While I agree that name calling in politics is never a good idea, in this case Dr. Griffin is correct. Mr. Gingrich is totally discredited in my mind. After promising to make spaceflight a priority before he gained power, he chose instead to undertake divisive ideological battles in Congress — and now he has the gall to say that space has become too politicized?

I won’t be fooled twice, at least not by this man.

My (entirely personal) take on Dr. Griffin is that he went in with a plan and intended to “get things done” in contrast to most of his immediate predecessors. Although forced to deal with them, he doesn’t care a whole lot about anything but his lunar project. Then, he got bogged down with a poisonous mix of physical reality, political reality, and internal NASA politics. He’s frustrated, and cannot control his mouth sufficiently well to work the politics necessary to achieve his goal. He is still trying, but, primarily because of his fateful decision to “waste” the EELVs by not using them, he is ultimately likely to fail.

Mark: Five to seven billion is not a trifling figure and is many times the amount that Rp/K is having trouble raising.

There are a small number of private individuals who have this kind of money. How about a MarsX? In fact, I’ve read the Elon’s ultimate goal is Mars.

Chance: Could an RpK do it? No, it would need to be a huge company to begin with,

I think a “huge company” is far less likely to try to do this than a small company or, more likely, a private individual. Most huge company’s are beholden to stockholders, and no even vaguely responsible institution is going to spend grandma’s retirement money on going to Mars.

— Donald

Habitat Hermit wrote:
“I think the question is whether NASA is so far beyond control that the Administrator doesn’t actually have any real amount of power any more. That’s a pretty ugly scenario and spells doom for NASA.”

Check out this.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07434r.pdf

It doesn’t seem to be a problem restricted to NASA. The document isn’t exactly what we’re talking about (it seems to be about the balance between government employees doing jobs vs. allocating them to contractors, whereas we’re talking about government employees and contractors doing jobs vs. government buying services – or maybe in-house and cost-plus vs. buying a ticket or fixed-price). However, I think it gives some insights into the agency perspective (or at least parts of it).

“You requested that we determine how the Department of Commerce (National Institute for Standards and Technology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have implemented the May 2003 revised Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-76 process, which seeks to put commercial activities now performed by government out for public-private competition. … We also found that, while the five agencies generally implemented the A-76 process, few of the hundreds of commercial activities they determined suitable for public-private competition were competed. … Finally, we found that the private sector won few of the science agency activities put out for competition. Specifically, from fiscal year 2003 through fiscal year 2005, the agencies held 22 public-private competitions. In-house organizations won 19 of these competitions and the private sector won 3.”

From a side bar in the report:

“Agency View of Activities That Can Be Successfully Contracted Out

According to agency competitive sourcing officials, they expect the in-house organization to win most competitions. For example, Energy officials told us that they expect the in-house win rate to be higher than the private-sector win rate because most commercial type activities such as cleaning and general maintenance have already been contracted out. The remaining activities are more complex and require greater knowledge about agency operations, which officials said gives agency employees an advantage. Similarly, NASA officials told us that NASA started off about 30 years ago contracting out many of its commercial services and now has fewer such services to compete.”

It seems like some officials at NASA think the balancing job has already been done.

I’m not sure, by the way, that all of the corporate sponserships (“Cialis – The Official ED Pill of the Mars Expedition!) in the universe is going to come anywhere near that amount of money. Nor selling Mars rocks at Southbys.

I really think that the prize needs to be broken up into smaller, more managable bits. How about this for a start?: 100 million for the team that builds a working engine that would take a ship to Mars quicker than oridnary chemical rockets. I could see Chang-Diaz, for example, leaping at the chance.

I’ve heard otherwise. I’ve been hearing the same thing for two years now. There’s not enough money to do what they want to do in terms of the moon. My guess is won’t be really revealed until Spring 2009.

To be fair to the human side, they aren’t yet at the point in a program where costs get officially baselined and under- or overruns get measured. Ares I and Orion may cost a heckuva lot when compared to similar programs or alternatives, and may even cost more than originally estimated in ESAS. But unlike MSL, their costs do not yet represent true “overruns”.

“If he’s [Griffin’s] being effectively “locked down” by his own agency or spending just about all his resources fighting it then it’s an answer that could explain all the oddities and contradictions between words and actions.”

Could be. There are always rumors about parts of the agency going off the reservation and undertaking studies on alternatives without the Administrator’s knowledge or blessing, and there’s no end of such rumors currently. But by their very nature, such “resistance” or “underground” activities are hard to verify with documentation.

But regardless of whether it’s Griffin’s lack of follow-through or institutional and bureaucratic resistance, the lack of action on a simple procurement to purchase existing microgravity flight services argues that Griffin and NASA speak a much better commercial game than they play.

“The private sector is balanced. On one side of the scales you have ATK, and on the other, BoeLockMart.

Perfectly balanced.”

Very wry. Very funny.

I’d just note that prize competitions, certainly not NASA’s or the X PRIZE Foundation’s, are restricted to for-profit companies. In fact, most competitors (but not all) are usually non-profits.

“a government financed prize that may or may not be there in the end depending on the whim of future Congresses and administrations”

That’s not how NASA’s prize program and Congressional appropriations work. Congress must appropriate the funding for the prize and that money has to be sitting in NASA’s accounts at the Treasury Department before NASA can start the competition.

Although $20 billion is still arguably too big an amount — bigger than NASA’s annual budget — to reasonably expect any White House to propose or any Congress to appropriate for any prize competition (Mars or otherwise), anti-deficiency laws force the Congress to fund the prize in full before NASA can start the competition. It’s not up to “the whim of future Congresses and administrations”. The money must already be in the bank before the prize can go forward.

“the prize would not necessarily be the sole pay off”

While true, I would not expect a private entity to make billions or tens of billions in advertising or sponsorships, space burial, and data collection. Millions, yes, which arguably makes the Google Lunar X-Prize relatively viable. But not billions. Nor would I expect a large corporation to undertake a loss-leader measured in the tens or single billions.

That doesn’t mean that non-profit organizations might not pursue such a large, risky, and challenging prize. But I’m not sure any for-profit organization could bear the weight at that scale.

“America’s Space Prize seems to have fizzled after all.”

ASP is arguably way underfunded for the requirements set out in its rules. ASP requires five crewmembers to 250 kilometers, a docking capability, an ability to stay in orbit for six months, 80 percent reusability, and two successful flights in 60 days. For $50 million, the best that could be hoped for would be a single Mercury- or Gemini-like flight that just orbits once or twice with one or two crew.

This is second- or third-hand, but I understand that NASA was in discussions with Bigelow to add another $50 million to ASP before Griffin came on board, but that the change in regime quickly brought an end to the discussions. For what that’s worth…

Finally, John Tierney had very interesting editorial in the NY Times Magazine this past weekend on funding sources for private space activities, especially space prizes and the teams that pursue them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/science/space/25tier.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

Tierney makes a jocular yet serious appeal to the bazillionaires of the world, arguing that if they want to buy their way into history, then space exploration in the model of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal and Queen Isabella of Spain is a good way to do it. And, moreover, big prizes and their teams offer a mechanism that won’t take up too much of a bazillionaire’s time if they don’t want to go the “hands-on” route of the likes of Musk and Bezos. It’s a provocative piece, implying that if anyone is going to fund a multi-billion human Moon or Mars prize, it will be a Paul Allen, a Saudi prince, or other bazillionaire, not a government.

Here’s hoping the Paul Allens and Saudi princes of the world read the NY Times Magazine…

I think the question is whether NASA is so far beyond control that the Administrator doesn’t actually have any real amount of power any more. That’s a pretty ugly scenario and spells doom for NASA.

I’ve been struggeling to figure out Dr. Griffin for quite a while since I don’t believe he’s insane nor an idiot. If he’s being effectively “locked down” by his own agency or spending just about all his resources fighting it then it’s an answer that could explain all the oddities and contradictions between words and actions.

That’s pure speculation but for sure something must be wrong somewhere.

And if it happens to be right on the mark I’ve got to extend my sympathies to Griffin because being lured into being a “figurehead only” when you actually have real ambitions (which I do believe he has) must be pure hell.

Btw Christine is perfectly balanced three ways; one measure snark, one measure truth, and one measure humour – perfect ^_^