Full Text of Jeff Hanley's Latest Rant

After reading Hanley's email, I don't think it's appropriate to call this a "rant", if by rant it is implied that he wrote, spoke or shouted at length in a wild, impassioned way.

What Hanley did was a good dissection of the HSFRC Summary. What will be difficult for Hanley's critics is to dismiss someone who has been deep in the space business for 20 years, rising to the level of Flight Director and then Chief of Flight Directors.

If one listens to yesterday's teleconference, the debate between Bohdan Bejmuk and Jeff Greason, which was rather one-sided in that Bejmuk has launched both Protons and Shuttles while Greason has not, it's pretty clear that Bejmuk, and according to him Sally Ride, feel that the Committee's report did not do justice to the Ares I program. That debate yesterday adds weight to what Hanley wrote on Wednesday.

Naturally, being an optimist, I do hope that those who have intimate knowledge of what's going-on post to illuminate for the rest of us the debate now between the Augustine Committee and Mr. Hanley rather than having a pile-on session by people without even an engineering degree.

WRT "a pile-on session by people without even an engineering degree." How do YOU know the background of commenters here? If you are going to use such a broad, uninformed brush to characterize posters, then you must be including yourself.

Hanley seems competent, unfortunately Constellation has such serious problems that its long-term success is inconceivable. The first problem is the lack of any meaningful strategic objective. The second is decision-making by an interminable series of boards that insist on making the decisions (by voting!) even though they often have to ask for answers to the most basic questions.

For the record, I am an engineer with more 28 years of experience in systems, project management, etc. and Hanly's e-mail is not a rant. With all due respect Keith, I think that you are bringing your anti Mike Griffin bias to the table. It is unrealistic to assume that someone with Hanly's investment and charge in a program would not have some pretty strong feelings in defending it. I for one think that they've done some good engineering analyses, something that can't be said of the findings from the Augustine Commission. Even though there is more than one "right" way to do this it doesn't take away from the present program.

Sorry that I misspelled Mr. Hanley's name.

Keith,

Is it your position that those without even a basic background in a subject matter, whether through education or experience, illuminate and educate when they opine on such matter, e.g. that someone without a background in launchers (real ones, not Estes) can elucidate for all here as to why Hanley's comments are right or wrong, founded or unfounded with respect to the Committee's findings and statements about Ares?

Because I no longer work in the field, I come here to learn about what's going on. That is why you created NasaWatch, isn't it? So that readers could learn something? I think sometimes the comments devolve down by those who pile-on anything Griffin did and prejudice their views of Constellation and Ares accordingly. I'm surprised there aren't more comments here denigrating Hanley--I've seen plenty of those types of comments and worse. And I just can't see how that helps any of us better understand what is going on in our space program.

This is getting silly. You seem to think that you know the backgrounds of everyone who posts here. You do not. You seem to think that you are the only one who understands rocket science. You are not. You also have this lingering arrogance that leads you to think that only rocket scientists are qualified to comment. Wrong. It is rocket scientists who managed, built, and have screwed up Ares 1 - so what does that say about their expertise in terms of being qualified to comment?

Everyone has something to add to this conversation. If this bothers you then go somewhere else.

Can anyone (Jim?) list operational launch systems Mr. Hanley led from design to realization/production? That would certainly add some meat to the generic platitudes about his authority on the subject expressed in some posts here, no? He came to Constellation from STS flight operations, no? That is quite a different field of expertise. (disclaimer: I am an engineer)

I know and have interviewed Jeff Hanley for publication many times, and I can assure you he is not incompetent. His Shuttle experience gives him substantial credibility when discussing human spaceflight-related isues, IMHO. What he is, though, is biased towards the system he has helped develop, which is precisely why outsiders are asked to make these reviews. Hanley can't see the broader big picture-not just whether Ares 1 technical issues can be fixed-I'm sure they can-but whether it justified on a national scale spending the time and resources to do so. And if there is a "better" way. No. I'm not a rocket scientist (my education was in history and journalism)but after writing about this subject professionally for 28 years come next Nov. 17th I think I understand the trade as well as anyone else. (Google me and you can read my stuff). The Augustine panel has hinted that there is just such a better way to LEO-don't build ANY human related launcher but let the commercial suppliers do that, with a smaller capsule that can be launched aboard different types of boosters. Develop a man-rated heavy lifter for beyond LEO. Use the experience of Ares 1 and the current design of the LEO CEV to inform the next steps. Nothing is fully lost-but applied. The only obstance to this rational thinking will be members of Congress who will as we have recently learned fight changes to the hilt-not because of technical merits but because they feel it disrepects them!

Nice post Frank, but you speak of his bias towards "his system" as if it's somehow wrong. I contend, and I think with some justification, that he is not required to look at the "other" systems and goals because he is charged with successfully completing the one he has.

His point by point post of the commissions assessments is no more a rant than Augustine's (limited) analysis of Constellation. Just because one is intimately involved in some endeavor does not automatically exclude them from the debate. If they have made serious analysis errors, point them out, don't attack the messenger. That's the way it works in our engineering office and I believe that's what is at work here.

If your point about "broader issues" wins out, afterall we are dealing with politicians, then I'm sure Mr. Hanley will go on to his next assignment with some satisfaction that he did not fail because of engineering issues but that Constellation failed due to political issues. Been there done that. My rant is over.

I agree with Jim and Mike that Jeff Hanley's email has been mischaracterized as 'rant'. What I see is an initial point by point critical assessment of the report summary by Jeff H. Keep in mind this was a internal email sent to Mike Coats and not meant for the general public. And much of what he said in this email regarding the summary rings true.

Mike, I didn't say Hanley's views should be excluded but that one should keep in mind his biases and Constellation-centric viewpoint. The same applies to advocates of Direct as well. That's why the trick in outside review panels is to find qualified people not tied to any specific direction or configuration.
That's harder than it sounds.

I'd agree that this isn't a rant. But there are a lot of chauvinistic perspectives.

Jeff was a flight director, mainly on Shuttle though some on early ISS too. He was a pretty good flight director, though I don't think he was exceptional. When you come into a job like that when the missions have been flying for years, and with no serious new challenges, its pretty hard to claim extraordinary experience. Jeff was named to lead the FD Office, but never really took the position since he was moved almost directly to Constellation. So he really had never led an office, a program, or any kind of a research or development effort before Constellation. This put him at a clear disadvantage, in my view. He could have overcome this by selecting some exceptional support people with the appropriate experience.

But instead of recognizing and overcoming his handicap, he mainly took a bunch of people who looked just like himself; a bunch of flight director cronies, along with a few others like astronauts; essentially all were equally inexperienced. There was experience out there in the form of people who had participated in the development of past spacecraft and programs, but they are not part of Constellation. But Constellation management actively made decisions that those individuals would not be part of the Constellation program.

Charlie Bolden has been saying that NASA can no longer operate the way it has been operating, and I hope this is one of the problems he will fix. This is not a question of money, but simply good management practices.

As far as Jeff's critique, about the only thing that makes any sense in it, is, if NASA were going to develop a super-heavy lift vehicle, then Ares 1 supports such an effort so yes, 'they have started developing Ares 5 already'.

But there are significant questions that have never been answered with regard to Ares 5: What is the overall architecture and program plan and does it necessitate an Ares 5 or are there alternatives ? Can NASA afford to develop an Ares 5 ? Over what kind of a schedule ? All of these questions were the job of the Program Manager to figure out, right from day 1. ISS, and Shuttle, and Apollo LM, and CSM all went through a series of trades to arrive at their final architecture and designs. None of this was done on Constellation. They went with what came out of ESAS without seriously questioning the concept, and based on their concept today, consideration of trades and alternatives were never made. The few changes made were to make it bigger, heavier, and more expensive.

Right now it looks like it will take 2 decades and while the program says $100 billion, based on Ares 1 cost growth, my guess would be 2X to 3X that amount to develop Ares 5. After all, just Ares 1 which is, as Hanley says, a relatively simple booster based on a lot of already existing hardware, is using up half the cost associated with his Ares 5 cost expectations. Not much logic or realism in an estimate that Ares 5 will only be twice what Ares 1 costs to develop.

The original Vision specifically called for an evolutionary approach based on Shuttle and other existing hardware. Those are not the Ares 1, 5 segment SRB nor the Ares 5 core section, which is not based on ET structures or tooling, nor any of the engines. Its commendable that someone thought we needed and could build something as large as we might conceive, but the cost and the schedule to support these were never in the Vision which chartered Constellation.

Jeff seems to have misgivings about certification or safety of flight of commercial boosters and vehicles. He points out the US government efforts to fly the airmail in the 1930s. The government bureaucracy sent pilots out who were inexperienced, in aircraft that were ill-equipped for the job. The government bureaucracy killed a large percentage of their pilots within a few weeks; and so the government reverted to commercial air carriers within a matter of weeks. Commercial industry was in the air transport industry. The government was not.

I suspect that certification and safety would not be handled too differently for commercial carriers than how its been done with NASA-run programs up until now. Maybe the best example to date was Spacehab, which was built by a commercial entity under commercial supervision, though there were a couple of NASA technical experts who oversaw the commercial work. The same [foreign] company that built Spacehab, built the last two 'US' Nodes of ISS, using some of the same tooling used for Spacehab. Spacehab was efficient and very inexpensive (missions were 1/10 the cost at most) by comparison with similar NASA-run projects like Spacelab. The only serious Spacehab loss was the result of a NASA failure, the loss of Columbia. As in the case of Hanley's misgivings about relying on a commercial entity and process, ISS took over much of Spacehab's integration work, and did not save NASA any money or efficiency in doing so.

As with every mission, and every vehicle that has been flown on or launched from Shuttle, and every payload ever carried in Shuttle, the Spacehab module and everything in the module always went through full safety reviews and certification processes. Constellation probably would not know this since no one involved in Spacehab development or integration ever made it into the Constellation management group.

Orion is too large and too massive, if not for the boost phase (there are still questions about this), then for the landing phase. And the idea that we will be dumping an Orion in the ocean every mission; it is not a good way to bring astronauts home, especially from long missions.
If the goal was for six people, the Apollo CM had modifications for six and five crew; the five crew version was ready to fly on both Skylab and Apollo Soyuz. For a safe abort and for a safe earth landing, especially using parachutes, you want a capsule that is as small, compact, and light as possible for the crew size. That is not Orion.

There was a quick and easy way to have done an ESAS style architecture, and that was a capsule based on Apollo, moreso than just its shape. You could have easily retroengineered an Apollo using largely the same technology; upgrade the electronics, controls and displays, the computer and go to a solar array based power system, and the vehicle could have been ready to fly by now. The smaller vehicle might have been launnchable on a booster based directly on the Shuttle SRB, An Ares heavy lifter could have been based on the ET as its core. But engineers violated the first rule of good engineering - they wanted it better, and better is the enemy of good enough. Better costs a lot more money and a lot more time.

A more risky approach than retro-Apollo would have been to develop a spaceplane to replace Shuttle and make use os as much of the Shuttle experience base and technology as possible. Instead the choice was made to throw all that away and start on something that should not be as challenging; an Apollo on steroids (which now can no longer do as much as an Apollo CSM did).

The program has worked for 25 years to develop long duration modules and systems for ISS, and it would have made a lot of sense to use that architecture and those systems and that expertise in the new exploration systems, but once again, Constellation was going to throw that away and start over, with something better (in someone's opinion).

So while I appreciate Jeff's deep sighs, the real proof is in the status of the Exploration program today; which is why there was an Augustine Committee; still 8 to 10 years and $35 billion away from flying people in space.

I've been an aerodynamicist for the last 15 years. For the first 13 1/2 yrs I worked for a engineering/consulting firm. During that time I worked on projects for DoD, NASA, and commercial companies (big and small). In regards to aerodynamics, NASA does an excellent job. I also have confidence in the aerodynamic work of the DoD and some of the big commercial companies. For example, these agencies and companies have the brain power to enhance their CFD codes to better model the aerodynamics and heating a vehicle will experience. They bring this capability into the design loop, leading to a system which is better understood. Enhancing numerical computer codes (CFD, structures, optimization, etc.) is something the majority of commercial companies can not do. So, one needs to ask, if a company can't analyze something to this extent, what are the chances an "abnormality" goes unnoticed until the actual flight?

I also believe a significant number of commercial companies (excluding those that both design hardware and do research and development in numerical methods) do not have knowledge of the assumptions and limitation of these numerical methods. And yet, they rely on these methods. They must, to lower upfront costs. So, are they misusing these codes to begin with?

Of course, NASA is not perfect in regards to analysis. But what is the analysis success rate of commercial companies? In regards to failures, anywhere from small to large, are commercial companies as transparent as NASA?

I don't feel Jeff Hanley's email was a "Rant." More like frustrated.

Frank, you're correct that it is harder than it sounds...we agree on that. My objection is to the practice of dimissing or marginalizing a view, no matter the correctness, if it is coming from someone we don't like. The practice is not intellectually honest and that is why I object to this being characterized as a "rant". (I don't believe that you think that it's a rant.)

I agree with another poster that Mr. Hanley is frustrated but he is no more so than those of us that are tired of the politicians not funding U.S. manned space exploration. We've been waiting for 40 years and all the committees in the world apparently are not going to shorten the wait.

Dear Keith,

Can you please elaborate on your statement:

"Wrong. It is rocket scientists who managed, built, and have screwed up Ares 1 - so what does that say about their expertise in terms of being qualified to comment?"

I consider myself a rocket scientist. Explicitly, what do you mean by "screwed up"? In a way the term is relative. So, who would do better? How would you like to fix the problem? Without us, would a better system be built? Do you feel a non rocket scientists should manage this? And how far down the management chain should that go? Do you feel an astronaut would like to fly on a system not designed by a rocket scientist?

I'm acquainted with the unsuccessful outcome of a launch system designed by a commercial company who hired new college grads to design their system. Smart individuals but no real world experience. After the failure NASA was brought into the loop. One of the failure points was something NASA found obvious from the beginning. And, apparently, it isn't something thought in school. Is that the methodology you propose?

I'm not insulted since your statement doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I missed part of the conversation.

The US manned space exploration has been, and is being funded as we speak. Appropriately. Perhaps even OVER funded for the benefits gained to the taxpayer.

It is outrageous that the mock demonstration of the 'next NASA manned launch system' the Ares-1 costs in the excess of 30 billion dollars and a decade of time. It was (mis) sold as 'safe, simple, soon' Remember that? The taxpayers' patience is wearing thin.

That NASA's HSF program (including Mr. Hanley's underqualified efforts at managing one) can't do with what it is given is a limitation of NASA's management and decisions made, not that of self serving politicians (who are eagerly scrambling to pry $3b per year out of the taxpayer to aid their states)

You are certainly entitled to your opinion, however the issue is that we have NOT been funding U.S. manned exploration, we have been funding U.S. manned spaceflight, a very real distinction that you obviously don't understand.

The txpayer's patience is wearing thin? I sure wish those taxpayers had the same impatience with the other, ill conceived and executed expenditures of our beloved government. But then again I guess you could make the argument that the expenditures for NASA could be better spent in entitlements.

Yes we have enough money in the program to limp along in LEO and have for the past 40 years. Have we had manned exploration of space in that same period of time...I think not.

Keith,

I thought that by writing, "Because I no longer work in the field..." I made it pretty clear that I am, "...no longer work in the field". So why would you write, "You seem to think that you are the only one who understands rocket science."? That's simply discontinuous.

U. Texas just doesn't hand-out BSE's and MSE's in aerospace engineering. Part of that curriculum dealt with the very basics of structures, propulsion, controls, and dynamics. Does that make me a "rocket scientist"? I guess I could once claim that I was, but being out of the loop for 8 years has removed that title. But that absence from engineering has not removed my ability to occasionally spot a technically specious claim.

Such as, "Ares I is screwed-up". Broad claim, less supported by data after the DM-1 test, so how specifically is Ares I screwed-up? Knowing how in particular the rocket scientists screw it up, what would you do to fix it?

And why do you think that a re-engined, structurally enhanced (carrying a bigger payload after all) and aerodynamically altered Delta IV HLV isn't going to experience issues, isn't going to "ring", or experience to pogo effect, such as the S-IC and S-II stages of the Saturn V did, and quite violently too?

I don't think engineers are the only ones who can comment. I think all of us who have followed him would conclude that his time covering Space have educated him in ways not covered by Batten or Kaplan, as his comments reflected.

"In regards to aerodynamics, NASA does an excellent job"

Hmm. When they come up with a sidemount vehicle with a LAS and yet do not work the escape (e.g. unusual attitude) as it should be done (at least whatever was released to NasaWatch) this statement is odd to say the least. One could say though that aerodynamicists do not design the vehicle but it is another story.

"I also believe a significant number of commercial companies (excluding those that both design hardware and do research and development in numerical methods) do not have knowledge of the assumptions and limitation of these numerical methods. And yet, they rely on these methods. They must, to lower upfront costs. So, are they misusing these codes to begin with?"

Quite a statement here again. What leads you to believe this? Any experience with those guys? Did you participate in any NASA review of whatever they are designing? If so, are you saying that NASA is awarding contracts to companies that don't know what they are doing? What would that say about the NASA reviewers? There is no aerodynamicist reviewing the work? Is that it?

Very nice summary Mr. Gray. I cannot comment on Jeff Hanley's prior career but the idea of having flight directors heading a design program feels really odd to me, to say the least. It is pretty sad they did not stick to the original plan to fulfill the VSE as that planned by Sean O'Keefe. My belief is they ran a very big and dangerous gamble and it did not pan out... Too bad. As for a "spaceplane" I do not think it'd been feasible with the intended budget but one has to define "spaceplane". I can think of some concepts that might have worked for lunar return. I think the whole premises were full of contradictions hence the failure. Faster better cheaper of sorts...

This is getting tiresome. You did not even read what I wrote. You questioned whether non-rocket scientists had anything valuable to add to the discussion. You also seem to be responding to comments I never even made - please show me where I mentioned Delta IV rockets.

Yes, Ares-1 is indeed screwed up - they designed a rocket and then found out that it would shake itself apart and/or incapacitate the Orion crew as designed. They shrank Orion because Ares-1 cannot be made powerful enough to life its prime payload. And so on.

First, every rocket shakes. During Saturn's development, NASA didn't even know that pogo was going to become the near-program ender that it did. The Saturn V S-IC and S-II stages pogo'd so badly that NASA was worried about cavitation of the liquid fuels. In later Apollo flights, the S-II stage was shut-down early because of additional pogo issues inherent in that stage at high-g's. The pogo effects in Apollo 6 S-IC stage were vicious, alternating backward and forward at a rate of 5-6 Hz and producing stresses on the order of 10 g's for 10 seconds and failed some of the S-II and S-IVB fuel line bellows, which caused engines on those stages to fail.

The S-IC pogo effect was caused by the F-1's frequency of 5.5 Hz was very close to the vehicle's frequency of 5.25 Hz. According to NASA, over 125 engineers and 400 technicians spent over 31,000 man-hours, or 14.9 man-years, to solve the Saturn V's pogo issues. I don't know how much time NASA has spent on TO issues for Ares I, but I'm pretty sure it isn't close to 31,000 man-hours.

Mass was constrained during Program Apollo as well on the venerable Saturn V. Partly, that was because the F-1 program was having real developmental problems due to combustion instability. In January 1963, two F-1's blew-up on the test stand. It wasn't until November 1963 that those developing the F-1 achieved stable combustion. In the meantime, in July 13, 1963, the New York Times titled an article, "Lunar Program In Crisis". That should sound familiar to all of us.

But the F-1's issues had downstream effects on the development of the Apollo CSM in the early 60's. There was a back-and-forth between JSC and MSFC over the diameter of the third stage and its effect on the final CSM stack. Initially, the stack was to be 160", then von Braun changed diameter of the Saturn V 3rd stage to 154". At the time, the CM design was a cone with a diameter of 160" and did not have rounded edges between the shield and the upper-body. Faget and Johnson changed the CM design pretty much on the spot, smoothing-out the edges. Know why the LM shroud canted-in slightly? Because by the time MSFC settled on the S-IVB as the Saturn 3rd stage, which had a diameter of 250", it was too late to go back and change the CSM design from 154". All of this is in the public domain.

I could go on about other programmatic issues that cropped-up with Apollo, but I think the point has been made. Anyone who reads about the history of Apollo, backed-up I'm sure by those who've launched rockets, would realize that rocket design is not clean, that perhaps if the Apollo program had the transparency that Constellation does today we might never have walked on the Moon because Congress and the public would have $25B was being wasted. It's only now that Apollo looks like the seamless program that it most certainly wasn't. What it had that Constellation does not currently was an open spigot of money flowing and doing so early in development. Got a problem like pogo, blow 31,000 man-hours on solving it. Constellation does not enjoy that level of support.

I have never been told that the diameter of Orion was changed for mass reduction reasons. I have been told that the 5 m diameter was adopted so that Orion could fit on a Delta IV H, whose core as it turns out is 5 m in diameter, a decision that those on Orion disliked as it cost over a 25% volume loss.

Jim,

Listen to Keith. He is right on this. Ares I also suffers from a huge debris field generated by the range safety system. It is currently no-go by the 45th Space Wing because of this fatal design flaw.

The dampers needed to keep the crew alive are springs on both sides of the upperstage. They will certainly cause flutter at the world's record maximum dynamic pressure the Ares I must fly at to make up for its anemic performance. NASA has yet to do the aeroelastic analysis of the springs. But, modeling a point spring in an aeroelastic analysis is trivial. I am sure NASA has done the analysis, but they have the undesired answer secured under Sensitive But Unclassified.

The Delta Heavy is ready to fly Orion with the addition of an simple emergency detection system. I have looked at the Delta in detail and it even has a full complement of necessary transducers for an excellent emergency detection system. I am thinking two 1553 data busses in between the current Delta computer's in the upperstage and the Orion is the only hardware modifications needed to fully implement the current NASA man-rating requirements.

The higher performing Atlas Heavy detailed design is complete and ready to start manufacturing and testing tomorrow. In late 2003, Lockheed was ready to sign on the dotted line to produce a man-rated Atlas Heavy in 1 year and $1B. NASA decided to build the stick instead.

And if you bother to look at the Delta Users guide you will see it was designed to carry a heavy payload to LEO. There is a customer support number for the Delta you can call to confirm this is true.

"Quite a statement here again. What leads you to believe this? Any experience with those guys? Did you participate in any NASA review of whatever they are designing? If so, are you saying that NASA is awarding contracts to companies that don't know what they are doing? What would that say about the NASA reviewers? There is no aerodynamicist reviewing the work? Is that it?"

I am not referring to contracts awarded by NASA.