Setbacks Cast Doubt On NASA's Ares Project 255
stoolpigeon writes with this excerpt from an Orlando Sentinel article about the Ares program, which paints a bleak picture of the program's future: "Bit by bit, the new rocket ship that is supposed to blast America into the second Space Age and return astronauts to the moon appears to be coming undone. First was the discovery that it lacked sufficient power to lift astronauts in a state-of-the-art capsule into orbit. Then engineers found out that it might vibrate like a giant tuning fork, shaking its crew to death. Now, in the latest setback to the Ares I, computer models show the ship could crash into its launch tower during liftoff. "
Sounds familar or what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Experts say its problems stem from changes to the original design. These modifications, such as changing the engines and making the solid rocket boosters longer, created unexpected problems, including excessive shaking and the launch drift.
Changing design too late in the game, not enough time to review what consequences those changes might create? Too many requirements squeezed into too tight a schedule?
Hmm, sounds familiar to us who are doing large software projects.
DIlber law has taken over (Score:4, Insightful)
Looking around and seeing the tons of greedy and incompetent managers I have no doubt that Dilber law (it states that incompetent people will get promoted to managment) has taken over the old rule that managers where people that may have been lacking "social" skills but at least they knew what they where doing.
I have no problem to believe that suggestions and faults report of engineers where just ignored by some manager that decided that by doing so he will be in charge to build two projects (the faulty one and the possibly working one)
I suggest that we go back to the old school, managers must be taken from successful engineers that have worked on the field ! They may lack some "social" skill but at least they know what they are doing
We need to... (Score:0, Insightful)
Man-rate a Delta vehicle and use that to lift our astronauts, and we need to purchase Soyuz spacecraft from Russia. Luckily, Congress has recently authorized the latter.
We also need to do something like what Von Braun did - inflate the specs by 20% and build the rocket for that target instead of what the payload engineers say they need. The payload is going to weigh a lot more than what they think, even if they don't know it yet.
Re:DIlber law has taken over (Score:5, Insightful)
You know many technicians, mechanics, and repairmen have a similar complaint about engineers - really smart people who don't know a damn thing about physically working on something. The Dilbert-esque manager is a simplistic stereotype, when the problems are likely much more complicated.
Shuttle II (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember, as a kid, being very excited about reports that the reusable 'Space Shuttle' was going to be like a 'space pickup truck' and reduce launch costs to $50/lb. It was still expensive, but I remember calculating the price for a kid my size. ($4500. Wow!) Then the cost went up to $100/lb. Not great, but still cheaper than what we had. Then $500/lb. Tolerable, I guess. Then they quit talking about it at all.
NASA has done a lot of amazing things in the last 30 years, no doubt. But their manned program is a complete fuck-story. Just once, I'd like to see senior NASA management acknowledge a problem in the manned program, own up to causing it, and taking the action necessary to fix it. I like it that they've split cargo and humans (after 30 years of agonizingly expensive lessons that have greatly diminished American space capability) and are going back to mostly disposable systems (again, after 30 years of expensive lessons). But, why--Oh, why!?--can't they get this right?
It looks like they're going to drive this thing into the ground, just like the shuttle. The public secret is that the NASA manned program shows all the signs of a dysfunctional organization, and has for 30 years. The next president, senate, and congress need to seriously look at scrapping NASA's manned program and building a new one from scratch, possibly outside of the auspices of NASA. For the good of the country and of humankind, I hope that they do.
Success over progress? (Score:3, Insightful)
How have our standards of failure become so high that we freak out because there could be flaws in simulations? This is the POINT of these projects, to push ourselves forward
Nobody wants to have to scrap their work to fix a problem, but it's going to happen. If it's not, we're not pushing ourselves hard enough. Probes are going to crash, projects are going to overrun, people are going to make mistakes. If we keep at it, however, thats when we reap the rewards.
No doubt we need to eliminate needless risk and move what other risks we can away from the loss of life and property, but lets not confuse that with eliminating any risk at all. To remove all risk is to end all progress and change.
Why is this so hard? (Score:5, Insightful)
We seem to have made them in the "dark ages" of technology, too, relatively speaking.
What's the problem now? Are our engineers less smart? Do we have fewer materials? Are we under a budget that's too strict? There has to be something that's keeping us from being able to do this. I mean, we made a fricking space plane twenty years ago to build up public opinion and convince people that we were on the edge of the future -- now we can't go back and make a rocket?
I mean, at worst, what's keeping us from looking at, say, the Saturn design and updating it with modern technologies, materials, and safety measures?
I feel like I'm missing something here.
Re:What're the alternatives? (Score:4, Insightful)
Another alternative: Falcon 9 Heavy [spacex.com] This is being deliberately built with the goal in mind to become man-rated eventually, and will be making trips to the ISS on unmanned resupply missions. The first flight of this rocket (not the heavy variant but at least the Falcon 9) is going to be later on this year. The manned version will be using a completely new spacecraft as well, which SpaceX is calling the Dragon.
But will it get us to the moon? That is the whole point of Ares.
Re:DIlber law has taken over (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I remeber reading my dad's copy in the early 70's, and it doesn't say that "incompetent people get promoted" it says people get promoted to their level of incompetence and then remain at that level.
BTW: The "zen" of the Peter Principle is to realize it applies to EVERYONE, including yourself. This is why the best project managers will happily admit they "don't know anything" when in reality they probably have 20+yrs experience on the floor.
Re:AND, there is the fact ... (Score:5, Insightful)
well they're already trying that concept with the Lunar Lander challenge.
but space research has already been commercialized. all of NASA's technology is developed by private contractors. that's why it costs so much to build and launch the shuttle. on top of the actual development costs (materials, salaries for engineer/scientist/researchers, etc.) a large portion of their budget spending is needed to feed commercial profits--companies like Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. as well as smaller private contractors that also need to make a profit on each contracted component.
cut out the CEO salaries, corporate profits, and replace business politics with a scientific meritocracy, then you'll see a much more efficient space agency. a lot of other national space agencies seem to be able to do more with less (as with NASA in the past), so there's no inherent problem with public space research.
i don't have anything against the commercialization of space per se. if private corporations want to invest in cutting-edge technology like space travel, they should do it. but the commercial sector prefers to wait for the pure research to be done by someone else and then come in only after the technology is stable enough to develop commercial applications that they can profit from.
so it's usually up to the government to fund pure research. and that works great when it's truly public research. but when you mix public research with commercial industries, that's when you get the problem we're faced with today, where the government is basically subsidizing a commercial space industry that has gradually replaced public space research. and this just shouldn't be happening. if private corporations want to commercialize space, they can do it on their own dime.
besides, no one is stopping commercial industries from doing space research. just look at Virgin Galactic and Space X. national space programs has pioneered space technology and done much of the hard work for private industries. we shouldn't have to pay private corporations to commercialize space. commercial research doesn't benefit the public. it's like subsidizing the telecom industry and then letting the private telecoms charge us to use the infrastructure we paid for in the first place.
Re:Remake Apollo (Score:4, Insightful)
While I would have to agree that it was a huge mistake to abandon the Saturn family of rockets in the 1970's, any attempt to revive the project would simply be starting all over again with a whole new rocket design.
More importantly, all of the talent that went into building the Saturn V, including much of the undocumented "fixes" and the folks who were on the line actually putting the thing together have long since retired or simply died. Also, none of the suppliers for the Saturn V even exist.
Heck, I'm not even sure you could find the manufacturing capabilities for many of the Saturn V components in America any more. Most of that capability has been shipped overseas to places like China, India, and Taiwan. And you wonder why those countries are getting rockets of their own going?
Re:It is called engineering. (Score:3, Insightful)
We can't get it back, we can only make a copy and find out the hard way what some of the bits that are undocumented for were really added for. On the other hand we can make a launch vehicle that living designers know backwards based on expertise that is not just limited to NASA and a couple of contractors, and we can repeatedly test the things to destruction like the motors in the Saturn V were. The problem is that it will take time and we need to be able to listen to experts instead of going for headlines. Chasing headlines IMHO is how we ended up with a NASA culture that was so malevolent that the only person untouchable enough to speak the truth was a dying Nobel prize winner. The Russians had major failures too but I think a lot of their success came from announcing things when they were done - in a lot of cases they had less time pressure than US missions (Sputnik was an exeption and had to be launched before the instruments were ready, but we didn't find that out until decades after a launch that was still a huge success).
Re:Why is this so hard? (Score:2, Insightful)
You're wrong.
The rockets you mention had a hell of a time getting to work properly. Stuff that makes the problems with Ares look tame. In the 50s all the US could do was make big explosions, before they got the hang of systems management.
NASA a classic dysfunctional bureaucracy (Score:5, Insightful)
To my admittedly outsider's eye, NASA looks and acts exactly like your classic dysfunctional monopoly bureaucracy. These things are common and seem unavoidable - everything that I've read about the Ares debacle is right in line with a sclerotic, mismanaged, change-averse (and risk-averse .. just not the right type of risk) fiefdom-addled government clusterfuck we see time and time again. Hell, not just government - occasionally we see this in the private sector too, when a trenchant monopoly manages to establish itself somewhere and then proceeds to lose sight of everything that got it there in the first place and rots from within. Microsoft of 5 years ago, by all accounts, got pretty close to that, but there are many others, especially in defense.
What kills this is competition, genuine competition, that forces the organisation to adapt or perish. Nothing other than imminent risk of complete death will force such organisations to subject themselves to the kind of creative destruction needed to re-invent themselves.
I personally believe that NASA in its present form is lost, but forms can change. The key element is the competition now arising from other countries' space agencies. NASA no longer has a monopoly; it will not take long before the results from other agencies - done better, faster, cheaper - will force radical change at NASA.
It's not the 1960s again yet, but when China and India announce dates for their moon landings, you can bet the clock will start spinning backwards within days.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. I love America, but it desperately needs competition. The same could go for NASA. Well, it'll get it soon enough.
Funny how NASA - and America in general - needs foreigners to keep itself in line. Back in the day it was Von Braun. Now it's Hu Jintao who will provide the electric shock necessary to revive this intransigent patient.
America isn't a country, it's a team. It needs to fight, it needs to compete, it needs constant challenge. If there's no "enemy", it gets lazy and tears itself apart. Just like every other empire in history. I use that word without any perjorative intention, by the way - there is simply no other way to describe a country with so many overseas military bases. Of course America is an empire, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But god, it needs competition. The good news is - competition is on the way. In space, and everywhere else, America now faces its first real competition in generations.
I for one am on the edge of my seat, waiting for the games to begin, and looking forward to what the "real america" - the one that competes, and wins - can come up with. USA!
Re:They want to be smart. KISS, remember it. (Score:4, Insightful)
In Lotro PvMP one of the basics is "you need numbers". A complex task is to try stategies like creating a diversion, flanking etc etc. Everyone who thinks they know about war might think these are valid tactics but forget one thing. KISS. Even an attempt at flanking the enemy is FAR to complex to pull off.
It might be "FAR too complex" in your videogame, but people fighting an actual war realize the value of flanking.
Flanking is valuable because of KISS - when the enemy has to cover his 12 and his 6 at the same time, vs. two of your units that only have to cover their 12, he covers both less adeptly than he would cover one. It's a win for you.
Re:Yes I think people forget (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think the average American taxpayer even has a clue for how much (or how little) money is being spent on NASA. Most of the "ordinary" (but perhaps a bit older) folks that I talk to about NASA think that it is getting funded at 1960's levels, and can't for the life of them figure out why we aren't on Mars yet.
Indeed, most of the folks who complain about NASA "waste" are complaining that with the 10% of the federal budget devoted to NASA (it is actually 1/10th of a percent, more or less) that there are much better way to be spending that sort of money.... like on education or to help protect against global warming. Barack Obama is one of these that has proposed just this sort of wild accusation about "wasteful spending" by the government on spaceflight.
"The Space Program" has changed quite a bit from the 1960's, and I just don't see the innovation coming from NASA or the gutsy moves like the Apollo 8 flight that really tried to push technology right to the edge. Put into a more modern context, the Apollo 8 flight was like a manned trip to Jupiter and back would be today.
I have thought a "what if" situation where somehow all of the Science-related programs of the federal government were thrown together into something called the "Department of Science" that would include the NSF, NASA, and NOAA. Then again, I'm not a huge fan of "efficient" government either.
BTW, I'd have to agree with you on something here as well. Leadership in this area (spaceflight) is something that has been significantly lacking from Washington DC for quite some time. There are a bunch of dedicated engineers and research scientists, as well as a huge corp of astronauts, that want nothing better than to "boldly go where nobody has gone before". The Vision for Space Exploration was a good first baby step that has been missing for nearly three decades, but it certainly isn't as stirring as "we choose to go to the Moon, not because it is easy but because it is hard."
"We are returning to the Moon" just seem to ring hollow in that sort of context.
Re:It is called engineering. (Score:5, Insightful)
I certainly would trust the Saturn V and its safety record over the Shuttle.
Saturn V, zero failures in the first (and only) 13 flights.
Space shuttle, zero failures in the first 24 flights, one failure, then zero failures for the next 87 flights.
If you "trust" the safety record of the Saturn as better than shuttle, this is only by an artifact of low statistics-- the Saturn V does not have a long enough flight record to say it has a better record than shuttle.
Two wrongs don't make a right (Score:3, Insightful)
Two wrongs don't make a right, you know? Yes, some engineers are incompetent, and some are as out of touch with reality as to design an engine block with the spark plugs underneath. (To pick an example of something a mechanic would dislike thoroughly.)
1. Adding an incompetent manager on the next layer doesn't fix it. It just makes the total problem even worse. You can't say it's ok to add an incompetent boss, just because a lot of those under him will be incompetent too.
2. Yes, an engineer will not know everything. E.g., the ones doing physical engineering may not know much about industrial design, or programmers usually don't know much about GUI design. That's why we have a whole organization, not a lone maverick designing it all. You have to mix and match the skills of several people, to have a good design. From the guy designing the engine, to the one designing a pleasing dashboard, to the marketer doing a study in which colour should it have to be attractive to buyers. It's a _team_ effort.
And guess what? The role of a manager is precisely to organize such a heterogenous team, and make sure it has the right mix of skills and that they're used right.
Basically if you can notice the shortcomings of an individual there (e.g., "damn engineers who put the spark plugs there"), you're actually noticing a management failure too. The guy who should have had the missing skill, wasn't there or wasn't listened to. Even if you want to expect that engineers should have had <insert extra skill> in the first place, then someone should have taken that into account when hiring them. If a whole team ended up with _all_ members missing that skill that everyone should have had... why did they get hired then? Or, again, then why wasn't an extra guy hired who has that extra skill needed, and whose job is to apply it.
That's the job of management: to manage it all.
Re:It is called engineering. (Score:2, Insightful)