NASA + DoD: Getting Us To The Moon Together?

When we think of "space programs", most of us think of NASA, the space shuttle, the space station, maybe the Mars rovers... It is less known that most of our nation's space budget is spent by the DoD.

Now news is swirling that Obama will try to get NASA to:

1) Scrap its Ares program rockets

2) Replace them with rockets already being used by DoD

(Here's one such article from Bloomberg.)

The news is about cost savings or cost sharing. I am starting to believe that the Obama years will be punctuated by pragmatism. I believe this is why he is keeping Bob Gates as his Secretary of Defense. I think this is a great move. He gets things done. Aviation Week just named him their "Person of the Year" largely for that reason.

NASA chief Michael Griffin does not have that same pragmatic reputation. He's been implicated in trying to snuff out the opinions of his own scientists regarding global warming. He's also dishonest. In 2005 he had announced that he would not reduce NASA's science budget, but in 2006 slashed it by 25% to pay for manned space programs. Griffin wants us to inhabit the solar system, have nuclear-powered spaceships, et cetera et cetera.

The point is, he has a vision too much his own. Gates thus far seems to be the consumate bureaucrat in the best sense. He executes his boss' vision to the best degree possible. For these reasons and more, I think that the biggest benefit of such a realignment would be to perform an end-run around Griffin and focus on results. If Gates becomes involved in oversight of our moon missions, I think we might just get there. Under Griffin, I suspect we would see schedule slips and cost overruns and, honestly, might still not get there before a future president cans the whole thing.

So I'm cheering for this.

Shuttle Missions are Dangerous Enough Without Management's Help

Another report on the Columbia accident was released yesterday. This one was authored and researched by astronauts, some of them close friends of fellow astronauts who died on Columbia.

What struck me of the report are the echos of Challenger. It's painful. From a New York Times article about the report:

The impact of the foam was obvious in videos taken at launching, and during the Columbia’s 16-day mission, NASA engineers pleaded with mission managers to examine the wing to see if the blow had caused serious damage. The managers, however, held firm to the then-common belief that foam strikes were relatively harmless and constituted a maintenance problem, not a fatal risk.

In a scathing report issued in August 2003, an investigative board later found that a “broken safety culture” at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was largely responsible for the deaths. It criticized managers as complacent and too tightly focused on scheduling and budgetary pressures.

This means that little changed since the 1986 Challenger disaster when o-rings made by Thiokol failed, causing the Challenger to blow up. The o-rings failed because the Challenger had launched in freezing temperatures, and the o-rings were only rated to 40°F. From a Wikipedia writeup about the accident:

...At a teleconference which took place on the evening of January 27, Thiokol engineers and managers discussed the weather conditions with NASA managers from Kennedy Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center. Several engineers—most notably Roger Boisjoly, who had voiced similar concerns previously—expressed their concern about the effect of the temperature on the resilience of the rubber O-rings that sealed the joints of the SRBs. Each SRB was constructed of six sections joined in three factory joints and three "field joints".

...Despite public perceptions that NASA always maintained a "fail-safe" approach, Thiokol management was influenced by demands from NASA managers that they show it was not safe to launch rather than prove conditions were safe. It later emerged in the aftermath of the accident that NASA managers frequently evaded safety regulations in order to maintain the launch manifest (schedule).

That NASA management, almost 20 years after the Challenger accident, had not learned to listened to their engineers is despicable. But I think a deeper problem sits below. For reasons I don't understand, NASA promotes an image of its manned space programs "fail-safe". Oh sure, everybody "knows that they are dangerous"... But on the Challenger they were sending a teacher, Christa McAuliffe, into space! (Factoid: my elementary school was named after her.)

NASA should change two things, then:

1) It needs to make missions actually safer by listening to its own engineers, and those of its contractors.

2) It should stop promoting their "fail-safe" image and instead emphasize that astronauts are really heroes on dangerous missions operating under immense personal risk.

Flying on the shuttle is dangerous enough. Both shuttle disasters were avoidable (especially Challenger). Maybe NASA managers have been drinking too much of their own "fail-safe" kool-aid, believing their systems to be so robust they would withstand their bad decisions. Maybe by embracing the fact that these missions are so dangerous, the managers would actually get a clue and understand how much trust is being placed in their hands. Maybe, just maybe, they would take their responsibilities to the astronauts more seriously.

Congratulations SpaceX, Orbital Sciences Corp, and NASA

NASA has awarded contracts to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp. contracts to deliver cargo to the International Space Station for the next dozen or so years. This is news, big news, huge news, for the geek that I am. From a Wall Street Journal article:

"When the U.S. space shuttle fleet is retired sometime after 2010, such so-called Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contracts temporarily will be the only way for U.S. spacecraft to reach the space station."

This is a huge risk. These companies do not have the traditional experience of building such systems for the government. But the news is even bigger than this.

The procurement will be via the NASA "Commercial Orbital Transportation Services" contract type. So what's the big news about this? It goes like this:

If the government wants to buy, lets say, a military base, it can't just buy one. It puts a team of government employees together to put together ideas for what the base should be like and then look for contractors willing to do it for a good price. This is how our government pretty much gets rockets today. It doesn't buy "rockets", it buys "rocket programs". (As an alternative metaphor, imagine if you couldn't buy clothes for yourself, but instead had to keep creating clothes patterns for what you wanted and shop the designs out to tailors for a good price. That would be an annoying world!)

If the government wants to buy an SUV, it just friggin' buys it. It doesn't need to assemble a team to put together ideas for what an SUV should be like! Sure, there might be some mods but for the most part the government gets in line with the rest of us and buys a friggin' SUV!

THIS is the real news. SpaceX and Orbital want to sell rockets commercially, more or less the way auto companies sell cars. So if our government wants a rocket, it should get in line with telecom companies and other governments and buy the next rocket slot.

This is a big gamble. NASA will take a sort-of hybrid approach, trying to be as hands-off as possible while still assuring success. It will check in on these companies at critical junctures and try to stay out in between. If it works, it would point the way to a new way to procure rockets, though. No more managing the contractors, no more having to create requirements for rockets, no more eating the inevitable cost overruns and the schedule slips. Just buy the next rocket.

If either SpaceX or Orbital succeed, then the entire experiment succeeds because it proves the concept. Even better, there are added dividends for our nation:

0) It proves that space companies can exist as truly private entities pursuing commercial interests. Contrast that to the current base of government contract-driven mega corporations.

1) Commercial companies should spur rocket innovation faster than Lockheed or Boeing or Northrop (or Energia or Arianspace, for the internationally minded) because they can try stuff out without waiting for government permission or government requests.

2) Commercial companies should reduce the overall cost of these systems to the point where more rocket launches should be possible, which should create more higher-paying jobs that are supported by the private industry.

3) By being a commercial company, SpaceX and Orbital will reduce the price not only for satellite operators and governments, but also for our fledgling Space Tourism industry.

All of this is great. Outstanding.

Lastly: I just really want to applaud Elon Musk for having the courage to gamble so much of his private fortune from his PayPal sale to create SpaceX. His achievement cannot be overstated: to privately develop a rocket from scratch. It hurts me a little to say this since I work at one of the government contract-driven megacorporations, but I think that his Silicon Valley shtick is going to rock our Aerospace world.

Bailout out America, not just GM

As a person interested in urban planning and development issues, I had learned some time ago of General Motors' efforts to deliberately buy municipal street car systems and demolish them. The intent, obviously, was to promote the car.

Few now are aware, but nearly every American city had electric street cars before World War II. Los Angeles even, now famous for crisscrossing ribbons of freeways, was loaded with street cars. This L.A. Times blog includes pictures of L.A. streetcars circa 1911. Check these out:



...or

Washington, DC is right now trying to bring street cars back to Anacostia and possibly the Purple Line through some of DC's suburbs. But here's a look back at what DC used to be like (complements of Wikipedia's Streetcars in Washington article):

Pennsylvania Ave, facing our Capitol

15th St NW (next to the Dept. of the Treasury)

Don't think that the Streetcars were limited to areas outside of "Real America" either. Here's Minneapolis in 1906:


And here's Wichita, Kansas (compliments of the Wichita Photo Archives, which has lots of interesting such photos):


So what happened to all of these streetcars? What happened to their tracks? The tracks were covered over and the streetcars were destroyed save a few for museums and the like. In some places the tracks weren't even completely covered, like in the stretch of Georgetown on the picture on the right.

And GM wants a bailout...

I say give it to them. Give them a really good bailout. But for the bailout, make them build our streetcars back. I don't say this for "revenge" or social justice, not for the environment or for a chance to legislate better cities. I say it for economics.

If we give GM a bailout on their terms, they will still go to bankruptcy, just a few years later. They can't compete on cars. They made critical mistakes in the last decades: they dropped the ball on quality, they dropped the ball on fuel economy, and they dropped the ball on manufacturing effeciency. GM does not have a credible plan for using our tax dollars to get back in the game and become self-sufficient. When Chrysler got a government bailout in the 80's, they had a plan: the minivan. That worked. Right now, there is no credible plan.

So I say we stick one on them. Use American labor to build streetcars for cities and towns across our nation. Tie our cities together again with high-speed passenger rail with trains built by American labor. Let Hyundai, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, VW, BMW, and Mercedes expand their American presence. Let them employ Americans from Kentucky to Texas, Virginia to California (Detroit is left out on purpose: it shunned foreign car companies-- another critical mistake for Detroit.) Let them go wild building better cars for us. Let our companies earn their bread and butter on American trucks and trains.

If we allow GM to get a handout to keep building cars the way they have, then we are neglecting our fellow citizens at GM who are hard-working but happen to work for a company without a plan. Lets give them one. And while we're at it, lets improve life for tens of millions of Americans by giving them a real alternative to paying more for gas.

Lets not bailout just the fat cats at the failing banks or the complicit auto-CEOs and union leaders who will drive our companies off a cliff. Lets build our rails with American steel, design our trains with American engineering, create our stations with American architecture. Lets employ tens of thousands of Americans to operate and maintain these systems. Lets breathe new life into old towns. Lets bailout America, not just GM.

EZ-Pass of the Future: SpeedyPass

Across our nation, state and municipal budgets are drying up. Colorado transportation budget is getting slashed thirty percent.

In my area, local newsletters are filling with complaints that police must be on funding drive because they are stepping up speed limit enforcement to a previously-unheard-of level. (Bully the complainers: I'll happily pay my once-every-three-years speeding ticket for all of my time saved: that's just economics for me.)

But maybe there's a real opportunity here. For those not in the know, E-ZPass is a must-have in the DC, NY, Boston corridor, and it goes all the way to Chicago. You get a thingy-bob that pays tolls for you while you're rolling 35 to 55 mph and it recharges itself from your credit card. It's great.

So here's what I propose:

Offer a new system, I'll call it SpeedyPass, that can track you on the highway, and offer 2 lanes of traffic for SpeedyPass holders only. Then, make the speed limits digital to reflect how fast traffic can go (faster on nice days, slower on crappy days or at night) and automatically levy lots of really small speeding fines every five minutes or so and run up a tab for you. If you're really going so fast that you are a public menace, then "the man" can come and get you. Voila! More revenue, and the cop didn't even have to pull anyone over except people are actually putting others in danger.

Little factoids I just recently learned: When speed limits were first created, they were calculated by engineers as the highest speed for which 85% of travelers would remain safe. In other words, they weren't "limits" the way we think of them today, but actually reflected how fast you could safely go in good weather. The other factoid I've known for a while: during the oil crisis in the 70's, our government told all states to set their speed limits no higher than 55mph or the feds would withhold highway money. That went away some years ago, but a lot of speed limits are still set to 55mph on huge freeways. Why?!?!? Cars are safer now and are more fuel effecient now. Shouldn't speed limits reflect this?

So SpeedyPass. That's the un-ticket :-D

Images from:
Creative Commons: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/25/94411850_2ac5e973d8_m_d.jpg
EZ Pass website: http://www.e-zpassiag.com/IAG-E-ZPASS-MAP%20New.jpg

(Not) In the Interest of Shareholders

Law states that corporate executives must act at all times in the interest of their shareholders. Implicit within the law is that shareholders can only have one interest: more $$$. I offer two examples of where that implicit assumption falls apart:

1) Employee-Owners: I have a 401k and my company gives a 50% match in company stock, so I and other employees are shareholders. I do like it when the share price goes up. But beyond a certain price gain, I have other priorities. For instance, I would always like better health care: more coverage, lower co-pays, no networks, etc etc. I also wouldn't mind the company investing money on speculative, long-term R&D. Lastly, I'd like my company to set aside cash to weather the rough patches better and ensure longevity. These actions would suppress profits and therefore share price or dividend yields--but I'm a shareholder too! And this is in my interest!

2) Socially-Conscious Investing: I would fully support profit-reducing initiatives at my company and every company I own stock in to reduce CO2 footprints even when the business case for it is not clear. As an example, a business could buy carbon offsets for their business travel. The CEOs might even want to at a personally level, but they can't without that business case. Doing right for the public is not enough, even if the shareholders "say so".

I'm sure there are more examples. What irks me about this setup is that the concept of ownership interest is reduced to share price. What if the citizens of a city, in order to take back their rivers or communities, banded together to buy a controlling stake in the corporation with that factory up-river? Is the CEO of that corporation, against the will of the shareholders, required to continue maximizing share price even at the expense of that river? That should be changed. I believe that a business does not have to lose its moral sense when it incorporates, yet the law clearly states that it pretty much has to. The only check on this is government regulation that creates a compelling business case (by incorporating likely fines or loss of licenses) to not take the cheapest route at every turn.

So I say it's high time to review this law.

(Update) Consider this:



(link)

Some Insights into Future Defense Spending?

Military.com reprinted an article from the NYT and re-titled it: Wall Street Pain Coming to Military. (That actually sounds better but less accurate than the NYT’s original title: Pentagon Expects Cuts in Military Spending.)

On the other hand, Aviation Week runs with: Obama to Support Defense, Space Technology.

In either case, some excerpts from the NYT article:

• The obvious targets for savings would be expensive new arms programs, which have racked up cost overruns of at least $300 billion for the top 75 weapons systems, according to the Government Accountability Office….
• In all, the Defense Department now accounts for half of the government’s total discretionary spending…
• On the presidential campaign trail, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have pledged to cut fat without carving into the muscle of national security…
• “I think we need a complete review of this whole thing,” said Representative Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat from Hawaii who is chairman of a House Armed Services subcommittee. “You cannot make a case for undermining the readiness of the Army and the Marines in the circumstances that we face today with a commitment of so much money to weapons systems that are at best abstract and theoretical.”…
• Boeing’s chief executive, W. James McNerney Jr., recently wrote in a note to his employees: “No one really yet knows when or to what extent defense spending could be affected. But it’s unrealistic to think there won’t be some measure of impact.”…
• Other analysts, like Loren B. Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a policy research center, say that weapons spending will be fiercely defended by many in Congress and their allies in the weapons industry as a way to stimulate the economy.

I guess the Pentagon doesn’t read Aviation Week. They’re saying:

• Obama's campaign says he advocates unmanned aircraft, electronic warfare capabilities and cyber security among several other national security efforts. The tech emphasis aligns with Obama's promises to buttress the military's personnel ranks while wrangling control of the DOD's problem-plagued acquisition portfolio…
• Obama during the late summer appeared to shift his support toward the Bush Exploration Vision goal of returning astronauts to the moon by 2020, noting that he "endorses the goal" of a lunar return "as a precursor in an orderly progression to missions to more distant destinations, including Mars."…
• Nevertheless, while the Democrats assert their willingness to develop, buy and equip the U.S. military with the best weapons and technology, the platform of Obama and Vice President-elect Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) still paints a person-over-program picture.

So where does this all lead? I don’t know, but we’ll get a lot of insight when the future Secretary of Defense is announced.