Author Topic: New Frontiers 4  (Read 152897 times)

Offline Blackstar

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #100 on: 08/07/2017 08:54 pm »
Yes but looking at what you're saying here as a non-American could easily sound like we don't trust other countries they are unreliable and will let you down. I could easily say after ExoMars that ESA should have nothing to do with NASA as they are unreliable and will let you down. But space is supposed to be above this kind of thing but if it isn't then that's a great shame.

MOST American space projects have some form of international participation. Non-American instruments are flying on American spacecraft a lot (you're welcome). It is not a case that "we don't trust other countries."

As I noted, it's a complicated issue. I don't have time or energy to explain it in detail here or in the policy section. And I doubt that I'd change your mind because it already seems pretty made up.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #101 on: 08/07/2017 09:05 pm »
Whether that reason is "genuine" or not? I don't know. But again, a bit out of scope. Even if the discussion were in space policy,  it might be out of scope.

I think that such a discussion would be perfectly in-scope for the policy section. You can't simply cover your eyes and ears and pretend that different political points of view have no effect upon the space program. The China restrictions were imposed by some Republicans because they have strong ideological views, and those views are different than the Democrats. That said, as I noted in another post, there's more to that subject than can be publicly discussed.

But... those China restrictions are also not relevant to the New Frontiers program. It is a competitive program to respond to the science goals of the American scientific community. If the American scientific community wants to answer scientific questions, then it is up to the Americans to pay to answer those questions and not expect that somebody else is going to do it for them. NASA has to take the mission proposals and evaluate them. One of their evaluation criteria can be the amount of international participation that is in the proposal, and they can limit that participation at the start of the competition (when they issue an announcement of opportunity). They have in recent years changed the amount of international participation that is allowed within competitions, although I don't know the details. They limit that participation in order to limit the programmatic risk.

I'd also point everybody back to where these science questions are developed. They are developed within the planetary science decadal survey, and the participation in the decadal survey is mostly American scientists. When they come up with a science question, they want to be the ones who answer that question, they want to do the work. They don't want to leave it to somebody else. When you go to a restaurant you order the food that you want to eat, not order food so other people can eat it for you.

Offline vjkane

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #102 on: 08/07/2017 09:07 pm »
And a lot of US instruments fly on other agencies' spacecraft.  It is a good system but it does add management complexity for the senior agency whoever it is

Perhaps a bigger issue causing NASA to limit foreign instruments to a minority is that they are an American agency that 1) wants to support American scientists and 2) they want to see some of the instruments they pay to develop fly.  Other agencies have the same motivations

Offline Star One

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #103 on: 08/07/2017 09:10 pm »
And a lot of US instruments fly on other agencies' spacecraft.  It is a good system but it does add management complexity for the senior agency whoever it is

Perhaps a bigger issue causing NASA to limit foreign instruments to a minority is that they are an American agency that 1) wants to support American scientists and 2) they want to see some of the instruments they pay to develop fly.  Other agencies have the same motivations

That's alright then let's not progress and use space as a best example to present to the upcoming generations but just replicate the same old divisions. I guess I am just naive in thinking space exploration could be the one area where we try and set a better example because clearly this is pointless.
« Last Edit: 08/07/2017 09:13 pm by Star One »

Offline Sam Ho

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #104 on: 08/07/2017 09:23 pm »
To try to keep this on topic, the NF4 AO specified that international contributions should be no more than one-third.  There are separate one-third limits for instruments and for PMMC.

Similarly, recent ESA AOs have set a limit on international participation of 20% of total mission envelope, and required that international contributions be replaceable using European technology.

One could recount the list of projects that lost international partners midstream (Ulysses, LISA, ExoMars) but that's neither here nor there.

Offline Jim

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #105 on: 08/07/2017 10:24 pm »
And a lot of US instruments fly on other agencies' spacecraft.  It is a good system but it does add management complexity for the senior agency whoever it is

Perhaps a bigger issue causing NASA to limit foreign instruments to a minority is that they are an American agency that 1) wants to support American scientists and 2) they want to see some of the instruments they pay to develop fly.  Other agencies have the same motivations

That's alright then let's not progress and use space as a best example to present to the upcoming generations but just replicate the same old divisions. I guess I am just naive in thinking space exploration could be the one area where we try and set a better example because clearly this is pointless.

Why does space have to be different than the real world?

Offline Lar

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #106 on: 08/08/2017 04:08 am »
Blackstar, you convinced me, a carefully crafted starter post could very well spur a good, productive, and on topic discussion of this in Space Policy.

No one is required to create a thread just bacuse someone else thinks it's a good idea, but I can't think of anyone that would do a better job than you, so please consider it if you have time and interest.  Everyone else, this ISN'T space policy, please stay out of policy and stick to science. You all know better. Thanks.
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Offline Star One

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #107 on: 08/08/2017 09:39 am »
And a lot of US instruments fly on other agencies' spacecraft.  It is a good system but it does add management complexity for the senior agency whoever it is

Perhaps a bigger issue causing NASA to limit foreign instruments to a minority is that they are an American agency that 1) wants to support American scientists and 2) they want to see some of the instruments they pay to develop fly.  Other agencies have the same motivations

That's alright then let's not progress and use space as a best example to present to the upcoming generations but just replicate the same old divisions. I guess I am just naive in thinking space exploration could be the one area where we try and set a better example because clearly this is pointless.

Why does space have to be different than the real world?

Because it should be.

Offline Ben the Space Brit

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #108 on: 08/08/2017 10:54 am »
Why does space have to be different than the real world?

Because it should be.

That's not going to happen so long as the majority of the money is governmental in origin, unfortunately. Space is soft power and has been from the start of the state space agencies.
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Offline Star One

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #109 on: 08/08/2017 11:29 am »
Why does space have to be different than the real world?

Because it should be.

That's not going to happen so long as the majority of the money is governmental in origin, unfortunately. Space is soft power and has been from the start of the state space agencies.

Are you effectively suggesting only commercial space can rise above politics?

Offline Ben the Space Brit

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #110 on: 08/08/2017 12:41 pm »
No, I'm saying that only non-governmental space will be able to rise above politics. Even commercial providers will at least at first have to obey the diktats of the government in whose territory they operate. The only way to circumvent governmental interference is to have a privately-commissioned spacecraft and funded from non-government-controlled sources.

FWIW, that's still a decade off at the very least but, with the advent of 'crowd funding' is at least conceptually possible.
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Offline Star One

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #111 on: 08/08/2017 02:10 pm »
I think now's the time to get back to discussing New Frontiers 4, huh?

There's nothing too discuss at this time.
« Last Edit: 08/08/2017 02:11 pm by Star One »

Offline Jim

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #112 on: 08/08/2017 02:18 pm »
And a lot of US instruments fly on other agencies' spacecraft.  It is a good system but it does add management complexity for the senior agency whoever it is

Perhaps a bigger issue causing NASA to limit foreign instruments to a minority is that they are an American agency that 1) wants to support American scientists and 2) they want to see some of the instruments they pay to develop fly.  Other agencies have the same motivations

That's alright then let's not progress and use space as a best example to present to the upcoming generations but just replicate the same old divisions. I guess I am just naive in thinking space exploration could be the one area where we try and set a better example because clearly this is pointless.

Why does space have to be different than the real world?

Because it should be.

This isn't Star Trek.  Space isn't any different than a piece of land, a body of water, etc.  Whereever humans go, they will bring their failings with them.

Offline Star One

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #113 on: 08/08/2017 02:26 pm »
And a lot of US instruments fly on other agencies' spacecraft.  It is a good system but it does add management complexity for the senior agency whoever it is

Perhaps a bigger issue causing NASA to limit foreign instruments to a minority is that they are an American agency that 1) wants to support American scientists and 2) they want to see some of the instruments they pay to develop fly.  Other agencies have the same motivations

That's alright then let's not progress and use space as a best example to present to the upcoming generations but just replicate the same old divisions. I guess I am just naive in thinking space exploration could be the one area where we try and set a better example because clearly this is pointless.

Why does space have to be different than the real world?

Because it should be.

This isn't Star Trek.  Space isn't any different than a piece of land, a body of water, etc.  Whereever humans go, they will bring their failings with them.

Well perhaps we should strive not too.

Offline gongora

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #114 on: 08/08/2017 02:44 pm »
I think now's the time to get back to discussing New Frontiers 4, huh?

There's nothing too discuss at this time.

That's not an excuse to turn this into your personal space policy thread.
« Last Edit: 08/08/2017 02:56 pm by gongora »

Offline as58

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #115 on: 08/08/2017 03:04 pm »
So to get back to NF4: any updates on schedule? The tentative timeline from AO says that Step-1 selection is expected in November. Is that still the plan?

Offline Zed_Noir

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #116 on: 08/08/2017 10:52 pm »
So does folks think TPTB at NASA for NF4 will pick the mission with the least cost & complexity or some X-mas tree mission with lots add-on ornaments bleeding edge tech?

Offline AegeanBlue

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #117 on: 08/08/2017 11:40 pm »
So does folks think TPTB at NASA for NF4 will pick the mission with the least cost & complexity or some X-mas tree mission with lots add-on ornaments bleeding edge tech?

Considering that the Planetary budget is likely to get strained by the Europa missions, I see them going conservative on NF4. Discovery and New Frontiers anyway came out as a rejection of the Christmas tree approach, none of the three so far have seen overloading on instruments. Leave that to flagships.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #118 on: 08/09/2017 12:09 am »
Considering that the Planetary budget is likely to get strained by the Europa missions, I see them going conservative on NF4. Discovery and New Frontiers anyway came out as a rejection of the Christmas tree approach, none of the three so far have seen overloading on instruments. Leave that to flagships.

I think you're mushing a whole lot of issues into one category, and that's not the right way to look at it.

For starters, both Discovery and New Frontiers have cost caps. So every proposal has to fit within the cost cap. That inherently prevents loading up on instruments.

But a related issue is how NASA wants to evaluate the proposals that it determines will fit within the cost cap. Suppose NASA has two NF missions, both equal in every way (if there is a way to say that the science of a Venus mission is equal to the science of a comet sample return mission). Now what does NASA do when they have independent cost estimates of both missions and they determine that there is a 30% chance that Mission A will bust its cost cap, and a 35% chance that Mission B will bust its cost cap? Do they make their decision solely upon the basis of cost realism? (In which case, they pick Mission A.) Or do they make their decision based upon another criteria, like programmatic balance? (Meaning, they may select the Venus mission because it has been three decades since the last American Venus mission.)


Offline Star One

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Re: New Frontiers 4
« Reply #119 on: 08/10/2017 08:33 pm »
I think now's the time to get back to discussing New Frontiers 4, huh?

There's nothing too discuss at this time.

That's not an excuse to turn this into your personal space policy thread.

The idea of creating a policy thread was floated by another poster up thread.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39263.msg1710831#msg1710831

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