Management, mandate, and manned spaceflight

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
You are going to bizarre lengths to defend a NASA director
No, you are going to bizarre lengths to attack him, saying that if
he'd only surfed the web more, he'd have done a better job...

No, I think that he was long aware of basic facts that you said that he
can't be expected to know, for example the flights in which the shuttle
almost crashed. I think that he might have done a better job if he
had acted on known safety warnings. Merely interviewing the Navy about
safety is not enough.

who is not an engineer,
The (arguably) best NASA administrator (Webb) was not an engineer.
Being an engineer is not a job requirement, despite your attempt to
make it one ad hoc.

I agree with your stance on this now. It was you who argued that John
Pike has no authority to be quoted in Wired on launch costs because
he's not an engineer or "even" a physicist. Well, thank goodness that
O'Keefe was appointed as NASA administrator rather than interviewed
by Wired!

He was doing what he was hired to do. If you have a complaint about
"lack of vision" and "status quo" go complain to the White House.

Well that does seem to lie behind this dispute. Personally I think that
NASA manned spaceflight needs a Dr. Kevorkian rather than a visionary.
Having a bean counter handle a shuttle crash could be as close as you can
get to that. So I don't mind O'Keefe. However, many other people seemed
to be really annoyed with Dan Goldin, for one, for his lack of vision for
manned spaceflight. I'm just wondering where all of these critics went
now that NASA is run by a self-described bean counter. Maybe they have
trouble believing that the Bush Administration doesn't care about space
flight.

Your laying all of the blame of the program at the feet of an
individual who's only been on the job for a couple years is absurd.

No, not *all* of the blame. I would only assign him *some* blame
for lack of commitment to safety. And since when is "a couple of years"
a grace period? The average term of a NASA administrator is
only four years.



--
/\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
/ \
\ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
\/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 18:59:23 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Greg Kuperberg) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
The blow to the program was from the loss of Challenger and Columbia,
and the long down time that those losses entailed, not the loss of
their crews. The latter is a blow only to their friends and families
(though it's certainly one harder to bear, for them).

I half agree with this. The loss of the two shuttles is ultimately
the greater concern. However, the celebrity status of the astronauts
largely drives NASA manned spaceflight.

One of the many ill effects of a NASA manned spaceflight program.

For that matter, violent death tends to scare away space tourists as well.

Not at this stage. Not enough to matter.

In fact, while I'm not glad it happened, I do think that the Columbia
loss was a blessing in disguise for the nascent industry. People are
finally realizing that NASA has feet of clay, and no longer inclined
to take their opinion as seriously any more. I don't know whether it
would have happened anyway, but the investment climate for such
ventures has seen a dramatic improvement in the past few months.

--
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interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

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In article ,
(Greg Kuperberg) wrote:

The real problem is that the shuttle is not safe for astronauts and
never will be. Granted, bad management is the immediate cause of that.
But behind bad management lies a bad mandate, namely, the mandate
of manned spaceflight.

That's a good mandate, not a bad one.

The Shuttle is a reasonably good vehicle, though it suffers both from
age and from being designed by committee.

But there is nothing inherently dangerous about manned spaceflight --
many more people were killed in the early history of aviation (or even
in the last couple of plane accidents) than have yet been killed in
space. Of course, our tolerance for loss of life is much lower now than
it was in the early 20th century, and our mass media is much swifter.

A manager with a good mandate may be good or
bad; a manager with a bad mandate is going to look bad no matter what.
It is a fantasy of public opinion that space travel is kind-of like air
travel and kind-of like continental exploration. (For most people it's
not even strongly held opinion, just ill-informed.) It's actually more
like ocean-floor exploration, which by common sense is almost entirely
done by remote control.

If the purpose were exploration, then sure. But that's not the purpose.





It's learning to work and live in space, so that eventually large parts
of the population can live and work there. The best way to do that is
to do it -- remotes aren't much help.

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On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 13:00:56 GMT, Joann Evans
wrote:

Cardman wrote:

If you want low-life to ride your space craft, then I only hope that
you ride along with them.

Those willing to take informed risk = low lifes?

Rand wants to do space at all costs, where he is fully happy to use
people and kill them to get his way.

One hopes that's not what you're implying.

No I am implying that no respectable person who values their life
would ride Rand's rockets, which is why the only people who will do so
are the desperate and the odd ones.

Remember the concept of 'test pilot?'

Yes, where Rand would say "Get in that rocket or I will find someone
else. And yes I don't care if it has a poor safety record",

Then when it blows up Rand would go "next!".

Now of course, the shutle is allegedly an 'operational' vehicle,

And still a test model I recall.

but
even limiting it to systems like the rocket powered X-Planes (because
even the first guy to put daylight under the wheels of a 747 was still a
test pilot), we the public accepted that there was a signifigant risk in
what they did. So did they. Most are still around (Chuck Yeager being
the best known example.) I'll ride with low-lifes like that, any day....

You missed my point, when if you read Rand's other postings you will
notice a pattern.

The respect for the risk-taker is highly dependednt on the goal.

Exactly my point, when if you have to kill some people, then it had
better be for a damned good cause.

I don't have much for the mere masochists you describe.

Welcome to Rand's astronaut training programme...

Maybe he can get some criminals on board, when murders would ride
Rand's rockets if given the option of release after the flight.

Well anyway Rand won't get far if he does not respect his pilots
instead to lining them up to be killed in his space or bust plan.

On the other hand 14 people dead for rather lame trips to orbit seems
like 14 lives too many to me.

Which is an argument for a better vehicle. We *all* admit this one
is too fragile

I personally do not have a problem in this area, when both disasters
were due to a combination of bad design and poor management.

Technically the Shuttle has never failed.

and expensive.

That is the key problem.

There's plenty to do in LEO,

Rubbish. LEO is empty. No resources to exploit.

The only worthwhile thing you can do with LEO is to put the public
there, when then you can get into the service industry.

London. Paris, Rome, New York and LEO.

and flight there *should* have been reliable, cheaper

Yes.

and mundane by now,

No. Soon, but not yet.

so those of a lower risk-taking inclination can apply.

Well NASA is not exactly hot on human space exploration at this time,
when back in 1972 people would not have believed you had you said that
no astronaut would have walked on the Moon since, or even Mars by now.

But trust me, someone, clearly not you, but with arguments like
yours, will appear when the first crewmember dies even on a 'cutting
edge' mission somewhere beyond Earth orbit. (And inevitably they will.)

Going beyond orbit would be good and worth some risks.

They'll not see the same risk/benefit ration you do, even in that
scenario.

Well I expect many of NASA's astronauts these days are there for the
view and to be called "astronaut".

I know the risks of the Shuttle and I would be willing to ride it
myself, had that been an option, but it is a awfully close choice,
when one of the next 50 odd flights won't be coming back.

(And they may well be soomeone who prefers all-unmanned deep
space exploration....

They can only do half the work.

then, of course, will be those [and there are
plenty today] who don't see the value of spending money on *that*
endavour, even in the total absence of risk to life.

Maybe because they do not believe in space.

Note that when a
probe fails, the news stories *always* state the cost of the mission.)

Naturally, but I quickly forget that number and get annoyed that it
will be another couple of years before we see the nice pictures and
the science data.

The MERs cost $800 million by the way. Money well spent in my view,
when a successful mission will provide some very impressive results.

I am quite looking forwards to that varying terrain.

And hey even the Mars Express could find life...

Cardman.

"LooseChanj" wrote in message

I fail to see his point in adressing me, I've had his Maxson ass
killfiled from the day he returned.

It's simple your response was worse than his. Limiting your post to SSH is
a bit cowardly as well. You two embarassed yourselves and don't even
realize that you did so.

Oops corrected group posting deleted by looschanj.

--

Daniel
Mount Charleston, not Charleston, SC

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 16:31:29 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 07:34:30 +0100, in a place far, far away, Cardman
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 04:14:36 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

Who cares?

Do you want the long or the short list?

There are plenty more where they came from. No one's
holding a gun to their head to make them be astronauts.

There are also people out there who want to be killed and eaten by
others, rapists, murders, etc, etc.

If you want low-life to ride your space craft, then I only hope that
you ride along with them.

That is an absurd interpretation of what I said.

I never mentioned what you said...

And my words certainly stand on there own, when if your response to if
one of your virtual astronauts died was "who cares?" (as mentioned
above) then so would your astronauts soon stop respecting you.

Should that go on, then certainly you will find that people won't want
to work for you any more, which limits your choices considerably.

Are you really comparing dedicated and competent people who want to go
into space to murderers and rapists?

No, but you can send murders and rapists into space as well.

Low-life attracts low-life.

Cardman.

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 05:35:22 +0100, in a place far, far away, Cardman
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

If you want low-life to ride your space craft, then I only hope that
you ride along with them.

That is an absurd interpretation of what I said.

I never mentioned what you said...

Then everything else you say is irrelevant to the topic.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
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On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 13:34:47 +0200, in a place far, far away, Jan C.
Vorbrüggen made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

One in 999 is what NASA is shooting for in the next
generation space shuttle. That is a far cry from the joke set for the
current orbiter fleet which was about one in a million.

Do you have any cite for that nonsense?

If you mean the last sentence of his paragraph with "that nonsense", that's
straight from Feynman's appendix to the Commission Report, I would think.

Without seeing an actual quote in context, I can't address that, but
I've never known anyone in the industry (at least, anyone who was
knowledgable) who believed any such number, as either a requirement or
reality.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
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Jan C. Vorbrüggen wrote in
:

One in 999 is what NASA is shooting for in the next
generation space shuttle. That is a far cry from the joke set for
the current orbiter fleet which was about one in a million.

Do you have any cite for that nonsense?

If you mean the last sentence of his paragraph with "that nonsense",
that's straight from Feynman's appendix to the Commission Report, I
would think.

And then he (Daniel) exaggerated it by a factor of ten before passing it on
to us:

http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm

"It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the
probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The
estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000."
--
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On 28 Jul 2003 15:14:23 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Jorge R.
Frank" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

Jan C. Vorbrüggen wrote in
:

One in 999 is what NASA is shooting for in the next
generation space shuttle. That is a far cry from the joke set for
the current orbiter fleet which was about one in a million.

Do you have any cite for that nonsense?

If you mean the last sentence of his paragraph with "that nonsense",
that's straight from Feynman's appendix to the Commission Report, I
would think.

And then he (Daniel) exaggerated it by a factor of ten before passing it on
to us:

http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm

"It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the
probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The
estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000."

Even without that inflation factor, I have trouble seeing how some
unnamed person's opinion translates into "set for the orbiter fleet,"
which I would take to mean either a reliability estimate or a system
requirement.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
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