Trump Landing Team Update
Keith’s 16 December note: The Trump Landing Team will be halting work at NASA Headquarters in a few days and then coming back after New Year’s. As such, I doubt that there will be any movement from Trump Tower in terms of naming an Administrator.
Then again there may be a few interesting developments prior to the Landing Team’s vacation …
Keith’s 17 December update: Sources report that Brandon Eden, Alan Stern, Charles Miller are among new appointees submitted to join the Trump Landing Team at NASA for an increased focus on commercial space. There is a possible fourth new member as well. Stay tuned.
Keith’s 20 December update: Sources report that Alan Lindenmoyer, former manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program, is also on the list of people to be added to the NASA Landing Team. Meanwhile it looks like Brandon Eden will not be on the Landing Team which is unfortunate given his familiarity with commercial space from his days working for Rep. McCarthy. Meanwhile, the SLS materials being assembled for the Landing Team are being advised by purported NASA Administrator possibility Doug Cooke (who has worked for years as a Boeing consultant) – who is not actually on the Landing Team. But wait, there’s more: at least one of the NASA Landing Team wants to try to become NASA Administrator – because, well … this is NASA Administrator Apprentice after all.
Peter Thiel now leading the fight for commercial space in Trump’s NASA, Ars Technica
“Last Thursday, word began to trickle out about new appointments to the transition team with a decidedly commercial bent. Reports of the new transition team members first appeared in NASA Watch, and the Wall Street Journal confirmed them Monday. Ars understands that not all of the appointments are final, and Shank has resisted the new direction. “It will be interesting to see how Trump Tower handles the product of the Shank team versus the new team,” one source told Ars.”
.jpg)
Unless Mr. Trump gives his Twitter account a vacation, we will certainly have the possibility of “interesting” news over the holidays.
I’ve learned something reading those tweets.
I’ve asked several times about the equality between SLS and Saturn V, and about larger questions wondering why we haven’t learned yet how to build a rocket after all of these decades.
It’s been explained to me that SLS, while $$$, at the very least dramatically reduces ground requirements and to that extent is a huge step forward.
I’m not arguing the advisability of SLS, only saying that my own negativity about SLS was informed, until recently, by a fairly shallow understanding of the issues. As a result I formed the opinion that SLS is a big ole monster with no redeeming qualities. This does not accurately characterize the program.
This is a thought pattern awfully similar to what we are seeing with the President-Elect. The proposed new Air Force 1 is an example of something that seems really expensive but when you look into it you see that an awful lot goes into the numbers aside from flight hardware; cancelling is probably ill-informed (and short-sighted).
If you are saying the SLS dramatically reduces ground requirements of the SatV well just the advances in computer tech does that. But what yardstick is this reduction being measured against? The Space Shuttle? The Saturn V? Neither of those are a good example for it to be measured against.
Saturn V was cancelled precisely because it was so expensive. In other words, it was economically unsustainable.
The space shuttle wasn’t much better in terms of economics. Total program cost divided by number of flights gives about $1.5 billion per flight.
For SLS, one could argue that past costs should be ignored when doing this sort of “cost per flight” analysis. The trouble is, that SLS “block 2” isn’t penciled in to fly until 2029. Before then, we’ll have (again penciled in) 8 flights of “block 1” and “block 1B” between now and then. So pre-“block 2” we’ll surely have an SLS/Orion per flight cost considerably higher than the shuttle with a flight rate considerably lower than the shuttle.
Also, one has to consider that 11 years means at least one more change in Presidential Administration. So, even if SLS/Orion survives the current transition, and Trump holds office 8 years, will SLS/Orion survive the next transition?
So, in my opinion, SLS is still a “big ole monster with no redeeming qualities”.
No. I’m saying it is too easy to make big decisions based on very little information. On first impressions. Or on preconceptions.
And still seem smart.
Michael Spencer wrote: ” As a result I formed the opinion that SLS is a big ole monster with no redeeming qualities. This does not accurately characterize the program.”
Yes, actually it does accurately characterize the program. NASA’s own internal studies said that. Dana R. had to threaten NASA to finally get the fuel depot data made public. It CLEARLY showed that the monster rocket was THEE most expensive way forward and as K.B.H from Texas finally stated the priority was jobs. Not productivity, not cost savings, but protecting as many space shuttle jobs as possible.
True, but when it comes to the American congress, who’s ability to get data so easy, coming up with SLS, when there was easily 30 years of data to show we needed to move in a different direction and then to have that need to change chronicled over and over year by year, decade after decade… and STILL pick SLS ..
I get you, Michael. You’re saying that you used to be dumb…but now you’re smart. And Trump, in your opinion, is still dumb.
Yea, more or less; I’m saying that it’s easy to make decisions based on ‘seems like’, ignoring the deeper facts. And there are always deeper facts. Indeed, ignoring that deeper analysis is even warranted.
$4Billion for AF1! Ridiculous! Until you learn that while the price of metal is in there, it’s not the only thing.
This is what makes the Presidency so difficult, and it is what makes the President – Elect so unqualified.
Michael, let’s not confuse tweets with public policy. If you do that, you’re acting just the same way that you are condemning Trump for…jumping to conclusions without all the facts.
Don’t take the President-elect at his word?
No, you can’t take the President-elect at his word. He’s proven that his word is as slippery as quicksilver. He seems to change his position based on who had his ear last and even this is weighed heavily by his “closest advisers”, most of whom seem to be family.
Michael…if you ever take politicians at their word…you’re even crazier than I think you are 😉
Internal NASA Studies Show Cheaper and Faster Alternatives to The Space Launch System
“On 26 September 2011, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) issued a press release regarding fuel depots. This included a letter to former Administrator Mike Griffin who had dismissed the notion of fuel depots and commercial launch vehicles as being a viable alternative to the Space Launch System(SLS) during Congressional testimony.
Rohrabacher noted “When NASA proposed on-orbit fuel depots in this Administration’s original plan for human space exploration, they said this game-changing technology could make the difference between exploring space and falling short. Then the depots dropped out of the conversation, and NASA has yet to provide any supporting documents explaining the change,” says Rohrabacher.”
Well, despite what NASA may or may not have been telling Rep. Rohrabacher about its internal evaluations regarding the merits of alternate architectures that did not use the SLS (and those that incorporated fuel depots), the agency had actually been rather busy studying those very topics.
And guess what: the conclusions that NASA arrived at during these studies are in direct contrast to what the agency had been telling Congress, the media, and anyone else who would listen.
This presentation “Propellant Depot Requirements Study – Status Report – HAT Technical Interchange Meeting – July 21, 2011” is a distilled version of a study buried deep inside of NASA. The study compared and contrasted an SLS/SEP architecture with one based on propellant depots for human lunar and asteroid missions. Not only was the fuel depot mission architecture shown to be less expensive, fitting within expected budgets, it also gets humans beyond low Earth orbit a decade before the SLS architecture could.
Moreover, supposed constraints on the availability of commercial launch alternatives often mentioned by SLS proponents, was debunked. In addition, clear integration and performance advantages to the use of commercial launchers Vs SLS was repeatedly touted as being desirable: “breaking costs into smaller, less-monolithic amounts allows great flexibility in meeting smaller and changing budget profiles.””
http://www.spaceref.com/new…
Just in case there is a misunderstanding, I was one of the people who commented on reduced staffing. I wrote that both the Japanese Epsilon and the Falcon 9 have used modern software to reduce the size of the launch operations team, and reduce it dramatically in the case of Epsilon. I also wrote that the same thing _could_ be true of SLS. But I specifically said that I do not know the details for SLS. That was describing a possibility not a known fact.
I fear my point has been entirely missed due no doubt to writing skills. The comment has nothing to do with the merits of SLS.
It has to do with making sweeping decisions based on incomplete data. The AF1 example is more apt I suppose.
>why we haven’t learned yet how to build a rocket after all of these decades.
I ask the same myself or why is it still so difficult to achieve LEO? I think to begin with is the high pressures and temperatures involved. There is also Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation and you cannot break the laws of physics though some have tried with X33 (and from what I observe very few people intuitively and literally know that equation. I’ve not much success with the little time I spent doing calculations).
Getting back to building rockets, I find on internet either flashy graphics and brief paragraphs to very esoteric AIAA papers. There are books on aerospace engineering but very little techie “good stuff” like structural drawings and electrical schematics where I can see how this stuff is built (I guess obvious that is proprietary and ITAR, and zillions of documents for all the systems).
I also have opinion why SLS, F35, and other big programs are so expensive is because a lot of industrial infrastructure is gone. Back in the days you had a lot more, Tom Matula (I think) wrote reason we beat the Soviets to the Moon is because we had “an Ace Hardware store on every corner.” His dad working on Surveyor was able to find a small company that has a lubricant that works in zero pressure and temperature extremes. Unlike USSR had to develop every item of technology. All those companies that were in Southern Calif are gone.
Also note Saturn V was able to make use of lots of resources including an engineering base built in WWII and engineers from GI Bill (besides the German rocket scientists, US got lots of engineers from Canada from defunded Avro Arrow and Avrocar). So when development problems occurred you can hire and put these guys to work (though many were fired after task complete). Unlike Soviet N-1 that didn’t start until 1963 but Korolev had to continually argue with Politburo for resources.
I see SLS kind of in a situation like the N-1 (it is between being supported and being cancelled), however, there are smart people want to insure proper ground tests are done (unlike N1 did full engine testing on first launch) but with inadequate resources, this takes time.
“where are our hundreds of B-2 bombers that are needed to replace the aging B-52s?”
We have much less bombers and fighters because you don’t need large numbers to strike a specific target. Back in the days you need a squadron bombers with several crew members just to hit one building (most of the bombs will miss). These days all it takes is one GPS guided bomb. And the plane that does it only carries one or two crew. So the need to train hundreds (thousands) of people in addition to maintenance crews at several airfields is not needed. It also means much less technically educated people entering civilian life after their stint in the military. I can think of a few friends back in 1960s that joined the military to get out of low life, get tech training, have to spend a few years on some crummy base but had skills for good paying job after discharge.
As far as having “an Ace Hardware store on every corner” goes, I’m not sure if it’s availability or willingness to use them. In the early years (pre-Apollo), they really did buy some flight parts that way, and I’ve heard talks on CubeSats where the PI talked about buying certain parts from a local hardware store. Specifically some parts for the solar panel deployment system were described as a razor blade and a piece of fishing line, which he said should be the cheap nylon sort, and he mentioned the local hardware store by name. He might have been joking, but COTS hardware procurement isn’t too far from that.
In contrast, this approach would be unthinkable for flight hardware on a modern launch vehicle or important satellite. So the change you suggest might not be a lack of small suppliers, but an unwillingness to use them. (Most small companies, by the way, have trouble affording or supporting all the special requirements expected for flight hardware on class A missions.)
Ace hardware store is analogy, I see this as back in the days there was much larger infrastructure to build flight qualified hardware. In 2011 (or 2012) when 747 with Shuttle orbiter flew over Ames, I saw it as something we could never build again. Issue is not that we want to build the same thing again but it’s that we cannot. This was built from many including Fairchild, Grumman, Rocketdyne, and others that no longer exist or these companies are shells of what they used to be. All those “mom and pop” suppliers Wayne Hale wrote in his blog “Horse left the barn” have all disappeared. It seems SLS and F35 has to spend a lot more time and money just getting stuff done. Consider when Shuttle program got its final approval in 1972, it flew into space less than 10 years. And this was during layoffs and budget cuts.
Pardon my intrusion on the rocket squabbling… but I think it’s good that the NASA landing team is going to allow the folks at NASA supporting them to take off a couple days before Xmas and the week between Xmas and New Years. Everyone is going to need some time to recharge for what promises to be an interesting 2017.
//CONCUR// Mr. Muncy.
Charge up!
Mike Shupp wrote: “You could imagine forward and see the manned spaceflight programs just over the horizon “
For me the take away from that period was I thought I was going to see INSTANT commercialization and industrialization of spaceflight. Hell Pan Am was talking about space flight, Hilton of Hilton Hotels were talking about space hotels. The very last thing I ever imagined was what actually took place.
When Reagan, in 1984, had the Space Act of 1958 amended to force commercialization on NASA I thought finally, now we are going to see finally see it. But no it would take the Commercial Space Act of 1998 to crack at it again. Now two presidents later, we are finally seeing it.
as you say…
“Ah well”
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
I like the chairs.
And Pan American Airlines is as dead as those dreams. It only lasted two decades beyond those advertisements.
My impression in that the Pan Am shuttle is intended to portray the second stage of a two-stage system, with the booster also being winged. However IMO the orbiter would benefit from a V-tail like the X-37 to provide both directional stability and a longer moment for control of pitch. While Pan Am is gone, the concept in the movie that transportation to LEO would be commercial appears accurate.
Yikes I hope that was not an Omen!
To be fair, “space technology” isn’t the only area where the future looked extremely bright, but the reality in the decades that followed simply didn’t live up to that vision.
Atomic power is another area where this was true. There was a time when it was envisioned that *everything* would be powered by cheap atomic power, even watches! Imagine everyone walking around with watches powered by little radioactive power sources. Seems inconceivable today right? Well that’s what you get with 20/20 hindsight.
In both space and atomic power, there are a few “true believers” who keep clinging to the hope that those (quite dated) rosy visions of the future will still come true (only today it’s a nuclear powered smartphone instead of a watch):
https://www.extremetech.com…
It’s not clear to me at all how space technology- whatever that is, and especially human space flight- is ‘bright’ in any sense whatsoever.
As someone once said, there’s no ‘there’ there.
And more’s the pity.
“Anyhow. In 1970 or so, when space shuttle development started, the sort of squeezing down that was going to happen in the aerospace business wasn’t yet visible”
I completely disagree. Look at a graph of NASA funding over time. It peaked in the mid 1960’s. Anyone who could read a graph should have known that the “squeezing down” had already started and was going to be quite vigorous.
Unfortunately, there was a massive collective delusion that the NASA funding heydays of the 60s would be restored, opening up the floodgates for new technologies and new vehicles at NASA. Perhaps with the next president…? But, it has not happened over the last 50 years!
As for ignoring cost, NASA can’t. DOD can, to a certain extent, but even large scale expensive DOD programs have been cancelled or cut short before. For example, where are our hundreds of B-2 bombers that are needed to replace the aging B-52s? They quite simply don’t exist, do they? That’s a quite visible reminder that even the USAF does not enjoy unlimited funding.
Keep in mind that during those declining budget years, NASA added and maintained many more programs then it had during its peak funding years. Between you and me..the deniers don’t want Ares, they don’t want SLS, they just want robust Human exploration….That is the best example of Space Cadet Naivete out there.
Amen brother
http://www.wsj.com/articles…
“Thiel Pushes to Add Commercial-Space Backers to Trump NASA Team”
This is good.
In what way? Mr. Thiel is a dedicated randian, a guy vociferously and radically opposed to governmental spending of almost any sort. He’s also a denier, and he’s the guy who shut down an internet site through law suits that skirt the first amendment.
Because SLS is too expensive to allow NASA to go anywhere without big budget increases (which are vanishingly unlikely) and Thiel is not only supportive of commercial space efforts, but “Thiel was also an early investor in SpaceX, run by his former Pay-Pal colleague Elon Musk, through his vehicle Founder’s Fund.”
There are some things the government must do. Launch vehicles isn’t one of them anymore. Another example would be commercial airliners for passengers and cargo.
If any one from the ESMD/Constellation era senior leadership is considered for NASA Administrator it will be a clear indication that Trump’s NASA is being hijacked and steered in the wrong direction and wind up being nothing more then a re-thread of failed management. I hope that real leadership from within the Landing Party rises to the top and counter balances the ESMD/CxP leadership mafia being mentioned. Just look at their track record.
I have commented quite a few times before in the past about what the executive branch wants and what congress wants and being the exact opposite. Bush traded constellation for commercial cargo, Obama traded SLS – Orion for commercial crew. Now do we get a commercial destination under Trump and what do you trade for it?
Presidents have never been willing to veto the entire spending bill to get at the 20 billion NASA spending and congress is well aware of it. When I read Jeff Sessions was going to “help” vet the NASA transition team I thought it was over. So I really hope these picks go through and have an actual voice.