My Space BlogBy Anthony Matthews – with an emphasis on Small Launch Vehicles |
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| By N2H | ||||
Kosmas, the freshman Democratic congresswoman from New Smyrna Beach, caught up with the president flying back to Washington from Obama’s economic recovery speech in Fort Myers.
Kosmas said she invited the president, who described himself as a “space guy,” to join her for a space shuttle launch.
She said she also asked him whether he had decided who to appoint as the next NASA chief.
I speculated yesterday that there was a connection between the NASA-Pentagon-Ares-EELV issue and the delay in appointing a new NASA administrator. Now the issue is being more fully reported in the Houston Chronicle.
It’s actually my thought that the appointment of a general may not be a bad idea. Everyone respects generals and it’s not a given that one would be parochial about using a military vehicle. Plus, two generals (Lew Allen, Pete Worden) have gone on to run NASA centers with great success. Someone at that level may have the clout to stand firm against the powerful interests involved and actually make the right choices for the right reasons. Here’s what the “Chron” had to say:
WASHINGTON — During the past few weeks, the names of three retired generals have floated around Washington and Houston as candidates for the top job at NASA.
Each time, though, aides to President Barack Obama failed to say whether they had selected the space agency’s administrator, and the guessing game continued.
Now, some supporters of the manned space program with ties to NASA say that one of the key reasons for the prolonged selection process is that powerful politicians and rival space contractors are maneuvering behind the scenes to influence the choice.
At stake is a multi-billion-dollar project to develop the Ares rocket for the space shuttle replacement.
T. Keith Glennan, First NASA Administrator
NASA is a large and amazing organization, always embroiled in its own dramas – funding, priorities, battles between behemoth contractors with increasing noise from smaller startups, the ongoing bungee-cord balance between science, safety, cost, manned flight considerations, defense vs commercial vs exploration, US dominance vs all the other countries, and on and on. The latest issues to bump heads are the future of Ares, and the appointment of a new NASA administrator.
By now, you would have thought that a new administrator would be in place. Instead, there is no more activity than a few names being floated around. Interestingly, there are several from the military world. This plays into the other issue, that there are those who think that we should abandon Ares and go with military launch vehicles instead.
I’m not going to get into that line of reasoning here (Jeff Krukin has some thoughts), but I will say that it plays into the old assumption that political and other appointees will be parochial and come in with agendas. A military NASA administrator would be assumed to automatically support the use of military vehicles, for example. I’m not sure if that’s true or if a military appointee would necessarily be a bad thing (General Lew Allen had a good run as director of JPL in the 80’s, for example, and Pete Worden is happily ensconced at Ames) but it will certainly bring in a different perspective. Some people might argue that it’s not fruitful to have dual-track vehicle programs at all.
Anyway, for your interest here are links to a few people whose names are currently floating around as possible nominees for NASA administrator:
Spaceports has a longer but older (Dec ‘08) list here.
Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin is unshakably opposed to switching from NASA’s Ares 1 rocket to an upgraded Air Force Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, or EELV.
A chief reason: crew safety.
“Our probabilistic risk assessment for loss of crew on Ares 1 showed it to be twice as safe — I repeat, twice as safe — as a human-rated EELV-derived vehicle,” Griffin said recently.
Astronomers will use the powerful University of Arizona/Smithsonian MMT Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Ariz., to search for lunar water ice when NASA fires a 2-ton rocket into a polar crater on the moon later this year.
More: continued here
As long as I’ve been in the space business, “Business As Usual” (BAU) has been frowned upon. Managers like to encourage engineers to “think outside the box” and other such buzz phrases intended to promote the concept of innovation and free-thinking.
Unfortunately, it turns out that those same managers are not always geared up to respond accordingly when an employee actually does come in with a new idea, especially one which may alter whatever path the program they’re working is on. Wayne Hale, NASA’s Deputy Associate Administrator for Strategic Partnerships, has an interesting blog post on the subject, along with a video that was made by a task team researching this area. It’s an interesting read and watch.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board said that NASA – and specifically the Space Shuttle Program – stifled dissenting opinions which might have prevented the accident. Particularly the action was pointed toward the Mission Management Team. As the new Deputy Program Manager, I was assigned the task of restructuring the MMT and providing means for listening to dissent. Somewhere along the way I acquired the informal title of ‘culture change leader’. I took this to heart and changing the culture to be more welcoming to alternate or dissenting opinions was a task that took a lot of my time and attention.
NASASpaceWatch is reporting on today’s protest of the COTS awards. There’s some nice commentary comparing the the different proposals.
PlanetSpace Inc – which lost out on NASA’s 3.5 billion dollar Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract – have filed an official protest. Last month, SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp) and Orbital were awarded the contract to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) during the transition between Shuttle and Orion.
Mike Griffin, whose own job as NASA adminisrator is nearing its end despite some sterling efforts, has warned of potential cutbacks.
WASHINGTON — Departing administrator Michael Griffin warned Tuesday that NASA would have to lay off an unspecified number of contractors if Congress freezes the agency’s spending at current levels.
Griffin’s comments reflected a timeworn practice by agency chiefs who often use dire warnings to try to persuade lawmakers to ante up additional funds.
He said Congress’ decision to hold NASA spending at the 2008 level of $17.3 billion could trigger the personnel cutbacks. He declined to specify the locations that might suffer the layoffs.
From Flight International:
NASA’s nascent commercial orbital transport system (COTS) is expected to go live late next year under a $3.5 billion programme. The programme’s aim is to provide more than half of the cargo needed to run the International Space Station in the post-Space Shuttle era.
From the Orlando Sentinel, a reported phone call from Mike Griffin, the NASA administrator:
Industry officials say that a few days later, Griffin called Robert Stevens, the CEO of Lockheed Martin Corp., which jointly owns ULA together with Boeing Co., and demanded that Stevens stop what Griffin called the subsidiary’s efforts to “kill Ares I” by promoting versions of its own rockets that could carry humans to space.
Maybe Mike Griffin should get his wife to call. She seems to be doing pretty good rallying people around the effort to keep the Administrator in his job.