Blogging is to writing like getting on a roller coaster is to an astronaut launching to space. In an online world full of click-bait titles like “The one weird trick…” -where the dot-dot-dot is not because the rest of the title didn’t fit, it’s easy to zone out between headlines. Twelve sentences pass for an article. “Yeah, I read about that!” And never mind everyone’s denials, according to the world of data analytics, the shitpostings and that lint-trap below the twelve-line news snack get more traction than anyone will admit. Twenty-one hundred words accompanied by “10-min. read?” You have way too much time on your hands. (Next time, I promise!) So today I offer only some quick rants on a few reports you may have seen fly by one of your screens. These reports started beautifully, but actually…
NASA at a Crossroads
Nice title. So serious. Let’s just call this Augustine III, though I realize this shows my age. Augustine who? This one is written in the usual wandering words of a National Academies report. Meaning it’s where the copier took your tax forms and printed them on top of your refrigerator owner manual. Copier? You have a copier? The short of it is the NASA budget doesn’t keep up with what NASA is told to go do. Doesn’t now. Probably won’t in the future. “The committee heard repeatedly from NASA leaders at many levels that they felt there was little point to internal strategic planning given the heavy influence of OMB and the Congress on yearly programs and budgets.” If NASA had a therapist, this is where she says “learned helplessness.” Admirably, the writers say NASA deserves more funding, as if checking off the box – say Congress should give NASA more funding. Check. Say it again. And again. Check. Check. Or ask NASA to do less. But let’s have NASA do more R&D, that we need more of. Oh, and the R&D should keep NASA (federal) employees more hands-on. Quality over quantity. Sadly, doing better or Congress allowing NASA to do better, not covered. But, the really fantastic find in the report was…
Civil Space Shortfall Ranking
I am not sure if this is a NASA report, or a NASA wish-list, or is it a wish-listicle? See. Listicle. I am not so old I don’t know what that is. Curiously, this sort of look at saying what’s a priority is not new to me, so I can speak from experience. Bad experience. There is herding cats, along a steep cliffside, where the cats have hidden in small holes, and there is the task of eliciting and organizing what experts in our aerospace community believe is most important. My experience says that cats task must be easier. While this list-ish document is a valiant attempt at understanding priorities, handy in a budget pinch, there is a long way to go. Back in the day, a first report like this was a good way to show no one could agree on what “important” even meant. This does not appear to have changed. Twenty-seven people in the room. Thirty-eight perspectives on defining a word. Maybe a field of study is important? Maybe a gadget? Maybe something in-between? Yet the document mysteriously says…
Inspector General report on NASA’s Management of the Mobile Launcher 2 Project
Save this one. Come back to it in about five years, maybe six. The new bigger second mobile launcher, the one for when the new NASA rocket has a larger upper-stage, will cost more than expected. Not more like 50% more. Or 100% percent more. More like this thing someone thought would be $383 million is heading toward $2.7 billion. Now it happens this is quite funny, well, not funny-funny, more like curious-funny. In another life, cost estimating such massive complex projects was also an experience. It’s there, adjacent to my day-job in Shuttle, next to the technology thing. It didn’t take long to see that if Congress approves a year’s budget, you could get an awful good total cost estimate by just multiplying that number by five (best case) or ten (worse case). Nothing got done in under five years after all. And ten, well, we’d have to be done in ten! Most important, that Congressionally approved budget held steady. Congress loves predictability. So, “…in 2018, the Agency received $350 million from Congress to begin ML-2 development.” (Should have been more like $40M, steady.) Did anyone honestly think the thing would be built in one or two years? Multiply and, as we always knew long ago… Well, see the report, when the project cut metal and found…
Zapata Talks NASA 