NASA’s useless safety panel suddenly notices that there are leaks on ISS
My regular readers will know that I consider NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) to be less than useless, repeatedly showing strong biases that allow it to miss major safety issues while causing headaches where no safety problems exist. Those biases consistently favor NASA and the older big space companies while attacking the new space companies like SpaceX.
This week the panel held its quarterly public meeting, and illustrated their uselessness and bias once again. Suddenly they have noticed that ISS has a serious chronic air leak problem due to the stress fractures in the Russian Zvezda module. They also came to the brilliant discovery that ISS is big, and that its de-orbit will have to be done carefully.
Oh my! Will wonders never cease!? These facts have only been documented at length and frequently by numerous inspector general reports and NASA updates over the past half decade. NASA has in fact contracted SpaceX to build a specialized de-orbit spacecraft, larger than a Dragon capsule, to dock with the station and conduct the de-orbit.
NASA didn’t need this safety panel to tell it the obvious.
Meanwhile, the panel suddenly decided it must chime in on budget issues and the possibility of there being major cuts at NASA, something that is entirely outside its area of responsibility. And to no one’s surprise it announced that budget cuts are bad!
Nor did the panelists see any safety issues with putting astronauts in an Orion capsule and flying them around the Moon on the next Artemis launch, even though NASA and its inspector general have both determined that the capsule’s heat shield is unreliable. The panel also had no problem with flying humans in this capsule the very first time its environmental system is tested.
To these political hacks, they see “we see no showstoppers at this time” for this SLS/Orion manned mission.
Instead, as always, the panel focused its criticism and concerns on SpaceX and Starship, labeling its development “the biggest risk” in NASA’s program to get Americans back to the Moon.
The most hilarious aspect of the panelists’ public comments is that they had nothing to say about Boeing’s Starliner, a pattern the panel has followed since Boeing and SpaceX got contracts a decade ago to transport astronauts to and from ISS. Consistently the panel has seen phantom safety risks with SpaceX — where none existed — while ignoring or completely missing Boeing myriad failures. That pattern continues.
NASA does face budget cuts. It would certainly help the agency if every dime wasted on this panel could be funneled into more useful purposes.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
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My regular readers will know that I consider NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) to be less than useless, repeatedly showing strong biases that allow it to miss major safety issues while causing headaches where no safety problems exist. Those biases consistently favor NASA and the older big space companies while attacking the new space companies like SpaceX.
This week the panel held its quarterly public meeting, and illustrated their uselessness and bias once again. Suddenly they have noticed that ISS has a serious chronic air leak problem due to the stress fractures in the Russian Zvezda module. They also came to the brilliant discovery that ISS is big, and that its de-orbit will have to be done carefully.
Oh my! Will wonders never cease!? These facts have only been documented at length and frequently by numerous inspector general reports and NASA updates over the past half decade. NASA has in fact contracted SpaceX to build a specialized de-orbit spacecraft, larger than a Dragon capsule, to dock with the station and conduct the de-orbit.
NASA didn’t need this safety panel to tell it the obvious.
Meanwhile, the panel suddenly decided it must chime in on budget issues and the possibility of there being major cuts at NASA, something that is entirely outside its area of responsibility. And to no one’s surprise it announced that budget cuts are bad!
Nor did the panelists see any safety issues with putting astronauts in an Orion capsule and flying them around the Moon on the next Artemis launch, even though NASA and its inspector general have both determined that the capsule’s heat shield is unreliable. The panel also had no problem with flying humans in this capsule the very first time its environmental system is tested.
To these political hacks, they see “we see no showstoppers at this time” for this SLS/Orion manned mission.
Instead, as always, the panel focused its criticism and concerns on SpaceX and Starship, labeling its development “the biggest risk” in NASA’s program to get Americans back to the Moon.
The most hilarious aspect of the panelists’ public comments is that they had nothing to say about Boeing’s Starliner, a pattern the panel has followed since Boeing and SpaceX got contracts a decade ago to transport astronauts to and from ISS. Consistently the panel has seen phantom safety risks with SpaceX — where none existed — while ignoring or completely missing Boeing myriad failures. That pattern continues.
NASA does face budget cuts. It would certainly help the agency if every dime wasted on this panel could be funneled into more useful purposes.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Not being a US tax payer, I don’t really have a dog in this race…. But as an outsider it seems worrying that NASA’s science budget is being slashed, that is the stuff that NASA does best, and I hope the planetary science stuff is able to continue.
As Bob has said repeatedly, the race for the moon is something that should really be contracted out.. private space has zero incentive to build interplanetary missions, but is something that NASA has vast experience in, and does very well indeed… Pour you tax dollars into expanding our knowledge of the universe, and let private enterprise deal with transporting folks about in space. As the recent not really a space flight Blue origens publicity stunt proved, there will always be a market for private funded space flight, and when the tech is tried and tested, NASA can rent seats, flights, missions…
And just a point to mention… Does anyone really care if China gets back to the moon first? The US can wave the “been there, done that” card.
Wishing all my frenemies over the pond a very happy Easter! Enjoy the break and I hope the Easter bunny brings your favorite chocolate!
Wonder how Dick Feynman’s root-cause report would have read on this aspect of near-earth travel? “…no showstoppers at this time”…?
After all, he is known for finding the expected outcomes of high-energy interactions of subatomic particles & showstoppers. Not necessarily in that order.
Lee S,
What NASA’s science budget actually turns out to be will be the resultant of several forces, only one of which is the initial recommendation by the Trump administration. But NASA’s science arm has been at least as profligate in recent years as have been its human spaceflight arms. It is not at all unreasonable to force some economies on a wastrel directorate.
Will less science be done a result? Perhaps. But less science is already being done as the cost of each successive chronically over-budget project starves other would-be projects to death in infancy. Imposing some much-needed external discipline holds out at least the possibility of better performance – and more science – in future. What is going on now is simply not sustainable.
The same applies to human spaceflight. It is the performance – or, more properly, non-performance – by the exploration systems and operations directorates and their legacy contractors that have brought matters to their current problematical place. SLS, Orion and Gateway are all money pits that financially benefit OldSpace without producing anything of lasting utility. And none of these actually enables Americans to walk on the Moon again, just to get them to a place in deep space that is still quite distant.
The lander program is being pursued much more economically, with the two NewSpace contractors providing much more of the total expenditure than is NASA. This is because both contractors foresee future revenues from their respective lander programs that do not derive from NASA. The main problem with the lander program is that is was ginned up absurdly late in the game due to anything explicitly Moon-related being verboten during the Obama years.
With, now, a two-track lander program well-established, what is most needed is a second – or even third – means of getting humans from Earth’s surface out to where the landers are to be waiting – and to do so far more frequently and for far less than SLS-Orion’s $4+ billion every two years pace. Fortunately, the stars seem to be coming into alignment such that a formal way to meet this need may soon be in place.
In short, it is manifestly possible for NASA to do far more with far less than it has been doing for far too long now. I am fairly confident the new Administrator can be the change agent NASA needs. The transition from old to necessary new ways of doing things will certainly be painful for some, but reforms are always toughest on those needing them the most. So it goes.
Bob,
A splendidly – and deservedly – scathing description of one of NASA’s more notable dysfunctional appendages. If Isaacman doesn’t dump ASAP entirely, one hopes he can at least dump its current line-up of OldSpace apologists and enablers and replace them with people actually concerned about the safety of something other than legacy contractor exchequers.
I can’t even find the quarterly briefing, nor indeed any for the past year. Which is frustrating, because I would love to see just what their reasoning is in shrugging off the heat shield issue.
The only downside I see if China gets to the Moon first, is that they would probably try and stake a claim.
Andi,
That would be thoroughly in character for the PRC. But the PRC’s opportunity to get to the Moon “first” disappeared in 1969. Whether or not we return to the Moon before the PRC gets there for an initial visit, we have both precedence and the Outer Space Treaty on our side. I don’t think the PRC would find many “allies” – other than ones it pays – to back such a claim.
@Dick Eagleson,
I cannot argue with pretty much anything you said there, apart from the chances of humans to orbit services expanding to 2 or 3 operators any time soon… I keep my fingers crossed, because this is what is needed… But the best bet for a genuine competitor to SpaceX seems to think sending a bunch ( of admittedly very ) pretty girls up on a joy ride will misdirect attention from the real space stuff… Flown hardware is needed…. Proven rockets are needed, proven heat shields are needed… Unfortunately I think the competition are years behind SpaceX… I have a few political issues with Mr Musk right now.. ( as I’m sure you will all understand), but I can only doff my cap to SpaceX… They are doing it right!
Also…. Again, not being a US tax payer, but generally liking folk to stay alive, I do have an opinion on this…. Has there been a good risk assessment report conducted? , not having followed this story as I’m sure you have Bob, but have lessons been learned from the shuttle disasters? , is there a route now for a lowly engineer to red flag a mission he thinks is unsafe… If it seems blatantly obvious that something’s are amiss to laymen like myself, it is surely down to the technicians to offer proof everything is A-OK… And tell who will be responsible for giving the mission the green light… ( Should it happen )
Lee S inquired
“Does anyone really care if China gets back to the moon first?”
Yes. It is the difference between pioneers, and settlers.
Lee S,
My hope is that Isaacman can quickly negotiate an unfunded Space Act Agreement with SpaceX to provide a Starship variant that can replace SLS and Orion. I hope for the same with Blue Origin and New Glenn, though delivery would obviously be much later as Blue would be starting with much less of the needed tech already in-hand than would SpaceX.
I think both Elon and Jeff would go for this. Elon, because the incremental expense would be fairly minor and the future payoff quite large. Jeff, because he won’t want to be left out and also wouldn’t want to appear the churl by asking for money if Elon has agreed to do his part at no up-front cost to the government.
Doing unfunded Space Act Agreements also eliminates any Congressional complications as there would be no impact to NASA’s budget. Having Blue Origin involved – which has significant operations in Huntsville, AL – would also tamp down any grumbling from the AL Congressional delegation about ending SLS-Orion and – one also hopes – closing MSFC.
While that is going on, I hope Artemis II is redefined as an unmanned mission to test Orion’s heat shield using the newly defined descent profile and to test its life support system before entrusting crew to it. If things go well enough on that mission, Artemis III could be flown with the remaining SLS-Orion Block 1 stack as soon as the SpaceX HLS lander is ready and using the same crew now detailed for Artemis II. I think getting to walk on the Moon would more than compensate most of said crew for having to wait longer to go.
I would adjust the mission profile to allow all three Americans in the crew to descend to the lunar surface while the Canadian stays in lunar orbit to mind Orion. As the white, male mission commander will certainly be one of those to land, sending the other two Americans along with him eliminates any necessity to decide whether it is the woman or the person of color who gets left out. The SpaceX HLS lander can easily accommodate an extra passenger.
Leaving the Canadian in orbit also preserves the possibility of offering the distinction of being the first non-American Moonwalker to a Japanese astronaut – assuming the PRC hasn’t managed to snag that distinction first. Even so, the Japanese would like to supply the first non-American citizen of an Artemis Accords country to tread lunar soil. I think they are quite deserving of that distinction.