Why NASA is doomed

[Linoleum]

http://www.exploration.nasa.gov/acquisition/cev_procurement.html

It just needs to be put down like a sick dog.

[Matthew Gallant]

A Crew Exploration Vehicle? In the old days they would have used a rubber glove and some petroleum jelly.

[Bullhajj]

A Crew Exploration Vehicle? In the old days they would have used a rubber glove and some petroleum jelly.

You're thinking of the Old Negro Astronauts (http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=17888).

[XPav]

Looks like a standard government SOW to me, but well, I don't think too many people besides me read those on a daily basis.

[Jason McCullough]

Duh? What's strange about this?

[Mehrunes]

The Crew Exploration Vehicle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Exploration_Vehicle) is NASA's intended replacement for the space shuttle. I have no idea what this has to do with NASA being doomed, however.

[quatoria]

I believe you meant to say that they are DOMED.

[chet]

With Linoleum posting, I can only guess. Maybe because it doesn't have guns to shoot the godless liberals? Or because they are even proposing this while they should be spending their time saving Terri Schiavo? or maybe because it is not used to explore for oil in natural parks? Doesn't cut down trees? Isn't destroying other nations?

I sure hope he lets us know...

Chet

[Linoleum]

When your formatting style guide runs over 300 pages and that's just one of a couple hundred documents necessary to make a proposal...

...the only companies that can pitch are Lockheed and Boeing who will burn billions of dollars without even building a vehicle.

There won't be a CEV by 2011. I doubt there will be a CEV ever.

I give SpaceX much better than even-money odds on doing a manned mission by 2010 for less money than it costs either of the big two to merely do their proposals.

[Bullhajj]

Maybe NASA is DOOM 3'ed

[Jason McCullough]

When your formatting style guide runs over 300 pages and that's just one of a couple hundred documents necessary to make a proposal...

...the only companies that can pitch are Lockheed and Boeing who will burn billions of dollars without even building a vehicle.

There won't be a CEV by 2011. I doubt there will be a CEV ever.

I give SpaceX much better than even-money odds on doing a manned mission by 2010 for less money than it costs either of the big two to merely do their proposals.

As stupid as I think NASA is, what makes you think a big private corporation would have anything simpler for a comparable project? Also, item of note: military requests are probably as complicated.

I don't see a 300 page style guide anywhere.....

[quatoria]

Maybe NASA is DOOM 3'ed

How disappointing. When I saw Elhaaj had posted, I expected something about penises.

[Mike O'Malley]

Give him a few posts, he's building anticipation.

[Qwijybo]

It's not like they can just sketch the general idea of what they want on the back of a napkin, or even 12 pages. It's a vehicle to take people into outer space...the government can't exactly be cavalier about it and leave everything up to the contractors.

As XPav noted, and from my brief glance at the documents, this is a pretty standard goverment SOW. Many of the requirements are going to be boilerplate government/military requirements that any company familiar with the industry will be very familiar with anyway. And so that does favor (or possibly limit it to) Lockheed and Boeing and a few other companies, but do we really want Joe Startup to build this thing?

[Lunch of Kong]

NASA is CMM level 5 shop. Every *line* of code NASA writes, or has someone else write, probably has 50 pages of supporting documentation to go along with it.

[Jason McCullough]

....and they do that, basically, because the stuff they do can kill a lot of people if it fucks up. Sucks, but there you go.

[Linoleum]

I'm not saying that a project like the CEV is trivial. Nor am I saying that you can do things like wing development on mission critical avionics software; I'm well familiar with CMM level 5 and the processes for the Shuttle software.

However, even for a project of this complexity, NASA has taken things with their own protocols and procedures and jargon to make the burden an order of magnitude greater than it has to be.

This does not necessarily make things safer.

Thankfully the future of manned spaceflight is no longer dependent on NASA.

[Jason McCullough]

The criteria for this, which no one here apparently agrees with you on, is your own personal evaluation of how complicated a space shuttle procurement process should be?

[chet]

Dude, didn't you read his post? He like knows his shit about the shuttle and stuff!

[shift6]

I think he's talking about general space travel tech, not space shuttle specific tech. There are private companies who have put people in low orbit now, ya know. Give it a measly ten more years.

[Linoleum]

The criteria for this, which no one here apparently agrees with you on, is your own personal evaluation of how complicated a space shuttle procurement process should be?

The procurement process is only one factor, albeit an important one. I can live with differences of opinion on the subject, to say the least.

However, given the last 25 years of the shuttle program, the X-33 fiasco, the current climate at NASA and the progression of the CEV program to date, I hardly think I'm out of my gourd predicting a dim future for NASA's manned program. I don't agree with those that think manned space exploration a total waste of time and money, although I do agree that it's been a hell of a waste of taxpayer money.

[Jason McCullough]

Of course not, I think NASA is just as fucked as you do. But their procurement process is entirely par for the course, so it's a bit silly to go on about it. The procurement process for, say, a new kind of high-speed passeneger train would probably be similar; anything that's advanced tech + people.

[russellmz00]

NASA is CMM level 5 shop. Every *line* of code NASA writes, or has someone else write, probably has 50 pages of supporting documentation to go along with it.


neat article (http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.html) on nasa coding.

1. The product is only as good as the plan for the product.

At the on-board shuttle group, about one-third of the process of writing software happens before anyone writes a line of code. NASA and the Lockheed Martin group agree in the most minute detail about everything the new code is supposed to do -- and they commit that understanding to paper, with the kind of specificity and precision usually found in blueprints. Nothing in the specs is changed without agreement and understanding from both sides. And no coder changes a single line of code without specs carefully outlining the change. Take the upgrade of the software to permit the shuttle to navigate with Global Positioning Satellites, a change that involves just 1.5% of the program, or 6,366 lines of code. The specs for that one change run 2,500 pages, a volume thicker than a phone book. The specs for the current program fill 30 volumes and run 40,000 pages.

But how much work the software does is not what makes it remarkable. What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.

[jeffd]

NASA is amazingly risk averse - that's no secret.

I wonder if there's any actual material out there detailing how successful their risk aversion has been? e.g. how many system failures have occured that the famed "triple redundancy" and massive bureaucratic procedures kept from resulting in the loss of life & equipment? Obviously the two catastrophic failures that occured weren't prevented by the existing system.

rant on: look, manned spaceflight is dangerous. It's probably slightly less dangerous at this point than the exploration that occured during the fifteenth and sixteenth century when people sailed all over the world for months on end with a limited supply of food hoping they'd hit land before they died - but it's still pretty fucking dangerous. At some point we need to accept this - I suspect that there's diminishing returns on dollars spent in the preservation of crew & equipment and I have to wonder if NASA hasn't long since gone past the point where they're spending that money effectively.

JD

NASA is CMM level 5 shop. Every *line* of code NASA writes, or has someone else write, probably has 50 pages of supporting documentation to go along with it.


neat article (http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.html) on nasa coding.

1. The product is only as good as the plan for the product.

At the on-board shuttle group, about one-third of the process of writing software happens before anyone writes a line of code. NASA and the Lockheed Martin group agree in the most minute detail about everything the new code is supposed to do -- and they commit that understanding to paper, with the kind of specificity and precision usually found in blueprints. Nothing in the specs is changed without agreement and understanding from both sides. And no coder changes a single line of code without specs carefully outlining the change. Take the upgrade of the software to permit the shuttle to navigate with Global Positioning Satellites, a change that involves just 1.5% of the program, or 6,366 lines of code. The specs for that one change run 2,500 pages, a volume thicker than a phone book. The specs for the current program fill 30 volumes and run 40,000 pages.

But how much work the software does is not what makes it remarkable. What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.

[Jason McCullough]

I dunno, "check the fucking o-rings for temperature response" doesn't sound like something you would normally miss as part of the process. I think they're just incompetent.

[XPav]

I dunno, "check the fucking o-rings for temperature response" doesn't sound like something you would normally miss as part of the process. I think they're just incompetent.
Says the guy who works for Microsoft.

[shift6]

Ouch.

[Jason McCullough]

Yes, and it's also a travesty that your toaster isn't bulletproof.

Can you name a Microsoft product that is designed or intended to make life and death decisions?

[russellmz00]

Yes, and it's also a travesty that your toaster isn't bulletproof.

Can you name a Microsoft product that is designed or intended to make life and death decisions?

didn't a billion dollar cruiser have to be towed to port after windows crashed when someone entered a zero into the database?

[Nick Walter]

Yes, and it's also a travesty that your toaster isn't bulletproof.

Can you name a Microsoft product that is designed or intended to make life and death decisions?

Windows (all flavors).

MS Reps push it for everything. I see it in the telecom world doing call center stuff. Including 911 call centers.

[Jason McCullough]

They're completely insane, then.

[Nick Walter]

They're completely insane, then.

I agree, but that's business for you.

[Jason McCullough]

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/12-22vegas.asp

Augh! It's a backup 911 system, but still.

[antlers]

I think he's talking about general space travel tech, not space shuttle specific tech. There are private companies who have put people in low orbit now, ya know. Give it a measly ten more years.

There's a greater than order of magnitude difference (in energy) between what private companies have achieved and low orbit.

[Nick Walter]

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/12-22vegas.asp

Augh! It's a backup 911 system, but still.

Yep. I dunno if the push comes from corporate or if it's channel partners out doing the dirty work but MS products are being pushed for these types of projects.

[shift6]

I think he's talking about general space travel tech, not space shuttle specific tech. There are private companies who have put people in low orbit now, ya know. Give it a measly ten more years.
There's a greater than order of magnitude difference (in energy) between what private companies have achieved and low orbit.
No, there isn't. IMHO.

[Linoleum]

I think he's talking about general space travel tech, not space shuttle specific tech. There are private companies who have put people in low orbit now, ya know. Give it a measly ten more years.
There's a greater than order of magnitude difference (in energy) between what private companies have achieved and low orbit.
No, there isn't. IMHO.

Physics says otherwise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_equation).

That said, people are doing work beyond sub-orbital. It is much much more difficult to say the least, although it is a solved problem.

[shift6]

SpaceShipOne got from the ground floor to 71.5 miles in what, four years? Low orbit for satellites runs as low as a paltry 175-180 miles up or so. Do they need to do twice or maybe three times as much to get there? Yeah. Do they need an order of magnitude more energy? No.

[bago]

Spec changes requiring an official DCR (Design Change Request) approved by test, dev, and PM; flawless fxcop runs, 90% code coverage goals and the 5 9 guarantee make MS server software handily servicable.

[foogla]

They also make my brain hurt.

[MikeJ]

SpaceShipOne got from the ground floor to 71.5 miles in what, four years? Low orbit for satellites runs as low as a paltry 175-180 miles up or so. Do they need to do twice or maybe three times as much to get there? Yeah. Do they need an order of magnitude more energy? No.

Most of your energy at low orbit is in the tangential velocity you have to build up in order not to hit the ground again, not the potential energy of climbing a couple of hundred miles out of the gravity well. Satellites in low-earth orbit are moving FAST. I used to work a bit with radar satellite data (about 800km up), and IIRC the ground-track speed was around 6 km per second.

So I think a better measure is how fast SpaceShipeOne was going at its peak altitude. If they were doing about 3/4 of the speed of a low-orbit satellite, then I'd say they were about half way there in terms of energy.

[Linoleum]

SpaceShipOne got from the ground floor to 71.5 miles in what, four years? Low orbit for satellites runs as low as a paltry 175-180 miles up or so. Do they need to do twice or maybe three times as much to get there? Yeah. Do they need an order of magnitude more energy? No.

No. It actually requires around thirty-six times more energy, well over an order of magnitude.

So I think a better measure is how fast SpaceShipeOne was going at its peak altitude. If they were doing about 3/4 of the speed of a low-orbit satellite, then I'd say they were about half way there in terms of energy.

They aren't going ~20,000/kph , SS1 never really gets above 3,500.

[shift6]

Whoops! Sorry. Somewhere between a LEO velocity of 8000 m/s and the SpaceShipOne's max speed of 3500 km/h I fucked up the units when quickly eyeballing the math in my head. Hey if NASA can get unit conversions wrong every so often and crash a project into Mars, I can do it on a forum.

So, my bad Linoleum. :oops:

That said, I still believe that based on the amount of work being done now on private research and how far it has gotten so quickly, there will be an essentially completely private manned LEO done within ten years, by 2015.

[Jason Cross]

I think he's talking about general space travel tech, not space shuttle specific tech. There are private companies who have put people in low orbit now, ya know. Give it a measly ten more years.

I curious about what private companies have had manned low-orbit flights. Got any links?

[Jason Cross]

That said, I still believe that based on the amount of work being done now on private research and how far it has gotten so quickly, there will be an essentially completely private manned LEO done within ten years, by 2015.

I think this depends more on regulatory issues than on technological advancement. Making it legal for them to have certain grades of fuel, to broadcast telemetry at a certain power (and altitude), and so on. The govt. needs to clear the way for a few important things before private companies can put people in orbit.

[antlers]

That said, I still believe that based on the amount of work being done now on private research and how far it has gotten so quickly, there will be an essentially completely private manned LEO done within ten years, by 2015.

I think this depends more on regulatory issues than on technological advancement. Making it legal for them to have certain grades of fuel, to broadcast telemetry at a certain power (and altitude), and so on. The govt. needs to clear the way for a few important things before private companies can put people in orbit.

It's not technological issues only in the sense that we've had the technology to get people into LEO for about 45 years now. The question is private industry doing it with enough economic advantage over NASA that it's worth the investment. That's definitely a technological issue, and it's the same one that's plagued NASA. For cost effective space travel, you need two things: powerful and reliable engines and a re-entry vehicle, and both need to be either cheap or reusable. The Russians have come closest to this. SpaceShipOne is cool but it's not at all clear that its capabilities can scale to LEO energies; what it's done isn't much beyond what NASA's predecessors could do in the late '40s.