Apollo had a short timeline and a crisp “get ‘em there and back alive” mandate. Cold War urgency drove an organization in large part created for the mission.

In principle, VSE’s longer timeline and less specific mandate permitted more deliberate and leaner planning; in practice it left room for the scope creep and “reinventing the ETO wheel” that you cite.

In principle, the rolling reallocation under modest increase depicted in the sand chart was good management; in practice, it ran into the pushback (pullback?) of STS/ISS constituencies that you cite.

Goal orientation… well, I look at the Huntsville times in March 2005: “President Bush on Friday picked [Griffin]. By Friday afternoon, U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Huntsville, was bending the new administrator’s ear on behalf of [MSFC]… ‘I welcomed him to the position and quickly reminded him that we’ve got some tough issues that we need to settle…’ ” As I said at the time, Sen. Hutchinson (R-JSC) and Sen. Nelson (D-KSC) had probably already weighed in.

I’m not claiming to have foreseen the last 46 months in detail, or beating the tired drum of “good NASA back in the day, bad NASA now.” And I’m certainly not accusing you of naivete. I’m offering a dispassionate observation, along the sociological lines of Howard McCurdy et al, that it’s inevitably tougher to re-orient an established organization than to orient a new one.

Short version: Nothing fails like success

2) ISS assembly will be shut down when it loses another orbiter, no matter how far along the construction has gone.

3) the funding for COTS doesn’t matter as much as does the flight purchase commitments. If there is a market for orbital flights – that is, if potential investors can see a guarantee from NASA that it will buy X orbital flights per year – then private investors will pony up the cash for development. If NASA is under no obligation to buy any flights, ever, from private industry, then the only ones willing to finance development will be those willing to turn a large fortune into a small one.

4) is a 5-year gap acceptable as compared to a 3-year gap? That depends on what one wants to accomplish in those extra two years. If it is simply ISS resupply, then guaranteeing that market to the COTS program would reduce that gap drastically, because investors would see a chance at a profit and would thus invest in vehicle development.

5) I’d be interested in seeing an objective side-by-side comparison of Orion and DIRECT.

6) good questions to which i have no answer.

If I were king of the world, I also might pick different interim VSE goals for NASA’s human space flight programs than human lunar return. But that said, I’d argue that the VSE and sand chart were implementable as is. The funding curves in the sand chart for the human lunar return elements added up to the same dollars, adjusted for inflation, as spent on Apollo. Admittedly, those dollars were spread over a longer period of time, but the timeframe for the first human lunar landing set by the policy — no later than 2020 — was consistent with that budget. Given that NASA now has a much larger technical and industrial base to build off of than in the 1960s, a human lunar return should have been very achievable with bucks and years to spare. The problems came with ESAS, where Griffin mandated requirements that went well beyond Apollo’s capabilities (e.g., 4 crew instead of 2) and selected vehicles that did little to build off the technical and industrial base that had developed over the past 40-odd years. It’s shouldn’t be surprising that doing more than Apollo did, while also unnecessarily reinventing the ETO wheel, is going to cost more than Apollo did. Griffin then compounded the budgetary problem by not holding the Shuttle program’s feet to the fire with regard to shutdown savings.

FWIW…

They were tears of laughter at the time, but not for long.

On the contrary, to sustain something as ambitious and technically involved as the Vision, leadership must keep their eyes glued open.

“A fine dissection.”

Thanks much, Mr. Davis.

“Are we going to cut back further on crew activities [when STS is retired]…?

Do we have an agreement signed [with the Ruskies] that locks in a price per flight, or are we at risk that they may arbitrarily raise the price?…”

Also a good set of questions from Charles.

“At best, this was only a partial success as it produced one vehicle that appears not to be economically viable and one that may be, but only marginally so.”

Just to be clear with Mr. Robertson, this is not the point I’m trying to make. I’m arguing that, based on the ratio of USAF dollars to technical content in the EELV program, there is a big mismatch between COTS content and NASA dollars being put into COTS, which makes it unattractive to investors. That’s different from EELV, where the program proved attractive enough to Boeing and LockMart investors, in the form of their corporate boards. EELV succeeded in developing operational vehicles using private cost-sharing arrangements, even if market conditions changed to the point that one or both vehicles was no longer competitive in the commercial market. My point is that we can’t yet worry about or discuss the latter with respect to COTS, because NASA has yet to set up the correct conditions for the former (self-funded billionaires like Musk aside, and even there, without a bigger NASA contribution, I’m not sure Dragon will make it even if Falcon 9 does).

FWIW…

I’d be interested in hearing what specifically Mr. Whittington finds “loaded” about these questions. They may be tough, but they’re all pretty open-ended. Summarizing:

1) Are the risks of continuing to fly Shuttle acceptable or not and why?

2) At what logical points can ISS assembly be cut short before 2010? Given the budget savings and avoided risks, why not cut ISS assembly short? What happens if NASA cannot complete ISS assembly by 2010?

3) Does COTS content match the funding resources and flight purchase commitments made to it? If not, what is being done to fix that?

4) Is a 5-year gap in U.S. civil human space flight with a 1-in-3 probability of not meeting that schedule acceptable and why? If not, how much will it cost to accelerate Ares I/Orion and increase the probability of meeting the schedule? If additional dollars are not forthcoming, how can Ares I/Orion be descoped to accelerate the schedule? Are there less costly and more quickly fielded alternatives to Ares I/Orion and what are their benefits and drawbacks?

5) Given Ares I’s increasing divergence from Shuttle heritage systems and other design changes, what are the updated reliability and safety figures for Ares I? How do these figures compare to alternative launch vehicles?

6) What are the reliability and safety impacts of the various mass-saving changes being considered for Orion? Are there changes to Orion requirements or alternative launch vehicles that would allow Orion to fly without making changes that impact reliability and safety?

I just read Griffin’s testimony from the hearing and would point out that it does not address any of these topics in the slightest. Of course, he wasn’t asked these question, but that’s the point. If Congress cares about the answers to these very legitimate questions about NASA human space flight program risks, costs, and alternatives, then they have to be asked, even if they appear “loaded” to supporters of the current programs. The best way to ensure the success of NASA’s human space flight programs (or to govern or manage any endeavour) is to ask the tough questions and adjust accordingly. Defensive cheerleading only perpetuates problems; it does not resolve them.

“NASA will have answers that will not satisfy Mr. Anonymous since those answers will not add up to, “Everything we’re doing is idiotic and doomed to fail.'”

Absolutely not. These questions are tough and they challenge basic assumptions that the agency has made since Griffin came on board and ESAS was completed. But nowhere do they imply that everything NASA does is “idiotic”. At a minimum, all these questions deal with NASA’s human space flight programs, so they imply nothing about NASA’s science and aeronautics programs. And even within human space flight, just off the top of my head, I would commend Griffin & Co. for shrinking the ISS assembly manifest to a much more achievable number of STS flights. Clearly, I do not think that everything Griffin or NASA does is “idiotic”.

If NASA came back with good answers to these questions that did not fundamentally change NASA’s current course in human space flight — why certain STS and ISS risks are acceptable, how COTS is being fixed, how Ares I/Orion can be substantially accelerated without major budget increases or requirements impacts, and why all the Ares I/Orion redesigns are having little or no impact on reliability and safety — I would certainly sit up and listen.

If Mr. Whittington thinks that these tough yet legitimate questions will make NASA’s human space flight programs appear “idiotic”, then maybe it’s a reflection of his own concerns about what the answers to these questions might be and what the implications of those answers might be for the current programs.

“It has been gospel from the New Space folks that small, entrepeneurial companies like SpaceX and even Rp/K can do more with less money than the big, bloated, bureaucratic corporations like Boeing and LockMart.”

It’s a question of degree. Can “newspace” be twice as efficient as “oldspace”? Probably. Four to eight times as efficient? Probably not.

The problem with COTS is the extreme mismatch between the technical content and resources allocated to it. Again, the USAF EELV program spent $1 billion to get two launch vehicles in a cost-sharing arrangement (with “oldspace” companies). NASA COTS is spending $500 million in an attempt to get four vehicles (two launch vehicles and two in-space vehicles). That makes COTS at least a factor of four more difficult than EELV. And it’s arguably six to eight times as difficult, as those in-space vehicles must rendezvous with ISS and withstand Earth reentry. Whether “oldspace” or “newspace,” NASA is simply expecting way too much for way too few dollars. It has nothing to do with corporate culture and everything to do with program formulation. NASA either needs to bring more resources to the game or spread the remaining dollars over fewer performers and/or vehicles. RpK’s failings aside, if NASA does not do so, only a self-funding company like Space-X can play this game (and they’re the only such orbital company right now). External investors, whether they’re oldspace stockholders and corporate boards or newspace angel investors and venture capitalists, will continue to shy away as RpK’s investors did.

FWIW…

At best, this was only a partial success as it produced one vehicle that appears not to be economically viable and one that may be, but only marginally so.

— Donald

How’s this pass your idiocy test : using Merlin 1C powered Falcon 1 stages as booster augmentation for ground started SSME stages in SSTO spaceflight.

What plans exist to address the logistics shortfall (identified recently in a study where Tommy Holloway, retired senior NASA technical manager, was a prime participant) to Station? Even with a heavy lift vehicle (Shuttle) flying there is not enough available lift to bring up the identified science samples, replacement parts, hardware, etc needed on Station. Are we going to cut back further on crew activities? When our only heavy lift vehicle retires, can we get any needed Control Moment Gyros, computers, other ORUs up to Station?

When the Shuttle retires we will be dependent on the Russians to get astronauts up to Station. Do we have an agreement signed that locks in a price per flight, or are we at risk that they may arbitrarily raise the price?

Charles

A fine dissection.