Bob Zubrin asks how much an astronaut is worth. I don’t think that this is historically accurate, though:
The attempted Hubble desertion demonstrates how a refusal to accept human risk has led to irresponsible conduct on the part of NASA’s leadership. The affair was such a wild dereliction of duty, in fact, that O’Keefe was eventually forced out and the shuttle mission completed by his replacement.
That’s not how I remember it. I recall at the time that I thought, and even advocated, that O’Keefe step down, because he had demonstrated himself unable to do the job, being traumatized by having to tell the Columbia families and friends on the tarmac at KSC that their loved ones weren’t coming home, which is probably what caused his timidity about Hubble. But I’m aware of no evidence that he was “forced out” over the decision. I thought that he simply wanted out of the job and took the best offer that came along. The administration would have been loath to remove an administrator, knowing how hard it is to find a good one. Someone should write a letter to the Reason editor on this. Bob either needs to substantiate this with a credible citation, or the magazine should run a correction. Because I think it’s wishful thinking on his part.
[Update a few minutes later]
Bad link, it’s fixed now, sorry.
[Mid-afternoon update]
While I criticized O’Keefe at the time, I didn’t actually disagree with the Hubble decision at the time. The problem that I saw with it was that it was based on irrational criteria. All the focus was on astronaut safety, and no one seemed to be considering how disastrous it would be if we lost another orbiter. NASA had no shortage of astronauts, but there were only three birds left in the fleet, and we would have had to complete ISS with only two, if the program survived at all. Add to that the fact that we probably could have launched an improved Hubble replacement for the cost of the repair mission, and the decision to do it was irrational in its own way, driven by an emotional attachment to the telescope that had shown so many wonders over the past decade.
Your link is to an Economist article (from a couple of your posts ago, I think).
I remember seeing a lot of noise about this “O’Keefe got canned over Hubble” nonsense at the time as well.
It was my understanding he never intended to stay at NASA past Bush’s first term and had his eye on returning to DoD (perhaps replacing Wolfowitz as deputy). When Rumsfeld nixed that, O’Keefe bailed to LSU (as you say, the best offer that came along). Had nothing to do with Hubble.
Not Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld. The deal was that NASA Administrator would be a training assignment. If O’Keefe kept NASA from embarrassing the White House, he would be in line to be SecDef when Rumsfeld left. That was obviously no longer in the cards after the Columbia accident (and Rumsfeld stay on longer than expected, anyway).
I thought that he simply wanted out of the job and took the best offer that came along.
There was clearly more going on than O’Keefe let on. The official story was that he stepped down because he couldn’t afford to put his kids through college on the NASA Administrator’s salary. If you know how much money the NASA Administrator makes, you know that isn’t true.
It was obvious at the time that O’Keefe had developed a real fear of flying. It is equally obvious that the Administration could not continue with a NASA Administrator who was afraid to fly the Shuttle. I’m sure O’Keefe was under pressure to leave, and I’m equally sure that he did not resist that pressure.
The administration would have been loath to remove an administrator, knowing how hard it is to find a good one.
Not all that hard, in this case. George W. simply tapped an old family friend. Mike Griffin runs the “back to the Moon” project every time theres a Bush in the White House.
My point is that he wasn’t “forced out” over Hubble per se. It was clear to all, including himself, that he wasn’t up to the job in general after Columbia.
Not all that hard, in this case. George W. simply tapped an old family friend. Mike Griffin runs the “back to the Moon” project every time theres a Bush in the White House.
If it was that easy, why didn’t they do it in 1981?
I don’t understand the question. Apollo II wasn’t part of Bush’s space policy in 1981. Did you mean 1984?
When the need to accomplish anything except expenditure of money in certain congressional districts is absent, it makes no sense to risk human life at all. Hence the emergence of the risk reduction industry. Announce a grandiose goal, but start out with a risk reduction phase. In the limit, all such undertakings arrive at the same endpoint: one can make the risk as small as possible (zero) only by not doing anything. Grandiose program gets cancelled, but only after a third of a career has slipped by with everyone getting paid pretty well the whole time. Some may complain about the waste, but the “solution” is to do a much more thorough risk reduction phase next time. So the cycle begins again, and ends the same way. It isn’t just NASA’s fault, nor even NASA’s exclusive domain; DoD blazed this trail, with industry eagerly complicit, in the early 1990s. Congress and industry are equally culpable. But it is really tempting to pin it all on NASA, whose acronym is so richly redefinable. In this case, it would stand for: “No Action” = “Safe Action.”
As I noted in my history of the Hubble Space Telescope, The Universe in a Mirror, Sean O’Keefe announced his resignation as administrator only days after a National Science Foundation panel issued its recommendation that the shuttle be used to service Hubble one more time. The two events were closely linked.
I personally saw O’Keefe testify before that NSF committee, and it was very clear that he no longer had the stomach to put humans in orbit. Thus, I never expected him to stick around once the shuttle was ready to fly again.
When the NSF committee slapped down his proposal to use robots to service Hubble and instead recommended the use of the shuttle and humans, it was obvious that it was time for him to go. He might not have been literally “forced out” as administrator, but the political winds were entirely against him. That, combined with his obvious distaste of ordering humans to fly in space, made leaving an easy decision.
I personally saw O’Keefe testify before that NSF committee, and it was very clear that he no longer had the stomach to put humans in orbit.
That is not in dispute. In fact, I was advocating for him to step aside at the time for just that reason.
He might not have been literally “forced out” as administrator, but the political winds were entirely against him. That, combined with his obvious distaste of ordering humans to fly in space, made leaving an easy decision.
Again, I agree with all that. But Bob said he was literally “forced out” over the Hubble decision specifically. I’m not sure the history supports that statement.
Re the Hubble repair mission, no one mentioned then (or now) the risk to the public of an uncontrolled random reentry of an object of that size. Though it would not, admittedly, be anywhere near that posed by Skylab (which was many times the size, and in a higher inclination orbit), the risk is by no means zero. And unlike the astronauts, people living or traveling between 28.5 degrees north and south didn’t volunteer for it. Just thought I’d point that out, FWIW…
You could also debate whether NASA or O’Keefe became more risk averse, or whether they became more aware of what the risks of a Shuttle flight actually were. It’s easy to order a Shuttle launch when you don’t realize that many of the anomalies which had been accepted as normal actually represent a significant risk of catastrophic failure, and it’s harder to launch when the engineers say that as it turns out, the success depends on a significant element of luck.