[X] My Assistant

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Let me add, though, that all this is entirely separate from the question of whether Dawn itself should be cancelled. That mission was accepted by the Discovery program on the condition that it stayed within the specified cost cap, which it has now seriously exceeded. As I've said before: if you allow that cost cap to be busted in this case, you will be opening the gates of Hell by encouraging all future proposers to deliberately lowball their price estimates, and then later come back to NASA with expressions of wide-eyed innocence to rattle their begging bowls like Oliver Twist and ask, "Please, Sir, it was an honest mistake. Can I have some more?" And some more, and some more, and... Uh-uh. This is a good argument even against completing Dawn with additional funding from the supply for the Missions of Opportunity (although I made that suggestion earlier).

[Marz]

Well, yeah; basically, that IS what I'm saying -- at least for now, and for a long time to come.  The thing is simply that when you're exploring or doing anything else in Earth orbit or on the Moon, it's tremendously cheaper and more efficient to it using telepresence -- and when you get farther away, at distance where the radio time lag does start seriously interfering with the ability to control robots from Earth, the difficulty and cost of sending humans out so far also skyrockets compared with the cost of simply putting them into orbit or sending them to the Moon. 

BTW: Sky & Telescope's March issue has a tiny blurb that basically says that Dawn was told to stand down for review, but there's optimism that the go-ahead will be given once the actual costs are re-evaluated for a launch in 2007. There was also a blurb that J.Webb telescope has already suffered from costs ballooning, and they're reducing costs where possible.

While I agree that NASA can't afford bad cost-management practices to become entrenched, clearly there must be weight given to the scientific importance of a mission. Ceres is not just some rubble-roid; it's probably a key piece in understanding solar system evolution, and probably a much more interesting world to visit than Mercury.

Heck, if I were head of Dawn, I'd just borrow that "Mission Accomplished" banner the President used and take a photo of the team infront of the completed spacecraft. Then, request extended mission funding about 5 times the initial budget. If congress gripes, be sure to call them "unpatriotic".

As to the larger argument; sure ISS is a behemoth, but one could apply that argument to almost any unmanned space mission too when compared to funding requests by terrestrial biologists, chemists, etc... I think the answer for what is an appropriate level of funding for manned exploration requires a larger context: what are it's near and long-term goals. I tend to think the end-game is a sustained manned presence on mars (or possibly Ceres?), but at what timeframe? Clearly these worlds should first be explored with sterile robots to clear up the biological questions before lobbing hairless apes at them.

It's hard for me to answer what the optimum levels of funding for which programs and at what % of the GNP; . I tend to think more research $$ should be spent trying to get a space-elevator going at this point, but I'm woefully ignorant of how many show-stopper technology gaps there are into seeing that a reality.

But as the Doug's have said, it's silly for scientists to squabble over such a tiny amount of the federal budget that's measured in *trillions*. I mean, you could eliminate NASA *entirely* (and flushing down one of our best think-tanks in the process), and not even make a 1% dent in the budget. The only squabble to discuss is why did Dawn miss its budget target and/or why is the Discovery cap so low to preclude anything but a NEO mission.

I was so darn optimistic in the 90's watching the usa defense portion shrink year after year. Boy, what a lousy start the 21st century has gotten off to... it just seems like an economy that astromical can do anything, until one realizes the scope of the world's problems anyways.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

You know, that might be a workable Solomonic solution to the problem (and I don't mean Sean Solomon...) Let the mission fly but take custody of its scientific returns away from the original proposers.

[mcaplinger]

Let the mission fly but take custody of its scientific returns away from the original proposers.

Seems like the technical problems are the fault of Orbital or their subs, not the science team or the instrument providers. My guess is it'll be a while before Orbital gets picked to do a planetary mission again.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Mike Caplinger says that this discussion has gotten a wee bit off the subject of Dawn. He is, of course, correct -- so my imminent reply to Scisys' arguments will be over in the "Policy" department below.

[David]

Let me add, though, that all this is entirely separate from the question of whether Dawn itself should be cancelled.  That mission was accepted by the Discovery program on the condition that it stayed within the specified cost cap, which it has now seriously exceeded.  As I've said before: if you allow that cost cap to be busted in this case, you will be opening the gates of Hell by encouraging all future proposers to deliberately lowball their price estimates

Maybe so, but that seems to be a moot point, since as of the the latest budget there aren't going to be any new projects anyway. Space science would be better off trying to complete the current projects that can be completed, if there is not going to be any funding for future projects in the immediate future.

[Guest_Analyst_*]

Orbital, the company building the Dawn spacecraft, is doing this for the first time. Contrary to all the talking about doing this cheaper and faster and better than the majors (LM, TRW, Boeing etc.), they can't. It's not their fault, because is hard. What makes me mad is they are proposing to do it cheaper and faster and better. And a lot of people believe them. And wonder now.

Other topic, but the company building the Falcon rocket is talking about boosters in the Atlas and Delta range now, before their first launch ever. For much less money of course. Spaceflight is not cheap because it is hard and therefore expensive, not because LM is overcharging. They don't burn the money for joy, they test and test and redesign and test and test ... and sometimes fail even then.

Last example: During MPF and later MPL there has been a lot of talk about how expensive Viking was and we can do now better and cheaper. They doublechecked during the 1970ies, even tested chutes in real flight, and trusters ... They didn't with MPL and Deep Impacts camera. And used a very risky approch for Contours departure ...

Analyst

[mcaplinger]

Last example: During MPF and later MPL there has been a lot of talk about how expensive Viking was and we can do now better and cheaper. They doublechecked during the 1970ies, even tested chutes in real flight, and trusters ... They didn't with MPL and Deep Impacts camera.

Your post implies that spending more money decreases risk. It ain't necessarily so, at least not at all times and not linearly. There have been plenty of failures in programs where few expenses were spared: Hubble and Galileo, just to name two.

The MPL failure had little or nothing to do with parachute or thruster testing, and it's really hard to estimate how much more money would have been needed to find the problem. If a couple of people had been thinking just a little harder, a few more lines of code would have been written and there's a good chance we wouldn't be using MPL as a negative example.

[ljk4-1]

The following is quoted from the FPSPACE list:

From ALLEN THOMSON thomsona at flash.net

Thu Feb 9 12:59:02 EST 2006

Relayed from a source who does not wish to be identified.

******************

One of the things that nobody here seems to understand is that many of the NASA programs that are getting cut or placed under review have their own problems, and they are on the chopping block not explicitly because of the Vision for Space Exploration, but because NASA officials have lost confidence in their ability to come in on time and reasonably close to schedule.

For instance, DAWN suffered from sudden cost increases last year. But that is not the whole story, because what really made NASA officials worried was the nature of the increases. They occurred in parts of the program (the ion drive) that were supposed to be easy. So when DAWN started to experience cost overruns on the easier parts of the spacecraft, NASA understandably became worried that it would also experience cost overruns on the harder parts as well. They lost confidence in the management of the program and put it under review. Put a simpler way, DAWN would not be in danger of cancellation if the program was running smoothly. The Vision is not threatening DAWN.

The complete post is here:

http://www.friends-partners.org/pipermail/...ary/018939.html

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

That is exactly what Dantzler said at COMPLEX -- which, I believe, is where the news of the stand-down was first announced. They were running into a puzzling cloud of problems with multiple parts of the project that were supposed to be routine and easy -- and so the stand-down was to provide time to determine whether this was just a run of random bad luck, or whether something more systematic was going on.

To repeat what I said at the start of this thread: if the total projected cost overrun is over $100 million, into the trash can it goes. Otherwise, they'll probably try to salvage it.

[djellison]

they are on the chopping block not explicitly because of the Vision for Space Exploration, but because NASA officials have lost confidence in their ability to come in on time and reasonably close to schedule.
......
They lost confidence in the management of the program and put it under review.

As someone mentioned over at the HZ, pity they don't apply the same logic to Shuttle/ISS/VSE.

Doug

[gpurcell]

Like I said back in November:

Now, I've been on the wrong end of an federal department investigation, so I'm somewhat cynical about the process. But this would not be happening is, for good reasons or bad, high up folks in NASA did not have significant concerns about Dawn's prospects for success.

I really think that you cannot separate this review from the radical descoping the mission unwent even prior to the stand-down. I'd sure like to know how much is left in the DAWN's budget item...that plus the launch costs could be a pretty nice piece of change to toss somewhere.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

As someone mentioned over at the HZ, pity they don't apply the same logic to Shuttle/ISS/VSE.

That's hard to believe, Doug.

And no, I'm not referring to the "pity they don't apply the same logic to Shuttle/ISS/VSE" portion, a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree. Rather, I find it hard to believe that such an intelligble, to-the-point comment could emanate from THZ

[djellison]

I find it hard to believe that such an intelligble, to-the-point comment could emanate from THZ 

Since going Grondine free a few months ago, it's not TOOooo bad actually.

Some utter tripe from time to time, but still some interesting things as well. The occasional thing that I spot that I doubt I'd have seen otherwise. In terms of structure and admins etc - it's a 'strange' place though

Doug

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Excerpt from the February 13, 2006, issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology:

Space Technology
Orbital Enhances Satellite Manufacturing Facilities to Meet Demand
Aviation Week & Space Technology
02/13/2006, page 64

Frank Morring, Jr.
Dulles, Va.

[...]

"ALONG WITH THE Pegasus-class spacecraft built on Orbital's MicroStar and LEOStar buses, the company is well along on its first planetary spacecraft, which is sized for a Delta II-heavy. Built for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Dawn spacecraft is a Discovery-class mission that will use three xenon-ion engines to thrust out to the main asteroid belt on a 10-year mission that will take it to the large asteroids Vesta and Ceres. The spacecraft is built around a composite tank with a titanium liner designed to hold 900 lb. of xenon fuel for the solar-electric propulsion system.

"A couple of technical issues have left the Dawn mission in limbo for the moment, although its planetary launch window remains open until the second half of 2007. NASA is reviewing the xenon tank for safety, after test failures on similar hardware, and is rechecking the long-term reliability of the power processing unit.

"'In both of those cases, we think we see our way clear to getting to a flightworthy situation,' says John McCarthy, Orbital's program manager for the Dawn spacecraft.

"IN KEEPING WITH NASA's overall push beyond low Earth orbit under President Bush's Moon, Mars and Beyond exploration initiative, Danko sees planetary spacecraft like Dawn as a promising growth area for Orbital's satellite-manufacturing operation.

"'In the satellite business I think growth is going to come basically from two places: one, from the geostationary satellite business, or [two,] from winning a larger market share within the government program,' he says. 'We won the Dawn program several years ago. That was our first entry into our planetary market, and we think we've done a very credible job there. We're looking to get more programs in the deep-space planetary market, which for us is a larger market share of the NASA overall budget.'"