Space News got a sneak peek at the final report of the Aldridge Commission (which would have been released yesterday were it not for the delay caused by Ronald Reagan’s funeral) and offers a few details:
- At least some of the NASA field centers should be turned into federally-funded research and development centers (FFRDCs), much like how JPL is run;
- NASA should create three new internal organizations to provide technical advice, independent cost estimation, and to oversee high-risk technology projects;
- The administration should create a “Space Exploration Steering Council”, analogous to the old National Space Council, that reports to the president;
- NASA should rely on private industry more for various services, including access to low Earth orbit.
Nothing here sounds terribly surprising, although it will be interesting to see the rationale behind these recommendations when the report comes out next week.
How can you get “independent cost estimation” from an internal organization? Isn’t that a direct contradiction?
Perhaps a more viable solution would be to hire an outside organization to perform this function. The most obvious choice is The Aerospace Corporation, although a private auditor is another option.
Reviving the space council, in some form or another, is totally expected. However, it is probably not viable. I have written about previous space councils (including the original one for an AIAA book in the mid-1990s). The problem is that a policy advice organization only makes sense if the President is interested in its advice. If the president doesn’t want it, then it will be superfluous and he will ignore it. This is what happened during the Eisenhower administration and the Johnson administration.
Converting NASA field centers into federally-funded research and development centers (FFRDCs), much like JPL sounds like a good idea at first. Wouldn’t this mean however that more sites asking for the same dollars not to mention more pork barrel projects and more book keeping errors.
The administration should create a “Space Exploration Steering Council”, analogous to the old National Space Council, that reports to the president; the MoontoMars commission is just that but good for the agency level but at the rocket level there needs to be more steering.
NASA should rely on private industry more for various services, including access to low Earth orbit. This would be good if not done by contracts.
NASA should create three new internal organizations to provide technical advice probably only if not part of Space exploration council, independent cost estimation not needed for converted Nasa field sites, and to oversee high-risk technology projects still needed even after taking care of the first two items since this is the real R&D work.
Harold,
Not really because FFRDCs aren’t run by the Federal Government. All JPL’s people are employees of the University of California. This removes a lot of overhead and “career bureacrat-ism”. The state organizations have a lot more freedom in terms of money and project management as well as for receiving money from other sources and for easier, more entreprenurial, technology transfer.
Last thought on the converting of Nasa Field offices. Would this or could this lead to duplication of projects or research if no over seeing board.
Minor nitpick on Michael’s posting: JPL is run by Caltech, not the University of California.
On the subject of Caltech, Carly Fiorina of the Aldridge Commission gave the introductory commencement address at Caltech this morning. The webcast can be found here:
http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/04/
http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/04/broadcast/bb/introbb.ram
Carly mostly spoke of the desparate need for science advocates, but she did explain her reasoning for joining the Aldridge commission at about the 25 minute mark on the webcast.
Space.com appear to have an advance copy of the report, FFRDCs all round it seems:
http://www.space.com/news/commission_report_040610.html
OK, scrub the last comment: They updated the old story but kept the URL the same.
‘How can you get “independent cost estimation” from an internal organization? Isn’t that a direct contradiction?’
Nope, not at all; it works fine..in fact, sometimes better than a lot of outside, so-called independent (and often un-trained and un-experienced) assessments. As someone who’s run one, there are four keys to having it successful; and without them..forget it.
A quick and dirty summary:
1. TOTAL ACCESS TO THE DATA AND THE PROGRAM’S PEOPLE. (Something that can’t be given to total ‘outsiders’ for other than defined short periods of time, by the way).
Making this work, though, is harder than it seems; it’s not just a management directive (in fact, that often is what you DON”T want). It requires people who won’t just walk and and insist–like outsiders–on being spoon-fed data; but instead people who will work–emphasis on the word ‘work’–with the Program’s folks, on a continuing basis, and not act like an evil boarding party each time they show up. Once they get used to them, often good Program people will try to take (good) advantage of them by highlighting things to the indie’s that they just can’t seem to get up their chain of command at the moment.
2. TOTAL INDEPENDENCE FROM THAT PROGRAM.
(don’t get too hung up on the word ‘Total’, by the way).
A Good as well as Bad Example? On paper, for example, safety and quality overight in NASA is ‘independent’ simply by having safety/quality report directly to the Administrator. HOWEVER, this can (and has) been circumvented in the past; by putting a ‘friendly’, non-invasive, head of safety/reliability in the slot who wouldn’t rock the boat; such as during the latter 90s with the shuttle and station programs, so that the (intended) result of no intensive independence of e.g., shuttle/station is accomplished.
The result: a safety/quality system that is repeatedly described (as you know!) as ‘broken’ in the CAIB report. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that, according to the CAIB report, the person who was officially head of that officially ‘failed’ and ‘broken’ effort in the years leading up to Columbia wasn’t even interviewed. (He WAS promoted, however; something, again, not noted in the CAIB report: that a system everyone saw as rewarding only those who ‘played along’was–AND STILL IS–in place. The CAIB’s silence on the matter is in fact direct evidence that it still continues).
((Note here: I liked the CAIB report….in what was actually written; the few technical errors that I found were made in volume one I’ve discussed, among others, with Paul Wilde, after one of his ‘post-CAIB’ presentations contained the errors. But the place where CAIB really failed the American people…and still does, to this moment…is in what it doesn’t say; of which the above is one example)).
3. RESOURCES: First and over-riding resource: ability to hire the right senior, experience, dedicated PEOPLE. And I’m not talking thousands, here. (In fact, large ‘casts’ in such roles do NOT work).
EXAMPLE: In setting up such an office on space station in the early nineties, I very deliberately kept it small; but went out of my way to find…fight for…steal…the right senior, experienced people. Not GS-12s; each one was a GS-15 who was a true expert in their field and still had a fire in their belly and were willing to both work with people…and also call them as they see them….and, in particular, FIX THINGS AS THEY WENT ALONG; not wait until a year later and produce an ‘independent report’ after hundreds of millions have already been spent. This the emphasis was on fixing things that went along, it also meant another thing: I needed people who didn’t mind NOT getting any ‘credit’ afterwards (as Ronald Reagan would have said), since the intention was not to publicize themselves later with big presentations, but rather fix things–including management brokes, not just technical ones…as they went along; making the Program seem like it was catching its own errors and fixing them).
Two managers at the Centers at the time… a (later) Center Director at MSFC; and the main Project Manager at JSC…later told me they had been ‘skeptical’ (that’s the polite word!) of the whole effort to do the above; but once they saw that this independent little group actually helped either make their program better/make it work/occassionally saved them, they both pulled me aside (at different times, in different locations) and told me they were presently surprised.
But again, the key is authority to hire the RIGHT people: very experienced, who can’t be bs’d either technically or managerially–and outsiders not familiar with a very large, on-going program, usually can be– but who also want to do other than just make a presentation a year later and say ‘gotcha’ to some one. And it’s possible, believe me.
The key to how each ‘super-professional’ can cover a large segment of a Program and make a difference–besides getting people with the right experience, attitude, and boss-is this:
Their ‘charge’ is NOT to try to know everything; that’s impossible, even for each Program’s manager. What IS possible in such an independent oversight job is the experience and curiosity to FIND AND UNDERSTAND WHERE THE RISKS are in the Program; then assess where the RESOURCES of the Program are going (i.e., management’s time and focus; number of people; amount of money; priority on testing, etc. etc.); and SEEING WHERE THOSE TWO LISTS DON’T MATCH UP.
simple example: Challenger accident. For years both management and operations and engineering were focused on risk reduction in the same two areas: main propulsion, and the landing/decel system. The SRB assembly process was very complex and involved….and NEVER seriously was on senior management’s or SE&I’s radar screen.
I clearly remember in ’84/’85 at one dinner at Ninfa’s in Houston between a group of MSFC and JSC guys; the argument got into was, which system would most likely cause an accident? One single engineer there said the SRBs…and both sides were incredulous. The rest of them all agreed: heck, the SRBs were like the ET; ‘simple, assumed reliability One, have to, no choice…” and they all went back to arguing SSME vs. brake failure modes.
The problem, of course, is that the SRBs on THIS program were NOT simple…there were lots of high-risk areas that weren’t even getting attention or discussion, much less resources. You don’t have to understand each issue or be able to build your own vehicle; you DO need to be able to dig, and discover, on your own, where the RISKS really area…which is often where no one is speaking about them….and where the resources really aren’t. Per $500m or so spent, you only need one Super-person with the right attitude, experience, and marching orders to be able to make a difference in that way. And it’s done best from inside the Agency….not outside. Not on a continuing basis,anyway; and that’s what we’re talking about here.
BOTTOM LINE to this mini-tome (sorry, guys; but, I’ve been under official orders to Shut the Hell Up with respect to anything related to the agency these last couple of years; guess I might as well come out of the closet with a bang….):
1. It not only IS possible to have it internal to the Agency..it is often the most desirable and effective mode; but,
2. Only IF certain criteria and modes of operating are met; and,
3. Total Honesty is in force on where the failures of such schemes…the safety/quality oversight area being one example…happened, and how it’s being made sure that won’t happen again. And it is on the latter that nothing, still, has been done; and I hope to hell this commission report does something about it. Otherwise, no matter what well-intentioned re-org is put in place, it will almost immediately, it will be discovered later, start to, well, I guess ‘degenerate’ is the closest word I can get to.
The latter, sadly, didn’t happen as much as was–and still is…..truly needed in the CAIB; and it isn’t happening in the Agency now that I can see.
ok, something that escaped the notice before:
“The commission also identified 17 enabling technologies needed to accomplish the exploration goals. These include an affordable heavy lift capability …”
why is this commission issuing recommendations wrt to technologies ? By their own words, i thought they were strictly for organizational and policy advice ?
Another disturbing part:
“the commission wants NASA to turn over nearly all launch activity to private firms…The commission specifically exempts the launching of human crews from this recommendation”
According to this, NASA could start building another X33 if they want to.
My understanding is that the commission’s charter allows them to recommend programmatic emphasis on particular capabilities, like heavy launchers, advanced propulsion, on-orbit assembly and so on.
What they said they wouldn’t do was specify particular technologies, such as X33, or new EELV variants etc.(*) I don’t know whether that was for charter reasons or because they didn’t have time.
(*) Actually, just specifying heavy launchers already presumes that the way we go about launch and on-orbit assembly in the future will be the way we went about it in the past.
As for all unmanned launches being private, I thought that was the case already, but I guess it precludes NASA from operating a launcher of its own in the future, though hopefully not from investing in the future of launchers.
Investing in the future of launchers has not been a particular speciality of the corporate aerospace sector either. If the turnover and margins of the this sector increase dramatically, a Bell labs style operation to develop technologies that create new markets in space may be possible in the bigger companies – there’s almost no serious research right now, only low-risk development related to existing products.
Unfortunately, the way to make the cheapest possible aerospace products, e.g. satellites, is never to change the way you build it or the components you use, until a supplier goes out of business and you’re forced to. That’s understandable in a business, but that culture opposes the culture of innovation, as do cost-plus contracts.
The X-prize companies might get the needed revenue stream and profit margins to develop new launchers eventually. But it’s a maybe, and as far as NASA’s concerned, hope should not be a plan.
I guess the big question I have is then: who will ask a business to send men into space for exploration as Nasa has done in the past or will they actually decide to do this because there is a profit in doing so.
If only the largest are capable then why have Boeing and Lockheed not developed manned capablility independent of Nasa’s needs.
Settlement maybe the ultimate goal of the common man to begin life anew much like many of our ancestors did when they came to the new world but there is no profit in exploration or in science alone.