Paul Spudis misses the Space Council. I wonder if it would have made a difference with ESAS and Constellation? It sure would have if I’d been on it. They might have demanded to see the appendices a lot sooner than they were eventually released.
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They might have demanded to see the appendices a lot sooner than they were eventually released.
Whoever posted those appendices (was it last year?) is a hero. That was probably one of the few uses of Wikileaks that almost all readers of this blog can agree was worthwhile.
~Jon
uhh.. it depends on who leaked them. If it was a NASA contractor or, heavy forbid, a civil servant, then they’re a traitor and deserve the chop.
Griffin was an egotistic jerk but he deserved the best that NASA could give him.. he didn’t get it. Who knows what could have been achieved if everyone had the can-do attitude.
The technical criticism leveled at Constellation was warranted but ultimately irrelevant. The same criticism was leveled at Apollo but the engineers had the dignity to set aside their quibbles and *make it work*.
I wonder if it would have made a difference with ESAS and Constellation?
Let me suggest to you two lines of evidence that it would have.
1. History. After President G.H.W. Bush announced the “Human Exploration Initiative” (later, Space E.I.) in 1989, NASA responded with the “90-day Study” architecture. It was immediately recognized as an unworkable, unaffordable approach. The Space Council set-up the “Synthesis Group” under Tom Stafford in response. They looked at a variety of architectural alternatives, including Lowell Wood’s inflatables launched by EELV’s and a variety of different mission emphases (the “waypoint” studies). The SEI failed not because we didn’t have a workable way forward, but because Bush lost re-election and Congress was not interested in it.
2. A variety of architectural alternatives were presented to the agency starting immediately after the announcement of the VSE, but no decisions were made until Fall, 2005 with the adoption of the ESAS. An early plan (March 2004) by a tiger team from the Office of Space Flight outlined an affordable approach using Shuttle side-mount. Klaus Heiss presented an affordable architecture to the administrator in April 2006 (posted here) based on the use of EELVs. Subsequently, we had the continuing work of many others outside NASA, including the DIRECT team and ULA’s EELV-based plan. None of this work was ever given real consideration. A WH-based Space Council would have had both the technical staff to evaluate alternatives and the bureaucratic authority to correct problems when the agency gets off track.
Of course, any safeguard can be defeated, but it would have added one more level of technical review — one that must be responded to — that we presently lack.
The problem is that one cannot engineer ones way out of what was essentially a political problem. NASA was promised an adequet budget for the architecture it choose which was not delivered. A Space Council would have been useful, however, is bringing awareness of this sitiuation to the attention of those who could have done something about it.
Ironically it looks like Obamaspace is just as “unsustainable” in the sense that Congress won’t fund it either.
NASA was promised an adequet budget for the architecture it choose which was not delivered.
Mark, this (misspelled, ungrammatical) nonsense does not magically become true through repetition. Mike Griffin chose an architecture that was going to break any budgetary bank, and certainly the one in the sand chart.
The technical criticism leveled at Constellation was warranted but ultimately irrelevant. The same criticism was leveled at Apollo but the engineers had the dignity to set aside their quibbles and *make it work*.
The engineers working Apollo made it work because a) it was important to do so and b) they had an unlimited budget. Neither was the case with Constellation.
Rand, sure.. but they could have just sat around and bitched and moaned too. They didn’t, and anyone who did would have been ousted. The *cough* engineers at NASA have lost all professional dignity.
Rand, sure.. but they could have just sat around and bitched and moaned too.
No, they couldn’t have. At least not for long, or they’d be looking for new jobs. As I said, it was important.
Rand: “The engineers working Apollo made it work because a) it was important to do so and b) they had an unlimited budget. Neither was the case with Constellation.”
c) they shelved their collective egos and listened to John Houbolt who found a technical solution that leverage what was already in development/existing with the political imperative of execution time and political support base.
The DIRECT team achieved a similar technical/political result of turning the battleship as represented in a near 100% alignment of both the letter and sprit of the 2010 Authorization Act with our proposal as presented over the last five years. Unfortunately even now it’s very much an open question as to whether we were in time given the fiscal realities. We are still waiting to see if we will ultimately clear the iceberg.
Regardless, had Mike Griffin listened to his engineers we may well have been seeing the Jupiter-130 nearing flight testing right now. Instead his “smartest engineer in the room” ego compelled him to drive for a HLV 50% larger than the SaturnV composed of 100% new stuff appropriately named after the Greek god of unnecessary war.
While this technical and budgetary insanity was eventually defeated we now have a new crop of NASA leadership actively working behind the scenes against the will of the Congress and the now the President (unofficially) despite clearly false assurance to the contrary last week. Just like they told us that Bolden was acting on his own when he claimed that the President told him that one of the three imperatives for NASA was Muslim outreach. Yah right. I’ll take Bolden’s word on that one.
So in the last five years those at NASA that actually make things happen have had to unfortunately endure extreme oscillations in NASA management. An oscillation between the extremes of those that want Apollo on Steroids all the way to the other extreme of those who want to shut down the NASA HSF in exchange for piles of PhD papers and wishful thinking.
The first causality of War is the truth.
Having had to endure the demagoguery of both extremes, despite a sincere non-shellfish attempt to find common ground for a compromise, I would say that this is most certainly the case in the present debate.
Even now despite the clear Congressional and Presidential direction embodied in the NASA 2010 Authorization Act now law the battle rages on behind the scenes by the extremes, whose hatred of each other is obviously greater than their sense of national duty to further the important mission that NASA does on behalf our nation and mankind.
Our elected representatives have given us all a clear direction, its time to stop fight and move on already.
Now do we want to go to beyond Earth orbit or not?
Our elected representatives have given us all a clear direction, its time to stop fight and move on already.
They haven’t given us a budget. And next month, our new elected representatives may give us yet another direction. That’s life with a state-funded space program, particularly one that isn’t important from a policy standpoint.
We shall see Rand, unfortunately I suspect they’ll just feed us a new crop of lies even if we manage to achieve a 100% matched Appropriations/Authorization. For example; we need more money to develop the SLS than it took to build the STS from scratch. Or the SLS defies the laws of physics. Or all brand new stuff that doesn’t exist is way cheaper than existing proven stuff with over thirty years of flight experience and improvements with near 100% certainty on cost.
Yah come to think of it your right, the money has not yet been appropriated for the 2010 Authorization, thanks for bringing that to our attention 🙂
Maybe removing all the funding for the key pet projects of those working at cross purposes to will of Congress will get their attention?
You know the projects kicked off ‘with’ funding before the ink dried on the authorization while those that formed key elements of the agreed upon compromise from a Congressional view point all seem to be TBD for some surprising reason. The mind boggles doesn’t it Rand?
What do you think, want to play a game of Constitution 101? Better cash those unconstitutional checks sports fans while you still can. I think we may have found a way to plug the $270 million dollar gap between FY2009 and FY2010 if it should occur after all.
Stephen, how many traitors did you help sabotage NASA from the inside out? How many broke the law to support your cause? Do you like the company of anonymous cowards?
Trent your statement proves your complete ignorance of how this came about.
The truth is not always pleasant but it’s the only path towards success in field that doesn’t suffer fools (represented by you) or arrogance (represented by Mike) gladly.
We may be anonymous to you but we are not anonymous to people that count like the Commission. After Leroy asked me the question of “who are you guys?”, he and everyone on the Commission got an earful from a multitude of people I didn’t even know and still don’t know to this day.
Citizen’s who happen to be engineers responding to official requests for information by a commission approved by Congress and appointed by the President is not breaking the law, withhold the information needed by our elected representatives to make an informed decisions is. Do you know anything about the Constitution and our duties as citizens? Or is an arrogant, duplicitous, incompetent bureaucracy trying to cover its serious mistakes now a fourth branch of government in your eyes?
Lastly we did not betray NASA, rather through our efforts the NASA engineers have now put our nations Space program back on a path that if followed will see the next fifty years easily eclipse the accomplishments of the last fifty years.
Stephen, by doing so you cultivated a bunch of malcontents who dragged their heels. They *did* break the law, by leaking confidential documents to the press time and time again. Whistle-blower laws do not protect anonymous cowards.
So long as NASA is populated with armchair quarterbacks, who all think they can do the administrator’s job but refuse to throw their own hat into the ring, NASA will never do anything. Watch as the SDHLV goes down in flames due to all the backstabbing, then recognize what you’ve sown.
Once again your statements within this thread clearly indicate how little you know of what actually happened and why.
In the end we only cast the light of truth on those that were lying to Congress and the President. Lies measured in the loss of thousands of jobs, lost time and billions of dollars of damage to America’s space program. It took a lot of courage on the part of number of Space Program Engineers over a number of years to get the truth to the right people. In the end all we wanted was for NASA to succeed which was a technical and budgetary impossibility with the Ares-1.
“The truth is generally the best vindication against slander”- Abraham Lincoln
So slander away and keep sucking on that blue pill. Your hope that NASA fails in this new path speaks volumes of where your heart is.