Some people are criticizing Mike Griffin's decision to overrule some of his managers, and go ahead with the next Shuttle flight, claiming that "schedule pressure" is driving the agency to make a decision in defiance of launch safety, as occurred with Challenger and Columbia.

I disagree, of course. The only thing wrong with Griffin's decision is that it came almost a year too late--they should have restarted the regular schedule after last summer's return to flight (and in fact, the return to flight should have been much sooner). I'm on record of long standing as believing that the CAIB's recommendations were unrealistic, and if they weren't at the time, they certainly became so when Bush came out with his new policy in early 2004 (which included retirement of the Shuttle fleet in 2010). The Shuttle is as safe as it can practically be made (and despite a lot of confusion among many, including professional "safety" engineers, "safe" is a relative, not absolute state).

I'm doing a lot of work right now with a company that specializes in this sort of risk analysis (though we fine tune it a little more, using a five by five matrix, rather than a four by three). While useful, this kind of analysis is more art than science, with an unavoidable level of subjectivity.

But what it doesn't take into account is the schedule and cost issues. I've noted before that we're in the worst of all possible worlds right now (and will remain so until we start to fly again with regularity). We're spending billions of dollars per year to not fly the system, and the date (admittedly arbitrary) of retirement looms, leaving less and less time to complete the ISS (the only reason that the Shuttle hasn't already been retired). We know as much as we can know about how safe the vehicle is, we don't know how to make it any safer, absent spending many more billions and years (money that would be much better spent on new systems). The crew are ready to fly, and most of the astronaut corps would have been the day after Columbia broke up. Or if not, NASA did a lousy job in choosing them. Even a "catastrophe" (loss of another orbiter and crew) wouldn't be the end of the world (though it might be the end of Mike Griffin's career, since he's decided to do his job and make this decision), because we're planning to retire the fleet anyway. But it's extremely unlikely (and would have been had we done nothing after Columbia, as evidenced by the fact that it happened only once in a hundred flights). The chances of losing another vehicle in the few remaining flights are small.

Mike Griffin is right. It's time, long past time, to fly.

[Update late afternoon]

There's a pretty lively discussion of this over at The Flame Trench, with a post by Todd Halvorson. Some of the comments contain the typical fallacies. I loved this one:

You wrote your comment on a computer that without the NASA program would only fit in a large room, you probably cook on a teflon pan. The astronauts do not take up cargo bays full of cash and shovel it out of the airlock, the money is spent to pay salaries and for goods. This money is then returned to the various communities in the form of; buying houses, buying cars, buying groceries, and also paying taxes. Government employees are the only ones that "pay their employers for working".

Let's see, there are two false spinoff claims, the old "we don't send money into space" strawman, and the "multiplier effect" (containing a version of the broken windows fallacy) all in one graf.

I liked this one, too:

If you think the program is a waste of money, think about this: After the Apollo program ended, the Brevard County Area was a waste land. Homes were worth zero and business folded. The Wedgefield area in Orange county is a prime example. Do away with the space program and you will have a disaster here. The economy of this area will drop to almost zero and your local investments will be worth zero. I realize some think it is a waste of money thats becuase you want that money to go into free government handouts for you. Get a job. If you do away with the program and let China get a foot hold in space, we will be in dier straits. The space program is Brevard, no program, no Brevard.

Yes, the taxpayers are clearly obligated to maintain home values in Brevard County. Well, and to keep the Yellow Horde (whose earliest prediction in their "race" with us to the moon is several years after NASA's plans) from becoming our space overlords.

I haven't read the specifics of why the safety guys disagreed, but I can agree with the concept that the shuttle isn't likely to become safer without billions to fix it.

Disagree with you on this. The question isn't the cost of making it safe (for 18 billion dollars and 3 years you could have contracted for a couple replacement RLV projects (McDac projected the price and time to take DC-X to a tested production fleet coming off the assembly line at $3 bilion and 3 years), you certainly could field a better tank without a unstable foam surface. The question isn't the value of what they are doing (risking lives like that to lift sup[lies to a station we have no interest in doing anything with?).

The shuttles were never fixed because of the politics of the centers and the centers staffing hunger. Risking lives to avoid making political waves in your organization, and to avoid layoffs, just doesn't cut it in my book. The shuttles should be fixed, or grounded - no excuses.

I listened to Griffin's press conference, and I thought he made some good points. The heart of the matter is that there are two separate risks involved: risk-to-fly and risk-to-land.

According to the safety analysis, risk of crew loss (in the risk-to-fly assessment) is extremely small, because NASA believes that foam strikes will not prevent the shuttle from making it to the ISS. Once there NASA will be in a better position to evaluate and assess the "risk-to-land".

The crew can evaluate the condition of the heat shield. If it is damaged beyond repair, then the worst case scenario in the risk-to-fly will be realized, and we will have lost another shuttle, but not the crew.

Kelly: I disagree, at least in part. Because the shuttle is so incredibly expensive, if (big if!) the shuttle is doing something that is worth the cost of flying it, then it is doing something that is worth the risk of flying it.

Human lives are not infinitely valuable. If we assign a value of $20 M to a single human life (which may be generous, given how policymakers do these computations) then the expected cost from dead astronauts is about $3M/launch. This is a minor fraction of the overall cost of a launch.

You're being too rational, Paul. The problem is that we refuse to grow up on this issue, as a nation. I wish that Griffin would use a little tough talk like that, and kick off a national debate. It could show the hysteria mongers and hand wringers to be what they are.

You're being too rational, Paul.

This enables me to act smugly superior, which as you well know I revel in. :)

Here's to hoping future space activities kill many more astronauts (if they don't, it will be because they continue to be trivial in scope, and we don't want that, do we?)

The irony is that what they've been doing lately
(as in the last previous flight) is what they
should have done at the beginning: taken detailed
notes on the condition of the TPS as-orbited, and
cross-referenced that with the condition as-landed
to build up a database of understanding of just
what degree of deterioration during entry results
from, say, a loose gap filler (etc.)...

-dw

Why don't they ask the people who fly in the shuttle, if they feel safe? Or if the danger they face is worth the time in space?

I know the cost of a lost vehicle, and the chances of getting a new one built if we only have 4 years of the project left. But this issue has weighed much more on the loss of the crew, than on the loss of the vehicle. These lucky few who fly in the shuttle are in greater danger on Houston's freeways, than they are during a flight.

I've never flown the shuttle, but I have driven in Houston. What time is the launch?

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that most folks in this country have no real concept of 'risk', and address the concept in a reactive rather than proactive way. That's why we see such idiocy as people being required by law to wear helmets while cycling, and people being perfectly free to drive on conciousness cruise-control because they're yapping on the phone in the fast lane. People can, and are encouraged to, sign contracts without reading them. Airport security searches the underwear of little old ladies. It's a mess.

And I don't think the shuttles will be entirely retired in 2010. I think they're going to figure out that the best way to transition down the work force is to slowly reduce it over, say, a four year period, during which time there will only be a couple of flights to finish our commitments to our international partners. The payloads should be structured so that each delivery allows a contingent of the workforce to be retired after a job well done. The induced uncertainty as to actual termination date will help to discourage workers from jumping ship too early.

Of course, this prediction is null & void in the event of another shuttle loss, which I think would ground the fleet permanently.

Management might also want to look into success bonuses for completion of the shuttle's duties, so that the pools of engineers will have fair sums of capital to work with to start up private firms. They should also post a $1.0Bn pool of seed capital for successful private delivery of NASAnaut crews to ISS in 2010 (first must fly by 12/31/10). This would kind of be the payoff for the COTS investment, and encourage others to participate as well. First winner gets half ($500Mn). Second winner gets half of what's left ($250Mn), third place half of the remainders ($125Mn), and so on. Winners can only collect one prize. Void in Hawaii and Puerto Rico. ;-)

Rand Sez

""There's a pretty lively discussion of this over at The Flame Trench, with a post by Todd Halvorson. Some of the comments contain the typical fallacies. I loved this one:""

I buy at least part of the computer one. If you go in the front door of the Smithsonian Air and Space museum you will find part of a guidance unit of a Minuteman missile (at least it was there last year). Look closely at the components. There are several 5400 series of TTL chips on the board. The development of those IC's (the date code is from mid 1963) was paid for by the USAF on a contract to Texas Instruments. The 5400/7400 series of IC's form the fundamental building blocks of our entire computer industry and we would easily be at least a decade or two behind without the funding that made those chips.

Look at the computer on the Lunar Module. It was a miracle of miniturization that actually used direct input of assembly language commands (the first assembly language computers of that size class) (The NOUN and VERB) via the keyboard.

The massive funding of the aerospace industry (the Atlas, Thor Delta, and Titan programs cost more than the Apollo program) and the massive drive to save weight did drive the electronics industry in an amazing degree. Too bad aerospace is as conservative now as the American Steel industry of the 1970's.

Dennis

The Minuteman program was not a NASA program, so it doesn't justify the anon posters spinoff claim. It does point out that what are often called NASA spinoffs are actually cold war spinoffs.

The cold war, or even just the nuclear weapons system procurement part of it, were much more expensive than the Apollo program, by roughly a factor of 30 to 100 (IIRC), so the spinoff argument loses a lot of its force.

Paul

In the early sixties the division that you imply did not exist or existed in a far mor limited form than what you think. The IC's that were in the guidance system of the Minuteman also went into the Saturn. The Instrumentation unit on the S-IVB was built by IBM and programed by what is now Draper labs. The state machines, arithmetic logic units and hardwired algorithms that formed the heart of the Instrumentation Unit were later used to build the Datapoint 3300 in San Antonio Texas. The datapoint 3300 was one of the very first desktop computers. Why is this important? Those same ALU's and PCB of the Datapoint 3300 were turned into a single chip (Under contract by Datapoint, who after it was finished rejected the part) by an outfit that also made the state machine and ALU for traffic lights. Who was this company? A little outfit that was a spin off (expertise wise) of a defense contractor Fairchild.

That company was Intel.

Dennis

Dennis: I understand the Apollo Guidance Computer and the Minuteman II computers used ICs from different suppliers. AGC used chips from Fairchild, but Fairchild was not a major supplier for the MM II; those ICs came from Texas Instruments, Westinghouse, and RCA.

The total number of chips used by the MM II program was much greater than the number that went into AGCs (only 75 of which were built, 25 flown, although AGC had 2.5x as many ICs as the MM II's computer.) If production volume is what drove down costs, MM II would seem to be the program that should get the credit, not Apollo.

Apollo was a very early customer for ICs from TI, in 1959 through 1961, but I don't imagine that was a very high volume relationship. Still, it would have helped in that very early stage.

Apollo was a very early customer for ICs from TI

I meant to write: Draper Labs was an early customer. I don't know where their funding was coming from.

Dennis

Good info, as far as it goes, and makes your point well without this addition. That contract was let to two companies that where to do a "fly off" of sorts to see which made a better part. After the contract was cancelled each comapany had there own version of an early microprocessor. Intel said in effect, now that we have it how can we make something with it. The other company was more like, that was fun what is the next project, and put it on a self to gather dust.

The other company: Texas Instruments.

Frank

Not according to my source which was the former VP of Engineering of Datapoint and the inventor of ARCNet. We started a company together in 1983 in San Antonio where I did the hardware design of the first two channel statistical multiplexer that was integrated into NCR cash registers for point of sale inventory management.

The Intel 8080 is a direct implementation in single chip silicon of the Datapoint 3300 central processor card. The DP3300 would run CP/M and it had the worlds first 5 megabyte hard drive for a desktop computer (non winchester technology).

Dennis

Paul

High volumes came from the commercial market, initially rebranding 5400 series TTL chips as 7400 series when they failed qualification for milspec.

The point is that the capital costs for the creation of the manfacturing line was paid for by the USAF and NASA (DARPA may have been in this as well). It is the up front capital costs that are the barrier to entry for companies seeking to market new products and this is what TI, Motorola, and Fairchild were able to capitalize on.

The semiconductor Integrated Circuit market only ramped up slowly during the 1960's and it was only in the 70's that Moore's law even became possible. Some who read this know who Rudy Pansholfer is. Rudy did the microcode for the first TI calculator that came on the market in 1970 and it was this product that really started to push the demand curve for IC's. It was the 4004 and the 8008 from Intel that was used in traffic lights across the country that started to drive the demand curve for CPU's.

Dennis

The point is that the capital costs for the creation of the manfacturing line was paid for by the USAF and NASA (DARPA may have been in this as well).

And our point is that you could have taken away NASA, and it still would have happened (though it might have been delayed by a year or three).

Spinoff remains a lousy argument for NASA funding, both in general, and specifically as stated by the commenter (the teflon one is a perennial howler).

A good case can be made that it should have reflown immediately http://www.thespacereview.com/article/328/1

I'd spend the savings on around the corner rifles and auto-turrets for humvees instead of armor to save more US soldiers. A million AEDs might save 10,000 lives/year.

And our point is that you could have taken away NASA, and it still would have happened (though it might have been delayed by a year or three).

Especially since, (1) the MM II GC led to a larger overall demand for ICs than the AGC, and (2) the MM II computer was flown a year before the first AGC prototype was even built.

Some 40% of the total cost of the MM I missile was due to its electronics. There was a very strong pressure to reduce this cost (and increase capability), and this pressure would have existed even in the absence of manned spaceflight.

They should also post a $1.0Bn pool of seed capital for successful private delivery of NASAnaut crews to ISS in 2010 (first must fly by 12/31/10). This would kind of be the payoff for the COTS investment, and encourage others to participate as well. First winner gets half ($500Mn). Second winner gets half of what's left ($250Mn), third place half of the remainders ($125Mn), and so on. Winners can only collect one prize.

Better idea:

No development money upfront. $20m per seat subsidy to ISS or commercial equivalent, guaranteed, seat filled or not. This is capped at $2B per year, starting 2009. Per seat subsidy reduced by $4m each year from 2010. By 2015 you either have cheap commercial transportation, or you've proved that the market doesnt want it.

Winners collect on safe vehicle return.