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NASA Task Force Recommends Radical Changes
darrellsilver writes: "As reported at the nytimes (free reg, etc) here and msnbc here, an independant task force initiated in July by the now resigning Dan Goldin concluded this week that "radical changes" need to be put into place if the space station is to continue functioning. The full report in PDF format is available from NASA here." We've reported on this before but we didn't have a link to the report itself. Budgetary woes have already taken their toll on the station and this report is recommending even more cuts.
It's really a pity that they couldn't find anybody willing to PAY for a trip to the ISS. It would solve so many financial problems.
Idiots.
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It seems like what's being lost in this analysis is that any project you're going to launch into space has to be done safely and properly ... or your cost-managed investment amounts to naught.
It's all well and good to insist that NASA manage to a budget and a schedule; however, to hold these as the two highest priorities as they attempt to coordinate something no one has ever tried before is ludicrous.
--j, insomniac at large.
Damn. The ISS took yet another hit, and more NASA engineers who love their jobs will be told to leave. The article makes these panel members sound inscrutable, but who knows what kind of backseat politicking is going on here? Finance and law seem to be tearing engineering apart.
Since when does science take a backseat to finance? Welcome to the federal hegemony of America, where culpable deniability and reactionary motivation rule the day. This is the same kind of stuff that makes American engineers cry: when Goldin parachutes matter more than scientific progress. It makes me want to resign my own piece of scholarly hide to some country that is friendlier to engineers and hard scientists.
Unfortunately, the "American way" is being imposed almost everywhere, and many countries are pervaded with an overarching sense of responsibilty to itemize their science into the ground. Just where does NASA think this will take them? More importantly, why in the hell is Johnny Lunchpail equating NASA cuts with more money in his pocket?
I'm tired of the $2 billion/year ego project that the ISS is. I'd go back to really good 100 million buck science projects, and fund 20 of em a year, or 5 bigger and 12 smaller ones. I suspect a few scientists would agree. And that's basically what the report comes down to. No good science looks like it'll be getting done any time soon.
People forget that it takes foundational science to do sexy science, and there are TONS of really worthy and interesting projects that get sidelined by sex appeal.
Even the dreamers should realize that ISS does much less to get folks on mars for example than real good focused R&D here on earth. NASA has a horrendous record in cost control, timeline estimates, and it is about time they paid the price. Redirect all that money to folks who'll use it well untill NASA get's its house back in order.
Man on mars (one way trip to start) is definatly cool, but let's take a pause to do some real science for a while, say 5 years, then see where we are.
Sure, this'll get modded down by all the NASA lovers but all these blind science geeks need to realize something. Unless you allow stuff to fail you never will evolve. Basic evolution in action.
That's something the miliary for example, which refuses to admit huge procurment mistakes time and again, has never has got. They can't admit a mistake and end up chasing down dumb roads to the tunes of billions.
Bush never cut the space station's budget... His administration simply agreed on the already-planned funding, but told NASA they wouldn't get a single buck more than that. Aren't they already several tens of billions over budget? (If I'm not mistaken, the planned cost was about $40billion and the current estimates are more like 80...)
And now they say they can't make it, due to an absolute failure to track costs. Giving them more money is encouraging them to soak more of it into their virtual monopoly on spaceflight. That said, not completing the space station is a violation of the US' international commitments.
How about calling for bids and letting a private company complete program? Preferably a small one - not Boeing and the likes, they're already the ones running the show...
As usual the really good stuff is in the appendix, which is available here:_ ap pdx.pdf
ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/reports/2001/imce
evanchik.net
Honestly, I just don't see the relavency of the space program in this day and age.
Construction.
We need to concentrate on keeping our citizens safe, and most importantly bringing our boys home from Afghanistan and bringing Bin Laden to justice.
Destruction.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
The report detailed a plan to maximize the research capability of the station while keeping down costs. So far NASA has not shown the ability to hold down total program costs. This report addresses that in a way that does not endanger the construction of the station. "Core complete" is not the intended final configuration. It is proposed as a milestone. When NASA demonstrates competency at managing project costs, they get more toys, and a station crew of seven.
The idea of using visiting crews to supplement the station crew is brilliant. I only hope that NASA takes this advice seriously.
The report also made the point that cutting more hardware will do little to reduce the cost. The proposed solution is to cut support personnel, which of course NASA will fight tooth and nail.
I am highly interested in progress in space. I want to see many more things happen before I die. I am all for any way to increase the amount of funding that advances space sciences.
Although nasa may not be the best place to put all that money in its current state, that does not mean we should just cut the funding for space projects.
To say that we are at war or that there are more important ways to spend money is short sighted and a narrow view of the benefits of this science.
first of all, the people that died on sept 11 were unfortunate americans, and im a patriot and all but that does not qualify them as brave(with exception of the firefighters,etc).
second, if we abandon everything so that we can go after one guy(this was implied in the previous comment) then we are a very sad country.
the space program does a whole lot more for us than "waste money"
Many usefull things have come out of NASA, most importantly knowledge.
the 120 some million americans can do a whole lot more than just focus on terror. We have to keep moving and developing, as in keep programs like NASA running. The space station also gives us a certain respect from other nations and people, they know that only america can do stuff like this.
not to mention that you are an anonymous coward!
AND, not that im defending him, but Bin Laden has not been proven of the sept11 attack, he is just a major terrorist and the first target of many, dont use this one man to focus everything bad you knoww on, focus on the terrorism itself. anything else would be mob justice which is not justice at all.
first of all, the people that died on sept 11 were unfortunate americans, and im a patriot and all but that does not qualify them as brave(with exception of the firefighters,etc).
Actually it's now looking as though Americans were the largest minority (mid 40's percent) of the people killed.
the space program does a whole lot more for us than "waste money"
Anyway if you want an example of a money wasting exercise there are far better examples.
There is something in this analysis that strikes me as odd.
1) Apparently, the NASA did not have enough money these last years, and solved this by pushing costs to the future.
2) The solution suggested for this problem is giving them even less money. Strange.
If you look at item 1, you would think that giving them *more* money, or more time on the current budget, would be a logical solution. At least, give them the same amount as before and allow for some time to reorganize their management.
Of course, budgetting is a real world issue, so just doing the logical thing is not always feasible. Spending for ISS has been going down for some time, even before the current maybe-recession and the attacks on Afghanistan. But even though wars costs lots of money, a wise government would not stop spending money on all research. Imagine when they would have said in WWII "we're at war, we don't have time for this research on atoms". The outcome could have been way different from what it was.
And on a side note, wouldn't you be giving the terrorists more credit than they're due? They are already disrupting normal life, which is surely one of their targets.
Inez{R}.
If humanity wants to survive, we must get off the Earth.
:-(
And that certainly starts with small steps, like the ISS.
But, hell, we can't even take that small step
Then the US government should break up NASA. NASA is now a great big lead weight on the progress of space flight. Ever since the "low cost" shuttle was created.
Deleted
Some of the assumptions behind the selected 1993 Space Station "Alpha" design and cost estimate of $17.4B now appear to be ridiculously optimistic.
The space flight software would total 500,000 source lines of code (SLOC).
It is now projected three times as high, tripleing the costs. And this is only to speak of the software onboard, the whole project software has 4M source lines it says later. Why do I think that in the majority of cases the software costs is the part which is underestimated mostly? Shouldn't they have learned from the Ariane V disaster?
Props go to New Scientist for excellent journalism, and me for subsequently stealing it (subliminal message: subscribe! subscribe!)
Problems with the space station are: <riff>
- Incompatible electrical supplies between the Russian and American modules
- Russian and American water supplies cannot be mixed. Russians used silver ions to preserve water, Americans use iodine, mix and you get silver iodide which clogs any/all filters/valves.
- The crew couldn't get to an air-circulation fan to fix it due to a large piece of "substrucutre". Out comes the impact driver... which solves the problem... sort of.
- Lack of tools. Stuff like vice grips are being used to hold together temporary odds and ends as well as tightening and loosening things.
- "Crew Squawk" program, designed to report when systems aren't working, isn't working. =(
- 3-page procedure for putting a maintenance panel back on is on the back side of said maintenance panel.
Other problems have been:Fortunately most of these problems have been ironed out. The whole thing reads like a Dilbert cartoon. Just goes to show that money doesn't solve everything. Said article appeared in the July 14 edition of New Scientist and was written by James Oberg.
Best quote is from ex-ISS Commander Bill Shepherd:Fortunately the crew left the station on the 18th of March.
(PS - subscribe to New Scientist - the Women's Weekly for geeks(TM))
* Intelligence is like 4-wheel drive. It only allows you get stuck in more remote places. -- Garr
I don't see much purpose to the ISS. We should concentrate on robotic missions for now: they yield much more information per dollar spent. NASA seemed to think so as well; the ISS seems to have mostly been pushed through for political reasons, not for scientific ones. (Of course, I still prefer the ISS to bombs, but that's another matter.)
I agree the ISS is a collossal waste of money, but those who think the main purpose of the ISS was ever scientific are pretty naive. The point of the ISS is to keep the Russian rocket/space industry afloat, thus keeping their scientists and engineers employed in peaceful pursuits instead of working for the missile programs of Iran, Iraq, North Korea, China, Pakistan, India, etc. etc.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4291653,00. html
Paraphrasing here, "the agency's main hopes lie with persuading Congress to bail it out. It is estimated it needs 8 billion dollars to fulfill its commitments and to cover a 5 billion dollar debt, a vastly improbable sum given that America is on a war footing and has priorities far removed from space travel. Instead, a desperate slashing back of costs and missions seems the agency's likely future."
Not a pretty picture at all.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Worse than that. Think about how much money the US spends every year bombing the people you just spoke of. You know, like the ones in a certain Af.... country.
Rod Taylor
And I've written a fairly angry analysis of what I saw there. A Few Thoughts on NASA's Problems describes some of the management (or is it manglement) problems I saw there. While I've toned it down a bit, NASA people might want to put on their asbestos underwear. Then again, independent thinkers who still manage to work in aerospace might see reflections of their own disorganizations.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
On the non-manned mission side, NASA has pushed a whole new approach of smaller and cheaper space vehicles and satellites. Using this strategy, NASA has gotten more satellites into space and had the first mission to Mars in decades.
At the exact same time, NASA has also been pursuing the International Space Station, which is neither cheap, small, nor effective. It is currently only being manned by a skeleton crew, so they can't hardly do any experiments. Furthermore, it has been recently pointed out that the ISS wobbles a bit, which could render many microgravity experiments useless. Basically, the ISS is an endeavour to pay hundereds of millions if not billions of dollars for experiments of very questionable scientific value.
Consider all the interesting science that could be done if this were instead channelled into real science.
Either you have a very skewed definition of space science, or you are merely an idiot. Apollo did very little in space science, which is why I am leaning towards idiot. But, with full knowledge that this is a troll, here we go.
e 02.html#Table_2_4). ISS is about 35% of that. But, if you look at the table, you will notice a surprising list of things we spend more money on: Veterans' Affairs, and Transportation, for instance. We spend TWICE on HUD what we do on NASA. Same with Education, and HHS gets 3 times as much. I am not arguing that NASA should be equated with any of these agencies, but just pointing out how insignificant the NASA budget really is.
.8 cents of the tax dollar.
"we spend as much on NASA as we do."
NASA spends 14 billion a year, in total. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2002/guid
Or, for a more influential stat, divide 14 billion into 1.6 trillion, and figure out the percentage of the annual budget that goes to NASA.
"Around the world, people starve and die of diseases that would be cured by a quick trip to an American doctor."
OK, more math: Assume half of the populations of China and India (probably a significant understatement) have problems that could be easily remedied in the United States. So, that's 1 billion people. If you can find a way to get them to the States, or provide continuing American quality medical care, for FOURTEEN DOLLARS A PERSON then more power to you, but you are missing your calling posting on slashdot. And this totally ignores the mess that is sub-Saharan Africa.
People starved and died before NASA, and they will continue to after NASA is a memory. That is LIFE. The United States ALREADY feeds the world. U.S. Pharmaceutical companies, love them or hate them, medicate the world. These facts are only true because of the research dollars the U.S. gov't has spent. Now, I'm no biologist, but I have heard from quite a few that there is potential in creating medicines in zero-g environments that will revolutionize medical care. I think that possibility might be worth
"We haven't done anything of significance in space since the moon landings, and we won't in the near future, either."
This doesn't make much sense, frankly. Apollo brought us back some moon rocks, and we learned about lunar geology and some about the space environment and how to survive in it. Within the past 2 years we have discovered evidence of water oceans on Europa and, possibly, Ganymede and Callisto. Since 1990 we have discovered evidence of the movement of water on the Martian surface, we have discovered planets around other stars, imaged black holes, etc. Hubble, Chandra, and a whole host of smaller projects have made significant advances in our understanding of the universe. I haven't even gotten into NASA's Earth Science and Solar Science Programs. In the near future, Cassini/Huygens will get to Saturn and we will learn what is going on on Titan, including gathering evidence for or against the possibility of life in the atmospheric soup.
What of any of this is insignificant? Or is space science itself insignificant, which you don't say.
"Commercial interests will eventually take over..."
This part of this sentence I actually agree with, though the idea of a private concern building Hubble is so ludicrous that is doesn't even deserve comment. If we kill NASA in the near future, commercial interests will never take over. Period. The cost of space activity is too high for anything besides communications sats. This cost will not come down without a significant amount of research money being spent. Sure as hell the industry is not willing to spend those dollars, even if they were equipped for it. Without NASA, no one would do it, plain and simple.
Well, I hope this actually makes you think, though I doubt it. Idiot might have been a bit strong in the first paragraph, but I don't think you've actually put any time or effort into this opinion, so you merely sounded like an idiot instead of actually being one. I apologize.
"Fifty million Americans can't be wrong," said Rep. Billy Tauzin. Gore - 50,999,897 Bush - 50,456,002
Gore was more interested in going up into space and looking BACK at Earth instead of looking out, away from Earth and to human kind's future. Human kind is doomed in the very long run (100% chance in a few billion years), and perhaps in the short run, if we don't get our freakin' DNA off this planet.
As much as I hate seeing IIS suck the dough from other NASA projects, the work IIS supports in gaining experience in long term space travel is worth it. Read the book Dragonfly about the Shuttle-Mir program for a good look at life in space.
Once a good sized chunk of rock smacks into Earth, all that starving and disease doesn't matter much anyway.
Anyone who thinks the money would be better spent on charity is very shortsighted.
HOWEVER, I have done a little contract work for NASA here and there, and they are nothing but one huge bureaucracy with a history of mismanagement. (Much like the DOD, et. al.) Throwing them more money just makes them think that mistakes, bad fiscal management, and scores of incompetent middle managers is A-OK with everyone and business should go on as usual.
I don't want any funding cut...but I do want them to act a little more like a business instead of a public works project. Either that, or let's start handing out R & D grants to people who can actually put the money to work effectively and efficiently. You can't say a project will cost $8 billion/year and then spend $10 billion/year and defer the extra $2 billion till five years down the road. What happens when five years go by and you now have to face the fact that you have spent $2 billion of your budget before you have even done one thing?
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
Think of how many billions of dollars go to taking away people's rights to liberty and the puruit of happiness via the Drug Enforcement Agency. Think of how many people that could put in orbit if they made drugs legal...
Frankly if NASA can't coordinate the finances they are given, why give them more? That only reinforces their poor accounting.
As to holding NASA to a budget -- well, actually Congress is holding NASA to a greatly inflated budget (relative to original estimates, which themselves grew several times). And the Young Commission report says that NASA's budget estimation has no credibility, such that the Commission could not even evaluate whether current outyear projections could be met based on current knowledge of the program. Unless Congress is going to write a blank check, there has to be some limit. Goldin has not hesitated to kill scientific projects which went over budget -- why should there be a doube standard for Station?
Don't get me wrong, my truck gets about 285 Leagues to the Oxhaft and that's the way I like it, and I love NASA and what they do, but honestly, this is a scientific organization. What the hell are they doing using "standard" measurements?!?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
That NASA proposal is mostly budget tweaks, not radical proposals. The Economist, in contrast, recommends termination of all manned spaceflight as pointless.
So, what is the mission of the manned space program? What are we paying for? I'm all in favor of a manned space program -- but not boring holes in the sky.
So what do I propose for the manned space program? Drastically increase research into advanced transportation technologies:
In short, I think that the time has come for NASA to focus on the basic building blocks of space utilization, rather than pursuing missions as the primary focus. The missions will come when the building blocks are ready. I would like NASA to return to its R+D roots a la NACA.
Access to space probably isn't something that NASA should stick their nose into:
a) subsidised launch systems are a bad idea
b) NASA are bad at it (~$500 million per launch of the Space Shuttle? I don't think so.)
c) they can't compete with the much cheaper Russian hardware (it's a factor of 4 cheaper, and it's not a factor of 4 worse).
d) to a pretty reasonable degree the cost of access to space is related to frequency (the costs of getting to space are in launch pads, R&D, factories etc., not so much in fuel or rocket hardware), so because NASA doesn't launch much- the price goes up massively, and so they can't launch much because it's too expensive, so it goes up even more.
Propulsion, space tethers, sounds good. Space exploration, maybe a manned mission to Mars and asteoids- that can make sense.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"From: mordor!lll-tis!oodis01!riacs!rutgers!pnet01.cts.c
To: ucsd!nosc!crash!space@angband.s1.gov
Subject: SAVE NASP!!!
All PROspace activists should lobby congress heavily to favor NASP over Space Station. The reason is simple: Since NASP is totally bankrupt technically and is promising "results" in a few years, we could kill off Space Station almost immediately and NASP would die in another 5 years or so.
The situation with NASP dying to save Space Station is terrible. We really do need space facilities. Now we will end up with a gold-plated, bureaucrat-controlled CDSF about 10 to 15 years after we could have had an affordable, industry-controlled CDSF. Giving NASP enough rope to really jerk its head off when it falls would be a great wake-up call to Congress.
Unfortunately, Congress has just enough knowlege to see that NASP won't work and that maybe NASA can fly something called a Space Station. They don't have any deeper insight.
Seastead this.
"We haven't done anything of significance in space since the moon landings, and we won't in the near future, either."
This doesn't make much sense, frankly. Apollo brought us back some moon rocks, and we learned about lunar geology and some about the space environment and how to survive in it. Within the past 2 years we have discovered evidence of water oceans on Europa and, possibly, Ganymede and Callisto. Since 1990 we have discovered evidence of the movement of water on the Martian surface, we have discovered planets around other stars, imaged black holes, etc. Hubble, Chandra, and a whole host of smaller projects have made significant advances in our understanding of the universe. I haven't even gotten into NASA's Earth Science and Solar Science Programs. In the near future, Cassini/Huygens will get to Saturn and we will learn what is going on on Titan, including gathering evidence for or against the possibility of life in the atmospheric soup.
It's interesting data, and that's about it. What good is knowing about water on Luna when NASA hasn't had a manned mission there in 30 years and has no plans to do so again? Don't get me wrong, learning about space is one of the most important things we can do with our civilization, but for it to do any good whatsoever it has to be followed up with space colonization. We can learn and learn and learn but if we're not where that knowledge can be applied, what good is it? It's like my getting a Computer Science degree and then never looking at a piece of electronics again. The money spent on my education would be totally wasted.
If we kill NASA in the near future, commercial interests will never take over. Period. The cost of space activity is too high for anything besides communications sats
Yes, it is expensive. But if we kill off NASA, there will still be a market for satellite launches. Now here's the important part: private industries would be less likely to stick with a fuckup like the Shuttle for 30 or 40 years (which NASA plans on doing) and will constantly be trying to lower costs so as to earn greater profits. They would do more for lowering orbital launch costs than NASA ever did.
But the initial R & D costs are amazing and bennefits may not be immediately realized, so yes, companies might be hesitant before jumping in. Fine. Take NASA off every single project of theirs with the sole exception of developing cheap launch methods. That's the bottleneck on our space industry and it's what NASA should have been working on all these years. We can handle the rest, just get us up there.
Dyolf Knip
There is a *worldwide* market for satellite launches
Yeah, I thought of that. I'm wondering, how many of them are government run or massively subsidized? Are any of them at all mostly private?
the Shuttle post-Challenger no longer has a monopoly on US launches
I thought that in the US at least NASA still does.
The ISS is the type of huge, bleeding edge, long-term payoff type of R&D effort that the private sector won't touch with a bargepole
I somewhat agree. Space research is currently insanely R & D intensive and unattractive to industry, which was why a government agency was put in charge of it in the first place. Problem is, in 40 years they have done fsck all with it. The ISS doesn't help any since the bottleneck is in launch costs more than anything else and as far as NASA is concerned, they haven't changed in years. If anything, they've gone up by using the Shuttle. If we want to study physiological effects in zero g, there's 10,000 universities that would happily study it. If we want to learn about manufacturing techniques, there's a million companies that would jump for it. Same goes for military applications, planetary probes, tourism, any industry you can think of. We don't need or indeed even want NASA doing that for us. But we're stuck with them because it costs too damned much to get up there and almost all the other players are newcomers themselves. Most all the research that's been done is interesting but of no use since it'd not going to be applied anytime soon.
Maybe NASA could do a good job on launch costs if that's all they worked on, maybe private industry would do it better. It's practically a secondary point; I just think that they've been working on the wrong things for decades. All the extraneous research that's been done so far could be done later but at a fraction of the cost.
Here's a good analogy. Let's say that way back at the dawn of the vaccum tube, building useful electronics of any kind was so insanely expensive and useless that only governments could and would do it. To deal with this, a government agency is put in place to expedite the development of useful electronics. Now, the intelligent thing to do would be to concentrate on making components cheaper to build and letting everyone else put them together and write the software, right? We might get things like transistors which for purposes of computing are far superior to vacuum tubes any day. Why, it might get to the point where every person could have their own PC. What we got was an agency that spent 40 years designing bigger vacuum tubes culminating in the construction of one giant computer that does jack squat. And if anyone tries to use that computer for playing some ADVENT or Hunt the Wumpus on the side, they have to fork over $20 million and fight tooth and nail with two governments to do it. They have done a terrible job with their charter and I for one doubt their ability to ever improve.
Dyolf Knip