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Space Science

Bad Testing Doomed NASA's Hypersonic X-43A 205

Posted by michael from the whoops dept.
RobertB-DC writes "Space.com got hold of NASA's yet-to-be-released report on the June 2001 failure of the air-breathing X-43A hypersonic research vehicle, and it doesn't look good for 'Faster, Better, Cheaper'. The report refuses to single out any one contributing factor, but it cites ground testing 'inaccuracies' and 'misinterpretation' of wind tunnel data -- in particular, failure to retest the vehicle after additional heat protection was added. As noted in the original Slashdot article, the craft went out of control when the fins broke off just seconds into flight."
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Bad Testing Doomed NASA's Hypersonic X-43A More

Bad Testing Doomed NASA's Hypersonic X-43A

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  • faster, better, cheaper... (Score:5, Funny)

    by 10 Speed ( 519184 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:06AM (#6476488)
    The X-43A MIB report underscores the fact that the Hyper-X launch vehicle contract was developed under the faster, better, cheaper philosophy

    the rules clearly state that you may only choose 2 of the above!!
    • Obviously you never heard someone from Fry's Electronics delivering their salespitch on an E-Machine...

      When one attempts to get good, cheap, and fast all in one package, the first is the one that suffers the most...
    • A pretty picture [nasa.gov] may be cheap, but it does not always prove correct. Oh well, the next one will be better.
    • the rules clearly state that you may only choose 2 of the above!!

      Yeah, yeah. Everyone keeps saying that. But the truth of your statement depends entirely on how you define "better". In the "Faster, Better, Cheaper" philosophy "better" doesn't mean that an individual mission is any less likely to fail. Under FBC "better" means that the overall ROI across a large number of missions is higher. The words "faster" and "cheaper" apply to individual missions. The word "better" applies to the program as a whole.

    • So, if NASA spent more money, they would have greater success?

      Nah. That's wack, man. NASA doesn't need to spend any more fucking money. They spend enough. What they need is to reduce the manager staffing by 50%.

  • Well obviously.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Exiler ( 589908 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:09AM (#6476501)
    they didn't train [coinop.org] enough!

  • Yeah right. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The Old Burke ( 679901 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:09AM (#6476503)
    he report refuses to single out any one contributing factor, but it cites ground testing 'inaccuracies' and 'misinterpretation' of wind tunnel data -- in particular, failure to retest the vehicle after additional heat protection was added.
    Sounds like a classic NASA math failure to me.

    • Although the article seems to indicate that this was incompetence on the part of Orbital Sciences Corporation, and that NASA oversight would have corrected the flawed testing process.
    • Sounds like a classic NASA math failure to me.

      Interestingly enough, most people I talk to think NASA was using English measurements, since Americans are so backwards and NASA is 'so incompetent'. Actually [aticourses.com], NASA was using metric, and their contractor was using English. Of course, then I've been told that English is pretty much the standard in aerospace, so NASA doesn't get off the hook entirely, even if they were trying to be progressive.
    • Proud patriot and republican voter.

      The Republican and Democratic parties are much too rich and powerful, now, to care deeply about the integrity of the U.S., its constitution, and the individual liberties of its citizens. They are more concerned about self-perpetuation and wide-ranging power over their constituencies.

  • Why can't we work through failure?? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Captain_Loser ( 601474 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:10AM (#6476506)
    Why is it that nasa has the philosophy of faster better cheaper? Although it has had some success the philosophy leads to more failure. Its obvious that the public seems to want more space based research, trips to mars, etc. So why does nasa feel that it needs to drop a project at any hint of failure?

    • Re:Why can't we work through failure?? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Because of fear of an accident. That's the main reason they don't want to go to Mars, etc. It would be a complete embarassment if a mission to Mars, or something of the sort, messed up. NASA would never recover. Shuttle disasters are just like car crashes - they aren't really out of the ordinary (that is, the missions), so they don't draw much attention to when they crash, compared to what would happen if it was a Mars mission, etc, so they aren't really comparable.
      • But isn't making mistakes part of the game. I just think this faster cheaper crap is causing trouble. If we could maybe not be as concerned (still concerned but not completely) concerned about costs. All projects base everything on costs, this won't change, this is how the world works. But maybe we should scale down having 80 different projects and focus the limited funds on one goal.
      • I disagree.

        The Apollo 1 fire was as traumatic as an accident could be, yet the program pulled itself up by its bootstraps and proceeded to hit their milestone.

        I certainly wouldn't argue that NASA, as it is curently chartered, would survive a Mars mission disaster, but frankly I don't think they'll ever have a chance to do so. NASA is impotent.
        • The Apollo 1 fire was as traumatic as an accident could be, yet the program pulled itself up by its bootstraps and proceeded to hit their milestone.

          But remember this was in a different time. The cold war was a motivating factor for the Apollo program, so more risk was acceptable. Nowadays that kind of failure would be a 1.5-2 year setback, at least.

          I agree, NASA is impotent. What can be done to further our space program either without them, or without this 100% reliance on them? Something has to be
        • Yeah, the public worked right through that one, largely because NASA insisted that the astronauts had died instant, heroic deaths that were unavoidable, not that they'd slowly suffocated from the smoke in a fire that would have been prevented if NASA had taken seriously the problems with pure-oxygen atmosphere. As it was, Grissom, Chaffee and White had to die for the atmosphere to be changed to something less dangerous (I'm not sure exactly what they use, but it's much closer to our atmosphere here).

          --gren

    • NASA killing any Shuttle competitor (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SysKoll ( 48967 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:43AM (#6476617)
      Captain Loser, you have to remember that NASA is a bureaucratic organization. The purpose of a bureaucratic organization is to extract money from the taxpayers to hire more bureaucrats.

      It's the reason why NASA deceived Congress and underestimated the cost and reliability of the Shuttle. Not a concious conspiracy, just your regular bureaucratic tendency.

      Nowadays, the Shuttle is keeping tens of thousands of plushy jobs at NASA. Many of them aren't paper pushers, there are really good engineers working on this program. However, the real top dogs are the bureaucrats. And they know that the Shuttle should be replaced by something that does not require an army to operate, but they'd be out of a job.

      Each time the crazy engineers rock the boat and create a potential cheaper competitor for the Shuttle, it magically gets killed. Look at the X-33. Look at the DC-X: This demonstrator was taking off and landing on its jet, vertically. It was perfectly working when it was given to NASA, and somehow, NASA killed it on its first NASA flight [nasa.gov]. And somehow, the budget to build a new DC-X was consumed by, why, the Shuttle of course. So this perfectly good project was dropped.

      See how it works? Tons of examples can be found in the history of the various X-projects that got mysteriously mismanaged and killed since the Shuttle program started.

      NASA outlived its utility and became the worst enemy of cheap space access.

      You want space access? You want to get to Mars before the Chinese? Keep the JPL and the researchers, get rid of the rest of NASA.

      -- SysKoll
      • Then bring on the private companies..
        • Then bring on the private companies..

          It was a private company that made the part that failed in Challenger booster. Even more so, one of the engineers at that company warned the managment of possible failure under certain conditions, and was ignored. The rest is history.

          • The fact that a private company was involved does not alter the accuracy of what SysKoll said. What a company will do when it is acting as a contractor to the government, or as a sub sub sub contractor to another company bares no resemblance to how it would handle a situation for an internally developed product.

            The contracting company has to develop what looks like a one-on-one defense when dealing with its government counterparts. Each government person is trying to do their best, impress their own mana

        • Re:NASA killing any Shuttle competitor (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @01:52AM (#6476781)
          There's no law keeping private companies from building spacecraft.

          But private companies aren't going to do that, because it takes too much money, and won't realize a profit within a year. There was a time when companies would make long-term investments in a program, knowing it'd be many years before they'd earn it back, but those days are long gone. Now, if you can't make a quick buck at it, there's no reason to do it.

          • Re:NASA killing any Shuttle competitor (Score:4, Insightful)

            by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @02:05AM (#6476812)
            Now, if you can't make a quick buck at it, there's no reason to do it.

            Thus the abject fuckitude of just about everything worthwhile in society.

            Plus 5
          • The problem with long term projects where the payoff is some way away is maintaining interest and trust from the investors. If I see something big being built, it is easy to keep the investors on board because they can see the 'pyramid' being built. To do this means a high level of disclosure. If you are a public company (i.e., with large numbers of investors) then anything that you disclose to investors will also be disclosed to your competitors.

            A good example of how things can go wrong is Germany's ill-

          • There was a time when companies would make long-term investments in a program, knowing it'd be many years before they'd earn it back, but those days are long gone

            Counter-examples: X-Box, CPU devlopment, pharmacy research, movie production.

            The reason that private companies won't build a space shuttle is that they haven't been contracted to do so. Of course they could try to build one anyway and sell it afterwards but that is extremely risky (as opposed to just delayed payments).

            Tor
            • The reason that private companies won't build a space shuttle is that they haven't been contracted to do so.

              Actually, whenever NASA puts a private sattelite into orbit, it bills the customer a mere fraction of its actual launch cost, typically less than $200 million. The rest (another $300-$500 million depending on how you count) is paid by the taxpayer. Which is how NASA can afford to send a manned vessel to do the job of a cargo rocket.

              If NASA stopped operating as a federal-subsidized competitor of th

        • Yeah!

          I want to rude into space on the lowest bid or better, on onr of Dick Cheney's buddies!

      • Normally I'm not in a hurry to jump onto the conspiracy bandwagon, but with stuff like this, "determined to be an unconnected helium pressurant line that supplied hydraulic pressure to extend the landing strut", it's a no brainer to think something funny is going on.

        Come on, truckers can connect their pressure lines. So can mechanics. They want us to believe that Nasa engineers and mechanics, on a one of a kind vehicle, can't do the same. Shesh! How odd is it that there isn't a check item AND a switch
        • This stinks to high heaven.

          You bet it does. Many an engineer cried tears of rage when they saw the DC-X burn and not being replaced because hey, a new copy of DC-X would cost 10% of the cost of a Shuttle launch, NASA can't find that kind of money anywhere.

          A few outraged people muttered accusations of sabotage, but somehow, an investigation was never started.

          The lesson: A human system, especially a bureaucracy, will do whatever it takes to insure its survival and expension. The only way to avoid that

      • Re:NASA killing any Shuttle competitor (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Centurion509 ( 685702 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @06:10PM (#6480856)
        Captain Loser, you have to remember that NASA is a bureaucratic organization. The purpose of a bureaucratic organization is to extract money from the taxpayers to hire more bureaucrats... And they know that the Shuttle should be replaced by something that does not require an army to operate, but they'd be out of a job.

        SysKoll, do you actually know any NASA bureaucrats? Well, my father is one of them. And ever since the Columbia accident he's been working 70-hour workweeks (with no overtime pay, I think). And every day he talks to me about all the discussions at work he's having about how to phase out the shuttle. And all of the other "bureaucrats" he works with are hard-working, honest folks who are neither conspirators nor thieves of taxpayer money.

        I'm sorry if this seems a little harsh, but I am really FED UP with people who bash NASA just to bash NASA.

        P.S. In response to your "Each time the crazy engineers rock the boat and create a potential cheaper competitor for the Shuttle, it magically gets killed" I would point out that none of NASA's X-vehicles were competitors for the shuttle. They were technology demonstrators. I agree that NASA mismanaged them, but if they had flown, we would be no closer to a shuttle replacement.

        P.P.S. An by the way, there is hope for the future of private space flight, which I think is our only hope for CATS. It's called the X-Prize (www.xprize.org); I think you would enjoy learning about it.

    • Re:Why can't we work through failure?? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EvilOpie ( 534946 ) * on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:59AM (#6476660) Homepage
      As far as I understand, the faster better cheaper philosophy came from back when NASA was working on several research probes that were to be launched into space, but were having problems with implimenting their plans under the old philosophy.

      See, at the time NASA had the "everything and the kitchen sink" philosophy where they would work on building a probe and put every instrument they could think of on it. Problem is that it would take a very long time to build, and it would cost a ton of money. Plus, if they ever lost one, then all that work was down the drain. So they came up with their "faster, better, cheaper" philosophy where instead of launching huge space probes with tons of equipment on them, they started to build smaller ones with less equipment on them. When they did that, they saved costs in what it took to build one, plus they cut down on the build time. And in the event of a failure, they weren't out quite as much on a probe as they were before.

      So as far as I know, that's where the faster better cheaper philosophy came from. But like it was noted before... "Pick any two". I mean, you've got to have some give somewhere in there.
      • I was on a tour at JPL where our guide was discussing this shift. Apparently, the internal slang for the old mega-missions was "Battlestar class", as in "Cassini was the last Battlestar class mission". I thought that was a vivid way to put it.
      • As far as I understand, the faster better cheaper philosophy came from back when NASA was working on several research probes that were to be launched into space, but were having problems with implimenting their plans under the old philosophy.

        The loss of the $1 billion Mars Observer proved to be the final straw for NASA's bosses. They had already seen both Galileo and Ulysses delayed by the loss of Challenger, the birth pains of Cassini had been massive and they were finding it harder and harder to expla

    • Re:Why can't we work through failure?? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @01:07AM (#6476673)
      The engineers who formulated and put the faster, better, cheaper model to work expected, indeed predicted, a much higher failure rate than had been the norm.

      These people weren't stupid or something and knew just as well as any person with something on the ball, such as yourself, that a high failure rate was inherent in the model.

      Doing it fast and cheap is relatively better in the long run on the throwing enough speghetti against the wall process. A lot of it falls off, but some of it sticks, and speghetti is dirt cheap so the stuff that falls on the floor doesn't matter.

      However, as the other poster notes, NASA is a government beaurcracy, and run by beaureacrats, not the engineers.

      Beaureaucrats punish failure and assign blame. The more failure you can point at and the more blame you assess the more you justify your job.

      The other thing they do is develop massive control programs, requiring that they have personal control over a large budget and many subordinates, to "prevent" failure.

      It's the violence inherent in the system.

      You can't tell these people when they come knocking on your door and asking why your sattelite blew up, "Dude, we built twenty of 'em on the cheap, we'll just send up another."

      That just makes them confiscate everything you've got and slash your budget, which they then add to theirs.

      You haven't fallen into the trap of believing that NASA is about engineering, science and the gathering of data, have you?

      Silly boy.

      KFG
      • Wish I could mod the parent higher than a 5 somehow. You have hit the nail precisely on the head. I get sick of hearing everyone regurgitate the "pick any two" line. "Faster, Better, Cheaper" as a design philosophy was always supposed to mean "do lots of small, low-cost missions quickly, accepting the fact that some will fail in return for the higher overall science return".

        Too many people interpret the "better" part to mean that an individual mission will be "better". Not necessarily so (although an a

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • What you mean linux clusters? Google finds it cheaper to replace an entire node instead of taking the time to troubleshoot. Its a throw away society now. Everyone wants things fast and cheap, unfortunately quality doesn't fit with those options.

  • Billy Joe Hickock, Nasa Aerospace Engineer (Score:5, Funny)

    by dook43 ( 660162 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:14AM (#6476525)
    Damn it, Bobby Ted! That JB Weld was supposed to hold them goldang fins on tight....lemme check that thar tube. You dumb ass! It says that it holds in temperatures up to 200 degrees F not 2000! Get that antenna out of your ass!

  • Just leave it to the x-prize guys... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Perdition ( 208487 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:14AM (#6476529)
    I personally don't see this governmental fiddling with space lasting much longer, seeing how commercial interests and private (albeit wealthy) citizens are starting to push the cold, dark envelope of space travel. If I could make an outlandish prediction, I'd guess that by 2020, we'll have a ship or two with no real flag-bearing duties on the Moon. I personally hope we find a complete replacement for manned vehicles altogether, but exploration has demands for the flexible, so humans will probably still be risked as a result.

    Remember, you don't fly in a "Wright" airplane, it's a Boeing... let commercial interests take over where purist experimentation leaves off.

    • Re:Just leave it to the x-prize guys... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @01:05AM (#6476671)
      You seem to be overlooking the fact that the X-Prize guys have not really achieved anything substantial at this point in time, and by substantial I mean compared to NASA'a achievements. The 2020 prediction looks pretty optimistic to me given the cost of space exploration with no short to medium term ROI its difficult to see the private sector putting the money up. More likely is that in 2100 private investors will be demanding NASA share their technology so they can jump on the bandwagon.

      Also in the current climate I cant see any way the US government would allow independent development of technology which could ultimately be used to destroy at a stroke the technology advantage the US currently enjoys.
      • Well, if you compare the state of the X-prize developments with the beginnings of the US Space program, the X-prize guys don't have unlimited funding and resources like NASA did in the early days.
        (And during the Apollo era).
        I realize that the technology in the form of materials, machining, structure, etc. etc. etc. has advanced considerably in those times, but there are still certain problems that can only be solved properly (within a certain timeframe) by throwing large amounts of money around.

        Another
      • you also seem to be overlooking that the X-prize contest has only been in full swing for a short time. Their funds are limited. their teams are small.

        NASA has a nation behind it, unlimited funding and has been doing it for decades.

        give it a little time. Space engineering is not computer engineering.

  • Testing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bigfishbowl ( 528934 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:18AM (#6476545)
    You know, I'm not sure that the whole slashdot crowd understands how hard it is to test these sort of things. I mean my university [mtu.edu] has been doing subcontracting for NASA and I have to say, these people there are really smart. I'm not talking business major to business major, I mean EE to Ph.D EE - these guys are dumb so please don't refer to them as such. Imagine though, any huge project, no matter how well constructed, basically comes down to a single person decieding or desidgning something (the so called single point failure). Do you think you could be that person?

    • Re:Testing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Loudog ( 9867 ) <loudog@noSPAm.doghaus.org> on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:29AM (#6476589) Homepage
      At the risk of feeding the flames:

      I worked as a contractor to NASA for a year on various network projects. My father was a "rocket scientist" for the Atlas and Mercury programs, so I have some knowledge of what excellence in space programs should look like.

      What I saw was very scary. The politics were intense and the science was very spotty. It was not a good experience. It was proof that a Ph.D doesn't mean that you can think.

      Much of the folks that worked on my project (with up to 10 years of NASA experience) think that NASA is full of idiots. And -- for but the occational flash of true genius I saw -- I'd have to agree with them. We certainly wouldn't be able to accomplish the equivalent of a "moon shot" with today's NASA. Sad. They used to have the right "one person", they don't anymore.

      I certainly don't use the phrase "takes a rocket scientist to..." because I've seen NASA in action. Ouch.

      YMMV.

      Everyone needs a cause: Stamp out phase jitter!

      • Re:Testing (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Moofie ( 22272 )
        For what it's worth, I believe that the people, and the technology, are there.

        It's the politics and the bureaucracy that are destroying them. Unfortunate.
    • Unfortunately, I have to second the opinion of one of the other people that replied to this post: NASA is riddled with incompetents. Sure, they were great during the Apollo program, and sure, there are still a few sharp people there. But there are also alot of people who are just dead weight.

      A large part of the reason for the rampant incompetence is that NASA is a government agency, and as such it must pay its employees on the GS pay scale. Which sucks. I have seen them attempt to hire people at slightly m

  • NASA: Are they slacking? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jbottero ( 585319 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:19AM (#6476550)
    There have been consistent stories in the press about a certain slack in attention to detail at NASA of late. And, as an Air Force guy, I wonder how they could design a wing leading edge that can't take a hit from some hard foam, we get bird-strike all the time! Even a C-17 can take a 30 pound goose at 400 knots...
    • But the wing's structure could take the hit from a piece of hard foam. The problem was the heat tiles are so increadibly fragile that they broke apart, at which point, the leading edge of the wing could no longer survive going Mach 25 in an atmosphere. If you can find a stronger substance that has the same heat properties as the tiles on the shuttle, that's one thing, otherwise, can a C-17's wings handle Mach 25 in an atmosphere?
      • The ablative heat shielding the old space capsules used to handle Mach 25, and they weren't incredibly fragile.
  • at least we can hold out hope for the future scram jet testing and development.

  • Nasa died 1969 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:26AM (#6476579)
    Nasa as a forward looking organization died in 69. Ever since then its been a zombie a shadow of its former self. Its been almost continuous decline in the post apollo era. Take a look at the programs that followed.

    Skylab vs ISS Alpha
    Direct easy and done safely v.s. Pointless

    X-15 vs X29, X43 and the other spaceplane projects

    The only significant manned space vehicle since the apollo program is the shuttle. While it is one thing for hero's to lose their lives in the conquest of a new frontier, its another to lose life because a congressional district in utah needed make work or nasa's beuracracy wouldn't listen to outsiders.

    If there is any hope of man in space, it will come from private entrepeneurs and perhaps other countries.

    • Re:Nasa died 1969 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by m00nun1t ( 588082 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:53AM (#6476642) Homepage
      Agree completely. But look at what happened in the 60's - they had the President in public state "We will put a man on the moon by the end of this decade". They had a *clearly* defined goal to work towards, and were resourced to do it.

      What are they working on now? Do they have such a strong, defined, focused goal? Such strong executive leadership? No wonder they are floundering.
    • Certainly I'd agree that Apollo was a better run and much more successful project, but didn't the moon race consume something in the neighbourhood of 10% of the US GDP at the time?

      To attempt to put that in perspective, if you think that the war on Iraq was/is expensive, try multiplying it by 10* to get an idea of how much Apollo cost.

      What could people really expect? Once the moon race was over, there really was no place for NASA spending to go but down. Less money = Less resource = Less cool stuff t
      • Apollo wasn't as expensive as you might think. According to this NASA page [nasa.gov], total funding for the Apollo program was less than 20 billion dollars (which would equal about 100 billion of today's dollars).

        In contrast to that, last year's US GDP [cia.gov] was about USD 10 trillion. It's just a matter of will - the state's administration doesn't really have an interest in space exploration.

      • Re:Yeah, but how much are you willing to pay? (Score:4, Informative)

        by SmilingBoy ( 686281 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @10:18AM (#6477914)
        You are way off.

        The total cost of the Apollo program was $19.4b.

        This is the total program cost starting from 1965 (or was it 1964?) to 1972. Let's assume that the year 1969 was the year with the highest spending, say one quarter of the total sum, ie $4.9b.

        The nominal GDP of the USA in the year 1969 was 3928.7b.

        Therefore, at its peak, Apollo consumed approximately 0.12% of the GDP of the US.

        I think you might be referring to the nuclear program during and after that World War II. That was expensive! (I've got no numbers though)

  • The fins broke off?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ignorant Aardvark ( 632408 ) * <cydeweys.gmail@com> on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:26AM (#6476580) Homepage Journal
    Wow, I've heard of ghetto engineering ... but the fins just flat fell off a second into the flight?! C'mon, I expect much better of NASA. Hell, even I can manage to launch a rocket whose fins will stay fully attached until the parachute burns through and the entire assemblage smacks into the ground, sending fin particles everywhere. But that's MANY seconds after launch, not only a few.

  • The end of NASA. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Grendel Drago ( 41496 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:28AM (#6476583) Homepage
    NASA has some damn smart people working there. NASA does really nice basic research. NASA sucks ass at applying it.

    Look at the various inventions that fell out of the space program as little extras. Look at all the technology that was invented. That's what NASA does well.

    Now look at the Shuttle, which didn't meet a single one of its design parameters---it's technically not even reusable, it's salvageable. Look at the criminally high cost of launching mass into LEO. Look at NASA's inability to really deliver on the applied end of things. That's what NASA can't do.

    I suggest Kings of the High Frontier [amazon.com] as required reading for anyone interested in learning how NASA has failed to deliver on its promise of space access due to its fetishization of research-heavy boondoggles. The book is fiction, but extensively researched. (The discussion on unpressurized spacesuits [slashdot.org] fell out of an off-the-cuff reference the author made.)

    Leave it to the X-Prize competitors, and their successors. The Space Shuttle is at the very limit of complexity that's possible to construct, which is why NASA has been unable to replace it. (Did you know there are literally hundreds of "Criticality One" components in the shuttle, the failure of any one of which could cause the shuttle's destruction?)

    Okay, this seems like a rant about the Shuttle. But it's really about NASA, and the way in which they do things. It's not an indictment against the people who work there; the scientists and engineers of NASA are without equal. Their efforts are being squandered. The future does not belong to NASA, and it hasn't since they cancelled Apollo.

    --grendel drago

  • A ridiculous concept from the start (Score:5, Informative)

    by topher_k ( 622399 ) <[topher] [at] [kersting.com]> on Saturday July 19, 2003 @12:43AM (#6476616) Homepage

    I worked for one of the companies [accurate-automation.com] involved in this program, although not directly on the program itself.

    Let's see, we've got a scramjet test aircraft, which will be boosted to hypersonic speeds by a modified Pegasus rocket, which will be dropped from a B-52. So, besides developing the scramjet test aircraft, an interface system between the Pegasus and the X-43A needs to be designed and the whole system tested.

    That didn't bother me too much. What really got me was what the point of the program was in the first place. The goal was to test the ability of a scramjet engine to propel an aircraft at hypersonic speeds. The Pegasus booster was supposed to accelerate the test aircraft to hypersonic speeds, then detach, at which point the scramjet would be started and the instrumentation would transmit 10 seconds of data. Besides the limited amount of data, if I recall correctly, the scramjet was not supposed to even maintain the aircraft's speed, which calls into question the value of the technology as a means of propulsion, in my opinion.

    If I recall, the contract value was $33 million, and was significantly overrun. Your tax dollars at work (if you're American).

    • To appreciate the test you have to have a basic understanding of what the scramjet does.

      A scramjet seperates the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere and uses the hydrogen molecules as fuel for the engine.
      In doing this you have an engine that can go significantly faster, an engine that uses up a fraction of the fuel load of traditional aircraft and an aircraft that expels significantly less harmful waste in the atmosphere then a traditional jet engine.

      The downside is that the engine is not phys

      • Re:A ridiculous concept from the start (Score:5, Informative)

        by Idarubicin ( 579475 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @08:26PM (#6481426) Journal
        To appreciate the test you have to have a basic understanding of what the scramjet does.

        I agree completely. So why do you then tell us the following? You have been misled, my friend.

        A scramjet seperates the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere and uses the hydrogen molecules as fuel for the engine. In doing this you have an engine that can go significantly faster, an engine that uses up a fraction of the fuel load of traditional aircraft and an aircraft that expels significantly less harmful waste in the atmosphere then a traditional jet engine.

        Quick primer on scramjets, from the top:

        In a typical jet engine (see here [geocities.com], for example) air enters through an intake at the front, and passes through several fan stages to compress (and heat) the incoming air. Squirt fuel into this hot air, and the rapid combustion generates exhaust at high temperature and pressure. This high pressure exhaust propels the jet (and drives a turbine which turns the fans in the compressor).

        The downside of this design is that it is mechanically complex--those compression stages have large, finely-machined, rapidly-moving parts which are subject to wear, tear, and accidental failure; they also add a significant amount of weight to the engine.

        Enter the ramjet. (See also cutaway figure [aviation-history.com].) Instead of using fans to compress incoming air, a ramjet uses a specially shaped inlet. Air enters the jet inlet at high speed, and then is forced through a narrow aperture. The result is compression without fans. Unfortunately, the ramjet will only work when the jet is travelling at significant speed--there isn't going to be any air coming into the engine if the aircraft isn't moving.

        A scramjet is a supersonic combustion ramjet. In a plain vanilla ramjet, the incoming air is slowed while it is compressed to the point where it is travelling slower than sound. Combustion takes place in air that is still moving quite quickly, but not supersonically. Although easier to manage from an engineering standpoint, requiring subsonic combustion places an upper limit on the speed of a conventional ramjet.

        The scramjet functions in a similar manner--incoming air is compressed and heated through a properly shaped inlet, then fuel is injected, and the combustion products propel the jet. The defining difference is that combustion takes place in a supersonic airflow; in practice, this dictates certain changes to the basic ramjet design. Again, the scramjet requires significant airspeed before it can be started.

        Quite correctly, you note that the fuel for these beasts is often hydrogen, though in principle nearly any air-combustible liquid or gas could be used. The fuel must be supplied, however--a scramjet cannot extract hydrogen from ambient water vapour. The hydrogen scramjet is inherently no cleaner burning than any other air-breathing hydrogen engine. Given its high operating temperature, I would be quite surprised if it didn't generate significant nitrogen oxides in operation.

    • See the technology development of the gas turbine engine for many useful parallels.

      Scramjets are about the most absurdly complicated things you can imagine, from a fluid dynamics standpoint. Much more data is required to refine their operation. Such data comes from programs like this one.

      Now, it may be that NASA and your firm are not being as frugal as they should be, but this is useful and important research, if you think that high-speed air breathing flight is important.

      (Me, I say use ballistic rocke
      • Ask yourself: Why on earth (or in orbit therof) does NASA need an air-breathing engine capible of hypersonic speed?

        Think about it. All of the savings in oxidizer are MORE than made up for in atmospheric drag. Why doesn't the concorde still fly? It burns WAY too much fuel to be profitable. If you want to get a rocket above the lower atmosphere use a sub-sonic jet. There are certainly enough off-the-shelf heavy lifters:

        • B-52
        • Boeing 747
        • C-5 Galaxy

        And those are just the american designs. The Russians have

        • Why doesn't the concorde still fly? It burns WAY too much fuel to be profitable.

          There's a Concorde flight twice daily over my house. They stop flying in October, but that's because of the cost of upcoming refits and because Airbus will not maintain them in the future. They appear to be highly profitable at the moment.

          Fuel costs just aren't an issue: do the maths. An average load for a transatlantic flight is probaly about 100 passengers, paying about £5000 each for a return journey, i.e £0

          • Fuel is cheap. Maintenance costs the world, and the Concorde is the most expensive-to-operate airliner in the world. So far as I know, it has NEVER shown a profit, so I take your contention with a large grain of salt.

            I'd love to see a citation if you happen to have one. I'd like to be proven wrong! I think it's a great aircraft.
        • I'm going to have to see if I can figure out what the fuel savings for a rocket look like vs. launch altitude. I might be able to make Excel do my homework for me.

          Apparently, Burt Rutan thinks it's a great idea, and he's way smarter than I am. I've just never understood, from a potential energy perspective, how getting a measly 70,000 feet up is going to save you a lot of gas.

          My off-the-cuff conclusion is that for a sub-orbital shot, the savings are large, but for an orbital insertion, not so much, simp
          • What makes the math work is:
            • that the atmosphere is a hell of a lot thinner at 70,000 feet.
            • Rocket motors are REALLY innefficient at low speed.
            • Air travels differently around a craft traveling at supersonic speed. If you can start the craft off at nearly the speed of sound you can optimize the design better by ignoring the sub-sonic properties.

            If you look at a graph showing mass, velocity, and altitude [melbpc.org.au] of the Saturn V, you see that half the fuel in the first stage got the vehicle up to 3000 feet at 500m

  • Ugh! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by LadyAshnod ( 690669 )
    Wham, what a waste? I think the
    • Cheaper
    is one helluva factor for it! *shrugs*
  • Current CFD software maybe just don't cut it at those speeds or not enough CPU power.

    don't give up.

  • Mir (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Remember the Mir? What an amazing success for mankind. It just kept right on working. Even whenever there was anykind of problem that was repaired in space, the American media talked about how it was an aging station and about the "cash-strapped Russian space agency". What comes around goes around I guess. The cash-strapped American space agency now has no manned space flight capability. Russia is the only country on Earth with that ability. The shuttle fleet is too old and if they ever attempt to fly those

  • This is getting ridiculous. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fruity1983 ( 561851 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @02:08AM (#6476818)
    Something has to be done about NASA. They are clearly far too inadequate to do their job properly.

    They ignored their engineers in '86. Astronauts died.

    They cant convert units, expensive Mars rovers are lost.

    They didnt follow proper safety procedures this year, astronauts died.

    They lose prototype planes because they decide not to test added elements. They lose this, and that, and lose billions of dollars doing it.

    I dunno about all you other readers, but it seems to me that NASA needs some *serious* restructuring.

    This better, faster, cheaper thing has turned out to be broken, slow, and expensive. It's bad enough we lose prototype planes worth billions to their errors, let alone the 14 astronauts sacrificed in the name of saving costs to keep a complex bureaucracy well paid.

    Fuck NASA. We need something new.
    • Well as far as sweeping, unfounded generalizations go, that's pretty well done. Have you considered that they put people in space? Like, in ships that escape earth's gravitation going several dozen times the speed of sound? With two significant accidents in 20-odd years. Seriously, if you can only come up with 4 examples since '86, I'd love to see someone with a better track record.

      And I don't really see how you lose anything here, prototype or not; you'd have to contribute something to this before you

    • Maybe the engineers could do their job better if they didn't have to worry about getting laid off, the wars our administration will be fighting for the next 4 years, Nasa's management breathing down their backs, trying to push the blame onto someone else, etc.

      All these problems link to capitalism. But nobody will admit it, will they?

      I will say it once again. Create the proper environment for people to work in and they will do a good job. That environment has nothing to do with money and a lot to do wit
    • I have an article coming out in the November 2003 issue of Space Policy (elsevier) that addresses NASA's restructuring... send me an email if you want to see it when it gets published (I'm under embargo until then... especially considering the CAIB report will come out two months earlier).

  • Not all is as it Seems (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 19, 2003 @02:28AM (#6476851)
    Based upon my experience at Goddard, I will say that most of the people at NASA are honest, upstanding individuals intent on doing the best job they can.

    Unfortunately, I don't think the management culture they inhabit works the same way. Yes, there are honest people in management. Too often, though, they must fight against pressures forcing dishonesty and abuse.

    Some people are quitting the field because of dishonesty and abuse. Donna Shirley, the woman who led the team that designed and built the successful Mars rover of 1997, has quit, citing the "lack of honesty and openness" in the field.

    When I was at Goddard, some high level managers in my company were caught defrauding the government out of millions of dollars. As a part of being allowed to continue doing business with the government, the company signed an agreement that forced all employees to receive annual "ethics" training. The training was a joke, emphasizing things like not using government e-mail for personal use. Teaching employees how to recognize major corruption on the part of mid and high level executives? Why, we "worker bees" need not worry our pretty little heads about that sort of thing...

    Personally, I think the kind of dishonesty reported in these articles will persist until NASA embraces honesty, openness and democracy in its culture.
  • NASA should call on (and pay lots of money to) the inimitable Bruce Simpson. [aardvark.co.nz]
  • First off... this is my own opinion only, and does not reflect the attitude or thoughts of my employer.... with that said:
    I'm not sure whether to be pleased that someone actually took the time to locate a report that's been out for almost three months, or irritated that they (space.com) are completely misleading the public as to the cause and who's to blame for the defect (or that somehow they're privy to information that's available to everyone) which resulted in NASA having to terminate the Launch and R

  • RTFM (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stewwy ( 687854 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @03:27AM (#6477005)
    Remind's me of the allegedly true story going the rounds BAE systems in the UK developed a new test rig for testing plane windsceens , a chicken was fired at high velocity at the screen by a giant compressed air gun An american company involved in high speed train developement asked if they could use the design, three weeks later a frantic Email arrived at BAE saying the chicken went through the screen, through the bulkhead and embedded itself in the rear wall of the carriage, what should they do to improve their windsceen, the guy at BAE sent a one line email to them 'DEFOST THE CHICKEN' I tend to think its true as something similar happened to me, I was involved in developing rat poisons, new novel chemicals/drugs are often sent off for evaluation as anti-cancer drugs or in this case to combat strokes (it was an anti-coagulent) the center replied that it was not effective as all the rats died at their standard testing dose DOH RTFM

    • Re:RTFM (Score:2, Informative)

      by tengwar ( 600847 )
      It's a very old urban legend. As far as I can tell, the chickecn cannon was developed in the UK to test the De Havilland Comet.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @05:03AM (#6477173)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • As someone who has worked on satellite software development and testing, I can tell you that system complexity is one of the biggest enemies of the 'Faster, Better, Cheaper' philosophy. As the complexity of a spacecraft increases, so does the testing.

      No doubt. Which is why successful FBC missions tend to deliberately work to reduce complexity. That's how they make them fast and cheap. It's a foolish project manager (i.e. one that really doesn't "get" FBC) that tries to implement the "Faster" and "Cheaper"

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • That philosophy put man on the moon.

          Actually, if you stop and think about you'll realize that the way NASA put men on the moon was very much in line with the FBC philosophy. Rather than investing a huge amount of money in something complex and "high-tech" like the X-20 DynaSoar and taking forever to develop the missions NASA operated on a fixed, very tight schedule (land and return before the decade is out), and opted for simple, rugged solutions. Sounds a lot like the mandated "3 years from 0 to launch

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
            Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • Businesses want profits and the profits just aren't there for pure science research in space.

              The profits aren't there because it costs so much to put things in space. It costs so much to put things in space because of NASA's stranglehold on space, and the massive amount of useless government red-tape involved in a launch.

              Universities won't be funding space exploration -- it's often tough for them to find enough money in the budget for facilities maintenance.

              Actually, many universities do run their own

  • Has anyone noticed that NASA is cooler than you?

    Seriously. They are doing new stuff that hasn't been done before. Cut them some slack.

    Yeah, sure, the Shuttle fiasco has been an expensive endeavor, but I don't see a whole lot of other groups sending crazy experimental aricraft up to see what happens.

    When you new things, it doesn't always work out. Did Jeremy McGrath totally nail his first backflip? Not bloody likely. Chances are it took him a few tries and a few scratches (and, perhaps, watching a few
  • Donald Rumsfeld (always) and NASA management will want you to believe that NASA employees are all to blame for failures. We always find out later that the Government civilian worker-bees and pack-mules did all the right things, but management and office (government) politics in the government workplaces did all the wrong things ... too include point the finger at the group that many like to use as an excuse, but they (civilian worker-bees and pack-mules) make no decisions and can only seek permission. Incompetent decisions that sometimes are made by unaccredited university degreed (diploma mill) managers, Bosses, and politicians are the typical today.
    Failures in business and government projects are due to piss poor performance by management and Bosses not the worker-bees and pack-mules employees. Ecology, business, and tax laws, pension and health benefits, ... don't cause bank/CU failures, business bankruptcies, criminal fraud and theft in business the majority of failures in our economy/business are due to piss poor performance by management and Bosses not the worker-bees and pack-mules employees.
    2001/09/11 NSA, CIA, and FBI failures were not because of the field agents. Two Shuttle disasters, Hubble Telescope, X-43A, ... failures are due to failures in leadership and delusional denial by management. Credit Unions (CU), Global Crossings, World Com, Enron, ... failures, and Delta and other companies CEOs and staff steeling (lack of a better word) from worker-bees and pack-mules pension funds, reductions in pay, benefits, and health insurance to fund the CEOs' and staffs' ever increasing pay and benefits increases, and then put CEOs' and staffs' retirements in protected trust.
    Politicians of the Capitalist Republic applaud CEOs' and staffs' performance in saving the economy by getting the worker-bees and pack-mules (US Citizens) to pay for the bad global economy. The President after 2001/09/11 called for all good US Citizens to spend our money and support the USA. The CEOs', staffs', and politicians (have a different agenda) are setting up more corporate and wealthy tax welfare programs for the oil and construction companies in Iraq and national parks, pharmaceutical companies in Africa, ....
    US Citizens will pay in the future (our children, grandchildren, ...), financial responsibility is a thing of the past, and social security is always secure, because the government can maintain benefits for the wealthy today, and increase the social security retirement age until the right number of US Citizens die and never collect any benefits (old folks don't have many dependents). US, EU, and UN Citizens are becoming the whores of the wealthy fucked now, beaten later, and screwed to death.

    OldHawk777

    Reality is a self-induced hallucination.

    Yea, I know, I did stray a little from topic, but I beg forgiveness from /. Readers and US Citizens. Try to get a politician, CEO, holy-man, or manager to admit they made a mistake, like in this X-43A case.
  • Failed probes, failed missions, failed vehicles, and 7 more astronaughts to build a stupid monument and name conference rooms after.

    But he sure did a good job changing NASA's letterhead. Glad that logo got fixed...

    His next mission? President of Boston University. I can't wait till "Faster-Better-Cheaper" filters down to the BU School of Medicine.
  • ...when the article clearly states the subcontractor, Orbital Sciences Corporation, was deficient in a number of engineering and technical disciplines?

  • X-43 Test Failure (Score:2, Informative)

    by De_Gopher ( 689849 )
    I haven't seen that particular report, but just to clarify what I know, the failure wasn't in the X-43 hypersonic vehicle but in the Pegasus launch booster, built by Orbital Sciences. Apparently the Pegasus was built to be launched at 40,000 feet, however in the first test it was launched at 20,000 feet. The increased air density and aerodynamic loading at this altitude caused a structural failure in a stabilising fin on the booster, not the X-43 craft itself, which remains unproven.

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