Space Politics

Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…

Griffin’s latest defense of Constellation

January 8, 2009 at 1:58 pm · Filed under NASA

NASA administrator Mike Griffin was the speaker at a Space Transportation Association breakfast on Capitol Hill this morning. (The speech is now available online.) I’ll provide some more details later, but some highlights:

This was not really a valedictory or farewell speech by Griffin. Instead, it was a lengthy (about 40 minutes) address focused almost exclusively on defending why NASA is implementing Constellation the way it is, rather than going with an alternative architecture.
In the speech he addressed several of the alternatives, including using EELV-derived vehicles, relying on commercial providers for ISS access instead of developing Ares 1, extending the life of the shuttle, and using dual Ares 5 launches for lunar missions instead of Ares 1 and Ares 5. All of these alternatives, he argued, fail to meet the goals of national space policy as effectively as the current architecture.
He also briefly addressed issues like reports that Orion is overweight (”I have never - never - worked on a space project that did not have weight issues,” he noted, unless they ran into volume or power problems first) and the Ares 1 thrust oscillation issue. NASA, he noted, is now effectively “doing engineering design in public” and has to do a better job of communicating what it’s doing on these programs to non-engineers in the public.
In the Q&A session that followed, Griffin was asked about Scott Horowitz’s petition to keep Griffin in office. Griffin went through a mix of emotions: “I was embarrassed, of course, when it was conveyed to my attention,” he said, but also said he was was “very honored” that Horowitz would do it. He noted, though, that the petition generated some negative reaction. “How do you turn it into a negative?” he asked. “Why did we all in the Washington community cringe when that came out? Because we in the Washington community are all so damn cynical that we knew that something like that will backfire… So how do we get to a place in Washington where somebody doing something nice for you is viewed as ammunition for your enemies? How does that happen?”

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10 Comments »

Making The Case One Last Time - Transterrestrial Musings wrote @ January 8th, 2009 at 3:09 pm

[...] Foust has some notes from it. I just read [...]

Rand Simberg wrote @ January 8th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

As I note at my blog (in the ping above), I love the way he always accuses his critics of just being in it for the money.

The Truth wrote @ January 8th, 2009 at 10:49 pm

Is (or was…) Mike Griffin the NASA’s Gorbachev?
http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/043griffin.html
in my opinion, the Griffin’s story as NASA chief looks very much like the story of Mikhail Gorbachev as last President of the Soviet Union

yg1968 wrote @ January 8th, 2009 at 11:58 pm

Great speech. He answers all the bloggers’ criticism. He mentions that using two Ares V would be possible for some misions when necessary (although 32% more expensive).

Jonathan Goff wrote @ January 9th, 2009 at 12:48 am

“He answers all the bloggers’ criticism.”

Heh.

yg1968 wrote @ January 9th, 2009 at 9:40 am

I meant that he answers a lot of the criticism on Ares I that appears in various blogs concerning the possibility of using rockets other than Ares I (Delta, Atlas, Direct 2.0, Space X, etc.) because they would be somehow cheaper, better, etc.

Jonathan Goff wrote @ January 10th, 2009 at 1:07 pm

vg1968,
Well, he responded all right, but I typically like a little more proof or data before claiming that criticism has been answered. And I’m also not a huge fan of setting up strawment to knock down.

Quite frankly, I wasn’t that impressed.

~Jon

Michael Mealling wrote @ January 10th, 2009 at 1:49 pm

yg1968,
And yet again he responded to the criticisms by looking specifically at the rockets themselves and comparing them to the architecture and basic assumptions he had already made. If you came to me with a self driving, green-energy truck and I had pre-determined that I wanted a mule cart, I could easily dismiss your solution as being in appropriate since it didn’t come with a bridle and hardware for hooking my mule up to it. I guess that was Jon’s point about a strawman.
No where in his speech did he dismiss or even acknowledge changing the architecture to take advantage of on-orbit-assembly, fuel depots, or any of several ways you can re-architect the cislunar infrastructure to reduce costs over time.

-MM

Space Politics » Griffin, Constellation, and more wrote @ January 13th, 2009 at 7:38 am

[...] In yesterday’s issue of The Space Review, I write a more detailed article about Mike Griffin’s speech last week where he defended Constellation against the various alternatives proposed to replace it. A couple of items in the report that I didn’t mention in my previous post on the topic: [...]

…. wrote @ January 13th, 2009 at 1:13 pm

Beyond the costs involved, our probabilistic risk assessment for loss of crew on Ares 1 showed it to be twice as safe – I repeat, twice as safe – as a human-rated EELV-derived vehicle. This figure of merit was a significant factor in our decision to go with the Shuttle-derived Ares 1, yet is ignored by almost everyone suggesting that we make a change. I cannot responsibly ignore it, for reasons having nothing to do with money. But if to someone else it is just about the money, then the cost of unreliability must be considered. Incurring even one additional accident through the use of a less-reliable system wipes out all of the savings of the hypothetically cheaper vehicle. Solely from a fiscal perspective, we should be willing to pay a premium for safety, if necessary.

B*LLSH*T!