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From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
Newsgroups: sci.space.science,sci.space.tech
Subject: Re: Pluto Express Team Continues Design
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 06:55:13 GMT
In article <4emi9b$osr@infoserv.rug.ac.be> FilipPC.DeVos@rug.ac.be (Filip De Vos) writes:
>: >Would you consider a nuclear boost? ...
>: Were such a stage available -- not just on the drawing board with some
>: parts experimentally tested, mind you, but complete, space-tested, and
>: ready to fly -- I'm sure JPL would give it serious consideration. But
>: NASA is unlikely to undertake a development program for it, and is most
>: unlikely to design a "flagship" mission like the first Pluto probe around
>: a nonexistent upper stage.
>
>This attitude of NASA's is deplorable. Another pretty well developed
>propulsion technology, Solar Sails, allmost completely developed,
>has never flown...
The basic problem here is threefold. First, NASA gets pilloried in
Congress and the media every time something goes wrong; it has quite
understandably become rather averse to taking risks. Second, the tendency
toward massive megaprojects in planetary exploration has made this worse,
by increasing the penalty for a single failure. And third, NASA has no
program of engineering-oriented missions to cheaply test such concepts in
space and remove the remaining uncertainties.
It's hard to do much about problem one, but problem two is going away
because the megaprojects have become unaffordable, and problem three just
may be addressed by the New Millennium program.
>[solar sailing]
>In fact NASA did use the principle once, with the Mariner 10 spacecraft
>that made three flyby's of Mercury. The third flyby was made
>possible by inclining the solar panels to the sun's ray's.
However, that was only attitude control, not thrusting. Nobody doubts
that sailing can be used for attitude control, especially since light-
pressure effects are one of the biggest attitude *disturbances* for
spacecraft in high orbit. But using sailing for propulsion requires much
larger surface areas. Nobody questions that the thrust is there; the
doubts center on issues like deployment and control of large sails.
Those are hard problems, too -- it is legitimate to worry about whether
the paper solutions will really work in space.
--
The Earth is our mother. | Henry Spencer
Our nine months are up... | henry@zoo.toronto.edu
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
Subject: private enterprise (was Re: Phil Gramm's Federal Employee Comments)
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 02:54:47 GMT
In article <DLpMAp.I3s@freenet.buffalo.edu> ai181@freenet.buffalo.edu (Dean R. Oberg) writes:
>>If roads are built and financed by private companies, there's no reason
>>why they couldn't be operated by private companies as well.
>
>I can't wait for this! Then the tolls to cross NYS will probably cost
>more than a plane ticket from Buffalo to New York City. Privatization
>always dangles the promise of reduced costs and better management but
>the thought of unregulated profiteering dictating my travel budget has
>me buttoning the flap over my wallet...
Remember the magic word "competition". The situation where you need to
watch your wallet carefully is where one organization -- and it doesn't
matter whether it's a private company or a government agency! -- has a
monopoly and can charge whatever it pleases, without any need for good
service or efficient operation. The idea that government bureaucracies
are less venal, slipshod, and greedy than private industry is a popular
myth with little foundation in fact; they often display the rot in
slightly different ways, but they're not immune to it. "My God, Thiokol,
when do you want me to launch, next April?"
To bring us back to spaceflight :-), one of the most important changes
that needs to be made in people's thinking is to abandon the Bureau Of
Spaceflight (or, even worse, the International Bureau Of Spaceflight)
model of how things should happen. To the extent that the Bureaus Of
Spaceflight got anything done, it was because they were competing with
each other. With that motive largely gone, leaving control in their hands
is a recipe for stagnation. Actually, it's been a recipe for stagnation
for a quarter of a century now: they haven't been actively competing with
each other for quite a while, and the result has been exactly what you'd
expect. Throwing more money to them will not solve the problem.
--
The Earth is our mother. | Henry Spencer
Our nine months are up... | henry@zoo.toronto.edu
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
Subject: Re: How *not to* manage X-33
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 00:44:51 GMT
In article <3102C793.924@mail.GANet.NET> "William H. Mook" <wm0@mail.GANet.NET> writes:
> The X-33 has no rational economic use. It pays no economic
> benefits. If you were to take the assets currently at hand
> and build an RLV of high economic utility the X-33 is NOT
> something you would come up with...
Correct. The X-33 will never return a nickel to NASA. Its purpose is
knowledge, not money. That's what X-planes are for. Not one of them
has ever made a profit; most of them did not resemble later operational
aircraft at all closely. The X-33's job is to change the world -- by
making it clear to all that SSTO is a realistic approach -- not to make
money without changing the world.
> You are not correct. NASA is the dominant force in
> space vehicle development and pushes out all other
> methods of funding development. It would be like Boeing
> waiting on the Airforce to design and build a 747
> before they offered it for sale to a commercial market...
Uh, Bill, you've forgotten that Boeing *did* wait on NASA and the Air
Force to develop the high-bypass turbofan, the technology that made the
747 really practical.
There *is* a problem with the socialist myth NASA has woven around itself,
in which no dirty private enterprise should trespass on the sacred
precincts of the government space program, but fortunately that is
changing. Not everybody has gotten the message yet (as folks observed
when some of the X-33 bidders showed pictures of operational SSTOs in NASA
markings at Space Access 95), but the situation is improving. Lockheed
developed LLV without a nickel of government money, and Atlas IIAR and
Delta III are being done the same way.
> Or worse yet, Boeing would ignore the potential of
> commercial markets because they know the Airforce
> it the only real customer for airplanes in the first
> place! ...
Ever wonder why the 747 has that odd configuration, with the flight deck
raised above the main passenger deck rather than stuck on the front? It's
because the 747 is a derivative -- a fairly distant one -- of a military
heavy transport design, a losing contestant in the C-5A competition. It
wasn't until Boeing lost the military competition that they started
looking seriously at a commercial widebody. (They bet on the right horse
in the end, too: the C-5A started out promising, but the program was
choked by overruns and scandals and its production run ended much earlier
than planned, while the 747 nearly killed Boeing early on, but is now a
magnificent success that has earned Boeing an astronomical profit.)
> NASA should be engaged in doing research that benefits
> the entire aerospace community...
Quite so, like the work the X-33 will do on composite structures, durable
heatshields, etc.
> ...Ultimately,
> NASA would be funded by user fees paid to gain access
> to the top notch intellectual property it will have
> produced.
Go to the back of the line and start over, Bill. The whole point of
having research done by NASA is that it is stuff which does *not* have
immediate cash value. Anybody can do research that people are willing to
pay for right now; the point of having a government lab do it should be
that it's got a high long-term payoff but no short-term value. NASA will
be of little value to anybody if you can't get access to its work without
paying fees. Even patents -- a better approach, and one that NASA pursues
vigorously -- have limited utility because they often expire before the
real market arrives. NASA is never going to be self-funding.
--
The Earth is our mother. | Henry Spencer
Our nine months are up... | henry@zoo.toronto.edu
From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
Newsgroups: sci.space.tech,sci.space.policy
Subject: Re: Shuttle Costs
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 17:21:47 GMT
This actually has little or no technical content, so subject to the
moderator's consent, I've cross-posted to sci.space.policy and pointed
followups there.
In article <4k3b2b$ove@mycroft.westnet.com> Thomas Kalbfus <tkalbfus@westnet.com> writes:
>How did this happen? What were the engineers doing when they
>designed the shuttle? How could they design an operational
>vehicle and not know it would cost more per pound than the
>Saturn V? ...
Basically, it boils down to excessive optimism, bad management, and tight
budgets. The few who saw the problem coming weren't able to get changes
made, because that would have cost more and endangered the program. The
best NASA could do was to carry on and hope that improvements could be
made once the system was operating. Only in retrospect has it become
clear that a lot of the costs were built in from day one and cannot be
reduced dramatically.
>...In the wake of this failure, why didn't
>they go back to producing Saturn Vs?
Because Congress had already firmly refused to pay for an ongoing Saturn-
based space program, so there was no point in revisiting the question.
Everybody *knew* that approach wasn't going to work. Trying to get
shuttle costs down looked like the only way out.
>Why did they launch this
>thing for 15 years after they found out it was more expensive
>than the Saturn?
Because they had it, and they didn't have the Saturn V any more, and
Congress wasn't going to give them the money to change their minds.
>I know rocket engineers are smart people, so why couldn't
>simple do a design analysis of the space shuttle before it was
>built and determine its launch costs? ...
Because the outcome of such an analysis depends very heavily on the
underlying assumptions, and those are much less susceptible to design
analysis. Also, do remember that this was the first time anyone had
tried to build a reusable launch system.
There *were* actually some reports which predicted problems, but nobody
knew whether to believe them or not. NASA, having already "bet the farm"
on making the shuttle work, didn't want to.
--
Americans proved to be more bureaucratic | Henry Spencer
than I ever thought. --Valery Ryumin, RKK Energia | henry@zoo.toronto.edu
Newsgroups: sci.space.history
From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
Subject: Saturn V revival (was Re: Some Apollo Queries)
Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 15:08:59 GMT
In article <ericsE9IqG5.zv@netcom.com>,
Eric Smith <erics@netcom.remove.this.com> wrote:
>>...wondering how long and what it would take to relearn the necessary skills.
>
>Well, given the fact that it was done in less than a decade once, and
>the fact that it wouldn't be exactly like starting at ground zero because
>some things from that earlier experience must be relevant, I think it's
>reasonable to expect that it might take a few years but not as long as
>a decade.
Remember, though, that it's not the same organization doing the work. In
1958, Del Tischler wrote the specs and RFP for the F-1 himself in one day,
reviewed them with potential contractors the next day, and chased them
through proposals, evaluation, selection, contract signing, and work start
within three months. Now it would take longer than that just to get some
sort of agreement on the specs. (To restart the Saturn V one wouldn't
start from scratch in that way; this is just an illustrative example of
what's happened to the agency.)
--
Committees do harm merely by existing. | Henry Spencer
-- Freeman Dyson | henry@zoo.toronto.edu
From: gandalf@digital.net (Ken Hollis)
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
Subject: Re: RLV engines (was Re: X-33 Concepts...
Date: 4 Jul 1996 14:51:46 GMT
Greetings and Salutations:
(Well, Henry, I tried a couple of ways to post this to sci.space.tech
and had problems. So sue me :-))
From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
> Andy Haber <andyh@hcxio.hdw.hcsc.com> wrote:
> >This seems like somewhat of a "disconnect" to me. If a
> >RL-10A-3-3A will do 10 starts and 4000 seconds with no
> >maintenance, then why, after a *lot* of work, does a SSME need
> >3/4 of million dollars worth of maintenance after 1 start and 500
> >seconds of use? At $ 300 per hour, $ 750k will buy a team of 24
> >technicians that will work for 100 hours each with $ 30k left
> >over for lockwire/gaskets/sealers. The questions is what do
> >these guys have to do that takes all that work to get this engine
> >ready for it's next flight?
Two words. Manned flight.
If the DC-X blows up then you don't have a "national disaster". If
the shuttle does then you have a big problem. NASA wants to make
sure that it doesn't happen again so we have an army of people
supporting those 24 technicians.
Let us take the installation of a valve. First off we have to have
a serial number for the old and new valve that gets tracked on the
paper that changes out the part. There is a whole department of
Configuration Management that tracks what serial number of what
valve goes on that particular engine. This is for pedigree history.
If you have a problem with that valve then you "suspect" that there
might be problems with all the valves in that lot or serial number.
Next you have a reason to change out the valve. Did it malfunction?
A problem report is written. Was there an engineering order that
upgraded that valve to another dash number? That is a different
piece of paper (TPS). And by the way you also have just seen that
there is an engineering department (that represents the design
center) just for design of the pieces parts of the shuttle (also for
failure analysis). One of these two paper types have to be written.
That is yet *another* set of engineers who write the paper (and
actually do) to do the test / checkout / replacement of valves to
insure the correct torque's are done, the correct leak checks per
the OMRSD (Orbiter Maintenance Requirements Specification Document),
the correct people stamp the paper ("Buys"), the test setups and
teardowns are written correctly. Now you have to get a NASA
counterpart to review the paper to make sure it is written
correctly. After that there is a Quality Engineer that makes sure
the paper of "formatted" correctly and has all the correct "buys"
annotated on the paper. Now the paper is ready to go to your "army"
of technicians.
The contractor technician signes out the paper and first off has to
order the valve an misc. parts. The tech goes to logistics and writes
up a piece of paper to actually order the parts. After the parts
arrive, the tech takes them to the job. This is after signing out the
tools from the toolbox and doing FOD (Foreign Object Debris) control.
I know I am missing a few steps here. If it is a critical part
then he not only has to get a contractor Quality Control (QC), he
also has to get a NASA QC. They all have to check into their work
area with the Orbiter Integrity Clerk and sign in all the tools.
The system is verified ready to be opened (by depressurization,
whatever, by engineering) and he removes the old valve, inspects
the critical sealing surfaces (with QC looking on) and installs the
valve. Mechanical connections (bolts, tubes, etc.) are done by
mechanical techs, the electrical connections are done by the
electrical techs ("Sparkies"). The valve is now hooked up. Ready
for retest.
If the valve is on the Orbiter, then contractor engineering powers
up the vehicle (engineering sit on the consoles, not the techs).
Typically this is where you leak check all the joins that were
opened. If it is a cryogenic joint then it is leak checked with a
mass spectrometer and bubble soap. If the valve is hydraulically
actuated then the hydraulics contractor engineers have to get
hydraulics hooked up to the vehicle for the retest. O.K... now the
vehicle is powered up, hydraulics is applied and you functionally
retest your valve. All of the hydraulics is deconfigured by another
set of GSE (Ground Support Equipment) technicians and Orbiter tech's
(not engine tech's).
After the paper is worked we have to have a department that looks
and makes sure that all the OMRSD's are bought for that vehicle flow
(OMRSD's are also used to specify what the "normal" test and
checkout requirements are). Configuration management looks at the
paper to make sure that all of it's beans are counted. It then goes
to tech data to be microfilmed and stored.
You have all these people working just the paper. Now you have to
consider that they have supervisors, payroll, upper level
management, etc. You can begin to see why there are so many people.
This is not even starting to consider the fact that there are many
inspections done by both a tech and a QC for each engine each flight
to make sure things still look OK. We remove all three engines
every flight because the time to remove check them and reinstall is
shorter than trying to do normal Orbiter test & checkout and engine
work at the same time. There is another group who just type /
maintain the OMI's (Orbiter Maintenance Instructions). These books
are the "standard" inspection / checkout procedures and include
preps, test & post operations.
I am sure that I missed some groups and many steps here.
> However, the RL10 is a much simpler engine, using much more
> ordinary materials, running at much lower pressures and
> temperatures, and quite substantially overbuilt in certain areas.
> It has major inherent advantages when durability and maintenance
> requirements are the issue.
(Oh boy! An engine discussion again ... just like we used to Henry
.. but I think you are better armed now than you used to be ;-))
I will (finally) admit that the RL-10 is a good engine. P&W makes a
good product (even tho' they had to learn the same rotodynamics
problems that Rocketdyne learned years ago with the HPOTP (High
Pressure Oxidizer Turbo Pump) & HPFTP (High Pressure Fuel Turbo
Pump) ;-)...). *BUT* as you point out it is a beefier engine that
is overbuilt.
That is my problem and point with the new RL10 engine that is being
designed for the DC-X. Some of the DC-X types assume that things
can be easily scaled up and everything will be fine.
I am sure that you and I could design a nice simple pressure fed LOX
/ LH2 engine with a carbon - carbon nozzle that would run for
several ten thousand seconds and for many hundred starts. If you
made a huge beefy nozzle that didn't flex and overdesigned the lines
that feed the MCC (Main Combustion Chamber) we could have a
phenomenal engine. Not saying it would be useful, but it would be a
shining example of what an engine could be like :-).
Right now (from the last I heard) the flight vehicle still isn't
down to the weight that they want it to be. The engines will have
to be eking out either more performance (higher pressure and temp)
or they will have to be lighter. This will translate into a more
finicky engine that requires more work, or an engine that you fly
"X" number of times and just say "Oh well, get me a new engine".
Rocket engines don't scale all that well. When you change one
little thing, that could be the end of that engine. I will be
skeptical until I see the engine run for a long time on the flight
vehicle that can actually put a payload up in orbit, not on an
engineering test bed like the DC-X.
Newsgroups: sci.space.history,sci.space.policy,sci.space.shuttle
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: How would NASA return to the Moon?
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 04:34:15 GMT
In article <7anhqj$lrg$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <wmook@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>President Nixon decided to kill project Apollo following the successful lunar
>landing.
No, the handwriting was at least on the wall rather earlier than that.
Most of NASA's long-term work, including most of the Apollo Applications
program and all immediate hopes for continuation of the Saturn V and
Apollo spacecraft production lines, went down the tubes under Johnson, in
summer 1967.
Moreover, if you have to blame somebody for the demise of Apollo, I would
pick not Nixon but Paine. Yes, the Administrator of NASA. Nixon was not
*hostile* to ongoing exploration, he just didn't consider it a priority.
What sealed the fate of Apollo was the report of the Space Task Group (the
Agnew commission), which -- mostly at Paine's instigation -- totally
ignored political reality and called for new programs on a scale that
Nixon and Congress were completely unwilling to support.
Had the STG report instead suggested low-key, moderate-cost continuation
of existing programs (including Apollo/Saturn operations and lunar
exploration), with future programs begun slowly on an evolutionary basis
rather than as cost-is-no-object crash programs, there was a reasonable
chance that Nixon would have okayed it. As it was, by the time NASA woke
up (or halfway up) to reality, much of the damage was done.
(I say "halfway up" because the STG report was the beginning of twenty
years in which NASA planning invariably assumed that the glory days would
soon return, and that long-term planning need not be constrained by any
sort of fiscal realism. There are still deluded people who believe that.)
--
The good old days | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
weren't. | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.history,sci.space.policy,sci.space.shuttle
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: How would NASA return to the Moon?
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 06:05:44 GMT
In article <36d51c44.211088024@news.ccsi.com>,
om <om@REMOVE_THIS.ccsi.com> wrote:
>>Most of NASA's long-term work, including most of the Apollo Applications
>>program and all immediate hopes for continuation of the Saturn V and
>>Apollo spacecraft production lines, went down the tubes under Johnson, in
>>summer 1967.
>
>...Henry, this isn't the first time you've raised this point, but what
>I've yet to see is the documentation to prove that LBJ had actually
>taken steps to start this downward spiral...
I don't think LBJ himself initiated this, but he didn't fight it either,
when Congress balked at funding NASA well enough to continue Apollo *and*
continue preparations for longer-term things.
If dim memory serves -- references aren't handy -- the previous year's
budget battles clearly indicated that trouble was coming, but in 1967 it
arrived. For example, in spring 1967 NASA was optimistic enough to
recruit a second batch of scientist-astronauts, but when they showed up in
fall, Slayton had to tell them that he wasn't expecting to have flights
for them any time soon.
--
The good old days | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
weren't. | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.history
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: joyrides for $$$
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 14:01:27 GMT
In article <38EAD523.EFE33956@ibm-pc.org>,
Jorge R. Frank <jrfrank@ibm-pc.org> wrote:
>It is quite possible that NASA was headed in the direction of flying
>tourists before Challenger, but the subsequent ban on commercial
>payloads on the shuttle and the end of the citizens-in-space program
>killed that. In other words, even if NASA wanted to fly tourists,
>they'd have to lobby Congress for a change to the law...
Which law? The no-commercial-payloads rule is a White House directive,
not a law, *and* it has an exemption for anything "shuttle-unique"...
which in particular means any payload which requires a crew. (A number of
commercial payloads have flown on the shuttle since Challenger, sometimes
with quite flimsy excuses to justify it.) Citizens In Space is on hold --
not formally dead -- by NASA fiat, not by law.
>One does not have to be a bomb-throwing socialist to believe that flying
>tourists on the shuttle is a bad idea. ... That's not "socialism", it's
>keeping the government out of areas where it doesn't belong. The
>marginal cost of flying a tourist aboard the shuttle is so low that NASA
>could do significant harm to the budding space-tourism industry...
You think NASA cares about that? Far from it -- NASA historically has
quietly done its best to derail private spaceflight, because NASA wants to
keep control. (NASA has no hesitation in competing with private industry
when it thinks it can get away with it -- there were private companies
interested in providing parabolic-flight time for "Apollo 13"'s filming,
but NASA underbid them.)
You're confusing two separate issues: what NASA thinks, and what's right.
NASA's aversion to passengers, while it may be beneficial to would-be
competitors, is motivated by dislike for passengers rather than a desire
to stay out of industry's way. NASA is perfectly happy to carry your
payload, even if private industry could launch it for you instead -- they
just don't want to carry *you*. Even if your payload needs an on-board
operator and you're the best person to do it, you get to train a NASA
astronaut to do it instead.
>> Non-government-employees flying on the shuttle? Polluting space by flying
>> someone other than New Socialist Men/Women? Unthinkable!
>
>Hmm, and I suppose you can name even *one* US astronaut that is a
>card-carrying Socialist? :-)
I didn't say they were willing to *admit* it. Even to themselves.
>> Now those evil totalitarian non-market-economy Russians, *they* will take
>> your money and sell you a Soyuz ticket. Just proves their depravity.
>
>Never mind that the company selling the tickets, MirCorp, is
>majority-owned by RSC Energia, which in turn has the Russian government
>as its largest shareholder. This is, therefore, a government-subsidized
>ticket...
You think the Russian government has money to subsidize you with? :-)
--
"Be careful not to step | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
in the Microsoft." -- John Denker | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: jet engines and a launcher
Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 15:53:17 GMT
In article <kl9nes4lmqnuu750c7a8d6r0l4fd3je0io@4ax.com>,
Michael Richman <mlrichman@prodigy.net> wrote:
>>Uh, yes, and? Fuel is CHEAP. With reasonable fuel combinations, the fuel
>>cost of getting stuff into orbit is dollars per kilogram. Dollars, not
>>hundreds or thousands. The costs lie elsewhere. Saving fuel is just not
>>of the slightest importance at present.
>
>So please, tell us, where does the cost lie?
Very expensive hardware thrown away each time, and very inefficient
organizations doing it.
It took eight men 15 minutes to launch a Thor missile. When NASA turned
Thor into a launcher, Delta, the ground crew grew to 1200 and the delay
became 10 weeks. Yes, Delta is more complex than Thor, but the difference
isn't *that* big. (The manpower and delay have come down some since Delta
started being run by McDD instead of NASA, but they're still large.)
--
"Be careful not to step | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
in the Microsoft." -- John Denker | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
From: "Jeff Greason" <jgreason@hughes.net>
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
Subject: Re: Nice report on FBC on space.com
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 16:41:17 GMT
Geoffrey A. Landis <geoffrey.landis@sff.net> wrote in message
news:8dpn49$a8q$1@sulawesi-fi.lerc.nasa.gov...
> In article <FtCM7F.4AK@spsystems.net> Henry Spencer, henry@spsystems.net
> writes:
> >A note of caution, Geoff: Jeff Greason was middling-high management at
> >Intel before he was led astray :-) into the rocket business.
>
> Actually, my comment "I would not call this a good critique" refered to
> McCurdy, not Greason, but in fact it could be interesting to hear what
> Jeff Greason has to say relevant to the McCurdy article, based on
> experience at Intel.
>
> But the McCurdy comments themselves mainly just miss the point.
Well, based on my experience to date both in computers and
rockets, the McCurdy comments did *not* miss the point :-)
The major points I thought were on target (I'm paraphrasing, not
quoting), in roughly the order they appeared in the article.
1) Dramatic improvements in performance require a change in
(or replacement of) the "corporate culture" -- in order to
achieve the impossible, the team has to honestly believe it
to be possible, not just going through the motions to prove that
it really can't be done.
2) The team has to be smart, highly capable, and SMALL
3) It has to be fun .. a point often missed. As I would have
said "morale matters".
4) You've got to co-locate the team, and telepresence is
no substitute for the real thing.
5) Test thoroughly -- substitute test for getting the last 5%
of perfection in design (which you won't get anyway),
and leave enough time in the schedule that you don't
cut short the test/debug/fix/retest cycle
6) Seamless management -- "the people who fly the spacecraft
are the people who designed it". Or, to quote from Kelly
Johnson's rules for the Skunk Works "The contractor must
be delegated the authority to test his final product in flight.
He can and must test it in the initial stages. If he doesn't,
he RAPIDLY LOSES HIS COMPETENCY TO DESIGN
OTHER VEHICLES" (emphasis added).
Obviously, the details of the engineering techniques used are
very different in spacecraft and semiconductors -- but the
management techniques used to achieve breakthroughs in
performance are not new, nor are they secret -- but they are
much easier to learn than to apply, and they are seldom used
in large organizations.
There is also no guarantee
of success, regardless of the techniques used; so the best
way to succeed is to exploit the 10X or more cost advantage
of a "skunk works" approach and expect only a 3X cost
improvement by funding three parallel "skunk works" efforts.
(This is how the marketplace works in the commercial world,
and is a major difference from aerospace). When you fund
three efforts in parallel with different funding sources, one
succeeds and is regarded as a great success. Even if you fund
three efforts in parallel from the same funding source (NASA),
all anyone remembers is that two failed -- and you almost never
try anyway, because someone wants to know why you're
"wasting" money on "duplicating" your efforts, and the GAO
proposes "consolidating" operations for more "efficiency".
Competition works; consolidation doesn't.
I could have drawn substantially the same comments from
Kelly Johnson's rules, or from another book or two on
the management techniques for breakthrough performance.
The ideas are not new -- but I thought McCurdy's assessment
that ignoring them was the root cause of recent FBC problems
was timely and on-target.
----------------------------------------------------------------
"Limited funds are a blessing, not Jeff Greason
a curse. Nothing encourages creative President & Eng. Mgr.
thinking in quite the same way." --L. Yau XCOR Aerospace
<www.xcor-aerospace.com> <jgreason@hughes.net>
From: Rand Simberg <simberg@interglobal.org>
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
Subject: Re: "NASA Delenda"
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 07:52:58 -0700
Henry Spencer wrote:
> >: Goal Space Settlement
> >
> > Whose goal is this?
> > It certainly isn't NASA's...
>
> If memory serves, NASA's charter (as amended some years back) specifically
> defines this to be one of NASA's goals.
Yes, and in fact, the Space Settlements Act, passed in the 1980's, statutorilly
requires the Adminstrator to submit a report every two years to Congress
regarding progress toward this goal. He has never done so...
--
************************************************************************
simberg@interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1391 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org
"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: NBC Pays $40M for 'Destination Mir' Show
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 07:08:18 GMT
In article <39C304CE.AF1657C2@tgv-rockets.com>,
Pat Bahn <bahn@tgv-rockets.com> wrote:
>When one buys a service, one agrees on a price and agrees on a service and
>agrees on a schedule. No accounting is neccessary on a fixed price
>contract.
Of course, the US government still wants to *do* it. Yes, really. It's
very difficult for the government to deal with someone who wants to be an
arms-length capitalist supplier rather than a socialist design bureau;
they're not used to it and not geared up for it.
(Usually it only happens when somebody's really got the government over a
barrel, so the bureaucrats can't insist on things being done their way.
For example, reportedly the company which makes the shuttle SRB casing
segments insists on being just a commercial supplier, and gets away with
this because it's difficult work and nobody else can do it.)
--
Microsoft shouldn't be broken up. | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
It should be shut down. -- Phil Agre | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Who will mine Lunar ice first?
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2000 06:12:16 GMT
In article <QutD5.151633$Ur3.2114776@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>,
Mike Rhino <kestrelwings@laser.home.com> wrote:
>To get the old NASA back:
>1. Cut back on subcontracting. This is the opposite of privatizing, but I
>think that it is more efficient.
With the right people, it can be more efficient, for a while. The trouble
is that it doesn't last. Competition works better than central planning
in the long run; just ask the Eastern Europeans...
>Some people advocate privatization while
>at the same time criticizing Lockheed-Martin over the X-33. We had the
>wrong type of contract in that case. It should have been cost plus instead
>of fixed price. The problem with fixed price is that when the money runs
>out the project slows down.
And the problem with cost-plus is that people get paid for effort rather
than for results -- so unless it's very carefully run, the project goes at
full blast but never gets anywhere. (The phrase "space station" comes to
mind, I can't imagine why...)
Half X-33's budget, split among the three most promising new rocket
companies (whichever you think those are), would probably have gotten at
least one new launch system into orbit.
>2. NASA needs to hire some economists and accountants so that they can
>figure out the most efficient way of accomplishing a task and accurately
>estimate the cost.
NASA already suffers from having too many accountants and not enough good
engineers. NASA puts a lot of effort into estimating how to do things
most efficiently and how much they should cost. The answers that come out
give you a fairly good idea of how Lockheed Martin would do things most
efficiently or how much Orbital Sciences would charge NASA for it. Which
has nothing to do with real efficiency or actual minimum costs.
The way to get things done efficiently and at low cost is to give people
*incentive* to do so. A sign saying "Work efficiently!" is not an
incentive. Nor is a bureaucrat watching over their shoulders and
complaining every time they spend a dime.
About five years ago, I bought a computer. Computers with ten times the
speed, ten times the memory, and ten times the disk capacity now cost
about a tenth as much. This did *not* happen as the result of efficiency
guidelines and refined cost estimates from the government's Bureau Of
Computing Cost Reduction. It happened as the result of murderous,
cutthroat competition, with company after company going broke trying to
sell computers ten dollars cheaper. Some succeeded.
--
Microsoft shouldn't be broken up. | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
It should be shut down. -- Phil Agre | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Who will mine Lunar ice first?
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2000 23:42:01 GMT
In article <rUGD5.152660$Ur3.2168237@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>,
Mike Rhino <kestrelwings@laser.home.com> wrote:
>> With the right people, it can be more efficient, for a while. The trouble
>> is that it doesn't last. Competition works better than central planning
>> in the long run; just ask the Eastern Europeans...
>
>Eastern Europeans haven't had much luck with switching from communism to
>capitalism...
And the relevance of this is? I didn't say anything about switching from
one system to the other, I was comparing fully-developed forms.
By the way, speaking very generally, the most successful Eastern Europeans
are the ones who switched immediately and wholeheartedly, rather than
delaying and fiddling around and vacillating about it. The prevalence of
the latter approach goes a long way to explaining the problems.
>> And the problem with cost-plus is that people get paid for effort rather
>> than for results -- so unless it's very carefully run, the project goes at
>> full blast but never gets anywhere.
>
>Didn't we land a man on the moon?
Who's "we"? The NASA of thirty years ago did that. Today's NASA can't.
>> (The phrase "space station" comes to
>> mind, I can't imagine why...)
>
>Many things have gone wrong with the space station, but that isn't one...
I beg to differ. The reason why the project is over a decade behind
schedule -- the President's orders were that it was to be up and
operational by 1992, remember -- is precisely that NASA spent a lot of
time expending great efforts and getting roughly nowhere. Why? Because
almost nobody cared whether anything ever flew, so long as the dollars
(paid for effort, not results) kept flowing.
>> so unless it's very carefully run
>
>That problem exists for all proposals. There is no way around it. Are
>saying that under your plan it can be run like crap and still succeed?
I'm saying that under my plan, the company that runs it like crap goes
bankrupt, and one of the other companies fills the gap. There is no way
you can legislate good management, but you can make plans which aren't so
sensitive to the failure of *one set* of managers. (Doing this also tends
to improve the quality of management, by the way, since there is real and
specific incentive to do a good job.)
>...With brand new things, nobody knows what it costs. Bids are not
>going to end up matching costs.
Quite true. Which is why you don't want to pick a single winner based on
bid viewgraphs. The way you keep a company honest, when they're doing a
complex task whose cost you can't estimate well, is to have alternatives.
"You say you have to jack the price up because you've hit unexpected costs?
I guess you won't be getting our business, then. Too bad."
>There aren't that many companies that can
>bid on lunar rockets. There's Lockheed Martin and Boeing...
I would rephrase that to "there aren't that many traditional aerospace
contractors that can bid on lunar rockets". If you're willing to open up
the bidding to people who haven't done this sort of thing before -- and do
remember that the Atlas, Thor, and Titan were all built by companies which
had never built a large rocket before -- then I can think of half a dozen
candidates, starting with Beal Aerospace.
The mindset which says that only traditional contractors could possibly be
qualified to bid is a large part of the problem.
>> This did *not* happen as the result of efficiency
>> guidelines and refined cost estimates from the government's Bureau Of
>> Computing Cost Reduction. It happened as the result of murderous,
>> cutthroat competition...
>
>The government doesn't pay Microsoft and Dell to produce stuff.
Sure it does -- it buys stuff from them all the time. But it buys *results*,
not *promises*.
>In the case of the manned space program, if the government doesn't pay,
>it doesn't get done.
Quite true, there is only one customer right now. But that customer is
paying far too much, because it's followed a consistent pattern of looking
at the viewgraphs and picking the winner, rather than paying for results
and keeping competition open.
>Robots are better adapted to space than humans are...
Only if what you want to do is things that robots can do easily.
--
Microsoft shouldn't be broken up. | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
It should be shut down. -- Phil Agre | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.station,sci.space.history
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Where are the Billionaires??
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 20:59:20 GMT
In article <3A3BC6AC.E8907A91@nospamplease.erols.com>,
rk <stellare@nospamplease.erols.com> wrote:
>Ignorant question: OK, I'm learning more about the '60s, so obliviously
>not on top of all of this. Was Kennedy pro-space? It seems that VP
>Johnson was. What I have been reading so far was that the Moon landing
>program getting the kick in the butt was more of a response to Soviet
>space spectaculars and our perception on the world stage w.r.t.
>mastering technology than with being pro-space. Is this correct?
Very much so. Apollo was a creation of the Cold War, and specifically the
result of Kennedy wanting to do something impressive and challenging in
response to a number of international embarrassments like the Bay of Pigs.
Kennedy may have liked space but he wasn't actively pro-space.
>...Could George Jr. pull it off under these circumstances and
>convince the Congress and the public that it is an acceptable way to
>"spend part of the surplus?"
I doubt it -- not unless he can convince people that it will be done
efficiently, and that will be difficult if NASA gets the job. As Goldin
commented some years ago, the first step toward any sort of resumption of
manned space exploration was to demonstrate that the space-station program
could be done efficiently, to restore NASA's credibility as an agency that
can do big projects... and while he understood what was needed, he didn't
deliver on that one.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.station,sci.space.history
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Where are the Billionaires??
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 00:18:08 GMT
In article <3a3c8af1.147596539@news.seanet.com>,
Derek Lyons <elde@hurricane.net> wrote:
>>As Goldin commented some years ago, the first step toward any sort of
>>resumption of manned space exploration was to demonstrate that the
>>space-station program could be done efficiently, to restore NASA's
>>credibility as an agency that can do big projects... and while he
>>understood what was needed, he didn't deliver on that one.
>
>How much of that is his fault, and how much the extensive Presidential
>and Congressional meddling?
Some of both, I would say. In particular, Goldin is notorious for
shooting the messenger, which is just what you don't need in a reformer.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Legal Issues of Purchasing SRB, ET for private HLV
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 20:49:28 GMT
In article <948bgi$jqm@news.nd.edu>, tmarotta <tmarotta@nd.edu> wrote:
>Does anyone know the legal issues, if any, of purchasing off-the-shelf
>External Tanks and Solid Rocket Booster for use with a possible privately
>funded Shuttle clone? Is it legal?
It's legal... but you're going to have to negotiate with NASA, not the
companies, because all that work was done under NASA contract. The
chances of getting NASA approval for such a purchase are roughly zero.
Almost certainly, they will say "that's a very interesting idea, we'll
have to study it carefully before giving you an answer". They will go on
saying that, for years if necessary, perhaps occasionally varying it with
requests for lots more detail on everything, until you lose interest.
You're not the first to think of doing a privately-funded shuttle. Nor
the second, nor the third. NASA does not want private competition.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Legal Issues of Purchasing SRB, ET for private HLV
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 06:10:11 GMT
In article <3A68DE51.C13449E9@nospamplease.erols.com>,
rk <stellare@nospamplease.erols.com> wrote:
>> It's legal... but you're going to have to negotiate with NASA, not the
>> companies, because all that work was done under NASA contract.
>
>Er, totally ignorant question. Can't one sort of do the mother of all
>FOIA requests?
That'll get you information, but not hardware.
>What is the mechanism that forces a negotion to go through NASA in
>general? If one wants an SRB, why does one have to go through NASA?
Because they paid for things like the production tooling. Even the
special railcars used to transport SRB segments belong to NASA. In the
case of the ET, most of the manufacturing is done in the NASA-owned
Michoud plant.
And quite aside from questions of ownership, the companies involved are
making far too much money off their NASA contracts to take the slightest
chance of offending their number one customer... a customer that is well
known for its proprietary attitude toward the shuttle.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Legal Issues of Purchasing SRB, ET for private HLV
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 06:15:46 GMT
In article <DC6a6.2769$hm.17613@grover.nit.gwu.edu>,
Dwayne Allen Day <wayneday@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu> wrote:
>: You're not the first to think of doing a privately-funded shuttle. Nor
>: the second, nor the third. NASA does not want private competition.
>
>This has nothing to do with NASA not wanting "private
>competition." Nobody can afford a space shuttle.
On the contrary, in the early days there were several serious bids to
build privately-owned orbiters, at least two of which had full financing
ready. All failed on NASA's unwillingness to cooperate, which was
expressed exactly as I said: ostensible polite interest combined with
indefinite stalling.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: What if NASA had sold some moon rocks?
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 06:58:51 GMT
In article <3A68A8FD.CE84E222@sff.net>,
Geoffrey A. Landis <Geoffrey.Landis@grc.nasa.gov> wrote:
>> There was a proposal for a privately-financed Apollo 18, to be paid
>> for by sales of rocks.
>
>Reference, please.
It isn't exactly well documented, since NASA brushed it off as a crackpot
idea. That said, I have seen one or two brief references to it, and would
have sworn I could supply a pointer to at least one, but a quick search
doesn't find one.
The concept was referred to as "Harvest Moon" or "Operation Harvest Moon",
and if memory serves, Barbara Hubbard was the main promoter. It wasn't
secret; I remember reading a news report about it at the time.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Legal Issues of Purchasing SRB, ET for private HLV
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 18:46:49 GMT
In article <Wria6.2784$hm.17637@grover.nit.gwu.edu>,
Dwayne Allen Day <wayneday@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu> wrote:
>: case of the ET, most of the manufacturing is done in the NASA-owned
>: Michoud plant.
>
>NASA doesn't own the Michoud plant.
That's interesting -- when was it sold? It was government-owned as of
Apollo.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
From: Dave Michelson <dmichelson@ieee.org>
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Legal Issues of Purchasing SRB, ET for private HLV
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 22:10:59 GMT
Henry Spencer wrote:
> That's interesting -- when was it sold? It was government-owned as of
> Apollo.
Hmm. My posting on this topic hasn't appeared yet (and may be lost) so
I'll try again:
According to our friends at Lockheed Martin, they produce "the Space
Shuttle External Tank (ET) at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New
Orleans. The NASA facility reports to Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville, Alabama."
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/michoud/aboutus/aboutus_index.html
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/michoud/aboutus/history.htm
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/michoud/aboutus/nasa.htm
Perhaps LM manages and operates the facility for NASA.
--
Dave Michelson
dmichelson@ieee.org
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Legal Issues of Purchasing SRB, ET for private HLV
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 02:42:41 GMT
In article <3A6A0DBD.C99777F8@ieee.org>,
Dave Michelson <dmichelson@ieee.org> wrote:
>[Michoud]
>Perhaps LM manages and operates the facility for NASA.
That was my understanding -- it's a GOCO (Government Owned, Contractor
Operated) facility, like the orbiter maintenance facility at Palmdale.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.history,sci.space.station
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: launcher history (was Re: Destiny not that Big?!?!)
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 19:57:35 GMT
In article <3A6B31AA.4D38A9AE@videotron.ca>,
JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@videotron.ca> wrote:
>Going back to the seventies when the decision to build Shuttle was made. Was
>this done before or after the budget was cut in half ?
NASA was firmly committed to building a reusable launcher of some kind
from the mid-60s on. It really did seem like a very obvious thing to do,
to provide more and cheaper access to space. (Mind you, they originally
envisioned it replacing only the Saturn IB and smaller vehicles, not the
Saturn V.)
>**with hindsight**, should NASA have built the shuttle or continued to use
>Saturn boosters with just some changes to the upper portion to provide Shuttle
>like habitable space ?
With hindsight, it would have been better to move gradually toward
reusability, perhaps starting with a reusable manned upper stage for the
Saturn IB -- something rather like a shuttle orbiter, but with tanks built
in instead of dropped -- and then modifying the first stage for lower cost
and reusability. The Saturn V would be retained, perhaps with work done
on partial reusability, at a low flight rate, launching occasional lunar
expeditions and other heavy payloads like space stations.
It *just might* have been possible to sell a slower-paced, evolutionary,
economy-minded program to Nixon and Congress. Instead, NASA asked for a
new reusable launcher *and* a space station *and* a Mars program, and then
had to salvage what it could from the ensuing political wreckage.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: What if NASA had sold some moon rocks?
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 21:51:22 GMT
In article <3A6A0D46.4038@sff.net>,
Geoffrey A. Landis <geoffrey.landis@sff.net> wrote:
>I'd be curious to see an actual reference...
So would I; I'm annoyed that I can't find one...
>Precisely what was proposed,
>and exactly to whom was it proposed? By whom? When?
Working from somewhat-dim memory... The proposal was to fly one more
Apollo, with NASA supplying hardware, facilities, and crew. A commercial
venture would pay the incremental costs -- and *only* the incremental
costs -- of finishing the hardware and flying the mission. In return, it
would get clear title to a large fraction of the lunar rocks and soil
returned, to be sold in various ways to recover the initial investment.
Any samples of unusual scientific interest, and a modest fraction of the
rest, would remain with NASA as part of its lunar-sample collection.
Timing I am unsure of, but I'd guess that it was in early 1971, with the
initial idea germinating when NASA (in Sept 1970) cancelled Apollos 15 and
19 to save a relatively small amount of money.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: What if NASA had sold some moon rocks?
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 02:34:47 GMT
In article <3A6CCB73.C7416DC6@home.com>,
Michael Walsh <mp1walsh@home.com> wrote:
>I have already read that NASA is quite willing to purchase consumables
>for the ISS if someone is capable of delivering them.
Unfortunately, this may be like the 1980s NASA being quite willing to turn
over the shuttle to a private owner eventually -- that's what they *said*,
yes, but actual proposals always "needed more study" or were found to be
"impractical". A particular issue for ISS resupply is what standards
would have to be met before NASA would permit a commercially-designed
vehicle, especially an unmanned one, to approach ISS for docking.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Legal Issues of Purchasing SRB, ET for private HLV
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 16:44:58 GMT
In article <94e0to$tpp$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, <spacecadet@startrekmail.com> wrote:
>> On the contrary, in the early days there were several serious bids to
>> build privately-owned orbiters...
>
>Any details, like who where the two that had full financing, how much
>was that?
Been a long time and I wasn't keeping track then... One of the
fully-financed bids was led by, if memory serves, Prudential Insurance.
The deals typically were complicated, since just buying an orbiter isn't a
lot of use without access to the facilities to fly it. Some of them
envisioned combining commercial operation of the whole fleet with private
financing of a fifth orbiter.
Ah, I see I saved an old (1993) sci.space posting by Wales Larrison on the
subject of shuttle commercialization. Some excerpts:
"I've been reading some of the discussions about "commercializing"
the shuttle. I've worked with some of the teams putting together
the business plan on a couple of these attempts...
Prior to this pass at commercializing the shuttle, there have
been (by my count) at least 4 very serious prior attempts and
proposals. All of these have had real serious money backing them
up, including one pass that had several billions of dollars in a
letter of commitment from the folks who had financed the Alaska
pipeline project, as well as the usual corporate financial sources...
The biggest stumbling block left is the NASA culture. NASA has
embraced the shuttle as part of its core "identity". Moving the
shuttle to a commercial operator will mean that folks will have to
find new jobs within the agency, and would radically change how NASA
operates and how NASA sees itself..."
As for the extent to which that stumbling block has changed... not much.
United Space Alliance now does a lot of the gruntwork, but NASA is still
firmly in charge and is quietly adamant that this will not change. A
couple of years back, the head of U.S.A. got fired merely for suggesting
that real commercialization might someday happen.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.history
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: launcher history (was Re: Destiny not that Big?!?!)
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 21:20:24 GMT
In article <3a6ef339.86250362@news.virginia.edu>,
Chris Manteuffel <cdm7g*REMOVETHIS*@virginia.edu> wrote:
>>With hindsight, it would have been better to move gradually toward
>>reusability, perhaps starting with a reusable manned upper stage for the
>>Saturn IB ... and then modifying the first stage for lower cost
>>and reusability. The Saturn V would be retained...
>
>Heppenheimer, _The Space Shuttle Decision_, says that without external
>tankage, a full size orbiter was outside of the reach of such a
>relatively weak booster.
Yes, but the size of a "full size orbiter" was dictated by requirements
which would not apply to this alternate scenario. Without the massive
up-front costs of a new vehicle built from scratch, USAF political support
would not be required, and hence the cargo bay could be rather smaller and
the maximum payload mass ditto. And without the requirement to launch
space-station modules -- the Saturn V could do that much better -- even
NASA's more modest constraints on the cargo bay could be relaxed.
>With a full size shuttle that carried its own
>tanks, the staging velocity was about 10,000 fps; moving just the LH2
>outboard lowered the optimal staging velocity to 7,000 fps...
Although it's a side issue for the current discussion, note an omitted
option: moving the propellants outboard almost certainly eliminated the
need for *any staging at all*. Several earlier shuttle proposals used
single-stage-with-drop-tank concepts; all had been rejected because of the
dislike, then, for having any expendable element. Once drop tanks were
deemed acceptable, that would have been the sensible way to proceed for a
start-from-scratch vehicle. (Indeed, there were people at the time who
said that the two-stage decision needed re-examining because of the change
in assumptions.)
>"Phased development also carried political risks, for in Washington,
>few things are so permanent as a temporary solution. If NASA could get
>any kind of shuttle into space, even one of interim design, it might
>face strong opposition and long delays before it could win permission
>to build the shuttle it truly wanted." [3]
With a program based on continuing existing designs and gradually evolving
them in the desired direction, such a delay is not a disaster. All it
means is that the next round of improvements is deferred. It's a problem
only if you deliberately sacrifice capabilities, e.g. to reduce up-front
investment in an all-new system, in hopes of getting them back later.
It's important to realize that I'm talking about a different *approach*,
not just a different hardware design: the idea would be to shift NASA's
big-rockets-and-manned-spacecraft side away from major new development
efforts and into an exploiting-and-improving-what-exists pattern. It
would have involved major changes within the agency.
I do think such an approach could have been sold -- it was inherently much
more attractive than "give us lots more money to build the next big new
gadget" -- if the timing had been right. (You do not, repeat NOT, wait
until after the STG "give us LOTS more money to build LOTS of big new
gadgets" report has totally pissed off the White House and Congress. This
is not a drop-in replacement for the shuttle's politics; the groundwork
has to be laid earlier.) It would have needed serious political realism,
though, at a time when NASA upper management was desperately short on that.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Surprising answer from the Canadian Space Agency's Director of
Communications
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 17:42:10 GMT
In article <3A71451C.4FB9BC1E@nospamplease.erols.com>,
rk <stellare@nospamplease.erols.com> wrote:
>In substance, they were quite clear, that as a publicly funded entity
>they do not do in effect lobbying and BS'ing...
Indeed, CSA is tightly restricted in that area. The Canadian government
is more centralized than the US government; agencies like the CSA are very
explicitly charged with carrying out policy, NOT MAKING IT. Policy gets
made at Cabinet level, with input from lower levels only on request and
through proper channels. CSA cannot do anything that so much as *hints*
at lobbying for a change of policy.
Dan Goldin can openly disagree with the White House, within limits, and
get away with it. If the head of CSA tries the equivalent today, he'll be
looking for a new job tomorrow.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.history
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Mission to Mars?
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 16:18:13 GMT
In article <cMoe6.2499$Ee3.75103@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
Douglas Ellison <mailbox@*spam*douglasellison.co.uk> wrote:
>It needs Dubya Bush to give it a JFK speech.
Needs more than that; look what happened when Bush Sr. tried that.
(In case you weren't around and paying attention, the final outcome of
that was that Congress went through NASA's budget line by line, killing
anything that even *hinted* at being connected to SEI.)
>Mars Direct could put a man on mars in ten years - just needs money
Basically correct, although a more efficient space agency would help too.
But note that money comes from Congress, not from Dubya Bush. Selling
Congress on a major Mars effort will be very, very, very difficult. The
incentive is not there.
JFK picked a lunar landing as The Thing To Do In Space, but he did not
create the incentive to Do Something Big In Space. That was there
already, as a result of the politics of the day -- a rare, indeed quite
remarkable, consensus that a big push into space was appropriate. One
should realize that THIS IS NOT THE NORMAL STATE OF AFFAIRS. It was a
freak, an aberration, an astonishing coincidence. It lasted only a few
years, too: political support for Big Space was visibly falling apart by
1967. Apollo got to the Moon on momentum, and NASA management bungling
then lost whatever slim chance there was of continuing that momentum.
There is no similar political consensus today that another Big Space
project is a good thing to do. One presidential speech will make not the
slightest difference. It is vanishingly unlikely that Dubya Bush is going
to make the big investment of time and effort and political capital needed
to make something like this happen under an unenthusiastic Congress. And
the way NASA has bungled ISS makes it all a hundred times harder.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Story Musgrave
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 23:10:30 GMT
In article <973nm3$muv1o$1@ID-76470.news.dfncis.de>,
Tanada <tanada1945@yahoo.com> wrote:
>That just gave me a thought, how would those of you here working for NASA or
>the contractors like to see S Musgrave or say Jim Lovell as NASA director
>when D. Goldin leaves?
And their management experience is...?
The last time a well-thought-of, competent, personable astronaut became
NASA Administrator, the result unfortunately was a total disaster.
While I hesitate to say definitively that there is anything Story Musgrave
can't do :-), a long career as an astronaut is not good preparation for a
management job; indeed, it may be negative preparation.
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Story Musgrave
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 02:07:36 GMT
In article <975hrv$nghjc$1@ID-76470.news.dfncis.de>,
Tanada <tanada1945@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> While I hesitate to say definitively that there is anything Story Musgrave
>> can't do :-), a long career as an astronaut is not good preparation for a
>> management job; indeed, it may be negative preparation.
>
>While I freely admit I don't know much about S. Musgrave, Jim Lovell was a
>naval officer for quite a few years, he managed others of lower rank well
>enough to keep rising in rank ect ect ect, I beleive the same could be said
>for all of the military background astronauts.
Including Dick Truly, unfortunately, which doesn't help the argument. :-)
Being a mid-level military officer and being an agency administrator are
very different jobs. The latter involves far more compromising and
politicking, and a lot less giving orders and receiving salutes. Note,
for example, that Dan Goldin was the first NASA Administrator in many
years that NASA Center directors couldn't just hang up on if they didn't
like what he was saying. (Yes, literally. Goddard's director hung up on
Goldin, and found out the hard way that the rules had changed.)
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
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