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Setbacks Cast Doubt On NASA's Ares Project
stoolpigeon writes with this excerpt from an Orlando Sentinel article about the Ares program, which paints a bleak picture of the program's future: "Bit by bit, the new rocket ship that is supposed to blast America into the second Space Age and return astronauts to the moon appears to be coming undone. First was the discovery that it lacked sufficient power to lift astronauts in a state-of-the-art capsule into orbit. Then engineers found out that it might vibrate like a giant tuning fork, shaking its crew to death. Now, in the latest setback to the Ares I, computer models show the ship could crash into its launch tower during liftoff. "
There are going to be setbacks. Mistakes will be made. For the most part these rocket surgeons do the job, on time.
Personally, I'd like to see them re-engineer the Saturn V. Didn't it run linux?
how come the old technology didn't and the new can't? i wonder whether the conspiracy theory is true....
Experts say its problems stem from changes to the original design. These modifications, such as changing the engines and making the solid rocket boosters longer, created unexpected problems, including excessive shaking and the launch drift.
Changing design too late in the game, not enough time to review what consequences those changes might create? Too many requirements squeezed into too tight a schedule?
Hmm, sounds familiar to us who are doing large software projects.
Chair vibrating too much? simple.. just look at your compass floating away, undo your straps and let your chair crunch into the ceiling while you float for the rest of the trip.
S.R. Hadden: First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?
"Persistance is Fertile" - Me. I can quote myself if I want to.
Looking around and seeing the tons of greedy and incompetent managers I have no doubt that Dilber law (it states that incompetent people will get promoted to managment) has taken over the old rule that managers where people that may have been lacking "social" skills but at least they knew what they where doing.
I have no problem to believe that suggestions and faults report of engineers where just ignored by some manager that decided that by doing so he will be in charge to build two projects (the faulty one and the possibly working one)
I suggest that we go back to the old school, managers must be taken from successful engineers that have worked on the field ! They may lack some "social" skill but at least they know what they are doing
Man-rate a Delta vehicle and use that to lift our astronauts, and we need to purchase Soyuz spacecraft from Russia. Luckily, Congress has recently authorized the latter.
We also need to do something like what Von Braun did - inflate the specs by 20% and build the rocket for that target instead of what the payload engineers say they need. The payload is going to weigh a lot more than what they think, even if they don't know it yet.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Common guys, this isn't rocket science!
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Please, this is not a troll.
So what are the alternatives? I understand that not only is the shuttle getting very old (and presumably less safe with already a 1:100 chance of failure per launch) but is extremely expensive in terms of dollars/lb. to orbit.
Are there any reasonable alternatives that are available in say, 5 years? Such as using a man-rated Delta (very reliable commercial launcher) for the relatively small Orion crew capsule and perhaps some sort of Shuttle tank + Shuttle engines + 2 current boosters as a heavy lift vehicle? Or will the U.S. be without manned space flight capabilities in a few years (ceding it to the Russians and Chinese!).
Any NASA/ex-NASA/space experts out there? (By the way, really disappointed that the SSTO efforts like the Delta Clipper and X-34(?) didn't work out. Also, no, the Japanese space elevator will not be available for at least 20 years and probably not within our lifetimes).
An even more bleak picture comes from this blog/editorial:
http://rocketsandsuch.blogspot.com/2008/10/getting-specific.html
It seems as though NASA hasn't learned about what went wrong with the development of the Space Shuttle and are bound and determined to repeat those mistakes of the past and make new ones on top of that. This is a rocket being designed by committee, with some of the top management folks who don't want to compromise on the basic premise: to "reuse" as many of the Shuttle parts as possible.
I hate to break the word to anybody still ignorant on this, but so little is being re-used from the Shuttle design that they might as well have gone back to the Saturn V design instead, or even made something completely from a blank piece of paper and rebuilt the supply chains from scratch.
There are also so many engineers who are working for NASA that are complaining about this design that at the very least somebody in political leadership (aka congressmen & senators) ought to be starting to listen to the grumblings going on here. The lines of communication between Griffin and the engineers doing the actual number crunching and the basic design of this vehicle are completely broken.
Of course, NASA has a wonderful reputation for listenting to its engineers that you can put full confidence in the NASA administration being able to listen to what needs to be fixed.
This is the generation that the 60s idiots raised. I hope you are happy, flower children. You raised the first generation of the downfall of the United States. I only wish there was a hell for you to burn in.
As the Chinese already have a working man-rated launch vehicle, I suspect that the US will have to make the Areas work no matter what, or else you'll be seeing the Chinese on the moon first (and at this rate even the Russians and the Europeans too, since the Europeans are currently looking at man-rating the Ariane and launching astronauts with a modified ATV).
There, my contribution to the Slashdot US vs. the rest of the world slanging match.
... that engineers at NASA have formed a group to develop an alternative to "Ares", because of the perception that it was too little for too much effort. And the fact that NASA has so far rejected their plan without having looked at it seriously.
I have been saying this for years now: NASA has been dropping the ball when it comes to man in space. It has been doing great with robotics, but otherwise has been dropping the ball.
You want to see another man on the moon from the United States? Make it a $10 Billion dollar prize. NASA blows that (or pretty close) on a single Shuttle launch. I bet private industry would do it in under 10 years.
NASA has been losing it, big time. Can they make a comeback? I would be the happiest person if they did. But I have my doubts.
Despite what people will say about the environmental side-effects, I still feel that Project Orion is the best possible way for us to get back to space fast, and actually travel useful distances with a live crew.
I remember, as a kid, being very excited about reports that the reusable 'Space Shuttle' was going to be like a 'space pickup truck' and reduce launch costs to $50/lb. It was still expensive, but I remember calculating the price for a kid my size. ($4500. Wow!) Then the cost went up to $100/lb. Not great, but still cheaper than what we had. Then $500/lb. Tolerable, I guess. Then they quit talking about it at all.
NASA has done a lot of amazing things in the last 30 years, no doubt. But their manned program is a complete fuck-story. Just once, I'd like to see senior NASA management acknowledge a problem in the manned program, own up to causing it, and taking the action necessary to fix it. I like it that they've split cargo and humans (after 30 years of agonizingly expensive lessons that have greatly diminished American space capability) and are going back to mostly disposable systems (again, after 30 years of expensive lessons). But, why--Oh, why!?--can't they get this right?
It looks like they're going to drive this thing into the ground, just like the shuttle. The public secret is that the NASA manned program shows all the signs of a dysfunctional organization, and has for 30 years. The next president, senate, and congress need to seriously look at scrapping NASA's manned program and building a new one from scratch, possibly outside of the auspices of NASA. For the good of the country and of humankind, I hope that they do.
Maybe they should just remake the gear from Apollo. We know it worked (cue the conspiracy theorists) and we could definitely do quite a lot of stuff with it, given advancements in technology in the past 40 years. Just compare the monstrosity that was the Apollo guidance computer (thousands of RTL NOR ICs, magnetic core memory) to something modern to do the same thing (Hell, my pocket calculator could likely provide much of the functionality if you rad-hardened it.) and you can save a ton (probably literally) of weight for other stuff.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
How have our standards of failure become so high that we freak out because there could be flaws in simulations? This is the POINT of these projects, to push ourselves forward
Nobody wants to have to scrap their work to fix a problem, but it's going to happen. If it's not, we're not pushing ourselves hard enough. Probes are going to crash, projects are going to overrun, people are going to make mistakes. If we keep at it, however, thats when we reap the rewards.
No doubt we need to eliminate needless risk and move what other risks we can away from the loss of life and property, but lets not confuse that with eliminating any risk at all. To remove all risk is to end all progress and change.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we had a series of really nice, multi-stage rockets... what, forty years ago? Just off the top of my head, we had... Vanguard, Atlas, Saturn, Delta, Titan.. And they all worked pretty well.
We seem to have made them in the "dark ages" of technology, too, relatively speaking.
What's the problem now? Are our engineers less smart? Do we have fewer materials? Are we under a budget that's too strict? There has to be something that's keeping us from being able to do this. I mean, we made a fricking space plane twenty years ago to build up public opinion and convince people that we were on the edge of the future -- now we can't go back and make a rocket?
I mean, at worst, what's keeping us from looking at, say, the Saturn design and updating it with modern technologies, materials, and safety measures?
I feel like I'm missing something here.
If what is stated in the summary is true, then I think I've simply have to give up any trust in the prowess of NASA.
What happened to this organisation that managed to put people on the moon, that managed to build a huge telescope in orbit around the earth, that even built a permanently manned space station? How is it possible they can't even design a rocket to take us to the moon?
It is for sure not an easy task - but with the immense expertise that should be present within NASA, and commercial rocket launches now being commonplace, I'd say even geostationary orbit is an off-the-shelf technology, and I don't believe the step from there to the moon is that big, technically speaking.
Not having enough power to lift off in the first place, come on! Someone didn't read the design specs, or were they not written down properly? It is really the most mundane if not stupid problem I can imagine when designing a moon rocket system.
The other two mentioned problems (liftoff drift and the shaking) seem to me more like scaling issues, that presumably can be solved. Nasty ones I bet when you find them out, but the fact that they are found on the drawing board already means they're known issues. Then why making so much fuss about it! I bet they have had to deal with many more design issues that they found out only when modeling their new upgraded rocket.
The Saturn 5 rocket design is design tested and known to work. It might be wise to update some of the hardware yes, however the configuration is known to be good. Should stick with known working designs. If it aint broke dont fix it
Why can't we just beam them into orbit? Seriously, do we not have working teleporters yet?
Why are they dicking around with rockets? What does rocket technology have to do with cloning?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
It might seem unrelated but this "management project" might be easier to experience for most of us. Lord of the Rings Online PvMP. Tactics.
Two sides, uneven numbers and uneven skills. Battles tend to be tank rusk vs tank rush, or zerg vs zerg. Hit the other with all you got and see if you can wipe them out. It is the nature of the game. In the battle area there are keeps to take. First thing a SMART leader who understands KISS does is ask himself. Do I really want to add complexity to the battle by giving myself TWO goals, fighting the enemy AND taking a keep at the same time? Note that taking a keep itself already has two tasks at least, killing NPC's and stopping others on your side "accidently" pulling every NPC in the area.
KISS means, Keep It Simple Stupid. The more complex you make a task, the more trouble you create for yourself. The human brains ain't all that good at dealing with a lot of tasks so it tends to just ignore things it can't handle if overloaded. Overlooking the basics by focussing on to many complex demands at once.
In Lotro PvMP one of the basics is "you need numbers". A complex task is to try stategies like creating a diversion, flanking etc etc. Everyone who thinks they know about war might think these are valid tactics but forget one thing. KISS. Even an attempt at flanking the enemy is FAR to complex to pull off. Sure, it might work once, if you got people who REALLY work together, but 9 times out of 10 it just ends up with the enemy just wiping one part first, then the second. PvMP is Lotro is about numbers vs numbers, so stick together and hit them in force. It works, has been proven to work and is something most people can deal with. Split for instance into two groups and you waste ten minutes getting everyone to follow the right leader, while the enemy looks on and thinks "Yummie, bite sized enemy forces".
So how does this relate to the US space program? The mandate to re-use space shuttle parts. Totally unneeded complexity. Re-using existing stuff SOUNDS smart but goes against KISS because it forces you to work around ALL the problems the existing parts bring. It is in this case BLOODY clear the existing parts have troubles because if they didn't, you would be using the old system.
If you want a rocket to take you to the moon with a manned module then THAT is the design requirement. Nothing more. Rocket+manned+moon. Not +cheap. Not +beforedateX. Not +reuseparts. Not +somebodiespetproject. Everything requirement you add makes things far more complex and that is BOUND to go wrong.
People in software are of course familiar with the idea of re-usability. Re-use your code. C++ was build around the idea. The idea has its meritcs. I certainly wouldn't recommend that the next moon rocket seeks to re-invent the screw BUT there is a HUGE difference between using existing parts if it happens to be convenient and putting re-using parts as a design requirement.
Think of it like this. Using GD in your website software vs GD must be used in your website software. Using OS/2 for your desktop vs your desktop MUST use OS/2.
As a software engineer you probably seen this countless time. Software requiring the use of Oracle database to store 1 column because we use oracle in this company. Demands to have servers run windows because that is what the boss has on his desktop.
Ares has to many design requirements that have nothing to do with getting the US back on the moon and that is the reason it failed. If they had gone for a new design, re-using only if it happened naturally, then they would already have had a rocket, it would have been cheaper and it might even have been flying already. But no, it had to re-use by design to be cheaper and faster and voila, as everyone could predict, it is more expansive and slower. re-use as part of the design spec != KISS. If someone mentions re-use of code as a goal during development I have long since learned to get the hell out of the project. I suggest NASA hires me so that I can stand by with a clue-bat during their brainstorming sessions and whack anyone adding needless complexity to their projects. Seeing how much money it wastes, I would say 10 million a year would be nice starting salary. Where do I apply?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
To my admittedly outsider's eye, NASA looks and acts exactly like your classic dysfunctional monopoly bureaucracy. These things are common and seem unavoidable - everything that I've read about the Ares debacle is right in line with a sclerotic, mismanaged, change-averse (and risk-averse .. just not the right type of risk) fiefdom-addled government clusterfuck we see time and time again. Hell, not just government - occasionally we see this in the private sector too, when a trenchant monopoly manages to establish itself somewhere and then proceeds to lose sight of everything that got it there in the first place and rots from within. Microsoft of 5 years ago, by all accounts, got pretty close to that, but there are many others, especially in defense.
What kills this is competition, genuine competition, that forces the organisation to adapt or perish. Nothing other than imminent risk of complete death will force such organisations to subject themselves to the kind of creative destruction needed to re-invent themselves.
I personally believe that NASA in its present form is lost, but forms can change. The key element is the competition now arising from other countries' space agencies. NASA no longer has a monopoly; it will not take long before the results from other agencies - done better, faster, cheaper - will force radical change at NASA.
It's not the 1960s again yet, but when China and India announce dates for their moon landings, you can bet the clock will start spinning backwards within days.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. I love America, but it desperately needs competition. The same could go for NASA. Well, it'll get it soon enough.
Funny how NASA - and America in general - needs foreigners to keep itself in line. Back in the day it was Von Braun. Now it's Hu Jintao who will provide the electric shock necessary to revive this intransigent patient.
America isn't a country, it's a team. It needs to fight, it needs to compete, it needs constant challenge. If there's no "enemy", it gets lazy and tears itself apart. Just like every other empire in history. I use that word without any perjorative intention, by the way - there is simply no other way to describe a country with so many overseas military bases. Of course America is an empire, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But god, it needs competition. The good news is - competition is on the way. In space, and everywhere else, America now faces its first real competition in generations.
I for one am on the edge of my seat, waiting for the games to begin, and looking forward to what the "real america" - the one that competes, and wins - can come up with. USA!
Let my new 7-digit UID be a lesson to all - write down your passwords.
What's the problem now? Are our engineers less smart? Do we have fewer materials? Are we under a budget that's too strict? There has to be something that's keeping us from being able to do this.
Well, we've got all these neat new development processes and guidelines to ensure that our development activities comply fully with the imposed development processes, whether they are sensible or not. In other words, we have process compliance at the expense of results, and many of the processes are complete pigs which are often inflexible (think of Six Sigma, for instance). The main problem in recent decades has been the succession of Fad-of-the-year dogmas excreted by business schools and accumulating in R&D departments.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
That part of the problem is that the US had a very successful manned space program with many firsts (including the moon landing). In fact the US continues to have a very successful unmanned space program. The recent Mars missions, the rovers and the Phoenix Mars mission, have been very successful.
Well those two things help lead to being lazy about future manned space missions. After all that's not the competitive "We've got to do it first," thing going on. Then there's the fact that the unmanned missions are much, much cheaper and seem to produce plenty good data.
You have to remember that sending people in to space has thus far not been all that necessary, nor is there a real economic reason (beyond tourism). If it was a case that there was a lot of money to be made, like say you sent someone to the moon and they brought back billions of dollars of valuable resources, well then sure, there'd be plenty of motivation to keep a modern manned mission going. However as it stands, there's no economic benefit. So the benefit is entirely scientific. Well, that's sure as hell not worthless, but unmanned missions seem to do the job brilliantly.
I mean suppose you are running the program and I come to you and say I have some research I want to do. I can do it two ways: I can either design and build an automated system, which has a chance of failing, or I can send people, who based on past experience have about a 1% chance of dying (that's roughly NASA's record at this point, about 1 in 100). Also, the automated system is much cheaper to do, and can potentially work for longer, though perhaps not quite as flexible.
Which do you choose?
I'm certainly not against NASA modernizing it's manned space program I think it's worthwhile. But let's maintain a realistic assessment of how useful it is and how priority it is. The US has already sent people to the moon, a number of times in fact. Doing it just for bragging rights isn't useful at this point.
why can't they just wait until winds are well below 12 mph? The force exerted on a body by a moving fluid goes as v^2, so they wouldn't have to wait for it to drop all that far.
has involved reinventing the wheel? I know too many engineers that like to start from scratch and simply ignore tried and true existing ideas/code/technology/what have you.
I'd hate to rain on your parade, but I think you're underestimating how much the specific people involved were crucial to sending people to the moon vs the "organisation". It's not unknown in more earth-bound areas either, for such a timeframe(30+ years) to have a name attached, but noone involved in "the goods" left around. Just because they call it the same doesn't mean it's the same.
This is kind of surprising. When US was able to put a man on moon some 30yrs back, what is the big deal in putting another on moon again?
Computer simulations... in the mean time, an Indian rocket it's on the way to the Moon!
Your idea to replace a 70's tech rocket, is to go back to 50's tech rocket? Is that what I am hearing?
There are about to be a number of private companies with different space crafts. That will include spaceX, Orbital, and possibly Planet Space. Two of these will have new launchers. The third will simply use what exists today. A 4th possibility (probability?) is that scaled is working on their system. They currently have the mother ship nearly ready to test. Of course, they are building a sub orbital craft. And ppl like to point out that an orbital craft will be different, while ignoring the fact that Scaled actually did the bulk of the work on the X-38; the craft DESIGNED to go to the ISS.
Now, why do I bring this up? Because we are about to have a NUMBER of crafts that will replace Ares I. So what is needed is either Ares IV or Ares V. The Ares V would be nice, but I doubt that congress will fund it. The ares IV will be more expensive to launch than Ares V and carry a fraction of the weight, but quicker and cheaper to build.
Of course, the odd thing is that NASA is missing the easiest answer of all. COTS was an XPrize for getting cargo to ISS. Why not develop a COTs for heavy lifters as well? Seriously, the Ares I will most likely be killed. Congress will probably shoot for Ares IV or Direct, while blaming NASA for this.
Either way, we are going to get a fraction of the capacity that we wanted. So, why not create an X-Prize of 2 Billion for a heavy lifter that will lift at least as much as the saturn V or perhaps Ares V? That would be our moon and mars rocket. My guess is that we would see several heavy lifters developed.
BTW, would you really want to travel to the moon or mars in Orion, or in a Bigelow system? ME? I will take the roomy idea. Have water around for radiation, as well as more shielding on the capsule.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Is it comfortable sleeping on those laurel so many decades afterward ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride
If turnips were swords, I'd wear one by my side
If ifs and ans were pots and pans,
there'd be no need for tinkers' hands
--
My point being - it is still early days and experimenting and design changes are inevitable.
"We were told by a person directly involved [in looking at the problem] that as they incorporate more variables into the liftoff-drift-curve model, the worse the curve becomes"
Yes captain obvious, when that Seagull poop builds up on the nose cone of the inboard solid rocket booster it increase the chances
of striking the tower during liftoff...
Got Code?
With the effective end of the shuttle program already (we're down to what, one launch a year now?) it's clear that the end of manned spaceflight is in view. The Russians will continue for a few years more as they work down their inventory of ex-ICBM boosters to get people into near earth orbit. The Chinese and the Indians will have a few launches for national pride and zero engineering and scientific benefit. But by 2020 the era of manned spaceflight will be over and out. And in case you haven't been watching, unmanned spaceflight for purely research reasons will end around 2040 or so.
NASA should get out of the manned rocket business, turn that over to private developers, who can most likely do it better, faster and cheaper. NASA has become an overbloated government agency.
The prizes would be graduated, with a goal of creating a sustainable infrastructure [but it is possible that a given prize could entice a 'one shot' effort like Lindbergh's ocean crossing. The prize list [and discussion] was posted at Getting to Space:Prizes
Also relevant is another paper from 1995 called Why Have NASA
Caution: Do not stare into laser with remaining eye.
.... as are all efforts on the edge of understanding and capability. Going into space still takes a long time, costs lots of money and requires working through many things that don't work to get to one way that does. Don't get distracted by those who have more opinion and bandwidth to blair than common sense or wisdom.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JJ25Ad02.html
US gets its @$$ handed to it again.
That is what is confusing me, why don't they just update Saturn? They know it works, it has a decent track record, it can carry the load. After all, we are talking about the rocket, not actual capsule. At the very least, (as you state) it would have made more sense to START with the Saturn V and move forward.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Two wrongs don't make a right, you know? Yes, some engineers are incompetent, and some are as out of touch with reality as to design an engine block with the spark plugs underneath. (To pick an example of something a mechanic would dislike thoroughly.)
1. Adding an incompetent manager on the next layer doesn't fix it. It just makes the total problem even worse. You can't say it's ok to add an incompetent boss, just because a lot of those under him will be incompetent too.
2. Yes, an engineer will not know everything. E.g., the ones doing physical engineering may not know much about industrial design, or programmers usually don't know much about GUI design. That's why we have a whole organization, not a lone maverick designing it all. You have to mix and match the skills of several people, to have a good design. From the guy designing the engine, to the one designing a pleasing dashboard, to the marketer doing a study in which colour should it have to be attractive to buyers. It's a _team_ effort.
And guess what? The role of a manager is precisely to organize such a heterogenous team, and make sure it has the right mix of skills and that they're used right.
Basically if you can notice the shortcomings of an individual there (e.g., "damn engineers who put the spark plugs there"), you're actually noticing a management failure too. The guy who should have had the missing skill, wasn't there or wasn't listened to. Even if you want to expect that engineers should have had <insert extra skill> in the first place, then someone should have taken that into account when hiring them. If a whole team ended up with _all_ members missing that skill that everyone should have had... why did they get hired then? Or, again, then why wasn't an extra guy hired who has that extra skill needed, and whose job is to apply it.
That's the job of management: to manage it all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
that ppl are calling for restarting Saturn, when it really was not anywhere near as tested as the shuttle's. Given the choice of Saturn or Direct, I would take Direct. MUCH faster to get off the ground. While I like the lift capacity of the Ares V, I wonder if it will survive Congress and our budget hits that we are about to take.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is the vehicle that ATK Thiokol tried to sell as "Safe, Simple and Soon"
Oh, well.
(I started writing this comment and got a strange feeling of deja-vu. It turns out that my last slashdot comment 67 days ago was virtually identical. This is getting scary.)
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Back in the late '70s I bought a book, published by NASA, that described the planned followons to the shuttle... based on using the Shuttle engines and launch system in other configurations, including a heavy lifter. This scheme was never followed through, but it should be.
There's a group of NASA engineers working on it again. They call it DIRECT 2.0.
I think the issue is not the engineering, but how it is perceived.
This article is just silly. Now, I'm a critic of the constellation project because I think the initial design was rushed and based on pleasing contractors rather than efficiency.
However, those statements seem to stem from the sensation-hungry press hyenas. First, the thrust issue was fixed fairly quickly. Secondly, the rocket would have never "shaken astronauts to death," it was more on the order of being able to read displays etc. And now this latest issue, come on! This is what engineering IS. You don't draw a rocket on a napkin and find out it works right then. The fact that advanced methodology can find problems, albeit somewhat late, before we fly the damn thing should speak for the project rather than against it. If these problems didn't surface, engineers would be out of a job quickly, except that now the trust in NASA and the interest in space exploration is virtually gone, so that every "normal" engineering issue is bloated and thrown haphazardly at the masses as "epic NASA fail."
Secondly, an air launch allows for far safer escape. You are already at some velocity and height. If the thing doesn't blow up (a distinct possibility), you can still jettison the capsule and re-enter or parachute down. On a launch pad, you're right on top of the fireball with nowhere to go but up.
Bottom line: it's time to reign in manned spaceflight and support the Rise of the Machines. Explore the solar system with them and let them set up the Moon and Mars for us. When they are both terraformed, comfy and warm, that would be the time for the Machines to harvest us and take us there.
*** Don't be dull.***
Here is an interesting story about the Saturn V blueprints and why NASA doesn't want to rebuild from them.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
"Back in the space race era, there simply wasn't time for huge bureaucracies."
Most of the big projects I've seen fail suffer from too many managers who know too little, managers and engineers whose agenda is having an easy job or impressive career rather than doing the right thing for the project, and way too much process overhead as in CMMI IV and CMMI V, where vastly much more time is spent on process than on solving problems.
Eugene Cernan: The enemy of good is better. We don't need to make the trip fancy...
What happened to this organisation that managed to put people on the moon, that managed to build a huge telescope in orbit around the earth, that even built a permanently manned space station?
They became another large corporation with managers and fiefdoms and a culture where it's safer to aim low and marginally succeed than to aim high and risk failure.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
We just need to get american idol to do the contest on the moon next year! We'd be there in a heartbeat.
Umm, yeah, about that.
Hubble was horribly mismanaged. Perkin-Elmer was given no oversight whatsoever on the mirror and proceeded to grind it incorrectly. The error was not small- any amateur telescope maker with a razor blade and a pen laser would have found it in five minutes. The solar panels were an awful design that flapped when the scope crossed the day/night terminator and required replacement with a better set. The gyroscopes used were ancient and near the end of their life.
Worse, many of these problems were already known- the Hubble is basically a KH-11 spy satellite that points the other way- same mirror, same size, even the same shipping container. According to the guy who ran the Space Telescope Science Institute, Hubble managers had a couple of meetings with various black agencies *after* all the problems came to light that indicated all of these had been seen in the spy satellite program before.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Of course flanking is a GOOD real world strategy and might well be in other games. But it doesn't work in Lotro because the game mechanics just don't work for it. Communication between different groups is hard and distances are VERY small and if out numbered fights are over very small.
Say both sides got 48 players (2 raids). 1 side splits into 2 raids. The other side attacks one of the raids. They can then cause a wipe of that raid in a couple of seconds (or at least cripple it fataly) if the other raid is not reacting INSTANTLY, they will flank into an enemy just finishing off the last remnants.
To translate to the space program. The US got plenty of cash. it is not as if they HAVE to re-use shuttle parts or that shuttle parts are that cheap to begin with. Space development is already complex enough with you having to make many compromises between what you would like to use and what you can actually get. To deliberatly limit what you can use right from the start for the sake of some dubious cost savings is making things to complex. It would be like saying "this next program MUST be build in C, because then we can re-use some math libraries we got lying around".
Or "we must flank because that is what real armies does even if this game only emulates a VERY small amount of the real world".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I think this is all moot, as Barney Frank recently stated he wanted huge budget cuts at the Pentagon, a 25 percent across the board cut. "We don't need all those fancy new weapons", Mr Frank said.
With that kind of attitude in the coming adminstration and Congress, what makes you think something like a new moon shot is going to survive? The attitude is going to be "we've been to the moon... been there, done that". Congress and a President Obama are likely going to see manned spaceflight... especially expensive projects like moonshots... as a waste of money better spent elsewhere.
Like it or not, get ready for the return of "better, faster, cheaper". As before, only the last two will really be true. But manned spaceflight outside of ISS support missions is about to take a long hiatus.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I did not think they really cost $10 B per flight... but on the other hand, I don't think the prize should really have to be $10 B either. I was just trying to make a point.
Actually, from my experience in software, the absolute worst PHB's I've ever seen, were ex-programmers. Some of them _brilliant_ ex-programmers. But they were crap at dealing with people, even worse at organizing things, hated being in meetings half the time now, and most of them also expected their employees to meet and exceed some standards that they themselves actually failed. (Except maybe in their own mind.)
A rough breakdown, off the top of my head, is somewhat like this:
- two ended up obnoxious control freaks, and convinced that nothing ever gets done unless they pester someone to death. One of them used to click on Netscape's title bar to show it that he's watching. He genuinely believed that it loaded pages faster if it knew the boss is watching . (Freaking hillarious or freaking sad, for someone who had been a brilliant programmer before. You decide which.)
- one ended up personally doing the programs of his whole team, because it was less stress than trying to organize and manage that team. He'd make up by lashing out with random acts of mis-management, presumably more to show himself that he's still the boss, than to show it to his underlings.
- two ended up what I can only describe as yes-men in both directions. They basically avoided managing, by pretending to be on everyone's side, both from above and from below.
- one ended up, basically a depressed whiner.
Etc.
As for Dilbert... here's something worth wondering about: several comic strips paint the PHB as being unable to read people's reactions. In one, he can't tell if Wally is sleeping or working, when looking at him from the front. Several make sense only if he isn't even aware of the harm he does. That guy has Asperger's Syndrome. He's a nerd. A complete nerd, in fact.
And if I'm allowed to run amok with analyzing a cartoon character too far: while it is possible that his narrow focus of interest (practically a given for an aspie) was management from the start, it's very _unusual_ for that disorder. Asperger's Syndrome is a bit like being colour blind, only it's about human reactions instead of about colours. The typical way is to end up fascinated with numbers, technology or the like, not with the people that you can't even understand much. My money is that such a person started from engineering, CS or some other such field.
And, yes, I know that it is just a cartoon character, and I'm not pretending that it's real or anything. I _am_ however guessing that it might be based on one or more managers that Scott Adams worked with before.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Anyone else thought it said NASA Arse Project?
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Well, actually, taking a guess at what period you mean by "as a kid", by your description: nobody wanted to pay for that shuttle.
The original Shuttle concept was a small, reusable craft, mostly for getting a couple of people into orbit, and at most some minimal cargo. It was a space car. Or, ok, maybe pickup truck.
Also, very importantly: only in some orbits. Getting anything in an equatorial LEO is cheap because the Earth's rotation helps you a bit. Getting something in a polar orbit is more expensive. Not only you have to supply the whole orbital speed yourself, you have to _lose_ the speed you started with because of Earth's rotation. Otherwise it would be merely a very inclined orbit, not a polar one.
But what happened was that NASA didn't actually get a budget for it. So they started looking at which other agency they can swindle out of its budget. And there was the Air Force, which used these huge rockets to put spy sats into orbit. And they had a budget for those.
So NASA goes to them and says, basically, "hey, if you give us your lunch money, we can build a reusable launch vehicle for you, and put your sats up there for peanuts ever after. Better yet: we can also go pack one up and bring it down." The Air Force liked both ideas. Lots.
But their spy sats were freaking huge, and they had to go into polar orbits. The Shuttle had to be inflated to accomodate that. Instead of a pickup truck, it became a freakin' huge 18 wheeler truck.
Now funnily enough, this made the Shuttle a failure on both counts:
A) It failed to keep its promise to the Air Force, and those guys still ended up using their own rockets, because the Shuttle was too unreliable and made a trip once in a blue moon. And about bringing them back down, remember that news where they shot one down with a missile shot off a cruiser? Yeah. That's not what NASA had promised them.
B) The original idea was that the space shuttle will be so cheap per launch, that even for TV or telecom sats, it'll be cheaper to just pack it on the shuttle and put it up that way, than use a normal rocket. Even skipping past the unavailability for such things, here's a thought: now it was too big for economics to work that way. If you have a 1 ton sat to put up there, you don't pack it on a 2000 ton shuttle, because just the fuel alone costs more than a traditional rocket. Just as you wouldn't pack it on a 2000 ton truck to ship it across the country. Some jobs _are_ better suited for a small pickup truck, which the shuttle no longer was.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Having worked at NASA, the answer to your question is simple.
The engineers are fine, if not still some of the world's best. The problem is management, national politics (earmarks), and political in fighting between centers.
Perhaps another thing for you to consider is that much of NASA (I've heard as high as 2/3) is eligible to retire in the next five years. NASA also hasn't really had open hiring, that I'm aware of, since the early 80s. Contractors have been hired, and a lot of NASA's technical talent became contractors, but not civil servants. All of the budget shake ups over the last few years have decimated programs and often cause the contractors to go find someplace more stable to work.
Quite frankly, while there is some good management at NASA, a lot is too beholden to their political goals rather than the mission.
Before I get started: I _am_ a reserve sergeant, though not that it means much. I also do have a bit of a hobby about history.
So based on that, it seems to me that:
1. Pin-and-flank is the basic maneuver that all armies use and are trained to use nowadays. Ideally, you pin with two units and try to flank with a third. Whether it's at platoon level (pin with 2 squads, flank with a third) or done at whole army level with divisions (pin with 2, flank with the third), you pin and try to flank, while the enemy tries to do the same to you.
And everyone is trained so they do work together. From recruits doing basic drills to military academies training generals, _everyone_ is trained to pin and flank. Any modern war is pins-and-flanks _within_ pins-and-flanks.
2. Any army is not your average PUG (Pick-Up Group) in a MMO, and not even your average guild group. We're talking people who've been drilled into working together until that stuff becomes a reflex and you do it without thinking. When it's your turn to lay the suppression fire while that other guy dashes forward, you don't even think "it's my turn", you just do it.
In fact, _the_ one stat that would be best used to describe any unit in a RL army, wouldn't be "hp" or "dps", but cohesion. An army is only as good as its ability to act together as a single entity. When that breaks down, it wipes out.
It's not even a modern thing. From the Greek phalanx, to the british squares at Waterloo, to any modern war, the unit that stays cohesive a second longer wins. The Phalanx that broke into individual soldiers, got owned. The musket square that lost cohesion, got _rolled_ _over_ by cavalry from a corner. Etc.
So, yes, you _have_ to have people who _really_ work together, or you've lost before you even started. If that group doesn't work together, before the first bullet has been shot, before the artillery duel even started, you've already lost. Heck, if you're even in a situation to wonder, like you do, if the team will actually act together, you have already lost. You just don't know it yet.
3. To get back to flanking, it's again not just modern stuff, it's been a basic thing for millenia. Those cavalry wings ("ala") of a roman legion were there to, at the very least, stop the enemy cavalry from flanking. If a general did nothing smarter at all, he would at the very least try to use his most mobile units to flank. It's been used with chariots, it's been done with cavalry, it's been done with tanks, heck even ship classes have been designed for the sole role of "crossing the T", which was the naval version of flanking.
4. War is complicated shit, and always was complex shit. Again, it's not your average MMO group.
If you look at most known wars from the last few thousand years, they invariably involved more than just rows of soldiers facing each other. There were feints, flankings, ambushes, trops kept in reserve so the enemy would face fresh troops when it's tired, creative use of terrains, etc. Almost invariably the guy who won was the guy who pulled some unexpected stunt and caught the other unprepared. Far larger armies have been wiped by smaller ones whose general pulled some inventive stunt.
The guys who applied the KISS principle... well, the graveyards and historical lists of losers are full of them. 'Nuff said.
Heck, even combined arms tactics, are inherently more complex, but it's what wins wars. The guys who keep it simple, get owned by those who don't. Almost every single time.
Basically: don't judge real wars by the untrained kids who play a MMO. Flanking, cover, complex tactics, etc, don't even work on MMOs, and neither the code nor the design are there to even sense them happening. But they are what wins or loses a real fight.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What happened to this organisation that managed to put people on the moon, that managed to build a huge telescope in orbit around the earth, that even built a permanently manned space station? How is it possible they can't even design a rocket to take us to the moon?
IMHO a lot of the problems can be traced back to bad management by current NASA administrator Michael Griffin. Back in 2005, prior to Griffin's arrival, NASA's original plan for a new manned launch vehicle, two competing teams of companies would have been selected, and they would be running unpiloted test launches this year. Based on those test launches and what was learned about their designs, the best vehicle design would have been selected. My suspicion is that at least one of the rockets would have been a modified version of an already-proven design, such as the Boeing Delta IV or Lockheed Martin Atlas V.
Then midway through 2005 Mike Griffin came in. He had his own pet design from a paper he had written, and had the requirements for the US's new manned launcher redone. Coincidentally, under the new requirements Griffin's design was the only one which satisfied. The engineers at NASA have been doing what they can, but it seems that Griffin's design has some pretty severe inherent flaws. The engineers have been trying to issue their concerns, but ignored or silenced by management.
I think this farewell message by one of the engineers working on Ares sums things up well:
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2008/08/a_farewell_mess.html
At the highest levels, there seems to be a belief that you can mandate reality, followed by a refusal to accept any information that runs counter to that mandate. I'm sure you can all think of multiple examples (having nothing to do with CAD) without trying very hard. This reminds me of Clark's law: "Sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice". I've heard others use terms like "arrogance combined with ignorance". ... Then between us workers and the highest levels of management another problem exists. As one person put it: "Where does the bad news stop going up?" Again, I'm sure you all know of situations where people are trying to raise red flags, but somehow they never get addressed.
"Gavin wastes an hour on Slashdot"
The error was not small- any amateur telescope maker with a razor blade and a pen laser would have found it in five minutes.
Hmm, from what I remember of that, the problem wasn't detectable until it was in zero G. It was ground perfectly flat in earth gravity, but then bubbled slightly once put into space. I think it'd require a quite a bit more than a razor blade and a pen laser (of which were really really expensive at the time and not many people had them) to detect the problem.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
"Worse, many of these problems were already known- the Hubble is basically a KH-11 spy satellite that points the other way- same mirror, same size, even the same shipping container."
And I imagine a large chunk of the problems NASA had with the Hubble might have been due to that very fact: that since it was partially classified technology, getting information to the right people without telling 'the wrong people' would have been fraught with complications.
Not that I know for sure, but it seems likely to me. The problem with doing all this neat technology stuff in black programs is how do you transfer that information and experience to the civilian world when the whole black system is set up specifically to *stop* such transfers?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Actually, no, this is not true. The error was in fact detectable on the ground, and in fact was detected on the ground, but the measurement that showed the error was ignored -- the assumption was that the dissenting measurement must surely itself be an error. You can find out more from Wikipedia, or from Time Magazine's article.
Some blame goes to Perkin-Elmer for assuming that the obviously (in hindsight) flawed null corrector was more accurate than the other two null correctors employed, and should be trusted.
Didn't NASA learn anything from history? Two men (von Brawn and Korolyov) had less technology and could do way more. Plus the test pilots back in those days had bigger balls.
We really have hit the space wall haven't we. No hope of getting to the moon, forget anything to Mars.
I may be stating the obvious, but I don't expect Orion or any of these new launch vehicles to be completed, but that may be a good thing. The idea of placing highly skilled, highly trained volunteers on top of a giant firecracker is ridiculous. Solid propellents are accidents waiting to happen and that's why military weapon systems drop or boost rocket powered munitions away from the delivery vehicle before they ignite. That's also why those "solid rocket engines" are manufactured in desolate area's of the Southwest and shipped in secure containers. In stark contrast the proposed heavy lift booster continues to be a liquid core vehicle. I personally take issue with the philosophy of placing equipment, not humans on the safer of the two vehicles. These kind of decisions are also indicative of political "grand standing." First lay out a "grand plan for glory," then set a time-table for shutting down a working system, while only "starting" work on the means to achieve the goal. The current administration will not be in office when NASA comes asking for financing to build hardware, so these actions will likely play out as a politically correct method for shutting down the Shuttle program. At some future date I am sure a politician will step forward and claim this action as proof of there effort at "reducing government waste." What's that you say? They already built the Orion capsule... NOT. A "mockup" is not a finished and tested product. That thing is not even an alpha build, it's a Powerpoint show at best. This whole process compares to Microsoft being contracted by the US government to investigate replicating the IBM360. They may get a workable device out of the exercise but the world will have moved on and past glory will be forgotten. The ingenious exploitation of available resources to meet human needs has been a major driver of all know civilizations. The exploitation of space resources has payed for our current level of space exploration, so I don't expect this trend to change. Progress will only happen at a greater level than we currently know when we can routinely travel to space, work there and come back. That means building the equivalent to the DC-3 or B727, because disposable vehicles are a huge waste of funds and resources. There is plenty of documentation to show how and where mistakes were made in creating the Shuttle and that documentation indicates that under-funding and politics were key to it's failure. Engineers and program manager must learn the lessons of economics, finance and politics in order to change the world. Repeating pst mistakes and basing decisions on cheapness will only guarantee failure.
Why does this sound like the Challenger launch?
Engineer: Look at these figures, this isn't going to work.
Admin: We don't care, this is officially sanctioned. Build it or be fired and blackballed from the industry.
...that's why military weapon systems drop or boost rocket powered munitions away from the delivery vehicle before they ignite.
Some munitions with solid fuel rocket motors are dropped from the aircraft, others aren't and it's mostly due to airstream issues rather than safety with the solid rocket motors. AIM-9s are launched from rails under wing and wingtip, and the rocket motor is ignited on the rail. AIM-120s are also rail carried and ignite the rocket motor on the rail. AIM-7s were carried next to the airframe and were "pushed" away so air pressure would not slam the missile back into the aircraft before the rocket motor ignited. (Same thing with bombs--if not shoved away, the airstream can bring it back up into the wing)
As for safety, solid propellants are generally safer than liquid--they store well, transport well, and withstand rugged handling. That's the primary reason the USAF eliminated liquid fueled ICBMs from the inventory. That's also why Rutan used solid fuel for SpaceShipOne and will for SpaceShipTwo. One of the plusses for solid fuel is "instant on" power, but a drawback for solid fuel is the inability to throttle the exhaust, unlike liquid propellant engines, which is why there is a mix of the two on various launchers. The Challenger disaster was a failed o-ring/design/safety culture problem, not the solid propellant.
As for dropping satellite launchers (and now sub-orbital vehicles) before ignition, the boosters on those are much more powerful and can easily damage a wing or the fuselage (depending on where its carried) if ignited too close, so they are dropped and the lifting vehicle pulls away before ignition. Plus, it's just smart to stay back from something that's going to be departing at multiple G's and avoid any messy entanglements.
Impetuous! Homeric!