I hear ya... Soyuz IS small; it wasn't built for comfort... it wasn't built for three, either, although they've modified it since the old days so they can get three in pressure suits in there... I'm not going up in space either... I wouldn't fit (not with anybody else in the capsuel anyway! LOL It's heck being a fatboy... oh well...



ISS was built the way it was TO GIVE SHUTTLE A REASON TO EXIST... shuttle was absolutely pointless without a station by the 90's... After Challenger proved that sending a complex manned spacecraft to do routine satellite deliveries to orbit that could be done better and cheaper with expendable rockets costing a fraction as much, and not endangering a crew's life in the process for no good reason, and once it'd been proven shuttle had NO CHANCE of EVER meeting the cost and flightrate expectations set for it and used to justify it from the beginning, and once it was proven that the concept that shuttle could provide a valuable service in retrieving and repairing or bringing back to Earth for repair commercial satellites ( a service that essentially NOBODY wanted) shuttle was really left without a reason to exist... enter 2 things-- "space manufacturing and research" and "the space station". Shuttle was originally sold as THE space truck to build large space stations and keep it resupplied and crewed with payloads, modules, equipment, supplies, and personnel launched frequently and cheaply from Earth... and that demand for such a station and its successors would be in high demand once it was available and provided a massive opportunity for commercial research and production of 'space alloys', "space medicine", and other such commercial opportunities in LEO... as it turned out, it didn't work out that way. In the late 80's and 90's, NASA tried the "space research and manufacturing" angle to justify shuttle and interest commercial companies in using shuttle for research into materials and drugs, primarily, eventually leading to "man tended" orbital research platforms and manufacturing platforms, all serviced by shuttles. Nobody was interested... Despite NASA's best sales job, commercial industry rapidly saw that the costs and overhead involved would RAPIDLY make any possible "miracle products" they produced in orbit be SO expensive that terrestrially produced competitors, even if they couldn't do the job as well (or possibly at all) would be chosen simply because of costs... Does no good to manufacture a "miracle product" if NOBODY can afford to buy it or are willing to spend the money on it... This tided NASA over until the Space Station Freedom went through its birth pains and finally morphed into ISS as we know it today, which gave the shuttle a reason to exist besides flying up there and orbiting for two weeks taking pee and blood samples and watching how fruit flies mate in zero gee...

Of course the fact that ISS could have been built using larger modules designed for launch on ELV's and without the expensive and mass-limited shuttle using dozens and dozens of expensive manned flights to accomplish what unmanned rockets could have done cheaper was never even entertained... it flew in the face of the "need" to provide the shuttle with something to do-- a reason to exist. Hence, why we ended up with the mess that ISS is... a huge, expensive boondoggle, just like shuttle, incapable of producing the results set for it, and providing the "research opportunities" that commercial industry had already turned their back on before and largely have again... simply due to COSTS... NASA of course cannot and WILL not admit that...



Yes, I know that... the amount of cargo it can carry is fairly unimportant... (SIZE of the cargo it can carry is a more important metric... after all, it's much cheaper to fly four Progresses to deliver the same amount of supplies as it is one ATV...) More to the point, though, ATV is STILL INCAPABLE of replacing Progress... ATV is NOT a propellant tanker... while it can provide reboost capabilities via it's built-in propulsion systems, it cannot do that indefinitely... once its propellant is exhausted, it's useless... and ATV is NOT designed to be a tanker to carry propellants to the station's service module... it would have to be redesigned for that. IF Progress wasn't a tanker, it too would have MUCH more room for payload (but would require a second orbital module for pressurized cargo space, or a Soyuz descent apparatus (obviously not equipped with a heat shield so it would burn up in the atmosphere for trash disposal, or equipped with a heat shield if downmass and landing of equipment or experiments flown on the station WAS desired-- it is evident no such capability is warranted, since such a vehicle has never been developed by the Russians... and SpaceX's Dragon's downmass capability was designed into it more as an afterthought since it was designed from day one as a future crew transport, requiring reentry and landing capability... just as shuttle's downmass went largely unused and there was VERY little compelling reason to need or want it.) Progress is STILL the only space-tanker capable of independent operation and autonomous docking and propellant transfer in orbit that has ever been built, period...



Yes, I'm aware of that too, but again, it's just a basic "tang, T-shirts, and toilet paper" hauler... it's not a tanker and cannot keep the service module supplied with reboost propellants.

Dragon provides some interesting capabilities since it alone can provide downmass back to Earth, but there has been little reason beyond demonstrating the capabilities to do so... IF SpaceX plays their cards right, Dragon will become the basis for a successful commercial crew transport. If not, well, we'll be thumbing rides from the Russians for a LONG time... perhaps CST-100 or Dreamchaser will come through... but they're not a sure thing either... and Orion and SLS are still nearly a decade from even being in the test flight stage, (well, Orion is a little further ahead than that, but has no rocket to carry it due to the Constellation fiasco-- SLS is just in the starting gate, essentially). At any rate, Orion and SLS, assuming they're ever actually built, will be FAR too expensive to use as a mere LEO crew transport... and sans a destination elsewhere and the committment to go to it, I don't particularly see a bright future for Orion or SLS... both are likely to be cancelled at some point due to costs and lack of a clear, affordable mission... IMHO... The President isn't interested in returning to the Moon, Congress isn't interested in anything but spending money on the right centers and contractors, and NASA isn't really interested in going to an asteroid or to the Moon... they want to go to Mars in a gold-plated Bentley but they won't admit the money will NEVER be there for that in the foreseeable future... so looks like we'll be going NOWHERE, VERY EXPENSIVELY, for a LONG, LONG time to come... ISS will still be there, and despite the non-interest from commercial industry for space research, they'll still be sending astronauts up to pee in jars and look at stars, just to say we have a space program, and justify spending billions on studies and hardware development for inevitably cancelled projects to keep the wheels greased with the contractors and make sure NASA has "10 healthy centers" whether they need them or not...

Later! OL JR

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Yep, love that part about "NASA decided they'd use NASA's design, without even considering alternatives".

50 years later, and NOTHING has changed...

Later! OL JR

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This was big here a couple of days ago. Got a good bit of press. Corroborates what you are saying:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012...o-us-to-fix-it/

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Very interesting read, thanks for the link!

That pretty much sums it up... I've been accused of being "anti-NASA" for posts I've made, especially on NSF forums, at times, because I call the agency to task for not being more realistic in its planning. It's an established fact that the VAST majority of the time, virtually EVERY time that NASA "expects" more funding, they simply don't get it. SO, and this is where I find fault with NASA, WHY do the plan like somehow this trend does NOT exist and that somehow they WILL "magically" get more money... "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it... over and over again". NASA has been on this path for a VERY long time... If they would PLAN missions and hardware requirements based on the funding they HAVE (which as the article says, has remained remarkably consistent over the past ten years), if they would plan for smaller, cheaper, more affordable vehicles and systems and budget the program REALISTICALLY, giving account to the standard 40% cost overrun that typifies ALL aerospace projects for the last several decades (ironically, shuttle development was the last program that really came in with only a modest spending overrun, mostly due to the additional year of development needed for the tile problems they were having and redesigning SSME's not to blow up in the test stands). NASA should go into ANY new project, be it for a new space vehicle, launch vehicle, mission hardware, whatever, with the FIRST assumption being "no substantial increase in funding" and "expect a 40% cost overrun, and so have a funding reserve capable of dealing with that". NASA's default method of dealing with overruns is to merely stretch out the development schedule, push missions "to the right" on the timeline, in the parlance... BUT, this has some pretty bad consequences... the longer the schedule is stretched out, the MORE EXPENSIVE the program becomes! Aerospace isn't like most other businesses, which is where the confusion comes in, and why people are shocked and amazed at how much things cost when you start dealing with aerospace projects... For instance, if NASA adds another year to the development schedule, or delays the first launch for a year due to budget overruns, and having to divert funding to development rather than finishing that and getting on with operations, it then bears a LOT of additional costs... You have to PAY all those highly educated engineers and highly skilled technicians actually designing and building things for an extra year... In the meantime, you've got to pay all those highly educated personnel and highly skilled technicians in the operations side of it as well... the ones that were training with the hardware for next year's mission, now pushed another year out. Even if they end up mostly "polishing wrenches" for a year, you have to keep them on the payroll and doing "something"... It's not like Chevy, when they decide to cut production and idle a factory, and send everybody home on furlough, waiting for the call to come back to work and do a production run of cars because Chevy has a big enough order put together to run the factory again... Aerospace isn't like that... these people have to be kept on the payroll, because if you don't, you don't get them back... and you can't replace their knowledge and experience as easily as you can get more guys to come to the plant from Local 712 or something... Also, the cost of space vehicles, launch vehicles, rocket engines, etc. are all highly sensitive to flight rates. Most of these things are made in factories of some type, and that factory is staffed and equipped to turn out so many units per year. Virtually nothing beyond the prototypes and a handful of test models are actually "hand made", and rightfully so-- "handmaking" everything would be HORRIBLY expensive! So, the factory is tooled up and equipped to produce "X" number of rocket engines a year, "Y" number of rocket airframes, for "Z" number of launches/missions per year. The infrastructure to test, handle, transport, integrate, and launch the vehicle is set up for a specific number of launches/missions... increasing those rates (rare) means having to add more capabilities, (be able to make more rocket engines, more cores, more capsules, handle more launches, etc) which means more tooling and more personnel (which is where the BIG costs are-- people!) Usually there's a massive UNDER-USE of the existing infrastructure... which wastes a LOT of overhead... and incurs a lot of costs to support infrastructure that's not being used. Again, if it's a temporary slow-down or stand-down, you have to keep more people around than you need (which again, is a BIG cost...) BUT, if you get rid of them, and need them later, your program is going to be delayed as you try to recruit new people and train them on the systems they'll be working with, which is not an inconsequential cost in itself). Generally speaking, the higher the flightrate, the less the cost per launch-- up to a point. This is the "economy of scale"... you use the infrastructure and overhead you have to pay for anyway to the best effect, rather than having it sit idle... (which costs money in upkeep and maintenance, and of course the personnel you have to keep onhand-- personnel you have to pay regardless of whether they're launching rockets or polishing wrenches). It's a complex situation...

To be continued...

Later! OL JR

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Cont'd...

The other thing the article pointed out is that NASA has become a bloated bureaucracy... This is to be expected-- all gov't operations bulk up over time... people come aboard for a program, the program ends or is canceled, and some are sent packing, but some transfer to other projects, or whatever, and over time this adds up. New programs are started, new organizational levels formed, more layers of management added, and pretty soon you've got a LOT more folks on the payroll. This problem has been mentioned several times in NASA's history. The problem is, like all gov't bureaucracies, is they don't respond well to suggestions that they be downsized... they read it as a loss of power, position, or influence, despite the fact that it might be for the better good, and a healthy thing. The last time that NASA was undergoing scrutiny and suggestions of streamlining, institutional change, and/or even possibly closing centers and reducing staffing levels, NASA did what it ALWAYS does... it withdrew into a defensive posture, "circled the wagons", and fought back against it, adopting the mantra "Ten healthy centers" as their main, if unstated, goal. Everything else has been basically predicated upon that foundation, and subjugated to it, either implicitly or explicitly... Even the way NASA has conducted its programs have been based on this entrenched position... "NASA against the world". NASA has, time and again, basically from the beginning, often chosen its own path and ignored the suggestions or alternatives, sometimes considerably better ones, from its contractors. This "NIH syndrome" extends even within the agency... Once NASA has steered onto a certain path, taken a certain mindset, and set itself on a given course and achieved some institutional inertia, anybody, within or without of NASA, who doesn't "toe the company line" is considered a "traitor" or "troublemaker" and risks their career to stand up as a voice of dissent. Fortunately for the moon landing effort, NASA was such a new animal that it hadn't formed the bureaucratic structures to discredit and destroy John Houbolt, the engineer who, despite NASA's "official" adoption of the EOR lunar mission model, and the backing of that choice by some of NASA's biggest luminaries, including Von Braun, continued to promote the LOR mission mode which made the NOVA rocket unnecessary, which was probably the ONLY way that they could land on the moon before 1970. When Houbolt's immediate superiors wouldn't listen to him, he went over their heads and took it to the top... (which would be career suicide nowdays-- right or wrong one would find themself broken and driven out of the agency, or trivialized and sidelined into a dead-end go-nowhere position). He got a hearing, and presented his evidence, and to the surprise of everyone, Von Braun, who'd been a staunch supporter of the EOR mode choice, towing the company line, and so unlike the modern managerial dynamics at NASA, gave the idea an honest, open minded hearing, and accepted the logic of the argument presented, and was willing to admit that someone had a better plan-- and promptly changed course and embraced LOR as the method that NASA should use on the moon missions. Houbolt was vindicated, and the other leaders at NASA took Von Braun's lead and backed the change. Unfortunately, NASA hasn't had such leadership since Von Braun's generation retired... Now, alternative or contrarian positions are something to be stamped out-- because changing one's mind and accepting them MUST mean that the original decision, and those who backed it, were WRONG, and we certainly can't admit THAT, now can we?? So goes the "Not Invented Here" syndrome and institutional inertia is a poor substitute for logical decision making. That is part of the reason NASA is in such dire straights.

Harrison Schmitt, the Apollo 17 LM pilot, has been proposing a reorganization and streamlining of NASA, basically clearing out the dead wood, and perhaps breaking NASA up into several distinct operations, seperate agencies. While I don't know if that is the best idea, I think it's definitely something worth looking at. NASA's "ten healthy centers" have been operating as their own little fiefdoms, many times at cross-purposes or unnecessary duplication, for decades. Attempts at reigning them in have usually met with sufficient blowback to prevent it from happening, and "internal circling the wagons" usually gives them enough staying power to weather the storm until NASA gets a different Administrator or the policies change, and they continue on basically the same path they've been on. Breaking NASA up into totally seperate divisions, each having their own budgets, seperate and apart from the others, say, one for manned exploration operations, one for unmanned space probes, and one for aerodynamics and aeronautics, and a fourth for technology development, all reporting to one overall Agency that coordinates the efforts, but compartmentalizes the budget to prevent the common NASA fallback position of robbing funding from unmanned space programs, aeronautics, or technology development to pay for cost overruns in the expensive manned programs when they face budget shortfalls.

Anyway, it's something to consider... Later! OL JR

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Houbolt did finally get his LOR proposal through and got it accepted, but even then in NASA (circa '61 or '62) it was still a major career risk and he got plenty of flak for going over his superiors directly to HQ.

It would probably be worse for him in today's culture -- NASA or elsewhere -- but NASA had it's issues even back then. The Houston center and Huntsviille were never very cozy with each other at all back during the Apollo days. Chris Kraft and Von Broun in particular were pretty snotty to each other. Kraft, while I admire him, seems to have been kind of overly egotistical and I think sort of was in envy of the star power the astronauts had. But I think he thought Von Broun would have liked to have run the ENTIRE NASA show himself if given the chance, and I don't think Kraft would have been willing to grant any of HIS Houston empire at all, either while he was director beginning around 1970 or even before that when Kraft just had control of one of the directorates there and Bob Gilruth was Center director.

Yep, there was plenty of infighting and disfunction even back in the high point days of Apollo. It's human nature in action in large organizational structures.


Earl

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I always liked the similar way that Japan organized their space activities, with two separate space agencies. NASDA (the NAtional Space Development Agency) developed communications, meteorological, and Earth resources satellites and their launch vehicles, as well as handling Japan's astronaut program. ISAS (the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science) built, flew, and tracked scientific sounding rockets (NASDA flew some sounding rockets for applications satellite engineering work and microgravity research), sounding balloons, scientific and astronomical observation satellites, and lunar and planetary probes. They also developed their own series of solid propellant launch vehicles to carry their satellites and space probes. Also:

Even though NASDA and ISAS were merged to create the new space agency called JAXA (Japan Aerospace EXploration Agency) about ten years ago, ISAS still appears to exist as an autonomous or at least semi-autonomous part of JAXA (perhaps rather like the status of JPL--the Jet Propulsion Laboratory--within NASA). Both ISAS and JPL were founded and managed by universities, so this could account for ISAS's continued existence as a distinct organization. If--which I do not know--ISAS gets its budget as block grants from the overall JAXA budget (money that JAXA can't go back and dip into if non-ISAS JAXA projects need more funds than expected), Japan may have achieved "the best of both worlds," or nearly so.

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Well, I never said things were all sunshine and roses in the old days; there were some BIG players back then with MIGHTY BIG egos, and of course that all came into play... You're right about the beginning of the 'fiefdoms' where the centers were infighting amongst themselves starting way back then; the difference was that they were ALL dedicated to the job in hand, not like now when most of the centers are involved, in varying degrees of course, and with varying numbers of individuals and varying attitudes, in different levels of infighting, undercutting, and duplication of efforts, all of which is very wasteful. There are various contingents or adherents even within the centers themselves-- some want to go to Mars first, some to the moon, some to an asteroid, then there's various disagreements about the best means to do it... some of that IS HEALTHY, as it promotes a kind of free thinking and honest debate that is necessary to come to some sort of concensus. It's healthy even when it is an honest critique of what's being done, looking honestly at the difficulties and problems and what might actually be a better path forward. When it degenerates into cliques infighting in "turf wars" then it's just wasteful and counterproductive.

Later! OL JR

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Agree, and that would be the fundamental difference between JPL and JAXA/ISIS in this case... JPL, should be funded by the same "block grant" type system, to give it more autonomy... NASA constantly "raids the cookie jar" of the unmanned programs' funding every time they run into a major overbudget/overschedule problem in the manned programs.

Later! OL JR

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You know, there was a REALLY interesting piece that was run in the Seattle Times recently, an interview with Bill Anders, who was on Apollo 8. I think he REALLY hit the nail on the head.

http://seattletimes.com/html/pacifi...id=obinso urce

http://seattletimes.com/html/pacifi...cpanders09.html

Bill Anders went to the moon on Apollo 8. He left NASA for a career in aerospace, rather than "do the same job over again" as a CM pilot on a later mission... and immediately after he left NASA went to work on a board charged with assessing NASA's future plans and America's path forward in space post-Apollo. In the interview he tells how he assessed various plans and proposals for different shuttles, and was called in to present them and the assessment before Haldeman and the politicians. He said he tried to be as impartial as he could, and got a call before he even got back into his office-- Haldeman wanting to know "which one would produce more jobs in California-- a "big shuttle" (the whole enchilada, which NASA tried to do and ultimately failed, even though it worked) or the "little shuttle" (which was more of a stepped, gradual experiment in reusability, sort of an "X-plane" style development project leading up to a reusable shuttle). Of course it was plain that the "big one" would produce the most jobs, he said so, and that was that. Nixon approved the shuttle based on what would get the most jobs back in his native California. Not what was the best space system, what was the most realistic, what was even the most prudent... nope, what produced the most VOTES. THAT is why NASA is in trouble!

Read the articles... he really makes some VERY good points...

Later! OL JR

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