Death Sentence for the Hubble?

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:27:57 -0700, in a place far, far away, Charles
Buckley made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

2 mission actually.. you have to count the rescue shuttle as that is
also one taken out of production and has all the ancillary tasks also
assigned..

It says a) fly through through to a given date and b) meet these
criteria on flying. Guess what.. one of those criteria is seriously
compromised when you throw shuttle flights to Hubble in addition to
those already backlogged to ISS. 27 flights. Flight rate of 6 per
year, plus a slippage of a 2 flight cycle to allow for repair and
other supply issues will hit that 2010 date.

If you read between the lines of Chairman Boehlert's opening statement
at the hearing today, it's pretty clear that ISS takes second priority
to ending the Shuttle program in 2010. It also takes second priority
to keeping the Iranians from getting Russian techology.

IOW, ISS doesn't have a lot of support from the chairman. Of course,
neither does Shuttle. And he didn't mention Hubble...

kert wrote:
Charles Buckley wrote:

2005: 3 flights
2006: 6 flights
2007: 6 flights
2008: 6 flights
2009: 6 flights

27 flights. And, even those won't do everything, IIRC.

And, looking at the manifest, they are thinking only 5 a
year.. which effectively means *zero* room for slippage.

Which effectively means that the effort is screwed from the get-go. Ask
any project manager that has led a project longer than couple of weeks.
*zero* error margin projects never have a snowballs chance in hell.

It doesn't much matter, at this point ISS assembly complete
is pretty much fungible within a fairly broad range (mostly
getting the ESA and Japanese modules on orbit and cycling
the crew often enough). If they don't manage to finish off
some of the finer points or orbit this or that piece of
nice-to-have hardware it won't mean much.

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 22:15:52 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: IOW, ISS doesn't have a lot of support from the chairman. Of course,
: neither does Shuttle. And he didn't mention Hubble...

I see Star Wars and SDI are on these people's minds more so than actual
spaceflight.

No, idiot. What's on the chairman's mind is CEV, and getting back to
the moon.

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 15:54:05 -0700, in a place far, far away, Charles
Buckley made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: IOW, ISS doesn't have a lot of support from the chairman. Of course,
: neither does Shuttle. And he didn't mention Hubble...


NASA, in general, is not getting much support from the chairman.

Except you snipped this:

"I am for returning humans to the moon by 2020. I am for moving ahead
prudently but swiftly with the development of a Crew Exploration
Vehicle (CEV) for that purpose. I am for retiring the Space Shuttle as
soon as possible, but under absolutely no circumstances later than
December 31, 2010. I am for a NASA that sees itself as a science
agency, with all of Space Science, Earth Science and Aeronautics
receiving theattention and funding accorded to priority areas. I am
for a NASA that is open to outside ideas from academia and the private
sector..."

He's supporting NASA, and the VSE (and maybe even an increase in the
aeronautics budget). What he's not supporting is ISS, or Shuttle
beyond 2010.

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 16:18:24 -0700, in a place far, far away, Charles
Buckley made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:


Oh. I misread your post as meaning he was all for taking Shuttle to
2010. Heck.. no one wants to see this go past the date he said.

You must not know anyone in Houston. Or Huntsville. Or the Cape...

February 17, 2005
GAO Investigates NASA Under Sean O'Keefe
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- Congress' investigative arm is looking into
Sean O'Keefe's tenure as NASA chief, including whether he misused
government airplanes and went on too many expensive getaways with
underlings, former and current senior NASA officials say.

The focus of the Government Accountability Office investigation is not
fraud, but waste, one of the four NASA officials told The Associated
Press. The four -- two still with NASA, two recently departed -- asked
not to be identified for fear of reprisals. Two said they had been
questioned by the GAO.

A top GAO investigator, George Ogilvie, declined to comment.

O'Keefe said Thursday night that he was unaware of any such
investigation, and that he had checked with NASA's inspector general,
who also knew of no such probe.

He defended his use of government airplanes as a normal, necessary
part of his job and said there were no abuses.

"To the extent there is such a thing under way, it will validate and
confirm that the course of my entire career as a public servant and
financial manager has been responsible, in this circumstance as well
as every other previously," O'Keefe said.

A GAO probe was requested last June by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine,
following testimony at spring hearings about "serious financial
management problems" at NASA. Some of those problems predated
O'Keefe's tenure.

O'Keefe is leaving NASA after three years as the space agency's
administrator and will become chancellor of Louisiana State
University's main campus on Monday. Late Thursday, he held a news
conference on campus to discuss the reported GAO probe.

When they hired him late last year, university officials showered
praise on him for his budget-conscious management skills.

At Thursday's news conference, LSU system president William Jenkins
echoed O'Keefe's comments, saying he too was unaware of any GAO
investigation of O'Keefe.

Earlier, NASA spokesman Glenn Mahone declined to comment, saying it
would not be "proper or appropriate to comment on an ongoing
investigation."

The officials familiar with the investigation told the AP that one
area of interest to the GAO was O'Keefe's costly penchant for
traveling on government airplanes, instead of flying commercially.

As a "basic principle," government employees are asked to use
commercial flights, one of the officials said.

But O'Keefe "never, ever travels without going on a NASA airplane,"
one of a half-dozen small jets the space agency shares with other
agencies, another official said. And to justify the flights, O'Keefe
often would "fill the planes with ballast," the official said -- other
employees who might not have a need to travel.

"A lot of the times, at the last minute, Sean would be looking for
people to put on the plane. We would call it baggage," an official
said.

The officials said another area the GAO is looking into is O'Keefe's
"retreats" with subordinates far from NASA headquarters in Washington,
in contrast to the more sparing practices of his predecessor.

One official said these took place in Monterey, Calif.; at Syracuse
University in upstate New York, where O'Keefe taught; and at a country
club near his Virginia home.

O'Keefe's new job at LSU will pay him $425,000 a year, nearly three
times what he made at NASA.

C. Stewart Slack, chairman of LSU's board of supervisors, said he knew
nothing about the investigation. "Anytime you've got somebody in a
position like that, I'm sure there's somebody who wants to take a shot
at him," Slack said Wednesday.

In requesting the probe, Collins sent a letter to the GAO, saying: "I
am concerned about whether NASA has an effective system of internal
controls in place to prevent fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer
resources."

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 15:54:05 -0700, in a place far, far away, Charles
Buckley made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: IOW, ISS doesn't have a lot of support from the chairman. Of course,
: neither does Shuttle. And he didn't mention Hubble...

NASA, in general, is not getting much support from the chairman.

Except you snipped this:

I am for retiring the Space Shuttle as
soon as possible, but under absolutely no circumstances later than
December 31, 2010.

He's supporting NASA, and the VSE (and maybe even an increase in the
aeronautics budget). What he's not supporting is ISS, or Shuttle
beyond 2010.

He also appears to be bucking for his own chapter in the *next* shuttle
accident investigation report (see CAIB v1, 5.7 and Rogers, Chapter VIII).

--
JRF

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

Rand Simberg wrote:

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 22:15:52 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: IOW, ISS doesn't have a lot of support from the chairman. Of course,
: neither does Shuttle. And he didn't mention Hubble...

I see Star Wars and SDI are on these people's minds more so than actual
spaceflight.

No, idiot. What's on the chairman's mind is CEV, and getting back to
the moon.

If we were anywhere near going back to the moon, we would would have
ten Hubbles up - we would have Hubbles orbiting the moon - we would
have Hubbles at L5 - big Hubbles, little Hubbles, all kinds of Hubbles.

But we don't and we aren't.

Lew Mammel, Jr.

Rand Simberg wrote:

If we were anywhere near going back to the moon, we would would have
ten Hubbles up - we would have Hubbles orbiting the moon - we would
have Hubbles at L5 - big Hubbles, little Hubbles, all kinds of Hubbles.


Ummmmm...OK, I'll bite.

Why?

The reasoning is probably: 'if we were going back to the moon, it would
mean we had much cheaper access to space, which means it would be much easier
to launch and maintain space telescopes'.

The first part of the chain of inference is either suspect or uses a somewhat
different definition of what 'going back to the moon' would mean than what
you or I may have thought (not Apollo redux, but a considerably larger presence).

I'd state things a bit differently: if going back to the moon is not a dead end,
then eventually it'll be easy to have dozens of Hubble-class telescopes
up there (in earth orbit, on the moon, or elsewhere), since the expanding
scope of space activities will have driven down costs.

Paul

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 07:16:26 GMT, in a place far, far away, Lewis
Mammel made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:



Rand Simberg wrote:

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 22:15:52 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: IOW, ISS doesn't have a lot of support from the chairman. Of course,
: neither does Shuttle. And he didn't mention Hubble...

I see Star Wars and SDI are on these people's minds more so than actual
spaceflight.

No, idiot. What's on the chairman's mind is CEV, and getting back to
the moon.

If we were anywhere near going back to the moon, we would would have
ten Hubbles up - we would have Hubbles orbiting the moon - we would
have Hubbles at L5 - big Hubbles, little Hubbles, all kinds of Hubbles.

Ummmmm...OK, I'll bite.

Why?