Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

I was nodding in agreement with Dennis up to the sentence:

Also, one of the unheralded accomplishments of NASA since the Apollo era is the near flawless execution of the construction of ISS and its operation in orbit.

Do others agree with that sentence? I thought ISS was behind schedule and over budget. ISS schedule pressure was cited by the CAIB as a cause of the Columbia accident. Others have noted a variety of problems with ISS as well.

I couldn't even finish the piece after that sentence. And Dennis is a normally thoughtful guy.

Posted by Chuck Divine at March 22, 2004 11:44 AM

No, I don't, and I believe that using ISS as a staging base for moon/Mars, at least in its current location, would be a disastrous error. There were a few other problems with the piece, too, but I hadn't the time to read or critique it in detail.

Posted by Rand Simberg at March 22, 2004 11:53 AM

While I'm sure we could all find various nits, I found the media archeology expedition to be very interesting. That was a scathing indictment of a very lazy media. If I were to perform my job that badly I'd have been fired long ago. How do these guys keep their jobs? One comment I had a little problem with was Dennis' comments on Easterbrooks bad attempt at blogging. Dennis needs to understand that _real_ blogs a) allow comments and b) fix errors. IMHO, blogs done correctly provide a much greater chance of getting the story right than traditional media.

Posted by Michael Mealling at March 22, 2004 12:16 PM

I wouldn't go that far. I do think that real blogs do tend to fix errors, but there's no requirement that they have comments. Or are you saying that Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, Virginia Postrel, Steven den Beste aren't "real bloggers"?

Posted by Rand Simberg at March 22, 2004 12:23 PM

I think someone should create a website focused on Jeffrey Bell's greatest hits. For example:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nasa-04c.html

65 days later, can we really say the following Bell commentary is dead wrong?

The first question to ask is: Will this massive redistribution of funds come from other elements of the manned program, or from the rest of NASA?

There is essentially no possibility of squeezing this kind of money out of the existing manned programs. There can't be any significant scale back in Shuttle or Station in the FY05-09 time frame, because we will still be assembling the Station. Possibly there will be some small reduction in the Shuttle flight rate from the former 5 per year.

But as NASA never tires of mentioning, cutting back the flight rate of Shuttle doesn't save a lot because the marching army of support people have to be kept on salary anyway. Implementing the CAIB recommendations will increase cost and staffing levels, not reduce them.

The NASA wedge chart for Plan 2 confirms this: the Shuttle funding wedge continues to be huge right up to its retirement date end in 2010, and at a reduced level for two more years (to cover demolition and clean-up costs for LC-39?).

So there is really no alternative to cutting over $2B/yr out of the non-manned-space half of NASA's budget. That's a ~%40 cut to "Aeronautics and Other Science" if you assume it is equally distributed over the five years 2005-2009!! If it is ramped in like most big budget cuts, the final cut by 2009 would be much larger. Goodbye wind tunnels, goodbye Webb Space Telescope, goodbye planetary probes to boring places like asteroids.

Do we really want to trade all this in for Apollo Mark II? A lot of people will say no. Even a lot of Space Cadets will say no. We lost ten years of solar system exploration to pay for the Shuttle and it left a bloody wound that still drips. A lot of influential people will fight this proposal to the last round, and then fix bayonets and keep on fighting until it is defeated.

I could go on for pages with minute analysis of the Bush space plan(s), but what's the point? This situation reminds me of what they said in the Congress about Ronald Reagan's budget proposals -- "Dead On Arrival".

Fixed bayonets? Senator Barbara Mikulski seems to have done exactly that and Sherwood Boehlert appears sensitive to the non-human space advocates as well.

Posted by Bill White at March 22, 2004 02:51 PM

I did not seen Wingo mentioning Gregg Easterbrook at all. I suspect that Mr. Mealling was referring to my essay on a different website concerning the origins of the $1 trillion cost estimate.

There I took Easterbrook to task for his really bad mathematics (counting the lunar base twice, rounding up by $200 billion, etc.). And note that I was not so much complaining about weblogs as I was noting that they are not good sources of reliable information.

Posted by Dwayne A. Day at March 22, 2004 02:52 PM

Rand said: "I believe that using ISS as a staging base for moon/Mars, at least in its current location, would be a disastrous error."

Mr. Wingo's article makes frequent reference to an EML-1 station. Getting there from ISS isn't really any worse that getting there from lower inclination orbits. EML-1 is pretty indifferent to inclination as far as delta-V requirements go until you start getting up to polar orbits.

The assumption is that we're smart enough to build a facility at EML-1, where you get such wonderful benefits as:
-Constant access to anywhere on the Moon's surface for the same delta-V
-A great spot to put some asteroid watch 'scopes, up above the cis-GEO clutter
-A spot to fix all of our libration point Sun and Star Watchers (courtesy of the Interplanetary Superhighways)
-A really cheap (delta-V-wise) spot for trips into GEO to fix or retrieve or salvage satellites
-A prime launching spot for future Mars missions (with the Moon as a backdrop for the departure, allowing half the world to watch)
-With fuel depots at EML-1 and LEO you only need a 4km/s capable vehicle for pretty much any cislunar mission, without that climbs to about 6km/s

So does the ISS need to be a marginalized outpost? No. Will it be? Probably.

Posted by ken murphy at March 22, 2004 05:04 PM

Doh!

You're right Dwayne! I was switching between the two and got confused. And anyone one blog is not a reliable sources of information, at least in my experience, the give and take of the blogosphere in general does give me a higher level of reliability than traditional media. Neither are as good as going back to primary sources, but not all of us have the time for that.

To Rand's point about blogging and comments: Yes, taking comments in an integrated comments section so that readers can see them isn't necessarily a requirement, but responding to critiques from other blogs and from readers sent via email, is. If you don't interact with either your readers or other blogs then its nothing more than a traditional op-ed piece. I've never seen Easterbrook actually respond to or correct any of the mistakes in his articles. At least to me, blogging suggests a level of interaction that Easterbrook just doesn't have.

And its that interaction that makes it more reliable than traditional media...

Posted by Michael Mealling at March 23, 2004 06:59 AM

Dwayne,

I have been pointing J. Snyder of "The Hill" magazine to your articles. I took him to task recently for cicrle jerking with the cost estimates in a recent story and he seems genuinely intrested in learning the truth. He has been quite receptive. You might want to email him directly.

Posted by Mike Puckett at March 23, 2004 07:48 AM

Various comments:

Mr. Puckett, thanks for sending Mr. Snyder to look at my articles. I appreciate it (I'm currently job hunting for a new job in civilian space policy and have decided that good publicity cannot hurt). I do not have his e-mail address, but you can give him my e-mail at zirconic@earthlink.net.

I started writing for The Space Review (as opposed to magazine and journal snail publications that nobody reads) because I have become gravely concerned that space policy is currently being discussed in the mass media with very little context. Now it has probably always been so, but I was not that concerned about it before.

I think that things like Alex Roland's Florida Today op-ed article, the $1 trillion cost estimate and NASA's incomplete explanation of the Hubble SM cancellation decision are what pushed me over the edge. I realized that there are a number of current issues where there is no public, easily accessible explanation of the events. So I am trying to write things that can hopefully improve the discussion. They are intended primarily as impartial analyses, not opinion pieces. One thing I like about The Space Review is that it has no overt ideology.

Mr. Mealling, I think you're right about Easterbrook not bothering to correct anything he has written. If you read enough of his blog (I don't read it regularly--have I mentioned that I don't really like blogs?), you'll note that he has lots of attitude. Usually this is accompanied by a belief in one's infallibility. So Easterbrook, I suspect, dismisses most of his critics as uninformed and so he doesn't have to listen to them. He is, after all, an editor at The New Republic, which has a stellar reputation for journalism, right?

I think that Easterbrook is viewed by other journalists as knowledgeable about space policy. At the very least he has some kind of mythic status for "predicting" the Challenger accident back in the early 1980s. The result is that other journalists assume that he knows what he is writing about on space policy and do not bother to question it.

Finally, my $1 trillion article was "slashdotted," which apparently got it looked at by a lot of people (although it's not the same crowd who would have linked to it from NASAWatch). I looked briefly at Slashdot and most of the commentary there seems to be rather goofy. Can someone explain to me what slashdot is, who it appeals to, who reads it, etc? I'm only vaguely familiar with it. Their slogan is "news for nerds." I'm a nerd (actually, more of a geek, but with a girlfriend and my own apartment), but I am unfamiliar with Slashdot. Is it some variation of the Drudge Report for techies or something?

Posted by Dwayne A. Day at March 23, 2004 09:40 AM

Dwayne,

Slashdot is a sometimes interesting gathering spot for techies on the Web. The editors post links to stories they think that techies will be interested in. NASA and space do get interesting attention.

Slashdot has a moderation system that I think necessary for such a popular site. I've read that Slashdot has something like 3 million readers. I do know my user number is up in the 6 figure range.

Yes, there are some really awful comments from trolls and the like. They get moderated down to -1 pretty quickly. If you're just interested in reading Slashdot, I'd wait until the discussion has settled down. The good stuff gets moderated up to +4, +5 by the moderators and featured on the page. The range of moderation is -1 to +5.

My user name on Slashdot is, rather unimaginatively, ChuckDivine. I post occasionally.

I haven't made up my mind about the Easterbrooks of this world. Easterbrook writes well and gets things somewhat right some of the time. That's actually pretty difficult to do -- especially if you're an outsider with only some knowledge of a topic. What bothers me so much about writers is that they really don't put out cautions about what they say. Making mistakes is no crime in my book; not warning people about that sort of thing is a bit more problematical.

Posted by Chuck Divine at March 23, 2004 11:50 AM

Mr. Divine, thanks for the clarification. If I understand you correctly, Slashdot has people who read the individual posts and rate them? Or do they rate the posters overall behavior? I assume this means that something with a +3, +4 or +5 rating is going to have higher content than something that has a negative rating, correct?

I saw that there were over 500 posts on that topic. I don't have time to read a tenth of those, but a quick skim of the list made it look like typical Usenet babylon. Then again, I don't expect much detailed discussion of the issue because the facts speak for themselves (that is, the $1 trillion figure is based upon incorrect assumptions). One could have a more spirited discussion of peripheral issues, such as the validity of NASA cost estimates in general.

As for Easterbrook, I think that he often has good insights on space. But this is vastly diminished by two things--a) his snarky attitude, and b) his shoot-from-the-hip style, masquerading as careful analysis.

The two combined make for a bad cocktail. I think that it's okay to be snarky if you're careful with your facts and also willing to acknowledge mistakes. I don't get the sense that Easterbrook is either of these things. As I noted about his blog article and then his later Time magazine article, he performed his math in public, which would give uninformed readers the _impression_ that he knew what he was talking about and was making sense. But an informed reader could also quickly determine that his math was faulty (such as counting the lunar base twice and rounding up by $200 billion). I actually sent a letter to the editor of The New Republic pointing this out. They did not print it. (Their policy seems to be to only print letters from government or business officials.)

Once again, thanks for the information.

Posted by Dwayne A. Day at March 23, 2004 02:31 PM

The problem with slashdot is that you have to wade thru so much dung to get to the good posts. I use it as a place to go for a collection of interesting tech headlines but gave up on the comments section long ago.

Posted by Mike Puckett at March 23, 2004 03:44 PM

Dwayne,

I sent you an email earlier today with Mr. Snyder's email address. I sent it from work and we were later told some outbound emails didn't make it out of our domain. If you didn't recieve it, let me know.

Posted by Mike Puckett at March 23, 2004 03:47 PM

Dwayne Day wrote:

Dwayne, this is the way moderation on Slashdot works. A moderator has points he/she can award or not to a posting. On those occasions when I've been awarded moderator points, I look at what's been said and then decide to award points or not. You can award points if a posting is informative, interesting, insightful or funny (yes, good jokes are encouraged). You can subtract points by moderating a posting offtopic, flamebait, troll or offtopic. There are also overrated and underrated options. There is also a "metamoderation" system where people can approve or disapprove moderation on comments. The metamoderated comments come without author or moderator identification.

Do I take into account general commenter behavior? Only on those occasions when the commenter has a memorable reputation. There are some well known trolls and flamers. They tend to get quickly moderated down to -1. There are a few posters whom I've come to recognize for making good comments. I'll look at them early in a discussion and make a decision whether or not to award them points or not.

After awhile the comments section does settle down. Then the comments that are highly rated are featured on the page. It allows the casual reader (someone like yourself) the liberty of looking at only the comments that are highly rated.

I like both the links and the comments (well, the worthwhile ones).

Posted by Chuck Divine at March 24, 2004 05:30 AM

Mr. Divine, thanks for the information. But I'm still a little confused. Can _anybody_ provide moderator points, or only those who are dedicated moderators?

I'm not actually going to bother to read this stuff, but I've never heard of this kind of moderating before. The only kind I'm familiar with is Usenet moderated groups, where it either gets on the group or does not get on the group.

Posted by Dwayne A. Day at March 24, 2004 06:14 AM

I have one more nit about Dennis' article.

A few times Wingo mentions Von Braun. Why should we be looking back at the man's work today? Yes, his team was the world leader in rocketry back in the 1940s. Yes, they led the Apollo program in the 1960s. But are we better off today for their work?

When the United States welcomed Von Braun and company into the United States post World War II the nation got the most advanced rocketry technology of the day. They also got a group steeped in a culture that was extremely dysfunctional. Delusional thinking and behavior had become quite normal in Germany during the 30s and 40s (some argue even before that).

What have we seen during the history of NASA? Well, there was the triumphant race to the Moon in the 1960s. And, since then, a few more triumphs in planetary science -- and, of course, Hubble. But we've also seen an incredible amount of dysfunctionality and stagnation. The CAIB described a bureaucracy that functions poorly in many regards.

Is it possible that the culture imported along with the technical expertise has held us back more than the technical expertise has advanced us? Or is the current bureaucratic dysfunctionality of NASA the result of other factors?

I really don't know the answer to these questions. But I do think we should consider them.

Posted by Chuck Divine at March 24, 2004 07:01 AM

Dwayne Day writes:

Mr. Divine, thanks for the information. But I'm still a little confused. Can _anybody_ provide moderator points, or only those who are dedicated moderators?

Dwayne, I understand editors get unlimited moderation points. For normal readers such as myself we are occasionally awarded moderator points in small numbers. When I get points, it's typically 5 points that expire within three days. I don't know about others. There is apparently a formula that is applied to readers of the site. I suspect flamers et al. rarely if ever get to moderate. People who are poorly metamoderated also have moderation privileges suspended. You can also take yourself out of the moderator pool if you so choose.

What the exact formula is I don't know -- and don't want to speculate.

Like I've said, just read the highly rated comments unless you're very interested and have lots of time.

Posted by Chuck Divine at March 24, 2004 07:12 AM

Hey Rand

I just found this website a few months late to timely respond to your post.

If you carefully read what I said you might look at it differently.

I said the "execution of the construction" of ISS, not the program.

If you look at the construction activity itself you should agree that it has gone well. Putting together a multi module station with components from several different nations that never came into contact except in space is a great accomplishment, no matter the screw ups and overruns on the ground.

ISS is often used as an example inside of DoD that on orbit assembly can work, the key is doing it cheaper, which with the way NASA screwed it up would not be hard.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at October 31, 2004 12:15 AM

Also,

ISS is a great location to start out for the Moon. The delta V penalty from the ground is only about 10% and this is trivial to the cost of building a station of any type at 28.5 degrees.

One of the other posters was right that if you are going to L1 (which is the only logical place to go to stage for the Moon at any lattitude) the delta V penalty is nothing.

EML is the bomb.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at October 31, 2004 12:18 AM

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