Welcome To The Recession, NASA

August 13, 2009

A tedious final public meeting of the board reviewing the country’s human space program concluded with a sobering assessment of the future, at least for those wishing to see American flags on other bodies in the solar system. To put it bluntly: It ain’t gonna happen in our lifetimes without a big boost in NASA’s budget.

That’s not to say there’s not a silver lining, a couple actually. First off, we’re likely to make our international partners very happy because the only program that looks robust and viable for the foreseeable future is the International Space Station. For the most part, the Human Space Flight Review panel seems to favor extending its planned lifetime to at least 2020. 

It’s a logical choice considering that the complex isn’t even finished yet and currently is on the books for only five years of operating funds beyond its 2010 completion date. That’s less time than NASA has kept the rovers Spirit and Opportunity plucking around on Mars.  The space station will have consumed somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 billion by the time it’s finished, so it seems only prudent to try to get some return on the investment.

NASA, however, would like to move beyond operations 200 miles above Earth and has set its sights on the moon and Mars. The blueprint it’s been working toward had its legs cut out from under it, financially speaking, and it’s over.

“We can’t do this program in this budget,” board member Sally Ride told her colleagues on the Human Space Flight Review panel, which wrapped up what was expected to be its final public meeting in Washington D.C. on Wednesday. “This budget is simply not friendly to exploration.”

About $3 billion a year would be needed to get the exploration initiative back on track, though the earliest a return to the moon could occur is probably in the mid-2020s, rather than 2020, the agency’s initial goal.

The cards left on the table, however, offer a new path into space, one that might be well-tread by NASA, but is brand new to the rest of us. By extending the space station, the government can create a commercial market for rides to space. Once the space shuttles are retired, NASA will need a way to transport its astronauts and the only option now is to buy rides from the Russian government for close to $50 million a seat.

Buying rides commercially not only could create a more robust space station program, it could open travel options for tourism and other orbital expeditions.

It’d be a tough pill for NASA to swallow, one that has stymied almost every government bureaucracy, as it would require the agency to do the unthinkable: get smaller. Welcome to the recession, NASA.

Launch logjam exposes NASA quandary

June 15, 2009

A reporter pal of mine once told me this story about an editor he worked with who was struggling to integrate facts with narrative flow in one of his articles. “Everything needs to be moved up,” was the assessment. NASA is taking the same attitude as it tries to share a tight four-day launch opportunity this week between two space program mandates: finish the space station and move on to human exploration of the moon.

Most days, any incongruity in NASA’s marching orders is hidden beneath a shower of good will, shared philosophy and common budgetary concern. So, for example, the Constellation program, which is spearheading the post-shuttle and station human space initiatives, was happy to give its shuttle brethren extra time on the launch pad earmarked for the new Ares rocket program so a second shuttle could be ready to mount a rescue mission if the Hubble telescope servicing crew needed a ride back home.

Sometimes, though, where the rubber meets the road (or where the rocket meets the launch pad) the dance floor has room for only one. Pressed to make a decision about whether to proceed with a high-priority construction mission to the International Space Station or a high-priority moon mapping mission NASA, like a parent who doesn’t want to play favorites among its children, came up with a solution totally worthy of its engineering heritage: reducing the issue down to a numbers game of how to get the most launch opportunities out of the four-day window.

NASA Looks to Future, Hands out Pink Slips

May 01, 2009

With the high-profile shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope finally ready to fly, the space station on the verge of getting its full six-member crew and the debut flight for NASA’s new exploration initiative to return astronauts to the moon slated to launch in a few weeks, it’s a fabulous time for the space business -- unless you happen to be one of the misfortunate chaps getting a pink slip today.

In a bizarre contrast of old and new, NASA’s associate administrator extolled the virtues of the space program today, with particular emphasis on several milestone 

events in May, during the same press conference on Thursday where his shuttle program manager John Shannon stalwartly laid out plans to cut 900 positions by Sept. 30. The first 160 layoff notices go out today.

It’s the first significant step to close down the shuttle manufacturing lines, in preparation for the retirement of the three-ship fleet at the end of next year. NASA plans eight more mission to the finish building and outfitting the space station before then, as well as the final servicing call to Hubble -- now slated to launch on May 11 -- before then.

Congress is taking steps to alleviate the schedule pressure in case all nine flights can’t be finished by Sept. 30, 2010, the end of the government’s fiscal year. Legislators authorized another $2.5 billion for NASA to keep things going until 2011 if needed. None of that, however, is going to go toward buying more shuttle parts.

The layoffs are expected to hit Lockheed Martin’s facility in New Orleans, where the shuttle’s fuel tanks are made, and ATK Thiokol’s plant in Utah, which produces the solid rocket boosters.

“At some point you have to decide that what the shuttle was meant to do has been done … and it’s time to move on,” Shannon said.

 

NASA scales back Orion capsule

April 29, 2009

Hoping to simplify designs and speed up development of spaceships to replace the retiring space shuttles, NASA is scaling back the number of astronauts who will be able to ride the new capsules to the International Space Station.

Originally intended to carry crews of six to and from the orbiting outpost, NASA on Wednesday said it now plans to limit the number of astronauts aboard to four and fly the vehicle in the same configuration for future trips to the moon.

NASA hopes to send its first crew to the station in the new Orion capsule in 2015, but a recent review determined the agency is in danger of missing its deadline. The shuttles are being retired in 2010 when space station construction is complete.

Until the new ships are ready, the United States will have to depend on Russia for rides to space.

“We’re at a stage in the program where schedule is really king,” said Jeff Hanley, the program manger for NASA’s new exploration initiative, known as Constellation.

Hanley said NASA can make a modification later to accommodate six-member crews on Orion.

“We will need it someday, but we don’t need it early,” Hanley said.

(Artist rendering of Orion capsule approaching the space station. Credit: NASA)

 

A Reprieve for NASA's Space Shuttle?

March 26, 2009

Saying there is no way NASA can complete its remaining nine missions by the end of next year, a Senate budget committee on Thursday voted to lift the shuttle's  planned retirement and fund operations through 2011 with an extra $2.5 billion.

In a directive passed Thursday, the senators also noted that a "fixed retirement date could create dangerous scheduling pressures," a situation that investigators said contributed to both the 1986 Challenger disaster and the 2003 Columbia accident.

Florida Democrat Bill Nelson is taking credit for the measure, which he sees as a way to close the gap and save jobs between the time of the shuttle program's end and the debut flight of NASA's new spaceship, called Orion.

President Obama's proposed 2010 budget adds one more mission for the shuttle -- to deliver a high-profile dark matter physics experiment to the station -- provided it can be completed in 2010. NASA previously had seven mission remaining to the orbital outpost and one final servicing call to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Spurned Contractor Wants New Deal from NASA

January 15, 2009

NASA is suspending contract awards to two firms selected to fly cargo to the International Space Station after a third contender formally protested the outcome of the competition.

PlanetSpace, a Chicago-based partnership set up by three of the U.S. space agency’s prime contractors -- Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co, and Alliant Techsystems Inc. -- filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office on Wednesday, contesting contracts awarded last month worth $3.5 billion to startup Space Exploration Technologies of Hawthorne, Calif., and Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp.

The contracts called for a total of 20 flights to the space station to deliver cargo after the space shuttles are retired in 2010.

NASA has 30 days to respond to the complaint and the GAO is required to issue a ruling by April 29, 2009.

You can read some details about the complaint here and a statement by PlanetSpace on the matter.

Industry's Big Break

December 22, 2008

If every cloud has a silver lining, payday for at least one launch services firm should be coming on Tuesday. Well, the promise of pay, anyway.

NASA plans to announce which company or companies it wants to hire to haul cargo to the space station after the shuttles are retired and before the government’s next fleet of spaceships is ready to fly. No one is particularly happy about the gap, but it could prove a bonanza for one or more company vying for a contract worth more than $3 billion.

In the running are startup Space Exploration Technologies of California, headed by internet entrepreneur Elon Musk; Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp., which is angling to branch into a new space transportation line; and a Chicago-based venture called PlanetSpace, a collaborative venture that includes some of the biggest and most established firms in the aerospace industry.

SpaceX and Orbital already share a $500 million pool of public funds to demonstrate their capabilities. Both plan test flights in 2010. PlanetSpace joins the considerable resources of Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Alliant Techsystems for a launch vehicle it says could be ready to fly in 2011.

Whichever firms are selected, the United States will still be dependent on Russia to provide rides for its astronauts. So far, NASA has not put a call out to private industry for that service.

NASA's Shuttle Plan B

November 12, 2008

If the Barack Obama administration decides to keep the space shuttles flying beyond the currently scheduled 10 final flights, NASA has plan to make sure the program still ends on a high note -- i.e. with no more accidents.

Deputy program manager LeRoy Cain tells me one of the three shuttles would be removed from service -- probably Atlantis -- and serve as a donor ship for parts needed to keep the other two orbiters flying. But it also would serve as a sort of cadaver research subject, a testbed for invasive procedures to ascertain structural integrity and other factors in an attempt to uncover hidden hazards that could prove fatal in flight.

Safety “is a huge consideration,” Cain said during a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday. “It’s in the forefront of our minds and it always will be.”

“The safety aspect is a little bit elusive, so we need to be very open-minded and very creative in how we think of it,” he added.

GAO says shuttle retirement urgent issue for Obama

November 06, 2008

Among President-elect Barack Obama’s long to-do list: Figure out when to have NASA retire the space shuttles. During the campaign, both Obama and Republican contender John McCain indicated they wanted to tweak the plan laid out by the Bush administration to retire the fleet in 2010. That schedule would leave a key physics experiment, which the United States, Europe and other countries already have spent more than $1 billion to design and build, without a ride to orbit.

NASA says it’ll need $2 billlion a year to keep even one space shuttle flying beyond the current manifest, which includes nine missions to the International Space Station and one final flight to fix up the Hubble Space Telescope. (The first of those 10 is slated for liftoff next Friday.) But in a briefing with reporters this week, managers also warned that taking the $2 billion from a new program to develop a replacement ship would be “disastrous.”

To keep the options open, NASA has held off making any irrevocable decisions, such as shutting down manufacturing lines for the shuttle’s fuel tanks. The maneuvers will only buy a few months lag time. Perhaps that’s why the Government Accounting Office, in drawing up a list of “Urgent Issues” awaiting the two-day old Obama administration, ranked the space shuttle retirement as No. 11 out of 13 chief concerns.

No Rest for the Myth-Makers

August 28, 2008

This is probably a bad thing for a Discovery Channel columnist to admit but I don’t watch TV much. I was curious, however, to see how the guys on Mythbusters were going to tackle a rather irritating contention that the United States never landed on the moon.

Parts of the show are pretty goofy, but I enjoyed watching a chop-chop version of the scientific process in action. I hope I’m not ruining the ending for anyone who missed it last night and wants to catch a re-run, but Mythbusters says the only hoax going on is the one put forth by people who say the moon landings are a hoax.

Unfortunately, this probably won’t make a whit of difference to anyone who doesn’t ascribe to rationality and logic -- the foundations of science, even science-lite like Mythbusters -- and it’s concerning that these attributes have waned faster than the bull market.

Leaving aside the really big issues like creationism/intelligent design vs. evolution (Hey, Mythbusters: will you take THAT on??), let’s ponder for a moment the renewed call to keep the space shuttles flying so we don’t have to depend on those pesky Georgia-stomping Ruskies for rides to the space station.

Although it’s nice to see presidential candidates caring enough about space exploration to squeeze it into their busy days, the latest volley by John McCain seems a bit like a soft-boiled egg.

His call to President Bush to suspend plans to retire the shuttle (at least until after the election, says my sardonic side) because we just don’t know if we can trust our Russian partners pretty much misses the fact that we’re already beyond wedded. We’ve merged. Whether Russia flies our astronauts or not really doesn’t matter since that house in space can’t be divided.

For example, we can go on flying the shuttle to the station until the next accident, but it won’t change the fact that the spaceships standing by to transport crewmembers home in case of an emergency are Russian-made, Russian-operated, Russian-owned. The United States made the decision years ago to leave lifeboats to the Russians.

The new ships being developed to replace the shuttle CAN be used as lifeboats too, though the primary design driver is to get them to the moon.

These decisions were not made lightly. They stemmed from the highly acclaimed work of the board that investigated the 2003 Columbia disaster, which went above and beyond the call of duty by not only proving the equipment breakdowns that triggered the accident and the blind spots in managers’ mindsets that nurtured false assumptions, but also recommendations on what to do next. Topping the list? Retire or recertify the shuttle. The board determined NASA had been flying the ships without keeping up on how real-world conditions, as opposed to engineering models and simulations, were affecting them.

Like most of us individually, NASA learned the hard way. Being of sound mind and limited budget (recertification was estimated to be about as expensive as creating new ships), NASA pushed for the shuttles retirement so it could use the funds for a new endeavor.

Rational, logical --- and, unfortunately, becoming passé.

(Photos: NASA)