This morning the House Science Committee’s space and aeronautics subcommittee will be holding a hearing on NASA’s space science programs in the FY2008 budget proposal, featuring the agency’s new associate administrator for science, Alan Stern, as well as several outside experts. The hearing will be at 10 am in Rayburn 2318 and will be webcast.
Also today, Senators Barbara Mikulski and Richard Shelby will host a “roundtable discussion” with five Nobel laureates, including John Mather of NASA Goddard. The roundtable, Mikulski’s spokesperson said, is designed “to look at promising new areas of research that will keep America competitive and look at why it is important to continue funding our nation’s research programs.”
It’s worth reading the testimony from the panel witnesses about the impacts to NASA’s space science program. Per Len Fisk, the number of space science missions launched will drop to two per year in the 2010-12 timeframe, from a rate of five to seven missions per year since the mid-1990s. Per Garth Illingworth, astrophysics will have no new missions for three years in 2010-12. Given the high productivity of NASA space science, these are unwise impacts to pay for even a well constructed human space exploration program. They are totally unacceptable cuts to pay for a poorly designed human space exploration program that consists of little more than an unnecessarily duplicative and expensive LEO launcher and an oversized human capsule.
I also have to say that I’m not terribly impressed by Alan Stern.
His history with New Horizons is primarily one of circumventing, not respecting, scientific and mission selection processes. I would not trust Stern to be a manager of such processes.
And although I do not expect Stern to go against his boss and demand budgetary increases for NASA science, his testimony fails to address the central problem that NASA science now has fifty pounds of missions to fit into a five pound budget sack. Instead, Stern’s testimony only makes vague promises about creating yet more management boards to examine mission priorities, mission cost estimation and management, and the pending termination of the Delta II line, with no timetable for recommendations or decisions. The only substance to Stern’s testimony is his initiative to deal with smaller budget problems in R&A grants and suborbital programs, but that’s relatively low-hanging fruit.
Stern needs to wake up in the new few months and perform some radical budget surgery by terminating the weakest appendages or the whole body of NASA’s science programs is going to be sick for years to come.
Your assessment of unacceptability of these cuts is pretty much dead on.
Yes, Stern’s testimony was short, but give him a break. He’s been on the job for just several weeks and has pretty much inherited these problems from his predecessor. The timetable is pretty obvious. It’s set (in the near term) by the first round of FY09 budget development activities in the late summer.
As to management boards, ever since the Space Science Advisory Committee was disbanded by his boss, the Science Mission Directorate has had NO formal, balanced, directorate-wide science community input. So Stern is basically in a position of reconstituting some formal community-wide consensus building to make the hard choices that various Decadal Surveys failed to make.
Yep, he needs to make some radical surgery, but it’s not a matter of waking up. It’s a matter of getting his sharp knife pointed in the right direction.
“Yes, Stern’s testimony was short, but give him a break. He’s been on the job for just several weeks”
I’d argue that anyone playing at Stern’s level in the space science community should not require even a few weeks. The point about the FY09 budget process is well taken. But Stern should know the landscape very well already and in what direction to point the budget knife. His testimony should reflect at least a little of that programmatic substance rather than vague arm-waving about cost studies, mission management reform, and yet more do-nothing senior meetings about the Delta II problem.
“As to management boards, ever since the Space Science Advisory Committee was disbanded by his boss, the Science Mission Directorate has had NO formal, balanced, directorate-wide science community input.”
It’s not clear to me that’s what Stern is reconstituting. Instead, it sounds like a Nobel laureate and a couple other esteemed scientists will be making recommendations to Stern regarding science direction and mission selection. While that might be better than Mary Cleave’s limp-wristed, fractured, and poor decisionmaking, it’s still unclear at this point what, if any, community consensus-taking and -building will be done outside the decadal surveys.
Fisk’s testimony sounded pretty grim.
http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/File/Commdocs/hearings/2007/space/02may/fisk_testimony.pdf
There’s a chart (I originally reached via this NASAWatch link http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2007/04/no_joy_in_the_s.html) that shows his point about the withering away of missions here (on slide page 9):
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ssb/Mar07mtg_Hartman.pdf
According to the chart, and matching Fisk’s testimony, New Earth observation, astronomy, planetary science, and solar/space weather missions will have almost grinded to a halt by 2010-2012. That’s the time frame that current decisions effect (currently they are still surviving and launching missions off of previous years’ investments). Note that SOFIA isn’t an actual spacecraft mission if you’re more interested in the satellite or launch industries than the observations, so you might even consider that chart optimistic. I also find the out years in the chart to be overly optimistic, assuming current NASA policy holds, because, in addition to the usual difficulties, I suspect the Ares program will have significant cost overruns and delays that these missions will have to cover for many years. I also think that doing so few actual space missions will erode some industry skills and economies of scale, causing higher costs and more delays and failures.
Fisk also discussed the need for cost-effective missions, including suborbital technology demonstrators, small satellites, and small launchers. It sounds like the remaining science community should be checking into how they might be able to benefit from things like the potential new suborbital personal spaceflight vehicles, and help make sure (eg: by developing compatible instruments) these actually happen.
Re the level that Stern has been playing at, what level has Stern been playing in the Earth Science or Astrophysics community? Not very high at all. For those communities, the idea of an impatient self-defined Planetary insider with a big knife would be pretty scary.
Re reconstitution, he’s not reconstituting what his boss took apart. Not much political intelligence in that. One gathers that he’s assembling a mechanism to get what he needs in the way of community consensus. You’re right that it’s not at all clear yet how the mechanism is going to work (or if it is going to work) when it gets switched on.
Again, in all fairness, give the guy some time to get his feet on the ground. NASA HQ is a VERY different place than the rest of the universe, and actually looks a lot different from the inside than from the outside. Bulls in china shops are not necessarily what is needed right now.
Anonymous,
Griffin is dealing the cards, and no matter how you play them, there was going to be lots of blood on the floor. In summary, the blame for this mess lies with Griffin, not with the people he hires to execute his plans.
IMO, Stern has no good choices to cleaning up the mess. If you disagree, please tell me what you think Stern should do, given the budget he has.
It is quite possible that the best Stern can do is play at the margins — in fact I am betting that Griffin has a short leash on him. If Stern does have a plan to cut select projects to free up funding elsewhere (as you suggest he do), the last thing he should do is pull a Griffin and telegraph his plans to everybody so they can go running to the Hill.
– Al
“Re the level that Stern has been playing at, what level has Stern been playing in the Earth Science or Astrophysics community? Not very high at all.”
I disagree. Stern is the PI for New Horizons, a Pluto mission that he was primarily responsible for pushing through Congress a half-decade or so back despite White House opposition and (more importantly) over the competitve selection process established by the New Frontiers program. Stern has been playing at a high level for quite some time now and has demonstrated that he understands the landscape (and how to circumvent it) quite well.
I’m worried that his testimony did not reflect his state of knowledge and skill, because that either means: 1) he’s not going to be allowed by Griffin to put his political skills to work to fix the space science mess (which would be a waste), or 2) he’s going to continue to play games, circumventing priorities established by the science community and competitive processes in favor of playing favorites and personal gain (as demonstrated on New Horizons).
Just Stern’s conflict of interest on New Horizons alone should give everyone pause going forward.
“Re reconstitution, he’s not reconstituting what his boss took apart. Not much political intelligence in that.”
I disagree again. When budgets are worst is precisely the time that an R&D agency like NASA most needs broad input from its scientific communities, for two reasons: 1) to help inoculate the agency against political blowback for the tough decisions that must be made, and 2) to make sure that those tough decisions are the right ones.
Mather and his two deputies will probably be great scientific leaders, but they cannot hope to accurately reflect the community’s priorities and inoculate NASA without reconstituting some function akin to the long-standing SSAC.
“If you disagree, please tell me what you think Stern should do, given the budget he has.”
These probably wouldn’t represent where the community comes out, but I for one would:
Kill SOFIA. How they could design an Earth-based telescope that will be less productive than space-based equivalents, especially after all the overruns, schedule slips, and loss of technical relevance, is beyond me. Put it and us out of our misery.
Re-scale JWST requirements. Too hard, too fast. Make her smaller and less capable but still a substantive step over HST.
Kill STP. The program is so stretched out that the solar and heliospheric probes won’t get the intended good from simultaneous operations. It’s no longer a coherent mission sequence. May as well compete the missions AO-style.
Put the savings into reconstituting a smaller Origins program (rethink SIM and TPF given other, cheaper concepts like cat’s eye and shade interferometers and European interest in GAIA), augmenting/accelerating the Mars program in minor but important ways, getting at least one flagship planetary mission underway to Europa/Titan/Enceladus/etc. (although it would still be on a fairly slow development curve), and putting in place a competed AO program for mid-size astrophysics missions (like Discovery and New Frontiers are for planetary science) so there is a place for bigger missions than Explorers in high-energy astrophysics and solar and heliospheric physics.
I think such a restructuring would appropriately sacrifice the weak children in the space science family for the sake of a healthier family that accurately reflects the search-for-habitable-environments priority of the VSE (extrasolar planets, Mars, Outer Planets) while also broadly providing regular opportunities across all space science disciplines.
I’d also fix some of the R&A and suborbital cuts per Stern’s testimony, get the newspace community involved in the latter and in solving the Delta II problem, and put some seed money into some technology priorities. But that’s easy, low-hanging fruit compared to the restructuring described above.
“If Stern does have a plan to cut select projects to free up funding elsewhere (as you suggest he do), the last thing he should do is pull a Griffin and telegraph his plans to everybody so they can go running to the Hill.”
That’s a fair critique. But Stern should at least be clear in his testimony that he’s going to have to make tough decisions. It’s not clear at all from his testimony that such decisions are forthcoming. Instead, it appears that Stern is just going to play at the margins budgetarily and rely on vague future improvements in cost and mission management to fix his budget problems (probably long after he’s gone). Or he’s going to continue to circumvent established selection processes and community priorities as he did on New Horizons.
Hey guys,
Several of you mentioned suborbital cuts, could you elaborate? I work for one of those NewSpace suborbital companies that’s targeting that market, but I’m an engineer, so I typically have my nose buried in engineering issues, and sometimes miss what’s going on in the NASA part of the market.
~Jon
“Several of you mentioned suborbital cuts, could you elaborate? I work for one of those NewSpace suborbital companies that’s targeting that market, but I’m an engineer, so I typically have my nose buried in engineering issues, and sometimes miss what’s going on in the NASA part of the market.”
Go to http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/index.html and click on the “Full Document” link for the “FY 2008 Budget Request”.
In that document, go to page 105 in Adobe (SM-85 in the document) and you’ll see the budget line from FY 2006 through FY 2012 for “Heliophysics Research”. That space science discipline is the major customer for sounding rockets at NASA currently. That line contains NASA’s budget for “Sounding Rockets”, which is described on the next few pages. Unfortunately, the budget for “Sounding Rockets” itself is not broken out, but the overall “Heliophysics Research” line is getting squeezed a little, so the “Sounding Rockets” line has probably taken some hit. Page 107 (SMD-87) specifically states that approximately 10 sounding rocket missions will be undertaken in FY 2008, which I think is down from a high of 20 (maybe 30 or 40) some years ago.
Apparently Stern is going to try to reverse this trend, but I’d warn that the altitudes these guys generally go for (often multiples of STS/ISS altitudes) are not necessarily consistent with the altitudes of the emergent human suborbital vehicles (~100km), although there could be new applications at those altitudes if the right people got together.
I’d also point out that there is a high altitude “Balloons” program in “Astrophysics Research” on page 216 (SMD-196) of the document, which is another possible market for emergent suborbital vehicles, especially ones that could mount lots of flights in relatively short periods of time. But again, budget numbers are only available at the “Astrophysics Research” level on page 213 (SMD-193).
Microgravity flights would be another sounding rocket customer, but to my knowledge NASA has curtailed all such research in SOMD to pay for Ares 1/Orion.
Finally, there is a ray of hope in the “Innovative Partnerships Program” on page 454 (CASP-37). In the box paragraph under “Performance Achievement Highlights”, there is a sentence that reads:
“IPP also plans to develop and demonstrate a means for NASA to purchase services from emerging parabolic aircraft flight and suborbital launch providers for microgravity research and training”
This is clearly the category that MSS falls into so you’d probably want to reach out to these folks first and foremost. I’d note that Centennial Challenges also now falls under “Innovative Partnerships Program” so you could probably talk to the NASA guys you work with on the Lunar Lander Prize to get the names and numbers of whomever is responsible for these potential future service acquisitions.
I’d just warn that there is no clear budget assigned to these services and that Griffin promised such an emergent suborbital services acquisition very early in his tenure and has failed to deliver so far. But a call or two to the right people would certainly not hurt.
Hope this helps, FWIW.
““Re the level that Stern has been playing at, what level has Stern been playing in the Earth Science or Astrophysics community? Not very high at all.â€
Another follow-up to this point. This link provides a short bio on Stern:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/time100/article/0,28804,1595326_1595329_1615991,00.html
As noted in the bio, besides being the New Horizons PI, Stern has also served on the NASA Advisory Committee, about as high as a non-government type can get in terms of formal influence on the agency.
There’s no doubt that Stern has the experience, knowledge, and tools to play at the AA level. It’s just a question of to what extent he’ll be allowed, and towards what ends, he’ll play.
FWIW…
Anonymous, while we may disagree about the relative importance of human versus automated space science, I almost totally agree with your recommendations for “fixing” space science to live within its means, however those means are ultimately defined. SOPHIA especially is a complete waste of money.
That said, isn’t JWST a little far along at this point to re-scope? Note the article in this week’s AvWeek suggesting it may be possible to keep HST flying indefinitely. Also, I’d probably de-emphasize the “flagship” class missions until we are over this budgetary hump, and concentrate on the smaller stuff. We should hire Surry and / or some of the domestic small spacecraft manufacturers to run any automated lunar program to resist the temptation to turn these into expensive missions that duplicate what future human missions would be capable of doing.
— Donald
“SOPHIA especially is a complete waste of money.”
SOFIA’s potential instrument flexibility could be valuable, but its now enormous cost and increasing lack of relevance far outweigh that benefit.
“That said, isn’t JWST a little far along at this point to re-scope?”
The technology investment is a sunk cost (all confirmed just this week), but the development investment is still largely in the future. Despite some prior re-scaling, I still have serious doubts about achievability of the size and precision of the collecting area. I’d re-scale with the same technologies and instruments to save on development costs and ensure no further headaches. Probably the biggest question mark would be whether to still use the Ariane launch contributed by ESA on JWST or put that to better use elsewhere (e.g., an outer moons mission).
“Note the article in this week’s AvWeek suggesting it may be possible to keep HST flying indefinitely.”
HST’s most useful days are already behind it. It would have been retired to pay for JWST were it not for Mikulski’s parochialism. Any further extension of its lifetime after the next servicing mission would verge on the ridiculous.
“Also, I’d probably de-emphasize the “flagship†class missions until we are over this budgetary hump, and concentrate on the smaller stuff.”
The problem is that there are some really long-lead items (RTG inventory is practically depleted, for example) that need addressing to see such a mission in any reasonable timeframe. It will be a slow burn, but NASA needs to light the fuze.
“We should hire Surry and / or some of the domestic small spacecraft manufacturers to run any automated lunar program to resist the temptation to turn these into expensive missions that duplicate what future human missions would be capable of doing.”
Amen.
How about a smaller JWST as a testbed for a later, larger version, maybe going back to the original size?
Alternatively, make it a human-tended observatory with a deep space version of Orion, so that you can fix later issues as they crop up.
I strongly disagree with you about HST. There’s a lot of sky out there that HST hasn’t looked at, and, if Orion can be used to keep the observatory going, we should at least until a larger optical mirror is in orbit.
Regarding the RTG issue, we can’t do everything. I believe we should be using Orion (or something similar) to put geologists on the moon (and nearby asteroids and the Martian moons) before we worry about many more automated “flagship” missions, but I think we’ve already agreed to disagree about that. So that aside, I’d still let smaller missions have priority over those requiring RTGs for the foreseeable future.
— Donald
“How about a smaller JWST as a testbed for a later, larger version, maybe going back to the original size?”
There was such a JWST tech demo mission called Nexus (IIRC) once upon a time, but JWST’s cost growth ate it a long time ago (long before Griffin and ESAS).
There are also sketches of plans for follow-ons to JWST (SAFFIRE et al.) which effectively make JWST a tech demo for their collectors.
“Alternatively, make it a human-tended observatory with a deep space version of Orion, so that you can fix later issues as they crop up.”
Yeah, I don’t know if the economics would work out positively or if the system could stomach yet another station at an Earth-Moon Lagrange point. But the benefits of Earth-Moon Lagrange point architectures, for both lunar science and deep space telescopes, are worthy of more serious investigation.
“I strongly disagree with you about HST. There’s a lot of sky out there that HST hasn’t looked at, and, if Orion can be used to keep the observatory going, we should at least until a larger optical mirror is in orbit.”
Unless we’re conducting an astronomical survey, sky coverage is not nearly as important as depth of field, resolution, sensitivity, etc. are. And HST is about to get lapped by Earth-based telescopes in some of these key performance parameters. It makes no sense to continue delaying JWST development (the next bigger space collector in the IR/optical field) to pay for the development of expensive Hubble servicing missions and operations. I’m as emotionally attached to HST as anyone, but from a hard, analytical viewpoint, it’s time to let her die gracefully. Unlike Griffin (and in agreement with O’Keefe), I wouldn’t have even bothered with next year’s servicing mission.
“Regarding the RTG issue, we can’t do everything. I believe we should be using Orion (or something similar) to put geologists on the moon (and nearby asteroids and the Martian moons) before we worry about many more automated “flagship†missions,”
It’s more than just RTGs, but setting that aside, because of their astrobiological potential, those outer moons are just way more compelling and important targets scientifically. I know you’re a big fan of getting more ground truth on solar system chronology, but automated sample return missions could fill in a lot of that history for a fraction of the cost of a human infrastructure. And we could send a couple handfuls of automated missions to those interesting outer moon targets for the cost of a human lunar return effort.
Again, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a human exploration program or put footsteps and more back on the Moon — just that solar system chronology alone is not enough to justify the current and foreseen high costs of human space exploration and that we shouldn’t totally sacrifice efforts to understand the most compelling targets in the solar system for the sake of human space exploration.
At least in my opinion… FWIW.
Well, I’ll say it again about Sterns’ relative lack of expertise in Earth Science and Astrophysics. The arguments against this statement presented above are hardly convincing. Time magazine sure doesn’t make the case. The COI on New Horizons, and the unconventional prioritization strategy used to get that mission going do give one pause, though.
As to missions to cancel/reprogram, SOFIA is certainly a bit long in the tooth, with an ops budget that is kind of scary, but it’s somewhat naïve to say that the science that can be done with it can be done far better by space missions. For broadband work, Herschel, JWST, and what’s left of Spitzer will eat SOFIA’s cake in general, but for high res spectroscopy in many bands, they won’t come close. SOFIA will always have the latest sensor technology on board. Once flying, Senior Reviews will make the judgements that need to be made on cost value of this mission.
As to SOPHIA, that’s a mission that is also long in the tooth, but ever since linking up with CARLO, the ops costs have been fairly painless. C’mon. If you’re going to zing a mission, at least get the acronym right! BTW, it’s SAFIR, not SAFFIRE, but at least that one’s not getting zinged …
JWST is too far along to be able to save money by substantial rescoping. Although there is a long way to go, technical risk has largely been retired, and credible contingency funding is in place, A lot of the cost increases were because of rebudgeting and delays that weren’t NASA’s fault. But JWST has certainly become the poster child for irresponsible (or at least delusional) cost estimation.
Give the money to SIM or TPF?? Mike Griffin has referred, with some justification, to SIM as a license plate that got jacked up in order to roll a new car underneath. Some un-rescoping on that mission might be productive. TPF has very substantial technological hurdles.
As to STP, I find it hard to argue with a mission sequence that addresses high priority science in a cost-capped manner. As noted, a Probe line for other communities would be hugely enabling.
As to future servicing of HST, I agree that HST is over the hump on science productivity compared to what we’re now able to do. Taking money to keep HST alive that could be used to build a vastly more capable successor would be a mistake. Astronomical productivity for pointed instrument like HST is simply not proportional to the sky area covered.
As to “stomaching another station at the Earth-Moon Lagrange point” that would be quite a trick, considering that there are no facilities at all there now, nor are any planned by the science community. The Sun-Earth second Lagrange point is another matter, however. It offers enormous performance benefits and (here’s where the confusion may lie) offers low delta-V trajectories back to Earth-Moon Lagrange points that will offer opportunities for human servicing.
With regard to “domestic small spacecraft manufacturers to run any automated lunar program to resist the temptation to turn these into expensive missions that duplicate what future human missions would be capable of doing”, I have to laugh. As in, you’re saying, dare turn them in to expensive missions that future human missions would not be? Get real.
Doug, in your last paragraph, you misunderstood my comment. I have never argued that human missions are cheaper than automated ones. I have argued that their productivity (at least on a planetary surface) is higher per dollar spent, but I certainly recognize that is an unprovable and unpopular opinion and a debateable point. What I was arguing here is that, if you _are_ planning to return to the moon with astronauts, it is wasteful to try to do with robots (however cheap or otherwise) what the astronauts would do.
— Donald
“Well, I’ll say it again about Sterns’ relative lack of expertise in Earth Science and Astrophysics. The arguments against this statement presented above are hardly convincing.”
Stern has a background in astrophysics (as well as planetary science). He’s done work in galactic evolution, for example. And one could argue that planetary science is just Earth science around different globes. (Some NASA Mars probes use the same instruments as NASA Earth remote sensing satellites, for example.)
But that’s not the key question. No science AA at NASA is ever going to have substantial depth in all four the directorate’s broad disciplines (astrophysics, heliophysics, planetary science, and Earth science). We can’t wish for someone whose background simply doesn’t exist.
Rather, the key question is whether Stern has a strong enough background and skills in managing science spacecraft programs and budgets as well as the policy and politics surrounding them. Based on his experience managing a division of the Southwest Research Institute, his experience on the NASA Advisory Council, his experience as the PI for New Horizons and several space-based instruments, and his success in getting New Horizons funded outside an established, peer-reviewed, mission selection process and against the White House’s wishes, he definitely has the chops to be NASA’s Science AA.
But I’m greatly concerned about Stern’s past abuses/circumventions of the peer review and political processes (and, to a lesser extent, the conflict-of-interest he now has continuing as New Horizons PI) and what that portends for his tenure as NASA’s Science AA.
“Time magazine sure doesn’t make the case.”
Time wasn’t trying to build Stern up — the article just referenced his past experience on the NAC. A better bio is here:
http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/stern_bio.html
“As to missions to cancel/reprogram, SOFIA is certainly a bit long in the tooth, with an ops budget that is kind of scary, but it’s somewhat naïve to say that the science that can be done with it can be done far better by space missions.”
That’s not what I said. I stated that SOFIA “will be less productive than space-based equivalents.” Specifically, SOFIA will manage only a small fraction of the observing time of a space-based equivalent, despite it being as costly as the most expensive space-based telescopes.
“but for high res spectroscopy in many bands, they won’t come close. SOFIA will always have the latest sensor technology on board.”
Getting the latest spectroscope above the clouds would certainly be useful in certain bands. But not at an estimated cost of $3.5 billion (yes, three-and-a-half billion dollars through 2012). That’s as much as a Hubble-class instrument, and SOFIA is far from Hubble-class. Heck, just going from the 2007 to the 2008 budget, SOFIA had a $200 million overrun. Who knows how expensive this white elephant will be by the time it’s all over. Someone should kill it now.
“JWST is too far along to be able to save money by substantial rescoping. Although there is a long way to go, technical risk has largely been retired,”
I disagree on both counts. Although JWST’s component and subsystem technologies have been validated, the system has yet to be built. And setting aside black programs that I don’t know about, it remains to be seen if someone can actually pull off a collector that big and with that much precision. Given all the technical problems JWST has had to date, it would be wise to scale back now and avoid more setbacks.
And as a bonus, significant savings could be had. Starting in 2008, JWST still has $2 billion worth of development spending in front of her until launch.
“Give the money to SIM or TPF??”
I never said to give the money to SIM and TPF. I said that NASA should reconstitute a “smaller Origins program”, which would involve rethinking SIM and TPF using “other, cheaper concepts like cat’s eye and shaded interferometers” and leveraging “European interest in Gaia”.
“As to STP, I find it hard to argue with a mission sequence that addresses high priority science in a cost-capped manner.”
The problem is that the mission sequence is very important to STP so that there can be simultaneous observations from different spacecraft of the same heliophysical phenomena (like a coronal mass ejection, for example). Unfortunately, Griffin’s cuts have blown the sequence to smithereens and there will not be many overlapping missions or much overlapping observation. This calls into question whether the STP effort as conceived is still the right one, or whether those missions or ones like them would be better off as competed AO missions (my suggestion) or under some other plan.
My 2 cents… FWIW.