Leonard David (who I hope I'll see at next week's Space Access Conference) has an interesting article today on the prospects for returning Shuttle to flight, and the potential consequences, political and otherwise, of delaying or failing to do so.

There's a fear expressed in the article that a NASA that's afraid to risk a Shuttle launch isn't a NASA that can accept the risk of sending people back to the moon, let alone Mars.

I think that's right. The first step toward a bold new space program is defeminizing our space policy. And while Dwayne says that his intent was to point out the feminine language of the rhetoric of our policy, I do think that this irrational risk aversion is in fact a feminization of the policy itself.

I'm with Jack Schmitt. My position is that we should quickly decide whether or not we're going to continue the program. If we are, then start flying now, so people don't forget how to fly it, and we don't wear it out in the hangar. Stop wasting all these hundreds of millions of dollars and all this time developing improvements for something that we're only going to fly another couple dozen times and are probably just political bandaids anyway, and just get on with it, while putting into place a plan to develop alternative capabilities as soon as possible. Tell the nation to recognize that the vehicle has risks, to expect to lose another one, and to suck it up and stop crying about dead astronauts who, now more than ever, accept the risk with eyes open, just as do our troops in Iraq. Fly them until we either finish station (and fix Hubble), or lose two, at which point the remaining one goes to Dulles.

If we can't do that, then just shut the thing down now, so we can take the billions that it costs to keep the standing army sitting around and apply them to something useful. As it is now, we have the worst of all worlds, with wasted money and time, and continuing uncertainty as to whether or not we'll get any value out of the wasted money and time. Let's just do it or get off the pot.

The defeminize link doesn't seem to go anywhere...

As far as changes with regard to shuttle status, I expect that will happen after the elections and not before... I do suspect there will be some changes.

Leonard said to me last week he would not be able to be at Space Access (he has another assignment. We'll miss him and Barbara. Hope they can both make it next year.

Rand, this is exactly what we should do, and exactly what politician want to avoid.

A politically driven decision maker abhors risks in the sense that "diasters" (that is things that look bad on TV and that can be second guessed in a hearing) must be avoided at all costs, while potentail successes are not weighty enough to counter balance the chance of disaster. Parking the shuttle in a hanger while we discuss the problems, and work on exceedingly minor safety provisions is a perfectly "Safe" way of operating. No chance of failure while on the ground. Even the workers still get their salaries, and can probably be counted on to vote to continue the (non-flying) pork.

Canceling the Hubble mission due to safety concerns isn't a valid decision. It would involve roughly an equal amount of risk as each of the previous shuttle flights and an almost equal amount of risk as each of the succeeding flights to ISS. This being the case, why are 25 ISS missions OK while one Hubble mission is not?

I fully support the decision to sunset the Shuttle for safety reasons. It is wise to continue to fly to finish ISS while accepting the risk of doing so. I believe a similar informed and rational decision can be made about Hubble.

I know this is tangential, but that fact that you highlight defeminizing makes it difficult to ignore.

So women are essentially risk averse now? This is exactly the risk that I think Bill was pointing to when he first pointed out the problem of discussing space in terms of masculine v. feminine. There is no need to bring gender stereotypes into this discussion, and plenty of reason to keep them out. There are plenty of women who are all for sending people into space at all risks, and plenty who are more than willing to do it themselves. If we want to use gender analysis here, in many ways, the risk aversion is based on masculine modes of strict economic decision making. Given that the NASA leaderhsip has been almost exclusively male it is really hard to pin this one on women. I understand that men might make changes in their policy to attract a broad group, and risk aversion may be partially due to this, but to state (or at least strongly imply) that risk aversion is targeted specifically at women seems at best partially accurate, and probably obscures a large part of the story.

I'm all for calling for bold rhetoric and bold plans, but is there really a need to rally the good ol' boys to the exclusion of others to do so? You could have made exactly the same point by simply saying "changing the rhetoric" or any number of other phrases.

The women who are involved in space are on the whole very intelligent and rightfully proud women, just as are the men. To imply that they are the cause of our problems is counterproductive, and just plain wrong. Ultimately, I suspect you dont actually beleive this, but it would be really easy not to sound like you might.

I also figure you might have been trying to give the hat tip to Dwayne, but I hope this is not the way he was intending the discussion to go. I'll let him speak to that.

No, I stand by it. This isn't about economics--it's about "flight safety." All this keening and wailing when astronauts die isn't a masculine trait, it's a feminine one. Obviously, many woman don't behave this way (and many men do), and it doesn't make them any less women when they don't, but there is a real Venus/Mars thing (just to confuse the subject even more) going on here, and I'm not politically correct enough to ignore it. It doesn't exclude or demean women to decry this societal trend, any more than it does to point out the ongoing war against boys going on in the classroom.

If you don't like to call it feminization, then let's call it adolescence versus being grownups.

"I also figure you might have been trying to give the hat tip to Dwayne, but I hope this is not the way he was intending the discussion to go. I'll let him speak to that."

Leave me out of it. It is NOT what I was discussing at all.

Jeff Bell's latest screed titled:

Shuttle derived vehicle, shuttle derived disaster.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-04k.html

I got to agree with the criticism about the use of the term "defeminize". Not only are you provoking certain points of view unnecessarily, you're also ignoring that risk adverse behavior is also (IMHO) a halmark of the "dominant male" (stereotype follows). Namely, if I'm on the top of the world, have all the right toys, and the fear/respect of my inferiors, then anything that tilts that balance is going to be threatening. They don't mind personally gambling their status yet at the same time, they ruthlessly oppose any competitors.

Now look at the politicians' behavior. They talk about the safety of the crew and vehicle. That would on the surface be an indication of feminine traits. However, as you note, for some reason it's "safe" to conduct 25 missions to the ISS, but "unsafe" to service the Hubble telescope. This smells more like the fear of public humiliation rather than any concern for wellbeing of the astronauts. And the wailing over the deaths of the Columbia seven? A lot of that noise comes from the US equivalent of professional mourners.

In other words, I think "defeminize" is inappropriate here because it doesn't really apply.

Mike,

I'm glad somebody pointed out Jeff Bell's continued idiocy. When I popped on to catch up on the day's reading, I was hoping Rand would've given that thing a through fisking. Perhaps he's still laughing...

- Eric.

My apologies Dwayne, didnt mean to try to bring you into it, just trying not to be unfair in misrepresenting Rand's motives.

Rand, to state the obvious, we have a disagreement about what it means for something to be "feminine", and more deeply about whether it is functional in society to portray things as "feminine v. masculine". I just dont see a need to throw another illusory dichotomy into the mix when we already have robots v. humans, moon v. mars, and space v. domestic programs to deal with.

Bell does make some good points but unfourtanetly, he makes some super-assinine ones like using the Gemni docking problems(He says "Agena" but I think he is referring to the "Angry Alligator" episode with the non-agena target) as an example why EOR is not a good idea.

EOR may not be ideal but I ask, have we had a docking failure since 1966? I don't think so.

I think Apollo and Shuttle have never had a failure to dock and I don't think the russians have had one in quite some time either.

I have no doubt Rand will have a field day with that piece.

While I appreciate your anticipation of my upcoming proposed evisceration of Prof. Bell's latest, I haven't had time to even read it, let alone fisk it. Based on the title alone, it's not obvious to me that I'll have any disagreement with it. I used to be a big fan of Shuttle-derived vehicles, but that time was well over a decade past.

If I can find some time away from getting my house ready to rent, and moving to Florida, I may take a look, but I make no promises.

As I said, he does make some valid points but some are so paper thin a child could tear them apart. I too may even agree partially with his conclusion but he sure takes a torturous path getting there.

Rand, I understand we take the flavor of the day of free ice cream as we can get it so I ain't complaining about the amount. Good luck with your house.

Anyone else noticed that it's men complaining about the use of the term "defeminising"? Maybe you should just concede the point and call it "demasculinizing".

When you've got time, Rand, I think you'll find plenty to disagree with. Jeff may reach a conclusion you can agree with, but for all the wrong reasons. One argument he uses against shuttle-derived vehicle (SDV) is how much it costs per flight for the shuttle. Hmmm... First, a great deal of the recurring cost for shuttle has to be the half-year orbiter refurbishment prior to each flight -- gone in SDV. Also, until the number of flights gets big enough (as squishy term, I know), the total system cost of any HLLV will be dominated by development cost. Whether that cost is lower for SDV than for Atlas or Delta-derived HLLV isn't a matter that can be determined in a paragraph or two of prose.

Bell then goes on to state that most of the shuttle's problems aren't really in the orbiter, but in the SRBs and ET, as these are the causes of the two losses so far. I wonder if Jeff is aware that the SRBs were fixed after Challenger. I also wonder if he's aware that the impact of popcorning foam from the ET would be of little import on a vehicle that isn't going to be trying to take that damage back down through reentry.

He then basically says Aldrin's Aquila (Bell's "SDV-2") makes a fair amount of sense, but that the SRBs are just way too risky, after all, look at the accidents in Brazil & India. In fact, he makes the silly (to me) allegation that the VAB is mostly un-utilized because NASA wants to keep as many folks out of there as possible to avoid large numbers of deaths when something bad happens. Let me see, could it also be that the entirety of the VAB simply isn't needed to sustain the generally low flight rates? Plus, I imagine that, given how much more $$ we spend, our procedures are just a bit better than Brazil & India. In time those folks will learn and be safer as well.

As an aside, Bell also disses the SRBs because they're "reusable". Well, Jeff, even if it costs a bit MORE to recover them, guess what. When you can break them apart and examine any possible problems, you can fix those problems and make the whole thing safer. I consider that money well spent.

From this base, Bell then descends into an abyss of illogic wherein he argues for progressive piece-by-piece replacement of every component until the SDV has nothing to do with any shuttle component (except perhaps the launch pads) and becomes an entirely new development. In the end, to quote: "The result of this little exercise in back-of-the-envelope engineering shows the complete absurdity of a SDV." Since he's morphed the SDV into an EELV-derived HLLV, he argues that the EELV-derived launcher makes far more sense. The real absurdity is that Jeff thinks that his screed is somehow "back-of-the-envelope engineering"! Perhaps he should get in touch w/ some real engineers.

He finishes with a few statements about the politics of how the choice will be made that might actually find some traction if they weren't diluted by all the preceding foolishness.

- Eric.

Rand,

I agree completely with your sentiment. I think part of the problem lies with forgetting what we are trying to accomplish in going to space, and that is to 'explore'. I am referring to the definition where one travels into unknown territory. It is ridiculous to expect NASA to drive the risk to zero when we are still in the infancy of spaceflight. I certainly know that anyone who stepped on a sailing ship in the 17th or 18th century knew that there were many undefined risks that they could face.

If we want to be a nation of explorers, then we have to accept the dangers that come with the new territory.

[Disclaimer: I do strongly believe that bureaucracy is not an acceptable excuse when lives are lost.]

When we first got the order to go to the moon, cars didn't have seatbelts. Today they have lap belts, shoulder belts, air bags, side air bags, anti-lock brakes, and you can be fined by the government if your child is not properly encapsulated in a rear-facing, back seat-mounted child safety seat. The problem isn't just NASA; the whole culture has become risk-averse to the point of insanity. It took forty years to get to this state, and I don't think NASA will be able to chuck it off and return to a bolder stance anytime soon. Even if they did, the first accident would see them in front of a congressional committee with demands for resignations and shutting down the program. Certainly NASA needs to take a bolder approach, but getting there won't be simple or straightforward or without political risks.

Eric,

When he was comparing the dangers of solid fuel and our experience with that of India and Brazil, all I could think of was the 40+ years experience we have had dealing with countless hundreds if not thousands of Minitueman series, Peacekeeper series, and Titan, Shuttle, Pegasus and Delta series SRM's without a premature ignition type handling mishap. At least none I have heard of.

Comparing Brazils SRM program to ours is proabally like comparing Chernobyl to the US Nuclear industry.

Any "bold new space program" ain't worth ZIPPO unless it can be sustained across multiple generations. How much time passed between 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and the driving of the golden spike to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans?

Now, if we humans are to undertake a multi-generational conquest of space we need mothers, who as far as I can tell, are universally women.

From a multi-century perspective, the only space race that matters is the race to be able to bear and raise children at multiple celestial locations. Everything else is nothing but boys and their toys.

Humans seem to have got bad at the multi-generational approach to projects. I asked about this (here I think) a while back, and there are still some multi-generational civil engineering projects, and thanks to bloat a couple of recent aerospace military projects have accidentally become 2 generations worth of work [I suppose you could make a case that the DeHavilland Comet is a 3 generation project as BAe are still building the airframe in the same place and altering it]... but it's hardly the norm.

When you think of the great Cathedral projects when multiple centuries would elapsed between first stone laid and completion, I'm left wondering if we really have the patience for that.

We might do in science still. A friend of a friend worked on the design of an instrument for Huygens - half a career has passed since he did the initial work, and the probe is only just arriving. But that's slightly different to the kind of patience and forward planning we probably need right now.

You're forgetting a couple of things - projects that took several generations back then take a decade or less today. Also, with the rate of technological change, it is dangerous to work on specific projects that have such a long time scale. It was originally thought human DNA sequencing would take many, many years, but the rate increased exponentially, and it was over in a few years. Some areas don't grow as fast as we would like, outhers beyond anything we expected. The one truth is that it is, in general, expanding very quickly. And in a couple of generations, things will be beyond anything we can imagine.