The full Senate Appropriations Committee today approved an appropriations bill that includes $17.45 billion for NASA. The press release doesn’t offer many details about the NASA portion of the bill, although at first glance it appears that the committee made few, if any, major changes to what the subcommittee approved on Tuesday. Space News reports that Sen. Barbara Mikulski proposed, and then withdrew, an amendment for a $1-billion increase for NASA as Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), chairman of the full committee, objected (as expected, since the amendment would have exceeded the spending limits agreed by appropriators earlier this year). Byrd suggested that Mikulski instead offer the amendment when the full Senate takes up the bill.
I really have to hand it to NASA’s legislative and budget staff. To meet the President’s request — almost a 7 percent increase over last year — in the early marks in both the House and Senate is quite an accomplishment. It bodes well for potentially avoiding anymore budget-induced Ares I/Orion slippage this year. (Although it looks like Orion will experience a slip due to mass issues, regardless of budget.)
That said, I’d venture that Mikulski’s miracle is dead again this year. A desperate floor vote is rarely a viable legislative strategy.
And all this is highly hypothetical, given the Bush has promised to veto the bill that NASA’s funding resides in, along with most other appropriations bills. That’s probably going to set up another free-for-all like the 2007 budget resolution, and NASA may not do so well in that environment.
My 2 bit commentary… FWIW…
It bodes well for potentially avoiding anymore budget-induced Ares I/Orion slippage this year. (Although it looks like Orion will experience a slip due to mass issues, regardless of budget.)
Now that the details are available it’s good to see that the Senate are fully funding ESMD. Although the proposed funding allows Orion to be operational by March 2015, it does not meet the VSE goal of no later than 2014. To achieve the original date several hundred million more is needed to restore the funding lost due to the 2007 CR. (It’s far too early in the development phase to say whether schedule slippage will occur due to mass issues.)
I think it’s also worth pointing out that the budgets in the first few years of the VSE are likely to be the most difficult to get through. VSE still has to compete with the Shuttle for funding, a problem which will diminish as the Shuttle moves closer to retirement, then disappear entirely. And every year that passes with development of the Orion and Ares on track increases the “philosophy of prior investment” factor in the minds of Congress. This particular budget may be the hardest, as Congress and the White House are currently held by opposing parties and the personalities involved hold each other in contempt.
“It’s far too early in the development phase to say whether schedule slippage will occur due to mass issues.”
Actually, this LockMart Orion document:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=24647
says that a slip due to mass issues is likely.
I agree that it is too early for a mass issues to be cropping up. It should not be happening but it is.
Your source appears to be an internal NASA/Lockheed document distributed unoffically by NASAWATCH, so its status is unclear. The document deals with weight and cost issues during the design phase, quite normal for a project of this type. Nowhere in that document does it refer to schedule slippage of the March 2015 IOC.
“Nowhere in that document does it refer to schedule slippage of the March 2015 IOC.”
The document refers to SDR and CDR slips on pg. 3 and 36:
— pg. 3:
“Primary objective
– Develop a system design that closes on weight and cost, including
required Manager’s Reserve (1000-2000 lbs)
• Primary objective likely won’t be met by SDR”
— pg. 36:
“Possible serial slip to CDR (needs to be evaluated)”
You’re right that actions could still be taken to “buy back” the lost schedule to SDR and mitigate the impact to CDR. And the document talks about those possible actions.
But the original statement that:
“It’s far too early in the development phase to say whether schedule slippage will occur due to mass issues.â€
is not true. Schedule slippage to major review milestones, driven by mass issues, is happening. Again, it shouldn’t be, but it is.
“The document deals with weight and cost issues during the design phase, quite normal for a project of this type.”
You’re right that it’s normal for any project to be allocating mass and cost at this (or any other) stage of the design process.
What’s not normal is for a project to have mass issues of this magnitude this early in the design process. Inadequate mass before SDR, and having to delay SDR, are big red flags.
Equally troublesome are the likely tradeoffs being considered to “buy back” mass on pg. 32-35:
“– Eliminate supplemental Radiation Protection”
“– [Reduce] prop load [to provide] global sortie mission
access but with reduced capability for small regions, ie shorter surface
stay or fewer crew.”
“– Reduce VMCs from 3 self-checking pairs to one self checking pair”
“– Delete the crash survivable data recorder.”
“– Reduce ATCS pumps from 4 to 2″
“– Don’t size [EPS] for a gimbal failure.”
“– Delete 1 EPS string (power bus architecture).”
“– Go to minimum [GN&C] Functionality: 2 IMUs, 2 RPOD NAV aids, 1 star tracker, no GPS”
“– Delete 1 string of CM/SM RCS (currently 3).”
It’s rather alarming that these kinds of reductions in safety, reliability, and capability have to be considered this early in the design process due to mass (or any other) issue.
“Your source appears to be an internal NASA/Lockheed document distributed unoffically by NASAWATCH, so its status is unclear.”
If you have officially distributed documents that contradict this source, please share them.
But based on a pretty good track record at NASA Watch, based on what folks in the program are saying, and based on similar Level 2 documentation over on nasaspaceflight.com, I’d say that the document appears to be original and accurate.
You’re obviously free to disagree and ignore what’s been documented here and elsewhere, but don’t say that you weren’t warned.
FWIW…
Ciclops says “Your source appears to be an internal NASA/Lockheed document distributed unoffically by NASAWATCH, so its status is unclear. The document deals with weight and cost issues during the design phase, quite normal for a project of this type. Nowhere in that document does it refer to schedule slippage of the March 2015 IOC.”
Then by all means ignore the document – if you have material that is more accurate, that is …..
The reason that all of this is going on is that there is no direction to the entire effort. Without direction, that is a goal, how can you develop requirements? NASA JSC is still trying to design this thing as if it is going to go to Mars. This is without even a credible plan for a Mars mission.
Although the status of this document is unknown, let’s assume for the purposes of this discussion that it’s relevant. Yes it refers to weight and mass objectives not being met by SDR, however there is no reference to IOC schedule which is several years beyond that milestone.
Once again there is nothing in the document to indicate the magnitude of these issues, furthermore without knowing the context of the document making such generalizations is unjustified as is assuming that the list of mass trades is definitive. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
As to an official source, NASA gave a press conference 6 June 2007 where schedule and performance were discussed. Jeff Hanley stated that there was a 50% confidence to bring IOC forward to September 2013, a schedule advance of 18 months – this does not indicate either a serious situation or slippage beyond March 2015. A question was asked about the performance of Ares I, Horowitz said performance was 58,000 (26 mT) to LEO and Hanley said they have margin but not as much as they would like, he added that they will have a closed design by SDR at the end of the Summer.
“Yes it refers to weight and mass objectives not being met by SDR, however there is no reference to IOC schedule which is several years beyond that milestone.”
There are also references to slipping CDR, which will almost certainly impact IOC (can’t initiate development until after CDR).
“Once again there is nothing in the document to indicate the magnitude of these issues”
Sure there is. There are numbers and graphs that describe the magnitude quite clearly. And then there’s the list of rather drastic (especially for this early in the program) offsets towards the end of the document.
“Jeff Hanley stated that there was a 50% confidence to bring IOC forward to September 2013, a schedule advance of 18 months – this does not indicate either a serious situation or slippage beyond March 2015.”
That’s not an accurate statement. Hanley stated that there is a 50% probability of meeting a 2013 IOC within the available budget (not that there’s a 50% chance of bringing the IOC forward two years). That’s a statistically derived number, based on the comparison of the estimated cost to the available budget.
The scary part is that Ares I/Orion is only budgeted at the 65% level for the 2015 IOC. There’s a 1-in-3 chance that Ares I/Orion will not meet a 2015 IOC within the available budget, forcing either an overrun situation or a further increase in the gap beyond five years.
For comparison, most aerospace projects are budgeted at the 80% level.
“A question was asked about the performance of Ares I, Horowitz said performance was 58,000 (26 mT) to LEO and Hanley said they have margin but not as much as they would like”
There’s the understatement of the year. They have performance margin but zero design/development margin, with eight years of design/development to go.
“he added that they will have a closed design by SDR at the end of the Summer”
The LockMart document indicates otherwise.
Ciclops says “Once again there is nothing in the document to indicate the magnitude of these issues, furthermore without knowing the context of the document making such generalizations is unjustified as is assuming that the list of mass trades is definitive. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.”
Clearly Ciclops has never worked at NASA. This is an engineering presentation by one team working on the CEV – one focused on a specific topic concerning events in the very near future, not an overall summary of the entire project. Hate to break it to you Ciclops but not every presentation given by every person is a complete A to Z treatise on the CEV. Again, why don’t you and your newmars.com pals dig something up on this topic?
“For comparison, most aerospace projects are budgeted at the 80% level.”
Before I pressed “submit”, I meant to add:
“Based on that standard industry practice, Ares I/Orion IOC will not be reached until sometime in 2017, forcing a seven year-gap in post-Shuttle human space flight. This is the little white lie behind Hanley’s statement. Instead of talking about a 2013 IOC that only has a coin-flip’s chance of happening, Hanley should be addressing the realistic case that the Ares I/Orion IOC lies out in the timeframe when we were suppossed to be preparing to return to the Moon under the VSE.
And all that is just budget-driven analysis. None of it takes into account the likely SDR and CDR slips due to mass issues in this document or any future technical issues arising.”
FWIW…
There are also references to slipping CDR, which will almost certainly impact IOC (can’t initiate development until after CDR)
This reference? “Possible serial slip to CDR (needs to be evaluated)” Not exactly an unequivocal statement is it? Yes CDR obviously needs to be completed before IOC but note that the process is not waterfall, testing proceeds in parallel with design. CDR is scheduled for 2009, four years from planned IOC in 2013 and after the first stage test flight (Ares I-X), there is a lot of slack in the schedule.
Hanley stated that there is a 50% probability of meeting a 2013 IOC within the available budget (not that there’s a 50% chance of bringing the IOC forward two years).
Yes that was Hanley’s risk estimate from a budget point of view, however that does not change the fact that IOC is shown on the flight schedule as 10/2013 and so absent other information it is also the chance of flying 18 months before March 2015.
For comparison, most aerospace projects are budgeted at the 80% level.
Ares I/Orion is not a typical aerospace project.
This particular budget may be the hardest, as Congress and the White House are currently held by opposing parties and the personalities involved hold each other in contempt.
They are both right.
Anonymous wrote:
“And all this is highly hypothetical, given the Bush has promised to veto the bill that NASA’s funding resides in, along with most other appropriations bills. That’s probably going to set up another free-for-all like the 2007 budget resolution, and NASA may not do so well in that environment.”
Ah, yes. After six years of massive deficit spendifying, the Decidificator has morphed into President Fiscal Respondifier now that the Democrat Party is running things over there in Congress.
Face it: decent funding for this effort may be sacrificed to political expedience – trying to blame Congress and its leadership for a big fiscal mess. Oh well. Will anyone be surprised if this did happen?
“This reference? ‘Possible serial slip to CDR (needs to be evaluated)'”
That and:
— Slides 4, 27, and 31, which all make reference to a potential “recommendation to slip ERB”, an “ERB slip decision”, and the fact that the “Schedule is ~2 weeks out of bed with the… ERB”.
— Slide 11, which questions the due date of the analysis regarding the “efficacy of the functional baseline” vehicle.
— Slide 14, which questions whether the team can really populate the “Initial Parking Lot” with “Foundations [sic] reductions” before “systems reviews”.
— Slide 20, which makes reference to “Major Lien Closure Conflicts”, the fact that the “Schedule is very aggressive”, and the fact that “90% [needs to be] engaged in this activity” despite multiple other technical efforts that will be “ongoing in parallel”.
— Slide 27, which list six “Constraints” on the “Lien Closure Schedule”, some of which are weeks or a full month in duration.
— Slides 38 and 40, which outline alternate schedules, including such rather drastic measures as merging “Subsystem PDRs” with the “System PDR”.
Is it in the realm of possibility that Orion can avoid a slip that ricochets all they way to the 2015 IOC date? Sure. Is it likely that they’ll avoid such a slip given all these schedule issues, problems, and constraints, not to mention the very thin mass margins they’ll be working with even assuming this current mass-saving exercise is successful? It’s a judgement call based on past experience, but the evidence weighs against it.
“there is a lot of slack in the schedule”
That’s not an accurate statement for a couple reasons:
1) The near-term schedule on pages 17-19 is highly stacked. Per the quote from page 20 above, they’ve already pulled in a lot of activities and stacked them in parallel to maintain schedule.
2) Page 41 states that they can’t “validate PDR schedule” at this point because they no longer know what their “long lead plan” is.
If we’ve sucked up all the near-term slack in a schedule with stacked activities and if we no longer know the critical path in our long-term schedule, then we certainly cannot claim that “there is a lot of slack in the schedule”.
“Ares I/Orion is not a typical aerospace project.”
Sure it is. If Ares/Orion is actually ever built, it will be the fourth such capsule-on-a-stick human orbital space transportation system developed and operated in the United States, and the sixth such system in the world. The basic configuration has been around for five decades, and the underlying subsystems (minus some questionable changes to a 5-segment SRB and the upper stage engine) have been used for almost three decades. Heck, it’s the sort of system that even a lowly internet hundred-millionaire thinks is within reach of his wealth.
Moreover, even if Ares/Orion was atypical, that is no excuse for not following good program formulation and budgeting practices. Advertising IOC dates with 35 and 50 percent chances of either schedule or budget overruns (or both) is silly at best and dishonest at worst. Griffin & Co. should have come clean months ago, admitted that we’re really looking at a 2017 IOC using common industry and budgeting practices, and then rescoped the work and reselected/redesigned the vehicles to deliver at earlier date.
I am still mystified that Griffin buys into these budget/schedule shenanigans when they bear so directly on his top priority, the post-Shuttle human spaceflight gap. But that’s another discussion.
FWIW…