Markets

I hear your points, Jay. I think that many contributors to this and other
lists are simply frustrated at what they perceive to be a lack of progress
in space, and that anger gets directed (often incorrectly) at NASA. I
agree that directing anger at "NASA" is a substantial oversimplification.

For example, NASA/JPL continues to knock the ball out of the park with
various planetary probes: NEAR Shoemaker, Galileo, Deep Space 1. The
Hubble Space Telescope and a wide variety of other telescopes and probes
continue to return great data, many of them years beyond their intended
design lives. No doubt the folks who work within NASA on these great
projects are no doubt offended by constant NASA-bashing.

As another example, everyone knows that the Shuttle never delivered on the
projections made before it was flown as to the cost of its operation or
flight rates. But to direct the anger for that failure entirely at NASA
would be to ignore the significant contribution to the problem by the
Administration, Congress, and public apathy. Everyone who has ever worked
on a big project for which the sales expectations were very high but
budget low knows the great technical and moral difficulties in getting a
big system built. Sausage-making can be an ugly process. That's life.
NASA got the Shuttle built under stressful budget constraints, and that
was an accomplishment.

A similar problem happened with ISS Alpha: is the fact that it is $4
billion overbudget solely NASA's fault? How would any organization have
been better able to handle the multitudinous redesigns that ISS had to
endure during its long birthing period? Ideally, one has a set of
unchanging and clear requirements when building a large system (e.g.,
"Before this decade is out..."), but that, in my opinion, is unfortunately
a fairly rare occurrence. When requirements are constantly in flux and
major project redesigns are happening, ..., well it's real tough.

But lacking a better catch-all scapegoat, the NASA label absorbs the
collected angst of the perceived lack of progress. And some of that
anger may be well-deserved. After all, NASA pioneered the large-project
management that was able to go from suborbital flight to landing on the
moon in less than a decade. Why couldn't they have used that project
management experience to foresee and mitigate the requirements problems
that happened with ISS Alpha, especially given their recent and painful
experience with the Shuttle fiasco? And why, given a long history of
successful X-planes and a very successful and low-budget DC-X project did
NASA undertake the X-33? Many, many people bemoaned that decision, and
they were right: X-33 eventually failed. And why is it that the
Russians have been the ones to pioneer so many of the commercial uses of
space such as television commercials and the first beginnings of space
tourism?

I think we all need a more complex understanding of the role of NASA. For
some aspects, NASA has done and is doing a fantastic job. For some
aspects, NASA has done a mediocre job, but for reasons that were largely
out of its control. For some aspects, NASA has clearly dropped the ball
big time.

I know that I am guilty of uninformed NASA-bashing from time to time.
Perhaps for me it is the great letdown of a boyhood fantasy: as a 7
year-old boy, I stood on the beach in the summer of 1971 and felt my body
shake as a Saturn V lifted Apollo 15 towards Hadley Rille. I was certain
that I would spend my adulthood living and working in space. When that
didn't happen, well, I had to find a scapegoat. Mea culpa.

(Did this posting come through in plain text?)

Ron Menich

"Huebner, Jay" jhuebn@...
10/16/01 10:07 AM

"A bunch of hype is not a business plan." We are fighting Russia, where
have you been? The cold war is over, the ISS is up. What are you talking
about? The lack of a business plan is NASA and ESA's fault? It is hard
to
psychoanalyze people at a distance, but I do know folks close up who argue
that they are smart by claiming others, usually of higher station, are
dumb.
Isn't that the basis of many of these negative comments? Is there a point
to them for the rest of us?
Sincerely Jay Huebner at jhuebn@...