Pre-Preview Of NASA's Latest Notional Exploration Architecture
Keith’s note: If you have been following NASA’s exploration plans for more than 10 minutes you know that there have been a lot of pivots along the way. The chart above (minus my snarky large yellow arrows and captions) is floating around NASA and puts the past few decades of pivots, false starts, and detours in NASA’s exploration plans into context. Notice that even though the whole focus right now is on the Moon the chart only shows Mars. It is rather obvious to see that we spent half a century between the Apollo era of actual exploration on another world and today talking about what to do next. While the immensely capable ISS has orbited Earth for 20 years it just goes in circles. It does not go anywhere. Nor have we. Only robots get to do the exploring. When is this going to change? Larger version (image) (pdf).
Today there is a briefing of the National Space Council’s Users Advisory Group (UAG) on the current state of NASA’s Artemis 2024 landing architecture. The UAG name is somewhat misleading in terms of its name since there are few actual “users” of space on the panel. It is mostly big aerospace company representatives (sellers), political appointees with little space expertise, aerospace trade group representatives and lobbyists, and retired NASA employees who now consult. But I digress.
The briefing will be held in the 9th floor conference room near the NASA Administrator’s suite. The event runs from 9:30 am until 4:00 pm. The briefing will be chaired by HEOMD AA Doug Loverro and run by Deputy AA Ken Bowersox and Acting Deputy AA for Human Lunar Exploration Programs Marshall Smith. FWIW at the 24 July 2019 UAG meeting Marshall Smith told participants that NASA is going to “turn and burn” from the Moon to Mars, so keep that in mind. In addition, Jake Bleacher, Doug Craig, Dan Matizak, Michelle Rucker, and Pat Troutman will provide background information to UAG attendees.
At the last UAG meeting one of the actions was to form a UAG Task Force to look into NASA’s plans to meet the Vice President’s direction to dial up NASA’s original plans and land people on the Moon by 2024 – and how that meshes with the White House’s three previously issued Space Policy Directives. The UAG Task Force members are Eileen Collins, Pam Melroy, Mary Lynne Dittmar, Les Lyles, and David Wolf.
After this briefing the Task Force will go off and do up an assessment – of NASA’s assessment – and eventually toss it back to the full UAG and eventually to the National Space Council itself. And then something else will happen I suppose where everyone lays their hands on it for group approval.
This briefing will be “pre-decisional” and “notional”, of course. As such, whatever detail emerges please remember that your mileage may vary, contents may settle, etc.
… and past performance is no guarantee of future results.
This is a NASA picture ?
What does “First Lunar Outpost” (back in the ’90s) refer to ?? Something planned (but not achieved ?), but then lots of things have been planned …
Yes as I mention in the write up – I marked it up but there are links below to the original.
I’m not sure about the lunar outpost thing, but I recognize most of the circles in that figure. Every one I recognize was a paper study or report on what NASA should do and, at a high level, how they should do it. None of them happened. So I assume the “First Lunar Outpost” was another paper study which went nowhere, just one I didn’t hear about.
It was finished in 1992 just before President Bush left office so there wasn’t much time for it to be noticed before the reset button was hit. It noted for the Comet HLV, basically a Saturn V on steroids…
Bureaucrats do love charts and reports. Meanwhile, down Texas way, the roar of Raptors are heard almost nightly at McGregor while Elon Musk just announced they solved their tank building issues and SpaceX is moving ahead with the construction of Starship SN1. Judging from twitter videos the Boca Chica area is a beehive of activity with lots of sand, but no sand charts or view graphs in sight.?
I’m not exactly sure why anyone is surprised at this. In fact, NASA’s success in so many arenas is often inexplicable, given:
1. Wide disagreement over policy is part and parcel of democracy, which is messy at best;
2. NASA is subject to changing direction from several sources of leadership (I nearly wrote ‘whims’, possibly more accurate);
3. NASA necessarily responds to many sources: Congress, Administration, public opinion, in decreasing order.
And there’s more, of course. Policy has historically been all over the map; much of this wildly gyrating direction is properly at the feet of those outside NASA.
SX’ success is owed in large part to the single-minded vision of one person. Not possible for NASA.
Nicely put. I get really tired of folks on here who want to blame those working at or supporting NASA, when the real blame need to be focused on Capitol Hill.
In addition to Congress, the administration and the public, NASA also has to respond to the views of their major contractors. They certainly shouldn’t be allowed to run the show, but their opinions do matter. NASA selects proposals; it doesn’t write them. So when they solicit proposals, they have to consider whether or not the competent contractors will be interested in bidding on them. Asking for a company to put in some of its own money is fine, but if NASA required them to put in too much, they might not get anyone submitting proposals. Similarly, there has to be some match between what NASA is asking for and what various companies are capable of doing.
Agreed. And I would add that the opinions and views of contractors, properly weighted, are indeed a proper input. And why not? Great ideas are great ideas no matter the source.
Architects like me are often criticized by contractors, and, sometimes clients. The thinking is that we sit in cloistered offices dreaming up unbuildable projects. To some extent we deserve this criticism.
I’ve been a professional designer more than 30 years. I have come to deeply respect the abilities of some contractors, many of whom bring surprising finesse needed practicality to projects. Treated like a team member the input is invaluable.
However, expecting even the most capable company to initiate a new concept is a recipe for disaster. And it’s mostly because few project participants are fully informed. Ignorance regarding client’s motivation and goals severely limits the ability to contribute.
This of course is where any sort of parallel between private industry and public efforts completely separate.
That’s one of the many things I find frustrating about plans for space missions. The scientists are the right people to ask about the mission’s goals, and the engineers are the right people to ask about how to make it happen. But I think they really do need to talk to each other and be realistic. Just last week, I heard a prominent planetary scientist say we shouldn’t think that way. Dream up whatever you want, don’t limit yourselves, and then just hand off the goals and requirements to the engineers and managers, and say “make it so.” She even implied that a scientist that does anything less was incompetent or unprofessional. I disagree.
Yes, the scientists (customers) should push hard for what they want. But they also need to consider reality, and that means some things just aren’t possible or just aren’t practical. Personally, I try to learn as much as I can about the engineering and the technical details. That lets me push very hard on issues where there is some flexibility and not waste everyone’s time and effort on things that just aren’t possible. (And, I’ve found that this also helps get the engineers on your side; they are more willing to listen to people who “do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.”)
Dr. F: I am certain you didn’t intend to elevate scientists to the top of the heap!
Many point to Steve Jobs’ POV on issues related to mission direction and creativity; he focused on collaboration amongst relevant professionals.
In an ideally functioning public sector, wouldn’t the ‘people’ be responsible for project initiation? In close proximity to the experimental scientists, and the engineers?
I definitely didn’t mean to imply scientists are (or should be) at the top of the heap. I was trying to say that a sizable number of scientists do think that way. I don’t like that, but that’s what I see.
Ideally, I’d say science should be driven by the public. People who just like to know cool things about how the universe works, but aren’t too interested in getting into the gory details. If they care enough, they would pay (either through government funding or private donations) for people who do deal with the gory details to make those cool discoveries. And then someone has to make it happen and deal with all the annoying, technical problems.
Scientists, in my mind, are somewhere in the middle of that. I was simply saying that they (well, we, since I’m one) can’t become divorced from the details of how the job actually gets done. It would really be great if a Cassini-like spacecraft could be launched on a SLS in 2030 and get into orbit around Neptune before 2040. But that isn’t going to happen. It’s not possible for a number of reasons. I guess I’m just frustrated by scientists who say, “well, that’s an engineering detail, let’s ask them to find a way to do it.” To expand on the Kipling quote, “They say to mountains, “Be ye removed” They say to the lesser floods “Be dry.”” I just do not hold with that view.
It would be great to put a $ value on all this to show just how much waste has occurred. To show what might have happened if we had stayed any course to fruition. To show what a dedicated, sustainable and long-term vision and plan could have looked like. And lastly to show how many people have become despondent with the waxing and waning and how many youth were similarity dissuaded from becoming scientists. Simple so much waste and lost time, things no one ever gets back.
Sadly, your comment remind me that, once again, I find myself sliding ever closer to Dr. Matula’s governmental efficiency sensibilities.
The billion dollar PowerPoint slide.
“Billion”? You mean “billion per pixel” …
I was saying the slide itself cost a billion dollars to produce. Yeah, I’m sure what that slide represents is an astronomical cost per pixel.
It’s not quite that bad. I count twenty studies or reports on that slide. At a guess, each one pissed away less than a few tens of millions. So we’re not talking about billions in directly wasted money. Of course, that doesn’t include the costs of engineers, scientists and NASA centers going off and trying to see how they could implement those plans, and then starting over when the next plan comes out. But looking at the overall NASA budget, I think we’re “only” talking about a few billion.
When I was younger and more naive I remember the Ride Commission (“Leadership and America’s Future in Space”) coming out and thinking “they are finally getting back on track”. Now it’s 35 years later and the wheels are still spinning in the mud.
Let’s not go there. The left three or four circles on that slide are things I read in high school and some of the main reasons I went into my profession. I really don’t want to think about where the years went or if I’ll even be alive when anything along those lines actually happens. And I get to deal with scientists who just don’t understand why many “space cadets” and science fiction fans actually hate NASA. (And, yes, I know that’s at least half-way unfair.)
With the previous effort (Artemis) I was hoping to see what a lunar lander will look like (no, not some promotional artwork we have been seeing for 40+ years).
Although the Commission of the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry (2001-2002) was not a NASA study it did have an entire chapter addressing NASA’s problems and argued for NASA to work closer with commercial space firms. It also argued for the need to create a clear Space Imperative for NASA. Sadly the report came out just before the Columbia Accident and was quickly forgotten as a result.
https://history.nasa.gov/Ae…
Incidentally the report has some great historical figures on the cost of space launch using different launch systems and of trends in space launch activities