Shuttle, I Can’t Quit You

There are a number of conclusions that can be drawn from this week’s Senate vote on NASA:

1. We’re stuck with the space shuttle forever. Although the orbiter fleet will be retired, the system’s legacy will live on through the shuttle-derived heavy-lift vehicle (SD-HLV) that Congress is ordering NASA to start building immediately.

This system is expensive technology that requires a small army of people to build, launch and maintain. The good news: a lot of highly-skilled people are employed. The bad news: it soaks up so much money that we can’t do very much in space once we get there.

The American space program has been hobbled by this reality for decades now. The Senate plan ensures that we’ll be stuck in that cycle for the foreseeable future.

Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison

2. The job you save could be your own. This move was, above all, about saving jobs. Not only aerospace jobs in Alabama, Texas, Utah and elsewhere, but the jobs of the people who represent those states in Congress.

3. Don’t ever let Congress design a rocket. The SD-HLV is supposed to serve as a backup in case NASA’s efforts to contract with private-sector launchers fail.However, using it to launch a small Orion into a 250-mile high orbit is an insanely expensive waste of money.

Yes, the heavy-lift vehicle could send Orion to the moon or asteroids. However, there doesn’t seem to be much money in the budget to do the other things required in order to conduct such missions. So, we’re rushing to build a heavy-lift vehicle for which we have no real short-term need.

ULA's Delta IV Heavy rocket

4.  You’re still learning how to walk even at age 50. In justifying a slow build-up on commercial crew systems, Sen. Bill Nelson says the industry must learn to walk before it can run. Really?

It’s a strange thing to say, given that United Launch Systems is a joint venture of two companies, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, that have been around since the beginning of the Space Age. ULA has two rockets – Delta IV and Atlas 5 – that could be human-rated for orbital missions. In fact, the company just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first Delta flight.

If they haven’t figured it out by now, they never will. What can they learn in the next four or five years that will make a real difference? If NASA can’t work with its industrial partners to build and fly safe rockets and spacecraft, they should all hang it up and call it a day.

5. Charlie Bolden should not take any sales jobs. I respect Bolden as an astronaut and a military man. But, whatever his other attributes are as a leader, he’s a poor salesman. He got off to a bad start when he announced the new plan in February. To his credit, he took responsibility for it.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden

However, his performance really didn’t improve very much. Bolden was never able to articulate a coherent vision or rally much support for the President’s plan. And he didn’t seem to get that much help from President Barack Obama, whose public statements about the plan didn’t clarify matters.

6. All things being equal, I would rather watch sausage making. My criticism of Bolden and the Administration notwithstanding, I place much of the blame on Congress.

The behavior of many Congressional opponents has been atrocious. They made little effort to really understand the plan. They told outright lies about it. They whispered ominously of dark conspiracies. They held hearings that were jokes. And, worst of all, they failed to fully face most of the unpleasant realities outlined in the Augustine Committee’s report.

The result could very well be heavy-lift, Orion and commercial crew programs that continue to be underfunded and behind schedule. The gap in flights between the end of the space shuttle program and its successor could be equally as long, if not longer, than they are now.

Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin

7. Mike means never having to say you’re sorry. Faced with a decision five years ago about how to implement President George W. Bush’s plan to return to the moon, then NASA Administrator Mike Griffin had a chance to put an end to the shuttle era once and for all. He could have chosen an expendable booster for orbital missions and gotten NASA started on a heavy-lift vehicle built from new technologies.

Instead he opted to use shuttle-derived rockets for both missions. Officially the decision was based on engineering and safety concerns. The reality was more pedestrian: a need to keep people employed in key states.

The effort turned into a fiasco that the Obama Administration was left to fix. Given a chance to admit his error and support a realistic approach, Griffin opted to defend his legacy. In so doing, he demonstrated an unfortunate trait of the last Administration; namely, never admit mistakes.

Well Mike, you got most of what you wanted. We’ll have to wait and see if it’s really what the country needs.