That Other Anniversary

Every space enthusiast seems to have some way of commemorating July 20th, the anniversary of when humans first walked on the surface of the moon. But few seem to mark that other anniversary: December 14, 1972, when humans last walked on the moon. For all of the jubilation on Apollo's success in landing a man on the moon before the decade was out, there is very little introspection on why Apollo gave us a tease of a space-faring future that has yet to come to fruition.

The success of Apollo can be credited to a well-run program packed with technical and management genius, flush with cash from a cold-war defense buildup. Conversely, the end of Apollo can be attributed to a decline in national will to continue the lunar effort, making it impossible to justify the human risk and national expenditures that were required to continue sending humans to the moon. Even after the risk was reduced and the development costs were sunk, a majority of Americans didn't want to keep cranking out Saturn rockets and launching them to further our understanding of our moon.

As NASA again embarks on the Apollo adventure, the questions of how we will sustain the lunar program have not been adequately addressed. If the cold war wasn't justification enough for a nationally-funded effort at sustained lunar missions, what is? I doubt that the use of NASA as a government jobs program can justify it alone. With regards to keeping people on the government payroll, sustained lunar missions don't have much advantage over, say, a sustained earth-orbital program such as the shuttle.

It's difficult to see Project Constellation sustaining itself beyond a few sortie missions, if it even achieves the lunar goal to begin with. Humans will only sustain a presence on the moon if a profit motive exists to do so. It doesn't matter if we're talking about the United States, Russia, China, or any other spacefaring world power. If the economic justification does not exist, the lunar landings will be an unsustainable stunt. Until a profitable reason to put humans on the moon exists, a sustained human presence on the moon will have to wait.

The Shuttle Legacy

When Project Apollo was shut down, the most tragic aspect of it was all of the useful technologies that were lost as tooling was destroyed and experts were reassigned to other programs. The mighty F-1 engine was relegated to museums, ceding the kerosene-engine market to the Russians. The demise of the J-2 engine has led to an expensive development program for the new J-2X that will be used on the Ares launchers. Even the exact formulation and processes for creating the Apollo capsule's ablative heat shield were lost to time, complicating the effort to develop the Orion heat shield.

As the Space Shuttle winds down, it appears that the same mistake is not being repeated, at least not on the same scale. In taking stock of the program's technical accomplishments, many of them are being preserved or leveraged for the Ares and Orion systems. Of the ones being discarded, they have served as lessons for ways that a reusable launch vehicle should not be built.

When NASA transitioned from Saturn to Shuttle, significant propulsion elements had to be re-developed. While Space Shuttle Main Engine owes a lot to the J-2 program, it is a much bigger engine with higher specific impulse and thrust, a more complex staged combustion cycle, and built-in reusability. The solid rockets were a massive undertaking in many ways, eclipsing any solid rocket with flight history up to that point in time.

Some elements of the propulsion system will remain relevant for the Ares generation. The shuttle solid rocket boosters will be leveraged for the boosters on the Ares rockets. While the new boosters are a leap beyond the current SRB, it's not as far of a leap as the original SRB was when compared to its predecessors. Additionally, the shuttle's maneuvering engines are being re-used for Orion. This may be the only element of the shuttle system that is reused with no changes.

For other shuttle developments, they will best serve as lessons learned in the development of equivalent systems. Perhaps the shuttle's most remarkable achievement was its main engines. Nevertheless, the SSME's taught us a lot of the ways not to design an engine for producibility or reliability. The high chamber pressure and staged combustion cycle ensured high performance, but required lots of ground support equipment. Thousands of tiny welded tubes in the nozzle and chamber for cooling? It was state of the art for the 70's, but channel-wall cooling is the preferred method nowadays. The RS-68 benefited from the lessons of SSME, sacrificing specific impulse in favor of producibility. Its gas-generator cycle, lower chamber pressure, and channel-wall chamber with ablative nozzle make for a much cheaper engine. Its only drawbacks when compared to SSME are specific impulse (which can be increased with a redesigned injector and regen-cooled nozzle) and lack of reusability. In fact, a channel-wall nozzle was planned as a shuttle upgrade until the program's 2010 retirement was announced.

At the same time, a lot of the shuttle's pioneering achievements in the field of re-usability are being discarded as dead-ends which taught us how not to build a reusable launcher. Case in point is the shuttle's thermal protection system. While the blankets will likely find use on the cooler surfaces of a future reusable launcher, the other heat shield materials will likely be dismissed. The ceramic tiles still are remarkable, but they form a complex system that is difficult to maintain. Reinforced carbon-carbon had incredible abilities to stand up to high temperatures on the shuttle's nose cap and leading edges, but they were too brittle to reliably ensure safe reentry. A future reusable launcher will likely be a "fluffier" design along the lines of X-33, which can get by using a robust, metallic thermal protection system.

Overall, NASA and the industry are taking a wiser approach to the end of the shuttle program than was taken at the end of Apollo. Many critical technologies are being reused, albeit in expendable rockets. The clear succession from Shuttle to Ares is mainly in the field of propulsion, where breakthroughs during the shuttle's development have reduced the risk for Ares. The enduring challenge from the shuttle program is to learn the correct lessons from the reusability concepts that proved so difficult to implement on the operational shuttle.

"Stages to Saturn" and Lessons from Saturn

I recently finished reading Stages to Saturn, Roger Bilstein's authoritative tome on the development of the Saturn rockets. The book was first written in 1979, with the perspective that Saturn-like rockets would soon be replaced with reusable launchers like the upcoming Shuttle. Perhaps Mr. Bilstein was surprised to see that, by the 2003 edition, his book could again be referenced by the designers of a new generation of launchers.

Philosopher George Santayana has been memorialized for his famous aphorism, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Naturally this begs the question, "How has today's NASA learned from history?" The major lessons from Apollo can be debatable, and NASA's implementation of those lessons is even more open to controversy.

When the Saturn A-I was still on the drawing boards in late 1959, there was debate as to what the upper stage would be. The cluster-tank first stage was already set, but various ICBM's were being eyed to form the second stage. While the Titan I first stage was preferred, it was rejected for numerous reasons (including structural limitations.) In Spring 1960, the Silverstein Committee convinced Wernher von Braun and his team to bite the fiscal bullet and develop an all-new, hydrogen-fueled upper stage.

During the Saturn program, NASA faced opportunities where existing hardware could have been used in a sub-optimal manner, but they instead invested in high-risk, high-payoff technologies that made Saturn a success (particularly the massive F-1 engine and the J-2 engine, which was a major impetus for the development of hydrogen as a rocket fuel.) The Ares rockets are shuttle-flavored, but not exactly shuttle-derived. The existing Shuttle SRB and Space Shuttle Main Engine were rejected because they couldn't meet mission requirements. But it's debatable whether a solid fuel first stage is necessary to begin with.

The Saturn rockets became astounding successes because they had ample development time and budgets. The Saturn program had the luxury of investing in new engines like F-1 and J-2 and all the challenges that accompanied them. By contrast, Ares I is being developed on a shoestring budget until the Shuttle is retired in 2010. The conflicting demand is that Ares I be operational as soon as possible, to minimize the loss of space launch capability between shuttle retirement and Ares I first flight.

Another reason for Saturn's spectacular success was the inherent design conservatism of the team at Marshall who developed the moon rockets. Wernher von Braun was skeptical of the low mass estimates that were given for the Apollo spacecraft and lunar module at the start of the program. He discreetly had his engineers design to much higher performance margins. Sure enough, von Braun was vindicated as spacecraft mass grew, particularly in the lunar module. The structural margins in all of the stages were such that mass could be removed from the S-II stage in order to increase the Saturn V's payload.

In designing Ares I, NASA quickly forgot the guidance of von Braun. The mass budgets for Ares I are so tight that Lockheed Martin was forced to scale back Orion to a "zero base" vehicle and add redundancy back in as vehicle performance improved. While there's still some performance margin, the margin between vehicle performance and payload mass should be much higher at such an early stage in the program's life (currently past Preliminary Design Review, with delta-PDR's remaining on issues like thrust oscillation damping.)

One lesson from the Saturn staging process could have averted the failure of Falcon I Flight 3. During a Saturn launch, the vehicle was allowed to coast for a period of time following stage burnout. When the stages separated, a series of retrorockets would create additional spacing between the upper and lower stages before the upper stage ignited. My guess is that Falcon I's designers omitted the retrorockets to squeeze extra payload mass into the design; the consequence is that some reliability is sacrificed.

The use of common bulkheads was key to Saturn's mass savings on stages 2&3. In both cases, the design of the bulkheads gave the contractors significant manufacturing challenges. Common bulkheads were rejected for the S-IC because of the density difference between liquid oxygen and kerosene (although this didn't stop its use in Atlas.) Because of the temperature difference between hydrogen and oxygen propellants, the bulkhead consisted of two thin skins separated by a precisely-shaped layer of insulation. The segments of the skins had to be welded together from individual gores. NASA and Boeing will hopefully be able to apply the same techniques when manufacturing the common bulkhead for the Ares I upper stages.

A massive program like Saturn cannot survive without effective management. This became an issue during North American Aviation's manufacturing of the S-II stage, and it appeared that NAA was overextended between the S-II and Apollo spacecraft. This becomes a bigger problem for Project Constellation because there are fewer aerospace contractors left who can manage the production of a major component, like the spacecraft or a rocket stage. Will LockMart or Boeing be able to produce the Ares V core in addition to the Orion Spacecraft or Ares I upper stage? What about production of the Earth Departure Stage or Altair lander?

While Project Constellation is fairly young, logistics is a challenge that deserves serious consideration at this stage of the program. Apollo neglected logistics longer than it should have, but innovative solutions were found through the use of river barges and "Pregnant Guppies" for transport of large rocket stages. The logistics problem for Constellation takes on an added dimension because the Ares V core will be the largest rocket stage ever produced. I don't know if NASA has seriously looked into what it will take to produce the Ares V core and transport it from Michoud to the Cape. It's an open question of whether the existing facilities and vehicles are up to the challenge.

Most importantly, the Saturn rockets succeeded because of ample supplies of genius and luck. People like George Low, Werner von Braun, Sam Phillips, and George Mueller were instrumental to the program's success. One of von Braun's biggest virtues was not his own ideas, but his ability to support other people's ideas when they conflicted with his own (ideas like all-up testing and lunar orbit rendezvous.) Many of the leaders in the Apollo effort took large gambles; the biggest gamble of all was all-up testing for Saturn V. The fact that all three stages of Saturn V worked properly on the first launch (Apollo 4) is testament to the geniuses and methodical managers and meticulous technicians who got it correct on the first try. The same could be said about Apollo 8, launched around the moon prior to an earth-orbit test of the Apollo spacecraft aboard the Saturn V. Only time will tell if the same genius is currently at play with NASA.

One small launch for a rocket, one giant leap for newspace

My hat goes off to SpaceX for successfully achieving orbit on the fourth launch of Falcon I. I'm sure a lot of observers of this industry, and a lot of space enthusiasts feel the same way. It's been a rocky road to get to this point, and the road will be even bumpier from here out. But with that being said, this is a brief moment for SpaceX to bask in the glory of achieving orbit with a privately-developed vehicle.

The only concern I have from watching the launch video feed is all of the debris that seemed to hang around the second stage nozzle. With that being said, I thought that separation was much cleaner than on the previous flights.

While Falcon I has found success, Falcon IX will be a much tougher challenge. With nine Merlin engines on the first stage and a single Merlin on stage 2, it's a much more complex vehicle than Falcon I and its pairing of one Merlin with one Kestrel.

Another factor worth considering is the long-term profitability of SpaceX. The Pegasus launcher is case-in-point. Also developed with private funds, the Pegasus program was launched with claims of low cost per each kilogram of payload to orbit. Due to a lack of missions and a low launch rate, Pegasus prices skyrocketed beyond what was initially projected. SpaceX hopes that Falcon IX will have a high flight rate thanks to COTS and space tourism missions. But if these goals aren't met, Falcon IX will turn into little more than another fairly-expensive EELV-class rocket like Delta or Atlas.

With all that being said, today is a very encouraging day. The accomplishments of SpaceX leading up to today's launch may be more important than the other government-funded space stunts of this past week, at least in terms of advancing humanity's permanent presence in space.

Red Scare

As we head into the Beijing Olympics, the event is being widely portrayed as a means for China to enhance its national prestige. The same is generally said about China's manned spaceflight program.

Since 2003, the Shenzhou project has moved at a slow flight rate but has achieved very deliberate goals. The second mission, two years later, introduced a second "taikonaut" into the capsule. The third mission, anticipated for later this year, will probably be China's first spacewalk. It's fair to say that China's manned spaceflight program matches the prowess of the Gemini and Voskhod programs, and is quickly catching up to the early Soyuz.

Beginning in 2010, China intends on launching the first in a series of incrementally-more-capable space modules, leading up to a true space station. Beyond that general plan, China's manned space activities are anybody's guess. While the words "China" and "Moon" are linked together in the minds of many, there has been no stated desire by Chinese officials for a human lunar landing.

In spite of the slow flight rates and unanswered questions, this hasn't stopped American space officials, including Michael Griffin and Richard Gilbrech, from painting a "doom and gloom" picture of a new space race with China, with the moon as the ultimate destination. Even Buzz Aldrin has warned that China will make it to the moon with a human by 2017. The implied message to Americans: keep supporting all the money you're sinking into Project Constellation. We can't let the Reds beat us!

What's so magical about the 2017 date? By 2013, China intends on launching its Long March 5 rocket. Unlike previous Chinese boosters, Long March 5 is a modular family of rockets which use cryogenic propellants. While the first Long March 5 will fly by 2013, it's reasonable to look at 2017 as the year when the heaviest, most powerful member of the Long March 5 family will fly.

In its heaviest variant, Long March 5 will offer similar performance to Delta IV Heavy. That is probably enough to fly a Shenzhou around the moon, similar to the Soviet Zond program. But it's a far cry from putting a human on the lunar surface and returning to earth safely. It serves the Chinese goal of national prestige, but does nothing for the goals of lunar settlement, science and exploitation.

Assuming that a Chinese lunar landing utilizes a heavy-lift rocket (which, NASA assures us, is necessary for going to the moon,) it will take several years to develop. Heavy-lift rockets are very difficult to cloak from foreign intelligence, because the facilities to build and launch these rockets are behemoth. This fact helped the CIA to produce remarkably-close estimates of the Soviet lunar program during the 60's. If China is to attempt a lunar landing by 2017 with a rocket in the mold of Saturn V, they'd better start development soon. But it's unlikely they'd launch such an outlandish program when they're still five years away from flying the relatively-puny Long March 5.

Claims of Chinese lunar prowess are often trumpted up by supporters of Project Constellation. The idea is that we need "Apollo on Steroids" so we can prevent Chinese monopolization of the moon. But there's no reason to believe that a program which molds itself after Apollo will be any less temporal. Apollo had the political will of a genuine Cold War behind it, and it could only manage six lunar missions before it was scrapped. Project Constellation will likely meet the same fate, if Ares V and Altair are funded at all. Even in Red China, the prospect of sustaining a Chinese equivalent to Apollo should be greeted with a large amount of skepticism.

China's manned space program has made some big strides over the last five years, but it is still plodding along at a slow flight rate with uncertain goals for the future. Any claim that China can beat America to the moon should be treated with a large amount of skepticism. The only way that will be reversed is if America insists on a fiscally-unsustainable and politically-unpopular approach to lunar exploration, which kills the American lunar effort and allows China to walk to the finish line.

COTS Parts

In today's The Space Review, Jeff Foust gives an excellent accounting of the COTS program thus far. While it has the potential to give birth to a true commercial market for manned orbital spaceflight, the execution has been uneven.

Some good commentary on COTS can also be found from "Rocket Man" at the "RocketsAndSuch" blog here, here, here, and here. It's definitely worth a read, even if you're not fond of his demonizing of "Emperor" Griffin.

Rocket Man has a good point in noting that NASA is spending COTS money on new rockets that essentially duplicate what we already have. Falcon IX is similar to the under-utilized Atlas V and Delta IV in their single-core versions. Taurus II is a more economical replacement for the Delta II, which will likely be retired by 2012 unless new orders come along. Could COTS move along faster if all of the funds were being spent on capsules instead of rockets? It's not always possible to crash the schedule by throwing more money at the problem, but I suspect that both Dragon and Cygnus capsules could be accelerated to some degree if the funding was present.

NASA's current strategy for COTS D is quite schizophrenic, as Mr. Foust points out. The capability isn't currently funded, even though it will sorely be needed after the shuttle retires in 2010. But let's assume that a manned Dragon flies by 2012. It will only be needed for another three years once Orion comes online in 2015. And Orion will be out of the ISS picture when the US abandons ISS in 2017. Does any of this make sense? COTS D appears to compete with Orion for a market that is very small to begin with. But COTS D only applies to Dragon, since the Cygnus spacecraft bus is probably too small to support a useful manned capsule for the COTS D mission (especially when Taurus II is the booster.)

The most enduring part of Michael Griffin's legacy is likely to be the COTS program, which is currently stimulating two teams attempting to resupply the space station. Eventually COTS may lead to a commercial manned spaceflight program. The opening of the orbital frontier to NewSpace will have a far more enduring legacy than any fiscally-unsustainable push to put humans on the moon by 2020 and establish a base. At the same time, space observers should have justified reservations about whether this effort is likely to succeed.

It Can Happen Here

After reading Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, I am starting to see how his arguments apply to the business of manned spaceflight and space launch. America's space program was born from the Cold War defense establishment, and for the foreseeable future it will remain a "fascist" space program.

Jonah Goldberg points out that most "fascist" societies share common traits: the mobilization of society under "the moral equivalent of war," the "coordination" of government and corporate power, and most importantly, "the religion of the state." All three traits are systemic to America's space program.

The glory days of NASA covered the period from Project Mercury in 1959 through the end of Project Apollo in 1975. As Tom Wolfe wrote in The Right Stuff, every manned spaceflight represented a round of "single combat" with the Soviets. It was the moral equivalent of war. Project Apollo served to mobilize American industry in a way that was surpassed only by the Manhattan Project.

Through Project Apollo, America dealt a severe blow to the Soviet Union in the greater Cold War. But in order to beat the Soviets, America had to become like the Soviet Union and beat them at their own game. Apollo was a crash program with no commercial application or opportunity for private-sector investment. Its goals were largely centered on national pride, or the religion of the state. After appeasing the gods of statolatry, Apollo was allowed to wither and die.

Fascism continues into the shuttle era. In order to justify the enormous expense of the space shuttle borne by the American taxpayers, and to get the flight rate up to levels which would make the vehicle economical, the shuttle was used to launch commercial payloads during its early years. The thought of a government-funded, government-operated vehicle launching commercial payloads should be anathema to freedom-loving Americans. But the shuttle served its need as "the moral equivalent of war." After all, the Russian efforts to duplicate the shuttle capabilities with Energia-Buran helped to bankrupt the Soviet Union. And the shuttle & space station continue to serve as symbols of national pride, promoting the religion of the state.

As the shuttle program winds down, Fascism will survive well into Project Constellation and possibly make its way to the moon again. The Ares-Orion stack is a prime example of "coordination" between the government and an oligarchy of large corporations. Every surviving aerospace giant gets a piece from the pork barrel. The worst offender is ATK, who is being paid hand-over-fist to produce an all-new solid booster that is the cornerstone of a horribly-suboptimized crew launcher. The line separating NASA and ATK grows fuzzier on a daily basis, as figures like Scott Horowitz continue to pass back-and-forth through the revolving door. Even Orbital Sciences gets a big handout in the form of a COTS prize to develop what's supposed to be a commercial launcher, Taurus II. And the official "state religion" within NASA is the dogma of Mike Griffin's "infallible, genius plan" for getting us back to the moon.

I'm not saying that these examples of fascism within the space program are all bad. For instance, the government subsidies of Atlas & Delta, and the eventual merger of their production, were necessary evils for ensuring DoD's continued space access. But unless there is a clear national-defense rationale, it's really hard to justify the continuing fascism within America's space efforts.

The writing is on the wall for the fascist space program. The news coming from Project Constellation is a continuing stream of schedule slips and budget shortfalls. The patience of Congress will not be infinite. At the same time, firms like SpaceX and Bigelow continue to develop not only commercial space vehicles, but commercial applications for said space vehicles. In time, the American space program will transition from fascism to freedom. And while freedom might not get us to the moon in the course of a decade, it can sustain itself much longer than six landings.

Learning the Wrong Lessons

Over the course of this week, America remembers its most visible and most profound space disasters. The sacrifices of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia will not be in vain if we choose to be smart and learn the correct lessons. But the brave astronauts who perished will have done so needlessly if we take the easy way out and embrace the wrong lessons from the tragedies which are seared in our minds.

Apollo 1 was a case where an immature spacecraft was rushed to the launch pad, under poorly-designed test conditions, and after proper quality controls were neglected. While the fire claimed the lives of three prominent astronauts and delayed Project Apollo by approximately 20 months, the result was a dramatically improved spacecraft that brought all of her crews home safely.

The Columbia disaster resulted from a broken safety culture which largely ignored a known defect in the Space Shuttle System: the liberation of ET foam and the risk it posed to the fragile thermal protection system. The reasoning was that because the foam had never caused a problem before, it was not a significant threat to crew safety. Columbia disproved this belief in tragic fashion. Fortunately for the program, NASA management has been judicious in trying to mitigate the shuttle system's inherent design flaw, and even more judicious in assessing damage from the foam strikes that still do occur.

Unfortunately, I think that the correct lessons of Challenger are being buried in the false ones. Challenger demonstrated that the shuttle was a finicky and complex system that could never achieve the fictitious flight rates that were promised at the program's outset.

Moreover, the Challenger disaster was the result of grossly-negligent decisions by middle managers within both NASA and Morton-Thiokol. The flight rules prohibited a launch in the conditions that existed on January 28, 1986. The Thiokol engineers had plenty of evidence to justify the reasoning behind those flight rules. Nevertheless, the launch wasn't stopped by the people who had the power to do the right thing.

When a person's gross negligence results in people getting killed, those people are often sent to jail. When Challenger was lost, nobody went to jail. In fact, NASA was REWARDED for its negligence when Congress funded construction of a replacement orbiter, and when President Reagan and the national leadership supported the continuation of the Space Shuttle Program.

The aftermath of the Challenger disaster is a dramatic example of the difference between the government and the private sector. Government endeavors will continue as long as Congress funds them, regardless of their success or failure. In the private sector, success means generating a profit for the stakeholders. If a private venture fails in that regard, the stakeholders will pull the rug out from under the failing effort. Twenty-two years after Challenger was lost, the American taxpayers still toss roughly $7 billion per year at a manned space program that can't accomplish much more than space station housekeeping and three shuttle flights per year. NASA is still in the business of flying the dangerous and finicky shuttle, and ATK (successor to Morton-Thiokol) is still getting paid hand-over-fist for both the existing SRB's, and for the new solids that will fuel the next generation of big-government pork-launchers.

NASA management's most enduring lesson from Challenger is the flawed mantra of "Crew must be kept separate from cargo." While such flawed logic is enough to trick Congress into funding the development of two very different launchers, it doesn't always hold true. If a launcher can be made safe enough for a human crew, there's no reason why it can't be trusted with carrying a reasonable amount of cargo at the same time.

Additionally, the ESAS architecture could potentially create the same schedule pressures that led to the Challenger launch decision. Because the EDS and lander can only loiter in orbit for 14 days, it creates conditions where NASA management could be tempted to launch the manned Ares I and Orion spacecraft in spite of borderline launch conditions. Managers may be willing to assume more risk if the alternative is throwing away multi-million-dollar hardware that's already in orbit, and missing the launch window for a lunar mission.

As NASA carries out Project Constellation, the agency has no incentives to hold to its schedule, budget, or performance claims as long as Congress funds NASA unconditionally. What the agency really needs is a set of safety and performance benchmarks that must be achieved in order to justify further funding. And if NASA fails to meet those benchmarks, the agency should be thrown under the tires in favor of SpaceX or Scaled Composites (or any other firm with the potential to clear the hurdles of putting humans in orbit.)

While the Challenger disaster fades into becoming a painful memory, its legacy is open to all who choose to seek it. We all have a duty to act in the interests of safety. And when we fail to do so, there should be serious ramifications.

I'm the Man Without a Plan

I am a frequent reader of Mark Whittington's Curmudgeons Corner. There's plenty of things I agree with in his monologues. There's also some things I disagree with. Overall, it's a quality blogging experience. Still, I had to take exception to his characterization of my previous column on what my resolutions for 2008 would be, if I were running the show at NASA.

There is nothing quite so off putting than someone claiming that "Unless you choose my plan, than doom and destruction will ensue." Unless, of course, one can prove it. But, of course, it is not proved. So the above is wasted bandwidth.

I don't think my rhetoric is "hyper heated." I'm asking where we went wrong between President Bush's goal of replacing the shuttle by "no sooner than 2011, and no later than 2014" and the NASA prediction (with 65% confidence) that Orion and Ares won't be operational until 2015. I would like to see NASA get back to the mission it was charged with. Maybe this is an article of faith on my part, but I don't believe that any kind of budget increase is necessary to return to the original goal of 2014 or sooner. I believe that minimizing near-term development to fit within the existing NASA budget (at least until the shuttle retirement) is the way to get it done.

I also will admit that I have no preferred architecture for returning to the moon. There are things I like about EELV's, things I like about evolved EELV's, things I like about DIRECT, and even things I like about ESAS (much to the surprise of my readership.) No architecture will be perfect. What I care most about is delivering a lunar architecture to the American taxpayers which can be sustained within NASA's existing budget, and delivers the best value (most crew-days on the moon) for the money.

I can't "prove" that one architecture is better than the other, or more cost-effective. But I've seen enough of the space business to know that there's much uncertainty that goes into the cost-estimating process and risk analysis process (especially when all-new hardware is being developed.)

What I do know is what the "sand chart" for the NASA budget looks like over the course of Project Constellation. When it was unveiled in early 2004, the "sand chart" showed modest increases in NASA funding for the first five years of the program, followed by only inflationary increases after that. The plan was shot in the foot when NASA's FY07 budget didn't receive the expected increase. This represents a decline in the buying power of the NASA budget as the US dollar loses value. Because the original VSE budget called for funding Project Constellation using money from the retirement of Shuttle and ISS, it means that Constellation will have its growth stunted until two critical events occur: retirement of the shuttle at the end of FY10, and American withdrawal from ISS after FY17. This is a dramatic departure from the days of Apollo, when the development budget was front-loaded to assure sufficient funds early in the program.

In such an environment, it's unlikely that ANY architecture can meet the president's schedule for returning to the moon. That's why I prefer to reuse systems that have already been developed, such as the Delta IV Heavy. DIRECT would seem, on the surface, to minimize development costs. But it's also true that adapting existing systems for new purposes often creates unforeseen challenges.

Admittedly, NASA is being asked to do a lot with a very small amount of money (by US Government standards.) We should keep in mind that there was a six-year gap between Apollo and Shuttle. As long as nearly half the current NASA budget is going to support Shuttle and ISS operations, the development of any new vehicle will be kept on the back burner.

So what is my "plan" to cope with this sobering budget reality?
1) We can either tolerate a gap of five years or more, or we can choose to accelerate the development of the spacecraft at the expense of the launch vehicle. Because we already have an acceptable alternative launcher (Delta IV Heavy,) I do not view this as a big loss.
2) Development of lunar-specific hardware will have to wait until later, when the Shuttle & ISS funding wedges open up. If Ares I development is dropped, the development of a lander or heavy-lift rocket (whether it be Evolved Atlas, Ares V, or DIRECT) can ramp up in FY11. Otherwise, Ares I will ramp up in FY11 at the expense of lunar-specific hardware.

Again, there's nothing technically unworkable about ESAS. But in the face of an unforgiving budget, the initial schedule promises from Summer 2005 are falling apart. The biggest question is whether America is willing to tolerate a gap of five years or more. I, for one, am not.

A New Years' Resolution for NASA

The Year 2008 gives NASA a chance to start again with a clean slate and try to get America's space program back on track. The agency should never forget that the Vision for Space Exploration has been a golden opportunity for the United States to assume a dramatic and bold plan for exploring the solar system. It would seem that the last 2 1/2 years have been spent chasing the ESAS rabbit down the rabbit hole. Whether the ESAS rabbit will find the moon and Mars is a point open to much debate.

Within the halls of Congress, the debate has focused not on the moon and beyond, but on the infamous gap between the end of Space Shuttle operations in 2010 and the beginning of Orion operations in 2015. Congress is justifiably angry that American spaceflight will be held hostage by Vladimir "Person of the Year" Putin during that period of time. If NASA wants to see funding for moon missions, it will first have to please Congress by demonstrating that the gap can be successfully shrunk.

If I were Michael Griffin, my resolution for 2008 would be to reduce the gap at all costs, except for crew safety. NASA needs a full-throttle surge to make up for the time that has been lost since January 2004 in fielding the shuttle's replacement.

The fast-track to a shuttle replacement isn't hard to figure out. Orion is too heavy, Orion is too fault-intolerant, and Ares I is the pacing item. The solution is to delay Ares I indefinitely and mate Orion to the existing Delta IV Heavy. Orion can scale down to 4.5 meters in diameter, and the associated mass savings can be used to restore the fault-tolerance that has been taken out of the spacecraft. Perhaps the landing bags can even come back. The Ares I budget can be spent on modest enhancements to Delta IV Heavy that will trigger the Orion abort tower if the booster should fail.

At this point, if NASA switches to Delta IV, the gap could conceivably shrink by 1-3 years. I'm hardly an expert in this field, and my assumption is that Orion will not be ready until 2013 unless the schedule is crashed with a major infusion of cash and personnel. My guess on Orion's schedule is based on the nearly seven years that elapsed between Apollo contract award and the first manned flight on Apollo 7.

Concurrently with NASA's resolution to make a shrunken gap its top priority, I would like to see NASA re-examine some of the assumptions that were made during ESAS. The most blatant of these trades include:
--Is lunar-orbit rendezvous the best method for supporting a permanent base at the lunar south pole? What are the advantages to L1 or L2 rendezvous?
--What is the baseline design for the Altair lander? Should Altair's functions be split between a habitat lander and a crew lander?
--From a science-return standpoint, what is the optimum number of man-days for a lunar mission? How do we balance the science return of that mission with the engineering challenges of supporting an exorbitant number of man-days?
--What is the lowest-lifecycle approach to launching the elements of the lunar transportation system? Standard EELV's? Evolved Atlas V? DIRECT? Ares V? Some combination of all aforementioned launchers?

It is worth noting that ESAS was a 60-day study that glossed over many of the debates that took up to two years to settle during Project Apollo. Is it too much to ask that NASA take an entire year to re-visit the ESAS assumptions, while the agency's development budget is being used to accelerate Orion and mate it to the Delta IV?

It's worth noting that in the space business, we rarely get more than one shot to get things right. I remember reading about the Space Exploration Initiative in my Weekly Reader back when I was starting grammar school. At the time, I had to scratch my head and ask what was happening when they stopped talking about humans on Mars. As an adult, I was initially excited that we would get another chance with the Vision. But now my tune is starting to resemble "It's All Been Done" by Barenaked Ladies.

The year 2008 represents NASA's last shot at getting the Vision right. Drastic changes need to be adopted in order to ease Congress's justified frustration in the short term. Even more deviations from ESAS will likely be required to make the moon and Mars affordable over the long term. I do not wish ill upon Mike Griffin, Doc Horowitz, Doug Stanley, or anybody else associated with ESAS. I want them to succeed, as much as they want to succeed. I merely ask of them to fix the Vision, and make sure it isn't discarded along with the Weekly Readers and the dreams of American schoolchildren.

Requiem for a Vision

Dennis Wingo has a somewhat lengthy but very good piece in which he dissects the fall of the Vision for Space Exploration. I'm not going to declare the Vision dead and nail up the coffin, but it's clear that the plan is in serious trouble.

The odds of getting Ares I and Orion operational by 2015 (at the earliest) are so low, that Rep. Dave Weldon is sponsoring legislation to keep the shuttle flying. Let's think about that for a second. In 1986, and again in 2003, there have been calls to ground the space shuttle permanently. It's just too dangerous, many pundits claimed. And if routine space access is your goal, then the shuttle IS too dangerous, not to mention expensive. But for Rep. Weldon and other members of Congress, the shuttle represents emplyment for thousands of people in his home district. For the American astronauts, who are willing to take great risks to fulfill the dream of flying in space, the shuttle is the only ticket in town. For American policymakers, the shuttle's continued existance frees us from being politically beholden to the Russians for manned space access.

I disagree with Mr. Wingo (whom I've met in person, and spoken with briefly) on some of the similarities between the Vision for Space Exploration and the Space Exploration Initiative. In the case of SEI, the plan was dead, for all practical purposes, within a year of its announcement on July 20, 1989. The sticker shock from the $450 bil price tag (an unreliable figure, but one that would be spread over thirty years) was enough ammounition for the plan's political opponents. The SEI was also undercut by a lack of support from NASA's administrator, Richard Truly.

With the Vision for Space Exploration, the plan largely flew under the radar for over a year. Sean O'Keefe's NASA commissioned some promising architecture studies from the contractors, but they were not acted upon. Michael Griffin took over as NASA administrator and decisively rolled out an architecture of his own in Summer 2005. The plan, as originally presented in the media, seemed to have the support of the American people. After all, we were told that it would fit within the current funding wedge reserved for the Shuttle and ISS. Even the questions of national priorities, brought to the fore by Hurricane Katrina, couldn't slow the Vision down initially. In spite of the problems that have arisen since the announcement of the ESAS architecture, Michael Griffin can at least take credit for coming up with a plan that has out-lasted its predecessor.

The problem with the Vision is that it's being run in a business-as-usual fashion by the same agency that gave us the Shuttle and ISS. NASA still hasn't gotten past the fact that it will never see Apollo-era budgets. NASA still hasn't accepted that its business is space exploration, not job creation. The agency is still trapped in the shuttle-era, big-government mindset that the government has to design the spacecraft, and the government has to provide transportation to low earth orbit. NASA needs to shift the paradigm and view space launch as a commercial service that can be provided today by commercial vendors. NASA's finite resources should not be squandered in reinventing the mousetrap and coming up with better earth-to-orbit launchers.

On January 14, 2004, President Bush asked NASA to complete the ISS and retire the shuttle by 2010, fly a new manned spacecraft between 2011 and 2014, return to the moon by 2020, and land humans on Mars during the decade after that. The agency is doing its best to complete the ISS by 2010 (although the recent STS-122 delay casts doubt on that goal.) NASA is planning on retiring the shuttle as scheduled, but members of Congress have other ideas.

The goal the agency is focusing on, and the one for which they are taking the most Congressional criticism, is establishing a manned spaceflight capability between 2011 and 2014. It should be noted that Congress has not given NASA the money that was originally budgeted for this goal. But with that being said, NASA has chosen a wasteful and expensive approach that has little (if any) chance of being completed by the originally scheduled date. There's a perfectly-capable launcher available in the form of Delta IV Heavy, but NASA continues (for now) down the route of Ares I and retention of shuttle-program jobs.

The Vision for Space Exploration stands as a monument to government largesse in the face of fiscal austerity. As an agency, NASA still hasn't grasped the need to assume a smaller footprint and contract out more of its work. If Ares I should falter, and America go without a manned spaceflight capability, it will be NASA's inability to evolve that will have doomed it.

Engineering a Spacefaring Society

The goal of Project Constellation is to take humanity to the moon, Mars and beyond. That is a noble step on humanity's drive to spread out beyond the earth, explore the universe, and preserve our society beyond the Earth's inevitable death. But it's also clear that there's a massive gap between Constellation's goals (a small moon base and Mars sortie mission) and our eventual goal of spreading out beyond earth. The end-state is what I like to call a "spacefaring society."

In some ways, I think that Project Constellation ignores the technological needs of a spacefaring society in the name of budgetary and schedule expediency. Transportation to the moon and beyond will be achieved with brute-force, by launching large rockets from the earth. But if Constellation is truly a marathon (rather than a sprint,) it should focus on the long-term development of the essential technologies which will enable human exploration of the solar system.

My "technologies for a spacefaring society" list is nothing new. Many of the all-time great visionaries in the space business have said the same things that I'm saying here. Nonetheless, the admission of things that require development is an admission that humanity is not ready to truly leave the cradle for good.

The following is a list of eight technologies that I feel are essential to human exploration of our own solar system. Rather than a "moon-first" focus, I'm beginning to feel that Constellation should be redirected towards developing these technologies before we return to the moon.

1) Space Nuclear Power
Albeit a controversial technology, portable nuclear reactors have the capability to make bases on the moon and Mars sustainable without being hostage to the sun (or Martian weather.) While they would require periodic replenishment from earth, space surface reactors are the way to truly power long-term human bases on other bodies of our solar system.

2) Large-Scale Electric Propulsion
This is not a prerequisite for lunar travel, but they certainly make for a more fuel-efficient cruise to Mars, asteroids or beyond. Current electric thrusters have put out very tiny amounts of thrust. We need much larger thrusters for human interplanetary missions.

While solar power is a possible power source for electric propulsion units, the large array size needed to drive the electric thrusters would make a spacecraft more vulnerable to micrometeoroid impacts. For human missions, nuclear reactors are the preferred power source for driving electric rockets.

Electric propulsion isn't useful for human travel to the moon due to their low thrust. My preferred lunar transport architecture uses nuclear-thermal rockets. Without losing too much thrust over chemical engines, they offer almost twice the specific impulse of hydrogen-oxygen rockets.

3) Artificial Gravity
While we don't understand everything there is to know about long-term exposure to weightlessness, we've seen enough to realize that zero-G is largely detrimental to the human body. We still don't fully understand what rotation rates the human body can tolerate while subjected to an artificial-G system. We also need lightweight materials that can build strong structures for artificial-G spacecraft. An open question is whether it's better to subject a person to a slow, constant spin on a large-diameter wheel spaceship, or if an astronaut could spend short periods of time in a very fast centrifuge to counteract the effects of weightlessness.

4) On-Orbit Fueling
On-Orbit refueling has so much to offer for spacefaring societies. It allows us to launch massive spacecraft from earth into orbit, as long as those craft are launched with empty propellant tanks and refueled on-orbit. Propellant stocks make for cheap payloads and increase the demand for earth-to-orbit transportation.

Beyond their use in earth orbit, propellant depots on the moon and Mars will enable reusable transportation to ferry astronauts between space transportation hubs and the lunar/Martian surface. Whether it's a space station at EML1/2 or on the Moons of Mars, it will serve as a useful staging ground for landings and for inbound or earthbound astronauts.

5) In-Situ Resource Utilization
The ability to make propellant on the moon or Mars will save the expense of launching so much propellant mass into earth orbit. The Sabatier reaction and electrolysis on Mars can produce methane, oxygen, and water by simply using Martian atmosphere combined with hydrogen feedstock. Future missions can make use of water and other substances we find on the moon and Mars.

If astronauts are to survive with little or no resupply from earth, they will need to adopt a "live off the land" philosophy. Just as the pioneers of the American frontier learned how to be resourceful with the things they found in the lands where they settled, so too will the astronauts who settle the moon, Mars and beyond.

6) Closed-Loop Life Support Systems
Unless astronauts can carry massive amounts of consumables with them for long space voyages, they will need to close the life-support loop. Practially everything will need to be recycled. That even means having to find a way to recycle the astronauts' poop. It's a dirty job, but NASA or somebody will need to develop a "biodome" capable of sustaining life with a minimum of mass that will need to be replaced.

7) Aerobraking & aerocapture
The ability to use the atmosphere of Earth or Mars to brake large payloads will save much propellant mass in an earth-Mars transportation system. It's essentially like getting a free ride, as long as we can build heat shields and guidance systems that can make aerobraking effective.

8) Reliable, routine transport to earth orbit
This is a major sticking point for a lot of the space pundits. Many people can't get past the idea that expendible rockets are so wasteful. But it's also true that reusable launchers are more expensive to develop and more expensive to operate. In the current paradigm, the best way to provide human transportation for earth to orbit is with simple, throwaway rockets and simple capsules.

As we build simpler rockets and capsules that can reliably increase the demand and ability to put humans in orbit, we'll get closer to the launch rates that will make reusable rockets cost-effective. It may take 50 or more launches per year to make economic sense of a reusable spacecraft. That day may not come in my lifetime, but it eventually will come.

My current thinking on reusable launchers is that a scramjet-powered first stage would be required for a manned spaceship. It would need an assist from the upper stage's rocket engines for takeoff, but it would then accelerate to Mach 12 (approximately) before releasing its "spaceliner" upper stage. The scramjet-powered mothership would be capable of airliner-like operations, as opposed to the relatively maintenance-intensive upper stage. In the system I envision, there would actually be fewer motherships than spaceliners in order to meet the demand for spaceflights.

Epilogue--Growing Up in the Cradle
As Tsiolkovsky wrote, "Earth is the cradle of mankind, but man cannot remain in the cradle forever." While his words still ring true today, it's clear to me that we are still mere babies in this wide universe. We're trying to stick our hands out of the cradle, but we just don't have the strength to pull ourselves up and out. We will only grow up when we invest time, money, brainpower, willpower, and patience (most importantly) in the tools that will make us strong enough to rise from the cradle.

Delaying the Vision

Depending on the direction the political winds blow in 2008, Project Constellation may face a delay of the political kind. The armchair astronauts have been wrapped up in debating the technical merits of the program, and the political merits are now open to debate as well. (I have argued about the technical merits from the perspective of what's politically acceptable, favoring cheaper development and lifecycle costs in order to make Constellation invulnerable to budget cuts like Apollo was.)

The way Constellation is structured, there are many forms that a potential delay can take. While many pundits have jumped to the conclusion that "Barack is going to extend the US spaceflight gap to 2020," that's not necessarily the case. There are three possible forms that a five-year delay could take:
1. Delay the development of Orion and Ares I. This is the worst option, as it would delay the shuttle's successor to 2020. It would force America to rely on Russia (possibly China and India too) for manned spaceflight, at least until SpaceX can get Dragon working.
2. Develop Orion as planned and delay the development of Ares rockets and lunar hardware. This option would still see the gap extending into 2013-2015, but would fly Orion on the already-developed Delta IV Heavy. A future president would be able to resurrect the lunar program at a later date, although this would appear to be unlikely.
3. Develop Orion and Ares I, while delaying Ares V and lunar hardware. Let's face it: Ares I is neither safe, simple, nor soon. Its major purpose is to justify the early development of the J-2X engine and five-segment SRB's. If Ares V is delayed, at least some of its major elements will already be in production. If a future administration authorizes Ares V and lunar missions, it will "only" require development of the super-transporters, launch pads, servicing structure, EDS, 10m core, and fairing. At least the post-shuttle gap would not grow under this option.

Now that we've talked about delays, let's talk about the way politics and acquisition work in the real world. In a best-case scenario, we're talking about major cost growth on Project Constellation, once the costs of maintaining Constellation facilities, hardware and personnel during the five idle years is factored in.

The most likely scenario is that a politically-imposed delay of more than a year will probably spell the end of the Project Constellation. When Congress delays a program indefinitely, it's simply a more gentle way of killing it. (Just think of the way Milton is fired in Office Space.) The Navalized F-22 was killed in this fashion, as have many other aerospace projects.

The only aerospace project I can think of to survive a politically-mandated, multi-year delay was the B-1 Lancer. In 1977, President Carter terminated the B-1 production contract but still allowed the B-1 test program to proceed. Candidate Reagan used the B-1 as a campaign issue in the 1980 election, and authorized production of the improved B-1B when he became president the following year. Of course, this was the height of the Cold War, and a program such as the B-1 could be justified on national security grounds. If some future president should try to campaign on resurrecting Project Constellation in the 2012 election, he or she probably wouldn't find too many sympathetic ears.

Downsize This, NASA!

At this juncture in Project Constellation, it's pretty clear that NASA did not pick its current shuttle-heritage architecture because of its performance benefits, and it did not pick it due to low development or operational costs. Instead, the Ares I & V promise to MAXIMIZE operational costs, owing to their inheriting of the "standing army" that was raised to support Apollo and was sustained throughout the Shuttle years.

By the same token, it's clear that the non-use of EELV's (Delta & Atlas) for Project Constellation had nothing to do with performance or economics. Delta and Atlas have already sunk their development costs, and an economy of scale could be achieved if the EELV plant in Decatur AL was cranking out the ~40 cores per year as it was designed to do. The economic case for the EELV's was made on the basis of 1) high flight rates, and 2) low fixed costs with a reduced labor force.

If NASA had adopted an EELV-based architecture, it would represent a shift from a workforce employed by NASA and United Space Alliance, to a workforce employed by United Launch Alliance. And what would become of the Shuttle Standing Army under an EELV-based architecture? While some of them could still work on Project Constellation (particularly the astronaut trainers and the life support technicians,) many of them would likely have to work on another job.

Congress has mandated upon NASA that the agency retain the Shuttle Standing Army to the fullest extent. It would certainly work against the Congressional incumbents, particularly those in Central Florida, if there was an exodus of jobs and the accompanying "brain drain" following the shuttle's retirement.

At the same time, I do not believe that the government has the duty to act as a jobs program, and I do not believe the American taxpayers should fund a standing army when a leaner force can achieve the same result. It may sound heartless, but I could care less if the Shuttle Standing Army was cut loose. The standing army is made up of talented and dedicated individuals who should have no trouble finding other work once the shuttle is finished. Such is the nature of the defense business. Defense contractors and civil servants must always remember that they serve the taxpayer, and there's no obligation for their continued employment after their service is over. The Air Force is letting 40,000 of its own people go during the force-shaping program, but neither Congress nor the American people seem to be concerned over the loss of jobs.

At the same time, an EELV-based architecture need not cut the shuttle workforce loose. While stock EELV's (Atlas V with SRB's, or Delta IV Heavy) are perfectly capable of launching Orion into earth orbit, a growth variant of the EELV's could launch out of LC-39, make use of facilities like the shuttle's Vehicle Assembly Building, and keep the standing army employed. ULA has promoted concepts such as Atlas V Phase 3, which would require a new launch site. One idea is to cluster five Phase 2 cores, while another would use a shuttle-derived core of 27-feet diameter. Doing so would put LC-39 back in business and retain the jobs of most who worked there.

Flags, Footprints, and Splashdowns

In order to fit the lunar-capable Orion spacecraft on the Ares I booster, NASA and Lockheed Martin are cutting a lot of weight. The most recent deletion is the set of airbags that would have enabled Orion landings on terra firma.

So the mismatch between Orion mass and Ares I performance is solved. But what's the price to be paid for this solution? For one thing, an entire carrier battle group will have to be put on notice for each mission, and NASA will have to foot the bill that the US Navy will send its way. If the capsule has to come down in the event of an emergency, the crew had better hope that they don't end up on land by accident; the capsule's lack of airbags and structure will ensure that the astronauts inside will have a very bad day indeed.

Speaking of safety, the change to splashdowns is also allowing NASA and LockMart to bring back storable (but carcinogenic) propellants for the capsule's reaction control system. Hopefully we won't see a repeat of Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, where the Apollo capsule's cabin filled with toxic fumes from the thrusters upon splashdown.

With the costs and operational complexities associated with splashdowns, I think this will be the nail in the coffin for any plans of a moonbase in the 2020 timeframe. I can't foresee launching more than four Orions per year (two to ISS, two to the moon initially) over a sustained period of time if it takes a carrier battle group to retrieve each capsule. Constellation will become just like Apollo: flags and footprints, with little hope of building an infrastructure after the initial sortie missions.

I don't understand why NASA would sacrifice operational flexibility and assume increased operating costs, just so they can avoid admitting that Ares I is a mistake. While the booster may be "safe, simple, and soon," the capsule is sacrificing whatever safety gains are achieved by the booster. I'd prefer that NASA make the capsule as heavy as need be to ensure the safety of the crew, and only then select a booster that can do the job. God forbid that should drive NASA to choose Atlas V Heavy or Jupiter-120.

The Soviets have been landing capsules since 1964, with Voskhod-1. While the US initially chose splashdowns because of the limited capabilities of our early boosters, we should be able to do better by now. Let's leave the splashdowns for turds. Spacecraft should make landings.

Regrets

Two years ago today, I commissioned as an officer in the United States Air Force. By this point in my life, I realize that this was the wrong decision. The military lifestyle is not suited for my natural abilities and aptitudes, and I feel that I am doing the nation a disservice by being here and consuming taxpayer dollars.

I bear half the responsibility for this situation, by not realizing sooner that this life was not suitable for me. I had inklings of this long before I commissioned; I never felt like I fit in with the other cadets. At the same time, I had friends who genuinely cared about me and genuinely thought I could do some good if I stuck with it. Yet I didn't have any mentors to tell me that if I really wanted to be a good engineer (as opposed to being a manager,) I should forget about commissioning in the Air Force, spend my free time learning the computer and machine shop skills I'd need to thrive in the industry, and work on internships during my summers. Then again, I probably wouldn't have had the patience or drive to do any of those things, either.

At the same time, the Air Force has to examine itself and ask how they can let such poor cadets pass through the cracks in the system to get their commissions. The "Kinder, gentler" Air Force is more reluctant to give cadets the boot, although that has changed recently as a result of force-shaping. I don't think the Air Force is very forthcoming in presenting a realistic picture of what the acquisition career fields look like when cadets are going through their training. And for cadets who are on scholarship, the Air Force only grants them one year to change course and leave the ROTC program before the threat of recouping scholarship money comes into play.

I may seem like a dead-ender, but I'm still motivated by the fact that my reputation is tied to my work. If my program is delayed because of something I did (or failed to do,) that weighs very heavily on my conscience. In the end, when beauty and material wealth have escaped us, all we have is our reputations.

Based on listening to me rant, one might get the impression that I was only in this for the scholarship money. While the money was nice, I can honestly say that I used to believe in what I was doing. That changed after about six months on active duty. I realized that my aptitudes were being wasted, and that I'd make a more valuable contribution to society in a different capacity. I don't think that the system ever made an effort to understand me. As much as I tried, I never seemed to understand the system, either.

My hope is that I can serve out the last two years of my commitment without getting my nose any dirtier, and without giving the Air Force an excuse to make me pay my scholarship back. Hopefully I can emerge from this experience a little wiser, and with a little more clarity on what I should be doing with my life.

Why Space Acquisition is Broken

This post promises to be perhaps the most controversial one I've ever made, and it may land me in deep doo-doo. Yet I think the message is so important that it must be said, one way or another.

The full question of why space acquisition is broken is a complex one that can't be summed up merely with the observations of a junior officer. It can't be answered in a short blog posting, either. Yet progress has been made by the mere fact that the Air Force has actually admitted they have a problem here. Then again, problems as big as the SBIRS program are impossible to hide forever.

I think that much of the space acquisition problem lies in an unrealistic belief that space programs can be done quickly and cheaply. Nothing can be further from the truth. Space efforts will always be more challenging than equivalent airborne systems due to the challenges created by the space environment. The key is to employ space systems only in areas where the unique benefits of operating in the space environment can be used to enhance the military's capabilities.

The fact that we live in a pilot-dominated Air Force certainly bodes poorly for the space community. Few in the Air Force question why it took 15 years for the F-22 to progress from prototype stage to Initial Operational Capability, or why each example costs hundreds of millions of dollars, or why the Air Force is cutting 40,000 members of its workforce in order to afford this Cold War relic of a fighter. A space asset with similar development and acquisition challenges as the F-22 would not be given the same amount of leeway.

Most importantly, based on my experiences, our space acquisition efforts have been hampered by politically-driven budgets and schedules that have zero basis in reality. I don't know exactly who sets these unrealistic cost and schedule targets, but the people who are experienced in building and operating space systems know these budgets and schedules are totally bunk.

Cynically, it would seem that the Air Force tells Congress that its space programs will be quick and cheap, so the Congress will release enough money for the Air Force to get its foot in the door and start the program. After the program gains momentum, the Air Force will ask Congress for more money to finish the project. Congress will usually relent, at least a certain number of times, because they don't want to be seen as squashing a militarily-relevant program. Sometimes this cycle is by accident (underestimating the complexity of the program,) and other times it's by design (because Congress would never give its initial approval if they knew what the real cost and schedule would turn out to be.)

The most adverse effect of unrealistic, politically-driven schedules is that contractors will do rush jobs and cut corners with the design in order to meet these cost and schedule targets. I can't blame the contractors one bit; after all, you can't make a chicken salad if you're only given chicken shit to work with. And when the government takes delivery of these unfinished space systems, it faces an important choice: fly it as-is (and risk your satellite turning into an orbiting brick,) or pay the contractor more money and give them more time to fix it. Most people will recognize that it's faster to do things correctly on the first try, rather than messing them up and having to fix them later.

A lot of clear thinking is necessary to solve the space acquisition dilemma. I believe that lower expectations for space aquisition are the first order of business. Next, the Air Force should commit to realistic budgets and schedules that reflect the engineering realities that the integrators and operators will face. Lastly, we need a broad re-think of the role that space plays in the way that the United States wages war. Space assets are inherently expensive, and thay should be employed only when the space environment's unique properties can be employed to great effect on the battlefield. There are plenty of applications where space assets could probably be replaced by unmanned aerial vehicles and lighter-than-air craft. Unless the Air Force takes a critical look at the ways it currently employs its space assets and its future projections, the ossified space paradigm of the present will never be shattered.