NASA is taking a beating!

It is not my intention to crucify NASA. Nor will I say that NASA should be done away with. That would be a terrible idea for many reasons. However, there needs to be fiscal accountability by private companies for their failures, regardless if they're government contracts. Orbital has had 3 failures with 9 launches of this particular rocket of theirs. In private business, a supplier would be held fiscally responsible for faulty equipment. If they want to be players in this business they can't be allowed to make repeated mistakes at the taxpayers expense. Make them fiscally responsible for their mistakes and I bet the errors will either disappear or they will be out of business and replaced by a more effective provider of rocketry. NASA does need to take more control over equipment used in their missions, if only to spare them the blame/embarassment in the eyes of the public/politicians. Whether its fair or not. NASA will pay the price in the long run for debacles like this. My specialty in the public administration field was military procurement of newly developing technology by the big defense contractors. Believe me, there is a tremendous amount of waste/inefficency and corruption in the development of products from the contractors, because there is little to no real fiscal responsibility by the suppliers for the quality/promised performance of the delivered products after the contracts are approved.
NASA needs to protect itself........and do better in this area. And continuing to do business with Orbital with their current track record is what I consider to be a unnecessary higher than average risk.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2011 03:06AM by TerraDigger.

TD....your comments are well taken as everyone has the right to an opinion and I support your right to be able to voice it. I did not in any way deduce from your comments that you were putting NASA on the cross. Does NASA have procurement problems? YES.... Do most government agencies have procurement problems? YES. One only has to look as far as the FAR (Federal Acquisition Register) and become overwhelmed by the complexity of the government procurement process.....the IRS is a blood brother twin in a different way. Ask 2 different government procurement officers the same question and get 2 distinctly different answers. I personally do not work for NASA. I work for an aerospace company that is in the launch vehicle services business and supports NASA, DOD and commercial customer interests. I am in violent agreement with you that Orbital's reliability has been less than stellar (no pun intended). Often times the customer (in this case NASA) is boxed into a corner. They have a limited overall mission budget.....can only afford a ride on a particular booster that is a bit riskier and cheaper than their costlier competitors. Mission cost includes launch service cost and when you minimize one you usually pay the price. Would NASA have wished they could have flown those missions on a more expensive, more reliable Atlas V? Certainly...but I guarantee their budget did not allocate the additional funds to do so...so you take risk...and in the end you cover risk by the launch service provider insuring his launch (AON or International Space Brokers now one in the same). The risk of a particular launch vehicle succeeding to orbit is well documented by the price the booster company must pay to insure the launch...and Orbital right now is faced with some screaming hefty rates. What can they do about it? eat into profit and/or pass along the cost to the customer. Too much pass along and the customer says "see ya!" and looks elsewhere. Shareholders won't stand for much of this, customers won't stand for it either and sooner or later the market itself weeds out the sick and wounded. That's why we have fewer launch companies today...remember McDonnel Douglas? Conestoga? etc......and much more overseas competition....can you say Soyuz providing astronaut transport to ISS? In the end this problem has no simple easy cure as we all tend to believe....its a culture thing...its a political thing...its a complicated thing.....and this ship will not turn overnight. Until then we can yell Right Full Rudder and hope the beast responds.......

Bob

Thanks for the refreshingly honest reply. You are right. It has become an onerous beast with the regulations/politics and damnable lobbyists. And I do know that NASA would have loved to have the very dependable Atlas V rocket. Pennywise and dollar foolish with the budget. I totally agree with you that having to use the lowest bidder sucks. Might be a good idea if your ordering paper clips. Not so good with 300+ million dollar payloads.

NASA-Tom Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We TRIPLE-check EVERYTHING at NASA......and STILL
> find that we are not perfect.
>
> Going into space with ANY vehicle is DANGEROUS!
> In 1492 .......... Columbus ALSO did a very
> DANGEROUS thing! Open-heart surgery is also very
> DANGEROUS. Electricity is dangerous. Medicine
> prototyping is also dangerous. ((( To list only a
> VERY few ))).
>
> THINK OF THE CONSEQUENCES IF WE DON'T!!!!!!!!!

There is a direct relationship between freedom and risk. The safer we are the less free we are, in general. We need to be free to reach to the limit of our imagination and to risk our lives if we want to have true success in this life. Some will win and some will lose, there can be no winners if there are no losers... without NASA we all will lose. The shame is that we will not know what we have lost because nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Our governmnet has done some really foolish things over the last hundred+ years.. some good things but mostly our government has evoved into a great regulatory machine that stifles enterprise and real acheivement for most of the population. Those with weath and power tend to keep it at the expense of those who would gain it. There are the exceptions, there always are but the influence of the powerful and wealthy is always brought to bear upon competition through weilding the regulatory power of the government. I don't know what the real story is behind the scenes of the government/NASA relationship but I would wager that someone somewhere is standing to gain a lot because of the demise of NASA... it is always the money and power when you peel the layers away.

I can give two examples from one corporation... DuPont. They were behind making marijhuna illegal in 1937 because they did not want the hemp fiber to compete with their new synthetic fibers. Then again there was the "hole in the ozone layer" myth that started when their patent on freon ran out. Of course they make a new, less effective, more expensive coolant and they make lots of money and the third world suffers needlessly because they cannot afford the coolant that is available. Freon can be had for pennies and the ozone layer hole story has been debunked... but the regulators never go back, they march onward. They will soon come for our lightbulbs too. They claim that smog is caused by burning petrol in cars and trucks and have added probably 30% to the price of a car. They say nuclear power is clean but too dangerous however the cause of smog is the tritium that escapes in large ammounts from the production of nuclear energy... chemically you wind up with ozone in the lower atmosphere because of the tritium. Without the presence of tritium there would be no smog. Our total CO2 outputis insignificant globally... but with all the new nuclear plants being built in China you can look for air quality to go down especially in the northern hemisphere... then the "regulators" will try to combat the effect while ignoring the cause and life will become more and more burdensome and the powerful will use deceit to exploit every one of us with theories and lies and will laugh all the way to the bank... it is the way of the world.

Sorry, I got a ittle off topic but not really. It still comes down to trying to see what the other hand is doing... what the man behind the curtain is doing and why. There is no good reason to scrap NASA or the shuttle program without replacing it.. just like there is no "humanitarian reason" for us to be shooting missles into Libya while ignoring Darfur, Bahrain, Yemen, Iran, and other places. The reasons given are lies... and there is nothing we can do about it until 2012. The reasons behind the demise of NASA are not known to you and to me but you can be sure that there are reasons and they have to do with money and power. I'll guarantee you that a few are gaining at the expense of the many and we aren't even given a reason. The regulatory, bureacratic side of government is a huge swollen tick on our collective backside. We need our freedom and we need it now. We NEED an active and robust space program and we also need to expand it to include deep sea exploration and exploitation. We also need MUCH less regulation, much less central federal government.

I do not need security social or otherwise. If I harm myself I wont blame you or anyone else. I cannot believe the arrogance of the government these days and it is the reason the Bonnie Blue flag waves off my front porch... I love my country but I do not love what the government has become. I think we desperately need to rid our selves of this "two party" system we have... it isn't working anymore, it is just two wings of ne big party, and they n longer listen to the people... I think November 2012 is going to be a bigger shock that 2010 was. If not, we are in for a long hard time.

I'll leave you with a quote from the late Brother Dave Gardner, "When a man is down, kick him... it might make him want to get back up!".

GO NASA!!!

Julien

Well said!

Not a drinkin man.......but I would share a beer or two with ya............

I can't wait for 2012......



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2011 01:07AM by TerraDigger.

Julien, that is well said and many of us wrote the same thing but in our own way.
This bloated uncaring gov we have will be the downfall of us all if we are not careful.
Think about this, we went to war in Iraq to supposedly save the oil and make sure
we get what we need.---keep oil prices at reasonable levels to keep the economy going.
Yet we have enough oil under the ground here in US to produce 50% of our oil needs
according to John Hofmeister who appeared on CNN a few days ago.
Look it up folks and then think why are we fighting in the mideast?
Whatever the reason like Julien said it is bogus.
We the American people are in trouble if we don't address and make corrections
with our Gov.

Wow... interesting perspective Julien!

Two favorite comments regarding risk.....

Ships weren't built to stay in port...and if you want to safety explore space...buy a telescope.

And since I am digressing so...a little comment about the fledgling commercial space tourism hype. Virgin Galactic is a really neat but very expensive carnival ride. Can you ride the Spaceship One into space??? you betcha!...BUT can you stay there? NOPE!.....bottom line.......

Its pretty easy to "get" to space" (parabolic trajectory) ...its one whole hell of a lot harder to stay there (orbital velocity required 17,500 mph) and return (massive energy dissipation required during reentry..can you say "fireball"?).
Next week's topic...playing with cryogenic rocket fuel...till then

FB

Used to play with liquid nitrogen while in the medical corp of the Navy. The day's need was a couple of ounces, but I would get a couple of gallons from the cryogenics dept. Did some very interesting things with it. Can"t wait to hear your experiences.

When I was a kid I had a "blast" putting some hydrochloric acid in a Coke bottle and then sticking a piece of aluminum foil down in the bottle. Then I'd put a balloon over the top of the Coke bottle until it was inflated, tie it off and put a match to it... you get a briliant yellow fireball from the hydrogen. Great fun!!!

Cutting the bottom off a Co2 cartridge and filling it with caps, match heads and gun powder, and a fuse... and dropping it down a pipe (like a barrel) is great fun too.. as is putting an M-80 under a bucket.

J

Julien, you still got all your fingers?

I thought I was the only knucklehead that did those kinda stunts. None will I post for obvious reasons. But there was a kid in the neighborhood that blew 3 of his fingers off with the CO2 match head stunt. We stopped doing that one.

Almost sounds like we're from the same neighborhood. We would gather/take/steal our dads almost emty aresol cans, go to the woods and build a camp fire.
When the fire got nice and hot, throw one of the cans in and hide behind trees. Sometimes the cans wouldn't blow up, that's when it gets dangerous. Everyone is peeking around the tree and slowly inching toward the fire. BOOOM!!!
Nobody ever got hurt, thank goodness. After every can we had to re-build the fire and put out little fires that started around the perimeter.
We would also gather/take/steal our fathers gasoline and fill glass bottles then go to our favorite rock in the woods...you know the rest.
We would be outside all day in the summer. The only time we were home is when being punished or working down the chore list. Times have changed. When you go through neighborhoods these days, there's hardly any kids out playing. Every block in our neighborhood had at least 50 kids (baby boom). There was always something going on, somebody getting a broken arm, in a fight, falling out of a tree, father leaning against his car drunk, unfortunatly, also a few tragedys, you name it. My childhood was always filled with adventure and having a big woods close by had alot to do with it. When our kids were young, my wife and I would only allow them a short time with their video games, then boot them out of the house to run and play. Now, they are glad we did as I hear some of the similar stories of their adventures that now there not afraid to tell me.
Metal detecting is an adventure, and is one that dosen't spike up the adrenalin so much, maybe thats why I like it.

I think as kids we all did crazy things.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/2011 01:45AM by schultzie.

I shall bite my tongue VERY hard!

........and I thought when I put "Squeeky" (our pet hamster) inside the cardboard payload fairing tube of an Estes rocket we were pushing the envelope...but I see that's not the case at all with the contributions of the other "boyhood geniuses" on this forum!

And yes...for those who beg to know Squeeky's outcome...he LIVED!...although he seemed to walk a bit more in circles than he used to. Squeeky happy retired from the Astohamster Corps with full honors and when his time came, full attention was made to every detail in his funeral......padded shoebox, fresh cedar shavings and his favorite cedar wood chew block. RIP Squeeky...you have not been forgotten!