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What Buzz Aldrin and Gene Cernan have in common with Bubba the Love Sponge

Well, they may have many things in common, but the relevant one here is that they all talked about space policy yesterday. Buzz Aldrin made an appearance on Neil Cavuto’s show on the Fox Business Channel, talking about the future of America’s space program. “Everyone but us seems to want in on space,” Cavuto said in the lead-in to his interview. Aldrin noted that the decision to retire the shuttle dated back to 2004. “That’s over seven years to come up with a substitute. Where is the substitute? It did not come out of Constellation. Constellation needed to be cancelled,” he argued. “Some of us saw this coming a long ways back, but nobody was going to listen that we were building the wrong rockets and the wrong spacecraft to replace the shuttle,” he said later. He largely supported the administration’s policy of handing access to LEO to commercial providers, while Cavuto lamented the fate of the nation’s space program. “Don’t yell at me. I’m telling you what’s going on here, Mr. Hero,” Cavuto said to Aldrin at one point at the end of the interview when Aldrin declined to agree with Cavuto’s assessment that “it is what it is, sadly.”

In a related story, Fox News reported over the weekend that Aldrin wants to make space a campaign issue in the 2012 presidential election. He said that the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s 1961 speech announcing the goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, coming up on May 25, “can be an opportunity for this President [Obama]to make a proclamation about our space future. Unfortunately, I just don’t think that is going to happen.” Aldrin said he will be speaking at a 50th anniversary event about that speech at the JFK Library in Boston and, according to the report, he “feels after that, many people around the world will realize this can be a campaign issue.”

Houston’s KRIV-TV used the launch Monday of the shuttle Endeavour to interview Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon. Cernan, who has not been a fan of the administration’s space policy, reiterated his concerns in the interview. He called the shuttle’s retirement “premature” in the interview. “The space shuttle has literally just reached its prime. It’s just ready to really perform,” he said. “There are a few of us old fogies who have called Mr. Obama’s space program a mission to nowhere,” he added. “When the last shuttle lands in June, where are we going to go? What is our mission?” Like Aldrin, he harkened back to Kennedy’s vision of space exploration 50 years ago. “We’re abdicating our role.”

There there is the rather unexpected commentary from shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge, the nom de radio of Todd Clem. “You know, a lot of people may be sad to see the shuttle program go, but you know, I actually applaud Obama once on this move,” he said. He sees human spaceflight as using outdated technology and wasting billions of dollars, and believes human spaceflight should instead be privatized. “Privatize NASA and quit throwing away money,” he concluded, saying “taking the toys away from NASA” is good place to start cutting federal spending.

44 comments to What Buzz Aldrin and Gene Cernan have in common with Bubba the Love Sponge

  • MrEarl

    Seems that a lot of people on this site take their que about HSF from “Bubba the Love Sponge”!

    Looking at you Oler! :-)

  • Robert G. Oler

    “He largely supported the administration’s policy of handing access to LEO to commercial providers, while Cavuto lamented the fate of the nation’s space program. “Don’t yell at me. I’m telling you what’s going on here, Mr. Hero,” ”

    the problem is that a lot of people cannot see “a space program” outside the confines of a government program with government generated goals. The other problem is that most of the people who cannot see that notion of a program anymore are most of the American people who are unwilling to support such expenditures.

    Fox News is a parody of the right wing…which sees America and American history as something that is how they wish it was, not how it is or what it can be. This is Cernan’s statement. He simply cannot see the flaws with a NASA effort

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    What is missing in all of this, is a solid debate on the future shape of NASA.

    The folks trying to preserve the “exploration” approach are simply howling at the Moon…there is 1) no way that the American people are going to buy in toward a 100-200 billion dollar exploration effort and 2) there is no way that the current NASA can do any crewed exploration for less then 100-200 billion.

    It is really to early for either Charlie Bolden or the Obama administration as a whole to chart a new NASA course…but the folks who have NASA HSF as a constituent service SHOULD start pushing out alternate ideas for how the Agency works and in particular how the JSC stays relevant to any future efforts.

    JSC is probably going to evolve to a “space station” center…but if they do not move quickly to reduce cost in terms of operating the station and getting payloads up to the station and coming up with unique ideas how to use the station… they are going to find themselves outmanuevered in that line as well.

    POliticians of all stripes need to recognize the obvious Obama and Bolden have won this round and the NASA of the space shuttle era has at best about three more months before they are having the plugs (money) pulled from them.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Obama seems to view government manned spaceflight as a political flag planting program. And since we’ve already planted a flag on the Moon, he suggest we now plant a flag on an asteroid and then on one of the moons of Mars– but far far into the future. This makes me strongly suspect that his real intention is terminate NASA’s manned spaceflight capability and just let private industry do it– if they want too!

    However, there are many of us who view government manned spaceflight as an essential program designed to pioneer cis-lunar space and the rest of the solar system so that privateers, tourist, and colonist can follow and in order to continue to grow the US economy!

    So far, the government’s investment in aerospace technology and exploration over the past 50 years has been enormously beneficial to the US economy with practically every American benefiting from space technology every day from satellite weather reports, enjoying cable TV, navigating our vehicle’s around town, and many other aerospace derived technologies.

    The plasma torch invented for heat shield research for manned spaceflight could help to make the US totally independent of petroleum, keeping hundreds of billions of dollars from going to hostile nations, by converting urban and rural biowaste into carbon neutral gasoline, methanol, methane, diesel fuel, and jet fuel.

    Fuel derived from water from the Moon could potentially lower the cost of transporting commercial satellites from LEO to geosynchronous orbit. And private commercial space tourism has the potential to be a multibillion dollar a year industry that could extend all the way to the lunar surface.

    A Federal manned space program is extremely good for private industry. And companies like the ULA, Bigelow, the Sierra Nevada Corporation, and Space X would not even exist if it weren’t for the hundreds of billions of dollars invested by US tax payers over the past 50 years in aerospace technology and space exploration.

  • John Malkin

    As much as I would like to believe that the general public has an interest in Space, the general public aren’t space advocates. The majority of the general public don’t call, write, lobby or e-mail their congress members about space. Yes, some people that aren’t associated with space do call, write, e-mail and lobby but it’s small and those are space advocates. Otherwise only people with jobs related to space will call, write, e-mail or lobby for space which is much larger number and more influential group than the space advocate only. So big proclamations won’t have an effect.

    I wish with this 50th anniversary celebration, we say goodbye to the Apollo days and its outdated methodologies. It is holding us back now. NASA hasn’t completed a human spaceflight program alone since Shuttle which started during Apollo. ISS was an international effort and it wasn’t going to be successfully completed by the US alone.

    So go COTS and CCDev! These are examples of programs that are working. I hope they see a successful completion and they change human access to space forever. We shouldn’t be afraid to try new ideas and fail. And we shouldn’t penalize people that do try new ideas and fail. One success versus nine failures can yield 50 fold in both business and science.

  • SpaceColonizer

    LOL. We’ll see. I’ll be more than simply shocked to see space policy even mentioned during a debate. I think space will become more popular as it becomes increasingly commercialized, which will balance out to the same amount of interest in the public spending side of things (actually, probably increased interest in cutting the budget). When commercial has LEO transport covered and we can start to talk about real affordable exploration of our solar system, then the taxpayers might get intersted.

  • If you continue listening to the Cavuto/Buzz video, it segues into one of Norm Augustine by Charles Payne. Augustine gets the Russian seat prices wrong, and thinks it’s five to seven years before we have any way to relieve our dependence on them, with no explanation of how it happens (in other words, no mention of Commercial Crew). He was entirely too pessimistic. I also noticed that Neil Cavuto has bought into a lot of the Kennedy space myth.

  • amightywind

    It did not come out of Constellation. Constellation needed to be cancelled,” he argued. “Some of us saw this coming a long ways back, but nobody was going to listen that we were building the wrong rockets and the wrong spacecraft to replace the shuttle

    Cancellation of Constellation was abrupt and political. There was no debate, no program review, no post mortem. Even after the successful Ares I-X test flight. No, Obama’s minions did their dirty work, and destroyed the space coast, while the congress recoiled in horror. As a result, here we are implementing Constellation Express, and doing it badly. Buzz is adding nothing new to the debate. He is trying to sell the same newspace snake oil Fox’s conservative viewers don’t want. Do they need to be reminded that he sat with Obama on the plane on that ruinous first trip to the Cape?

  • DCSCA

    Cernan ‘co-anchored’ Fox News’ live coverage of STS-134’s launch coverage. His embrace of shuttle as a technological advance goes w/o saying but is tinged in his golden years with emotion in terms of pride in country and the politics it represents– Cold War politics. Referencing ceding space to ‘the Russians’ oozed of space race rhetoric from the 1960’s and just sounds obtuse to 25 -30 year olds.

    Shuttle engineering is what it is. But the program management has been decidely mediocre. Cernan was quite critical of NASA managers when the Rogers Commission released its report in the summer of 1986– noting a sense of betrayal at the time. The CAIB report should have shown him that as far as the decision-making patterns of NASA’s shuttle management culture goes, little had changed. But these days, Cernan consistently (if not conveniently) averts discussing the very down to earth realities of the costs involved in operating the space shuttle in this era. It was not lost on TV viewers that as STS-134 cleared the tower, the United States slammed smack into the ‘debt ceiling’ at the same time– it was the next story on FOX as shuttle coverage ended. Contrary to the original planning, the costs to maintain and launch the space shuttle fleet continued to rise, not decline. It ranges now at a low of $750-$800 million/launch – (some estimates peg it at $1 billion/launch, per Branson today on MSNBC,) not including millions more for delays (such as the embarrassing, inexcusable delay w/t CIC on hand due to incompetent management and flight prep by NASA for STS-134.)

    Cernan should review the performance records as well for the program. There are vast periods of down time due to accidents, redesigns and generally poor management. Shuttle is ending because the program bureaucracy is laced with a mediocre management culture and dubious decision-making, not uncommon to aging bureaucracies, failed to lower costs over three decades of operations, lost two multi-billion space shuttle orbiters and killed 14 astronauts. (No doubt the same ‘culture’ infects ISS management as well.) If NASA had demonstrated it was capable of lofting shuttles quarterly for $250 million a launch to service the boondoggle ISS, the Congress might very well have kept flying and kept Cernan happy. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…” -Shakespeare.

    Kennedy”s complete 5/25/61 speech is an interesting read and must be considered in the context of the times 50 years ago when revisiting it– or better still, listen/watch to the whole thing as delivered. It was billed as a ‘special message to Congress’ — with the famed moon passage toward the end. It was essentially a supplement to his 1/30/61 SOU speech after which some very adverse international events occurred for the U.S.– Bay of Pigs, Gagarin… and his Vienna summit w/NK was just a few weeks away… and the Berlin Wall was fated for construction that August. Very Cold War stuff… and as relevent to the problems facing Americans today as FDR’s speech about Pearl Harbor on 12/8/41. Mention JFK to a 25 year old and you’ll get a reference to it being the name of a high school or some gossip about Marilyn Monroe, not a Cold War commitment to space.

    Sadly, Aldrin is all about Aldrin these days. Anecdotally speaking, this writer was discussing space w/some younger people a few weeks ago and in passing, Aldrin’s name came up– as the old guy in the uniform on ‘Dancing With The Stars” pitching his phone app. Not as a historic space visionary. One person noted that, “Buzz loves his ‘bling'” – which brought to mind the old Gemini days references to Buzz ‘wearing his resume.’ Sad. Fortunately, his hosting of the WWF event in Canada last year, complete with him embarrassingly ‘moonwalking’ in the center of the canvas for the crowd, didn’t come up. Should not be a surprise that a ‘shock jock’ feels comfortable commenting on space policy, either. He knows his audience today– dumbed down and to the right. Hence Buzz’s embrace of entertainment schlock. One gets the impression Buzz would be content to keep membership in the world’s most exclusive club to twelve- for sometime to come. A club in which he is number two–a fact which may still irk him.

  • There was no debate, no program review

    Were you living in a cave? Did you not read the Augustine report?

  • Vladislaw

    “Obama seems to view government manned spaceflight as a political flag planting program. And since we’ve already planted a flag on the Moon, he suggest we now plant a flag on an asteroid and then on one of the moons of Mars”

    In one of Bolden’s first interviews he was asked about making NASA more visual to the masses. He refered to a talk with the President on how they could achieve this. Bolden said that Americans only get excited and pay attention to the space program was when we were doing a “first”. He then went on to talk about a series of “many firsts”. Earth-Luna Lagrange points, Earth-Sol lagrange points, a Mars moon trip, mars orbit et cetera.

    I believe that is the track the technology they wanted NASA to develop was heading. Create excitement through a series firsts. Fuel depot and a space based vehicle for NASA for exploration and commercial handling the Earth to LEO.

  • Coastal Ron

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 17th, 2011 at 3:06 pm

    …with practically every American benefiting from space technology every day from satellite weather reports, enjoying cable TV, navigating our vehicle’s around town, and many other aerospace derived technologies.

    NASA consumes about 0.5% of the National Budget, so if you want to claim that they contribute 0.5% of our innovation, fine by me, but in this day and age that’s probably a little high since it’s the consumer and commercial market that are driving innovation.

    Besides, the stuff you are claiming NASA has helped is all pretty old:

    – The first weather satellite was launched 5 months after the creation of NASA (Feb. 1959), so I don’t think they had much input.

    – Cable TV started back in the 40’s, so I don’t know how you assign NASA much credit.

    – GPS can also trace it’s lineage back to the 40’s, and was created and realized by the DoD.

    – “aerospace derived technologies”? Sure NASA funds some research, as does the DoD and private companies. And really, how much manufacturing does NASA do? Not even a blip on the manufacturing index.

    Can you name five mainstream technology innovations of the last 10 years that NASA truly does get credit for creating?

    To use a Cernian description of your knowledge of NASA, “you don’t know what you don’t know”… ;-)

  • Egad

    > Even after the successful partly successful and mostly irrelevant Ares I-X test flight.

  • DCSCA

    @amightywind wrote @ May 17th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
    The fatal flaw in Constellation was Ares. Griffin’s rocket was a lousy design to build a 30 year program around and the cost overruns so early on was crippling. Augustine’s report(s) repeatedly showed that underfunding funding all but doomed it from the get go.

  • DCSCA

    @Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 17th, 2011 at 1:44 pm

    “[T]he problem is that a lot of people cannot see “a space program” outside the confines of a government program with government generated goals.”
    .
    Inaccurate, at least w/respect to unmanned space operations. HSF is another matter. Branson has a sub-orbital for profit enterprise w/paying passengers readying to commence operation next year. It is the next logical phase for commercial HSF in this period. For orbital HSF operations and beyond, no so much. The very parameters of the free market makes what interested people “see’ all too apparent: high risk, minimal ROI. Hence investors in the private sector remain wary. That’s why governments do it– and have been able to afford the largess of capital necessary ofr programs of scale– and have done so not for financial profit but for political rationales and/or strategic/military advantage. Revisit ‘Destination Moon,’ strip away the entertainment schmaltz and you’ll find a for profit ‘space project’ complete with a business plan as envisioned 60 years ago– provided you find a high value resource like uranium by reel five to justify the expense. Today that ‘uranium’ may very well be the discovery of water on ol’ Luna- a ‘high value’ resource already on site, 240,000 miles out.

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 17th, 2011 at 2:26 pm

    “What is missing in all of this, is a solid debate on the future shape of NASA.”

    As long as there is a SLS and MPCV there will be no such debate.

    “It is really to early for either Charlie Bolden or the Obama administration as a whole to chart a new NASA course…but the folks who have NASA HSF as a constituent service SHOULD start pushing out alternate ideas for how the Agency works and in particular how the JSC stays relevant to any future efforts.”

    Agreed and I said so myself several times. “Alternate ideas” in their minds consists in how many combinations of ATK boosters you can come up with for a 70-to-130 tons LV for HEFT like missions. I think we’ve seen them all. And it’s not just JSC.

    “JSC is probably going to evolve to a “space station” center…but if they do not move quickly to reduce cost in terms of operating the station and getting payloads up to the station and coming up with unique ideas how to use the station… they are going to find themselves outmanuevered in that line as well.”

    I still believe they could become a Space Academy of some sort but it will dramatically shrink the size. Which will happen anyway pretty soon. Just watch after last Shuttle launch.

    “POliticians of all stripes need to recognize the obvious Obama and Bolden have won this round and the NASA of the space shuttle era has at best about three more months before they are having the plugs (money) pulled from them.”

    I doubt they will “recognize” anything. Suffice to see how Romney recognized his health plan run by this WH. Or how some acknowledged the efforts of GWB in recent events as opposed to those of this WH.

    It is going to hurt at NASA, it already does but it is not over just yet. How many Jupiters are we going to get again?

    Oh well…

  • Scia

    Rand Simberg wrote @ May 17th, 2011 at 5:22 pm
    “Were you living in a cave? Did you not read the Augustine report?”

    That’s amightywind

    the resident Republican that loves Big government space travel and hates SpaceX.

    He also hates facts

  • SpaceColonizer

    @John Malkin

    But as OldSpace employees go down and Newspace employees increase the scales will begin to tip onto the “enthusiast” side. Anytime soon? Maybe not… but the true budget cutters aren’t taking favorites… and the SLS is a big target… so there’s some support for Newspace right there.

  • amightywind

    Were you living in a cave? Did you not read the Augustine report?

    A left wing lynch mob. Not an honest broker.

    The fatal flaw in Constellation was Ares.

    So you have been taught to say. I won’t be unhappy if they build Direct, but it is more rocket than the lunar or BEO mission demand.

  • reader

    >>He sees human spaceflight as using outdated technology and wasting billions of dollars

    You would need a pretty sturdy set of blinders, not to spot that.

    Somebody needs to do a good infograph with all the US HSF expenditures of past few decades combined, depicted side by side with all its “great” accomplishments… calling XKCD

  • vulture4

    “He called the shuttle’s retirement “premature” in the interview. “The space shuttle has literally just reached its prime. It’s just ready to really perform,” he said. “There are a few of us old fogies who have called Mr. Obama’s space program a mission to nowhere,” he added. “When the last shuttle lands in June, where are we going to go? What is our mission?”

    I agree with Cernan that the Shuttle could certainly continue to fly safely, but where was he when Bush cancelled the Shuttle program in January 2004? I agree with his point that Constellation was (and still is) a mistake but why didn’t he speak up and say so? Why doesn’t he say that Orion and HLLV are equally without practical value? Why does he blame Obama and not Bush? I am tired of these partisan attacks that fail to place the blame where it belongs.

    Right now we need to jettison the remainder of Constellation and put our money into more modern concepts.

  • A left wing lynch mob. Not an honest broker.

    OK, so the Augustine panel was a “left wing lynch mob,” but you are an objective, rational actor. Nothing nutty about you at all…

    Riiiigggghhhtt…

  • Rhyolite

    “The space shuttle has literally just reached its prime.”

    The ultimate goal of the space shuttle was to reduce launch costs. We knew it had failed at that goal by the mid 80s. It really should have been canceled 25 years ago and its funds redirected to more promising solutions. Instead what developed was a rocket entitlement for benefited a few choice congressional districts at the expense of any real progress in space.

  • DCSCA

    @amightywind wrote @ May 17th, 2011 at 9:18 pm
    The fatal flaw in Constellation was Ares.
    “So you have been taught to say.”

    It was a bad bird, Windy. A lousy rocket design to build a 30-plus year program around. Accept it and press on.

  • Shuttle was cancelled in 2004 after the Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded it’s “a complex and risky system.” The fundamental design flaws, primarily the side-mounted crew vehicle, can’t be changed. It’s not safe and never will be safe.

    I wish the people whining about Shuttle’s cancellation would actually read the CAIB report.

  • Justin Kugler

    And there are people at JSC working on the very things common sense and Oler are talking about.

  • Dennis Berube

    While the shuttle program failed in its attempt at reducing spacefight cost, Im wondering if Musk will end up with the same problem? Promises abound, but reality sets in!

  • Rhyolite

    “While the shuttle program failed in its attempt at reducing spacefight cost, Im wondering if Musk will end up with the same problem?”

    We are going to get that answer for a lot less tax payer money than we did for the shuttle.

    A rational approach to reducing launch cost would spread our bets – try multiple approaches at a small scale, discard the ones that fail and move on quickly.

    Putting all of our eggs in one (shuttle) basket was an invitation to failure.

  • common sense

    @ Justin Kugler wrote @ May 18th, 2011 at 8:21 am

    Can you say a little more about what you know being done at JSC?

  • Robert G. Oler

    Rand Simberg wrote @ May 17th, 2011 at 11:32 pm

    lol, btw really nice discussion by you of the AWST article on your blog. Coherent well laid out, I would urge everyone to read the report, and your post but if not just read your post, it was well done. I’ve linked it on my facebook page and shared it with quite a few people RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 17th, 2011 at 3:06 pm

    Obama seems to view government manned spaceflight as a political flag planting program.>>

    there seems to be little data to support that statement. If anything Obama’s government crewed efforts seem to be shunning planting flags and making footprints outside of LEO…just ask Mark Whittington…he is in uproar mode about it RGO

  • Halfwit

    I am wondering whether the cancellation of the Soviet Buran program was ultimately a good thing? It did hurt their pride, but saved them billions. The Buran did not have a specific task anyway, even less so than the Shuttle, because the Russians copied Space Shuttle just in case, to have a “symmetric answer” to whatever the Shuttle would be tasked with. Turned out, that the Shuttle is not a space attack ship, but rather a very expensive cosmic minivan with a tendency to blow up. The Russians keep flying the old Soyuz, which fits the purpose of bringing people to the ISS and back. Would you like to be pulled out of an ugly steel ball alive, or to burn into pieces with comfort?

    I wish Musk all the best, his Dragon seems to be the best answer this country has for human flight into orbit, and hopefully it will push the Russians to finally abandon the half-a-century design in favor of something more modern.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ May 18th, 2011 at 6:43 am

    Shuttle was cancelled in 2004 after the Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded it’s “a complex and risky system.” The fundamental design flaws, primarily the side-mounted crew vehicle, can’t be changed. It’s not safe and never will be safe.>>

    rarely a note of disagreement but the shuttle system could be made “safe within the limitations of the design” …but that is a management issue and probably is politically unfix able RGO

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 18th, 2011 at 2:31 pm

    “rarely a note of disagreement but the shuttle system could be made “safe within the limitations of the design””

    Nah I don’t think so. Not at a reasonable cost anyway. There may be way to fix the foam shedding issue yet there is no guarantee none will ever shed again. Suffice a tiny piece hit a leading edge and you’re history. The boosters? Sure, make them liquid boosters, flyback at that. Also the Buran in that respect at least was superior. So I think there may be ways to make it “safer” but it would come at great cost. It is not just that the vehicle was used outside its design envelope (Challenger) it is also that its design is fairly unsafe (Columbia). It is outdated technology and if I had a say I would push for DreamChaser rather than Shuttle. Now SNC is not done yet. As I have expressed before an abort will be quite difficult, far from trivial. It is not even clear it is possible to have an “all time” abort with such an OML.

    Even though I wish them the best, I believe it is their Achilles heel if NASA insists on an all time abort. You’ll see.

  • DCSCA

    @Stephen C. Smith wrote @ May 18th, 2011 at 6:43 am
    This writer has read it. Twice. Shuttle engineering is what it is. How it is/was managed is the variable. The CAIB report revealed the ‘in family’ management culture at NASA remains a problem and that mind set has thoroughly infected layers of decision-making at the agency. And the real tragedy of it all is similar deficiencies were revealed in the Rogers Commission report as well. It’s past time to clear out the deadwood.

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ May 18th, 2011 at 3:07 pm

    it is worth almost no time here really (grin) but I would say this about safety.

    If NASA HSF was operating a Piper Tripacer they would figure out a way to operate it unsat.

    Safety is about a management structure that deals with the KNOWN limitations of the hardware and measures the risk associated with that hardware with the mission involved.

    There is always going to be foam “migrating” or what is their new phrase “being liberated” from the tank…but the issue is 1) how to measure the worth of the mission vrs the risk and 2) to deal with the risk.

    Where NASA HSF is losing people and having one near miss after the other is that they have no adherence to good engineering/management discipline. That wont change with the hardware. Here is a hint. No 737 out of Hobby would have taken off with the issue that the shuttle is flying with now…ie a shorted component and no idea why.

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 18th, 2011 at 7:40 pm

    “Safety is about a management structure that deals with the KNOWN limitations of the hardware and measures the risk associated with that hardware with the mission involved.”

    I agree but with the foam shedding there is no real possible risk mitigation. You know when you know and obviously when you know well it is too late. I do not think, except for a redesign, they could come up with a set of design rules that if you follow you won’t get in trouble. The foam shedding is fairly random and is a flawed design. Remember that they’ve know all along about it and they thought it was no big deal. It is not about operating within specs, it is that the design does not work. Maybe it is the best they could do back then yet the design well… does not work. The only way to deal with a TPS impact would be to send a rescue mission of some sort. I do not know all the other flaws but this one is critical and pretty obvious.

    Talking of a 737 it’s akin to fly the 737 even though you know you ingested a bird or two and still try to make the HOU-SFO trip. That would be a bad idea. At least usually you can make it back with a 737. And with an Airbus you can even land on water ;) Not so with a Shuttle, once you’re committed you go all the way up, up, up.

  • Justin Kugler

    common sense,
    We have stood up a Technology Development Office in ISS Payloads to marshal all of the NASA space tech research that can be done on Station and coordinate those projects with OCT and the new hybrid exploration/space ops directorate that Gerst will be managing. Many of the projects they are looking at are in the pre-decisional phase, so I really can’t say much about them.

    NASA will also be selecting the Non-Profit Organization to manage the ISS National Lab, probably this month. The NPO will be specifically geared towards pairing researchers and commercial developers with financial backers and prioritizing on-orbit science of benefit to the nation. My office has been pathfinding for them – with no budget – for the past two years so the NPO can hit the ground running.

    If you look at the FY12 budget proposal, the NPO is intended to eventually manage all science on the Station, such that NASA itself would become a user of the National Lab while providing the sustaining engineering for the USOS. Slowly, but surely, we’re moving towards a model where NASA can free up its limited resources for BEO exploration, while still being able to take advantage of LEO through commercial ventures.

  • common sense

    @ Justin Kugler wrote @ May 19th, 2011 at 7:32 am

    “Many of the projects they are looking at are in the pre-decisional phase, so I really can’t say much about them.”

    Too bad. I’d love to hear about those. Specifically.

    Best of luck with the NPO.

  • Justin Kugler

    When there’s more I can say, I’d be more than happy to. Since they’re already manifested and simply moved over when the new office was created, I can mention that there is going to be an Amine Swingbed demonstrator on Station. It is much smaller than existing CO2 removal systems and has the benefit of being self-replenishing because the carbon dioxide is flushed to vacuum.

  • pathfinder_01

    Justine, Intresting. I know they had planed one for Orion due to its constraints of volume and needing a long flight time. How will the new system work with the old? I know the old system can turn C02 into water and methane using left over hydrogen from oxygen production(recoverimg water).

    Is it related to this plane:http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?channel=space&id=news/asd/2011/04/07/03.xml&headline=NASA%20May%20Test%20Advanced%20Life%20Support%20On%20ISS&next=10

  • Justin Kugler

    No, that’s a commercial proposal by Paragon. The Amine Swingbed was developed at JSC and is NASA-funded.

  • LowBidder

    The Amine Swingbed project website is here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/Amine_Swingbed.html
    Great Technology: Technology was developed by Hamilton Sundstrand; Great Vision: funded by ISS Program;
    Poor Execution: the system was built by Jacobs under the ESC Contract. At startup it had a system failure (pump failure). Now it’s a very expensive ($10+Million) weightless paperweight. When is NASA going to learn you can’t always go to the lowest bidder?

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