NASA Admin Says Shuttle and ISS are Mistakes

Teancum writes "NASA Administrator Michael Griffin was recently interviewed by the USA Today Editorial Board regarding the current direction of the U.S. Space Program, and in the interview he suggested that the past three decades have been a huge mistake and a waste of resources. As a total cost for both programs that has exceeded $250 Billion, you have to wonder what other useful things could have been developed using the same resources. Griffin quoted in the interview regarding if the shuttle had been a mistake "My opinion is that it was... It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible." Regarding the ISS: "Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in.""

ISS Orbit

[bohemian72]

I'm sure I've heard that the ISS was supposed to have a more equatorial orbit, but when Russia came on board the orbit was tilted to give them easier access to it.

Re:Wrong headline ...

[dAzED1]

no, it doesn't. In fact, it is more than just misleading; it's very wrong. Mr Griffin did state that ISS was in fact important, he just said, like you pointed out, that he thinks the orbit is wrong.

Shuttle Engines Not Engineered Properly

[justanyone]

As Richard Feynman's brilliant analysis from 1986 clearly states, the shuttle's main engines were NOT designed properly and are doomed to be both expensive to maintain and markedly dangerous to use.

A link to his comments is at http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.ht ml [ralentz.com]

He has a wonderful explanation, in terms that non-engineers as well as engineers can understand, about how to build complex devices. Good engineering, he says, comes from dividing the task in to component parts, creating specifications for those parts, building samples, testing them to their limits, retesting them to various other limits, until you have a complete understanding of all the failure modes of that component, as well as the reliability of your manufacturing process for that component. Then, you assemble multiple components together and test that assembly together in all the modes you can conjure up, to create what I have always heard termed, "A Well-characterized System".

As he points out, the space shuttle main engines (SSME's), though complex and "groundbreaking" in the sense that they were very big and incorporating some (at the time) quite advanced technologies, they were NOT WELL CHARACTERIZED on a component basis. To my knowledge (although I'm not a NASA watcher with as much fervor as some) I don't believe the SSMEs have EVER BEEN analyzed and re-engineered to create characterizations of their failure points, reliability, etc.

The fact that NASA's next plan is to use them in the follow-on vehicles for heavy lift only testifies to NASA's complete lack of focus here. They should put out several contracts for heavy lift engines with well-characterized failure modes, with focuses on reusability, reliability, maintenance cost, and overall operating cost.

We're soon going to be stuck with the next-gen heavy lift using components of unknown reliability, which forces us to replace component parts ("tune-up" or "overhaul") the system too often and with too large an expense.

Feynman was right. Solve the root cause. Engineer these things with good methodologies. And don't tie us down to next-gen-of-schlock-engineering if we don't have to be. I congratulate the able engineers who worked on the SSME's, but I respect Feynman's analysis that correct procedures benefit lowering long-term costs and ensure safety of the admirable crews who pilot our national spacecraft.

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Re:ISS

[VitaminB52]

It's not the altitude of the orbit, it's the orbits angle with the equator that Michael Griffin is referring to.

The Russians put the first parts of the ISS in orbit, and did it in an orbit that is easier for them than for the Americans. The large angle with the equator reduces the amount of payload the shuttle can bring to the ISS.

Re:Things they could be working on

[Nimey]

There is no "dark side" of the Moon. There's a *far* side that we don't see from Earth, but it gets about as much sunlight as the Earth-facing side.

Re:Waste of Resources?

[supernova87a]

All the research that has been done there?

As one commentator put it recently, "the only research that has been carried out at the ISS is of the caliber of a high school science fair."

If you can name any hard hitting science that has been done at the ISS (aside from humans-in-space-duration sort of research), I'd be interested to hear it. I'm an astronomer, and I haven't heard of a single thing useful having been produced by the ISS.

We seem to have fallen into the faulty logic that, "we've invested so much that we shouldn't bail out and waste what we've put in to it so far." If it's a waste, it's a waste -- and continuing it is just throwing good money after bad. This seems to be a common thread these days....

Cost has always been an issue ...

[busman]

This site has a good summary of the Shuttle history

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shuttle.htm [astronautix.com]

As far back as 1970 cost was an issue ..

June 19790 - Launch Vehicle: Shuttle.
Independent studies of NASA's shuttle ordered. Nation: USA.
The new NASA Administrator, James Fletcher, had found that the NASA internal estimates of the cost to develop and operate the space shuttle were treated by the Office of Management of the Budget with great scepticism. Therefore he authorised several independent studies. Lockheed was to report on how the shuttle could reduce payload costs. Aerospace Corporation was to make an independent estimate of the cost of developing and operating the shuttle. Mathematica was to use these studies to make a definitive report comparing the cost of the shuttle with that of using existing expendable boosters.

The Mathematica study would become notorious, for it forecast enormous savings in the use of the shuttle. It became very influential in government and congressional circles in shifting opinion to support the project. This, as NASA Administrator Low would dryly comment later, was 'unfortunate'. All earlier studies for the USAF and NASA, notably a RAND study in 1970, showed no cost advantage for reusable boosters when research and development costs were taken into account. RAND had concluded that a manned space station supported by expendable boosters would be cheaper, and more flexible and useful.

Fletcher also directed NASA to take US Air Force requirements for the shuttle into account. The US Defence Department's requirements included the ability to carry 18 m long payloads, and deliver a mass of 18,000 kg to a polar orbit from Vandenberg AFB, or 30,000 kg to a low earth orbit from Cape Canaveral. The 4.5 m diameter for the payload bay was a NASA requirement, established by the planned diameter of future space station modules. 18 m x 4.5 m also corresponded to the dimensions of a liquid hydrogen tank with a mass of 30,000 kg, the lowest-density payload imaginable. The USAF also wanted an 1800 to 2400 km cross range on re-entry, and an initial operational capability of December 1977.

The Aerospace Corporation study of NASA Phase A proposals concluded that the weight of a shuttle's thermal protection system would vary in relation to the fourth root of the required cross range. Aerospace also believed that sequential ignition of the booster and orbiter was a better approach than the triamese-type all-engines running at lift-off. It also declared that the USAF's desired operational date was unrealistic -- the earliest a shuttle could be available was mid to late 1979.

Monolithic funding may not be the way

[romit_icarus]

There may be argument and historic evidence in science and technology to show that projects that are succesful and then scaled up dont have good returns, and innovation and breakthrough come from small, tightly controlled projects. There could be innumerable examples to support this, notable of them being the Mars Explorer project, which forced NASA to be innovative given its relatively small budget.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ [nasa.gov]

Re:ISS Orbit

[everphilski]

No. It wouldn't have been. We couldn't have gotten the shuttle (or a soyuz for that matter... any manned carrier) to a lagrange point. He was saying a lower inclination orbit, probably 28.6 degrees, the inclination of JSC in Florida. It would have added several thousand pounds usable payload to each shuttle flight.

-everphilski-

Atypical bureaucrat

[amightywind]

I mean, he states the shuttle was "deeply flawed". What would he have built? Kept shooting Apollo capsules up forever more? Built an Apollo 2? And if the ISS isn't in a good orbit, what orbit would he prefer? And additionally, how were we supposed to know the Shuttle wasn't a solid idea, until we had actually built a few and tested them operationally?

After nearly 35 years imagine how the original Apollo design might have evolved? We might be on the 10th iteration! The ISS orbits sucks because it is highly inclined and low altitude. Highly inclined orbits are less accessable from low latitude launch sites (thanks Russia). Throw in the new lighting requirements for the Space Shuttle and you have absurdly few launch opportunities from the Cape. The low altitude of the station results in the need for frequent reboost due to atmospheric drag. It is also of marginal use in earth remote sensing because there is no global coverage.

I do agree that a shuttle-like vehicle has great R&D value. Perhaps a smaller reusable vehicle could have been built that integrated smoothly with Apollo launch capabilities.

It seems to me he's just trying to ride the wave of popular opinion that says the shuttle must go and the ISS isn't interesting.

Better that than ride the wave of mindless groupthink that left the US without a space architecture. Now that there is a negative (and richly deserved) feeding frenzy against shuttle/ISS lets make sure we kill the beast!

Re:$250 billion.

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Oh, is that what we were supposed to have spent it on? When do we get it?

Impatience is the hallmark of your generation, it seems. Go look up The Marshall Plan for post-WWII Europe. You'll see that over $100 billion was spent in 4 years in inflation-adjusted dollars, but that is merely financial aid. Military costs of occupation were significantly higher than that. Similar costs were borne to help rebuild Japan as well. Both plans took over a decade to even be considered reasonably complete.

War is not like some 30-minute TV sitcom. Things are not wrapped up neatly by the last commercial break. These things take time, and you should give us (I'm a Marine who's done a tour in Iraq) time to do our jobs. The more you carp and moan about how long things are taking, the more incentive you give insurgents to keep making bombs. After all, they know they can't defeat us militarily, so their only recourse is to try and get Americans at home to declare this war a "quagmire" and demand the troops come home. If they succeed at that, they will have won not because they defeated us but because we defeated ourselves. Attitudes like yours, whether you intend it or not, are helping the enemy.

Re:Waste of Resources?

[darkfrog]

This is complete fud. There is lots of interesting research that has/is going on in the ISS. Any attempt to say otherwise is just ignorant.

For some quick ideas see: http://www.spaceislandgroup.com/manufacturing.html [spaceislandgroup.com]

or for a more detailed list of publicized experiments try: http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/list. html [nasa.gov]

Some of interest I've found:
http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/CGBA- APS.html [nasa.gov] (Antibiotic Production)
http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/BBND. html [nasa.gov] (Radiation Damage)
http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/APCF. html [nasa.gov] (Protein Crystal Growth)
http://exploration.nasa.gov/programs/station/Foam. html [nasa.gov] (Viscous Liquid Foam/ Metallic Glass)

100 KHz?

[jfengel]

100 KHz? Really? I don't know much about power distribution, but wouldn't AC at that frequency cause all sorts of interference? And wouldn't you have to stick transformers everywhere to actually use it?

A bit of googling says yeah, people really do 100 khz power supplies, and higher. But I don't understand the advantage.

Re:Imagine if...

[SimilarityEngine]

I think that would be Napolean [wikipedia.org] rather than Julius Caesar... but yes still thanks to the (French) military.

Re:$250 billion.

[WhiplashII]

Iraq never attacked the United States

Technically, by attempting to assisinate former President Bush (Senior), Iraq did attack the US government. (But at least they had the balls to attack legitimate targets, not civilians)

Re:Wrong headline ...

[Ihlosi]

With artificial gravity even of 1/2 or 2/3 normal this problem would essentially disappear, freeing up maybe an hour a day for each astronaut.

Sorry, but generating artificial gravity isn't as simple as just making the space station spin (even if movies suggest that). First, getting even a fraction of a g would either require relatively huge angular velocities OR a really BIG space station. Then, by spinning things around, you don't just get the illusion of gravity (by centrifugal force), but also a lot of weird side effects (coriolis force) that a ME can probably explain better.

Also, the rotation creates quite a lot of strain on the structure of the space station.

Re:$250 billion.

[RWerp]

I was fucking serious. I know a professor who works in quantum optics. He told that this field of physics got a lot of funding in Reagan's times, because of the SDI.

Re:Waste of Resources?

[Naam Gozar Mohavi]

Be careful buddy. If the standard of good science is that it has to be "useful" then I think you'll find that a lot of the funding for those fancy telescopes you love so much will quickly dry up. I haven't heard of a single useful thing that any astronomer has done in my lifetime.

The discovery of Fullerenes and carbon nanotubes arose from studies of the dust surrounding a particular Asymptotic Giant Banch Star (IRC+10216). That was pretty useful.

Re:100 KHz?

[Agripa]

Efficiency is the advantage. One of the new advances that has helped to miniaturize "wall-wart" type AC power supplies is they use a "chopper" transistor to chop the 60 Hz AC into a much higher frequency. That higher frequency AC can be run through a much smaller transformer to get the required voltage out of it, with less waste heat generated.

The advantage is power density. For the same reason, aircraft power systems are 400 Hz instead of the 50 or 60 Hz used on land. Transformer, capacitor, and inductor size are inversely proportional to frequency for a given power level. If you have a weight or space constrained application, it can be well worth giving up some efficiency for increased power density. For space applications where waste heat has to be handled, all three criteria need to be considered.

Switching losses are proportional to frequency so in the best case doubling the frequency halves the mass of your converter while increasing the switching losses which are only a part of the total power conversion losses. Depending on the technology and topology of a switching power supply, there will be a sweet spot for switching frequency that yields the best efficiency. You can always sacrifice efficiency for power density.

I would have expected a high frequency distribution system to be just above 20 KHz. 100 KHz seems a little high to me but it is quite possible that the added cost of handling the higher frequency was more then worth the weight savings. DC has the advantage of being less complicated with fewer frequency compensation issues which sounds like what happened in the described test failure.

Re:Not quite.

[orac2]

The Earth's deviation from a sphere is enough to make a noticeable difference in the ground track of a satellite or spacecraft in all but the very briefest of missions, see here [esa.int].

Re:This sort of war doesn't require technical R&am

[PlacidPundit]

No, he jumped up and down and talked about mushroom clouds and how we had to invade right now to stop Saddam from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Exactly. Which was and still is a completely valid reason for invading since Iraq was attempting to purchase materials for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. And they already had quite a bit. They just didn't have massive stockpiles of ICBMs that the Left suddenly thinks we went there to get.