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Book Review: Moon-Mars Commission Report
The single most prolific spinoff attributable to NASA is not Teflon, Tang, or Velcro. No, it's high-level reports on how to fix NASA. The latest report, written under the authority of a 9-member commission named by President Bush, proposes how to implement NASA's latest orders: complete the Space Station and retire the Shuttle by the end of the decade, return humans to the Moon by 2020, and eventually send humans to Mars.
The Background
The President's proposal, while lacking details, has been greeted with enthusiasm by many aerospace workers, for whom the application of the term "beleaguered" is more than appropriate. What other major industry has lost half its workforce in the last 15 years? (Oh yeah, the airline, IT and telecom industries, who managed about the same attrition rate in only 2 years: evidence of efficiency, or something.) Space scientists have awaited the implementation report with some trepidation: their Hubble servicing mission has already been traded for the uncertain prospect of a robotic mission, and some NASA science missions have already been pushed back by the budget impact of the Moon-Mars mission.
Meanwhile, public opinion has not quite caught fire. Opinion polls taken in January show at best indifference and at worst hostility to the new plan. Greg Klerkx wrote "Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the explosion of Columbia, other than the human tragedy, was that it changed very few opinions about NASA or NASA's human spaceflight activities. Both should continue, the polls unanimously concluded, but with no more or less vigor than at present." [p. 12, Klerkx 2004]
The Commission, led by longtime government official E.C. Aldridge, also includes four space scientists, a retired Air Force General, a former Congressman, a business and government executive, and the well-known CEO of a high tech firm. Notably, no astronauts or former NASA executives were on the panel.
Contents
Transmittal Letter
Executive Summary
Section I - Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision
Section II - Organizing the US Government for Success
Section III - Building a Robust Space Industry
Section IV - Exploration and Science Agenda
Section V - Inspiring Current and Future Generations
Section VI - Concluding Comments
Appendices
Historical Context
After any disaster or major program failure, commissions are empaneled and they tend to produce two sorts of reports. The first type of report is a failure analysis, including specific prescriptions for recovery. The second is a more broad examination of strategies and goals. This report falls into the second category. While the Aldridge Commission report includes some recommendations that duplicate some previous ones, the new report differs in some important ways from those.
In 1986, the Paine Commission examined how NASA should respond to the Challenger failure. The commission's report in places reads like a primer on space technologies, and proposes specific goals similar to those of the Bush plan: completion of the Space Station, return to the Moon, and a manned mission to Mars. The Paine Commission seems to have felt that the basic problem facing NASA was a lack of a long-term vision and political commitment.
In 1990, the Augustine Commission studied how NASA should respond to a variety of troubling problems on the Shuttle and other programs. This study endorsed space science strongly, while also supporting Space Station. The report focused strongly on workforce issues like morale, attrition and aging. It also noted weaknesses in NASA's executive leadership practices. The report made some specific reform proposals, some of which reappear in the Aldridge report.
The Report
The Aldridge Commission report differs from previous examinations in important ways. First, it has a very limited scope. The Commission did not perform an open-ended study of what NASA ought to do, or how much emphasis to place on astronomy vs planetary science vs human spaceflight. They only studied how to accomplish President Bush's new goals for the space program. Paradoxically, their limited brief resulted in a far more profound proposal to reorganize NASA than previous reports. The range and depth of reforms proposed by this report greatly exceeds those of previous reports.
The top-level recommendations include:
1. Establish a Space Exploration Steering Council, reporting to the President
2. NASA should establish much more private industry participation in space operations, beginning with unmanned launch services
a. Reorganization of NASA HQ
b. Spin off NASA Centers as Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (similar to JPL and the DOE National Labs)
c. NASA should establish 3 new organizations:
+ a technical advisory board, modeled on the Defense Science Board
+ an Independent Cost Estimating organization, modeled on DoD Cost Analysis Improvement Group
+ a research organization, modeled on DARPA and formed from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
d. NASA should adopt DoD-style project management methods
3. NASA should identify and begin development of critical technologies
4. Renew and sustain development of a robust space industry
a. NASA should actively solicit ideas from all sources
b. Congress should fund prizes targeting specific missions and technologies, and work on space property rights
5. NASA should pursue international partnerships
6. NASA should consult regularly with scientists and the National Academy of Sciences
7. The space exploration program should be tied into educational programs and public relations
Section I "Introduction: The Space Exploration Vision" presents three basic justifications for the exploration program: The human urge to explore, economic growth, and national security. Three "imperatives for success" are also presented: sustainability, affordability, and credibility. Sustainability is described as being able to sustain both technical momentum and long-term political support for what will be an expensive program. Affordability is described as "go as you can pay," where each milestone is reached through "spiral, evolutionary developments." The report compares the funding to cancer research, where the pace is determined by a political judgment of "annually, how much can we afford?" The report describes credibility as an amalgam of best practices. While the Commission recognized that space exploration is full of risk, NASA must not appear careless or foolish. NASA must embrace both management practices as well as technical ideas regardless of their source.
Analysis
The Commission's Report is itself a model of the practices they exhort NASA to follow. Whether by intention or not, many of the ideas in the report have been the stated position of advocacy groups like the National Space Society and the Mars Society. Some of the reforms have been specifically proposed by previous Commissions.
The biggest problem I wondered about was funding. So far, about $12B has been proposed for this vision. Yet, many of the recommendations seem likely to cost a great deal of money. For example, on p. 23, the report states that much of NASA's infrastructure needs substantial modernization. Elsewhere, technology R&D is addressed by proposing a DARPA model or even the In-Q-Tel Venture Capital firm funded by the CIA. The Pentagon's "System-of-systems" approach is proposed as a model for project architecture. Special attention is given to the need for reliable heavy lift launch capability. In discussing how to pursue international participants, the Joint Strike Fighter program is listed as a model. Each of these areas requires either significant direct investment (infrastructure, heavy lift, R&D) or large bureaucracies to administer complex contracts (system-of-systems, JSF model). There is an unavoidable tension between the need for R&D, "go as you can pay," available funds, and "credibility."
The money issue is partially addressed by proposing tax incentives, privatization and private competition. But competition cannot reduce the amount of honest-to-goodness investment needed to remediate the technology deficit. It can only promote the most efficient approach. We need more R&D, yet private competition is seen as a way to "reduce government investment" (p. 20). The elephant in the room is that aerospace is a highly regulated market with relatively low profit margins. This means that direct reinvestment is fairly low. A glance at a list of the top R&D companies shows that top-tier aerospace companies do not reinvest a lot of their own money.
The second issue that troubled me is the applicability of the models they proposed. JPL, the National Labs, various DoD organizations and methods, the X Prize, and other examples are listed as models for various reforms of NASA. This raises some questions. First, are these models applicable? No evidence is presented to indicate that the Commission considered whether different organizations with different goals, constraints, missions, and sizes can use a given model successfully. The proposal to spin off most NASA centers as FFRDCs seems quite radical. Would any commercial firm spin off everything except a design team? Is this what the Aldridge Commission proposes of NASA? How many NASA employees would be left, and in which disciplines? Can the JPL model be applied well to other NASA centers? Would the centers work together better or worse? Would there be limits to how many centers a given contractor would be permitted to operate? I suspect it's much easier to designate JPL as a model than it is to enact in the real world. Do the security and procurement scandals at some DOE labs give us anything to worry about? What about the need for the National Labs to chase proposals in light of funding cuts? Does that make organizations more market oriented and relevant, or does it simply waste the time of researchers?
Finally, the Commission's report failed to address the biggest political problem our human spaceflight program faces: a lack of relevancy to ordinary people. The transmittal letter to the President states that the Commission's web site received over 6,000 written inputs, and that public comments were 7:1 in favor of the new vision. This is of course not a scientific survey, rather it is a self-selected and rather small sample of people who are presumably interested in space exploration. Elsewhere in the report, supportive public testimony is cherry-picked without context or attribution. In one case, I recognized a quote that, taken out of context, sounds much more supportive of a government monopoly on human space travel than the speaker probably meant: "We all wanted to go" (p. 13) was characterized as an expression of the deep and broad effect that the Apollo program had on Americans. I believe this was Tony Tether, Director of DARPA. The full quote was: "What NASA seemed to forget was that then, we all wanted to go," Tether told commissioners. "We were forgotten about." But if NASA can find a way for American citizens to take the baby steps that would eventually allow them to reach the moon - or even just space - themselves, it would do wonders for the space agency's support, he added. "If you can do that, you will have a constituency that you don't have today," Tether said. The longer quote is here.
These anecdotes do not invalidate the report, but I do wonder if the Commission is overselling the enthusiasm that the public will have for this program. Section I, and the report's title, endorse the "inspiration, education, and innovation" arguments for space travel that have so far failed to garner support for a more expansive space vision. One brief mention was made of space tourism and of making NASA an engine of the economy (p. 20). There are hints at the relevance problem sprinkled throughout the report, but public support is more or less presumed, not demonstrated.
What's Good:
If your attitude about NASA reorg proposals is "wake me if it's a big deal," then this is your wakeup call. The Aldridge Commission Report proposes the most profound and far-reaching reorganization of NASA since its founding.
To a larger degree than I would have expected from this board, the proposals are strongly market- and business-oriented. I presume this is the implicit desire of President Bush (MBA, former CEO) and possibly NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe (an accountant).
The report is written in an engaging, enthusiastic style.
What's Bad:
Where's the Beef? "Go as you can pay" does not seem like an adequate response to an agency that has faced aging infrastructure and workers for more than 14 years (see Augustine report). Increased funding and profit margins might address many issues better than bureaucratic realignments or spinoffs. There is no discussion of how to value intangibles like scientific discovery and inspiration, yet tangible values are of prime concern to contractors. NASA's credibility is discussed only in terms of competency, not based on perceived relevancy to the public.
What's Missing:
There is no consideration of potential disadvantages of the various proposals. Supporters of space science may find the report dismissive of their priorities and concerns. There is no critical evaluation of the benefits of space program investments vs direct investments in education, science and technology.
This report is remarkably thin on supplementary materials: there are 13 pp of appendices. More is available on the Commission's web site.
Refs:
[Klerkx 2004]: "Lost In Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age," Greg Klerkx, 2004. ISBN 0375421505
[Paine 1986]: http://history.nasa.gov/painerep/cover.htm
[Augustine 1990]: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/augustin e/racfup1.htm
[Aldridge 2004]: http://www.moontomars.org
The reviewer is an aerospace engineer with experience in human spaceflight engineering and operations, commercial satellite development and operations, and scientific satellite development and operations. No current relationship to NASA, and no significant interests in companies with an interest in this proposal.
You can download A Journey to Inspire, Innovate and Discover from moontomars.org. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to contribute.
...given so little detail?
Am I the only one who's a bit frightened by the concept of Space Property rights? We all knew it was coming of course, but why not something more akin to our handling of the oceans as international waters? Sure, let private corporations control asteroids, artificial satellites and other space debris but keep space itself free for general use by all, or by some international body.
Of course, it didn't happen. It turns out that just hoisting enough life-support for a person for a few days into orbit costs more than most people earn in their lifetimes. The benefits of going to the moon, building the space station, and other manned ventures have turned out to be in two areas:
* Spinoff technologies
* Psychological side-effects
That is, none of the actual benefits of space travel have come from the space part, more from the preparation and the coolness factor. The real practical advantages have all come from unmanned craft, mostly communication satellites.
So, why don't we get more excited and/or spend more money on terrestrial exploration? There is better mapping of Venus than there is of the ocean floor these days.
I'm not trying to denigrate anybody's dreams or anything, and I recognize the value of science for its own sake, but maybe blowing another $100 billion on a one-time put-a-guy-on-Mars mission isn't really a good idea. Let's try to find some more practical way to spend our budget surplus (*cough*). How about curing diseases, for example? Bill Gates has personally increased the funding for research in diseases like malaria by a significant factor; why can't our government fund this kind of stuff more?
Pardon my grumblings....I'm just disillusioned in my old age. (where's my space ship, dammit! :)
Have you read my blog lately?
"As if the airplane was immediately relevant to everyone the day after the wright brothers had a successfull flight?"
Uh, you may not have noticed, but it's now nearly fifty years since the space equivalent of the 'Wright Flyer', and space is still not relevant to ordinary people. Fifty years in aviation took us from the Wright Flyer to the first jet airliners... fifty years in space has taken us from expensive, cramped capsules to really, really expensive, slightly less cramped space shuttles.
Going to Mars is important. It is, if nothing else, a proof of concept - going to Mars is orders of magnitude more difficult than going to the Moon. It requires better propulsion, better equipment, more efficiency and the planning and execution to see a group of people through a multi-year mission to another planet and back. If we can go to Mars, we can (with minimal additional scaling effects) go anywhere in the Solar System. This (other than scientific research) is the purpose of going to Mars, no more and no less.
"What's so great about that?" you might ask. If you want it in one word, that word is "Mining". Consider: in a nickel-iron asteroid, there is an amount of metal roughly equivalent to the metal mined in the course of human history. Not to mention rare heavy metals - Iridium, Osmium, Platinum - things that are scarce on earth but relatively more abundant in asteroids. A mining operation of that scale is more than lucrative - it also presents a way to attain necessary raw materials without tearing open the surface of our own planet.
But, yeah, mostly, it's the money. Money is the key - and I don't mean "having enough money to do these things". What I mean is opportunities for profit in space. Space travel currently costs a lot - I maintain that this is due to lack of expertise. If there is a sufficient profit motive in space, companies will find ways to do things cheaper and faster and, arguably, better (not being a terrible believer in an unregulated market, this last point is debatable). Prove that we can go get to the money, and people will go get it.
Which brings me to my last point - spending philosophy. A lot of people decry spending on the space program, arguing that the greatest benefits have come from near-Earth satellites and such; and besides, they say, aren't there better things to spend the money on? This is true, in a sense. But, I, for one, would rather spend another billion dollars on the space program, on research and development, than on a new B2 bomber that doesn't work the way it should and whose role as a long-range strategic bomber was obviated by the end of the Cold War. Finding a more worthy cause - education, health care, welfare - does not eliminate the need to spend on less worthy causes. The point is, we don't know yet what we might find worthy in space. It is a money sink until we find that. I think it is worth examining - with plans like reuseable launch vehicles and space elevators and Lagrange-point stations, we have a number of ways to lower the financial barriers to space.
I am not generally one to talk so, but I think we have a responsibility to future generations and to our own sense of intellectual completeness to reach into space. The cost will be mitigated over time. The benefits could be grand. The investment will surely be prohibitive. The continued and future examination and implementation of space travel depend on a long-term view of the investment, a willingness to look for opportunities, and a certain modicum of childlike wonder and hope. Space is great. It's just hard to get to right now.
Vincent Galliard, Precinct 9 -- "Minding the gap since 1996"
"Stimulate economic development" is a code word for "spend money in my Congressional district". And "Federally Funded Research and Development Centers" aren't organizations tightly focused on single goals.
That "executive summary" addresses all the wrong stuff. It doesn't mention cost, schedule, or basic approach. It's all about organizational structure. That's not how Apollo was done.
It also says very little about NASA's thirty years of failures to build a new launch vehicle. Those bozos can't even replace the existing Shuttle. Not for lack of money, either. In the past 30 years, NASA has spent more money than it did from 1960 to 1974, with far less to show for it. Keeping all those "centers" going costs billions.
DARPA, by comparison, is tiny. DARPA itself is a few hundred people. They buy and evaluate; they do nothing in house. There are no "DARPA centers" chewing up billions in overhead.
NASA works primarily because it is government. Yes, it always has the chance to be swayed from one political side to the other (slightly). NASA, though is also one of the few (only?) institutions of the government that has actually returned more money to the economy than it has taken. The thought of slice and dice on NASA is chilling. NASA provides (or provided) a strong platform for bringing initial research from the point of being non-viable in a business sense to a viable and even necessary understanding for businesses.
Take a look at most business today, especially corporations. How far down the road are the looking for a return on investment before they are willing to spend their capital on anything? Not even 4 years in most cases. There are a few exceptions, but normally limited to the pharmaceutical companies. Even most investment funds are geared to a year by year investment strategy, and they have one of the longest look ahead time frames for any product on the market.
I see the same private interests peeking up here as I see in almost all other privatization, schools, parks, roads, etc. The failure of this view is to recognize that by their very nature, all businesses must make a profit, and that means to the exclusion of all things perceived profitless (or not profitable enough). Our space program would have never happened if that had been the view (profit), and more than likely many things from tennis shoes to microwave ovens would either not exist yet or never exist. (Yeah, I know theoretically, all things in time will exist, but realistically, from a profit motive standpoint, most things will not exist, as the profit motive is not strong enough and even a societies available consumption is finite in nature. Basic supply and demand says no (or not enough) demand, no need for a supply.)
One of the problems with advanced cutting edge/bleeding edge research (like the moon missions) is that you have to throw tons of money away to get the advances. But as has been shown time and again (moon shots, Internet, Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, ), the benefits can be unmistakably life altering. This is something that most businesses are not good at, and in the hands of businesses would slow to a trickle.
IMO, NASA should be returned to its prior years of glory. I say glory because as a nation we glorified it. We stood as a people behind its mission. The bully pulpet of the president was strongly behind it. It was advertised and promoted. If anything should be outsourced, perhaps that would be the best start. We do so well promoting our drug using abusive sports heroes, but we fail to promote that which is essentially most valuable to us as a society, even as a race.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.