If the government actually wanted companies on the line for mistakes...they would issue contracts that actually do that.
I am of the feeling that as long as the money is going where Congress wants it to go, they don't care where the blame is...which is why no one is responsible. This goes for LOTS of government programs. (SLS, F-35, etc...).If the government actually wanted companies on the line for mistakes...they would issue contracts that actually do that.
Quote from: ulm_atms on 07/02/2018 08:54 pmIf the government actually wanted companies on the line for mistakes...they would issue contracts that actually do that.There's a limit to which the government can do that before the contractor backs out of negotiations, leaving the government with no one.
It used to be that aerospace corporations were limited by statute in the amount of profit they can make. The amount of something like 7% comes to mind.
The bulk of the financial dollars comes from awards that are built into Cost Plus contracts. This can be sizeable.
Another reason the government may keep paying a contractor money is the cancellation fees may off set any savings.
Insofar as lack of responsibility, I don't think any NASA employees lost their jobs over Challenger or Columbia. I think some may have been promoted.
So what is the solution? Good program oversight by management, and members of Congress that are willing to every once in a while cancel a program when it gets too far out of budget. Because without consequences, no one will ever take responsibility.
But this is why you need well trained NASA program managers, and executives running NASA that understand how to manage large, complex programs. For instance, the designers of the JWST will always be biased towards spending money on optimal solutions, because it's not their money. And Northrop Grumman knows from decades of government contracting experience that it's more profitable if they take on more expensive work since they get a percentage of that work as profit.
But this is why you need well trained NASA program managers, and executives running NASA that understand how to manage large, complex programs
You underestimate the need for a telescope like JWST in astronomy. Almost any astronomer wants that telescope. It is the most promising way to answer the remaining open questions in astronomy. If JWST gets canceled, the push of scientists will be to a new telescope just like JWST. There are many more telescopes needed for answering current open questions, but JWST or equivalent would give data for the largest chunk of it.
Quote from: Semmel on 07/03/2018 08:27 amYou underestimate the need for a telescope like JWST in astronomy. Almost any astronomer wants that telescope. It is the most promising way to answer the remaining open questions in astronomy. If JWST gets canceled, the push of scientists will be to a new telescope just like JWST. There are many more telescopes needed for answering current open questions, but JWST or equivalent would give data for the largest chunk of it.You do realize that your argument is exactly what was used to justify the cost of Hubble?And guess what: Hubble observations led to more new questions than that it answered existing and old ones.IMO JWST will do the same: When JWST is said-and-done there will be more new questions about the universe than that it will have answered old ones.But that aside I stick to the opinion that cancelling JWST in 2011 would have been the right thing to do. Because it would have led IMO to a more practical and affordable way of doing an in-space telescope of that size. JWST as it exists today is IMO overly complex and relies too much on new/unproven technology resulting in massive cost-overruns above-and-beyond the cost-overruns caused by the initial under-funding and poor management.
Quote from: woods170 on 07/03/2018 11:22 amQuote from: Semmel on 07/03/2018 08:27 amYou underestimate the need for a telescope like JWST in astronomy. Almost any astronomer wants that telescope. It is the most promising way to answer the remaining open questions in astronomy. If JWST gets canceled, the push of scientists will be to a new telescope just like JWST. There are many more telescopes needed for answering current open questions, but JWST or equivalent would give data for the largest chunk of it.You do realize that your argument is exactly what was used to justify the cost of Hubble?And guess what: Hubble observations led to more new questions than that it answered existing and old ones.IMO JWST will do the same: When JWST is said-and-done there will be more new questions about the universe than that it will have answered old ones.But that aside I stick to the opinion that cancelling JWST in 2011 would have been the right thing to do. Because it would have led IMO to a more practical and affordable way of doing an in-space telescope of that size. JWST as it exists today is IMO overly complex and relies too much on new/unproven technology resulting in massive cost-overruns above-and-beyond the cost-overruns caused by the initial under-funding and poor management.JWST was done the way it was because it had to be. It wasn’t wilfully designed that way for the sake of it.With your overly-conservative approach we would never make any progress in delivering capabilities.It seems as if when private industry breaks new ground for progress it’s applauded but when NASA tries a similar approach it gets condemned. We often hear people complaining NASA is too conservative. So it seems to be case of them being dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t.
Quote from: Star One on 07/03/2018 11:42 amQuote from: woods170 on 07/03/2018 11:22 amQuote from: Semmel on 07/03/2018 08:27 amYou underestimate the need for a telescope like JWST in astronomy. Almost any astronomer wants that telescope. It is the most promising way to answer the remaining open questions in astronomy. If JWST gets canceled, the push of scientists will be to a new telescope just like JWST. There are many more telescopes needed for answering current open questions, but JWST or equivalent would give data for the largest chunk of it.You do realize that your argument is exactly what was used to justify the cost of Hubble?And guess what: Hubble observations led to more new questions than that it answered existing and old ones.IMO JWST will do the same: When JWST is said-and-done there will be more new questions about the universe than that it will have answered old ones.But that aside I stick to the opinion that cancelling JWST in 2011 would have been the right thing to do. Because it would have led IMO to a more practical and affordable way of doing an in-space telescope of that size. JWST as it exists today is IMO overly complex and relies too much on new/unproven technology resulting in massive cost-overruns above-and-beyond the cost-overruns caused by the initial under-funding and poor management.JWST was done the way it was because it had to be. It wasn’t wilfully designed that way for the sake of it.With your overly-conservative approach we would never make any progress in delivering capabilities.It seems as if when private industry breaks new ground for progress it’s applauded but when NASA tries a similar approach it gets condemned. We often hear people complaining NASA is too conservative. So it seems to be case of them being dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t.Industry and NASA can break new ground perfectly fine while still adhering to the KISS principle. Unfortunately, neither NASA, nor industry did so in the case of JWST.JWST is overly complex, with too many mission-critical deployment steps. If just a single one of those steps goes awry it is mission-over for JWST.
That is the scary part for me in all of this. Since it has to be deployed at L1, there is no way to fix it (unlike Hubble) if there are any issues with any the moving parts during deploy. Shoot, Hubble was a colossal screw up at first but at least it was built to be fixed to a point and we could actually get there to fix it.So this telescope, with all it's complexity, and no way to fix any issues after deploy, makes hearing of all of these issues from NG scary to read/hear. KISS should be adhered to especially if there is no way to fix it post launch.
But now we are on the edge of a world where reusable rockets and commercial crew vehicles are part of our reality, and I would advocate that somewhere in NASA they should be considering what the next generation of standards should be for Earth-local remote systems.For instance, and this gets to the national "leadership" issue, NASA could decide that all future Earth-local major science platforms be equipped for not only capture (like Hubble), but movement from their location of science to a location of service. Then all that would be needed are space tugs and commercial habitats to set up a service location. No doubt this would cost a good chunk of money to set up, but the long term benefits should pay for itself. Plus this would help create new industries, which is always a good side effect of government spending. Just trying to think of ways to eliminate situations like this...