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O'Keefe to Resign as NASA Administrator
lommer writes "The Globe and Mail is carrying a story that NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe may be set to resign as early as Monday to begin a position as chancellor of Louisiana State University. On the one hand this could mean the indroduction of an administrator with an engineering background (O'Keefe is an MPA), on the other hand can we really expect NASA to effect serious changes and find a focused direction with leadership changes every 4 years?"
An anonymous reader adds a link to this Florida Today article (also carried by Space.com) which says that "the retired director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency tops a list of five men that President Bush is considering to take over the space agency."
Lets see what happened on his watch - Hubbel was left to fend for itself, more money was poured into the money pit of ISS, and the X Prize totally stole the show.
NASA - get a mission people care about that can be realistically funded, or sign over the next twenty years to Burt Rhutan and company.
[...], on the other hand can we really expect NASA to effect serious changes and find a focused direction with leadership changes every 4 years?
Funny you should mention that. Isn't that the period of time most statesmen around the world is elected for?
Look a monkey!
NASA is a bunch of chairwarming hacks who want to sit around collecting government paychecks until they're able to retire and sit around collecting government pensions. There are exceptions such as the scientific part of NASA that directs unmanned missions but since so much of NASA's funding is commited to the Shuttle and ISS the agency is effectively paralyzed and sclerotic. The fact that no one lost their job over the Columbia disaster is prime evidence that the agency is terminally fucked.
In order to be effective a new administrator would have to make drastic changes, such as immediately cancelling the shuttle program and ISS and closing down some of NASA's research centers and redirecting the money thus freed up into innovative research programs to lower the cost of access to orbit. Unfortunately this isn't going to happen as it would piss off too many congresscritters and the aerospace contractors who fund them.
So, unless the new director has cojones grande a real mandate for real change from Congress and the Administration and carte blanche in managing operations this change is going to be about as significant as spray painting a turd.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Changes in leadership don't really make much difference.
Interal reform as such does not occur.
Reform only occurs in the face of an externally imposed crisis.
NASA will be NASA - big, publically funded, inefficient, conventional and hugely discouraging private space travel - until the day it, in one form or another, dies.
--
Toby
[o]_O
Privatize. *cough* Give incentives out instead of doing it in-house. *ahem* Replace NASA slowly...
A-Day
Great, I love your ignorance. "Condi Rice for Sec. State, a woman who as National Security Advisor somehow managed to miss all the reports and test runs that proposed air-based attacks on the WTC and claimed that a presidential intelligence bulletin issued one month before Sept. 11 warning of al Qaeda's efforts to attack within the US was "nothing major" That PDB did not point directly to New York or any specific place, and naturally people continued gathering intelligence even if she didn't order it. So technically it was nothing major because we had no idea it would happen exactly when and where, though we knew if anything would happen it would be bin Laden.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
So technically it was nothing major because we had no idea it would happen exactly when and where, though we knew if anything would happen it would be bin Laden.
Over the nine months leading up to 9/11, the Bush administration did literally nothing to respond to the many internal and external warnings it received concerning terrorist threats and cancelled the programs the Clinton administration had in place to target Al Qaeda.
Do you really think there was nothing a national security advisor could have done to improve our national security during that time?
Meanwhile, if you haven't forgotten, New York was not the only target of the September 11 attacks. There were four planes involved. Two went to New York. The others went elsewhere.
I would like to be excited and think that things will change in NASA, but I can't help but be a little more the skeptical. NASA is utterly obsessed with safety and conservatism. What they don't seem to realize that there are plenty of people more then happy to throw safety to the wind and risk their life, and that obsessive conservative (not conservative in the political sense) policies lead to people getting bored and not bothering to shill out money. X-Prize like adventures is what leads to breakthroughs and advancement. Just imagine the sort of things that would have been accomplished if one of the X-Prize teams had been handed a billion dollars. It would be a lot more interesting then a handful of grounded behemoths and a massive bureaucracy shaking at the knees at the prospect that someone might have to risk their life to move forward.
I hope something changes, but I have a feeling that Russian saying is more likely to offer a better explanation of what is to come:
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
"effect" is correct in the sense used.
sPh
From all reports, O'Keefe was a MAJOR backer of Nuclear Space Initiatives. I only hope that continues under a successor, because I hate to break it to you people, but nuclear- either nuclear-thermal or nuclear/RTG powered ion- is the best solution for in-space propulsion.
"In my opinion, if you're going to put someone in the seniormost position of ANYthing, make sure he or she is actually interested in the subject and is that thing's greatest proponent."
Administrator Goldin was the exact opposite of O'Keefe. When people would disuss matters with him he would never take advice because he thought he was the smartest man in the room (and most of the time was right). But because one man cannot know everything he made many horrible mistakes. O'Keefe had to take advice from the people who knew the systems the best. He has made very few major mistakes (because when you listen to your people who know their systems the best, you add their intelligence to yours). The only mistake that most people fault him with is not sending men to the Hubble because he cares about their safety. We can fault Goldin with forcing the horrible faster, cheaper, better philosophy that burned up $500 million of spacecraft and put Mars research back 5 years.
O'Keefe was brilliant at playing the money and getting people to work together even if he didn't have a clue on what they were doing. This is exactly what you need in a NASA Administrator. His reorganization of NASA following Columbia shows his outstanding leadership. Bring on the next beancounter.
What did O'Keefe accompilish?
:)
1. Adressed cost over runs on the space station. Cancelled crew escape ship and I think multipuspose modules if I recall. Anyhow, there were 5B in cost over runs.
2. Gave NASA a unifying mission. I think the proposal for a "systems of systems" open architecture to get to the moon and mars is a great idea. Its about time nasa had a more agressive mission. Use robots and people to accomplish the mission.
3. Cracked heads on nasa safety. Though, I think the public needs some education that space flight will never be as safe as a armored school bus.
4. Told the robotics people to go fix hubble. Oops, we need astronauts after all. But we all still like robots.
5. Got nasa's budget increased when most federal programs were cut.
I think the next administrator should have more technical expertise because the decisions in the near future will require that knowledge. Where as, O'Keefe had to deal with 5B cost overrun cluster.
The next administrator should build on the current vision so *something* gets accomplished. Most of all, scientists and engineers can be a herd of cats. So, break out the bull whip when needed.
Economies of scale.
:) Maybe it shouldn't be government run, but one key player is going to dominate this industry for a long time to come. If I could buy stock in NASA I would.
Actually, the space industry is subject so considerable economies of scale. Burt Rutan spent ~$20 million in R&D for SpaceShipOne. If you think of his product as "rides into outer space", it certainly ain't gonna cost him another 20 mil. produce another. That was the whole point of the X-Prize: build something reusable that was cheap to fly. Hence, the average price of rides declines with every new one that gets completed: textbook definition of increasing returns to scale.
I guess you could argue that NASA, because of its porky nature and idiot bureaucracy, realizes a lot less returns to scale than it should. But the fact remains that the (hundreds of) billions they've spent in R&D over the past four decades has made it much cheaper for them to do the things they do. Everybody loves to bag on NASA, fine, but don't forget they are freaking parsecs ahead of the nearest US competitor. Literally--they're the only ones to send stuff outside the solar system, visit other planets, hell, even putting someone is orbit is their sole domain and will be for a long time to come. No way in hell a private firm could accomplish even one of those on their own? Why: initial costs several orders of magnitude higher than any quantity of funding they could rustle up.
It can be shown mathematically that a single, monopolistic producer actually generates higher surplus than would a competitive market with increasing to scale. Thus the term "natural monopoly". Think pharmaceuticals, microprocessors, cars--anything that takes of a lot or R&D--or infrastructure, in the case of phone/electrical/sewage/cable TV services--will tend towards monopolization. Space exploration, I'm sorry to admit, fits right with those, which is why this (pardon the pun) nebulous idea many have of a vibrant, competitive market for space travel has always seemed like a quixotic load of economic bollux to me
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
I'm guessing that a spacecraft is much like a nuclear reactor in the sense that QA is a very significant part of the costs. Its nice to assemble parts, but once thats done you have to prove that they will work. Do you X-ray the welds, temperature cycle them, etc? This has to be done with every piece. So while the design costs are already paid, QA must be done with every piece, meaning that building 10 space shuttles will very nearly cost 10 times as much as just one. Building 100 might cost only 90 times as much as one.
Not to argue with most of what you have to say but NASA is not the only organization with the ability to put people into Orbit. Especially ironic considering that the only way currently people are regularly getting to orbit is the Russian Soyuz platform. China also recently joined this rather elete brotherhood.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
Apparently, you have never heard of FAR. No not the Federal Aviation Regulations, the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These regs set up how the government buys things. From multimillion dollar jets to paperclips, if you work for the government you got to follow those rules. And if it ain't in the regs, you can't do it unless you get a waiver. Who decides who gets a waiver depends upon how much money gets spent. The more money is spent, the higher up the food chain you got to go to get the waiver. And in regards to money, Congress, not the President, is king. So the prizes NASA would like to offer are probably in the area where Congress likes to play and NASA, nor President Bush can change that. So if you really want NASA to be able to award these prizes, convince your congressman.
First off, the requisite Why SpaceShipOne Never Did, Never Will, And None Of Its Direct Descendants Ever Will, Orbit The Earth
Now, to address some specific points.
1) "For 1% of the cost of one shuttle flight": They carried 1/80th of the payload to 1/6th of the delta-V of a minimal orbit and plan to sell this for 1/500th of the cost. Lets just be nice and pretend that costs will scale up at merely an O(N^2) rate (in reality, scaling up an SS1-style design to orbit is all but impossible); that's almost 6 times worse a deal.
Don't like the assumptions about the scale-up rate? Then discuss a *Real Spacecraft*.
2) "I'd wager that for $100 million you could send three people to orbit.": The shuttle's cargo mass is about the same as 240 people plus their share of life support (assuming ~100kg). At this rate, if the shuttle were a passenger liner, it would carry them at a rate of 3.75 million dollars for 3 people, not 100 million.
3) "Apollo only cost us $50 billion": In 1968 dollars, 24 billion dollars. In modern dollars, that's 130 billion dollars. That's about NASA's entire budget for the last 8 years. Unfortunately for us now compared to the past, back in the 60s, we actually cared about spaceflight, and budgetted accordingly.
4) "So is space expensive because it's hard": Go try to strap yourself to a virtual bomb made out of the lighest materials you can get your hand on, and start igniting the bomb's chemicals, have them burn hotter than the boiling point of iron, push your flimsy craft upwards at several Gs, with a vibrational load that will rip most materials to shreds. Rocketry is bloody hard - it's amazing that we're able to get off this huge atmosphere-covered gravity well at all, and those who actually pulled it off - not posers who ride up to a vaccuum in an airborn rocket sled without dealing with the technical problems of *real spaceflight* - deserve all the credit we can give them (not just NASA, but ESA, China, Russia, Japan, India, Brazil, etc).
This wizard will complete the installation of: AQP AA002! P O a @ P @1 Ae IoD'i
"his commitment to the CRV"
I'm guessing you mean CEV. The CRV (Crew Return Vehicle) was insane and was cancelled. They were going to spend millions and millions to build a new mini Shuttle whose sole reason to exist was to sit on the ISS and serve as a lifeboat in the event of an emergency. Only thing it did was make it possible to get the ISS manning up to 6-7 people so they could actually do research instead of just maintain the bloody mess. Could have been done way cheaper with an extra docking port and a second Soyuz capsule. It was just another sign of the sickness that is NASA's manned space program.
As for the CEV(Crew Exploration Vehicle) it is a better idea than CRV but I am willing to predict Boeing or Lockheed will win the contract, they will spend billions and billions of dollars, on one design after another(like ISS and space planes), the schedule will drag on for ever and the program will be cancelled around the time they have to start bending metal or launch something. The proposed schedule is already ridiculously long. They are just building a glorified new capsule like America and Russia have been building for decades and it will take longer and cost more money than Apollo did before its done.
Again, please, please, just let Burt Rutan build it. He is competing for it through T/Space but its a given a giant consortium lead by either Boeing or Lockheed will get the contract and they will just transfer huge sums from tax payer pockets to their bottomlines and not build anything worth a damn.
@de_machina
Maybe the new director won't have his head up his rectum and will see the sense in saving the Hubble telescope. The robotic mission isn't a sure thing and would only extend Hubble's life by a few years if it worked since it would render future servicing impossible. The risk to the astronauts in servicing Hubble isn't much greater than in going to the ISS, and even the ISS isn't safe (what with air leaks and roaches eating all the food!). Face it space ISN'T 100% safe and the astronauts know the risks and accept them (much the same as fighter pilots, ground force troops, policemen, mine workers, etc). SAVE HUBBLE!