Author Topic: Reversing the nonsensical retirement of Shuttle requires a miracle – DeCastro  (Read 42950 times)

Online Chris Bergin

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/08/reversing-nonsensical-retirement-shuttle-requires-miracle-decastro/

Exclusive interview, based around Shuttle Retirement and Commercial Shuttle.

I know "some" of you aren't going to like what was said in this article, but thank God someone isn't being fluffy with the "Win The Future (WTF)" buzz words and such.
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Offline Ronsmytheiii

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Quote
She was welcomed back into the warm embrace of her NASA and contractor workforce, of which the United Space Alliance (USA) team provide the role as the main guardians of the fleet.

Excellent work and nice BSG reference!
« Last Edit: 08/24/2011 01:57 am by Ronsmytheiii »

Offline Longhorn John

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Saying it how it is. What a refreshing change to read such informed comments!!

Offline KEdward5

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Loved what you did with the quotes Chris. That was an article worth cheering to. I hope Mike Griffin gets to read it ;)

Offline DDG40

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Nice article. I have been wondering what happened to the commercial shuttle proposal.

I expect MR De Castro to be crucified for speaking out but I do appreciate this quote.

"But if you study this particular situation closely, NASA is placing our Nation’s human spaceflight program in jeopardy in order to subsidize the development of some “commercial” space companies. Personally, I would not risk so much for the benefit of so few."

Offline GBCT#5

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Good Article Chris.

WTF, indeed.

Howard DeCastro is a solid Manager. Several times now he has spoken out, all of it straight up. I just wish more people would listen.

Offline FinalFrontier

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Loved what you did with the quotes Chris. That was an article worth cheering to. I hope Mike Griffin gets to read it ;)

His mentality wouldn't allow him to accept it as fact if he did.


BTW, Chris I like those quotes, great work again :)
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Offline Seattle Dave

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Excellent. When you've got the Shuttle managers and then the contractor managers who are this good, you can see why RTF onwards was near-perfect.

Offline Launch Fan

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Interesing that the notion of a commercial shuttle operation was considered as far back as the Goldin days? Part of his faster, better, cheaper?

Offline Lars_J

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Chris, I found this to be a very confusing interview to read, but that could easily be addressed.

My primary issue is that the structure of the article makes it VERY HARD to distinguish between:

A) DeCastro's own words
B) your summary of his views
and
C) your views

The flow of the article makes the jumps between these points of views hard to follow. For journalistic clarity, I would ask that you make it clearer what paragraph actually is what. Either through some CSS styling changes or reworking the flow of the article.

This is even more important when you as a journalist find yourself in intense agreement with the person you are interviewing.

Offline KelvinZero

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Hey wait a minute.. think about this a moment.

Is it commercial supporters who are anti shuttle extension?
Has anything like the shuttle budget been diverted to commercial, or has it gone somewhere else? Who should have been supporting the shuttle? Where did they divert their support instead?

Im a commercial supporter (and a supporter of pretty much every element of NASA except the SLS) .. Why do you guys think someone like me would be anti shuttle extension? This seems very sensible to me both practically and politically.

OV-105 can enumerate many more practical reasons than I can think of but obvious ones are keeping the ISS well supported, closing the flight gap and preserving infrastructure until commercial has grown to the point that there is something to transition into.

Now just look at it politically. Shuttle extension removes the political need for the SLS. It maintains jobs (that SLS will often not), It prevents reliance on the russians (which SLS cannot in any case). Shuttle is not a threat to commercial; the shuttle has a built in time limit.

Surely Commercial supporters would leap at shuttle extension instead of SLS.

« Last Edit: 08/24/2011 04:37 am by KelvinZero »

Offline Mark Max Q

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Great article!

And it seems Lars can't work out what the quotation marks mean. Stupid comment as Chris could have gone bias with this but provides numerous counter points of objectivity.

But yeah, we know the rules with SpaceX fans...if it doesn't say Elon is God, it's bias.

Offline Lars_J

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And now to the guts of the article - I find it unfortunate that Mr. DeCastro falls back on two of the most common misleading talking point from the "anti-commercial" crowd:
Quote
“But if you study this particular situation closely, NASA is placing our Nation’s human spaceflight program in jeopardy in order to subsidize the development of some “commercial” space companies. Personally, I would not risk so much for the benefit of so few.”

As opposed to subsidizing the existing contractors much sweeter contracts? (who aren't that many either) If we can achieve more affordable spaceflight, it will be to the benefit of MANY.

Yes, in an ideal world Shuttle should have flown until a commercial crew vehicle was ready. But this is not an ideal world. After all, how many more affordable crew spacecraft development programs were cancelled while Shuttle flew? (HL-20, OSP, X-38, the list goes on...) How come none of them ever came into fruition? Would commercial crew really have had a glimmer of a chance with the Shuttle flying?

At least now we will know where people's priorities really lie - Is it in the most rapid return to US spaceflight capability, or something else?

Offline Jason1701

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Has anything like the shuttle budget been diverted to commercial, or has it gone somewhere else?

Nearly all has gone to SLS and MPCV. DeCastro states the opposite.
« Last Edit: 08/24/2011 04:48 am by Jason1701 »

Offline Lars_J

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Great article!

And it seems Lars can't work out what the quotation marks mean. Stupid comment as Chris could have gone bias with this but provides numerous counter points of objectivity.

But yeah, we know the rules with SpaceX fans...if it doesn't say Elon is God, it's bias.

??? LOL, trust me, I know how quotation marks work.  ;D But the whole structure where trains of thought and sentences flow across them leaves something to be desired. I don't need a completely unbiased article - I know full well what Chris' opinion is. I was just offering some helpful pointers in writing style.

Offline grr

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While I can understand the sentiments, I do not agree with his conclusions.
His stated reason is to be independent. He does not want reliance on Russia, or on commercial space, as well as lower costs.


Well, the problem with that is that we have been reliant on others because we refused to have multiple inexpensive launch systems. When columbia happened, we had our dependency on Russia. And yet, few gripped about it. How long were we down? It was almost 2.5 years.  How long are we looking at for dependency on Russia again? 3 years. 
BUT, are we TRULY dependent on them this time? Nope.  The fact is, that if needed, the dragon can be pressed quickly into human launch. It would take less than 6 months to put in seats and decent life support. What would be missing? Escape capabilities.  Well, even that could be sped up with more money.  Keep in mind that the shuttle did not have one until Challenger and even then it was not a good one. Likewise, mercury, gemeni and originally Apollo did not have these.

If this is about national security, then we absolutely should press forward with private space. 2 shuttles will not give us that capability. BUT, multiple launchers will.

Now, as to dependency on commercial launchers, I think that it is again wrong.
 His grip is that it we benefit so few. Well, how many ppl have launched with NASA?
Well, ~550 ppl have gone into space, of which roughly 1/2 to 2/3 were launched by NASA. That means that roughly 300 ppl. So, divide by 50 years and it becomes obvious that we put up an average of 6 ppl a year. In fact,  with exactly 2 shuttles, we can only put up 14 ppl a year and that is at a cost of 3 billion. Even if we go with USA's proposal, then the 14 will cost 1.5-2 billion (how come they never made the proposal before?).. OTH, with private space, we can count on launch costs being at most 1/4B per launch of 7. As such, we can put up at least 6 launches, to the shuttle's 2 launches. IOW, 14 ppl vs 42 ppl for less money.

In addition, if one of these fail, then another system is ready to take up the slack. Falcon fails? Then Atlas picks up launches for a time.

And if we are talking costs, well, Bolden/Obama are pushing for 3/4 billion to be spent on the next round. Assume that NASA gets it. Then it will around 1 billion that we will have spent so far. If if we spend another billion to gain 3 launch systems, it is less than what we will spend on 2 shuttles and (SLS|aries I) combined with Orion.

Quite honestly, when you look at the facts, commercial space is the way to solve our issues.

Offline kkattula

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I have to say, if FY2011 had also extended Shuttle through at least 2015, it might have received a less hostile reception in Congress and elsewhere...


Cancel CxP and spend the money on both Commercial Crew and R&D, while flying shuttle at a reduced rate, (possibly even as a commercial operation), makes a kind of sense. Even Orion could still have been continued, testing on EELV Heavy.

Is there anyone, with influence, who would have absolutely hated this idea?

Edit:  MSFC and Senator Shelby, probably.
« Last Edit: 08/24/2011 08:29 am by kkattula »

Offline john smith 19

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While I'm sure his views are heartfelt he makes some statements and claims that just don't make any sense.

“Technological developments in space-based battlefield intelligence and war fighter assistance have played a significant role in the tactical successes of the U.S. military in recent campaigns. 

Which will continue to be launched on the EELV's developed (using a similar funding model to COTS/CCDev) under DoD direction. IIRC its been a very long time since the shuttle did a military mission.

"President Obama cancelled the Constellation Program to fund commercial companies."

I'd say taking 8 years to manage 1 flight test of a stretched SRB with a dummy stage and taking,depending on the estimates $30-36Bn to IOC might have had something to do with it. Apologies for the poor link but the $30bn figure was Congressional testimony.

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2009/07/what-are-the-real-costs-of-nasas-constellation-program.html

In contrast COTS & CCDev  between them have taken what < $1.5Bn total to 5 *cargo* carriers (Taurus 2 /Cygnus is cargo only) to a substantially higher level of readiness in a substantially shorter time.

“In my opinion, the decision to terminate the Shuttle Program does not make sense since the “bright future” is further off than advertised and is dependent on the success of  “commercial” space companies who, so far, have failed to meet their schedules for cargo resupply to the station,” Mr DeCastro noted.

*What* schedule is he talking about? Dragon and Cygnus have cargo contracts. Cygnus is running about a year behind Dragon (it got the remainder of the award to RpK) and has had schedule slips but Dragon is re-scheduled to fly late Nov to combine 2 flights into 1 and (*provided* everything is nominal) go for 1st docking about 1 year and 4 days from its first flight. What is this "failure" he is talking about?

When a senior manager of a programme is trying to make a case for its continuation it would seem they should be very careful about what they say.

Note there's more to the Space Transportation System than the orbiters. The joker seems to be the tooling used to cast the sections of the 4 segment SRBs. Sold for scrap? Sitting under a tarpaulin? There seem to be some doubts about them, certainly when alternatives to SLS using 4 seg SRB's get discussed.
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Online Chris Bergin

Chris, I found this to be a very confusing interview to read, but that could easily be addressed.

My primary issue is that the structure of the article makes it VERY HARD to distinguish between:

A) DeCastro's own words
B) your summary of his views
and
C) your views

The flow of the article makes the jumps between these points of views hard to follow. For journalistic clarity, I would ask that you make it clearer what paragraph actually is what. Either through some CSS styling changes or reworking the flow of the article.

This is even more important when you as a journalist find yourself in intense agreement with the person you are interviewing.


Thanks for your feedback......... ;)

You know me, I wouldn't pull that stonewall response on our readers, so let me try and address this, even if it's - thank goodness - the only one which has a problem with my writing.

(A: DeCastro's own words): Mr DeCastro's comments are quoted and that provides the sep. All his comments are quoted and unedited. I put the full transcript on L2 when it was completed, as per my "I always show the raw source content" - so people will be able to see what I did with the quotes.

(B: your summary of his views) I've - as I would if he was saying the opposite - led into his quotes. Standard practise, as I've got to "represent" what he's saying, sometimes expanding on it.

(C: your views) I can see where you may have thought I've gone op-ed on it, with the Griffin, ASAP and such, but that's factual and I linked up the Mr Shannon article on ASAP as evidence. If I had avoided that, I might as well have put on the Q&A, but my questions may have also been seen as "my views". After all, my experience of the extension effort are "my views" as a journalist, based on what the NASA guys like Mr Shannon have written in memos and such.

On some of the controversial stuff, I have provides some counter points (commercial, where I've first led into his comment, then added a "more likely that not will be successful") - which to some people may have caused the opposite reaction to yours. That's to give it some balance.

So - especially based on no other reactions after it goes through the 30,000 read mark at 8:30am Eastern - I'm standing by the representation of his comments with confidence.

It's never perfect, but no writer can get create something "perfect" on a subject matter where the readership will have massive differences of opinion. Heck, even the "everyone usually likes" prop depot article gained five e-mails saying "it was too long" etc.

And yes, I'm a shuttle hugger, but my Lord, if I was op-ed, I could have had a field day with this. Ironically, I also love CCDEV and such. I love big HLVs, I love Falcon Heavy, I love Atlas V's and I love the whole bloody lot. So if there's a problem with my opinion, that's it right there. We can't afford to do what I want, which is a home run of a space program.

So if you want to charge me with bias. Sure, I'm a shuttle hugger, but my bias is not "AGAINST" anything. But I can assure you if I had ballsed this up on the "confusing" element, I'd have a full inbox by now. Everyone's a subeditor on here and 99 percent of it is aimed at helpful, so the lack of such e-mails (although I have a lot which are thankful for the article, by the way) gives me confidence to stand by it.

Hope that helps and I REALLY don't mind such posts, as I'm a rare one where I'm here, available, to discuss. Most writers hide behind their byline - I'll never do that.
« Last Edit: 08/24/2011 12:42 pm by Chris Bergin »
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Offline alk3997

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While you're all arguing about whether commercial cargo companies have advertised unrealistic launch dates (see Elon's comments after the first and only Dragon launch), another round of Shuttle employee layoffs in Houston occur tomorrow. 

Some of us already have other jobs and we're not easily going back if the miracle were to occur.  I believe there are also Michoud layoffs tomorrow.

So, the question of a Shuttle extension is really irrlevent (without taking the time to train new people).

I wanted to also add that Howard was a great leader for us.  The first "all hands" I saw him speak at, he mentioned that the reason for us being there was to fly Space Shuttles safely.  After that it was to meet the manifest - not to make money.  The money would follow if we kept flying safely.  Then he pointed out that the only reason he came to Houston was to help fly the Space Shuttle and how happy he was to be here.

We needed more Howards...
« Last Edit: 08/24/2011 12:59 pm by alk3997 »

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