31 thoughts on “Operation Overlord Cancelled”

  1. That was a pretty biting comparison. I was thinking more of the Maginot LIne… fighting tomorrow’s wars with yesterday’s tactics.

  3. “Lord Raglan protests cancellation of charge of the Light Brigade; horse breeders demand intervention of Parliament.”

  4. Mountbatten claimed, “I have no doubt that the Battle of Normandy was won on the beaches of Dieppe. For every man who died in Dieppe at least ten more must have been spared in Normandy in 1944.” – Wikipedia

    This seems a failure of the Dieppe analogy. Is anything going to be learned from Constellations failure that we didn’t know going in?

    I was struck by how his seemed a poor copy of what you do so much better.

    Having said all that, I believe I understand the perspective. If you wrongly assume that NASA should take the lead in space exploration then focus can be a good thing and the new plan could seem not to be such.

    There’s a lot of money funneled through NASA. I look forward to when NASA becomes irrelevant.

  5. Actually I was thinking more Operation Barbarossa: Initially a great success, but not sustainable.

  7. It’s kind of odd how Mark Whittington mocks “game-changing technology,” when the technology developed during the war had such a huge impact on WW2 and world history thereafter. I mean, this is the war which gave us ENIAC, jet aircraft, long-range bombers, smart bombs, semi-automatic rifles, radar, sonar, synthetic rubber, widespread use of penicillin, ballistic missiles/rockets, aircraft carriers, amphibious landing craft, and the atomic bomb.

    If the US had opted to abstain from game-changing technology as Mark suggests, and instead just poured all its resources into building weapons with the technology it already had, the war would have had a VERY different outcome.

  8. That was a pretty biting comparison. I was thinking more of the Maginot LIne… fighting tomorrow’s wars with yesterday’s tactics.

    Exactly. Mark should be describing how glorious it would be for the Allies to re-fight the Battle of the Somme “on steroids”.

  10. Of course, the U.S. and Britain *did* choose to invest in game-changing technology for warfare, called the Manhattan Project. If you keep canceling your R&D to fight today’s battles, something is wrong….

  11. “re-fight the Battle of the Somme “on steroids”.”

    The Maginot Line was pretty much a WWI trench on steroids. It was the trench the generals all wished they had had when they were lieutenants in 1917.

  12. What about the Kasserine Pass? If fighting the Americans was going to be like that, the Germans got to thinking they didn’t have much of a problem.

    Story was that the situation got the attention of the highest ranks in the American military leadership, and things got changed in a big hurry. There is something to say about adapting on not keeping on doing what you had been doing. Why is this missing from modern American political culture?

  13. I think that Mark is really regretting that he made the attempt to analogize the current situation. But then, that’s assuming that he’s smart enough to realize what an hilarious disaster it was…

  14. I suspect that if Overlord had been a publicly known plan, people like the ones commenting here would be condemning it as a waste of time and money. A sea borne invasion? Hasn’t anyone heard of Gallipolli? (See, I can dredge these things up too.)

  15. I suspect that if Overlord had been a publicly known plan

    Your suspicions are not sufficient for us to not think your piece nonsense. Sorry. (OK, well, not really…)

  16. Mark, the Ares was a disaster. How can you defend it?

    Now what about Apollo? How did that turn out? It got turned into museum pieces rather than laying any foundation for the future. It was scrapped.

    We saved a lot of money by scrapping the Ares sooner rather than later.

  17. I suspect that if Overlord had been a publicly known plan, people like the ones commenting here would be condemning it as a waste of time and money. A sea borne invasion?

    This is why analogies are usually crap; you spend more time arguing over them than over the actual issue.

    But to give it a shot:

    The Allies had successfully done any number of seaborne invasions before Overlord. They had reasonable confidence that the Overlord would do they job. In that sense, it IS sort of analogous to Constellation – the US has done Apollo already, and there’s a reasonable expectation that, given enough time and money, NASA could do it again. Sometime. Maybe after 2030, and a quadrupling of the inital cost estimates, but they could possibly do it. But that misses the point. Seaborne assaults worked at what they were supposed to do – win battles and eventually the war. Constellation, even if successful, would NEVER have succeeded in what I want money spent on human space exploration programs to do – namely to help lower the cost of and open up access to space to more than a select few government employees a year, twenty or so years from now.

  18. By the way,

    Neil – I;m not mocking technology. I am mocking the substitution of technology development for its own sake for doing things. In both WWII and Apollo, the mission drove the technology and not the other way around.

    Rand – Yeah, I kind of suspected that your reaction would not be, “Goodness, I hadn’t thought of that! I now have to reevaluate my position.”

    Ken – I stand with Norm Augustine in my accessment of Constellation.

  19. The fact that there was going to be a seaborne invasion of Western Europe sometime after 1943 was a generally-known fact and FDR and Churchill had made a public commitment to it. Everybody knew we had to do it to keep Stalin from making a separate deal with Hitler. The technologies to be used (landing craft, etc.) had been used in Sicily and Italy and were no big secret. The only thing unknown about it were the specifics; when and exactly where.

    It was also the case that the US had made the decision to spend whatever it took to win the war, so they weren’t particularly resource-constrained. The invasion was primarily time-constarined: it took time to build up supplies and train troops, and there was no way to speed that up. There was no need to choose between current technologies and new technologies; we were doing huge amounts of both, and they weren’t competing for the same resources. There was no need for contractors to compete to sell their systems; every contractor was kept running flat-out building either their own or somebody else’s systems, and everybody’s profits were capped.

    Apollo was a junior version of that environment; time-constarined rather than resource-constrained, and plenty of work for anybody who could work a slide rule or cast an engine part.

    Ares arose in a much different environment. We are resource-constrained and will continue to be. You might wish for an extra three billion a year but there’s no way in hell you were going to get it. In that environment Ares just didn’t make sense and there was a huge opportunity cost for continuing to pursue it.

    Historical analogies are fun and I love them, but really, they have nothing to do with the actual problem at hand.

    The historical story i think is most appropriate is the one when the British Admiralty got the cable describing the ironclad CSS Virginia running amok with the Union’s wooden warships. That same day, they cancelled all wooden warships under construction. No pissing around with studies or commissions, no whining contractors running to Parliament to lobby against it. They had one good prototype of a seagoing ironclad and they realized they had to get to work.

    Nobody proposed doing Trafalgar on steroids.

  20. In both WWII and Apollo, the mission drove the technology and not the other way around.

    If, like Constellation, the “mission” is a costly and pointless dead end, you’d be well-advised to re-think it.

  21. Mark, the Ares was a disaster. How can you defend it?

    Mark specializes in defending disasters. After all, he backed George W. Bush, Tom Delay, and John McCain. 🙂

    Now what about Apollo? How did that turn out? It got turned into museum pieces rather than laying any foundation for the future. It was scrapped.

    Not according to Mark. In his imaginary world, Apollo was a resounding success, the “Children of Apollo” are still living on the Moon, and because he continued the Apollo program, Nixon was not forced to resign.

    Unfortunately, Mark confuses his fantasy novel with reality.

  22. I am mocking the substitution of technology development for its own sake for doing things. In both WWII and Apollo, the mission drove the technology and not the other way around.

    Let me guess. You think NACA research into fundamental technologies was completely useless and contributed nothing to winning World War II? The NACA should have stopped testing airfoils, sold its wind tunnels to Germany, and put all its money building a heavy-lift dirigible to send three aeronauts to Hawaii and return them safely to the United States?

    Because, obviously, the United States could not depend on those “unproven” commercial aircraft companies. If one airplane crashed, investors might pull the plug on the whole industry. Clearly, the NACA needed a backup — and the Japanese are building their own dirigible, if they were to reach Hawaii first, they could conquer the whole island. (Forget that crank Billy Mitchell and all the wild-eyed talk about aircraft carriers, which will never amount to anything.)

  23. From the testamony…

    The Committee’s review noted that the Constellation Program has encountered technical difficulties of the type not unexpected of undertakings of this magnitude– problems which, given adequate funds and engineering attention, should be solvable.

    Mark, not having any firsthand knowledge myself, this seems a bit disingenuous. It was sold on the lie that it wouldn’t be a major new development. Keeping jobs in the right districts being more important than making a working rocket. They would have had more credibility if they’d just resurrected Saturn (w/ Big Gemini.)

  25. > I’m not mocking technology. I am mocking the substitution of technology development for its own sake for doing things. In both WWII and Apollo, the mission drove the technology and not the other way around.

    If you look at the actual Vision for Space Exploration, its mission is to (1) implement a sustained and affordable exploration program, (2) extend human presence across the solar system, (3) develop innovative technologies and infrastructure to explore, and (4) promote international and commercial cooperation.

    Constellation set us on a trajectory which would have failed to achieve any part of that mission. The investment in game-changing technologies and technology demonstrators enables the achievement of mission goals (1), (2), and (3), while the commercial crew program targets goal (4).

  26. Kay Bailey Hutchison seems to think we need new metaphors.

    Perhaps thesis (Constellation) –> antithesis (100% commercial crew) = synthesis (DIRECT)

  28. There are quite a few problems with the article Bob links to, but that is irrelevant…Flighterdoc is right…Gallipoli is an almost perfect metaphor..

  29. It seems to me that the fundamental question is: Do you let the technogy drive your goals, or do you let your goals drive the technology? Nobody, not even supporters of Constellation really argues that the program is the ideal way to move out into the solar system. The reason is that the fundamental problem would remain the high cost of getting anything off this planet. Does the Constellation program address that basic problem? The answer is “no.” So why shouldn’t NASA map out a program that finally moves in that direction, and harnesses the creative energy of free competition to achieve that goal?

  31. To clarify, I meant that to refer ONLY to the issue of whether or not you let yourself be driven by technology…

    Regarding Ares, etc. It is a bad idea, should be killed, buried with its mouth filled with salt and a stake through its heart

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