Transterrestrial Musings

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I like your comment about "...that was then, this is now." One thing I've often said, in many acrimonious "NASA could get us all the way to the Moon forty years ago, but they can barely get to LEO today" debates, is that we got to the Moon because John F. Kennedy said "beat the Russians to the Moon, use as much money as it takes." The cost of the Apollo program, adjusted to modern prices, was about a hundred and fifty billion dollars. And that's not including the previous funding into space vehicle research, which went all the way back to World War II Germany.

Posted by DensityDuck at May 10, 2005 09:29 AM

I don't know where you came up with the claim that "no one seems concerned about the current 'gap' since Columbia was destroyed in 2003."

There are certainly plenty of people who are concerned. But there are significant differences between the current situation and this possible future gap. One is that the current gap is an unplanned result of an accident, not the planned result of budgeting/programming decisions.

Another difference is that we currently have an agreement with the Russians to give us rides to ISS, and we don't have to pay. That ends in 2006, after which they can charge whatever they like. We're stuck in our current situation, which is not good, but not awful. But shouldn't we try to _avoid_ a future situation that could be worse?
(Of course, this argument is based upon the assumption that it is important to maintain access to ISS.)

You also state that the decision to go to a capsule-like CEV ELV approach is somehow based upon nostalgia for Apollo. Although you don't state so, you imply that we would be better off developing a theoretically safer fully reusable RLV. The CEV ELV approach is actually a pragmatic one, based upon a desire to not have to design an entirely new rocket from scratch. There are no safe fully reusable RLV designs flying, nor is there an existence proof that your approach is better--or even that it could work.

Posted by Taylor Gosnold at May 10, 2005 09:50 AM

I don't know where you came up with the claim that "no one seems concerned about the current 'gap' since Columbia was destroyed in 2003."

There are certainly plenty of people who are concerned.

They are insufficiently concerned to do anything about it (i.e., return Shuttle flight much sooner than they have).

You think that there is no nostalgia for Apollo?

Yes, I think that it's foolish to even think about going back to the moon or to Mars when we can barely afford to get to orbit. That's neither affordable or sustainable, supposedly one of the goals of the new policy.

And the lack of an "existence proof" doesn't constitute proof that such a thing cannot exist, unless you're one of those people who think that nothing can ever be done for the first time. There is in fact abundant reason to think that it can, given proper management and incentives, something that have never existed in NASA's attempts to build one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at May 10, 2005 10:18 AM

"There is in fact abundant reason to think that it can, given proper management and incentives, something that have never existed in NASA's attempts to build one."

Wishing don't make it so.

"Yes, I think that it's foolish to even think about going back to the moon or to Mars when we can barely afford to get to orbit. That's neither affordable or sustainable, supposedly one of the goals of the new policy."

If you believe this, then why wasn't that the subject of your article? It's a much more boldly-stated, and interesting, thesis than the TCS piece, which seemed to lack a point.

Posted by Taylor Gosnold at May 10, 2005 10:30 AM

Wishing don't make it so.

That's an interesting strawman. I guess.

If you believe this, then why wasn't that the subject of your article? It's a much more boldly-stated, and interesting, thesis than the TCS piece, which seemed to lack a point.

The point of the article was that Mike Griffin is being very aggressive in executing his agenda. It was more of a news piece than an opinion piece. I'll expand on it in other columns to come, I'm sure.

Posted by Rand Simberg at May 10, 2005 11:09 AM

>There are no safe fully reusable [sic]
>RLV designs flying...

Crashingly obvious because there are only three crewed spaceflight vehicles in the entire world, and only one of the three makes any claim to reuseability! (No, I'm not counting the sixty-five-mile puppy treat thrown to the USAF as "spaceflight".)

There were a number of very specific design requirements that led to the Shuttle's configuration. Suggesting that the Shuttle is the only way to build an RLV, or that the Shuttle's problems mean that RLVs will never happen, is not correct.

It's also wrong to think that NASA could never build a workable RLV, or that something was "right" in the NASA of 1960 that is "wrong" with the NASA of 2005. NASA will do what it can with the money and requirements that it is given. The moon shot happened because the government gave NASA a shitload of money, and had several spare shitloads in a warehouse.

Posted by DensityDuck at May 10, 2005 02:52 PM

Why is it progress to be able to reuse the orbiting part of the vehicle? I thought the point was to get TO space. The reusable part should be the first stage, not the last. That's where all the money is. The first stage launches, lands, gets refitted and refuled, launches again. It makes way too much sense for those NASA geeks.

With regard to the Saturn V, it put 260,000 lbs to LEO (a real LEO) for half to a third the cost of shuttle's paltry 40,000 lbs. So tell me again which approach is more advanced.

NASA has one more chance. They'll either do it right, or the taxpayer is going to put the axe to them.

Posted by Dfens at May 11, 2005 08:48 AM

Saturn V $3000/lb (2004 dollars) to LEO. Shuttle $5000 to $10,000/lb depending on who you believe. Dan Goldin said $10,000/lb in '97.

Posted by Dfens at May 11, 2005 08:53 AM

Another shuttle bonus you didn't get with the Saturn V. How many times did a Saturn V launch get cancelled because the weather was bad in Spain? Try NONE! With a reusable final stage you get to have NASA blood suckers all over the globe waiting for this or that contingency abort scenario. Ironically, when they did have a launch problem, they aborted to the ocean, just like a Saturn would have - except without the parachute.

Posted by Dfens at May 11, 2005 12:56 PM

NASA will do what it can with the money and requirements that it is given. The moon shot happened because the government gave NASA a shitload of money, and had several spare shitloads in a warehouse.

In my opinion, the moon shot happened because the requirements were very tightly defined. Having worked on engineering projects with well-defined, narrow requirements, and ones in which the requirements are loose or widely defined to appeal to everyone, I can tell you which one is going to have a chance to come in anywhere near on-schedule and on-budget.

Posted by Dan H. at May 11, 2005 02:34 PM

This systems requirements b.s. is exactly why we can't get anything done any more, and if dumping money on a program were the answer, then space station would be a floating Hilton instead of man-in-the-can like it is now.

The Apollo program worked because Werner Von Braun designed it to work. Now someone tell me who designed the shuttle. Then tell me who designed space station. They were designed by committee, the same way all of NASA's current load of garbage is designed.

And why are they designed by committee, you might ask? Everyone knows what "designed by committee" means. It means you've got junk. Everything is designed this way because NASA has no real technical track any more. There is one way to have a career at NASA and that is to be management.

Posted by Dfens at May 12, 2005 01:44 PM

> Why is it progress to be able to reuse the orbiting part of the vehicle? I
> thought the point was to get TO space. The reusable part should be the
> first stage, not the last. That's where all the money is.

You don't think upper stages cost any money???

> With regard to the Saturn V, it put 260,000 lbs to LEO (a real LEO) for
> half to a third the cost of shuttle's paltry 40,000 lbs.

Neglecting overhead and development.

> NASA has one more chance. They'll either do it right, or the taxpayer is going
> to put the axe to them.

That's what people said about X-33, 2GRLV, and Orbital Space Plane. NASA gets an infinite number of one more chances. If CEV craters, NASA will simply get more money for its next Shuttle replacement.

Posted by Edward Wright at May 12, 2005 07:16 PM

Upper stages cost very little compared to the first stage. Payloads are expensive.

As for the overhead and development costs of a Saturn V, it was peanuts compared to the shuttle. The shuttle was the prototype for how business is done now in aerospace. They proposed a grandiose and cheap shuttle, with a fly back first stage and fly back orbiter. Then came the changes. As the cost went through the roof, they descoped the program and slid the schedule. Every time they did this, they covered the cost overruns of the previous year.

We did that for many years on space station. Initially it was this huge thing, and it only cost $250M. Then year after year they would descope the program, blaming budget cuts by Congress or technical difficulties. Every time they did this the cost went up exponentially and the cost overruns magically disappeared.

I remember one year when I worked on the F-22, the Air Force threatened to fully fund the program, which meant we could not get well on the overruns from the previous year. Their bargaining chip to get the concessions they wanted was FULLY FUNDING THE PROGRAM!

NASA won't get an infinite number of chances. Do a search on "get rid of NASA" and see how many hits you get.

Posted by Dfens at May 13, 2005 04:31 PM

> As for the overhead and development costs of a Saturn V, it was peanuts compared to the shuttle.

Even if that were true -- it isn't -- so what? The Shuttle and the Saturn V do not represent the only two things that can ever be built.

I don't understand why so many people want to retreat to the 60's and limit space travel to a few historical reenactments.

> The shuttle was the prototype for how business is done now in aerospace. They proposed a grandiose
> and cheap shuttle, with a fly back first stage and fly back orbiter.

They never proposed a cheap shuttle. If you amortized the cost over the planned 50 flights a year, there's no way it could have been as cheap as they claimed. The numbers just didn't work. Neither do your claims about the Saturn V.

There's no way to get low costs with trivial flight rates.

> We did that for many years on space station. Initially it was this huge thing, and it only cost $250M.

Where do you get these figures? The costs estimates for the space station were never less than $8 billion -- and even that was a fudge, which ommited support costs.

> NASA won't get an infinite number of chances. Do a search on "get rid of NASA" and see how many hits you get.

Now do a search and find out how many times the government has gotten rid of NASA.

Every new Shuttle replacement is billed as NASA's "last chance." Have you considered the solution might be to *not* replace the Shuttle?

Posted by Edward Wright at May 14, 2005 10:53 PM

Perhaps if your sharpened your reading skills a bit, you'd notice I did not propose the Saturn V as a shuttle replacement. Even though it would clearly be better than the shuttle, I know we could do much better and stated how. It would be difficult to do worse.

If you're interested in seeing some of the early models of what the shuttle was proposed to be, they have some in the Marshall Space and Rocket Center that make the original concepts very clear. It was very cheap compaired to what the POS we ended up with finally cost. They lied in the proposal and never intended to build the shuttle for what they proposed, what a surprise. The unique thing about shuttle at that point was the way they handled their cost overruns.

As for my knowledge of space station, it is either first hand, or from those who I worked with who worked on the proposal. In every one of 4 years I worked on that monument to man's stupidity and not once during that time was there ever a firm design, budget, schedule, or mission. There were three constants on that program. Every change reduced capability, every change increased the cost, and every change slid the schedule years to the right.

The disgusting thing from a taxpayer point of view was the fact that NASA accepted all of these changes because their necks were on the chopping block just like ours. If there can be said to be degrees of whoredom, they were worse than us. They had an unbelievable number of technical people whose only job was to look over the shoulders of the people doing the work, and to make more work. None of them were adding value. No doubt you can understand how they felt about that. They all knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it.

NASA has never built a shuttle replacement, which is why they still launch the shuttle. I'm not sure how you missed that. When you say, "Every new Shuttle replacement is billed as NASA's 'last chance,'" you are right. There might be a reason for that.

What the US space program needs is not a "vision". We need a reliable and relatively inexpensive means of getting to space. Anyone who thinks the shuttle is it must lead a very blissful existance.

Posted by Dfens at May 15, 2005 09:57 AM

> I did not propose the Saturn V as a shuttle replacement. Even though it would clearly be better than the shuttle,

It isn't clear at all, if you look at the numbers. You're simply repeating an aerospace urban legend.

> I know we could do much better and stated how.

Yes -- put Von Braun in charge. History does not support your belief. Von Braun never achieved low launch costs when he was alive, and it's unlikely his ghost would do any better. Reducing launch costs requires an understanding of economics, not nostalgia for dead Germans.

> If you're interested in seeing some of the early models of what the shuttle was proposed to be, they have some
> in the Marshall Space and Rocket Center that make the original concepts very clear. It was very cheap
> compaired to what the POS we ended up with finally cost.

Models prove nothing. Numbers do. It's simple amortization. Cost per flight is total cost divided by flight rate.

The only way to make a vehicle cheap is to fly often. That doesn't mean 50 flights a year. It means thousands of flights per year. That requires a vehicle sized appropriately for the market, not a von braunian heavy lifter like the Shuttle.

As long as NASA remains fixated on trivial flight rates, its launch costs will remain high, no matter what kind of models it comes up with.

> As for my knowledge of space station, it is either first hand, or from those who I worked with who worked on the proposal.

Who you worked for and who you know is rrelevant. The cost of the space station was never estimated at $250 million. Even Skylab cost several times that much.

> NASA has never built a shuttle replacement, which is why they still launch the shuttle. I'm not sure how you missed that.

NASA never built a Shuttle replacement, but not for want of trying. There was NASP, Shuttle II, X-33, 2nd Generation RLV, Orbital Space Plane, and now Constellation.

I'm not sure how you missed those.

> "Every new Shuttle replacement is billed as NASA's 'last chance,'" you are right. There might be a reason for that.

Yes, there is.

> What the US space program needs is not a "vision". We need a reliable and relatively inexpensive means
> of getting to space. Anyone who thinks the shuttle is it must lead a very blissful existance.

I never said it was. Do you build strawmen for a living?

Posted by Edward Wright at May 15, 2005 11:44 PM

Yes, I'm repeating an urban legend, just like the one regarding the US landing astronauts on the Moon. And by the way, Von Braun did not design the shuttle. Good guess, though. Bless your heart.

Also, I build airplanes, design them actually. Airplanes that have and will fly in my life time. It is much more satisfying than the tedium of working on NASA projects. The saddest thing about working on those projects was that I cared. I did not want to see how much money I could milk out of the US taxpayer. I wanted to build hardware, but NASA in it's infinite wisdom has put in place a system which prevents that from happening.

There is no incentive to build things faster, cheaper, and better. The only incentive is to build it slower, more expensively, and barely meet the letter of the (way too darn many) requirements. None of the shuttle replacement vehicles you mentioned has ever been built because the contractors make more money off of doing the studies than they do from actually building them. Ok, there were other reasons too, but what the heck, if you never plan on building the hardware, who cares if the basic design premise of your vehicle is stupid?

NASA will continue to be a welfare agency until they start providing financial incentives for companies to do a good job. The requirements approach has failed. You cannot put a requirement on someone to do their best. If you could, the Soviet Union would continue to exist. It would do better than exist, it would thrive. It doesn't work. The Soviet Union is dead, and NASA will soon follow if they don't fix how they do business.

Uh, let's see, what could they do? How about stop paying profit on development costs? I'll bet you wouldn't see the next shuttle replacement program go on for 5 years and end up producing nothing if they did that. Of course, it could reasonably take 5 years to build a shuttle replacement, so they could pay companies profit on delivering things like WORKING simulations, or WORKING demonstration hardware. No more money for paper, though. No more of these BS requirements. No more of these huge NASA program staffs with thousands of people running around creating make-work for the people actually adding value to the program. I wish someone could identify the idiot responsible for the way things currently are. They should be tried for treason. And, no, it wasn't Von Braun.

Posted by Dfens at May 16, 2005 06:38 AM

> Yes, I'm repeating an urban legend, just like the one regarding the US landing
> astronauts on the Moon. And by the way, Von Braun did not design the shuttle.
> Good guess, though.

Another strawman. If you have to lie about what I said, it says a lot about your own arguments.

> Uh, let's see, what could they do? How about stop paying profit on development
> costs? I'll bet you wouldn't see the next shuttle replacement program go on
> for 5 years and end up producing nothing if they did that. Of course, it could
> reasonably take 5 years to build a shuttle replacement,

NASA did stop paying profit on development costs. Ihat project was called X-33. Where's the Shuttle replacement?

The only thing Shuttle accomplished was to keep space travel expensive. Why do we need a Shuttle replacement? To keep space travel expensive for another 40 years?

Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Posted by Edward Wright at May 16, 2005 06:00 PM

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone else, but perhaps you should read what you wrote.

As for the X-33, it was a technology demonstration program, NOT a shuttle replacement program. Applied research programs like that often require the contractor to make both monitary and in-kind contributions, which is what Lockheed did. Granted, it was born of stupidity, and disappeared into that same mist - along with a billion of your hard earned tax dollars. At least Lockheed lost money too, though it's not much consolation. Lockheed saw it as an investment. One that would pay off big when they started milking us for the real thing. How anyone could be so stupid to think that turkey would work... It just goes to show the power of many stupid people all working together to the common goal of spending your money.

The Skunk Works isn't a shadow of it's former self under - not Werner this time - but Kelly Johnson. All of the old line government contractors are eaten up with stupid for much the same reason NASA is. They don't have a technical track any more. If you want to advance, you've got to become managment. Once someone has become a PowerPoint Ranger, there's no going back. They aren't worth anything as far as technical abilities are concerned within two or three years.

We used to have a matrix management structure, so the person who gave you promotions or raises was someone with a clue as to what you do. Now we all report to the program managment. All those idiots want, and all they reward, is telling the exactly what they want to hear. Of course, stupid people are more than happy to do that, becuase its a lot easier than being right. So the brown noses get the promotions and make the managment ranks ever a bigger bunch of morons than they already were.

I've gotta give you one thing, though. You (and Einstein) are right about the definition of insanity. It increasingly likely we would be better off without NASA screwing up the launch biz. I think even they know they only have one more chance, though, and that's part of why they've been reluctant to replace the shuttle up to now.

There is another reason they haven't replaced the shuttle. It is due to the fact that the shuttle program managment has more power than the director. That's the other part of the elimination of the matrix managment formula. The programs only answer to themselves. Where would we be had they not reinvented the aerospace industry in the '80s? We might still be able to put a man on the Moon or defend our country, but who cares about that?

Posted by Dfens at May 17, 2005 12:19 PM

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