The Manhattan Project, ICBM development, Apollo, the Vision For Space Exploration.
Understanding which is the outlier, and why, provides insight into policy going forward.
27 thoughts on “One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other”
Comments are closed.
Vision For Space Exploration had no deadline for accomplishing something?
As for as insight into policy going foreword.
I don’t suggest one needs to state some arbitrary deadline, but rather those other projects had deadlines dictated by existing circumstances.
As example, getting to the moon after the soviets would be a failure of the government program.
Or could one say there was a perception by those involved that something was actually needed within a certain time frame as compared to something merely possibly desired within some time frame in the future.
So as far as “lessons” for government policy, one should not wish for a Manhattan Project, it is only if there is a need that one should do a Manhattan Project.
I ‘ll just throw out a time line:
Manhattan Project: ~ 1942 – 1945
ICBM : ~ 1946 – 1955
Apollo: ~1963 – 1972
Federal Procurement Policy Act : 1974
Vision for Space Exploration : ~ 2004
Some event in there prevents the government from doing big things effectively.
Gbaikie,
Rather than frame what was happening in terms of deadlines or requirements, think of it as “perceived competition, regardless of actual need.” We thought the Axis would get the Bomb, then there was the missile gap, then the moon race.
This isn’t necessarily smart – you might end up with Buran or just way more nukes than you really need – but that kind of thinking resulted in more bent metal than the VSE has.
The first three were US National Security projects, VSE wasn’t (and was, therefore, far more susceptible to pork-barrel politics).
Merry Christmas, Rand
I’ll go along with the idea that, for the first three, there was perceived to be an urgent national need for them at the time, and therefore there was wide public support.* Not so with VSE. Nobody cared other than those of us who already follow space-related issues.
*The Manhattan Project was secret, of course, but if it hadn’t been, I bet it would have enjoyed even more public support than Apollo. “There’s a war on”, as the saying went.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
My theory of false advertising… those things that are lacking are most emphasized. “United” States, “Vision” for Space, Etc.
Without goals and deadlines, vision is just fantasy. This is why business is not democracy.
Rand,
The first three had unlimited budgets and specific goals critical to national security so they received strong support and oversight from the White House. Also they fell in the realm of tasks best done by government and an organization structure was created that was designed specifically to implement them.
The VSE had a series of goals but no national security justification for their accomplishment. The budget was limited and the White House basically ignored VSE after the speech was made. And it was placed under an existing organizational structure whose culture and management were incompatible with its goals.
Thomas, don’t you think that VSE would have accomplished more by now, depsite a limited budget and no national security justification, if NASA was in competition with some other organization? If the Air Force said “we’ll race you to the moon”, I bet they both woud have gotten more by now.
.. more done by now.
I don’t think it’s quite as clear-cut as Rand seems to be postulating:
I think that the Manhattan Project and Apollo have many similarities: an urgent national security goal (win the war / beat the Russkies to the moon, even though the true national security implications of losing the moon race are debatable), a cost-no-object execution in pursuit of the goal, and near-complete loss of direction once the goal was achieved. In Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, Richard Rhodes describes the breakdown of Los Alamos – many if not most scientists felt they had done their duty and “didn’t want to study war no more”, and were leaving Los Alamos in droves. There was no postwar plan about what to do with their creation, and in fact, several months after V-J Day, Los Alamos would have been hard pressed to field more than a few bombs (among other reasons, lack of skilled assembly crews), and the delivery mechanisms (the Silverplate B-29s) had lost a good deal, if not most, of their readiness. Sound familiar to Apollo after “the Eagle has landed”? It was really Curtis LeMay on the AF side and Norris Bradbury on the Los Alamos side who, against a lot of inertia if not outright opposition, saved our nuclear capabilities to fight another day, and began making and executing the plans to turn the “gadget” into a true weapon.
I would submit that both the ballistic missile program and the VSE had a clear, well, vision (no pun intended) of where they were supposed to go. But budgeting and execution on the VSE was lacking from the beginning, and then Griffin perverted the whole program to focus on his personal itch.
The commonality here is that all of these programs were reactive, responses to significant external pressures, were enormously time critical with aggressive deadlines, and were generally developments in response to perceived or real gaps (there was a perception that the Germans and the Japanese were working on A-bombs during WWII, the Soviets were already ahead in ICBM development and in manned spaceflight). And most of all there were severe consequences for failure or falling behind. Loss of prestige to the Soviets due to being beaten to the Moon. Loss of WWII due to the enemy developing devastating weapons. An imbalance of power during the Cold War or the failure to present a credible nuclear deterrent force, potentially leading to diminishing of American geopolitical power or perhaps outbreak of nuclear war and the ascendancy of Soviet communism.
In comparison, VSE had no such pressures, tight timelines, or severe consequences for failure.
As to budgets, that’s a false issue. There has been no lack of funding of VSE compared to, say, Apollo, but the funding has been far less well spent.
I”l bite. It’s the VSE since it was cancelled, unlike the others.
Bob-1
The problem with competition is that is tends to encourage shortcuts to reach the destination that impact long term sustainability.
Apollo is a good example. If you read Dr. Von Braun’s original vision in the 1950’s it was to first build a LEO Shuttle, then space station, then Earth orbit-Lunar surface shuttle refueled at the station. (See the Conquest of Space by Willy Ley, 1949). But because of the tight deadline for Apollo it was tossed out in favor of the heavy lift Saturn V and an LOR approach that was too expensive to be sustainable.
The X-Prize is a more recent example. In the race to win the prize a number of corners were cut on SpaceShipOne, especially in terms of the propulsion system and flight test program that impacted it sustainability. The result is that the development of SpaceeShipTwo has taken much longer then expected, longer then it took to develop SpaceShipOne (2001-2004).
The X-prize runner up, a balloon launched clone of the V-2 was even worst in terms of sustainability. Interestingly this is actually keeping with the results of the Orteig Prize. Although Charles Lindbergh won acclaim for winning the prize and creating a bubble in public interest in aviation it did very little to advance the technology of transatlantic flight since the Spirit of St. Louis was nothing more then a modified Ryan airmail plane with gimmicks like periscopes to allow extra fuel tanks to be added. True land based non-stop flight from New York to Paris didn’t start until World War II and followed a completely different pathway evolving from the technology developed via Army Air Force funding for long range bombers.
BTW in terms of the ICBM competition its worth nothing that none of the 3 liquid fuel rockets originally envisioned under it proved sustainable. The most practical design, the solid fueled Minuteman family of missiles actually came from left field as a result of breakthroughs in solid fuel technology. It quickly replaced the liquid fueled ICBMs. The original Minuteman I were operational from 1906 to the late 1990’s while there a still 450 Minuteman III deployed today.
Robin,
[[[As to budgets, that’s a false issue.]]]
No. Unlike the other projects the budget for VSE was clearly limited which provided a constraint on both the timetable and technical options. And that was a built in feature of VSE, that all the great goals envisioned would be accomplished with any increase in NASA funding.
@Rand:
So what’s the answer?
If you look at all government gigaprojects, and not just the infrequent successes that lobbyists repeatedly tout, the first three are the outliers.
For example, add in Shuttle, ISS, National Aerospace Plane, the Big Dig, Amtrak, over a dozen High Speed Rail projects, the Peacekeeper, SDI, SEMATECH, V-22, F-22, JSFP, NPOESS, and countless infrastructure projects.
Also, while the oft-touted Manhattan Project and Apollo were successes in achieving their simply stated physical objectives (make a big boom and put a man on the moon), whether in the long run they brought us a world so much better that it was worth the cost may be another matter.
Thomas Matula Said: The problem with competition is that is tends to encourage shortcuts to reach the destination that impact long term sustainability.
Yes, but when the competition is to win something that has continuous or growing pay-off (i.e. a real market, rather than a one-off prize), this doesn’t matter because evolutionary forces – from other ventures and/or next generation designs – will drive things in the appropriate direction.
The other thing about evolutionary – as opposed to ‘planned’ – development is that it can adapt rapidly to unforeeseable problems/opportunities, which is what real-life tends to throw at you.
“The problem with competition is that is tends to encourage shortcuts to reach the destination that impact long term sustainability.”
OK… show me something comparably large (to the Manhattan Project) that was created with 0% competition, which reached its destination easily, then existed unchanged (since it meet its long-term goals on day one) for, oh, say, a century.
I don’t think the quoted sentence has any content.
The X-Prize is a more recent example. In the race to win the prize a number of corners were cut on SpaceShipOne, especially in terms of the propulsion system and flight test program that impacted it sustainability. The result is that the development of SpaceeShipTwo has taken much longer then expected, longer then it took to develop SpaceShipOne (2001-2004).
But is the total development time longer than it would have been in the absence of the X Prize? I doubt it. Who would have funded SpaceShipOne in the first place? Paul Allen’s money came in because of the prestige of the X Prize. Virgin Galactic’s money came in because Scaled Composites had a demonstrated prototype. The X Prize ended up being an essential element of the development of this vehicle.
Also, while the oft-touted Manhattan Project and Apollo were successes in achieving their simply stated physical objectives (make a big boom and put a man on the moon), whether in the long run they brought us a world so much better that it was worth the cost may be another matter.
The benefits of the Manhattan Project are pretty obvious. In the short term the fission bomb negated the need for the US to invade Japan directly. In the long term, it stopped the USSR’s empire building and prevented a third world war. Since 1945, there has been a remarkable drop in the frequency and severity of wars. For example, the bloodiest two wars since the Second World War, were the Second Congo War, which involved no major powers at all, and the Chinese Civil War.
Dave,
[[[Yes, but when the competition is to win something that has continuous or growing pay-off (i.e. a real market, rather than a one-off prize), this doesn’t matter because evolutionary forces – from other ventures and/or next generation designs – will drive things in the appropriate direction.]]]
Yes, market competition is the real drive of progress, at least until firms get “to big to fail” like Boeing and Airbus and this natural selection is prevented by major barriers to entry and exit being created in the market. BTW the original intent of the Sherman Anti-trust Act was to prevent firms from reaching such a monopoly position. AT&T is a good example of its proper use. Look at how little phones advanced during the monopoly days and the rapid advancement since.
And this is the common problem with both prizes and government programs, and the root problem with socialism, that constant selection by the constantly evolving needs of the marketplace is replace by human decision making with the result being that major barriers to entry are created to entry/exit in that market placing it on the road to becoming a monopoly or at least an oligopoly structured market. The fact that socialist governments loved offering prize competition in place of market competition should be a good clue of the role of prizes in economic philosophy.
tehag,
[[[OK… show me something comparably large (to the Manhattan Project) that was created with 0% competition, which reached its destination easily, then existed unchanged (since it meet its long-term goals on day one) for, oh, say, a century.]]]
The Interstate Highway System, although its not a hundred years old. The Panama Canal also comes to mind, although it won’t be a hundred for a few years (and which was finished ahead of schedule). The Suez Canal also comes to mind.
Karl,
[[[But is the total development time longer than it would have been in the absence of the X Prize? I doubt it. Who would have funded SpaceShipOne in the first place? Paul Allen’s money came in because of the prestige of the X Prize. Virgin Galactic’s money came in because Scaled Composites had a demonstrated prototype.]]]
Two points. First, you a confusing a specific vehicle with industry creation. Without the X-Prize firms like scaled would have instead focused on development vehicles to meet the needs of the sub-orbital market, which consists of far more then tourism.
And second, you are forgetting that more and more Spaceshiptwo appears to be a technological dead end, something Sir Richard Branson has basically acknowledged by moving beyond Scaled Composites for his orbital systems. You could well make the argument without the X-Prize he might have skipped the sub-orbital stage completely and focused on funding a orbital system from the start for space tourism.
Almost every industry valuable in the long term started small. The first dam was a tiny diversion of a creek into an irrigation ditch. Which was also the first canal. The first coal mine was just a little quarry. The first oil wells were built where oil was already seen oozing out of the ground and went down only a few feet. The first gas station was a can. Facebook started in with just Harvard. Most of today’s big high-tech companies (Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Google, etc.) started in an apartment, college dorm or lab, garage, or similar. The Wright Brothers didn’t set out to build a Spruce Goose. Goddard started with rockets the size of his arm. Roads started as footpaths, then livestock paths, then pack horse paths, then roads for carts, then paved roads for wagons, only then for horseless carriages and trucks. The dramatic gigaprojects make headlines but they don’t, with very rare exceptions, make new industries.
Government contractors lobbyists love to take these one-and-a-million exceptions, like the interstate highway system or the rare geostrategic canal like Panama and Suez, and tout them as if they are or could be the norm. In fact, humans have been building roads and canals for thousands of years. Britain during the industrial revolution had a vast network of privately built and owned roads and canals. That a government that taxes large proportions of the incomes of the wealthiest country in human history can extend these very mature businesses with unprecedentedly large capital investments is not a terribly surprising or widely applicable exception to the rule that government gigaprojects are generally an extremely poor way to invest in the future.
The key difference between these projects is that the first three were all done by organizations largely started from scratch for specific high-priority purposes. They had access to top talent, they didn’t have a lot of legacy bureaucratic baggage, and they could structure things as needed to get the job done.
The VSE on the other hand was a jobs program for the forty-years-bureaucratized remnants of the Apollo organization.
The obvious lesson is that organizations have a life-cycle, and beyond a certain point the bureaucratic sclerosis can become so bad that they go beyond mere uselessness for their nominal goals into outright destructiveness.
Creative destruction is the answer – periodically break up the old so the resources are freed up for new organizations.
Googaw,
[[[That a government that taxes large proportions of the incomes of the wealthiest country in human history can extend these very mature businesses with unprecedentedly large capital investments is not a terribly surprising or widely applicable exception to the rule that government gigaprojects are generally an extremely poor way to invest in the future.]]]
The false assumption you are making was that the Manhattan Project, ICBM Competition and Project Apollo were funded as investments in the future, but actually they were seen as investments in national survival, just as strategic bombers, super carriers, NORAD and nuclear submarines were. The tech spin-offs and industries created were not intentional but accidental.