Gordon Responds to Hubbard et al

Chairman Gordon noted in his letter: “This conclusion was not reached in haste and was based upon several months of hearing from expert witnesses. Moreover, the Committee received a letter (attached) earlier this year by the Aerospace Corporation in response to questions submitted by Subcommittee Chairwoman Gabrielle Giffords that raised concerns about the assumptions made to justify the president’s budget request.”

Below is an excerpt of the above linked letter from Aerospace to Subcommittee Chairwoman Giffords:

“This is the guidance the Committee gave to Aerospace: $3 billion would be carried in our affordability analyses as NASA’s portion of the development. Aerospace did not independently develop the basis for the $3B initial estimate. The Committee did not ask Aerospace to independently verify the $3 billion figure. In fact, no verification could be performed given the Committee’s statement that this dollar amount was simply NASA’s portion of the total cost. Our role, as explicitly outlined in our task statement, was in some cases to develop our own estimates for certain elements where we were asked and qualified to perform the estimate, and in other cases to accept numbers from the Committee itself and/or the NASA analysis team. No traditional independent cost or independent schedule estimates were performed. Aerospace was not privy to all of the background material on the cost of commercially provided services which was provided in closed fact finding sessions to the Committee. In each case, we would seek to understand what was included in the estimate to assure there were no gross omissions or “double booking” and to uniformly apply historical cost growth factors to the NASA portions.”

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“Direction to use the $3 billion figure came to us from Dr. Crawley, who was the lead for the working group; however, the figure was consistently reiterated by all members of the working group when Aerospace interacted with them during the course of our analyses. ….. [End Excerpt]

Okay, Anne. What is your point?

This is a bitchy way of saying they won't stop NASA welfare.

I hope people aren't gullible enough to take Congress seriously. The only hearings Bart and Giffords held were with people who already supported the house welfare agenda. Giffords even said she had her mind made before the Augustine report.

"I believe the Committee's judgment was the correct one" -- and the Noble Laureates still disagree, Bart.

His letter changes nothing.

My point?

I believe Aerospace Corporation explains quite clearly how they were hamstrung (my word) while charged with giving technical analysis to the Augustine Committee -- given the limited time they had to respond, as well as not being participants to closed fact finding sessions, as well as being directed by the Augustine Committee liaison to Aerospace to accept budget numbers provided by the Augustine Committee and/or the NASA analysis team.

Did I misunderstand their answers to the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics Committee on Science and Technology?

Quite an impressive set of red herrings, Chairman Gordon.

You're calling into question the validity of a cost estimate created by a panel of experts.

Does somebody have reason to believe they are wrong?

What alternative source is there? Another expert panel? You?

Forgive me RC for having the audacity to wonder how sound decisions can be made if they are based on questionable data.

I have never claimed to be an expert.

How can anyone make a point if they're shouted down by others' appeal to authority? They aren't infallible or biased? When did that miracle happen?

Gordon said
"it is premature to make NASA's human space flight plans dependent on the achievement of the significantly more difficult objective of developing commercial crew systems by a date-certain and for an assumed cost."

Since the Constellation program was nowhere near developing a government-led crew launch system by a date-certain and for an assumed cost, I contend that the money diverted to non-commercial crew launch in the current budget is money wasted. The new effort is just as unlikely as the last one to yield an affordable LEO crew launch system (non-recurring and recurring costs). If on time, it will be too expensive; if affordable, it will take too long. The only paths I see with any hope of hitting both goals are F9/Dragon and a hypothetical Orion Lite/ULA. Despite their uncertainties, both are years ahead of the government.

Anne,

I have to laugh at the notion of Aerospace being hamstrung re commercial crew, as if that was in their job jar at all. But when NASA had Aerospace look at human rating of Delta IV, NASA had to "direct" Aerospace three times before Aerospace would come up with the answer NASA wanted.

Here's the deal. The Aerospace Corporation was given a role to play in supporting the committee. They were not put in charge of the entire Augustine process. And of course there was limited time... Augustine was under a deadline.

The fact is that the Augustine Committee, with Aerospace support, *did* apply the "historical cost growth factors" to the NASA portion of the total commercial crew development investment for three providers, even though those were fixed prices.

The companies had provided proprietary data, which totalled perhaps $2.5B. Adding NASA's costs, plus the same 50% factor everything else got, producing under $5B, which was rounded up to $5B.

Aerospace compared that, along with lots of other exploration puzzle pieces, in a variety of combinations to see what produced what results when.

And it turned out that *no* realistic budget scenario allowed for Ares 1 to be ready before ISS was going to be retired. Nor did Constellation produce better exploration results.

The level of insight Aerospace had to specific commercial crew proposals was completely irrelevant to this result, because the pure Constellation options didn't include commercial crew. They simply didn't work.

So Augustine had all the other options include the same commercial option, since commercial crew was always better than a government-only approach.

Gordon is simply throwing this letter at the wall (along with a lot of other faulty arguments) hoping it will stick.

It's a poor defense of an indefensible piece of legislation. The House should simply pass the Senate bill, possibly with a few improvements.

- Jim

that cunning dog Gorden is saying to the planetary society,we could trade in the science budget for commercial crew,that would cuase the folks at JPL to go grab a brew.
we will go with DIRECT with a long GAP, leaving the human space flight program to stew.

And it turned out that *no* realistic budget scenario allowed for Ares 1 to be ready before ISS was going to be retired. Nor did Constellation produce better exploration results.

And no other architecture scenario you can think of or that was presented to the committee would have fit under that budget cap and preserved the Vision?

I have posted elswere here that the full house and/or the speaker would gag on this house bill if it hit the floor, and gag they did.

I have suggested to ULA that future astronomy telescopes that utilizes Liquid helium or Liquid Nitrogen could be a part of a fuel depot/tanker mission, and indeed the senate nasa bill has a provision for future space telescopes to be servicable.

Utilizing Liquid Argon using existing upper stages such as Centaur, with NEXT/FAST as the engine/power source might save money in the long run.
over on lori Garver,s facebook page under discussions I filled up a Centuar (single tank) with LXe but came up with a hugh heavy wieght monster, that would need a Ares super heavy to loft :):):) not a good idea

http://www.facebook.com/LoriGarver?ref=ts#!/topic.php?uid=109555615732469&topic=186

> Forgive me RC for having the audacity to wonder how sound decisions can be made if they are based on questionable data.

Why is the data questionable? Guilty until proven innocent?

A bunch of experts talked to another bunch of experts and guessed how much money would be needed to do something that has never been done before. That's questionable?

Questionable like a fox. Constellation wasted more money and hasn't produced anything useful and isn't half done yet. You want to talk about questionable data?

Anne:

Very good point about the $3 billion. It appears to have been an attempt to kill NASA's manned space exploration program by unnecessarily asking for much more money at a time of budget cutbacks.

In light of the economy, the responsible action would have been to freeze or slightly reduce the NASA budget, but allowing it to increase when the economy improves. The Constellatoin timelines should have been adjusted accordingly.

Anne,

I'm certainly not aware of 1/10 of the architectures that were supplied to the Augustine Committee.

But I can imagine several architectures which employ early small depots and/or buy-it-only-as-you-need-it all-liquid moderately heavy lift and enable much earlier, more frequent, and more affordable & sustainable human presence all over cislunar space, including earth-crossing asteroids. All for the FY2011 runout (or less).

The Vision was NOT the same as ESAS. Despite many stupid things said by the President and (sadly) Administrator Bolden, the potential is there for NASA to still honor the Vision by using the Obama 2011 budget to explore.

But just as I can't seem to convince Republicans to support privatization when a Democratic president proposes it, I can't convince Democrats to give credit to a Republican president's idea, however badly implemented it was by his staff.

The sad thing is I will really miss Chairman Gordon. The first paragraph of his letter is right, but too diplomatic: you can't give NASA too many rice bowls to feed with a limited budget.
Unfortunately, the bill developed in the name of Chairwoman Giffords tries to make NASA still do Constellation with even less money than Augustine said couldn't work.

Sigh.

- Jim

The Vision was NOT the same as ESAS. Despite many stupid things said by the President and (sadly) Administrator Bolden, the potential is there for NASA to still honor the Vision by using the Obama 2011 budget to explore.

You are correct. The architect that was chosen would not have implemented the VSE, which was (is): Return to the Moon and learn to use it’s resources to build a sustainable infrastructure to Mars and beyond.

You are incorrect that the new budget will honor that vision.

But just as I can't seem to convince Republicans to support privatization when a Democratic president proposes it, I can't convince Democrats to give credit to a Republican president's idea, however badly implemented it was by his staff.

My opposition has absolutely nothing to do with a D or an R behind a president's name. The VSE was the best thing to come down the pike and it still is. The proposed Obama 2011 budget is not.

Anne,

I did not say that the FY2011 budget honors the vision. In fact, the White House has, clumsily or intentionally depending on one's point of view, gone out of its way to appear to reject the Vision.

I said that NASA could use the FY2011 budget to honor the Vision. And they still can.

- Jim

As has been said before, "Could of, would of, should of."

What makes you think they will honor it now, when they did all they could to erase it from the mission planning whiteboard?

What makes you think the vision is anything other than science fiction? Congress has not and will not pay for it.