I’m past all of the technical stuff, and getting into the real cause of the disaster–the management culture.

From page 97:

In a report dealing with nuclear wastes, the National Research Council quoted Alvin Weinberg’s classic statement about the ?Faustian bargain? that nuclear scientists made with society. ?The price that we demand of society for this magical energy source is both a vigilance and a longevity of our social institutions that we are quite unaccustomed to.? This is also true of the space program. At NASA’s urging, the nation committed to building an amazing, if compromised, vehicle called the Space Shuttle. When the agency did this, it accepted the bargain to operate and maintain the vehicle in the safest possible way. The Board is not convinced that NASA has completely lived up to the bargain, or that Congress and the Administration has provided the funding and support necessary for NASA to do so. This situation needs to be addressed ? if the nation intends to keep conducting human space flight, it needs to live up to its part of the bargain.

They didn’t provide the necessary funding and support, but the worst penny pinching occurred during development, as the report indicates at the beginning. It’s possible to make the Shuttle safer by pouring money into it now, but it’s not possible to make it safe–there are simply too many compromises in the original design, and the problem goes beyond the design to the entire program philosophy.

The notion that we can have a single vehicle type, with only four (now three) vehicles, each of which only flies once or twice a year, and have a system that is affordable, robust or safe, is, simply put, insane.

Sadly, not understanding this, and thinking that it’s just a matter of getting the design right and putting enough money into it, the kneejerk response of many is that “we need a new Shuttle.”

No. We need a space transport industry, and if it’s important for the government to have access to space for its employees, they should put into place incentives to create one, rather than giving more money to a failed bureaucracy to lather, rinse, repeat.

Continuing on, they’ve got a useful litany of all of the problems with federal space policy. While the report is fairly harsh in tone, I think they softened this a little too much, on page 107:

In January 1996, Goldin appointed as Johnson’s director his close advisor, George W.S. Abbey. Abbey, a space program veteran, was a firm believer in the values of the original human space flight culture, and as he assumed the directorship, he set about recreating as many of the positive features of that culture as possible. For example, he and Goldin initiated, as a way for young engineers to get hands-on experience, an in-house X-38 development program as a prototype for a space station crew rescue vehicle. Abbey was a powerful leader, who through the rest of the decade exerted substantial control over all aspects of Johnson Space Center operations, including the Space Shuttle Program.

Let me translate that last sentence. By many, if not most accounts, he was a tyrant who ruled with an iron fist, withholding and dispensing flights as punishment and reward to the astronaut corps, using them to spy on each other to determine who was loyal, and who was not.

On page 111, they discuss the failed attempts to develop a successor to the Shuttle:

In 2000, as the agency ran into increasing problems with the X-33, NASA initiated the Space Launch Initiative, a $4.5 billion multi-year effort to develop new space launch technologies. By 2002, after spending nearly $800 million, NASA again changed course. The Space Launch Initiative failed to find technologies that could revolutionize space launch, forcing NASA to shift its focus to an Orbital Space Plane, developed with existing technology, that would complement the Shuttle by carrying crew, but not cargo, to and from orbit. Under a new Integrated Space Transportation Plan, the Shuttle might continue to fly until 2020 or beyond. (See Section 5.6 for a discussion of this plan.)

This paragraph is very misleading, because it accepts the (false, in my opinion) premise that the problem with space lauch is simply one of having the right “technologies.” In fact, the main problem is the incentive structure, but pretending that it’s about technology allows NASA to continue, self servingly, to claim that it’s “hard” and that they need more money, and that there’s no way the private sector could satisfy their manned spaceflight requirements. I’m disappointed in the board for buying into this, but there’s really no one on it who properly understands these issues.

On page 115, we find the statement:

By the time O’Keefe arrived, NASA managers had come to recognize that 1990s funding reductions for the Space Shuttle Program had resulted in an excessively fragile program…

As noted above, there was no amount of money that could have been put into the Shuttle to make it anything other than a fragile program. The fleet was too small, too undiverse, and flew too seldom. Yet policy makers continue to make noises about replacing it with another with the same flaws.

On page 209, I find a very interesting statement, which seems to be at variance with the one above, about the need for “launch technologies.”

The Board believes that the country should plan for future space transportation capabilities without making them dependent on technological breakthroughs.

Damn straight.

OK, I finally found the most frustrating and disturbing part of the report (already hinted at above) on page 211. This is where it really goes off the rails, in recommendations for future human space transportation:

However, the Orbital Space Plane is seen by NASA as an interim system for transporting humans to orbit. NASA plans to make continuing investments in ?next generation launch technology,? with the hope that those investments will enable a decision by the end of this decade on what that next generation launch vehicle should be. This is a worthy goal, and should be pursued. The Board notes that this approach can only be successful: if it is sustained over the decade; if by the time a decision to develop a new vehicle is made there is a clearer idea of how the new space transportation system fits into the nationʼs overall plans for space; and if the U.S. government is willing at the time a development decision is made to commit the substantial resources required to implement it. One of the major problems with the way the Space Shuttle Program was carried out was an a priori fixed ceiling on development costs. That approach should not be repeated.

No. It is not a worthy goal. It should not be pursued.

The board continues to assume that it is the role of the US government to develop manned launch systems, and to dictate their design.

Moreover, they assume that there will be a Shuttle replacement. If that comes to pass, will put us back into the same boat, regardless of the generosity of the development funding.

Monocultures are fragile. Launch systems designed for the government, of the government and by the government will be doomed to the same failure and fragility as Shuttle.

Let’s read the final paragraph on that page, and the last one in the chapter on future transportation.

The Board’s perspective assumes, of course, that the United States wants to retain a continuing capability to send people into space, whether to Earth orbit or beyond. The Board’s work over the past seven months has been motivated by the desire to honor the STS-107 crew by understanding the cause of the accident in which they died, and to help the United States and indeed all spacefaring countries to minimize the risks of future loss of lives in the exploration of space. The United States should continue with a Human Space Flight Program consistent with the resolve voiced by President George W. Bush on February 1, 2003: ?Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on.”

Lofty words. The question is, what do they mean?

Is it possible for the United States to “retain a continuing capability to send people into space” without NASA being in charge of that? The question isn’t neither asked, nor answered.

What is a “Human Space Flight Program”? Is it a government program in which NASA develops a Shuttle replacement and continues to monopolize human spaceflight, and continues to scare off investors with the implicit threat to compete with private alternatives, and put out a fog of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about the “incredible lack of technology”?

Or can it be an initiative that finally harnesses competion and free enterprise to the problem, creating access to space for, as the old ad goes, “the rest of us”? Couldn’t that serve equally well, or better, to satisfy the president’s resolve?

The commission doesn’t say, but almost everyone reading this report will assume that it’s the former, rather than the latter.

We need to tell our representatives, never again. No more Shuttles. No more “national space transportation systems.” We want, and need, a space transport industry.