NASA Shuttle Replacement's Problems Are Worsening 344
ausoleil noted that NASA's replacement for the shuttle, the Orion, is slipping behind schedule "'We're probably going to have to move our target date,' NASA exploration chief Doug Cooke told The Associated Press on Wednesday after Nasawatch.com posted the 117-page internal status report (PDF) on the moon program. The cost problems include an $80 million overrun on a motor system. The Orion spacecraft's design remains too heavy for the proposed Ares 1 rocket. Software development, heat shield testing and other complex work remain behind schedule or over budget. There are dozens of such serious challenges, many of which are 'worsening.'"
Did we really make it to the moon? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Just wait (Score:5, Interesting)
Citizens actually want to fund space activities, not the stuff that's killing us: http://perotcharts.com/ [perotcharts.com]
Dis-intermediating DC is step #1 in carrying out the will of the people.
I'm outraged? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, that's sucks I guess. But since NASA has something like a $17 billion budget, isn't that a colossal non-issue? I realize this was just the motor system, but if I had a $40,000 budget to furnish a new home, I don't think I would be concerned if the coffee table was $20 more than I was expecting.
Re:Did we really make it to the moon? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now we have no one to race
And even if there was someone to race, their installations would probably get bombed down during a so-called preventive strike because of its potential military applications ;)
Nowadays, it's much easier to start a fire and put oil on it than dealing with a cold war it seems.
Programming language (Score:2, Interesting)
Go Robotic (Score:3, Interesting)
I would like to question the reason to build a human carrying shuttle at all right now. While it's certainly very cool to be able to shoot people into space and have the walk around on the Moon is it really the most cost effective way to do the research? Huge amounts of money are spent researching ways to keep our poorly space adapted feeble bodies alive in space which could otherwise be spent making some really great breakthroughs in the robotics and perhaps AI fields.
I'm not questioning whether we should do space research (which I would like to see more of even though I think it's an expensive luxury) but I am saying that we should be maximum bang for our buck both in space and down here in the real world.
Re:What has happened to us? (Score:3, Interesting)
See, I don't know about this. I keep hearing around minable resources on the moon that might make good sense if we ever get the whole cold fusion thing working. If this is true (and excuse me if I'm not, see disclaimer for more info) it makes sense to me to get the technology off the ground today that could put those resources within easy reach to us as soon as possible. I would really really hate to see us get fusion down to a workable and safe energy solution to only have to wait another 10-20 years after that while the technology was developed to mine the resources that make it truely worthwhile and cost effective.
Again, I'm not in the know on the subject like some other users seem to be so maybe I'm talking out of my ass. I just think that developing technologies on a parallel track makes more sense than doing step one and wait to be able to do step two if they're solutions that can be worked out simultaneously.
Re:Shocker!!!!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
That's *why* the public date is further out than the internal date in the first place
Re:yeah, that's right. i'm not a rocket scientist (Score:5, Interesting)
The more expensive and the longer it takes, the more the contractors make. There's no motivation to be on time and under budget.
Not true... cost plus is good if you don't want the "lowest bidder" mentality. Although underhanded tactics will inevitably exist, NASA only pays contractors cost plus a FIXED profit for the contractor.
They have no incentive to run over on the time
Re:Why the Ares I? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's exactly what's supposed to happen.
We're canceling the Shuttle, and later when Ares/Orion turns into a huge disaster with budget overruns and shortfalls, Congress will be justified (in the public's eyes) when they cancel it as well and shut down the entire manned spaceflight program.
And if you think they're going to make private spaceflight easy to make up for this, you're deluded.
We're in the process of shutting down our airline industry with ridiculous security policies that do nothing for security and everything for driving people away from air travel. Private aviation is being similarly crippled with new taxes designed primarily to ensure that only the very wealthy can afford to fly. There is no reason to have NASA when we can outsource our space flight needs to overseas vendors and get paid kickbacks to our secret overseas bank accounts.
A population that stays in the same place all the time is much easier to control. Transportation is under attack.
Re:yeah, that's right. i'm not a rocket scientist (Score:5, Interesting)
If only it were that easy. Adding to the Cost usually means you're going to take a beating when it comes to determining the Plus. It's also not a great idea to willfully and purposely dick over a major customer like NASA; both because it's illegal and because you'll have no chance to win future contracts.
I don't buy that. First, there's a long history of prime contractors (the ones actually able to make contracts with government agencies) screwing over federal agencies yet continuing to get contracts. Second, it looks pretty straightforward to legally exploit cost plus contracts.
Re:Just wait (Score:5, Interesting)
FYI, I found updated numbers for the six engine Ares V on NASA's site here:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/aresV/index.html [nasa.gov]
The correct LEO figure is stated here:
Re:Did we really make it to the moon? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's really tragic thing. Maybe we don't deserve to be a spacefaring race.
Have some patience, man! It's like having the Vikings visit the Americas, get killed, never return, and then you complain that "Maybe we don't deserve to be a seafaring race."
A little over a century ago, man wasn't even flying airplanes. The first human was sent into space less than fifty years ago. There's no real reason to think that large-scale space exploration and even colonization won't happen. There's also no real reason to think that it will, or should, happen within the next fifty years, or even within the next two hundred years. The amount of time that humanity has so far been visiting space is but a blink of an eye in historical terms.
Re:Just wait (Score:4, Interesting)
Nonsense. The vast majority of people really want to see some cool pictures on the news every couple of years or so. If you substitute to 10c per person (or whatever the current budget works out to) with half a dozen multi-millionaires and a long (actually, short) tail of "enthusiast" types chipping in $50 or $20, you won't have enough for a single Delta launch, let alone fund design testing build and operation of two and a half new launchers, a new crew vehicle and the TLI / lander / ascent hardware needed for another moon landing.
I personally am of the opinion the moon landings will be jettisoned as soon as practical, and that that's a good thing. I just hope it's early enough to leave enough left for the increasingly delayed outer planets flagship mission and some more Mars landers / rovers, oh and a telecoms relay orbiter that will be desperately needed in 7-10 years' time. (Did you know there's nothing on the Mars launch schedule after MSL in 2010? That money's gone to Dubya's cock-eyed publicity stunt of trying to get Kennedy's rep by announcing another manned moon landing. But I realise that's unpopular around here.
Re:Fortunately for NASA (Score:5, Interesting)
You should check the figures on that... it stopped being true some time ago. Email has killed the ability of the USPS to fund itself. It's really hard to track the USPS budget, for lots of reasons (for example, their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quarters are 84 days long, and their 4th quarter is 112 days), but the Federal budget includes payments to the USPS for security and anti-terrorism, to make up for reduced revenue from Congressionally capped rates, and for other reasons.
Suffice it to say that the USPS is no longer self-sufficient.
Re:yeah, that's right. i'm not a rocket scientist (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't that trivially fixed by "buying from yourself", such that you can control the costs (indirectly) and still blow the top off the budget? It seems pretty common for even a moderately-sized business to split itself into lots of tightly-knit components, and depending on the definition of 'cost', it seems like that could work out perfectly for the contractors involved...
Re:yeah, that's right. i'm not a rocket scientist (Score:2, Interesting)
Cost plus is common in situations like this and is typical for NASA. The shuttle replacement requires a significant amount of R&D and it's not easy (or possible) to accurately estimate the final cost without knowing how you're going to build something. Cost-plus shifts some of this risk to the customer and is typically used when you're concerned about long term quality instead of cost.
Re:Just wait (Score:1, Interesting)
As I'm sure you realize, the 71 tons to the moon means to trans-lunar injection (earth escape), not into lunar orbit or onto the surface (about 14 tons to the surface...from a rocket that weighs 4000 tons at launch)
Amazing what 40 years of politicization will do (Score:4, Interesting)
NASA has been on a long, uninterrupted downward slide ever since Reagan, when it became more heavily politicized. They somehow managed to get people to the moon in 1969 with a basic, brute-force, heavy-lift vehicle and almost enough computing power to run a pocket calculator. Since then, the manned program hasn't made it much past Low Earth Orbit.
If the current crop of idiots can't get their act together, why not blow the dust off those old Saturn V plans, save some weight by substituting new materials where it would work, and get freakin' going? Longer stays could be accommodated be using the Mars Express approach of sending automated supply missions on ahead.
I don't know if it's time to fire everybody in upper management and start fresh, but it's getting really tempting. And let's try to remember that space exploration is dangerous work. Test pilots die. Astronauts die. That doesn't mean you shut down and abandon your whole program for years on end whenever something goes wrong. They tried it with the Space Shuttle, and all that down time didn't ultimately make things a lot safer.
Re:Just wait (Score:3, Interesting)
Those are not my quotes, they are NASA's. And I do realize that 71t "to the moon" means a TLI burn. The reason for the 188t figure is that NASA added a sixth engine to the previously 5 engine stack AND moved from the SSMEs to the RS-68 engines. These changes significantly increased the performance of the booster.
That is, in theory. We'll see how close the booster is to its theoretical figures once it's on the pad. ;-)
Re:Gap? (Score:1, Interesting)
I personally do not think the overruns are deliberate. Heck...I recently totally botched an estimate for a 3 week, $10,000 project. I'm slightly ashamed to admit I just finished it after 6 weeks (at least I was on-budget, however). I shudder to think of planning for a 10 year, $30 billion project.
Sunk cost rationalizations have failed to save quite a few NASA projects in the past, most notably the X-33.
Ariane 5 & Soyuz 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
There are alternatives
Those are some and I also wonder if they couldn't just license the designs of the Ariane 5 [wikipedia.org] or the Soyuz 2 rocket [wikipedia.org]? They are both proven vehicles.
Another alternative would be to work the Russians to bring the Energia [wikipedia.org] rocket back into use.
Re:yeah, that's right. i'm not a rocket scientist (Score:3, Interesting)
Many of the costs (e.g., labor costs) are profits to people involved in the project (and in many cases, in the decision making relating to how the project gets done), though they aren't part of the "fixed profit" added on to the "costs".
Fixed-price contracts (the main alternative to "cost-plus" contracts) don't need to be "lowest bidder" (and cost-plus contracts can be to lowest bidders). The incetive problem cost-plus contracts notionally fix isn't a real problem with fixed-price contracts: that is the notional incentive in fixed-price contracts to cut corners, which is a problem of contractor oversight not fixed-price nature (in a cost-plus contract, the same lack of oversight is more likely to lead to padding costs, but the net result is that the entity contracting for services doesn't get value for its money, the same as in the corner-cutting case). The valid concern cost-plus contracts address is the absence of flexibility to deal with problems that could not reasonably have been anticipated when the contract was let; with proper oversight, cost-plus contracts would be a good way of dealing with this problem. The problem in government contracting (fixed-cost or cost-plus) is with contract oversight.
Re:Just wait (Score:1, Interesting)
Amen, brothah. The entire government should be funded with such a "tip jar." What donors/taxpayers do is submit an electronic form with their payment containing a user-customized pie chart instructing the government as to how they want their money spent.
Re:I am a Rocket Scientist (Score:2, Interesting)
The shuttle's orbiter was doing in atmosphere testing for at least 5 years before it flew a mission, and I'd expect large assemblies of this rocket to be in testing by now for it to be on time. Again, I'm not an insider, but it just doesn't seem like things are there yet. Then again this is probably just a bullshit timetable for the benefit of congress, so who knows what NASA is picturing for a realistic timetable amongst themselves.