January 14, 2004 to January 31, 2008

RIP

“we hardly knew ye…”

Well so much for VSE. Having demoted it to a mere Space Exploration Policy basically makes it an artifact of the Bush Administration since policies, like White House stationary, are changed with every administration. By down grading it to a policy now NASA has basically freed the next administration to replace it with ITS space policy. And advocates arguments that it is abandoning the vision will be easily countered by pointing out that it was already abandoned by the same administration that created it by down grading it to a mere policy….

So I wonder what the new administration’s space policy will be?

They could continue this administration’s policy and increase NASA’s funding to build the CEV/Stick and Ares V. But this is unlikely given the coming recession, increases cost of Iraq, and other spending problems Washington must address. Just as the costs of the Vietnam War and recessions in the early 1970’spelled doom for Apollo and the Shuttle as proposed during the Nixon Administration, so will these problems spell doom for this administration’s Space Exploration Policy.

Given that they might decide to reverse the decision to retire the Shuttle arguing that the number of flights since Columbia without tile damage prove that the problem is solved and its safe to keep flying it until a replacement is available. Or until the ISS is safety deorbited at the end of its service life. We have already seen the first attempts in that direction. And a flight rate of 2 a year will minimize the political risks of an accident during the administration’s tenure while allowing them to keep NASA’s budget level or even cut it. Cutting would be especially attractive since this administration has already killed off most of the robotic science missions. This could be a very attractive option.

The mostly likely option for the new administration will be to downgrade it to a LEO CEV on a EELV. Good enough to allow U.S. access to space via missions to the ISS and to fill the great space flight gap. Think of the Shuttle as originally planned as a TSTO and the one NASA actually got, and for the same reasons, lack of money to do it as originally planned. This will allow the Shuttle to be retired on schedule, along with the political liabilities of another accident, while also reducing the new to increase the NASA budget. And by redesigning the CEV to be launched on a EELV NASA will be able to do early boiler plate flights show it will look like progress is being made towards the replacement even if it doesn’t fly with a crew during the first term of the administration which also makes this option attractive.

In any case, this down grading of the VSE by NASA has basically doomed it.

This late in the game, between the fact that no hardware is flying (because a successful program is much harder to kill than an unsuccessful program), and the fact that the plan is so tied to the legacy of Bush, and the likelyhood of the fact that the next president will be a Democrat, makes this effort to little to late.

Even on Wikipedia under NExT’s successor, the Decadal Planning Team or DPT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadal_Planning_Team

It’s worthwhile to note that this group was more about capabilities than destinations (like Lagrange Points). It would be more fair to say that Lagrange Points and manifold trajectories figured heavily in their mission plans, rather than saying that Lagrange Points were their preferred destination.

FWIW…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/02/AR2008020202042.html

It will be hard to sustain this program no matter what they call it.

Last year’s (FY 2008) budget said “Vision for Space Exploration”.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/nasa.html

“FOCUSING ON THE NATION’S PRIORITIES

The President’s Vision for Space Exploration”

I also wonder whether NASA will ask the folks who manage the following website if they got the memo.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040114-1.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040114-3.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/images/20040114-3_nasa3-515h.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/images/20040114-3_nasa2-398h.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/space/archive.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/ask/20040114.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/07/20040720-8.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/space/

– Nemo2

Early on inside NASA a lot of people kept referring to it as “The President’s Vision for Space Exploration.” There was a push to drop the reference to “the president” especially after Congress endorsed the plan as well. So people started to refer to it as “the national vision” or “NASA’s vision.” But the useage was inconsistent. There were orders to not use VSE in external documents that often got ignored by the people who had actually issued those orders.

My point is that this has been in the works for a long time and it is in fact a natural and reasonable change.

I agree.

What is truly sad is if anybody thinks this will work — that coming up with a new brand, for a flawed product, which is selling something our elected leaders do not want to buy, is going to make any difference.

I don’t care if they pay $160k for branding/advertising help, $1.6 million, or $16 million. It is not going to work.

I actually don’t think anybody at NASA believes this will work. I think they are doing this for a different reason.

My reaction to this is that Griffin is challenging everybody at NASA to “Sell my program!”

and this is part of the action plan the “communications” people at NASA came up with.

In summary — the boss is yelling, so you better show you are doing something if you want to keep your job.

– Al

“Politics is not rocket science, which is why rocket scientists do not understand politics.”

Weird… $160K isn’t enough to pay the executive secretary’s salary at a NY advertising firm. If Griffin & Co. really think that the best way to save Constellation is to relabel it, they should at least put enough money on the table to get the job done.

Instead of wasting taxpayer dollars on underfunded and misguided attempts to apply commercial advertising and intellectual property practices to government programs, maybe Griffin & Co. should take a stab at basic technical and program management.

Maybe, say, review the dozens of technical and programmatic deficiencies in the Ares I program from the December General Accounting Office report, develop an action plan to address these deficiencies, and make the necessary changes in Ares I management to get that action plan implemented?

Maybe get rid of the over 600 (six hundred!) bureaucratic rules of engagement that now govern Constellation project office “Relationship Agreements” and just let the managers and engineers work with each other?

Maybe stop marching towards a major design review in a few months during which major decisions about which launch abort system on Orion, what landing mode on Orion, and what acoustic mitigation system on Ares I (if any is workable) will be left unanswered and rethink the schedule (and maybe the program) instead?

Oy vey… what a sad joke Constellation has become.

This is the most important. It’s impossible for me to understand why Griffin didn’t stick with EELVs for this very reason. The EELV and Stick options traded very closely in ESAS. In retrospect, the EELV numbers had much greater fidelity than the 4 and 5-segment SRB 1st stage options, and now we’re paying for it.

You could have performed an Ares 1-X type demo with an EELV last year. That would have gone far to convincing the public and congress that NASA was moving forward with VSE plans. Now we have to wait until next year, and even that schedule is questionable.