MSNBC (JimO) - Hubble debate -- a lot of sound and fury

In article 1kFbc.134$ug1.121@newsfe1-win,
"John" wrote:

What about the one about the
americans spending billions on the Freedom/Alpha/ISS whilst the russians
just built 7 Salyuts and a Mir? You must admit that NASA does, on rare
occasion, tend to over think some tasks. And you can't blame that entirely
on congress.

Umm, yes, I can. Congress challenged, cut, manipulated and mangled
NASA's budget so severely - specifically on Space Station Freedom issues
and led by Congress members from states NOT getting a major piece of the
pie - so as to render Boeing's winning Phase B proposal barely
recognizable by the end of the Work Package 1 Critical Design Review.
SSF circa 1993 was very different than SSF circa 1989. I was part of
the Boeing design team.

Were you involved, in any conceivable way, with the space station
program in those days, to speak with such authority?

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
Columbia Loss FAQ:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote ...
Were you involved, in any conceivable way, with the space station
program in those days, to speak with such authority?

Don't misquote me. I was referring to NASA operations in general, rather
than any specific problem or project.

But if you want to talk about the station, was it really Congress's idea to
make one big super-station that would be the dream answer for all scientists
and engineers who wanted to study everything to do with space?

Is Congress really to blame for NASA's illogical obsession with space
planes? SSTOs and TSTOs are much better odds for reusable launch vehicles.
Yet NASA seems to ignore these completely. It shut down the delta-clipper
project. Was this under pressure from Congress?

As I understand it Hubble was always intended to be serviced periodically,
yet there seems no easy way to physically grab it. Was making the hubble so
difficult to service that NASA would have to dump it in the sea a secret
Congressional conspiracy all along?

Yes Congress has done a lot of damage, and some of the blame can be laid at
the feet of the USAF. But NASA still has done some pretty silly things over
it's existance. And it really should take the fall for some of them.

John

In article 0kTbc.167$ox4.68@newsfe1-win,
"John" wrote:

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote ...
Were you involved, in any conceivable way, with the space station
program in those days, to speak with such authority?

Don't misquote me. I was referring to NASA operations in general, rather
than any specific problem or project.

I didn't misquote you at all. The part of *my* message that *you*
trimmed included the specific comment wrt to SSF that *you* wrote. My
comments were directed entirely at that phrase of yours, however
throwaway or off-hand you intended it to be.

But if you want to talk about the station, was it really Congress's idea to
make one big super-station that would be the dream answer for all scientists
and engineers who wanted to study everything to do with space?

Had SSF been fully-funded and built as intended at the end of phase B
(with a closed-loop ECLSS, 8-person crew, a MTFF, a dedicated centrifuge
module, etc.), it would have be much more capable of fulfilling both its
engineering and its scientific goals.

Is Congress really to blame for NASA's illogical obsession with space
planes? SSTOs and TSTOs are much better odds for reusable launch vehicles.
Yet NASA seems to ignore these completely. It shut down the delta-clipper
project. Was this under pressure from Congress?

Off-topic for my post. I wasn't commenting on any of that.

As I understand it Hubble was always intended to be serviced periodically,
yet there seems no easy way to physically grab it. Was making the hubble so
difficult to service that NASA would have to dump it in the sea a secret
Congressional conspiracy all along?

Are you *trying* to be a troll? Hubble was intended to be serviced
periodically by a visiting crew in a Shuttle orbiter equipped with an
RMS. It has grapple fixtures appropriate to this design. It was *not*
designed to be grabbed and tugged about by some still-hypothetical OTV
or deorbit module.

Yes Congress has done a lot of damage, and some of the blame can be laid at
the feet of the USAF. But NASA still has done some pretty silly things over
it's existance. And it really should take the fall for some of them.

No one has said otherwise. And it's *still* off-topic and outside the
scope of my post, which was directed at your ignorant comment re SSF.

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
Columbia Loss FAQ:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

"John" wrote in
news:0kTbc.167$ox4.68@newsfe1-win:

Is Congress really to blame for NASA's illogical obsession with space
planes? SSTOs and TSTOs are much better odds for reusable launch
vehicles. Yet NASA seems to ignore these completely. It shut down the
delta-clipper project. Was this under pressure from Congress?

Indirectly, yes. NASA took over DC-XA when SDIO cancelled it. When it came
time for the next phase, which would have been DC-Y. NASA re-competed the
contract under the name X-33 rather than sole-sourcing it to MDAC.
Procurement law sets out specific circumstances under which sole-sourcing
is allowed (small contracts or lack of other suppliers in the market), and
the circumstances of DC-X did not fit: the contract was too large and there
were other suppliers in the market. Had NASA sole-sourced it anyway, it
would have invited legal challenges from other potential suppliers and a
lot of scrutiny from Congress. MDAC bid on the re-competed contract but
lost to LockMart. We can debate the relative merits of the X-33 competitors
(personally I preferred MDAC and Rockwell's designs over LockMart's), but
not the necessity of re-competing the contract.

As I understand it Hubble was always intended to be serviced
periodically, yet there seems no easy way to physically grab it.

You misunderstood. HST is quite easy for a trained human to grab with the
RMS. That is because HST's capture aids are all visual, and the human eye-
brain combination is highly evolved to make sense out of visual patterns.
All existing automated rendezvous/capture solutions require that the target
have aids for machine sensors (RF, laser, etc). HST was not designed to be
easy for a machine to grab because all HST servicing missions were to be
done with the space shuttle. It is not impossible to design a machine-
vision system to cope with this, but it is seriously pushing the envelope
of the current state-of-the art.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

On Sun, 4 Apr 2004 13:40:43 +0100, in a place far, far away, "John"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote ...
Were you involved, in any conceivable way, with the space station
program in those days, to speak with such authority?

Don't misquote me. I was referring to NASA operations in general, rather
than any specific problem or project.

But if you want to talk about the station, was it really Congress's idea to
make one big super-station that would be the dream answer for all scientists
and engineers who wanted to study everything to do with space?

It was Congress' idea that they would only fund one station. Once
that became clear, politically it made sense to make it do everything
to garner as much political support for it as possible (the same thing
that happened to Shuttle). This is why govenment space programs are a
bad idea, if your goal is accomplishment in space, as opposed to jobs.

Is Congress really to blame for NASA's illogical obsession with space
planes? SSTOs and TSTOs are much better odds for reusable launch vehicles.
Yet NASA seems to ignore these completely. It shut down the delta-clipper
project. Was this under pressure from Congress?

In the sense that NASA can only do what Congress funds it to do.
There was no appropriation for a follow-on to the Delta Clipper
program (other than X-33, of course, but NASA chose the Lockmart
design instead).

NASA still has done some pretty silly things over
it's existance. And it really should take the fall for some of them.

Few would dispute that.

On 04 Apr 2004 16:06:04 GMT, "Jorge R. Frank"
wrote:

Indirectly, yes. NASA took over DC-XA when SDIO cancelled it. When it came
time for the next phase, which would have been DC-Y. NASA re-competed the
contract under the name X-33 rather than sole-sourcing it to MDAC.
Procurement law sets out specific circumstances under which sole-sourcing
is allowed (small contracts or lack of other suppliers in the market), and
the circumstances of DC-X did not fit: the contract was too large and there
were other suppliers in the market. Had NASA sole-sourced it anyway, it
would have invited legal challenges from other potential suppliers and a
lot of scrutiny from Congress. MDAC bid on the re-competed contract but
lost to LockMart. We can debate the relative merits of the X-33 competitors
(personally I preferred MDAC and Rockwell's designs over LockMart's), but
not the necessity of re-competing the contract.

The X-33 RFP called for an _innovative_ vehicle, but the MDAC bid the
DC-Y and RI bid what was essentially a modernized Orbiter. Nothing
new in either of them. At least Lockheed-Martin bid something
innovative, with the aerospike engine on a lifting body. It deserved
to win and the other two didn't.

When NASA (or any other government agency) wants a specific company or
specific proposal to win the competitive bid process, it writes the
RFP to be sure that happens. It doesn't specify "innovative" for a
warmed-over SDIO concept or an Orbiter retread.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

On Mon, 05 Apr 2004 07:49:37 -0700, in a place far, far away, Mary
Shafer made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

The X-33 RFP called for an _innovative_ vehicle, but the MDAC bid the
DC-Y and RI bid what was essentially a modernized Orbiter. Nothing
new in either of them. At least Lockheed-Martin bid something
innovative, with the aerospike engine on a lifting body. It deserved
to win and the other two didn't.

The goal wasn't just to be innovative--it was also to come up with
something that offered promise of reducing costs of launch, and having
a business plan to implement it. NASA fell in love with the
technology for technology's sake, and ignored the practical aspects.

When NASA (or any other government agency) wants a specific company or
specific proposal to win the competitive bid process, it writes the
RFP to be sure that happens. It doesn't specify "innovative" for a
warmed-over SDIO concept or an Orbiter retread.

Any SSTO concept would be innovative, Mary, and all three contractors
submitted one.

Mary Shafer writes:
The X-33 RFP called for an _innovative_ vehicle, but the MDAC bid the
DC-Y and RI bid what was essentially a modernized Orbiter. Nothing
new in either of them. At least Lockheed-Martin bid something
innovative, with the aerospike engine on a lifting body. It deserved
to win and the other two didn't.

If your only metric is innovation. Unfortunately, when you have a
fixed budget (which X-33 essentially had), there is an inverse
relationship between innovation and successfully completing a flight
test program. In other words, the entire program was shut down before
all of the bugs could be worked out in the innovative areas.

When NASA (or any other government agency) wants a specific company or
specific proposal to win the competitive bid process, it writes the
RFP to be sure that happens. It doesn't specify "innovative" for a
warmed-over SDIO concept or an Orbiter retread.

Innovative gets specified when there is more of a desire to play in a
technological sandbox than there is to do real work towards lowering
the costs of access to space.

In the end, NASA's official position is that X-33 failed because we do
not yet have the technology to produce a workable SSTO. In the end,
this program did more harm than good, especially when NASA refuses to
admit any guilt as it relates to the program's failure.

If DC-Y wasn't innovative, I'd like to know if you think DC-X was
innovative.

Jeff
--
Remove "no" and "spam" from email address to reply.
If it says "This is not spam!", it's surely a lie.

On 05 Apr 2004 14:59:15 -0400, jeff findley
wrote:

Mary Shafer writes:
The X-33 RFP called for an _innovative_ vehicle, but the MDAC bid the
DC-Y and RI bid what was essentially a modernized Orbiter. Nothing
new in either of them. At least Lockheed-Martin bid something
innovative, with the aerospike engine on a lifting body. It deserved
to win and the other two didn't.

If your only metric is innovation. Unfortunately, when you have a
fixed budget (which X-33 essentially had), there is an inverse
relationship between innovation and successfully completing a flight
test program. In other words, the entire program was shut down before
all of the bugs could be worked out in the innovative areas.

That's not inevitable, though. "Innovative" is not an excuse for
throwing money down a rat hole.

Have you noticed that we have opposing metaphors here? Throwing good
money after bad versus in for a penny, in for a pound, for example.

When NASA (or any other government agency) wants a specific company or
specific proposal to win the competitive bid process, it writes the
RFP to be sure that happens. It doesn't specify "innovative" for a
warmed-over SDIO concept or an Orbiter retread.

Innovative gets specified when there is more of a desire to play in a
technological sandbox than there is to do real work towards lowering
the costs of access to space.

That's not part of NASA's charter for X-vehicles. X-vehicles are
flown to explore new flight regimes or get new flight data or
demonstrate new technology. The X-29 wasn't built to demonstrate
cheaper access to flight, for example, although a lot of it was COTS,
like the F-16 landing gear and the F-5 cockpits and forebodies.

In the end, NASA's official position is that X-33 failed because we do
not yet have the technology to produce a workable SSTO. In the end,
this program did more harm than good, especially when NASA refuses to
admit any guilt as it relates to the program's failure.

I personally don't think we ever will have that technology because I
think the physics are against it. It was an X-vehicle, though, so
failure is an option. I just wish it had come later in the program.

If DC-Y wasn't innovative, I'd like to know if you think DC-X was
innovative.

I thought it was very innovative, from the day I went to the early
team meeting long before the program was formalized. I would have
liked to have worked on it, not just advised at the beginning.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

On Mon, 05 Apr 2004 12:52:07 -0700, in a place far, far away, Mary
Shafer made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

Innovative gets specified when there is more of a desire to play in a
technological sandbox than there is to do real work towards lowering
the costs of access to space.

That's not part of NASA's charter for X-vehicles.

It was for that particular one. At least that's what the CAN said. I
think you're confusing X-33 with well-conceived and managed X
programs.

In the end, NASA's official position is that X-33 failed because we do
not yet have the technology to produce a workable SSTO. In the end,
this program did more harm than good, especially when NASA refuses to
admit any guilt as it relates to the program's failure.

I personally don't think we ever will have that technology because I
think the physics are against it. It was an X-vehicle, though, so
failure is an option. I just wish it had come later in the program.

I don't know what you mean by "that technology." If you mean the
technologies (and one of the problems with the program was trying to
insert to many into a single program) in the X-33, none of them were
necessary for low-cost launchers, regardless of Marshall spin.

If by "that technology," you mean the technology needed for low-cost
space transports, we already have it (though SSTO is disputable)--we
have just never funded an implementation of it.