By Jeff Foust on 2006 August 7 at 7:07 am ET As you may have noticed from the earlier post on the subject, the question about the relative roles of the CEV and COTS programs has generated significant debate. And it’s not just here: John Kavanagh has taken up the question at COTS Watch, asking a series of open questions about the roles of the two programs, while Clark Lindsey of RLV and Space Transport News also tackles the topic. In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Grant Bonin offers an extensive summary of the issue, arguing that the overall vision is in trouble because of the concerns about the CEV raised by the Space Frontier Foundation and the GAO in their respective reports.
Bonin, though, doesn’t let the entrepreneurial “NewSpace” industry off easy, postulating the “Fermi’s Paradox of Space Access”: “If the promise and potential” of low-cost commercial space access to LEO “are so great, where are they?” The answer, he says, is due to the lack of available investment capital for the development of such vehicles, which is where NASA must step in for the benefit of both itself and the NewSpace industry: “To such ends, NASA should be providing for the establishment of capabilities that cannot be wholly capitalized by the private space sector, but which nevertheless hold the promise of creating significant wealth down the road. COTS is arguably the NASA initiative with the highest potential for economic reward in the long-term and redundant LEO access in the near-term. But its chances of success are greatly diminished without increased agency support.”
By Jeff Foust on 2006 August 4 at 2:50 pm ET I spoke briefly this morning with Chris Carberry, the organizer of the Mars Society’s Mars Blitz citizens lobbying event that took place Thursday afternoon. The event was very well attended, with over 100 people participating. They had meeting with over 100 House and Senate offices, with roughly a 50-50 split between scheduled meetings and drop-ins. (See an earlier post about the event for more details.) And no, no one was overcome by the heat despite a high temperature in Washington yesterday of 101°F, a record high and the hottest temperature in the city in the last several years.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 August 4 at 6:58 am ET
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin was the keynote speaker Thursday morning at the annual Mars Society conference, held this year in Washington. His speech is available online, although he devoted most of his hour-long speaking slot to taking questions from the audience of about a couple hundred people. Some highlights:
- One of the first questions posed to Griffin was when he thought the first human missions to Mars could be undertaken under the Vision. “My own personal best guess would be the late 2020s,” he said. That’s based on a return to the Moon by 2020, he said, and the existence of a heavy-lifter (the Ares 5) that could be used for Mars missions. “I think we would be poised by that point, the late teens or 2020, for a rational national decision to aim resources at going to Mars.”
- Realizing that such a schedule would not necessarily be desirable to Mars Society members (a t-shirt at the conference had the slogan “Are we there yet?” next to an illustration of a Martian landscape) Griffin then added, “People are frustrated with the timetable. I am frustrated with the timetable.” He then lamented the loss of space infrastructure, namely heavy-lift launch vehicles, from the Apollo era.
- He later said that the decision to develop the two different launch vehicles for the Vision, the Ares 1 and 5, were motivated in part by long-terms to go to Mars. Noting that a single-vehicle architecture for a lunar mission couldn’t be made to work, he said the logical step was to go to a two-vehicle architecture using identical vehicles to benefit from economies of scale. “Why did we not do that? We didn’t do that because if I want to go to Mars, and I believe I need something like a million pounds in low Earth orbit to do that, then I want to do that in five or six launches, not 10 or 12.”
- Griffin said that he plans to start studies on a notional Mars mission architecture next year. “I don’t want to leave my term of office without having done at least a preliminary Mars architecture.”
- Griffin said there was no consideration when developing the Vision to spend money on (re)developing Russian vehicles like the Energia. “I am probably a leading proponent of international cooperation, but international cooperation is not defined as asking other nations for help on how to spent US tax dollars. US tax dollars go to the US, by and large.” (The “by and large” qualifier is important, of course, since NASA is paying for seats on Soyuz taxi flights to the ISS.)
- Griffin didn’t think much of ideas that have been tossed around about moving science programs out of NASA to the NSF or other agencies. “Moving the money from one agency to another, I don’t see how that affects anything of significance.”
- Griffin also addressed scientists’ concerns about the “reduced level of growth” of science programs in NASA. (“No one has received an actual cut; it’s a fine distinction in Washington,” he noted.) “Lost in all the tumult” about those science cutbacks, he said, was that other NASA programs, including space station, aeronautics, and exploration, also didn’t get as much as they wanted. “The space station guys didn’t get all they wanted, either: their flights were cut by a third over the runout of the space station program,” he said. “Some would have us just abolish those legacy commitments [to shuttle and station]. That is not going to happen. A national policy level decision has been made by the chief executive and ratified by the Congress that the United States will not abrogate its legacy commitments and others who wish to do new things will have to wait in line.”
- As for those who want more funding for science programs like astrobiology, and to encourage students to work in those fields? “Then they will have to be trained to work on what it is we are being asked to do by the Congress, and not what it is they think we ought to be asked to do. And we are not being asked, at the present, to do astrobiology or a huge amount of biology work of any type.”
- Griffin said that a decision on flying a Hubble servicing mission would come no earlier than early this fall, once all the technical issues have been resolved. “When I do it, I want to do it right.”
By Jeff Foust on 2006 August 1 at 12:55 pm ET On Thursday afternoon, as part of the Mars Society’s annual conference, being held this year in Washington, conference attendees will participate in a “Mars Blitz” on Capitol Hill. According to a Mars Society press release about the event, the purpose of the Blitz will be to promote an “integrated Moon-Mars plan that will emphasize common hardware for missions to the Moon and Mars; accelerate the VSE schedule; and to make use of in-situ resource utilization on the Moon and Mars.” They will also ask for a Hubble servicing mission.
While the atmosphere of the event will have a definite Martian focus, the atmosphere itself—the weather—will seem positively cytherean on Thursday, according to the latest forecast: “Mostly sunny in the morning…then becoming partly cloudy. Hot with highs around 100. West winds 5 to 10 mph. Heat index values up to 110 in the afternoon.” Let’s hope the Blitzers don’t have to spend too much time outdoors…
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 31 at 6:33 am ET Sunday’s edition of the Cumberland (Md.) Times-News promised a “faceoff” between two newspaper staffers on hoary question of whether space exploration should be done by humans or robots. If you’re looking for insightful commentary on the (space) age-old question, keep looking. The pro-robot argument reads as much like an attack on President Bush as a defense of the capabilities of robotic spacecraft: “Not satisfied with screwing up the nation and the world, George W. Bush has extended his foul reach to the very heavens with a backward-looking plan for space exploration that harms science and threatens the U.S.’s pre-eminent role on the final frontier.” The pro-human argument isn’t much better: the best it can do to defend sending humans in to space is that “by placing astronauts and scientists on manned space missions, we are able to more accurately conduct tests and experiments for the purpose of gaining more accurate results that provide us with information that is exponentially greater than if we simply collected samples and brought them back to earth for study.” The humans-versus-robots debate is a tired old argument, and neither Times-News writer does it much justice.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 31 at 6:22 am ET On the heels of the somewhat overblown story that NASA had changed its mission statement to delete a reference to Earth sciences come some editorials in major newspapers critical of NASA’s overall priorities. The New York Times published one such editorial Friday, claiming that “earth studies seem to be in trouble”. Evidence for this includes the cancellation of Triana (although the spacecraft isn’t mentioned by name), the delay of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, and cuts in research and analysis funding (something that affects other science programs, not just Earth science.)
A similar editorial appears in today’s Washington Post, although the claims it makes are a little sketchy. The Post claims that the Hydros mission to study soil moisture “got the ax”, although NASA intended that mission only to be a backup should one of two other missions run into problems (albeit with some confusion among the Hydros team about exactly what their status was). The editorial also claims that “NASA’s satellite network that monitors global weather patterns — including hurricane formation — is aging, and replacements may arrive late or not at all.” It’s not clear what satellites they’re referring to, since hurricane monitoring is done principally by NOAA, not NASA. It could be a reference to NPOESS, but that is a joint project among NASA, NOAA, and the DOD, whose problems have largely been beyond the control or blame of NASA. The Post also argues that “NASA is uniquely qualified to do things such as launch and maintain weather satellites.” That statement is debatable: while NASA oversees the development and launch of the GOES weather satellites, they are operated by NOAA, which also manages the overall program.
The two editorials also have slightly different recommendations about what NASA should do to rectify this problem. “Mr. Bush needs to get his head out of the stars,” the Post advises, arguing that “The White House has to either pay responsibly for its exploration programs or cancel them.” The Times, meanwhile, tacitly endorses the Senate’s billion-dollar supplemental funding proposal for NASA, saying that without it Earth sciences, and science programs in general, will be “a casualty of the administration’s insistence on completing the space station.”
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 28 at 7:12 am ET NASA’s Crew Exploration Vehicle program, a cornerstone of the Vision for Space Exploration, is now facing criticism from two sides. On Tuesday the Space Frontier Foundation released a white paper calling the agency’s CEV development plans “unaffordable and unsustainable”. The Foundation is particularly critical of the “Block 1″ CEV, designed for low Earth orbit operations, noting that in its rush to get the vehicle ready to serve the ISS it is making design decisions on issues like docking adaptors and thruster systems that will not carry over to the Block 2 version intended for lunar missions. (The Foundation is also critical of the Ares 1, née CLV, development strategy.) The Foundation argues that NASA should go directly to the Block 2 CEV and use the “many billions” saved on additional COTS funding.
Just a day later, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report on NASA’s CEV program that is hardly any more complementary. The GAO concludes that “NASA’s current acquisition strategy for the CEV places the project at risk of significant cost overruns, schedule delays, and performance shortfalls because it commits the government to a long-term product development effort before establishing a sound business case.” The report also recommends that “Congress should consider restricting annual appropriations and limiting NASA’s obligations for the CEV project” to key support activities until the program is better defined.
After reading the Foundation paper, one concern I had is that they did not define, beyond “many billions”, how much money would be saved by going directly to the Block 2 CEV. The GAO report suggests that no one, not even NASA, would be able to answer that right now. This issue will get Congressional scrutiny; the House Science Committee issued a press release with committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert saying he plans to hold a hearing about the GAO report after the summer recess.
There is, however, a deeper issue not touched upon in either the Foundation or GAO reports. A big reason for the current CEV development schedule, and the whole Block 1 CEV design, is to minimize the “gap” in US government human space access after the shuttle is retired in 2010. NASA, under the watchful eye of at least some members of Congress, is trying to minimize that gap; even the Foundation report notes that, through additional COTS funding, NASA increases the odds of shortening the gap by funding more ventures, thus making it more likely one or more companies will develop a viable cargo and crew transportation solution.
Here’s the problem, though: while a gap in human space access is not desirable, in ideal circumstances, it’s not clear just how bad such a gap would be. Any missions in the post-2010 time frame would be limited to ISS missions, until the CEV and other ESAS vehicle systems are ready for lunar missions. And the US current plans call for ending support for the ISS in 2016, while the agency is already considering suspending all US research there for a year or more because of funding issues. NASA will still be able to purchase Soyuz flights to ISS at least until 2012 under current law, regardless of the status of other vehicles. “National security” is often trotted out as a reason for minimizing the gap, but if you’re in Congress and worried about national security in space, you’d be better off keeping watch on the problems with various Air Force space programs instead. Moreover, we seemed to have survived the nearly six-year gap caused by the Apollo-Shuttle interregnum between 1975 and 1981. Those who worry about a gap of a few years between shuttle and CEV need to be more explicit in the explanations why it’s so undesirable, or else we should re-think the overall CEV (and ESAS) procurement strategies.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 27 at 7:22 am ET I have been trying very hard the last several days to get worked up by the New York Times story Saturday that NASA has quietly changed the mission statement of the space agency, deleting a reference to studying the planet. I haven’t been successful, but a lot of other people, particularly in liberal neighborhoods of the blogosphere, have expressed varying levels of outrage, seeing this as another case where the White House has meddled with NASA so that it devotes less attention to global warming.
An example of these arguments can be a found in a post by Laurie David on The Huffington Post on Monday. David, one of the producers of the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth (as well as the husband of Larry David of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” fame), believes it’s “truly chilling” that NASA would quietly change the mission statement, and sees something more nefarious at work:
Since the quiet change to the mission statement was made in February, funding for research of our home planet has continued to disappear from NASA’s budget as Bush puts increased emphasis on returning to the Moon and putting men on Mars.
Getting past the argument about the perceived disappearance of Earth sciences funding (previously discussed here) is the question of just how significant that mission statement is for NASA. While David calls it “the mission statement of this 48-year-old agency”, the statement itself dates back only four years, when it and an accompanying vision statement were released a few months into the tenure of Sean O’Keefe. Go to the NASA web site and you’ll be hard-pressed to find this mission statement prominently displayed anywhere. Perhaps the most damning statement comes from the original Times article, which noted that “Though the ‘understand and protect’ phrase was deleted in February, when the Bush administration submitted budget and planning documents to Congress, its absence has only recently registered with NASA employees.” If the mission statement was more prominent with the agency, don’t you think its absence would have been noted earlier?
What would be cause for concern is if other references to space science disappeared from other NASA documents. Yet the agency’s 2006 strategic plan, released at the same time as other documentation with the revised mission statement, has listed as one of its goals to “study Earth from space to advance scientific understanding and meet societal needs.” Now if NASA (or the White House, or whomever is really pulling the strings) really wanted to stop global warming research, or whatever, do you think that section of the plan, whose first paragraph mentions the “understanding of Earth’s system and its response to natural or human-induced changes” would still be in there?
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 27 at 6:48 am ET Thanks to the grand publicity machine that is the Internet (and you thought it was just a series of tubes) you may have already read the op-ed I wrote for the latest issue of SEED magazine on the burdens facing NASA now and a way out. But there’s an interesting backstory about this essay worth discussion.
Earlier this year, the folks at SEED contacted me and asked if I would be interested in having this blog join ScienceBlogs, their collective of, well, science-themed blogs. I declined, since I liked doing my own thing and because I didn’t think this blog would be a good fit in their network (although there is a lot of policy and other non-science discussion there), but kept the door open for future collaboration.
Not long after, they asked if I would be interested in writing a commentary on a space policy topic for the magazine itself: the more controversial or counterintuitive, the better. Given that many scientists have blamed the Vision for Space Exploration on the cutbacks they’re suffering in missions and research funding, that led to a theme that was suitably counterintuitive: instead of killing the Vision to save science, the effort should be accelerated where possible to get legacy projects off of the agency’s plate and get sooner to the time where exploration (accompanied by science) dominates the agency’s budget. (There was an interesting back-and-forth with the editors, who wanted something even more controversial: that NASA should simply drop all space science programs. While that’s an approach endorsed by some, it doesn’t seem terribly realistic in the near or even long term.)
I don’t know if some of the measures mentioned in the article will help that much; I’m particularly skeptical of the ISS national laboratory designation, although the proponents of it vigorously argue that it will help spread the burden of operating the station. If was difficult to go into more detail because of the roughly 800-word limit on the entire essay. It is, though, another voice in the ongoing, and critical, conversation about NASA’s long-term direction.
(And yes, I did plan to post about this earlier, but my internet got clogged in the same series of tubes as Senator Stevens’, so I had to wait my turn.)
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 26 at 7:20 am ET By a voice vote, the House passed Monday H.Res 892, a resolution that thanks those employees of the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans who “risked their lives in dedication to the space program and faced down one of the greatest natural disasters in this Nation’s history” by staying behind at the factory during Hurricane Katrina last August. The text of the resolution names all 38 members of the ride-out team who prevented more serious damage to the shuttle external tank facility. The resolution was introduced by Congressman Charlie Melancon of Louisiana and cosponsored by the chairs and ranking members of both the full House Science Committee and its space subcommittee; statements in support of the resolution from Reps. Sherwood Boehlert and Ken Calvert are included in a Science Committee press release, while comments by Melancon and Bart Gordon are in a separate Science Committee Democrats release.
|
|
