Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/spacedig/V16_0/V16NO016.ZIP/V16NO016

Internet Message Format | 1993-07-13 | 35KB

Date: Fri,  8 Jan 93 05:00:14
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #016
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Fri,  8 Jan 93       Volume 16 : Issue 016

Today's Topics:
               Bion 10 (Cosmos 2229, 92 095A) observed
                    DC-1 and the $23M NASA Toilet
                             DC-Y funding
                Fabrication (was fast track failures)
 Government-run programs Was: Re: Justification for the Space Program
             How many flights are Orbiters designed for?
                         Latest Pegasus news?
            Microreactors for processing native materials
                          Moon Dust For Sale
      Overly "success" oriented program causes failure (2 msgs)
                                 SEI
      Shuttle a research tool (was: Re: Let's be more specific)
        Stupid Shut Cost arguements (was Re: Terminal Velocity

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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 6 Jan 93 20:36:30 GMT
From: Bruce Watson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Bion 10 (Cosmos 2229, 92 095A) observed
Newsgroups: sci.space

I observed Bion 10 as it passed over my location here in Denver.
It was moving from the NW to the SE and brightened to 0 magnitude
at a slant distance of 246 km.

--
Bruce Watson (wats@scicom) Bulletin 629-49 Item 6700 Extract 75,131

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 11:30:05 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: DC-1 and the $23M NASA Toilet
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Michael F. Santangelo) writes:
>Well, it occured to me after being subjected to a little CNN Headline News
>peice this evening regarding the new $23 MILLION DOLLAR toilet that will
>be flying aboard the shuttle Endeavour (GAO is somewhat concerned about
>this btw)

The GAO report concluded that the 'extended duration toilet' costs about
ten times more than it needed to because of NASA procurement practices.
Other examples of this abound; the Wake Shield Facility would cost
NASA $93 million to build (according to NASA's cost model) yet a private
company is building the exact same thing for $11M.

>that no mention has been made regarding this sort of thing
>with respect to the proposed manned, operational Delta Clipper program...
>and what comes as a result of eating).  A great deal of time, effort, and money
>has been spent on STS to accomodate humans living in space during
>week long missions in this regard.

I don't know exactly what the DC1 will do. However, I point out that
the cost will not be as great. SDIO is buying DC in a very un-NASA like
manner. There are only two government people overseeing activities (I
have worked on smaller government programs which had more government
people on it than contractor people doing the work.

That is why the program is coming in at such a low cost. that is also why
SSTO supporters worked so hard to find a new home which would execute
the contract in a streamlined manner.

   Allen
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "A great man is one who does nothing but leaves        |
|  [e-mail]     |  nothing undone"                                       |
+----------------------107 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Jan 93 08:13:00 EST
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Subject: DC-Y funding

-From: [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer)
-Subject: Re: DC-Y funding
-Date: 7 Jan 93 02:48:15 GMT

-In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John Roberts) writes:

->The Shuttle only launches about eight times a year, and represents relatively
->few subsidized GAS cans, mid-deck experiments, etc. Is the market really
->*that* small?

-In testimony before the House Space Subcommittee, Dennis Dunbar, VP of
-the Space Systems Division at GD said that if Government bought launch
-services in a commercial and competative manner then costs would be
-roughly cut in half.

-Yes the market is that small and government policies and systems (like
-Shuttle) are sending prices up and not down.

->(And if these incidental payloads were not subsidized, the market
->might be even smaller.)

-Not so. If NASA implements the voucher system authorized in last years
-authorization bill they could launch more payloads for less cost. There
-is a difference between providing subsidies for a hugely expensive system
-like Shuttle and giving somebody enough money to launch their own payload.
-The latter encourages greater reliance on lower cost systems.

I was thinking of the commercial (rather than government) payload market.
The Shuttle has lots of "nooks and crannies" for small payloads, and if
the government is using the Shuttle anyway for the large payloads and
human-tended experiments, then there's very little marginal cost to the
government in also using the Shuttle for small payloads (particularly those
which need to be returned to Earth after several days in orbit), so
the idea of "subsidization" would mainly be relevant to non-government
users who are presumably deciding whether to use the Shuttle or some
commercial launcher to lift their payloads.

You seem to be implying that the market even for small payloads is almost
exclusively government-funded - that the private sector for the most part
just isn't interested in launches of small payloads - because if there were
a private market, and if commercial launchers were cheaper to the customer
even with the subsidized prices of GAS cans, etc. on the Shuttle, then the
private customers would choose the private launchers even with the current
setup.

John Roberts
[e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:21:15 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Fabrication (was fast track failures)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:
>>>> Most engineering *is* paperwork, or workstation work today. Otherwise
>>>> it's just tinkering on a wing and a prayer. You have to bend metal to
>>>> *test* your engineering, but bending metal *isn't* engineering. It's
>>>> fabrication done by tradesmen.
>>
>>Wait a minute, I never wrote that! That was Gary Coffman!

Yeah, and damn pretty too isn't it?

>Gary's comments (the >>> above) are squarely in the NASA mold:  if you
>do it right on paper, it will work the first time (although of course
>you test it just in case).  Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work
>that way, as witness any number of NASA projects that *didn't* work
>the first time.  Real-world development involves *finding out* what
>works and what doesn't... and you cannot do that on paper.  You have
>to test things *during* the engineering, not just afterward.

I don't know how you read such things into my statements, must be
the big lies of Wright that fool you. Of course you test as you go.
Of course you change the design when you find problems. *And* of
course you *plan* for that in your developmental budgeting and
scheduling. If you don't and instead operate with a "success"
orientation that everything is going to work just like you planned
it and there aren't going to be any delays or extra expenses, *then*
you'll fail more often than not to meet spec, budget, or schedule.
Engineers still don't bend metal though. Most of them don't know the
right end of a hammer to grasp. That's what you've got skilled tradesmen
on the payroll for.

Gary

--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     | emory!ke4zv![e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 09:09:22 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Government-run programs Was: Re: Justification for the Space Program
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:
>In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
>
>>After the first Apollo landing, TV ratings for space coverage dropped
>>sharply. The media took their cue from that. It's only climbed into
>>the top 50 *once* after that, that was the launch after Challenger.
>
>And Star Trek was always at the bottom of the ratings...

Yes it was. It's done quite well in syndication over the years, however,
thanks to a small, but hardcore and vocal group of fans. More viewer
hours are probably spent watching Star Trek reruns today than during it's
first run network release. But that's because you can find it at nearly
any hour of any day on cable and independent stations. Some people watch
it eight times a week. I find that rather sick, but then fan is just a
contraction for fanatic.

Gary
--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     | emory!ke4zv![e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:40:47 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: How many flights are Orbiters designed for?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:
>In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>
>>There will be no private financing of a SSTO proof of concept. The current
>>and projected market is simply too small and not profitable enough to
>>warrent private capital.
>
>With friends like you, who needs Gary Coffman? :-)

Well I like him. He's one of the few sane people posting here. :-)

>The one way to make certain there is no private financing is
>to place all your eggs in the DoD basket and not look for any.
>This is very dangerous unless you believe DoD funding is a
>sure thing.  (In which case it's still dangerous, because
>you'd be wrong.)

Allen's right about this, and you are right that DOD funding
is iffy. Makes a space enthusiast want to cry. Fortunately,
the Russians are still plugging away and the Japanese are
enthusiastic. When the next equivalent of Sputnik comes along,
the US will mount a crash program to catch up, develop an
overly expensive one shot system, then fall back asleep after
the next election.

Gary

--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     | emory!ke4zv![e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:06:05 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Latest Pegasus news?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:
>In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
>
>>Yeah, I'm saying a factor of two isn't enough to cover the likely
>>stretchout in the development timeline as problems appear. I said
>>in the other post that realistic numbers based on other new spacecraft
>>development programs would be a tripling of MacDD's projected base costs
>>and a tripling of their projected development timeline. That would still
>>be cheaper than the monsterous delays and costs of Shuttle development.
>
>Oh?  What new spacecraft are you talking about?  Apollo came in on time
>and under budget.  If the time line had been tripled, we wouldn't have
>landed on the Moon until 1991.  (Assuming the project wasn't cancelled
>in the interim, as it almost certainly would have been.)

Apollo came in on time, as crash military programs sometimes do, and
near budget, a budget more than double that of Shuttle in constant
dollars, but where is it now? It's rusting in Alabama and Florida
because no missions could afford it after the Cold War stunt was
accomplished. Is Pegasus on schedule and on budget? It's been playing
hanger queen for 18 months after it's last bollixed launch. Is Conestoga?
It's launch cost twice what it earned. Neither of those are tainted
by your hated NASA. How about E-Prime's LOFT-1? It launched a year
behind schedule and only made 15,000 feet. Or look at the troubled
Titan series, 34D, III, IV. It's Air Force, but it's a hanger queen
with questionable economics.

>>I think *everyone* agrees that the Shuttle development program was about
>>as badly managed as is possible while still getting a working system in
>>the end.
>
>But, Gary, the Shuttle is the quintessential example of the engineering
>management philosophy you espouse.  The ridiculous Rogers Commission
>report to the contrary, the Shuttle program was not "success oriented."
>It was a failure-seeking program if there ever was one.

It's you who expouses your whole cloth failure-seeking strawman. I
expouse careful engineering planning for the inevitable developmental
setbacks in any new venture. That's not failure seeking, that's failure
avoiding by providing alternatives to risky sections of a program. By
providing for the inevitable changes and substitutions that occur in
any development program *in* the budget and *in* the schedule, you
can have high confidence that you *will* come in on budget and on
schedule. The fact that you can't seem to grasp that simple concept
indicates to me that you are unsuited to ever manage a high tech
development program. You'll certainly never do so with my money.

>>I think comparisons to new airliner construction, such as the references
>>to the progression of the 7xx series, is bogus because SSTO is attempting
>>something no other craft has ever done,
>
>Bogus right back at you, dude.
>
>Every aircraft is designed to do something no other aircraft has done
>before.  If an existing aircraft could do the same job, no one would
>bother designing a new one.
>
>>with an engineering team that has no experience with similar reusable
>>spacecraft to draw on.
>
>Next to Boeing, McDonnell Douglas's engineering teams probably have
>more experience designing commercial aerospace products than any
>company in the world.  Practically all of them reuseable.

There's a vast difference between the incremental improvements from
one aircraft to the next in the series and in a clean sheet of paper
design by a team who has never done any similar work. Name 5 vertical
takeoff and landing reusable spacecraft designed by the MacDD team.
Name *one* that came in on spec, on time, and on budget. Don't bother
me with routine extensions of existing airliner designs, it's not
the same thing. Hell, name *one* high performance fighter or bomber
that the MacDD team doing DC have brought in on spec, on time, or
on budget.

>I can almost hear you sucking breath every time you type the phrase
>"reuseable spacecraft."  Strangely enough, you don't have the same
>reaction to the phrase "reuseable aircraft."  Perhaps because you
>don't know enough history to realize how much engineering and development
>the first commercial aircraft required.  Or perhaps you know how silly
>you'd sound if you spoke about aircraft development in the same apocolyptic
>terms.  But mainly, I think, it's just the technological superstition,
>which NASA has helped to instill, about anything connected with "space."
>After so many years of seeing the way NASA spends money, you believe
>there's just *got* to be a good reason for it; anything connected with
>space must be at least an order of magnitude more difficult to do.  When
>you hear that a vehicle is going to operate in space, without any air
>outside, the superstition takes over, and you believe that the principles
>of engineering that govern other aerospace systems don't apply.

More crap. I do know quite a bit about the engineering mega-hours that
went into airliner development to get practical cost effective airliners
that an airline could operate at a profit. And I expect that a reusable
spacecraft is going to need the same kinds of work before it's practical
and can be operated at a profit. Knowledge of NACA airfoils and high
bypass turbofans just doesn't transfer to vertical takeoff and landing
rockets no matter how much you wave your hands about it.

Gary
--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     | emory!ke4zv![e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 12:00:33 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <[e-mail]>
Subject: Microreactors for processing native materials
Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.sci.planetary,sci.chem,sci.engr.chem

Using materials native to space, instead of hauling everything
from Earth, is crucial to future efforts at large-scale space
industrialization and colonization.  At that time we will be
using technologies far in advance of today's, but even now
we can see the technology developing for use here on earth.

There are a myriad of materials we would like to process,
including dirty organic-laden ice on comets and some asteroids,
subsurface ice and the atmosphere of Mars, platinum-rich
unoxidized nickel-iron metal regoliths on asteroids, etc.
There are an even wider array of materials we would like to
make. The first and most important is propellant, but
eventually we want a wide array of manufacturing and
construction inputs, including complex polymers like Kevlar
and graphite epoxies for strong tethers.

The advantages of native propellant can be seen in two
recent mission proposals.  In several Mars mission proposals
[1], H2 from Earth or Martian water is chemically processed
with CO2 from the Martian atmosphere, making CH4 and O2
propellants for operations on Mars and the return trip to Earth.
Even bringing H2 from Earth, this scheme can reduce the propellant
mass to be launched from Earth by over 75%.  Similarly, I
have described a system that converts cometary or asteroidal
ice into a cylindrical, zero-tank-mass thermal rocket.
This can be used to transport large interplanetary payloads,
including the valuable organic and volatile ices themselves
into high Earth and Martian orbits.

Earthside chemical plants are usually far too heavy to launch
on rockets into deep space.  An important benchmarks for plants
in space is the thruput mass/equipment mass, or mass thruput
ratio (MTR).  At first glance, it would seem that almost any system
with MTR>1 would be worthwhile, but in real projects risk must be
reduced through redundancy, time cost of money must be accounted for,
equipment launched from earth must be affordable in the first
place (typically <$5 billion) and must be amortized, and
propellant burned must be accounted for.  For deep-space
missions, system MTRs typically need to be in the 100-10,000
per year range to be economical.

A special consideration is the operation of chemical reactors
in microgravity.  So far all chemical reactors used in
space -- mostly rocket engines, and various kinds of life
support equipment in space stations -- have been designed
for microgravity.  However, Earthside chemical plants incorporate
many processes that use gravity, and must be redesigned.
Microgravity may be advantageous for some kinds of reactions;
this is an active area of research.  On moons or other plants,
we are confronted with various fixed low levels of gravity
that may be difficult to design for.  With a spinning tethered
satellite in free space, we can get the best of all worlds:
microgravity, Earth gravity, or even hypergravity where desired.

A bigger challenge is developing chemical reactors that
are small enough to launch on rockets, have high enough
thruput to be affordable, and are flexible enough to
produce the wide variety of products needed for space
industry.  A long-range ideal strategy is K. Eric
Drexler's nanotechnology [2].  In this scenario small
"techno-ribosomes", designed and built molecule by molecule,
would use organic material in space to reproduce themselves
and produce useful product.  An intermediate technology, under
experimental research today, uses lithography techniques
on the nanometer scale to produce designer catalysts and
microreactors.

Lithography, the technique which has made possible the rapid
improvement in computers since 1970, has moved into the deep
submicron scale in the laboratory, and will soon be moving
there commercially.  Lab research is also applying lithography
to the chemical industry, where it might enable breakthroughs to
rival those it produced in electronics.

Tim May has described nanolithography that uses linear arrays of
1e4-1e5 AFM's that would scan a chip and fill in detail to 10 nm
resolution or better.  Elsewhere I have described a class
of self-organizing molecules called _nanoresists_, which make
possible the use of e-beams down to the 1 nm scale.  Nanoresists
range from ablatable films, to polymers, to biological
structures.  A wide variety of other nanolithography techniques
are described in [4,5,6].

Small-scale lithography not only improves the feature density of
existing devices, it also makes possible a wide variety of new
devices that take advantage of quantum effects: glowing nanopore
silicon, quantum dots ("designer atoms" with programmable
electronic and optical properties), tunneling magnets, squeezed
lasers, etc.  Most important for our purposes, they make possible
to mass production of tiny chemical reactors and designer catalysts.

Lithography has been used to fabricate a series of catalytic
towers on a chip [3]. The towers consist of alternating
layers of SiO2 4.1 nm thick and Ni 2-10 nm thick.  The deposition
process achieves nearly one atom thickness control for both SiO2 and Ni.

Previously it was thought that positioning in three dimensions
was required for good catalysis, but this catalyst's nanoscale 1-d
surface force reagants into the proper binding pattern.  It
achieved six times the reaction rate of traditional cluster catalysts
on the hydrogenolysis of ethane to methane, C2H6 + H2 --> 2CH4.
The thickness of the nickel and silicon dioxide layers can be varied
to match the size of molecules to be reacted.

Catalysts need to have structures precisely designed
to trap certain kinds of molecules, let others flow through,
and keep still others out, all without getting clogged or
poisoned.  Currently these catalysts are built by growing
crystals of the right spacing in bulk.  Sometimes catalysts
come from biotech, for example the bacteria used to grow
the corn syrup in soda pop.  Within this millenium (only 7.1
years left!) we will start to see catalysts built by new
techniques of nanolithography, including AFM machining,
AFM arrays and nanoresists Catalysts are critical to the oil industry,
the chemical industry and to pollution control -- the worldwide
market is in the $100's of billions per year and growing rapidly.

There is a also big market for micron-size chemical reactors.
We may one day see the flexible chemical plant, with hundreds of
nanoscale reactors on a chip, the channels between them
reprogrammed via switchable valves, much as the circuits
on a chip can be reprogrammed via transitors.  Even a
more modest, large version of such a plant could have a
wide variety of uses.

Their first use may be in artificial organs to produce
various biological molecules.  For example, they might replace or
augment the functionality of the kidneys, pancreas, liver, thyroid
gland, etc. They might produce psychoactive chemicals inside the
blood-brain barrier, for example dopamine to reverse Parkinson's
disease.  Biological and mechanical chemical reactors might
work together, the first produced via metaboic engineering[7],
the second via nanolithography.

After microreactors, metabolic engineering, and nanoscale catalysts
have been developed for use on Earth, they will spin off for use in
space.  Microplants in space could manufacture propellant, a wide variety
of industrial inputs and perform life support functions more efficiently.
Over 95% of the mass we now launch into space could be replaced by these
materials produced from comets, asteroids, Mars, etc.  Even if Drexler's
self-replicating assemblers are a long time in coming, nanolithographed
tiny chemical reactors could open up the solar system.

====================
ref:
[1] _Case for Mars_ conference proceedings, Zubrin et. al.
    papers on "Mars Direct"
[2] K. Eric Drexler, _Nanosystems_, John Wiley & Sons 1992
[3] Science 20 Nov. 1992, pg. 1337.
[4] Ferry et. al. eds., _Granular Nanoelectronics_, Plenum Press 1991
[5] Geis & Angus, "Diamond Film Semiconductors", Sci. Am. 10/92
[6] ???, "Quantum Dots", Sci. Am. 1/93
[7] Science 21 June 1991, pgs. 1668, 1675.


--
Nick Szabo                     [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 6 Jan 93 20:45:10 GMT
From: Bruce Watson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Moon Dust For Sale
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro

In article <[e-mail]| [e-mail] (Thomas E. Smith [LORAL]) writes:
|
|I'm just guessing on my figures, but wasn't 500 lbs of moon rock and dust
|brought back from the moon? And didn't the entire Moon program cost around
|$67 billion? I think that puts the moon dust/rocks at about $134,000,000 a
|pound! But as Ken says, it ain't fer sale by Nasa.
|
A total of 842 pounds of rock and soil.
--
Bruce Watson (wats@scicom) Bulletin 629-49 Item 6700 Extract 75,131

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:09:18 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Overly "success" oriented program causes failure
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:
>
>Of course, the Rogers Commission, headed by a State Department
>carreer bureaucrat with no knowledge of engineering or technology,
>didn't say that.  Instead, they blamed NASA -- as you blame NASA --
>for being too "success oriented" (!) because somewhere along the
>line, someone, somewhere actually took a chance to get the thing
>to work.

Yeah, a management asshole said fuck the temperature, screw the
engineers who say don't launch when it's this cold, we're listening
to Edward V. Wright and taking a chance. God are you an idiot.

Gary

--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     | emory!ke4zv![e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:51:14 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Overly "success" oriented program causes failure
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward V. Wright) writes:
>In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>
>>What they don't tell you in the textbooks is that although Pert charts
>>were indeed invented for Polaris, they *weren't* used to manage it --
>>they were used to intimidate assorted Washington kibitzers, keeping
>>them at arms length from the people who actually ran the project
>>(in the traditional way, using competence and judgement rather than
>>Pert charts).
>
>Doesn't surprise me.  From my experience, that seems to be the
>main way they're still used today.

The Pert chart is a tool of the competent and experienced manager
that allows him to visualize the potential bottlenecks in his
schedule, and to track his project's progress to make sure he
isn't slipping badly because of a subassembly with development
problems. Competent managers don't have to use this tool any more
than they have to use spreadsheets, but it does make the job
easier to use the proper tool. Really competent management, like
the Japanese with their just in time methods, depend on Pert
charts, or their equivalents, to spot potential trouble in their
programs before it impacts their schedule. Trying to carry the
schedule of a complex project in your head almost always results
in some tiny but vital part of the program being overlooked until
it's too late.

Gary

I can't believe I'm giving free management seminars here. I should
be getting paid for this. :-)
--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     | emory!ke4zv![e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 09:41:19 GMT
From: Nick Szabo <[e-mail]>
Subject: SEI
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (John Roberts) writes:

>...SEI didn't sell, largely because of the projected
>horrendous cost (~$400 billion, if I recall correctly). [liability
>to any mission related to SEI, "camel's nose under tent" effect]

SEI was the ultimate manifestation of the old NASA/Von Braun style
of space development, sold honestly.  We're going to tell you today
just how we're going to develop space, out into the middle of the next
century.  We've got all the Next Logical Steps planned out, just so.
Of course there won't be any technological advance before 2030 that
would make our plans obsolete.  Of course we won't discover anything on
the asteroids that would make them better targets than the Moon
or Mars, or on the comets, or on Jupiter, or anywhere else in
space; obviously the Moon and Mars are the Next Logical Steps
and that's that.  Obviously the commercial and military satellites
are just trivial child's play against our inspiring and ambitious
Plan.  Obviously Man In Space is central, and robot probes will play
only a peripheral role, and no technoligical advance can change that.
This is a Long Term Plan, so don't expect any sort of applications
or payback, except of course there will be Spinoffs.

STS and SSF, the first two Logical Steps, were sold dishonestly,
claiming dramatic capabilities that were cut back to trivia and huge
breakthroughts that became huge liablities.  SEI was the second two
Logical Steps, sold more honestly: we're going to spend your tax
money, tons of it, with no application or payback at all, except
the sheer Adventure of it.

When honestly presented, The Plan is most thoroughly rejected.

It's time to move on to the 21st century instead of trying to
implement the myths of the first half of the 20th, fantasies
political (central planning economics) and technoligical (space
stations, shuttles, Buck Rogers, etc.).  Done is the era
of the dominance of Man in Space, coming is the dominance of
Space for the wants and needs of Mankind.  Out goes prejudiced
central planning and Next Logical Steps, in comes building
space infrastructure through emergent competition, and
adaptation to change.  Begone with technology as religious
sacrament; let's use technology as tool.

The 21st century will soon be here.  Toto, I don't think we're
in Kanas any more!


--
Nick Szabo                     [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 7 Jan 93 11:15:50 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Shuttle a research tool (was: Re: Let's be more specific)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Francois Yergeau) writes:

>But the airlines do not contract out their operations.  They procure
>planes, and fly them, just like NASA buys shuttles and operates them.
>It's certainly proper, legal, and it's not clear to me that doing
>otherwise would be beneficial.

Commercial launch services cost the government 30% to 50% less then when
government buys and operates the system itself. It is therefore very clear
that doing otherwise would be very beneficial.

   Allen

--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "A great man is one who does nothing but leaves        |
|  [e-mail]     |  nothing undone"                                       |
+----------------------107 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:33:18 GMT
From: Gary Coffman <ke4zv!gary>
Subject: Stupid Shut Cost arguements (was Re: Terminal Velocity
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>
>>Allen I put a question to you. Do you think that if we grounded the Shuttle
>>permanently tomorrow, laid off all personell involved in the Shuttle's overhead
>>and began work on the DC series that the rest of the money would be available
>>for other uses in space?
>
>If a worthwhile plan for the money where put forth, we would keep 80% to
>90% of it. At this level money in Congress tends to come top down, not
>bottom up. NASA gets $15B a year because that is how much clout it and its
>supporters have. That money went up under Reagan and bush mostly because
>both where strong supporters of space which gave NASA more clout.

Reagan and Bush couldn't care less about NASA, though Danny thought it
was neat to shoot those big fireworks. But they, and Congressmen,
did care about the money and jobs that NASA represents in their districts.
And they did care about the lobbyists and money that flowed into their
campaigns from aerospace contractors. The bulk of that support comes
because of Shuttle and Freedom pork. Where's the pork in your schemes?
Which contractors benefit? Which districts get the jobs? Which Comgressmen
are *really* going to be pissed? And do Clinton/Gore really give a damn
if it means money out of their roads and bridges fund? Paving contractors
are the politician's best friend at campaign contribution time.

Gary
--
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     | emory!ke4zv![e-mail]

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End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 016
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