Tag: NASA

Management problems at NASA’s asteroid hunting program

11:15 pm

An inspector general report today criticized NASA’s program to find potentially hazardous asteroids, finding it disorganized and poorly managed.

The report faulted the NEO Program’s lack of structure, and said its resources are inadequate for handling its growing agenda. In addition to the program’s Washington-based executive, Lindley Johnson, NASA funding goes to support six employees at the Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts and six more at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the inspector general’s office said.

The report said the program’s executive fell short when it came to overseeing progress in the asteroid-tracking effort. What’s more, there were no formal partnerships with the Defense Department or the National Science Foundation, or with international space agencies. Those groups could make significant contributions to the effort, the report said.

I do not doubt that this program has management problems. What government agency today doesn’t? And any that are managed well are the exception to the rule. However, the report’s conclusion that “resources are inadequate for handling its growing agenda” is typical Washington-speak for “Give us more money!” which almost never solves the management problems that made the program a failure in the first place.

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An update on the status of NASA manned commercial competition

3:25 pm

Jason Davis at the Planetary Society blog has put together an excellent summary of the status for all three companies competing for NASA’s contract to ferry astronauts to and from ISS.

Key paragraph:

From a quantitative standpoint, Boeing is the leader. Since the first quarter of 2013, the company has been ahead in percentage of milestones completed and percentage of funding awarded. Plus, there’s the simple fact that they’ve finished all of their milestones, while SpaceX and Sierra Nevada asked for extensions. But from a qualitative standpoint, things are less straightforward. SpaceX has already proven they can fly missions to the ISS. And they’re the only CCiCap participant with a pad abort test and an in-flight abort test among their milestones.

It is very clear just looking at the actual milestones that what Boeing has done so far is not that impressive. Almost everything on their list is a paperwork review, not construction or testing of actual hardware. Meanwhile, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada are building and testing spacecraft. That they have not yet completed their milestones is hardly a big deal in this context.

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The Russian takeover of Crimea once again threatens American access to space

10:12 pm

A decision by the Russians to possibly shift astronaut training back to a base in the Crimea, now under their control, could lock American astronauts from future Soyuz flights.

Shifting the survival training to Russian-occupied Crimea will require foreign cosmonauts to accept travel there without Ukrainian visas, an explicit acquiescence to the new diplomatic status of the province. Refusal to attend survival training is equivalent to failing the training, which by existing training regulations is an automatic disqualification for flight certification. No Crimea trip, no space trip.

The Russians have not yet made this shift official, so it is possible it will not become a problem. However, the article outlines many reasons why it makes good sense for the Russians to do it.

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Construction completed on first Orion capsule

7:32 pm

NASA has released the first photo of the completed first Orion capsule, now finished and scheduled to do a test flight in December.

As interesting as that first test flight will be, launching the capsule to about 3,600 miles before it dives back into the atmosphere to test its heat shield, I can’t get that excited about it. I sincerely believe this program will go the way of Ares, the Orbital Space Plane, Constellation, and a host of other big NASA projects that were too expensive and took too long to build. It will get cancelled before it actually flies any humans anywhere.

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New York dumps NASA contract because of cost overruns.

8:26 am

New York Mayor de Blasio has fired a team of NASA consultants that had been hired by the previous mayor to lead the overhaul of the city’s 911 system after costs skyrocketed and the project fell far behind schedule.

Up to 20 NASA consultants had spent the past two years working on the project, at average annual salaries of $250,000. They’ve conducted technical designs for new radios and computer dispatch systems. That technology will eventually link police, FDNY and emergency medical system dispatchers and field units to the city’s main emergency call center in downtown Brooklyn, and to a still-unfinished backup call center in the Bronx.

City officials did not say they were dissatisfied with NASA’s performance. They simply believe the work can be done cheaper in-house.

Why does this sound familiar?

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Review panel approves extensions for seven planetary missions.

5:19 pm

In approving extensions of seven NASA planetary missions, a review panel concluded that the Curiosity rover wasn’t doing the best it could, and that the project scientist didn’t work hard enough to change their minds.

The Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity rover landed on the red planet in August 2012. Equipped with a drill to gather surface samples and spectroscopy equipment to analyze the samples, the rover has collected and analyzed five surface specimens so far and, according to the extended mission proposal just approved by NASA, would analyze another eight over the next two years. That is “a poor science return for such a large investment in a flagship mission,” a 15-person senior review panel chaired by Clive Neal, a geologist at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, wrote in a report published Sept. 3.

The report also chided John Grotzinger, the lead Curiosity project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for neglecting to show up in person during a Mars-focused senior review panel meeting in May. “This left the panel with the impression that the [Curiosity] team felt they were too big to fail,” the senior review panel wrote.

This sounds like a pissing war between scientists. Grotzinger didn’t give them the required deference so they slammed him. No matter happened, however, we know they weren’t going to cancel Curiosity’s funds.

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Battle of the heavy lift rockets

9:44 am

Check out this very detailed and informative look at unstated competiton between NASA’s SLS rocket and SpaceX’s heavy lift rocket plans that are even more powerful than the Falcon Heavy.

Key quote: “It is clear SpaceX envisions a rocket far more powerful than even the fully evolved Block 2 SLS – a NASA rocket that isn’t set to be launched until the 2030s.”

The SpaceX rocket hinges on whether the company can successfully build its new Raptor engine. If they do, they will have their heavy lift rocket in the air and functioning far sooner than NASA, and for far far far less money.

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The decision on manned spaceflight

9:23 am

The rumors are swirling. Today alone the news included three different articles about NASA’s upcoming decision to down-select to either one or two in its manned commercial crew program.

The third article above speculates that the decision will be made shortly after this weekend, maybe as soon as next week. It also outlines in nice detail the companies who are competing for the contract.

I strongly expect NASA to pick two companies, not one, as the agency has repeatedly said it wants to have redundancy and competition in manned space flight. To this I agree whole-heartedly. Right now, if I was a betting man (which I am not), I would pick SpaceX and Sierra Nevada as the two companies to get the nod.

If NASA only picks one company that I don’t think there is much doubt that it will be SpaceX.

And then again, government agencies, because of politics, have sometimes made some incredibly stupid decisions. For example, back in the 1970s the company that proposed the space shuttle was rejected for another big space company that had more political clout, which then turned around and essentially stole the first company’s designs to build the space shuttle from them. It just took longer and cost more.

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SLS first launch officially delayed one year

3:18 pm

In a press conference today to tout the development of the SLS rocket, NASA finally admitted that the rocket’s first flight has been delayed a year until 2018, as had been rumored for months.

The cost? $7 billion more from now until that first launch, a number that does not include the billions already spent. I once again note that the entire commercial program, both manned and cargo, has cost less than that, from start to finish, and includes the entire manifest of actual cargo flights to ISS.

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Russia to continue on ISS past 2020?

9:03 am

A Russian news story today suggests that they are leaning strongly to continuing their partnership with the United States on ISS beyond 2020.

“The issue of Russia’s participation at the ISS after 2020 remains open, but there is a 90-percent chance that the state’s leadership will agree to participate in the project further,” [Izvestia] wrote, citing a source at Russia’s Federal Space Agency Roscosmos.

This report gives a better overview of the debate going on with Russia’s government and space agency. If they abandon ISS the work they have already done on new modules for the station will have to be written off, and it appears assembling their own station from those modules will be too expensive and take too long.

It also looks like NASA offered them a second year long mission if they stuck around.

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NASA’s Space Launch System searches for a mission

9:26 am

Managers of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) are searching for a mission that they can propose and convince Congress to fund.

Any honest read of this article will conclude that this very expensive rocket system is an absurd waste of money. It has no mission now, and will never get one considering the cost. Instead, NASA will spend billions to fly two test flights, both unmanned, and then the money will run out.

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What private manned spaceship will NASA pick?

8:47 am

Speculation grows on the upcoming down-select decision by NASA of its manned commercial space program.

Next up is the announcement of the transition to the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts, to be announced later this month, or early in September, depending on political direction. Although the source selection process is obviously an internal debate, with its results embargoed until the time of the NASA announcement, it is hoped that two of the commercial crew providers will move forward with additional funding.

At the ASAP meeting, Ms. Lueders expressed “NASA’s desire to continue the partnerships even after the announcement, including with companies not selected.” That continued association may be in the form of unfunded Space Act Agreements (SAA), not unlike that which Blue Origin is currently working under, as it develops a crew capsule outside of the trio working with CCiCAP funding. “People are recognizing the value of competition and have an appreciation for shared knowledge,” added Ms. Lueders. “NASA has learned from the companies and the companies have learned from NASA. It would be a big plus to continue the relationships.”

As to which companies are likely to win through to the CCtCap phase, that is a tightly kept secret. However, over recent months, sources have noted NASA’s strong affection toward the multi-capable Dream Chaser, while SpaceX has a growing track record with its Falcon 9 and cargo-Dragon combinations via its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) missions. [emphasis mine]

My sense in the last few months has also leaned heavily in favor of Dragon and Dream Chaser, both of whom appear to be moving forward with construction at a fast pace. Boeing meanwhile has instead made it seem that it wishes to invest as little capital in its project as possible, unless it wins the competition. While the first two companies have unveiled real hardware, Boeing continues to show us mostly mock-ups.

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