Robert Zimmerman, Thursday, 9-30-10
Guest: Robert Zimmerman. Topics: U.S. Space policy, heavy lift, commercial space. We welcomed Bob Zimmerman back to The Space Show to discuss the passage by the House of Representatives of S.3729 known as the NASA Authorization Bill. Please note that you are invited to comment, ask questions, and rate this program on the new Space Show blog, http://thespaceshowoutsidethebox.blogspot.com. As we started our first segment and throughout this two segment two hour show, Bob expanded on his thesis that the Authorization bill was nothing but pork, that NASA would likely screw up most parts of it including heavy lift, that because of our economy, we cannot afford heavy lift at this time and should not be doing it, and that the best hope for U.S. human spaceflight lies within the private sector for developing and expanding a successful commercial space industry without oversight from NASA where NASA simply buys the ride from different commercial vendors. Bob takes us through his analysis and how he has reached these conclusions so you can see if you agree with him or not. We talked about the coming Lame Duck Congress, how the elections will tell us much because if the nation's deficit turns out to be the focus of the election and the new congress, he expects NASA to be included in budget cuts. We talked about FY 11 and subsequent years and Bob clarified what would likely happen for FY11 as compared to future years or the out years. He did say that aware of space was in his opinion, at an all time high and the public was interested in space but as others have said, it has to start being relevant to the people. We talked about Constellation, the details in S.3729 and order NASA to be only marginally different than Constellation and more. In the second segment, Bob continued these themes but we also talked about the Russian space program and some about China as Bob was asked if other national space agencies could fill the void he sees coming because of what is going on with NASA and our economy. I asked Bob for an assessment of the science and astronomy side of NASA and he said those budgets were flat. Later in this segment, we turned our attention to the discovery of the most Earthlike planet yet found, Gliese 581d which orbits its red dwarf star is 66.8 days, is about 20 light-years from Earth, and is in the constellation Libra. In the second segment, Bob broke the space policy discussion down into three groups and he talked about commercial space including the large aerospace firms such as Boeing and Lockheed, not just the NewSpace companies. If you have questions or comments for Bob, please post them to the Space Show blog URL above and you can send them to Bob zimmerman at asw dot org. Visit and post at Bob's blog as well, http://behindtheblack.com.
Hi Bob,
ReplyDeleteliked your show. REALLY wish I could have called in then.
Several of my would be comments I just posted on your beyond the black comments
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/this-nasa-bill-is-nothing-more-than-pork#comments
Couple of things you said on the show I wanted to comment on.
I’m not sure why you think voters have been so unpredictable this year? They seem to have been following a pretty steady trend for 2 years? Course yes; Obama is completely contradictory to this direction. So that could be fun.
As to refitting and modifying shuttle into a newer form would be as expensive as designing it from scratch, no it wouldn’t. A lot of the systems and parts that would not be changed can use the old analysis and specifications as is. (Been there, done that.) Even upgrading to new forms can rely on a lot of the old work.
Past that of course the shuttles even if designed from scratch, they would still cost much less then Orion Ares, since the shuttles originally from scratch cost far less. The orbiters cost less to design then Orion. Orion and Ares-I were to cost more than the shuttle dev did -- and of course the per launch costs were to be FAR higher for each Ares/Orion launch then shuttle.
Ways to reduce that much more would be a configuration change. A biamese shuttle design like the one I sketched out and talk about, would cost no more than a new orbiter, and eliminate the overhead for the other systems for the other parts of the shuttle. Other way of course would be to let shuttle be operated commercially, or a new one developed commercially. These would cut costs by a factor of 4.
As to Obama space doing research. NONE OF OBAMA’S PROPOSALS RESEARCHED ANYTHING NEW!!!
Course I sent out my “What would Kelly do?” ideas for what to do in space --- Or did I to you? You didn’t want to be no my standard email list of folks to send stuff to.
I disagree with your certainty that NASA will have a demand for a commercial launchers, or foster commercial based manned space. Certainly NASA would prefer to use Soyuz or bury new “commercial” in traditional NASA rules. For NASA it would be far better to kill newspace at the price of being dependant on Russia (assuming Soyuz can be kept running that long) or stopping all US human launch; then to field fleets of low cost commercial operators that can make space routine and NASA irrelevant. I.E. they are not going to jump on a plan that makes them dependent on their worst competitor.
Kelly
Robert Zimmerman presents a much too critical view of the recently passed NASA authorization bill. He seems to be engaged in a diatribe against NASA rather than a useful proposal on the way forward. He mixes criticism of about every program that has attempted to improve our access to LEO with fantasy scenarios in which new start space companies will develop such capabilities without government funding. Well, save for a potential billion dollar cash prize for the first company to succeed to orbit a crew space vehicle.
ReplyDeleteHe is right that the government in general and NASA in particular have wasted money. However, many of these “failures” result from serious attempts to advance the state of the art. Others resulted from changing political situations and administrations. The NASP for example wasn’t even truly a NASA project and while NASA had a role it was more of a DARPA/DoD program. The end of the cold war had as much to do with end of this effort than anything else. The X-33 was a technology demonstrator not a Shuttle replacement. There was no way the vehicle as proposed even if all technical challenges could have been overcome would ever come close to achieving orbit. Shouldn’t we spend some money on developing new technologies? After all these amounts of money was a small portion of the NASA budget in those years.
It is my view that (and here I have some limited agreement with Mr. Zimmerman) NASA and the higher levels of government really have fumbled space policy in the last 15 years or so. It was clear that the fleet of four orbiters couldn’t meet our needs forever even before the Columbia disaster. At some point they should have focused on the need to go beyond technology demonstration and embark on a firm program to address this issue. Instead we got Constellation and its objective to redo Apollo. I certainly thought this was a mistake at the time but that is not to say that it was doomed to fail. After all did Dr. Griffin know that the Bush Administration would get a mired in Iraq or that mortgage crisis would hit a few years hence when he embarked on Constellation? Bush had increased spending in several areas so why not a few billion more for space?
It is also clear that Griffin underestimated the challenges of reusing Shuttle technology. Here, he and NASA come in for some blame. They should have known better. An attempt to do a lunar program on the cheap soon turned into being much more expensive as one complication after another delayed the effort. Probably it would have been less expensive to have started from a clean sheet of paper than to force fit Shuttle and other legacy elements into a new program. It only took a new administration which was ambivalent at best in its support for human spaceflight to cancel Constellation. Essentially the Obama space non-plan was just to cancel everything and to stimulate commercial space and do research.
The current bill is a rejection of Obama Space. It lays out a clear plan to save what is left of our space capability. The most important element is saving the Orion crew exploration vehicle. We have rockets that can launch it into LEO but with the shuttle retiring we need a crewed vehicle. Second is the start on a modular HLV vehicle development plan. If we are ultimately to go beyond LEO we will need suitable launchers. There is reason to suspect that developing a HLV will require more time and money than the specified in the bill. However, it is more useful to have out effort focused on a specific project than to spend it randomly as in the Feb. 1 non-plan. The bill requires that early work will proceed with a core that will launch 70 metric tons into LEO. It is unclear but likely this is all that would be developed by the end of 2016 if that. The Earth departure stage would be developed later.
ReplyDeleteOne factor that Mr. Zimmerman doesn’t consider in this prognosis of NASA’s ability to perform is the fact that they know this is their last chance. As long as the Shuttle was flying they could get by with business as usual. But with the fact that nothing will be flying and the fear a budget cutting Congress, it is likely that NASA will buckle down and do the job. It seems to me that developing the initial core stage of the HLV might be less challenging than the Ares I. Assuming that existing engines will power the core stage and that exiting Shuttle SRBs will be used, this initial phase might well be accomplished on schedule.
On the other hand if Congress underfunds the HLV then we can still fall back to launching the Orion into orbit with the Delta IV heavy. It seems to me that most of the talk about human rating the EELV is beside the point. The Delta IV has a very good safety record already. Is the Falcon 9 safer? Either way the NASA authorization bill gets us back on the path to avoiding perpetual dependence on the Russians.
This is certainly not the space program that I would like to have but given the mistakes already made and the various constraints we are under, I think that we should support it rather than attacking it as pork.
I failed to address the considerable discussion of the impact of the election on the space program. First of all it is clear that the new Congress will be more conservative than the present one. Second, the space program as such is not a major target on the spending cut push. Third, space is not protected either so it seems likely that it will take a percentage cut along with other things. The interested parties will then battle over the details. Space might get some protection because a lot of the jobs on the line will be in Republican districts and there is a national prestige issue involved. Also, the main target of the cuts will be the area where Obama increased spending over the CY 2008 levels. Space has had little increase so by that logic its cut should be small as well.
ReplyDeleteAnother question is whether the lame duck session will be able to pass an appropriations bill. It is very possible that they will just pass another CR. In that case the new Congress might have a big impact on BY 2011 spending. Given this possibility one would think the current Congress would go all out to get the budget passed.
Why is everyone happy about the senate authorization bill passing in the house?
ReplyDeleteBecause it's possible that this terrible fight might be over soon. Any that's a huge relief. It's stressing not knowing where you're going so when the Congress finally decides on something and says "go that way", people are relieved.
It's simple canine psychology.
Hi John (in Atlanta) said...
ReplyDelete>== The NASP for example wasn’t even truly a NASA project and while NASA had a role it was more of a DARPA/DoD program.
> The end of the cold war had as much to do with end of this effort than anything else.
Not really the cold war. NASA was involved – and utterly outclassed. They didn’t even know the current technologies involved as far as I heard. But the design, really the concept, was much less practical then the mil expected, and they weren’t interested in a X-plane (and NASA was NOT interested in operational craft for obvious reasons).
After this program was canceled the mil turned around and basically said, “Ok we won’t tell you how to do it, but we need hugely efficient, highly reusable, CATS to service the big SDI satelight feet were tasked to support. The result was the DC-X prototype, which was $3 billion and 3 years away from production, FAA certified, craft coming off a production line. The DC-X was hugely successful, demonstrated a functional configuration requiring less then a thousandth of the labor hour of a shuttle configuration to turn around and service and relaunch. HIGHLY reusable, and capable of flying serveral flights a week per ship if nesisary.
Griffen (whose was part of the SDI program office then) was very enthusiastic about the DC-X. McDonnel Douglas really thoughtthis ship and the SDI anchor market could open up space and precipitated a true CATS fleet lowering costs to orbit to hundreds of dollars a pound. Even less with follow up ships. THEY WERE EXCITED!!
…Then the SDI program was canceled, so the DOD dropped it. NASA was ordered to pick it up – but they decided to refit it with new technologies (that it didn’t need) and had some serious management problems on the project, and then their was a stupid maintenance screw up that never should have been missed in preflight inspections – and the landing gear failed after it landed. Ship destroyed – and NASA moved on to the X-33, which was loaded with exotic new technology just like they wanted.
>== The X-33 was a technology demonstrator not a Shuttle replacement.
> There was no way the vehicle as proposed even if all technical challenges
> could have been overcome would ever come close to achieving orbit. ==
Yes and no. NASA wanted a tech developer – but after L/M won the bid they offered at no charge to upgrade the program to do a full shuttle replacement craft. NASA would owe them nothing if it didn’t meet all NASA requirements for a shuttle replacement AND cost less then 1/10th as much to operate and fly. NASA freaked and said no way!! L/M had no interest in demoing their technologies – I.E. teaching their competitors to build them out of LM funds. So after a summer of discontent – NASA paid them a extra B$ billion to stay in and just do the tech demonstrator – then L/M pulled their best folks off since it was a dead program. Further stupid arguments from NASA demanding they use more exotic tech even if it was worse then established tech --- and it never was finished.
NASA made no bones about the fact they did NOT want shuttle replaced. They were talking about flying them until 2040. The especially were behind the scenes VERY focused on not seeing a CATS fleet fielded that would virtually eliminate the shuttle program costs – hence eliminating the agency political support they enjoyed due to the shuttle program cost.
>== we got Constellation and its objective to redo Apollo. I
ReplyDelete> certainly thought this was a mistake at the time but that is not
> to say that it was doomed to fail. After all did Dr. Griffin know
> that the Bush Administration would get a mired in Iraq or that
> mortgage crisis would hit a few years hence when he embarked on
> Constellation? Bush had increased spending in several areas so why not a few billion more for space?
He knew Bush demanded it all be done with no NASA budget increases, and a reliable, supportable system. He also knew that Constellation was an INSANELY expensive configuration. Having both very limited abilities compared to anything else proposed, and staggering costs FAR more then anything else proposed. Griffin knew something like DC-X (which he was very familiar with) or a improved shuttle system, would cost a fraction as much to implement as Constellation. But Griffin felt the agency needed to fly a lot less, while keeping the costs high, and being space spectaculars he thought would excite the public and keep public support high. He seemed to expect the public would be as excited as they were in the moon race. ..Didn’t work.
Hi John (in Atlanta) said...
ReplyDelete> The current bill is a rejection of Obama Space. It lays out a clear plan to save
> what is left of our space capability. == There is reason to suspect that developing
> a HLV will require more time and money than the specified in the bill. However,
> it is more useful to have out effort focused on a specific project than to spend it
> randomly as in the Feb. 1 non-plan. ==
Agree! The Obama’s plan pretty much ended not only NASA as a functional engineering organization (which arguably could be a good thing for a space program), certainly all its exploration abilities and plans end, and its space operational abilities and skills are scraped out, and also pretty much disbands the human space flight industrial base of the nation. That fits Obama’s statements of NASA’s value (or lack there of), but does NOT match the public or congresses view of it.
..So the pork is basically life support to save the space program, or at least its infrastructure, for the future..
John (in Atlanta) said...
ReplyDelete> I failed to address the considerable discussion of the impact of the election on the space program.
> First of all it is clear that the new Congress will be more conservative than the present one.
> Second, the space program as such is not a major target on the spending cut push.
> Third, space is not protected either so it seems likely that it will take a percentage cut
> along with other things. ==
I think folks are really not looking at the political changes I enough details. Obviously the incumbents are in big trouble, but beyond that theirs a huge conservative “Tea Party” wave. Given the Tea Party has shoved aside several long time republican establishment folks in primaries, are doing very well in polls, and have had a couple roughly million person gatherings in DC this year. They are riding a political wave no seen since the civil rights movement!
So since they have such public support, where is their head at, especially related to space?
They are not traditional conservatives, in that they are not interested in social or cultural conservatism. Some of their candidates ARE very socially conservative, but they don’t push it much since its not getting them political traction. (Anti-abortion or traditional marriage rants don’t move the crowd).
Tea party folks are hugely focused on balanced budget, and small constitutionally based federal gov. They hate the big programs and federal control into ever aspect of life and economic life.
They demand politician focus and stay on their interests, and deliver. “Moderates” who promise to deliver, and drift off onto other things once in office, can expect to be shoved out next time, like the traditional Republicans are being driven out now.
They are very patriotic and want some new Regan like character to talk about and inspire the best in American.
Now the assumption folks like Zimmerman have is, they will want to cut and everything will need to be cut. Really the federal budget needs to be 25-30% to get rid of the deficit. That means entitlements. All the discretionary programs (NASA, DOD, Education, etc combined) are only a fraction of that size. So they will need to focus on long nasty arguments over how to cut those entitlements, and the big gov controlled programs and agencies. NASA is just to small to be worth the time arguing about.
Also again, they are patriotic; and space exploration and technology innovation is to most folks the quintessential image of American exceptionalism. So though the current space program projects, and Senate bill, isn’t likely to excite. They are going to want a NASA that achieves and puts America visibly back on top in aerospace and exploration. A NASA as a subset of the Russian space program buying flights to the ISS that they service or do climate change studies on – not going to cut it.
NASA made no bones about the fact they did NOT want shuttle replaced. They were talking about flying them until 2040.
ReplyDeleteThen it seems that NASA didn't have much of a back up plan in case they lost another orbiter.
Given the Tea Party has shoved aside several long time republican establishment folks in primaries, are doing very well in polls, and have had a couple roughly million person gatherings in DC this year.
Actually only two incombent Republican senators were defeated. Really both were special cases. Utah has a strange primary system where you have to get picked by a convention in order to get on the primary ticket. The Tea Party activities showed up at the convention. The other case you have a very good Tea Candidate (proabably the best) running against a senator who was orginally appointedy by her father the governor. Plus you have the Palin factor in Alaska!
Tea Party doens't have real take on space and no one is going to lose for supporting space to the level we are talking about here. But, space will take a percentage hit most likely hence the Delta IV option.
> Then it seems that NASA didn't have much of a back up plan in
ReplyDelete>case they lost another orbiter.
NASA calls it manage for success. I.E. planing for things going right.
;/
Personally, I would love to see space become hugely profitable to small private enterprise. That will bring it to everyone.
ReplyDeleteBut, two points:
1. The trope that 'NASA and government space can't do anything right' is getting old. Granted they've got problems, but private enterprise hasn't even caught up with what goverment space did 50 years ago, let alone what they've done since.
Viking, Voyager, GPS, Magellan, Gagarin's orbit, Lunokhod, Apollo, Cassini, Hubble, Galileo - which one of these were done with privately? Oh that's right: none. Well who's been holding the private sector back? Oh yeah: nobody, just themselves.
Zimmerman is waiting to be rescued by a unicorn.
2. Be careful what you wish for. If a private space company is really interested in efficiency and corporate survival, the one huge, obvious, egregious waste of money they'll have to cut to make any profit at all will be: astronauts.
Astronauts are 10% need and 90% politics. Take the politics out of space, and suddenly you have to abandon Buck Rogers for a real business model.
>==
ReplyDelete> 1. The trope that 'NASA and government space can't do anything
> right' is getting old. Granted they've got problems, but private
> enterprise hasn't even caught up with what goverment space did 50
> years ago, let alone what they've done since.
One quip. Private enterprize has done everything NASA has done for the last 50 years. NASA just contracts for it.
Also pretty soon NASA will be throwing away all the capability they had assembled to do anything beyong what they did 50 years ago.
> Viking, Voyager, GPS, Magellan, Gagarin's orbit, Lunokhod, Apollo,
> Cassini, Hubble, Galileo - which one of these were done with privately? =
Pretty much all, or at least not by NASA.
GPS was DOD/Private, NASA had no part in it.
Viking, Voyager, Cassini, and Galileo was JPL/private, not NASA.
Obviously Gagarin's orbit, Lunokhod, had no US much less NASA invovement.
Hubble was a total foul up, though NASA after screwing it up - did a good job of on orbit repairs.
>== who's been holding the private sector back? =
No customers. ..And NASA working to suppress them in some cases. Especially commercial space stations adn private launchers until recently. (Look up the ISF, and Beal aerospace stories for example.)
>== Zimmerman is waiting to be rescued by a unicorn.
As of yet there is damn little reason to think commercial space can work past this log jam. They can easily do the work - but won't do it with no one interested in paying for it. Stockholders get really irritated by things like that.
> 2. Be careful what you wish for. If a private space company is really
> interested in efficiency and corporate survival, the one huge,
> obvious, egregious waste of money they'll have to cut to make any profit
> at all will be: astronauts.
Actually not. Astrounauts are highly cost effective at complex exploration or repair functions. Course without identifying what anyone wants to do....