The Conquest of Space

The Long Morrow

2011-12-05T18:47:00.000-08:00

In the original Twilight Zone episode titled “The Long Morrow” an astronaut played by Robert Lansing is sent on a long voyage to see if life exists on a planet far from our solar system. Just before he leaves he meets a woman (Mariette Hartley) and falls in love. He goes on the journey, but along the way his ability to communicate with Earth is lost. Unable to send or receive information from his home planet he is left to make his own decisions and to wonder about what life is like is his absence. He makes the fateful choice to forgo using suspended animation so that he can age at the same rate as the woman he left behind.

The long wandering astronaut eventually returns safely to the Earth and when we see him again he is an aged old man. He meets the woman he left behind and finds that she appears the same as she did the day he left. She had elected to put herself into suspended animation to prevent her own aging. If the story ended there you would think that it was a predictable “I saw that coming” plot line. The real twist comes when the aged astronaut is told that while he was gone technology had long ago proved that life did not exist on the planet he was sent to explore. His journey was made all the more painful by knowing his sacrifice was for nothing. It is an interesting irony that may indeed play out to some degree in our own exploration of the galaxy. Dr. Michio Kaku predicted that in 200 hundred years we as a civilization might possess the technology to “warp space” and travel faster to far off destinations that are only in our imaginations today. Maybe a future deep space probe will pass Voyager 2 as it streaks at the cosmically slow pace of 34,000 miles per hour on its way to explore the far reaches of our galaxy.

Let us suppose for a moment that Dr. Kaku’s vision of the future never comes to pass. Perhaps the technology is too difficult to create, requires too much energy, too costly for humans to absorb or just is not possible. Maybe we make space travel faster, but it may still take years to explore our outer solar system instead of decades while interstellar travel may remain technologically elusive. Our interest has waned in exploring our own celestial backyard where it is comparatively easy, why would exploring the universe decades from now at a higher cost be any different? We have long thought that dreams fueled our desire to explore space. It was the innate curiosity of the human race to understand what standing here on this rocky planet 93 million miles from our star and seemingly alone in the vast void of space is all about. To a large degree our thinking was wrong. Few things in our society are achievable without money and risk. That it turns out is the fuel for space exploration.

There is another factor why exploring space now rather than waiting on a technology breakthrough is perhaps more urgent than we believe, necessity. In desperate situations, money seems to somehow become less of an issue. It could be the Earth will not survive another 200 years. A host of factors from wars, famines, disease, a rogue asteroid, scarce natural resources, energy, and climate change could conspire to curtail human domination of this planet and our very existence. If that were the case, 100 or 200 hundred years from now what would be the human legacy of planet Earth? Today’s answer seems to be that we are content to rest on the laurels of our accomplishments in space and not think boldly about how space exploration might not just be a critical part of our history, but also our future. We falsely believe that an overstressed planet will keep giving when in reality the planet resources are becoming exhausted to the point where 50 or 100 years from now they could be gone across vast critical commodities. Yet, roaming our galaxy right now are the silent messengers of human existence, the Pioneer, Mariner and Voyager spacecraft. They are too small to be detected and are no longer broadcasting or will soon cease broadcasting as they journey through space. It is unlikely that any of them will ever be found by or stumble upon another civilization in the vast, far reaches of space. Hurtling through space without communications, fuel, or a power they will likely roam until time ends without even passing a planet much less being discovered. While primitive, they are the trace of human existence that could outlast the stars. These nomadic works of human ingenuity are no substitute for human space exploration or even more advanced robotic exploration.

So when is the right time to explore space in a different way? Do will roll the dice and in the hope that 200 years from now that we have a better capability for space travel or much like the astronaut in the Twilight Zone take a chance that doing something, rather than waiting for a technology breakthrough is the path to pursue. Unlike like the idea floated about sending humans on a one way journey to the stars I am not proposing sending humans out to explore our galaxy. A part of me has a measure of skepticism that we will have the means or the will to commit human lives on a one-way “Space Family Robinson” approach. So then what are our alternatives? A few come to mind, but we have to consider that all of them will not provide the return on investment that we seek in space exploration. The first is do nothing and continue to dream, but not explore. This is why science fiction resonates and stirs our imagination. It paints a picture of what is seemingly impossible today, but perhaps possible a million tomorrows from now. Science fiction often breaks the laws of physics and time to make it more appealing to us. If humans could travel at the speed of light to our nearest neighboring star, the message of what they found would take four years to get back to us, but in our fictional eye the communication is instantaneous. We are too impatient a civilization to sit on our hands and wait. The very mind that can paint an inspiring vision of the future is the same mind that lacks the attention or the patience to make it a reality.

It could be though that we are living in the “Bell Curve” of science and science fiction. We are still somewhere in the meaty part of the curve with more breakthroughs and discoveries to be found and with that more science fiction becomes fact. However, the Bell Curve, like so many other postulates and theories may indeed be an immutable law in its own right. Everything around us goes through birth, maturity, and decline. The “Bell Curve” was not a startling revelation about how things tend to work in our world, but an observation of fact applied across many scenarios. The only difference between them is the amount of time it takes. At some point our ability to “break the laws” of science may face the law of diminishing return.

Perhaps we will collectively as a civilization decide to send our “astronaut” on journey now betting that technology will never catch up enough to make any time savings in the future outweigh the benefit of starting early, but what really is decades in the time of space travel? Statistically insignificant, except to us who want to see and know that we using our technology to reach out to the stars even if we will never know what they may find. Now when I say “astronaut” it is not meant to mean one of us as depicted in “The Twilight Zone”, but a representation of us. For example: IBM announced that is had created a microchip that could mimic the human brain. It is no substitute yet for computing power of our brain, but it is a start. It could be we tap into another science fiction story and somehow port all of humanity into a machine that will carry our limited knowledge across the stars. A machine that could roam the universe until it detected a signal from another civilization to use as beacon to reach out and share information. That almost sounds a little like “Battlestar Galactica” and how the Cylons came to migrate from machine to humanoid. Our robot could search and search as occasionally the light from a passing star would hit it solar arrays and breathe life into the craft. It could beam a message home that it is still working millions of years after it left Earth to whoever is listening with a message that is has found a distant cousin in space or that it is still wandering alone. It might come to pass on such a mission that the message of the discovery of intelligent life would make its way back to an Earth that was long ago vacated by the human race or that long ago forgot about its robotic explorer.

Another way would be to fill a probe with a variety of single cell organisms and send if off to one of the rocky exoplanets we detected in the habitable zone of a distant star. There are a number of ethical issues associated with a project like that such as what if the planet already harbors life? However, for the preservation of Earth-based life we could hope that it would crash on a water rich world and through the process of evolution intelligent creatures might develop millions of years from now. Those creatures would look up at the night sky and dream of reaching the stars never knowing that it was their ancestors in a far of part of the galaxy that started life on their planet. It could very well be a story that has already played out in the history of the universe.

Lastly, it could be that we pack the instruction kit for building a human being into a capsule and send it searching endlessly through the universe looking for a home where a civilization could follow the instructions to build Adam and Eve to keep the human race going. All of these seem like the far-fetched dreams of sci-fi movies and books. As each day passes it seems more likely that some form of microbial life might already exist in our solar system and if it does exist, the odds increase dramatically that we are not the only species in the universe capable of intelligence and space travel. Yet, budget, financial turmoil and politics have us moving at a crawl to explore a solar system potentially teeming with some form of minute life, but life nonetheless. The Mars Rovers, Mars Curiosity, Dawn, New Horizons, and Cassini are all “flagship” type missions that have enhanced and will enhance our understanding of how we came to be and what else might exist in our solar system. After these missions, the science will continue to be analyzed for decades, but what lies next for our exploration of Enceladus and Europa, of humans on Mars, or harnessing resources from the Moon or nearby asteroids. It seems we have a long ways to go and not much Presidential and Congressional vision to get us there. It may be that visionaries like Rod Serling and other science fiction writers may offer us the best and perhaps our only view of our future in space. Like the astronaut in "The Long Morrow", I would rather take our chances and explore space now. If technology improves that would be a bonus, but let's not wait until it's too late to reach for the stars.

NASA Tweetup: Force Multiplier

2011-08-11T16:41:00.000-07:00

NASA Juno Tweetup

They came from 28 states and five countries and they all shared common bonds – an interest in space exploration and a commitment to use social media tools like twitter to spread their experience with friends and followers as it happened. One hundred and fifty were selected to participate out of thousands that submitted their name for the NASA Juno Tweetup. Everyone came excited to witness the American Space Program continue its unmatched excellence in robotic exploration of the solar system. Many were veterans to the space center having attended previous launches; some were first time witnesses to the allure of rockets and space. Whether a launch veteran or a space novice, no one would leave disappointed. Even the lingering threat of a Tropical Storm churning nearby and the uncertainty of its direction would not rain on this event. Sunshine prevailed and it would turn out to be two very memorable and picture perfect days at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

If we had gathered to just witness the launch of the Juno probe to Jupiter it would have made for a great event, but the mission did not begin or end there. By the end of day one we had a full understanding of the mission and had toured the Juno launch pad, the Atlas V Spaceflight Operations Center, and the Delta II rocket that will carry the GRAIL probes around the moon. As if that was not enough to make anyone go back to their hotel and dream of space, we also toured the cathedral of human spaceflight, the Vehicle Assembly Building with the Space Shuttle Discovery parked inside. Some may think that referring to the VAB as a “cathedral” is over exaggerating and taking it too far, but not for someone who dreamed of being an astronaut and was inspired by humans reaching deep into their imagination to journey to the moon. Those that were standing in the sands at Kitty Hawk to watch the Wright Brother's first flight must have thought that one day they would touch the clouds and see our planet from high above the treetops. Now, I stood in the shadows of where rockets and humans left Earth to visit other worlds and still with my insatiable curiosity and a thirst to explore the universe. It was a place where rockets rolled in and dreams rolled out. Space is where we must look to answer the questions of why are we here, how did we get here, and are we alone. I have come to learn that curiosity is one of the most important drivers in life. To be always chasing questions and looking for answers to our universe’s greatest mysteries is not a futile effort, but a lifelong learning experience.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden

On two hot Florida days, 150 strangers united to share a journey with Juno in spirit and to chase their own dreams. Leveraging a different technology they shared they experiences with the world. The NASA Tweetup provided access for the public to see behind the scenes of America’s Space Program. It offered a rare glimpse for space evangelists and advocates to get closer to the machines and people behind the passion. NASA provided the canvas and each participant painted the experience in 140 characters (or less). Over those two days, a who’s who of NASA scientists, mission managers, and leaders spoke to the invited guests. The company behind the technology spoke about the launch vehicle and the spacecraft, NASA Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati spoke eloquently about exploring space while NASA Administrator Charles Bolden reiterated America’s commitment to a human presence in space and continued robotic exploration. Bill Nye the Science Guy brought his high energy and love of science to the crowd in a way that only he could. As each guest spoke, their words were captured by the attendees who sent them racing around the world at the speed of light. Each one of those messages began its own journey to space and perhaps it will be one of these messages that will find its way to a distant civilization long after planet Earth has disappeared. Those messages will tell the tale of a civilization that was not content to stand on their rocky planet, but one that sought to reach out to the stars to explore so that they could understand their place in the cosmos.

Space Shuttle Discovery in the VAB

Bill Nye made an astute observation when he told the crowd that there were more of us at the Tweetup than there were reporters covering the mission. That is where the most important benefit of the Tweetup delivers its true value. It is a “force multiplier”. Reporters covering the space program offer a snapshot, a point in time view of an event. This snapshot is like reading about how your favorite team did the day after the game, but not knowing where they are in the standings or the team’s capabilities and strategy. It is valuable information, but out of context to the bigger picture. This is where the members of the NASA Tweetup can offer their greatest contribution. Attending is not a “snapshot” event, but one that lives on. In addition to reporting “live” from the scene and providing a play-by-play of what was being said they also conveyed their passion for space. They told of what it felt like to be there standing in front of the Space Shuttle, or in the center of the Vehicle Assembly Building, to see a rocket riding a column of fire as is began a journey to our solar system’s largest planet. They went back to their respective cities and in some cases countries to share their knowledge and make the case for space exploration. All of that came not from someone whose job it was to tell the story, but from someone whose passion for space compelled them to share the story. It makes a difference.

To a large extent, the public and the press associate space and the space program with sending humans aboard rockets. The face of space exploration may always belong to the ones that walked on the surface of the moon or rode aboard the Space Shuttle, but humans will not venture aboard vehicles like the fictional Starship Enterprise until robotic technology blazes the trail to test new technologies and explore unknown worlds. We are all children of the stars riding our own spaceship through the galaxy. Most of us spend our lives only looking around and not up at our past and perhaps our future. As I reflect back, the NASA Juno Tweetup was more than a collection of space followers getting together to enjoy the experience of a rocket launch – it was a call to action for us to do our part to ensure that space exploration, human and robotic, doesn’t end on our watch. The passion that the 150 felt must be shared with an infectious enthusiasm to all who will listen for why space matters.

Juno on its way to Jupiter

Long after the event, attendees will post photos and relive the experience with friends and family. They will write their blogs and share with hundreds more about the experience. For those that hear about the story it will be the next best thing to being there. It will be like having your own personal observer at the scene, but it cannot stop there. I challenge all NASA Tweetup attendees to think big in the spirit on those that dreamed of reaching the stars and those that worked to make those dreams a reality. As space exploration comes under increasing pressure we must counter those that say science does not matter by reaching out in our own community. This after all was NASA's goal, to create ambassadors for space with a message to all who will listen. Share your experience by writing an editorial, submitting an article to a local magazine or newspaper, start a blog, reach out to a local television or radio station, or dream even bigger dreams. Very few high schools in the United States have a space program. You may be thinking that you never knew any existed at all, but it is true. Anacapa School in California is one and Columbus High School in Georgia is another. Columbus High School has partnered with Auburn University and the results are amazing. They have built a program that educates and inspires their classmates to aim high. They focus on robotics, launch rockets and high altitude balloons with onboard science experiments that they have enginneered. Alumni of the program have gone to to Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, and MIT to name a few. Perhaps a school near you would be interested in pursuing such a program. What better way to contribute to the future of space exploration than by energizing young minds today? By virtue of us being an alumni of the Juno Tweetup, we share a common interest, experience, and now friendship. As individuals we are strong, but together we are a community -- and a community united in purpose spread around the United States and several points around the planet is powerful force. We can make a difference!

Lastly, I want to offer my sincere thanks to the NASA team for hosting and inviting me to this event. A passion for space exploration has been a common thread throughout my entire life. Born as the space race began it captured my imagination and created a lifelong curiosity to understand and explore the universe in which we live. A typical year will not go by without a trip to KSC to watch a launch or just be close to that passion that lives within me. It may sound silly to some, but growing up in the space age made those events a part of me. Standing in the Vehicle Assembly Building, out at the Juno launch pad, listening the speakers talk about the mission only served to reinforce that passion. People who know me, will tell you if its about space ask Mike, people from my past will say "that's the kid that wanted to be an astronaut". Whether the audience is one, ten, a hundred, or a thousand you will find me selling the virtues of exploring space. Those two days have motivated me to do even more for the cause of space exploration. Over the coming weeks I will follow that passion. More details to come, but it will involve a persistence to do my part and return back to the space program a small part of what is has given me - a desire to understand our universe, a pursuit of learning and knowledge, inspiration, and dreams of what we can accomplish.

Watching the End of the Space Shuttle Era

2011-07-12T21:20:00.000-07:00

The Final Flight of the Space Shuttle Program

It was estimated that between 750,000 and 1,000,000 people were at the Space Coast to catch a fading glimpse of American history. They crowded parks and straddled roadsides jamming into any available space that offered a line of sight to the last launch of the Space Shuttle Program. Several thousand of those onlookers were lucky enough to win the Kennedy Space Center Ticket lottery, others purchased VIP packages from tour vendors, a very lucky few were selected by NASA to attend as guest tweeters and report live via Twitter from the launch. I purchased my ticket on the open market having failed to secure one by another means. The final launch of the Shuttle as it turns out was a hot commodity and that was not unexpected.

Many Shuttle ticket lottery winners saw this as an opportunity to make a fast buck. Simply buy a ticket (up to six) for $75 each and sell for $1500 each to those that wanted to be there to experience the last launch. As soon as email notices went out tickets appeared for sale online through ticket brokers. It was too fast for this to be anything other than an orchestrated way that the system had been beat. Those that wanted to go had been outdone by professionals who leveraged technology to gain an advantage, but such is the American way. The lure of making money often drives creativity and innovation.

I was watching as ticket prices of early online auctions soared into the thousands. Caught in the frenzy, I bid, only to be outbid. I bid more than I planned and thought reasonable and still was outbid. The last flight of the Shuttle would not escape enterprising individuals who could make a profit and those loyal space followers who would pay any price to be there.

The Golden Ticket

For this occasion I was determined to see the launch, but much like the Shuttle the economics were not making sense, even for a true follower. Spaceflight was never inexpensive and as it turns out watching a spaceflight would become nearly as costly. Finally, I caught a break on an afternoon auction that was expiring right before 5pm. Activity had seemed somewhat low that day and it looked like I might have a chance. I ended up getting two tickets for about 8x the going rate. A bargain compared to other tickets that had gone before and after me at an average of 20x the face value, but standing out on the NASA Causeway as Atlantis lifted off for the final time would be priceless. This could not be the launch I would miss. Recently, I had heard someone say that buying “things” is not as important as buying “experiences”. Things wear out, get tossed away or replaced over time, but experiences never fade from our memories. They are permanent and evoke emotions that transport us to a time and place where doing something mattered much more than having something. So it was with the Shuttle, being there to see it meant everything.

That experience went beyond the 45 seconds or so it took the Shuttle to go from the launch pad to the clouds and out of sight for those of us looking up from below. It started with a sleepless Thursday night. A few rearranged meetings led to a short workday and it was off to the airport to catch a flight to Orlando. From there we caught dinner and made our way to the vicinity of the Space Center. At 11PM Thursday night the Space Center was not yet open to vehicles with passes. A nearby shopping center in Titusville became a temporary camping ground as many parked their cars to nap for just a few hours. It was late into the night and realistically it would be another 15 or more hours before we would be at the hotel to catch-up on sleep. An adrenaline rush was sustaining us. Sleeping, even for just an hour seemed hopeless. At about 2AM I drove back the Space Center and found that it had opened to visitors. The crowds were trickling in and the parking lot had fewer cars than I expected. Most ticket holders were told to be there by 4AM and we were running ahead of the thousands expected to soon be at the complex.

Crowds gather to watch history

The lines to get through security were surprisingly short. Previous launches I attended had very long lines that stretched from the entrance of the center all the way to the back parking lot. The price of passing on sleep was rewarded by short lines and getting one step closer to history. The atmosphere around the Visitor Center was friendly as one big family of space fans gathered one last time to share a common passion. The main plaza would soon become a sea of people covering every available spot of concrete where a chair or two feet could rest. The Space Shop was jammed with those buying up "Made in China" toys and mementoes of the last launch. An irony that while our leaders seem hesitant to fund our space program, our appetite for cheap goods made abroad was funding ambitious space programs in China and India. If everyone in America had the same passion as those buying souvenirs inside the store, we would forever stand unchallenged in human spaceflight. Many, like me, will go back to their homes and offices and place replica Space Shuttles on their desks and shelves as a reminder of what we once accomplished and with no clear path of where we were going.

Here in America, we tend to cherish “firsts” and not “lasts”. The first time we do something it is an accomplishment. It means the best is still ahead of us. The last time we do something it usually means the best is behind us. Those that went to Florida to see the last flight of Atlantis are the breed that has a passion for space, a desire to see what America can accomplish, but they also know our country. They came to view something that we may never see again in our lifetime – humans flying into space and gliding back to Earth. We almost certainly will not see the likes of a spacecraft like the Shuttle again, but NASA will continue to search for ways to do the impossible on shoestring budgets. History has taught us that it cannot be done. The real lesson of the Space Shuttle is that money does matter. Since Richard Nixon, money is all that has mattered when it came to human spaceflight. The downturn in the economy and the fiscal woes our nation faces are just the latest excuse for why sending humans into space is a low priority.

The hard and simple truth is that we do not want to do this in a way that is right and sustainable because it might cost too much. While Nixon started us down this path, there were many along the way that kept the space program at bay. Presidents and Congress squabbled over investing in manned space; NASA itself had a hand in this by showing that it was not infallible in the post-Apollo era. Strategy and operational missteps showed an already skeptical Congress that the only way to ensure a NASA program met its budget was to not build it. Money to spend is only a problem when we want it to be. In 2010 and 2011 the United States doled out foreign aid to China, Russia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and Egypt to name a few. Some of those countries are awash in surplus trade dollars from Americans buying their cars, goods, resources, toys, and services. Yes, you read that right. We are generous in this country. We have given, and wasted our precious national treasure until it has become painful. We find billions to fight endless wars around the globe, but if there were no war, the dollars to keep the dreams of space alive would be just as scarce. Not having a follow-up ready for the Space Shuttle is not a national tragedy; it’s a leadership and imagination failure. One we cannot seem to learn. It is also a question of heart, of having the will to explore, be curious, and stare down impossible challenges until we conquer them. Why is it that we seemed destined for creating mediocrity when greatness is our heritage?

Atlantis soars towards space for the final time

At 11:36AM on Friday, July 8^th, I stood as a witness to history being made. I had made it to the last Space Shuttle flight. The Shuttle beat the odds one more time and despite clouds and with only a 30% chance of launch it thundered into the Florida sky on-time. It was a bittersweet moment that has yet to sink in. I had made my mind up long ago that I would be there for the end of the Shuttle program. I had been to four launches and two landings over the program’s history, far too few for someone that cherished the thought of one day making it into space. The end of a space program was something I had seen before. Throughout the sixties I watched America’s march to the moon. The thrill of the space race left me wanting more. Moon bases and footprints on Mars were just around the corner. Ten years after Apollo 11 we were supposed to be standing on Mars, but when 1980 came we had already been stuck on the ground for years. When the Apollo program disappeared it left me at a crossroads stuck at which direction to go --follow an uncertain dream or take the well worn path. Today, young Americans will be faced with the same choice and many will not wait for the space program to regain its swagger. The past forty years have shown us that once we let our momentum go, no matter how big or small it is, it is tough to get it back. When Atlantis soared into space for the last time it carried with the dreams of many young minds, minds that will see reaching the stars as not their dreams, but as those belonging to writers who will spin fictional tales of what should have been.

The retirement of the Space Shuttle has caused many to reflect and write about the program. Forty years of Shuttle history dating back to the late sixties and early seventies is being revisited to analyze what story should be told about the vehicle’s place in the legacy of human spaceflight. Looking back, the reviews and the feelings will be mixed. One could easily argue that the system itself served us well for thirty years and that its human caretakers failed in more ways than the technology. There is little disputing that the economics of the Space Shuttle never worked out as planned. They often do not when breaking Earth's gravity with gigantic and complex machines are required. The Space Transportation System had fallen victim to America’s love affair with creating multipurpose Swiss Army knife vehicles. It was surmised that building two specialty vehicles that did 100% of their role effective and efficiently wasn’t as cost effective as one vehicle could do 50% of each role, but do neither effectively or efficiently. That math quickly caught up with the Shuttle and soon safely managing the most complex machine ever built by humans would also.

SpaceShip One in the National Air and Space Museum

With the technology odds stacked attacked against it and the compromises made to get over political and budget hurdles , the Shuttle itself performed remarkably well. It was expensive, but NASA quickly adapted to repeatedly operating in low Earth orbit. However, common sense gave way to complacency as twice the system failed at the hands of its human managers. Those responsible for the program became overconfident and believed that spaceflight had become routine. The history of the Shuttle is littered with other close calls where potential disaster was a shadow that hung over each flight whether the public knew it or not. The loss of one vehicle and her crew was a tragedy; the loss of a second became a disaster for the program and human spaceflight. The Shuttle was a vehicle that could never be made safe, but after thirty years of trial and costly errors we had just learned to make it safer. Just in time to abandon the program and learn the lessons of a new vehicle all over again.

We can only hope that companies like SpaceX and Orbital Sciences can deliver on their goal to relieve NASA of reaching low-Earth orbit so that it can focus on deeper space. However, with the recent announcement that the Webb telescope might fall victim to cancellation, money has come again to the forefront of the space program. It might be that we will be circling planet Earth for a long time as our leaders hearts and checkbooks remain as far away as the goal of putting humans on Mars. I thought I would see in my lifetime humans walk again on the moon, then on Mars, but each time and with each new vision the day that goal will be realized is something my children or grandchildren might see. I hope that as some have speculated that we will not wait until China or India touches down on the lunar surface and folds the flag of Apollo 11 as a souvenir that we are spurred to action. The time to plan our next steps in space have long passed. From here we will be playing catch-up to countries that see space as a means to spur technological advancement. Those countries see now what we once saw in ourselves.

Endeavour: One Last Time

2011-06-01T22:24:00.000-07:00

Endeavour Touches Down at KSC for the Final Time

At 2:15am Wednesday June 1st, the alarm clock sounded on schedule and I awoke to catch the culmination of the final flight of Endeavour as it was about to touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center. The loud warning sound coming from the alarm also served as a reminder that the Space Shuttle era was nearing its end.

Endeavour would touchdown at 2:35am Eastern Time and complete its service to the space program. The mission was a success marred only by damaged tiles and the persistent worry that the vehicle’s Thermal Protection System might have been compromised by foam that struck the underside of the spacecraft during ascent. After rolling to a stop, Endeavour was now safe and destined to remain forever earthbound.

Endeavour would be an early retiree. Though Endeavour was employed full-time at NASA for the past 19 years, it would only work about a quarter of its time in space. It would fly 22 times out of a life expectancy of 100 flights and cover 122 million miles circling the Earth. Flying its maiden voyage in 1992, it would serve nine years beyond the expected ten years a Shuttle was supposed to be on the job. Endeavour was the youngest of the Shuttle fleet and the second to retire, but it would become the fourth of five Shuttles to be written into the history books. Over its life it would average just a little more than one flight a year. Now, just one Shuttle remained to write the last chapter, Atlantis.

Looking back over the Space Shuttle era one can only wonder "what might have been". So much occurred in the first ten years of the space program that the second decade of space was a letdown. The dreams of generations of children that lived during the space age faded as interest in space exploration and questions about our future in space seemed to hang in the balance during the seventies. The increasingly rapid pace of society enabled by cultural and technological change had made us far too impatient to tolerate gaps in anything. We are always looking for the next mountain to climb and the next hill to take. Delays and indecisiveness pushed us to other interests. So it was when Gene Cernan stepped off the moon and America’s future in space depended on a patchwork of programs and promises built on a foundation of shifting sands. There were no guarantees that tomorrow’s space program would exceed the heights reached by Apollo. Endeavour's landing and Atlantis rolling out to the launch pad is reminiscent of Apollo 16 and Apollo 17. The end of an era was near and no successor, no bigger mountain to climb was in sight.

Between the end of the Apollo era and the beginning of the Shuttle era there was Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz Test program. While impressive on their own, they were short-lived. Cobbled together using leftover hardware from the space race they were not the future, but merely a placeholder until a new space age would arise. The second decade of the space age would vanquish thoughts of humans of Mars by 1980. Instead, the future of human spaceflight would rest in low-Earth orbit with the Shuttle. The Space Shuttle was supposed to dominate the next decade of flight. The Shuttle program would help us build space stations that would set the stage for deep space exploration. The reality would be something much different. The Shuttle would go on to serve for thirty years. Envisioned to fly more frequently, the Space Shuttle’s 100 flights per vehicle life was expected to used in a short ten years and from there we would move to the next evolution of space exploration. The Shuttle however would become a poster child of failed Government strategies for space exploration and endless political conflicts over budgets and priorities. The reason for building the Shuttle was to save money getting to and from space. Creating a reusable vehicle with a fast turnaround that could make space travel akin to boarding an airplane proved too costly. Finding a cheaper way to perform the task would lead to compromise. The Space Shuttle as it exists today was the result of that compromise. A hybrid of ideas that could be afforded and sold to Congress and not what was needed, cost-effective or sustainable in the long-term. As it would turn out, the finished product would prove to be complex and difficult to maintain. Schedules could not be met and the very costs that the Shuttle was supposed to contain only served to constrain further ambitions in space. The Shuttle became so expensive to operate that little money was left to fund development of replacement vehicles and launch platforms. Still, no space platform before or since could do what the Shuttle could and it will likely be a long time before we see the likes of it again.

Political wrangling and strategic missteps would leave the Shuttle flying without a destination for a third of the program’s life. A decade of the Shuttle's potential was lost while Congress squabbled over building a space station. Thirteen years after its first flight the Shuttle would finally find a home in space, the Russian Space Station Mir and eventually the International Space Station. That the Shuttle remains a technical marvel forty years after engineers began sketching its design is a testament to NASA’s technical prowess in an era before computers could model every possible scenario such a vehicle would encounter. For all the things the Shuttle could do, the one thing is could not achieve was a record of safety and an efficient cost of operation. None of that though falls on the vehicle itself, but to those that put short-term expense ahead of long-term benefits and savings. The Shuttles may hold the title for another 30 years or more of being the most remarkable and complex machine humans had ever built.

When John Young and Bob Crippen flew aboard STS-1 even the casual observer would admit that it looked dangerous. It would be an unusual configuration with solid rockets attached to a large fuel tank and what amounted to a passenger plane mounted on its side flying manned without a test fight. If air travel worked like the Shuttle, none of us would fly. There were too many dangers and risks to ever make it safe. Beyond what the eye could see there were another two million parts and miles of wires that had to all perform flawlessly under the harshest of conditions and do it time after time. In the world of rockets and space travel minor problems can lead to big trouble and twice that system failed. The Challenger accident made the Shuttle safer, but Columbia proved that it could not be made safe. The last flight of Endeavour proved that the threat of mortal damage to the Shuttle still haunted each flight. We could all breathe a collective sigh of relief when Endeavour’s wheels rolled to a stop and the damage proved to not be a threat to the crew.

Endeavour Lands on August 21, 2007

On a night when the Space Shuttle Atlantis moved to the launch pad for its final flight in July, Endeavour’s work would be done. Endeavour flies one more time on the back of the 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft as it will head west to Los Angeles sometime in 2012. I would like to be there when the Shuttle’s depart for their last destinations. In the early 80’s, the Space Shuttle Enterprise riding on the back of its 747 made a promotional pass around Baltimore on its way back from the Paris Air Show. I snapped a fuzzy Polaroid of it off in the distance. I took great care to be where it was supposed to flyover, but it flew a different route. That photo has been lost over time through various moves. It’s the one photo of a Space Shuttle that I would like to get a chance to take again. Still, I have had the privilege to see several Shuttle launches, two Shuttle landings (including one of Endeavour), numerous scrubs, and one distant and hazy flyby of the Space Shuttle Enterprise. My home and office are adorned with pictures of the Shuttle launches and landings I have witnessed and now just one more picture to add to the collection, the final launch of the Space Shuttle program.

I wish the Shuttles could keep flying, but their time has come to be retired. Things that were supposed to go wrong with the Shuttle never did and things that were not supposed to be problems proved persistently problematic. Even with two crew losses, we can only assume that we were luckier than perhaps we should have been and that retiring the Shuttles now avoids the next accident in waiting. I am glad that Endeavour and her crew are home safe and I look forward to making a future trip to Los Angeles to see it on display at the California Science Center. Welcome home Endeavour.

May 25, 1961 - Kennedy's Reach for the Moon

2011-05-25T18:30:00.000-07:00

President Kennedy Speaks to Congress on May 25, 1961

Before there was Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech” there was John F. Kennedy’s “We have a dream” address to the nation that set us on our way to reaching the moon. On May 25, 1961 before a Joint Session of Congress and just weeks after Alan Shepard’s suborbital flight, President John F. Kennedy set a course for the moon. Kennedy’s speech was more direct than passionate. There was no “we should” or “we will try”, but a commitment from the President on behalf of the nation to send humans to the moon and return them safely back to the Earth. His words challenged all of us to think and dream bigger. As Kennedy made his pitch to Congress, he wasn’t speaking for some of us or to some of us, but on behalf of all of us. While his words spoke of sending “men” to the moon, they would be carried there by a country united in purpose. His challenge was not open-ended, it did not allow for compromise, obstacles, delays, or shifting political winds. It was firm and set a target date to complete the goal by the end of the decade. There was no ambiguity in the message. We would do what had not been done and reach for the stars. It sounded much like the first steps of turning science fiction into fact and the beginning of humankind’s journey other worlds. It would be the journey that would test us technically and financially, but an endeavor that generations from now would look back on much like the primitive voyage of Columbus and say that this is where the discovery of new worlds started.

JFK at Rice University in September, 1962

At the time of Kennedy’s message to the nation 50 years ago today, the United States has accumulated 15 minutes of time in space. We had yet to orbit a man in space and didn’t have a man-rated rocket capable of doing it until John Glenn’s flight, the third flight of an American astronaut. When Kennedy uttered those now famous words “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth” his motive was to leave no doubt that the American way of life led to better technology and he wanted to showcase that to the world. The Soviet Union and the spread of communism would be no match or threat for America and space exploration would prove it. When we set out to win, we wanted to win big and the moon was the prize. A year and a half later in September, 1962 Kennedy gave a more detailed and perhaps more eloquent speech at Rice University on reaching the moon. By that time the program was underway and the course charted. In that speech he talked about costs and commitment, that reaching the moon was expensive and getting more costly by the week. He said on that day that American’s still spent more annually on tobacco products than we were spending on space exploration. JFK called space exploration and “act of faith and vision”.

“We have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us”

He tested the nation to believe that tangible results would come from developing methods, tools, and products needed to build a rocket that could carry men to the stars. He would be right. The space program of the sixties jumpstarted a technology revolution that would deliver benefits and change everyday life.

As time has passed, we have learned more about the inner workings of the space race. The public face was exciting, the private side was full of questions about costs, public support, risks, and possibly partnering with the very enemy we chose to defeat. Kennedy saw that the public, even in the early days of the space program was losing interest. Even before 24/7 news, computers, and cell phones our national attention span was short and we were impatient for action and results. Eight years to get to the moon seemed a lifetime in the decade of the sixties with the Vietnam War and civil unrest. Kennedy himself privately questioned his challenge and occasionally publicly reached out with words to the Soviets about a joint effort to reach the moon. While Cold War tensions eliminated any chance that the Soviets would partner with America to reach the moon, Kennedy marched on. He remained steadfast in the face of critics who wanted him to back off the challenge. Kennedy, despite all the conflict and turmoil going on around the world remained visible and engaged with the space program. We will never know if eventually the costs of the program and the critics would have persuaded Kennedy to soften his position. His death by an assassin only served to assure that no effort would be spared to achieve his goal.

Fifty years later as we end another chapter in the history of the space program we wonder when humans will once again set foot on another celestial body. As decade after decade passes, stretching our technology and testing our national resolve on a Kennedy-like challenge for space seems further away. One cannot help but look back at a time when through the questions about why we should explore space and how much it would cost, one man’s voice stood above the rest and dared to take us to new heights. Even though Kennedy may have questioned his own rationale for space exploration in private, he ultimately knew it was the right thing to do for the country and to advance our society. Ironically, it would be his death more than his life that would take America through its “Golden Age of Human Space Exploration”. Though some have tried, no President since JFK has moved a nation and the Congress to action in space exploration in the way that he did. That period of history may never be replicated with the same intensity and desire, and for that we remember a time when we reached for the stars and landed on the moon.

April 12th, Past and Present

2011-04-11T21:06:00.000-07:00

The fiftieth anniversary of humankind’s first venture into space is now upon us. April 12, 2011 marked five decades of human space exploration. Significant progress has been made and perhaps more could have been accomplished on our watch in this small window of human history. Persistent political and economic headwinds have slowed our once starry eyed dreams of moon bases and footprints on Mars. Recently, as the anniversary of Yuri Gargarin’s first flight approached, Russia announced new plans for human exploration of the moon and eventually Mars. China had previously announced ambitious plans for manned orbiting space stations and eventually their own exploration of the moon. Neither announcement spurred the same passion or national competitiveness in the United States that fueled the first space race. It’s a story that has played out over and over in the brief history of manned space. Leaders of nations make bold proclamations of venturing beyond Earth orbit to once again touch the surface of other worlds. What each nation inevitably finds is that during the time it takes to prepare for such a journey, the winds of change shift priorities and make those dreams smaller. New leaders with new visions, unforeseen economic storms, wars, natural disasters, and other diversions tend to lure a restless public and its government away from dreaming big to the reality of Earth-based problems.

Once, such claims and challenges motivated our nation to dream big, take risks and push the technical edge to its very limit to reach what was thought an unattainable goal. We accomplished the goal of landing on the moon at a startling pace, just eight years after a fallen President’s challenge. However,in the ensuing decades, complacency led to loss, and poorly defined strategies led to delays and waste; all the while managing expenses became the supreme architect of the American Space Program. A brief eight year period in the early sixties of crystal clear focus and virtually unlimited resources gave way to decades of unfocused misdirection and underfunding.

Fifty years seems so long if measured in “space years”. We came so far, so fast with so little technology in the first ten years that the last forty feels like very little progress by comparison. The fast paced technical revolution spurred by the space age that put personal computing power, mobile communications and instant access to news and information into everyone’s hands has made the technology used to reach space seem antiquated. The technical marvel that is the Space Shuttle is decades old. Designed and built in the seventies, it is a long serving testament to how good we were, but how far behind we have fallen. While the Shuttle fleet has been upgraded over its lifetime and given new avionics, it is still a design from another era.

Over the years, economic drivers for the space program had us thinking in a linear way about what defined human spaceflight objectives. We began to think about successive steps and not concurrent objectives. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Shuttle, Constellation were names given to each program that would inherit the path to space, but as the “goal based” space program made way for an “expense based” program we no longer had a progressive successor lined up. Gaps emerged between Apollo and the Shuttle, then the Shuttle and it’s yet to be defined successor (since Constellation was cancelled in lieu of Commercial Spaceflight). For all the technological risks we took reaching for the moon, the greatest risk would not come from machines, but from our wallets. The loss of 14 crew members was not because we overreached, but because we tried to do more with less. Tragedy will forever mar the Shuttle era as lives and opportunity lost.

In terms of human history, fifty years is but a blink of the eye. For some of us, the entire history of spacflight has occurred during our lifetime. Thirty-years ago in April of 1981, the first Space Shuttle was launched to usher in a new era of space transportation. It had all the potential, but none of the backing needed to deliver on its promises. The Space Transportation System (Space Shuttle) had planned for 500 flights in ten years, it managed just 135 over its thirty year life. Forty-one years ago, Apollo 13 was giving NASA its second finest hour after landing on the moon. Fifty years ago, the Soviets and Americans began their reach for space. One-hundred years ago, humans had yet to stand on the South Pole. In Belfast, the Titanic was being built on the promise that it would become the gold standard of transportation across the Atlantic while routine airline passenger service was still a dream. Just one-hundred and fifty years ago, the Civil War began. The very fate of our nation rested on surviving the differences within our own borders. Five-hundred and fifty years ago, the first European settlers had yet to touch the shores of America. Lasting progress comes one step at a time with and starts with a vision of the future. It progresses rapidly when motivation and economic benefit or national interest intersect. We seem to have lost both in our quest for space.

Perspectives on Challenger

2011-03-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

   January 28, 2011 marked the 25th anniversary of the Challenger Accident. For those who were of age to remember that fateful day, it is forever etched as one of those unforgettable moments of our lives. In an instant, the shock and surprise, the tragedy and loss became an event where you never forget where you were when you heard the news. For me, it was no different. Our daughter had been born the day before the accident and having been exhausted from a long two days of events, the morning of the launch I had slept in a little late before heading back to the hospital. I knew that liftoff was scheduled later that morning around 11:30am and I had hoped to make over the hospital on time to catch it live. If not, I would see it later on the news that evening. As timing would work out, when I got off the elevator on the maternity floor there were several people huddled very close to a television in a corner of the waiting area. So close that it obscured any line of sight I had to what was of such interest. As I walked by I heard the announcer say "it appeared to be a problem with", that was it. It did remotely cross my mind that they were talking about the Shuttle, but I had assumed it was a scrub due to a last minute technical glitch. This particular flight had been repeatedly postponed and that it might have been again was of no surprise to me. I brushed it off and kept walking. An accident of this magnitude was the furthest thing from my mind. We all knew the hazards and risks of spaceflight, but like many others I did not think it was possible for America to lose a Space Shuttle and its crew.

   When I got to my wife's room, the first thing she said was "did you hear about the Shuttle?". She added that there was a problem at launch to which I replied "did they make it back safe?". Without yet knowing what had happened I thought about a problem on ascent and possibly an RTLS (Return to Landing Site) abort, but as I watched the replay it became evident that this was a fatal accident. I remember thinking the "how it happened", while important, might never match that it "had happened". Though it was the second loss of life behind the fire in Apollo 1, it was the first in-flight accident. We had lost seven space travelers who dreamed the same dream I had of reaching space, and within seventy-three seconds we had lost all of them. Without knowing what eventual news was to come about o-rings, management issues, safety issues with the vehicle, and ultimately a second crew loss, I had thought this might be enough to derail human spaceflight permanently. The results of the Rogers Commission would only provide additional fuel to the fire for those that believed that manned spaceflight was too far a reach given our appetite (or lack thereof) to fund a space program at the levels required to ensure the highest degree of safety and realistic performance objectives.

   Over the many years since the Challenger and Columbia accidents I have watched nearly every documentary on the tragedies and read countless volumes and reports. The most compelling of which is the "The Challenger Launch Decision" by Diane Vaughan, but there are many other good films and materials including the report by the Challenger Accident Investigation Board. There is sadness to reading and watching the story of both accidents, neither was a failure of crew or the Orbiter itself, they were human, political, and process failures. They were both reminders that in the U.S. Space Program we were living above our means. The wheels had been set in motion prior to the moon landing that would set the manned space program in a continual state of decline decade after decade. Forced to do more with less and portray less as more. It was an unsustainable mode of operation that was bound to break, and it did.

With the recent passing of the 25th anniversary of the Challenger Accident and the 8th anniversary of the loss of Columbia I went back and reviewed several clips and footage about the Challenger accident, including a NASA documentary that I had not previously discovered. That particular documentary walked through a step-by-step photo and film technical analysis of the events with the Shuttle after launch. Having watched many hours of film, it more than any other captures the essence of what caused the loss of the crew and vehicle. It is not a film about the underlying reasons or causes, but about what transpired in those seventy-three seconds. I have embedded these films, in two parts, in this blog and also to my YouTube library for those that may be interested. It is a film that is factual and emotionless. It describes what happened in detail, but ignores the fact that human lives were lost. It focuses instead on the machines, not the crew. It is a cold film that looks at a sequence of technical failures, but it cannot escape forcing one's thoughts about the human element.

A portion of the film is startling, as the crew compartment with the windows visible, but detached from the remainder of the vehicle, emerges from the cloud of vaporized liquid oxygen. It is a heartbreaking thought that the crew was likely alive at this point. Former Shuttle Astronaut Story Musgrave, a physician, strongly believes the crew was conscious until impact with the Atlantic Ocean at 200+ mph. Others agree, and even NASA states that it was "likely" the crew had survived. I also watched a 15 minute clip of stock NASA footage taken the day of the accident. The majority of that film focuses on what happened after the accident. The cameras were rolling capturing the debris cloud and the crowd. It spends a large amount of time looking at the faces of those in attendance at the launch. The faces are easy to read and cover a wide range of emotions. There is panic and confusion, sadness and shock. Some knew immediately that what they had witnessed was a tragedy in the making. Others seemed to be waiting for news that the crew had somehow survived and the Shuttle was on its way back, but survival was not a possibility in this set of circumstances. The Shuttle's contingency and intact abort options did not account for an incident while the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) were still attached and active. Interestingly, the Air Force in the 1960's had once considered adding a "dousing" feature to SRBs that they had planned to use on their own manned space program. This "dousing" feature would be a required safety feature and allow for shutting down actively firing SRBs before their fuel was exhausted, that option was never developed and never considered for the Shuttle.

   As I watched the film on the technical analysis of the accident, I learned a few things that I had not previously considered about the events of that day. For example, the aerodynamic stress and forces on the orbiter at the point of the accident. I also thought about the Shuttle's abort modes and did a little research to see exactly how they worked. Technically, there are four abort options, three are available to the Commander during launch, they are the Return to Landing Site (RTLS), Transatlantic Landing (TAL), and Abort Once Around (AOA). In those abort modes, the Shuttle Commander dials a switch to the desired abort mode and then presses the abort button. The fourth is an Abort to Orbit (ATO) which assumes that the Shuttle, while encountering an anomaly, maintained sufficient power to reach orbit. The one I was most interested in was my first thought on the day of the accident, the Return to Landing Site abort. Challenger was unique in that the accident occurred at a point where no abort option was available. The accident itself proved how rare and perhaps impractical these abort options would be.

   Here is how the Return to Landing Site option would work. During launch, a failure of one or more of the Space Shuttles Main Engines (SSMEs) would trigger action for an RTLS Abort. This option is available during a two minute window starting as early as 2:20 (minutes) into the flight up to 4:20 (minutes) depending on the number and timing of the SSME failure. To put this into perspective, the Shuttle goes from ground to space in about eight minutes. Before that 2:20 mark no abort mode exists and after 4:20 another abort option must be used. Challenger's accident occurred 73 seconds into the flight, well before this first option was available. Even if, Challenger had made it to SRB separation, but it was feared that External Tank was breached, the Shuttle could not have executed an RTLS. How the RTLS works is a high risk maneuver under any circumstances. First, it assumes Orbiter power and flight control along with External Tank structural integrity, then a "safe failure" of an SSME. This would require a detection and shutdown of an SSME and not a catastrophic failure such as a turbopump or a damaging explosion of the engine or the engine compartment or any of the flight control mechanisms.

   Assuming that a "safe failure" occurred then the commander would trigger an RTLS abort after SRB separation up until 4:20 seconds into flight. At that time the Orbiter and the External Tank would begin a course change to fly back towards the Kennedy Space Center. When the Orbiter had sufficiently burned enough fuel it would roll to a heads-up position, jettison the external tank and fire its maneuvering engines to ensure that the tank does not make contact with the vehicle after separation. The Orbiter would then continue a normal glide path back to the Shuttle Landing Facility. It would take a failure mode under a very narrow set of conditions for that to work.

The thought might have crossed your mind what if Challenger would have emerged intact from the accident? Could it have glided back to the Kennedy Space Center? Many of us thought, myself included, that what we had witnessed was a violent explosion of the external tank. It visually appeared that it was the cause of the Orbiter breakup. Despite the initial NASA announcer's remarks that "the vehicle has exploded", NASA found no explosion in its review.

If you watch the two films embedded in this blog you will get an understanding of what happened to Challenger (Orbiter). Near the 73 second mark of the flight, the failed left solid rocket booster had set off a rapid chain of events. The left SRB aft attachment bracket had broken free from the tank, the flame burning through the SRB had already breached the external tank, eventually the liquid hydrogen tank failed and the bottom of the tank detached. As the booster swung free of its attachment point it likely struck the top of the tank, but also broke at the forward attachment bracket and breached the upper liquid oxygen tank. Within milliseconds, the structural integrity of the tank was gone. Exposed to aerodynamic forces, the breached tank immediately spewed rapidly expanding gases and disintegrated. Challenger was now uncontrolled and free from the tank. Within a fraction of a second, the aerodynamic forces tore the Shuttle apart and debris from the tank and Shuttle were pushed outward by the expanding gases giving the illusion of an explosion. The Shuttle was not designed to sustain such violent forces. RTLS abort could only have worked while the Shuttle was in a controlled flight and could dissipate fuel and energy, nothing could have saved Challenger on this day - except to not launch at all.

   Many events conspired against Challenger, numerous delays, an erroneous weather forecast that scrubbed the mission on a perfect launch day and forced a delay to launch in unusually cold temperatures. The cold temperatures and its correlation to o-ring degradation was a known issue, as was wind shear on launch day. On that day, the Shuttle experienced the most violent wind shear any mission to that point had encountered, yet the wind shear was expected and found to be within design limits. It's all speculative, but the post launch exhaust trail reveals how significant the upper levels winds were that day. The flame emerges from the booster at about the same time the Shuttle was buffeted by these winds and as it was given the go for throttle up. Even with the failed seal, Challenger may have just barely missed disaster had it not encountered winds that shook the vehicle and dislodged debris temporarily sealing the breach in the failed joint.

   Columbia would evoke similar emotions and disbelief that tragedy had once again found its way to the American space program. The RTLS was an option for Columbia, but only if trained eyes had spotted the foam strike as it happened. No real-time process existed at that time for such a call. What did exist was an initial review of ascent footage within two hours. For the flight of Columbia, the initial review did not show the foam strike. The next day, higher resolution footage showing different angles from additional cameras was reviewed. That film showed the alarming strike on the underside of the Reinforced Carbon Carbon panel on the left wing. The strike had occurred at 82 seconds into the flight while the Shuttle was at sixty-five thousand feet and traveling at mach 2.5. It would have taken a gutsy call by the ground to call for an RTLS abort within about a minute and a half after the strike, but no such contingency had ever been planned. No process existed to monitor foam strikes as a potential hazard worthy of an ascent abort. Hard data, telemetry were the drivers for abort, not speculative "what-ifs", even if they erred on the side of caution and safety. One could also understand that an RTLS abort might have been equally as dangerous as the flight itself.

   As the Shuttle program winds down and we begin yet another journey towards the stars, the lessons of Challenger and Columbia must still remain fresh. Both post accident reports showed shocking lapses in safety and management. Some of these were a result of the early success of NASA and the risk taking culture inherent in space exploration, but a large portion falls on the political nature of the program and the direct influence the President and Congress has on our success in space. Even though the Shuttle will end its reign as America's first reusable space vehicle, the lessons learned must remain. Space is too complicated to be run on shoestring budgets and safety shortcuts. We either have to decide to invest and do it right or rest on our legacy. Given the tragedies and the price of the lives lost to reach space, our legacy is incomplete. We owe it to the crews of Challenger and Columbia to prove that America is still a great space power.

The Saga of the X-38

2011-03-02T20:45:00.000-08:00

It was a chance trip to the Midwest on a cold winter day in December that took me within striking distance of the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Ashland, Nebraska. The museum had been on my list to visit if the opportunity ever afforded itself for me to be in the area. The reason for my interest was NASA’s X-38, also known as the CRV (Crew Return/Rescue Vehicle). The X-38 was first proposed in the 1990’s and was to be NASA's first new manned spacecraft since the Shuttle. The craft was given to the museum on permanent loan to display alongside its primarily military aircraft. I had inquired over the years as to the whereabouts of the vehicles. Three had been built for testing within Earth’s atmosphere; a fourth test vehicle would have been rated for testing in space, but it was never completed.

The tale of visiting the museum and seeing the X-38 has an element of disappointment much like the feeling I get when I ponder what is to become of America’s once mighty space program. I was interested in photographing the vehicle up close and writing about its history and its fate. When I originally made my request, my information indicated that the vehicle was stored at NASA’s Dryden facility in California. Initial conversations seemed promising that I might actually be granted access to the vehicle until it was determined that the vehicle was not at Dryden, but had been shipped to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Another round of inquiries and I was told that the craft was in an off limits building. I was pleasantly surprised when I read an article that the craft had been given to a museum to display and would finally be made accessible to the public. This particular vehicle was not a full-size mockup, but purely a test vehicle at roughly about 80% the actual size of the final vehicle. It was in many ways like was the first Space Shuttle Enterprise, an earthbound trailblazer whose descendants would lead a path to the stars.

When I arrived at the museum, the lot was nearly empty; only a school bus and one other car were in the visitor parking lot. This was no surprise; I was here on a Tuesday in December, and it was already mid-afternoon with a crisp chill in the air and grey skies above. However, this was a rare opportunity to see a planned spacecraft and a piece of space history. It would not take long for me to find that I had overestimated the significance and importance of this particular artifact to the museum. Upon paying my $12 dollar fee, I was handed a map of the complex. I didn’t bother to look at it. I was here for only one reason. The rest of the displays, while interesting, were not why I had travelled halfway across the country. After walking downstairs into the main display area, I realized that the object of my search was likely mingled among bombers, jets and cars. Yes, cars were displayed under the wings of many of the military planes. The purist in me cringed at obscuring the beauty of an aircraft by parking a line of Corvettes and other assorted vehicles underneath its wings.

My time was short and I moved briskly through the cavernous, hangar-like space; I thought to myself that surely this item would be somewhere visible and prominent, but it was not. It appeared to not be here at all. Finally, I resorted to the map I was given. It was also not listed on the map. It crossed my mind that maybe the craft was not on display, but being restored or prepped for display. By pure luck, I had wandered to another section of the museum and down a hallway where I caught a glimpse of an oddly placed Star Wars exhibit. As I moved closer to the exhibit, I saw that it led to another smaller display area of the museum. From that hallway, I could see some version of an Apollo test capsule and a Space Shuttle tire. As I walked into this section I turned and there is was, the X-38. There was an instant emotional letdown that is hard to articulate. I was shocked at what my eyes were seeing. It was tucked in a corner and sitting on what resembled a boat trailer. Where it was and how it was displayed spoke volumes. It was parked as an afterthought, a leftover that needed a home and this was the best that could be done. Absent were any decals or logos and it appeared to be in less than pristine condition. It was dirty and scratched, the vehicle was not protected and no signs were present to tell patrons not to climb or touch the vehicle. Judging from its appearance, it looked as if many visitors had climbed all over the craft. I spent about a half hour photographing it from every angle and studying its shape and lines. What a magnificent spacecraft this would have been I thought. As I looked more closely, I noticed that someone had etched their initials into its side. It was a sad ending indeed for what could have been, but was not to be. The spacecraft would have been more at home at the National Air and Space Museum in D.C. or parked alongside a future display of the Space Shuttle. This was no fitting end for a remnant of the space program that had cost the taxpayers $500 million.

The X-38 had been of particular interest to me since it was first proposed. I saw its development as advancement in human spaceflight. The CRV would not be the vehicle that would take us back to the moon or Mars, but it was a chance to develop a less costly crew only vehicle while leveraging the Shuttle for more complex delivery missions. In theory, the vehicle would be simpler and safer than the Shuttle and provide the U.S. space program with some much needed versatility. It would also leverage knowledge gained from the Shuttle and advancements in technology since the Shuttle was created. The sleek look of the X-38 was familiar; it had a lifting body design reminiscent from the 1960’s, but incorporated new materials and composites. Eventually, the space rated version of the X-38 would carry an advanced Thermal Protection System (TPS) to shield its crew from the heat of reentry. It would be the reusable ferry to deliver crew when the lift capabilities of the Shuttle were not required.

In its first role, the X-38 would serve as a lifeboat for the International Space Station and be carried there in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle. A key design requirement, and constraint, was that it must fit in the cargo bay of the Shuttle. The CRV was a critical component of the ISS. Without it, the station could not be fully staffed and could only be manned by a crew of three without a Shuttle present. A station crew of three was sufficient to keep the orbiting outpost operating, but insufficient to maintain and conduct the scientific research and experiments that were its primary function. Each day on the ISS without a CRV meant that the reason for building the largest man-made complex in space would not be fulfilled. The station was too expensive to let its potential wither because planning, politics, and funding would once again converge to scuttle humankind’s potential uses of space.

After development, testing and utilization, subsequent plans for the X-38 would call for modification of the initial design so that the craft could evolve to become a new low cost crew transport carried atop an existing Delta, Atlas or Ariane rocket. The Air Force’s X-37b, which is a crewless mini-shuttle that in many ways resembles the X-38, is a vehicle that remains in orbit to conduct research and perform experiments. It was envisioned that a variant of the X-38 could also be launched pilotless to conduct experiments providing another capability that did not exist with any of the current platforms. Its capabilities seemed to be broadening not only how we could get to space, but how we could leverage one design for a multitude of tasks. Such were the dreams of engineers and program managers who saw in the X-38 another way to expand our reach into space.

The X-38 would never make it to space and like the forthcoming retirement of the Space Shuttle, it would be relegated to becoming an expensive museum artifact. The program was cancelled by President George W. Bush and its demise supported by then NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. I had a spirited exchange with then Administrator O’Keefe about the merits of keeping the X-38 program alive at least until an in-flight drop test from the cargo bay of the Shuttle could prove its viability. The discussion was futile, this was not about what was needed, the future, what was right, wrong, or what should be done - this was about how many dollars could be saved at that moment. It is the epitome of being pennywise and pound foolish. Original costs were projected at $700mm, but costs ballooned to over a billion. Competing ideas for a CRV capsule version had put development at $2 billion, but by those numbers the X-38 still seemed a bargain even with higher than anticipated costs. The program’s end came after an expenditure of $500 million with a projected $500 million more needed to operationalize the program, $200 million of which would have completed the flight testing. The result would be costly; the ISS was dependent on the X-38 program to allow for the station to be fully manned. The station would operate a large portion of its existence undermanned due to a lack of rescue capability. Much potential science would be lost over the years because the CRV would never fly.

What-if’s are often not fair to use, especially in hindsight, but a spaceflight ready CRV that required testing would have needed a Shuttle to fly it. The logical choice would have been Space Shuttle Columbia. The aging Columbia was in search of a mission when it was tragically struck by debris and subsequently lost. Many things went wrong with Columbia, but a CRV in the cargo bay and a detection of the breach in the leading edge of the left wing might have offered the astronauts their only hope. There are a lot of unfair assumptions in that scenario, such as transferring to the vehicle, wearing full pressure suits in the cramped compartment of the CRV, the pressurization of the crew compartment, and so many others. Much has been written about other ways to rescue Columbia, but the thought had occurred to me that this could have been the mission to test the X-38. It would have been an irony of sorts that the CRV on its maiden flight might have been called to duty and not been able to serve. It was our ability to paint an exciting vision that gave us the X-38 and our lack of will that clouded our dreams and left it grounded.

The recent release of NASA's budget reveals the struggles the agency faces in trying to recapture its early glory in sending humans to destinations in the heavens. The news is mixed for America's future in space. The Space Shuttle will soon become another museum artifact, the Constellation program and a return to the Moon or Mars seems as difficult to reach as the Red Planet itself. We have gotten here because we had success early in space, success that strained the very limits of our financial and technical capabilities and fatigued our ability to run a sustained journey to the stars. Shifting political winds are often credited or perhaps more rightly blamed for the fate that has befallen the American space program. This post-Apollo tightening of NASA's financial resources led to a series of weak administrators who sought to carry out the orders of each President and work within the budget authorized by Congress. Playing in this tug-of-war forced NASA to develop a less that optimal vision for space. In an attempt to win this contest, NASA often underestimated the cost and over estimated performance. This created another set of problems where increased costs either used up scarce resources destined for development of future platforms or caught the ire of politicians who continually retooled NASA’s missions - enter the X-38. It became another program that came into the budget crosshairs as costs escalated. In the insanity of our process, we often first choose to throw away our investment rather than finish the investment and reap the return.

On this day, I was interested in seeing not only where my tax dollars had gone, but where the American spirit and our dreams of reaching for the stars had ended. Museums are places where we go to view the best works of mankind and not where we bear testament to the failure of our imagination and our dreams. The X-38 sits collecting dust and serving as an amusement for school kids to climb and perhaps dream that they are riding its back into space. In that role, and at least in the young minds of a few school kids, the X-38 made it into space after all.

View more pictures of the X-38 taken at the Strategic Air and Space Museum

Before the Shuttle

2010-09-15T19:54:00.000-07:00

In the early days of the space program there were several dynamics that worked for and against a winged, reusable space vehicle. First, the space race itself put resources and focus on a moon landing. A winged, reusable vehicle, while studied extensively by NASA and the Air Force through the X-1, X-15, and lifting body programs was not in the immediate plans for the civilian space program. A winged, reusable spaceplane was the ultimate dream, but too far ahead of its time for NASA. This was especially true for an organization that’s main charge was to get to the moon. Capsule technology was the quickest and simplest way to achieve that task. This would, in the early days of the space program, leave the military as the chief evangelist, owner and operator of such a vehicle.

There would be other political and technical issues. Eisenhower’s motivation for creating NASA was due largely to creating an image that America would seek the civilian and peaceful use of space rather than a direct militarization of space. While in practice this was true, both the Soviet and the U.S. program pulled its astronauts from the ranks of the military, and both used rocket technology derived from military ICBMs. Despite the peaceful, public facing manned space programs of each country, neither had been deterred from planning for the military uses of space. The Cold War in space was fueled by Kennedy’s moon landing challenge, but Kennedy quickly backpedaled and sought cooperation for a joint effort with the Soviets. It would be too late, the space race was off and running and long with it a huge national effort that left the military scrambling for ways to use space for military purposes. Military uses of space would require different vehicles and orbiting platforms to dock the vehicles for extended stays. That would require the development of a unique craft with versatility, re-usability, and payload capacity as key characteristics. A military spaceplane would need to plan for a multitude of activities ranging from reconnaissance to perhaps serving as a space “bomber” to potentially conducting on-orbit missions to disable satellites. The vehicles used and planned by NASA to accomplish the moon landing were too expensive, too clumsy and did not offer the rapid turnaround required by the military. The very public NASA program also did not offer the military the ability to operate with some level of secrecy.

Dyna-Soar would be the military’s answer. It would be in many ways the true ancestor of the Space Shuttle. Many of the issues and concerns it faced would need to be solved for the Shuttle. For the late 1950’ and early 1960’s creating such a vehicle would come with enormous technical challenges. The military sought a three hour turnaround on an orbital flight path anywhere across the globe. This would require a simple vehicle without significant technical complexity or weight. One of these key items would be the thermal protection system. The preferred method for space vehicles at the time was to use an ablative material. This would not be an option for a spaceplane. The ablative material was heavy and rather than being designed for reuse had a one-time use. Ablative material flaked away as the vehicle reentered the atmosphere. On a capsule design, the material went harmlessly around the capsule; hot flaking material on a winged spacecraft could damage the less heat sensitive areas with debris including the vertical stabilizer. More troublesome, the potential uneven ablation could affect the vehicles aerodynamics as it came under the control of its movable surfaces in the thickening air. Other materials such as titanium which is often used on high speed aircraft in heat sensitive areas could not withstand reentry heat. There would need to be the development of a ceramic based heat shield that absorbed and dissipated the heat rather that ablated it. It would be a technology used on later on the Space Shuttle, but a brand new technology for the early 60’s.

The designers of early winged space vehicles were making assumptions that technology would advance rapidly and some of their needs, while not available immediately, would be available by the time a craft was built. In the absence of computers, the vehicles would rely on pilots to maneuver in orbit and deorbit; a complex task that would require landing flexibility. Next would be the issue of weight. While the vehicle was kept to a functional, payload, and crew minimum, there wasn’t a launch vehicle capable of lifting such a craft into orbit. Even one that was relatively small. There would need to be a larger launch vehicle created. At first, Titan I, then a modified Titan II, then a planned Titan III-C with strap-on solid rocket boosters would be required. The Titan I and II could only provide a boost to suborbital flight. An orbital flight would require the powerful Titan III. The use of solid rocket boosters in conjunction with a liquid fueled rocket was unheard of at the time. No man rated vehicle had considered mixing the two. It had seemed to violate a standard of safety that had been preached against by the likes of Von Braun. So much of a concern it was that a “dousing” feature was studied to shut the booster off mid-flight if needed.

The issues continued to mount. As requirements were added such as abort and escape and the potential for the allotment of weapons – all of these would continue to add to a vehicle that had existed only on the drawing board. Eventually, the concept would be doomed. The accumulation of expense and technical factors combined with political conflicts and the true value such a breakthrough, but functionally limited technology would bring ended early hopes for a reusable spaceplane. The Dyna-Soar program had hoped for technical advances that would make it feasible, what would happen instead was that technology had replaced the functionality Dyna-Soar provided. While the technologies were breakthrough, the functions the vehicle would have performed were better suited to missiles and satellites. Eventually, the Air Force’s spaceplane would fly before the Shuttle, but only in the movies. In 1969, the movie “Marooned” would feature a winged, reusable spaceplane that showcased the promised versatility of the Dyna-Soar and winged spacecraft program. The spacecraft, which was based on actual Air Force designs would launch on short notice and be piloted to a rendezvous point in space to rescue a stranded Apollo crew and return them safely. The film would be the only appearance of the Air Force’s dream of manned spaceflight.

The Shuttle would leverage many of Dyna-Soar‘s early work. The U.S. would go on to operate the Shuttle for 30 years, but at great expense. The Shuttle, while a technical marvel for its age, was a premature technology. In hindsight, launching the vehicle manned on its maiden flight was an enormous risk that could have resulted in tragedy and crippled manned spaceflight. However, the Shuttle was a workhorse, albeit an expensive one. Its crew and medium-lift payload capacity were unmatched during its reign. The U.S. will miss the Shuttle’s capabilities. The Shuttle was not the wrong technology; it was a component of the right technology fit into the wrong strategy for space. There were other Shuttle type designs on the drawing board over the years, Russia’s Klipper, ESA’s Hermes, and both Japan and China have explored Shuttle-type vehicles. While the Shuttle never materialized its promised savings and routine access to space, duplicating it capabilities will be more costly. Replacing the Shuttle will not be easy; once again, it will require a new way of thinking and additional breakthrough technologies. It will require multiple launches, and perhaps robotic servicing missions to replace what humans could do. At least for the next twenty-years it doesn’t appear we will ever see the likes of the Shuttle again.

NASA Plans: Asteroid or Bust

2010-09-02T18:47:00.000-07:00

For those of us that passionately support the manned space program, there was a glimmer of hope in the news articles circulating yesterday that NASA was narrowing down targets to send human visitors to an asteroid. Sounds exciting and this would make for some great “Kodak moments” along with a rekindled interest in the program if it were to happen, but not so fast. A NASA asteroid mission is NASA trying to do something with the limited budget they’ve been given.

NASA has a long history of being out of step with the political climate. There are no guarantees that this mission will gain approval and funding. NASA has become conditioned and accustomed since the Nixon days to not think bold, but to think cheap, not to be brave and daring, but be more ‘down to Earth’. This mentality has been driven largely by changing Presidential administrations reworking the strategy every 4-8 years. Long-term strategy at NASA is something that starts after a President’s first 100 days and last as long as the President holds office. Then the cycle repeats. In the space business, where it can takes decades to bring a new system online, from design, build, and test, a three-year plan just doesn’t work. Nothing will ever get done. That has been proven as a historical fact since Johnson’s Presidency. For every bold vision NASA has come up with there has been a President waiting to scale the dream back, time after time. Not that an asteroid mission is an easy mission or is not a worthwhile dream, but it’s being done because Mars is too expensive and few support a return to the Moon. It’s the compromise that NASA thinks it can sell. Throw in that they will reuse an ISS module and it sounds like great efficiency.

During its post-Apollo history, NASA has been fed the table scraps from lawmakers and they’ve taken it. Over the past four decades, they have received just enough to do something, but not enough to do what needed to get done. In recent years, the strategy has gone from cancelling the moon program (Nixon), to abandoning the manned space program (Nixon), to the Shuttle compromise (Nixon), scaling back Shuttle production (Carter), Space Station Freedom (Reagan), Mission to Mars (Bush I), a scaled down Space Station Freedom (Clinton), then the ISS (Clinton), and then back to the Moon (Bush II), to skip the Moon and head to Mars, maybe (Obama), to a rendezvous with an asteroid using a module cannibalized from the International Space Station after we abandon it, maybe (Obama). This new plan isn’t a strategy, it’s a desperation move. It’s NASA settling again for what it can do with limited funds and limited support. Enough. This insanity with a short-term flip-flopping strategy for the space program has to stop. Where is it that we find and elect people whose vision and logic is so lacking?

The space agency is caught in a loop that it can’t escape. It has become the subject of constant retooling every time a President is elected. I can’t think of one federal agency that undergoes a change in direction as drastic as what NASA faces after each election. Compounding the problem is that NASA can barely get the studies done on one vision before the next change comes rolling through. NASA needs to take a stand and fight for its vision, but first it needs to articulate one. NASA has been trained by Congress and Presidents in recent years to feel like they are lucky to get anything. As such, they tread lightly, don’t make too many waves. What NASA should do is to treat this as if they are at war. They are. It’s a battle for public support and for the support of Congress and the President. NASA needs to plan a strategy to win, not just compromise. For the space agency, compromise is a loss. It has been compromising decade after decade, and it has been losing. A bold NASA that says that it has to be this way or no way might awaken the public to support the program at levels it hasn’t seen in forty-years.

The asteroid mission is wrong. Not because of the target, but because of how it’ll be done. Think of strategy as two parts, the first is what we are going to achieve, how we are going to do it, and when. The second is making sure that the strategy you put in place is achievable, sustainable and lays a foundation for what comes next. The asteroid mission is NASA settling to accomplish something because it is sellable and doable with limited resources, but what next? The target asteroids are few and far between, miss a window due to technical delays or funding, and you’re stuck waiting years for another shot. The bigger question is what is the objective? What can a manned mission achieve to an asteroid that an unmanned mission couldn’t do cheaper and without risk, including sample return? The answer is nothing. So why risk crew, cobble together a system using an International Space Station Module when you can’t repeat the process and haven’t built equipment that can be leveraged for the next step, Mars. We know the answer, it is that old adage “better to do something, than nothing”, this is something rather than nothing, and something that can be done cheaper. It’s a mistake.

In the coming weeks, I’ll talk more about what needs to be done with NASA’s long term vision and how it can win the battle for public support, but I’ll give you a hint. Forget manned mission to asteroids and Mars, at least for now. It’s a battle that can’t be won today. The space program needs to get back to its foundational elements and build the systems and tools for the future, but leveraging what we’ve already done. We’ve become experts at operating and constructing objects in low-earth orbit, let’s build on it rather than discard that experience. The Earth-Moon system is a logical place to build and test vehicles for Mars. We need to progressively reach for Mars so that we can repeat it and build on it to reach further. It will take time and money, but it will create a lasting system. A Mars mission or an asteroid mission now is a “one and done” deal with nowhere else to go and a lot of “lost” years building something that can’t be leveraged.

The asteroid mission had one element right; travel to deep space will require a space station type craft. We’ll need to get working on one and we’ll need to test it, first in Earth-Moon long duration orbit, then perhaps an asteroid trip to step further, then to Mars, but wait, there’s more! “Space exploration” is how we term our activities in space; a long-term strategy might begin not with exploration, but operations. Items such as building in-orbit power stations that continue to leverage our experience while funding the program to build new vehicles and new technologies. To do that you’re going to need a heavy-lift launch vehicle (Ares V), and a crew vehicle that can be more than just as transport, but operate in space for days (Orion). That gets us one step closer and meets both needs. In other words, win by making the other guy think he’s winning.

Lastly, we’ve got to get a better linkage between our unmanned and manned strategies. Send a robot to an asteroid, not people. We have done it already, this is no stretch for us technically, and a robotic mission opens up potentially better targets. Next up, a full test run of an unmanned Mars Lander and sample return mission; it would be a great mission to work on all the logistical details for an eventual manned flight. Mars has become a graveyard of failed vehicles, and we’ve never done a full launch, transit, orbit, land, launch, transit, return on a mission this scale since Apollo. We’ll need practice. A sample return mission from Mars with multiple sampling probes docking with a single return vehicle would be a mission that would captivate public imagination. Then focus on an unmanned probe to Europa to explore the surface and perhaps the subsurface ocean. All the while, use the scarce manned spaceflight resources to build and test vehicles with improved capabilities and propulsion that will keep us in orbit, then to the moon, and eventually on to Mars.

Hawking: Beware Hostile Aliens Seeking Earth's Treasure

2010-08-25T19:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, there was the announcement of the discovery of five large planets orbiting the star HD 10180, 126 light years from Earth with the possibility of two additional smaller planets also in that system. The findings indicate that the planets orbit their star in a pattern that resembles the structure of our own solar system. NASA’s anticipated announcement tomorrow (Thursday, August 26, 2010) will likely add similar findings from Kepler of Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars. That news brings to mind the recent debate that has sprung up regarding whether or not people, or more appropriately governments, should communicate with alien civilizations should we discover them. This has received more attention as of late when Professor Stephen Hawking, the noted physicist, stated that alien civilizations were likely to be older, more advanced, and would likely be hostile. He remarked that alien civilizations would likely raid our planet and use what they find here as spare parts for their own civilization and recommended we avoid communication.

Our detection of exoplanets has advanced rapidly in just a few years, but so far we have yet to discover any form of life in the universe outside of planet Earth. However, in the past decade the case has gotten stronger that some form of microbial life may indeed exist in our own celestial backyard either lurking under the soil of Mars or in the oceans of Europa and Enceladus. If that’s true, life is likely abundant in the universe, but what about this “evil empire” waiting to pick up a signal of intelligent life somewhere and raid an unsuspecting planet? It’s a ridiculous argument fueled by one too many sci-fi movies that portray alien civilizations as ‘pirates’ and ‘barbarians’, or reptilian creatures that are savage, but technologically superior and ready to slay an inferior species and not think twice about it. I could write a book about what’s wrong with this concept. From the size of the planet required to support such as advanced race’s resource demands, the additional gravity and the burden that puts on escaping the planet to the same constraints of physics that we face. It all makes for entertaining reading, but that may be the extent of it.

Hawking’s alarmist comments were likely meant more to create interest and dialogue on the meaning of humanity than to seriously create worry about a conquering alien civilization waiting to destroy the Earth. Step back, take a deep breath and think about this for a minute. First, any civilization brought up in a manner where destruction of other worlds and a lack of respect for other living beings is the primary driver for that civilization couldn’t survive long without destroying itself much less others. Look at our own planet for example. We’re not nearly as advanced as we project these alien civilizations to be and we live under the constant threat of annihilating each other. Second, these ‘aliens’ would build these fantastic ships to cross the universe and haul their ill-gotten booty and for what? Computer chips? A few fighter jets? Earth’s water? The first two would be obsolete to that civilization and the last is abundant in the universe in the form of ice. They could use their technology to send a few comets back home or tow an icy moon back and all of that would likely be closer to their own home planet. So what does that leave us? Just bad tempered aliens out looking to destroy a planet full of living beings for spite? Seems impractical that they would cross the galaxy to wipe us out and do it just because they could. The Jodie Foster line in “Contact” comes to mind; “It would be like us going out of way to destroy some anthill in Africa”. Why bother?

Perhaps we will find that indeed humans are unique in the universe after all, maybe it is our predisposition for violence that sets us apart. We see evil in others, because we are so use to seeing it in ourselves. Maybe the universe doesn’t work that way at all. Just maybe, alien civilizations don’t have the notion of reigning supreme over the weak, of using technology as a means to threaten domination. Perhaps benevolent civilizations will pick up an earthly broadcast of “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” and be fear struck that it a documentary of how we operate, and feel the need to arm themselves against future invaders from Earth. It could be that they might pick up a broadcast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and would wait to welcome the altruistic human civilization in the form of Captain Picard and his crew aboard the starship Enterprise as they come visiting on their “continuing mission to seek out new civilizations”. If alien civilizations exist and they were to find Earth or pickup up our decades of broadcast we could understand their apprehension about us or hostility towards us, for any signals they received from us were likely dominated by proof of our preference to use aggression to solve our problems. They may just avoid us altogether.

Though we have not found any evidence of life outside of our own planet, and we have only begun to find Earth-like planets around distant stars, it is mind boggling and an extreme display of hubris that we humans think we’re alone in the universe. We inhabit a small planet around an ordinary star about halfway out from the center of our galaxy with billions of other stars just like it everywhere, and all made from the same materials and processes. We have evidence of oxygen, organic molecules, and water all around us. While a large portion of that water in our own solar system is in the form of ice, it is proof nonetheless that given the right temperature our main criterion for “life as we know it” is abundant. It would be shocking if it turned out that with this abundance of the chemical ingredients for life spread all throughout the vastness of space that the right combination only occurred once in an ordinary galaxy around an ordinary star. What’s more likely is that life is everywhere, from primitive to intelligent, it just happens to be spread so far apart that we can’t detect it or won’t detect for decades, perhaps hundreds of years, if at all.

For all of our fantasy and dreaming of alien worlds, it may be that we will never know. The laws of physics, while not fully understood, may be laws that cannot be broken. Even if we could travel at light speed, it would still take too long to visit distant worlds, too long to effectively communicate. Exceeding the speed of light may be impossible and that may keep us safe from Hawking’s aliens, but also alone. Being alone may come at a price; we could be deprived of the benefits an advanced civilization might bring us. The evidence for why it may stay that way is in the form of a simple experiment. Einstein said the speed of light is a universal speed limit. Here’s how we know. If you were walking down the street at 5 miles per hour and threw a baseball forward at 10 miles per hour, the speed of the ball is actually 15 miles per hour. The speed of light is at its maximum in a vacuum, and less through another medium such as air, but walking down the street with a flashlight shining forward and the total speed of the beam of light is the speed of light. Even though it’s less in air then its maximum, the walking speed didn’t add to it and the speed of light is the same whether you are standing still holding the flashlight or walking with the flashlight. It tends to support the theory that going faster than the speed of light just isn’t possible. The speed of light isn’t the fastest that light can go, it’s the fastest it’s allowed to go, the speed limit imposed on it by the universe in any given set of conditions.

We may indeed find ways to make trips around the solar system faster, but traveling for years at light speed to another star may just be beyond our civilization's reach and that may mean it is beyond an alien civilization’s reach also. For the all the ideas of creating “warp drives” and opening “wormholes” we just may never get there. It has become a near forty year quest to move beyond Earth orbit. I don’t like our odds of getting it together and creating the advanced space technology to move among the stars, but there is hope. In the next 50-100 years the signals of maturing civilizations that may have been on the same evolutionary timeline as Earth may reach us, and maybe it will be from the system orbiting the star HD 10180. We may tune in to see what and how another alien civilization is like by their broadcast, and we may learn something about them and about us, it may give new meaning to the term “educational television”.

As for those hostile aliens, don’t lose sleep over it. In the 126 years or so it may have taken them to get here from some distant star, they would either be too tired to fight us or have long forgotten why they ever wanted to come here in the first place.

Meteorite Men

2010-08-06T14:42:00.000-07:00

About 35 years ago, when the skies were darker in the suburbs north of Baltimore I would keenly wait for the large meteorite showers in August and November. I would stay up late and peer through my bedroom window hoping to catch a falling star. They seemed more impressive back then, I could usually count on seeing them if I looked hard enough. To my amazement, and in what could only be considered a coincidence of astronomical proportions, one morning I found a tiny meteorite lying on the garage roof just outside my window. What are the chances that someone actually watching the meteor shower having a small fragment land outside their window. There was no mistaking it. It was a little smaller than the size of a dime, irregular shape, black with and orange crust in a few places. Back then I wasn’t sure what to do. We didn’t have internet, email or any type of instant communication. So I wrote a letter to a university that I had seen in a book while I was doing research on it at the library. I asked how I could tell if it were a real meteorite. They wrote back and said I would have to send them the object. I couldn’t do that, it was a one of a kind. So I tucked it away in a small metal tube for safekeeping. Over the years, somewhere in the accumulated mess of a teenage boy’s world I lost track of it. I’m sure it is still there in my parent’s house somewhere, but wherever that place is, it isn’t obvious.

Last weekend while watching part of the marathon of Meteorite Men that ran on The Discovery Science Channel I began to think about my little visitor from space and whatever became of it. Now, there were other grown adults like me who were captivated by rocks falling from the sky, only they spent their adulthood scouring the country looking for the same little pieces of rocks from space that had come right to my rooftop. The “Meteorite Men” have done quite well finding space rocks of all types, shapes and sizes. So well, that they’ve made a career out of it. Seeing them unearth buried pieces of rock that date back to the formation of our solar system is quite awe-inspiring when you think about it. Being the first human to touch a rock from space, or see a rock from space is quite the feat.

A few years ago, on the 23^rd of December, my son had just come into town for the Christmas holidays from his Air Force Tech School training. When he got here we decided to do some very late night shopping to get him caught up. As we were driving back to the house around 1am we saw this ball of fire come out of the sky right in front of us. It was bright and large and it seemed near the city of Charlotte about 15 miles away. As soon as we got back in the house we started searching the internet for news. We were so certain that others had seen it, or that a weather cam picked it up and caught it on film, or that it landed somewhere near Charlotte and someone heard it, but no luck. I emailed local weather people, no response. It could have been miles away or hundreds of miles away, but debris from it is out there somewhere. With no concrete evidence of where it could be, no one will ever know.

So I got to thinking about that and did some quick research on meteorite strewn fields in my immediate area. There are a few, and not what I would call immediate to Charlotte, but within North Carolina, but they are old and date back to the 1800’s and they most likely have been picked clean by meteorite hunters over the years or the fragments long eroded by wind and rain. I did find one intriguing sighting in a nearby state that was recent and the object has yet to be found. Just for fun, I’m going to do a little research using the available data and plan a little road trip and try my luck where others have failed. In the sixty minutes that Meteorite Men is on, the task of actually finding a space rock seems easy, but that is just the edited version. They admit that they often search in futility and find nothing. My endeavor will likely end the same way; it’s searching for a needle in a haystack. The thrill of this is not just the search, but getting out and looking. It’s about being creative and inventive and talking to local townspeople about what might have been seen or found. It most likely will be never found, but it is just another space adventure that will happen right here on earth.

Perhaps one day my little rock will turn up or maybe I’ll start using my spare time to head west and spend some time in the Arizona and Nevada deserts looking for rocks from space. It doesn’t seem like there can be a much better way to see America and meet interesting people than to find the little towns that were lucky enough to have a visitor from outer space come calling.

Good News, Bad News....

2010-08-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

The Senate passed the NASA Authorization Bill that put the American space program somewhere in the middle between the drastic retooling that the Obama Administration had sought and the “stay the course” approach outlined in the Vision for Space Exploration. There are a few things we should never compromise in this country and the exploration of space makes the top five behind life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and national defense. I say this because space exploration is one of those things that does not lend itself to compromise very well. Space is difficult, full of unknowns, and when you’re doing something for the first time, incredibly expensive. Getting NASA back on track is turning out to be a lifetime endeavor. By that I mean I’m not sure in my lifetime I’ll ever see it on the right course. Decade after decade the same mistakes and missteps, more compromise that delivers enough to keep the program on life support until we can change strategies yet again. The good news is that we are most likely going to build some things we need, the bad news, there isn’t enough money to do it right or do it in the mandated timeline. That’s just the start of it. This Senate bill is only half the battle. There still needs to be reconciliation with the House version of the same funding authorization. As they stand now, they are both radically different and neither is the optimal solution. It’s getting to the point now where we need to either be in this all the way or out of it and get a thumbs up on whether or not we need to continue manned space or the thumbs down and get out of it and boost unmanned exploration. This continual political infighting ends up costing us more and we get less. If the Senate bill is a compromise and the House bill is radically different then just imagine what we are going to end up with when this is all said and done.

Realistically, we’ve moved very little since Apollo. One could argue we’ve done almost nothing since the moon landings since we appeared ready to abandon the space station and we have already committed retiring the shuttle. We haven’t learned from those projects and built upon them a better future. We’re treating the Shuttle era like that forgettable season on the television series Dallas where Bobby mysteriously reappears after being killed off the previous season and we find out it was just a dream. Just like that we’re being asked to forget that whole Shuttle and ISS program happened and let’s pickup where we left off with Apollo. It’s senseless. We can’t have this both ways. We can’t keep the space program as a trophy in the case while providing minimal funding to keep us in the spotlight. The strategy and funding mistakes of the past have costs us the lives of astronauts and we’ve lost valuable time.

I think it was Dave Scott, Commander of Apollo 15 that said we shouldn’t be so worried about the program, that explorations of great discovery have sometimes had hundreds of years between them. The difference then and now was the evolution of technical capabilities, not a will or commitment to explore. It was because those predecessors never lost that will to explore that we have a space program, but now it’s different. We’re willing to do only what we think we can afford. This cycle has to be broken. We need to once and for all decide what we’re going to do, how we’re going to do it, and when we’re going to do it. Once we agree on that, then it will cost what it will cost to achieve. Somehow, this mindset has creeped into the Congress and the President that NASA willingly makes things more expensive just to waste taxpayer’s money. The solution then becomes dictating a spending ceiling and a timeline that fixes NASA’s problem. It doesn’t work that way. This logic escapes me. I challenge any member of Congress to tell me a real world example of where that works. Where do we dictate broad specifications on something extremely complicated and provide funding and a timeline as if every detail was known? What inevitably happens is that it costs more and takes longer because we didn’t do it right up front. Everyone’s angry and the course changes and funding restrictions only get more frequent. I don’t know that I care if we spend less and it takes longer if it’s the right course. It’s where we spend less and compress the timeframe, or compromise the strategy and don’t get what we need just get something that disappoints me the most. We’ve got lots to do in the area of space exploration. There are so many exciting destinations for humans and unmanned spacecraft. I realize we can’t do it all right now, but we need an integrated approach independent of costs. Once we have that, we can decide how we will pay for it and how long it will take. The way we’re doing it now we will never make any real progress.

Just for fun.....

2010-07-28T19:19:00.000-07:00

There is only one place in our Solar System outside of the planet Earth where an astronaut could stand outside a vehicle/craft without a pressured spacesuit, with gravity close to our own planet, atmospheric pressure equal to Earth at sea level, and carrying only a bottle of breathable air in what could be termed relatively comfortable temperatures (above freezing and below 100 degrees Fahrenheit)? Now, this isn’t a trick question per se, but you do have to read it carefully. There could be other factors like exposure to radiation that might make wearing a protective spacesuit a good idea, but it is possible for this to occur.

Imagine an astronaut for the very first time feeling the wind and air of another world on his face. Considering this is likely to be the only place this could occur within any reasonable proximity to Earth (within our Solar System), it would seem quite an event, maybe on a par with stepping on the surface on the moon. Where is this place? Maybe the answer will surprise you, but it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out. I’ve given you one very big clue already. A simple process of elimination will get you pretty close, but given what you know and given that is has a relatively hospitable environment would you be in favor of sending astronauts there to explore such a place? How it could be done is almost as fascinating as the fact that it could be done. Now, I’ll let you off the hook from over thinking where this place might be just a little, since for all the pluses about it exploring it, there are many many more minuses. This is why we haven’t done it. We could debate the scientific value of such a mission, for as intriguing as it sounds I don’t know that I see the value right now, but it might be one that is getting more relevant year after year. Well, you ponder this one for a little while. I’ll post the answer in a few days.

"No Go" for Launch

2010-02-10T19:21:00.000-08:00

Thousands of people came to the Kennedy Space Center on February 7, 2010 for the last night launch of the Space Shuttle program. I made the trek down hoping to catch one last piece of history and see a spectacular launch. The complex was as crowded as I had ever seen it. There were long lines everywhere, long lines to get in; long lines to catch a bus out to the causeway, a crowded gift store with people buying up jackets, blankets and chairs hoping to stay warm. Once I finally made it there, thousands were crowded on the causeway. The ground was covered in people. They were huddled in chairs wrapped in blankets, on the ground asleep in sleeping bags; the sounds of babies crying could be heard scattered in the crowd. Off in the distance stood the reason we braved the elements, the Space Shuttle, bathed in bright lights about six miles away ready for launch.

Earlier in the day when I left Orlando, the winds were stiff, I had a feeling that perhaps they were too high to launch, but out on the causeway the winds had lessened, and the skies were clear. Over the loudspeaker, as the updates came in, the chances of launch were dropping, first they were 80%, then 60%, then 30%, all the while clear skies and moderate to light winds were all the frozen thousands could see.The forecasters would be right. About an hour before launch, low clouds filtered in. Occasionally, there were scattered and broken, giving hope that the launch would go on, but just 9 minutes before launch it was scrubbed. The low cloud deck and the thickness of the clouds were right on the edge of the margin of safety should the Shuttle have an abort event during liftoff where it would have to glide back to the runway at the Kennedy Space Center. During such an event, the Shuttle Commander and Pilot would not have the benefit of preprogrammed guidance into their computer; it would be pure piloting, in the darkness, with very little moonlight providing any extra light for visibility.

The old NASA prior to Challenger and Columbia might have launched. The margins were close. The current NASA couldn’t chance it. Such is life for NASA. After the loss of two Shuttles in accidents that could have been prevented – there can be no risk taking, even if the odds are in your favor. Flying into space is risky enough, adding even the slightest risk is out of the question. I got to thinking about the other well known accidents and whether scrubbing this launch was evidence of NASA at its best watching out for safety.Interestingly enough, when the poll was taken and they proceeded to get a “go for launch”, the Range Safety Officer and Weather Officer gave a final “no go”, you could tell in the voice of the launch director what sounded like a little hesitancy to call a scrub. NASA had a 10 minute window and the scrub came 9 minutes before launch which was in the middle of the window. So NASA had about 15 minutes for the weather to change. The launch director asked if they should continue to wait it out in hopes that it would change before the launch window expired. The call came back, “no”, it wasn’t going to change and they wouldn’t launch. We all wanted it to go. I thought if they have asked me what would I had said?

There’s a difference between having all the facts and making a call, and making a call based on rationalizing the past history. In the absence of facts, people tend to rationalize history. For example, there’s never been an instance of an abort back to the landing strip. Therefore, it’s an unlikely event, and if that were the only risk holding up launch assume it won’t happen and launch. This is the type of thinking that led to Challenger. This launch though was cause for additional caution. It was a cold night, breezy, clouds, the shuttle has been on the pad for weeks through some unusually cold weather for Florida (although the Shuttle was protected and heated during that time), and it was early February. The three loss of crew events have all occurred at the end of January or beginning of February. It’s a statistical anomaly that must lurk in the back of NASA’s mind whenever a launch occurs around that same time. All of those events and the serious in-flight accident of Apollo 13 all share a common thread.

The link between Apollo 1, Apollo 13, Challenger, and Columbia is that they are failures of systems and process, and not of the crew. What is most striking about the four is that they were all preventable. Ultimately, NASA is responsible for the oversight and the process that protects the crew and prevents or greatly reduces the likelihood of an accident and does not increase the risk. These four examples are the most striking, but the process has failed before without tragedy, but only because luck was on the side of the crew. In some instances, the safety nets kicked in and prevented tragedy and in others, the human element of the process failed.

When NASA launched Apollo 12 through rain clouds, the vehicle was struck by lightning and the systems went offline. The rocket could have lost control or not regained its bearings had the computer been damaged or the electronics disabled from the strike. The response: no one knew that could happen. NASA launched the first shuttle manned, even though the vehicle was little understood. NASA continued launching despite issues with the thermal protection system and foam loss early in the program. There were other issues that received little public attention:

While Columbia was being transported from the factory where it was built in Palmdale, California, 5000 tiles fell off the vehicle. This included 4800 temporary tiles and 200 critical heat resistant tiles.
In a January 1990 mission, as the crew slept, the Space Shuttle Columbia tumbled out of control for nearly twenty minutes.
On a Columbia mission in 1993, an Auxiliary Power Unit leaked fuel and caused a minor fire while the Shuttle was descending. This was discovered as technicians found a burned section of the vehicle during inspection.
In January, 1986, the launch of Columbia was stopped with 14 seconds to go when sensor readings caused a launch abort. It was discovered that a technician had accidentally drained the liquid oxygen from the fuel tank. The fuel starved Columbia would not have reached orbit. The shortage would have certainly led to the first ascent abort in the program history. It would have taken flawless computer and sensor performance to shut down the engines before the fuel ran out and avoid a catastrophic failure before the vehicle could attempt a high risk abort-to-landing site maneuver. It would have made for an unlikely survival scenario.
In yet another close call, during a 1999 Shuttle mission by Columbia, it main engines leaked hydrogen from launch all the way to orbit. It resulted in an abnormally high use of the liquid oxygen fuel resulting in a premature engine shutdown. It was a stroke of luck that the leaking fuel did not explode and cause a loss of the vehicle.

There were also signs of o-ring erosion that were not addressed. The response: the Shuttle has to meet aggressive launch schedules to meet its costs and performance objectives. The Shuttle has had one ATO (abort to orbit), which occurred on the 19th flight when a main engine failed, but the mission proceeded normally until six missions later when Challenger exploded. Then on STS-95, the cover for the deceleration chute came off on the pad during launch and struck the vehicle without causing damage. There have been numerous launch pad aborts, an early cutoff of the Space Shuttle main engines due to a 4000lb shortage in the external tank, a failure of the primary system to detonate an explosive bolt on the SRBs to release the Shuttle stack from the pad. Luckily the backup system worked. In total, there were 16 abort events in the final 60 seconds to SSME ignition or after SRB ignition. There were numerous instances of foam coming off the vehicle, but it was considered a “maintenance” issue and not a “safety” issue.

After the Challenger accident and the subsequent review, there were numerous issues identified with Challenger including the brakes, steering, landing gear, tires that were unrelated to the disaster, but known weaknesses that were overlooked. After Columbia, there was discussion about the “bolt catchers”. It was a primitive system that is designed to “catch” the explosive 80lb bolts from the SRBs. If it failed, the bolt could strike the orbiter. Even with modifications, there is no guarantee that fragments still couldn’t escape into the airstream and hit the orbiter. On a sophisticated spacecraft, it could have come down to a bucket catching a bolt that could mean the difference between a crew’s life or death.

To look at the four accidents out of context of every mission and every near-miss would lead one to believe they are an anomaly. They occurred far enough apart to be considered a statistical risk of flight, but viewed in another light and one could assume that a) human spaceflight is risky, but loss is preventable, b) to meet its objectives, NASA must compromise time, safety and costs; NASA can only have two of the three, c) NASA is operating vehicles that they do not fully understand in environments that they don’t understand, and d) NASA’s training and culture does not adequately support its mission objectives.

It appears that a mix of all four has been at play in NASA’s organization over the years. NASA grew up in an era where it had unlimited funding, an ambitious and exciting goal, but little time to execute. That occurred during a time where it was also building its organization, its culture, and the systems and processes that would last long beyond the moon landings. In the full scope of NASA’s history, the race for the moon was the most impressionable, but just a small part of its total history. It left a ‘muscle memory” that lingered long after and through many changes. NASA had to adapt to substantially lower funding and take more risks to accomplish its goals. NASA didn’t knowingly put lives at risk, but it did so unknowingly and with a naiveté of an organization that didn’t know how to adapt. The organization never had a chance during its formative years to pace and learn all it needed to know, but instead was under a timeline to land on the moon, and second was under the gun to deliver at the least expense. Both philosophies would prove tragic.

In Apollo 1, the NASA contractor was guilty of poor workmanship, but there were design flaws like the inward opening hatch, the use of pure oxygen, the failure to recognize the flammability of oxygen saturated items such as Velcro, paper and fabric. There were process failures in oversight of the vendor and lack of quality control checks. In Apollo 13, the tank that exploded was a tank from the Apollo 10 Command Module that was damaged during removal for modification. The tank was repaired and an underrated component was not replaced during the upgrade. Subsequent testing showed an anomaly in the tank. After a conference with the contractor, a process was used to complete the test and approve the tank. The process used to clear the tank overheated and damaged the underrated component which damaged the internal heating element. The oversight would prove disastrous and near fatal. The conference with the manufacturer, and the subsequent decision to approve and use a critical component that was not performing as planned had a familiar ring and was reminiscent of NASA's next accident, Challenger.

In Challenger, NASA overrode the recommendation of the manufacturer of the SRB’s and launched in cold weather well below any previous Shuttle launch, and well below the previous near miss launch in 52 degree weather. Little known is that the Challenger may have survived had it not been buffeted by wind shear prior to explosion , which dislodged the debris blocking the o-ring leak, or that a misread on the weather had scrubbed a perfect day to launch the Sunday before the disaster. Any event could have prevented the disaster, but may not have solved the root problem. Even the disaster itself didn’t solve the process that looked at all aspects of flight safety and operational anomalies. Seventeen years later, another event caused the loss of Columbia. In that event, despite rather ominous visual evidence of a strike on the left wing, NASA failed to order additional checks on the condition of the orbiter from ground and space based assets and dismissed the impact a suitcase sized object with the consistency of Styrofoam could have on the orbiter’s wing.

Ultimately, NASA owns these issues. These were systemic failures of process and organization. I previously stated that NASA has had shifting sand beneath its feet since its inception, and has had to deal with numerous administrations and numerous administrators; but it never instituted a risk management or oversight process from its inception that could have avoided accidents and tragedies. A process that would permeate, become part of the agency’s DNA, and become part of the agency’s culture. Through their 50 years of operation, that aspect has proven hard to change. After ARES I had already been designed, there was debate over whether the harmonic oscillation would cause enough vibration to damage electronics and harm the crew. Rather than redesign the vehicle, the plan was to put dampers in the booster to absorb the vibration. The modifications left the vehicle with no margin for future increases in power and already there have been compromises in vehicle weight. It appeared that once again NASA’s culture was to work within the budget and accept risk rather than demand the necessary funding to adequately build and fly vehicles with the greatest amount of safety money can buy, but on this chilly, somewhat cloudy night in early February, the process worked. NASA did not move the margin higher in the risk category to get the launch off, but waited for better conditions. Thousands like me would be disappointed, but the crew and vehicle launched safely the next night proving that NASA has learned. Had they launched safely I would have been ecstatic, had this been the time that another tragedy would befall the space program and the weather would have made a difference, it likely would have brought an end to America’s manned spaceflight program or at a minimum, and an even longer hiatus then is already planned. I’m sorry I missed the launch, but glad NASA made the right call.

The Wrong Stuff

2010-02-03T20:11:00.000-08:00

When the Bush era Vision for Space Exploration was released NASA said "it was going back to the future" for its next generation of space vehicles, they didn’t realize how right they were. They went all the back to 1970. Back to a time when Richard Nixon decided manned spaceflight wasn't a priority anymore. In 1970, Nixon gave a speech on the future of the space program eerily similar to the latest Obama direction for NASA. Outside of the speech, Nixon had already established a timetable to end Apollo and use the last of the hardware for Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Only because NASA persisted did manned spaceflight survive. NASA had managed to sell Nixon on the idea that deploying satellites would be cheaper if they were launched on a manned reusable spacecraft than using unmanned expendable rockets. It was a close call for the manned space program. Nixon was drunk with his power. He had forced NASA to rethink how they did space, and forced them to do at a cost much less than Apollo. He touted it as a bold new era for space. We would do even bigger things with a much smaller budget. Well, at least that was the thinking. What Nixon, along with his successors in the Oval Office, never learned is that space is incredibly complicated. Presidents aren’t engineers, aren’t strategists, they’re aggregators of information. We hire them to make decisions based on their ability to come to a reasonable assessment. For a large part of our history, they have failed us.

Space is an area where if you do it wrong, lives are lost. You plan wrong and costs go up. We know how the Nixon strategy played out. It wasn't cheaper to fly the Shuttle, and it diverted scarce funds for decades that could have gone into the next phase of deep space exploration. NASA has never recovered. Now, another President wants to make another bold course change; one that will be better, cheaper, and take us on new adventures. Where have I heard this before? Did you realize that since Apollo 17 left the moon in December of 1972, and counting the time until ARES-1 was supposed to fly, that NASA would be grounded 11 years during that time? Twenty-five percent of the time NASA stayed here on Earth. That’s what you call a bad strategy.

I like Charlie Bolden, the NASA Administrator, but if he seriously believes we'll get to the moon quicker under this direction, than Barack Obama is not just a politician, he’s a magician. It can't be done. At an absolute minimum, we need the ARES V heavy lift vehicle. You still need to put components of significant weight into orbit even if you can get crews there commercially using SpaceX. You'll need transit vehicles, fuel, and a lander. If SpaceX is going to do all that, then great, but it certainly won't be in the lifetime of anyone reading this. Sending NASA off to explore this hodgepodge of new technologies is something they should have been doing all along, but not as a substitute for manned space. What makes Obama think this assortment of research won’t be more expensive than he’s given NASA money for?

If you kill Constellation, it's not coming back. In 2020, when we bailout of the ISS, we'll be having this "what to do next" discussion all over again. The anti-NASA crowd always cites "how it was over budget anyway". It wasn't "over budget", it was "underfunded". NASA spends more than it plans because it gets less than it needs. NASA had tried to do the most complicated thing on or off the planet on a shoestring. It won’t work. It’s been that way for forty years. NASA has been given a fixed budget and then has to make the rocket fit the budget. It’s a disastrous formula. We never learn.

That Bolden equates the loss of Constellation to a “death in the family” is evidence NASA wasn’t in agreement. What have we learned from Nixon and Obama? Nixon didn’t care about space. He was out to be the President who would be the world’s statesman. His mission, have détente with the Soviets and open China to America. Sending people into space and to the moon was Kennedy’s dream. Nixon was out of touch with what space could do for America. The program and the country would pay the price – in human lives, financially, and technologically.

As for Obama, what his passion for space is we don’t know. He’s been on both sides - for it and against it. What we do know is he wants to be branded as different and works hard at it. When it calls for conventional, he’ll do the unconventional. Do I think he knows it all? That he’s infallible. Hardly. Let’s look at an example. He decides the Air Force doesn't need the F-22 Raptors - despite the fact that the current mainstay, the F-15, is a 70’s era fighter. "The Air Force is out of touch with modern warfare – they’re fighting last century's war” he says, “We need to build more UAVs". On the surface, that sounds reasonable. We’re fighting two wars and neither requires air-to-air combat. However, China announces their 5th generation fighter, the F-22 equivalent - and guess what? They're going to build at least 500 of the fighters, and likely more - enough to overwhelm whatever concentration of F-22s we could deploy in a conflict (less than 200 will be produced out of an original plan of 800). It just happens to be that the Chinese are about 5 years ahead of when we thought they’d be able to build them. It sounds like a strategy mistake. It’s the right tactic for one situation and wrong for another. In the case of UAVs versus F-22s, we need them both. There’s no choice to be made. Our continued missteps have emboldened China. Every weakness we exhibit makes them that much more confident and stronger.

Recently we announced we’re going to sell arms to Taiwan. The move antagonized China. That’s fine, but China is expecting a clash with the U.S. over Taiwan. They are preparing for it. Obama, Clinton and Gates need to do their homework. China is out to dominate space and to take the U.S. advantage away in such a battle. We have taught China well. They’ve watched how we've conducted military operations and they know the importance of space. Their civilian program and military space program are tightly connected. Did you know that in 2006 China blinded a U.S. satellite with a ground based laser? How about when China did that well publicized anti-satellite test – did you know if was from a mobile launcher? The test showed a mastery of multiple space skills and a bold strategy that could create a “Pearl Harbor” equivalent in space. Finally, in January, 2010, they successfully conducted an anti-ballistic missile test, their version of Star Wars. One other point of interest – in the early 50’s China tried to talk the Soviets into attacking the United States. They saw it as inevitable and combined with the Soviets they figured sooner was better than later. Hard to believe, but the Soviets showed restraint. They knew it would be a nuclear exchange that would devastate their country while leaving China largely intact. All of this talk about we’re not competing with China, we are, and especially in space technology.

There’s one other thing China has learned from the U.S. – how not to run a space program. China recently stated that they are not in a space race. Their goal, build a sustainable, long term space program. The U.S. version, change every few years as Presidents, who closest qualifications of directing a space program are that they may have watched an episode of two of Star Trek, discard what we’ve built and start all over. This is not the way to advance human spaceflight. Alright, so what’s the point? The point is that mastery of space is important. Our military and civilian programs feed each other. Cutting half of the program out will hurt us short term and will cripple us long term. China is no longer the backwards country we all think they are. They’re moving fast and have a long standing grudge against the west for previous occupations, they hold the key to our financial stability, and they’re buying time for the day that they will stand toe-to-toe with the United States on the world stage. That day is coming fast.

In 20 or 30 years, when China is leveraging the resources of space to their benefit, we’ll look back at this time in history and see it as the moment we gave up. The moment our President decided to throw the towel in the ring and concede defeat. We bailed out GM, AIG, Citibank, and a host of banks and industries that we deemed vital to America, but we let the dream of space fail. Every nation in the world can build cars, only a few can go into space. That Barack Obama decided that being a technological leader in space wasn’t worth saving speaks volumes for our leadership in this country. Obama’s decision is much like Nixon’s. He’s trying to be different to be different. Nixon was wrong, Obama’s wrong. It likely won’t be reversed and NASA will wither. For those followers of human spaceflight, all is not lost. There’s always Russia, China, India, and Japan – and more countries to follow who see leading in space as a technology enabler and not just an expense.

The Way of the Pyramids

2010-01-28T20:58:00.000-08:00

Standing on the Giza Plateau outside of Cairo, Egypt stands a modern marvel for its time, the Great Pyramid. For 3800 years it stood alone as the tallest man-made structures on the planet. The Egyptians don’t build pyramids anymore and haven’t for over 4500 years. At night they shine lights on the monuments as a testament to the great civilization that they once were – and so we have our own monuments to great achievements of how great our civilization can be, our rockets to the moon. After reaching the unreachable, we canceled the program and let our monuments rot. A few years ago, before the Saturn V in Huntsville was restored, I was shocked on a visit there to find the Saturn V laying on its side, on the grass, and rotting. It was faded, the metal eaten in parts, overtaken by rodents, birds and other animals that made it their home. Now, the Saturn V is restored and sits in a museum where like the pyramids future generations can come and say “what great people these must have been”.

The space race began because a unique set of circumstance occurred to give birth to it, and along the way those events kept happening, at first they made the race more exciting, but after the race was won, the events turned against the program. Manned spaceflight has been misunderstood since its beginning. We put a lot of national treasure into reaching the moon, but we never saw it as an investment. Like Steinbrenner and his Yankees, we just thought, how much will it cost to win, and just do it. When we had won, we looked at space in a new light. Having never established it as an investment in our future and in our technology – we saw it as an expense. An investment is something you put money into and get a greater value back. If space exploration were sold as a good investment with a guaranteed return, funding it would have never been a problem, but that wasn’t done. Instead, we viewed space exploration as a necessary evil – if we have to do it, then spend as little as possible. As so it floundered. So many people have failed the space program. Strategy mistake after mistake. Political wrangling, waning public support, a lack of creativity and vision for the future. Everyone has some accountability for the state of where the U.S. Manned Space Program is today. As I read the reports on Obama’s latest proposal, one Congressman remarked “if we're not going to do it right, then why do it at all”. So it has come to this. The people and not just the few fervent supporters must step up and say they want America to be leaders in space. For without that we will fail.

Every four years NASA comes under the gun, every change in Administration threatens a new direction. Our world has changed too. In the 60’s, the space program WAS the technology. We used typewriters, and had three tv channels to watch and most shows were in black and white. No CDs, DVDs, Cable, Cell Phones, Computers, iPods,Email, or Internet. The space program marveled us like nothing else could. Today, technology is so pervasive that not being able to reach the moon seems nonsensical. We can do so much and we did that in the 60’s – it has to be easier now. Couple that with movies that look so real footage from the Mars or the Moon would disappoint. It’s much harder to dazzle the public’s fancy with space when movies can take them there without leaving their living rooms.

“The World is Flat” as Thomas Friedman says and I’d bet on a global alliance to develop a Mars mission before I see the U.S. going it alone. I hope we will adequately fund the space program, but I’m skeptical. Who will stand up and speak for NASA? For now, we seem content to live off our past laurels. I don’t want my future grandkids and their children to go to the space center, and like the pyramids marvel at our monuments and wonder - who were these people that did such bold and great things?

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

2009-12-07T20:47:00.000-08:00

Prior to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project there were several attempts by the United States to engage the Soviets in a joint space effort. President John F. Kennedy was the first to propose a combining of U.S and Soviet resources. Kennedy’s core focus was defusing tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets by working together on a moon landing. His message to Nikita Khrushchev initially laid out specifics on what cooperation would entail. Khrushchev had initially responded positively, but then added that “cooperation without disarmament” as a precursor would severely limit the extent to which joint sharing of information or joint missions could take place. Kennedy tried once again at a speech to the United Nation shortly before his death asking for joint cooperation between nations on space endeavors, but by the time of Kennedy’s second speech the race between the U.S. and the Soviets was too far along to reset each nation’s strategies. The assassination of John F. Kennedy shortly after the U.N. speech ended any chance for cooperation as fulfilling Kennedy’s moon challenge would be accomplished by the U.S. alone in honor of the fallen President.

With Richard Nixon’s election in November of 1968 the course was changing. It can easily be argued that over the history of the space program it has been driven by political concerns and ambitions rather than technical achievements. The Nixon view towards space would be no different. Nixon had fought for the creation of NASA as Eisenhower’s Vice President. Now, NASA would be his political pawn in a chess game of détente with the Soviets. Early in 1969, and at Nixon’s direction, overtures were made to the Soviets to engage in discussions about a joint space effort. With the moon landing not yet achieved, but almost a certainty, the Soviets were in a difficult position that made accepting such overtures a public acceptance of defeat. Ironically, that same year the movie “Marooned” would be released. The movie was a realistic depiction of three American astronauts trapped in an Apollo-like capsule after the service module engine failed to ignite. The movie ends with a Soviet spacecraft changing course and reaching the astronauts and providing assistance until help arrived. That very concept was an original tenet of the Kennedy-Khrushchev proposal back in the early sixties. Marooned was the first movie portrayal of the U.S. and Soviets cooperating in space at a time when the rivalry and hard feelings were at an all time high. It would take persistence by Nixon’s lieutenants and a more receptive Soviet Academy of Science that would finally convince the Soviets to undertake a joint mission and make cooperation in space a reality.

The proposal for some type of joint effort came attached to other points of cooperation such as providing the Soviets with lunar rock samples and exchanging weather satellite data. The political deal making by the White House would get NASA caught in what would be the first of many political and budget dramas that would play out for the next forty-years following the moon landing. The Nixon White House had put a stranglehold on the NASA budget and no matter what the directive or mission NASA could not exceed its budget number. Nixon at one point in 1970 had publicly stated that manned spaceflight by the U.S. would come to an end following Apollo 17 and that unmanned missions were to be the preferred choice. Nixon had already cancelled Apollo 18, 19, and 20. NASA had worked furiously to save manned spaceflight and won approval to continue on the basis that their new vehicle, the space shuttle, would be the cheapest route to space. Nixon finally agreed that the shuttle was cheaper than any other solution to carry payloads human or otherwise into space.

There were other problems with the continuation of manned space flight in the interim until the new shuttle came on board. NASA was using leftover Apollo hardware for Skylab to keep America in space. NASA had built two “Skylabs”, Skylab I had flown successfully after some initial glitches and was inhabited by three separate crews. NASA’s post-lunar/pre-shuttle plan for space came down to launching a fourth Skylab mission or doing the ASTP project. With budget issues looming large over NASA, the second Skylab workshop would never be launched and was destined to become a museum artifact. While the hardware had already been bought and paid for, the expense of operating Skylab would have delayed the shuttle development. The shuttle and Skylab were intertwined. The planned third launch of the shuttle was to be a rescue mission that would boost Skylab to a higher orbit and provide the station with five more years of usable life, and America with a destination for the shuttle. That mission was planned for 1978, but the shuttle's first launch wouldn't come until 1981. Too late to save Skylab's decaying orbit.

In the spirit of détente with the Soviets, Richard Nixon would get the first mission in space between once rival nations. For the Soviets, there was another reason to cooperate with their former rival. Despite their success with the Salyut I space station, their first attempt at docking there failed. The Soviets had a string of prior flights where two and on one occasion three spacecraft executed a rendezvous, but did not dock. It seemed the Soviets had a problem docking two manned spacecraft. The partnership with the U.S. could be a direct benefit to their program.

There were other concerns about the ASTP program – the transfer of technology to the Soviets and about missing out on another opportunity to gain more expertise from another Skylab mission were issues that troubled NASA officials and the media. Many had dismissed any technology transfer to the Soviets claiming the Apollo hardware was already obsolete and soon to be replaced with state of the art shuttle hardware. However, Chris Kraft had noted that perhaps the real benefit for the Soviets came from understanding the process and management techniques of NASA. He also noted that the Soviets got an in-depth look at how we build spacecrafts and how we run the program. There was also a sentiment that after the U.S. accomplished the goal of landing on the moon and demonstrated a clear technical superiority that the Soviets were allowed to climb back up on the stage as an equal to the U.S. in space power.

The ASTP brought out the complexities of the two nations working together. It would take five years of planning for a mission where the two spacecraft would remain docked together for only two days. The main objective of the mission was to test the docking mechanism and the rendezvous of two spacecraft launched from two different locations using two different vehicles and methodologies for spaceflight. It was a seemingly simple task after Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, but one that required years of understanding the nuances in detail of each other’s space programs and spacecraft to accomplish.

There would be disagreement on whether or not the ASTP was a good use of NASA resources. The mission itself was successful, but nearly ended in tragedy for the three American astronauts when a series of switches that triggered chute deployment were missed on the checklist. The late, manual deployment had caused a leak of toxic fumes into the cabin which nearly killed the astronauts. The astronauts spent two weeks in the hospital recovering after the splashdown. It would have been an unfortunate ending to the Apollo program and an auspicious beginning to U.S – Soviet cooperation if on the last flight of Apollo hardware and the first joint mission between nations that a loss of life would have occurred. Had the astronauts perished it is likely the cause would have been traced to human error, but many conspiracy theorists would have likely blamed sabotage by the Soviets, damage by the Soviet vehicle, a faulty docking mechanism or what many thought to be a flawed mission to begin with. Such a tragedy could have impacted U.S.-Soviet relations in general and certainly would have impacted future cooperation in space.

In hindsight, the mission was a technical success, but did not immediately lead to further cooperation in space. It succeeded in providing the U.S. access to the previously secret Soviet space program, but it would take until 1995 before another joint mission would occur with the first docking of the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Mir space station on June 29, 1995. There would be eleven shuttle missions to Mir and one mission with an American astronaut, Norman Thagard, flying aboard a Soviet craft for the first time. While the ASTP was a valuable PR success, it ultimately benefited the Soviets more than the United States. The Soviets ended up with information related to U.S. thruster technology and retained the docking mechanism as well as the airlock technology. It would take the fall of the Soviet Union and the resulting financial constraints on the Soviet’s that would force their hand in cooperation with the U.S. and would lead to their full partnership in the International Space Station. Eventually, the partnership would take on new meaning as America became reliant on Soviet hardware to ferry American astronauts and supplies the space station as the shuttle program went offline due to two tragedies. The ASTP opened the door for two former rivals to show that nations could cooperate on a successful mission, but once the political card was played by the Nixon White House, the stark reality of the NASA budget remained and follow-up plans for further joint efforts didn’t seem to fit either countries future agenda.

Apollo at Forty

2009-07-19T20:33:00.000-07:00

Forty years ago humans embarked on a dangerous journey from which their safety and return could not be guaranteed. Not since humans first journeyed far from the savannahs of Africa or set sail across vast oceans has any trip been so defining of the spirit that lives in all of us. We are seekers of knowledge, of new frontiers, we are restless spirits and explorers always seeking to chart the unknown in the quest for understanding what lies beyond our shores.

Today we remember and celebrate not just an era when giant rockets and giant men ventured across the stars to set foot on another world, but when we as humans dared to leave the safety of our shores and fulfill our destiny as explorers - to reach out and quench that thirst for knowledge by not just dreaming, but by turning our fears into courage, our dreams into words and our words into action.

We remember the words of Neil Armstrong as he stepped on to the surface of the moon “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” and later “Here men from the planet earth first set foot on the moon – we came in peace”. Only five hundred of us have ever left planet earth to venture into space. Just twenty-eight of the billions of us have ever left the confines of low-earth orbit earth to venture to the moon and only twelve of us have walked on its surface, but it is not the number of us that made the journey that was important. What was important was that we decided to go at all - for in the end it was not just twelve men who made the journey, but a civilization that made that journey with them.

On this day, we mark that great adventure and the skill, courage and bravery of all who made that journey possible. Many are no longer with us, but their spirit and their commitment live on. The fruits of their work shall sit for an eternity on the surface of the moon and will survive long after the humans that built it or remember it will walk the face of the earth. It will live on as a monument to an era when risk, daring and a strong national will defined the human spirit.

We can only hope that the spirit of that time is not lost on future generations. Our spirit and our drive to seek out new frontiers cannot be silenced by those who think exploration too risky or too costly. Hundreds have paid the ultimate price for the dream of space exploration. Perhaps millions over the existence of humankind have done the same to move us forward off the plains and off the shores to a bold new world over the horizon. Today, we also remember the small steps of our ancestors that made “a giant leap” possible.

Houston We Have a Problem....Again

2009-07-07T21:42:00.000-07:00

"With a few exceptions, we have the technology or the knowledge that we could go to Mars if we wanted with humans. We could put a telescope on the moon if we wanted," "The technology is by and large there. It boils down to what can we afford?"

Norman Augustine
Chairman, Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee

Before this entry I had written a long response that I was going to publish about why the various teams that had presented to the US HSF Committee were dead wrong about making pitches for low cost alternatives to what NASA already had on the drawing board. Those pitches were heresy I thought. We (the fanatical space loving community) are our own worst enemy. Maybe ARES I isn’t the right next-gen rocket, but don’t go tossing the ARES V out with it on another Swiss Army knife spacecraft. We were committing the cardinal sin of pitching lesser solutions that will leave us in the same place we are today and not fulfill our Moon or eventual Mars destiny. I was thinking if we’ve got the platform (the committee) then let’s pitch the entire vision and strategy and all the parts that will make it happen step-by-step. If someone bites on a proposed solution because it’s cheaper we’re going to be stuck with it. Then we will be wondering why China is planting a flag on the Moon and trying to leverage space as more than a political venue, but as a resource. We’ll have no one but ourselves to blame and the detractors will say you proposed it in the first place. It will be a convenient excuse to once again diminish America’s role in space.

As Norman Augustine’s comments reflect this is once again about costs. Not a vision, but bottom line dollars. What can we do for the least amount of expense. The majority of the members of Congress that will vote on the NASA budget are uneducated about manned space exploration. The last thing we want to do is give them a low cost solution that won’t get the job done. They’ll approve it. Then I realized that the teams making these proposals had tossed their rose colored glasses away and are pitching these ideas to save the space program. They know what we all know deep down inside. The space program lives today and will live tomorrow on the table scraps fed it from the Congressional spending trough until we change it.

It is frustrating indeed to see proud American industries teeter on the edge of survivability by their own hand and get bailed out with billions and here we have our nation’s technology leader, NASA, treated as a panhandler. Forty-years after the Moon landing and here we are again. Welcome to déjà vu for it is 1969 once again. Shortly after the Moon landings Richard Nixon wanted the space program cut. Cut completely. Interestingly enough Eisenhower who created NASA found out late in his Presidency that the organization was planning to put humans on the Moon. He was furious and called it a waste of public resources. Whether or not his then Vice President Nixon espoused that belief or carried that philosophy into his own Presidency is not known, but ten years later after Nixon had been elected President the dismantling of the space program had begun. Once again it was about costs.

The Shuttle we fly today was born of that era. A compromise of what was needed versus what could be afforded. Eventually, the Shuttle program was carved down to a high risk, lesser capacity vehicle than what NASA originally requested. The resulting design would have to operate at the extreme limits of machine performance and risk. One that was soon realized couldn’t meet the very expense guidelines that gave birth to it. Costs were paid not only in dollars, but in human lives. There wasn’t a vision that anyone could have dreamed of that would have expanded the program back then. Despite the fact that we were a driving space force we stepped aside and let time pass the space program by… but for a few dollars.

There is an old saying in the business world that if given enough money, time and resources you can get anything done, and therein lies the problem. In the world NASA operates in those are precious commodities that are not in abundance. Now factor that to get those three you need a strong base of support from the American community, strong political support from the President and Congress, and an economic climate that will make the sale of the program palatable to all interested parties. To get a blank check you would need a climate of overwhelming support on every side of the spectrum much like the one that existed in the sixties. Perhaps a climate where Americans felt of the verge of being labeled second best to another country and were determined to win a race to prove a superior technical and political way of life. The recent economic meltdown and the global economy we live in has already acclimated Americans to the thought of other nations rivaling the U.S. like China or a group like the European Union who GDP already rivals the United States. Unfortunately, Americans are becoming accustomed to living in a world where our dominance is questioned. Perhaps a resurgent American Space Program could be the answer, but for the immediate future I don’t see any of a resurgence of a strong public or political will coming together in a way that will make that viable at least under the current approach.

We need a sea change, a paradigm shift of how we approach public support for the space program and how we define our interests in space. It’s time for us, the dedicated loyal followers to do what we can to re-architect how Americans view space. This is no small task by any means. That’s not a next decade, next year, or next month thing. That’s a NOW thing. As the saying goes “The right time is NOW”. We the space enthusiasts are everywhere and as such have the ability to work grass roots locally to start the process of bringing greater awareness and visibility to America’s efforts in space. To inform, excite and educate.

The times have changed in America on many fronts which will make our battle for space all the more difficult. This is a different social, technical, political and financial America then has existed at anytime in our history and is far removed from the climate of 1969. Over the four decades since the moon landing Americans have bore witness to a technical and information revolution. One that has dazzled and amazed us and one that makes feats like launching rockets to the moon an expected feat and not a daring feat. It’s not that most American’s aren’t interested it’s that their expectations have been reset. Ask most about going back to the moon and the response wouldn’t likely be “why should we”, but rather “why can’t we” as if to say this seems like something we should have already been doing. People are less dazzled because the imitation of life by art is so good. I heard a story once that after the movie Apollo 13 came out Buzz Aldrin asked Ron Howard where he got the launch footage because he hadn’t seen those angles before. The answer why he hadn’t seen it? It didn’t exist. The images were computer generated yet they looked so good that even the second man on the moon was fooled. The average kid today must think going to the moon is boring. After all it’s a couple of people cramped in a small capsule for a few days and then walking around on the surface. Just like on the series “From the Earth to the Moon”, just like in Apollo 13 or perhaps even a comparison to Star Trek or Star Wars. The computer generated images of today far exceed the best footage of the space race and venturing to the moon seems tame by the comparison to the adventures of Luke Skywalker. Lost is the technical marvel that you don’t see that it takes to get there and the bravery to venture into space.

Perhaps it is I who is wrong about how I look at the space program. Maybe I am hanging on an era that has passed us by. The ISS and the cooperation of so many countries is a great example of how space unites us. Yet inside of me I can’t help but want another American flag on the Moon or an American on Mars and I can’t picture an Orion capsule launched atop an Arianne 5 rocket. It’s a pride issue for our country and for the space program. We are the leader in space and we shouldn’t we relinquish that title but for a few dollars. Kennedy was driven by competition and his spirited challenged rallied the country largely because it was a challenge. It was as a boxing match between cold war warriors that pitted the U.S. against the dreaded Soviet Union for the title of national pride and to be victorious in the greatest race the world had ever seen. We didn’t just want to win, but tower over our opponent as they lay on the mat. Yet in this era I am willing to compromise to save the dream of putting humans into space. Perhaps it is that spirit of cooperation not competition that will put humans back on the Moon and make a Mars journey a reality. Maybe spaceflight isn’t a U.S. thing, but a human thing. Something we all do collectively. Either way it is in jeopardy.

There once was a self-proclaimed “lone voice in the wilderness” within the space program. That voice belonged to John Houbolt, a NASA engineer who risked his career and standing within NASA to promote his vision for lunar orbit rendezvous to anyone who would listen. He did this standing in the shadows of powerful figures like Wernher Von Braun whose direct ascent method was seen as a front runner early in the planning for Apollo. Houbolt’s persistence paid off and America got to the moon using his method. It was Von Braun who immediately after the LEM touched down on the surface of the moon turned to Houbolt flashed the OK sign and said “Thank you John”. It is the spirit that Houbolt displayed to stand and fight for what he believed in, to be heard over the voices of giants and never be resigned to letting others decide what he knew to be the wrong course that we must emulate. It is up to us to carry that same type of spirit forward so that we can get back to the Moon and on to Mars.

We need to find our voice and find a way to reach a broader audience, educate them, and get them interested in space. It’s time for us this collective group of enthusiastic followers and dreamers of space to seek out ways to do more. Perhaps we need to recruit the likes of Elon Musk, Founder of SpaceX and reach out him about forming an organization to help us educate Congressional leaders, political candidates, school kids and the general public. In a short time he’s taken a start-up space venture to one that will be carrying cargo and possibly crew to the ISS. He’s seems like a good place to start. If we don’t act and don’t do something we will lose this battle once again. The time is act is NOW.

The Presidents and NASA

2009-06-23T19:19:00.000-07:00

With the nominations of former astronaut and retired Marine Corps Major General Charles Bolden and former NASA associate administrator Lori Garver as the next number one and two to lead NASA President Barack Obama has taken the first step in building a space legacy for his administration. To date, the President has given comments that provide both hope for the future of manned space exploration and cause for concern. It was President Obama who early in his campaign remarked “Why should we send people into space when we have kids in the U.S. that can’t read”. Later in the campaign while in Florida he remarked “I’m a space guy”, but as recent as the interview that Administrator Designate Charles Bolden had with the President it was widely reported that he was told there would need to be cuts in the manned space program.

The space age Presidents it seems have had a love-hate-indifferent relationship with NASA to the extent that we’ve had the extremes of one that wanted to cancel the program (Nixon) and one that helped get us to the Moon (Kennedy). For a program that has the capacity for such positive public relations for America and a symbol not only of our technical prowess, but for our children to aspire to learn engineering and highly technical skills it seems to be one that Presidential leadership (with the exception of a very few) has failed to embrace and leverage.

Even Barack Obama’s statement of “Why should we send people into space when we have kids in the U.S. that can’t read” sounds like an excuse that gets trotted out to contrast educating kids against expensive machines to go back and forth to space. Why then did Barack Obama indicate that he wanted to double U.S. foreign aid? Did we solve poverty here in the U.S.? Seventy-three million dollars just went to Zimbabwe and another two-hundred million dolars went for refugees in Afghanistan. All of this while tent cities and skid row sections of major cities are growing during this recession. If a sending person into space is less important then the literacy of kids then it would only figure that keeping money here in America to solve problems of homelessness and hunger is more important than foreign aid. We spend four billion dollars on manned space exploration. We’re doubling, yes, doubling foreign aid to fifty billion dollars. My point is that in the priority of what we spend NASA is low on the totem pole. To single it out is often not out of need, but out of a sentiment towards manned space exploration in general. In this case a potentially negative one.

While it is too early to tell where the new President will land on the list of most influential Presidents in the history of the space program we can take a look at the previous ten administrations of the space age and rank their position on the list.

It should be no surprise to anyone who sits at the top of the list as the President who did the most for the space program and which President(s) did the least or in this case the worst job of managing the program or setting a vision for manned space exploration. What’s most troubling about this list is that the Presidents at the bottom outnumber the Presidents at the top and aside from positions #1 and #2 on the list the remaining can all be questioned as to their true commitment and advancement of the program.

Here is the top four most influential

1. John F. Kennedy
2. Ronald W. Reagan
3. Lyndon B. Johnson
4. Dwight D. Eisenhower

And here are the six least effective and least influential

1. Richard M. Nixon
2. Jimmy Carter
3. Gerald R. Ford
4. George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton

The top four names on each list are for the most part indisputable, but there are great distances between each, and at first glance one could see a pattern that the worst Presidents for the space program is dominated by Republicans by a margin of 2-1. This isn’t a total surprise. Since Kennedy’s overwhelming support of the space program it has always been associated with the Democrats. Since the incumbent President is a Democrat conventional thinking would lead us to believe that he also would be good for the program, but time will tell.

Let’s take a selective look hitting the highs and the lows since NASA was founded in 1958.

On the high end of the list as the “best” Presidents for the space program.

1. John F. Kennedy – It was fitting that when JFK was sworn into office his set of goals for his Administration was deemed “The New Frontier”. It was Kennedy’s inspiring challenge right after Alan Shepard’s flight that put America in the new frontier of space and on a course to land on the moon. Kennedy grew the space program with both resources, funding and political support. His Vice President Lyndon Johnson was assigned oversight and to ensure the administration’s political support with the congressional leaders. Johnson was the perfect man for the job as he had the clout with Congress from his tenure as a powerful Senator to make sure it there would be no roadblocks.

In Kennedy’s day both the program and the goal of landing on the moon became an “all hands on deck” approach. Kennedy had put aside the mistrust that Eisenhower displayed for using the German engineers and made reaching the moon everyone’s goal. Kennedy was also visible to the program appearing at launches and briefings. His interest was more than passing or lip service he believed in America’s ability to reach the moon. It was the dawn of the high-tech space age and Kennedy wanted America to be the leader. Kennedy tops the list for giving more than casual support to the space program and ranks alone as the only President to effectively wield his political clout to support space initiatives. While still in its infancy he challenged NASA it to achieve bold, but at the time unthinkable goals, and NASA delivered.

2. Ronald Reagan – A surprise to many at number two, but no President since Kennedy threw his support behind the space program like Reagan did and no President after Reagan has done so. Reagan was a strong supporter of the space program and was the President in office when the first Space Shuttle flight occurred in April of 1981. He was also in office during the first in-flight loss of life when the Challenger exploded in January, 1986.

Reagan who had been wounded during an assassination attempt two weeks before the first launch of a Space Shuttle was unable to attend Columbia’s maiden voyage in person, but during his term he believed and fought for a strong space program and after just four flights he declared the Space Shuttle “operational”. While in hindsight the assessment may have been premature it reflected his enthusiasm and belief in the Shuttle as a platform for space exploration.

It was Reagan who over the objections of many of his advisors went ahead with the plans for Space Station Freedom which would later become the International Space Station and while “Freedom” never got off the ground during the Reagan administration and underwent numerous revisions and battles with Congress it was Reagan’s initial vision that gave it life and allowed it to survive initial doubts and become the current showpiece of joint space efforts between nations.

Reagan did not articulate a broader vision largely because the existing vision had literally just gotten off the ground. Reagan came into office just as the United States was getting back into manned flight after a long hiatus and did not challenge the existence or strategy of the Shuttle, but rather supported it. After the Challenger accident Ronald Reagan's eloquent words comforted a grieving nation "There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue."

In no uncertain terms after the worst disaster of the U.S. Space Program he assured all Americans manned space flight would continue. The Space Shuttle program post-Challenger stood down for a significant time while the program was retooled to fix the problems that uncovered during the Challenger accident, but never was the cancellation of manned space flight a consideration. Many believed the Shuttle would lead to a resurgence of the American space program. It would take time to understand that new technology and its place in the annals of space exploration and whether it would be the right platform to achieve greater objectives in space. Long after Reagan left office and long after his death the Shuttle still flies.

3. Lyndon B. Johnson – Upon Kennedy’s assassination LBJ picked up the responsibility for seeing that Kennedy’s goals were achieved. Johnson added a few of his own and quickly became mired with a multitude of tasks and programs that bogged down his administration at a time of increasing strife and unrest in America. Johnson’s “Great Society” and the escalation of the Vietnam War never seriously threatened America’s commitment to manned space. In a way it was Kennedy’s clear challenge and his subsequent death that kept the program on track. In Kennedy’s brief time as President the goal of landing a man on the moon was perhaps his most publicized public and certainly highly visible goal and Johnson would not be the man to end that dream.

As a tribute to the fallen Kennedy, Johnson would ensure that goal was achieved, but LBJ failed to lay the groundwork of what would follow. The demise of the post-Apollo era began with LBJ and as the goal of reaching the moon became more evident the program had already started winding down. Nixon deserves harsh criticism for setting the space program back by forcing major cuts and leaving it without a vision and a goal, but Johnson made the decision easier for Nixon by beginning this process even before Nixon took office. Still, Johnson despite growing unrest in the country over civil rights and the Vietnam War resisted stopping the program. It would turn out that America’s achievements in space gave momentary pause to the national strife and managed to even unite the world as a symbol of what humans could achieve.

4. Dwight D. Eisenhower – Perhaps a little controversy with ranking Eisenhower so high after all it was on Eisenhower’s watch that the U.S. was upstaged by Sputnik, and it was Eisenhower who prolonged the development of missiles as a mainstay in the U.S. arsenal by concentrating on bombers as a weapons delivery platform and that subsequently delayed advances in rocket technology. Perhaps most damaging was his disdain for the German rocket team and alienating that group and their work from potentially advancing American space technology. His direct exposure to the horrors of World War II made him reluctant to place America’s technology future in the hands of Germans. Eisenhower did leave one enduring legacy of the space program, the creation of NASA.

NASA got off to a rocky start as a new government agency. Ike did not have a clear goal in mind for the program, but achieved a significant objective – he made the program a non-defense agency and united what were many disparate and costly programs into a more efficient cooperative vision. It was this groundwork and unified agency that would make putting people into space a core focus and that in turn gave Kennedy the head start on achieving his goal by putting the team to execute that vision in place. Eisenhower could have very easily militarized the space program and made a single branch of the military responsible, but he didn’t and that legacy of NASA lives on fifty-years later.

My list of the least effective “Space Presidents” will certainly cause some rebuttal, but here is the brief reasoning behind the Presidents that have done the most harm or have done the least for the space program. There are two that stick out on this list (Nixon and Carter). There isn’t much that can be said about Bush (41), Clinton and Bush (43) for their commitment to the space program was lukewarm at best. Each can cite an accomplishment or two, but the reality is that they did little to move the program forward. As for Gerald Ford, he spent so little time in office that its almost unfair to give him the ranking as the third worst President for NASA, but he did very little to advance the manned space program forward. Granted, he was cleaning up the mess from the previous administration, but there was no vision from a man who earlier in his career was a staunch supporter of the space program.

1. Richard Nixon – Nixon has no equal when it comes to being the worst President for the space program. He could own the list all by himself and perhaps he should. Despite having the good fortune of being in office when the first landing by a human (an American) on another world occurred Nixon didn't seize the momentum or chart his on next steps for the American space program. Nixon was too preoccupied with the Vietnam War, later Watergate, and burdened by his own insecurities to focus on the space program. For him, landing on the Moon accomplished the dream of his political enemy JFK.

Nixon originally wanted the manned space program ended after Kennedy’s goal was achieved. He prematurely ended the flights to the moon even though the hardware for three additional landings had been bought and paid for. Eventually, Nixon’s aides convinced him to keep the manned space program alive. As a compromise Nixon wanted the NASA budget cut drastically and a cheaper solution found. He positioned it as a new era of space travel, but in reality he really couldn't have cared less. The Space Shuttle was born of that initiative, an incredible machine, but a single method of what should have been a multi-part program. Americans built the amazing shuttle and could have continued enhancing the Saturn program to provide Americans with a versatile launch capability, but we didn't due to Richard Nixon's disdain for the space program. The same Richard Nixon who had a speech drafted to read should the Apollo 11 mission fail and the astronauts remain trapped on the Moon. For Nixon failure seemed an option after all.

The Skylab program accomplished much with very little, but Nixon didn't have the forethought to fund America's space program and keep it on a track that would have dominated for decades. He couldn't see the legacy that would have left behind for him much like Kennedy's space legacy lives on today. Had he seized the moment we would be talking about how Richard Nixon was responsible for Americans on Mars. Instead, Nixon is the man who single handily took the world's preeminent space power and technology leader and set us on a course that would cause the program to drift for decades.

Today, as a result of Nixon's failed vision for space exploration we are in another space race. This time the race between countries is just as footnote. The real race is one of survival, one of keeping NASA in the business of achieving goals and putting humans in space. Why don't we have Americans on the Moon or Mars? The blame rest solely on the shoulders of Richard Nixon. No President has done more damage to the America space program than this man. Just barely did the future of manned space flight survive Richard Nixon. Nixon’s failure as an advocate for space exploration while it was at its prime is just another failure we can add to his presidency.

2. Carter - Since Alan Shepard first went into space during the Kennedy administration every President has had a manned launch on his watch except Jimmy Carter. While the blame for that is not Carter’s alone it is a dubious distinction that reflects overall on his attitude towards manned space flight. Carter exhibited an interest in unmanned exploration, but did not advance the cause of human exploration. During Carter’s time construction of the Space Shuttle fleet had begun and it was Carter against NASA’s recommendation that cut the Shuttle fleet from five to four. Carter’s administration was mired in the malaise that had come across America in the waning years of the seventies – high unemployment and interest rates, energy crisis and hostage crisis were all issues that distracted his administration. The typical caricature of Carter as a “peanut farmer” misrepresented that he might have been one of our more intelligent and educated Presidents. As a Naval Academy graduate that worked on submarines and who was accepted in the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program Carter seemed an ideal candidate to advance the cause of manned space exploration. Carter’s Presidency came and went in four short years and he did little to support NASA or advance the cause of manned space exploration.

3. Bush, Clinton, Bush - All had their opportunities to paint the next generation of manned space exploration and all either let the status quo ride or lacked the political clout or will to change directions.

George Bush (41) tried to paint a vision to go to Mars, but faced with a hostile opposing party majority in Congress his plans went nowhere. Former President Bush (41) is an example of a President who wanted to move the dial for manned space exploration, but didn’t possess the right combination of skills and support. That Vice President Dan Quayle was his point man on the initiative spelled doom from the start. Whereas Vice President, Lyndon Johnson wielded a mighty stick with the Congress for Kennedy and could push programs through Dan Quayle was a relative unknown and not so well respected Junior Senator. His clout was absent and the program was DOA with the Congress.

Bill Clinton resisted the advice he was given to cancel the Space Station Freedom project and instead opted for a joint initiative with the Russians on what would become the International Space Station. This opportunity was made more convenient by continued problems onboard the aging Russian Mir station and a cash strapped Russian government that needed financial aid for its space program. Those conditions presented a window of opportunity for a joint project. Had Mir been in better shape or had the Russians been financially better off and opted for their own station the International Space Station likely would have never been built which may have altered U.S. space strategy. No one will ever know, but Clinton deserves a nod for keeping the ISS alive even if the reasoning was purely for political purposes to engage the Russians in a positive outreach.

George Bush (43) did little for the space program up until the Columbia accident. Bush’s core focus early on was to reign in costs at NASA especially with the ISS. Bush (43), much like Clinton was content to let the space program ride status quo. There wasn’t a consideration of the next generation post-Shuttle vision until the Columbia accident and even then the new “Vision for Space Exploration” (VSE) was just a very broad framework with the details left to NASA and future administrations to deal with. For Bush, the VSE wasn’t a bold new strategy like his father tried to portray, but rather a strategy born out of tragedy and necessity. Unlike his father, the second Shuttle accident convinced the Congress that it was time for a new strategy and the concept of a change in direction came with no real objections. There was little resistance to Bush's broad space vision in large part because the details were yet to come and because everyone knew a change had to take place. What we are seeing now with the Augustine Commission and questions about Constellation and whether the Moon or Mars should be a target are the result of both Clinton and Bush failing to lay the groundwork for a smooth transition from Shuttle to next-generation spacecraft. Had the Columbia accident not occurred it likely there still wouldn’t be a new vision or Shuttle replacement strategy in place today.

In the hearts of American the U.S. Space Program has been a source of pride and accomplishment. Forty years after we landed on the moon we realize how incredible a feat it was. We see that it will take longer to get back there even though our technology has made quantum leaps from mid-to-late sixties technology. The reason is not technology; the reason is because we’ve lacked the right strategy and a President who can garner both public and congressional support.

Not since Kennedy have we had the right Presidential message and the right Congress to get the manned space program what it needs. In a recent poll 52% of American supported in increase in funding for the space program, but that public support has been at odds with either the President or the Congress. It seems unlikely based on what we’ve seen so far that Barack Obama will crack the top five of most influential Presidents in the space age. During his first term it is likely we will see the shuttle retire and we will be without a manned launch capability at least until his second term (if reelected). Early indications are that Obama is more likely to hold the status quo then to go to bat for a bold trip back to the Moon or Mars. Once again the climate for raising the space program back to new heights just isn’t right. Our only hope may be that the next President is the one we’ve been waiting for to be the advocate we need for manned space exploration.

The Last Great Space Shuttle Mission

2009-05-20T19:08:00.000-07:00

As the Space Shuttle Atlantis prepares to return back to earth there is reason to celebrate the work done by the crew of STS-125. After five spacewalks totaling nearly thirty-seven hours the Hubble upgrade has by all accounts been an overwhelming success. The mission that put two of NASA’s aging workhorses in the spotlight demonstrated that neither was past their prime, but while one enjoys the broad support of the public and the Congress for its amazing photos of the universe the other after two tragedies and the lost of fourteen astronauts gets only selected political support and moderate public support. The Hubble is getting a new lease on life and is expected to perform at least another five years maybe just long enough to celebrate its 25th anniversary while the Shuttle is facing an early retirement in 2010 just short of its 30th anniversary. It seemed for a while that time had caught up with these scientific and mechanical wonders, but like an aging, champion prizefighter both showed they had one more fight left in them to win, and win they did.

The work to repair Hubble showcases NASA at its very best. Extending the life of the space telescope included upgrading parts that were never meant to be serviced. This required new tools and flawless execution once the actual work began in space. Despite obstacles like parts that wouldn’t exactly fit and bolts that were locked in place after sitting in the extremes of space for nineteen years the crew managed to overcome these challenges and give new life to the Hubble, but amidst the joy of success there is also an element of sadness to this mission. This is both the last servicing mission to the Hubble and the last great Space Shuttle mission. This particular mission more than any other previous Space Shuttle mission highlighted what NASA, the Space Shuttle and its highly trained and capable crew can accomplish working in space. It is fitting in a way that this great mission comes near the end of the Shuttle’s working life. A great example of what the Shuttle can do if given the chance and the right mission.

It took a vehicle with the Shuttle’s unique capability to pull off this mission. One that could capture and hold the Hubble while it was serviced and one that could carry the parts, tools and crew to accomplish the tasks. The new Orion capsule will have no such ability to perform missions of this kind. It will be a “ferry” more than a “shuttle”. Ferrying people to and from the space station and perhaps the moon, but the true capability that is the Space Shuttle ends with this mission. Yes, we have a few more Shuttle missions to go and the delivery of the remaining modules to the International Space Station could have been done in an automated manner by unmanned rockets for it didn’t need the Shuttle to make that possible, but having the Shuttle made it easier.

On this mission there was no substitute for what the Shuttle and the Astronauts accomplished. It wasn’t that long ago when a manned Shuttle mission to service Hubble seemed out of the question and sending a robot to perform the maintenance was seen as a possibility. While that may have been realistic on an object designed to be easily accessed and serviced by such a mechanism this mission proved that only humans could have performed this type of delicate work, Only humans could improvise on the fly assessing and recommending workarounds when unforeseen challenges arose. It is a capability we will miss and one that was underutilized during the life of the Shuttle. For a large part of the Shuttle’s life it had no place to go it was its “own destination” as a recent documentary put it. During the Shuttle’s life we missed out on so much of its potential and now as it prepares to the exit the stage it will be the Shuttle itself we will miss.

STS-125 Commander Scott Altman quoted a line from the movie “300” in complementing Mike Massimino and Mike Good on their success during one of their spacewalks “Remember this day, men, for it will be yours for all time”. Indeed we should remember these days of the last great Space Shuttle mission until such time that another great space endeavor will join its ranks. We can only hope that our wait for the next great moment in manned space isn’t too far off.

Congratulations to NASA and the entire crew of STS-125, Spacewalkers and repairman extraordinaire Michael J. Massimino and Michael T. Good, Commander Scott D. Altman, Pilot Gregory C. Johnson, and Mission Specialists K. Megan McArthur, John M. Grunsfeld and Andrew J. Feustel for a job well done.

NASA Adrift

2009-04-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

As a veteran of many a bank mergers and transition where changes in strategy, direction, vision, personnel and operations were the norm I can relate to what NASA is feeling right now as a change in Presidential and organizational leadership has created that sense of being temporarily adrift. It is natural for an organization and its people to feel lost during major change even though the business direction seemingly goes on as usual until further notice, but is it also human nature to want continuity in purpose, clarity and confirmation that the work being done today will have value tomorrow and that those involved also have a level of job security. Employees, vendors, contractors and others dependent on the program all seek the same surety that their efforts will not be in vain.

As we all know change brings stress to an organization and without solid leadership, a sound direction and strategy, and the voices of leaders asserting that the current direction is and will be the right one the organizational foundation begins to crack. Left in that state for too long and the cracks will spread creating additional problems at every level and function within the organization. Nothing is immune to human nature when it is under stress. That stress creates its own problems such as a lack of focus, strategic paralysis, rumors, errors, reduced productivity and drain of talent as key resources search out a more stable environment.

These "cracks" are becoming more evident. Already we've seen hints at changes in strategy such as forgoing a moon base in favor of a direct Mars launch, capsule downsizing to accommodate fewer astronauts to meet vehicle weight requirements and all of this at a time where stable leadership and political support from the top is absent.

As I’ve written previously there is no magic answer as to where to look for NASA’s next leader. There have been many good choices suggested and a few not so good names, but the time has come to put an end to the uncertainty and appoint a new leader to NASA. That we are one-hundred days and counting into a new administration and while the shuttle retirement was listed as one of the top issues that needed immediate attention there is no leader and NASA and its employees and contractors have been left to founder.

There are questions about President Obama’s commitment to the space program. We can only hope that the hesitation in selecting a new NASA leader is due to wanting the right person with the right vision. The President offered conflicting views about the space program during and after the campaign - on one hand asserting “I’m a space guy” and on the other talking about cuts in the program “Why would I send people into space when there are people here that can’t read”, but then Florida became important in the elections and he promised money for space. As time drags on the second Obama may be the real one – the economic woes are providing perfect cover to cut select government programs while the rest balloons so high we could almost ride a stack of dollars into the sky. We have thrown away trillions at failing companies and comparatively pennies at NASA. We gave more to the car companies to keep them afloat for a few months than NASA’s entire budget and I’ve yet to see the same technical return.

Politics does strange things in Washington. Kudos to Sen. Bill Nelson for getting NASA additional money in the budget to (potentially) keep the shuttle flying (there are some “ifs” attached to that money and some hurdles to clear), but the change in administrations that triggers changes in departmental leadership and direction isn’t a good thing. It has the habit of smothering a current strategy or proposing a new direction and that in an area as complex as space exploration will in the end slow progress. A new leader and new vision work when the vision is clear, crisp and sustainable over the long-term. Our political leaders have consistently let NASA down by talking a good game, but not walking the walk when it came to political and financial support. A key reason we will be caught again (first post-Apollo and now post-Shuttle) without a manned space capability is the lack of support of our political leaders to support a long-term vision for manned space exploration.

Perhaps now is President Obama’s time to make NASA apolitical. Establish a leader and a succession plan that grows leaders from within the organization and offers continuity similar to what is done in the business world. NASA’s role demands that level of leadership, knowledge and consistency. I would personally liked to have seen Shana Dale take the reigns at NASA and become the first female administrator. Her experience as Deputy Administrator positioned her well to lead the team and would have been a great first-step towards that goal. We will now face a new leader with a steep learning curve and likely a top-to-bottom review of everything NASA has in progress. Since that is going to be the charge let’s get started. Mr. President, appoint a NASA leader now.

Earth Day 2009

2009-04-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

It seems only appropriate on Earth Day 2009 to talk about our planet in the scope of the much bigger scale of time and space. Are we the six billion human residents on this planet along with the other animals, insects and microbes all there is in this vast universe?

This week Edgar (Ed) Mitchell stood at the National Press Club and told the audience that UFO’s were real and that there was an “alien presence” here on Earth. While that sounds a tad more like the fictional Agent Fox Mulder of X-File’s fame than the former astronaut and sixth man to walk on the moon it is the question we all would like the answer to – Is there intelligent life beyond planet earth? Ed Mitchell made it seem like someone already has the definitive answer, but I doubt that.

UFOlogy is a topic that captures the interest of many by virtue of being one of those topics that a few represent as fact by having witnessed a UFO or having an even more dramatic encounter face to face with alien beings, but the proof is often vague, ambiguous, disputed, known only to shadowy operatives or can’t be substantiated. Stories of downed UFO being quickly seized by the military in the dark of night and scurried off to secret locations to be reversed engineered along with the alien inhabitants is the stuff of science fiction. Heresy you say? Let’s separate the key elements of the argument first.

1. Is there life outside of planet earth?

While we have no direct proof it is with high degree of probability that we can say yes. Where we once thought we were alone in our own solar system we can’t unequivocally make that statement any longer. We are learning that life finds a way to thrive even in the harshest conditions and microbial life may live a few meters down in the Martian soil or in the oceans of Europa or Enceladus. Our criteria for “life as we know it” required liquid water and oxygen. Suddenly, even in the cold far distant reaches of our solar system the case for liquid water is strong making at least microbial life possible. It is only a matter of time perhaps ten years or less before we will find some form of living organism. Mars is the likely candidate. Europa a solid bet, but getting a probe funded and launched to land and drill to the ocean below seems more than a decade out.

2. Is there intelligent life beyond our solar system?

Next time you’re at the beach grab a handful of sand and let it sift through your fingers. Then imagine that every grain of sand was a star. Taking it one step further imagine that you were standing in three feet of sand and that sand covered the entire surface of the earth. Now you’re close to the number of stars in our universe. Of all the stars formed by the same process (like each grain of sand) that only one created the ideal conditions for life seems to be “astronomical”. It would be analogous to saying that there was only one black grain of sand in the trillions and trillions of grains you were standing in even though they all had the same origins and composition. That we’ve detected planets orbiting other stars confirms that the formation of planets around stars is a common occurrence. Our sun and our location in our galaxy seem “average”. There is nothing extraordinary that gives us cause to believe that the formation of the earth was unique. Drake’s equation tried to postulate the likelihood of such an occurrence, but equations aren’t necessary. This is a pure numbers game. Given the age of the universe and vast number of chances for intelligent life to develop (number of stars) it would be the most unlikely of unlikely scenarios that an average star would be the only one to get the mix for life right and that life became the only one to develop intelligence. We’ll likely will never know, but as they said in the movie Contact “If we are the only ones it sure would be a waste of space”.

3. Have they visited Earth?

Let’s go back to the sand analogy for a second Take all of that sand (three feet covering the entire Earth) and for the sake of argument assume that each grain is white, but a handful of the trillions of grains we’re black say ten thousand. Spread each grain four miles apart in every direction from the other and you’re looking at the scale of the universe. When you’re done pick a place to stand and now find those black grains of sand, but don’t move from your spot. With some equipment you might spot some grain of sands closest to you and maybe you’ll get lucky and one will be another black one like yours, but the odds wouldn’t favor you. You can’t invent a technology to locate those few black grains out of the trillions – size, distance and time are against you. You know they exist, but finding them is beyond your capability. Even if there is an advanced civilization out there having them find the small and ordinary Earth in the vastness of space just doesn’t seem possible. There is all that talk about wormholes and warping space to cover vast distances in a short period of time, but if we had that technology where would we use it to go? Exactly. We don’t have a clue and our E.T. friends are likely in the same boat.

Following the latest stories and history of UFOs is fun and entertaining, but rather than wait for E.T. to find us we need to reflect on our own planet and realize that someday the survival of the human race will depend on venturing beyond planet Earth. Look how far we’ve advanced in the past two thousand years and we have millions left to improve, but on Earth Day it is important to look at the cost of our progress. In the past two hundred years alone we’ve nearly exhausted some of the Earth’s resources. How will we survive ourselves unless we look to the stars? The cosmic end of Earth is way off in the distant future. In a billion years our sun will have begun to heat up at it marches towards the end of its life making life difficult. Two and a half billion years the sun will have become too hot for life on Earth and five billion years from now the sun will have swelled to encompass the Earth. Long before that we will have exhausted the resources of this planet and will have hopefully begun the process of using our technology to make other planets habitable or at least have the ability to use the resources outside of Earth. If we don’t then it will be us that will be phoning E.T. to come save us.

Which Fox Was Guarding This Henhouse?

2009-04-10T13:50:00.000-07:00

Fox News the bastion of fair and balanced reporting published a piece on Thursday April 9th, 2009 that was a little out of character for them. Fox’s Space News section has very little original content and the space section found on Foxnews.com is interesting in that it contains far more links then most other news agencies, but most of it appears to be “bought” news. All of that is fine since most key news sites don’t provide much more than high level stuff and certainly not the depth that Fox has even if it is sourced from other areas.

Somehow on Thursday Google’s news search engine picked up an article that appeared on Fox’s site. The article titled: NASA by the Numbers: Cost Overruns Plague Key Projects turned out to be a one-by-one analysis of key NASA projects and how much more money it was costing than had been originally projected. That of course is newsworthy and no matter how passionate I am about the space program I want to make sure the money is spent wisely, but I also wanted to understand the facts. All of that could have been good reporting, but at the end of each project the “news” became an editorial on what could have been done with that money and called the numbers in NASA’s 2009 budget “eye-popping” and here verbatim is there example of those “eye-poppers”.

— $5.78 billion for space shuttle and International Space Station projects, equivalent to London's original estimated cost of hosting the 2012 Olympic Games;

— $577 million for heliophysics, the study of the sun and its effect on the solar system, or the amount of Missouri transportation projects to be funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act;

— $447 million for aeronautics research or the deficit currently facing Texas’ unemployment compensation fund;

— $173 million for entrepreneurs to develop commercial transport capabilities to the International Space Station, or the USDA’s total estimated cost of providing food, shelter and other necessities to 847 middle-income U.S. children for 18 years.

As you can see, Fox’s “attack” on NASA’s budget also became a judgment of space exploration in general. I’d certainly rather spend $5.78 billion on space than the Olympics. Ask the Chinese opinion of that one. After tens of billions spent on venues to host the games in Beijing that lasted about a month the sites are now seldom visited tourist attractions for curiosity seekers that cost more to maintain then the meager revenue they generate.

I’m guessing $173 million invested in high technology entrepreneurial companies that will create jobs and spur interest in science and technology by creating private space capabilities doesn’t sound like a wise investment either to Fox.

Now let’s look at the continued Fox attack on NASA by looking at their examples of the overruns. I’m not going to list them all, but just enough to give you a feel for the spirit of Fox’s article.

— Mars Science Laboratory: Costs have risen $657.4 million since October 2007. That’s equivalent to the gross domestic product of Grenada, according to the 2008 CIA World Factbook;

What an achievement it will be when we land a science lab the size of an SUV on the planet Mars. Fox should look at previous Mars missions like the rovers to see how the investment returned higher gains that originally planned. The rovers were to last ninety days. We’re now counting the time they’ve spent exploring in years.

— NPOESS Preparatory Project: Since October 2006, the price tag for NASA’s satellite to study atmospheric and sea temperatures has ballooned $121.8 million, or the amount New York Gov. David Paterson proposed to save in a December budget plan by deferring five days' pay until state workers end their employment or the state’s dismal financial situation allows repayment.

One minute we care about global warming the next we don’t. Does the reporter understand how sea temperatures affect climate? How El Nino and La Nina events have affected rainfall and in turn crop production? Where’s the analysis here of New York’s state budget? Are you’re telling me they’ve not wasted a dime of taxpayer’s money? Do some homework Fox. You’re ready to hand over money to New York without understanding or explaining how they spend their dollars.

— Kepler: NASA's spacecraft designed to discover Earth-like planets, launched last month from Cape Canaveral after a 9-month delay and a $97 million increase in costs, or the amount Oregon lawmakers hope to save in the state's budget by asking unionized state workers to agree to 24 unpaid furlough days in 2009-11;

There are people in the private sector this economy everyday that are losing jobs that won’t come back. These dollars help keep a few more employed, but like New York I’d like to see Oregon’s budget analyzed. I’d like to see the state’s staffing model. Did they create their own mess by overspending in good times? The good news for these workers in Oregon: After twenty-four days they’ll have a job to come back to.

— Dawn: Launched in September 2007, this $465 million asteroid probe is expected to visit asteroids Vesta and Ceres during its 3-billion mile trip to better understand the formation of the solar system. Costs have increased $4.6 million since October 2006, roughly equal to the deficit facing the city of Bloomington, Ind.

Yes, Bloomington, Indiana did have a projected deficit of $2.2 million dollars in 2009 (Source: City of Bloomington Budget), but they also had a cash on hand balance of $4.4 million to start the budget year and a rainy day fund of $4.8 million. The city budget includes construction of a dog park so I’m assuming that the needs of the human population have all been met. Next to New Horizon’s exploration of Pluto this is probably the most interesting mission in progress. Few probably know that Ceres was once considered a planet. The largest object in the asteroid belt has not been explored and we don’t have good images of this round, dwarf planet. This project is the type that should spur the intellectual curiosity of young minds and want them to understand science and the universe outside of planet earth.

The Fox article goes on and one. Endlessly proposing how we could have spent dollars allocated for science and space exploration elsewhere. There is no author listed on the article just FOXNEWS. A few comments on the article:

Not fair and not balanced. This isn’t an article, but an editorial. Somewhere I missed that in the disclaimer (there wasn’t one of course). The underlying theme of the article is that dollars spent at NASA should be spent elsewhere. This article isn’t just about cost overruns, but about the entire budget. It is a thinly veiled attack on space exploration.
Government is loaded with waste. NASA like any company and organization will have its share, but to a lesser degree than most would think. Space is dangerous and complex; it is a constant learning environment. It is a difficult thing to do and do right 100% of the time. The complexity, difficulty and harsh environment stack the odds against every mission yet NASA succeeds over and over. The majority of things NASA does are being done for the first time in human history. Those types of things have no precedent, no previous experience, and no past project to reference as a timeline. It is incredibly difficult to forecast. Criticize that someone didn’t estimate the unknown properly or didn’t pad the budget as is the typical practice, but don’t diminish the value of the work.
Where is the Fox analysis on the real waste in the Federal Government? Let’s look at some examples over the past six years. Medicare’s waste cup runneth over and over. Let’s talk about the overpayment of prescription drugs by Medicare - three, four, five, six times what other government agencies spending for the same medicine. The tip of the iceberg. What about unaccounted for dollars missing an explanation as to its use? $50 billion that no one can tie to any specific use or project, but the money is gone. How about this for an efficient operation - Congress ran a test on the Department of Education by submitting fraudulent documents. The result, approval and a check to a fictitious person using false information to the tune of $55,000. Just a few examples. NASA spends $17 billion and look what we get. Where is Fox trying to track down the missing $50 billion? That certainly seems like a big story.
In good times State and Local governments have spent like drunken sailors building stadiums and arenas funding projects that they couldn’t pay for immediately, but assumed that they would as long as the good times kept rolling. The good times have come to an end and the bill for the waste is coming due. Now, state and local governments have their hand out asking for money under the flag of we’ve done it all right. They haven’t. The Fox article takes a one-sided approach that space is bad business in a down economy perhaps bad business in any economy. Where was Fox when cities and states mortgaged their future on projects less worthy of funding? NASA makes an easy target, but this article is biased. Plain and simple.

This Fox article was hardly worth my time for true space aficionados are use to the “why send people into space when we have problems on earth argument”, but I felt compelled to respond for this article is an opinion portrayed as news, a commentary and as such should have been noted. NASA makes an easy target for those that specialize is distorting the facts and is next only to the Defense Department as a highly visible target for this type of reporting. There are bigger fish to fry in the ocean of government waste. I’d like to see the unknown author of this article find those dollars for New York, Oregon and Bloomington and I think he could do it very quickly if he did a little homework and a little more investigative journalism.

What NASA does for science, education, environment, our understanding of why we’re here and the dangers lurking in space that could threaten us far outweigh the $17 billion we spend annually. I’m sure Fox wasn’t aware they picked up such a one-sided diatribe in their automatic feeds, but Google posted it as a Fox article so Fox must carry the responsibility for it. Next time Fox News read the information you post online that you pass off as news and at least make an attempt at providing a more complete balanced picture. After all it is your mantra.

This subject was worthy of a book’s worth of material and you encapsulated it into a few paragraphs. Do your homework Fox and get a full time space analyst on board to write for you online and provide insight into the missions and the exploration of space on cable. Stimulate minds for a change with the wonders of what we do in space and not deaden them with the endless political talk over and over.

Here is the link to the full article.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,513575,00.html

Leading NASA

2009-04-09T19:29:00.000-07:00

In the two months since Michael Griffin resigned as NASA Administrator a successor has yet to be named. While NASA is in competent hands under the interim direction of Chris Scolese we all understand the dynamics of being a “lame duck” especially in the political swirl of the Federal Government. NASA needs a new leader and one that will champion the causes for which the organization is charged and one that will bring the passion and leadership to help the many directorates reach even greater heights. In the past few months many names have been floated as the potential next administrator. Some with agency experience, some with military experiences, others with current roles in government administration and some from the ranks of Congressional leadership. With so many choices where should the Obama administration look for the next leader?

NASA’s history doesn’t give us a solid point of reference. Since its inception NASA has flourished during times of strong political backing, clear direction and financial support. It has languished during times when its capabilities and direction have been handcuffed by a diminished or unclear strategy, lack of political will and reduced budget support. James Webb who directed the agency during quest for the moon is highly regarded as one of NASA’s best yet Webb was not an insider, but also had the advantage of unlimited resources and strong political backing. Sean O’Keefe was also an outsider, but an “administrative professional” as it related to running large government agencies. Michael Griffin was an insider, a highly skilled engineer, and could speak the language of science and physics, but lacked the charisma and political skills so crucial outside the agency. So which direction to choose?

There are two fundamental elements crucial to the success of any venture: the first is business acumen - whether were talking about a government agency or a company in the private sector they both need to be run like a business. Managing products, services, strategy, planning, marketing, finances, risk, customers, suppliers, shareholders, stakeholders and delivering flawless execution to a market that wants that product. The second is leadership. Great leaders lead in all facets of the business. One of the great flaws in many businesses is picking the most knowledgeable person about the product or service the organization produces to lead the organization. It can work, but it is a delicate balance for often this model stifles creativity and doesn’t allow the organization to reach its full potential. Rather than all levels of the organization contributing and innovating it drifts into execution of the singular vision of a single person and often that leads to a frustrated team and a “brain drain” as the best and brightest look for other opportunities. Many great leaders often knew little about the business they ran, but they excelled in maximizing the potential of every person in the organization. They listened to their team, felt the pulse externally; they challenged ideas and conventional thinking, they made their team “prove” their ideas not because they didn’t believe, but they wanted to make sure the team believes, they connected the dots, knew the customers, knew the stakeholders and found ways to make the organization overachieve, and lastly they were passionate about what they did because the organization’s success was their driver.

NASA needs such a leader. It’s time to restructure the agency. Put the best leader that can be found at the top. Structure the agency so that there is a liaison to the military to ensure synergy and full leveraging of assets and a sharing of technology. Ensure that there are capable deputy administrators skilled in the day to day of operations and budgets. This will allow the leader to focus bringing together the vision and the talent to make NASA the world leader in space exploration for decades to come. NASA needs a leader who can craft a vision and sell that vision to the President, Congress and the American people. We’re falling into the same trap of years past in finding a person to run an agency and not a person to lead the agency.

One of the best and often used examples of success in this area is Lou Gerstner at IBM. Gerstner’s pick at IBM was a surprise to many. His history had been at American Express and RJR Nabisco. When Gerstner was selected to run IBM he was as outside as white shirt, blue suit IBM could get, but IBM was floundering. The massive technology conglomerate that was an American institution and an American success story had reached the highest points only to fall to near bankruptcy. Gerstner’s leadership, focus and marketing savvy are credited with saving IBM and positioned them to thrive. He let the IBM’ers do what they do best. His contribution was focus, direction and leadership.

This is where NASA is and the direction it needs to take is the same. The organization needs to leverage its immense reserves of talent under a new leader who can craft a sustainable vision that will survive for decades to come. Our lesson from the past is that without strong leaders and a strong vision success is evasive and the lack of direction stirs doubt and leads to waning support from the public and political leaders. Let’s get a new leader and let’s look to outside and resist the government insiders. NASA has shown what it can achieve and good times and lean years. The right leadership can take the agency to places it has yet to explore.

Learning a Lesson: The Colbert Conundrum

2009-04-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

NASA is learning the power of the internet and social computing – the hard way. NASA has one of the better sites on the web with a good design with a wealth of news, feeds, archival data, and multimedia to be experienced and enjoyed by all followers of the space program. NASA can be found on Twitter and Facebook and with the NASA channel available via streaming video on the web, or carried at least partly by local government channels on cable or via satellite they would seemed to have mastered all means of media. However, NASA’s good intentions were disrupted by those whose business it is not just to "inform" or in this case "perform", but disrupt and exploit media channels. Enter Stephen Colbert.

The comedian who almost falls into the category of being famous for being famous since I can’t seem to place what he’s actually accomplished that’s meaningful. Colbert recently rallied his troops to win a NASA sponsored “name a space station module” contest. To my knowledge Colbert has done nothing to advocate for the space program and I’m sure his legions of followers don’t have the passion for space exploration as the rest that voted in the contest.

I’m sure a the majority of space supporters never dreamed that the contest would be hijacked by someone directing people to a website to vote, but we shouldn't have been surprised and neither should NASA. Any Facebook user will tell you that causes pop-up everyday and thousands join as the movement spreads. There isn’t much humor in what happened since it will inspire future copycats and deprive many of a chance to participate in something they’re passionate about. The likes of Letterman, Leno, Limbaugh, Stern and Winfrey could have easily marshaled followers to do the same. Kudos to Colbert for thinking of it first or I should say kudos to the rest who thought it an act below the standards of decency to do such a thing.

There are many deserving names that could go on the module. There are those that lost their lives to keep the dream of space exploration alive. Many more that dreamed and sacrificed to make the space program what it is today. When Colbert puts his money where his mouth is and cuts NASA a check for the naming rights to the module equal to the taxpayer costs to build it then I’ll be all for it. Until then, name it after someone deserving who has actually made a contribution to the program. Name it after an American soldier who died during the Iraq or Afghanistan war. Name it after the police officer who has fallen in the line of duty. Name it after the countless heroes in America, but don't name it after Colbert. A man who has reaped the spoils of the American dream, but has given so little back.

If NASA ends up naming the module after Colbert I’ll feel different about the agency. No less passionate about space exploration, but disappointed that we let a comedian jump to the head of the class by duping the agency and the public. Different because he is undeserving and until every single deserving person ahead of Colbert in line gets their due Colbert can wait, and a long wait it would be. It was a hard lesson to learn that there are people that don’t play by the rules of decency. There are too many deserving people whose name could be on that module. Colbert would be an ant among giants in that field. This stunt proves one thing we already knew. He’s just not that funny.

NASA Gets It Right

2009-04-01T19:30:00.000-07:00

The successful launch of Discovery on Sunday March 15th after weeks of delays and the safe landing on Saturday March 28th was a clear demonstration of NASA “getting it right”. When you have a program that has the highest visibility and you suffer not one, but two tragedies that resulted in the loss of human life, vehicles and delays in the program you absolutely cannot afford anything but 100% success on every mission.

Prior to the successful launch, Discovery had been delayed several times due to mechanical and fuel related issues and inside the world’s most complicated machine any anomaly has the potential for disaster. The Space Shuttle is asked to operate at the extremes of machine performance. From high performance turbo pumps that spin at 28,000 rpm and deliver an Olympic size swimming pool worth of fuel in twenty-five seconds at -423 Fahrenheit degrees to a combustion chamber that burns the fuel at 6000 F is both impressive and frightening. Failure alone of one of the blades in the turbo pumps due to fatigue or a manufacturing defect is enough to cause loss of vehicle. The Shuttle is arguably the most complex machine humans have ever built and may ever build at least for the foreseeable future. As evidenced by this launch NASA has learned from its mistakes and mitigated the Shuttle’s risk as well as can be expected given the tasks the vehicle is asked to perform.

The accidents with Challenger and Columbia could have happened on any mission and had Challenger not been buffeted by higher than usual upper level winds the slag that temporarily plugged the leak in the booster may have held long enough for the shuttle to make it past the point of danger. Had Challenger survived, the discovery of a close call may have prompted a change in minimum temperatures to launch, but likely wouldn’t have driven a booster design change or a review of the other safety issues on the vehicle.

Likewise, had the block of foam that struck Columbia missed the leading edge of the wing it likely still would be classified as a “maintenance issue”. The loss of the crews of Columbia and Challenger did save lives. Mistakes were made that could have altered the outcome in both instances, but those mistakes have made the program safer.

Prior to Challenger it was easy to enjoy the launch of a shuttle, but we were naïve to the true dangers and risks in operating such an extreme performance machine. Post Challenger we started to understand the magnitude of things that could go wrong that hadn’t. Post Columbia we learned a little more. What has been lost in the success and the tragedy is that we’ve flown the Space Shuttle one-hundred and twenty-five times barely half of the fleet’s designed life and behind that are the men and women who on this and every other mission made sure that the complexity of parts including the valves, engines, the miles of wiring, thermal protection system, tires, brakes, software and the other million components were safe to fly. Congratulations to the crew of Discovery for a successful mission and thanks to the thousands on the ground that make the flight a safe one.

The North Korean Threat:: Bringing Terrorism to Space

2009-03-31T19:43:00.001-07:00

The dynamic of world politics, people and cultures is indeed fascinating. We spend a significant amount of time trying to understand the vast diversity of living creatures on this planet, but don’t seem to spend near enough time trying to figure out how we ended up with such a diversity of intelligent creatures who consistently end up at war with each other or at the least threaten each other’s livelihood’s by whatever means at there disposal. It’s not an easy answer to resolve and throughout history we watched a few successes where countries have turned from dreams of world conquest to world cooperation and others that have consistently stood on the side of tyranny and oppression perhaps none more so than North Korea. Technically, North Korea is still at war with it southern neighbor. However, South Korea is an example of what a country can do when it embraces openness, entrepreneurship and a spirit of individual expression and freedom. The South Korean economy thrives and is a financial success and technological leader. North Korea however is a closed society with a dictatorial ruler and can barely feed its people much less offer it resources to the world. Another consistency with countries that stand on sides opposite to the Western democracies is the tendency to resort to a military buildup and to advance weapons of mass destruction.

That brings us to where we are now. Sitting on a launch pad in North Korea is a three-stage Taepodong-2 missile purported to test North Korea’s ability to put a satellite in orbit. In the early days of the American and Russian space program the only difference between an intercontinental ballistic missile and a manned rocket was the payload. I’m generalizing here – the statement is true although some modifications were made to “man rate” the vehicles, but my point is the same technology is used for both. In the case of the Americans and the Russians the quest to perfect a ballistic missile came first then utilizing it to put satellites and humans in space was a byproduct. For countries like North Korea and Iran such a development is not permitted. The world would not sit by and watch radical regimes build weapons that could wreck havoc on neighbors and other targets around the world.

With a three stage Taepodong-2 missile poised on a launch pad in North Korea we sit again in a position similar to the launch of the Iranian satellite. It should be noted that the Iranian launch vehicle is a direct derivative work of the North Korean rocket. It is North Korean technology. Iran has worked closely with North Korean to purchase hardware and technical expertise to assist with their program and will be on hand to watch this launch. Under the guise of a space program both countries have developed a launch capability that could reach countries with which both have had longstanding feuds. North Korea’s rocket if successful could hit American soil in Alaska or Hawaii and if the payload were lightened even the West Coast. Of course, such a blatant attack would be foolish and the retribution would be so great that even radical regimes like North Korea and Iran wouldn’t risk their nation’s existence for a one-shot attack.

However, much like my previous writing on Iran’s launch the ability for North Korea to commit a “terrorist” act is not limited to delivering a warhead via a rocket. The greater threat is that these capable, but relatively unsophisticated rockets will be used as the equivalent of a “roadside” bomb in space. As we’ve seen from the Iranian launch the maximum altitude is exactly the operating parameter of the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. An anti-satellite mission under the umbrella of a “test” or merely the “accident” of a fledgling space program or even for defense purposes would be similar to tests by the U.S. and the Chinese. It would be a difficult “crime” to enforce given that other countries have done the same without any punitive actions. As we’ve seen, the Shuttle and the ISS recently had to dodge space debris that were remnants of the Chinese test. Such an act by North Korea could be highly disruptive to peaceful operations in space and could endanger the lives of all humans operating in space and the hardware they utilize.

The opportunity is to act now. North Korea and Iran shouldn’t be allowed unmonitored access to put vehicles in space given their cloak of secrecy, outspoken aggression and pursuit of destructive intentions towards those that stand in their way. Under international supervision and monitoring North Korea and Iran can enjoy the peaceful usage of space for exploration and advancing technologies can benefit their people. Without supervision it can only be assumed that North Korea’s motivation is something other than stated and the use of ballistic missiles or anti-satellite capabilities is the true intent. It seems unlikely that Japan or the United States will shoot down the North Korean rocket attempt. Given that this rocket has not had a successful launch yet by the North Koreans and has suffered from structural failure makes a mishap during launch or an “accident” in space not out of the realm of possibility. If we do shoot down the launch attempt we will have set a precedent that all launches from “Axis of Evil” countries will not be permitted unless they are monitored and cleared by an international governing body. It would also create another regional conflict that would involve the Koreas, China, Japan and the U.S while almost certainly bringing in Iran and the Middle East conflict and large players like Russia and China would likely fall on the side of the Axis and not the Allies.

There are no easy answers to these problems, but one thing is certain. Countries that will risk all to inflict loss of life and pain on their ideological opposites are truly dangerous and cannot be allowed to progress in the development of weapons to wage war on a more horrific scale. We’ll all be watching this week at the planned launch takes place and we’ll all be waiting to see what steps will be taken to ensure that North Korea’s use of rocket technology isn’t a threat to anyone.

NASA Vision Keeps Going

2009-02-26T18:27:00.000-08:00

When President Barack Obama indicated in his speech Tuesday night that everyone would have to make sacrifices and everyone’s favorite programs would have to take hits it sent shudders through the space community. Despite frequently relying on analogies related to the space program as examples of what America can do the program seemed destined for the chopping block. It was President Obama who fueled this speculation during the Presidential campaign that the Bush administration’s plan to retire the shuttle and return to the moon would itself be retired. He indicated that “we shouldn’t send people into space when people here in the United States can’t read”.

Perhaps there was a change of heart, perhaps it was the lobbying of staunch space program supporters like democrat Barbara Mikulski or perhaps it is politics as usual considering two of our most populous states including one very large city are home to the largest NASA centers. Whichever driver it turns out to be it worked. NASA will receive a six percent increase in the 2010 budget. For 2010, NASA will receive $18.7 billion and an additional $1 billion from the recent stimulus package. NASA has been instructed to proceed “as is” with the Vision for Space Exploration and continue with the retirement of the Space Shuttle, reliance on Russian rockets to ferry Americans to space, and a manned return to the moon.

That an underfunded NASA will receive additional dollars to accelerate a return to the moon is long overdue. The bad news is that there is no permanent administrator at NASA, no confirmation that the ARES I is the launch vehicle of choice and questions about the way we’ll accomplish the vision. During the Presidential transition there were discussions between the Obama team and NASA about alternatives such as using existing Delta IV or Atlas V or even rely on the French Arianne rocket to lift a capsule. All of those details will be left to the new leadership at NASA when a full time administrator is appointed.

More troubling is that we will be once again without a manned launch capability. The budget adds one shuttle flight, but after that it will be retired. That NASA gained in the new the budget in such a tough economic time is good news. That we don’t have new leadership in place and a retooling of the Vision for Space Exploration to take the program from point and shoot goals to long term sustainability in manned space operations only means that we are repeating the same mistakes of the past. We hope this succeeds and provides growth and stability to the program for some period of time, but the harsh reality is that we will find ourselves at this crossroads again in the future.

Now was the time to lay the foundation that would create the world class space program that would last for decades. It is an opportunity missed and instead of choosing to lead we are choosing to run with the pack.

Minefields in Space

2009-02-17T17:18:00.000-08:00

The recent collision between an active American Iridium communications satellite and the inactive Russian Cosmos 2251 satellite illustrates that for as big as space is it isn’t big enough for satellites to roam freely in low Earth orbit without rules governing the use of “occupied” space. No one is disputing that this was a pure accident between an operational satellite and a defunct satellite that just happened to stumble upon each other, but the resulting impact between the two objects created a large debris field that carries with it the possibility of risk to manned vehicles including the International Space Station.

While that risk is thought to be minimal the threat can’t be ruled out. The once endless void of space is becoming increasingly more crowded with satellites and debris of all shapes and sizes. In space, it isn’t just the size of the debris that is a concern, but the sheer volume. Large items (those greater than a few inches across) can be tracked and avoided; small objects traveling at high speeds are more difficult, but can be equally as damaging and can puncture the protective skin of the space station, break tiles on the shuttle’s protective thermal shield and even chip or crack the windshield on the shuttle. Such is the power of even the tiniest objects freely floating in space and moving at great speeds.

Currently, there are no rules for satellites operating in the relatively low confines of earth orbit and as seen by this incident the lack of coordination by civilian space interests with government agencies that track all orbiting objects can result in the creation of debris fields that could in a worst case scenario impact humans in space. The problem is one that will only grow as new space capable countries namely Iran and North Korea and private entities continue to emerge and fill low earth orbit with test and operational vehicles. These countries space vehicles lack the power and sophistication to maneuver once in orbit and the countries themselves lack the refinement of space operations to track the orbits of their objects related to the thousands of other objects inhabiting the same space.

The fifty years of debris floating in space since the space age began isn’t a new problem, but is becoming a more visible problem due to exponential growth in the volume of objects that are hazards like those from anti-satellite tests conducted by China and the United States, the increase in spent boosters and obsolete satellites, the missing tools and hardware that have all collectively created a “minefield” in space for current and future manned and unmanned space operations. There are several things that need to be done all of which present challenges.

Create a central launch clearinghouse for low-earth orbit objects. Something akin to filing a flight plan. Sounds simple but given that many U.S., Russian and Chinese satellites operate in this sector and have classified orbits would make disclosure problematic. That would prevent other countries like Iran and North Korea from cooperating using the same logic. It is necessary, but unlikely that the countries who need such a central clearinghouse would actually take advantage of it.
Start now on a process to cleanup the mess in low-earth orbit. If we haven’t reached the point where it is a necessity we soon will. This is a technical challenge, but this is one that we can master and would make an ideal area of cooperation between today’s reigning space powers. It would be in their best interest to protect their current and future investments in space. A venture that would place small maneuverable robotic scavengers into low earth orbit that would sweep through large debris fields or that attach themselves to large pieces and de-orbit those pieces by plunging them into the atmosphere. These robotic “minesweepers” could clear the most hazardous and threatening debris from the paths of current or planned spacecraft.

While accidental collisions are rare we also have seen intentional collisions that have thrown large amounts of debris in space and pose a grave threat to vehicles of all nations that operate in the lower orbits. History has taught us many lessons. One of the earliest is the story of David and Goliath, a term synonymous with a smaller unskilled combatant defeating a larger seemingly invincible opponent with a rudimentary weapon. That David and Goliath story is just as relevant in the reaches of space. How easily an unfriendly nation could shutdown, disrupt or put at increased risk our unmanned and manned space vehicles with a crude launch vehicle. There are many complexities to reach space however if a nation can master developing a launch vehicle and getting it to an orbital altitude that nation then possesses the capability to create an orbital minefield by exploding satellites loaded with shrapnel that could cripple the space operations of all nations. Such an act would render areas of space useless unless a mechanism to clear the debris was developed

We can’t turn a blind eye to such threats or assume that rogue nations that develop a launch capability won’t subsequently use it as a terror weapon or a threat. For those reasons alone it is time to enact both a central space clearinghouse for low-earth orbital launches and a method to clear the most hazardous debris fields in space. The details of how the program can protect the rights of all nations while ensuring a safe and peaceful region in space are not insurmountable. The nations that refuse such a treaty or central command must be looked at as those that would harbor bringing weapons of terror to space. The world’s leading space powers cannot allow a new war on terror in space nor the ever increasing threat of debris to become a risk to national security or humans in space.

The Iranian Sputnik

2009-02-03T16:48:00.000-08:00

With the announcement that Iran launched its own satellite last night came renewed suspicion that its intentions in space are less than honorable. In a closed society such as Iran one can never know if the public portrayal of national pride resulting from putting a small satellite into orbit is a cause for recognition of a significant technical achievement or a cause for concern that it is a nation harboring intentions of using rocket technology as a weapon of war. The launch of the Omid satellite which translates to “Hope” was timed to coincide with the Iranian Revolution thirty-years ago. That revolution which overthrew the pro-western Shah moved Iran to the list of countries that would seek extremes to execute on its disdain for non-Islamic neighbors, the United States and European countries that have stood against it.

The Omid was launched on Iran’s Safir-2 two-stage rocket with a range of 150 to 250 miles. The launch was confirmed by both American and European Defense Agencies as well as Israeli Space Agency officials. The Iranian Government stated that the payload was a communications satellite although the altitude this rocket is capable of achieving is far to low to put a satellite into a more useful geosynchronous orbit. While the launch was confirmed the release of a satellite into orbit had not.

The previous statements and actions of Iran compel us to look with skepticism upon Iranian President Ahmadinejad when he stated that “The launch was intended to be a message of peace and friendship to the world” - “We need science for friendship, brotherhood and justice”. In listening to Ahmadinejad we must heed the words of former American President Ronald Reagan when he said “trust, but verify”.

The words “necessity are the mother of invention” are true and history has taught us that countries that seek to carry out policies of terror and aggression will use any means at their disposal to do so. While we hope that the words of Ahmadinejad are true the simplest way for Iran to advance its peaceful use of space is to allow team of Russian, European, Chinese and American observers and technicians to monitor the program with unrestricted access to construction, technology, operations, assembly and storage. If the Iranian’s don’t agree to oversight then we must assume that their intentions in space will follow the same ideological path that they have followed here on earth.

We need only remember a time sixty-years ago when a group of engineers that sought to put men into space created a technology that was in turn used by another group of ideological leaders to create terror and destruction. The V-2 was a first step in space that became the start of the use of rockets to wage war and later weapons to ensure a peace between world powers. While the threat of nuclear warheads sitting atop intercontinental ballistic missiles has kept the peace between the world’s major powers the use of such rockets by smaller countries is more threat than peacekeeper.

Some analysts have argued that the two-stage Safir-2 with a solid rocket first stage and liquid fueled second stage is not as large a threat as Iran’s single-stage solid rocket booster the Shahab-3 which is capable of delivering non-nuclear explosive warheads and is more easily concealed from western eyes. However, any launch of a Shahab class missile against a neighbor would bring a significant and overwhelming military response. Exactly what the Iranians don’t want. If they managed to strike a target the price in retaliation would be high. Others have said that the launch is more about symbolism than substance or threat. However, we must not be naive to what can be achieved by a capability such as the Safir-2.

The largest threat yet unmentioned by any reports is as an ASAT or anti-satellite weapon. To conduct this type of “terror in space” would not require a terribly sophisticated satellite only the vehicle to put it into orbit in its operational range of 150-200 miles which Safir-2 has demonstrated that it is capable of achieving. This is precisely the range that the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle operate in. An explosion or “accident” that resulted in creating a debris field at that range could severely damage the vehicles and could hamper future space operations. No one has so far speculated that the purpose of the Iranian launch was to test an ASAT capability or to create a debris field in the orbit of the Shuttle or ISS, but we have learned painful lessons over time that it is the crudest of weapons that are capable of inflicting great damage. The United States and Russian response to the Iranian launch should be one that focuses on how to jointly monitor their intentions going forward with their fledgling space program to ensure it is as they state “a message of peace and friendship to the world”.

Whether the Safir-2 is the Iranian’s V-2 or the Omid is its Sputnik we don’t know, but to prevent advanced rocket technology from becoming another method of terror requires oversight and the Americans, Chinese and the Russians have a significant stake in the proliferation of weapons in space and the safety of current satellites and manned space vehicles.

This Day in Space History

2009-01-28T15:58:00.000-08:00

January 27th is a day of remembrance in the annals of space history and a day to reflect on those that were lost in the conquest of space. On this date ten astronauts gave their lives in mankind’s reach for the heavens. In 1967, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were lost in an accident on Pad 34a during a routine test. Thirty-six years later Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Michael J. Smith, and Dick Scobee were lost when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff.

Both accidents dealt a blow to the space program, but the lives of those astronauts and subsequent loss of the Columbia crew of Rick D. Husband, William McCool, Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel B. Clark, and Ilan Ramon on February 1, 2003 were not in vain and resulted in NASA taking a hard look at what it knew about the dangers of manned spaceflight, what it thought it knew, and what it still needed to learn.

In hindsight, all three accidents could have been prevented and the lives of seventeen people spared, but as is the case with all progress there resides a technological naiveté and a complacency that is temporarily masked by success, but one that eventually results in disaster. Many more have given their lives to in-flight and ground accidents in the Russian space program and America too has had other close calls and lost others to lesser publicized training and ground accidents. It is from great sacrifice that great things are learned and achieved. The space program is safer for crews today and safer for crews tomorrow as a result of the lesson learned from Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia.

Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle

2009-01-26T14:59:00.000-08:00

I recently completed reading the book “Energiya-Buran: The Story of the Soviet Space Shuttle”. First, my kudos to the authors Bart Hendrickx and Bert Vis as well as Praxis for publishing a book with such a wealth of detail about a subject that only ten or so years ago would been another little known Soviet space project. This is no superficial review of Buran with a few glossy pictures and limited text, but rather this is a comprehensive review of Soviet winged space vehicles from their inception to the launch and eventual cancellation of the Soviet Shuttle program.

We often tend to think of the former Soviet Union and now current Russian Space Program as somewhat second class or backwards to the American efforts. This mindset applies not only to the Russian Space Program, but to their overall technology advancement as a society. In terms of unmanned space exploration there is no comparison – American efforts over the years with Hubble, SOHO, Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo, Cassini, New Horizon, Messenger, Spirit and Opportunity to name just a few are unequaled and have changed the world’s thinking on our solar system and our universe, but in manned spaceflight the Russians have proved steady and reliable, capable of larger things and like the America program always constrained by funding.

One of the most impressive angles to the Buran story is the methodical approach the Soviets used to develop the Shuttle. This wasn’t an outright “knockoff” of the American Shuttle although most agree it leaned heavily on the NASA concept, but a thoroughly tested design and approach to ensure the Soviets comfort in the vehicle’s capabilities. While likely equally as dangerous to operate as its American counterpart the Soviet Shuttle did not rely on solid rocket boosters or onboard Shuttle Main Engines which added to a reduction in overall accident risk.

In reading Energiya-Buran there are four core concepts that emerge about the Soviet/Russian space program and in particular the Soviet Shuttle Program 1) the Russians are technically competent, 2) they are innovative, but have a simple operating model, 3) they have a passive/aggressive thinking towards manned space exploration, and 4) they are calculated risk takers. Let’s examine each a little more closely.

The Russians (Soviets) are technically competent - Let’s face it, the Russians pulled off some major firsts in space with the same jump start the American’s had after World War II and with less resources. They launched the first satellite, impacted the first man-made object on the Moon, first living creature in space, first man in space, first woman in space, first space station, and first automated docking of an unmanned craft to a manned craft as well as the first landing on Venus with the Venera spacecraft. Granted they’ve had more than their share of mishaps and tragedies and suffered ground and crew losses in their program, but nonetheless they have perfected low-earth orbit spaceflight and long duration spaceflight by staying true to a design that worked and by modifying that core design only incrementally over the years. They have perfected clustering and control of multiple engines and boosters on a single stack and even though the Soviet Shuttle Buran was a copy of the American shuttle externally and the Soviets at the time has access to a wealth of publicly available documentation on the American Shuttle it did have its own unique capabilities that included manned and unmanned operational capability and a heavier lift thanks to the Energiya configuration. That they could build the shuttle from scratch, fly it and recover it safely is an enormous technical feat given the complexity of the shuttle and what it has to do on each mission to have a safe flight.
They are innovative - The Soviet space program has also been constrained by resources and funding since its inception. That lack of funding forced the program’s administrators to make tough calls on growing the program and led to a strategy where they had to be innovative to make up for fewer resources. They were also driven to accomplish major milestones in space. That they could sustain efforts like the Salyut and Mir space stations, develop a shuttle on a shoestring and over the course of nearly five decades have a continuous manned access to space is a remarkable achievement. It isn’t their design innovation that gets high marks for they have essentially been running the same configuration with minor improvements for decades. The high innovation comes from the thinking on how they used limited resources to accomplish a steady performance of manned space capabilities and firsts.
They have a passive/aggressive thinking towards manned space exploration - Over the years while the American program has had peaks and valleys, triumphs and tragedies the Soviet/Russian program has been relatively steady. This is due largely to a conservative approach on sticking with their original rocket engine design and configuration and by not developing new launch platforms. What goes atop the platform may have been different, but the platform remained consistent. This steady approach allowed them to focus and become more aggressive on how to use the platform and that in turn led to their success. While the U.S. struggled in the immediate post-Apollo years the Soviets didn’t continue to reach for the moon, but quickly shifted strategies to orbiting space platforms and long duration flights. The American shuttle program was built largely on the need to launch satellites predominantly Defense Department satellites and that wasn’t a strategy to move American manned space efforts forward, but rather it was a strategy to build a highly capable multipurpose machine for missions that were best accomplished by other platforms. The vehicle may have been right, but the strategy for its use was wrong.
They are calculated risk takers – The Russians have always stretched their capabilities. Some of their efforts were high risk. The R7 rocket that Yuri Gagarin flew only had a fifty percent success rate. The N1 that was to take two Soviet cosmonauts to the moon was as complex a clustered rocket as has ever been launched and it failed (unmanned test flight) due to a minor fault, but there have been other bold moves that did pan out and were major successes. The Salyut and Mir space stations were significant achievements that gave the Russians a lead in long endurance spaceflight. In Buran, the Soviets believed they could build a shuttle superior to the American version and give themselves a capability of building expanded space stations and enhanced operational capabilities in space including military uses. The Soviets thought they could leverage the knowledge and research that the United States had already done and build upon it to make a better vehicle. The end result was a “form follows function” vehicle with similar weaknesses to the American shuttle, but improvements also. Since the program was cancelled after only one flight and only one flight-ready Buran was built we’ll never know how well it would have operated over a long period of time.

Would the rate of failure mirror the American Shuttle? No one knows, but given that the Soviets were well versed in crew loss and their decision to fly the vehicle unmanned initially tends to lean towards a more conservative approach for testing before declaring the vehicle operational. Remember also that through this period they never abandoned their capsule based launch platform. They were willing to experiment with new ideas, but not at the risk of losing their existing capability.

There were some in the former Soviet space program hierarchy that didn’t believe in the need for a space shuttle to compete with the Americans. For the dissenters it wasn’t a case of the shuttle not becoming a key part of the overall Soviet, but rather that funding two programs would result in both elements suffering or that the untested shuttle program would take precedence and result in the loss of a proven space capability. The Soviet Shuttle program might have survived had it been further along when funding which was always extremely tight came at a richer premium under the Gorbachev years. The Soviet Space Shuttle program was eventually canceled in 1989 and the Buran Shuttle remained mothballed in a hangar at the Baikonur Cosmodrome until 2002 where it was destroyed in an industrial accident. During maintenance on the roof of the building that housed the vehicle it collapsed killing eight workers and raining debris down that inflicted fatal damage to the orbiter and the Energiya booster it was sitting atop.

The Soviets had planned a fleet of five orbiters. The first two including Buran were unmanned test articles that lacked a full crew life support capability, but could have been converted to manned flight later on. Two of the actual three manned Soviet shuttles were under early construction when the program was halted construction on the third was never started. The lessons for the American program? Experimenting with advanced concepts is a good thing, but not at the expense of abandoning a core competency that you’ve developed and perfected over time. The American program was based on a “develop and discard” strategy, the Soviet/Russian program was based on a “repeat and refine” strategy. America was without a manned capability for years in the post-Apollo era and may be without one again in the post-Space Shuttle era – the Russians however have an unbroken manned space capability.

Necessity truly is the mother of invention - The Soviets due to a lack of proficiency in certain areas such at solid rocket motors had to improvise and in turn created perhaps a better model for launching a shuttle. By creating a heavy lift booster in Energiya they didn’t have to rely on incorporating main engines into the shuttle thereby reducing its weight and increasing its capacity to deliver and retrieve payloads.

If we were going to build a shuttle today it would be an interesting collaboration by American and Russian engineers to develop a medium lift unmanned shuttle replacement that could have the potential to deliver a vehicle that could transform how we use space and exceed the original concept that both nations envisioned for reusable, winged vehicle space flight. For more on this see my thoughts on “Creating a Sustainable Manned Space Capability”.

For space aficionados “Energiya-Buran” is a must read. It provides the reader with an opportunity to rethink our own space strategy and where the American space program needs to go based on the lessons of the past. It also is a stark reminder that the Russian space program is formidable and capable of great things at a time when our own space capability is waning and faces a period of uncertainty. The Russians are largely responsible for the rapid success of the Chinese space program. It was their technical expertise and support as well as their export of capsule technology that boosted China’s ability to achieve manned flight so quickly and they will continue to assist China’s efforts to reach the moon.

With existing technology both Russia and China are capable of a circumlunar flight similar to Apollo 8. However, neither has a capability to land yet. India is next on the list to show a strong desire to join the manned spaceflight club and will likely follow the same path China took in purchasing Russian space technology. ESA already has launched Russian rockets from their site in French Guyana and has explored developing its own manned spaceflight vehicle with the Russians based on the Clipper concept. Clipper was considered the next evolutionary stage in reusable winged space vehicle.

The Russian program while still cash strapped grows stronger as it develops new customers for its space technology and can continue to "repeat and refine" its capabilities and keep the production lines going. Manned space programs are an enormous source of national pride and the list of countries that aspire to achieve manned space flight and that will achieve manned space flight is growing. It’s hard to imagine an American capsule atop a Russian or ESA rocket for our own national pride and prowess in space technology would be hard to share and hard to let go, but our own strategic missteps, our dire economic condition and waning political will have almost left us no alternative but to forge alliances and seek partnerships to jointly create something bigger and better. The lesson of Buran is that we can build upon each other’s knowledge and experience and move the dial and the human race forward in space. The joint work on the ISS has laid a good foundation, but perhaps now is the perfect time to combine efforts and look at a global space effort.

Combining Forces: NASA and the Military

2009-01-05T20:04:00.000-08:00

A trial balloon recently floated by incoming President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team raised the possibility of combining the U.S. military’s space capability and funding with NASA’s.

An intriguing option that raises numerous possibilities that could help advance the civilian and military uses of space, but one that also warrants a close examination of the resulting structure and end game.

Before then President Dwight Eisenhower decided to unify disparate resources in the American rocket community including those of the Army and Navy there were many competitive projects and much political infighting that didn’t provide the expected rivalry for success that had become the American way of getting things done. That spirit of competition and the political impediments should have come as no surprise.

Each branch of the service nearly up until this day has insisted on different equipment to conduct its operations and missions using different contractors and assets with different criteria, but ultimately required to perform the same or similar function. For example, different planes for each service has increased costs while offering only a marginal operational difference and increasing the support costs by maintaining training, parts and staff on such a diverse fleet of assets. Defense economics dictates that the more copies of an item you produce the lower the cost each subsequent unit becomes.

Even after rocket resources were combined under NASA the Air Force quickly marched down a path to put into orbit its own trained crews in orbiting laboratories and reusable winged space vehicles launched atop the same missile family that was being used to launch satellites and ICBMs. The reusable vehicle and orbiting space station strategy were at least a decade or two ahead of NASA’s, but NASA’s charge was one of achieving a specific goal of landing a man on the moon while the Air Force’s goal was achieving and operational capability of protecting the space boundary in low-earth orbit. In many ways it was NASA’s greatest triumph that has handcuffed its ability to create an efficient, sustainable, reliable, repeatable manned space program.

The early Air Force strategy of Dyna-SOAR and Manned Orbiting Laboratories (MOL) would have created parallel paths to space which would have benefited both programs over the long-term. The aggressive and ambitious program that the Air Force laid out was eventually canceled as the all-hands on deck approach to get a man on the moon required precious resources to meet Kennedy’s timeline and two competing programs couldn’t survive, but had it survived and had it been continually refined we would have had a post-Apollo platform to leverage to take America to its next steps in space. Instead, in the post-Apollo era costs became the critical factor in the space program and since the Air Force had not continued its program and NASA was ending the use of assets and learnings gained from Apollo it would turn out that both programs would end up empty handed at a time when the Soviets while failing to reach the moon had in place the foundational components of a reliable space program.

In the development of the Space Shuttle and early shuttle missions NASA and the Defense Department tried again to combine resources. The Pentagon was to be the largest customer of the Space Shuttle’s satellite delivery capabilities. The Air Force had even gone as far as to build a launch facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base to launch classified shuttle missions to deploy and service military spy satellites using Air Force trained crew. The Vandenberg site was required to maintain both a higher level of secrecy and a better launch window for polar orbits that are optimal for most spy satellites.

Various reasons led to the abandoning of that strategy including the difficulty in maintaining a robust shuttle launch schedule due to operational constraints in the shuttle program, problems with the construction of the launch pad at Vandenberg and ultimately the loss of Challenger moved military payloads back to expendable rockets. So what has history taught us about combining our civilian and military space endeavors? Many have speculated that the ex-military laden NASA would lean heavily towards a “militarization” of space, other say that the two organizations will never get along and never agree on common objectives.

Perhaps, but in the end it comes down to two critical factors. The same two factors that have plagued both programs since their inception: Money and Strategy. In the early sixties NASA had all the money it needed to achieve its goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth, but it lacked a strategy for the post moon era and failed to create a vision of what would happen if the moon program were canceled due to political whim, economic constraints, waning public support or an accident in the program. Eventually, the lack of strategy crossed paths in the seventies with a lack of funding and NASA was left foundering and looking for a way to stay afloat.

The Air Force on the other hand had a great vision of how to operate in low-earth orbit with manned space stations and low-cost earth to orbit reusable vehicles, but the Air Force lacked the funding and eventually crossed the same path as NASA and both would experience only a medium level of success achieving their manned space goals thereafter. Combining the military’s twenty-two billion in space program funding with NASA’s eighteen billion dollar budget would seem to make sense if NASA and the military could agree on the following:

1. Necessary capabilities of manned spaceflight.
2. Common hardware that can be leveraged.
3. A common strategy and vision can be implemented on how to achieve and maintain a long-term sustainable manned space capability.
4. Agreement on a path to continually refine and improve hardware to steadily increase capabilities.
5. Specific capabilities to perform specific missions and functions, but not a one size, multipurpose approach.
6. Clear purpose and boundaries. The goal of combining resources should be to develop common platforms and vehicles, share the knowledge, training, support, resources and development costs, but also have a dividing line where each can have the proper assets to perform their missions and not be constrained by the other's missions or timelines.

Some have argued that using the military and commercial Atlas or Delta launch vehicles are unsafe for humans to ride atop therefore leveraging assets is a waste of time and money. Any rocket is dangerous, but ultimately whether a rocket is carrying humans or a billion dollar satellite it should be safe and reliable. We shouldn't want to lose either. Bringing those vehicles up to man-rated standards is costly, but that can't be an excuse to develop yet another unproven and marginally capable alternative. The Russians have taught us that repeatable success comes from taking a rocket and refining it over time, but essentially producing the same configuration over and over.

Repeatability brings reliability and an enduring success rate.

Historic cooperation between NASA and the military has had a limited success record due largely to the conflict of mission, money and strategy. There is a chance that with the right leadership a combination of resources could create a better and faster space program. There is also a danger that other space powers namely Russia and China could see this combination as thin guise for militarizing space and a retreat from looking for international cooperation. Given both China and Russia’s past activities it is a risk worth taking. America has to take the lead once again in manned spaceflight and combining the resources of NASA and the military’s programs are a good step, but will require the right vision to execute. More of the same traps of the past and we’ll make little progress, but once again spend a lot of time and resources getting there.

On This Christmas Eve

2008-12-24T18:06:00.000-08:00

Forty years ago tonight America was bringing to a close a year that saw much turmoil and unrest. America's survival through the problems at home and abroad that marked the sixties was tested as we struggled to find ourselves through the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the civil unrest, the VietNam War and the changing of the guard as a new President-elect was waiting to lead the country out of what had proved to be the disasterous year that what 1968.

One of the few bright spots came on this night, Christmas Eve of 1968. Three men from planet Earth became the first humans to circumnavigate around the moon. A daring adventure that showed the world what America could do at her best even in the worst of times. The Apollo 8 crew of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders became the first to see the Earth rise above the lunar horizon and realized that the entire history of humankind and every single person they'd ever known could be hidden behind their thumb. They took turns reading a passage from Genesis in the Old Testament and helped all of us see the wonder of our own little spot in the universe. After their return the crew received numerous letters from citizens around the world. One note simply said "Thanks for saving 1968".

Forty years later America is struggling through a year of uncertainity and crisis, there will be no heroics that will "save 2008". We have a new President-elect and as we saw in 1968 even through the worst of times America will rise again. On this night we remember those that are far from home, those that have lost friends, family and loved ones, those without food and shelter, and those that are affected by the difficult times we are in. The lesson of Apollo 8 is that we can do great things and we can survive tough times if we rely on our spirit and the talents in each of us take bold steps to move America forward again.

No Giant Leaps for ESA (European Space Agency)

2008-12-09T15:34:00.000-08:00

The thought of manned space exploration conjures many emotions from the initial “can we do this?” in the late fifties and early sixties to the space race to the landing on the moon and how we’ve progressed since that July day in 1969. On one hand those that are space aficionados can’t get enough and any mission into space is an exciting one that opens up news areas of discovery, scientific findings and wonderment of what we can do if as a people we apply ourselves. Then there is the element of national pride – the pride that led and united many Americans to cheer the space program on as we wanted to beat the Russians to the surface of the moon, but after winning that game we weren’t interested creating a dynasty or hearing the noise of the crowd cheering us on to another great leap in space. There was only one Super Bowl in the space race and that was landing on the moon.

In late November when the eighteen countries that support the European Space Agency met and laid out a three-year plan I was interested to see if manned space flight would make the cut. The European Union is about the economic equivalent of the United States and has a roughly equivalent technical base. One could argue that in some ways ESA is better positioned to conduct future manned space operations than NASA may be in the coming years. Even President-Elect Barack Obama’s transition team has questioned NASA about using ESA technology for manned flight or Japan’s HII-A. ESA has a proven rocket in the Ariane 5 that could lift a manned capsule into low-earth orbit. It also has developed the Jules Verne module that successfully launched and docked autonomously with the International Space Station and could be fitted with a capsule to carry a crew. Lastly, ESA members have had on and off discussions with the Russian Space Agency about developing a version of the Russian Kliper (Clipper) for the European space program. The Kliper is a winged space plane for crew transport on a par with the American Orbital Space Plan that was cancelled in lieu of the Constellation program. When the meeting was complete ESA agreed to an ambitious set of unmanned space missions, but no commitment to manned space flight in the next three years.

As we look back, the analogy of the space program to a Super Bowl may have been correct for that one stepping stone of landing on the moon, but it could turn out that in fact the race was a marathon and after the moon landings instead of building on our lead we decided to set a slower pace and may have underestimated the skill of our competitors. For now we have now found that the pack has caught us and we are in danger of slipping behind. ESA’s commitment shows that they are interested in competing, but not necessarily winning. Despite economic troubles Russia remains steadfast, China is in to win and Japan and India will surely stake a claim as will other nations that have dreams of space.

The group that is now out in front is Russia. Despite losing the moon race the Russian strategy for space has been consistent. A brief experiment with a shuttle program had been their only deviation from a steady course and even that experiment did not place them in a position of having only having one system at a time. When the Buran didn’t pan out, the existing spacecraft and it’s production line were still in place. Now, Russian space technology is so reliable we use it to deliver astronauts and cargo to the ISS. China has bought Russian space technology and consulting services to build its program and India will likely follow the Chinese path somewhere in the near future. Russia has become a net exporter of space technology and America may become a net importer of space capabilities if the current indicators are correct.

If the Space Shuttle retires in 2010 we will be a customer of the Russians for at least the next three years, but more likely five years until and if a replacement is built. With all that has happened to our country over the past forty-years it would be an irony and something that we must reflect deeply on if the country that led and won the race to the moon resorted to outsourcing getting American astronauts into space to countries and programs like ESA (European Space Agency), Russia and JAXA (Japanese Space Program). As one of those space aficionados I’m interested in seeing many countries succeed and venture into space, but America’s pride and prowess in space technology would be tarnished if we let those that weren’t even in the race when we landed on the moon provide us with the means to get there.

War and Space

2008-12-01T17:10:00.000-08:00

Civilization has known war and conflict all throughout its history. The Second World War gave birth to the space age, but long before that battle humans gazed at the sky and dreamed of what existed beyond the reaches of Earth while on the ground the use of rockets was strictly as a military weapon. It is thought that the use of black powder rockets started as early as the thirteenth century in China. Crudely constructed, unguided and unsophisticated, the early rockets were meant more to strike fear than to cause actual loss and damage.

As technology progressed and dreamers of space emerged a new thinking on the use of rockets for manned space flight and exploration was born. Leading thinkers like Russia’s Konstantin Tsiolkovsky who wrote the first works and theories on space travel and Hermann Oberth whose works inspired the likes of Werner Von Braun and other young Germans to not just dream of space, but find ways to make space flight a reality put forth bold ideas on how space travel could be achieved. Meanwhile, in the United States, Robert Goddard was testing liquid fueled rockets as a way to achieve higher altitudes with the ultimate goal of reaching space. These men, the founding fathers of space flight laid the foundation for using rockets to send humans into space.

Rocketry’s ancestral heritage was hard to escape and over the centuries the leaders of nations and commanders of armies seized on the opportunity to refine the rocket to achieve greater accuracy and destruction. No more evident is Adolph Hitler whose support was initially lukewarm, but in his quest for domination of Europe left no option off the table including the development of powerful rockets that could terrorize his enemies.

The men tasked to build these weapons were the same men that Oberth inspired with dreams of manned flight, but men whose own ideas and dreams were deferred to focus on rockets as weapons of war. Through the efforts of war came the technology to reach space. The V-2 became the first object to reach beyond the boundary of Earth’s atmosphere. After the fall of Germany the Americans inherited the twenty-five year advantage the Germans had built in rocket technology including the brains, plans and vision to send men into space and the architect of Germany's space technology Werner Von Braun. The Russians were also the beneficiary of the German technology and had their own space pioneer in Sergei Korolev. Korolev was also a man who dreamed of space and was inspired by Tsiolkovsky to build rockets that could put objects and humans into orbit. Both countries would have the technical know-how to put men in space, but both men faced obstacles with leaders who wanted rockets to use as military platforms and not for science or exploration.

Politics have always played a role in Russia’s and in America’s space goals and for different reasons play a role in China’s space program. Harry Truman was the fist President to acquire the means and the vision to develop a space program based on exploration, but the too recent memory of the war in Europe, the Korean War, the threat of atomic weapons, and the growth of communism relegated rocket research to the military as more important issues were pressing. Dwight Eisenhower, America’s top General on the ground in Europe during World War II became President after Truman, but also had the memory of war still fresh in his mind and harbored distrust in the German scientists and engineers. Eisenhower believed in the tried and the true heavy bomber to deliver the increasing arsenal of powerful ordinance. Eisenhower, like Truman also didn’t seize upon a vision to make America a technological leader in space exploration until it was too late and the Russians surprised America with Sputnik.

It wasn’t until John Kennedy became President that a true vision for space exploration was put forth. Kennedy’s vision was bold and involved a daring reach of technology and an advance in rocketry far beyond what had been developed to date. Kennedy’s vision set a goal for space exploration that many thought was unachievable, but would require a concerted national effort and public support to achieve. Kennedy’s goal was laid out during a time when yet another conflict was brewing in Vietnam. His death by an assassin meant the goal of reaching the moon would fall to his successor Lyndon Johnson. Johnson kept the program intact and on course to reach the moon before the end of the decade, but Johnson also escalated the war in Vietnam which would eventually play a pivotal role in the direction of the space program. Johnson also realized that before the decade was out he too would be out of office and the realization or failure of JFK’s goal would fall to a new President.

It was during Richard Nixon’s Presidency that landing a man on the moon became a reality and during the short span of seven years from the early sixties to nineteen sixty-nine America had amassed a monumental technology lead in rocketry and space exploration, but the continued costs, waning public support, the enduring war in Vietnam and a President who had little interest in space exploration sent the program into a tailspin. Technologies were discarded; a cheaper route to space was sought while no vision for our continued immediate or long-term presence in space was articulated.

During that time America continued to lead in unmanned space exploration, but allowed its manned space leadership to wither away. No President before or after John Kennedy has been able to make the case for a robust manned American space program. Jimmy Carter governed during a time when America was in an energy crisis, the hostage crisis in Iran was ongoing, and where the space program found itself still down as the transition from Apollo to the Shuttle had yet to be completed. During the Carter years manned space flight was at an all time low. Ronald Reagan heralded the era of the Space Shuttle and a commitment to a low-Earth orbit space station. George H. W. Bush laid out a goal to reach Mars, but with the Gulf War and a subsequent declining economy his political capital was spent and he failed to win reelection. Bill Clinton continued the space program in a status quo mode without a new vision even though the Shuttle had been operating for over ten years at the time of his inauguration and would be in operation for nineteen at the end of his second term. George W. Bush was content to continue the space program “as-is” until the second Space Shuttle accident and the findings of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board urged the limited use and retirement of the shuttle. As a result, George Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration mandated the retirement of the Shuttle and the creation of a replacement, but also laid out goals to achieve a return to the Moon, but America was once again embroiled in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now facing yet another economic downturn that threaten the country’s economic capability to continue the space program in a way that will build a sustainable long-term program, and once again America’s space program – the envy of the world would be set to encounter another period of manned space flight downtime while a transition from the Shuttle to Constellation was planned.

The manned space program is finding itself at a crossroads again during a time of war, an economic downturn and a changing of the guard with a new President coming onboard. During each decade of the space age America has found itself engaged in a war or military conflict that had the potential to broaden and those conflicts have come at times when the choice of how to spend limited resources needed to be made. The lack of a long-term strategy and vision has made the space program vulnerable at each of these crossroads.

The technology of missiles and rockets played only a minor role in World War II, but led to the development of rockets that to a large extent kept the peace between countries that otherwise would likely have destroyed each other. There is another irony that internationally the quest to reach for the stars has been the one area of common ground that nations that often disagree finds ways to cooperate.

Incoming President Barack Obama will inherit two wars and a space program that has a vision, but not a sustainable vision and doesn’t have the funding that will allow a program born of war to survive being constantly caught in the middle of war. The lack of a post-Apollo vision for space has made it susceptible to changes in direction, vulnerable at times when America is engaged in conflicts around the globe or when the country is in economic trouble even though space exploration is a unifying theme and a common goal many nations share. Kennedy’s vision carried the program through the sixties, but the seventies brought change and the lack of a vision. The manned space program has been riding that lack of vision ever since and has incurred larger costs and a technical “draw down” of our space leadership. While painful, perhaps now is the time to go back to the drawing board to create a long-term vision in space that separates it from the turmoil that always seems to plague the program. Barack Obama would be well served to find a way create a new vision that lays out ambitious goals, but goals that are to be achieved over a twenty-five year time frame and goals that continue to grow and diversify the program’s technology while achieving progressively larger achievements in manned space exploration.

The Air Force X-37B (Orbital Test Vehicle)

2008-11-25T20:21:00.001-08:00

In December the Air Force will launch its first OTV also known as the X-37B Orbital test Vehicle. This small unmanned Space Shuttle-type vehicle will launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station grounds on an inaugural mission to test out its systems and capabilities. After the mission is completed it will land at Edwards or Vandenberg Air Force Base in California where it will be inspected and subsequently prepped for another flight. The OTV is one-quarter the size at twenty-seven feet in length compared to the Shuttle’s length of one-hundred and twenty-two feet. The OTV has a cargo bay about the size of a large refrigerator at seven feet by four feet compared to the Shuttle’s payload bay which could hold an object the size of a bus or a railroad boxcar. The OTV operates on the same principle as the Shuttle – it is a winged vehicle with thermal protection system and a payload bay for deploying and retrieving satellites or for conducting experiments.

The X-37 was originally a NASA initiative - dubbed a “mini-shuttle” it was later transferred to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) when budget constraints affected the program. The OTV was built by Boeing’s Phantom Works and it was Boeing’s Rockwell division that was the original contractor of the Space Shuttle. The X-37B is rumored to have a more advanced heat shield and can do something the Russian Space Shuttle Buran could do, but the America Space Shuttle couldn’t and that is operate without a crew and return to a landing strip on its own.

Hopefully, the X-37B is just the beginning of a program that will continue the legacy of the shuttle program. If as former astronaut Story Mugrave put it that the shuttle can’t be made safe then the versatility and the capability of what the Shuttle program is will live on in an unmanned capacity through the OTV. An unmanned shuttle that could do all the things the current Shuttle does without the risk of crew would be the perfect vehicle to fulfill the original promise of the Space Shuttle program.

This little known program could play a significant role in the future of the space program. While this version of the OTV is small by comparison to the Space Shuttle it presents an ideal opportunity to test out the systems and advanced technologies to develop a much larger unmanned Shuttle or perhaps another winged crew delivery vehicle along the lines of the proposed European Space Agency’s Hermes or the Russian Clipper. The OTV program allows us to avoid a critical mistake we have repeated during the history of the American Space Program - that mistake was to follow a path to “develop and discard” technologies that we’ve worked hard to perfect and advancements that we’re paid with both sacrifice and national treasure.

While this is an initial small step towards a future larger unmanned Shuttle it is nonetheless an important step to retaining and evolving winged reusable spacecraft. We’ll watch this initial checkout launch carefully and hope that the current budget and economic conditions that doomed the original X-37 program don’t haunt the Air Force’s reincarnation of this much needed capability.