Rocketforge

I caught the tail end of O’Keefe’s presentation today and I must say that I’m not very impressed. The answer to just about every “But what about my group’s pet project” question was “Don’t worry, nothing is changing.” In this CNN article O’Keefe says:

O’Keefe said the agency was considering the panel’s recommendations.

“The approach we’ve taken is to look at those recommendations and to see how and if they will be implemented,” he said. “A lot of information must be gathered to make informed judgments.”

I was hoping for someone to sit above NASA and say must. To not give that bureaucracy any chance to equivocate on what it had to do. As it stands I’m not seeing any suggestions that the Commission’s recommendations are anything more than toilet paper.

Unless someone can show me some real progress and fast my opinion on this entire vision thing is going to go south very quickly.

Update: From reliable sources there is a suggestion that there has been no legislation written yet that is a result of the Aldridge Commission report since they are still testifying to Congress about it. At the same time this legislation does contain some information that corresponds to what is in the report. Was this written in anticipation of the report? I’ll try and find some clarification and let you know.

Thanks to Jim Burk of ProjectConstellation.US I found the newly submitted NASA Authorization bill that was mentioned last week.

My first impressions are that something seems to have been lost in the translation. For example, Section 305, “COMMERCIALIZATION PLAN WITH OFFICE OF SPACE COMMERCIALIZATION.” says this:

(a) IN GENERAL- The Administrator and the Director of the Office of Space Commercialization of the Department of Commerce shall develop a commercialization plan to support the human missions to the Moon and Mars. The plan shall identify opportunities for the private sector to participate in the future missions, including opportunities for partnership between NASA and the private sector in the development of technologies and services.

(b) REPORT- Within 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator and the Director jointly shall submit a copy of the plan to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House of Representatives Committee on Science.

(c) Report To Be Combined With Section 306 Report- The Administrator shall combine the plan required under subsection (b) with the report required by section 306 and submit them as a single document.

This section reads to me as though the plan is to let the OSC write the recommendation for ‘partnerships’ when the Aldridge Report seemed to recommend that the private sector actually run the entire mission.

Section 306 even goes on to ask NASA to evaluate private industry:

(a) IN GENERAL- The Administrator and the Director of the Office of Space Commercialization of the Department of Commerce shall develop an assessment of the capability of the private sector, including small businesses, to support the manned missions to the Moon and Mars. The assessment shall include the ability of private industry to support–

(1) the definition of basic program requirements;

(2) an assessment of current technologies and shortfalls; and

(3) the production and manufacturing capabilities necessary to implement the manned missions to the Moon and Mars.

(b) REPORT- Within 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator and the Director jointly shall submit a copy of the assessment to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House of Representatives Committee on Science.

Umm…. sense when do you let the child that has been misbehaving define the new behavior its being asked to adhere to?

Section 311 at least got the private property rights request right:

SEC. 311. LEGAL ASPECTS OF LUNAR EXPLORATION.

The Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall submit a legal review and interpretation of laws and treaties governing the exploration of space and the possible ownership of resources on the Moon and Mars. The review should determine if any changes or new agreements are needed to reflect the growing role of the private sector in space exploration. The review shall be submitted to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House of Representatives Committee on Science within 90 days of enactment of this Act.

Now its possible that, being a lay person, I’m not capable of interpreting legislation correctly. There is also this in Section 403, “COMMERCIAL GOODS AND SERVICES”:

It is the sense of the Congress that NASA should purchase commercially available space goods and services to the fullest extent feasible in support of the human missions to the Moon and Mars and shall not conduct activities with commercial applications that preclude or deter commercial space activities except for reasons of national security or public safety. For purposes of this section –

(1) a space good or service shall be considered to be commercially available if it is offered by a commercial provider, or if it could be supplied by a commercial provider in response to a Government procurement request; and

(2) a purchase shall be considered to be feasible if it meets mission requirements in a cost-effective manner while offering the same or a higher level of safety.

But even this allows NASA the out by letting them define the mission and safety requirements. Section 404 describes an Industry Advisory Board that can “review and discuss opportunities for the private sector to invest in and take advantage of activities at NASA” but again, this all seems to be a one way street with no teeth.

The Centennial Challenges authorization is also in there (Sectino 408) but its a little confusing as to time limits.

There just seems to be way to much wiggle room here for business as usual to sneak in. I hope there is some way for the Aldridge Commission members to jointly react to how their recommendations have actually turned out.

From our vantage all we can confirm is that it went up, lit and came back. But unofficially its being confirmed that they did get beyond 62 miles. Its still difficult finding the time to post articles since there are press conferences still to go to. I’ll be posting more pictures in the wiki page.

I’ve been taking pictures and posting them on the wiki. See the ScaledLaunchPictures link. More to come tomorrow!

I’m off to Mojave. I’m not sure what kind of connectivity I’ll have there so entries may be lite until Tuesday morning. See you there!

Mojave Airport received its launch site license today. I haven’t found any press releases to link to yet.

Check out these comments. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to sleep tonight after reading that. This one in particular sent shivers up my spine:

Well, I work at a NASA Center, too, and I don’t particularly care who pays me, though the rosy picture painted as to employee benefits is contrary to the experience at the FFRDC National Optical Astronomical Observatories, where scientists and engineers routinely make less than their peers in government, industry — or universities.

What concerns me far more is the ignorance of the people on the panel (and apparently among some of your correspondents) as to what actually goes on at NASA Centers. There are people above and beyond contracting officers and their bosses who monitor flight programs: engineers, technicians, and scientists. Was even one of the members of the Commission ever involved with a flight project, at NASA or JPL? Can they even spell the words, “fiduciary responsibility?”

Honestly, this raises the question for me of the competence of the Commission to make these suggestions. I get the sick feeling that there was an agenda at work before the Commission ever met, and that it included the more efficient transfer of the taxpayers’ dollars to industry and universities — be damned with any expert oversight from within the government. Are the activities of Payload Engineers, Systems Engineers, Project Managers, and Project Scientists “inherently governmental?” Of course not. Would you trust the industrial and university partners of NASA that gave us the stirring successes of Lewis, WIRE, Mars Polar Lander, and Mars Climate Orbiter to go and try again with no adult supervision? I hope not. Should you trust an FFRDC technical expert to have the taxpayers’ interests at heart? Good question.

I watched this afternoon’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing but I didn’t hear about Brownback’s NASA authorization legislation for FY 2005 (thanks to Jeff Foust for keeping track of all this for us!) But if the following is actually in there then I really don’t care what they do with NASA’s budget:

• The bill would call on NASA to implement a “private sector managed robotic mission to the Moon in three years”;
• The bill also asks the administration “to clarify US positions on private property rights for those seeking to develop space resources and infrastructure”;
• It includes provisions to enable NASA to offer prizes (presumably to allow NASA specifically to award prizes bigger than the current $250,000 limit it currently has). Brownback also said he would suggest that NASA’s first “big” prize would be a manned orbital flight; he has previously suggested a “Glenn Prize” like that with a purse of $100 million.

I thought I’d be old and grey before someone in the government finally took space property rights seriously. This and all of the other Aldridge Commission related legislation is going to go through a hell of a time in Congress but if it comes out even remotely resembling what went in then the world will be a better place.

(Thanks to Jeff Foust at Space Politics for finding this!)

If you are at all interested in how this report is going to play in Congress you should be watching this. Interesting questions about FFRDCs and how they can manage what is normally thought of as a ‘federal’ resource