Mar 05 2010

What Is Going On At NASA HQ?

Published by at 4:27 pm under All General Discussions

I never share work on this blog. But we all received an email from our dear ‘leader’ at NASA and it is one of the most bizarre emails I have ever seen in my life. It seems the administrator had a bit of an uprising on his hands due to President Obama’s plans to shut down the Constellation Program and throw tens of thousands of people out of work (during a recession now less).

Here is the email:

Point of Contact: Bob Jacobs, Office of Communications, 202-358-1600
————————————————————————————————

Message from the Administrator – March 5, 2010

During a Strategic Management Council meeting on Tuesday, I asked JSC Director Mike Coats and MSFC Director Robert Lightfoot to put together a very small team to help me develop an accelerated plan for research and development on a heavy lift launch vehicle for future exploration, in support of that element of the President’s FY11 NASA budget. Regrettably, this was subsequently reported by the news media as a request for a “Plan B” alternative to the President’s budget.

As I have said in all hands meetings, Congressional testimony, and interviews, I advised the President on our budget for FY11 and it is MY budget. I have not asked anyone to develop an alternative to that budget and plan, and I don’t want anybody to do so. Rather, I have asked – and am asking – for input on how the exceptional talents and capabilities we have developed in our organization can best be applied going forward to advance the elements of our new plan.

OK, this “MY” plan thing indicates a bit of insecurity and anger. Why blast an email reminding everyone the NASA Administrator runs the place? It seems to me someone feels like they are losing their control here.

I find great comfort in knowing that President Obama has seen fit to put his faith in us to develop a game-changing strategy in our four mission areas, and that he has given us a $6 billion plus up on our FY10 budget as a show of support and trust. I fully believe in the plan that this budget has allowed us to set out for NASA’s road ahead, and unlike many of our detractors, I do believe it will very likely allow us to reach exploration destinations sooner and more efficiently than we would have been able to while we were struggling to develop the Constellation Program.

Well this is pure fiction. Delaying the program will not get us back to exploring sooner. Another sign all is not coherent in NASA HQ.

Look, someone wanted to cancel a major Bush program (hung over from Bush derangement syndrome). After the realized it was too late to surrender Iraq, they needed to finish the job in Afghanistan, they weren’t going to roll back the FISA-NSA changes, the started looking for other areas to ‘get Bush’.  Most of the jobs lost on CxP are in FL and TX – Bush states. Coincidence?

Will this be difficult? Yes, it will, but as President Kennedy said when he challenged the nation to send humans to the moon and bring them safely back to Earth in 1961, we do it not because it’s easy, but because it is hard. I’m told that Dr. Robert Gilruth, the Director of the Johnson Space Center in the days of Apollo was heard to have said at the end of the Apollo Program, “People will know how difficult it was for us to go to the Moon when they try to return.”

We in the NASA family know all too well the difficulty of the things we do, and we now want to go to Mars and other deep-space destinations.

We have the technology now. The only problem with CxP was the starvation funds. But that could have been solved with the $6 billion dollars (as well as fund tons of new Earth observing missions). Why make up such stuff – especially when dealing with the real, honest-to-god rocket science crowd?

I firmly believe we have a budget that supports the goals and dreams we all share, and that we will maintain our technological leadership as well as our acknowledged leadership of human space flight in the world. I need all of you to believe as I do and pull together as a team to make this happen.

Ahh, the lack of human space flight will make us a leader while China and Russia continue on in our stead???  And why the ‘pull together’ plead? Has he lost the confidence of the NASA community?

Thanks very much for the privilege of serving again with all of you and being able to call myself your leader.

Charlie B.

Not sure what to make of this, but it does not give me confidence that NASA has confidence in itself right now. Methinks the peasants might be revolting.

BTW, this is all public domain stuff, nothing special or secret.

13 responses so far

13 Responses to “What Is Going On At NASA HQ?”

  1. ajh1492 says:

    The problem was that CxP was driven by the flawed 60-day ESAS study and not by the goals/requirements from the VSE.

    Why did all the contractor teams in the 2004-2005 studies recommend EML-1 rendezvous vs LLO rendezvous (plus a 3 part CEV – service module/reentry module/mission module), then NASA in it’s infinite wisdom completely throws it out for “Apollo on Steroids”?

    It’s not even the case that NASA chose the truncated cone for the reentry module because they had prior data on it – a number of the CEV teams offered the truncated cone form.

    I think it’s arrogance on the part of some in NASA who think only they have the answers.

    Alan

  2. Mike M. says:

    Strategically, I think this is one area Obama got right. NASA needs to refocus on technology development and contract routine operations out.

    But tactically, he’s going about it very poorly. This is like the F-22 cancellation…trading real capability delivered today for vague promises delivered tomorrow. If it doesn’t get cancelled in favor of vaguer promises further out.

    The more I watch this man, the more he strikes me as determined to gut every capability that has brought the United States security, prosperity, and honor in the last fifty years.

  3. dbostan says:

    “The more I watch this man, the more he strikes me as determined to gut every capability that has brought the United States security, prosperity, and honor in the last fifty years.”

    Which was the goal of bolsheviks and progressives for over a hundred years.
    And, now, they have their guy/guys and gals in the WH / Congress + Senate.

    God save us.

  4. OBloodyhell says:

    Sorry, AJ, nothing to denigrate anything you’ve personally done, but I posted the following over at Dr. Sanity and elsewhere. This is my take —

    I don’t think NASA has been any more than peripherally related to the advancement of Man in Space since the late 70s.

    In the nineties, there was a brief surge of good ideas coming from NASA, which resulted in the Mars probes, but those were stuck off at the edges.

    For me, I gave up on NASA in 1992 as having any possible relevance to the future. And I’ll explain why:

    On Labor Day weekend in 1992 the World Science Fiction Convention was held in Orlando. NASA usually has a few token reps there to be on panels and stuff, but there was more than the usual number of them due to Orlando’s proximity to the Cape, only 40 miles away.

    There was a panel on the future of man in space, which had several mid-level people from NASA on it. At some point during the panel, the NASA people made the rather startling claim that, if the USA wanted to, they could not make it back to the moon within 10 years.
    This caught attention: “What, you mean you don’t believe there’s the will to do so?”
    “No, we couldn’t do it even if there was the will *and* the money”.

    Now, think about that. They were saying that they could not accomplish, in 10 years time, with 1990s technology, what was clearly achieved, in the same amount of time, with 1960s technology!!!

    They had some bullshit excuse for this — “The designers who created those large-scale booster rocket engines died, and their art died with them” (sorry, not buying it. We have all manner of capabilities they did not have back then, and we particularly don’t need, and probably don’t want, to do it with the same brute-force means that was all they had available to them).

    THAT is post-Challenger NASA.

    Jerry Pournelle spoke, after the Challenger disaster, of the fact that NASA’s Apollo Era “Can Do” attitude had been replaced with an arrogant “Can’t Fail” attitude.

    It was clear to me that, by the 1990s, even that attitude had been replaced by the far less lofty one of “Can’t Imagine“. :-/

    The whole of NASA’s budget should long since have been appropriated to make up government sponsored ‘X-prizes’ for private industry to accomplish instead.

  5. AJStrata says:

    OB,

    Clearly you don’t know much about NASA. I mean, seriously stop showing off so much ignorance.

    When you build a satellite and fly it, then we can talk.

  6. ajh1492 says:

    OB,
    I agree that it was a weak excuse on their part to say “The designers who created those large-scale booster rocket engines died, and their art died with them”. Apparently they are unfamiliar with the concept of reverse-engineering.

    Considering there are at least TWO copies of Saturn-5 FLIGHT EQUIPMENT in existence (not to mention lots of blueprints & material on microfilm @ MSC):

    Vehicle Stage @ Location
    ——— ——————————————————–
    SA-515 S-IC (first stage) @ Michoud, LA
    SA-515 S-II (second stage) @ JSC, TX
    SA-515 S-IVB(third stage) @ NASM, Washington DC

    SA-514 S-IC (first stage) @ JSC, TX
    SA-514 S-II (second stage) @ KSC, FL
    SA-514 S-IVB(third stage) @ KSC, FL

    SA-513 S-IVB (third stage) @ JSC, TX

    And LM engineers were pouring over any Apollo CM they could get their hands on to study for Orion development.

    Oh, and a good percentage of the junior engineers from S-5 prime contractor’s development teams are still alive. I know because I WORKED with them and still talk with them.

    Heck, in the late 90’s I was still working with a couple engineers who worked MERCURY.

    Alan

  7. AJStrata says:

    ajh,

    And don’t forget all the incredible engineering that went into ISS – which is where NASA has been focused for manned space flight for decades. It is an amazing habitat in space.

    Also, the robotic missions have been exploding in capabilities. LRO, SDO, JWST – the brains of these systems are now on par with earth based systems (and could be identical if some old dogs would jump a few years ahead).

    NASA has problems like any large organization, but OB and the Obama administration have very little actual understanding of all the great things it does on a tiny budget.

  8. theshaz says:

    A couple of issues I have with NASA. I live in Florida; I am close enough to see the Shuttle launches from home and went to KSC to see two of them up close. I have a friend who is working on the Constellation Program. Haven’t spoken to him in a while and I do not know if he’s been laid off or not. But here are some of MY issues with NASA in general.

    • NASA being dependent on Federal Funding sold its soul to get that funding by jumping in with both feet over Global Warming.
    • Cancel America’s only working human space launching system before the next generation system is even online. Cancel the Shuttle before Constellation is even running is stupid. Now the Russians want to severely overcharge us to take Americans to the ISS.
    • The lack of a “Can Do” attitude is all over NASA, but in their defense, it’s trickled down from political leadership, or lack of any real political leadership out of DC.
    • As a Sci-Fi buff I still can’t believe we haven’t figured out a better, easier and cheaper way to get into orbit.

    I guess we will have to wait for the Chinese and the Russians to jump way out in front before we hit the panic button and kick our butts in gear. If Alan Shepard would have gotten into space before Yuri Gagarin, I don’t think there would have been an Apollo Program. So I hate to say it, we may have to wait for the Russians and/or the Chinese to do something spectacular before we do anything beyond going to the ISS.

  9. AJStrata says:

    thesahz,

    NASA is the federal government, but it has (and was with constellation) introduce both science and technical innovation to humanity. It is a shame to see it destroyed by political interests in DC.

    Set the propeller heads free!

  10. OBloodyhell says:

    Sorry, AJ, you’re not impressing me with this rather offensive and sneering response. I am not some yokel when it comes to physics or math (chances are quite decent that I’ve taken notably more applied math courses above and beyond calculus than you — and certainly enough to match your knowledge in that area). I’m not an engineer but know enough science to know where a lot of problems lie in the various issues that must be dealt with.

    If you care to explain why THEY were accurately correct in that assessment, then I’m open to it. It should not be so complex that it can’t be addressed at all, and your “clearly you know nothing” smacks of the same kind of arrogant elitist attitude you’re decrying in Phil Jones, et al on other obvious matters.

    Given that they’ve lost two shuttles and their crews while managing to neither control launch costs nor really establish a beachhead in space — and throw away two completed, man-rated Saturn launch vehicles while they destroyed key plans to prevent anyone else from attempting to build them — I have to wonder if you’re a bit on the biased side there.

    The shuttle has been massively subsidized since its inception, and has essentially resembled a typical government project in its budgetary promises and requirements vs. actual results and expenses.

    When it comes down to it, it’s really not a question of “what has NASA managed with its budget?” It’s as much a question of what private industry could manage with the same funds as a guaranteed reward for accomplishing the same tasks. From what I’ve seen of what they have accomplished on the kind of miniscule budgets you can get for something as pie-in-the-sky as space operations (i.e., there’s no question there’s money to be made Out There — it’s just not to be had SOON, greatly limiting its ability to obtain credit), it appears as though the answer is definitely “more”.

    When you’re prepared to actually justify their claim, let me know.

    Until then, you’ve succeeded in making me even more sure I’m correct, as being THAT defensive while not actually offering any facts to refute the argument isn’t a sign of someone being on the right side of things.

    I continue to support man in space strongly, regardless of what has been accomplished with unmanned probes.

    I just don’t believe NASA has any sort of capacity to get us there. And I stand by that assessment.

    “My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of human
    systems, and I am convinced that we are terribly vulnerable….
    We should be reluctant to turn back upon the frontier of this epoch.
    Space is indifferent to what we do; it has no feeling, no design, no
    interest in whether or not we grapple with it. But we cannot be
    indifferent to space, because the grand, slow march of intelligence
    has brought us, in our generation, to a point from which we can
    explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be
    to deny our history, our capabilities.”

    – James A. Michener –

  11. OBloodyhell says:

    > your “clearly you know nothing” smacks of the same kind of arrogant elitist attitude you’re decrying in Phil Jones, et al on other obvious matters.

    P.S., not to suggest I support Jones in any way, shape, or form. I’m saying your responses sound markedly like his:

    “You disagree, so clearly you can’t understand”.

    Ah-*huh*.

  12. AJStrata says:

    OB,

    What makes you think I want to impress you? Clearly you have failed miserably to impress me with your naive understanding of NASA.

    As I said, build and fly a satellite I might listen, until then your just another armchair ‘expert’ knocking something you couldn’t yourself do.

  13. OBloodyhell says:

    > What makes you think I want to impress you? Clearly you have failed miserably to impress me with your naive understanding of NASA.

    As a longtime proponent of man-in-space, if you think you DON’T have to “impress me” (people LIKE ME) at all then you demonstrate exactly the kind elitist arrogant BS that gets NASA funding cut and eliminates any aspect of NASA involvement in that future, and rightly so.

    I was AT the very first shuttle launch — both the initial failure and the subsequent success — and have been on “low-level VIP” tours at Kennedy TWICE back before the shuttle was operational and they restricted such to “bigger VIPs” due to insurance considerations.

    I *am* your typical primary political supporter.

    Both of your replies have smacked of the exact same attitudes that the AGW proponents have in spades, and you really ought to be ashamed of yourself for that. But don’t be, “I’m too stupid for you to need impressing”.

    My “naive” understanding says NASA is no longer run by even the vaguely competent (much less the hugely competent) but by bureaucratic boobs like any other government make-work agency and we’re better off without them or it sucking off money from the public teat that ought to be funding REAL space operations.

    You guarantee my future support for totally defunding NASA and taking the money and giving it to real companies like Virgin Galactic for eventually developing the talent to do things that NASA takes 2x and 3x or more to accomplish (and likely far more than that).

    You leave me little doubt that the money would be far better spent in their hands instead of the hands of elitist boobs like you who think you’re the be-all end-all of space.

    I have no doubt man will make it into space just fine without people like you “helping”.

    “Good work”.

    NASA Money == > ‘X prizes’. I’ll let my various Congress bozos know.

    Yeesh.