Stern Measures Keep NASA's Kepler Mission on Track

Hugh Pickens writes "NASA's new Space Science Division Director, Dr. S. Alan Stern, appears to be making headway in keeping in space projects like the Kepler Mission at their original budgeted costs. The New York Times reports that Stern's plan is to hold projects responsible for overruns, forcing mission leaders to trim parts of their projects, streamline procedures or find other sources of financing. 'The mission that makes the mess is responsible for cleaning it up,' Stern says. Because of management problems, technical issues and other difficulties on the Kepler Mission, the price tag for Kepler went up 20% to $550 million and the launch slipped from the original 2006 target date to 2008. When the Kepler team asked for another $42 million, Stern's team threatened to open the project to new bids so other researchers could take it over using the equipment that had already been built."

Comments

They need some corporate sponsorship

[spun]

Put some big old advertising on it, call it Verizon Awesome Space Planet Finder. Offer to let sponsoring corporations name the first earth-like planet found. You'd have funding coming out your black hole, I tell ya'.

Please, for the love of science, don't anyone take this seriously, m'kay?

No news here.

[DerekLyons]

Nothing to see here, move along please...
 
Nobody should be surprised at this 'news', the unmanned/science side of NASA is just as bad at estimating costs and meeting schedules as the manned side. Every couple of years a new broom comes in and makes a big show of trying to change things... but things never really change.
 
Keep this in mind when they start whining about how the Shuttle is eating up all their budget.

Re:No news here.

[Zadaz]

To the contrary, they know exactly how to bid on a government contract: You bid low so you can get any funding at all. Then you keep your head down so no one will notice your cost overruns.

But I still feel that belt tightening is overdue at NASA. No way we're getting back to the moon, much less mars without more clever thinking applied to off-the-shelf components. The most successful of recent NASA projects have been the most thoughtful and focused, not the highest spenders.

Re:No news here.

[DerekLyons]

When the components NASA needs are available off-the-shelf, that will be an excellent approach.

Preflight testing was scaled back

[The Media Mechanic]

"Among other measures, the duration of the four-year mission was cut by six months and preflight testing was scaled back." Way to go guys ! You saved $42 million but increased the chance of the entire $500 million project failing due to not enough preflight tests! Good choice there ! Nice one !

lowest bidder mentality

[timmarhy]

This is what happens when you try use the lowest bidder method of picking contractors.

They are forced to bid low and over charge later, if they don't some other company will do it and they will lose out.

Re:lowest bidder mentality

[evanbd]

Historically, some of the stuff NASA was trying to get bids on was so far outside the realm of expertise of any possible bidder that no one would have been willing to just eat the cost overruns. So cost-plus contracts were awarded. It's become ingrained, and contractors have realized that they can simply threaten to not deliver if cost overruns won't be payed for.

There are some small aerospace companies that place fixed-price bids on NASA contracts, but none of the major ones do. Many of these companies are of the opinion that taking cost-plus work is severely damaging to the company mindset and correspondingly to its ability to function.

In general, I think fixed-price contracts would be a good idea. If you're worried about paying for a large project along the way, write the contract with intermediate deliverables, like test results from subsystems or prototype versions.

Re:Corporate Sponsorship rant

[Toonol]

Well, it may have been idiots that bought the space, but whoever sold it is a genius...

Re:Staying within budget?

[ScrewMaster]

Well, keep in mind that a there is a difference between a commercial part and a part certified to mil spec, and military grade parts often cost a lot more. But yeah, there's a lot of profiteering going on amongst military suppliers, has been for decades. There are various C.O.T.S. (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) programs in our militaries. Their purpose is to seek out non-mil-spec commercially available hardware that can either be used in a military application as-is, or can be brought up to spec relatively cheaply.

Re:Staying within budget?

[Carnildo]

Didn't they spend some ridiculous sum (> $100) on a nut and bolt once?

For most applications, parts can be qualified for use in batches: take a few parts from the batch, test them to destruction, and if they meet spec, the whole batch is qualified. When I worked in a mechanical testing lab, strength-testing a bolt to destruction would cost (equipment + labor + overhead) $1.50. At the typical ratio of one part tested out of every ten thousand, that's a tiny fraction of a penny per bolt.

Military hardware requirements generally state that each individual part meet spec. This requires non-destructive testing. The company I worked for never did non-destructive testing, but the one time we were asked for a quote, it was $30 per part. If that's typical for the industry, it's obvious why the military was spending $100 per bolt.

Stern

[Shooter6947]

Alan Stern is the precise antithesis of a clueless project manager. He is, in fact, a planetary scientist who continues to actively contribute to the scientific community. He took this job because HIS mission to Pluto, New Horizons, on which he is the principal investigator, did end up on budget and on time, and he thinks that the total amount of science would be maximized if others did the same. He's right. On the astrophysics side there isn't money left for hardly any science at all these days, what with the Hubble-successor James Webb Space Telescope hoovering up any dollar not glued down. What Alan Stern is doing makes sense from the standpoint of maximizing the science return from a fixed yearly budget.

Re:Staying within budget?

[ScrewMaster]

For most applications, parts can be qualified for use in batches

Statistical Process Control, yes. You'll still do both destructive and non-destructive testing especially for a military application, but yeah, hundred percent testing is expensive as hell. I did a number of SPC data acquisition systems for fastener manufacturers (self-tapping screws, mostly) and they would typically test 20 parts from a barrel of screws. That was sufficient for commercial use but would hardly be acceptable in a military program. And load-testing a bolt? There you'll have to use a high-powered tension machine (Tinius-Olsen or something on that order, if it's a large part) and those things aren't exactly fast.

There are many other failure modes that a threaded fastener can suffer as well, and depending upon the specifics you might have to test for those as well. That's not including performance testing and design verification either.