The Difficulty of Dismantling Constellation

Last month, we discussed news that President Obama's 2011 budget proposal did not include plans to continue NASA's Constellation program, choosing instead to focus on establishing a stronger foundation for low earth orbit operations. Unfortunately, as government officials prepare to shut down Constellation, they're warning that it won't be a quick or simple process due to the contracts involved. From the Orlando Sentinel: "Obama's 2011 budget proposal provides $2.5 billion to pay contractors whatever NASA owes them so the agency can stop work on Constellation's Ares rockets, Orion capsule and Altair lunar lander. But administration officials acknowledge that this number is, at best, an educated guess. ... Many inside and outside of the space agency, however, think the number is too low. The agency has signed more than $10 billion worth of contracts to design, test and build the Ares I rocket and Orion capsule that were the heart of Constellation. But government auditors said last year that the costs of some of those contracts had swelled by $3 billion since 2007 because of design changes, technical problems and schedule slips. How much NASA will owe on all those contracts if the plug gets pulled is unclear. Many of the deals are called 'undefinitized contracts,' meaning that the terms, conditions — and price — had not been set before NASA ordered the work to start. That means the agency will need to negotiate a buyout with the contractor — and that can be a long and painful process, according to government officials familiar with the cancellation process."

Comments

Of Course

[DarkKnightRadick]

We could continue the Constellation project - or sell out to private companies - and quit letting the government take over health care.

Since neither will happen, not sure what else we can do. We've lost our backbone for adventure as we've continued to reinforce the entitlement mentality that is draining our country dry of resources.

Re:Of Course

[Nyeerrmm]

In case you didn't notice, Constellation in many ways was a much bigger sellout to private companies -- these undefinitized contracts seem to be a handy way to funnel money to the big contractors with little oversight.

Space exploration is not about adventure for its own sake -- for that we can send all our astronauts to climb Mt. Everest instead. Its about advancing the frontier, and learning to live and work sustainably in space, and Constellation wasn't doing that. Even at the time of Apollo, Von Braun et.al. knew that that architecture was not the way forward, because each mission was individually incredibly expensive. Rebuilding Apollo in the form of Constellation was always doomed to repeat flags and footprints with little else, and without the political impetus of cold war and a mission from a martyred president, it was quite frankly stillborn. A cheap LEO launch vehicle with true spaceships that never re-entered the Earth's atmosphere was always a better long-term plan, it just couldn't get built as quickly, so didn't fit the goals of the time.

This was what the original Bush VSE said, until CxP hijacked it, and its what the Augustine commission said. Sustainability is key, and the FY2011 budget, despite the piss-poor PR to go along with it, lays out a path for sustainable, flexible exploration.

Re:Of Course

[FleaPlus]

It would be quite bad for NASA to continue the Constellation project, as it miserably fails to achieve any of the goals which were set forth for in the Vision for Space Exploration; the VSE is what Constellation was ostensibly designed to fulfill. From the 2004 VSE:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/55583main_vision_space_exploration2.pdf

Goal and Objectives
The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program. In support of this goal, the United States will:
* Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and
beyond;
* Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations;
* Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human exploration; and
* Promote international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests.

Let's look at these original goals one by one and compare them to Constellation vs. the new plan:

Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and
beyond

Constellation was pretty much the opposite of sustained and affordable, with costs constantly increasing and an ever-slipping deadline. Not only that, but Constellation's going overbudget resulted in the cancellation of many human and robotic projects which would have contributed to making exploration sustainable and affordable.

The new plan for NASA places sustainable and affordable exploration as its primary goals, allowing us to make steady progress towards expanding into the inner solar system, with key near-term development and in-space tests of technologies like propellant depots, cost-effective access to orbit, nuclear propulsion, lightweight manned modules, in situ resource utilization (asteroid/moon mining), and nuclear electric propulsion. All of these things were unfunded under the old plan.

Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations

According to the Augustine Committee's report, Constellation wouldn't have been able to even produce the Ares I (essentially an in-house duplicate of the existing Atlas V, Delta IV, and Falcon 9 rockets) by 2017-2019, which would have only been able to transport astronauts to the ISS several years after the ISS had splashed into the ocean. They wouldn't even be able to develop a lunar lander until "well into the 2030s, if ever," or the mid-2020s if NASA got a massive funding boost.

Under the new plan, IOC for several competing commercial crew vehicles is 2014/2015. The precise plan is still being formulated, but it's likely to involve propellant depots in low-Earth orbit and the EML-1 lagrange point in this decade, which makes the Moon (and near-Earth asteroids, and Phobos, and ultimately Mars) much easier to access for both robots and humans, using already-existing rockets.

Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human exploration;

If you read through the documents which established Constellation, innovative technologies were deliberately excluded, as they didn't want to have to re-adapt the 15/20-year program if any of those technologies worked out differently than expected. Avoiding innovative kind of makes sense for short-term projects, but for a long-term project pretty much guarantees that your end product is going to

Re:Of Course

[mano.m]

We've lost our backbone for adventure as we've continued to reinforce the entitlement mentality that is draining our country dry of resources.

If the Nordic countries can run some of the most competitive free market economies in the world while assuring poverty does not become a leading cause of death, I'm sure the Greatest Nation on Earth can manage to manage.

Re:Of Course

[Nyeerrmm]

Constellation as an architecture was fatally flawed. This is not a question of privatization, of the viability of human settlement or anything like that -- the program of record was an unsustainable throwback to the Apollo era that was simply unviable in the current environment and didn't complete the goals laid out in the Vision for Space Exploration. The fact that it was based on shuttle technologies is besides the point -- they screwed this up anyway by using 5-meter tankage and 5-segment SRBs that eliminated much of the advantage of being 'shuttle-derived'.

The statement by the Augustine commission that "if Constellation were completed now, it would still have to be cancelled because we couldn't afford to operate it" is the most succinct way of stating the flaw. Even after all of the development costs, the amount to fly each flight is so high that NASA would have to continue operating at the politically untenable +$3B budget . This is exactly what happened with Apollo: it was built, we went to the moon, but each flight was so expensive that it couldn't be sustained after the impetus to beat the Soviets was removed. This isn't to negate the accomplishment of Apollo -- the Saturn V stack, sending it all up at once, was the best way to do it as quickly as possible, but definitely not the cheapest.

Now instead consider the current situation. NASA's budget is limited to approximately 0.5% of the federal budget, we have nothing to prove, we understand the basics of space flight, have much better computer and control technology, and we are interested in doing real exploration. The only things that actually need to get from the Earth's surface to the Moon's surface and back, each time, are humans and their research equipment. All the landers, Earth-departure stages, communications equipment and long-term life-support can be pretty easily re-used. They will be more expensive than their equivalent disposable counterparts (say by a factor of 4), but if you run 10 missions you've saved money. So what we do is we have a lunar transport vehicle (LTV) that sits in Earth orbit, refuels from orbiting fuel depots, and simply goes back and forth to the moon. Fuel depots could be brought to orbit more cheaply, even by more ridiculous methods like space-guns, because they can handle extremely high G-loads. Astronauts get to orbit and rendezvous with the LTV using simple low-cost vehicles that resemble Dragon. Note that I don't discuss how they're developed -- cost-plus or fixed-price rides.

It may take 30 years to get to the moon this way, but it makes a lot more sense. The simple capsule could be completed in 5 years easily, and fuel depots are another independent project. The LTV and other components again could be broken up into manageable pieces that could be completed within a single administration. Budget cuts wouldn't eliminate previously developed capabilities, since they're already deployed, and once you have the entire thing completed you can get astronauts to the moon for a cost equivalent to a couple of STS flights.

Of course this is all just musing on my part, I'd have to run a lot of numbers to see estimate sizing, and cost savings. All I hope to demonstrate is what a better approach is than Constellation could look like. Constellation was pie-in-the-sky because it depended on the nature of our politics changing, which is far more difficult than solving mere engineering problems.

the dangers of cancelation

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen it happen in the software industry... if project after project is canceled, people eventually assume that the next project they work on will *also* be canceled. And when that happens, they subconsciously or otherwise don't do a good job any more, because they don't really believe that what they're building will ever see the light of day.

In aerospace, that can get people killed. Sometimes it's better to actually build something imperfect, then to start and stop program after program after program without ever producing anything. Sooner or later, the institutional knowledge of how to actually do something gets lost.

Re:Brilliant idea!

[tgd]

Yes, by all means we should pay many times the cost of cancelling it it to continue it, and then pay ten times the cost for every launch from that point forward.

A big problem in this country, no matter what side of the political coin you are on, is people like yourself that either deliberately, or because of a lack of understanding, spout bullshit not because there's a real issue, but purely because its against someone you don't like. Your position is not supportable, and yet you'll post it because it gives you a chance to tell everyone how much you don't like Obama.

There are lots of actions Obama has taken that have perfectly valid positions on either side of the coin, but this really isn't one. Politicians, lobbyists and people employed by the project were and are the only ones who *ever* supported it.

That should tell you something.

Not just contract stupid

[Wardish]

The fact that Nasa is contract stupid (I'm guessing deals to placate various legislators, but hey, I'm paranoid.) is only part of the problem.

Nasa lives and dies over gee wizz flashy programs to get funding. Nasa has to impress the powers that be, President, advisors, legislators, defense contractors, and even lobbyists, to get decent upper management and funding. They have to be even more impressive to maintain the needed funding over multiple years and administrations.

Because...

Most ventures having to do with space require a lot of time as well as consistent funding. Congress, who holds the purse strings, is motivated by short term goals and is easily swayed by other vested interests (see above).

The only way I can see to fix this would require a law or constitutional amendment, if necessary, to enable congress to assign budgetary funds, ideally multi-year, that are paid in advance and very difficult to change. At least a 2/3 or even a 3/4 vote should be necessary to remove or repeal. This sort of protection will have to include the top management at Nasa as well.

Not a lot else you can do unless you can make all three branches of government reasonable, honorable, and able to think and plan on a long range basis.

"negotiate a buyout with the contractor"

[larry bagina]

Like they negotiated the bank bailout ("you will take this money or we will spend the next 10 years auditing you")? Like they negotiated the GM bailout ("sorry bondholders with a legal contract, we're fucking you over in favor of the unions")? Or like they negotiated the Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, and AIG bailouts ("how much money do you want? Let's triple that just in case. Come back in 3 months and we'll give you some more.")?

false dichotomy

[mdwh2]

I wish there was more money for space, but for heaven's sake - if it really was a choice between socialised healthcare for people, or socialised manned space travel, I'd still put the former first.

But it's not one or the other. Curiously this false dichotomy is used by people against manned space travel. After all, the argument against the common "But the are more important things to spend money on than manned space travel" is not to somehow argue that manned space travel is more important than people living and having basic needs, but to point out that there can be money for both. As one example, perhaps if they spent slightly less on a socialised military, there'd be plenty of money for both socialised healthcare and socialised manned space travel.

We've lost our backbone for adventure as we've continued to reinforce the entitlement mentality that is draining our country dry of resources.

Yes, obviously it's those evil people who are ill who are just draining resources, obviously they should be paying for those who have a sense of entitlement to go travelling in space. There's no "entitlement" here - your view on how taxes should be spent is no less an "entitlement mentality" than anyone else's.

Re:false dichotomy

[c6gunner]

Heh. I think it's really funny that medicare is considered "mandatory spending", while defense - one of the few legitimate duties of government - is considered discretionary. It's also interesting that the FBI and the Department of Energy also fall under the "National Defense" label.

Unlike the parent poster, I'd much rather have a socialized space exploration program than socialized medicine. The medicare budget alone could fund NASA 20 times over. You could have had Americans walking on Mars by now, instead of paying for gang members to get stitched up after their weekly gunfight.

Re:false dichotomy

[nido]

I didn't mean to imply that I approve of Medicare or any of the other medical-based wealth transfer schemes. I'm just saying that the Pentagon's budget is disproportionately huge, compared to everything else.

When you're to balance your budget, it helps to look at the big items first.

Re:false dichotomy

[mdwh2]

Does the constitution specify how much must be spent on the military? Because no one suggested scrapping it completely.

Re:false dichotomy

[ppanon]

Oh, for goodness sake. When the constitution was written, doctors still thought bloodletting was a commonly useful treatment. Modern medicine didn't really get started until nearly 100 years later when the American Civil War demonstrated the usefulness of things like aseptic work areas. Of course the Founding Fathers wouldn't have thought it was important to socialize the support of glorified witch doctors! They didn't foresee the potential of modern medicine just like they didn't foresee Ingram Mac 10s or whatever the drug dealers' automatic pistol of choice is these days. The question is, would they think it's worthwhile if they were alive today? For the most part, they were really bright rational people who would look after the common interest, unlike nearly all Republican politicians (and far too many Democrats) around these days.

Re:false dichotomy

[guruevi]

Everybody is complaining about how much health care would cost but if you can replace Social Security, Health Care, Veterans Benefits and Medicare with "Universal Health Care" you would be able to spend $5000/person in the US on health care. That is a about as much we currently spend per capita on health care and a whole lot more than many of the countries that already have government run healthcare.

Re:false dichotomy

[badasscat]

The US spends far more on programs like SS and Medicare than it does on the Pentagon. Indeed, looking at the big items first would help. In order to support the existing medicare committments, with no further socialization of medicine, tax rates would have to reach 80% in my lifetime.

Quit pulling numbers out of your ass. That number you just quoted has zero basis in reality. Ok, how about this: in order to keep funding the military at the rate its growing, taxes will need to reach 90% in my lifetime. Top that!

And do you see that big chunk of the budget labeled "health"? Yeah, that's what the health care bill is designed to reduce. Without a health care bill, that chunk will only get bigger and bigger. It's amazing to me that some people don't understand this.

Re:false dichotomy

[RealTime]

It is exactly because the Founding Fathers could not see the future that the U.S. Constitution has an amendment process. It is difficult to argue that the commerce and general welfare clauses (relative to the founders' original intent; read the Federalist Papers) have been utterly abused to expand the Federal government at the expense of the states and the people.

We have the Supreme Court to thank for this state of affairs, with the real damage starting during the New Deal era, when they could not stand up to Roosevelt's threats to expand and stack the Court. (On a somewhat related note regarding expansion of the Federal government, modern economists seem to be equally split on whether the New Deal turned a bad recession into the Great Depression or not.)

So, if health care is supposed to be "right", then why not add an amendment to the U.S. Constitution making it so. Ditto Social Security. Otherwise, give this responsibility back to the states where it (currently, without changing the Constitution) belongs.

My biggest complaint with the Federal government is that much of it is simply unconstitutional. Also, a Federal bureaucracy seems to add a lot of wasteful "friction" to the tax dollars collected. Wouldn't they be better (more efficiently) spent if collected at the state level and spent in that state?

Re:Brilliant idea!

[M1FCJ]

What does it have anything to do with Obama? Constellation is a Bush project and it's the Congress that's preventing the cancellation. Obama inherited the white elephant and trying to get rid of it and others are preventing that.

Time and materials, baby

[Overzeetop]

plus reasonable shutdown costs to complete archiving of documentation. That's the way it should be.

The problem is that all the people who have regular contact with the contractors and their employees are good friends and colleagues, so they're far more likely to make sure their "friends" has a soft landing.

Now we'll see what kind of idiots work on the contract negotiation side of NASA. Time for the blood sucking lawyers to get to work...

Re:Break the stranglehold

[Nyeerrmm]

While I'm a big proponent of privatizing LEO launch and things like that, NASA (or an entity like it) will be the critical partner in exploration for a long-time to come.

Exploration is very high-risk, and theres not a whole lot of guaranteed reward in term of monetary profit. Pushing the sphere of humanity is something that (at least I feel) has great value for society, but its not good business. Like the national defense and laying out infrastructure, the 'Lewis and Clark' role will always be best handled by a government entity.

However, after the initial exploration, its then time to consider privatization. Boeing, Bigelow and SpaceX aren't going to take us to NEOS, the Moon or Mars, but they're damn sure going to be able to get us to the near frontier, 500-miles up. From there they can get on a NASA vehicle and push on to the far frontier. As NASA keeps going, more of what was once the far frontier becomes the near frontier, responsibilities shift, and progress is made. What we're seeing now is the growing pains of learning how to hand off the torch.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[pushing-robot]

Most Americans believe that they pay an inordinate amount of money on taxes, and therefore anything they can possibly take from the government is rightfully theirs, and any money the government gives to anyone else is "stolen" from them.

It doesn't help that the country is full of loonies on radio and TV that are telling them the exact same thing.

Of course, it all boils down to selfishness. If it benefits you in some way it's a right. If it benefits someone else it's an entitlement.

Dynasoar Was Also Canceled

[RudyHartmann]

Project Dynasoar was nearly complete when they canceled it. It is probably they way we should have been going into LEO. Then we could have started building a nuclear powered VASIMIR. Heck project Orion might have been done by now.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's funniest is that the same Americans who are against taking money from all Americans to help offset health care costs for some other Americans often turn around and scream the loudest about how important it is to take money from all Americans to fund the military and kill innocent civilians half-way around the world.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[c6gunner]

Yet those same Americans will turn around seconds later, and complain about how other Americans have an "entitlement mentality" when these other people want such basic things as affordable (not even "free"!) health care, or even a slight degree of job security.

What differentiates between those ideas that it's okay to feel "entitled" to, versus those that lead to a "entitlement mentality"?

The fact that inalienable rights are things which nobody has to give you - the only reason we even talk about them is because others have tried to take them away. Whereas the "rights" you're talking about inherently depend on someone else. Health care isn't something you're born with, or something you'll find in the middle of a jungle - it's something that requires the labor of another person. You can not have a right which requires someone else to do things for you.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[turgid]

A man after my own heart!

Would you like a tour of my workhouse here in Whitechapel? No able-bodied man over the age of 3 gets gruel rations until he has broken his daily quota of rocks. It's good for their souls! When they have worked off their debt by the age of 21, most thank me for my seemingly unending generosity and are reluctant to leave. Most send their sons and daughters to be brought up in the industrious and humble fashion in which they themselves were moulded.

Next year I am to receive a knighthood.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[pushing-robot]

The one set is free, the other set involves taking my money and giving it to someone else.

Which rights, pray tell, are the "free" ones, that cost no money, effort, or lives to enforce?

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that inalienable rights are things which nobody has to give you - the only reason we even talk about them is because others have tried to take them away. Whereas the "rights" you're talking about inherently depend on someone else. Health care isn't something you're born with, or something you'll find in the middle of a jungle - it's something that requires the labor of another person. You can not have a right which requires someone else to do things for you.

How delightfully theoretical! Our society and economy are definitely not a jungle; and haven't been for at least ten thousand years. Your very existence depends on "the village", which defends your inalienable rights as well as your private property. Back in the jungle there were no inalienable rights; you'd be killed, robbed, enslaved and/or raped by whoever could do it.

Since the whole economy is a man-made game, the society gets to decide how to apportion its fruits. It will always be a compromise between decency, fairness and practicality, and the compromise will evolve over time.

Now that the society can provide universal health-care coverage, it definitely should be considered an inalienable right because the alternative is inhumane.

Re:What is this "entitlement mentality"?

[c6gunner]

Twits/trolls like you are the reason for the first part of my sig, but what the hell:

So there are still millions of Americans who believe that surgical strikes and smart bombs only kill the bad guys and that it's OK to get involved in military adventures for corporate interests.

Fine me ONE. I've tried. They aint there. It doesn't matter how stupid you are, nobody believes that smart bombs only kill bad people. However, apparently idiots do beleive that others believe that.

There isn't anyone quite as stupid as those who think they're smarter than everyone else.