Congress, NASA

CAIB members clash on safety and Constellation

This week Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) distributed a “Dear Colleague” letter to fellow members that included a copy of a letter he received last month from Roger Tetrault, who served on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB). In the letter (published by the Huntsville Times) Tetrault argues that for crew vehicles “safety must be the primary consideration above all other design parameters – including performance, cost, reusability, and advance space operations.” (emphasis in original) Constellation, he argues, was designed with that lesson in mind, but that is being rejected by the administration’s new plan for NASA. “There is no clear mission or direction given to NASA, and the use of proven-technologies [sic] is being shunned,” he wrote. “Further, the choice to commercialize our launch capability provides insufficient safety for the brave men and women that will be asked to ride these rockets.”

Another person who served on the CAIB disagrees with Tetrault, though. John Logsdon told Space News that Tetrault is making “an ideological judgment, not a technical statement” by concluding that commercial providers would provide “insufficient safety” for crewed launches. “You can’t make such a judgment in advance of something being done.”

33 comments to CAIB members clash on safety and Constellation

  • ” … The choice to commercialize our launch capability provides insufficient safety for the brave men and women that will be asked to ride these rockets.”

    I assume Mr. Tetrault drives every day in a government-built vehicle, because cars built by the private sector are “insufficiently safe.”

    The private space sector in this country has killed no one. NASA has killed 17 astronauts, 14 with Shuttle. NASA bureaucracy was most definitely responsible for the 14 Shuttle deaths. He should read his own CAIB report.

  • Andy Clark

    Perhaps the cartoon of “The OSHA Cowboy” should be updated for this foolish man, Roger Tetrault.

    Safety is something in which everyone has an interest, but there is nothing that we do as humans that does not involve risk. What we actually do is try to minimise the risk so that it becomes psychologically acceptable, and we all have different levels of acceptance of risk.

    So, engineer for what we know, accept the risk and minimise it to a level which is acceptable. Good, that’s what we do every time we drive, walk, fly etc.

    Looking at the Shuttle program, NASA has lost two vehicles and crews in flight. Out of 132 launches that is a probability of failure of 1 in 62 flights. Safer to go sky diving! For the crews though, this was an acceptable level of risk – or they would not have flown. For the public and the politicians it is an opportunity to be “armchair quarterbacks”. Unfortunately the media picks up on the sensational, the salacious and the inaccurate vocal vomit of these “experts” who feel they just have to say something and muddy already turbid waters.

    As for confusing Tetrault with the conclusions of a report he had a hand in writing – that is just a minor inconvenience to him. Hell, he may even disown it if the fee is large enough!

  • Andy Clark

    Sorry,

    Cannot divide by two! Two failures in one hundred and thirty-two flights is a probability of failure of one in sixty-six. (1 in 66).

  • Andy Clark wrote:

    Two failures in one hundred and thirty-two flights is a probability of failure of one in sixty-six. (1 in 66).

    Here’s another way to look at it … 14 astronauts lost in 132 missions. That means one astronaut fatality every 9.4 missions.

  • For the crews though, this was an acceptable level of risk – or they would not have flown.

    Actually, prior to the Challenger loss, most didn’t realize how high the risk was.

    Here’s another way to look at it … 14 astronauts lost in 132 missions. That means one astronaut fatality every 9.4 missions.

    That’s not a statistically useful way of looking at it, because it’s a function of crew size, which is unrelated to safety.

  • “Actually, prior to the Challenger loss, most didn’t realize how high the risk was.”

    Columbia really enlightened them. There were several flights of STS that had massive tile damage including one where hot gasses got into the landing gear wells (sound familiar). I’d have to dig up the quotes, but one Columbia investigator essentially said that that flight, in the 80’s, was within seconds of meeting a similar fate. And so early in the game, it may very well have derailed STS entirely. It was a regular event to see moderate damage to 40+ tiles per flight and even to have missing tiles when they landed. Such a thing today would initiate a LON rescue mission.

    There is a certain degree of uncertainty in that we didn’t conduct pre-landing heat shield inspections at the time, but it’s safe to assume that a good portion of the tile damage events existed before re-entry.

  • DCSCA

    @StephenCSmith: “The private space sector in this country has killed no one.”

    It has flown no one. NASA has been flying people into space for half a century.

    @RandSimberg “Actually, prior to the Challenger loss, most didn’t realize how high the risk was.”

    Uh, actually, ‘most’ did, particularly the ‘most’ who were trained and culled from the ranks of military test pilots. Good grief.

  • Bob Mahoney

    “The private space sector…has killed no one.”

    Didn’t folks die in a rocket engine firing mishap in the Virgin Galactic effort? Or do they not count because they didn’t die in flight? Kinda shallow way to look at human lives…

  • DCSCA

    @StephenCSmith ““The private space sector in this country has killed no one.”

    It has flown no one. It’s cousin, the ‘private aviation sector’ has: [There have been] 1,300 fatal accidents involving commercial aircraft, world-wide, from 1950 thru 2009 for which a specific cause is known. Aircraft with 10 or less people aboard, military aircraft , private aircraft and helicopters are not included. -source, PlaneCrashInfo.com

  • DCSCA

    @BobMahoney- Doesn’t seem to be a wise marketing strategy for an emerging venture, does it. “NASA has killed 14 in shuttle, 3 testing Apollo and 2 in transit for Gemini. We’ve killed no one. Fly us.” They best stick to the economics of it as a selling point.

  • Uh, actually, ‘most’ did, particularly the ‘most’ who were trained and culled from the ranks of military test pilots.

    Very few thought it was less than one in a hundred. Most of them thought it was safer than being a test pilot.

    Good grief.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 2:48 pm & 2:59 pm

    …private space sector in this country has killed no one… It has flown no one. NASA has been flying people into space for half a century.

    and

    private aviation sector’ has… 1,300 fatal accidents involving commercial aircraft, world-wide, from 1950 thru 2009…

    You’re proving the point that those that fixate on “NASA being the only safe way to fly” are being disingenuous. No matter what method of transportation you choose to take, even walking, there are inherent risks.

    The market place will sort all of this out if given the chance. Those companies that succeed will continue, and those that don’t will be lost to the history books. Anyone still flying the airline that loaded oxygen generators in with cargo and caused the plane to crash in the swamp? Evolution in action.

    If NASA monopolizes space transportation, it will never have the monetary incentive to make spaceflight frequent enough to lower the rate of accidents. You can only make a system better by using it, and NASA will never be able to be funded enough for anything more than rides for “programs”.

    Statistics reflect that most car accidents happen within 1.4 miles from home, yet that doesn’t deter us from driving. As long as paying customers understand the risks, why should they be stopped from using commercial crew services?

    Space flight can only become safer if it’s an industry, not a program.

  • DCSCA

    @Rand Simberg wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
    Very few thought it was less than one in a hundred. Most of them thought it was safer than being a test pilot. Good grief. <– Most?? Uh, no. But your inaccuracies regarding space history remain amusingly consistent.

  • common sense

    I wonder why Tetrault is so adamant about Constellation being safe… So much for integrity.

    Oh well…

    http://caib.nasa.gov/board_members/tetrault.html

    Mr. Roger E. Tetrault was appointed Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of McDermott International, Inc. on March 1, 1997. He became Chairman on June 1, 1997 and retired in August 2000 after 24 years of service with McDermott.

    Tetrault left McDermott and its major subsidiary, Babcock and Wilcox, in 1991 to join General Dynamics as corporate vice president and president of its Electric Boat Division. At Babcock and Wilcox he had been the Vice President and Group Executive of the Government Group, where he was responsible for the diversified government business segment that included nuclear reactors, pressure vessels, steam generators and pressurizers for nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. The Group also included ammunition and missile components, specialty pipe fabrication, Advanced Solid Rocket Motor bodies for the Space Shuttle, and other diverse weapon systems

  • But your inaccuracies regarding space history remain amusingly consistent.

    I have expressed no inaccuracies regarding space history.

  • DCSCA

    “The people who fly the shuttle were aware of the risk. So we went ahead on that basis.” – Max Faget, Shuttle Designer. “Is it risky? Well, uh, I think 51-L sort of shows that it’s pretty risky. Always been a possiblity, I think, that you could lose people in spaceflight. I was sure sorry to see it happen.” — John Young, Chief Astronaut. – source, Frontline, ‘The Real Stuff’ -1/28/87

  • DCSCA

    @RandSimberg- “I have expressed no inaccuracies regarding space history.” =yawn= in fact, you have. But they are amusing all the same.

  • DCSCA

    On another thread: @Rand Simberg wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
    “Nixon terminated NASA’s ability to travel to the Moon No, Lyndon Johnson did that.”

    Uh, no. “President-Elect Nixon named a space task group chaired by Spiro Agnew. It reported in September, 1969 on three possible long-range programs…. The third option [and the cheapest] involved only the space station and the shuttle, with annual spending between $4 and $5.7 billion. NIXON chose option 3 in March, 1970. The last two Apollo [lunar landing] flights were scrubbed and the Apollo Applications Program shank to a single Skylab. Nixon even cancelled the MOL, again frustrating the Air Force.” — source, Walter McDougall,’…the Heavens and the Earth.” =sigh=

  • “The people who fly the shuttle were aware of the risk. So we went ahead on that basis.” – Max Faget, Shuttle Designer. “Is it risky? Well, uh, I think 51-L sort of shows that it’s pretty risky. Always been a possiblity, I think, that you could lose people in spaceflight. I was sure sorry to see it happen.” — John Young, Chief Astronaut. – source, Frontline, ‘The Real Stuff’ -1/28/87

    Those statements is meaningless in the context of the discussion, since they are not quantitative, and I never said there was no risk — only that it was greater than they thought. If they had thought it was less than one in a hundred, Christa McAuliffe would never have flown. Neither would have Jake Garn or Bill Nelson.

    Perhaps you should work on your reading comprehension?

  • I also pointed out that your Nixon quote was irrelevant. Again it seems to be a reading comprehension problem.

  • DCSCA

    @RandSimberg- It’s very relevant. But your inaccuracies remain amusing all the same.

  • DCSCA

    @RandSimberg- meaningless in the context of your spin. As usual, ever amusing. And a little sad.

  • meaningless in the context of your spin.

    No, meaningless in the context of your inability to read what I wrote for comprehension.

    You know, you’d look a little less like a fool if you responded to what I actually write, instead of what the voices in your head tell you I write.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ June 10th, 2010 at 2:48 pm

    Uh, actually, ‘most’ did, particularly the ‘most’ who were trained and culled from the ranks of military test pilots. Good grief….

    I know a “few” astronauts and have flown with “a few” of them…and I know a few of the “managers” in the program (particularly from the 90’s) and…. Rand is correct on this.

    what surprised a lot of them was “how” the orbiters were lost….and the near misses that almost lost vehicles.

    none of these events have been “Surprises”. Everything that got them or almost got them has been well understood as a problem until the moment something went bang, or there almost (or wasnt) wasnt enough hydrogen to get to orbit because of an H leak or well even the foam flying off and “denting’ the tiles.

    that is the problem with the shuttle in specific and NASA management in general. They dont have a cluehow to safely operate any human vehicle these days.

    Robert G. Oler

  • DCSCA

    @RobertGOler- RS is inaccurate regarding crew risk. His ‘Donald Duck’ rants are amusing to refute.

    ‘Surprise’ is your term. It’s evident the vehicles and crews were ultimately lost because of poor management, not sloppy engineering. The engineering strengths and weaknesses were seen -or revealed- through flight experience to the engineering teams– and often ignored, or deemed acceptable flight risks, by management. Schedule and budget pressures; cost considerations. Bad habit thinking. Putting Challenger aside, the steadfast disbelief of shuttle managers to initially dismiss- or to avoid accepting the possiblity that foam could damage tiles on Columbia at those velocities – something similiarly familiar to HS physics students– was stunning to witness on national television. [Even woodpeckers and raindrops were an endless problem.] Those managers should have been fired – not transferred. The performance envelope of the spacecraft is what it is. This writer places blame on loss of vehicles & crews firmly with management– not the engineering community. But the crews knew the risks and weighed that risk against the rewards. We probably agree shuttle management is mediocre at best; deadly at worst.

  • vulture4

    The only consistent predictor of the reliability of a launch vehicle is the number of flights it has made. The reliability of the Shuttle has increased with every mission, since the problems that caused the two losses and several near-misses were each corrected. The number of problems has decreased consistently in the last five years. Consequently assertions that its reliability is 1/66 are incorrect. That is its historical loss rate, but its current loss rate is less than 1/132. It is currently the most reliable launch vehicle available in the US. Anyone from the public to the crew who believes it is unsafe should obviously insist on cancellation of the remaining two missions. Shuttle management has also markedly improved, in part because Shuttle managers have finally learned to listen to the contractor engineers and technicians who actually build and maintain the Shuttle.

    A new vehicle should of course learn from and improve upon Shuttle. Constellation instead preserved the SRB, which was responsible for one of the two Shuttle losses, while claiming that it was now 100% safe since only the RSRM was considered. The Shuttle carries almost twice the crew and ten times the cargo and flies more than twice as often as Orion, all for the same price. Constellation was a huge and inexplicable step backward, and we should cancel all remaining Constellation activity immediately. If this were done we could easily afford to keep flying Shuttle at full flight rate until 2020, while developing a new fully reusable system to replace it and operating SpaceX in parallel as a backup cargo and ultimately human access to space.

    SpaceX and Shuttle use different pads and are complementary. Constellation and SpaceX require the same resources and cannot coexist, financially of physically. SpaceX serves no meaningful strategic goal and should be canceled immediately.

  • vulture4

    Yikes! I meant Constellation serves no meaningful strategic goal and should be canceled immediately.

  • Andy Clark

    Vulture, please read what I wrote. I never asserted that the reliability of the Shuttle was 1 in 66. The probability of losing a vehicle and crew based on demonstrated flights IS 1 in 66 at the moment. It changes with each launch and we will never know if Shuttle has a greater probability of success now than it had before Columbia broke up in flight. Otherwise I agree with your comments.

  • vulture4

    I have read a great deal about the Probability Risk Assessment. Typical is this:

    “This one in one-hundred is the probability risk assessment number given,” NASA space operations spokesman Allard Beutel tells PM. “It’s the chance of the possibility of loosing the space shuttle and crew.” It’s not, however, the odds of losing the crew on any given mission.

    The general nature of all these reports is that “we know what we’re doing, it might be too complex for you to understand. In hundreds of assessments in print and in actual meetings, I have almost never seen any attempt to test actual subsytems and components for failure rates and modes. Instead these are simply guesses, but they are made with such authority (rhetoric element ethos; believe me because I am authoritative) rather than scientific tests to establish component reliability (rhetoric element logos, believe me because I am logical) that no one questions them. Really they are just meaningless wags. I have personally sat through meetings where design decisions were made on this basis. For reasons unknown to me NASA engineers never admit that a component reliability parameter is unknown and would cost some time and work to measure. I’ve seen them take estimates of completely different devices from other industries, or just estimate based on the “order of magnitutde” method, i.e. writing down risks of .1, .01, and .001 and then choosing which ever seems right. I have actually seen NASA engineers generate a risk assessment by looking at the specified availability in the RFP and stating that “the contractor will be required to meet this level of reliability”. In fact, this seems to be the origin of the famous 1 in 100,000 estimate of risk early in the Shuttle program. Similarly the current PRAN is obviously too low because if it were correct, given that the flaws that caused the two losses have been corrected, we would have seen at least two more losses in the past 132 missions. No one questions how NASA can be credible today when they make such widely varying estimates. Here’s a pretty good intro to the field. Note that the most consistent predictor of launch vehicle reliability is the number of launches that have been made with the system:
    http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2001/03.html
    Another bit of foolishness is the the faith NASA has in redundancy. Challenger had redundant O-rings. Both failed almost simultaneously. Redundancy only increases reliability when failures are random and failure modes are anticipated, while most launch failures are deterministic (the short launch period provides little opportunity for wear and similar random processes) and due to unanticipated failure modes.

    The basic problem is that any NASA engineer, asked a question, will never say “I don’t know.” They will provide an answer, and will never express doubt. I would like to see just one authoritative text on reliability engineering that supports this approach. Practically everything I have seen published on the PRAN fails to make any mention of the parameters that were estimated.

    The USA engineers, for the most part, have considerable hardware experience with the systems and don’t bother with such foolishness, concentrating instead on how failures really occurred and can be prevented.

    Systems engineering is a useful tool when experience or testing of a system is adequate to establish the actual modes and rates of failure. In the absence of this data no level of complexity in a paper analysis produces accurate results.

  • “The engineering strengths and weaknesses were seen -or revealed- through flight experience to the engineering teams– and often ignored, or deemed acceptable flight risks, by management.”

    So many tiles were lost in the initial missions including the even where gasses entered the wheel wells that if they understood the risks, you’d expect someone would have spoken up. But no one did. They were so nonchalant about it that to this day, even after Columbia failed in a near carbon copy event, people don’t even know what went on in the early days. If you read the post-flight reports, it reads more like a maintenance checklist than any red lights going off. The risks may have been known, but they were far from well-understood. The estimates on the magnitude of the problem were way off.

  • Coastal Ron

    vulture4 wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 12:58 am

    The reliability of the Shuttle has increased with every mission, since the problems that caused the two losses and several near-misses were each corrected. The number of problems has decreased consistently in the last five years. Consequently assertions that its reliability is 1/66 are incorrect. That is its historical loss rate, but its current loss rate is less than 1/132. It is currently the most reliable launch vehicle available in the US.

    Reliability is one thing, but survivability is another. The marked difference in survivability with old-fashioned capsule launchers comes from the ability of a capsule to also be the escape system when leaving the failed launcher. For the Shuttle, unless you can land it, you have to bail out from it. This is the inherent problem with all-in-one vehicles, which also includes modern airliners.

    For cargo, reliability is paramount, since we do not incorporate escape systems for the payload. For crew, the question is not necessarily whether something is the most reliable, but whether it’s the most survivable. However, there is risk in everything we do, so it’s more a matter of acceptable risk, however each of us defines that.

    SpaceX and Shuttle use different pads and are complementary. Constellation and SpaceX require the same resources and cannot coexist, financially of physically.

    Huh? I think you have that backward, if anything. Other than range support, SpaceX is completely separate from everything NASA, Shuttle or Constellation. Ares V, I believe, was going to use the Shuttle launch pads.

    Constellation was a huge and inexplicable step backward, and we should cancel all remaining Constellation activity immediately. If this were done we could easily afford to keep flying Shuttle at full flight rate until 2020, while developing a new fully reusable system to replace it and operating SpaceX in parallel as a backup cargo and ultimately human access to space.

    Cancel Constellation – agreed.

    “easily afford to keep flying the Shuttle” – yes, but at the expense of what? You have a fixed budget, and the $6B increase over 5 years has not been approved. The Shuttle Program Manager has stated that it costs $200M/month to run the Shuttle program, regardless if you launch anything. $200M gives you almost 4 full Falcon 9 launches, for a total of 92,200 lbs of mass to LEO. Do you see trade-off here?

    “flying Shuttle at full flight rate until 2020″ – to do what? The ISS already has contracted services to keep it supplied with crew and cargo through 2015, and after that the prices should go down as Orbital and SpaceX mature, and new capsule systems come online. What is the economic need for the Shuttle?

    If we truly wanted a backup to Soyuz, and we wanted it ASAP, then we have three non-Shuttle systems that could be online by 2015 or so. Delta IV Heavy with an Orion ($300M/launcher only), Atlas V with a commercial capsule ($130M/launcher only), and Falcon 9/Dragon for $20M/seat. All of these are far less expensive than the Shuttle, and they are all common with their cargo versions, which means they will only get more reliable/survivable.

  • vulture4

    “flying Shuttle at full flight rate until 2020″ – to do what?

    If ISS is valuable, then the more capability it has, the more it can accomplish. The original plan was to use Shuttle to continue adding modules, science, spacecraft servicing, etc. Shuttle provides a combination of cargo, people, and equipment to do the job which is unexceled. If ISS is just an unprofitable waste that we are supporting just to meet an arbitrary obligation, then we should abandon it immediately.

    “If we truly wanted a backup to Soyuz, and we wanted it ASAP, then we have three non-Shuttle systems that could be online by 2015 or so.”

    The Shuttle is operating right now, not in five years plus potential delays. It can hardly be considered a backup to Soyuz, since its capabilities are far greater and Shuttle is currently our primary access to ISS. The Soyuz is a backup to Shuttle, but as such it is far from ideal, having had two near misses due to the still unresolved failure of the service module separation bolts. SpaceX would provide a better backup to Shuttle than Soyuz or Orion. SpaceX requires little additional funds and no facilities other than Complex 40, so it can easily operate in parallel with the Shuttle.

    Although ULA has many excellent engineers, the company is not cost-competitive and the Orion capsule, designed for the lunar mission, is substantially inferior to the Dragon in the logistic role, carrying far less cargo and fewer crew despite its greater weight. The Lockheed capsule for the Atlas does not yet exist but even if feasible it will still leave the US dependent on Russian engines.

  • common sense

    @ vulture4 wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 10:42 am

    You by far are one of the most reasonable Shuttle defender around but where were you in 2004? I do not agree we should keep Shuttle. It is not a safe vehicle and costs way too much despite being a magnificent vehicle. A little like Concorde but for space. Well actually Concorde was providing an income towards the end but anyway. It is too late to get Shuttle going again. There will be a 2 year gap per John Shannon at a cost of at least $4.8B. For the same cost we can develop a new vehicle, not a Shuttle mind you but something that can loft people to orbit. Or we can develop 2 such vehicles. So I am afraid Shuttle’s time has passed now. The real question is how to minimize the effects of the transition. How do we keep the people we need to do the job? How do we know who are the people we need? And what do we want to do in the future? Do we need a reentry vehicle with good down/cross range? What for? Does it have to land on a runway? Why? In essence we need to look way into the future, accommodate with the political realities of our government and go forward. In the mean time we need to alleviate the pain of those being laid off, whose dreams are being shattered and make sure we use them effectively in the transition. It’ll be long and painful but we have to do it.

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