Dazed and Confused on "The Hill"

SpaceX is not quite on cash on delivery but if the milestone is not met Musk is not paid.

Thanks for posting this Keith... Things like this need to be nipped in the bud.

I wonder how many of "us" posted on that blog?

VR
RE327

I think the one who is confused is Mr. Fenn. No one had planned at the outset to put our future in Mr. Musk's hands.

Constellation, Orion and Ares received plenty of money and had the time and people to keep us in space with their capsule approach (remember "safe, simple, soon") and a flight date in 2009 or 2011. The guys with the inside track did not get the job done.

We are now very reliant on Mr. Musk because the sure thing did not pan out the way anyone expected.

Folks:

Yah, I threw my two bits in on that blog... after I stopped gagging!

You've heard it all from me before but I consider posting here preaching (mostly) to the converted. Nice to let off steam somewhere else. Keith is right, the comments said more than the article for sure.

tinker

Man what a load of crock, but reading the rebuttals at the bottom of that post was worth the consternation of reading the post itself. What a moron. "brought to you by United Launch Alliance, this message was approved by Senator Richard Shelby".

The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

a bunch of 20- and 30-somethings

I would note that the average age of the Apollo workforce was 26.

"Certainly not such a large investment of our tax dollars — high-risk to be sure."

Well that says it all, doesn't it. That is what it means to be a Republican in 2000. Paralyzed by fear.

Keith,

If you go to http://www.fenngroup.com/clients.html

you will see that not only does Peter Fenn work
for General Motors, but also for Lockheed Martin.

This was paid character assassination aimed at convincing Congressional Democrats (Fenn is a long-time Democratic media consultant) that Elon is not to be trusted.

Of course, like other Constellation whores before him, Fenn fails to disclose that a little untried company called Boeing is pursuing commercial crew also.

- Jim

Keith - in response to your comments on parachutes - I am a simple old software guy so I may be all confused trying to understand all this, and I'm not trying to take anything away from SpaceX or their accomplishments.

But is dropping a Dragon from a helicopter at 14K feet really the same thing as an Orion coming in from a sub-orbital test flight?

Once again, I am a software jock who has trouble getting his coke can on the correct trajectory to hit the trash can, but it would seem that just the dynamic loads involved here make this a case of comparing apples to oranges.

If you look at the candidates who have used Mr. Fenn's firm Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Obama; you really begin to understand how our country got into the mess it is in. Don't do any research. Just make things up to make your ill-informed point. The sad thing is our leaders read "The Hill". The quality of what will end up in a newspaper like this is too often just garbage. And even sadder yet is that our leaders hire people like Peter Fenn to do their bidding.

> But is dropping a Dragon from a helicopter at 14K feet really the same thing as an Orion coming in from a sub-orbital test flight?

Not necessarily, but since NASA also dropped a parachute test out a plane and it crashed too, it is a safe comparison to make...

"a bunch of 20- and 30-somethings

I would note that the average age of the Apollo workforce was 26."

This is a false argument.

Sure a lot of the NASA (government)working troups were 30 yrs old and under. Remember NASA was hiring every engineer they could get their hands on, most out of school, between 1961 when the moon landing program was initiated, and 1963, when hiring plateaued.

If you look at the workers, and especially the lead workers in the contractor communities, you will find almost all were 10 years or more older than the NASA people.

The NASA leaders had been working on rocket (von Braun and his team), missiles and aircraft R&D (Kraft, Gilruth, Low, etc) through WWII and the 1950s, all had 10 to 30 years serious experience, and consequently were almost all considerably older throughout the 1960s, not to mention lots of real DDT&E experience which most engineers today do not have an opportunity to participate in because there are not that many new start projects today. Most of the Apollo leaders reached retirement age as Apollo came to a close or in the early years of Shuttle, meaning they were mostly born in the 1920s and earlier, and meaning they were in their 40s and 50s through the Apollo program.

What you state as an obvious fact is actually a myth.

Really? It's just the same?

If you remember, the parachute failure (at least test 1) was due to the extraction chutes not working properly. If you don't remember, here's the story:

http://gizmodo.com/5039573/nasa-tests-orion-parachute-result-spectacular-failure

Is it a failure that the extraction system didn't work as expected? Yes. Does that mean that the chutes wouldn't have worked if the thing had been hauled up to 15000 ft and dropped by a helicopter? nope. Does that have any similarity to how the actual system would have worked under actual conditions? Nope. Neither tests simulated actual conditions.

@Rc:
"Not necessarily, but since NASA also dropped a parachute test out a plane and it crashed too, it is a safe comparison to make..."
Source for SpaceX's Dragon "crashing too" on drop test, please.

I hope someone puts a lawsuit up this guys ass. Someone needs to stop this kind of crap from being posted.

MaDer, I think you missunderstood RC's post. I think what he was saying, was that NASA had more than one failed drop test and that one of NASA's failed drop tests was out of a plane.

SpaceX's drop test was according to them, 100% successful.

Everyone's probably figured it out, but just for the record, the URL for Fenn Group is:

http://www.fenn-group.com/clients.html

(Note the hyphen...)

The NASA leaders had been working on rocket (von Braun and his team), missiles and aircraft R&D (Kraft, Gilruth, Low, etc) through WWII and the 1950s, all had 10 to 30 years serious experience, and consequently were almost all considerably older throughout the 1960s, not to mention lots of real DDT&E experience which most engineers today do not have an opportunity to participate in because there are not that many new start projects today. Most of the Apollo leaders reached retirement age as Apollo came to a close or in the early years of Shuttle, meaning they were mostly born in the 1920s and earlier, and meaning they were in their 40s and 50s through the Apollo program.

Really now, that is interesting as Von Braun became the head of Peenemunde at the tender age of 25 in 1937. Most of the rest of his team was that young as well. I will grant that by the 1960's they were older and they were a hell of a lot more experienced than any NASA group since in what they were doing.

I note also that Elon hired the guy from Boeing that led the Delta IV development program to run the Falcon 9 development effort.

Smart move on his part.

I used to get this crap when I was young and in the business. By the time I was 26 I had fourteen years worth of practical experience building electronics hardware (got my ham license when I was 12), and had worked in the industry for 8 years. I ran entire development teams and company divisions by that time. Experience can be gained by many paths and just because you are young, does not mean that you don't know what you are doing.

The vast majority of the working engineers as you admit fall into that age group. I have been privileged to work with many of them as they are in their 60's and 70's now.

The point of this article is that unless you provide challenges for these young engineers, and not just ten years worth of paperwork to get one piece of hardware flown, you are going to lose the best and the brightest of them. After the demise of the Space Exploration Initiative I swore that I would never work for NASA as did many of my generation. Looks like the trend is continuing.

Your points are well taken.

von Braun, in 1937, at age 25, and as I recall he got his PhD just about this time, did not start out by building Saturn V's. Not even V-2s. He got a lot of OJT that, by the time of the first Saturn V launch, gave him 30 years of experience, which made him pretty indispensible. Once development of Saturn was done he was expendable because he'd helped to train many others, and NASA promoted him up and out.

In human space, the last significant development efforts in the US were Shuttle (1971-81), Spacehab (1989-92)-and most of Spacehab was an internal outfitting job, ISS (1984-1992), Mir (1993-1996) also an outfitting job and not entire vehicle development, and X-38 (1998-2003).

Of the NASA named leaders for Constellation, virtually none had any experience in any of those DDT&E efforts. In several instances they were naming SES, GS-15 and GS-14 managers who were not old enough to have participated in those DDT&E efforts, or were not in the right place to have had virtually any relevant experience.

I think it is very appropriate to bring in people of any age to learn how to do the job, but you do not put them into the leadership when they have none of the appropriate technical experience.

That is precisely what led to the situation we are in today.

Even on Shuttle, there was a long list of Program Managers who had come out of operations. They were not placed in charge of DDT&E. They came in, starting with Glynn Lunney, after the first vehicles had been designed, were built and were flying.

The Falcon 9 parachutes did not work perfectly the first time. They did not open and the first stage was lost.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/rockets/spacex-falcon9-first-flight

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2010/06/falcon-9-nails.html

> "I would note that the average age of the Apollo workforce was 26."
> This is a false argument.

What argument? He just said the Apollo workforce was in their 20s.

Pete Fenn is the one who made the argument. And Dennis Wingo provided a counter example.

Unfortunately the history lesson you typed up is irrelevant.

> The Falcon 9 parachutes did not work perfectly the first time.

JohnK, that is irrelevant for more than one reason. Pick one: we're talking about capsule tests here, we're not talking about first stage recovery here, and they don't know if it had anything to do with the parachutes.

Of the NASA named leaders for Constellation, virtually none had any experience in any of those DDT&E efforts. In several instances they were naming SES, GS-15 and GS-14 managers who were not old enough to have participated in those DDT&E efforts, or were not in the right place to have had virtually any relevant experience.

I am quite well aware of the inadequacies of the NASA management at MSFC to undertake the Constellation development effort. I also know that a dedicated contingent of retired Apollo era engineers offered their help and support though they were in their late 60's and 70's now. NASA management at NASA headquarters ignored them and their input and they were basically pushed aside when they questioned the more questionable decisions radiating from Washington.

However, NASA's workforce is not the subject of this thread, the subject that I was addressing is in the first paragraph above...

The New York Times describes a bunch of 20- and 30-somethings who are launching rockets while soaking up $1.6 billion from NASA.

These 20 and 30 somethings are from SpaceX, not NASA.

I don't fault the working engineers at MSFC for what happened. They were handed a bag of crap and told to find the pony in it.

I fault the experienced adult at NASA headquarters that was himself in over his head who picked a technically complex and financially unsustainable architecture.

If SpaceX had wasted the entire $1.6 billion rather than succeeding in launching the equivalent of the Saturn 1, it would have been less of an affront to the national pocketbook than the program of record.

http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

I was referring to the capsule drop test that SpaceX did. It was an excellent drop. What you are referring to is their attemp to recover the F9 first stage. First stage recovery and eventual reuse will be something that SpaceX will be working on.

"I also know that a dedicated contingent of retired Apollo era engineers offered their help and support though they were in their late 60's and 70's now."

There were quite a few people with successful experience, in their 50s and 60s, and still with NASA who were also ignored and shunted aside.

There were quite a few people with successful experience, in their 50s and 60s, and still with NASA who were also ignored and shunted aside.

Or if they were SES's and complained, they were fired.

This was because this was (and seems it will still be is) jobs program, not sane space program. Constellation case shows how well it ends.

Even if SpaceX was nothing but 20-30 somethings, so what?

Whatever they actually consist of seems to work pretty well; they've built and launched two rockets to orbit.

It has been 29 years since NASA did that with the Shuttle in 1981.

I don't want to seem like I'm insulting NASA; damn near every single thing NASA does other than rocket-making is utterly badass on a legendary scale.

But to see NASA as the gold standard rocket-maker is like thinking of Boeing as the go-to guys for spreadsheet software.