Category Archives: Space

Space

Lies, Damned Lies, And Aerospace Cost Estimates

Dwayne Day has a long, but worthwhile description of how bad the reporting has been on the president’s space initiative, and the source of the mythical trillion dollar program.

Jeff Foust has a related piece on how badly the administration and particularly NASA has handled the media, with the danger that this president’s space initiative may share the fate of his father’s.

I remain very concerned about this program, because I think that the approach is fundamentally technically flawed. If Dennis Wingo is right, they’ve narrowed down the trade space far too much too early, by looking at a binary decision between building at ISS with EELVs (a bad idea for two reasons–ISS and EELV) or building a heavy lifter and replicating Apollo. Either approach will result in a program that’s ultimately unsustainable, if it succeeds at all.

There are other options, but it requires new thinking that NASA is clearly not yet ready for. I think that the president’s initiative would have a much better chance if he had set up a clean new agency, rather than giving it to the existing NASA, just as we did when NASA was established forty six years ago. It’s not clear that Code T as such will be able to break out of NASA think as long as it’s a code within the agency, rather than one that’s independent.

Space

Why I’m Not In A Union

Geeeeez.

Go check out the idiot union rep at NASA Watch. The moron can’t even spell his name right. Maybe she’ll threaten to sue me for unfair labor practices, too, for calling her a moron and an idiot. Sorry, dear, but truth is an absolute defense against libel.

(Sorry, no permalink–maybe Keith will move this to Spaceref so future viewers of this post can find it).

And hat tip to Mike Puckett in the comments section of this post.

[Update at 9 PM PST]

I should add that I found this particular part the most moronic (and sadly, typical of leftist thinking):

You have either missed the point of the Bulletin, or you are trying to stifle Freedom of Speech.

Once again, we’re not allowed to critique dumb commentary without being accused of “stifling Freedom of Speech.” As though by the mere act of criticism, the perpetrators of free speech have been hustled off to the gulag, to speak no more.

Here’s a quarter, Virginia. Go call someone who gives a damn.

[Update on Saturday morning]

Clark Lindsey has some further thoughts (scroll down, though the beginning part about potential Centennial prizes is worth a read, too):

It also brings up the serious topic of the brother-in-law effect commonly cited by space startup companies. A potential investor initially shows great enthusiasm and seems ready to write a check but a few days later backs off after talking to a brother-in-law or other contact who works at NASA. The NASA person typically knows little about the project but bashes it anyway and influences the investor against it.

I’ve heard that the military has rules forbidding employees from expressing any such personal judgments about commercial products of possible military use because of potential conflicts of interest. Similar rules should be placed into the next NASA budget authorization.

Space

Why I’m Not In A Union

Geeeeez.

Go check out the idiot union rep at NASA Watch. The moron can’t even spell his name right. Maybe she’ll threaten to sue me for unfair labor practices, too, for calling her a moron and an idiot. Sorry, dear, but truth is an absolute defense against libel.

(Sorry, no permalink–maybe Keith will move this to Spaceref so future viewers of this post can find it).

And hat tip to Mike Puckett in the comments section of this post.

[Update at 9 PM PST]

I should add that I found this particular part the most moronic (and sadly, typical of leftist thinking):

You have either missed the point of the Bulletin, or you are trying to stifle Freedom of Speech.

Once again, we’re not allowed to critique dumb commentary without being accused of “stifling Freedom of Speech.” As though by the mere act of criticism, the perpetrators of free speech have been hustled off to the gulag, to speak no more.

Here’s a quarter, Virginia. Go call someone who gives a damn.

[Update on Saturday morning]

Clark Lindsey has some further thoughts (scroll down, though the beginning part about potential Centennial prizes is worth a read, too):

It also brings up the serious topic of the brother-in-law effect commonly cited by space startup companies. A potential investor initially shows great enthusiasm and seems ready to write a check but a few days later backs off after talking to a brother-in-law or other contact who works at NASA. The NASA person typically knows little about the project but bashes it anyway and influences the investor against it.

I’ve heard that the military has rules forbidding employees from expressing any such personal judgments about commercial products of possible military use because of potential conflicts of interest. Similar rules should be placed into the next NASA budget authorization.

Space

Why I’m Not In A Union

Geeeeez.

Go check out the idiot union rep at NASA Watch. The moron can’t even spell his name right. Maybe she’ll threaten to sue me for unfair labor practices, too, for calling her a moron and an idiot. Sorry, dear, but truth is an absolute defense against libel.

(Sorry, no permalink–maybe Keith will move this to Spaceref so future viewers of this post can find it).

And hat tip to Mike Puckett in the comments section of this post.

[Update at 9 PM PST]

I should add that I found this particular part the most moronic (and sadly, typical of leftist thinking):

You have either missed the point of the Bulletin, or you are trying to stifle Freedom of Speech.

Once again, we’re not allowed to critique dumb commentary without being accused of “stifling Freedom of Speech.” As though by the mere act of criticism, the perpetrators of free speech have been hustled off to the gulag, to speak no more.

Here’s a quarter, Virginia. Go call someone who gives a damn.

[Update on Saturday morning]

Clark Lindsey has some further thoughts (scroll down, though the beginning part about potential Centennial prizes is worth a read, too):

It also brings up the serious topic of the brother-in-law effect commonly cited by space startup companies. A potential investor initially shows great enthusiasm and seems ready to write a check but a few days later backs off after talking to a brother-in-law or other contact who works at NASA. The NASA person typically knows little about the project but bashes it anyway and influences the investor against it.

I’ve heard that the military has rules forbidding employees from expressing any such personal judgments about commercial products of possible military use because of potential conflicts of interest. Similar rules should be placed into the next NASA budget authorization.

Space

OK, I’ve Reconsidered

OK, I’ve gone back and taken a look at Jeffrey Bell’s Space Daily piece again.

In addition to the comments that Dwayne Day made on the previous post, he’s wrong about architectures. I was a little confused on my first read, and I thought I agreed with the following:

People who say that a manned moon mission could be assembled in LEO out of small pieces launched on existing boosters like the new EELVs are dead wrong. This option was never seriously considered by either the Red Team or the Blue Team back during the Moon Race. It vastly magnifies the chances of failure.

Both Delta 4H and Atlas 5H can lift about 20 tons to LEO, so many launches would be needed for each moon flight. The need to design the moonship in many small pieces increases its total weight. Rumor suggests that the actual number coming out of current studies of this option are in the range of 6 to 9 launches (120-180 tonnes). If any one of these launches were to fail, the whole mission plan would be disrupted.

Also, there is no way we could produce the number of Delta 4H or Atlas 5H boosters it would take to support a serious moon program on top of all other launch requirements. Since each Heavy EELV uses three core stages in parallel, 18 to 27 stages would be dumped into the Atlantic for one Moon landing.

I actually do agree with much of this–I don’t think that it’s sensible to use EELVs for the new space initiative. Of course, I don’t think that it’s sensible to use expendables in general. My biggest disappointment in the new space policy is that it seems to have thrown in the towel on the possibility of getting low-cost launch.

If we were to launch the pieces on a reliable, low-cost launcher (a highly reusable space transport), then the concerns about a missed launch would be vastly mitigated, the pieces themselves would be much cheaper, and there would be spares in the event of a launch failure. Unfortunately, this is an option that no one seems to be considering now, because NASA screwed the pooch so badly on X-33 that the agency (totally irrationally) really seems to believe that it’s not possible to build reusables, or lower launch costs significantly. And for the paltry goals that the agency has (even in the wake of the new space initiative), it’s probably not.

It will only happen when the nation (not NASA) decides that we have to have routine affordable access to space, and puts in place policies to achieve that goal (which involve much more activity than NASA’s space exploration goals). But once the goal is achieved, the trade space will become radically transformed, and articles like Jeffrey Bell’s will be irrelevant.