NASA and Boeing Lock Heads Over Space Station

Ornslo writes, "NASA is getting angry at Boeing about their project management of the International Space Station, thanks almost $1 billion in cost overruns. A NASA report released last week puts much of the blame on Boeing's acquisition of Rockwell and McDonnell Douglas, and how the company underestimated the impact this would cause on development. Because of the overruns, Boeing will lose over $125 million in incentive bonuses. I think World War III will be over money and nothing else if it ever does happen... Visit MSNBC, CNN Space, or Spaceviews for more... "

Comments

first post?

[Anonymous Coward]

probably took too long

Hey...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I get a Saturn V at auction for under a $100K? I wanna get off this rock...

-- Ender, Duke_of_URL

Re:Hey...

[Eric Smith]

Unfortunately, NASA took the last two (perfectly good!) Saturn V's and laid them out as lawn ornaments in Houston and Huntsville.

When I visited KSC in 1990, seeing that Saturn V was quite a mixed-emotions experience. On the one hand, it was pretty neat to be able to get that close to a real spacecraft. On the other hand, I just about cried over what a waste it was to have taken a perfectly good spacecraft, laid it out, and left it exposed to the elements and vandals.

It was a bit of a disappointment that the high point of the tour was when the bus stopped by the fenced-in area that one of the crawlers was parked in, so that we could stare through the fence. The crawler's awesome, but it was the only thing other than the Saturn V that we got close to.

There was a really stupid stop on the bus tour at the building that they said had been used for Apollo astronaut training. I expected that they would show us some of the training equipment or some such, but instead they had turned it into an incredibly poor-quality "replica" of launch control. They had someone fabricate a whole bunch of "control consoles" that bore no resemblance to the real thing; they were just four different designs of panels with switches and blinky lights.

The "museum" was slightly interesting, although I was disappointed that they couldn't even be bothered to make the sentences on the placards gramatically correct.

It's really a shame that rather than NASA employing people who care about it to run the visitor center and tours, they just contract it out to a company that only sees it as a way of fleecing tourists.

Unless it's been substantially overhauled in the last ten years, I'd advise people to skip visiting KSC unless it's already on their route to somewhere else, or unless they can arrange a VIP tour.

Re:Hey...

[Eric Smith]

AFAIK, the Saturn V at the Cape wasn't flight-ready hardware

The tour guide claimed it had been, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if she had been mistaken.

Re:Hey...

[tesserae]

AFAIK, the Saturn V at the Cape wasn't flight-ready hardware (I think it was a tooling testbed). The other two were the last of the production run of boosters (NASA didn't want the Shuttle to have competition, it's said; pretty effective way of enforcing it).

My work takes me to JSC (Houston) and to the Cape from time to time, and I meet the people who really do the work. For the most part, they're dedicated, even pretty idealistic folks; they work where they do because it's the only space game in town, as far as I can tell. Hell, JSC is full of engineers who'd freely give body parts to be astronauts, but haven't made the cut yet (or will never, but can't stand to be away from it).

Their bosses, OTOH, are somewhat different... and their bosses are the ones who farm out the tourist crap. I won't even get into the political stuff...

This makes the ISS/Boeing story all the more offensive. I only wish there were some way to take those people I know, and let them loose on a modern version of the Apollo Program; we really ought to be able to use their talents and enthusiasm to accomplish something, rather than see them abused.

It's a damned shame.

---

Re:Hey...

[tesserae]

Oops! My bad... the one at JSC is the static test system.

Sorry 'bout that! (at least you made me look)

---

Re:Hey...

[tesserae]

Unfortunately, NASA took the last two (perfectly good!) Saturn V's and laid them out as lawn ornaments in Houston and Huntsville. And we couldn't build another one now even if we wanted, because we've lost the technological infrastructure necessary to build them.

My real point: A lot has changed since the start of the Apollo Program. When I first started working in the aerospace industry, my boss was an old Apollo vet; he cared about everything he did, just as if it were still Apollo and the astronauts' lives (and our nation's prestige) depended on it. His boss, on the other hand, is the younger jerk who told me that the most important concept I could learn was to say, "That's not in scope."

At the root of it, that's what this present problem is: Boeing (just like all the other contractors) lowballs their bids, in the near-certain knowledge that changes will come down the pipe (often because of Congress, often because of NASA's own internal problems), and they'll be able to make back that money and a good bit of extra change with the "out-of-scope" modifications to the contract.

I think Boeing was just keeping quiet, waiting for this to happen, and they got caught when NASA held to the financial line drawn by Congress. And for its part, NASA doesn't have the money or the manpower to constantly monitor its contractors -- hell, they don't have the time to check their units, or run a complete end-to-end test series on a system (remember the last two Mars missions?).

Things are a mess on all sides: the system has fossilized. I want to get off this rock, too -- but I suspect the only way to make that happen is too do it with other like-minded adventurers, instead of waiting for NASA and the aerospace industry.

Now, does anyone know someone rich enough *cough*Gates*cough* to fund some real space exploration?

---

lesser crap...

[Anonymous Coward]

We've been discussing (or bitching about this) in previous science posts, and you can find similar things in the YRO, and other sections.

It does cut down on the amount of trolling, but it also SEVERELY cuts down on the amount of neat information that frontpage stories generate.

<shrug> I don't know what to do about it personally, except continue to try and make intelligent comments on stories, and check them once in awhile.

-- Ender, Duke_of_URL

Sut up, mmmkay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tanks.

Trollin' for Yu Suzuki
-=United Coalition of Trolls for te Abolition of Moderation=-

Re:This is a surprise. Honest.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were a totalitarean country you wouldn't have this problem...

This is real funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep the Zerg ha

Re:This is real funny

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate them damn zergs :P

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

this doesn't make it to the frontpage, while hordes of lesser crap does?

A better way to colonize space

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I believe that we should focus our resources on designing the SCV. With these, we'll be able to harvest the vast Mineral and Vespene Gas resources on the moon-- and be ready for when the Zerg attack.

This is a surprise. Honest.

[jd]

Nothing Boeing or NASA does surprises me any more. If it were discovered tomorrow that they were both run by different factions of semi-intelligent Jelly Baby, it could hardly be any more of a shock.

Seriously, let's look at this. Boeing was doing perfectly "normal" business, by lying through it's teeth about the impact of buying out a competitor. I mean, that's standard practice, and always has been. It probably always will be, whilst CEOs worship the Great Green Printed God. Reality and business rarely mix, because reality is too damn expensive.

Even with this bonus loss, who's really hurting? Boeing? They gain 1 billion, and lose only 1/5th of that in bonuses, and that's hurting? *COUGH* Give me a break! They're laughing all the way to the bank and there's not a damn thing NASA can do to touch them. And they both know it.

Expect further rip-offs being discovered or announced in future. We all know NASA keeps getting taken for a ride, that the companies they depend upon are charging as much as 10,000% for sheer profit. NASA is a vehicle for American companies to milk. It's never been taken seriously and it doesn't even take itself seriously any more.

Far as I'm concerned, the best thing for America would be if NASA declared bankrupcy, the Government funds transferred to amateur rocket builders, and the licencing laws made more amateur developer-friendly.

Re:Dump the space station - On to Mars!

[ATKeiper]

You're definitely right about increasing Congressional hostility toward NASA - including among lots of political conservatives, which is why I was pleasantly surprised to read Krauthammer's article. Last year, the pressure in Congress was so bad that the first version of the budget would have forced NASA to actually cut programs it had already started.

I just wish politicians had the courage to talk about the importance of space exploration, instead of being cowed by the "let's solve all our problems here on Earth first" crowd.

Somebody on Slashdot has as a signature file something like the following: "Faster. Better. Cheaper. Pick any two you want - you can't have all three." Seems right to me.

Dump the space station - On to Mars!

[ATKeiper]

Sounds like just one more reason the overhyped and purposeless space station program should be scrapped in favor of something scientifically useful and socially ennobling, like a mission to Mars. I largely agree with what Charles Krauthammer wrote in his recent Weekly Standard piece on this topic.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

Re:Dump the space station - On to Mars!

[tesserae]

While I agree with Krauthammer also, I think it's important to recognize that the only reason NASA has as much budget as it presently does, is the Station. Remove that, and the idiots in Congress will remove all the funding associated with it -- and all that'll be left is the occasional $180M faster-cheaper (I refuse to say "better") mission. As it is, there are constant efforts to kill ISS (and NASA, too, pretty much).

Realistically, the only reason we were able to pull the Apollo program off was because it was really a Cold War effort, not simply a manifestation of mankind's enquiring spirit. Kennedy made a great speach, but it was propaganda. And when we'd definitely shown the Russians where they stood, the program was gutted, then cancelled.

OTOH, the American people were genuinely thrilled by the whole thing; as I recall, it wasn't lack of interest by the public that caused the networks not to broadcast the Apollo 13 launch, it was the networks' desire to pull in more advertising dollars. But the American public doesn't really run the show, do they? Congress has its own agenda, and I get the feeling that they don't want people to raise their eyes too high -- they'd rather folks kept their heads down, eating the bread and watching the circus.

---