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NASA Admin Says Shuttle and ISS are Mistakes
Teancum writes "NASA Administrator Michael Griffin was recently interviewed by the USA Today Editorial Board regarding the current direction of the U.S. Space Program, and in the interview he suggested that the past three decades have been a huge mistake and a waste of resources. As a total cost for both programs that has exceeded $250 Billion, you have to wonder what other useful things could have been developed using the same resources. Griffin quoted in the interview regarding if the shuttle had been a mistake "My opinion is that it was... It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible." Regarding the ISS: "Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in.""
I'm sure I've heard that the ISS was supposed to have a more equatorial orbit, but when Russia came on board the orbit was tilted to give them easier access to it.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
no, it doesn't. In fact, it is more than just misleading; it's very wrong. Mr Griffin did state that ISS was in fact important, he just said, like you pointed out, that he thinks the orbit is wrong.
As Richard Feynman's brilliant analysis from 1986 clearly states, the shuttle's main engines were NOT designed properly and are doomed to be both expensive to maintain and markedly dangerous to use.
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A link to his comments is at http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.h
He has a wonderful explanation, in terms that non-engineers as well as engineers can understand, about how to build complex devices. Good engineering, he says, comes from dividing the task in to component parts, creating specifications for those parts, building samples, testing them to their limits, retesting them to various other limits, until you have a complete understanding of all the failure modes of that component, as well as the reliability of your manufacturing process for that component. Then, you assemble multiple components together and test that assembly together in all the modes you can conjure up, to create what I have always heard termed, "A Well-characterized System".
As he points out, the space shuttle main engines (SSME's), though complex and "groundbreaking" in the sense that they were very big and incorporating some (at the time) quite advanced technologies, they were NOT WELL CHARACTERIZED on a component basis. To my knowledge (although I'm not a NASA watcher with as much fervor as some) I don't believe the SSMEs have EVER BEEN analyzed and re-engineered to create characterizations of their failure points, reliability, etc.
The fact that NASA's next plan is to use them in the follow-on vehicles for heavy lift only testifies to NASA's complete lack of focus here. They should put out several contracts for heavy lift engines with well-characterized failure modes, with focuses on reusability, reliability, maintenance cost, and overall operating cost.
We're soon going to be stuck with the next-gen heavy lift using components of unknown reliability, which forces us to replace component parts ("tune-up" or "overhaul") the system too often and with too large an expense.
Feynman was right. Solve the root cause. Engineer these things with good methodologies. And don't tie us down to next-gen-of-schlock-engineering if we don't have to be. I congratulate the able engineers who worked on the SSME's, but I respect Feynman's analysis that correct procedures benefit lowering long-term costs and ensure safety of the admirable crews who pilot our national spacecraft.
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You are a liar and a loser. You criticize Griffin without any grasp of the facts, and in doing so lie and distort his significant record. Griffin was distinguished head of the Space Department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Before that he worked at NASA and previously did important work for SDI which led the development of the Delta anti-missle system. When he was appointed to head NASA he had just been elected to be president of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a group of scholarly aeronautics engineers. He is also shockingly well educated: BS Engineering from University of Maryland College Park Masters in Aerospace Engineering from Catholic University Masters in Electrical Engineering from University of Southern California Masters in Applied Physics from Johns Hopkins Masters in Civil Engineering from George Washington University MBA from Loyola College, MD BS Physics Johns Hopkins He was working on his BS in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins when he left for NASA. He plans to return at then of his term. He co-wrote what many believe to be the definitive textbook on space vehicle design used in virtually every graduate aeronautical program. In general, you are an asshole. Griffin is not a hack. He is a shockingly well qualified man. His views expressed here are refined, excellently thought out, and very reasonable. Disagree? Fine. Say why and be prepared to be ripped apart. Assholes like you are the reason qualified people avoid politics and positions of responsbility. You labeled him a hack without even knowing anything about his impressive qualifications.
The Russians put the first parts of the ISS in orbit, and did it in an orbit that is easier for them than for the Americans. The large angle with the equator reduces the amount of payload the shuttle can bring to the ISS.
There is no "dark side" of the Moon. There's a *far* side that we don't see from Earth, but it gets about as much sunlight as the Earth-facing side.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
All the research that has been done there?
As one commentator put it recently, "the only research that has been carried out at the ISS is of the caliber of a high school science fair."
If you can name any hard hitting science that has been done at the ISS (aside from humans-in-space-duration sort of research), I'd be interested to hear it. I'm an astronomer, and I haven't heard of a single thing useful having been produced by the ISS.
We seem to have fallen into the faulty logic that, "we've invested so much that we shouldn't bail out and waste what we've put in to it so far." If it's a waste, it's a waste -- and continuing it is just throwing good money after bad. This seems to be a common thread these days....
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shuttle.htm
As far back as 1970 cost was an issue
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Sigs are like arse-holes, everybody has one
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/
I mean, he states the shuttle was "deeply flawed". What would he have built? Kept shooting Apollo capsules up forever more? Built an Apollo 2? And if the ISS isn't in a good orbit, what orbit would he prefer? And additionally, how were we supposed to know the Shuttle wasn't a solid idea, until we had actually built a few and tested them operationally?
After nearly 35 years imagine how the original Apollo design might have evolved? We might be on the 10th iteration! The ISS orbits sucks because it is highly inclined and low altitude. Highly inclined orbits are less accessable from low latitude launch sites (thanks Russia). Throw in the new lighting requirements for the Space Shuttle and you have absurdly few launch opportunities from the Cape. The low altitude of the station results in the need for frequent reboost due to atmospheric drag. It is also of marginal use in earth remote sensing because there is no global coverage.
I do agree that a shuttle-like vehicle has great R&D value. Perhaps a smaller reusable vehicle could have been built that integrated smoothly with Apollo launch capabilities.
It seems to me he's just trying to ride the wave of popular opinion that says the shuttle must go and the ISS isn't interesting.
Better that than ride the wave of mindless groupthink that left the US without a space architecture. Now that there is a negative (and richly deserved) feeding frenzy against shuttle/ISS lets make sure we kill the beast!
an ill wind that blows no good
Oh, is that what we were supposed to have spent it on? When do we get it?
Impatience is the hallmark of your generation, it seems. Go look up The Marshall Plan for post-WWII Europe. You'll see that over $100 billion was spent in 4 years in inflation-adjusted dollars, but that is merely financial aid. Military costs of occupation were significantly higher than that. Similar costs were borne to help rebuild Japan as well. Both plans took over a decade to even be considered reasonably complete.
War is not like some 30-minute TV sitcom. Things are not wrapped up neatly by the last commercial break. These things take time, and you should give us (I'm a Marine who's done a tour in Iraq) time to do our jobs. The more you carp and moan about how long things are taking, the more incentive you give insurgents to keep making bombs. After all, they know they can't defeat us militarily, so their only recourse is to try and get Americans at home to declare this war a "quagmire" and demand the troops come home. If they succeed at that, they will have won not because they defeated us but because we defeated ourselves. Attitudes like yours, whether you intend it or not, are helping the enemy.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This is complete fud. There is lots of interesting research that has/is going on in the ISS. Any attempt to say otherwise is just ignorant.
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- APS.html (Antibiotic Production). html (Radiation Damage). html (Protein Crystal Growth). html (Viscous Liquid Foam/ Metallic Glass)
For some quick ideas see: http://www.spaceislandgroup.com/manufacturing.htm
or for a more detailed list of publicized experiments try: http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/list
Some of interest I've found:
http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/CGBA
http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/BBND
http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/APCF
http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/Foam
--DarkFrog
If the dead rise again, we're going to have some serious population control issues.
100 KHz? Really? I don't know much about power distribution, but wouldn't AC at that frequency cause all sorts of interference? And wouldn't you have to stick transformers everywhere to actually use it?
A bit of googling says yeah, people really do 100 khz power supplies, and higher. But I don't understand the advantage.
I think that would be Napolean rather than Julius Caesar... but yes still thanks to the (French) military.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Iraq never attacked the United States
Technically, by attempting to assisinate former President Bush (Senior), Iraq did attack the US government. (But at least they had the balls to attack legitimate targets, not civilians)
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Sorry, but generating artificial gravity isn't as simple as just making the space station spin (even if movies suggest that). First, getting even a fraction of a g would either require relatively huge angular velocities OR a really BIG space station. Then, by spinning things around, you don't just get the illusion of gravity (by centrifugal force), but also a lot of weird side effects (coriolis force) that a ME can probably explain better.
Also, the rotation creates quite a lot of strain on the structure of the space station.
I was fucking serious. I know a professor who works in quantum optics. He told that this field of physics got a lot of funding in Reagan's times, because of the SDI.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
The discovery of Fullerenes and carbon nanotubes arose from studies of the dust surrounding a particular Asymptotic Giant Banch Star (IRC+10216). That was pretty useful.
The Earth's deviation from a sphere is enough to make a noticeable difference in the ground track of a satellite or spacecraft in all but the very briefest of missions, see here.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
Exactly. Which was and still is a completely valid reason for invading since Iraq was attempting to purchase materials for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. And they already had quite a bit. They just didn't have massive stockpiles of ICBMs that the Left suddenly thinks we went there to get.