Ares Manager Steve Cook Resigns From NASA

FleaPlus writes "Steve Cook, project manager for the Ares I-X, Ares I, and Ares V rockets, announced that he will resign from NASA MSFC after 19 years at the agency, leaving for an executive position at Dynetics, Inc. This raises doubts about the future of the Ares program, which has been plagued with development problems and massive cost/schedule overruns since its inception. Steve Cook also oversaw the (since discredited) 2005 ESAS study which scrapped NASA's prior plans to adapt already-existing commercial rockets for human/beyond-LEO exploration in favor of internally developing the Ares rockets."

Re:One Person is not a Program

[Anonymous Coward]

If that is the case, then NASA really needs to work on hiring and/or training more Program Managers.

One person is not a program?

Tell that to Robert H. Goddard, Werner von Braun, and Freeman Dyson.

How about less emphasis on "managers" of "programs" and more emphasis on "visionaries" leading "engineers". (grumble, grumble, as cool as it is, we're building the wrong spacecraft-named-Orion, get off my lawn...)

Re:One Person is not a Program

[confused one]

He was also responsible for the X-33; he's been in charge of a big budget program that was shut down before. I'm guessing he can see the writing on the wall.

Re:Good news?

[FleaPlus]

Before making my submission I honestly tried to find examples of things which were even marginally successful, but could only find examples of management failures (X-33, X-34, Delta Clipper, ISS Propulsion Module).

I should add that this can potentially be attributed to big launch/propulsion projects in general at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (or at least those from the past 30 years). It's kind of tricky to separate the two though, since Steve Cook seems to have been manager for most of those projects. There were some failed launch projects though at MSFC which Steve Cook didn't manage, such as the ASRM, National Launch System, and Orbital Space Plane. No MSFC successes I've been able to find, though.

So... it's an open question if the management failures were due to Steve Cook, NASA MSFC, or NASA in general.

Re:Hmmmm. Private Enterprise?

[FleaPlus]

If its publicly funded, is it still private space travel?

IMHO, what's important is that it's commercial and competitive. For example, as great as they are, if you just handed Elon Musk, Robert Bigelow, or Burt Rutan a huge pile of money and gave them a monopoly over spaceflight, you'd eventually have many of the same problems. What's key is to have many companies competing against each other to provide the best spaceflight product, with NASA, academic researchers, "tourists," and private industry as the customers.

Re:Dianetics... WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you hear that giant woooosh sound when it went over your head?

Re:Hmmmm. Private Enterprise?

[WindBourne]

Who spoke of 50 billion? Under 500 million would get us a sundance AND a ba-330 added to the ISS (that includes the LV). Likewise, the MULTIPLE tugs will come if we offer up multiple contracts to de-orbit sats. And flea has it right. We NEED mutliple companies in this game. Not just the Boeings and l-marts. We need companies like the original scaled (now owned by Northrup), SpaceX, Armadillo, Bigelow, Blue Origin, etc. Basically, we want MULTIPLE providers in each space. That also means that at some point we need multiple providers of space stations. If we start the push for private into our orbit, then the rest will come. More importantly, we will see a real drop in price so that we can afford to go to the moon AND mars AND NEO asteroids (which is probably more important to America).

Not a surprise

[Shag]

We've already had the bad news - moon and mars are utterly unattainable with the current budget. Everyone's said it over the last few weeks, and I just heard it reiterated again in a dinner talk by Charles Kennel, who used to be a NASA associate administrator and is now on the Augustine Commission. So if you're Cook, you know your baby got knifed. No harm in bailing.

Kennel said he thinks it's time we suck it up and treat our international partners like actual partners, including depending on them for launch capability when we need to (after all, we already depended on Russia for a few years after Columbia) - and for really big projects like moon or mars, not go it alone when there's really nothing to gain by doing so.

Re:Back out of Plan Affirmative-Action

[barath_s]

That's really uninformed and outdated scare mongering. The soyuz spacecraft did NOT nearly burn up, it entered in a ballistic trajectory (i.e.without lift). This is uncomfortable, and undesirable as it is a backup emagency mode, which causes brief periods of high G and causes the craft to land off-course but is still safe. The problem was investigated, fixes determined, and recent soyuz launches work fine. Cites : http://www.spaceflightnow.com/station/exp16/080422descent.html [spaceflightnow.com] http://www.universetoday.com/2008/04/24/soyuz-hard-landing-the-facts/ [universetoday.com] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/23/nasa_says_soyuz_all_fixed_now/ [theregister.co.uk] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TMA-13 [wikipedia.org]