3 thoughts on “What Does The Phobos-Grunt Failure Mean For NASA?”
Pretty horrific management of the project. If they were behind they could have at least utilized the Mongolian Horde Method to get the stuff done in time; that’s no guarantee it’s right, but they might have gotten better results.
And yes one has to ask if their manned efforts can get that sloppy.
Perhaps the only thing saving their manned efforts is that they’ve been doing the same thing for so long that they can do it out of habit, so it’s not really a difficult project-management question (and business management was never exactly a communist strong suit). They long ago figured out how many man days and how much vodka it takes to launch a Soyuz mission.
It does bring up serious worries about engaging in new, tightly scheduled engineering projects with the Russians.
And what is ESA/NASA doing? Teaming with Russia and ESA on ExoMars…
[[[PARIS — Senior officials from the U.S., European and Russian space agencies on Dec. 7 agreed to pursue negotiations that would make Russia a full partner in a planned U.S.-European Mars exploration project that has been stymied by budget restrictions at NASA, a European Space Agency (ESA) official said Dec. 8. ]]]
Too bad for ULA that NASA no longer has the money to provide the Atlas V.
Pretty horrific management of the project. If they were behind they could have at least utilized the Mongolian Horde Method to get the stuff done in time; that’s no guarantee it’s right, but they might have gotten better results.
And yes one has to ask if their manned efforts can get that sloppy.
Perhaps the only thing saving their manned efforts is that they’ve been doing the same thing for so long that they can do it out of habit, so it’s not really a difficult project-management question (and business management was never exactly a communist strong suit). They long ago figured out how many man days and how much vodka it takes to launch a Soyuz mission.
It does bring up serious worries about engaging in new, tightly scheduled engineering projects with the Russians.
And what is ESA/NASA doing? Teaming with Russia and ESA on ExoMars…
http://www.spacenews.com/civil/111207-russia-join-exomars.html
Thu, 8 December, 2011
Russia Expected To Join ExoMars as Full Partner
[[[PARIS — Senior officials from the U.S., European and Russian space agencies on Dec. 7 agreed to pursue negotiations that would make Russia a full partner in a planned U.S.-European Mars exploration project that has been stymied by budget restrictions at NASA, a European Space Agency (ESA) official said Dec. 8. ]]]
Too bad for ULA that NASA no longer has the money to provide the Atlas V.