Bolden on Risk: Quit Treating American Citizens "As if They are Children"

Great idea !

In order to implement it Charlie Bolden and NASA have to overcome their existing bureaucratic inertia. This is something that over the last several years NASA has shown itself unable to do.

Bolden's committee says we need to "explain not only the level and range of risk associated with space exploration, but also the importance of the work, the reward that justifies the risk, and the acceptance of that risk by willing and knowledgeable astronauts."

Nice idea, but I don't think that that is possible.

If people don't understand why spaceflight is important, and that risk is worth taking, there is literally no possible way to "explain" it.

Dave Os "Bolden's committee"

A note: This is not a "Bolden committee"... this is a standing committee of Apollo 1 vintage with a congressional mandate to write this report each year.

In fact in the report they not-so-subtly hawk the Ares Project Of Record safety kool-aid at the expense of the competition... even though the word is that that ship has already launched and "Ares the POR" is toast.

There might be something named Ares but it won't be the POR.

I disagree.

I think there are ways of explaining it so that you can reach a substantial fraction of the people who count, and that you can explain it to them in a meaningful manner, and that they will come to understand its significance.

But, at least for human space, NASA's emphasis has been on the newsworthiness, the spectacle, and the heroic efforts of the astronauts.

Most missions these days are not news worthy. What is news worthy is when something new, different, out of the ordinary occurs. If you try to broadcast every successful mission, that is just as bad as not broadcasting at all; the message and story gets lost in the noise.

It bewilders me why NASA continues to spend lots of money to send its news teams to Baikonor and Kazakhstan for every Soyuz launch and return. First, few people are watching any live coverage. Second, if the Russians are partners, why can't we depend upon them for the coverage and video images?
That alone would serve to illustrate the international nature of the endeavor.

Second, the true spectacle is in the great photography that comes back nearly continuously.

It is not even a mission-by-mission thing anymore. NASA cannot get beyond dividing everything up by mission.

NASA would do well to spend more time and effort cataloging the imagery, particularly video which is now much easier to use, and make it available - not by mission - but by subject; and link these in such a way they make sense for communications and educational purposes.

Third, while most astronauts are generally competent and decent people to work with, the 'heroic' age of space flight ended about 40 years ago with a few exceptions such as the first flight of the Shuttle. For several years its been possible for anyone with money to travel in space.

So if you accept that it is possible to reach the people and to tell the story, why isn't NASA doing it?

Success rests in the people managing the telling of the story.

Engineers, scientists, astronauts are not the best people to lead the story telling effort. Even news reporters, who lead most of the NASA PAO functions, should have only a limited role.

Media specialists, educators, marketers, and people who have been successful story-telling whether through books, articles, game development, movies; these are the sort of people NASA needs to lead this effort.

But NASA, being an astronaut, engineer and scientist led bureaucracy, does not believe it is worthwhile. NASA has virtually no one with this sort of experience in their management ranks. They give a lot of lip service to doing it but then revert to their old ways. Tom Hanks offered to help but the NASA astronauts said they did not want any 'fake astronauts' involved. Bob Rogers was hired as a consultant to Constellation but then they put managerial layers in charge of his work who did not have the requisite background, education or experience.

NASA had it easy the last 30 year with Shuttle, since every mission provided opportunity for spectacle. And it had a great opportunity with the rapid expanse of communications media.

NASA failed to use these opportunities properly.

In another year it will be far more difficult since ISS is unseen and invisible in the current NASA culture, and Constellation, if it survives, aside from one or two first missions, is a decade or more away from being of interest to the public.

I would suggest looking at the average American today. He or shee wants absolutely no risk in their lives. They want the Government o bail them out when they buy a $200,000 house while making minimum wage. Rather than save, they want Social Security to provide a retirement for them. They want all drugs to have no side-effects, and they are willing to sue to get their way. They also sue McDonald's and others because they eat too much high calorie food and become obese.

And anyone who has ever had to deal with "helicopter parents" knows that they will NEVER allow any risk whatsoever into their delicate little child's life.

I think that, if we were talking about earlier generations where risk was seen as inevitable and that there were reasonable levels when the gains were sufficient, we could so this. I have absolutely no confidence in the ability of Americans in 2010 to deal reasonably with the risks NASA faces on a deaily basis.

Yes, this is a great idea.

In order to implement it Bolden needs competent Directors and leaders at his Centers, which he does not have. Implementing this idea without fixing the fundamental problems in the Agency is accepting more risk than he may realize.

Can someone tell me what making U. S citizens as partners in what NASA does will look like?

Yes, they pay the bill. I can see them as 'customers'. I can even envision including them in what we do, i.e. outreach and educational activities.

But exactly what does 'partnering with the public' mean here?

Partners is a business context are involved in decision making, briefings, sharing of the work, etc.

Someone?

Griffin's idea to emphasize the launcher was made with the "best of intentions". However we all know that "the road to hell is paved with the best intentions".

Its time to reconsider the entire Constellation program.

Americans will not accept loss of life from easily avoidable risks resulting from flawed human decision making! The very cause thus far for every American Astronaut death.

Emphasizing the launcher as the core requirement at the expense of all other requirements is clear evidence of flawed decision making!

Everything has been designed to emphasize the launcher (Ares I), and not the payload, which is entirely backwards to industry standard development practices!

Americans easily get this stuff, and are not children!

At the core, this is a classic case of the abandonment of the sound and proven "systems engineering practices" which made our county the leader in Aerospace.

Ares PDR Was Not As Smooth As NASA Says It Was
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2008/09/ares-pdr-was-not-as-smooth-as-nasa-says-it-was.html

Much of the Orion's Avionics Systems are derived from the Boeing 787.

"Part Apollo, Part Boeing 787"
http://www.technologyreview.com/business/17482/

NASA no longer has systems design expertise in-house, and therefore, decisions are not being taken with regard to stable requirements, and engineering considerations. Everything is focused on the launcher, not the payload!

History shows that "systems engineering" is what made the ICBM possible. It is the key ingredient in the accomplishment of the core objectives of reliability and availability.

The Apollo program was operated on systems engineering processes. Constellation is "one mans vision for NASA to dominate space, at all costs".

Both Ares and Orion clearly suffer from the lack of "systems engineering" practices. The current Orion baseline requirements are the product of the introduction of significant "late stage" requirements changes induced by flaws in the "stick" propulsion system.

Such decisions are "classic indicators" of a deeply flawed design process. The late stage changes ripple thru the entire design, crippling the systems integrity.

Constellation's process is most representative of the symbol with the snake eating its tail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros

Rather than to identify "reliability and availability" objectives as key anchors in a "systems engineering process", they became a casualty of the launcher focus (ARES I), with the Orion "probabilistic risk assessment" being rewritten, in order to "justify" jettisoning "obvious safety" to gain an overall weight savings.

Quote:

According to Connolly, the new approach “ recognizes redundancy as one of the options available to mitigate risks”, but challenges the notion that redundancy is “the correct or preferred solution for all risks”. We are used to specifying “two-fault tolerant systems” in our spacecraft"

Its all quite easy to explain to a typical U.S. citizen.

Now a failure in your cars engine electronic ignition system is less significant than in an Airliner, because "you can always pull off to the side of the road".

In an Aircraft, If the engines fail, its not as simple as with a car, unless the aircraft can glide to a safe landing, it will crash with catastrophic consequences. For this reason Airliners are equipped with redundant electronics to provide additional safety margin, making such failures highly unlikely.

Given that a Spacecraft operates in an environment entirely "hostile to life", many failure scenarios have catastrophic life threatening consequences for the crew. Therefore, utilizing the proven safety critical Avionics technology utilized in Airliners as a baseline, a rational balance has been maintained between safety and exploration.

INSTEAD WE HAVE THIS TO LOOK FORWARD TO:

Our brave American Astronauts made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, because we could not provide them with the proven safe technology used in Airliners, because the management at NASA did not utilize proven systems engineering practices, and instead chose "at its core" to focus on a flawed propulsion systems concept. They could not bring themselves to admit that they made a deeply flawed decision, and vigorously fought any attempts at an "open review of its approach", and reconsideration of its conclusions, with the result of the regrettable loss of the lives of these "True American Heroes".

NASA avoidable tragedies of record:

Apollo 1 HUMAN FLAW "poor quality / rushed design"

Challenger HUMAN FLAW "known catastrophic issue"

Columbia HUMAN FLAW "known issue threat assessment based on human judgment rather than testing"

All deaths of American Astronauts have been the result of flawed human decision making.

Acceptable loss would be the failure of a critical system for which there was no solution, hense the term "ACCEPTABLE RISK".

Exploration is a critical need of the human mind.

Choosing between safety, and not going at all, humans choose to take the risk and take the journey.

Apollo accepted risks in the balance of loss of life and "mission failure". In many cases, a
solution was unobtainable (unobtanium) given the mission constraint issues of weight / payload.

Americans will likewise accept the same risks which come as a result of "unobtanium".

Not mentioned on NASA Watch are two lines in the linked summary:

"Some of the panel's critical safety findings in the 18-page report include:

- No manufacturer of Commercial Orbital Transportation Services is currently qualified for human-rating requirements, despite some claims and beliefs to the contrary.

-To abandon the program of record as a baseline for an alternative without demonstrated capability or proven superiority is unwise and probably not cost-effective."

This would seem to be a topic of discussion.

I agree that NASA has wasted educational and advertising opportunities during the shuttle era, but I don't think hope sinks with the retirement of the shuttle. While the shuttle launches are certainly newsworthy spectacles, the key will be incorporating all of NASA's unmanned missions into the picture -- regardless of the human spaceflight path.

This focus has been the Hubble for a very long time. This spring IMAX is releasing a new 3D movie on the Hubble, narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, which I'm sure will resonate with lots of folks. Moonman (above) mentioned NASA refusing Tom Hank's offer -- go back an ask again! What about the Europa Jupiter System Mission, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (the Sun in HD), the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites? NASA can capitalize on all this material, noting the media backfire of LRO/LCROSS.

Reinvention is possible, even with astronaut/scientist/engineer-led bureaucracy.

... and wtbard quoted the ASAP report:

"- No manufacturer of Commercial Orbital Transportation Services is currently qualified for human-rating requirements, despite some claims and beliefs to the contrary."

Hmmm... would these "requirements" be the same "requirements" that NASA rewrites on the fly as often as a change of underwear? The "requirements" carefully designed to keep other launchers from being considered and thus rigidlt enforced until a NASA system fails to meet the "requirements" and the "requirements" are promptly downgraded or even ignored?

You mean those "requirements"

"-To abandon the program of record as a baseline for an alternative without demonstrated capability or proven superiority is unwise and probably not cost-effective."

Pure [DELETED]. It carefully ignores the simple fact that the POR has proved under review to be an unaffordable mess of a design... and this judgment came from a review panel with the pro-POR thumbs weighing so heavily on the scale that the balance arm was permanently bent.

And even with all that the POR lost. The ASAP should have gotten up to date before regurgitating the kool-aid.

Thus "demonstrated capability or proven superiority" is a given for any of the alternate designs... seeing as the POR can't fly as designed, couldn't be paid for even if it could somehow fly and that paying to continue development of the POR until it could actually fly would literally drain NASA's budget and leave us with a launcher we couldn't afford to launch.

If only we were children…children have grand dreams, believe in magic, and expect fairness. No, I would say we are more like adolescents, self-absorbed and unable to envision a future beyond the next 5 minutes. And being governed by people needing a return within the next 2 years and unable to take a short-term hit for a long-term gain only amplifies our adolescent behavior.
I still believe in the “American Way”, but these are difficult times for a system that requires an intelligent and educated base who values the long term common good over short term individual benefit, and the ability to have intelligent debate, confident that we all ultimately share a common goal of what’s best for the whole, without resorting to vilifying those with whom we disagree.
The state of our Space Program is a reflection of our culture.

The problem isn't just that people are risk averse. The bigger issue is that people have become unable to evaluate risk (and reward). It also ties in with personal responsibility. People will take a "risk" and assume that if it goes wrong someone else will be responsible for it instead of themselves.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans are indeed "children" when it comes to evaluating complex issues such as this. Sad indeed.