFR. I _think_ the quote about pilots was on The Verge, but I couldn’t swear to that. I do remember it was a quote, not something the author came up with himself.
You mean like the people movers at airports?
They used to say the same thing about carrier landings…
I read (it might be true) that one of the problems with automatic carrier landings is that the planes all hit the same spot on the deck, concentrating the wear on the deck and arresting gear.
Can someone point me to a document that indicates what the president wants? I somehow missed it.
I hope that was a joke. I think not knowing what the president wants, and a lack of any documentation on the subject, more or less defines the current administration.
More snark than joke.
I think the pressure to reach the moon by the end of 1969 came about due to a set of unique circumstances that will probably never occur again in my lifetime. The US/Soviet rivalry, the death of the young vibrant leader who set the goal, the Vietnam war and the Civil rights struggle all happened within just that few years of time. The program did not have the urgency early on that it did after Nov. 22, 1963.
Had Kennedy not been struck down, I don’t think Congress would have appropriated as much funding as it did. It would have taken much longer to develop the hardware to get to the moon, and who knows what would have happened when Nixon was elected? The program might have been drastically reduced (it was slashed by the Nixon administration). It might have lost it’s way entirely.
I think that’s also why SpaceX and other private companies have a much better chance of carrying out their plans. They are not changing CEO’s every 4 or 8 years so the goal is not changing. I think Keith is correct in his evaluation of SLS and Orion, how are they going to sustain a system that can only be launched once or twice a year?
We should remember that the SaturnV/CSM/LM combination was not what people had in mind as the way to get to the moon originally. It was chosen because that combination was the only way to get there in the timeline that was set. Von Braun and many of his followers wanted to build Nova and launch a single spacecraft (Direct flight) that would land on the Moon – but it would have taken too long to develop. Similarly the two Saturn V (EOR) plan with a single spacecraft would not have made it in time. Only the LOR system got us there so quickly, but it was really a dead end because it severely limited the payload.
Multiple flights of lower cost, reusable hardware makes a lot more sense than an upgraded Saturn V, IMHO.
I think Keith also makes a fine point about robots vs. humans. Each has capabilities and strengths for different missions and he is correct asserting that man (and woman) has always gone where technology has gone before.
It will be interesting to watch…
And now this, from the 20/20 Hindsight Department:
We can draw inspiration from Apollo, true, but let’s be careful here.
Apollo’s drop-dead timeline drove a hugely wasteful program that depended on expendable parts as if that’s the only way to go. Not just boosters; the moon is littered with billions of dollars worth of gear. Similarly solar orbit.
Worse: Because Apollo successfully landed humans it became a sort of ‘model program;’ as time left Apollo in the rear view mirror, NASA clung to the shiny Apollo model. It’s represented clearly in SLS, for instance.
Think that through for a few minutes. Many poor decisions were made because Apollo was so insanely goal-oriented. And chief among these decisions is the acceptance of expendable rockets as a normal cost of doing business. We were so wrapped in a patriotic cloud that expendability came to be seen as necessary, proper, and acceptable.
Unlike many here, I’m insufficiently grounded in the appropriate sciences to say exactly when recoverable boosters could have been part of the picture. Certainly the largest parts, including GPS, were available long before SX.
Recovering a first stage with a vertical landing in the 1960s? I don’t think that would have been possible. Metallurgy and mechanical engineering have certainly improved in half a century, and that helps. But I think what was really lacking back then was the computer technology for automatic landing and navigation. The existence of modern GPS also makes things much, much easier. If we had gone down a reusable path in the 1960s, I think it would have been based on evolving the X-15 for human spaceflight, but significant payload to orbit would have been on expendable rockets.
But, if you want to place blame on the urgency and schedule of the Apollo program, I’d put something else at the top of the list. That would be the emphasis on performance over cost effectiveness. That’s been a part of NASA’s corporate culture ever since.
Thanks for underscoring the point: that I’m insufficiently grounded to make these charges!
Actually I don’t think I envisioned powered landing as part of Apollo. It’s the reusability mindset I was after; if I understand your point, extrapolating contemporaneous tech would have begun with the X15, which likely would have been a dead-end (my conclusion, not yours).
I’m not sure I’d call the X-15 inherent dead end. Historically, it was. But Virgin is working towards a drop-launched rocket plane to carry passengers, and OSC’s Pegasus is effectively a drop-launched rocket plane to put small payloads on orbit. I also always liked Mitch Clapp’s idea of mid-air refueling for an orbital rocket plane. If we’d gone in that direction, I could imagine reusable spaceplanes, with a turn-around time of days or less, carrying people to orbit today. It might only be a couple of passengers per flight, but with reusability and rapid turn-around, that might not be a problem. What I can’t see is this approach hauling large payloads.
NACA would have been glad to continue work on the X-15, which was a fully reusable, albeit suborbital, spacecraft and had by far the most powerful reusable rocket engine of the era in the Reaction Engines XLR-99, and an X-15 launched into orbit on an expendible booster was discussed as an alternative strategy for Mercury. Unfortunately as pointed out above the computer technology for guiding a winged vehicle through atmospheric entry was not very solid, and at the time the blunt body entry pioneered by Mercury was more practical.
Yes, but that changed after Major Mike Adams was killed when one crashed. Afterward they sent the two surviving ones to museums and ended the program.
The report of the incident in which Adams was killed makes clear that the X-15’s stability augmentation system was pushing the limits of what was possible in the precomputer era, not merely in computation but also in human factors; the pilot lost attitude awareness and thus control of the aircraft in part because the control system operating mode was unclear. The Shuttle flight computer was far more sophisticated, although still computationally limited compared to any desktop computer.
Apollo used powered landing – on the Moon.
Your offered perspective reeks of Presentism which is a common element of discussing history merely as a prelude to playing the futile alternate history game.
Dig into the details of what really happened and perhaps you’ll be less quick to reimagine the past and in turn formulate a fantasy future.
Presentism? Yep, it really is. I offered the comment as a way to learn from the past.
See my comment above. Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Yes, I think your point about Apollo becoming a “model program” is correct. The goal was not to come up with an expandable system to explore, but to land a man on the moon in any way possible in the given time.
If you look at Heinlein’s “Man Who Sold the Moon”, the mode was very similar, the story describes building a single man spacecraft to get to the moon, but follows on with rendezvous in space of smaller craft to begin building a “space infrastructure” if you will. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke’s method involves a reusable winged spacecraft with catapult assist as the first stage, followed by a reusable orbit to lunar landing vehicle, after a space station visit.
I agree that these technologies would have been difficult to implement in the early 1960’s, and really impossible in the time frame given. Apollo used the best method to reach the goal, even though it was overall a “dead end”. We did get a lot of useful technology from it, and also developed the operating techniques and mission protocols still used today so overall it was worth the effort.
Better put. Thank you for elaborating some.
The race to the Moon was not a vehicle for exploring space, it was a symbolic substitute for what Kennedy saw as the very real possiblility of nuclear war between the superpowers. He did not ask von Braun for a program to explore space scientifically, or to use space militarily or commercially. He asked for a dramatic goal that he could announce, and that von Braun could achieve before the Soviets. The Moon Race was spectacularly successful in its geopolitical goal. The expense helped to bankrupt the USSR, and America’s victory persuaded the nonaligned nations that the American system was the best course toward beoming a modern industrial nation. Kennedy was quite specific on the goal of Apollo in his address to the joint session of Congress. It was “To send a man to the Moon, and return him safely to the Earth.” Period. The part NASA did not understand was the period. The geopolitical mission was complete the moment Armstrong and his crew landed.
Yes, and many folks still don’t understand that. Space commerce and economic develop will be how humans go to Mars, not a national or even international program as the desire to commit the resources to do so is just not there. Yes, politicians are always declaring it a goal so they appear to be a bold leader like President Kennedy, but when the time comes to use their political capital to fund it they are no where to be seen.
And BTW this is in the traditional of both polar expeditions and the Age of Discovery when the vast majority of funding came from private sources to either make money or at least have some major geographic feature named in their honor. Why do you think the maps of the Arctic and Antarctic look like a guest list for a 1920’s Wall Street power lunch?
Government funded science based exploration is mostly a legacy of WW II and the Cold War.
Guys.
On the face of it, splashing is stunningly bad policy.
The thing that interests me is how NASA became wedded to discarding boosters (and other hardware). I’ve looked at the mode decision, for instance, and as far as I can see there was no real alternative that did not involve a dip in the Atlantic. Or solar orbit.
The hypothesis is that Apollo mainstreamed the acceptability of expendability as a cost of doing business.
We are still doing it. Where are the critics? Nowhere, because it’s simply assumed to be necessary. Then along comes SX, using primarily NASA research. SX hasn’t done anything that couldn’t have been done many years ago.
And yet, google “cost to orbit”, and you’ll get hundreds of pieces by learned people pointing out that until the cost to orbit drops dramatically that space will be basically unaccessible except for the most important uses. We knew the costs were a huge hurdle, yet did nothing serious about it.
Where are the face palms?
reusability means less pork … congress’s actions always pushed the prices upwards and not cost savings. Only when COTS finally was used to it try and cut costs.,… the next time NASA tried Crew COTS … congress slashed funding to make it look bad.
I’m not sure if you can fairly blame Apollo for an acceptance of expendable launch vehicles. The Shuttle, in its earliest form, would have been fully reusable. But that was neither practical or affordable at the time. And, prior to Apollo, most of the near-term concepts were expendable (going back, I think, as far as Tsiolkovsky.)
But the pre-Apollo idea did, I think, implicitly assume improving and evolving designs. And reusability was somewhere along that path. Apollo, after the decision to go with LOR was about building the Saturn V. Until late in the program, there wasn’t a whole lot of attention going into what the next generation launch vehicle would be.
With the Shuttle, the goal was to develop a reusable launch vehicle. There wasn’t, so far as I know, any ingrained idea that, even though the Shuttle wouldn’t be all that great, they would (or should) be a Shuttle 2 that would be a bit better. Instead, there was more like a reaction in the late 1980s, that a reusable spaceplane was just a bad idea. Something we tried and discovered wasn’t economical, not something that could evolve into an economical vehicle.
If you look at SpaceX, they did not build a reusable vehicle from the start. They built one that could get to orbit (Falcon 1), then one that could get to orbit with a useful payload (Falcon 9 v 1.0) and then evolved it into a reusable one (the current configuration) and plan to make a few more changes to make it more economically reusable. Blue Origin took a somewhat different path, developing reusable suborbital rockets and then working on a reusable orbital rocket. But neither company regarded the first vehicle as the final one, or even a step towards a “final” vehicle. With SLS, even the initial configuration implies a final one: The very name of the “interim” upper stage implies a step towards a final configuration.
Because this thread is days old, you won’t see my other comment…
Something that occurred to me while describing the Nova/Saturn-C8/Direct-Ascent vs C3/EOR decision for Apollo (which was internal NASA vs Von Braun’s Army team.) It led me to realise that NASA’s tendency to choose the unrealistic, unaffordable option actually pre-dates Apollo.
People love to blame Congress, but as I asked in the other comment: “has NASA ever chosen a realistic affordable design in a major program?”
There were smaller, more modest proposals for the Shuttle, NASA chose the giant one that pushed the state-of-the-art for virtually every single component. So we blame the USAF for setting those requirements, but for the X-33 program, there were more moderate proposals, and again NASA chose the design that was the most complex and difficult and unrealistic. No-one to blame but themselves. Likewise, in response to Reagan’s desire for a space-station like the Russians, NASA proposed the unrealistic Freedom station. (Which burned through a $1b/yr for nearly a decade without developing a single piece of hardware.) In response to Bush I’s “back to the moon”, NASA proposed a half trillion dollar program. In response to Bush II’s VSE, NASA proposed Ares/Orion. (Orion deliberately chosen to be bigger than Apollo.) And when Congress demanded a launch vehicle based on Shuttle-parts, NASA chose a design (SLS) that required every single part to be changed. (The more modest Jupiter-DIRECT proposal was ignored.)
NASA is… bad at this.
Your analysis of the Mode Decision is over- simplified and distorts the truth.
It really would have depended on if President Kennedy was re-elected. Remember one of the reasons he was in Dallas was to position himself for the upcoming election. If he was re-elected Vice-President Johnson, who was the real driving force, would have kept Congress in line.
If a Republican had been elected instead in 1964 then it would have probably be cut as waste, scaled back or maybe done with the Russians because it was associated with the previous Administration.
Actually it was Kennedy who was concerned about the rising costs, and was sniffing around a joint program with the Russians. He had developed a mutual respect with Khrushchev, and Khrushchev was similarly concerned about the cost (and failures) of the Russian program.
When Kennedy was killed, Khrushchev snubbed the less familiar LBJ, as he would have a Republican like Nixon.
You got this backwards. Von Braun wasn’t part of the Nova group at NASA, he was part of the Juno/Jupiter group with the Army.
Nor did Von Braun advocate for all-on-one launch through either Nova or Saturn C8. It was Von Braun who advocated for EOR. However, it wasn’t using two Saturn V’s, it’s was a smaller 2-engine version, called the C3.
Saturn V (C5) was chosen as a compromise between the two groups. Allowing all-in-one Earth launch, but using Von Braun’s preferred multi-component vehicle for LOR.
Had they gone with Von Braun’s C3/EOR model, it’s like that the Saturn III would continued flying after the Apollo/Skylab program ended. It was a good size for USAF payloads, as well as continuing manned missions and modular space stations, without being as unaffordable as the C5 (Saturn V).
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Looking back, has NASA ever chosen a realistic affordable design in a major program? People love to blame Congress, or Presidents, or the Air Force, for NASA’s failures. But the agency seems to have had a broken design culture from its very founding.
Michael talks about Apollo influencing subsequent thinking, leading all the way to SLS, but the Nova/C8 group within NASA, and even the C5 “compromise”, shows that the culture was present before Apollo.
You folks seem to go off topic at the drop of a pin.
Welcome to the world today.
Lots of pent-up enthusiasm.
This is one of your best comments ever, Mr. Cowing.
Lockheed Martin, like all of oldspace, just wants their government contracts. They are not anxious to do things differently. They certainly are not interested in efficiency when they are on a cost plus, dollars/human body model. The more inefficient, the less they do with the more bodies, the more the shareholders make.
NASA, since the operation of Shuttle began, has become part and parcel of oldspace. Prior to Shuttle entering the “operational stage”, NASA engineers were researchers and innovators and figured out new ways of doing things. NASA people were the leaders because they often had thought about how to do things better and had some experience that run of the mill corporate engineers did not have. The NASA engineers now have little to no experience in research or development. They have been told and retold to follow the cookbook instructions for so long on how to do things ineffectively and inefficiently, that there is no effort made to improve the situation. When it came to Constellation and Orion, they went with the old way-they knew it worked once, so why do things differently?
Look at ISS, whether it was thanks to Goldin or someone else, they decided no knowledge and no experience was best and NASA went with people who did not even know what had been done before. What a waste that the program is now paying for.
I don’t know whether it stems from Bolden, Lightfoot or Gerstenmier, but someone at the top thinks NASA’s job is designing, building and operating spaceships. The government’s job, in their limited way of thinking, is not science, nor is it research, nor is it education to get the US taxpayer to understand what is being done or why. Which is funny if you think about it. Its exactly backwards from how most of government operates. The DOD does not design and build airplanes and battleships. They hire people and pay them to do that. Now if NASA wants to keep space operating at the 2 or 3 astronauts a year level forever (which I think the astronaut office likes because, after all, astronauts are super-humans who can accomplish what no one else can-another miniature mind perspective), then NASA can keep operating as it has been doing. Personally, I would eliminate the in-house NASA operations organization. It is where much of the failure emanates from.
NASA needs to figure out what the role for a government entity needs to be. They have no idea any longer and no one in NASA management today has apparently experienced it or figures out what they ought to be doing.
I am a little concerned that Bridenstine does not know either and will look to NASA for guidance, and that is the last thing he needs.
Richard,
There are still people around here that innovate and move the dial in many of their respective disciplines. I won’t get into a debate about politics or vision, but don’t paint us all with the same brush.
Yes, that is true, and also a little tragic given the resistance of many in leadership to change or innovation. One good thing withthe emergence of firms like BO and SX is it gives them an alternative where their ideas and work is appreciated.
A large portion of BO’s success is due to Jeff Bezos hiring members of the original DC-X team after NASA ended the program. In some ways it an indication of what NASA could do if it was able to turn the innovators in the Agency loose. After all, that is how it got to the Moon.
That resistance is at the high level. And that’s because those at the highest levels have to answer to the 435 folks in that building in Washington, DC with the dome on it. Those right below them want to get where those guys are.
But down where the real work is being done, innovation and change are the norm. We can have another debate about risk postures, but trust me, innovation is a goal of most. “Show me how we can do it better..” is what I hear from many leaders where the real work is being done.
Now, what’s our mission? Well, that’s up to the folks who work in that building with the dome on it…
I agree but getting resources to do even small scale R&D is challanging because funding is centered around a small number of large missions.
My Op ed would read like this,
Congress and the president will keep SLS around for a while so use it for a few outer planets planetary missions and three SLS to loft whats called Skylab-II wich is made from SLS propellent tanks
astronuats cant survive long in ISS tin can gateway stations so the Skylab-II would be the gateway station with multiple docking ports for international partners and multiple COTS commercial crew/cargo
Skylab-II placed at Diemos or Phobos repeat the COTS process here
we want to retire SLS after this and spend most of the human space flight budget on the commercial crew/cargo to these stations and the american components docked are also procured with a COTS mechanism
IE all of the gateway proposers have to have skin in the game for docking at the Skylab-II and we want two to three docked providers
We want two to three commercial crew/cargo providers to the Skylab-II in Mars orbit
The current ISS and SLS budget would pay for this after ISS and SLS are gone
This COTS process should also require that some profits are reinvested in the cislunar economy(the SpaceX model)
This idea is a compromise idea in that it keeps SLS for a while along with ISS with perhaps a COTS RFP for ISS partial salvage……….
All of your punctuation sank to the bottom of your post.
Might as well be #JourneyToEnceladus
David Von Drehle seems to do OK in the first 3/4 of the article, but in the bottom 1/4 demonstrates lack of research.
Haven’t read the other article yet. I need to pull of up on a device that doesn’t keep asking me for money. I’m not enough of a fan of the WP to help support it.
Giving Google sufficiently close keywords will provide a link to the article. Often this link will open the piece (but not always, and the policy can vary). Worth a shot.
Sometimes, too, coming at WaPo via a Europe-based VPN works.
It turned out all I had to do was hit it from a different WiFi network. It must be based on the number of hits from specific router IP addresses.
I liked her reply. No she doesn’t talk like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos…but why should she? She doesn’t work for a market disruptor. Personally, I thought it was an adequate reply that addressed the points made in the other oped.