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.

— Donald

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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…

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.

~Jon